The Routledge Handbook of Language in Conflict 9781138643840, 9780429058011

Citation preview

The Routledge Handbook of Language in Conflict

The Routledge Handbook of Language in Conflict presents a range of linguistic approaches as a means for examining the nature of communication related to conflict. Divided into four sections, the handbook critically examines text, interaction, languages and applications of linguistics in situations of conflict. Spanning 30 chapters by a variety of international scholars, this handbook: ••

•• ••

includes real-life case studies of conflict and covers conflicts from a wide range of geographical locations at every scale of involvement (from the personal to the international), of every timespan (from the fleeting to the decades-long) and of varying levels of intensity (from the barely articulated to the overtly hostile) sets out the textual and interactional ways in which conflict is engendered and in which people and groups of people can be set against each other considers what linguistic research has brought, and can bring, to the universal aim of minimising the negative effects of outbreaks of conflict wherever and whenever they occur.

The Routledge Handbook of Language in Conflict is an essential reference book for students and researchers of language and communication, linguistics, peace studies, international relations and conflict studies. Matthew Evans is a Lecturer in Linguistics and English Language at the University of Huddersfield. Lesley Jeffries is Professor of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Huddersfield. Jim O’Driscoll is a member of the Language in Conflict team at the University of Huddersfield.

Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics

Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics provide comprehensive overviews of the key topics in applied linguistics. All entries for the handbooks are specially commissioned and written by leading scholars in the field. Clear, accessible and carefully edited Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics are the ideal resource for both advanced undergraduates and postgraduate students. For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/series/RHAL The Routledge Handbook of Language and Superdiversity Edited by Angela Creese and Adrian Blackledge The Routledge Handbook of Language Revitalization Edited by Leanne Hinton, Leena Huss and Gerald Roche The Routledge Handbook of Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Development Edited by James P. Lantolf and Matthew E. Poehner with Merrill Swain The Routledge Handbook of Study Abroad Research and Practice Edited by Cristina Sanz and Alfonso Morales-Front The Routledge Handbook of Teaching English to Young Learners Edited by Sue Garton and Fiona Copland The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Research in Classroom Learning Edited by Ronald P. Leow The Routledge Handbook of Language in Conflict Edited by Matthew Evans, Lesley Jeffries and Jim O’Driscoll The Routledge Handbook of English Language Teacher Education Edited by Steve Walsh and Steve Mann

The Routledge Handbook of Language in Conflict

Edited by Matthew Evans, Lesley Jeffries and Jim O’Driscoll

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter, Matthew Evans, Lesley Jeffries and Jim O’Driscoll; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Matthew Evans, Lesley Jeffries and Jim O’Driscoll to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-64384-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-05801-1 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India Visit the eResources: www.routledge.com/9781138643840

Contents

List of figures List of tables List of eResources Acknowledgements List of contributors Introduction: the origins of The Routledge Handbook of Language in Conflict Lesley Jeffries and Jim O’Driscoll

ix x xi xiii xiv

1

SECTION I

Text in conflict 1 Introduction: textual choice and communication in conflict Lesley Jeffries

11 13

2 Discursive (re)construction of the prelude to the 2003 Iraq War in op/ed press: dialectics of argument and rhetoric Ahmed Sahlane

25

3 Stark choices and brutal simplicity: the blunt instrument of constructed oppositions in news editorials Matt Davies

44

4 Projecting your “opponent’s” views: linguistic negation and the potential for conflict Lisa Nahajec

64

5 Ideological positioning in conflict: the United States and Egypt’s domestic political trajectory Gibreel Sadeq Alaghbary

83

v

Contents

6 Homosexuality in Latvian and Polish parliamentary debates 1994–2013: a historical approach to conflict in political discourse Joanna Chojnicka

103

7 Conflict and categorisation: a corpus and discourse study of naming participants in forced migration Charlotte Taylor

128

8 Hate speech: conceptualisations, interpretations and reactions Sharon Millar

145

SECTION II

Interaction in conflict 9 Introduction: conflict as it happens Jim O’Driscoll

165 167

10 Conflict, disagreement and (im)politeness Maria Sifianou

176

11 Offence and conflict talk Michael Haugh and Valeria Sinkeviciute

196

12 Conflict interaction: insights from conversation analysis Phillip Glenn

215

13 Conflict in political discourse: conflict as congenital to political discourse Peter Bull and Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen

246

14 Discourse features of disputing in small claims hearings Karen Tracy and Danielle M. Hodge

271

15 Leadership in conflict: disagreement and conflict in a start-up team Christian J. Schmitt and Rosina Márquez Reiter

286

16 Interaction and conflict in digital communication Sage L. Graham

310

SECTION III

Languages in conflict

329

17 Introduction: conflict with the fabric of language Jim O’Driscoll

331

vi

Contents

18 Ethnicity, conflict and language choice: an example from northern Ghana Paul Kerswill and Edward Salifu Mahama

339

19 Language and conflict in the Mapuche context Robbie Felix Penman

361

20 Linguistic landscape as an arena of conflict: language removal, exclusion, and ethnic identity construction in Lithuania (Vilnius) Irina Moore

376

21 “You are shamed for speaking it or for not speaking it good enough”: the paradoxical status of Spanish in the US Latino community Pilar G. Blitvich

398

22 Hate crimes: language, vulnerability and conflict Kamran Khan

417

23 Language ideologies in conflict at the workplace Julia de Bres and Anne Franziskus

433

SECTION IV

Linguistics in conflict

449

24 Introduction: the potential for Linguistics to change conflict in the “real” world Lesley Jeffries

451

25 The value of linguistics in assessing potential threats in an airport setting Dawn Archer, Cliff Lansley and Aaron Garner

454

26 Threatening contexts: an examination of threatening language from linguistic, legal and law enforcement perspectives Tammy Gales

472

27 Talk in mediation: metaphors in acrimonious talk Madeline M. Maxwell and Scott V. Anderson 28 Conflicts of policy and linguistic self-representation in the UK asylum process Rachel Hanna

493

514

vii

Contents

29 On agency, witnessing and surviving: interpreters in situations of violent conflict Rebecca Tipton

537

30 The Irish language in Belfast: the role of a language in post-conflict resolution Marcas Mac Coinnigh, Linda Ervine and Pól Deeds

556

Afterword: connecting linguistics and conflict research Index

575 581

viii

Figures

  7.1   7.2   7.3   7.4 16.1 18.1 18.2 25.1 28.1 30.1

Raw frequency of mentions of “immigration” and “emigration” in The Times, 1785–2005 Raw frequency of migration-related terms in The Times, 1800–2000 Raw frequency of “emigrants” and “refugees” over time Raw frequency of “evacuees” and “boat people”, 1800–2000 Twitch stream screen layout Localised trilingualism – a model of development communication Location map of northern Ghana, showing Daboya, Pong-Tamale and the city of Tamale (Google Maps) Elicitation scale The discourse world of the original interview captured through written report, creating a split discourse world Ballybean Youth C. Company

135 136 136 139 315 349 350 463 521 563

ix

Tables

2.1 3.1 3.2 3.3 6.1 6.2 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 16.1 18.1 18.2 18.3 18.4 18.5 18.6 18.7 21.1 21.2 25.1 26.1 28.1 x

Newspaper sample Textual examples from the Daily Express editorial column Canonical conceptual oppositions triggered in the editorial The mapping of constructed evaluative conceptual oppositions onto party-political ideology List of keywords in both languages with English translations Results of the keyword search Metalanguage references to naming of migrants in comments below the Al Jazeera article Collocates of “emigrants” in The Times, 1800–2000 Sample co-occurrences of “Irish” and “emigrants” with time references Collocates of “evacuees”, 1940–2000 Collocates of “boat people”, 1970–2000 Concordance lines of “boat people” co-occurring with “Afghan” Stream and game goals Typical triglossic structure of language use in an African country A triglossic structure of language use in Ghana Language selection for general domains First preferences for language choice in development-oriented activities in Daboya by respondent First preferences for language choice in development-oriented activities in Pong-Tamale by respondent Self-reported main languages for interaction in development settings in Daboya (n=32 for each interaction) Self-reported main languages for interaction in development settings in Pong-Tamale (n=32 for each interaction) Contributions Narrative themes The 27 SCAnR criteria Stance forms significant and/or salient to threats versus non-threats with most common collocates and functions Participants’ information

26 51 53 55 106 107 129 137 137 139 140 141 318 348 348 353 354 355 355 356 406 406 460 485 515

eResources

20.1 20.2 20.3 20.4

20.5

20.6 20.7 20.8 20.9 20.10 20.11 20.12 20.13

(a) Lithuanian capital’s name on the airport façade; (b) A Lithuanian sign on a bus from the airport, 2017 (a) Circled in red is a commercial Russian sign Кофейня (Coffee House), 1910; (b) The statue of Catherine II, 1904 A Russian-Lithuanian sign on a private school, 1912 (a) A Russian name of the city Вилна (circled in red) is visible on the Vilnius station platform, 1913; (b) A Russian-Polish billboard advertising Aslanov wine and brandy on the main square of the city (circled in red), 1915 (a) A German sign on a hostel for German Soldiers, 1915 (Deutsches Soldatenheim) circled in green hangs next to commercial Russian signs circled in red; (b) A German-Polish shop sign, 1916; (c) A LithuanianGerman sign above a soup kitchen, 1917 (a) A Russian sign, 1829; (b) A German sign, 1917; (c) A Polish sign, 1939 (a) A bus with a Polish route sign, 1937; (b) A Polish shop sign Tanie Pończochy (“Cheap Stockings”) on Mickiewicz Street (circled in red), 1938 (a) and 20.8 (b) An anti-Polish Commemorative medal designed by the Lithuanian sculptor P. Rimsa, 1920 (a) A medal commemorating the foundation of Vilnius by P. Rimsa, 1923 (The Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture in Chicago); (b) An antiPolish poster, 1925 The Lithuanian Army enters Vilnius with the victorious slogan ‘Vilnius inhabitants welcome Lithuanian army’ (Vilniaus gyventojai sveikina Lietovos Kariuomene), 1939 (a) A German decree compelling Jews to wear special patches and imposing a curfew, 1941; (b) An ID card in German and Lithuanian issued to a ghetto inhabitant, 1941 (a) A Nazi flag on the main Vilnius cathedral, 1941; (b) The German/ Lithuanian street sign (Deutschegasse/Vokiečių gatvė), 1943 (a) A Stalinist propaganda board in Lithuanian in a library’s reading room, 1940s; (b) Pioneers’ parade dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the Soviet Lithuanian Republic, 1950

xi

 eResources

20.14 (a) Arts Museum with Lithuanian sign (Dailės Muziejus), 1949; (b) Vilnius railway station with Lithuanian sign (Geležinkelio Stotis), 1960 20.15 A street in Vilnius with bilingual Lithuanian-Russian shop signs – Vinas – Вино (“Wine”) circled in red, 1966 20.16 (a) 16th Congress of the Lithuanian Communist Party with a Lithuanian banner – LKP (“LCP – Lithuanian Communist Party”), 1971; (b) Lithuanian café and restaurant signs, 1980s 20.17 A bilingual street sign in Vilnius where Russian on the bottom line has been obliterated, 1991 20.18 Monolingual Lithuanian sign in the old town, 2016 20.19 (a) Lenin’s monument in central Vilnius in Soviet times; (b) Removal of Lenin’s monument in 1991 20.20 The Royal Palace and the statue of the Grand Duke Gediminas, 2017 20.21 (a) A trilingual Lithuanian-English-Russian sign; (b) A trilingual Lithuanian-English-Polish sign, 2016 20.22 Lithuanian-Polish street sign in 2013 (insert on the right) and the empty space in 2014 20.23 (a) Tarybinis (“Soviet”) sausages, 2013; (b) Manhole covers near the parliament building, one with the abbreviated SSR (“ССР”) 2013, one with the same abbreviation erased 2016, both circled in red 20.24 (a) Handheld Polish signs, banners, and EU and Polish flags; (b) Lithuanian, Russian, and Polish signs, 2016

xii

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our thanks to all of the contributors who have worked with us on producing this volume, which we hope will stimulate further exploration of the boundaries between Linguistics and Peace and Conflict Studies. We are particularly grateful to Professors Tom Woodhouse and Oliver Ramsbotham for agreeing to write an Afterword from their perspective in Peace Studies. Our hope is that a conversation between our fields may follow from the publication of this volume. We are delighted that we have been able to include so many different approaches to this interface and especially pleased to be able to include in the final section some examples of very practical ways in which language can be part of the solution to the things that divide human beings from each other. The volume would never have happened if we had not been working on our own corner of this field in relation to mediation communities across the UK from Belfast to Cambridge and from Bournemouth to Dumfries over the last few years. The goodwill and expertise of the people we met through this work are humbling. They have inspired us to, first of all, bring together the scholars and practitioners in this volume and secondly to continue to pursue our own research into the communication inherent in mediation encounters. We will be returning to this work now that the Handbook is complete. A further source of encouragement has come from the people we met at conferences of the Conflict Research Society. Their enthusiasm for our work reinforced our conviction that it is a project worth pursuing. We would also like to thank everyone who has helped us at Routledge. One final mention is to acknowledge the very great contribution made by Simone Schuller, one of the early members of our team, now working for peace on behalf of the EU. Her influence is there wherever this work is worthy, though she is responsible for none of its failings. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders however this has not been possible in every case. The Publishers would be glad to have any omissions brought to their attention so that these can be corrected in future editions. Figure 18.3 is reproduced with the kind permission of the Nordic Journal of African Studies. Figures 20.2a and b, 20.4a and b, 20.11a and b, 20.12a and b, 20.13a and b, 20.14a and 20.16a are reproduced with the kind permission of the Lithuanian Special Archives.

xiii

Contributors

Gibreel Sadeq Alaghbary is an Associate Professor of English affiliated to Taiz University,

Yemen, and currently working for Qassim University, KSA. He served as a Fulbright post-doctoral fellow and adjunct faculty at San Diego State University, USA, in 2013. His research covers the analysis of textual ideology with a focus on political discourse.

Scott V. Anderson is a Graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, College of

Communication. In his current professional role as a change management strategist and consultant, Scott helps executives in the IT industry lead their organisations through major changes.

Dawn Archer is Professor of Pragmatics and Corpus Linguistics at Manchester Metropolitan University and Research Development Lead for the EIA Group, where her work includes developing behaviour analysis and elicitation training to aid airport security. She also developed and advocates CPD training for UK police negotiators, drawing on psychological and linguistic communication principles to provide a toolkit of context-relevant negotiation techniques. Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich is Professor of Linguistics in the English department at University of North Carolina. She researches aggression and conflict, im/politeness models, genre theory, identity construction and traditional and social media, on which she has published and lectured extensively. She sits on the board of journals and is co-editor in chief of the Journal of Language of Aggression and Conflict. Peter Bull is Honorary Professor in Psychology at the Universities of York and Salford, UK, and Visiting Professor at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. He has also been Visiting Professor at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, and is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society. He has over 100 academic publications, primarily concerned with the detailed “microanalysis” of political discourse and nonverbal communication (his principal research interests). His website is at profbull.nfshost.com. Joanna Chojnicka is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Bremen. She studied in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Germany, obtaining her PhD from Adam Mickiewicz University and worked at the Herder Institute in Marburg and Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz. Her research interests focus on discourse, gender and sexuality. She offers seminars in postcolonial discourse analysis, language and gender, and ecolinguistics. 

xiv

Contributors

Matt Davies is Senior Lecturer in English Language at the University of Chester, UK. His

research interests include critical approaches to news discourse, including the ideological function of syntactically triggered binary oppositions in news and other mass media texts. His publications include Oppositions and Ideology in News Discourse.

Julia de Bres is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at Massey University. Her research explores language policies, practices and ideologies relating to multilingualism, in contexts including workplaces, advertising, the new media and everyday literacy practices. She uses approaches deriving from language ideologies theory and discourse analysis. Pól Deeds is the CEO of the leading Belfast Irish language organisation An Droichead Ltd. He has worked there since 2004 when he left Ulster University having earned a PhD for his research into the work of the Cork Poet, Seán Ó Ríordáin. Linda Ervine is Irish Language Officer at Turas, an Irish Language project at East Belfast

Mission. She oversees Irish language, dance, music and Welsh classes. Linda received the Roll of Honour in the Aisling Award for her work promoting Irish (2013) and the Community Relations Council (CRC) Civic Leadership Award (2015) for her Turas work.

Anne Franziskus is a Sociolinguist with research interests in multilingualism, linguistic ethnography and discourse analysis. She completed her PhD at the University of Luxembourg on the language practices, ideologies and norms of cross-border workers in Luxembourg. She now works as a researcher at Luxembourg’s national statistics institute (STATEC). Tammy Gales is Associate Professor of Linguistics and Director of Research at the Institute for Forensic Linguistics, Threat Assessment and Strategic Analysis, Hofstra University, New York. Her primary research uses corpus and discourse analytic methods to examine authorial stance in threatening communications. She has trained law enforcement agents from agencies across Canada and the US and applied her work to criminal and civil cases. Aaron Garner is Director of the EIA Group and Paul Ekman International with a back-

ground in behavioural analysis, specialising in reading emotions and the evaluation of truth, credibility and deception, as well as primary detection of malicious intent in high-risk security environments. As a professional trainer, coach and public speaker, Aaron engages with many types of professionals across the world.

Phillip Glenn is Professor of Communication Studies at Emerson College, Boston. His

conversation analytic research includes studies of laughter, mediation and employment interviews. He was Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Program on Negotiation and ­co-edited a special section of the Negotiation Journal. A volunteer mediator and trainer with Metropolitan Mediation Services in Brookline, MA, Phillip has advanced training in nonviolent communication.

Sage L. Graham is an Associate Professor of Linguistics in the Department of English at the

University of Memphis in Memphis, Tennessee, USA. Using language as an analytical lens, her research explores misunderstanding, conflict and impoliteness in digital, medical and religious contexts. Her recent research addresses multimedia multimodality in online gaming.

xv

Contributors

Rachel Hanna is a PhD student in English Language and Linguistics at Queen’s University, Belfast. Her doctoral research explores reader responses to asylum seekers’ stories and the influence of linguistic medium on empathetic engagement. She was given the Poetics and Linguistics Association’s (PALA) Palgrave Prize in 2017 for her conference paper at their annual conference in Sardinia in 2016. Michael Haugh is Professor of Linguistics in the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Queensland. His research interests lie in pragmatics, conversation analysis, humour studies and intercultural communication, with a particular focus on the role of language in social interaction. His books include Understanding Politeness (with Daniel Kadar), Pragmatics and the English Language (with Jonathan Culpeper) and Im/politeness Implicatures, and he is co-editor in chief of the Journal of Pragmatics. Danielle Hodge is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication at the University

of Colorado, Boulder. Her research focuses on identity, race and racism by putting discourse analytic approaches into conversation with African American Studies and critical race theory. She received her BA in English from Chapman University and her MA in Communication and Rhetorical Studies from Syracuse University.

Lesley Jeffries is Professor of Linguistics and English Language at the University of

Huddersfield. She is the co-author of Stylistics and Keywords in the Press and author of Opposition in Discourse, Critical Stylistics and Textual Construction of the Female Body. She works on the interface between textual meaning and ideology.

Paul Kerswill is Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of York. His research centres

on the sociolinguistics of language and dialect contact. He is editing, with Heike Wiese, Urban Contact Dialects and Language Change: Insights from the Global North and South for Routledge. He is interested in language in development contexts and is a founding member of the University of York’s Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre.

Kamran Khan is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and visiting

scholar at King’s College London. He is author of Becoming a Citizen: Linguistic Trials and Negotiations.  He is co-leading a British Academy project about security and sociolinguistics at King’s College. His research interests include race, citizenship, security and Islamophobia.

Cliff Lansley is CEO of the EIA Group and Paul Ekman International and Board Level con-

sultant for six other companies. His experience is in the commercial sector and he works with security/intelligence agencies around the world, helping them embed research-based behaviour analysis and elicitation skills into professional practices. His PhD explores Emotional Intelligence models and assessment methodologies. 

Marcas Mac Coinnigh is a Lecturer in Irish and Celtic Studies at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests include Irish Phraseology, Cultural Memory and Folkloristics. His academic articles have appeared in Folklore, International Journal of Lexicography, Léann, Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship and Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie.

xvi

Contributors

Edward Salifu Mahama is a Sociolinguist. He is a Senior Research Fellow and Head of

the Institute of Interdisciplinary Research and Consultancy Services at the University for Development Studies, Tamale. His research is in language use, culture, conflict and development. He has also ventured into migration and food security and language and religion.

Madeline M. Maxwell is Professor of Communication Studies and Director of the Project on

Conflict Resolution at the University of Texas, Austin.

Sharon Millar is the head of the Department of Language and Communication at the University of Southern Denmark. Her research interests include language norms, corporate language management, internationalisation of higher education and hate speech. She was partner in an EU-funded action project on hate speech and hate crime (2015–2017) and is the grant-holder for a project on the expression and perception of hate speech, financed by the Velux Foundation (2018–2021).  Irina Moore is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Wolverhampton, where

she teaches linguistics and psycholinguistics. She is an editorial board member of the International Journal of Communication and Linguistic Studies (Sage Open). Her research interests include, among other areas, the sociolinguistics of the post-Soviet space and comparative psycholinguistics. She has published a number of works on linguistic rights of minorities and identity issues, language removal and repositioning in Kazakhstan and Lithuania.

Lisa Nahajec is Lecturer in English Language at Liverpool Hope University. She teaches

discourse analysis, media language and stylistics and her research interests include pragmatics, stylistics and linguistic negation. Previous publications include ‘Negation, Expectation and Characterisation’ (in Pragmatic Literary Stylistics, 2014) and she has a forthcoming monograph, Negation, Expectation and Ideology in Written Texts (John Benjamins).

Jim O’Driscoll is a member of the Language in Conflict team at the University of Huddersfield.

His research interests straddle several aspects of language in situated use. His articles have appeared in Functions of Language, Intercultural Pragmatics, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Journal of Politeness Research, Journal of Pragmatics, Multilingua and Pragmatics and Society.

Robbie Felix Penman is a PhD student in ethnolinguistics at the University of Montreal, a graduate of the program in language documentation and revitalisation at SOAS (London) and a former intern with whereareyourkeys.org. He has been involved in language revitalisation and documentation in Quechua, Mapuche, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh contexts, and has written about solidarity between different endangered language communities. Rosina Márquez Reiter’s research sits at the interface of pragmatics and sociolinguistics

and focuses on (inter)action. She has published research monographs and journal articles dealing with pragmatic phenomena such as indirectness, face, politeness, pragmatic variation, speech acts, conversational interaction and service encounters. She is currently working on multidialectalism and issues of (im)mobility among Latin Americans in Madrid and London.

xvii

Contributors

Ahmed Sahlane is Senior Lecturer of English at University of Jeddah. He is a certified teacher of English and has published on questions related to student argumentative writing, media argumentation, metaphorical reasoning and rhetoric in mediated political discourse, particularly within the Middle Eastern context. He is also a reviewer for journals in the field of critical discourse and argumentation studies. Christian J. Schmitt is a PhD student in linguistics at the University of Surrey. His research

examines the discursive construction of leadership in the entrepreneurial team as a setting.

Maria Sifianou is Professor Emerita at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

Her publications include Politeness Phenomena in England and Greece and a number of articles. She has co-edited Linguistic Politeness across Boundaries among others. She is coeditor of the Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict. Her research interests include im/politeness phenomena and discourse analysis from an intercultural perspective.

Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen is Emeritus Professor of English Linguistics at Ghent

University, where she is an Associated Researcher. Her research focuses on modality and discourse markers in a functional perspective and on media discourse. She has published on these topics in journals including Journal of Pragmatics, Journal of Language and Social Psychology, Language Sciences, Linguistics, Journal of English Linguistics, Text and Discourse & Society.

Valeria Sinkeviciute is a Lecturer in Applied Linguistics in the School of Languages and

Cultures at the University of Queensland. Her research interests include pragmatics of social interaction and discourse analysis with a focus on conversational humour, (im)politeness and identity construction.

Charlotte Taylor is Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University

of Sussex. She works on language and conflict in two contexts: investigating mock politeness and the representation of migration. Her publications include Corpus Approaches to Discourse: A Critical Review, Patterns and Meanings in Discourse and Mock Politeness in English and Italian.

Rebecca Tipton is Lecturer in Interpreting and Translation Studies at University of Manchester. She researches interpreting in a variety of contexts including asylum settings and conflict zones. Her recent publications include Ideology, Ethics and Policy Development in Public Service Interpreting and Translation and Dialogue Interpreting: A Guide to Interpreting in Public Services and the Community. Karen Tracy is Emeritus Professor of Communication at University of Colorado, Boulder.

She is Distinguished Scholar at  the  National Communication Association and Fellow  in the International Communication Association. She studies institutional talk in justice, academic and governance sites. She is author of Challenges of Ordinary Democracy; Discourse, Identities, and Social Change in the Marriage Equality Debates and Everyday Talk.

xviii

Introduction The origins of The Routledge Handbook of Language in Conflict Lesley Jeffries and Jim O’Driscoll

When we started working on a “Language in Conflict” project a decade ago, we had a range of things in mind. We had started by considering some basic questions, the answers to which follow below. These were: •• •• ••

what do we mean by conflict? how does our definition (or definitions) compare with that used in conflict and peace studies? what are the different ways in which language (and linguistic research that has already been undertaken) impinges upon the types of communication involved in conflict situations?

Following this initial scoping of the field as we saw it, we realised that there were myriad ways in which we could follow up with some basic research as well as attempting to unite researchers with overlapping interests in the field in some way. We therefore embarked on a number of small research projects reflecting our own linguistic interests (see Evans and Jeffries, 2015, Evans and Schuller, 2015) as well as setting up a web-based forum for discussion of linguistic aspects of conflict and some training materials for non-linguists who wish to understand more about the tools of analysis that we use (see languageinconflict. org.uk). In 2013, a new journal (The Journal of Language, Aggression and Conflict) was initiated, mainly from the field of pragmatics, and in particular the subfield of (im)politeness research. This publication was a welcome innovation and, edited by Pilar G. Blitvich and Maria Sifianou (both of whom have contributed to this volume), it continues to provide a platform for work in this field. However, we had already embarked upon planning a handbook of language in conflict and we thought there was room for both. We felt in particular that there might be some benefit to the field as a whole for a handbook that would scope it, enabling future researchers to decide how their work fits in among other research into language in conflict. 1

Lesley Jeffries and Jim O’Driscoll

I.1  What is conflict? There are several divergent characterisations and definitions of what conflict is (some of which are discussed by contributors to this volume). Our working definition is that it is: any situation or behaviour involving parties (individuals or groups) who are, or consider themselves to be, instrumentally, intellectually and/or emotionally opposed or simply feel antagonistic to each other. This is perhaps so wide as to be more of a circumscription than a definition and we imagine it will need refining as more work is done. But for our purposes a “catch-all” understanding is necessary because of our perception of the role of language in conflict, which is that the same linguistic and interactional features can be as relevant in the most trivial and fleeting two-person squabble as they are in the most intensely felt, long-standing antagonism between large groups (e.g. nations). Indeed, this commonality is one of our motivations for promoting the study of the role of language in conflict. The more general motivation is the simple observation that, short of firing missiles or throwing punches, language and the interaction accompanying it is involved in every stage of every conflict: people are moved to act the way they do by their worldview, for whose formation their previous experience of language has been largely responsible; most conflicts are conducted through language (even those that include punches or missiles); most can only be transformed through dialogue. While the overt reasons for conflict are rarely linguistic in nature (see Section II of this volume), it would not be stretching a point to claim that language constitutes conflict. Rather than agonise over a precise definition at this point, then, we are more concerned to consider what is or can be involved in a conflict, the factors that will have a bearing on how it is conducted, whatever its nature. To this end, there follows a suggested inventory that circumscribes all the possible variety of interaction that takes place within the context of conflict. Its intention is to provide a vocabulary for this variation, to offer a checklist of situational features that could have a bearing on the nature, development and outcome of conflictual encounters and to take a first step towards a possible typology of conflict situations. It is based on the assumption that the “settings” on each of the identified parameters have a profound effect on the way conflict participants conduct themselves and therefore will influence the nature and progression of a conflict. The inventory is divided into four parts, each of which addresses a particular question, as follows: who? (parameters of participation); how? (categories of means); what? (categories of object); when and where? (spatio-temporal categories).

I.1.1 Parameters of participation: who is involved and how are they involved? Scale of engagement How many individuals are actively participating? Of course, there may be (and often are) many others engaged behind the scenes, but this parameter refers to those enacting conflict in any one encounter. From 1:1 (e.g. a couple having a fight) to many thousands (e.g. a largescale demonstration).

2

Introduction

Scale of effect How many individuals stand to be measurably affected? From just two (e.g. the parties in a small-claims court) to large swathes of the global population (e.g. peace negotiations between countries at war). Permeability To what extent are members of opposing sides fixed? From closed (i.e. the parties are clearly identifiable and restricted, as in a civil court hearing) to entirely open (e.g. anyone can “take sides” – or change them – in a public meeting called for the purpose of discussing an issue). Those present may disagree about individuals’ group membership – or indeed their right to be considered a party at all – which might affect their ability to participate in the interaction. Power From symmetrical to very asymmetrical. This parameter involves potential divergences between participants regarding their ability to influence proceedings and outcomes. These result not only from existential aspects of the wider context (e.g. unequal distribution of military might, financial muscle or soft power) but also prevailing social values and linguistic capital in the specific activity-type (e.g. legal experts versus lay people in court proceedings). Visibility Who else (other than those actively engaged as conflicting parties) is privy to what happens? From nobody to everybody. Crucially, this parameter refers not only to knowledge of the occurrence of an encounter but also to the extent to which it is directly witnessed, since conflicting parties are likely to behave very differently when alone with each other, in the presence of a few witnesses or before TV cameras. Direct/indirect To what extent are the parties engaging directly? Is their conflict being enacted through third parties (with varying possible degrees of autonomy)? Representativeness To what extent are those directly engaged acting on their own behalf? (Or are they merely representing a position? If so, what latitude do they have?) This question is the converse of direct/indirect above.

I.1.2  Categories of means: how is conflict expressed and manifested? Channel A list of means for relaying language (e.g. face-to-face, phone, email, Twitter, letter, displayed notice, badge, distributed flyer, newspaper), but can also involve non-verbal signs (e.g. clothing, mannerisms, use of projectiles, display of physical presence).

3

Lesley Jeffries and Jim O’Driscoll

Language activity/genre For example, informal discussion, formal warning, formal negotiation, debate, semi-public meeting, report. This category involves issues of accountability and confidentiality. For example, is a meeting on-record or off-record? (And if the former, how is it to be recorded?) The precise nature of an encounter, and its assumed purpose are often matters of contest in themselves and/or involve divergent assumptions on the part of participants. Intensity This is a cline, from inflammatory verbiage, through clearly articulated language of entirely neutral affect, to barely articulated “bad feeling”. Strategy A short list of future prospects projected by one party intended to induce change in an opposing party (e.g. changed perspectives, dire consequences, benefits). These may be contained in a single speech act (e.g. an assertion, a threat, a promise) or in large-scale nonverbal actions (e.g. overt military manoeuvres).

I.1.3  Categories of object: what is presented as at issue? These categories can be expressed as a contest between two mutually exclusive propositions, as follows: Possession “I want X” versus “You can’t have it (perhaps because I want it)”. This category most typically involves territory, goods or money. Action “I want to do X” versus “No, you can’t do X (perhaps because I want to do it)”. This is typically about access to resources or facilities, or about performing actions. Procedure “Let’s do X” versus “No, let’s not do X (perhaps let’s do Y instead)”. All ideological debates within a society about mores and laws fall into this category. Commission “I want X (to be) done” versus “No, X will/should not be done”. Cutting across these basic categories are several more. One of these admits the possibility that the matter is not so clear-cut. Focus How clear is it? From high focus (clear, single object of dispute) to very diffuse in which more than one of the above categories of object arises. For example, a person who alleges unfair dismissal may clearly frame their case as one of possession (e.g. “I want compensation”) or as one of action (e.g. “You have no right to dismiss me”). On the other hand, 4

Introduction

s/he may frame it in a manner that allows for both (“You have no right to dismiss me, so I want compensation or my job back”). Two other categories refer to participants’ alignment to the object of dispute. Outcome = yes/no or either/or There are two possible types of reason for “no” in the categories above. It could be a “flat” no, the naysayer arguing simply that “you have no right to X” and/or that “X is a bad idea”. This means that the disputed outcome is yes/no. On the other hand, the reason for “no” may be because an alternative is predicated. This means that the disputed outcome is either/or. This latter type may be further subdivided into either X or Y and either me or you. The former is applicable to all categories of disputed object (e.g. “You can’t have X, but you can have Y / Let’s not do X; let’s do Y instead”). The latter is applicable only to the possession and action categories (e.g. “You can’t do X because I want to do X instead”). Perceived magnitude This category is a continuum from, at one end, a perception that the object of conflict is a matter of great moment (invoking deeply-held principles and beliefs and/or involving the setting of precedent) to, at the other end, a feeling that it is an ephemeral matter (e.g. result of misunderstanding, “storm-in-a-teacup”). Finally, there are two categories that relate the object of dispute to its temporal existence. Facticity Is the dispute about something that is presented as having already happened, is happening or is planned? Conflicts concerning planned actions or arrangements may be easier to resolve, while those pertaining to done deeds are inherently more difficult because the original sense of grievance is likely to have been exacerbated by initial responses to its voicing. Immediacy To what extent is the object of the dispute an integral part of the encounter itself? From completely (e.g. refused entry to venue) to not at all (e.g. a debate concerning Israel versus Palestine).

I.1.4 Spatio-temporal categories Stand-alone/episodic Is the encounter a one-off (e.g. fight with a stranger over a parking space) or part of a series (e.g. one of several negotiation meetings)? Domain Three basic types may be recognised: private (individuals interacting as themselves without a significant audience); specialist-role-based (e.g. workplace, service encounters, state agencies; where individuals act as representative so that particular norms apply and issues of accountability arise); and public arena (whether local, national or international; where the numbers and identity of the audience is unknown). 5

Lesley Jeffries and Jim O’Driscoll

Setting For example, private place, institutional building, TV studio, street.

I.1.5  The nature of the inventory The inventory presented in the last four subsections does not constitute a model. It is a list of categories many of which are interdependent; that is, “settings” on any one parameter often constrain what settings are possible on others. But our concern at this stage of our work in language in conflict is to be comprehensive rather than to achieve elegant parsimony. And the relevance of the inventory to conflict – and especially to language in conflict – should be obvious. It pertains to how conflicts are acted out. All of the contributions in this book take account of several of these settings in one way or another.

I.2  How do we link to conflict and peace studies? The study of conflict and its application to particular cases of conflict is, quite rightly, a growing field of academic attention. A small number of British universities, for instance, have dedicated research centres and the number offering postgraduate-level taught programmes in the field runs into double figures. All the publicity materials for these programmes stress the ubiquity, and some the inevitability, of conflict in all areas of life and on all scales. However, the names of the department/schools under whose aegis they run (most frequently featuring the words “politics” and/or “international”) and the majority of the programme titles (most frequently featuring – as well as “conflict” – “peace” and “international”) indicate a tendency to concentrate on large-scale conflicts where conflicting parties are conceptualised, and their positions analysed, politically. The only other perspective that sometimes makes an appearance in the publicity materials is a psychological one, suggested by occasional use of the word “reconciliation” and in references to psychological aspects and the need for personal transformation with regard to attitudes, (religious) belief systems and the “inner being”. What is missing from these materials is the linguistic-interactional perspective. It is not, of course, that an awareness of the importance of language is entirely lacking from scholarship in and around conflict. The contemporary constructionist/constructivist emphasis in the social sciences – on “making” meaning – implies an integral role for language in constituting psychological and social realities (Shotter, 1993) and is evident even in volumes intended primarily for the student (see, for example, the prominence given to language and discourse in Burr, 2003). At a less general level, we see this emphasis manifesting itself in areas of political scholarship such as inter-community relations (e.g. Hayward and Mitchell, 2003), security issues (e.g. Balzacq, 2005) and most notably international relations (e.g. Debrix, 2003), where reference has been made to a “linguistic turn” (Fierke, 2002, p.331). Finally, at the most particular level of study – that of conflict itself – the role of discourse is sometimes addressed. One well-respected volume (Pearce and Littlejohn, 1997) is explicitly predicated on the belief that “communication” is “the essence” of all conflict and argues the need for “new forms of discourse” in tackling ideologically rooted antagonisms. Its social constructionist position, in which conflicts are viewed as made and remade in an ongoing process, advocates attention to “the particularities of the activity” rather than the constellations of clashing variables “in some abstract world of generalized persons” (1997: p.xii). 6

Introduction

It is in Pearce and Littlejohn’s book, however, that we see exemplified the rather narrow angle of the present linguistic/discourse turn in conflict-related studies. Despite its professed standpoint, it does not attempt to define what “communication” or “discourse” is, nor is a methodology offered for studying the nature of these “particularities” or for exploring how the abovementioned “persons” can be degeneralised analytically. Its main thrust is to put forward and itemise the characteristics of a “transcendent” form of discourse (Pearce and Littlejohn, 1997, pp.151–215). This prescription is a laudable and valuable aim. But it is one more likely to be appreciated in the tranquillity of contemplation than the hurlyburly of participation. It amounts to a moral transcendence within individual psyches. Thus, to some degree, Pearce and Littlejohn reflect the same bipolarity noted previously with respect to courses in conflict studies – a macro (political-ideological) focus and a micro (psychological) one. Its emphasis on discourse and communication illustrates a widely held belief in their importance. But the mechanisms for studying how language is important are largely missing. We believe that a more comprehensive, systematic application of the insights and methods of several subfields of linguistics offers a way for conflict studies to fill this gap between the macro and micro. One key contribution we hope to make is to widen the scope of situations to which Conflict Studies/Peace Studies, as a subject in its own right, can realistically be applied. Attention to the particularities of texts and encounters offers not only the possibility of elucidating how large-scale conflicts are played out through myriad smaller-scale encounters and exchanges, but also that of bringing relatively small-scale conflicts into the same conceptual field of view There has, of course, been quite a large amount of scholarship emanating from subfields of linguistics that takes on board the inevitability of conflict, addresses antagonistic communication and interaction and explores how oppositional stances are created and maintained. One example has come from the (on the face of it, unpromising) field known as “politeness studies”, which researches its opposite – that is, impoliteness and rudeness (e.g. Bousfield, 2007; Bousfield and Locher, 2008; Culpeper, 1996, 2011; Culpeper and Hardaker, 2017). Another strand, more clearly belonging to the public arena, is that which studies confrontational broadcast talk and how the manipulation of situational norms and language resources can be used to set up the potential for conflict (e.g. Clayman and Heritage, 2002; PiirainenMarsh, 2005). Yet more public is the attempt (Chilton, 2004; Chilton and Wodak, 2002) to apply linguistic insights to the (inherently conflictual) political arena in some kind of systematic fashion. Finally, the field known as Critical Discourse Analysis (Blommaert, 2005; Fairclough, 1995, 2001, 2003; Hodge and Kress, 1993 [1979]) has always been socially engaged and, in addressing itself largely to the study of how hegemony, inequality and power are enacted, often has conflict in its sights. These foci are examples of linguistic scholarship with relatively obvious applicability to conflict. There are several other tools and concepts from linguistics that can usefully be applied. By and large, however, the overall contribution to conflict studies from linguistic scholarship so far has been the converse of that implied above in conflict scholarship. Just as conflict scholars employ insights from linguistics on an ad hoc and partial basis, so linguistic scholarship has employed a scatter-gun approach to the social, focussing either on particular issues or events in order to advance theory or on particular settings in order to describe the nature of interaction within it. In both cases, conflict swims in and out of view, just one element of a larger whole. Our intention is to raid both these types of scholarship, training their insights, theories and associated modes of analysis specifically on the matter of conflict. 7

Lesley Jeffries and Jim O’Driscoll

I.3  What is in the volume? From the outset, we were determined that this volume would be much more than a random selection of different types of linguistics, all with some relevance for conflict, useful though that could have been. We have long considered it important that scholars working on projects relevant for the real-world make explicit these connections and their potential impact, so one of our aims here was to encourage our authors to do so. In addition, we wanted to provide a framework for the different ways in which language impinges on conflict as a way through the morass of potential research approaches that could be relevant. This is particularly important for those outside of linguistics who may wish to inform themselves about linguistic aspects of conflict. Providing an overall division into three main types of contact between language and conflict may seem simplistic to those in the fields themselves, and there are certainly some overlaps where work draws on more than one approach, but we would defend the division on both practical and theoretical grounds. First of all, it is helpful for policy-makers, practitioners in the field and conflict and peace theorists to have a straightforward framework for thinking about the relevance of language to their work. We have seen above that the importance of language in conflict has been recognised in these fields, but the lack of further development beyond acknowledging a “linguistic turn” (see above) may reflect the absence of linguistic input into those fields themselves. We therefore feel that we – and other linguists – have a duty to bring our knowledge to the attention of those who may be able to use it in practical ways in bringing about conflict transformation into something more positive. The theoretical justification for a high-level division of research in linguistics relevant to conflict is that made in Jeffries (2000, p.5) as follows: Another basic insight that I remember from my early brush with scientific modelling is that no useful theoretical model can be as complex as the data that is being described. One of the strengths of theoretical models is precisely their aim of simplifying the complexity of the mass of data. What worries me about the rejection of some linguistic models we have seen recently is that they are not replaced by another equally simple model, or even by a more complex but more explanatory model. Instead they are replaced by models whose complexity equals that of the data and whose explanatory value is therefore very limited. We therefore present a defiantly simple three-way division as the main structuring device for the Handbook, where we first of all distinguish between those aspects of language use that are textual (word and structure choices) and those that are interactional (pragmatic choices). Section I focuses on text in conflict and includes a range of chapters concerning ideational features of texts and Section II focuses on interaction in conflict concerning the interpersonal aspects of conflict communication. Section III looks at languages in conflict and takes a more socio-politically situated standpoint, looking at the role of languages and dialects themselves in decisions relating to conflict. Section IV, which focuses on linguistics in conflict, closes the volume with a different take on everything that has gone before, considering more closely and exemplifying how linguistic knowledge can play out in actual situations of (potential) conflict.

8

Introduction

References Balzacq, T. 2005. The three faces of securitization: political agency, audience and context. European Journal of International Relations. 11(2), pp.171–201. Blommaert, J. 2005. Discourse: a critical introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bousfield, D. 2007. Impoliteness in interaction. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamin. Bousfield, D. and Locher, M. eds. 2008. Impoliteness in language: studies on its interplay with power in theory and practice. Berlin and New York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter. Burr, V. 2003. Social constructionism. Hove: Routledge. Chilton, P.A. 2004. Analysing political discourse: theory and practice. London: Routledge. Chilton, P.A. and Wodak, R. eds. 2002. Journal of Language and Politics. Amsterdam: John Benjamin. Clayman, S. and Heritage, J. 2002. The news interview: journalists and public figures on the air. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Culpeper, J. 1996. Towards an anatomy of impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics. 25, pp.349–67. Culpeper, J. 2011. Impoliteness: using language to cause offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Culpeper, J. and Hardaker, C. 2017. Impoliteness. In: Culpeper, J., Haugh, M. and Kádár, D.Z. eds. The Palgrave handbook of linguistic (im)politeness. London: Palgrave MacMillan, pp.199–225. Debrix, F. ed. 2003. Language, agency, and politics in a constructed world. New York: M.E. Sharpe. Evans, M. and Jeffries, L. 2015. The rise of “choice” as an absolute good: a study of British manifestos (1900–2010). Journal of Language and Politics. 14(6), pp.751–77. Evans, M. and Schuller, S. 2015. Representing “terrorism”: the radicalisation of the May 2013 Woolwich attack in British press reportage. Journal of Language, Aggression and Conflict. 3(1), pp.128–50. Fairclough, N. 1995. Critical discourse analysis. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. 2001. Language and power. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. 2003. Analysing discourse: text analysis for social research. London: Routledge. Fierke K.M. 2002. Links across the abyss: language and logic in international relations. International Studies Quarterly. 46(3), pp.331–54. Hayward, K. and Mitchell, C. 2003. Discourses of equality in post-Agreement Northern Ireland. Contemporary Politics. 9(3), pp.293–312. Hodge, R. and Kress, G. 1993. Language as ideology. London: Routledge. Jeffries, L. 2000. Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater: in defence of theoretical eclecticism in Stylistics. PALA Occasional Papers No 12. Pearce, W.B. and Littlejohn, S.W. 1997. Moral conflict: when social worlds collide. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Piirainen-Marsh, Arja. 2005. Managing adversarial questions in broadcast interviews. Journal of Politeness Research. 1(2), pp.193–217. Shotter, J. 1993. Conversational realities: constructing life through language. London: Sage Publications.

9

Section I

Text in conflict

1 Introduction Textual choice and communication in conflict Lesley Jeffries

1.1 Why textual choices matter in conflict This opening part of the Handbook concerns aspects of language which can be seen as both most and least obviously related to conflict. While the words we choose to use may appear to the lay-person as the most obvious way to offend or pacify those we find ourselves in conflict with, this section concerns not how we threaten (or find agreement with) others, but how we create a view of the world that may exacerbate – or ameliorate – situations of unacceptable conflict. We will consider the more direct interpersonal aspects of linguistic choices in Section II, but for now we will see how the effects of what we say/write – and how we say/write it – may feed into the fundamental structures of our worldview with the consequence of putting us at odds with those holding a different or an opposing worldview. While the worldview we create by our textual choices often directly impinges on our audience(s), it is convenient to separate out the textual choices from their (interpersonal) effects in order to make some progress in understanding each strand of communication.

1.1.1 Textual choices create an ideational/ideological worldview The way in which we express ourselves includes many choices which together build up a worldview which our texts (whether spoken or written) present to the audience. This worldview makes assumptions about how the world is, particularly the human world. It delineates the shape, size, timescale and social structure of the world in the text and may imply or state how the participants, human and other, typically behave, or what typical characteristics they may have as well as the specific behaviours and characteristics the text is concerned with at any one point. A text may, for example, present people with certain characteristics (race, colour, gender, sexuality, age) as essentially good or bad, on the basis of those characteristics. A place or an institution may be painted in glowing or dark colours with little or no evidence and as part of the background of the text. These processes are not in themselves wrong or harmful. They are an inevitable consequence of describing (a version of) the world in texts. After Halliday (1985), we may label this worldview, using one of his “metafunctions”, as ideational, by contrast with the interpersonal metafunction of language which we will 13

Lesley Jeffries

consider in Section II. Thus, any text (e.g. “I’m boiling”) is likely, at one and the same time, to be presenting a particular (ideational) view of the world (e.g. the room is very warm) and may also be aiming for some interpersonal effect (e.g. for your hearer to open the door to cool the room down). The way in which both of these aims are achieved at once varies in relation to textual choices and context (and it provides linguistic scholarship with a great proportion of its more difficult subject matter). When we consider texts relating to conflict situations at any level, from personal to international, we often encounter not only a worldview but a worldview with certain implied values. Thus, we can see that some texts may provide relatively benign (though nevertheless possibly contested) views of the world (e.g. whether or not the room is actually too warm can be a subjectively contested view) and others may provide not only ideational information on what the world is like, but also ideological information on the values espoused, whether consciously or unconsciously, by the producer of the text. Thus, a comment that the restaurant you are going to provides vegan food may demonstrate either the ideology of the speaker (that s/he does not think human beings should exploit the animal world for food/ clothing and therefore approves of this option) or an ideology whereby the speaker thinks it right to demonstrate respect for such views in their hearer(s), whatever their own views. Whichever of these options is true in the situational/interpersonal context, the very text of an utterance like “We can go to Hansa’s – they have vegan food there” itself embodies the value that on some level, vegan food is a good thing. Textual meaning, then, may carry the consciously-intended ideological outlook of the producer, but it may also simply reflect the subconscious ideological assumptions of the society or group in which the text is produced. We cannot necessarily know which of these is true of any text and in a way, the point is moot since it is how the text propagates ideation – and ideology – that we are concerned with here. Much communication in conflict appears to centre on the intended meanings of the participants in what they say or write, but this could be a red herring when what we need to discuss is the effects of their texts, irrespective of conscious intention. Clearly, the values or ideologies embedded in texts produced during communication in a conflict situation may be precisely those which are contested by the conflict itself. As we will see below, this may be during a particular episode between parties to a well-defined conflict or it may be part of a longer, slower, debate across society and through history about what is acceptable and unacceptable. All such debate to the extent that it is respectful and open is preferable to physical combat. More often, though, there is no debate at all about the most important of the disagreements. These are the ones that are embedded at a level of textual meaning that is least accessible to challenges and may not even be clear to the text producers. The following section discusses the nature of such hidden meanings.

1.1.2 Textual choices are not only propositional but also hidden Texts, however long or short, are the combination of fundamental linguistic meaning (i.e. structures/words/semantics) with particular contexts of use. We will discuss the wider situational and social context later, but here we will address the particular issue of what makes textual meaning different from basic linguistic meaning. We can visualise the textual layer of meaning as being added to the basic propositional meaning by the choices made between alternatives on a particular occasion of use. This is the reason that it can justifiably be linked to stylistics, which is the study of textual choices. Thus, if we aim to produce a text describing a dog eating a bone, it may be that we decide to characterise the dog as an active participant in this text (“The dog ate the bone”) or we may decide to background the dynamism 14

Introduction

of the dog in favour of a focus on the bone (“The bone was eaten by the dog”). This kind of active-passive relationship between alternative sentence pairs has been much-discussed by linguistics, including in syntactic theory (e.g. Chomsky, 1957) and in critical linguistics (e.g. Fowler, 1991, pp.77–9; Hodge and Kress, 1988), but there are many other features of textual meaning where the effects of choices can also alter the way a scene or event is presented (Jeffries, 2013). Although they do not always explicitly present themselves in this way, the various approaches to discourse analysis (DA) that developed after the rise of Linguistics as a discipline in the early 20th century can be characterised as aiming to capture the kinds of meaning that are neither fully contextual (pragmatic) nor completely context-free (i.e. semantico-structural). With the possible exception of early versions of DA (see, for example, Brown and Yule, 1983; Coulthard, 1985), whereby the main concern is with the formal links between sentences, all other developments in describing “discourse” appear to be attempting to explain how language usage makes meaning over and above the basic propositional content but stopping short in many cases of characterising the full interpersonal and situational context. While DA has produced a wealth of different frameworks with which to analyse text (see Alba-Juez and Juez, 2009 for an overview of some of them), none of these has so far become the default approach, though one strand of development of particular interest in the context of this handbook, usually known as CDA (Critical Discourse Analysis) developed from an explicitly Marxist position specifically with the aim of exposing the fostering of unacceptable ideologies by certain textual practices (see Bloor and Bloor, 2007; Fairclough, 1995). This may be the most obviously relevant development of discourse analysis in relation to conflict communication, but it too has produced many different terminologies and a range of approaches (see, for illustration, Machin and Mayr, 2012; Wodak and Myer, 2015) which over time have become increasingly concerned with context (of production and reception) and only a few of which remain primarily text-based. My own contribution to this field comes in the form of Critical Stylistics (Jeffries, 2010, 2015a, 2015b) whose aim has been to separate the analysis of text from the views of the analyst (i.e. it is not Marxist in essence) and also from the intended and received meaning by producer and recipient respectively. The other aim was to provide a coherent framework of textual features for researchers to employ. There will be more discussion of the approaches used by authors of chapters in Section I of the Handbook but for now, we can note that many of the features examined by such approaches do not occur at the propositional level of lexico-grammar (plus associated context-free semantics). Rather, they use frameworks which access the background “scenery” of the text world. This includes value-laden ideologies that are taken for granted in the processing of a text and by this very mechanism have the power to influence the viewpoint of the reader, often beneath the level of conscious engagement.

1.1.3 This difficulty of identification can make ideologies hard to challenge/see In order to discuss the problems encountered when challenging ideology in texts, I will explain examples here in terms of the critical stylistics framework. This framework is used by a number of the other chapters in Section I (Chapters 3, 4 and 5) but there are also different ways in which textual meaning can be accessed methodologically and described in theoretical terms, as we can see in chapters drawing on rhetoric (Sahlane) and on corpus methods combined with CDA (Chojnicka, Taylor and Millar). For exposition here, then, 15

Lesley Jeffries

I will use the notion of the “textual conceptual function” (TCF) from Critical Stylistics as a way to define the layer of meaning at which these features operate. What is meant by TCF is a kind of form-function pairing in which there may be a prototypical form (such as, for example, “no” and “not” in negation) which commonly identifies with the core meaning (e.g. of negation), but where there is also a range of more or less peripheral forms which may vary across the different levels of language structure (e.g. “un-” and “dis-” from morphology and “lack” and “fail” from lexis), even to the point of including body language (e.g. shaking of the head) or facial expression (e.g. turned down mouth and furrowed brow) to deliver the negated meaning. The reason why negation (see Nahajec’s chapter), opposition (see Davies) and other TCFs (see Alaghbary) matter is that they can provide a powerful backdrop for propositional meaning. Thus, for example, the proposition of a sentence such as “We must consider X” is relatively uninteresting and simply indicates that there is something we should take note of, but whatever is chosen to fill the X slot is potentially very powerful; for example, “We must consider the terrible mess that this government has made of the National Health Service”. In this case, what gets included in a noun phrase (i.e. the phrase replacing X) is not open to question but becomes reified by its very naming. So, the reader is asked to engage with a proposition (“We must consider something”) but is not invited to question whether the implied proposition in the final noun phrase (“The government has made a mess of the National Health Service”) is in fact true. I sometimes play a short game in workshops and classes to illustrate this point. It is a version of the Victorian parlour game known as “Consequences”, and it involves writing a word at the top of a slip of paper, folding it over so that your neighbour cannot see what you have written and then passing it to them for the next word to be added. What happens, if you instruct the participants to write first a determiner, then an adjective, then a noun, followed by another noun and maybe also a prepositional phrase (each time with the paper being passed on to the next person) is that the resulting random phrases name a number of “things” that have never been named before, but which take on a fascinating existence in the minds of the class. Thus, we have encountered “that huge cat duster in the cupboard”; “my green house book on the table” and other such imaginary items. Usually, the words chosen are quite mundane and frequently concrete rather than abstract, though they can be quite bizarre, like “this furtive dream bike” or “his wooden idea hat”. Once encountered, these referents appear to exist, by the very act of naming. This exercise demonstrates the power of naming, not just the process of choosing a particular noun from a number of options, but by also including words which pre- and post-modify it (the noun). While it is fun to play with them in this way, it underlines the more serious significance of phrases like “a form of soft war that Russia is now conducting against the west” (UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to parliament on 6 March 2018, after the poisoning of a former Russian agent and his daughter in Salisbury). In this phrase, there is an assumption about Russian (governmental) behaviour, but it is constructed as the referent of a noun phrase, rather than as a proposition (“Russia is now conducting”, etc.). The result is that the reader/hearer is less likely or able to challenge the truth or accuracy of this assumption, because, just like the “furtive dream bike”, its existence has been established by naming it.

1.1.4 The repetition of ideologies can lead to naturalisation Another important facet of the power of textual meaning is that however it is created (by naming, negation or some other feature), the repetition of an idea – whether ideational 16

Introduction

(e.g. this room is hot) or ideological (e.g. Russia is the enemy) – can start to seem like common sense if it is repeated often enough. This process of an idea becoming seen as factual by repetition is known as naturalisation, and it can affect even the most educated and critical of readers/hearers. We are all susceptible to the power of repeated ideologies, such as “Women should be slim”, in texts, even if our more political selves reject them when confronted with them head-on. It is the insidious nature of the half-hidden ideology that makes it so powerful and difficult to challenge. When combined with a conflict situation, perhaps one which has been ingrained for generation after generation, this kind of textual feature may naturalise and perpetuate the attitudes that prop up the conflict itself. In long-standing conflict situations such as Israel–Palestine or Northern Ireland, the power of naturalised ideology to produce antagonistic attitudes in each new generation is often facilitated by the kinds of textual feature discussed in the previous section. We can also see similar processes at work in local or personal conflicts where, for example, an estranged husband and wife may name each other in increasingly naturalised ways (e.g. “that mad bitch”, “that twisted bastard”) so that it is difficult to perceive or label them in any other way.

1.1.5 These processes are independent of conscious intentionality One further general point in relation to the significance of textual meaning in conflict situations needs to be made. Of course, it is perfectly possible to see examples of explicit ideology in the propositional content of texts (e.g. “We are opposed to the deliberate ending of any innocent human life from the first moment of its existence, conception” (Pro-Life, 2018). However, the ideology in such cases is open, clear and able to be questioned or challenged directly by similarly propositional counter-arguments. What we mean by textual meaning is the kind of meaning that is brought into being behind and around the propositional meaning and which can be accessed only with significant processing effort. There is no necessary link, however, between textual meaning of this ideological kind and deliberate obfuscation or conscious manipulation. While it is perfectly possible for competent writers and speakers to self-consciously hide or obscure their ideologies by using textual features of the kind we are discussing, it is just as likely that they honestly see the naturalised ideologies they support as being factual, and therefore not open to debate or challenge. In addition, many ideologies are the product of tacit social agreement and are not contested publicly. These feed into texts without comment and are only brought to the surface when something happens to disrupt the accepted norms of a group or of society. Thus, although deliberate manipulation and obfuscation may be of interest in particular cases, we make no theoretical linguistic distinction between them.

1.2 The kinds of conflict that involve textual meaning In our general introduction to this volume, we discussed the nature of human conflict short of violent physical strife. Often, of course, there are both linguistic and physical manifestations of conflict, but we are concerned here with the former, which we see as a characterising all human conflict to a greater or lesser extent. In this section, I will attempt to map out the types of conflict where textual meaning (as opposed to, or in addition to interpersonal meaning) could have an effect and indicate how the same textual features may play a part in the playing out of those conflicts. 17

Lesley Jeffries

1.2.1 International conflict between states and other parties The word “conflict” perhaps brings international conflicts most readily to mind, though disagreements can occur at any level. The issues that arise between larger entities such as states or competing groups or tribes within a state are complex and qualitatively different in many cases from smaller-scale conflicts. There may be clashes over land, natural resources, political ideologies and historical actions which seem intractable (see, for example, Ramsbotham, 2016) and many years of diplomatic and other efforts may have gone into trying to resolve them. However, there remains, at the heart of all the negotiations and debate, the use of language to engage with the warring parties and factions. Other complicating factors in the linguistics of these situations are, of course, the question of which language(s) to use in any particular circumstances (see Section III for chapters relating to this issue) and the particular register(s) that arise from international diplomacy. Neither of these sets of complications can detract, however, from the fact that in any particular communication there is a need to choose words and structures. In other words, textual meaning of the kind defined in this chapter is always present and therefore always liable to import some assumptions – which may be ideological – into the situation.

1.2.2 Regional and local conflict between groups and organisations Many people in the world live in situations where there is tension or even outright conflict between groups within the same geographical location or administrative unit (from village to city or county). As with international conflicts, the tension may arise from competition for resources, which, for example, in cities may be space, or what a lack of space causes, such as noise pollution. There may also be overlap between this category of conflict and more personal or cultural clashes based on race, age, lifestyle and so on. In many such cases, there is no direct communication between the parties and the conflict is entirely carried on in public discourse (e.g. through the pages of local newspapers or in discussions between the members of each “side” which emphasises and naturalises the stereotyping of the perceived “enemy”). This lack of direct communication is, of course, typical too of entrenched international conflict and in both cases the result can be physical violence replacing discussion. Language does participate in these conflicts, however, in the manner in which texts represent the (splintered) world of the conflict. This textual representation is of course always crucial to the ongoing debate. Whether in the editorial of a newspaper, the shouting match in a city street or a conversation between those of like minds aimed at strengthening the antagonism towards the other side, all these uses of language make (textual) choices and these choices create assumed meaning.

1.2.3 Institutional politics at state/region/local level Politics at all levels has its own language habits and this is evident in the disconnect that many citizens of all countries, whether democratic or not, feel in relation to their political leaders. As with diplomacy, politics has registers and shorthand, which is usually shared by political commentators (i.e. journalists) and the politicians themselves. The public, insofar as they are interested, may also know the kind of language that is used in this arena. There is very often, however, a feeling that the language is allowing politicians and their supporters to promote ideas and policies that citizens do not like. It is, however, not straightforward to find a way to pinpoint exactly what the linguistic problem is. One answer is that everyday 18

Introduction

words (e.g. “choice”, “respect”) take on a different kind of meaning within the political sphere and can be both a shorthand for an assumed bundle of semantic features and at the same time relatively empty of signification. This kind of socio-political keyword has been studied using a combination of corpus methods and critical stylistic analysis in news reporting of the years when Tony Blair was prime minister (Jeffries and Walker, 2017). The resulting potential for disaffection and estrangement in the electorate as a result of their suspicion that linguistic choices may be hiding ideologies exacerbates social tension and may set the scene for conflict – between political leaders and the public in this case. It may suit certain kinds of ideological positions to stir up this kind of reaction, but often it is the unintentional consequence of operating largely within the political “bubble”, and not conscious manipulation, that is at the root of the problem.

1.2.4 Personal/social/cultural politics I have already mentioned the aspects of people’s make-up that may contribute to feelings of estrangement from those who differ from us. These include race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, education, political leanings and many more. Each of us is a complex assemblage of many such features and this only leads to tension or conflict where our lives impinge on each other or to the extent that we feel morally or socially superior to the “other”. While our identity may also cause positive engagement both with those who share and those who challenge our norms, there can be a combined effect with other pressures (e.g. shortage of resources) that leads to the “othering” of those with different identities and blaming them for the other problems. These are perhaps particularly highlighted where the identity features are most immediately evident; in skin colour, dress, language, social habits and so on. The linguistic consequences of this kind of tension or conflict may be partly in relation to language variety (e.g. we criticise a group for their language choice or their accent or dialect – see Section 1.3), but there are also textual consequences for the way that we represent such groups or the way in which we construe the world in communicating with them.

1.2.5 Personal conflict Perhaps the most common kind of conflict in our daily lives comes in the form of personal conflict – with neighbours, family members, co-workers and so on. These conflicts can be short or long-lasting, of course, and may also descend into physical violence in extreme cases. The kinds of structural violence that are entrenched in societies where some groups have lower status by definition can, of course, mean that solutions to personal conflict are only possible by some changes at societal levels. These conflicts are also distinguished by being played out largely in face-to-face (spoken) interaction, which means that pragmatic approaches to the language involved are central (see Section II). Nevertheless, these personal conflicts are also affected by linguistic choice and that means there is always textual meaning which construes the nature of the conflict and the context in certain ways some of which may not be helpful if we want to address the underlying conflict itself.

1.3 The kinds of data that are relevant to conflict at some/all of these levels Having taken some time to talk through the types and layers of conflict in the last section, here we try to account for the range of text-types that may be involved in any one case. 19

Lesley Jeffries

While it is tempting to think of personal conflict as mainly characterised by face-to-face spoken interaction and international conflict as being carried out in written documents and formal meetings, in fact, there is probably a great deal of personal interaction in the world of international diplomacy (note the amount of discussion of body language when leaders meet in public) and there can be quite formal language involved in personal conflict (for example once mediators or lawyers are involved). We, therefore, refrain from linking text-types to any particular kind of conflict, though some may be more likely than others in particular settings. For example, it is unlikely that newspaper stories will be written about a conflict between spouses unless this becomes so extreme that law enforcement or other authorities become involved. There is a sense in which all and any type of language use can become involved in a conflict situation. This could range from a tweet or a personal text message to published accounts from a committee or a public speech reported on news media. In the following list, I have tried to account for the nature of the texts involved, without necessarily itemising each sub-genre or text-type there is in human interaction.

1.3.1 Parliamentary debate and official language The ultimate example of public language, official proceedings in parliaments are usually available in print and broadcast format, sometimes live and often archived online for future viewing or searching (see, for example, the UK’s Hansard at https://hansard.parliament. uk/). This means that politicians’ words in relation to any issue, but particularly where they impinge on a conflict, are permanent and thus very powerful. The debates that politicians engage in are a very important part of the way in which the public world and social values are created and naturalised. Using a corpus-based study of parliamentary debates in the Latvian and Polish chambers, Chojnicka reflects on this process in relation to changing attitudes towards LGBT people in those countries.

1.3.2 Public texts aimed at influencing their readers Other public text-types whose raison d’etre is to influence attitudes and present the perceived world in particular ways include any public texts (written or spoken) which are explicitly linked to the opinions, policies or attitudes of a person or group. If these texts are explicit in their espousal of particular ideological values, then this is reflected in their propositional content. Such explicit ideologies in texts may be offensive or provocative to some readers, but they are at least accessible to direct challenge. It is also common to find that ideological content is semi-concealed in such texts and this is where a linguistically sophisticated analysis is needed to understand what values are being propagated. Alaghbary investigates the textual meanings inherent in government statements by the US and Egypt on two sides of the conflict in that country and Sahlane and Davies base their analyses on the news editorial, which is also explicitly aimed at influencing the opinions of its readers.

1.3.3 Reporting/commentary/editorial/interview in mass media The mass media is hugely influential in mediating power in modern society and the variety of genres and text-types across all the conventional media outlets is growing. The recent debates about “fake news” have been ubiquitous in response to the idea that the power of the media is its pervasiveness in promulgating inaccurate or misleading “facts”. Perhaps more 20

Introduction

insidious, because it is more difficult to identify and challenge, are the naturalised ideologies about people or groups, based on repeated assumptions, that can lead to prejudice and hatred. The ways in which migrants are represented (infesting, flooding, etc.) is just one recent example of this process. Taylor considers changing reporting of migration over time in the The Times.

1.3.4 Social media engagement/debate/argument with current issues The public has a stronger voice these days, largely thanks to social media. While superficially positive, this change in public debate – and the means by which is it carried on – has also led to a blurring of the lines between public and private communication. In itself, this is not problematic, but it can lead to a naturalisation of some very unappealing ideologies which might otherwise have only been expressed in private. The rise in the apparent acceptability of racist, sexist, homophobic and other prejudiced views is partly defended by appeals to “free speech” without a nuanced understanding of what that precious ideal really means in practice in our highly connected world. It is clear that the use of social media to “other”, to bully and to whip up hatred is growing and causing more conflict in the world. Millar approaches this topic by looking at the meta-language used in legal and quasi-legal texts and considers how terms like “hate speech” themselves are defined.

1.3.5 Mediated conversations/negotiations between individuals/groups One of the types of communication event that is perhaps specific to conflict is the mediated conversation. Whether it is a teacher or parent trying to make two children settle their differences; a community mediator helping two sets of neighbours to come to some kind of peace or an international negotiator trying to find common ground between warring parties, these communications are marked by the presence of a “third” party who is officially neutral in relation to the cause of the conflict. The interactive aspects of this kind of communication (who speaks when; what are the “rules” for turn-taking, etc.) are clearly specialised but the textual meaning is the same as in all other communication and can be analysed for the same partially hidden or assumed ideologies. There has been some work on mediated communication in conflict (Stokoe and Sikveland, 2016), but there is a great deal more to do. Although mediation does not feature in this section, Maxwell and Tipton, both in Section IV, discuss communicative aspects of this kind of situation; the metaphors used – and useful – in mediation (Maxwell) and the issues that arise for interpreters in conflict communication, who are presented with many of the same challenges as mediators, though the roles are officially distinct.

1.3.6 Conversational data: between individuals/groups It should be clear by now that the textual choices made by language producers, in all situations, are subject to the same kinds of ideational processes and that some of these can go beyond ideation to reflecting values (ideologies) of the text producer, whether conscious or not. When two people or groups are involved in a slanging match or a frosty conversation or a continued argument over several episodes there are many features of language that will be prominent, most of them aspects of the interaction itself and affected in many cases by the wider situation and social context (see Sections II–IV). Nevertheless, since there are still words, phrases and sentences being used, these will reflect the worldview and opinions 21

Lesley Jeffries

of the participants. Textual meaning is therefore threaded through all language use, and all conflictual communication, whatever the circumstances. Nahajec (see Chapter 4) looks at the textual choices made in a particular kind of one-to-one interaction, which has potential for conflict, the political interview.

1.4 The approaches available to researchers Depending on the specific research question being addressed, there are a range of options for researching the textual aspects of communication in conflict situations. The data can be used inductively, whereby a research question is asked and data collected which is then systematically analysed to answer the question. This data may be corpus-based (see Chapters 6, 7 and 8) or use smaller amounts of specific data analysed qualitatively (see Chapter 5). Other approaches seen in this section may be seen as more deductive, testing a hypothesis or proposing a theoretical refinement by searching for cases which confirm or challenge the hypothesis/proposal (see Chapters 2, 3 and 4). In these latter cases, the rigour in the research process is partly in the structure of its argument, complemented by the explanatory and illustrative examples from data sought out to test the ideas.

1.5 Introducing the chapters in Section I This chapter has laid the background for the following chapters, which range over the conflict levels, text-types and approaches discussed above. There are, of course, many permutations that are not represented here, but these chapters are indicative of the scope for much more work in this field, as well as demonstrating that much work already completed in CDA, Critical Stylistics and Corpus Linguistics (as well as combinations of these) is relevant to conflict, whether or not it has presented itself in this way. In Chapter 2, Sahlane uses argumentation theory and analysis based on rhetorical frameworks to examine op-ed press items (editorials and other opinion pieces) covering the prelude to the 2003 Iraq War. Sahlane critiques the fallacious use of argumentation strategies in this data that are not wrong in themselves but are “dangerously prone to abuse”. The following three chapters (3–5) are based on a critical stylistic view of textual meaning. Davies argues that news discourse is partly responsible for creating conflict through its exaggeration of the binary. His data comes from editorials used during the UK’s general election campaigns of 2010 and 2015 and his focus is on a single TCF, that of constructed opposition. Nahajec considers the textual practice of another TCF, negation, and its effect in conflict situations. Using examples from political interviews, she argues that there are three ways that negation can contribute to conflict: i) in enacting conflict between speakers; ii) in representing people and ideas; and iii) in heightening fears and tensions in conflict contexts. Alaghbary takes a broader Critical Stylistic view of two conflicting statements on the removal from office of President Morsy of Egypt. The statements are from US President Obama and the Egyptian Supreme Council of Armed Forces. Alaghbary considers the role of language in naturalising ideologies and the difference between categorical statements from the military government and Obama’s modalised or provisional “truth”. The remaining chapters in this section (6–8) approach their topics through (critical) discourse approaches combined with corpus methods. Chojincka examines the construction of ideological views of homosexuality in Latvian and Polish parliamentary debates from 1994 to 2013. The chapter considers the structural violence which arises from representation leading to the normalisation of negative ideologies characterising homosexuality. Changes in 22

Introduction

parliamentary references/discussion over time are examined and the tendency to connect homosexuality with Leftist politics (by the Right) is critiqued. Taylor examines the naming practices of reporting on forced migration in The Times newspaper. In particular, the naming of the participants in the process of forced migration is shown to have potentially damaging consequences for the people forced from their homes. Finally, Millar takes a slightly different stance, examining official documents and legal discussion to see how the phenomenon of “Hate speech” is defined and used. She shows that although popular in political policymaking and speeches, the term is not used in laws themselves. She also demonstrates the power of a term (which has no agreed definition) to become reified through naming in conflicts at different (geographical/political) levels from global to national.

1.6 What we might gain from textual analysis of conflict-related text It may already be evident that careful and systematic scrutiny of the language used in or related to conflict can demonstrate where prejudices arise, how stereotypes are naturalised and when opinions are entrenched. However, it is perhaps worth finishing this chapter with some suggestions as to how raising awareness of textual meaning could be of value in a society aiming to minimise conflict at all levels. First, taking time to demonstrate how ideologically loaded text and argumentation work can help to raise the levels of critical language awareness in the general population. Although all human beings, including text linguists, can be carried away by emotive reactions to texts at times, there is scope for all of us to learn to react less instinctively and find a more measured way to counter the ideological assumptions being made in the texts we encounter. Second, there is potential for adaptation amongst those involved in conflict to adapt their own linguistic behaviour or at the least be able to analyse what kinds of textual meaning they have created in their language use. This kind of self-awareness, informed by linguistic knowledge, would take time to develop into more automatic behavioural traits, but is not impossible to achieve, it seems to us. Finally, perhaps the best and most achievable outcome from an increased awareness of the effects of our textual choices would be an improved level of public (and private) debate in which people can respond to assumed ideologies by challenging them directly and recognising their own naturalised assumptions for what they are. Politicians already have some ability in this regard, but it earns them only a reputation for avoiding answering questions. To be fair to them, that is usually because the questions they face contain traps created by the very textual features that this chapter has been discussing.

References Brown, G. and Yule, G. 1983. Discourse analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chomsky, N. 1957. Syntactic structures. Janua Linguarum, Series Minor. The Hague: Mouton. Coulthard, M. 1985. An introduction to Discourse Analysis. London: Longman. Fowler, R. 1991. Language in the news: discourse and ideology in the press. London: Routledge. Halliday, M.A.K. 1985. An introduction to functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold. Hodge, R. and Kress, G. 1988. Social semiotics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Jeffries, L. 2010. Critical stylistics. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Jeffries, L. 2013. Critical stylistics. In: Burke, M. ed. The Routledge handbook of stylistics. London: Routledge, pp.408–20. Jeffries, L. 2015a. Language and ideology. In: Braber, N., Cummings, L. and Morrish, L. eds. Introducing language and linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.379–405. 23

Lesley Jeffries

Jeffries, L. 2015b. Critical and cultural stylistics. In Sotirova, V. ed. The Continuum companion to stylistics. London: Bloomsbury, pp.157–76. Jeffries, L. and Walker, B. 2017. Keywords in the press: the New Labour years. London: Bloomsbury. Pro-Life. 2018. Abortion. Available from: https://prolife.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Abortion.pdf. [Accessed 3 June 2018.] Ramsbotham, O. 2016. When conflict resolution fails: an alternative to negotiation and dialogue: engaging radical disagreement in intractable conflicts. Cambridge: Polity Press. Stokoe, E. and Sikveland, R.O. 2016. Formulating solutions in mediation. Journal of Pragmatics. 105(6), pp.101–13.

24

2 Discursive (re)construction of the prelude to the 2003 Iraq War in op/ed press Dialectics of argument and rhetoric Ahmed Sahlane

2.1 Introduction Operation Iraqi Freedom marked not only the US’s second incursion into Iraq in just over a decade but also an unprecedented alignment of the media with the interests of the US government. As in the First Gulf War (1991), the desirability of attacking Iraq became increasingly tied up with human rights abuses committed by Saddam Hussein (the ex-president of Iraq, 1979–2003). Though the Bush run-up to war has generated some frame analysis and agenda-setting research (e.g. Degano, 2007; Nicolaev and Porpora, 2007; Porpora and Nicolaev, 2008), few studies have investigated the prelude to the Iraq War debate from a critical discourse perspective and across different media contexts (e.g. Chang and Mehan, 2008; Sahlane, 2012, 2013, 2015; Wilson, Sahlane, and Somerville, 2012). The present study is an attempt to fill this gap by addressing the role of language in shaping the way the 2003 Iraq crisis unfolded and remained unresolved. I first discuss the data used. Then, I show how argumentum ad hominem (personal abuse aimed at preventing the opponent from advancing his standpoint) and argument from pity were strategically deployed in pro-war argument in a way that provided blinkers that prevented the American–British public from viewing the Iraqi conflict from different perspectives (silenced rebuttals). Argument from pity resorts to emotional appeal (argumentum ad misericordiam) “either to put pressure on the audience or to sway the audience in the protagonist’s favour” (van Eemeren and Grootendorst, 1992, p.139). Argumentum ad misericordiam consists of “unjustifiably appealing for compassion and empathy in cases where a specific situation of serious difficulties, crisis or plight intended to evoke compassion and to win an antagonist over to one’s side is faked or pretended” (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001, p.72). Such emotional appeals in argument are fallacious when the arguer fails to substantiate his standpoint through solid and relevant evidence. The two fallacies listed above can be classified as argumentative moves that are not intrinsically wrong but are “dangerously prone to abuse” (Jacobs, 2002, p.119). Finally, I conclude by highlighting the important findings of the study. 25

Ahmed Sahlane

2.2 Sample materials and methods Mass media reflect the sociopolitical and cultural-ideological environment they operate in. While French journalism has always emphasised the need to analyse facts and educate (inter)national public opinion rather than merely report facts (Berkowitz and Eko, 2007, p.781), American journalism values balanced exposition of the different positions of the contending parties in a conflict, without getting involved in the analysis of the hard facts of political disputes. Hence, US journalists have become more dependent on official sources for information, and they consequently help in the framing of sociopolitical issues. While the French (and Arab) media can be characterised as fitting within the “Mediterranean” or “polarised” model, the US–British media belong to the “North Atlantic” or “liberal” model (Hallin and Mancini, 2004). In other words, the US–British press (which is not state-owned or subsidised) is supposed to be more independent, neutral and informationoriented while state support for the French press (and across Europe) “is justified as a measure to promote political pluralism” (Benson and Hallin, 2007, p.43). However, sometimes the US media “is forced to move closer to the state in order to maintain its legitimacy and authority” (ibid.) and promote its commercial self-interest. In this sense, they face a more challenging task – that of providing a wide range of perspectives and acting as a “watchdog” of the government’s policies (Hallin and Mancini, 2004, p.189). Similarly, the British press has to “compete nationally for readers who are reached primarily via daily sales rather than subscriptions” (ibid., p.42). Consequently, to account for the diverse needs of its readership, “the British press is forced to cover politics in a highly critical, sensational fashion” (ibid.). As British newspapers are financially independent of political parties, they tend to display a significant degree of political pluralism by allowing for more diverse viewpoints and alternative voices in their coverage of international affairs (Hallin and Mancini, 2004).

2.2.1 Newspaper sample The opinion and editorial (op/ed) articles used in this study were retrieved from six prominent daily broadsheet newspapers (see Table 2.1). Two papers from each Western country (France, the UK and the US) were selected, one known as being “conservative” (Le Figaro, The Times and The Washington Post, respectively) and the other as being “liberal” (Le Monde, The Guardian and The New York Times). In addition, Al-Ahram Weekly was selected as a major quality English newspaper from the Arab world. These newspapers are chosen because they are often considered representative of the mediated public sphere.

Table 2.1 Newspaper sample Paper

Political leaning

Position

Articles

The New York Times The Washington Post The Times The Guardian Le Monde Le Figaro Al-Ahram Weekly

Liberal Conservative Conservative Liberal Liberal Conservative Liberal

Pro-war Pro-war Pro-war Anti-war Anti-war Anti-war Anti-war

362 174 135 139 109 237 158

26

Discursive (re)construction in op/ed press

The New York Times (NYT) is supposed to be the most “literate”, “comprehensive” and “magisterial” of US newspapers; it is the US “paper of record” for international news reporting and the “guardian of oppositional news practices” (Goss, 2002, p.84). Together with NYT, The Washington Post (WP) is incontestably the main elite press source for the US foreign policy decision-makers. However, WP was the most hawkish major daily US newspaper in its adoption of a clear pro-war stance during the prelude to the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 (Sahlane, 2012). It systematically silenced or downplayed criticism of the Bush administration’s rush to war (ibid.). Similarly, The Times is regarded as the newspaper of record and the “organ of the British establishment” in view of its “conservative political allegiance” (Cameron, 1996, pp.318– 20). While The Times offered strong support for the US-led war on Iraq, The Guardian forcefully opposed it. The Guardian, which draws its readership mostly from educated, higher socioeconomic classes, has online popularity because of its support for liberal causes. Its editorials demonstrated a clear anti-war stance during the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion. However, its coverage changed in favour of the war once the British troops were on the battlefield (Wells, 2007). On the other hand, Le Monde is selected because it is a newspaper of record of leftist/ Gaullist outlook; it is a “sober paper; there are few ‘soundbites’, no trace of populism. Texts are long, dense and demand high levels of literacy from the reader” (Grundmann et al., 2000, p.306). Likewise, Le Figaro demonstrates an outstanding coverage of international political affairs; its opposition to the Iraq War was very clear in its editorials (Sahlane, 2015). The inclusion of the English-language weekly paper Al- Ahram Weekly was partly motivated by its adoption of a Western style and its broader educated pan-Arab audience.

2.2.2 Methods of analysis Using the keyword “Iraq (editorial)” on a Web-version Lexis Nexis search, the current study has identified 362 NYT and 174 WP op/ed articles. Searches using “Iraq (editorial or comment)” yielded 135 op/ed and feature articles from The Times and 139 Guardian op/ed articles from the selected period (1 February to 20 March 2003). Sunday editions were excluded. As regards the French newspapers, Le Monde (“Saddam”) yielded 695 articles while Le Figaro (“Irak”) generated 237 articles (31 of which were “debates and opinions”). For Le Monde, the analysis mainly targeted sections that were unsigned or written by guest academics or regular op/ed writers. It should be noted that “French newspapers often publish guest opinion articles as well as official editorials on their front pages” (Benson and Hallin, 2007, p.31). The op/ed articles coded as mixed in the theme category or irrelevant were excluded, leaving a total of 109 op/ed articles to be examined. On the other hand, Al-Ahram Weekly data contained 158 articles concerning the same range of topics that were published in the other papers and in the same period. However, owing to space restrictions, my focus will be on “typical” pro-war arguments in US–British op/eds and counterarguments (rebuttals) will be provided from other anti-war papers as deemed useful. The unit of analysis is the individual op/ed. “Op/eds” here refers to both editorials and opinion pieces. Editorials are “unsigned and represent the position of the publication” and opinion pieces are “signed” and “represent the opinion of an individual, a regular, or a guest columnist” (Nikolaev and Porpora, 2007, p.7). Op/eds are predominantly in argument mode and they are schematically structured in that they first define the situation, then summarise the news event and finally evaluate the given situation on the basis of which 27

Ahmed Sahlane

recommendations for a course of action are highlighted. The analysis of the op/ed articles is carried out in two stages. First, argumentative strategies that have the potential to impart ideological meaning are identified. Then, an analysis of selected texts is carried out to illustrate the type of fallacious arguments that the US–British mainstream op/ed discussants advanced in their debate of the legality of the potential US-led war on Iraq. The sampled op/ed texts will be largely presented as illustrative of US–British op/ed discursive practices vis-à-vis the looming Iraq conflict. In a pragma-dialectical approach, the reconstruction of argumentative exchange involves a systematic interpretation of the discourse in the light of the pragma-dialectical objective (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, 1984). The discourse analyst needs to closely examine actual utterances and their underlying interactive and communicative functions. Therefore, the newspaper op/ed argumentation about Iraq is “reconstructed” as a “critical discussion” aimed at a “rational” resolution of a difference of opinion (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, 1984). This reconstruction was guided by the macro-structure of the argumentation process, i.e. the contextual situation in which the argumentative moves are embedded. In other words, the analyst reflected upon the broader circumstances that shaped the unfolding of the Iraq conflict. In this sense, both the verbal indicators and the contextual information served as clues for detecting the type of complex argumentation schemes used by the disputants. In addition, only those elements that are verbally expressed (externalisation) and/or implied from unstated commitments by the participants were considered, contingent upon the overall macro-structure of the argumentative discourse (i.e. the participants’ communicative, interactive and strategic goals). The present study assumes that all representations of social events are polysemic and intertextual in that discourse enters into a synchronic and diachronic relationship with other co-occurring communicative events. For example, the type of arguments put forward by pro-Iraq War op/ed discussants intertextually resonated with the Bush administration’s “war on terror” rhetoric in an uncritical way that created a form of indexical association through “recontextualisation” (Sahlane, 2012). More interestingly, language should be seen as a “socially and historically situated mode of action” in that “it is socially shaped, but it is also socially shaping, or constitutive” (Fairclough, 1995, p.131). The aim of this chapter is to show how ideology may manifest itself in discourse through the use of argumentative manoeuvring strategies that can be geared to manipulate meaning construction.

2.3 The function of ad hominem fallacies in argumentation Pragma-dialecticians define “argumentation” as a communicative encounter in a context of controversy, whose main goal is to resolve a difference of opinion in a rational way (i.e. based solely on the merit of the arguments put forward). Arguers might tacitly resort to “strategic manoeuvring” when they “attempt to exploit the opportunities afforded by the dialectical situation for steering the discourse rhetorically in the direction that serves their own interests best” (Van Eemeren and Houtlosser, 1999, pp.481–2). Effective argumentation should involve taking a stance that is morally worthy (ethos), providing sound evidence in support of argument (logos) and legitimately appealing to the audience’s emotions (pathos). However, strategic manoeuvring may lead to manipulative practices such as (a) exploiting the “topic potential” by directing discussion to the topics that are easiest to handle (e.g. filtering information and keeping argumentation within the bounds of “acceptable” premises), (b) appealing to the audience’s emotions to gain their sympathy for a 28

Discursive (re)construction in op/ed press

preferred stance and (c) using effective presentational devices (e.g. rhetorical questions, metaphor, analogy, loaded expressions, strategic ambiguity) to frame contentious issues from a certain perspective (Van Eemeren and Houtlosser, 1999, p.484). In other words, when a deficient “strategic move” in an argumentative exchange hinders the rational resolution of a disagreement (e.g. false witness testimony, ad hominem arguments), a “fallacy” is said to be committed (van Eemeren and Grootendorst, 1984). Therefore, an interplay of ethos and pathos, seeking to enhance the arguer’s standpoint, might be manipulative, as the following sections demonstrate.

2.3.1 Argumentum ad hominem: strategies of character attack An ad hominem fallacy occurs when an interactant resorts to irrelevant1 personal abuse of an opponent instead of addressing his argument. Such a defamation strategy can also involve discrediting moves that cast doubt on the opponent’s character by portraying them as inconsistent (circumstantial ad hominem) or biased, in order to disqualify them as legitimate interlocutors in a rational dialogue (poisoning the well). Therefore, in what follows, ad hominem arguments are treated as dialogical moves (speech acts) aimed at achieving “rhetorical” goals.

2.3.2 Direct (abusive) ad hominem Personal attack is a manoeuvring strategy that calls into question the character, sincerity and credibility of the other party instead of countering their standpoint. Its function is to ridicule the opponent. Hence, it violates proper rules of social exchange (i.e. politeness), as illustrated below: [M]any elements of the Democratic Party, including most of its base and many of its most conspicuous leaders, seem deranged, unhinged by the toxic fumes of hatred and contempt they emit for the president […] they consider ignorant. (Will, WP, 19 March 2003) It [France] was given its permanent seat on the Security Council to preserve the fiction that heroic France was part of the great anti-Nazi alliance rather than a country that surrendered and collaborated […] France spent the entire 1990s weakening ­sanctions and eviscerating the inspections regime as a way to end the containment of Iraq. France is doing this to contain the United States. (Krauthammer, WP, 28 February 2003) [Short’s “not in my name” position is] more a slogan of disengaged individuals who are opting out of the political battle than of those fighting for an alternative. So, our moral Cabinet minister ends up hiding behind the bogus authority of the UN, waiting for unelected, unaccountable apparatchiks such as Hans Blix and Kofi Annan to pass judgment on Iraq before she can give the bombers her blessing. (Hume, The Times, 13 March 2003) US Democrats, British labour politicians and French and UN leaders are negatively portrayed. While “martial virtues” were associated with American jingoistic masculinity, opposition to war and the advocating of diplomacy became a form of cowardice, dereliction of 29

Ahmed Sahlane

responsibility, defeatism and the pursuit of prudential self-interest. For example, Clare Short (the then-secretary of state for international development, who resigned from Tony Blair’s government in opposition to the 2003 Iraq War) was portrayed as “disloyal Ms Short” (The Times, 11 March 2003), “the people’s peacenik” whose “angry rebel routine boosts her crafted PR image as the conscience of the Labour Party in an otherwise sinful world” and won her the title of “Saint Clare of Ladywood”. She also sounded “as if she were a spokesman for Greenpeace” (Hume, The Times, 13 March 2003). “Her outburst on Iraq is less a statement about the war than about Clare Short” (ibid.), and her “brave stands against government policy” are fake as they tend to “bomb soft targets such as […] a war without UN support” so that “she can ride a wave of public sympathy” (ibid.). The problem with character evidence is that it is a mere strategic manoeuvre to discredit the opponent in the eyes of a third-party audience. This ad hominem argument can be represented as follows (Walton, 2004, p.361): Clare Short is unfit to engage in a dialogue about Iraq War because of her political conduct (“disloyal”, “self-important”, “irresponsible”) and her dialogical propensity to get “angry” and rebellious. Therefore, Short’s “not in my name” stance over Iraq should not be accepted as it is a mere “slogan” of political disengagement and partisan “betrayal”.

2.3.3 Circumstantial ad hominem Circumstantial ad hominem is a “form of argument […] used by one party to infer that the other is committed to a certain proposition, based on what the other has said or done in the past” (Walton, 2004, p.362). Robin Cook’s case can provide a useful illustration of this fallacy that combines argument from commitment and personal attack. Robin Cook (the former British Labour Foreign Secretary, who resigned from Tony Blair’s Cabinet over the 2003 Iraq War) convincingly argued that “Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction” (The Guardian, 18 March 2003).2 Besides, in the 1980s, “the US sold Saddam the anthrax agents and the then British government built his chemical and munitions factories” (ibid.). Therefore, he argued: Why is it now so urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for 20 years and which we helped to create? And why is it necessary to resort to war this week while Saddam’s ambition to complete his weapons programme is frustrated by the presence of UN inspectors? […] If we believe in an international community based on binding rules and institutions, we cannot simply set them aside when they produce results that are inconvenient to us. (Cook, The Guardian, 18 March 2003) William Rees-Mogg (former editor of The Times and former vice-chairman of the BBC) countered Cook’s anti-war position by claiming that: Kosovo is the nearest comparable case to Iraq. NATO acted without UN approval on the grounds that Milosevic’s conduct was a crime against humanity […] That is a problem […] for Robin Cook, who was Foreign Secretary at the time […] If Kosovo was legal, Iraq will be legal as well. ( The Times, 17 March 2003) 30

Discursive (re)construction in op/ed press

Rees-Mogg’s appeal to ethos is a manoeuvring strategy that can be schematised as follows (Walton, 2004, p.364): a (Cook) advocates argument α (“why rush to war now?”), which has proposition A (“invading Iraq without a UN mandate is illegal”) as its conclusion. But Cook has agreed to the bombing of Kosovo without UN backing when he was the British foreign Minister, which implies that he is personally committed to not-A (“If Kosovo was legal, Iraq will be legal as well”). Therefore, Cook has a defect in ethical character (he is inconsistent and hypocritical) and thus Cook’s argument (“invading Iraq without UN authorisation is illegal”) should be retracted because it violates the rules of ethical conduct (a discussant should honour his past commitments). Silenced rebuttal: Why has [the bombing of Iraq] become so much more pressing than any other [humanitarian concern] that [the US] should command a budget four times the size of America’s entire annual spending on overseas aid? (Monbiot, 2003).3 Rees-Mogg’s ethical appeal seeks to refute Cook’s anti-war position in an illegitimate way. First, the analogical presumption that Iraq and Bosnia were similar is yet to be evidenced (burden shift strategy): “Iraq is not a Kosovo, where ethnic cleansing was an immediate, urgent horror or a fledgling East Timor, crying out for external assistance” (Tisdall, 2003). Besides, the goal of the US invasion of Iraq might be motivated by the need “to change social and economic relations by military force in favour of the ‘Master Race’ of the day” (Amin, 2003). Therefore, though personal traits might be valid attacks on an opponent’s credibility, character evidence might become problematic when used to silence others’ viewpoints. More interestingly, even if the character attack is retracted, the damage to the opponent’s credibility may nonetheless persist. The irreparability of the damage is even more serious in the “poisoning the well” ad hominem (Walton, 2006).

2.3.4 The “poisoning the well” ad hominem The deployment of culpabilisation strategies was a very crucial Manichean “rhetoric” to delegitimise the religious leaders’ anti-war position. During Bush’s preparations for war, “church leaders have warned of the unpredictable and potentially disastrous consequences of war against Iraq – massive civilian casualties, a precedent for preemptive war, further destabilisation of the Middle East and the fueling of more terrorism” (Wallis and Cohen, 2003). For example, Tincq pointed out that: Opposition to war on Iraq is contagious in the churches, which view attacking Iraq as politically and morally unacceptable […] The sanctions already killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Iraq does not need bombs or missiles; what it (desperately) needs is moral, political, and economic support. ( Le Monde, 2003 – translation mine) Their anti-war stance brought the religious leaders much criticism in mainstream media. For example, it was claimed that “a list of more than 573 priests” who were “accused of abusing minors since 1976” (Goodstein, 2002) were born radicals as they also opposed the Vietnam War. Instead of addressing their “immoral” scandals, these clerics chose to “turn to 31

Ahmed Sahlane

writing anti-war policy” (ibid.). A conspiracy thesis was also invoked in that any opposition to war was characterised as mere “anti-American/Israel” sentiment (Amos, 2003; Friedman, 2003). Besides, the French and Russian UN veto threats were characterised as “largely driven by economic interests in Saddam’s continuance in power” (Safire, 2003). After all, the UN itself “has rarely risen above being a mere bazaar for the trading of interests between major powers” (Hoagland, 2003). In the same vein, referring to the verbal clash between Izzat Ibrahim (the former right-hand man to Saddam Hussein) and Al-Ahmed (the Kuwaiti representative to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference) about the need for Saddam to resign to avert war, Hoagland argued that “Americans and Europeans dismiss the insults and accusations that Arab leaders hurl at one another at public gatherings and summits as angry and even irrational outbursts” (Washington Post, 2003). Hence, as Tony Blair (Prime Minister for the UK from 1997 to 2007) put it, “the only persuasive power to which Saddam responds is 250,000 allied troops on his doorstep” (The Guardian, 2003). This “perceived Arab tendency towards verbosity and antagonistic dispute is the opposite of self-ascribed European norms of negotiation, consensus and rational dialogue” (Blommaert and Verschueren, 1998, p.19). As a Westerner, Hoagland, a columnist for The Washington Post and a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1991 for his op/eds on the lead-up to the Gulf War, deployed rhetorical strategies “whereby constructions of personal subjective cultural opinion are transformed into cultural realities” (Shi-Xu, 1997, p.182) about the Arab Other (secundum quid fallacy), who is categorised as rationally inferior. Iraqis were characterised as “political minors who are in need of a regime change and/or are unable to carry one out” (Youssef, 2008, p.160). However, as Van Dijk points out: Ideological opinions selectively invoke and hide history […] we need continuity in presenting Arabs as the enemy of the West by describing them in terms of ideological opinions that are part of a long tradition of Western superiority and Arab inferiority. (van Dijk, 1998, pp.60–1) Similarly, Charles Krauthammer (a political columnist for Washington Post, a Fox News commentator and a Pulitzer Prize winner for Commentary in 1987) argued that it would be ridiculous to ask for “the permission of Guinea to risk the lives of American soldiers to rid the world – and the long-suffering Iraqi people – of a particularly vicious and dangerous tyrant” (WP, 2003). As Bush put it, “when it comes to our security, we really don’t need anybody’s permission” (quoted in McGrory, 2003) because “[t]he course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others” (WP, 2003). Therefore, this “agonistic combat” creates an “epistemic context” of “radical incommensurability” and “moral alienation” (Jacobs, 1989, p.359) which reserves epistemic privileges for pro-war arguers and excludes the other party. This “poisoning of the well” ad hominem can be schematised as follows (Walton, 2006, p.289): a (Cook, Short, Russia, Guinea, US democratic party, UN, Arab and ‘Old Europe’ leaders, the clergy, etc.) have argued for a thesis A (a US invasion of Iraq would be an unprovoked war of aggression against a sovereign Arab state). But a belong to or is affiliated with groups Gs (far left radicals, Gaullist nationalists, violent communists, African dictators, rogue Arab regimes, peacenik paedophiles, etc.). It is known that such groups (Gs) are special-interest partisan groups that take up a biased (dogmatic, prejudiced, irrational, fanatic, anti-American/Semitic, “pacifist”, etc.) quarrelling attitude in pushing exclusively for their prejudiced views. 32

Discursive (re)construction in op/ed press

Therefore one cannot engage in a reasoned dialogue over Iraq (or any other ethical/ political issue) with any members of these Gs, and hence the arguments of a for A do not deserve to be taken seriously. In other words, “It is futile to try to reason with passionate marchers waving signs proclaiming that America’s motives are to conquer the world and expend blood for oil. Nor should we waste more precious time trying to beg or buy moral approval from France or Russia, their UN veto threats largely driven by economic interests in Saddam’s continuance in power” (Safire, 2003). Ad hominem arguments are faulty once they try to prevent the other party from advancing their standpoints by casting doubt on their character and/or circumstances. Attributing certain personality traits to a person or a group of people to exclude them from taking part in a rational dialogue is illegitimate, especially when ad hominem is deliberately used with a rhetorical intent to divert attention from the core issues at hand. For example, instead of addressing the illegality of the US’s pending attacks on Iraq, pro-war arguers strategically shifted discussion to irrelevant issues (e.g. the character of anti-war political actors, conspiracy theories). The epistemic harm caused by ad hominem fallacy can extend to the whole out-group beyond the individual engaged in the dialogue. Such epistemic injustice can also be perpetuated through media cultivation of false witness accounts.

2.4 Media appeal to witness testimony as strategic manoeuvring During the 2003 Iraq War, editorial perspectivation of news was very clear in the way mainstream media reframed the US invasion of Iraq as a “necessary” and “benign” “war of liberation”. For example, television news reporters “tend to portray [Iraqi] women as the embodiment of sadness, despair [and] helplessness” (Lipson, 2009, p.152). Iraqi women were also depicted as “immobile subjects” (the only active role given to Iraqi women is their “begging” for water from the coalition forces) and “objects to be seen” (ibid.). This stereotypical portrayal was meant to justify the US invasion as a war to liberate Iraqi women. More seriously, the BBC suppressed “the emotional, ethical and political issues that lie behind the bombardment of Baghdad” (Chouliaraki, 2005, p.147). This “detached overview” reconstructed the US bombing of the Iraqi capital “not as a scene of suffering”, but as “a site of intense military action without agency”, “full of spectacularity and striking action” (ibid., p.153). Reports were “free of bloodshed, dissent and diplomacy but full of exciting weaponry, splashy graphics and heroic soldiers” (Aday et al., 2005, p.18). Likewise, The Guardian featured images of innocent Iraqi children “standing on an abandoned Iraqi tank” and “giving the victory salute” under the “protecting gaze of a soldier” (ibid.). Triumphalist images of “children taking food parcels from the back of a military truck” (Wells, 2007, p.62) erased the sociopolitical context of the Iraqi conflict by rendering the Iraqi children’s suffering attributable to parental “neglect rather than attack” (ibid., p.66). This sanitised depiction of the 2003 Iraq War in Western mainstream media was challenged by the anti-war argument. For example, The Daily Mirror’s iconography confronted the readers with the “brutal realities of the invasion” (Wells, 2007, p.69). Equally, in the Greek press, the gaze of a wounded child in a photograph entitled “The soundless cry of a child” functioned as “a metonym of the Iraqi people looking directly towards the (western) readers” as if telling them “‘I dare you’ (to care, to respond), backed up with the ‘Shame on you’ (for refusing) performative speech act” (Kostantinidou, 2008, p.152). Hence, “its 33

Ahmed Sahlane

narrative was one of shame about what was being done ‘in our name’” (ibid., p.68). Another iconic photo(story) was that of Ali Ismail Abbas, the 12-year-old Iraqi child who lost 16 family members and was maimed for life by a US missile attack on his home. He was flown to the UK for specialised medical treatment. The global infotainment media reframed Ali’s tragedy as a “rescue” story (ibid.) by evoking “liberal narratives of compensation and healing […] to neutralise the iconic photograph’s sense of guilt” (Hariman and Lucaites, 2003, pp.49–50). Therefore, while the act of witnessing is intimately bound up with suffering, it remains a conflict-ridden discursive act in that “the narrator conveys biased selections based on interpretations and conveys evaluations that guide an audience in specific directions” (Van den Hoven, 2015, pp.169–70). This performative aspect of media witnessing is crucial in that arguments from pathos do not merely reflect reality, but they actively seek to shape it, as the data of the present study demonstrate below: Based on Iraqi government figures, UNICEF estimates that containment kills roughly 5,000 Iraqi babies (children under 5 years of age) every month, or 60,000 per year […] Saddam Hussein is 65; containing him for another 10 years condemns at least another 360,000 Iraqis to death. Of these, 240,000 will be children under 5. (Mead, 2003) Men were dropped into [industrial shredders] and we were again made to watch. Sometimes they went in head first and died quickly. Sometimes they went in feet first and died screaming. It was horrible. I saw 30 people die like this. Their remains would be placed in plastic bags and we were told they would be used as fish food […] On one occasion, I saw Qusay [President Saddam Hussein’s youngest son] personally supervise these murders. (Clwyd, 2003) Another witness told us about practices of the security services towards women: “Women were suspended by their hair as their families watched; men were forced to watch as their wives were raped […] women were suspended by their legs while they were menstruating until their periods were over, a procedure designed to cause humiliation”. (Clwyd, 2003) Thousands [of Bosnian Muslims] died. They were killed individually in battle and individually in latter-day concentration camps. They were murdered by the hundreds in massacres. Women were raped. Unlike the Holocaust, the world could not pretend ignorance. We all knew what was happening at Srebrenica in July 1995. (Cohen, 2003) On the second day of the invasion [of Kuwait], I saw a woman, minutes after she had been raped by a member of the Republican Guard. (Ewald, 2003) many more [Kuwaitis] had been brutalized […] ritualistically humiliated […] robbed, beaten, raped, tortured. Some of the subjugation, rape and torture had been professional: the work of Iraq’s terrible special security units […] I watched one torture 34

Discursive (re)construction in op/ed press

victim, a big, strong man, being interviewed in the place of his torture by a BBC television crew – weeping and weeping, but absolutely silently, as he told the story. (Kelly, 2003) First, Walter Russell Mead (then serving as the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for US Foreign Policy), in his WP op/ed “Deadlier than war”, contended that 12 years of US-backed “genocidal sanctions”4 (1991–2003) had been detrimental for the innocent Iraqi civilians. Then, he fallaciously argued that invading Iraq to effect a regime change would be the only morally acceptable solution because the suffering that the US might inflict upon the innocent Iraqi people (“collateral damage”) would be less dreadful than that which would be forestalled. He tried to enhance the “credibility” of his position through the citation of authority sources, such as UNICEF and Iraqi government figures (argumentum verecundiam). This “manoeuvring strategy”, however, is an attempt to use the other party’s data (as already agreed facts) to his own advantage. Similarly, Ann Clwyd (a Welsh Labour Party MP for Cynon Valley since 1984), in her opinion piece “See men shredded, then say you don’t back war”, argued that Blair’s call for arms against Iraq was justified, based on the human rightist argument she espoused and the presumption that her witnesses are “truthful” beyond reasonable doubt. Hence, her use of direct speech might be motivated by the need to leave a back door open for plausible deniability (Walton, 1996b) (she can easily retract any claim that cannot be conclusively defended) by shifting the burden of responsibility (witnesses were made to “swear that their statements are true and sign them”) (Clwyd, 2003). Though “compassion” is a desirable virtue, acting solely based on unverified witness testimonies might lead to simplistic conclusions. She also argued that “[Saddam’s] evil, fascist regime must come to an end. With or without the help of the Security Council, and with or without the backing of the Labour Party in the House of Commons” (Clwyd, 2003). Her description of how Saddam fed dissidents “feet first” into industrial shredders evokes human abuses detailed in Tony’s Blair’s infamous “dodgy” dossier on Iraq. In other words, Clwyd “strategically” introduced into her argument “presuppositions that may not be true at all” (van Dijk, 1998, p.34), but that are “ideologically” coherent with regards to the pro-war stance she was supposed to defend. Such pragmatic presuppositions are very instrumental in political persuasion in that they: regulate the way authors or speakers take their (envisaged) audience into account by attuning their formulations and arguments to the kind of views they implicitly suppose this audience to endorse. Consequently, pragmatic presuppositions reflect not so much the authors’ hidden opinions, but rather such opinions as they expect from their readership. (Hemrica and Heyting, 2004, p.451) Clwyd invoked feelings of pity to induce immediate military action against Iraq, even when she knew that her claim was not relevant to her conclusion: if all dictators should be toppled, the world would turn into a perpetual battlefield. Besides, “it is a bit problematic to be invoking international law and insisting on your right to ignore it at the same time, in the same cause and with the same righteous indignation” (Kinsley, 2003). “Civilised norms of global behaviour” say that “Thou shalt not use military force without the approval of the Security Council – even if thou art the United States of America” (ibid.). Cohen’s witnessing narrative is meant to shock and evoke moral outrage. It conveys a very powerful “never again” instrumental moralism (Nazification strategy) by rendering the 35

Ahmed Sahlane

failure to act as complicity. Recourse to guilt technique has a persuasive force as it enlists the emotional involvement of the readers, who are themselves agentivised, through the ethical claim that “we” should all share responsibility for remembrance and human rights abuse prevention (inclusion strategy). However, Cohen’s argument is based on “presumptive appeal to a precedent [Bosnia], to plead for exemption from the [UN] established rule” (Walton, 1996a, p.94). His shame appeal forewarns the international community and incurs an obligation to assume the moral responsibility of inaction. Cohen’s appeal to shame argument can be reconstructed as follows (Manolescu, 2007, p.380): If you (the international community) do A (tolerate Saddam’s repression of Iraqis), “shame on you”. Feeling shame is undesirable (and I dare you to act responsibly). But, the only way to assume your moral obligation and prevent shameful conduct (as in Bosnia) is to do A (support Bush’s plan to effect a regime change in Iraq). Therefore, you ought to do A. Ewald’s testimony was meant to stress the authoritative role of journalistic eye-witnessing and create the effect of truth (veracity) to validate his pro-war stance (e.g. “I saw a woman, minutes after she had been raped”). The Ba’th regime’s alleged sexual atrocities are rendered factual by the appropriation of the voice of a Western insider-narrator (in his capacity as a reporter). More importantly, he communicates not only his knowledge of the event (spatio-temporal context, circumstance, causality, persecutor-victim relations, etc.) but also his emotional reaction to the traumatic incident. Therefore, his aim is to elicit affective response from readers, who are invited to step beyond the role of complicit passive spectators and take public action to stop the depicted atrocities. However, “a handful of women whom [Al-Ali] interviewed shortly after the invasion vehemently denied the atrocities committed against Kurds by the Iraqi regime and Iraqi soldiers” (Al-Ali, 2016, p.8). Similarly, the widely publicised “incubator” testimony by the 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, Nayirah (Kuwaiti premature babies dumped out of the incubators by Iraqi troops), that helped build support for the 1991 Iraq War turned out to be a fabrication (Walton, 1995, p.771). Had the identity of Nayirah been disclosed (a member of the Kuwaiti royal family), her testimony could have been eroded by her motivation as a witness (though Bush could still have invaded Iraq). The choice of witnesses is not always innocent. For instance, while Bakri chose Palestinian victims in his documentary film to bear witness to the Israeli attacks on Jenin on 3 April 2002, Shalev recounted the conflict from the perspective of Israeli soldiers (wearing civil clothes and outside the battlefield) and Palestinians (wearing dark masks and on the location of the attacks) (Ashuri and Pinchevski, 2009, p.152). Kelly’s appeal to “argument from witness testimony” brings into play proof to expound the arguer’s attempt to sell war to the British public. Witness testimonies are invested with the power to invoke an emotional response as they invite the audience to reflect upon the traumas of others who are suffering. This “Western experience-as-proof” strategy (e.g. “I watched one torture victim”) creates in the reader a sense of experiential proximity with otherwise distant suffering (assertion performative act and its spatio-temporal circumstance). When a BBC TV crew is quoted, evidentiality becomes intertextual. However, reference to “mythical” groups (“another witness”, “one torture victim”) is another form of burden of proof avoidance (anonymisation strategy). Therefore, it seems that this “persistence on the humanitarian discourse of compassion towards victims was pivotal in identifying with the western moral virtues of ‘civilised’ humanity” (Kostantinidou, 2008, p.148). The evocation of “rape” scenarios serves 36

Discursive (re)construction in op/ed press

as a cultural trigger of the black rapist/white woman schema, which ultimately led to the ritualistic lynching and “castration of the racial Other” in the 1920s (Farmanfarmaian, 1998, p.288). Likewise, “Native Americans were accused of kidnapping white women and these allegations were used as justification for genocide” (Stabile and Kumar, 2005, p.770; see also Augoustinos et al., 2002; see also Kumar, 2004). This “sexual anxiety” “necessitates a display of virility” against “sand niggers” (ibid., p.289). The pro-war argument from appeal to pity can be schematised as follows (Walton, 1997, p.105): Premise 1

Premise 2

Conclusion

Silenced Rebuttal

Saddam is using “torture chambers and rape rooms” to suppress his Iraqi restive people (President Bush’s televised war ultimatum to Saddam Hussein on 17 March 2003, reported in The Guardian, 18 March 2003). The US war on Iraq is a “war for drinkable water”, a “war to replace a regime that throws children from helicopters to force their parents to confess” (Ignatius, 2003). “The Iraqis would be much better off after an invasion than they would be living indefinitely chained to Saddam Hussein” (Bobbitt, 2003). “Iraqis, even more than Americans, have much to gain from the downfall of a tyrant” (WP, 2003). Therefore “The removal of Saddam Hussein would […] free millions of Iraqis from deprivation and oppression and make possible a broader movement to reshape the Arab Middle East, where political and economic backwardness have done much to spawn extremists such as al Qaeda” (WP, 2003); “prisoners can be released, ethnic minorities freed from brutal repression, war criminals brought to justice, and a polity based on torture and murder replaced by one that respects basic political and human rights”* (WP, 2003). “We say ‘no’ to this preventive war, carried out by the starvers of Iraqis by embargo” (Morin and de Saussure, 2003) because it is a mere “return to the colonial era and might aim at the remapping of the Middle East” (Myard et al., 2003). “[D]emocracy is a long-term endeavour, more complex than the neo-imperialists of the Bush Administration seem to realise” (Pons and Vernet, 2003). “American hegemony and imperial desires necessitate aborting any and all genuine democratic attempts and aspirations inside Iraq […] Alas, the prospect of a free and democratic Iraq is now more distant than ever”** (Antoon, 2003).

* President Bush declared: “we will tear down the apparatus of terror and we will help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free. In a free Iraq, there will be no more wars of aggression against your neighbors, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near” (The Guardian, 18 March 2003). ** When Bremer came to Iraq as a US neocolonial “proconsul”, he occupied Saddam’s palaces and “stifled Iraqi calls for direct elections” (Scahill, 2007, p.66). He instead created “a thirty-five-member Iraqi ‘advisory’ council, over which he would have total control and veto power” (ibid.). He “banned many Sunni groups from the body, as well as supporters of Shiite religious leader Muqtada al-Sadr, despite the fact that both had significant constituencies in Iraq” (ibid.). The “de-Baathification” process deprived the Iraqi skilled manpower from reconstructing post-invasion Iraq. In addition, the disbanding of the Iraqi military paved the way for its replacement by mercenary contractors (Blackwater) and a powerful Shiite militia (Al-Mahdi Army). Hence, it came as no surprise when John Negroponte was appointed as the first US ambassador to post-Saddam Iraq. Negroponte supervised the training of “death squads or repressive militaries to crush popular movements [in Latin America] Washington deemed a threat to its interests” (Scahill, 2007, p.182). The irony was that “President Bush has argued for a war ostensibly to protect democracy by besmirching democracy” (Hartnett and Stengrim, 2004, p.173).

Though philosophical moralists of the Platonic school view emotional appeal as irrational ad pasiones fallacies (and, thus, as an unreliable guide to action), efficacious rhetoric can turn emotion into a powerful “strategic manoeuvring” tactic to “adjust the conditions of the deliberation for the better” (Jacobs, 2002, p.125) and prepare the audience for “the proper 37

Ahmed Sahlane

frame of mind” by drawing their attention to “the urgency of the situation” and “its moral gravity” (ibid.). However, bearing witness is never innocent of politics in that the pro-war culturalist and gendered narratives are meant to boost their topic potential to the effect that the need to verify the truthfulness of rape and torture allegations becomes functionally irrelevant to the production of an immediate “call for arms” appeal. The problem, therefore, is that the media representation of the Iraq crisis reduces the conflict to a morality tale of good versus evil that requires moral denunciation. It portrays distant suffering of Muslim victims as “their” own fault and absolves the US of any political or moral responsibility. Besides, gender-based violence in the Iraqi context is sensationalised, exaggerated (in terms of scope and threat) and instrumentalised5 in essentialist political and media narratives to the effect of fulfilling the US post-9/11 political agenda for the “Greater Middle East”. More interestingly, witnessing texts have a “performative” power.

2.5 Conclusion In this chapter, I have shown how ad hominem arguments are derailments of appropriate strategic manoeuvring in that they irrelevantly involve (1) direct personal abuse, whose main goal is for the proponent to evade the burden of proof, (2) the accusation of the opponent having violated ethical norms of reasoned dialogue to force him to retract commitments from his support argument store and (3) questioning the disputant’s motivation or intention. Ad hominem arguments, even if retracted by the contender, still detract from the “rhetorical credibility” of the opponent. Another instance of fallacious manoeuvring is the deployment of narrative representations of the traumatic suffering of Iraqis in order to manipulate public opinion in favour of the pro-war perspective. Appeal to pity as a means to induce moral engagement is fallacious when it frames personal testimonies as having incontestable justificatory potential and fails to address the diversity of perspectives (perspectivisation strategy). Witnessing remains a political site of struggle “entangled with conflict and power, itself attesting to the contested ground of experience” (Ashuri and Pinchevski, 2009, p.155). Therefore, the safeguard against media manipulation is that readers can reconceptualise the Iraq conflict “in accordance with the reservoir of images they already carry with them as visual memories” (Möller, 2010, p.125). Media witnessing6 espousing the narrative of trauma and victimhood is a form of social activism that is infused in ethical and legal discourses operating within the matrix of testimonial engagement, moral responsibility and action. However, the act of bearing witness involves social actors who occupy different roles and hold competing positions and divergent interests and resources. Therefore, the appropriation of witnessing as an identity marker by many pro-war arguers remains a socially contested terrain of political struggle in that appealing to narratives of atrocity to legitimise a certain political action can yield prejudiced media accounts. The “chivalrous” engagement between “us” and the suffering cultural “others” in the mainstream global mediapolis does not always provide an unchallengeable record of what really happened. The pro-war discussants deployed an enthymematic argument in that “the activated narrative scheme makes the audience construct a tightly connected web of information that far exceeds the content of the utterances that are presented to the audience” (Van den Hoven, 2015, pp.169–71). The deployed enthymematic topoi7 evoke socially shared beliefs about human compassion and functions as a warrant for the pro-war argument. The tendency of narrative witnessing to reproduce rather than challenge Bush’s pro-war rhetoric rendered 38

Discursive (re)construction in op/ed press

press relations more integral to policymaking and the media largely relinquished their “watchdog” role in favour of their self-assigned “guard dog” position. Feminism and human rights activism certainly intersect with the struggle against other structural forms of oppression, especially the glorification of emerging neocolonial and militarised masculinities. After the invasion, the liberation of Iraqi women dropped off the US political agenda as “sexual abuse and rape in prisons” became “part of counterinsurgency campaigns” (Al-Ali, 2016, p.10). The torture images of Abu Ghraib (200 made popular, but 1,600 kept secret) represented not only America’s drift away from its constructed image of the post-World War II “moral beacon” but also “carried a post-modern burden as well: the burden of shame” (Hamm, 2007, p.275; see also Andén-Papadopoulos, 2008, 2014).8 The sexual enslavement of Yezidi women by Daesh fighters marked an unprecedented scale of brutality against Iraqi women. Unsurprisingly, the “Shock and Awe” attacks on Iraq have ignited sectarian violence, created a fertile ground for global terrorism, inaugurated a new era of “preventive” regime-change and established a hybrid theocratic junta that, at best, bears more resemblance to the aspirations of Ayatollah Khomeini than Paul Wolfowitz.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to Professor Lesley Jeffries of the University of Huddersfield and to another anonymous referee for their constructive comments. I also want to mention here that the present chapter is an updated part of extensive research I started in 2002. The research culminated in a PhD in 2009 and other articles (Sahlane, 2012, 2013, 2015; Wilson, Sahlane and Somerville, 2012).

Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes 1 An ad hominem argument is not always fallacious. Ad hominem fallacies are fallacies of relevance and they are context-dependent. What counts as “relevant” to the interlocutor’s argument will vary with context. 2 In 2003, Mohamad El- Baradei stated that “The IAEA concluded, by December 1998, that it had neutralised Iraq’s past nuclear program and that, therefore, there were no unresolved disarmament issues left at that time” (quoted in Hartnett and Stengrim, 2004, p.172). Besides, the evidence for Saddam’s WMD threat presented by the British secret service turned out to be a mere plagiarised MA thesis of a Kurdish Iraqi student of the University of California (Claude Jacquemart, Le Figaro, 15 March 2003). 3 “By August 2002, General Franks had spent close to $700 million quietly preparing the military groundwork in the Gulf” and the CIA had also spent “about $189 million” for the same objective (Lando, 2007, p.219). Then, the imposition of non-fly zones by the Anglo-American planes (without UN authorisation) targeting the air defence capacities of Iraq constituted the subsequent preparation phase for the 2003 invasion of Iraq (ibid.). Such build-up for the invasion was privatised: “When US tanks rolled into Baghdad in March 2003, they brought with them the largest army of private contractors ever deployed in a war” (Scahill, 2007, xvii). The privatisation of war brought to Iraq the Blackwater-recruited commandos of mercenaries, with valued expertise not in “humanitarian” aid but in “kidnapping, torturing and killing defenseless civilians” (ibid., p.200). In addition, foreign contractors marched into Iraq to “reap enormous profits while ordinary Iraqis lived in squalor and insecurity” (ibid., p.119). For example, Halliburton was awarded a $11billion “reconstruction” 39

Ahmed Sahlane

contract (Lando, 2007, p.259). During Bremer’s short “pro-consulate” in Iraq “some $9 billion of Iraqi reconstruction funds were unaccounted for” (Scahill, 2007, p.61). 4 During the sanctions, US reporters from Baghdad were “careful to avoid inferring causality for Iraq’s plight, sticking with the facts directly visible to [them]” (Goss, 2002, p.95). Such a “voyeuristic” stance led to the construction of an “Orientalized” Iraq framed as “a portrait of a nation that has authored its own fate with its defiance of law, aggressive ambitions and malevolent head of state, who also functions as a synecdoche for an undifferentiated citizenry” (ibid.). 5 Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney met with Women for a Free Iraq (a newly formed group of US-backed Iraqi opposition activists) to publicise the Iraqi regime’s abuse of women’s rights, in preparation for the invasion of Iraq. Similarly, Tony Blair met a delegation of Iraqi women in November 2002 for the same purpose (Al-Ali, 2016, p.8). 6 Media witnessing refers simultaneously to the witnesses’ accounts in media reports, the media actors themselves bearing witness and the positioning of the targeted media audiences as distant witnesses to represented events. 7 An argument is characterised as “enthymematic” when implicit premises needed to make the argument reasonable are only implicitly recoverable from the context of the argument (Walton, 1989, p.115). A “topos” is a system of cultural-social cognition shared by a rhetorical community, which is activated as “a discursive resource in which one may find arguments for sustaining a conclusion” (van der Valk, 2003, p.319). Topoi are the “basic principles” underlying any “accepted” social conduct, and hence constitute “the consensual, self-evident issues of a community” (ibid.). Topoi are effective persuasive tools that call upon “socially shared values”, “beliefs” or “maxims” of a particular discursive community with the aim of informing discussions on disputed issues (ibid.). 8 The Taguba Report revealed that “numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees” (Taguba, 2005, p.74). This “systemic and illegal abuse of detainees was intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military police guard force” (ibid.). “Evidence gathered from Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and US prisons in Afghanistan suggests that torture, the keeping of ‘ghost detainees’ and other violations of the Geneva Conventions were endemic within the system of [US] military custody” (Wilson, 2005, p.19).

References Al-Ali, N. 2016. Sexual violence in Iraq: challenges for transnational feminist politics. European Journal of Women’s Studies. 25, pp.10–27. Andén-Papadopoulos, K. 2008. The Abu Ghraib torture photographs: news frames, visual culture, and the power of images. Journalism. 9(1), pp.5–30. Andén-Papadopoulos, K. 2014. Citizen camera-witnessing: embodied political dissent in the age of ‘mediated mass self-communication’. New Media & Society. 16(5), pp.753–69. Ashuri, T. and Pinchevski, A. 2009. Witnessing as a field. In: Frosh, P. and Pinchevski, A. eds. Media witnessing: testimony in the age of mass communication. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.133–57. Augoustinos, M., Lecouteur, A. and Soyland, J. 2002. Self-sufficient arguments in political rhetoric: constructing reconciliation and apologising to the stolen generations. Discourse & Society. 13(1), pp.105–42. Benson, R. and Hallin, D.C. 2007. How states, markets and globalisation shape the news: the French and US National Press, 1965–97. European Journal of Communication. 22(1), pp.27–48. Berkowitz, D. and Eko, L. 2007. Blasphemy as sacred rite/right: ‘The Mohammed Cartoons Affair’ and maintenance of journalistic ideology. Journalism Studies. 8(5), pp.779–97. Blommaert, J. and Verschueren, J. 1998. Debating diversity: analysing the discourse of tolerance. London: Routledge. Cameron, D. 1996. Style policy and style politics: a neglected aspect of the language of the news. Media, Culture & Society. 18, pp.315–33. Chang, G. C. and Mehan, H. B. 2008. Why we must attack Iraq: Bush’s reasoning practices and argumentation system. Discourse & Society. 19(4), pp.453–82. Chouliaraki, L. 2005. Spectacular ethics: on the television footage of the Iraq War. Journal of Language and Politics. 4(1), pp.143–59. 40

Discursive (re)construction in op/ed press

Degano, C. 2007. Presupposition and dissociation in discourse: a corpus study. Argumentation. 21, pp.361–78. Fairclough, N. 1995. Media discourse. London: Edward Arnold. Farmanfarmaian, A. 1998. Did you measure up? The role of race and sexuality in the Gulf War. In: Ó Tuathail, G., Dalby, S. and Routledge, P. eds. The geopolitics reader. London: Routledge, pp.286–93. Goss, B. M. 2002. Deeply concerned about the welfare of the Iraqi people: the sanctions regime against Iraq in the New York Times (1996–98). Journalism Studies. 3(1), pp.83–99. Grundmann, R., Smith, D. and Wright, S. 2000. National elites and transnational discourses in the Balkan War: a comparison between the French, German and British establishment press. European Journal of Communication. 15(3), pp.299–320. Hallin, D.C. and Mancini, P. 2004. Comparing media systems: three models of media and politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hamm, M.S. 2007. ‘High crimes and misdemeanors’: George W. Bush and the sins of Abu Ghraib. Crime, Media, Culture. 3(3), pp.259–84. Hemrica, J. and Heyting, F. 2004. Tacit notions of childhood: an analysis of discourse about child participation in decision-making regarding arrangements in case of parental divorce. Childhood. 11(4), pp.449–68. Hariman, R. and Lucaites, J.L. 2003. Public identity and collective memory in US iconic photography: the image of ‘accidental napalm’. Critical Studies in Media Communication. 20(1), pp.35–66. Hartnett, S.J. and Stengrim, L.A. 2004. ‘The whole operation of deception’: reconstructing President Bush’s rhetoric of weapons of mass destruction. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies. 4(2), pp.152–97. Jacobs, S. 1989. Speech acts and arguments. Argumentation. 3, pp.345–65. Jacobs, S. 2002. Messages, functional contexts, and categories of fallacy. In: van Eemeren, F.H. and Houtlosser, P. eds. Dialectic and rhetoric: the warp and woof of argumentation analysis. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp.119–30. Kostantinidou, K. 2008. The spectacle of suffering and death: the photographic representation of war in Greek newspapers. Visual Communication. 7(2), pp.143–69. Kumar, D. 2006. Media, war, and propaganda: strategies of information management during the 2003 Iraq War. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies. 3(1), pp.48–69. Lando, B.M. 2007. Web of deceit: the history of Western complicity in Iraq from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush. Toronto: Doubleday Canada. Lipson, M. 2009. ‘If it wasn’t rolling, it never happened’: the role of visual elements in television news. In: Haarman, L. and Lombardo, L. eds. Evaluation and stance in war news: a linguistic analysis of American, British and Italian television news reporting of the 2003 Iraqi War. London: Continuum International Publishing Group, pp.140–69. Manolescu, B.I. 2007. Shaming in and into argumentation. Argumentation. 21, pp.379–95. Möller, F. 2010. Rwanda revisualised: genocide, photography, and the era of the witness. Alternatives. 35, pp.113–36. Nikolaev, A. and Porpora, D. 2007. Talking war: how elite US newspaper editorials and opinion pieces debated the attack on Iraq. Sociological Focus. 40(1), pp.6–25. Porpora, D. V. and Nicolaev, A. 2008. Moral muting in US newspaper op-eds debating the attack on Iraq. Discourse & Communication. 2(2), pp.165–84. Reisigl, M. and Wodak, R. 2001. Discourse and discrimination: rhetorics of racism and antisemitism. London: Routledge. Sahlane, A. 2012. Argumentation and fallacy in the justification of the 2003 war on Iraq. Argumentation. 26(4), pp.459–88. Sahlane, A. 2013. Metaphor as rhetoric in newspaper op/ed debate of the prelude to the 2003 Iraq War. Critical Discourse Studies. 10(2), pp.154–71. Sahlane, A. 2015. Dialectics of argument and rhetoric: protesting Iraq War in US/British opinion press. Discourse & Society. 26(6), pp.754–74. 41

Ahmed Sahlane

Scahill, J. 2007. Blackwater: the rise of the world’s most powerful mercenary army. New York, NY: Nation Books. Shi-Xu. 1997. Cultural representations: analysing the discourse about the other. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Stabile, C.A. and Kumar, D. 2005. Unveiling imperialism: media, gender and the war on Afghanistan. Media, Culture & Society. 27(5), pp.765–82. Taguba, A.M. 2005. The Taguba report on treatment of Abu Ghraib prisoners in Iraq. In: Brecher, J., Cutler, J. and Smith, B. eds. In the name of democracy: American war crimes in Iraq and beyond. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books, pp.74–6. Van den Hoven, P. 2015. Cognitive semiotics in argumentation: a theoretical exploration. Argumentation. 29, pp.157–76. Van der Valk, I. 2003. Right-wing parliamentary discourse on immigration in France. Discourse & Society. 14(3), pp.309–48. Van Dijk, T.A. 1998. Opinions and ideologies in the press. In: Bell, A. and Garrett, P. eds. Approaches to media discourse. Oxford: Blackwell, pp.21–63. Van Eemeren, F.H. and Grootendorst, R. 1984. Speech acts in argumentative discussions: a theoretical model for the analysis of discussions directed towards solving conflicts of opinion. Dordrecht: Foris Publications. Van Eemeren, F.H. and Grootendorst, R. 1992. Argumentation, communication and fallacies: a pragma-dialectical perspective. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Van Eemeren, F.H. and Houtlosser, P. 1999. Strategic manoeuvring in argumentative discourse. Discourse & Society. 1(4), pp.479–97. Walton, D. 1989. Informal logic: a handbook for critical argumentation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walton D. 1995. Appeal to pity: a case study of the argumentum ad misericordiam. Argumentation. 9, pp.769–84. Walton, D. 1996a. Argumentation for presumptive reasoning. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Walton, D. 1996b. Plausible deniability and evasion of burden of proof. Argumentation. 10, pp.47–58. Walton, D. 1997. Appeal to pity. Albany: State University of New York Press. Walton, D. 2004. Argumentation schemes and historical origins of the circumstantial ad hominem argument. Argumentation. 18, pp.359–68. Walton D. 2006. Poisoning the well. Argumentation. 20, pp.273–307. Wells, K. 2007. Narratives of liberation and narratives of innocent suffering: the rhetorical uses of images of Iraqi children in the British press. Visual Communication. 6(1), pp.55–71. Wilson, J., Sahlane, A. and Somerville, I. 2012. Argumentation and fallacy in newspaper op/ed coverage of the prelude to the invasion of Iraq. Journal of Language & Politics. 11(1), pp.1–30. Wilson, R.A. 2005. Human rights in the ‘War on Terror’. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Youssef, M. 2008. Suffering men of empire: human security and the war on Iraq. Cultural Dynamics. 20(2), pp.149–66.

Newspaper references Amin, S. 2003. Confronting the empire. Al-Ahram Weekly. [Online]. 27 February. [Accessed 5 March 2003.] Available from: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/627/sc12.htm Amos, O. 2003. The protesters: right for the wrong reasons. The New York Times. 19 February, p.25. Antoon, S. 2003. Once upon a war. Al-Ahram Weekly. [Online]. 20 March. [Accessed 26 March 2003.] Available from: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/630/sc8.htm. Bobbitt, P. 2003. Today’s war is against tomorrow’s Iraq. The New York Times. 10 March, p.19. Clwyd, A. 2003. See men shredded, then say you don’t back war. The Times. 18 March, p.20. Cohen, R. 2003. Evil isn’t a dream. The Washington Post. 20 March, p.A29.

42

Discursive (re)construction in op/ed press

Cook, R. 2003. Why I had to leave the cabinet: this will be a war without support at home or agreement abroad. The Guardian. 18 March, p.26. Ewald, T.H.B. 2003. Get out of the way. The New York Times, 15 March, p.17. Friedman, T.L. 2003. The gridlock gang. The New York Times. 26 February, p.25. Goodstein, L. 2002. Bishops turn to writing antiwar policy. The New York Times. 13 November, p.27. The Guardian. 2003. Tony Blair’s speech. The Guardian. [Online]. 18 March. [Accessed 24 June 2017.] Available from: www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/mar/18/foreignpolicy.iraq1 The Guardian. 2003. A transcript of George Bush’s war ultimatum speech from the Cross Hall in the White House. The Guardian. [Online]. 18 March. [Accessed 18 May 2018.] Available from: www. theguardian.com/world/2003/mar/18/usa.iraq Hoagland, J. 2003. Thinking parochially, acting selfishly. The Washington Post. 13 March, p.A23. Hoagland, J. 2003. Hussein’s shame strategy. The Washington Post. 20 March, p.A29. Hume, M. 2003. It’s time; time ran out. On the other hand, maybe we should play for more time. The Times. 24 February, p.18. Hume, M. 2003. Honesty is the first casualty of the War of Short’s Ego. The Times. 13 March, p.22. Ignatius, D. 2003. A new Iraq, a new Arab world. The Washington Post. 18 March, p.A29. Jacquemart, C. 2003. Irak: alors que pro et anti-guerre campent sur leurs positions; L’art et la manière de déclencher un conflit. Le Figaro. 15 March, no pagination. Kelly, M. 2003. Who would choose tyranny? The Washington Post. 26 February, p.A23. Kinsley, M. 2003. Problems of international law. The Washington Post. 3 March, p.A19. Krauthammer, C. 2003. A costly charade at the UN. The Washington Post. 28 February, p.A23. Safire, W. 2003. Give freedom a chance. The New York Times. 6 March, p.31. McGrory, M. 2003. The ‘Shock and Awe’ News Conference. The Washington Post. 9 March, p.B07. Mead, W.R. 2003. Deadlier than war. The Washington Post. 12 March, p.A21. Monbiot, G. 2003. Too much of a good thing: underlying the US drive to war is a thirst to open up new opportunities for surplus capital. The Guardian. 18 February, p.17. Morin, J-H. and de Saussure, L. 2003. Guerre et paix: des rhétoriques défaillantes. Le Monde. [Accessed 18 May 2018]. 20 March, no pagination. Myard, J., Maillard, P., Robin, G. and Tisse, J. 2003. Une guerre contraire au droit; Irak: le compte à rebours s’accélère contre Saddam Hussein. Le Figaro. 3 March, p.15. Pons, Ph. and Vernet, D. 2003. Japon-Allemagne, modèles pour l’après-Saddam? Le Monde, 21 February, no pagination. Rees-Mogg, W. 2003. Bush: a policeman with the law on his side. The Times. 17 March, p.18. Tincq, H. 2003. Églises divisées face à la guerre. Le Monde. 18 February, no pagination. Tisdall, S. 2003. Blair’s ‘moral’ case for war in Iraq is shot full of holes: as public opposition mounts, the PM is forced to play his last card. The Guardian. 17 February, p.22. Wallis, J, Bryson, J. and Cohen, C. 2003. There is a third way. The Washington Post. 14 March, p.A27. The Washington Post (editorial). 2003. Text of President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union Address. The Washington Post. [Online]. 28 January. [Accessed 24 June 2017.] Available from: www. washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/transcripts/bushtext_012803.html The Washington Post (editorial). 2003. The case for action. The Washington Post. 5 February, p.A22. The Washington Post (editorial). 2003. Blaming the Jews. The Washington Post. 12 March, p.A20. The Washington Post (editorial). A question of will. The Washington Post. 18 March, p.A28. Will, G.F. 2003. Addressing the naysayers. The Washington Post. 19 March, p.A31.

43

3 Stark choices and brutal simplicity The blunt instrument of constructed oppositions in news editorials Matt Davies

This chapter will show how conflict is created through news discourse, especially in general election campaigns. The representation of differing party-political policies as artificially exaggerated conflicting positions can be facilitated through constructed binary opposites (oppositions) triggered at the syntactic level. The premise is that political discourse is predisposed to representing complex moral positions, policies and practices as simple, polarised “stark” contrasts. At times of heightened political debate, such as general election and referendum campaigns, alternative positions are overstated to the extent that the discourse used to characterise certain policies plays a part in constituting that conflict. In other words, conflict is constructed through discourse, often by offering up “either/or” choices to the electorate. The UK Prime Minister Theresa May, for instance, in the 2017 general election campaign, claimed in the aftermath of a terrorist bomb at a Manchester Arena concert that killed 23 people that “[t]he choice that people face at the general election has just become starker” (Merrick, 26 May 2017). She asserted that the electorate had to choose between herself – who was “working to protect the national interest and protect our security” – and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, “who, frankly, is not up to the job”. The implied message, of course, was that the election of Corbyn would compromise national security. The “stark choice” motif encourages the dissemination of dichotomous positions in powerful ways and was used in the UK general election campaigns of 2010 and 2015 to frighten voters into choosing between one of the two main political parties, mainly by the right-wing press to encourage a Conservative vote. May’s post-bomb warning to the electorate was also echoed by much of the press in the 2017 election campaign. A Daily Mail editorial column claimed on 27 May 2017, for instance, that “people have a stark choice between a strong and stable government and a government led by Jeremy Corbyn failing to protect our national security”. Similarly, The Daily Telegraph’s 7 June 2017 polling day editorial (headlined “Britain has a stark choice – a Corbyn government would be a calamity”) argued that the “election offers the starkest choice in many years between a Conservative Party largely wedded to prudent economics and a socialist Labour Party offering a fantasy land of state control, free service provision and higher benefits”. The text encourages the reader to believe in mutually exclusive “either X or Y” contrasts between the Conservative and Labour parties based, among others, on the oppositional concepts 44

Stark choices and brutal simplicity

of prudence/recklessness, reality/fantasy and freedom/control, with the Conservatives associated with the first, positive, concept in each pair. Conflicting positions are exacerbated by the construction of irreconcilability between the two parties. This chapter shows how the discourse of “stark choices” in newspaper editorial (or “leader”) columns – mirroring the discourse of the politicians that they promote – is partly facilitated by oppositions that are “triggered” and exploited by the limitations of syntax, which encourages “either/or” types of constructions within or between adjacent sentences. A typology of syntactic frames that trigger oppositions – developed by Davies (2012, 2013) and Jeffries (2010) and based on the work of Jones (2002) – is used to locate instances of textual oppositions that contribute towards building systematic conceptual oppositions within and across editorial columns synchronically and diachronically. Common oppositional triggers are grammatical conjunctions such as “or” “but”, “while”, “instead of” and the negator “not”. Jones (2002) provides compelling evidence that co-occurring conventional opposites or “antonyms” (such as “good”/“bad”, “war”/“peace”, “hot”/“cold”) are commonly framed by these specific syntactic structures, by systematically logging co-occurring antonyms from a 280-million-word corpus of the Independent newspaper (see also Jones and Murphy, 2005). His typology has since been adapted by Jeffries (2010) and Davies (2012, 2013), who propose that these frames are commonly used in rhetorical texts, such as news editorial columns, to generate novel and/or more complex, intersecting oppositions for specific contexts. So, whereas Jones chooses 56 antonym pairs to reveal syntactic frame categories (e.g. “negated antonymy” represented by “X not Y”), a theory of constructed opposites starts with the frames themselves and uses these as search terms to explore what appears in the X/Y positions. The X/Y text is labelled “oppositions” rather than antonyms because a) they would not usually be codified as such in the English antonym lexicon and b) they are often formulated in more complex phrases and clauses. The term “antonym” is therefore substituted with “opposition” in the constructed oppositions typology. An example of a constructed opposition would be “[t]his is a moment for patriotic realism, not socialist indulgence (Daily Express, 2017) whereby “not” triggers, for instance, an opposition between “patriotic” and “socialist” – not conventionally codified as antonyms –implying that one cannot be both socialist and patriotic at the same time. Examples of syntactic frames in Davies’ (2012) typology include “either X or Y” (binarised option), “X not Y” (negated opposition), “X but Y”, “despite/while/although X, Y”, “X yet Y” (concessive opposition), “X instead of Y”, “X rather than Y” (replacive oppositon), “X contrasted with/opposed to Y” (explicit opposition) and various other closely related formulae. Conceptual oppositions are the binary ideas that are triggered by these frames, which operate at various levels of generalisation and may co-exist within any one example of text. At the most general level, voters are encouraged to consider the main political parties (in this case Conservative and Labour) as a rudimentary choice between good and evil, positive and negative, us and them. These evaluative positions are often mapped onto the specific ideologies associated with the parties, such as private/public, saving/spending and individual/state: in simplistic terms, free-market policies are good, and state spending or intervention (the “nanny state”) is bad. These binary positions encourage the electorate to perceive no areas of consensus between the parties on which to give more careful consideration. The personal qualities of party leaders and their suitability for the role of UK Prime Minister are cast in a similarly dichotomous manner so that the qualities of honesty and reliability are mapped onto the promoted attributes of Conservative leaders David Cameron (2010, 2015) and his successor Theresa May (2017), while their opposites – dishonesty and unreliability – 45

Matt Davies

are associated with Labour leaders Gordon Brown (2010), Ed Miliband (2015) and Jeremy Corbyn (2017). The focus of this chapter is on how this particular strategy – just one of many employed by the right-wing press – is used to promote the Conservative Party in general election campaigning editorials while simultaneously demonising all other options. van Dijk (1991, 1996) calls this the “ideological square” – an emphasis on the positive qualities of one group (“us”) and the negative qualities of another (“them”) and often the simultaneous de-emphasis of any negative attributes of the in-group and positive qualities of the out-group (see also Sonwalker, 2005). This phenomenon is much in evidence in the data analysed below. I argue that the constructed binary nature of conflict – the artificial prising apart of more ambiguous and intricate political positions – is strongly facilitated, and indeed encouraged, by the very nature of the syntax available for representing alternative views, disguising any shades of grey that are likely to exist (see Coe et al., 2004). At the sentence level, these oppositions are characterised by syntactic frames (e.g. “either X or Y”, “not X but Y”, “while X, Y”) that can trigger binary positions discursively and thereby encourage a far more simplified view of public affairs than is actually the case. Analysis of oppositions reveals how editorials bluntly exhibit their enthusiasm for promoting a bigger ideological gulf between the parties than may exist in practice in order to consolidate the loyalty of their readers to their preferred party. This chapter uses data from a corpus of editorial columns of UK national newspapers published during the general election campaigns of 2010 and 2015 to show how these conceptual oppositions are exemplified textually and how we can search for examples of constructed oppositions using the oppositional syntactic frames. The corpus comprises 110,846 words of editorial columns published in the national UK press during the 2010 general election campaign and 124,462 words of the equivalent in the 2015 general election campaign. The discussion here mainly involves highlighting specific examples from those corpora and also includes references to the 2017 general election campaign. There is an analysis of a specific editorial column from the Daily Express of 7 June 2017 (general election polling day) followed by examples taken from the two highest print circulation newspapers in the UK, The Sun and Daily Mail, in the 2010 and 2015 corpora.

3.1 Paradise or Armageddon? Stark choices on polling day Nothing exemplifies the discursive construction of conflict better than the 23 June 2016 UK referendum on membership of the European Union, whereby the ballot paper offered voters a stark choice between putting a cross against leaving or remaining a member of the EU. The fallout of a narrow victory for the leave campaign laid bare the reality of the multifaceted nature of the UK’s relationship with the EU and uncertainty, even among government supporters of the outcome, about what constitutes “leaving”. Blake (2016) claims that the binary manner in which the EU referendum was executed – any notion of multiple choices was ruled out – has led to an unnecessary adversarial situation, including “post-Brexit violence”. Dichotomous referendums “are divisive and extreme because binary choice discourages nuance. Most political beliefs rest somewhere on a spectrum. A binary choice, however, cannot account for this spectrum, resulting in an invariably stark result” (Blake, 2016).  Furthermore, they “affect the public’s perception of societal

46

Stark choices and brutal simplicity

cohesion, emphasising disagreement over consensus”. Colignatus (2017) and Portas (2016) present similar positions. It is no surprise then that the crude “yes”/“no” choice on the referendum ballot paper was exploited with immense gusto within certain sections of the UK news press – especially among those campaigning to leave – with the framing of arguments involving convincing readers that the wrong choice would have implications of biblical proportions. The Daily Express, for instance, covered 80 percent of its front page on referendum day (23 June 2016) with the strapline and headline “Your Country Needs You: VOTE LEAVE TODAY” against the backdrop of a Union Jack. The editorial comment section below (usually reserved for the inside pages) declared ominously that “[t]he moment of destiny has finally arrived […] At stake today is nothing short of the survival of Britain”. Voters were then offered a choice in which the “outcome of the Referendum will be either the trumpet blast of freedom or the death knell of our nation”. The representation of a two-options-only decision on a “single-issue” campaign lends itself to being represented as a choice between Paradise and Armageddon. The formulation above relies on the common syntactic frame of “either X or Y ” – which Davies (2012, 2013) labels a “binarised option” opposition and which discursively constructs exaggerated conceptual contrasts between, in this case, freedom and oppression and life and death, triggered by the lexical items “freedom” and “death”, which appear on either side of the frame. The fact that there can be few scenarios where the proffered options of life or death could be considered “choices”, shows the hyperbolic nature of the way the options are cast metaphorically. However, in general election campaigns, when the electorate are being presented with the chance to make a decision on which of a range of political parties best represents their views on a whole panoply of positions on crime, health, defence, welfare, industrial relations, housing and so on, they are often beaten by the UK news press with the equally blunt rhetorical instruments of simplistic binary choices of an “either X or Y ” type choice between two artificially constructed mutually exclusive extremes, despite the multifarious, overlapping and shifting nature of policies between and within the organisations vying for power. The convention for most UK national newspapers to actively promote support for one political party in the month or so leading up to polling day – a distilled version of their longer-term allegiances – is facilitated in their editorial columns by a Manichean rhetoric whereby readers are encouraged to view the campaigns as a black and white struggle between good and evil, between one party and “the rest”. Although the traditional UK two-party political system of Labour and Conservatives has been challenged in recent times (by the Liberal Democrats, UK Independence Party, The Green Party and the Scottish National Party), in these election campaigns the battle is still largely characterised as that between the alleged positions that these two parties hold, with the Conservatives receiving unqualified support from the majority of editorial boards. In the 2010, 2015 and 2017 general elections, the Conservatives were promoted relentlessly by The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and Daily Express (apart from 2015 when it supported UKIP) – four of the five highest print circulation newspapers, comprising roughly 65 percent of sales at the time of the 2015 general election (see Media Reform Coalition, 2015, p.7). The construction of binary positions is a significant technique in the strategies employed by these publications by which they promote their favoured party in general election campaigning editorials while simultaneously demonising all other options, in accordance with van Dijk’s (1991, 1996) “ideological square”. Analysis of oppositions reveals how editorials 47

Matt Davies

bluntly exhibit their enthusiasm for promoting a bigger ideological gulf between the parties than may exist in practice in order to consolidate the loyalty of their readers to their preferred party.

3.2 The Conservative press and the UK general elections 2010–2017 The 2010 UK General Election saw the end of 13 years of Labour rule under the leaderships of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, ushering in a coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, with Conservative leader David Cameron as Prime Minister and Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg as his deputy. Wring and Deacon (2010, p.436) claim that the 2010 election campaign signified a revival in the Conservative press, which adopted a “stridency not witnessed since the Conservatives last won an election in 1992”; 2010 was the first campaign since 1992 in which the Conservatives were returned to Government, against the backdrop of a banking crisis and fears of recession. The Sun seemed to consistently back winners, switching from support for the Conservatives in the elections of 1979, 1983, 1987, 1992 (all Conservative victories) to support for Labour who were victorious in 1997, 2001 and 2005 and back, in 2010, to the Conservatives, who took power thanks to a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and who then won with an overall majority in 2015. There was also a strengthening of support for the Conservatives from other UK national newspapers. According to Wring and Deacon (2010, p.439), “The changes of partisanship by the Sun, The Times, FT and News of the World were a significant fillip to the Conservatives, and the campaign saw a revival in the overall strength of the Tory press not seen since the party’s last national victory in the 1992 General Election”. According to Fenton (2015, p.92), the coverage of the following 2015 election was the most partisan since 1992. She notes that on 21 April 2015, just over two weeks before polling day, the Independent newspaper reported that News UK (formerly News International) owner Rupert Murdoch “had told journalists at The Sun that if [Labour leader] Miliband got into power then the future of the company was at stake. He then directed them to be more aggressive in their attacks against Labour and more positive about the Conservative Party”. If this is the case, it goes some way towards explaining the bluntness of the techniques used to represent the two main political parties in terms of mutually exclusive binary oppositions in the editorial columns of what was then, and still is at the time of writing, the UK’s highest circulation print newspaper. The increased news press support for the Conservative Party is substantiated in Deacon et al.’s (2015) study, which claims that “the press support of the Blair years had evaporated for Labour with coverage favouring the Tories and being hostile to the other parties and their leaders […] the Conservatives […] gained the most quotation time, the most strident press support, and coverage focused on their favoured issues” (p.12). Barnett (2015) also maintains that “It is indisputable that the right-wing press went to town during this election campaign, not only in launching a furious, brutal and very personal vendetta against Ed Miliband but in relaying Conservative Party messages with an almost fanatical zeal” (p.91). He claims that a study by the Media Standards Trust showed that this partisanship was even more one-sided than usual, “with 95 percent of leader [editorial] columns anti-Labour (mostly vilifying Miliband personally) compared to 79 percent in 1992”. According to Barnett, the influence of the collective, relentless power and partiality of the UK national press on the “shock” Conservative majority in 2015 – defying the major opinion polls – “operates in inchoate and intangible ways which defies empirical measurement”.

48

Stark choices and brutal simplicity

However, an analysis of constructed oppositions in editorial columns that contributed to the denigration of Labour in order to encourage a Conservative vote may go some way to substantiating Barnett’s (2015, p.91) suspicion that the UK national press “played a significant part in determining the electoral outcome”.

3.3 The editorial column news sub-genre According to Wring and Deacon (2010, p.442), editorials are often the most explicit indicator of a newspaper’s political allegiance. Their content and orientation are not the random whimsical jottings of whoever happens to be on editorial duty at the time, but “the result of discussions involving the most senior executives, the composition of which varies between newspapers but involves a selection of editors, leaderwriters and possibly the proprietors” (p.442) (see also van Dijk, 1996). According to Greenburg (2000, p.519), editorials fall under the broader genre category of “opinion discourses” whose important communicative function is to complement the formulation of “‘preferred’ viewpoints about the world”. This view concurs with Fowler’s (1991) proposition that they offer their newsreaders an authoritative voice that directly addresses them on issues of the day. Editorials can be distinguished from so-called “hard news” or “straight news stories”. Greenburg (2000) argues that the latter are “structured ideologically and inflected with “­preferred” readings that frequently, though not necessarily, serve dominant interests, whilst containing and displacing contradiction” (p.520). However, on the surface at least, they might stylistically present themselves as providing a balanced and objective representation of events. Editorials, however, make no pretence of neutrality. Not only are they explicitly subjective, they also explain events “in ways that have to do first and foremost with the attribution of responsibility”, attempting to “mobilize and enrol newsreaders around particular ideological positions by resonating in ways that will connect with their ethics and emotions” (Greenburg, 2000, p.521). The editorial is a staple and stable genre of printed news media discourse. Little has changed in their formal structure since van Dijk’s (1992, p.244) depiction of them as having “restricted length (between 200 and 500 words), appear[ing] at a fixed place in the paper, and often hav[ing] special type or page lay-out, and a typical header, which may be different from one newspaper to another (e.g. the British Sun’s header is ‘The Sun Says’)”. They are also invariably anonymous and impersonal (lacking, for instance, first-person singular pronouns), reproducing, as they do, a set of values that form the cornerstone of the institution’s ideologies rather than the compulsions of individual writers. There is not the space to elaborate here, but the register and style of news editorials shares many of the same rhetorical features of a typical political speech – direct address, syntactic parallelisms (e.g. three-part lists), extended conventional metaphors, hyperbole and, pertinent to this study, what is traditionally defined as “antithesis”, i.e. the use of structural oppositions, or in the words of van Dijk (1995, cited in Izadi and Saghaye-Biria, 2007, p.148): “polarised vocabulary to describe political actors and events”. A Daily Mail editorial column in the early stages of the 2015 general election campaign (24 April 2015), declared that “Anyone who still believes there’s no difference between the economic policies of Labour and the Tories needs to read this report. The choice is brutally simple”. The encouragement of readers to consider complex realities as “brutally simple” is echoed by the phrase “stark choice”, which was used to frame several crucial editorial

49

Matt Davies

columns in the 2015 and 2017 election campaigns. The replacement of the more centre-ground free-marketeer Labour leaders Tony Blair and Gordon Brown by the more state-orientated Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn – the most left-leaning Labour leader for decades – fuelled the confidence of the right-wing press in maintaining these hyperbolic positions.

3.4 Brutally simple: the role of constructed oppositions in a Daily Express 2017 general election editorial The introduction to this chapter showed how Theresa May’s “stark choice” motto was echoed in general election editorials in the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph. This section shows how to approach an analysis of binarised discourse – where conflict between two political parties is exaggerated to an almost ludicrous extreme – by relating text that appears on either side of an oppositional syntactic frame to the conceptual oppositions that are triggered by those frames. The focus is on the Daily Express front-page editorial column on the 2017 election polling day (7 June 2017), the headline of which declared in typical binary fashion: “VOTE MAY OR WE FACE DISASTER”. Here, voters are clearly encouraged to associate the policies of the other parties (and Labour in particular) with disaster, and presumably, therefore, Theresa May as a success. The first sentence uses typically religious tropes to describe the day as the “hour of judgement” in the “hallowed tradition of our democracy”, and readers are urged to cast their vote based on the following scenario: The choice in this election could hardly be more stark. On one side there is the ­ ainstream Conservative Party under Theresa May, determined to regain our m independence from foreign rule, protect the public and safeguard the economy. On the other is Labour’s hard-Left rabble under Jeremy Corbyn, the most extreme figure ever to have become a contender for Downing Street. The rest of the extended 1,105-word editorial uses similar techniques to flesh out the reasons why readers should vote for what they represent as the safe, patriotic, mainstream Conservatives rather than what is asserted to be the dangerous subversion offered by Labour under Corbyn. Tables 3.1 and 3.2 show how oppositions are constructed at the intra- and inter-sentential level in this particular text. Similar oppositions are embedded as a core practice in many other editorials in The Daily Mail, Daily Express, The Sun and Daily Telegraph in the 2010 and 2015 general election corpora. The analytical method here relies on separating out three discursive elements. If we label the two sides of an oppositional structure as “X” and “Y”, and take example 1 from Table 3.1, then we need to explore: a) oppositional triggers (e.g. “X not Y”); b) the textual Xs and Ys that have been placed in polarised positions, i.e. what the reader sees on the page/screen (e.g. “patriotic realism”/”socialist indulgence”; and c) the standard canonical opposites (often called “antonyms”) that may be referenced at the conceptual level in order to help the reader cognitively process the X/Y text as oppositions (e.g. patriotic/traitorous, realistic/unrealistic, indulgence/moderation). Table 3.1 shows how conflictual positions between the two parties in this specific editorial can be constructed through discourse. The whole editorial consists of a complex network of various types of oppositions; Table 3.1 consists of a selection of some of the more straightforward ones. Textual examples that refer to each party as triggered by oppositional frames have been separated out into “Conservative” and “Labour” columns for visual ease. 50

Table 3.1 Textual examples from the Daily Express editorial column (7 June 2017) involving oppositional frames and triggers Conservative (Theresa May)

Trigger

1 Patriotic realism not 2 Move forward with the Conservatives, either/or restoring our democratic sovereignty and maintaining our economic solvency 3 Theresa May and her party are willing in contrast … to take the tough decisions for the sake of Britain’s long-term future, whether it be standing up to the EU or curbing state expenditure or confronting Islamic extremism.

4 May’s pragmatic conservatism

Labour (Jeremy Corbyn) Socialist indulgence Slide into Labour’s world of bankruptcy, chaos and despair, made all the worse by continued surrender to Brussels. Labour’s reckless, dogmatic approach would be catastrophic. Wallowing in their fantasy land of class war and anti-British agitation, Corbyn’s crew have no convincing answers for the problems of our age. Their recipe would just mean more borrowing, taxation, immigration and appeasement of Brussels. Corbyn’s doctrinaire socialism

a titanic fight between… these two vastly different visions of Britain 5 Theresa May has a clear strategy for None [of this On the biggest issue facing our achieving our withdrawal, including could be country, Corbyn’s party is clueless. the return of full control over our remotely The talks with Brussels begin borders, courts and trade. Moreover, said about just 11 days after the election, she has repeatedly emphasised her Labour’s Brexit yet Labour’s approach is as clear willingness to walk away from a bad policy] as mud. Corbyn has not even EU deal. indicated whether he will fight In addition, her negotiating team for the most humiliating terms from the talks will be led by David Davis, the Brussels, such as the preposterous massively experienced and increasingly £100billion so-called “divorce bill”. impressive Brexit Secretary, who mixes toughness with command of detail 6 After the latest terrorist attack in but Tolerance of extremism has been London, Theresa May rightly said Corbyn’s speciality throughout his that “enough is enough”, adding parliamentary career […] a man that “there has been far too much who has called Islamist groups his tolerance of extremism in this “friends”, mourned the death of country”. Osama bin Laden as “a tragedy” and questioned the need for a shoot-to-kill policy against terrorists. Even now, his kneejerk anti-Western self-loathing leads him to blame Western foreign policy for jihadism As a fanatical internationalist, Corbyn 7 The Tories have a target by which to compared with does not believe in controls at all. reduce immigration. [May] (Continued )

Matt Davies Table 3.1 (Continued) Conservative (Theresa May)

Trigger

Labour (Jeremy Corbyn)

 8 The Tories have Amber Rudd as Home Secretary, exuding reliability and competence

but

 9 Theresa May’s Conservatives provide sanity 10 The Tories over the past seven years have an impressive record of job creation and business promotion, as a result of which Britain has one of the highest growth rates in the Western world. As a key member of the Cabinet since 2010, Theresa May helped to achieve that. She is a serious heavyweight politician with a strong sense of responsibility and purpose. She deserves to be re-elected. 11 Move forward with the Tories

where sanity/lunacy but

Her place could be taken by his [Corbyn’s] ex-girlfriend Diane Abbott. It would be truly terrifying if this inept, unpatriotic bungler were to be put in charge of immigration and the fight against terrorism. Labour offers economic lunacy

either/or

Corbyn remains a permanent adolescent protester. His political career has been one, long dreary moan against the British way of life.

Slide into Labour chaos

It is important to note that these are not all necessarily precisely faithful renditions of the way that the text appears in the original editorial. For instance, Example 3.1 matches the order in which it appears in the fourth paragraph of the original Daily Express editorial – “This is a moment for patriotic realism, not socialist indulgence”. However, Example 3.9 appears in the original text as: “Where Labour offers economic lunacy, Theresa May’s Conservatives provide sanity”, with Labour positioned in the first (subordinate) clause. The positions in the table have, therefore, been reversed simply for illustrative purposes, so that reading down the column relates to one party only. It also needs to be pointed out that in this example, “where” serves a similar function to “while” as it is synonymous with it in this context, and would fit into the concessive opposition category that Davies (2013, p.71) claims “usually involves a contrast combined with some kind of subversion of expectations”. However, in another sense, “where” is not needed to trigger an opposition, because “Labour”/“Conservative” and “lunacy”/”sanity” are standard canonical oppositions (antonyms) in their own right. This is a good example of how parallelisms can frame and trigger oppositions and illustrates that the discovery of constructed oppositions cannot be sufficiently fulfilled simply by using the triggers as “search” terms in a corpus. Explicit oppositions may, for instance, use metaphorical expressions such as that in Example 3.5 – “a titanic fight between” – which relies on a close reading of the text. The analytical framework as proposed by Davies (2012, 2013) and Jeffries (2010) would involve consideration of specific examples, followed by a collation of the more general “superordinate” conceptual oppositions in order to reveal consistent patterns of oppositions across and between texts synchronically and diachronically. If we take Example 3.1 52

Stark choices and brutal simplicity Table 3.2 Canonical conceptual oppositions triggered in the editorial

 1  2

 3  4  5  6

Conservative

Labour

realism

fantasy

“realism”

“fantasy land”, “fanatical internationalist”

patriotic

unpatriotic

“patriotic”, “sovereignty”, “full control over our borders”

“surrender to/appeasement of Brussels”, “kneejerk antiWestern self-loathing”, “fanatical internationalist”, “unpatriotic bungler”, “long dreary moan against the British way of life”

forwards

backwards

“job creation”, “business promotion”

“no convincing answers for the problems of our age”

growth

decline

“job creation”, “solvency”, “growth”

“slide into […] bankruptcy”, “economic lunacy”

pragmatic

dogmatic

“pragmatic”

“dogmatic”, “doctrinaire”

saving

borrowing

“more borrowing”  7  8

clarity

ambiguity

“clear”

“clear as mud”

moderation

extremism

“tolerance of extremism”, “Islamist groups his ‘friends’”, “mourned the death of Osama Bin Laden”  9

10 11

12

toughness

weakness

“restoring […] sovereignty”, “standing up to”, “confronting”, “toughness”, “enough is enough”

“surrender”, “appeasement”, “tolerance of extremism”

sanity

madness

“sanity” mature/experienced/responsible/serious “target to reduce”, “serious, heavyweight”, “responsibility and purpose”, “massively experienced”, “impressive” order/stability “full control”, “job creation”

“chaos”, “class war”, “lunacy” immatu ​ re/i​nexpe​rienc​ed/ir​respo​nsibl​e/fri​volou​s “indulgence”, “reckless”, “wallowing”, “no convincing answers”, “clueless”, “more borrowing”, “inept”, “permanent adolescent protester” chaos/instability

“chaos”, “catastrophic”, “class war”, “does not believe in controls”

as an example – “This is a moment for patriotic realism, not socialist indulgence” – the negator “not” encourages the reader to consider the abstract nouns “realism” and “indulgence” as opposites in the context of Labour being portrayed in the same and previous paragraph as having a “contempt for our national interests” and a Corbyn premiership being “a nightmare for our country”. The adjectival form of “realism” – “realistic” – is proposed on an on-line Thesaurus (thesaurus.com, based on the 2013 version of Roget’s 21st Century Thesaurus) as having a number of conventional antonyms, including “impractical”, “inefficient”, “unreasonable”, “irrational”, “fanciful” and, of course, “unrealistic”. Any of these could be triggered as applying to Labour, and, clearly, “indulgence”, though not cited as a conventional antonym, could easily fall into the semantic remit of any of the more conventional antonyms cited. Similarly, if we look up antonyms of “indulgence”, examples cited 53

Matt Davies

include “moderation”, “temperance” and “care”. Although “realism” and “indulgence” are not conventional antonyms in themselves, they can be processed as such by relying on our conceptual grasp of canonical binaries such as realistic/unrealistic, rational/irrational, moderate/extreme and so on, and a number of these might therefore be triggered in the processing of this and other similar examples. “Patriotism” and “socialism” are therefore placed in opposition to each other, constructing them as mutually exclusive and implying that one cannot be a patriotic socialist; therefore, Labour are “unpatriotic”, even though the word is not used in the text. Table 3.2 shows the kinds of conceptual oppositions (in bold small capitals) that may be triggered from grouping together the examples placed in oppositional frames, provided in Table 3.1, and which relate to each political party. It is important to note the generalised nature of these concepts, which may or may not match their textual equivalents. For instance, Example 3.1 applies the adjective “patriotic” to the Conservative Party, and in that oppositional context, triggered by “not”, implies that Labour (and Jeremy Corbyn in particular) are unpatriotic, even though that word is not used in the editorial. The concept of unpatriotic is however expressed textually by a number of formulations referring to Labour, which are placed in positions of opposition in the examples from Table 3.1. So, Opposition 3.2 from Table 3.2 shows some of those textual instantiations – “surrender to/appeasement of Brussels”, “kneejerk anti-Western self-loathing”, “fanatical internationalist”, “unpatriotic bungler”, “long dreary moan against the British way of life”. As well as having the word “patriotic” directly associated with them, one could argue that “sovereignty” and “full control over our borders” could fit under the more general umbrella concept of patriotic. Occasionally, there might not be a direct lexical expression associated with a triggered concept. For instance, in Opposition 3.6, the Conservatives are associated with the concept of saving because in Example 3.3, Labour is accused of promoting “more borrowing” in an oppositional construction triggered by the explicit opposition “in contrast”, connecting the Conservatives to policies of prudence by implication. Example 3.10 in Table 3.1 provides a more complex web of overlapping conceptual oppositions, triggered by the concessive “but”. Several of the oppositional concepts from Table 3.2 are referenced here. The Conservatives and Theresa May are associated with growth (Opposition 3.4) (“job creation”, “highest growth rates”) and maturity/responsibility/ experience/seriousness (Opposition 3.11) (“serious, heavyweight politician with a strong sense of responsibility and purpose”). Labour and Jeremy Corbyn are tarnished by implication with their equivalent opposites: decline and immaturity/irresponsibility/inexperience/frivolity in Example 3.10 (“permanent adolescent”) and in other examples such as “slide into … bankruptcy” and “economic lunacy”. They also exemplify decline and “indulgence”, “reckless”, “wallowing”, “no convincing answers”, “clueless”, “more borrowing”, “inept” in Opposition 3.11 in Table 3.1. It is important to note that there is a level of subjectivity in how the oppositional concepts are lexicalised. One could, for instance, lexicalise Opposition 3.4 (growth/decline) slightly differently as, for instance, solvency/bankruptcy. Reading down the “Conservative” and “Labour” columns in Table 3.2 gives an indication of the kinds of qualities – expressed as oppositions – that the Daily Express encouraged its readers to associate with each political party and their leaders on polling day in the 2017 UK General Election. The hyperbolic demonisation of Labour and Corbyn as unfit for government is unequivocal. However, clearly, the analysis of one editorial proves very little other than what that specific text comprises. Therefore, we also need to explore to what extent these oppositions are consistent both across and between individual newspapers that share similar political affiliations and diachronically, i.e. throughout the life of 54

Stark choices and brutal simplicity

a specific election campaign and also by comparison across election campaigns. A much bigger study than can be explored in this chapter (in progress) uses words in the syntactic frame (e.g. “yet”, “while”, “but”) to search for examples of constructed oppositions from the data outlined in the introduction – editorial columns in the 2010 and 2015 election campaigns. The next section shows just a sample of the ways in which oppositions in this data create consistent positive and negative representations of Conservatives and Labour respectively.

3.5 The Sun and the Daily Mail in the 2010 and 2015 general election campaigns This section focusses on the two highest circulating newspapers in the UK, The Sun and The Daily Mail, both of which are ardent promoters of the Conservatives. It shows that a systematic, consistent technique is employed by both publications in their 2010 and 2015 election campaign editorials. This technique involves the use of strongly evaluative oppositional conceptual pairings – i.e. those where it can be assumed that any reader would prefer the first of a pair – such as strong/weak, freedom/control, justice/injustice. Broad and oversimplified policies are attached to each party so that they become irrevocably entangled (e.g. private/public, saving/spending). What are represented as stark choices are simultaneously promoted as only one choice, the implication being that nobody could possibly want to vote for the negatively represented party. Table 3.3 is a simplified snapshot of some of the very generalised oppositions constructed by these newspapers. Evaluative concepts are in bold and the specific policies associated with each party are in bold italics. In each case, the Conservatives are associated with the first of the pair and Labour with the second. An analysis of the oppositions generated by syntactic triggers in the editorial columns in the 2010 and 2015 general election campaigns, for instance, shows that the following evaluative pairs dominate, where the first of the pair refers to the Conservatives and/or their leader David Cameron and the second to the Labour Party and their leaders Gordon Brown (2010) and Ed Miliband (2015) – life/death, freedom/control, order/chaos, justice/injustice, strong/weak, reliable/unreliable, honesty/deception,

Table 3.3 The mapping of constructed evaluative conceptual oppositions onto party-political ideology Conservative

Labour

honesty

deception

reliability

unreliability

style

substance

freedom

control

strong

weak

justice

injustice

order

chaos

private

public

saving

spending

individual

collective (state)

55

Matt Davies style/substance.

The governmental philosophies, which are represented in a deliberately crude way, are associated exclusively with each party – private/public (spending), saving/ spending, individual/state – and interwoven into the evaluations made by each newspaper so that, for instance, state spending is represented as innately irresponsible and as repressing individual freedoms. A good example is the following from The Sun on the launch of the 2015 general election campaign (30 March), in which the “stark choice” motif is evoked using the powerful binarised option trigger of “either X or Y ”: At lunchtime, David Cameron visits the Queen to start the process officially. His message – that we have six weeks to save Britain – is stark and very real. There are two choices, the PM claims. Stick with his Tories, with the economic recovery, job figures on the up and a sense of optimism for the future. Or go with Ed Miliband and economic chaos; where hard-working Brits will be clobbered with a massive tax bill leap of more than £3,000 over the next five years; where jobs and the recovery will be plunged into crisis. Adopting the method of construing conceptual oppositions from textually triggered ones, the conceptual oppositions of recover/decline, optimism/pessimism, stability/crisis and employment/unemployment can be inferred from the example above. These are related to whether state spending, facilitated by “clobbering” “hard-working Brits” with higher taxes, will be increased, thereby associating austerity (“saving”) with the first pair and spending with the second. The metaphor of the economy as a healthy or dying patient or as a thriving/devastated geological topography had been used in the previous (2010) election to associate Labour with apocalyptic scenarios. The Sun, for instance, declared on 6 April 2010 that if the reader voted Labour, then “We’d all end up in the knackers’ yard rather than the recovery room”. The Sun consistently promoted hostility towards the influence of the “state” and the public sector in general, which it associated with spending, irresponsibility, control and economic decline. The respective conceptual oppositions (saving, responsibility, freedom and growth) were promoted as only achievable in 2010 under the alternative reign of the Conservatives and in 2015 by keeping the Conservatives in power (with or without the Liberal Democrats). This is perhaps best encapsulated in the loaded binary choices proffered between “reckless Labour spending or sensible Tory savings to cut debt” (7 April 2010), where the neatly parallel oppositional structures evaluate “Labour spending” and “Tory savings” with the pre-modifiers “reckless” and “sensible”. In the same editorial, mutual exclusivity is claimed between “Labour’s tax on jobs or Tory growth” (implying that tax can lead to shrinkage only) and deciding on matters of education “whether State or parents know best” (opting for parents automatically stigmatises the “state”). In subsequent days, Labour’s association with the state was formulated in oppositional structures as “massive state control over your life”, “Labour’s Big Brother mentality” (14 April), “Gordon Brown’s bossy Big State” (20 April) and “Labour’s nanny state” (28 April). The alternatives were “the state off your back”, “Mr Cameron’s optimistic and ambitious vision for Britain [which] offers genuine hope for a better future”, “individual responsibility” (14 April) and Cameron’s “Big Society”, in which families and communities enjoy more freedom and responsibility (20 April). 56

Stark choices and brutal simplicity

The Daily Mail’s 2010 campaign echoes The Sun’s promotion of the benefits of a less intrusive state under Cameron, claiming on 14 April that under Labour “Britain has suffered under an ever-more-bloated state’s centralising, box ticking, finger wagging, authoritarianism, slowly destroying any sense of individual or community pride and responsibility”. The paper also claims that only a reduction in “government spending, borrowing and taxation – all to prop up a vast incompetent self-reliance sapping state” can lead to a more prosperous Britain. As an alternative, the Daily Mail welcomes Conservative plans to “free schools from local education bureaucracies” and to allow “communities [to] buy their local pubs and post offices to keep them going”. They support Conservative proposals to “roll back the state” and “cut the number of MPs and public sector workers and slash spending” – proposals which contrast with “Mr Brown’s alternative plan – to continue flooding the economy with taxpayer’s money” (2 May). In the 2015 campaign, against the backdrop of the Conservatives’ ongoing austerity measures and a more robust insistence on the evils of public spending, the Daily Mail unleashed a torrent of anti-state spending rhetoric tied to oppositions of spending/saving, irresponsibility/responsibility, control/freedom and state/individual, among others. For instance, “the Tories want to let people keep more of their money to spend as they see fit. Labour by contrast – through tax rises and a return to ruinous levels of public spending – want to take it off you and hand it out to their friends” (7 April 2015). Continuing in this vein, in various oppositional structures, Labour under Miliband has a “messianic certainty in the power of the State to improve people’s lives”, while elsewhere in the same article Labour is described as “the self-reliance-sapping welfare state” (11 April 2015), “obsessed with taxing and spending ever more of your money” (13 April 2015), “the party of state control, which ruined the economy” (14 April) and as a party that believes in an “all-powerful state, regulating every spit and cough of our lives” (15 April 2015), alongside fears of a “tax-andspend binge benefiting Labour’s client state sector and their union puppetmasters” (2 May 2015). Miliband is portrayed as a leader who “eats, sleeps and breathes wealth redistribution, seizing money from those who earn it to give it to those who don’t” (6 May) and who proposed “the return of tax and spend, fiscal irresponsibility, subservience to the state and trades unions” (6 May 2015). Meanwhile, Cameron and the Conservatives are cast as the epitome of frugality and individual freedom: they believe in “enterprise and self-reliance” (13 April 2015) and are “the party of private enterprise, aspiration, self-reliance, homeownership and the family” (14 April 2015). In “Mr Cameron’s buccaneering, world-beating, “can-do” Britain, families will be able to decide for themselves how they spend their wages” (15 April 2015), and “the state should take a back seat where possible, freeing schools and businesses from red tape and setting savers and pensioners free to enjoy fruits of a lifetime’s efforts” (6 May).

3.6 Personality clashes: the othering of leaders through oppositions Similar stark choices in relation to economic and personal prosperity are embedded in other oppositions that attempt to arouse distrust of Labour by associating them and their leaders with dishonesty and unreliability (as opposed to the honest and reliable Conservatives). This is often encapsulated in an illusion/reality binary that contrasts claims Labour have made about what they might achieve or have achieved with assertions that the reality is the reverse. A typical example of the former from The Sun is “On immigration, Mr Brown said he had listened to the country. But he hasn’t. And he ducked the issue last night. Mr Cameron said immigration was too high and he would 57

Matt Davies

cut it to sensible past levels. A straight answer” (16 April 2010). The representation of the Labour leader and outgoing Prime Minister Gordon Brown as unreliable, duplicitous and – in extreme cases – treacherous, is evident here in “ducked the issue” (as opposed to Cameron’s “straight answer”), and elsewhere in “Gordon Brown’s clapped-out, dishonest, incompetent Labour Government” (7 April), “empty promise” (13 April), “biggest whopper” (idiom for “lies”) (16 April), “waffled unconvincingly” (16 April) and “dealing in fear, smear and lies” (24 April). The reality/illusion binary is ideally captured by The Sun in the following parallelism from 29 April 2010, which marked a turning point in the campaign where, some commentators claimed, any hopes that Labour had of maintaining its credibility, and therefore majority government status, were dashed. A private conversation involving Brown was recorded, and subsequently transmitted, in which he labelled Rochdale Labour supporter Gillian Duffy, with whom he had just concluded an election campaign discussion about immigration in front of the national press, a “bigot”. The Sun commented: “To her face, Mr Brown gave his cheesiest grin. Behind her back he sneered at her as a bigot”. The contradictions expressed in “to her face”/“behind her back” (honest/dishonest) and the associated attitudes epitomised by the caricatured facial expressions (“cheesiest grin”/“sneered” – welcome/unwelcome) are clearly designed to portray Brown as twofaced and untrustworthy. Prior to this, The Sun attributed verbalisation processes to Brown and the Labour Party for the X half of an oppositional structure (the illusion) in order to expose what they represent as the reality of Brown’s deceitful nature. For example, 13 April coverage included “Labour say they won’t raise income tax. But that’s an empty promise since they slap stealth taxes on everything from your home to your holidays”. Similar formulations occur in “He smugly insisted that […] Yet under him the opposite has been the reality” (16 April), “Mr Brown said he had listened to the country. But he hasn’t. And he ducked the issue last night” (16 April), “While Mr Brown denies [X] […] his party [Y]” (24 April), “He boasts [X] […] but forgets to mention [Y]” (24 April), “Labour brags that [X] […] not mentioning that [Y]” (24 April), “Gordon Brown […] claims to be [X] […] yet he is the biggest [Y]” (26 April), “He says he has the answer to [X] […]. Pity he didn’t when [Y]” (26 April). In 2015, although Labour had been out of office for five years, The Sun repeated much of the same strategy of vilifying Labour’s economic strategy (high taxes, state interference) while casting doubt on it and on leader Ed Miliband’s trustworthiness. Their statement on the third day of the election campaign (1 April) acquainted the reader with what became a consistent tactic throughout the campaign – the promotion of a Conservative vote because the only alternative was Ed Miliband and his undesirable policies: “David Cameron and George Osborne today offer voters another stark choice. Income tax, National Insurance and VAT frozen under the Conservatives or big tax hikes under Labour”. The reality/illusion contrast was utilised several times to cast doubt on Ed Miliband’s suitability as a new Prime Minister. On Day Two of the campaign (31 March), The Sun set out its stall as follows: “Anyone who doubts David Cameron’s promise to create two million new jobs should study his form. It’s pretty much what he achieved over the last parliament in the teeth of a deep recession – while doom-mongers predicted the opposite would happen. Contrast that with Ed Miliband’s laughable claim yesterday that Labour is the pro-business party, not the Tories. Bosses immediately shot down his tax plans and challenged his EU position”. Here, the editorial used a series of oppositions to assimilate two sets of claims and counter-claims with assertions about the skill with which Cameron had allegedly handled the economy. Conceptually Cameron is associated with optimism, 58

Stark choices and brutal simplicity

and honesty, triggering contrastive qualities bound up with Labour – pessimism, and dishonesty. Miliband and Labour consistently suffered similar demonisation to Brown as regards their openness and integrity – “Ed Miliband has repeatedly pledged [X] […] Yet in this election campaign all he has offered is [Y]” (10 April), “They claim they will not [X] […]. Yet experts say [Y]” (14 April), “He swore he would do no deal with the SNP. But he cannot govern without relying on their votes […] Yet he couldn’t bring himself to be honest on live TV” (1 May). It is worth quoting in full The Sun’s concentrated list of Labour allegations against the Conservatives: prosperity recession

Labour broke the economy and said the Tories’ medicine would put millions on the dole. Instead it helped create 1.8 million jobs. Labour claimed austerity would steer Britain to catastrophe. Instead the Tories engineered world-beating growth and zero inflation. Similarly, back in the early 1980s Labour howled with outrage at Mrs Thatcher’s council house right-to-buy scheme. Then they saw it transforming lives and embraced it. In this example, the replacives (“instead”) that trigger the first two sets of illusion/reality contrasts have a similar semantic role to concessives in that they signal the unexpectedness of what is asserted in the second clause, i.e. the alleged reality of the consequences of Conservative economic policy in opposition to the claims that Labour made about it. Note also that in this three-part list of equivalent oppositions, the verbalisation processes that are attributed to Labour become increasingly hysterical – from “Labour […] said” to “Labour howled with outrage” – portraying Labour as progressively more desperate in their efforts to smear the Conservatives’ policies as catastrophic, when the reality, according to The Sun, includes job creation, “world-beating growth” and the transformation of lives. Much of the Daily Mail’s representation of the stark choices between honesty and falsehood was aimed at discrediting Miliband in 2015. From the outset, they alleged that “if Labour’s claims about the cost-of-living crisis were ever true, they are not today” (1 April 2015). Much of their ire was focussed on undermining Labour’s claims that workers’ conditions are unsafe under the Conservatives. In the following example, the opposition is triggered between sentences through the closely canonical oppositional pairing of “truth” and “less than straight” (idiomatically and euphemistically synonymous with “lies”). There is also an implied conceptual opposition between simple/complex, whereby Miliband is accused of deliberately masking sophisticated evidence by exaggerating the situation regarding “zero hours” contracts: Listening to the BBC news, anyone might believe Ed Miliband is telling the unvarnished truth when he suggests ruthless employers are exploiting British workers on an epic scale. Drill more deeply and it becomes clear the Labour leader is being less than straight when he speaks of an epidemic of zero-hours contracts, keeping staff on standby for work only when it suits the boss (2 April 2015). In other columns, Miliband was accused of having “never allowed reality to interfere with his quasi-Marxist convictions” (2 April), while his “newly presidential style” was deemed “stage-managed and phoney […] beside the rampant dishonesty of his words”. The Daily 59

Matt Davies

Mail also asserted that “Mr Miliband claims he would never go into coalition with the Scottish nationalists but that’s a deception” (18 April) and that “contrary to everything suggested by Ed Miliband’s class war rhetoric, the rich are shouldering a far bigger share of the burden of public spending”, while “living standards are now higher than five years ago again, in flat contradiction of Labour’s claims” (6 May 2015). The personal attributes of each party leader also contribute to the stigmatisation of Labour and the promotion of Conservatives in both of the campaigns. For instance, after the first-ever live TV debate between the party leaders in 2010, The Sun declared: “Mr Brown was shifty, arrogant and bullying. He rudely talked over his opponents. Decent Mr Cameron, in contrast, was plain-speaking, courteous and came across as a decent person” (16 April 2010). The attempt to caricature Brown and Miliband as unreliable, inconsistent, devious, volatile and, ultimately, weak, went hand-in-hand with the depiction of Cameron as a straight-talking, practical, steely man of the people – “what you see is what you get”. According to The Sun, Brown “waffled unconvincingly” (16 April), “is the biggest ditherer to have occupied No10 for decades” (24 April) and “sunk from Labour’s hero to the nation’s zero in record time” (24 April). In 2010, The Daily Mail were more magnanimous towards Brown and cautious about Cameron, although in the closing stages of the campaign, they characterise Cameron as “strong” and “courageous”, having “rallied his conference with an electrifying speech”, while “it was Mr Brown who bottled it” (2 May). The Daily Mail saved a character assassination for Miliband in the more recent campaign, representing him as a dangerous left-winger – “a callow quasi-Marxist” (1 April 2015) with “quasi-Marxist convictions” (2 April 2015) who has “reverted to the traditional us-and-them language of socialism” (6 April 2015) using “class war rhetoric” (6 May 2015). He is portrayed as naïve and weak: he “never worked in the real world” (1 April 2015), inserted a “child-like signature at the bottom” (of a much-derided Labour monument) (6 May 2015) and is a “self-confessed geek who says he ‘blubbed’ over a film showing the London lesbian and gay community helping miners in Wales and […] learned his economics from a Marxist textbook” (2 April). This dichotomy between weak/strong, inexperienced/experienced and emotional/rational was exploited to promote the alleged reliability of Cameron as the sitting Prime Minister: Cameron had a “proud track record” (6 April), “handled the fiery Leeds audience [of a TV debate] with poise and candour” and had “a massively positive story to tell of the Government’s successes” (2 May). Similarly, in The Sun, Miliband, after the first TV debate of the 2015 campaign, was “left with Easter egg on his face […] he fluffed it”. He was guilty of using “replies full of soundbites” and “huffed and puffed”, failing to come up “with a coherent response” (3 April). Miliband also “visibly wilted in the face of his most hostile questioning of the campaign” (1  May 2015) and issued “flustered responses [that were] simply dishonest” (1 May). Cameron, on the other hand, was cast by The Sun as the “Tory alternative to this Labour rabble” (14 April 2015). He looked “a capable and trustworthy Prime Minister” (14 April 2015) and “produced simple, practical measures to help the poor” (15 April), while being a candidate who “offers something with substance” (10 April 2015) and “confidently batted away his rival’s attacks while making a compelling case for allowing him to continue the economic rescue mission” (3 April 2015). Another strategy that utilises syntactically triggered oppositions to demonise Labour’s track record in order to promote the advantages of a Conservative-led Britain is the use of temporal contrasts. A feature mainly of the 2010 campaign in The Sun, Labour was often branded as being stuck in the past, propagating outdated ideas, while the Conservatives 60

Stark choices and brutal simplicity

were celebrated as the architects of a fresh, modern vision. For instance, on 7 April, The Sun declared that they “believe the Tories represent a brighter future than Gordon Brown’s clapped-out, dishonest, incompetent Labour Government”. Here, the idiom “clappedout” – often used to label an obsolete or spent piece of machinery or individual – acts to tarnish Labour with the accusation of antiquated practices. Labour are therefore associated with the concepts of past, archaism, dishonesty, incompetence and gloominess, whilst the Tories stand for their opposites – future, modernity, honesty, competence and brightness. In subsequent editorials, where similar contrasts are expressed, Cameron is represented as “the one with fresh ideas” (16 April) who has “fought a modern and positive campaign” (6 May), and the Conservatives are “a modern and caring party” (6 May) whose team bring “experience and wisdom […] bursting with excellent ideas” (6 May). Labour under Brown, on the other hand, have “turned Britain into a wasteland” (12 April) and a “swamp of despair” (14 April), and are a “clapped-out and spivvy team offering nothing but more of the same” (6 May). The Daily Mail echoed these tropes, referring to Labour’s “often dismal past” (13 April 2010) and how, 13 years after former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair’s proclamation that “we have secured a mandate to bring this nation together”, Britain was “more financially divided than at any time for a generation” (9 April 2010). By 2015, on polling day itself, the Daily Mail attempted to frighten the electorate with the prospect of a Miliband government “that will knock us back to the days of union blackmail and economic stagnation”, declaring that “this paper passionately urges readers to keep Mr Miliband’s hands off the levers of power. In most constituencies, of course, this can only mean voting Conservative” (6 May 2015).

3.7 Conclusion The examples used in this chapter have mostly been generated by using the syntactic frames associated with triggering oppositional structures (and therefore concepts) as search terms (e.g. “while”, “but”, “not”) in a corpus of general election editorial columns in the UK press in 2010 and 2015. Other “non-searchable” oppositions that are based around parallelisms have to be found by a subsequent close reading of the texts in which many of these frames occur. Clearly, this can be replicated and developed in many intriguing and exciting ways. At the time of writing, the consequences of offering the electorate a stark choice between “in” or “out” in the 2016 European Union referendum has led to an unprecedented crisis in British politics. Conflict has manifested itself not only between the two parties dominating the House of Commons, but also internally, characterised by resignations, factions and cross-party allegiances. Members of the public and individual parliamentary consistencies are represented as “remainers” or “leavers”, disguising hugely complex gradations of ways the UK could be related to the EU. The discourse of conflict has largely been channeled through news institutions who have played a major role in perpetuating simplistic and often tautological (“Brexit means Brexit”) rhetoric, leading to disjunctures between what is desired and what is achievable within EU and UK legislation. This study experiments with a framework for locating and interpreting instances of constructed oppositions at the syntactic and semantic levels and where these intersect, deepening our understanding of how such binaries can be used ideologically, in this case, in the news press. Conflict between party policies and party leaders is, to a certain extent, constituted in discourse that helps maintain the “ideological square”. Future studies should investigate the moral repercussions of these claims and consider how polarised thinking and the phenomenon of the stark choice can be resisted. Does the binary nature of syntax 61

Matt Davies

(“either X or Y”, “not X but Y”) inherently limit our capability to consider and conceptualise third options and other shades of grey or is binary discourse merely a reflection of a political system that thrives on simplicity and reductionism?

Symbols and typographical conventions X/Y Bold

Italic

small capitals

Indicates X and Y (representing words, phrases, clauses) are in an oppositional relationship. Indicates all co-occurring examples being treated as oppositional pairs both in and out of context, e.g. “The oppositional pair ‘hot’/‘cold’ are equivalent as examples of temperature”, or “I like my coffee hot not cold”. Indicates syntactic triggers for oppositions, e.g. “the negator ‘not’ acts as an oppositional trigger in the previous sentence”, “I like my coffee hot not cold”. Also occasionally used for emphasis (where not put in single quotes). Indicates concepts treated on their own, e.g. “hot” and “cold” are both equivalent as examples of temperature.

References Barnett, S. 2015. Four reasons why a partisan press helped win it for the Tories. In: Jackson, D. and Thorsen, E. UK election analysis 2015: media, voters and the campaign. Early reflections from leading academics. Bournemouth: The Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Community, Bournemouth University, p.91. Blake, L. 2016. Beyond the binary: what might a multiple-choice EU referendum have looked like? Democratic Audit UK. Available from: www.democraticaudit.com/2016/11/11/beyondthe-binary-what-might-a-multiple-choice-eu-referendum-have-looked-like/ Coe, K., Domke, D., Graham, E.S., Lockett, J.S. and Pickard, V.W. 2004. No shades of gray: the binary discourse of George W. Bush and an echoing press. Journal of Communication. 54(2), pp.234–52. Coglinatus, T. 2017. Voting theory and the Brexit referendum question. Royal Economic Society Newsletter. 177, pp.14–16. Davies, M. 2012. A new approach to oppositions in discourse: the role of syntactic frames in the triggering of non-canonical oppositions. Journal of English Linguistics. 40(1), pp.41–73. Davies, M. 2013. Oppositions and ideology in news discourse. London/New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Deacon, D., Downey, J., Stanyer, J. and Wring, D. 2015. News media performance in the 2015 General Election campaign. UK Election Analysis 2015. Available from: www.electionanalysis. uk/uk-election-analysis-2015/section-1-media-reporting/news-media-performance-inthe-2015-general-election-campaign/ Daily Express (editorial column). 2017. Vote May or we face disaster. Daily Express. 7 June. Fenton. 2015. Media policy, power and politics. In: Jackson, D. and Thorsen, E. UK election analysis 2015: media, voters and the campaign. Early reflections from leading academics. Bournemouth: The Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Community. Bournemouth University, p.92. Greenburg, J. 2000. Opinion discourse and Canadian newspapers: the case of the Chinese ‘boat people’. Canadian Journal of Communication. 25, pp.517–37. Izadi, F. and Saghaye-Biria. 2007. A discourse analysis of elite American newspaper editorials: the case of Iran’s nuclear program. Journal of Communication Inquiry. 31(2), pp.140–65. Jeffries, L. 2010. Opposition in discourse: the construction of oppositional meaning. London: Continuum. Jones, S. 2002. Antonymy: a corpus-based perspective. London/New York: Routledge. Jones, S. and Murphy, L. 2005. Using corpora to investigate antonym acquisition. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics. 10(3), pp.401–22. 62

Stark choices and brutal simplicity

Merrick, R. 2017. Election choice ‘starker’ after Corbyn said Manchester bombing ‘our own fault’, claims Theresa May. The Independent. 26 May. Available from: www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ politics/general-election-stark-theresa-may-corbyn-manchester-bombing-our-fault-g7-a7758391. html Portes, J. 2016. The Condorcet Paradox at work? Rock-paper-scissors in the EU referendum. National Institute of Economic and Social Research. 6 June. Available from: www.niesr.ac.uk/blog/ condorcet-paradox-work-rock-paper-scissors-eu-referendum Sonwalker, P. 2005. Banal journalism: the centrality of the ‘us-them’ binary in news discourse. In: Allan, S. ed. Journalism: critical issues. Maidenhead/New York: Open University Press. van Dijk, T.A. 1991. Racism and the press: critical studies in racism and migration. London/New York: Routledge. van Dijk, T. 1992. Racism and argumentation: ‘race riot’ rhetoric in tabloid editorials. In: van Eemeren, F.H. ed. Argumentation illuminated. Dordrecht: Foris, pp.242–59. van Dijk, T. 1996. Opinions and ideologies in editorials. Athens: International Symposium of Critical Discourse Analysis, Language, Social Life and Critical Thought, Athens. Wring, D. and Deacon, D. 2010. Patterns of press partisanship in the 2010 general election. British Politics. 5(4), pp.436–54.

63

4 Projecting your “opponent’s” views Linguistic negation and the potential for conflict Lisa Nahajec

Negation expresses an absence at the same time as evoking a possible presence, for example: Example 4.1 This election is not a joke. Example 4.1 calls to mind two opposing versions of a situation, one in which “this” is not a joke and one in which it is. The positive scenario in which it is a joke is not only textually accessible but assumed to be a belief or expectation on the part of the hearer that is being corrected by the speaker. This example is from a newspaper interview with the Labour party’s London mayoral candidate in 2008, Ken Livingstone. His main political opponent, Boris Johnson, was, at the time, represented as something of a buffoon and not sufficiently serious for the role of London mayor. He went on to win two terms as mayor. Here, Livingstone’s utterance encapsulates two viewpoints: the supposed viewpoint of the interviewer (and, by extension, readers of the newspaper) that the election is not to be taken seriously and his own viewpoint that it is. What is particularly significant here is that Livingstone is able to project the alternative positive onto the interviewer at the same time as rejecting this characterisation of the election. His viewpoint conflicts with the viewpoint that he has evoked and through negation he has attributed that viewpoint to the interviewer and readers. In addition, he contributed to the media discourse around the representation of Johnson as a clown-like figure. Linguistic negation is the textual realisation of an underlying conceptualisation of a dichotomy between actual absence and possible presence. This textual/conceptual practice (Jeffries, 2010b) can be put to use in context along two broadly distinctive lines within Halliday’s (1985) metafunctions of language. On the one hand, there is the interpersonal dimension where negation can be used for refusal, denial and prohibition. On the other, there is the ideational dimension where negation can function to reflect or project conceptualisations of worlds. Both functions share textual properties, but they also share the potential for conflict. 64

Projecting your “opponent’s” views

The duality of negation has long been recognised by scholars and is at the core of understanding its use in discourse. However, despite millennia of interest in the linguistic, psychological and philosophical properties of negation, scholars have only relatively recently begun to examine how we make sense of negation in the context of discourse and to consider its effects (Dancygier, 2010; Hodge and Kress, 1979; Hidalgo-Downing, 2000; Jeffries, 2010b; Nahajec, 2009, 2014; Pagano, 1994; Werth, 1999; Riddle-Harding, 2007; Nørgaard, 2007; Sweetser, 2006). Apart from the contributions of Hodge and Kress (1979), Jeffries (2010b) and Nahajec (2012), who consider its ideological effects, examination of its role in discourse has largely been concerned with its effects in literary texts. Little work has been done on the ideological effects of manipulating viewpoints. The aim of this chapter is to broaden our understanding of negation as a viewpoint mechanism and in doing so, consider the interplay of negation and conflict. Halliday’s influential approach to language posits the idea that language performs particular functions in the context of use: ideational, interpersonal and textual metafunctions. The interpersonal is concerned with managing relations between discourse participants, while the ideational is concerned with representing worlds. Conflict could be seen as most closely associated with the interpersonal function: conflict is, in some sense, the breakdown of relations between interlocutors, sometimes to the point of violence. However, the ideational and interpersonal show significant overlap. In the case of negation, while negated declaratives and imperatives frequently function as refusal, denial and prohibition, they do so on an ideational basis by representing the world in a particular way. In using negation to manage the beliefs and intentions of others, speakers/writers choose to evoke potential but unrealised states that implicitly create a contrast between what is presented as expected and what is actually realised. Let us take another example from the 2008 London Mayoral election. During the election campaign, Ken Livingstone sent out a mail-shot comprising a postcard which urged readers: Example 4.2 Don’t vote for a joke. Vote for London. While Livingstone’s textual strategy would seem to operate on an interpersonal level, managing the relationship between writer and reader in directing a particular course of action, it simultaneously works on an ideational level, presenting an image of the world in which it is not only possible to vote for a joke, but also where one or more of Livingstone’s addressees intend to follow that particular course of action. This potential to attribute ideas, beliefs and intentions can contribute to the reproduction of existing beliefs, intentions and so on, but also create them in the act of negating. In their discussion of language as ideology, Hodge and Kress (1979, p.145) note the powerful effects of negation: A negative is a convenient way of expressing forbidden meanings, evading a censor by the vehemence of the denial. It is also a way of planting ideas without having to take responsibility for them. This chapter examines negation from the perspective of what and how it contributes to meaning in the context of language in use in order to understand its role in situations of conflict. It suggests that linguistic negation constitutes a significant mechanism for viewpoint projection and plays a role in both enacting conflict and presenting the ideas that form the bases for conflict. It has the potential to reproduce and contribute to the naturalisation of 65

Lisa Nahajec

ideas that shape our understanding of the world. The aim of this discussion is to highlight some of the ways in which analysing the use of negation can be useful in identifying how conflict is enacted or how it may arise from this presentation of ideas about others and the world they inhabit. The following sections provide a brief explanation of what negation is and how it works in context before considering a range of illustrative examples of negation in situations of conflict. Negation is not conflictual per se; it is the context that gives rise to its conflict potential. These examples, therefore, focus on broadcast political interviews, a context that is characterised by conflicting conversational goals and ideas. The chapter concludes with a summary of this conflict potential and considers the relationship between understanding negation as a textual practice and the potential for conflict transformation.

4.1 Realising and processing negation Negation, then, fundamentally operates at a conceptual level; it is a recognition and expression of an absence that is relevant to the current discourse. Absence is, however, contingent on presence; marking something as absent is to indicate that it could have been present. Section 4.3 returns to the question of how this basic property of negation impacts on discourse through presupposition and point of view effects. This section, however, briefly considers how absences are textually realised and how language users are likely to make sense of them.

4.1.1 Conceptualisations and textual realisations As noted above, negation is the recognition and expression of a salient absence. Words such as “not”, “no”, “never” and “none” are textual vehicles for this conceptual practice (Jeffries, 2010b). This conceptual practice, however, is realised in a wider variety of textual forms than these readily recognisable ones. Linguistic negation ranges from its most basic expression in “not” to such things as grammaticalised metaphors (Yamanashi, 2000) such as “far from”. Givón (2001) and Tottie (1991) suggest a three-part classification of negators (lexical items that fulfil the negation function) around syntactic, morphological and semantic properties. However, while this classification makes a useful starting point, it presents only a partial picture of the range of textual forms that function as negators and it is worth supplementing this kind of classification with Jeffries’ notion that underlying conceptual practices are realised at the textual level through forms that range from prototypical expressions to the more peripheral. In her discussion of textual– conceptual practices (e.g. opposing, hypothesising, assuming, etc), Jeffries (2010b) notes the tendency for underlying conceptualisations to be realised in a variety of surface forms. These forms range from the prototypical to the more peripheral in relation to their membership of a category of forms that can express that underlying concept. The textual realisations of negation range from the prototypical expressions “not” and “no” to more peripheral expressions including such forms as “diddly squat”. So, the sentences below all express an absence, but use a variety of textual forms to do this: Example 4.3 a.  Jen was not happy. b.  Jen was never happy. c.  Jen was unhappy. 66

Projecting your “opponent’s” views

d.  Jen failed to be happy. e.  Jen was almost happy. f.  Jen was far from happy. g.  I wish that Jen was happy. h.  If Jen had been happy, she would have smiled. In each sentence, Jen lacks the property of being happy. In 4.3a and 4.3b, the negator is syntactic, taking scope over “was happy”. While “not” in 4.3a has a single function as a negator, “never” in 4.3b combines the negator function with a reference to time in the combination of “not” and “ever”. The negator in 4.3c operates at a morphological level with the prefix “un” and takes scope only over the base word to which it attaches, “happy”.1 While the negators in 4.3a to 4.3c have a distinct linguistic identity, in 4.3d the negation function is inherent in the meaning of the word “fail”. Identifying negators in the semantic properties of a word is fraught with problems. However, Givón (2001) and Cruse (1986) and Kartunnen and Peters (1978), among others, suggest that inherently semantic negators can be paraphrased with more prototypical negators. In the above examples, 4.3d is propositionally equivalent to 4.3a. Examples 4.3e to 4.3h constitute more peripheral forms of negator; 4.3e belongs to a small group of adverbs that straddle the divide between negation and affirmation: “almost”, “nearly”, “barely”, “scarcely” and “hardly” (see Tottie, 1977). These forms express a mitigated form of negation and affirmation. For example, while “almost” in 4.3e is propositionally equivalent to “not” in 4.3a, it carries a sense in which the absence is less forcefully expressed; 4.3f contains the grammaticalised metaphor (Yamanashi, 2000), “far from”, which carries the same function as “not” but is context dependent and based on a metaphor of proximity. Like grammaticalised metaphors, 4.3g and 4.3h are also context dependent. “Wish” in 4.3g is a modal expression of a desire for something to be the case and only implies that it is not. The combination of past perfect tense and aspect with the conditional “if … then” structure in 4.3h sets up a hypothetical but unrealised scenario in which Jen was happy and smiled. The variety of textual vehicles ranges from the explicit to the implicit, from the prototypical to the peripheral. They are conditioned by the linguistic context in which they occur, the scope of the negator (what utterance elements it has influence over) and the degree of emphasis or force expressed by a speaker (for more on variation, scope and pragmatic force, see Givón, 2001; Horn, 1989; Nahajec, 2012; Tottie, 1991).

4.1.2 Negation and indirect meaning As negation expresses an absence, it does not, technically speaking, tell us something about what is the case; hearers/readers must infer what speakers/writers intend to mean. Leech (1983, p.101) considers the idea that using negation is uninformative, but posits that it will in fact be used when it is most meaningful: In fact, the CP (Co-operative Principle) will predict that negative sentences tend to be used precisely in situations when they are not less informative for a given purpose than positive ones: and this will be when S (speaker) wants to deny some proposition which has been put forward or entertained by someone in the context (probably the addressee). Understanding negation in context is a matter of inferring implied meaning. Elsewhere (Nahajec, 2012, 2014), I suggest that understanding negation relies on taking into account 67

Lisa Nahajec

the textual form of the negator, its presuppositional value (see below) and the context in which it occurs to determine an implicature (implied meaning). Grice (1975) proposed that language users orient towards the notion of co-operation in understanding language in context. That is, hearers/readers will assume that speakers/writers are intending to mean something even where their utterances appear to lack relevance, clarity or truthfulness, or have too much or too little detail. To capture this idea, Grice (1975, pp.45–6) posited the Co-operative Principle with the attendant set of maxims (rather than rules) – quantity, quality, relation and manner. He suggests that, all things being equal, hearers will assume that speakers orient towards these maxims or norms for conversation and where they are overtly disregarded it will be for the reason of implying more than is literally said. In the case of negation, speakers can be seen to flout (disregard) the maxims to imply meaning rather than directly affirm meaning. Depending on the context, negation can flout the above maxims in that it can appear to lack relevance to the current discourse or fail to give clear information. The process by which meaning can then be inferred is by considering what it would mean if the state, event or attribute that is negated were present and then reversing that meaning by the degree of emphatic force of the negator itself. Looking again at Example 4.1, the utterance is indirect because it does not say anything about what the election is, only what it is not. However, taking into account the prototypical negator with a single negation function (“not”), the presuppositional value (someone thinks the election is a joke) and the context (mayoral election campaign where the main opponent is frequently constructed in the media as a fool), readers may well infer that Livingstone is implying that voters should cast their ballot for him rather than Boris Johnson, who is projected as a wider participant to the discourse as believing the election is a joke. As noted here, negation is a complex form of communication that, in part, requires an understanding of its presuppositional nature. As Levinson (1983, p.107) asserts: Whenever I avoid some simple expression in favour of some more complex paraphrase, it may be assumed that I do not do so wantonly, but because the details are somehow relevant to the enterprise. The next section examines this presuppositional nature of negation and links it to point of view effects in communication.

4.2 Negation, presupposition and point of view The basis of understanding negation in context is its duality in realising both an actual absence and possible presence. Negation, then, is not simply the opposite of affirmation. Affirmation does not automatically draw attention to its opposite, whereas negation does. Not only does negation draw attention to the negated positive, it treats the positive as if it were part of the common ground knowledge between speaker and hearer. More importantly, it treats the positive as if it is expected to be the case by the hearer and potentially other discourse participants. In using negation, speakers/writers are interacting with hearers’/ readers’ conceptualisations of the world rather than the world itself. According to Verhagen (2005), negation is intersubjective, concerned not with representing the world, but with representing others’ conceptualisations of the world. In presenting those supposed images of others’ minds, speakers/writers reproduce or project conceptualisations and operate at the ideational level of language. Hodge and Kress (1979, p.145) note (in relation to an utterance 68

Projecting your “opponent’s” views

such as “There isn’t a tiger in that room”) that “The negative form does not guarantee the reality of the tiger, but it does guarantee the reality of the thought”.

4.2.1 Negation and presupposition Negation has long been recognised as presuppositional in nature (e.g. Givón, 2001; HidalgoDowning, 2000; Jordan, 1998; Nørgaard, 2007; Pagano, 1994; Tottie, 1991; Werth, 1999), and it is this aspect of its use in context that is particularly significant in the consideration of its relationship to conflict. For example, according to Givón (2001, p. 336), negation not only treats the negated positive as if it were part of the shared common knowledge between speaker and hearer but treats hearers (and potentially wider discourse participants) as if they expect or believe the positive to be the case: a negative assertion is made on the tacit assumption that the hearer has either heard about, believes in, is likely to take for granted, or is at least familiar with the corresponding affirmative proposition. He goes on to note that this presupposition is pragmatic in nature, presupposing what hearers think rather than presupposing that a situation is true. For example, an assertion such as “My door is not blue” does not presuppose that it is true that my door is blue, but rather that someone thinks that it is. It is worth briefly considering the sources for these presuppositions. While the textual construction of negation treats information as if it were part of the common ground between speakers and hearers, there can be a correlation between what is presented as expected and what could actually be expected. The expectations can be part of the co-text in that negation functions to deny some previous assertion available as part of the immediate discourse. They can be incorrectly inferred from the co-text or part of more general schematic knowledge of the world. They can also be created in the act of negating itself through a process of negative accommodation (Werth, 1999). The types of background knowledge evoked or projected by negation can be summarised as follows: i. explicit expectations: expectations that are explicit in the co-text ii. implicit expectations: a. based on knowledge about how the world works b. based on specific knowledge shared by discourse participants c. based on incorrect inferences from the text d. based on cultural shared knowledge iii. projected expectation: expectations simultaneously instantiated and defeated through the use of negation Negation, then, is a viewpoint mechanism, either reflecting a hearer’s existing point of view based on co-text or context, or creating that point of view in the act of negating. Pagano (1994, p.253) captures this idea when she points out that writers construct texts around an idealised version of the reader, a reader who holds the expectations that are projected by the text itself: The writer creates a picture of the reader, who thus becomes an “ideal reader”, and attributes to this reader certain experience, knowledge, opinions and beliefs on the basis 69

Lisa Nahajec

of which a writer builds his/her message … As the writer somehow assumes what the reader’s questions and expectations are, s/he tries to provide information about these. The presupposed expectations, beliefs and opinions of Pagano’s “ideal” reader present a partial picture of negation as a viewpoint mechanism. The next section examines the multiplicity of viewpoints encoded in negation.

4.2.2 Negation and viewpoint According to Dancygier and Vandelanotte (2016), negation is one of many linguistic and discursive mechanisms that create local viewpoint multiplicity, encoding a mix of viewpoints in textual constructions. Negation encodes the point of view of the speaker (the absence of something) and the supposed viewpoint of the hearer/wider discourse participants (an expectation of the presence of something). Nørgaard (2007), developing work by Nolke (2006), captures this position from a polyphony-based approach, suggesting that negation encodes multiple voices and, consequently, multiple viewpoint effects in discourse. Nolke (2006) suggests that an utterance such as “this wall is not white” encodes two points of view: POV 1:  The wall is white POV 2:  POV 1 is wrong Negation, then, holds within it both the speaker’s viewpoint that the embedded viewpoint of some other discourse participant is wrong, but also that embedded viewpoint itself. In this environment of presupposition, the assertion of absence projects, at the textual level, the supposed viewpoints of hearer and potentially other discourse participants. However, it does so without needing to assert that the expectation of the positive is actually the viewpoint of the hearer. Negation presents the potential for speakers to construct an image of their interlocutors as not only holding beliefs or expectations about the world but also as holding incorrect beliefs or expectations. Therefore, from a conflict perspective, the use of negation involves two significant features: 1. it constructs a situation in which hearers (and other discourse participants) are presented as being wrong (in their beliefs/expectations) 2. it presents an image of the (incorrect) beliefs/expectations held by hearers (and other discourse participants) In relation to the examples from political interviews discussed below, negation allows participants to project the supposed beliefs of their immediate interlocutors, the overhearing audience and wider discourse participants such as political opponents.

4.3 Negation and conflict situations Having laid the foundations of the textual practice of negating – that is, how it is expressed and how it is understood – we can consider its conflict potential in situations of use. The examples address three broad areas in which negation and conflict intersect. The first is the role of negation in enacting conflict between speakers and hearers in the local management of talk. The second is concerned with how negation represents opponents, situations and 70

Projecting your “opponent’s” views

ideas that contribute to an environment of, or bases for, conflict. The last looks at negation used in the context of conflict situations, particularly in relation to how it may heighten fears and tensions. These types of effects are not exclusive to any particular discourse type. However, in order to illustrate this range of intersections between negation and conflict, the analyses below draw on a discourse type that is inevitably, and even necessarily, combative – political interviews. The examples focus on the role of negation in reflecting and projecting viewpoints through evoking, reframing and attributing unrealised expectations. They are selected from a wider project on textual practices in political interviews broadcast on public television in the UK but are framed by a period of time in 2017 that saw a heightened level of conflict in the UK.2 This period was particularly marked by political conflict over the aftermath of the UK-wide referendum on Brexit. The 52 percent to 48 percent vote in favour of leaving the European Union left a divided country and produced dissenting voices from across the political spectrum. As a result, the sitting prime minister, Theresa May, called an early General Election with the intention of strengthening the government’s hand in negotiations with the EU. The period was further marred by a series of terrorist acts in London and Manchester. Party political campaigning, ongoing Brexit issues and extremist violence dominated interviews with politicians at this time. Political interviews are characterised by both the potential to realise conflict between interlocutors and for conflict to be the topic of discussion. Fundamentally, there is conflict at the level of the goals of each participant. On a simplified basis, interviewees’ goals are characterised by the nature of democratic political systems that are dependent on the approval of voters. In such contexts, interviewees (politicians) need to present themselves to the viewing audience as worthy of voting for. Politicians, then, must tread a fine line between being sufficiently informative and presenting the government and/or political party in the best possible light. The goal of the interviewer, on the other hand, is to reveal a fuller picture of the issue under discussion rather than a partial one that favours the particular politician, political party or government. In order to do this, the interviewer is likely to adopt, if only in the context of the interview itself,3 a contrary position to that of the interviewee. Within this framework, conflict is a necessary feature of the function of a political interview as interviewer and interviewee present competing conceptualisations of situations, events and entities. Bull (2008, p.336) suggests that political interviews are shaped by local “communicative conflict” as interviewees attempt to avoid answers that might damage the public perception of them and their party. Montgomery (2008) notes that political interviews are constructed around the notion of holding politicians to account for their policies and actions, which reflect particular ideologies. As a means of holding politicians to account, such interviews are concerned with representing broad issues within societies, the conceptualisations of which may provide the bases for conflicting understandings of the world. Political interviews are also frequently concerned with discussing conflicts, including conflicts of ideas with political opponents as well as broader social conflicts and conflicts that have deteriorated to the level of violence, such as terrorism and war. In their exploration of the effects of linguistic negation in discourse, scholars in the field (e.g. Jeffries, 2010b; Nahajec, 2012; Nørgaard, 2007; Sweetser, 2006) have noted that the range of these effects is likely to be open-ended and highly context dependent. However, the role of negation in viewpoint manipulation is one of the core effects identified (e.g. Nahajec, 2012; Nørgaard, 2007; Sweetser, 2006). The examples analysed below build on and expand our understanding of the contextual effects of viewpoint manipulation by specifically examining the role of negation in realising and contributing to an environment of conflict. 71

Lisa Nahajec

4.3.1 Enacting conflict in interaction While the broad focus of this discussion is the way in which negation can produce and reproduce ideas and project points of view, it is worth briefly considering perhaps the most obvious realisation of conflict through negation in interview situations. As noted above, negation can draw on expectations that are part of the co-text, asserted by a prior speaker; in doing so, it can deny the validity or truthfulness of that assertion. For example, the interview between the Prime Minister, Theresa May (PM), and Andrew Neil (AN) on the BBC in the run-up to the General Election contains several instances where May uses negation to deny Neil’s characterisation of a situation: Example 4.4 AN:   So Jeremy Corbyn is now rewriting your manifesto? PM:  No, not at all. AN:   Well, that’s what it sounds like. You’ve reacted to him. PM:  No, we haven’t. Andrew, we have not rewritten the manifesto. May’s responses in this example negate expectations that are made explicit by Neil in the co-text (Corbyn rewriting the manifesto and Theresa May reacting) and function as a denial of Neil’s viewpoint. May is not projecting but echoing Neil’s asserted viewpoint in her use of negation. In doing so, she implies that he is wrong in his beliefs and that his viewpoint is not valid. These speakers, then, come into conflict over what constitutes an accurate representation of the world. This reflects the underlying conflict in goals where May wants, particularly during an election campaign, to present, in her words, a “strong and stable” government worthy of re-election. While the negation in Example 4.4 draws on explicit expectations in the co-text in order to realise conflicting viewpoints, there are less obvious ways in which negation enacts conflict. In the following example, the Labour MP Andrew Gwynn uses negation to reframe the meaning of a question from Andrew Neil regarding Labour party plans for funding the National Health Service: Example 4.5 I am not going to lay out the Labour Party manifesto for an election that hasn’t been called. Gwynn’s use of negation re-frames Neil’s question on specific funding plans to a question of general funding plans. By negating an intention to lay out the Labour Party’s manifesto, Gwynn is either responding to what he views as Neil’s implied request to lay out the party manifesto or reframing Neil’s actual question as meaning something else in order to avoid answering it. Either way, the utterance presupposes that Neil’s viewpoint is such that Gwynn should put forward the Labour party manifesto. In fact, Neil goes on to say, “That wasn’t my question”, challenging the point of view that Gwynn is projecting. Here, the utterance attributes a point of view to Neil that is clearly at odds with what he intended to mean but constructs Neil and Gwynn as being opponents in this context. Further, like Example 4.4, it reflects the underlying goal conflict; while elaborating on Labour’s spending plans would fulfil the interviewer’s goals to inform the viewing audience, avoiding the question saves the interviewee from making spending commitments in front of an audience of potential voters that may cause problems in the future. 72

Projecting your “opponent’s” views

Where Gwynn appears to be using reframing to avoid answering a question, Home Secretary Amber Rudd (AR), in an interview with Andrew Marr (AM), reframes and projects the interviewer’s meaning to correct an inference that the audience may derive from the interviewer’s suggestions and question: Example 4.6 AM: I suppose what I’m wondering is the question about whether Abedi was red flagged or not at some point in the last few years may simply be because there are so many plots, so many people that they have to look at. One thing you could decide to do after Manchester is a step change in the size of MI5. You could double it. You could spend money that’s being spent on Trident or something else and put it into this. Have you considered that? AR:  We won’t shy away from finding out what else we can do to keep people safe. In Example 4.6, Marr makes suggestions for what the security services and Home Office could do to increase and improve security in relation to terrorist plots in the UK and poses a question regarding whether Rudd has considered these possibilities. Though Rudd goes on to address funding issues more directly, her initial negated response re-frames Marr’s suggestions and question as an expectation that “we” (the home office) will “shy away from finding out what else we can do to keep people safe”. Rudd’s negated utterance seems to present Marr and perhaps the audience as believing the Home Office is reluctant to consider ways in which security can be improved. By using negation, the utterance encodes both the supposed viewpoint of the hearer and Rudd’s viewpoint that the hearer is wrong, and in doing so, Rudd, like Gwynn, constructs her interlocutor as opponent. It may seem odd that Rudd is constructing Marr as an opponent here when she might simply have said she was thinking about those options. However, in re-framing Marr’s meaning, she is perhaps forestalling an inference that the audience may derive from his suggestions/question; while interviews are on one level a conversation between the interviewer and interviewee, they engage in conversation for the purpose of informing the audience. It would seem that in re-framing Marr’s meaning through negating a supposed expectation, Rudd is making an implied criticism explicit in order to disagree with it. It seems that in this situation, if Rudd directly engages with Marr’s suggestions, she opens up problems around the government’s commitments to funding and to the much bigger issue of the UK’s nuclear programme. However, by circumventing the question/suggestion, she raises the very possibility of shying away (albeit unrealised) and perhaps makes the Home Office and herself look weak in the process. The final example in this section looks again at the interview between Andrew Neil and Theresa May. The use of negation here re-frames the interviewer’s meaning and also potentially draws on wider perceptions of the Conservative party as being target driven: Example 4.7 AN:  But let me come back to the NHS. Our hospitals have just endured their worst 12 months in ten years. A record number of urgent operations were cancelled, a string of targets, from emergency care to routine care, to cancer care, have been missed. What you’re promising is too little too late. PM: No. And I accept that the NHS has missed some of its targets, but let’s look at– and targets aren’t the be all and end all. What matters actually is the quality of patient care. 73

Lisa Nahajec

May’s assertion that “targets aren’t the be all and end all” presupposes and reframes Neil’s comments on cancelled operations and missed targets as an expectation/belief that “targets are the be all and end all” of NHS care. Again, the two encoded viewpoints construct May and Neil as being in opposition, even though it is the negation itself that constructs Neil’s supposed viewpoint. However, as well as reframing Neil’s comments, May’s assertion also draws on, reproduces and challenges the wider conceptualisation of the NHS as being target driven, a viewpoint arguably constructed in the consistent reporting of NHS trusts’ performance in relation to targets set by the government. As such, May is not only constructing Neil’s viewpoint and implying that it is wrong but also drawing on the same viewpoint that is held more widely and implying that those who hold that viewpoint are wrong.

4.3.2 Contributing to the bases for conflict In the above examples, the use of negation to echo or reframe the interviewers’ meanings provides the basis for disagreement and realises conflict in the local management of talk. This section moves on to look at the way in which negation can contribute to the ideas that might underpin conflict more widely. The potential to attribute expectations or beliefs to wider discourse participants is significant in the reproduction and naturalisation of ideologies. These ideologies in turn underpin wider social conflicts. In the following example, Paul Nuttall, the then leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), was being interviewed by Andrew Marr during the General Election campaign. As UKIP’s policies primarily revolve around the desire for UK independence from Europe, the topic of the interview turned to the management of migration, a frequently contentious and emotive topic in UK (and world) politics: Example 4.8 AM: Now, the Office of Budget Responsibility has calculated that if we cut immigration down to 185,000 – so vastly more than you’re suggesting – that would cost the Treasury £6 billion a year in lost revenue. How much will your policy cost the Treasury? PN:  […] We need people to come into the country, they can come in and they can work. But you know, economics isn’t everything. It’s also about social cohesion, and at the moment we have communities which have been tipped upside down over recent years because too many people are coming to the country too quickly and not learning English and not integrating. Nuttall’s response to Marr’s question on the financial cost of reducing migration reframes the question as a presupposed assertion that “economics is everything”. So, Nuttall both projects Marr’s supposed point of view and implies that this point of view is wrong. However, he goes on to qualify what it means for “economics is everything” to be absent from an understanding of the migration situation. Nuttall links migration to the lived experiences of communities that he implies are suffering from a lack of community cohesion through excessive numbers of migrants. What is of particular significance here, however, is Nuttall’s negated assertion that those coming are “not learning English and not integrating”. As with the other examples, this encodes two points of view: Viewpoint 1:  People are learning English and are integrating. Viewpoint 2:  Viewpoint 1 is wrong. 74

Projecting your “opponent’s” views

Viewpoint 2 is clearly held by Nuttall himself, while viewpoint 1 could be attributed to the interviewer, audience and wider discourse participants. Nuttall is correcting what he clearly sees as a misapprehension on their part. There is, then, a very basic level of conflicting viewpoints with regards to whether or not migrants are learning English and integrating. However, what is perhaps more significant is that Nuttall sets up an expectation of integrating and learning English without needing to assert it and possibly be challenged on it. It also sets the agenda for what constitutes social cohesion. O’Driscoll (2009) notes that negation can contribute to what he terms the “discursive deictic centre”, a situation in which speakers may hold differing viewpoints on a particular subject yet share a common viewing position. In discussing the construction of a discursive deictic centre in a BBC Question Time debate over the seemingly intractable Israeli/Palestinian conflict, O’Driscoll (2009) uses the following example to illustrate: Example 4.9 Jenny Tonge:  It [the attack by Israel] is not doing Israel any good. While this utterance was made by a pro-Palestinian speaker and took an opposing view on the efficacy of Israeli actions to her pro-Israeli opponent, she shares a common viewing position with that opponent. By realising an absence of “doing Israel any good”, the speaker views those actions from the position, as her opponent does, of whether or not the actions are of benefit to Israel. Similarly, the two viewpoints in Nuttall’s assertion that people (migrants) are not learning English and not integrating come from the same discursive deictic centre where there is an expectation of learning and integrating – an expectation that is attributed to wider discourse participants and which goes unchallenged by the interviewer. A discursive deictic centre is similarly established in Andrew Neil’s interview with the leader of the Liberal Democrats at the time, Tim Farron. While their exchange is concerned with whether or not Farron is a Eurosceptic, what is interesting is Neil’s assertion that Farron is not being honest: Example 4.10 AN: You are no Eurosceptic Mr Farron, are you? It’s not honest to say that to the British people. In asserting Farron’s lack of honesty, Neil reproduces and reinforces the widely held expectation of honesty, though politicians’ lack of honesty is frequently a point of media speculation and public criticism. The two encoded viewpoints do not dispute whether or not honesty is required but only project Farron’s belief that he is compared with Neil’s assertion that he is not. Reproducing the expectation of honesty then establishes, albeit on a small scale, a discursive deictic centre where honesty is a baseline requirement of politicians. Rather than directly engaging with Neil’s characterisation of him as not being honest, Mr Farron, perhaps wisely, goes on to attack the basis of the claim; by delineating what he means by Eurosceptic, Farron attempts to demonstrate his honesty rather than deny Neil’s assertion of dishonesty. In the same interview between Neil and Farron, Farron uses negation to introduce expectations into the discourse, again projecting others’ viewpoints. Here, the subject is the contentious issue of who has the final say on the Brexit deal negotiated between Britain and the European Union: 75

Lisa Nahajec

Example 4.11 TF:  It should not be a deal stitched up by the politicians in Brussels and London. Instead it should be a deal that we agree with as a country, and that’s what we’re supporting. In this example, parallel structures and negation are used to construct an opposition between those in power (“politicians in Brussels and London”) and those subject to that power (“we […] as a country”) (see Davies, 2013 and Jeffries, 2010a on constructed opposition). However, the use of negation presupposes that the interviewer and potentially wider participants believe that it “should be a deal stitched up by the politicians in Brussels and London” and that a “stitched up” deal is possible or likely. The use of the phrase “stitched up” (meaning to intentionally or maliciously arrange a situation such that it disadvantages individuals or groups involved) negatively evaluates the inevitable prospect that it will be politicians who come to a final agreement. This evaluative phrase, however, makes it unlikely that someone who thinks that politicians should draw up the final agreement would see it as “stitched up”. The negated positive, then, is being introduced as an expectation rather than reproducing one. Farron is constructing his political opponents – in this case, the government – as intending to produce a stitched-up agreement against the interests of voters. Negation can also be used to engage with individual political opponents, opposing parties and their policies. In an interview with Andrew Marr, shadow Home Secretary4 Diane Abbott was challenged on her track record of not supporting anti-terrorist legislation and legislation around enhancing the powers of the security services. She was specifically challenged on whether or not the country could trust her given her support of the IRA in the 1980s. She responded with: Example 4.12 No, no, no, but what I’m saying to you is this: it was 34 years ago, I had a rather splendid afro at the time – I don’t have the same hairstyle and I don’t have the same views, and it’s 34 years on. The hairstyle has gone and some of the views have gone. On the same episode of The Andrew Marr Show, Amber Rudd (Home Secretary) was interviewed. When asked about Abbot’s defence of her beliefs in the past, Rudd said: Example 4.13 What I would say to Diane Abbott is I’ve changed my hairstyle a few times in 34 years as well, but I have not changed my view about how we keep the British public safe. Here, Rudd is constructing herself in opposition to Abbott for the viewing audience. If she had changed her views about how to keep the British public safe, as Abbott has, then she would be the same as her Labour party counterpart. By negating this and evoking Abbott’s assertion earlier in the TV programme, Rudd is placing herself in opposition to Abbott, although she does not assert any major policy difference on which they disagree. Rudd is implying that her approach to security is consistent and therefore better. However, there is nothing in being consistent that entails being particularly efficacious, or even good; for example, ineffective or discriminatory ideas on security do not, unlike wine, improve with age. 76

Projecting your “opponent’s” views

While Rudd engages directly with her Labour party counterpart and realises a conflict of ideas between them, she also, unsurprisingly, places the Labour Party as a whole in conflict with the Conservative party: Example 4.14 AR: The Conservative Party is a party that is very frank about these things, unlike the Labour Party. In example 14, the expectation is subtle and morphologically embedded in the use of “unlike”. The expectation of similarity between the Labour and Conservative parties is realised and rejected at word level. That expectation of similarity is presupposed, but probably also reflects wider beliefs that political parties in general are similar to one another. However, while the negator takes scope over only “like”, it influences the whole utterance, resulting in a meaning something like: The Conservative party is X. The Labour party is not X. As such, the Conservative Party is constructed in opposition to the Labour Party in terms of the presence and absence of frankness as the basis for being unlike. In embedding the negation in the second clause and in a morphological form, Rudd is able to assert something positive about the Conservatives and merely tack on the opposition to Labour without asserting the Labour Party’s lack of frankness in such a way as it could be easily challenged.

4.3.3 In the context of conflict Where the examples above have considered the contribution of negation to enacting conflict or contributing to the bases of conflict, this final section looks at negation in the context of conflict, particularly in relation to heightening fears and tensions. The examples examined in this section focus on the use of negation in political interviews at a time when terrorist attacks and the ongoing conflicts that underpin them are a regular part of the news. Since 2001, there have been a series of terrorist incidents in the UK, with four taking place in the first half of 2017. Terrorism is not new to Britain and indeed is a problem worldwide. Recent terrorist attacks have seemingly been inspired by a perceived conflict between Westernstyle liberalism and religiously motivated extremism. This conflict is played out in various discourses on mass and social media platforms and through violent actions of nation states and extremist groups. Significant media space is devoted to the coverage of terrorist events. This first example is taken from an interview between Andrew Marr (AM) and Labour shadow defence secretary Emily Thornberry (ET) on the day after the second terrorist attack during the official campaign period for the General Election. Part of the attack involved the killing and injuring of pedestrians with a van on London Bridge. Marr addresses the question of security, particularly in relation to London’s bridges: Example 4.15 AM: This is the second attack on a London bridge and it just strikes me that perhaps London’s bridges are particularly soft targets. There aren’t bollards, there aren’t bits of street furniture to stop cars from getting onto the pavement, and of course people have nowhere to jump except into the river. Do you think we need to look again at the security of London bridges? 77

Lisa Nahajec

While Marr is ostensibly eliciting Thornberry’s views on security measures, he does so after establishing a high level of vulnerability in relation to pedestrians and bridges in London. He suggests that London’s bridges are “soft targets” but goes on to delineate the notion of “soft” as relating to a lack of bollards, street furniture and somewhere to jump. In negating the presence of these things, the utterance draws on common knowledge regarding what is possible for streets and raises that possibility to an expectation through presupposition. Thornberry and the audience are then constructed as expecting some kind of safety measures on London bridges, expectations that are defeated in the negated utterance. There are no doubt a great many streets and bridges across the UK that do not have barriers that would prevent a vehicle from mounting the pavement. By drawing attention to the possibility and thus projecting an unrealised expectation of preventative measures, such utterances have the potential to communicate to audiences the sense that they are at risk in everyday life. Of course, most activities involve some kind of risk and indeed a driver going out of control on any street and mounting the pavement is dangerous to pedestrians. However, in drawing attention to a lack of safety measures, Marr’s utterance has the potential to heighten the perception of danger, particularly from terrorism. Thornberry picks up this “safety” meaning in her response: Example 4.16 ET: […] Obviously you can never make anywhere completely safe, but measures like that and like we’re now beginning to get around the House, around parliament, I think need to be looked at. The negation of “make anywhere completely safe” in this example projects both Marr and the audience as holding the viewpoint that somewhere could be completely safe. While it is unlikely that either would genuinely hold this view given the nature of life in general, by projecting it as their expectation, the utterance sets it up as a possibility that is being defeated. Drawing attention to a lack of safety, like in the lack of bollards and so on, emphasises vulnerability and potentially heightens fears. A related issue is the use of negation in relation to non-terrorist events in UK news bulletins. It has now become a frequent practice in news bulletins to note that acts of public violence or tragedy are not, or are not believed to be, acts of terrorism. Here, the description of an event as not being related to terrorism presents the listening audience as holding an expectation that needs to be corrected. But, of course, in saying that it is not an act of terrorism, the news producers raise this not only as a possibility but as a baseline expectation, repeated again and again to the point where audiences may expect terrorism at every turn despite its relative infrequency. Taken alongside a “them” and “us”-based media coverage of Islam and Muslims, such use of negation could in fact be inflammatory rather than providing the perhaps well-intentioned aim of reassurance. The final example, from the same Thornberry/Marr interview, relates not to expectations or beliefs per se, but to intentions. Here, the use of negation in an imperative structure that functions as a prohibition presupposes that the interviewer and particularly the viewing audience intend to carry out an action that is negatively evaluated by the interviewee: Example 4.17 ET: Well, I don’t know if it’s a conscious– I don’t know if it’s done consciously or not, but clearly a side effect of it could be, and that absolutely we must not allow 78

Projecting your “opponent’s” views

to happen. And one of the responses, the response from London, should be to be brave, be calm, carry on. But also, do not let this derail our democracy. We go ahead with this election and we make sure people vote. Marr raises the question of whether the timing of the latest terrorist attack during the general election campaign was aimed at disrupting the electoral process. What is particularly significant in relation to heightening tensions is Thornberry’s use of negation in an imperative structure that treats Marr and the audience as if they intend to “let this derail our democracy” and that it is in fact possible for democracy to be “derailed”. As with Example 4.2, the negative imperative encodes not only the point of view of the hearer in that they intend to carry out some action but also the point of view of the speaker that that action is negatively evaluated; after all, we are unlikely to prohibit something that is approved of. Here, the audience and Marr are being constructed as intending to allow “this” – the terrorist action – to impact on the process of democracy. The implication would seem to be that the impact of the attack has the potential to go beyond the isolated incident in London to undermine the very structure of society, adding to already heightened fears. Areas of overlap between the types of effects created through negation in these examples are clear. For example, using negation to re-frame a hearer’s prior turns at talk can not only be a matter of local communicative conflict over meaning but can also contribute to the bases for conflict and contribute to an environment of heightened fear. However, the above characterisation of the types of viewpoint effects created through negation provides a general framework with reference points for examining how conflicting goals and ideas are realised in discourse.

4.4 Conclusions and transformative potential It would seem that as social animals, human beings cannot avoid conflict of one kind or another, and as Tjosvold (2006) suggests, engaging with conflict situations is about managing conflict rather than simply resolving it. Political interviews would seem to be a situation in which conflict is managed and maintained, at least at the local level of the interviewer and interviewee, in order to achieve conflicting conversational goals in relation to the viewing or listening audience. Political interviews present an environment where conflict is a necessary part of the discourse type; if, as Montgomery (2008) notes, the aim of the political interview is to hold politicians to account for their policies, actions and ideological positions, then interviewer and interviewee are pursuing conflicting goals and presenting competing conceptualisations of situations, events and entities. One might argue that the realisation of this local communicative conflict attempts to shed light on potentially unpalatable policies, ideas and so on, and serves the very task of holding politicians to account. However, the mutually dependent relationship between interviewer and interviewee – one seeking votes, the other seeking “truth” – means that conflict is managed in order for the interview format to be mutually beneficial. It is important to note, however, that this type of necessary conflict is not completely benign. The analyses carried out above demonstrate that negation not only contributes to local communicative conflict but also to the viewpoints that form the bases for wider conflicts of ideas. If understanding how language is used in discourse enhances our understanding of conflict – the notion explored in this volume – then understanding negation illustrates one aspect of the interplay between these two complex phenomena. The above discussion presents illustrations that demonstrate the contribution of negation to: 79

Lisa Nahajec

•• •• ••

local conflict between speakers and hearers in managing the type of interaction and the turns at talk a more general level of conflict in the introduction or reproduction of ideas that form the bases of conflict potentially heightening fears and tensions in the environment of conflict

If indeed understanding language can illuminate our understanding of conflict, then there is a basis for considering in what way this understanding can contribute to transforming or managing conflict. In understanding the presuppositional qualities of negation, we (academics, professionals in the field of conflict management and transformation and everyday language users) can identify the kinds of ideas and conceptualisations that are being introduced into a discourse without, as Hodge and Kress (1979) note, participants needing to take responsibility for them. For example, in Paul Nuttall’s negative assertion that migrants are not integrating and not learning English, he contributes to the agenda of what constitutes community coherence without having to debate whether these things are actually fundamental. It is also possible to identify what kinds of elements potentially contribute to an environment of fear in conflict situations. For example, in Andrew Marr’s delineation of the notion of a “soft target” as being an absence of street furniture and bollards, the emphasis is placed on a lack of something that ought to be there, perhaps leading to a sense of privation and vulnerability even in the most mundane of actions – walking down the street. Heightening fears within the media in this way may impact on the possibility of a reasoned response in relation to a conflict situation. We might also consider the very nature of negation as an indirect form of communication that can impact on conflict situations. As negation is ostensibly uninformative, it requires, like other mechanisms of indirectness, interlocutors to “work out” what speakers intend to mean. This leads to the potential for misunderstanding. While not an exclusive property of negation, it does add negation to a set of language practices where misunderstanding is a possible side effect in communication. However, as demonstrated in Example 4.18, although negation is itself indirect, it can be used to make implied meaning at least partially explicit and challenge ideas that are being indirectly introduced into a discourse: Example 4.18 AM: I suppose what I’m wondering is the question about whether Abedi was red flagged or not at some point in the last few years may simply be because there are so many plots, so many people that they have to look at. One thing you could decide to do after Manchester is a step change in the size of MI5. You could double it. You could spend money that’s being spent on Trident or something else and put it into this. Have you considered that? AR:   We won’t shy away from finding out what else we can do to keep people safe. Finally, we might ask how we can expand the circle of “we” that can engage with negation as a point of view mechanism and with its conflict potential. First is seeing the conflict potential of language practices in general and expanding our evidence-based understanding of the intersection of language and conflict. This evidenced-based, rigorous and detailed engagement with language in context should feed into an education system that not only introduces professional mediators to the centrality of language, but also to undergraduates. Encouraging and facilitating a critical engagement with language not only benefits individual students, but students also take their knowledge, understanding and skills 80

Projecting your “opponent’s” views

out into the wider community, become the wider community and are able to question the way that meaning is encoded and often obfuscated in the discourses we encounter on a daily basis.

Notes 1 Morphological negation, like negation as a whole, is varied and there are several affixes that carry the negation function: “un-” (“unfinished”, “unclear”, “unbuttoned”, “unequal”); “in-” and the variants “il-”, “im-”, “ir-” and “ig-” (e.g. “indispensable”, “illogical”, “impossible”, “irregular”, “ignorant”; “de-” (e.g. “detangle”, “decommissioned”); “dis-” (e.g. “discontinuous”, “dishonest”); “a/an-” (e.g. “atonal”, “anaerobic”); “-less” (e.g. “hopeless”, “homeless”); “-free” (e.g. “tax-free”, “sugar-free”); “ex-” (e.g. “ex-wife”, “ex-manager”). 2 The Andrew Marr Show – Andrew Marr and Emily Thornberry interview – 4 June 2017: http://news. bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/04061702.pdf. The Andrew Marr Show – Andrew Marr and Diane Abbott interview – 28 May 2017: http://news. bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/28051703.pdf. The Andrew Marr Show – Andrew Marr and Paul Nuttall interview – 21 May 2017: http://news. bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/21051701.pdf. The Andrew Marr Show – Andrew Marr and Amber Rudd interview – 28 May 2017: http://news. bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/28051704.pdf. BBC election interviews – Andrew Neil and Tim Farron – 1 May 2017: https://blogs.spectator. co.uk/2017/06/andrew-neil-interviews-tim-farron-full-transcript/ The Sunday Politics – Andrew Neil and Andrew Gwynn – March 2017. BBC election interviews – Andrew Neil and Theresa May – 22 May 17. https://blogs.spectator. co.uk/2017/05/andrew-neil-interviews-theresa-may-full-transcript/. 3 In political programmes such as The Andrew Marr Show (BBC) or Peston on Sunday (ITV), interviewers can be seen to switch positions as they interview politicians with opposing political stances on the same topic. 4 The position of shadow Home Secretary is held by a member of the shadow cabinet formed by the second largest political grouping in parliament – the official opposition to the government of the day. Shadow cabinet positions echo those in the government and function to hold the sitting government to account.

References Bull, P. 2008. ‘Slipperiness, evasion, and ambiguity’: equivocation and facework in noncommittal political discourse. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 27(4), pp.333–44. Cruse, D.A. 1986. Lexical semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dancygier, B. 2010. Alternativity in poetry and drama, textual intersubjectivity and framing. English Text Construction. 3(2), pp.165–84. Dancygier, B. and Vandelanotte, L. 2016. Discourse viewpoint as network. In: Dancygier, B., Lu, W.L. and Verhagen, A. eds. Viewpoint and the fabric of meaning: form and use of viewpoint tools across modalities. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, pp.13–40. Davies, M. 2013. Opposition and ideology in news discourse. London: Bloomsbury. Givón, T. 2001. Syntax: an introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Grice, H.P. 1975. Logic and conversation. In: Cole, P. and Morgan, J. eds. Syntax and semantics 3: speech acts. New York: Academic Press, pp.41–58. Halliday, M.A.K. 1985. An introduction to functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold. Hidalgo Downing, L. 2000. Negation, text worlds and discourse: the pragmatics of fiction. Stamford: Ablex. Hodge, R. and Kress, G. 1979. Language as ideology. London: Routledge. Horn, L.R. 1989. A natural history of negation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Jeffries, L. 2010a. Opposites in discourse. London: Continuum. Jeffries, L. 2010b. Critical stylistics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 81

Lisa Nahajec

Jordan, M. 1998. The power of negation in English: text, context and relevance. Journal of Pragmatics. 29, pp.705–52. Karttunen, L. and Peters, S. 1979. Conventional implicature. In: Dinneen, D.A. and Choon-Kye, O. eds. Syntax and semantics: presupposition. New York: Academic Press, pp.1–56. Leech, G. 1983. The principles of pragmatics. Harlow: Longman. Levinson, S. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Montgomery, M. 2008. The discourse of the broadcast news interview: a typology. Journalism Studies. 9(2), pp.260–77. Nahajec, L. 2009. Negation and the creation of implicit meaning in poetry. Language and Literature. 18(2), pp.109–27. Nahajec, L. 2012. Evoking the possibility of presence: textual and ideological effects of linguistic negation in written discourse. PhD thesis, University of Huddersfield. Nahajec, L. 2014. Negation, expectation and characterisation: the role of negation and character construction in To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee 1960) and Stark (Elton 1989). In: Chapman, S. and Clark, B. eds. Pragmatic literary stylistics. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp.111–31. Nolke, H. 2006. The semantics of polyphony (and the pragmatics of realisation). Acta Linguistica Hafniensia. 38, pp.137–60. Nørgaard, N. 2007. Disordered collarettes and uncovered tables: negative polarity as a stylistic device in Joyce ‘Two Gallants’. Journal of Literary Semantics. 36, pp.35–52. O'Driscoll, J. 2009. A viable Israel and a secure Palestine: textual intervention in a British public debate. In: Slembrouck, S., Taverniers, M. and Van Herreweghe, M. eds. From will to well: studies in linguistics offered to Anne-Marie Simon-Vanderbergen. Gent: Academia Press, pp. 361–71. Pagano, A. 1994. Negatives in written texts. In: Coulthard, M. ed Advances in written text analysis. London: Routledge, pp.250–65. Riddle-Harding, J. 2007. Evaluative stance and counterfactuals in language and literature. Language and Literature. 16(3), pp.263–80. Sweetser, E. 2006. Negative spaces: levels of negation and kinds of spaces. In: Bonnefille, S. and Salbayre, S. eds. Proceedings of the conference ‘Negation: form, figure of speech, conceptualization’. Publication du groupe de recherches anglo-américaines de l’Université de Tours. Tours: Publications Universitaires François Rabelais, pp.313–32. Tottie, G. 1977. Fuzzy negation in English and Swedish. Stockholm: Almquisti Wiksell International. Tottie, G. 1991. Negation in English speech and writing: a study in variation. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Tjosvold, D. 2006. Defining conflict and making choices about its management: lighting the dark side of organisational life. Journal of Conflict Management. 17(2), pp.87–95. Verhagen, A. 2005. Constructions of intersubjectivity: discourse, syntax and cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Werth, P. 1999. Text worlds: representing conceptual space in discourse. London: Longman. Yamanashi, M. 2000. Negative inference, space construal and grammaticalisation. In: Horn, L. and Kato, Y. eds. Negation and polarity: syntactic and semanticperspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.243–54.

82

5 Ideological positioning in conflict The United States and Egypt’s domestic political trajectory Gibreel Sadeq Alaghbary

5.1 Background and context Egypt sits at the strategic intersection of the Mediterranean, African and Arab worlds, and controls the Suez Canal, a vital waterway for oil trade between the Gulf and the US and a strategic conduit for US warships deploying in the Middle East and into the Indian Ocean. It is also a signatory to the peace treaty with Israel and a key US partner in the war on terrorism and extremism in the region. These geostrategic considerations have, since the late 1970s, driven the US to partner with Egypt, and the Egyptian Military in particular, to promote an environment that safeguards US political and economic interests in the region. The popular protest that ousted President Mubarak in 2011, during what was often called the “Arab Spring”, changed the domestic political trajectory of Egypt, with consequences for the US’s geo-political and security interests. Mubarak stepped down in response to popular protests and the US welcomed the “transition to democracy” in a bid to balance the short-term national security interests and the long-term promotion of freedom and democracy in the region. The outcome of the democratic process was the election of the “Islamist” Muhammad Morsy as President – the Muslim Brotherhood candidate. The US hoped that it would continue security and diplomacy cooperation with Morsy the way it did with Mubarak and, at the same time, espouse the democratic principles for which the US stands. But things did not turn out the way Obama was hoping. President Morsy diversified Egypt’s strategic partners by reaching out to Russia, France and Iran. He also improved relations with Hamas – an organisation designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation by the US State Department in 1997 (Zanotti, 2014). He visited Iran and Iranian President Ahmadinejad landed in Egypt for the first time in 33 years. Although Egypt was acting as a “free, democratic” country, its strategic partnership with the US was strained, and it was moving away from Washington’s influence. President Morsy also loosened the Military’s grip on decision-making in Egypt, which necessarily entailed a threat to American security interests in the region. One year into President Morsy’s term, on 3 July 2013, Defense Minister and Commanderin-Chief of the Armed Forces Abdulfattah el-Sisi made a statement in which he toppled Morsy and replaced him with a Military-backed transition government. The overthrow of 83

Gibreel Sadeq Alaghbary

the Muslim Brotherhood government and the installation of a Military-backed government maintained the US’ strategic interests in the region but constituted a departure from the American ideals of freedom and the promotion of democracy. It marked a significant return of Egypt to the stronghold of the Military establishment and, by implication, a long-awaited return of the US’ most significant regional security partner. However, it stood in stark violation of the American constitutional values of democracy and the rule of law. The choice for the US is between the status quo represented by the Military-backed government and the deposed Islamist government that has risen to power through free and fair elections. The former, a decades-old strategic ally of the US, toppled a democratically elected president and eventually brought back the Military-backed regime against which the Egyptian people had revolted. The latter, Egypt’s first democratically-elected government, had improved ties with Hamas, dispatched the prime minister to Gaza, recalled the Egyptian ambassador to Israel, opened up towards Iran and is feared to turn Egypt into an Islamic theocracy on the Israeli southern border. Does the Obama administration champion the status quo that safeguards its strategic interests in the region or does it champion the American ideals of freedom and democracy regardless of its geo-political and security interests? The present chapter investigates the ideological outlook of the US government on the events leading to the removal of a duly elected president. It offers a critical stylistic analysis of Obama’s political statement in response to the overthrow of President Morsy against the political statement released earlier on the same day by the Egyptian Military declaring the “coup”. By examining the rhetoric of both statements against each other, the chapter aims to ascertain the extent to which Obama endorses or dictates the Egyptian Military’s position and perspective.

5.2 Methodology This section introduces and contextualises the data to be analysed. It also offers an overview of the ten-function analytical toolkit of Critical Stylistics – the approach informing the methodology and analysis.

5.2.1 Data This study seeks to establish whether the US government coordinates with the Egyptian Military for Egypt’s domestic political trajectory, dictates the course of action for them or simply endorses the political status quo. In order to achieve this objective, the study compares the two statements released on 3 July 2013 by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) and the US government on the removal of President Morsy from office. SCAF’s statement was released first and in Arabic. In this statement, General Abdulfattah el-Sis, the Minister of Defense in Morsy’s government, ousted President Morsy, suspended the constitution and installed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Adly Mansour, as the interim president. The statement has been transcribed by different news agencies (e.g. Aljazeera, BBC, ahramonline). This study analyses the transcript released in English by SCAF itself. There are two versions of SCAF’s English text, however. The first version was released on 4 July 2013 and is available (The Main Page of the Egyptian Army Forces Speaker, 2013). The second was published a year later on 30 June 2014 on the Egyptian government’s official website (The Egyptian State Information Service, 2013). 84

Ideological positioning in conflict

The 2014 version of the statement is noticeably edited compared with the 2013 version published on the official Facebook page of SCAF’s spokesperson. Strategic and domestic calculations and other considerations might have prompted the editing of the statement, resulting in a necessarily altered overall focus and effect. This study selects for the purpose of analysis, therefore, the unedited version of the statement, which was released the day after the statement was aired on TV. Obama’s statement followed later on the same day and addressed the decisions by SCAF and the implications of these decisions for the future of Egypt. The statement is archived under “Statements and Releases” on the website of the White House (The White House, 2013).

5.2.2 Theoretical and analytical framework The analysis of ideology in political discourse has traditionally focused on the analysis of the mechanisms of legitimisation, delegitimisation, manipulation and persuasion in political text and talk. Since the late 1970s, however, linguistics has provided a more explicit and rigorous framework for the analysis of ideological embedding in political discourse, indeed all discourse. The earliest attempt at an analytical methodology was Critical Linguistics (Fowler and Kress, 1979), which morphed into Critical Discourse Analysis ten years later (Fairclough, 1989). In 2010, however, Lesley Jeffries (2010, p.12) extended this tradition to scrutinise “the precise ways in which texts may transmit, reinforce or inculcate ideologies in their readers” by offering a more comprehensive ten-tool toolkit known as Critical Stylistics. The Critical Stylistic approach is particularly suited to the present study because of its undivided attention to language in the investigation of textual ideology and because of the coherence of its analytical toolkit. Critical Discourse Analysis, an obvious alternative, broadens the concern with language to include such contextual factors as historical, cultural and socio-political considerations (e.g. Fairclough, 1989), and Critical Linguistics (e.g. Fowler, 1991) is informed only by a five-tool list, viz. syntactic transformation, transitivity, lexical structure, modality and speech acts. The choice of Critical Stylistics, therefore, is guided by the centrality of language in its outlook and the comprehensiveness of its toolkit. In addition to the tools derived from Critical Linguistics, critical stylisticians investigate equating, contrasting, exemplifying, enumerating, negating and representing speech, thoughts, time, space and society. The analytical toolkit is constituted by ten functions for the investigation of ideology in language. The ten functions are outlined in Jeffries (2010). The first function is naming and describing, which is linguistically realised by: the choice of a noun that “not only makes reference to something, but also shows the speaker’s opinion of that referent” (Jeffries, 2010, p.20); noun modification, a syntactic technique that is used to transform an assertion about entities into an assumption by way of transforming a potential clausal relationship into a noun phrase or noun group; and nominalisation, a morphological process that “turns a process into a nominal (i.e. a verb into a noun)” by packaging up information which could have been the content of a proposition (Jeffries, 2010, p.25). The second function is representing actions/events/states. It involves the choice of the lexical verb to “present the situation in the way that the author (speaker) desires” either as an action, an event or a state with ideological consequences “for the way in which the situation is seen by the reader/hearer” (Jeffries, 2010, p.37). Lexical verbs are assigned to four categories. The first is material action processes, which are either intentional actions by 85

Gibreel Sadeq Alaghbary

human agents (MAI), supervention processes that represent unintentional actions by human agents (MAS) or events (MAE) – actions by inanimate actors. Verbalisation processes, which involve human agents using language rather than performing an action. Mental processes refer to “what happens within human beings” (Jeffries, 2010, p.42) and are processes of either mental cognition (MC), mental reaction (MR) or mental perception (MP). The final category is relational processes, which represent “the static or stable relationships between Carrier and Attributes, rather than any changes or dynamic actions” (Jeffries, 2010, p.43), and are either intensive, possessive or circumstantial. The third function is equating and contrasting. It examines the way texts “structure the world in terms of equivalence and opposition” (Jeffries, 2010, p.51). These are ideologically motivated non-systematic synonyms and opposites that are set up in the text but not attested in language. Textually constructed equivalence may be triggered by noun phrase apposition, parallel structures, intensive relational equivalence and simile/metaphor-type constructions, while textually constructed opposition is triggered by negated opposition, transitional opposition, comparative opposition, replacive opposition, concessive opposition, explicit oppositions, parallelism and contrastives (Davies, 2013; Jeffries, 2007). The fourth function is exemplifying and enumerating. Through exemplification, we provide an instance, or a number of instances, of a certain phenomenon; through enumeration, we claim to provide a complete list, with all possible instances listed. Textual carriers of exemplification include “for example”, “for instance” and “to exemplify”, while in enumeration we use a general term followed by instantiations of the term (Jeffries, 2010). Jeffries distinguishes two-part lists (that overlap with the construction of opposition), three-part lists (that serve the symbolic function of complete coverage) and four-part lists (that invite the reader to think of other members of the list). The fifth function is prioritising (information). The default focus of the proposition may be changed via a number of syntactic operations in order to indicate attitude and ideological priorities. These operations include subordination (the lower the level of subordination, the less amenable the structure to disagreement by the reader), exploiting information structure (which covers fronting and cleft structures, both of which result in contrastive information focus) and transformations (adjectival transformation that results in presupposing the resulting noun phrase, and passive transformation which downplays agency in relation to other parts of the structure). The sixth function is assuming and implying. Assumptions and implications are used to naturalise ideologies and make them sound like common sense (Jeffries, 2010, p.93). Instead of questioning propositions and relationships, they are tacitly assumed as shared knowledge. This consensual reality is built through existential presupposition (definite noun phrases), logical presupposition (factive verbs, change of state verbs, cleft constructions, iterative words and comparative structures) and implicatures (flouting the maxims of the Cooperative Principle) (Grice, 1975). The seventh function is negating. A text may produce a hypothetical version of reality in order to inspire belief, desire or fear. In conjuring up the absence of a scenario, there is “the potential for a hearer/reader to conceptualise this hypothetical situation”, which “may have some persuasive power” (Jeffries, 2010, p.107). Textual carriers of this function include negative particles, negative pronouns and inherently negative and morphologically negated words. The eighth function is hypothesising. Instead of making categorical assertions about reality, the text presents the author’s commitment to the truth of a proposition (perception modality), desirability of something happening or being the case (boulomaic modality), evaluation of the likelihood of something happening or being the case (epistemic modality) 86

Ideological positioning in conflict

and evaluation of the necessity or possibility of the proposition (deontic modality). Carriers of this function include modal auxiliary verbs, lexical verbs, modal adjectives, modal adverbs and conditionals. The ninth textual function is representing others’ speech and thought. This power to manipulate the speech and thoughts of others constitutes an act of interpretation and is ideological. Speech presentation is divided into five categories (Jeffries, 2010): narrator’s report of speech (NRS), narrator’s report of speech act (NRSA), indirect speech (IS), free indirect speech (FIS) and direct speech (DS). Thought representation is also divided into five categories: narrator’s report of thought (NRT), narrator’s report of thought act (NRTA), indirect thought (IT), free indirect thought (FIT) and direct thought (DT). These categories represent a descending progression of narrator control over the reported speech/thought. The last textual function is representing time, space and society. Deictic expressions of place (adverbs, demonstratives, adverbial and prepositional phrases), time (verb tenses, adverbs, demonstratives and time adverbials), person (personal pronouns) and address (titles and address forms) are used create the time, space and social relationships that define the world of the text. As a result, the reader may be caused to abandon their deictic centre (their perspective), adopt that of the text producer and eventually assimilate as common sense the perspective or ideology of the text producer (Jeffries, 2010). This is a manipulative act with ideological consequences.

5.2.3 Procedure The two statements are subjected to the ten-tool analytical toolkit of Critical Stylistics. Each tool is introduced in brief before the analysis starts and then the tool will be employed to analyse the textual features in both statements and uncover the ideologies permeating them. SCAF’s statement will be analysed first in order to uncover its ideological evaluation of President Morsy and the popular revolt, and Obama’s statement for its adaption of SCAF’s position or dictation of its perspective. Each section of the analysis closes with a comparison of the findings and the ideological outlooks of el-Sisi and Obama. The overall findings of the analysis are summarised at the end of the chapter and inter-statement connections made and related to the objectives of the study.

5.3 Objectives The Critical Stylistic analysis of the two statements investigates: 1. SCAF’s ideological evaluation of President Morsy, its projection of itself as a national institution and its construction of Egypt under Morsy’s rule 2. Obama’s ideological evaluation of President Morsy, of SCAF’s decision and of the situation in Egypt and SCAF's representation of Egyptian popular and political perspectives of Morsy’s rule 3. the extent to which US foreign policy endorses, or dictates, SCAF’s position and perspective

5.4 Analysis The ten tools of Critical Stylistics are used to analyse el-Sisi’s statement for his ideological evaluation of President Morsy and projection of the Egyptian Armed Forces, and Obama’s 87

Gibreel Sadeq Alaghbary

statement for his ideological perspective of the Egyptian situation and the parties in it. The objective of the analysis is to uncover Obama’s endorsement or dictation (or otherwise) of SCAF’s perspective.

5.4.1 Naming and describing In this section, I examine the way the naming practices in the two statements signpost ideological evaluation of the parties in the conflict and the way evaluative propositions are passed as if they were accepted assumptions by packaging the propositions into noun phrases or material action intention verbs into the head of noun phrases. General el-Sisi’s use of naming conventions signposts SCAF’s ideological position. The Egyptian Armed Forces are mentioned 16 times in the statement, albeit using different labels, while the Egyptian people are mentioned only 8 times. This makes the statement more about the Egyptian Armed Forces than about the people whose aspirations it claims to be protecting. In contrast, President Morsy is referred to twice by his official title and twice metonymically by the presidential institution in which he is serving but is never mentioned by name. He is already excluded from the scene. In addition to statistically dominating the statement, the Armed Forces are constructed more positively than any other party. Packaged inside noun phrases and passed as unquestionable assumptions are its insightful vision – “The Military, dashing from its insightful vision, perceived that the people” – and its commitment to duty, responsibility and integrity – “the Armed Forces […] approached the political scene with hope, desire and commitment to duty, responsibility and integrity”. Assumed as given as well is the construction of the Military as patriotic, in “The Military, as a patriotic establishment, also related its vision”. The Military justifies its anticipated forceful course of action as driven by its national and historical duties: “the Egyptian Military warns, out of its natural and historical responsibility, that it will forcibly and decisively rebel any deviation”. Both these positive constructions are structured in appositive NPs and passed as unquestionable. To enhance the positive construal of the Armed Forces, el-Sisi constructs President Morsy and Egypt under Morsy’s rule unfavourably. President Morsy is constructed as responsible for “the offenses against the State national and religious establishments” and “the intimidation and threat of the Egyptians”, both of which are structured into definite NPs and assumed as true. He is also responsible for “the causes of national division” and “the reasons of congestion”, which the Armed Forces have stepped up to “contain” and “eradicate”. The national division and socio-political congestion, which are otherwise debatable propositions, are also packaged into definite noun phrases and passed as accepted assumptions. President Morsy – or “the Presidency”, as el-Sisi prefers to refer to him – has also triggered “the current crisis” and “the state of conflict and division”, which are again assumed as given outcomes of Morsy’s rule. In this frame, President Morsy becomes a threat to national unity and SCAF’s actions, which are driven by popular calls “from every urban and rural corner of Egypt”, and so duly justified. Obama’s ideological perspective, however, is different from el-Sisi’s and this is reflected in his nominal choices. Unlike el-Sisi, Obama is more tolerant of Morsy and more accommodating; he mentions President Morsy by name and official title. In fact, President Morsy and the Egyptian Armed Forces are both referred to three times in Obama’s statement. Obama is carefully keeping the same distance from both parties in the conflict. The frequency of other nouns/nominal groups in the statement highlights Obama’s ideological priorities. Although Obama’s statement is about half the length of el-Sisi’s, the Egyptian people are mentioned 88

Ideological positioning in conflict

nine times, compared to eight references in el-Sisi’s statement. Obama shows more concern for the people than for the parties in the conflict. But unlike el-Sisi, who makes no reference to democracy in SCAF’s statement, Obama is particularly concerned with the restoration of Egypt’s democratic process; the word “democracy”, and its morphologically related forms, is repeated eight times in the statement. Obama’s ideological evaluation of the Egyptian situation is also evident in his manipulation of naming strategies. He takes a detached view of the current Egyptian situation, describing it as a “very fluid situation” at an “uncertain period”. Obama acknowledges Morsy’s government as “democratically elected” and urges the Egyptian Military to “return full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government”. He has also instructed the relevant US departments to “review the implications under US law for our assistance to the Government of Egypt”. Obama is hinting at a coup but is very careful not to classify the “removal” of President Morsy as a coup because it would, under US law, require an immediate cut-off to all assistance to the government of Egypt. He calls it instead “the decision of the Egyptian Armed Forces to remove President Morsy”. Consistent with this detached view, Obama uses the noun “unrest” to describe the Egyptian situation. This noun is often used when we want to focus on a state of disturbance and avoid implicating any party in it. In this same statement, by contrast, Obama names the events that had two years earlier unseated former President Mubarak – “the Egyptian Revolution”. It was a revolution that brought President Morsy to office and it is “the current unrest” that toppled him. In summary, el-Sisi avoids reference to Morsy and deploys noun phrase modification to pass as an accepted assumption the state of national division and congestion that has necessitated the intervention of the Military. He also implicates President Morsy in all of the assumed socio-political grievances. Obama, on the other hand, avoids reference to el-Sisi and makes the same number of references to President Morsy as to the Egyptian Military. He uses naming conventions carefully to avoid naming the “coup” and to keep the assistance to Egypt flowing, which is crucial to “the maintenance of the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty and crucial bi-lateral security cooperation against international terrorism” (Stock, 2013, p.1).

5.4.2 Representing actions/events/states The analysis now turns to the verbal elements in both statements in order to reveal whether the speakers conceptualise the “happenings” leading to the overthrow of Morsy as actions, events or states, and the consequences that transitivity choices have for agency and causation. In el-Sisi’s statement, transitivity patterns sustain the positive construction of the Military and its “impartiality” in the unrest unfolding in Egypt. In the first two paragraphs, the Egyptian people appear in two verbalisation process inviting the intervention of the Armed Forces: “the masses who call for its national, not the political role”, “the people who call for its backing”. The Egyptian Military is then structured in six mental processes: “The Egyptian Military has been incapable of turning deaf ears or blind eyes to the movement and voices of the masses”; “The Military […] perceived that the people […]”; “Such is the message received by the Armed Forces”; “the Armed Forces realized this call”; “[the Armed Forces] comprehended its objective”; “(the Armed Forces) assessed its inevitability”. Towards the end of paragraph two, the Armed Forces start taking action. This action is constructed as a careful move taken after repeated calls by the Egyptian people and after careful deliberation by the Armed Forces. 89

Gibreel Sadeq Alaghbary

The first move taken is a material action intention process that has no human target. The Military “approached the political scene with hope, desire, and commitment to duty, responsibility and integrity”. The target is the political scene. In their second action, in paragraph three, the Military is also the agent of a material action intention process of conducting reconciliation with the political powers of Egypt: “The Military initiated a call for national dialog” in order to “contain the domestic situation” and undo the damage caused by Morsy and his government. The call for reconciliation was welcomed by all the local political powers but “declined in the last minute by the Presidency”. Right from the start of the statement, the Military is constructed as the agent of positive action targeted towards saving Egypt, and at the end of paragraph three, Morsy assumes the agent role, but as the agent of further damage and of attempts to frustrate the Military’s reconciliation efforts. The Military continues to figure in material action intention structures and to act positively in order to redress Morsy’s damage. In paragraph four, the Egyptian Armed Forces “presented a strategic assessment of the internal and external situation and of the key challenges and risks encountering the nation”. It is also the agent of “a vision to contain the causes of national division” that the Presidency is blamed for. The favourable projection of the Military continues and so does the negative construction of Morsy and his government. In the next paragraph, the Military continues to act for the good of Egypt. It “convened with the President” one day before this statement was released. This material action intention process is followed by two verbalisation processes in which the Military “stated its rejection to the offenses against the State national and religious establishments and reiterated its rejection to the intimidation and threat of the Egyptians”. Given the fact that only the Military and Morsy were present in the meeting, the missing agent of the nominalisation “offenses”, “intimidation” and “threat” is implied to be Morsy and his government. In preparation for the “decision” of the Military, paragraph six starts with an agentless passive structure – “hope was pinned on national reconciliation”. The implied agent is the Military and the people of Egypt, whose hopes are frustrated in the next sentences by the speech of the President that “neither met nor conformed to the demands of the masses”. The Military come back to their agent role in a material action intention structure to “hold consultation with the national and political powers”, except Morsy and the Muslim Brotherhood, who “agreed on a future roadmap […] to terminate the state of division and conflict”. The particulars of the roadmap and the form of government to supersede Morsy are listed in ten attributes structured in the relational process “This road map includes”. One of these attributes contains a morphological nominalisation – “the temporary suspension of the constitution” – and six others contain participle phrases that blur agency: “to hold early presidential elections”, “to form a strong and capable national government”, “to form a commission […] to revise the proposed amendments to the constitution”, “to draw up a media code of ethics”, “to adopt executive measures” and “to form a higher commission for national reconciliation”. El-Sisi’s statement concludes with five verbalisation processes in which the Armed Forces “appeal to the great Egyptian people”; “warn [against] any deviation from peacefulness”; “salute and praise the honorable and sincere men of the military, the police and the judiciary”; and warns that it will “forcibly and decisively rebel any deviation from peacefulness in accordance with the law”. In Obama’s statement, on the other hand, transitivity choices carry forward the detached attitude towards the Egyptian situation and the commitment to the democratic process. The statement starts with a verbalisation process in which Obama reiterates “the set of core principles” which the US is committed to. This commitment is paraphrased in the next sentence, 90

Ideological positioning in conflict

which contains a negated material action intention process – “The United States does not support” whose agent is the US and whose goal is “particular individuals or political parties”. In reference to the unfolding events in Egypt, Obama uses a material action event process – “the current unrest began” – that blurs agency and does not attribute responsibility for the disorder to any party. The first paragraph concludes with a verbalisation process in which Obama calls on “all parties to work together to address the legitimate grievance of the Egyptian people […] without recourse to violence or the use of force”. Obama’s detachment from action continues in the second paragraph. The paragraph starts with three mental processes in which the US is “monitoring the very fluid situation”, “believing” that “the future of Egypt can only be determined by the Egyptian people”, and “deeply concerned by the decision […] to remove President Morsy”. These mental processes are followed by another verbalisation process: “I now call on the Egyptian Military […] to return full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government” and “to avoid any arbitrary arrests of President Morsy and his supporters”. The paragraph ends with another verbalisation in which Obama “directed the relevant departments and agencies to review the implications under US law for our assistant to the Government of Egypt”. Obama and the US government continue to avoid material action processes. This attitude is carried forward in paragraph three, which starts with two mental processes. The US “continues to believe that the best foundation [...] for Egypt is a democratic political order”, and the US government “expect the Military to ensure that the rights of all Egyptian men and women are protected”. This is followed by four relational processes that define the goal of any political process, including the political process in Egypt. The goal “should be a government that respects the right of all people, majority and minority […] that institutionalizes the checks and balances upon which democracy depends”; and that “places the interests of the people above party or fraction”. The paragraph concludes with yet another verbalisation process by Obama: “I urge all sides to avoid violence and come together to ensure the lasting restoration of Egypt’s democracy”. The statement concludes with the attitude of detachment it starts with. The fourth paragraph contains four relational processes that expand on “the will of the people”, “the longstanding partnership between the United States and Egypt” and “the transition to democracy”. The statement finishes with a material action intention process in which Obama assures that the US “will continue to work with the Egyptian people to ensure that Egypt’s transition to democracy succeeds”. In el-Sisi’s statement, the transitivity patterns effectively build up the case for the removal of President Morsy. The statement begins with the people of Egypt verbalising an invitation to the Military to intervene, which is followed by a series of mental processes and material action process in which the Military deliberates on the situation and attempt a reconciliation before eventually appearing in a verbalisation process in which they warn to “forcibly and decisively rebel any deviation from peacefulness”. Similarly, Obama’s deployment of the patterns of transitivity sustains his ideological outlook. The statement is almost entirely composed of verbalisation, mental and relational processes, which is consistent with Obama’s detached view of the “unrest”.

5.4.3 Equating and contrasting In this section, I examine the two statements for triggers of textual equivalence and opposition. Equivalence may be triggered by noun phrase apposition, parallel structures or intensive relational equivalence, while triggers of opposition are negated opposition, transitional 91

Gibreel Sadeq Alaghbary

opposition, comparative opposition, replacive opposition, concessive opposition, explicit oppositions, parallelism and contrastives (Davies, 2013; Jeffries, 2007). In el-Sisi’s statements, there are two textual non-systematic opposites that enhance el-Sisi’s ideological outlook. The first textual opposition is between “national” and “political”. The Egyptian Military, emphasises el-Sisi, is a “national” institution that is “distancing” itself “from politics”. In this ideological frame, political parties and political activity become “a-national”. In other words, el-Sisi distances the Egyptian Military from politics and, in turn, distances political institutions and political activity from nationalism. This construction is borne out by the textual distribution of the word “national” in the statement. This word is used 13 times – three times to qualify the Egyptian Military, four times to describe attempts at reconciliation by the Egyptian Military, twice in reference to the threats fended off by the Egyptian Military, three times to describe the political actors that have “positively responded” to calls initiated by the Egyptian Military and once to qualify the government that the Egyptian Military is planning to form. Any act of the Egyptian Military is qualified by “national”, while no action by Morsy and his government is thus qualified. Besides, when reference is made to “national political powers”, the Presidency is always excluded from the intension of the phrase. The second textual opposition is an extension of el-Sisi’s ideological evaluation of Morsy’s performance as President. The people of Egypt, according to el-Sisi, have summoned the Military to “render public service and necessary protection of their revolutionary demands”; not to “assume power or rule”. The model of government to be offered by the Egyptian Military (offering public service and the protection of revolutionary demands) is constructed as a textual opposite of the model offered by Morsy’s government. In this frame, Morsy is constructed as preoccupied with assuming power or ruling at the expense of catering to people’s needs and demands, which has eventually caused “national division”, “congestion” and a “state of conflict and division” that have necessitated the intervention of the Armed Forces. In Obama’s statement, by contrast, there is a discoursal construction of opposition across the text as a whole: a textually constructed opposition between the democratic process and the current situation in Egypt, which helps sustain Obama’s ideological evaluation of Morsy and el-Sisi. Obama shows little backing for el-Sisi’s decision. Instead, he declares that “The United States does not support particular individuals or political parties, but we are committed to the democratic process and respect for the rule of law”. He also calls on the Egyptian Military to “return full authority to a democratically elected civilian government as soon as possible through an inclusive and transparent process”. The current situation is constructed as a diversion from the process of democracy and the core principles for which the US stands. Obama also warns against practices that are associated with nondemocratic regimes. He calls on the de facto authority in Egypt to “avoid arbitrary arrests of President Morsy and his supporters and ensure that the rights of all Egyptian men and women are protected, including the right to peaceful assembly, due process and fair trials in civilian courts”. This construction is borne out by the fact that the word “democracy”, which appears eight times in morphologically related forms, is used in the statement either in reference to Morsy’s rule or, more generally, to the form of government that enabled Morsy’s rule, and always in opposition to the decision of the Egyptian Military to forcibly remove President Morsy. It may be reiterated in support of this argument that el-Sisi did not use the word “democracy” in his statement at all. In summary, the Egyptian Military is projected in el-Sisi’s statement as a national institution concerned with the delivery of public service and constructed in textual opposition 92

Ideological positioning in conflict

to Morsy, who is projected as concerned with holding his position and responsible for the national division engulfing the country. Obama’s statement, on the other hand, is more about democracy, the democratic values of freedom and the rule of law, which are constructed in textual opposition to the “non-democratic” situation in Egypt with which the Egyptian Military, and el-Sisi by implication, is aligned.

5.4.4 Exemplifying and enumerating In this section, I examine whether the instances of listing in the two statements are indicative or comprehensive and the ideological consequences of each choice for the construction of the popular revolution and the parties in it. In el-Sisi’s statement, three-part lists are used in reference to the Egyptian Armed Forces. The Egyptian Military, says el-Sisi, approached the scene with “hope, desire and commitment” and they were committed to “duty, responsibility and integrity”. The three-part lists suggest completeness and imply clarity of vision. When the Egyptian Military intervened, they were summoned by the people to “contain the causes of national division, eradicate the reasons of congestion, and counter challenges and risks”. The Armed Forces are constructed as having a clear vision about the mission to get Egypt out of “the current crisis”. The roadmap laid down by the Military provides motives of “trust, reassurance and stability” for the people. The implication is that this is the complete list of demands by the people of Egypt and the Military is well aware of it. The proposed participation of the youth also figures in a three-part list: “partners in the decision-making, assistants to ministers and governors, [and] various executive posts”, which suggests completeness and eventually limits the political participation of the youth in post-Morsy Egypt. The statement concludes by saluting and praising “the honorable and sincere men of the Military, the police, and the judiciary”, again in a three-part “complete” list. The risks encountering Egypt, however, are structured in a four-part list that suggests incompleteness and invites the recipient to add to the list. The risks concern “security, economic, political and social levels”. The incompleteness of the list implicates Morsy and necessitates intervention by the Military. Also structured in a four-part list is the code of ethics to be imposed on the media in order to ensure “professional rules, credibility, impartiality, and elevation of the higher interests of the State”. The list is left open, opening the possibility for more measures to be imposed in the future. Like el-Sisi, Obama also makes extensive use of three-part lists, but only in reference to the US and the Egyptian people. The principles the US supports are “opposition to violence, protection of universal human rights, [and] reform that meets the legitimate aspirations of the people”. The rights of the Egyptian people are “the right to peaceful assembly, due process, [and] free and fair trials in civilian courts”. The goal for Egypt is a government that “respects the rights of all people, majority and minority; that institutionalizes the checks and balances upon which democracy depends; and that places the interest of people above faction or party”. Obama goes on to say that the Egyptian people deserve an “honest, capable [and] representative government”. The preference for three-part lists implies an assured attitude towards Egypt, the Egyptian people and the democratic values for which the US stands. To summarise, el-Sisi uses three-parts lists in his statement to present the Egyptian Military as a competent institution that is conscious of “all” the problems of its people and “all” it takes to redress them. El-Sisi also deploys four-part lists to evaluate Egypt under Morsy’s rule and the measures to be taken to set things right. The openness of the lists construct Morsy as a threat to Egypt and leaves the list of corrective measures open for the 93

Gibreel Sadeq Alaghbary

Military to add to. Obama, on the other hand, uses only three-part lists, which project the US as well aware of its own priorities, the rights of the Egyptian people, and the roadmap for Egypt. This tendency to use three-part lists for what we approve of is something that deserves further investigation.

5.4.5 Prioritising I now examine the ways the speakers in both statements prioritise or downplay parts of the content of their statements via subordination, information structure and transformation, and highlight the ideologies that are tacitly advanced as a result. El-Sisi’s ideological priorities are signalled by the textual subordination choices in his statement. The statement contains 21 sentences, none of which has more than 4 levels of subordination. This reflects the clarity of his ideological priorities. Of the 21 sentences, 19 have active voice structures, one is an agentless passive structure and there is one passive structure. The 19 active structures foreground the Egyptian Armed Forces. In almost all these sentences – indeed, in practically the entire statement – it is the Egyptian Armed Forces that occupy the highest level of structure. The prioritisation of the Armed Forces in all the active structures reflects the ideological priorities in el-Sisi’s statement. At the lowest level of structure in these sentences are the “innocent people”, “Egyptian people”, their “revolutionary demands”, their “ambitions and aspirations”, “the current crisis”, “the state of division and conflict”, “the law”, “political powers and youths” and “the Presidency”. The only other agent that is prioritised in the statement (in sentence number 14) is the “speech of the President”. Even here, the sentence is negated, and the speech is presented as a source of frustration to “the speech of the President […] neither met nor conformed to the demands of the masses”. The other two structures in the statement sustain el-Sisi’s ideological priorities. In the passive structure, “Such is the message received by the Armed Forces from every urban and rural corner of Egypt”, the agent is the Armed Forces. Conventionally, agents in passive structures appear in a by-phrase at the lowest level of structure, but the Armed Forces, in keeping with el-Sisi’s ideological outlook, have been promoted higher up in the structure. The other structure is an agentless passive sentence – “Hope was pinned on national reconciliation to lay down a roadmap for the future and provide motives of trust, reassurance and stability for the people, in a way that fulfils their ambitions and aspirations”. In this sentence, it is the ambitions and aspirations of the Egyptian people that are subordinated at the lowest level, and the missing agent is understood to be the Egyptian Military. Just as el-Sisi’s statement is predominantly about the Egyptian Armed Forces, Obama’s statement is predominantly about the US. His ideological priorities are equally clear. The statement presents a perspective on the status quo in Egypt – a perspective that emphasises the US “core principles” and downplays the “revolutionary demands” of the “people of Egypt”. In 11 of the 15 sentences that make up the statement, it is the US or Obama that is prioritised at the highest level of structure. At the lowest level of these structures are the aspirations of the people: “As I have said since the Egyptian Revolution, the United States supports a set of core principles, including opposition to violence […] and reform that meets the legitimate aspirations of the people”. The Egyptian people are also presented in sentence number four (“The United States is monitoring the very fluid situation in Egypt, and we believe that ultimately the future of Egypt can only be determined by the Egyptian people”), the Egyptian constitution in sentence number five (“Nevertheless, we are deeply concerned by the decision of the Egyptian Armed Forces to remove President Morsy and suspend the 94

Ideological positioning in conflict

Egyptian constitution”) and President Morsy and his supporters in sentence number six (“I now call on the Egyptian Military to move quickly […] and to avoid any arbitrary arrests of President Morsy and his supporters”). Consistent with this outlook, Obama also prioritises democracy – “No transition to democracy comes without difficulty” – and US-Egypt relations – “The longstanding partnership between the United States and Egypt is based on shared interest and values”. Related to these “democratic practices” is the kind of government Obama wishes for Egypt – “An honest, capable and representative government is what ordinary Egyptians seek” – which receives prominence by being fronted in a cleft-structure. Our last remark here is about President Morsy. Although mentioned by name and official title three times in the statement, Morsy is embedded at the lowest level of syntactic organisation in all three appearances: “Nevertheless, we are deeply concerned by the decision of the Egyptian Armed Forces to remove President Morsy and suspend the Egyptian constitution”, “I now call on the Egyptian Military to move quickly and responsibly to return full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government as soon as possible through an inclusive and transparent process, and to avoid any arbitrary arrests of President Morsy and his supporters” and “The voices of all those who have protested peacefully must be heard – including those who welcomed today’s developments, and those who have supported President Morsy”. In conclusion, textual subordination reveals that the ideological priority of el-Sisi is the favourable projection of the Egyptian Armed Forces, which is prioritised at the highest level of structure across the statement, even in the passive structures. All other parties, including President Morsy, the Egyptian people and their revolutionary demands, are downplayed at lower levels of subordination. Likewise, Obama’s ideological priorities are signalled by the levels of subordination in his statement. Consistently at the highest levels of structure in the statement are the US and the promotion of democracy, and at lower levels of subordination come the Egyptian people, the Egyptian constitution and President Morsy and his supporters.

5.4.6 Implying and assuming The analysis now focuses on the way questionable propositions and relationships are tacitly advanced as assumptions by being structured into existential presupposition structures, logical presupposition structures and implicatures and the ideological effect of these choices on the readers’ perspectives and conclusions. El-Sisi uses triggers of presupposition and implication to tacitly advance his evaluation of Morsy and his government. The negative construction of Egypt under Morsy is existentially presupposed by being structured in definite noun phrases such as “the offenses against the State national and religious establishments”, “the intimidation and threat of the Egyptians”, “the state of conflict and division”, “the current crisis”, “the causes of national division” and “the reasons of congestion”. In addition, the use of change of state verbs in el-Sisi’s efforts to “bring about a strong and cohesive Egypt”, to “form a strong and national government” and to “provide for the freedom of the media” trigger the logical implicatures that Egypt was neither a strong, cohesive state nor possessed of a national government under Morsy. It also did not provide for the freedom of the press. The comparative “more” in the call to “avoid violence that leads to more congestion and bloodshed” logically presupposes violence and bloodshed. The iterative in “the Command reiterated its rejection to the intimidation and threat of the Egyptians” logically presupposes the Military’s sympathy with the people of Egypt and serves to blame all of the violence and bloodshed referred to earlier 95

Gibreel Sadeq Alaghbary

on Morsy and his government. This negative evaluation of Morsy and his government is not structured in propositions that are open to questioning, but rather are instead covertly assumed as a consensual reality. In Obama’s statement, on the other hand, the carriers of implication and assumption sustain Obama’s ideological outlook on the Egyptian situation. While Obama recognises Morsy as the President who has been “removed”, he acknowledges “the legitimate grievances of the Egyptian people”, which are existentially presupposed by being structured in a definite noun phrase. He also uses an iterative verb to presuppose acknowledgement that Morsy’s government was legitimate and democratically elected: “I now call on the Egyptian Military […] to return full authority to a democratically elected civilian government”. This presupposition is borne out by Obama’s direction to the “relevant departments and agencies to review the implications under US law for [America’s] assistance to the Government of Egypt”. Under US law, the government of America does not offer financial aid to the government of a country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by Military coup. The designation of the removal of President Morsy as a Military coup, however, is not verbalised and remains an assumption for the reader to work out. In line with this construction, Obama urges “all sides to […] come together to ensure the lasting restoration of Egypt’s democracy”. The nominalisation of the change of state verb in “restoration” extends the endorsement of Morsy’s rule and the rejection of the coup by the Military. Obama concludes the statement by promising to “continue to work with the Egyptian people to ensure that Egypt’s transition to democracy succeeds”. The use of the iterative verb “continue” implies that the US has always been on the side of the Egyptian people and serves to distance the US government from Morsy, the Egyptian Military and all other political players. In summary, el-Sisi’s assumptions about the chaos resulting from President Morsy’s rule are built into the text to evade questioning and pass as a consensual reality. Definite noun phrases existentially presuppose offenses against national and religious institutions, intimidation of the people and a state of national division. Change of state verbs, iteratives and comparatives logically presuppose political congestion, bloodshed and the absence of a cohesive state and a national government. In Obama’s statement, on the other hand, definite noun phrases, change of state verbs and iterative verbs are used to existentially presuppose the grievances of the Egyptian people and the legitimacy of the deposed President.

5.4.7 Negating In this section, I examine the way the use of negative particles, negative pronouns and morphologically negated words construct non-existent narratives for the discourse recipients to fear, desire or believe. The use of negation in el-Sisi’s statement is ideologically significant. El-Sisi negates interest in taking up a political role in post-Morsy Egypt: “the movement and the voices of the masses who call for its national, not the political, role”. He also negates interest in assuming power or in ruling: “the people who call for its backing do not summon the Military to assume power or rule, but to render public service”. He offers a roadmap for Egypt’s future and negates intention to exclude any of the political parties that are from Egypt’s social texture: “a roadmap with initial steps to bring about a strong and cohesive Egyptian society that excludes none of its members and trends”. El-Sisi ends the statement by appealing to the people to “abide by peaceful demonstration” but warns that the Egyptian Military “will forcibly and decisively rebel any deviation from peacefulness”. 96

Ideological positioning in conflict

The use of negation, argues Jeffries (2010), constructs a “non-existent” narrative in order to enhance that narrative. It allows discourse producers to textually evoke the very expectations that they are negating; by distancing themselves from these expectations through negation, the discourse producers attribute responsibility for the negated scenario, albeit by implication, to other participants in the discourse. Only one month after el-Sisi’s statement, the feared non-existent narrative became real. The Military forcibly removed camps of Muslim Brotherhood supporters from sit-ins across the country. Violence erupted, which led to the “more congestion and bloodshed of innocent people” of el-Sisi’s statement. Hundreds were killed and many more arrested, including the Supreme Leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and the President himself. On 23 September, the Muslim Brotherhood movement was banned and its assets seized by court order. The ruling also banned the Muslim Brotherhood movement from contesting and participating in elections. Later the same year, in December, the Muslim Brotherhood movement was declared a terrorist group. The group was “alienated” and “excluded”. Less than a year after the statement, el-Sisi contested the presidential elections and became president of Egypt with 96.91 percent of the total votes. He took up a “political role”, “assumed power” and eventually “ruled”. This is exactly the same scenario el-Sisi had conjured up by negation. Like el-Sisi, Obama also uses language with negative shading to conjure up a possible scenario that became real soon after the statement. He urges the Egyptian Military to “avoid any arbitrary arrests of President Morsy and his supporters”. He also urges “all sides to avoid violence” and “come together” for the good of Egypt. Later the same year, this nonexistent, negated scenario came about. The Egyptian Military launched the worst security campaign in the history of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. President Morsy and his supporters were “arbitrarily arrested”, imprisoned and later even sentenced to death. The Muslim Brotherhood supporters remained defiant. In August 2013, the Military stormed a sit-in outside Rabaa Aladawiya mosque in Cairo, killing hundreds of protesters. It was clear that the Egyptian Military and the Muslim Brotherhood could never “come together”. In his statement, Obama also says that the United States “does not support particular individuals” but is “committed to the democratic process and respect for the rule of law”. Despite the stipulation in the US law against offering financial aid to a government that rises to power by militarily deposing a former duly elected leader, President Obama resumed Military and financial assistance to Egypt under el-Sisi. He even congratulated el-Sisi, who toppled a democratically elected president, on his inauguration and affirmed commitment to advancing the shared interests of both countries. Again, every scenario negated by Obama became real. Analysis of both statements highlights the power of negation in conjuring up an alternative reality that could eventually materialise. El-Sisi negated having political ambitions, aspirations to rule and any intentions to sideline any Egyptian political party. One year down the road, this negated reality became actual reality. Similarly, the hypothetical world conjured up by Obama in which violence erupts and President Morsy and his supporters are arrested came about.

5.4.8 Hypothesising This section offers an analysis of the use of modal expressions in order to reveal the speaker’s attitude to the propositions in both statements and the ideological impact of these choices on the construction of conflict and the parties in it. 97

Gibreel Sadeq Alaghbary

El-Sisi’s attitude of conviction and assertion is sustained by the use of non-modalised language. The message of the statement is communicated almost entirely in categorical assertions. El-Sisi is uncompromising about his vision to “contain the causes of national division, eradicate the reasons of congestion, and counter the challenges and risks in an endeavor to get out of the current crisis”. He is definite about the roadmap to terminate “the state of conflict and division” and intolerant of any “deviation from peacefulness”. In fact, there is only one modal expression in the entire statement, where the median-value epistemic modal of certainty “will” is used in reference to any likely “deviation from peacefulness”: El-Sisi warns that the Egyptian Military “will forcibly and decisively rebel any deviation from peacefulness in accordance with the law”. The use of the modal expression serves to enhance the mood of assertion even further. Besides being carried by the use of categorical expressions, el-Sisi’s assertive attitude is also expressed using adjectives and adverbs. The Egyptian Military dashed from its “insightful vision” to save the “great”, “brave” and “venerable” people of Egypt. All the national political powers “positively responded” to the Military’s reconciliation attempts, except the Presidency. As a result, the “honorable and sincere men of the Military” will “forcibly” and “decisively” rebel any deviation from the roadmap proposed. Obama’s detached outlook on the Egyptian situation and the parties in it, on the other hand, is sustained by the use of modalised propositions. Ideologically loaded verbs, adjectives and adverbs express this attitude. Obama uses epistemic modality to express the US belief about Egypt’s future (“we believe that ultimately the future of Egypt can only be determined by the Egyptian people”), perception modality to express reaction to the removal of Morsy (“we are deeply concerned by the decision of the Armed Forces to remove President Morsy and suspend the Egyptian constitution”) and boulomaic modality to express what the US wishes for Egypt (“we expect the Military to ensure that the rights of all Egyptian men and women are protected”). In addition, Obama uses modal expressions to the same effect. The statement has two instances of the high-value deontic modal of obligation “must”, neither of which involves President Morsy or el-Sisi. The first one relates to the demands of the Egyptian people – “The voices of all those who have protested peacefully must be heard” – and the second to democracy – “No transition to democracy comes without difficulty, but in the end, it must stay true to the will of the people”. The statement also has one instance of the median-value epistemic modal of certainty “will” that refers to future cooperation between the US and Egypt: “we will continue to work with the Egyptian people to ensure that Egypt’s transition to democracy succeeds”. What is not present in the statement is deontic modality involving action by the US. Obama’s call to the US authorities to review the implication for “assistance to the Government of Egypt” and his expression of commitment to work with the “people” of Egypt to ensure that “Egypt’s transition to democracy succeeds” denote the US attitudinal stance, but Obama is not willing to express it more cogently. Analysis reveals that el-Sisi’s statement is almost free of any markers of modality. It is constituted entirely of categorical assertions, reflecting assuredness of objective and assertiveness of approach. But while a Military leader is categorical, given his absolute power, a democratic president can only be provisional. Obama uses loaded vocabulary and modalised propositions to express support for the demands of the Egyptian people, concern about the removal of President Morsy and expectations about the future of Egypt. Consistent with Obama’s outlook, however, neither Morsy nor the Military is structured in modalised propositions. Obama prefers to remain detached from both of them. 98

Ideological positioning in conflict

5.4.9 Representing others’ speech and thoughts We will now examine how the speech and thoughts of other people are presented in both statements, and the way this “sanitised” version of the events leading to 3 July is in line with the speakers’ ideological outlooks. In his statement, el-Sisi gives himself total freedom to manipulate the speech and thoughts of the Egyptian Armed Forces and the Egyptian people. He uses free indirect speech to report the action of the Egyptian Military (“The Egyptian Armed Forces, more than once, presented a strategic assessment of the internal and external situation”), narrator’s report of speech to report their speech (“the Command reiterated its rejection to the intimidation and threat of the Egyptians”), narrator’s report of speech act to report their speech acts (“The Armed Forces, first and foremost, have announced and still insist on distancing themselves from politics”) and narrator’s report of thought to report even their thoughts (“the Armed Forces realized this call, comprehended its objective [and] assessed its inevitability”). El-Sisi also reports the speech and thoughts of the Egyptian people. He reports their speech acts – “The participants have agreed on a future roadmap with initial steps to bring about a strong and cohesive Egyptian society” – and uses free indirect thought to report what the Egyptian people thought about the speech of their President (“the speech of the President last night, before the end of the 48-hour grace period, neither met nor conformed to the demands of the masses”) and what the people had in mind when they took to the streets of Cairo (“The Military, dashing from its insightful vision, perceived that the people who call for its backing do not summon the Military to assume power or rule, but to render public service and necessary protection of their revolutionary demands”). Obama, however, starts his statement by quoting directly from an earlier statement he made on Egypt: “As I have said since the Egyptian Revolution, the United States supports a set of core principles”. As head of state, Obama gives himself freedom to report the speech and thoughts of the US government. He uses free indirect thought to report the US’ position on parties in domestic conflict – “The United States does not support particular individuals or political parties, but we are committed to the democratic process and respect for the rule of law” – and to report its reaction to the current unrest: “The United States is monitoring the very fluid situation in Egypt, and we believe that ultimately the future of Egypt can only be determined by the Egyptian people”. He also uses narrator’s reports of speech acts to report the speech acts of the government: “we are committed to the democratic process” and “we are deeply concerned by the decision of the Egyptian Armed Forces”. In the last paragraph of the statement, Obama uses free indirect thought to report the demands of the Egyptian people: “An honest, capable and representative government is what ordinary Egyptians seek and what they deserve”. Analysis of the representation of the speech and thoughts of others backs up the interpretive comments on the ideological outlooks of el-Sisi and Obama. El-Sisi, the categorical Military leader, manipulates the speech, acts and thoughts of the Egyptian Military and the Egyptian people in order to construct the removal of President Morsy as a “national response to public grievances”. Unlike el-Sisi, however, Obama speaks in the first person four times to reiterate the values of democracy, calling on the Military “to return full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government”, directing the US government to review “assistance to the Government of Egypt” and urging “all sides to avoid violence”. He also reports the “concerned” reaction of the US government and the “democratic” aspirations of the Egyptian people. 99

Gibreel Sadeq Alaghbary

5.4.10 Representing time, speech and society This function covers the use of deictic expressions of place, time and person, and the creation of a deictic centre from which to narrate the events leading to 3 July, thereby influencing the discourse recipient’s perspective of the Egyptian situation. In el-Sisi’s statement, the Egyptian Military is constructed as so close to the Egyptian people that it was “incapable of turning deaf ears or blind eyes” to their “movement and voices”. This ‘constructed’ proximity to the “voices of the masses” allows el-Sisi to shift the deictic centre from which the events and reactions are narrated from that of the Egyptian protestors to the Military. El-Sisi uses the proximal deictic expression “this” in “the Armed Forces realized this call” and he moves on to even speak for the Egyptian people and interpret their “call”: “the voices of the masses who call for its national, not the political, role”, “the Military […] perceived that the people who so call for its backing do not summon the Military to assume power or rule, but to render public service and necessary protection of their demands”. El-Sisi also describes the reaction of the Egyptian people to the speech of the President, which “neither met nor conformed to the demands of the masses”. The projection of the Egyptian Military as ‘omniscient’ is borne out by the sentence structure in the statement; 16 of the 20 sentences in the statement have the Egyptian Military as their subjects and agents. The other four sentences are: a passive sentence the missing agent of which is the Military (“Hope was pinned on national reconciliation”); an active sentence whose agent is the participants in the talks, including the Military (“The participants have agreed on a future roadmap”); the “roadmap”, which was proposed by the Military (“This roadmap includes”); and “the speech of the President”. In the only one sentence where the Military is not grammatically present, el-Sisi gives himself freedom to qualify the speech of the President as out of touch with reality: “the speech of the President […] neither met nor conformed to the demands of the masses”. In contrast to el-Sisi, Obama does not manipulate the discourse recipient’s outlook on the events. His statement constructs a default deictic field in which the speaker’s (Obama’s) time/place is at the centre. He uses no deictic expressions to suggest proximity to the Egyptian situation, nor does he attempt to narrate from the viewing position of any party in the conflict. The statement recounts the set of principles that the US supports, expresses concern about the future of Egypt and offers a roadmap for Egypt. In fact, Obama distances himself and the US, which is “monitoring the very fluid situation in Egypt” and makes clear that “ultimately the future of Egypt can only be determined by the Egyptian people”. This ideological position is also sustained by the sentence structure in the statement. In 10 of the 15 sentences, it is Obama or the US government, or both, that are the grammatical subject or agent. The other five subjects are the political process, the voices of the people, transition to democracy, the government Egyptians deserve and the US–Egypt partnership. To sum up, analysis reveals that el-Sisi manipulates the discourse recipients’ outlook, causing them to view the events from the viewing position of the Military. This allows­ el-Sisi to extend the construction of Morsy as a threat to national unity and Morsy’s removal as a national move towards terminating the state of conflict and division. Obama’s recount of the events, on the other hand, is not manipulative. He occupies the deictic centre and articulates his concern and position. Taking up a detached position, he invites all the parties in the conflict to his own space and to “come together to ensure the lasting restoration of Egypt’s democracy”. 100

Ideological positioning in conflict

5.5 Conclusion The main aim of this chapter was to examine the role of language in the textual construction of naturalised ideology and in the investigation of ideological position in domestic conflict. The tools of critical stylistics have provided a valuable means of accessing naturalised ideology in el-Sisi’s statement and of detecting ideological perspective in Obama’s statement. Critical stylistic analysis of el-Sisi’s statement has revealed that el-Sisi constructs a textual opposition between President Morsy as the cause of national division and conflict and the Egyptian Armed Forces as the guardian of the popular revolution. This naturalised ideology is sustained by the findings from the analysis of textual features in the statement. El-Sisi uses definite noun phrases to existentially presuppose President Morsy’s offenses against national institutions, intimidation of the Egyptians and threat to national unity. He also uses change of state verbs, iterative verbs and comparatives to logically presuppose the absence of a national government during Morsy’s rule. Transitivity patterns contribute to this construction. Analysis of transitivity reveals that Morsy is positioned in material action intention structures and presented as the agent of “damage” and “national division”, whereas the Military is mostly structured in mental and verbalisation processes. When it assumes agency, the Military is the agent of reconciliation efforts and visions – never the agent of action whose goal is Morsy and the Muslim Brotherhood movement. El-Sisi is not presenting the Military as opposing Morsy but as the “guardian of people’s will”. It is a “national” and “patriotic” institution whose action is driven by popular calls and national interests. El-Sisi uses listing to carry forward this construction. The Egyptian Military is structured in three-parts lists to project it as a competent establishment capable of redressing Morsy’s damage to the nation, which is structured in four-part “open” lists. In addition, the Egyptian Military is consistently structured at the highest level of structure throughout the statement, while Morsy and the Egyptian people are subordinated at lower levels of structure. Analysis of Obama’s statement has also revealed his ideological position with regard to el-Sisi, President Morsy and the Egyptian revolutionaries. Unlike el-Sisi, who refers to Morsy in non-human terms (“the Presidency”) rather than by name or official title, Obama is more accommodating. He refers to Morsy by name and title and makes almost as many references to him as he makes to democracy. Obama also constructs the removal of Morsy from office as a “decision” by the Armed Forces alone – not a consensual reality as el-Sisi makes it out to be. Obama’s call for the “restoration” of democracy implies recognition of Morsy as a democratically elected president and his call for the reconsideration of US assistance to the government of Egypt implies a classification of the “decision” to remov e Morsy as a Military coup. Analysis of the text using the tools of naming and assuming, therefore, shows that Obama neither adopts nor dictates el-Sisi’s position. In addition to classifying the removal of Morsy, albeit by implication, as a coup and not acknowledging the interim head of state, Obama constructs a textual opposition between democracy and the current situation in Egypt with which el-Sisi is aligned. He refrains from associating with the Egyptian Military or the interim Military-backed Egyptian government and pledges to “continue” to work with the Egyptian people. Obama also uses definite noun phrases to existentially presuppose the legitimacy of President Morsy. He neither endorses nor dictates el-Sisi’s construction of Morsy as an authoritarian ruler who is unresponsive to people’s demands, indifferent about the country’s future and out of touch with his countrymen. He projects Morsy, though using “mild” rhetoric, as a deposed legitimate President whose overthrow by the Egyptian Military must be overturned. 101

Gibreel Sadeq Alaghbary

Analysis using the other critical stylistic tools supports the conclusion that Obama neither adopts nor dictates el-Sisi’s position. The statement is presented as a series of verbalisations and mental reactions by Obama to material action processes by others. What the statement emphasises are the US’s core principles, notably the “democratic process” and its commitment to the “rule of law”. These concerns are prioritised at the highest level of syntactic structure, while at lower levels of subordination come the material action processes whose agent is the Military and whose goal is Morsy and his supporters. Obama neither adopts nor dictates el-Sisi’s position. Another interesting finding from the analysis relates to the differences in the rhetoric of the Military and political leaders on conflict. El-Sisi uses categorical assertions throughout the statement and exercises control of the speech and thoughts of the Egyptian people. The statement is made from the deictic centre of the Military, which helps el-Sisi project the coup as if it were a consensual reality. He gives himself freedom to manipulate the speech and thoughts of the Armed Forces and the Egyptian people. Obama’s conceptualisation of conflict, however, is different. His statement is written in modalised propositions, and his truth is provisional. He occupies the deictic centre from which he articulates his concerns and invites all the parties in the conflict to “come” in order to “ensure the lasting restoration of Egypt’s democracy”. This is an interesting area for further research.

References Davies, M. 2013. Opposition and ideology in news discourse. London: Bloomsbury. Fairclough, N. 1989. Language and power. London: Longman. Fowler, R. 1991. Language in the news: discourse and ideology in the press. London: Routledge. The Egyptian State Information Service. 2013. Statement by the Armed Forces on Thursday, 3 July 2013. [Accessed 22 May 2015.] Available from: www.sis.gov.eg/En/Templates/Articles/ tmpArticles.aspx?CatID=2861#.VOEHGMYxE_X Fowler, R. and Kress, G. 1979. Critical linguistics. In: Fowler, R., Hodge, B., Kress, G. and Trew, T. eds Language and control. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp.185–213. Grice, H. P. 1975. Logic and conversation. In: Cole, P. and Morgan, J. eds Speech acts. New York: Academic Press, pp.41–58. Jeffries, L. 2007. Textual construction of the female body: a critical discourse approach. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Jeffries, L. 2010. Critical stylistics: the power of English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. The Main Page of the Egyptian Army Forces Speaker. 2013. Statement of the general command of the Armed Forces Wednesday 3rd July 2013 at 1918 [Facebook status update]. [Accessed 22 May 2015.] Available from: www.facebook.com/Egy.Army.Spox/posts/335803989883923 Stock, R. 2013. Islamist or nationalist: who is Egypt’s mysterious new pharaoh? Foreign Policy Research Institute. October 2013. [Accessed 10 October 2015]. Available from: https://www.fpri. org/article/2013/10/islamist-or-nationalist-who-is-egypts-mysterious-new-pharaoh/ The White House. 2013. Statement by President Barack Obama on Egypt. [Accessed 22 May 2015.] Available from: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/07/03/statement-presidentbarack-obama-egypt Zanotti, J. 2014. The Palestinians: background and US Relations. Congressional Research Service 31 January 2014. [Accessed 10 October 2015.] Available from: www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/ RL33003.pdf

102

6 Homosexuality in Latvian and Polish parliamentary debates 1994–2013 A historical approach to conflict in political discourse Joanna Chojnicka

6.1 Introduction It is safe to say that homosexuality belongs to the most controversial and contentious topics in political discourse of both Latvia and Poland. These two Central- and Eastern-European (CEE) post-socialist states that joined the European Union together in 2004 are commonly described as homophobic due to the limitations of expression and assembly rights, regular use of hate speech by public figures – including politicians and religious leaders – or lack of legislation addressing the needs of the LGBT community (Abramowicz, 2007; Amnesty International, 2006; Locmelis, 2002; O’Dwyer and Schwartz, 2010). In the most recent Rainbow Map ranking, which assesses the social climate for LGBT people in European countries, they scored the lowest of all EU countries – Poland at 18 percent and Latvia, together with Lithuania, at 17 percent. The EU average was 48 percent and Europe’s overall score – including Turkey with 9 percent and Russia with 6 percent – was 38 percent (https:// rainbow-europe.org/). The conditions described above belong to political and legal domains and are thus likely to be discussed by legislative bodies, which makes it reasonable to expect many references to homosexuality in the discourse of parliamentary debates. It is also justified to anticipate many examples of conflict, disagreement and antagonism in Latvian and Polish political discourse on this topic, with homosexuality being such a bone of contention there, especially in the period chosen. The study is based on a corpus of transcripts of Latvian (http://saeima. lv/lv/par-saeimu/arhivs/) and Polish (http​://se​jm.go​v.pl/​Sejm8​.nsf/​page.​xsp/a​rchiw​um/) parliamentary debates from the years 1994 to 2013, available online. This 20-year period represents an exciting era in modern history, when political debates settled accounts with the legacy of socialism/communism, analysed costs and benefits of democratic transition or wondered about the two countries’ place and role in Europe/European Union. More fundamentally, and relevantly for this chapter, it was also a time when the clash of various narratives of 103

Joanna Chojnicka

national identity – some revisiting the glorious nationalist past, others construing a future of innovation, modernisation and globalisation – coincided with the increasing visibility of the LGBT community. Homosexuality became incorporated by many of these narratives, as this chapter will attempt to show. What is more, the 20-year period makes it possible for this chapter to offer a historical perspective on the development of discursive conflict around homosexuality, with the amount of data to be handled remaining within the margin of manageability. The fact that homosexuality is a source of controversy and conflict in Latvian and Polish public discourse makes studies on this topic attractive and relevant, but there is also a risk of instrumentalising and spectacularising hardships faced by the LGBT community there. This chapter has been written from the perspective of an ally, and every effort has been made to approach the subject thoughtfully and considerately. One of the motivations for this study was the wish to contribute to a better understanding of the reasons for, and solutions to, the disadvantageous social climate for LGBT people in the two countries. Another rationale for investigating Latvian and Polish language material was the perceived need to diversify the field of discourse, gender and sexuality, where research conducted in and on AngloAmerican contexts predominates (Kulpa and Mizielińska, 2011; Szulc, 2014). In this study, the topic of homosexuality relates to conflict in two ways. First, it may become a topic of – often heated and hostile – discussion, for example, in a debate on civil partnerships, marriage equality or anti-discrimination law. Second, a reference to homosexuality may be used as an insult in a debate on any, also unrelated, topic. Such reference can take the form of offensive name-calling (e.g. PL pedały! [“faggots!”]) or an ironic – either jocular or sarcastic – statement used to discredit an opponent, as in Example 6.1. This means that we may expect a rather substantial variety of discursive features and strategies to account for, analyse and compare. Example 6.1 LV  Es saprotu, ka Tautas partijas frakcijas līderim patīkamāks ir homoseksuālists, nevis čekists, bet […] tā ir viņa personīgā lieta, par kuru nav jārunā no tribīnes. I understand that the leader of the People’s Party faction prefers a homosexual to a Chekist, but […] this is his personal thing that shouldn’t be talked about from the podium. (30 March 2000) As a point of departure, conflict is understood to be a disagreement, opposition or antagonism expressed in linguistic behaviour. But the analysis will show that this definition may not suffice in cases when the linguistic behaviour associated with conflict is used one-sidedly, against a discursively constructed opponent with no actual speaker(s) to fill the slot. Here, a discursive rather than linguistic approach, recognising the existence of discourses in conflict – even if not realised in actual language use – could be more adequate. With this chapter, I hope to contribute to the ongoing academic debate on such issues as conflict in political discourse, homosexuality as a topic of political debate – especially in Central and Eastern Europe – or the use of insults in spoken discourse.

6.2 Theoretical framework The chapter’s theoretical–methodological framework is partly based on Foucault’s theory of sexuality (1980) and his method of genealogical analysis (Carabine, 2001), and partly inspired by Kurvinen’s study of the historical development of media discourse on 104

Homosexuality in parliamentary debates

homosexuality in Estonia (2007). Homosexuality is understood here as a historically constructed and maintained discourse, a product of the more general interplay between social structures and institutions, power and knowledge: “sexuality is not a natural feature or fact of human life but a constructed category of experience which has historical, social and cultural, rather than biological, origins” (Spargo, 1999, p.12). Foucault “prioritised the crucial role of institutions and discourses in the formation of sexuality” (ibid., p.13). This link between sexuality and power may be more discernible in the case of countries that have undergone – or are still undergoing – a systemic transition. In gender and sexuality research, it is commonplace to consider the political and socio-cultural context not as a mere background, but an important contributing factor (Kuhar and Takács, 2007; Štulhofer and Sandfort, 2005). In official discourses of the Soviet Union – that Latvia was part of – and socialist Poland prior to democratic transition, sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular were taboo topics. Putniņa notes how people in CEE “missed the opportunity to debate sexuality in the 1960s. Debates around homosexuality emerged in the virtual absence of a critical discourse tradition dealing with sexuality and gender” (2007, p.324). After the fall of the Soviet Union, both countries highlighted the return to traditional values as an element of the process of rebuilding their national identities. Communism in any shape or form became the definition of evil: anything associated with or resembling it was automatically rejected. In this context, a link has been noted between homophobia and anticommunism, where homosexuals and communists pose serious threats to the prevailing social and sexual order (Epstein 1994). In a widespread argument, opponents of the European Union compare it to the Soviet Union. “This link is also made in numerous claims about the existence of a powerful ‘homosexual lobby’ apparently supported by the West”, notes Gruszczyńska (2007, p.108). This, paradoxically, means a double silencing of homosexuality discourses coming from apparently opposing directions – one conditioned by the communist/socialist past and the other emerging in resistance to it. Coming back to the connection of discourse and power, it also means that the LGBT communities and their allies are a “discourse minority”: they are underrepresented in public discourse as producers of texts, as a side of the debate. They constitute “issues” talked “about”, but rarely contribute their side of the story and their point of view. Figuring as constructed participants in discursive conflicts over morality, they are attributed opinions and beliefs presupposed to be perceived negatively by the majority of the society. This means that when they do speak out, they are forced to do so from a defensive position. It is becoming obvious that the conflict over homosexuality in Latvia and Poland is not only about sexuality: it is a conflict of political and ideological nature that involves attitudes towards tradition and modernity, collectivism and individualism, order and freedom (Sidorenko, 2008). And while this may be the case anywhere in the world, the case of postsocialist countries is additionally complicated by the historical issues mentioned above, making attitudes towards sexual minorities a “litmus-paper test” of tolerance, openness and inclusiveness (Graff, 2006, p.448).

6.3 Methods and materials In terms of methodology, the chapter partly employs Foucault’s genealogical discourse analysis, an approach used to study discourse in order to reveal power/knowledge networks (Carabine, 2001, p.275). “Genealogy is concerned with describing the procedures, practices, apparatuses and institutions involved in the production of discourses and knowledges, and their power effects” (ibid., p.276), as well as with tracing changes in the power/knowledge/ 105

Joanna Chojnicka

discourse triad from a historical perspective. It is based upon the following assumptions: power operates at every level of society; normalisation – the discursive construction of norm – is one of the ways of deploying power; power/knowledge/discourse are intricately intermeshed; discourses are constitutive; discourses have a normalising role and regulatory outcomes; discourses are uneven, contradictory and contested; knowledge, truth and discourse are socially constructed and historically specific (ibid., p.280). Doing genealogical discourse analysis involves identifying themes, categories and objects of discourse, looking for evidence of inter-relationships between discourses, identifying discursive strategies and techniques employed, looking for absences/silences, resistances and counter-discourses, all against the background of historical context (ibid., p.281). In this study, discourse is understood as a particular way of representing the world that rests upon, and reveals hints about, a broader background of ideological assumptions, beliefs and values. The terms “Left discourse” and “Right discourse” refer to this understanding. But discourse can also be defined as “a particular history of talk about a particular idea or set of ideas” (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 2003, p.42). This definition is at work when a reference is made to the “discourse on sexuality/homosexuality”. As a result, this study’s task is to follow the struggle between various ways of representing the world in their attempts to fix their own understanding of homosexuality as the right or correct one. The focus lies mostly on discursive themes, objects and strategies: referential – concerned with naming and labelling, predicational – concerned with assigning attributes and actions, and argumentative – concerned with supporting claims (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009). Also important are the dynamic relationships between different discourses, for example, interdiscursivity – employing various discourses within one statement, or recontextualisations – when a term from one discourse is reappropriated by another one. Foucault’s approach to discourse analysis and his theory of sexuality (1980) have already inspired an analysis of media discourse on homosexuality in another CEE country – namely, Estonia (Kurvinen, 2007). This study follows the development of discourse on homosexuality from medical discourse – discussion concerning AIDS, homosexuality as a disease – to sexualised discourse: sex and homosexual, especially lesbian, relationships as spectacular, trendy topics. A similar procedure of tracing the shift of discourses on homosexuality will be attempted here, and Kurvinen’s text can additionally be used for comparative purposes across countries/languages, discourse genres and periods. As mentioned above, the study uses a corpus of transcripts of parliamentary debates. All the transcripts were first searched using a set of parallel keywords in both languages, as listed below in Table 6.1. The results of the keyword search are presented in Table 6.2. Table 6.1 List of keywords in both languages with English translations Latvian

Polish

English translation

homoseks* gej* lesb*/lezb* minorit* orient* pederast* –

homoseks* gej* lesb* mniejsz* orient* pederast* peda*

“homosex*” “gay*” “lesb*” “minorit*” (sexual minority) “orient*” (sexual orientation) “pederast” “faggot”

106

PL

LV

2004–2013

PL

LV

1994–2003

homoseks* gej* lesb*/lezb* minorit* orient* pederast* homoseks* gej* lesb* mniejsz* orient* pederast* peda*

homoseks* gej* lesb*/lezb* minorit* orient* pederast* homoseks* gej* lesb* mniejsz* orient* pederast* peda*

58 12 7 3 18

2

2 1

1

21 10 7 2 2 1 31 7 1 2 12

2005

1 2

1 1 1

2004

11

1995

3

1994

Table 6.2 Results of the keyword search

54 13 9 3 3 8 61 20 10 8 10

2006

1 2

2 4 1

2 38 5

2007

3 4 2

31 3 2 7 4

2008

1

1 2

9

8 10

1 2

1

1998

2

2

3

1997

2

3

1996

20 7 6 3 5

1

2009

1

1 3

8

1

9 2 1

1999

29 3 2 2 6

3

5

2010

10 1

1 9 16

9 6

2000

1

34 13 2 5 35

2

2011

2

5

1

2001

4

5 28 27 3 6 28

2012

2

1 38 3 2

1

2002

112 20 6 10 28

1

2013

3 7 29 3

41

2003

Joanna Chojnicka

All the texts – debate turns, statements, reports and questions – containing the keywords were selected and copy–pasted into a .doc document, in order to make it possible to access the whole context of their use. In the case of all debate turns and some reports and questions, I additionally read other contributions to the same debate in order to get a better idea of how the discussion developed. Some reports, questions and most statements were not part of a debate, but stand-alone texts announced in the course of a parliamentary sitting; others were not even read out but submitted to record in written form. The Latvian transcripts additionally contained radio reports on parliamentary proceedings, while the Polish ones included many repetitions – the same debate was to be found in numerous documents in the online archive. Some results were also irrelevant. For example, minorit*/mniejsz* can also refer to national, ethnic, parliamentary and not only sexual minorities. Table 6.2 presents the number of keywords after filtering, i.e. discarding repeated and irrelevant occurrences, and thus allow describing tendencies and shifts of frequency. The results that remained after filtering were arranged chronologically – separately for both languages – and read repeatedly, making detailed notes about features relevant for the analysis, including: •• •• •• ••

••

••

the topic of the debate where a keyword was used. This is important for establishing whether the use of a reference to homosexuality was motivated by the topic or off-topic whether it was a part of a speech from the podium or an interruption from the audience – interruptions usually have an offensive or disruptive character whether the reference caused any reaction from other speakers other issues mentioned together with a reference to homosexuality, if relevant. References to homosexuality often occur in lists. In Example 6.3, such a listing is not relevant to our analysis, since the list is offered for illustrating another point (that HIV can affect anyone) and is thus not in focus. But in Example 6.5 below, homosexuality is listed together with stealing and abortion, and in Example 6.7 – with euthanasia and rejecting religion, and this is relevant since such use is meant to discredit homosexuality by associating it with phenomena commonly considered to be extremely negative the stance taken towards homosexuality. It was usually possible to distinguish between a positive, negative or neutral stance on the basis of a pragmatic reading. To illustrate, Example 6.2 below is considered positive because the speaker states that the problems of sexual minorities should be better addressed by law; Example 6.6 is positive because the speaker explicitly defends sexual minorities (“they shouldn’t be offended”). Examples 6.1 and 6.5 are deemed negative: in 6.1, the speaker makes a joke at homosexuals’ expense, and in 6.5, the speaker refers to homosexuality as a deviation. Example 6.3 is considered neutral: the speaker includes homosexuality in a list of possible social identities or states, without judging any of them. Example 6.4, which is ambiguous, illustrates that this sort of analysis does not always lead to an unequivocal result whether the reference was made in an offensive or sarcastic manner or as a joke. Again, this is done by way of pragmatic reading, keeping in mind the difficulties in interpreting irony or jocularity in written discourse and the role of cultural background knowledge (see the chapter on irony in Chojnicka, 2012). To me, Examples 6.1 and 6.9 are ironic and jocular, but the cultural references – to Chekists in 6.1 and MP Ikonowicz in 6.9 – may make it difficult for readers unfamiliar with these contexts to see why.

The approach taken in the analysis was mostly qualitative. Due to the fact that all the material was obtained using keywords – it would have been impossible to read through all the 108

Homosexuality in parliamentary debates

transcripts – some references to homosexuality may have been missed. For this reason, and due to difficulties with counting occurrences discussed above, the chapter will not make any quantitative claims. In what follows, I will attempt to tell a narrative of homosexuality as both a subject of conflict and a means employed in conflict in Latvian and Polish parliamentary debates over a period of 20 years. Due to differences in the quantity of material, I will discuss Poland in detail and Latvia through comparison. Throughout the discussion, to facilitate the reading flow, examples will be provided in their English translations only, unless the original is necessary for illustrating a strictly linguistic (formal) rather than discursive feature or phenomenon. Each example is preceded by a country code – LV for Latvia and PL for Poland – and followed by its occurrence date.

6.4 The history of homosexuality in Latvian and Polish parliamentary debates The parliament of the Republic of Latvia is called Saeima and comprises 100 members elected by proportional representation every four years. The first term began in November 1922, after Latvia proclaimed independence from the Russian Empire in 1918. During the fourth term, in 1934, a coup was staged to establish a nationalist dictatorship and the parliament was dissolved. Latvia was part of the Soviet Union in the years 1940–1941 and again, after being occupied by Nazi Germany, in 1944–1991. In the years 1990–1993, Latvia had a transitional parliament called the Supreme Council. Saeima was restored in 1993 with the fifth term, resuming the pre-war enumeration. Sejm is the lower chamber of the bicameral parliament of the Republic of Poland, comprising 460 members elected by proportional representation every four years. The tradition of legislative gatherings dates back to the king’s councils of the 12th century, but the modern parliament, consisting of Sejm and Senat (Senate), was established in 1919 after Poland regained independence from Russia, Prussia and Austria-Hungary in 1918. The parliament was dissolved at the beginning of World War II. A unicameral Sejm existed throughout the duration of the Polish People’s Republic, but its power was symbolic. The bicameral parliament was restored in 1991 with the first term, discontinuing the enumeration from socialist times. In what follows, I will use the term Sejm to refer only to the Polish parliament’s lower chamber and Saeima to refer only to the Latvian parliament. Transitional terms of Latvian and Polish parliaments – the Supreme Council 1990–1993 and the first democratic Sejm 1991–1993, respectively – were hardly concerned with homosexuality. Although they fall out of the scope of this study, two facts may be mentioned: first, the few references to homosexuality that do appear are quite neutral to positive, as in Example 6.2; second, the term “sexual minorities”, associated with human rights discourse that was only making its way into CEE, was used in both parliaments for the first time as early as in 1992. Example 6.2 PL: [The law] leaves the problems of sexual minorities, for example homosexuals, completely out of the educators’ attention (30 December 1992). On the basis of the analysis of material from the years 1994–2013, it was possible to distinguish six phases in the history of discourse on homosexuality in Polish parliamentary debates. These phases cut through parliamentary terms, which suggests that they reflect 109

Joanna Chojnicka

more general debates taking place in the society at the given time. The discussion of study results in the remaining part of this chapter will be organised chronologically, following the periodisation scheme outlined below: 1.  1994–1998: the HIV/AIDS crisis 2.  1997–2001: instrumentalisation of homosexuality by the Right 3.  2001–2006: the EU debate 4.  2005–2007: radicalisation of the Right – first peak 5.  2008–2011: calm after the storm 6.  2011–2013: Polish Left joins the discussion – second peak. As Table 6.2 shows, references to homosexuality in the Latvian parliament over the same period were so scarce that it is hardly possible to talk about different phases. Latvian MPs seem to have missed the HIV/AIDS crisis debate – homosexuality was discussed in this context for the first time as late as in 2004. But there is some evidence for the instrumentalisation of homosexuality between 1997 and 2001 and strong evidence for thematisation of homosexuality in the EU debate between 2004 and 2006. After that, however, the discourses in Poland and Latvia parted ways completely: in Poland, the number of references to homosexuality continued to rise, while in Latvia the topic seems to have been silenced. The space between phases 3 and 4 above illustrates this division.

6.4.1 The years 1994–1998: the HIV/AIDS crisis Homosexuality became an object of discussion – rather than a passing reference as in Example 6.2 above – in Poland in 1994, during the second parliamentary term of 1993– 1997, and in Latvia in 1996, during the sixth term of 1995–1998. It was first thematised by the Polish Sejm with regard to the European Union, already then seen by some as in conflict with traditional Christian values. In 1995, the number of references to homosexuality in the Sejm increased, almost all made in the same context: the worldwide HIV/AIDS epidemic. This mirrors Kurvinen’s finding that the topic first entered the public debate in Estonia in connection with this issue and as part of medical discourse (2007, p.292). Some MPs mentioned homosexuals as an increased-risk group, but the overall debate was kept neutral and civil rather than judgemental or hostile, as the following example demonstrates: Example 6.3 PL: HIV does not choose, whether you are rich or poor, black or white, whether you live in a town or countryside, whether you are a hetero- or homosexual (27 October 1995). In Latvia, references to homosexuality between 1995 and 1998 were restricted to debates on criminal issues, especially rape of men – for example, in the army – and children, which points to the notorious association of homosexuality with paedophilia. It was a time of apparent terminological confusion, with the labels homoseksuālists “a homosexual” and pederasts “a pederast” used interchangeably, and lack of consistency in spelling (lesbiete/lezbiete “a lesbian”). Most often such references were employed jokingly, in apparent attempts to create a kind of locker-room rapport with an audience presumed to be mostly male and 100 percent straight: 110

Homosexuality in parliamentary debates

Example 6.4 LV: Well then let better specialists on pederasty issues go deeper into the topic if they want to talk about it, but we, I think, should talk about the matter’s legal side and that’s all (5 February 1997). The locker-room register or style “includes not only lots of profanity but also ways of talking disparagingly about women and about other men who don’t measure up to certain norms of masculinity” (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 2003, p.306). Verbal aggression against victims both absent and present in the interaction is common, and often makes use of derogatory terms that imply the victim’s homosexuality, such as “fag”, “homo”, “queer” (Armstrong 1997, p.329). The locker-room style is typical of all-male activities, but also increasingly present in mixed-sex interactions, especially those that used to be a male domain – for example, golf (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 2003, p.94) or politics – and its purpose is to facilitate male homosocial bonding and police non-masculine and non-heteronormative behaviour. See also Chojnicka (2014) on transsexuality as a topic in Latvian parliamentary discourse. Back in Poland, references to homosexuality remained largely formal, neutral and rational until early 1996, when a debate on abortion took place. In it, homosexuality became clearly associated with leftist-liberal politics, see Example 6.5. It should be noted that applying the right-wing/left-wing division to the political scene in Latvia and Poland is problematic. Since the democratic transition, neither parliament has had a party that could be considered left-wing according to Western European standards. Most parties seen as leftist are actually centrist and many are conservative when it comes to social issues. Also, the term “liberal” is confusing; it is usually used by conservatives to mean “progressive”, with a negative connotation. In the article, I use the terms “Right’s discourse” and “Left’s discourse” to mean the traditionalist/conservative and socially liberal/progressive discourse, respectively. Example 6.5 PL: Exactly this leftist-liberal formation calls a thief a dishonest businessman, the murder of a child in its mother’s womb – pregnancy interruption procedure, and a sexual deviation – a different sexual orientation (1 March 1996). Example 6.6 PL: Unfortunately, we differ in everything, also in language. You talk about deviants. We talk about people who belong to a sexual minority, and claim that not only do they have the right to it, but also that they have been constructed this way and shouldn’t be offended at every opportunity (1 March 1996). Although the reference to homosexuality in Example 6.5 was unmotivated since the debate concerned abortion, the response in 6.6 did not question its justifiability, instead employing human rights discourse to oppose it. This response also framed the conflict in terms of language use, as if suggesting the insulting term zboczenie “deviation” to be a legitimate linguistic choice. The use of offensive terms in principle will rarely be questioned before the introduction of the hate speech concept in the late 2000s. Note also the sarcastic recontextualisation of the human rights discourse term “sexual orientation” in Example 6.5, quite a typical feature of the Right’s discourse, especially in the Latvian material. 111

Joanna Chojnicka

6.4.2 The years 1997–2001: instrumentalisation of homosexuality by the Right The abortion debate in 1996 seems to mark an important shift. From then on, until the end of the second term of Sejm and throughout the third term 1997–2001, homosexuality played a very specific role, although it was never a debate topic itself. However, it was used quite frequently by the Right to flag leftist-liberal politics. The “leftist-liberal formation” became defined through its assumed positive attitude towards abortion, homosexual marriages, as well as pornography and sometimes prostitution, as in lewackie siły aborcyjno-­homoseksualne, which could be loosely translated as “leftist pro-abortion and pro-homosexuality forces”. More generally, any phenomenon or idea could be discursively connected or compared with homosexuality in an attempt to present it negatively, to discredit it. Such instrumental use of homosexuality by the Right could be seen in debates on divergent and seemingly unrelated topics and was particularly visible in discussions on the future of Poland in the European Union, which was of central concern at that time. For instance, in Example 6.7, the juxtaposition of Europe and religion/Christianity is clear. In traditional/ conservative Right discourse, Europe became the “Europe of deviations” (Europa zboczeń), dominated by the infamous “homosexual lobby” (lobby homoseksualistów), a term introduced into parliamentary discourse during this period – the first example in the corpus dates from 22 September 1998. In another example, during a debate on pornography in 2000, a speaker responded to the proposal of adapting legal solutions already existing in EU countries by suggesting that it would pave the way for the legalisation of homosexual partnerships as well. This example shows how the association of the EU with support for same-sex partnerships worked to discredit the Union itself and any initiative coming from it that a speaker disagreed with. It also shows how homosexuality could be instrumentalised in a discussion on a hardly connected topic. Example 6.8, which offers another statement from the same debate on pornography, illustrates this point quite well. While comparing the proposed solution – penalisation of the use of pornography – to the law in Russia, the speaker offered a digression, a by-the-way remark on homosexuality also being penalised in Russia. The purpose of this move was to substantiate and strengthen the proposal to penalise pornography by drawing a parallel to the penalisation of homosexuality. If this comparison was supposed to serve its purpose, the speaker must have presupposed that everyone agreed that the penalisation of homosexuality would be a good idea. Example 6.7 PL: Who are the people that want to unite Europe on the basis of laws on euthanasia, homosexual marriages, who reject the Decalogue and proclaim new values such as: tolerance, democracy, peace, human rights, gender equality? Are these values not present in the Decalogue, in Christianity? (6 June 2001). Example 6.8 PL: The penalization of pornography proposed in this draft is similar only to the Russian penal code law among European solutions. It should be added here that in addition to this solution, in addition to the absolute prohibition of pornography, the Russian Penal Code also introduces the penalization of homosexuality (10 May 2000). These examples suggest that the speakers quoted presupposed their negative attitude to homosexuality to be commonly shared, taken for granted. Indeed, many MPs in the timeframe of 112

Homosexuality in parliamentary debates

1997–2001 seemed to assume abortion and homosexuality to be predominantly understood as wrong. This is necessary if the attribution of a supportive attitude towards homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia or prostitution is supposed to work to the disadvantage of Europe, the European Union or the Left. But it is also paradoxical, as by using presuppositions, speakers claim common ground with all hearers – which necessarily includes the Left – while defining the Left as not sharing this ground at the same time. Defining the Left in such a negative way made it extremely risky to claim allegiance to it. Indeed, with the lack of formal leftist representation in the parliament and the absence of speakers who would defend leftist principles, the Right appeared to be constructing an imaginary, straw-man enemy. What is more, there were no responses in protest against the extremely negative portrayal and instrumental use of homosexuality by the Right, which made the conflict around homosexuality appear unilateral, with the accusations of the Right remaining unchallenged. The Right appeared to be creating problems rather than responding to them, for example, by discussing counter-arguments to homosexual marriage while it was not on the agenda at all. Such unmotivated usage represents a conflict larger than the single topic of a debate: an ideological conflict between traditional, conservative values and modern, progressive ones. The Right, but not the Left discourse – at least not in the corpus material – seemed to be referring back to these large ethical, moral, philosophical questions even when discussing, for example, the state budget, radio and television law, or voluntary and nongovernmental organisations. This made the debate less focused and trivialised moral/ ethical values by invoking them too frequently. It also made the contrast between Right and Left seem more pronounced or absolute – even though, as has been emphasised repeatedly, leftist politics were hardly represented and never defended in the parliament at that time. There were only a couple exceptions to the principle of leaving negative and instrumental references to homosexuality unanswered. First, they provoked reactions if aimed at a specific person. The remark in Example 6.9 caused a response from the MP mentioned in it. MP Ikonowicz objected to being compared with sexual minorities, but this only sparked further abuse. The speaker of Example 6.9 explained how Ikonowicz constituted a minority since he was the only MP unable to understand the logic of enumeration. Jocularity was also the strategy used once to respond to an offensive remark towards sexual minorities. Example 6.10, like Example 6.9, represents a creative, jocular recontextualisation of a term from human rights discourse (“minority”). Note, however, how the speaker found it necessary to disclaim their membership of this minority, anticipating that their defence could be interpreted as an (undesired) admission of their own homosexuality. It is also important to note that within the period 1997–2001 the widespread offensive label denoting male homosexuals pedał, pedały (“faggot”, “faggots”) was used for the first time – not in a speech but as an interjection from the audience (Example 6.11). Example 6.9 PL: I think that [the Left’s] energy in the defence of those threatened by exclusion has been exhausted on the defence of homosexuals, lesbians and MP Ikonowicz (17 December 1997). Example 6.10 PL: Honourable Members! I speak with some embarrassment, since I am not a sexual minority […] as a mental minority I believe that the gravest danger in this House is lack of distance towards oneself and lack of sense of humour (4 November 1999). 113

Joanna Chojnicka

Example 6.11 PL:  Widać, kto się pedałami interesuje. It’s obvious who’s interested in faggots (22 July 1999). Around the same time in Latvia, during the seventh parliamentary term of 1998–2002, homosexuality remained a marginal topic. But the few references to it (see Table 6.2) do exemplify the instrumental use of homosexuality in ideological – albeit one-sided – conflict, similar to the one just described for Poland. The following example illustrates it quite well: Example 6.12 LV: A battle is taking place in Latvia and worldwide between the old Christian morality, which until now has enabled the Latvian nation to survive, and a new morality with exaggerated human rights, even with the right to homosexuality and abuse of children (7 September 2000). Here, the speaker considered “the right to homosexuality” to be an “exaggerated” human right and associated it with abuse of children. The concern for children’s safety belongs to the most frequent argumentation strategies of the Right. It is unclear whether in this example “abuse of children” refers to homosexuality itself – often confused with paedophilia – or to adoption by same-sex couples. The opponents of legalising same-sex partnerships often assume that the demand for the right to adopt children will be the next step if homosexual unions are allowed. This is another example of presupposition since same-sex adoption can only function as such a threat if it is universally considered as wrong. Example 6.12 additionally illustrates an aspect of the conflict barely present in Poland – the worry over the nation’s survival. In Latvia, which is a small country tending towards nationalism, the threat of the nation dying out has always been one of the strongest arguments against homosexuality (Chojnicka, 2015).

6.4.3 The years 2001–2006: the EU debate Another important shift in political discourse on homosexuality seems to be associated with entering the European Union in 2004 – during the fourth parliament term of 2001–2005 in Poland and the eighth term of 2002–2006 in Latvia. Both parliaments discussed anti-discrimination policies in employment, required by the EU, and the obligation to protect sexual minorities within employment law caused eruptions of homophobic statements. Particularly in Latvia, the religiously focused Latvia’s First Party (Latvijas Pirmā partija, LPP) became the locus of anti-gay politics (Chojnicka, 2015, p.142). Outside the parliament, the first equality marches were attempted in Warsaw in 2004 and 2005, banned by the city’s mayor and later state president Lech Kaczyński; the first attempted Riga Pride was banned in 2006. In 2002, the Polish Democratic Left Alliance (Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej, SLD) submitted a draft law on civil unions allowing both hetero- and homosexual partnerships. It was the first debate in Sejm on an explicitly homosexuality-related topic. After entering the EU, the atmosphere was clearly not conducive to such proposals anymore. Although during the negotiation process, the pro-EU stance was predominant both in the Polish society and among political elites, the incorporation itself “aroused suspicion and opposition from political trends that saw greater openness to the outside world as a threat to values derived from Poland’s own, apparently specific, past” (Cox and Myant, 2008, p.2). Public discourse increasingly focused “on patriotic values and the promotion of moral education based on Catholic values in a way that presents negative images of foreign influences, cosmopolitan 114

Homosexuality in parliamentary debates

values and cultural diversity, and sees these as challenges to traditional aspects of ‘the Polish way of life’” (ibid., p.5). Similar processes were taking place in Latvia, where an amendment was added to the Constitution in 2006 to define marriage exclusively as a union between one woman and one man. Within this context of anti-European backlash, offensive and insulting references to homosexuality grew in frequency and intensity. While previously only one Polish term – zboczenie (“deviation”) – was used consistently to anchor homosexuality within the Right’s discourse, the early 2000s saw a proliferation of synonymous referential strategies, including wypaczenie (“distortion”), niegodziwość (“iniquity, evil”) and zachowania antyrodzinne i antyludzkie (“antifamily and antihuman behaviours”). In 2003, the infamous expression promocja homoseksualizmu (“promotion (propagation) of homosexuality”) was used for the first time. It expresses the idea that people – especially children and youth – can become homosexual after having been exposed to representations of homosexuality in various media and is at the foundation of the so-called Russian gay propaganda law. Its use in argumentation by the Right was increasing consistently, leading to a draft law prohibiting content that violates the principle of protection of marriage and the family – including content referred to as “the promotion of homosexuality” – being proposed in the Polish parliament in 2007 but eventually rejected. See also Example 6.17. During the EU debate 2001–2006, other referential strategies emphasising the negative impact of tolerance towards homosexuality, especially on children and youth, included deprawacja dzieci i młodzieży (“depravation of children and youth”), demoralizacja (“demoralisation”) and propagacja przemocy, zboczeń, pornografii (“propagation of violence, deviations, pornography”). Homosexuality continued to be associated with abortion and both were framed as serious crimes against children, as in zabijanie dzieci i adoptowanie dzieci przez zboczeńców (“killing children and adopting children by deviants”). Also in Latvian, some synonyms joined the previously prevailing (though semantically ambiguous) label pederasti (“pederasts”), e.g. nenormāliķi (“abnormals”), pediņi “faggots”, heterofobi (“heterophobes”). Homosexuality was referred to as izvirtība (“deviation, debauchery”), netikumība (“immorality”), nešķīstība (“impurity”), sodomisms (“sodomy”), nepareiza seksuālā orientācija (“incorrect sexual orientation”), perverss dzīvesveids (“perverse lifestyle”); listed with other phenomena suggesting its pathological character, e.g. pederastija, lesbiānisms, pedofilija, zoofilija, nekrofilija un citas patoloģijas (“pederasty, lesbianism, paedophilia, zoophilia, necrophilia and other pathologies”); or lumped together with social problems unrelated to sexuality, e.g. narkomānija, dzeršana, pederastija (“drug addiction, alcoholism, pederasty”). Similarly, as in Polish, some terms were used to present homosexuals as a powerful political interest group: homointerešu grupa (“homo-interest group”), geju un lesbiešu lobbijs (“gay and lesbian lobby”), pederastu un lesbiešu lobijs (“pederast and lesbian lobby”) or even pedokrātija (“faggocracy”). Many Polish speakers employed the term attributed to Pope John Paul 2nd cywilizacja śmierci (“civilisation of death”), whose main features were homosexuality, abortion and euthanasia. Also, the new discursive association of homosexuality with drugs can be regarded in the civilisation of death frame: Example 6.13 PL: A formation that […] wants the legalization of gay relationships and legalization of drugs has no moral right to say what is good for the family (16 February 2005). In Latvia, homosexuality as a threat to the family was again mostly associated with concerns over the whole nation’s survival – the node word within this discourse being demogrāfiskā 115

Joanna Chojnicka

krīze/katastrofa (“demographic crisis/catastrophe”) – and here seen as a “parody of the family” (ģimenes parodija), “hostile and destructive tendencies” (naidīgas un destruktīvas tendencies) or even “voluntary suicide” (brīvprātīgā pašnāvība, meaning “childlessness”). In Polish debates, some new terms appeared to describe the leftist-liberal politics, for example laicka poprawność polityczna (“laic political correctness”) or środowiska liberalno-laickie (“liberal-laic milieu”). Note the association of the Left with atheism/laicism in the two examples. In the years 2001–2006, the values of the Left, conflated with the values of the EU, became synonymous with atheism and antonymous with respect to Christian values that Poland was supposed to represent. Example 6.14 illustrates quite well the claim that leftist politics was defined through its association with homosexuality and abortion: Example 6.14 PL: The [Labour] Union shows its leftism in a way hardly relevant to the government, e.g. gays, lesbians, abortion is the main subject of concern of this party (24 August 2004). This utterance is especially interesting in the context of a complete lack of statements supporting gay rights or legalisation of abortion, with the exception of the SLD proposal mentioned above, in the years 2001–2006. Like in the previous phase of 1997–2001, the Right’s discourse seemed to be creating problems rather than reacting to them, raising the question of who was actually promoting homosexuality here. An important turn in this respect took place in 2004, when a speaker identified themselves with the Left for the first time and entered the ethical/ideological dimension of the conflict over homosexuality, previously occupied one-sidedly by the Right – see Example 6.15 below. The term tolerancja (“tolerance”) then became an influential node word in the Left’s discourse to be employed frequently in future debates. Example 6.15 PL: I was a participant in the march of anti-globalists in Warsaw and march for freedom in Cracow. According to the extreme Right […] I am thus a leftist. I, the leftist, agree […] that the acceptance of lack of tolerance causes violence (12 May 2004). Another feature of the phase of 2001–2006 was the Polish Right’s widespread resistance towards human rights discourse, most prominently the terms mniejszości seksualne (“sexual minorities”) and orientacja seksualna (“sexual orientation”). The former was often preceded in the Right’s discourse by the hedge tak zwane (“so-called”), indicating an ironic, unsupportive, resilient attitude towards the term’s justifiability. in Latvia, these terms from human rights discourse seemed to be adapted by the Right quite early and employed both ironically as described above and in a form of an inversion of accusation/ blame argument: Example 6.16 LV:  We that are not homosexuals – what human rights do we have? (26 March 1998). Example 6.17 PL: It is impossible to promote homosexuality, no matter how hard I tried to promote it, you, if you are not homosexual, would not become homosexual. You can promote chickens in a supermarket, not homosexuality (29 April 2004). 116

Homosexuality in parliamentary debates

As in the previous phase 1997–2001, there were very few voices in the defence of homosexuality. Next to Example 6.15 another statement may be mentioned, made to protest against the proliferation of the “promotion of homosexuality” argument – see Example 6.17. Furthermore, a new development in comparison to previous years seemed to be the introduction of a new identity label gej (“a gay”, existing only as a noun), which was probably used for the first time in 2002 (recall also Example 6.13); in Latvia, it started being used in 1999. Soon enough, it came to be used as an insult in interjections: Example 6.18 PL:  Speaker on the podium: “I’m smiling to Mr Lepper …” Interjection from the audience: “Gay!” (21 April 2005). In general terms, while there were considerably fewer references to homosexuality in Latvian than Polish parliamentary debates between 2001 and 2006, these references were more likely to be sarcastic or jocular. Appearing in debates on unrelated topics, they seemed to be used to provide comic relief and the kind of locker-room rapport mentioned earlier – please see Example 6.19 and recall Example 6.4. The appeal of such jokes depends on the presupposition that everyone in the audience is heterosexual. It is possible to assume that many Latvian parliamentarians did not take the issue of homosexuality seriously and truly believed the problem did not exist in Latvia at all – a stance actually expressed a few times in the debates. On the other hand, humour could also be used in defence of homosexuality, although rather indirectly, through making jokes at the expense of those expressing anti-gay views – as in Examples 6.20–6.21 below (compare also Examples 6.25–6.27): Example 6.19 LV: Deciding whether sexual orientation is an object of discrimination or not is much more amusing than discussing trailers and semi-trailers (22 April 2004). Example 6.20 LV: The Civil Law has already solved the question of same-sex, two-sex and threesex marriages a long time ago (26 October 2005). Example 6.21 LV: Dear colleagues from the LPP! The more I listen to you, the more convinced I become that many of you have problems in the sex department […] and you are constantly suffering from some sort of complexes (15 September 2005).

6.4.4 The years 2005–2007: radicalisation of the Polish Right The fifth term of 2005–2007 of the Polish parliament saw the first peak in the number of references to homosexuality, even though it was dissolved after only two years. It was a controversial term as it included members from the populist parties Samoobrona (Self-Defence) and Liga Polskich Rodzin (League of Polish Families, LPR). The latter’s representative and Minister of Education 2005–2007 Roman Giertych “led a public attack on the rights 117

Joanna Chojnicka

of sexual minorities, particularly in schools” (O’Dwyer and Schwartz, 2010, p.225), turning his unabashed homophobia into political capital and contributing significantly to the politicisation of sexuality (Sidorenko, 2008). He was also the one to propose the ban on representations of homosexuality mentioned above. In the debates, the previous government’s concern for gay and lesbian rights was always LPR’s central objection – even though the analysis above clearly shows no such concern. When the parliament debated a vote of no confidence in him, his own defence emphasised the impudence of his predecessor, who allowed gay organisations and German transsexuals to be invited to Polish schools (8  September 2006). In a discussion on the drug prevention programme, he mentioned “anarchistic, feminist and homosexual organisations” as factors leading to the increase of drug consumption among youths – another example of the association of homosexuality with drugs (recall Example 6.13). With the populist parties in the parliament, the quality of the discussion clearly deteriorated. Although homosexuals were subject to verbal abuse before, the extent of those insults did not come close to what can be seen in Example 6.22 and many similar statements from 2005–2007. Example 6.22 PL: Another shameless equality march – manifestation of gays and lesbians and their allies – is being planned for the coming Saturday in Warsaw. Degeneration will spread on the streets of our capital, public disruption will become a fact […] these continuously recurring manifestations of deviation in many cities of Poland are not an expression of equality and freedom, but a clear provocation of enemies of normality, enemies of common sense, enemies of Christian principles and simply enemies of morality and public order. Everyone has the right to their sexual orientation regardless of whether it is a consequence of mental disorder, so illness, or an expression of a wild fashion for difference […] as long as they are confined in the sphere of their privacy […] No minority has the right to terrorize the majority […] Do residents that do not want to have anything to do with sexual pathologies […] have to feel threatened by the invasion of gays and lesbians, by the public propaganda of sodomy? […] There can be no approval of an event that promotes homosexuality in the capital of Poland, that encourages public disorder, that clearly demoralizes society and constitutes an obscene provocation from a group that turns homosexuality into an ideology and a tool in political and religious battle (8 June 2006). This fragment draws on many different discourses that are mixed together. It contains some war metaphors – the (sexual) minority as terrorists and enemies, the activism of gays and lesbians as an invasion – which belong to the discourse of war and terrorism popularised worldwide after 9/11 (Machin and van Leeuwen, 2007). Medical discourse (“deviation”, “mental disorder”, “illness”, “pathologies”) constructs homosexuality as a disease while terms from moral (“shameless”, “degeneration”, “obscene”, “demoralises”) and religious (“Christian principles”, “sodomy”) discourses present it as condemnable. Actions of gays and lesbians are also represented as a threat to the public order (“disruption”, “provocation”, “public order”, “disorder”), which is of particular value to the Right. Last but not least, the fragment employs the notorious homosexual propaganda strategy (“propaganda of sodomy”) and (“promotes homosexuality”). The fifth term also saw the first use of the highly offensive label pederaści (“pederasts”), noteworthy as the term was already rather archaic. In the Latvian material, while it had been 118

Homosexuality in parliamentary debates

used relatively frequently in the 1990s, it almost disappeared in the 2000s. Furthermore, in 2005–2007, the phenomena listed together with homosexuality were not only abortion and pornography but also, for example, “autoerotism” (masturbation), divorce or contraception. This showcases an extreme retraditionalisation of the Right’s discourse in Poland and the importance of Catholicism as the foundation for this development. In Latvia, where the influence of the Catholic Church is much lower, using such discursive strategies would make no sense; not only divorce or contraception but also abortion – which to this day incites the most vehement opposition from the Polish Right – are uncontroversial and do not have any antagonising potential. We need to be careful, however, not to draw a simple causal link between religiosity and a conservative attitude towards sexuality and reproductive rights; after all, the situation of the LGBT community in Latvia is similar, and not better, as in Poland. In fact, I believe that the same shift towards retraditionalisation took place there as well, but with another outcome – a silencing of homosexuality in Latvian parliamentary debates after 2006. Probably the most noteworthy aspect of the conflict in this timeframe was the fact that the opponents of the Right started to define it in ideological terms, associating it with specific values/attitudes. So just as the Left was defined through its association with abortion, homosexuality, pornography and so on, the Right came to be defined through its association with neo-Nazism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia and so on. In addition, the strategy of the Right to frame a debate on anything, including animal experiments or mobile telephone networks, in ethical/moral/ideological terms, was overtaken by its opponents, who started to make such explicit references to their moral and political beliefs as well, as in Example 6.23. The Left also started to defend some of the groups (assumed to be) targeted by the Right due to their association with leftist-liberal politics, although rarely mentioning sexual minorities exclusively – see Example 6.24. On the other hand, the number of humorous, jocular remarks from the opponents of the Right that did mention homosexuality increased significantly, commenting on the preoccupation of some MPs with the topic, as in Examples 6.25–6.28. Example 6.23 PL: You, ladies and gentlemen of the Right, agree to, or even accept discrimination and inequality. We, the Left, regard equality and justice to be basic values of the society. You want to decide what a family should look like, want to tell Poles how they should live and what they should believe in. We promote freedom of opinion, freedom to choose and decide one’s own way to happiness and realization of one’s life plans (10 November 2005). Example 6.24 PL: PiS [Prawo i Sprawiedliwość – Law and Justice party] can do nothing so well as finding enemies. An enemy can be anything: SLD, nurses […] Jaruzelski of course, a gay and a feminist, Germany with Russia, judges (7 September 2007). Example 6.25 PL:  You, Sir, as usual dream about the rights of homosexuals (24 November 2005). Example 6.26 PL: Mr Giertych associates everything with homosexual organisations, so I understand his obsession (22 June 2006). 119

Joanna Chojnicka

Example 6.27 PL: MP Wierzejski, your obsession with sexual minorities predestines you to become a member of the Polish Sexologist Association. I hope you have already submitted your application (23 June 2006). Example 6.28 PL: In the breaks between […] successive hunts for homosexuals […] will you have at least a bit of time to address the educational problems that are important for Polish children and youth? (28 June 2007). In response, the Right seemed to attempt to overtake or recontextualise the tolerance discourse, for example, coming up with the neologism Chrystofobia (“christophobia”, parallel to homophobia), or claim that while racism, nationalism or fascism were indeed unacceptable, they only happened somewhere else, not in Poland: Example 6.29 PL: It is these countries, mainly Germany and France, that stand behind the resolution of the European Parliament […] which are responsible for possible cases of racism, nationalism, fascism or xenophobia in Europe. In Poland there are no such cases (23 June 2006).

6.4.5 The years 2007–2011: calm after the storm The sixth parliamentary term of 2007–2011, following the prematurely dissolved Sejm (for a good reason), was like the calm after the storm, witnessing less populist argumentation and explicitly hostile anti-gay discourse. The most notable development was the increase in references to religion and religious arguments by both sides. The Right continued associating the increasing visibility of homosexuality with the influence of the European Union, and the EU with anti-religion attitudes, for example, Unia prowadzi walkę z religią (“the [European] Union leads the fight against religion”), nie walczcie z religią (“don’t fight against religion”). As these examples show, war metaphors (“fight”) continue to be widely employed by the Right discourse, presenting religion and religious people as victims of attacks that have institutional backing (“the Union leads the fight”). The expression dyskryminacja chrześcijan (“discrimination of Christians”) exemplifies the recontextualisation of human rights discourse, where the term “discrimination” is applied to the majority rather than minority of the society. Pro-gay voices started employing religious arguments as well, asking “Can gays and lesbians not be good Christians? Can Protestant, Orthodox, Buddhist believers not be good Polish citizens?” (24 June 2009). This last example also demonstrates the increasing focus of the Left on various definitions of minorities usually listed together – national, ethnic, religious, sexual – reflecting the growing significance of pluralism/multiculturalism in the EU and Poland and probably working to cushion sexual minorities among other, more acceptable ones. The Right responded with a new term, multi-kulti, used with a kind of mocking, contemptuous connotation. The expression is actually an abbreviation of the term multikulturowość (“multiculturalism”), which has been reappropriated by the Right discourse like “political correctness”, “sexual orientation” or “sexual minority”. Homosexuality was targeted by the Right with full force again in 2011, when discussing legislation on hate speech and hate-motivated crimes, as well as the question of recognising 120

Homosexuality in parliamentary debates

civil partnerships concluded abroad, including same-sex ones. Some notable referential strategies included roszczenia homolobby (“demands of the homolobby”), degradacja społeczna i cywilizacyjna (“social and civilisational degradation”) and afirmacja zaburzeń seksualnych (“affirmation of sexual dysfunctions”). Homosexuality was also associated with paedophilia, which surprisingly had not happened that often before in the Polish material, although it is commonplace in the Latvian material throughout the 20-year period. Over the same period, Latvia also had two parliamentary terms – the ninth in 2006–2010 and the tenth in 2010–2011. For the years 2007–2011, there were extremely few results from the keyword search. For example, homoseks* had only five occurrences in 2010, pederast* – two in 2007, while gej* and lesb*/lezb* had none. The term seksuālā orientācija was found four times; once in 2009 and three times in 2010, in a debate on EU directives concerning anti-discrimination legislation. In all cases the uses were neutral as in the example below: Example 6.30 LV: [The financial crisis] affects all the country residents regardless of gender, race, ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, sexual orientation and age (8 October 2009). It is difficult to speculate about the reasons for this silence. It is possible that Latvian parliamentarians reacted to the earlier explosion of homophobic discourse by turning homosexuality into a taboo, which would point to the retraditionalisation rather than liberalisation of discourse, as suggested above. Another possibility is that a new vocabulary, invisible in keyword search, was developed to avoid using the words that had become emotionally charged. There are some expressions denoting homosexuals in colloquial Latvian that could have been recontextualised by parliamentary discourse, e.g. mīkstie (“the soft ones”) or zilie lit. “the blue ones”. Still, as they remain colloquial and informal, a search of these terms could only return insults and interjections rather than actual debates on homosexuality as a topic.

6.4.6 The years 2011–2013: Polish Left joins the discussion The final period to be considered here involves the Polish parliament’s seventh term of 2011–2015 and Latvian parliament’s eleventh term of 2011–2014; in both cases, material was collected until the end of 2013. The search in Latvian returned very few results again. On 13 December 2012, Saeima discussed a proposal to include in the Criminal Code a paragraph “on responsibility for sexual intercourse, pederasty and lesbianism with a person who has not reached 16 years of age” (par atbildību par dzimumsakariem, pederastiju un lesbiānismu ar personu, kura nav sasniegusi 16 gadu vecumu). The proposal was rejected but note the use of the controversial term “pederasty” to mean “male homosexuality” and how the enumeration separates “pederasty and lesbianism” from sexual relations. In 2012– 2013, Saeima discussed the questions of civil unions and hate speech, but no references to homosexuality were made in these contexts. In Poland, the seventh term was the first one that involved both sides of the conflict over homosexuality on more or less equal terms. With the election of the first openly transsexual MP, Anna Grodzka, and re-election of the openly gay Robert Biedroń, three draft laws important for the LGBT community were discussed: legislation on civil partnerships, gender recognition and hate-motivated crimes, explaining the second peak in the number of references to homosexuality, especially in 2013. All these topics were treated seriously 121

Joanna Chojnicka

by most discussants. Also, those who spoke against them tried to present substantive and rational arguments, e.g. using Article 18 of the Constitution on the protection of marriage. In particular, Anna Grodzka’s project of gender recognition law received unprecedented support and was accepted by the parliament, only to be vetoed by the president Andrzej Duda. That said, there was no shortage of homophobic, hostile statements and insults. In the discussion on civil unions, relationships based exclusively on sex and physical pleasure were defined as ‘pure evil’ and traditional family – as a value that is “not up to discussion”. On these premises, homosexual – but never heterosexual – couples were then presented as interested only in sex: związki homoerotyczne są przejawem hedonizmu (“homoerotic relationships are a sign of hedonism”); nietrwałe, jałowe związki (“unstable, sterile relationships”). The term “cohabitation” was deemed “meaningless” in relation to same-sex relationships, “based on mutual abuse” and threatening to family and nation. On the other hand, this discussion saw probably the first defence of homosexuality as a phenomenon – as opposed to defence of homosexual people’s human rights: Example 6.31 PL: It has been known since Antiquity that homosexuality happens as something completely normal. You want to return Poland to the Middle Ages and almost burn people with another worldview, preference, taste. It is unacceptable (24 January 2013). Homosexuality was also equated with paedophilia (gej – przyjaciel dziecka [“gay – a child’s friend”]) and mentioned in a list of sexual deviations that included attraction towards the same sex, children, animals and objects. This statement caused an immediate protest by the MP Biedroń, who, as an openly gay man, felt personally offended. His presence in the parliament also motivated other MPs to protest homophobic statements from the podium. The discussion on hate speech and hate crimes seemed to encourage many neologisms with the homo- prefix, e.g. homomarsze (“homo-marches”); homopropaganda (“homopropaganda”); gejowska homomowa (“gay homo-speech”); homolewica (“homo-Left”), and revisited some of the previously mentioned expressions, most notably homoseksualne lobby (“homosexual lobby”); heterofobia (“heterophobia”); pseudokultura homoseksualna (“homosexual pseudo-culture”); and sexual orientation as “gibberish” (orientacja seksualna to bełkot). Example 6.32 illustrates the use of a fairly marginal and archaic term of abuse Sodomita (“sodomite”), which, as a religious discourse term, flags a religious argument. It is also similar to Example 6.16 in that it presents the majority, not the minority, as in need of protection. Also 6.33 below reflects homosexuality as an issue of concern in religion – especially Christianity – and exemplifies the kind of grand ideological argument discussed previously. Example 6.32 PL:  A sodomite, a homosexual should have legal protection […] a Catholic, an Orthodox – not (24 May 2012). Example 6.33 PL: we live in the times when some think that gender is constructed, sexual orientation – inborn, substances causing psychoses and suicides are harmless, Christianity is called a sect, priests are publicly called boors, when persons designated as “homophobic” are publicly encouraged to be destroyed (20 February 2013). 122

Homosexuality in parliamentary debates

My final example shows the grand ideological argument from the other side of the conflict. It also suggests that these two positions – Left and Right – should not be considered equal, merely two opposing worldviews to choose from – a development from what we saw in Example 6.6: Example 6.34 PL: This evil [of hate crime] that we talk about today has its provenance in and is encouraged by political groups which elevate xenophobia, nationalism, homophobia, discrimination of various social groups, and their provenance is unfortunately in the extreme Right. And it is encouraged by the discourse that has us all hostage, that there is a symmetry between those who are fascists, who are nationalists, who are sexists, and those who are anti-fascists, anti-sexists, and so on (22 November 2012). This example is well suited to conclude the presentation of results, as it brings us back to the question of discourse and power, emphasising the role that language/discourse plays in representing the world in particular ways.

6.5 Discussion and conclusion Studying the corpus has confirmed my initial expectation that the topic of homosexuality has encouraged conflict, disagreement and antagonism in the modern history of political discourse in Latvia and Poland, yielding many thought-provoking results. First of all, it proved possible to distinguish a few phases in the development of discourse on homosexuality between 1994 and 2013. In Poland, homosexuality entered the public debate in the context of the HIV/AIDS crisis (1994–1998), and quickly became incorporated by the Right discourse as an instrument in argumentation against the European Union and the Left (1997–2001). The debates on the future of Poland in the European Union between 2001–2006 solidified this instrumental use of homosexuality, which saw its first peak during the period of radicalisation of the Right (2005–2007), represented in the parliament by two extremist and populist parties. After the premature dissolution of that parliamentary term, the time of relative calm followed (2008–2011), with the slow mobilisation of the other side of the debate. The final phase of 2011–2013 saw the second peak in the number of references to homosexuality, caused both by parliamentary initiatives concerning the LGBT community being discussed and by the participation of both sides of the debate on more or less equal terms. The Latvian material offers a very different story. There were hardly any references to homosexuality before 1998, then a short period of instrumentalisation of homosexuality by the Right in 1999–2000, followed by the EU debate in 2004–2006, after which the topic seems to have been silenced. The EU debate in Latvia coincided with the radicalisation of the Right, which, similarly as in Poland, was a reaction to joining the European Union in 2004. It is thus an important finding that the mobilisation of the Right against homosexuality seems to be connected with anxieties and fears concerning the nations’ future role in the European community and the survival of national identity. The fact, however, that directly after this moment of convergence, the discourses on homosexuality in Saeima and Sejm developed in two radically different ways requires explanation. While contextualising the study results within the political and socio-cultural environment of Latvia and Poland would require a whole new article, one aspect is worth mentioning, 123

Joanna Chojnicka

as it may be one of the reasons for this silence over homosexuality in Saeima after 2006. Despite its small size, Latvia has a relatively large Russian-speaking minority (about onethird of its residents; ca. 12 percent of the country’s inhabitants have no citizenship status). This minority is resented by many Latvians who see it as residue of Soviet Union’s collapse and justification for Russia to interfere into Latvia’s internal affairs. Thus, the refusal of some Latvian politicians to admit that discrimination exists in their country or to grant legal protection to vulnerable groups may have less to do with gays and lesbians and more with their fear of Russian-speaking residents being granted “special privileges” (Chojnicka, 2013). Still, it would only be a partial explanation. I believe that the absence of references to homosexuality in Latvian material after 2006 could also be at least partly attributed to the retraditionalisation of political discourse in response to the European Union expansion in 2004. The same process took place in Poland, but there the result was an increase in negative and offensive references to homosexuality rather than its tabooisation. Another important finding is that there were only a few cases where homosexuality was part of a debate topic, for example, on civil unions in Sejm or anti-discrimination legislation in both parliaments. More frequently it was an object of discussion in a debate on a topic seen as more-or-less related, such as HIV/AIDS, sexual education, abortion, sexual offences, hate crimes – thus, topics associated with sexuality, reproduction/reproductive rights and criminal law. But the majority of references to homosexuality were unmotivated with regard to the debate topic, functioning as offensive strategies used to discredit either an opponent in the debate or the LGBT community as representing an undesired worldview or lifestyle. The use of such strategies rested upon the presupposition that homosexuality is commonly considered as something wrong. An idea or a person could be easily discredited by being associated, connected or compared to homosexuality. While lacking motivation in the direct context of the given debate, such instrumental use of homosexuality as a strategy in conflict does, of course, reflect more general debates taking place in the society and the growing visibility of the LGBT community. This growing visibility, however, does not correlate with increasing tolerance/acceptance in a simple, linear way. While some legal solutions aiming at improving the social climate for the LGBT community in Poland were finally discussed at the very end of the 20-year period, the increase in number of references to homosexuality must also be attributed to the rise in instrumental use of such references as offensive strategies. Taking a historical approach made it possible to trace the development of verbal strategies of insult and abuse over the 20-year period. Many insulting labels denoting homosexuality or homosexuals that have been used by legal representatives of Latvians and Poles in their official, formal speeches, and these statements clearly constitute cases of hate speech as understood today. In the Sejm, growing awareness of the concept of hate speech has helped to formulate responses to such cases of verbal aggression, but they remain rare. In general, the linguistic behaviour that could be considered insulting or abusive has been more openly hostile and threatening in the Polish material and more ironic and jocular in the Latvian one. Contrary to Kurvinen’s (2007) results, medical discourse has played a marginal role in the story reconstructed here: both references to HIV/AIDS and framing homosexuality as a disease were scarce. The Right in both parliaments saw homosexuality consistently as a sexual deviation, parallel to zoophilia or necrophilia. Almost absent in Poland, the frequent association/confusion of homosexuality with paedophilia in Latvia is illustrated by the double meaning of the term pederastija and may be associated with the common concern for the small nation’s survival. Homosexuality was also seen as a choice – a selfish and hedonistic one – and gays and lesbians as personally responsible for the consequences of 124

Homosexuality in parliamentary debates

this choice. Same-sex couples were seen as illegitimate and meaningless and their relationships as based only on sex and unable to produce children, deeming invisible both heterosexual relations based exclusively on physical pleasure and uninterested in having children, and same-sex couples raising their own or adopted children. Sexualisation of discourse on same-sex relations reported by Kurvinen was absent. These differences are most likely to be genre-dependent. Instead, the prevailing discourses in the conflict over homosexuality seem to be nationalistic and religious ones, confirming my earlier findings (Chojnicka, 2015). The former is more frequent in Latvia, a small country whose rightist politicians worry about the nation’s future; the latter is more widespread in Poland, whose Right sees the country as the last bastion of Christianity in the atheist/laic EU. Additionally, the human rights discourse could be employed by both sides of the conflict, with the Right using it ironically or to reverse the accusation. Last but definitely not least, the most outstanding aspect of homosexuality in Latvian and, to an even greater extent, Polish parliamentary debates seems to me the way the Right’s discourse employs it to flag what it calls leftist-liberal politics. By attributing to it a positive, supportive attitude towards homosexuality and other phenomena presupposed to be commonly believed as unacceptable, the Right constructs an imaginary – and impossible – straw-man opponent. This positive attitude is then operationalised to discredit the Right’s opponents in a debate on any topic in a move that I have called a “grand ideological argument”. It happens in the context of an almost absolute lack of initiatives aiming at legalising any of these things. What other phenomena are associated with homosexuality depends on many socio-cultural factors that may change over time. Abortion is a very interesting example. In Poland, it is legal only in exceptional cases but hardly ever practised due to political pressure. The Right continues to politicise the issue by regularly threatening to delegalise it completely. Fervent opposition to both abortion and homosexuality appears to be a constant component of the Right’s political agenda. But in Latvia, where abortion is legal and access to it taken for granted, its connection to homosexuality is completely absent in the Right discourse. The influence of the Catholic Church in Poland may play a role here but is probably not the only explanation. By constructing the Left through its assumed positive attitude towards homosexuality, abortion, pornography, prostitution, euthanasia and, increasingly, drug use, the Right’s discourse does two things. First, it creates an opponent position that is extremely difficult and risky to claim. And in fact, declarations of leftist-liberal affiliations in the corpus are very rare. Second, by taking it for granted that an association with homosexuality must be insulting and demeaning, it reinforces negative attitudes towards it. Again, voices in defence of homosexuality are absent in the Latvian material and rare in the Polish ones before 2011. It thus appears that the conflict over homosexuality in Latvian and Polish parliamentary debates is to a large extent one-sided, with the Right struggling against an opponent that it constructs itself, providing counter-arguments for proposals that nobody makes, and instrumentalising homosexuality as a discursive strategy in order to discredit any actual competitor or proposal. By doing so, the Right constantly positions itself with regard to a much larger conflict that has been taking place in the societies of Latvia and Poland ever since the democratic transition. It is a conflict between traditional and modern values, typical in transitional societies but here additionally amplified by the anxiety caused by the EU expansion, which raised questions concerning the future role and significance of national identity. This is one of the reasons why anti-gay opposition in the parliaments was at its peak directly after Latvia and Poland joined the EU in 2004. But outside the parliament, this grand ideological 125

Joanna Chojnicka

conflict has never been one-sided, and both leftist-liberal ideas and support for the LGBT community are currently finding more and more representatives.

References Abramowicz, M. ed. 2007. Situation of bisexual and homosexual persons in Poland. 2005 and 2006 report. Warsaw: Kampania Przeciw Homofobii. Amnesty International. 2006. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in Poland and Latvia. London: Amnesty International. Armstrong, J.D. 1997. Homophobic slang as coercive discourse among college students. In: Livia, A. and Hall, K. eds. Queerly phrased. Language, gender, and sexuality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.326–34. Carabine, J. 2001. Unmarried motherhood 1830–1990: a genealogical analysis. In: Wetherell, M., Taylor, S. and Yates, S.J. eds. Discourse as data. A guide for analysis. London: Sage Publications, pp.267–310. Chojnicka, J. 2012. Linguistic markers of stance in Latvian parliamentary debates. PhD dissertation. Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing. Chojnicka, J. 2013. Nazis vs. occupants: the language of ethnic conflict in Latvian parliamentary debates. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict. 1(2), pp.225–55. Chojnicka, J. 2014. Ja es būtu smuks, es gribētu būt meitene! (‘If I were pretty, I would like to be a girl!’). Debating transsexualism in the Latvian Parliament. Gender Studies. 13(1), pp.179–200. Chojnicka, J. 2015. Homophobic speech in post-socialist media: a preliminary typology of homophobic manipulative discourse. The Journal of Language and Sexuality. 4(1), pp.139–74. Cox, T. and Myant, M. 2008. Introduction. In: Myant, M. and Cox, T. eds. Reinventing Poland. Economic and political transformation and evolving national identity. London: Routledge, pp.1–7. Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. 2003. Language and gender. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. Epstein, B. 1994. Anti-communism, homophobia, and the construction of masculinity in the postwar US. Critical Sociology. 20(3), pp.21–44. Foucault, M. 1980. The history of sexuality. Part 1: introduction. New York: Pantheon Books. Graff, A. 2006. We are (not all) homophobes - a report from Poland. Feminist Studies. 32(2), pp.434–49. Gruszczyńska, A. 2007. Living ‘la vida’ internet: some notes on the cyberization of Polish LGBT community. In: Kuhar, R. and Takács, J. eds. Beyond the pink curtain: everyday life of LGBT people in Eastern Europe. Ljubljana: Mirovni Inšt., pp.95–115. Kuhar, R. and Takács, J. eds. 2007. Beyond the pink curtain: everyday life of LGBT people in Eastern Europe. Ljubljana: Mirovni Inšt. Kulpa, R. and Mizielińska, J. eds. 2011. De-centring Western sexualities: central and Eastern European perspectives. Farnham: Ashgate. Kurvinen, H. 2007. Homosexual representations in Estonian printed media during the late 1980s and early 1990s. In: Kuhar, R. and Takács, J. eds. Beyond the pink curtain: everyday life of LGBT people in Eastern Europe. Ljubljana: Mirovni Inšt., pp.287–301. Locmelis, A. 2002. Sexual orientation discrimination in Latvia. In: Kimeta Society ed. Sexual orientation discrimination in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Vilnius: Open Society Institute, Kimeta Society, pp.26–53. Machin, D. and van Leeuwen, T. 2007. Global media discourse. A critical introduction. London. New York: Routledge. O’Dwyer, C. and Schwartz, K.Z.S. 2010. Minority rights after EU enlargement: a comparison of antigay politics in Poland and Latvia. Comparative European Politics. 8(2), pp.220–43. Putniņa, A. 2007. Sexuality, masculinity and homophobia: the Latvian case. In: Kuhar, R. and Takács, J. eds., pp. 313–26. Reisigl, M. and Wodak, R. 2009. The discourse-historical approach (DHA). In: Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. eds. Methods for critical discourse analysis. London: Sage, pp.87–121. 126

Homosexuality in parliamentary debates

Sidorenko, E. 2008. Which way to Poland? Re-emerging from romantic unity. In: Myant, M. and Cox, T. eds. Reinventing Poland. Economic and political transformation and evolving national identity. London: Routledge, pp.109–27. Spargo, T. 1999. Foucault and queer theory. New York: Icon Books; Totem Books. Štulhofer, A. and Sandfort, T. eds. 2005. Sexuality and gender in postcommunist Eastern Europe and Russia. New York: Routledge. Szulc, Ł. 2014. The geography of LGBTQ internet studies. International Journal of Communication. 8, pp.2927–31.

127

7 Conflict and categorisation A corpus and discourse study of naming participants in forced migration Charlotte Taylor

7.1 Introduction This chapter contributes to the discussion of “Text in conflict” by discussing rhetorical ­strategies employed in naming people involved in forced migration and by investigating naming preferences in the British newspaper The Times over 200 years. The chapter aims to show how naming choices produce ideation, which then perpetuates the particular conflict situation, and how casting light on naming choices and de-naturalising them may hold potential benefits for tackling conflict in the area of anti-migration discourse. Conflict is present in this study in a number of guises given the focus on participants in forced migration. First, the people involved in migration processes are frequently moving due to physical threat of conflict in the area that they have left. Second, in many countries across Europe (and beyond), people who move across national borders are increasingly becoming the target of conflict in that moment of transition. In particular, they have become the focus of a right-wing populism, which manifests itself in nationalistic and xenophobic beliefs and rhetoric (see Wodak et al., 2013). Third, and of particular relevance from the linguistic perspective, the names that are given to these people, as a result of the second conflict, are themselves the subject of a discursive struggle. To take an example of the latter, when the Al Jazeera news network changed its style guide to note that “migrant” would not be used when “refugee” was applicable (Malone, 2015), its decision became an important news story in its own right, prompting multiple opinion pieces in other news media both aligning with and attacking Al Jazeera’s stance. Thus, the naming itself became a controversial and newsworthy topic. This controversy was reflected in the comments below the article on the Al Jazeera website in which, as illustrated in Table 7.1, readers made multiple references to the right word or term and commented on what to call people who are forced to move. Often these moves involved offering alternative terms to those discussed in the original article (“refugee” and “migrant”), ranging from sympathetic (“victim”) to derogatory (“animals”, “terrorists”, “infestation”, “invaders”). What this shows is that conflict about naming is not a merely “academic” practice, or the product of so-called “political correctness”, but a negotiation which takes place continuously, and sometimes aggressively, in everyday life. 128

Conflict and categorisation Table 7.1 Metalanguage references to naming of migrants in comments below the Al Jazeera article They are asylum seekers, a cold rts overboard before they arrive. OK, don’t The when co/ckroaches invade your kitchen, it’s They are, in the fullest sense of the Just They are no refugees in real sense of the They should just Olman Rantn gally and this is a fact and those who do this hen muslims swarm across Europe, it’s also Thr proper Across Europe, they are

word but describes everyone, from real refugees call the migrants, keep calling them refugees word “VICTIM” might be the better called an “infestation”. When muslims swarm word, “refugees”. Sadly, they’re fleeing a call them what they are: “terrorists”. word because they could stay in safe countries call them “animals” instead. Call them migrating refuges. called illegal immigrants no matter what called an “infestation”. term is “INVADERS”! called either “migrants” or “invaders”, so who

7.2 Categorisation In this section, I address why names matter and how the kinds of categorisation that are inherent in naming choices reflect and encourage conflict.

7.2.1 Framework for addressing conflict The framework used in this study combines corpus linguistics and (critical) discourse studies (Baker, 2006; Mautner, 2016; Partington et al., 2013). From the corpus linguistic side, we gain the ability to examine large numbers of texts and, in so doing, to develop a different perspective on the data. As Fairclough (1989, p.54) observes regarding the exertion of power by the media, “A single text on its own is quite insignificant: the effects of media power are cumulative, working through the repetition of particular ways of handling causality and agency, particular ways of positioning the reader, and so forth”. What corpus linguistics can offer is a way of tracking this cumulative nature and this is particularly relevant in the analysis of collocation. Collocation is a fundamental notion within corpus linguistics, and the underlying concept is perhaps best summed up by Firth (1957, p.11), who famously stated that “you shall judge a word by the company it keeps”. The Firth quote is important because it sums up not just how we understand collocation (the relationship between words), but why we are interested in collocation: knowing which words tend to go together can tell us more about the contextual meanings (including evaluative potential) of the lexical item we are particularly interested in. In this case study, this involves the kinds of associations that swirl around the different choices available for naming people who are forced to move across borders. The (critical) discourse studies perspective, the other half of a corpus and discourse study, offers both a theoretical and methodological contribution to the framework. One of the goals underpinning critical discourse studies (CDS) is to deconstruct and denaturalise hegemonic discourses so that they can be seen as viewpoints and ways of interpreting/representing a reality, rather than simply “common sense”. When we name groups of people, we are not applying a label to a pre-existing group but are actually creating groups based on our interpretations of what holds them together or sets them apart from others. The non-­naturalness of names is a logical consequence of conceptualising discourse as founded on choice. 129

Charlotte Taylor

This foundation has underpinned work in the area from the beginnings of critical linguistics, as in Fowler’s (1991, p.4) claim that “there are always different ways of saying the same thing, and they are not accidental alternatives. Differences in expression carry ideological distinction (and thus differences in representation)”. Thus, in the following section, I explore why naming choices matter, with particular reference to naming people who move.

7.2.2 Why do names matter? Tajfel and Turner (1979) propose a three-part description of how we construct our social identities. In the first stage, “social categorisation”, we identify (construct) categories of people. The second stage involves “social identification”, in which we position ourselves within a category. The third stage involves “social comparison”, in which we start to compare our group (the “us” group or in-group) with other groups; as part of the identification process, these comparisons are often unfavourable to other groups (the “them” groups, or outgroups). In part, this model helps to conceptualise why it is that the creation of groups – the process of categorisation – is so closely interwoven with conflict. The importance of naming choices is addressed in Mautner (2016, p.156), whose corpus analysis of the labels “unemployed” and “hard-working” illustrates that “the way labels […] are used reflects social attitudes, perspectives and categorisations. And the labels, in turn, shape the way in which social structures and relationships are perceived”. Thus, the principal reason why names matter is that they fulfil the central role of discourse in both reflecting and shaping perceptions of social realities. Using the corpus and discourse framework taken in this chapter, we can consider how this assertion about the dialectical nature of naming has been addressed through both the components of (critical) discourse studies and corpus linguistics. Starting with the former, social categorisation is the area that has greatly attracted attention. Although foremost in discursive psychology (e.g. Potter, 1996), this can be traced back to Bordieu’s (1991, p.223) claim that “The act of categorisation […] exercises by itself a certain power” and, from critical linguistics, Fowler’s (1991, p.94) interpretation of groups as socially constructed phenomena. Fowler (1996, p.4) claims that: Critical linguistics insists that all representation is mediated […] it challenges common sense by pointing out that something could have been represented some other way, with a very different significance. This is not, in fact, simply a question of ‘distortion’ or ‘bias’: there is not necessarily any true reality that can be unveiled by critical practice, there are simply relatively varying representations. In van Leeuwen’s subsequent work on social actors, participants and how they are named becomes a central focus of the analysis of representation. In the case of the naming choices analysed in this chapter, they are instances of “categorisation”. As van Leeuwen (2008, p.40) explains, “Social actors can be represented either in terms of their unique identity, by being nominated, or in terms of identities and functions they share with others (categorisation), and it is, again, always of interest to investigate which social actors are, in a given discourse, categorised and which nominated”. More specifically, the naming choices examined here are instances that straddle an interesting divide in types of categorisation: functionalisation and identification. According to van Leeuwen (2008, p.42), “Functionalisation occurs when social actors are referred to in terms of an activity, in terms of something they do” and “Identification occurs when social actors are defined, not in terms of what they do, but 130

Conflict and categorisation

in terms of what they, more or less permanently, or unavoidably, are”. However, crucially, van Leeuwen (2008, p.42) goes on to note that “classification categories are historically and culturally variable. What in one period or culture is represented as ‘doing’; as a more or less impermanent role, may in another be represented as ‘being’; as a more or less fixed identity”. And indeed, this is what occurs with labels associated with migration; in some cases, these refer to temporary states, to things people do; in others, the label is applied to the group permanently.1 So, “immigrant” might refer either to someone who has recently completed an act of immigration or to an individual within society who is permanently marked as “other” to a native population. With reference to corpus linguistics, the interest in collocation, the kinds of words that go together, has led to a highly specific focus on connotation, which helps to provide evidence of the extent to which meaning is not simply referential and denotational and to show that the alternative choices available will carry alternative sets of associations and evaluations. Key concepts in this area are “semantic preference” and “discourse prosody”.2 Semantic preference is understood as the tendency for a lexical item to collocate with semantically related words (Stubbs, 2001). For instance, Baker (2006) notes that “refugee” has a semantic preference for quantification in the British press as it is often pre-modified by numbers (e.g. “thousands of refugees”). Discourse prosody is a closely related concept that refers to patterns “found between a word, phrase or lemma and a set of related words that suggest a discourse” and which “focuses on the relationship of a word to speakers and hearers” (Baker, 2006, p.87). For example, Baker et al. (2013) found two discourse prosodies or patterns of use surrounding “Muslim community” in the British press. In the first, it ­co-occurs with negative emotion words such as “antagonise”, “offensive”, “upset”, “uproar”, “resentment” and “anger”, and constructs the Muslim community as “having the potential to be offended” (Baker et al., 2014, p.126). In the second, the Muslim community are presented as “separate from the rest of Britain”. This is referred to via phrases such as “non-assimilation”, “driving a wedge”, “too little understanding” and “simmering conflict” (Baker et al., 2014, p.127). As Mautner (2016, p.161) summarises, “Taken together, then, semantic preference and discourse prosody show us what kinds of social issues a particular lexical item is bound up in, and what attitudes are commonly associated with it. Importantly, collocational patterns are not merely instantiated in text, but also cling to the lexical items themselves”. This last point is important in understanding how conflict may be engendered in the media, the topic of this chapter. Collocations, and thus the evaluations that surround lexical items, are register-specific, and so what is found in one set of similar texts may not necessarily hold for another – this is, after all, how communities show their shared understandings. If a particular media source uses certain lexical items with a consistent set of collocates and thus connotations, then for their audiences those associations will “cling” to the lexical items even when they are encountered in texts elsewhere. This is the means by which so-called “dog-whistle politics” works – a speaker may use words whose meanings are seemingly neutral, yet which communicate a negative message to a target community (see, for instance, Coffin and O’Halloran, 2006).

7.2.3 Previous research on naming migrants The importance of naming (van Leuwen, 1996) within the contested area of migration discourses has been highlighted by O’Doherty and Lecouteur (2007, p.10), who follow Potter (1996) in assuming that “every description is a construct and constitutes an action that can be ascertained only by investigating the context in which the description occurs” and, 131

Charlotte Taylor

furthermore, that “In light of this, one might also expect that racist practices and discourse may be more easily masked and justified through the use of categorisations”. Thus, when addressing the issues occasioned by language choice, it is not only key to challenge the labels, but also to interrogate the categories that have been brought into being by the naming choice. From a corpus and discourse perspective, the most influential study in this area is the Lancaster group’s ESRC-funded work on refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants and migrants (RASIM – see, for example, Baker at al., 2008; Gabrielatos and Baker, 2008). As it is beyond the scope of this chapter to provide a comprehensive overview of all such research, below, I briefly summarise the principle rhetorical and persuasive patterns that have been identified in how migrants are named in public discourse. These include the avoidance of legitimising terms, the construction of polarisation and blurring of categories. The first strategy noted is the avoidance of legitimising terms where they could be used. In many ways, this is what the Al Jazeera decision, discussed previously, was concerned with. Using “migrant” where the term “refugee” was applicable meant that the people being described were being denied a label that denotes their legal status. Under the 1951 Refugee Convention (UN General Assembly), a “refugee”, who is accorded rights by the convention, is defined as someone who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country”. Research has shown how this avoidance occurs and indeed is deliberately implemented. In the Australian context, Rowe and O’Brien (2014) show how a political leader (Abbott) avoids legitimising terms such as “refugee” in favour of “boat people”, and Hodge (2015, p.125) describes how an Australian Immigration minister “instructed departmental and detention centre staff to refer publicly to asylum seekers as ‘illegal arrivals’ or ‘illegal maritime arrivals’”. The avoidance of terms that legitimate the presence of migrants has also been noted as a recurrent feature of media reporting elsewhere. For instance, Taylor (2014) reports that where “refugee” is used in the UK press it very rarely refers to those people with refugee status in the UK, instead describing displaced people in other parts of the world, such as Sri Lanka. In other words, alternative, less legitimating terms (such as “immigrant”) are used for refugees in the UK itself. Goodman et al. (2017) also investigate the UK press and show how the description of the humanitarian crisis in Mediterranean countries was briefly affected by the publication of a shocking photo of a drowned baby. In the immediate aftermath, the papers moved to prefer the naming choice “refugee”, acknowledging the suffering and rights of the people involved, before moving back to the label “migrant”, which obscures those rights. The second strategy that has been noted across different contexts of migration discourses is that of creating binary opposition through naming choices. Pickering (2001) highlights the binary nature of naming choices with the use of pre-modifiers such as “genuine” versus “non‑genuine” and “legal” versus “illegal”. This also extends to terms such as those discussed above, where “refugees” are opposed to “migrants”. This creation of (false) binary opposites is a rhetorically efficient move because, by dividing the group, one portion can be dismissed as “undeserving”, and the speaker may even be able to position themselves as protecting the “deserving” group by enacting harsh policies against the “undeserving” group (see also Van Dijk, 1997). This is demonstrated by Rowe and O’Brien (2014), who found that “genuine” and “illegal” groups of migrants were constructed in parliamentary discourse. This binary and oppositional language is not a simple reflection of real-world facts. As Rowe and 132

Conflict and categorisation

O’Brien (2014, p.179) note, “Despite it not being illegal to arrive in Australia without a valid visa and subsequently apply for asylum (Pedersen et al., 2006), IMAs [Irregular Maritime Arrivals] were continuously depicted as ‘illegal’ in the parliamentary debates in 2011”. Similarly, in Lynn and Lea’s (2003) investigation of readers’ letters in British newspapers regarding asylum seekers, one of the principal strategies identified regarded “differentiation of the other” with references to “bogus” and “genuine” applicants. They liken this to the well-known “I’m not racist, but …” strategy as speakers are able to show themselves as aligning with one part of the group while attacking the other component. A key part of this division is also that of ratio between the two parts; in most cases, the rhetorical device assumes that the “deserving” component is much smaller than the “undeserving”. Moreover, as Goodman and Speer (2007) show, this may then allow the speaker to argue that the whole group should be treated with suspicion so the “deserving” can be carefully distinguished from the “undeserving” (see the conflation strategy discussed below). An instance of this rhetoric would be a claim that all people arriving through non-regular routes should be detained to discourage and identify those who are “undeserving” – or indeed the creation of a “hostile environment” that will affect everyone. The strategy of polarisation is also frequently linked to the previous one insofar as the polarisation or creation of a binary opposition relies on one label acknowledging rights while the other does not (e.g. the recent pair of “refugees” vs “economic migrants”). Furthermore, we should note that these divisions into binary groups are by no means “natural”. Alternatives are always available. For instance, as Goodman and Speer (2007, p.180) point out: Other ways of categorising asylum seekers could be in terms of those who have fled a country in which the British army is involved and those who have not, or in terms of those who have come from ex-British colonies and those who have not. Each of these classifications would paint a very different picture of what an asylum seeker is; in particular, they would focus on the factors causing asylum seekers to leave a country, and not on the legitimacy of their claim to be here. Alongside this creation of opposition in the choice of names for describing people who move, a blurring of the terms has been observed. Again, this is illustrated by the Al Jazeera decision. One of the reasons why “migrant” is a rhetorically useful naming choice for those constructing arguments against migration is that it blurs different groups of people and yet the speaker can claim to be innocently using it as an umbrella term. Where binary oppositions are created it is often the case that the term used for the “deserving” group is more specific than the “undeserving” (e.g. “refugee” vs “migrant”); having constructed an opposition, the speakers may then re-assign the “deserving” back into the vaguer negatively connoted term. Goodman and Speer (2007) present a comprehensive overview of the strategies discussed here with reference to British media discourse. They show how “the categories ‘asylum seeker’ and ‘immigrant’ are conflated so that asylum seekers come to be presented as economic or illegal immigrants” (Goodman and Speer, 2007, p.176). O’Doherty and Lecouteur (2007, p.10) also identify this strategy in their study of discourses around migrants in Australia, concluding that: It is to be expected that as different categorisations such as “illegal immigrants”, “detainees”, and “boat people” are used in apparently interchangeable ways over 133

Charlotte Taylor

time, an increased blurring may occur between such terms. This cumulative blurring between categorisations could be viewed as constituting the formation of an additional large, vague, and unnamed categorisation, encompassing all associated smaller category labels. If the coexistence of these polarisation strategies (usually denying legitimacy of claims) and blurring of categories seems illogical, it is. The rhetorical devices aim to be convincing, not logically lucid. This is why a linguistic analysis can also help deconstruct the creation of conflict in these discourses of migration. First, we can draw out the ways in which these othering strategies create conflict. Second, we can deconstruct the rhetoric by bringing out the inadequacies of logic, rather than solely addressing the content to which there may be more resistance (see also Faloppa, 2016).

7.3 Methodology The methodology used in this chapter combines tools from corpus linguistics and (critical) discourse studies. This combination of large-scale corpus analyses with detailed discourse analysis (e.g. Baker, 2006; Baker et al., 2008; Partington et al., 2013) is a well-established approach and has been particularly well-used in the investigations of discourses in the media. However, it is only in recent times, largely thanks to the construction and availability of new corpora, that historical investigations have become increasingly possible. As such, the research in this chapter follows the work of McEnery and Baker (2017), who set out a frame for historical investigations of naming choices in their study of the language surrounding prostitution in the 17th century. The integration of historical data to the investigation of discourse is particularly important if we again consider the cumulative nature of meaning – if meaning is language in use, then we need a long view to see the emergence of particular discourses (and the suppression of alternatives). Moreover, and of particular interest to the discussions of conflict in this volume, I see the analysis of historical data as a potential means of subversion. First, because it allows us to move away from a simplistic assumption that frequency of mentions are driven by real-world events alone: by showing how shifts in frequency of mentions of migrants in the press do/do not match up with frequency of actual movement, we can investigate what really constructs the newsworthiness of particular groups. Second, we can compare the actual contemporary representations with the present-day shared recollections of how particular groups were treated (see, for instance, Kushner [2006] on how Jewish migrants were talked about at the time of arrival in the 1940s and now). One of the key contributions of a corpus and discourse approach is that it can tell us about actual language use. To take an example relating to the topic of this chapter, if we look at the terms “immigrant” and “emigrant” in the Oxford English Dictionary, we find that “immigrant”, with the meaning “One who or that which immigrates; a person who migrates into a country as a settler” was first recorded in 1787, and “emigrant”, with the meaning “One who removes from his own land to settle (permanently) in another” was first recorded in 1754. Thus, it would appear that terms emerge contemporaneously in the mid-late 18th century and this would seem to support a common-sense view that they are simply a relational pair of antonyms indicating the movement of the people as seen from the same deictic centre (“emigrants” move away from here, “immigrants” move towards here). However, if we look at the actual use, even at simply the level of frequency, a rather different view appears. Figure 7.1 displays the frequency of the related nouns “immigration” and “emigration” in the UK-based The Times newspaper over the time period 1785 to 2005. 134

Conflict and categorisation

40 35 30

immigration emigration

25 20 15 10 5

1785 1792 1799 1807 1814 1821 1828 1835 1842 1849 1856 1863 1870 1877 1884 1891 1898 1905 1942 1949 1956 1963 1970 1977 1984 1991 1998 2005

0

Figure 7.1 Raw frequency of mentions of “immigration” and “emigration” in The Times, 1785–2005

From this, we can see that what is clouded in the OED information is actual usage. The reference to movements in the nouns “immigration” and “emigration” show that although they entered the language at a similar point in time, the uptake was in no way equal. “Emigration”, in the newspaper data, is largely a 19th-century term while, in direct contrast, “immigration” belongs firmly to the 20th century. The corpus used in this study, Times Online, was created at the University of Lancaster, using the OCR (optical character recognition) files made available by the British Library. The corpus covers the period 1785 to 2011 and the current size is c. 10.5 billion words. It was analysed through Lancaster’s CQPWeb interface (Hardie, 2012).3

7.4 Naming choices In the discussion of the case study, I present a range of names that are found to be used for people who have been forced to move in the The Times over the period from 1800 to 2000 (these were identified manually in a previous stage which looked at a large number of possible terms identified from previous studies and the collocation analysis of verbs relating to human movement, and then checked in the corpus to see which were actually used). The names identified encompass a range of naming sub-categories such as “refugee”, which refers to forced migration across the entire period, and “émigré”, “boat people” and “evacuee”, which underwent a short period of semantic broadening before contracting to a historical reference, as well as names that appear only in specific periods, such as “asylum seeker”; and names that are used across the period but not consistently to refer to forced migration, such as “emigrant”.

7.4.1 Overview of naming choices As Figure 7.2 shows, there has been considerable movement in the choice of terms for describing migration over the period. The increase over time is noticeable, and this is likely to be influenced by both textual (the size of the newspaper has increased in recent times) and contextual factors (rates of immigration/emigration), in addition to cultural and political 135

Charlotte Taylor

shifts that dictate the newsworthiness of migration.4 In the following subsections, I investigate how these terms are used and who they refer to in the different time periods.

7.4.2 Stasis and shifts in meaning Two terms that occur across the entire time period, although both showing a decline in the most recent time period, are “refugees” and “emigrants”, as isolated in Figure 7.3. While “refugees” refers quite consistently to forced migration, the term ‘emigrants’ has undergone a process of semantic change, and indeed readers might be surprised to see it in

7000 EMIGRANTS

6000

ALIENS

5000

EXILES IMMIGRANTS

4000

REFUGEES MIGRANTS

3000

ÉMIGRÉ 2000

ASYLUM SEEKERS EVACUEES

1000

BOAT PEOPLE

1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

0

Figure 7.2 Raw frequency of migration-related terms in The Times, 1800–2000 7000 EMIGRANTS REFUGEES

6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000

Figure 7.3 Raw frequency of “emigrants” and “refugees” over time 136

2000

1990

1980

1970

1960

1950

1940

1930

1920

1910

1900

1890

1880

1870

1860

1850

1840

1830

1820

1810

1800

0

Conflict and categorisation Table 7.2 Collocates of “emigrants” in The Times, 1800–2000 1800

1850

1900

1950

2000

French Lift The Of France who returned Are country return To from All That Were

Intending Carry Australia To Number For vessels from The Of Out sailed sent Irish who

Intending Young Number Canada out-patients SENT Attending Information Of British Seeking Hospitals From Are Out

AUSTRALIA To CANADA FROM intending Zealand countries Britain FLOW For would-be Fares Remittances Jewish British

Slawomir Irish the of revealing Returning from America play Jewish to Russian Italian nation British

a discussion of forced migration. As mentioned above, “emigrant” may be considered the counterpart to “immigrant”, with both indicating movement as seen from the perspective of the speaker (towards and away from). However, even a relatively brief overview of the collocates of “emigrants”, as displayed in Table 7.2, shows that the meaning is more complex (items for further discussion are marked in bold). All collocates in this chapter are calculated using log likelihood and a 5 left/right span (minimum frequency of 5). Where space is limited, only the strongest are presented. Regarding nationalities, we see that “British” only emerges as a salient collocate from 1900. Prior to that, the nationality collocates are “France”, “French” and then “Irish” and “Australia”. While it could be argued that the latter pair does relate to the deictic centre of the newspaper, as these two countries were held in a colonial relationship with Britain, this is more difficult to argue for “France” and “French”. Here two things seem to be occurring. First, news reporting at that time reflected the point of view of the person sending the news report. Second, the use of the term “emigrants” at that time indicates an affective deixis; the speaker sees the French emigrants as close to their cultural centre. In the later time periods, collocates relating to nationality and religion such as “Irish” and “Jewish” indicate how the sympathetic term, “emigrant”, has become historicised. The migrants described are not primarily contemporary emigrants, but those who moved in the past, as illustrated in Table 7.3. Table 7.3 Sample co-occurrences of “Irish” and “emigrants” with time references (from The Times, 2000–2009) carried destitute Irish Irish, Scottish and English mines the careers of Irish that middle-class Irish impact of middle-class Irish

emigrants emigrants emigrants emigrants emigrants

to North America during the potato famine in 1848 at the beginning of the 20th century during the reign of Queen Victoria had on Victorian London. on 19th-century British culture.

137

Charlotte Taylor

The third point to note is the presence of “sent” in collocates from the three earlier periods. The examples show how these items point towards the use of “emigrant” as a term for forced migration in these time periods: 7.1. “This Institution has sent out as emigrants, or otherwise provided for 361 criminals” (The Times 1858) 7.2. “The whole number of orphan emigrants sent out in the course of the year was 1,600” (The Times 1858) 7.3. “The proper selection of emigrants […] they should be entirely free from any mental of bodily defect likely to impair their usefulness as settlers” (The Times 1850). Indeed, what emerges from this early period is a use of “emigrant” describing those moving away from the UK, which echoes the contemporary discourses of immigration in the UK. For instance, in Example 7.4 we see the economic resource frame: 7.4. “At the same time, the efforts making to provide an efficient amount of emigrants for the Australian colonies give unqualified satisfaction” (The Times 1852). From this brief investigation moving from collocates into concordance lines, we see that “emigrant” shifts in meaning over time and needs to be included in the discussion of labels for forced migration with reference to those early periods. Furthermore, the term is not consistently used to indicate an “us” group in either geographical or affective/evaluative senses. One way in which this kind of finding can be used in challenging contemporary xenophobia (an area of conflict) is by showing how terms change their connotations and thus do not carry “natural”, unvarying meanings. Furthermore, showing how British “emigrants” were involved in forced migration may allow us to establish connections between the “us” and “them” groups of resident populations and newcomers in the UK.

7.4.4 Avoidance of semantic broadening for sympathetic terms One of the most salient patterns noticed in the historical newspaper data concerns the way in which certain naming choices, such as “émigré”, “boat people” and “evacuee”, are tied to particular time periods in terms of both frequency and meaning. For reasons of space, here I focus on the latter two terms. Both of these indicate people involved in forced migration and therefore, in theory, should be available for use from the time they enter the language to the present day. However, as Figure 7.4 shows, this is not what occurs; in both cases, there is a sharp peak that steadily falls away. In order to find out why this occurs, we have to go below the level of frequency. Once again, the first step here is the investigation of collocates. Table 7.4 shows the strongest collocates of “evacuees” in the period 1940 to 2000. One constant across the collocates is the focus on child participants (underlined in the collocates). We can imagine how this close association with young people is likely to indicate that this is a sympathetic term for forced migrants. From 1970 onwards, we notice the presence of items such as “war” and “wartime” (in bold). Examination of the concordance lines shows that these do not refer to contemporary wars leading to forced migration but refer more specifically to the Second World War (1940s). In this context, the evacuees are usually children who were moved from urban centres in the UK to supposedly safer, often more rural, locations. Alongside this, the collocate “are” from the early decades drops 138

Conflict and categorisation

800 700

evacuees boat people

600 500 400 300 200 100

50 18 60 18 70 18 80 18 90 19 00 19 10 19 20 19 30 19 40 19 50 19 60 19 70 19 80 19 90 20 00

40

18

30

18

20

18

10

18

18

18

00

0

Figure 7.4 Raw frequency of “evacuees” and “boat people”, 1800–2000

Table 7.4 Collocates of “evacuees”, 1940–2000 1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

Gibraltar RETURN FINNISH Billeting COMFORTS children troops who returning homes FUND are evacuees have billeted

many EGYPT housing some are But only Other last they have their been were that

Tristan Cunha British da arrived children home here were American group today have are Had

Uganda Welfare Committee were return war children area British many being their they said some

Chernobyl were wartime war many homes taken themselves had been who some second board said

Were Wartime Many War Had Bosnia Child children medical Who Most As leave taken former

Reunited were wartime Aspel Bawden war Nina Hurricane Houston carrying children surviving 5 Thousands child

away while “were” continues into the later time periods (both in bold), again indicating that “evacuees” is used in connection with historical events. Rather like the use of “emigrants” with “Jewish” in contemporary data, what we have is a pattern of historicising the naming choice. “Evacuees” has increasingly become tied not just to temporary forced migration, particularly of children, but more specifically of British children during the Second World War (hence the use of “surviving”, too, in the 2000s collocates). We can test the specificity of this label by examining which nationalities other than “British” collocate with “evacuees”. Two instances are “Chernobyl” and “Bosnia”, used in 1980 and 1990 respectively. These indicate the potential for the term to be opened up to describe other groups. However, in 2000, the only geographical items refer to the US 139

Charlotte Taylor

(“Houston”, “Hurricane Nina”), and, interestingly, closer examination shows the terms here did not predominately refer to children, again suggesting the potential for application to a wider set of forced migrants. This indicates that in contemporary usage, when there is a subsequent semantic broadening of the term away from the specific group of British children in Second World War, it refers to a group close to the “us” group of the speaker (the affective deictic centre); in this case, the US.5 In this regard, we might note the absence of countries such as Afghanistan or Iraq – areas where we know there has been large scale forced migration which was intended to be temporary – in the more recent time period. Moving on to the naming choice “boat people”, there is a similar pattern of the term emerging at a defined moment in time and then dropping away, as seen in Figure 7.4. If we examine the collocates, as shown in Table 7.5, it is clear that the term is strongly associated with a specific event, that of the forced migration of people from Vietnam following the Vietnam War in the 1970s (in bold in the table).6 Once again, we have a sympathetic term (see collocates like “plight”) that has become historicised. The dominant collocates even in the more recent period refer back to a past event. In the 1990s collocates, there is evidence for some semantic broadening of the term to describe other groups of forced migrants who, as a result of conflict, have to migrate across sea (“Cuban” and “Haitian”, underlined in the table). This would indicate that a once-sympathetic term can be extended to participants other than those originally described (although it is noticeable that these are still not people moving to the UK). This broadening initially appears to continue into the 2000s collocates with “Afghan”, but closer inspection, as shown in Table 7.6, demonstrates that actually, this occurred only in a short space of time between August and November of 2001. Thus, in effect, the collocates show that the scope of “boat people” seems to contract back down to the historical referent in the last dataset. An important exception to this is indicated by the collocate “Australia”. In contrast to the UK, the term “boat people” has

Table 7.5 Collocates of “boat people”, 1970–2000 1970

1980

1990

2000

Vietnamese refugees are MORE be that

Vietnamese Hong Kong repatriation Vietnam camps refugees plight return refugee Hanoi influx arrived who arriving repatriate

Vietnamese Hong Kong repatriation Haitian Vietnam camps Hanoi exodus plight Cuban detention Malaysia repatriated return back

Vietnamese Vietnam Rescued Afghan Stance Australia Against Who were more they Are That One have ‘s

140

Conflict and categorisation Table 7.6 Concordance lines of “boat people” co-occurring with “Afghan” 2001_08_29 2001_08_29 2001_09_01 2001_09_03 2001_09_03 2001_10_08

uld accept the 438 Afghan r who will take the Afghan which rescued 438 Afghan -Borggreve Court to rule on n boat people THE Afghan en more than 400 Afghan

boat people boat people boat people boat people boat people boat people

. The asylum-seekers were resc . If anything, the stand-off and was then stranded off Austra THE Afghan boat people who a who are seeking refuge in Austra were prevented from landing on

gone through semantic broadening in the Australian context and is now used pejoratively to refer to forced migrants travelling to Australia (see previous discussion). One possible explanation for the mismatch between the British and Australian usage is that Australia was a destination country for the Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s and they were portrayed unfavourably there in some press discourse at the time. Therefore, the semantic broadening is facilitated because it does not involve a shift in evaluation. For the British press, the reporting of the first group of forced migrants described as “boat people” was sympathetic. In the UK press data, it is used nearly exclusively in the year 2001 to report on changes in the Australian context, as shown in Example 7.5: 7.5. “Court reverses Australian ban on boat people” (The Times 2001). The concentration in 2001 is particularly interesting as this indicates that it is after this period that the nascent semantic broadening ceases. In terms of absence, we might note that collocates in the 2000s do not include terms such as “Mediterranean”, although even at that point there was a pattern of forced migration involving travel by boat to European countries. Thus, it seems that sympathetic terms such as “boat people” and “evacuees” initially show potential for semantic broadening but then become fossilised and the application of them to name contemporary refugees is avoided. In terms of addressing the conflict at the textual level, it may be that showing how these fossilised terms are actually alternatives that could be used can function as a means of raising awareness of the scope for different ways of talking about migration. Furthermore, contrasting past, sympathetic reporting with contemporary critical reporting (even as indicated by the different naming choices) could be a way of opening up discussion about how people are being discursively constructed at the present time, a way of destabilising assumptions of “naturalness”.

7.5 Conclusions In the case study examined here, I believe that it is the historical dimension that holds subversive potential by allowing us to examine, and indeed exhibit, the ways in which the labels or naming choices that are used for migration in our contemporary period are not the only labels available, nor in some way immutable and “natural”. For instance, we have seen how even the term “emigrant” previously referred to forced migrants. To the linguist, the fact of language change is an obvious one, and yet the lay debates around labels for people who have to move rely on a logical base that assumes (or at least asserts) the opposite. Therefore, there is scope for using the illustrations of change as a way to critique the underpinnings of such arguments. 141

Charlotte Taylor

Perhaps one of the roles of the linguist in reducing conflict can be that of critiquing the rhetorical fallacies and flaws inherent in arguments that are not constructed from a logical base. In a way, there are two audiences for such work: the first being those who drive discourses in more overt ways, such as mass media producers, and the second being their consumers (us!). We may want to challenge the first group where we see conflict being created in text and to raise awareness in the second group who may become unconscious reproducers of hostile discourses. Indeed, a key feature of discourse prosody, discussed earlier, is that users of the language often replicate the evaluative environments unconsciously. Raising awareness of language among those who have in a sense “inherited” a hostile discourse may help denaturalise that discourse, while addressing the flawed logic in the assumptions around language use can potentially make such interactions less conflictual, allowing discussions to develop. Part of our work as linguists interested in conflict in text is destabilising assumptions about language in order to show that names do have “real-world” implications and that they are choices. One stage of this destabilisation might be using public engagement activities to show how apparently straightforward terms, such as “emigrant”, have changed in meaning and to link this to how other terms might have changed too. Understanding that British “emigrants” have not always been affluent people making a choice to move, may also help illustrate the shared ground between historical and contemporary forced migration, perhaps leading to a reduction in polarisation between “us” and “them”, a recurrent source of conflict. As we have seen, labels used to describe people who move are not static, “factual” assessments, and corpora can provide empirical evidence and thus arguments for this. We have seen how some labels, such as “evacuees” and “boat people”, resist semantic broadening in the newspaper data. These naming choices represent unchosen options in contemporary data. This is salient to discussions around naming choices as it provides a concrete challenge to the assertions of the type “I call them x because they are x” and a response to the question of “What else would I call them?”. If we aim to deescalate conflict, such as the polarised debate around migration, then these kinds of language examples can be employed to raise awareness of the ways in which language use is a choice. The historical data can inform our discussion of contemporary usage and be used in addressing the conflict around and within the discourses.

Notes 1 This has been addressed explicitly in Italy in another instance of public debate about naming choices over the use of immigrato (noun formed from past participle, indicating identification) or immigrante (noun formed from present participle, indicating functionalisation). 2 There is substantial disagreement over the naming and precise identification of the latter. See also “evaluative prosody”, which focuses more specifically on the favourable/unfavourable attitudinal associations and “semantic prosody”. The terms used here are chosen simply for their higher frequency in discourse literature. 3 I am very grateful to the University of Lancaster-based ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science (CASS) for allowing me access to The Times corpora while I was a visiting researcher there in 2016–2017. 4 At the time of writing, it is not possible to investigate the relative frequency of the terms which would take into account the size of the paper in different time periods. 5 The collocates “Uganda” and “Finnish” do not counter this trend as they are part of proper names. “Egypt” refers to British refugees expelled from Egypt. Similarly, the people moved from “Tristan de Cunha” were considered part of a British “us” group. 6 “Hong Kong” and “Malaysian” refer to the same event as destinations for the migrants. 142

Conflict and categorisation

References Baker, P. 2006. Using corpora in discourse analysis. London: Continuum. Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C., Khosravinik, M., Krzyzanowski, M., McEnery, T. and Wodak, R. 2008. A useful methodological synergy? Combining critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to examine discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press. Discourse and Society. 19(3), pp.273–306. Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C. and McEnery, A. 2013. Discourse analysis and media attitudes: the representation of Islam in the British press. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. 1991. Language and symbolic power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Coffin, C. and O’Halloran, K. 2006. The role of appraisal and corpora in detecting covert evaluation. Functions of Language. 13(1), pp.77–110. Fairclough, N. 1989. Language and power. Essex: Longman. Faloppa, F. 2016. Per un linguaggio non razzista’. In: Aime, M., Barbujani, G., Bartoli, C. and Faloppa, F. eds. Contro il razzismo: quattro ragionamenti. Turin: Einaudi, pp.69–124. Firth, J.R. 1957. Papers in linguistics, 1934–1951. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fowler, R. 1991. Language in the news: discourse and ideology in the press. London: Routledge. Fowler, R. 1996. On critical linguistics. In Caldas-Coulthard, C.R. and Coulthard, M. eds. Texts and practices: readings in critical discourse analysis. London and New York: Routledge, pp.3–14. Gabrielatos, C. and Baker, P. 2008. Fleeing, sneaking, flooding: a corpus analysis of discursive constructions of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK Press 1996–2005. Journal of English Linguistics. 36(1), pp.5–38. Goodman, S., Sirriyeh, A. and McMahon, S. 2017. The evolving (re)categorisations of refugees throughout the ‘refugee/migrant crisis’. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology. 27(2), pp.105–14. Goodman, S. and Speer, S.A. 2007. Category use in the construction of asylum seekers. Critical Discourse Studies. 4(2), pp.165–85. Hardie, A. 2012. CQPweb – combining power, flexibility and usability in a corpus analysis tool. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics. 17(3), pp.380–409. Hodge, P. 2015. A grievable life? The criminalisation and securing of asylum seeker bodies in the ‘violent frames’ of Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders. Geoforum. 58, pp.122–31. Kushner, T. 2006. Remembering refugees: then and now. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Lynn, N. and Lea, S. 2003. ‘A phantom menace and the new Apartheid’: the social construction of asylum-seekers in the United Kingdom. Discourse and Society. 14(4), pp.425–52. Malone, B. 2015.  Why Al Jazeera will not say Mediterranean ‘migrants’. Al Jazeera. [Online]. 20 August [22 May]. www.aljazeera.com/blogs/editors-blog/2015/08/al-jazeera-mediterranean-migrants150820082226309.html Mautner, G. 2016. Checks and balances: how corpus linguistics can contribute to CDA. In: Wodak, R., and Meyer, M. eds. Methods of critical discourse studies 3rd ed. London: Sage, pp.154–79. McEnery, A. and Baker, H. 2017. Corpus Linguistics and 17th-century prostitution: computational linguistics and history. London : Bloomsbury. O’Doherty, K. and Lecouteur, A. 2007. ‘Asylum seekers’, ‘boat people’ and ‘illegal immigrants’: social categorisation in the media. Australian Journal of Psychology. 59(1), pp.1–12. Partington, A., Duguid, A. and Taylor, C. 2013. Patterns and meanings in discourse: theory and practice in corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Pedersen, A., Watt, S. and Hanser, S. 2006. The role of false beliefs in the community’s and the federal government’s attitudes toward Australian asylum seekers. Australian Journal of Social Issues, The. 41(1), p.105. Pickering, S. 2001. Common sense and original deviancy: news discourses and asylum seekers in Australia. Journal of Refugee Studies. 14(2), pp.169–86. Potter, J. 1996. Discourse analysis and constructionist approaches: theoretical background. In: Richardson, J.T.E. ed. Handbook of qualitative research methods for psychology and the social sciences. Leicester: British Psychological Society, pp.125–40. 143

Charlotte Taylor

Rowe, E. and O’Brien, E. 2014. ‘Genuine’ refugees or illegitimate ‘boat people’: political constructions of asylum seekers and refugees in the Malaysia Deal debate. Australian Journal of Social Issues. 49(2), pp.171–93. Stubbs, M. 2001. Words and phrases: corpus studies of lexical semantics. Oxford: Blackwell. Tajfel, H. and Turner, J.C. 1979. An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In: Austin, W.G. and Worchel, S. eds. The social psychology of intergroup relations. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole, pp. 33–47. Taylor, C. 2014. Investigating the representation of migrants in the UK and Italian press: a crosslinguistic corpus-assisted discourse analysis’. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics. 19(3), pp.368–400. Van Dijk, T.A. 1997. Discourse as interaction in society. In Van Dijk, T.A. ed. Discourse as social interaction. London: Sage, pp.1–37. Van Leeuwen, T. 1996. The representation of social actors. In: Calsa-Coulthard, C.R. and Coulthard, M. eds. Texts and practices: readings in critical discourse analysis. London: Routledge, pp.32–70. Van Leeuwen, T. 2008. Discourse and practice: new tools for critical discourse analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wodak, R., Mral, B. and KhosraviNik, M. eds. 2013. Right-wing populism in Europe: politics and discourse. London: Bloomsbury.

144

8 Hate speech Conceptualisations, interpretations and reactions Sharon Millar

8.1 Introduction Hate speech has increasingly become a source of societal and political concern across the globe, as witnessed by recent measures and initiatives to tackle it. For instance, the Japanese Parliament introduced its first hate speech law in 2016 to deal with rising ethnic tensions, particularly directed towards residents of Korean descent; the Law Commission in India has proposed a tightening up of hate speech law because of heightened anti-minority political rhetoric; the European Commission and the major global technology companies (Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube) agreed on a code of conduct in 2016 to remove illegal hate speech from their platforms within 24 hours; the Norwegian government announced in 2017 a strategy against hateful expressions. At the same time, in the wake of political upheavals, increased migration and terrorist attacks, what might be viewed as trigger events (Burnap and Williams, 2015), there have been reports from human rights organisations and official institutions of a rise in hate incidences against minorities in many countries, including the US, the UK, Germany, France, Poland, Turkey, South Sudan, China and Russia. The internet offers a myriad of spaces where hate speech thrives and, although difficult to monitor, there are indications that incidences of hate speech online are rising (Banks, 2010; Bartlett et al., 2014; Foxman and Wolf, 2013; Gagliardone et al., 2015). It is these online environments that are attracting increasing political attention. Hate speech is clearly a global phenomenon and one which rests on some form of intergroup antagonism. Referring to online hate speech, Gagliardone et al. (2015, p.7) argue that it: is situated at the intersection of multiple tensions: it is the expression of conflicts between different groups within and across societies; it is a vivid example of how technologies with a transformative potential such as the Internet bring with them both opportunities and challenges; and it implies complex balancing between fundamental rights and principles, including freedom of expression and the defence of human dignity. Hate speech then feeds off conflict, but it also can feed into it as illustrated most strikingly by cases of genocide and atrocities in Nazi Germany, Rwanda, Kenya and the Balkans 145

Sharon Millar

(Gordon, 2017; Thompson, 2007). For example, the use of dehumanising metaphors in the media to construct outgroups as the enemy and a threat to be eliminated have been frequently observed in relation to subsequent atrocities, such as Jews being portrayed as vermin in Nazi Germany or the Tutsis as dirt or cockroaches in Rwanda during the 1990s (Gordon, 2017). In some cases, hate speech has been directly linked to ethnic violence, such as during the 2007 elections in Kenya (Halakhe, 2013). However, the notion of hate speech itself is highly controversial and is argued to be an “essentially contested concept”, characterised by continual dispute and normative disagreement (Boromisza-Habashi, 2010, p.276). There is, for instance, no accepted definition of hate speech in law and indeed, the term itself is generally not used in legislation. Brown (2017, p.565) suggests that the lack of conceptual transparency of hate speech is best tackled through a mapping of “the stunning heterogeneity of the phenomena to which it refers and as much of the vast array of different connotations it carries as possible”. Similarly, Boromisza-Habashi (2013, p.5) argues that hate speech has multiple local meanings that are contextually embedded and the objective must be to “capture the complicated cultural life of hate speech”. Acknowledging this heterogeneity and multiplicity, the aim of this chapter is to explore understandings of online hate speech and its social control from institutional and corporate perspectives. Such perspectives are important as it is these institutional and corporate actors that play a fundamental role in establishing, disseminating and enforcing norms for acceptable online communication: what may be expressed and what should be suppressed, and why. As noted by Blommaert (2007, p.2): people continuously need to observe “norms” – orders of indexicality – that are attached to a multitude of centers of authority, local as well as translocal, momentary as well as lasting. For Blommaert, norms involve indexical meaning, which “anchors language usage firmly into social and cultural patterns” (Blommaert, 2005, pp.11–12). As differing normative authorities operate at various levels of scale, for example, a parent, a school, a state, norms involve vertical dimensions of scale predicated on stratification and different power differentials. Hence, norms can index different social meanings depending on the scalar level; for example, a regional accent may be assigned a more positive value in local than national or international contexts. My concerns are with higher levels of scale – European bodies, global social media corporations and the state – and how these centres of authority construct norms for online public discourse through their textual representations of hate speech.

8.2 Hate speech as practice It is quite common to find the label “hate speech” written in scare quotes. BoromiszaHabashi (2013, p.2) explains his graphical usage as a “visual reminder that the term is not a simple window on reality”. Hate speech is not a pre-defined object that can be described, but rather its meanings must be found in language use. For example, in Hungary, he found that media debates about hate speech often revolved around the content versus the tone of expression. I will similarly adopt a practice approach, proceeding from “doing to meaning” (ibid., p.5), and avoiding the “infinite regress of definitions” that occurs when trying as an analyst to establish a definition of hate speech (Janicki, 2015, p.77). Janicki suggests that defining hate speech will ultimately prove pointless, but I would argue that institutional 146

Hate speech

attempts to secure definitions are an important part of the normative social actions surrounding hate speech. For example, Aldo Patriciello, an Italian Member of European Parliament, put forward a motion to the European Parliament in March 2017, asking for the European Commission to explore the feasibility of having a single legal definition of hate speech across EU member states. Within this practice orientation, I adopt insights from van Leeuwen’s (2008, 2016) approach to discourse as the recontextualisation of social practice. He argues that discourses, defined as “context-specific frameworks of making sense of things”, are based on social practices, but “transform” these practices through, for instance “including and excluding different things, and doing so in the service of different interests” (van Leeuwen, 2016, p.138). Actual social practices are characterised by certain elements, such as actions, actors, times, spaces, resources, and it is these that are transformed in discourses about the social practices. Discourses may not represent certain aspects of the social practice (e.g. actors may be deleted) or may “add reactions and motives to the representation of social practices” (ibid., p.144). For van Leeuwen, discourse is not the same as text, but by means of textual analysis, discourses can be identified or reconstructed on the basis of similarities and repetitions across different texts. To transfer this thinking to hate speech, we can say that hate speech and the means to counter it (such as monitoring, censorship, legal punishment) are performed social practices, discourses of hate speech and combatting hate speech represent these practices, and through examination of a variety of texts, we can find evidence of these discourses. Van Leeuwen (2008, 2016) identifies numerous components for this type of analysis, but I will focus particularly on the following: a) social actions (e.g. recognising/identifying hate speech, flagging/reporting online comments and posts, removing online content), and social actors (participants in the action); b) the transforming of social practices in discourse through deletion (not representing an aspect of a social practice) and the addition of reactions (how actors react) and motives (purposes of, and legitimations for, the action); and c) the role of times and spaces, where I will also take account of different dimensions of scale where relevant (Blommaert, 2007). The analysis requires different types of texts and I have selected a number produced by, or under the auspices of, institutional and corporate bodies operating at different scalar levels. The global level is represented by two of the global technology corporations, Facebook and Twitter, while the European level will be represented by two European organs, the Council of Europe and the European Commission. The European institutions are major social actors with regard to hate speech, but they are fundamentally different. The Council of Europe is a European human rights organisation with members from 47 countries, including the EU member states. The European Commission is an EU executive body, consisting of representatives from all 28 EU member states, and is responsible for drawing up EU legislation and implementing decisions. The national level will focus on one EU member state, Denmark, and consider how hate speech online has been interpreted as criminal or not in national case law. The choice of Denmark owes much to my participation in an EU action project (CONTACT) on hate speech, which involved collecting data in the Danish context (Assimakopoulos et al., 2017). The Council of Europe’s understandings of hate speech will primarily be investigated through Bookmarks: a manual for combating hate speech online through human rights education (Keen and Georgescu, 2016) and published in ten languages as part of the Council’s youth campaign, the No Hate Speech Movement. According to Thorbjørn Jagland, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, this campaign was “launched to reduce the acceptance of hate speech online and put an end to its ‘normalisation’” (Bookmarks, p.3). The European 147

Sharon Millar

Commission and the global technology companies will be considered together in light of the common code of conduct on hate speech agreed upon in May 2016, again because of political concerns about the extent of hate speech online. In addition to this code, Facebook and Twitter policies on hate speech will be drawn upon. Danish case law is accessed through the public database of the Office of Public Prosecutions (Anklagemyndigheden), which provides summaries of court decisions (but not transcriptions of court proceedings) and practical guidelines for law enforcement and legal professionals on how to interpret the relevant Danish legislation. While the texts come from different genres (training manuals, policy guidelines, summaries of court proceedings), they all relate to internet governance to a greater or lesser degree. They can also be seen as representing actions and reactions to hate speech in the sense that they are normative documents dealing with its social control, be this through education, awareness-raising, censorship or criminalisation. Importantly, they are all framed by international conventions on freedom of expression and human rights and hence, intertextuality is in evidence in the form of, for example, direct quoting, using similar formulations, lexical choices or arguments from the conventions and statutes. Citing all the relevant instruments is beyond the scope of this contribution, but I will point to some of the most salient. Both Article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and Article 10(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights (1950) formulate restrictions on freedom of expression in terms of protection of the rights and freedoms of others, public order or safety and morality. From a more legal perspective, Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) and Article 4 of the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (1969) sanction activities such as incitement to racial discrimination and violence or dissemination of ideas of racial superiority and hatred. The criminalisation of racist and xenophobic written, visual and other expression online that involve advocacy, promotion or incitement of hatred, discrimination and violence was introduced by the Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime, concerning the criminalisation of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems (2006). As the texts deal with hate speech, they have metalinguistic dimensions since they include reflection about, and evaluation of, language use. As such, they are not simply “reflexive activity” (Lucy, 1993, p.17) about language use, but “ideologically saturated” (Silverstein, 2003, p.196), involving moral, social and political beliefs. As noted by Cameron (2004, p.313) “metalinguistic resources seem very often to be deployed to connect various aspects of linguistic behaviour to a larger moral order”. The textual analyses will include these metalinguistic aspects, particularly in relation to two key pragmatic concepts which are commonly appealed to in hate speech discourses. These are the intention of the communicator and the effect of the expression he/she produces on the receiver, often referred to as perlocution or perlocutionary effect in the academic literature.

8.3 The Council of Europe and hate speech The Council of Europe, which is the major human rights actor in Europe with regard to combatting hate speech, locates its work at the interface between the right of freedom of expression and the need to protect the rights of vulnerable groups. For example, one of its current webpages on hate speech is embedded under “media” and “freedom of expression”, and emphasises that, in working to counter hate speech, the Council adopts: a “freedom of expression perspective” which focuses on co-operation with member states in preparing, assessing, reviewing and bringing in line with the European 148

Hate speech

Convention on Human Rights any laws and practices that place restrictions on freedom of expression. (http​s://w​ww.co​e.int​/en/w​eb/fr​eedom​-expr​essio​n/hat​e-spe​ech) The Council then legitimises its approach to hate speech as one resting on the authority given by the European Convention of Human Rights to protect freedom of expression and guard against restrictive regulation. The need to emphasise freedom of expression derives from the fact that addressing hate speech often involves the control of what may be expressed. In the preface to Bookmarks (p.3), the Secretary General of the Council of Europe adopts a legitimation strategy of authoritative argument, tinged with morality, to counter such concerns: The manual Bookmarks you have in your hands is a precious tool to stop hate speech and strengthen human rights. You may ask: ‘Why should we bother? Don’t people have the right to express themselves freely in a democratic society?’ It is true that freedom of expression is a fundamental human right that applies also to ideas that may offend, shock or disturb people. But exercising this right carries clear duties and responsibilities. Hate speech is not ‘protected’ speech; words of hate can lead to real-life crimes of hate, and such crimes have already ruined and taken the lives of too many people. The association of rights with duties and responsibilities derives from a human rights discourse that acknowledges moral duty in relation to rights (Boot, 2017) and is intensified through the association of hate speech with criminal activities. Hate speech is morally wrong and, hence, must be countered. It follows then that for Bookmarks taking action is paramount, but action is also constructed as part of the definition of hate speech. The reader is told that: Hate speech is rarely a black-and-white, yes-or-no concern. Opinions differ both over how it should be classified and over what we should do about it. Part of the reason for the difference of opinion is that these questions are seen by most people as related: if something is classed as hate speech, it seems to warrant some action. If it is not, we assume it is acceptable, or at least, that it should be tolerated. That means that the definition we use also seems to tell us when we should act. ( Bookmarks, p.148) So, defining hate speech is combined with the social action of taking (non-specified) material, real-world action. What is noteworthy is how acceptability and toleration are aligned with not being hate speech; this implicitly broadens the notion of hate speech to include all that is judged to be unacceptable or not to be tolerated and associates such expression with action. The social actors are represented as “we”, suggesting an inclusive civic responsibility. It should be borne in mind that the No Hate Speech Movement (of which Bookmarks forms a part) promotes empowerment of youth through participation in internet governance, encouraging active user regulation rather than relying on web providers. The issue of action is not new to the notion of hate speech, but the typical perspective has been that of the producer of such speech and action in the sense of speech acts, that is expressions that may in themselves constitute an action, such as threats; the act of saying/writing “I will kill you” is, in essence, a threatening act. Associated with speech acts is communicator intention (e.g. in saying/writing “I will kill you”, my intention was to threaten rather than 149

Sharon Millar

to merely express frustration or anger) and perlocutionary effect, which concerns the effect of an expression on the receiver (e.g. the person feels threatened) (see Birner [2013] for an introduction). Academic approaches to hate speech have been inspired by speech act theory (e.g. Butler, 1997; Langton, 2012; McGowan, 2009), as have institutional definitions of hate speech. Coming back to the Council of Europe’s webpage, we are told that: Hate speech has no particular definition in international human rights; it is a term used to describe broad discourse that is extremely negative and constitutes a threat to social peace. According to the Committee of Ministers, hate speech covers all forms of expressions that spread, incite, promote or justify racial hatred, xenophobia, anti-Semitism or other forms of hatred based on intolerance. Importantly, hate speech is not understood solely in terms of propositional content, which must be not simply negative but “extremely negative”. It has to include some form of action, in this case specified as spreading, inciting, promoting or justifying forms of hatred. These actions can be understood as social actions, which may involve a variety of speech acts (e.g. threats, assertions, accusations, commands, complaints, suggestions). That it is these social actions which are specified is no coincidence as they derive from an earlier definition of hate speech given by the Council of Europe in 1997 (Recommendation No. R (97) 20 of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers to Member States on “Hate Speech” (the scare quotes in the original document)). Note too that these actions which constitute hate speech must have a specific perlocutionary effect, that of constituting “a threat to social peace”. Within peace studies, social peace refers to issues of inclusion and identity, rather than security, and widens processes of peacebuilding to include non-security dimensions and social actors other than the state (Lee et al., 2016). So, from this perspective, the perlocutionary effect required for an expression to be considered hate speech must operate beyond the individual addressed by the communicator, or the individual or group targeted, to include society at large. This is similar to hate speech legislation that focuses on threats to public order; as noted by Brown (2015, p.28), such laws aim to “protect not only the people targeted by hate speech but also the wider community”. Insisting on a perlocutionary impact of threat to social peace raises the bar for an expression to be considered hate speech, but more frequently, perlocutionary effects are formulated in terms of the emotional impact on the individuals and groups addressed or targeted (denigration, humiliation, marginalisation, etc.). Bookmarks reproduces the Council of Europe’s 1997 definition and in so doing sustains an understanding of hate speech across time, 20 years, and also across medium since it now serves to define hate speech online. How the definition is to be interpreted is not directly elaborated upon, but instead, Bookmarks provides a classification of hate speech, the purpose of which is instrumental to aid the recognition of hate speech. Combatting hate speech as a social practice clearly encompasses social actions such as identifying what hate speech is and selecting an appropriate response. In Bookmarks, recognising hate speech is represented in terms of a continuum, which in itself is not unusual, but here the poles of the spectrum are labelled with the evaluative terms “bad” and “worse” (Bookmarks, p.151). The lexical choices may well be due to the focus of the manual on educating youth, but it also anchors hate speech as inherently negative and unacceptable, regardless of its legal status or intensity. What is especially revealing for my purposes is that brief examples of this spectrum are given according to some of the typical definitional components of hate speech: content and tone of expression, intent of the speaker, targets, impact of the expression. I will 150

Hate speech

illustrate with intent (intention) and impact (perlocutionary effect) as these are important if problematic notions in pragmatics (Haugh, 2008) and how they are represented in hate speech discourses could give interesting metapragmatic insights. Speaker intent is exemplified by the same phrase “wipe out gays” but written in two different contexts: “a private email to a friend – as a ‘joke’” (placed as bad on the continuum) and “someone’s Facebook page, knowing that he’s gay” (placed as worse) (Bookmarks, p.152). The latter is worse because it exemplifies “an intention to hurt” and hence it requires a different response (ibid., p.151). There are two points to be made here. One is the significance given to context in the evaluation of intention. As a metapragmatic object, intention can only be evaluated retrospectively and, without recourse to the person who produced the expression, such evaluation relies on contextual factors and plausible assumptions (Edwards, 2008). Here, pivotal factors are addressee (as member or not of a minority group) and medium (a one-to-one email correspondence versus a one to many post on a personal Facebook page). However, the examples also suggest a hierarchy of intention in that joking about a group is deemed less unacceptable than to directly hurt a member of the group. The second point is that intention to hurt (assuming “hurt” refers to emotional hurt) is not generally included in institutional definitions of hate speech so Bookmarks is expanding on official understandings. The European Court of Human Rights1 notes, from the perspective of perlocutionary effects, that information and ideas that “offend, shock or disturb” are protected by freedom of expression. Similarly, although with greater restrictions, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), a human rights monitoring body under the Council of Europe, stipulates that “satire or objectively based news reporting and analysis that merely offends, hurts or distresses” is not hate speech (ECRI, 2016, p.17). It would seem then that the perlocutionary effect of being “hurt” is not necessarily enough to be hate speech. Yet when Bookmarks (p.153) emphasises the significance of impact on others in evaluating hate speech, ideas of emotional distress are included: The actual or potential impact on individuals, groups, or society as a whole is one of the most important considerations in assessing an expression of hate, and in weighing up our response. How a person or group was in fact affected is often more important than how outsiders feel they should have been affected. For example, if a child is severely troubled by comments that others claim to be making in a “friendly” way, the actual pain will probably be more important in simply allowing those others to “express their opinions”. Actual experiences of targeted individuals and groups would seem to be part of the represented process of recognising hate speech. Yet ultimately these are effects as perceived by the social actors involved in the action of recognising. Bearing in mind that Bookmarks is about combatting hate speech through increased internet literacy, encouraging “critical thinking and information processing” (p.184), it primarily adopts a hearer/receiver-centred perspective on the communicative productions of others. A noticeable aspect in Bookmarks that has relevance for the recognition of hate speech is the association of hate speech with a range of other concepts. These are modelled as feeding into hate speech in a linear fashion: stereotypes ® prejudice ® racism ® discrimination ® hate speech ® hate crime (Bookmarks, p.168). This model reflects the plant metaphor for hate speech used to introduce the manual: hate speech as “the leaves of a particularly malicious plant, whose roots lie deep in society”. (Bookmarks, p.1). The argument that 151

Sharon Millar

stereotypes and hate speech are related is not novel; for example, Haas (2012, p.130) notes in relation to psychological work on prejudiced communication: Stereotypic talk and hate speech should be understood as existing on a continuum of prejudicial messages. Hate speech constitutes one end of this continuum with subtle, perhaps unconscious, verbal and nonverbal messages falling on the opposite side. However, this association of hate speech with stereotyping seems to have evolved into a relationship of equivalence: hate speech is negative stereotyping. This is clear, for example, from the definition of hate speech in ECRI’s Recommendation No. 15, On Combatting Hate Speech (2016, p.16) which, in addition to hate speech as “advocacy, promotion or incitement”, includes hate speech as “any harassment, insult, negative stereotyping, stigmatization or threat”. Bookmarks too encompasses what Haas refers to as “stereotypic talk” within hate speech when it addresses the identification of hate speech: The first task in the battle against hate speech online is being able to identify it when we come across it. This requires knowing what constitutes hate speech and knowing how to assess the possible impact, but it can also demand a deeper awareness of underlying messages and the ability to spot bias and prejudice where these are only implicit. ( Bookmarks, p.184) Consequently, the social action of recognising hate speech is represented as having to ask questions about a range of issues, such as “What is the intention?”, “How ‘bad’ is the expression?”, “Is it hurtful? Damaging? Dangerous?” “Are there any underlying messages?”, “is it true?” (ibid., p.184). The assumption is that these questions are not only answerable but answerable by the social actors Bookmarks is targeting, namely young internet users. Yet, for instance, identifying communicator intention is acknowledged to be notoriously difficult in the scholarly literature (Haugh, 2008). Kecskes (2014, p.32) argues that “what is actually ‘recoverable’ is hearer meaning” and this will be individual since people have “different cognitive predispositions, different commitments, different prior experiences, and different histories of use of the same words and expressions”. Similarly, decisions about the truth of propositional content, needed because “false information […] feeds prejudice against particular groups” (Bookmarks, p.184), are likely to be individual. While Bookmarks gives blueprints and examples to guide normative understandings of hate speech, there will inevitably be a strong subjective component to any endeavour in hate speech recognition. One issue that remains to be discussed is the space where social actors are expected to be agentive in tackling hate speech. Bookmarks is driven by an ideology of democracy as participatory action and, in this regard, the manual asserts that “online space is public space, and hence, all principles of a democratic society can and should apply online” (Bookmarks, p.8). This statement is noteworthy in that it discursively removes the boundary between private and public in digital contexts and its consequences for the representation of social actions surrounding hate speech need to be considered. In discussing the blurring of the public and private, Livingstone (2005, p.169) argues that the extent of their interpenetration can be assessed along three main dimensions. profit, participation and governance. Under profit, public can be understood as “disinterested” as in the public interest or the public sector whereas private refers to “self-interest” and commercial gain as in the private sector or private enterprise. Under participation, public means “connected or engaged in a shared culture” as in public opinion, public space while private deals with “individualisation” as 152

Hate speech

in private opinion and personal choice. Under governance, public concerns visibility and accountability as in the public eye, in contrast to private, which is about (rights to) privacy and being “beyond surveillance”. Applying this framework to Bookmarks, there seems to be a conflation of public and private in relation to participation and governance. Constructing online space as public space extends not only the public sphere so that private views function as public opinion, but also the reach of social actors, including the State and internet users, on the governance of these online spaces. Of course, Bookmarks strongly and repeatedly emphasises rights to a private life on the internet, but nonetheless, there remains a dilemma. Discursively erasing the idea of private online spaces for the purpose of combatting hate speech, inevitably compromises the representation of privacy rights in cyberspace. Interestingly, it seems to be the profit dimension that is a motivating factor here since private ownership of online spaces is seen to be detrimental to applying democratic principles to hate speech.

8.5 The European Commission, social media companies and hate speech Turning now from human rights education to codes and policies of regulation, a notable event occurred in May 2016, when the European Commission announced a code of conduct on countering illegal hate speech online which had been agreed with Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and YouTube. As part of this code,2 the companies vowed to remove within 24 hours illegal hate speech, defined according to the EU Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA 2008 on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law. This definition focuses exclusively on incitement, covering “all conduct publicly inciting to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin”. As such, it focuses on communicator intention rather than perlocutionary effect and sets a relatively high threshold for what is to be considered as illegal hate speech. Moreover, as the definition is taken from a decision concerning racism and xenophobia, the protected categories listed belong to that domain. This means that characteristics such as gender and sexual orientation have been deleted from the representation of hate speech in the code. The legitimation of the code of conduct is, like Bookmarks, framed within the right of freedom of expression and concerns that illegal hate speech is silencing voices and hindering participation in democratic debate. Hence regulation is positioned within an ideology of participatory democracy. This is further emphasised by other sections of the code, which go beyond illegal hate speech and bring in alternative measures and other civic actors to counter broader issues of prejudice. To this end: The IT Companies and the European Commission, recognising the value of independent counter speech against hateful rhetoric and prejudice, aim to continue their work in identifying and promoting independent counter-narratives, new ideas and initiatives and supporting educational programs that encourage critical thinking. (http​://ec​.euro​pa.eu​/just​ice/f​undam​ental​-righ​ts/fi​les/h​ate_ s​peech​_code​_of_ conduct_en.pdf) In this way, the code of conduct shares similar ideals to the human rights initiatives of the Council of Europe. Significantly, it also represents the social media companies as legitimate social actors in the identification and removal of illegal hate speech. 153

Sharon Millar

Of course, independently of the European Commission, the global technology companies do represent themselves as social actors in relation to combatting hate speech and they have their own corporate policies, although different terminology may be used; Twitter, for example, does not refer to hate speech but to “hateful conduct”. Both Twitter and Facebook use similar legitimation strategies as the Council of Europe and the European Commission: hate speech regulation is framed in terms of its effects on freedom of expression, participation and even real-world behaviours. Twitter informs its users that: Freedom of expression means little if voices are silenced because people are afraid to speak up. We do not tolerate behavior that harasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence another person’s voice. (http​s://h​elp.t​witte​r.com​/en/r​ules-​and-p​olici​es/ha​teful​-cond​uct-p​olicy​) In April 2018, in the wake of considerable criticism of its actual and represented social actions surrounding online content (discussed below), Facebook released an updated and more detailed version of their community standards, where hate speech is placed under “objectionable content”, arguing that: We do not allow hate speech on Facebook because it creates an environment of intimidation and exclusion and in some cases may promote real-world violence. (www.​faceb​ook.c​om/co​mmuni​tysta​ndard​s/obj​ectio​nable​_cont​ent/)​ By associating hate speech with a lack of safety (intimidation, fear, even violence), the companies legitimise their policies for removing it. They operate with a much lower threshold for hate speech compared with the EU code of conduct, in terms of the range of social actions represented and the protected characteristics included. Both companies extend protected characteristics to include gender, sexual orientation, disease, disability and, in the case of Twitter, age. The companies differ, however, in how they represent hate speech, bearing in mind that this is done for the user as a potential producer of hate speech. In the Twitter policy, the representation is dynamic using verbal forms, presumably because the focus is on hateful conduct. Users “may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten others” on the basis of protected characteristics (same link as above). Generalised examples of what will not be tolerated include “violent threats”, “behavior that incites fear” and “repeated and/or non-consensual slurs, epithets, racist and sexist tropes, or other content that degrades someone”. Compared with Twitter, Facebook shows a preference for what Van Leeuwen (2016, p.149) refers to as “deactivated representations” where actions are represented as “though they are entities or qualities”. In line with their location of hate speech under the link “objectionable content”, Facebook views hate speech as “a direct attack” on the basis of protected characteristics, objectivating hate speech as an entity through nominalisation (an attack versus to attack). Accordingly, what is proscribed is the action of posting such “content”. Users are told “do not post” and there then follows a sub-division of attacks into three tiers of severity: in descending order, “violent or dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion or segregation” (same link as above). The hierarchy is decontextualised, focusing on the general forms and content of the different levels of attack. For instance, at tier 1, attack includes “Any violent speech or support for death/ disease/harm” and “Dehumanizing speech”, which focuses on dehumanising metaphors relating to “filth, bacteria, disease or faeces” and “animals that are culturally perceived as intellectually or physically inferior”, as well as “reference or comparison to sub-humanity”. 154

Hate speech

Tier 2 attacks include “Statements of inferiority or an image implying a person’s or a group’s physical, mental, or moral deficiency” (e.g. “deformed”, “ugly”, “retarded”, “idiot”, “slutty”, “free riders”), “Expressions of contempt or their visual equivalent” (e.g. “I hate”, “I don’t like”, “X are the worst”) and “Expressions of disgust or their visual equivalent” (e.g. “vile”, “gross” and “cursing at a person or group of people who share protected characteristics”). Tier 3 is not detailed beyond “calls for exclusion or segregation”, but what is permitted is “criticism of immigration policies and arguments for restricting those policies”. Interestingly, slurs are included in this lowest tier of severity and, hence, racial, ethnic and sexual terms of insult are represented as less serious than, for example, swearing at members of a minority group. A notable feature of Facebook’s approach to hate speech is what is represented as an eligible target to be protected at each tier of severity. All tiers encompass individuals or groups based on the specified protected characteristics (“race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity and serious disability or disease”). However, Tier 1 is the only level that explicitly adds “immigration status”, hence giving refugees and asylum seekers recourse to protection, as well as “all subsets except those described as having carried out violent crimes or sexual offences”. The latter has to be understood in the light of the criticism Facebook received after training documents on content moderation were leaked in May 2017 and reported on by the British newspaper The Guardian3 and ProPublica, an online investigative newsroom (Angwin and Grassegger, 2017). Here it was revealed that Facebook did not include subsets of protected categories when enforcing its hate speech policy. This meant that, for example, “black children” were not eligible for protection against hate speech as they are a subset of the protected category of race, but “white men” were as both characteristics are protected (race and gender). In their new rules, all subsets will be protected (black children and white men) but this is only specified for Tier 1 attacks. Generally, social media corporations have not been forthcoming about how they implement their hate speech rules/standards. However, both Twitter and Facebook deal with “enforcement” in their policies, representing this as contextual, even though their representations of what hate speech is mainly are decontextualised. Twitter refers to the difference between viewing perceived abusive content “in isolation” and “in the context of a larger conversation”. Facebook’s approach is found in a link from the hate speech page to its “hard questions blog”, where the vice-president of the EMEA region, Richard Allan, asks, “Who Should Decide What is Hate Speech in an Online Global Community?” in a blog written in June 2017. Note that this blog was released approximately one month after the Facebook manuals on online moderation were leaked but predates the new rules on hate speech by ten months. Context is primarily discussed in geographical and cultural terms and reflects Facebook’s acknowledgement of scale when enforcing its global community standards. Allan notes how: Often the most difficult edge cases involve language that seems designed to provoke strong feelings, making the discussion even more heated — and a dispassionate look at the context (like country of speaker or audience) more important. Regional and linguistic context is often critical, as is the need to take geopolitical events into account. (http​s://n​ewsro​om.fb​.com/​news/​2017/​06/ha​rd-qu​estio​ns-ha​te-sp​eech/​) Here Allan represents Facebook as an objective, rational social actor in highly-charged contexts, taking considered decisions about the use of language in specific situations. 155

Sharon Millar

For instance, he refers to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, where slang terms traditionally used by each group to designate the other began to be reported as hate speech. Consequently: We did an internal review and concluded that they were right. We began taking both terms down, a decision that was initially unpopular on both sides because it seemed restrictive, but in the context of the conflict felt important to us. In evidence here are clear layers of represented reactions: it is first users that take action by reporting perceived hate speech, then Facebook reacts by investigating and subsequently deleting and users react to the decision. The process of enforcement is generalised in that no details are given about what an “internal review” consisted of, or on what basis conclusions were drawn, or how the targeted terms were taken down. Other examples of enforcement given follow a similar pattern of representation, although the scale may differ as in the following example, which takes a global rather than regional perspective. In relation to the migrant crisis in Europe, “feedback” suggesting that posts were “directly threatening refugees or migrants” meant that: We investigated how this material appeared globally and decided to develop new guidelines to remove calls for violence against migrants or dehumanizing references to them. Allan also relates enforcement to considerations of the intent of the user, which is assessed from the immediate context. Unlike Twitter, where it is implied that the wider conversational context will be taken into account, Facebook focuses on the specifics of the post: People’s posts on Facebook exist in the larger context of their social relationships with friends. When a post is flagged for violating our policies on hate speech, we don’t have that context, so we can only judge it based on the specific text or images shared. But the context can indicate a person’s intent, which can come into play when something is reported as hate speech. Examples of permissible intent given are satirical or humorous use “to make a point about hate speech”, reclaiming offensive terms or repeating hate speech to condemn it. What is not stated is that these examples derive from complaints made against Facebook for removing such content, although Allan does acknowledge that mistakes have been made. Both Twitter and Facebook represent enforcement as a process beginning with the reporting or flagging of content. In so doing, they include users as social actors in the process of removing hate speech from their platforms. As with Bookmarks, there is emphasis on participation and responsibility. However, as noted by van Leeuwen (2016), social practices require not only actors but resources, and Facebook, in the introduction to its community standards, directs attention to the resources that they have made available for users to take on their responsibility: We make it easy for people to report potentially breaching content, including Pages, Groups, profiles, individual content and/or comments to us for review. We also give people the option to block, unfollow or hide people and posts, so that they can control their own experience on Facebook. 156

Hate speech

In addition to reporting others in the hope of getting content taken down, individuals have also the opportunity to remove themselves from the content they do not like. Hence, Facebook is providing alternative resources for users to avoid the action of initiating the enforcement process and possible subsequent deletion of the offending content. With regard to specific resources for reporting hate speech, there appear to be developments underway. Various media sources4 report that a hate speech button was released accidentally and prematurely by Facebook in the US, meaning that users were asked “does this post contain hate speech?” for even the most innocuous of posts. When and if this particular resource will make a future appearance is not yet known. The enforcement process, however, also involves those users whose posts have been removed. As noted above, Facebook represents itself as acknowledging mistakes, which are then rectified, so user reactions to actual content removal are part of the represented enforcement process. Indeed, the Verge (a news and media network in the US) reports an interview with Mark Zuckerberg in April 2018, where he talks about the possibility of an appeals process for people who have content removed for violating community standards. Interestingly, in the light of my previous comments about the eligible spaces for hate speech control as represented by Bookmarks, the Verge states that: The CEO likens the appeal process to Facebook operating more like a government, with the goal of creating a network that “reflects more what people in the community want than what short-term-oriented shareholders might want”. (www.​theve​rge.c​om/20​18/4/​2/171​87974​/mark​-zuck​erber​gcom​munit​y-con​tent-​remov​al-ap​peal-​vox-i​nterv​iew) As in Bookmarks, there is evidence of the blurring between public and private to satisfy the demands for participatory democracy online. If online space is to be public space, it is not just the roles of users that will change, but those who own the spaces may begin to act as public social actors in relation to internet governance.

8.6 Hate speech and the courts: examples of case law in Denmark One of the criticisms directed against the EU code of conduct discussed above relates to the blurring of public and private as some view the agreement as transferring responsibility for dealing with illegal hate speech to private corporations. The EU, however, insists that it is the courts in member states that arbitrate on matters of criminal hate speech. To illustrate how the judiciary represents illegal hate speech through its interpretations of the legal provisions, I will consider some examples from Denmark.5 These have been selected to further elaborate on points raised in relation to the Council of Europe and the social media platforms, i.e. publicness, intention and content. Denmark has ratified all the relevant international and European instruments regarding freedom of expression and restrictions on that expression. The legal provision most generally used to deal with allegations of criminal hate speech is paragraph 266b of the Danish criminal code, popularly known as the “racism paragraph” (racismeparagraf). The first section reads as follows (official translation): (1) Any person who, publicly or with the intention of wider dissemination, makes a statement or imparts other information by which a group of people are threatened, insulted or degraded on account of their race, colour, national or ethnic origin, religion, 157

Sharon Millar

or sexual inclination shall be liable to a fine or to imprisonment for any term not exceeding two years. The roots of this paragraph come from legislation introduced in 1939 to protect the Jewish community in Denmark and which dealt with the dissemination of false rumours and accusations that victimised or incited to hatred on the grounds of religion, descent or citizenship. The requirement of dissemination remains, but the criterion of falseness has been dropped so the truth of the propositional content of an expression has no bearing on the interpretation of 266b. Unlike Bookmarks, the question “is it true?” is not asked. I begin with court interpretations of publicness and intention to disseminate in online settings. The Office of Public Prosecutions advises that online versions of media (newspapers, radio and tv), online debate fora, blogs and social media platforms are covered by the provision. In the case of closed, non-public Facebook profiles, an intent to disseminate must be shown through documented evidence of numbers with access to the profile and profile settings. In contrast to Bookmarks, online spaces are not by default viewed as public. A case from the District Court serves to exemplify judicial practice (Judgement 1.4.9 2014). The accused had previously been found guilty by the town court for writing the following comment on a friend’s Facebook profile: “one ought to gas Muslim children” (man burde gasse de muslimske børn). He appealed to the District court who acquitted him on the grounds of lack of evidence of intention to disseminate. The Court argued that writing on a Facebook profile is not equivalent to writing on publicly accessible webpages or blogs and that no evidence had been presented to the town court about the number of friends attached to the profile or the settings of the profiles of the friend and the accused. In addition, the Court remarked that only two people had commented on the article that had given rise to the comment. Moreover, the accused had stated that he had limited knowledge of Facebook and its affordances. In evidence are issues of horizontal scale (spread, distribution), defined by number of friends. This reliance on numbers for the evaluation of intention to disseminate is evident in other judicial judgements. For instance, in a court decision from 2014 (judgement 1.1.43), the town court emphasised that racist comments made by the accused in association with a video he/she uploaded onto a Facebook profile could potentially be shared by his/ her 92 to 100 friends. In this instance, the accused was found guilty. In another case from 2009 (judgement 1.2.9), the accused was found guilty on the grounds of the nature of the comments written on her blog, but the court added that, even though it was not her intention that her blog should be read by more than her five to six cycling friends, she “must have realized it was highly probable” (måtte have anset det for overvejende sandsynligt) that others would read it. This is an understanding of intention, which in Danish law is “probability intention” (sandsynlighedsfortsæt). It has similarities to the understanding of intention proposed by Culpeper et al. (2017) as the foreseeability of the consequences (perlocution) of an utterance. Turning from issues of intention to content, the question of generalisation arises in several cases. The Office of Public Prosecutions points to dehumanising metaphors and generalisations about criminal behaviours when exemplifying how the wording “threatened, insulted or degraded” is to be interpreted. Importantly, there is no requirement of actual perlocutionary impact on the targeted individual or group; what is decisive is that the “expressions in the concrete situation can be seen as suited to cause fear or appear insulting/degrading”. So, it is the potential of the expression to have a perlocutionary impact in a situated context that is paramount. Note too that speaker’s intention is not represented as a factor; the issue is not whether the speaker intended or did not intend to threaten, insult or degrade. Interpretation 158

Hate speech

of an expression rests on the evaluations of its potential to have an effect by those eligible to do so outside the communicative event: law enforcement and then, if the police decide to prosecute, the courts. Of course, in actual practice, it is likely that the police talk to the producers of the expressions reported and possibly those who reported them and get an insight into producer and recipient meaning. A court case from 2016 (judgement 1.1.54) serves to illustrate the approach to generalisations about criminal behaviours. The accused had written on a Facebook group profile “No thanks to mosques” (Nej tak til moskéer) the comment “Terror container!!!”. The Court found that the post “must be understood as a generalising statement that people who come to a mosque are terrorists” (måtte forstås som en generaliserende udtalelse om, at de personer, der kommer i en moské, er terrorister). For the court, the implied meaning was clear. Since it is Muslims who attend mosques, the statement was a “generalising claim about serious criminality among a group of people defined by their religion” (en generaliserende påstand om grov kriminalitet hos en gruppe af personer, der er defineret af deres tro). The accused was found guilty. The scope of a generalisation about the target group can be a deciding factor in some court decisions. A case that attracted some media attention in Denmark provides an example. In 2013, the accused, after disagreements on the board of a housing organisation about Christmas arrangements, had written on the Facebook wall of someone else the following comment: ideologien Islam er fuldt ud lige så afskyvækkende, modbydelig, undertrykkende og ­menneskefjendsk som Nazismen. Den massive indvandring af Islamister her til Danmark, er det mest ødelæggende det danske samfund har været udsat for i nyere historisk tid. (The ideology Islam is completely just as odious, disgusting, oppressive and ­misanthropic as Nazism. The massive migration of Islamists to Denmark is the most destructive thing that Danish society has been subjected to in modern times.) In 2015 (case number 1-848/2015), the town court found him guilty under paragraph 266b for posting “generalising claims which are insulting and degrading to followers of Islam” (generaliserende påstande, der er forhånende og nedværdigende overfor tilhængere af islam). In interpreting the comment, the court took account of the temporal and societal context and judged that the phrase “the ideology Islam” referred to Islam in general and not to the extreme factions. The accused argued that he was referring to the political side of Islam and that “Islamists” was a normal label for extremist groups. So here we see contestations about situated textual meaning. The case was taken to the District Court through a special appeals process and the judgment of the town court was overturned (judgement 1.4.13). This higher court considered the comments to be directed towards the ideology of Islam and Islamists and argued that the legal provision did not cover groups based on their ideology. This conclusion was reported in the media in terms of being able to criticise Islam without being considered to be racist.

8.7 Discussion: agency, accountability, authority and AI In considering how hate speech as social practice is represented in the differing texts, certain commonalities emerge and these can be seen as characterising hate speech discourse. It is very clear that the European bodies and social media platforms emphasise participation as part of the online democratic process and, in representing hate speech as a threat to that process and warranting action, they simultaneously emphasise participation as a means to 159

Sharon Millar

deal with the threat. Part of the rationale is to facilitate agency and distribute responsibility in a top-down manner so that hate speech can be tackled at grassroots level. As argued by Mitchell and Haugh (2015, p.207) in the context of interactional evaluations of impoliteness: Agency involves the socially mediated capacity to act that is afforded through 1. knowing one has the ability to act, 2. knowing that these actions may affect others (and self), and 3. knowing that one will thus be held accountable for those actions. With regard to hate speech, the institutional position is that people have to be equipped with resources to allow them to recognise the relevant behaviours and then act accordingly, be this through counterspeech reporting, or in the case of social media moderators, removing. These resources can be educational, as in greater knowledge and awareness, and technological, as in accessible means to flag and report content. There is an obvious bias towards recipients as social actors and their interpretations and evaluations of what the communicator is doing. Receivers cover a range of what Goffman (1981) refers to as participant roles, that is the roles people can have in an interaction. Reception roles may be those of addressee or bystanders or eavesdroppers in the interaction. The target talked about in an interaction has the role of figure, bearing in mind that a great deal of hate speech is about individuals and groups, but not necessarily addressed directly to them. The importance given to reception roles is unsurprising since hate speech only becomes hate speech through evaluation. In a sense, what is underway is a capacity-building enterprise, involving education in critical digital literacy and metapragmatic awareness, where internet users, depending on one’s viewpoint, are either being empowered to participate in internet governance and effect change or being trained to be normative, digital surveillance police for purposes of control. Whatever one’s stance, part of the process involves assigning users a moral authority and obligation to act. In so doing, a moral order for public discourse on the internet is being constructed, in terms of not only what may be expressed, how and about whom, but also how perceived unacceptable pragmatic behaviours can be challenged and people held to account for those behaviours. Of particular interest is how the notions of public and private are blurring in hate speech discourse as is evidenced in the texts. This means that the spaces for action have expanded as have the obligations and responsibilities of social actors. This tendency towards broadening is also seen in the representations of hate speech where definitions and exemplifications have become more encompassing in line with countermeasures that have moved beyond the criminal. There are worries that hate speech is being diluted down to become an issue of giving offence with the subsequent dangers to freedom of expression. However, the Danish legal texts still tend to construct hate speech in narrower terms. More fraught with problems is the process of regulating or enforcing standards online. As noted already, this is very dependent on the meaning-making of recipients, who typically take the first steps by reporting content. Then the authorities, such as platform moderators, the police and the courts, take over. They are faced with issues that are familiar to academic linguists. Where is the meaning to be found: in the text itself, in the assumed intentions of the communicator, in the interpretations of recipients or in a combination of all three? Recipient interpretation would seem to have less of a role in the later stages of enforcement. Facebook and the Danish courts, for example, put more emphasis on context, textual content, communicator intention and potential effects on targets and society at large than recipient meanings. 160

Hate speech

Enforcement of norms is still represented as a process with human social actors assigned differing tasks. However, the sheer quantity of content online means that non-human help is considered a viable, future solution. Certainly, there is increasing research on automatic detection of hate speech, but challenges often identified include differentiating hate speech from offensive language, detecting less explicit forms and avoiding bias in algorithms (Davidson et al., 2017). AI solutions are also likely to combine identification and deletion into one step and textual meaning may well dominate. Automatic filtering mechanisms, for instance, have been typically based on isolated words or phrases and attempts to trick them can be seen in orthographic strategies where users disguise words using spaces, ellipsis and deletion of vowels (e.g. writing the Danish word Muslimer (“Muslims”) as “mslr”).

8.8 Conclusion: conflicts of legitimacy of expression It is unlikely that hate speech as concept and practice will cease to be discursively contested given its integral links to freedom of expression. However, there are signs of a discourse about hate speech that cuts across genres and social actors to represent common ideas of legitimation, social (re)actions, spaces and resources for those (re)actions. The question is whether, in the real world, measures to counter hate speech practices can help relieve intergroup tensions and polarised identity politics. This is probably a big ask since underlying prejudices are not easily changed. For example, a study using bots to counter racist slurs on Twitter used by white men found that the racial identity of the bot influenced whether the human subjects altered their behaviour or not (Munger, 2017). An important function of countermeasures is symbolic to indicate the thresholds of acceptability that a society or community wishes to maintain and the types of behaviour that will not be legitimised. These thresholds will be variable, not always consistent and will be sources of conflict in themselves. Constraining hate speech is an exercise in meaning making and metapragmatic evaluation, but what and whose meanings are prioritised in this process will differ according to interests despite institutional attempts to standardise. Whether artificial intelligence can solve the problems and controversies remains to be seen. Finally, in the spirit of Critical Discourse Analysis, I need to ask if the discourse about hate speech gives any cause for concern. In many ways, such discourse is to be welcomed in that it addresses problems of inequality, prejudice and marginalisation. Nonetheless, from a pragmatics perspective, complex phenomena are perhaps represented as being easier to evaluate than what they are, and the broadening of hate speech, while motivated by interests to encourage wider and fairer participation in internet governance, needs to be applied thoughtfully to prevent over-policing of online spaces that may result in different forms of dominance.

Notes 1 See www.e​chr.c​oe.in​t/Doc​ument​s/FS_​Hate_​speec​h_ENG​.pdf.​ 2 See http:​//ec.​europ​a.eu/​newsr​oom/j​ust/i​tem-d​etail​.cfm?​item_​id=54​300. 3 See www.t​hegua​rdian​.com/​news/​galle​ry/20​17/ma​y/24/​hate-​speec​h-and​-anti​-migr​ant-p​osts-​faceb​ooks​rules​. 4 For instance, the BBC: www.bbc.com/news/technology-43966188. 5 The examples are taken from two documents available on the “Vidensbasen” of the Office of Public Prosecutions. Guidance on how the law is to be interpreted is given in “Hadforbrydelser” (March 2016), available from https​://vi​densb​asen.​ankla​gemyn​dighe​den.d​k/api​/port​als(6​e3025​27-f0​b3-4a​ 5e-88​9a-66​8aa67​e5491​)/Pri​nt/h/​6dfa1​9d8-1​8cc-4​7d6-b​4c4-3​bd07b​c15ec​0/VB/​a7a85​6c5-1​a4f161

Sharon Millar

4​f49-8​df5-4​a17ad​49a73​e. An overview of practice in the courts is given in “Hadforbrydelser”, En praksis oversigt (October 2016), available from https​://vi​densb​asen.​ankla​gemyn​dighe​den.d​k/h/6​ dfa19​d8-18​cc-47​d6-b4​c4-3b​d07bc​15ec0​/VB/0​adc60​f2-50​4d-42​70-bd​8c-2e​41e4f​3aee0​#ID0E​ OXAE.​ One example from 2016 can be found at https​://vi​densb​asen.​ankla​gemyn​dighe​den.d​k/h/6​ dfa19​d8-18​cc-47​d6-b4​c4-3b​d07bc​15ec0​/VB/d​55ead​39-87​a2-40​d4-97​c5-28​7ddd9​45d14​.

References Angwin, J. and Grassegger, H. 2017. Facebook’s secret censorship rules protect white men from hate speech but not black children. Available from: www.p​ropub​lica.​org/a​rticl​e/fac​ebook​-hate​spee​ch-ce​nsors​hip-i​ntern​al-do​cumen​ts-al​gorit​hms. [Accessed 3 November 2017.] Assimakopoulos, S., Baider, F. and Millar, S. 2017. Online hate speech in the European Union. A discourse-analytic perspective. Cham: Springer Open. Banks, J. 2010. Regulating speech online. International Review of Law, Computers & Technology. 24(3), pp.233–9. Bartlett, J., Reffin, J., Rumball, N. and Williamson, S. 2014. Anti-social media. London: Demos. Birner, B. 2013. Introduction to pragmatics. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell. Blommaert, J. 2005. Discourse. A critical introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blommaert, J. 2007. Sociolinguistic scales. Intercultural Pragmatics. 4(1), pp.1–19. Boot, E. 2017. Human duties and the limits of human rights discourse. Cham: Springer. Boromisza-Habashi, D. 2010. How are political concepts ‘essentially’ contested? Language & Communication. 30(4), pp.276–84. Boromisza-Habashi, D. 2013. Speaking hatefully. Culture, communication, and political action in Hungary. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Brown, A. 2015. Hate speech law: a philosophical examination. Abingdon/New York: Routledge. Brown, A. 2017. What is hate speech? Part 2: family resemblances. Law and Philosophy. 36(5), pp.561–613. Burnap, P. and Williams, M.L. 2015. Cyber hate speech on Twitter: an application of machine classification and statistical modelling for policy and decision making. Policy & Internet. 7, pp.223–42. Butler, J. 1997. Excitable speech: a politics of the performative. New York: Routledge. Cameron, D. 2004. Out of the bottle: the social life of metalanguage. In: Jaworski, A., Coupland, N. and Galasinski, D. eds. Metalanguage: social and ideological perspectives. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, pp.311–22. Culpeper, J., Iganski, P. and Sweiry, A. 2017. Linguistic impoliteness and religiously aggravated hate crime in England and Wales. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict. 5(1), pp.1–29. Davidson, T., Warmsley, D., Macy, M. and Weber, I. 2017. Automated hate speech detection and the problem of offensive language. Proceedings of the Eleventh International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2017). Available from: http:​//sdl​.soc.​corne​ll.ed​u/img​/publ​icati​ on_pd​f/hat​espee​chdet​ectio​n.pdf​. [Accessed 6 November 2017]. ECRI. 2016. General policy recommendation No15. On combating hate speech. Strasbourg: European Commission against Racism and Intolerance. Available from: www.c​oe.in​t/t/d​ghl/m​onito​ring/​ecri/​ activ​ities​/GPR/​EN/ Recom​menda​tion_​N15/R​EC-15​-2016​-015-​ENG.p​df. [Accessed 6 November 2017.] Edwards, D. 2008. Intentionality and mens rea in police interrogations: the production of actions as crimes. Intercultural Pragmatics. 5(2), pp.177–99. Foxman, A. and Wolf, C. 2013. Viral hate: containing its spread on the internet. New York: St. Martins Press. Gagliardone, I., Gal, D., Alves, D. and Martinez, G. 2015. Countering online hate speech. UNESCO: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Goffman, E. 1981. Forms of talk. University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

162

Hate speech

Gordon, G.S. 2017. Atrocity speech law: foundation, fragmentation, fruition, New York: Oxford University Press. Haas, J. 2012. Hate speech and stereotypic talk. In: Giles, H. ed. The handbook of intergroup communication. London: Routledge, pp.128–40. Halikhe, A.B. 2013 ‘R2P in practice’: ethnic violence, elections and atrocity prevention in Kenya. Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect Occasional Paper Series No4, December 2013. Haugh, M. 2008. Intention in pragmatics. Intercultural Pragmatics. 5(2), pp.99–110. Janicki, K. 2015. Language and conflict. Selected issues. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Kecskes, I. 2014. Intercultural pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keen, E. and Georgescu, M. 2016. Bookmarks A Manual for Combating Hate Speech Online through Human Rights Education. Revised edition. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Langton, R. 2012. Beyond belief: pragmatics in hate speech and pornography. In: Maitra, I. and McGowan, M.K. eds. Speech and harm: controversies over free speech. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.72–93. Lee, S., Mac Ginty, R. and Joshi, M. 2016. Social peace vs. security peace. Global Governance. 22, pp.491–512. Livingstone, S. 2005. In defence of privacy: mediating the public/private boundary at home. In: Livingstone, S. ed. Audiences and publics: when cultural engagement matters for the public sphere. Changing media – changing Europe series (2). Bristol: Intellect Books, pp.163–85. Lucy, J. 1993. Reflexive language and the human disciplines. In: Lucy, J. ed. Reflexive language: reported speech and metapragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.9–32. McGowan, M.K. 2009. Oppressive speech. Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 87(3), pp.389–407. Mitchell, N. and Haugh, M. 2015. Agency, accountability and evaluations of impoliteness. Journal of Politeness Research. 11(2), pp.207–38. Munger, K. 2017. Tweetment effects on the tweeted: experimentally reducing racist harassment. Political Behavior. 39(3), pp.629–49. Silverstein, M. 2003. Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language & Communication. 23, pp.193–229. Thompson, A. ed. 2007. The media and the Rwanda genocide. London: Pluto Press. van Leeuwen, T. 2008. Discourse and practice: new tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press. van Leeuwen, T. 2016. Discourse as the recontexualization of social practice – a guide. In: Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. eds. Methods of Critical Discourse Studies. Third edition. London: Sage, pp.137–54.

163

Section II

Interaction in conflict

9 Introduction Conflict as it happens Jim O’Driscoll

9.1 Why study interaction? This section of the handbook is about enacted conflict. It starts from the logically ­self-evident, but nevertheless crucial, fact that the actual playing-out of conflict is impossible without people “doing” it. This fact is most obvious when the entirety of a conflict can be played out in just one spate of interaction – who gets the last piece of pie, who wins this football match, whether the accused is guilty. But it should be remembered that even the most protracted and global of conflicts would not be regarded as such if it could not be reduced to likewise recognisable episodes – an article published here, a speech made there, an argument ensuing, a shot fired – all of them by recognisable individual people. In terms of scale, the studies in this section pertain to the “micro” end of the conflict spectrum. That is, they address (potential) conflict which is interpersonal in that it involves identifiable individuals talking to each other – what is often termed, following Grimshaw (1990), “conflict talk”. This is true despite the fact that some of them involve audiences that may become very large and all of whose members are not necessarily actually identified. This focus on the participants in conflict brings to the fore another observable fact: whatever the overt object of dispute, however purely physical or instrumental this might be, its conduct inevitably involves interpersonal relations. When a family, a village, a nation or a species has not enough food to eat, there is potential for conflict among its members as to who gets what. In order to avoid this potential becoming reality, the resources available need to be doled out fairly and, crucially, perceived to have been doled out fairly. These perceptions are heavily influenced by people’s feelings for and feelings about others. And when the distribution of resources is not perceived as fair, the conflict that results gets played out with attention as much to the purportedly unfair behaviour and/or immoral stance of some members or subgroups as it does to the original bone of contention. That is, it is the rightness/wrongness, fairness/unfairness and justness/unjustness of the doings and sayings of particular participants that becomes the focus. In other words, both in avoiding or managing conflict, and also in conducting it generally, interpersonal relations are central. Of course, many instances of conflict pivot around matters of direct importance for the interpersonal relations themselves. Most of the instances treated in the contributions in this 167

Jim O’Driscoll

section involve conflict of this personal kind: purportedly rude, inconsiderate or inappropriate behaviour (Haugh and Sinkeviciute, Glenn, Graham), an interruption (Haugh and Sinkeviciute), reaction to a negative assessment of appearance (Glenn). And when they are not personal, they are matters of an otherwise “micro” kind: disputes about money (Glenn, Tracy and Hodge) or about the name for a company (Schmitt and Márquez Reiter). In none of these cases does the conflict directly involve more than a few individuals. (Only in the contribution from Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen are the topics matters of wider public interest.) One might view such cases as trivial when compared with the terrible violence perpetrated on whole populations around the world right now. But the fact that even these “serious” and large-scale conflicts so often involve interpersonal issues is a justification for studying how they play out. And there is a further justification. Most conflicts occur between people or groups who expect to have dealings with each other in the future so that the relations between them are crucial in themselves. To put this perspective another way: to exist, conflict, regardless of its scale, needs both an overt object or cause and also at least two parties taking oppositional stances. Whether the object is the distribution of vital resources across whole populations or the behaviour of a single person at a particular moment, a conflict ensues when parties perceive themselves to be in opposition with respect to it and then act on that perception. When that action takes the form of language (as it nearly always does in the first instance), the expressing of this opposition invariably includes the voicing of assessments of a moral kind about the opposing party. These assessments can in turn themselves become subject to negative assessments … and so on. It is, typically, this chain that we are referring to when we describe a conflict – again of whatever scale – as “escalating”. Conflict is always “personal” in the last analysis. The studies in this section, then, afford a markedly close-up view of conflict in action. Given this perspective, most of them have much to tell us about the beginnings of conflicts. Chapters 11–12 in particular, focus sharply on its very inception. Even when, as with the study in Chapter 13, conflict is assured by the activity type and wider social context (political argument), there is a focus on those precise moments when conflict is triggered and becomes manifest. But it is not just the beginnings. As Jeffries points out in her introduction to Section I, much large-scale conflict becomes entrenched and is exacerbated precisely because people do not talk to each other (thereby facilitating the naturalisation of negative stereotyping). So, this close-up view of conflicting parties interacting can also tell us about how conflicts can be avoided (Glenn) and/or managed (Glenn, Schmitt and Márquez Reiter, Graham).

9.2 How to study interaction From the perspective outlined above, what matters as much as what is said and how (the main focus of the contributions in Section I of this Handbook) is who is saying it and when – this “when” encompassing who they are saying it to, who else is around to hear it, the exact moment at which they say it and what sort of activity is understood to be going on at the time. Investigating these interpersonal aspects of conflict necessitates approaches that facilitate the exploration of the workings of interaction in minute, even forensic, detail. For most scholars working in this area, the default field of vision, and therefore the default unit of analysis, is what has been called the encounter; that is, a spate of interaction with a recognisable beginning and end in which participants “jointly ratify one another as authorized co-sustainers of a single … focus of visual and cognitive attention” (Goffman, 1964, p.135) and are “open to each other for talk or its substitutes” (Goffman, 1967, p.144). 168

Introduction

However, from this starting focus, the lens angle typically needs to be both widened and narrowed. As regards the former, it is usually the case that an apparently single-encounter conflict is not the whole story. This may be because the behaviour witnessed in that encounter is only fully explicable in the light of previous dealings between the parties concerned and/or (as demonstrated by Schmitt and Márquez Reiter in this volume) their assumption of dealings to come. This is why the notion of context is so important to this kind of study (and is discussed in some detail in this section by Sifianou). It may also, or alternatively, be because the outcome of the encounter generates succeeding ones (the person who did not get that last piece of pie feels resentment which impacts his/her future dealings with the person who did, or there will be an appeal against the decision of the court, etc.). As Tracy and Hodge observe in their contribution, even a very clearly bounded encounter with a definitive resolution such as the decision of a court may be regarded by the disputing parties as part of an ongoing conflict (i.e. as just one episode). As for the sharper focus, there is much focussing on “moments” – specific points in an encounter when something important happens. Many of the concepts and methodologies that have been developed to achieve this focus can be grouped under the umbrella of what has become known as the field of interpersonal pragmatics (or sometimes sociopragmatics). This field studies how people get on – or do not get on – with each other when they interact. Historically, this area of study emerged from linguistic pragmatics, so that its assumed (sometimes explicit) ultimate aim was a deeper understanding of the workings of language. However, in this century, a shift has been observable whereby the ultimate aim is the understanding of the workings of human relations, with language analysis merely as the main tool for accomplishing this (see O’Driscoll, 2013a). This newer approach is obviously more suited to the exploration of conflict than the former. While studies investigating interpersonal phenomena have always been numerous in sociolinguistics and pragmatics (which studies how people make meaning in language and interaction) more generally, it cannot be denied that the single most influential work in crystallising this area as a field in its own right was the work of Brown and Levinson ([1978] 1987). Entitled Politeness: some universals in language usage, it addressed the question of why people so often do not spell out (i.e. do not say literally) what they mean. It answered this question by appealing to the notion of face (see below) and then developing this notion as part of a full-blown theory explaining why people say what they say in particular ways. Since its publication, most of its components have been widely, comprehensively and convincingly refuted on methodological and/or affective and/or conceptual and/or empirical grounds (e.g. Eelen, 2001; Kádár and Haugh, 2013; O’Driscoll, 2007; Watts, 2003). Nevertheless, many of its terms and concepts have passed into general usage in the interpersonal-pragmatic scholarly community. It is also noteworthy that to date this work remains the only true theory in the field; that is, it is the only work that offers a systematic model for predicting what people will say in a given situation. However, as Graham notes in this volume, prediction seems to be of only marginal value in understanding interpersonal behaviour in interaction. Developments in the field in the last couple of decades have not been so ambitious and have contented themselves with offering perspectives and concepts that aid in the understanding of this behaviour after it has happened. These are briefly explained in the following paragraphs.

9.2.1 Face The concept of face as a technical term was first expounded by the North American sociologist Erving Goffman ([1955] 1967), who saw it as a kind of contingent and temporary 169

Jim O’Driscoll

personal identity – contingent in that, although it describes a person’s self-esteem, it is largely dependent of how others view him/her; temporary in that it is a property of the self while interacting (rather than a person’s general, context-spanning reputation) and can be modified during interaction. When taking up this concept, Brown and Levinson (1987) played down the contingent and temporary aspects and, preferring to see it as a desire rather than an accomplishment, claimed the existence of two abiding aspects of face that they called positive face (the desire to be liked and approved of) and negative face (the desire to be unimpeded in one’s actions). Since then, scholars of interaction have found face to be an immensely useful concept. It has been widely used in empirical studies and its nature and constituents endlessly debated (see O’Driscoll, 2017 for an overview). Its value lies in the fact that it denotes neither simply a person’s self-image nor simply his/her reputation but something in between, capturing those parts of both self-image and reputation that are directly relevant in interaction and directly affected by what happens in interaction. Crucially, it is an inevitable fact of interactive life simply because in our dealings with other people, we are forced to give off impressions of what sort of person we are and to act on our impressions of others. Interactive life is all about making inferences and working hypotheses. There simply is not time to explain the totality of ourselves every time we encounter someone or to wait for them to similarly give a full account of themselves. Consequently, face is more than just an affectation or the result of an over self-conscious ego (as some lay uses of the term would lead us to believe). Equally crucially, we seem to be strongly affectively attached to our faces, as witnessed by our ability to feel embarrassment, humiliation or just mildly affronted. Face in interaction, then, is both ever-present and vulnerable, so it is not surprising that it can be appealed to as an explanation for moments of potential conflict, the beginnings of conflict and the playing out of conflict. In this section, both Haugh and Sinkeviciute and Schmitt and Márquez Reiter identify and make use of different particular aspects of face. In the latter, it is an important component of the analysis, and it is absolutely central to Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen’s analysis. Sifianou makes frequent reference to face-threats, faceprotection and face-attack, the last of these also being referred to by Graham.

9.2.2 Politeness/impoliteness and relational work From their conception of two kinds of face (see above), Brown and Levinson propose two “strategies” used by people to mitigate the threats to face that are intrinsic to many of the things they say: positive politeness attends to positive face and negative politeness to negative face. The former of these is utilised by Sifianou in her discussion of disagreeing and is also mentioned in passing by Schmitt and Marques-Reiter. Work in this field which has “moved on” from Brown and Levinson focuses not so much on what people intend by what they say and more on what they can be seen to have achieved in the course of interacting by what they say. The key notion here is evaluation of people’s behaviour as polite or impolite, appropriate or inappropriate, nice or nasty, observable by other people’s reactions to what has been said. All of the contributions in this section take up this post-facto perspective, especially that from Tracy and Hodge and that from Graham, the latter using the notion of relational work, the term preferred to politeness by Locher and Watts (2005) as a way of avoiding the value-laden judgement inherent in the everyday use of the latter term. Of central importance to conflict, of course, is the opposite of politeness. Impoliteness was first theorised by Culpeper (1996) as a simple mirror image of Brown and Levinson’s model but has since adopted the evaluative perspective as well (e.g. Culpeper, 2011). 170

Introduction

In this section, both impoliteness strategies and impoliteness evaluations are utilised at length by Haugh and Sinkeviciute in their discussion of causing offence and taking offence respectively.

9.2.3 Context Another important aspect of understanding people’s behaviour when they interact is the consideration of what sort of encounter is going on. It is the participant’s own, ultimately subjective, understanding of this that dictates their own ideas about what sort of things can and can’t, should and shouldn’t be said. Their reactions to what actually gets said are heavily coloured by these expectations. This aspect goes by many names in the literature (e.g. “frame” in Goffman, 1974, “activity type” in Levinson, 1992) but the term preferred by the two contributions in this section that address themselves squarely to specific kinds of canonically adversarial encounter (Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen on various types of political encounter and Tracy and Hodge on courtroom hearings) is “genre”. This is also the term used by Sifianou in her discussion of different levels of context. “Genre” is a term that foregrounds the nature of the discourse itself. However, as Sifianou points out, there is an important aspect of what she calls “local” context that is relevant here too and has a significant effect on the behaviour of participants. This is the precise roles, and even relative physical positions, of all those present and their relation to what is said at any one point, an issue theorised in Goffman’s (1981) notions of participation framework and production format. The former notion describes the roles of those who witness what is said and distinguishes first between ratified participants and overhearers. A good example of this significance can be found in this section in Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen’s comparison of broadcast political interviews and Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) in the British parliament. As they observe, while both are televised, the former are produced for TV viewers (i.e. they are ratified) but in the latter these viewers are in a sense accidental – the event would go on whether they are there or not, and they are not understood to have, as viewers of TV interviews have, hearing rights (i.e. they are overhearers). Goffman (1981) demonstrates that people habitually design their utterances not only for ratified participants but also for overhearers. But this difference in the hearing rights is one reason why, it can be observed, politicians at PMQs behave with less awareness of the viewers than they do when interviewed in a TV studio. Another reason is the immediate physical presence of many other participants at PMQs who, moreover, are accustomed to expressing their reactions vocally (albeit not always verbally). Those being interviewed, on the other hand, typically do so in a studio without “live” participants other than the interviewer, so that their awareness of those at the other end of the camera must be proportionally greater. To put this another way, while, as Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen show, politicians in both settings show much concern for face, at PMQs, they are more concerned about their faces with other MPs than those with the viewers. This comparison has relevance to Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen’s discussion of how conflictual discourse is conducted in parliament, especially of the apparent rowdiness of PMQs and the reputedly poor image it gives to the British public of the pettiness, and even childishness, of their politicians. Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen report on a study showing that the entry “interruption” in Hansard (the official record of what is said in parliament) has increased exponentially (by a factor of more than six) in recent decades. The televising of parliament began in 1989. What role has this advent of a TV audience had in this apparent change? In the face of the charge of shallowness, one might have expected that it would 171

Jim O’Driscoll

have caused MPs to quieten down and behave more soberly. However, the opposite appears to have happened. Perhaps instead it has made them especially anxious not to come across to the viewing public as “stuffed shirts”, too pompous and distant from the ordinary person? There is, however, another possible explanation for that spectacular increase in “interruptions”. And here we may bring in a wider aspect of context. The notion of interruption is itself value-laden (see Glenn in this section). It is possible that the “increase” may simply be a reflection of changing attitudes to what counts as an interruption on the part of the writers of Hansard (who were not always the same people throughout the period studied, and in any case, have not been trained in conversation analysis – see below) and may be one example of a perceived trend that demands greater “civility” in public life than heretofore. Those who have perceived this trend (e.g. O’Driscoll, 2013b; Tracy, 2008) argue that it should be resisted. And indeed, the section on PMQs displays a good example of the argument that impoliteness is sometimes necessary and valuable. Another aspect of participation framework is a distinction between those ratified participants who are being addressed and those who, while nevertheless fully ratified, are not. In institutionalised conflict such as that found in the British parliament and in the small claims court examined by Tracy and Hodge, there are explicit regulative rules in this regard. In both cases, there is a proscription against addressing the opposing party directly. Instead, speakers are expected to address their remarks to the “chair” (in the UK parliament, the “Speaker”, in the court, the judge). But there is an important difference. In the former case, they do so entirely ritualistically, such address not being supported by gaze or posture, which can in fact be directed squarely at the opposing party as long as they continue to refer to this party in the third person. In the small claims court, on the other hand, there is an urgent reason for litigants to “really” address the judge because it is the judge who will decide the outcome, so it is necessary for them not just to talk through the “chair” ceremonially but to make that chair understand their viewpoint. The above discussion pertains to the roles and attitudes of those who hear what is said. Also of significance to how utterances are received is the relation of the speaker to what s/he says. Goffman’s (1981) production format distinguishes three different roles in this respect: principal (being accountable for what is said), author (composing the words used) and animator (physically uttering the words). In their analysis of political interviews, Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen make use of equivocation theory, which treats the notion of principal (as “sender”) but also contains categories relevant to the immediate context of the previous utterance.

9.2.4 Conversation analysis Conversation analysis (CA) is a very specific method for studying interaction that can be placed under the umbrella of interpersonal pragmatics only with some difficulty, or at least protests from some of its practitioners. This is because it eschews (and in its more puritan forms, absolutely forbids) nebulous concepts such as face, politeness, genre and all but the most local aspects of context, dealing only in behavioural phenomena directly observable in the interaction. Its main focus is on how talk is structured. CA’s viewpoint is radically that of the participants whose talk is examined. Thus, for example, an utterance that may seem to the analyst be an act of advice-giving is only recognised as such if there is evidence in the reaction of the addressee that it has been interpreted (or “oriented to”) that way. Although its claims to empirical rigour can be contested, there is no doubt that CA offers an exemplar of attention to the minute details of talk. And indeed, most of the contributions 172

Introduction

in this section make use of aspects of its methodology. Glenn’s contribution is entirely devoted to it. Haugh and Sinkeviciute make passing reference to it explicitly and use much of its approach and terminology. They also use its very specific method of transcribing spoken data, which is designed to record all possibly relevant aspects of the talk (there being no prior assessment of what might and might not be relevant). Tracy and Hodge and Schmitt and Márquez Reiter also make use of features of CA by implication, although in both cases, their analyses are framed as a more general kind of discourse analysis. Sifianou discusses the CA perspective with reference to disagreement. There is in fact, no obvious reason why the phenomena it recognises cannot be combined with some of the approaches outlined above. Glenn’s account of how people react to being given advice, for example, in particular their tendency to resist it in various ways, could be developed with reference to face – being the recipient of advice poses obvious face threats.

9.3 The contributions in this section The rest of the chapters in this section are sequenced in a very loose sense from the most theoretical to the most empirical. Sifianou, and Haugh and Sinkeviciute both discuss behavioural phenomena with clear relevance to conflict, involving two different kinds of oppositional stance taken towards what someone has done or said. Glenn discusses the applicability to the study of conflict of one particular approach to interaction. The remaining chapters – Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen, Tracy and Hodge, Schmitt and Márquez Reiter, Graham – all examine instances of conflict, and often also its avoidance and resolution, in a variety of domains (politics, the law, business and on-line gaming) and settings (a legislative chamber, a TV studio, a small claims court and on-line). Sifianou’s focus is disagreement, which, for operational analytic purposes, she sees as a hyponym of conflict (i.e. it is one ingredient), but her contribution includes an extensive discussion of the various related terms that have been used to circumscribe some or all aspects of conflict, drawing attention to the differing styles and tenors of interaction that these terms connote and their differing, though overlapping, semantic fields. She concludes that underlying all such terms is the notion of opposition but points out that many of them seem to involve the idea that conflict additionally involves some features of the people doing the disagreeing (their personal goals and/or their emotions). Haugh and Sinkeviciute address the role of offence and thus the root origins of interpersonal conflict. They emphasise the needs to distinguish between causing offence and taking offence and illustrate their approach with detailed analyses of a phone conversation and a face-to-face encounter in a “reality” TV show. Of all the various triggers for conflict, this contribution singles out accusations as especially predictive. That this should be the case is on reflection perhaps not surprising: to express (or otherwise project) antagonism towards, dislike of or hatred for another person is one thing; but to combine this kind of stance with an assertion that that person is somehow morally lacking is another. The former alone is a bilateral matter, leaving the person’s standing with other people largely untouched. But when the latter is added, his/her reputation with the rest of the world is called into question. To accept an accusation as accurate, then, is to change one’s face for the worse in one’s future dealings with people. In the following chapter, Glenn presents a concise account of the principles and workings of conversation analysis (see above) and proceeds to a closely reasoned and level-headed discussion of its potential for use in the study of conflict. Exemplification is provided with analyses of dinner-table talk, a phone conversation and a couple arguing in a TV 173

Jim O’Driscoll

documentary. These include moments of conflict inception and conflict avoidance, as well as illustrating the trajectory of conflict. The contribution from Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen addresses political discourse, an arena in which conflict is endemic, indeed one might say constitutive, so that the focus here is on how politicians deal with it. The chapter describes and analyses their verbal behaviour in specific situations, successfully demonstrating a number of methodologies and the concept of face as a means of analysis. It also introduces some valuable discussion on the nature of political debate and its relation to conflict. Tracy and Hodge likewise examine a type of encounter in which conflict is woven into the very fabric of the situation, in this one – the small claims court – there being a clear winner and clear loser each time. They show how the genre privileges a certain kind of discourse, disadvantaging those participants who do not have facility in it. In the light of Haugh and Sinkeviciute’s identification of accusations as a major trigger of conflict, it is perhaps significant that Tracy and Hodge find disputants, in a situation whose very existence depends on the prior issuing of some sort of accusation, to be often anxious to assert their moral reasonableness. Like that of Sifianou, this chapter also discusses the different terms to denote various aspects of conflict, though this time with reference to the dimension of public versus private. Schmitt and Márquez Reiter likewise discuss these terms and, like both Sifianou and Tracy, conceive of disagreement as one ingredient of conflict but this time in the context of an analysis of a very different kind of situation. The chapter describes a conflict between the three members of a start-up company in which the complex interplay of the instrumental (making a business decision) and the interpersonal (the three having various relational histories) is clearly shown. This contribution is also valuable in demonstrating the analysis of a series of encounters. Graham examines the nature of conflict in one particular medium. Her study is located entirely in the on-line world, an arena whose propensity for hostility and aggressive verbal behaviour has become almost a cliché. Accordingly, she discusses this propensity before examining in detail the various ways in which participants deal with the interpersonal conflict which, apparently inevitably, arises and often escalates. As does Sifianou, Graham brings up the matter of the extent to which conflict can be ritualised. As her case study is of a gaming community, there is, of course, an inevitable ingredient of ritual (as in any sporting contest) but the interest here is on the extent to which often aggressive verbal exchanges around the gameplay have a ritual function. Taken together, the chapters in this section offer ample evidence of the sheer intricacy of interaction. This intricacy is both a joy and a danger. As to the former, I cannot resist quoting from one of my favourite scholars, who observes that the mutual obligations and expectations that people have when they are interacting with each other, recognised by them and continually being modified by them and modifying their behaviour form the bridge that people build to one another, allowing them to meet for a moment of talk in a communion of reciprocally sustained involvement. It is this spark, not the more obvious kinds of love, that lights up the world. (Goffman, 1967, pp.116–7) As to the latter, one can observe that this spark sometimes starts a fire. We cannot predict with certainty on which occasions such ignition will occur. But by studying the intricacy of interaction closely, we can identify hot spots and also learn of ways to douse the flames. 174

Introduction

References Brown, P. and Levinson, S.C. 1987 [1978]. Politeness: some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Main body of which first published in Goody, E. ed. Questions and politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.) Culpeper, J. 1996. Towards an anatomy of impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics. 25, pp.349–67. Culpeper, J. 2011. Impoliteness: using language to cause offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eelen, G. 2001. A critique of politeness theories. Manchester: St Jerome. Goffman, E. 1964. The neglected situation. American Anthropologist. 66(6), pp.133–6. Goffman, E. 1967. Interaction ritual: essays on face-to-face behaviour. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Goffman, E. 1974. Frame analysis: an essay on the organization of experience. New York: Harper & Row. Goffman, E. 1981. Forms of talk. London: Blackwell. Grimshaw, A.D. ed. 1990. Conflict talk: sociolinguistic investigations in conversations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kádár, D.Z. and Haugh, M. 2013. Understanding politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levinson, S.C. 1992. Activity types and language. In: Drew, P. and Heritage, J. eds. Talk at work: interaction in institutional settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.66–100. Locher, M.A. and Watts, R.J. 2005. Politeness theory and relational work. Journal of Politeness Research. 1(1), pp.9–33. O’Driscoll, J. 2007. Brown & Levinson’s face: how it can – and can’t – help us to understand interaction across cultures. Intercultural Pragmatics. 4(4), pp.463–92. O’Driscoll, J. 2013a. The role of language in interpersonal pragmatics. Journal of Pragmatics. 58, pp.170–81. O’Driscoll, J. 2013b. Situational transformations: the offensive-izing of an email message and the public-ization of offensiveness. Pragmatics & Society. 4(3), pp.369–87. O’Driscoll, J. 2017. Face and (im)politeness. In: Culpeper, J., Haugh, M. and Kádár, D.Z. eds. The Palgrave handbook of linguistic (im)politeness. London: Palgrave MacMillan, pp.89–119. Tracy, K. 2008. ‘Reasonable hostility’: situation–appropriate face attack. Journal of Politeness Research. 4, pp.169–91. Watts, R.J. 2003. Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

175

10 Conflict, disagreement and (im)politeness Maria Sifianou

10.1 Introduction In popular parlance, “conflict” has been associated with tensions surrounding decisions on various issues and in general terms, it “has been stretched and molded to refer to any discord in any social situation” (Jeong, 2008, p.6). Attempting to illustrate the complexity of conflict, Hartwick and Barki (2002, p.4) state that some scholars equate conflict with disagreement or differences of opinion; some see it as antagonistic or hostile behavior; others view it as a mixture of negative emotions like anxiety, jealousy, frustration and anger; and still others treat conflict as some combination of the above. Thus, broadly speaking, in many social and cultural contexts (see Section 10.4), conflict has been associated with disagreement but mostly with “destructive, disruptive, hostile, and aggressive behavior” (Adams and Laursen, 2007; Leung, 2002, p.1; Teven, Richmond and McCroskey, 1998). Despite such negative associations with disruption in social relations, some scholars describe conflict as in-built in human relationships, such that it cannot be eliminated (see, for example, Janicki, 2015, p.1; Jeong, 2008, p.1). It is viewed as “an inevitable fact of life” (Putnam, 2001, p.10) and as “fundamental to the construction of social reality and of social relations” (Briggs, 1996, quoted in Pagliai, 2010b, p.96). Moreover, some argue that rather than being harmful, conflict may be beneficial within teams and family under certain circumstances (Adams and Laursen, 2007; Jehn, 1995). Simmel (1908/1955) is widely quoted as a supporter of the positivity of conflict. For instance, he views the expression of conflict as a means of avoiding more serious communication breakdowns in cases of eruption of suppressed conflicts (quoted in Kakavá, 1993, p.43), and also as a means of sociation, that is, the opposite of appearing indifferent (Nelson, 2001, p.13). Tannen (2002, p.1653) sees both positive and negative aspects in conflict and verbal aggression as they “can be used in interaction to negotiate either power, or solidarity, or both at once”. They can be “destructive power plays” but can also “function constructively to create rapport”. 176

Conflict, disagreement and (im)politeness

As sociolinguists have shown for years, disagreement, too, need not be seen only in negative terms, as it may not necessarily result in conflict but can, on the contrary, be a sign of intimacy and sociability (Kakavá, 1993; Langlotz and Locher, 2012; Locher, 2004; Schiffrin, 1984) and may not destroy but rather strengthen interlocutors’ relationships (Georgakopoulou, 2001). Similarly, Kienpointner (1997, p.283) contends that “[c]ooperative rudeness fulfills a number of important social functions and quite often stabilises rather than endangers social relationships”. This breadth in understandings of conflict reflects the fact that, for a long time, conflict has been of concern to scholars from various disciplines, such as philosophy, social psychology, sociology, conflict and business studies among others. Moreover, in addition to being a theoretical construct, conflict is a common, every day, abstract term and hence bound to vary in its meaning. As Garcés-Conejos Blitvich (2018) observes, the nomenclature along with first- and second-order uses of the terms employed to describe the phenomena under study complicate their understanding (see also Nelson, 2001). In linguistics, work influenced by speech act theory and mostly by Grice’s principle of cooperation (and attendant maxims) marginalised interest in what was seen as disruptive, aggressive and conflictual behaviour (see, for example, Pagliai, 2010a). However, the relatively recent scholarly interest in impoliteness, especially its on-line manifestations, has kindled research on the various aspects of conflict (see, for example, Bou-Franch and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2014). The aim of this paper is to address some of the issues raised above and suggest that a multimodal (D’Errico et al., 2015; Stadler, 2006) and a multidisciplinary approach is needed for better understanding the function of conflict and disagreement. In other words, they cannot be treated as merely linguistic phenomena, since they are closely linked to feelings and even simple feelings of like and dislike may affect their development and outcome (Allwood, 1993). More generally, as non-verbal behaviour (including prosodic features) contributes significantly to the expression and interpretation of feelings, politeness and conflict, it should not be ignored. Understanding disagreement and conflict requires much more than single utterances or even complete exchanges since their source may be located beyond the current exchange. In addition, the situational and socio-cultural contexts in which they occur are deemed very significant as there are contexts and cultures which are more tolerant and even encourage conflict and disagreement and others where they are less appropriate. Since disagreement and conflict are complex and multifunctional phenomena, it is hard, if at all possible, to provide all-encompassing definitions. In the following section, I will try to explore the various definitions that have been suggested for conflict and related terms and their relationship.

10.2 On defining conflict and related notions As is usually the case with definitions, scholars do not agree as to how conflict should be best defined and what its relationship is with other related notions. Such related notions include “disagreement”, “argument” (Maynard, 1985; Muntigl and Turnbull, 1998; Schiffrin, 1984, 1985), “debate” (Johnson and Johnson, 1985), “dispute” (Corsaro and Rizzo, 1990; Dersley and Wootton, 2001; Goodwin, 2006; Kotthoff, 1993), “confrontation” (Hutchby, 1992) and “opposition” (Kakava, 2002), among others. Tannen (2002, p.1562) uses the term “agonism” to refer not to “conflict, disagreement, or disputes per se, but rather to ritualized adversativeness” (emphasis in the original) in academic discourse. Hutchby (1992, p.244) prefers the term “confrontation talk” for “a type of conflict talk which we might call argument ‘for its own sake’” frequently emerging in the discourse of talk radio shows. For his 177

Maria Sifianou

part, Nelson (2001, p.7) argues that dispute is a type of oppositional interaction and that, in certain contexts, dispute can be used as a synonym of controversy, argument or debate, that is, as a kind of verbal competition but also as a synonym of quarrel, that is, exchanges involving hostility. He further adds that dispute is largely similar to confrontation. As Jeong (2008, p.6) notes, even though conflict and dispute have been used synonymously, conflict entails “a serious nature of challenges” whereas dispute is related to management issues. All these terms are related in that they involve some kind of opposition which can be brief and mild or prolonged, intense and even hostile. Argument is a frequently used term as it has a long history in the tradition of argumentation (Antaki, 1994). Goodwin (2006, p.446) notes that a central feature characterising an argument is the marked absence of agreement evident in the opposition. Relatedly, Muntigl and Turnbull (1998, p.225) see disagreement as basic to argument since it is understood as “the conversational interactivity of making claims, disagreeing with claims, countering disagreements, and the processes by which such disagreements arise, are dealt with, and resolved”. In addition, they see disputing, conflict talk, verbal discord and oppositional argument, among others, as terms referring to similar activities. Goodwin (2006, p.446) further notes that arguments are characterised by rapid shifts from one topic to another whereas disputes tend to sustain a single topic of contention. For Schegloff (2007, p.73), it appears that arguing is closely related to fighting. The variable use of these terms has led scholars to draw distinctions and modify the terms they use. For instance, some have talked about “strong” and “weak” disagreements (e.g. Pomerantz, 1984). Leech (1983, p.183) talks about “partial” and “complete” disagreements, Angouri (2012) discusses “marked” and “unmarked” disagreement and Langlotz and Locher (2012) explore “conflictual disagreements” (i.e. unsupportive disagreements) in on-line data and also “sociable arguments” (Locher, 2004). Luzón (2013, p.113) suggests the term “conflictual act” for “any discourse act where disagreement, criticism or dissension is explicitly marked by different discursive or lexical devices”. Using structural and pragmatic criteria, Muntigl and Turnbull (1998) identify four types of disagreements in their corpus of naturally occurring conversations: “irrelevancy claims”, “challenges”, “contradictions” and “counterclaims”. Scott (2002) distinguishes between “backgrounded”, “mixed”, and “foregrounded” disagreements based on relative explicitness and degree of hostility. She further contends that within foregrounded disagreements, three patterns emerged in her data from adult American professionals: “collegial disagreements”, “personal challenge disagreements” and “personal attack disagreements”. Allwood and Ahlsén (2015) identify seven possible taxonomies of conflict including “overt” and “covert” conflicts and “normative” and “descriptive” conflicts, among others. Honda (2002, p.574) distinguishes between two senses of conflict, a narrow and a broad one. The former relates to conflict as “a speech activity that consists of the manifestation of opposition (including exchanges of opposition termed ‘confrontation’)” and the latter to conflict as “a process of opposition which includes not only the manifestation of opposition, but the whole process of inducement, initiation, development, and management of opposition”. Hartwick and Barki (2002, p.11) refer to a common distinction between cognitive and affective conflict: the former referring to “task-oriented conflict that focuses on judgmental differences about how to achieve common objectives” and the latter being defined as “conflict that involves personalized, individually-oriented disputes”.1 Despite its being difficult to always clearly distinguish between the two, this seems to be a significant distinction and is also found in research on disagreement as content- and relationship-oriented disagreement (Koester, 2017, p.274). Infante and Rancer (1996) discern two traits in aggressive 178

Conflict, disagreement and (im)politeness

communication: (a) attack on the position taken by others, which they call “argumentativeness” and (b) attack on the other's self-concept, which they call “verbal aggressiveness”. One may assume that attacks on the position taken by one's interlocutor will be evaluated less negatively by the recipient than those on his/her overall self-concept. To emphasise interactivity, some scholars prefer broader terms like “conflict talk” (Grimshaw, 1990; Honda, 2002; Norrick and Spitz, 2008) and “oppositional talk” (BardoviHarlig and Salsbury, 2004), that is, cases in which interlocutors “express opposing views” through “disagreements, challenges, denials, accusations, threats, and insults” (BardoviHarlig and Salsbury, 2004, p.200). Another related broad term is that of “verbal aggression” which has been a staple term in im/politeness research (Dynel, 2015, p.339). Most researchers agree that all these terms are related, the underlying unifying notion being that of opposition, but disagree as to whether they are primarily positive or negative phenomena. To be fair, in most cases, there is a consensus that terms such as conflict have “the potential to be productive or destructive” (see Nelson 2001, p.3) and differences relate mostly to the focus of what is perceived as dominant in specific settings. Even though broader terms, such as “conflict talk” and “oppositional talk”, highlight the idea that conflict or opposition involves conversational interactivity rather than single acts, this should not be taken to mean that single terms like “dispute”, “argument” or “disagreement” refer to single acts. For instance, viewing disagreements as single acts is one way of conceptualising them as when we talk, for instance, of the speech act of disagreeing. However, disagreement also refers to a situated activity, interactionally managed by interlocutors. Kakavá (2002, p.1539) contends that opposition is a general category under which disagreement falls and argues that more than two oppositional turns constitute an argument or a dispute. For their part, Norrick and Spitz (2008, p.1661) state that “a dialogue counts as a conflict sequence only when participants contradict each other in three consecutive turns”. Moreover, these broader terms (e.g. “conflict talk” and “oppositional talk”) are seen as umbrella terms which can be manifested through various means. For instance, Garcés-Conejos Blitvich (2018) sees conflict talk as a more comprehensive term to capture a whole range of phenomena spanning from disagreement to hate speech. Taking this a step further, Koester (2017, p.274) argues that conflict should be distinguished from conflict talk and quoting Gruber (1996), she states that verbal conflict is one of the ways through which conflict can be realised and, therefore, the term “disagreement sequence” is preferred (see also Kotthoff, 1993). The view that, in contrast to disagreement, conflict extends over a number of turns is discussed in the relevant literature (see, e.g. Koester, 2017). However, as Nguyen (2011, p.1768) argues, in multiparty interactions in particular, “conflict talk is by no means a neatly bound unit: it emerges incipiently and gradually over a series of turns” and further adds that “the classic three moves in conflict initiation – arguable move, initial opposition, and counter-opposition (Maynard, 1985; Vuchinich, 1986, 1990) – are not always discrete but may intersperse with one another, especially when both nonverbal and verbal actions are taken into consideration”. In other words, she contends that an opposition may extend over a number of turns and involve both verbal and non-verbal (e.g. eye contact, gestures) actions. Moreover, even a resolved conflict may influence/be oriented to in the ensuing interaction or may be renewed later. In this last case, the number of moves may be reduced. As it transpires from the above discussion, some scholars use these terms without a definition and others use one or more of these terms to define some other, this being especially evident in the case of conflict and disagreement. Georgakopoulou (2001, p.1882) makes this point stating that argument, conflict talk and dispute are seen in the relevant literature as concepts closely related to disagreements and are either used interchangeably (see also 179

Maria Sifianou

Dynel, 2015, p.340) or their boundaries are left confusingly fuzzy. Along similar lines, Angouri (2012, p.1566) contends that “[d]isagreement and conflict are conceptually related but the exact relationship between them is not always explicitly discussed”. My aim here is not to provide definitions for these conceptually interrelated terms or try to disentangle their complex interrelationship and “inconsistent” use but simply problematise the issue. Part of the apparent inconsistency is rather forcefully attributed by Nelson (2001) to the polysemy of these terms which are further examined outside specific contexts of use, thus leading to confusion. More specifically, for Nelson (2001, p.4), this confusion results from the conflation of the various senses of the term ‘conflict’ with each other and with senses of “competition”, “dispute” and “negotiation”. From a broader philosophical perspective, Janicki (2017) argues that since word meanings are arbitrary and conventional, it is not only difficult but also futile to invest effort in attempting to provide all-encompassing definitions. One could argue here that conventionality might facilitate the provision of overarching definitions but what definitely makes such a task complex is that there are cultural, group, gender and even individual differences in perceptions as to whether conflict should be expressed (Allwood, 1993, p.4) or whether conflict has occurred in a specific interaction.2 Georgakopoulou (2012, p.1624) notes in her epilogue to the Journal of Pragmatics special issue on disagreements “the extra resistance of the concept of disagreement as to any consensus on what it actually is, let alone how it is identified and analysed”, an observation that could be equally valid for the concept of ‘conflict’ since it draws from various disciplinary traditions (e.g. social psychology, sociology, conflict studies) and research interests. This has implications as to how conflict is understood and defined.

10.3 Conflict and disagreement Perusing the relevant literature and even some of the above definitions, one can easily discern the close relationship attributed to conflict and disagreement, the two being either interchangeably used or conflict being defined in terms of disagreement, a common assumption being that disagreement leads to conflict. This is boldly stated by Kennedy and Pronin (2008) in the opening sentence of their abstract, which reads: “It is almost a truism that disagreement produces conflict”. Kakavá (1993, p.36) shares this view, but rightly expresses it more cautiously when she says: “Since disagreement can lead to a form of confrontation that may develop into an argument or dispute, disagreement can be seen as a potential generator of conflict”, especially when there is low affinity between interlocutors (McCroskey and Wheeless 1976, cited in Teven, McCroskey and Richmond, 1998, p.210). Jones (2001, p.90) states that “[m]ost conflict scholars believe that conflict is a disagreement between two or more parties who perceive incompatible goals or means of achieving those goals”. Closely related is Putnam’s (2001, p.11) definition which views conflict as referring “to the expressed disagreements between people who see incompatible goals and potential interference in achieving these goals”. Waldron and Applegate (1994, quoted in Locher, 2004, p.94) clearly define disagreement as ‘‘a form of conflict […] taxing communication events’’. However, such conceptualisations should not be taken to mean that disagreement and conflict fall on a continuum with the former always being the antecedent, as Angouri (2012, p.1566) argues. Attempts at distinguishing between the two (i.e. conflict and disagreement) can be found in McCroskey and Wheeless (1976, cited in Teven, McCroskey and Richmond, 1998, p.210), who define disagreement as “differences of opinion on issues” and associate conflict with negative features, such as “competition, hostility, suspicion, distrust and self-perpetuation”. Negative aspects are also attributed to conflict by Kennedy and Pronin (2008, p.834) who 180

Conflict, disagreement and (im)politeness

state that they view conflict “as the state of opposition, quarreling, strife, or competition” and disagreement “as a difference between parties in their views or opinions”, adding that such differences may (but may not) lead to conflict. Angouri’s (2012, pp.1567, 1576) view is similar since she advocates that conflict is negatively marked whereas disagreement refers to “opposing views” or “deviating opinions” and as such they are not inherently bonding or damaging to the interlocutors. Another such attempt at distinguishing between disagreement and conflict is that of Knutson et al. (1979, cited in Teven, McCroskey and Richmond, 1998, p.210) who defined disagreement as “a disagreement of opinion on substantive or procedural matters” and conflict as “disagreement plus negative interpersonal affect”. Hartwick and Barki (2002) report on three properties that have been found to underlie conflict: disagreement, interference (with the attainment of one’s goals) and negative emotions. They argue that all three should be present to label an event as conflictual but note that scholars differ as to whether they deem sufficient the presence of one, two or all three of these. They (2002, p.8) illustrate this with cases they call “pure” disagreements where opinions may differ, but such differences are not very important to the individuals concerned or they are easily solvable and as such they do not lead to conflict since, as they add, just “because people disagree does not mean that they are in conflict”. The significance of emotion in conflict and disagreement is brought up in a number of studies. Bonelli (2015) argues that not only different opinions but also the lack of “interpersonal convergence” can become sources of conflict, that is, when interlocutors fail to relate emotionally both linguistically and paralinguistically. Kienpointner (2008) also underlines the significance of accounting for emotions in impoliteness research since they are seen as a vital factor influencing the overall climate of any interaction. Locher and Langlotz (2008) and Langlotz and Locher (2012) are among the first to systematically explore emotions in discourse and argue for the neglected significance of emotions, especially when analysing conflictual discourse. Langltoz and Locher (2012, p.1591) argue that conflictual disagreement incites negative feelings such as annoyance, irritation, anger or contempt directed at one’s interlocutor. More specifically, the authors discuss the role of emotions in construing disagreements and argue that they are crucial in understanding their quality. The significance of such negative emotional stances is also evident in that they may even be extraneous to the particular situation and may not be a reaction but the source of a disagreement. Relatedly, Adams and Laursen (2007, p.2) argue for the importance of the kind of relationship in which conflict and disagreement occur because in supportive relationships, conflict can be beneficial whereas in unsupportive ones, it can be detrimental. Thus, in my view, two issues arise here, which are worthy of consideration for the analysis of conflict and disagreement: (a) the contribution of emotions which points to the necessity of a multidisciplinary and a multimodal3 approach and relatedly (b) the exploration of their source and development not only in relation to the current interaction but also in relation to previous ones since any current disagreement or conflict may stem from previous ones. More generally, a current disagreement or conflict may stem from an overall disaffiliative relationship and/or may foster conflict in the future (Sifianou, 2012). These claims point to the significance of context in understanding disagreement and conflict, which will be discussed in the following section.

10.4 The significance of context As Mey (2011, p.172) states, “there is no text without context” and adds that “speech acts, in themselves, are not ‘real’: they have to be situated in reality, that is, in the context in which 181

Maria Sifianou

they were produced”, a statement which does not apply only to speech acts. Understanding conflict and disagreement necessitates consideration of both the linguistic and extra-­ linguistic context in which an interaction occurs. Context itself is a broad, multifaceted and much-debated issue (see, for example, Fetzer and Oishi, 2011; Locher, 2004; McHoul et al., 2008; van Dijk, 2008). As has been argued, ‘‘how to theorize context and how to treat context in analysis is perhaps one of the most enduring controversies in pragmatics, discourse analysis, and sociolinguistics’’ (Kasper, 2006, p.301; see also Finkbeiner, Meibauer and Schumacher, 2012; van Dijk, 2007). Context here should be understood in very broad terms to include what van Dijk (2007, p.286) calls local (or micro) and global (or macro) context. The former includes the actual verbal activity, the setting, the participants and their relationships and the audience, if any present, whereas the latter includes the broader social, cultural and historical surroundings. Between these two ends lie various genres, that is, various kinds of texts, such as an interview, a panel discussion or an academic meeting. They constitute a kind of mesolevel which relates and facilitates the production and interpretation of the language produced (see, e.g. Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2013; Garcés-Conejos Blitvich and Sifianou, forthcoming; Moser and Panaretou, 2011). The distinction between these three levels is obviously an academic convenience since they are all closely interrelated. As Bargela-Chiappini and Harris (1997, p.19) concede, “[a]ction within the immediate context is […] affected by causes operating in the wider context”. In our interactions, who the participants are is of utmost significance. Once participants enter the scene, it becomes extremely difficult to account for what they carry with them, in terms of experience and knowledge (socio-cultural and encyclopaedic) which is relevant or activated on the particular occasion and in terms of personal traits, emotional states and relational histories. Such features then point to the need for a context-specific, multimodal and multidisciplinary approach to the study of both disagreement and conflict. I will start with a brief consideration of the local context and proceed with more global aspects.

10.4.1 Local context As is well known, some people are more argumentative than others, and some may be aversive to any kind of opposition. As Teven, McCroskey and Richmond (1998) state, individuals have different degrees of tolerance to disagreement, thus some may avoid entering into conflict and others may be prone to it. Some people may construct relationships where they frequently argue and others where they do not. Moreover, and significantly so, speakers in solidarity relationships will (dis)agree differently and the impact of their disagreement will be different from that of speakers in distant or antagonistic relationships.4 The affinity between interlocutors has been attributed high significance as to whether disagreement will develop into being destructive or constructive (Teven, McCroskey and Richmond, 1998). The topic of the discussion is obviously significant, but topics are not inherently contentious; whether they are interpreted as such depends, to a great extent, on the identity and the relationship of the participants. Evidently, the distinction between cognitive and affective conflict or task and relationship disagreement, that is, if the conflict or the disagreement is related to the task at hand or the relationship, become highly relevant here. Garcés-Conejos Blitvich (2009, p.282) underlines the significance of one’s interlocutor’s identity in the interpretation of what is said and also in understanding whether the topic discussed is significant or controversial. Unlike other speech acts, such as requests, disagreements are acts produced in reaction to a preceding prompt (Kakavá, 1993a, p.36; Locher, 2004, p.99), which is not of a specific kind, since any verbal or non-verbal previous act type (or even a notable absence) 182

Conflict, disagreement and (im)politeness

can serve as a trigger of disagreement, if such a prompt is contradicted (Maynard, 1985, p.3) or challenged. This feature makes the emergence of a disagreement highly unpredictable. Besides, disagreements are not simply accepted or rejected but tend to initiate further sequences. Disagreeing responses are frequently followed by the original speaker's further contribution. These change the specifications of context, so that ensuing disagreements may become more and more explicit without mitigation (cf. Kotthoff, 1993, p.195). Research into both children’s disputes (see, e.g. Goodwin, 1993) and on conflict interactions between adults in both institutional and casual settings (see, for example, Gruber, 1998; Hutchby, 1996; Kotthoff, 1993) has shown a reversal of the preference pattern in such contexts. That is, disagreements are enacted as preferred acts, whereas agreements are enacted as dispreferred acts. Let me clarify here that in the discipline of Conversation Analysis, the concept of “preference” is used in different ways (see Bilmes, 1988) but most frequently the terms “preferred” and “dispreferred” seconds/turns/actions are used for cases in which more than one alternative responses are available for interlocutors, as, for instance, an assessment can be followed by an agreement or a disagreement and an invitation can be either accepted or declined. There are exceptions (e.g. responses to compliments or to self-denigrations), but in general, it is positive responses such as agreements and acceptances that are termed “preferred” seconds/turns/actions, whereas negative responses, such as disagreements and declinations are termed “dispreferred”. It should be noted that, according to conversation analysts, these terms do not refer to psychological desires but to structural properties of the interaction. These structural properties are understood in two complementary ways (Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998, p.45). First, preference is built into the design of the first turns/ utterances which determine the status of the response. In other words, first utterances are designed in ways that invite specific kinds of responses. For instance, a negatively phrased utterance like “You haven’t sent the card to James, have you?” appears to “prefer” a negative response whereas the opposite would be true of its positive counterpart (“You’ve sent the card to James, haven’t you?”). Second, preference is also built into the design features of the second turns (i.e. the responses) as preferred responses tend to be brief and immediate whereas dispreferred ones tend to be elaborate and delayed including hesitation markers, accounts and so on (see, for example, Levinson, 1983). A similar pattern to the one noted earlier of preference reversal is also reported by Blum-Kulka, Blondheima and Hacohenb (2002), who state that within an argument framework, disagreements appear to be preferred and any features of dispreference are viewed as a weakness in that one cannot defend their positions. Such findings indicate the significance of the local interactional context in which interlocutors may be expected to support their own positions rather than agree with their opponents (Kotthoff, 1993; Locher, 2004, p.143). Viewed from a conversation analytic perspective (see, for example, Drew and Heritage, 1992), context involves the sequential organisation in which an action occurs allowing, in some cases, “certain restricted aspects of context to appear in the analysis’’ (McHoul, 2008, p.823). More specifically, context consists of the linguistic material preceding and following the action in question, since the details of the talk itself reveal what the interlocutors consider to be the salient features of context by orienting to them. This facilitates their identification by the analyst and renders recourse to external information unnecessary (Schegloff, 1992, p.110). However, it should be noted that a disagreement which emerges in the current interaction may have roots not just in previous turns of the same interaction but also in previous interactions or more broadly in the type of relationship between interactants. So, what I am claiming here is that most of our interactions with acquainted others are not complete and finished texts but have roots in previous ones and provide sources for 183

Maria Sifianou

future ones. What is drawn from previous interactions may be assumed to be shared content and thus, may not surface in the current interaction, which, however, does not mean that it is not salient for the interlocutors. As Dersley and Wootton (2001, pp.612–13) contend, the termination of a current interaction does not mean that the dispute has been resolved. It sets up expectations that the issue may be readdressed on some future occasion. As mentioned earlier, conversation analysts also see disagreements in negative terms, that is, as dispreferred seconds/turns (Pomerantz, 1984; Sacks, 1973/1987), which should be mitigated since they are, “largely destructive for social solidarity’’ (Heritage, 1984, p.268). Even though they claim that the notion of “preference” relates to the internal structural organisation of turns and their sequential organisation, comments linking preference to social considerations are found even in early conversation analytic work. For instance, Pomerantz (1984, p.77) contends that disagreement is dispreferred because disagreeing with one another is uncomfortable, unpleasant, difficult, risking threat, insult or offence, whereas agreeing with one another is comfortable, supportive, reinforcing and perhaps sociable, since it demonstrates that interlocutors are like-minded. Sacks (1973/1987, p.69) also notes that the preference for agreement may stem from social expectations, because as he says ‘‘it is not that somebody or everybody psychologically does not like to disagree, but they may not like to disagree because they are supposed to not like to disagree; they are supposed to try to agree perhaps’’. Interestingly, as Leung (2002, p.8, drawing on Holtgraves, 1997) notes, even though conversation analysts delineate preference organisation as a structural feature of the interaction and thus unrelated to psychological desires, many of the linguistic features marking dispreferred responses are similar to positive politeness strategies, that is, strategies promoting closeness and solidarity. Some such features are also seen as reluctance markers rather than markers of dispreference for Bilmes (1988) which may also be seen as markers of negative politeness, that is, strategies promoting social distance, as one reviewer suggested.5 An issue that has been relatively ignored in studies of im/politeness and conflict is that of prosody and non-verbal cues in communication. Notable exceptions are Culpeper (Culpeper et al., 2003, and elsewhere) and Stadler (2006). Culpeper et al. (2003, p.1576) state that “[i]t is sometimes the prosody that makes an utterance impolite – giving truth to the common view that the offence lay in how something was said rather than what was said” (emphasis in the original). Along similar lines, Stadler (2006) argues that prosodic and non-verbal means can convey the opposite from what the verbal message does and drawing on Kendon (2000), she (2006, p.76) further adds that both prosodic and nonverbal cues “convey information about the emotional state of a speaker, about the speech itself, about a speaker’s attitude, about individual differences and interpersonal relationships”. The significance of non-verbal behaviour for the study of politeness is also noted by Bargiela-Chiappini and Harris (2006) and Fukushima and Sifianou (2017). Thus, both prosody and non-verbal aspects of interaction constitute significant aspects of local context but there is no room to address them here in the full length and detail they deserve.

10.4.2 Global context Discussing context at the global level, a significant aspect which has attracted scholarly attention is that of culture. Cultural preferences have been discussed in the relevant literature (see, for example, Kakavá 1993 and elsewhere; Paramasivan, 2007; Schiffrin, 1984; Ting-Toomey, 1994). For instance, early research on disagreement argued that interlocutors in certain national groups prefer disagreements over agreements in daily interactions whose function is sociability rather than disaffiliation. One such case is Schiffrin (1984), who argued that in Jewish culture, there is a preference for disagreement which displays 184

Conflict, disagreement and (im)politeness

interest in and involvement with other people. Blum-Kulka (1982) also observes that Israelis seem to prefer more directness than Americans and it is not uncommon to hear blunt disagreements in social interactions. In relation to Greeks, Kakavá (1993) and Tannen and Kakavá (1992) have shown that disagreements are not dispreferred acts but rather a means of expressing sociability, especially in intimate settings, such as among family members and friends. In contrast, Wierzbicka (1991, p.113, quoting Clancy, 1986) states that in Japanese “overt expression of conflicting opinions is taboo”. Smith (1987, p.2), drawing on Renwick’s (1983) findings, argues that such differences can be observed even in cases where the language is shared but not the culture, as is the case between Australians and Americans. Americans are more inclined to like people who agree with them, whereas Australians tend to be more interested in people who disagree with them. For the former, agreement implies liking and disagreement rejection, whereas for the latter, disagreement is a source of lively conversation. Despite their being overgeneralisations, such statements point to people's different understandings of the function of disagreements. Bargiela-Chiappini and Harris (1997, p.155) state that “[i]t is an ethnocentric illusion to think that all cultures value agreement more than disagreement” and Blum-Kulka, Blondheima and Hacohenb (2002) conclude that in conflict situations, politeness is not valued in all cultures. In discussing cultural differences, as has been repeatedly argued (see, for example, Bargiela-Chiappini and Harris, 2006; Eelen, 2001; Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2013; Mills, 2003; Sifianou and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2017), one should bear in mind that presenting whole cultures as homogeneous and static is untenable. However, such research is useful in foregrounding “variation in what people understand as ‘disagreement’” as Angouri and Locher (2012, p.1561) rightly point out.

10.4.3 Different genres In institutional contexts, such as workplaces, courtrooms or parliaments, individuals are constrained by the institutional roles they enact and the general contextual norms. These norms differ in the extent that they are rule-bound (Harris, 2001, p.454; Taylor, 2013, p.212). Various kinds of institutional discourse (see, for example, Harris, 2001; Perez de Ayala, 2001; Thornborrow, 2007; Tracy, 2008) and the degree to which they “have routinised the use of certain types of language” (Mills, 2003, p.125) allow for uses that would be interpreted as impolite in other contexts. For instance, the ubiquitous presence of disagreements and conflict in on-line contexts has been well attested in the relevant literature. This presence is context-bound and has been attributed to both the restrictions and the facilities (e.g. anonymity) of the media (see, for example, Angouri and Tseliga, 2010; Bou-Franch and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2014; Luzón, 2011, 2013) and is seen as related to the norms of interaction of the specific community and the participants’ expectations (Angouri and Tseliga, 2010; Luzón, 2013, p.112). Thus, their realisation bears both similarities and differences when compared with face-to-face encounters. One particularly contentious issue in studies on conflict and disagreement that clearly lends itself to reflecting on the significance of context is whether conflict and disagreement are constructive or destructive phenomena. Adams and Laursen’s (2007, p.2) suggestion for this impasse is that some disagreement is beneficial for addressing problems and facilitating change, but after a point, additional conflict is counterproductive. Thus, they see duration and the kind of relationship within which the disagreement takes place as significant in understanding the role of conflict. Similarly, Teven, McCroskey and Richmond (1998) report on research which relates perceptions of constructive or destructive conflict to individual differences such as communication skills and affinity between interlocutors. In the 185

Maria Sifianou

same way that different genres generate different versions of politeness (Lakoff, 1989), different genres will produce different understandings of what conflict is and whether it is constructive or destructive. Considering a specific genre, that of the Tuscan Contrasto duels, Pagliai (2009) illustrates how conflict and cooperation are inextricably interrelated and such verbal duels are highly cooperative achievements, not destructive but rather constructive of social interactions and social organisation. Investigating a different genre, that of the new news interview in the US, dubbed as “news as confrontation”, Garcés-Conejos Blitvich (2009) argues that interviewers have become progressively adversarial abandoning their deference style, noting that this has become “the characteristic par excellence” (p.295) of this new genre. Through confrontation with interviewees, alliance is established between the host and his audience. In relation to this specific context, Garcés-Conejos Blitvich (2010, p.47) states elsewhere that conflict is “construed as ultimately constitutive rather than disruptive of social interaction”. In her analysis of interaction in academic weblogs, Luzón (2011) makes a similar point arguing that anti-social markers are used not only to manifest conflict with scholars supporting rival views but also to signal allegiance with those readers who agree with the poster’s perspective. Elsewhere, Luzón (2013) observes that research has shown that in on-line interaction, conflict serves both identity construction and group allegiance. Alliance formation is also an issue addressed by Kangasharju (2002, p.276) in the context of a committee meeting in a Finnish town. She argues that in this context and in the process of disagreement, such alliances may be rewarding for the participants to the extent that they are sometimes tempted to engage in arguments which are not directly relevant to the issues discussed. In yet another context, that of high school students focusing on solving an algebra problem, Chiu (2008) shows how diversity in group views and argumentation might enhance a group’s micro-creativity, defined as the kind of creativity ordinary people exhibit in everyday life. However, when arguments spill over from the content of the problem into social relationships, concern for the protection of face may adversely affect the problem-solving process. Moreover, he argues that the desire for agreement may be face-supportive but at the same time may inhibit the expression of novel ideas. This view is frequently found in business studies. For instance, Dyer and Song (1998, p.505) state that “[t]eamwork and harmony are worthy objectives but a healthy dose of conflict also plays an important role in fostering innovation” (italics removed) and disagreements far from being exceptional in the workplace constitute “a common daily reality and practice of the employees” (Angouri, 2012, p.1576, but see Marra, 2012). These cases and many others one could cite indicate that conflict and disagreement cannot be seen a priori as constructive or destructive (Angouri and Locher, 2012). Moreover, there are genres where conflict and disagreement are endemic, such as army training discourse (Bousfield, 2008; Culpeper, 1996), courtroom discourse (Lakoff, 1989), adolescent discourse (Goodwin and Goodwin, 1990), therapeutic discourse (Lakoff, 1989), parliamentary discourse (Harris, 2001; Perez de Ayala, 2001) and workplace discourse (Angouri, 2012; Angouri and Bargiela-Chiappini, 2011), among others. So some scholars have talked about “sanctioned face-threatening activity” and “sanctioned aggressive facework” (Watts, 2003, p.248, p.260) or “sanctioned impoliteness” which is even rewarded in Prime Minister’s Question Time (Harris, 2001). Relatedly, Tracy (2008) argues that in certain contexts, such as local governance meetings, the common-place face-attacks can be accounted for by what she calls “reasonable hostility” (i.e. “emotionally marked criticism of the past and future actions of public persons”) rather than politeness or civility. Such systematic intentionally face-threatening acts could be considered impolite in other contexts.6 186

Conflict, disagreement and (im)politeness

10.5 Conflict, disagreement and im/politeness In addition to context, the participants and the affinity between them, language use is vital to conflict. As Fisher and Sharp (2004, p.74) note, “[o]ne word or phrase can help either to resolve a conflict or feed the flames” (see also Janicki, 2015), and both resolution and escalation of conflict are seen as intricately interrelated with issues of im/politeness. This view is expounded by Brown and Levinson (1987, p.26) themselves when they state that research on conflict and confrontation has “obvious implications for any theory of politeness”. This relationship is a negative one in that politeness is viewed as a means to mitigate disagreement and conflict or the reason why they should be avoided in interpersonal contact. Early politeness research has conceptualised politeness as a means of avoiding conflict and aggression in communication.7 Of the first to consider the issue of politeness, Lakoff (1990, p.34) defined politeness as “a system of interpersonal relations designed to facilitate interaction by minimizing the potential for conflict and confrontation inherent in all human interchange”. Similarly, Brown and Levinson (1987, p.1) quite explicitly associate politeness with aggression stating that politeness “presupposes that potential for aggression as it seeks to disarm it, and makes possible communication between potentially aggressive parties”. More specifically, in this model, politeness appears to be understood as redressive action, that is, action taken to counterbalance the damaging effect of face-threatening acts (FTAs), which are acts that have the potential to harm face. In Kasper’s (1990, p.194) terms, politeness understood in this way depicts communication “as a fundamentally dangerous and antagonistic endeavor”. According to Eelen (2001, p.21), one may even argue that this notion of politeness is not only “about the avoidance of potential conflict, but about the defusing of conflict that is intrinsic to the very act of communicating” (emphasis in the original). Likewise, for Leech (1983, p.113): “the function of the Tact maxim is a negative one: it is a means of avoiding conflict”. However, as Locher (2004, p.96) observes, if one is to follow not only Leech’s tact maxim but also his agreement and approbation maxims, one will try to redress disagreement. Interestingly, even though, as it transpires from the above, conflict and disagreement constitute one of the underlying cornerstones of early theoretical frameworks of politeness, they have been treated as sub-strategies of positive politeness or as a maxim of secondary importance. More specifically, Brown and Levinson posit two complementary positive politeness strategies: “Seek agreement” and “Avoid disagreement”.8 By raising safe topics, such as the beauty of gardens or the incompetence of bureaucracies, one seeks ways to agree and thus to claim common ground with his/her interlocutor. Further, emotional agreement is stressed by repeating part of what the previous speaker has said (Brown and Levinson, 1987, ppl.112–13).9 So strong is the assumed significance for agreement in interaction that disagreement should be avoided through token agreement (“Yes, but …”), pseudo-agreement and even white lies (Brown and Levinson, 1987, pp.114–15). Leech (1983) posits a Politeness Principle (PP) which is realised through a number of maxims, one of which is the Agreement maxim. Its two sub-maxims are (a) minimise disagreement between speaker and addressee and (b) maximise agreement between speaker and addressee. As Leech (1983, p.133) states, sub-maxim (a) seems more important than (b) because of the more general law that avoiding discord is a weightier consideration than seeking concord. Though in different ways and to different degrees, early politeness research draws on Grice’s work and, in particular, from the Cooperative Principle (CP) and its attendant maxims. In this context, the CP is a technical term and does not mean that in their interactions people always agree with each other or that they are nice to each other. It rather means that they observe certain regularities and can thus interpret utterances which appear untrue, unnecessarily prolix or 187

Maria Sifianou

irrelevant. If, for instance, speaker A asks a colleague “Is Jill in her office this morning?” and speaker B responds, “There is a red Clio outside”, on the face of it, the response sounds irrelevant. However, according to Grice, if speaker A assumes that speaker B has been cooperative (i.e. observing the CP) and has produced an appropriate response, s/he will try to find an alternative interpretation. The general assumption is that cooperative behaviour leads to harmonious interactions and amicable relationships with politeness being used to secure them. When cooperation and politeness are in conflict, it is the strict adherence to the maxims of the CP that is sacrificed because in the reverse case, the equilibrium of harmonious relationships is risked (Leech, 1983, p.82). This understanding probably results from the common mistaken assumption that Grice’s CP refers to genuine cooperation or even human benevolence (Leech and Thomas, 1990). However, as the authors (Leech and Thomas, 1990, p.181) note “nothing is further from the truth” and later Thomas (1995, p.62) similarly argues that in setting out this principle, Grice was not suggesting that “people are always good and kind or cooperative in any everyday sense of that word” (see also Sarangi and Slembrouck, 1992). Arguing against the frequent understanding of impoliteness being non-cooperative behaviour, Dynel (2013) claims that the CP always holds whether one is polite or impolite. There are at least two consequences of this mistaken assumption. On the one hand, it has contributed to the marginalisation of interest in what was seen as disruptive, aggressive, conflictual behaviour (see, for example, Pagliai, 2010a) as well as impolite behaviour. The relatively recent discursive turn in politeness research has redirected attention to impoliteness phenomena, including aggressive and conflictual behaviour, which has been found to be frequent, especially in on-line contexts. On the other hand, it sidesteps the fact that even aggressive behaviour cannot thrive without coordination. Kienpointner (1997) discusses a number of types of rudeness,10 which should be seen, as he states (p.252), as cooperative communicative behaviour and calls them “cooperative rudeness” (e.g. mock impoliteness and ritual insults). Pagliai (2010b) illustrates this point arguing that cooperation and conflict are not to be seen as two extreme forms of social action but rather as inextricably interrelated, as in verbal duels, which are highly cooperative activities. Not only disagreement but also conflict has been seen as beneficial within teams and family under certain circumstances (Adams and Laursen, 2007; Jehn, 1995). Considering discussion threads in political newsgroups, Papacharissi (2004) argues that a clear distinction should be drawn between politeness and civility since the former refers to interaction that flows smoothly but at the same time suppresses some of the participants’ emotions and opinions, whereas the latter allows the democratic plurality of conversation to emerge. This is seen as significant because “democracy can merit from heated disagreement” (p.262). This is related to what Tracy (2008) calls “reasonable hostility” which she sees as necessary for “the able functioning of democratic bodies” (p.169, italics removed). Papacharissi’s call for a distinction between civility and politeness is appealing because it reflects understandings outside the field of im/politeness research drawing more from lay understandings and those connecting politeness with formality. Along similar lines and drawing on earlier research (Hwang, 2008), Santana (2014, p.21) defines “discursive incivility” as “expressing disagreement that denies and disrespects the justice of others’ views” and further adds that “incivility can be defined as attacks that go beyond differences in opinion and that devolve into namecalling, contempt and derision”. To my mind, the call for a distinction between civility and politeness evidences the discursive struggle over the value of terms (Watts, 2003). As mentioned earlier, politeness in early research has been conceptualised as presupposing the potential for aggression which it seeks to disarm (Brown and Levinson, 1987, p.1). In this framework, failed attempts or no attempt at keeping aggression at bay are seen 188

Conflict, disagreement and (im)politeness

as cases of impoliteness. For Brown and Levinson (1987, p.5) “politeness has to be communicated, and the absence of communicated politeness may, ceteris paribus, be taken as absence of the polite attitude”. Even though not explicitly stated, this broad understanding implies that impoliteness is the opposite of politeness, a view that does not take into account either local or global contingencies. As a number of scholars (see, for example, Eelen, 2001; Kienpointner, 1997; Mills, 2003) have argued, politeness and impoliteness should not be seen as polar opposites since they function in different ways. Moreover, neither should politeness be seen only in positive terms nor impoliteness only in negative terms (Mills, 2003, p.125). As Kienpointner (1997, p.282) states “it does not seem self-evident to consider politeness as unmarked, normal communicative behavior, whereas rudeness, as a (partial) violation of politeness maxims, would always be marked and/or exceptional behavior”. For instance, in English-speaking societies, characterisations of politeness “range from socially ‘correct’ or appropriate behaviour, through cultivated behaviour, considerateness displayed to others, self-effacing behaviour, to negative attributions such as standoffishness, haughtiness, insincerity, etc.” (Watts, 2003, pp.8–9). As is well-known, and as transpires from the above discussion, in early politeness research, disagreement and conflict by extension are seen to verge on impoliteness and should thus be mitigated or avoided. In conversation analytic terms, disagreement is typically understood as a dispreferred second (Pomerantz, 1984; Sacks, 1973/1987), which is, however, a rather restricted view of disagreements. Since politeness is a situated evaluation, we cannot decide a priori whether disagreement or even conflict is polite or impolite. In addition, conflict and disagreement are themselves situated evaluations. The situation becomes even more complicated because all three lexical items are used in everyday parlance and are also used as technical notions in theoretical constructs.

10.6 Concluding remarks Given the complex interplay of the various parameters (e.g. context, genres, participants) discussed above among others, it appears that disagreements and conflict cannot be given allencompassing definitions. In addition, they cannot be straightforwardly labelled as (im)polite or (dis)preferred, nor as beneficial or detrimental actions. It is also worth noting that even though we appear to be discussing the issues involved in terms of dichotomies, it is clear that conflict and disagreement, much like im/politeness, form continua. In other words, neither conflict nor disagreement are either constructive or destructive, either polite or impolite. On a purely theoretical level, it sounds reasonable to suggest that seeking agreement and avoiding disagreement and conflict (Brown and Levinson, 1987) are polite ways to behave since they contribute to harmonious relationships. However, if we consider not only genres of argumentative language (such as verbal duels) but also actual encounters with family and friends in both offline and online contexts, this appears to be a rather restricted understanding. Disagreements and conflict seem to reflect and be more related to broader face (or rather identity) issues, than to more restricted politeness concerns. As Papacharissi (2004, p.279) contends, “impoliteness is not so bad; it implies emotion, and emotion implies compassion, which in turn implies humanity”, it is rather “impeccable incivility”, that is, “incivility without a trace of politeness” that should worry us. Moreover, the nature of the relationship between interlocutors and the nature of context significantly affect the construction and interpretation of (dis)agreement and whether it will escalate into conflict. Thus, a multimodal and multidisciplinary approach may assist in our better understanding of these phenomena. 189

Maria Sifianou

Acknowledgements I would like to thank the editors for their constructive, expert comments and their patience and the anonymous reviewer for their detailed useful feedback. The chapter has improved with their help but needless to say that all remaining infelicities are entirely my own.

Notes 1 In relation to this distinction and in the context of academic seminars, Allwood (1993, p.6) suggests that emotional and personal conflicts should be prevented, whereas cognitive conflict should be encouraged. 2 In the relevant literature, individual differences have been discussed under the term “tolerance for disagreement” in an attempt to explain why some people will perceive the occurrence of conflict much sooner than others (Teven, McCroskey and Richmond, 1998). 3 As D’Errico et al. (2015, vii) argue, communication in conflict situations includes in addition to threatening language, threatening facial expressions, loud voice, angry gaze etc. all of which clearly point to its multimodality. 4 Gross et al. (2004, p.254) state that when team members distrust one another, they are more likely to ascribe conflict to personal rather than task-related issues. 5 For the relationship between preference and implicature, see Bilmes (1988). 6 Culpeper (2011, p.217) argues that even though such impoliteness is sanctioned or legitimated, this does not mean that people in such contexts do not take offence at perceived face-attacks. 7 This emphasis on politeness as a means of avoiding conflict and discord is problematic since it seems to ignore politeness as a means of maintaining or creating involvement and solidarity (see, for example, Sifianou, 1992, p.83; Locher, 2004, p.65). 8 Elsewhere (Sifianou, 1992, 2012), I express reservations as to whether these are actually positive politeness strategies, but this issue falls beyond the scope of this paper. 9 The issue of repetition is a clear case pointing to the significance of context, as has also been associated with conflict through format tying, i.e. the strategic reuse of material from previous moves (Corsaro and Maynard, 1996). 10 Kienpointner (1997) prefers the term “rudeness” for all kinds of verbal impoliteness.

References Adams, R.E. and Laursen, B. 2007. The correlates of conflict: disagreement is not necessarily detrimental. Journal of Family Psychology. 21, pp.445–58. Amalia, M. and Panaretou, E. Why a mother’s rule is not a law: the role of meso- and macro-context in the interpretation of Greek legal texts. In: Fetzer, A. and Oishi, E. eds. Contexts and context: Parts meet whole. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp.11–40. Allwood, J. 1993. Types of conflict and conflict handling in an academic seminar. In: Hultberg, J. ed. New genres in science studies. University of Gothenburg, pp.1–15. Allwood, J. and Ahlsén, E. 2015. On stages of conflict escalation. In: D’Errico, F., Poggi, I., Vinciarelli, A. and Vincze, L. eds. Conflict and multimodal communication: social research and machine intelligence. New York: Springer, pp.53–69. Angouri, J. 2012. Managing disagreement in problem solving meeting talk. Journal of Pragmatics. 44, pp.1565–79. Angouri, J. and Bargiela-Chiappini, F. 2011. ‘So what problems bother you and you are not speeding up your work?’ Problem solving talk at work. Discourse & Communication. 5(3), pp.209–29. Angouri, J. and Locher, M.A. 2012. Theorising disagreement. Journal of Pragmatics. 44, pp.1549–53. Angouri, J. and Tseliga,Th. 2010. ‘You have no idea what you are talking about’: from e-disagreement to e-impoliteness in two online fora. Journal of Politeness Research. 6(1), pp.57–82. Antaki, C. 1994. Explaining and arguing: the social organization of accounts. London/Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Bardovi-Harlig, K. and Salsbury, T. 2004. The organization of turns in the disagreements of L2 learners: a longitudinal perspective. In: Boxer, D. and Cohen, A. eds. Studying speaking to inform second language learning. Buffalo, NY: Multilingual Matters, pp.199–227. 190

Conflict, disagreement and (im)politeness

Bargiela-Chiappini, F. and Harris, S.J. 1997. Managing language: the discourse of corporate meetings. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Bargiela-Chiappini, F. and Harris, S. 2006. Politeness at work: issues and challenges. Journal of Politeness Research. 2, pp.7–33. Bilmes, J. 1988. The concept of preference in conversation analysis. Language in Society. 17, pp.161–81. Blum-Kulka, S., Blondheima, M. and Hacohenb, G. 2002. Traditions of dispute: from negotiations of talmudic texts to the arena of political discourse in the media. Journal of Pragmatics. 34, pp.1569–94. Bonelli, L. 2015. Disaffiliation and pragmatic strategies of emotive communication in a multiparty online conflict talk. In: D’Errico, F., Poggi, I., Vinciarelli, A. and Vincze, L. eds. Conflict and multimodal communication: social research and machine intelligence. New York: Springer, pp.159–82. Bou-Franch, P. and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. 2014. Conflict management in massive polylogues: a case study from YouTube. Journal of Pragmatics. 73, pp.19–36. Bousfield, D. 2008. Impoliteness in interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Briggs, C. ed. 1996. Disorderly discourse: narrative, conflict, and inequality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brown, P. and Levinson, S. 1987. Politeness: some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chiu, M. M. 2008. Effects of argumentation on group micro-creativity: statistical discourse analyses of algebra students’ collaborative problem solving. Contemporary Educational Psychology. 33, pp.382–402. Corsaro, W.A. and Maynard, D.W. 1996. Format tying in discussion and argumentation among Italian and American children. In: Slobin, D.I., Gerhardt, J., Kyratzis, A. and Guo, J. eds. Social interaction, social context and language: essays in honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp.157–74. Corsaro, W.A. and Rizzo, T. 1990. Disputes in the peer culture of American and Italian nursery school children. In: Grimshaw, A. ed. Conflict talk. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp.21–66. Culpeper, J. 1996. Towards an anatomy of impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics. 25, pp.349–67. Culpeper, J. 2011. Impoliteness: using language to cause offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Culpeper, J., Bousfield, D. and Wichmann, A. 2003. Impoliteness revisited: with special reference to dynamic and prosodic aspects. Journal of Pragmatics. 35(10–1), pp.1545–79. D’Errico, F., Poggi, I., Vinciarelli, A. and Vincze, L. 2015. Preface. In: D’Errico, F., Poggi, I., Vinciarelli, A. and Vincze, L. eds. Conflict and multimodal communication: social research and machine intelligence. New York: Springer, v–xvii. Dersley, I. and Wootton, A.J. 2001. In the heat of the sequence: interactional features receding walkouts from argumentative talk. Language in Society. 30, pp.611–38. Drew, P. and Heritage, J. 1992. Analyzing talk at work: an introduction. In: Drew, P. and Heritage, J. eds. Talk at work: interaction in institutional settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.3–65. Dyer, B. and Song, M.X. 1998. Innovation strategy and sanctioned conflict: a new edge innovation? Journal of Product Innovation Management. 15, pp.505–19. Dynel, M. 2013. Being cooperatively impolite: Grice’s model in the context of (im)politeness theories. In: Kecskes, I. and Romero-Trillo, J. eds. Research trends in intercultural pragmatics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp.55–83. Dynel, M. 2015. The landscape of impoliteness research. Journal of Politeness Research. 11(2), pp.329–54. Eelen, G. 2001. A critique of politeness theories. Manchester: St. Jerome. Fetzer, A. and Oishi, E. eds. 2011. Context and contexts: parts meet whole? Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Finkbeiner, R., Meibauer, J. and Schumacher Petra, B. 2012. Introduction. In: Finkbeiner, R., Meibauer, J. and Schumacher Petra, B. eds. What is a context? Linguistic approaches and challenges. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. 191

Maria Sifianou

Fisher, E.A. and Sharp, S.W. 2004. The art of managing everyday conflict: understanding emotions and power struggles. Westport, CT/London: Praeger. Fukushima, S. and Sifianou, M. 2017. Conceptualising politeness in Japanese and Greek. Intercultural Pragmatics. 14(4), pp.525–55. Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. 2009. Impoliteness and identity in the American news media: the ‘Culture Wars’. Journal of Politeness Research. 5(2), pp.273–303. Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. 2010. A genre approach to the study of im-politeness. International Review of Pragmatics. 2, pp.46–94. Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. 2013. Face, identity, and im/politeness: looking backwards, moving forward – from Goffman to Practice Theory. Journal of Politeness Research. 9(1), pp.1–33. Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. 2018. Globalization, transnational identities, and conflict talk: the complexity of the Latino identity. Journal of Pragmatics. 134, pp.120–33. Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. and Sifianou, M. (forthcoming). Politeness in discursive pragmatics. Journal of Pragmatics (special issue): Quo vadis pragmatics? Georgakopoulou, A. 2001. Arguing about the future: on indirect disagreements in conversations. Journal of Pragmatics. 33, pp.1881–1900. Georgakopoulou, A. 2012. ‘A simple disagreement? A row? Or a massive fall out?’: on the challenges of an analytical task. Journal of Pragmatics. 44, pp.1623–25. Goodwin, C. 2006. Retrospective and prospective orientation in the construction of argumentative moves. Text & Talk. 26(4/5), pp.443–61. Goodwin, C. and Goodwin, M.H. 1990. Interstitial argument. In: Grimshaw, A.D. ed. Conflict talk: Sociolinguistic investigations of arguments in conversations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.85–117. Goodwin, M.H. 1993. Tactical uses of stories: participation frameworks within girls’ and boys’ disputes. In: Tannen, D. ed. Gender and conversational interaction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.110–43. Grimshaw, A.D. ed. 1990. Conflict talk: sociolinguistic investigations in conversations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gross, M.A., Guerrero, L.K. and Alberts, J.K. 2004. Perceptions of conflict strategies and communica­ tion competence in task-oriented dyads. Journal of Applied Communication Research. 32, pp.249–70. Gruber, H. 1996. Streitgespräche: Zur pragmatik einer diskursform. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Gruber, H. 1998. Disagreeing: sequential placement and internal structure of disagreements in conflict episodes. Text. 18, pp.467–503. Harris, S. 2001. Being politically impolite: extending politeness theory to adversarial political discourse. Discourse & Society. 12(4), pp.451–72. Hartwick, J. and Barki, H. 2002. Conceptualizing the construct of interpersonal conflict. Available from: http://expertise.hec.ca/gresi/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/cahier0204.pdf. [Accessed 20 November 2017.] Heritage, J. 1984. Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Holtgraves, T. 1997. Yes, but … Positive politeness in conversation arguments. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 16, pp.222–39. Honda, A. 2002. Conflict management in Japanese public affairs talk shows. Journal of Pragmatics. 34(5), pp.573–608. Hutchby, I. 1992. Confrontation talk: aspects of ‘interruption’ in argument sequences on talk radio. Text. 12(3), pp.343–71. Hutchby, I. 1996. Power in discourse: the case of arguments on a British talk radio show. Discourse and Society. 7, pp.481–97. Hutchby, I. and Wooffitt, R. 1998. Conversation analysis. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hwang, H. 2008. Why does incivility matter when communicating disagreement?: Examining the psy­ chological process of antagonism in political discussion. PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Infante, D.A. and Rancer, A.S. 1996. Argumentativeness and verbal aggression: a review of recent theory and research. Communication Yearbook. 19, pp.319–51. Janicki, K. 2015. Language and Conflict. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 192

Conflict, disagreement and (im)politeness

Janicki, K. 2017. What is conflict? What is aggression? Are these challenging questions? Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict. 5(1), pp.156–66. Jehn, K.A. 1995. A multimethod examination of the benefits and detriments of intragroup conflict. Administrative Science Quarterly. 40, pp.256–82. Jeong, H.-W. 2008. Understanding conflict and conflict analysis. London: Sage. Johnson, D. and Johnson, R. 1985. Classroom conflict: controversy versus debate in learning groups. American Education Research Journal. 22(2), pp.237–56. Jones, T. 2001. Emotional communication in conflict: essence and impact. In: Eadie, W. and Nelson, P. eds. The language of conflict and resolution. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp.81–104. Kakavá, C. 1993. Negotiation of disagreement by Greeks in conversations and classroom discourse. PhD thesis, Georgetown University, Washington, DC. Kakavá, C. 2002. Opposition in modern Greek discourse: cultural and contextual constraints. Journal of Pragmatics. 34, pp.1537–68. Kangasharju, H. 2002. Alignment in disagreement: forming oppositional alliances in committee meetings. Journal of Pragmatics. 34, pp.1447–71. Kasper, G. 1990. Linguistic politeness: current research issues. Journal of Pragmatics. 14, pp.193–218. Kasper, G. 2006. Speech acts in interaction: towards discursive pragmatics. In: Bardovi-Harlig, K., Félix-Brasdefer, C. and Omar, A. eds. Pragmatics and language learning, volume 11. Honolulu, HI: National Foreign Language Resource Center, pp.281–314. Kendon, A. 2000. Language and gesture: Unity or duality’. In: McNeill, D. ed. Language and gesture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.47–63. Kennedy, K. and Pronin, E. 2008. When disagreement gets ugly: perceptions of bias and the escalation of conflict. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 34, pp.833–48. Kienpointner, M. 1997. Varieties of rudeness: types and functions of impolite utterances. Functions of Language. 4, pp.251–87. Kienpointner, M. 2008. Impoliteness and emotional arguments. Journal of Politeness Research. 4(2), pp.243–65. Koester, A. 2017. Conflict talk. In: Vine, B. ed. The Routledge handbook of language in the workplace, pp.272–83. Kotthoff, H. 1993. Disagreement and concession in disputes: on the context sensitivity of preference structures. Language in Society. 22, pp.193–216. Lakoff, R. 1973. The logic of politeness; or, minding your p’s and q’s. Papers from the Ninth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society, pp.292–305. Lakoff, R. 1989. The limits of politeness: therapeutic and courtroom discourse. Multilingua. 8(2–3), pp.101–29. Lakoff, R. 1990. Talking power: the politics of language. New York: Basic Books. Langlotz, A. and Locher, M.A. 2012. Ways of communicating emotional stance in online disagreements. Journal of Pragmatics. 44, pp.1591–606. Leech, G.N. 1983. Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman. Leech, G. and Thomas, J. 1990. Language, meaning and context. In: Collinge, N.E. An encyclopedia of language. London/New York: Routledge, pp.173–206. Leung, S. 2002. Conflict talk: a discourse analytical perspective. Teachers College, Columbia Univer­ sity Working Papers in TESOL. Appl. Linguist. 2(3). Available from: http://journals.tc-library.org/ index.php/tesol/issue/view/4 Levinson, S.C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Locher, M. 2004. Power and politeness in action: disagreements in oral communication. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Locher, M. and Langlotz, A. 2008. Relational work: at the intersection of cognition, interaction and emotion. Bulletin suisse de linguistique appliqué. Centre de linguistique appliqué. 88, pp.165–91. Luzón, M.J. 2011. ‘Interesting post, but I disagree’: social presence and antisocial behaviour in academic weblogs. Applied Linguistics. 32(5), pp.517–40. Luzón, M.J. 2013. ‘This is an erroneous argument’: conflict in academic blog discussion. Discourse, Context and Media. 2, pp.111–19. 193

Maria Sifianou

Marra, M. 2012. Disagreeing without being disagreeable: negotiating workplace communities as an outsider. Journal of Pragmatics. 44, pp.1580–90. Maynard, D.W. 1985. On the functions of social conflict among children. American Sociological Review. 50, pp.207–23. McCroskey, J.C. and Wheeless. 1976. An introduction to human communication. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. McHoul, A., Rapley, M., Antaki, C. 2008. You gotta light? On the luxury of context for understanding talk in interaction. Journal of Pragmatics. 40, pp.827–39. Mey, J.L. 2011. Speech acts in context. In: Fetzer, A. and Oishi, E. eds. Context and contexts: parts meet whole? Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp.171–80. Mills, S. 2003. Gender and politeness. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Moser, A. and Panaretou, E. 2011. Why a mother’s rule is not a law: the role of meso- and macrocontext in the interpretation of Greek legal texts. In: Fetzer, A. and Oishi, E. eds. Context and contexts: parts meet whole. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp.11–40. Muntigl, P. and Turnbull, W. 1998. Conversational structure and facework in arguing. Journal of Pragmatics. 29(3), pp.225–56. Nelson, C.K. 2001. If it sounds too good to be true, it is: a Wittgensteinian approach to the conflict literature. Language & Communication. 21, pp.1–22. Nguyen, H.T. 2011. Boundary and alignment in multiparty conflict talk. Journal of Pragmatics. 43, pp.1755–71. Norrick, N.R. and Spitz, A. 2008. Humor as a resource for mitigating conflict in interaction. Journal of Pragmatics. 40, pp.1661–86. Pagliai, V. 2009. The art of dueling with words: toward a new understanding of verbal duels across the world. Oral Tradition. 24(1), pp.61–88. Pagliai, V. 2010a. Introduction: performing disputes. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 20, pp.63–71. Pagliai, V. 2010b. Conflict, cooperation, and facework in Contrasto verbal duels. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 20, pp.87–100. Papacharissi, Z. 2004. Democracy online: civility, politeness, and the democratic potential of online political discussion groups. New Media & Society. 6(2), pp.259–83. Paramasivam, S. 2007. Managing disagreement while managing not to disagree: polite disagreement in negotiation discourse. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research. 36(2), pp.91–116. Pérez de Ayala, S. 2001. FTA and Erskine May: conflicting needs? Politeness in Question Time. Journal of Pragmatics. 33, pp.143–69. Pomerantz, A. 1984. Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: some features of preferred/ dispreferred turn shapes. In: Atkinson, M. and Heritage, J. eds. Structures of social action: studies in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.57–103. Putnam, L.L. 2001. The language of opposition: challenges in organizational dispute resolution. In: Eadie, W. and Nelson, P. eds. The language of conflict and resolution. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp.9–20. Renwick, G.W. 1983. If Australians are arrogant, are Americans boring? If Americans are boring, are Australians arrogant?. In: Smith, L.E. ed. Readings in English as an international language. Oxford: Pergamon Press, pp.117–23. Sacks, H. 1973/1987. On the preference for agreement and contiguity in sequences in conversation. In: Button, G.B. and Lee, J.R.E. eds. Talk and Social Organisation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp.54–69. Santana, A.D. 2014. Virtuous or vitriolic. Journalism Practice. 8(1), pp.18–33. Sarangi, S.K. and Slembrouck, S. 1992. Non-cooperation in communication: a reassessment of Gricean pragmatics. Journal of Pragmatics. 17, pp.117–54. Schegloff, E.A. 1992. On talk and its institutional occasions. In: Drew, P. and Heritage, J. eds. Talk at work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.101–37. Schegloff, E.A. 2007. Sequence organization in interaction: a primer in Conversation Analysis I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 194

Conflict, disagreement and (im)politeness

Schiffrin, D. 1984. Jewish argument as sociability. Language in Society. 13, pp.311–35. Schiffrin, D. 1985. Everyday argument: The organization of diversity in talk. In: van Dijk, T. ed., Handbook of discourse analysis, Volume 3: Discourse and dialogue. London: Academic Press, pp.35–46. Scott, S. 2002. Linguistic feature variation within disagreements: an empirical investigation. Text. 22(2), pp.301–28. Sifianou, M. 1992. Politeness phenomena in England and Greece: a cross-cultural perspective. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sifianou, M. 2012. Disagreements, politeness and face. Journal of Pragmatics. 44, pp.1554–64. Sifianou, M. and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. 2017. Im/politeness and cultural variation. In: Culpeper, J., Haugh, M. and Kádár, D. eds. The Palgrave handbook of linguistic (im)politeness. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, pp.571–99. Simmel, G. 1908/1955. Conflict: conflict and the web of group affiliations. New York: Free Press. Smith, L.E. 1987. Introduction: discourse strategies and cross-cultural communication. In: Smith, L.E. ed. Discourse across cultures: strategies across Englishes. New York: Prentice Hall, pp.1–6. Stadler, S.A. 2006. Multimodal (im)politeness: the verbal, prosodic and non-verbal realization of disagreement in German and New Zealand English. PhD thesis, The University of Auckland and Universität Hamburg. Tannen, D. 2002. Agonism in academic discourse. Journal of Pragmatics. 34, pp.1651–69. Tannen, D. and Kakavá, Ch. 1992. Power and solidarity in Modern Greek conversation: disagreeing to agree. Journal of Modern Greek Studies. 10(1), pp.11–34. Taylor, C. 2013. Negative politeness forms and impoliteness functions in institutional discourse: a corpus-based approach. In: Davies, B.L., Haugh, M. and Merrison, A.J. eds. Situated politeness. London/New York: Bloomsbury, pp.209–31. Teven, J.J., McCroskey, J.C. and Richmond, V.P. 1998. Measuring tolerance for disagreement. Communication Research Reports. 15, pp.209–17. Thomas, J. 1995 Meaning in interaction: an introduction to pragmatics. London/New York: Longman. Thornborrow, J. 2007. Narrative, opinion and situated argument in talk show discourse. Journal of Pragmatics. 39, pp.1436–53. Ting-Toomey, S. 1994. Managing intercultural conflicts effectively. In: Samova, L. and Porter, R. eds. Intercultural communication: a reader. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, pp.360–72. Tracy, K. 2008. ‘Reasonable hostility’: situation-appropriate face-attack. Journal of Politeness Research. 4(2), pp.169–91. van Dijk, T. 2007. Comments on context and conversation. In: Fairclough, N., Cortese, G. and Ardizzone, P. eds. Discourse and contemporary social change. Bern: Lang, pp.281–316. van Dijk, T. 2008. Discourse and context: A sociocognitive approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vuchinich, S. 1986. On attenuation in verbal family conflict. Social Psychology Quarterly. 49(4), pp.281–93. Vuchinich, S. 1990. The sequential organization of closing in verbal family conflict. In: Grimshaw, A.D. ed. Conflict talk: sociolinguistic investigations of arguments in conversations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.95–113. Waldron, V.R., Applegate, J.L. 1994. Interpersonal construct differentiation and conversational planning: an examination of two cognitive accounts for the production of competent verbal disagreement tactics. Human Communication Research. 21, pp.3–35. Watts, R.J. 2003. Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wierzbicka, A. 1991. Cross-cultural pragmatics: the semantics of human interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

195

11 Offence and conflict talk Michael Haugh and Valeria Sinkeviciute

11.1 Introduction Arguments and conflict involve disagreement or opposition between different parties. In this chapter, we discuss the way in which the initial disagreeing or opposing move is itself very often triggered by some kind of (perceived) offence on the part of another party and how construing the conduct of others as offensive can thus occasion conflict. Consider Excerpt 11.1 from a recording of a telephone conversation between two friends. Beth has been talking with Alison about posts to a Christian discussion list about prayers and how participants are sometimes sanctioned for inappropriate posts. At the point the excerpt begins, Beth starts recounting how such sanctions, and the offending actions that are being sanctioned themselves, can occasion arguments among members of the discussion list. In this case, it was a “sexually perverted kinda jokey” posting (lines 5–6) that caused “everyone” to be offended (lines 6–7) and ensuing argument about whether the post should have been the object of sanction (lines 7–8).1 (11.1) CallHome: eng4624: 1:38 1 B: there was this big thing on last year and I- I 2 took myself off because I didn’t want to deal 3 with it this um sister she wrote about uh 4 this like cookie dough thing you know one of 5 those like sexually perverted kinda jokey kinda 6 postings thing and so, everyone was so 7 offended an- and like (1.3) you know (0.6) a lot 8 of people arguing back and forth, they got really 9 [pet]ty and 10 A: [mm] 11 B: it happens a lot you know? it happens a lot. 12 (0.4) 13 B: stuff gets (0.5) you know g- taken out 14 of context and people get offended and stuff 196

Offence and conflict talk

15 16 A: 17 18 19 B: 20 21

[like that.] [yeah and] plus cause you’ve got y- you’re dealing with so many different completely different kinds of people? I didn’t really realize that though I thought it was I eh this is a really diverse network I didn’t know there was so many people

Two key points about the relationship between offence and conflict become apparent in Beth’s recounting of the events on the discussion list. First, taking offence can lead to acrimonious conflict, even in a community of practice where the focus is (nominally at least) on supporting others in the group (Graham, 2007). It is notable that the offensiveness of the “jokey” posting itself is reported here as the object of widespread dispute (lines 7–8) and that the parties involved became “petty” (lines 8–9). Second, reporting about transgressions, and the responses of others to those offences, creates opportunities for moralising or moral talk, that is, (dis)affiliating with (shared) moral values (Bergmann, 1998; Luckmann, 1995), as well as for positioning the moral self vis-à-vis others (Douglas, 1970; Garfinkel, 1956). In the course of Beth’s telling, there are ample opportunities for Alison to express support for the (tacit) stances Beth takes here that such arguments are unpleasant and should be avoided (lines 1–3), or that people take offence too easily (implicit in lines 5–7, given Beth does not appear to include herself amongst those who were offended) or that offence is caused by things being “taken out of context” (lines 13–15). However, Alison passes up these opportunities. For instance, in the relatively long pause of 1.3 seconds (Jefferson 1989) in line 7, Alison withholds taking a stance on Beth’s report that “everyone was so offended”, while in line 10, Alison only offers a continuer (“mm”) rather than indicating her stance on Beth’s reporting of the ensuing argument. Indeed, Alison does not take any particular evaluative or affective stance on the legitimacy of taking offence at all, but rather offers an additional account as to why offencetaking in that group can lead to conflict (lines 16–18): that is, that there are different kinds of people with presumably different sets of beliefs. Beth endorses this account, ostensibly as something she did not previously realise (lines 19–21). In short, an opportunity for affiliation between these two parties about the right/wrongness of what happened on the discussion list is not interactionally accomplished here. Instead, the two participants interactionally accomplish moral grounds for not taking a stance vis-à-vis the (allegedly) offensive posting and ensuing arguments. What we can see, then, is that whether interactants themselves end up taking a moral stance or not, the conflicts that ensue when people do take offence offer an opportunity for both the involved parties, and those observing those conflicts, to “interactively construct and/or reconfirm a common moral ground” (Günthner, 1995, p.170). It is also evident from the above brief discussion that the notion of offence itself is multifaceted. This reflects the relatively complex semantics (in English) of the related terms “offence”/“offense”, “offend”, “offended” and “offensive”. According to the MerriamWebster Dictionary (2018), for instance, “offense” has multiple senses relevant to the study of conflict talk: 1. something that outrages the moral or physical senses; 2. a breach of a moral or social code; 3. the state of being insulted or morally outraged; 197

Michael Haugh and Valeria Sinkeviciute

4. the act of displeasing or affronting; 5. the act of attacking The notion of offence can thus refer to: (1) interpersonally transgressive conduct; (2) a (perceived) moral breach or transgression; (3) a complex moral emotion occasioned by (perceived) transgressions; (4) the acts of “causing” and/or “taking” of offence – actions which are themselves morally loaded, as they both implicate moral evaluations and are themselves open to moral evaluation; as well as (5) the act of verbally attacking someone (as opposed to defending oneself). Given the inherent conceptual complexity of offence, it is perhaps no surprise that the research literature on offence is dispersed across a range of different disciplines, including linguistics (e.g. Culpeper, 2011; Günthner, 1995), media and communication (e.g. Durant, 2010; Tagg, Seargeant and Brown, 2017), philosophy (e.g. Barrow, 2005; Weckert, 2007), social psychology (e.g. Poggi and D’Errico, 2018; Smith, Phillips and King, 2010), law (e.g. von Hirsch and Simester, 2006) and sociology (e.g. Bergmann, 1998; Campbell and Manning, 2014), among others. In light of the vast scope of this literature, then, our aim in this chapter is to draw attention to a number of key distinctions that are of particular import when studying the relationship between offence and conflict talk. More precisely, we focus on the distinctions between “causing”/“giving” and “taking” offence, and with respect to the latter, between “feeling”/“being” offended as a kind of moral-affective stance and “taking” offence as a form of social action, that is, “claiming”/“indicating” that (some)one is offended. We argue that the latter, in particular, is what gives rise to overt conflict and so is deserving of more in-depth study. The chapter begins by reviewing extant work on causing offence and what counts as “offensive”. We then argue, in Section 11.3, that “causing offence” should be distinguished from “taking offence”, and that the latter can constitute a social action that is itself open to moral evaluation, and for that reason can seed conflict. We next briefly review, in Section 11.4, studies that have focused on the way in which taking offence can lead to conflict in various kinds of situated discourse. We draw together some of the theoretical threads that emerge from these studies through a brief case study focusing on accusations and conflict talk arising in the Australian version of the reality television show Big Brother. We conclude by suggesting possible future avenues of research and the importance of examining causing offence, whether it involves giving, claiming or taking offence, in a range of situated discourse settings in different languages and varieties therein.

11.2 Causing offence The analysis of causing/giving offence, as the term suggests, focuses on how particular forms of conduct can be treated as transgressions that are potentially offensive to other parties. A transgression involves a breach of some form of (perceived) moral, social or legal code that can be variously referred to as an affront, fault, infraction, infringement, misdeed, misdemeanour, offence, sin, wrongdoing and so on. A line is commonly drawn between legal and moral transgressions (or offences). Notably, in Western societies, “being offended is still generally recognised as something in principle to be balanced against benefits of freedom of expression” (Durant, 2010, pp.200–1), although this ideological commitment does not extend, as Weckert (2007) points out, to all societies around the world. There is also sometimes political pressure for the line between the two to be shifted (Smith, Phillips and King, 2010; von Hirsch and Simester, 2006). 198

Offence and conflict talk

Moral transgressions have, of course, a different basis from legal ones. One key question for researchers seeking to better understand the causes of offence is thus: what are the moral grounds invoked by interactants in order to construe some conduct as a form of transgression? Durant (2010, p.202) suggests that “much of the day-to-day arbitration of alleged ‘offensiveness’ does not rely on formal regulation or law at all. Instead it is a matter of adaptation by individuals and groups to tacit conventions governing communicative behaviour”. However, this begs the question of what constitutes these “tacit conventions” and how are they instantiated and regulated in ordinary day-to-day interaction? For the most part, moral transgressions are conceptualised as threats to the moral (Douglas, 1970) or sacred self (Goffman, 1967). These threats to the moral self (or the group to which self belongs) are theorised to varying degrees of granularity, ranging from relatively undifferentiated notions such as personal dignity (Wierzbicka, 2001) or face (Bousfield, 2008), through to more complex frameworks that make distinctions between different types of face and sociality rights (Culpeper, 2011) or different types of interpersonal expectations (Tayebi, 2016). Culpeper et al. (2010), for instance, who draw on Spencer-Oatey’s (2005) rapport management framework to examine types of offence across British, Chinese, Finish, German and Turkish informants, distinguish between seven loci of moral breaches or transgressions: quality face, (social) identity face, relational face, equity rights, association rights, (cultural) taboos and physical self. Tayebi (2016), on the other hand, employs a bottom-up approach to tease out the different interpersonal expectations that are held to underpin moral transgressions by Persian speakers, namely, relational expectations (foreseeability, equity, face-saving expectations), deference entitlement expectations, reciprocity expectations and ritual-based expectations. In all cases, however, the perceived or attributed degree of intentionality (Culpeper, 2011; see also Barrow, 2005), as well as the relational history of those participants involved (Tayebi, 2016), is argued to influence the degree to which the conduct in question is regarded as offensive. Studies of causing offence have also focused on the forms of conduct that lend themselves to being regarded as offensive. Different typologies of these transgressive forms of conduct broadly fall into two camps: behaviourist and linguistic.2 Behaviourist typologies of offensive conduct attempt to pinpoint specific forms of behaviour, or the non-performance of expected behaviours, that cause offence. Such behaviours are treated as (proto)typically offensive, either to some people or to all people in a society (Barrow, 2005). They range from bad language, insults, hate speech, incitement, unspeakable ideas and blasphemy (Durant, 2010), through to invasions of privacy, failed humour, inappropriate behaviour or simply “values and opinions one disagrees with” (Tagg, Seargeant and Brown, 2017, p.71). Notably, some forms of behaviour, such as racist language, are claimed to be “inherently offensive” irrespective of whether anyone has actually taken offence (Barrow, 2005). Whether these forms of conduct are treated as offensive to some or all, or as inherently offensive, can, of course, be subject to considerable dispute. Through such disputes, the ideological discourses underlying arguments about what can be legitimately treated as offensive conduct become apparent (Moulinou, 2014; O’Driscoll, 2013). Language-based typologies of offensive conduct focus on identifying “act[s] of communication intended to be interpreted by the hearer as one that makes him/her experience a negative affective response, such as feeling hurt, humiliated, debased or in some way degraded” (Piskorska, 2017, p.52). These causes of offence are often theorised as impoliteness strategies (Culpeper, 2015). Such strategies are generally divided into those that arise “on record” through conventionalised formulae and those that arise “off record” through implication (Bousfield, 2008; Culpeper, 2011; Piskorska, 2017). Examples of the former 199

Michael Haugh and Valeria Sinkeviciute

(in British English) include insults (e.g. “You are so stupid”), dismissals (e.g. “Get lost”) and threats (e.g. “I’m gonna box your ears if you don’t [X]”). More granular typologies of impoliteness strategies that place such strategies on an explicit–implicit continuum have also been proposed. Mateo and Yus (2013), for instance, develop a taxonomy of conventional through to innovative insults that are recognised by the interactants as being used in order to offend them. Being offended and, as a result, acting in an emotionally aggressive way has been associated with insults directed at one’s perception of honour (i.e. diminishing one’s status) (Mosquera et al., 2002). In contrast to the growing number of studies of impoliteness formulae or more explicit types of impoliteness strategies, there have been relatively fewer studies to date of indirect forms of impoliteness. Culpeper (2011, 2015), for instance, distinguishes between convention-driven, form-driven and context-driven forms of implicational impoliteness, but draws his examples primarily from reports of “offensive” incidents. The relative lack of studies focused on the analysis of implicated impoliteness in interaction is somewhat surprising given the fact that implicitly communicated offence may be more biting or hurtful than explicitly communicated offence (Culpeper, 2011; Haugh, 2015a; Piskorska, 2017; Tayebi, 2018). However, this is perhaps a function of the fact that inferences are much more challenging for researchers to locate in discourse compared with conventionalised formulae. A key assumption made by many researchers in regard to the causing of offence is that no language is inherently impolite or offensive, and thus not everything that is potentially offensive will be perceived as such in every situation. Indeed, there are various forms of discourses in which the aforementioned impoliteness strategies are more likely to occur, such as in military and civilian police training (e.g. Culpeper, 2011), parking disputes (e.g. Bousfield, 2008) or in exploitative television shows where impoliteness is treated as a form of spectacle (e.g. Culpeper, 2005; Culpeper and Holmes, 2013; Lorenzo-Dus, 2009; Lorenzo-Dus, Bou-Franch and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2013). It has been claimed that impoliteness in such contexts is sanctioned as a form of “normal and expectable communicative behaviour” (Kienpointner, 2008, p.244) or “rule-governed rudeness” (Lakoff, 1989, p.123), and therefore no offence is caused, at least on-record or publicly. However, even in discourse contexts where impoliteness is claimed to be sanctioned, people can and evidently “do still take offence” (Culpeper, 2011, p.217; see also GarcésConejos Blitvich and Lorenzo-Dus, 2013; Sinkeviciute, 2015). This begs the question of when these kinds of impoliteness strategies give rise to conflict. Given arguments or conflict arise when one party opposes an antecedent (non-)verbal action (Coulter, 1990; Maynard, 1985), analysing the responses of parties to (perceived) offences is critical to answering this question. In order to further our understanding of the relationship between offence and conflict talk, then, it is important to consider how people also take offence.

11.3 Taking offence While communication scholars and linguists have tended to focus on the causes of offence, moral philosophers have generally focused their attention on the taking of offence (e.g. Barrow, 2005; Haydon, 2006; Weckert, 2007). An important point made by these scholars is that: the term “taking offence” is ambiguous. It may apply only to the subjective perception: a person is offended by, or – we can say – takes offence at the remark of another, but says and does nothing about it. We could call this “passively taking offence”, though an 200

Offence and conflict talk

everyday and less ambiguous term for it is simply “being offended”. On the other hand, a person may take offence in the sense of actually registering, to the other, the fact that they have been offended. I shall call this “actively taking offence”. (Haydon, 2006, p.24; cf. Barrow, 2005, p.268) In other words, to take offence involves either a negative affective state (i.e. feeling/being offended) or a negatively valenced stance (i.e. claiming/indicating (some)one has taken offence). The former is subjective and so only formally knowable to the party concerned (although we might make inferences about how others feel based on their response to an offending event), while the latter is intersubjective in that an evaluative stance is interactionally accomplished with other parties (Du Bois, 2007). In both cases, however, what is involved is not simply some kind of negative emotion (e.g. anger, annoyance, displeasure, hurt, indignation, resentment, etc.), but a moral judgment that the conduct in question is somehow bad, wrong, inappropriate (Barrow, 2005, pp.268–9; Weckert, 2007, p.27) and so constitutes a moral transgression (affront, fault, infraction, infringement, misdeed, misdemeanour, wrongdoing, etc.). Taking offence thus involves a moral emotion (Haidt, 2003), that is, an emotion grounded in (tacit) claims about the rightness/wrongness of the conduct in question.

11.3.1 Taking offence as moral emotion Feeling offended is generally understood to involve subjective experience of a negative emotion that is grounded in moral evaluations of the conduct of another party who is perceived as an offender (Mosquera et al., 2002; Slaby and Stephan, 2008). As a result of someone taking offence, the target feels strong negative emotions, especially if the offensive action is seen as intentional, albeit not necessarily offence-intentional (Weckert, 2007). In other words, offence is primarily viewed as “some sort of hurt or pain, displeasure, disgust, mental distress or mental suffering of some variety” (Weckert, 2007, p.26). However, as Barrow (2005) argues, feeling offended should not be equated with something being offensive. While someone might feel offended, this does not necessarily mean that what produced that feeling was offensive in the eyes of others, and so it is not necessarily actionable. Feeling offended is thus considered to be an inherently subjective experience, albeit rooted in that individual’s understanding of (shared) moral values. The inherent subjectivity of feeling offended raises a key analytical question, namely, for whom is this conduct considered offensive? For instance, refusing to assist a friend at a charity event might cause someone to feel offended, especially if they have tried hard to arrange the tickets in question, but even though this might be evaluated as inconsiderate by many, this is clearly only offensive to the party concerned (although others may well be recruited to agree that it is offensive). In general, the focus of studies examining feelings of offence has been on interactions which take place in public or in multi-party settings where, apart from the offender and the offended, there are other interlocutors in front of whom the (perceived) offensive event takes place. Studies of (ostensibly) pro-social or jocular teasing, for instance, have found that targets of teases are more likely to take offence than expected by the producers of those teases (e.g. Kowalski, 2000). However, while tease-targets may feel offended, they often do not actively take offence (e.g. Bollmer et al., 2003), or they may do so “backstage” with third parties rather than with the offending party (Sinkeviciute, 2017a), particularly in multi-party settings. However, feeling offended is clearly not limited to public settings, but 201

Michael Haugh and Valeria Sinkeviciute

can also be occasioned by (transgressive) conduct in private settings, especially in relation to the expectations associated with more intimate relationships (Poggi and D’Errico, 2018; Tayebi, 2016).

11.3.2 Taking offence as social action Taking offence also refers to a form of social action where some conduct on the part of another party is construed as a moral transgression and/or offensive and grounds for expressing (moral) indignation (Garfinkel, 1956; Günthner, 1995; Moulinou, 2014). Taking offence in this sense is thus morally loaded, not only because it is grounded in a moral judgment, but also, as a consequence, the party taking offence is also open to moral judgment by others (Haugh, 2015b; Kádár and Márquez Reiter, 2015; Mitchell and Haugh, 2015). The grounds for the moral judgments that underpin the taking of offence are instantiated and regulated through discourse in ordinary and institutional interactions (Bergmann, 1998; Garfinkel, 1967; Luckmann, 1995). One consequence of the inherently discursive nature of those moral grounds is that “one can choose not to make such a judgment” (Barrow, 2005, p.269; see also Mitchell and Haugh, 2015), which means the legitimacy of taking offence is itself open to moral evaluation (Haugh, 2015b). In other words, by taking offence, the interlocutors can also put themselves into a situation of being held morally accountable for this taking of offence (Haugh, 2015a, 2015b; Sinkeviciute, 2017b, 2017c), for instance, as someone who takes offence too readily or is overly sensitive. Claiming offence may, therefore, be oriented to, in some instances at least, as a delicate or sensitive social action (Günthner, 1995, p.172; Haugh, 2015b, p.42). Offence can be taken more or less explicitly (Haugh, 2015b). One of the most explicit ways in which offence can be claimed is through metapragmatic comments where individuals refer to their own emotions or those of others (e.g. anger, frustration), or explicitly refer to the taking of offence through such phrases as “I was really offended”, “I take offence at that”, “that’s offensive” and so on (e.g. Spencer-Oatey, 2011; Sinkeviciute, 2017c; Tayebi, 2016). When taking offence in interaction, an individual engages in a pragmatic act in its own right; that is, they construct events as involving some kind of offence and construe another party as responsible for that moral transgression. In other words, irrespective of whether they actually feel offended or not, speakers choose to claim that an offending event has taken place and, as a consequence of that, refer to themselves as offended. Such claims can be occasioned by prior aggressive behaviours, humorous or not, which can, in turn, generate conflict, depending on the response of the party being held responsible for the (perceived) offensive conduct. However, it should be pointed out that explicitly claiming offence, like all metapragmatic comments (Hübler and Bublitz, 2007), may be strategic. For instance, when people deliberately claim offence, even if they do not really feel that way, in order to promote their own moral superiority (Lægaard, 2007). (Perceived) transgressions can also occasion a whole range of social actions through which offence is implicitly taken, including complaining (e.g. Drew, 1998; Schegloff, 2005), criticising (e.g. Morris, 1988), reproaching (Günthner, 1996), blaming (e.g. Pomerantz, 1978), denouncing (e.g. Garfinkel, 1956; Günthner, 1995) and accusing (e.g. Garcia, 1991; Haugh and Sinkeviciute, 2018). Complaints about moral transgressions by third parties, in particular, have been the object of considerable work in the fields of conversation analysis and pragmatics (e.g. Boxer, 1993; Drew, 1998; Schegloff, 2005). These sorts of indirect/third party complaints are frequently designed to solicit affiliative responses, that is, a joint expression of indignation at the reported transgression (Drew, 1998). 202

Offence and conflict talk

Günthner (1995, p.170) raises the question of “why [do] members of a community react with rejection and strong indignation when they hear about morally deviant actions which do not directly affect themselves”. She then suggests that through doing so, not only do “participants interactively negotiate and confirm the ‘moral infrastructure of their social life-world’” (Günthner, 1995, p.157), but also position themselves as morally superior to the offender (and perhaps superior to those who do not or are not able to perceive the transgression in question) (see also Moulinou, 2014). Direct complaints or reproaches, on the other hand, do not recurrently occasion affiliative responses. Günthner (1996) argues that this is because reproaches involve calling attention to misconduct on the part of the addressee, and in holding those addressees morally responsible for this misconduct, the producer of the reproach initiates a remedial interchange (Goffman, 1971), that is, where they are seeking an offer of redress (e.g. an apology) for that misconduct from that addressee. However, she goes on to argue that “the initiation of a remedial interchange inevitably opens up the possibility that instead of performing remedial work the co-participant may challenge the initiator’s legitimacy and a quarrel may ensue” (Günthner, 1996, p.276). Accusations have also been argued to prefer denials (Coulter, 1990; Garcia, 1991; Haugh and Sinkeviciute, 2018) and so more likely to occasion conflict. Overall, then, it has been found that some social actions through which offence is taken are less likely to give rise to conflict (e.g. indirect complaints) while others are more likely to occasion conflict (e.g. direct complaints, reproaches, accusations). In the remainder of this chapter, we thus move to examine in more detail situations in which causing and/or taking offence leads to conflict in order to further our understanding of the relationship between the two.

11.4 Offence and conflict in interaction Conflict can occur at various levels – interpersonal, intergroup or international – where incompatibility in expectations about what counts as appropriate conduct between people, groups or nations can arise. As we have discussed in the previous sections, there are different pragmatic practices that can lead to offence being given and taken, which can, in turn, provoke conflict. Genuine impoliteness, including direct insults, name-calling and unmitigated (face) threats (e.g. Bernal, 2008; Bou-Franch and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2014; Culpeper, 2011; Sinkeviciute, 2015) is frequently linked with conflict. Sinkeviciute (2015), for instance, lists three main triggers in interaction for perceiving something as genuinely impolite and thus likely to cause conflict: previous impolite (non-)verbal behaviours (e.g. using expletives), implied negativity (suggesting someone’s behaviour is inappropriate and indirectly criticising it) and personal dislike. However, conflictual situations can also be occasioned as a result of, for example, unfulfilled expectations in intimate relationships (e.g. Tayebi, 2016), disagreements, criticisms or accusations (e.g. Angouri and Tseliga, 2010; Haugh and Sinkeviciute, 2018) or different understandings of what counts as appropriate or acceptable humour (e.g. Haugh, 2017; Sinkeviciute, 2017b). Conflict sequences have been argued to arise when the targets themselves (Bousfield, 2007, 2008; Culpeper, Bousfield and Wichmann, 2003) or co-present third parties (Dobs and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2013; Kádár and Márquez Reiter, 2015) express opposition to an antecedent offending action through either “offensive” (e.g. insults, threats, etc.) or “defensive” (e.g. direct contradiction, dismissals, accounts, etc.) counter moves. Bousfield (2007, 2008) notes that such counter-responses (whether defensive or offensive) can be 203

Michael Haugh and Valeria Sinkeviciute

considered as offending actions themselves, that is, as “impolite”, thus resulting in heated conflict. However, it is also clear that conflicts do not always arise despite offence being caused. The likelihood of (perceived) offence occasioning conflict is arguably dependent on the specific parties involved (including their relational history, if any, and their own individual proclivities), aspects of the situational context (including, for instance, the stakes involved in that interaction), as well as the specific design of the social actions through which offence is taken. The relationship between offence and conflict is evidently complex. In the remainder of this section, we thus focus on the different settings in which taking offence can give rise to conflict. Conflict talk varies in the extent to which it is interpersonal or intergroup in nature, and the extent to which it occurs in private or public communications. Although there are numerous studies of conflict in interpersonal, private settings (e.g. Coulter, 1990; Dersley and Wootton, 2000; Hutchby, 1996; Maynard, 1985), studies of how (taking) offence can lead to conflict in such settings are remarkably few in number. Tayebi (2018), for instance, examines the taking of offence in intimate settings in response to what is termed tikkeh in Persian: a form of insinuation where the implication of an impolite belief is interpreted as intentionally communicated. Haugh (2015b), on the other hand, examines the taking of offence in settings where participants are getting acquainted. One noticeable difference between the two studies is that taking offence is treated as a sensitive or delicate social action in the latter case, but not in the former. There is not, however, a straightforward relationship between the degree of intimacy between participants and the extent to which conflict arises when disagreements occur (Ogiermann, 2019). While it is evident that the extant relationship between parties as well as the way in which offence is taken can impact on the likelihood of that taking of offence leading to conflict talk, the taking of offence is itself always a locally situated phenomenon. In contrast to the paucity of studies of offence and conflict talk in private settings, studies of the relationship between offence and conflict talk are more numerous in the case of online, mediated settings and broadcast talk. Analyses of how offence can seed intergroup conflicts in discussion boards or Facebook (Ferenčik, 2017; Kádár, Haugh and Chang, 2013; Parvaresh and Tayebi, 2018; Sinkeviciute, 2018), for instance, have focused on the role of identity (politics) in the taking of offence. Studies of broadcast talk, in contrast, have demonstrated how interpersonal conflicts in televised fly-on-the-wall documentaries, game shows or reality shows often serve as a form of public “spectacle” or “entertainment” (Bousfield, 2008; Culpeper, 2005; Culpeper and Holmes, 2013; Lorenzo-Dus, 2009; Lorenzo-Dus, Bou-Franch and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2013). We can nevertheless learn much about the relationship between offence and conflict talk through such studies. Kádár and Márquez Reiter (2015), for instance, show how offence can be taken on behalf of others through what they term “bystander intervention”. In another study, Haugh and Culpeper (2018) draw attention to the way in which the taking of offence in response to the (ostensibly) jocular use of a racial slur is treated as a sensitive, dispreferred social action in an interaction between housemates on the television reality game Big Brother, while a denunciation of that offence is delivered as a preferred social action in subsequent televised interviews with the offender in question. Such settings are also often rich in metapragmatic expressions relating to the taking of offence that allow us to explore how the relationship between ostensibly jocular teasing or mocking is nevertheless treated as offensive (Sinkeviciute, 2017c). However, while interpersonal conflict is typically associated with private communications, and intergroup conflict with public communications (Douglas, 1970), the lines between 204

Offence and conflict talk

interpersonal, intergroup and institutional conflict have become increasingly blurred with the rise of social media in both private and public life (Lakoff, 2005). O’Driscoll (2013, p.380), for instance, points to the public-isation of seemingly private, interpersonal offences, that is, where the privately offensive is treated as publicly offensive, thereby attracting institutional sanction. He suggests that this is indicative of a shift in public discourse away from valuing “freedom of expression” to one in which “decorum takes priority over free expression and possibly insulting attributions become inadmissible” (ibid., p.379). Nowhere is this more evident than in the rise of the phenomenon of reporting and documenting “microaggressions” (Campbell and Manning, 2014, p.693), that is, remarks or glances that are interpreted as communicating “hostile, derogatory, or negative racial, gender, and sexual orientation, and religious slights and insults to the target person or group” irrespective of whether or not any such slights or insults were intended. These phenomena are well worth investigating further from a linguistic perspective, given the taking of offence is an increasingly highstakes move in both private and public life.

11.5 Accusations and conflict talk In this section, we briefly conclude our overview of the relationship between offence and conflict talk with a case study focusing on a conflict sequence taken from the Australian version of the reality television show Big Brother in order to illustrate how some social actions, specifically accusations, appear designed to seed conflict. Accusations involve an assertion that the accused has done something wrong (Castor, 2015; Coulter, 1990; Garcia, 1991). As Castor (2015, p.20) argues, “accusations label and assess actions and by extension, label and assess or blame agents”. Making an accusation thus involves holding the accused accountable for some form of moral transgression or wrongdoing, and so constitutes a means by which interactants indicate that they have taken offence (Haugh and Sinkeviciute, 2018). There is also evidence from studies of accusations in everyday interactions that they frequently lead to some kind of interpersonal conflict (Coulter, 1990; Garcia, 1991). This is because “accusations engender return accusations, counter-assertions […] or denials” (Garcia, 1991, p.821). Haugh and Sinkeviciute (2018) have recently argued that the propensity of accusations to provoke denials or counter-accusations explains, at least in part, the tendency for accusations to engender conflict talk. The sequence we examine here to illustrate this claim is taken from the Australian version of Big Brother. We have chosen this excerpt because a seemingly mild implication of a fairly trivial, low-stakes wrongdoing nevertheless results in extended conflict talk between two members of the household, Angie and Estelle. The conflict in this sequence is not as overt as others we have examined in which participants are shouting and swearing at each other (see e.g. Haugh and Sinkeviciute, 2018), but the tension between the two is clearly palpable. Moreover, while both Angie and Estelle claim that they are not going to argue with the other party, it is nevertheless evident that this is exactly what they are doing. In the following brief analysis, we examine how this comes about. We draw particular attention to the way in which a denial in response to an implicated assertion of wrongdoing by Estelle – in this case, interrupting Angie – not only construes that assertion as an accusation, but in so doing leads to subsequent conflict talk between the two. The excerpt begins as Angie is talking to Ava (who is vegetarian) about what the latter can eat, because no tofu has been ordered for her. Six members of the household are in the kitchen at that time: A = Angie; E = Estelle; Av = Ava; R = Ray; G = George; B = Bradley. 205

Michael Haugh and Valeria Sinkeviciute

(11.2) AUS BB: A&E: 0:22 1 A: the (.) which you [can] eat but= 2 E:    [yep ]          [mm.] 3 A: =you’re not gonna wanna eat peaches and be-= 4 E: |looks at Ava, smiling| 5 A: = bea[ns #every da:y?#] 6 E: [the thing is we’re] like [I was ] just 7 Av:  [◦no::.◦] 8 E: looking [at we’ve cook]ed 9 A: [u h h : : m ] 10 A: |raising hand| 11 E: we’re (.) li[ke once from] today we’re gonna= 12 A: [ o k a : y ] 13 A: |abruptly drops hand| 14 E: =have= 15 R: =I’ve got [eggs and] tuna: and you eat fish= 16 E: [(only ) ] 17 R: =don’t you: 18 (0.3) 19 E: WHat An↓gie 20 A: I ↑just wa[s mid-]sentence ba::be 21 R:  [ Ava ] 22 (0.3) 23 A: I’m hh like 24 | smiling | 25 (0.7) 26 Av: ◦ohhh◦= 27 A: =[don’t worry ] 28 E: =[>I was ↑talk]ing at< the same ↑ti:me as you: 29 (.) we both were talking at the [same ti]::me = 30 A:               [o k a y ] 31 A: =◦↑okay.◦ 32 A: |not looking at Estelle, shaking her head| 33 (1.4) 34 A: I’m not gonna argue 35 (0.2) 36 E: I’m not h- I’m not arguing with you I’m just 37 saying we were at the same 38 ti:[me] 39 A:  [o: ]kay. #I just felt like I was just mid40 conversation just then# 41 G: |bangs cans on the table| 42 E: I: was [as well though] 43 G: [ ] 44 (0.2) 45 G: ↓that’s e↑nough e[nough (at ease) ] 46 E:         [we were both spea]king like

206

Offence and conflict talk

47 (0.6) |E moves hands back and forth| 48    |A looks at Estelle| 49 E: we were bo:th >speaking at the same< ↑ti:me 50 A: |looks down| 51 E: and you: cut me off all the time and I don’t 52 care like I’m like whateve:r so it’s ↑not 53 [just] me I’m just sa:ying= 54 A: [okay] 55 |not looking at Estelle| 56 (0.2) 57 A: |rolls eyes and raises eyebrows| 58 E: =cause we were both talking at the same time 59 A: it’s ↑all ↓goo:d [it’s been] a long ↓da::y 60 E:        [y e a h. ] 61 (1.8) |E looks briefly at Angie| 62 E: I guess it ha::s 63 (0.7) 64 E: apparently? 65 E: |looks away from Angie| The transgression in question, the “interruption”, occurs in lines 5–6, when Estelle starts addressing Ava in overlap with Angie, who is also addressing Ava. Overlapping talk does not necessarily constitute interruption, as long argued by conversation analysts (Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson, 1974), even in cases where it occurs some distance from a seemingly legitimate point for speaker change (Jefferson, 1986). It has thus been argued that there is no independent or objective definition of an interruption (Bilmes, 1997), but rather that it is a moral category where one party draws attention to a failing on the part of another party (Hutchby, 1992; Schegloff, 2001), specifically “a hostile transgression upon another person’s speaking rights” (Weatherall and Edmonds, 2018, p.11).3 Schegloff (2001) argues that construing prior talk as an “interruption” is grounds for complaint, which leaves that party open to the charge of being “inattentive”, “impolite” or “rude” (Drew, 2009, p.72; Hutchby, 2008, p.227). What is notable here is the way in which Angie introduces this charge. Subsequent to Ava responding to Angie’s question (line 7), Angie alludes to the interruptive nature of Estelle’s prior talk (in line 6), through a gambit to re-take the floor (lines 9–10) that is delivered in overlap with Estelle’s ongoing talk (line 8). Estelle nevertheless continues her talk (line 11), and Angie alludes again to the interruptive nature of Estelle’s talk by this time abandoning this attempt to re-take the floor (lines 12–13), once again in overlap with Estelle’s talk (line 11). Ray appears to offer another proposal for what Ava can eat (line 15), which is also delivered in partial overlap with Estelle’s ongoing talk (lines 14, 16), but Estelle does not orient to this as interruptive.4 Instead, she orients to Angie’s prior attempts to re-take and then relinquish the floor as pre-complaints (Monzoni, 2008), through a “go-ahead” for Angie to make her complaint (line 19). By introducing the complainable matter in this implicit manner, Angie thereby positions Estelle to acknowledge that a transgression may have taken place (i.e. through a pre-complaint go-ahead that presupposes a potential transgression). Notably, this go-ahead is delivered by Estelle with marked prosody (increased loudness and emphatic stress) that indexes “annoyance” or “irritation” (Günthner, 1996), an indication that a conflict sequence is emerging here between the two. 207

Michael Haugh and Valeria Sinkeviciute

Angie at this point proceeds to make a negative observation typical of complaints (Schegloff, 1988), namely, that she was “mid-sentence” (line 20), although withholds the upshot that she did not get to finish what she was saying. Instead, she proceeds to offer, in lines 23 and 27, what appears to be an absolution for a wrongdoing (Robinson, 2004), notably, in the absence of an apology (Drew and Hepburn, 2016). Once again, then, Angie implies but does not say that Estelle’s prior talk was “impolitely interruptive” (Hutchby, 2008, p.227). Estelle denies the implied charge that her prior talk was interruptive by formulating it as “talking at the same time” (line 28–9), thereby treating Angie’s implied negative observation not simply as a complaint but an accusation (Haugh and Sinkeviciute, 2018). Angie then appears to concede this point (lines 30–1), although in shaking her head (lines 32) and then going on to assert that she’s “not gonna argue” (line 34), it becomes evident that she does not, in fact, agree with Estelle’s formulation of the event as simply “talking at the same time”. Estelle then construes Angie’s ostensible concession as another accusation in denying that she’s arguing (line 36) and then repeating her account of the event (lines 36–8). Angie repeats the charge through an implied negative observation that she was “midconversation” (lines 39–40), which is countered with the same claim by Estelle (line 42). That conflict is indeed occurring here becomes apparent from George’s attempt to intervene through a joking call for them to stop (lines 41, 43, 45). However, Estelle ignores this, yet again repeating her formulation of the event as “speaking at the same time” (line 49), but then following this up with an implied accusation that Angie is overly sensitive, in claiming that although Angie cuts her off “all the time” (line 51), she does not complain (lines 52–3). Once again, Angie appears to concede this (line 54), but her facial expression (line 57) appears to signal otherwise. Estelle then repeats her formulation of the event as “talking at the same time” (line 58), and Angie responds with a platitude, “it’s all good”, and an account for their prior argument, namely, “it’s been a long day” (line 59), an account with which Estelle indicates hedged agreement (lines 60, 62). The argument is thus closed through ostensible submission by Angie (Bousfield, 2007; Vuchinich, 1990), although the sarcasm indexed through the subsequent hedging increment in line 64 as Estelle shifts her gaze away from Angie (line 65) indicates the conflict has not been resolved happily. Through this brief excerpt we have drawn attention to a number of features of the relationship between offence and conflict talk. First, what counts as an offence is itself an interactional accomplishment. Overlapping talk constitutes a moral transgression, an interruption, when one or more parties construe it as such. Second, indicating one has taken offence through an implied complaint can lead to conflict when that complaint is construed as an accusation through denial and counter-claims. Third, conflict talk is not always marked through overt signals, such as shouting, overt threats, insults or swearing. Instead, it can be accomplished through seemingly mild disagreement about the formulation of prior events. Studying the relationship between offence and conflict talk thus allows us insights into the interactional accomplishment of less overt forms of conflict alongside the more overt cases that have been studied to date.

11.6 Future directions In this chapter, we have focused on the relationship between offence and conflict talk. We have drawn attention to the multifaceted nature of offence itself and the importance of distinguishing between the causing and taking of offence as social actions. It is evident, however, that there is much more that remains to be done. There needs to be more systematic study of the ways in which offence is caused and taken across languages and cultures 208

Offence and conflict talk

and its interpersonal – and, in some cases, institutional – consequences. We also need more systematic theorisation of the relationship between affective and moral dimensions of offence. There are, inevitably, a number of challenges for researchers wishing to venture into this territory. One centres on cross-linguistic terminological issues. The past two decades of (im)politeness research have illustrated that we need to distinguish between emic (insider’s) and etic (outsider’s), as well as lay and scientific, perspectives on (im)politeness (Haugh 2016; Kádár and Haugh, 2013). The same likely applies in the case of studies of offence and conflict, as offence is conceptualised in different ways across languages and cultures. In this chapter, we have drawn from lay terms in English, but there are not necessarily straightforward equivalents in other languages. The potential conceptual overlaps and differences across languages are well worth further investigation. A second challenge relates to the paucity of studies investigating the taking of offence and conflict in everyday, interpersonal settings. While studying offence and conflict in publicly available forms of communication in online and broadcast settings has clearly been fruitful, there is still much to be understood about the nature of offence and its relationship with conflict in private settings. Although the line between the two is clearly blurring (O’Driscoll, 2013), we cannot effectively analyse and theorise this phenomenon without building on an understanding of the latter. Yet despite such challenges, or perhaps because of them, it is important to analyse conflict talk data in a whole range of different settings.

Transcription conventions [ ] (0.5) (.) : - . ? , = underlining CAPS ° ° .hh # # ↓ ↑ > < < > ( ) | |

Overlapping speech. Numbers in brackets indicate pause length. Micropause. Elongation of vowel or consonant sound. Word cut-off. Falling or final intonation. Rising intonation. “Continuing” intonation. Latched utterances. Contrastive stress or emphasis. Markedly louder. Markedly soft. In-breathing. Creaky voice. Sharp falling/rising intonation. Talk is compressed or rushed. Talk is markedly slowed or drawn out. Uncertainty about the transcription. Gloss of non-verbal behaviour.

Notes 1 We use transcription conventions from Conversation Analysis (Jefferson, 2004) for data from spoken interactions in this chapter in order to allow us to draw attention to specific aspects of turn design and sequential positioning (see above for a list of those conventions). In this excerpt, however, the 209

Michael Haugh and Valeria Sinkeviciute

transcript is somewhat simplified for the sake of expediency as the original recording is available for inspection through Talkbank (https://talkbank.org/). 2 In some cases, however, this distinction is not maintained. For example, Poggi and D’Errico (2018) group evaluations of conduct (e.g. lack of respect, distrust, betrayal, injustice) together with instances of conduct (e.g. accusation, insult and mockery). 3 Extensive overlapping talk, which might be glossed as “interruptive”, is, of course, a notable feature of conflict talk (Hutchby, 1996). 4 Ray’s talk (lines 15, 21) and Ava’s response (line 26) thus appear to constitute a conversational schism (Egbert, 1997), that is, a separate line of talk from that which emerges between Angie and Estelle, although not entirely unrelated.

References Angouri, J. and Tseliga, T. 2010. ‘You have no idea what you are talking about!’ From e-disagreement to e-impoliteness in two online fora. Journal of Politeness Research. 6(1), pp.57–82. Barrow, R. 2005. On the duty of not taking offence. Journal of Moral Education. 34(3), pp.265–75. Bergmann, J.R. 1998. Introduction: morality in discourse. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 31(3–4), pp.279–94. Bernal, M. 2008. Do insults always insult? Genuine impoliteness versus non-genuine impoliteness in colloquial Spanish. Pragmatics. 18(4), pp.775–802. Bilmes, J. 1997. Being interrupted. Language in Society. 26(4), pp.507–31. Bollmer, J.M., Harris, M.J., Milich, R. and Georgesen, J.C. 2003. Taking offense: effects of personality and teasing history on behavioural and emotional reactions to teasing. Journal of Personality. 71(4), pp.557–603. Bou-Franch, P. and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. 2014. Conflict management in massive polylogues: a case study from YouTube. Journal of Pragmatics. 73, pp.19–36. Bousfield, D. 2007. Beginnings, middles and ends: a biopsy of the dynamics of impoliteness exchanges. Journal of Pragmatics. 39, pp. 2185–216. Bousfield, D. 2008. Impoliteness in Interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Boxer, D. 1993. Social distance and speech behaviour: the case of indirect complaints. Journal of Pragmatics. 19(2), pp.103–25 Campbell, B. and Manning, J. 2014. Microaggression and moral cultures. Comparative Sociology. 13(6), pp.692–726. Castor, T. 2015. Accusatory discourse. In: Tracy, K. ed. International encyclopedia of language and social interaction. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, pp.20–4. Coulter, J. 1990. Elementary properties of argument sequences. In: Psathas, G. ed. Interaction competence. Lanham, MD: International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis/University Press of America, pp.181–203. Culpeper, J. 2005. Impoliteness and entertainment in the television show: The Weakest Link. Journal of Politeness Research. 1(1), pp.35–72. Culpeper, J. 2011. Impoliteness: using language to cause offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Culpeper, J. 2015. Impoliteness strategies. In: Capone, A. and Mey, J.L. eds. Interdisciplinary studies in pragmatics, culture and society. New York, NY: Springer, pp.421–45. Culpeper, J. and Holmes, O. 2013. (Im)politeness and exploitative TV in Britain and North America: The X-Factor and American Idol. In: Lorenzo-Dus, N. and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. eds. Real talk: reality television and discourse analysis in action. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.169–98. Culpeper, J., Bousfield, D. and Wichmann, A. 2003. Impoliteness revisited: with special reference to dynamic and prosodic aspects. Journal of Pragmatics. 35, pp.1545–79. Culpeper, J., Marti, L., Mei, M., Nevala, M. and Schauer, G. 2010. Cross-cultural variation in the perception of impoliteness: a study of impoliteness events reported by students in England, China, Finland, Germany, and Turkey. Intercultural Pragmatics. 7(4), pp.597–624.

210

Offence and conflict talk

Dersley, I. and Wootton, A. 2000. Complaint sequences within antagonistic argument. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 33(4), pp.375–406. Dobs, A.M. and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. 2013. Impoliteness in polylogal interaction: accounting for face-threat witnesses’ responses. Journal of Pragmatics. 53, pp.112–30. Douglas, J.D. 1970. Deviance and respectability: the social construction of moral meanings. In: Douglas, J.D. ed. Deviance and respectability: the social construction of moral meanings. New York, NY: Basic Books, pp.3–30. Drew, P. 1998. Complaints about transgressions and misconduct. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 31(3/4), pp.295–325. Drew, P. 2009. ‘Quit talking while I’m interrupting’: a comparison between positions of overlap onset in conversation. In: Haakana, M., Laakso, M. and Lindström, J. eds. Talk in interaction: comparative dimensions. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, pp.70–93. Drew, P. and Hepburn, A. 2016. Absent apologies. Discourse Processes. 53(1/2), pp.114–31. Du Bois, J. 2007. The stance triangle. In: Englebretson, R. ed. Stancetaking in discourse: subjectivity, evaluation, interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp.139–82. Durant, A. 2010. Meaning in the media: discourse, controversy and debate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Egbert, M.M. 1997. Schisming: the collaborative transformation from a single conversation to multiple conversations. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 30(1), pp.1–51. Ferenčik, M. 2017. I’m not Charlie: (im)politeness evaluations of the Charlie Hebdo attack in an internet discussion forum. Journal of Pragmatics. 111, pp.54–71. Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. and Lorenzo-Dus, N. 2013. Reality television: a discourse-analytical perspective. In: Lorenzo-Dus, N. and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. eds. Real talk: reality television and discourse analysis in action. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.9–23. Garcia, A. 1991. Dispute resolution without disputing: how the interactional organisation of mediation hearings minimises argument. American Sociological Review. 56(6), pp.818–35. Garfinkel, H. 1956. Conditions of successful degradation ceremonies. American Journal of Sociology. 61(5), pp.420–4. Garfinkel, H. 1967. Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood-Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Goffman, E. 1967. Interaction ritual: essays on face-to-face interaction. New York, NY: Pantheon. Goffman, E. 1971. Relation in public. New York, NY: Basic Books. Graham, S.L. 2007. Disagreeing to agree: conflict, (im)politeness and identity in a computer-mediated community. Journal of Pragmatics. 39(4), pp.742–59. Günthner, S. 1995. Exemplary stories: the cooperative construction of moral indignation. Versus. 70/71, pp.147–75. Günthner, S. 1996. The prosodic contextualization of moral work: an analysis of reproaches in ‘why’-formats. In: Couper-Kuhlen, E. and Selting, M. eds. Prosody in conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.271–302. Haidt, J. 2003. The moral emotions. In: Davidson, R.J., Scherer, K.R. and Goldsmith, H.H. eds. Handbook of affective sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.852–70. Haugh, M. 2015a. Im/politeness implicatures. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Haugh, M. 2015b. Impoliteness and taking offence in initial interactions. Journal of Pragmatics. 86, pp.36–42. Haugh, M. 2016. The role of English as a scientific metalanguage for research in pragmatics: Reflec­ tions on the metapragmatics of ‘politeness’ in Japanese. East Asian Pragmatics. 1(1), pp. 39–71. Haugh, M. 2017. Jocular language play, social action and (dis)affiliation in conversational interaction. In: Bell, N. ed. Multiple perspectives on language play Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp.143–68. Haugh, M. and Culpeper, J. 2018. Integrative pragmatics and (im)politeness theory. In: Ilie, C. and Norrick, N. eds. Pragmatics and its interfaces. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp.213–39. Haugh, M. and Sinkeviciute, V. 2018. Accusations and interpersonal conflict in televised multi-party interactions amongst speakers of (Argentinian and Peninsular) Spanish. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict. 6(2), pp.248–70. 211

Michael Haugh and Valeria Sinkeviciute

Haydon, G. 2006. On the duty of educating respect: a response to Robin Barrow. Journal of Moral Education. 35(1), pp.19–32. Hübler, A. and Bublitz, W. 2007. Introducing metapragmatics in use. In: Hübler, A. and Bublitz, W. eds. Metapragmatics in use. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp.1–26. Hutchby, I. 1992. Confrontation talk: aspects of ‘interruption’ in argument sequences on talk radio. Text. 12(3), pp.343–71. Hutchby, I. 1996. Confrontation talk: arguments, asymmetries and power on talk radio. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Hutchby, I. 2008. Participants’ orientations to interruptions, rudeness and other impolite acts in talkin-interaction. Journal of Politeness Research. 4(2), pp.221–41. Jefferson, G. 1986. Notes on ‘latency’ in overlap onset. Human Studies. 9, pp.153–83. Jefferson, G. 1989. Preliminary notes on a possible metric which provides for a ‘standard maximum’ silence of approximately one second in conversation. In: Roger, D. and Bull, P. eds. Conversation: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp.166–95. Jefferson, G. 2004. Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In: Lerner, G. ed. Conversation analysis: studies from the first generation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp.13–23. Kádár, D.Z. and Haugh, M. 2013. Understanding politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kádár, D.Z., Haugh, M. and Chang, W-L.M. 2013. Aggression and perceived national face threats in Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese CMC discussion boards. Multilingua. 32(3), pp.343–72. Kádár, D.Z. and Márquez Reiter, R. 2015. (Im)politeness and (im)morality: insights from intervention. Journal of Politeness Research. 11(2), pp.239–60. Kienpointner, M. 2008. Impoliteness and emotional arguments. Journal of Politeness Research. 4(2), pp.243–65. Kowalski, R.M. 2000. ‘I was only kidding!’: victims’ and perpetrators’ perceptions of teasing. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 26(2), pp.231–41. Lægaard, S. 2007. The cartoon controversy: offence, identity, oppression? Political Studies. 55(3), pp.481–98. Lakoff, R.T. 1989. The limits of politeness: therapeutic and courtroom discourse. Multilingua. 8(2/3), pp.101–29. Lakoff, R.T. 2005. The politics of nice. Journal of Politeness Research. 1(2), pp.173–91. Lorenzo-Dus, N. 2009. ‘You’re barking mad, I’m out’: impoliteness and broadcast talk. Journal of Politeness Research. 5(2), pp.159–87. Lorenzo-Dus, N., Bou-Franch, P. and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. 2013. Impoliteness in US/UK talent shows: a diachronic study of evolution of a genre. In: Lorenzo-Dus, N. and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. eds. Real talk: reality television and discourse analysis in action. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.199–217. Luckmann, T. 1995. On the intersubjective constitution of morals. In: Crowell, S.G. ed. The prism of the self. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, pp.73–91. Mateo, J. and Yus, F. 2013. Towards a cross-cultural pragmatic taxonomy of insults. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict. 1(1), pp.87–114. Maynard, D.W. 1985. How children start arguments. Language and Society. 14(1), pp.1–30. Merriam-Webster. 2018. Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online, http://www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/offence (Accessed 3 March 2018). Mitchell, N. and Haugh, M. 2015. Agency, accountability and evaluations of impoliteness. Journal of Politeness Research. 11(2), pp.207–38. Monzoni, C.M. 2008. Introducing direct complaints through questions: the interactional achievement of ‘pre-sequences’? Discourse Studies. 10(1), pp.73–87. Morris, G.H. 1988. Finding fault. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 7(1), pp.1–25. Mosquera, P.M.R., Manstead, A.S. and Fischer, A.H. 2002. The role of honour concerns in emotional reactions to offences. Cognition and Emotion. 16(1), pp.143–63. Moulinou, I. 2014. Striving to make the difference: linguistic devices of moral indignation. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict. 2(1), pp.74–98. 212

Offence and conflict talk

O’Driscoll, J. 2013. Situational transformations: the offensive-ising of an email message and the public-isation of offensiveness. Pragmatics and Society. 4(3), pp.369–87. Ogiermann, E. 2019. Researching im/politeness in face-to-face interactions: on disagreements in Polish homes. In: Ogiermann, E. and Garcés-Conejos Bltivich, P. eds. From speech acts to lay concepts of politeness: a multilingual and multicultural perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.146–74. Parvaresh, V. and Tayebi, T. 2018. Impoliteness, aggression and the moral order. Journal of Pragmatics. 132, pp.91–107. Piskorska, A. 2017. On the strength of explicit and implicit verbal offences. In: Bonacchi, S. ed. Verbale aggression. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp.51–71. Poggi, I. and D’Errico, F. 2018. Feeling offended: a blow to our image and our social relationships. Frontiers in Psychology. 8, article 2221. Pomerantz, A. 1978. Attributions of responsibility: blamings. Sociology. 12(1), pp.115–21. Robinson, J.D. 2004. The sequential organisation of ‘explicit’ apologies in naturally occurring English. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 37(3), pp.291–330. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. and Jefferson, G. 1974. A simplest systematics for the organisation of turntaking for conversation. Language. 50(4), pp.696–735. Schegloff, E.A. 1988. Goffman and the analysis of conversation. In: Drew, P. and Wooton, A. eds. Erving Goffman: exploring the interaction order. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, pp.89–135. Schegloff, E.A. 2001. Accounts of conduct in interaction: interruption, overlap, and turn-taking. In: Turner, J. ed. Handbook of sociological theory. New York, NY: Kluwer Academic, pp.287–321. Schegloff, E.A. 2005. On complainability. Social Problems. 52(4), pp.449–76. Simester, A.P. and von Hirsch, A. eds. 2006. Incivilities: regulating offensive behaviour. London: Bloomsbury. Sinkeviciute, V. 2015. ‘There’s definitely gonna be some serious carnage in this house’ or how to be genuinely impolite in Big Brother UK. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict. 3(2), pp.317–48. Sinkeviciute, V. 2017a. ‘Everything he says to me it’s like he stabs me in the face’: frontstage and backstage reactions to teasing. In: Bell, N. ed. Multiple perspectives on language play. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp.169–98. Sinkeviciute, V. 2017b. What makes teasing impolite in Australian and British English? ‘Step[ping] over those lines […] you shouldn’t be crossing’. Journal of Politeness Research. 13(2), pp.175–207. Sinkeviciute, V. 2017c. ‘It’s just a bit of cultural […] lost in translation’: Australian and British intracultural and intercultural metapragmatic evaluations of jocularity. Lingua. 197, pp.50–67. Sinkeviciute, V. 2018. ‘Ya bloody drongo!!!’: Impoliteness as situated moral judgement on Facebook. Internet Pragmatics. 1(2), pp.271–302. Slaby, J. and Stephan, A. 2008. Affective intentionality and self-consciousness. Consciousness and Cognition. 17(2), pp.506–13. Smith, P., Phillips, T.L. and King, R.D. 2010. Incivility: the rude stranger in everyday life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spencer-Oatey, H. 2005. (Im)politeness, face and perceptions of rapport: unpackaging their bases and interrelationships. Journal of Politeness Research. 1(1), pp.95–119. Spencer-Oatey, H. 2011. Conceptualising ‘the relational’ in pragmatics: insights from metapragmatic emotion and (im)politeness comments. Journal of Pragmatics. 43, pp.3565–78. Tagg, C., Seargeant, P. and Brown, A.A. 2017. Taking offence on social media: conviviality and communication on Facebook. New York, NY: Springer. Tayebi, T. 2016. Why do people take offence? Exploring the underlying expectations. Journal of Pragmatics. 101, pp.1–17. Tayebi, T. 2018. Implying an impolite belief: a case of tikkeh in Persian. Intercultural Pragmatics. 15(1), pp.89–113. 213

Michael Haugh and Valeria Sinkeviciute

Vuchinich, S. 1990. The sequential organisation of closing in verbal family conflict. In: Grimshaw, A.D. ed. Conflict talk: sociolinguistic investigations of arguments in conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.118–38. Weatherall, A. and Edmonds, D. 2018. Speakers formulating their talk as interruptive. Journal of Pragmatics. 123, pp.11–23. Weckert, J. 2007. Giving and taking offence in a global context. International Journal of Technology and Human Interaction. 3(3), pp.25–35. Wierzbicka, A. 2001. A culturally salient Polish emotion: przykro [‘pshickro]. International Journal of Group Tensions. 30(1), pp.3–27.

214

12 Conflict interaction Insights from conversation analysis Phillip Glenn

A primary location for human conflict is in real-time, spoken interaction. Whatever else might attract interest for conflict scholars – strategies, decision games, large-scale intergroup conflict, intrapersonal conflict or email disputes – a great deal of what we might think of as conflict gets expressed, managed and resolved (or not) in and through talk, whether conducted face to face or through some channel. More than articulation of language, talk interweaves vocal, visual, temporal and spatial behaviours as people get things done, create meanings, calibrate relationships and manage identities. Conversation analysis (hereafter CA; also called the study of talk-in-interaction) offers a rich accumulation of more than 50 years of research studies providing detailed findings regarding how people organise and accomplish activities through their interactions with each other. This chapter reviews findings from CA studies of interactional phenomena that constitute or play prominent roles in what would likely be regarded as conflict. We begin by considering ways in which much interaction is built to “prefer” agreement and minimise the likelihood of conflict. Within this preference system, participants nevertheless routinely complain, correct or resist a prior action, challenge each other’s knowledge and rights to know, attempt to repair or correct what preceded and more. Through these actions located in unfolding courses of talk, participants may come to constitute themselves as being in conflict. Disagreement may develop into antagonistic argument or get managed through negotiation or mediation guided by a third party. In reviewing research in each of these areas, transcribed excerpts from real life interactions will illustrate key findings. A sample analysis of a couple’s dinner table talk will show participants’ practices for occasioning, maintaining and closing a conflict prompted by a complaint. In the following section, a brief overview of the conceptual and methodological commitments of CA highlights some markedly distinct stances CA researchers take toward the study of human linguistic conduct.

12.1 Overview of CA Working from close investigation of recordings and transcripts of actual interactions, CA studies attend to vocal and embodied details, characterising how people jointly create order 215

Phillip Glenn 

and meaning in context. Deeply influenced by Garfinkel’s (1967) ethnomethodological investigations of the systematic ways people organise and account for actions and Goffman’s detailed descriptions of social actors’ behaviours in a variety of settings (e.g. 1959), Harvey Sacks and colleagues Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson began investigating interaction as a locus of social order. They turned to recordings, which would allow repeated inspection and encourage attention to the actual details of talk rather than abstractions thereof. Jefferson developed a transcription protocol that captures words, paralinguistic details and sounds, as well as temporal features such as overlaps and silences (see examples below). Early studies tended to focus more on telephone conversations in which participants had no visual access to each other. With the advent of inexpensive, widely available video recordings, visual and embodied features gained prominence in CA transcripts and analyses of face-to-face interactions. From these beginnings, CA has grown into a substantial, international research enterprise spanning many academic fields (see, e.g. Schegloff, 2007; Sidnell, 2010; Sidnell and Stivers, 2013). Three core principles inform CA research (Heritage, 1984, pp.241–4): 1. interaction is orderly and participants both create and orient to the always-unfolding social order; 2. each next action or turn at talk displays a sense of what is going on and shapes what is relevant next. In this way, participants continually both create and renew context; 3. the interaction order may be evident in the most minute features of talk; accordingly, no detail can be dismissed a priori as being random or irrelevant. Reflecting roots in ethnomethodology, CA studies employ analytic terms (e.g. repair, preference, adjacency pair) intended to capture how in their conduct “participants” orient to and create what is going on at any moment. “Meaning” is rooted in actions, located in sequences and courses of unfolding activity. Analysis proceeds inductively. Single case studies may precede analysis of collections of similar instances, accounting for canonical practices as well as deviant cases. Relying on recordings and transcripts for analysis, as well as for presenting findings, reflects an insistence on grounding claims in inspectable details of interaction. In this regard, CA differs from social scientific methods that rely on self-reports, interviews, focus groups, surveys, experiments, hypothetical examples and other data sources further removed from first-order social life. CA studies eschew “psychologising” or making analytic claims about participants’ motives, feelings and attitudes. However, analysis may take into account how participants communicatively occasion and orient to features of “mind”. For example, one prominent focus in CA research concerns how participants orient to relative states of and rights to knowledge, or epistemic stance and status (discussed below; see Heritage, 2012a, 2012b). These methodological commitments – relying on recordings and transcripts as primary data, documenting evidence for analytic claims in participants’ displayed orientations and avoiding mentalistic inferences – distinguish CA research and give CA studies considerable explanatory power and durability. CA research represents a marked departure from approaches to conflict that focus on individual behaviours, “inner” features such as cognition or emotion, abstract process conceptions such as phases or styles or causal links between strategies and outcomes. The related term “discourse analysis” (hereafter DA) refers to a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches that tend to investigate how meaning and action get 216

Conflict interaction

accomplished in discrete linguistic units. Discourse is sometimes operationalised to refer to the interpretive or cultural contexts identifiable in particular texts (as in the critical discourse analytic writings of Fairclough, Foucault, etc.). Speech Act Theorydriven discourse studies draw on Wittgenstein’s ordinary language philosophy, J.L. Austin’s lectures on the force of linguistic actions and John Searle’s sustained inquiries. Research seeks to specify the conditions under which single utterances perform actions such as “assertives, directives, commissives, declaratives, expressives, and accreditives” (Fairhurst and Cooren, 2004, p.136). DA represents a prominent strain in organisational studies (Fairhurst and Uhl-Bien, 2012; Grant et al., 2004) and in language and social interaction research (Fitch, 2005). A substantial body of discourse analytic research investigates language use in conflict and negotiation situations (see Putnam, 2005). Topics of inquiry have included strategy use, relationship development, identity management, emotional expression, issue development and framing, often as linked to outcomes (Putnam, 2010, p.146). Action-implicative discourse analysis (Tracy, 2005) blends sequential analysis with ethnographic methods and compares actual discursive practices with strategies and ideals within communities of practice.1 Across these variations, DA studies have much to say about how language works in conflict situations. Yet there are foundational differences between CA and other approaches represented by the label discourse analysis. Distinctions in the data sources investigated, the level of analytic detail, the units of analysis, the treatments of context and perhaps most crucially, CA’s insistence on grounding claims in participants’ displayed orientations (the ethnomethodological commitment) motivate treating DA studies as separate research traditions from CA, deserving of their own review (Glenn and Susskind, 2010, p.121). The same research commitments that distinguish CA from other discourse analytic or pragmatics traditions also limit what CA studies can say directly about conflict, particularly if it is operationalised as a cognitive phenomenon, as consisting of single acts analysed in isolation or as displaying meaningful order at the level of abstract patterns distributed over time and context. In general, CA studies have not employed “conflict” as an analytic category or made it an object of investigation. For CA researchers the term “conflict” represents an abstraction or typification (Heritage, 1984, pp.144-50) that is insufficiently grounded in details of actual conduct and does not capture the orientation of the participants in the interaction. As an analytic notion, “conflict” may emphasise persons doing things to and with each other, while CA attends more closely to the unfolding of utterances, turns at talk and sequences (Schegloff, 2010). Nevertheless, people’s methods for organising interactions include methods for constituting and orienting to disagreement or misalignment. Surely these are among the key building blocks for what researchers and laypersons would think of as conflict. Thus, with a careful eye toward translation of findings, we turn now to reviewing CA research offering powerful tools for analysing how conflict-in-interaction unfolds.

12.2 How interaction promotes alignment and minimises conflict Interaction, no matter how adversarial, requires some cooperation if it is to be coherent. Participants strive to achieve and maintain intersubjective understandings that enable them to do whatever it is they are doing together. As Levinson (2006, p.45) writes: Interaction is by and large cooperative. This is not a Panglossian claim that we all get on with one another. It is, rather, the claim that there is some level, not necessarily at the level of ulterior motivation, at which interactants intend their actions (a) to be 217

Phillip Glenn 

interpretable (the underlying intentions to be recoverable), and (b) to contribute to some larger joint undertaking (having a conversation, making a hut, even having a quarrel!). More to the point, practices for organising talk facilitate alignment and minimise the emergence of resistance, correction or disagreement. To see how this works, we must introduce a fundamental and pervasive building block of interaction. The “adjacency pair” is a sequence of two turns, produced by different speakers, adjacently placed, and relatively ordered into a first pair part (FPP) and a second pair part (SPP). These occur in pair types, such as greeting-greeting, question-answer or invitationresponse. Although the adjacency pair constitutes a minimal, two-turn unit, expansions of it are common (Schegloff, 2007). Many of these expansions unfold in ways that limit the likelihood of overt misalignment or disagreement. “Pre-expansions” done before the FPP orient to avoiding problematic SPP responses. For example, if a speaker provides a preface before launching into a story or an announcement, that preface gives the recipient an opportunity to signal openness to hearing and “stance” towards the impending news. Similarly, pre-invitations and pre-offers give the recipient the opportunity to mark whether acceptance is likely. If the recipient signals that acceptance is not likely, the first speaker may take an early exit out of the sequence before reaching the point where overt declination might occur. “Insertions” can address some trouble after the FPP has appeared but prior to the SPP. A second speaker may initiate “repair”, making it relevant for the prior speaker to re-do or offer a different version of the FPP that is more likely to engender a second that aligns with it. “Post-expansions” can be as simple as a third turn that closes the sequence such as “okay” or “oh” or more elaborate developments of the FPP or SPP that indicate the sorts of trouble we might think of as conflict (explained further below). In some adjacency pairs, more than one type of action works as a relevant SPP. In response to an invitation, both accepting and declining are relevant; in response to an assessment or evaluation, both agreement and disagreement are relevant.2 However, these alternative seconds “embody different alignments toward the project undertaken in the FPP” (Schegloff, 2007, p.59). They are not equivalent, equally valued, or symmetrical. After all, “Sequences are the vehicle for getting something accomplished, and that response to the FPP which embodies or favors furthering or the accomplishment of the activity is the favored – or, as we shall term it, the preferred – second pair part” (Schegloff, 2007, p.59; also see Pomerantz, 1984; Sacks, 1987)3. This sense of “preference” is not psychological but structural. “Dispreferred” turns show recurrent features (Schegloff, 2007, p.63). These may include mitigation or attenuation; elaboration in the form of an account, excuse, or disclaimer; a gap between the FPP and beginning of the SPP; or a turn-initial delay such as a pause or hedge.4 These canonical markings of dispreferred SPPs allow the first speaker to monitor and, hearing trouble, reformulate the FPP with preference reversed, before the SPP is complete. It is not solely the second speaker’s job to align with a first speaker’s action: “Rather, it should be understood as a joint project of both parties to arrive at a sequence – an adjacency pair – whose parts are contiguous and in agreement, or in a preferred relationship. Trouble in achieving this outcome can be addressed by either (or any) party” (Schegloff, 2007, p.70). Thus, many FPPs that might draw a dispreferred response get stopped or redone in pre-expansion, and insertion expansions can “fix” problems that might otherwise lead to a dispreferred SPP. Similarly, when questions containing candidate answers (Pomerantz, 1988) do not get immediate confirmation, the questioner may redesign questions to enable confirmation (Pomerantz and Heritage, 2013, p.213). For example, 218

Conflict interaction

Pomerantz (1984a, p.76), in Pomerantz and Heritage (2013, p.214) 1 A: They have a good cook there? 2 ((pause)) 3 A: Nothing special? 4 B: No, everybody takes their turns

Not surprisingly, across many cases, there is a “greater aggregate frequency” of preferred SPPs (Schegloff, 2007, p.72). This preference organisation “clearly serves as a vehicle through which initially ill-fitted positions, interests, etc. get mutually adjusted and even, on occasion, reconciled. And it clearly channels the forms which disagreement and misalignment take, even when they cannot be reconciled, and serves as a kind of metric for the seriousness which the parties wish to accord their misalignment” (Schegloff, 2007, pp.72–3). The following example from a telephone conversation illustrates how these structures work together.5 Lisa offers to come to Ilene’s house (this line is marked as “FPP” below), and Ilene’s immediate and unmitigated acceptance (marked “SPP” below) shows preferred turn shape. Heritage 1:3, simplified Lis: what time in the ahfterno[on’r you go]ing out. Ile: [U h  :  :   :m] Ile: Well I- all I- I go from one from two to three, .hh to- [to do the hospital trolley. Lis:  [°(Oh.)° FPP→ Lis: Right. Well suppose we get tih you about hahlf ↓pahst three. SPP→ Ile: ↓That’s fine.[That’s lovely’n have[a cup a’tea= Lis:          [°(Yeh)°         [(Alright.) Ile: =’n a piece a’ca[ke. Lis:            [l:↓Love[( ) Ile:                [Yeh, Lis: See you

However, this simple set of aligned pair parts arrives as the result of negotiations that unfold over the preceding moments. Space limitations preclude a full description, but one earlier passage will demonstrate how participants work toward alignment and agreement. Lisa has been keeping and caring for Ilene’s dog and they are making plans for returning the dog:

Ile: W’l look uh::m (0.8) Ile: .mk Kah- eh tomorrow’s Fri:day isn[‘t it.h Lis:                       [Yah. Ile: .hhh Uh:m: (.) no:w u- can you come over in the morning? or the ahfternoon be[cause Lis:                   [Ah:’ll haftih consult (Siiim) Ile: eeYah. Because ah’ll tell you what I:- uh .hh I’ve got Meals on Wheels in the morning but Edgizn might do that for me. 219

Phillip Glenn 



Lis: .h Oh don’t worry abou:t that if we came we’d leave her en go:. (0.3) Ile: Oh well no we:h ↓one of us’d be here anywa:y,↓ (0.4) Ile: No cuz I’d like t’see ↓you:.

Ilene issues a summons “W’l look” that directs shared attention to what is to follow. She asks an FPP question confirming the day; Lisa confirms, returning the floor to Ilene to continue. Ilene proposes that Lisa come to her house in the morning; without waiting for a reply she adds “or the ahfternoon” and begins providing an account. In overlap, Lisa neither accepts nor rejects the proposal but states that she will need to check with another person. Ilene provides reports that she has morning obligations but that her husband might take care of them for her. Lisa encourages her not to worry and states that were they to bring the dog, they would “leave her en go:.” – thus minimising the burden to Ilene. Ilene’s reply challenges the implication that Lisa coming by would be burdensome; she reports that someone would be home anyway. After a brief pause, she adds that she wants to visit with Ilene. In this passage, the pre-expansion turns work to secure the participants’ joint attention to making plans and confirming the date. The FPP proposal is built to get acceptance while perhaps providing Ilene the option of morning or afternoon. Lisa delays producing a SPP acceptance or rejection, instead adding a complicating factor. They negotiate the nature of the visit, Lisa offering simply to drop off the dog and Ilene rejecting this offer to ask for a social visit as well. Through these expansions before the FPP and between the FPP and the SPP, both parties work to resolve related misunderstandings and align intentions and schedules. The preliminary work done here enables the simple proposal – acceptance sequence that arrives a few moments later. In brief, the preference structure built into adjacency pairs – the core structural units of conversation – favours and facilitates alignment. More broadly, the way FPPs are deployed, the pre-expansion actions that can redirect or foreclose them, the uses of insertion expansions before SPPs and the shape of preferred and dispreferred SPPs, all make it both easier and more likely that a first action seeking a second will get the second that it seeks. The research commitments of CA enable in-depth understandings of how these structures operate to produce non-conflictual talk as well as to examine how troubles emerge and get handled.

12.3 And yet … (how interaction may shape and manifest conflict) Despite a system built to prefer aligning responses, participants still misalign, disagree, reject, argue and more. As Schegloff (2007, p.72) puts it, “there is no shortage of dispreferred responses in talk-in-interaction. Every social setting is a world full of diverse interests and turf and stances, all being managed (among other ways) in talk-in-interaction, and these are not suppressed or dominated by the organisation of preference/dispreference”. Indeed, conflict is rooted in the capacity of language to formulate different versions of events with different moral implications. “The very existence of conflict and schism in social life depends on the possibility of there being alternative and competing accounts of the same social event” (Drew, 1998, p.322). As the figure against this ground of cooperation, conflict may emerge through actions that disagree with or oppose a position prior speaker has taken up, resist or try to change a 220

Conflict interaction

course of action, disaffiliate from the prior speaker, challenge knowledge and rights to know or complain about or criticise a co-present party. From these, depending on how subsequent actions treat them, the talk may develop into an argument that manifests interpersonal conflict. The following passage from a documentary film (Ganz and Ganz, 1988), illustrates several of these actions, as Jim and Barbara argue over how she is to spend money: Couples arguing 12.1 1 Jim: (‘f) I’m gonna give you eighty dollars a week I 2 want the car covered. 3 (0.4) 4 Barb: Not for trips 5 Jim: Hm?= 6 Barb: =Not for trips 7 Jim: Not for trips.= 8 Barb: =No. 9 Jim: But- for all around town. 10 Barb: Okay [(so) I’ll take care of that ] 11 Jim:     [In other words if ↑I give you-] if ↑I 12 give you eighty dollars a week I don’t wanta 13 hear (0.6) 14 Barb: You don’t wanta [hear 15 Jim:           [two- two- two days (.) short 16   of next time, .hh I did this ‘n I did that ‘n 17   I’d like a (0.5) a little advance. 18 Jim: Y’know? 19 Barb: Ohh I’m no(h)t gonna get any sla:ck huh?= 20 Jim: =No:o!

Briefly: Jim offers to give his wife 80 dollars per week with the condition that it covers her car expenses. Barbara does not challenge the amount, but she counter proposes that “trips” be treated separately. He accepts this amendment and reasserts what is to be covered (line 9), and Barbara agrees to this. In overlap, Jim reformulates what is to be covered into a complaint about how she comes to him to ask for additional money (lines 11–13, 15–17). She counter complains, characterising his position as perhaps unreasonable (line 19). The laugh particle within the word “no(h)t” may further mark her awareness of and critical stance toward his position, but she does not actively oppose it. He affirms bluntly, with emphasis. Much more can be noted about this passage, but for the moment we can usefully contrast it to the preceding excerpt between Lisa and Ilene. There, participants deployed aspects of sequence organisation to work towards alignment and agreement on social plans. Here, the participants challenge each other and disaffiliate. In the sections that follow, we will review research on repair, dispreference, misalignment, disaffiliation, epistemic challenges and complaints – the building blocks from which people constitute resistance or trouble in talk. We will then review research on how these actions can lead to full-fledged disagreements and arguments. A case study will show how these elements work together during the course of a couple’s dinner table conflict. In the closing discussion, we will touch briefly on negotiation and mediation as formal, institutional interactions devoted to resolving differences. 221

Phillip Glenn 

12.3.1 Repair Repair refers to interrupting the ongoing course of action in order to deal with possible troubles in speaking, accuracy, hearing, understanding or more (Kitzinger, 2012, p.229; Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson, 1977). Repairing is omnirelevant, applicable at any moment, to any utterance or action. Yet speakers routinely bypass opportunities to initiate repair (Robinson, 2014). Extensive research has demonstrated that repair represents a generic practice of talk-in-interaction across many languages, although its particular manifestations reflect influences of available grammatical forms and linguistic resources (Kitzinger, 2012). Participants orient to “initiating” repair and the actual repair itself as distinct practices. Broadly, either “self” (the speaker of the trouble source) or “other” may initiate or provide repair; however, the preference for self- over other-repair operates so pervasively in interaction that even to think of these as alternatives proves misleading (Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson, 1977, p.377). Other-initiation and other-repair may point to incipient disagreement and thus provide clues to the emergence of conflict. Other initiations can happen in the next (second) position following the trouble-source turn, in the fourth position, or even later in the unfolding sequence (Schegloff, 2000). Here, as two former camp counsellors are discussing a camper, Sta provides a negative assessment of that camper (lines 2–3), and Ala initiates repair on it (line 4): Schegloff et al. (1977, p.368), in Schegloff (2007, p.154) 1 Sta: That’s all. But you know what happened that night 2 we went to camp. Forget it. She wouldn’t behave for 3 anything. 4 Ala: W-when. 5 Sta: When we went to camp 6 Ala: She behaved okay. 7 Sta: She did? 8 Ala: Yeah. She could’ve been a lot worse.

The repair initiation demonstrates some trouble in providing the preferred agreement. After Sta’s answer clarifying the time frame, Ala overtly disagrees with the assessment (line 6). This instance illustrates how repair can address problems as possible misunderstandings, reducing the likelihood that conflict will emerge: For one basic way that humans have of dealing with disagreement and conflict is to treat it as a problem in hearing or understanding, and try to “fix” that problem. Not, then, that misunderstanding breeds conflict; but that conflict is handled by trying to treat it as a problem of misunderstanding. And the instruments for so treating it are the practices of repair. (Schegloff, 2007, p.151) As a first pair part itself, an other-initiation of repair initiator makes a response relevant, giving the prior speaker a space in which to review and possibly produce a redone version of the prior turn. Given this close relationship, it is not surprising that repair sequences commonly occur in the environment of, and may serve as harbingers of, the occurrence of dispreferred SPPs. 222

Conflict interaction

12.3.2 Dispreference A dispreferred SPP provides an on-record mechanism for signalling disagreement and trouble. Dispreference refers not to psychological desire but to structural features including production delays, mitigations or attenuations and accompanying accounts or excuses. Delays can be accomplished by pauses or vocal fillers prior to or during beginning of the SPP. Wording such as “well” in turn-initial position routinely prefaces disagreement, marking the “unstraightforwardness” of the turn to follow (Schegloff and Lerner, 2009). In general, preferred or aligning SPPs are “closure-relevant” while sequences with dispreferred or misaligning SPPs are “expansion” relevant (Schegloff, 2007, p.149). Following a dispreferred second, the first speaker may disagree, challenge or reject in the third turn. In the fourth turn, the second speaker may back down or hold that position (Schegloff, 2007, p.159). Through these structural regularities, disagreement may generate more talk more readily than does agreement. Dispreferred SPPs can be understood as misaligning with the FPP. As such, they represent one of a range of misaligning actions, discussed in greater detail in the following section.

12.3.3 Misaligning actions The term alignment describes cooperation at the structural level. Aligning responses forward what the prior action sets into motion or proposes, accept the presuppositions and terms of the proposed action and match the formal design preference (Stivers, Mondada and Steensig, 2011, pp. 20–1). A greeting to a greeting, or a type-conforming answer to a yes/no question represent SPPs aligning with FPPs. Preferred SPPs align with the FPP. Yet these categories are not airtight; for example, requesting can be understood as one of a range of ways speakers may recruit a co-participant into providing assistance (Kendrick and Drew, 2016). Thus, any understanding of nonalignment must take into account the ways firsts and seconds fit together, including the degree of obligation and joint responsibility implied by the first. More broadly, any action aligns by ratifying (and not disrupting) the activity in progress; thus, a continuer such as “mm hm” aligns with a story-in-progress. Even the failure to provide an SPP when one is expected could indicate misalignment, for example, abruptly ending an interaction (Schegloff, 2007, p.115). Misaligning then provides another way to mark trouble and perhaps incipient conflict. For example, advice-giving appears commonly in mundane interaction and in certain institutional interactions. Because it represents a claim that the advice-giver is more knowledgeable, participants may treat it as problematising the recipient’s competence (Heritage and Sefi, 1992). Orienting to a moral dimension of advice that conveys deficiency or fault, potential advice recipients will work to display their knowledge (Shaw and Hepburn, 2013). For these and other reasons, across a number of situations participants show “reluctance” to occupy the role of advice recipient (Shaw and Hepburn, 2013). Resisting advice may include explicit claims of competence and knowledge or actions that claim having already had prior commitment to the advice. Recipients may also more passively or ambiguously resist through unmarked acknowledgments such as “mm” and “yeah” (Heritage and Sefi, 1992; Shaw and Hepburn, 2013). While claiming prior commitment still endorses the advice but calibrates the degree to which it is influencing knowledge or commitment to a course of action, unmarked acknowledgments resist the “action” of being advised. The choice of these responses links to the ways advice is packaged. Giving advice formulates something that should be done but does not claim that it will be; it implies that the recipient has choice. 223

Phillip Glenn 

Advice giving appears in stronger to weaker forms and in forms that mark more or less symmetry of knowledge claimed by the giver relative to the recipient. The way advice is packaged can provide more or less latitude for the recipient to respond (Shaw and Hepburn, 2013). In ordinary conversations, troubles-tellers will reject advice if it is given too soon, before they have been able to fully deliver and work up their account of the troubles. This contrasts to institutional interactions where, as soon as the advice starts, the recipient generally stops telling (Jefferson and Lee, 2015/1981). Similar to the mid-range of passive resistance to advice, Moerman (1988) shows villagers resisting a state official’s directions through minimal agreement tokens. Glenn (2003, chapter 6) shows how laughing may accompany and mark implicit resistance to a course of action. In summary, a variety of actions from preferred to dispreferred, from overt to ambiguous, show participants misaligning with an unfolding course of action. There is no clear line from misaligning FPPs and SPPs to what we might think of as conflict. Nevertheless, misaligning turns provide moments of social life where a structurally disruptive or resistant responsive move takes place. Misaligning with a turn is not the same as misaligning with a speaker (Schegloff, 2007, pp.59–60). To characterise the latter, we turn to the related notion of disaffiliation.

12.3.4 Disaffiliating from prior speaker When a speaker displays an affective stance towards the topic or action in progress, this provides an opportunity for a co-participant to affiliate with that stance. In such a context, the second speaker can “disaffiliate” by withholding the congruent stance marker or even actively displaying an alternative stance. For example, jointly built complaint sequences about a third party or situation routinely provide opportunities for displaying affiliation. Complaints tend to emerge progressively with the complainer gradually securing the other’s participation; participants affiliate through collaboratively complaining. Sometimes, however, one speaker may complain on behalf of another but the second does not affiliate, instead resisting going so far (Drew and Walker, 2009). Laughing can demonstrate affiliation when responding to a prior turn that displays a non-serious stance or contains first laugh particles (Glenn, 2003, pp.29–30). A speaker talking about troubles may laugh to show “troubles-resistance”; following such laughs, recurrently recipients affiliative by not laughing along (Jefferson, 1984). Yet laughing can disaffiliate in teasing environments (Drew, 1987). In multi-party interactions, a first laugh at one participant can invite others to join in, disaffiliating from that person while affiliating with others. Recipient laughter that plays a role in defusing complaints by another (Holt, 2012) disaffiliates from the complaining stance. Audience laughter during political debates displays partisan affiliation and disaffiliation (Clayman, 1992). Laughter may also stake out an ambiguous position between outright affiliation and disaffiliation (Glenn and Holt, 2013, pp.16–17). In response to improprieties, recipient laughter occupies a midpoint on a continuum from outright resistance to outright affiliation (Jefferson, Sacks and Schegloff, 1987). The terms “laughing at” and “laughing with” (Jefferson, 1972; Glenn, 2003, pp.112–21) capture this dual capacity of laughter. Alignment and affiliation are closely linked concepts. Despite inconsistencies across studies in the uses of these terms (Lindstrom and Sorjonen, 2014), they offer important analytic tools for tracking incipient conflict. For our purposes, a distinction between the “structural” character of alignment and the “evaluative” character of affiliation allows focus on each and on the ways that they intersect. While aligning actions cooperate at the 224

Conflict interaction

structural level, affiliative responses cooperate at the level of action and affective stance (Stivers, Mondada and Steensig, 2011, p.21). For example, in the context of storytelling, aligning responses ratify and further the asymmetrical distribution of turns into teller and recipient(s). A disaligning response competes for the floor. Respondents affiliate by displaying support for the teller’s conveyed stance (Stivers, 2008). In some instances, a disaligning action may actually display stronger affiliation than an aligning action would. Alignment is omnirelevant; affiliation is not. For much routine talk that occurs without any particular affective stance marker, an affiliative response would likely seem strange. (Lindstrom and Sorjonen, 2012, pp.352–3). Thus, affiliation represents a more restricted domain (Drew and Walker, 2009, p.2412).

12.3.5 Challenging knowledge and rights to know: epistemic authority and epistemic stance Participants continually display their epistemic “status” relative to each other: who knows what, who has rights to know what, and to what degrees participants are well-informed, illinformed or loosely or strongly committed to what they are saying. These matters become manifest through epistemic stance displayed in word choice, turn design and action formation (Heritage, 2011, 2012a, 2012b, 2013). In general, speakers attempt to maintain congruency between the epistemic stance evident in a turn at talk and their displayed epistemic status relative to the topic and to the status of a recipient (Heritage, 2013, p.559.) However, epistemic misalignments are common. These matters can override the ways that grammar and syntax shape what a turn at talk is doing and what is expected next. For example, Heritage (2012a) shows that a statement produced with declarative syntax will be heard as delivering information if the topic lies within the speaker’s epistemic domain. Comparing these three utterances:

“So I went to the store” “So you went to the store” “Did you go to the store?”

the first, made with declarative syntax, reports one’s action as if the recipient did not previously know this. The second, also made with declarative syntax, references something lying primarily within the recipient’s epistemic domain; it is likely to be treated as seeking confirmation from the recipient. The third with interrogative syntax more explicitly seeks confirmation. Speakers work out whose “view is the more significant or more authoritative with respect to the matter at hand” (Heritage and Raymond, 2005, p.15). Heritage and Raymond identify four practices by which a second speaker can mark that a second assessment is independent from the preceding one (e.g. “I know” as a response to “There was a beautiful sunset last night”) thus resisting the first speaker’s claim to greater epistemic authority. The sequential organisation of talk reflects logics of epistemics as well as adjacency and relevance. That is, “imbalances of knowledge drive sequences” (Drew, 2012, p.65). When the initiator is informed and the other is not (and again, these are not objectively stable categories, but understandings participants continually display), the first speaker will tend to share information explicitly and marked by a pre-announcement (e.g. “Guess what?”) or implicitly. When an uninformed initiator seeks information from an informed other, initiations can be explicit such as interrogative questions, or more implicit such as “my side” tellings and inferential 225

Phillip Glenn 

declaratives (“You haven’t spoken to her recently”). These sequences close when there is a claim of knowledge equilibrium for all practical purposes (Heritage, 2012b). Although epistemic considerations fundamentally drive much of human interaction, a passage in which orientation to epistemic matters is particularly salient will illustrate how matters of knowledge shape an emerging dispute. This excerpt occurs early in an extended conversation between a grandmother (Gramma) and her granddaughter (Sissy) (analysed in Beach, 1996). [SDCL: Gramma/Sissy. Beach (1996)] 27 G: Well honey you’re so thin: no:w: 28 (0.6) 29 G: I don’(t) know (.) I think you’re just (0.2) 30 °(well you’re)° just wearin yourself out with 31 all your activity >I think if you slo:w down a 32 li(tt)le bit and rest a little bit more, 33 (0.4) 34 S: GRA:[M M A] YOU’RE SO WEIRD! 35 G:    [Maybe] 36 S: >I don’t even know why you say that I-< 37 ˑhh I am f:i::ve thr:ee:: and I still weigh 38 a hundred an’ te[ n- fif ]teen po:unds? 39             [((noise))] 40 (0.6) 41 G: O:h ↓you don’t weigh a °hundred an’° 42 fifteen ↑pounds ˑhh all your clothes are 43 fallin off of ya everybody tells you ya look thi:n? 44 S: Ya:: but fin[ally I ] 45 G:        [You’re b]o:ny look at acrossed 46 your chest an yer ˑhh your co:llar bo:nes 47 stickin o:ut . . . .

Gramma assesses Sissy’s appearance (line 27), claiming without mitigation that she knows that Sissy is too thin and implying that she has the right to assert this knowledge. Her account for Sissy’s behaviour and recommendation for action (lines 29–32) display a downgrade in certainty, marked by “I think”. Sissy negatively assesses Gramma (line 34) asserting without mitigation her knowledge and right to know. This turn parallels Gramma’s (“honey, you’re so thin”; “Gramma, you’re so weird”; see Goodwin and Goodwin, 1990, on “format tying”) while shifting the referent from her own appearance to Gramma’s behaviour. Sissy reports her height and weight (lines 37–38) as knowledge she has and has primary right to know. This report challenges the import of Gramma’s assertion (that Sissy is dangerously thin) by shifting the epistemic grounds from appearance to numerical ratio. Gramma disputes Sissy’s claim directly (lines 41–42), implicitly rejecting Sissy’s primary right to knowledge of weight and thus the legitimacy of this evidence for Sissy’s argument. Gramma reasserts visual evidence and invokes “everybody” as sharing her knowledge (lines 42–43, 45–47). Thus, a substantive conflict concerning Sissy’s eating disorder plays out during these moments primarily on matters foregrounding epistemic status and stance. To summarise so far, we have reviewed research on a range of practices by which participants display opposition or resistance. Repair initiations delay progressivity to mark some 226

Conflict interaction

prior action as problematic and provide an opportunity for it to be amended. Dispreferred second pair parts, activity disruptions and even laughter can show misalignment between the course of action a prior speaker is pursuing and the action produced by the recipient. Disaffiliating makes evident that a recipient does not share in or endorse the affective stance displayed by a prior speaker. Challenges to epistemic authority manifest potential disagreements about who knows what and who has the rights to know what. Our review so far has emphasised actions that are largely responsive to something in the immediately preceding environment. We now turn to complaints as a sequence-initiating practice that includes a moral dimension implying or directly conveying judgment.

12.3.6 Complaints Although pervasive in talk, negative assessments of an interlocutor are especially likely to occur during disagreements or talk that participants treat as delicate (Pomerantz, 1984). Negative assessments appear commonly in the form of complaints (also investigated under related terms such as criticisms, accusations, and blaming: Drew, 1998; Drew and Holt, 1988; Drew and Walker, 2009; Edwards, 2005; Heinemann, 2009; Jefferson, 2015; Laforest, 2009; Pillet-Shore, 2015, 2016; Pomerantz, 1986; Pomerantz, 1987; Schegloff, 2005; Whitehead, 2013). Complaints may directly concern a co-present recipient or indirectly concern some non-present third party (see Laforest, 2009; Monzoni, 2009). For this review, we are particularly concerned with direct complaints, which may indicate or constitute expression of conflict.6 Complaints draw on moral reasoning to render judgments, and they may implicate the complainer who can be subject to evaluation for “propriety or fairness or justice or accuracy” of the complaint (Drew, 1998, p.295). Thus, complaints make assessments of right/wrong or good/bad particularly salient. A complaint turn commonly includes an explicit formulation of a transgression and an expression of indignation. As first pair parts, complaints make responses relevant and can occur within longer sequences (Drew, 1998; Dersley and Wootton, 2000; Laforest, 2009). Participants may treat the minimal two turn sequence of complaint-response as complete by moving on to next matters, and that is commonly the case when the object of complaint (the “complainable”) action occurs immediately prior (Laforest, 2009) (e.g. “You stepped on my foot!” “Sorry!”). Complaint sequences may also expand through SPPs that offer a remedy, deny, reject, account or counter complain. In sequences featuring complaints to and about a co-participant, outright denials are rare. Far more commonly, in second position, the accused implicitly accepts the charge but offers a “not at fault” mitigation or account, Following the second turn response, the original complainer may engage the response by acknowledging, reasserting the complaint, modifying it and so on. In fourth position, the respondent may expand further, and in this way, complaints can develop into longer discussions or full-fledged arguments. In almost all cases, however, the participants align in preserving the roles of complainer and accused (Dersley and Wootton, 2000). In the passage below, Elvyn complains to Ernie about his behaviour with Robert (her teenage son and Ernie’s stepson). The term “nag.” conveys the transgression, and the idiom “sick and tired” conveys her indignation (lines 1–3). After a pause, Elvyn continues with a combined demand and complaint (lines 5–7). Starting at line 9, Ernie replies with a “not at fault” (Dersley and Wootton, 2000) counter-complaint placing blame on the teenager’s behaviour. Following a long pause (line 15), Elvyn completes Ernie’s abandoned description of Robert’s actions in a way that defends Robert, thereby implicitly reasserting the complaint against Ernie. Ernie lodges an additional complaint against Robert (line 18), as the two participants continue their adversarial argument: 227

Phillip Glenn 

Couples arguing 12.2 1 Elvyn: I am sick and tired (.) of having the first thing 2 out of your mouth (.) when you come downstairs is a 3 nag. 4 (0.8) 5 Elvyn: I want ↑you and Rob↑ert (.) to go and settle that 6 some other way so that I don’t have to hear you come 7 downstairs and nag. 8 (0.7) 9 Ernie: My experience is >he’s sitting there at the goddamn 10 kitchen tab- di- (.) dining room table< (.) until I 11 come down then all the sudden the great light 12 flashes in his eyes that it’s time to go, 13 He gits up an’ he scrapes the chairs and he (.) 14 makes clatter getting out of the house, 15 (3.0) 16 Elvyn: And he gets out the door and he ↑gets there. 17 (0.3) 18 Ernie: °thh° (0.3) His ↑shoes are dangling from his mouth.

Speakers package complaints in ways that mark their orientation or stance towards what they are saying. As Edwards (2005, p.5) puts it: A complaint can be done in ways that enhance its objectivity and seriousness, and its chances of being taken seriously. On the other hand, rather than simply reporting factual and complainable matters, a complainer may (also, or instead) be heard as moaning, whinging, ranting, biased, prone to complaining, paranoid, invested, over-reacting, over-sensitive, or whatever other vernacular category might apply. As this passage suggests, from the evident stance may derive potential judgments of not only the object of the complaint but the complainer – what Edwards calls the “subjective” side of complaining. These displays also cue the recipient about how to respond, for example, with expressions of concern, sympathetic laughter, disaffiliation and so on. CA research on “extreme case formulations” (ECF) shows how speakers employ superlatives and extreme adjectives, adverbs, and noun phrases as they complain and accuse, or defend and justify in the face of complaints and accusations (Edwards, 2000; Pomerantz, 1986). An extreme case formulation can propose that something is generally the case rather than a product of circumstance, for example, “You’re never here on time!” It can also propose that some behaviour is right by virtue of its commonality, for example, “Everybody else is going!” Similarly, complaints may be worded in especially detailed ways that contribute to the moral case being made: Thus the description is overdetermined in the sense that it includes a prior action that might be regarded as a necessary, constituent part of doing the principal action and hence one that can be taken for granted and not need reporting. However, as these examples suggest, such descriptions seem to be designed to portray the particular care or deliberateness with which the principal action was taken. (Drew, 1998, p.319) 228

Conflict interaction

As stance markers, extreme case formulations can provide a kind of index of investment in what is being said. That is, stating something in an extreme way may be taken less as a literal claim about the world and more as an indication of the intensity of one’s stance. Going to extremes also provides a way to tease, joke or employ irony. In contrast to ECFs, speakers can use softeners in descriptions such as “mostly”, “almost”, “few” or “hardly any” (Edwards, 2000, p.352). Interestingly, these make for weaker claims, yet they make a description or claim less easy to refute. ECFs, on the other hand, are “factually brittle” in that they can easily be falsified. Turns that oppose, misalign, challenge, disaffiliate or complain invite inspection as islands of difference popping up in the waters of an interactional system built in various ways to encourage cooperation and agreement and minimise conflict. Their occurrence creates contingencies that participants manage through sequence expansion and closure. Sometimes, participants will sustain stances marking difference, and these may develop into what we can understand more directly as disagreements or arguments. We take these up in the next section.

12.4 From disagreement to argument: extending difference Arguments in interaction begin as a minimal three-part sequence consisting of an arguable, opposition and ratification (Hutchby, 1996). We start with the second turn, understanding it as an action that in some way opposes the action of something that precedes. Thus, an arguable is only identified as such when someone argues with or opposes it. Occurrence of an arguable-opposition pair is not sufficient to constitute participants as being in an argument. After all, in the third turn position, the first speaker might fail to defend, agree with the action or stance of the second speaker or apologise. Instead, argument requires a third-turn ratification by the first speaker. Once constituted by this three-turn sequence, expansion is possible. This can take the form of simple, aggravated correction and disagreement turns (Goodwin, M.H., 1983). Parties can maintain their opposition across topics, activities, and encounters (Goodwin, C., and Goodwin, M.H., 1990, pp.96–8). Second turn opposition might take the form of some of the actions reviewed in previous sections: initiating repair or repairing, disagreeing with an assessment, rejecting advice, misaligning, disaffiliating, downgrading or upgrading one’s own epistemic stance, and reformulating positions (Hosoda and Aline, 2015). Each of these moves contributes to sustaining a position or orienting to another party’s prior action in a way that retroactively constitutes it as problematic or arguable. In children’s arguments, opposition turns contain such elements as expression of polarity (“no”), repetition of key components, person descriptors, insult terms, corrections, tit for tat return moves, format tying, disclaimers (“I don’t care”) and recycling of positions (Goodwin, M.H., 1990, p.145; Maynard, 1985). While it is possible to imagine extended interactions consisting solely of opposition turns, actual arguments may include a more complex array of actions and sequences. For example, in Reynolds’ (2011) study of arguments in public places amidst protests, participants routinely ask their adversary a non-challenging, “enticing” question. The adversary produces an answer which the asker treats as already-known and uncontroversial, even obvious. Then the asker uses that answer to attack or challenge in the third position. Thus, a brief moment of agreement fuels a next opposition move. Researchers have noticed that in some open disagreements and hostile arguments, oppositional moves come packaged in “preferred” turn shapes: unmitigated, without delays, without accounts, and with intensified disagreement components. Pomerantz’s (1984) research documented the context-sensitivity of the preference for agreement with assessments. A structural preference for agreement might warrant agreeing when one receives 229

Phillip Glenn 

a compliment (which is a kind of assessment). Simultaneously, a structural preference for minimising boasting or self-praise might warrant disagreeing with or downplaying the compliment. Put another way, more than one preference structure may be relevant at a single point. Interaction in certain environments appears built to favour a structural preference for disagreement, with agreements showing dispreferred turn shapes. For example, in children’s street arguments, unmitigated opposition turns show preferred structures (Goodwin, M.H., 1990). Among institutional interactions, television panel interviews featuring a moderator and participants who are selected to represent a variety of views will tend to emphasise disagreement. A variety of practices in the conduct of the participants as well as in how producers design and frame the programs serve to forecast, facilitate and intensify disagreements among panellists (Pomerantz and Heritage, 2013, p.225). A study of adversarial radio talk shows featuring a host and telephone callers reveals practices for intensifying disagreements, presumably for entertainment value (Hutchby, 1996). In oral arguments by attorneys to an appellate court, adversarial arguing and questioning show a preference for disagreement through which participants enact their roles (Tracy, 2011). There has been some analytic interest in how arguments that arise in an agreement preferred environment might transform into arguments in which participants treat disagreement as preferred. Kotthoff’s (1993) study of German and Anglo-American interactions between lecturers and students in a university shows how preference structures might shift towards disagreement once an argument sequence involving dissent is underway. As disagreements continue, markers of reluctance to disagree diminish and markers of reluctance to agree will tend to accompany concessions. Dersley and Wootton (2000), on the other hand, challenge the notion that “argument” shows a reverse preference for disagreement. They argue that this claim has been based largely on children’s arguments and institutional interactions in which there is a special incentive for bald, preferred-shape disagreement. If there is such a reverse polarity preference, it is unclear how participants might make the transition. Schegloff (2007, p.73) points cautiously to the issue of preference transformation in arguments: For example, there can be a point in the development of a disagreement or conflict at which the practices described here as characteristic of doing dispreferred responses are abandoned, and parties begin to formulate their positions and stances in unmitigated and full-blooded forms, not delayed but prompt and even overlapping their interlocutor’s talk. We can see in this a ‘graduation’ from disagreement/conflict being reined in into full-fledged ‘arguing or fighting’. And the activity of ‘arguing or fighting’, as an activity in its own right, may have its own preferences and dispreferences. Yelling, interrupting, not modulating one’s position, etc., can thus serve as an indication of the vehicle within which differences are to be worked through, and thereby potentially serve as an indicator of severity. We have, however, virtually no naturalistically grounded analyses of actual arguing of this sort, and the account in this note must be regarded as impressionistic and casual at best, and wrong at worst. The tentative tone and caution evident in Schegloff’s comment point to the preliminary nature of any such claims and the need for further research on this matter. There has been little analytic attention in CA research to how arguments end. In part, this is because studies of the phenomena reviewed above (repair, complaint, dispreferred SPP) often document the ways participants exit from those sequences. Closure of longer, more bounded arguments may be understood as part of the larger “closing problem” of conversation (Schegloff and Sacks, 1973; Vuchinich, 1990). Put simply, with the mechanisms 230

Conflict interaction

for turn-taking providing ongoing procedures for selecting the next speaker, the closing problem becomes, how to have one speaker’s turn completion not engender a next turn and not have the following silence heard as the responsibility of some particular speaker. One study of family dinner table arguments (Vuchinich, 1990) identified two structural forms addressing the closing issue. The “submissive terminal exchange” features some kind of assent, agreement or compliance following an opposition turn. The “compromise terminal exchange” features one party offering some concession or modification of position, which is accepted by the disputing party. However, the vast majority of arguments in this study ended in some variation of a stand-off in which participants maintain their opposition while moving on to other topics and activities. Thus, these family members often do not resolve their arguments (and perhaps their conflicts) but instead set them aside. Similarly, children’s arguments will sometimes end with one party conceding and sometimes with standoffs; another exit approach involves playful and metaphorical frame switches (Goodwin, M.H., 1990). As in the family arguments studied by Vuchinich, through these ending types, participants may orient to winning or losing. More work remains to be done specifying how participants move out of such sequences into other matters.

12.5 Sample analysis7 During part of a dinner table conversation, one partner (Jay) in a couple complains to the other (Kay) about something she did. The issue seems to be that on a previous evening, when they were visiting friends, Kay began looking at a photo album that contained pictures of her with a former partner. Jay felt uncomfortable and isolated, and he blamed her for having done so intentionally or at least thoughtlessly. Following his complaint, Kay apologises, and Jay expands the complaint. They disagree about what exactly happened. Implying that she sought out the photo album on purpose, he highlights the moral nature of her transgression. They invoke relationship rules about whether it is okay to look at, or to have, pictures of former romantic partners. Closing this topic with agreement that “you can have pictures of friends” but with the matter of her accountability unresolved, they turn to talking about the meal in front of them. The entire excerpt lasts about four and a half minutes. For the sake of economy, this analysis will focus on selected passages that illustrate the phenomena reviewed above.

12.5.1 Launching a complaint sequence Kay has returned to the conversation after taking a phone call from Gretchen, whom she characterises as “someone I never really liked”. As this excerpt begins, Kay reports Gretchen’s negative assessment of Iowa City people (lines 1, 2, 4, 6). Offering her own, more mixed assessment (lines 25, 27, 28), Kay disaffiliates from Gretchen’s negative stance. Jay topicalises Kay’s assessment (line 31) and his allusion to “something” that made him feel good about Rick (lines 32, 34, 35) projects a forthcoming story or report. With the quick-tempo “>Whyor something like that< and then [nine Jay: [And where did she come from? Kay: North Dakota (1.0) Kay: They are more friendly there. (2.2) Kay: They’re- (0.4) a- a little different though. (1.4) Kay: I ↓told her, that (0.8) you know I- she- asked m:e what I thought (of) people in *Iowa City* (0.5) Kay: And I just told her- what my impressions were Jay: [Mm hm Kay: [Especially coming back from B↑e:lgium but (0.6) I don’t think they’re that bad. (2.1) Kay: They’re just not cu:rious (0.4) about anybody who’s done [something different Jay: [Hm (0.4) Jay: Now ↑that’s interesting >that you say that< because that[’s s:]omething (0.6) Kay: [W h y] Jay: that- (0.2) made me feel v:ery very good (0.8) about Rick. (1.0) Kay: >Why< (0.5)

Next, Jay begins narrating events from the previous evening when they had been visiting friends (lines 39, 41). The strong vocal emphasis on “you:” marks a shift from talk about Rick to talk about Kay, and he complains to Kay about her actions. The word “immediately” following the negative assessment “very rude” enhances the criticism by marking her behaviour as inaptly timed as well as inappropriate. Returning to narrative description, he links the negative assessment to her behaviour (lines 42–43) and to how her actions affected him (lines 45–46). He resumes talking (line 48) and she overlaps to apologise (line 49), an action that aligns with the preceding complaint. 39 Jay: Cause when we got there, 40 Kay: Mm hm= 41 Jay: =An’ we sat down, (2.5) you: immediately I 232

Conflict interaction

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

thought were very rude an’ started looking through (0.3) photograph album(s). (0.7) Jay: And kinda left (.) I- I was left sitting doing nothing. (1.5) Jay: pt an:d u[: : h Kay: [I’m sorry (0.3)

Following her apology, Jay intensifies the complaint, first by claiming that her action impacted their hosts as well as him and then by stating a rule of conduct that by implication she violated (lines 51–53). Kay is silent (line 54), and after a pause he modifies the rule to grant that perhaps “eventually” one can look at the photo albums of people one is visiting. He positively assesses Rick’s actions as “really nice” (line 60) and aligns (“as you say”) with Kay’s previous negative assessment of local people lacking curiosity – even while he expands the category assessed from Iowa City people to “Am:ericans in general”. Thus, Rick’s reported curiosity now becomes even more noteworthy, coming as it did from a member of a group lacking curiosity. Kay’s response (line 63) seems misaligned. In claiming she already knows, she treats his prior turn as claiming to inform her of something; yet if his prior turn were indeed the SPP agreeing with her original assessment, it would not carry such a claim. Perhaps orienting to this misalignment, he reformulates the assessment about Americans (lines 64–65). She offers no reply. With the “Oh-” (line 67) he marks a sudden realisation and assesses his own prior assessment as a generalisation – a stance marker that allows him to put the opinion forward while acknowledging that doing so is perhaps somewhat inappropriate. A long pause follows. 51 Jay: 52 53 54 55 Jay: 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 Kay: 64 Jay: 65 66 67 68

ˑhh Wel- ↑n:ot just to me but- to Rick and Elena too:=You- don’t go to visit people (0.4) >to look at their pho(h)tograph albums, (0.7) How- ya know- (1.0) p’rhaps you do u i- (0.2) you do it eventually but- (0.9) pt ˑhhhh And Rick- jus:- (0.3) >I was sorta left< s:ittin there and Rick >out of the blue< jus:t start’d(.) hhh ask’n’ me about my background, and I thought that was r:eally nice because as you say you know (2.2) Am:ericans in general are(0.2) tend not do that. I: kn↑[ow]     [In] a group they >tend to stick together.< (0.3) Oh- (0.3) generalization. (5.0)

It may be helpful to summarise, for this is a complex moment with multiple relevancies. Jay has produced an example, aligning with and reinforcing Kay’s negative assessment about local people. In providing that example he has complained about Kay’s behaviour, and she 233

Phillip Glenn 

has apologised. In assessing his own talk as a generalisation, he may make it relevant for her to agree or disagree; however, to agree might imply sanctioning all such talk, including her own prior assessments.

12.5.2 Arguing over what happened: apology and defence In what follows, Kay’s first defends her actions as having been reasonable in the course of events. This launches a disagreement about what happened, following which Kay defends her intentions and culpability: 69 Kay: 70 71 72 Jay: 73 Kay: 74 75 Jay: 76 77 78 79 Kay: 80 Jay: 81 Kay: 82 83 Jay: 84 85 86 87 Kay: 88 89 90 Jay: 91 92 Kay: 93

But El↑ena was the one that said (0.3) H↑ere’re the pictures from Thanksg↑iving, (1.6) No:[::. [She did- she said ˑhhh We have all those pictures from Thanksgiving (.) i[n the ( ) [No: Elena (.) said (1.9) that- (1.8) what she’d been doing (.) for the last coupla weeks her project was to put all those= =Mm hm? pictures together= =Mm hm? (2.2) And you start- happen to start lookin’ at(0.4) them and she said ˑhh Oh all the pictures from Thanksgiving are in there (1.4) / ((two noises)) Well- (0.2) I’m sorry I didn’t think it was ru:de, (0.9) W*ell(3.1) pt might- very well ↑might’ve been but I didn’t-

With the word “But” (line 69) marking contrast with what preceded, Kay reports that Elena had in effect invited them to look at pictures. In this she does not deny having looked at photos but challenges the blame Jay has placed on her for having done so. After a pause, Jay rejects this claim (line 72), thereby constituting it as arguable. Kay reasserts her claim, but with a modified version of what Elena said (lines 73–74). Jay again disagrees and presents his own version (lines 75–78), in which Elena announced that she had created photo albums but did not invite her guests to look at them (thereby placing blame again on Kay). Note that this now has developed into an argument with sustained opposition turns that displayed preferred turn features such as absence of delay and mitigation. However, Kay abandons arguing for her position in favour of noncommittal continuers that return the floor to Jay to keep talking (lines 79, 81). Having rejected her self-defence, he reasserts the complaint. In self-repairing from “start-” to “happen to start” (line 83) he overbuilds the complaint 234

Conflict interaction

(Drew, 1998), implying that she acted intentionally. His version of events, in which Kay started looking at photos prior to Elena’s announcement about them, continues to hold Kay morally culpable. Kay again apologises (lines 87–88). She disagrees with the “rude” assessment of her action, providing a “not at fault” defence (Dersley and Wootton, 2000) against any implication that at the time she acted rudely on purpose. With “W*ell-” (line 90) Jay marks a continued stance of opposition but adds no more; following a lengthy pause, Kay concedes possible rudeness while seeming to reassert her “not at fault” defence, now with a downgrading epistemic stance (lines 90–92).

12.5.3 Elaborated complaint: disagreement over the rudeness of her action In the next few moments, Jay repeatedly uses the word “think” (lines 94, 96, 98) as he challenges Kay’s epistemic authority as a way to maintain his position. In this turn, he begins but abandons formulating the complainable offense in generalised terms. In a partial concession, he grants the disputability of his “rude” assessment (lines 104–105) while emphasising the negative impact her actions had on him (lines 106–108). She does not reply. He expands the complaint by claiming that other people likely felt awkward, as did he. 94 Jay: 95 Kay: 96 Jay: 97 Kay: 98 Jay: 99 100 Kay: 101 Jay: 102 103 104 Jay: 105 106 Jay: 107 108 109 110 Jay: 111 112 113 114

Wul- ↑y’ow- (.) think [(of ih-) [↑Okay J- just think about it [Mm hm [Think abou the situation (0.5) when:yours↑elf and anyone el[se o::r or any tw↑o [Um::eh. people- going to do it. (1.1) An’ you know to a (1.0) you may not think it was rude but (4.0) A- ↓look at the time I didn’t think- (0.2) of it being (0.3) r:ude ˑhhh so much as making me feel real awkward. (0.7) And- (0.2) >to a certain extent,< (3.0) I would- think that maybe other people (.)°feel awkward too=Rick and Elena and Paul (0.4) possibly (did).° (1.1)

12.5.4 Renewed disagreement over what happened Kay claims that Jay was involved in a gaming activity, thereby defending her from charges that by looking at photo albums she left him awkward and alone. Jay challenges her and this leads to a series of disagreement turns (lines 115–131). Noteworthy in these moments is Kay’s complaint that she tried to get him to look at pictures with her (lines 124, 126, 128). With “Okay”. she seems to accept his preceding version of events, yet with “↓But.” she sustains opposition. Repeating the same word moments later (line 138) with marked emphasis 235

Phillip Glenn 

and questioning intonation may call attention to her use of it. In the lengthy silence that follows, they seem to be at a stand-off. 115 Kay: But you were playing that ↑game, 116 (1.1) 117 Jay: No: not on ↑Friday ↑ni:ght, 118 (0.3) 119 Kay: °↑Mm.° 120 (1.0) 121 Jay: °No°= 122 Kay: =Mm hm. 123 (0.6) 124 Kay: pt Because I kept125 Jay: bhh= 126 Kay: =trying to [↑show you things, 127 Jay: [ˑhh 128 Kay: And you kept going back to your ↑game. 129 (0.5) 130 Jay: Yeah but you started look’n at the pictures 131 before Ira came over with that th [ing 132 Kay: [Okay. 133 (0.2) 134 Kay: ↓But. 135 (0.3) 136 Jay: Yeah. 137 (0.7) 138 Jay: Bu:t? 139 (4.4) ((possible unvoiced outbreaths))

12.5.5 The real problem with photos Jay alludes to “good reasons” for not wanting to look at the photo album, and in providing this account for his behaviour, he implicitly accepts her claim (lines 124, 126, 128) that she had tried to get him to join her. Kay’s open-ended question (line 143) marks her as uninformed, unable or unwilling to confirm the allusion (Schegloff, 1996). Jay answers with another allusive formulation, self-repaired to overbuild a complaint about her (lines 145–147). Her acknowledgement with laughter claims understanding but does not affiliate with his complaining stance (as for example an apology might accomplish). Jay reports having “thought” she was looking for “that” – again, using underspecified allusions. To this, she aligns epistemically but denies the intent he has ascribed to her (lines 153, 156). Jay accepts her denial (line 159). 140 Jay: 141 142 143 Kay: 144 145 Jay: 146 147 236

I had a lot of good reasons for not ↑wanting to look at that photograph album. (0.4) Why, (2.6) We:ll? (2.5) °it’uz° quite apparent what would show up sooner or later (0.2) as you(0.2) manage to find one sooner or later.

Conflict interaction

148 Kay: hYe(h) [huh 149 Jay:   [To show me 150 (2.5) 151 Jay: And in a way a lot- a lot of ways I thought 152 that was what you were ↑looking for. 153 Kay: h[n No: ] I ↑wasn’t 154 Jay: [(theh)] 155 (1.0) 156 Kay: [°No I ↑wasn’t° 157 Jay: [°Yeah° 158 (1.6) 159 Jay: pt ˑhhhh °mn okay°

12.5.6 Compromise agreement and topic closure Following a lengthy silence, Kay prompts Jay to speak. He produces a positive assessment about the fact that he destroys pictures of old girlfriends. With the tag ending “in’t it”, he invites agreement while treating her as already aware of this. She neither agrees nor disagrees with the assessment but misaligns epistemically by treating what he said as news to her (line 165). Jay’s claim and subsequent account (lines 163–164, 169) while shifting topic away from the complaint contrast his take-the-high-road stance with her morally complainable act of having sought out pictures in the photo album of her with a former partner, and, by implication, possibly still attaching meaning to the former relationship. Over several turns and in different forms, they sustain disagreement with Kay challenging his claim and Jay holding to it (lines 170–179). Notably, Kay asserts, in wording making a strong epistemic claim of certainty (line 177), that Jay still corresponds with a former girlfriend. A silence follows, and Kay claims this as evidence that the relationship is important to him. Jay does not deny the accusation but mitigates its status as a counter-example in the conflict, describing the person in question as “good friend of mine” (in contrast to an “old girlfriend”, line 164). Kay accepts his account and formulates a rule, “You can have pictures of friends”. In this she offers a compromise of sorts: if it’s okay to correspond with a former partner, it’s okay to have pictures of one. Jay agrees, first tentatively, then after pursuit from Kay, definitively (line 195). Having secured this tenuous agreement, they shift to talking about the food, ending the extended complaint/disagreement sequence: 160 161 Kay: 162 163 Jay: 164 165 Kay: 166 167 Kay: 168 Jay: 169 Jay: 170 Kay: 171 172 Jay: 173

(5.7) What. (1.2) Just as well I- (0.2) tear up all my pictures of old girlfriends n throw them away in’t it. You do? (0.2) [(hn)] [ hhh] They don’t mean anything to me any more You must have some. (0.4) >I don’t.< (3.7) 237

Phillip Glenn 

174 Kay: °I bet you do° 175 Jay: I don’t. 176 (0.6) 177 Kay: Yeah but you still write to o:ne 178 (1.1) 179 Kay: She must mean something, 180 (0.3) 181 Jay: Hm. She’s a good friend of mine. 182 (0.2) 183 Kay: °Okay° 184 (0.6) 185 (?) pt 186 (2.3) 187 Kay: You can have pictures of friends, 188 (2.6) 189 Jay: Hmm, pt °I guess you can° 190 (5.4) 191 Kay: °I hope° 192 (0.4) 193 Jay: °Mm (.)mm° 194 (1.0) 195 Jay: Course you can 196 (4.0) 197 Kay: That fish was good if it would been hotter 198 Jay: O:h, Go:d 199 ((continues))

To summarise: Kay negatively assesses local people who show no curiosity towards others. Jay creates an opportunity to complain about Kay by placing the complaint within an extended turn praising Rick for having shown interest in him – an example that affiliates with her assessment. Kay apologises then defends herself. Twice the defence takes the form of asserting a version of what happened that mitigates her blameworthiness; Jay opposes these claims, and disagreements ensue. At other moments, her defence rests on what might have been “rude” and what they thought of as rude at the time (compared with now). Each party concedes a bit while maintaining opposition. Cautiously alluding, Jay voices discomfort in knowing that the photo album in question would contain pictures of Kay with her former partner. Agreeing that it is okay to have pictures of “friends”, they move on to other matters. Complaint sequences, epistemic misalignments and challenges, disaffiliations and disagreements all intermingle in this unfolding discussion. If “conflict” seems a reasonable label for this passage, it might represent a gloss for some package of these various actions and sequences. Through them, the “issue” evolves from her rudeness, to what happened, what she intended, how he felt, the impact on others and the rules for orienting to former partners. Kay and Jay manage a confrontation and they negotiate rules of the relationship. The conflict seems to have reach closure without resolution.8

12.6 Discussion The review above represents not an exhaustive list but an initial organisation of some key areas of CA research that directly speak to phenomena likely to characterise interpersonal 238

Conflict interaction

conflict. The discussion until now has emphasised how participants create forms of talk that might constitute conflict in casual conversation and in a variety of institutional interactions. There is related research on institutional forms of interaction that are specifically devoted to managing conflicts or reaching agreements. In the preface to an edited volume, Firth (1995) construes “negotiating” broadly as talk devoted to making mutually acceptable decisions, not necessarily rooted in pre-existing and mutually recognised differences or overt conflict. However, more formal bargaining sessions do represent ways for parties with adversarial or competing interests to try to reach agreement and formal mediation sessions pursue the same goal with the guiding presence of a third party. These have been the focus of a number of CA studies. In a foundational study of plea bargaining in criminal courts, Maynard (1984) documented a core two-turn bargaining sequence between district attorneys and public defenders consisting of a proposal by one party and the response by the other. From this minimal pair, expansions can alter the pre-sequence environment, the first turn, the space between the first and second parts, the second turn, or subsequent talk. Generally, Maynard found, these bargaining sequences unfolded along one of three paths: a. proposal met with acceptance (aligning response); b. proposal met with rejection (disaligning); c. proposal met with withholding of acceptance or rejection and a counterproposal. In a case study of a negotiation between two realtors, Maynard (2010) documents three bargaining moves occurring within and as expansions of this core sequence. “Defer” moves postpone a relevant bargaining action that has been made relevant in order to insert explanatory materials relevant to the forthcoming action. When more than one action is relevant in a next position, bargainers will sometimes “demur” dealing with the lesser priority action. For example, an offer may also be treated as a news announcement. Following demur, the prior speaker may make the implied action more explicit. Third, agents bargaining on behalf of clients may attribute responses to proposals to their clients (a shift in “footing”; Goffman, 1979) as a way to “deter” expectations for alignment. Other CA studies of formal conflict resolution activities have tended to identify core practices, challenges or dilemmas in single cases or small collections. A study of disagreements during jury deliberations contrasts practices by which participants avert acrimony with practices that escalate acrimonious disagreement (Pomerantz and Sanders, 2015). The choice by mediators to intervene or “selectively facilitate” raises issues (for participants as well as analysts) regarding their supposed impartiality (Greatbatch and Dingwall, 1989, 1994; see also Heisterkamp, 2006). A related issue concerns mediator responses to participants’ displays of affective stance (Glenn, 2010). As actions devoted to putting into words the essence or the implication of some previous talk, “formulations” have drawn analytic interest for how they work in labour-management negotiation (Drew, 2003; Walker, 1995) and in small claims court mediation (Glenn, 2016). Mediator practices for moving participants toward agreement include minimising argument (Garcia, 1991; Greatbatch and Dingwall, 1997), guiding proposal generation (Garcia, 1997) and producing resolution (Garcia, 2000). One promising arena for additional CA research with implications for the study of conflict concerns how participants orient to and manifest displays of “emotion” (Ruusuvuori, 2014), such as anger, that are routinely associated with conflict situations. Likewise, promising work on epistemics particularly linked to “empathy” (Heritage, 2011) will yield insights about how participants respond to affective displays. Studies of the interplay of embodied action (Heath and Luff, 2014) with talk in face-to-face interactions, and the interplay of prosody with language use (Walker, 2014) will enrich understandings of the multimodal ways 239

Phillip Glenn 

that conflicts unfold. Investigation of stronger and weaker forms of disagreement, along the lines of strong and weak agreement with assessments studied by Pomerantz, offers a fruitful path for further research. Building on some promising initial forays, questions remain concerning how interactants may affect a shift from agreement-preferred to disagreementpreferred structures, as in antagonistic argument (Dersely and Wootton, 2000; Kotthoff, 1993; see above, p.230). A rich tradition of CA studies of accounts and accountability (see Robinson, 2016) will inform understandings of the moral dimensions of conflict situations. Almost any aspect of language use could provide a locus for human conflict. A recent study of interactions between persons with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and their caregivers problematises clear distinctions between alignment (cooperation) and misalignment (conflict). In the moments analysed, the FTD individuals exhibit combinations of cooperative and conflictual behaviour in response to their caregivers’ directives and attempts to guide their actions (MIkesell, 2016). As this line of research demonstrates, the challenge for scholars lies in connecting detailed understandings of how participants organise their actual talk and activities with the abstract, elastic concept of conflict. Understanding how to transform conflict rests on understanding conflict itself. While there is much accumulated wisdom, there is more to learn about the detailed, contingent sequences of actions that constitute interpersonal conflict. Conversation analytic research has made great strides in describing and analysing interaction; however, this work has until now remained relatively disconnected from conflict studies. Recent efforts show the efficacy of translating CA research into applied findings (doctor-patient interactions, therapy, learning environments, mediation sessions and more; see Antaki, 2011). Parallel to this review, a synthesis of CA research on phenomena related to humour acknowledges the challenges in linking ethnomethodological studies of actual practices to an abstract concept that may not capture participant orientations (Glenn and Holt, 2017). While detailed analysis of actual talk-in-interaction reveals a complexity not easily rendered into pre-existing conceptual categories or into prescription, it provides a depth and rigor to our understandings of the core phenomena of social life that merit inclusion in the study of language and conflict.

Transcribing symbols [ ] = ( . ) (2.0) ye:s yes. yes, yes? yes! yes- yes YES °yes° hhh •hhh ye(hh)s 240

Brackets indicate overlapping utterances. Equal marks indicate contiguous utterances, or continuation of the same utterance to the next line. Period within parentheses indicates micropause. Indicates timed pause in approximate seconds. Colon indicates stretching of sound it follows. Period indicates falling intonation. Comma indicates relatively constant intonation. Question mark indicates upward intonation. Exclamation indicates animated tone. Single dash indicates abrupt sound cutoff. Underlining indicates emphasis. Capital letters indicate increased volume. Degree marks indicate decreased volume of materials between. H’s indicate audible aspiration, possibly laughter. Superscript period indicates inbreath audible aspiration, possibly laughter. H’s within parentheses indicate within-speech aspiration, possibly laughter.

Conflict interaction

((cough)) I tems within double parentheses indicate some sound or feature of talk which is not easily transcribable, e.g. “((in falsetto))”. (yes) Parentheses indicate transcriber doubt about hearing of passage. ↓yes ↑yes Arrow indicates marked change in intonation. £yes£ Pound signs indicate “smile voice” delivery of materials.

Notes 1 For a rich, conflict-related analysis in this tradition, see Agne and Tracy (2001). 2 However, an assessment does not necessarily make a response (either agreeing or disagreeing) relevant. Features of turn design contribute to stronger or lesser degrees of compelling a response (Stivers and Rossano, 2010). 3 There are other preference structures, such as a preference for offers over requests and for “type-confirming” answers to yes/no type interrogatives. See Schegloff (2007) and Pomerantz and Heritage, (2013) for reviews. 4 There are exceptions and complications. For example, following a self-deprecating assessment, disagreement may be preferred rather than agreement (Pomerantz, 1984). A dispreferred can be couched as preferred: That’s where you live? That’s where I was born There can be pro forma agreement followed by disagreement (typified by the “yes but” formulation). There can be multiple preferences operating at one slot, e.g. assessments can seek agreement but can also compliment or self-deprecate, calling for disagreement and thus putting into play competing preference structures. 5 For readers new to CA, the transcripts can seem a bit opaque at first. The spellings and symbols represent the transcriber’s attempt to capture actual words and sounds, paralinguistic characteristics, temporal features such as pauses and overlaps and (where video is available) visual features. In this excerpt, the brackets and spacing of the first two lines show that Ilene’s vocal sound “U h : : :m” overlaps Lisa’s talk. Underlining indicates emphasised sound. Colons indicate stretched sound. Dashes indicate cut-off sound. Upward and downward arrows indicate intonational rises and falls. The parentheses indicate transcriber uncertainty that the transcription has accurately captured what’s inside. Please refer to the full list of symbols that appears in this chapter. 6 However, the direct-indirect distinction can become complicated, for participants as well as for analysts. In parent-teacher conferences, parents will praise their own children directly, while teachers will criticise the children delicately and hesitantly. By these structural regularities both treat the parent-child as a single party, such that evaluating the child can be treated as evaluating the parent (Pillet-Shore, 2016). Indirect complaints can “spill out” (Sacks, 1992, pp.599–600) to other persons who could be placed in the same category, e.g. a complaint about sales clerks made to a sales clerk might be treated as directly critical of that person. 7 A bit of background about the data: Bryan Crow obtained this recording of a dinner table conversation for his research on couples’ interactions. It is available online (http​s://r​eposi​torie​s.lib​.utex​as.ed​ u/han​dle/2​152/6​347, Part 2, beginning at 12:50) in the University of Texas Conversation Library, a collection begun by the late Robert Hopper and maintained by Jurgen Streeck. I modified Crow’s original transcript. I selected this excerpt for analysis because it richly illustrates several of the practices described in this review. 8 In fact, Crow (1992) shows how Kay’s complaint about the fish, while changing the topic, provides a basis for sustaining conflict. It seems that Jay prepared the meal, which Kay interrupted to take a phone call, resulting in a lengthy delay and fish that could have been hotter.

References Agne, R. and Tracy, K. 2001. ‘Bible Babble’: naming the interactional trouble at Waco. Discourse Studies. 3(3), pp.269–94. Antaki, C. ed. 2011. Applied Conversation Analysis: intervention and change in institutional talk. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. 241

Phillip Glenn 

Atkinson, J.M. and Heritage, J. eds. 1984. Structures of social action: studies in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beach, W.A. 1996. Conversations about illness: family preoccupations with bulimia. Mahwah, NJ: LEA. Bolden, G. and Robinson, J.D. 2011. Soliciting accounts with why-interrogatives in conversation. Journal of Communication. 61, pp.94–119. Clayman, S.E. 1992. Caveat orator: audience disaffiliation in the 1988 presidential debates. Quarterly Journal of Speech. 78, pp.33–60. Crow, B.K. 1992. Conversational episode structure. In Conville, R. ed. Uses of ‘structure’ in communication studies. Westport, CT: Praeger, pp.155–84. Dersley, A. and Wootton, A. 2000. Complaint sequences within antagonistic argument. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 33(4), pp.375–406. Drew, P. 1987. Po-faced receipts of teases. Linguistics. 25, pp.219–53. Drew, P. 1998. Complaints about transgressions and misconduct. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 31(3–4), pp.295–325. Drew, P. 2003. Comparative analysis of talk-in-interaction in different institutional settings: a sketch. In Glenn, P., LeBaron, C.D. and Mandelbaum, J. eds. Studies in language and social interaction: in honor of Robert Hopper. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, pp.293–307. Drew, P. 2012. What drives sequences? Research on Language and Social Interaction. 45(1), pp.61–68. Drew, P. and Holt, E. 1988. Complainable matters: the use of idiomatic expressions in making complaints. Social Problems. 35(4), pp.398–417. Drew, P. and Walker, T. 2009. Going too far. Complaining, escalating, and disaffiliation. Journal of Pragmatics. 41, pp.2400–14. Edwards, D. 2000. Extreme case formulations: softeners, investment, and doing nonliteral. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 33(4), pp.347–373. Edwards, D. 2005. Moaning, whinging and laughing: the subjective side of complaints. Discourse Studies. 7(1), pp.5–29. Fairhurst, G.T. and Cooren, F. 2004. Organizational language in use: interaction analysis, conversation analysis, and speech act schematics. In Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C., Phillips, N. and Putnam, L. eds. The SAGE handbook of organizational discourse. London, England: SAGE, pp.131–52. Fairhurst, G.T. and Uhl-Bien, M. 2012. Organizational discourse analysis (ODA): examining leadership as a relational process. The Leadership Quarterly. 23, pp.1043–62. Firth, A. 1995. Introduction and overview. In Firth, A. ed. The discourse of negotiation. New York: Elsevier, pp.3–39. Fitch, K. 2005. Discourse analysis. In Fitch, K.L. and Sanders, R.E. eds. The handbook of language and social interaction. Mahwah, NJ: LEA, pp.253–5. Ganz, J. and Ganz, H. producers. 1988. Couples arguing. [Documentary film]. United States: Filmakers Library. Garcia, A. 1991. Dispute resolution without disputing: how the interactional organization of mediation hearings minimizes argument. American Sociological Review. 56, pp.818–35. Garcia, A. 1997. Interactional constraints on proposal generation in negotiation hearings: a preliminary investigation. Discourse & Society. 8, pp.219–47. Garcia, A. 2000. Negotiating negotiation: the collaborative production of resolution in small claims mediation hearings. Discourse & Society. 11(3), pp.315–44. Garfinkel, H. 1967. Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Glenn, P. 2003. Laughter in interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Glenn, P. 2010. A mediator’s dilemma: acknowledging or disregarding stance displays. Negotiation Journal. 26(2), pp.155–62. Glenn, P. 2016. Formulation sequences in mediation: one locus of conflict transformation. In Kellett, P.M. and Matyok, T.G. eds. Transforming conflict through communication in personal, family, and working relationships. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, pp.169–88. Glenn, P. and Holt, E. 2017. Conversation analysis of humor. In Attardo, S. ed. The Routledge handbook of language and humor. London: Routledge. 242

Conflict interaction

Glenn, P. and Holt, E. 2013. Introduction. In Glenn, P. and Holt, E. eds. Studies in laughter in interaction. London: Bloomsbury, pp.1–22. Glenn, P. and Susskind, L. 2010. How talk works: studying negotiation interaction. Negotiation Journal. 26(2), pp.117–23. Goffman, E. 1959. The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books. Goffman, E. 1979. Footing. Semiotica. 25, pp.1–29. Goodwin, M.H. 1983. Aggravated correction and disagreement in children’s conversations. Journal of Pragmatics. 7, pp.657–77. Goodwin, M.H. 1990. He-said-she-said: talk as social organization among black children. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Goodwin, C. and Goodwin, M.H. 1990. Interstitial argument. In Grimshaw, A. ed. Conflict talk. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.85–117. Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C. and Putnam, L. eds. 2004. The SAGE handbook of organizational discourse. London: Sage. Greatbatch, D. and Dingwall, R. 1989. Selective facilitation: some preliminary observations on a strategy used by divorce mediators. Law & Society Review. 23(4), pp.613–41. Greatbatch, D. and Dingwall, R. 1994. The Interactive construction of interventions by divorce mediators. In Folger, J.P. and Jones, T.S. eds. New directions in mediation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp.84–109. Greatbatch, D. and Dingwall, R. 1997. Argumentative talk in divorce mediation sessions. American Scoiological Review. 62, pp.151–70. Heath, C. and Luff, P. 2014. Embodied action and organizational activity. In Sidnell, J. and Stivers. T. eds. The handbook of Conversation Analysis. Chichester, Sussex: Blackwell, pp.283–307. Heinemann, T. 2009. Participation and exclusion in third party complaints. Journal of Pragmatics. 41, pp.2435–51. Heisterkamp, B.L. 2006. Conversational displays of mediator neutrality in a court-based program. Journal of Pragmatics. 38, pp.2051–64. Heritage, J. 1984. Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Heritage, J. 2011. Territories of knowledge, territories of experience: empathic moments in interaction. In Stivers, T., Mondada, L. and Steensig, J. eds. The morality of knowledge in conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.159–83. Heritage, J. 2012a. Epistemics in action: action formation and territories of knowledge. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 45(1), pp.1–29. Heritage, J. 2012b. The epistemic engine: sequence organization and territories of knowledge. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 45(1), pp.30–52. Heritage, J. 2013. Action formation and its epistemic (and other) backgrounds. Discourse Studies. 15(5), pp.551–78. Heritage, J. and Raymond, G. 2005. The terms of agreement: indexing epistemic authority and subordination in talk-in-interaction. Social Psychology Quarterly. 68(1), pp.15–38. Heritage, J. and Sefi, S. 1992. Dilemmas of advice: aspects of the delivery and reception of advice I interactions between health visitors and first time mothers. In Drew, P. Heritage, J. eds. Talk at work. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, pp.359–419. Holt, E. 2012. Using laugh responses to defuse complaints. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 45(4), pp.430–48. Hosoda, Y. and Aline, D. 2015. Single episode analysis of extended conflict talk sequences in second language classroom discussion. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict. 3(2), pp.231–62. Hutchby, I. 1996. Confrontation talk: arguments, asymmetries, and power on talk radio. Mahwah, NJ: LEA. Jefferson, G. 1972. Side sequences. In Sudnow, D. ed. Studies in social interaction. New York: Free Press, pp.294–338. Jefferson, G. 1984. On the organization of laughter in talk about troubles. In Atkinson, J.M. and Heritage, J. eds. Structures of social action: studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.346–69. 243

Phillip Glenn 

Jefferson, G. and Lee, J.R.E. 2015/1981. The rejection of advice: managing the problematic convergence of a ‘troubles telling’ and a ‘service encounter’. Journal of Pragmatics. 5(5), pp.399– 422. [Reprinted as Jefferson, G. In Drew, P., Heritage, J., Lerner, G. and Pomerantz, A. eds. 2015. Talking about troubles in conversation. Oxford: Oxford University Press]. Jefferson, G., Sacks, H. and Schegloff, E. 1987. Notes on laughter in pursuit of intimacy. In Button, G. and Lee, J.R.E. eds. Talk and social organization. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp.152–205. Kendrick, K. and Drew, P. 2016. Recruitment: offers, requests, and the organization of assistance in interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 49(1), pp.1–19. Kitzinger, C. 2012. Repair. In Sidnell, J. and Stivers, T. eds. The handbook of conversation analysis. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp.229–56. Kotthoff, H. 1993. Disagreement and concession in disputes: on the context sensitivity of preference structures. Language in Society. 22, pp.193–216. LaForest, M. 2009. Complaining in front of a witness: aspects of blaming others for their behavior in multi-party family interactions. Journal of Pragmatics. 41, pp.2452–64. Levinson, S.C. 2006. On the human ‘interaction engine’. In Enfield, N.J. and Levinson, S.C. eds. Roots of human sociality: culture, cognition and interaction. Oxford: Berg, pp.39–69. Lindstrom, A. and Sorjonen, M. 2012. Affiliation in conversation. In Sidnell, J. and Stivers, T. eds. The handbook of conversation analysis. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp.350–69. Lindstrom, A. and Sorjonen, M.L. 2014. Affiliation in conversation. In Sidnell, J. and Stivers, T. eds. The handbook of Conversation Analysis. Chichester: Blackwell, pp.350–69. Maynard, D.W. 1984. Inside plea bargaining: the language of negotiation. New York, NY: Plenum. Maynard, D.W. 1985. How children start arguments. Language in Society. 14, pp.1–29. Maynard, D.W. 2010. Demur, defer, and deter: concrete, actual practices for negotiation in interaction. Negotiation Journal. 26(2), pp.125–43. Mikesell, L. 2016. Opposing orientations in interactions with individuals with Frontotemporal Dementia. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict. 4(1), pp.62–89. Moerman, M. 1988. Talking culture: ethnography and conversation analysis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Monzoni, C.M. 2009. Direct complaints in (Italian) calls to the ambulance: the use of negatively framed questions. Journal of Pragmatics. 41(12), pp.2465–78. Pillet-Shore, D. 2015. Complaints. In Tracy, K. ed. The international encyclopedia of language and social interaction. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, pp.186–92. Pillet-Shore, D. 2016. Criticizing another’s child: how teachers evaluate students during parentteacher conferences. Language in Society. 45, pp.33–58. Pomerantz, A. 1984. Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: some features of preferred/ dispreferred turn shapes. In Atkinson, J.M. and Heritage, J. eds. Structures of social action: studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.247–65. Pomerantz, A. 1986. Extreme case formulations: a way of legitimizing claims. Human Studies. 9(2–3), pp.219–30. Pomerantz, A. 1987. Attributions of responsibility: blamings. Sociology. 12, pp.115–21. Pomerantz, A. 1988. Offering a candidate answer: an information seeking strategy. Communication Monographs. 55(4), pp.360–73. Pomerantz, A. and Heritage, J. 2013. Preference. In Sidnell, J. and Stivers, T. eds. The handbook of Conversation Analysis. Chichester: Blackwell, pp.210–28. Pomerantz, A. and Sanders, R.E. 2015. Conflict in the jury room: averting acrimony and engendering it. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict. 1(2), pp.141–64. Putnam, L.L. 2005. Discourse analysis: mucking around with negotiation data. International Negotiation. 10, pp.17–32. Putnam, L.L. 2010. Negotiation and discourse analysis. Negotiation Journal. 26(2), pp.145–54. Reynolds, E. 2011. Enticing a challengeable in arguments: sequence, epistemics and preference organization. Pragmatics. 21(3), pp.411–30. Robinson, J.D. 2014. What ‘What?’ tells us about how conversationalists manage intersubjectivity. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 47(2), pp.109–29. 244

Conflict interaction

Robinson, J.D. ed. 2016. Accountability in social interaction. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Ruusuvuori, J. 2014. Emotion, affect and conversation. In Sidnell, J. and Stivers, T. eds. The handbook of Conversation Analysis. Chichester: Blackwell, pp.330–49. Sacks, H. 1987. On the preferences for agreement and contiguity in sequences in conversation. In Button, G. and Lee, J.R.E. eds. Talk and social organisation. Philadelphia, PA: Multilingual Matters, pp.54–69. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E.A. and Jefferson, G. 1977. The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language. 53(2), pp.361–82. Schegloff, E.A. 1996. Confirming allusions: toward an empirical account of action. American Journal of Sociology. 102(1), pp.161–216. Schegloff, E.A. 2000. When ‘others’ initiate repair. Applied Linguistics. 21, pp.205–43. Schegloff, E.A. 2005. On complainability. Social Problems. 52(4), pp.449–76. Schegloff, E.A. 2007. Sequence organization in interaction: a primer in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, E.A. 2010. Commentary on Stivers and Rossano: ‘mobilizing response’. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 43(1), pp.38–48. Schegloff, E.A. and Lerner, G.H. 2009. Beginning to respond: well-prefaced responses to Whquestions. Research on Language & Social Interaction. 42(2), pp.91–115. Schegloff, E.A. and Sacks, H. 1973. Opening up closings. Semiotica. 8(4), pp.289–327. Shaw, C. and Hepburn, A. 2013. Managing the moral implications of advice in informal interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 46(4), pp.344–62. Sidnell, J. 2010. Conversation Analysis: an introduction. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Sidnell, J. and Stivers, T. eds. 2013. The handbook of Conversation Analysis. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Stivers, T. 2008. Stance, alignment and affiliation during storytelling: when nodding is a token of affiliation. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 41(1), pp.31–57. Stivers, T., Mondada, L. and Steensig, J. 2011. Knowledge, morality and affiliation in social interaction. In Stivers, T., Mondada, L. and Steensig, J. eds. The morality of knowledge in conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.3–24. Stivers, T. and Rossano, F. 2010. Mobilizing response. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 43(1), pp.3–31. Tracy, K. 2005. Reconstructing communicative practices: action-implicative discourse analysis. In Fitch, K.L. and Sanders, R.E. eds. The handbook of language and social interaction. Mahwah, NJ: LEA, pp.301–19. Tracy, K. 2011. A facework system of minimal politeness: oral argument in appellate court. Journal of Politeness Research: Language, Behaviour, Culture. 7, pp.123–45. Vuchinich, S. 1990. The sequential organisation of closing in verbal family conflict. In Grimshaw, A.D. ed. Conflict talk: sociolinguistic investigations of arguments in conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.118–38. Walker, E. 1995. Making a bid for change: formulations in union/management negotiations. In Firth, A. ed. The discourse of negotiation: studies of language in the workplace. Oxford: Pergamon, pp.101–41 Walker, G. 2014. Phonetics and prosody in conversation. In Sidnell, J. and Stivers, T. eds. The handbook of conversation analysis. Chichester: Blackwell, pp.455–74. Whitehead, K.A. 2013. Managing self/other relations in complaint sequences: the use of selfdeprecating and affiliative racial categorizations. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 46(2), pp.186–203.

245

13 Conflict in political discourse Conflict as congenital to political discourse Peter Bull and Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen

13.1 Introduction In democratic systems, political parties represent different viewpoints on a large number of crucial issues (social, economic, cultural). It is in the nature of the system that in order for their viewpoints to carry weight and to be effective the parties need – through the voices of their representatives – to be heard and believed by the largest possible number of voters. As a result, persuasion is at the heart of political discourse. However, since all parties either want to gain political power through the election process, or at least want to gain enough representation in the legislature to be taken seriously by the parties in power, the political arena is by definition the scene of battles between opposing voices. Rather than looking for commonalities, these voices will highlight the differences between them with one major goal: persuade the electorate of their own “right” and of the opponents’ “wrong”. All parties’ representatives, i.e. all political speakers, hence need to emphasise the strong points of their own programmes and achievements as well as the weak points of the opposition’s programmes and achievements. This leads to clashes between conflicting voices. The public nature of political discourse entails that the stakes for speakers are high: either they convince (part of) the electorate or they fail to do so. All communicative strategies of political speakers will hence be geared towards presenting the best possible image of themselves (as individual representatives of the parties). This requires communicative skilfulness.

13.2 Aim of the chapter In this chapter, we examine how political speakers in different contexts and genres cope with conflict. While the nature of the conflict is essentially the same in all genres, the ways in which it can surface and can be dealt with varies according to the rules of the genre. According to Thibault (2003, p.44), “Genres are types. But they are types in a rather peculiar way. Genres do not specify the lexicogrammatical resources of word, phrase, clause, and so on. Instead, they specify the typical ways in which these are combined and deployed so as to enact the typical semiotic action formations of a given community”. It is proposed that 246

Conflict in political discourse

the modes of political conflict vary according to different genres of communication, hence the importance of analysing conflict in situated context. For this reason, we want to examine three particular genres: political interviews, debates and parliamentary questions. We will mainly focus on British data, though data from other cultures are also included. By looking at different genres, different types of political parties (notably mainstream/moderate vs. marginal/extremist) and different cultures, we intend to show that while the rules of engagement vary, all communicative strategies find an explanation within the theory of face. We argue that in political discourse face and face management constitute the unifying factor in all occurrences of conflict.

13.3 Theoretical background Since the 1980s, there has been a growing body of linguistic research on media political discourse, both written and spoken. We propose, along with Simon-Vandenbergen, White and Aijmer (2007), that the majority of studies can be roughly divided in three different groups (although we acknowledge that this is a simplification and may not do justice to research that does not [easily] fit into any of these categories). In one type of study, the focus is on how language choices reflect ideologies. Researchers working mainly within the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis aim at laying bare underlying political outlooks that may not be explicitly expressed in the discourse, but which nevertheless have an impact on the way readers/hearers interpret the messages. The goal of this type of work is to raise awareness of language as an instrument of power and hence potentially of oppression and inequality. As such, these studies have a clear ideological starting-point and purpose. Much of this type of work has been inspired by leading theorists such as van Dijk (1998a, 1998b), Fairclough (1995, 2001) and Wodak et al., (2000), to name just a few. A second group of studies focus on the mechanisms of interaction and on the ways in which speakers engage in various types of talk. These researchers are interested not so much in laying bare ideologies, as in uncovering how spoken political discourse develops in different contexts such as radio and television interviews and debates. This type of work can be situated within the broader framework of Conversation Analysis and its later developments in a number of variants. Influential researchers in this tradition have been Greatbatch (1992) and Clayman and Heritage (2002). The third group comprises studies which take a functional linguistic approach in a broad sense. These studies examine linguistic choices (lexical, grammatical, prosodic ones) as expressing ideational and interpersonal meanings. The focus is on rhetorical strategies adopted consciously or subconsciously by speakers to cope with the demands of the various genres such as speeches and interviews. These studies share with the first group the viewpoint that linguistic choices are never innocent since they both reflect and create meanings. They share with the second group an interest in how interaction is managed, for instance in the way speakers use language to answer face-threatening questions, deny accusations, or present images of themselves. Some of this research has been directly inspired by Systemic Functional Linguistics and Speech Act Theory, for example, Harris (1991) on answering questions and Fetzer (2007) on challenges in political interviews. Our own approach is functional in a broad sense. Much of the research by Bull and colleagues (e.g. Bull, 2008; Bull et al., 1996) has been focused on how politicians manage to hold their ground in the context of adversarial questioning, in particular on how 247

Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen 

politicians do or do not answer questions. The work of Simon-Vandenbergen and colleagues takes a systemic-functional approach and has been focused on linguistic choices made by political speakers in order to express both commitment and non-commitment (e.g., SimonVandenbergen 1996, 1997, 2000; Simon-Vandenbergen et al., 2007). The research by both Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen shares a concern with finding explanations for strategic choices made by political speakers and has – via different routes – found such explanations in concepts of face and face management (Goffman, 1955, 1967b; Brown and Levinson, 1978, 1987). The term “face” loosely means something like prestige, honour or reputation. The word was originally derived from Chinese, but was introduced into social theory by the sociologist Erving Goffman with his article “On face-work: an analysis of ritual elements of social interaction” (1955), and his subsequent book Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behaviour (1967b). According to Goffman, everybody acts out a line, a pattern of interaction whereby they express their view of the situation and themselves. Face is the positive social value a person effectively claims by the line they have taken, facework the actions taken by a person to make whatever they are doing consistent with face. Goffman’s seminal article provided the inspiration for Brown and Levinson’s (1978, 1987) highly influential theory of politeness, according to which face is important in all cultures – it can be lost, maintained or enhanced. Brown and Levinson (1987, p.62) further distinguished between what they call positive and negative face, where positive face is defined as “the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least some others”, negative face as “the want of every ‘competent adult member’ that his actions be unimpeded by others”. So, for example, a request to do something may threaten someone’s negative face (by restricting their freedom of action), whereas disagreements may threaten someone’s positive face (by showing a lack of approval). In politeness theory, face maintenance is regarded as a primary constraint on the achievement of goals in social interaction. “Some acts are intrinsically threatening to face and thus require ‘softening’” (Brown and Levinson, 1978, p.24). Hence, communicative actions such as commands or complaints may be performed in such a way as to minimise threats to both positive and negative face. In the context of the above theories of face, we consider in the next two sections how particular points of conflict arise and are dealt with in two genres of political communication: broadcast interviews (Section 13.4) and parliamentary questions (Section 13.5). Broadcast interviews are a media event; the conversation between interviewer and interviewee is talk produced specifically for the camera, for what has been termed the “overhearing audience” (Heritage, 1985). In contrast, parliamentary questions do not comprise talk produced just for the camera; this is talk which takes place as part of ordinary parliamentary business, but which is also televised and broadcast to the nation (since the televising of the UK Parliament began in 1989). Whereas the focus of Section 13.4 is primarily on how politicians respond to interviewer questions, the focus of Section 13.5 is primarily on the actual questions that are posed to the Prime Minister. These two sections are followed by a third (Section 13.6), which is focused on whether the discursive phenomena identified in interviews with politicians from mainstream political parties can also be observed in the discourse of politicians from both the far right and the far left, based on both broadcast interviews and debates. The findings from all these studies are considered in the final section (discussion and conclusions).

248

Conflict in political discourse

13.4 Political interviews The focus of this section is on broadcast political interviews. The expression of both commitment and non-commitment (equivocation) by politicians is considered in the overall context of theories of face and face management.

13.4.1 Face management as an explanation for equivocation In several studies of media political interviews, the development of the investigative or even adversarial mode of interviewing has been analysed (e.g. Greatbatch, 1986). This involves interviewers putting pressure on political interviewees to give straightforward and clear answers to the questions, even though in doing so the interviewees may risk losing face. According to Jucker (1986), political interviewees are more likely to be asked face-­ threatening questions than non-political interviewees; he lists 13 ways of threatening the interviewee’s face, which are used more or less frequently by journalists. One explanation for this interviewer style is that challenging interviews are more interesting to the listener, and more newsworthy. Also, interviewers are understood to have a warrant to behave in this way as representatives of an inquisitorial public. In this mode of questioning, interviewers often confront the interviewees with the opponents’ viewpoints, with contradictions between present and past statements, or with inconsistencies between promises and declarations on the one hand and facts on the other. Research has also revealed that political speakers have developed strategies for coping with this type of questioning. For example, they may shift the agenda (Greatbatch, 1986) or their responses may become deliberately indirect and evasive (Harris, 1991; Jucker, 1986). Jucker points out that hedging devices are typically used as means of reducing commitment. If one says, “I think that x is the case”, the speaker cannot be held to account if it appears not to be the case. In contrast, if one says, “It is the case”, this makes an unqualified assertion which may be proven wrong. More recent studies include Fetzer’s (2007) analysis of challenges in political interviews, in which she also found that hedging (e.g. with the discourse particle well) is a frequently used strategy. The most comprehensive studies of how political interviewees deal with questions have been carried out by Bull and his colleagues (in particular, Bull, 2003; Bull and Mayer, 1993). On the basis of 33 television interviews with prominent politicians of the major mainstream parties in Britain, these studies show that “equivocation” is the norm rather than the exception, and that there is – in other words – serious ground for the popular intuitive belief that politicians are evasive, woolly, and indirect (Bull, 1994). The term “equivocation” has been defined as “the intentional use of imprecise language” (Hamilton and Mineo, 1998, p.3), or “non-straightforward communication […] ambiguous, contradictory, tangential, obscure or even evasive” (Bavelas et al., 1990, p.28). In addition to a detailed classification of different types of equivocal response, Bull provides a powerful explanation for their occurrence. We shall first summarise in broad lines the most important results from these empirical studies and then provide an interpretation in terms of facework and face management. If we define “replies” as responses to questions in which the requested information is given, “non-replies” are responses in which the politicians fail to give any information requested in the question and “intermediate replies” are those responses which fall somewhere in the middle. This last category comprises “answers by implication”, “incomplete replies” and “interrupted replies” (Bull, 1994). From three studies of 33 television interviews with British politicians, an average reply rate of only 46 percent was found (Bull, 1994). 249

Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen 

(Reply rate refers to the proportion of questions that receive an explicit reply, i.e. excluding both intermediate replies and non-replies.) Similarly, in an independent study of a different set of political interviews, Harris (1991) found a reply rate of 39 percent. In comparison, televised interviews with non-politicians show a markedly different pattern. The late Diana, Princess of Wales, in her celebrated interview with Martin Bashir (20 November 1995), replied to 78 percent of questions (Bull, 1997). Louise Woodward, the British au-pair who was convicted for the manslaughter of eight-month-old Matthew Eappen, replied to 70 percent of the questions in an interview (22 June 1998) with Martin Bashir (Bull, 2000). Monica Lewinsky replied to 89 percent of questions posed by Jon Snow (4 March 1999) in an interview concerning her affair with President Clinton (Bull, 2000). The mean reply rate of 79 percent across all 3 interviews was significantly higher than the 46 percent in the 33 political interviews referred to above (Bull, 2003, p.114). A typology of different forms of equivocation has been devised (Bull, 2003; Bull and Mayer, 1993), from which 35 different types of equivocation have been identified, based on the analysis of both intermediate replies and non-replies. We here restrict ourselves to summarising the 12 superordinate categories. Thus, politicians may respond in one of the following ways: ignore the question, acknowledge the question without answering it, question the question, attack the question, attack the interviewer, decline to answer, make a political point, give an incomplete reply, repeat the answer to a previous question, state or imply that the question has already been answered, apologise or interpret the question literally where it was clearly not intended as such. As an illustration,1 we will look at some subordinate types of the category “attacking the question”: Extract 13.1 The question is factually inaccurate, for example: J Dimbleby: In the present circumstances do you think that those 2 million or so pensioners who rely on the basic state pension have enough to live a decent life? Thatcher: But they don’t have to rely on the basic state pension. Extract 13.2 The question is objectionable, for example: J Dimbleby: The one you didn’t mention were books and magazines does that mean they’re the ones that might be […] Thatcher: No you’re going to tr you’re going yes and that’s exactly a typical question. Extract 13.3 The question is based on a false alternative, for example: Day: Thatcher: Day: Thatcher: 250

Which would you regard as a greater evil a coalition between Thatcherism and the Alliance and others or letting in a Thatch a Kinnock minority government committed to socialism and unilateral disarmament? I do not accept I do not accept that that is the alternative. Supposing it was? I think you have possibly posed a false alternative.

Conflict in political discourse

Given the ample proof for avoidance of commitment as a strategy frequently resorted to by political interviewees, the question arises how to explain this. The proposed answer lies in the nature of the broadcast political interview itself. A major distinctive feature is that the talk is actually enacted for the audience of radio listeners or television viewers. Both interviewer and interviewee keep the so-called “overhearing audience” (Heritage, 1985) constantly in mind when addressing each other. For the interviewers, the potential benefit of a successful performance is high status among their fellow journalists and advancement in their careers. The interviewer must therefore keep a balance between posing interesting and pertinent questions, while preserving neutrality.2 For the politicians, the potential benefits are that the interviews give them a platform for political propaganda, for expounding their programme and achievements to the audience, thereby hoping to convince the electorate of their party’s superiority over other parties. Thus, the stakes are high for both parties involved in the talk. Furthermore, interviews are organised in strictly regulated turns: it is the interviewer’s role to ask questions and the interviewee’s role to answer them. Interviewers will tend to go as far as they can without losing neutrality in asking “tough” questions. This makes for interesting television. A tough interview may be seen as one with a large proportion of conflictual questions (Bull and Elliott, 1998). According to a theory proposed by Bavelas at al. (1990), equivocation typically occurs in situations characterised by what they call “avoidance-avoidance” or “communicative conflicts” – the so-called Situational Theory of Communicative Conflict (STCC). These are situations in which all possible answers have negative consequences for the respondent, but nevertheless the interviewer and the audience expect a response. For example, in Extract 13.3, the interviewer acknowledged that both the alternatives he presented to Thatcher are bad solutions from her point of view (viz. “Which would you regard as a greater evil […]?”). Thatcher would not want to choose publicly between the two; she would not want to talk about defeat before the elections. Yet some kind of response is expected. Her solution in this case is logical: the alternative is a false one, hence there is no need to choose. The STCC has been further developed and theoretically elaborated in terms of the concept of “threats to face” (Bull et al., 1996; Bull, 2008). From this perspective, equivocation occurs when the least face-threatening option for an interviewee is either a non-reply or an incomplete reply. Furthermore, politicians may be seen as “three-faced”: they have to defend their personal-political face, the party face and the face of significant others (Bull et al., 1996). This last group includes for example the electorate, a colleague, a friendly country or other positively valued people or institutions.3 On the basis of what has been termed the “face-threatening structure of questions” (Bull et al., 1996; Bull, 2008), it is possible to predict the direction of responses in political interviews; arguably, this is crucial in a theoretical model which explains the mechanisms of talk in mass audience political interviews. It follows that all the options which fall under the umbrella of equivocation may be seen as strategies adopted by skilful speakers in contexts where they are the best option from a face-saving point of view. No negative value judgement needs necessarily be attached to the strategies as such. What is equally important, however, is that facework also explains explicit replies in the same way: when an explicit reply is the best way of presenting a positive impression of themselves, then the speakers will opt for such a response. Self-presentation through the expression of non-commitment can thus be seen as one side of the coin; when it is in the best interest of the speaker to express non-commitment. they will do so. In the next section, we look at the expression of commitment as an equally important strategy for presenting a desirable political face. 251

Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen 

13.4.2 Face management as an explanation for the expression of commitment Non-commitment as a face-saving strategy may be expressed by markers of modal uncertainty (such as “may”, “possibly”, “I think”, “I suppose”), by certain discourse markers announcing there is no straightforward answer (such as “well”, “actually”) or by other words weakening the force of the assertion such as quantifiers such as “some”, “a few”. In contrast, commitment can be expressed by direct replies as well as by lexical and grammatical markers of certainty. It appears that presenting a face of authority, of confidence and of knowledge is as important a strategy to political speakers as avoiding commitment. In fact, a closer look at “I think” has shown that in political argumentation it functions much less as a hedge than as a marker of authority (Simon-Vandenbergen, 1998, 2000). SimonVandenbergen (1996) showed how linguistic choices may contribute to turning interviews into instruments of propaganda: political speakers strive to present an image of intellectual power in order to gain or retain social power (see Kress and Hodge, 1979, p.99, on the notions of social and intellectual power). This involves showing that one knows more than the opponent. Since interviewers often confront the interviewee with the opposition’s viewpoint, interviewees will try to use their turn to convince the audience by making assertions with the highest degree of confidence. Expressions of cognitive certainty and confidence in the truth of the assertion include a variety of choices, all cooperating to convey the meaning “I know” or “This is true”. The choices are basically of two superordinate types: speakers refer to so-called “objective” sources to provide external evidence for the claim, or they simply state or presuppose that the claim is true. Simon-Vandenbergen (1996) lists four major types of references to sources of knowledge: rationality and common sense, factual evidence, hearsay or majority opinion. The following example4 is of the first type. The topic is the government’s inner-city programmes, and the question is whether or not there should be some sort of contract compliance with firms to make sure they employ local labour. The interviewee is the coordinator of the Conservative government’s inner-city programmes, and this is his response: Extract 13.4 First of all we have got to concentrate much more on small firms and obviously we’ve been doing that an awful lot in the last year and in the last eight years […]. No one in their right mind is going to imagine that the very large companies in the UK, whether it’s in Liverpool, Manchester, London or wherever, are going to increase their share of the labour market because of modern technology and higher productivity per man. (BBC Radio 4 interview, June 1987) The response starts with a statement of policy (i.e. the government’s policy to attract small firms) and goes on with a rejection of Labour’s alternative, which is to persuade large companies to employ local labour. Labour’s commitment to spend large sums of public money to attract private investments into the inner cities is dismissed as nonsense (see the words in italics), which is implicitly contrasted with the rational policy proposed by the Government. This contrast between the world of imagination (Labour policy) and rational thinking (Tory policy) is further expressed in the remainder of the speaker’s turn: If you were to look at it on the other side of the coin and imagine that some subsidiary of GEC [General Electric Company] or ICI [Imperial Chemical Industries] or some 252

Conflict in political discourse

other household name are simply going to just set up in an area, I think you’d be on the prayer mat for a very long time. Putting across one’s own viewpoint as common sense without giving arguments is a tactic frequently employed by political speakers to create or maintain an asymmetrical power relationship in the discourse (see also Hall et al., [1978] and Fairclough [1988] on putting across the voices of the powerful as voices of common sense). However, instead of attributing their certainty to some source of knowledge, politicians also frequently express commitment without giving any type of evidence for their claim. In one subtype of this category, cognitive certainty is simply emphasised through the use of modalised opinion (such as by “certainly”, “obviously”, “It is the case that”); in another, it is de-emphasised and presented as presupposed. There are several linguistic resources to construe a state of affairs as “to be taken for granted”: certain formulations which treat propositions as generally agreed upon and therefore not at stake argumentatively. It has been pointed out that it is much more difficult to attack a proposition which is presupposed than one which is asserted (Caffi, 1998); first, it must be recognised before it can be attacked, and secondly such an attack comes across as face-threatening (Caffi, 1998, p.753). This might explain the widespread use of presupposition by political interviewees, in attempts to ward off critical questions or counter-arguments. Extract 13.5 below illustrates one subtype, where the proposition is made dependent on a so-called “factive predicate”, i.e. a verb which presupposes the existence of its complement. The extract comes from an interview with the UK Energy Secretary about the report of the Select Committee on the safety of nuclear energy, in particular at the nuclear plant at Sellafield. The interviewer refers to a statement in the report that Sellafield is the biggest single source of radioactive discharge in the world, and here is the Energy Secretary’s response: Extract 13.5 The use of emotive phrases like that I deplore.

(BBC Radio interview 4, March 1986)

By embedding the noun phrase in italics as the complement of the predicate “I deplore” the reasoning is compressed with the aim of “imposing an unexamined consensus” (Kress and Hodge, 1979, p.35). It is, in other words, taken for granted that the statement in the report is “emotive”, i.e. not rational and hence not true. Simon-Vandenbergen et al., (2007) examined presupposition and “taken-for-grantedness” in British, Flemish and Swedish data and found that similar tactics were used in all three cultures. The English and the Flemish data belonged to the genre of “panel interviews”, where a number of participants with varying stances on particular issues act jointly as interviewees with the interviewer as chair (see Clayman and Heritage, 2002; Greatbatch, 1992). Such interviews resolve the journalist’s problem of reconciling the expected neutral stance with critical and investigative questioning, as the panellists, typically representing different parties, will openly disagree with each other when they are asked the same questions. In this way conflict arises, while the journalist can maintain his role of moderator. A favourite adverb to express “taken-for-grantedness” is “of course”. Research has shown that it fulfils various useful functions in political argumentation (Simon-Vandenbergen, 1992; Lewis, 2004). Its function depends on an interplay of placement (turn-initial, within turn, free-standing), intonation as well as context. We here focus on just one of these 253

Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen 

functions, namely acting as a dialogic “put-down”: the speaker presents the interlocutor as having dealt inappropriately with informational or evaluative material. The interlocutor is presented either as having made an irrelevant contribution (because it is self-evident, known by the present speaker and hence does not contribute to the issue), or as having failed to take into consideration some universally known evidence. For a detailed analysis we refer to Simon-Vandenbergen et al., (2007). Extract 13.6 is an illustration: Extract 13.6 D Dimbleby: What do you make then of the point that Peter Hitchens was making – making to the effect that marriage is fundamental to the belief of the church and fundamental to its identity, as he believes it also to be in a coherent civilised society? Bryant: Of course marriage is absolutely essential to a coherent and a good society and for the vast majority of people it’s the way they’re going to live their lives but there are some people, like myself, who are gay or are lesbian who are never going to have the opportunity of marriage, who might want to live in a long trusting loving relationship and I think the church should be helping people to do that rather than making it more difficult. In Extract 13.6, the speaker (Bryant) does not simply concede the prior speaker’s point about the social role of marriage, but the use of “of course” construes it as self-evident and beside the point at issue. The opponent is thus implicitly and cleverly presented as lacking insight into the real problem, as less knowledgeable. “Of course” clearly serves an oppositional function and contributes to the speaker’s image of one who has superior knowledge. In sum, expressions of commitment serve to present politicians as powerful, in charge, knowledgeable and responsible. Within the same turns, opponents are portrayed as lacking the necessary qualities and knowledge. Such commitment choices complement the picture of the evasive politician who relies on hedging and non-committal statements. Both commitment and non-commitment are understandable as facework. In fact, commitment expressions can be seen as a key component of intermediate and non-replies: while avoiding a direct reply, speakers may need to boost the impact of their message through forceful language.

13.5 Parliamentary questions A second context in which face and facework have been shown to be of importance is that of parliamentary questions. Debates between opposing politicians are often characterised by what has been termed “face aggravation” (from Goffman, 1967b). This is a form of adversarial conflictual discourse, in which politicians seek to make one another look bad, or constrain one another’s freedom of action. As an illustrative example, face aggravation will be considered in this section of this chapter in the particular context of Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) in the British House of Commons. In the UK, laws are passed by the House of Commons, which is supreme in legislative matters. The Prime Minister (PM) is answerable to the Commons and must maintain its support to stay in power. PMQs is the central British parliamentary institution and its highest profile parliamentary event. Since 1997, it has taken place for at least half an hour every Wednesday while Parliament is sitting, and allows Members of Parliament (MPs) from any 254

Conflict in political discourse

political party to pose questions to the PM. Although PMQs has been widely and extensively criticised (e.g. Blair, 2010; Thomas, 2006), this a remarkable institution, providing a degree of political accountability which might well be the envy of the citizens of many less democratic states across the world. Both PMQs and broadcast interviews are characterised by question/response sequences. However, there is a notable difference: whereas questions in broadcast interviews are posed by professional political journalists, those in PMQs are posed by other politicians. This has important implications for the discourse of both situations. Political interviewers as journalists are expected to be impartial. For example, according to the editorial guidelines of the BBC, “impartiality lies at the heart of the BBC’s commitment to its audiences”. Politicians in contrast are restricted by no such constraints. MPs can be as partial and as unashamedly partisan as they choose. Furthermore, MPs in Parliament are protected by parliamentary privilege, which allows them to speak freely in the House without fear of legal action on grounds of slander. At the same time, MPs cannot simply say what they like. According to parliamentary custom, they are expected to observe certain traditions and conventions regarding what is termed “unparliamentary language”. Specifically, they should not be abusive or insulting, call another member a liar, suggest another MP has false motives or misrepresent another MP. These conventions are enforced by the Speaker of the House (who chairs the debates). Thus, the Speaker may ask a Member to withdraw an objectionable utterance. Over the years, Speakers have objected to the use of abusive epithets such as blackguard, coward, git, guttersnipe, hooligan, rat, swine, traitor and stoolpigeon (House of Commons Information Office Factsheet G7, 2004). A Member who refuses to comply with the Speaker may be suspended from the House (referred to in parliamentary procedure as “naming”). Thus, in PMQs, MPs must orient both to the expectation that the dialogue should follow a question-response pattern, and refrain from unacceptable unparliamentary language. However, within these constraints, they are still allowed a great deal of scope to attack and criticise their fellow MPs (including of course the PM). In doing so, they may employ considerable ingenuity to remain within the conventions of acceptable parliamentary language. For example, the former Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill once famously substituted the phrase “terminological inexactitude” for the unacceptable term “lie” (House of Commons Information Office Factsheet G7, 2004). Indeed, PMQs has become notorious for its political point-scoring. When David Cameron became Leader of the Conservative Party (6 December 2005) he pledged to put an end to “the Punch and Judy politics of Westminster, the name calling, backbiting, point scoring, finger pointing” (Punch and Judy is a traditional popular British puppet show, which features domestic strife and violence between the two central characters, Mr Punch and his wife Judy). Subsequently, Cameron admitted that he had not kept this pledge, blaming the adversarial nature of PMQs (29 April 2008). Again, according to the late Simon Hoggart (2011), distinguished political columnist of The Guardian newspaper, “Prime Minister’s Questions is increasingly like an unpleasant football match, in which the game played publicly is accompanied by all sorts of secret grudge matches, settlement of scores and covert fouls committed when the players hope the ref [referee] is not looking”. The most substantive analysis of PMQs to date was conducted by Bates et al., (2014), who based their research on techniques devised by Bull described above (Bull, 1994, 2003; Bull and Mayer, 1993). Bates et al., compared the opening sessions of PMQs for the five PMs from 1979 to 2010 (Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown and Cameron). Bates et al.,’s aim 255

Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen 

was to test a general perception that PMQs have developed into a focal point for shallow political point scoring, rather than serious prime ministerial scrutiny. They found that the conduct of PMQs had become rowdier over the period sampled, with weekly sessions increasingly dominated by the leaders of the two main parties to the gradual exclusion of backbenchers. So, for example, Bates et al., measured rowdiness by counting the number of times that [Interruption] appears in Hansard transcripts [Hansard is the official record of proceedings of the House of Commons]. This showed that the average number of interruptions per session had increased from less than one during Thatcher’s premiership to about 6.5 during Cameron’s. According to Harris (2001), discourse in PMQs is composed primarily of intentional and explicitly face-threatening acts (FTAs). In a study entitled “Being politically impolite”, she analysed 12 sessions of PMQs, recorded between March and November 2000. Harris argued that systematic impoliteness is not only sanctioned in PMQs, but rewarded in accordance with expectations of the Members of the House of Commons, through an adversarial and confrontational political process. Hence, even the most serious FTAs rarely, if ever, result in a breakdown in interpersonal relationships, nor is that the intention. MPs clearly perceive that the main role of the political opposition is to oppose, i.e. to criticise, challenge, subvert and ridicule the policies and positions of the government. Arguably, this adversarial and confrontational process was only heightened by the televising of the House of Commons. Harris (2001) identified two techniques whereby FTAs may be performed in PMQs. One strategy is to ask a question that contains a request for highly specific information, which the PM may not have to hand or may not wish to publicise. If the PM declines or fails to answer the question, the Leader of the Opposition (LO) may then subsequently provide the information in order to embarrass or attack the PM. For example, Jeremy Corbyn (Labour LO since 12 September 2015) asked Theresa May (Conservative PM since 11 July 2016) the following question at PMQs (23 May 2018). “How many more GPs [general practitioners] are there than there were in 2015?” After May failed to provide this information, Corbyn in the preface to his next question provided the answer: “The reality is that there are 1,000 fewer GPs and the number is falling”. Thereby, Corbyn added fuel to his ongoing attack on the government’s mismanagement of the National Health Service. Also common are questions that build in face-threatening presuppositions. So, for example, the question “Will the PM promise straightforwardness and honesty in future health announcements?” presupposes that past announcements have not always been honest and straightforward. In the latter example, the accusation of lying is only implicit, thereby keeping the questioner within the conventions of acceptable parliamentary language, according to which explicit accusations of lying are prohibited. In addition to disingenuous questions and contentious presuppositions, Bull and Wells (2012) have identified a further four distinctive ways in which FTAs may be performed in questions in PMQs. These are prefacing the question, invitations to perform a face-damaging response, conflictual questions and asides, and are illustrated below. A lengthy preface may precede a question in PMQs, which can be used to perform FTAs. The following extract (18 April 2007) occurred after the then Labour PM Tony Blair had failed to endorse Gordon Brown (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) as his successor as PM. The Conservative LO David Cameron then commented: “The interesting thing is that the Prime Minister will not endorse the Chancellor”. Cameron’s next question (“What does he [i.e., Blair] think is wrong with him [i.e., Brown]?”) was prefaced with the following extended face-damaging attack on Brown: 256

Conflict in political discourse

Extract 13.7 We know why we do not want the Chancellor – he has complicated the tax system and virtually bankrupted the pensions system, he is impossible to work with and he never says sorry. That is why we don’t want the Chancellor. What does he think is wrong with him? Another questioning technique is to invite the PM to perform some kind of face-damaging act, e.g. by apologising, by criticising a member of his/her own party, by admitting that a particular policy has been a complete failure or by acknowledging that a government department has been incompetent). In the following extract (20 June 2007), Cameron asked Blair a question about the prison population, inviting him to apologise for the early release of prisoners: Extract 13.8 Ten years ago, he told us that he would be tough on crime; now he is releasing 25,000 criminals on to our streets. Shouldn’t he, just this once, apologise for what can only be described as an abject failure to deliver? The early release scheme (whereby prisoners were released from prison before completing their sentence in full) was announced on 20 June 2007 by Lord Falconer (the then Secretary of State for Justice) as a means of reducing prison overcrowding. Arguably, this scheme was tantamount to a government admission that it had failed to make adequate provision for the increase in the prison population. Cameron’s question was based on the presupposition that Blair never apologised, through the use of the phrase “just this once” (“Shouldn’t he, just this once, apologise”) Notably, a direct insult to another MP is not acceptable, it is regarded as a form of “unparliamentary language”. However, this convention may be circumvented by embedding insults in the presuppositional content of the question. Thus, if Cameron had directly accused Blair of never apologising, he might have been called to account by the Speaker. By embedding the insult within the presuppositional content of the question, Cameron was able to keep within the bounds of acceptable parliamentary language. This extract can also be used to illustrate the way in which conflictual questions can pose face-threats in PMQ questions. In this example, whatever response Blair gave was potentially face-damaging. An apology would have been tantamount to an admission that government policy on the prison population had been a failure. A refusal to apologise might have made Blair sound arrogant, given that the early release scheme could be readily understood as a failure by the government to make adequate provision for the increase in the prison population. In fact, just as the STCC (Bavelas et al., 1990; Bull et al., 1996) would predict, Blair avoided this dilemma by not giving an answer, stating “I entirely regret, as I have said, I regret very much having to take the measures on early release”. Arguably, the use of the term “regret” does not have the full pragmatic force of an apology (Kampf, 2009), in that it attenuates any sense of government responsibility for prison overcrowding. Nevertheless, this failure to take responsibility might also be seen as face-damaging – but perhaps not as face-damaging as answering the question in either of the ways specified above. Finally, in what is termed an aside, speakers may depart from the question–response format, while also performing FTAs. In the following extract (17 October 2007), Cameron used an interruption from a Labour MP to make an aside attacking the Labour government for its lack of discipline. Previously, in attempting to put his question, Cameron had been 257

Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen 

interrupted twice by shouting from a Labour MP Ian Austin, who was reprimanded by the Speaker as follows: Extract 13.9 Order order. I hope the Honourable Gentleman Mr. Austin you’re not going to keep shouting again. You’re a difficulty in PM’s questions because you keep shouting. You shouldn’t do it. Cameron then used this reprimand to quip the following aside: “It comes to something when you have to tick off the PM’s own PPS” (Ian Austin was Parliamentary Private Secretary [PPS[ to Gordon Brown). Cameron’s aside was greeted by laughter, before he continued with the main body of his question concerning the National Health Service. Overall, Bull and Wells (2012) argued (following Harris, 2001) that face aggravation between the PM and LO is not just an acceptable form of parliamentary discourse, it is both sanctioned and rewarded, a means whereby the LO may enhance his/her own status. In addition, they observed that PMQs should be regarded as another of the situations identified by Culpeper (1996), where impoliteness is not a marginal activity, but central to the interaction that takes place. In a second study (Bull, 2013), the political significance of adversarial questioning in PMQs was considered in the context of a specific political issue, that of the British phonehacking scandal. This was an ongoing controversy involving the News of the World and other British tabloid newspapers published by News International, whose employees were accused of engaging in phone hacking, police bribery, and exercising improper influence in the pursuit of publishing stories. In the context of this furore, the leader of the Labour opposition at that time (Ed Miliband) launched a wholesale attack on both the PM and News International in two sessions of PMQs (6 and 13 July 2011). Notably, Miliband achieved substantive political gains with his questions: most notably, a public inquiry into the role of the press and police in the phone-hacking scandal (the Leveson inquiry) and the resignation of the chief executive of News International (Rebekah Brooks). PMQs has been likened to a form of verbal pugilism, conducted under arcane conventions resembling the so-called Queensbury rules of boxing (Bull and Wells, 2012). However, although adversarial discourse by its very nature is intrinsically face-threatening, it is arguably not merely about face aggravation, nor is face aggravation necessarily just an end in itself (“rudeness for rudeness’ sake”). From the above perspective, the adversarial and confrontational discourse of PMQs should not necessarily be dismissed as just petty political point scoring, but also may be understood as a means to an end, namely, the pursuit of particular political policies and political objectives (Bull, 2013). Notably, there is nothing comparable to PMQs in the American political system. In the US, the presidential press conference plays a much more prominent role, where journalists have the opportunity to put questions to the president. But the president can “de-select” a journalist by not inviting him/her to future press conferences if s/he poses questions which are too awkward. In contrast, the PM has no right to de-select the LO, who may return to PMQs week after week to persist in posing awkward questions. Thus, despite its many detractors and deficiencies, PMQs offers a unique degree of political accountability, whereby the leader of the UK can be directly questioned, criticised and challenged by the political opposition. Despite much of the admittedly facile point scoring of PMQs, the conflictual discourse of PMQs can play an important role in sustaining political dialogue and political accountability, as illustrated above in the case of the phone-hacking scandal (Bull, 2013). 258

Conflict in political discourse

Notably, questions in PMQs are posed not by professional interviewers but by other politicians. Although the PM needs to defend both positive and negative face, face aggravation is a prime feature of PMQ discourse. Indeed, the positive face of the Leader of the Opposition depends at least in part on an ability to undermine the face of the Prime Minister, the positive face of the Prime Minister in part on an ability to defend him/herself against such attacks. In broadcast interviews, in contrast, questions are posed by professional journalists, who are constrained by norms of journalistic impartiality. Nevertheless, their questions also typically present threats to a politician’s positive face, although on occasions politicians may need to defend negative face, should a question threaten their future freedom of action. In addition, politicians may also use questions for face aggravation against their political opponent, should the opportunity arise. Thus, both PMQs and political interviews are characterised by conflictual discourse, which may be understood in terms of face and facework. However, the way in which that manifests itself varies according to the norms of acceptable discourse in each situational context.

13.6 Extremist versus mainstream discourse: some case studies from interviews and debates All the data presented above is based essentially on analyses of mainstream politicians. Whether such features are also characteristic of the discourse of more marginal parties considered “extremist” by the mainstream is the focus of the next section of this chapter. Two studies have been carried out by the authors of far right-wing politicians (Bull and SimonVandenbergen, 2014; Simon-Vandenbergen, 2008). In addition, a new study is reported in this chapter of an interview with a far left-wing South African politician, Julius Malema. This analysis is intended to show whether similarities in discourse can be attributed to similar contextual factors.

13.6.1 Right-wing extremist discourse in Belgium and the UK One study of far right-wing discourse was conducted in Belgium of two debates with Filip Dewinter and Gerolf Annemans, both MPs from the Flemish Bloc (FB), a nationalist party which calls for independence of Flanders, but which mainly profiles itself as strongly antiimmigrant. In both debates, the MPs’ opponent was Etienne Vermeersch, a distinguished Flemish philosopher (Simon-Vandenbergen, 2008). The slogan of the Flemish Bloc (“Our own people first”) refers to the view that priority in all matters must be given to Flemish citizens over immigrants. In 2004, the Ghent court of appeal ruled the FB in contempt of the 1981 Belgian law on racism and xenophobia, a view upheld by the Belgian Supreme Court. Following these verdicts, FB dissolved itself and created a new party, Flemish Interest. In the two debates analysed in this study, the philosopher sought to demonstrate that the politicians had not abandoned their racist views. An analysis was conducted of the politicians’ responses to those arguments, focused particularly on their use of implicit discourse to convey their racial stance. This implicit discourse was conceptualised in terms of an underlying communicative conflict (following Bavelas et al., 1990). Thus, on the one hand, given the legal position, the politicians might be expected to deny any statement that could be construed as racist. The MPs had been obliged by law to delete certain passages from their political programme, 259

Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen 

so when confronted with passages which might seem racist, they avoid expressing commitment to those utterances, either refusing to endorse them, or distancing themselves in some way. On the other hand, the MPs would arguably also wish to reassure their hard-core supporters that the party’s ideology remained the same. In this context, implicit discourse enabled the MPs to put over their message, but with sufficient ambiguity to avoid risks of prosecution or wider condemnation for racism. So, for example, in one debate, the philosopher asked, “Has the principle ‘Our own people first’ been abolished then?” The MP replied, “There is nothing dirty or racist about it. It simply means that I defend what is most precious to me. It is no disgrace to love your own children more”. Although the MP does not answer the question, there is a clear implication that the principle “Our own people first” has not been abandoned. The philosopher then rephrased the question in a slightly different way. “Does ‘Our own people first’ mean priority for Flemish people regarding housing or employment?” The MP responded:5 Extract 13.10 I’m not allowed to be in favour of that. It is forbidden by law, since the change of the anti-racism law. You are not going to extract statements about that from me, because otherwise I risk prosecution. But in general terms I can tell you that in my opinion nationality gives certain rights and duties and hence also certain privileges. Thus, although the MP refused to answer this question, there was again the clear implication that the Flemish people should have priority in housing and employment (“in my opinion nationality gives certain rights and duties and hence also certain privileges”). Thus, from the perspective of the STCC (Bavelas et al., 1990), the implicit responses of the Flemish Bloc MPs could be understood in the context of an underlying communicative conflict. Equivocation can be understood in terms of four dimensions, namely, “sender”, “content”, “receiver” and “context” (Bavelas et al., 1990). The sender dimension refers to the extent to which the response is the speaker’s own opinion; a statement is considered more equivocal if the speaker fails to acknowledge it as his own opinion, or attributes it to another person. Receiver refers to the extent to which the message is addressed to the other person in the situation – the less so the more equivocal the message. Content refers to comprehensibility, an unclear statement being considered more equivocal, and can be distinguished from context, which refers to the extent to which the response is a direct answer to the question – the less the relevance, the more equivocal the message. In terms of these four dimensions, the implicit language of these MPs might be regarded as equivocation in terms of content, that is to say, it might seem superficially unclear, vague or ambiguous. Nevertheless, even though not explicitly stated, it carries the clear implication that the underlying “Our own people first” message is still the same. From this perspective, it might also be regarded as a form of “doublespeak” – language that deliberately disguises, distorts or reverses the meaning of words (e.g. Lutz, 1987). It should be noted that linking the concept of doublespeak to the content dimension of equivocation theory is novel. In the theory’s original version, content is defined simply in terms of comprehensibility, an unclear statement being considered more equivocal. In contrast, the concept of doublespeak provides a useful bridge between equivocation and deception. Doublespeak can be seen both as deceptive, given that there is deliberate intent to disguise, distort or reverse the meaning of words, and as equivocal, given that it may seem vague or ambiguous. Notably, a well-known far right-wing British politician (Nick Griffin) was caught on camera openly advocating this kind of doublespeak. Griffin was a former leader (1999–2014) of 260

Conflict in political discourse

the far right-wing British National Party (BNP), who was shown on a YouTube video (BNP Nick Griffin + KKK Terrorist) alongside David Duke, a former leader of the Klu Klux Klan (a far right-wing American organisation with a violent history of lynching and murdering blacks). The video was recorded at a private meeting of American white nationalists, but subsequently uploaded onto the internet by Ukfightback (an anti-fascist organisation). In this video, Griffin made the statement rendered in Extract 13.11: Extract 13.11 But if you put that, i.e. getting rid of all coloured people from Britain, as your sole aim to start with, you’re going to get absolutely nowhere, so instead of talking about racial purity, we talk about identity, we use saleable words, freedom, security, identity, democracy. Nobody can come and attack you on those ideas. Thus, in this video, Griffin openly advocated doublespeak as a calculated communicative strategy. A second study of far right-wing discourse (Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen, 2014) was based on Griffin’s appearance on the popular topical current affairs prime-time BBC television program Question Time (22 October 2009). This was the first time a far right-wing British politician had appeared on the Question Time programme and followed Griffin’s election in 2009 as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the North-West of England. The broadcast provided a unique opportunity to analyse a sample of far-right wing political discourse in the context of a prime-time television debate. The results of this analysis were compared with the analysis of debates with two Flemish far right-wing politicians reported above (Simon-Vandenbergen, 2008). Just as with the two FB politicians, it was proposed on the basis of the STCC that Griffin was caught in a communicative conflict (Bavelas et al., 1990). On the one hand, the BNP is widely perceived as a racist party, and to support the BNP, let alone vote for them, is totally unacceptable in significant areas of society. At the same time, much of the BNP’s political support comes from its anti-immigrant stance; to be seen to abandon this would be highly face damaging in the eyes of its hard-line supporters. Hence, it was proposed that both the FB and the BNP found themselves in a comparable social and political situation, characterised by communicative conflict. Accordingly, it was hypothesised that the distinctive features of right-wing discourse already identified by Simon-Vandenbergen (2008) in her study of FB politicians would be replicated in Griffin’s performance on Question Time. In particular, it was hypothesised that Griffin would utilise various forms of doublespeak to put over the underlying racial message of the BNP, and this was indeed found to be the case. Notably, Griffin’s implicit discourse (like that of the FB politicians) can be regarded as a form of doublespeak. Seemingly, it is vague and ambiguous. Terms such as the “British people” and the “indigenous people” are never clearly defined. However, although never explicitly stated, the terms are readily understood by members of both panel and audience as meaning the white population. At the same time this interpretation, if challenged, had the strategic advantage of deniability, and Griffin does indeed deny that is what he means. Nevertheless, they carried a clear implicit message to reassure the party’s supporters that the underlying anti-immigrant message is still the same. Interestingly, audience members seemed to be aware of this duality. For example, one audience member remarked, “I think the, erm, the public who are voting for the BNP do need to be educated about what Nick stands for. He’s basically a wolf in sheep’s clothing”. Another audience member quipped, “you’d be surprised how many people will have a whip 261

Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen 

round to buy you a ticket, and your supporters, to go back, go to the South Pole, it’s a colourless landscape, it’ll suit you fine”. According to Bavelas et al.,’s (1990) theory, equivocation may be used as an alternative to deception. In this section, it has been argued that equivocation may also be used as a form of deception. In addition, equivocation and deception may be linked together through the concept of doublespeak. Doublespeak can be seen as deceptive, given that there is deliberate intent to disguise, distort or reverse the meaning of words, but also as equivocal, given that it can be vague or ambiguous. Undoubtedly, there are situations in which people equivocate to avoid deception. But as argued above, there are also contexts in which equivocation itself may be seen as a form of deception. In short, people both equivocate to avoid deception, but may also equivocate as a form of deception – and as a calculated communicative strategy.

13.6.2 Left-wing extremist discourse According to the data presented above, far right as well as mainstream politicians equivocate in response to face-threatening questions in conflictual situations. However, some strategies are seemingly more frequent in far-right discourse, in particular denial and attacks. Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen (2014) further found striking parallels between strategies of equivocation and doublespeak in the discourses of Flemish and British extreme right politicians in situations where their face was seriously at risk. From this perspective, it was decided to conduct a study of a far-left wing politician, to investigate to what extent equivocation may be used in comparable conflictual contexts and may be explicable in terms of threats to face. Should there appear to be parallels with farright politicians as against mainstream politicians, the types of responses may be accounted for in terms of comparable communicative contexts rather than competing ideologies. The analysis was based on a CNN interview with Julius Malema (dated 12 September 20126). Malema is a South African politician (born 1981) and former leader of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL). At present, he is “Commander-in-Chief” of the political party Economic Freedom Fighters. Malema started his political career in the ANC (African National Congress) as a fervent supporter of the ANC leaders, and at one time said that he would “die for Zuma” (speech at Bloemfontein, June 2008). Jacob Zuma was elected President of South Africa in 2009 and has become one of its most controversial presidents since the end of white-majority rule in 1994, facing various allegations of corruption. Malema turned into one of the harshest critics of the President, quickly becoming progressively more controversial himself both within the ANC and in South Africa generally. He publicly distanced himself from ANC decisions and refused to tow the party line. He openly praised Zimbabwe’s President Mugabe’s political regime, especially the redistribution of the land without compensation and the nationalisation of the mines. He is particularly popular with some sectors of the black youth, many of whom are unemployed, as he is viewed as voicing their frustrations and driving radical economic policies which they perceive as their only hope of change. The following facts form the background to the interview. In early 2010, Malema decided to revive the old struggle song “Dubula iBhunu” (“Shoot the Boer”). Malema was convicted of hate speech in 2011. In that same year, he was found guilty of sowing division in the ANC and expelled from the party. In September 2012, he was charged with fraud and money laundering. In that same year, the miners went on strike for higher wages, but the strikes turned violent and it was clear that the miners had lost all confidence in the ANC. Malema saw his 262

Conflict in political discourse

moment and “paraded straight into the political space that Zuma had unwittingly created for him” (Forde, 2014, p.151). He addressed the strikers as their new leader. In the CNN interview, the following topics were covered: corruption charges and allegations of fraud; Malema’s aims as leader in the crisis of the national miners’ strike; Malema’s right to claim leadership in the miners’ strike; his expulsion from the ANCYL; and finally, the charge of stoking (anti-white) racial tension, notably by singing the song “Shoot the Boer”. The choice of this politician’s discourse for comparison with the earlier data was based on the following considerations: 1 although the language in which the interview is conducted is the same as in the Nick Griffin interview (English), the cultural context is different (South Africa vs. Europe). On the other hand, the interview is conducted by an American journalist and broadcast by CNN. CNN International reaches more than 350 million households worldwide and thus addresses a global audience. In addition, Julius Malema is a critical, experienced interviewee with a great deal of global exposure, who reads the context. This raises the question whether similar discursive strategies are used to the ones we found in the European data 2 although Malema’s ideology and political programme are at the opposite extreme of the political spectrum to speakers from the far right, he shares with them an antagonistic attitude to mainstream politics and charges of racist rhetoric. These common positions raise the question whether similar types of facework are performed in similar situational contexts, irrespective of differences in cultural contexts. The total interview lasts 8:49 minutes. Yet only five questions get asked. This is because both the first and the last question give rise to denials, interruptions and overlaps, so that the interviewer, CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour (Ier) has to repeat the same questions several times. Malema is put into a position of communicative conflict on several occasions in this interview. For example, in the opening of the interview (rendered in Extract 13.12), the interviewer suggests – through the use of presupposition – that the leadership role that Malema assumes in the miners’ strike conflict is dubious both because he has been ousted from the ANC and because he is facing corruption charges. In other words, while seemingly asking for Malema’s agenda, she is attacking his credibility as a leader. On the surface her double question (“Why have you done this? What do you think you can achieve?” is a double wh-question, giving Malema the opportunity to respond freely. But underlying the question is the accusation of inappropriate behaviour. Malema sees this and before responding to the “why” and “what” he attacks the presupposition. If he had given a direct reply this would have signalled that he accepted the accusation of unrightful leadership. He therefore had no choice but to equivocate. This is the opening of the interview: Extract 13.12 Ier: Julius Malema, a harsh critic of the Zuma government, has become the face of this crisis, stepping into the leadership void that’s been left by the President and his men calling for a national strike in all of South Africa’s mines. Malema was leader of the ANC’s Youth Wing before being expelled for fermenting division within the party. He’s now facing corruption charges relating to the misuse of party funds while he was in office. And he joins me right now. 263

Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen 

Julius Malema, you are a very controversial figure and yet you’ve gone and inserted yourself into [Malema laughs] a really violent and difficult situation right now. Why have you done that? What do you think you can achieve? JM: No let’s correct one thing here. I’m not facing any corruption charges eh from any institution in South Africa Ier: There’s are there’s an investigation. JM: for any wrongdoing. Ier: There’s an investigation into some fraud and allegations of misappropriation. JM: Yeah yeah. Ier: So my question is JM: Yeah so if you use I’m facing charges as if I’m charged already that’s not correct. Ier: No I said that you that there’s an investigation. JM: Yeah. Ier: And they’re looking into it. Could you please tell me what you’re doing inserting your very controversial self into what’s going on in South Africa at the mines right now? What do you think you will achieve? Malema does not reply to the question but criticises the question for being based on incorrect information. His denial “I’m not facing any charges” attacks a statement in the introduction by the journalist by denying its truth. By doing this his response “No let’s correct one thing here” falls under what Bull and Mayer (1993) call “the question is based on a false premise”. The facts are that on 12 September 2012, the day of the interview, he had appeared in court for these charges, but the trial was to take place 18–29 November 2013. In any case Malema plays on the words “facing charges”, and finally accepts the wording “there’s an investigation”. Note that in one turn he attacks the interviewer directly “if you use”, implying she is either misinformed or deliberately manipulating the truth. The interview ends with another wh-question which puts Malema in a position of communicative conflict. It is a question about his singing of the controversial song “Kill the Boer”. This question again leads to a long exchange between interviewer and Malema, rendered in Extract 13.13. Extract 13.13 Ier: Julius Malema, do you believe that stoking racial tensions is a way of getting what you believe the workers are entitled to? Why did you go there and sing that song again today and yesterday that got you into trouble in the first place ‘Kill the Boers’? JM: That is not the song that got me into trouble that Ier: But anyway why did you do it? JM: I think people know know the difference. No I didn’t sing the song “Let’s kill the Boer” today I Ier: What did you say? JM: I was saying in Zulu you can listen to the tape and get a proper interpreter because those who are interpreting for you are actually misleading you and you must fire them. Ier: So what were you saying? JM: I sang two songs today. One is the toitoi the other one was the one that says we are going forward irrespective of us being shot or arrested or being killed while soldiering on with the struggle for economic freedom. 264

Conflict in political discourse

Ier: JM: Ier: JM:

Let me just play this. In the past. Let me play the tape. Yeah.

[Plays video with JM chanting “Kiss the Boer, the farmer” and the crowd responding with the refrain “kiss kiss”]. Ier: What is that then because we had reports so you were again using those words and that song. JM: The song says “Kiss the Boer kiss the farmer” – listen to them to the words in that song “Kiss the Boer kiss the farmer”. That’s what I’m saying in the song so I don’t know where you’re getting what you’re saying. Ier: Might you have changed those words? JM: Come again. Ier: The original song that you were told basically told off for using was “Kill the Boer”. JM: No this was not the song before the court – this song was sung by the firebrand the president of the Youth League Peter Mugaba. It used to have the words “Kill the Boer kill the farmer” and we changed those words into reconciliatory words promoting reconciliation through kissing. That’s why we talk about the kiss in the song and the one before the court was Ier: All right. JM: a different song and was never sung anywhere since the proceedings of the court and since the finding by the judge and the appeal we are awaiting on the other song. Ier: Julius Malema, thank you very much for joining us. The interviewer starts with a why-question in which the truth of the proposition that JM sang the song “Kill the Boers” is presupposed. Malema attacks the question by protesting that it is factually incorrect, i.e. he attacks the presupposition. Note that he needs to do this because the court had found him guilty of stoking racial hatred by singing the song in public. The remainder of the exchange turns around this presupposition which is thus turned into the proposition which is argued about. The facts are that JM indeed changed the word “kill” into “kiss”. However, that the song is meant to be reconciliatory is not credible in view of his stance on white ownership of land. Thereby Malema’s version of the song might be seen as a clever and effective strategy for remaining within the law and at the same time telling the supporters that he has not changed his mind – a form of doublespeak in response to the communicative conflict created by the court ruling. Malema is clearly in exactly the same situation as the far-right politicians analysed in the previous section: he is forced to choose between breaking the law or losing the support of his core voters who expect him to be radical and unwavering. His solution in this case is a cynical use of doublespeak: using the same chant in which he “leads” and the crowd responds he changes the refrain “Kill the Boer, the farmer” into “Kiss the Boer, the farmer”, well knowing that everyone grasps the underlying message. In fact, the message was so clear that it prevented the journalist (and others) from noticing the change from “kill” to “kiss”. Notably, Malema uses this for another personal attack on the interviewer, claiming that she is being misled. In the middle of the interview, between the opening and closing questions, Malema sets out his programme of economic reform and uses the opportunity for personal image 265

Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen 

building, with such phrases as “we have now taken over the leadership of that struggle to ensure that the mineral resources of this country benefit the people of this country”, “we remain leaders […] to ensure that the working class in South Africa does not become leaderless” (a clear attack on Zuma). In conclusion, Julius Malema in this interview uses equivocation strategies comparable with other politicians. Like mainstream politicians, he attacks the presupposition of the question (cf. Bull and Mayer, 1993). Like both mainstream and far-right wing politicians, he makes personal attacks on the interviewer (cf. Bull and Mayer, 1993; Simon-Vandenbergen, 2008; Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen, 2014). Furthermore, his reformulation of the song “Kill the Boers” to “Kiss the Boers” is comparable with the forms of doublespeak used by far-right wing politicians to get their message across while staying within the law (SimonVandenbergen, 2008; Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen, 2014).

13.7 Discussion and conclusions In this chapter, we have considered conflictual discourse in three genres of communication: broadcast political interviews, debates and parliamentary questions. Since we focused in the debates on how speakers responded to the moderator-journalist’s questions, we discussed interviews and debates together. Most of the data analysed has come from recordings of British politicians, but we have also included analyses of Belgian and South African politicians. In broadcast interviews, questions typically present a threat to a politician’s positive face, although on occasions politicians may need to defend negative face, should a question threaten their freedom of action. In addition, they may use a question as an opportunity for face aggravation against their political opponents. Politicians typically equivocate to conflictual questions, where all the principal forms of response present a threat to face, but typically answer non-conflictual questions. From this perspective, facework is integral to both replies and equivocation, which both may be seen as distinctive forms of communicative skill. In broadcast interviews with extremist politicians, both of the far right and the far left, face management and facework have also been shown to be important. In particular, so-called doublespeak may be used as a way of putting their message across while staying within the law. In the immediate context, it also serves ambivalently to put one message across to core followers and another to presumably more mainstream listeners. In PMQs, questions are posed not by professional interviewers but by other politicians. Although the PM needs to defend both positive and negative face, face aggravation is a prime feature of PMQ discourse. Indeed, the positive face of the LO depends at least in part on an ability to undermine the face of the PM, the positive face of the PM in part on an ability to defend him/herself against such attacks. In PMQs, all participants must orient to the expectation both that the dialogue should follow a question-answer pattern and that they should refrain from unacceptable unparliamentary language. Given these constraints, the adversarial discourse of PMQ can be seen as a highly demanding form of social interaction, in which the participants need to acquire high level skills in the formulation of both questions and responses. Our overarching theoretical framework is based on the concepts of face and face management, and the view that the salience of different form of facework varies according to genre of communication. Three distinct types of facework (positive face, negative face and face aggravation) have been discussed in the context of three distinct genres of political communication (broadcast interviews, debates and parliamentary questions). Face and face 266

Conflict in political discourse

management are central to both the handling of conflict, and to the most favourable representation of political arguments to persuade others of their validity – hence, the importance of these concepts in understanding the language of conflict. The question of the opposition between “mainstream parties” versus “marginal parties” or between “moderate parties” versus “extremist parties” needs further investigation. In this article, we have used them more or less as synonyms, i.e. mainstream parties tend to be moderate, while marginal parties (at least those we studied here) hold what moderates see as extremist views. On the other hand, we are aware that politicians may have “extremist” views while belonging to “mainstream parties”: Donald Trump comes to mind as an example. The type of doublespeak we have discussed was clearly due to the situation the interviewees found themselves in. But there is more: what the far right- and far left-wing speakers in our data – as well as the president of the US – share is that they use populist discourse. We are using the term “populism” in the meaning as defined by Buruma (2018, p.77), i.e. “which includes hostility to political, cultural and social elites”. Buruma writes: “Since the make-up and the history of elites vary in different countries, populism comes in various forms as well”. Causes of its success, according to Buruma, include the erosion of ideological principles, the shifting of responsibilities, and corruption: “People felt increasingly alienated from and disgusted with the political class, those ‘elites’ who represented nobody but themselves” (Buruma, 2018, p.83). When it comes to the question of conflict transformation, these findings lead us to the need for politicians with ideologies and principles they stand for and can be seen by the electorate to stand for. These are issues that go beyond what we as discourse analysts can do. What we can do is raise awareness, both of “mainstream” and of “marginal”, of “populist” language meant to deceive rather than to elucidate. More than ever, close reading and understanding of political discourse is essential to the maintenance of the democratic process.

Notes 1 Extracts 13.1 to 13.3 are taken from Bull (2003). 2 It should be noted that interviewers are often expected to play a devil’s advocate for opposing views. In those cases, they tend to signpost this role (e.g. with “Some might say that”), thus making it clear that, in Goffman’s (1981) terms, while they are animating (and sometimes authoring) these views, they are not their principal. This is how they preserve neutrality. We thank the anonymous reviewer who added this comment. 3 We are aware that the use of face with regard to persons not present is objected to by some (e.g. 0’Driscoll 2011, 2017). 4 Extracts 13.4 and 13.5 are taken from Simon-Vandenbergen (1996). 5 The original language in Extract 13.7 was Dutch. The translation is ours. 6 See www.youtube.com/watch?v=drP336QXp9s.

References Bates, S.R., Kerr, P., Byrne, C. and Stanley, L. 2014. Questions to the Prime Minister: a comparative study of PMQs from Thatcher to Cameron. Parliamentary Affairs. 67, pp.253–80. Bavelas, J.B., Black, A., Chovil, N. and Mullett, J. 1990. Equivocal communication. Newbury Park: Sage. Blair, T. 2010. A journey: my political life. New York, NY: Random House. Brown, P. and Levinson, S.C. 1978. Universals in language usage: politeness phenomena. In: Goody, E. ed. Questions and politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.56–310. 267

Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen 

Brown, P. and Levinson, S.C. 1987. Politeness: some universals in language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bull, P. 1994. On identifying questions, replies and non-replies in political interviews. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 13, pp.115–31. Bull, P. 1997. Queen of Hearts or Queen of the Arts of Implication? Implicit criticisms and their implications for equivocation theory in the interview between Martin Bashir and Diana, Princess of Wales. Social Psychological Review. 1, pp.27–36. Bull, P. 2000. Equivocation and the rhetoric of modernisation: an analysis of televised interviews with Tony Blair in the 1997 British General Election. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 19(2), pp.222–47. Bull, P. 2003. The microanalysis of political communication: claptrap and ambiguity. Routledge International Series in Social Psychology. London: Psychology Press. Bull, P. 2008. ‘Slipperiness, evasion and ambiguity’: equivocation and facework in non-committal political discourse. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 27(4), pp.333–44. Bull, P. 2013. The role of adversarial discourse in political opposition: Prime Minister’s Questions and the British phone-hacking scandal. Language and Dialogue. 3(2), pp.254–72. Bull, P. and Elliott, J. 1998. Level of threat: means of assessing interviewer toughness and neutrality. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 17(2), pp.220–44. Bull, P., Elliott, J., Palmer, D. and Walker, E. 1996. Why politicians are three-faced: the face model of political interviews. British Journal of Social Psychology. 35(2), pp.267–84. Bull, P. and Mayer, K. 1993. How not to answer questions in political interviews. Political Psychology. 14(4), pp.651–66. Bull, P. and Simon-Vandenbergen, A-M. 2014. Equivocation and doublespeak in far right-wing discourse: an analysis of Nick Griffin’s performance on BBC’s Question Time. Text & Talk. 34(1), pp.1–22. Buruma, I. 2018. The wave of populism. In: Boone, M., Deneckere, G. and Tollebeek, J. eds. The end of postwar. Essays on the work of Ian Buruma. Leuven: Peeters, pp.77–84. Bull, P. and Wells, P. 2012. Adversarial discourse in Prime Minister’s Questions. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 31(1), pp.30–48. Caffi, C. 1998. Presupposition, pragmatic. In: Mey, J. ed. Concise encyclopedia of pragmatics. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp.751–58. Clayman, S. and Heritage, J. 2002. The news interview: journalists and public figures on the air. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Culpeper, J. 1996. Towards an anatomy of impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics. 25(3), pp.349–67. Fairclough, N. 1988. Discourse representation in media discourse. Sociolinguistics. 17(2), pp.125–39. Fairclough, N. 1995. Media discourse. London: Arnold. Fairclough, N. 2001. Language and power. Second edition. Oxford: Blackwell. Fetzer, A. 2007. Challenges in political interviews: an intercultural analysis. In: Fetzer, A. and Lauerbach, G.A. eds. Political discourse in the media. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp.163–96. Forde, F. 2014. Still and inconvenient youth. Julius Malema carries on. Johannesburg: Picador Africa. Goffman, E. 1955. On face-work: an analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. Psychiatry. 18, pp.213–231. (Reprinted in Goffman, E. 1967a. Interaction ritual: essays on face to face behaviour. Garden City, NY: Anchor, pp.5–45.) Goffman, E. 1967b. Where the action is. In: Goffman, E. Interaction ritual: essays on face to face behaviour. Garden City, NY: Anchor, pp.149–270. Goffman, E. 1981. Footing. In: Goffman, E. Forms of talk. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 24–159. Originally published 1979. Semiotica. 25, pp.1–29. Greatbatch, D. 1986. Aspects of topical organization in news interviews: the use of agenda-shifting procedures by interviewees. Media, Culture and Society. 8, pp.441–5. Greatbatch, D. 1992. On the management of disagreement between news interviewees. In: Drew, D. and Heritage, J. eds. Talk at work: interaction in institutional settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.268–301. 268

Conflict in political discourse

Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. and Roberts, B. 1978. Policing the crisis. London: Macmillan. Hamilton, M.A. and Mineo, P.J. 1998. A framework for understanding equivocation. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 17, pp.3–35. Harris, S. 1991. Evasive action: how politicians respond to questions in political interviews. In: Scannell, P. ed. Broadcast talk. London: Sage, pp.76–99. Harris, S. 2001. Being politically impolite: extending politeness theory to adversarial political discourse. Discourse and Society. 12, pp.451–72. Heritage, J. 1985. Analyzing news interviews: aspects of the production of talk for an overhearing audience. In: van Dijk, T.A. ed. Handbook of discourse analysis. London: Academic Press, pp.95–117. Hoggart, S. 2011. Prime Minister’s Questions – or an unpleasant football match? The Guardian. [Online]. 14 December. [Accessed 26 December 2012.] Available from: www.guardian.co.uk/ politics/2011/dec/14/prime-ministers-questions-football-match House of Commons Information Office Factsheet G7. 2004. Jucker, A.H. 1986. News interviews: a pragmalinguistic analysis. Pragmatics & beyond VII:4. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Kampf, Z. 2009. Public (non-)apologies: the discourse of minimizing responsibility. Journal of Pragmatics. 41(11), pp.2257–70. Kress, G. and Hodge, R. 1979. Language as ideology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Lewis, D. 2004. Mapping adversative coherence relations in English and French. Languages in Contrast. 5(1), pp.35–48. Lutz, W. 1987. Doublespeak: from ‘revenue enhancement’ to ‘terminal living’: how government, business, advertisers, and others use language to deceive you. New York, NY: Harper Row. O’Driscoll, J. 2011. Some issues with the concept of face: when, what, how and how much? In: Bargiela-Chiappini, F. and Kádár, D.Z. eds. Politeness across cultures. London: Palgrave MacMillan, pp.17–41. O’Driscoll, J. 2017. Face and (im)politeness. In: Culpeper, J., Haugh, M. and Kádár, D.Z. eds. The Palgrave handbook of linguistic (im)politeness. London: Palgrave MacMillan, pp.89–119. Simon-Vandenbergen, A.-M. 1992. The interactional utility of of course in spoken discourse. Occasional Papers in Systemic Linguistics. 6, pp.213–26. Simon-Vandenbergen, A.-M. 1996. Image-building through modality: the case of political interviews. Discourse & Society. 7(3), pp.389–415. Simon-Vandenbergen, A.-M. 1997. Modal (un)certainty in political discourse: a functional account. Language Sciences. 19(4), pp.341–56. Simon-Vandenbergen, A.-M. 1998. I think and its Dutch equivalents in parliamentary debates. In: Johansson, S. and Oksefjell, S. eds. Corpora and cross-linguistic research. Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi, pp.297–317. Simon-Vandenbergen, A.-M. 2000. The functions of I think in political discourse. International Journal of Applied Linguistics. 10(1), pp.41–63. Simon-Vandenbergen, A.-M. 2008. “Those are only slogans”: a linguistic analysis of argumentation in debates with extremist political speakers. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 27(4), pp.345–58. Simon-Vandenbergen, A.-M., White, P. and Aijmer, K. 2007. Presupposition and ‘taking-for-granted’ in mass communicated political argument. An illustration from British, Flemish and Swedish political colloquy. In: Fetzer, A. and Lauerbach, G. eds. Political discourse in the media. Studies in Language Companion Series 85. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, pa: John Benjamins, pp. 31–74. Thibault, P. 2003. Contextualization and social meaning-making practices. In: Eerdmans, S., Prevignano, C.L. and Thibault, P.J. eds. Language and interaction. Discussions with John J. Gumperz. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp.41–62. Thomas, G.P. 2006. United Kingdom: the Prime Minister and parliament. In: Baldwin, N.D.J. ed. Executive leadership and legislative assemblies. London: Routledge, pp.4–37. 269

Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen 

van Dijk, T.A. 1998a. Ideology: a multidisciplinary approach. London: Sage. van Dijk, T.A. 1998b. Opinions and ideologies in the press. In: Bell, A. and Garrett, P. eds. Approaches to media discourse. Oxford: Blackwell, pp.21–63. Wodak, R., de Cillia, R., Reisigl, M., Liebhart, K., Hofstätter, K. and Kargl, M. eds. 2000. The discursive construction of national identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

270

14 Discourse features of disputing in small claims hearings Karen Tracy and Danielle M. Hodge

Courts are the institutions to which societies assign the job of resolving conflicts that ­people have been unable to settle by talking with each other. One particularly interesting and relatively unanalysed type of conflict is the dispute that occurs in small claims courts. Small claims are a self-contained type of civil court which handles disputes between parties that, whatever the actual content and complexity of the conflict, are channelled into a claim by one person for the other person to pay the first party an amount of money. Small claims courts in the United States came into existence in the early years of the 20th century, their purpose being to “provide citizens from all walks of life with quick, uncomplicated, inexpensive and just resolution of smaller civil disputes” (Ruhnka and Weller, 1978, p.xi). They were part of a broader movement that sought to increase access to and participation in the justice system for ordinary people by providing more informal, less bureaucratic procedures. In the United States, the limit in small claims courts varies state to state but it is usually between $5,000 and $7,500.1 In addition to small claims courts involving restricted amounts of money, three other features deserve mention: •• ••

••

disputants speak for themselves; only rarely are attorneys present unbeknownst to disputants, judges have considerable freedom in how they enact a small claims court. Some judges frame the occasion as a mini-trial having parties do opening statements, cross-examination and closing statements; others treat it as an occasion where the judge asks questions that he or she sees as needed to make the decision (Tracy and Caron, 2017) judges are expected to conclude a hearing quickly. In our corpus of small claims hearings, soon to be described, the average length was 45 minutes

First, Section 14.1 provides some definitional clarification about conflict terms and a brief overview of the small claims disputes from which we draw examples.

271

Karen Tracy and Danielle M. Hodge

14.1 Conflict terms Terms for conflict tend to be used in different contexts, point to different issues and index different emotional intensities. If a conflict is conducted primarily through violence, we label it a “war”, “fighting” or “terrorism”. If the conflict is largely verbal, we have an array of different terms. Smallish conflicts between intimates are likely to be labelled “quarrels”, “bickering” or “having an argument”, whereas societal conflicts about the best policy or course of action are likely to be named “arguments” or “debates”; if there is a significant public dimension, we may label it a “controversy” or a “question”. For researchers who study language, communication and interaction, the terms most often used to refer to conflict are “dispute”, “disagreement” and “conflict”. Sifianou (2012, p.1554) defines “disagreement” as “the expression of a view that differs from that expressed by another speaker”. Although disagreements can be tools to hurt and oppose others, they need not be. Some disagreements are friendly and done to enhance sociability, as happens when friends argue over sports or politics (Schiffrin, 1984); others are a routine part of the activity as is the case in academic discussions (Tracy, 1997). While disagreements need not be conflicts, just about all conflicts involve disagreement. In addition, conflicts require disagreeing parties to see themselves as connected to and partly dependent on the other. Putnam and Poole (1987, p.552) for instance, define a conflict as “the interaction of interdependent people who perceive opposition of goals, aims, and values, and who see the other party as potentially interfering with the realisation of those goals”. Attending particularly to verbal conflict, Vuchinich (1990, p.118) describes conflict as involving turns at talk where one party opposes “the utterances, actions, or selves of one another”. When a conflict moves from the interpersonal to the institutional realm, it is likely to be labelled a “dispute”. Mather and Yngvesson (1980) define “disputes” as conflicts that have been asserted publicly before third parties such as judges or mediators, for supporters or in front of an audience. In a widely cited article, Felstiner, Abel and Sarat (1980–81) suggest that disputes come into being through three steps. In the first step, a party labels some experience as an injury (naming). Second, the wrong is attributed to a specific party (blaming). The final step involves the wrong being voiced by the perceiver to the injuring party (claiming). When a claim is transformed into dollars and is made to the court, it becomes a small claims dispute.

14.2 The small claims data This chapter is part of a larger project analysing litigant and judge discourse in small claims courts in the United States (e.g. Tracy and Caron, 2017; Tracy and Hodge, 2018)2. There are 12 judges in our corpus, 7 from Colorado, 3 from Washington and 1 each from New Jersey and Michigan. Each of these judges heard from 2 to 12 full cases, totalling 55 cases. The shortest trial was 12 minutes, the longest 176 minutes and the average 45 minutes. The data are digital audio files, except for Michigan in which the judge posted videos of his trials online. Trials were transcribed verbatim; all words, repetitions, ‘uh’s and ‘um’s and word cut-offs were included (Tracy, 2005). The transcripts captured accurately what was said and there was no cleaning up of errors for high-status speakers as is common in court-provided trial transcripts (Walker, 1986). In the larger research project investigating style differences for judges, as well as litigants, we use action-implicative discourse analysis (AIDA) to construct the problems or ­dilemmas inherent in the practice of small claims, the discursive techniques that make visible and seek to manage the problems and the situated ideals of good conduct (Tracy, 1995, 2005). In this 272

Discourse in small claims hearings

chapter, we focus on describing discourse features of conflict in this institutional activity. Matters of small claims disputes focus primarily on three issues: (a) conflicts about deposits, failure to pay rent or damage costs in living situations; (b) quality of or payment for services; and (c) damages to property or person.

14.3 How the genre shapes discourse structure and strategies A feature of the small claims trial genre is that it is an encounter between three people rather than two (Brenneis, 1988). Moreover, the third person – the judge – has power over the other two, a fact that shapes the expression and unfolding of conflict in five significant ways. First, in small claims disputes, litigants are not expected to address each other, except if the judge allows cross-examination. For most of the trial, litigants are expected to speak to the judge. This funnelling of comments through a third party, as Garcia (1991) has shown in mediation, tends to lessen the level of hostility. Hostility is typically more intense when speakers do second-person accusations: “you did X” rather than telling a third party “Jim did X”. Second, since the rules of the court require litigants to address the judge and not each other, litigants rather regularly violate this and other conduct rules that differ from how people do conflict in non-institutional relationships. Trial discourse is peppered with judges instructing litigants not to interrupt, to wait for their turn to speak and directing them to address the judge and not the other party. Third, in a good number of cases, conflicts involve one or both parties using presentation and interpretation of documents (e.g. leases, photographs, bills) to advance their own claim or refute the other’s. When claims are made regarding activities that are not within people’s competence (e.g. building a structure, painting, electrical wiring, car repair), the trial talk could involve extended segments where a litigant seeks to direct the judge’s gaze to the right part of a document and then instructs what the seen thing means. An example of this complexity can be seen in the case of a subcontractor who was suing a home builder for unpaid services, where the builder was arguing that the charges were added inappropriately and done without checking and getting permission. The subcontractor, in contrast, argued that errors in the drawings necessitated changes being made to build the structure to code. The parties’ dispute centred around a set of schematic diagrams that involved technical specifications about heights and lengths for walls and bases, and materials for framing different facets of the house. Excerpt 14.1: Case 14 – TB (plaintiff, subcontractor), J (judge), in Colorado3 T1 J: What is your testimony about that? T2 TB: Although it is shown as having siding, there’s been many, many changes, your honor. He- he sent out this and what we ended up with was a lotta changesT3 J: Okay, so did he change that? T4 TB: Uh, it is showingT5 J: What is showing? T6 TB: On exhibit four, page four. T7 J: Alright. T8 TB: If we go to detail one, foundation and floor framing. T9 J: Detail one, foundation and floor. Fourth, in those small claims hearings that are run as trials, rather than directed questioning from the judge, litigants are expected to advance their point of view by cross-examining 273

Karen Tracy and Danielle M. Hodge

the opposing party and witnesses. Cross-examining requires the person to ask questions, not testify, and this is difficult for people. Attorneys, as multiple scholars have shown (Atkinson and Drew, 1979; Harris, 2011), are experts in packaging accusations into questions. Ordinary litigants are not. When litigants are instructed to cross-examine, they want to explain what they did or counter-accuse. About an hour into the builder-subcontractor case, after the judge had explained that cross-examination required litigants to ask the other party questions, the following exchange occurred. Excerpt 14.2: Case 14 – PB (defendant, builder), J (judge), in Colorado T1 PB: Uh Ted mentioned the flashing on the back of the building to cover the- it was a wider flashing, but it is typical and good practice to install flashing below your siding. T2 J: Now you’re asking questions. So, is that true? T3 PB: I’m making a statement. T4 J: You can’t. T5 PB: Oh, I see. Um I’m asking TedT6 J: You’re asking questions, there ya go. T7 PB: Um is it not appropriate to install flashing on the- uh where- to cover- to protect the plate, and to carry in the water flow over the top of the foundation wall? In T1, PB makes an assertion about the correct building practice, therein countering what the plaintiff had just asserted. Assertions, however, do not legitimately count as “crossexamination” so in T2 the judge corrects PB – “Now you’re asking questions” – and then implicitly models how PB should speak, directing him to ask, “Is that true?” The judge’s direction, though, assumes the litigant understands the discourse structure and only needs to be gently reminded. Rather than saying something like “The way you need to do crossexamination is to say, ‘Is it true that the typical and good practice’”, the judge simply says, “So”. This cue is inadequate for the litigant. In T3, we see PB interpreting the judge’s T2 as a question regarding whether he was asking a question or making a statement to which he responds that he is making a statement. In the next few turns, this confusion gets clarified and in T7 PB successfully asks a question. Moments like the one above happen commonly and even repeatedly for a single litigant in small claims trials. In essence, talk in small claims courts is full of exchanges in which judges instruct parties how to express and advance their dispute in court-approved ways. In a classic study, Conley and O’Barr (1990a) showed that a good number of litigants used a relational rather than a rule-based style to narrate their dispute. The relational style seeks to bring the judge into the moral and relational complexity of the litigants’ world in contrast to the rules-based style which attends to the legally specified issue of dispute. When litigants used the relational style, judges regularly intervened to get them to stop talking about parts of the dispute that the judge saw as not relevant. Thus, a fifth and final way the genre constrains the conflict is with regard to the scope of the dispute. Judges want to keep the focus on the single claim identified in a plaintiff’s complaint whereas many litigants want to fill in the larger history of their conflict. Judges will stop litigants or reprimand them for being irrelevant. An example of litigants seeking to provide the bigger picture is seen in the case of a woman (the plaintiff) who was suing her neighbour, also a woman, for medical costs incurred the evening after the two had a physical altercation in a nearby shop. The plaintiff 274

Discourse in small claims hearings

attributed a seizure she had that night to the physical effect of the fighting earlier in the day that she characterised as having been started by the neighbour. Towards the end of the trial when the judge described the conflict as a “she said, she said” matter that there was no way to figure out, the plaintiff’s husband asked to speak. The judge let him speak but stopped him soon after it became apparent that he was narrating the larger history of the defendant’s perceived wrong-doing in relation to them as a couple and his own reasonable actions responding to provocation. Excerpt 14.3: Case 36 – P-H (plaintiff’s husband). J (judge), in Michigan T1 P-H: The two and a half years that we did live there, it was a nonstop harassment (Judge: Okay) between us and them, calling the police on us uh 7 or 8 times for absolutely no reason. The police even came to our house and said, “I see no problem here, but when someone calls we have to come out”. (Judge: Okay) Okay. When she physically attacked my wife, I did not get an eviction notice that day from Pat Carney, which is my best friend’s father, who I have been in a family with since the ’70s. T2 J: Wait- wait- wait a minute, what does that have to do with this case today? T3 P-H: The-the harassment that led up to the assault. T4 J: I don’t care what happened before the date of question. In sum, whether a judge conducts the small claims hearing as a mini-trial or an inquisitorial session, either version of the genre will be unfamiliar to most litigants and at odds with the ways they engage in conflict with family, friends and co-workers. An upshot of this institutional unfamiliarity is that discourse in small claims courts is full of moments in which judges stop the narration of the substance of the conflict to insert their comments, which try to channel litigants’ expressions into what is defined as an appropriate court style.

14.4 Litigant strategies common in other kinds of conflict Litigants in small claims are asked by the judge to “give their story”, “explain why they are claiming what they are” or to “provide their side of events”. Interestingly, some of these prompts may have encouraged litigants to tell the kind of relational accounts that small claims judges work to close down (Conley and O’Barr, 1990a).4 In these accounting narratives, participants draw on the evaluative practices that are part of everyday talk. They employ a host of discourse moves widely recognised as tools of ordinary talk that function to show the self as reasonable and opposing others as unreasonable. Among these devices, three are especially prominent. They are membership terms, extreme case formulations and reported speech. Membership terms are used to implicate certain actions or behaviours, highlighting the positive or negative characteristics of a person and pointing to whether a person is acting (un)suitably for the category. The membership categorisation device, initially identified by Sacks (1992), involves a membership term for a category of person (e.g. teens, teachers, slackers) and some rules of application regarding how to use terms in talk. Membership terms are connected to actions and ascriptions, which in turn explain why people are likely to draw certain positive or negative inferences. Eelen (2001) points out that while classification may be a non-political activity in scientific research, in everyday life, it is always employed for a purpose. The category terms a speaker uses can help justify why someone expressed a negative attitude, as would be the case if a speaker making a 275

Karen Tracy and Danielle M. Hodge

disparaging comment about gays then followed it by saying, “I’m a Christian” (Housley and Fitzgerald, 2015). Membership terms are commonly used in complaining sequences in neighbour disputes (Stokoe, 2003, 2009), when print and broadcast news media are framing issues of public debate and assessing the accountability and morality of public actors (Housley and Fitzgerald, 2007, 2009) and more generally in any conversational situation that involves accusations and moral assessment, such as in classroom interaction (Niemi and Bateman, 2014). This device is also used by small claims disputants to show the reasonableness of their own actions or the unreasonableness of others. Small claims court is a setting in which there is a winner and a loser. The use of membership terms is a way for litigants to seek to position themselves as the morally reasonable party, the person who deserves to win. In the following case from a court in Colorado, the plaintiff is asking for her security deposit and two weeks’ worth of rent (i.e., $1,650). Though she did not give a full 30-day notice, which the law would normally require with her kind of lease, she claims that her early move out was necessitated because the apartment was uninhabitable due to a flood. In Excerpt 14.4, she explains how she was willing to compromise with the defendant and pay part of the month she moved out. To heighten the reasonableness of her actions, she categorises herself as a “single mom”. Excerpt 14.4: Case 1 – plaintiff, in Colorado I was willing to let go of those two weeks in September. I’m- I’m a single mom. I can’t afford to just give away money. I can’t- (laughs) I just can’t do that. But I was willing to compromise. And then he decided that he would give me a check for $257 for the one week that the floor was wet, which that’s not the apar- that doesn’t equal to the apartment being habitable that the floor is dry. I mean you had- he had to cut a foot up the drywall in the entire apartment. He had fans running in there. He had my stuff in the middle of the floors piled up high. It’s- I couldn’t live there. I just couldn’t live there. The plaintiff refers to herself as a “single mom” to highlight her character relative to the landlord. Using the category term “single mom” implies that she could be going through a financially difficult time, as single moms have dependents and only a single household salary. The category also implicates the actions of the landlord as unreasonable. Withholding a single mother’s security deposit is particularly harmful since single mothers are a category of person who generally may not have backup financial resources. Uses of this category also underscores the woman’s own reasonableness. That she “was willing to compromise” highlights how fair her actions were in this situation. Thus, the use of the category “single mom” works to not only show her financial hardship, which is underscored when she draws out the implication of that status, saying “I can’t afford to just give away money”. Additionally, it displays her patience in allowing the landlord to take a little longer to return her deposit than is legally required (not shown in the above excerpt). While positioning herself with this membership term, she is also constructing the actions of the defendant-landlord as problematic. In this instance, as is often the case, this membership term encourages a positive evaluation of the speaking plaintiff and a negative one of the defendant landlord. Extreme case formulations are a second device used in everyday speech to convey strong positive or negative assessment of a person’s actions or proposals. These devices cut across grammatical categories and are illustrated by lexical choices such as “brand new”, “forever”, “everyone” and “every time” (Pomerantz, 1986, p.219). They are used to: 276

Discourse in small claims hearings

•• •• ••

defend against or counter challenges to the legitimacy of complaints, accusations, justifications and defences; propose a phenomenon is “in the object” or objective rather than a product of the interaction or the circumstances; propose that some behaviour is not wrong or is right by virtue of its status as frequently occurring or commonly done. (Pomerantz, 1986, p.219–20)

Pomerantz’s initial investigation of extreme case formulations was, in fact, in the context of small claims court, but scholars have found this device common in many other sites including everyday conversation (Edwards, 2000) and a range of other institutional encounters. For example, Sidnell (2004) shows how extreme case formulations could be used as an evasive strategy to avoid blame in inquiry testimony. Robles (2015) shows how extreme case formulations are used to give individuals the opportunity to repair perceptibly racist talk and Tracy (2012) shows how state supreme court judges used extreme case formulations to justify the correctness of each judge’s written opinions in a context of marked disagreement. In another tenant and landlord dispute, the plaintiff, who is the tenant, is asking for a deposit of $500 to be returned to her. The defendant rented the room out to the plaintiff for $500 unbeknownst to the owner of the property. Therefore, the owner never received the $500 deposit from the plaintiff because the defendant took the deposit and left the residence. The plaintiff is asking for the $500 back so she can give it to the owner and stay at the residence. In the following excerpt, the plaintiff is responding to the defendant’s accusation of her boyfriend urinating all over the room while he was intoxicated, an activity that the defendant used to justify her not returning the $500 deposit to the plaintiff. Excerpt 14.5: Case 2 – plaintiff, in Colorado And that’s a big fat lie about the peeing all over the walls and the carpet. Yes, my- my boyfriend did pee on the mattress. That was the only thing he peed on. The pee on the carpet was probably from the eight dogs that were living there before I moved in there. There were eight dogs and three adults- or three- three people, two- two adults, one child, and eight dogs in that room. And that’s what the pee on the carpet was from, and there was graffiti on the wall from that, that was somewhat repaired when we had moved in. But Lowell did not ever pee on any wall or any carpet, he peed on the mattress. Which is a piece of property that gets thrown away. To challenge the defendant’s accusation about the plaintiff’s boyfriend urinating all over the room, the plaintiff responds by saying “that’s a big fat lie about peeing all over the walls and the carpet”. Using the extreme case formulation “big fat lie” to characterise the defendant’s accusation strongly frames the defendant’s claim as unreasonable. The plaintiff states that not only has the defendant lied, but the lie is “big” and “fat”. She continues to say that “that was the only thing he peed on” and he “did not ever pee on any wall or any carpet”. To further justify the unreasonableness of the defendant’s accusation, the plaintiff reacts with another instance of extreme case formulations. She uses “did not ever” – another variation of “never” – to further counter the accusation made by the defendant. Consider a third and final feature common to litigants’ stories: reported speech. Reported speech is stating what one or another said. “Reported speech”, as Tracy and Robles (2013, p.226) define it, “is a rhetorical device to present what one is uttering as if it were one’s exact words or those of another”. But this stretch of talk may not be the actual words of 277

Karen Tracy and Danielle M. Hodge

the other. Although not widely adopted as the preferred term, Tannen (1989) argues that reported speech is better labelled “constructed dialogue”. “Reported speech”, though, better captures one especially common function of this type of talk – to persuade that one’s words may be trusted because one is simply reporting what a person said. When people engage in reported speech, they are often recounting past events that include themselves and others. This retelling serves as a source for identity construction for the self and the told-about others. These snippets of reported speech accomplish evaluation (Buttny, 1997; Holt, 1996, 2000). To put it another way, reported speech is used to show one’s reasonableness and another’s lack of it. In Excerpt 14.6, a plaintiff is asking for $5,000 from the defendant who sold her a car with damage that she was not made aware of at the time of purchase. The plaintiff is retelling the details of the purchase, which include her attempting to negotiate the price of the car with the defendant. In addition to accusing the defendant of misleading her about the condition of the car, she tells a lengthy story which suggests the defendant was also seeking to avoid taxes by registering the vehicle in another state. She then comments: Excerpt 14.6: Case 47 – P (plaintiff), J (judge), in Washington T1 P: The following day on 6-20 he took the vehicle to Montana and registered it in Montana state. Um I bought the vehicle from him on 8-28. Um I also asked him if he’d come down on the price and he answered “not a snowball’s chance in hell”. T2 J: What was the price ma’am. What was the price? T3 P: Um $9,500. I asked him to come down to 7,000 he said “not a snowball’s chance in hell”. Across her extended testimony, the defendant employs many moves to highlight the bad actions of the defendant. One device illustrated in this short excerpt is to report his speech in an exchange with her: “I also asked him if he’d come down on the price and he answered, ‘not a snowball’s chance in hell’”. Notably, she repeats the defendant’s use of the idiomatic phrase “not a snowball’s chance in hell” a second time. Her use of reported speech not only suggests that she is presenting the facts and recounting exactly what was said but also builds a portrait of a seller who was intransigent in responding to her and not at all polite. This negative portrait is further burnished by virtue of the reported speech being an idiomatic phrase, a discourse move that is particularly difficult to dispute (Drew and Holt, 1989). The plaintiff uses the words of the defendant to implicitly assess his unreasonableness and underscore his problematic way of handling the negotiation of the price of the car.

14.5 A strategy (relatively) unique to small claims disputes In addition to discourse devices that are common in many kinds of conflict exchanges, there is a discourse practice that is part of conflict narrating that happens because it is a court setting. That practice is the use of legal language, or less frequently, a fully formed legal style – what some scholars refer to as a register – to advance a party’s position. Features of a legal style include long, complex sentences, conjoined phrases, nominalisation, frequent passive sentences and a large and distinct lexicon (Tiersma, 2008). As noted previously, Conley and O’Barr (1990a) identify two different litigant styles: rule-based and relationally oriented. They find that litigants with business backgrounds were more likely to use the rule-based legal style and speakers using this style were also 278

Discourse in small claims hearings

more likely to succeed. Litigants who use the rule-based style highlight in their speech the issues perceived to be directly related to what the court must decide. In addition to limiting the topic to the designated issues, a central way to perform a rule-based style is to use legal terms such as “lease”, “contract”, “treble damages”, “in arrears” and “perjury”. The greater likelihood of a positive outcome for speakers using this style is in line with what speech accommodation theory (Giles et al., 1987; Shepherd, Giles and LePoire, 2001) would predict: communicators who take on discourse features of the more powerful conversational partner are likely to be evaluated more positively. An example of a relatively full-blown legal style is seen in Excerpt 14.7. In this case, two male college students, now the plaintiffs, are asking for money to cover several months’ past rent that a female roommate, now the defendant, has not paid. The defendant testified that she was not liable for the rent because she followed the appropriate procedures identified in Colorado state law under the category of a domestic abuse or domestic violence victim. Put more simply, she argued that because she was a victim of “domestic abuse”, her vacation of the shared apartment and non-payment of additional rent was appropriate under Colorado law. Her reason for claiming to be a victim of domestic abuse was that when she was at work one night, one of the plaintiffs broke her bedroom door, which was directly off the living room. According to the plaintiff-roommate, he had been roughhousing with a friend and crashed into her bedroom door, broke it and got his blood on the door. The defendant describes what happened to the door as an “attack” on herself, offering it as evidence that she was a victim of domestic abuse and was living in an unsafe environment. Consider how the defendant uses not simply a handful of legal terms, but a full-blown legal register to argue that her actions were appropriate. Excerpt 14.7: Case 21 – defendant, in Colorado Following the meeting that took place between Office of Student Conduct and my former roommates and the issuance of the letter from Peter [legal staff in the office of student conduct] I have had no contact with either of them. And um my defense is that according to Colorado State Law um if a tenant to a residential rental agreement or lease agreement notifies the landlord in writing that he or she is the victim of domestic violence or domestic abuse and provides to the landlord evidence of domestic violence or domestic abuse in the form of a police report written within the prior 60 days or a valid protection order, and the residential tenant seeks to vacate the premises due to fear of imminent danger for self or children because of the domestic violence or domestic abuse, then the residential tenant may terminate the residential rental agreement or lease agreement and vacate the premises without further obligation except as otherwise provided. Uh if a tenant to a residential rental agreement or lease agreement terminates the residential rental agreement or lease agreement and vacates the premises pursuant to par- paragraph A of this subsection two then the tenant shall be responsible for one month’s rent following vacation of the premises, which amount shall be due in payable to the landlord within 90 days after the tenant vacates the premises. And I paid that November rent. In her story, one she had written in advance and received approval from the judge to read because she did not feel she could speak extemporaneously, we see a good example of what a rule-based, legal style sounds like. The defendant presents the judge with information related to “Colorado State Law”, “residential rental agreement[s]” and “domestic abuse” requirements. She uses long complex sentences with conjoined phrases (e.g. “residential 279

Karen Tracy and Danielle M. Hodge

rental agreement or lease agreement”) and, rather than using pronouns to refer back to people and things as is typical in other forms of talk and writing, she repeats the identifying nouns phrases. Her testimony focuses on the key legal issues of her responsibility as a tenant and why she should not be obligated to pay additional rent given her adherence to legal rules. The details she introduces specifically address her actions and obligations as a tenant at that time within the confines of the law. The account for her actions references the responsibilities of a tenant as such: “notif[ying] the landlord in writing”, “provid[ing] to the landlord evidence of domestic violence or domestic abuse in the form of a police report” and being “responsible for one month’s rent following vacation of the premises”. She largely avoids relational discourse moves such as inserting extraneous background information. Moreover, in addition to her account being attentive to key legal questions, she also uses formulations that are rare in everyday exchanges but common in written and oral legal discourse. She “notifies” rather than “tells”, “vacates” rather than “leaves” and is “in fear of imminent danger” rather than “afraid she’s going to be beaten up”. Although this litigant employed an extended legal register – that is, a rule-based account (Conley and O’Barr, 1990a, 1990b) – she was not successful in defending her actions. She did not fully understand the law and how it defined issues. Thus, while a rule-based style may improve success, it does not ensure success. In announcing his decision, the judge summarises the key issue in the following way: Excerpt 14.8: Case 21 – judge, in Colorado So the basis is whether um as set forth in the statutes there was domestic abuse. Uh to reiterate a person who is a victim of domestic violence or desti- domestic abuse may be released from a lease if uh they had been such a victim, um they get a police report, and then they report that to the landlord and pay one month’s rent. She did call the police. The police uh indicated there was no criminal conduct. And Ms L did uh pay the one month rent. The question is whether she should be released from th- the lease based on the objective facts of this case. Quoting from the same statutes as the defendant had about domestic violence, the judge then follows the quote with what he asserts to be the correct interpretation of domestic abuse and domestic violence. The judge highlights that “domestic abuse means any act, attempted act, or threatened act of violence, stalking, harassment, or coercion that is committed by any person against another person”. Because the attack was not against her but made on the defendant’s possession – i.e. the door to her bedroom – the judge constructs her narrative as “subjective fear” and the situation as having no “objective basis for her to terminate” the lease. The judge rules in the plaintiff’s favour. Except in cases where an attorney was present, a litigant using such a full-blown legal style was unusual. More common was for disputants to use a few legal terms. For terms that are part of everyday language as well as the legal register, it became apparent that disputants did not necessarily understand that a term might have a different legal meaning than the everyday one. Excerpt 25.9 illustrates the misuse of a legal term that is also an everyday one. The exchange comes from the case of the disputing female neighbours seen in Excerpt 14.3. The plaintiff is asking for $3,000 to pay for her hospital bills, lost wages and court costs. She claims that the defendant assaulted her at the convenience store/gas station, which caused a seizure that evening. Because she is an epileptic, she views the defendant’s grabbing of her neck and subsequent choking as the cause of a seizure and the needed hospital visit. 280

Discourse in small claims hearings

Although the plaintiff and defendant agree that there was an altercation, their differing versions of the story show little resemblance to each other, each placing blame squarely on the other party. What is particularly interesting is the plaintiff’s use and interpretation of the legal term “assault” to label the defendant’s action, in relation to how the judge understood the term. Excerpt 14.9: Case 36 – plaintiff, in Michigan I’m an epileptic. She had me by my throat like this and was shaking my head back and forth [uses illustrative gestures]. They asked if I felt that I needed to go to the amb- you know to the hospital at that time. They were trying to talk me out of anything, pressing any charges against her. I don’t know what was said between her and the police. They told me that I didn’t have a case against her. We were right underneath the video camera at the gas station when the whole assault took place. The defendant begins by using the membership term “epileptic” to categorise herself. This term helps the plaintiff increase the seriousness of the defendant’s actions, much as one can increase the reprehensibility of a violent action by describing victims as “women” and “children” rather than “men” or “soldiers”. The actions of the defendant are described as “had me by the throat” and “shaking my head back and forth”. The woman could have described what happened as a “fight” but by labelling the defendant’s actions as an “assault” she implies that the blame should go to the defendant. In addition, by using a term that has a technical legal meaning – that is, the name for a crime – she strengthens the sense of the other’s culpability. The judge, though, rejects her description as legally warranted. Earlier in the trial, a store clerk was reported to have initially assumed the two women were playing around rather than having a fight or one attacking the other. Excerpt 14.10 occurred soon after the plaintiff claims that the defendant testified to having committed the assault. Excerpt 14.10: Case 36 – P (plaintiff), D (defendant), J (judge), in Michigan T1 P: Which she admitted to that. Which she just admitted to. T2 J: What do you mean admitted? T3 P: She just admitted right there that she grabbed me by the throat. T4 J: But not assaulted, I mean, the witness hereT5 P: Grabbing someone by the throat is not assault? T6 J: Well, not enough to charge with I guess. Did you grab her by the throat? T7 D: After she had run into me, yeah I did. T8 J: Okay, see there we have it. It’s impossible to figure out. I don’t know what happened here. There is no way for me to figure out what happened. The two stories contradict each other OK? Um also I’ve got a real question as to whether you were damaged in the amount of $3,000, but be that as it may, you can’t win on that claim unless you can show that there was an actual assault here. The way the judge interprets the understanding of assault is made clear when he states that throat-grabbing does not count as “assault”. The plaintiff questions the judge’s interpretation and application of the term assault when she says, “Grabbing someone by the throat is not assault?” He explains his rejection of her definition by claiming “well, not enough to charge with I guess”. Because the police did not take the encounter between the plaintiff and the defendant seriously enough to follow up and encourage the pressing of charges, the 281

Karen Tracy and Danielle M. Hodge

judge does not feel it is appropriate to describe what happened as an assault. His understanding of the term “assault” is also seen when he begins to announce his decision. He states that “you can’t win on that claim unless you can show that there was an actual assault here”. The description of the attack provided by the plaintiff does not fit the legal meaning of the term “assault” and hence her claim is dismissed. In addition to legal terms being used and misused, litigants also make use of a concept that applies in regular civil trials in which attorneys do the speaking for plaintiffs and defendants. The right to be compensated monetarily “for pain and suffering” is a mainstay of regular civil cases – i.e. those above the small claim limit – that involve, for instance, defective equipment, incompetent service by doctors or injuries sustained in auto accidents. Judges generally do not regard arguments about pain and suffering as relevant in small claims cases, but litigants do not know this. In their testimony, litigants will bring up the hardship they incurred in having to take a day off work, drive a long distance or to find and prepare all kinds of documents to legitimate their right to more money. They also claim that the emotional distress engendered by the conflict warrants some amount of money for that distress. Excerpt 14.11 illustrates an example of this discourse move. Excerpt 14.11: Case 9 – HA (plaintiff), J (judge), in Colorado T1 HA: … This is a little, it’s very emotional for me. T2 J: Well, um, Let-I. That’s fine, I’m n- I’m not worried about your emotions. What I’m worried about is my understanding. So, if she’s agreeing that she owes you. T3 HA: Right. T4 J: $1,849.03, do you think she owes you more than that? T5 HA: I do, because for the, for the pain and suffering and then for the court cost. Because I had to file in Los Angeles. T6 J: OK. The “pain and suffering” argument is not unusual in small claims court, and, as mentioned, it is regularly disallowed by the judge. In excerpt 14.12, the judge directs a question to the defendant who had filed a countersuit. The defendant who was the plaintiff’s landlord asked for money from his former tenant for the trouble caused to him by the plaintiff bringing the suit. Excerpt 14.12: Case 4 – RB (plaintiff), ML (defendant), J (judge), in Colorado T1 J: OK, do you think that he owes you any money? T2 RB: Actually, sirT3 ML: With- with all this time wasted, I think he owes me something. T4 J: People don’t get compensated for coming to court, that’s part of the business of- of litigation, is you don’t get- the only time you get compensated are for example lost work if you’re injured in a car wreck, then you can get compensated but not- not as a litigant in this type of case. Neither side gets paid for coming to court. So neither- neither side can be compensated for coming to court, that’s- that’s not compensable. The judge makes it clear that compensation is not given for “coming to court”. He then acknowledges the circumstances where litigants would get compensated such as “lost work if you’re injured in a car wreck”. Claiming that being in court is wasting the defendant’s 282

Discourse in small claims hearings

time and should be compensated is not a valid argument. As the judge says, “that’s part of the business of- of litigation”.

14.6 Conclusions In this chapter, we have shown that disputes in small claims court differ from conflicts elsewhere, such as ones that occur between intimates or people working together. Because of the institutional mooring of small claims with judges as a key third party, litigants are required to “do conflict” in an institutionally specific way. Disputants are expected to follow strict turn-taking rules, to limit the topical focus and to use certain formulations while avoiding others. Because most disputants are unfamiliar with court rules, the unfolding of a conflict in small claims court includes frequent comments from the judge seeking to guide litigants towards the expected style. Litigants express themselves in small claims conflicts in a way that is rarely seen outside law contexts: they make use of legal terms, sometimes correctly and sometimes not, that every now and then may be embedded in a full-blown legal argument style. Plaintiffs and defendants also use arguments to justify awarding money to themselves that are common in other civil settings but are given little or no weight in the small claims setting. Yet, although there are clear differences in how conflict gets done in this particular court compared with other courts and in contrast with other settings, what is equally striking is how persons’ communicative moves draw heavily on everyday ways of doing conflict. Disputants give considerable attention to displaying their own moral reasonableness and the other person’s immorality, unfairness or unreasonableness. They work to accomplish these morally freighted goals for themselves and others by making use of discourse devices that are everywhere in ordinary conversation. They report their own and other’s speech to persuade of their own fairness. They formulate claims about their own goodness or the other’s lack of it using extreme terms and they select terms to refer to people in telling their stories that enhance their version of events. In this situation of institutionalised conflict, small claims litigants may not be able to name and describe what they are doing discursively, but these conflict-doers are experts in using language to implicate their own good moral character while implying its absence in the party they oppose.

Notes 1 See nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/small-claims-suits-how-much-30031.html. 2 In addition to the central data, which are the tapes and transcripts of 55 small claims hearings, the first author has observed small claims hearings one or two times per month for the past eight years. This observation occurs before and after small claims cases she is waiting to mediate or where mediation disputants do not settle and go to trial. This extended experience of watching small claims trials informs chapter descriptions of discourse actions as frequent or rare. 3 Italics are used in transcripts to highlight turns focused on in the analysis. Small claims hearings are public documents. We have, however, used pseudonyms or initials for judges and litigants since our focus is on discourse moves. 4 Thanks to the editors for noticing how this formulation may lead to a less preferred accounting style.

References Atkinson, J.M. and Drew, P. 1979. Order in court: The organisation of verbal interaction in judicial settings. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Brenneis, D. 1988. Language and disputing. Annual Review of Anthropology. 17, pp.221–37. 283

Karen Tracy and Danielle M. Hodge

Buttny, R. 1997. Reported speech in talking race on campus. Human Communication Research. 23, pp.477–506. Conley, J.M. and O’Barr, W.M. 1990a. Rules versus relationships. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Conley, J.M. and O’Barr, W.M. 1990b. Rules versus relationships in small claims disputes. In: Grimshaw, A.D. ed. Conflict talk: sociolinguistic investigations of arguments in conversations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.178–96. Drew, P. and Holt, E. 1989. Complainable matters: the use of idiomatic expressions in making complaints. Social Problems. 35, pp.398–417. Edwards, D. 2000. Extreme case formulations: softeners, investment, and doing nonliteral. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 33(4), pp.347–73. Eelen, G. 2001. A critique of politeness theories. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome Publishing. Felstiner, L.F., Abel, R. L. and Sarat, A. 1980–1981. The emergence and transformation of disputes: naming, blaming, claiming … Law & Society Review. 15(3/4), pp.631–54. Garcia, A. 1991. Dispute resolutions without disputing: how the interactional organization of mediation hearings minimizes argument. American Sociological Review. 56, pp.818–35. Giles, H. A., Mulac, J., Bradac, J. and Johnson, P. 1987. Speech accommodation theory: the first decade and beyond. In: McLaughlin, M. ed. Communication yearbook 10. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, pp.13–48. Harris, S. 2011. The limits of politeness revisited. In: Linguistic Research Group ed. Discursive approaches to politeness. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp.85–108. Holt, E. 1996. Reporting on talk: The use of direct reported speech in conversation. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 29, pp.219–45. Holt, E. 2000. Reporting and reacting: concurrent responses to reported speech. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 33, pp.425–54. Housley, W. and Fitzgerald, R. 2007. Categorisation, interaction, policy, and debate. Critical Discourse Studies. 4, pp.187–206. Housley, W. and Fitzgerald, R. 2009. Membership categorisation, culture and norms in action. Discourse & Society. 20, pp.345–62. Housley, W. and Fitzgerald, R. 2015. Introduction to membership categorisation analysis. In: Fitzgerald, R. and Housley, W. eds. Advances in membership categorisation analysis. London: Sage, pp.1–22. Mather, L. and Yngvesson, B. 1980. Language, audience, and the transformation of disputes. Law & Society Review. 15(3/4), pp.775–821. Niemi, K. and Bateman, A. 2014. Cheaters and stalkers: accusations in a classroom. Discourse Studies. 17(1), pp.83–98. Pomerantz, A. 1986. Extreme case formulations: a way of legitimising claims. Human Studies. 9, pp.219–29. Putnam, L.L. and Poole, M.S. 1987. Conflict and negotiation. In: Jablin, F.M., Putnam, L.L., Roberts, K.H. and Porter, L.W. eds. Handbook of organisational communication. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, pp.549–99. Robles, J. 2015. Extreme case (re)formulation as a practice for making hearably racist talk repairable. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 34(4), pp.390–409. Ruhnka, J. C. and Weller, S. 1978. Small claims courts: a national examination. Williamsburg, VA: National Center for State Courts. Sacks, H. 1992. Lectures on conversation. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Schiffrin, D. 1984. Jewish argument as sociability. Language in Society. 13, pp.311–35. Shepard, C., Giles, H. and Le Poire, B. A. 2001. Communication accommodation theory. In: Robinson, W.P. and Giles, H. eds. The new handbook of language and social psychology. Chichester, UK: Wiley, pp.33–56. Sidnell, J. 2004. There’s risks in everything: extreme case formulations and accountability in inquiry testimony. Discourse & Society. 15, pp.745–66. 284

Discourse in small claims hearings

Sifianou, M. 2012. Disagreements, face and politeness. Journal of Pragmatics. 44, pp.1554–64. Stokoe, E. 2003. Mothers, single women and sluts: gender morality and membership categorisation in neighbour disputes. Feminism and Psychology. 13, pp.317–44. Stokoe, E. 2009. Doing actions with identity categories: complaints and denials in neighbour disputes. Text and Talk. 29(1), pp.75–97. Tannen, D. (1989). Talking voices: repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Tiersma, P. 2008. The nature of legal language. In: Gibbons, J. and Turrell, M.T. eds. Dimensions of forensic linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp.7–25. Tracy, K. 1995. Action-implicative discourse analysis. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 14, pp.195–215. Tracy, K. 1997. Colloquium: dilemmas of academic discourse. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Tracy, K. 2005. Reconstructing communicative practices: action-implicative discourse analysis. In: Fitch, K. and Sanders, R. eds. Handbook of language and social interaction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp.301–19. Tracy, K. 2012. Dogmatic dialogue: essential qualities of judicial opinion-writing. In: Cooren, F. and Letourneau, A. eds. (Re)presentations and dialogue. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp.37–58. Tracy, K. and Caron, M. 2017. How the language style of small claims judges does ideological work. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 36(3), pp.321–42. Tracy, K. and Hodge, D. 2018. Judge discourse moves that enact and endanger procedural justice. Discourse & Society. 29(1), pp.63–85. Tracy, K. and Robles, J.S. 2013. Everyday talk: building and reflecting identities. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Guilford. Vuchinich, S. 1990. The sequential organisation of closings in verbal family conflict. In: Grimshaw, A. ed. Conflict talk: sociolinguistic investigations of arguments in conversations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp.118–30. Walker, A.G. 1986. The verbatim record: the myth and the reality. In: Fisher, S. and Todd, A.D. eds. Discourse and institutional authority: medicine, education and law. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, pp.205–22.

285

15 Leadership in conflict Disagreement and conflict in a start-up team Christian J. Schmitt and Rosina Márquez Reiter

15.1 Introduction This chapter examines how the members of a start-up team deal with a particular ­conflict across time and media. The start-up team constitutes a contemporary business setting without a formally assigned hierarchy or leadership roles. As no member has formal decisionmaking authority over the others, leadership within the team has to be negotiated and disagreements are to be expected. The chapter examines a specific incident of conflict – a disagreement regarding the name for the prospective start-up. It tracks and captures the emergence of conflict across a sequence of computer-mediated interactions on different channels (email and Skype) from its beginning in an email exchange until its emergence and resolution in a Skype conversation. A relational continuity perspective (Sigman, 1991) is employed to show how the participants orient to past and future communication in their current interactions. This allows us to examine the contextual factors under which the conflict emerges.

15.2 Previous research on conflictive disagreements The topic of conflict has received much attention by discourse analysts. Seminal examples include “conflict talk” (Grimshaw, 1990), “adversative episode” (Eisenberg and Garvey, 1981), “conflict episode” (Gruber, 1998), “quarrel” (Antaki, 1994), “dispute” (Brenneis, 1988) and “disagreement” (Pomerantz, 1984). Of particular relevance for this study are the concepts of conflict talk and disagreement. Grimshaw (1990) used the term “conflict talk” to describe discursive events in which two or more parties hold opposing positions towards a specific issue. The social actors involved work towards accomplishing certain ends, tied to their reconcilable or irreconcilable positions. Conflict talk can have certain outcomes, including but not limited to one party’s “victory”, “defeat” or a “draw”. In addition, conflict talk is not confined to a given act, stretch of talk or issue, or restricted to a specific communication channel. This is particularly relevant for this study. The conflict among the spatially separated German team members of the start-up we examine takes place across time and media, thus permeating both spoken and 286

Disagreement and conflict in a start-up

written communication. The chapter acknowledges the dynamically emergent character of conflict as “a process, not a state” (Brenneis, 1996, p.43). It sees conflict as a relational process co-constructed between two or more participants across time and media. The addition of time and media is important as previous interactions between the participants can be seen as potentially preceding the conflictive exchanges examined and influencing their future encounters. Sigman’s (1991) concept of spatiotemporal relational continuity suggests that (continuous) social relationships are affected by prior, present and future exchanges, including experiences across time and space. It thus offers us a fresh lens from which to explore the dynamics of conflict (talk). This chapter shows how the behaviour between the team members is influenced by their previous exchanges across different communication channels and what the members orient to as future communication, with special attention to disagreements. Disagreements can be generally understood “as the expression of a view that differs from that expressed by another speaker” (Sifianou, 2012, p.1554) or as contrastive utterances (Pomerantz, 1984). Contrastive utterances can be considered strong disagreements when they “contain exclusively disagreement components” and no “agreement components”, that is, where “a conversant utters an evaluation which is directly contrastive with the prior evaluation” (Pomerantz, 1984, p.74). Weak disagreements, on the other hand, contain “disagreement components […] formed as partial agreements/partial disagreements” (Pomerantz, 1984, p.74). Ishihara (2016, pp.32-3) distinguishes three categories of disagreements: mitigated, unmitigated and aggravated disagreement. Mitigated disagreements often contain hedges, silence, downtoners or certain modals (i.e. Pomerantz’ weak disagreements), whereas unmitigated disagreements (i.e. Pomerantz’ strong disagreements) are produced without delay or mitigating devices. The third category, aggravated disagreements are produced by adding upgraders. This additional subdivision of strong disagreement enables us to capture the directness/explicitness previously identified in German disagreement (see House, 2006; Kotthoff, 1993; Stadler, 2006). Disagreements have thus been generally conceived of as a potentially delicate marked reaction, a dispreferred second (Pomerantz, 1984). Participants would accordingly seek agreement and avoid (strong) disagreement. However, numerous studies have reported strong or aggravated disagreement as unmarked and even expected in certain settings (see e.g. Goodwin [1990] on dispute management among Black children; Schiffrin [1984] on sociable arguments within Jewish communities; Tannen [1981] on conversational conventions within the New York Jewish community). For example, Kotthoff’s (1993) study of German and Anglo-American dispute settings found instances of a structural shift towards a preference for disagreement. The contestants were expected to defend their position and not suddenly seek agreement. In addition, aggravated disagreements were found to be prominent among German men (Kotthoff, 1993, p.214). Waldron and Applegate (1994, p.4) suggested that disagreements should be considered as “a form of conflict” as they are “characterized by incompatible goals, negotiation, and the need to coordinate self and other actions”. Indeed, Kakavá (1993, p.36) considered disagreement to constitute “a potential generator of conflict” that “can lead to a form of confrontation that may develop into an argument or dispute”. She further argued that disagreement could also “constitute conflict since an argument is composed of a series of disputable opinions or disagreements” (p.36). Disagreements may thus be understood as part of Grimshaw’s (1990) conflict talk, assuming that they are being exchanged openly through discourse and not held back strategically by participants. Disagreements can often be found in the initiatory structures of conflict talk (see e.g. Goodwin, 1982), as an opposition marker, where opponents respond to statements with disagreement (example: Student A: 287

Schmitt and Márquez Reiter 

That exam was so difficult. Student B: No, it wasn’t). However, this can be reversed after self-deprecating statements, where disagreement would be the preferred response. Here, agreement can constitute a dispreferred second (Pomerantz, 1984) and thus potentially initiate conflict (example: Student A: That exam was so difficult, I’ll probably fail it. Student B: Yes, you will). In light of this, not all instances of disagreement should be considered inherently conflictive. The production of disagreements can pose the beginning of a conflict talk event. It reveals participants’ opposing positions on a conversational level. Therefore, it can allow previously underlying conflicts to emerge in discourse, as indeed it does in the data examined in this chapter. Accordingly, disagreement can be regarded as a spatiotemporal projection of conflict, particularly in a leaderless setting, such as the start-up team we examine here. The team members’ alternative positions have implications for their interpersonal relations. Indeed, the expression of disagreement has been traditionally understood as a potential face-threatening act (FTA) or even as potentially impolite (see Goffman, 1967 on face; Brown and Levinson, 1978, 1987 on politeness theory) in so far as they show little consideration for the recipient’s face needs. To mitigate the face-threatening potential of disagreements on the addressee’s “positive face-want” (Brown and Levinson, 1987, p.66), politeness theory proposes that speakers maintain common ground by seeking agreement and/or avoiding disagreement (Brown and Levinson, 1987).1 A strong disagreement would thus, in theory, have a bigger potential to become face-threatening than a weak disagreement (Pomerantz, 1984). In a professional setting, such as the start-up team of this study, special importance can be attributed to an individual’s professional face, that is, an individual’s perceived competence in an institutional role identity (see Márquez Reiter, 2009). As the start-up team members hold no formal authority over each other, an interlocutor’s professional face poses an essential resource for individual leadership. The perception of individual competence would increase perceived influence on decision-making, potentially amplifying thus the individual voice during the negotiation of conflict. However, a strong interpersonal relationship between the interlocutors might warrant the expression of disagreements. In this sense, certain instances of (conflict) talk between close friends might exhibit a high incidence and in some cases preference for unmitigated or aggravated disagreement. Prior research has shown that family or friendship ties support the expression of strong disagreements (see e.g. Habib, 2008; Tannen, 2002). Indeed, Wolfson’s (1988) bulge theory suggests that people tend to disagree more with those with whom they hold a close interpersonal relationship (cf. Lim and Bowers, 1991). This short excursion into the literature has provided some insights into the complex relationship between conflict and disagreement. In the next section, we will introduce the participant team, the data and its collection. This will be followed by an analysis of selected exchanges, taken across different computer-mediated communication (CMC) channels, where we explore how the members manage conflict and disagreement with attention to face concerns and disagreement strength. The examples will be presented according to their chronological occurrence to take the reader through the conflict as it unfolds.

15.3 Data and methodology The data for this study was taken from a corpus that comprises the discursive exchanges between the members of a German start-up over a period of six months. This includes communication on different synchronous (Skype calls) and asynchronous (Email, WhatsApp) channels, as well as instances of unmediated face-to-face communication. In total, the 288

Disagreement and conflict in a start-up

data comprises 47 audio-recordings (e.g. of meetings) totalling over 36 mediated and nonmediated hours of interaction, over 200 emails, over 1,000 WhatsApp messages as well as numerous (digital) documents related to the start-up. The focus is on the exchanges related to the selection of the company name – arguably, a critical moment in the life cycle of start-ups. The data consists of a Google calendar excerpt, three emails and six excerpts from a (voice only) Skype conference. These examples portray the procedural construction of the conflict, as it unfolds across time and media. The participant team consists of three members partaking in a German governmentbacked founding scheme with the aim to establish a business.2 The incident we focus on took place six weeks prior to the official start of the funded period. At this point, the team had obtained full grant clearance and the team members can expect their grant-based collaboration to span over the funded period. This poses an incentive to reach consensus during conflictive situations, as a fall out or the team’s disbanding may jeopardise the team’s funding and damage the professional face of its members. Entrepreneurial teams – especially in the pre-start-up phase, that is, prior to the official establishment of the firm – are commonly characterised by a lack of hierarchy and hierarchically attributed leadership roles.3 As no member holds formal authority over the others, the use of authority-based conflict management strategies (see Holmes and Marra, 2004) is limited. A particular subcategory of the modern entrepreneurial team is referred to as virtual (entrepreneurial) team. It “consist[s] of geographically distributed individuals (entrepreneurs) who interact through interdependent tasks and are led by common (entrepreneurial) interests and/or goals” (Matlay and Westhead, 2005, p.281). As a result of this spatial separation, a large proportion of the members’ interactions do not take place via face-to-face interaction, but via CMC (e.g. emails, instant messaging applications, video- or voice-conferencing). The entrepreneurial team in this study could be regarded as a (semi) virtual team, as one of the members was geographically separated from the others. At the time of the data collection, Christian was located in the UK, while the other two members, Alex and Thomas, were in Germany. As a result, the communication between Christian and the other members, which involved working on interdependent tasks, exclusively took place via CMC. Thomas and Christian shared a long-term friendship as “best friends”, while the respective relationship to Alex could be categorised as mainly project-centred. Thomas and Christian had been present in the earliest stages of planning and had filed a patent together, while Alex was later added by Thomas during the grant application stage. Thomas knew Alex as a co-worker and a classmate from his studies. The two, albeit not close friends, were thus well acquainted with each other. Alex and Christian, in contrast, had just met twice in real life at the time of the data collection. The interpersonal relationships in the team further affected the frequency of certain interactions as well as the participation framework within these exchanges. Christian and Thomas would have frequent and spontaneous Skype calls between them (upon seeing each other available on Skype). In contrast, Christian and Alex would interact in prescheduled appointments, which typically also included Thomas (see Example 15.1). The data was collected through participant observation by the first author using an (auto-)ethnographic approach (see e.g. Chang, 2008). Christian had the status of a “complete member researcher” as he was both a researcher and a full member of the participant group (see Adler and Adler, 1987). This participation status granted him access to the closed setting (see O’Reilly, 2009) of start-ups and enabled the collection of numerous instances of communication. Ethical clearance had been sought prior to the study. 289

Schmitt and Márquez Reiter 

15.4 Analysis The data analysis is approached from a general discursive perspective that draws on interactional pragmatics and is informed by impoliteness research. Ethnographic insights will be supplied to set the background for the analysis and to provide the necessary contextual information to understand certain observations. Detailed transcripts of the Skype conversations have been produced to portray the content and delivery of speech following GAT2 transcription conventions (Selting et al., 2009, 2011). To decide the company name, a Skype meeting, involving all members, had been scheduled via email, using Google calendar (Example 15.1). The purpose of the meeting is reaffirmed by Thomas (Example 15.2), who suggests that the members prepare some ideas for the meeting. Alex follows this request by suggesting two different names and logo designs for the meeting (Example 15.3). Thomas responds by expressing strong support for one of the names (Example 15.4) but Christian expresses disagreement with the endorsed name before the scheduled Skype conference in a Skype call with Thomas (Example 15.5). The two then engage in conflict talk (Example 15.6). Eventually, Thomas voices agreement with Christian’s suggested strategy, which entails a rejection of Alex’s proposals. He then expresses major face concerns about how to communicate this decision to Alex (Example 15.7). In the later Skype call between all three members, Thomas and Christian aim to avoid initiating conflict by staying away from topicalising the quality of the proposal and instead praise Alex for his initiative (Example 15.8). Upon introduction of Thomas’ and Christian’s alternative strategy, Alex is reluctant to abandon his position, which results in conflict talk between him and Christian (Example 15.9). Eventually, Alex voices approval of the new approach and this helps to bring the conflict talk to a close (Example 15.10).

15.4.1 Email Example 15.1 Google calendar invitation (translated from German) When: Thu 19. Mar 2015 21:00 - 22:00 Berlin Where: At home in front of the computer (map) Calendar: [email protected] Who: Christian – Organiser Alex – Creator Thomas Example 15.1 depicts the Google calendar schedule that was attached to a corresponding email entitled “Skype conference”. The conference had been scheduled with a view to finding a name for the prospective company. The location of the meeting – “at home in front of the computer” – constitutes a humorous reference to the virtual nature of the group’s communication. As observed, all members consented to the appointment and are listed as attendees. The calendar lists Alex as the creator, as he had initially scheduled the appointment using his Google calendar account. Christian is listed as the organiser, as he had rescheduled the time of the meeting. The calendar schedule serves to ratify all team members as participants (Goffman, 1981) in the task of choosing a company name. It could

290

Disagreement and conflict in a start-up

be regarded as a preliminary, i.e. an action that should not be regarded as self-serving, yet as a preface, leading up to a projected action (Schegloff, 2007), in this case, the discussion of the company’s name. It constitutes a preface to a potential conflict as it sets the stage for an encounter where individual parties are likely to hold different positions towards an issue (Grimshaw, 1990). Indeed, as we will see in Example 15.5, the participants orient to their alternative positions from the very beginning. Example 15.2 Thomas’  response Von: Thomas Gesendet: Montag, 16. März 2015 19:30 An: Christian Cc: Alex Betreff: Re: Skype Konferenz Läuft ;) macht euch schonmal Gedanken zu möglichen Marken/Fimennamen!!! Great ;) give some thought already to potential brand/company names!!! The example depicts Thomas’ response to the calendar invite. Notably, his message does not open with a greeting. This could respond to the fact that the initial invitation did not contain a greeting either and could be considered typical of prompt responses between people on familiar terms (Crystal, 2006, p.105). In this case, “Läuft” and a winking emoticon could be viewed as Thomas’ second pair part response to the initial invitation.4 Such verbal confirmation of his attendance might appear slightly redundant, given that he additionally confirmed his attendance via the calendar service. It does, however, display his personal commitment to the team. Thomas also uses his response to give a directive to the other members: he asks the group to prepare for the meeting by giving some thought to potential names for the prospective company. The particle “mal” acts as padding. It reduces the level of coerciveness inherent in his directive (Márquez Reiter, 2000) and suggests that the task in question is comparatively minor (Thurmair, 1989, p.185). Example 15.3 Alex’s proposal Von: Alex Gesendet: Donnerstag, 19. März 2015 10:17 An: Thomas; Christian Betreff: Vorschläge Namen / Logo Hi, Hi, schaut euch mal die Dokumente an. Have a look at the documents. Lasst mal jede Seite einzeln auf euch wirken … Let each page sink in individually …

291

Schmitt and Márquez Reiter 

Wir besprechen dann heute Abend was ihr davon haltet bzw. ob ihr euch das We’ll then discuss this evening what you think about it, or if you auch so oder so ähnlich vorstellt … also imagine it like this or similar … Mit freundlichen Grüßen,  Yours sincerely,  Alex Müller



Alex’s message opens with the unpersonalised greeting “Hi”, directed at the other members, which he included as addressees. He attaches the relevant documents containing the different logo ideas and font styles for the two potential company names he has designed. Alex announces that feedback would be discussed later that day. By referencing the upcoming Skype conference, he restates and reaffirms the preceding arrangement, thus reminding the others of their agreed attendance and topic of discussion (Márquez Reiter, 2011). Alex orients to the agenda of the upcoming meeting as a “know-in-advance item” (see Svennevig, 2012, p.65). This constitutes an example of relational continuity within the team and how communicative events are linked to preceding and upcoming exchanges (Sigman, 1991). Alex expands his request for feedback by attaching a subordinate clause “or if you also imagine it like this or similar …”, where he takes a weaker stance on the design proposals while conveying an inclusive attitude. This strategy might serve to lower his own accountability and protect his professional face in case of rejection (Márquez Reiter, 2009). Alex closes the email with the expression “Mit freundlichen Grüßen” and his full name. This notably formal closing, which contrasts the informal language employed by Thomas (Example 15.2), can be attributed to his automatic signature and can consistently be found in all of Alex’s email within the corpus. Example 15.4 Thomas’  reaction to Alex’s proposal Von: Thomas Gesendet: Donnerstag, 19. März 2015 10:30 An: Alex Cc: Christian Betreff: Re: Vorschläge Namen / Logo Geil!!!! Awesome!!!! {Name A} ist auf jeden Fall schützenswert!!! {Name A} is absolutely worth registering!!! Hab schon mein Lieblingsschriftzug ausgesucht! I’ve already selected my favourite logo!

292

Disagreement and conflict in a start-up

The time stamps show that Thomas responded to the email 13 minutes after it had been sent. His omission of a greeting could be considered characteristic of the swiftness of his response which constitutes a second-pair part to Alex’s prior email. Thomas expresses a strong general positive endorsement with the informal term “Geil”. He then expresses strong agreement with one of the suggested names as “auf jeden Fall schützenswert”, which suggests that his support for the particular name would be strong enough to file for a trademark. This adds weight to his endorsement and could be regarded as making arrangements for future encounters (Sigman, 1991), namely the registration of trademarks. His extensive use of exclamation marks throughout his message, another common feature of informal email communication, adds emphasis and indicates his enthusiasm (Crystal, 2006, p.95). Thomas closes the email with the announcement that he has already selected his favourite logo. He fully endorses Alex’s position on the subject and signals that he is ready to move on the decision-making process: from finding to designing the name. By including Christian in the “cc” field, Thomas signals his stance with respect to the proposal and his position relative to the relationality in the group. This clear positioning contributes to the construction of a proposal-centred alliance between Thomas and Alex, which, in turn, puts conformity pressure on Christian to approve the proposal as well (see Skovholt and Svennevig, 2006). As a member of the team, Christian disapproved of both names and attached designs. This situation constituted the potential for conflict (talk) in that his position towards the proposals contrasted the position voiced by the rest of the group (Grimshaw, 1990). Nevertheless, Christian did not express his opposition via email, which would have revealed the underlying conflict to the other members. Part of the reason could be related to the intrinsic properties of email as a CMC channel and the affordance of the medium for conflict management (see Bradner, 2001; Gibson, 1977). When it comes to conflict resolution, email is often considered subpar compared with synchronous communication formats (e.g. face-to-face exchanges, phone calls or teleconferences) and might even lead to the escalation of disputes (see Friedman and Currall, 2003). Once a message had been sent, the expressed opinion could not simply be retracted and would alert the other participants to his opposing position. Christian’s disagreement would thus be on record. This may lead the other participants to enter the upcoming Skype conference orienting towards conflict, possibly with prepared responses and a hardened position. Disagreement might have been particularly problematic given Thomas’ previously expressed strong support, which contributed to the construction of an alliance between him and Alex. Christian did not reply to the message. He withheld his opinion until the upcoming Skype conference. His lack of response could be interpreted as unmarked in line with Alex’s request for feedback to be given in the subsequent conversation. However, as the next section reveals, it was oriented to as marked for Thomas in their upcoming exchange.

15.4.2 Skype Date: 19/03/2015 Duration: 62:50 Example 15.5 Christian’s vs Thomas’ positions on Alex’s proposal Christian was already on Skype 20 minutes before the scheduled meeting and, seeing that Thomas was online, he called him. As previously mentioned, as best friends

293

Schmitt and Márquez Reiter 

they would frequently have unscheduled calls. As the scheduled meeting with Alex approaches, Thomas asks Christian’s opinion on the proposals. ((…)) 0701 Thomas: geNAU; °h exactly 0702 und was HÄLtst du eigentlich jetzt zu:, and what do you now actually think about 0703 nur beVOR wir noch mit_m alex telefonieren, °h just before we call Alex 0704 Christian: ja, yes 0705 Thomas: ähm: von der iDEE {Name A}? erm about the idea {Name A} 0706 also ich find des nicht verKEHRT.=also; well I find it not bad well 0707 (1.6) 0708 Christian: EHRliche MEInung? honest opinion 0709 (1.1) 0710 Thomas:

c’mon yes of course honest opinion 0711 Christian: ziemlich beSCHEIden; pretty poor 0712 (0.8) 0713 Thomas: nu_waRUM, why 0714 (1.0) 0715 Christian: hm: verSCHIEdene GRÜN:de: also: hm different reasons well ((…))

Thomas asks for Christian’s opinion on Alex’s proposals prior to the scheduled conversation with him (ll.701–705). While he does not address the email explicitly, the keywords “Alex” (l.703) and “{Name A}” (l.705) offer a link between the previous and upcoming exchanges. This shows the continuous nature of the social relationship between the group members (Sigman, 1991) across time and (virtual) space and the way in which the participants orient to it. While referring to the proposals originated from the prior exchange (l.705), Thomas orients to the following encounter (l.703), placing thus the current exchange on an axis between them. Additionally, the reference of the upcoming encounter marks the issue as pressing, considering that Alex is expected to join the conversation within the next few minutes. Thomas’ support for the particular name is now voiced less strongly (cf. Example 15.4). He employs the double negative “nicht verKEHRT” (l.706), hedged by the repetition of “also” (l.706). This weaker position allows Thomas to protect his own professional face in case of disagreement. Thomas’ actions could be further interpreted as orienting to the topic as potentially interpersonally sensitive (Hansen and Márquez Reiter, 2016). This is evidenced by the long pause at l.707 indicating dispreference and upcoming disagreement (Pomerantz, 1984). Christian does not directly answer Thomas’ question, but 294

Disagreement and conflict in a start-up

instead asks him whether he should provide his honest opinion (l.708), thus also orientating to the sensitivity of the topic. The delicate or problematic nature of the projected disagreement lies in the face-related implications and the impact this would have for the working of the team. A strong negative assessment of the proposal would question Thomas’ judgement and his competence as a team member – i.e. his professional face. However, there is another facet to this question: Christian’s question would add weight to the upcoming disagreement and “rub in” his disagreement with Thomas’ assessment (see Schegloff, 2007, p.48). Accordingly, the close friendship between Thomas and Christian would allow for the expression of aggravated disagreement, or in this case “rubbing it in” as the risk of interpersonal cessation would not be great (see Wolfson, 1988). After a short pause (l.709), Thomas affirms that Christian should naturally express his honest opinion (l.710). Christian thus offers his opinion without further delay: a strong negative assessment of the idea (“ziemlich beSCHEIden”, l.711). The previous build-up and the use of the intensifier “ziemlich” (Smith et al., 2008, p.63) add further strength to the disagreement, upgrading it to that of an aggravated disagreement. It poses a challenge to Thomas’ professional face (Márquez Reiter, 2009), as it questions his competence in making appropriate decisions for the group. No further justification or rationale for this assessment is provided by Christian. At this point, his alternative position has been fully revealed to Thomas and the underlying conflict lies bare (Grimshaw, 1990). After another short pause (l.712), Thomas warrants a justification (l.713) on Christian’s part in support of his position (Antaki and Leudar, 1990). Christian thus sets out to provide support of his unfavourable assessment of the proposals (l.715), allowing Thomas to dispute it. Example 15.6 Thomas speaks up The example portrays a later stage in the Skype conversation between Thomas and Christian. At this point, Christian has presented support for his position, referring to a potentially unfavourable name perception in Germany. Thomas so far has remained silent. 0730 Christian: 0731 0732 0733 0734 0735 Thomas: 0736 0737 0738

((…)) ANgenommen wir heißen {Name C}; let’s suppose we were called {Name C} oder SONSTwas; (-) or whatever des WÄR jathis would DES wär doch deutlich GLAUBwürdiger.=oder? this would be way more credible, right als {Name A},(.) than {Name A} ja DES ((räuspert sich)) yes that ((clears throat)) da hast du schon RECHT; you’re right about that aber ich GLAU:B? °h (.) but I think da HAST du komplett RECHT;=gell? °h you’re completely right about that, right 295

Schmitt and Márquez Reiter 

0739 Christian: 0740 Thomas: 0741 Christian: 0742 0743

ja, yes aber ich GLAUB du denkst !ZU:! euroPÄisch; but I think you’re thinking too European !NEIN!. !NO! mir geht_s diREKT um die chiNE:sen; for me this is directly about the Chinese und ZWA:R, (.) in fact ((…))

As Christian argues against the proposals, he asserts that another option would be superior to the name previously supported by Thomas (ll.730–734). His statement is underscored by the modal particle “doch” and the tag question “oder” (l.733), which – by appealing to mutual knowledge – equals a call for Thomas to correct his position in alignment to Christian (Hagemann, 2009, p.170; Thurmair, 1989, p.112). Such use of assertives reflects a high confidence of the speaker in his knowledge base (Koshik, 2005). While Christian’s professional face serves as a resource to validate knowledge-based argumentation, this approach leaves his professional face vulnerable if the supported position and thus his competence is contested. As Thomas initiates a response, he interrupts his turn to clear his throat (l.735), which might be a pathological phenomenon, yet could potentially indicate his hesitation (Poyatos, 2002, p.126) regarding the upcoming interpersonally sensitive action. He then states that Christian would be right (l.736). The particle “schon” (l.736) is employed to partially acknowledge Christian’s position (Thurmair, 1989, p.148), thus projecting upcoming disagreement. Thomas sets out to articulate his disagreement as observed by the particle “aber” (l.737). Prior to finalising his disagreement, he stops and repeats an emphasised acknowledgement, stating this time that Christian would be “completely right” (l.738). Thomas appears to be aware of the interpersonal sensitivity related to his approaching disagreement and uses a high degree of positive politeness – in this case, twice stating his agreement – to orient to this activity as delicate. He thus mitigates his challenge of Christian’s point of view as European-biased. While the disagreement could be classified as mitigated, the challenge is expressed explicitly, strengthened by verbal stress on the intensifier “!ZU!” (l.740). This constitutes a major threat to Christian’s professional face, the expression of which could be validated given the close interpersonal relationship between them (Wolfson, 1988). Christian responds to the face-treat with unmitigated disagreement, as observed by the immediately expressed emphatic disagreement marker “!NEIN!” (l.741). With this direct and unambiguous disagreement, Christian defends his position and professional face. He explains that his approach acknowledges the Chinese target market (line 742) and sets out to back this claim (Antaki and Leudar, 1990) and elaborate on his position (l.743). Example 15.7 Thomas looks out for Alex The example portrays a later stage in the Skype conversation between Thomas and Christian. At this point, further arguments have been presented and a new strategy for deciding the company’s name that would suit the needs of both target markets has been introduced. 296

Disagreement and conflict in a start-up

0943 Thomas: 0944 0945 0946 Thomas: 0947 0948 0949 0950

((…)) die strategie wird am BESten sein; this strategy will be best RECHT. you’re right on that (1.0) des muss müssen wer dem ALEXwe have to have break this to Alex äh schön ZAGhaft BEIbringen;=gell?= erm very reluctantly, right == and definitely praise him on a large scale = °h because he has really des is GUT dass er damit ANgefangen hat; (.) it is good that he started with it ((…))

Following the portrayal of further arguments, Thomas aligns with Christian’s position and expresses consent for the new strategy (ll.943–944). This ends the conflict between the two as they now share the same position (Grimshaw, 1990). After a short pause (l.945), Thomas topicalises the delicate issue of communicating this decision to Alex. This is observed in ll.946–947 where he suggests that a very careful approach has to be employed, including the modal “müssen” (l.946) thus indicating that facework is a necessity rather than a recommendation. The turn-internal tag question “gell” (l.947), marks the statement as particularly important and signals Christian’s acceptance of the proposition as evident (Hagemann, 2009, p.153). Thomas explicitly spells out the need for extensive commendation to be conducted (l.948), which further highlights the perceived importance of facework in this situation (Brown and Levinson, 1987). This suggested facework is not merely aimed at Alex’s positive face but especially at his professional face given his work-related role in the start-up. It is evident that Thomas considers the communication of proposal-related criticism to Alex as a highly interpersonally sensitive activity that should be approached with care. Direct and explicit confrontation would constitute a threat to Alex’s professional face and the harmony within the team might sustain damage in the ensuing conflict. Thomas orients to this by not only signalling awareness, but also proposing a concrete strategy to prevent FTAs. Many enhancing elements are used here, such as “schön”, “auf JEden fall”, “in GROßem stil” and “wirklich” (ll.947–949), which stress the importance of this proposed approach. The occurrence of fast and contiguous talk throughout the sequence further underscores the importance of the issue (Poyatos, 2002, p.8). Thomas states that it was good that Alex had been the one to put forward the proposals (l.950), which could be regarded as a justification for the expressed face concerns. If Alex’s initiative would be met with rejection or criticism, it might discourage him from further contributions to the team, and this could negatively affect the organisational objectives. Thomas’ proposed disagreement strategy contrasts that of his preceding disagreements between him and Christian. Especially on Christian’s side, no praise but strong criticism of the proposals had been brought forward and resistance had been met with unmitigated 297

Schmitt and Márquez Reiter 

(Example 15.6: “!NEIN!”) and even aggravated disagreement (Example 15.5: “ziemlich beSCHEIden”). While the close relationship between Thomas and Christian could validate such explicitness, the relationship between Thomas and Alex or Alex and Christian respectively could not be characterised as strong, with the latter being exclusively project related (Wolfson, 1988). Based on the prior exchanges, Thomas might be worried that Christian would not be sensitive towards Alex and also “rub in” his rejection of his proposals, a behaviour that would not be validated by a close friendship and might result in major face threats (and potential conflict) within the team. While Thomas displays face concerns for the absent Alex, the reference to Alex’s initiative (ll.949–950) infers (see Gumperz, 1982) that this pursuit of harmony might not be self-serving, yet in a wider context, it might contribute towards the achievement of organisational goals. Example 15.8 Thomas broaches the topic of name selection Alex, being late for the scheduled meeting, has joined the group about 40 minutes into the conversation. Thomas brings up the topic of the company name. ((…)) 1900 Thomas: und jetzt HINsichtlich der MARkenfindung; and now regarding the brand (name) finding 1901 da müss_n wir uns ma zuSAMmensetzen. we need to sit down together for that 1902 des is noch WICHtig.=gell? that is also important, right 1903 des is n PUNKT den wir jetzt äh: that is a point which we now erm 1904 (1.2) 1905 Thomas: ((räuspert)) ja; ((clears throat)) yes 1906 (1.1) 1907 Thomas: ma DRANbringen müssen. need to address 1908 und dann [(        )] and then 1909 Alex:       [des muss ge]KLÄRT werden;=genau; (.) this has to be solved, right 1910 (BRAUchen) (need to) 1911 (1.2) 1912 Christian: !JA!. yes 1913 ALso: ähm: (.) well, erm 1914 die VORschläge ham_mer geSEHen, we’ve seen the proposals 1915 (1.0) 1916 Alex: hm_hm; hm hm 298

Disagreement and conflict in a start-up

1917 Christian: sehr GU:T very good 1918 find i(ch) äh: MEga, I find it erm great 1919 dass da jetzt ENDlich mal jemand n bisschen DRUCK macht. that there is now finally somebody putting some pressure 1920 (0.7) 1921 Alex: hehehehe hehehehe [laughs] 1922 (1.1) 1923 Christian: und wir ähm: ich HAB mir da ma noch überLEGT; (.) and we erm I have additionally thought about 1924 hab ich dir damals äh diesen WELT artikel, did I send you that Welt article back then 1925 mit den DEUTSCHen AUtoherstellern geschickt? with the German car manufacturers 1926 (0.7) 1927 Alex: hm (-) hm 1928 WEIß ich grad NICH I don’t know right now ((…))

With all the team members present, Thomas once again initiates the exchange by introducing the topic of finding the name (l.1900). His use of the term “hinsichtlich” (l.1900) marks the topic as a “know-in-advance item” on the agenda (Svennevig, 2012, p.65) and constitutes a direct orientation to the preceding communication between the team members (Sigman, 1991). Thomas states the issue to be important (l.1902) and employs the turninternal tag question “gell” (l.1902), which marks the validity of his assertion as evident (Hagemann, 2009:153). The modal “müssen” (ll.1901, 1907) signals the importance of the topic, while the softening particle “ma[l]” (ll.1901, 1907) weakens the degree of coerciveness inherent in his directive (Thurmair, 1989:185). Such padding might be warranted, as Thomas is part of a group of equal members and as such does not hold any formal authority. He underscores his alignment to the group by using the inclusive pronoun “wir” (ll.1901, 1903). As the content of the most recent exchange between Thomas and Christian remains undisclosed to Alex, Alex and Christian are likely to have varying attitudes towards the importance of the topic and the nature of the particular agenda item. Alex might be waiting for the feedback, he had asked for in his prior email – which Christian had not yet provided to him – and might be orienting towards receiving approval of his proposals. In light of the most recent exchange with Thomas, Christian considers the proposals as rejected. For them, the respective agenda point has transformed into how to communicate this decision to Alex. The prior excerpts indicate that the members’ attitudes regarding the agenda point as part of their relational history have changed based on their varying exchanges across time and media (Sigman, 1991). 299

Schmitt and Márquez Reiter 

During Thomas’ turn, two pauses occur (ll.1904, 1906) in which he audibly clears his throat (l.1905). This might indicate that he feels uncomfortable about approaching the upcoming topic (Poyatos, 2002, p.126, p.165) and – given the potential for conflict talk to ensue – might be reluctant to take personal responsibility. Thomas’ hesitation could be explained by the previously expressed face concerns towards Alex (Example 15.7), the impact of which still carries over across the span of the preceding conversation (Sigman, 1991). In line 1909, Alex takes up the floor to reaffirm the importance of the agenda item, thus displaying alignment with Thomas. The subsequent pause (l.1911) constitutes an opportunity for another speaker to take over the floor, which Christian seizes using an emphasised “!JA!” (l.1912). Holding directorship, he mentions that “we” have seen the proposals (l.1914), which prompts a continuer from Alex (l.1916). It is notable that Christian uses a plural form “ham_mer” (l.1914), which might give Alex a hint about the previous discussion. During Christian’s turn, several pauses (ll.1913, 1915, 1920) and hedges (ll.1913, 1918) indicate his hesitation about how to approach the topic (Poyatos, 2002, p.165). Christian’s following positive assessment (ll.1917–1919) is not directed at the proposals, yet instead at Alex’s initiative to advance the decision-making process, which – tied to his in-role performance – strengthens Alex’s professional face. It is noteworthy that any direct assessment regarding the proposals themselves is avoided. The issue is circumvented rather than addressed. Alex responds by laughing (l.1921) possibly displaying embarrassment about the exaggerated praise (Poyatos, 2002, p.75). The subsequent pause (l.1922) poses another opportunity for an interlocutor to seize the turn, yet remains unused, thus prompting Christian to continue his deliberations. Again, he inadvertently uses a plural form “wir” (l.1923) when referring to further considerations. This time, however, he initiates self-repair by restating the singular form after a hesitation token “ähm: ich HAB” (l.1923) (see Schegloff et al., 1977). In this case, “wir” does not apply to the three group members, yet to the in-group, consisting of Thomas and Christian, present at the prior exchange. This hints at the preceding interaction between the two and, in the context of the statement, specifically at their disagreement alliance. However, it goes unnoticed by Alex, who does not address it. At this point, upcoming disagreement is evident, as a quality-related statement regarding the proposals might be expected, based on the previous exchanges regarding the agenda of the meeting. Omitting any concrete assessment of the proposals, Christian asks Alex if he had previously sent him a certain newspaper article (ll.1924–1925). While (mitigated) disagreement could be inferred from this topic change, it is not directly expressed (cf. Example 15.5). Instead of using democratic authority to enforce Alex’s compliance, based on the disagreement alliance formed in the previous exchange, the article would serve as a neutral rationale. This way of introducing information to the discussion is aimed to convince Alex to reach the conclusion favoured by the other members while avoiding a face-threatening rejection of his position. The question allocates the turn to Alex, who cannot recall the article in question (ll.1927–1928). This allows Christian to introduce the article as support to authorise his position. Example 15.9 Alex speaks up This example portrays a later stage of the conversation between the three ­members. At this point, the new strategy has been introduced, using the article as a foundation. The initial design proposals have not yet been explicitly addressed. 300

Disagreement and conflict in a start-up

((…)) 2069 Thomas: was hältst DU davon ALEX? (-) what do you think about it Alex 2070 [( )] der TAK(tik)? (.) (about) the tac(tic) 2071 Alex: [äh ] erm 2072 JA: ich (.) hhh° (.) yes I 2073

durchlesen;= would really like to read through the article 2074 =also geneRELL ja: kla:r wieso nicht, well in general yes sure why not 2075

one can give it a try 2076 ob man da irgendwie: auf was ORdentliches KOMMT; if one will somehow get decent results there 2077 und (.) ich VORstellen; and I could also imagine 2078 dass da was bei RUMkommt- °h (-) that something comes out of this 2079 aBER:- (.) but 2080 JA hab mir keine geDANken drüber geMACHT.= well I have haven’t thought about it before 2081 = !SO!: machen könnte; if one could also do it like that 2082 so: AUFziehen könnte;  start it up like that. 2083 ich hab halt von anfang an gedacht man BRAUCH_n:(.)!NA!men; I just thought from the start that one needs a name 2084 un:d AUCH überLEGT ham; °h and what we’ve also just considered 2085 dass man sich n NAmen aussucht; that one selects a name 2086 und DArauf dann AUFbaut. and then builds on that. 2087 Christian: nee ich: ich HAB mi:r- (-) no I I have 2088 des des stimmt AUCH. that that is also true 2089 des is äh ne gute SACHe. 301

Schmitt and Márquez Reiter 

that is erm a good thing 2090 wichtig ist !DASS! wir den namen FINden. what’s important is that we find the name. 2091 (0.7) 2092 Alex: [hm_hm ] hm hm 2093 Christian: [ja mit] mit diesen euroPÄischen NAmen is halt die sache well with with these European names it’s just the case ((…))

In this example, which follows the introduction of the new strategy, Thomas explicitly allocates the turn to Alex (ll.2069–2070) enquiring his opinion on the matter. This systematic turn allocation constitutes facework, in that it shows Alex his opinion is valued and that time is allocated to hear him out (see Holmes and Marra, 2004, p.458). So far, Alex has remained rather passive, with the majority of his contributions being reception signals and continuers. Explicitly receiving the floor from Thomas, Alex now elaborates on his view over a long sequence (ll.2071–2086). After a heavily hedged beginning (ll.2071–2072), Alex states that he would like to see the aforementioned article (l.2073). This could be regarded as disalignment to the team strategy, as his request for the article questions or even challenges the provided narrative. Alex then further introduces his position regarding the new approach. While he initially does not utter criticism or disagreement, he also does not seem particularly enthusiastic of the strategy either: He states that the team could give it a try to see if they could get decent results from the approach (ll.2075–2076) and accounts for the possibility of success (ll.2077-2078). Various downtoners, such as “generell” (l.2074) or “irgendwie” (l.2076) and the use of subjunctive verb forms such as “könnte” (ll.2077, 2081, 2082) indicate that Alex still holds a conflict position regarding the approach. Next, he produces the token “aber” (l.2079), which predicts upcoming disagreement and the introduction of Alex’s position. Alex then states that he has not given any thought to the approach before (ll.2080–2082). With this expression, he takes a relatively weak position, thus shielding his professional face should his upcoming contribution be met with disagreement. Alex’s next utterance constitutes a shift in focus from addressing the others’ position to introducing his own. He states that he thought that an entrepreneurial team needed a name (l.2083), using the token “halt” (l.2083), which commonly serves to strengthen a statement, by highlighting its plausibility and marking it as common sense (Thurmair, 1989, p.125). This position itself would at first sight not be conflictive, as all members consider the selection of a name important. However, bringing it up in response to the new strategy constitutes mitigated disagreement and conflict, as it implies that the suggested approach might oppose this group goal. Alex then reminds the team of the previous approach towards choosing the name (ll.2084–2086), marked as plausible by the particle combination “halt (jetzt) AUCH” (l.2084) (Thurmair, 1989, p.228). While Alex uses the indefinite article “[ei]n[en]” (ll.2083, 2085) to refer to “a name”, it is evident that he is orienting towards the reintroduction of his previous name proposals. He now uses the inclusive “wir” (l.2084) for the first and only instance in his turn (cf. Alex’s previously exclusively used “ich” (ll.2072, 2077, 2080, 2083) and the indefinite pronoun “ma[n]” (ll.2075, 2076, 2081, 2083, 2085). By using the pronoun “wir” (l.2084), Alex is arguably orienting to previous exchanges with Thomas, possibly 302

Disagreement and conflict in a start-up

aiming at reinstating the agreement alliance in support of the old proposals. A conflict is evident, in that Alex has not yet adopted the viewpoint of the other members and still holds an opposing position. Alex’s disaligning response prompts Christian to initiate disagreement characterised by the disagreement token “nee” (l.2087). However, he does not finish the utterance, as he enacts repair to acknowledge Alex’s position, using the expressions “stimmt AUCH” (l.2088) and “ne gute SACHe” (l.2089). Christian thus mitigates the disagreement and its face-threatening potential. It could be argued that his contributions are oriented towards politeness here, as he does not consider the relationship with Alex strong enough to utter unmitigated disagreement (see Wolfson, 1988). The observed behaviour could have additionally been influenced by the previous exchange with Thomas, where the latter warned him against uttering direct criticism. Instead, Christian attempts to construct common ground by stressing the importance of finding a name (l.2090). This is underscored by strong emphasis on “!DASS!” and the use of the inclusive pronoun “wir”, thus highlighting the outcome as a group goal. While this earns a reception token from Alex (l.2092), it does not put an end to the conflict. Instead, it opens up another round of argumentation. Building on the established common ground, Christian then sets out to challenge Alex’s position (l.2093). This constitutes a change in focus, as the team previously argued in support of the new strategy and would now move to addressing the weaknesses of the initial proposals. However, Alex’s initial name (and design) proposals are not challenged explicitly, as in contrast to the conversation with Thomas, where Christian referred to them as “pretty poor” (see Example 15.5). Concrete assessment is circumvented by Christian instead arguing against “European names” (l.2093) as a vague concept, thus paying attention to Alex’s professional face needs. Example 15.10 Alex comes round This example portrays a later stage of the conversation, where further arguments have been presented. 2300 Thomas: 2301 Alex: 2302 2303 2304 2305 2306 Thomas:

((…)) SO ungefähr. like this approximately ja: nee des KLINGT verNÜNFtig; °h yes no this sounds reasonable ich würd SA:gen ähm dann MACHen wer; I would say erm then we make oder mach ICH mit_m ((name omitted)) or I make with ((name omitted)) n terMIN für nächste woche; an appointment for next week zu dem du AUCH kommst. (-)   to which you also come oKAY; okay ((…))

After further argumentation, Alex eventually communicates approval, characterised by a positive assessment of the new strategy as reasonable (l.2301). His response is interesting in 303

Schmitt and Márquez Reiter 

that it combines the agreement token “ja:” and the disagreement token “nee” (l.2301). This seemingly contradictory combination might hint that Alex agrees rather reluctantly (Harren, 2001, p.63), yet willing to put the topic to rest and move on. However, his suggestion to organise a meeting with a Chinese contact (ll.2302–2304), with whom the team intends to discuss potential name choices, could be interpreted as alignment and acceptance of the change. Alex here not only accepts, but also co-constructs the new approach by making future arrangements for the group (Sigman, 1991). In line with this, he gives the directive for Thomas to attend this appointment as well (l.2305), which the latter confirms (l.2306). At this point, the conflict (talk) could be considered solved, in that the members no longer occupy different positions regarding the company name (in conversation) and are ready to move on (Grimshaw, 1990).

15.5 Conclusion In this chapter, we have examined a critical incident in the early stage of a start-up venture – the selection of the company name – from its beginning through the encompassing conflict. In so doing, we analysed how the team members managed conflict with special attention to their disagreements related to the selection of the company’s name across time and media. The expression of disagreement revealed conflict on a conversational level. It indicated the different positions held by the parties regarding the company’s name and its related strategy. However, their different stances regarding the topic in conversation did not constitute the source of the conflict. Conflict had been brewing from prior exchanges between the team members. Conflict was seen as a dynamic process, characterised by participants’ changing positions and the (de)construction of disagreement alliances. To capture and explain these dynamics, it was helpful to adopt a relational continuity perspective (Sigman, 1991). This allowed us to understand the import of participants’ orientations to past and future exchanges in their current interactions as well as the contextual factors under which the conflict emerged and issues of relationality in the way the disagreements were constructed. The analysis revealed differences in disagreement strength according to the participation framework: the conflict between Christian and Thomas was approached rather directly with instances of unmitigated and even aggravated disagreements. In contrast, the conflict with Alex was approached reluctantly with Thomas explicitly stating overt face concerns prior to the encounter with the latter. When all the team members were present, disagreement was expressed implicitly or mitigated. This stands in contrast to the reported preference for direct and unmitigated disagreement behaviour among the male German participants (cf.  Kotthoff, 1993). We argued that the interpersonal relationships within the team constituted a central mitigating factor. The close interpersonal relationship between two of the team members (Thomas and Christian) allowed for the expression of unmitigated and aggravated disagreements (Wolfson, 1988) between them. The distinction between different disagreement types was helpful to highlight the contrasting approaches to conflict in the interaction where all three team members were present versus the interaction between two of the members. However, the categorisation of disagreement instances often proved difficult to untangle. For instance, the disagreement observed in Example 15.5 (“ziemlich beSCHEIden”) could be classified as mitigated (Ishihara, 2016) or weak (Pomerantz, 1984), if we take into account the preceding expansion (“EHRliche MEInung”) as mitigating. If we, however, consider this expansion as strengthening – an interpretation supported by the social relationship between the participants – the disagreement instead could be viewed as aggravated (Ishihara, 2016) or strong (Pomerantz, 1984). 304

Disagreement and conflict in a start-up

Ishihara’s (2016) additional subdivision of strong disagreements into unmitigated and aggravated disagreements was helpful to show the explicitness with which the conflict was approached between Thomas and Christian but analytically it was not sufficiently accurate to consider whether the verbal emphasis in Example 15.6 (“!NEIN!”) would be strong enough to upgrade this unmitigated disagreement into an aggravated one. It would then follow that any categorisation of disagreements not only needs to take into account the interactional context in which they emerge but also needs to consider the relational continuity between the participants in a given setting. In view of this, we suggest that it might be more useful to approach disagreement strength as a spectrum as it would enable us to better understand the effect of different upgraders and/or downgraders and their concomitant strength on disagreements produced in the construction of conflict talk. The findings also showed that the affordance of the medium influences the emergence of conflict. The participants of this study oriented to conflict and disagreement on synchronous (Skype) channels rather than asynchronous (Email) channels (Friedman and Currall, 2003). In Skype calls, individuals can dynamically fine-tune or adapt their positions according to their interlocutors’ reception. This could be considered beneficial for conflict resolution in a leaderless setting, such as the entrepreneurial team examined in this chapter. The study should not be understood as a comprehensive portrayal of conflict in start-up teams but as a first examination of a single instance of conflict within this new and contemporary business setting. At the time of the featured exchanges, the team was still in the beginning of their venture, with the members still working out their specific roles. Further studies could expand the time range of observation to establish if the development of interpersonal relationships over time is reflected in different approaches towards conflict and disagreement. There is a clear need for long durée ethnographic studies on the construction of conflict in professional contexts. However, accessibility to such closed settings remains an insurmountable obstacle. With this in mind, the current chapter offers an insight into the typically restricted world of business start-ups.

List of abbreviations and transcript conventions Adapted from Selting et al. (2009, pp.391–2) and Selting et al. (2011, pp.37–8).

Sequential structure [ ] [] =

overlap or simultaneous talk fast, immediate continuation with a new turn or segment (latching)

Pauses (.) (-) (0.5)

micro pause, estimated, up to 0.2 sec. duration appr. short estimated pause of appr. 0.2–0.5 sec. duration measured pause and duration (to tenth of a second)

Continuers hm ja, nein nee monosyllabic tokens hm_hm, ja_a bisyllabic tokens 305

Schmitt and Márquez Reiter 

Accentuation SYLlable !SYL!lable

focus accent extra strong accent

Final pitch movements of intonation phrases ? , - ; .

rising to high rising to mid level falling to mid falling to low

Pace changes allegro, fast talk

In- and outbreaths °h/h° °hh/hh° °hhh/hhh°

in-/out-breathe of appr. 0.2–0.5 sec. duration in-/out-breathe of appr. 0.5–0.8 sec. duration in-/out-breathe of appr. 0.8–1.0 sec. duration

Laughter haha, hehe, hihi syllabic laughter

Other segmental conventions : und_äh äh, öh, ähm

lengthening, by about 0.2–0.5 sec. cliticizations within units hesitation markers

Other conventions ((clears throat)) (  ) ((…)) [annotation] {Name A}, {B}, {C}

non-verbal actions unintelligible passage omission in transcript annotations substitutes for omitted names

Notes 1 Lim and Bowers (1991) expand upon Brown and Levinson’s (1987) concept of positive face to distinguish between “fellowship face” as people’s “want to be included” and “competence face” as people’s “want that their abilities be respected” (Lim and Bowers, 1991, p.420). They suggest that speakers address interlocutors’ competence face by “approbation”, which – following Leech’s (1983) approbation maxim – entails maximising praise and minimising criticism.

306

Disagreement and conflict in a start-up

2 The team had been awarded an EXIST business start-up grant by the German Ministry of Economy and Energy (BMWI) and the European Union social fund ESF (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie, 2016). This grant is targeted at technology-oriented start-ups in the pre-founding stage (Kulicke, 2014). As a competitively attributed one-year funding scheme, it permits a sponsored team to test its business idea with reduced personal risk. This is done by providing the team with a certain budget for company expenses, as well as a monthly stipend, covering the living expenses of each individual member to fully focus on their project-related tasks. 3 The entrepreneurial team members pursue their interdependent tasks “collectively and independently of formal leaders” (Vine et al., 2008, p.341). This is representative of distributed leadership constellations (see Choi and Schnurr, 2014, 2016). 4 Smileys are traditionally considered inappropriate in formal business email communication (Angell and Heslop, 1994, p.111). Their use by Thomas might be attributed to the relatively informal nature of this particular entrepreneurial team.

References Adler, P.A. and Adler, P. 1987. Membership roles in field research. Newbury Park: Sage. Angell, D. and Heslop, B. 1994. The elements of e-mail style. New York: Addison-Wesley. Antaki, C. 1994. Explaining and arguing: the social organization of accounts. London: Sage. Antaki, C. and Leudar, I. 1990. Claim-backing and other explanatory genres in talk. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 9(4), pp.279–92. Bradner, E. 2001. Social affordances of computer-mediated communication technology: understanding adoption. Proceeding CHI ‘01 Extended abstracts on human factors in computing systems. ACM Digital Library, pp.67–8. Brenneis, D. 1988. Language and disputing. Annual Review of Anthropology. 17, pp.221–37. Brenneis, D. 1996. Telling troubles: narrative, conflict, and experience. In: Briggs, C.L. ed. Disorderly discourse: narrative, conflict and inequality. New York: Oxford University Press, pp.41–52. Brown, P. and Levinson, S.C. 1978. Universals in language usage: politeness phenomena. In: Goody, E.N. ed. Questions and politeness: strategies in social interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.56–311. Brown, P. and Levinson, S. 1987. Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie (BMWi). 2016. Das ist EXIST. Available from: www. exist.de/DE/Mediathek/EXIST-Publikationen/Das-ist-EXIST/inhalt.html. (Accessed 7 July 2017). Chang, H. 2008. Autoethnography as method. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. Choi, S.Y. and Schnurr, S. 2014. Exploring distributed leadership: solving disagreements and nego­ tiating consensus in a ‘leaderless’ team. Discourse Studies. 16(1), pp.3–24. Choi, S.Y. and Schnurr, S. 2016. Enacting and negotiating power relations through teasing in distributed leadership constellations. Pragmatics and Society. 7(3), pp.482–502. Crystal, D. 2006. Language and the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eisenberg, A.R. and Garvey, C. 1981. Children’s use of verbal strategies in resolving conflicts. Discourse Processes. 4, pp.149–70. Friedman, R. and Currall, S. 2003. Conflict escalation: dispute exacerbating elements of e-mail communication. Human Relations. 56(11), pp.1325–47. Gibson, J.J. 1977. The theory of affordances. In: Shaw, R. and Bransford, J. eds. Perceiving, acting, and knowing: toward an ecological psychology. Hillsdale: Erlbaum, pp.67–82. Goffman, E. 1967. Interaction ritual: essays on face-to-face behavior. New York: Pantheon. Goffman, E. 1981. Forms of talk. Philadelphia, : University of Pennsylvania Press. Goodwin, M.H. 1982. Processes of dispute management among urban black children. American Ethnologist. 9(1), pp.76–96. Goodwin, M.H. 1990. He-said-she-said: talk as social organization among black children. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

307

Schmitt and Márquez Reiter 

Grimshaw, A. ed. 1990. Conflict talk: sociolinguistic investigations of arguments in conversations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gruber, H. 1998. Disagreeing: sequential placement and internal structure of disagreements in conflict episodes. Text-Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse. 18(4), pp.467–504. Gumperz, J.J. 1982. Discourse strategies. New York: Cambridge University Press. Habib, R. 2008. Humor and disagreement: identity construction and cross-cultural enrichment. Journal of Pragmatics. 40(6), pp.1117–45. Hagemann, J. 2009. Tag questions als Evidenzmarker. Formulierungsdynamik, sequentielle Struk­ tur und Funktionen redezuginterner tags. Gesprächsforschung–Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion. 10, pp.145–76. Hansen, M.B. and Márquez Reiter, R. 2016. Introduction. The (co-)construction of potentially inter­ personally sensitive activities across languages and institutional contexts. Pragmatics and Society. 7(4), pp.507–11. Harren, I. 2001. Alltagsgesprachen - Interaktive Funktionen und Positionierungen in Turn und Sequenz. PhD thesis, University of Oldenburg. Holmes, J. and Marra, M. 2004. Leadership and managing conflicts in meetings. Pragmatics. 14(4), pp.439–62. House, J. 2006. Communicative styles in English and German. European Journal of English Studies. 10(3), pp.249–67. Ishihara, N. 2016. Softening or intensifying your language in oppositional talk: disagreeing agreeably or defiantly. In: Friedrich, P. ed. English for diplomatic purposes. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp.20–43. Kakavá, C. 1993. Negotiation of disagreement by Greeks in conversations and classroom discourse. PhD thesis, Georgetown University. Koshik, I. 2005. Beyond rhetorical questions: assertive questions in everyday interaction. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Kotthoff, H. 1993. Disagreement and concession in disputes: on the context sensitivity of preference structures. Language in Society. 22, pp.193–216. Kulicke, M. 2014. Arbeitspapier der wissenschaftlichen Begleitforschung zu “EXIST - Existenzgründ­ ungen aus der Wissenschaft”. Karlsruhe: Fraunhofer-Institut für System-und Innovationsforschung ISI. Leech, G.N. 1983. Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman. Lim, T.-S. and Bowers, J.W. 1991. Facework: solidarity, approbation, and tact. Human Communication Research. 17(3), pp.415–50. Márquez Reiter, R. 2000. Linguistic politeness in Britain and Uruguay: a contrastive study of requests and apologies. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Márquez Reiter, R. 2009. How to get rid of a telemarking agent? Facework strategies in an intercultural service call. In: Bargiela-Chiappini, F. and Haugh, M. eds. Face, communication and social interaction. Equinox Publishing, pp.55–77. Márquez Reiter, R. 2011. Mediated business interactions: intercultural communication between speakers of Spanish. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Matlay, H. and Westhead, P. 2005. Virtual teams and the rise of e-entrepreneurship in Europe. International Small Business Journal. 23(3), pp.279–302. O’Reilly, K. 2009. Key concepts in ethnography. London: SAGE Publications Ltd. Pomerantz, A. 1984. Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: some features of preferred/ dispreferred turn shapes. In: Atkinson J.M. and Heritage, J. eds. Structures of social action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.57–101. Poyatos, F. 2002. Nonverbal communication across disciplines: volume 2: paralanguage, kinesics, silence, personal and environmental interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Schegloff, E.A. 2007. Sequence organisation in interaction: a primer in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

308

Disagreement and conflict in a start-up

Schegloff, E.A., Jefferson, G. and Sacks, H. 1977. The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language. 53(2), pp.361–82. Schiffrin, D. 1984. Jewish argument as sociability. Language in Society. 13, pp.311–35. Selting, M., Auer, P., Barth-Weingarten, D., Bergmann, J., Bergmann, P., Birkner, K. Couper-Kuhlen, E., Deppermann, A., Gilles, P. Günthner, S., Hartung, M., Kern, F., Mertzlufft, C., Meyer, C., Morek, M., Stukenbrock, A. and Uhmann, S. 2009. Gesprächsanalytisches Transkriptionssystem 2 (GAT 2). Gesprächsforschung – Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion. 10, pp.353–402. Selting, M., Auer, P., Barth-Weingarten, D., Bergmann, J., Bergmann, P., Birkner, K. Couper-Kuhlen, E., Deppermann, A., Gilles, P. Günthner, S., Hartung, M., Kern, F., Mertzlufft, C., Meyer, C., Morek, M., Stukenbrock, A. and Uhmann, S. 2011. A system for transcribing talk-in-interaction: GAT 2. Gesprächsforschung – Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion. 12, pp.1–51. Sifianou, M. 2012. Disagreements, face and politeness. Journal of Pragmatics. 44(12), pp.1554–64. Sigman, S.J. 1991. Handling the discontinuous aspects of continuous social relationships: toward research on the persistence of social forms. Communication Theory. 1(2), pp.106–27. Skovholt, K. and Svennevig, J. 2006. Email copies in workplace interaction. Journal of ComputerMediated Communication. 12(1), pp.42–65. Smith, T.W., Mohler, P.P., Harkness, J. and Onodera, N. 2008. Methods for assessing and calibrating response scales across countries and languages. In: Masamichi, S. ed. New frontiers in comparative sociology. Leiden: Brill, pp.45–94. Stadler, S.A. 2006. Multimodal (im) politeness: the verbal, prosodic and non-verbal realization of disagreement in German and New Zealand English. PhD thesis, University of Auckland. Svennevig, J. 2012. The agenda as resource for topic introduction in workplace meetings. Discourse Studies. 14(1), pp.53–66. Tannen, D. 1981. New York Jewish conversational style. International Journal of the Sociology of Language. 30, pp.133–49. Tannen, D. 2002. Agonism in academic discourse. Journal of Pragmatics. 34(10–1), pp.1651–69. Thurmair, M. 1989. Modalpartikeln und ihre Kombinationen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Vine, B., Holmes, J., Marra, M., Pfeifer, D. and Jackson, B. 2008. Exploring co-leadership talk through interactional sociolinguistics. Leadership. 4(3), pp.339–60. Waldron, V.R. and Applegate, J.L. 1994. Interpersonal construct differentiation and conversational planning an examination of two cognitive accounts for the production of competent verbal disagreement tactics. Human Communication Research. 21(1), pp.3–35. Wolfson, N. 1988. The bulge: a theory of speech behavior and social distance. In: Fine, J. ed. Second language discourse: a textbook of current research. Norwood: Ablex, pp.21–38.

309

16 Interaction and conflict in digital communication Sage L. Graham

16.1 Introduction Trolling. Flaming. Cyberbullying. Griefing. These are only a few of the terms used to describe conflictual behaviour in digital contexts. In many cases, in fact, “toxic” language and behaviour are seen as part-fand-parcel of our interactions online; we assume trolls, spammers and other “disruptors” (Graham and Hardaker, 2017) will be there and are often counselled on how to respond to the impoliteness and aggressive attacks that such individuals bring. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and Codes of Conduct (which provide guidelines for acceptable behaviour in given online contexts) appear across many digital platforms, including microblogs (e.g. Twitter), discussion boards and social network sites (e.g. Facebook). The fact that these guidelines for dealing with problematic behaviours appear with such frequency indicates just how “present” conflictual online behaviour is. In some cases, conflict may actually play a positive role, providing the mechanism through which individuals can change their membership status from peripheral participants in a given community to members of the in-group (Graham, 2016), allowing the community to evolve. In other cases, however, digital conflict can cause a great deal of harm. Banks (2010, p.238) notes that the “anonymity and mobility afforded by the internet has made harassment and expressions of hate effortless”. Examples include a 2013 UK controversy where rape threats were issued on Twitter after Caroline Criado-Perez petitioned for keeping the female image on the UK £5 bank note (for further discussion, see Hardaker and McGlashen, 2016) and the “Gamergate” controversy in 2014, when multiple women in the online videogaming industry were subjected to a campaign of harassment that included rape and death threats and the release of private contact information (aka “doxing”), putting them at risk of physical harm. There is also a common perception that digital discourse lends itself to conflict in ways that face-to-face (hereafter “f-t-f”) interaction does not. Researchers (e.g. Graham and Hardaker, 2017, Herring, 2007) have identified multiple factors that, while not unique to digital realms, play a role both in how digital interaction is perceived and how conflict unfolds in digital contexts. These factors include features such as degrees of anonymity, the (perceived) lack of consequences for bad behaviour, perceptions of privacy, the scope of 310

Conflict in digital communication

audience, degrees of a/synchronicity (e.g. how quickly messages are received and responses are generated) and cross-cultural expectations/interpretations that exist on a global scale (for additional classification categories, see Herring, 2007). While these are not necessarily unique to online contexts, any of these features (or combinations of them) can lead to misunderstanding, impoliteness, aggression and violence online – in some circumstances offering new combinations of features that may affect how conflict is identified and resolved.1 As digital interaction takes on increasing prominence in day-to-day interaction for many people, it is beneficial to examine digital conflict in greater depth. Using interactions in online gaming as a lens, it is the goal of this chapter to explore how conflict is enacted, identified and addressed in digital interactions.

16.2 Face-to-face interaction versus digital discourse Despite early speculation that computer-mediated communication (hereafter “CMC”) was a completely new and distinct communicative setting, researchers have subsequently argued that digitally mediated interactions are not as different from f-t-f interactions as was once thought.2 Benwell and Stokoe (2006), for example, note that all identities are constructed and performed – whether they occur online or offline – so differentiating “virtual identity” from “real-life identity” is a red herring. More recently, researchers have argued that as the presence of technology in many people’s lives has increased, the lines between digital interaction and “life away from the keyboard” have blurred, making a distinction impossible. As Locher et al. (2015, p.9) argue, CMC and f-t-f interaction at this point are not even truly separable, since “often we cannot clearly split the norms interactants bring to the keyboard with those that emerge in online interactions”. In researching digital discourse (especially with regard to conflict), then, two questions emerge as particularly relevant: 1 how do digital and f-t-f interaction really differ (particularly with regard to conflict)? 2 how does the increasing use of multiple media platforms (which may contribute to the blurring of online and offline practice) affect digital interaction (including conflict)? With regard to the first question, there are at least some identifiable differences between f-t-f and digital interaction. Graham and Hardaker (2017), in their discussion of digital (im)­politeness, for example, argue that one key difference between digital discourse and f-t-f interaction is the continual implicit invitation in CMC to review others’ online behaviours (positive or negative). They note buttons such as “Like”, “Share”, “Block” and “Report Abuse”: establish a subtext that (im)politeness is something that can (and perhaps should) be constantly not just [silently] evaluated, but also declared in digital interaction. While notions of (im)politeness are certainly ever-present in f-t-f interactions, when interacting f-t-f we are not staring at buttons asking us to explicitly share our evaluation of that (im)politeness during each interaction. (2017, p.791) They go on to posit that the ubiquitous invitation to put assessments of others on record gives them a weight that might not exist in f-t-f environments. This encouragement to declare evaluations “on record” is particularly relevant in the examination of digital conflict and is at least one way that f-t-f and digitally mediated interaction still differ. 311

Sage L. Graham

A second way that digital discourse (in its current form)3 differs from f-t-f is in new manifestations of “multimodality”, which, in its most basic sense, simply refers to the fact that all discourse (or more generally, communication) occurs via multiple co-occurring and co-dependent avenues. According to Bateman et al. (2017), multimodality: Is a way of characterising communicative situations (considered very broadly) which rely upon combinations of different ‘forms’ of communication to be effective – the TV programme uses spoken language, pictures, and text; the book uses written language, pictures and diagrams, page composition and so on; talking in the cafeteria brings together spoken language with a host of bodily capabilities and postures; and the computer game might show representations of any of these things and include movement and actions as well. (2017, p.7) In its broadest sense, then, all communication is multimodal, since elements of the context and multiple communicative acts, such as body positioning and eye gaze, influence the pragmatic understandings of participants. Digital interaction, however, brings new multimodal channels to the table and may open possibilities for combining them in new ways (Herring, 2016, Jewitt, 2016). Drawing on Newon’s (2011) study of the online game World of Warcraft, which includes voice, text, emotes and avatar actions, Herring (2016) classifies the multiple modes of communication that characterise “Web 2.0” as “convergent media CMC” and describes the wide spectrum of IMPs (interactive multimodal platforms) available and how each combines different sensory modes such as audio and video feeds (Herring, 2016, p.398). There is, however, a great deal of variation in how the term “multimodality” is used and understood. Jewitt (2013) reiterates the fact that there is no consensus as to what constitutes a “mode”, nor what might differentiate it from others. She then argues that communication is comprised of “multimodal ensembles”, in which “different aspects of meaning are carried in different ways [and different amounts] by each of the modes in the ensemble” (Jewitt, 2013, p.255). I would argue further that elements of digital discourse in a given multimodal ensemble are not necessarily equivalent and should be further differentiated. Rather than cast a wide net in which the term “multimodal” is so broad as to be almost meaningless (Bateman et al., 2017), here I divide semiotic resources into channels of transmission (i.e. conduits with predictable parameters such as email) and modes that communicate and enrich pragmatic meaning. Making this distinction, each transmission channel4 influences meaning due to its characteristics as a deliverer, while each mode contributes different message content. In a f-t-f equivalent, eye gaze would serve as a mode that enhances semiotic understanding by indexing pragmatic information (e.g. attention). The channel, on the other hand, would be the conduit of the optic nerves and their processes and capabilities. Contrary to early speculation that digital multimodality would result in CMC becoming more like f-t-f interaction, later research has shown that different modes of communication each have their own unique impact on communicative practice (e.g. Herring and Demarest, 2011, Newon, 2011, Sindoni, 2014). If this is the case, simply adding channels (i.e. different digital conduits such as email, blog posts and tweets) to one another will not necessarily result in more cohesive communication. Adding a video feed (visual) to an audio voice conversation, for example, will not make the interaction equivalent to what would take place f-t-f, nor will it necessarily make communication more successful. If we accept that different 312

Conflict in digital communication

digital modes/channels of interaction affect communicative practice in different ways, then we may reasonably ask how conflict is addressed in the “convergent media CMC” that Herring (2011) describes – multimodal environments where there are many channels of communication with different audiences and technical parameters that are, in some cases, used simultaneously. Herring (2016) justifiably notes that research that examines the unique features of individual modes of digital interaction needs further exploration. I would also argue that research that explores the overlap between multimedia modes and channels that are used within the same communicative event (i.e. concurrent multimedia multimodality) also merits further attention, and one goal of this chapter is to begin to fill this void.

16.3 Digital disagreement, (im)politeness and conflict – the difficulty of definitions As is evident throughout this volume, definitions and features of conflict can vary widely, and there is not necessarily consensus as to what constitutes conflict between individuals, cultures or contexts. The working definition proposed by O’Driscoll and Jeffries, “any situation or behaviour involving parties (individual or groups) who are, or consider themselves to be, instrumentally, intellectually and/or emotionally opposed or simply antagonistic toward each other” (see the Introduction to this volume) is a worthy starting point. The term “conflict” is, however, still slippery, since it may be understood very differently by different people in different contexts. Graham (2017) notes that since interaction is emergent, what might begin as simply impolite could progress in severity to antagonistic, then aggressive and perhaps even violent (all manifestations of conflict). Given that the boundaries between these states are somewhat fluid, I will use terminology for these statuses as loosely equivalent, based on the participants’ responses as indications of severity. Each Community of Practice (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 1992, Lavé and Wenger, 1991) also has its own rules, expectations and terminology to describe problematic behaviour, and actions that would be interpreted as quite inappropriate or impolite in one Community of Practice (hereafter CofP) might be seen as non-problematic and perfectly normal in another. “Spamming”, for example, is commonly defined as the wide distribution of digital content that is unwanted and/or unelicited. As with many terms used to describe digital behaviour, however, interpretations can vary widely between digital CofPs, with some seeing spam as a hostile act (Heyd, 2008), some seeing it as a nuisance and some even encouraging it as a positive component of digital community participation (Graham and Dutt, 2019). Marra (2012) justifiably observes this difficulty, noting that “it has almost been impossible to identify disagreements with any confidence”. Georgakopoulou (2012, p.1624), in discussing linguistic research on disagreement, also notes that there is “resistance of the concept of disagreements to any consensus on what it actually is, let alone how it is identified and analyzed”. That said, ongoing linguistic research that attempts to hone in on characteristics of digital opposition and conflict – including flaming (e.g. Angouri and Tseliga, 2010), trolling (e.g. Dynel, 2016, Hardaker, 2013, 2015), impoliteness (e.g. Graham, 2017, Graham and Hardaker, 2017) and disagreement (e.g. Bolander, 2012, Langlotz and Locher, 2012) – have enhanced our understanding of how problematic digital acts are realised in empirical ways. This research, however, has tended to focus on context-specific conflict that occurs via a single communicative channel (e.g. email, Facebook status updates, etc.). While this is one way to make the research process more manageable, it cannot be denied that more and 313

Sage L. Graham

more interaction takes place via multiple (blended) digital channels simultaneously. This means that parsing communication into separate channels to be analysed individually might not paint a complete picture of how conflict is understood and negotiated. While a full discussion of digital “conversations” that occur across multiple channels at the same time is far beyond the scope of this chapter, I would argue that as interaction increasingly blends multiple channels within the same communicative event, examining them as a whole will be increasingly necessary. There has not, to my knowledge, been linguistic research that focuses on digital conflicts that occur within and across many different blended channels simultaneously, however, and this will be one element of the discussion here.

16.4 Online gaming as a multimodal space In exploring conflict and opposition in concurrent multichannel interaction, online gaming provides a rich representation of Jewitt’s (2013) multimodal ensembles.5 Recent years have seen a steady increase in research on online gaming across a broad range of disciplines including psychology, communication studies and computer science. And while initial ­linguistic research on gaming tended to focus on online games as a resource for teaching, there has also been growing interest in online gaming as a social space for interaction (e.g. Ensslin, 2012, Newon, 2011, 2016). Gee (2015, p.2) argues, in fact, that examining the discourse of online gaming “can illuminate how we think about language” and that “both language and games can illuminate how we think about and live in the world […] including the worlds we create”. Online game streams, more specifically, are broadcasts in which eSports gamers broadcast live video of themselves playing video games while simultaneously interacting with viewers. Building on Locher and Watts’ (2005) concept of relational work, this qualitative study attempts to address conflict as it occurs within this multichannel environment by taking an ethnographic, interpersonal pragmatic approach (Locher and Graham, 2010) to examining conflict as an emergent phenomenon. Specifically, it will explore which type(s) of opposition and conflict emerge, what goals that opposition serves, and how (or if) they can be differentiated from one another and resolved.

16.5 Data and methods The data for this study comes from a corpus of online gaming interactions from Twitch.tv – an online platform that broadcasts “streamers” as they play a variety of video games and chat with their viewers. The game that is the focus here is the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) League of Legends, a competitive eSport with international competitions. These include high stakes prize money and sponsorships and cater to a global fan-base. Twitch streams combine multimodality with extreme multimedia capabilities. Most allow viewers to watch the gameplay as it unfolds, hear audio of the gamer while s/he plays, see a live camera feed of the streamer while s/he plays, view written communication between players in the current match, see and hear game alerts, and interact with the streamer and other viewers in an open chat forum that appears on the screen beside the gameplay (see Figure 16.1). The specific data discussed here was taken from a corpus of over 100 hours of audio and video produced by 11 gamers, plus the concurrent postings to each stream’s open chat. The videos were captured using OBS screen-capture software and the chat data collected via the programs HexChat and Chatty, then cross-referenced to track the intersection of the concurrent channels. The primary focus here is on 1 hour and 51 minutes of video stream and 314

Conflict in digital communication

Figure 16.1 Twitch stream screen layout

the accompanying 2,137 posts to the live chat of a female gamer – “Raihnbowkidz” – who is a self-confessed “boobie-streamer”. She wears low-cut tops and has her video camera positioned with a view from above so that her cleavage is prominent in the video window. Since the beginning of her streaming career, she has received criticism for wearing revealing clothing, periodically standing up in front of her camera (which would then display a close-up of her chest) and using body-posturing to create/highlight a sexualised persona. One day prior to the video stream examined here, Gross “Grossie” Gore, a British streamer known for explosive commentary that often includes potentially offensive content, distributed a video saying that Raihnbowkidz (hereafter “Raihn”) had unjustifiably ended a romantic relationship with him. He called her a “slut and a whore” who enticed men with sexually provocative dress and behaviour on her game stream. In addition to his YouTube video, Grossie also reiterated his accusations on multiple digital channels, including his live Twitch broadcast and the microblogging platform Twitter. This sparked a sequence of volatile messages posted to the open chat forum in Raihn’s stream, attacking her moral character by claiming that she displayed her body for money, was sexually promiscuous, and was manipulative by exacerbating the “drama” with Gross Gore to get more viewers (which can result in more revenue for streamers). It should also be noted that, related to streamers’ motivations to broadcast material with the goal of increasing viewership are questions of research ethics. There is ongoing debate about how researchers should balance the protection of participants through the anonymisation of data with the acknowledgement of participants as the authors of intellectual property and/or broadcast material that might be copyrighted. For the purpose of this study, I include references to the streamers’ real names as well as their screen names because they have shared them on publicly available global-scale platforms, and the goal of online streaming is to achieve “fame” by drawing as much viewership as possible – attributing stream content to them directly, therefore, aligns with this goal. For chat participants (who may or may not be striving for wide viewership), I have maintained the display names that 315

Sage L. Graham

individuals themselves have chosen, which are theoretically self-anonymised (although see Androstopoulous (2008) for more extensive discussion).

16.6 Analysis As in many multimedia multimodal settings, there are layers of communication with different goals in operation at any given time. On Twitch, one layer involves the gameplay itself – the activity that provides the main purpose of the stream. Streamers play the game(s) according to predetermined rules, with the goal of winning the contest. They also, however, have goals that go beyond the parameters of the game(s) – they must also employ strategies to satisfy the goals of streaming, which include attracting and keeping viewers and generating revenue through donations. The differing goals related to the dual purposes of the streamers are critical components of understanding opposition and conflict in this setting, since they have an impact on what is perceived as (in)appropriate and what counts as conflictual. At first glance, much of the talk in the open chat could appear highly aggressive and oppositional, but on closer examination, the data show different types of opposition that support differing goals. In Twitch streams (and similar interactive broadcasts), we must account for two facets of activity: the types of opposition and the goals of the activity (i.e. the game versus the broadcast), and how these manifest in different ways. By examining how different types of oppositional discourse reflect the objectives of both the game and the stream (Sections 16.6.1 and 16.6.2), we can gain a greater understanding of the role of opposition and the ways that these components are blended and understood in this digital environment.

16.6.1 Agonistic opposition Ritual has historically occupied a central place in human interaction, from lengthy religious rites and ceremonies to short ritual greetings. Kádár (2017, p.269) argues that the ritualised practices performed in our daily lives reflect a “moral order” that comprises “the set of expected, background features of everyday scenes that members of a sociocultural group or relational network ‘take for granted’”. Walter Ong (1981) also notes the historical importance of ritual in academic settings such as the medieval academy, where students were taught to argue about a topic as a means of learning. He labels this type of ritualised argument “agonism”6 or “ceremonial combat”. Expanding on this, Tannen (2002, p.1652) clarifies that agonism “does not refer to conflict, disagreement, or disputes per se, but rather to “ritualized adversativeness”. In academic discourse, this means that […] intellectual interchange is conceptualized as a metaphorical battle”. While her later work takes issue with the oppositional culture that agonistic rituals reinforce (e.g. Tannen, 2013), Tannen has not retracted her earlier claim that “the use of dynamic opposition and verbal aggression [can be] a means of reinforcing intimacy, because it is a ritual rather than literal attack” (2002, p.1653) (my emphasis). Ritual or agonistic “battles” are a prominent feature of online gaming, since games, by nature, include a subtext of opposition.7 This is not to say that players are constantly engaged in interpersonal confrontation or animosity – quite the contrary. However, games have goals, and players must employ strategies that pit them against some sort of obstacle(s) (whether those be people or environments or circumstances) in order to meet the goal(s) and win the game. In the case of gaming, the rules of the game dictate the formulaic practices 316

Conflict in digital communication

(i.e. rituals) and parameters under which players compete to try to achieve the required objectives, but it is important to note that the opposition entailed in this enterprise is separate from any personal attack or conflict. A parallel in the physical (rather than virtual) world would be a player on an American football team who tackles another player in a strategic move during the gameplay. This act is perfectly acceptable (and even expected). A player tackling another player in the parking lot after the game has ended, however, would constitute a personal attack – “true” or literal opposition rather than ritualised opposition. Legal “battles” are also agonistic, in that the attorneys involved are attempting to win the case, rather than acting out personal animosity toward the opposing attorneys or plaintiffs/defendants. The goal in these types of agonistic conflicts is winning the fight, whereas the goal in true/literal conflict is to challenge or harm another in some way, be it mentally, emotionally or physically. Although it is not ritualised in the same way as a religious ceremony with formulaic phrases from a lexicon uttered in predictable sequences, online gaming includes practices that are conventional, in that they occur with regularity and serve a consistent pragmatic function. While Marsden and Kádár (2017) argue that there is a distinction between ritual and simply conventional practice, for the purposes of this chapter, I will use the terms “­ritual” and “convention(al)” interchangeably to describe behaviours that are regularly performed and that are understood as reflective of the norms of the CofP in achieving success in the game. One of the clearest manifestations of ritual behaviour in any sport – including eSports such as League of Legends (2009) – is the use of aggressive and insulting language as a strategic tactic. By using oppositional/conflictual language, players hope to create emotional turmoil and distract or agitate opponents, thereby gaining a competitive advantage. While there may be sanctions if “trash talk” exceeds prescribed boundaries, the pragmatic purpose of this action is not to cause harm but to gain a “competitive edge” in order to win the contest. In the case of online game streams, streamers who have been defeated often discuss their (unsuccessful) strategies and choices and in some cases blame their poor performance on the talk or actions of others, for example, by blaming the trash talk for their poor performance. After an error that caused her avatar to die in one match, for example, Raihn acknowledges that she made the mistake because of inattention and implies that her performance was compromised by Gross Gore’s rancour (i.e. “trash talk”), saying: Example 16.1 I’ve never been so triggered8 in my whole entire life. When I feel like I’m being painted in a– in the wrong brush, I get triggered. She later says that she has “no energy after yelling so long” (in her angry response to Grossie’s accusations earlier in her stream session). While she does not explicitly articulate a connection between her imperfect performance in the game and the fact that she was triggered by Grossie’s actions, the timing of the comments supports that conclusion. Since Grossie was not an opponent in an ongoing match in this particular case, the trash talk was not a strategic move to win a game, but the example illustrates the effects that trash talk can have. A second way that participants engage in digital agonism is in distributing unsolicited, repetitive messages to a broad audience. As reflected in Table 16.1, the goal of any broadcast (including game streams) is to generate viewership (and often, by extension, revenue). While not necessarily as formulaic/prescribed as the rule-governed rituals of competing in 317

Sage L. Graham Table 16.1 Stream and game goals Goals

Ritualised opposition example(s)

‘True’ conflict example(s)

Game

To win

Seize resources from opponents Defeat or kill members of the opposing team

Harm teammates through antagonistic language Undermine team success (e.g. by leaving the game)

Stream

To gain viewers To generate revenue

Engage in discourse that appears oppositional to create collaborative play and fun (e.g. via banter)

Personal attacks e.g. accusations of being manipulative Name-calling Disrupting communication in chat

the game, the stream goals also incorporate agonistic conventions. One aspect of Twitch streams that makes them attractive to viewers and participants is the playful banter that characterises interaction. In the chatroom of any given Twitch stream, spam is a common component, used to increase the co-operative tenor of the open chat. While spam has varying definitions within different digital CofPs, many (perhaps most in current practice) associate spam with the unwanted or unsolicited distribution of digital content on a large scale. Heyd (2013) defines spam as one type of email hoax in which unsolicited email is distributed for profit – a practice that she labels as highly adversarial and antagonistic. Heyd’s definition entails true opposition in that the sender is encroaching on the rights of the recipients. On Twitch, however, what would have been identified as spam by Heyd has different characteristics; it is sent through a different digital channel with a different speed of transmission and has a different longevity.9 In live Twitch broadcasts, spam is treated in practice as a collaborative game, rather than an aggressive move. And although spam is technically prohibited according to the official rules of Twitch and many streamers, it is a frequent activity that is used as a marker of co-operation rather than competition. As Graham and Dutt (2019) note, “On Twitch, spam serves a metapragmatic/phatic function as a community-builder through an invitation to play”. In these cases, then, spam functions not as true opposition, but as ritual play that serves to build camaraderie. As with any type of (potentially oppositional) move, spam may be difficult to identify. On Twitch, spam is characterised by repetition of redundant messages10 posted in relatively quick succession, and by the number of participants in its production. The key factor, in this case, is whether initial spam posts are taken up and repeated by other participants (in which case the act of reposting ratifies the collaborative game). To Twitch chatters, spam is an avenue through which they can bond together through shared rule violation – buying into the playfulness of breaking the rules together and testing how long they can avoid sanctions as they post the same message repeatedly. Spam must be assessed in context and as part of an emergent interaction so that it can be identified when it is disruptive and appropriately controlled, but the shared experience of rule violation via spam is one of the defining characteristics of an entertaining and attractive Twitch stream. Examples 16.2 and 16.3 show the array of variations in repeated messages posted in a successful spam attempt (i.e. one that was taken up by others).11 Example 16.2 • Twerk Pls Twerk!!!