soundbiters bit. living in a contracted dialogistic space the uncomfortable life at number 10
TRANSCRIPT
Soundbiters bit
Living in a contracted dialogistic space
The uncomfortable life at Number 10
Or appraisal meets CADS over Hutton
Appraisal system descriptive framework
CADS methodology
Hutton inquiry data
And social change…
Soundbites, spin and other practices Technologisation of discourse Records of discourse are more available and
access to what was said is easier. This has made the moves more evident And people less trusting Cultural products created round this theme
CADS methodology
Corpus linguistics Discourse analysis Quantitative and qualitative methods Pork butcher approach
The data
Hutton Inquiry transcripts Blair, Campbell and Powell: their
testimony at the Inquiry (Parts 1 and 2)
the context… Legal setting: Q and R. A number of dialogues going on Constrained by: A serious occasion Need to remain coherent with witness
statements and documents taken from office computers. (retrospective)
All was being recorded, transcribed and put on the web site (prospective)
Corpus All Hutton: 1,002,836 st. sentence length
18.31 Number 10: 39,304 St. sentence length:
26,07 Blair: 13,534 sentences 348 st length
28.60 Campbell: 17,705 sentences 646 26.05 Powell: 8,431 sentences 176 st length
17.21
Sentence length and ideolect
A pattern of accumulating discourse markers:Turn initiatiors well. Utterance launchers Look, I mean, you know. Overtures as I said, I must say, can I just say. Epistemic stance markers I think, in a sense, as it were. Stance adverbials obviously , really , actually
A thin trickle of proposition in a sea of discourse markers: more spin than substance?
Keywords 1 N WORD Number 10 % Hutton % KEYNESS
1 hmm 0.58 0.05 826.2 2 I 4.34 2.35 696.5 6 think 0.98 0.39 312.0 7 was 3.00 1.96 244.1 9 this 1.31 0.69 223.2 10 that 3.97 2.88 196.4 11 the 6.56 5.15 192.9 12 point 0.41 0.14 170.6
Keywords 2
N WORD Number 10 % Hutton % KEYNESS
16 thing 0.14 0.03 97.5 18 going 0.29 0.12 85.6 19 not 1.55 1.10 84.1 20 thought 0.20 0.07 83.5 24 were 0.82 0.52 73.1 25 say 0.43 0.23 72.5 26 making 0.12 0.03 71.3 27 issue 0.17 0.06 70.7 28 saying 0.18 0.06 70.4
Keywords 3
N WORD Number 10 % Hutton % KEYNESS
15 it 2.01 1.44 29 felt 0.13 0.04 66.6 31 way 0.22 0.09 62.6 35 discussion 0.13 0.05 53.8 39 story 0.17 0.07 50.9 44 people 0.17 0.08 42.3 47 cannot 0.13 0.05 41.1 48 false 0.04 - 40.6 49 frankly 0.03 - 40.5 50 terribly 0.02 - 40.3
KEYWORDS 4
N WORD Number 10 % Hutton % KEYNESS
53 important 0.11 0.04 37.9 55 clear 0.14 0.06 37.5 57 person 0.11 0.04 36.9 61 centrally 0.02 - 34.0 62 difficult 0.07 0.02 32.5 65 recall 0.12 0.05 29.2 66 should 0.22 0.13 29.1 67 obviously 0.11 0.05 28.8 71 emphasise 0.03 - 26.7 73 no 0.48 0.34 26.4 76 best 0.06 0.02 26.1
Keywords
Indicate salience Show differences compared with all
Hutton corpus Indicate what the core of a particular
pattern might be At first sight appear normal and
innocuous, noise rather than signal
Constructing an identity
Individuals and team spirit – who does what to whom with whom?Pronouns
What do people do all day? Kinds of activity–Verbs/Nouns
Engagement and detachment – evaluating, taking responsibility, Modality
Pronouns
Mostly to do with discourse management and an interpersonal dialogue but also it, this and that
Oscillation: vague reference and group identity
Lawyers accepted the alternations without comment, encouraging the construction of a joint identity for the team
Key verbs from the keywords
Word all Hutton Men at work Keyness
think 0.39% 0.92% 191.2 thought 0.07& 0.22% 78.4 say 0.23% 0.48% 77.2 mean 0.07% 0.21% 57.6 felt 0.04% 0.13% 45.7 emphasise - 0.03% 26.5
More verb forms All Hutton Men at Work
Keyness was 1.96% was 3.06%
Keyness:199.6 were 0.52 were 0.83 Keyness:
57.9 do 0.36% do 0.61% Keyness:
51.1 cannot 0.05% cannot 0.15% Keyness:
47.4
Existential constructions
Cluster All Hutton Men at work this was 0.07% 0.19 % that was 0.15 % 0.27 % it was 0.07 % 0.63 % there were 0.15 % 0.27 % there is 0.09 % 0.21 % Tot: 0.53 % 1.57 %
Talking about work Mental and communication verbs: discourse and
stance markers – privileged access Transitivity: impersonal constructions no-one gets
singled out or named. Locative/ Existential constructions : stuff happens In the thick of things: indefinite noun phrases often
marked for size and number and negative evaluation Perceivers of a situation; reactors rather than
initiators
The real protagonists
Word All Hutton Men at Work Keyness
thing 0.03% 0.15% 90.1 sense 0.03% 0.12% 66.3 issue 0.06% 0.19% 63.9 people 0.08% 0.21% 58.6 point 0.14% 0.29% 45.4 story 0.07% 0.19% 52.9 discussion 0.05% 0.12% 28.0
Nouns
Text autonomisation or illocutionary text nouns
The vagueness of thing, way, sense Fuzzy reference referential indistinctness Patterns in their use: the first, the best, the
only, the important (thing, way) and issue agentless passives and
metaphorical usage
People
Decisions and choice (the best the only the right the senior)
Part of the dialogistic second guessing about perceptions: people would say
The key point
Dialogistic positioning with respect of interlocutors (the BBC’s point of view)
Limiting the range of choice dialogistically (there is no point, little point, a key point, )
Emphasis: structural foregrounding, lexical focussing around the field of difficulty
A kind of spin
Foregrounding : Cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions
Focussing: what the point is emphasise/important/key/salient/vital/. Stance adverbials in the keywords:
obviously/terribly/absolutely/frankly Evaluation: best/only way/only thing
Hard times and having to The quality of life Modality: deontic and epistemic, perceived
needs and duties, perceptions of reality HUTTON MEN AT WORK
should 0.13 should 0.24% Having to: 0.07% 0.20% Difficulty: 0.02% 0.09% Semantic field: difficult/complicated etc.
Metaphors they live by
Firefighting and weathering the storm Space and positions Under fire and at war Stronger and bigger than us Uncontrollable and messy
In control or at bay?
The data, wordlists, keywords, concordances, point to a different picture from that of the outsider perceptions.
Men at work construct their identity and working reality through their use of particular linguistic features in a build up of patterns
What the data shows
On returning to the data (via concordance lines)
We see the keywords correspond to resources linked to a number of dialogistic patterns:
Appraisal – dialogistic positioning
particular patterns of dialogistic positioning:the arguability of any utterance can be varied by adjusting the dialogistic status of the utterance to engage with past, present or future communicative exchanges.
Constant interaction
taking up, acknowledging, responding to, challenging or rejecting actual or imagined prior and future utterances.
Disclaim
Dialogic opposition resources by which some prior
utterance or some alternative position is invoked so as to be rejected, replaced or dismissed as irrelevant
Proclaim Concur - aligns with interlocutor Pronounce - intrudes self Endorse - brings in other texts for
support Typically against some opposed
alternative increases the interpersonal cost of any ejection /doubting / challenging of the author's dialogic position
Expanding and contracting
whether the resources employed present the speaker as opening up the dialogue to more or less divergent positions or as closing it down so as to suppress or at least limit such divergence.
Contraction
the space for dialogistic diversity is contracted by what amounts to a pre-emptive rhetorical action - the writer/speaker is presented as seeking to constrain possible dialogistic divergence by overtly and strongly indicating their personal investment in the current proposition/proposal.
‘obviously’
Any challenge necessitates a direct confrontation with the speaker writer or a confrontation with what is represented as `common-knowledge' or `public opinion'.
“the only way”
alternative positions are closed down by being directly rejected or by being replaced.
Assertion
Those utterances which employ the form of the bare assertion ignore or deny the dialogic imperative and thereby suppress the basic heteroglossic nature of social reality.
Key patterns in the data
Proclaiming and Assertion – Denial – Probabilising via privileged access Relativising or spin –– backgrounding by
foregrounding Justification closing down options
Making assertions
Existential and locative expressions Cluster number 10 All Hutton this was 0.19 % 0.07% that was 0.27 % 0.15 % it was 0.63 % 0.07 % there were 0.27 % 0.15 % there is 0.21 % 0.09 %
Tot: 0.53 % 1.57 %
denying
No Not Cannot False
Probabilising
When epistemic markers are used it is usually with privileged access:
We felt/We thought/I think
Not open to contradiction
contracting the space
Illocutionary text nouns thing, way. Fuzzy reference, referential indistinctness but with distinct patterns in their use
the first, the best, the only, the important (thing, way)
All of which close down the options
People
Same patterns found with the key word people. Decisions and choice evaluation (the best /the only /the right /the senior)
Part of the dialogistic second guessing about perceptions and pre-empting of reactions: people would say
“Look this way”
Point as a keyword Dialogistic positioning with respect of
interlocutors (the BBC’s point of view) Limiting the range of choice dialogistically
(there is no point, little point, a key point, ) Emphasise: angling the argument to
exclude other aspects
Spin – angling the position
Foregrounding : Cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions
Focussing: what the point is emphasise/important/key/salient/vital/. Stance adverbials in the keywords:
obviously/terribly/absolutely/frankly
Noblesse oblige
Modality: deontic and epistemic, perceived needs and duties, perceptions of reality
Number 10 HUTTON
Having to: 0.22% 0.04% No options but one…….
Painted into a corner or shutting the door
The data, wordlists, keywords, concordances, point to a habit of dialogistic second guessing and pre-empting.
Chronic anticipation
Living in an open dialogue
An uncomfortable contracted space
limited in scope, trapped by its own logic, created by its encoding in language which
closes off areas of possible choice Immobile but twitching Cripplingly heightened intertextual awareness
of others’ reactions Technologisation strings visible Short term benefits soon give way to longer
term drawbacks
Painted into a corner