Modality as Identity in Text Interpretation and Creation

Global COE Program International Coference Series No. 3 Proceedings of the Third International Conference Hermeneutic Study and Education of Textual Configuration

Identity in Text Interpretation IId ddeen tiand ttyy iin nEveryday T n er p r e t a t i o n Ide ntity Teeexxxtt IInterpre nttter erp pr re tat at ti ion io on Life aan n dE yyd daayy L iffee nd Evvveerryd Life Li

Edited by

Masa-chiyo AMANO Michael O’TOOLE Zane GOEBEL Shinya SHIGEMI SONG Wei

2008 Graduate School of Letters, Nagoya University

CONTENTS Tributes to Amano-sensei from his Colleagues………………………………………………………...ii Preface.……………………….……………...…………………………………………………………1 (Shoichi SATO) Subtexts: A Systemic-functional Semiotics of English Gothic Misericords …………….…...………..3 (Michael O’Toole) Enregisterment, Alternation and Difference: Constructing Insiders and Outsiders in an Indonesian Ward………...…………………………………………………………………………………….…...15 (Zane Goebel) Visualizing Cultures: A New Approach to “Seeing” History and Culture ……………………...……36 (John Dower and Shigeru Miyagawa) Power, Identity and Life in the Digital Age…………………………………………………………...45 (Kay O’Halloran) The Textual Identity of the Web……………………………………………………………………....63 (Shinya Shigemi) “Something Old, Something New”: Cultural Bricolage in Japanese Wedding Speeches….................75 (Cynthia Dunn) Cultural Identity and the Production and Understanding of Sign Language Signs…………………...89 (William Herlofsky) Dialect Speakers on Dialect Speech…………………………………………………………………...99 (Debra Occhi) Constructing Group Identity through Narratives on BBS…………………………………………....111 (Akira Satoh) Language Structure as a Reflection of Cultural Schema…………………………………………….121 (Masayuki Ohkado) A Critical Discourse Study of Youth Crime in UK Radio News…………………………………….133 (Edward Haig) Modality as Identity in Text Interpretation and Creation…………………………………………....151 (Masa-chiyo Amano) The Emotion in the Form: Prosodic Modules on an Inspirational Political Address………………..157 (Tetyana Sayenko) Concluding Remarks…………………………………………………………………………………173 (Masa-chiyo Amano, Michael O’Toole, Zane Goebel)

i

Tributes to Amano-sensei from his Colleagues

Dr. Wendy BOWCHER (formerly of Tokyo Gakugei University) When I first met Professor Amano I was immediately impressed by his warm personality and his smile. Professor Amano had a way of making you feel welcomed and comfortable. Aside from inviting me to take part in the International Conferences for the Integrated Text Science, Professor Amano invited me to teach an intensive course on Systemic Functional Grammar at Nagoya University in 2004 and 2005. This gave me the opportunity to see first-hand his excellent rapport with his colleagues and students, and his enthusiasm for teaching Linguistics. He was always generous in allowing me to use his office and in making sure that I had everything I needed for the course to go smoothly. On my visits to Nagoya, I went out to dinner with Professor Amano and his colleague Professor Tanaka. Whether it be a tiny izakaya or a more sophisticated restaurant, conversation over dinner was always lively and interesting. Professor Amano’s professionalism, academic rigour and generous spirit will be missed by all, and I will always remember his smile.

Associate Professor David BUTT (Macquarie University, Sydney) Amano-sensei was always intensely engaged with the person to whom he was speaking: listening actively; following up issues for clarification; reflection on how the content of the conversation could be ‘put to work’. What a wonderful example to students and colleagues alike! He was generous in always bringing out the work of others. Concerning his own lucid and detailed work on the history of English syntax, he was reserved. While visiting Macquarie University (in Sydney), Professor Amano asked a number of non-linguists on campus to consider certain syntactic constructions: “Your students are so generous” he exclaimed. He bubbled with enthusiasm for his investigation. There, in my photolibrary, are pictures of Masachiyo at lunch with my close colleagues—Professor Matthiessen and Teruya sensei—debating issues in the “Science of Text”, with Sydney’s Botanical Gardens extending to the Opera House and to the Harbour Bridge. And what a legacy that project can be for all us involved in discourse analytics! Professors Sato and Amano had the courage to do what others around the world did not, namely: to recognise that our worlds are constructed by regularities of meaning, and that we needed to tackle this fact systematically. I remember him ‘in conversation’.

Dr. Zane GOEBEL (Nagoya University) Professor Masa-chiyo Amano was one of the rare scholars that others hope to encounter and work with during their academic careers. He was a scholar who insisted on the importance of a broad and inclusive definition of linguistics that avoided the narrow focus that one can find in some linguistics ii

departments. Indeed, without such openness to other ways of thinking about linguistics and language I would never have met Professor Amano nor would we have been able to hold the conference, which resulted in the current set of papers in this volume. He was also a generous mentor who always made time to talk with his students and colleagues. His mentoring has made my own introduction to academia in Japan pleasant, rewarding and stimulating. Professor Amano’s intellectual qualities were combined with human warmth, kindness, humor and hospitality, which I admired and appreciated. I will miss our conversations about linguistics and life. I also remember fondly and with appreciation his efforts to make my family and me comfortable during our time in Japan. All of these qualities made Professor Amano a scholar’s scholar. His sudden passing has left a gap in the field of humanities in general and linguistics in particular that will not easily be filled. Even so, he instilled many of these qualities in his doctoral students and so we can also look forward to some emerging scholars with these qualities.

Associate Professor Kay O’HALLORAN (National University of Singapore) Professor Masa-chiyo Amano was a close friend and colleague, and he is sadly missed for many reasons. First, he was an honest and sincere person, someone to be trusted. When I think of him, I see his wonderful smile and I feel the natural warmth which he extended to me and those around him. When I met with him, I felt the same reassuring sense of being in the company of a kind and remarkable man. Second, he was an intellectual who was not afraid to cross academic boundaries to explore new and unfamiliar territory. Although trained in formal linguistics, he actively encouraged researchers like myself who work in other linguistic traditions. This is extremely rare, and the mark of a person who embodies the spirit of academia in its purest form. His academic merit was demonstrated in his close relationship with colleagues and the students fortunate enough to be under his care and supervision. I will remember him for a long time.

Emeritus Professor Michael O’TOOLE (Murdoch University, Western Australia) My first memory of Professor Amano was of being greeted in his office in the School of Letters before the conference he organised in June 2003 under the title “Creation and Practical Use of Language Texts”. Although he himself was trained in a very rigorous formal school of linguistics and largely taught a combination of Generative Grammar and a Structuralist history of English, he was very open to other ways of looking at language and realised that Hallidayan Systemic-Functional Grammar, with its focus on the relation between language and social context, would be valuable to Nagoya’s program for an Integrated Text Science. In fact, he was so receptive to the provocations of David Butt and myself regarding the centrality of functional views of language and other semiotic systems that he devoted his next COE conference paper to the analysis of Japanese temples and shrines. The result was profound and highly instructive. My last memory of Amano-sensei was of him entertaining me at his favourite sushi restaurant in Yagoto. He was full of apologies for not entertaining me at home due to his recent serious illness. After the excellent meal, despite his fragile condition, he bounded up the subway stairways at a pace that I, the supposedly fit member of the party, could not keep up with. I was amazed to hear of his death so soon after our last meeting. My most abiding memory, however, is of Amano-sensei as a teacher and friend of his students. With typical generosity, he allowed me to use his office in the mornings of my two-month visit to the School of Letters in January-February this year. When he arrived in the early afternoon he was usually besieged by iii

postgraduates worrying over their dissertations on English grammar, which he would have to grade. Even my limited Japanese allowed me to observe that he combined wise academic advice with a warm, caring and jocular personal relation with the boys and girls he was tutoring. Masa-chiyo Amano was a fine, open-minded scholar, a brilliant teacher, and a delightful friend. He will be sorely missed by the GCOE Project, by his students and colleagues at Nagoya, and by his many friends and peers throughout the academic world.

Dr. Terry ROYCE (Teachers College, Columbia University, Japan Campus, Tokyo) Professor Masa-chiyo Amano’s passing is a loss, a real loss. His efforts in bringing together scholars from around the globe to present their ideas on text and meaning in the Global COE in Nagoya provided us all with not only the chance to hear from each other and present our ideas to his eager students, but also to experience the best aspects of Japan and the Japanese people, of whom Masa-chiyo was a shining example. He was greatly appreciated in life, but now he will be missed by us all, not the least by his family and his many many students, who have our sincere condolences.

Professor SATO, Shoichi (Nagoya University, Nagoya) It is a sad duty to write a eulogy about a colleague who was at the prime of his career. Professor Amano passed away suddently because of a stroke at the start of a beautiful day on the 13th June 2008 at the age of fifty-eight years. This seperation causes a deep pain. This pain may be partly from a sense of rage at the unfairness of Dr. Masa-chiyo Amano’s passing, which has cut short the life of one of the most gifted scholars among us in the field of English Linguistics. Despite the challenges of massive systemic change and burgeoning adminstrative workloads Dr. Amano continued to be a man with a deep sense of professional duty and obligation who rose to and overcame these challenges. He has always done so with honesty and with an authentic and selfless love for the scientific truth. Indeed, these personal qualities allowed him to make such magnificent contributions to the two huge national research and educational programs that we won and carried out in 2002 and 2007. The former project was given the name of “Studies for the Integrated Text Science”, and the latter, “Hermeneutic Study and Education of Textual Configuration”, which will continue for the next three years. On both of these projects—the first which sought a type of universal grammar that holds good for different types of texts, whether these were written, spoken or visual and our current project which trains doctoral students in carrying out hermeneutic praxis—he proved to be a prime engine in joint-research in the linguistics hub. He has also been a talented and ambitious organizer of international scholarly meetings. Indeed, he realized many international conferences for our programs, including: “Creation and Practical Use of Language Texts” in 2003, “Multimodality: Towards the Most Efficient Communications by Humans” in 2005 for “Studies for the Integrated Text Science”, “Philological and Grammatical Studies of English Historical Texts” in 2007 and most recently “Identity in Text Interpretation and Everyday Life” in 2008 for the “Hermeneutic Study and Education of Textual Configuration” program. During his career he seemed to have undergone a sort of conversion from an enthusiast of generative grammar to a sympathizer of systemic functional grammar. Thus, it was very natural that he had come into contact with a number of eminent disciples of M. A. K. Halliday who could read a broad cultural context into linguistic phenomena. Indeed the co-editor of the present proceedings, Dr. Michael O’Toole who most kindly offered to take charge of the preparation of this publication in the memory of Dr. Amano, iv

belongs to this brilliant circle of Australian linguists. The type of colleaugial behaviour demonstrated by Professor O’Toole offers beautiful proof not only of strong intellectual and scholarly bonds built by Professor Amano but proof of the strong foundations which will enable future colloboarations between scholars from different disciplines and institutions. Being a Buddhist the late Dr. Amano was given a posthumous Buddhist name by a venerable priest during his sad and most moving funeral service. It is not easy to exactly translate this name into English. I dare, however, to try translating it into Latin: Clementissimus doctor quiescens in silva fulgenta linguae Anglorum. May his soul take a rest forever in that luminous wood.

v

Preface

Dear Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is my great honor and satisfaction to say a few words of welcome to all the people gathered here to attend the Third International Conference of the Global COE program: “Identity in Text Interpretation and Everyday Life”. In 2002 the Ministry of Education alias MEXT in Japan publicly promoted a special five-years grant-in-aid program “the 21st Century COE Program” in order to create competition between academics. We submitted a research proposal entitled “Studies for the Integrated Text Science” to the selection committee of the JSPS that worked on behalf of MEXT. We succeeded in obtaining the grant and I would reveal here that the committee of ex post facto evaluation has blessed our former project with the highest rating after five years of its performance in 2007. It must be stressed that we belong to the Happy Few who received the highest marks from post-factum evaluation along with Hokkaido University and Keio University in the Humanities group. During the latter part of quinqennial program, they say that MEXT had been considering shifting the focus of the ministerial plan from research to education giving it the name “Global COE” program. We were puzzled a little over the change of ministerial directive but thanks to discussions by leading members we finally created a good project to propose, which succeeded in passing a harder peer screening system. This success is all the more valuable considering the fact that the number of selected projects has been reduced to half of the former program. Our new project named “Hermeneutic Study and Education of Textual Configuration” consists of discovering the logical disposition of textual constituents, which must be varied from one text to another, according to the nature and function of the text itself and by means of interpretative practices. Starting from the commencement of our new program, we organized two international conferences: the first was a joint one with SHELL (The Society of Historical English Language and Linguistics) last September and the second one was held last December on the subject of French literature texts with the title “Balzac, Flaubert. La genèse de l’oeuvre et la question de l’interprétation”. Today, to my great pleasure, we are going to attend the third international conference discussing “Identity in Text Interpretation and Everyday Life”. I am sure that this highly academic meeting will also provide, as with the two previous conferences, precious results to the human sciences. I am very grateful to all of the guest speakers independently of nationalities and living places where they traveled from for more or less a longtime to join us. They accepted our invitation to deliver papers on their research activities or ideas enriching the text sciences. Some of them have already visited our university as invited scholars and others are going to discover the university and the city as well. I hope that all of them will enjoy their stay in Nagoya after they have presented their thought provoking discussions about their work. Last but not least, on behalf of all the members of the project I would like to thank Professor Masa-chiyo Amano and those who have worked under his instruction for organizing this conference and enabling it to run efficiently and successfully. Thank you. Shoichi SATO Leader of the Global COE Project HERSETEC Professor of Western History 1

2

Subtexts: A Systemic-functional Semiotics of English Gothic Misericords

Michael O’TOOLE Murdoch University

Introduction The outline of the proposal for establishing the Global COE for an Integrated Text Science, put forward in 2007, proposed that texts constitute their own special configuration. In general, texts consist of pretexts, which are prerequisites for their existence, other related texts, which realize inter-textuality through cross-references among them, meta-texts, which are annotations or interpretations assigned to them, and para-texts, which are titles indicating genres of texts or categories they belong to, as well as their forms and constitutions. This definition was illustrated by a diagram clarifying the relations involved: tacit cultural context 1

writer

interpretation

tacit cultural context 2

intertextuality

pretexts

text

reader

interpretation

metatexts

paratexts

Fig. 1  Factors in an Integrated Science of Texts

Alongside all these elements producing and interpreting texts, I want to argue that “subtexts”—a widely used concept in literary criticism and critical discourse analysis—represent an additional and parallel category of “interpretation”, growing out of the “tacit cultural context 1” of the writer, or “tacit cultural context 2 “ of the reader—and here we would have to add “speaker” and “interlocutor” for spoken texts and “artist” and “viewer” for painted or sculpted texts. Subtexts are by definition “subversive”, i.e they are at odds with the obvious and “official” pretexts of the text’s originators. For example, Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”—apart from the major themes of regicide, incest, adolescent protest, disappointed love, and international relations between Denmark and England— 3

Michael O’Toole

could be seen as having as a subtext the role of play-acting in the politics of family and court life. (Note that this may, but need not, reflect what the playwright intended; as a writer and theatre manager Shakespeare could not help writing-in this professional message). The invasion of Iraq by the USA and her allies, one of the major narratives of our time, —apart from false official stories of “weapons of mass destruction” and semi-true stories of “the war on terror” and “the clash of civilizations”—has been seen as having as a subtext the American dominance of diminishing oil resources and the armaments industries (not an overt political message, but an important aspect of the world’s reading of US claims). That is, subtexts are often not consciously intended, but frequently betray hidden intentions. In the rest of this paper I wish to look at the subtexts that can be found by analyzing English Gothic Misericords using the theoretical and methodological approach developed in O’Toole (1994) and exemplified in Figure 1. Unit

Function

WORK

FIGURE

MEMBER

REPRESENTATIONAL

MODAL

COMPOSITIONAL

Process (action/event/existence/ relation) Theme (religious/magic/civic/ political) Peripeteia (narrative turningpoint)

Scale (to human) Mass   Modality Equilibrium Palpability   Message ‘Address’

Volume (relation to space) Proportion (relation to setting) Independence Openness/Closure Fixed/Mobile Cohesion Material

Participants (agents/patients/ existents) Body (anthropomorphic/zoo­ morphic/biomorphic/inorganic) Act Movement/Stasis Position

Scale Characterization Mass Equilibrium Expressiveness Address Vitality Line Solidity Relation to Light

Relative position in Gestalt Parallelism Static/Dynamic Fixed/Mobile Rhythm Material

Basic Physical Forms (parts of the body/objects natural forms/machine parts/ geometric forms) Drapery

Fullness of Realization (detailed/stylized/attenuated/ abstract) Raw/Polished Stress Factors

Texture Rhythmic Relations Material Qualities

Fig. 2  Functions and Systems in Sculpture

Subtexts in English Gothic Misericords This shot shows a typical two rows of choir stalls, where monks and priests would celebrate the long and frequent services in the mediaeval church (up to fourteen hours per day, and for most of that time they would be standing up). The front row of seats have been tipped up to reveal the ledge which would provide support for elderly or infirm worshippers who could not remain standing (“misericord”: Latin miserere, to take pity + cordis, the heart). Below this ledge decorative designs were carved and these took on the designation of “misericord”. The misericords revealed here are typical in churches in continental Europe, where the ledge was relatively narrow. English Gothic misericords typically have wider ledges, with support designs branching out from the central motif. We have little evidence to suggest that the English monks were much fatter and heavier than those in Belgium and France—like Robin Hood’s merry friend Friar Tuck—, but the support designs were standard in Britain:

4

Subtexts

Fig. 3  Choir stalls in Aarschot Church, Belgium

Fig. 4  Jonah and the Whale (Ripon Minster)

The story from the Bible of the sailors casting Jonah into the sea in order to be saved from a terrible storm is a vivid example of an English misericord, with flower designs on either side providing extra support to the broader ledge above. Apart from the lively Representation of the central drama, I would claim that much of the visual meaning is carried by the Compositional function of symmetry (the matching support flowers on either side, the centrality and symmetry of the ship and the triangle formed by the two figures and Jonah, on the right, as they push him into the waves. The contrasting textures of the wood carving accentuate this compositional meaning: the active participants (the sailors, Jonah and the head of the whale) are all smooth surfaces, the ship is made to look mechanical with its round crow’s nest, square poop and matching yardarms, while the raging sea swirls with roughly chiselled rhythms. In terms of the Modal, or Engagement, function of meaning, the viewer is directly addressed by the gaze of the central sailor and the whale’s left eye. We are also given a “bird’s eye” (or God’s eye) view of the event, seeing the ship from above. I believe another important Modal factor in sculpture is the degree of protrusion from the flat plane of the backing. Misericords are a kind of bas-relief sculpture, but, as we will see, the carvers engage us with figures which catch the light and form rear shadows by being raised from the plane of the seat. Note that the misericord and the ledge and the seat are all carved from a single block of wood, usually oak. The sculpting of forms is even more striking in the depiction of the end of Jonah’s maritime adventure: 5

Michael O’Toole

Fig. 5  Jonah disembarks (Ripon Minster)

The whale’s head emerging from the waves and Jonah emerging from the whale’s jaws are sculpted in the round, as are the trees on the beach, so that our eye is directly engaged with the central drama being represented. There even seems to be an intertextual visual joke to engage us in the support designs: on our left we have a kind of hybrid flower/ fruit, with a raspberry emerging from a flower bud, while on the right we have a kind of hybrid rat or mouse whose rear and tail are also a plant stem. We will discover more hybrid categories of living creatures in some misericords to follow. Biblical scenes like Jonah’s story are very rare in misericords, even though they dominate the more visible carvings in a church. More often we find scenes of mediaeval domestic life, including signs of marital disharmony:

Fig. 6  Domestic Disharmony (Ripon Minster)

The wife is pulling her husband’s beard and raising a jug to hit him, while he raises his hands to protect his head and pull away her hand. Note the vigour of the actions of both the couple: this creates a rhythm which engages both our eye and our emotions, that is, the Modal function. A clockwise circular rhythm of his arms at once frames his face and draws our eye to her actions. This circular rhythm is then mirrored, Compositionally, in the plaited frames of the name crests which form the supports on each side. Another domestic scene in the Ripon Minster series shows a husband carting his wife along in a small hand-cart. This is one of a number of quite pervasive images which has been traced to a German woodcut of the period, i.e. a two-dimensional image. There are two theories about what the image represents. Some experts have said that it shows the husband carting his wife off to be ducked in a pond—which was a frequent punishment for witches. Others argue that she has got drunk at the Lenten carnival (as the drinking bottle in her hand suggests) and he is taking her home. Whatever is actually being represented, this misericord again manifests a fine mastery of compositional 6

Subtexts

balance and the skilful wood carving that was the norm in the more public and sanctified parts of the church. The representation of a fiddler stealing a kiss from a dancing girl at the carnival:

Fig. 7  Carnival Pleasures

engages us with its wonderful energy of figures in motion and the rhythm created by the parallel arms and the swirling skirt. The carnival, of course, is a subversion of the official world of the church and the powers-that-be; here we have a concrete subtext in the context of a Gothic church where every column and every flying buttress strains heavenward, away from earthly pleasures, yet the misericord transports us in an instant to the real lives and pleasures of the common people. One asks oneself why the Gothic period (12th to 15th centuries) led to such an explosion of church building and decoration. The Norman (Romanesque) period of solid columns, rounded arches and square, crenellated towers seemed to reflect the defensive cast of mind of the mediaeval barons, obsessed with preserving their territorial claims and their control over their peasants. With the enclosures movement and the growth in efficiency of sheep farming and of the wool-growing industry, many farmers and merchants grew wealthy. Spinning and weaving were still done by hand as a cottage industry, but the peasants still had to pay tithes and fees for marriage, baptism and funerals to their parish churches, which became wealthy in direct proportion to the success of their local wool growers. English wool was of very high quality and attracted both trade and craft skills with the Low Countries and France, and the newly rich growers and merchants and clothiers would endow fine churches as a way of gaining social recognition in this life and eternal salvation in the after-life. The Gothic cathedrals and parish churches in the East of England (East Anglia and Yorkshire) and in the West Country (Devon, Gloucestershire) reflect this sudden growth in prosperity and piety. Their exterior design points to heaven with immense pointed spires; their interior architecture, using new building materials like limestone and new building techniques based around the pointed arch, shares this upward thrust; and every available surface is carved, painted or tiled to Fig. 8  Ely Cathedral Nave celebrate the glory of God: 7

Michael O’Toole

Ely Cathedral in the Fen Country of East Anglia, hence nearest to the Low Countries of Belgium and Holland, reveals the transition in styles. The lower columns of the nave form rounded brickbuilt Norman arches, while the roof and choir, built of limestone, already have the lofty proportions and pointed arches of the Gothic style. On the other side of the country, the choir screen in Cartmel Priory in Lancashire, although originally an Augustine monastery church, displays the skill and loving care with which the wood carvers set about their work, whether in bas-relief on the columns, tracery in the screens, or the threedimensional sculpture on the arm rests. The seats below have misericords, like the Green Man:

Figs. 9, 10  Cartmel Priory: Choir Screen and “Green Man” Misericord

Now, why did I choose to focus on the art of the misericord at this COE Conference on “Identity in Text Interpretation and Everyday Life”? Firstly, because it is a long time since I analyzed sculpture—which I love (see Chap.3 of The Language of Displayed Art). Second, because these church furnishings are a meeting-point for the semiotics of sculpture and architecture—two of the different multimodal meaning systems which I have previously analyzed separately. Thirdly, because I wanted to pay tribute to the work of your COE ProjectDirector, Professor Sato, who has devoted most of his work to the study of mediaeval European texts, and to our host, Professor Amano, who has himself published systemic-functional analyses of Japanese shrines and temples. And lastly, because all the art works I have analyzed previously have had a single author; —they belong to the canon of art history which assumes that the artist’s identity and life experience is relevant to the reading of their work. But the misericord carvers were anonymous. We have hints in church documents that some of them, having carved misericords in one church, say, Exeter Cathedral, were then sought out for similar creations in others, like Norwich or Chester. Although I chose to talk about misericords before I had been informed about the precise theme of this conference, I believe that the analysis of works of art by craftsmen whose identity we don’t, and can’t, know fits in with my frequent complaint that art history and appreciation is dominated by the biographies of identified personalities—and that that usually distracts us from actually looking at the work itself. Therefore the artist’s lack of historical and biographical identity is an advantage that helps us to focus on the details and quality of his “text”. (I use the masculine possessive advisedly, since it is most unlikely that any of the wood-carvers were women.) Although we have very few names and little other evidence about the carvers of the misericords, it is almost certain that they were the same craftsmen who had carved all the visible sacred symbols, so what was their motivation for carving the secular, profane and sometimes obscene images in the misericords 8

Subtexts

themselves? I want to claim that all three ways of making meaning come into play: Representational, Modal and Compositional (see my chart, Fig. 2). To take the last first, in Compositional terms, the head of this “Green Man” (Fig. 10) is almost perfectly symmetrical—which links up with its experiential architectural function of providing maximum support for the ledge above, which, of course, has to support the rear of a large monk. On the other hand, its side supports are not symmetrical in that one seems to be the head of a lion while the other seems to be some kind of flower: perhaps these represent the fauna and flora over which the Green Man presides. For the Green Man, in many misericords, as well as in woodcuts and many other mediaeval representations, has come into this Christian context from ancient animist pagan times, when the gods dwelt in woods and water and other parts of the natural world. In other words, the Green Man here is as much a pagan survivor— after twelve hundred years of Christianity as the Christmas tree in our modern, supposedly Christian, festival! In Modal terms, this head engages us in a confrontational stare, which is even more direct in the head of the lion to his left. We can see a similar play of three semiotic functions in some other highly symmetrical misericords such as the one in Ripon Minster where the Green Man has been inverted and turned into a monkey:

Fig. 11  Green Man as Monkey (Ripon Minster)

Here we still have the extreme symmetrical composition to support the ledge and the directly staring eyes which engage us (even upside down!), but the Green Man, while sprouting foliage and flowers from his mouth, as is often the case with this figure, has become a mischievous and potentially disruptive monkey. Even pagan deities are not exempt from mockery!

Fig. 12  The Fox Preaches to the Poultry (Beverley Minster) 9

Michael O’Toole

Groups of figures often preserve the symmetry which helps to buttress the sides of the ledge above. Here the bodies and tails of the duck and hen stretch out as supports. The fox, however, is central and gazing our way, with an exaggeratedly pious look on his face. The fox is one of the many animals representing human cunning or mischief in misericords, woodcuts and oral tales. He is probably descended originally from the ancient Greek Aesop’s and other animal fables, but in mediaeval times he is the protagonist of the adventures of Reynard the Fox which were told and retold in oral narrative and visual forms throughout Europe. Here he is used to satirize the priests who controlled their gullible congregations with Holy Writ. Pigs, of course, were the commonest of farm animals on peasant smallholdings or common land, and they were often associated with bagpipes. Music, particularly on folk instruments, was seen by the clergy as promoting lust and loose living, and the bagpipes—often made out of a pig’s bladder—were particularly base in both their origins and their effects. The bladder was obviously associated with urine and people’s lower bodily functions, while the noise they made seemed to suggest wild rustic lovemaking. It was also reputed to induce a desire to urinate. (We should note that doctors in mediaeval times were usually monks or priests and that the main diagnostic for every human ailment was the colour and transparency of the patient’s urine, so priests (often as monkeys or foxes) are often shown carrying urine flasks. This playful misericord, then, is quite a complex text with lots of cultural and political subtexts.

Fig. 13  Pigs and Bagpipes (Ripon Minster)

The theme of bagpipes is taken a step further in the side support of a misericord in another famous Yorkshire cathedral, Beverley Minster:

Fig. 14  Bagpiping Monkey (Beverley Minster) 10

Subtexts

Our witty woodcarver has a monkey as the piper holding a dog’s hind legs as the pipes of the bagpipes while blowing down the dog’s tail into his body (the bag of the pipes). This adds the reversal of farting to all the other “lower bodily functions” associated with bagpipes. Apart from mythical animals like preaching foxes and bagpipe-playing pigs, many of the misericords have as their subject hybrid creatures such as unicorns, centaurs, mermaids and mermen. One of the most intriguing hybrids is the “blemya”, a race of headless natives described by the Roman writer Pliny as living in India.There are a pair of these as side-supports to one of the misericords in Ripon Minster, where the one on the left, a standing oarsman, has no head, but has large facial features of eyes, nose and mouth as part of the structure of his torso. The right-hand one has no arms or body, but consists of a large head, complete with cap, walking around on a pair of legs.

Sub-texts, Modality and Lower Bodily Functions The play with hybrid categories brings me to the subtext of my own paper. All the commentaries by art historians and mediaevalists that I have been able to discover concern themselves exclusively with the subject matter of the misericords. Now, the range of subjects and everyday themes is broad and fascinating indeed, and it allows plenty of exploration of links between images and themes across many cultures and media of the period from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries that we are looking at. However, this focus on the purely Representational function of the carvings seriously undervalues the aesthetic sense of Composition of their craftsmen and ignores the Modal elements in their design: these miniature sculptures may be hidden away out of sight for most of the time, but they were made, like all art, for an audience. In fact, we must assume that, however pious the preoccupations of the monks and priests in the choir stalls during a service, they would experience some curiosity and thrill at the profane images when they tipped up their seats—as do we cultural consumers and pious pilgrims, after marveling at the Gothic splendours higher up. I have taken some time, therefore, to stress the Modal and Compositional qualities of each image as well as recognizing its story-line. Michael Halliday’s stress on the Interpersonal function of language is very close to Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the dialogic principle, enunciated in Russia fifty years earlier, but suppressed under Stalinism and only rediscovered in the 1970’s both in Russia and the West. Bakhtin argued that any text, verbal or visual—indeed, whole narratives like novels—have an orientation to the hearer/ viewer/ reader, that is, as I have tried to show with my stress on Modal and Compositional features of the misericords, the anonymous craftsmen who carved them have a strong sense of the viewer’s position and physical orientation. This is intensified by our—and the mediaeval monks’—spiritual position which discovers these secular and often profane images lurking unseen as subtexts beneath the glorious religious decoration of the Gothic cathedral and church. The dialogue is between architecture and sculpture, between holy and profane, between respectable and lewd, between realistic and mythical. The link with Bakhtin becomes even more germane once we know that Bakhtin’s later work (for his slowly produced and long-suppressed doctoral thesis) was on the principle of “carnival” in the mediaeval world as reflected in the writings of Francois Rabelais (see my Bibliography for Bakhtin’s “Rabelais and his World”, published in the West in 1984). As Bakhtin says, The men of the Middle Ages participated in two lives: the official and the carnival life. Two aspects of the world, the serious and the laughing aspect, coexisted in their consciousness…. 11

Michael O’Toole

In 13th and 14th century illuminated manuscripts … we find on the same page strictly pious illustrations … as well as free designs not connected with the story. The free designs represent chimeras (fantastic forms combining human, animal and vegetable elements), comic devils, jugglers performing acrobatic tricks, masquerade figures and parodical scenes—that is, purely grotesque carnivalesque themes … however, in mediaeval art a strict dividing line is drawn between the pious and the grotesque; they exist side by side but never merge.” (Bakhtin, 1968/1984: 96) The world of Rabelais’ novels, like the world around him, Bakhtin claimed, was dominated by those carnival moments when both the spiritual and the secular powers were suspended and the “lower bodily functions”, which underpin all our lives, were foregrounded: “the gaping mouths, devouring, swallowing, drinking, the defecation, urine, death, procreation, birth, childhood, and old age.” It appears that in the misericords the dividing line between the pious and the grotesque is often the human rear end. Here, again in Ripon Minster, all eyes, as well as the raised cane, are on the exposed bum, about to receive a blow from the cane in the teacher’s right hand. Like all teachers, the priest can not tolerate inattention or laziness, but there is a gusto about his corporal punishment which suggests it is not without its pleasures:

Fig. 15  Caning the Schoolboy (Ripon Minster)

Meanwhile, in the Queen’s own chapel at Windsor castle one misericord combines the physical act of defecation with the spiritual act of exorcism, or casting out devils: a fat but fully human monk (male, of course) is evacuating a grotesque devil with the aid of another monk and a devil with a human face. This is a very subversive subtext to find in a monastery chapel:

Fig. 16  Monk Evacuating a Devil (St. George’s Chapel, Windsor) 12

Subtexts

Despite the repeated focus, highlighted by Bakhtin, and more recently by Michael Camille (1992), on the “lower bodily functions” in mediaeval art, in the misericord carvings of the English Gothic Churches there is very little preoccupation with sex. It was left to the French craftsmen to introduce a sexual visual pun (Fig. 16), where the eager face of the thirsting woman and the calm satisfaction of the man’s face and the thrust of his hips surely betoken fellatio, oral sex. (In case Japanese readers find this erotic metaphor shocking, I would remind them that the whole tradition of shunga (erotic woodblock prints), popular and officially promoted throughout the Edo period) was far more sexually explicit.)

    Fig. 17  Thirst or Lust?                Fig. 18  Sniffing out Corruption (Church of St Pierre, Saumur, France)

Conclusion I will leave it to the witty woodcarver of Saumur to provide the visual postscript to my paper (Fig 17). This misericord has everything: strong, symmetrical support of the ledge, intricate carved texture of hair, fingers and fabric, high contoured carving that catches the light, exposed buttocks—and a nose, wrinkled in disgust, almost in direct contact with the rear of the monk who would occupy this seat in the choir stalls—a self-reflexive image for a very sophisticated art form. “Subtexts”, then, is quite a complex notion in the case of Gothic misericords: ❖ The

carved texts are physically SUB someone’s bottom; out of a single piece of timber SUB misericord ledge, which is SUB seat; ❖ Needing the seat to be raised to even be seen, they are SUBordinate texts; ❖ Having as their subject profane figures and narratives, they SUBvert the essential holiness of the cathedral and its otherwise sacred decorations; ❖ the survival of unmistakeably pre-Christian pagan stories and imagery after twelve centuries is itself a SUBversion of Christianity ❖ Their recurrent stress on lower bodily functions SUBverts the spiritual striving of the monk or priest, worshipping with his head and his heart (miseri + cord). ❖ Their carnivalesque images frequently SUBvert the authority of the powers-that-be— whether monks, priests, princes or quack doctors. ❖ Carved

And, let’s face it, the whole concept of misericords involves a major deception (or SUBterfuge): the monk supporting himself on the ledge is supposed to be standing for the divine rituals! References Bakhtin, M. (1968/1984). Rabelais and his world: Indiana University Press.

13

Michael O’Toole

Camille, M. (1992). Image on the edge: The margins of medieval art. London: Reaktion Books. Dentith, S. (1995). Bakhtinian thought: An introductory reader. London: Routledge. Harding, M. (1998). A little book of misericords. London: Aurum Press. O’Toole, M. (1994). The language of displayed art. London: Leicester University Press / Pinter [NB This book is no longer in print, but can be obtained from the author: ]. Wood, J. (1999). Wooden images: Misericords and medieval England: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.

Mailing address: XXXXXXXX E-mail: XXXXXXXX

14

Enregisterment, Alternation and Difference: Constructing Insiders and Outsiders in an Indonesian Ward

Zane GOEBEL Nagoya University

1. Introduction Within the humanities and social sciences discussions about community are common. For example, discussions continue about how to conceptualize groups and community in political science (e.g. Anderson, 1983), anthropology (e.g. Appadurai, 1996; Barth, 1969; Wenger, 1998), social theory (e.g. Bauman, 2001; Bourdieu, 1977; Giddens, 1984), cultural studies (Ang, 2003; Hall, 1996; Werbner, 1997), and sociolinguistics (e.g. Blommaert, Collins, & Slembrouck, 2005; Eckert, 2000; Holmes & Meyerhoff, 1999; Hymes, 1972). Similarly, there have been laments about the decline in community (e.g. Putnam, 2000), solutions to such declines (e.g. Putnam, Feldstein, & Cohen, 2003; Wise, 2005), and the social construction of problematic communities (e.g. Collins, Noble, Poynting, & Tabar, 2000; Poynting, Noble, Tabar, & Collins, 2004; Tsuda, 1999). A common thread in much of this work relates to how community is built and maintained at the local level given increasing population diversity. As a question concerning the relationship between action and social structure sociolinguists have been especially active in further theorizing and demonstrating how talk and meta-pragmatic talk contribute to processes of identity and community (re)production and with it the linguistic differentiation between groups and/or communities (e.g. Agha, 2007; Bucholtz & Hall, 2004b; Inoue, 2002; Irvine, 2001; Irvine & Gal, 2000; Ochs, 1988; Wortham, 2006). In this paper I draw inspiration from the work of these scholars along with that of those working in the area of communities of practice COP, semiotic registers SRs and processes of social identification to demonstrate how notions of community are built through everyday narratives of problematic encounters with neighbours in an Indonesian RT “ward”, which is essentially one street and the households found in that street. I argue that in such narratives this meaning-making process relies upon locally produced understandings of language-context relationships (e.g. Wortham, 2006) and publicly circulating ideologies about language and social identity in Indonesia (e.g. Goebel, 2008a).

2. Semiotic Registers and Social Identification Drawing on the work of Agha (2007), Wenger (1998), and Wortham (2006) my main argument in this section is that concepts such as community, identity, culture and language are difficult, if not impossible, to separate. This work is partly grounded in an ethnomethodological agenda which 15

Zane Goebel

aims to describe the orderliness of social practices where language usage in the form of situated talk is part of such practices (e.g. Antaki & Widdicombe, 1998; Gafaranga, 2001; Sacks, 1995; Schegloff, 2007b). This has a number of benefits and allows for less speculation about participants’ interpretations of ongoing talk because they frequently have to show each other through each turn at talk that they are orienting to each others’ utterances. Thus, methodologically, sequential analysis of turns at talk allows us insights into how participants come to some shared understanding of the situated meaning of ongoing talk. In developing this perspective, scholars of language socialization (e.g. Ochs, 1988; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986) have demonstrated that such talk also produces indexical relations between setting, activities, persons, topics, utterances, prosody, gesture, affective stance, et cetera. In this sense language is much more than just linguistic forms. In his work on SRs Agha (2007) has further clarrifed the dynamics of this process as it relates to issues of stability, variation, change, and cultural reproduction more generally in private and public spaces. He defines a Semiotic Register (SR) as a category of signs that includes both linguistic and non-linguistic signs, such as personas, affective stances, place, space, et cetera. The links between these signs and the SR of which they are a part are such that the use of one sign—whether linguistic or non-linguistic—implicates the Semiotic Register(s) to which it belongs (Agha, 2007: 81; see also Ochs, 1996 on this). SRs should also be viewed as emergent. For example, signs only become signs if those used by a sender are recognized by the receiver. In looking at this process in a little more detail we can look at Wortham’s (2006) work on social identification and time-frames. He notes that in initial situated encounters (the shortest time-frame) newcomers do not have a fixed identity vis-à-vis other participants. Because of this all participants draw upon some of the signs that make up a particular longer-term SR to signal and interpret identity. Whether and to what extent a sign (say Sign A) becomes used for social identification in subsequent speech situations depends upon the extent to which a number of other signs (say Signs B and C) indexical of the SR being invoked co-occur in a way that helps confirm participants’ interpretation of Sign A in the initial interaction. In ethnomethodological terms we are talking about whether this usage is ratified in conversation (e.g. Gafaranga, 2001; Gafaranga & Torras, 2002; Torras & Gafaranga, 2002). In cases where the usage of signs is not ratified—that is sign usage appears contrary to a particular participant’s “frames of expectation” (e.g. Goffman, 1974; Tannen, 1993)—such disjunctures can often be observed empirically with reference to stops in ongoing talk, requests for clarification, and so on. Indeed, as Wortham (2006) points out this process closely resembles Gumperz’s (1982) notion of “conversational inference” and these signs resemble “contextualization cues”. If such social identification is ratified in initial encounters, it then becomes a resource to be appropriated in subsequent interactions (developing time-frame). Thus, over time identity as one sign within a SR can become solidified in a local setting. In this sense, we can see much of what is commonly referred to as “culture” and “norms” in anthropological and linguistic anthropological work (e.g. Barth, 1969; Geertz, 1973; Hymes, 1972; Moerman, 1988; Ochs, 1988; Philips, 1983). Another reason why SRs should be seen as emerging is that the very nature of SR production means that the constellation of signs making up a SR will change in a speech chain (that is, from speech event to speech event) because place, participants, affective stance, et cetera will differ from one speech event to the next (e.g. Agha, 2007; Wortham, 2006). Hence, meaning is a product of the negotiation of meaning between a number of participants in a particular setting (cf. Wenger, 1998). In this sense, then, SR formation always draws upon pre-existing signs from other SRs that exist within a system of SRs (e.g. Agha, 2007). Continued interaction over time and across speech events, however, allows for some linguistic 16

Enregisterment, Alternation and Difference

signs from an emerging SR to become reified and associated with particular types of persons, settings, social practices, and so on. In other words, despite the emergent nature of SRs, some become more stable and perdure over time through processes of enregisterment, defined here as: … [S]ociohistorical processes … whereby diverse behavioral signs (whether linguistic, nonlinguistic, or both) are functionally reanalyzed as cultural models of action, as behaviors capable of indexing stereotypic characteristics of incumbents of particular interactional roles, and of relations among them.” (Agha, 2007: 55). In addition to being a product of face-to-face semiotic encounters across speech events, the enregisterment of SRs can be a result of meta-pragmatic discourses about language usage and users found in dictionaries and prescriptive grammars, more widely accessible books on etiquette, novels, newspapers, magazines, radio, and television (e.g. Agha, 2003; Inoue, 2004). In the case of representations of language use in the media, the signs linking language use to performable social personas and relationships are harder to falsify or question (Agha, 2007: 74–77). This is so for two reasons. The first is that this type of speech chain does not allow the type of questioning and/ or ratification of such stereotypes that are possible in face-to-face talk. Secondly, the audience of such representations is also much larger. Competence to perform or comprehend SRs varies from person to person because populations are geographically dispersed and access different forms of media. That is, they have different trajectories of socialization (e.g. Agha, 2007; Fairclough, 1995; Friedman, 2006; Ginsburg, Abu-Lughod, & Larkin, 2002; Spitulnik, 1996). While this points to the fragmented nature of people’s understanding of signs, such as linguistic tokens and/or utterance that are part of a SR, these divergent trajectories also represent different processes of enregisterment which produce competing SRs (Agha, 2007). Indeed, while there will always be dominant SRs within a system of such registers—especially those that are institutionally authorized, as in the case of use of signs associated with a Standard Language in state-owned/run schools and broadcasters (e.g. Spitulnik, 1998)—there will also, necessarily, be competing SRs (e.g. Agha, 2007; Schieffelin & Doucet, 1998). Indeed, it is familiarity with signs or fragments of a SR that allows differentiation with signs from other SRs (e.g. Irvine, 2001; Irvine & Gal, 2000).

3. Narrative Analysis One of the main points about SRs is that they should be viewed as emergent because signs only become signs if those used by a sender are recognized by the receiver. In cases where sign usage is not recognized such disjunctures are often seen through stops in ongoing talk, requests for clarification, and importantly for this section, talk that identifies the offending party as socially deviant. In other words, such sign usage appears contrary to a particular participant’s “frames of expectation” (e.g. Goffman, 1974; Tannen, 1993). In addition to seeing such disjunctures between expectation and experience in real time conversations—as in the case of accounts of intercultural interaction (e.g. Gumperz, 1982; Tannen, 1984)—scholars of narrative have also observed that such disjunctures can be seen through narrative accounts of past interactions with others (e.g. Briggs, 1996; Georgakopoulou, 2007; Ochs & Capps, 2001). For example, Ochs and Capps (2001) point out that the within everyday conversational storytelling the life events that get most attention are often those that are unusual, problematic, and/ or run counter to personal or community expectations. Such narratives are also an activity described as “socialization to use language” (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986) which raises participants’ awareness about other’s and/or community expectations, while at the same time providing ideas about what 17

Zane Goebel

would have been appropriate and/or ways of coping with the problem (e.g. Ochs, 2004). As this work on conversational narrative has shown us, such social identification often relates to moral evaluations. Ochs and Capps (2001: 45–46), for example, argue that in many stories that recount personal experience there is a protagonist whose actions have run counter to the teller’s expectations of how interactions should unfold. As such the teller tries to position themselves as moral, polite or well-behaved in contrast to the protagonist. In other words, talk about others tells us about conceptions of self on the part of the teller (e.g. Geogakopoulou 2007: 119–120). Just as importantly, as Georgakopoulou (2007) has shown, such narratives also provide participants insights into just how community is defined, especially in terms of who are members and how they can be identified through their following of perceived norms of interaction (see also Coupland, Garrett, & Williams, 2005). In this sense, we can say that conversational narratives or small stories (cf. Georgakopoulou, 2007) simultaneously socially identify participants while also producing what those working in the tradition of the ethnography of communication refer to as “norms” (e.g. Hymes, 1972, 1974). Indeed, as Wortham’s (2006) work has reminded us, the joint emergence of categories like identity, classroom interactional norms, academic learning, et cetera is part of everyday interaction. Processes of social identification thus refers to how participants and non-present others are positioned vis-à-vis others in situated interaction (e.g. Berman, 1998; Davies & Harre, 1990; Georgakopoulou, 2007). Such interactions generally produce a category or a “membership category device” (e.g. Antaki & Widdicombe, 1998; Hester & Eglin, 1997; Sacks, 1995; Schegloff, 2007b), which usually presupposes the existence of binary opposites (see also Billig, 1999). Membership categories are part of the category of signs that make up a locally emerging SR (Agha, 2007; Wortham, 2006). While interactions among unfamiliars generally also relies upon the appropriation of signs from pre-existing SRs for initial social identification, over time it is the locally emerging SRs that increasingly become drawn upon for social identification projects (Wortham, 2006). Hence, locally emerging categories along with other signs are available to participants to appropriate and recontextualize as “emblems” of identity in subsequent interactions (Agha, 2007: 233–277). Just as the production of talk, norms and the social identification of others is often a joint exercise whereby hearers—as one participant category—help actively produce a speakers’ talk and embodied actions (e.g. Goodwin, 2007; Goodwin & Goodwin, 2004), not all participants have the same role. For example, some participants have the rights to tell about newsworthy stories while others may have the rights to evaluate such stories (e.g. Georgakopoulou, 2007). Just as importantly, participant roles and the structure of such narratives emerge through joint participation in an ongoing conversation and are depended on who is doing the telling and their prior trajectories of interaction (Georgakapoulou 2007: 71). For example, in contrast to narratives elicited though interviews, in conversational narratives one person may tell about experience while another evaluates such experience. Moreover, the assigning of such participant roles—such as colluder, ratifier, evaluator, et cetera—often draws upon participants prior interaction with each other where such roles may have become routinized and thus indexed to particular participants (Georgakapoulou 2007: 70–77). Similarly, the learning of other types of conversational activities (e.g. collusion, ratification versus contention, disagreement, delegitimation) will also be dependent upon one’s trajectory of socialization (Georgakapoulou 2007: 70–77). Of interest here also is the relationship between work on narrative and work on reported speech (e.g. Berman, 1998; Clift & Holt, 2007; Errington, 1998b; Georgakopoulou, 2007). For example, many narratives contain reported speech or are indeed defined as stories because they 18

Enregisterment, Alternation and Difference

contain reported speech. Of relevance to this paper, however, is the common observation that while the way in which talk is reported in terms of language choice, prosodic features and so on may not represent what was actually said nor how it was said, nevertheless it often tells the hearer how the teller feels about the particular talk, the event, and/or the speaker being reported (e.g. Briggs, 1996; Clift & Holt, 2007; Georgakopoulou, 2007; Ochs & Capps, 2001). In this sense, reported speech can be talked of as represented speech (cf. Agha, 2007: 32). In concluding this section we can say that examining ward members’ talk about others across speech events may provide insights into which signs make up a locally emerging SR within this ward, and how identity, social conduct and social relations fit into such a SR. An increasingly common approach to such talk can be found in studies of small stories. Such narratives are commonly identified based on the existence of talk about disjunctures in experience (including the representation of talk of those involved or responsible for such disjunctures) and evaluations of such experience. Moreover, a useful approach to temporalization—another key element used in identifying narratives (e.g. Labov, 2006 [1972]; Ochs & Capps, 2001)—is to also consider talk that occurs in other settings outside of situated narratives. In doing so, we are able to place such situated narratives in a larger history or trajectory of interactions among participants (cf. Georgakopoulou, 2007).

4. Fieldwork: Repertoires, Timescales and Socio-Historical Data In this section I am mainly concerned with providing an account of the fieldwork setting and my methods. In doing so, I will emphasize how data sets from different timescales were gathered and analyzed while also presenting information on linguistic repertoires. 4.1 Fieldwork In terms of local timescales, the data that I will be basing my analysis was gathered during two-and-a-half years of fieldwork in two Rukun Tetangga (RT ) “Wards” in Semarang, Indonesia (reported in Author 2000, 2002, 2005, 2008b). Geographically the neighborhoods where I carried out this research were located in the newly urbanizing fringes of the northern part of Semarang. These two neighborhoods were located within fifty meters of each other and were part of a larger administrative unit called a Rukun Warga “neighborhood”, which was made up of twelve wards. As one would expect in large city (with around 4 million inhabitants) the members of both these wards came from diverse religious, ethnolinguistic, educational, economic, occupational and experiential backgrounds. After obtaining informed consent my research assistants and I observed and recorded the conversations of 88 of the 167 residents who lived in these wards, including 29 who reported being non-Javanese (15 men, 14 women) and 59 who reported being Javanese (30 men, 29 women). The types of settings that I and my research assistants participated in and observed, included: monthly ward meetings, weekly working bees, social functions and celebrations, religious gatherings, sporting events, and neighbor to neighbor conversations. Sixty hours of conversations were recorded by mainly non-Javanese research assistants in interactions with their Javanese neighbors and peers. The reason that I chose mainly non-Javanese rather than Javanese research assistants was because they were more likely to be involved in interethnic interactions in these primarily Javanese wards. Preference was given to recording naturally occurring group interactions—that is, those that would have occurred whether they were being recorded or not—for at least an hour. These recordings were then transcribed with the help of 19

Zane Goebel

Indonesian research assistants and participants of these interactions. Part of this process involved classification of linguistic forms and interpreting language alternation, both of which were quite problematic, as I point out below. 4.2 Classification of lexical signs Transcription has been described as an ideological act (e.g. Edwards & Lampert, 1993; Green, Franquiz, & Dixon, 1997; Ochs, 2006 [1979]; Roberts, 1997): my classification of language forms in these transcripts is no different. For example, initial classification was based on the extent to which lexical forms approximated or deviated from standard forms found in dictionaries (e.g. Echols & Shadily, 1992; Prawiroatmojo, 1989, 1993), and other descriptions (e.g. Errington, 1985; Poedjosoedarmo, 1968; Uhlenbeck, 1978). Where Javanese is concerned I initially drew upon distinctions between ngoko, madya and krama Javanese, which are reportedly identifiable by the presence or absence of particular words and affixes (e.g. Wolff & Poedjosoedarmo, 1982: 29), as illustrated in Table 1. Such distinctions also come with descriptions of their relationship to situated social conduct. For example, ngoko is described as a language level or “style” (cf. Errington, 1988; Errington, 1998b) used among familiars, friends, and the language of the self. With a vocabulary of around one thousand words, non-ngoko forms such as madya, have been described as “other-oriented” language (e.g. Errington, 1998b) and language used among non-familiars. Krama is reportedly the language used on formal occasions and speeches, and for conversations among, or to, nobility (e.g. Errington, 1988; Poedjosoedarmo, 1968; Wolff & Poedjosoedarmo, 1982: 17–39). Table 1 Examples of words and affixes indexical of Javanese speech levels Krama

Madya

Ngoko

Gloss

meniko

niki, niku, niko

iki, kuwi, kaé

this, that, that over there

menopo

nopo

opo

what

wonten

enten

ono, nèng

there is/are, in/at/on

badhé

ajeng

arep

will/wish/intend

Adapted from Wolff and Poedjosoedarmo (1982: 30)

In addition to the main vocabulary sets noted above there are two others: the first, labelled as krama inggil, literally ‘high Javanese’, consist of words and terms of address that honor or elevate the addressee and his or her actions (e.g. Errington, 1988; Wolff & Poedjosoedarmo, 1982). The second set, called krama andhap, consisted of words that humble the speaker and their actions. It should also be noted that many Javanese often only make the distinction between bahasa seharihari or bahasa kasar (“everyday language” or “crude language”) and basa or basa halus (“cultured language” or “polite language”) (e.g. Bax, 1974; Errington, 1985). Moreover, as Bax’s (1974), Errington’s (1985), Smith-Hefner’s (1983) and Goebel’s (2000) studies have shown, the types of symmetrical exchanges shown in a) and b) of Diagram 1 may be just as common as the more widely known and studied asymmetrical exchanges in c) (e.g. Berman, 1998; Errington, 1988; Geertz, 1960; Keeler, 1987; Siegel, 1986; Uhlenbeck, 1978; Wolff & Poedjosoedarmo, 1982). Problems with my categorization of linguistic tokens based on the above previous work became increasingly obvious as I worked with different members of the two wards when transcribing and classifying language forms. Consider, for example, the following text of a Javanese female speaking in a ward meeting (Extract 1). The person who spoke this utterance classified it as ngoko Javanese. However, other language consultants from this ward pointed out that it was a mixture of 20

Enregisterment, Alternation and Difference

Javanese and Indonesian. For example, on line 1 there is the Indonesian form sampai “until” and ngoko Javanese forms podo “same”, angel “difficult/hard”, waé “just”. Interestingly the Indonesian form has a ngoko Javanese equivalent tenan. Given this speaker’s self-classification as a Javanese (whose first language was Javanese) we might expect that she knew this form. Diagram 1 Symmetrical and Asymmetrical Exchanges of Javanese a) Interlocutors familiar and of same status NGOKO NGOKO b) Interlocutors unfamiliar and of same status KRAMA KRAMA c) NGOKO used by status superior (in terms of age, occupation, education, wealth, noble background)

KRAMA used by status inferior (often plus self-effacing KRAMA ANDHAP forms and otherelevating KRAMA INGGIL forms)

Extract 1 Codeswitching, codemixing or a new code? 1 Pak Indro sampai Pak Jati Pak Tobing Pak Yuli podo angel waé. Mr Indro until Mr Jati Pak Tobing Pak Yuli same hard just Pak Indro down to Pak Jati, Pak Tobing, Pak Yuli [all of them] are just as difficult. 2 Orangé Person + cohesive reference They don’t pay ever.

nggak don’t

bayar pay

tenan. Really

Of equal interest is her use of an Indonesian form orang “person” affixed with “é”, a Javanese form used, among other things, to indicate an utterance’s relationships with the subject of prior talk (line 2). The Indonesian form does have a Javanese form wong, which this speaker was recorded using in other contexts. In lines 1 and 2 there are also forms that could be equally classified as Javanese or Indonesian (e.g. nggak “no/not/don’t” and the kin terms used to talk of other people, namely Bu and Pak used to address women and men respectively). More generally, there is lexicon common to both languages. Indeed some of Indonesian’s lexicon has been adopted from Javanese, and the reverse is also true (e.g. Errington, 1998b; Poedjosoedarmo, 1982). Moreover, the introduction of new language forms into Indonesian also begs the question of whether these items should also be classified as Javanese or other regional languages because of their new status. For example, words such as resmi “official” and kantor “office” don’t have any Javanese equivalents with Indonesian-Javanese bilingual dictionaries presenting them as both Indonesian and Javanese (e.g. Sudaryanto, 1991). In attempting to address some of these issues Gafaranga’s and Torras’s ethnomethodological approach to language alternation provided some very useful insights into how we might go about classifying language alternation practices (e.g. Gafaranga, 2001; Gafaranga & Torras, 2002; Torras & Gafaranga, 2002). In particular, Gafaranga’s and Torras’s (2002) framework is especially useful for providing some initial means for the categorization of situated talk. I have italicized initial because the categories—as I use them in the following chapters—do leak, especially when viewed as a social practice linked with prior and future interactions. Consider for example Extract 2 which, in line with a purely ethnomethodological agenda, provides no information about participant identities or their language choices (e.g. Gafaranga 2001). I use the following to indicate prosody, tempo and pause: a period “ . ” is used to indicate a perceivable silence, while numbers in brackets indicate silences from three tenths of a second and more; an apostrophe “ ’ ” indicates final falling intonation; a question mark “ ? ” represents final rising intonation; two arrows “ > ” surrounding talk are used to indicate that this talk is faster than 21

Zane Goebel

the previous and subsequent talk; and I use a series of colons “ : ” to represent a sound stretch. A plus “ + ” surrounding talk indicates that the volume has been increased relative to the previous and subsequent talk while a “ # ” hatch is used to indicate a decrease in volume. I use “ = ” to indicate latching, that is, where there is no perceivable pause between turns; and I use “ { ” to indicate overlapping talk. The bold italic underlined numbers in the far left column indicate points of analysis. Extract 2

No classification

Participant A 1 2 3 4 5

Bu Tobing #kui loh# . +ditarik?+ wong kan? ngga pernah ketemu yo ndhéwéké karepé kih?. lepas ngono loh soko tanggung jawab #RT iki ndhéwéké kih emoh# =

That Bu Tobing, asked by someone [for monetary contributions she] can never be found, yeah [her] individual wish is to not take any RT responsibilities, [she] is not interested.

Participant B 6 7

= lho ojo manggon nèng kéné { (???)

Well don’t live here (???) (???)

Participant A 8 { anu opo 9 ndhéwéké ora tahu teko loh?. kan? 10 ya nggak boleh ok’ =

Ah what is it, [she] has never shown up, [you] aren’t allowed.

Without any conversation external information we can begin to analyze the talk in the above extract. For example, there appears to be some identity work going on with Bu Tobing being identified as someone who is irresponsible in relation to the ward. However, there is no talk about participants’ language choices. Essentially, this means that for this interaction I cannot pursue matters of whether and to what extent language choice figured in meaning-making in this interaction. Unfortunately, this situation was very common with there being no explicit meta-talk about language choice in any of my sixty hours of recordings. When I asked research assistants to transcribe and classify the language used in the transcripts, however, they had clear ideas about which languages where being used in interaction. Although, as noted when looking at Extract 1, not every research assistant or participant agreed on others’ classifications. In conversations and semi-formal interviews outside of these recordings, participants also where quite articulate about the existence of language varieties and their interactional meanings. This seemed to confirm or build upon my own biases on this issue at the time. Indeed, subsequently my work within Agha’s (2007) semiotic framework also suggests the need to draw upon but not rely on ethnomethodological methods for categorization. Thus, the re-analysis I present below also draws upon conversation-external information to categorize linguistic signs. For example, I use participants’ and ward members’ information about participant identities together with my research assistants classification of signs, my own knowledge about these signs and a number of Javanese and Indonesian dictionaries to reanalyze Extract 2. I use the following transcription conventions to represent these understandings, although for economy here and in the following sections I substitute “Indonesian” and “Javanese” for “linguistic signs stereotypically associated with Indonesian” and “linguistic signs stereotypically associated with Javanese”. Indonesian (I) is in plain font, ngoko Javanese (NJ) is in bold, and bold italics indicates those forms that can be classified as either NJ or I. 22

Enregisterment, Alternation and Difference

Extract 3 Reanalysis: alternation as the medium and codeswitching Participant A 1 2 3 4 5

@Bu Tobing@ kui loh. +ditarik?+ wong kan? ngga pernah ketemu yo +ndhéwéké karepé kih?. lepas >ngono loh>+ soko tanggung jawab RT iki ndhéwéké kih #emoh# =

That Bu Tobing, asked by someone [for monetary contributions she] can never be found, yeah [her] individual wish is to not take any RT responsibilities, [she] is not interested.

Participant B 6 7

= lho ojo manggon nèng kéné { (???)

Well don’t live here (???) (???)

Participant A 8 { anu 9 opo ndhéwéké ora tahu teko loh?. 10 kan? ya nggak boleh ok’ =

Ah what is it, [she] has never shown up, [you] aren’t allowed.

In drawing upon Gafaranga’s and Torras’s (2002) categories I wish to categorize the talk on lines 1–5 as language alternation as the medium. This category seems appropriate for two reasons. The first is that neither the participants nor other members of this ward (in settings outside of this one) comment about the appropriateness of alternating between two linguistic forms stereotypically associated or enregistered with named languages, such as Indonesian and Javanese. The second reason is that this language alternation appears to occur within intonational units: that is, in an utterance surrounded by pauses (indicated by a period “.” or a number in brackets). As such language alternation as the medium resembles the following pattern (adapted from Auer, 1995): AB1 AB2 AB1 AB2 (the upper case letters represent a particular language variety and the numbers indicate speaker 1 and 2). The above extract also provides an example of a second category that I will borrow from Gafaranga and Torras (2002), namely codeswitching. This category is used in cases where one group of linguistic signs are followed by a longish pause (e.g. lines 8–9)—relative to previous and subsequent ones—and then followed by a different group of linguistic signs stereotypically associated with a particular language, as can be seen on line 10. Codeswitching can be illustrated with the pattern: A1 A2 B1 A1 A2 (adapted from Auer, 1995). 4.3 Female sign knowledge and use As noted earlier, my focus in this paper is on female heads of household, thus from now on I will focus only on these participants. Table 2 summarizes my findings relating to participants’ competence in Indonesian, ngoko Javanese and krama Javanese. Evidence for the use of these three codes is placed under the three columns to the right of the first column which has participant names. Those who have self-reported to be non-Javanese (and who other members of the community characterize as non-Javanese) are indicated by an asterix “*” affixed to their name. Hence Bu Naryono is a Javanese while Bu Sumaryono* is non-Javanese. Proper names are preceded with the kin term “Bu” literally “Mrs” which is often used for addressing married women in this RT. There were also members of these two communities who were never recorded or observed using one or more of these codes where they might have been expected to and thus I have reason to believe that they weren’t competent in that code. Accordingly, I have left the column blank for these people to indicate this lack of evidence and potential lack of competence. In summarizing this table we can say that most of the Javanese and non-Javanese women of this ward were competent in two types of Javanese (ngoko and krama) as well as Indonesian, although 23

Zane Goebel

there were some exceptions. Accordingly, barring the exceptions, when we look at actual instances of talk we won’t be able to attribute the use of one code or another to the lack of knowledge of an alternative. Table 2 Evidence for lexical knowledge and use for females of Ward 8 Participant

Javanese

Indonesian

ngoko Javanese

krama Javanese

O.

O. R and O.

R, O and I.

Bu Saryono

R and O.

R and O.

R, O and I.

Bu Yudianto

R and O.

Bu Dono Bu Indro

Bu Mugiono Bu Joko

R and O.

O and I.

R and O.

O and I.

O.

O and I.

R and O.

R, O and I.

Bu Feizel*

R, O and I.

Bu Nurholis

R and O.

R and O.

R, O and I.

Bu Taufik*

O.

O.

O and I.

Bu Pujianto

R and O.

R and O.

O and I.

Bu Suntoro

R and O.

R and O.

R and O.

Bu Sugiono

R and O.

R and O.

O and I.

Bu Roni

O.

O and I.

Bu Abdurrahman*

O.

R, O and I.

Bu Yulianto

O.

O.

O and I.

Bu Tri

O.

O.

O and I.

Bu Kris*

R and O.

Bu Zainudin*

R and O.

O.

Bu Sumaryono*

R and O.

Self-report.

R, O and I.

Bu Manurung*

R, O and I. R, O and I. O and I.

Bu Tobing*

O and I.

Bu Matius*

O.

O.

O and I.

Mbak Fatimah* (Pak Feizel’s daughter)

R and O.

Mbak Suli

R and O.

O.

R, O and I.

Mbak Endang

R and O.

O.

R, O and I.

R, O and I.

Abdurrahman children*

O.

R, O and I.

Manurung children*

O.

O and I.

Mbak Tuti (Bu Zainudin’s friend)

R and O.

O.

R, O and I.

4.4 Socio-historical data My descriptions of how I categorized and interpreted instance of language alternation above also highlight my need to use socio-historical data. I gathered some of this information during fieldwork and some of it is based on other scholars’ work, especially Errington (1998a, 1998b, 2000, 2001). I have been developing this theme in a number of publications (e.g. Goebel, 2007, 2008a; Goebel, 2008b) of which Goebel (2008a) is the most comprehensive treatment. Accordingly, here I won’t cover this ground in detail but merely sketch out some of the main points of my argument. Essentially, I have argued that political discourses, schooling, enumeration practices and representations of language use in the popular mass media have helped enregister semiotic registers that index languages other than Indonesia (LOTI) and Indonesian with various contexts, including region, stranger, ethnicity, hierarchy, and so on. Table 3 summarizes some of the signs that make up 24

Enregisterment, Alternation and Difference

each of these widely circulating but also constantly emerging semiotic registers. Table 3 Long-term widely circulating semiotic registers in Indonesia Context

Languages other than Indonesian (LOTI)

Indonesian

Interethnic interaction

●

Unfamiliarity/stranger/outsider

●

Out-group relations

●

Region

●

Ethnic identity

●

In-group relations

●

Family

●

Intimacy

●

Familiarity/familiar/insider

●

Gotong-royong “working together for the mutual benefit of the community”

●

●

5. Building Community through Everyday Narratives In this section I am primarily concerned with demonstrating how some of the expectations about social conduct in this neighborhood are co-constructed in narratives about problematic neighbors. In doing so, I will argue that such narratives also represent lessons for new-comers. I follow this by arguing that the language variety in which such narratives are told also index other expectations, namely which variety of language should be used among members of a particular community. Across speech events this process (re)produces local indexical relationships. Moreover, for newcomers or observers of such interactions it also helps produce such indexical relationships, while also drawing upon wider circulating SRs of the type represented in Table 3. In carrying out this analysis I will also suggest that these co-constructed narratives also construct notions of identity and its relationship with community, that is to say, the interactions themselves represent the (re)production of a number of communities of practice (COP). For example, the actual interactions observed by newcomers represent small communities of practice while the new-comers and other observers help make up a larger community of practice within which the smaller one is nested. In the last section, I try and test this hypothesis by showing how one of the observers of the initial interaction starts to appropriate observed ways of speaking: namely the use of ngoko Javanese inter-ethnically. I argue that this usage points to a process of local enregisterment, which as noted at the beginning of this paper is one component used in defining a communities of practice and with it the social identification of its members. To exemplify the above points I draw on audio-recorded conversations that were made in a speech situation, locally known as arisan RT “womens’ neighborhood meeting”, which occurred every month in this ward. These meetings usually occurred on Saturday or Sunday afternoons at around 4:00 pm. Like most RT meetings, the following two meetings took place in the front room of the host’s house (see Diagram 1). In both these meetings participants sit on the floor. These meetings were led by Ibu RT “The female head of the ward” or her nominated representative. Part of the function of such meetings was to help disseminate state development policy—as part of the Family Guidance Movement (Pembinaan Kesejahteraan Keluarga or PKK)—which among other things included ideas and directives on family planning, community health and development, gotong royong “working together for the mutual benefit of the community”, et cetera (see also 25

Zane Goebel

Blackburn, 2004). Diagram 2 A women’s ward meeting in Ward 8 (June 96) d o o r

stairs

divider

table

Mardiono

Pujianto Taufik*

Feizal*

Nurholis Joko

Recorder

Abdurrahman*

Naryono Sumaryono* Kris* Yudianto

Zainuddin*

Suntoro

entrance

These meetings also fulfilled a more immediate pragmatic function with relation to local conditions. Such conditions related to the need to plan and pay for garbage collection, dengue fever mosquito prevention, neighborhood social activities and celebrations, and so on. While these pragmatic functions necessitated participation from all of the community, the make-up of family units, working hours, levels of sociability, income levels, religious affiliation, whether other relatives lived in Semarang, and neighborhood layout all mitigated full participation in such meetings (Goebel, 2000: Chapter 5). Indeed, while there were twenty-three households in this neighborhood, no more than fifteen women heads of household ever attended these meetings. Each meeting starts with a song called Ibu PKK “PKK Mothers”, which among other things reminds all participants about how mutual cooperation benefits the individual and their community. Extract 4 is of the first meeting recorded by my research assistant and spouse, Bu Zainudin. In this meeting thirteen of the twenty-three female heads of households attended and all present were regulars. In terms of old-timers and newcomers, one person—Bu Zainudin*, who was introduced earlier and whom we will meet again in Extract 8—was a newcomer having arrived in this RT three months earlier. Extract 4 below occurs about fifteen minutes into the meeting and is preceded by a group conversation about who has and has not paid contributions toward the upcoming Independence Day celebrations. The conversation starts to focus upon one non-present person: Bu Tobing, a nonJavanese. Bu Naryono publically identifies her by raising her voice very noticeably relative to her previous talk (indicated by @ surrounding the talk). This makes the talk more accessible to the other participants, especially those who were engaged in their own conversations. Indeed, in the talk that follows Bu Sumaryono*, Bu Kris**, and Bu Pujianto all become contributors to the social identification of Bu Tobing. I use the same transcription conventions outlined for Extracts 2 and 3.

26

Enregisterment, Alternation and Difference

Extract 4 Co-constructing self, other, community and norms for conduct Bu Naryono 1 2 3 4 5

@Bu Tobing@ kui loh. +ditarik?+ wong kan? ngga pernah ketemu yo +ndhéwéké karepé kih?. lepas >ngono loh>+ soko tanggung jawab RT iki ndhéwéké kih #emoh’# =

That Bu Tobing, asked by someone [for monetary contributions she] can never be found, yeah [her] individual wish is to not take any RT responsibilities, [she] is not interested.

Bu Joko 6 7

= lho ojo manggon nèng kéné { (???)

Well don’t live here (???) (???)

Bu Naryono 8 { anu opo 9 ndhéwéké ora tahu teko loh?. kan? 10 ya nggak boleh ok’ =

Ah what is it, [she] has never shown up, [you] aren’t allowed.

Bu Sumaryono* 11 = dia tuh dia 12 statusnya di sini apa? =

She, what is her [residency] status here.

Bu Naryono 13

= lah iya’=

That is right.

Bu Sumaryono* 14 = dia 15 di sini minta surat RT kan? jangan 16 >DIKASIH’> =

[If] she is here asking for an RT letter, don’t GIVE IT [to her].

As can be seen in lines 1–5 and 8–10 Bu Naryono publicly associates Bu Tobing with the categories of non-payer, non-attendee and a person who disregards their ward responsibilities. This latter category is very much related to wider circulating categories associated with gotong-royong “working together for the mutual benefit of the community”, which all participants are reminded of through the Ibu PKK song recited at the start of each of these meetings. This widely circulating category seems to be invoked by talk about Bu Tobing, who is someone who does not belong to this category of persons. In doing so, the colluders in this telling are implying that they belong to the category of persons who are good ward members. In other words, in identifying Bu Tobing as deviant they are also implying that they are not deviant. Note also that while Bu Naryono mentions her expectations about what is neighborly, it is Bu Joko and Bu Sumaryono who cite solutions or sanctions for treating those who deviate from these expectations (lines 6–7 and 14–16). Thus, here processes of social identification are also reliant upon input from multiple participants (that is, co-construction). Just as importantly, this co-construction also simultaneously creates other identities, such as community or ward, as well as norms for social conduct in this ward. For example, the above talk implies that having the identity of a responsible community member means attending and paying. This points to the inter-related nature of “identity”, “practice” and “community” through seeing expectations about practice simultaneously defining what social characteristics contribute to identity and community membership in this setting. At this stage it is also important to point out that Bu Naryono’s engages in language alternation in two ways. The first on lines 1–5 appears to fit the pattern of alternation as the medium. This is so because participants make no comment about the appropriateness of alternating between ngoko Javanese and Indonesian in subsequent talk in this or other settings. This interpretation is further supported if we look at the use of ngoko Javanese and Indonesian within intonational units 27

Zane Goebel

(indicated by a “ . ” in the transcript). As we can see, where pauses do occur this does not set apart an instance of talk that is made up either of linguistic signs associated with ngoko Javanese or those associated with Indonesian. The second form of language alternation is where one set of signs are used (in this case ngoko Javanese on line 9) followed by a pause and then another set of signs (in this case Indonesian on lines 9–10). This alternation from ngoko to Indonesian also co-occurs with what appears to be an evaluation of Bu Tobing’s behavior represented in lines 1–5. Thus, the alternation here seems to be functional and as such I will classify it as codeswitching. Note also that the language choice of Bu Naryono’s interlocutors—Bu Joko and Bu Sumaryono—also gives some insights into their situated identities. For example, we can interpret Bu Joko’s talk (lines 6–7) as helping solidify her insider/intimate/familiar identity that has been achieved through talk in ngoko Javanese in prior talk (not found in this paper for reasons of length). Such an interpretation continues to fit with wider circulating SRs relating to LOTI usage. This interpretation is further supported by way of Bu Joko’s participation in discussions about nonnormative neighbors. For example, she contrastively positions herself as belonging to a category of persons who are normative through her talk about sanctions for persons who are deviant. In contrast, although Bu Sumaryono seems also to have rights to suggest sanctions and engage in discussions about deviance, her identity is a little more ambiguous due to her use of Indonesian (lines 11–12 and 14–16) with its associations with outsiders, strangers, and ethnic others. To sum up all of the talk so far what seems to be locally emerging are two broad types of SRs. The first might be conveniently talked of as an insider SR which has within its constellation of signs, certain behavioural patterns that are also sequentially tied to patterns of language alternation. The second SR might be talked of as being primarily containing signs that are opposite to the first and being associated with deviant outsiders. Although thus far there has been little evidence which ties this second SR with wider circulating SRs which have Indonesian forms within their category of signs, in the following extract we will see Indonesian beginning to be more unambiguously associated with outsiders at the local level. This talk follows directly after the talk in Extract 4. Extract 5 Doing othering through represented speech Bu Naryono 17 = wong lagé embèn ngéné toh nang 18 kéné?. saya tuh sewaktu waktu 19 #pind:ah’# =

A while ago [she] came here [and said] at some time or another I will move [from here].

Bu Sumaryono* 20 = kabéh W:ONG? =

All PEOPLE [move]

Bu Naryono 21 = lah iya’ =

That is right.

Bu Sumaryono* 22 = semua ORANG . wong kantor aja 23 tidak ada menetap #(???) (???)#.

All PEOPLE, even office people, none stay forever (???) (???).

What is interesting in the above extract is the alternation from ngoko Javanese on lines 17–18 to Indonesian on lines 18–19. Here such alternation can be classified as codeswitching for two reasons. The first is that different codes are used in the first and second intonational units. Secondly, this alternation appears to frame what is said as “reporting” or more accurately “representing” (cf. Agha 2007) what Bu Tobing has said. With recourse to wider circulating SRs that have Indonesian and stranger within their constellation of signs here I also suggest that such codeswitching helps 28

Enregisterment, Alternation and Difference

add Indonesian to the emerging SR relating to outsiders. In doing so, it also reinforces the insider SR which has within its category of signs Javanese usage within this ward. This interpretation also seems supported by both the representation of first person reference and Bu Sumaryono’s response. For example, the use of the form saya (line 18)—which is stereotypically associated with Indonesian—contrasts with these participants’ usage of the form aku among themselves in talk preceding that represented in Extract 4. This points to a reading of the relationship between Bu Naryono and Bu Tobing as different than the relationship between the conversationalists at this meeting. Bu Sumaryono also seems to have made such an interpretation as illustrated by her subsequent turn (line 20), which in contrast to her prior turns, is now in ngoko Javanese. In conversation analytic terms Bu Sumaryono’s turn in ngoko was “relevant” (e.g. Schegloff, 1992, 2007a) to Bu Naryono’s prior talk. Such an interpretation also sits with what I know about both participants’ competencies in krama forms of Javanese and Indonesian. Basically, Bu Naryono could have used krama Javanese to represent Bu Tobing’s speech had she wished and Bu Sumaryono could have used Indonesian if she had wanted, as she had done previously and one turn latter (e.g. lines 22–23). Moreover, in switching to ngoko Javanese Bu Sumaryono is also situationaly positioning herself as a ngoko speaker in contrast to Bu Tobing, the Indonesian speaking deviant. Taken together these social practices further contribute to the solidifying of local identity categories which simultaneously become part of emerging SRs. Table 4

Emerging semiotic registers

SEMIOTIC REGISTER 1 (SR1)

SEMIOTIC REGISTER 2 (SR2)

Paying neighbor

Non-paying neighbor

Attendee of meetings

Non-attendee of meetings

Javanese speaker

Indonesian speaker

Sociable

Reticent

Person who engages in gotong royong

Those who don’t engage in gotong-royong

Participants: Bu Naryono, Bu Sumaryono, Bu Joko, Bu Nurholis, Bu Zainudin, Bu Kris, Bu Pujianto

Bu Tobing (and anyone else who doesn’t participate in meetings, etc.)

Positive affect

Negative affect

Insider

Outsider

Without actually reproducing the rest of this talk, which would take a few more pages, I can say that the identity categories discussed thus far further solidify and start to be used in subsequent speech events. These categories are also added to as Bu Tobing is further positioned as someone who not only appears sour-faced in encounters but doesn’t want to socialize with neighbors or even say hello when passing by. This of course also positions those who report such characteristics as persons who do socialize and say hello. Importantly for this paper, these categories were often constructed not only explicitly but through the same patterns of language choice and language alternation described in Extracts 4 and 5 thereby further solidifying identity categories and norms for evaluating Bu Naryono and Bu Sumaryono as “good neighbours who speak Javanese” and others, like Bu Tobing, as “deviant Indonesian speaking neighbours”. In doing so, it also helped further develop the two emerging semiotic registers, which at a minimum contained the constellation of signs listed in Table 4, while also reproducing some of the signs that are ideologically associated with the Indonesian state, development and citizenship. 29

Zane Goebel

6. Crossing, Adequation and Enregisterment Thus far I have argued that within this setting, norms and sanctions are co-constructed and (re) produced in talk and that the interpretation thereof can be made using at least three sets of resources. Such interactions can be characterized as local level speech chains which help constitute and reproduce a small community of practice (COP). In addition to this, however, observation of such activities by newcomers may also index linguistic forms with particular identities and affective stances. In this sense, these newcomers participation as a bystander resembles COP theorists’ notions of a “peripheral participant” (e.g. Wenger, 1998: 164–172) within a larger COP. In doing so, newcomers have the opportunity to learn how to become a member of a larger COP, or in language socialization terms they have an opportunity to become communicatively competent in this setting as part of wider processes of becoming a member of a cultural group. I have underlined “opportunity” to highlight that learning can’t be assumed to happen. We need to look at subsequent interactions among a newcomer—in this case Bu Zainudin—and the core participants of Extracts 4 and 5 to see whether and to what extent such learning has taken place. Of particular interest here is whether and to what extent Bu Zainudin, has started to use local insider ways of speaking. For example, to what extent does she use ngoko Javanese in subsequent interactions with these Javanese neighbors and to what extent does it become tied with processes of social identification. Diagram 3 A female monthly meeting in Ward 8 (Jan 97) door Joko

Mardiono Sumaryono*

Sugiono

Naryono

Feizel*

Abdurrahman*

Pujianto

Recorder Zainuddin* Yulianto Kris* Nurholis Yudianto

entrance

In the following section I seek answers to these questions by taking a look at Bu Zainudin’s subsequent interactions in a meeting that occurs six months after the one reported above. Extract 6 is of an interaction that occurs about fifteen minutes into the recording. It is preceded by an interaction about a new member of the neighborhood who has leased a house next door to Bu Zainudin and opened a business that requires frequent trips by heavy trucks into the neighborhood. Diagram 3 shows where participants were seated.

30

Enregisterment, Alternation and Difference

Extract 6 (Re)producing or reifying norms for speaking conduct? Bu Zainudin* 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

toh Bu (.2) itu katanya kan adik (.1) itu loh Bu adik saya itu? kan waktu pertama kali bawa barang itu minta itu minta tolong sama adik saya soalé engga ada laki laki yang mau ngangkut ngangkut nurunin itu adik saya ditolong’ (.2) dia (.3) dia ngangkut itu malam malam itu bawaké ke ruma:h? terus dia =

Heh Bu he said [my] younger brother right, [I] mean my younger brother right, the first time when goods were brought [by truck to next door], [they] asked asked for help from my brother because there were no men to lift and unload [the truck]. [So] my younger brother helped, he, he lifted [their merchandise of the truck] and carried it into the house. And he.

Bu Naryono 11 = >jenengé 12 ngerépotké tonggo . kok ngono 13 kuwi #jenengé#’> =

Hem that’s called inconveniencing the neighbors, that’s what doing that is called.

Bu Zainudin* 14 = ya soalnya 15 engga ada siapa siapa waktu itu 16 { sih Bu’ haha

Yeah the problem was at that time there was not anybody around Bu haha

Bu Naryono 17 { >lah salahé wong gowo barang 18 ra nggowo { wong piyé’>

Yeah [well] that’s the problem of the person who brought the goods, [gee how stupid] not [also] bringing someone with [to do this].

Bu Zainudin* 19 20 21 22 23

{ ya adik saya kasihan engga apa apa ditolong . terus dia bilang katanya ini (.3) resminya sih mulai pindah tanggal dua dua #Desember katanya’#=

yeah my younger brother felt sorry for them [he thought] “it doesn’t matter I’ll help”, and he said they will formally move in on the 22nd of December, is what they said.

Bu Naryono 24 = 25 belum bayar ok itu’. #baru uang 26 muka#

[They] have yet payed, just a deposit.

In starting our analysis I wish to first draw on Gafaranga and Torra’s (2002) category of medium repair, to determine whether the talk fits this category or is perhaps something else. In determining whether the language alternation above represents medium repair we can take a sequential view of the talk to see if a particular alternation leads to the choice of one particular group of signs stereotypically associated with either Javanese or Indonesian. As can be seen above we have the situation where participants both use different languages for their turns at talk from lines 1–23. Following this Bu Naryono changes her language of interaction from Javanese to Indonesian, which from this piece of transcript appears to be Bu Zainudin’s preferred language choice. On the face of it this could be interpreted as medium repair, which can be illustrated with the following pattern: A1 B2 A1 B2 A1//A2 A1 A2 A1 (adapted from Auer, 1995). In some ways, however, the assigning of alternation to this category is problematic. For example, we see that Bu Zainudin has actually used two ngoko Javanese suffixes: é in soalé “because/the issue is” on line 5 and ké in bawaké “to bring something for someone” on line 9. By taking into account some ethnographically recoverable information about participant identities we 31

Zane Goebel

can come to a different categorization. For example, Bu Zainudin does not self-identify nor do other participants identify her as an ethnic Javanese. Yet she uses a linguistic sign that is enregistered with Javanese ethnicity, among other things (see Table 3). Thus, we might initially suggest that this as an instance of what Rampton (1995a, 1999) has termed crossing or styling the other. Such an interpretation also fits with what we know about Bu Zainudin’s competence in Indonesian (see Table 2), where it is clear she could have used the Indonesian suffixes (respectively nya and kan) just as easily as the Javanese ones. What complicates this some, is that she could also have used ngoko Javanese or krama Javanese instead of Indonesian if she so chose. For example, it is fairly clear from her responses from line 14 onwards that she understands ngoko Javanese and interprets this talk as being addressed to her and requiring a response: that is, she interpreted Bu Naryono’s talk as not just addressed to the Javanese participants present in this speech situation. Just as importantly, in interactions outside of this setting, Bu Zainudin regularly used Javanese with those who she shared a long history of interaction. In other words, in these other settings she engaged in the frequent pursuit of linguistic sameness: that is, adequation (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004a, 2004b). In the following twenty-four months I also had the opportunity to observe Bu Zainudin in subsequent interactions with Bu Naryono where they both increasingly moved towards habitual exchanges of ngoko Javanese. This was facilitated by forces described in Goebel (2000, 2002, 2005, 2008b) where these participants regularly shared social spaces as part of their membership in a particular socio-economic setting (for other examples of this type of situation see Skapoulli, 2004; Sweetland, 2002). In this sense, the use of ngoko Javanese suffixes in Extract 6 can be seen as part of an ongoing process of learning and of becoming part of a COP and its associated SRs, albeit ones with no end point (cf. Rampton, 1995b: 506). In other words, in addition to showing that she has learnt that she should attend these meetings and that it is acceptable practice to position non-present persons as deviant neighbors, she also appears to have learnt that it is acceptable to use ngoko Javanese to aid in such positioning narratives. That is to say, using ngoko fragments as emblems of identity here may well be positioning Bu Zainudin as an insider. Such an interpretation also seems relevant to her interlocutor, Bu Naryono, who replies in ngoko Javanese. In summary, it appears that fragments of SRs of the type represented in Table 2 have been appropriated from the speech situation represented by Extracts 4 and 5 and recontextualized in a subsequent speech situation. In some ways we can say that Bu Zainudin can be seen to have chosen not to continue the exchange in ngoko Javanese. This is so because she was perhaps aware that doing so may have pointed to a different semiotic register—which existed as a result of Bu Naryono’s long-term interactions with other participants (she had known and interacted with Bu Joko and Bu Sumaryono for four years prior to this recording)—that did not include Bu Zainudin in its category of signs.

7. Conclusions My starting point in this article was how community has been problematized in the humanities and social sciences given increasing population diversity in any setting. Of particular interest were questions relating to how ethno-linguistically different newcomers become seen as members of an Indonesian ward community. In taking an approach that looks at the relationships between wider-circulating, local and situated SRs I have concentrated on the way in which community and with it identity are constructed through the situated co-production of narratives about problematic neighbors in monthly meetings. For example, I pointed out that in talk-in-interaction such things as 32

Enregisterment, Alternation and Difference

‘norms’ were frequently co-constructed in situ by participants. Moreover, the situated construction of such norms were only possible through the simultaneous co-construction of identity categories that initially drew upon wider circulating socio-historical categories relating to notions of gotongroyong and language ideologies. Such norms, however, appeared to change across speech situations. For example, gotong-royong was associated with negative affect and a particular individual (Bu Tobing), Indonesian linguistic signs were associated with unfriendliness and Bu Tobing, and good relations among participants from diverse backgrounds became associated with ngoko Javanese usage. We also saw that through narratives, participants—often those who are initially ‘peripheral’— are presented with opportunities to learn what characteristics make a ‘good’ ward member. Hence, we can say that there are multiple simultaneous communities in any one setting. For example, dyadic and triadic conversations represent small communities of practice. When such conversations are observed by other peripheral participants there is the potential that observation will lead to legitimate participation in this community of practice or more accurately further participation. As I have argued this participation may well be facilitated by the appropriation of local and wider socio-historical linguistic resources. In cases where this happens, individual identity in relation to community identity continues to develop. As part of this process linguistic forms continue to be re-indexed to multiple signs across speech events (e.g. new ward members, new settings), which means that communities of practice and their associated SRs are always developing rather than being fixed definable entities. This position sits well with Wenger (1998), Agha’s (2007), and Wortham’s (2006) positions where this sort of change and reanalysis across speech events is actually the norm rather than the exception. *

This paper builds upon ideas presented in a number of my earlier works. These include a paper titled “Language, Community, Identity, Categories and Change in an Ethnolinguistically Diverse Ward” to be published in NUSA: Linguistic studies of Indonesian and other languages in Indonesia (to be published by Atma Jaya Catholic University, Jakarta, Indonesia), and three conference papers. The first was presented as “Building Community: Identity, Interdiscursivity and Language Choice in Everyday Narrative” at the first International Symposium on the Languages of Java, held at Hotel Graha Santika, Semarang, Indonesia on the 15th and 16th of August 2007. The second was presented as “Constructing the Stranger: Ideology, Alternation and Difference in an Indonesian Neighborhood” at the American Anthropological Association’s 106th Annual Meeting at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Washington DC on the 28th of November until the 2nd of December 2007. The final was presented as “Enregisterment, Alternation and Difference: Insiders and Outsiders in an Indonesian Neighbourhood” at the Global Centre of Excellence Conference Texts, Identity and Everyday Life held at Nagoya University, Japan on the 9th and 10th of February 2008. The paper has benefited from the generous questions, comments, and encouragement offered by the audiences and panel members in all of these forums, including (but not limited to) Stuart Robson, Yacinta Kurniasih, Michael Ewing, Antonia Soriente, Shlomy Kattan, Jim Stanford, Michael Silverstein, Salikoko Mufwene, Lawrence Michael O’Toole, Kay O’Halloran, Cyndi Dunn, Debra Occhi, Tetyana Sayenko, Kuniyoshi Kataoka, Akira Satoh and Masachiyo Amano. Of course all errors, misinterpretations and omissions remain my sole responsibility.

References Cited Agha, A. (2003). The social life of cultural value. Language and Communication, 23 (3–4), 231–273. Agha, A. (2007). Language and social relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Anderson, B. R. O. G. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso. Ang, I. (2003). Together-in-difference: Beyond diaspora into hybridity. Asian Studies Review, 27, 141–154. Antaki, C., & Widdicombe, S. (1998). Identity as an achievement and as a tool. In C. Antaki & S. Widdicombe (Eds.), Identities in talk (pp. 1–14). London: Sage Publications. Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press. Auer, P. (1995). The pragmatics of code-switching: A sequential approach. In L. Milroy & P. Muysken (Eds.), One speaker, two languages: Cross-disciplinary perspectives on code-switching (pp. 115–135). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barth, F. (1969). Introduction. In F. Barth (Ed.), Ethnic groups and boundaries: The social organization of cultural difference (pp. 9–38). Bergen: Universitets Forlaget. Bauman, Z. (2001). Community: Seeking safety in an insecure world. Cambridge: Polity. Bax, G. W. (1974). Language and social structure in a Javanese village. Unpublished Unpublished PhD, Tulane University, Tulane, USA. Berman, L. (1998). Speaking through the silence: Narratives, social conventions, and power in Java. New York: Oxford University Press. Billig, M. (1999). Freudian repression: Conversation creating the unconsciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blackburn, S. (2004). Women and the state in modern Indonesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blommaert, J., Collins, J., & Slembrouck, S. (2005). Spaces of multilingualism. Language and Communication, 25 (3), 197–216.

33

Zane Goebel

Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Briggs, C. (1996). Introduction. In C. Briggs (Ed.), Disorderly discourse: Narrative, conflict, and inequality (pp. 3–40). New York: Oxford University Press. Bucholtz, M., & Hall, K. (2004a). Language and identity. In A. Duranti (Ed.), A companion to linguistic anthropology (pp. 369–394). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Bucholtz, M., & Hall, K. (2004b). Theorizing identity in language and sexuality research. Language in Society, 33 (4), 469–515. Clift, R., & Holt, E. (2007). Introduction. In E. Holt & R. Clift (Eds.), Reported talk: Reporting speech in interaction (pp. 1–15). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Collins, J., Noble, G., Poynting, S., & Tabar, P. (2000). Kebabs, kids, cops and crime: Youth, ethnicity and crime. Sydney: Pluto Press. Coupland, N., Garrett, P., & Williams, A. (2005). Narrative demands, cultural performance and evaluation. In J. Thornborrow & J. Coates (Eds.), The sociolinguistics of narrative (pp. 67–88). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Davies, B., & Harre, R. (1990). Positioning: The discursive production of selves. Journal of the Theory of Social Behaviour, 20 (1), 43–63. Echols, J. M., & Shadily, H. (1992). Kamus Indonesia-Inggris: An Indonesian-English dictionary. Jakarta: PT Gramedia. Eckert, P. (2000). Linguistic variation as social practice: The linguistic construction of identity in Belten High. Oxford: Blackwell. Edwards, J. A., & Lampert, M. D. (Eds.). (1993). Talking data: Transcription and coding in discourse research. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Errington, J. J. (1985). Language and social change in Java: Linguistic reflexes of modernization in a traditional royal polity. Ohio: Ohio University Press. Errington, J. J. (1988). Structure and style in Javanese: A semiotic view of linguistic etiquette. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Errington, J. J. (1998a). Indonesian(’s) development: On the state of a language of state. In B. B. Schieffelin, K. A. Woolard & P. V. Kroskrity (Eds.), Language ideologies: Practice and theory (pp. 271–284). New York: Oxford University Press. Errington, J. J. (1998b). Shifting languages: Interaction and identity in Javanese Indonesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Errington, J. J. (2000). Indonesian (’s) authority. In P. V. Kroskrity (Ed.), Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities, and identities (advanced seminar series) (pp. 205–227 ). Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research. Errington, J. J. (2001). Colonial linguistics. Annual Review of Anthropology, 30, 19–39. Fairclough, N. (1995). Media discourse. London: Arnold. Friedman, S. L. (2006). Watching twin bracelets in China: The role of spectatorship and identification in an ethnographic analysis of film reception. Cultural Anthropology, 21 (4), 603–632. Gafaranga, J. (2001). Linguistic identities in talk-in-interaction: Order in bilingual conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 33, 1901–1925. Gafaranga, J., & Torras, M.-C. (2002). Interactional otherness: Towards a redefinition of codeswitching. The International Journal of Bilingualism, 6 (1), 1–22. Geertz, C. (1960). The religion of Java. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books Inc. Publishers. Georgakopoulou, A. (2007). Small stories, interaction and identities. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ginsburg, F. D., Abu-Lughod, L., & Larkin, B. (2002). Introduction. In F. D. Ginsburg, L. Abu-Lughod & B. Larkin (Eds.), Media worlds: Anthropology on new terrain (pp. 1–36). Berkeley: University of California Press. Goebel, Z. (2000). Communicative competence in Indonesian: Language choice in inter-ethnic interactions in Semarang. Unpublished PhD, Northern Territory University, Darwin. Goebel, Z. (2002). Code choice in inter-ethnic interactions in two urban neighbourhoods of Indonesia. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 158 (69–87). Goebel, Z. (2005). An ethnographic study of code choice in two neighbourhoods of Indonesia. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 25 (1), 85–107. Goebel, Z. (2007). Enregisterment and appropriation in Javanese-Indonesian bilingual talk. Language in Society, 36 (4), 511–531. Goebel, Z. (2008a). Enregistering, authorizing and denaturalizing identity in Indonesia. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 18 (1), 46–61. Goebel, Z. (2008b). Language, class, and ethnicity in Indonesia. Bijdragen tot de Taal, Land- en Volkenkunde, 164 (1), 69–101. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Goodwin, C. (2007). Interactive footing. In E. Holt & R. Clift (Eds.), Reported talk: Reporting speech in interaction (pp. 16–46). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodwin, C., & Goodwin, M. H. (2004). Participation. In A. Duranti (Ed.), A companion to linguistic anthropology (pp. 222–244). Oxford: Blackwell. Green, J., Franquiz, M., & Dixon, C. (1997). The myth of the objective transcript: Transcribing as a situated act. TESOL Quarterly, 31 (1), 172–176. Gumperz, J. J. (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hall, S. (1996). Introduction. Who needs ‘identity’? In S. Hall & P. du Gay (Eds.), Questions of cultural identity (pp. 1–17). London: Sage. Hester, S., & Eglin, P. (1997). Membership categorization analysis: An introduction. In P. Eglin (Ed.), Studies in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (pp. 1–23). Maryland: International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, and University Press of America, Inc. Holmes, J., & Meyerhoff, M. (1999). The community of practice: theories and methodologies in language and gender research. Language in Society, 28 (2), 173–183. Hymes, D. (1972). Models of the interaction of language and social life. In J. J. Gumperz & D. H. Hymes (Eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication (pp. 35–71). New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Hymes, D. (1974). Foundations in sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Inoue, M. (2002). Gender, language, and modernity: Toward an effective history of Japanese women’s language. American Ethnologist, 29 (2), 392–422. Inoue, M. (2004). What does language remember?: Indexical inversion and the naturalized history of Japanese women. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 14 (1), 39–56. Irvine, J. (2001). “Style” as distinctiveness: The culture and ideology of linguistic differentiation. In P. Eckert & J. Rickford (Eds.), Style and sociolinguistic variation (pp. 21–43). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

34

Enregisterment, Alternation and Difference

Irvine, J., & Gal, S. (2000). Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In P. V. Kroskrity (Ed.), Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities and identities (pp. 35–84). Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Keeler, W. (1987). Javanese shadow plays, Javanese selves. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Labov, W. (2006 [1972]). The transformation of experience in narrative. In A. Jaworski & N. Coupland (Eds.), The discourse reader (pp. 214–226). London: Routledge. Moerman, M. (1988). Talking culture: Ethnography and conversation analysis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Ochs, E. (1988). Culture and language development: Language acquisition and language socialization in a Samoan village. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ochs, E. (1996). Linguistic resources for socializing humanity. In J. J. Gumperz & S. C. Levinson (Eds.), Rethinking linguistic relativity (pp. 407–437). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ochs, E. (2004). Narrative lessons. In A. Duranti (Ed.), A companion to linguistic anthropology (pp. 269–289). Oxford: Blackwell. Ochs, E. (2006 [1979]). Transcription as theory. In A. Jaworski & N. Coupland (Eds.), The discourse reader. London: Routledge. Ochs, E., & Capps, L. (2001). Living narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Philips, S. U. (1983). The invisible culture: Communication in classroom and community on the Warm Springs indian reservation. New York: Longman. Poedjosoedarmo, S. (1968). Javanese speech levels. Indonesia, 6, 54–81. Poedjosoedarmo, S. (1982). Javanese influence on Indonesian. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. Poynting, S., Noble, G., Tabar, P., & Collins, J. (2004). Bin laden in the suburbs: Criminalising the Arab other. Sydney: Institute of Criminology. Prawiroatmojo, S. (1989). Bausastra: Jawa-Indonesia. Jakarta: CV Haji Masagung. Prawiroatmojo, S. (1993). Bausastra: Jawa-Indonesia. Jakarta: CV Haji Masagung. Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone. New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks. Putnam, R. D., Feldstein, L. M., & Cohen, D. (2003). Better together: Restoring the American community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Rampton, B. (1995a). Crossing: Language and ethnicity among adolescents. London: Longman. Rampton, B. (1995b). Language crossing and the problematisation of ethnicity and socialisation. Pragmatics, 5 (4), 485–513. Rampton, B. (1999). Styling the other: Introduction. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 3 (4), 421–427. Roberts, C. (1997). Transcribing talk: Issues of representation. TESOL Quarterly, 31 (1), 167–172. Sacks, H. (1995). Lectures on conversation, vol. 1 and 2. Oxford: Blackwell. Schegloff, E. A. (1992). On talk and its institutional occasions. In J. Heritage (Ed.), Talk at work: Interaction in institutional settings (pp. 101–134). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, E. A. (2007a). Sequence organization in interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, E. A. (2007b). A tutorial on membership categorization. Journal of Pragmatics, 39, 462–482. Schieffelin, B. B., & Doucet, R. C. (1998). The “Real” Haitian creole: Ideology, metalinguistics, and orthographic choice. In B. B. Schieffelin, K. A. Woolard & P. V. Kroskrity (Eds.), Language ideologies: Practice and theory (pp. 285–316). New York: Oxford University Press. Schieffelin, B. B., & Ochs, E. (Eds.). (1986). Language socialization across cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Siegel, J. T. (1986). Solo in the new order: Language and hierarchy in an Indonesian city. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Skapoulli, E. (2004). Gender codes at odds and the linguistic construction of hybrid identity. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 3 (4), 245–260. Smith-Hefner, N. J. (1983). Language and social identity: Speaking Javanese in Tengger. Unpublished Unpublished PhD, University of Michigan, Michigan. Spitulnik, D. (1996). The social circulation of media discourse and the mediation of communities. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 6 (2), 161–187. Spitulnik, D. (1998). Mediating unity and diversity: The production of language ideologies in Zambian broadcasting. In B. B. Schieffelin, K. A. Woolard & P. V. Kroskrity (Eds.), Language ideologies: Practice and theory (pp. 163–188). New York: Oxford University Press. Sudaryanto (Ed.). (1991). Kamus Indonesia-Jawa. Yogyakarta: Duta Wacana University Press. Sweetland, J. (2002). Unexpected but authentic use of an ethnically-marked dialect. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 6 (4), 514–538. Tannen, D. (1984). Conversational style: Analyzing talk among friends. Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex. Tannen, D. (1993). What’s in a frame? Surface evidence for underlying expectations. In D. Tannen (Ed.), Framing in discourse (pp. 14–56). New York: Oxford University Press. Torras, M.-C., & Gafaranga, J. (2002). Social identities and language alternation in non-formal institutional bilingual talk: Trilingual service encounters. Language in Society, 31 (4), 527–548. Tsuda, T. (1999). Transnational migration and nationalization of ethnic identity among Japanese Brazilian return migrants. Ethos, 27 (2), 145–179. Uhlenbeck, E. M. (1978). Studies in Javanese morphology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Werbner, P. (1997). Introduction: The dialectics of cultural hybridity. In P. Werbner & T. Modood (Eds.), Debating cultural hybridity. Multicultural identities and the politics of anti-racism. (pp. 1–28). London & New Jersey: Zed Books. Wise, A. (2005). Hope and belonging in a multicultural suburb. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 26 (1–2), 171–186. Wolff, J. U., & Poedjosoedarmo, S. (1982). Communicative codes in Central Java. New York: Cornell University. Wortham, S. E. F. (2006). Learning identity: The joint emergence of social identification and academic learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mailing address: Graduate School of Letters, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464–8601, JAPAN E-mail: [email protected]

35

Visualizing Cultures: A New Approach to “Seeing” History and Culture

John W. DOWER and Shigeru MIYAGAWA Massachusetts Institute of Technology

1.  Introduction Modern history has been told primarily through the written text. This is natural and richly rewarding. At the same time, however, such fixation on language cuts us off from an enormous body of historically fascinating material embedded in the visual world—the photographs, prints, paintings, popular graphics, and material objects that saturate everyday life and decisively influence how we see ourselves and others. Visualizing Cultures is an innovative website that opens windows on modern history by integrating graphic images, expert commentary, elegant design, and substantial databases in ways that have only recently become technologically possible. It can be accessed at http://visualizingcultures.mit.edu. Launched at MIT in 2002, the site has focused topically to date on Japan and Asia in the modern world. The principal investigators are the coauthors of this article. Our case-study focus so far has been Asia in the modern world, with particular (and now changing) focus on Japan. Thirteen elaborate units are now online—and in the process of developing these we have developed considerable knowledge in all aspects of this sort of digital humanities, including technology, legal issues (notably, intellectual property), education-oriented design and editing, the presentation of potentially controversial images, etc. We have also sharpened our understanding of how the Web can be used to advance image-driven scholarship of a sort more expansive than is possible in e-journals—including inclusion of large and (where appropriate) bilingual databases. We also have developed institutional partnerships with museums and other repositories of graphic images that can become a model for others exploring these same frontiers. Critical start-up funding for the project was internal, with three years of support from MIT’s d’Arbeloff Fund for Innovation in Undergraduate Education. Additional funding has been received from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Japan Foundation’s Council for Global Partnership, and MIT’s Microsoft-funded iCampus project. Over the past two years, Visualizing Cultures has been sustained by an Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award granted to John Dower in 2005. We recently received word of funding from the Getty Foundation and the Luce Foundation to do work on new China and Japan units.

1 36

John W. Dower and Shigeru Miyagawa

2.  Goals

Our goals over the next three years are: (1) Significantly enhance understanding and teaching of China, Japan, the Philippines, and World War Two in Asia (Korea as well as Southeast Asia will be developed later) through image-driven scholarship; (2) Provide a sophisticated online model for the use of images by scholars and educators in other topical and disciplinary areas; (3) Develop new levels of collaboration with museums, libraries, rare archives, and the like that will make valuable visual materials widely accessible in a structured manner—and simultaneously will encourage others to establish comparable collaborative projects.

2.1  The Visualizing Cultures “Vision” Visualizing Cultures holds promise of new ways to understand and teach about Asia: Unparalleled use of visuals We offer on our own platform a broad and deep topical coverage of Asia in the modern world that makes unprecedented use of the visual record ranging from popular and commercial images to the fine arts. Other scholars in the Asia field are of course already also mounting visual sites. Our scale and model is more elaborate, but the overall goal in any case is to push the envelope and inspire other scholars to pursue comparable approaches. Visuals as “texts” We regard Visualizing Cultures as a conceptual model for incorporating visual materials as “texts” integral and essential to understanding in the humanities and social sciences in general. This builds on our increasing fascination with the dynamics of society and culture at popular or grass-roots levels; with constructions of “self” and “others”; with the multiple manifestations of “modernity,” particularly as seen comparatively across time and place; and so on. Visualizing Cultures is not art history, and the visuals we draw on run the gamut: lithographs, engravings, woodblock prints, paintings and drawings, photographs, posters, advertisements, cartoons, and fine art as well. These are integrated with original scholarly commentaries, as well as written texts from the time. As the specific “Visualizing Cultures: Japan” units have evolved, we also have attempted to graphically invigorate the notion of “cultures” in our modern world. That is, the project is not simply concerned with “capital-C” cultures in the more traditional geographic or “civilizational” sense (like Japan, China, “East,” “West,” etc.). Rather, it addresses a range of broader, nonparochial “small-c” cultures and issues that transcend geographic, national, racial, ethnic, religious, ideological, political, and other conventional boundaries. In one way or another, most units draw attention to such issues as the impact of differing modes or mediums of representation; “cultures” of power, war, nationalism, imperialism, colonialism, racism, commerce and consumerism, technological change, and the like; multi-directional “boundary crossings” in all their complexity; and “modernity” as seen from a truly global perspective.

2 37

Visualizing Cultures

3.  Visualizing Cultures Platform Visualizing Cultures (VC) is built on the OpenCourseWare (OCW) platform, an MIT project initiated in 2001 with the goal of making materials from virtually all MIT courses available freely on the Web. Over 1,800 courses are already up, ranging from simple to elaborate presentations, and around 1.5 million users worldwide access OCW each month. All materials on OCW come with copyright permission, so that users can make free use of the material for non-commercial purposes. (The materials can be translated or integrated into an existing project, and visual images can be downloaded for non-remunerative educational purposes.) OCW has been widely recognized as one of the major online educational innovations of recent years. VC is one of very few “courses” explicitly designed to take optimal advantage of the OCW platform. In 2004, MIT awarded the Visualizing Cultures project the “Class of 1960 Innovation in Education Award.” In 2005, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected VC for inclusion on “EDSITEment” as an excellent online resource for education in the humanities. It is important to emphasize that the visual materials on Visualizing Cultures have heretofore been largely inaccessible to scholars and the public at large. Not only do we make them freely and openly available, but they are offered within a cohesive design and a technically advanced platform.

4.  Present Units on Visualizing Cultures To date, units have focused on Japan’s emergence as a modern state and society. The objective has been not merely to enhance understanding of Japan in the modern world, but also to use this as a case study for demonstrating the complexities that can be revealed by sophisticated use of the visual record. Multiple perspectives on events and developments are always kept in mind and often highlighted. Many of the visuals introduced are non-Japanese, and virtually all have been impossible to access easily until now. The first unit we completed, on Commodore Perry’s arrival in Japan in 1853–54, draws from a wide range of collections in the U.S. and Japan. Beginning with the second unit, we adopted the strategy of approaching institutions that have pertinent collections that are particularly suited to opening new intellectual vistas. The following ten units are online as of early 2007 [at http://visualizingcultures.mit.edu]: 1. Black Ships & Samurai: Commodore Perry & the Opening of Japan (1853–54). This pioneer unit juxtaposes hundreds of American and Japanese images of the historic mission that “opened” Japan to the modern world. Visuals come from some 50 or so sources, including rare books as well as museum collections. 2. Yokohama Boomtown: Foreigners in Treaty-Port Japan (1859– 72). Based on a collection of “Yokohama prints” at the Smithsonian Institution’s Arthur Sackler Gallery, this is a vivid and early sample of the popular representation of “Westerners” in newly-opened Japan. 3. Felice Beato’s Japan: Places (ca. 1869). This unit reproduces in its entirety a classic photo album by the pioneer Western commercial photographer in Japan; from the Hood Museum at Dartmouth.

3 38

John W. Dower and Shigeru Miyagawa

4. Felice Beato’s Japan: People (ca. 1869). This companion Beato album, from the Smith College Museum of Art, established a model for “Japanese types” followed by later photographers. The two Beato units stimulated our development of innovative treatment of “revealing details” when working with photographs in particular. 5–7. “Throwing Off Asia”: Woodblock Prints of Japan’s “Westernization” (1868–1905). Based on the excellent Sharf Collection at the Boston MFA, this breaks down into three presentations: “Westernization”; “The SinoJapanese War (1894–95)”; and “The Russo-Japanese War (1904–5).” These exceptionally elaborate units involved on-site survey of the entire Sharf Collection and the MFA’s subsequent digitization of an additional 150 prints never before made accessible. 8. Asia Rising: Japanese Postcards of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5). This taps the Leonard Lauder Collection of postcards donated to the MFA in 2002, which totals over 20,000 images. The entire Lauder database for just Russo-Japanese War postcards numbers over 1,800—and this unit together with the one that follows are simultaneously a remarkable study of “self” and “others” in a new age of imperialistic warfare and an eye-opening introduction to new genres of popular “modern” visual representation at the turn of the century. 9. Yellow Promise / Yellow Peril: Foreign Postcards of the RussoJapanese War (1904–5). Companion to site #8, this views the war from multiple non-Japanese perspectives (notably French, Russian, English, German, and Italian). The complexities of race and power at the turn of the century in Asia emerge with stunning vividness here. 10. Ground Zero 1945: Pictures by Atomic-Bomb Survivors. Put online in 2005, the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this unit derives from a database of over 2,000 visuals at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The Core Exhibit “reads” some 35 of these images, and the unit presents a bilingual Database of over 400 paintings and drawings done by survivors in the early 1970s. Developing these units led us to various modes or models of analysis and presentation. These include “Core Exhibits” where the scholarly analysis is presented most thoroughly; “Visual Narratives” that isolate specific themes (and can be models for student projects); increasing use of video and film (the “VCTV” component); interactive components that can engage users more actively; keyword-oriented databases that eventually will facilitate searches across collections; and refinement of effective presentations involving juxtaposition of images, isolation of details, captioning or highlighting for those who eschew the more densely written portions of the site, handling of harsh or potentially controversial images, etc. Given its topical focus on Asia in the modern world, VC has the potential to broaden our understanding of “world history.” Beyond this, however, our ultimate goal always has been to concretely offer an intellectual and technological model that can help deepen our “visualization” of the human experience itself. 4 39

Visualizing Cultures

5.  Future Units Over the next three to four years, we plan to develop units in the following three topical areas: China in the Modern World, “Modernism” In Early 20th-Century Japan, and The Asia-Pacific War: Graphic Images and Contemporary Memories. As before, all content will be placed on MIT’s OpenCourseWare, assuring open access to all. 5.1  China in the Modern World The long-term goal is to treat China in the same depth already done for (or in the works for) Japan: to cover, that is, the entire period from the 19th century to fairly recent times. The images will be drawn largely from the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM, in Salem, MA) and Hong Kong Museum of Art. Both institutions have given VC permission to use already identified images in their collections on MIT’s OpenCourseWare platform. Other museums with holdings pertinent to the early China trade also will be approached, including several small collections in New England. 5.2  “Modernism” In Early 20th-Century Japan This general treatment of “modernism” and modernity in early 20th-Century Japan will eventually evolve into multiple units, including industrialization, social and political protest movements, and the like. Marketing Modern Beauty: The Shiseido Vision in 20th-century Japan This is a break-through collaboration based on full access to the private archives of the Shiseido cosmetics firm. Beginning around World War One, Shiseido (founded in the 1870s) emerged as a pioneer in promoting a cosmopolitan ideal of female beauty through cutting-edge advertising as well as publication of several innovative and strikingly illustrated periodicals. The company already has digitized over a thousand images at VC’s request, and we are confident that our innovative treatment can become a model for image-driven scholarship—in this case offering insight into, among other things, the tensions in Japanese society during a period usually addressed primarily in terms of rising militarism. Consumerism, the international phenomenon of the “modern girl,” 1930’s breakthroughs in technology as well as graphic representation-all emerge vividly in Shiseido’s marketing up to 1940, when the shadows of war finally (and belatedly) become visible. Professor Gennifer Weisenfeld of Duke, a leading Western expert on 20th-century Japanese art and commercial graphics, will author this multi-unit presentation. Imperial Tokyo: the Modern Prints of Koizumi Kishio This site will introduce the manner in which so-called traditional themes and mediums—here woodblock renderings of “100 views”—were reconfigured for explicitly “modern” (and often foreign) audiences. Koizumi’s series, done between 1928 and 1940, complements the modernism seen in the Shiseido treatment; like the latter, it also offers a new angle of vision on the rising militarism of the 1930s. The unit will be authored by James Ulak, Deputy Director of the Smithsonian Institution Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, and based on holdings of the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami; after a series of exchanges with the Wolfsonian and Florida International University, VC now has the digitized images in hand.

5 40

John W. Dower and Shigeru Miyagawa

Leonard Lauder Collection of Japanese Postcards at the Boston MFA Another major archival source for modernism in early 20th-Century Japan is the Leonard Lauder Collection of Japanese Postcards at the Boston MFA, which numbers over 20,000 graphics from the early years of the 20th-Century into the 1930s. It is not excessive to describe this collection as an untapped goldmine for visualizing popular culture, consumerism, avant-garde art and illustration, and the like in pre-World War Two Japan. VC has already signed an agreement with the Boston MFA to access their extensive collection. The units on Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars already on VC were collaborations with the Boston MFA. The Asia-Pacific War: Graphic Images and Contemporary Memories Memories and recreations of the Asia-Pacific War that began with Japan’s invasion of China in 1937 and ended after the atomic bombings of Japan in 1945 continue to provoke widespread, emotional responses in Asia as well as the United States and the United Kingdom. Eventually, VC intends to address this in considerable depth (two completed units already address “Ground Zero 1945”).

6.  Databases Each analytical treatment in VC contains numerous images selected from larger collections. To maximize the educational as well as scholarly and research impact of the project, we include many of these images in databases easy to navigate with a Web browser. The value of these original databases lies in making hitherto scattered or inaccessible visual resources more widely available. In addition, we will provide crosslinks to other pertinent collections that are already online. Some of the databases (e.g., Shiseido) will be bilingual (English-Japanese), which will afford Japanese language learners a chance to see Japanese in “raw” data form.

7.  Curriculum Most of the VC units contain extensive curriculum support materials that have been developed by professional curriculum developers at Teaching for East Asia at the University of Colorado under contract with VC. Part of this work has been supported by the Center for Global Partnership. These are available for download on the VC website.

8.  Public Education Along with research and teaching in the traditional modes, VC has moved into nontraditional and less formal venues for education—what we call “public education.” Our first, pioneer unit (“Black Ships & Samurai”) also became a prototype of “reverse engineering,” in that we were encouraged to use the site to develop a traveling installation on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the opening of Japan, in 2004. This installation appeared at universities, libraries, trade shows, the National Archives in Washington D.C., and even a bank lobby in the United States, and was duplicated for display in Japan. The same site was also tapped for an off-Broadway lobby presentation in 2005–2006 (of Steven Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures at Studio 54 directed by Miyamoto Amon). The potential for comparable adaptations exists for the units to be developed under the proposed project. 6 41

Visualizing Cultures

Mailing Address: XXXXXXXX E-mail: XXXXXXXX

7 42

43

44

Power, Identity and Life in the Digital Age

Kay L. O’HALLORAN National University of Singapore

Introduction ‘We are, not what we are, but what we make of ourselves’ (Giddens, 1991: 75). Michael Foucault (1991) describes the operation of modern power using Jeremy Bentham’s design of the Panopticon, where people are disciplined into obedience by being tied to a particular space according to a timetable where they are under constant surveillance. The watchful supervisors monitor the supervised and, in turn, the supervised monitor themselves in what Foucault describes as ‘technologies of the self’, a set of practices which modify and affect one’s behaviour and thinking (Martin, Gutman & Hutton, 1988). While these techniques have changed over time (e.g. the religious confessional, prisons, schools and the modern office), the operation of power has been materially grounded; it was located in space and time and it depended upon mutual engagement between the supervisors and the supervised for the arrangement to work. As Bauman (2000) points out, the strategy is expensive and time-consuming with regards to the material infrastructure and manpower. The digital age has produced new strategies which are cost-effective, largely because faceto-face engagement is no longer necessary. Electronic communication can take place at a distance, removing the need for expensive infrastructure and the co-presence of supervisors with the supervised. Computer keystrokes can be automatically recorded, making surveillance a simple and comprehensive affair. People are free to roam under the gaze of security cameras, which store scenes of public and private spaces in centralized systems which can be retrieved at any time. Mobile phones permit the location of the user to be ascertained, and credit cards ensure purchases are recorded. There are digital footprints of our every move in modern times. The new set of practices for the operation of power function independently of space and time. Corporate managers operate private and former state-operated institutions from afar in areas which include finance, healthcare, education, transport, employment, communication and public utilities; even water supplies come under corporate ownership. These corporate managers can respond by email in seconds, and equally they can disappear; no longer accessible, answerable or responsible. These absent managers are members of corporate boards which have a common goal of maximizing profit, accompanied with a lack of responsibility should things collapse. Bauman (2000: 11) explains: 45

Kay L. O’Halloran

The end of Panopticon augurs the end of the era of mutual engagement: between the supervisors and the supervised, capital and labour, leaders and their followers, armies at war. The prime technique of power is now escape, slippage, elision and avoidance, the effective rejection of any territorial confinement with its cumbersome corollaries of order-building, ordermaintenance and the responsibility for the consequences of it all as well as of the necessity to bear their costs (Bauman, 2000: 11). The disintegration of social and political networks and institutions tied to territorial borders have given way to transience, fluidity and rapid change in the pursuit of profit. ‘[I]t is the mindboggling speed of circulation, of recycling, ageing, dumping and replacement which brings profit today—not the durability and lasting reliability of the product’ (Bauman, 2000: 14). Corporate greed, disengagement and lack of responsibility are evident in the financial crisis which unfolded in October 2008, a global economic meltdown left to governments to resolve. The turmoil in the financial markets, described by former US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan as a ‘once in a century credit tsunami’1, took place at an astonishing speed across the world, reflecting the interconnectedness of the financial sectors in the global market and the lack of corporate responsibility attached to that system. If identity is linked to views of the self, role-relationships and group memberships in society traditionally endorsed and supported by the state, what happens in the present age of fluidity, evasion and constant change in a globalised consumer world? Does identity necessarily become the object of constant transformation, an area of contestation and trouble (Iedema & Caldas-Coulthard, 2008)? At first glance, it would appear that the ‘liquidification’ (Bauman, 2000) of stable social frameworks and institutions requires individuals and groups to adapt in order to survive: ‘[t]oday’s respected authorities will be ridiculed, snubbed or despised tomorrow, celebrities will be forgotten, trend-setting idols will be remembered only on TV quizzes … indestructible powers will fade and dissipate, mighty political or economic establishments will be swallowed up by even mightier ones, or just vanish …’ (Bauman, 2004: 51). In this case, how can we address the issue of power and identity when traditional approaches in sociolinguistics are based on more or less stable social networks and institutions, face-to-face interactions, and the study of linguistic difference? In today’s digital world, new approaches to power and identity are needed to track identities, and these approaches must incorporate a multimodal framework to include resources beyond language to ensure that the images, photographs, videos and interactive digital media genres which play a major role in identity construction are taken into account. As Iedema and Caldas-Coulhard (2008: 6) explain ‘Identity is linguistic/discursive and multi-modal or semiotic: identity is the things we say, do, gesture, posture, wear, possess, create, and so on’. Changes in identity brought about by patterns of visual, auditory and somatic choices need to be traced through time to understand the mechanisms and relations between power, identity and life in the digital age. The approach adopted in this chapter is Michael Halliday’s (1978, 2004) social semiotic theory, because this theory is applicable beyond language for the study of images and visual design (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996), displayed art (O’Toole, 1994), music and sound (van Leeuwen, 1999) and the integration of semiotic choices in multimodal phenomena (e.g. Baldry & Thibault, 2006; Bateman, 2008; Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996; O’Halloran, 2004). Halliday’s (1978, 2004) social semiotic theory provides a conceptual framework for analyzing the individual and social 1 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7687101.stm

46

Power, Identity and Life in the Digital Age

dimensions of identity construction, where identity is the product of three strands of meaning (a) interpersonal relations; (b) ideational or experiential and logical content; and (c) the compositional integration of visual, auditory and somatic choices. The strength of Halliday’s theory is that the three dimensions of meaning are analysed using a common framework where semiotic resources (e.g. language, images, actions, gestures, clothing, and so forth) are conceptualized as functional systems which work together to create individual and group identities. Halliday’s (1978, 2004) social semiotic theory is used in this chaper to analyse the ways in which identity is constructed and marketed in digital media in video trailers advertising The Sims Online (2002) and Second Life (2003), two online virtual worlds which draw from everyday life. The ways in which identity is constructed in the video trailers produced by the companies responsible for the online virtual games are related to transformation and change in the globalised consumer-market world of today. The concept of identity is first considered in more detail below.

Approaches to Identity Buckingham (2008) explains that there are several meanings of identity. First, identity is something considered unique to individuals, something which is more or less consistent over time. On the other hand, it embodies a relationship with some form of collective or social group in terms of a national identity, cultural identity or gender identity where there is some common element across individuals. People are the product of their unique biographies, yet who they are varies according to whom they are with, the situation and their motivations at the time. Furthermore, people do not choose how they are defined, rather a complicated mix of socio-cultural factors results in identity configurations which vary according to social class, ethnicity, age, race and gender. Buckingham (2008) divides the two approaches to identity into psychological and sociological paradigms, with a range of subdisciplines and intellectual paradigms such as developmental psychology, social theory, symbolic interactionalism and cultural studies. Identity is not an enduring entity. In the psychological and social sense, it is a complex process involving social actors, actions and circumstances which change over time and context. Social actors interact consciously and subconsciously, giving rise to semiotic choices which form individual and group identities. As Lemke (2008a) points out, these identities involve multiplicities and hybridity as individuals learn to perform a diverse range of identities in interactions across communities. Lemke (2008a) suggests that notions of identity should be scale-differentiated, from the short-times scale of interactions to the larger institutional scale and life spans. Lemke (2008a: 18) explains that identities are integrated ‘by means of the material continuity of bodies and other socially meaningful material constructions across time’. Furthermore, identities are no longer linked to institutions; ‘recurrent styles of traversals and linkages we make among and across institutions become more important’ (Lemke, 2008a: 40), a fact which relates to the disintegration of social and political networks and institutions tied to nation states. In the digital world, Boyd (2008: 120) explains that online interactive media sites have four dimensions which are not present in face-to-face interactions; persistence, searchability, replicability, and invisible audiences. These dimensions fundamentally change the social dynamics, the formation of identity and the negotiation of social roles because interactions are instantaneous, unbounded by physical proximity, material context and time. Therefore, the ways in which producers of online virtual worlds formulate the concept of identity are investigated in this chapter, with the aim of understanding how online virtual worlds conceptualise individual and group identities. Traditional approaches to identity include (1) self identity and (2) group identity. In this 47

Kay L. O’Halloran

chapter, identity is extended to include (3) virtual identity. (1) X (self) identifies X (self) (2) X (self) identifies with Y (group) (3) Y (self) identifies with Y (self and group in virtual world) The focus of this investigation is the marketing of identity in online virtual worlds by the companies which produce the games, rather than the analysis of how players actually create representations of themselves and negotiate social relations in virtual worlds, a research project beyond the scope of this paper2. The concept of ‘consumer identity’ is introduced before The Sims Online and Second Life video trailers are analysed.

Consumer Identity Machin and van Leeuwen (2008) investigate the uneasy tension existing between (a) models of identity as ‘the citizen’ imposed by nation states and reinforced in families, educational systems and other national institutions, and (b) models of identity as ‘the consumer’ constructed by global corporations and spread through marketing in the global media. Citizen identities are more or less stable because they are linked to ‘who you are’ in terms of age, race, nationality and ‘what you do’ in terms of qualifications and profession. On the other hand, marketing formulations of identity are ‘lifestyle identities’ which are changeable clusters of behaviours, attitudes and consumption patterns (Chaney, 1996; Machin & van Leeuwen, 2008; Mitchell, 1978). Machin and van Leeuwen (2008) found that lifestyle identity classifications in magazines are relatively unsystematic, including categories such as what people do (e.g. job, leisure time activities and patterns of consumption) and physical appearance and prowess, often in the form of pop psychological classifications which focus on individual traits. Attitudes, values and preferences attached to lifestyle identities are linked to material goods such as clothing, accessories, homes and interior decoration. As Bauman (2000) emphasizes, fluidity and change in modern life is directly related to the consumer market, and therefore the fact that lifestyle identities are variable and unsystematic is no surprise, given their link to patterns of consumption, which in turn are regulated by corporations aiming to make a profit. It becomes important to understand how companies formulate and market individual and group identities in the age of digital media, hence the analysis of The Sims Online and Second Life video trailers. What interpersonal, ideational and textual dimensions of personal and group identities are promoted in the trailers for these games? How do these identities intersect across other media and genres in real life, and how do they relate to the notion of fluidity in a global market economy? These questions are considered below.

Identity in Online Virtual Worlds Online virtual worlds are computer-based simulated environments in which users create avatars—two or three-dimensional graphic representations of human beings or other graphic or text-based beings—which communicate though local chat and instant messaging. Most virtual worlds allow for multiple users who interact online where they engage in various activities and 2 Children’s online virtual worlds are being investigated in the Events in the World research project in the Multimodal Analysis Lab, Interactive and Digital Media Institute (IDMI) at the National University of Singapore (http://multimodal-analysis-lab.org/projects/projevents.html). The project is funded by the Media Development Authority (MDA) Singapore under the National Research Foundation (NRF) (NRF2007IDM-IDM002-066).

48

Power, Identity and Life in the Digital Age

form relationships and groups across time and space (see Lemke, 2005). There is no predefined goal in online virtual worlds, and the game play is open ended. (a)  The Sims Online The Sims, created by Will Wright, published by Maxis and distributed by Electronic Arts, is a life-simulation computer game where players construct avatars that interact in a household near SimCity. The Sims was first released in 2000 and multiple expansion packs followed, including the release of The Sims Online in 2002 and The Sims 2 in 2004.

(a)  The Sims

(b)  The Sims 2

(c)  The Sims 3 Fig. 1  Screenshots

Electronic Arts announced in March 2007 that The Sims Online would be re-branded as EA-Land and released with major enhancements to the game. However, Electronic Arts shut the online game down a year later, stating that they were moving onto other projects3. The release of the computer game The Sims 3 is scheduled for 20094, where the Sims interact in neighborhoods rather than being confined to houses. The screenshots from The Sims, The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 in Figure 1 show the increasing sophistication of the computer graphics and the accompanying expansion of semiotic meaning potential (e.g. colour, light and stylization of the avatars) over the past eight years.

3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sims_Online 4 http://thesims3.ea.com/view/pages/home.jsp

49

Kay L. O’Halloran

The transcript from an Electronic Arts (2002) video trailer5 for The Sims Online appears in the boxed text. The bold text in the transcript corresponds to enlarged and bold font in the typography in the video trailer. Screenshots from The Sims Online are displayed in Figure 2. The soundtrack is repetitive upbeat dance music which creates a dynamic rhythmic tempo as the video unfolds with written text, scenes from the game and pictures of the avatars. The #1 PC game of all-time GOES ONLINE! THE SIMS ONLINE join a massive world built by thousands of players play as yourself or your alter-ego explore neighbourhoods, make friends, host events run a business, how you play is limited only by your imagination “That’s your Queue …” [says a blond girl in a red dress] “Uuh?” [says a blond guy with sunglasses & suit] “Clever, isn’t he?” [says the blond girl in the red dress] [Various scenes: outdoor jacuzzi, indoor futuristic room, café, disco, swimming pool with text “this place looks great”, disco dancing, lounge room and hybrid-functional rooms] [Pictures of Sims faces] CREATE AND CUSTOMIZE your Sim Play as YOURSELF “Or Somebody else” [range of pictures of Sims] an amazing variety of FACES, CLOTHES and endless APPEARANCE choices “does this make me look fat?” [says the blond hair man with suit top & kilt] [Picture with palette choices showing how to create characters] [Pictures of Sims faces] “That’s Better” [says blond man, now in singlet and tight jeans] build a thriving business build the trendiest boutique build your dream home “Finally my very own Big screen Barbeque Garage!” [says man in singlet and yellow workman’s hat] “There goes the neighbourhood” [says female punk rocker] [Scenes of the land divided into blocks, zoom into houses, various scenes of house interiors which change and people moving about] [Pictures of Sims faces] meet, flirt and INTERACT with other real Sims through CHAT and INSTANT MESSAGING “and thousands of animations!” [says girl in bikini] [Scenes of people dancing, a band playing, people socialising, a wedding, a jacuzzi, lounge room dancing and so forth] [Pictures of Sims faces] DEVELOP friendships & business relationships and track your SUCCESS on your way to the TOP 100 “BE FAMOUS” [says young black man] “BE INFAMOUS” [says young woman in black skimpy dress] BE BOLD, BE BIZARRE, BE SILLY, BE HIP, BE FUNNY, BE A FLIRT, BE A ROCK STAR, BE A DANCER, BE THERE, BE POPULAR, BE WILD, BE A BULLY, BE A BOMBSHELL, BE A BEAR, BE A NERD, BE A STUD, BE A GENIUS, BE AN ALIEN, BE A PEST, BE, SOMEBODY, BE SOMEBODY. ELSE™ THE SIMS ONLINE 2002 © Electronic Arts Inc. All rights reserved.

5 http://www.fileplanet.com/131197/130000/fileinfo/Sims-2-Gameplay-Video Also, see similar trailer: http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=NLMvXVy7jf4

50

Power, Identity and Life in the Digital Age

The Sims Online video trailer engages the viewer through the dance music and the vibrant scenes of leisure activities where avatars socialise and have fun dancing, swimming, talking, playing music, attending weddings and so forth. The scenes include a swimming pool, jacuzzi, casino, café, disco and futuristic-looking multipurpose rooms which the players decorate using interior design palette menus. The palette menus for the avatars include choices for gender, age, body shape, and clothes, and mood choices can be attached to the characters (e.g. ‘Happy’, ‘Freakout’, ‘DownN’out’ and ‘Attitude’). The scenes are bright and colourful, and they are presented in rapid succession, in time with the beat of the music. The linguistic text in the video trailer has the simple textual organisation found in chat rooms and casual conversation. Approximately three quarters of the speech functions in the video are commands, congruently expressed through imperative mood. The verbiage attached to the avatars is expressed in speech bubbles and it consists of simple statements, often involving ellipsis (see Figure 2). The main function of the video trailer is interpersonal: to engage the viewer through a rapid succession of scene changes, upbeat music and commands to undertake actions in the game. Viewers are encouraged to ‘join a massive world build by thousands of players’, ‘play as yourself or your alter-ego’, ‘explore neighbourhoods’, ‘make friends’, ‘host events’, ‘run a business’, ‘build a thriving business’, ‘build the trendiest boutique’ and ‘build your dream home’. Nearly two thirds of the process types are relational processes, where attributes and values are attached to players, typically in the form of personality characteristics (e.g. ‘be bold’, ‘be bizarre’, ‘be silly’, ‘be hip’, ‘be famous’ and ‘be infamous’). Players are encouraged to become identifiable characters (‘be a flirt’, ‘be a bully’, ‘be a bombshell’, ‘be a nerd’ and ‘be a stud’) with identifiable occupations in the world of pop culture (e.g. ‘be a rock star’ and ‘be a dancer’). The video trailer concludes with the appeal to ‘be somebody’ and ‘be somebody else’ displayed in Figure 3. From the video trailer, we may see that The Sims Online is an ultimate ‘lifestyle identifier’, in terms of personality characteristics, consumption (clothes, material goods and interior design) and physical appearance where the body itself becomes a site for customisation (e.g. ‘an amazing variety of FACES, CLOTHES and endless APPEARANCE choices’). ‘Does this make me look fat?’ asks the blond avatar in Figure 2. The Sims 3 homepage6 explicitly advertises that identity creation and customization are key concerns of the game: New Create A Sim—Create any Sim you can imagine. New Realistic Personalities—Every Sim is now a truly unique person, with a distinct personality. New Unlimited Customization—Everyone can customize everything. New Gameplay That’s Rewarding & Quick—There’s more to life for your Sims in The Sims 3. The screen shot in Figure 3 from a video featured on The Sims 3 homepage illustrates the detail in which the avatars can be customised; from facial features which include the shape of the nose, face and eyes to characteristics such as age, gender, look, personality traits, clothing and voice. Players engage with each other through simple instant chat and visual icons that can be inserted in place of linguistic text, as displayed in the screenshot from The Sims 3 website7 in Figure 4. The reinforcement of gender stereotypes is evident in the heart icon which is attached to the thought bubble for the woman in Figure 4. The Sims game is concerned with lifestyle identifiers in the form of physical appearance, clothing and character attributes as the major markers of personal and group identities. These 6 http://thesims3.ea.com/view/pages/home.jsp 7 http://thesims3.ea.com/view/pages/screenshots.jsp

51

Kay L. O’Halloran

Fig. 2  The Sims Online (2002) Video Trailer Screenshots 52

Power, Identity and Life in the Digital Age

Fig. 3  The Sims 3 Screenshot (1)

Fig. 4  The Sims 3 Screenshot (2)

identities form the basis for the social activities which take place in scenes constructed using the interior design palettes, which are lifestyle identifiers in terms of consumption. While The Sims 3 homepage refers to the psychological dimension of identity (e.g. ‘Every Sim is now a truly unique person, with a distinct personality’) the video trailer for The Sims Online focuses on physical appearance, social interactions and the places in which these activities take place. The players are encouraged to build things, including ‘a thriving business’. The monofunctional tendency (O’Toole, 1994) of The Sims Online video is interpersonal, given the visual, linguistic and music choices which function to engage the viewer and to promote individual appearance, social roles and group identities, and consumer goods and activities in what becomes an ultimate lifestyle identifier game. (b)  Second Life Second Life (for users aged 18 and over) and its subset Teen Second Life (for users aged 13–17) are online virtual game worlds, developed by Linden Research Inc and launched in 2003. Players construct avatars, known as residents, which take part in different activities in the game. Second Life has its own currency, Linden dollars, which residents use to exchange virtual property and services. An advertising video trailer8 for Second Life is transcribed in the boxed text and screen shots from the trailer are displayed in Figure 5. The sound track is new age mood music, featuring the piano. 8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f_gGjXQaLM

53

Kay L. O’Halloran

IN 2003 LINDEN LABS CREATED A VIRTUAL WORLD … [Scene: magical garden] … THAT INSPIRED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE TO LIVE A SECOND LIFE … [Scene: magical seaside] … A WORLD BUILT WITH THE IMAGINATION OF ITS RESIDENTS … [Scene: ornate castle] … WHERE FANTASY HAS NO LIMITS … [Scene: magical fountain] … WHERE LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP … [Scene: couple embracing overlooking water] … GO BEYOND NEW BORDERS EVERY DAY … [Scene: young girl with young man] … A NEW MILLION DOLLAR MARKET … [Scene: man at café in square] … LINDEN DOLLARS WITH THEIR OWN EXCHANGE RATE … [Scene: man at café in square] … WHERE ANYONE CAN BE A FAMOUS DESIGNER … [Scene: girl with pink hair & white dress] … A FAMOUS DECORATOR, A SOCIALITE … [Scene: girl with blond hair dancing] … A PLACE WHERE NEW MONUMENTS RISE … [Scene: magical buildings on mountain] … AND OTHERS ARE REINVENTED … [Scene: picture of castle] … WHERE ANYONE CAN SHARE HIS/HER VISION OF ART AND OF THE WORLD … [Scene: blue lagoon/ river with sailing ship] … WHERE PARALLEL WORLDS CO-EXIST … [Scene: tropical forest with rain and lightning] … AND WHERE ALL RACES MINGLE … [Scene: creature with machine gun and coloured eyes] … WHERE YOU CAN SIMPLY ROAM WITHOUT A DESTINY … [Scene: magical scene] … OR BUILD AN EMPIRE … [Scene: new world castle with walls] … TO BE WHAT YOU WANT, TO BE WHO YOU WANT … [Scene: magical woman in water] … JUST BE THE BEING THAT LIVES WITHIN EACH OF US … [Scene: strange figure in with waterfall] DIRECTED & EDITED BY HUGO ALMEIDA [HALDEN BEAUMONT] [Scene: ocean, water fall, greenery, magical tropical], TRANSLATION WINTER WARDHANI, THANKS TO WITCH FARGIS, ANA LUTETIA, TOMMI PLANER, VIKTOR STROGANOFF, COPYRIGHT: “SECOND LIFE® AND LINDEN LAB® ARE TRADEMARKS OR REGISTERED TRADEMARKS OF LINDEN RESEARCH, INCL. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO INFRINGEMENT IS INTENDED”

The Second Life video trailer promotes themes of fantasy, romance, fame and a million dollar market in the magical settings of virtual ‘parallel worlds’ where the user can ‘simply roam without a destiny’ or ‘build an empire’. Water is a constant feature in the scenes: i.e. oceans, rivers, waterfalls, fountains, rain and underwater scenes create fantasy worlds complete with mythical creatures. When humans are featured, they are identifiable as handsome young successful business entrepreneurs, and beautiful young female decorators and socialites (see Figure 5). Therefore, lifestyle identifiers are reinforced in terms of appearance, clothing and job identification. In addition, Second Life reaches out to one’s psychological self, for example, ‘… TO BE WHAT YOU WANT …’, ‘… TO BE WHO YOU WANT …’, and ‘… JUST BE THE BEING THAT LIVES WITHIN EACH OF US …’. The focus in Second Life is more orientated towards the psychological self and romance compared to The Sims, presumably because the game is aimed at an older audience. The written text in the video trailer unfolds as a series of statements in declarative mood which give information about Second Life. Approximately half the processes are relational processes which are textually organised to foreground the attributes of Second Life through ellipsis of the subject which is ‘Second Life’ (e.g. ‘… A NEW MILLION DOLLAR Market …’, ‘… LINDEN DOLLARS WITH THEIR OWN EXCHANGE RATE …’, ‘… A PLACE WHERE NEW MONUMENTS RISE …’ and ‘… AND OTHERS ARE REINVENTED …’). Material processes are used to encourage players to explore the game and to build empires. The tone of the Second Life video is evocative through the music score, the font style of the text (see Figure 5) and the graphics which unfold to create a magical mystical world which engages the viewer. The pace is slow, and this is accentuated through the pauses ‘…’ in the written text. Players are promised fantasy, love, and romance, where anyone can be anything they desire in a world where amazing buildings and empires exist, where ‘races mingle’. The basis for this world 54

Power, Identity and Life in the Digital Age

Fig. 5  Second Life (2003) Video Trailer Screenshots

is an economic market, where Linden dollars are used to purchase goods and services, explicitly modelling the real world in terms of consumer culture. Second Life is promoted as unparalleled opportunity to participate in the world of consumerism and the creation of a lifestyle identity in terms of appearance and material possessions.

55

Kay L. O’Halloran

(a)  Second Life Home Page

(b)  Teen Second Life Home Page Fig. 6

Fig. 7  Club Penguin Online Virtual World for Young Children

The Second Life website9 has a similar focus on lifestyle identifiers, as seen in Figure 6 (a) where the home page features a young couple and the text ‘Your world, your imagination’ and ‘Discover a whole new world of friends, fashion music, videos and fun! Explore the best of Second Life’. While Teen Second Life home page10 contains life style identifiers as well (‘Ashley Dassin’ who is a ‘jewelry/ accessory designer’ in Figure 6 (b)), the emphasis is similar to The Sims Online in that groups and social activities are promoted for the younger players with avatars which are young trendy people having fun. (e.g. ‘Hang out with your friends at the Coffee Spot in Teen Second Life’ and ‘Tell a friend’). Online virtual game worlds extend beyond the teenage and adult market. For example, Club Penguin11, an online virtual world for young children, has lifestyle identifiers in terms of coffee shops, nightclubs and gift shops and discos (see Figure 7), replicating the social worlds found in The Sims Online, Teen Second Life and Second Life. 9 http://teen.secondlife.com/ 10 http://secondlife.com/ 11 http://www.clubpenguin.com/

56

Power, Identity and Life in the Digital Age

Power, Identity, Consumerism and Digital Media “… [D]eception and invention frame the production of every individual’s ordinary social life. We are continually introduced to situations in which lies and distortions are exercised; [yet] … society rests on assumptions of trust and reciprocity…. At the same time, we know these principles are constantly violated. [M]uch of the training for this dual and divided mentality is delivered through popular culture …” (Finkelstein, 2007: 2) Lemke (2004, 2008a)12 theorises the relationship between media and identity in the globalised consumer market as ‘transmedia franchises’ which he defines as the intertextual networks of genres and media which people traverse in their everyday life. Lemke (2004) explains that these franchises are powerful mechanisms for shaping ideas about the social world because they appear in many forms across different media over extended periods of time. For example, Harry Potter, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Disney and Star Trek identities are marketed through films, websites, online fan clubs, toys and other marketing merchandise. In a similar manner, The Sims 2 website features a news page, fan-site, videos and a Sims2 Store where merchandise can be bought. Lemke (2008b) explains that these ‘commercial transmedia promote systems of differentiated and hierarchized identities, identity markets, which we learn to re-appropriate and re-organize as members of social networks’. As we have seen in this chapter, these identities are lifestyle identifiers which focus on physical appearance, consumer goods, and group activities for younger players and romance and the financial market for older players. The intertextual consumer network is more comprehensive than transmedia franchises, however. For example, transmedia franchises such as The Sims and Second Life intertwine with other consumer markets in music, film and entertainment industries, forming an intertextual consumer network complex. For example, The Sims 2 machinima13 based on Kristin Chenoweth’s song, Taylor, the Latte Boy14 displayed in Figure 8 (a) is intertextually linked to her live performance of the song in You Tube15 in Figure 8 (b), a site which contains videos of every conceivable genre. Similarly, avatars in sites such as Yahoo! Asia in Figure 9 (a) appear alongside “Red Carpet Moments’ with famous celebrities in Figure 9 (b). The intertextual consumer network complex is a wide reaching set of hybrid and ‘remediated’ genres (Bolter & Grusin, 2000) which connect across space and time, beyond the immediate transmedia franchises in what has become the consumer cult of celebrity, fame and fortune. The strength of the network is evident in Figure 10, where the socialite in Second Life video exactly replicates the body, movement, hair and clothing of Britney Spears, a pop singer featured in mainstream news, the tabloids, official fan websites, music websites, women’s magazines, Wikipedia, You Tube, television entertainment news and talkback shows. In the age of transformation and change, Britney Spears’ rise and fall is comprehensively documented and it continues to be a topic of much speculation across multiple sites and genres. Connections between the real world and digital worlds are evident in Figure 11 (a)–(b) where scenes from a trailer for Call of Duty 4 computer game are replicated in a video produced by the person responsible for the Virginia Tech massacre which took place on 16 April 2007. The question 12 Lemke (2004) can be downloaded from: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jaylemke/papers/Franchises/Valencia-CDA-Franchises.htm 13 Machinima is ‘a portmanteau of machine cinema a collection of associated production techniques whereby computer-generated imagery GI) is rendered using real-time, interactive 3-D engines, such as those of games, instead of professional 3D animation software. Engines from first-person shooter and role-playing simulation video games are typically used’. http://www.wowwiki.com/Machinima 14 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkK6fmj3SdI 15 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXS0nEOx_20

57

Kay L. O’Halloran

(a)  Taylor, the Latte Boy Machinima

(b)  Taylor, the Latte Boy Song Fig. 8

(a)  Avatars in Yahoo! Asia website Fig. 9

(b)  Avatars in Yahoo! Asia website with ‘Red Carpet Moments’

Fig. 10  Britney Spears and the Second Life Socialite 58

Power, Identity and Life in the Digital Age

(a)  Call of Duty 4 Game Trailer

(b)  Virginia Tech Massacre April 2007 Fig. 11

is, how do we come to terms with these intertextual links and understand the relationship between power, identity, consumerism in digital media and the everyday world of today?

Power, Identity and Consumerism in the Digital Age Industries reflect the world through consumer choices, but they also shape the world by offering a limited set of choices, giving rise to Foucault’s view of consumerism as a technology of the self (Martin et al., 1988). We need to understand how commercial forces ‘both create opportunities and set limitations to young people’s digital cultures’, particularly how ‘these media provide young people with symbolic resources for constructing or expressing their own identities’ (Buckingham, 2008: 5). In addition, we need to understand subversive shifts in identity construction (Turkle, 1995) and other creative strategies through which resistance to consumer culture takes place. For example, Willet (2008) analyses the online activities of young girls to examine the influence of commercial industries in a way which recognizes young peoples’ active engagement with the resources these industries offer. The research was undertaken in light of findings which suggest 59

Kay L. O’Halloran

that online activities are sites for increasingly sophisticated marketing strategies. Willet (2008) concludes that there were tensions within the research; on one hand, online communities provide important spaces for girls’ development, expression and access to alternative cultures, yet there was also evidence that these spaces are not free and open environments. It is clear, then, that online virtual worlds such as The Sims and Second Life actively promote lifestyle identifiers focusing on physical appearance, consumer goods, group activities, romance and the financial market. Young children and teenagers learn that identity depends on appearance and material goods, and adults learn that you can have what the consumer market dictates you want in virtual worlds, if not in the real world. In addition, it becomes clear that these games do not exist in isolation; they are part of a larger intertextual consumer network complex stretching across multiple domains. As state-operated institutions dwindle in the wake of global corporatisation, it appears that citizen identities (i.e. who you are and what you do) are overshadowed by lifestyle identifiers in an age where fluidity, transformation and change form the basis for a global world run by corporations motivated by profit. And yet simultaneously, digital media do provide creative forums for creativity and resistance, and hope for the future. Lemke (2004) asks what theory and practices are needed to assess the affordances, effects, and dangers of transmedia franchises, and we can extend that question to address the relationship between power, consumerism and identity in the intertextual consumer network complex of today. The operation of power and technologies of the self have changed in the digital era, and our theories and methods of analysis in the social sciences require updating too. Software for multimodal analysis of videos, television, film texts and internet sites are being developed in the Multimodal Analysis Lab at the National University of Singapore16 in an attempt to understand the functionalities and integration of semiotic resources as they combine within and across different media. This is a first step towards developing and using interactive digital media for analytical purposes, where the semiotic meaning potential of the tool approximates the semiotic meaning potential of the multimodal phenomena under analysis. The combined skills of social scientists working with computer scientists may be a productive way forward for understanding power, identity and life in the digital era. References Baldry, A. P., & Thibault, P. J. (2006). Multimodal transcription and text analysis. London: Equinox. Bateman, J. (2008). Multimodality and genre: A foundation for the systematic analysis of multimodal documents. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bauman, Z. (2004). Identity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bolter, J. D., & Grusin, R. (2000). Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Boyd, D. (2008). Why youth ♥ social network sites: The role of networked publics in teenage social life. In D. Buckingham (Ed.), Youth,identity, and digital media (pp. 119–142). Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Buckingham, D. (2008). Introducing identity. In D. Buckingham (Ed.), Youth, identity, and digital media (pp. 1–22). Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Chaney, D. (1996). Lifestyles. London: Routledge. Finkelstein, J. (2007). The art of self invention: Image and identity in popular visual culture. London: I. B. Tauris. Foucault, M. (1991). Discipline and punish (1977 Allen Lane (1st ed.). London: Penguin. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language as social semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning. London: Edward Arnold. Halliday, M. A. K. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar (3rd ed, revised by C. M. I. M Matthiessen). London: Arnold. Iedema, R., & Caldas-Coulthard, C. R. (2008). Introduction: Identity trouble: Critical discourse and contested identities. In R. Iedema & C. R. Caldas-Coulthard (Eds.), Identity trouble: Critical discourse and contested identities (pp. 1–14). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading images: The grammar of visual design (1st ed.). London: Routledge. Lemke, J. L. (2004). Critical analysis across media: Games, franchises, and the new cultural order. Paper presented at the First International Conference on Critical Discourse Analysis. Lemke, J. L. (2005). Place, pace, and meaning: Multimedia chronotopes. In S. Norris & R. H. Jones (Eds.), Discourse in action: Introducing 16 For further information, see http://multimodal-analysis-lab.org/

60

Power, Identity and Life in the Digital Age

mediated discourse analysis (pp. 110–122). London: Routledge. Lemke, J. L. (2008a). Identity, development, and desire: Critical questions. In C. R. Caldas-Coulthard & R. Iedema (Eds.), Identity trouble: Critical discourse and contested identities (pp. 17–42). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Lemke, J. L. (2008b). Transmedia traversals: Marketing meaning and identity. In A. P. Baldry and E. Montagna (Ed.), Interdisciplinary perspectives on multimodality: Theory and practice. proceedings of the third international conference on multimodality. Campobasso: Palladino. Machin, D., & van Leeuwen, T. (2008). Branding the self. In C. R. Caldas-Coulthard & R. Iedema (Eds.), Identity trouble: Critical discourse and contested identities (pp. 43–57). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Martin, L. H., Gutman, H., & Hutton, P. H. (Eds.). (1988). Technologies of the self : A seminar with Michel Foucault. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Mitchell, A. (1978). Consumer values: A typography. Menlo Park CA: Stanford Research Institute. O’Halloran, K. L. (Ed.). (2004). Multimodal discourse analysis. London: Continuum. O’Toole, M. (1994). The language of displayed art. London: Leicester University Press. Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the screen. New York: Simon and Schuster. van Leeuwen, T. (1999). Speech, music, sound. London: Macmillan. Willett, R. (2008). Consumer citizens online: Structure, agency, and gender in online participation. In D. Buckingham (Ed.) Youth, identity, and digital media (pp. 49–69). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Mailing Address: Director, Multimodal Analysis Lab Interactive & Digital Media Institute (IDMI) 9 Prince George’s Park National University of Singapore Singapore 118408 E-mail: [email protected]

61

62

The Textual Identity of the Web

Shinya SHIGEMI Nagoya University

1. Introduction The study of text has a very long tradition. Especially, as Elizabeth Eisenstein (1979) wrote, in the period of the so-called “incunabulum”, all human knowledge was revised and re-organized in the name of consistency. For this reason the famous “Hermetic writings” should not be ascribed to Hermes Trismegistos “Hermes the Thrice-Greatest”, for example. Today, for the study of text in the domain of literary studies, we may recognize three different approaches. First of all, we may take text as medium: this type of textual studies puts a great emphasis on the materiality of texts and aims to clarify its specificities. A number of studies in recent years adopt this perspective on various types of text: Walter J. Ong’s (1982) Orality and Literacy: Technologizing of the Word includes general reflections on the oral text; Eisenstein’s studies on the birth and the development of the printing press in Western Europe shows the important influences of technological evolution on texts; and Marshall McLuhan’s (1964) Understanding Media and David J. Bolter’s (1990) Writing Space clarify the effects of the advent of a new type of texts, that is the web text1. The second perspective considers text as an internal system: French literary critics and philosophers started around the 1960s to work intensively to establish a theory which makes it possible to explain human activities by the concept of “structure” inspired from the dichotomized categories of Saussurian (1916) linguistics: signifying / signified, paradigm / syntagm, for example. Thus, for those who adopt this perspective, textual studies consist of finding the structure of texts as an internal system and describing it. All the studies of stylistics or narratology pursue this strategy, and Umberto Eco (1976) tries to theorize in philosophical terms about the concept of textual structure. Lastly, there are scholars who consider text as phenomenon: you can replace the word “phenomenon” with “context”. Various schools in various academic domains take this approach; in the domain of linguistics, we should mention pragmatics or the speech act theory of J.L. Austin (1962); in the domain of literary or philosophical studies, German scholars, such as Wolfgang Iser (1972 [1964]) and Hans-Georg Gadamar (1979) developed their own theories of text following a German philosophical tradition of “hermeneutics” or phenomenology. These studies have no 1

I use the term “web text” to mean a text rendered onto the web browser window(s) we see on a computer screen or on other devices.

63

Shinya Shigemi

apparent influences on each other, but share the same idea that the study of a text requires that its context be taken into account. Among these various approaches to text, textual studies take traditionally a great interest in textual identification. Eisenstein (1979) points out that the introduction of the printing press into the world of text gave a new power of preservation, which means numerous copied and identifiable texts could spread throughout the world2; she supports Michael B. Kline’s claim that the idea of authorship or copyright for a text began to play a role only after the printing press had arrived3. We should recognize here that the technological evolution of texts gave birth to the problem of textual identification. In the domain of narratology, whose concern focuses on textual structure, the idea of ‘point of view’ or ‘focalization’, if we follow the term Gérard Genette (1972) coined in his Figures, becomes central4. Genette divides the “grammar” of narratology into three parts termed Tense, Mood and Voice; and the concept of ‘focalization’ constitutes one of two parts of his Mood theory, which distinguishes between “(a) modes of presenting action, speech and thought […] and (b) modes of selection and restriction of the information conveyed by a narrative” (Jahn, 2005: 173). As the mode (b), “[f]ocalization denotes the perspectival restriction and orientation of narrative information relative to somebody’s (usually, a character’s) perception, imagination, knowledge, or point of view” (Jahn, 2005: 173). In other words, focalization connects directly to the question of agents who perceive and identify a narrative world. The protagonists of ‘text as context’ are exemplified by Paul Ricœur. In his Temps et Récit, on his way to developing the theory of temporality, Ricœur (1983) surveys Saint Augustine’s Confessions to establish the concept of “la structure discordante-concordante du temps” (the discordant-concordant structure of time). Another structure is introduced into his account, but the concept of structure is not limited to the internal coherency of a text. Ricœur’s theory of text goes so far as to assume a communicative structure of mimesis, inspired from Aristotle’s theory of tragedy. The mimesis structure is considered to be on three levels: mimesis I for the prefigurational stage of textual communication, mimesis II for the configurational, and mimesis III for re-figurational5. He describes pre-figuration as implying the generative contexts of a text, and re-figuration of its interpretative contexts. Thus, we learn that his theory involves two subjectivities and the configurational level becomes a place where the two subjectivities of author and of reader (re)confirm the identity of a text (Ricœur, 1983: 85–129). Unlike the structuralists who see identity as involving only the internal coherence of a text, Ricœur takes account of subjectivities external to the text in order to attack the issue of textual identification. We have taken a retrospective look at earlier studies of text up to this point. However, to understand textual identification today, especially in the period where the web text penetrates our society, we must advance a more synthesizing study of text than ever, including the web text and combining three different approaches. In this respect, I start to mark out different approaches to textual identity by taking the example of a medieval French literary work, after reviewing a 2

“Of all the new features introduced by the duplicative powers of print, preservation is possibly the most important. To appreciate its importance, we need to recall the conditions that prevailed before texts could be set in type. No manuscript, however useful as reference guide, could be preserved for long without undergoing corruption by copyists, and even this sort of ‘preservation’ rested precariously on the shifting demands of local elites and a fluctuating incidence of trained scribal labor.” (Eisenstein, 1979: 113–114) 3 “Competition over the right to publish a given text also introduced controversy over new issues involving monopoly and piracy. Printing forced a legal definition of what belonged in the public domain. A literary ‘Common’ became subject to ‘enclosure movements’ and possessive individualism began to characterize the attitude of writers to their work. The ‘terms plagiarism and copyright did not exist for the minstrel. It was only after printing that they began to hold significance for the author.’ (Eisenstein, 1979: 120–121) 4 We acknowledge that later studies found fault with the genettean model of ‘focalization’, beginning from Mieke Bal’s Narratologie. 5 “Je me propose de les désimpliquer de l’acte de configuration textuelle et de montrer le rôle médiateur de ce temps de la mise en intrigue entre les aspects temporels préfigurés dans le champ pratique et la refiguration de notre expérience temporelle par ce temps construit. Nous suivons donc le destin d’un temps préfiguré à un temps refiguré par la médiation d’un temps configuré.” (Ricœur, 1983: 87)

64

The Textual Identity of the Web

scheme proposed by Michel Foucault (1969a, 1969b), in order to present a hypothesis about textual identification by examining some examples of web texts.

2. Textual Identity without the Author: Semantic and Formal Aspects While confirming that textual identity remains a central problem for the study of text, we still need to demarcate the concept with more precise analysis, because the examples we saw in the last part of our introduction cover a number of different levels. In considering textual identity, we may empirically distinguish two approaches: the first one tries to know why two texts can be the same, the other to know how two texts can be different in order to see the specificity of each text. Historically speaking, the former approach had been dominant before printing press technology was invented, because texts were copied manually and no single transcription was made without containing differences. The latter approach is possible only through comparison, and that is why we had to wait for the invention of the printing press, which enabled texts to be disseminated and compared. Thus, it is after Gutenberg that people became aware that so-called identical texts might contain differences. However, these two attitudes can coexist even today, at least in the domain of philology. We will take an example from French literature of the Middle Ages of the Roman de Renart (The Tale of Reynard the Fox), which contains about 30 branches6 focusing on a fox named Reynard or Renart. The work is estimated to have been written from around the fourth quarter of the 12th century to the first quarter of the 13th century by different authors: Pierre de Saint-Cloud, Richard de Lison and other unknown authors. It enjoyed enormous popularity in Western Europe, so that Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century used the material in his Canterbury Tales (“The Nun’s Priest’s Tale”). Even in the 19th century one of the greatest German writers, Wolfgang von Gœthe, rewrote it under the title of Reineke Fuchs (1846). As far as the French versions of the tale are concerned, we know 14 almost full manuscripts of the work, and 16 fragments today. Edgard Martin, a French specialist in Renardien studies, has numbered the 14 manuscripts in capital letters from A to O and assigned to the fragments the small letters a to q. German philologists have regrouped them in three “families” according to the numbers of branches: α, β, and γ. The manuscripts that were not regrouped in three families were called “composite”. This regrouping is fully accepted today as the basis of their study, and each family has its critical edition. Now, I want to draw your attention to the fact that the ultimate objective of a philological study consists of unifying the manuscripts and the fragments ultimately into a single text, adjusting the differences that each text contains. The α edition classifies the manuscripts composed of 18 branches; for the β edition, 21 or 22 branches have reference value, and 23 for the γ edition. Thus, the regrouping was one step ahead for the philological objective. As far as the textual identity is concerned, scholars observe both differences and similarities of the texts to identify the Reynard’s tales. But how do they identify the texts? Remember that they tried to identify the text by numbers of branches. This means that in a philological study of Reynard, the textual identity is established by numbers of branches, that is the formal aspect of the text. If each manuscript is held in a volume, they should have a thematic and stylistic homogeneity. This means, on the other hand, that the textual identity is also established by their content. Then we know that both formal aspect and content of text take an active role in establishing the textual identity of the work, rather than the 6

The renardien studies traditionally call “branch” to speak of a chapter.

65

Shinya Shigemi

similarity or difference, because the philologists rely mainly on the formal aspect of the text, while they are conscious of the similarity and the difference of each text. For this reason, we substitute the formal aspect and the semantic aspect for our empirical distinction. The formal aspect includes the appearance of the text, whereas the semantic aspect the content of the text.

3. Identity as Function: Michel Foucault’s View Even if the Tale of Reynard the Fox has no identified authors, each of its three editions claims a single identity; and we do accept the claim, because we may be satisfied with any of three editions when we want to read the tale. However, our experience tells us that the author is also an important factor, when we think of the identity of text(s). This is what Michel Foucault (1969a) has in mind in his lecture entitled “What is an author?”.7 After making a comment on the parallelism between the way the literary critics define the author and the way the Christian tradition justified the texts8, Foucault introduces a theory proposed by Saint Jerome of Stridonium in the fourth century. In his De viris illustribus (On Illustrious Men), Saint Jerome presents four criteria to follow: a) the author as a certain invariable level of value9, b) the author as a certain field of conceptual or theoretical coherence10, c) the author as a stylistic unity11, d) the author as a historically definite moment and as encountering point of numerous events12. After the introduction of this apologist’s theory, Foucault concludes that a text has no need to possess an author, but it should hold internally a certain type of subjectivity. He names this type of subjectivity “the author as function (la fonction-auteur)”. The function is relative to the juridical and institutional system of the discursive or textual universe, and it happens and works simultaneously for different selves or subjectivities13. The point, which Foucault wants to insist on in this lecture, is to look for the possibility of establishing a typology of texts on the basis of their existential modes, without depending on the concept of an author. Therefore, explaining the criteria, Foucault compares them to the modern attitude of literary criticism, which tends to consider the concept of author as the principle of a certain unity of writing and as an agent who is able to dissolve the textual contradictions. In this respect, he also develops his scheme with more precision in his book entitled The Archaeology of Knowledge14. In the book, he proposes two levels for consideration: statement (‘énoncé’) and discourse (‘discours’). The statement means the oral or written utterance, which is not yet situated in the whole system of discourse, while the discourse constitutes a networked 7 For a more precise discussion on Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge as developed in this chapter, see Shigemi (2007). 8 “Il me paraît, par exemple, que la manière dont la critique littéraire a, pendant longtemps, défini l’auteur — ou plutôt construit la formeauteur à partir des textes et des discours existants — est assez directement dérivée de la manière dont la tradition chrétienne a authentifié (ou au contraire rejeté) les textes dont elle disposait.” (Foucault, 1969a: 829) 9 “l’auteur est alors défini comme un certain niveau constant de valeur” (Foucault, 1969a: 829). 10 “l’auteur est alors défini comme un certain champ de cohérence conceptuelle ou théorique” (Foucault, 1969a: 829). 11 “c’est l’auteur comme unité stylistique” (Foucault, 1969a: 829–830). 12 “l’auteur est alors moment historique défini et point de rencontre d’un certain nombre d’événements” (Foucault, 1969a: 830). 13 “La fonction-auteur est liée au système juridique et institutionnel qui enserre, détermine, articule l’univers des discours; elle ne s’exerce pas uniformément et de la même façon sur touts les discours, à toutes les époques et dans toutes les formes de civilisation; elle n’est pas définie par l’attribution spontanée d’un discours à son producteur, mais par une série d’opérations spécifiques et complexes; elle ne renvoie pas purement et simplement à un individu réel, elle peut donner lieu simultanément à plusieurs ego, à plusieurs positions-sujets que des classes différentes d’individus peuvent venir occuper.” (Foucault, 1969a: 832) 14 In fact, the lecture entitled “What is an author?” serves as preamble for The Archaeology of Knowledge, and he explains what he wrote in the book: “Alors, me direz-vous, pourquoi avoir utilisé, dans les Mots et les Choses, des noms d’auteurs? Il fallait, ou bien n’en utiliser aucun, ou bien définir la manière dont vous vous en servez. Cette objection-là est, je crois, parfaitement justifiée: j’ai essayé d’en mesurer les implications et les conséquences dans un texte qui va paraître bientôt; [...]. Voilà le premier volet d’un travail entrepris il y a quelques années, et qui est achevé maintenant.” (Foucault, 1969a: 819–820)

66

The Textual Identity of the Web

system, in which different statements can hold their place with functions. It is at the level of the statement where the consideration on the textual subjectivity is deployed. Besides, he fleshes out the idea of textual subjectivity with three other “functions”, following his terminology: a) the referential, which means that a text has a specific referential-like Saussurian signifying / signified (which some might prefer to call referring/referred)15, b) the subjectivity, which means that a text supposes a certain subjectivity16, c) the context or the network, which means that a text should not be understood by itself, but by its context in which a text is located or by the network to which a text considered to belong17, d) the materiality, which means that a text is always supported by a material and the material forces various kinds of restriction to the text when the text is represented18. It must be said that the four functions defined in the Archaeology do not correspond at all to what is presented in the lecture we traced earlier in this paper. Foucault (1969b) insisted in his lecture that the textual subjectivity could be different from the author of a text, and that the textual subjectivity could be an internal function for the text. Thus, what he pronounced in the lecture only concerns the second function in his book, which is the subjectivity of text. Three other functions have been added for the Archaeology. We confirm that Foucault insists on the textual materiality of all functions. At the end of the chapter, which describes the textual functions, he concludes: This repeatable materiality that characterizes the enunciative function reveals the statement as a specific and paradoxical object, but also as one of those objects that men produce, manipulate, use, transform, exchange, combine, decompose and recompose, and possibly destroy. […] the statement, as it emerges in its materiality, appears with a status, enters various networks and various fields of use, is subjected to transferences or modifications, is integrated into operations and strategies in which its identity is maintained or effaced. (Foucault, 1972: 105) The materiality of text guarantees a text will be copied and repeated in the real world in Foucault’s view; it also enables a text to form a network with other texts where the textual identity is established (or effaced). In other words, we cannot give a sense of identity to a single text, but the established relation between texts can only hold an identity to be recognized or interpreted. It is in this manner of relation that we may talk of a so-called textual identity. As he puts an emphasis on the materiality, the existential pluralism of text, forming a textual network, has significance in the process of textual identification. Thus, we may indeed be right to abstract the concept of textual “spatiality” from that of textual identity from Foucault’s considerations. If the identity is established and maintained not by a single text but numerous texts, and if the texts form a network, then it should mean the texts are spread in a certain field, which would form a kind of space.

15 “[A statement] is linked rather to a ‘referential’ that is made up not of ‘things’, ‘facts’, ‘realities’, or ‘beings’, but of laws of possibility, rules of existence for the objects that are named, designated, or described within it, and for the relations that are affirmed or denied in it.” (Foucault, 1972: 91) 16 “[the subject of statement] is a particular vacant place that may in fact be filled by different individuals; but, instead of being defined once and for all, and maintaining itself as such throughout a text, a book, or an œuvre, this place varies—or rather it is variable enough to be able either to persevere, unchanging, through several sentences, or to alter with each one. It is a dimension that characterizes as whole formulation qua statement.” (Foucault, 1972: 95) 17 “Every statement is specified in this way: there is no statement in general, no free, neutral, independent statement; but a statement always belongs to a series or a whole, always plays a role among other statements, deriving support from them and distinguishing itself from them: it is always part of a network of statements, in which it has a role, however minimal it may be, to play.” (Foucault, 1972: 99) 18 “Lastly, for a sequence of linguistic elements to be regarded and analysed as a statement, it must fulfil a fourth condition: it must have a material existence.” (Foucault, 1972: 100)

67

Shinya Shigemi

4. The Identity of Web Texts In the first section, taking an example of philological study, we confirmed that textual identity without an author might be established in terms of the consistency both of the formal aspect of a text and of its content. Foucault, however, criticizing the traditional idea of textual identity, developed his own idea of textual identity. Thus, through the redefinition of the concept of text as a whole comprising numerous texts, a textual identity may be established relatively to other texts in that whole. His concept requires no author outside the text, but enables us to seize a text in a textual space. This textual plurality remains invisible for printed or oral texts; we may call it ‘invisible’, because a relationship to other texts may be present in one’s mind, only imaging other texts at the time of reading a text; thus it should be readers who affirm a textual space, and it would be different depending on who reads it. However, we know today another type of text, which enables us to visualize the textual relation easily: hypertext or web text. The hypertext is composed of numerous types of text with a single material by nature, as we may confirm in Figure 1. It represents a good example for us to understand what Foucault had in mind in his Archaeology.19 A computerized system, as shown in Figure 2, supports the existence of hypertext. It is composed of web servers, of client computers (including computers, mobile phones or other devices) and of hub devices linked to each other with cables (the Ethernet cable or others) or radio waves (the Wi-Fi or other mobile systems), which transmit encoded electronic signals. Daemon software, such as Apache, gathers, on demand from client computers, texts in local storage from right across the network and sends them back. We take a simple example of the Google20 portal page to see how the web text is composed, as shown in Figure 3 where we see both a browserwindow rendering a web text and another smaller window showing all the texts in relation to the web page.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

As for the identity of web texts, we have in mind recent frauds reported almost everyday, i.e. phishing. The phishing site is a web site, which duplicates the appearance of an authentic web site 19 Of course, as we confirmed in the previous section, Foucault proposed four functions in the level of statements and attached great importance to materiality above all. We have to admit that taking web texts as an example implies a fundamental change of the textual materiality; the change may require a further study on the effects caused by differences between materials. This is so because during Foucault’s time there were no web texts or hypertexts. Thus, our main concern in this paper is to know how we can establish an identity for a text as a statement which is composed of numerous texts. In other words, Foucault’s four functions analyzed at the level of statement may serve as valid criteria to establish a textual identity even on the level of discourse, where various texts in context gather together. In this perspective, the change of materiality provides a good opportunity to test the validity of his thinking. 20 Google: www.google.com; accessed on Oct. 24th, 2008.

68

The Textual Identity of the Web

(usually commercial or financial) to trick visitors and steal their money or credit card information (number, assigned password or security code). The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines this scam as follows: Phishing and spoofing are somewhat synonymous in that they refer to forged or faked electronic documents. Spoofing generally refers to the dissemination of email which is forged to appear as though it was sent by someone other than the actual source. Phishing, often utilized in conjunction with a spoofed email, is the act of sending an email falsely claiming to be an established legitimate business in an attempt to dupe the unsuspecting recipient into divulging personal, sensitive information such as passwords, credit card numbers, and bank account information after directing the user to visit a specified website. The website, however, is not genuine and was set up only as an attempt to steal the user’s information.21

Fig. 3

All six images of Figures 4a–b, Figures 5a–b and Figures 6a–b give us a general idea of what the phishing site is. Figure 4a shows a screenshot of the page which prompts the user to log on to the bank-account of Lloyds Bank in the United Kingdom, while Figure 4b is a reported screenshot (submission number #535742) to PhishTank (www.phishtank.com), collaborative website to archive and distribute information on phishing. Another screen shot (Figure 5a) represents a genuine PayPal site, which provides the service of alternate processing of sending and receiving money, and one of the forged sites reported to PhishTank. 21 Definition described on the Internet Crime Complaint Center, cooperative center between the FBI, the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), and the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA). http://www.ic3.gov/crimeschemes.aspx#item-14 (Author’s emphasis). Internet Crime Complaint Center: www.ic3.gov; accessed on Oct. 24th, 2008.

69

Shinya Shigemi

70

Fig. 4a

Fig. 4b

Fig. 5a

Fig. 5b

Fig. 6a

Fig. 6b

The Textual Identity of the Web

On the other hand, some cases may offer counter examples with respect to textual identity on the web. Take, for example, the YAHOO! website in its Japanese version, whose URL is “www. yahoo.co.jp”. When we type the URL into a proper place in the browser running on our personal computer, the result will be like in Figure 7a. However, the same URL gives us another representation or “page” if we consult the site with a different mobile device than a personal computer. We see a screenshot of the website browsing with Apple’s iPod touch (Figure 7b). In fact, when we get access to the website with an iPod, a program redirects us to another web page “ipn.yahoo.co.jp”. Then, for verification, we have another screenshot (Figure 7c), which represents a web page of “ipn.yahoo. co.jp” browsed through the computer browser.

Fig. 7a

Fig. 7b

Fig. 7c 71

Shinya Shigemi

Table 1 Text Identity Grid for Websites formal

semantic

subjectivity

identity

−

−

+

+

+

+

−

−

“www.yahoo.co.jp” with Safari browser YAHOO! Japan

“ipn.yahoo.co.jp” with iPod touch “ipn.yahoo.co.jp” with Safari browser

Phishing websites

genuine websites forged websites

From the analysis of these examples of web texts, we may put the result into a matrix (Table 1). The grid represents whether each example of web texts meets four criteria: the formal aspect, the semantic aspect, subjectivity, and identity. The idea of four criteria comes from reflecting on what we examined in the previous sections; the formal aspect and semantic aspect of a web text are both considered relevant to the establishment of identity in our first section. Another aspect of textual identity on which Foucault put emphasis is the subjectivity or the author considered in our second section. This grid reconfirms what we have looked at in this paper; even if both the formal aspect and the semantic aspect of a web text are identical, as with the cases of phishing websites, identity remains in flux; on the other hand, the occasional coincidence of both aspects, as in the cases of YAHOO!22, doesn’t always provide or establish identity. Another piece of evidence we may learn from this matrix is that we tend to recognize texts as identical when the subjectivity of web texts indicates the same subject. This is why we can distinguish a genuine website from a disguised website; but we still have to remember that the distinction will be made on the basis of the spatial information of the URL. Of course, the observation of other YAHOO! pages may refute the evidence. However, as the URL of “ipn.yahoo.co.jp” is the redirected result of “www.yahoo.co.jp” for iPod touch, we could take the former URL as identical to the latter.

5. Conclusion We started this paper with a brief consideration of the traditional conception of text identity based on examples of philological study in the domain of literature, where both the formal and semantic aspects of texts are involved in the establishment of textual identity. We then went on to consider Foucault’s reorganization of the concept in his Archaeology with respect to statements and discourses, where the idea of textual spatiality came to be recognized. In the final section, textual spatiality takes an important part in establishing identity for web texts. The observations in this paper still remain at the ontological level of our understanding of text. However, our experience tells us that the ontological mode of text doesn’t explain all the aspects of our textual interpretation. Furthermore, textual spatiality alone does not constitute the whole of text; in fact, Foucault in the same work proposes two other components relevant to the ontological mode of text: materiality and temporality. As we should be very cautious about accepting all these propositions made by a theorist, these components will remain to be evaluated in future studies. Textual spatiality appears to have been underestimated in the tradition of textual studies. At the very least we would claim that the dissemination of web texts comes to highlight this aspect of text. This paper does not provide detailed reflections on the ontological mode of text about which future studies would provide accounts. 22 YAHOO! Japan: www.yahoo.co.jp, ipn.yahoo.co.jp; accessed on Oct. 24th, 2008.

72

The Textual Identity of the Web

References Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Clarendon, Oxford: Ed. J. O. Urmson. Bolter, J. D. (1990). Writing space. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Eco, U. (1976). A theory of semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Eisenstein, E. L. (1979). The printing press as an agent of change (Vol. I & II). Cambridge University Press. Foucault, M. (1969a). L’archéologie du savoir. Paris : Éditions Gallimard. [The archaeology of knowledge and discourse on language] (A. M. S. Smith, Trans.). New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1969b). Qu’est-Ce qu’un auteur? In Bulletin De La Société Française De Philosophie, 63e Année, No 3, Juillet-Septembre (pp. 73–104. Republished in Daniel DEFERT and François WEALD ed. (1994) Dits et écrits I, 1954–1975. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, pp. 1817–1849). Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge & the discourse on language (A. M. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: Pantheon Books. Gadamer, H.-G. (1979). Truth and method. London: Sheed and Ward. [(1960) Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzuge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik. Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr. Genette, G. (1972). Figures Iii. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Iser, W. (1972 [1964]). The implied reader: Patterns of communication in prose fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Jahn, M. (2005). ‘Focalization’. In Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory (pp. 173–177). London: Routledge. McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. New York: McGraw-Hill. Ong, W. J. (1982). Orality and literacy techonologizing of the word. New York: Routledge. Ricœur, P. (1983). Temps et récit, tome I. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Saussure, F. d. (1916). Cours de linguistique générale. Publié par Charles Bailly et Albert Séchehaye Avec La Collaboration De Albert Riedlinger : Éditions Payot & Rivages [1967 edition]. Shigemi, S. (2007). Textual spatiality in Michel Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge. Hersetec, 1, 73–93.

Mailing address: Graduate School of Letters, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464–8601, JAPAN E-mail: [email protected]

73

74

“Something Old, Something New”: Cultural Bricolage in Japanese Wedding Speeches

Cynthia Dickel DUNN University of Northern Iowa

“Something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.” (Traditional American saying for what a bride should wear on her wedding day)

Introduction The theme of this conference invites us to explore processes of the creation and interpretation of texts in everyday life. This paper focuses on processes of cultural meaning-making in one particular everyday context, namely the congratulatory speeches given at Japanese wedding receptions. Weddings are a particularly interesting site for investigating the production of cultural meanings because they are a situation in which speakers display for each other their understanding of important cultural concepts related to marriage, gender roles, and personhood (Dunn, 2004; Edwards, 1989). At Japanese wedding receptions, various categories of guests offer speeches in which they congratulate the couple and express their own understandings and ideals of marriage. In doing so, they both express Japanese conceptions of the marriage relationship and contribute to the cultural discourse through which ideologies of gender, marriage, and social relationships are created, re-created, and changed over time. These speeches thus allow us to observe processes of cultural (re)production in naturally-occurring discourse, without active intervention by the analyst. I am also drawn to wedding speeches because they are a relatively conventionalized genre in terms of both form and content. Wedding speakers display, not only their understandings of marriage and gender ideologies, but also their competence in the conventions and speech formulae appropriate to public speaking on a ceremonial occasion. Speakers draw on a stock of formulaic phrases and conventional metaphors to congratulate the couple and may also quote directly from authoritative cultural texts to offer marital advice to the newlyweds. At the same time, each wedding speech is unique, and the quoted texts and phrases must be adapted to be appropriate to each specific couple and wedding. Wedding speeches thus comprise, in the words of my title, both “something old” and “something new.” Wedding speakers reuse and reinterpret cultural texts to create new, contextualized meanings in a process similar to that described by Lévi-Strauss as bricolage. This process of recontextualizing and reinterpreting prior stretches of discourse will be the focus of this paper.

75

Cynthia Dickel Dunn

Theoretical Frameworks: Interdiscursivity as Bricolage I approach the concept of “interpretation” by examining how speakers re-use and reinterpret prior texts in the creation of new utterances. In doing so, I draw on the work of Lévi-Strauss and Bakhtin as well as more recent work on interdiscursivity in linguistic anthropology. In a discussion of what he calls “mythic” or “pre-scientific” thought, Lévi-Strauss (1966 [1962]) compares processes of cultural production to the work of a bricoleur. Bricoleur is a French word which refers to a type of handy-man who repairs and builds items out of whatever odds and ends happen to be lying around from previous construction processes. As Lévi-Strauss puts it, The ‘bricoleur’ is adept at performing a large number of diverse tasks; but, unlike the engineer, he does not subordinate each of them to the availability of raw materials and tools conceived and procured for the purpose of the project. His universe of instruments is closed and the rules of his game are always to make do with ‘whatever is at hand’, that is to say with a set of tools and materials which is always finite and is also heterogeneous because what it contains bears no relation to the current project, or indeed to any particular project, but is the contingent result of all the occasions there have been to renew or enrich the stock or to maintain it with the remains of previous constructions or destructions. (Lévi-Strauss, 1966 [1962]: 17) In this metaphor, the creation of a new cultural concept, a new text, or a new utterance, is a process of selecting and combining bits and pieces of existing cultural materials. The concept of reusing existing cultural materials to create new ones is similar to Bakhtin’s concept of discourse as dialogic. Bakhtin (1986) distinguishes the sentence, in the sense of a grammatical sequence of words, from the utterance, which is spoken or written in a particular, concrete situation. He further argues that we encounter words and sentences only in their manifestation as concrete utterances. Therefore, the process of composing a new utterance necessarily draws on elements taken from prior utterances which contain echoes of their prior use: This is why the unique speech experience of each individual is shaped and developed in continuous and constant interaction with others’ individual utterances. This experience can be characterized to some degree as the process of assimilation—more or less creative—of others’ words (and not the words of a language). Our speech, that is, all our utterances (including creative works) is filled with others’ words, varying degrees of otherness or varying degrees of “our-own-ness,” varying degrees of awareness and detachment. These words of others carry with them their own expression, their own evaluative tone, which we assimilate, rework, and re-accentuate. (Bakhtin, 1986: 89) The concept of reusing prior utterances in constructing new ones has been further explored in more recent work by linguistic anthropologists interested in the concept of intertexuality, or more broadly, interdiscursivity. Bauman and Briggs (1990) provide a framework for examining how particular utterances come to be “entextualized”, detached from their spoken or written context such that they become a relatively self-contained “text” which can then be transported across time and space to be “recontextualized” in a new context. The multiple forms that such recontextualizations can take have been explored in some detail (Barber, 1999, 2003; Bauman, 1996, 2004; Dunn, 2006; Irvine, 1996; Scollon, 2004; Silverstein, 2005; Silverstein & Urban, 1996). When a text is spoken or written in a new context, it shifts its meaning. Returning to Bakhtin’s distinction between sentence and utterance, we can also distinguish sentence meaning 76

“Something Old, Something New”

from utterance meaning. The very same sentence or sequence of words can have different meanings depending on the context in which it is used. As Bakhtin puts it, “ … only the contact between the language meaning and concrete reality that takes place in the utterance can create the spark of expression. It exists neither in the system of language nor in the objective reality surrounding us” (Bakhtin, 1986: 87). The meaning of an utterance depends, not only on the actual words selected, but on how they are interpreted in relation to that particular context. Meaning occurs in the fusion of words and context. Take the phrase Ohayoo gozaimasu which is uttered on a daily basis as an early morning greeting throughout Japan. Its meaning shifts slightly each time it is used; it refers each time to the fact that it is early today, as opposed to yesterday, or tomorrow. Furthermore the meaning of hayai or ‘early’ can itself shift fairly radically across different speech communities. When I first lived in Japan, I worked in an office where people showed up for work at eight-thirty A.M. and greeted each other with “Ohayoo gozaimasu.” Despite the fact that this greeting is often translated as “Good morning,” I learned that if one first encountered someone at eleven A.M., it was too late for this greeting and one shifted instead to “Konnichi-wa”. Several years later, however, I was back in Japan working with college students, and I quickly discovered that for college students, “Ohayoo gozaimasu” is a perfectly normal greeting for eleven in the morning, or indeed, one in the afternoon. What is hayai ‘early’ for college students is quite different from what is hayai for office workers. Thus, any utterance, even the most mundane, involves the (re)contextualization and (re)interpretation of texts, not only by the listener, but also by the speakers who, like LéviStrauss’s bricoleur, reshape and reinterpret existing cultural materials even as they reuse them. Indeed, the title of this paper exemplifies the trope under examination. The initial phrase comes from an American saying used to describe what a bride should wear on her wedding day: “Something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.” The analysis in this paper applies that phrase, not to American brides, but to the speeches given at Japanese wedding receptions. I will argue that Japanese wedding speeches are also comprised of “something old, something new, and something borrowed”. Note what has happened here. I have taken a phrase used in one context, transported it across the Pacific ocean and applied it, not to Japanese brides, but to Japanese wedding speeches. The same phrase is being reused in a different context in ways that reshape its meaning. The following sections will examine similar processes of reusing and reinterpreting prior texts in the context of Japanese wedding speeches.

Cultural Conventions in Japanese Wedding Speeches Let us begin with the obvious fact that Japanese wedding speeches are highly formulaic.1 1 This paper is based on video recordings of five Japanese wedding receptions that took place in the Tokyo area between 1990–94. All of the couples were college-educated, from upper-middle class backgrounds. Videotapes of the wedding receptions were collected from recently married Japanese friends and acquaintances and are not statistically representative of any larger population. Videotaping has become a standard part of most Japanese wedding receptions, and many wedding halls include a professional videotape as part of the wedding package. In other cases, the couple ask a friend or relative to tape the reception for them. My data include examples of both types. I did not personally attend any of the wedding receptions. The corpus includes a total of twenty-five speeches, including speeches by four go-betweens (two college professors and two workplace superiors of the groom), eleven workplace superiors or colleagues (employers included a bank, insurance company, private high school, electronics company, and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry), four professors, one colleague of the bride’s father, and five high school or college friends of the groom and bride. Exact ages were not always available, but friends of the couple were generally in their early twenties to early thirties, whereas workplace colleagues and superiors ranged from late twenties to sixties. Six of the speakers were female (three professors of the bride and three friends of the bride), and the rest were male.

77

Cynthia Dickel Dunn

Indeed, when I told one friend that I was interested in collecting and studying wedding speeches, she wondered why. “They’re boring,” she said. “Everyone says the same thing.” This formulaic quality is particularly obvious in the opening and closing sections of speeches in which speakers rely on a relatively small stock of formulaic greetings. Wedding speeches generally begin with some combination of the following elements, each expressed in highly formulaic phrases (Dunn, 2005): Self-introduction Congratulations to the couple and their families An apology for speaking ahead of other guests Metalinguistic announcement of what the speaker is about to talk about For example: Opening of a speech by the groom’s workplace superior2 1

M ginkoo no K de gozai-masu./ M bank NOM K COP HPOLITE-DIST ‘I am K of M bank.’

[Self-introduction]

2

Honjitsu wa,/ ee Y- kun M- san,/ taihen omedetoo gozai-mashi-ta./ today TOP Y TI M TI very congratulations HPOLITE-DIST-PAST ‘Today, congratulations, to Y and M.’ [Congratulates couple]

3

Mata,/ aa go-kazoku, go-shinzoku no kata,/ also HP-family HP-relatives GEN people(H+) makoto ni,/ omedetoo gozai-masu./ sincerely as congratulations HPOLITE-DIST [Congratulates families] ‘Also, uh my sincere, congratulations, to the families and relatives.’

4

Ee senetsu nagara,/ presumptuous while ‘Ah although it feels presumptuous,’

5

[Apology]

hito koto go-aisatsu sase -te itadaki -masu./ one word HP-greetings permit-and receive(H-)-DIST ‘permit me to say a few words.’ [Metalinguistic announcement]

Similarly, the closing section of the speech generally involves wishes for the couple’s future, and there are a variety of conventionalized themes and phrases for expressing these wishes. Speakers emphasize themes such as cooperation and harmony and draw on a relatively limited stock of conventional metaphors including marriage as building a new home together, marriage as an object jointly created by the couple, marriage as a journey, and marriage as a union (Dunn 2004). For example:

2

78

Glossing: ADJ adjective marker; COP copula; DIST distal form (addressee honorific); DO direct object; GEN genitive; H- humble form; H+ subject honorific; HP honorific prefix; HPOLITE hyperpolite; IP interactional particle; NOM nominalizer; PASS passive; PAST past; PL plural; QM question marker; QT quotative; SU subject marker; TI title; TOP topic marker. Initials are used in place of proper names. Transcription conventions: Following Maynard 1989, / marks a pause-bounded phrasal unit. Punctuation is used to show intonation. : indicates lengthening. Unclear segments are enclosed in single parentheses while double parentheses are for non-verbal behavior.

“Something Old, Something New”

Speech by go-between (Build a home metaphor) Shiawase na go-katei o kizui-te itadaki -tai to zonji-masu. happiness HP-family DO build-and receive(H-)-want QT think(H-)-ADHON ‘I hope that they will build a happy home.’ Speech by friend of groom (Build a home metaphor) Sore de ano,/ ma kongo wa,/ kitto futari chikara o awase-te,/ that and um well hereafter TOP surely two-people strength DO unite-and ‘And then well from now on these two will unite their strength and,’ E: tanoshiku akarui katei o kizui-te -iku to omoi -masu keredomo,/ fun bright home DO build-and-go QT think-ADHON but I think they will build a bright and fun home but, Thank you speech by father of the groom (Journey metaphor) chikara o,/ awase-te strength DO unite-and ‘uniting their strength,’ i-ppo,/ i-ppo o,/ kakujitsu ni,/ ayun-de one-step one-step DO reliably walk-and itadaki-tai to,/ nengan shi-te ori-masu./ receive(H-)-want QT desire do-and be(H-)-ADHON ‘our deepest wish is that they can reliably walk forward together one step at a time.’ Speech by workplace superior of groom (Journey metaphor) Ee o-futari mo,/ oo kore kara,/ nagai jinsei ee HP-two-people also this from long life tomo ni ayun-de ik-areru wake de -gozai -masu./ together as walk-and go-SUBJHON situation COP-HPOLITE-ADHON ‘They will also walk together through their long life from now on.’ Despite the conventionality of these metaphors, speakers also sometimes drew on personal details about the couple to individualize traditional metaphors or create new ones. For example, in a case where the couple had met playing tennis, one speaker asked them to make use of their tennis partnership to build a new home: Speech by workplace superior of bride (Build a home metaphor) Maa soo iu koto de,/ tenisu no paatonaashippu o ikashi-te,/ well that say thing by tennis GEN partnership DO make-good-use-and rippa na katei o,/ o kizushi-te i-tte—, fine ADJ home DO build-and be-and kizui-te itadaki-tai to,/ ee omoi-masu./ build-and receive(H-)-want QT think-DIST ‘Well in this way, I uh hope that, using their experience as tennis partners, they will be— will build, a wonderful home together.’ 79

Cynthia Dickel Dunn

In another case, the bride had recently bought a piano. Her friend used this information to add an individualizing detail to the conventional metaphor of building a home: Speech by friend of bride (Build a home metaphor) Sono piano o kakom-are-te,/ that piano DO surround-SUBJHON-and ‘[They] will sit around that piano and,’ kore kara,/ T san to futari de,/ haamonii yutaka na,/ this from T TI with two-people as harmony rich ADJ atatakai go-katei o,/ kizui-te ika-reru koto to omoi-masu./ warm HP-home DO build-and go-(H+) NOM QT think-DIST ‘I think that from now on, together with T [the groom], [she] will build a warm home filled with rich harmonies.’ Thus, several of the speakers at these weddings combined formulaic phrases such as ‘building a new home together’ with personal details that contextualized the metaphor as appropriate to the specific couple, sometimes creating novel metaphors such as marriage as a musical harmony. Speakers at these weddings creatively adapted conventional phrases and metaphors in ways that made them appropriate to the context of specific weddings and specific couples. Here we have cultural bricolage at its most mundane—a standard cultural image is inserted into a specific context and interpreted in terms of that context. The process of recontextualization creates a contextually specific meaning, and this is true whether or not the speaker engages in overt recontextualization by adding phrases referring to that specific couple. Even in a totally conventional metaphor, the abstract sentence meaning of a phrase like “building a new home together” takes on a concrete, utterance meaning through its use in a specific context—the phrase now describes a specific newly-married couple, while still trailing with it the echoes of prior use to refer to other couples at other weddings. Thus, any time a conventional phrase is reused, it is also reinterpreted in relationship to its new contextual surroundings. But if metaphors or other conventionalized phrases can be personalized in relation to individual brides and grooms, it must be noted that the process also works in reverse. The cultural conventions and genre expectations of wedding speeches also flatten out the distinctive personalities of individual grooms and brides. In analyzing a corpus of twenty-five speeches given at five different weddings, I was struck by the similarity of the phrases used to describe the brides and grooms. All of the brides were beautiful, and all of the grooms were hard-working young men with a promising future. Rather than conventional phrases being reinterpreted in light of specific biographies, here individual characters and personalities are reinterpreted to fit cultural norms and expectations for the ideal bride and the ideal groom. Thus, there is a dialectic between cultural texts and cultural contexts with each being reshaped in terms of the other. We fit ourselves and our ideas to existing discourses as much as we reshape prior texts to specific situations.

Recontextualization of Quoted Texts in Wedding Speeches The type of interdiscursivity I have been describing occurs throughout everyday discourse and is so mundane that we often fail to notice that, as Bahktin says, our speech is “filled with 80

“Something Old, Something New”

others’ words.” Yet wedding speakers also engage in much more overt and deliberate quotation of others’ words. In the course of their speeches, many of the older honored guests in particular provide the new couple with thoughts and advice on marriage. Sometimes these are drawn from their own experience, but equally often, the speaker quotes an existing text to express some sentiment about marriage. In contrast to formulaic expressions and conventional metaphors, these texts are specifically framed as quotations of someone else’s words. Barber (1999) has noted a similar distinction between quotation and the use of formulaic phrases in Yorùbá verbal art. She argues that many Yorùbá genres are characterized by the pervasiveness of quotation where the speaker is actively felt to be repeating the utterances of past speakers: “There is a whole field of texts that are constituted as quotations: rather than being merely uttered, they are cited” (1999:18–19). She contrasts these genres with formulaic greetings that are repeated verbatim in the appropriate situations. Such a greeting is conventional and contextually appropriate but “is not uttered in such a way as to draw attention to its status as text that has been previously constituted and already uttered by others” (Barber, 1999:19). By contrast, the process of quotation presents texts as autonomous objects detached from particular contexts of utterance in a way that invites analysis and interpretation. Japanese wedding speakers frame their texts as quotations by following a sequence of citation, quotation, and interpretation (Dunn, 2006). The speaker first announces the text’s provenance or original context, then quotes the original text, and then proceeds to explicate its meaning and relate it to the married couple. Here we see the processes of entextualization, recontextualization, and reinterpretation actively displayed.

Speech by Workplace Superior of the Groom A. Citation 1

E kono sai watakushi wa: aa:,/ ma,/ toku ni kekkon ni this occasion I TOP well especially marriage to kagi-tta wake de wa nai-n de -gozai -masu kedomo,/ limit-PAST situation COP TOP not-NOM COP-HPOLITE-ADHON but ‘On this occasion I, well it’s not particularly limited to marriage but,’

2

hito-koto,/ oo,/ kotoba o,/ okuri-tai to omoi-masu./ one -word word DO give -want QT think-ADHON ‘I’d like to give these words.’

3

ee sore wa watakushi ga hijoo ni sonkei suru,/ senpai no kata that TOP I SU very respect do senior GEN person(H+) kara,/ i -ware-ta kotoba na -n de -gozai -masu ga,/ from say-PASS-PAST words COP-NOM COP-HPOLITE-ADHON but ‘Ah it’s something I was told by a senior colleague whom I greatly respected but,’

B. Quotation 4

on wa,/ shita ni kaesu./ obligation TOP below to return ‘Pay one’s debt downward.’

5

on

wa

shita ni kaesu to iu koto de -gozai -masu./ 81

Cynthia Dickel Dunn

obligation TOP below to return QT say thing COP-HPOLITE-ADHON ‘It’s the saying pay one’s debt of gratitude downward.’ C. Interpretation

82

6

e:,/ kore wa ano:,/ yoosuru ni,/ on-gaeshi this TOP um summary as obligation-repay (wa desu ne) ue no,/ shi-te kure-ta TOP COP(ADHON) IP above GEN do -and give-PAST hito ni,/ suru no de wa naku-te,/ people to do GEN COP TOP not -and ‘In short, the repayment of “on” is not to those above who did things for you but,’

7

jibun yori shita ni,/ shi-te ager-o./ oneself from below to do -and give-IMP to iu imi de -gozai -mashi-te,/ QT say meaning COP-HPOLITE-ADHON-and ‘the meaning is that one should give “on” to one’s own subordinates/dependents and,’

8

e:/ to iu koto wa desu ne,/ kanarazushimo,/ oo anoo,/ QT say thing TOP COP(ADHON) IP necessarily um on o ada de kaesu,/ aruiwa on o wasureru to iu koto obligation DO evil with return or obligation DO forget QT say thing de -gozai -mashi-te,/ de wa mochiron nai wake COP TOP of-course not situation COP-HPOLITE-ADHON-and ‘Ah which of course is absolutely not to say that one should return “on” with evil or forget one’s obligation but,’

9

ee:Y-kun ni:,/ ii,/ on o,/ hodokoshi-te Y TI to obligation DO give -and kure-ta kata wa desu ne,/ daitai moo,/ give-PAST people(H+) TOP COP(ADHON) IP generally already oo Y-kun no on o kitai shinai demo,/ Y TI GEN obligation DO expectation do -not even ‘ah the people who have given “on” to Y generally don’t expect it in return since,’

10

iikurai no hito da./ good-roughly GEN people COP ‘they are people who pretty much have enough.’

11

to iu koto mo ari -mashi-te,/ QT say thing also exist-ADHON-and ‘There’s also this and,’

12

Toku ni,/ sono meue no kata ni desu ne,/ isshookenmei,/ especially those superior GEN people(H+) to COP(ADHON) IP extreme-effort o-wasure itadai-te ee tsukusu to iu koto wa,/ moo do-greatly QT say thing TOP already HP-forget receive(H-)-and ‘especially please forget about striving to do all you can for your superiors since,’

“Something Old, Something New”

13

kekkoo de -gozai -masu./ sufficient COP-HPOLITE-ADHON ‘[they have] enough.’

14

Kore kara atarashii jinsei,/ kore kara atarashii shakai-jin toshite this from new life this from new society-person as desu ne,/ shuppatsu suru ni atari -mashi-te wa COP(ADHON) IP start-off do to connected-ADHON-and TOP desu ne,/ ue no hito kara uke-ta COP(ADHON) IP above GEN people from receive-PAST on wa,/ jibun no meshita,/ jibun yori jakusha ni,/ obligation TOP oneself GEN subordinate oneself more weak-person to kaeshi-te age-te itadaki-tai./ to iu koto de-gozai-masu./ return-and give-and receive(H-)-want QT say thing COP-HPOLITE-ADHON ‘In his new life from now on as he sets off as a new member of society, I ask that he will return the kindnesses that he has received from those above him to his own subordinants and dependents.’

15

Ee kore kara no:, jinsei de,/ tatoeba,/ okusan./ toshishita no okusan,/ this from GEN life in for-example wife younger GEN wife ‘For example in your future life, your wife. Your younger wife,’

16

Aruiwa,/ atarashiku o-umare ni naru dearoo:/ o-ko-san./ or newly HP-be-born SUBJHON perhaps HP-child-TI ‘or the new-born child you may have.’

17

Aruiwa,/ kore kara motsu dearoo,/ buka desu ne./ or this from have perhaps subordinate(s) COP(ADHON) IP ‘Or the subordinates you may have in the future.’

18

Koo i-tta kata ni desu ne,/ ata— atatakai this say-PAST people(H+) to COP(ADHON) IP warm desu ne,/ ee kokoro—/ kubari o ya-tte itadai-te,/ COP(ADHON) IP heart give-out DO do-and receive(H-)-and ‘I ask that to these kinds of people he will give his warm—warmest care and consideration and,’

19

kongo shita no kata ni,/ taishite ( )./ hereafter below GEN people(H+) to towards ‘towards the people who hereafter will be below him ( ).’

20

Kore ga,/ ee,/ atarashii jinsei,/ aruiwa,/ this SU new life or ningen toshite no desu ne,/ aruiwa shakai-jin human-being as GEN COP(ADHON) IP or society-person toshite no,/ tsutome dearoo ka to omoi-masu./ as GEN employment perhaps QM QT think-ADHON ‘I think that perhaps this is [his] work in his new life or as a human being or as a member of society.’ 83

Cynthia Dickel Dunn

Some of the texts quoted in these speeches had a clear relationship to marriage as when one speaker quoted a Chinese proverb that “With a hundred men it’s easy to build a house, but it takes a wife to make a home” (Hyakunin no danshi atte, shukusha o tsukuru no wa itomo kantan dearu keredomo, hitotsu no katei wa tsuma nakute, tsukuru koto wa dekinai). Similarly, a professor of American literature quoted William Faulkner’s “you do not love because, you love despite.” However, many of the quoted texts were only tangentially related to the topic of weddings or married life. In the example presented above, for instance, the speaker noted that the advice to “pay one’s debts downward” is not limited to married life, and making it relevant to marriage requires conceptualizing, not only the groom’s future children, but also his wife as his subordinates or dependents. Other quoted texts seemed even less directly relevant to marriage. For example, one speaker quoted a newspaper editorial concerning Japan’s economic recession, in which the writer used the slogan “Recovery, restructuring, recycling.” He then proceded to discuss how these three concepts could be applied, not to restructuring Japanese businesses to make them more competitive, but to marriage. For “recovery,” he explained that different people naturally have different cycles, and that, like an airplane with two engines, one person can help the other recover when things are not going well. Restructuring was defined as “cutting out the fat.” He speculated that now that the groom was married he might spend less time eating cup-noodles, but warned him to take care of his health and not overeat his wife’s cooking. Finally, recycling was characterized as “thrift,” and the couple was encouraged to be thrifty. In this and other instances, speakers took a text which previously referred to very different circumstances and reinterpreted it to make it relevant to marriage. Such examples demonstrate that texts can be almost infinitely malleable in their meaning and recontextualization. In terms of form, the quoted texts were generally pithy, memorable, neatly self-contained utterances, qualities which made them particularly suitable for being detached from one context and reinserted into another (Bauman & Briggs, 1990). However, their content and previous context seemed almost irrelevant as speakers demonstrated a broad capability to reinterpret such texts in ways that made them relevant to their new contexts. This is where Levy-Strauss’s idea of bricolage is so powerful in thinking about cultural production. The key characteristic of bricolage is not simply that the bricoleur reuses items, but that they are frequently reused in an entirely different function to build a completely different item than that from which they were originally extracted. The creative power of culture is not only to reuse older cultural constructs, but to reshape them into something new. Culture in the making is neither completely novel nor completely conventional, but an odd mish-mash of the two, often in rather unexpected ways. It is indeed, something old, something new, and sometimes something borrowed and reinserted into a radically different context to create new meanings.

And Something Aoi: The Creation and Enactment of Identities What then of identity, the third of the themes for this conference? One of the primary functions of weddings is of course to create and display a couple’s new identities as husband and wife, something that in the Japanese context also defines them as shakaijin or contributing ‘members of society.’ Indeed, one function of the wedding speeches described here is to do precisely this type of identity work—to describe a particular groom and bride as instantiations of the “ideal type” of man or woman and to provide them with models of how they should act in their new roles. 84

“Something Old, Something New”

Somewhat in contrast with my own expectations, much of the more explicit discourse was quite gender neutral. Many of the conventionalized metaphors and requests, for instance, referred to the couple as “cooperating” or “working together” without differentiating the roles of husband and wife. However, it is in the interpretation of quoted texts that were less overtly concerned with marriage that one finds deeply embedded assumptions about gender roles—models that may be all the more powerful because they were presumed rather than being overtly didactic. We have seen this with, for example, the comment about the groom eating fewer cup noodles once he is married or in the “on wa shita ni kaesu” quotation with the interpretation of the wife as the groom’s subordinate or dependent. Another example involved a text whose previous context was a political speech: “The government is the sail; the nation is the ship; the era is the wind; and the people are the sea.” (Seifu wa hoo de ari, kokka wa fune de ari, jidai wa kaze de ari, kokumin wa umi de aru.) The speaker went on to say that, Speech by workplace superior of the groom 1

Ma sono mama ni de mo,/ imi ga well that state in COP even meaning SU tsuuji -nai to omoi -masu node,/ get-across-not QT think-ADHON since ‘Well since I think that if I just leave it at that the meaning won’t be understood,’

2

ma ho—/ T [groom] kun ga yahari,/ ho no yakuwari./ well sail T TI SU naturally sail GEN role ‘well the sail—T [the groom] of course has the role of the sail and,’

3

De,/ M [bride] san wa,/ sono,/ kokka/ dearu,/ fune no yakuwari. and M TI TOP that nation COP ship NOM role ‘And, M [the bride] has the role of the ship which is the nation.’

In other words, husband is to wife as the government is to the nation, an authoritarian philosophy of government translated into an authoritarian philosophy of marriage. Yet it is not only the roles of the newly married couple which are defined in and by wedding speeches. The social identities of the speakers are also at stake. One of the things that is most striking to an outsider is how carefully the speakers at Japanese weddings are chosen and how defined and conventionalized these speaking roles are. Wedding speech manuals available in local bookstores typically provide sample speeches divided into different categories of speakers such as baishakunin ‘go-betweens,’ shuhin ‘honored guests,’ ippan raihin ‘ordinary guests’ and yuujin ‘friends’ (Fujino, 1977; Teeburu Spiichi Jissen Kenkyuukai n.d.). Each of the speakers is asked in advance to give a speech, and the order alternates between speakers for the groom’s side and speakers for the bride’s side. In general, speakers are selected, not only because of their personal connection to the groom or bride, but also because of their social position. With the exception of the friends, the speakers are usually high status people in positions of authority to whom the couple (or their parents) are obliged for past or future benevolence. The most common wedding speakers are thus workplace superiors and former teachers. Not only are speakers chosen on the basis of demographic and social role characteristics, but the form and content of the speeches also vary in predictable ways across the different conventional categories of speakers (Dunn, 2005). In particular, the forms of bricolage in which speakers engage vary across the different categories, and here at last we perhaps come to 85

Cynthia Dickel Dunn

“something blue.” The kanji 青 not only means the color blue or green, but can also mean unripe, youthful, or immature as in the 青 of 青年. The final guests to speak before the closing words by the groom and his father are indeed “seinen,” the youthful friends of the groom and bride from high school or college and their speeches are rather different from those of the more senior guests who speak earlier. Certainly these younger speakers also make use of formulaic phrases and conventional metaphors, even if their stock of these is often not as large or elaborate as those of the more experienced speakers. It is often the younger speakers who creatively combine personal characteristics with conventional metaphors to create hybrid wishes for the couple’s future. Although the friends also praise the couple in very conventional and gendered terms, they often tell amusing anecdotes which may reveal less laudable and more individual characteristics as well. Their speeches are thus less standardized and somewhat more individual and idiosyncratic. Perhaps most importantly for our purposes, none of the unmarried friends at these five weddings gave any advice relating to marriage. Given that they themselves were unmarried, it is hardly surprising that they did not draw on their own experience to offer advice, but they also did not quote other, authoritative texts. It may be that the act of advice giving is an assertion of a hierarchical position that is not appropriate between friends, even if the advice is attributed to another source. Whatever the reason, we find that in this context it is only the more senior and experienced speakers who engage in the quotation and (re)interpretation of prior cultural texts. The use of such texts lends an authoritative weight to the speaker’s advice, but the act of exegesis and reinterpretation itself also requires or perhaps instantiates a kind of authority. Engaging in this particular type of cultural bricolage is an enactment of a particular cultural role and status which is only open to certain speakers. Or, to turn it around, engaging in (or avoiding) this type of cultural bricolage is one way in which speakers enact particular social roles and identities. The question of who is authorized to reuse which types of texts and in which contexts is an important locus for identity construction and enactment.

Conclusion This paper has explored various aspects of cultural bricolage in the speeches at Japanese wedding receptions. We have seen how Japanese speakers recontextualize conventional phrases within each wedding ceremony and also how they frame certain texts as quotations of other, prior texts. As Bahktin (1986) notes, these recontextualizations occur with varying degrees of awareness. Speakers may consciously frame an utterance as a reproduction of another’s words, distinctly separating the “original text” from their own interpretation. But they also routinely reuse standard phrases with no felt disjuncture between their own utterance and those of prior speakers. Sometimes the recontextualizations are slight, congratulating this particular couple rather than another. Sometimes, as with some of the quoted texts, the recontextualizations radically reshape the meaning of the recreated text. Bricolage is not a static reproduction, but a process of shifting and changing cultural meanings, sometimes gradually, and sometimes radically. This paper has explored the process of bricolage in one particular context, but such reusing and reshaping of prior utterances occurs all around us, not least of all in our practice as scholars. As I have done in this paper, we too reuse the words and ideas of others—both those of prior scholars and the words of our informants—as we attempt to reshape them into something new. And, like the wedding speakers discussed here, it is partly through our skill in culturally approved ways of doing this that we enact our identities as scholars. 86

“Something Old, Something New”

References Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). The problem of speech genres (V. W. McGee, Trans.). In C. Emerson & M. Holquist (Eds.), Speech genres and other late essays (pp. 60–102). Austin: University of Texas Press. Barber, K. (1999). Quotation in the constitution of Yorùbá oral texts. Research in African Literatures, 30 (2), 17–41. Barber, K. (2003). Text and performance in Africa. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 66 (3), 324–333. Bauman, R. (1996). Transformations of the word in the production of Mexican festival drama. In M. Silverstein & G. Urban (Eds.), Natural histories of discourse (pp. 301–328). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bauman, R. (2004). A world of others’ words: Cross-cultural perspectives on intertextuality. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Bauman, R., & Briggs, C. L. (1990). Poetics and performance as critical perspectives on language and social life. Annual Review of Anthropology, 19, 59–88. Dunn, C. D. (2004). Cultural models and metaphors for marriage: An analysis of discourse at Japanese wedding receptions. Ethos, 32 (3), 348–373. Dunn, C. D. (2005). Genre conventions, speaker identity and creativity: An analysis of Japanese wedding speeches. Pragmatics, 15 (2/3), 205–228. Dunn, C. D. (2006). Formulaic expressions, Chinese proverbs, and newspaper editorials: Exploring type and token interdiscursivity in Japanese wedding speeches. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 16 (2), 153–172. Edwards, W. (1989). Modern Japan through its weddings: Gender, person and society in ritual portrayal. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. Irvine, J. T. (1996). Shadow conversations: The indeterminacy of participant roles. In M. Silverstein & G. Urban (Eds.), Natural histories of discourse (pp. 131–159). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1966 [1962]). The savage mind (G. Weidenfeld, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Scollon, R. (2004). Intertextuality across communities of practice. In C. L. Moder & A. Martinovic-Zic (Eds.), Discourse across languages and cultures (pp. 149–176). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Silverstein, M. (2005). Axes of evals. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 15 (1), 6–22. Silverstein, M., & Urban, G. (1996). The natural history of discourse. In M. Silverstein & G. Urban (Eds.), Natural histories of discourse (pp. 1–17). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Mailing Address: Dept. of Sociology, Anthropology & Criminology University of Northern Iowa Cedar Falls IA 50614–0513 U.S.A. Email: [email protected]

87

88

Cultural Identity and the Production and Understanding of Sign Language Signs: Identifying, Interpreting, and Preserving the Cultural Information in Iconic Signs

William J. HERLOFSKY Nagoya Gakuin University

1. Introduction There are two common myths about sign languages that I often encounter in one form or another when I tell someone that I am involved in sign language research. The first myth or assumption that people seem to have is that there is one international sign language that every deaf person knows and uses. The other myth or misunderstanding that many people have, a myth that is somewhat contradictory to the first myth, is that all sign languages are surrogate languages that are merely the manual equivalent of the dominant spoken language in the region where they are used. Though both of these myths are inaccurate, there are reasons for their existence. One reason for the first myth is that, since many of the signs of sign languages are to some extent iconic in origin, a relatively high percentage of signs are somewhat understandable to people from different sign language backgrounds. For example, the sign for TO MEET someone (see figure 1a in the following section), where two extended forefingers on each hand (which are sometimes called classifiers, see Herlofsky, 2007 for discussion), are brought together in an iconic imitation of two people meeting, is understood by most deaf people around the world, because many sign languages use (classifier-like) forefingers coming together in this way to indicate two people meeting. As for the second myth, most sign languages studied so far do seem to have a counterpart that is, more or less, a manual version of the dominant spoken language. This is also the case in Japan as well, where there is a manual version of Japanese called Signed Japanese (SJ, see section 3 for discussion). Perhaps a few more details on the minority/majority language relationship, and the language-contact-like situation that exists in Japan is in order. Most, if not all, sign languages are minority languages surrounded by majority spoken languages and cultures. On average, only about 0.1% of the general population is deaf, and so, since Japan has a population of a little over 120 million, statistically, there should be more than 100,000 deaf people in Japan (These data and what follows are based on a summary of the information found in Inaba, 2007; Nakamura, 2006; Zen-Nihon-Roa-Renmei, 2007). The definition of deafness, however, is problematic. There is a range of hearing ability, from zero to hard-of-hearing to hearing. There are also people who were born deaf, those who lose their hearing when they were young, and those who lose their hearing, for one reason or another, later in life. And it is estimated that 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents, which means only 10%, or about 10,000 deaf children, are born to deaf parents, and acquire their first language, Japan Sign Language (JSL), naturally 89

William J. Herlofsky

by observing their parents and those around them. It is also estimated that about 50, 000 people in Japan use JSL as their primary language, and maybe ten times that number, about half a million hearing and hard-of-hearing people (for whom Japanese is a first language) are studying and/or using sign language. It is this large group (which includes interpreters) that might even prefer to use SJ rather than JSL. It is clear, then, that JSL is a minority language in Japan, dominated by a majority hearing culture and spoken language. In addition, deaf children in deaf schools in Japan, until recently, were not allowed to use JSL on school premises (This is still the case unofficially in many deaf schools, although ‘officially’ JSL is now allowed.). Deaf children were expected to learn the majority spoken language, Japanese, first, and it was thought that using JSL would interfere with the acquisition of Japanese. The official educational goal was to first have the deaf children become proficient at speaking Japanese, and in reading lips, so that once they graduated from the school system, they could become participating members of (the hearing) society. Although this may be an admirable goal in theory, in practice, the language ability of the deaf children was less than ideal. The deaf children often spent considerable time and effort in special classes to help them with pronunciation and lip-reading, with mixed results. They were allowed to use sign language in their free time away from school, and it was then thought that eventually they would become bilingual in Japanese and JSL, with Japanese, the national language, as their first and primary language. In fact, the results were that instead of producing bilingual children, what often happened was there were children finishing their education semi-lingual in two languages: Japanese and JSL. In addition to the language problem, cultural identity also becomes a problem for many young adults. With hearing parents, and an oral Japanese educational system, many young deaf children lack knowledge of what it means to be deaf, and many do not even know what JSL is, until they reach young adulthood. A full discussion of these issues is not within the scope of this paper (see Nakamura, 2006 for discussion), but some related issues that focus on language in relation to culture and identity, will be discussed in the following sections. In section 2, examples of iconicity in signs, and illustrations of differences and similarities in different sign languages will be given, and in section 3, examples of differences between JSL and SJ will be illustrated, followed by a brief conclusion in section 4.

2. Different Signs and Cultures in Different Countries As stated above, many of the signs in the sign languages of the world are iconic in origin, and because of this, some, like 1a, TO MEET, mentioned in the previous section, are understandable inter-linguistically. Many other signs are not so transparent. For example, consider signs 1b and 1c below.

1a 90

1b

1c

1d

1e

Cultural Identity and the Production and Understanding of Sign Language Signs

These signs mean MAN and WOMAN, respectively, in JSL, and such thumb and pinky genderdifferentiated signs are somewhat uncommon in sign languages, and not transparent to deaf people from other sign language backgrounds, even though they are iconic in nature. In fact, these signs appear to have been borrowed from the Japanese hearing culture, where they are gestural tokens, with similar but somewhat different meanings (somewhat less than elegant referential terms meaning something like ‘my man’ and ‘my woman’, respectively). These handshapes can also be used in combination with other signs, as seen in 1d, the sign for FATHER, and 1e, the sign for MOTHER (again, see Herlofsky, 2007). These examples illustrate one of the few instances of a manual boundmorpheme prefix in JSL. Since JSL is a relatively young language (as sign languages are assumed to begin when deaf people gather together and form a community, the beginning of JSL is assumed to be about 1878, when the first school for the deaf was founded in Kyoto), manual inflections and other bound morphemes, such as affixes, are still rare. The touching of the cheek in 1d and 1e is a nonproductive prefix, and means something like ‘parental relative’, and so, in combination with the raised thumb in 1d indicates FATHER, and with the raised pinky in 1e indicates MOTHER. So far, the forefinger, the thumb, and the pinky have already been used to specify certain types of people, and that leaves us with only two other fingers, the middle finger and the ring finger, for specifying other people, and that is exactly what they do in the signs in 2a–d below.

2a

2b

2c

2d

These sign are used in JSL to refer to other family members. 2a means OLDER-BROTHER, and 2b means YOUNGER-BROTHER. Although 2a is somewhat iconic (‘an entity who is high’), it is not understandable to deaf people outside of Japan, and in fact could cause considerable misunderstanding outside of the Japanese deaf cultural community, among both deaf and hearing people. This is a case where the use of the fingers of the hand to refer to family members has developed rather systematically within the deaf culture in Japan, but for those who do not identify with this culture and its linguistic reference system, the sign can be misinterpreted and may even cause serious intercultural problems. The signs in 2c (OLDER-SISTER) and 2d (YOUNGERSISTER) should be safer, but care should still be taken, because at a distance, or for someone not familiar with JSL, they look much like 2a and 2b. By contrast, the sign to the left of 2a–d is the American Sign Language (ASL) fingerspelling handshape that represents the letter ‘T’, and therefore should be rather harmless, but this ‘T’, if used in Japan, would cause a reaction similar to what 2a might cause in the United States. Now let us consider signs in JSL and ASL that have different appearances but similar meanings and similar origins. The signs in 3, that is, 3a, 3b, and 3c, all have the same meaning, and are all iconic, but they are not understandable to deaf people from different cultures and sign language backgrounds.

91

William J. Herlofsky

3a

3b

3c

How can signs that are supposed to be iconic look so different? The signs in 3a and 3b are JSL signs, and they both mean NAME. 3a is used mainly in the western part of Japan, while 3b is used in the eastern part. The sign in 3a is an iconic representation of a name card on a lapel or pocket. The sign in 3b is a bit more complicated. The sign used to be signed a bit differently, with the non-dominant left hand more in front of the body with the palm facing upwards, and the thumb of the dominant right hand was then pressed down on the upturned left palm, as if giving a thumb print. This is in fact what was iconic about the sign; it was originally an imitation of a person providing a thumb to ‘sign’ his/her name. Many years ago in Japan, if a person did not have a personal name stamp, or could not sign his/her name in some other way, a thumb print was provided. Now, the question is how the ASL sign in 3c can look so different and still be iconic, with the same meaning of NAME. The reasons are both cultural and historical. In the United States as well, there were many people who sometimes needed to sign their name, but were not able to read or write. This group included many deaf people. In the United States, instead of a thumb print, people were often asked to draw an X where a signature should be. That is the X was provided in place of the signature or name of the person. The sign in 3c, the shape of the fingers, is intended to represent the X of the signature. In this way then, both 3b and 3c are iconic representations, from different cultures and different countries with different histories, for ways of providing some sort of substitute for a name; a thumb print in Japan, an X in America. These signs, then, illustrate how signs that look very different can still be iconic representations for the same thing, a name, even though the NAME has a bit different etymology in each country. Cultural differences and similarities can be seen in other signs as well.

4a

4b

4c

The sign in 4a is a sign in both ASL and JSL, but it has completely different meanings. In ASL the sign means HISTORY, and is an initialized sign with the fingerspelling handshape for H, the first letter in HISTORY, and then a movement something like a movement from the past (from behind) to the future (the front). In JSL it means something like SEEMS or MAYBE, and originated with tracing something like a question mark (?) in the air after a statement, to indicate that there is some 92

Cultural Identity and the Production and Understanding of Sign Language Signs

doubt about the statement. This, then, is an example of the same sign with different meanings in different sign languages. Now let us consider the signs in 4b and 4c. Although some people seem to think that creating an international sign language (one does exist) would make communication for deaf people around the world much easier, 4b and 4c are just two examples (although many, many more exist) of why much would be lost if an international sign language replaced many of the local sign languages. For example, the sign in 4b is the JSL sign for EAT. It is iconic in that the two extended fingers of the right hand represent chopsticks, an important part of the Japanese culture. The sign for EAT in ASL is a hand shaped like it’s holding a part of a sandwich up to the mouth. Both signs are not just words of a language, but part of the culture and heritage they represent. This internal culture and heritage is even clearer in 4c, although the iconicity and culture is not apparent without some explanation. Many years ago (and to a lesser extent, even today), the job possibilities for deaf people were rather limited. Many were employed, however, in places where the noise of workplace machines was very loud. If there was one advantage to employing deaf people, it was that they weren’t bothered by loud noises in the workplace. One of the places deaf people were often employed was at printing shops, where they worked around noisy printing presses. The motion imitated in 4c is the motion of evening off sheets of paper before stacking them, and so the sign means WORK. That is, this is the work that many deaf people had in the old days. Eliminating this sign and the one in 4b in favor of some international sign might make some communication smoother, but it would be at the loss of much cultural heritage of the deaf community in Japan.

3. Different Signs and Cultures within Japan As mentioned, in Japan, as in most countries, along with the natural signed language of the deaf, there is also a somewhat artificially constructed manual version of the dominant spoken language of the region. And, as indicated in the introduction, the manual version of Japanese is referred to as Signed Japanese (SJ). SJ is used by many hearing and hard-of-hearing people for whom Japanese is a first language, and it uses many of the handshapes of JSL, but with the grammar of Japanese. To begin to understand some of the differences, consider first the SJ sentence below, which means YET (5a), MARRIED (5b), NOT (5c), or ‘(I’m) not married yet’. (Notice that MARRIED (5b) is the MAN (thumb) and WOMAN (pinky) coming together.)

5a

5b

5c

The problem with this sentence is that the word order would be different in JSL, and the JSL sentence would also include the appropriate non-manual facial expressions. For example, consider 6 and 7 below. The sentence in 6 is a neutral statement of not being married, ‘(I’m not) married yet.’, similar to 5 but with the JSL word order, while 7 is a little bit more ‘worried’ statement, in which facial expressions and the distance between the hands in YET (7b) indicates marriage may 93

William J. Herlofsky

be still a long way off, and so the English translation might be something like ‘(I’m not) married yet !!’

6a

6b

7a

7b

Non-manual facial expressions, then, play a very important role in JSL grammar, while this aspect of deaf culture and language is often neglected in SJ. Now consider the SJ sentence in 8a–e below. The signs, in Japanese word order, are YESTERDAY (8a), EASILY (8b), SLEEP (8c), DIFFICULT/ COULDN’T (8d), DONE/-ED (8e), or ‘I couldn’t sleep very well last night.

8a

8b

8c

8d

8e

The JSL version below, uses three of the same signs, but in different order, with a little bit different effect.

9a

9b

9c

In the JSL sentence in 9, which has the same meaning as the SJ sentence 8, the EASILY/READILY sign in 9c (and 8b) is used without an overt manual negation marker (as is often the case in JSL), but the non-manual facial expression provides the necessary trigger for negation. Even hearing people who are proficient in JSL are sometimes reluctant to use the facial expression necessary for fluent JSL. This aversion is probably partially cultural in nature. Compared to European and deaf cultures, the hearing Japanese culture utilizes fewer and less exaggerated facial expressions in normal spoken conversations. This tendency seems to be carried over when sign language is used. Let us consider another SJ sentence. Sentence 10 is a SJ sentence that means ENTIRELY (10a), SEE (10b), NOT (10c), REASON (10d), NOT-SAY (10e), ‘(I’m) not saying (that I) don’t watch (movies) at all’. 94

Cultural Identity and the Production and Understanding of Sign Language Signs

10a

10b

10c

10d

10e

The JSL sentence in 11, with the same meaning as 10, is a model of brevity.

11a

11b

11c

There are signs in 11 that do not appear in 10, and these signs help to make the JSL sentence more efficient. The signs in 11 are SEE (11a) ZERO (11b) DIFFERENT (11c), or ‘It’s not (that I) see zero (movies).’ In a case where an interpreter is interpreting from Japanese for deaf people, 11 is much easier to understand than 10, though 10 is the more probable translation for an interpreter that has Japanese as a first language. From the above discussion it might appear that JSL sentences are always shorter and more efficient that the SJ sentences. This is not always the case. Consider, for example, the SJ sentence in 12 below, followed by the JSL sentence with the same meaning in 13.

12a

13a

13b

12b

13c

12c

13d

13e

13f

A translation of the signs in 12 is YOU (12a), SEXAGENARY-CYCLE (12b), WHAT?, and means ‘What is your sexagenary sign?’. The signs in 13 are YOU (13a), BORN (13b), MOUSE (13c), COW (13d), RABBIT (13e), WHAT, and mean, ‘You were born in (the year of) the mouse, cow, 95

William J. Herlofsky

rabbit, what?’ The main difference between 12 and 13 is that 12 uses the Sino-Japanese word eto, that means the sexagenary cycle of 12 years (which in 12b is simply fingerspelled E+TO), while 13 provides examples of the animals in the cycle, and then asks which animal in the cycle the person is. One more example of giving examples instead of Sino-Japanese words is 14 and 15 below.

14a

14b

15a

14c

15b

15g

15h

14d

15c

14e

15d

15i

15j

14f

15e

14g

15f

15k

15l

The signs in 14 are SOCIETY (14a), BROADCAST (14b), VARIOUS (14c), COMPANY (14c), CAPTIONS (14d), REQUEST (14e), APPLY (14f), and mean to ‘Apply to request captions from various broadcast companies’. The sentence in 15, like 13 above, provides examples and avoids the translation of Sino-Japanese. The signs in 15 are TELEVISION (15a), COMPANY (15b), FOREXAMPLE (15c),ASAHI (‘rising sun’) (15d), MAINICHI (‘everyday’) (15e), YOMI (‘read’) (15f) URI (‘sell’) (15g), VARIOUS (15h), SAME (15i), CAPTIONS (15j), REQUEST (15k), APPLY (15l), and mean to ‘Request the same captions from various television companies, for example, Asahi, Mainichi, and Yomiuri.’ Again, sentence 15 is different from 14 in that it avoids the direct translation of Sino-Japanese and instead gives examples. Let us consider two more examples before we conclude. Sentence 16 is a question.

16a 96

16b

16c

16d

16e

16f

Cultural Identity and the Production and Understanding of Sign Language Signs

The signs are WHITE (16a), DOG (16b), BLACK (16c), CAT (16d), LIKE (16e) WHICH (16f), and mean, ‘Which (do you) like (better), white dogs or black cats?’ There are two things interesting about this sentence. One is the sign in (16c), BLACK, that is formed by touching the hair. This, of course, assumes that the signer will have black hair, which is not true for the author of this paper. This sign, therefore, assume a certain amount of racial homogeneity. The other point of interest is that the WH-word is in the sentence final position. Now consider 17 below.

17a

17b

17c

17d

The signs are RABBIT (17a), EYE (17b), RED (17c), WHY (17d), and mean, ‘Why are a rabbit’s eyes red?’ This sentence is of interest because, like 16, the WH-word is again in the sentence final position. This will be discussed again in the conclusion.

4. Conclusion As discussed and illustrated in the previous sections, sign languages are not part of some internationally interpretable communication system. Each country has its own sign language, and many countries have more than one sign language, and these languages often include many dialects, and manual versions of the dominant spoken language. There are also many kinds of deaf people, and many kinds of non-deaf people who use different kinds of sign languages. Iconicity, however, does aid in making many concrete expressions understandable to people from different backgrounds (like TO MEET in 1a). On the other hand, the iconicity of sign language signs is not always transparent. Notice that since metonymy is also often involved in the formation of many signs, the only difference between a DOG (16b) and a RABBIT (17a) in JSL is the orientation of the hands. And since sign formation is also often influenced by cultural factors, intercultural differences can cause misunderstandings, like the JSL sign for OLDER BROTHER (2a), or the ASL fingerspelling for T, for people from different cultural backgrounds. And although there is a tendency for iconicity to be lost over time, and for there to be considerable influence from the dominant spoken language(s), there is much (deaf) cultural information contained in the sign language signs (as with EAT (3b), WORK (4c), and even BLACK (16c)), and aspects of grammar (i.e., questions and negation, see below), that reinforce the identity and solidarity of Deaf people (with a capital ‘D’, to indicate cultural identity), and so there are many aspects of present-day sign languages that should be preserved. For linguists, a number of sign language phenomena should be of interest. First, as illustrated in sentences (5–11), though spoken Japanese and SJ use negative sentences, JSL conveys the same meaning without directly using manual negatives, utilizing instead signs like YET (6b and 7b), EASILY (9c), and DIFFERENT (11c), and non-manual markers. Another point of interest is the fact that WH-words appear sentence finally in the example sentences 13f, 16f, and 17d. And, it appears that interpreters (who often identify with the hearing culture and have Japanese (spoken 97

William J. Herlofsky

and written) as a first language) should try to avoid the direct translation of Sino-Japanese in sign language (12b and 14a–d), and instead use examples that can illustrate the meaning of the SinoJapanese words (13b–e and 15a–h). I would like to conclude with one more comparison of SJ and JSL in 18 and 19 below:

18a

18b

18c

19

The SJ signs in 18 are WHY/HOW (18a), THAT+THING (18b: pointing finger for THAT, and cupped hands for THING) and KNOW+? (18c: the chest thump for KNOW, and the extended hand at the end of a question for the ‘?’), meaning ‘How did you know that?’. The JSL sign in 19 has the same meaning but appears to be a holistic sign that includes all the semantic content of 18. It would be nice if the present research paper helped some of the false myths about sign languages disappear, and maybe even encouraged others to do more research on JSL and other sign languages, so that some day, deaf people might ask hearing researchers, ‘How did you know that?’ *

I would once again like to thank the deaf group kusa-no-ne (‘Grassroots’) for their permission to use JSL illustrations from their book akusesu! rou-sha no shuwa (‘Access! Deaf Sign Language’) Akaishi-Shoten, Tokyo, 1998.

References Herlofsky, W. (2007). Iconic thumbs, pinkies and pointers: The grammaticalization of animate-entity handshapes in Japan sign language. In E. Tabakowska, C. Ljungberg & O. Fischer (Eds.), Insistent images (pp. 17–35). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Inaba, M. (2007). Shitte-imasu-ka? Choukaku-shougaisha to ichimon-ittou. Osaka: Kaihou-Shuppansha. Nakamura, K. (2006). Deaf in Japan: Signing and the politics of identity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Zen-Nihon-Roa-Renmei. (2007). Shin-shuwa handobukku (new JSL handbook). Tokyo: Sanseido.

Mailing Address: XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX E-mail: XXXXXXX

98

Dialect Speakers on Dialect Speech

Debra J. OCCHI Miyazaki International College

Introduction This paper focuses on the issues that emerge when dialect speakers, in this case speakers of Miyazaki dialect, broadly conceived, analyze and reflect on dialect speech appearing in local and national broadcast media. These discussions, written and oral, took place in the framework of classes conducted in Miyazaki, southern Kyushu, at the small liberal arts college where I teach in English. Two of the three data sets emerged from a Topics in Linguistics class taught in 2005 and 2007; the third was derived from an evening class taught in our 2007 Continuing Education program. The three sets of discussions were evoked by the analysis of recorded samples of dialect speech from broadcast media used in the context of teaching about dialect research in English to Japanese speakers. Two of these are based on dialects found in Miyazaki; the third was based on Aomori dialect in the Tohoku region. Both dialects are extremely negatively ranked in both intellectual and emotional terms according to Inoue F. (1983).

Departures from the NORM The data are the result of methodological explorations into what happens when the analyst abandons ‘taken-for-granted professional metalinguistic practices’ described in Bucholtz (2003: 404). First, the dialect speakers were non-NORM (non-mobile, older, rural, male). They were all college educated, or nearly so. The college students had all spent at least six months abroad on the college’s study abroad program, and the continuing education students had all traveled or resided outside Japan. The oldest of the students was in his mid-forties; most students were in their early twenties. Miyazaki is a rural prefecture with a population of about 1,000,000 whose economy is agricultural and tourist oriented, yet it has an urban center with a population of around 360,000 in which the college is located (“Miyazaki city,” 2008; “Miyazaki prefecture,” 2008). Over half the students were female. Another departure from normative metalinguistic practice was the choice of inauthentic dialect data for the speakers to analyze, that is, dialect speech produced for the sake of media broadcast. An interview with the dialect coach for Wakaba, a drama filmed locally, revealed what she considered typical practice in the television industry. The script is initially written in Standard Japanese (SJ), after which it is modified by the dialect coach, who in that case was an 99

Debra J. Occhi

actress originally from the town in which the drama was set. The script was then rewritten using a selected subset of dialectal features intended to create a sense of non-standardness while retaining comprehensibility for a nationwide audience. After all, when truly NORM-like normative dialect speakers are interviewed on television—usually in the wake of some natural disaster—their speech is subtitled in SJ for necessity. Viewers of television dramas are therefore consuming an inauthentic, stereotypical, and watered-down version of regional dialect, which is then uttered by an actor who is most likely not a native speaker of that dialect. Yet as we’ll see, dialect is a major aspect of character development, and dialect speakers will assign identity and other attributes to characters based on even a small sample of dialect speech. The third departure from typical field practice was the empowerment of consultants, in this case dialect speaking students, through instruction in the analytic metalinguistic toolkit. Students in the linguistics classes were trained in the methods of analysis through exposure to the media data in classes conducted in an active-learning pedagogical format. Other data in English was used to provide the basis for comparison and the opportunity to apply the concepts learned to the students’ language of instruction. Therefore the dialect speakers were neither NORMative nor naïve, and the dialect speech they analyzed was a deliberately inauthentic product intended for mass consumption (which is something I want to index by the phrase ‘dialect speech’ rather than the more typical ‘dialectal speech’). Furthermore, the analytic discussions took place in English. Though several types of analysis were conducted using the standard linguistic toolkit (e.g., phonetic transcription) this paper will focus on the contextualized enactment, that is, the entextualization (cf. Bauman & Briggs, 2003) of dialect as much as the speech itself. I concur with the sentiment that ‘folk-descriptions of registers tend to distort the social realities lived through them’ (Agha, 2007: 150). In this case, however, the distortion begins with the media’s construction and presentation of dialect speech and its speakers, which at the same time is didactic, promulgating the ideology of core-dominance-over-periphery that permeates Japan at the national level. That is, as actors portray dialect speech using characters, they enact fictional identities which purport to resemble those of actual individuals. Speakers’ evaluations of this media and its characters reveal nuances of positionality as well as their awareness of local and national ideological formations. Speakers also respond to characters with comparative statements about their own identities vis-à-vis dialect, current or imagined. Also, learning which aspects of the data were met with particular interest for the dialect speakers and myself was revealing of positionalities that would otherwise have remained unexplored. The statements of individuals will be presented here as such.

Dialect Speech by a Dialectal Speaker: Sono Mama Higashi aka Gov. Higashikokubaru Dialect in Japan is now said to be in a ‘third wave’ stage of reassessment/revaluation after first losing its status as the basic state of Japanese upon creation of the Tokyo-based standard, and then suffering official eradication efforts (Kobayashi 2006). Many studies on dialect have focused on either the mapping of features or on language attitude. These are two areas of interest that emerge readily in non-specialist discussions as well and quickly evoke statements of positionality. A case in point from recent media is the nation’s catchphrase of the year for 2007, as determined by the publisher Jiyu Kokumin-sha, publisher of the longselling Gendai Yôgo no Kiso Chishiki “Encyclopedia of Contemporary Words” (Schreiber 2007). The winning catchphrase was uttered by Hideo Higashikokubaru, who is the recently elected prefectural governor of Miyazaki and formerly, a comedian known as Sono Mama Higashi. Dogen ka sen to ikan ‘something has to 100

Dialect Speakers on Dialect Speech

change’ was the motto that swept him to victory in a snap election in January 2007 following a bid-rigging scandal over which the former governor resigned. In Standard Japanese the phrase would be something like Dô ni ka shinakereba naranai. Though Higashikokubaru usually speaks in rapid Standard Japanese in interviews and other media appearances, he has chosen this dialectal motto, and writes some sections of his memoirs in dialect with standard transliterations. When I played an audio clip of his motto to an adult continuing education class in the spring of 2007, one man said it was koishii ‘made him homesick’ since he and the governor came from the same hometown, Miyakonojo in western Miyazaki. In the next breath, he added that it was a risky gambit, since ‘people from north Miyazaki won’t understand it.’ He thus reiterated local knowledge that what is currently Miyazaki prefecture spans across dialect divisions which in some cases correspond to whether locals drink imo, soba or mugi shochu (sweet potato, buckwheat, or barley vodka). He reasonably speculated that Higashikokubaru’s utterance was too specifically linked to their small hometown of Miyakonojo rather than to the prefecture at large and wouldn’t ring true to the populace. Six months later (31 January 2008), the pop singer Koda Kumi (who is from Kyoto) was interviewed by DJ Pocky, a Nichinan native from south Miyazaki, on a local radio promotion for her new album. When she said that she wants to come to Miyazaki, he suggested that she learn dialect and then said the catchphrase, which by that point represented Miyazaki to the nation. Locals hearing this would know that the DJ himself, an outspoken user and supporter of dialect, may have said it differently as he comes from donge territory, donge being the local variant of donna/dochira that Higashikokubaru utters as dogen. However, he and speakers of other Miyazaki varieties have also taken on the phrase; when I recently asked a man in his sixties how he would say it in Kiyotake dialect, he initially refused the question repeating ‘oh, we understand it,’ and had to be pressed into giving his version, donge ka senai to ikan. Thus in enacting Miyazaki to Koda and other outsiders, it appears that Higashikokubaru’s catchphrase, however peripheral his dialect is even within Miyazaki prefecture, has become the utterance of choice. The ‘homesick’ fellow from the continuing education class, a man in his late forties, went on to say that he now speaks in the more standardlike way associated with Miyazaki City and his job as a public servant. Yet he bears nostalgia not only for Miyakonojo dialect but also for the dialect of Fukuoka (a larger city), which he learned while a student there. He claims to switch to some extent when visiting his hometown or his college friends, though he also claimed attrition. In contrast, a thirtyish woman in that class, also a public servant, claimed to have retained her dialect though she uses standardlike speech at work, also using her hometown dialect and another dialect as well in her side jobs as an English teacher of young children. She framed her dialect and standard switching behavior as consciously performed, necessary and stressful. She furthermore found irony in the fact that in order to succeed as a teacher of English she had to fit in as a dialect speaker in the small towns where she taught children, since she communicated with parents who did not typically speak English. We can compare this speaker’s situation to that of the JA agricultural extension worker “Hayashi-san” who in Sunaoshi’s study uses Ibaraki dialect in solidarity with her farmwife interlocutors (Sunaoshi, 2004). There is a resonance with Sunaoshi’s conclusion that non-standard speakers are aligning to local rather than national ideologies. Conversely, we should also consider the positionality of the speaker Inoue Miyako refers to as “Sawada-san,” a Tohoku native living in Tokyo. This woman’s extensive use of feminine forms led to her nickname kashira no Sawada-san (‘Sawada-san [who always says] kashira,’ a polite hedge considered very feminine). When Inoue complimented Sawada-san on her speech, she learned of her Tohoku origins. In this case, the dialectal speaker said that speaking Standard 101

Debra J. Occhi

was part of her adult identity, and switching back to Tohoku dialect even when speaking to her childhood friends in her hometown would lead to a shift in personality. Interestingly, Inoue reports that codeswitching to Standard is more readily rejected by men from Kansai, for similar reasons (M. Inoue, 2006: 270). Learning about how multidialectal Japanese adults position themselves in discussions of codeswitching in daily life and the hazards thereof creates a position from which to reexamine academic theorizing on what sociolinguistics ‘should’ be doing. So while Bucholz rightly critiques sociolinguistics’ traditional focus on authenticity, rurality, and the like, we need to keep in mind the social fact that when rural speakers go urban in Japan they take on Standard Japanese as protective coloration, as Inoue M.’s kashira no Sawada-san has done. Data from my college students, who are in the acquisition phase of adult Japanese including keigo honorific language (cf. Dunn, 1999) supports this claim. Finding speakers of peripheral dialects in core urban settings would be a formidable task for any fieldworker who may lack preestablished connections with urban migrants. Peripheral dialect use in core locations emerges in gatherings of school alumni from peripheral towns, both as real events and as imagined in media data, but not in the public eye—except in the case of Higashikokubaru and there, limited to a key phrase. Each of the last six years that I have taught an introductory course on Japanese Society at Sophia University in Tokyo, I discuss these kinds of regionality and core-periphery issues. And each year one or more students will approach me individually and mention sotto voce that they are natives of a peripheral prefecture, but they do not volunteer this information to the class or want me to share it. Apparently they don’t use dialect when speaking Japanese to their classmates either. I take this as a kind of ‘passing’ behavior. Let us now turn back to the examination of dialect speech in media and reactions thereto. Given the high probability of a peripheral speaker’s accommodation to SJ following relocation to the core, especially for female speakers, one might imagine that this challenge would make fine fodder for a television heroine’s struggle. A series of recent studies (by Okamoto, Shibamoto Smith & Occhi) indicate, however, that we tend to see a regional heroine who, against logic, is not at all a speaker of the dialect of her region, rather aligning to a core dialect or Standard, though women who surround her do use the peripheral dialect. Use of this data with dialect-speaking university students has provoked an intriguing set of data echoed in reported public reactions at the local level to an NHK drama filmed in the Miyazaki area in 2003.

Dialect Speech in Drama I: Wakaba The local press was very excited when the Osaka branch of NHK decided to locate the morning drama Wakaba in Obi town in southern Miyazaki and in Kobe. There had been a 39year gap since the last asadora and 37 yrs since the last use of Miyazaki as a filming location; since then it has become the site of at least half a dozen other dramas and feature films (Miyazaki Convention & Visitors Bureau, 2006). I did fieldwork on Wakaba by interviewing the producer, a dialect coach, and the local government liason, as well as observing filming on location and talking to associated locals there. From this I expanded an inquiry of Miyazaki dialect through using the Wakaba media with college students. It seemed potentially interesting and nonrandom that the heroine, roughly an age-mate, spoke core (Kobe) vs. regional dialect despite having lived in Miyazaki throughout high school and college. Because the heroine’s preference for core dialect was an obvious feature of this and other NHK dramas I thought students would call her on it, but 102

Dialect Speakers on Dialect Speech

rather they picked on her interlocutor’s speech forms as age-inappropriate (e.g., hanashitage na yo), and thus nonauthentic. Other young female characters’ dialect performance was similarly criticized (strong, bad, etc.). The one character to whom students reacted favorably was a native of Miyakonojo, playing a character from Nichinan, who received judgements of ‘gentle, polite, good dialect speaker.’ The focus on Wakaba’s aunt as the ‘one true dialectal speaker’ with aesthetic appeal for the students as well as their rejection of ‘dialectlike’ others echoed the broader reaction. An interview with the city office worker assigned the temporary post of liaison for issues connected with Wakaba revealed that he had suffered a barrage of calls from complaining locals. The Miyazaki dialect coach for the drama had explained to me freely in an interview that the Miyazaki dialect used was a selectively manufactured and watered down version made for the sake of comprehension by a nationwide audience. Thus forms that sounded archaic to my students were put in the mouths of agemate characters. Another objectionable manipulation was the casting of a male actor who spoke Satsuma dialect, a neighboring and stronger sounding dialect from Kagoshima; this move was rejected by local listeners.

Dialect Speech in Drama II: Yama Onna/Kabe Onna For a further investigation of how dialect speakers react to dialect speech in dramas, I thought it would be interesting to replicate a study on language attitude. Fumio Inoue’s study employs a questionnaire on attitude using opposing predetermined variables on a Likert scale. Some were specific, including ‘un/suitable for young women;’ others were generalized reactions such as ‘like/ dislike.’ The data was taken from locally broadcast media, including some local dialect, some Standard Japanese, and notably, Tsugaru dialect speech taken from the fall 2006 Fuji TV drama Yama Onna/Kabe Onna “Mountain Woman/Wall Woman.” (Fuji TV, 2007) As the title may suggest, the main theme of this romantic comedy/drama is the imagined conflict between busty and flat-chested women, set in the workplace of a handbag department of a classy department store called Marukoshi (a fictional name made by mixing the names of two actual stores, Mitsukoshi and Daimaru) in Tokyo. There are two ‘mountain women;’ Tokyo natives who rival the ‘wall woman’ in sales contests and general popularity. The top salesperson and main character is the tall, beautiful and flatchested Megumi Aoyagi, who switches between flawless Standard Japanese at work and rough Tsugaru-ben with fellow dialectal speakers in her evening hangout, the Dainingu Kafe. Her childhood friend Iguchi seems unable to code-switch at all, despite the fact that he travels throughout Japan as an artist who specializes in installing decorative and traditionally inspired walls. To Megumi’s dismay, he is the subject of harsh criticism when he addresses attendees of an exhibit of his work at the ritzy department store where Yanagi-san works. The data used in replicating Inoue’s attitude survey included one audio clip of Megumi Aoyagi speaking SJ with her superior Kuzunuma (as speakers C and D) and one of her speaking dialect with Iguchi (E and F). Thus the students were unaware that one person was speaking in two dialect samples. I was particularly interested in their reactions to her speech given the earlier research findings about heroines’ preferential use of core dialects in television dramas. The major overall finding which emerged from this exercise was that the speakers from Miyazaki, one stigmatized, peripheral dialect region, don’t hold any sympathy for dialect from another such area, in this case Tsugaru, and thus rated the speakers along the same general lines as Tokyo natives did. (They also criticized Inoue F.’s alignment of ‘old words’ with dialect, as they were aware that 103

Debra J. Occhi

their dialect differs from that of their elders.) Having replicated Inoue’s quantitative study, I then took a qualitative tack and played the drama to show that Megumi Aoyagi was a bidialectal speaker. Since the content of the speech as well as the code-switching behavior exhibited in the scene are quite evocative of the core ideology towards dialect and dialectal speakers, I thought it would be a valuable tool to evoke discussion of dialect speech in drama. Here is a transcription, taken from the subtitles, and English translation of the scene. Note that the dialect speech in transcription is not as phonetically marked as its actual rendering. Probably the subtitles are intended to aid understanding for nonusers of the dialect, including viewers who may be hard of hearing, and would therefore be less rich in dialectal forms than the speech of the actors. Dialectal features are bold faced. A few more comments about the transcription are in order for non-Japanese readers. Japanese are educated using texts written in Standard Japanese and are strongly socialized into using it in formal speech settings such as oral reports given in childhood classrooms on up to adulthood, at which time they are expected to master the honorific register. Under this framework, the Iguchi character’s inability to use Standard or make a simple self-introduction is rather unrealistic, particularly for speakers in his (thirtyish) age cohort. We can see the construction of his buffoonlike character—and the portrayed difficulty his childhood friend Aoyagi faces in articulating his presence in her life ‘passing’ as a Tokyoite—as further evidence of Standardbased ideology against dialects and their users. Also, it should be mentioned that the use of basic (standard) politeness forms overrides the occurrence slots for some dialectal morphology, especially utterance endings. Thus the utterance-final use of dialect forms in this excerpt is not surprisingly reflected in the subtitles highlighted in the in the excerpt, though other forms audible in speech were elided. Even viewers who could not hear the speech would know that it is dialectal from observing the variation in utterance endings. Yama Onna/Kabe Onna Excerpt Episode #10 Setting: Marukoshi Dept. Store Scene 1: Art Project Marukoshi, 8/29 (Wed) to 9/2 (Sun) 次世代を担う カリスマアーティスト展 ∼王子たちその素顔∼  丸越デパートで開かれたカリスマアーティスト展を青柳恵美（伊東美咲） 、毬谷まり え（深田恭子）たちが見学。展示会には、井口昌平（西島秀俊）も参加しているからだ。 その会場に、黒板リカ（三浦理恵子）がロンドン店店長の岡島常務（小野寺昭）を発見。 リカは岡島が何のために帰国したのかを調べると恵美たちに告げる。 井口： しゃがんこんの井口です いやいや こったな人前でしゃべるなんて 初めてなんでー いやー何 しゃべったら いいんだべが？ Megumi: 井口。。。 左官っつうのは飛鳥時代のころからある大工と並ぶ伝統的な職業だじゃ オラだば毎日土と格闘して苦労してら あー 京都聚楽土と淡路浅黄土を配合した ら。。。 104

Dialect Speakers on Dialect Speech

Woman A: 何言ってか 全然分かんない Woman B: ホント 外国の人？ Woman A: 名前は日本語だったわよ Woman B: フッフフ。。。 Iguchi: いやいや。塗り壁は奥が深いのっす (laughter) あ。。。オラの住んでるとこだば。

(louder laughing) Megumi: あーもう！ She runs to the stage and takes the mike お客さまお静かにお願いします。彼がしゃべているのは津軽弁です 分かりにくいと思いますが聞いてあげてください 彼は一所懸命話してるんですから！

The audience looks with surprise Marie claps: 主任かっこいい！ Megumi: あ。。し。。失礼しました続きをどうぞ she hands mike back, runs from stage Kuzunuma: 青柳バカ なにを。。 then in office, to Megumi with Okajima present Kuzunuma: 勝手に壇上に上がってー しかも お客さまに対して何だ あの言いぐさは！

Megumi: 申し訳ありませんでした bows Kuzunuma: そもそもあのアーティスト展は岡島常務が 丸越本店を日本の文化の発信基 地にすべく発栄したことなんだそれを台なしにして！ Megumi: ホントに 申し訳ありませんでした bows Okajima: いやー いいんだよ 君が バッグ売り場売り上げトップの青柳君か？ Megumi: あ。。。はい Okajima: まあ ロンドンと比べたら日本人の文化的意識はいまだに低い ハッハッハ。。。君が怒るのは無理はないだろう eyes meet, Megumi steps back もういい  仕事に戻りなさい Megumi: はい。turns and walks away 何だあの目は shudders ああ。。。 Scene 2: in izakaya

Yuko looks at flyer from exhibit: うわぁ 井口君いつの間に偉くなったの？ Kenji:「次世代を担う」かすごいね Yuko: ねえ Megumi: 今度海外に行くんだって壁塗りに Yuko: 壁塗りに？ Kenji: 壁塗りに？ Megumi:「壁壁」うるさい Yuko: クッ。自分でいったんじゃん Both: ね Kenji: あっ いっらしゃい Yuko: あっ いっらしゃーい Iguchi enters Megumi: うん？ 105

Debra J. Occhi

Kenji: 今ちょうどね井口君の噂してたとこ Yuko: うん Iguchi: オラも いきなし呼ばれて何が何だがさっぱりと分からねえ Yuko: 外国さ 行くんだってな？ 壁塗りに Iguchi: まだ はっきし決まってねえけんど あっ こいつさ一杯やってけ オラからだ Megumi: えっ？ Iguchi: 助けてけえた礼だ Yuko: 助けた？何？それ Kenji: 気になると海峡 Iguchi: オラの津軽弁を客が笑ってたらこいつか助けにきたんだじゃ ちゃんと 話こ聞けって客を どなりつけてきた Yuko: やー相変わらず気強えなあ Megumi: どなったわけでねえ 注意しただけだ 後で上司にこっぴどく絞られた あん たのせいだ Iguchi: 気にすんでねえ お前（おめえ）の気持ちはよーく分かってら Megumi: えっ？ Iguchi: 隠さなくたっていいって お前（おめえ）オラに惚れてるべ Megumi: 何しゃべってんだ バカ あれは郷土愛だ 郷土愛 Iguchi: へば 乾杯 Megumi: あ。。。乾杯

(English translation) Episode #10 Setting: Marukoshi Dept. Store Scene 1: Art Project Marukoshi, 8/29 (Wed) to 9/2 (Sun) Carrying the next generation Charisma Artist Exhibition —the bare faces of those princes— Marie, Rika, Megumi enter the exhibit, Marie bumps into a guard who’s soon to retire. They see the sign; Iguchi’s photo is prominent. Marie finds Iguchi’s exhibit and says ‘is it art? it’s just a wall to me’ and there’s another reference to the ‘wall problem.’ They go in to the auditorium and Rika spots Managing Director Okajima (on the walkway above) who’s just back from London where he runs a branch of Marukoshi. The girls speculate about his return. Rika tells Megumi that she’ll check around to find out why he’s back. The event begins and Iguchi is introduced as ‘top batter.’ He emerges onto the stage amidst a stream of fog that he fights at with one hand and bows. Iguchi: I’m Iguchi the plasterer, um, it’s the first time for me to speak in front of a lotta people like this … hm, what the heck should I say? (Megumi: Iguchi …) Plastering walls is a thing from the Asuka era [552–645 AD], yeah, it’s a traditional profession alongside carpentry for a guy like me, it’s a daily struggle fighting with the mud … oh, and if it’s a compound of Kyoto Shuraku mud and Awaji pale yellow mud … 106

Dialect Speakers on Dialect Speech

Woman A: What’s he saying? I don’t get it at all Woman B: Yeah, is he a foreigner? Woman A: His name was in Japanese Woman B: hehehe Iguchi: um, wall coating is profound (laughter) uh, about the place I live … (louder laughing) Megumi: Oh, enough! (she runs to the stage and takes the mike) Honored guests, I ask for your silence. What he’s speaking is Tsugaru dialect. I think it’s hard to understand, but please give it a listen because he’s speaking from the heart! (The audience looks with surprise) Marie claps: Kewl, Boss! Megumi: Ah, e-excuse me, please continue (she hands mike back, runs from stage) Kuzunuma: Aoyagi—Idiot! What the … (then in office, to Megumi with Okajima present) Arbitrarily taking the stage and then, talking to the customers like that! Megumi: I’ve got no excuse (bows) Kuzunuma: In the first place, this art exhibit was the base for Managing Director Okajima’s vision of promulgating Japanese culture at Marukoshi’s main store—and you ruined it! Megumi: Truly, I’ve got no excuse (bows) Okajima: No, it’s alright. You, you’re Yanagi the top bag seller? Megumi: um, yes … Okajima: Well, compared to London, Japanese still have a low cultural consciousness hahaha … Your anger really wasn’t uncalled for (eyes meet, Megumi steps back) That’s enough. Get back to work. Megumi: Yes … (turns and walks away) what’s up with those eyes (shudders) euwww … Scene 2: in the pub Harada Yuko looks at flyer from exhibit: Wow, Iguchi. When did he become a VIP? Harada Kenji: Carrying the next generation? Amazing yeah Yuko: uh-huh Megumi: He said next he’s going abroad to plaster walls Yuko: To plaster walls? Kenji: To plaster walls? Megumi: Walls! Walls! Lay off! Yuko: heh—didn’t you say it yourself? Y & K: yeah! Kenji: Oh, welcome! Yuko: Oh, Welcome! 107

Debra J. Occhi

(Iguchi enters) Megumi: Oh? Kenji: We were just talking about you Yuko: yep Iguchi: Yeah, I don’t get it either, they called me up all of a sudden Yuko: You’re going abroad to plaster walls? Iguchi: It’s still not decided but … oh, get this guy a drink please, it’s on me Megumi: huh? Iguchi: It’s my thanks for your rescue Megumi: Rescue? what’s that? Kenji: This is getting interesting (+ a Japanese pun) Iguchi: When the audience laughed at my Tsugaru dialect she bailed me out. She shouted at them and told ‘em to listen up Yuko: Yep, as strongwilled as ever Megumi: I didn’t shout, I just instructed them. After that the boss really wrung my neck. It’s your fault. Iguchi: Don’t worry, I reeally understand how you feel Megumi: eh? Iguchi: You don’t have to hide it. You’re in love with me. Megumi: Say what? You idiot. It’s love for our hometown. Love for our hometown. Iguchi: Whatever. Cheers! Megumi: uh, cheers! The denouement of showing the bidialectal speaker on this drama clip opened up a discussion of identity relative to role/place/persona and dialect similar to that offered by the multidialectal woman mentioned earlier. However in this case, the students have not entered the career stage yet, so they focused on their experiences as young adults going through job interviews and similar experiences. Students discussed the difficulty of facing job interviews (even in nearby Fukuoka), in which not only the use of keigo politeness forms but also Standard Japanese was expected. They came up with a range of potential scenarios in which SJ would be used as well as specific triggers, including the wearing of (white-collar) uniforms or business suits similar to those seen in the drama. One student said that though his father, a small-business owner, was quite a raconteur in dialect, it was not so crucial for him to acquire those specific skills, since he planned to engage in different and globalized social networks in which he would use not only SJ but also English. Though the emotional values associated with one’s own dialect remain very strong, the overall acceptance of a public/private codeswitching rule is rather less problematized for these speakers than the ‘competing valorizations’ concept would suggest. These young adults expressed feelings of affection towards dialect, particularly as it indexes intimacy, yet expressed a thoroughly modern discourse about its place. We can conclude that students share the ‘when in Rome’ philosophy that has proliferated in post WWII Japan. Dialects are no longer overtly being eradicated, since the core-periphery ideological dynamic ensures that migrants to urban centers will conform. What is lesser known is what may happen in the opposite situation, when urban natives move into rural areas. Do they in fact plan to adapt, as did the Aomori-bound bride played by Setsuko Hara in Yasujiro Ozu’s 1947 film Setsubun? 108

Dialect Speakers on Dialect Speech

References Agha, A. (2007). Language and social relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bauman, R., & Briggs, C. L. (2003). Voices of modernity: Language ideologies and the politics of inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bucholtz, M. (2003). Sociolinguistic nostalgia and the authentication of identity. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7 (3), 398–416. Dunn, C. D. (1999). Public and private voices: Japanese style shifting and the display of affective intensity. In G. B. Palmer & D. J. Occhi (Eds.), Languages of sentiment: Cultural constructions of emotional substrates (pp. 107–130). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge & the discourse on language (A. M. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: Pantheon Books. Fuji TV. (2007). Yama onna, kabe onna. from http://www.fujitv.co.jp/yamakabe/staff/index.html Hanks, W. F. (1996). Language and communicative practices. Boulder: Westview Press. Inoue, F. (1980). Hoogen no imeeji. Gengo Seekatsu, 341, 48–56. Inoue, F. (1983). Hoogen imeeji tahenryookaiseki ni yoru hoogen kukaku. In H. T. H. K. Kinenkai (Ed.), Gendai hoogengaku no kadai (pp. 71–98). Tokyo: Meiji Shoin. Inoue, F. (1989). Kotobazukai no shinfuukee. Tokyo: Akiyama Shoten. Inoue, F. (1993). Kachi no takai hoogen, hikui hoogen. Gengo, 22 (9), 20–27. Inoue, F. (1999). Chihoo hoogen to shakai hoogen no rentaisee: Shakai hoogengaku no kenkyuu bun’ya. Nihongogaku, 13 (11), 24–33. Inoue, M. (2006). Vicarious language: Gender and linguistic modernity in Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. Irvine, J. (1989). When talk isn’t cheap: Language and political economy. American Ethnologist, 16 (2), 248–267. Jinnouchi, M. (2006). Hoogen no nenreesa: Wakamono o chuushin ni. Nihongogaku, 25 (1), 42–49. Jugaku, A. (1979). Nihongo to onna. Tokyo: Iwanami Shinsho. Jugaku, A. (1983). Nihonjin no kii-wa-do ‘rashisa.’ Kokugogaku, 133, 45–54. Kibe, N. (1999). Kyûshû chihô no chiiki hôgen to shakai hôgen. Nihongogaku, 13 (1), 212–219. Kuno, M. (2006). Gendai no ‘wakamono’ ga tukau hôgen. Nihongogaku, 25 (1), 6–17. Mashimo, S. (1969). Fujingo no kenkyuu. Tokyo: Tokyo-do Shuppan. Miyake, K. (2006). Keitai meeru ni arawareru hougen. Nihongogaku, 25 (1), 18–31. Miyake, Y. (1995). A dialect in the face of the standard: A Japanese case study. Paper presented at the the 21st Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Miyazaki city. (2008). from http://www.city.miyazaki.miyazaki.jp/www/contents/1199766995256/index.html Miyazaki Convention & Visitors Bureau. (2006). Miyazaki loco navi. Miyazaki prefecture. (2008). from http://www.pref.miyazaki.lg.jp/contents/org/honbu/toukei/jinko-setai/index.html Mizumoto, M. (2006). Terebi dorama to jitsu shakai ni okeru josei bunmatsushi shiyoo noo zure ni miru jendaa firuta. In Nihongo jendaa gakkai (Ed.), Nihongo to jendaa (pp. 73–94). Tokyo: Hituzi Shobo. Nakamura, M. (2005). Language ideologies in sex-differentiating the Japanese nation: The meiji period (1868–1912). Paper presented at the the International Pragmatics Association meetings. NHK. (2004). Nhk dorama gaido: Renzoku terebi shoosetsu ‘wakaba.’ Tokyo: Nippon Hoosou Shuppan Kyookai. NHK Hoso Yoron Chosajo. (1979). Nihonjin no kenminsee Tokyo: Nihon Hoso Shuppan Kyokai; reproduced in Sanada and Long 1997. Occhi, D. J., & Shibamoto Smith, J. S. (2007). “Real women,” “real men” the ideological landscape of Japanese language, dialect, and gender. Paper presented at the 10th International Pragmatics Conference. Okamoto, S., & Sato, S. (1992). Less feminine speech among young Japanese females. In K. Hall, M. Bucholtz & B. Moonwomon (Eds.), Locating power: Proceedings of the second berkeley women and language conference (Vol. 2, pp. 478–488). Berkeley: Berkeley Women and Language Group. Okamoto, S., & Shibamoto Smith, J. S. (2004). Japanese language, gender and ideology: Cultural models and real people. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Okamoto, S., & Shibamoto Smith, J. S. (2005). Constructing linguistic femininity in contemporary Japan: Scholarly and popular representations. Paper presented at the the International Pragmatics Association meetings. Sanada, S., & Long, D. (1997). Shakaigengogaku zushuu: Nihongo~eego kaisetsu. Tokyo: Akiyama Shoten. Satoo, R. (2006). Hoogen no fukkatsu to hoogen taikai. Nihongogaku, 25 (1), 60–68. Sawagi, M. (2006). Hoogen shiyoo no kinmiraiteki kadai. Nihongogaku, 25 (1), 70– 77. Shibamoto Smith, J. S. (2004). Language and gender in the (hetero)romance:“Reading” The ideal hero/ine through lover’s dialogue in Japanese romance fiction. In S. Okamoto & J. S. Shibamoto Smith (Eds.), Japanese language, gender, and ideology. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Shibamoto Smith, J. S., & Occhi, D. J. (2006). Authentic femininity in two dialects of Japanese. Paper presented at the the American Association for Applied Linguistics. Shibatani, M. (1990). The languages of Japan. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. Sunaoshi, Y. (2004). Farm women’s professional discourse in Ibaraki. In S. Okamoto & J. S. Shibamoto Smith (Eds.), Japanese language, gender, and ideology: Cultural models and real people (pp. 187–204). Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.

Mailing Address: Miyazaki International College 1405 Kano, Kiyotake-cho Miyazaki 889–1605 Email: [email protected]

109

110

Constructing Group Identity through Narratives on BBS

Akira SATOH Osaka University

1. Introduction In this study I investigate the function of narratives in Computer-Mediated Communication (or CMC), that is, constructing a group identity through storytelling across time and place, a topic that has not yet received much attention. More broadly, I investigate how people build interpersonal relationships through their language use in CMC. I examine so-called live reports posted on the bulletin board system (or BBS) of a Japanese web site for fans of a particular music group, focusing on the group identity built among the contributors. Although they are referred to in the vernacular as “reports,” they actually take the form of stories of shared experiences. I also look into the exchanges about “live reports” in the chat room. The research questions for this study are the following: What is a “live report” of a fan site? Why do fans tell stories? How do they tell stories? What kind of relationships do they build? How is identity indexed? By learning how individual contributors weave a web on-line with others, we can perhaps better understand the way a new form of communication such as the Internet contributes to the construction of interpersonal relationships and identities in our time.

2. Literature Review: Key Concepts At this point, I would like to review several key concepts that I draw on in this study. These are the concepts of narrative, on-line community, and communities of practice. 2.1 Narrative Since the seminal studies by Labov and Waletzky (1967) and Labov (1972), much attention has been paid to the forms of narrative. However, as Marra and Holmes (2004) point out, relatively little attention has been paid to the functions of narrative, such as building a particular identity and establishing social connections. What is more, quoting Georgakopoulou (2004: 2), “the 111

Akira Satoh

textual and interactional aspects of narrative present a gap” in the studies of CMC. 2.2 On-line Community Blanchard (2004) notes that a “community” refers to a group of people who share either a physical location or a common interest or characteristic, and that a feature common to both is the members’ psychological sense of community. In defining community, Preece and MaloneyKrichmar (2005) state that recent research considers the strength and nature of relationships to be more relevant than actual geographical proximity. A sense of community does exist in those who meet regularly on-line, and Blanchard argues that the notion of a community is applicable to some web sites (cf. Herring, 2004). 2.3 Communities of Practice As regular interaction on-line leads to mutual engagement, an on-line community like the one in this study is, as Davies (2005) suggests, a good candidate to be recognized as a type of what Lave and Wenger (1991) call “communities of practice.” In addition to mutual engagement, Wenger (1998) describes two other dimensions of a community of practice: that is, a joint enterprise, which refers to a process of pursuing a shared goal, and a shared repertoire, which includes routines, words, tools, ways of doing things, and stories that the community has produced or adopted in the course of its existence.

3. Data Now, let us move on to discuss the study itself. The data for this study comes from a personal web site (which no longer exists) of a pop rock band (or duo, A and B), widely popular in Japan and some Asian countries. A “fan site” is a website created and maintained by one or more fans of a particular person/group or thing. It is often equipped with bulletin boards and chat rooms to promote communication among fans. We sometimes see frequent exchanges of information in such sites, where fans become regulars and interact with each other. In this study I pay attention to postings on a BBS for live performances held between 2000 and 2002. The number of postings for each performance varies: some draw only a few, others more than 30. The length of each posting ranges from several lines to 80 pages (400 characters per page in Japanese). I also look into some interaction in a chat room of the same site around the time of the live concerts. Here is an example of a full “live report.” I am showing the image of an example in Japanese. Later, more examples will be shown with an English translation. (1) （コンサートが開催された都市名）に行って来ました。（サイトの友達の名前）お疲 れ様☆もう本当に（バンド名）のライブは幸せでした！ ！ ！運良くちょっとした階段の / 黒のスパンコール？か何 ところにいたのでＡちゃんの顔がよく見れましたヽ（^O^） かキラキラ光るシャツをＡちゃん着てました。すごく似合ってましたよ。 （曲名）か ら始まって、もうカッコ良すぎてクラクラして何度も倒れそうになりながら、しっ かりとＡちゃんを目に焼き付けてきました☆私も（別の曲名）本当に聴けてよかっ た！ ！みんなの気持ちに応えてくれたＡちゃんとＢさんに感謝感謝です。一日経った今 でもまだまだ当分昨日の興奮状態から抜け出せそうにありません（＞＜）

4. Methods For my research methods, I employed text analysis from the standpoint of sociolinguistics/ 112

Constructing Group Identity through Narratives on BBS

discourse analysis and the ethnography of communication; that is, I not only observed verbal exchanges on the website but also participated in the communication as a fan of the music group (actually I am a big fan of the group). I would like to mention here that I got permission to use this data from the Webmaster.

5. Analysis 5.1 What is a “live report” of a fan site? Postings about live performances are called “live reports.” However, many of them are not reports that convey information and describe what went on during a particular period, but stories that present personal experiences and judgments about these experiences, or make points (cf. Polanyi, 1982; Wolfson, 1982). Take a look at Example (2)1, which is intended to show that a so-called live report is really a story. At first sight, it seems that the following segment merely describes a moment in a live performance: (for this example, some background is needed. The author had met the musicians before and talked about the fan site and the frequent contributors to the site. In addition, since the regulars of the site were almost always in the front rows of the small concert halls, the musician could recognize them easily.) (2) 曲は１番「（曲名）」が１番盛り上がったかな？合いの手（っていうのかしら？）皆揃っ てて、面白かったです。あれは新鮮で面白かったですね！後半、Ｂが私の顔を見て、 私達の辺りと指でぐるっと指して、何て言ったのかは忘れたけど、内容的には「こ の辺、 （サイトの名前）の人達？」って聞かれて、 私がピースしながら、 「うん、 うん」っ てうなづいたら、すっごく嬉しそうな顔して笑ってくれたので、嬉し過ぎて死ぬか と思いました（笑）

When it comes to songs, we got most excited with the first (title of a song), didn’t we? We threw in refrains (what do we call it?) all together, so it was interesting. That was something new and interesting! In the second half, B looked at my face, drawing a circle with his finger around us, although I forgot what he said, he asked something like “Are the folks of (the name of the fan site) around here?” and I nodded “Yah, yah” with a peace sign, then he smiled happily, so I was so happy that I thought I might die LOL In this example, the author’s subjective view is evident, not only as external evaluation, such as the (repeated) choice of the word「面白かった」“interesting,” but also as internal evaluation, including quotation:「この辺、（サイトの名前）の人達？」“Are the folks of (the name of the fan site) around here?”. Therefore, what seem at first to be reports are really stories. 5.2 Why do fans tell stories? By telling stories, they create spaces for further communication with other fans. These narrators tell their own stories to elicit others’ stories. The following serves as an example. In Example (3), the author encloses her story with expressions such as: (3) みなさんの印象もぜひ聞かせて下さい。 Please let me listen to your impressions. This is the “first me, then you” approach: she sets an example and asks others to follow suit (cf. 1

Examples in Japanese contain errors in spelling and grammar. They are kept intact here to show the original postings.

113

Akira Satoh

Tannen, 1986). In order to encourage those who shared the same experience to do the same, the author gave her own account. Members of this BBS also narrate to reach out to other fellow fans who were not present at the concert. As in Example (4), they may preface their stories by saying: (4) 実際はどんなだったか、ここでお伝えしておこうと思います。 I would like to tell here what really happened. In other words, the author regarded narrative as the most appropriate way of characterizing what happened. 5.3 How do they tell stories? In the data I examine here, there is a structural pattern of telling stories. The authors usually begin with expressions such as「行ってきました」“I went (to the concert),”「お疲れ様」“it was a long time [a greeting],” and/or「よかったですね」“It was good.” After these expressions, the authors recount what happened at the concert and evaluate with words like「かっこいい」“(It was) cool” and「感動した」“(I was) impressed (moved),” and signs including exclamation marks 「!」, prolonged sounds「ー」, bracketed words like「 （笑） 」“LOL,” emoticons like「 （^^） 」“ : - ) ,” stars「☆」, musical notes「♪」, and so on. Next, the authors end the stories with expressions such as 「また行きたい」“I’d like to go again,”「ありがとう」“Thanks,” and/or「最高」“It was the best.” If you look at Example (5), which is a repetition of Example (1), you can find the pattern clearly: (5) （コンサートが開催された都市名）に行って来ました。（サイトの友達の名前）お疲 れ様☆もう本当に（バンド名）のライブは幸せでした！ ！ ！運良くちょっとした階段の / 黒のスパンコール？か何 ところにいたのでＡちゃんの顔がよく見れましたヽ（^O^） かキラキラ光るシャツをＡちゃん着てました。すごく似合ってましたよ。 （曲名）か ら始まって、もうカッコ良すぎてクラクラして何度も倒れそうになりながら、しっ かりとＡちゃんを目に焼き付けてきました☆私も（別の曲名）本当に聴けてよかっ た！ ！みんなの気持ちに応えてくれたＡちゃんとＢさんに感謝感謝です。一日経った今 でもまだまだ当分昨日の興奮状態から抜け出せそうにありません（＞＜）

I went to (the name of the city where the concert was held). (The name of a friend from the site), it was a long time (for us to remain standing) (a star). (The name of the band)’s live performance made me really happy!!! As I was lucky enough to be on the stairs, I could see A’s face clearly (an emoticon). A was wearing a glittering shirt, a black spangled one or something. It suited her well. The live performance began with (the title of a song), and she (or her performance) was so cool I almost fainted again and again, but I still made sure to burn A’s image into my eyes (a star). I was really glad that I could listen to (the title of another song)!! I have nothing but gratitude for A and B, who responded to our every expectation. Although it’s been a day since the concert, I still can’t get over my excitement from yesterday and I won’t be able to get over it for a while (another emoticon). In this example, the story starts with「行って来ました」“I went (to the concert),”「お疲れ様」 “it was a long time [a greeting]” and「幸せでした」“(the performance) made me happy,” then describes what happened, including「（曲名）から始まって」“began with (the title of a song) ” and「（別の曲名）本当に聴けてよかった」“I was really glad that I could listen to (the title of another song),” provides evaluation with words like「カッコよ過ぎ」“so cool” and signs like stars 114

Constructing Group Identity through Narratives on BBS

「☆」, exclamation marks「!」and emoticons such as「ヽ （^O^）/」, and finishes with「感謝感謝」“I

have nothing but gratitude.” Another way of telling stories uses “copy-and-paste” quotation, which electronic media is mechanically equipped with. These quotations are explicitly marked as such with an angle bracket (>) at the beginning of each line of texts. In Example (6), a section of Example (2) is quoted in this way: (6) > 後半、Ｂが私の顔を見て、（略）死ぬかと思いました（笑） そう言っていたんだ。聞き取れませんでした。 Ｂの問いに対して曖昧にうなずいてしまった。残念！

>In the second half, B looked at my face … I thought I might die LOL He said so. I could not hear it. I nodded to B’s question vaguely. Too bad! In this example, after the quotation the author adds his own experience. In the next posting, this example was again quoted in the same fashion. Here, Example (6) as a whole was quoted by another contributor: (7) >> 後半、Ｂが私の顔を見て、（略）嬉し過ぎて死ぬかと思いました（笑） > そう言っていたんだ。聞き取れませんでした。 > Ｂの問いに対して曖昧にうなずいてしまった。残念！ （バンド名）ファンかつ（サイト名）を見させていただいている一人としてもＢのそ のセリフはうれしいですね。 （サイト名）のグループは僕としてもいい人たちだなー と思いますし。ファンの代表みたいなものですからねー。

>>In the second half, B looked at my face … I thought I might die LOL >He said so. I could not hear it. >I nodded to B’s question vaguely. Too bad! As a fan of (the name of the band) and the one who is allowed to visit (the name of the fan site), I’m delighted with B’s words. I think the group of (the name of the fan site) consists of nice folks. They are like representatives of the fans. Here the writer quotes Example (6), in which a section of Example (2) is doubly quoted, and then he adds his comments. As shown in these examples, “copy-and-paste” quotation enables the next contributor to embed the previous posting, which was produced by someone else. This tactic, perhaps a very distinctive function enabled in CMC, allows the author of a posting to specify exactly what is being targeted for a comment. 5.4 Interactions in a chat room Now I would like to show some interactions in a chat room of the same web site. When frequent visitors enter a chat room around the time of live concerts, they start their communication by talking about so-called live reports. In Example (8), SS had already read the “live report” written by TA, who just joined the conversation. Here, the first utterance of SS to TA was “I like TA’s live report!”: (8) SS> TA さん、私 TA さんのライブレポ好きですよ！ TA> SS ！お久しぶりです！え？レポってあの変態っぽいのですか？ SS> TA, I like TA’s live report! 115

Akira Satoh

TA> SS! Long time no see! Well, is it an abnormal one? In Example (9), when SS entered the room, KH, the Webmaster of the fan site, expressed his gratitude to SS for contributing a “report” which he had already read, by saying “Thanks for (posting) your report”: (9) KH> レポどうもです。 SS> つたないレポですみません。 KH> Thanks for (posting) your report. SS> I am sorry that it is poorly written. Seeing the interaction in the chat room as well as on the BBS I have shown so far, we can say that those who regularly visit this site not only write their own narratives but also read and comment on each other’s narratives on-line. I argue that recounting their own narratives encourages others to participate in the dialogue, and appreciating others’ narratives and giving their own versions of a common experience contributes to the re/production of a rapport and diminishes the distance between the BBS users, hence creating a sense of community. 5.5 What kind of relationships do they build? Johnstone (1990: 5) calls a group of people who share and jointly tell stories “a community of speakers.” Ochs and Capps (2001: 57) suggest, “people build communities through the coauthoring of narrative.” It is possible to say that those who share narratives in CMC construct an on-line community. This fan site is a community of practice because the on-line communication provides the contributors, quoting Moore (2006: 627), “with the opportunity to articulate their mutual status as members of a community who not only share social events, but also share their perception of what is ‘storyable’ as community practice.” Once it is formed, the community may be maintained and even further solidified through the constant interactions among its members. New on-line friendships are built, and this can lead to off-line relationships, an example of which can be seen in the contributors convening in person to hold parties just before and/or after the concerts. What is perhaps unique and interesting about a community built on the foundation of CMC should be pointed out here. Even after the contributors become friends and begin to meet regularly, they often neither know nor care about each other’s real names, jobs (or schools) and other personal details: in this community only the fact that they are fans of the band counts. Considering that recent theories of identity assume not a unitary self but multiple and fragmented selves, it seems that they are communicating here and now by presenting only one aspect of their selves. It may be relevant that this community is not based on traditional relationships such as neighborhood and kinship, but has originated because of new networks such as the Internet. While the bonds of the former are harder to cut, it is rather easy to untie the latter. In this sense, this community represents not a traditional, total, systematic, institutionalized and binding network, but a partial, selective, pluralistic and non-binding network, often thought to be specific to contemporary society. 5.6 How is identity indexed? As I just mentioned, the relationships based on CMC may not be firm, but this does not necessarily mean that their sense of community is easily lost. As for me, more than 4 years have passed since the fan site was closed, but I still have a sense of community with friends from the fan site. And this is not just my imagination. Although I have not seen many of them for a while, 116

Constructing Group Identity through Narratives on BBS

I still get e-mail from some of them around the time of the band’s live concerts (and I still meet them at the concert). That is, a sense of community, or shared identity, can be constructed from the interactions on-line and maintained for some time. As Wellman’s (2001, cited in Herring, 2004) tripartite characterization of community as providing “sociability, support, and identity” suggests, an identity, especially a group identity, is one of the central parts of a community of practice (Job-Sluder & Barab, 2004). In this section, I would like to show how the group identity of the fan site is indexed in and around this fan site. Herring (2004) proposes six sets of criteria for online community: that is, participation, shared culture, solidarity, conflict resolution, self-awareness of the group, and roles/governance. For our purpose here, I focus on some of those aspects relevant to the group identity of this site. First, participation is assessed on the basis of the frequency of on-line as well as off-line interactions. After a live concert, many regular participants would post a narrative, which they call live report. Some of the participants even traveled just to go to the concerts, so they would contribute more than once during a single concert tour. In addition, many regulars usually attend pre-concert meetings of the fan site, then go to the concerts together and usually occupy the front rows of the hall, and finally have dinners together and sing in a Karaoke bar until dawn. Some of them even hold parties when there is no concert. Such regular participation can be interpreted as the indication of a group identity. Second, their shared culture is indicated through the use of group-specific abbreviations and language routines. For example,「ライブレポート」“live report” is almost always referred to as 「レポ」”repo.” In addition, while there are a few abbreviated ways to call the band, in this site they use only one of them, which is included in the name of the fan site. Furthermore, as I already pointed out, there is a structural pattern of telling stories on this BBS. Interestingly, this structural patterning of narrative is also observable in the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous (or AA), which Swora (2001) calls a narrating community. In this AA community, the members acquire an identity as sober (or non-drinking) alcoholics through the formalized narrative structure (Cain, 1991; Swora, 2001). Similarly, by sharing not only the experience (live concert) but also the way to tell it (a pattern of telling stories), the contributors of the narratives construct an identity as the fellows of the site. Finally, the group’s self-awareness is measured in how its members refer to themselves as a group. In Example (10), which is taken from the posting about one of the band’s first live performances after the debut of a single, the author’s form of reference is indirect: he calls the group「ここに来る人」“those who visit here.” He then contrasts them with those who do not visit the site by saying「と違って」“unlike.” (10) ここに来る人と違って、ちょっとの興味で来た人ばっかで unlike those who visit here, most of the audience came with a slight interest It seems no coincidence that the reference is indirect in one of the earliest postings to this BBS: in contributing to the then newly created web site, he must have been hesitant to show a strong group identity with other visitors to this site. Half a year later, the author of Example (11), which is a partial repetition of Example (7), literally refers to the group as「（サイト名）のグループ」“the group of (the name of the fan site).” Moreover, he uses positive language such as「いい人たち」“nice folks” and even characterizes them as being「ファンの代表みたいなもの」“like representatives of the fans.” Nevertheless, his self-introduction「（サイト名）を見させていただいている一人」“the one who is allowed to visit (the name of the fan site)” shows that he is not fully identified with the group. 117

Akira Satoh

(11)（サイト名）を見させていただいている一人として（略）（サイト名）のグループは 僕としてもいい人たちだなーと思いますし。ファンの代表みたいなものですから ねー。

as the one who is allowed to visit (the name of the fan site) … I think the group of (the name of the fan site) consists of nice folks. They are like representatives of the fans. To use Wenger’s (1998) term, he is a “peripheral participant.” Actually, in the same posting he writes that he has never attended the off-line meetings so far and wants to attend one of them next time. On the other hand, Example (12) indicates the author’s status as a full participant: the use of a group nickname shows his solidarity (or intimacy) with the group, and the use of a metaphorical expression「軍団」“corps” for the group implies a closely united and organized group of people with the power to influence something (in fact, in the concert the author narrates, those who had attended the pre-concert meeting asked the musicians to play a particular song as an encore, and they did play it). By the way the author references the group, the author’s identity as a member of the group is made evident. (12)（サイトの愛称）軍団以外からも声が飛んでいた those who are not (the nickname of the fan site) corps called, too His language use here seems relevant to the fact that it had been two years since the opening of this site and the fact that he was one of the regulars who visited several cities around Japan just to go to the concerts (and the meetings with friends from the site) during a single tour and he wrote “reports” for each performance. Thus the group identity seems to have developed through time and their involvement with other regulars. As we have seen, an examination of the linguistic and ethnographic data reveals that the participants’ sense of community and shared identity.

6. Conclusion In this study I have investigated the function of narratives in CMC: the construction of a community of practice/a group identity by sharing stories across time and place. I find that live reports are narratives recounting shared experiences, often using a structural pattern of storytelling and “copy-and-paste” quotation. As the fans regularly communicate with each other by writing, reading, and commenting on their narratives of shared experiences, they construct a community of practice, in this case, through narration. Finally, the identity of the group is indexed at least by participation, shared culture, and members’ self-awareness. Each narrative is relatively short, but some narratives contributed by individuals present various aspects of a shared live concert. When the narratives for each concert on the same tour are assembled, the whole image of the concert tour emerges. Therefore, the individual concert narratives eventually co-construct a “comprehensive” and “composite” story of the band, recounted by the fans. This authentic, life-size story tells us a lot more than those provided in the official site run by the music office and/or the record company. Finally, I would like to emphasize that it is the bulletin board on a web site that has made it possible for people to communicate this way. A bulletin board on a web site is not a local form of media, such as the passing of notes by high school students, but a global form of media; not a private one-on-one form of media such as telephone and e-mail, but a public one-to-many form of media; not a closed form of media, such as a social networking service (or SNS), but an open form 118

Constructing Group Identity through Narratives on BBS

of media. These characteristics bring together those who share almost nothing except the fact that they are fans of a particular music group. This new media form is surely changing interpersonal relationships in our time. References Blanchard, A. (2004). Virtual behavior settings: An application of behavior setting theories to virtual communities. Journal of ComputerMediated Communication, 9 (2), Article 4. Retrieved from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol9/issue2/blanchard.html Cain, C. (1991). Personal stories: Identity acquisition and self-understanding in alcoholics anonymous. Ethos, 19, 210–253. Davies, B. (2005). Communities of practice: Legitimacy not choice. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 9 (4), 557–581. Georgakopoulou, A. (2004). To tell or not to tell?: Email stories between on- and off-line interactions. Language@internet, 1. Retrieved from http://www.languageatinternet.de/articles/36 Herring, S. C. (2004). Computer-mediated discourse analysis: An approach to researching online behavior. In S. A. Barab, R. King & J. H. Gray (Eds.), Designing for virtual communities in the service of learning (pp. 338–376). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Job-Sluder, K., & Barab, S. A. (2004). Shared “we” and shared “they” Indicators of group identity in online teacher professional development. In S. A. Barab, R. King & J. H. Gray (Eds.), Designing for virtual communities in the service of learning (pp. 377–403). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Johnstone, B. (1990). Stories, community, and place: Narratives from middle America. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Labov, W. (1972). The transformation of experience in narrative syntax. In Language in the inner city (pp. 354–396). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1967). Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal narrative. In J. Helm (Ed.), Essays on the verbal and visual acts: Proceedings of the 1966 annual spring meeting of the American Ethnological Society (pp. 12–44). Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marra, M., & Holmes, J. (2004). Workplace narratives and business reports: Issues of definition. Text, 24 (1), 59–78. Moore, E. (2006). ‘You tell all the stories’: Using narrative to explore hierarchy within a community of practice. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 10 (5), 611–640. Ochs, E., & Capps, L. (2001). Living narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Polanyi, L. (1982). Linguistic and social constraints on storytelling. Journal of Pragmatics, 6, 509–524. Preece, J., & Maloney-Krichmar, D. (2005). Online communities: Design, theory, and practice. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10 (4), article 1. Retrieved from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue4/preece.html Swora, M. G. (2001). Narrating community: The creation of social structure in Alcoholics Anonymous through the performance of autobiography. Narrative Inquiry, 11 (2), 363–384. Tannen, D. (1986). That’s not what I meant!: How conversational style makes or breaks relationships. New York: Ballantine. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wolfson, N. (1982). The conversational historical present in American English narrative. Dordrecht: Foris.

Mailing address: 1–8 Machikaneyama-cho Toyonaka-shi, Osaka 560–0043 Japan E-mail: [email protected]

119

120

Language Structure as a Reflection of Cultural Schema

Masayuki OHKADO Chubu University

1. Introduction Wa, which is usually translated as ‘harmony’ or ‘concord’, is the key concept of this paper. As Wierzbicka (1997: 248) states, wa is of vital importance in Japanese culture and I will show that structural properties of the Japanese language are linked to the importance of this concept in Japanese culture.1 The organization of this paper is as follows. Section 2 deals with the historical origins of the importance of wa. Section 3 reviews the Principle of Cultural Elaboration as widely observed in vocabulary. Section 4 attempts to show that the relevance of the Principle of Cultural Elaboration is not limited to vocabulary and that the Principle can cover wider areas such as syntactic and discourse structures. The grammatical elements analyzed here are interactional particles. Section 5 compares Japanese with Korean, a language which is, at least grammatically, quite similar to Japanese. Section 6 briefly discusses the relevance of the present study to the long list of nihonzinron ‘japanology’ studies. Section 7 is a conclusion.

2. The Historical Origins of the Importance of Wa The historical origins of the importance of wa in Japanese society go back to one of the most popular historic figures in Japan: Prince Shotoku (573–621), a strong proponent of Buddhism in the period when its status was not yet stable. There are many legends about him, the best known one being that he could listen to what ten people said simultaneously. This Prince Shotoku is said to have authored the Seventeen-article constitution, a document stating the morals and virtues that government officials and aristocrats serving the emperor should observe. The source is Nihon Shoki or The Chronicles of Japan written in Chinese, which was finished in 720. The relevant part is preserved in the manuscript called Iwasaki bon, which was written in the 10th or 11th century and is in the possession of the Kyoto National Museum.2 The first part of the Seventeen-article constitution reads:3

1 For the “exact” translation of wa, see Wierzbicka (1997: 249–254). 2 The URL of the museum is: http://www.kyohaku.go.jp/. 3 (1) is based on the manuscript of Kyoto National Museum and Ienaga et al. (1975).

121

Masayuki Ohkado

(1) 一曰以和貴為（一に曰く、和らぐを以て貴しと為）4 Iti ni iwaku: Yawaragu o motte tootosi to su ‘Article 1: Yawaragu is to be valued.’ Thus, in the constitution, the first and most valued moral is “和,” which is read here as yawaragu. Adopting its Chinese pronunciation, “和” can also be read as wa. This first article has come to be widely known and often used like a proverb or common saying with the form Wa o motte tootosi to su/nasu ‘Wa is to be highly valued.’

3. The Principle of Cultural Elaboration According to Hymes (1964: 167), “anthropologists have taken elaboration of vocabulary as an indication of the interests of particular cultures and of differences among them.” This “principle of cultural elaboration in vocabulary” will be noticed by anyone who is familiar with more than one language. For example, to Japanese learners of English it is surprising that the English language has so many independent words denoting “牛” or usi such as bull, calf, cow, heifer, and ox. To English speakers learning Japanese it might be surprising that the Japanese language has at least four independent expressions for rice: ine ‘rice-plant,’ kome ‘uncooked rice,’ gohan ‘cooked rice,’ and raisu ‘rice served at a Western-style restaurant.’ These differences reflect the importance of the animal and the plant in English(-speaking) and Japanese cultures respectively. I would like to propose that this principle of cultural elaboration can be extended to cover areas much wider than vocabulary. Thus, the principle is changed from “Culturally prominent concepts are reflected in the vocabulary of the language” to “Culturally prominent concepts are reflected in the structure of the language,” where “the structure” includes “syntactic structure” and “discourse structure.” The culturally prominent concept taken up here is wa wo motte toutosi to su ‘wa is to be valued,’ which has originated from the seventeen-article constitution by Prince Shotoku as we have seen in the preceding section. “The structure of the language” dealt with here is constructions with interactional particles.

4. Interactional Particles in Japanese 4.1 Particles in Japanese Particles in Japanese are divided into two categories. The first is grammatical particles which “play a primarily grammatical function, marking grammatical relations within a sentence” (Maynard, 1997: 87).5 In (2) the four particles ga, de, to, and o, respectively, function as nominative, locative, commitative, and accusative markers. (2) Taroo ga gakkoo de Hanako to hanasi o sita. Taroo nominative school locative Hanako commitative talk accusative did ‘Taroo talked with Hanako at school.’ The second type of particles in Japanese are interactional particles which express “the speaker’s judgment and attitude toward the message and the partner” (Maynard, 1997: 87). 4 The method used for Romanizing Japanese examples is to use the Kunrei system for cited forms and the Hepburn system for proper nouns. This does not apply to examples from other studies. 5 For detailed descriptions of particles in Japanese, see Martin (1975: section 2.2 and chapter 15).

122

Language Structure as a Reflection of Cultural Schema

Interactional particles are further divided into two types: (i) Insertion particles which are phrasefinally inserted within a sentence and (ii) sentence-final particles which are attached sentencefinally. They are illustrated in (3).6 (3) Taroo ga ne gakkoni ne itta Taroo nominative IP (insertion) school IP (insertion) went yo. IP(sentence-final) ‘Taroo went to school.’ Some of the interactional particles can be used either as insertion particles or as sentence-final particles. Some of them have only one of the two usages. As for the choice of the interactional particles there are some dialectal, gender, and idiolectal variations. Interactional particles are very frequently used in conversations in Japanese. The following table is from (Maynard, 1997: 88), who has analyzed the total of sixty-minute conversation data consisting of three-minute segments of conversation among twenty pairs. Table 1 Frequency of Interactional Particles in Three-Minute Segments of Conversation among Twenty Pairs Interactional particle

Number

%

ne

364

42.18

sa

148

17.15

no

138

15.99

yo

128

14.83

na

49

5.68

Other

36

4.17

Total

863

100.00

The figures in Table 1 show that in Japanese conversations interactional particles are used on an average of once in every 4.20 seconds (3600 (60×60)/863=4.17). 4.2 Data: Sentence-Final Particles Let us now have a look at some real data involving interactional particles, starting with sentence-final particles in this subsection (4.2) and turning to insertion particles in the next subsection (4.3). The data is from a DVD titled Sailor Moon vol. 1, which contains a natural conversation between two leading characters: SAWAI Miyu, playing the role of Sailor Moon and HAMA Chisaki, playing the role of Sailor Mercury. (4) Sawai: 1, 2 wa no toki wa mada sonnani syaben nakatta 1, 2 episode GEN time TOP yet not-very-much talk not-PAST IP yo ne IP IP ‘In the first or second episode we didn’t talk with each other very much, did we?’

6

The following abbreviations are used for the glossing of Japanese and Korean examples. ACC: accusative case marker; COMP: complementizer; COP: copular; DCL: declarative sentence; GEN: genitive case marker; IP: interactional particle; NOM: nominative case marker; NOMINAL: nominalizer; PAST: past tense marker; TOP: topic marker.

123

Masayuki Ohkado

Hama: Syabetta yo. talked IP ‘We DID talk.’ Sawai: Chisaki-tyan tte itteta yo tabun watasi. Chisaki-tyan COMP was-calling IP perhaps I ‘I think I called you Chisaki-tyan.’ The functions of the sentence-final particles yo and ne are summarized in (5).7 (5) a. Yo is used when the speaker assumes that he or she has more access to and/or possession of the information and wants to focus on the information conveyed in the utterance. b. Ne is chosen when the speaker assumes that he or she has less (or about the same amount of) access to and/or possession of the information and wishes to concentrate on feelings and attitude more than on information. (Maynard, 1997: 90) A very rough approximation is that yo is used when the listener does not know what the speaker says and ne is used when the listener knows what the speaker says. In the first utterance in (4) the two sentence final particles yo and ne are used cumulatively. The speaker (Sawai) recalls what she remembers and presents the information as if she has more access to it than the hearer (Hama), which is indicated by yo. At the same time, since the memory is shared with the hearer (Hama), the speaker (Sawai) also adds ne, which reduces the strength of yo and at the same time evokes an emotional rapport between the speaker and the hearer. In the second utterance the speaker (Hama) indicates that what she remembers is different from what Sawai has just said. Likewise, in the third utterance Sawai insists that what she remembers is the truth. In both cases the speaker assumes that she has more possession of the information so that yo is the appropriate sentence-final particle. The sentence-final particle ne used as an evoker of emotional rapport is well-illustrated in the following example. (6) Sawai: Rei-tyan hankooteki da ne ima omou to sugoi. Rei-tyan defiant be IP now reflect COMP very ‘On reflection, Rei was very defiant.’ Hama: Ne. IP Sawai: Ima omou to sugoi kowai ne. now reflect COMP very scary IP ‘On reflection, she was very scary.’ Hama: Ne. IP Sawai: Yoku Usagi-tyan anna atakku siteru ne. how-come Usagi-tyan that attack is-doing IP ‘How come Usagi-tyan keeps on going to talk to her?’ Nakama ni nattyatta ne. friends to became IP ‘She has become friends with her.’ 7

For the semantics and functions of yo and ne, see also Kamio (1990), Kamio (2002), and Kinsui (1993).

124

Language Structure as a Reflection of Cultural Schema

Hama: Ki ga kawatta n daroo ne mind NOM changed NOMINAL perhaps IP ‘Perhaps she has changed her mind.’ Sawai: Ne. IP In (5) two of Hama’s utterances and one of Sawai’s consist of only ne. It is to be noted that a number of researchers on language acquisition report that sentencefinal particles are acquired at an earlier age.8 Ito (1990: 59) reports that he has heard a one year and eight month old child utter sentences with the sentence-final particle ne. Summarizing the overall course of language development of Japanese children, Clancy (1985: 381) states: The first stage of grammatical development in Japanese is marked by contrastive use of certain verbal inflections, usually including at least the imperative and the past tense, and the appearance of the three most common sentence-final particles: yo (assertive/emphatic), ne (seeking/indicating agreement) and no (presupposed shared context). This initial stage of grammatical development is typically quite early, before 2 years-of-age. (Clancy, 1985: 381) The baby book of the present author’s daughter says that, cocking her head, she repeatedly said the utterance in (7) when she was one year and 4 months old. (7) Mita ne. saw IP ‘(We) saw (that), didn’t we?’ It was even possible to hold a “conversation” by repeatedly saying ne for a while as in (8). (8) Daughter: Ne. IP Father: Ne. IP Daughter: Ne. IP Father: Ne. IP The early acquisition of sentence-final particles shows their fundamental importance in the Japanese language. In this connection, it is worth noting that, as demonstrated in Clancy (1986) the Japanese communicative style of emphasizing empathy and conformity, which helps to preserve group harmony and group values, “can be found in mothers’ speech from an extremely early stage in their children’s development’ (p. 245). Clancy (1986) identifies two types of training children receive from their mother: (i) Empathy training and (ii) conformity training. The empathy training emphasizes “sensitivity to the needs, wishes, and feelings of others” (p. 232). In the following example, the mother tries to instill the fear of fire in her child. (9) Yotchan achichi itazura shinai no ne. Kowai, kowai ne, kaji ne. Yotchan hot play don’t IP IP scary scarey IP fire IP 8

See Ohkubo (1967).

125

Masayuki Ohkado

‘Yotchan doesn’t play with fire, does he? I/We fear fire.’ (1:11/Clancy, 1986: 233) By the expression kowai, kowai ne, mother expresses her fear of fire, which she wants her child to share. (10) was uttered by the same mother when she saw her child repeatedly drop apples on the floor. (10) Sonna koto suru n dattara ringosan itai itteru wa yo such thing do NOM COP-if apple-Mr. ouch is-saying IP IP ‘If you do that kind of things, Mr. Apple says “Ouch!” ’ (1:11/Clancy, 1986: 234) In (10) the child is asked to empathize with the apple. The conformity training involves a strategy of “appealing to the imagined reactions of hito ‘other people,’ who are watching and evaluating the child’s behavior’ (1:11/Clancy, 1986: 236). Consider examples in (11) and (12). (11) Osara tabeteru hito inai deshoo? Ne? Osara dare ga taberu no? plate is-eating person no COP IP plate who nominative eat IP ‘No one eats plates, do they? Who eats plates?’ (2:1/Clancy, 1986: 237) (12) Dame nante yuu hito dare mo inai yo. no such say person who ever no IP ‘There is no one who says things like “No!” ’

(2:2/Clancy, 1986: 237)

It should be noted that these examples all include interactional particles: Ne in (9) and (11), and yo in (10) and (12). 4.3 Data: Insertion Particles Let us now turn to interactional particles used as insertion particles. Ne used as an insertion particle is illustrated in (13). (13) Sawai: 1, 2, 3, 4 wa nakama-atsume datta kedo … 1, 2, 3, 4 TOP finding-members COP-PAST but ‘(The main theme of) episodes 1, 2, 3 and 4 was to find members, but….’ Hama: Uhn. Sawai: Sono … 1, 2, 3, 4 … well 1, 2, 3, 4 Sawai & Hama: 5, 6, 7, 8 [together] ‘In episode 5, 6, 7, and 8 …’ Sawai: … ga cho kokka(r)a ne nominative a-little from-here IP ‘… from here …’ Hama: Uhn. Sawai: minna (no) naka wo ne everyone GEN relationship ACC IP ‘… everyone’s relationship …’ Hama: Ne. IP Sawai: dandan utusiteru gradually is-focusing 126

Language Structure as a Reflection of Cultural Schema

‘… is gradually focused …’ In (13) ne is twice used as an insertion particle by SAWAI. The first occurrence is attached to the postpositional phrase and the second occurrence is attached to the accusative NP. In both cases the use of ne triggers the listener’s (Hama’s) back channels, uhn in the first instance and the interactional partcile ne in the second instance. From the observations in this and preceding subsections, we can say that the Japanese conversational style is schematically illustrated in (14). (14) A: …. IP …. IP …. IP B: BC BC BC The interactional particles (IPs) in (14) are either sentence-final or insertion particles. They tend to trigger the listener’s back channels (BCs). In actual conversations insertion particles can be empty but in such cases, they are usually compensated by the prolonging of the last syllable of the relevant phrase with the falling intonation accompanied by vertical head movement. Back channels in (14) can be interactional particles, or other responding expressions such as ‘hai,’ ‘un,’ ‘hee,’ etc. or non-verbal vertical head-movement. Thus, in Japanese conversations the speaker and the listener are constantly interacting with each other. It seems that the speaker is constantly taking care of the listener and the listener is constantly encouraging the speaker to go on. I assume that this conversational style is linked to the Japanese inclination of valuing wa. 4.4 Disturbing Situations The speaker may feel it difficult to continue his or her talk when supports from the listener through back channels are not given. There are two such disturbing situations. One is when the speaker talks with a non-native speaker of Japanese. Especially disturbing is a conversation over the telephone as illustrated in (15), which is cited from Mizutani (1979: 96). (15) Japanese: Non-Japanese: Japanese:

Non-Japanese: Japanese: Non-Japanese: Japanese: Non-Japanese: Japanese:

Mosi mosi. Hello Mosi mosi. Hello Ee, kotira, anoo, Yamamoto desu ga uh this well Yamamoto is but ‘Uh, this is Yamamoto speaking….’ …. Mosi mosi. Hello Hai. Yes Kotira, Yamamoto desu ga, Johnson-san wa … this Yamamoto is but Johnson-Mr./Ms. TOP …. Mosi mosi. Hello

In (15) the Japanese speaker does not receive any back channels from the listener and begins to worry about whether the listener is listening to what he or she says. The “correct” response should be something like the following. 127

Masayuki Ohkado

(16) Japanese:

Mosi mosi. Hello Non-Japanese: Mosi mosi. Hello Japanese: Ee, kotira, anoo, Yamamoto desu ga uh this well Yamamoto is but ‘Uh, this is Yamamoto speaking….’ Non-Japanese: Hai. yes

The second disturbing situation is when the speaker presents a speech in public. There is an interesting historical episode concerning the “difficulty” of presenting a speech in Japanese. In 1873, six years after the Meiji Restoration, a statesman MORI Arinori, who later became the first Minister of Education, proposed to found an academy Meirokusha to promote civilization and enlightenment. Meirokusha was officially formed in the next year and started to play the leading role in introducing Western ideas and practices. One of the founding members, FUKUZAWA Yukichi, whose portrait is now on the 10,000 yen bill, proposed to hold a speech meeting. But the other members were skeptical about the success of such a meeting and MORI Arinori is reported to have even said that a speech could not be made in Japanese since the language was only good for a conversation and inappropriate in making a speech in public (cf. Kaganoi, 2002: 114). In his extremely popular book Gakumon no susume (An Encouragement of Studying), Fukuzawa (1876: 13) criticizes this idea as shown in (17). (17) Aru syosei ga nihon no gengo wa certain student/person NOMINATIVE Japanese GEN language TOP Hubenri ni site bunsyo mo enzetsu mo dekinu yue inconvenient writing as-well speech as-well cannot-do because eigo o tukai eibun wo motiiru nazo to English ACC use English ACC use such COMP torunimotaranu baka o iu mono ari. Anzuru ni kono worthless stupidity ACC say person is thinking this syosei wa nihon ni umarete imada zyuubunni nihongo o student/person TOP Japan in was-born yet enough Japanese ACC motiitaru koto naki otoko naran. Kuni no kotoba wa used thing not-was man will-be country GEN language TOP sono kuni no zibutu that country GEN things

no hantanaru wariai ni sitagaite GEN various propotion to according-to

sidai ni zookasi gou mo huziyuu naki hazu no mono nari. gradually increase not-any inconvenience not-is should GEN thing is Nani wa sateoki ima no nihonzin wa ima no nihongo wo before-anything-else now GEN Japanese TOP now GEN Japanese TOP

128

Language Structure as a Reflection of Cultural Schema

takumini motiite benzetu no zyootatusen koto wo hagemu beki nari. skillfully use speech GEN develop thing ACC strive should ‘There is a fool who says that he uses English and writes in English since Japanese is inconvenient, so inconvenient that you cannot write or make a speech in the language. I think that this person, although born in Japan, has never fully used Japanese. The language of a country increases as things in the country increases and there shouldn’t be any inconvenience. Japanese should now work hard so that we can make a speech by using the Japanese language skillfully.’ Of course, Fukozawa was correct and presenting a speech in public later became extremely popular and the next century saw a period of the Taisho democracy. Yet, I believe that there is a grain of truth in Mori’s remarks. For, in a public speech you cannot expect to receive continuous back channels, which the listener will give in an ordinary conversation, and this can be a cause of uneasiness for making a public speech in Japanese.

5. Japanese and Korean It is interesting to compare what we have seen in Japanese with comparable situations in Korean. As the following statement of Martin (1991: 280–281) and the examples in (19) show, Japanese and Korean are grammatically quite similar to each other. (18) The grammars of Japanese and Korean are remarkably similar, so that it is easy to make word-to-word and even morpheme-to-morpheme translations between the two. The dissimilarities turn out to be relatively trivial or to disappear when older varieties and dialects of each language are taken into account. (19) a. Japanese Taroo ga Taroo nominative b. Korean Taroo ka Taroo nominative

Ziroo ni hon wo age-ta. Ziroo dative book accusative give-PAST Ziroo ekey chayk u cwu-ess-ta. Ziroo dative book accusative give-PAST-DCL

There even is a group of scholars who suggests their common ancestry based on the grammatical similarities.9 Despite this similarity, the sentence-final particles are not of frequent use in Korean, nor does the listener give a series of back channels as observed in Japanese conversations, as pointed out by Hong (2007) and Horie & Taira (2002). Hong (2007: 102) states that in Korean, especially when the speaker talks with his or her senior, giving frequent back channels will be taken unfavorably. Hong goes on to say that the frequent use of back channels observed in Japanese conversations reflects the cooperative attitude of creating a conversation together and the harmonious attitude of expressing a partial agreement even when the listener is not in agreement with the speaker.

9

See Martin (1991).

129

Masayuki Ohkado

6. Nihonzinron ‘Japanology’ This section briefly touches on the link between the present study and the long list of the so-called nihonzinron ‘Japanology’ studies. Since the publication of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword by Ruth Benedict in 1946, a flood of books, and articles has been published on the theme of Japan and Japanese people (Benedict, 1946). The Bibliography on Japanology 1945– 1995 (Nichigai Associates, 1996) lists 3,000 books and 8,300 articles and The Bibliography on Japanology 1996–2006 (Nichigai Associates, 2007) lists 4,920 books and 7,860 articles. Examining representative books and articles on the topic between 1940s to 1980s, Aoki (1990) identifies two recurrent themes. One is the group-orientedness and the other is the shame-sensitivity. The evaluation of these features has changed over the period: The “negative evaluation” period (1945–1954), the “historically relativized evaluation” period (1955–1963), the “positive evaluation” period (1977–1983), and the “from uniqueness to universality” period, but these two have been constantly discussed in the literature. This suggests that these two characterizations are real and should be taken into consideration seriously when we try to study Japan and Japanese. Needless to say, the group-orientedness is directly linked to the concept of putting great emphasis on wa, which has been the central topic of the present paper. In this respect, what I have presented here can be situated in the long list of the post-war tradition of nihonzinron, the study of Japan and Japanese.

7. Conclusion As amply demonstrated in the literature, human languages may differ considerably from each other and sometimes the differences seem to be of fundamental importance. Furthermore, differences often appear to be closely linked to the cultural characteristics of the speech community.10 I hope the present paper has shown another case of such a link between language structure and the culture of the community in which it is used. *

I am grateful to participants of the conference, Prof. KOMORI Saeko, Prof. YANAGIYA Keiko, and my students in the English seminar class for their helpful comments and stimulating discussions.

References Aoki, T. (1990). Nihonbunkaron no henyoo. Tokyo: Chuokoron. Benedict, R. (1946). The chrysanthemum and the sword: Patterns of Japanese culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Clancy, P. M. (1985). The acquisition of japanese. In D. I. Slobin (Ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition (Vol. 1 The Data, pp. 373–524). Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Clancy, P. M. (1986). The acquisition of communicative style in Japanese. In B. B. Schiffelin & E. Ochs (Eds.), Language socialization across cultures (pp. 213–250). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fukuzawa, Y. (1876). Gakumon no susume (Vol. 17). Tokyo (Digital version available at: http://project.lib.keio.ac.jp/dg_kul/fukuzawa_tbl. php). Hong, M. (2007). Nikkan no gengobunka no rikai. Tokyo: Kazama Shobo. Horie, K., & Taira, K. (2002). Where Korean and Japanese differ: Modality vs. Discourse modality. In N. Akatsuka & S. Strauss (Eds.), Japanese/Korean linguistics (Vol. 10, pp. 178–191). Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Hymes, D. (1964). Language in culture and society: A reader in linguistics and anthropology. New York: Harper and Row. Ienaga, S., Fujieda, A., Hayashima, K., & Tsukishima, H. (1975). Shotoku taishi syuu. Tokyo: Iwanami. Inoue, K. (1998). Mosi “migi” ya “hidari” ga nakattara. Tokyo: Taishukan. Ito, K. (1990). Kodomo no kotoba: Syuutoku to soozoo. Tokyo: Keisou Shobo. Kaganoi, S. (2002). Nihongo wa sinkasuru. Tokyo: NHK Shuppan. Kamio, A. (1990). Zyoohoo no nawabari-riron: Gengo no kinooteki bunseki. Tokyo: Taishukan. 10 Linguistic relativism, which was and probably still is scorned by generative grammarians (cf. Pinker, 1994: 55–82), is coming under the spotlight again and a number of interesting cases have been reported (cf. Inoue (1998)). Michael Tomasello and his colleagues are developing a new approach towards human cognition and positioning language acquisition as culturally based (cf. Tomasello (1999, 2003) among others).

130

Language Structure as a Reflection of Cultural Schema

Kamio, A. (2002). Zoku zyoohoo no nawabari-riron. Tokyo: Taishukan. Kinsui, S. (1993). Syuuzyosi yo ne. Gekkan Gengo, 22 (4), 118–121. Martin, S. E. (1975). A reference grammar of Japanese. New Haven: Yale University. Martin, S. E. (1991). Recent research on the relationships of Japanese and korean. In S. M. Lamb & D. E. Mitchell (Eds.), Sprung from some common source (pp. 269–292). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Maynard, S. K. (1997). Japanese communication: Language and thought in contrast. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Mikami, A. (1942). Gohookenkyuu eno ititeisi. Kotoba, 4, 42–46. Mizutani, O. (1979). Hanasikotoba to nihonzin: Nihongo no seitai. Tokyo: Soutakusha. Nichigai Associates, I. (1996). Bibliography on Japanology. Tokyo: Nichigai Associates, Inc. Nichigai Associates, I. (2007). Bibliography on Japanology 1996–2006. Tokyo: Nichigai Associates, Inc. Ohkubo, A. (1967). Yoozigengo no hattatu. Tokyo: Tokyodo. Pinker, S. (1994). The language instinct. New York: William Morrow. Tomasello, M. (1999). The cultural origins of human cognition. Cambridge MA.: Harvard University Press. Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press. Wierzbicka, A. (1997). Understanding cultures through their key words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mailing address: Department of Humanities Chubu University 1200 Matsumoto-cho Kasugai-shi Aichi-ken 487–8501 E-mail: [email protected]

131

132

A Critical Discourse Study of Youth Crime in UK Radio News

Edward HAIG Nagoya University

Introduction The problems associated with the criminal behaviour of young people, particularly the use of guns and knives by gang members in violent and frequently fatal attacks, loomed exceedingly large in the UK media during 2007. In this paper my investigation focuses on one particularly notorious youth crime case which occurred during that year, namely that of the fatal shooting in August of an eleven-year-old boy by another teenager, widely presumed to be a local gang member, and on how the most influential radio news programme in the UK initially reported the crime. In my research I attempt to practice a form of what Paul Ricouer termed the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’, using a version of the approach known as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to investigate the ideological work of media texts. My concern in this paper is with how the identities of various social actors such as the media personnel involved in constructing and presenting this shooting incident as ‘news’ are textually constructed and how such constructions are ideologically motivated in ways which help perpetuate the types of inequitable socioeconomic relations of class and age which are the underlying cause of much youth crime. I ground this analysis in a detailed description of the generic structure of the radio news programme and relate this to the concept of discourse strategy.1

CDA and News Discourse My main reason for focusing on CDA studies of news is simply that ‘news’, broadly defined, is the area of discourse in which most CDA work has been done and in respect to which its the theoretical positions and methodological techniques have been most fully developed (Allan, 2004; Fairclough, 1995; Fowler, 1991; Richardson, 2007). Apart from the work of CDA scholars, the language of news in general and news interviews in particular have also received a great deal of attention from related linguistic fields such as conversation analysis (Clayman & Heritage, 2002; Hutchby, 2006), psycholinguistics (O’Connell & Kowal, 2006) and pragmatics (Dor, 2003). News is also a key focus of research in related fields such as cultural (Turner, 2003), communication (McQuail, 2005) and, unsurprisingly, media studies (Allan, 2004; Eldridge, 1995; Philo, 1995). However, it is my contention that, of all the academic fields that have taken news as their object 1

This paper is a condensed and revised version of a paper published in the journal Studies in Media and Culture Volume 4, pp. 33–65 (2008) published by the Graduate School of Languages and Cultures, Nagoya University.

133

Edward Haig

of study, it is above all CDA that offers the greatest possibilities for actually assisting people in contesting, challenging and transforming the ideology of mass-mediated news. This is because, firstly, only CDA combines a sufficiently interdisciplinary set of theories and methods of analysis capable of reaching across from the broadest levels of global society through the intermediate levels of social interactions and down to the minutiae of textual features; and secondly, because CDA possesses the strongest principled commitment to applying its theoretical and methodological framework as a practical tool for ideological critique: in short, to praxis.2

Radio News and Youth Crime For this study of news discourse I chose a broadcast medium rather than a print medium such as newspapers for a number of reasons. One of these relates to the relatively low degree of ideological bias which broadcast media display.3 In the UK the national press is relatively unregulated and openly partisan in its political commitments, which undoubtedly has ideological and political implications, as suggested by the famous headline in The Sun newspaper concerning the victory of the Conservative Party in the 1992 General Election: It’s the Sun Wot Won It.4 Given its clear ideological bias it is not surprising that much CDA work on the British media has focused on the—particularly tabloid—press. However, I believe that the problems for CDA here are that, firstly, the strength of this bias makes much newspaper reporting too easy a target for criticism and, secondly, that such criticism of the relatively obvious and superficial ideological bias leaves the more fundamental aspects of capitalist ideology unquestioned. After all, most readers already know that their chosen daily paper is biased (and actually prefer it that way) and do not need CDA to point this out to them. In contrast, broadcasting in the UK is subject to much more stringent ethical guidelines and many people would regard the BBC in particular as providing—or at least attempting to provide—fair and unbiased news reporting.5 The main reason for choosing radio rather than television is that language is the dominant form of communication in radio and, apart from sound effects and background music, is the only semiotic carrier of meanings, ideological or otherwise. In particular, a focus on radio avoids the need to analyse the complex interactions between verbal communication and visual modes of semiosis. The data for this project were gathered during the three weeks from Monday, 13 August to Sunday, 2 December 2007. During this period I recorded a selection of UK radio stations for eight hours per day (from 6 am to 2 pm). This enabled me to select the central week as the main focus for analysis but use data from the preceding and following weeks for contextualization and comparison. The reason for recording only from the morning till the early afternoon was that I wanted to focus in particular on the breakfast time news programmes. It is at this time of day that radio is most widely listened to in the UK, as many people are in their homes, getting up and preparing for their day, or commuting to work and are thus less likely or able to watch television. Although there had been a 2

3 4

5

Statements of the principles of CDA abound and vary in interesting ways, which I intend to discuss in a future work (compare for example the list of eight principles in Fairclough and Wodak (1997) with the list of ten in Wodak (2001)), but a commitment to the practical application of CDA to address social problems is an element common to them all. While this is true of the UK media I am aware that in other countries such as the USA the situation is quite different. The power of newspapers like The Sun to influence voting behaviour has been much debated and opinion remains divided (Curtice, 1999). Be that as it may, the strong political commitments of the national press in Britain mean that ideology is a prominent underlying feature of their news coverage and as such merits serious critical attention. Trust in the BBC and British television more generally was shaken during 2007 by a number of scandals concerning inter alia the misuse of premium-rate phone-ins and vote rigging. Nevertheless, my impression is that the public’s regard for the BBC’s neutrality in its news coverage remains high. I am currently seeking evidence to support this assertion.

134

A Critical Discourse Study of Youth Crime in UK Radio News

number of news reports relating to youth crime during the first week of this study, on the Thursday (23 August) of the central, second week of recording the theme assumed exceptional prominence due to the breaking news of the killing of an eleven-year-old boy, Rhys Jones, by another teenager in Liverpool the previous evening.

Discoursal Strategies In this paper I shall base my approach on the model of CDA presented by Fairclough in Fairclough (2000) and (2003). This I shall refer to as the ‘Genres, Discourses and Styles’ (or GDS) model. This model differs from, but complements, Fairclough’s earlier ‘Three Dimensional’ (3D) model as introduced in Fairclough (1989), which was based on a sequentially staged analysis of text, interaction and context. The newer GDS model places a greater emphasis on seeing discourse as an emergent phenomenon, forming an element or ‘moment’ of social events, dialectically related to other moments such as persons (with their unique attitudes, feelings and histories), the physical world, time and space. This new emphasis reflects the influence on Fairclough’s thought of the critical realist philosopher Roy Bhaskar (1979, 1986) and the Marxist cultural geographer David Harvey (1996). I shall also make use of the notion of strategies, seen in both discoursal and ideological terms, to analyse the radio news broadcast. Strategies have been studied by CDA scholars for many years (see contributors to Wodak, 1989) but have recently returned to prominence through the emphasis given to them by Fairclough (2006). Essentially, we can regard text producers as employing discoursal strategies on various levels in order to achieve ideological aims. On the macro level, these strategies relate to interactional features such as the generic structure of texts. On the meso level strategies are concerned with discoursal features such as how arguments are presented, how different voices are combined and how various sections of the text are framed. At the micro level the strategies include such things as pronoun usage, nominalization and passivization, discourse markers and deixis.

The Today Programme For this paper I have chosen to analyse just one radio programme from one day during the recording period: namely, the BBC Radio 4 Today programme for Thursday 23 August.6 I have chosen this programme for the following reasons. Firstly, I decided to focus on Radio 4 (‘the home of intelligent speech radio’ as the BBC’s website somewhat tendentiously describes it) because it is widely seen as the most important news and current affairs radio channel in the UK in the sense that it devotes more time to these subjects than any other national channel and reports them in a serious way for a relatively well-educated, predominantly middle-class audience. Secondly, within the whole range of Radio 4’s daily output, Today is regarded as the BBC’s ‘flagship’ news programme. That is, Today is seen as the programme which, by virtue of its long-established position in the important morning ‘breakfast time’ section of the daily schedule (on 28 October 2007 the programme celebrated its 50th anniversary) and its perceived authoritativeness, ‘sets the agenda’ for the day’s news in the UK.7 At the time of this study, Today was broadcast from 6 to 9 6

A recording of this edition is currently available in the ‘Listen Again’ archive section of the Today programme’s website (http://www.bbc. co.uk/radio4/today/). (last accessed 30/6/08) 7 In a survey of MPs conducted for the industry magazine Broadcast in 2005, Today was voted the most influential programme in setting the political agenda. BBC News tops MP’s survey http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/newsid_4440000/newsid_4444700/4444751.stm (14/4/2005). (last accessed 30/6/08).

135

Edward Haig

am Mondays to Fridays and from 7 am to 9 am on Saturdays. Finally, I have chosen to focus on the edition of the Today programme for 23 August in particular because it came in the middle of the three-week period during which I gathered the radio recording and associated data for this project and because as noted above it was on this morning that the news about the murder of the elevenyear-old schoolboy, Rhys Jones, in Liverpool was first reported. In the following sections I shall focus mainly on the generic aspect of the Today programme, viewing its generic structure as constituting a macrostrategy and attempting to relate this to the identities of the persons involved in the programme. Accordingly, I shall attempt to give a fairly detailed description and commentary of the generic structure of this programme, illustrated with excerpts from the 23 August edition. I shall pay particular attention to the use of repetition in the programme’s generic organization both as a strategic structuring device and as a means whereby the ideological work of the news is achieved. Identity of the programme’s presenters Although not exactly part of the discourse or generic structure of the programme, one notable and characteristic feature of this programme which is of the greatest importance in relation to the theme of identity is its team of presenters.8 At the time of this study, the team included five people, three men and two women who presented the programme in pairs on a rotational basis. Due to their prominent role as the ‘voices’ of this authoritative and popular programme the presenters become household names and personalities in their own right and their on-air identities are closely linked to the ‘identity’ of the programme as a whole. In addition to these principal presenters, several other people appear in ‘supporting roles’ on the programme, such as specialist business and sport correspondents, news readers and weather forecasters. The 23 August edition of Today was presented by Edward Stourton and John Humphrys. Humphrys is the most senior and well-known of the current presenters. He was born in Wales to working class parents and, although an able pupil, left school at 15 to become a local news reporter, working his way steadily up the career ladder to his current doyenic position. He is thus very much a journalist of the ‘old-school’. He is known for his curmudgeonly manner and has a reputation as a tough, opinionated interviewer. He is also interested in language and has written a number of popular books on the use and abuse of English (Humphrys, 2004, 2006). He is known to be an agnostic but has written a book on Christian faith. Stourton by contrast, is distinctly upper-class, being the cousin of a baron. He is also a devout Catholic and has written a number of books on Catholicism. Educated at Ampleforth College (‘the Catholic Eton’) and Cambridge University, his persona, in contrast to the down-to-earth persona of Humphrys, is the epitome of patrician self-assurance. A thorough CDA study of this programme will need to analyse the ideological significance of the style and public persona (in terms of Fairclough’s GDS model) of Humphrys, Stourton and the other presenters, paying particular attention to their vocal qualities, but in what follows space limitations prevent more than some very cursory remarks about these factors. Programme format At the time of this study the Today programme was broadcast for three hours on weekday mornings, and two hours on Saturdays. Accordingly, the producers are faced with the task of assembling enough material to occupy exactly that length of time each day, and to have it ready to 8

Strictly speaking, in terms of Fairclough’s GDS model the collective and individual characteristics of the presenters ought more appropriately to be considered under the heading of Style rather than Genre.

136

A Critical Discourse Study of Youth Crime in UK Radio News

be broadcast at the scheduled times, six days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. Of course the practical time constraints faced by the producers of Today are common to all radio (and television) news broadcasters. It is not surprising therefore that over the course of broadcasting history various production techniques have been developed to routinize and facilitate the daily production process, and these are made use of by Today. One such technique that I would like to foreground in this paper is the use of repetition. By this I mean the way in which programmes repeat the same news items and other features (such as weather forecasts) at different times throughout their duration, with the option of slightly modifying the item or feature each time. This technique not only helps fill up the allotted time of a programme but also enables programmes to cater for listeners who start and stop listening at various times and for various lengths of time. One advantage of this technique for programme makers (and listeners) is that it allows for the inclusion of news stories that break during the course of the programme, such as was the case with developments in the Rhys Jones killing, and for updating listeners about ongoing stories in a way not possible for conventional printed newspapers (although the increasing use of websites and services such as RSS news feeds9 by newspapers is helping to blur this distinction). The edition of Today selected for this study is typical in being structured into a number of (exactly) one-hour and, within these, (approximately) 30-minute units. Within this overall framework the various elements are arranged in a highly predictable way that varies little from day to day. In order to understand how the youth crime case was ‘textured’ into the programme as a typical news ‘story’ it is important to see clearly how it figured within the overall temporal flow of this programme. Accordingly, a schematic representation of the complete running order for this edition is shown below. Running Order of the Today Programme for Thursday, 23 August 2007 (Items related to the Rhys Jones (RJ) story shown in bold) 06:00 News Headlines and Summary (RJ story is 1st item in both Headlines and Summary) 06:06 Weather Forecast 06:07 Two livestock animals to be slaughtered at a Hindu temple in Wales where the bullock Shambo had been slaughtered earlier in the year. 06:10 Speech by President Bush on Iraq/Vietnam 06:12 Newspaper Review (RJ story is 1st item) 06:15 Business News 06:27 Sport 06:29 Programme trailer (for the BBC Proms concerts) 06:30 News Summary (RJ story is 1st item) 06:32 GCSE exam results 06:35 Rhys Jones 06:37 EU vets discuss lifting UK meat export ban 06:40 Ofcom report on media usage 06:43 Newspaper Review (RJ story is 2nd item) 06:45 Rhys Jones 06:46 Labour in Scotland: Interview with Prof. John Curtis of Strathclyde University 9

RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. This refers to an automated system for distributing website updates (known as ‘feeds’) to people who subscribe to the system. It is widely used by media organizations for distributing headlines and story summaries from their websites.

137

Edward Haig

06:50 Labour in Scotland: Interview with Wendy Alexander MSP (mention of indiscipline in schools) 06:53 Popularity in France of President Sarkozy 06:55 Findings of a study of salt in food 06:57 Weather Forecast 06:59 Programme trailers (for a music programme and for an interview with Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, on RJ story and youth crime generally later in this programme) 07:00 News Headlines and News Summary (RJ story is 1st item in both Headlines and Summary) 07:09 Rhys Jones [Rhys Jones named for first time] 07:14 GCSE exam results 07:20 Results of a study of older people’s sexual activity 07:24 Business news 07:27 Sport 07:29 Programme trailer (for a documentary about a foster parent) 07:32 News Summary (RJ story is 1st item) 07:34 Ofcom report on media usage, including the public’s loss of trust in the media 07:39 Newspaper Review (RJ story is 2nd item) 07:42 Sport 07:46 Thought for the Day (by Bishop of Liverpool) (RJ story and youth crime is theme) 07:49 Interview with Bishop of Liverpool (RJ story and youth crime is theme) 07:53 Interview with Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith (RJ story and youth crime is theme) 07:58 Weather Forecast 07:59 Programme trailers (for a new Classic Serial, To Sir With Love, and for items later in this programme) 08:00 News Headlines and News Summary (RJ story is 1st item in both Headlines and Summary) 08:10 GCSE exam results (prefaced by news flash on arrests in connection with RJ case) 08:23 British air force jets interception of Russian jets 08:28 Sport 08:31 Programme trailer (for documentary about former US President Bill Clinton) 08:32 Weather Forecast 08:33 News Summary (RJ story is 1st item) 08:34 Proposed EU register of sex offenders—interview with the father of missing girl Madeline McCann 08:39 Rhys Jones 08:41 Business news 08:45 Speech by President Bush on Iraq/Vietnam 08:51 Slavery museum in Liverpool exhibition on slavery and music 08:55 GCSE exam results 09:00 End of Today programme, followed immediately by News Summary (RJ story is 1st item) As this Running Order chart indicates, in total, the Rhys Jones case is featured prominently or referred to 21 times during this programme, plus once more in the 9 am news summary. To give a better understanding of the nature of the programme’s structure, particularly its repetitive elements which, as a discursive macrostrategy, provide the framework against which the almost pulse-like 138

A Critical Discourse Study of Youth Crime in UK Radio News

rhythm of the featured ‘main’ story occurs, each of the various elements will be briefly described. The description will be based on the generic features of this particular edition of the programme and also, to allow for generalizations to be made, on the other editions recorded during this study. One of the central arguments of my overall ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ approach to media discourse is that ideology works in the mass-mediated communication of modern societies not in an isolated and focused way but by insinuating itself (the intransitive usage here is intentional) like a miasma into every corner of the total output. Therefore, I believe it is a mistake for CDA analysts to focus, as they so frequently do, only on certain ostensibly critical textual features whilst ignoring the less obviously ideological elements of texts. On the contrary, ideology is inherently interstitial: in order to understand how a text works ideologically one must look first for the traces of ideology in each element and then, dialectically, at the intertextual relations (including tensions, ruptures and contradictions) between the elements. Hourly units Time, its accurate measurement and announcement, is a fundamental aspect of morning news programmes such as this. At the highest level of organization of the programme are its hourly units. These are demarcated with the utmost precision by means of time signals (a series of six short electronic beeps, commonly known as ‘the pips’). The very scientific precision of these signals, generated as they are by atomic clocks, helps lend an air of objectivity and authority to the programme. Thus one could regard even these ‘pips’ as having an ideological function in reminding the audience of the objectivity and authority of the BBC itself, quite apart from that of mustering the nation’s workforce in preparation for the coming day. These time signals are obligatorily followed by a presenter saying the time, day and date. The presenter may then also say the name of the programme and the names of the presenters. However, apart from at the very start of the programme this information is usually given immediately prior to the time signal. After saying the time, day and date, the same presenter, or his or her co-presenter, then reads out the news headlines. These are immediately followed by the name of the day’s newsreader, who then reads out a scripted summary of the news. Half-hourly units As noted above, the half-hourly unit markers are not so rigidly demarcated as the hourly ones. No time signals are used to mark the half-hours and the presenters have more latitude concerning when to introduce these items. However, mention of the programme’s name, the name of the channel and the names of the presenters seems to be an obligatory opening move. This leads on to a scripted news summary read out by a newsreader which forms the essential element of these unit markers. Unlike the hourly markers, the presenters do not read out the news headlines before the newsreader reads the summary. Other programme features In addition to the hourly and half-hourly markers, the following other repeated and one-off features are used to structure and segment the programme. Business news This is another regular item that usually occurs three times during the programme. However, probably due to its more specialist nature, unlike the review of the newspapers (see below) this is introduced not by the main presenters but by a ‘Business Correspondent’. This item is sometimes 139

Edward Haig

explicitly introduced as ‘the business news’ but not always so. On the 23 August programme this item occurred at 6:15, 7:24 and 8:41. The correspondent was Guto Harri. The 7:24 item began as follows: Stourton: Twenty-four minutes past seven the level of personal debt in the United Kingdom has for the first time, exceeded our national income, Guto Harri has details about that, Guto? Harri: Yees even as a dry old statistic it sounds pretty alarming doesn’t it and what it means is that the average person [unclear] owes more than he or she makes in a year. That’s not necessarily a problem and it won’t surprise anyone who’s bought a house in the last decade but it is higher than ever according to Grant Thornton. One of their senior tax managers is Maurice Fitzpatrick and he’s in the studio now. Um give us a a figure a heartstopping figure first of all, how much do we owe? Fitzpatrick: Well the total amount of personal debt in the UK is about one point three trillion, um and that’s just slightly less than the um slightly slightly um slightly in excess of the total amount that we actually produce each year so we ac we actually owe more than we produce. Obviously, from the point of view of any version of CDA that sees contemporary changes in global and globalizing capitalism—and the associated linguistic changes—as a key focus of critique, these business news segments of the programme are particularly relevant. Although these items are probably taken for granted by most listeners, one could imagine that under other socioeconomic circumstances they might, for example, be labeled ‘work news’ or even ‘capitalism news’ and have a very different angle on the topics discussed. While these segments almost always include an interview with a guest, such people are drawn exclusively from the ranks of business executives and particularly those from major financial services firms such as in this case Grant Thornton. It is not clear how these guests are chosen, but they appear on the programme as experts providing information, rather than interviewees to be questioned, and my impression is that the business correspondents such as Harri are seldom very critical towards them or the organizations (let alone the economic system) they represent. Given a topic such as the one discussed in this example—the unprecedented level of personal debt in the UK—it would seem appropriate to balance (or even replace) the rather complacent assessment given by Fitzpatrick (and backed up, incidentally, by Harri, see below) with a more critical view from, for example, a representative of a charity working with people in debt. However, as far as I am aware, rather surprisingly this kind of balancing is never done. Neither are representatives of workers organizations such as unions ever invited to be guests on this segment of the programme, and both correspondents and guests are almost exclusively male. Finally, we may note that the use in the above extract of personal pronouns, specifically ‘our’ and ‘we’, which is a staple item in CDA studies, displays a characteristic slipperiness. Who exactly are referred to by the phrases ‘our national income’ and ‘we actually owe more than we produce’? Sports news This item usually occurs three times during the programme, although on the 23 August programme it occurred four times (at 6:27, 7:27, 7:42, and 8:28). Like the business news, this item is introduced by a (usually male) specialist reporter. The sports referred to are those which generally command the biggest audiences (and thus the greatest advertising revenue) in the UK, including football, cricket and rugby. The item usually concludes with the programme’s ‘racing selections’, that is, tips for which horses to bet on in the day’s races. 140

A Critical Discourse Study of Youth Crime in UK Radio News

Weather forecasts The programme includes two types of weather forecast: longer, formal forecasts given by a member of the BBC Weather Centre staff, and brief summaries of the weather by one of the presenters. Review of the daily newspapers In this regular item, the presenters comment on the main stories in a selection (made by whom and according to what criteria we are not informed) of the day’s national newspapers. Thought for the Day This is a short stand-alone scripted speech by a representative of a religious organization. The programme has a pool of regular speakers for this slot who take turns to give their speeches. It is usually broadcast at or around 7:45 and frequently has some relevance to a current news topic. On the 23 August programme, the speech was given by the Anglican Bishop of Liverpool. I do not know whether it was purely a coincidence that he was the speaker on this day when Rhys Jones’ murder was first reported. Clearly, this section of the programme raises a great number of ideological issues related to religion. For example, we may ask what precisely the function of a section like this is within a news programme, how appropriate it is, how the speakers are chosen, and whether or not non-religious ethical viewpoints such as those of humanists should also be given a platform.10 The 8:10 interview This follows immediately after the 8 am news headlines and news summary and is usually represented as the highlight of the programme.11 In this section, one of the presenters conducts an interview lasting up to 15 minutes with a senior political or other public figure chosen for their relevance to the current news. However, on some days this interview slot is given over to a ‘special report’ on a particularly topical issue. In fact on 23 August this slot was used for a hybrid reportcum-interview with various figures concerned with the GCSE exam results. Summary of the programme’s repeated and one-off generic elements What I have tried to draw attention to in the preceding sections, based on this preliminary outline description of just one particular edition of the programme, is how Today, as a professionally and routinely manufactured media text, is constructed or assembled by combining an array of regular, familiar elements in predictable ways to constitute it as a distinctive, and authoritative, genre of radio news programme. Above all, I have tried to show how these elements are repeated, in more or less modified form, several times throughout the programme. Even though these elements together comprise just under half (87 minutes) of the total programme length, this does not exhaust the amount of repetition in the programme. The remaining 93 minutes of the programme are devoted to a more detailed examination of some of the news stories announced in the news headlines and news summaries. Unsurprisingly, these are frequently repeated, more or less modified, in part or in whole, during the programme. For example, apart from its prominent position as the theme of the 8:10 interview slot, the GCSE examination results story is reported on at three other times during 10 There is a website, Platitude of the Day, devoted to satirizing this section of the programme from a broadly humanist perspective. http:// www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php (last accessed 30/6/08). 11 There is an interesting gender dimension to this item. As it is the ‘hard news’ highlight of the programme, this interview is generally conducted by the senior of the two presenters. This means the interviewer is almost always male. In contrast, the interview is often followed by a ‘lighter’ topic which is presented by the other younger (and frequently female) presenter. I am grateful to Veronika Koller of Lancaster University for drawing my attention to this pattern.

141

Edward Haig

the programme for a total of 14 minutes. And the Rhys Jones murder story, in addition to being the main news item in all news headline and news summary sections and forming the focus of the interviews with the Bishop of Liverpool after his Thought for the Day speech and with the Home Secretary, is reported on four times for a total of 10 minutes.

The Shooting of Rhys Jones In the previous sections I have described the generic features of one edition of the Today programme and shown how it is characterized by a high degree of repetition at various levels of structure. A working assumption of the present study is that this kind of repetition is typical of the Today programme as a whole, at least in its current format, although undoubtedly there have been some changes during the programme’s 50-year history (Luckhurst, 2001). As has already been mentioned, there are practical reasons for radio news programmes being made in this way and, what is more, I would suggest that this repetition is a characteristic of contemporary mass-mediated news in general. However, my main concern in this paper is not with questions of production, nor even with the actual reception of such programmes by audiences, crucially important though both of these things undoubtedly are for any thorough CDA study of mass-mediated news. Rather, the aim of this paper is to consider how the linguistic features of the Today programme, specifically in its generic structure and identity aspects, contribute to its potential ideological effects. Whether or not (and if so how) the potential ideological effects of texts are realized in practice is another highly important—and highly complex—question for CDA and one which again involves sociological or ethnographic investigation of how texts are actually received by audiences. Throughout the foregoing account I have commented on the ideological significance of various aspects of the programme’s generic structure, particularly its repetitive features and the identities of the people who appear on it.12 I shall now turn to look in detail at how the shooting of Rhys Jones was presented in this programme, paying particular attention to the way in which the story is interwoven with those generic and identity features, how it is repeated with variations throughout the programme and how this synchronic ‘layering’ of the story, rather like successive coats of varnish applied to a piece of wood, have a cumulative effect of transforming it from its ‘raw’ state into a hardened, durable artifact. Unfortunately, due to limitations of space only a small selection of the earliest instances in which the story was featured can be discussed here. Sequential Presentation of the Rhys Jones Story The manner in which the Rhys Jones story13 was presented is interesting for the way it dovetails into the programme’s overall repetitive structure. This allows for the story to be heard by people who tune in to the programme at different times and to be updated as new information becomes available, as it does, during the time that the programme is on air. The general outline of how the story was featured in the programme was indicated in the Running Order chart shown above. The Rhys Jones story first appears at the very start of the programme in the 6 am News Headlines and News Summary section. This began as follows: [Time signal pips] Stourton: It’s six o’clock on Thursday the twenty-third of August, good morning this is Today with 12 One way of thinking about the ideological significance of generic structure is to imagine how else the programme could have been structured. Another strategy, and one which I intend to employ at a later stage in this study, is to compare the generic structure of this programme with other breakfast time programmes broadcast by other radio channels and stations on the same day as this one. 13 I would like to make it clear that I intend no disrespect to the memory of Rhys Jones in my use of the term ‘story’.

142

A Critical Discourse Study of Youth Crime in UK Radio News

John Humphrys and Edward Stourton. Humphrys: The news headlines this morning, an eleven-year-old boy has been shot dead in Liverpool. We’ll be talking to the Home Secretary. The GCSE pass rate is expected to rise to almost ninety-nine percent when results come out this morning. Also in today’s programme, Madeleine McCann’s father tells us why he thinks there’s a real possibility that she is in Spain, and, the survey which showed that the over-sixties are as active in the bedroom, as in the blogosphere. Today’s news reader, is Alice Arnold. In terms of generic structure, this initial presentation of the story by Humphrys is no more than a headline. However, since it is spoken English rather than written newspaper English it conforms to the standard grammatical rules by including the indefinite article an, which a newspaper headline would normally omit. Also, apart from its prominent position at this point in the programme (and being explicitly described as such in the immediately preceding phrase) this headline is not emphasized in any way that might be seen as the oral equivalent of written headlines, such as by use of a louder voice or forceful background music. Indeed, since this programme hardly ever uses background music—even as a signature tune—or sound effects (apart from those ‘ambient’ sounds which occur naturally when, for example, inteviewees speak via the telephone or reporters speak from external locations) the vocal qualities of the presenters are of paramount importance in conveying meaning and emotion and as such deserve detailed consideration.14 In terms of identity, John Humphys, as a veteran and highly individualistic presenter, has perhaps greater freedom to convey meaning and feeling through vocal qualities (and other means such as humour) than other presenters. Certainly, if one listens attentively to his speech one cannot fail to be impressed by his verbal dexterity and expressive expertise. In this very brief headline section for example, he varies his tone skillfully in accordance with each story. Thus, his voice is noticeably grave when he delivers the headline about the Liverpool shooting. In contrast, his tone lightens when he moves on to the GCSE story, darkens again and assumes a note of curiosity, almost mystery, tinged with sympathy, when talking about the Madeleine McCann story, and finally becomes even lighter when talking about the survey of sexual activity in the over-sixties which is a typical ‘light’ or ‘soft’ news topic such as is included in most editions of the programme.15 Although this is not entirely clear, the concise, orderly way that not only Humphrys but also the other presenters read out these headlines suggests that they have been scripted. That is to say, they have been prepared by other people and the presenters are, in Goffman’s terms, simply the animators of the words spoken, rather than the authors or principals (Goffman, 1981). If this is the case then this in turn suggests that the presenters may have had time to practice reading them out before going on air and may even have rehearsed and discussed their speeches. However, the likelihood of this diminishes as the programme proceeds and new information has to be included in the news headlines and summaries whilst the programme is being broadcast. Of course, it applies even less to other sections of the programme such as live interactions with reporters and interviewees. As a general principle, however, when analysing the identities of presenters and newsreaders through a study of their talk we should consider to what degree their words may be scripted or spontaneous. For example, it is clear that the words spoken by the newsreader, Alice Arnold, are entirely scripted. 14 A major problem in presenting work on oral data in written form concerns how vocal qualities such as tone, rhythm, volume and accent can best be represented on the page. Even prominent Conversation Analysis scholars who have focused on ‘media talk’ such as Ian Hutchby have generally not satisfactorily addressed this problem, despite their use of transcription conventions considerably more detailed than my own (Hutchby 2006). 15 I recognize that such descriptions as those I have used here are highly subjective and, as such, open to wide secondary (or meta-) interpretation.

143

Edward Haig

Partly for this reason, and also on account of her role as a dispassionate—almost robotic—provider of the basic news ‘facts’ her voice is far less expressive than that of Humphrys, though nevertheless not without a certain humane quality. Following immediately from Humphrys’ speech above, her turn is as follows: Arnold: Police in Liverpool are searching for the killer of an eleven-year-old boy, who was shot in the neck as he walked home from a football training session last night. The boy, who hasn’t been named, was shot outside a pub in Croxteth. Witnesses saw a teenage boy in a hooded top ride up on a BMX bike, dismount and fire several times. Assistant Chief Constable Simon Byrne of Merseyside Police, spoke of his disgust at the attack. Whereas the headline spoken by Humphrys describes the killing using a passive construction in which the victim is thematised and the agent is omitted, here the police are thematised and it is their action of ‘searching’ that forms the core of the clause, with the main event of the story relegated, albeit with greater details of circumstance, to a hypotactically subordinated clause. This foregrounding of the role of the police is a recurrent feature of the way in which this story is reported on in this programme. While this is not perhaps surprising, since the killing is seen (uncontroversially in the eyes of the programme’s producers) as a crime whose investigation is the legitimate responsibility of the police—any similar case in which the police were shown to be not searching for the killer at this time would be highly newsworthy!—we may ask what potential ideological significance this may have. Fundamentally, this foregrounding of the police encourages the audience to view, understand, interpret and explain this story from their perspective. We may see this in Althusserian terms (Althusser, 1971) as a situation in which the media, as an Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) serves to ‘interpellate’ the audience, in line with the dominant ideology with respect to crime, by presenting the news from the perspective of another ISA, namely the police. It has long been recognized in the field known as the Sociology of Knowledge, at least since the work of Berger and Luckmann (1966), that all knowledge is ‘interested’ and must be expressed from a particular point of view, with the very choice of viewpoint itself being imbued with meaning. In the present case we may consider what other possible points of view could have been reflected in this news summary. These may range from relatively uncontroversial perspectives such as, for example, those of the (unnamed) witnesses or the family of the victim, through the perspectives of ‘civil society’ leaders in Liverpool or academic experts on youth crime, to highly unorthodox perspectives such as that of the killer himself, his associates or members of youth gangs.16 It is also quite possible that a combination of perspectives may be foregrounded, and in particular the perspectives of the UK media, the BBC, the producers and presenters of this programme may be simultaneously or alternately drawn on. What is important in terms of ideology is that each of these perspectives would approach the story in a slightly different way which in turn would construct the identities of all concerned in different ways and would facilitate, or differentially make available, different interpretations of the story and its participants for the audience. As it is, in this case, as if to emphasize the police-oriented perspective of the story, immediately following from Arnold’s speech above, indeed cued by it, comes an excerpt from the words of the Assistant Chief Constable with which this story is, in this opening news summary section, concluded: Byrne: [external location] it is quite awful and quite senseless that it’s just not right that an eleven 16 One notorious aspect of this case was that members of two local gangs had posted videos on the website YouTube featuring their members wielding guns, showing off their dogs and committing acts of antisocial behaviour such as joy-riding.

144

A Critical Discourse Study of Youth Crime in UK Radio News

year old boy should lose his life in these circumstances and again my appeal really is that anyone that knows who this killer is, this is not a time for silence, do the right thing and turn them in. I particularly appeal to the criminal fraternity, if you know who this killer is, work with us to catch them quickly and take them off our streets. Arnold: Gordon Brown has ruled out a referendum on the new European Union Reform Treaty. [continues] What must be made clear at the outset is that the words of Byrne quoted here were not broadcast live. They have been recorded at some earlier time (between when the killing took place at around 7:30 pm the previous evening and the time of this broadcast. The decision to make an ‘appeal to the criminal fraternity’ is rather unusual and reflects the fact that this crime is being viewed by the police as an exceptionally heinous one that breaches the normal terms of engagement between the police and criminals, thus creating the opportunity or need for this kind of reaching out. The description of the appeal as being addressed to the criminal fraternity assumes that such a fraternity exists (setting aside the question of what precisely might be meant, both denotatively and connotatively, by the term) and that there is only one such fraternity, at least in Liverpool. However, it is quite possible that the killer himself is a member of this fraternity, and that the fraternity is far less unified and coordinated than Byrne’s appeal might suggest, so I doubt whether the police were very hopeful that any members of the fraternity would readily come forward to work with them. The suggestion that ‘turning the killer in’ (a colloquial phrase perhaps deliberately chosen as being less likely to provoke a hostile reaction than a more formal phrase such as ‘inform on’ or a more slangish and censorious expression such as ‘grass on’) constitutes ‘doing the right thing’ is clearly ideological, since according to the alternative ethical code of the criminal fraternity such actions are generally seen as despicable. One further interesting aspect of this appeal is the way in which Byrne uses personal pronouns. The use of you, uttered with a markedly pronounced emphasis, appears to be a direct address from the police, personified by Byrne, to the criminal fraternity, while the use of our in the expression our streets here also seems to reflect the sense of common identity between police, criminal fraternity and public that Byrne is trying, consciously or otherwise, to project. Finally, we may note the way in which Arnold’s words serve to frame Byrne’s speech. She cues the excerpt by saying that Byrne spoke of his disgust at the attack. In fact, although he may have done this at some other point in his speech, this seems rather an inaccurate description of this extract since this personal and emotional aspect does not appear to have been the main point. Rather, after saying that the killing was quite awful, quite senseless (which, we may note somewhat pedantically, are descriptions of the attack itself rather than of ‘his disgust’) and just not right (once again an attempt at ideologically defining through simple assertion what is and isn’t ‘right’), his main point is his appeal to the criminal fraternity. By contrast, later in the programme (7:09), Humphrys cues a repetition of the same excerpt with the words Mr Byrne made a direct appeal to Liverpool’s criminal fraternity, which seems more accurate. As has been widely noted by CDA scholars and others, the power and ability for mass-mediated news producers to frame the news in this way can have important ideological effects, alternatively encouraging or discouraging particular interpretations of the news that is reported (Peelo, 2006). In this case, Arnold’s formulation invites listeners to hear Byrne’s words as being an expression of his disgust and indeed to share that feeling. Arguably, Humphrys’ formulation by contrast is less manipulative, yet even this latter formulation might be queried since strictly speaking Byrne is not making a direct appeal to the criminal fraternity but an indirect one, via the media. 145

Edward Haig

The next section of the programme in which the Rhys Jones case occurred was the first review of the daily newspapers at 6:12 am. As befitting the importance given to this story by the UK media on this morning it was a prominent feature of almost all the newspapers’ front pages (at least their later editions) and was, not surprisingly therefore, the first item mentioned in this review. This review began as follows: Humphrys: The time is twelve minutes past six a quick look at the newspapers and the main story for most of them er they’ve changed their front pages some of them er during the course of the night is the shooting of that er eleven-year-old boy in Liverpool similar headlines are on the in the red-top tabloids Daily Mirror ‘BMX GUN KID KILLS BOY ELEVEN’, ‘BOY 11 SHOT DEAD BY KID’ in the Sun, and and so on and the er Times front page lead puts it like this ‘RIDE BY HOODIE SHOOTS AN 11 YEAR OLD BOY DEAD’ and um they’ll talk about how the police have expressed serious concern, this in the Times, about rocketing levels of violence, particularly, in the capital they report that increasingly, younger children are walking the streets with dangerous weapons in what has been a particularly grim year says the Times, seventeen teenagers have been shot or stabbed to death in London, alone, in 2007. Stourton: A lot of coverage of that speech by President Bush [continues] Again in this section we see the perspectivization of the story, unsurprisingly in terms of the police perhaps, but with the curious previously noted framing of their involvement in affective terms as ‘concern’. In passing it is interesting to contrast the typically strident use of language by the newspapers, particularly the tabloids, in their headlines with the more measured tones of the Today programme. Perhaps one function served by this segment of the programme is that it allows the programme to enunciate these rather scare-mongering headlines without having to admit to ‘owning’ them. In this case, the relationship between animators, principals and authors become yet more complex and, indeed, blurred, because whilst the headlines are clearly those of the newspapers, other phrases such as ‘rocketing levels of violence’ are less clearly distinguishable as belonging to the newspapers or the Today programme. Note how the ‘sticking to the facts’ approach used here, just summarizing the main points, plus giving some alarming background information about the number of violent teenage deaths in London, precludes any analysis of the socioeconomic, political or cultural factors underlying problems of this nature. A narrow focus on the topic as above all a criminal matter, most extremely in the individualizing of the agency of the killer of Rhys Jones, fusing him rhetorically into a freakish, hybrid, human-machine ‘gun kid’, leaves the wider (and admittedly more problematic) issues out of the frame, at least for the time being. However, explanations of some ideologically plausible sort must be sought and presented to the listeners and this is the main function of the next section in which the case is taken up, namely the first extended report at 6:35 am. This came immediately after the programme’s first lengthy report on the GCSE exam results and ran as follows: Humphrys: The time is twenty-five to seven, another young boy shot dead in the street this time in Liverpool. Here’s the Assistant Chief Constable Simon Byrne a few hours ago. Byrne: [external location] We’re dealing with a quite an awful and tragic crime an eleven-yearold boy has lost his life having been shot near to the Fir Tree public house in Croxteth. Round about seven thirty this evening we received calls from the public about a shooting, officers went to the scene along with paramedics, the young boy was taken to hospital where par- where doctors tried to work on him to save his life but attempts to resuscitate 146

A Critical Discourse Study of Youth Crime in UK Radio News

him failed and he sadly died Humphrys: Well Caroline Cheetham is our reporter in Croxteth this morning, can you add anything to that em Caroline? Cheetham: Erm morning morning John er not not an awful lot but I can recount for you exactly what we do know, and that is that er as as you heard there from Simon Byrne yesterday evening at around seven seven thirty in the evening three boys were playing football here outside the Fir Tree pub in Croxteth Park. Now they were all friends and all aged about eleven, now they were finishing the game, when an older boy aged about fifteen, we think, rode up on his BMX bicycle and calmly fired three times, now we believe one of those shots hit a car, which is covered in tarpaulin just to the side of me at the moment, one of the shots went astray, and a third shot hit one of these boys in the head or the neck, now he was taken to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital er where he later died and all last night and into this morning and I suspect continuing throughout the day, fingertip searches have been have been going on around the pub and the medical center and the parade of shops next door and the whole area is, as you’d expect, completely cordoned off. Humphrys: But what we don’t know for sure is whether the boy who died had been specifically targeted by that er other boy on the BMX bike Cheetham: Mmm no we don’t police police would not be drawn as you would expect on that at the moment, I did put to them last night that that this did appear to be, ahh targeted, you know, this this boy who’d calmly ridden his bike by all accounts by eye-witness reports, calmly ridden his bike up, calmly got off bike, calmly opened fire, three times, got back on the bike and rode off again and I said to the police that appeared to be er a targeted attack against one of the boys at least and they wouldn’t confirm or deny anything of that they just said this was, er this was a nice boy from a nice area, no links to anything they they’re Humphrys: No Cheetham: aware of and they can’t explain it they are bewildered this morning Humphreys: And is Croxteth a rough area where you’d expect this kind of thing though God knows you should never expect this kind of thing, but, you know Cheetham: No, of course not. Um, there are two parts to Croxteth I think I think it’s fair to say, the Croxteth Park, where I am today, and where this happened, and there’s Croxteth, where they do have issues with with with crime. Croxteth Park though is is very different this this doesn’t have er big issues with crime, as far as we’re aware, it’s a private housing estate, the biggest in Europe, it’s a typical Barratt or Wayne Homes estate, you know, small cul-de-sacs of detached properties, very well-kept gardens nice Audis and BMWs on the driveway, um it it’s actually very very nice middle-class area the kind of area you would expect your eleven-year-old boy to play safely on the pub car park across the road Humphrys: Thank’s Caroline, we’ll be talking to the Home Secretary about this and other things at about ten to eight Stourton: It’s now twenty-three minutes to seven, the EU’s vets will meet today [continues] Once again, after the briefest of introductions from Humphrys the floor is given over to the police representative for an extended quotation. The need for this quotation, which does not represent Byrne’s ‘direct appeal’ to the criminal fraternity but may well, judging from the ambient sounds, have come from the same speech, is not immediately apparent because it is followed up by the on147

Edward Haig

the-spot reporter giving much the same information. So if cognitive, ideational factors are not the reason for this quotation, I believe that it is possible to suggest that once again it has an affective or interpersonal (and therefore identity-constructing) function in helping perspectivize the story from the police’s point of view as ‘a quite awful and tragic crime’. I hasten to add that I completely agree with Byrne’s description: it is indeed awful and tragic. But at the same time we must remember how ideology is at its most effective when most unnoticed, and that a CDA reading of texts such as these must ‘make strange’ the commonplace and the taken-for-granted. In this case, the ideological work being done here is not so much a matter of the status of alternative descriptions of the incident but the selective inclusion and exclusion of alternative voices enunciating those descriptions. That is to say, it is the steady and repeated framing of the incident through the eyes of senior members of the state’s law-and-order forces which, I would suggest, predisposes listeners to be less able to conceptualize the incident in other, perhaps not so conventional ways. In contrast to Byrne’s hesitation-free and very probably scripted remarks, Caroline Cheetham seems to be speaking from notes or even memory. From her voice she gives the impression of being a young, earnest, middle-class woman in her 20s or 30s. The fact that she does not speak with a Liverpudlian accent suggests that she is not a local, although she may well be working for one of the BBC’s local news centres. At once we can detect traces of the closeness of the relationship between police and mainstream media personnel here and the professional identities which are reflected in it. First Cheetham omits Byrne’s title, referring to him simply as Simon Byrne. Then she repeatedly uses we as the subject of mental process verbs to conjecture about what happened (we think, we believe). Since a great deal of her information must have come from the police, this is a particular kind of inclusive use of we. On the other hand, regarding the crucial question of whether the attack was a targeted one, it is clear that she was unable to get a clear answer from the police and this is reflected in her language. She begins to answer Humphrys’ question about targeting with what I assume was going to be something like a simple Mmm no we don’t [know] but she self-repaired and rephrased it in a way more congruent with the facts as police would not be drawn. After eliciting from Cheetham the essential details about the incident, including the fact that as yet the question of targeting remains moot, Humphrys moves on to ask indirectly about possible explanations based on whether the area where it took place was, as he puts it, ‘rough’ or not. Cheetham’s long answering turn is interesting for the way in which she characterizes the social identities of the two neighbouring areas: first Croxteth, where they do have issues with with crime, and then Croxteth Park, where they do not (or at least not of this highly visible nature). There are several elements of her description of Croxteth Park which point to (and positively evaluate) its middle-class character, with the implication that such areas are not likely to have this kind of problem. The listener is left to infer from this that Croxteth itself, however, although not described in such detail, is everything that Croxteth Park is not. Above all, it is a non-private (i.e. council) estate which, by inference, is a likely home of the sort of violent teenage criminal who appears to have shot Rhys Jones. Even such non-explicit reference to the working-class nature of this area acts as an instance of what Coffin and O’Halloran (2006) refer to as ‘dog-whistle’ journalism: a type of reporting which, though not audibly biased, contains sufficient clues for those with sensitive ears to infer the bias nonetheless. Thus here the largely middle-class audience of the Today programme is alerted, subtly, by its middle-class journalists, that this is a story rooted in specifically class-related violence. Because the reference is signaled covertly, there is no necessity of explicitly referring to it. And indeed this is what we find as the programme unfolds. In successive interviews, first with a local councilor, Rose Bailey (who, predictably, although a Labour councillor lives in Croxteth Park rather than Croxteth), then with James Jones, the Bishop of Liverpool, and finally with the 148

A Critical Discourse Study of Youth Crime in UK Radio News

Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, there is a repeated search for explanations. These focus on factors such as the cheapness of alcohol in supermarkets (which would appear, from his comments and line of questioning in this programme to be the main culprit in Humphrys’ view); parents who have ‘abdicated their responsibility’ to control their children; and, above all, the failure of communities to ‘come together’. But nowhere in the programme is there any critique of the socioeconomic factors that cause communities to rupture in the first place and encourage the sort of gang and gun culture of which the Rhys Jones case is just one particularly tragic and shocking example.

Conclusion What I hope the preceding rather brief study of the opening sections of this one edition of the Today programme concerning the Rhys Jones story has shown is that the presenters and other participants in the programme clearly do not just ‘tell the truth’ or ‘present the bare facts’ about the case, as the standard mythology of journalists would have us believe, but rather they construct the news using various discourse strategies as a set of stories from very particular perspectives, related to particular personal, professional and social identities and in accordance with particular ideologies. It is my hope that as my long-term research project into youth crime reporting in radio news proceeds I shall be able to identify with greater precision just what those perspectives, identities and ideologies are and what strategies are used to realize them. These perspectives, identities and ideologies may not explicitly draw attention to themselves, although it is clear that in many cases they do, at least to anyone who attends to them critically, but nevertheless the meanings and effects they make available accumulate gradually, item by item, throughout the Today programme, foregrounding or facilitating certain ways of understanding the ‘news’ for its listeners while backgrounding others. This is not to say that oppositional or negotiated ‘hearings’ are excluded altogether, but simply rendered less easy to make. Busy middle-class citizens getting ready for their working day and listening to the radio perhaps only out of habit, or for companionship, or to know when it is time to set off for work, or at most listening to the programme cooperatively and thus with minimal cognitive effort, that is, listening for ‘gist’, are less likely to listen to the news about the killing of an eleven-year old boy as critically as I have. To most listeners, I would suggest, the Rhys Jones case will have been heard as a shocking and terrible crime, rightly of course, but a crime that is the work of a deviant individual or at most a gang of such individuals, a local problem of individual agency, rather than a reflection of any deeper structural problems of society as a whole. And even for those who do see in this story a symptom of a wider social malaise currently afflicting modern Britain, the explanations encouraged and facilitated by the news media will be constrained by, and conform to, the hegemonic norms of the capitalist state. From beneath the daily avalanche of reportage, facts and information, the ‘story’ will emerge to be heard as something for the local ‘authorities’ to deal with in the short term and the local ‘community’ to address in the longer term. This programme and others like it offer a plethora of sensible suggestions concerning solutions: the teaching of better parenting skills; stricter controls on the sale of alcohol; perhaps the provision of better leisure facilities for teenagers; and a few more CCTV cameras in public places—in those areas that do not have them already—for the dual purpose of protecting the residents of Croxteth Park (with their ‘very well-kept gardens’ and ‘nice Audis and BMWs’) and increasing the level of surveillance of those in Croxteth. And thus day after day the steady drip-feed of news about youth crime works its way into consciousness of middleclass Britain like a drug to which it becomes addicted: each day’s news a stimulating yet soporific 149

Edward Haig

dose of the predictably-novel, same-but-different story: ephemeral, evanescent and never enough. References Allan, S. (2004). News culture. Buckingham: Open University Press. Althusser, L. (1971). Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. In Lenin and philosophy and other essays (pp. 127–186). New York: Monthly Review Press. Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. New York: Anchor. Bhaskar, R. (1979). The possibility of naturalism: A philosophical critique of the contemporary human sciences. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Bhaskar, R. (1986). Scientific realism and human emancipation. London: Verso. Clayman, S., & Heritage, J. (2002). The news interview: Journalists and public figures on the air. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coffin, C., & O’Halloran, K. (2006). The role of appraisal and corpora in detecting covert evaluation. Functions of Language, 13 (1), 77–113. Curtice, J. (1999). Was it the sun wot won it again? The influence of newspapers in the 1997 election campaign. Centre for Research into Elections and Social Trends Working Papers, 75. Dor, D. (2003). On newspaper headlines as relevance optimizers. Journal of Pragmatics, 35 (5), 695–721. Eldridge, J. (Ed.). (1995). Glasgow media group reader (Vol. 1: News content, language and visuals). London: Routledge. Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and power. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (1995). Media discourse. London: Arnold. Fairclough, N. (2000). New Labour, new language? London: Routledge. Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. London: Routledge. Fairclough, N. (2006). Language and globalization. London and New York: Routledge. Fairclough, N., & Wodak, R. (1997) Critical discourse analysis. In T. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction (pp. 258–284). London: Sage. Fowler, R. (1991). Language in the news: Discourse and ideology in the press. London: Routledge. Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of talk. Oxford: Blackwell. Harvey, D. (1996). Justice, nature and the geography of difference. Oxford: Blackwell. Humphrys, J. (2004). Lost for words: The mangling and manipulating of the English language. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Humphrys, J. (2006). Beyond words: How language reveals the way we live now. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Hutchby, I. (2006). Media talk: Conversation analysis and the study of broadcasting. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Luckhurst, T. (2001). This is Today: A biography of the Today programme. Aurum Press. McQuail, D. (2005). McQuail’s mass communication theory. London: Sage. O’Connell, D., & Kowal, S. (2006). The research status of Clayman and Heritage’s (2002) ‘The news interview.’ Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 35 (2), 147–165. Peelo, M. (2006). Framing homicide narratives in newspapers: Mediated witness and the construction of virtual victimhood. Crime, Media, Culture, 2 (2), 159–175. Philo, G. (1995). Glasgow media group reader (Vol. 2: Industry, economy, war and politics). London: Routledge. Richardson, J. (2007). Analysing newspapers: An approach from critical discourse analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Turner, G. (2003). British cultural studies: An introduction. 3rd ed. London and New York: Routledge. Wodak, R. (2001). What CDA is about—a summary of its history, important concepts and its developments. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 1–13). London: Sage. Wodak, R. (Ed.). (1989). Language, power and ideology: Studies in political discourse. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Mailing Address: Graduate School of Languages and Cultures Nagoya University Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku Nagoya-shi, 464–8601, Japan E-mail: [email protected]

150

Modality as Identity in Text Interpretation and Creation

Masa-chiyo AMANO Nagoya University

Abstract A question we try to answer in this study is: How are expressions indicating identity conventionally routinized in language? We will approach this problem from the point of view of grammaticalization in the sense originally developed in Meillet (1912) and arrive at a conclusion that at least some examples of such expressions gradually acquire forms of routinization through subjectification, and then are eventually incorporated into modality. Mood is a grammatical category which is associated with a speaker-writer’s way, manner or fashion of saying, thinking, believing, and feeling when he or she uses a language. Interestingly, mood has an etymological connection with ‘mind’ in Old English and, as in Jespersen (1924), it has been used as a grammatical term in the area of grammatical theory to refer to verbal forms such as indicative, subjunctive and imperative. Thus, it should be noticed that mood is expressed in conventionally routinized ways, i.e., inflections on verbs, at least in some languages, typically Latin or Classical Greek, and probably English. This kind of routinization is often referred to as grammaticalization in many studies, including Hopper and Traugott (2003), since it is realized by means of morphological alternation. Here we take grammaticalization as a more advanced stage of routinization, probably a final stage of diachronic language change. Closely related to mood is modality. As discussed in Palmer (1986), among others, modality is a notional category which is expressed in various ways, including verbal morphology. There are modal adverbs, modal adjectives, or parenthetical clauses which are frequently discussed in the literature in connection with modality. It might be possible to characterize modality as a speakerwriter’s subjective attitudes or opinions toward what is being said in texts, or ‘the contents of texts.’ Thus, modality is often captured in terms of the opposition with the proposition; all that is semantically distinguished from proposition is modality. Linguistic forms, which originally have concrete meanings, gradually assume modality through subjectification, one of whose definitions is given in the following: Subjectification It is a gradient phenomenon, whereby forms and constructions that at first express primarily concrete, lexical objective meanings come through repeated use in local syntactic contexts to serve increasingly abstract, pragmatic, interpersonal and speaker151

Masa-chiyo Amano

based functions. (Traugott, 1995: 32) It is said that subjectification is a semantic motivation for routinization, and finally grammaticalization. In this study, we will show that linguistic forms expressing identity are also diachronically developed through subjectification, strongly suggesting that identity could be an essential part of modality and thus routinization is playing a role in derivation of identity expressions. It is unclear, however, whether or not identity expressions arrive at the stage of routinization, i.e., grammaticalization. To motivate the claim above, we will examine a variety of Japanese and English expressions which may be associated with a Japanese and English identity, and conclude that our claim here is certainly verified. There are a large number of routinized expressions which cannot be interpreted appropriately without having identity deeply embedded in them through subjectification. If a speaker-writer is able to use routinized forms efficiently and appropriately, he or she is more likely to be recognized as possessors of an identity common in a speech community and his or her social acceptance in that society will be enhanced. We will refer to this kind of identity as linguistic identity, and no one will raise any objection for an idea that seriously affects your interpretation of the creation of texts.

1. Introduction (1) The Basic Question in this Study How are linguistic expressions indicating identity conventionally routinized or even grammaticalized in language? (2) Grammaticalization content item > grammatical word > clitic > inflectional affix 内容語

文法語

接辞

屈折接辞

(Hopper and Trauggott, 2003: 7) (3) Routinization A process in which linguistic expressions are gradually frozen and then acquire fixed forms to be spoken by many speakers of a language in a certain sense understandable only for native or advanced speakers of the language.

2. Mood and Modality (4) a. Indicative: I am a linguist. b. Subjunctive: If I were a bird, … c. Imperative: Forget about this. (5) Variety of Modality

152

法性 (modality)

法助動詞 (modal auxiliary)

準法助動詞 (semi-modal auxiliary)

予測 (predication)

will/would/shall

be going to

Modality as Identity in Text Interpretation and Creation

義務 (obligation)

shall/should/ought to

必要性 (necessity)

must

have to/have got to

能力 (ability)

can/could

be able to

差し迫った行為 (imminent activity)

be about to

予定された行為 (scheduled activity)

be to

可能性 (possibility)

may/might

達成 (achievement)

get to

不可避性 (inevitability)

be bound to

(6) 態度離接辞 (Attitudinal Disjuncts) Clearly, he is behaving badly. Interestingly, he is behaving badly. a. apparently, certainly, clearly, conceivably, decidedly, definitely, evidently, outwardly, possibly, presumably, seemingly, superficially, surely, undoubtedly, etc. b. annoyingly, astonishingly, foolishly, fortunately, interestingly, luckily, naturally, oddly, regrettably, significantly, surprisingly, unbelievably, unluckily, wisely, etc. (7) Routinized and Grammaticalized Forms for Modality Meaning to be conveyed

Routinized forms

Grammaticalized forms

modality

Semi-modal auxiliaries

Modal auxiliaries (often called modal-marker)

Attitudinal disjuncts

(8) Why are modal expressions routinized or grammaticalized? (9) What motivates the routinization or grammaticalization of modal expressions? (10) Metaphor: A process to understand and experience one kind of thing in terms of another across conceptual boundaries, and directionality of transfer is from a basic, usually concrete, meaning to one more abstract. (11) Metonymy: A process by which one conceptual entity provides access to another conceptual entity within the same domain. (12) Answers to (8) and (9) H & T’s answer to (8)

Modality should be conveyed informatively and the use of routinized and/or grammaticalized forms enhances speaker-writer’s social acceptance.

H & T’s answer to (9)

Metaphor and metonymy are major processes that motivate grammaticalization.

(13) Subjectification It is a gradient phenomenon, whereby forms and constructions that at first express primarily concrete, lexical objective meanings come through repeated use in local syntactic contexts to serve increasingly abstract, pragmatic, interpersonal and speakerbased functions. (Traugott, 1995: 32)

153

Masa-chiyo Amano

(14) The Process of Routinization and Grammaticalization of Modality Content items → Routinized forms ↑ ↑ Subjectification Subjectification (Semantic bleaching)

→

Grammaticalized forms

3. Identity and Modality (15) Why are identity expressions routinized and/or grammaticalized? (16) What motivates the routinization and/or grammaticalization of identity expressions? (17) Japanese Routinized Identity Expressions

154

Examples

Direct translations

Actual meanings

Processes

どうも、どうも

Thank you, thank you.

Why, hello there!/Goodbye, then.

?

お陰様で

Thanks to someone behind me.

Fortunately, …

metaphor

失礼します

Excuse me.

Let me do it./Goodbye.

?

済みません

I am sorry.

I am sorry./Thank you./Please

?

結構です

That’s fine.

I don’t need it.

?

前向きに

Look forward …

cannot promise.

?

どう出る

How will (s)he come out?

How will (s)he response?

metonymy

泥棒

twist a rope after catching a burglar

very delayed/unorganized

metaphor

頭が真白になる

My head became white

I had no idea.

metonymy

頭が固い

have a hard head

Inflexible/stupid/stubborn

metaphor

頭でっかち

have a big head

think too much

metaphor

頭を使え

Use your head.

Think more.

metaphor

頭が弱い

have a weak head

Stupid

metaphor

両巨頭

two big heads

two great persons

metonymy

寝耳に水

pour water into one’s ears

be awfully surprised

metaphor

耳にたこ

have a callosity in one’s ears

Enough is enough.

metaphor

目障りだ

obstruction to seeing through

I hate it.

metonymy

見る目がある

You have an eye to seeing things.

You can appreciate the true value of things. metaphor

お目が高い

You have high-raised eyes.

You can appreciate the true value of things. metaphor

目が離せない

cannot take away one’s eyes

extremely interested

metaphor

目に余る

cannot keep it in one’s eyes

cannot accept

metaphor

目の保養

recuperate one’s eyes

watch a pretty woman

metonymy

目一杯頑張る

work until one’s eyes are filled.

work very hard

metaphor

目からうろこ

Scales dropped from one’s eyes.

understand clearly suddenly

metaphor

手が離せない

cannot take away one’s hands

awfully busy

metaphor

手を離れる

leave one’s hands

become independent

metaphor

手を引く

pull one’s hand

withdraw

metaphor

手びかえる

hold back one’s hands

hesitate

metaphor

手を切る

cut one’s hand

break up with someone

metaphor

私の片腕だ

one of my hands.

an indispensable person

metonymy

私の右腕だ

my right hand.

an indispensable person

metonymy

Modality as Identity in Text Interpretation and Creation

揚げ足を取る

take someone’s raised foot

metaphor

足を引っ張る

pull someone’s leg

hinder

metaphor

横車を押す

push a side wheel

act perversely

metaphor

骨を折る

break one’s bones

work very hard

metaphor

骨身にしみる

percolate into one’s bones and flesh

deeply moved

metonymy

屈指の

count on one’s fingers

excellent

metonymy

喉から手が出る

A hand comes out of one’s throat

鳥肌が立つ

have a chicken’s skin

very moved

自分を曲げる

vend oneself

unwillingly change one’s opinion

metaphor

ごぼう抜き

extract burdocks

overtake other runners

metonymy

たらい回し

pass a washtub to others

do not take responsibilities

metaphor

青田刈り

harvest green young rice

hiring future graduates too early

metonymy

お愛想

Say nice things to me.

I want to pay and leave.

metonymy

三行半

three-line letter

letter of divorce

metonymy

雨後の竹の子

bamboo shoots after raining

grow vigorously and quickly

metonymy

metonymy ?

4. “Chara-Copular” and “Chara-Joshi” as Identity Markers (18) Chara-copulars in Japanese a. おいどん、もともとバックプリント重視の人間でごわす。 I am inherently a person who puts emphasis on backprinting. b. 拙者ドライブに行ってきたでござる。 I am just back from a drive. (Sadanobu, 2007) c. はじめましてでおじゃる。 How do you do? (19) Chara-joshi in Japanese a. ナニーッ ワシはなにもいっとらんゴホン ［ゴホン is not a cough.］ What! I haven’t yet said anything. b. ぼくらはフェレット、いたち科だひょーん。 We are ferrets, we belong to the family of weasel. c. 申し訳ありませんですぷう。 I am awfully sorry. (Ibid.) (20) A Process of Routinization and Grammaticalization of Identity Content items → Routinized forms ↑ ↑ Subjectification Subjectification (Semantic bleaching)

→

Grammaticalized forms

(21) Answers to (15) to (16) My answer to (15)

Identity should be expressed informatively and the use of routinized and/or forms enhances speaker-writer’s social acceptance.

My answer to (16)

Metaphor and metonymy are major processes that motivate the Routinization and/or grammaticalization of identity expressions.

155

Masa-chiyo Amano

5. Concluding Remarks *

This is the edited version of the handout and abstract distributed by Professor Amano at the February conference. Regrettably, we were unable to establish if Professor Amano had written a revised full version of this paper before his passing. Even so, we thought that we would like to give readers an insight to some of this great scholar's ideas.

References Halliday, M. A. K. (1994). An introduction to functional grammar (2nd ed.). London: Arnold. Hopper, P. J., & Traugott, E. C. (2003). Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jespersen, O. (1924). The philosophy of grammar. London: Allen and Unwin. Meillet, A. (1912). L’evolution des Formes Grammaticals. Scientia 12, 26 (2), Reprinted in Antoine Meillet (1958) Linguistique historique at linguistique générale, 1130–1948, Champion, Paris. Palmer, F. R. (1986). Mood and modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sadanobu, T. (2007). Kyara-joshi ga arawareru kankyo. In S. Kinsui (Ed.), Yakuwari kenkyu no chihei (pp. 27–70). Tokyo: Kuroshio. Traugott, E. C. (1995). Subjectification in grammaticalization. In D. Stain & S. Wright (Eds.), Subjectivity and subjectivisation in language (pp. 31–54). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

156

The Emotion in the Form: Prosodic Modules of an Inspirational Political Address

Tetyana SAYENKO Nagoya University of Commerce and Business

Introduction Inspirational political rhetoric remains one of the most powerful instruments of leadership and social control (Brown & Van Riper, 1966, p. 80). Through emotional identification with his audience an orator directs and modifies their perception and evaluation of the reality and activates “common” attitudes, values, desires and goals. Thus, he mobilizes public opinion (Atkinson, 1984, p. 1) and urges a “course of future action” for the virtual “common good” (Corcoran, 1979, p. 42). The analysts of oral political rhetoric emphasize the importance of melody and rhythm as factors determining and enhancing the final effect of a rhetorically strong message in public speaking (Atkinson, 2004; Brown & Van Riper, 1966; Hayakawa, 1941; Henn, 1934; Oliver & Cortright, 1970; Van Dijk, 1995). Max Atkinson claims that “skillful public speaking can be readily recognized even in those … whose languages we do not understand” (Atkinson, 1984, p. 4). However, the study of oral text prosodic form remains one of the biggest challenges for researchers (Couper-Kuhlen, 2006), and speech prosody that gives “the fine sense of … music” and “harmonizes” the speech structure remains the least studied (Croll, 1966, p. 327) component of the fifth, least cultivated (Austin, 1966 [1806], p. x), part of rhetorical theory—the art of delivery. The studies of oral political address have provided some descriptions of the role of prosody and rhythm in enhancing the effect produced by the rhetorical devices used in speech, for example in the arrangement of “three-part lists” and parallel structures followed by applause (Atkinson, 1984, p. 63; Leith & Myerson, 1989, pp. 23–25), or in the accomplishment of “prominence” in public speaking (Nida, 1990, pp. 39–41). Researchers have also noticed that specific pitch-range parameters mark the public speaking mode, where an ascending pitch-range may be used “in certain kinds of rhetorical climax” (Crystal & Davy, 1969, pp. 32–33, 227; Greene & Brizel, 2002). David Crystal argues that speech melody, loudness, tempo, rhythm, and tone of voice serve as distinctive indicators of the status and role of the speaker, and there are some linguistic conventions that determine prosodic patterns for each genre of speech (Crystal, 2000, p. 41). Nevertheless, the research in the field has not yet offered any information on the patterns of prosodic fluctuations in the manifestation of, as Lev Vygotsky calls it, the unique “emotion” of a rhetorical art form (Vygotskiy, 1986, pp. 53, 189). There is no data on “the melodic curve” (Vygotskiy, 1986, p. 181) that harmonizes the whole text and determines the expressive intonation and emotional coloring of its units (Bakhtin, 1986, pp. 86–87). 157

Tetyana Sayenko

This paper is an attempt to study prosodic modules that shape inspirational political addresses. We define prosodic modules as pitch-range patterns marking the shifts in the direction, level and range of pitch fluctuations in speech progression. The results of acoustic analysis (with the application of Speech Station 2000 software) are used to provide more accurate descriptions of the prosodic fluctuations in speech. We base our research on the assumption that the form of a discourse and its substance are inseparable, and that the prosodic structure of speech units is connected with the purpose they must achieve in the rhetorical argumentation (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969 [1958], pp. 142–143). Our goal is to check the validity of the hypothesis that the types of prosodic modules and their clustering correlate with the place and function of the compositional-pragmatic part they shape in speech dynamics. The article also discusses how the speech’s prosodic macrostructure can project the orator’s identity and identification (De Fina, Schiffrin, & Bamberg, 2006, pp. 3–8). The theoretical basis for the research is drawn from rhetorical, generic, and linguistic theories. The study involves the compositional-pragmatic, auditory, and instrumental-acoustic analyses of the original recordings of the “I Have a Dream” address by Martin Luther King Jr. (Greene & Brizel, 2002; King, 1990) and the “Ich bin ein Berliner” address by John Fitzgerald Kennedy (Kennedy, 1988; Waldman, 2003). Perfection and power of the content and sound form of the addresses make them canonical examples of inspirational political oratory in the American rhetorical tradition (Atkinson, 1984; Greene & Brizel, 2002).

Inspirational Political Address Inspirational political address can be defined as an integration of two rhetorical genres: epideictic, or ceremonial, and deliberative, or persuasive. The nature and power of such integration of genres finds explanation in the theory of rhetorical argumentation. Perelman and OlbrechtsTyteca (1969 [1958], pp. 49–51, 142–143) argue that: The speaker tries to establish a sense of communion centered around particular values recognized by the audience, and to this end he uses the whole range of means available to the rhetorician for purposes of amplification and enhancement.… Epideictic oratory has significance and importance for argumentation, because it strengthens the disposition toward action by increasing adherence to the values it lauds.… Before even starting to argue from particular premises, it is essential that the content of these premises should stand out against the undifferentiated mass of available elements of agreement: the choice of premises can be identified with their presentation. Effective presentation that impresses itself on the hearers’ consciousness is essential not only in all argumentation aiming at immediate action, but also in that which aspires to give the mind a certain orientation, to make certain schemes of interpretation prevail, to insert the elements of agreement into a framework that will give them significance and confer upon them the rank they deserve. A political rhetorician uses the knowledge of what can move the audience and employs the arsenal of rhetorical and literary devices to “produce both impact and appeal” (Nida, 1990) through the dynamic images of positively and negatively defined “virtual” realities (Campbell, 1982, pp. 77–80). The power of rhetoric, therefore, is “due to the combination of cognitive and affective impact upon the audience” (Corcoran, 1979, p. 46; Hayakawa, 1941, pp. 88–89). The orator modifies the audience’s perception of present and future and “makes present to them what he thinks is true, just, and virtuous” (Hyde & Smith, 1993, p. 81). Reference to the accepted and affirmed common values makes the audience more emotionally responsive to what the speaker describes. 158

The Emotion in the Form

The orator does not only make a strong impression but, also, facilitates movement and change in the emotional state of the listeners. He enhances the perception of the present reality as “threatening” or “shameful” and stimulates the desire to replace it with an “appealing” one from the virtual future that he makes present. Citing Wagner’s words on the effects of music, we can suggest that the sound of speech can also help “materialize” thoughts and images, “give forth their emotional contents as no longer merely recollected, but made present” (Wagner, 1964, p. 222). Perelman and OlbrechtsTyteca (1969 [1958], pp. 174–175) claim that “the simplest way of creating this presence” in speech is “by repetition” or by “accentuation of certain passages either by tone or by pausing”. Hence, the images aimed at the modification of reality perception should be “put into motion” to “move” the listeners. It is also important to mention that the socio-political context and setting of the event in space and time, the size, emotions and expectations of the audience, the image and goals of the speaker can affect the topic, content, emotion and form of the address, and determine its effectiveness. Political or social confrontation creates “emotional anticipation” for someone who can address the “burning issues” of the time: someone confident, strong, and noble. A charismatic speaker with a resonant voice can uplift the spirit of the audience and transform them into a new community with common goals and values. People would be driven by the desire to share the speaker’s confidence and delight “to belong to a value structure greater than, or in addition to, materialism” (Davies & Wheeler, 1981, p. 18). On the other hand, huge crowds of people electrified with common desires, fears and hopes can influence the orator and his speech. Hence, we can say that the sound form of a successful inspirational speech reflects the dynamics of the collective emotion steered by the speaker. The dynamic pattern of the enhanced emotional energy is reflected in the sound form of any effective inspirational speech. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” address and John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” address can serve as examples of this type of speech. The idea about the similarity of the expressive means used in the art of public speaking and in music allows the author to hypothesize that, as in music, there might be some recurring rhythmic and melodic patterns shaping the dynamics of a public address, as Greene and Brizel argue: The brilliant communicator uses words not as markers for denotative meaning but rather as vehicles to carry the emotional content that will, in fact, generate changes in thought, feeling, or action. The word emotion says it all, but “e-motion” is how it should be spelled. “E”, the first letter in “energy”, in “motion” … King, John Kennedy, and Churchill wrote symphonies with their words…. There is direction and movement that turns sounds and words into emotion, grabbing us by the heart, and taking us with them (Greene & Brizel, 2002, p. vii). Previous experimental phonetic research of American political oratory conducted by the author has shown that there are some recurring patterns of prosodic fluctuations in inspirational speech dynamics that match its communicative-pragmatic strategy (Sayenko, 2000, pp. 182–183).

The Rhetorical Situation and Communicative-pragmatic Structure of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” Address Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech delivered at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963 can serve as a canonical example of an inspirational political speech (Greene & Brizel, 2002, p. 76). It was delivered at a time of strong social confrontation at the height of the civil rights movement, by a charismatic leader to an estimated 250,000–400,000 black and white people, at the Lincoln Memorial. The goal of the speech was to contribute to the 159

Tetyana Sayenko

unification of “various fractions of the civil rights movement with labor unions and other activists” and to advocate for nonviolent but active and forceful actions. In a broader context it was also aimed at the “Establishment” and the prejudiced “white moderate” who was “more devoted to order than to justice” (Greene & Brizel, 2002, pp. 71–76). The speaker’s voice is resonant and powerful. He delivers his address in a formal, public speaking mode with conviction and passion. Rich modulations of tone, “exaggerated” patterns of intonation and projected space-filling voice signal that the speaker is addressing a great number of people in an open space (Atkinson, 2004). The address represents a dynamic pattern of emotional tensions and relaxations. The speaker moves the audience through a series of psychological states: a state of nostalgic hope, despair, injustice, raised hope, urgency, determination, magnified injustice, satisfaction, increased hope, and unrestrained joy (Cooper, 1989, p. 106). Negative images are balanced with the stronger positive ones: fear with confidence, danger with courage, challenge with determination, despair with hope, violence with spiritual power, until the images from the “desired reality” replace the old ones and become “present”. Textual tension that results from the “conflicting” emotional energy pulling in different directions develops in curves and reaches its highest point at the climax. I have defined the basic pragmatic structure of an inspirational address by elaborating the idea of Teun A. van Dijk (1981, pp. 10–15) that the existence of a pragmatic macro-structure of any successful global speech act which is based on the shift in feelings, attitudes and judgments in the audience, and taking into consideration Miller’s (1956) suggestion that the operational memory span is limited by about seven “chunks” of information1. The emotional pattern of the text is a function of its communicative-pragmatic structure that can be limited to the following basic parts (Sayenko, 2000). Pragmatically dominant, prosodically emphasized parts are in bold): 1. Introduction-Identification (Identification with the audience and common values); 2. Problems/Negative Visualization (Directing attention to the negative, painful and shameful, situation); 3. Restoration of Confidence (Arguing the right and duty to change the situation); 4. Motivation (Urging to change the situation for the desired one); 5. Restoration of Moral Principles and Values (Strengthening adherence to common values); 6. Inspiration/Visualization (Transformation of the reality into the desired one); 7. Commitment (Mobilization for action); 8. Determination/Visualization (Call for action to make the desired future present). This basic chain structure is similar to the pattern known as Monroe’s Motivated Sequence: “attention, need, satisfaction, visualization, and action” (Oliver & Cortright, 1970, pp. 130–132)2. However, in the case of inspirational speech, motivation is always based on high moral principles and common good, not only on self-interest, inspiration is supported by common values and desires (brotherhood, freedom, happiness), commitment is based on faith in a better future for all and the anticipation of joy when it becomes present. The parts of the text macrostructure are enlarged and enhanced by several parallel and chain substructures with recurring propositions and warrants. The pragmatic macrostructure of the text develops in a spiral progression. The parts of the pattern of reasoning (premises, evidence and 1 2

Miller (1956) proposes to define the term chunk as a familiar unit of information that can include a number of bits of information. He argues that immediate memory span is limited by the number of these familiar units. The authors make reference to the following work: A. H. Monroe. Principles and Types of Speech, 5th ed. (Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1962).

160

The Emotion in the Form

conclusion) are repeated and enriched through the speech. The emotional pattern of the text is a function of its communicative-pragmatic macrostructure. The pragmatic macrostructure of the address is realized through a hierarchical pattern of its semantic foci that accumulate the meaning and energy of the parts they represent (Novikov, 1983, pp. 34–40). The foci at the highest level of hierarchy acquire “symbolic” meaning and form a dynamic emotional pattern of the speech contents. This emotional pattern of the most emphasized pragmatic foci of the whole speech remains in memory as a component of the “residual message” (Phillips, Kougl, & Kelly, 1985, p. 146), the rhetorical matrix of the address. The focal units, resonating in minds, trigger the memory of images and emotions associated with their sound, and can unfold the meaning involving the larger structures. Prosodically emphasized speech segments in the focal fragments of the speech include the terms that “bring about communion” and widely shared “value judgments” (Perelman & OlbrechtsTyteca, 1969 [1958], pp. 164–166) (e.g., I have a dream, all of God’s children, all men are created equal, dignity, discipline, destiny, black men and white men, sisters and brothers, brotherhood, let freedom ring, free at last), and the words representing the images of “mounting”, “height” and “God terms” (Burke, 1984 [1969], pp. 299–307) (e.g., every hill and mountain, from every hill and every molehill, from every mountainside, the glory of the Lord, thank God Almighty). In “I Have a Dream”, not only are the same ideas are restated several times in the course of the message, but the same textual segments are repeated from two to nine times, framing, enhancing and foregrounding the focal fragments, and setting the dynamic rhythmic pattern of prosodic fluctuations in the whole address.

Prosodic Modules of the “I Have a Dream” Address The opening phrase sets the key tone and rhythm for the whole address. It is shaped by a sequence of basic prosodic modules characterized by level melodic patterns with little fluctuations in pitch, within 200–230 Hz3, on strongly and weakly stressed syllables, and a stress-time heartbeat rhythm (a short pause within a phrase is marked with |, longer pause separating phrases—with ||): I am happy to join with you today | in | what will go down in history | as the greatest demonstration for freedom | in the history of our nation ||. The orator starts in a temperate tone and gradually carries his listeners along with him to more dynamic emotional parts of the speech returning to the temperate basic tone, however, in the reasoning parts of the address. This exertion of control and “reason in the midst of passion”, as Blair describes it, “has a wonderful effect both to please and to persuade” (Blair, 1990, p. 103). As the tension grows and moves in its ups and downs in the dynamics of the speech, basic modules form rhythmic patterns with other prosodic modules that reflect the energy potential of the functional part they shape. This prosodic macro-rhythm is supported by repetitions and parallel phrases that organize, frame, and stimulate the dynamics of the speech. Emphatic modules characterized by a widened pitch range and falling tones on the final stressed syllables are used to highlight and emphasize the semantic foci of the parts: Problems, Restoration of Confidence, and Restoration of Moral Principles and Values. The emotional dynamics of these parts is restrained, and the speaker catches up with the dynamics of the wave-like flow of energy only in the linking fragments that make reference to more emotional issues. Emotionally dominant 3

The average male voice pitch is 100–120 Hz; in public speaking mode the base tone of voice may be raised to 200 Hz.

161

Tetyana Sayenko

parts of the text, i.e. Motivation, Inspiration, Determination, are marked by the greatest fluctuations in pitch level and range, voice energy, tempo and pauses. In the Motivation part of the text, framing repetitions (underlined) are shaped by descending melodic modules within the range of 350–200 Hz, which makes them sound more forceful, with power and determination: Now is the time | to make real the promises of Democracy. || Now is the time | to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation | to the sunlit path of racial justice. || Now is the time | to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice | to the solid rock of brotherhood. || Now is the time to make justice a reality | for all of God’s children ||. The longest and pragmatically most important (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969 [1958], p. 143) Inspiration fragment with eight repetitions of “I have a dream” is marked by the widest range of prosodic fluctuations (12 semitones) and the longest (from 8 to 13 seconds) interrupting applauses. The contrast in the sound and emotion of the repetitions in this fragment is described by Barber and Watson (1988, pp. 94–96) in the following paragraph: Over and over again, King appealed to an America that did not yet exist. ‘I have a dream,’ he whispered; ‘I have a dream,’ he thundered; ‘I have a dream,’ he promised. And with each ringing ‘dream’ came a murmuring tide from the thousands … — ‘Yes, Reverend … a dream … we’re with you.… That’s right, yes, yes, yes … ’ ‘Yes, I have a dream,’ he proclaimed, to an audience beyond the mall, beyond Washington, to the great majority in whose hands the future of justice in America lay … The force of inertia of the rhythm pushes the text forward and speeds it up in the longer segments between the repetitions. Variation in the length of the segments between the repetitions is not chaotic. They form relatively symmetric patterns based on simple, mirror, or spiral symmetry with special emphasis on the segments in strong positions (initial, final, harmonious center) (Cheremisina-Yenikolopova, 1999) of the address and its parts. The speech tension grows in curves to its climax, like a rising sea. The rising-falling pattern of pitch fluctuations based on golden section symmetry (known as a harmonizing pattern in music) (Clynes, 1986, p. 187) allows the gradual growth of energy tension to be almost twice as long as the period of relaxation, which matches the psychological pattern of emotional elevation. This pattern is described by Wagner (1964, pp. 198–213) as preparedness of “the highest pitch of emotional utterance”: … This enhancement to the highest pitch of emotional utterance could only have been reached precisely in an ascension of the verse into the melody … to make these accents impress the hearer’s feelings as forcibly as we want to express in them our own feelings we dwell on them with sharply lifted voice. … The mood being so definitely prepared for a sudden change, as if itself to summon it. We can trace patterns of dynamic symmetry in the distribution of the emphasized segments in the focal phrases of the most uplifting parts of the text (Inspiration, Commitment, Determination). The patterns of golden section (underlined) may be shaped by one or more ascending or emphatic modules, an emphatic elevated module, and a closing descending module (melodic peaks are in bold), for example: I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, | every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, 162

The Emotion in the Form

and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, | and all flesh shall see it together ||. A dynamic symmetry pattern may organize a phrase into one peak (in bold print) climaxing structure, as in the following example: With this faith | we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, | to stand up for freedom together, | knowing that we will be free one day ||. In the last pragmatically dominant phrase of the speech, organized by a dynamic symmetry pattern, three repetitions are interrupted by the segment “thank God Almighty” that is placed at the peak of the last wave of energy in the whole address: Free at last! | Free at last! | Thank God Almighty, | we are free at last! The pitch rises from 250 Hz to 410 Hz and reaches its peak at the point of golden section on the words “God Almighty”. Iambic rhythm and pauses shape the rising curves of energy and move it forward. Long syllables and pauses contribute to the solemnity and sublimity of the message. King’s goal is to inspire for the non-violent movement. Speech segments in the strong positions, initial and final, form a message: “I am happy” … “we are free at last”. The most emphasized phrase in all the address is “I have a dream”. This phrase accumulates the dominant emotion of the speech and acquires a symbolic meaning of hope, faith, inspiration, confidence, and commitment. To sum up, the fluctuations of pitch range and level follow the dynamic pattern of the speech energy flow. Higher pitch level is associated with strong, active feelings: positive feelings with pitch peaks, negative feelings with lower areas of the high pitch zone (Vitt, 1985). Focal segments of the first part of the text are marked by a widened pitch range and slowed down tempo. Negative emotional reactions and demands are expressed with emphatic falling tones (mid-fall and highfall). Positive emotional states are marked by high-rising tones in a higher pitch zone. Emotionally contrastive speech parts are characterized by a wider range and greater fluctuations in pitch. The results of the study show that the prosodic modules shaping the speech’s dynamics are of five main types that can be labeled as basic, emphatic, ascending (or rising), descending (or falling), and emphatic elevated. Each of them has its distinctive prosodic characteristics and role in the textual dynamics (See Table 1). The basic module is characterized by a level melodic pattern with small fluctuations in pitch on strongly and weakly stressed syllables, and a stress-time heartbeat rhythm. The emphatic module is marked by the rise of the voice pitch level and greater fluctuations in pitch and intensity on the focal words. The ascending module is characterized by the ascent in pitch and acceleration in tempo. The descending module is marked by the descent in pitch, and slowing down or deceleration in tempo. The emphatic elevated module is characterized by a sharp ascent in pitch and acceleration in tempo. The length of the modules may be different. They do not necessarily correlate with the syntactic structure of the speech and may be realized in one or several syntagms. The use of each type of module and their clustering seems to be predetermined by the pattern of the energy flow in the whole speech (See Table 2).

163

Tetyana Sayenko

Table 1 Prosodic characteristics of modules in “I Have a Dream” Address Prosodic Features Modules (Symbol)

Pitch Range Fluctuations (Hz)

Tempo (syl/sec)

Duration (sec)

Following Pause (sec)

200–230 240–350 250–350 350–200 350–410

2–5 3–4 2.5–5 3–4 3–6

3–6 2–3 2–4 2–4 1–2

1–6 1–2 0–2 1–6 0.5–13

Basic (B) Emphatic (E) Ascending (R) Descending (F) Emphatic Elevated (H)

Table 2 Distribution of prosodic modules in “I Have a Dream” Address Parts of Speech Modules

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

Basic Emphatic Ascending Descending Emphatic Elevated

+

+ +

+ +

+ +

+

+

+ +

+ + + + +

+ + + + +

+ + + + +

At the beginning of the speech only the basic modules of the opening are used. With the growth of the textual tension, more emphatic modules play their role, forming a heavy rhythm that marks the urgency of the problems. Strong emotional reaction to the challenges is reflected in the appearance of a succession of the ascending modules in the sequences. The Inspiration/Visualisation, Commitment and Determination/Visualization parts are marked by the use of emphatic elevated modules. Any module added to a sequence balances the given portion. Emphatic elevated (H) and ascending (R) modules are unstable and require to be balanced out with descending modules. Used at the climax, emphatic elevated modules may be balanced out by applause. Prosodic modules shaping the curves of the energy flow in the text come in rhythmically arranged sequences. Clusters of the prosodic modules shaping the zones of emotional tension and relaxation in the dynamics of the speech are rhythmically arranged and organized in harmonious patterns (See Table 3). Table 3 Sequences of prosodic modules in “I Have a Dream” Address Parts of Speech

Sequences of Prosodic Modules

I II III IV V VI

B+B+B E+B+E+B+E+B; B+E+B E+B+E+B+E+B; B+E+B F+B+F+B+F+B+F B+B+F+B; E+B+E+B+E+E+H; R+R+R+F; B+B+E+R+F B+E+E+R+E; R+F+R+F+R+F; R+F+R+F+F+R+F+H; E+F+E+R+F+E+R+H; R+R+R+H F+R+F; F+R+R+R+H+F R+B+R+F+R+H+F+H; E+E+H+F

VII VIII

Similar prosodic modules have been traced in the structure of another political speech of inspirational genre—John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s address “Ich bin ein Berliner” delivered in West Berlin on June 26, 1963 (Kennedy, 1988; Waldman, 2003). 164

The Emotion in the Form

The Communicative-pragmatic and Prosodic Structure of John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” Address In June 1963 the future of West Berlin was still uncertain. Therefore, Kennedy’s visit was electrifying to West Berliners. The city stood still as millions of Berliners waited along the route to greet him. From his motorcade, Kennedy could see the devastation of East Berlin. He was so shaken by what he saw, that, as he rode in his limousine, he inserted stronger, more emotional, more defiant language into his speech. The President addressed the vast crowd in the Rudolf Wilde Platz. As far as he could see there was a mass of faces chanting “Kenned-dy, Kenne-dy.” The speech was brief, but it delivered a deeply moving and powerful message that reverberated globally (Greene & Brizel, 2002, pp. 65–70; Kelley, 1980, p. 182). In “Ich bin ein Berliner” address, Kennedy boosts the morale of the German people, offering them hope and his personal guarantee of support. The President moves the adoring audience through the stages of strong identification, enhanced confidence, defiance, challenge, determination, increased hope, conviction, and reinforced identification (Greene & Brizel, 2002, pp. 65–70). The basic communicative-pragmatic structure of the address follows the pattern of inspirational speeches, with some rearrangement in the order of the parts. The President places the Problems part after the Restoration of Confidence and Motivation parts. He also omits the Determination (Call for action) part. Thus, the communicative-pragmatic structure of the address has the following basic parts (pragmatically dominant, prosodically emphasized parts are in bold): 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Introduction-Identification (Identification with the audience); Restoration of Confidence (Boosting the audience’s confidence); Motivation (Identification with the audience’s plight. Urging for defiance); Problems and Challenges (Directing attention to the painful and shameful situation); Restoration of Moral Principles and Values (Strengthening adherence to common values, human rights and justice); 6. Commitment (Commitment to the course of freedom); 7. Inspiration/Visualization (Transformation of the reality into the desired one. Reinforcement of the identification with the audience). Pragmatically dominant parts of the speech (Restoration of Confidence, Motivation, and Inspiration/Visualization) are marked by the use of two short phrases in German: Ich bin ein Berliner and Laβt sie nach Berlin kommen. These phrases function as the pragmatic foci of the whole speech and reinforce the President’s identification with the audience. Kennedy sets a friendly, conversational tone of the whole speech in the opening statement of the Introduction part: I am proud | to come to this city | as the guest of your distinguished Mayor, | who has symbolized | throughout the world | the fighting spirit | of West Berlin ||. Using basic modules with pitch variation in a relatively wide range of 230–180 Hz (with weakly stressed syllables pronounced at a lower pitch level), pausing at frequent intervals and emphasizing the words proud, fighting spirit, democracy, freedom, progress with rising tones, the President allows the audience to grasp the main points of his speech. He also sends a double message, of support to Berliners and a warning to the Soviets, mentioning that he came to Germany with General Clay, Berliners’ hero, and emphasizing that the General “will come again if ever needed.” The audience responds with bursts of applause. 165

Tetyana Sayenko

Kennedy starts the next part, Restoration of Confidence, speaking into applause. He raises his voice, and uses an emphatic module, on the first segment “two thousand years ago”; then repeats it in the temperate basic tone. Using parallel rhythmic phrases, the President flatters Berliners putting them on the same level as great Romans. Using a descending module and slowed down tempo, with emphasis on every word of “civis Romanus sum” cadence, Kennedy makes the phrase sound as a symbol of confidence and strength. He pronounces the phrase “Ich bin ein Berliner” with an ascending module and rhythmic “hammer strokes” on each word, conveying the feeling of confidence and pride. Saying “I am a Berliner” in German, Kennedy reinforces his “oneness” with the audience (Greene & Brizel, 2002, p. 68), and invites 11 seconds of the following applause and chants. Two thousand year ago, | two thousand years ago | the proudest boast was | “civis Romanus sum.” || Today, | in the world of freedom, | the proudest boast is | “Ich bin ein Berliner.” || The most elevating part of Kennedy’s address is Motivation, with Let them come to Berlin cadence. He builds up the emotional uplift of the crowd by repeating this phrase five times in six short, punchy sentences and uses his voice to play each phrase differently, as Greene and Brizel (2002, p. 68) describe it: The first time, it sounds like a suggestion; the second, a stronger suggestion; in the third, a taunt; the fourth time, it is delivered in a stunning, crowd-pleasing German; and the fifth time, a fist pounding English reiteration—a virtual demand. In this rhythmic fragment with five repetitions (in bold print), the President identifies with the Berliners’ plight and refutes the imaginary opponents in the argumentation that Germans have the right and motivation for defiance. Emphatic, descending, basic modules, and a low level emphatic module with five heavy strokes on every short word of the phrase in German, form a macro temporhythmic pattern that climaxes with a sharp rise in voice pitch (from 200 to 295 Hz) and acceleration in tempo (from 3 to 4 syllables per second) on the fifth repetition Let them come to Berlin shaped by an emphatic elevated module. Kennedy pronounces the final Let them come to Berlin “speaking into applause”, and joins the emotionally aroused crowd, thus demonstrating his emotional reaction to the situation, defiance, and confidence. He identifies emotionally and reinforces the crowd’s desire for change. There are many people | in the world | who really don’t understand, | or say they don’t, | what is the great issue | between the free world | and the Communist world. || Let them come to Berlin. || (Applause) There are some who say, | there are some who say, | that communism | is the wave of the future. || Let them come to Berlin. || (Applause) And there are some who say, | in Europe and elsewhere, | we can work with the Communists. || Let them come to Berlin. || (Applause) And there are even a few | who say | that it is true | that communism | is an evil system, | but it permits us to make | economic progress. || Laβt sie nach Berlin kommen. || (Applause) Let them come to Berlin.|| (Applause) Having brought the audience to a climax, Kennedy takes them back to the substance of the speech in the fourth part, Problems and Challenges. The President addresses many audiences: the audience in the Plaza, West and East Germans, the Soviet leadership, the Europeans, and the American audience at home. He is extending a message of compassion and understanding for West Berliners and is offering support to the East Berliners listening on the other side of the wall. A powerful indictment of communism is contrasted with a candor in describing democracy and 166

The Emotion in the Form

praising West Berliners (Greene & Brizel, 2002, p. 69). Clusters of basic, emphatic, ascending and descending modules with pitch fluctuations within the range of 180–230 Hz and emphasis on the key words: wall, besieged, vitality, force, hope, determination, offence against humanity mark this part of the address. In the next part, Restoration of Moral Principles, the President insists that, for the sake of “real, lasting peace in Europe”, the audience, West Berliners, West Germans, and all Europeans should support the (East) Germans who are denied the rights of “free men”. He uses emphatic and descending modules, and emphasizes the words real, lasting peace in Europe, never, free, freedom, this generation and earned the right to be free to reinforce this persuasive message. Rhythmic succession of emphatic falling tones makes it sound like a serious warning. In the Determination part, Kennedy uses the word beyond four times introducing four balanced phrases. The clusters of ascending and descending modules form a rhythmic poetry-like pattern. The President asks his audience and all West Germans to contribute to the advance of freedom for “all people”, to look “beyond the wall to the day of peace and justice”, “beyond yourselves and our selves to all mankind”. Rising-falling rhythmic pattern with gradually declining energy makes this part more idealistic and suggestive than forceful. The fifth and the sixths parts of the speech do not invite any applause from the audience. Table 4 Distribution of prosodic modules in “Ich bin ein Berliner” Address Parts of Speech Modules

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

Basic Emphatic Ascending Descending Emphatic Elevated

+

+ + + +

+ +

+ + + +

+ + + +

+ + + +

+ + + +

+ +

In the Inspiration/Visualization part, Kennedy reassures the audience that the day “when the city will be joined as one” will come. He emphasizes every word of the segment “when that day finally comes” in a wider range descending module and follows it up with one more stroke of high fall on “as it will” to express his conviction. Kennedy relieves the tension of the phrase with the images of the virtual reality of “satisfaction”, using emphatic and basic modules. The audience answers with 13 seconds of the longest applause. The President ends the speech raising his voice and emphasizing the initial segment “all free men” by an emphatic module and the repetition of “all”. He returns to the theme of pride, with which he began the speech, and ties it directly to the “Ich bin ein Berliner” theme; this time making it even more personal. Not only “all free men” are Berliners, but Kennedy himself is also a proud “Berliner” (Greene & Brizel, 2002). The last phrase of the address is organized by a rhythmic pattern of short basic modules. All, | all free men, | wherever they may live, | are citizens of Berlin. || And, therefore, | as a free man, | I take pride | in the words | “Ich bin ein Berliner.” || Kennedy does not use emphatic elevating modules in the second half of his address (See Table 4). Clusters of basic, emphatic, ascending and descending modules, within a relatively narrow pitch range of 180–240, make the second half of the speech sound emotionally more reserved than the Motivation part—the most emotionally charged and uplifting in the speech dynamics. The goal of the President is to identify with the audience emotionally, to motivate them for defiance, boosting their confidence and offering them his personal support. But Kennedy, obviously, 167

Tetyana Sayenko

does not intend to raise the million people crowd to attack the Berlin Wall. He demonstrates control and confidence, and uses short, balanced, rhythmic phrases to make his points. Kennedy frames his address with the theme of “pride”. Segments in the strong positions of the text, initial and final, deliver a message: “I am proud” … “Ich bin ein Berliner”. The most emphasized phrase in all the speech is “Let them come to Berlin”. The phrases “Ich bin ein Berliner” and “Let them come to Berlin” accumulate the dominant emotion of the speech and acquire a symbolic meaning of pride, confidence, and defiance.

The Speeches’ Prosodic Macro Structure and the Orators’ Identity Even those who do not understand English can recognize both speeches, “I Have a Dream” and “Ich bin ein Berliner”, as examples of inspirational political rhetoric with immediate elevating effect (Atkinson, 1984). Both of the speakers have a deep, resonant voice and can be identified as charismatic, confident, mature and strong leaders who can speak with sincerity, compassion, and conviction (Kelley, 1980, pp. 179–187; Tusing & Dillard, 2000). However, it is also obvious that we are listening to two different orators. Not only the voice timbre and accent, speech topic and content, but also each speech’s melodic and rhythmic form can project the identity of the speaker. Comparison of the speeches’ prosodic macro patterns allows drawing some provisional conclusions about the way prosodic modules can project the speakers’ identity through the discourse. The basic difference in the sound of King’s and Kennedy’s addresses lies in the dominant emotion they build up in their speeches, and in their individual style of delivery, which can signal who they are and what they feel. The dominant emotion in King’s address is inspiration for action, commitment. He builds up an emotional argument for the unified, nonviolent but active and forceful actions, by evoking pity, shame, anger, calm, pride, and hope (Hyde & Smith, 1993, p. 94). King’s address resembles gradually rising waves of a powerful flow. The dominant emotion of Kennedy’s speech is confidence. He evokes pride, indignation, anger, pity, calm, and hope, to enhance confidence. King speaks in an “old fashioned” oration style, starting quietly and building the argument to the climax. He gradually increases pitch range, and both level and range, of the modules shaping the focal fragments of his speech. Stress-time rhythm switches to metric rhythm in the uplifting segments of the text. The voice pitch fluctuates from 200 to 400 Hz (12 semitones) through the text. Prosodic modules shaping emotionally charged parts of the text cluster in rhythmic, harmonious macro patterns. Starting from the Inspiration part we can tell that King speaks without notes (Greene & Brizel, 2002, p. 79) and goes with the waves of the emotional energy flow to higher and higher peaks, without rest. He builds up a succession of climaxing harmonious patterns of prosodic modules, with emphatic elevated modules marking the peaks of emotional elevation. His “speech starts to sing” and really sounds like a symphony. Kennedy exemplifies a new “sound bite” era in political rhetoric. He constructs one resonant remark after another and uses short words and clauses to make his points. Frequent pauses segment his speech into short units of 1–3 stressed syllables that form a stress-time poetry-like rhythm (Barney, 1999; Humes, 2002, p. 122). Basic and emphatic modules, with normal or increased pitch range, are predominantly used throughout the address. Most of the phrases start at a higher pitch, and decline to the lower pitch level. The range of prosodic fluctuation through the speech is narrower than in King’s address, from 180 to 250 Hz (6 semitones), with the widest range, from 180 to 300 Hz (9 semitones), in the most uplifting Motivation part. Focal phrases are pronounced in German and prosodically marked with emphasis on each word and with contrast in tempo and 168

The Emotion in the Form

rhythm. Emphatic elevated module is used only in the Motivation part as a marker of the emotional climax and the highest voice pitch peak of the address. Emphatic and descending modules highlight most of the focal phrases, clauses, and words. Emotionally charged fragments of the speech sound more like a rhythmic poem than a song. Prosodic modules used in the focal parts of the address can cue the listeners about some aspects of the orator’s identity through the speech. King starts his address in a powerful manner, filling the air with the energy of his resonant, steady, voice. He speaks in a slowed down stress-time rhythm, and uses basic modules with little fluctuations in pitch. The sound of his voice conveys solemnity and the seriousness of the occasion. He speaks as the leader of a powerful movement who can voice their claims. King projects and voices several identities through his speech to evoke and control emotional response in the audience (Vereshchagin, 1999, p. 94). He identifies with Negroes in their desperate response “We refuse to believe”. King voices the irritated opponents with the falling cadence of “When will they be satisfied?”, and identifies with the “devotees of civil rights” giving a warning answer, with confidence and indignation, in a set of emphatic, ascending descending modules on “We will never be satisfied”. He identifies with the audience, urging for change with forceful “Now is the time” repetitions. King identifies with different fractions of the movement with highpitched, softly and slowly spoken, sympathetic “I am not unmindful …”, and fosters Negroes’ identification with “white brothers” using uplifting ascending modules on “their destiny is tied up to our destiny”. With elevating “I have a dream”, King sounds as a spiritual leader, a profit who sees “the Promised Land”. He identifies with the aspirations of all Americans with an emphatic, ascending, and climaxing “I have a dream”. King reinforces his identification with all Americans repeating and emphasizing the words “all” and “all of God’s children” with an emphatic elevated module. In the Commitment part, he projects energy, confidence and commitment with harmonious clusters of ascending and descending modules framed by punchy repetitions of “With this faith”, and constructs a new identity of the movement. Citing the words of the patriotic song “My country ‘tis thee …”, he reinforces his emotional, symbolic identification with all Americans. In the Determination/Visualization part King sounds as a powerful leader moving the country to freedom. In the closing phrase, marked by the highest peak of energy, King identifies with the joy of all free Americans of the virtual future. The speech is framed by the basic module of the first segment “I am happy” and descending module of the final words “we are free at last”, which marks a shift in the projected identity from a hopeful “I” (as one of the activists of the movement) to “we” as all happy Americans of the future. The longest multiple interrupting applauses signal that the audience emotionally identifies with the orator. King’s speech gradually constructs a new, non-violent but powerful, identity of the movement. Moreover, the “I Have a Dream” address reinforces King’s own identity as a powerful inspirational orator and political leader. Kennedy introduces himself as “proud” and a “guest”. Variations in pitch and rising tones make his speech sound energetic and friendly. Declaring that he is “proud” to come “as a guest” Kennedy constructs a new flattering, dignified identity for West Germans who can make the President of the strongest and most respected country in the world proud to be their guest. Acknowledging General Clay, a true hero to Berliners, and emphasizing that the General “will” come again, Kennedy identifies himself as a guarantor of American support. The following witty remark “if ever needed”, pronounced in a more casual, conversational tone after a pause, at a lower pitch level, relieves the tension of the theme, and projects his charisma, friendliness, and confidence. In the Restoration of Confidence part, Kennedy reinforces his identification with West Berliners using an ascending cadence on a short phrase “Ich bin ein Berliner”, in their own language, and making it sound with 169

Tetyana Sayenko

pride and confidence as an echo of the great Romans’ “civis Romanus sum”, thereby constructing new, flattering, identity of West Berliners and all Germans. In five climaxing repetitions of “Let them come to Berlin”, Kennedy emotionally identifies with the audience expressing the emotional reactions (in English and in German) to a variety of arguments against defiance. Emphatic modules with hammering strokes on every word and emphatic elevated module project their common indignation, anger, defiance and confidence. The audience signals its identification with the orator’s emotions with bursts of applause after each of his answers in English to imaginary (voiced as naïve, uncertain, or pragmatic) arguments in support of communism, and signals, with stormy applause, their identification with the answer in German. Kennedy identifies with East Germans making their language sound with pride, and using emphatic and falling modules to project empathy and offer support. With high ascending modules, the President constructs a new identity for Europeans, as free men and proud citizens of Berlin. Closing his speech, he identifies himself as a Berliner, repeating the phrase “Ich bin ein Berliner” with declining basic tone, and projecting “satisfaction”. With these words in German he both reinforces his identification with Berliners and identifies himself as their (and other freedom fighters’) supporter. Comparison of the two speeches shows that some of the themes (rights, freedom, all free men) and emotions (pity, anger, confidence, hope) of “Ich bin ein Berliner” address echo in “I Have a Dream” speech delivered two months later, however in a different context. King identifies with Kennedy’s idealistic aspirations and his pledge to the world to fight for “freedom”. He echoes the President’s words arguing the rights of Negroes as “free men”, thereby constructing a new identity of “free men” as “all of God’s children.”

Discussion Instrumental analysis of King’s “I have a Dream” address and Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” address show that there are at least five prosodic modules shaping each speech: basic, emphatic, ascending, descending, and emphatic elevated. Each of them has its distinctive pitchrange characteristics and role in the textual dynamics. However, not only the pragmatic potential and structure of the address, but also the orator’s individual style of speaking predetermine the choice of modules, and variations in their prosodic shape and sequences. Furthermore, the degree to which the prosodic organization of each separate phrase carries the emotional impulse of the whole speech may be different depending upon the dynamic pattern of the address and its parts. The length of the modules and their clustering is ruled by the regulations of rhythm and by the emotional dynamics of the whole address. Although fluctuations in pitch are recognized as the leading markers of the emotional and attitudinal coloring of speech, other prosodic parameters (variations in tempo, rhythm, pauses, amplitude, and voice timbre) may affect the perception of the message. Therefore, finalization and description of the complete set of prosodic modules employed in political rhetoric would require further analysis of the joint work of all prosodic parameters in their formation, and the study of other highly successful examples of political oratory not only in the American, but also in other linguistic and cultural traditions. The research data suggest that the same words and phrases may acquire different emotional coloring, and therefore different meaning, when shaped by different prosodic modules in speech dynamics. However, more detailed study of the meaning transformation mechanisms used in inspirational speech and their correlation with the mechanisms of meaning construction used in other discourse practices dominant in various ideological and cultural contexts would be necessary to understand the role of oral rhetoric in the public opinion control and change. 170

The Emotion in the Form

*

The equipment (SCL Speech Station 2000) was made available for the experimental phonetic research by kind permission of Professor Robert Prosek, the Head of the Speech Disorders Laboratory at the Pennsylvania State University, USA. The author would like to thank the editors for their useful comments and advice.

References Atkinson, M. (1984). Our masters’ voices: The language and body language of politics. London: New York: Methuen. Atkinson, M. (2004). Lend me your ears: All you have to know about making speeches and presentations. New York: Oxford University Press. Austin, G. (1966 [1806]). Chironomia or a treatise on rhetorical delivery (M. M. Robb & L. Thonssen, Eds.). Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Eds.; V. M. McGee, Trans.). In E. C. & M. Hognist (Eds.). Austin: University of Texas Press. Barber, B., & Watson, P. (1988). The struggle for democracy. Boston-Toronto-London: Little, Brown and Company. Barney, T. (1999). Readers as text processors and performers: A new formula for poetic intonation. Discourse Processes, 28 (2), 155–167. Blair, H. (1990). Lectures on rhetoric and belles letters. In J. L. Golden & E. P. J. Corbett (Eds.), The rhetoric of Blair, Campbell, and Whately (pp. 28–141). Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. Brown, C. T., & Van Riper, C. (1966). Speech and man. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Burke, K. (1984 [1969]). A rhetoric of motives. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Campbell, K. K. (1982). The rhetorical act. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company. Cheremisina-Yenikolopova, N. V. (1999). Zakony i pravila russkoy intonatsii: Uchebnoye posobiye [Laws and rules of Russian intonation: Teaching manual]. Moscow: Flinta. Clynes, M. (1986). When time is music. In R. E. Evans & M. Clynes (Eds.), Rhythm in psychological, linguistic and musical processes (pp. 169–224). Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Cooper, M. (1989). Analyzing public discourse. Illinois: Waveland Press. Corcoran, P. E. (1979). Political language and rhetoric. Austin, TX: Texas University Press. Couper-Kuhlen, E. (2006). Intonation and discourse: Current views from within. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen & H. E. Hamilton (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 13–34). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, Ltd. Croll, M. W. (1966). Style, rhetoric, and rhythm: Essays by Morris W. Croll (J. M. Patrick & R. O. Evans, Eds.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Crystal, D. (2000). The Cambridge encyclopedia of language (2nd ed.). Cambridge-New York-Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Crystal, D., & Davy, D. (1969). Investigating English style. Bloomington-London: Indiana University Press. Davies, D., & Wheeler, B. (1981). Standing ovation or polite applause? The executive’s guide to exceptional speechmaking. London-Ontario: St George Press. De Fina, A., Schiffrin, D., & Bamberg, M. (Eds.). (2006). Discourse and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Greene, R., & Brizel, F. (2002). Words that shook the world: 100 years of unforgettable speeches and events (Includes 2 Audio CDs). New York: Penguin Putnam Inc. Hayakawa, S. I. (1941). Language in action. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company. Henn, T. R. (1934). Longinus and English criticism. Cambridge: University Press. Humes, J. C. (2002). Speak like Churchill, stand like Lincoln: 21 powerful secrets of history’s greatest speakers. New York: Three Rivers Press. Hyde, M. J., & Smith, C. R. (1993). Aristotle and Heidegger on emotion and rhetoric: Questions of time and space. In I. Angus & L. Langsdorf (Eds.), The critical turn: Rhetoric and philosophy in postmodern discourse (pp. 68–99). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University. Kelley, J. J., Jr. (1980). Speechwriting: The master touch. Harrisburg: Stackpole Books. Kennedy, J. F. (1988). The speeches of John F. Kennedy (D. Moore, Producer) [Video]. Oak Forest, IL: MPI Home Video. King, M. L. Jr. (1990). The speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “I have a Dream!” (D. Moore, Producer) [Video]. Oak Forest, IL: MPI Home Video. Leith, D., & Myerson, G. (1989). The power of address: Explorations in rhetoric. London-New York: Routledge. Miller, G. A. (1956). The magic number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63, 81–97. Nida, E. A. (1990). The role of rhetoric in verbal communication. Language & Communication, 10 (1), 37–46. Novikov, A. I. (1983). Semantika teksta i yego formalizatsiya [Text semantics and its formalization]. Moscow: Nauka. Oliver, R. T., & Cortright, R. L. (1970). Effective speech (5th ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Perelman, C., & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. (1969 [1958]). The new rhetoric: A treatise on argumentation (J. Wilkinson & P. Weaver, Trans.). Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Phillips, G. M., Kougl, K. M., & Kelly, L. (1985). Speaking in public and private. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing. Sayenko, T. I. (2000). Rhythmic patterns of political discourse. In Materialy konferentsii “Mova i Kultura” [Papers of the conference “Language and culture”] (pp. 182–189). Kirovograd, Ukraine: Kirovograd University. Tusing, K. J., & Dillard, J. P. (2000). The sounds of dominance: Vocal precursors of perceived dominance during interpersonal influence. Human Communication Research, 26 (1), 148–171. Van Dijk, T. A. (1981). Studies in the pragmatics of discourse. New York: Mouton Publishers. Van Dijk, T. A. (1995). Discourse, opinions and ideologies. Current Issues in Language and Society, 2 (2), 115–145. Vereshchagin, D. S. (1999). Vliyaniye: Sistema dalneyshego energo-informatsionnogo razvitiya [Influence: System of further energyinformational development]. St. Petersburg: Nevskiy Prospect. Vitt, N. V. (1985). Emotsionalnaya regulyatsiya rechemyslityelnykh protsessov [Emotional regulation of speech-thought processes]. In T. N. Ushakova (Ed.), Psikhologicheskiye i psikho-fiziologicheskiye issledovaniya rechi [Psychological and psycho-physiological studies of speech] (pp. 123–136). Moscow: Nauka. Vygotskiy, L. S. (1986). Psikhologiya iskusstva [Psychology of art] (3rd ed.). Moscow: Iskusstvo. Wagner, R. (1964). Wagner on music and drama: A compendium of Richard Wagner’s prose work (Select. A. Goldman and E. Sprinchorn; H.

171

Tetyana Sayenko

A. Ellis, Trans.). New York: E. P. Dutton. Waldman, M. (2003). My fellow Americans: The most important speeches of America’s presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush. [Includes 2 Audio CDs]. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks.

Mailing address: 505, Nijigaoka Mansion 1–1–1 Nijigaoka, Meito-ku, Aichi, Nagoya 465–0078 Tel. (052)–781–9121 E-mail: [email protected] [email protected]

172

Concluding Remarks

Masa-chiyo AMANO, Nagoya University Michael O’TOOLE, Murdoch University Zane GOEBEL, Nagoya University In this last chapter we present a summary of the papers presented at this conference together with some of the points made by conference participants. We should start by noting that our recently deceased colleague, Professor Masa-chiyo Amano, originally planned to write up this as a final chapter, but his untimely passing has left us to try and do a job that Professor Masa-chiyo had so ably and elegantly done in previous years. We should also note that all but one paper in this volume were presented at the conference with Sayenko’s paper being an invited and welcome addition to the volume. The brief of this conference was to focus upon one aspect of peoples’ everyday lives, namely the situated interpretation of texts that deal with or bring about identity as socio/cultural/linguistic difference. In doing so, we wished to explore how peoples’ situated production and interpretation of such texts— defined very broadly to include spoken, written, auditory, visual and combinations thereof—relied upon both socio-historical texts and more locally produced texts. In this sense socio-historical texts and locally produced texts represent what linguists, anthropologists and other humanities scholars frequently refer to as Context (e.g. Bakhtin, 1981; Halliday & Hasan, 1989; Hymes, 1972). Thus, Context refers to intertextual relationships between texts, the setting, participants, institutional structures and so on that figure in the production and interpretation of texts. The topic of Identity proved to be a very productive focus for a conference bringing together linguists, sociolinguists and linguistic anthropologists. The issue of personal identity was acutely demonstrated in relation to Japanese attitudes to dialect (Occhi), Japanese wedding speeches (Dunn), Indonesian community meetings (Goebel), sign languages (Herlofsky) and internet games. My (O’Toole) deliberate choice of misericords (with unidentified authors, and therefore none of the cult of personality of famous artists) appeared to be at odds with this theme, but Shigemi’s reminder of Foucault’s problematic “What is an author”, which even allows formal style to be a marker of identity, was a useful corrective. Then other papers (O’Halloran, Dunn, Satoh) reminded us that in formal speeches and in chat-rooms, fansites and gamesites on the internet the old Western preoccupation with personal subjective identity may be irrelevant and that identities can productively be invented or borrowed for new types of social interaction. We all operate—even without the internet—in a multidimensional world. There was a very satisfying relation established in virtually all the papers between Text and Context. Fine-grained micro-analysis of linguistic and/or visual and behavioural structures was related convincingly to immediate physical contexts and broader cultural contexts in papers by Goebel, Occhi, O’Halloran, Dunn, Herlofsky, Satoh and O’Toole. There was also a nice balance between language texts, visual texts and behavioural texts (Occhi, Dunn, Goebel, Haig, Amano, Miyagawa, O’Halloran, O’Toole, Herlofsky), which reminded us that Multimodality has become an important issue in recent pragmatics, linguistics, information technology, education and art study (e.g. Goodwin, 2000; Kress, 2000; Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001; Norris, 2004; O’Halloran, 2004; O’Toole, 1994; Scollon & Wong Scollon, 2003). Presenters also offered diverse approaches to investigating inter-relationships between language, identity, text, and contexts. In doing so, we also had the opportunity to see how different methods are 173

used to frame and answer different research questions. In particular, we have had nice introductions into linguistic anthropology (Dunn, Occhi, Goebel), multimodal-systemic functional linguistic analysis (O’Toole, O’Halloran), narrative analysis (Satoh), social psychologically inspired attitude surveys (Occhi), Foucault’s approach to discourse (Shigemi), Critical Discourse Analysis (Haig), and Weirzbicka’s approach to ethnopragmatics (Ohkado). We have also had the benefit of seeing how to use and interpret different types of data, including wood carvings, video games, television, radio, the tabloids, everyday conversations, web sites and internet bulletin boards. While the above suggests a very diverse set of papers, nevertheless there were some recurrent themes, which pointed to some common intellectual debts to important twentieth-century scholars. For example, systemic functional linguists, linguistic anthropologists, narrative analysts and critical discourse analysts found that they all shared a common debt to Bakhtin and Goffman for their work on dialogics, inter-textuality and situated behaviour. This created some useful space for dialogue between the papers and their presenters. Time and space also proved important dimensions. We were introduced to Gothic churches and airwaves in England (O’Toole, Haig), Japanese urban and rural contexts (Amano, Dunn, Herlofsky, and Occhi), urban Indonesia (Goebel), and virtual worlds in Singapore (O’Halloran) and Japan (Satoh, Shigemi). These papers have also taken us on a historical sojourn from the 13th Century to present day England (Haig, O’Toole) to nineteenth Century Japan (Miyagawa), and to present day virtual settings. In concluding four points are in order. The first is that one of the highlights of this conference was how it allowed us to see the benefit of embedding texts in their sociocultural context in a way that broadens our understanding of what we commonly refer to as language and culture. From the papers presented it seems clear that language should be viewed as much more than linguistic forms. Secondly, the inter-relationships between language and identity have been nicely fleshed out while also offering new and diverse approaches to investigating the language-identity nexus. Thirdly, Professor Amano’s openness to inter-disciplinarity and multiple approaches to language/culture questions ensured an interdisciplinary conference which allowed dialogue between scholars from diverse areas of linguistics. For example, we were given some very useful insights into how scholars in the humanities and social sciences in general and linguistics in particular might collaborate with the sciences (e.g. O, Halloran, Miyagawa). Finally, congratulations are due to our hosts at Nagoya for the superb quality of the venue (which allowed participants to enjoy the best that PowerPoint presentations can offer), the careful organization of the program, the generous hospitality—and a timely and beautiful fall of snow. References Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press. Goodwin, C. (2000). Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 32 (10), 1489–1522. Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1989). Language, context, and text: Aspects of language in a social semiotic perspective. Waurn Ponds, Vic: Deakin University. Hymes, D. (1972). Models of the interaction of language and social life. In J. J. Gumperz & D. H. Hymes (Eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication (pp. 35–71). New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Kress, G. (2000). Multimodality. In Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures (pp. 182–202). South Yarra, Vic.: Macmillan. Kress, G., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication London: Hodder Education. Norris, S. (2004). Analyzing multimodal interaction: A methodological framework. London: Routledge. O’Halloran, K. (2004). Multimodal discourse analysis: Systemic functional perspectives. London: Continuum. O’Toole, L. M. (1994). The language of displayed art. London: Leicester University Press. Scollon, R., & Wong Scollon, S. (2003). Discourses in place: Language in the material world. London: Routledge.

174

Authors

Authors

Masa-chiyo AMANO（天野政千代） Professor, Graduate School of Letters, Nagoya University Areas of interest: Historical Syntax of English, Semiotics Publications: (2006). (Editor) Multimodality: Towards the most efficient communications by humans. Nagoya: Graduate School of Letters, Nagoya University. (2003). (Editor) Creation and practical use of language texts. Nagoya: Graduate School of Letters, Nagoya University. (1999). Gengo yoso no ninka: Doshi, meishiku, fukushi (Licensing of linguistic elements: verbs, noun phrases, and adverbs). Tokyo: Kenkyusha. (1998). Eigo niju-mokutekigo kobun-no togokozo-ni kansuru seiseiriron-teki kenkyu (A generative approach to the syntactic structure of double object constructions in English). Tokyo: Eichosha. Cynthia Dickel DUNN Associate Professor, University of Northern Iowa Areas of interest: Speech Styles and Honorific Use, Japanese Discourse, Genre, Language Ideologies, Language Socialization across the Lifespan Publications: (2006). Formulaic expressions, Chinese proverbs, and newspaper editorials: Exploring type and token interdiscursivity in Japanese wedding speeches. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 16 (2), 153–172. (2005). Pragmatic functions of humble forms in Japanese ceremonial discourse. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 15 (2), 218–238. (2005). Genre conventions, speaker identity, and creativity: An analysis of Japanese wedding speeches. Pragmatics, 15 (2/3), 205–228. (2004). Cultural models and metaphors for marriage: An analysis of discourse at Japanese wedding receptions. Ethos, 32 (3), 348–373. Zane GOEBEL Associate Professor, Graduate School of Letters, Nagoya University Areas of interest: Semiotics, Talk-in-Interaction, Language Ideologies, Language Socialization, Identity, Migration, Indonesia, Javanese Publications: (In press). Migration, language choice and identity: Intercultural talk in Indonesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (2008). Language, class and ethnicity in Indonesia. Bijdragen tot de Taal, Land — en Volkenkunde (Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia and Oceania), 164 (1), 69–101. (2008). Enregistering, authorizing and denaturalizing identity in Indonesia. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 18 (1), 46–61. (2007). Enregisterment and appropriation in Javanese-Indonesian bilingual talk. Language in Society, 36 (4), 511–531. Edward HAIG Associate Professor, Graduate School of Languages and Cultures, Nagoya University Areas of interest: Critical Discourse Analysis, Systemic Functional Grammar, Ecolinguistics Publications: (2006). How green are your textbooks? Applying an ecological critical language awareness pedagogy in the EFL classroom. In S. Mayer & G. Wilson (Eds.), Ecodidactic perspectives on English language, literatures and cultures (pp. 23–44). Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag. (2004). Some observations on the critique of critical discourse analysis. Studies in Language and Culture (Nagoya University, Faculty of Language and Culture), 25 (2), 129–149. (2001). A study of the application of critical discourse analysis to Ecolinguistics and the teaching of Ecoliteracy. Studies in Language and Culture (Nagoya University, Faculty of Language and Culture), 22 (2), 205–226. William J. HERLOFSKY Professor, Nagoya Gakuin University Areas of interest: Iconicity, Japan Sign Language Publications: 175

(2007). Iconic thumbs, pinkies and pointers: The grammaticalization of animate-entity handshapes in Japan Sign Language. In E. Tabakowska, C. Ljungberg & O. Fischer (Eds.), Insistent images: Iconicity in language and literature 5 (pp. 37–53). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (2005). Now you see it, now you don’t: Imagic diagrams in the spatial mapping of signed (JSL) discourse. In C. Maeder, O. Fischer & W. Herlofsky (Eds.), Outside-in—inside-out: Iconicity in language and literature 4 (pp. 323–345). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (2003). What you see is what you get: Iconicity and metaphor in the visual language of written and signed poetry. In W. G. Muller & O. Fischer (Eds.), From sign to signing: Iconicity in language and literature 3 (pp. 41–61). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Shigeru MIYAGAWA（宮川 繁） Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Areas of interest: Japanese Syntax, Syntactic Theory, Electronic Media Publications: (2008). (editor, with Mamoru Saito) Handbook of Japanese linguistics. Oxford University Press. (2007). (with Koji Arikawa) Locality in syntax and floated numeral quantifiers. Linguistic Inquiry. Fall. (2006). On the ‘undoing’ nature of scrambling: A response to Boskovic. Linguistic Inquiry. (2003). (with Fusae Ekida) Historical development of the accusative case marking in Japanese as seen in classical literary texts. Journal of Japanese Linguistics, 19. Kay L. O’HALLORAN Associate Professor, National University of Singapore Areas of interest: Semiotic Analysis of Mathematical Texts Publications: (2005). Mathematical discourse: Language, symbolism and visual images. London: Continuum. (2004). Multimodal discourse analysis: Systemic functional perspectives. London: Continuum. (2003). Critical discourse analysis and language cognition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Michael O’TOOLE Professor Emeritus, Murdoch University Areas of interest: Systemic Functional Grammar, Semiotics Publications: (2006). Aboriginal visual culture: Semiotic paradoxes of painting, patronage and politics. In A. Baldry & E. Montagna (Eds.), Interdisciplinary perspectives on multimodality: Theory and practice. Proceedings of the third international conference on multimodality (pp. 393–408). Campobasso: Palladino. (2005). Pushing out the boundaries: Designing a systemic-functional model for non-European visual arts. Linguistics and the Human Sciences, 1 (1), 83 – 97. (2004). Opera ludentes: The Sydney Opera House at work and play. In K. O’Halloran (Ed.), Multimodal discourse analysis: Systemic functional perspectives (pp. 11–27). London/New York: Continuum. (1994). The language of displayed art. London: Leicester University Press (Pinter). Debra J. OCCHI Associate Professor, Miyazaki International College Areas of interest: Language and Gender, Dialect, Pragmatics, Cultural and Cognitive Linguistics, Various Issues in Applied Linguistics Related to Teaching Liberal Arts in English to Non-Native Speakers Publications: (2007). Using cultural linguistics to teach English language inferential schemas used in Archaeology to Japanese university students. In F. Sharifian & G. B. Palmer (Eds.), Applied Cultural Linguistics: Intercultural communication and second language learning and teaching (pp. 15–31). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (2006). Heartbreak’s destination: Tohoku in the poetic discourse of Enka. In C. Thompson & J. Traphagan (Eds.), Wearing cultural styles in Japan: Concepts of tradition and modernity in practice (pp. 151–170). New York: SUNY Press. (2003). (with Cynthia Dickel Dunn) Iowa meets Miyazaki: Bringing coursework to life through a cross-cultural electronic exchange. Education about Asia, 8 (2), 40–44. (2001). (with Kaoru Horie) Cognitive linguistics meets language contact: A case study of GETTO-SURU in Japanese. In S. Sato & K. Horie (Eds.), Cognitive-functional linguistics in an East Asian context (pp. 13– 34). Tokyo: Kurosio Publishers. Masayuki OHKADO（大門正幸） Professor, Chubu University Areas of interest: Historical Developments of the English Language, the Syntax of Old English, Comparative 176

Authors

Studies of Japanese and English Publications: (2007). The Lindisfarne gloss database. Nagoya: Sankeisha. (2007). Clause structure in old English. Nagoya: Mana House. (2005). On grammaticalization of negative adverbs, with special reference to Jespersen’s cycle recast. In Y. Iyeiri (Ed.), Aspects of English negating (pp. 39–58). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (2001). Old English constructions with multiple predicates. Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo. Akira SATOH（佐藤 彰） Associate Professor, Osaka University Areas of interest: Discourse Analysis, Sociolinguistics, Pragmatics Publications: (2008). Narrative and quotation in fan site: From the viewpoint of the construction of on-line community. In N. Okamoto, A. Satoh & M. Takenoya (Eds.), Media and language 3: The words that constructs society (pp. 204–236). Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo. (2005). Language and power: From the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis. In Y. Katagiri & K. Kataoka (Eds.), Lectures on sociolinguistic sciences 5: The systems of society and behavior (pp. 56–67). Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo. (2004). Quotation in the reports of Imperial Family: A historical study. In K. Miyake, N. Okamoto & A. Satoh (Eds.), Media and language 1: The discourse of ‘mass’ media (pp. 130–155). Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo. (2001). Constructing Imperial identity: How to quote the Imperial family and those who address them in the Japanese press. Discourse & Society, 12 (2), 169–194. Tetyana SAYENKO Associate Professor, Nagoya University of Commerce and Business Areas of interest: Theoretical and Experimental Phonetics, Phonostylistics, Speech Communication, Poetics and Rhetoric, Translation Publications: (2008). On the pragmatic and prosodic structure of inspirational political address. In D. Holmgreen, L. & L.-L. Strunck (Eds.), Rhetorical aspects of discourses in present-day society (pp. 130–153). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press. (2000). English-Ukrainian illustrative glossary of American financial terms. Kyiv: VIPOL. (2000). Rhythmic patterns of political discourse. In Materialy konferentsii “mova i kultura” (Papers of the conference “Language and culture”) (pp. 182–189). Kirovograd, Ukraine: Kirovograd University. (1986). Intonation and pragmatics of English fairy tale text. Kiev: INDSN, Academy of Sciences of the USSR. (1986). Practice in English (Informational potential of intonation in English discourse): Teaching manual. Kyiv: Vushcha Shkola Publishing House. Shinya SHIGEMI（重見晋也） Associate Professor, Graduate School of Letters, Nagoya University Areas of interest: Hypertext, Theories on Text Publications: (2007). Textual spatiality in Michel Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge. HERSETEC, 1 (2), 73–93. (2001). Concordance du Roman de Renart d’après l’édition γ. Hiroshima: Keisuisha.

177