Disagreeing in english and vietnamese
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- CHAPTER FOUR
- 4.1.1.2. Structural organization
- 4.1.1.3. Dispreferred second turns in disagreeing
- 4.1.2. Preferred Sequences
- 4.1.2.2. Repair apparatus in disagreeing
3.3. Concluding RemarksDespite the paramount effectiveness it has offered the SA study, Brown & Levinson’s model of strategies unveils certain controversial points which engender modification across cultures and subcultures. Basing themselves on the speech act of requesting, which is performed in first-turn utterances, Brown & Levinson pay very little attention to ‘No FTA’ strategies in such second-turn responses as disagreement tokens. In addition, the set of strategies as regards the notion of negative/positive face has also triggered numerous arguments. Native Ss of English and Vietnamese, according to the empirical findings, differ in choosing politeness strategies to realize disagreement attributes, and this confirms Blum-Kulka and House's hypothesis that differences in perceptions of social situations and in the relative importance attached to any socio-cultural parameter may lead to differences in linguistic behavior (Blum-Kulka and House 1989: 137). The English preference for direct strategies with redress and the Vietnamese tendency to use indirect strategies have proved Leech (1986) and Brown & Levinson’s assumption (1987[1978]) that cultures may differ in terms of precedence and significance given to each strategy in spite of having the same sets of strategies. This has also coincided with Kieu T. T. H.’s finding (2001: 86) of Americans’ favorite use of on-record and Vietnamese deployment of off-record strategies in disagreements. The assumption of consistent correlation between politeness and indirectness is taken into consideration and is proved to be less convincing. The empirical study shows that indirectness does not always correlate with politeness. The deployment of indirectness varies across cultures, across speech acts and across contexts of a speech act of a culture. Thus, linguistic indirectness is both culturally and contextually dependent and colored, and the Vietnamese exploitation of indirect strategies in different contexts ranging from intimacy to asymmetrical role relationships should be interpreted in consideration of social factors and norms of behavior. Politeness in the Vietnamese socio-cultural framework, which is strongly anchored in Confucian ethics, is essentially motivated by the maintenance social harmony and community solidarity via individual observance of institutionalized practices. On the contrary, Anglo-American culture with its primary focus on individualist non-imposition tends to leave more free space for Ss to make their own choice of politeness strategies. The following chapter provides a thorough investigation of the organizational structure of disagreeing to bring out the shared and unshared strategies deployed in English disagreement tokens in comparison to Vietnamese ones.
CHAPTER FOURSTRATEGIES CONCERNING PREFERENCE ORGANIZATION4.1. Theoretical Preliminaries4.1.1. Preferred Second Turns4.1.1.1. MarkednessTypical adjacency pairs, as earlier mentioned, consist of two parts: a first pair part and a second pair part. Once the first part is given, there is a set of potential seconds to it. However, not all second parts are of equal structural complexity and status. Some are very simple, made of one or two words (‘Yes’, ‘Fine, thanks’), others are constructed of several long utterances (like long explanations, elaborate accounts etc.). In general, all second alternatives can be distinguished as either preferred or dispreferred responses. In spite of its original connotation, the concept of preference organization has nothing to do with psychological preference of the speakers or hearers. It is merely a structural notion similar to the concept of markedness in linguistics, which was first proposed and developed by the Prague School, and later, by Jakobson and others (Levinson 1983: 333). The concept of markedness in linguistics can be understood as follows: The intuition behind the notion of markedness in linguistics is that, where we have an opposition between two or more members…, it is often the case that one member is felt to be more usual, more normal, less specific than the other (in markedness terminology it is unmarked, the others marked). Cited from Comrie (1976: 111) Preferred/unmarked seconds, as interpreted on the basis of linguistic markedness, have less material, and are structurally simpler compared to dispreferred/marked (Levinson 1983, Mey 2001). Apart from a range of different and unrelated first parts, the latter seem to have more in common, namely, delay components and various degrees of structural build-up. Preferred alternatives tend to occur within simple sequential structures. On the contrary, dispreferred are likely to be accompanied with different kinds of structural complexity, as in the following examples by Pomerantz (1984a: 60-71):
→ R: It’s wonderful.
(2.0) → W: Well uh-I say it’s suspicious it could be something good too. The preferred second in (1) is immediately produced after the first evaluative token, whereas the delivery of the dispreferred second is deliberately delayed in (2). After a two-second silence, W starts speaking, prefacing his disagreeing with ‘well’ and other delay components. Other kinds of dispreferred seconds like rejections of requests, refusals of offers, denials of blames etc., are normally done in this marked manner, as Levinson (1983: 308) puts it: …[I]n contrast to the simple and immediate nature of preferreds, dispreferreds are delayed and contain additional complex components; and certain kinds of seconds like request rejections, refusals of offers, disagreements after evaluative assessments, etc., are systematically marked as dispreferreds. By and large, the marked actions are likely to be avoided in interpersonal conversations due to the complexity of their marked formats.
The specific characteristics of such complex-structured responses are examined and generalized in the works by Atkinson and Drew (1979), Pomerantz (1975, 1978, 1984a-b), Levinson (1983), Yule (1996), Mey (1993, 2001) among others. The main features include: (i) delay tokens: silences/ pauses, hesitations and hedges (false starts ‘Er’, expletives ‘Yes’…), repairs, or insertion sequences, (ii) prefaces: dispreferred markers like ‘Well’ and ‘Uh’, appreciations, apologies, qualifiers and mitigations ‘I don’t know for sure, but…’, and (iii) accounts or explanations for uttering dispreferreds. Some other prosodic features like speed of delivery, articulation, stress, irregular breathing, as well as non-linguistic factors (head nods/shakes, smiles, facial expressions, body movements etc.) may create certain impact on the quality of dispreferred seconds. On the whole, the production of such wordy and elaborate responses takes time and requires a great effort on the part of conversationalists. Moreover, they may bring unpleasant feelings to whatever parties involved in interchanges. Consequently, dispreferred seconds are likely to be avoided due to their complex-structural format and communicative ineffectiveness. Conversation analytic work also focuses on the correlation of the content and the sequential structure of preference. Quite interestingly, there is an organic relationship between the content and its format, to wit, some patterns seem recurrently occur in fixed structures. For instance, agreements with evaluative assessments tend to appear in unmarked/preferred format, whereas almost all of disagreements are delivered in marked/dispreferred structures. The notion of preference may be applied to the actions that are produced in either preferred or dispreferred constructions, i.e., preferred actions are normally done in preferred format, and dispreferred actions in dispreferred format. A consistency between the format and content is found in a substantial number of adjacency pair second parts. This consistent match is illustrated in the following table:
Table 4 46: Correlations of content and format in adjacency pair second Levinson 1983: 336 (My emphasis) A close look at the sequential structure reveals that the concept of correlation also involves the first pair parts. Let us take an example from Levinson’s work (1983: 337):
R: Yeah you see I’ll I’ll phone him up and see if there’s any time free (2.0)
C: Yeah. R: Uh they’re normally booked Saturdays but I don’t- it might not be Actually, C’s first turn is full of places potential for R to perform a preferred second (breathing, pauses, silences, and latching), and this wordiness is resulted from C’s delayed uptake. Had it not been for R’s delay of a compliance response right after C’s request ‘I wondered if you could phone the vica’, C would not have had to prolong and elaborate his first part. As clearly shown, preferred and dispreferred seconds, by nature, may systematically influence the structural design of their corresponding first parts.
→ D: Essentially, except we’ve hadda good relationship at //home
→ R: .hhh Ye :s, but I mean it’s a relationship where … Pomerantz (1975: 68, 1984a: 72) In the second turn of the sequence, D is in disagreement with R’s assessment, and D’s mitigated disagreement token stimulates R to elaborate and clarify the prior assessment. R’s second assessment is proffered in the third turn of the sequence. Thus, the first parts in cases like this do allow for a set of responses to be relevant, and the structure of adjacency pairs can be interpreted as relatively fixed. It is of interest to note that the distinction between preferred and dispreferred format is not always clear. In essence, there is a general preference for agreement over disagreement when a first evaluation is uttered. But agreement components may go with disagreement tokens, weakening the strength of the responses. The ‘agreement plus disagreement’ format seems to be prefaced by such words as ‘Well’, ‘Yes, but’, or accompanied with delays, silences or pauses as in the following two excerpts by Pomerantz (1984a: 70-72):
→ (2.0) → B: (hhhhh) well, they do, but
they’re so god damn lousy. → D: We::ll, that’s a generality. The long silence after A’s turn signals an upcoming negative response in B’s next turn. The prolonged breathing and dispreferred marker ‘well’ delay the main act of disagreeing too. The same strategy is employed in (6) where D shows his hesitation by prefacing his dispreferred answer with ‘Well’. Disagreements that are displayed after assertions or qualifiers are called weak disagreements or weak agreements (Pomerantz 1984a). Disagreements, however, are not always considered dispreferred seconds in interactions. In case the first S self-denigrates or self-deprecates, the responder’s agreement may be understood as implicit criticism. Conversely, a strong disagreement on the part of the next S is actually a preferred second. Pomerantz (1975, 1978, 1984a), Levinson (1983), Sacks (1987) and Nofsinger (1991) among others pay close attention to this interesting point. In the example by Pomerantz (1984a: 85) exhibited below, the disagreement token is combined with a complimentary evaluative attribute:
feel like uh her and I play alike hehh → B: No. You play beautifully. In comparison with other dispreferreds, disagreements that occur in response to self-deprecations tend to be stronger and more straightforward, perhaps, because they are done for the sake of alter not ego. On the contrary, agreements are like to be delayed, withheld, or hedged to mitigate the confirmation of the prior. In the following example (Pomerantz 1984a: 90) a suppositional is exploited to weaken the conformation:
L: (No) W: Pavlov’s dog. (2.0) → L: (I suppose), As clearly seen, the agreement produced in the sequence above has typical features of dispreferred seconds: delayed by a long pause of two seconds, and mitigated by a qualifier. The answers subsequent to self-denigrations may be accompanied with disaffiliation with, or favorable reformulation of the prior self-critical assessments, as in:
→ C: Yeh but that’s passing Ronald. Pomerantz (1984a: 87) In the response to R’s complaining about getting a C in math, C points out that C is a passing grade although it is below A and B. C’s reformulating the grade scale undermines R’s self-deprecating attribute and comforts him. Conversationalists sometimes undermine the validity of the prior self-deprecatory formulations by suggesting that the actions or qualities are common and normal, as in another example by Pomerantz (Ibid.)
→ L: Everybody has a distance. As shown, the two different kinds of preference organization seem to work in opposing directions in excerpts containing self-denigrations, and this phenomenon creates more complexity in conversation analytic work. Another question concerning the structural complexity is raised in relation to the performance of second parts in response to compliments. The preference for agreements/acceptances over disagreements/rejections appears to be contradictory to the norm of self-praise avoidance. If the second party is complimented on, his/her preferred second in form of agreement or acceptance may insinuate a self-praise token. On the other hand, if he/she completely negates the prior compliment, he/she troubles himself/herself by getting involved in dispreferred format. In English actual interchanges, co-conversants are observed to make some kind of compromise solutions including downgraded agreements, shifts of praise to third parties, or reciprocal compliments (return of compliments to their producers) (Pomerantz 1978, 1984a and Levinson 1983).
→ A: I hadda hard time, but I didn’t think they were too good, …
→ D: Yeah you soun’ real good too. Pomerantz (1978: 98-105) In (11) the receiver downgrades the agreement token in response to the compliment, and in (12) he shifts the praise by returning it to the giver. By so doing, the receiver can avoid praising himself, but still make good use of the preference format.
4.1.2.1. Repair apparatusPreference organization does not only confine itself to alternative second turns, but also operates within a range of various matters like the handling of repair, a sequence of turns and sequence types. As aforementioned, repairs are often utilized as effective delay components of dispreferred seconds. There are two kinds of repair work: self-repairs and other repairs. Repairs can be stimulated by ‘self’ (self-initiated repairs), and by ‘other’ (other-initiated repairs). In the following example by Pomerantz (1975: 74 & 1984a: 71), the next S provides the prior S with a chance to elaborate his assessment by repeat his evaluation. Given this other-initiation of repair, the prior S confirms his assessment, resulting in a dispreferred answer.
B: Nothing. B: I sound ha:p//py? ((repair initiator)) A: Ye:uh. ((re-assessment)) (0.3)
→ B: No:, ((dispreferred seconds)) Finally, the dispreferred second comes after a pause that is treated as a second chance for A to reformulate his assessment in the first turn. As clearly demonstrated, preference organization affects and spreads all over the sequence, from the first turn to the last turn. On the whole, the repair mechanism works on the basis of preference for self-initiated repairs over other-initiated repairs, and preference for self-repairs over other-repairs (Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks 1977). The remedial work can be done in a three-turn (or more) sequence: (i) Turn 1 (includes the repairable), first opportunity for self-initiated self-repair, and transition space (between two first turns), second opportunity for self-initiated self-repair, (ii) Turn 2, third opportunity for other-repair or other-initiation of self-repair, and (iii) Turn 3, fourth opportunity for other-initiated self-repair. The following examples by Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks (1977: 364-366) illustrate self-initiated self-repair (opportunity 1 & 2):
→ this yea:r I mean this quarter y’//know J: Yeah
→ =I mean y’know they put up y’know that kinda paper ‘r stuff, the brown paper. Example (16) (Schegloff et al. 378) is typical of other-initiated other-repairs, example (17) (Ibid. 367) illustrates other-initiation of self-repair (opportunity 3), and example (18) (Ibid. 368) displays other-initiated self-repair (opportunity 4):
(0.7) → B: Quail, I think.
→ B: What? A: Have you ever tried a clinic?
→ A: The who? → B: Amfah Corporation. T’s a holding company. Another component of the repair mechanism involves a range of preferences operating in relation to the four opportunities mentioned above, namely:
M Least frequently used
Table 4-2 reveals that the preference ranking spills over a continuum from the most frequently used (# 1) to the least frequently used (# 4), and there is a clear trend for self-initiated self-repair. Also, substantial delays are at work in the third opportunity if self-initiated self-repair is not accomplished in the first two opportunities. In the following example by Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks (1977: 370), B waits for A’s self-repair, and only after a pause of one minute does A signal the problematic issue, leading to A’s successful self-remedy.
was this morning. (1.0)
B: From selling cigarettes? A: From buying cigarettes. In naturally occurring sequences, there are many other ways of doing repair work, such as (partial) repetitions of problematic items, echo-questions, lengthening sounds, etc. In addition to this, in many occasions, when the other parties can do other-repair, they still prefer the first Ss to self-repair by indicating the repairable in their turns subsequent to the prior as follows:
A: Wait-er? K: Waitress, sorry, A: ‘Ats better, Schegloff, Jefferson & Sacks (1977: 377) Given the rare case when other-repair is done, it is often accompanied with such phrases as ‘I think’ used in (16), or ‘y’mean’, or somehow marked, as in:
S: What? L: Single beds. // They’re- → E: Y’mean narrow? L: They’re awfully narrow yeah. (Ibid. 378) Preference organization also has considerable influence on sequence types (Levinson 1983). In making a request, for instance, the preference for an acceptance over a refusal may result in the S’s designing a special ‘pre-request’, which leads to a possible offer on the part of his co-conversant, as in Levinson’s example (1983: 343) below:
were going to Bertrand’s party. R: Yes I thought you might be. C: Heh heh R: Yes would you like a lift? ((offer)) C: Oh I’d love one. In his work on telephone conversation openings, Schegloff realizes that preference organization finds its manifestation in the callers’ provision of minimal cues in their turns subsequent to the receivers’ first turns, as shown below (Schegloff 1979a: 52):
C: Hello Ilse? R: Yes. Be:tty. C’s ‘try’ on the name of the receiver should be produced with a low-rise intonation contour, for a high-rise contour would show a far higher degree of uncertainty about the recipient’s identity (Ibid. 50). The preference machinery makes dispreferred the callers’ self-identification and preferred the receivers’ recognition of the callers. Callers’ self-identification is often withheld to leave room for other-recognition. In the example above, C’s ‘Hello plus name’ act as an invitation for R to recognize who the caller is. Callers’ self-identification, in general, runs the risk of having to deploy dispreferred structures in telephone conversation openings between known parties. In consequence, callers normally supply limited amount of identificatory information sufficient for them being recognized. In the example by Levinson (1983: 345) given below, preference organization operates in two sequence types, namely, greetings and greetings combined with self-identification and recognition:
(ii) Hello, (iii) Hello. It’s me. (iv) Hello. It’s Penny.
As discussed, preference organization influences not only turns (of a pair and other subsequent pairs), but also sequences and sequence types. 4.1.2.2. Repair apparatus in disagreeingRemedial work in disagreeing, as discussed to some degree above, seems to operate on the same basis of the general repair apparatus investigated by Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks in their 1977 paper. Self-initiated self-repairs may occur in the first turn or in the transition space between the first and the second turn within the first assessment, as in:
→ slightly different, but I think she has a good sense // of humor B: Yeh, I think she does too but she has a different type. Pomerantz (1984a: 73) Self-initiated self-repairs can occur in the third turn of the sequence within the delivery of disagreements as in the fragment by Pomerantz (Ibid. 74) exhibited below:
an’-an’she belie:ves that she’s running my li:fe, or, you know, or directing it one way or anothuh, and she feels happy about it, I do whatever I please (h)any (h)wa(h) .HHH!// ( ) L: Yeah,
→ W: We::ll –eh-that’s tur: - I mean eh-that’s alright, -- uhb-ut uh, ez long ez you do::. But h-it’s-eh-to me::, --after anyone … Recipients of the compliments are inclined to disagree with prior complements. They may treat the first positive assessments as exaggerated or overdone, therefore leading to their remedial work in form of undermining or qualifying, as in:
→ P: Uhh hmhh uhh hmhh well, not that much (Pomerantz 1978: 98) P seems to be hesitative in whether or not to repair A’s assessment, and after a lot of ‘uh’s, ‘hm’s and the like, she uses ‘well’ to mitigate her disagreement-remedy response. In the following excerpt (Ibid.), R downgrades the athletic award he has received by negating its importance. C repairs his downgrading by emphasizing the significance of the award, saying that she is happy with it.
→ C: Well I think it’s very important=En I’m very pleased Sometimes, second Ss may prefer to allude that the first assessment is problematic by delaying their turn, or asking prior Ss to reconsider initial evaluations, as given below:
→ (0.7) → B: I do? A: Meahm. B: mNo? I’m no:t, B’s pause subsequent to A’s opinion can be assumed the first signal of B’s upcoming disagreement. B’s question ‘I do?’ is the second signal, as well as a second chance for A’s self-repair. B’s apparently contrastive opinion is launched only after B’s reaffirmation of his position and his missing (on purpose?) both two opportunities for self-repair or self-elaboration. Pomerantz (1984a: 71) takes notice of repair initiators like ‘What?’, ‘Hm?’ and the like that may be used to request for more clarification on the part of first Ss as given below:
→ W: Hm? L: Maybe it’s just ez well you don’t know. (2.0) (D) W: Well. Uh-I say it’s suspicious it could be something good too. In other cases, the recipients’ long pauses or silences yield the prior Ss’ modification or elaboration work. Hoping to get approvals from the co-conversants, the first Ss may carry on explaining, clarifying and elaborating things, resulting in spilling the remedial work over the whole sequence, as in another example (Ibid. 70-71). Chances for repair work or places of repair work are notated with (→), and disagreements with (D):
→ 2. (2.0) (D) 3. B: (hhhhh) well, they // do, but 4. A: They aren’t accidents, 5. B: No, they take working at, But on the other hand, some people are 6. born with hhm (1.0) well a sense of humor, I think is something yer 7. born with Bea. → 8.A: Yes, or it’s c- I have the-eh yes, I think a lotta people are, but then I 9. think it can be developed, too. → 10. (1.0) (D) 11. B: Yeah, but // there’s- 12. A: Any- 13. A: Any of those attributes can be developed. The two-second silence in line 2 is the first chance for A to deal with the remedy, but he does not take it. A clarifies his position in line 8, but he still sticks to its kernel, thus causing a one-second silence on the part of his co-conversant. This silence is also his second chance to think over the issue at hand. However, his almost unchanged status leads to B’s second disagreement in the ‘agreement plus disagreement’ format.
4.1.3. SummaryAs it is clearly shown, preferred/unmarked pair parts are structurally less complicated and linguistically simpler in comparison with dispreferred/marked. The latter are likely to go with delay devices, prefaces, or explanations apart from the structural complexity, and thus tend to be avoided in interpersonal interaction because of their complex-structural format and communicative ineffectiveness. Disagreement tokens in English and Vietnamese are seen to be performed in both marked/dispreferred structures as dispreferred seconds and unmarked/preferred formats as preferred seconds. Also, three kinds of repairs, namely, self-initiated self-repairs, other-initiated self-repairs, and other-initiated other-repairs, functioning as delay devices are found to operate in various ways in the structural organization of turns and sequences in disagreeing. The next part compares and contrasts the English corpus and the Vietnamese corpus on disagreeing obtained from conversations recorded in everyday casual settings within the framework of conversation analytic studies earlier discussed and exhibited. Yüklə 1,43 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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