Thus the second social rule seems to be: ‘Express a negative attitude to yourselfand to the situation, especially if you are talking about the course, and especially in the spring term’.
Trang 1then Thus the second social rule seems to be: ‘Express a negative attitude to yourself
and to the situation, especially if you are talking about the course, and especially in the spring term’.
A detailed qualitative analysis of the predominant speech acts within the category
‘negative attitude to a situation or third party’ in CK dialogues showed that students evaluate negatively the work, books and lecturers They complain that the revision for the examination is ‘a lot of work’, that 3,000 words for the project is ‘lot’ to write, that there is ‘a lot of pressure’, and that the main problem is ‘time’ They express dis-satisfaction with theories, fields of thought and courses about them, saying that they are ‘rubbish’, as in:
But it I mean it’s it’s just (0.5)
I don’t know
It’s just I don’t know
Bloody tosh, isn’t it?
CM Well it’s- it’s a bit abstract ((1)) [Note: numbers in brackets indicate length of pause, in seconds] This example shows that negative evaluations are interactive in the sense that if one speaker displays a negative attitude, the other(s) are expected to do the same The students complain that books are too ‘theoretical’, and that articles are ‘completely useless’ In (2), BM and
DM are discussing an article
Again, BM chooses to talk negatively and DM is expected to echo the sentiments They evaluate some lecturers in an exaggeratedly negative fashion: one is ‘a fanatic’, and another ‘a complete maniac’
It would seem that one way that students can show a positive attitude to the course
is when they are being ironic and flouting the maxim of quality to imply a negative attitude [note that the transcription note // used by Cutting here signals simultaneous speech]:
I really like the teacher very much
Here, NF gives the teacher as the cause of her being late to class again Using an indirect speech act, she implies that she does not like the teacher; DM echoes her sentiments and her ironic conversational implicature
The analysis of expressions of a ‘negative attitude to self ’ in CK dialogues showed that the main speech acts in this category are ‘criticise yourself ’, ‘express worry’, and
‘minimise your progress’ Students evaluate themselves and their work negatively, possibly in the expectation that the interlocutor will contradict them or reassure them
of the normality of the situation They say that their ‘handwriting is awful’, that they
Joan
Cutting
Trang 2are ‘no good at memory things’, that they ‘never get things done on time’, that they
cannot ‘get [their] brains going’, that they cannot ‘come up with’ a point themselves
in their project In (4), the speaker shows himself in a negative light as he describes
how he did the tutorial task:
read the first part again which gave me a real big clue for one of the first
It was really stupid
I just had one book which wasn’t on the list which was too-too long
really to give // me any conclusions
BF // No I- I haven’t read anything specific for it (2.5)
If speakers feel that they may have alarmed interlocutors about their good progress,
perhaps showing themselves in a good light, they minimise the significance of it by
playing it down, as in:
a project
Well what are these yeah what are these ideas then? (1.5)
A qualitative analysis of expressions of a ‘positive attitude to interlocutors’ shows that
the main speech acts in this category are ‘empathise’, ‘console’, ‘encourage’ and
‘advise’ These occur in response to the negative evaluations of situation and self
mentioned above The students ‘empathise’ with each other using expressions such
as ‘I’ve done that’ and ‘same here’; they show solidarity by saying that they are in
the same boat In (6) below, about whether to do a higher degree immediately or
leave it till later, DM empathises with CM’s attitude in ‘It’s either now (2) or never
for me’ and encourages him in his decision:
It’s either now (2) or never for me
You’re doing the right thing
// Do it now yeah
Another response to worried colleagues is to ‘console’ them; to tell them ‘don’t
worry’, that their progress seems fine This happens mostly in CK In (7), CM says
that he is going to miss the last week of class and seeks the approval of his colleagues;
DM reassures him by minimising the problem:
Joan Cutting
Trang 3(7) DM Er it’s no big deal.
By the time you get to the last week you’ll have done most of what you need to- you’ll know what you need to know for the portfolio
If you’re answering questions anyway (3) shouldn’t be a problem (2)
On occasions, the students ‘encourage’ each other by praising or congratulating This happens more in CK than in NCK: students tell each other they have done well, or have good arguments and ideas In (8), DM has just read through BF’s project and praises it:
this (2) and it’s very readable (1) Another reaction to the ‘negative to self ’ speech act is to ignore it Notice in (4) that BF’s reaction to BM’s ‘It was really stupid’, and in (5) that DM’s reaction to AF’s ‘totally uninformed sort of basically stupid ideas for a project’ is not to ‘console’ (e.g.: ‘Don’t worry if you’re stupid’) or to ‘encourage’ by disagreeing (e.g.: ‘Oh no, you’re not stupid’), but rather to ignore the negative evaluation of self as if they knew that BM and AF were not serious about it They let it pass with ‘Yeah’ or ‘What?’ and then concen-trate rather on empathising with the negative evaluation of the situation (‘No I- I haven’t read anything specific for it’) and prompting the speaker to continue with a question emptied of negative evaluation (‘Well what are these yeah what are these ideas then?’)
In the summer term, sometimes students who feel close to each other do not respond
to colleagues evaluating the situation and themselves negatively by showing empathy
at all By then, they trust each other enough to risk threatening each other’s face by offering ‘advice’ and ‘warning’ (transactional ‘positive to interlocutor’ talk) Thus, in (9), DM fears that he will have difficulty finding a dissertation topic:
words (2) And is not excruciatingly boring
((sniffs))
and AF’s response is not ‘I’ve been trying to think of something too’ but ‘face it and cope with it’ Her advice is softened with the hedge ‘well’ and the tentative modal
‘might’
Just as students can show a positive attitude to the course if they are using irony and implying a negative attitude, they can show a negative attitude to the interlocutor
if they are indulging in a little banter and implying a positive attitude Teasing colleagues in the context of the course is a risky endeavour and it only occurs in the autumn and the summer when the stress-level is lower (Cutting 1996) In (10), DM expresses contentment that the deadline for a project has been moved forward:
Joan
Cutting
Trang 4Oh you dosser!
You’re an absolute dosser!
BF evaluates his attitude negatively, just to tease
It becomes more obvious that these social rules exist in the common room, when
speakers break them and meet with an adverse reaction Let us start with the first ‘social
rule’: ‘Express a positive attitude to your interlocutors and the communication, whatever
topic you are talking about, and especially in the spring and summer terms’.
Speakers rarely go out of their way to worry their colleagues Thus, when it
happens, the tension that it creates is striking (11) comes from the beginning of the
spring term when the pressure has just begun; CM and AM are discussing their
revi-sion for the examination:
You know I don’t mi-mind it
Cos we haven’t actually done it that deeply have we?
CM I’ve spent the most time right now on all this all this load of er in Language
and Linguistics
I haven’t done Chomsky
Which is (0.5) probably very stupid but you // know
No em avoiding it in terms of em (1.5) in terms of er I mean obviously
in relation to other things you’ve got to=
AM is evidently nervous about the linguistics revision He obeys the rule of speaking
negatively about oneself: ‘and I haven’t done Chomsky Which is (0.5) probably very
stupid but you // know’ However, CM makes no attempt to ‘console’ or ‘empathise’
His reaction is to intensify AM’s worry: ‘You still got enough time for that?’ and ‘Avoiding
Chomsky in Linguistics is // procrastination I think’ These two conflicting utterances
(amounting to ‘don’t do it now’ and ‘do it now’), co-occurring with statement that
shows himself in a positive light (‘I’ve spent the most time right now on all this all
this load of er in Language and Linguistics cos I really want to answer that question’)
do not sound as friendly as AF did with her advice in example (9) above More
soli-darity and less power could have been expressed with a hedge and a modal, ‘Perhaps
you might not have time for that now’ Unconsoled, AM is left consoling himself,
showing himself a positive attitude, with ‘There’s not a lot of things they can ask Cos
we haven’t actually done it that deeply have we?’ He is thrown into confusion;
witness his incoherent ‘No em avoiding it in terms of em (1.5) in terms of er I mean
Joan Cutting
Trang 5obviously in relation to other things you’ve got to but not necessarily you know
in depth’
When the second social rule of the common room, ‘Express a negative attitude to
yourself and to the situation, especially if you are talking about the course, and especially in the spring term’, is broken, it meets with an adverse reaction Starting with evaluations
of the course, it would be fair to say that when students realise that they have expressed
a positive attitude to the course, they themselves immediately counteract it with a negative expression For example, in (12) AM says that the courses ‘Linguistics Research’ and ‘Language and Linguistics’ are ‘interesting’ and that he is ‘really quite pleased’:
Language and Linguistics
It’s quite interesting actually
I was really quite pleased
I mean it’s (2) I don’t know
I’ll be glad when it’s finished (1)
and then has to add negatively that he will ‘be glad when it’s finished’ and that he
is ‘not really into it’ If, on the other hand, speakers express a positive attitude to the course and then leave it, this is met with open disagreement, an attitude ‘negative towards the interlocutor’ That is to say: if the speaker breaks the rules, the hearers break them too (13) is an example: CM is overjoyed that the Easter holidays are upon them:
the twentieth?
With nothing to do?
There is a group outcry [ .]
The study of speech acts shows general tendencies regardless of personality Although personality was not studied in depth, an overall global impression of personality in the data was included BM likes to express negative feelings about third parties and situations;
CM tends to show himself in a positive light and deny solidarity and reassurance to his colleagues; DM is the warmest solidarity-giver, guaranteed to express a positive attitude towards his interlocutors; AF goes in for self-deprecation, modestly showing herself
in a poor light; and BF most enjoys a little banter with her male colleagues, playfully showing a negative attitude to them These differences were not great enough to invali-date the overall results: it can be seen that they are not the causes of the changes observed over time When a calculation was made of the distribution of discourse units spoken
by each of the six recordees in each of the three terms, it was found that BM and AF feature less in the spring and summer term recordings; yet they are the ones who are most negative to self and third party, and speech acts expressing a negative attitude
to self and third party peak in the spring It was also found that CM features more in
Joan
Cutting
Trang 6the spring and summer dialogues than he does in the autumn and that he does not
go in for expressions of positive attitude to interlocutor; yet the rate of such speech acts
increases over the spring and summer Thus it would seem that the changes are not
a reflection of the characteristics of the recordee featuring most in each term [ .]
The speaker’s choice of speech act depends on the speech acts in the immediately
preceding discourse: in CK topics, speakers respond to their colleagues’ negative
expres-sions about themselves and the course, by empathising, consoling, encouraging and
occasionally advising and warning When speakers do not show a positive attitude to
interlocutors, the latter feel uncomfortable When students find themselves
express-ing a positive attitude to the course themselves, they add a negative expression;
otherwise their positive attitude is met with an embarrassing ‘congratulations’, open
disagreement or a minimal reaction The more frequent reaction to the unwanted
expres-sion of positive attitude is light-hearted irony or banter
This article has suggested that the common room dictates rules about the
expres-sion of attitudes The question is finally, why do the in-group members follow the
rules? The overall function of common room conversations is interactional; students
talk to show solidarity If one accepts that ‘individuals shift their speech styles to become
more like that of those with whom they are interacting’ (Giles 1979: 46), that the speech
acts express strategies of rapport and involvement (Tannen 1984), that a show of
feel-ing is a marker of intimacy (Goffman 1971; Taylor 1973), and that usfeel-ing irony and
banter stressing the shared background and values constitutes a positive politeness
tech-nique (Brown and Levinson 1987: 124), one could conclude that the students follow
the rules in order to cohere with the rest of the group and feel its support [ .]
Issues to consider
com-munity (see also A9), and suggests that the patterns she observes are primarily
indicators of social solidarity Can you generalise the same sort of patterns by
identifying particular speech acts that are used in other discourse communities?
Do you recognise the rules and complex applications around the rules in your
own social setting? Based upon Cutting’s findings from this MSc student data,
consider which of the following factors seems to you to be the most generalisable
across different discourse communities: age relationships, occupational status,
geographical location, shared group knowledge
strat-egies in the final paragraph when she is summarising how the common room talk
between students governs their expression of attitudes Analyse all data extracts
in Cutting’s study from the perspective of Brown and Levinson’s politeness
strategies, focusing firstly upon the positive politeness strategies outlined in B3
You should then consider whether there is any evidence of negative politeness
strate-gies or impoliteness stratestrate-gies Place your politeness analysis alongside Cutting’s
speech act analysis and re-examine the evidence that you have for how the
students are building rapport and expressing involvement with one another
You should then consider the overall usefulness of combining a speech act analysis
with an analysis of linguistic politeness
Joan Cutting