Spanish at Work: Analysing Institutional Discourse across the Spanish-Speaking World

Spanish at Work Analysing Institutional Discourse Across the Spanish-Speaking World Edited by

Nuria Lorenzo-Dus

Spanish at Work

Also by Nuria Lorenzo-Dus TELEVISION DISCOURSE: Analysing Language in the Media

Spanish at Work Analysing Institutional Discourse Across the Spanish-Speaking World Edited by

Nuria Lorenzo-Dus Swansea University, UK

Selection, editorial matter and chapters 1, 2, 7 and 12 © Nuria Lorenzo-Dus 2011 All other chapters © their individual authors 2011 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–0–230–57909–5 hardback ISBN 978–0–230–57910–1 paperback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Spanish at work : analysing institutional discourse across the Spanish-speaking world / edited By Nuria Lorenzo-Dus. p. cm. ISBN 978–0–230–57910–1 — ISBN 978–0–230–57909–5 1. Spanish language—Discourse analysis. 2. Spanish language— Spoken Spanish. 3. Spanish language—Variation. 4. Discourse markers. I. Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria. PC4434.S63 2011 2010023835 460.1 41—dc22 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents

List of Tables

viii

List of Figures

ix

Acknowledgements

x

Notes on the Contributors

xi

1 Spanish at Work – Analysing the Discourse of Institutions Nuria Lorenzo-Dus

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Part I Languages, Identities and Media Institutions 2 Languages, Identities and Media Institutions in the Spanish-Speaking World Nuria Lorenzo-Dus

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3 The Construction of Canarian Identity in the First Telenovela on Canarian Television Mª Isabel González Cruz and Mª Jesús Vera-Cazorla

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4 Linguistic Ideology in Galician Factual Radio Broadcasts: towards the Castilianisation of Galician Pronunciation Traits? Jaine Beswick

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5 A Gente é Latino: the Making of New Cultural Spaces in Brazilian Diaspora Television Iris Bachmann

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6 Tu voz es tu voto: the Role of Spanish in the 2008 United States Presidential Elections Clare Mar-Molinero

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v

vi

Contents

Part II Discourse, Persuasion and Performance in Political Institutions 7 Discourse, Persuasion and Performance in Political Institutions across the Spanish-Speaking World Nuria Lorenzo-Dus 8 A Critical Analysis of the Housing Policies Aimed at the Extremely Poor: the Case of the Social Development Secretariat of Buenos Aires City Mariana Carolina Marchese 9 Contested Talk and the (Co-)Construction of Identity: Spanish Parliamentary Debate Miranda Stewart 10 Political Implicature in Parliamentary Discourse: an Analysis of Mariano Rajoy’s Speech on the 2006 Catalan Statute of Autonomy David Atkinson 11 Bolivarianism and Socialism: a Corpus-Driven Investigation into Changes in Hugo Chávez’s Rhetoric Dominic Smith

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111

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Part III Discourse, Interpersonal Relations and the Workplace 12 Discourse, Interpersonal Relations and the Workplace in the Spanish-Speaking World Nuria Lorenzo-Dus 13 Managing Intersubjectivity and Establishing Consensus in Two Activity Types: Business Negotiations and Student Workgroups Lars Fant

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14 Vaya, ¡qué chungo! Rapport-Building Talk in Service Encounters: the Case of Bars in Seville at Breakfast Time María Elena Placencia and Ana Mancera Rueda

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15 How to Get Rid of a Telemarketing Agent: Face-Work Strategies in an Intercultural Service Call Rosina Márquez Reiter

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Contents

16 Discourse as a Tool for the Diagnosis of Psychosis: a Linguistic and Psychiatric Study of Communication Decline María Laura Pardo

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227

Bibliography

252

Author Index

278

Subject Index

285

List of Tables

3.1 Marked terms in the corpus 8.1 Social programmes considered in this study 8.2 Categories being presented as focus in the SSG documents 8.3 Total percentage of utterances stating actions to be undertaken by the City Government 8.4 Examples of verb use in the Service Description section 16.1 Dimensions and degrees of cognitive and communicative deterioration in the corpus

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27 98 100 101 103 248

List of Figures

8.1 Social Assistance Mobile Unit 11.1 Occurrences of SOCIALISTA and BOLIVARIANO per 1000 tokens 11.2 Occurrences of socialismo and bolivarianismo per 1000 tokens 14.1 Small talk 14.2 A revised continuum for analysing small talk in service encounters

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107 153 154 193 193

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank a number of people for their support in their preparation of this book. I am grateful to Priyanka Gibbons at Palgrave Macmillan for her diligence throughout the planning and production process, and to the International Association for the Study of Spanish in Society, especially to members of its Executive Committee, for their encouragement. I am also indebted to the anonymous referees, who most constructively reported on first drafts of the different contributions included in this book, and of course to each and every one of their authors. My warmest thanks, finally, go to Steve Marsh and to Clara Marsh-Lorenzo. Without his continual support and her infectious energy this project would have taken much longer to complete. The publishers and the editor would also like to thank RBTI Network Inc. for permission to reproduce segments from their broadcasts in Chapter 5. NURIA LORENZO-DUS

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Notes on the Contributors

David Atkinson is Senior Lecturer in Spanish at the University of Limerick, Ireland. He has published in various international journals, including Journal of Language and Politics. He recently co-authored a chapter on Spain and Portugal in the Routledge Handbook of Sociolinguistics around the World (2010). Iris Bachmann is Lecturer in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Manchester. Her research interests include history of linguistics and language ideologies, norms and variation in the media. She has published widely on creole studies and is currently working on the project ‘Transnational Portuguese: Language, Space and the Media’. Jaine Beswick is Programme Leader for Portuguese Studies at the University of Southampton, and Lecturer in Linguistics with specialisations in Spanish, Galician and Portuguese. Her research interests lie in Portuguese and Galician phonology, Iberian dialectology, borderland identities and language, language variation and change in multilingual societies, regionalism, and Portuguese and Galician migration. Lars Fant is Professor of Ibero-Romance languages at Stockholm University. His research interests include cross-cultural/intercultural communication, critical discourse analysis, politeness phenomena, discourse modalisation processes, communication management in conversation and high-proficient second language use. He has (co-) conducted several large research projects, such as ‘Negotiation Interaction: CrossCultural Studies of Scandinavian and Hispanic Patterns’ and, presently, ‘High-Level Proficiency in Second Language Use’. Ma Isabel González Cruz is Senior Lecturer in Grammar and Pragmatics at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. She has published widely on Anglo-Canarian sociocultural and linguistic contact, and on topics related to sociolinguistics and travel literature. Co-author of Semantics and Pragmatics (2003), she is currently working on pragmatic aspects of Canarian Spanish. xi

xii Notes on the Contributors

Ana Mancera Rueda is Lecturer in the Spanish Language Department at the University of Seville. Her research areas include descriptive syntax, the relations between orality and writing, and media language. She is the author of La ‘oralización’ de la prensa española: la columna periodística (2009) and Una aproximación al estudio de los marcadores discursivos en textos periodísticos españoles (2009). Mariana Carolina Marchese lectures at the University of Buenos Aires. She has a research fellowship from the Argentinean National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) and is currently working towards her PhD at the Department of Linguistics within CONICET’s Centre of Research in Cultural and Philosophical Anthropology (CIAFIC). Clare Mar-Molinero is Professor of Spanish Sociolinguistics and Head of Modern Languages at the University of Southampton. Her research interests are in language and migration, language policy and Spanish as a global language. Her recent publications include (co-edited with M. Stewart) Globalization and Language in the Spanish-Speaking World (2006). Rosina Márquez Reiter is Senior Lecturer at the University of Surrey. Her research interests include institutional talk, mediated communication and face management. She is author of Linguistic Politeness in Britain and Uruguay (2000) and co-author of Spanish Pragmatics (2005, with M.E. Placencia). She has published scholarly papers on indirectness, face, politeness, pragmatic variation, speech acts and conversational structure. María Laura Pardo is Professor of Media Discourse Analysis at the University of Buenos Aires and researcher at the Argentinean CONICET. She is also Director of the Linguistics Department of the CIAFIC-CONICET and author of numerous research monographs. Her latest book is El discurso de la pobreza en América Latina (2010). María Elena Placencia is Reader in Spanish Linguistics at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research interests lie in pragmatics, discourse analysis and intercultural communication. She has published on (im)politeness, forms/functions of small talk, service encounters language, discursive racism in interethnic communication, and Spanish as a foreign language. Her publications include Research on Politeness in the

Notes on the Contributors

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Spanish-Speaking World (co-edited with C. García) and Spanish Pragmatics (co-authored with R. Márquez Reiter). Dominic Smith is a PhD student in Hispanic Studies investigating Hugo Chávez’s discourse at the University of Birmingham, where he was Sir Henry Thomas scholar from 2005 to 2008. He previously studied for an MPhil in corpus linguistics at Birmingham and has an MA in Modern and Medieval Languages from Cambridge. Miranda Stewart is currently working for the Hellenic American University, Athens. Her research interests include interactional pragmatics, with work on politeness and pronominal usage in French and Spanish and negotiation of face in dialogue interpreting (with I. Mason). She has also published on the sociolinguistics of Spanish (The Spanish Language Today, 1999). Ma Jesús Vera-Cazorla is Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Author of two books on foreign language teaching in the Canary Islands, she was a Visiting Lecturer at Lebanon Valley College in 2005. Her main research interests focus on applied linguistics and humour studies.

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1 Spanish at Work – Analysing the Discourse of Institutions Nuria Lorenzo-Dus

Institutional discourse in Spanish: why, and why now? This book examines discourse in the Spanish-speaking world across a range of institutional and professional settings, ranging from television soaps and the Internet to bars and psychiatric institutions. This is designed to reflect the fact that the Spanish-speaking world both contains many varieties of Spanish and embraces other languages. Hence several chapters of this book examine institutional discourse that occurs within linguistic spaces where different varieties of Spanish are spoken. Some chapters assess how institutional discourse is framed by – and frames – speakers’ use of regional languages, or lenguas propias (Woolard 2005). And still others scrutinise discourse practices in institutional contexts in which Spanish coexists with other ‘global’ languages. The 12 case studies and accompanying contextualisation chapters that comprise Spanish at Work cumulatively offer a fascinating window into a permeably rich discursive tapestry of institutional settings within the Spanish-speaking world. The principal inspiration behind this book’s focus on how Spanish works in institutional contexts lies in a comparative dearth of systematic research into the language practices of institutions in Spanish, vis-à-vis other languages and cultural settings, particularly Anglophone ones. Research into institutional discourse as a programmatic field of study, indeed, originated in the early 1990s with the publication of two edited books focused on English-speaking contexts: Talk and Social Structure (Boden and Zimmerman 1991) and Talk at Work (Drew and Heritage 1992). The title of this book, an explicit reference to the latter, pays testament to the important, and since then prolific, field of study that 1

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was de facto born with these two pieces of scholarship: the so-called Institutional Talk Programme (ITP).1 The ITP emerged within an ‘Anglo’ context but was subsequently applied – indeed adopted rather than adapted in many cases – to a number of non-Anglo settings. This is problematic because, as research in the neighbouring field of sociopragmatics (especially (im)politeness) has shown, patterns of language use (discourse) originally identified in, and characterised for, ‘Anglo’ settings cannot simply be assumed to be applicable to other such settings. The above is undoubtedly true as regards institutional discourse. Institutions are of necessity intertwined with the specific sociocultural environments within which they emerge and thrive (or otherwise). Preference for mitigated disagreement in business negotiations in Sweden, for example, has been found to contrast starkly with a marked preference for overt, directly worded disagreement in similar business negotiation contexts in Spain (e.g. Fant 1989, 1995). In audience participation debates broadcast on British television, too, participants have been observed to depersonalise dissent and opposition. However, rather like political debaters on Israeli television (e.g. Blum-Kulka et al. 2002), participants in Spanish audience participation programmes have been seen to favour open, direct verbal opposition and the unmitigated affirmation of their own positions/interactional roles (e.g. García Gómez 2000, Hernández Flores 1999, Lorenzo-Dus 2007). Even in ‘globalised’ institutional communication, such as that taking place in multinational companies, there is room for some interactional ‘local flavour’ and the ensuing ‘glocalisation’ of discourse (Wodak 2005). Spanish at Work, therefore, provides a much needed step in the direction of systematically examining institutional discourse across the Spanish-speaking world. Benefiting as they are able to do from nearly two decades of ITP research, the chapters in this book integrate new analytic perspectives into traditional conceptualisations of institutional talk, as I next discuss.

The ‘institutional’ in Spanish at Work Institutional discourse is not an easy concept to define. It has indistinct boundaries with, amongst others, professional and organisational discourse (cf. Sarangi and Roberts 1999). Even in classic ITP studies, one finds a certain reluctance to be definitive about what institutional talk actually is. Ultimately, it transpires from such work that its main reference seems to be a contrast with ‘ordinary conversation’. But even then,

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as Drew and Heritage (1992: 21) stress, there is no ‘hard and fast distinction to be made between the two in all instances of interactional events, nor even at all points in a single interactional event’. Not all hope is lost, though. Institutional talk is said to encompass three ‘primary features’ (Drew and Heritage 1992: 25): (a) it ‘involves an orientation by at least one of the participants to some core goal, task or identity (or set of them). [. . .] it is normally informed by goal orientations of a relatively restricted conventional form’; (b) it ‘may often involve special and particular constraints on what one or [sic] both of the participants will treat as allowable contributions to the business at hand’; and (c) it ‘may be associated with inferential frameworks and procedures that are particular to specific institutional contexts’. (1992: 121, emphases in the original) Drew and Heritage (1992) further delimit institutional talk by identifying three features to which it does not apply: 1. It is not necessarily tied to a particular physical location: not all talk generated in, say, a business corporation is institutional just because of taking place inside it. 2. It is not the same as the sociological sense of a ‘social institution’. Institutional talk is not intended to be used, for example, ‘to describe activities that would be glossed as family dinners, picnics and the like’ (Drew and Heritage 1992: 59). 3. It is not simply identified by virtue of its participants being ‘correctly’ describable in institutional ways. For instance, not every time that a schoolteacher interacts with a parent are their respective institutional identities situationally appropriate. The above two sets of features are ultimately premised on the belief that systematic differences exist between institutional and non-institutional (ordinary) settings. A key such difference is that the range of language features that users ‘talk into being’ (Heritage 1984: 290) in institutional settings is generally more limited than that to be found in non-institutional settings. This has led to a particular analytic approach being primarily adopted when examining talk in interaction, and specifically institutional talk.

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By and large, the programmatic study of talk in institutional settings – the ITP – has favoured (and continues to do so) a ‘bottom-up’ approach. This approach is instantiated through microanalysis of a conceptual apparatus that revolves around the central notions of structure and sequential organisation. Talk is treated as a phenomenon that is always locally managed by participants. In institutional settings, it is the latter who, through their moment-by-moment actions, and hence from the bottom up, ‘construct the “institutionality” of such settings’ (Hutchby 1999: 41). Without denying the analytic rigour and validity of this bottomup approach, the study of institutional discourse can also be fruitfully complemented with a ‘top-down’, or macroanalytic, approach. The intention behind such eclecticism is to integrate analysis of patterns of inference, constraints and participant orientation to institutional goals within macro-perspectives and, in the process, encompass a number of relevant sociocultural factors. This is because, as Hester and Francis (2001: 207) argue, ‘the analytic burden imposed upon the structures of talk-in-interaction as distinctive with respect to, and definitive of, particular institutional settings is [possibly] more than they can intelligibly bear’. A case in point concerns the increasing presence of what Cameron (2008) calls ‘top-down talk’ in institutional settings. This type of talk is ‘designed to a large extent not by the people actually doing the talking, but by managers or consultants intent on controlling and standardizing institutional interactions’ (2008: 144). Cameron shows how in a number of English-speaking call centres, for instance, employees are provided with ‘codifying documents’ that contain explicit instructions about the rules and procedures they are meant to follow on the job, such as replacing negative (‘we can’t do x for you’) with optiongiving (‘we can do y for you’) language. These documents, Cameron (2008) further observes, operate in conjunction with a range of complementing institutional practices, such as closely surveying employees’ adherence to specific ‘discourse rules’ during their calls to clients. The regular practice of recording a number of these calls, seemingly for monitoring and training purposes, is a clear example of close surveillance institutional and top-down talk practices working in tandem. In this book, Márquez-Reiter’s work on call centres based in Latin America confirms the existence of distinctive and shared patterns of top-down talk in Spanish-speaking contexts, too. Moreover, this author successfully integrates into her analysis of these patterns a bottom-up investigation

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of interactional practices locally managed by telemarketing agents and clients. Call centres may be prime examples of how patterns of language use are imposed upon users from the top, but they are far from unique institutions in this respect. Take the case of the media, and more specifically the institution of broadcasting, within which three chapters in this book locate their analyses. Public broadcasting regulations in Spain, for instance, determine the use of ‘regional’ varieties of Spanish vis-à-vis a perceived prestigious standard variety (Castilian Spanish), as well as usage of regional languages. More importantly, such broadcasting, topdown regulations have an impact upon the kind of regional/national identities that may be constructed, and promoted or otherwise, within given media texts. It is important to remember that, although talk is highly regulated and standardised across institutional settings, it is not homogeneously ‘top-down’. Stretches of locally designed and managed talk are also found therein, their relative salience and features varying according to specific institutional and sociocultural contexts. A number of studies have noted the diverse functions of locally managed ‘rapport-building talk’ in service encounters and workplace settings (cf. for example, Placencia and Mancera Rueda’s chapter in this book within the contexts of bartender–regular customer interaction in southern Spain). Similarly, ‘bottom-up’ structures and patterns of discourse use seem to permeate blogs, file-sharing Web 2.0 sites and other ‘new media’. YouTube plays an important role in the current political and cultural climate – some authors arguing that we have over the past decade progressively witnessed a ‘YouTubification’ of politics (Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2010, May 2008). As Mar-Molinero observes in another of the chapters of this book, however, seemingly bottom-up discourse structures and associated user identity constructions in YouTube are also in part carefully imposed from the top by elite groups. All in all, then, the ‘institutional’ in this book comes from its exploring a variety of institutional settings across the Spanish-speaking world in which discourse emerges and is negotiated dynamically from variously enacted bottom-up and top-down practices. The discourse practices explored in the pages of Spanish at Work, in turn, involve a range of ‘participant roles’ and ‘participation frameworks’ (Goffman 1981): from interactions between institutional representatives and citizens, to those either among institutional representatives (in situations where their identities may be ‘correctly’ describable in such terms) or among

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citizens within the confines of an institution. These participants are moreover engaged in a wide range of ‘activity types’. Following Levinson (1992: 69), these are: [. . .] any culturally recognized activity, whether or not that activity is coextensive with a period of speech or indeed whether any talk takes places in it at all [. . .] In particular, I take the notion of an activity type to refer to a fuzzy category whose focal members are goal-defined, socially constituted, bounded events with constraints on participants, settings, and so on, but above all on the kinds of allowable contributions. Paradigm examples would be teaching, a job interview, a jural interrogation, a football game, a task in a workshop, a dinner party, and so on. (Emphasis in the original) The relevance of activity types to the investigation of talk in institutional settings is only too apparent. They determine the ability of those involved in institutional talk to ascertain how ‘what one says will be “taken” – that is, what kinds of inferences will be made from what is said’ (Levinson 1992: 97). Participants’ knowledge of given activity types within institutional domains, in particular, means that they are aware of the dos and don’ts of their performance, as well as the likely inferences that others will draw about them from their decisions. These are important issues that the chapters in Spanish at Work critically explore.

The scope and structure of Spanish at Work Each part of the book is serviced by a brief preceding contextualisation chapter. These chapters are designed to locate for readers the subsequent chapters within some of the key debates and developments pertaining to the particular focus of a part of the book. They also provide some of the conceptual underpinnings of the different case studies, thereby maximising space for contributors to develop their research analyses and arguments. It goes without saying that the range of contexts and institutional domains that can be examined in a book themed on institutional discourse in the Spanish-speaking world is potentially huge. A considerable degree of ‘down-sampling’ has therefore been applied in Spanish at Work for purposes of manageability and to avoid compromising its analytic depth. Three ‘umbrella institutions’ have thus been selected, within three key social domains: the mass media (Part I), politics (Part II) and the

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workplace (Part III). Each is sufficiently heterogeneous to defy any attempts at systematisation, which explains why a case study approach has been adopted. In Part I, language use within media institutions comprises case studies of, primarily, television (non-) fiction, factual radio and Internet social networks. Similarly, the study of discourse in political institutions (Part II) encompasses parliamentary sessions, broadcast political speeches, and state government documents disseminated through the Internet and other media. And workplace settings (Part III) cover talk generated in call centres, bars, business meetings and university student group discussions. Each section of the book is also organised around a discrete, though by no means simple, theme. The chapters in Part I examine the relationship between language (varieties) and (regional, national, transnational) identity within particular mass media formats or genres: telenovelas and diaspora programming on television, newscasts and weathercasts on the radio, and YouTube and other Web 2.0 media. Likewise, the chapters comprising Part II explore persuasion and performance in addresses made by political leaders on state-owned broadcasting channels (and available on the Internet), in parliamentary debates and speeches, and in policy documents by local government authorities. Finally, the chapters in Part III analyse the negotiation of face and task concerns (cf. Spencer-Oatey and Jiang 2003) in workplace-related activity types, such as business meetings, university group work and (mediated) service encounters. Finally, some further remarks are in order regarding the Spanish used in the Spanish-speaking institutions depicted in the pages of this book. Here again down-sampling has been ‘a must do’. Spanish at Work delves into a varied selection of countries and settings in which Spanish is spoken variously as one of several official languages, as the official language, as a ‘minority’ language, and even as one of a number of other languages. These include the Spanish used in Argentina (Buenos Aires), Chile (Santiago), Uruguay (Montevideo), Venezuela, Spain, parts of the US, and within the Brazilian diaspora in the US and Latin America. They also include the use of other languages or varieties of Spanish with which a ‘standard’ variety of Spanish coexists, more or less harmoniously, such as Galician, Portuguese, Canarian Spanish and even, following Mar-Molinero (Chapter 6), the Spanish of Twitter, YouTube and so forth. By no means can this selection be said to represent the Spanish-speaking world in its entirety and, admittedly, Castilian Spanish features more prominently than the Spanish spoken in any other single country in Latin America. Care has nevertheless been taken to recognise

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and embrace some of Spain’s complex linguistic reality, with its plethora of Spanish varieties and regional languages. The spread of Spanish in a time of globalisation (Mar-Molinero and Stewart 2006) demonstrates the pressing need of greater research into how Spanish language works in particular settings. Spanish at Work is an initial contribution to this task. The book’s contextualisation chapters, institutional, cultural and linguistic down-sampling and dual structure (by institutional setting and by theme) make it more than a sum of its contributing parts. Moreover, the 12 carefully selected case studies provide insights into the specificities and particularities of a range of discourse practices within a variety of institutional settings in the Spanish-speaking world rather than fall into a Galilean scientific paradigm of searching for generality and similarity (cf. Sharrock and Anderson 1986). Ultimately it is hoped that Spanish at Work whets readers’ and researchers’ appetites for future studies into how language works in institutional settings in Spanish-speaking countries and communities far beyond those featured here.

Note 1. Previous studies were plentiful but lacked an explicit programmatic rationale for the investigation of institutional talk. These include studies into the social organisation of talk in classrooms (e.g. McHoul 1978, Mehan 1979), courtrooms (Aktinson and Drew 1979), media interviews (Greatbatch 1988), medical consultations (Silverman 1987) and emergency services (Whalen and Zimmerman 1987, Zimmerman 1984).

Part I Languages, Identities and Media Institutions

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2 Languages, Identities and Media Institutions in the Spanish-Speaking World Nuria Lorenzo-Dus

This part of the book explores the established link between language and identity within a range of mass media institutions in the Spanishspeaking world. Specifically, and through analysis of their discourse practices, it critically examines the media’s organisational and orientational role in the allocation and adoption of a range of regional, national and transnational identities. The four chapters included in this part of the book, therefore, are primarily concerned with mediatisation practices relating to identity construction. Central to these practices is their thematisation and/or ideologisation of language, both of which tap into a wider notion: metalanguage. Broadly speaking, metalanguage connotes the use of language to refer to, or to comment on, itself. Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1981, 1984, 1986) characterisation of language as heteroglossic is instructive in this regard. For Bakhtin, language always embeds multiple, competing ‘voices’: from the present and the past, and from different socio-ideological groups and traditions. This makes language dialogic, rather than a set of single, isolated utterances.1 It makes language usage, in turn, always a matter of choice. The choices one makes signal one’s decisions to represent – to emulate, copy or differ from – particular voices from the whole language pool. They are, in short, meta-choices that are necessary to communicate. Along with the language’s capacity to refer to itself comes also a capacity for conscious linguistic manipulation. Bakhtin calls this ‘heteroglossia with awareness’. Instances of strategic meta-representation of one’s or others’ language are far from unique to the mass media, of course. They are nevertheless both pervasive and particularly important therein, given the influence of the media on our lives, including our ‘ways of speaking’ (Coupland 2007). This is what makes the 11

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media particularly suitable institutional enclaves in which to investigate ‘language ideologisation’, a concept characterised by Jaworski (2007: 271) as a metalinguistic concept par excellence, which involves people’s ideas, beliefs, and attitudes to language with regard to patterns of prestige and standardness, displays of authority and hegemony, acts of subversion and contestation, orientation to the aesthetic dimension of code, and so on. Acts of language representation (meta-acts), then, can under some circumstances buttress specific language ideologies. Given the language– identity link, these meta-acts can also be crucial in the construction of a range of more or less contested identities. Furthermore, since media institutions are bound by their own, heterogeneous, infrastructures and social practices, the kind of meta-acts that may and may not be conducted within certain media contexts provide an insight into how and why certain identities are promoted (or otherwise) in and through media texts. The above, albeit broad-brush, overview of linguistic ideology and identity is particularly relevant to media institutions across the Spanishspeaking world. This is not only because of the many varieties of Spanish available within a given Spanish-speaking country or region but because of the numerous media contexts, nationally and transnationally, in which Spanish coexists with other languages. It is no coincidence that the four case studies featured in this part of the book draw upon media settings in which linguistic ideologisation involves Spanish vis-à-vis either other languages (Galician, Portuguese and English) or more than one Spanish language variety (Canarian and Castilian Spanish). Acknowledging – and as far as possible representing – the richness of Spanish-language-related identities through the media is, however, only part of the rationale behind the selection of case studies included in this part of the book. A similar justification underlies the actual media contexts: television, radio, Internet, and references to print media. These also display considerable generic variety. They range from television soap operas and legal advice and documentary programming to news and weather radio broadcasts and ‘new media’ (blogs, YouTube). These media and genres are all treated as linguistic and cultural ‘rich points’ (Agar 1991, Coupland 1995), their power and influence deriving from their elite, authoritative status and/or their ability to reach (and potentially influence) the masses (Jaworski 2007).

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While undoubtedly influential, these media and genres do not always explicitly acknowledge the kind of language–identity ideologising in which they engage. Within the television medium, for example, particular language–identity relationships are often constructed as if they arose naturally, i.e. they are naturalised. This is why the chapters in this part of the book are, in part, devoted to unveiling the naturalisation practices that surround use of Spanish and other languages/language varieties in these media/genres.

Overview of chapters The first two chapters in this part of the book build upon the notion of language as a key marker of regional identity in Spain in order to critically examine the impact of dominant linguistic ideologies in this country. These often revolve around the lack of whole-hearted commitment by some broadcasting institutions (and hence in the programmes that they air) to the use of either varieties of Spanish other than that generally seen as the standard (Castilian Spanish) or other official languages (in this case, Galician). Although both chapters locate their discussion within one broad media institution (i.e. broadcasting), Chapter 3 uses data from fictional television and Chapter 4 from factual radio. In Chapter 3, González Cruz and Vera-Cazorla analyse the discourse practices through which a particular version of ‘Canarian identity’ is constructed in the first telenovela produced by the local government-run television channel in the Canary Islands (Televisión Canaria) in the early 2000s. Their analysis reveals a seemingly incongruous combination of Canarian and Castilian Spanish features, especially at the lexicogrammar and pronunciation levels. For instance, aspiration of /s/ in final or implosive position (one of the most defining phonetic traits of Canarian Spanish) is found to be erratically produced by the Canarian actors playing Canarian characters in the telenovela under examination. This, as the authors argue, contradicts Televisión Canaria’s claim to be fully committed to promoting ‘una televisión con acento canario’ (a Canarian-accented television). González Cruz and Vera-Cazorla also discuss possible factors that may have led to this telenovela/channel ‘pay[ing] only lip service to their claim to underscore the symbolic role of Canarian Spanish in the construction of a distinctive Canarian identity’. These are found to include both sociolinguistic, production and acting considerations associated with the use of a ‘standard variety’ of Spanish (rather than a regional one), as well as commercial implications

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Spanish at Work

for exporting the series, were the standard Castilian model not to be used. In Chapter 4, Beswick continues to explore the mediatisation of language(s) in multilingual Spain and the impact it has upon regional identity construction, this time in the context of the ‘Castilianisation’ of Galician pronunciation in the Galician-language radio station Radio Galega. Her chapter begins with a historical overview of linguistic ideologies that informed language policy and planning activities in contemporary Galicia, as well as of attitudinal factors pertaining to the status and prestige of Galician vis-à-vis (Castilian) Spanish. Beswick’s empirical work is based on close analysis of the pronunciation of Galician-speaking radio broadcasters and on interviews with speakers of Galician as a first language. Amongst other findings, Beswick’s analysis demonstrates the presence in the radio broadcasts of a number of Castilian Spanish phonetic traits, and the consequent absence of several Galician ones, notably what is regarded as the most prominent phonetic feature of dialectal Galician: the gheada. Her finding resembles that by González Cruz and Vera-Cazorla regarding the lack of final position/plosive /s/ aspiration in the Spanish produced by many of the Canarian characters in the telenovela that they examine. Together, they suggest relatively widespread practices of linguistic standardisation in these media. In the contexts examined by Beswick, moreover, absence also of several other features of Galician dialectal variation may contribute to reinforce ‘some of the deeply entrenched ideologies and strong prejudices concerning the value and worth of Galician’ in Spain. Not surprisingly, Beswick concludes by wondering how, faced with a seemingly inexorable move towards Castilian Spanish (which is portrayed as the language of success and advancement), Galician oral dialectal varieties can ever hope to be established in a broadcasting, or indeed any institutional, context. Chapters 3 and 4, then, highlight important language–regional identity debates in contemporary Spanish (media) and point to some of the challenges ahead in overcoming dominant linguistic ideologies constructed in and reflected by some broadcasting institutions in Spain. The following two chapters in this part of the book discuss further the impact of Spanish language ideologies on identity construction, this time within the Americas and, specifically, in ethnic television programmes that cater for Brazilians abroad (Chapter 5) and as part of e-campaigning in the 2008 US presidential elections (Chapter 6). An important feature of both chapters is the key role information

Languages, Identities and Media Institutions in the Spanish-Speaking World 15

technology plays in enabling transnational distribution of specific language–identity construction practices. Bachmann’s study of programmes on Brazilian international television that broadcast for the Brazilian diaspora (Chapter 5) identifies and characterises several ‘Latino spaces’. These partly tap into established US Latino constructions and partly offer alternatives to that model from within Latin America. Her work highlights the major role played by language in the diaspora programmes under examination, specifically their segmenting ethnic markets (often through alternating uses of Portuguese, Spanish and English) and their shaping of new pan-Latino spaces. Finally, in Chapter 6, Mar-Molinero critically examines the use of Spanish in the 2008 US presidential elections. During these elections, the importance and significance of the Latino vote were more widely acknowledged than in previous campaigns. Candidates from the main parties recognised the need to reach out to this constituency through the use (or partial use) of Spanish. Numerous websites, podcasts, television and radio broadcasts, billboards and, particularly, musical jingles and videos (commonly available on YouTube) translated key campaign messages into Spanish. Against this background, Mar-Molinero’s analysis shows how use of Spanish in the 2008 US elections was both imposed from outside the Latino communities (top-down) and created from grass-roots initiatives (bottom-up). This two-pronged approach affected the kind of Spanish language that was used, including different levels of adherence to a ‘pan-standard’. It also had an impact on the kind of Latino identities that were thereby constructed, both for political candidates and for those potentially comprising the ‘collective Latino vote’.

Note 1. In order to maintain the original terminology in Bakhtin’s work, the terms language and metalanguage are used here to refer to a general ‘meta’ dimension that encompasses verbal and non-verbal modes of communication. Also, utterance is used here in the sense of Bakhtin (1986) to refer to structural units containing the turn of one individual. The length of these structural units can vary from a single word turn to a (written) novel or longer.

3 The Construction of Canarian Identity in the First Telenovela on Canarian Television Mª Isabel González Cruz and Mª Jesús Vera-Cazorla

Introduction As Swann et al. (2004: 140) explain, the identity of a person or a group can be expressed in several ways, by taking into account their ‘nationality, geographical location, ethnicity, gender, social class, occupation, etc.’ However one approaches the question of identity construction, it is generally accepted that it is ‘in large part established and maintained through language’ (Gumperz 1982a: 7). From a psycholinguistic perspective, Kachru (1992) argues that social identity is acquired together with the mother tongue and that, along with this social identity, a personal or individual identity is also forged. Sociolinguistic research, in turn, shows that ‘language can act as a vehicle for conveying important social information about the speaker’ and that ‘certain linguistic features come to be associated with particular local characteristics’ (Dyer 2007: 101). In fact, the identity–language link is often so strong that ‘a single feature of language use suffices to identify someone’s membership in a given group’ (Tabouret-Keller 1997: 317). A speaker’s phonetic, lexical and syntactic features frequently lead us to identify their geographical origin and, in the words of Lamíquiz (2001: 17, our translation) We tend to attribute to each speaker a specific social behaviour, a series of life preferences, certain habitual customs, a distinctive attitude towards events, especially those concerning the communicative setting, a specific viewpoint on reality [. . .] in summary, a hierarchy of values that we extend to a whole social group or subgroup. 16

The Construction of Canarian Identity on Canarian Television 17

This is not to say, of course, that identity is either static or monolithic. There are ‘as many versions of “you” out there as there are people whose mental space you inhabit’ (Joseph 2004: 8–9). Drawing on this close relationship between language and identity, this chapter examines the construction of Canarian regional identity in El Juramento de Puntabrava (Puntabrava’s Oath) – the first Canarianproduced telenovela broadcast in the Canary Islands. El Juramento de Puntabrava (henceforth, Puntabrava) tells the story of two Canarian families involved in a fierce fight for the freehold of some land. The two families are linked by a secret oath taken by their ancestors, which is only known by the oldest members of the two families. The action takes place in Puntabrava – an imaginary town in the archipelago, which is a composite of a number of locations in the Canaries. Our chapter is structured as follows. In the next two sections, we review the historical and current sociolinguistic reality of the Canaries and of the media–identity–language relationship, respectively. Next, we introduce the methodology of our study, including contextual information about Puntabrava and the Canarian government-funded channel that produced and broadcast it: Televisión Canaria (henceforth, TVC). The results of our analysis of the lexico-grammar, pronunciation and visual features that characterise the multimodal discourse of this telenovela are then presented. Although these features are clearly interrelated in Puntabrava, results are presented separately for clarity of exposition. The chapter concludes with some data-driven reflections on television’s role in constructing regional identities and its thematisation/ideologisation of language (cf. Chapter 2).

The Canary Islands and Canarian Spanish: past and present Before the European conquest the Canary Islands were inhabited by the Guanches – a group of primitive people seemingly related closely to the North African Berbers. After their incorporation into the Crown of Castile in 1496, the Canary Islands were settled by Spanish-speaking colonists from the continent, who imposed their language and culture on the native population. The archipelago soon became a point of linguistic and sociocultural contact due to its strategic position halfway along the maritime commercial Atlantic routes. Over the years, therefore, Canarian Spanish was also influenced by different varieties of Latin American Spanish. Despite the islands’ close commercial links with the Anglo-Saxon world, their dependence on the continental

18

Spanish at Work

Spanish government remained strong. This may have contributed to the establishment of the Castilian variety of Spanish as the most prestigious form in the Canaries (Almeida and Díaz 1988, Trujillo 2003), a situation that did not seem to be affected even by the advent of local radio and television channels in the 1960s. Numerous sociolinguistic studies have shown that non-standard dialects are generally perceived to have an inferior status vis-à-vis their standard counterparts (cf. e.g. Giles 1970, González Cruz 2006, Morín and Castellano 1990). In studies in which participants assessed standardvariety speakers on tape, for example, they often rated these speakers as ‘more intelligent, industrious, self-confident and determined than regional-accented speakers – even when the raters themselves speak with a regional accent’ (Holmes 2001: 349). Non-standard varieties, however, have been found to have covert value – or prestige – stemming from their functioning as solidarity markers among their speakers. After all, if non-standard varieties were not valued, ‘they would not continue to be used’ (Holmes 2001: 348). As a non-standard variety, Canarian Spanish seems to have shifted – or to be in the process of doing so – from low to high status (González Cruz 2006). An array of academic publications have emerged in the 1990s and 2000s, for instance, dealing not only with Canarian history and arts (cf. e.g. Abad 2001, Barreto 2005, Domínguez 1998, Pérez Morera 2008) but, most importantly, with Canarian Spanish (cf. Corrales, Álvarez and Corbella’s long bibliography of Canarian Spanish).1 Also revealing of the increasing interest in this variety is the inclusion of a chapter on Canarian speech in Galván and Estévez’s (1997) inventory of Canarian identity symbols. Academic interest in Canarian Spanish has developed together with wider social and educational moves to promote various aspects of Canarian culture. One such example was the creation in August 1999 of TVC. TVC, which broadcasts a variety of Canarian-produced programmes, proudly markets itself as la nuestra; la televisión con acento canario (‘our own television channel; the Canarian-accented television’).2 Another example was the foundation in December 1999 of an Academia Canaria de la Lengua (Canarian Academy of Language),3 which has subsequently organised an international conference on Canarian Spanish, the proceedings of which have been published under the title Estudios sobre el español de Canarias (2003). The above are illustrative examples of widespread and growing positive attitudes in the Canary Islands towards Canarian Spanish. Its speakers – who historically tended to feel that their dialectal forms

The Construction of Canarian Identity on Canarian Television 19

(mainly those related to lexis and pronunciation) were inferior or inadequate for usage in formal contexts or in the presence of Castilian Spanish speakers – are nowadays beginning to show overt pride in Canarian Spanish and to assert openly that it deserves respect. In Morera’s (1997: 238, our translation) words: We cannot deny [. . .] that our linguistic identity is totally Spanish. But it is true that, apart from this radical linguistic identity (or, better still, based on it), we have also a particular linguistic identity, that speaks clearly to us about the smallest everyday things, a linguistic identity revealed in the distinctive words of our community, in the rhythm of its phonetics and in the particular way we have of using certain grammatical elements from our common tongue. It is a question of words, pronunciation and constructions that have their own internal sense and their own historical justification. It is necessary, then, to identify these words, pronunciation and constructions. Canarian Spanish is classified among the Atlantic or Southern varieties of Spanish, together with (Western) Andalusian Spanish and the Spanish of the Americas. Their similarities at the phonetic and grammatical levels are due to factors such as the coincidence in the dates of conquest and colonisation, the settlers having a single geographical origin, and the long and close relationship established between the Canaries and Latin America, particularly the Caribbean, through migration. Drawing on Almeida and Díaz (1988) and on Morera (1990), we briefly outline this variety as follows. At the phonetic level, the main distinguishing features of Canarian Spanish are the reduction of some oppositions and the relaxation of some consonants in implosive position, which produces the following phenomena: • Seseo: loss of the contrast between the sounds /s/ and /T/, which results in /s/ and produces homophones like casa (house) and caza (hunting), both pronounced [‘kasa]; • Aspiration or loss of /s/ in final or implosive position, e.g. estas casas (these houses) [‘ehtah ‘kasah]; • Substitution of /h/ for the tenser /x/, e.g. jamón (ham): [ha’mon] instead of [xa’mon]; and • Yeismo: reduction of the opposition between the sounds / / and /y/ which always results in /y/, e.g. pollo (chicken) vs poyo (stone bench), [‘poyo]. y

20

Spanish at Work

At the grammatical level, Canarian Spanish is characterised by: • Use of the third person plural pronouns (ustedes, les, los, se) and the third person plural verbal morphemes, where the Castilian standard rule uses the second person pronouns (vosotros, os, vuestro) and the second person plural verbal morphemes, e.g. ¿A ustedes les gusta el té? (Canarian Spanish) versus ¿A vosotros os gusta el té? (Castilian Spanish) (‘Do you (plural) like tea?’); • Preference for simple past tense forms, meaning both recent and remote past, and for the periphrastic or perfect form ‘haber + participle’ with the sense of past action that has not finished, e.g. Ya comí (Canarian Spanish) (‘I already ate’) versus Ya he comido (Castilian Spanish) (‘I have already eaten’). Yet, usage of the periphrastic forms in sentences such as Todavía no he terminado and Este año ha llovido mucho (Canarian and Castilian Spanish) (‘I haven’t finished yet’, ‘It’s rained a lot this year’); • Absence of leísmo, laísmo and loísmo (i.e. incorrect usage of the object pronouns le, la, lo), which is quite frequent in some regions where Castilian Spanish is spoken; and • Polite leísmo to emphasise deference and respect towards the hearer (coinciding with Castilian Spanish), e.g. Le llaman por teléfono (‘Someone is calling you on the phone’) or Mucho gusto en conocerle (‘Pleased to meet you’). As regards vocabulary, Canarian Spanish is characterised by: • A number of archaisms from the Castilian Spanish that was used at the time of the conquest; • Some words remaining from the Guanche language; and • A considerably higher number of loanwords from Portuguese or Galician-Portuguese, Latin American Spanish, and English4 than in Castilian Spanish. Having briefly described the sociolinguistic past and present of Canarian Spanish, we now turn our attention to its presence and role in the broadcast media, in particular in the genre (telenovela) under examination.

Language, identity and television Chapter 2 stressed the key role played by the mass media, both intraand internationally, in linguistic ideologisation. As Johnson and Ensslin

The Construction of Canarian Identity on Canarian Television 21

(2007: 4) state, the media frequently ‘represent language-related issues’ but, in addition, ‘media policy and practice with respect to language are central to the very construction of what we all (experts and otherwise) think language is, could or ought to be like’. In much the same way, the broadcast media have often been found to engage in nation-building processes (cf. e.g. Barker 1999, Drummond et al. 1993, Newcomb 1997, Louw 2005, Schlesinger 1991). In fact, as noted by Liebes and Livingstone (1998: 149), ‘part of the debate over national identity in relation to broadcasting has rested on the assumption that characteristics of a national culture can be clearly identified in the programmes they broadcast’. Nation-building processes have been identified as being especially salient in the case of television serials (e.g. Castelló 2007, in the context of Spain; and Griffiths 1995, in the context of Wales). These serials differ from their otherwise ‘close cousins’ – i.e. television series – in that the narratives told in a serial ‘roll seamlessly across episodes and the characters may (and indeed often do) change over time’ (O’Donnell 1999: 2). This contrasts with the characters in a series, who ‘remain relatively stable while each episode contains its own independent, completed storyline’, making it possible for the episodes in a series to be ‘shown in any order at all’, whereas ‘the episodes of a serial must be shown in strict chronological order’ (1999: 2). Admittedly, nowadays these differences are in practice ‘being increasingly blurred in a number of European productions’ (1999: 2). They nevertheless apply to cases such as Puntabrava, which broadly fits into the serial category despite its short-lived existence. Recognised as a complex phenomenon and approached from various analytic and theoretical perspectives, television fiction serials – popularly known as soap operas and, in the Spanish/Latin American context, as telenovelas – have succeeded in securing large audiences and have thus also tended to guarantee an increase in channel ratings (López-Pumarejo 1987). The increasing liberalisation of Western European economies at the end of the 1990s, moreover, encouraged the expansion of the number of commercial television channels, and this is regarded as a crucial factor in the growth of domestic soaps across Europe (O’Donnell 1999). Examples in the Spanish context include locally produced telenovelas, such as Arrayán (Canal Sur, Andalusia), El Cor de la Ciutat (TV3, Catalonia) and Libro de Familia (TVG, Galicia). Turner (2005: 417) notes that television serials ‘produced for local audiences [. . .] always operate in some relation to established discourses

22

Spanish at Work

of local or national cultural identities’. This has undoubtedly been the case in Spain, where there has been and remains ‘a link between domestic telenovela production and the question of “nationality”’ (O’Donnell 1999: 176). Drawing on the results of a production study of several fictional serials in the autonomous television channels in Spain (TVC not included), Castelló (2004) identifies six mechanisms for the construction of cultural identity therein. These are: on-location filming in order to show the landscape and the architecture of the place; the use of local names for the characters, who have typical professions and local economy-related activities; storylines that deal with social conflicts and current affairs;5 production that involves the incorporation of local humour, music and folklore; and scripts that use elements of the local language. Castelló underlines the importance of the latter mechanism and, in particular, the emphasis placed in these programmes on characters using accents and expressions typical of the language varieties spoken in the regions depicted. This is of course a strategy to establish a certain degree of complicity and identification with the serials’ local audiences, and its ultimate aim is to maintain and, ideally, increase the ratings. It is also of paramount importance for the serials’ construction through discourse of particular versions of regional identity. Fecé (2003), too, highlights the salient role played by the mass media in defending local cultural identities in Spain, not only from the influence of American television fiction but also from the dominant cultural power of Castilian Spanish. This author discusses the role of Catalan television channels in both preserving a minority language (Catalan) and constructing a Catalan identity through the way they establish a clear difference with the Castilian Spanish language group, which is not seen to share or identify with la nostra ficció (‘our fiction’). Within the European context, O’Donnell (1999: 20) also identifies choice of language as ‘a key element in its [the soap opera] general make-up’, emphasising soap operas in Catalan, Basque and Gaelic. As far as use of language varieties is concerned, O’Donnell (1999: 20) argues that it is only really in the UK that soap operas ‘use dialects consistently as a source of signification’, adding that ‘[b]y and large, continental European soaps are havens of the standard forms of the language in question’. This may seem paradoxical in the Spanish context for, after a period of limited, state-funded national channels in the previous decades, six regional channels were already broadcasting in the early 1990s in Spain: Basque Television (ETB), TV3 (the first Catalan Channel),

The Construction of Canarian Identity on Canarian Television 23

Televisión de Galicia, Canal Sur (in Andalusia), Telemadrid (in Madrid) and Canal 9 (in Valencia). These regional channels claimed to be fully committed to the promotion of local linguistic and cultural identities not only in those regions where languages other than Castilian Spanish are spoken (the Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia) but also, and crucially for our study, in autonomous regions like Andalusia and the Canary Islands, which have strongly marked cultural and dialectal differences. Thus, within the Canarian region, TVC has explicitly claimed that it exists to promote the identity, values and interests of the Canarian people, while simultaneously underlining the need for peaceful coexistence and solidarity with national television channels and standard language varieties.6 The tendency of European fictional series to depict standard language varieties is mirrored in other television formats in Latin America, in particular those produced to be broadcast nationally and/or internationally. For instance, research within the project Difusión Internacional del Español por Radio, Televisión y Prensa (DIES-RTP)7 has shown many national television programmes in Latin America to employ only standard language varieties. In doing so, they contribute not only to the promotion of linguistic standardisation but also to (inter)national intelligibility (Ávila 2006). Without denying the validity of demands for intelligibility within an (inter)national broadcasting scene, we believe that other factors may be involved, too, in the use of standard varieties of language in Spanishspeaking telenovelas, which we discuss later in the chapter in light of the results of our study. For the time being, though, let us clarify what we mean by standardisation in the world of Spanish-speaking international broadcasting. According to Ávila (2004), three norms have become standardised therein, which he calls ‘alfa’, ‘beta’ and ‘gama’, and which he illustrates in a simplified way as follows: E.g. Ellos son amigos muy cercanos (‘They are very close friends’) alfa: /eyos son amigos mui serkános/ beta: /eyoh son amigoh mui serkánoh/ gama: /eyos son amígos mui Terkános/ The alfa and beta norms, in which the interdental phoneme /T/ is never used, include all the Spanish-speaking countries, except for the central and northern regions of Spain, which are the only areas where the

24

Spanish at Work

gama norm rules and where speakers pronounce the phoneme /T/. The main difference in pronunciation between the alfa and the beta norm is that in the former the phoneme /s/ is never aspirated in final position, whereas aspiration does occur in the latter – to which group Canarian Spanish belongs. Some authors argue that final position aspiration in some Hispanic areas is ‘typical of the lower classes, whereas educated speakers try to produce the sound’ (Alcina Franch and Blecua 1980: 353, our translation). However, for Samper Padilla (1990), final position aspiration in Canarian Spanish is conditioned by speakers’ sociocultural group, gender and age. More importantly still, aspiration is not socially stigmatised in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where his study was based. Aspiration is viewed negatively, nevertheless, in other regions in Spain, including its central-northern area, where seseo and relaxation and/or aspiration of the sounds /s/ and /x/ have been traditionally regarded as incorrect. This is illustrated by the fact that a number of broadcasting presenters in Spain, who come from the various dialectal areas where these features are common, tend to pronounce distinctly the -s and -z sounds in their radio and television performances: that is, they contrast the phonemes [s] and [T] with no relaxation of -s (González Cruz 1995a). It is against the above sociolinguistic and broadcasting background that our study of Canarian identity construction in Puntabrava emerges. Was the need for (inter)national intelligibility more important in this telenovela than the need to be seen to promote la televisión con acento canario in the changing sociolinguistic, cultural and political environment in the Canaries?

The study Data Our corpus consisted of ten, 30-minute episodes of Puntabrava. The decision to examine this telenovela stemmed partly from its being the first fictional television serial shown on TVC, and partly from the considerable media expectation that this seemed to create prior to its launch. Co-produced by Plural Entertainment and MediaReport for TVC, Puntabrava was heralded by TVC channel director, Daniel Cerdán, as ‘the most important fiction project in the archipelago’.8 Before its premiere, Puntabrava was announced with great fanfare by the local press, which

The Construction of Canarian Identity on Canarian Television 25

referred to it as the first ‘entirely Canarian’ serial and boasted of its allCanarian cast and scriptwriting team. The 35 Canarian actors employed, the local press also stressed, would portray a number of Canarianaccented characters and this would mean, among other features, that ‘they would not pronounce the /T/ sound’ and that it was ‘precisely the “Canarianness” of the characters, actors and locations [that would] differentiate this telenovela from other similar productions’.9

Procedure Three communicative modes were pursued in our analysis: verbal (lexico-grammatical), paralinguistic (pronunciation) and visual. For the latter two we relied on repeated viewing of the entire corpus and detailed phonetic and visual transcription. For the former, we followed Ávila’s (2006) methodology in his study of ‘localisms’ in Latin American telenovelas. Thus, we randomly selected ten consecutive episodes (19 to 28 in our case) from a total of 32 episodes, which were aired Monday to Thursday between 7 May and 28 June 2007. We then transcribed them, the size of our transcribed corpus totalling 24,629 words.10 Next, we manually identified and coded as ‘marked’ all Canarian Spanish lexico-grammatical features in the corpus. The coding criterion for Canarian Spanish features was their being identified as such in lexicographical sources (e.g. Maffiotte 1993, Lorenzo et al. 1995, Quintero Sánchez 2006). In addition, we also ‘marked’ Venezuelanisms and non-Spanish words and expressions in the corpus. In the case of the former, this was because one of the female characters was of Venezuelan origin and spoke with a distinctive Venezuelan Spanish accent. We were interested in discovering, therefore, how this variety of Spanish was comparatively represented in Puntabrava. As for the latter, this was motivated by an interest in assessing the presence of non-Spanish forms in a region which has had through colonisation – and retains through tourism – close contact with languages such as English and French. Finally, we ran our corpus through the computer program LEES (2000), which is specially designed for this type of lexico-grammatical study.11 One of the advantages of this program is that it allows researchers to calculate the frequency of use of lexico-grammatical forms previously identified as marked vis-à-vis those that are regarded as unmarked, i.e. terms of general use in all the different varieties of Spanish (cf. Ávila 1997).

26

Spanish at Work

Results and discussion: the ‘Canarianness’ of Puntabrava Lexico-grammatical features Table 3.1 lists all the marked terms in our corpus. Starting from the left, the first column indicates the language/language variety to which they belong. The second column provides the actual word/expression, together with a translation into English and/or an explanation. The third column indicates the grammatical category to which the word/expression belongs. The fourth column provides information on frequency of use in the entire corpus. As Table 3.1 shows, 15 Canarianisms, 3 Castilianisms, 2 Venezuelanisms, 2 Anglicisms, and 1 Gallicism were identified in the ten episodes that we analysed. Taking into account the frequency of use of the 15 different Canarianisms, 33 occurrences were altogether computed within the 24,629 word corpus. This is the equivalent of 1.33 Canarianisms12 per 1000 words, a figure which is lower than that obtained by Ávila (2006), who found three ‘-ism terms’ (Mexicanisms, Latin Americanisms and non-Spanish) per 1000 words. The use of these Canarian Spanish words and expressions in our corpus most likely constitutes a conscious attempt on the part of Puntabrava’s scriptwriters to infuse its characters’ speech with some Canarian linguistic identity. This seems to be reflected, for example, in the fact that many of these terms are endearments and vocatives, greetings, diminutives and colloquialisms, all of which have a strong affective meaning potential and are easily recognisable as ‘in-group’, close community terms by Canarian Spanish speakers. The low frequency of use for Canarian Spanish in the corpus, nevertheless, raises questions regarding the actual contribution of lexicogrammatical features to the promotion of a distinctive Canarian identity in Puntabrava. What is more, Canarianisms co-occurred at times with grammatical features characteristic of Castilian Spanish, namely the use of the present perfect tense in sentence contexts where Canarian Spanish would favour the simple past. Although these verbal tenses, which were marked as Castilianisms in the study, were infrequent (three different forms and three occurrences), their inclusion points to poor, or at best incongruous, scriptwriting practices.

Pronunciation features The majority of the actors and actresses in Puntabrava spoke with instantly recognisable Canarian accents. Overall, their enunciation was

Table 3.1

Marked terms in the corpus

Language/ language variety

Word/expression

Category

Canarianism

Baldao (‘very tired’). Colloquial, similar to ‘shattered’ in British English Boberías (‘silly or stupid things’) Botado (‘let down’)

Adjective

1

Noun Adjective (past participle) Vocative

2 1

Adjective

1

Noun

1

Noun Interjection

1 1

Noun

1

Canarianism Canarianism Canarianisms

Canarianism

Canarianism Canarianism Canarianism

Canarianism

1/1/4

27

Chacha/chacho/muchacha. Abbreviated forms for muchacha (‘lass’) and muchacho (‘lad’), respectively. They function as highly colloquial terms of address, and are sometimes used as interjections Éramos chicos (‘we were small’). The forms chico, chica, chicos, chicas, which are primarily used as common nouns in Spanish (boy, girl, boys, girls), are also used as adjectives in Canarian Spanish with the meaning ‘small, little’ Chiquillajes (‘childish persons’). Derived from chiquillo (‘kid, child’). It carries negative connotations Chiquillo (‘lad, kid’) ¡Fuerte guineo! (‘what a nuisance!’). It combines two Canarian forms: (1) fuerte, which is commonly used before a noun in order to emphasise the qualities it expresses; and (2) guineo, which designates an annoying, monotonous and repetitive noise or utterance Gofio. Of Guanche origin, it designates a nourishing type of toasted flour made mainly of corn but which can also include wheat, barley and other types of grain. It is still widely consumed in the Canaries

Frequency

28

Table 3.1 (Continued) Language/ language variety

Word/expression

Category

Canarianism Canarianism Canarianisms

Jesús (‘oh dear!’) ¡Jesús hombre! (‘oh, come on!’) Mandarse a mudar/Que se mande a mudar (‘tell him to get lost’). Colloquial and rather insulting Mi niña/mi niño (‘my girl/my boy’). Terms of endearments that can also express anger Ahí mismito (‘right there’). Diminutive of mismo (‘same’)

Interjection Interjection

1 1

Verb Vocatives

1/1 8/3

Adverb modifier Verbs

1

Verb Verb Verb Adverb

1 1 1 1

Interjection

1

Adverb Noun Noun

1 1/1 1

Canarianisms Canarianism Canarianism

Castilianism Castilianism Castilianism Venezuelanism Venezuelanism Anglicism Anglicisms Gallicism

Trancarle/tranque. Either ‘to grab, to get hold of’ or ‘to catch someone doing something bad’, which is the meaning in the corpus Si me disculpáis . . . (‘if you’ll (second person plural) excuse me’) Se te ha olvidado . . . (‘you have forgotten . . .’) He aprovechado (‘I have taken advantage’) Ahorita. A diminutive form for ahora (‘now’), used also in other areas of Latin America ¡Qué chévere! (‘how nice!’).Used also in other areas of Latin America OK Topmodel/topmodels Bufette

Frequency

1/1

The Construction of Canarian Identity on Canarian Television 29

careful and precise. It was, in fact, typical of that generally found in formal registers, rather than in the informal registers to be expected within the colloquial communicative contexts depicted (and the colloquial lexis at times used) in the episodes. One of the effects of such careful enunciation was the frequent avoidance of aspiration (i.e. production of most final and implosive -s). Conscious avoidance of aspiration in Canarian Spanish is generally explained by scholars in terms of speakers’ awareness of the lack of prestige which aspiration carries in mainland Spain. As Morera (1997: 21–2, our translation) explains: the usual lack of prestige awarded vernacular languages causes their speakers to express themselves with less energy than that used by speakers of the standard variety. [. . .] This relaxed faltering pronunciation often creates the impression that, unlike users of the standard norm, who speak forcefully, without the least hesitation, the Canarian speaker appears to express nothing firmly. It is impossible to ascertain with our methodology whether avoidance of aspiration in our corpus reflected the kind of general metalinguistic views expressed above on the part of actors and/or scriptwriters (or even producers) of Puntabrava. What is clear, and was also noted by Castelló (2007: 61) in the context of fictional serials on Catalan television, is that the resulting phonetic standardisation likely ‘reduces realism because characters lose credibility’. Other examples of linguistic standardisation at the pronunciation level in our corpus which probably led to loss of realism and character credibility include use of ‘wrong’ language varieties and of registerunmotivated absence and presence of seseo within the same character. The former occurred mainly in the case of the actor who played the part of Eduardo Montalbán, a Canarian-origin character who, after more than 40 years in Venezuela and having married the only Venezuelan character in the serial, returns to the islands speaking with a marked Castilian Spanish accent, instead of either a Venezuelan or a Canarian Spanish one. As for the register-unmotivated oscillation between seseo and absence thereof, this was most evident in relation to the actor who played the role of Rafael Perdomo, one of the main characters. This actor is well known throughout Spain, as he has worked mainly with some of the national channels, in which Castilian Spanish is the standard pronunciation. As an experienced actor playing a part, he should not have

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produced such an implausible mixture of a Castilian and a Canarian Spanish accent. More importantly, given the serial’s avowed Canarian accent, one wonders why the production/scriptwriting teams allowed this to happen.

Visual features Both Fecé (2003) and Castelló (2007) argue that, despite its importance, language is not the only element in the construction of identity on fiction television in Spain. ‘Referential elements with cultural meaning’ (Castelló 2007: 59), too, contribute significantly. As far as Puntabrava is concerned, our analysis revealed a clear emphasis on filming on real locations, which its local audience could easily identify as part of the Canarian territory. Also, between sequences, transitional landscapes were regularly inserted with typical and instantly recognisable Canarian buildings with their decorative stone and wooden balconies. Other important referential elements were well-known Canarian brand names on certain objects, such as cash dispensers with the logo for La Caja de Canarias (the regional Canarian bank) in a hotel reception hall, or copies of the journal published by the local airline company Binter and the local newspaper La Provincia on the hotel reception desk. Likewise, a bottle of Viña Norte wine and a Teror water bottle, both Canarian brand names, were prominently displayed in numerous scenes on the Perdomos’ dinner table. At the entrance of the local bar, La Cofradía, a Kalise (local brand) ice-cream advertisement and a board with the day’s menu were regularly filmed, too. Similarly, the local bar menu listed typical local dishes, such as papas arrugadas, carajacas, chuchangos and longorones, together with others which, while not exclusively Canarian, are nevertheless very popular on the islands, such as pimientos de Padrón, chocos en salsa, puntitas, pulpo and calamares. Finally, although clearly not a visual element, the naming of the characters was also quintessentially Canarian. Examples included the traditional nickname Pancho (the usual abbreviation for Francisco in the Canaries) and the more modern names Tanausú and Yanira, both of Guanche origin. They also included the surnames Perdomo, Oramas, Falcón and Betancor, all of which have Canarian genealogy. All these elements, which are also typically found in serials broadcast in other Spanish autonomous channels (cf. Castelló 2004), undoubtedly contributed to the promotion of audience recognition and identification with local cultural referents of Canarian identity in Puntabrava.

The Construction of Canarian Identity on Canarian Television 31

Conclusions The symbolic role of Canarian Spanish in the construction of a distinctive, non-mainland Spain, Canarian identity seems nowadays unquestionable. Paraphrasing Kelly-Holmes and Atkinson (2007: 177), when referring to the Irish context, we can say that Canarian Spanish is ‘what makes “us” what “we” are, different to them’, in this case, primarily the Castilian Spaniards. It was also apparently self-evident to the local press, the TVC producers and others when they boasted of the ‘Canarianness’ of Puntabrava and highlighted its ‘acento canario’. While a Canarian identity was visually constructed in this telenovela, our analysis of the lexico-grammatical and pronunciation levels indicate that TVC paid only lip service to their claim to underscore the symbolic role of Canarian Spanish in the construction of a distinctive Canarian identity. Avoidance of aspiration, a small number of Canarian words and expressions and grammatical and phonetic inconsistencies in the language variety of some characters all considerably lessened the ‘Canarianness’ of Puntabrava. We have to ask ourselves why there was such a limited and inconsistent representation of Canarian Spanish features in this programme, and, in particular, why such avoidance of aspiration in the pronunciation of final and implosive -s, which are prototypical features of Canarian Spanish. Several factors are worth reflecting upon. Firstly, the team of Canarian scriptwriters was replaced – in the middle of the pre-production process – by another team from mainland Spain. For the former, aspiration was probably ‘natural’, whereas the latter probably had to ‘script’ it, which they clearly failed to do consistently. The authentic ‘Canarianness’ of the series had already been brought into question when the replacement of the scriptwriting team was leaked to the local press prior to its launch. In an interview, local newspaper journalist Guezuraga asked one of the script coordinators, Santiago Tabuenca, if it was possible to write a television serial based on a distant place. Tabuenca, who also expressed his surprise during the interview that TVC had not insisted on a minimum percentage of Canarian scriptwriters, replied: ‘It is possible to do it, but not to do it well.’13 Despite predictions that Puntabrava would become ‘the most important televisual project in the Canaries’ (C-7, La Revista Canaria, 7 July 2007, p. 13) and similar expectations created by the huge success of other television serials of the same kind in other Spanish regions, the telenovela only achieved a fairly modest share of the audience. Whether this was a direct consequence of the

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scriptwriters’ failure to depict Canarian Spanish features consistently is impossible to tell for sure. However, in our view, this is likely to be the case, given that – as a media genre – telenovelas are expected to depict human life and to reflect language use accurately within particular speech communities, including the ability to reproduce it in all its social variation. Secondly, precision and clarity of enunciation are often emphasised in the world of dramaturgical training (cf. McCallion 1998, Quilis Morales 1997).14 In the context of Spain, this means the avoidance of aspiration. Most Canarian actors and actresses, including those cast in Puntabrava, have studied and worked/work in Madrid. It is therefore possible that this aspect of their training affected their performance, especially as Puntabrava may have been their first role portraying Canarian characters. Linked to the above is the fact that most of the characters in this serial belonged to the higher or upper-middle social classes. Possibly in the absence of a clear script that prescribed the use of Canarian Spanish pronunciation, these actors may have actually been guided by their own perceptions of the careful pronunciation and formal, educated register of the higher or upper-middle social classes of the Canary Islands, which happens to coincide to some extent with some pronunciation features of Castilian Spanish specifically as regards absence of aspiration. Last but not least, there may have been commercial reasons behind the kind of linguistic standardisation identified in our corpus. Using a stronger Canarian accent and more local vocabulary might have been seen as potentially limiting the chances of selling Puntabrava to television channels catering to speakers of other varieties of Spanish. In this regard, one must take into consideration the role played in recent years by several factors in the process of opening up the international market for television serials, especially those produced in Latin American countries. These include the reorganisation of European national televisions, the privatisation and expansion of television channels, and the introduction of cable and satellite television (Vasallo de Lopes 2004). Use of non-standard language varieties, in this respect, poses challenges in a hegemonised world television market marked by two concomitant tendencies: on the one hand, the reduction of cultural differences and the standardisation of audiences and, on the other, ‘the promotion of national genres in other territories’ (2004: 96, our translation). These commercial considerations and opportunities likely significantly influenced the use of standardised language choices in the particular case of Puntabrava.

The Construction of Canarian Identity on Canarian Television 33

Notes 1. The second edition of this bibliography, published in 1998, includes a total of 1430 titles, which confirms Medina’s (1996) and Álvarez’s (1996) statements that Canarian Spanish is one of the most widely and deeply studied varieties in the Hispanic world. 2. This slogan can be heard in their own television advertisements very frequently. In addition, at http://www.rtvc.es/servicios/buscador/?text=LA %20NUESTRA, several news items can be found in which TVC publicises and refers to itself using the expression la nuestra (‘ours’). 3. Although it was officially founded on 22 December 1999, it was not registered as an institution in the Canarian government’s Registro de Fundaciones until 5 April 2000. Cf. http://www.academiacanarialengua.org (last accessed November 2009). 4. The usage of a number of words of English origin is the result of the presence in the main islands over a long period of time (since 1880) of a highly populous British colony, whose members played a crucial role in the social and economic development of the archipelago (González Cruz 1995b). 5. Apart from its main plot, Puntabrava incorporates two narrative lines dealing with two highly topical issues in Spanish contemporary society: drug abuse and domestic violence. This coincides with O’Donnell’s (2002) interpretative framework for most Western European soaps and telenovelas, where he distinguishes several levels and dimensions of narrative, and, most particularly in this case, with what he calls their ‘metanarrative’. 6. http://www.rtvc.es/corporativa/leyCreacion.aspx (last accessed November 2009). 7. Cf. http://www.colmex.mx/personal/cell/avila/index.htm. For further details about the methodology used for the compilation of the corpus in the DIES-RTP project, cf. http://www.colmex.mx/academicos/cell/ravila/docs/ 10crpest.pdf (last accessed November 2009). 8. ‘Esta serie se ha convertido en el más importante proyecto de ficción del archipiélago’, http://www.formulatv.com/1,20070507,4405,1.html (last accessed November 2009). 9. In the electronic edition of the newspaper El Día we can also read the following headline: ‘TVC estrena el lunes El juramento de Puntabrava, íntegramente canaria.’ (‘TVC premieres on Monday El juramento de Puntabrava, entirely Canarian’). http://www.eldia.es/200705-05/comunicacion/comunicacion2.htm (last accessed November 2009). Another local newspaper commented on the fact ‘La serie cuenta con 35 actores del Archipiélago para dar vida a unos personajes que hablarán con acento canario. Esto significa que no van a pronunciar el sonido /T/’ (La Opinión de Tenerife, 6 May 2007, p. 11). 10. According to Ávila (2006), since the names of people, places, institutions, book titles, etc. are not considered valid for the lexical analysis, the transcription of a minimum of 1200 words guarantees the presence of at least 1000 countable or eligible words in every text unit. In our text there was a total of 844 words which, as proper nouns, were not included in the analysis. 11. We are grateful to Professor Ávila for his generosity in allowing us to use this computer program.

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12. We found some terms and expressions which, although not registered in any of the lexicographical sources, can be recognised by native Canarians as having a certain Canarian flavour, because of their higher frequency of use in colloquial speech in the islands, in contrast with the usages found in Castilian Spanish. We believe they also contributed in a certain way to the Canarianness of the series at the linguistic level but were not considered for the frequency count for reasons of coherence with the applied criterion. These expressions were the following: •

¡Qué valor! (‘How cheeky!’ or ‘You’ve got a nerve!’). This is an ironic expression, the meaning of which has nothing to do with the positive sense of the noun valor (‘courage’, ‘bravery’). • The coloquial greeting oh!¿qué pasó? (‘what’s up?’). • The use of the diminutives desesperaíto (‘desperate’) and ¡hasta lueguito! (‘bye-bye’). Diminutives ending in -ito are very frequent in the Canaries and are recognised as dialectal. They can convey not only tenderness or realism but also humour and irony (Santana Díaz 2003). • The terms of endearment mi hija/mi hijo (‘my daughter’/‘my son’). All these terms and expressions were used once in the selected chapters, except for ¡qué valor!, which occurred twice. This makes a total of six terms (seven occurrences) which could have been added to our list of Canarianisms. Doing so, though, would not have increased significantly our total figure of Canarianisms used per 1000 words (reaching only 1.6). 13. Canarias 7 (24 December 2005, p. 67) http://www.canarias7.es/articulo.cfm? Id=16133 (last accessed November 2009). 14. Emilia Cazorla, one of the actresses in Puntabrava, told us that these two manuals were used for practising pronunciation in her drama classes.

4 Linguistic Ideology in Galician Factual Radio Broadcasts: towards the Castilianisation of Galician Pronunciation Traits? Jaine Beswick

Introduction This chapter explores the impact of dominant linguistic ideologies in Spain regarding the use of language(s) in one specific media context since political devolution. Such ideologies generally promote the use of the Castilian standard above that of any minority language. To this end, my approach is a case study of the ‘Castilianisation’ of Galician pronunciation in the institutional setting of Galician broadcasts on the public radio station Radio Galega. Given the presence at all levels of deeply embedded prejudices towards the autochthonous language held by non-Galician as well as Galician speakers, the socio-historical and socio-political contexts from which Galician has emerged as an officially recognised language variety alongside Castilian are essential to an overall understanding of the contemporary situation. My intention here, however, is purely to delineate the main concerns that the democratically appointed government of Galicia faced in the 1970s and 1980s regarding the use of both Galician and Castilian Spanish in diglossia, since these influence current ideologies regarding language use in public institutional settings as well as general attitudes towards language use and the role of such as an identity marker. One of the main issues regarding the use of Galician in officially managed public spheres relates to the pronunciation of the standard that is being disseminated through institutional settings, such as the education services and broadcasting companies. In order to address recent contentions (Kabatek 2000, Regueira Fernández 2004, Dobao 2008) 35

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regarding the superimposition of a Castilian Spanish phonetic system onto the Galician spoken in such spheres, as well as the reasons behind this, my intention in this chapter addresses the question of linguistic differentiation and linguistic approximation when two mutually intelligible languages (Galician and Castilian Spanish) are found in such a multilingual setting. However, my proposal is not to initiate a lengthy debate concerning second language (L2) acquisition of phonetic repertoires. Rather, my empirical data are employed to reinforce some of the contentions examined regarding the pronunciation of Galician in the media. The responses of my informants, whose first language (L1) was Galician, may also be relevant to an appreciation of the current situation regarding language use in broadcast settings, given their ideological and attitudinal perceptions concerning the validity of dialectal variation as a legitimate identity marker.

Historical context The diachronic evolution of Galician from Galician-Portuguese until the emergence of the Normas Ortográficas e Morfolóxicas do Galego (The Orthographic and Morphological Standards of Galician), the official standard language, is well documented (Beswick 2007). By the fifteenth century, Galician fulfilled many roles and functions of a normalised national language in the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula. However, a progressively centralising period in Spanish socio-political history established Castilian as the official Spanish language of prestige and power of the state and by the Séculos Oscuros (Dark Ages) of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Castilian Spanish was exerting substantial linguistic influence on the Galician varieties of the middle-class urban areas, although rural varieties remained broadly unaffected, speakers being largely isolated both geographically and socially from its influence. By the eighteenth century, the ruling monarchy had started to reinforce a nationalist ideology of a centralised and united, homogenised Spain, based upon a belief in the ideological, cultural and linguistic assimilation of territories (Regueira Fernández 2006, Lorenzo Suárez 2009). The imposition of Castilian Spanish throughout Spain as the national language was unequivocal (Mar-Molinero 1997), and in Galicia the hegemony of (Castilian) Spanish society and a Castilian Spanish linguistic identity continued virtually unabated for the next 200 years. The concomitant increase in urban bilingualism resulted in a high degree of lexical interference between the two languages, and Galician varieties came to be viewed as old-fashioned and corrupt forms of Castilian, their

Linguistic Ideology in Galician Factual Radio Broadcasts 37

differentiation reliant on an outmoded lexis and a risible pronunciation. Furthermore their use, still highly significant in rural areas, came to be linked with deep-seated ideologies regarding the region’s low social and uncultured status within nineteenth-century Spain. As O’Rourke (2003) points out, sociologically at least, Galician came to be considered as a rustic form of Spanish. Despite the emergence of galeguismo, a regionalist literary and cultural movement facilitated by the First Republic’s recognition of regional nationalisms in the peripheral areas of Spain and the precursor of regionalism as a political doctrine, the significant rural exodus of the time accelerated huge changes in the overall linguistic composition of Galicia. Nonetheless, the appearance of this movement represented the beginnings of a recuperation ideology and recuperation period of the Galician language (Lorenzo Suárez 2009): one of its legacies was to advocate linguistic unification and promote ethnic identity. Other movements appeared in the twentieth century. Ostensibly political, the Irmandades da Fala (The Brotherhood of the Spoken Word) advocated Galician (regional) nationalism. Their manifesto proposed the co-officiality of both Galician and Castilian, thus resolving the contradictions between ideological discourse and linguistic practice apparent in earlier regionalist doctrines (Mariño Paz 1998). However, it was the Xeración Nós (Our Generation) that advanced the establishment of a written standard, recognising what they considered as the importance of releasing Galician from its traditional, negative (and rural) characterisation and stimulating its use as a symbol of (regional) national consciousness (Regueira Fernández 2006).

Devolution and language planning Franco’s regime played a pivotal role in the substitution of Galician by Castilian Spanish (Lorenzo Suárez 2009). Characterised by its defence of Castilian Spanish as the only language of the state and by the view that Spain should be culturally and linguistically homogeneous, it quashed aspirations for autonomy and linguistic unification in Galicia. The transition to a parliamentary monarchy at the end of the dictatorship, though, initiated a further process of decentralisation. The Constitución Española of 1978 declared Castilian the official language of the state, but it ceded co-official language rights to Catalan, Basque and Galician within their respective regions. This co-officiality has been underlined by subsequent language policies and planning initiatives instigated by the Galician government, the Xunta.1 The Lei de

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normalización lingüística (Law of Linguistic Normalisation) establishes an ideology of recuperation;2 it promotes the notion that citizens have the right, but not the duty, to use Galician without prejudice for all functions and in all contexts. Further, embedded within the legislation on social planning is the implication that they can expect Galician to be used where Castilian Spanish was formerly the only language of choice, such as in administrative and political sectors, education and public life, including in the mass media. Importantly, the right of citizens to use their language of choice extends to choosing to use Castilian Spanish (Del Valle 2000), and is rooted within what Lorenzo Suárez (2005) has termed the previous government’s rather non-interventionist and low-intensity language policy of bilingüísmo limpo e harmónico (clean, harmonious bilingualism), which, at least for the time being, is still being implemented.3 By advocating social bilingualism in this way, the model was partially devised to avoid any type of linguistic or social conflict between the two languages regarding the formal demarcation of context. However, in reality, the highly ideological stance of the model creates a somewhat false perception of the linguistic situation and the choices available to speakers. Both languages are still very much in conflict, since the lack of contextual domain for either means that they continue to compete in many sectors, including, as we discuss below, in the broadcast media. This incongruity has led some observers to comment that this policy simply serves to maintain the (disproportionate) status quo between Castilian Spanish and Galician, rather than to maximise the objectives of Galician normalisation (Regueira Fernández 2009), since the implied right to be able to use Galician in all contexts is not borne out by reality. In line with Woolard’s (2007) comments regarding (nationalist) linguistic ideologies of language and identity within sociocultural and socio-political contexts, and with Milroy and Milroy’s (1985) earlier conception of the standard as a ‘correct’ form able, symbolically, to draw together society as a whole (what is termed ‘the ideology of standardization’), it is clear that within the remits of corpus, status and acquisition planning, the main aims of the Normas Ortográficas do Galego are to offer a shared set of linguistic norms with which to strengthen the notion of a communal identity between groups through recognisable sociolinguistic practices (Domínguez-Seco 2002, 2003), as well as to bring prestige to the language and attract the loyalty of new speakers (Loureiro-Rodriguez 2008).4 However, the issue of structural differentiation of the Galician standard from the linguistically similar and neighbouring languages of Castilian Spanish and Portuguese has

Linguistic Ideology in Galician Factual Radio Broadcasts 39

been somewhat problematical, and has resonated strongly in the major diachronic modifications that have typified attempts to normalise the language over the last 200 years. This is not simply a matter of linguistic codification, since the perception that Galician occupies a social, historical and linguistic ‘transition zone’ between these two state languages is also embedded within the various political ideologies regarding Galician (regional) nationalism and ethnic identity that have long pervaded debates surrounding the form and structure of the standard.5 The introduction of Castilianisms, their phonetic or morphological alteration or replacement with Galician synonyms, the creation of new lexical items either from foreign sources – including Portuguese – or generated internally, the removal of hyper purisms and ancient Galician forms: all these adaptations resulted in a highly variable written form, largely disassociated from much of the spoken dialectal variation of the region.6 In line with Lippi-Green’s definition of standard language ideology as ‘a bias toward an abstract, idealized homogeneous spoken language, which is imposed and maintained by dominant bloc institutions and which names as its model the written language’ (1997: 54), the Normas Ortográficas do Galego are thus an artificial construct. Whilst there may be a general attempt to be descriptive rather than prescriptive (Santamarina 1995) in terms of the two major dialectal zones of the region (Fernández Rei 1999), Galician standard language ideology is aimed expressly at the ‘purification’ of the language in order to obtain structural uniformity and a more ‘authentic’ Galician (Loureiro-Dominguez 2008: 67). Yet I would contend that this is ideological posturing, since in reality what has been ‘purged’ from the standard are not so much foreign elements but, rather, many of the characteristic forms still prevalent in rural areas. Indeed, the widespread implementation of the standard in urban areas has simply distanced the official language even further from these dialectal and sociolectal features of Galician varieties. This demarcation of language thus serves to exacerbate the long-standing social divide between cities and the countryside based on class differentiation and social power (Regueira Fernández 2004, Loureiro-Rodriguez 2008). This division has been particularly in evidence in terms of ever more vociferous issues concerning the pronunciation of the standard. When a language is standardised, legislative measures are not generally taken in order to codify its pronunciation in the same way, since accentual variation is not generally felt to be an obstacle to diffusion. Indeed, as far as Castilian Spanish is concerned, it is only in the area of written language that a significant level of standardisation has been achieved

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(Stewart 1999). Furthermore, the prescription of an oral standard often has implications for social status and prestige, for it may lead to linguistic discrimination (Mey 1989) against those who use phonetic and prosodic traits that are not integrated in the standard and, hence, socially acceptable in certain contexts. Nonetheless, in Galicia there appears to have been at least the implicit belief that basing the pronunciation of the ‘new’ Galician on that of Castilian Spanish in public spheres and in the education system would encourage and help L1 Castilian Spanish speakers to adopt Galician as their L2. Indeed, in her research, Loureiro-Rodriguez (2008) has found that L1 urban populations are gradually using the same phonetic system for Galician and Castilian. So for these speakers, an ostensibly Castilianised pronunciation of the standard may well have facilitated their acquisition of Galician. Yet importantly, this also results in the further omission of many phonetic traits through linguistic levelling, which conversely may well serve to alienate speakers in rural areas since the omission of certain phonetic (as well as lexical and syntactic) characteristics ‘contributes to perpetuating or generating processes involving social stigmatization that affect such forms and those who use them’ (Dominguez-Seco 2002: 212). As a result, we may be witnessing a type of two-layered diglossia (Beswick 2007, Loureiro-Rodriguez 2007): on the one hand, the embedded ideology of Castilian Spanish and Galician as official languages within the language policy of bilingüísmo harmónico; on the other, the standard (prestige) form and dialectal varieties of Galician. These latter forms pervade rural, oral communication and are deemed (for the historical reasons described above, and also by dint of not being formalised) as ‘incorrect’ or ‘non-shared’ varieties of Galician. Bearing these comments in mind, the remainder of this chapter focuses on the model of pronunciation used in radio broadcasts in Galician and the nature of its diffusion, be it implicitly or explicitly governed by official policy making. Firstly, I consider the case of Castilian Spanish and its relevance to the Galician situation.

Castilian Spanish and Galician language broadcasting There is no doubting the spread and success of Spanish linguistic nationalism legislation instigated by the Real Academia Española (RAE) and the Instituto Cervantes (Del Valle 2007). The Spanish language usage in general has become a political tool reflecting the centralising policies of Madrid. In recent decades, it has been substantially globalised and

Linguistic Ideology in Galician Factual Radio Broadcasts 41

decontextualised for a wider Hispanic audience (Mar-Molinero 1997). In order to advocate one particular variety as a lingua franca across national boundaries and throughout the Spanish-speaking world, socio-political and linguistic authorities have endeavoured to determine the ‘correct’ forms of the language, including pronunciation forms. This, in turn, has led to the removal of many linguistic traits deemed ‘local’ or ‘national’ variants (Mar-Molinero 1997, Stewart 1999). Such centralising policies coincide to a large extent with normalising initiatives within the media and, in particular, within the written press. Since the 1960s, there have been a substantial number of libros de estilo (style guides) produced in an attempt by broadcasting authorities to regulate the use of Spanish in the media by delimiting a mutually comprehensible variety (Stewart 1999).7 Most of these initiatives, including those of the state broadcasting authority Radio Nacional de España, have concerned lexical terminology, structural forms, stylistic issues and so forth, rather than accentual or dialectal variation. However, some regional based subsidiaries have considered how to express spoken norms where the prestige norm of Castile is not adopted. The style guide used by the Andalusian regional broadcasting authority, for example, discusses at some length issues to do with dialectal variation. Indeed, unlike the rather prescriptive recommendations of Telemadrid – the broadcasting company based in the capital where dialectal variation abounds due to internal migration – in Andalusia very little is proscribed (Stewart 1999). In Galicia, the two state-operated radio stations broadcast almost exclusively in Castilian, as do three privately owned commercial stations (Euromosaic 2009). The Spanish station Sociedad Española de Radiodifusión (SER), for instance, is the leading radio station both throughout Spain and in Galicia (Fernández 2008). On local stations, the Castilian Spanish transmitted via the radio waves is not completely devoid of any phonetic or prosodic traits, although many of the broadcasters try to emulate a spoken Castilian that approximates a more ‘standard’ form despite being bilingual (Regueira Fernández, personal communication). In contrast, the Galician broadcasting authority owns Radio Galega, which has been on air 24 hours a day since the late 1980s and has only ever broadcast in Galician. Although its audience is not insubstantial, it is about half of that of SER in Galicia (Fernández 2008). Some local radio stations, such as Radio Popular de Vigo and Radio Popular de Lugo, have been broadcasting regularly in Galician since the 1970s. Other local stations also broadcast some of their programmes in Galician, although their listening figures are extremely limited.

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In the incipient stages, most presenters, newsreaders and reporters employed by the Galician broadcast media were not engaged for their linguistic competencies. Indeed, and perhaps surprisingly given the brief comments above regarding pronunciation on the state-owned radio stations, these broadcasters were not Galician L1 speakers. As occurred to a large extent in the primary and secondary education sectors, linguistic consultants oversaw the language training of individuals destined for the public sector. Success in the standard Galician written test was (and still is) an important criterion for employment (Loureiro-Rodriguez 2007). As a result, the focus of these consultants tended to be on eliciting the ‘correct’ structural forms of the written language from their learners, rather than on issues surrounding an ‘authentic’ pronunciation of Galician (Kabatek 2000). Broadcasters, therefore, had no input from a model of imitation other than from their own L1: Castilian. Moreover, in pragmatic terms, Galician was often regarded simply as a ‘tool of the trade’, employed solely in order to carry out the broadcasters’ professional duties. Indeed, Dobao – himself a linguistic consultant – avers that few broadcasters tend to speak or even hear Galician away from their desks, which further limits their linguistic competencies (2007, 2008). From a sociolinguistic perspective, there is a clear lack of pressure on these broadcasters, from either the Galicia broadcasting authority or from the listening public, to adopt more popular phonetic characteristics of Galician pronunciation into their vernaculars. Williamson and Williamson (1984), among others, have argued that the structural proximity between languages such as Castilian Spanish and Galician tends to facilitate their reciprocal acquisition. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between speakers of the two languages and, indeed, Castilian-speaking broadcasters appear to have few problems learning the structural and lexical elements of the Galician standard. However, as with adult second language learners elsewhere, the process of transferring phonetic features from L1 Castilian Spanish onto L2 Galician involves the identification of certain elements of the L1 phonetic repertoire with the same or similar one in the L2 (Beswick 2007). Were these broadcasters subject to constant input of spoken Galician in their daily lives, then I may perhaps start to question whether L2 acquisition theoretical perspectives regarding acquisition difficulties in phonologically similar languages may be pertinent here.8 However, I would contend that this is largely irrelevant in this case study. Nowadays, and given the tacit institutional acceptance of this rather artificial model of ‘radio speak’, the relatively few broadcasters for whom Galician

Linguistic Ideology in Galician Factual Radio Broadcasts 43

is their L1 tend to conform to this in the workplace, whilst maintaining their own accentual variation in more informal contexts – what I would term a highly domain-oriented diglossic scenario. From the very beginning, there do not appear to have been any overt linguistic policies or codified formulae exercised by o servizo de normalización da Compañía de Radio Televisión Galega (CRTVG) (the normalization services of the Galician Broadcasting Corporation) regarding the institutional pronunciation of Galician employed on television and radio (Beswick 2002, Dobao 2008), although this does not mean that it was not considered (Dobao 2007). The tacit lack of strategy, however, also pervaded other areas of public discourse and this mainstream use of an ostensibly Castilian Spanish pronunciation simply served to reinforce and further facilitate the linguistic behaviour of the broadcasters. As I intimated earlier, television and radio play an important role in contemporary society, since the projection and diffusion of a language may impact not only on collective status and corpus planning, but also on individual attitudes and ideologies regarding language use and prestige factors (Johnson and Ensslin 2007). In Galicia, the implementation of a model of pronunciation for the Galician language disseminated by such means may have far-reaching implications for those listeners still relatively isolated from urban conurbations, who retain strong dialectal accents, since they are likely to view the use of anything that does not contain traits of their own dialectal variation as somewhat conflictual and even discriminatory. Indeed, previous research has demonstrated that the standard language and the way it is pronounced in official spheres is often perceived by rural speakers as the creation and imposition of new, urban varieties of the language (The Seminario de Sociolingüística da Real Academia Galega – The Sociolinguistic Institute of the Royal Galician Academy 2003, Regueira Fernandez 2006). Given the historical and socio-political contexts of multilingualism in Galicia described earlier, these speakers may thus associate a sense of inferiority with pronouncing Galician with a strong dialectal accent. In truth, at times such speakers describe their vernacular as castrapo, a term overlaid historically by rather derogatory connotations, which denotes a mixture of Castilian Spanish and dialectal Galician lexical, syntactic, morphological and phonological traits and that bears little resemblance to the standard variety employed in the broadcast media. Loureiro-Rodriguez (2007, 2008) has found that the standard form of the language and the oral forms heard on the television and radio appear alien to many of the rural L1 Galician speakers that she interviewed. I have also found that urban older respondents in particular display

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a degree of insecurity about their knowledge of these forms (Beswick 2002). As a result, many of our surveyed speakers have reported that they feel somewhat ‘estranged’ from these forms, so they often revert to the default solution, that is, to use Castilian, since even overlaid by a Galician accent, they believe it to be more acceptable universally (see also Dobao 2007, 2008). However, some of the younger respondents are more vociferous in their condemnation of the standard pronunciation used in broadcasting, an assertion that I will revisit next.

Case study: Radio Galega Until recently and the era of digitisation, there was a paucity of source material from the Galician spoken media accessible for detailed linguistic analysis, one of the most notable exceptions being the detailed comparative account carried out by Hermida Gulías (2008). Hence, my primary aim here is to evaluate the findings of an empirical analysis of a series of phonetic traits present in the Galician spoken on the radio, as well as the responses to such of a small group of native Galician speakers. To this end, I conducted an analysis of a series of Radio Galega news broadcasts and weather forecasts transmitted between January and April 2008 (accessible at http://www.crtvg.es/). A total of 86 live and pre-recorded excerpts were selected from four L1 Castilian Spanish speakers – three men and one woman. Using the software Audacity, a restricted set of segments were then captured, trimmed and subjected to a spectrographic analysis in Praat and to an auditory analysis. As a control, the results were compared to recent data elicited from L1 Galician speakers. As these speakers were from primarily urban zones, I also played the recordings to five L1 Galician speakers, all aged between 30 and 40, who had recently moved to Santiago de Compostela from villages in the interior of Galicia. I was primarily interested in their corroboration of forms elicited in the broadcasts, but their comments regarding the use of dialectal variation also proved valid. Given the plethora of data gathered, and space limitations, I focus here on a limited set of traits for which I have observed a recurring pronunciation in the articulations of all the broadcasters. The first concerns the pronunciation of vowels. The traditional Galician vowel system comprises seven oral phonemes in tonic and pretonic position (/u/, /o/, /O/, /a/, /E/, /e/, /i/) and five atonic oral phonemes (/u/, /o/, /a/, /e/, /i/). In a similar way to Hermida Guliás’ data (2008), my own indicate that the open and close vowel oppositions of /o/ and /e/ are almost always neutralised by Radio Galega broadcasters, and this was confirmed

Linguistic Ideology in Galician Factual Radio Broadcasts 45

by the responses of the Galician L1 speakers when asked about the pronunciation of vowels on the radio. This neutralisation is found both in non-cognate words (e.g. [E] of pedra > [e] (stone); [O] of home > [o] (man)) and in words that are homogeneous in Castilian Spanish and Galician (e.g. [E] of letra > [e] (letter); [O] of forma > [o] (form)). The latter, however, have also been evidenced by Kabatek (2000) for largely new, urban native speakers of Galician.9 So whilst these L1 Castilian Spanish broadcasters do not employ the traditional Galician vowel repertoire, neither do some L1 Galician speakers. Based on the responses of my informants of this research, this would appear to be a general tendency in urban areas, although the informants themselves appear generally to retain the open/close opposition and consider it a characteristic trait of Galician. Similarly, atonic o > [u] is found sporadically in some rural dialects of Galician, but more widespread is a very close [o]. All my Galician L1 informants use this close [o] both in cognates and non-cognates (e.g. [u] burro > [o] (donkey)). They all also attest that it is similar but not analogous to the rather less close [o] evidenced in my broadcast data, also found in Castilian, which they regard as a clear indicator of a Castilianised pronunciation. Earlier research (Beswick 2005) confirms that in certain areas of Galicia, orthographic ou > [ow] (e.g. pouco (little)) can still be sporadically found. My broadcast data evidence levelling to [o] in all samples, in line with the Castilian Spanish cognate poco [o]. This is not evidenced by my five informants, who had recently moved to urban areas and who stated that this type of levelling is indicative of a Castilianised pronunciation. One of the most prominent phonetic features of dialectal Galician is the gheada. The term denotes the replacement of the voiced velar plosive /ě/ by a (predominantly) voiceless continuant pronunciation in word initial position (e.g. [ě] gato > [x/h] (cat)). My Radio Galega data reveal no evidence of the gheada being used. Instead, a strongly articulated plosive – also found in Castilian – is pronounced. This in itself is somewhat unsurprising given my previous statements regarding the superimposition of Castilian Spanish traits. Even if broadcasters were to try to emulate Galician phonology, it is rather doubtful that they would include the gheada, since its use still generally connotes a lowprestige, marginalised rural dialect. All my informants came from gheada areas and fully recognised its limitations regarding status. Nonetheless, they all agreed that, were a newscaster or reporter to use it, then these broadcasts may start to appeal to a larger audience.10

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I now turn to the articulation of the velar nasal, one of the few Galician phonetic traits that the Normas do comment upon. The velar nasal is a well-integrated and highly characteristic feature of all varieties of Galician. Unlike the gheada, its use is not considered to lack prestige. Previous research demonstrates that it may even be heard in the articulation of some L2 Castilian Spanish tokens (Beswick 2007). This is the only characteristic of Galician phonology that was consistently present in my data. All the broadcasters proffered a strongly articulated velar nasal, even in contexts where its use is not predictable from the phonetic evidence. Thus, it was employed in syllable and word-final /VN/ sequences such as unha (one) (fem. sing) and man (hand), in the latter case even when followed by a vowel (e.g. chegaron os diputados (the deputies have arrived)).11 However, it was also sporadically used where [n] would normally be expected in Galician (due to certain phonetic constraints), for example with certain adverbs plus the definite article (non o viu (he did not see him)) and in plurals in /n/, such as mitins [Ns] (meetings), where the alveolar often predominates for younger respondents, potentially due to the interference of Castilian Spanish forms (Beswick 2007, Regueira Fernández 2004). It was also used a few times where a contraction between a preposition and determiner would normally obtain (e.g. en un bar (in a bar) (masc.) [eNumbar]), thus mirroring the orthographic form, not the general oral resolution: [numbar]. Given that there do not appear to be any social constraints attached to the use of the velar nasal, these examples are perhaps clear cases of its over-differentiation by the broadcasters. However, my respondents considered its use on the radio as the only attempt made by the broadcasters concerned to emulate some form of Galician pronunciation and were not perturbed by this overuse.

Conclusions In theory, the Galician language broadcast media is a key institution for the dissemination of the Galician standard as well as of a concomitant oral form that adheres to certain idiosyncratic, phonological and suprasegmental traits of the language. In practice, there appears to have been little incentive to address these issues, at least regarding the pronunciation of Galician utilised by announcers and newscasters. The CRTVG does not appear to be under any imminent pressure to recuperate some of the more ‘traditional’ pronunciation traits of Galician in their factual broadcasting (see also Dobao 2007): viewing and listening figures for Galician language broadcasting have recently risen and thus

Linguistic Ideology in Galician Factual Radio Broadcasts 47

are not totally indicative of the sense of frustration revealed in the data of previous research discussed earlier in this chapter. Indeed, despite the absence of any formal style sheet akin to those produced in Castilian Spanish contexts, Dobao (2008) contests that the aim seems to be to try and keep the pronunciation of Galician on the radio and television as ‘neutral’ as possible, that is, free of dialectal variation that may otherwise be construed as vulgar and lacking prestige. Of the characteristic traits of Galician examined here, the gheada does not feature in the broadcasts, and vowel articulation closely resembles that of Castilian Spanish in all contexts. Indeed, the only characteristic trait that pervades the broadcasters’ pronunciation attempts is the velar nasal. I would contend that this occurs precisely because the use of the velar nasal is widespread throughout all Galician varieties. Furthermore, it is detailed in and sanctioned by the Normas and its use is not associated with negative connotations concerning dialectal variation. Nevertheless, the fact that it is also used in contexts where the alveolar nasal would be predicted by the surrounding phonetic evidence lends a degree of artificiality to such speech forms. The trend of using standard Galician may be changing in certain television contexts outside the remit of factual broadcasting programmes, although this may be perceived as a rather tokenistic effort to improve audience figures. For example, some sitcoms now use characters with local dialects and accents, but importantly, those characters that belong to a higher socio-economic class are still portrayed using the Castilianised pronunciation of Galician (Loureiro-Rodriguez 2007; cf. also Chapter 3 in this book regarding the use of Castilian and Canarian Spanish in a Canarian channel telenovela). Rather than offer a solution to the absence of dialectal variation in the media, this wholly status- and prestige-oriented use of variation in pronunciation may reinforce some of the deeply entrenched ideologies and strong prejudices concerning the value and worth of Galician. It may also exacerbate the diglossic differentiation between rural and urban spoken varieties. This point was wholeheartedly reinforced by many of the comments made by the informants of this research, who are beginning to value dialectal variation as a foil to Castilianised accents. Based largely on the standard, these urban varieties of Galician, with their concomitant Castilianised pronunciation due to many years of dialectal levelling, have become a socially accepted model deemed ‘correct’ usage in some quarters of urban society (Domínguez-Seco 2002, 2003), so the presence of L1 Castilian Spanish speakers broadcasting in Galician with attendant strong Castilian Spanish accents simply serves to reinforce the pervading

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and continual use of Castilian Spanish phonetic traits in these other settings. At the time of writing, Galicia is once again going through a period of uncertainty regarding the future of its language. The official legal standing of Galician appears to be under threat by recent centralist and nationalist discourse not experienced in Galicia since the 1970s. This centres on el manifiesto por la lengua común (the manifesto for the common language) – a vociferous denunciation of multilingualism published by the Madrid press in the spring of 2008. Endorsed by a number of writers, journalists and academics, it claims the legal and political superiority of Castilian Spanish over the other ‘Spanish languages’. Despite the fact that the manifesto advocates a new era of political, social and linguistic centralisation under the banner of Spanish nationalism, and may have huge repercussions for linguistic policy in Galicia, at least one of the coalition parties comprising the new Galician government has already aligned itself with the discourse (Regueira Fernández 2009). Also, in El Correo Gallego (27 July 2009) it was reported that the President of the Xunta, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has reiterated his commitment to abolish the decree on the use of Galician in schools. Given the seemingly inexorable move towards Castilian Spanish and its portrayal as the language of success and advancement, it is to be wondered how Galician oral dialectal varieties can ever hope to establish themselves in any institutional context such as that of broadcasting, particularly given the Castilian Spanish form of the model in place and the linguistic proclivities of the broadcasters themselves.

Notes 1. Artigo 1: O galego é a lingua propia de Galicia. Tódolos galegos teñen o deber de coñecelo e o dereito de usalo. Artigo 2: Os poderes públicos de Galicia garantirán o uso normal do galego e do castelán, linguas oficiais da Comunidade Autónoma (Article 1: Galician is the autochthonous language of Galicia. All Galicians have the duty to know it and the right to use it. Article 2: The public authorities of Galicia will guarantee the normal use of Galician and of Castilian, the official languages of the self-governing region.) Artigo 18: O galego será a lingua usual nas emisoras de radio e televisión e nos demais medios de comunicación social sometidos a xestión ou competencia das institucións da Comunidade Autónoma (Article 18: Galician will be the customary language used on radio and television and in other means of public communication liable to administration by or competition from business concerns of the Self-governing Community) (Lei de Normalización Lingüística de Galicia 1983 – Linguistic Normalisation Law of Galicia 1983): http://galego.org/lexislacion/xbasica/lei3-83.html (last accessed January 2010).

Linguistic Ideology in Galician Factual Radio Broadcasts 49 2. Linguistic normalisation is a feature of language legislation in Spain, linked to political aspirations and ideologies, and implies a concerted attempt to consign or restore a language and its use to a ‘normal’, everyday level of occurrence (Mar-Molinero 1997) through institutional support and promotion, so that it is on an equal footing with other languages. 3. In the 1980s, the Madrid government ruled that the duty (as opposed to the right) to know and use Galician was unconstitutional. Regueira Fernández (2009) contends that this is why the language may be important at a symbolic level, but in political terms, its legal standing is subordinate to Castilian. I will return briefly to this issue in my conclusion. 4. For an interesting account of standardisation issues in Spanish, see Stewart (1999). 5. These debates have increased over the last 20 years. For language independentistas, the only way for the Galician language to recuperate and then survive as a viable form is as an independent language, uninhibited by influence from other languages. In general terms, the reintegración claim is that, diachronically, Galician is a variant of Portuguese, split from its ‘natural’ progression by Castilian Spanish linguistic and political dominance, and that Galician should conform to the Portuguese orthographic standard. See Beswick (2007) for a more comprehensive account. 6. For an excellent synthesis of nineteenth- and twentieth-century written tendencies, see Mariño Paz (1998). 7. The Galician-based newspaper La Voz de Galicia has also produced a style guide outlining recommendations regarding the written language. 8. See, for example, Flege (1996) and Major (1987), particularly regarding markedness theory and phonology. 9. Conversely, both Kabatek (2000) and Porto Dapena (2009) found that instances of the full range of Galician vowel phonemes superimposed onto some speakers’ L2 Castilian, once widespread, are now sporadic in urban areas. 10. See Alvarez-Cáccamo (1990), Kabatek (2000) and Beswick (2007) regarding the recent use of the gheada and Loureiro-Rodriguez (2008) regarding the current use of other dialectal variation in some rural social networks as a covert, local identity reinforcement strategy. 11. Hermida Guliás (2008), however, found that the alveolar tends to be obtained across word boundaries across the spectrum of spoken media she researched.

5 A Gente é Latino: the Making of New Cultural Spaces in Brazilian Diaspora Television Iris Bachmann

Introduction This chapter examines the emergence of new cultural spaces on ethnic television channels that cater for Brazilians living abroad. These relate the Brazilian diaspora to their Spanish-speaking fellow Latin Americans, both in the region and in the United States (US) where ‘Latinos’ form the largest ethnic minority group. Ethnic channels strongly depend on language use to shape a recognisable market niche for a dispersed diaspora (Sinclair and Cunningham 2000) and, hence, Brazilian diaspora television displays an almost exclusive Portuguese monolingualism. Concomitantly, programmes catering exclusively for the diaspora audience negotiate Brazilian diaspora identity in relation to their different host cultures, most prominently that of the US where the majority of the programmes are produced. This explains their frequent juxtaposition of the ‘Anglo’ host culture and the migrants’ home culture (Bachmann 2010). Moreover, as I argue in this chapter, the programmes display new cultural spaces that relate the Brazilian diaspora to a shared Latin American identity. My analysis focuses on the role of language practices between Portuguese, Spanish and English in the shaping of these new cultural spaces and identities on Brazilian television.

Latinos and Latin America on television: the commodification of language and identity Heller (2003) argues that language plays a pivotal role in some sectors of the new economy in francophone Canada, including call centres and heritage tourism. In both sectors, knowledge of French has proved an 50

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asset in markets that capitalise on language-based services or sell culturebased products often tied to language practices. Heller (2003) also argues that, while these products deal in authenticity (linguistic and cultural) based on essentialist concepts of ethnicity, their marketing requires processes of standardisation – or, in Bell’s (1984) term, ‘audience design’ – to create recognisable products that cater to specific market segments. This promotes language as a valuable resource and a commodification of language-based identity processes. Language has always played an important role in shaping markets for media products: books, radio programmes, films, television, websites and so forth. However, information technology has diversified the type of such products and created new possibilities for the transnational distribution of media discourses (Blommaert 2005, Fairclough 2006). Concomitantly, large-scale migration has created dispersed communities who are possible audiences for language-based products and can be catered for globally – as is the case of ethnic channels available on satellite television (Sinclair and Cunningham 2000). When conceiving of Latin America as a transnational media space, interesting questions arise. The media have long been described as a motor for Latin American integration, particularly through the wide circulation of telenovelas and music (García Canclini and Moneta 1999, Martín-Barbero 2002). Yet Brazil’s role in this transnational media space has often been ambiguous. Arguing that the Latin American market is um território pouco explorado (‘a little explored territory’) for Brazil, Rebouças (2005: 157) shows that while Brazilian novelas of the largest media company (Globo) have been exported with enormous success worldwide, they have made only modest inroads into the Latin American market, despite its being so much closer geographically and culturally. Rebouças (2005) attributes this relative failure to the Portuguese language posing a barrier for Brazil with regards to the Spanish-speaking countries in the region. Furthermore, he notes that the modest success in exporting novelas to the region is mirrored by a limited coverage in Brazilian news programmes of Latin American neighbours. We also often find media representations of Latin America that exclusively associate the region with Spanish-speaking countries. Hofmann’s (2008) analysis of CNN en Español’s construction of Latin America illustrates this. This news channel is the Spanish-language branch of the US news channel CNN and caters for a transnational Spanish-speaking audience including migrants in the US. While the channel’s slogan reads por latinoamericanos, para latinoamericanos (‘made by Latin Americans for Latin Americans’), the region constructed in the news comprises

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Spanish-speaking countries only. Combining political and linguistic allegiance, the channel seeks to address Latin Americans in the region as well as the diaspora in the US, and the Spanish language serves as the common denominator of this target audience. Similarly, Dávila (2000, 2001) shows that Spanish-language television has been the single most important tool in shaping the emergence of Latinos as a market segment in the US. This strategy relies on the homogenising linguistic effects described by Heller (2003) in that it favours a neutral, or generic, Spanish as a unifying expression of linguistic allegiance of a diverse diaspora population (Dávila 2001: 114–15). Against this background, the aim of this chapter is to analyse the construction of cultural spaces relating to Latin America on Brazilian diaspora television in the context of the strong Latino diaspora presence in the media of the US. Questions asked are, thus, how do the programmes refer to Latin America? How do they deal with the linguistic frontier between Portuguese-speaking Brazil and its Spanish-speaking neighbours? And how do the programmes negotiate multilingual practices of migrants in a medium that uses monolingual language practices to create market segments? A few observations about the concepts of Latin America and Latinos are first in order. The term ‘Latin America’ refers to countries in the Americas, where the majority populations speak languages of Latin origin and are of Latin culture, as opposed to the ‘Anglo’ North. However, despite its importance as the largest country within this region, Brazil has often been at the margins of this concept.1 Mignolo (2005) views the genealogy of the idea of Latin America as a continuation of the colonial project of modernity. In this context, L’Amérique Latine emerges as a French concept to justify the country’s interventionist policies in the region and to emphasise the common Latin roots against the growing influence of the US. Two insights from Mignolo’s (2005) study are of particular interest for our analysis. One is that, while Brazil is not excluded from Mignolo’s account, it is not central to his analysis and is often referred to in its difference from the rest of Latin America. The other is increasing migration from Latin America to the US in the second half of the twentieth century which has blurred the previously established line between the ‘Anglo North’ and the ‘Latin South’ (cf. also García Canclini 2002 for a discussion of the importance of migration for the construction of a modern conception of Latin America). This migration has also driven the transformation of the term ‘Latino’, which refers to the characteristic of being of Latin origin in the sense discussed above. In the US context, however, Latino has developed

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into a term of ethnic self-identification, as well as one that enables identification of a market segment (Dávila 2001, Sinclair 2005). As such, it competes – at times with political undertones – with the term ‘Hispanic’, which the US Census Bureau originally popularised before now using both terms interchangeably (cf. Wallerstein 2005 for a detailed discussion including the issue of race). This latter term clearly refers to Spanish-speaking cultures only and has an equally long tradition of marking cultural allegiance, in this case that of Hispanic America, with its former colonial metropolis (cf. del Valle 2006 for a discussion of the underlying language ideologies). It is precisely the cultural and identity-related affiliations and their linguistic underpinnings that lie at the centre of my analysis in this chapter. I will use the term ‘Latino’ in its broadest sense when discussing constructions of Latin America and Latin Americans abroad in order to analyse how far Latino spaces appear on Brazilian diaspora television despite the country’s ambiguous status in relation to these affiliations. The ambiguity with the narrow sense of the word, as discussed above, is inevitable. It is also – as I will argue – productive, for the experience of migration is central to how the programmes under analysis reshape the constructions of Latino that they display.

Brazilian diaspora television: Latino spaces between private and public discourse The language practices displayed on Brazilian diaspora television are embedded in, and help create, a whole set of spatial frames that situate them within value systems that contribute to their interpretation and uptake. Specifically, the representation of multilingualism on Brazilian diaspora television is tied in with negotiating the diaspora identity in relation to the different cultural spaces represented (Bachmann 2010, Blommaert et al. 2005). The restrained display of multilingual language practices helps shape different positions of migrants between a national Brazilian space, the Brazilian community abroad and the Anglo space of the ‘host’ country. In my work on television programmes that are directed at the diaspora, however, there are repeated references to Latin America, which I will refer to as Latino spaces. These generally constitute an intermediate cultural space between the national Brazilian and the Anglo space (Bachmann 2010). The corpus upon which my analysis draws consists of recordings from two television programmes specifically directed at the Brazilian

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diaspora. All recordings where made between May and September 2007 from US satellite television.2 One set of recordings comes from the personal interest programme Planeta Brasil (henceforth, PB), shown on the international satellite channel of Brazil’s largest network Globo (TV Globo Internacional). PB is a 30-minute programme that reports on the experiences of Brazilians living abroad. It addresses, as its title suggests, Brazilian migration to the US and worldwide. Three PB episodes particularly pertinent to the construction of Latino spaces were selected for detailed analysis: two country episodes on Argentina and Mexico and an episode on Latin American migration to the US with a report on the border city Tijuana. This set of recordings is contrasted with programmes dedicated exclusively to the legal aspects of migration: two episodes from a legal advice programme shown on RBTI (Rede Brasileira de Televisão Internacional), which is targeted at the Brazilian diaspora in the US and Canada, and a law firm advertisement shown on different Brazilian diaspora channels. My selection of programmes, therefore, seeks to cover a range of Latino notions. The above corpus is examined using a discourse analytical approach. Specifically, it follows Blommaert’s (2005) reinterpretation of critical discourse analysis, and makes use of his careful distinction between macro-level orders of discourse, which he calls regimes of language (using Kroskrity’s 2007 term), and the notions of indexicality and indexical orders. The latter refer to the embedding of language variation at the micro-level in social norms and values that are invoked by linguistic differences in addition to the denotational level of an utterance. The micro- and macro-analyses allow me to relate individual language use to ideas about language existing on a societal level. Public discourse is thus integrated into this model on two levels. On the micro-level, individual language use is conceptualised as being always embedded into social norms and values that shape our conception of linguistic difference. On the macro-level, the interaction between individual language use and societal norms is shaped by longer-term language regimes that impact on the way we conceive of language norms and linguistic practice as inserted in historical layers of discourse. Blommaert (2005) analyses a variety of media discourses, ranging from printed materials to radio transcripts. Therein, he addresses the question of ‘audience’ broadly, as one of uptake that needs to be addressed for all utterances. This view is advantageous in that it allows a broad basis for comparison with other genres of discourse and will, thus, be adopted in my analysis. I will also consider the specificities of performing private and public discourse on television for the benefit of

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an ‘overhearing audience’. The ‘double articulation’ (Scannell 1991) of broadcast talk is particularly evident in the programmes analysed in this chapter. For example, PB and the advice-giving show América Legal focus on individual interviews with, and questions of, Brazilian migrants. Specific participant contributions are likely chosen in these shows for their representativeness of an overhearing audience that is assumed to share the discursive category of being a Brazilian migrant.

A gente é latino: Brazilians and the Latino culture A gente é latino (‘We are Latinos’) is how a female interviewee in the PB episode on Argentina summarises her position towards Brazil’s Argentine neighbours. Therein, Sylvie Piccolotto, a music journalist from São Paulo, is interviewed together with her husband, a music journalist from Buenos Aires. They are shown working together as disc jockeys in a popular bar in Palermo – a hip and rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood of Buenos Aires. The interview takes place outside the bar, where Sylvie makes her assertion of shared Latino roots, part of which (1) illustrates: (1) [PB, 19 May 2007; Sylvie Piccolotto (SP); tagline: ‘3 years in Argentina’]3 01 SP Meu conselho é para aproveitar que está tão perto. É tão perto e é . é tão 02 parecido. É mais parecido do que a gente pensa, do que a gente imagina e 03 que tem que aproveitar, e misturar, porque . a gente, a gente é latino. A 04 gente vem tudo do mesmo lugar. E o que a barreira principal é a língua. 05 Então, estudar espanhol e . ou estudar português e vamo . é porque é tudo o 06 mesmo grupo. E a cultura, a miscigenação só vai fazer, só vai fazer crescer. 07 É lindo. 01 SP My advice is to take advantage of it, given that it’s so close. It’s so close 02 and it’s . it’s so similar. It’s more similar than we think, than we imagine 03 and we have to take advantage of it, and get together, because . we are. we 04 are all ‘Latino’. We all come from the same place. And the principal barrier 05 is language. So, study Spanish and . or study Portuguese and well. It’s 06 because we are all the same group. And our culture, our mixture only makes 07 us grow. It’s beautiful.

Interestingly, similarly to Rebouças (2005), SP explicitly cites language as the principal barrier between Brazil and Argentina (line 04), while emphasising their cultural and ethnic proximity (lines 01–04). Her husband, however, is presented later in the episode as proof that the language barrier can be overcome. He is shown in the interview speaking fluent Portuguese to the Globo reporter, who observes that the cultural

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exchange is mutual. SP and her husband are also shown telling the reporter that some of their Argentine friends have started businesses in São Paulo and that the cultural proximity between the two countries has surprised them. Their surprise is echoed in Schwartz’s (2000) work, which traces the development of pan-Latin American literary histories from within the region and acknowledges that most efforts have gone hand in hand with those to overcome the mutual lack of acquaintance with the literature on the other side of the linguistic border. Care should be taken when locating the discourse that is displayed in the programmes analysed in this chapter, however. Example (1) is an interesting case in point because, although the Portuguese word latino (line 03) has been translated with the English loan word ‘Latino’, it might be better to use ‘Latin American’ in English to mark the difference from the US-American use of Latino as previously discussed. Significantly, SP is the only person in the episode who uses latino. It is probably no coincidence that it is precisely her, a music journalist, who uses a term that has long since become a marketing label for music from the region (cf. Martín-Barbero 2002). Another interviewee in this PB episode raises the issue of ‘living between two languages’: Jonas. He is the founder of a marketing firm that operates between São Paulo and Buenos Aires and refers to his fluency in both languages, adding that he is sometimes unaware of which language he speaks. Although the audience only hears him speaking Portuguese, he is depicted in the show as floating between Argentina and Brazil, specifically between their respective economic centres (Buenos Aires and São Paulo) through – among other devices – intercalated shots from both cities. The presenter sums up Jonas’ ease of moving in-between places by saying that para ele não tem fronteira (‘for him there are no borders’). Jonas stands for the young and creative who take advantage of opportunities that the common market Mercosul (or Mercosur in Spanish and English) offers. Throughout the episode, Brazil is depicted as a regional player in the Mercosur area and Brazilians are shown exploiting the geographical and cultural proximity to advance their professional and personal lives. While language is mentioned as a potential barrier, linguistic issues that these migrating Brazilians might face are not directly depicted. The programme is rather a display of modern, flexible people who seek the opportunities that globalisation offers. The Latino space represented in the PB episode on Argentina is, then, one that focuses on the region from the internal perspective, depicting geographical and cultural proximity of neighbouring countries. Yet, the

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two PB episodes on Mexico reveal a different notion of belonging and of cultural space, as I next discuss. In the episode on Mexico City, the audience is introduced to Kleber, a gaucho (i.e. someone from the south of Brazil) who unsuccessfully tried to use the Mexican border as an entry point to the US, was detained and subsequently deported to Brazil. The audience then hears how he went back to Mexico and obtained a legal permit to work in a Brazilian restaurant in Mexico City. In (2), he explains why he is happy to live there: (2) [PB, 17 June 2007; Kleber = K] 01 K Se aparecer outra oportunidade . hoje .eu .eu falo que não. Eu fico por aqui 02 que tá mais . eu acho que está mais parecido com Brasil . mais um pouco 03 liberal . as coisas . Estados Unidos a lei tá . é um pouquinho complicado. 01 K 02 03

If I had another chance now I’d. I’d say no. I will stay here . it is more . I think it’s more like Brazil . things are a bit more liberal. [In] the United States the law is . is a little bit difficult.

In (2), Kleber emphasises the similarity between Mexico and Brazil in contrast to the US. He clearly marks the boundary between a space to which Brazil and Mexico belong, and where things are more ‘liberal’ or relaxed, and the US with its strict border controls along the Rio Grande to prevent illegal migration from the South. The Latin American space (marked by a greater permeability and cultural proximity) is thus counterposed to a protected US-American space (marked by distance and impermeability). This can be interpreted as a face-saving strategy on Kleber’s part to present a positive interpretation of his quite dramatic if not uncommon migration trajectory. Viewed from the perspective of the show’s audience, the Brazilian Kleber seems to represent the shared and often failed (Latin) American dream of South–North migration across the Rio Grande. This frontier space marking the boundary between the Anglo North and the Latino South is indeed the topic of the second PB episode on Mexico. This episode includes a report on undocumented migrants in Tijuana following the failure of a new US immigration bill in 2007. The physical border epitomised by the wall and heavily armoured US patrol cars is repeatedly displayed during the episode, marking the separation and impermeability of the Anglo North as opposed to a sense of solidarity and belonging to the south of the border. Again, Brazilians living in Mexico are shown in order to stress a shared regional identity that defines itself in opposition to the impenetrable US. In an interview

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with three young Brazilian women living in Tijuana (partly reproduced in (3)), Josiane Caloca, a Brazilian married to a Mexican, states her preference for the southern side of the border: (3) [PB, 22 September 2007; Josiane Caloca: JC. Angle brackets indicate use of Spanish words here and in later examples in the chapter.] 01 JC 02 03 04

Se fosse a escolher em viver em Tijuana e nos Estados Unidos eu preferia Tijuana . porque . lá . do outro lado acho as pessoas mais frias . e aqui os mexicanos têm mais . aquela coisa brasileira, mais . <> como se diz . e eu me sinto mais confortável vivendo aqui.

01 JC If I had to choose between living in Tijuana or in the United States . I’d 02 prefer Tijuana . because . there . on the other side I believe people to be 03 colder . and here the Mexicans have more . of this Brazilian way. 04 <<warmer>> as they say . and I feel more comfortable living here.

Like Kleber in (2), JC refers to a shared sense of human warmth between Mexicans and Brazilians. Her use of deictic expressions (lá do outro lado versus aqui, line 02) to mark the two sides of the border and the respective cultural spaces underline the stark contrast, as well as her sense of belonging to the Southern space. This is certainly helped by the fact that she is married to a Mexican. JC also underlines this belonging by using the Spanish adjective calientes (line 03) to refer to the warmth of Mexican people, contrasted with the perceived coldness of the Anglo North. In addition to individual examples of code switching by respondents, such as JC’s above, the presenter Tanira Lebedeff twice takes up the point of linguistic coexistence between Spanish and Portuguese in her comments in this PB episode. Let us consider first the example of Josiane’s friend, Regiane Pereira, in (4): (4) [PB, 22 September 2007; Tanira Lebedeff: TL; Regiane Pereira: RP.] 01 TL A Regiane está tão contente com a vida mexicana que mistura português e 02 espanhol em toda frase. 03 RP É uma vibra muito legal. 01 TL Regiane is so happy about Mexican life that she mixes Portuguese and 02 Spanish in every sentence. 03 RP It’s a really good vibe.

In this instance, the presenter’s introductory comment to RP’s exclamation could have been edited in to flag a word that the audience might be unfamiliar with: the term vibra (which was incidentally unknown

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to my informants from São Paulo). Vibra could be a borrowing from the Spanish verb vibrar. However, it seems more likely that the term is a product of language contact with English in this border region, since ‘good vibrations’ or ‘a good vibe’ are set expressions in American English, while in Mexican Spanish the same idea would rather be expressed by muy buena onda. It is evident from the context, furthermore, that RP’s expression seeks to underline the positive energy of Tijuana. This also seems to be the reason why this part of the interview is selected in the episode, for it stresses the linguistic situation of code mixing in the borderland. This view is confirmed by a previous comment by the same presenter (TL) during an interview with restaurant manager Elias Nowvitz, reproduced in part in (5): (5) [PB, 22 September 2007.] 01 TL O Elias veio para cá legal. Veio com convite para trabalhar em uma rede 02 de churrascarias. Hoje ele fala com sotaque espanhol, fala um portunhol. 03 Mas lembra que demorou um pouquinho a se adaptar no começo. como todo imigrante. 01 TL Elias came here legally. He had an invitation to work in a churrascaria 02 restaurant chain. He now speaks with a Spanish accent, he speaks 03 portunhol. But he remembers that it took him a little while to adapt at the 04 beginning. as all immigrants find.

Nowvitz is from the south of Brazil but is now working in a churrascaria – a gaucho-style grill restaurant. He does not display any obvious language contact phenomena during the interview but is nevertheless introduced by the presenter as speaking with a Spanish accent and mixing Spanish and Portuguese (lines 02–03). This repeated reference to language contact in the Tijuana episode is intriguing since diaspora programmes rarely – and, if so, often only indirectly – display migrants’ daily experience of multilingualism (Bachmann 2010). TL’s reference to the contact portunhol in line 02, then, seems to engage debates about the bilingual practices of Spanish speakers in the US, often crystallised around the notion of Spanglish (cf. del Valle 2006, Lipski 2008). While code mixing in these debates is often stigmatised, code mixing in this PB episode seems to be portrayed in a more playful and positive light. One could say that the depiction of Tijuana as an in-between space also lends itself to a portrayal of linguistic contact zones (Pratt 1987). The notion of the border space Tijuana depicted in this episode gains its particular importance through the discussion of the consequences

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of the failed US immigration bill in other instances in the episode, where the North–South divide presented here refers to differences in legal status: for all Brazilians interviewed on the Mexican side of the border, their legal residence in the country is emphasised, while the other reports focus on Brazilians living in the US illegally. That is, the playful linguistic assimilation seems to correspond to Mexico’s openness towards Brazilian migrants as opposed to the protectionist efforts on the other side of the border. The episode’s emphasis on the contrast in migrants’ status seems to be an attempt at addressing the audience’s possible anxieties about their own prospects in the US at a moment of intense debate among the Brazilian diaspora.

Agora com atendimento em portguês: Brazilians and the pan-Latino market It is precisely immigrants’ legal status that marks a third Latino space within Brazilian television abroad in my data. Just as Nowvitz speaks in the interview referred to in (5) of gente da Guatemala, Brasil, México (‘people from Guatemala, Brazil, Mexico’) all wanting to go to the US, migration and the legal issues surrounding it seem to have created a broadened US Latino market that includes Brazil. One clear example is the advertisement for a law practice of a Miami-based lawyer with the Hispanic name of Alfredo Jurado, who has capitalised upon the relative linguistic proximity between Portuguese and Spanish to reach out to Brazilians from a presumably Spanish-speaking client base by offering agora com atendimento em português (‘now Portuguese spoken also’). The advertisement, reproduced in part in (6), adopts a simple design, is made with minimal resources and displays Jurado speaking from a law office (presumably his own) to the audience. AJ’s speech is marked by an elaborate mixed code involving features from Spanish, Portuguese and English, which is difficult to represent without using close phonetic transcription. Instead I will highlight the intricate language contact at play by a close analysis of his opening statement in (6): (6) [Alfredo Jurado: AJ.]4 01 AJ Olá, eu sou o advogado Alfredo Jurado. Se você tiene algum problema e necesita ayuda com la justicia de Florida . eu posso ajudar você em 02 03 vários assuntos

«

01 02 03

AJ

»

«

»

«

»

Hello, I’m lawyer Alfredo Jurado. If you <> any problems and <> with <> in Florida . I can help you with various issues

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AJ’s first utterance is kept in a slightly forced Brazilian Portuguese with an attempt at the typical urban pronunciation of advogado with an epenthetic vowel to break up the consonant cluster /dv/ and, consequently, a palatilised /d/. He even tries to adapt his Hispanic last name to Brazilian pronunciation by modifying its word-initial sound. While the letter j in this context in Latin American Spanish would typically be pronounced as [x], or weakened to aspiration, in Brazilian Portuguese it would be realised as [Z]. However, instead of palatalising the velar Spanish sound, he realises it as [dZ], which seems an adaptation from the English, where the letter j would represent that sound. The same sound appears in the word justicia, which is pronounced as in the English word ‘justice’. On the other hand, ayuda is pronounced with a glide, as in Spanish. He uses Brazilian forms of address adequately. It is particularly interesting in this respect that he does not use the clitic pronouns te or lhe for informal or formal address. Instead, he uses the tonic pronoun você which is gaining ground in some areas in Brazil, particularly in São Paulo (Zilles 2005), thus indicating a grasp of Brazilian pragmatics (or the help of someone with it). AJ’s use of a mixed code in (6), moreover, serves to broaden the Latino market segment by including the considerable Brazilian population of Miami, which is also the target of many other advertisements on Brazilian television abroad. His use of a contact variety based on his knowledge of Spanish allows him to bridge the Portuguese–Spanish linguistic gap, which is treated in his advertisement not as a barrier in absolute terms but as a relatively accessible array of neighbouring languages that allow for an expansion of the traditional Spanish-speaking Latino market segment. AJ’s use of a contact variety cannot be considered, then, as a performance of cultural proximity as observed on PB. Rather, it follows a long-standing pragmatic communication strategy of mutual intelligibility between the two languages. A similar strategy is evident in the case of immigration lawyer Moisés Apsan, who acts as a legal counsellor on the programme América Legal, hosted by Brazilian presenter Cintia Martins. This legal advice programme largely consists of question–answer sessions with Apsan, through which specific audience cases are discussed. While the show is primarily directed at Brazilians, an interview with the lawyer on a website linked to the show indicates that his law practice targets a larger pan-Latino clientele. Example (7) reproduces part of this interview: (7) [América Legal, Moisés Apsan: MA.]5 01 MA Eu gosto muito de trabalhar com a comunidade brasileira, a cultura que 02 eu entendo. Gosto de trabalhar com brasileiros, espanhóis e portuguese

62 03 04 05 06 07

Spanish at Work (sic) de Portugal. Eu não gosto de trabalhar com outros países porque eu penso que advogado da imigração tem que falar a língua do país que conhece. Existem muitos advogados que têm uma secretária que faz tradução, eu acho ruim porque se eu não posso falar diretamente com o cliente eu prefiro não pegar o caso.

01 MA I really like working with the Brazilian community, the culture that I 02 understand. I like to work with Brazilians, Spanish, and Portuguese from 03 Portugal. I don’t like to work with other nationalities because I think that 04 an immigration lawyer should be able to speak the language of the country 05 that he knows about. There are many lawyers who have secretaries who do 06 interpreting; I think that’s wrong because if I cannot talk directly to the 07 client I prefer not to take on the case.

MA’s first allegiance is to the Brazilian community and this is justified on grounds of his own Brazilian origins (lines 01–02). However, his clients reportedly include Spaniards and Portuguese (line 02), on the basis that he has knowledge of their languages. Later in the interview, however, it becomes clear that he was in fact referring to US Latinos, rather than Spanish citizens. Since he mentions his cultural background in the Bronx, where he claims to have learned Spanish. Also, the website of his law office underlines a strong focus on a pan-Latino clientele by offering pages in Spanish and Portuguese besides English.6 Furthermore, he integrates his audience for América Legal into a larger Latino community. Thus, as shown in (8), commenting on a proposal by El Paso county attorney José Rodríguez to exclude children of undocumented migrants born in the US from benefits and other public services, Apsan stresses Rodríguez’s Latino roots to discredit his anti-immigration politics, which he denounces as a political strategy. He implies that by way of his Latino background he/his family is likely to share the illegal entry into the United States with the audience, whose questions mostly concern issues over legal residence: (8) [América Legal. Cincia Martins: CM.]7 01 MA É só uma coisa político. Esse homem quer ganhar pontos políticos por . po 02 seu futuro. Ele vai precisar isso. Ele quer mostrar que ele tá contra as 03 pessoas ilegal, mas se se veja . ele é um latino de família . [latinos 04 CM [latina] 05 MA e probabilidade a família dele também entraram em esse país do mesmo jeito. 01 02 03

MA

It’s just a political thing. This man wants to win political points for. for his future. He’s going to need this. He wants to demonstrate that he’s against illegal immigrants, but if you think about it. He’s from a [Latino] family.

The Making of New Cultural Spaces in Brazilian Diaspora Television 04 05

CM MA

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[Latino] and his family probably entered this country the same way.

In (8) illegal immigration from the larger region of Latin America appears as the binding element of this Latino group, to whom immigration lawyers offer their services. These services are identified in lawyer AJ’s advertisement previously discussed as concerning typical local law business, such as traffic fines, DUI (driving under the influence/ drink driving), suspended driver’s licences and domestic violence. A suspended driver’s licence is particularly important for migrants, since it is often their only document for identification and the one document that even those without legal residence in the US can obtain in some states. However, they include not only navigating a legal system that requires special qualifications, but also mediating a foreign language which appears in the form of legal terms in English (Bachmann 2010). Particularly in the case of the programme América Legal, this specific interest in the target audience as potential clients is underlined by MA, who presents himself as being on the migrants’ side. Such partisanship, however, co-occurs with the América Legal set-up and content, both of which underscore the perils of being an illegal immigrant. Thus, for example, its audience, who provide the questions via telephone contributions or email, remain anonymous (assuming they are not staged by the programme’s producers) due to their (probable) illegal status. At the same time, the programme focuses on the lawyer’s answers, which usually go beyond the confines of the specific questions asked. This serves to highlight MA’s expertise as well as the dependence of advice seekers and, potentially, the audience on his legal intervention.

Conclusions Analysis of television programmes directed at the Brazilian diaspora has revealed three Latino spaces anchored in different, albeit related, institutional discourses. The programmes’ intertwining of the public and private realms, on the one hand, and between the language practices between Spanish, Portuguese and English, on the other, contribute to the construction of these spaces. PB places Brazilian immigrants, interviewed by reporters doubling as presenters, centre stage. Through extensive interviews the seemingly private discourses of individual Brazilians are presented in the public

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realm of television. Thus we get acquainted with the personal migration stories of Sylvie, Jonas, Kleber, Josiane and so forth, insofar as they are prepared to retell them on air. At the same time, these ‘private’ stories are situated in the public discourse of migration that surrounds the teller’s individual lives, and as seen through the lens of the Brazilian programme makers. For instance, the episode on Argentina focuses on the economic opportunities created by Mercosur to construct a Latino space from within Latin America that claims regional and cultural proximity based on the economic potential of the large urban areas of Buenos Aires and São Paulo (Martín-Barbero 2002). This notion is not derived from the geographic proximity that exists in the borderland of the Mercosur countries, where intense linguistic contact exists (Carvalho 2004), but rather from the lifestyles of the young, urban educated seeking advancement in a globalised world structured by regional hegemonies. A second Latino space relates to the US-American concept of Latinos as immigrants of Hispanic American origin, as analysed through the PB interviews featuring Brazilians living in the borderland of Tijuana. Images of a wall in this episode epitomise the difference between a space to the north and to the south of the US border. Most interviewees comment on the cultural proximity they feel to the Southern space in terms of human warmth and a lighter touch regarding immigration policies. In that same episode the presenter, who usually reports from Los Angeles, comments repeatedly on language contact between Spanish and Portuguese in the borderland of Tijuana. She uses the term portunhol, thus alluding to the heated language debates surrounding the use of Spanglish in the US (del Valle 2006). Interestingly, she refers to language contact in a rather endearing way, thus signalling the more accommodating approach of the Southern Latino space. Her remarks about a playful linguistic fluidity between Spanish and Portuguese seem to indicate a greater permeability of the South for migrants, while simultaneously underlining the cultural proximity of those in the ‘South’ as opposed to those in the ‘North’. This Latino space relates to the US construction of the Latino identity, specifically to its emphasis on migration. Yet it does so from ‘the other side’, thus the desire to live in the US is viewed through the lens of Brazilians who have stayed in the borderland of Tijuana and are apparently better off for it than those Brazilians living in the US illegally, who are shown as considering their options after the failed immigration bill curbed their hopes of obtaining legal status. What is conspicuously missing from this depiction, and hence the Latino identity being constructed, is an exploration of

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the reasons why Brazilians left their country, despite adverse migration conditions. The third Latino space is linked to the notion of a Latino identity but emerges from within the US. This space, identified in my corpus in legal advertising and the legal advice programme América Legal, targets undocumented migrants as potential clients for lawyers who seek to expand their traditional Latino client base by including the Brazilian diaspora. While language is displayed as an important key to gain access to this business, the linguistic border between Spanish and Portuguese is seen here as one that can be surmounted with some goodwill. Importantly, the main point in these transactions is to sell legal mediation for Latinos in the US-American system based on the use of legal English (cf. Bachmann 2010). Similarly to Dávila’s (2001) analysis of a homogeneous construct of Latinos based on their use of Spanish language and conservative family values, this Latino space underscores the precarious status of first-generation Latinos who are presented in these shows as requiring expert linguistic and legal mediation. The institutional discourse of migration and the legal system related to it are thus placed at the forefront, while the individuals who seek legal advice are not shown on screen and are only identified by their first names and location as a consequence of their legal status.

Notes 1. The question of the Caribbean and francophone Canada and their relationship to Latin America is outside the scope of this chapter, and the English-speaking parts of the Caribbean were not initially included in the French conception of L’Amérique Latine (cf. Mignolo (2005: 58–67). For a critical discussion of this issue in relation to the Caribbean including the underlying appropriations of the notion of ‘America’, see Dash (1998). The issue of Amerindian languages and their marginalisation in the conception of Latin America cannot be discussed here either, but see Mar-Molinero (2000) for an overview of language policies in the region. 2. For a full description of Portuguese language television available in the US, see Bachmann (2010), which also gives a closer description of the different networks and their programmes. 3. The transcriptions indicate standard micro-pause (less than two seconds) with a full stop and overlapping conversation with square brackets. All translations are my own. 4. The advertisement was repeatedly broadcast on TV Globo Internacional and RBTI during the time of recording (May to October 2007). 5. http://www.guiadoimigrante.com/artigo.php?idPublicacao=1821 (last accessed October 2008). 6. http://www.advogados.us (last accessed October 2008).

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7. Lawyer Apsan’s Portuguese is fluent but contains some grammatical features, such as the frequent lack of pronoun/article contraction and of agreement, that suggest that his native Brazilian Portuguese has begun to be superseded by English as the main language of communication. See Bachmann (2010) for further analysis.

6 Tu voz es tu voto: the Role of Spanish in the 2008 United States Presidential Elections Clare Mar-Molinero

Introduction During the 2008 United States (US) presidential elections the importance and significance of the Latino vote were more widely acknowledged than hitherto. Candidates from both main parties, during the nomination race, and subsequently the presidential race itself, recognised the need to reach out to this constituency through, among other means, the use (or partial use) of Spanish. This was particularly the case during the Barack Obama–Hillary Clinton battle for the Democratic nomination, with websites, podcasts, television and radio broadcasts, billboards, and particularly musical jingles and videos (commonly available on YouTube) translating key campaign messages into Spanish. A cameo moment encapsulating this desire to climb onto the Latino bandwagon was the late Senator Ted Kennedy attempting to sing in Spanish during the Democratic nomination campaign. The impetus carried over into the presidential race between Obama and McCain. In this chapter I will examine this use of Spanish, exploring its ownership, origins and purpose. I will highlight how the nature of twenty-first-century election campaigning reaches beyond its national confines through the use of the Internet, including websites, blogs and YouTube. I will also look at how this use of Spanish is both imposed from outside the Latino communities and created from grass-roots initiatives, and see how far this two-way process affects the kind of Spanish language used and the representations of Spanish speakers therein created. As is so often the case in current discussions of the popularity of global Spanish, the role of popular music and its lyrics will be significant in this analysis. 67

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The knowledge that President George W. Bush would leave office at the end of his two permitted terms meant that campaigning for the US 2008 elections started early, both in terms of seeking Party nominations and defining territory for the final presidential race. This presidential election was the most expensive to date. It was also marked by two other characteristics, the interaction of which will form the focus of this chapter: the coming of age of Internet era electioneering and the increased political sensitivity to the Latino vote.

The Latino vote The Latino vote increased more than that of any other ethnic group in the 2008 elections, underpinning their potential power as a voting constituency. A Pew Research Centre study (López and Taylor 2009) identified this increase by three factors. First, Latinos increased their share of eligible votes from 8.2 per cent in 2004 to 9.5 per cent in 2008, an increase of 1.3 percentage points. In 2008 19.5 million Hispanics were eligible to vote, up from 16.1 million in 2004. Second, the number of Latino eligible voters increased 21.4 per cent between 2004 and 2008, the largest percentage increase of any group. Third, the number of Latino eligible voters grew faster between 2004 and 2008 than the growth in the adult Latino population overall – 21.4 versus 13.7 per cent. As far as the actual share of the electorate is concerned, Latinos also increased their presence from 6.0 per cent in 2004 to 7.4 per cent in 2008, this despite reports of Latino voters either not having their names on the voting register or being unable to receive assistance in Spanish. These figures represent 49.9 per cent of eligible Latinos voting as opposed to 47.2 per cent in 2004 (López and Taylor 2009). Notably more Latino women than men voted, and the participation by younger Latino voters rose significantly as well. In some states, such as New Mexico, Colorado, Florida, Virginia, Indiana and Nevada, strong concentrations of Latino voters were particularly influential. Another post-election analysis of Latino participation, commissioned by ImpreMedia, in conjunction with NALEO Education Fund and Latino Decision, reported that 92 per cent of registered Latino voters that they surveyed said that they had voted (an increase from 81.5 per cent in 2004).1 A further significant feature of the Latino vote is that this group had a high quantity of first-time or relatively new voters, who the parties wanted to capture for future as well as current support. One in every six Latino voters (15 per cent) was voting in a presidential election for

The Role of Spanish in the 2008 US Presidential Elections 69

the first time (NALEO/ImpreMedia 2008: 3). The ImpreMedia surveys also reported that immigrant voters comprised a sizeable share of the Latino vote in November 2008. Nearly half (46 per cent) of Latino voters were born outside of the US (39 per cent) or in Puerto Rico (7 per cent). The report furthermore noted that new voters were a significant force in shaping the Latino vote in this election. The surge in activism of the Latino vote was due in part to various organisations that support US Latinos making significant efforts to encourage Latinos to exercise their constitutional rights to register and vote. For example, AOL(R) Latino, described as ‘the leading Spanish language Internet provider for US Hispanics’, offered a special election coverage website in Spanish called Tu voto es tu voz.2 This sought to give its Latino users up-to-date information and news, a voting guide comparing candidates’ views on major issues, and to offer opportunities for interactive comments on the issues discussed. An even more significant initiative was the creation of a special coalition’s Spanish language campaign to increase Latino awareness and participation in the 2008 elections, entitled Ya es Hora ¡Ve y Vota! (‘About Time, Go and Vote!’) The coalition comprised major Latino organisations and associations and the US’s main Spanish language media companies.3 Building on the first phase of the coalition’s campaign to help Latinos obtain US citizenship (Ya es Hora ¡Ciudadania! – ‘About Time, Citizenship!’), the ¡Ve y Vota! phase sought to mobilise eligible Latinos to register and vote. The campaign included voter information and education tools, a bilingual phone hotline and a website (www.veyvota.org). In 2007 the National Council of La Raza (National Council of Race), announcing the launch of this campaign, stated: In collaboration, the largest Spanish-language media companies in the United States will dramatically expand the reach and impact of the campaign. Combined, Extravision, ImpreMedia and Univision are in 99% of US Latino homes. Additionally, according to a 2006 survey conducted by NCLR, 52% of Hispanics say ads and programs on Spanish-language media encourage them to get involved, register and go out to vote.4 In the event, campaign materials, targeting strategies and resources all demonstrate that Republicans and Democrats alike were sensitive to, and sought to capture, the increasingly significant Latino vote. Of the two parties, post-election analyses suggest that the Democrats were the more effective Party in appealing to the Latino vote.5 Their use of

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Spanish was an (unquantifiable) factor in their success, but how real this commitment to Spanish language will prove to be is something that I will return to later.

Elections in the age of the Internet Getting messages across to the electorate lies at the heart of election campaigns and campaigning teams seek more and more sophisticated ways of achieving this. Contemporary mass media have been exploited to the full by political parties to attract voters, beginning with the explosion of broadcast – radio and, of course, television – opportunities. The presence and potential of the Internet had started to attract campaigners as far back as the 2000 US presidential election and developed further in the 2004 race. But it was in the 2008 campaign that the so-called ‘new media’ (e.g. Lievrouw and Livingstone 2009, Rice et al. 1984, Silverstone 1999), characterised by digitisation, interactivity and networking, really came of age and completely dominated electioneering. Besides each candidate’s websites and emailing campaigns (cf. Garcés-Conejos Blitvitch and Lorenzo-Dus 2010), other technological tools included online video (played on the official websites or on YouTube in particular), blogs, social networking (MySpace and Facebook primarily), online news services (e.g. MSNBC and CNN) and mobile phones, which enable messaging, Twitter and increasingly the opportunity to download videos. Such media, mostly based around the Internet, allow far greater interactivity between candidates and their potential voters than hitherto, giving the impression of listening to and dialoguing with the electorate, rather than simply talking at them. The need, therefore, to choose accessible language(s) for this interaction becomes particularly important. US political candidates now face significant electoral groups that are not native speakers of English; some groups may not speak English at all. Moreover, these ‘new’ media are more accessible in the sense that their tools are widely owned and shared by the public generally and their use is relatively cheap. They, then, also potentially or actually open up new opportunities for popular participation in electioneering and for initiatives arising from the public at large and individual voters to shape the agenda and the debates aired, as opposed to their only being led by political parties and their candidates or mass media organisations. As YouTube’s news and political director Steve Grove put it, ‘YouTube is now the world’s largest town hall for political discussion, where voters connect with candidates – and the news media – in ways that were never before possible.’6 Latinos, therefore, could in principle directly

The Role of Spanish in the 2008 US Presidential Elections 71

affect and influence the tone and message of the election campaigns through these new media. How far this appears to have happened in practice will be discussed below. In late 2007, in the run-up to the race for the party nominations, the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) conducted a study of the official websites of 19 presidential hopefuls.7 Among its key findings it highlighted that candidate websites had fully embraced politics as a two-way conversation with voters. Twelve sites were also said to offer the opportunity for visitors to turn that dialogue into grass-roots action (organising their own events, fundraisers, etc.). Based on a combination of dialogue and action the Democrats were seen to have the most interactive sites, the lead here being taken by Barack Obama and followed by those of Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Bill Richardson. The PEJ noted, too, that perhaps the most fundamental grass-roots activity of all, registering people to vote, featured on only four candidates’ sites, with those of Hillary Clinton, John Cox, John McCain and Barack Obama offering tools or information about how to register. Not surprisingly, the top candidates – those with the most money and poll popularity – had the most technically sophisticated sites, updated them more often, used more video and included more news articles. The PEJ also reported how these websites were used as top-down feeding of information and propaganda and how much they offered possibilities for apparently genuine citizen participation and initiative. Blogs, a novelty in 2004, were identified as mainstream by 2007. Fifteen of the 19 sites featured their own official weblogs, and 7 offered users the chance to start their own. For instance, Mitt Romney had his five sons author his campaign blog, Sam Brownback let users contribute to his and John Edwards let users write diaries. Similarly, social networking opportunities on, for example, MySpace, Facebook, Meetup and Flickr bring registered voters on a site in touch with others with an interest in the same candidate. They are therefore a further way in which the public can influence the agenda and discussions, moving away from merely what the candidate necessarily wants to highlight. The PEJ report noted that only three candidates’ websites did not offer access to at least one social network site and that although its actual impact on voting was unknown, ‘social networking creates enthusiasm, drives traffic and might translate into both fundraising and votes’ (PEJ 2007: 6). The Obama campaign certainly recognised the importance of social networking opportunities and its value for attracting young, first-time voters, by targeting the Spanish-language site MiGente (MyPeople).

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However, one particularly relevant finding from the PEJ study for this chapter concerned the use of Spanish. They wrote: In a year in which immigration reform and English as an official language are issues, and the immigration population continues to climb, some candidates are working to involve non-English speakers in the campaigns. Four of the 19 candidates offer visitors the opportunity to translate some parts or the entire site into Spanish. This tool seems to be a Democratic strong point. Bill Richardson, Democratic Governor for New Mexico and the only Hispanic candidate in the running offers this Spanish version, and so do two of his Democratic rivals, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Mitt Romney is the sole Republican to have a Spanish language option on his website. (PEJ 2007: 15) It is notable that this study was carried out in the middle of 2007. As the race for first the nominations and then the presidency intensified, the candidates became increasingly aware of the importance of Spanish, not least in the context of the greater interactivity and personalised communications these new media offered them. By December 2007 six candidates were offering Spanish on their websites. It has also been argued that Latinos made more use of texting to send and receive electoral propaganda.8 The potential for greater citizen participation in the 2008 elections became crucial in the campaigns, both challenging candidates to respond to this new situation and giving voters an opportunity from the grass roots to take an initiative.

Targeting the Latino vote Clearly, wooing the Latino vote was as much, if not more, about the salient issues as it was about speaking to Latinos in accessible ways, such as employing media that they would use and, above all, communicating through Spanish. Many Latinos, after all, do not speak or use Spanish in their daily lives, albeit as aforementioned the role of newly arrived, Spanish-speaking Latino voters was important in these elections. However, it is the focus of this chapter to examine the use in the elections of the Spanish language above all and to a lesser extent the images of Spanish speakers, and Latinos in general, associated with this use. I will, therefore, in this section concentrate on how Spanish was used during the long election campaign by the major parties, the main candidates, the established mass media and the more participatory new media.

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As mentioned above, it was not only the political parties and the candidates themselves who focused on the Latino voters as an important target group of the electorate. As ever, the usual established outlets of the major mass media were also involved in transmitting news and messages during the campaigns. In particular television and, to a lesser extent, radio and the press continued to play their role. An early sign of the importance being given to the Spanish-speaking voter came at the start of the race for the party nominations in September 2007, when seven contenders for the Democratic nomination participated in a live debate on the most watched Spanish-language television channel Univisión. This debate operated a bilingual format where questions were asked in Spanish and translated for the candidates into English. Replies were given in English and translated for the Spanish-speaking audience. The format did not allow those candidates who do speak Spanish, such as Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd, to reply in Spanish. A similar debate for the Republican contenders was offered, but did not take place as only John McCain responded positively. It is important throughout this discussion of the use of the Spanish language in the election campaigns to differentiate between material which was only translated from its English original (as with the debate) and that which originated from Spanish speakers and outlets. As I will discuss later, this affects the quality of the Spanish and the nature of the content. It has in fact been argued that there was a significant lack of Spanish-originated information in the mainstream, more traditional media. In particular, Spanish language newspapers and radio tend to be concentrated in certain geographical locations, such as Miami, New York, Los Angeles or Chicago and their surrounding areas. Moreover, whilst the number of Spanish-language radio stations has risen from 587 in 2000 to 872 today, and they are a very popular media for Spanish speakers, there is minimal political content in their programmes. Spanish-language television, though, is available nationally – through Telemundo and Univisión – and became a powerful focal point for the various campaigns to target, for election advertising and appearances on talk shows, and so forth. The latter became the source of some questionable attempts by major candidates to be seen to talk in (some) Spanish, attempts which were used negatively or positively in online videos by the candidates and their opponents to underpin their commitment to Spanish in a positive light, or to mock their opponents’ incompetence in using it. The presidential candidates made increasing use of Spanish-language television to advertise their candidatures, to display their image and

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to persuade voters of their stance on key issues. One challenge that faced the candidates, which Obama and McCain at least seemed to recognise, was that it is a serious mistake to assume that ‘Latinos’ constitute a monolithic market. The wide diversity of people who can loosely be called ‘Latino’ includes, for example, different racial and ethnic origins, different social classes, and different values and beliefs (cf. Chapter 5 for a discussion of the term ‘Latino’). For this reason many of the Spanish-language television advertisements avoided too much detail and emphasis on actual political issues. Instead, they attempted to appeal to Latinos in terms of the candidate’s appreciation and awareness of their existence and likely priorities. For example, McCain addressed Latino pride and patriotism by referring to the high proportion of participation by Latinos (or those with Spanish surnames) in recent US military engagements.9 Obama chose in a widely circulated television advertisement, initially on Puerto Rican TV, to accentuate his empathy and understanding of Puerto Rican Latinos, stating in carefully tutored Spanish (which he does not actually speak): ‘I was born on an island, and I understand that food, gas and everything costs more’ (my translation).10 An explicit example of Obama’s awareness of the importance of Spanish in this campaign is a video clip which was widely circulated through YouTube and on his website where he stated his support for learning Spanish, saying, I don’t understand when people are going around saying, ‘We need to have English only.’ They want to pass a law ‘We want English only.’ Now I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English. They’ll learn English. You need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about how can your child become bilingual. We should have every child speaking more than one language. It’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is merci beaucoup, right.11 Given the high support in the US for the belief that all immigrants should learn English,12 and the considerable success of such campaigns as English-Only (Dicker 1996), this was a high-risk strategy on Obama’s part and clearly one that he considered worth taking in the knowledge of the importance of the Latino vote.

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During the race for the Democratic nomination Hillary Clinton clearly led in terms of Latino support. She, like all the leading runners, included significant use of Spanish in her campaign material and tools. Once Obama had defeated Clinton and faced McCain (a native of the Latino-concentrated south-west of the country), he had to gather ground quickly to win over this same Latino support – a task in which he was manifestly successful. Obama was particularly successful in attracting supporters to participate actively in his campaigns, taking advantage of the newly available wide range of grass-roots means to get the message across, and to use these to involve Latino activists too. Below I will comment on how this was particularly true through the use of popular music, but it is also apparent in campaigns such as the Amigos de Obama group (www.amigosdeobama.com), and the launch by the Nueva Vista Media of a Viva Obama ’08 website (www.vivaobama08.com). While both these groups endorsed Obama and worked energetically to get out the Latino vote for him, making the use of Spanish an important part of this, neither received any funding from the Obama campaign. This was indeed an example of grass-roots participation in the election campaign.

YouTube and campaign songs The medium which had the greatest impact as means of communication in the 2008 elections is undoubtedly the Internet and its many possibilities, of which YouTube in particular played a highly prominent role. Not only has social networking operated across YouTube in support or attack of certain candidates, but also numerous video clips, many of which were originally broadcast on live television, have been posted on YouTube. Often this has been done by supporters of the candidates rather than by the political parties or their nominees. Arguably also because of YouTube the role of campaign songs has been especially high-profile in the 2008 elections. In October 2008 songs about Obama uploaded to YouTube reportedly exceeded 900 (www.youtube.com/obamasongs). These included songs commissioned and endorsed by the Obama campaign – often by very well-known artists – as well as those simply placed there by other budding songwriters and artists (mostly) supporting Obama. John McCain also had songs written for him, and eagerly exploited the support given him by the leading reggaeton artist Daddy Yankee. I have argued elsewhere that popular music is a medium that has played a central role in projecting Spanish around the nation and

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around the world, and that it is a medium particularly used by Latinos (Mar-Molinero 2008). In this sense, the abundance of campaign songs fitted well with the desire to attract Latino voters. During the race for the Democrats’ nomination Clinton and Obama vied with each other for superiority in Spanish-language songs. The official Clinton campaign theme song, ‘Hillary, Hillary Clinton’ was sung and written by Walter Suhr and the Mango Punch and introduced by the well-known Latino/Tejano musician Johnny Canales. The song is based on Mexican cumbia and immediately recognisable as ‘Latin’. The lyrics start with a dedication from Canales, mixing English with Spanish in the very familiar US Spanish style: Mis amigos les hablo Johnny Canales le quiero dedicar esta canción a nuestra amiga Hillary Clinton . . . You got it! Take it away! Eso. The inclusive nuestra (‘our’) here is embracing the Latino voters. The actual lyrics highlight various prompts considered attractive to the Latino voter (referred to in the song as nuestra gente/‘our people’), such as the connection to her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and her emphasis on improved health care, ‘fair’ immigration laws and a ‘better economy’. It is, however, with the Obama campaign where Spanish-language popular songs were particularly prominent, catchy and also significant – both for whoever sang or wrote them, for the image of Latinos they represented and for the voter this representation seemingly courted. During the primaries and the nomination race Obama’s campaign launched the Viva Obama video, which nonetheless was not funded or commissioned by his campaign but written and produced independently by Miguel Orozco for him. This is a mariachi-style corrido whose musicians are all dressed in traditional (and stereotypical) Mexican mariachi dress. The music is also traditional and the images are arguably clichéd. The message is inclusive and upbeat.13 Interestingly, when Obama moved into the actual presidential race against McCain this song was rerecorded and relaunched as a norteño version sung by the Dorados del Norte. Both versions have been accused of being Mexican rather than Latino, which probably points to the huge dominance of Mexican Americans among the Latino-voting population, or the inability to discriminate between the diversity of Latinos by the Obama campaign organisers – or both. However, in terms of pleasing the large (majority) Mexican American audience, the choice of musical

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genre and image is likely to have proven very popular. In California, one of the heartlands of contemporary popular music, (narco)corridos are all the rage (The New York Times, 16 August 2009),14 with even non-Latino punk bands adopting mariachi costumes and musical influences (The Guardian, 21 August 2009). Appealing more to the younger voter, and to prove immensely popular as such, was a reggaeton-style song in support of Obama which was also written by Miguel Orozco and originally posted on the Amigos de Obama site. This became one of the best known songs of the campaign and was posted on YouTube with various different video accompaniments. The lyrics are simple – even simplistic – but fit with the hip-hop genre and are memorable. The title riff plays on the rhyme ¿cómo se llama? (‘what is he called?’) with Obama, and the lyrics again show the code switching between Spanish and English so normal among Latino youth. Once more there is the inclusive call to mi gente, i.e. Latinos/Spanish speakers. Cómo se dice . . . Cómo se llama? (OBAMA, OBAMA) Oye mi gente este es un hombre preparado . . . La esperanza ha llegado. Cómo se dice . . . Cómo se llama? OBAMA! OBAMA! (Repeat four times) Dicen que no contamos . . . Invisibles porque no votamos . . . Pero aquí estamos y todo esto va cambiar . . . We did the marchas y ahora vamos a votar. Listen to me gente, es tiempo para algo diferente. What we need is un nuevo presidente . . . Como se dice . . . Como se llama?15 Among the many other Obama campaign songs in Spanish, there were more reflecting different Latino groups and backgrounds, such as ‘Cumbia Obama’16 and a salsa-inspired ‘Respóndele’,17 sung by Cuban American José Conde. A further widely seen video promoting Obama Podemos con Obama (‘We Can with Obama’) – playing on the Obama slogan of Sí se puede (‘Yes, one can’) – was made up of many well-known and instantly recognisable Latino artists, speaking and singing in support of Obama. These included the reggaeton stars Julio Voltio and Don Omar – thereby competing with the support of Daddy Yankee for McCain (Lebrón 2008).

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The quality and impact of Spanish in the election campaigns In this section I will seek to evaluate the extent to which increased awareness of the Latino vote and consequent attempts to reach out to Latinos in Spanish can be considered fully successful, authentic and committed. To what extent was this opportunistic electioneering using Spanish in a mostly tokenistic way? Did it indicate a real awakening of an awareness of US Latino communities? Who ultimately controlled this burst of Spanish use? And will its use continue? While it is difficult to assess whether the use of Spanish by the presidential candidates had any quantifiable impact on attracting Latino voters, there does seem to be evidence that Spanish-language news on the elections on local television broadcasts helped persuade more Latinos to vote. As far back as 2006, a study by Oberholzer-Gee and Waldfogel of the mid-term congressional elections argued that there was an appreciable increase in Latino voter participation in areas where there were concentrated Spanish-language communities and therefore the provision of local news in Spanish from the main Spanish-language channels, Univisión and Telemundo. Spanish-language television remained influential in political broadcasting during the presidential elections, and continues to be so today according to Univisión ratings report. Obama in particular sought to broadcast messages on the channel and to be interviewed by its reporters. A 2008 study by the Latino Policy Coalition (LPC), a non-partisan association which conducts regular polls among registered Latino voters, also reports that as a result of Obama’s campaign his ratings with Latinos rose. Again, it is impossible to know how far this can be attributed specifically to greater use of Spanish. During the campaign various commentators referred to the very different nature of campaign coverage in the two different languages. For example, Shore (2008) writes: As an editor and Latino media monitor, I’ve tracked stark differences in the ways the Latino press cover political issues compared with the English-language press. These differences become clearer when we compare the coverage of and commentary about the presidential campaign. And these differences get magnified when one analyzes coverage about the ‘Latino voter’ in the context of racial voting patterns. She draws attention to the different interests and priorities found among Latino voters compared to the mainstream electorate, and, in particular,

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the different attitudes to race, which were often misunderstood by the candidates and propagandists during the elections. The simplistic equation of Obama as an African American antagonising Latinos, who were generally considered to have anti-black tendencies, was not shared by the Spanish-speaking press, which were more likely to nuance the racial mix of the Latino population and challenge this crude perception of Latinos’ preferences. How far the campaigns genuinely understood and listened to the Latino electorate is an important part of assessing how far their engagement with them was successful. Even as they used Spanish to communicate, how far was this just translating the issues, priorities and images of English-speaking America? Race, for example, was indeed a central issue for the latter, but the Latino voter identified different key issues. Shore (2008) writes: [T]he Spanish-language press focussed on the issues deemed important by members of the Latino communities – the economy, the war in Iraq, immigration reform, health care and education. While the English-language news media tended to focus on horserace aspects of the race, the Latino news media devoted much more of its coverage to what the candidates were saying about these key issues. However, an article in The Washington Post claimed that the candidates’ use of the Spanish-language media to promote themselves had taken an exceptionally (and unusually for Spanish-language outputs) negative tone: For the exploding Hispanic population, graduating to negative advertising is another political coming of age. But it also serves as a reminder that there are two different campaigns going on – one for the English-language audience and another, with a different emphasis, for voters speaking predominantly Spanish, and playing out in both Spanish-language news coverage and ads.18 Although it is indeed true, as I have outlined above, that in this campaign there was an explosion of Spanish, particularly on the Internet and through music videos, this still clearly lagged far behind the use of English, including in areas where the Latino electorate was highly significant, and even in outlets aimed to engage with Latinos. The main candidates set up Spanish versions of their websites, for example. Yet most of the Spanish versions suffered either from badly or over-literally

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translated material, and from a substantial part of the metalanguage of the site remaining in English. For example, navigation buttons, links to information beyond the front page remained in English. In the earlier months of the campaigns – at least – the quality of the Spanish language used was often inaccurate or inappropriate, showing that it was not, apparently, written by native Spanish speakers, but badly translated from English. There were such unforgivable mistakes as using corriendo to translate ‘running’ in the sense of being a candidate in an election (a blog on Bill Richardson’s website); introducir to translate literally the English ‘introduce’ (Hillary Clinton’s Spanish-language website); or omitted accents, such as an n for ñ (Obama’s Spanish website), to name a few. Likewise, Hillary Clinton was berated for trying to say a few words in very anglicised Spanish on live television by her opponents, although the late Ted Kennedy’s rendering of the Mexican song ‘Jalisco, Jalisco’ with a virtually incomprehensible accent did not seem to do Obama’s cause any particular harm. Yet it is hard to consider such gestures towards Spanish as anything other than superficial and patronising.

Conclusion Overall, the jury is still out in deciding how far the use of Spanish in the 2008 elections influenced the Latino vote. However, what is certain is that it had an enormous impact on the presence of Spanish on the national stage and, even, in global communications. The explosion of video clips and popular songs on YouTube and the burst of social networking connections were not confined to Americans wanting to learn about the presidential elections. The ‘YouTubification of politics’ (Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2010, May 2008) has meant many unexpected audiences receiving some of these Spanish-language videos and songs. A form of glocalisation (Wellman and Hampton 1999) is taking place with very local and particular political needs, interests and priorities being acted out on a global stage. This has implications for the kind of Spanish being heard. A significant proportion of the Spanish found on the Internet during the campaign originates with grass-roots activists, or simply those accustomed to communicating on the Internet. But even when it emanated from the political campaigns themselves, they often attempted to imitate this language to attract voters. This is the language of US Spanish varieties, marked by code switching and particular local idioms, as well as reflecting the predominance of younger Spanish speakers – the generation that uses new media and is most comfortable with

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modern technological networking. Modelling itself more closely to spoken than written forms of Spanish, it reflects the new Spanish of texting, the Spanish of Twitter and the Spanish of Facebook. This is a Spanish very alien to the varieties promoted by the Real Academia de la Lengua Española in Madrid, or taught by the many Institutos Cervantes across the world, and in this sense is playing a role in spreading a very different form of popular global Spanish.

Notes 1. ImpreMedia is the leading Hispanic news and information company in the US. NALEO is the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. 2. AOL(R) Latino is described as offering ‘comprehensive Spanish product features such as toolbar, menus, Parental Controls, and Homework Help’. AOL Latino also provides Spanish-language content including US and Latin American news, the latest in music, entertainment and sports. In addition, ‘AOL Latino delivers comprehensive Spanish language election coverage through its “Tu voz es tu voto” area’, http://www.hispanicprwire.com (last accessed January 2010). 3. These included Entravision Communications, ImpreMedia, Mi Familia Vota Educational Fund, NALEO Educational Fund, the National Council of La Raza and Univision Communications Inc. http://www.nclr.org/content/news/detail (last accessed January 2010). 4. According to Michael Falcone (New York Times, 29 July 2008), ‘The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee plan to spend $20 million on a grassroots organising and advertising effort aimed at shoring up the support of Hispanics’, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/ democrats-to-spend (last accessed January 2010). 5. The Pew Hispanic Centre report (López 2008: 1) shows that: ‘Nationally, all Latino demographic sub-groups voted for Obama by heavy margins. According to the national exit poll, 64% of Hispanic males and 68% of Hispanic females supported Obama. Latino youth, just as all youth nationwide, supported Obama over McCain by a lopsided margin – 76% versus 19%. [. . .] Obama carried the Latino vote by sizeable margins in all states with large Latino populations. His biggest breakthrough came in Florida, where he won 57% of the Latino vote in a state where Latinos have historically supported Republican presidential candidates (President Bush carried 56% of the Latino vote in Florida in 2004). Obama’s margins were much larger in other states with big Latino populations. He carried 78% of the Latino vote in New Jersey, 76% in Nevada, and 74% in California.’ 6. Steve Grove, ‘YouTube: the flattening of politics’, Politics and the New Media (Nieman Reports), Summer 2008. http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/ reportsitem.aspx?id=100019. 7. http://www.journalism.org/node/14038 (last accessed January 2010). 8. According to Jed Alpert, chief executive officer of a company that sets up text messaging for political campaigns, Mobile Commons (Kaste 2009).

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9. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0cNqtUtufo (last accessed January 2010). 10. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK-l_0jVtEU&feature=related (last accessed January 2010). 11. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZprtPat1Vk (last accessed January 2010). 12. ‘Seventy-nine percent (79%) say immigrants should be required to learn English before they are allowed to become citizens. Fourteen percent (14%) disagree. Sixty-four percent (64%) believe U.S. schools should teach all students in English. Twenty-nine percent (29%) believe some schools should offer courses in different languages’ (Rasmussen Report 2005). 13. (English translation): To the candidate who is Barack Obama/I sing this corrido with all my soul/He was born humble without pretension/He began in the streets of Chicago/Working to achieve a vision/To protect the working people/And bring US all together in this great nation/Viva Obama! Viva Obama!/Families united and safe and even with a health care plan/Viva Obama! Viva Obama!/A candidate fighting for our nation/It doesn’t matter if you’re from San Antonio/It doesn’t matter if you’re from Corpus Christi/From Dallas, from the Valley, from Houston or from El Paso/What matters is that we vote for Obama/Because his struggle is also our struggle, and today we urgently need a change/Let’s unite with our great friend/Viva Obama! Viva Obama!/Families united and safe and even with a health care plan/Viva Obama! Viva Obama!/A candidate fighting for our nation (www.my.barackobama.com). 14. For the full lyrics see http://Amigos de Obama (last accessed January 2010). 15. http://thatveiledgazelle.blogspot.com/2008/03/i-endorse-this-message.html (last accessed January 2010). 16. http://blog.veni.com/?p=655 (last accessed January 2010). 17. The New York Times, ‘In Los Angeles, Songs without Borders’ (16 August 2009). http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/08/15/travel/16corridos.html?8dpc (last accessed January 2010). 18. The Washington Post, 14 October 2008.

Part II Discourse, Persuasion and Performance in Political Institutions

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7 Discourse, Persuasion and Performance in Political Institutions across the Spanish-Speaking World Nuria Lorenzo-Dus

This part of the book progresses logically from the previous one insofar as its four constituent case studies explore discourse in political institutions that have a symbiotic relationship with the media. Political state discourse on housing and poverty in Argentina, the focus of Chapter 8, is disseminated to a considerable extent through local government websites and print media (e.g. promotional leaflets). Similarly, interaction in parliamentary debates, the political institution examined in Chapters 9 and 10, is regularly ‘recontextualised’ (Linell 1998) across a range of media, spanning television and radio news through to newspaper op-ed pieces. And political leaders’ national addresses, the context in which analysis of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s discourse is assessed in Chapter 11, are frequently televised and/or made available either in part or in their entirety on the Internet. Different degrees of mestizaje ideológico (ideological mestisation) (Pujante and Morales López 2003: 108) between political and media institutions – and their discourses – thus provide a natural transition between the chapters in Part I and this part of the book. As well as mediatised, or indeed in part because of it, the discourse of political institutions is quintessentially persuasive. A full discussion of persuasion is neither possible nor critically necessary here. Nevertheless, it is useful to contextualise the four case studies in this part of the book by rehearsing some of persuasion’s key features. Pardo (2001) rightly observes that persuasion is one of the oldest, most difficult to define, concepts, because of its blurred boundaries with 85

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argumentation, rhetoric and even manipulation. Notwithstanding this caveat, she (2001: 99) offers the following definition: Persuasion is in some respects a linguistic phenomenon (persuasion may be achieved in various ways that do not involve language). In relation to argumentation it is characterized by an increase in linguistic resources and strategies in general (hierarchical presentation of information, tonalization, evidentialness markers, etc.). Its communicative function is to try to convince another of something. Like any other language element it is necessarily linked to power and therefore it always entails some degree of it. Persuasive discourse is therefore characterised by intentionality, its difference with argumentation being one of degree, not of nature. Whereas all texts have ‘argumentativeness’ (Lavandera 1992) and hence try to convince their target audiences at some level, the communicative goal of persuasive texts is to convince others of something. Persuasion, furthermore, is not necessarily a ploy to influence someone spuriously to believe or act in the persuader’s interest (Pujante and Morales López 2003), but it is a form of power. In van Dijk’s (1998) theory of cognition, power is connected to people’s minds, specifically to our wanting to control the minds of others so that they may see things as we do and act as we want them to. Giving orders is one way to achieve power. Trying to convince others – persuading them – is a more complex and subtle, yet often more effective, alternative. For persuasion to work, persuader and persuadee must agree that the implications of non-persuasion, as it were, are worse than those of persuasion. This agreement, which is grounded on an ‘implicit threat’ (van Dijk, 1998), therefore lends further support to Pardo’s (2001) view above that persuasion and power are connected. The link between persuasion and power is particularly relevant to the study of the discourse generated by political institutions. In democratic systems, the power of (political) institutions needs to be legitimised and justified if it is to be accepted by people (Weber 1914). Legitimising and justifying are often discourse acts achieved through persuasion. For instance, in the early 1990s the US government and the American military justified the invasion of Iraq during the first Gulf War through a shared discourse or ‘rhetoric of military humanism’ which sought to persuade US citizens that the oppressed people of Iraq needed to be ‘liberated’ from an evil dictator (cf. Chomsky 1999). And in the 2000s, former Spanish Prime Minister Aznar legitimised his commitment to US-led military intervention in Iraq in 2003

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on grounds of Saddam Hussein’s ‘repeated and continuous challenges to the UN [United Nations], already begun with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait’ (van Dijk 2008: 194). Similar practices of legitimisation and justification were, then, enacted diachronically and cross-culturally by Western democratic governments in order to convince their citizens that another government – Iraq’s – was the one ‘causing trouble’. Western governments’ persuasive discourse thereby implied that, faced with repeated Iraqi ‘provocations’, there was ‘no option’ but to help the Iraqi people. These are two clear examples of us versus them discourse polarisation, based on the ideological strategies of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation – a form of political discourse persuasion which is revisited in different settings in two of the chapters of this part of the book. Foucault’s (1977) analysis of a ‘total institution’ (the prison) concludes that the enactment of power through discourse in institutional settings serves to regulate the behaviour of the members of given institutions. In the case of political institutions, strategic political interests drive their ‘professional visions’, that is, the set of ‘socially organized ways of seeing and understanding events that are answerable to the distinctive interests of a particular social group’ (Goodwin and Goodwin 1997: 293). The professional vision underlying government discourse on immigration, for instance, has at times equated the latter with ‘flooding’ through persuasive use of metaphors. Floods, needless to say, are an environmental threat with which we as humans are often ill-equipped to deal. This is of course the point of such metaphors: to instil a sense of fear that will lead ‘logically’ to governmental actions to ‘protect’ us. Political discourse of immigration/resident minorities has also constructed some individuals and communities as posing a significant threat. Van Dijk (2005a), for instance, provides an inventory – the first of this type – of political (and media) discourse of racism in contemporary Spain and Latin America (especially Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico). A significant dimension of such discourse in Latin America is found to target lower-class, African-descent people and poor mestizo minorities and immigrants. Barring the appropriate exceptions regarding national differences, van Dijk’s survey reveals that these minority and immigrant groups are frequently associated with ‘negative values and negative attributes, such as criminality, violence, laziness, backwardness, primitiveness, stupidity, amorality, impertinence, and so on’ (2005a: 162). Somewhat reassuringly, though, van Dijk concludes that since the 1990s, increasing discourses of antiracist resistance have surfaced in Latin America, alongside ‘modest positive developments of official discourse recognizing the autonomy, values, grievances and

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claims of indigenous and black groups, for instance, in political, media and educational discourse’. At the same time, though, it is unlikely that such improvements provide sufficient evidence ‘of the correctness of the ideology of racial democracy and of the denial of racism which continue to define the main parameters of official state discourse’ (van Dijk 2005a: 162). As regards Spain, the same survey shows that, while official political discourses of immigration tend not to be ‘explicitly racist’ (van Dijk 2005a: 20), the discourse of, in particular, conservative political elites at times displays moderate forms of xenophobia. Herein, non-European immigrants are the main target – the ‘problem’ apparently residing in the ‘threat’ that they pose to a ‘national’ identity. The discourse of immigration of some conservative politicians in historic autonomous regions (e.g. Catalonia and Euskadi) has been found to embrace to xenophobic ideas. Van Dijk (2005a) gives the example of former Catalan leader Jordi Pujol who, in his final major speech in the Catalan Parliament in 2002, defined immigration as one of the most ‘problematic facts’ of Catalonia in the recent past for it threatened ‘our [Catalan] identity’. Further aspects of official political discourse on regional identities in Spain are examined in Chapter 10, within this part of the book. Although the discourse practices therein analysed do not revolve around immigration and racism, they do exemplify some of the aforementioned conceptual points within the context of nationalism versus regionalism debates in contemporary Spain. Research on the discourse generated by political elites in the Spanishspeaking world along the lines discussed above has been undoubtedly beneficial in exposing the link between political discourse, persuasion and power. But it is within the field of performance of self (and other) that political persuasion has arguably been most frequently approached, both in the Spanish-speaking world and further afield. Within a mediatised political environment, politicians have had no option but to learn ‘how to make a good showing’ (Goffman 1967: 237), especially in their increasingly frequent appearances before the television cameras. The latter act as populism appeals,1 and their purchase in contemporary politics is illustrated by the fact that since the advent of democracy in the 1970s in Spain, most of the country’s presidents have been exceptionally charismatic, ‘television-friendly’ performers. For instance, the media appeal of Felipe González, whose presidency ran from 1982 until 1996, was such that he not only won several consecutive national elections with major electoral margins but also so dominated his party that there was little internal dissidence and no promotion of rival leadership

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candidates during his years in power. Moreover, even when González was finally defeated by a narrow margin in the wake of two years of accumulating political scandals for which he was deemed responsible, his party insisted it would have suffered a much heavier defeat were it not for González’s charismatic image (Dader 1998). In post-1999 Venezuela, President Chávez’s populist appeals have also relied heavily on television, specifically on his weekly broadcast Aló Presidente. He has used this as a political arena from which to promote, among other things, the revolución bolivariana (cf. Chapter 11). He has also regularly drawn upon persuasive metaphors, especially ‘politics-iswar’ (Chumaceiro 2004), a fiercely combative rhetoric and a barrage of insults (Bolívar 2001, 2008) not only to promote his policies but also to cultivate his charismatic political image. This frequent and regular recourse to television – or ‘going public’ – is a political mechanism well suited for leaders such as Chávez, who are particularly willing to call ‘directly’ to ‘their people’ through the mass media. Another setting in which politicians’ performance of self is both put to the test and closely scrutinised by the media is that of political debates, especially in pre-electoral campaign periods. In a number of countries, these debates are known to create great expectancy and have high popular appeal. Their ability to influence voting intention in Spain, for example, has been widely reported, though in the eyes of some commentators also considerably exaggerated (e.g. Dader 1998). Discourse analysis of politicians’ presentation of self and other in televised political debates in Spain has shown their adopting actionopposition moves, in which the public image of their political opponents appears to be both, and simultaneously, threatened and protected. Yet, these moves have been found to aim, first and foremost, at politicians’ own positive self-presentation (Blas Arroyo 2000, 2003). By complying with relevant debating rules regarding the right to express one’s views uninterrupted in a televised debate, for instance, politicians display their skills as debaters, rather than deference to their opponents. Political debates are self-promotional arenas from within which politicians strive to sell the ‘right’ image to audiences. It is persuasion through performance of self, rather than through adversarialness, that drives politicians’ interactional practices therein. Matters are not all that different, what is more, when politicians are engrossed in debate in actual Parliament (cf. e.g. Fernández García 2009, Lorda Mur 2009, Martín Rojo 2000, Martín Rojo and Van Dijk 1997, and Pujante and Morales López 2003 in Spain; Bolívar 2001 in Venezuela; and Carbó 1992, 1995 in Mexico).

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Overview of chapters The chapters in this part of the book cover Latin American (Chapters 8 and 11) and Spanish (Chapters 9 and 10) political institutions, as well as different ‘activity types’ and ‘genres’. In Chapter 8, Marchese examines the ‘housing discourse’ of the Social Development Secretariat of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, Argentina, during a fouryear period (2004–7). Adopting a critical discourse analysis approach, she investigates the textual and discursive practices whereby this government institution constructs a particular professional vision of the relationship between extreme poverty and housing in Buenos Aires. She also explores, in turn, how this vision reflects and further reifies the sociopolitical context in which it emerges, i.e. the social practices underpinning it. The analysis reveals a progressive tendency in the discourse of the Social Development Secretariat to echo the discourse of the medical subdiscipline of emergency care, in which notions such as ‘immediate response’, ‘emergency’, ‘urgency’ and ‘catastrophe’ are central. Marchese identifies a number of linguistic resources which reinforce the need for short-term state actions and, in turn, downplay the need for long-term measures in combating Buenos Aires’ housing problems. Interestingly, the findings of this case study mirror those of a prior study of employment policy discourse in the 1990s, also in Buenos Aires (Marchese 2008). This leads her to suggest that, following neo-liberal political models, those responsible for devising public policies to tackle extreme poverty in Buenos Aires have embedded in their discourse the concept of emergency into what is effectively a status quo, introducing in the process ‘the oxymoron of a permanent emergency’. The next three chapters move from the discourse of a political state institution to that of politicians, each examining specific aspects of their presentation of self and other in the context of parliamentary debates in Spain (Chapters 9 and 10) and televised presidential addresses in Venezuela (Chapter 11). In Chapter 9, Stewart approaches the parliamentary sessions of the Spanish Congreso de los Diputados (Lower House) as sites of contested talk. Her analysis unveils a wide repertoire of linguistic resources through which politicians dialogically co-construct their own and their opponents’ identities within this Lower House. Specifically, her analysis demonstrates how, in their interactional role as questioners, these politicians often work ‘in rhetorical and linguistic tandem’ to position their adversaries in an ungainly light while concomitantly pursuing their own interactional goals (essentially persuasion through positive self-presentation). Stewart’s analysis

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of positioning practices, moreover, highlights that these evolve both dynamically over the course of interaction and in accordance with the specific ‘rules of engagement’ of the House. There is, for instance, a tacit agreement amongst members of the House as to the grounds on which a particular politician can be ‘most easily delegitimised’. The recurrence of particular rhetorical strategies in her corpus likewise points to an unspoken agreement among the members of the House regarding which strategies can be most effectively marshalled for the purposes of compromising their adversaries. In Chapter 10, Atkinson analyses the principal speech made by Mariano Rajoy, leader of the Partido Popular, during a 2005 debate on the Catalan Statute of Autonomy in the Spanish Parliament. The analytical focus of the chapter lies in the construction of in-groups and out-groups within the institutional activity type of making a speech in the Spanish Parliament. The chapter describes the extensive rhetorical construction of ‘us’ and ‘them’ in the speech selected through two main ‘political implicatures’ (van Dijk 2005b) that run throughout: ‘(i) The Partido Popular is not anti-Catalan and (ii) The Partido Popular is the true embodiment of the spirit of democratic Spain.’ Atkinson argues that these implicatures are at the heart of how Rajoy ‘does opposition’ in the speech. They also help explain why he claims to focus on the content of the draft statute when, in fact, he does not. Finally, using techniques from the field of corpus linguistics, in Chapter 11 Smith analyses President Chávez’s usage of two key political terms, socialismo and bolivarianismo (and their principal collocates), in his appearances on the live broadcast Aló Presidente between 2001 and 2007. Smith argues that even subtle changes in Chávez’s use of these terms over the six-year period being examined may result in important changes in his rhetoric, which can in turn have potentially persuasive effects. Smith’s analysis shows changes from year to year that suggest, contrary to traditional arguments that Chávez is unpredictable and haphazard in his decision making, that he has ‘a long-planned “roadmap” for the country and what he wants to do’ with it. The frequency of occurrence of socialismo is statistically one of the greatest changes in the corpus. The term is shown to have been increasingly used by Chávez in the months prior to the start of his second term in January 2007. Changes in his use of the neologism bolivarianismo during the same period, moreover, lead Smith to argue that Chávez himself may have caused some small-scale semantic change in socialismo. Importantly,

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Smith concludes, changes in these terms over the time period under examination are closely and persuasively tied to the sociopolitical junctures in which they are brought into use.

Note 1. Cf. Weyland (2001) for a discussion of populist politics in a Latin American context.

8 A Critical Analysis of the Housing Policies Aimed at the Extremely Poor: the Case of the Social Development Secretariat of Buenos Aires City1 Mariana Carolina Marchese

Introduction Since the declaration in 2004 of a housing emergency in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, the different policies applied by the City Government have failed to resolve the problem. An essentially temporary situation (an emergency) has thus turned into a permanent one. The aim of this chapter is to examine the strategies through which the Government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires discursively constructed its housing policies aimed at the extremely poor since the declaration of the housing emergency in that city in 2004 and until 2007. A number of policies were put forward during this four-year period by the City Government through its Social Development Secretariat (SDS), which in 2006–7 became the Ministry of Human and Social Rights (MHSR). These policies failed to solve the housing problem, but throughout this period the SDS/MHSR continued to construct the housing issue as an ‘emergency’. Needless to say, although the core institutional mission of the SDS/MHSR focuses upon those living in extreme poverty, it was the poorest in Buenos Aires who suffered most from the series of inadequate measures put forward by the City Government. Two specific questions guide the research presented in this chapter: How did the SDS/MHSR discursively construct the relationship between extreme poverty and housing in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires during the period under examination? And how did these discursive 93

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constructions fit within the sociopolitical context in which they emerged? The chapter is structured as follows. Firstly, state policy on extreme poverty in Argentina is briefly reviewed with especial reference to the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. Secondly, political state discourse is characterised. The corpus upon which this study draws and its theoretical framework are then considered. Next, the housing policies of the SDS/MHSR are examined in terms of the textual, discursive and social practices that they reveal. Finally, and based on this tripartite analysis, several conclusions are advanced regarding the nature of Argentinean political state discourse and public policy design vis-à-vis situations of extreme poverty.

Public policy design and extreme poverty in postmodernity – the case of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires Rather than an aesthetic phenomenon, postmodernity is first and foremost a historical and social one – the cultural dominant of the logic of late capitalism (Jameson 2005). One of the defining features of postmodernity is the pre-eminence of the notion of ‘space’ vis-à-vis that of ‘time’, including a redefinition of the former in terms of the fragmentation and juxtaposition of images in urban spaces (Pardo 2008a). The last decade of the twentieth century and the first years of the twentyfirst have been marked by the rise of neo-liberal discourse. Images of wealth and poverty have been appearing side by side in the big cities during this period. As Bauman (1998: 22) explains in relation to a number of cities in postmodernity, the urban territory has therefore become ‘the battlefield of continuous space-war, sometimes erupting into [the] public spectacle . . . The fortifications built by the elite and the self-defence-through-aggression practised by those left outside the walls have a mutually reinforcing effect.’ Slums and precarious settlements, for example, have developed in the Greater Buenos Aires area, not always in peaceful coexistence with luxurious gated communities. In the 1980s and 1990s, Argentina faced serious social problems within the family, employment and, crucially for this chapter, housing spheres (cf. de Jong et al. 2001, Gattino and Aquín 1999, Rodríguez 2005, Wainerman 2003). Denouncing the deterioration of housing conditions in Argentina in the 1990s, Martínez (2004–5) notes that the very term ‘housing deficit’ was coined in that decade. Malanca and Repetto (2003), too, underscore the fact that homelessness became massively

Housing Policies Aimed at the Extremely Poor in Buenos Aires City 95

noticeable in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires by 1996, with street people falling through the social safety net. And Mingo (2006) argues that, although between 1990 and 1995 the Argentine economy seemed to grow with inflation under control, dependence on foreign speculative investment started to show the economy’s weakness towards the end of that period. The unemployment rate also increased then, leading to an expansion of structural poverty and the emergence of the ‘new poor’. The economy continued to grow between 1996 and 1998, but the increase in poverty was not reversed. The inequity of wealth distribution thus became critical. In the urban landscape, the above situation translated not only into social but also into spatial inequality. According to Mingo (2006: 29), this coincided with a transitional stage in social policy – from a so-called social state model to a new one characterised by focused policies: Universal social policy and the monopoly of the nation state over it have become detached from the economic dynamics [. . .] The nation state has deteriorated and its growth policies and national development planning have suffered as a result. It has declined to intervene even in those areas in which it could have implemented proactive policies, laying the country open to capitalist expansion. Against the above background, it is important to remind ourselves that both article 14.2 of Argentina’s National Constitution and article 31 of the Constitution of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires list access to decent housing as a human right. On 29 July 2004 the local legislature, based on both Constitutions, declared a housing emergency for a period of three years (Law No. 1408), which was extended for another three in October 2007 (Law No. 2472).

Political state discourse In light of the housing issues described above, attention turns now to characterising the key features of political state discourse, for the latter constitutes the discourse genre in and through which these issues are constructed in the corpus examined in this study. For Bakhtin (1982) discourse genres are relatively stable thematic, compositional and stylistic types of utterance. Hymes (2002) similarly indicates that the notion of genre involves the possibility of identifying certain traditionally defined and recognisable formal features.

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The texts produced within state institutions generally meet these criteria. Moreover, since these institutions perform a political function, which is explicitly or implicitly conducted through text production, their discourse genre might be termed ‘political state discourse’. Political state discourse includes a wide range of national and local government texts, ranging from government and case-survey reports to programme projects and informative texts of various kinds and formats. Although these texts display lesser or greater degrees of textual idiosyncrasy, a number of key linguistic features have been found to be markedly used across them, which may therefore be said to characterise political state discourse. Pardo (2001) and Marchese (2006a, b, 2007, 2008) identify the following: use of non-finite verbs (infinitive, present participle and past participle); nominalisations (instead of finite verbs); passive voice (se2 constructions, periphrastic passive constructions without agentive phrase, and past participles without se); impersonal pronoun se; impersonal verbs; adverbial clauses of purpose (made up of preposition and nominalisation or non-finite verb) to refer to the future; the subjunctive mood; speaker in the first person plural or third person singular; speaker as a collective agent; speaker as an adverbial clause of place; concealment of the speaker’s mental processes; words with multiple meanings (non-referential); and abstract nouns and technical expressions. Political state discourse, then, constitutes both a sphere of social action and a genre characterised by the use of certain linguistic forms. The texts produced by the SDS/MHSR of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires that I analyse in this chapter belong to this genre. Intended for public consumption by citizens and organisations, they discursively construct a relationship between extreme poverty and housing.

Methodology Framework The work presented in this chapter adopts a case study approach to the examination of political state discourse. It therefore uses a qualitative methodology along the lines of critical discourse analysis (CDA). Within this perspective, Fairclough’s (1992) characterisation of any discursive event as consisting of three dialectically constituted practices (textual, discursive and social) is followed here. Textual practice refers to the linguistic resources deployed in the texts under examination. Discursive practice considers the relationship between texts and the genre to which

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they belong, other discourse genres (inter-discursivity) and production, circulation and interpretation processes. And social practice focuses on the link between texts and the broader economic, political and social context in which they are embedded. Textual practice is specifically approached in my work through the notions of theme/rheme (Pardo 1996) and tonalisation (Lavandera 1985a, Pardo 1996). Theme and rheme distinguish, respectively, the information that is not central (theme) from that which is focused on in an utterance (rheme). At the same time, within the rheme, there is a specific focus which signals the most relevant information. In Spanish, the focus is located after the verb, following the last comma, connector, preposition or relative pronoun (Pardo 1996). Tonalisation analysis, for its part, accounts for the use of qualifiers and reinforcers in an utterance, which decrease or increase the semantic charge of the linguistic components to which they refer. My analysis of discursive practice, in turn, draws upon Hymes’ (2002) S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G model, which relates linguistic data to its immediate context. I concentrate on the G (genre) component of this model, examining its relationship with other discourse genres and hence drawing upon the concepts of intertextuality/interdiscursivity (e.g. Fairclough 1992). In order to interpret my data in its broader context (postmodernity and neo-liberalism), my social practice analysis is informed by multidisciplinary reading of postmodernity and poverty in, especially, Argentina. Corpus The corpus for this case study consists of three issues of the Social Services Guide (SSG), published by the SDS in 2004–5 (175 pp.) and then the MHSR in 2006 (239 pp.) and 2007 (258 pp.).3 The last one was available at www.buenosaires.gov.ar and the other two have been obtained from the Immediate Social Aid Directorate. The content of these three issues is similarly structured: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

A preface that states the purpose of the SSG; An introduction that discusses its aims; A service index that groups social programmes by beneficiary; A thematic index of such programmes; and A description of available social services: goals, beneficiaries, description, access requirements, contact information and division responsible for the services.

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Table 8.1 Social programmes considered in this study SSG 2004–5

SSG 2006

SSG 2007

Support for families living on the streets Immediate direct aid Housing emergency Our families Aid for the homeless

Assistance for families living on the streets Immediate social aid Housing emergency Our families Assistance for the homeless Buenos Aires Present Immediate social assistance: 108 telephone line Night shelters (for adults) Temporary housing -----------------

Assistance for families living on the streets Immediate social aid ----------------Our families Assistance for the homeless Buenos Aires Present Immediate social assistance: 108 telephone line Night shelters and evacuee centres Temporary housing Permanent centre for emergency evacuation

Buenos Aires Present -----------------

-------------------------------------------------

The preface (1), introduction (2) and service provision (5) sections have been selected for detailed analysis in this work. Information about service provision appears occasionally also in the thematic index (4), for example the same programmes are listed under two or more headings. After a close examination of the three SSG issues and a pre-selection of the housing-related programmes therein, the Programme Design and Control Department of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires was contacted in order to ascertain which programmes had been actually implemented between 2004 and 2007, for these would be the ones to examine (cf. Table 8.1).

Linguistic analysis As mentioned above, although political state discourse is amenable to genre characterisation, different types of discourse therein display their own idiosyncratic features. Being able to explain why in some types of political state discourse certain features are distributed in certain ways, why some linguistic forms co-occur and, ultimately, why certain choices are made therefore becomes paramount (cf. Lavandera 1985b). The results of such analysis of my corpus are presented in the next three subsections, each respectively dealing with its textual, discursive and social practices.

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Textual practice Three main categories were placed in ‘focus’ position in the SSG documents under examination: social crisis, the actions of non-government organisations (NGOs) and the actions of the Buenos Aires City Government. Their frequencies of use are listed in Table 8.2 in percentage form, together with illustrative examples from the corpus (preface sections). Other categories were also focused on but their individual frequencies of use were very small and have therefore been grouped in Table 8.2 under ‘Other’. The actions of the City Government form the focus of most utterances in the 2004–5 SSG document, with the social crisis and the actions of NGOs not being focused on at this stage. In the 2006 issue, however, the social crisis and the actions of NGOs are each presented as focus in 21.43 per cent of the utterances. Interestingly, the actions of the NGOs are not presented in focus position in the 2007 document, whereas the percentage of utterances in which the social crisis and the government actions are presented in focus position rise to 50 per cent in the same year. When discussing programmes aimed at solving the housing deficit, the service description section of the three SSG texts highlights the housing crisis by placing nominal phrases in focus position. Further emphasis on the housing crisis is provided through the use of reinforcers in these foci, as illustrated in the following examples: (1) • • • • •

[reinforcers have been underlined] [. . .] situaciones de emergencia habitacional (desalojos) (housing emergency situations (evictions)) (SSG 2004–5, u151) [. . .] problemática habitacional (housing problems) (SSG 2006, u40) [. . .] centro de evacuados (evacuee centre) (SSG 2007, u108) [. . .] para evacuaciones de emergencia (for emergency evacuations) (SSG 2007, u149) [. . .] fenómenos de emergencia (emergency phenomena) (SSG 2007, u153)

This emphasis on the housing crisis becomes increasingly frequent in the service description of the SSG documents as the years go by – a finding that was also revealed in relation to the preface section of the SSG texts (cf. Table 8.2). Thus, whereas in the 2004–5 edition, 12.88 per cent of the utterances in the service description section focus on the housing problems and a sense of emergency (i.e. they place these as utterance focus), this figure rises to 14.6 per cent in 2006 and reaches 18

100 Spanish at Work Table 8.2 Categories being presented as focus in the SSG documents4 SSG

Theme–rheme Other

Social crisis

NGO actions

Government actions

2004–5

36%

0%

0%

64 % u8 . . . datos estadísticos y de gestión que produce cada uno de los programas (u8 . . . statistical and management data produced by each programme)

2006

21.43%

21.43 % u7 . . . ante cada obstáculo y ante cada crisis.

21.43 % u6 . . . mapa de nuestra sociedad y la forma en que se organiza para seguir siendo solidaria

(u7 . . . in the face of every obstacle and in the face of every crisis)

(u6 . . . map of our community and the way in which it gets organised to continue acting with solidarity)

35.71 % u10 . . . creamos el Ministerio de Derechos Humanos y Sociales en el que las necesidades son reconocidas como derechos (u10 . . . [we] have created the Ministry of Human and Social Rights, where needs are recognised as rights)

50% u5 . . . profundidad de los problemas

0%

2007

0%

(u5 . . . depth of the problems)

50% u1 . . . el Estado . . . principal agente de inclusión e integración social (u1 . . . the State . . . chief instrument for social inclusion and integration)

per cent in 2007. The explanation for this gradual increase lies both in the inclusion in 2006 and 2007 of new housing emergency programmes within the Guides (cf. Table 8.1) and in a qualitative change regarding the kind of information being focused on, as illustrated in the examples

Housing Policies Aimed at the Extremely Poor in Buenos Aires City 101 Table 8.3 Total percentage of utterances stating actions to be undertaken by the City Government5 Service description Short-term action reinforcement Long-term action downplaying

SSG 2004–5

SSG 2006

SSG 2007

18.51 22.2

38.46 53.84

50 46.15

in (2), all taken from the three editions of the Buenos Aires Present Programme: (2) • • •

• • •

u137 . . .en el área de la ciudad de Buenos Aires (. . . in the Buenos Aires area) [SSG 2004–5, section: Beneficiaries] u90 Ciudadanos. . . en situación de calle (Citizens . . . living on the streets) [SSG 2006, section: Beneficiaries] u81 . . .Ciudadanos . . . atravesando situaciones de emergencia social (Citizens . . . going through social emergency situations) [SSG 2007, section: Beneficiaries] u160 . . . 0800-77-76242 (SOCIAL) [SSG 2004–5, section: Contact information] u94 . . . comunicándose con la Línea gratuita 108 (. . . calling 108 free) [SSG 2006, section: Contact information] u85 . . . comunicándose con la Línea gratuita 108 de Atención Social Inmediata (. . . calling free on the immediate social assistance line 108) [SSG 2007, section: Contact information]

The SSG texts therefore display an increasing discursive orientation towards the concept of emergency – one that is also increasingly seen to require immediate and urgent attention. For example, the 2007 SSG even speaks of the need for ‘evacuation’. As shown in Table 8.3, moreover, short-term actions are progressively reinforced, while long-term policy is concomitantly downplayed. The figures in Table 8.3 coincide with the finding reported earlier of an increase in utterances in which housing problems and a sense of emergency were presented in focus position (reaching 18 per cent in SSG 2007). Together, they create the impression that the greater the focus on housing emergency, the higher the emphasis placed on the need for short-term action, the latter reaching 50 per cent in SSG 2007. Three broad linguistic resources are deployed to reinforce the short-term action: (a) Focus on temporary accommodation followed by adjacent adjective. The frequencies of use of these adjectives in the corpus are

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40 per cent (SSG 2004–5), 42.86 per cent (SSG 2006) and 36.37 per cent (SSG 2007).6 As an illustration, consider (3): (3) [. . .] solución provisoria con carácter de emergencia (. . . temporary emergency solution [Night Shelters Programme, SSG 2006, u145; Night Shelters and Evacuee Centres Programme, SSG 2007, u112). (b) Adjectives, adverbs and prepositional phrases not situated in focus position, as illustrated in (4)–(6). Their frequency of use in the corpus is 60 per cent (SSG 2004–5), 57.14 per cent (SSG 2006) and 63.63 per cent (SSG 2007): (4) [. . .] Asistir con ayuda inmediata. . . (To assist with immediate aid . . . [Immediate Social Aid Programme, SSG 2006, u4; SSG 2007, u4]) (5) Brindar asistencia exclusivamente a las familias en situación de calle, fortaleciendo el ingreso familiar con fines habitacionales (To provide assistance only to families living on the streets, strengthening family income for housing purposes [Assistance Programme for Families Living on the Streets, SSG 2007, u38]) (6) Brindar con carácter inmediato y de emergencia servicio de pernocte, comida y atención profesional en el lapso acotado de su estadía (To provide immediate emergency7 night lodging, board and professional assistance during the limited period of their stay [Night Shelters Programme, SSG 2006, u143; Night Shelters and Evacuee Centres Programme, Permanent Centre for Emergency Evacuation Programme, SSG 2007, u110 and 151]) (c) Verb form variation. In the service description section of the 2004–5 SSG, 86 per cent of the utterances contain nominalised or future indicative verb forms. In the 2006 and 2007 issues, 61.54 and 60 per cent of utterances, respectively, include present indicative forms of transitive verbs. In these latter cases, then, verb tense serves to reinforce the notion of immediate (short-term) action, with these verbs’ direct objects referring mostly to subsidies and night lodging (62.5 per cent in the 2006 SSG and 66.67 per cent in the 2007 SSG).

Housing Policies Aimed at the Extremely Poor in Buenos Aires City 103 Table 8.4 Examples of verb use in the Service Description section8 SSG 2004–5

SSG 2006

SSG 2007

u7 Otorgamiento. . . de un subsidio. . . fines habitacionales (Granting . . . . of a subsidy . . . housing purposes) [Our Families Programme]

u22 Otorga subsidios . . .

u22 Otorga subsidios. . .

( [the City Government] grants subsidies. . . ) [Our Families Programme]

([the City Government] grants subsidies. . . ) [Our Families Programme]

u143 . . . El servicio . . . ofrecerá: . . .

u92 . . . equipos profesionales que efectúan . . . (. . . professional teams that carry out . . . ) [Buenos Aires Present Programme]

u83 . . . equipos profesionales que efectúan . . . (. . . professional teams that carry out . . .) [Buenos Aires Present Programme]

(The Service . . . will offer. . .) [Buenos Aires Present Programme]

Illustrative examples of this change in the use of verb forms between the 2004–5, on the one hand, and the 2006 and the 2007 periods, on the other, are provided in Table 8.4. Textual practice analysis thus far shows that the documents simultaneously construct a crisis or emergency situation and reinforce shortterm action. This means that immediate government assistance, as a rapid response, takes on a positive meaning. The underlying logical argument as persuasive force of this practice is: if A, then B. In other words, if there is an emergency (cause), quick action is required to address it (effect). Needless to say, housing emergency situations demand immediate attention. However, by so clearly reinforcing short-term action as the response to such an emergency, the importance of long-term action is underrated in the SSG texts. Housing solutions become ‘naturally’ associated with temporary lodging as a result. Further, the linguistic resources used in the corpus that downplay long-term action are as follows: 1. Use of nominalisation in focal position when referring to long-term action: the absence of a verb form de-emphasises the long-term action being described, even if it is still positioned as focus in the utterance. The frequency of use of this type of nominalisation in the

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three Guides is 50 per cent.9 Illustrative examples are provided in (7) and (8): (7) [Our Families Programme, SSG 2006, u22; SSG 2007, u22] . . .para el cambio de su situación (. . . for change in their situation) (8) [Assistance Programme for Families Living on the Street, SSG 2006, u44; SSG 2007, u43] .. para la obtención de una solución habitacional definitiva (. . . for the achievement of a final housing solution) 2. Use of the subjunctive mood in utterances describing long-term actions. Such action is therefore downplayed, for in Spanish the subjunctive mode is used to express possibility or a wish, whereas actual facts are stated in the indicative. The frequency of use of this strategy increases over time in the texts: it appears in 16.67 per cent of the utterances describing long-term actions in SSG 2004–5, 21.42 per cent in SSG 2006 and 25 per cent in SSG 2007. Consider (9) as an illustration: (9) [Our Families Programme, SSG 2006, u22; SSG 2007, u22] Otorga subsidios a la familia en situación de extrema vulnerabilidad, que signifique un cambio comprobable de sus condiciones de vida . . . ([The City Government] grants subsidies to extremely vulnerable families that must translate into a verifiable change in their living conditions)10 3. Use of multiple meaning words, without specific referent. Lack of concrete referent gives these words a mitigating function (cf. Lavandera 1985a, Pardo 1996) for coordination between Programmes is de-emphasised through vagueness. The frequency of use of this strategy remains reasonably stable across the Guides: it appears in 16.67 per cent of utterances regarding Programme coordination in SSG 2004–5, 14.3 per cent in SSG 2006 and 16.67 per cent in SSG 2007. An example is provided in (10): (10) [Programme for Immediate Social Assistance: 108 line, SSG 2006, u101; SSG 2007, u93] . . . articulando todos los recursos . . . (. . . bringing together all the resources . . .)

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4. Use of non-finite verbs (infinitive and present participle) in focus position. Although in these cases the final solution to the housing problem remains the focus of the utterance, the action described therefore loses force by virtue of the disappearance of person and number inflections in these non-finite verbs. The frequency of use of this strategy decreases over time in the documents: 16.67 per cent of utterances in SSG 2004–5, 14.3 per cent in SSG 2006 and only 8.33 per cent in SSG 2007. Examples (11) and (12) illustrate this strategy, with the latter (12) also showing an instance of nominalisation: (11) [Temporary Housing Programme, SSG 2006, u168; SSG 2007, u138] . . .hasta lograr la finalización de su vivienda definitiva (. . . until achieving completion of the permanent home) (12) [Assistance Programme for Families Living on the Streets, SSG 2006, u39; SSG 2007, u38] . . . fortaleciendo el ingreso familiar con fines habitacionales (. . . strengthening family income for housing purposes) To sum up, textual practice analysis reveals two concomitantly used strategies: 1. Association of the housing issue with short-term action, particularly with the provision of temporary accommodation and subsidies. This is reinforced by means of linguistic resources such as focus, adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases and verbs in the indicative mood; and 2. De-emphasising of long-term action involving a final solution, through use of nominalisation, the subjunctive mood, words with multiple meanings and non-finite verbs. Together, therefore, the texts may be said to persuasively construct a world of meaning that naturalises a compensation and adjustment model of social inequality, instead of seeking to transform it. Discursive practice Article 2 of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires Law No. 589, passed on 26 April 2001, states the goal of the Social Services Guides to be ‘to provide, in a systematic and orderly fashion, information . . . about the different services and programmes devised and implemented by the

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Social Development Secretariat’. Accordingly, the preface and introduction of the Social Services Guides declare their aim to be that of informing the population of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires about the action carried out by the SDS. The informative purpose of these texts is also explicitly stated in the following sections of the Guides: The purpose of this guide is to provide up-to-date information about the services provided by the Social Development Secretariat . . . The information made available by a publication such as this facilitates participation and contributes to management transparency. (SSG 2004–5: 6) The purpose of this guide is to provide up-to-date information about the services provided by the Ministry of Human and Social Rights . . . The information made available by this publication facilitates participation and benefit access. (SSG 2007: 7) . . . an orderly compendium, easy to read, providing concise and systematised information . . . (SSG 2007: 5) Informing citizens is presented in the Guides as necessarily linked to values such as ensuring their readability, accessibility, transparency, systematisation and succinctness. This stresses a particular institutional goal behind the Guides, namely to publicise the City Government’s actions. As the analysis of textual practice has revealed, these actions do not seek to modify the status quo. Instead, the particular distribution of linguistic resources in the texts aims at blurring long-term action and reinforcing short-term measures. Importantly, although some of these linguistic resources might be related to the political state discourse genre, this is not always the case. In other words, they are not always determined by the genre to which they belong. Moreover, the data exhibit a number of inter-discursive references to medical practice, specifically to the field of critical emergency care. As noted by San Martín et al. (2004), until the 1970s doctors in Argentina waited for patients at hospitals. There was ‘no talk of “urgencies”, “emergencies”, “catastrophes”, “multiple victims” or attention “at the scene”’. Since then, industrial growth, increasing numbers of vehicles and greater violence have all added trauma cases to the casualty ward workload. As a consequence, emergency care has become established as a new specialty. It has also become a specific discourse genre – one associated with a semantic field that includes terms such as ‘catastrophe’, ‘urgency’, ‘emergency’, ‘crisis’ and ‘attention at the scene’.

Housing Policies Aimed at the Extremely Poor in Buenos Aires City 107

Figure 8.1

Social Assistance Mobile Unit

One of the main features of emergency care situations is the need for immediate (short-term) response, since they afford no time for consultation with other specialists. Interestingly, the discursive construction of the City Government’s housing policy in my corpus also draws upon that of the discourse of the ‘new’ medical subdiscipline of emergency care. The Social Assistance Mobile Units, for instance, wear the inscription ‘social emergency’ (note the nominal phrase). These vehicles, which are used to deliver social aid wherever needed, look like ambulances without strobe lights (see Figure 8.1). They initially belonged to the Buenos Aires Present Programme and are now used in the Programme for Immediate Social Assistance: 108 Line. The textual and discursive practices through which the SDS constructs the relationship between extreme poverty and housing liken extreme poverty in the City of Buenos Aires to a disease that demands immediate attention. This similarity, needless to say, poses a series of questions: Would poverty not rather be a symptom of a harmful economic system that spreads like a virus throughout the social body? Should the City Government play the role of an emergency specialist or a fire-fighter, picking up the victims of a social catastrophe? And even if extreme poverty did constitute an illness or emergency situation of sorts, would long-term treatment not be required as well? Answers to these questions are conspicuously absent from the Guides. Social practice Critical discourse analysis is particularly useful as a way of approaching social phenomena, for it enables inquiry into the implicit meaning of texts. Linguistic forms, far from being neutral, reflect ongoing social and economic transformations (Fairclough 1992, Noblía 2003, van Dijk 2002). In this respect, the textual and discursive practice analyses thus far discussed here reveal an institutional and political purpose in the data which goes beyond the claimed explicit goal of providing information to the public. The documents studied seek to show that the

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SDS actually works to solve the problems of the City’s inhabitants. The strategy of reinforcing short-term action while downplaying long-term measures points to the legitimacy crisis of the social contract underpinning the welfare state that is currently taking place in Argentina’s globalised postmodern society. As Pardo et al. (2000) explain, Argentina is going through a transitional stage characterised by the decline of liberal capitalism as a domination structure and the rise of neo-liberalism, with its globalisation rhetoric. According to Vega Cantor (1999), furthermore, the former involved the regulation of capitalism by the state (i.e. by organs of government), the role of which has undergone significant change in this respect. Faced with the growth of poverty, then, the SDS seems to have taken discursive (and therefore social) action politically and institutionally aimed at concealing its inactivity regarding the longterm solution of the problems experienced by the poor. This in turn has contributed to widening the gap that separates the poor from the rich. Furthermore, fragmentation – another feature of postmodernity – manifests itself in the discursive and consequently social disconnection between policies in the documents under examination. Housing policies for the extremely poor are implemented through programmes that are not textually or socially linked to, for instance, employment schemes – such coordination is not constructed as essential for the sustainable satisfaction of their basic needs. Instead, the City Government awards subsidies that are seen as ‘compensation’ (Levín 1997). In Mingo’s (2006: 61) words, ‘the increasing complexity and intensity of poverty is tackled through a unilateral action that demeans the human condition by assuming that a grant may solve the exclusion and deterioration experienced by individuals’. These ‘solutions’ both polarise and disguise power relations between minority groups (the wealthy), who can have access to decent housing, and the majority group (the poor), who cannot.

Conclusions Textual and discursive practice analysis of three Social Services Guides produced by the SDS of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires has shown an increasing tendency since 2004 by this public state institution to focus on the housing emergency affecting the City. The political state discourse of these Guides has also been shown to echo that of a different genre – the medical subdiscipline of emergency care, which is grounded in the notions of ‘immediate response’, ‘emergency’, ‘urgency’ and ‘catastrophe’. Specifically, the political state discourse examined in this chapter has been seen to reinforce, through a range of linguistic

Housing Policies Aimed at the Extremely Poor in Buenos Aires City 109

strategies, the need for the SDS to take short-term actions and to downplay any need for implementing long-term measures. These findings lead us to reflect on the political purpose of such discourse, which seems to be simply to conceal the fact that the state has been surrendering its role as a mitigator of social inequality, in tune with neo-liberal tenets. Although the texts point to strong government presence, this is only temporary (short-term). Long-term action is only vaguely outlined. As Fairclough (1992) points out, an analysis of the social power of institutions involves understanding and close examination of their textual and discursive practices. This study has revealed how a political institution (a City Government Secretariat) discursively constructs the relationship between extreme poverty and housing in and through texts that are meant for public consumption. The link between emergency and short-term state action identified in the corpus, however, is not exclusive to housing policies. A corpus of employment policy texts produced in the 1990s in Buenos Aires has also been found to share similar features (cf. Marchese 2008). This suggests that, following the neo-liberal model, those in charge of devising public policies to tackle extreme poverty have built the concept of emergency into their description of the status quo, introducing the oxymoron of a permanent emergency. If a policy is a plan or course of action aimed at a particular goal, such policies have certainly deepened the process through which the Argentinean state abandons its role in mitigating social disparity.

Notes 1. This study was carried out within the framework of the University of Buenos Aires Science and Technology Project F127: ‘A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Discourse of Extreme Urban Poverty in Postmodern Argentina and Latin America: the Latin American Network for the Critical Discourse Analysis of Poverty’. The research was conducted by the Argentinean team of the Network, under the direction of Professor M.L. Pardo. The chapter was translated into English by Mónica Descalzi. 2. Translator’s note. A Spanish construction featuring the impersonal pronoun se is often used as a substitute for the passive voice. 3. For clarity of presentation, from this point onwards, the SDS and the MHSR will be referred to by means of its original name – SDS. 4. The utterance (u) focus is underlined in the examples. 5. These percentages refer to the total of the utterances stating actions to be undertaken by the City Government. As short-term action is also de-emphasised in some of them, the sum of these percentages is less than 100.

110 Spanish at Work 6. Frequencies are presented as percentages of the total number of utterances with short-term action reinforcers. 7. Translator’s note. The prepositional phrase con carácter inmediato y de emergencia has been translated as ‘immediate emergency’ (adj. + attributive noun). 8. Smaller verb form variation can be found in other sections of the Guides, such as in their introductions, where infinitives predominate. 9. Frequencies are presented as percentages of the total number of utterances which downplay long-term action. 10. Translator’s note. Instead of describing the subsidies granted by the government in the indicative, the Spanish text uses the subjunctive to state a requirement: subsidios . . . que signifiquen un cambio, which I have rendered as ‘subsidies . . . that must translate into a change’. The clause might also be interpreted as expressing the wish that the subsidies should lead to an improvement in people’s living conditions.

9 Contested Talk and the (Co-)Construction of Identity: Spanish Parliamentary Debate Miranda Stewart

Introduction As discussed in Chapter 1, how language functions in specific institutional contexts has attracted increasing attention. The language of parliament, institutionally the prerogative of a limited number of speakers, has consequently moved into the spotlight of discourse analysis (e.g. Bayley 2004, Chilton 2004). Politicians, like others operating in professional settings, use language to construct and perform identities and to pursue interactional goals. Identity is seen as a performance or (co-)construction (Benwell and Stokoe 2006, Jacoby and Ochs 1995) that is interpreted by others within a given ‘Community of Practice’ (Wenger 1998, Lave and Wenger 1991). Much research on parliamentary language has focused on representation of the world through specific discourses. Montgomery (2005), for instance, has examined the ‘discourse of war’ and Martín Rojo and van Dijk (1997) speakers’ construction of an ‘official version of events’, an ‘acceptable version’ of a government’s immigration policy.1 There has been rather less work done on the interactional dimension of parliamentary discourse, specifically on the pragmatics of performance (but cf. overview in Chapter 7). Blas Arroyo (2000, 2003) has examined personal deixis and what he calls ‘mitigated aggression’ in Spanish electoral debate. Bolívar (2001) has analysed insulting in Venezuelan political debate. Pérez de Ayala (2001), Harris (2001) and Ilie (2001, 2004) have focused on politeness and rhetoric in adversarial debate.2 The purpose of my analysis of political discourse in this chapter is different. I focus on the dialogic co-construction of identity, the struggle by speakers and their addressees for interactional advantage in the presence 111

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of an immediate audience of ‘auditors’ (Bell 1984, 2001), i.e. those present in the Parliamentary Chamber, and of ‘overhearers’, namely those watching the proceedings, whether live or at a later date. Specifically, I examine how Members of Parliament in Spain draw on language to co-construct themselves and their opponents in what is essentially adversarial debate of a relatively constrained nature. Through one series of questions put to a government minister I investigate how, despite the institutional constraints governing this particular setting, questioners can work in rhetorical and linguistic tandem to co-construct the identity of their adversary in pursuance of their interactional goals. Furthermore, their adversary can use similar linguistic strategies to resist this very positioning.

Methodology In this work, I adopt Chilton’s (2004: 30) perspective, which treats ‘political action as language action’ and in which coercion, (de-)legitimisation and (mis-)representation are central linguistic strategies. This allows me to incorporate notions of ‘positioning’ (Davies and Harré 1990), further developed as ‘alignment’ by Linell (1994), which are crucial to the co-construction of identity. Positioning, in Davies and Harré’s (1990: 48) terms, can be either interactive (in which what one person says can position another) or reflexive (in which a person positions him or herself). Like Chilton (2004: 48), moreover, I assume that when humans interact verbally, they may be communicating ‘representations of the world’ but are also signalling ‘social roles, boundaries and bonds’. I concentrate on the latter, examining how positioning and alignments become part of the interactional context and are consequently open to renegotiation. I understand context in van Dijk’s (2004: 350) terms: not as ‘static mental representations’ but as ‘dynamic structures’ that are ‘ongoingly constructed, updated and reconstructed’. Thus positioning is central to the struggle for interactional advantage. Within a frame which examines the co-construction of talk, it should be clear that while speakers, in their bid for interactional advantage, might seek to place their adversaries in less defensible positions or alignments, their adversaries will seek to reject these positions or to reproject them in ways that further their own bid for advantage. My data comprise video recordings and transcripts of debates in the Spanish Lower House (Congreso de los diputados).3 I have chosen plenary debate because talk tends to be most adversarial there.

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The data, from the plenary of 12 December 2007, consist of questions to the Minister of Finance and Second Vice President of the government, Solbes Mira, from the following members, the last four of whom are clearly on the opposition benches: Josep Sánchez i Llibre, Convergència i Unió (S1); Agustí Cerdà Argent, Esquerra Republicana (S2); Vicente Marínez-Pujalte López, Partido Popular (S3); Miguel Arias Cañete, Partido Popular (S4); Macarena Montesinos de Miguel, Partido Popular (S5) and Antonio González Pérez, Partido Popular (S6). Interaction within the plenary sessions of the Congreso is regarded as emerging and developing within a specific Community of Practice (CofP).4 Wenger (1998) defines a CofP in terms of three characteristics: mutual engagement, a jointly negotiated enterprise, and a shared repertoire of negotiable resources accumulated over time. The participatory structure of the Congreso is that of a deliberative assembly governed by Standing Orders (El reglamento del congreso). Congreso authorises the formation of the government, has the power to cause its cessation, is the first to know about procedures of bills and of budgets, and must confirm or reject amendments or vetoes that the Senate may approve concerning these legislative texts.5 My analysis focuses on the part of the plenary session containing questions to the government. It is regulated by Standing Order 188, paragraph 3: In the debate, after the question has been put concisely by the Member, the government shall reply thereto. The Member may then rejoin or ask a further question, and following the government’s further reply the debate shall conclude. The time shall be allocated by the Speaker between the Members concerned, but in no case may the consideration of the question exceed five minutes. When the time allocated to any Member has expired, the Speaker shall automatically grant the floor to the next person entitled to speak, or pass on to the next question. Such dialogue as there is in this CofP thus follows strict, largely conventionalised, patterns with the Speaker of the House allocating turns and, frequently, speaking time. Much of the intervention is pre-scripted, especially in the case of questions. In addition to the active participants, there are auditors (those present in the House) and overhearers who may be viewing proceedings remotely in place and possibly in time. Mutual engagement consists of government members seeking to defend their position on the issues raised in the questions and questioners seeking to present the position of the faction they represent. Depending on political alignments and the nature of the issue, this may result in them attempting to delegitimise the government, to redefine its position or to support it. Members of this CofP in Spain receive no formal

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training. Consequently, with time and experience, they move from the ‘periphery’ to the ‘core’, for example acquiring the ability to use conventionalised terms of address to rhetorical effect. While the conventions outlined above provide the framework within which a CofP can evolve, it is the contributions of individual members that create over time the conventions that ultimately characterise the CofP. An example of this is the relative weight given to rhetoric and style against knowledge and research in assessing what the effective asking and answering of questions is.

Co-constructing negative others In this section I examine how speakers in my data position themselves and others and how these positionings are developed and built upon in the course of interaction – being accepted, rejected or reprojected in a different form. I also show that the construction of a negative other is not restricted to a single speaker/hearer pair. Instead, there is a jointly orchestrated performance, between a succession of speakers, of a concerted attack on another speaker, in this case Minister Solbes. Indeed, over a total of 24 interventions, the Minister fields questions from 6 speakers who, together, work to position him as incompetent (Charge 1), inactive (Charge 2), devious (Charge 3) and boring (Charge 4). Each successive speaker capitalises on interventions by preceding speakers in order to block the Minister’s attempts to resist this positioning, whether through rhetorical strategies, such as rhetorical questions or irony, or lexical cohesion. Charge 1: professional incompetence The charge of professional incompetence is perhaps the most predictable insofar as a primary objective of the opposition in this CofP is to delegitimise government representatives. In (1), for instance, S1 attempts to position the Minister, by implicature, as someone not competent to answer on behalf of the government: (1)6 01 S1 02 03 04 05 06

Señor vicepresidente del Gobierno, lo siento, esta no era una pregunta dirigida a usted. Usted normalmente no hace promesas en las precampañas electorales, solamente se resigna a escuchar las promesas que hace el presidente del Gobierno en actos electorales del partido. Bueno, repito que no era una pregunta que iba dirigida a usted, pero ya que no la ha podido contestar el presidente del Gobierno le tengo que decir

Contested Talk and the (Co-)Construction of Identity 115 07 08

lo siguiente [. . .] Entendemos, señor vicepresidente, que no es serio prometer en plena campaña preelectoral [. . .]

01 S1 Mr Vice President of the goverment, I am sorry, this was not a question 02 for you. You do not normally make promises in the run-up to the 03 elections, you only resign yourself to listening to the promises 04 made by the President in the party election campaign. 05 Well, I repeat that it was not a question to you, but as 06 the President was unable to answer it I have to say to you 07 the following [. . .] We agree, Mr Vice President, that it is not serious to 08 promise in the middle of an electoral campaign [. . .]

Rhetorically, not only does S1 apologise in line 01 for directing the question at the Minister (a false apology as he has tabled this question) and places elsewhere the responsibility for it ‘I have to say to you the following’ (lines 06–07), he also positions the Minister as someone who does not make promises (line 02). By scalar implicature7 this could constitute praise, as he is contrasted positively with the President who is arguably being attacked for making hollow promises. Moreover, S1 also presents the Minister as powerless by implicature (‘you only resign yourself to’, line 03). As we shall see, this rhetorical strategy of ‘false praise’ followed by targeted attack recurs in the questions of several speakers. What is more, S1 implicates incompetence (‘it is not serious’, line 07) on the part of unspecified individuals. By implicature, though, these are the government and, specifically, the President, who has been previously identified as having made the promises. S1 also presupposes, through use of the first person plural in ‘we agree’ (line 07), that the Minister aligns himself with his (S1’s) view and, hence, that the Minister breaks alignment with the President, thereby becoming a source rather than a target of criticism. S2, in (2), then narrows the charge of incompetence down from the President to the Minister with a question to which the preferred response is ‘no’: (2) 01 S2 02 03

¿tiene el vicepresidente fundadas esperanzas de que su Ejecutivo o el próximo van a publicar algún día las balanzas fiscales en las metodologías ya determinadas por los expertos?

01 S2 does the Vice President have well-founded expectations that his Executive 02 or the next are going to publish someday the fiscal balances according to 03 procedures agreed by the experts?

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The implicatures in (2) are that the government are incapable of publishing economic figures (‘someday’ (line 02), ‘well-founded expectations’ (line 01)) and that they are unwilling to heed the ‘experts’ (line 03), i.e. they are not experts themselves. Importantly, S2’s implicature that the government’s hopes have not been grounded in fact/reality builds on that contained in ‘serious’ (cf. S1 in (1)). In (3), S2 then reinforces the implicature that the Minister’s position is not serious with his use of the generalisation ‘is surprising’: (3) 15 S2 16

Sorprende su posición, la de su Gobierno, [. . .] Pero aún más sorprende que [. . .]

15 S2 Your position is surprising, that of your government, 16 [. . .] But even more surprising is the fact that [. . .]

The self-correction (line 15) of the referent of the possessive adjective su (‘your’ singular or plural referent) echoes the previous distinction between the Minister as a public person and as a representative of a political grouping. It also creates space for the Minister to break alignment with his party – however improbable. Nevertheless, S2 has managed to coerce the Vice President into two impossible positions or alignments (either in support of the position and consequently a target of criticism; or against it thereby breaking ranks with his party) while at the same time creating an illusion of choice and showing ‘respect’ for the Minister’s ‘negative face’ (Brown and Levinson 1987). S3 builds on these allegations, launching into a series of five rhetorical questions, all inviting the preferred answer ‘no’, a continuation of the rhetorical strategy initiated by S2 in (2). Then, as (4) shows, S4 picks up the allegations about the economy: (4) 01 S4 02 03

En octubre, cuando la tasa interanual se situó en el 3,6, solo fue capaz de decir que suponía una sorpresa para el Gobierno, ya que no se lo esperaban porque pensaban que iba a ser inferior.

01 S4 In October, when the year-on-year rate stood at 3.6, all you could say was 02 that it was a surprise to the government, as they weren’t expecting it 03 because they thought it would be lower.

In line 02, S4 builds on S2’s notion of surprise (cf. (3)). He also implies a charge of incapacity in all other matters through his choice of ‘all you

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could say was’ (line 01). Incompetence is then further implicated in (5) by S5: (5) 01 S5 02 03 04

Cuando más falta hacía fortalecer la radiotelevisión pública estatal se prescinde de 4.150 trabajadores, la mitad de la plantilla, por tener más de 52 años. Señor vicepresidente, bonita forma de apoyar la prolongación de la vida laboral.

01 S5 At a time when there was the greatest need to strengthen the state television 02 service 4150 workers are let go, half of the workforce, on account of being 03 over 52. Mr Vice President, a fine way to support extending 04 working life.

After the impersonalised criticism of those who have made individuals redundant (‘4150 workers are let go’, line 02) on account of their age, the Minister is addressed directly with the implicature that it is the moral duty of the Minister to extend the individual’s working life and, through the ironic statement, ‘a fine way’ (line 03), that he has failed this challenge. S6, as (6) shows, continues in ironic mode: (6) 01 S5 02

Las maravillas y los milagros de una economía que se supone dirige usted [. . .] Los gobiernos son como un pedrisco [. . .] El panorama es desolador.

01 S5 The marvels and miracles of an economy that you supposedly manage [. . .] 02 Governments are like a hailstorm [. . .] The panorama is one of devastation.

S6 implies the Minister’s incompetence in running the economy (‘you supposedly manage’, line 01). This positions the Minister as either someone who should be running the economy but is doing it badly, or as someone who stands by as others make the wrong economic decisions, in clear dereliction of his duty. The ironic use of ‘marvels and miracles’ (line 01), contrasted with the metaphorical charge that the government has inflicted devastating damage on the economy (in this instance, of Ceuta and Melilla), is presented as being akin to that of ‘a hailstorm’ (line 02), thereby heightening the attack on the Minister. Charge 2: lack of action A second thread of attack is against the Minister on account of his lack of action. This starts with S1 in (7):

118 Spanish at Work (7) 01 S1 le hacemos un ruego, señor vicepresidente, supriman ya, a partir de este 02 año o para el próximo, pero ya, la recaudación del impuesto sobre el 03 patrimonio, ya que nosotros entendemos que, si no lo hacen [. . .] 01 02 03

S1 we plead with you, Mr Vice President, to abolish already, this year or next but already, the collection of inheritance tax, as we understand that if you do not do it [. . .]

In (7), S1 implicates a lack of urgency by the repeated use of ‘now’ (lines 01, 02), which foreshadows S2’s charge of ‘someday’ (cf. (2)) with the implicature that publication of reliable figures about the state of the economy is long overdue. The theme of inaction is taken up by S2 in (8): (8) 01 S2 02 03

en este apartado la aguja ni se ha movido. Ustedes mismos prometieron [. . .] Esta ley ha quedado en el cajón del olvido, seguramente en el mismo cajón donde han quedado las balanzas fiscales. [. . .]

01 S2 on this issue the hand hasn’t even moved. You yourselves promised [. . .] 02 This act has remained in the box of forgotten objects, certainly in the same 03 box where the fiscal balances ended up [. . .]

S2 uses two metaphors to accuse the Minister of inaction: a clock that has stopped (line 01) and a box of forgotten objects (line 02), akin to a ‘black hole’. S2 also relates his charge explicitly to Charge 1 (professional incompetence), returning to the twin themes of (unfulfilled) promises (line 01) of ‘fiscal balances’ (line 02). S4, for his part, targets the Minister as person and professional politician with the following: (9) 01 S4 02 03 04 05 06

Se cruza usted de brazos y se limita a esperar. A usted, señor Solbes, le cuadra el lema: ni una mala palabra ni una buena acción. Es posible que en esta legislatura haya sido usted una persona amable, pero su pasividad para frenar los excesos presupuestarios de sus compañeros de gabinete, su inactividad ante las tropelías diseñadas por la teoría económica del presidente [. . .]

01 S4 You cross your arms and are happy to wait. The saying ‘neither a bad 02 word nor a good act’ fits you, Mr Solbes. It is possible that during 03 this legislature you might have been a nice person but your passivity in 04 curbing the budgetary excesses of your cabinet colleagues, your 05 inactivity vis-à-vis the outrages caused by the President’s 06 economic theory [. . .]

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In (9), S4 uses a metaphor (‘you cross your arms’, line 01) for his charge of inaction, at which point the camera switches to a reaction shot of the Minister who has his arms down by his sides.8 S4 also uses a popular saying in lines 01–02 to sum up his criticism: ‘neither a bad word nor a good act’. This follows the timeworn politeness strategy of preceding criticism with attention to positive face (in this case, that the addressee never says a bad word), which S4 echoes (‘nice person’, line 03) in his final direct accusation against the Minister of passivity and inactivity. Here S4 builds on previous attempts at positioning the Minister: the charges of incompetence are aimed at the cabinet and the President; the Minister is targeted for having stood by and allowed these mistakes to be made. He is again indirectly invited to break alignment with a bad government on the grounds that he is potentially a nice person.

Charge 3: lack of transparency The accusations of lack of transparency relate mainly, but not exclusively, to the fiscal balances. The first implicature of lack of transparency is launched by S1, as shown in (10): (10) 01 S1 Lo que sí es realmente cierto es que el señor presidente del Gobierno ha 02 dicho recientemente que había margen suficiente para bajar impuestos 01 S1 What is truly really true is that the President of government recently said 02 that there was a sufficient margin to be able to reduce taxes [. . .]

The use of the hedges ‘really’ and ‘truly’ (line 01), addressing the Gricean maxim of quality, support the implicature that of what the Minister has said little is truthful thus far. In (11) S2, then, presses the issue by implying that President Rodríguez Zapatero has not been entirely open, having advanced spurious reasons not to divulge economic information: (11) 01 S2 Recordará también que, según el señor Zapatero, no se había podido 02 alcanzar una metodología única, aunque la Europa en la que vivimos se 03 inclina por el método de los flujos monetarios [. . .] 01 S2 You will also recall that, according to Mr Zapatero, it had not been 02 possible to agree a single procedure, although the Europe we live in has 03 opted for the method of fiscal flows [. . .]

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S2 also puts these accusations on record in (12), adding the presupposition (‘continue to hide’, line 08) that their modus operandi as well as their transparency is at fault. His parting shot, in lines 10–11, contains the implicature that transparency (sin transparencia, line 10) has been lacking heretofore: (12) 08 S2 09 10 11

Pero aún más sorprende que sigan ocultando los resultados de las balanzas [. . .] Sin transparencia, señor ministro, no hay la más mínima garantía de lealtad [. . .]

08 S2 But it is even more surprising that you/they continue to hide the results of 09 the balances [. . .] 10 Without transparency, Mr Minister, there is not the slightest guarantee of 11 loyalty [. . .]

In (13) S5, for her part, launches an acerbic attack on the government’s alleged complicity with the national broadcasting service: (13) 01 S5 02 03 04 05 06

Señorías, el grado actual de complacencia por el Gobierno por parte de Radiotelevisión Española solo es comparable al número de casos de manipulación o, como ustedes lo llaman, de fallos técnicos, que se cometen y que tienen como destinatario único a la oposición. Hasta dónde habrá llegado la hermandad, fíjense, que Televisión contrata [. . .]

01 S5 Honourable members, the current degree of complacency vis-à-vis the 02 government on the part of the State Broadcasting Authority can only be 03 compared to the number of cases of manipulation, or as you call it, 04 technical error, which are committed and which have as their principal 05 target the opposition. Just how far has the brotherhood that the television 06 employs got to [. . .]

In (13), the government is accused of being economical with the truth. In addition, S5’s use of the noun ‘brotherhood’ evokes religious sects, specifically the Opus Dei, renowned for the lack of transparency in their proceedings. The presupposition here – similar to that contained in ‘continue to hide’ (cf. line 01, (12)) – is that the government hides matters and that there is a ‘charmed inner circle’. The question focuses ostensibly on the extent of these presupposed givens.

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In (14), S6 goes as far as to accuse the President of lying: (14) 01 S6 02 03

Lamentablemente, señor vicepresidente, usted sabe como yo que no son cantidades adicionales, pero entiendo perfectamente que intenten justificar la mentira del presidente del Gobierno [ . . . ]

01 S6 Unfortunately, Mr Vice President, you know like I do that they are not 02 additional sums, but I understand perfectly how you (pl.)/they try to 03 justify the President’s lie [ . . . ]

S6 asks the Minister to break alignment with his head of government and align himself with the opposition’s critique (‘you know like I do’, line 01). This is followed with the use of a verb form (intenten, line 02) that can either include (‘you’ plural) or exclude (third person, plural) the Minister. The Minister is thus either invited to align himself with the President (and his lies, which are presupposed) and those who wish to justify these, or with his very ‘understanding’ questioner (‘Unfortunately’, ‘I understand perfectly’ lines 01, 02), which entails dissociation from the President and those who justify his lies. Charge 4: failure in a personal capacity Towards the end of their contributions, the speakers’ charges target more personal attributes, although they remain clearly entwined with the preceding charges. It is S3, as shown in (15), who mounts this charge, defusing his attack with humour, when he launches an ad hominem assault on the Minister on account of his being boring: (15) 01 S3 02 03 04 05 06

Señor vicepresidente, le reconozco una virtud: con usted baja la tensión de la Cámara. Es deliberadamente soporífero en sus respuestas. Me duerme hasta a mí, que ya tiene mérito. [. . .] Y usted se excusaba diciendo: Yo quería, pero no me han dejado. Ahora vuelve a decir lo mismo: Yo quiero, pero es que el resto de los ministros no me dejan.

01 S3 Mr Vice President, I recognise one virtue in you: with you the tension in 02 the House falls. You are deliberately soporific in your replies. You even 03 send me to sleep and that is some feat. [. . .] 04 And you excused yourself saying: I wanted to, but they didn’t let me. 05 Now you are saying the same again: I want to but the thing is that the 06 other ministers don’t let me.

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S3’s rhetorical strategy of insincere praise in (15) is identical to others’ use of it elsewhere (cf. (1) and (5)). The Minister is credited with the ‘virtue’ (line 01) of having a calming effect on the House. The implicature achieved by the use of the determiner ‘one’ (line 01) is that he has only that virtue. S3 further implicates that the Minister achieves this positive effect on purpose, for his answers are ‘deliberately soporific’ (line 02). His hyperbolic coda (‘You even send me to sleep and that is some feat’, lines 02–03) completes the rhetorical effect of bathos.9 In lines 04–06, S3 targets the Minister’s lack of personal courage and authority. He positions the Minister as someone of good intentions (‘I wanted to’, line 04, prefiguring the reference to ‘nice person’ (cf. line 08 in (9)), but without the drive or authority to follow these through. This accusation presupposes that the Minister has done something which merits an apology (‘you excused yourself’, line 04). It then builds on this positioning by implicating that while the Minister is aware of what he and the government have done wrong, he is impotent to affect it and merely does what he is told to do. It also builds on the positioning of the Minister by other speakers as someone who could have broken alignment with the government in the interests of the common good (as seen by the opposition). In (16), S4 effectively builds on the twin themes of the Minister’s lack of ability to understand reality and to provide effective ministerial replies. He also continues by positioning the Minister as someone whose replies, nonetheless, pale into insignificance compared to his failure to engage in any meaningful action. To these criticisms, S6 adds the more personal charges of a lack of courage and of authority (line 04) and finally holds him personally responsible for the alleged economic plight affecting millions of Spaniards (lines 05–06): (16) 01 S6 02 03 04 05 06

Señor vicepresidente, usted no tiene más remedio que reconocer que se le ha ido la inflación de las manos. Sus declaraciones al respecto en los últimos meses han sido patéticas. [ . . . ] Su falta de coraje o peso político para plantear reformas estructurales de alcance son factores que han contribuido a que [. . .] Y de todo eso es usted el responsable.

01 S6 Mr Vice President, you have no alternative than to recognise that you 02 have lost your grip over inflation. Your declarations on this subject over 03 recent months have been pathetic [ . . . ] 04 Your lack of courage or political clout to bring in wide-ranging structural 05 reforms are factors that have contributed to [. . .] And for all that you are 06 the one who is responsible.]

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Finally, S6 also adopts the same rhetorical strategy of seeming to praise before proceeding to attack. His intervention in (17) comes just after the Minister had left the Chamber, wrongly believing that question time for him had finished, and had to return to answer a final question. (17) 01 S6 02 03

La verdad, señor vicepresidente, no me esperaba la respuesta de un caballero como usted, hasta ahora, a una señora como la señora Montesinos [. . .]

01 S6 In truth, Mr Vice President, I was not expecting the answer from a 02 gentleman like you, up until now, to a lady like Mrs 03 Montesinos [. . .]

This attack on the comportment of the Minister, contingent on presenting him as ‘a gentleman’ who should know how to behave, is developed further by S6 in (18): (18) 01 S6 02 03

Lamento, señor vicepresidente, retenerle en el mundo de los mortales y que no pueda volver a su Olimpo, pero no me queda más remedio que realizarle la pregunta. [. . .]

01 S6 I am sorry Mr Vice President, to retain you in the world of the mortals and 02 prevent you from returning to your Olympus, but I have no alternative 03 but to ask you [. . .]

From a ‘gentleman’ in (17), in (18) he becomes through the ironic use of metaphor, an immortal deity (line 02). This imagery is continued through a sustained bout of criticism summed up in ‘The marvels and miracles of an economy that you supposedly manage’ (cf. line 01, (6)), which started to move the image into a biblical or even fairy-tale domain. It builds on the theme of detachment from reality, which has been jointly constructed in the course of the questions. Until now, my analysis has focused on how different speakers coconstruct and perform an attack on the Minister in terms of interactive positioning. In the remainder of this section, I consider the reflexive or self-positioning of these speakers insofar as it contributes to further position the Minister. Thus, for instance, in (19), S2 precedes his charges of inaction as follows: (19) 01 S2

Señor ministro, fin de curso; es hora de hacer balance y poner notas [. . .]

01 S2 Minister, end of lesson; it’s time to weigh things up and give marks [. . .]

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As well as interactively positioning the Minister as a schoolboy for whom the time of reckoning has arrived, S2 reflexively positions himself as the schoolmaster, an authority figure capable of such assessment. This is continued by S3, who similarly positions the Minister as an errant child and himself as the authority figure. S3’s use of rhetorical question and answer routines is in fact reminiscent of the didactic environment of the schoolroom and serves to strengthen the projection of asymmetrical power between him and the Minister, as illustrated in (20): (20) 01 S3 02

¿Sabe a qué lleva eso, señor vicepresidente? A que ahora la confianza de los consumidores, la confianza de los inversores está peor que nunca [. . .]

01 S3 Do you know what that leads to, Mr Vice President? To consumer 02 confidence, investor confidence being lower than ever [. . .]

Together with the four charges outlined above, these projected parent/child, teacher/pupil identities combine to delegitimise the Minister. What we have here, I would argue, is a jointly constructed and performed attack by six individuals, who build on each other’s interventions through shared lexis, imagery, implicatures/presuppositions and rhetorical strategies.

Resisting positioning How does the Minister respond to this concerted attempt at positioning? He disagrees in ‘off-record’ (Brown and Levinson 1987) fashion with the premise of the rhetorical questions seeking to demonstrate that the economy is not performing as well as claimed, as (21) illustrates: (21) 01 M 02

Si usted está de acuerdo conmigo en que [. . .] yo creo que mi afirmación es correcta. [. . .]

01 M If you agree with me that [. . .] I think that my statement is 02 correct. [. . .]

The implicature in (21) is that one cannot both agree with the Minister and argue at the same time that the economy is performing badly. The

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questioner is thereby offered two positions: either he agrees and the starting premise of his own argument is demolished; or he disagrees and has to dispute the veracity or relevance of the figures offered. This allows the Minister to assert blandly that he is correct (with the implicature that his opponent is not). After S3’s second intervention, in which he accused the Minister of ‘sins of omission which are as serious as those of commission’, the latter uses in (22) a rhetorical strategy that already has been marshalled against him: prefacing his remarks with a clearly false belief. (22) 01 M 02 03 04

Yo creo que ha estado bien que yo no haya tenido capacidad de ejercer mi responsabilidad, porque eso nos ha permitido que [list of achievements] Posiblemente esto es consecuencia de la inacción. Acción es seguramente el problema de [. . .]

01 M I think that it was very well that I did not have the capacity to carry out my 02 responsibilities, because that allowed us to [list of achievements] 03 Possibly that is a consequence of inaction. Action is certainly 04 the problem of [. . .]

The Minister’s strategy is to embrace the criticism as made and to adumbrate a series of achievements which he imputes ironically to his ‘inaction’ (line 03). He then moves to position his critic(s) by the same criterion: it is action (and by implicature the wrong action by the opposition party) that has caused a series of problems to which he alludes (lines 03–04). In (23), the Minister fields the question ‘Does the government intend to take any measures to control price chaos?’ thus: (23) 01 M 02 03 04 05 06

Yo no sé qué entiende usted por descontrol de precios. Si descontrol de precios es tener precios [. . .] ustedes tuvieron descontrol en noviembre del año 2000 [. . .] Y hubiéramos agradecido mucho que, dentro de sus múltiples actuaciones del pasado, [. . .] también se hubieran preocupado del consumo energético, [+ list]

01 M I don’t know what you mean by prices being out of control. If prices being 02 out of control is having prices [ . . . ] you had prices out of control in 03 November 2000 [. . .] 04 And we would have been very grateful if, as part of your/their multiple 05 activities in the past, [. . .] you/they had also attended to energy 06 consumption [+ list]

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As can be seen, the Minister tackles the presupposition first that prices are out of control (lines 01–02) and then goes on to imply that the previous government failed to tackle inflation in the past (as it ‘had prices out of control in November 2000’, lines 02–03). He then returns to the charge of inaction, ironically pointing out certain omissions in the ‘very active’ legislature of his predecessors (lines 04–06). The Minister’s response again adopts the rhetorical strategy of appearing to praise before sinking the knife. On another occasion, see (24), the Minister exposes his opponent’s pre-prepared strategy designed to attack him and then deflects the attack away from his person onto the facts which ‘speak for themselves’: (24) 01 M 02 03 04 05 06 07

Muchas gracias, señor Arias, por la elegancia y el buen tono que usted utiliza para leerme la retahíla de críticas que ustedes han decidido desarrollar contra mí. Pero volvamos a los datos. Dice usted que la inflación está muy mal. Bueno, ¿le gusta, por ejemplo, la inflación subyacente? ¿Sabe usted cuál es el diferencial de inflación subyacente con Europa en estos momentos? El 0,7. ¿Cuál era en el año 2003? ¿Se acuerda usted? El 1,1. No, no haga así con los brazos.

01 M Many thanks, Mr Arias, for the elegance and fine tone which you have 02 used to read out to me the list of criticisms which you (pl.) have decided 03 to marshal against me. But let’s return to the facts. You state that inflation 04 is very bad. Well, do you like, for example, the underlying rate of 05 inflation? Do you know what the differential with Europe in the 06 underlying rate of inflation is at the moment? 0.7. What was it in 2003? Do 07 you remember? 1.1. No, don’t do that with your arms.

A skilled politician, in (24) the Minister is also able to allude, in a throwaway remark, to the criticism made of him by the same hearer of inaction (‘You cross your arms’, line 01 (9)) and turn it back on the speaker (again, used figuratively as he is shown by the camera to have his arms by his sides, line 07). He is also able to adopt the didactic positioning that has been used against him: now it is the questioner who is positioned as a learner (lines 04–05) and, by implicature, the one with a poor memory (lines 06–07). In the following response, the Minister is alert to another charge – this time, a personal lack of political courage: (25) 01 M 02 03

Hay una frase que ya he utilizado una vez en el Senado y que no creía que tendría ocasión de volver a utilizar en esta legislatura, pero oyéndola, no tengo más remedio que volverlo a hacer. Corresponde a un amigo mío, ex

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comisario en Bruselas, como yo, que en una reunión de la Comisión, después de una intervención también vigorosa, como la suya, dijo: En esta Comisión hace falta mucho valor para decir ciertas cosas, pero muchas veces hace falta mucho más valor para oír otras.

01 M There is a phrase that I used once in the Senate and I didn’t think that I 02 would ever have the opportunity to use it in this legislature, but listening to 03 you, I have no alternative but to use it again. It belongs to a friend of 04 mine, a former commissioner in Brussels, like me, who in a meeting at the 05 Commission, after what was also a vigorous contribution like your own, 06 said: In this Commission you need a lot of courage to say some things, but 07 often one needs even more courage to hear others.

What is interesting is that M’s response does not come as a reply to S4 (who has accused him of a lack of coraje (‘courage’), an obvious lexical synonym of valor). Rather, it comes after S5, who has accused him of the government’s alleged control over the State Television Service. The Minister’s response (line 05) positions this speaker as someone of authority (i.e. with experience of the Senate and the Commission). He also quotes both an authoritative source and himself, attributes to S5 potential praise in his reference to a ‘vigorous intervention’ (line 05) and then uses an off-record strategy that allows multiple implicatures. He may be patronising his hearer by recognising her ‘bravery’ in making certain accusations against him and his government; he may be implicating (scalar implicature) that this degree of bravery is not enough for what he suggests is really needed: self-criticism rather than othercriticism. There are clear echoes of his adversaries’ attacks when he uses the phrase ‘I have no alternative’ (line 03), with the implicature that the opposition are in need of his advice. Finally, (26) offers an illustrative example of how the Minister deals with the twin accusations of lack of transparency and lack of personal qualities: (26) 01 M 02 03 04 05

Supongo que la referencia a las mentiras del presidente del Gobierno y a Zapatero el breve son consecuencia de su buena educación. A partir de ahí vayamos a los datos. [. . .] Por tanto, no comprendo su pregunta ni tampoco su afirmación de que el presidente mintió. El que ha mentido ha sido hoy usted.

01 M I suppose that the reference to the President’s lies and to Zapatero the 02 Short-lived are a result of your good upbringing. So let’s go to the facts. 03 [. . .] Consequently, I do not understand your question or 04 your statement that the President lied. The one who has lied today is 05 you.

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M’s ironic reference to the ‘good upbringing’ (line 02) of his addressee is arguably a response to the implicated accusation of his failure to be a ‘gentleman’ (cf. line 02 (17)). The implicature contained in the consequential link (‘So’, line 03), which contravenes the Gricean maxim of relevance, could well be that he does not consider these accusations to be grounded, in contradistinction to the hard ‘facts’ which he then proceeds to supply in abundance. The Minister then rejects the criticisms ‘bald on record’ (Brown and Levinson 1987) and turns the accusation of lack of transparency back on his hearer (lines 04–05). Throughout this section, we have seen how Minister Solbes deals economically with each of the criticisms levelled against him, largely by accepting them at supposed face value and reinterpreting them as assets or by turning them back on the questioner. Through the linguistic strategies identified above, he seeks to position himself reflexively as authoritative (appealing to his possession of hard facts and experience). This is even the case where he falsely accepts the positioning offered him by his opponents as ‘inactive’ and proceeds to reinterpret this as a positive asset. Simultaneously, he seeks to position his hearers interactively as not in possession of the facts, nor indeed of any of the personal qualities they have accused him of lacking.

Conclusions The analysis in this chapter has shown how a group of speakers in the Spanish Lower House used positioning in their struggle for interactional advantage, as part of weaponry designed to (mis-)represent, delegitimise and coerce their opponents. Four main charges against Minister Solbes have been identified, each being realised through a series of, at times overlapping, linguistic devices. Charge 1 (incompetence) is constructed on the basis of false apologies, implicatures, use of inclusive first person plural, ambivalence of target, rhetorical questions and use of irony. The linguistic devices used in relation to Charge 2 (lack of action) comprise implicature, metaphor, false praise and lexical choice, specifically the use of lexis of passivity. The linguistic devices used in relation to Charge 3 (lack of transparency) include implicature, connotation, offering alternative alignments and presupposition. And the linguistic devices used regarding Charge 4 (being boring) include false praise/bathos, presupposition, deictic shift and irony. Importantly, my analysis has shown that positioning of Minister Solbes evolves dynamically and is co-constructed and performed in the course of interaction, with successive speakers building collaboratively

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on previous interventions to orchestrate a joint attack. There is an unspoken agreement between the members of the opposition as to the grounds on which the Minister can most easily be delegitimised and on which rhetorical strategies shared by the House can most effectively be marshalled in order to compromise him. Finally, the analysis has revealed how an individual speaker, in this case the Minister himself, can work to resist positionings into which he is coerced by his adversaries and reproject these positions in the course of interaction. I have shown how these positions are created through lexical choice, imagery, implicatures and presuppositions, and through rhetorical strategies, all of which are linguistic resources used repeatedly by the participants in this particular CofP as part of their jointly negotiated enterprise and a shared repertoire of negotiable resources accumulated over time.

Notes 1. Similar work into representation in parliamentary debate can be found, for example, in Iñigo-Mora (2007) and Laborda Gil (2000). 2. From a perspective very similar to the one I adopt here, Koike and Graham (2006) have examined electoral candidates’ co-construction of identities designed to appeal to their potential electorate in terms of their perceptions of what the electorate’s perceptions might be. 3. As the transcripts, although broadly very accurate, occasionally edit the speech for the purposes of a written record, I have checked the transcript against the original at all points. 4. For a similar approach within a different institutional setting, see Lorenzo-Dus (2007). 5. http://www.congreso.es/portal/page/portal/Congreso/Congreso/Informacion/ Funci (last accessed August 2009). 6. Translation of all extracts are the author’s. U is used to mark usted address. 7. ‘The essential concept behind the scalar and clausal implicatures is the notion of a contrast set, of linguistic expressions in salient contrast, which differ in formativeness’ (Levinson, 2000: 35–6). 8. Chilton (2004: 97) identifies gestures in parliamentary speech as ‘probably of fundamental importance’. So too can be the stance of the addressee or audience; ‘reaction shots’ frequently form part of the broadcast event. 9. ‘An unintentional lapse in mood from the absurd to the trivial; a commonplace or ridiculous feature offsetting an otherwise sublime situation’ (Oxford Compact English Dictionary 1996: 77).

10 Political Implicature in Parliamentary Discourse: an Analysis of Mariano Rajoy’s Speech on the 2006 Catalan Statute of Autonomy David Atkinson

Introduction The focus of this chapter is a speech made on 2 November 2005 by Mariano Rajoy, leader of Spain’s Partido Popular (henceforth PP), during the parliamentary debate on the then draft Catalan Statute of Autonomy, a proposed replacement for the statute ratified in 1979. I have chosen to analyse this particular speech for two reasons. The first is its key importance in the parliamentary debate of one of the most highly publicised and contentious pieces of legislation approved by the Spanish Parliament in this decade – the Statute of Autonomy for Catalonia that came into force in 2006. The second reason is that it illustrates the construction of in-groups and out-groups within the institutional activity type (cf. Chapter 7) of parliamentary speeches in Spain. My aim, however, is not just to describe the rhetorical construction of these groups in the speech selected but also to offer an explanation of this construction by means of van Dijk’s (2005b) concept of political implicature. Clearly, in democratic political systems, parliamentary debates are a key component of the process of ‘doing politics’ and, as such, an important source of data for analysis of political discourse. As van Dijk furthermore argues, access to privileged social resources by elites is a fundamental aspect of the power wielded by politicians through ‘preferential access to the mass media and public discourse’ (2006: 362). This has become increasingly true of parliamentary debates in recent years in Spain through their television coverage and the availability of parliamentary speeches on the 130

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Internet. Moreover, parliamentary debates are highly performative in the sense that their results can lead to concrete action including, as in this case, legislation that affects people’s daily lives. I will first contextualise Rajoy’s speech, summarising its content and highlighting some of its most relevant features for further analytic purpose. I will then introduce the theoretical approach adopted in this chapter, namely critical discourse analysis (CDA), and analyse illustrative extracts from the speech. Although this analysis will be informed by a number of strands in CDA, including Fairclough’s (2000) textually oriented approach and Wodak et al.’s (1999) socio-historical methods, particular emphasis will be placed on van Dijk’s (e.g. 1998, 2005b) socio-cognitive orientation.

The 2006 Catalan Statute of Autonomy The current Spanish Constitution was ratified in 1978. It allowed provision for a semi-devolved structure of the Spanish state and 17 comunidades autónomas (autonomous communities/regions) were subsequently established. The first region to become autonomous, in 1979, was the ‘historical autonomy’ of Catalonia. The 1979 Statute of Autonomy, though, never satisfied all political constituencies in Catalonia (see e.g. Guibernau 2004). From the end of the ‘transition to democracy’ in around 1984, pressure for a new statute steadily grew in Catalonia, particularly once the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) won the Spanish general election in 2004 and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero became Prime Minister. At that point former Prime Minister José María Aznar was replaced by Mariano Rajoy as leader of the PP opposition.1 A first draft of a new Statute of Autonomy for Catalonia was approved by 90 per cent of the Catalan Parliament in September 2005.2 In accordance with Spanish legislation, the draft then required approval by a majority of the central Spanish Parliament before it could be submitted to referendum in Catalonia. On 2 November 2005 the Spanish Parliament approved the first reading of the draft by 197 to 146 votes. In line with its overall ideology to oppose moves towards greater autonomy for any of the autonomous regions, all of the ‘no’ votes came from the PP. The PP appealed to the Constitutional Court on grounds of the putative unconstitutionality of the draft insofar as it described Catalonia as a nation. During the process of ratification, considerable controversy raged over the issue of nationhood (the compromise reached for the final version of the text was that the word ‘nation’ would appear in the preamble but not in the main body of the text).3 The referendum in

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Catalonia was successful in June 2006 and the new statute came into effect in August of that year. Rajoy’s speech At the beginning of his 2 November speech Rajoy emphasised that his intention was to focus ‘objectively’ on the content of the draft statute itself rather than its ‘origin’. He said, for example: ‘Mis criterios son coherentemente constantes y se defienden sin acepción de origen o colores [. . .] Quiero hacer abstracción de todo lo que no sea el texto desnudo, la proposición de ley en sí misma. Quiero examinarlo a la luz de sus propios méritos sin más ayuda que la razón’ (6176).4 (‘My criteria are coherently consistent, without any reference to origin or flags [. . .] I want to leave aside anything other than the actual text of the bill itself. I want to examine it in the light of its own merits, with only the help of reason.’) Furthermore, he expressly stated that he did not intend to engage in positive or negative evaluation of any (ethnolinguistic) groups of people: ‘me propongo hacer abstracción de cuál sea origen del Estatuto y de quienes hayan sido sus creadores. De este modo ganamos en objetividad y despejamos la mesa de catalanismos y anticatalanismos’ (6176). (‘I intend to leave aside the origin of the Statute and whoever created it. In this way we gain objectivity and clear the table of catalanisms and anti-catalanisms.’) In light of this insistence on a ‘reasoned’ analysis of the content of the draft, it is interesting to note that Rajoy’s speech contained no explicit reference to any of the more than 200 clauses in the draft statute. Nor did it include any verbatim quotation from it. Thus, although Rajoy made extended reference to issues such as the PSOE’s motivation for supporting the draft, he said very little about its actual content. Instead, his arguments were at a very general level and can be largely captured in the four assertions below: 1. The draft was not a reform of a statute of autonomy because it was anticonstitutional. It was anticonstitutional because it ‘define a Cataluña como nación y a España como un Estado plurinacional’ (‘define Catalonia as a nation and Spain as a plurinational state’) and because ‘el concepto constitucional de nación está indisolublemente unido a la soberanía’ (6179) (‘the constitutional concept of nation cannot be separated from sovereignty’. 2. The draft was not amenable to amendment because ‘la inconstitucionalidad impregna todo el texto’ (6177) (‘unconstitutionality pervades the whole text’).

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3. The draft was based on a malentendido (‘misunderstanding’; this word was repeated five times), which made it incorregible (6178) (‘impossible to correct’) without, paradoxically, rejecting it outright. 4. The draft was anachronistic and retrograde because it embraced ‘los valores del nacionalismo, es decir, con las prebendas del antiguo régimen, con las ideas que combatieron la Ilustración, la Revolución norteamericana de 1776, la Revolución francesa y, entre nosotros, las Cortes de Cádiz’ (6180) (‘the values of nationalism, that is, with the privileges of the ancien régime, with the ideas fought against by the Enlightenment, the North American Revolution of 1776, the French Revolution and, among ourselves, the Cadiz Cortes’. In effect, apart from unexplained references to ‘pre-Enlightenment values’ and the claim that the draft could only be ‘corrected’ by being ‘rejected’, Rajoy’s argument rested on the putative unconstitutionality of the text, the basis of his Party’s aforementioned appeal to the Constitutional Court. Detailed analysis of this argument lies beyond the scope of this chapter, but it is anyway the case that in Rajoy’s speech the actual argument was not developed any further than the position that the draft was by definition unconstitutional because it used the term nación to refer to Catalonia. This seems to be the extent of the ‘argumentative construction’ (in Pujante and Morales López’s 2008 sense) present in the speech. Given the above, the following questions arise: If Rajoy’s speech did not focus on the content of the draft statute, what did it do discursively? And why did Rajoy claim so emphatically that the purpose of his speech was to do something that he did not do? These questions can be productively addressed from a CDA perspective by focusing on the ways in which Rajoy evoked and presented in-groups and out-groups (cf. Chapter 7) throughout his speech.

Theoretical framework and approach to the data Rajoy’s speech under discussion here was given during Sesión plenaria número 117 of the VIII Legislatura. This was a key juncture in the trajectory of the draft of the statute and the speech is Rajoy’s main contribution to that debate. The speech runs from page 6175 to page 6181 of the transcript of the debate and accounts for 6700 of the total of 84,000 words that the debate comprised.5 My analysis will focus on a selection of representative extracts from the speech. These relate to the notions of political implicature and we-they groups, to which I next turn.

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In an analysis of characteristic extracts of a key speech by former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar, van Dijk (2005b) makes use of the concept of political implicatures. These are of a pragmatic rather than a semantic nature, in that ‘they are specifically based on the political context’ (2005: 69). They are about what hearers are invited to infer, above and beyond what is actually said, based on their ‘relevant political knowledge of the current political situation’ (2005: 70). For van Dijk, their importance lies in the fact that [l]ater commentary in the media on parliamentary debates often precisely focuses on these tacit political implicatures of such debates. Political implicatures explain what and why political participants say the things they do. They define the fundamental point of parliamentary debates in the first place, such as ‘doing’ government and ‘doing’ opposition, and more generally the institutional and political power play enacted in parliaments. (2005: 70, italics in original) Van Dijk’s analysis of political implicatures, as opposed to simply analysing employment of rhetorical devices, is very useful in explaining Aznar’s extensive use of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation. For example, Aznar’s detailed explanations (rhetorical facticity) of how many times he and others had appeared before Parliament to explain the government’s position is elucidated in terms of the political implicature that Aznar is punctilious in his observation of the democratic process. For van Dijk, this implicature has to be understood by reference to the political situation at the time, where Aznar had been heavily criticised for making little effort to explain or justify his party’s policies on Iraq. A similar approach to van Dijk (2005b) is helpful in examining what Rajoy actually does in his speech and why he insists that he is doing something else. My hypothesis is that it is on the basis of the ‘now-forme relevant properties of the situation’ (van Dijk 2005b: 68) that Rajoy sets out to construct ‘political identities, roles, goals, actions and beliefs’ (2005: 69) as part of the process of ‘doing opposition’. As discussed in Chapter 7, positive self-presentation of ‘us’ and negative other-presentation of ‘them’ are very frequent – and very frequently discussed – strategies in political discourse. Depending on the data, analysts sometimes see the respective in- and out-groups as discursively quite clearly defined by speakers. This is true to a considerable extent of van Dijk’s (2005b) analysis of Aznar’s speech. Indeed van Dijk (2005b: 68) points out that, in the case of much of the political discourse

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relating to the September 11 attacks in the USA, ‘We represent the western democracies that fight against terrorism or “rogue states”, and They are the terrorists or states that threaten us, in our case specifically Saddam Hussein.’6 Similarly, in their analysis of another Aznar speech made during the same period, Pujante and Morales-López (2008: 82) observe that plural person deixis serves to symbolically draw up two spaces: namely us (the international community under the tutelage of the UN, the Government, Spain, the Spanish population and the group of Spaniards deployed in Iraq, which includes soldiers, diplomats and members of nongovernment organisations), against them (terrorists anywhere in the world). In Rajoy’s speech, as my analysis will show, the groups to which he refers are not always so clearly defined. Rather, there is evidence of strategic blurring and vagueness as regards the construction of in-groups and out-groups, which I contend is fundamental in generating the political implicatures of the speech.

Political implicatures in Rajoy’s speech Throughout his speech Rajoy employs a battery of well-documented rhetorical techniques for the purpose of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation. These serve the purpose of generating a number of political implicatures, of which two in particular stand out: (i) The PP is not anti-Catalan and (ii) The PP is the true embodiment of the spirit of democratic Spain. Neither of these is stated explicitly, yet they both address highly salient aspects of the political context at the time of the speech and, indeed, throughout the post-Franco (post-1975) period in Spain. The PP, or at least elements within it, have been suspected – and indeed accused – of centralist nationalism and ideological sympathy with the Franco dictatorship. As Pujante and Morales-López (2008) argue, the party’s ideological axis has tended to shift according to both its electoral aspirations and results, as is the case of many political parties. In the early 1990s it employed a strategic shift to the centre (from the right) in order to secure a majority victory in the 1996 Spanish general election. Subsequently, the party’s second general election victory in 2000 was achieved with an absolute majority. The party’s absolute domination of government in the light of this result obviated the need for any pacts with other parties and as a result of this, as

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Pujante and Morales-López put it, ‘Aznar initiated a move back towards the position his party had traditionally held, resulting in a return to Spanish nationalism’ (2008: 86, their italics). At the time of Rajoy’s speech in 2005, the PP was newly in opposition after eight years in power. This loss was widely attributed to the PP’s systematic attempt to blame ETA for the March 2004 train bombings in Madrid, despite rapidly accumulating evidence at the time that the bombings were in fact conducted by a group motivated by a radical jihadist ideology. The post-2004 scenario, and specifically the issue of the Catalan statute, thus presented Rajoy’s PP with a dilemma. On the one hand, opposition to the statute would serve the purpose of distancing the PP from the governing PSOE party and would help to reaffirm the PP’s credentials with the majority of the Spanish electorate, who tend to distrust ‘regionalist’ initiatives such as statutes of autonomy. On the other hand, overt ‘anti-Catalanism’ could well prove counterproductive. Additionally, there was a need, in the aftermath of the loss of credibility occasioned by the PP’s reaction to the Madrid bombings, to reassert the party’s credibility as a standard-bearer of democratic values. Certainly, the two political implicatures described above are not the only ones which Rajoy made in this speech. Exhaustive analysis of all of the political implicatures in a major contribution to a parliamentary debate would require ‘hundreds of pages of detailed description’ (van Dijk 2005b: 71). However, given the political context I have described, these two are particularly central to the purpose of shedding light on the nature and purpose of Rajoy’s discourse. I will now analyse the ways in which the construction and representation of in-groups and out-groups contributed to the realisation of these implicatures.

Positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation Two aspects of Rajoy’s positive self-presentation stand out particularly in respect of the political implicatures at issue: his strategic alignment with the people of Catalonia and his self-construction as an actor in the political process. In the first case, as illustrated in an earlier example from the beginning of his speech, he claims that by focusing on the content of the draft, rather than its origins or creators, ‘we gain objectivity and clear the table of Catalanisms and Anti-Catalanisms’ (6176). His use of first person plural deixis here and of the ‘clearing the table’ metaphor suggest that ethnolinguistic bias is a potential pitfall for any constituency involved in the debate and that he, as the leader of the

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PP, is assuming the initiative in his speech to ensure that no such bias sullies the debate. Immediately prior to this, Rajoy has already made his most extensive claim in the speech to empathy with Catalans, which is reproduced in (1): (1) (6176) 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15

Que nadie interprete estas palabras como que soy insensible al fuerte sentido identitario de la población de Cataluña. De ninguna manera. Lo reconozco y lo admiro, como me ocurre con todas las regiones españolas. ¿Hay alguna que no muestre una historia milenaria y un amor reverencial por su personalidad? Yo no doy la espalda a los sentimientos de los catalanes. Me importan mucho sus sentimientos y sus intereses, lo que ocurre es que mi atención no se restringe a los catalanes nacionalistas. Yo me preocupo por todos los catalanes. Por cierto, señorías, no quiero seguir adelante sin repetir algo que viene al caso. Yo no estoy de acuerdo con quienes boicotean productos catalanes. Ni los catalanes en general, ni los empresarios y trabajadores de Cataluña en particular, son responsables de los desaguisados que puedan cometer sus políticos, del mismo modo que los españoles no somos responsables de los desvaríos de nuestros gobernantes. (Aplausos.) Quien boicotea un producto catalán comete una injusticia y además incurre en un error porque alimenta a quienes buscan excusas para atizar el fuego del enfrentamiento y la ruptura.

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15

Nobody should interpret these words to mean that I am insensitive to the strong sense of identity of the population of Catalonia. Not at all. I recognise it and admire it, as I do in the case of all the regions of Spain. Is there any of these regions which does not have a thousand years of history and a reverential love for its own personality? I do not turn my back on the feelings of the Catalans. Their feelings and their concerns are very important to me, but my attention is not restricted to nationalist Catalans. I am concerned about all Catalans. By the way, members of the House, before continuing I want to repeat something particularly relevant here. I don’t agree with people who boycott Catalan products. Neither Catalans in general, nor Catalan businesspeople or workers specifically, are responsible for whatever messes their politicians might create, just as we Spaniards are not responsible for the ravings of our leaders (applause). Anyone who boycotts a Catalan product commits an injustice and also makes an error because by doing so they encourage those who look for excuses to stoke the fire of confrontation and conflict.

The nature of the empathy to which Rajoy refers in (1) is shown through the way in which he skilfully imposes on Catalans a very particular vision of their identity. He does so by means of the subordinate clause in the third sentence, ‘as I do in the case of all the regions of Spain’ (line 03), and the rhetorical question which follows: ‘Is there any of these regions which does not have a thousand years of history and a reverential love for its own personality?’ (lines 03–04). To call Catalonia a región

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española, as opposed to one of the many other terms available to those who, like Rajoy, dispute its status as a nation (for example the legislatively accurate comunidad autónoma), would be likely seen as gratuitously provocative by many Catalans. These strategies, therefore, constitute a discursive counterpoint to the way in which Rajoy introduces his ‘sensitivity’ (line 02) to the issue in that he manages to construct Catalonia as just another region of Spain – a highly contentious construction for many both within and beyond Catalonia. Rajoy’s putative empathy is then emphasised further by one of five instances of metaphors of ‘turning one’s back’ in the speech. All of the other instances focus on the proponents of the draft statute ‘turning their backs’ on the Constitution, thus heightening the contrast with Rajoy’s claim not to turn his back on the feelings of the Catalans. The marked, contrastive yo at the beginning of both the sentence containing the metaphor (line 04) and the next two sentences (lines 07–08), then, highlight Rajoy’s claim to empathise with all Catalans, as opposed to an implicit other, whose empathy is selective. Rajoy then stakes further claim to solidarity with all Catalans by emphasising, via an unspecified intertextual allusion (‘before continuing I want to repeat’, lines 07–08), his repeated opposition to the boycotting of Catalan products. The discursive distinction that Rajoy then makes between Catalans and their politicians (lines 08–15) is interesting not just because of its populism (cf. Chapter 7) but also because, at that stage, the draft statute had received the approval of all political parties in Catalonia except the PP. Rajoy’s populist appeal is intensified by his use of first person plural deixis, which distinguishes between ‘we the Spanish’ and, through the use of nuestros (‘our’), politicians. Paradoxically given his status, he discursively excludes himself from this latter group. In addition to constructing himself as empathetic to the concerns of Catalan people, Rajoy also devotes considerable effort throughout his speech to claiming punctilious respect for democratic processes and dispassionate behaviour. Thus, for example, in (1), lines 12–15, he talks about his ‘moderation’ in condemning those who boycott Catalan products. Another, even more explicit instance of Rajoy’s positive self-presentation occurs towards the beginning of his speech and is reproduced in (2): (2) (6175) 01 02

Cuando alguien agita el agua suele ocurrir que el agua no se está quieta. La culpa no es del agua, señorías, sino de quien la mueve y tampoco

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03 04 05 06 07 08 09

tiene la culpa quien discrepa, sino quien propone lo que no debe. Yo no voy a mover el agua. Mi deseo es que celebremos un debate serio, sin prejuicios y sin vehemencias. Me he propuesto no pronunciar una palabra más alta que otra (Rumores.), no excitar emociones ni dañar sentimientos. Voy a ser muy respetuoso con el texto aprobado mayoritariamente en el Parlamento de Cataluña. Muy respetuoso.

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09

When someone shakes up water, the water tends not to remain calm. That isn’t the water’s fault, members of the House, but rather the fault of the person who disturbs the water. Nor is it the fault of anyone who disagrees, but rather that of the person who proposes something they shouldn’t. I am not going to stir up the water. I want us to conduct a serious debate, without prejudices or vehemence. I have no intention of raising my voice (murmurs), of arousing strong emotions or of hurting anyone’s feelings. I am going to be very respectful of the text endorsed by a majority of the Catalan Parliament. Very respectful.

Rajoy’s ‘shaking up the water’ metaphor in (2) marks a clear discursive boundary between the ‘someone’ (line 01) who seeks to stir things up and himself, whose sole interest is in having a serious debate on the draft Catalan statute (line 05). The effect of this discursive boundary is further enhanced by his explicit affiliation to a debate ‘without prejudices or vehemence’ (lines 05–06) – the aim of which is not one of ‘arousing strong emotions or of hurting anyone’s feelings’ (lines 06–07). Rajoy also emphasises his ostensible moderation through repetition of the adjective ‘respectful’ (lines 08 and 09), on both occasions preceded by the intensifier ‘very’. His use of the non-specific pronoun ‘someone’ in (2), moreover, is the culmination of Rajoy’s use of rhetorical anaphora, which began with a number of prior comments, such as: Alguien se ha esforzado para agitar los ánimos, Alguien ha estado alentando los excesos (‘Someone has set out to stir up feelings’, ‘Someone has been encouraging excesses’) (6175), and Y alguien [. . .] condena, Alguién ha comprometido su futuro personal (‘And someone [. . .] condemns’, ‘Someone has compromised their personal future’) (6175). The strong suggestion in these examples is that the referent of ‘someone’ is Zapatero. Rajoy’s choice of a non-specific pronoun illustrates his use throughout the speech of negative other-presentation where the ‘other’ is not precisely defined. But Rajoy also takes considerable care to assign this ‘other’ a number of quite particular characteristics, which relate to the second main political implicature in the speech: the PP is the true embodiment of the spirit of democratic Spain. This implicature is partly generated through Rajoy’s construction of himself as the ‘voice of moderate reason’, as seen

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in (2). It is also generated through the construction of the ‘other’ as the antithesis of that spirit. Consider (3): (3) 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08

En ese caso, por primera vez en la historia de nuestra democracia, puede ocurrir que un Estatuto de autonomía se apruebe de espaldas al consenso constitucional. Si yo estuviera en el lugar del señor Rodríguez Zapatero, lo pensaría despacio antes de dar ese salto en el vacío. Y ya les adelanto que el Grupo Parlamentario Popular, en coherencia con todo lo dicho, no está dispuesto a servir de coartada en este fraude ni a legitimar la ilegalidad. No vamos a secundar la aventura del señor Rodríguez Zapatero, pero tampoco nos vamos a desentender.

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08

In that case, for the first time in the history of our democracy, a Statute of Autonomy may be passed with its back turned on the constitutional consensus. If I were in Mr Rodríguez Zapatero’s place, I would think carefully before making that leap into the void. And I make clear to you at this point that the PP Parliamentary Group, in keeping with everything which we have said, is not prepared to act as an alibi for this fraud or to legitimate illegality. We are not going to back Mr Rodríguez Zapatero’s hazardous venture, but neither are we going to wash our hands of it.

Here the ‘other’ is evoked as anti-democratic and contemptuous of the law through Rajoy’s running ‘turning one’s back’ metaphor (cf. also (1)) and his use of lexical items that imply concepts such as dishonesty (e.g. ‘fraud’, line 6) and lawbreaking (e.g. ‘illegality’, line 06). At the same time, the metaphor of ‘making [a] leap into the void’ (line 04) and the connotations of risk and hazard conveyed through lexical items such as ‘hazardous venture’ (line 07) ascribe to the same ‘other’ a quality of impetuous recklessness. Finally, throughout his speech Rajoy employs other ‘standard’ negative other-presentation strategies, notably ridicule and hyperbolic lexis (van Dijk 1998, 2005b). Regarding the former, for example, he portrays Zapatero’s position as a contradiction in terms, namely that: España estará mucho más unida si primero la desunimos (‘Spain will be much more united if first we divide it’) (6175). As for the latter, Rajoy employs such terms to describe Zapatero as desaguisado(s) (‘mess’) (6176), disparates (‘nonsense’) (6175), sordo a sus propias convicciones (‘deaf to his own convictions’) (6176), está reñido con la Constitución (‘he has fallen out with the Constitution’) (6176), sinrazón (‘injustice’) (6177), estupefacto (‘speechless’) (6180), and as engrossed in sus devaneos federalistas (‘his federalist flirtations’) (6177). Thus far, I have argued that the respective positive and negative presentation of us and them contributes to the two key political implicatures

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in Rajoy’s speech. The actual construction of these two groups in question significantly assists this process. Example (4), taken from the closing part of his speech, illustrates this. (4) (6181) [Suggested referents for each of the instances of first person plural verbs in this example have been coded as follows: underlined: PP; italics: Spanish people; underlined, italic and capitals: unclear.] 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Vamos a estar presentes porque los españoles tienen derecho a que alguien les cuente la verdad de lo que allí se haga (‘Rumores.—Aplausos’.), porque en España, sí. sí. como todo el mundo sabe, aunque algunos lo olvidan, hay españoles, 40 millones de seres humanos (‘Rumores’.) que, aunque pueda sorprender, sí. sí, se muestran obstinadamente dispuestos a seguir siendo españoles: andaluces, sí; catalanes, sí; canarios, sí; gallegos, sí, pero españoles también. España es muy plural, señorías, ya se ha dicho aquí. No lo van a creer, pero ya era muy plural antes de la llegada al Gobierno del señor Rodríguez. Zapatero (Risas.), muy plural, pero no por ser plural deja de ser España. Así lo entienden los españoles y por eso mostramos una voluntad obstinada e incansable de vivir juntos pese a quien pese. Esa es la España que VAMOS a defender, y la DEFENDEMOS porque los españoles tenemos memoria. No hemos olvidado la trágica historia de los últimos 200 años y las energías que hemos consumido en querellas estériles y excluyentes. La DEFENDEMOS porque APRECIAMOS, señorías, el valor de la Constitución vigente que nació de un consenso nuevo, de una enorme voluntad de entendimiento, del firme propósito de convivir en paz y de conseguir la armonía territorial

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

We are going to be involved in this because it is the Spanish people’s right that someone should tell them the truth about what’s going on (murmurs, applause), because in Spain, yes, yes, as everyone knows, even if some forget it, there are Spaniards, 40 million human beings (murmurs) who, however surprising this may be, yes, yes, are obstinately prepared to continue being Spaniards: Andalusians, yes; Catalans, yes; Canarians, yes; Galicians, yes; but Spaniards too. Spain is very plural, members of the House, this has already been said here. YouU won’t believe this, but it was already very plural before Mr Rodríguez Zapatero’s government (laughter), very plural, but it didn’t stop being Spain because it was plural. That is how Spaniards understand things and that’s why we show an obstinate, untiring willingness to live together, no matter who that upsets. That is the Spain which WE WILL defend, and WE DEFEND it because we Spaniards remember. We haven’t forgotten the tragic history of the last 200 years and the energy we’ve used up in sterile, excluding disputes. WE DEFEND it because WE APPRECIATE, members of the House, the value of the existing Constitution which was born out of a new consensus, out of an enormous desire for agreement, out of a firm intention to live with each other in peace and to achieve territorial harmony.

17 18

Earlier in the speech, Rajoy had stated that he had ‘come up to this platform in order to lay out my party’s position’ (6175). However, as the

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analysis of referents for ‘we’ in (4) shows, by the end of his speech he is still engaged in the institutional activity type of ‘doing opposition’ but no longer speaking only for his party. It is worth pointing out that the final page of the speech, from which (4) comes, contains more than twice the average number of first person plural verb forms than the speech as a whole. Through the density of first person plural verb forms here, Rajoy creates an intense focus on the concept of ‘we’ and thus necessarily also on ‘they’. As Wodak et al. (1999: 2) put it, ‘identity politics is always and necessarily a politics of the creation of difference’ – and this is precisely what Rajoy’s aim is during the final part of his speech. Rajoy’s use of ‘we’ forms is collectively rhetorical, in the sense of Quirk et al.’s (1985: 350–1) taxonomy. As in other analyses of political discourse, the first person plural verb forms that construct this ‘we’ (or more precisely these ‘we’ groups) in (4) do not appear to have a consistent subject referent. There seems to be a gradual move from examples which unambiguously reference the PP to those that reference one or more increasingly less obviously constituted in-groups. In many cases the decisions I have taken in assigning referents to specific occurrences in (4) could be disputed. But, as often happens with first person plural use, this is of course precisely the point. Part of the rhetorical strategy involved is often deliberate ambiguity and blurring of boundaries, as has been shown by, for example, Bokhorst-Heng (1999) in the case of the Singapore government’s ‘Speak Mandarin’ campaign, by Fairclough (2000) in the discourse of the UK’s ‘New Labour’ Party, or by LorenzoDus (2009) in the Bush–Kerry televised US 2004 election debates. The very ambivalence of Rajoy’s discourse facilitates the construction of potent in-groups, increasingly inclusive as the extract progresses, in which boundaries are muddied between members of the Spanish Parliament, members of the PP, the overhearing television audience, the Spanish people, all right-thinking people, ‘all people who think like me’, and so forth. Rajoy’s we is, then, a shifting, often indeterminate category, as in Petersoo’s (2008) coining of the term ‘wandering we’. The pattern that emerges in (4) is of a shift from exclusive ‘we’ to a ‘generic we’ (cf. also Iñigo-Mora’s 2004 discussion of British parliamentary discourse). In tandem with this, there is also an increasing fusing of authority and communality (Pennycook 1994). In addition to harnessing vague first person plurals, in the case of the collective noun los españoles (Spaniards), Rajoy exploits the ability of plural nouns in Spanish to collocate either with third person plural

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or first person plural verb forms in order to manipulate the inclusive/ exclusive dimension. The key juncture in this process in (4) is the move from ‘informing Spaniards’ what we, the PP, will do for the Spanish people, to ‘That is how Spaniards understand things and that’s why we show an obstinate, untiring willingness to live together, no matter who that upsets’ (lines 10–12). In this way the membership of ‘we’ expands dramatically over a short stretch of language and becomes set against an ‘other’, who not only do not wish to ‘live together’ but are exercised by the insistence of the ‘we’ group on doing so. This construction of ‘they’ as actively divisive and opposed to consensus and ‘liv[ing] with each other in peace’ (lines 17–18) is one example of the ways in which this extract further contributes to the implicature that ‘they’, unlike ‘we’, do not represent the democratic spirit of the country. Clearly, the move from third person plural to first person plural verbs with the subject of the Spanish people also serves the function of discursively excluding ‘them’ from membership of that vital group – as ‘we’ expands, so ‘they’ become an increasingly marginalised, delegitimised group. Whoever ‘they’ are, they are certainly not ‘Spanish’.7 A number of other aspects of ‘we–they’ constructions in (4) contribute to the same political implicature. For instance, ‘As everyone knows’ (line 03) affords a universal dimension to ‘us’. The ‘some’ in line 03 (i.e. ‘they’) who can forget the wishes of 40 million human beings (i.e. the entire population of Spain at the time) clearly have little regard for democracy. The lexical choice ‘human beings’ (line 04) to describe the ‘we’ group here serves to dehumanise, and possible demonise, the ‘they’ group. And the use of the indicative mood in the concessive clause starting with aunque (aunque algunos lo olvidan, line 03) leaves no doubt that they do forget.8 Rajoy’s use of irony in ‘however surprising this may be’ (lines 04–05) and ‘You won’t believe this, but’ (line 08) also contribute to delegitimise ‘them’. Repeated use of the concept of ‘defending ourselves’, moreover, enhances such delegitimising by harnessing the classic rhetoric of ‘us’ having no choice but to defend ourselves from ‘their’ attacks. Finally, the political implicature that ‘they’, unlike ‘we’, are antithetical to the democratic tradition in Spain (as well as being anti-Spanish) is particularly evoked in the latter part of (4). Herein, a striking contrast is presented between (their) ‘sterile, excluding disputes’ (line 14) and (our) ‘enormous desire for agreement, out of a firm intention to achieve territorial harmony’ (lines 16–17). These disputes almost inevitably evoke the extremely potent spectre of the Spanish Civil War and this greatly

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strengthens the rhetorical force of Rajoy’s claim that only we are on the side of consensus and understanding.

Conclusion Superficially, Rajoy’s speech is imbued with respect for difference and plurality. This ostensibly embodies an ideology which respects the ‘Catalans’ strong sense of identity’ (6176) and in which ‘sterile, excluding disputes’ (line 14, (4)) are, at least for the PP, a thing of the past. However, the cumulative effect of the lack of substantive argument concerning the text of the draft and the forcible rhetorical disassociation of Catalans from that text is such that Rajoy’s speech evokes an in-group of all ‘reasonable’ people and a shadowy out-group in the grip of an irrational ‘nationalist’ fervour – a very wide ‘we’ and a highly marked ‘they’. These constructions, together with that of Rajoy’s rhetorical claim to empathise with Catalans, generate the two political implicatures which I have discussed in this chapter. Both implicatures serve the purpose in the speech of refuting any accusations against the PP of Spanish nationalism or anti-democratic tendencies without having to address such accusations explicitly or indeed the reasons why they might be made against the PP. This in turns explains how Rajoy’s speech ‘does opposition’ in this institutional setting and why he makes the claims which he does about the focus of his speech – claims that critical discourse analysis of the speech belies.

Notes 1. At the time of writing, Rajoy continues to lead the PP despite its second consecutive general election defeat in 2008. 2. http://www.parlament.cat/activitat/dspcp/07p054.pdf (last accessed October 2009). 3. One indicator of the breadth and depth of that controversy is perhaps the fact that two months after the speech analysed in this chapter was given, in January 2006 the military head of Spain’s land forces, Lieutenant General Mena Aguado, made a speech expressly criticising the draft, focusing in particular on the concept of ‘nation’. This resulted in him being placed under house arrest for illegitimate involvement in the political process. 4. Numbers in brackets refer to page numbers in the transcript of the speech. All translations are my own. 5. http://www.congreso.es/public_oficiales/L8/CONG/DS/PL/PL_125.PDF 6. Van Dijk (1998) is not suggesting, of course, that these categories are always so clearly defined.

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7. There is no doubt that not all Catalans see español (Spanish) as part of their identity (cf. e.g. Alexandre’s 1999 book of interviews). However, such a selfconstruction is clearly a different matter from Rajoy’s apparent discursive exclusion from access to ‘Spanishness’ of supporters of the draft statute discussed in this chapter. 8. The conjunction aunque is most frequently followed by the subjunctive mood, which often indicates an element of doubt and thus might be translated as ‘even if’. The use of the indicative with aunque, on the other hand, implies certainty.

11 Bolivarianism and Socialism: a Corpus-Driven Investigation into Changes in Hugo Chávez’s Rhetoric Dominic Smith

Introduction President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela is one of the world’s most controversial politicians, with a number of political analysts being either strongly supportive (e.g. Gott 2005) or critical (e.g. Ellner and Hellinger 2003) of him. He has also been variously described in news reports as unpredictable in his decision-making, a socialist maverick, a politician working to alleviate poverty in society, a supporter of pariah states such as Iran and Cuba, and a politician prepared to stand up to US hegemony (e.g. Boyd 2006, Jones 2008). His rhetoric, moreover, has spawned a range of critical work, although only a limited proportion of this has been of a linguistic nature (e.g. Aponte Moreno 2008, Bolívar 2005, Méndez 2004). In this chapter, and using techniques from the field of corpus linguistics (CL), I examine Chávez’s usage of the terms ‘Bolivarianism’ and ‘socialism’ (and their principal collocates) in his appearances on the live broadcast Aló Presidente over a five-year period (2002–7). The underlying premise of my investigation is that changes, however subtle, in Chávez’s use of these key terms may lead to important changes in his rhetoric, with potentially persuasive effects.1 I believe that the corpus-driven approach adopted here, moreover, can provide the kind of analytical detachment that may be missing in some of the extant literature on political discourse in general and on Chávez’s discourse in particular. After briefly contextualising my study, I describe its methodology, including providing definitions of key CL concepts in my work. I then discuss my results and, in the conclusion, provide some possible 146

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reasons for the changes observed in Chávez’s lexis and rhetoric in my data.

Venezuela under Chávez Chávez has an army background and first gained public attention as the leader of a failed coup d’état in February 1992, following which he was imprisoned. He was released in 1994 and, in 1997, formed the Movimiento Quinta República (MVR) party to fight the presidential election in December 1998, in which he won a landslide victory with about 56 per cent of the vote (Jones 2008). Alongside constitutional reform, one of President Chávez’s first major actions was to launch the so-called Círculos bolivarianos (‘Bolivarian Circles’): groups of volunteers who performed a number of tasks in their local communities. These were followed in 2002 by the first of the misiones (‘missions’): a series of social action programmes designed to promote literacy, health and employment among the poor. After a recall referendum in August 2004, at which 59.25 per cent of the voters supported the President (Gott 2005), Chávez spoke at the World Social Forum in Brazil in January 2005 about the possibility of the adoption of socialism in Venezuela (Jones 2008). Two years later, this policy was implemented at the start of Chávez’s second term, after he had won the December 2006 presidential election with nearly 63 per cent of the vote (cf. Consejo Nacional Electoral 2007). The main focus of recent criticisms against Chávez’s government has been the ineffectiveness of the misiones (Rodríguez 2008), which rely on funding from the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. and are therefore dependent on a high price of oil (The Economist 2009). He has also been accused in the past of using the name of Simón Bolívar, who in the nineteenth century led the struggle for independence from the Spanish, as an excuse for the involvement of the army in the country’s politics (Blanco 2002). Concerns about purchases of military equipment, such as 100,000 Russian AK-47s, also persist (Shifter 2006). Chávez’s language, too, has spawned a range of critical work. According to Bolívar (2005: 13–14), for instance, he started to describe the political opposition in Venezuela as ‘terrorists’ and ‘assassins’ in December 2004 – an assertion that Bolívar supports with survey data but which statistics from my research into Chávez’s discourse indicate to be incorrect (cf. Smith 2009). And Méndez’s (2004) comparison of the discourse of Chávez visà-vis that of two other former Venezuelan presidents concluded that it was ‘populist’, although the CL methods used to reach that conclusion are open to criticism (cf. Smith 2009).

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Methodology Analytic framework Within the field of CL, my work adopts a ‘corpus-driven’ rather than a ‘corpus-based’ framework. Tognini-Bonelli (2001) was the first to draw a distinction between those who use corpus techniques to investigate some predetermined research question – the corpus-based linguists – and those who leave the corpus, and what can be learnt from features in it, to direct the topic: corpus-driven linguists. Tognini-Bonelli (2001) and others since (e.g. Teubert 2005), believe that corpus-driven studies are preferable, as the risk of a corpus-based study is the danger that some important feature could be missed owing to the researcher’s preconceived ideas about the topic. Within this corpus-driven framework, my study makes use of a number of CL concepts, which I briefly define next.

Words, types and tokens Most corpus linguists avoid talking about ‘words’. This is because of the connotations among the wider public that there is a link between words and meaning (and hence that words can have a definition when isolated from their context), which has generally been disproven by CL. Instead, corpus linguists talk of ‘types’ (which is intended to mean nothing more or less than a string of characters delimited by space and/or punctuation) and ‘tokens’ (individual occurrences of a type). Many tokens in Spanish, and other languages, of course, have grammatically determined morphologies (obvious examples being inflected verbs and adjectives) and in order to avoid this becoming a hindrance to automatic searches conducted in CL, it is sometimes necessary to use software to convert tokens to their dictionary headwords (the lemma) – a process known as lemmatisation. For reasons of brevity, this chapter adopts the typographical conventions set out by Stubbs (2001: 305–6) in presenting tokens in italics and lemmata in upper case.2 In addition, where the corpus has been searched for any token beginning with a certain sequence of letters (a stem), this is indicated by the use of an asterisk as a wild card.

Collocates Collocates are the types which most commonly surround the type under investigation (referred to as the node). Corpus linguists are interested in collocates because they have long been recognised as disambiguating meaning in the node (Firth 1957).

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Keywords A further major notion in CL is that of the keyword. For the corpus linguist, a list of keywords is obtained by comparing the frequencies of the types in one corpus (or subcorpus) with one or more other corpora, and obtaining the most significant differences between them by using statistical formulae such as z-score or specific mutual information (MI and its variant MI3).3 When the corpus under investigation is compared with a reference corpus made up of texts on a wide variety of topics from a number of genres, the resulting keywords tend to reveal the main topics of the researcher’s corpus, often referred to as its ‘aboutness’. The keyword formula chosen for this purpose is the MI3 statistic (Oakes 1998), since it does not overemphasise rare collocations, while taking frequency into account, unlike some of the other options. Span Of course, in order to know which types occur frequently in close proximity to the node, it is first necessary to define the number of tokens on either side of the node which are to be looked at. This is known as the span and in my work it was set at five tokens to the left and five to the right, as is conventional. The analysis of collocates was carried out in the WordSmith Tools suite of programs (Scott 2004), which is also conventional in CL. Diachronic linguistics Traditionally, and this is still quite true today, most corpus studies have been synchronic, i.e. they have investigated language without considering time. This is generally because most corpus linguists are interested in describing contemporary language by investigating some feature in a corpus of recent texts. In contrast, my study is very much about comparisons across time. Such diachronic investigations, as was noted at the start of the twentieth century by Saussure (1916), require a rather different way of looking at the texts forming the corpus. One of the implications of this is that, unlike for the synchronic linguist, generalisations cannot be made on the basis of patterns or changes in frequency alone. For the diachronic corpus linguist, changes in frequency might indicate candidate types for further investigation, but firm conclusions can only be drawn on the basis of the individual concordance lines. While most corpus linguists use reference corpora to obtain the aboutness of a specific corpus, the methodology developed for the present

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study relies upon the idea that, if a corpus is divided into subcorpora, it should be possible to compare any subcorpus to the other sub-corpora to obtain the aboutness of that subcorpus. In other words, if a particular topic were to be particularly prevalent during, say, a few weeks, the keywords resulting from a comparison of those few weeks compared with all of the other weeks should reveal this fact.

Data and procedure My corpus consists of all of the available transcripts of Aló Presidente from December 2001 to June 2007, totalling 189 editions and over 7 million words. The corpus was divided into quarter-year periods.4 Aló Presidente is broadcast live on most Sundays on the main state television channel VTV (it is also broadcast internationally on TeleSur) and often lasts in excess of six or seven hours. The programme is predominantly a monologue by President Chávez to the camera and it is mainly unscripted. This is evidenced by the fact that Chávez regularly has to ask the Ministers who are present to remind him of some statistic, and by the numerous, sometimes lengthy, asides. There are, however, also short sections of pre-recorded narrated videos presenting policy, live discussions and musical interludes. These programmes are transcribed verbatim on behalf of the Venezuelan Ministry for Popular Power in Communication and Information (MINCI) and released on the Internet.5 As a corpus linguist, I view this as a ready-made corpus, to be used to investigate Chávez’s rhetoric and therefore his presentation of policy. Bourdieu (1991) has described in detail how politicians can use language firstly to become influential and then to retain power, and Herman and Chomsky (2002) have described the media’s role in this process through a framework known as the ‘propaganda model’.6 Atkinson (1984) had previously explained the progressively more influential role of the broadcast media in political persuasion, particularly when audiences felt that they were ‘eavesdropping’, rather than being spoken to. This is undoubtedly the case in Aló Presidente, where Chávez is also seen to be talking to the invited studio audience, rather than directly to the camera for the viewer/listener at home. Fairclough’s (2000) description of how Tony Blair’s New Labour used discourse and how this contrasted with previous administrations in Britain suggests, moreover, that politicians may introduce subtle changes into their language over time as one means of persuading the public (i.e. the electorate) to embrace their intentions. If this is the case,

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the diachronic, corpus-driven approach adopted here will enable me to identify and characterise some of Chávez’s political lexical changes and their potential persuasive effects, while minimising analyst bias. Having collected my corpus, two versions of it were created: one which had been lemmatised and which was converted to the same XML7 format as used by the British National Corpus, the other kept as plain text. It was the latter which was used for most of the work, except where it was evident that use of unlemmatised forms would not provide a sufficiently accurate overview. This choice was made in recognition of the criticisms that have been made regarding altering corpora prior to use (Sinclair and Carter 2004). The decision to use quarter-year periods, rather than leaving the corpus divided into individual editions of the programme, was due to the risk of a particular event during a particular show affecting the results. For example, health care might not have been an important topic during a particular period but if, during that period, Chávez opened a hospital as part of the programme, there was a strong possibility that medical types could have become keywords. The use of quarter-years was aimed at diluting this effect. Using a piece of software written by myself especially for this study, the amounts of variation between the 21 periods were calculated for every token, using the standard deviation.8 Standard deviation is not commonly used as a measure in CL, so some comments on its use are required. The standard deviation of a population of scores shows how much it has varied. Thus, a type which has nearly the same frequency in each of the quarter-years would have a small standard deviation, and those which had a large variance in frequency would have a larger value. Of course, this is dependent upon all of the quarter-year periods being comparable, and so, rather than raw frequency, it is the frequency standardised per 1000 tokens that is conventionally used by corpus linguists, and this was adopted here. Since in developing this methodology I aimed to make it possible to investigate changes in how Chávez describes certain topics, it was decided that it would be the noun that exhibited the greatest change that would be the focus of this investigation, on the grounds that topics will (by definition) be nouns. It was at this point that the format of the transcripts became an issue, since the most changed nouns included Presidente, Chávez and aplausos. A quick check revealed that the reason for this was the differing styles found in different transcripts. For example, towards the end of the period covered by the corpus, it became common to annotate the texts with the points at which the

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audience had applauded. Equally, the label Presidente Chávez appeared at points where he started to speak, so the varying frequency of the label merely reflected the different amounts of dialogue in the different editions. Once these cases had been disregarded, the most changed noun was socialista and, on the grounds of familiarity with the corpus and knowledge of Chávez’s policies (as described in the section ‘Venezuela under Chávez’), it was decided to compare it to a closely related word in Chávez’s rhetoric: Bolivarianismo. Perhaps rather counter-intuitively, when all types exhibiting the greatest change (not just nouns) were checked, the most changed types were found to be y (and), de (of/from) and que (that/what/which). This is noteworthy since one would not expect there to be any reason for an individual to use these grammatical words much more frequently in one period than some other. This suggests some change in Chávez’s rhetorical style but due to their sheer frequency and the number of different uses that they can have, it would be very problematic to investigate them using this methodology. Consequently, such ‘grammatical words’ were placed in a stop list and excluded from further results. Finally, it is important to note that brief sections of the Aló Presidente programmes in my corpus involved other participants. Their contributions could not be removed, due to the fact that the transcripts are not supplied in a format which would make this process reliable when automated. What these other participants say, however, can only very rarely be considered dissent; it is often very supportive of Chávez’s argument, and so the corpus can still be considered Chavista. It is important, however, to be aware of who is talking in any given example, to avoid misattribution. In this study, this was achieved through manual verification of each example cited.

Socialism and Bolivarianism in Chávez’s rhetoric Socialista occurs 1726 times in the 7.1 million tokens in the corpus, making it the 431st most common word, yet it is only found in 93 of the 189 editions of the Aló Presidente programme that are contained in the corpus. Since the type can be both an adjective and noun, however, this is of limited interest in itself. Consequently, the various forms were lemmatised, using the Tree-Tagger software (TC-Project 1994), and analysed together. Figure 11.1 clearly shows how the frequency of the lemma SOCIALISTA, again standardised per 1000 words, changed in the 2002–7 period.

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The dramatic peak around the summer of 2006 to the start of 2007, coinciding with the start of the Presidential election campaign and then President Chávez’s second term in office, will not be news to any follower of Venezuelan politics, since it was at his second inauguration that Chávez rebranded his government as a socialist-orientated one. It nonetheless explains the very high standard deviation of 0.663 for this word’s frequency variation (compared with the mean standard deviation for all types of 0.051). In order to investigate the change further, it was decided to compare and contrast the usage of the lemma SOCIALISTA with the lemma BOLIVARIANO (Bolivarian), which is how Chávez regularly labelled his government during his first term. This type can also be seen in Figure 11.1. As previously mentioned, Simón Bolívar was the liberator of Venezuela from the Spanish at the start of the nineteenth century, and has long been seen as a nationalist hero. Many schools, plazas and public buildings are named after him, and a statue of him can be found in most Venezuelan towns. Until Chávez, however, Bolivarianism had not been a term applied to a political theory and movement. This provided an ideal opportunity for testing the methodology, since, if it Change in frequency over time: SOCIALISTA+ BOLIVARIANO Occurrences per 1000 tokens

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Change in frequency over time: SOCIALISMO+ BOLIVARIANISMO Occurrences per 1000 tokens

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worked, it would be possible to learn more about what Chávez means by Bolivarianism by comparing the patterns and collocates surrounding his use of this term with his usage of ‘socialism’. Since they are related, it was further decided to investigate the noun forms socialismo and bolivarianismo. In fact, as Figure 11.2 shows, bolivarianismo is rarely used at all but reference to socialismo increases, as with the lemma SOCIALISTA, from the start of 2005 to 2007. In contrast to the adjectival form, however, socialismo decreases in frequency by the second quarter of 2007. As Saussure (1916) notes, when working diachronically, attention must always be paid to each individual example. It is a basic CL premise that the researcher must justify every example in a set of concordance lines, since selecting individual cases brings the inherent risk of choosing them to justify his/her preconceptions. Due to space limitations, it is not possible to present each one here. However, a limited number of examples have been chosen to illustrate the most notable features of the types under investigation where this is considered critical. Figures 11.1 and 11.2 were considered to reveal a number of distinct periods in the corpus with respect to the changes in frequency of the

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two lemmata and two types under investigation. These periods may be generalised as: • Quarter 1, 2002–Quarter 4, 2004: high use of BOLIVARIANO but in decline; use of others negligible. • Quarter 1, 2005–Quarter 4, 2005: fluctuation – SOCIALISTA and socialismo increase, then decrease gradually, while BOLIVARIANO rises sharply before decreasing again. • Quarter 1, 2006–Quarter 1, 2007: uses of SOCIALISTA and socialismo increase dramatically, while BOLIVARIANO continues to decline. • Quarter 2, 2007: SOCIALISTA and BOLIVARIANO increase frequency substantially, while the nominal socialismo decreases. It is these periods that were used as the basis for the analysis. High frequency of one type alone, however, sometimes reveals little since it could merely reflect genre or stylistic choices. In my subsequent investigation, therefore, I used changes in collocation frequency as a means for determining how the node changed its usage. Period 1: 2002–4 In this period, there is a general decline in the use of the term BOLIVARIANO, although it is substantially more frequent than the other words under investigation, which have negligible frequencies. In the year 2002 alone, forms with the stem ‘bolivarian∗ ’ occur 2008 times, compared with just 18 occurrences of forms with the stem ‘socialis∗ ’. Of these, 411 occur with the collocate círculos. As previously described, the Círculos bolivarianos were local action movements, set up in the constitution written by Chávez and approved by referendum in 2000. These were groups of around ten local inhabitants who volunteered to do everything from cleaning streets to studying the constitution to organising activities for children (Jones 2008: 294). The other principal collocates of ‘bolivarian∗ ’ are Venezuela (216 occurrences) and República (180), both reflecting the nationalist tones in the new official name of the country, and revolución (168). There is, however, little precise indication of the defining features of this revolution from the corpus except that it is linked to the state: escuelas (‘schools’) (148), gobierno (‘government’) (138) and constitución (‘constitution’) (129) are also collocates of ‘bolivarian∗ ’. By 2003, the importance of the Círculos has been reduced, but Universidad has also become an important collocate (149 of the 1837

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occurrences of ‘bolivarian∗ ’). Clearly, Bolivarianism is closely linked to education in Chávez’s discourse. The main collocate of ‘bolivarian∗ ’ in this year is agenda (249) but, even looking at the collocates of the pair ‘bolivarian∗ ’ + agenda, it is still difficult to define what exactly Bolivarianism is. Its collocates include coyuntura (‘situation’) (51), alternativa ”(alternative’) (17), plan (17), ahora (‘now’) (16), proyecto (‘project’) (11), aquí (‘here’) (10) and endógeno (‘endogenous’) (10). Clearly, Chávez had a plan for a different, endogenous, alternative that was due now, but he had still not said what this was. On 3 March 2002, in Aló Presidente number 98, Chávez had actively denied that he was attempting to create a socialist state, instead classing himself as an anti-neo-liberal capitalist. The very fact that this point was addressed, however, can be seen as implying that at least some of his audience believed that socialism might have been his ultimate aim. Consider extract (1): (1) 01 02 03 04

Bueno, sí, en verdad, nosotros no nos estamos planteando aquí ningún modelo socialista ni comunista. No; nosotros estamos dentro del marco del capitalismo, lo que queremos es salir del cauce del capitalismo salvaje, de ese neoliberalismo que niega el derecho al ser humano [. . .]

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Well, yes, in truth, we are not establishing any sort of socialist or communist model here. No; we are working inside the capitalist framework; what we want is to escape from the course of uncontrolled capitalism, that neo-liberalism which denies the rights of human beings [. . .]9

Just prior to the recall referendum against Chávez, which took place on 15 August 2004, there was a telephone call during his programme (edition 200 on 1 August 2004), which came from the unlikely source of an electrician in Mexico. As noted earlier, the programme is broadcast on the Internet and (more recently) on the international TeleSur television channel, so it is perfectly possible that this electrician did just call in, although it will probably never be known whether or not he had been chosen for the purpose. During his call, he exhorted Chávez to adopt more socialist policies, to which Chávez rather tantalisingly responded as follows: ‘creo que después de que se culmine lo del quince de agosto, nos permitirá obtener una visión diferente de lo que es un sistema socialista y no un sistema capitalista’ (‘I believe that after the business of the 15th August is over, we will be able to have a different vision of what a socialist system, as opposed to a capitalist system, is’). In the light of subsequent events, this seems to indicate that Chávez did indeed want to address

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the differences between these two systems, but was not prepared to take such a risk before the result of the referendum was known. Sure enough, just a few months later, in edition 209 on 24 October 2004, Chávez started to discuss in his programme the theoretical background of socialist models of production, as they had been presented by Che Guevara. It is particularly noteworthy that this was prior to the speech at the World Social Forum (see the section ‘Venezuela under Chávez’ above) and so it might be argued that Chávez was preparing the population for that announcement.

Period 2: 2005–6 During this period, usage of the terms under investigation appears to be in flux. Both SOCIALISTA and socialismo rise quickly and then slowly reduce in frequency, while BOLIVARIANO shows a tendency to increase substantially over a longer period, before dropping back to frequencies similar to those found at the start of the year. The collocates of ‘socialis∗ ’, which occurs 667 times during the year 2005, are very different from those of the preceding three years, and generally fall into four categories: those referring to newness (siglo (‘century’) (98) and XXI (88) and nuevo (‘new’) (54)); those relating to a path (camino (‘path’) (41) and rumbo (‘course’) (40)); political collocates (capitalismo (37), democracia (27), partido (19), social (19)) and religious and nationalist figures (Cristo (29), Simón (24), Rodríguez10 (22)). The links to both Christ and Rodríguez are first introduced by Chávez in edition 225 of 12 March 2005, in which he reviewed two books expressing the view that these figures, both central in Venezuelan society, were socialist. It is as a result of this that Chávez indicated that socialism is a path intrinsically linked to two of the most important figures in the national religion and history, and which he wished the country to follow. The references to the socialist model being ‘new’ and linked to the twenty-first century are no doubt to distinguish this idea of socialism from the (arguably) failed socialist models of the twentieth century, particularly in the USSR, although this is never directly articulated in the corpus. It also permits socialism to be linked to a religious figure, whereas most traditional socialist models have opposed religion. By 2005, on the other hand, ‘bolivarian∗ ’ has become still more closely linked with education. It occurs 1354 times during the year, and among the top ten collocates six are from this semantic field, including Universidad (218), liceo (‘secondary school’) (182), sede (‘head office’)

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(122), escuela (‘school’) (102), escuelas (88) and liceos (87). This might be explained by the launch in late 2003 of the Misión Sucre, which aimed to give free higher education to the poor at so-called Bolivarian institutions.

Period 3: 2006–second quarter 2007 The term BOLIVARIANO decreases in frequency throughout this period, while SOCIALISTA and, to a lesser extent, socialismo, show dramatic increases. In the first half of 2006, the usage of ‘socialis∗ ’ (which occurs 296 times in these six months) is little changed from the year 2005, but, in the second half, the list of collocates changes. Words with the stem occur 184 times over this period.11 The third highest collocate during this time is moral (14), suggesting that Chávez sees socialism as a way of thinking about society as well as an economic theory. In the latter regard, propiedad (‘property’) (10) also becomes a collocate, as Chávez indicates that he understands socialism as permitting both public and private property. This is no doubt to avoid any accusation of his being anti-ownership immediately ahead of the election, which took place in December 2006. The other interesting feature is the appearance of the collocate construyendo (‘building’) (13) at this time, indicating that socialism is no longer a path to be followed in the future, but is already taking place. Meanwhile, ‘Bolivarian∗ ’ maintains its affinity with education throughout 2006, as had been the case in the preceding period. On 10 January 2007, Chávez was sworn in for his second term as President, choosing to end the oath with the powerfully striking phrase ‘Patria, Socialismo o Muerte. Lo Juro’ (‘Homeland, Socialism or Death. I Swear’), thereby echoing Fidel Castro’s rhetoric. This was followed by a two-hour speech (which does not form part of my corpus, since it was not an Aló Presidente programme) in which he described how a series of laws – likened to motors – would carry the country forward towards socialism. Importantly, the new term brought with it a significant set of changes in the principal collocates of the terms under investigation. At the start of 2007, ‘Bolivarian∗ ’ no longer has any significant collocates from the sphere of education. Rather, it is used with reference to the state and its institutions. Of the 278 occurrences, the main collocates are Venezuela (67), república (57) and revolución (35). Socialism, however, is now related to education, with the main collocates of the 1246 occurrences of ‘socialis∗ ’ including formación (‘training’) (345), estudiante (‘student’) (145), taller (‘workshop’) (69) and jóvenes (‘youth’) (61). The uses with formación are principally in the titles of

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places of education that are featured in the programme. The 25 Centros de Formación Socialista, which were inaugurated in edition 264 on 28 January 2007, aim to teach socialist and cooperative farming methods to local communities. Period 4: second quarter 2007 The adjectival lemma SOCIALISTA, along with BOLIVARIANO, increases in frequency still further during this period, but there is an apparent reduction in the frequency of socialismo. By April 2007, Chávez’s policies resulted in a socialist ideology being promoted at all levels in the economy. This is seen in the appearance of producción (289), empresa (‘company’) (285), centro (60), técnico (56) and productivo (54) as the main collocates of forms of SOCIALISTA, which occur 507 times. The top collocates of socialismo (149 occurrences), however, are patria (‘homeland’) (20) and muerte (‘death’) (20), each of these is a repetition of the final phrase of his inauguration oath, and capitalismo (13). From this, it can clearly be seen that Chávez’s main focus has switched from describing the theoretical basis of socialism as underlying his ideology to attempting to use his programme to implement it as economic policy. The ‘meaning’ of socialismo might, therefore, be seen as being almost delexicalised into nothing more than a rallying battle cry. ‘Bolivarian∗ ’ (347 occurrences) is now once again seen to be linked with Chávez’s social policy from his first term, as collocates include Negra Hipólita (148), which is the social mission aimed at helping the homeless, educativa (142), escuela (40) and alumno (‘pupil’) (26). It does, however, maintain a link with revolución (33).

Conclusion In this chapter, I have adopted a diachronic, corpus-driven approach in order to examine the concepts of ‘socialism’ and ‘Bolivarianism’ in transcripts of Hugo Chávez’s television programme Aló Presidente between December 2001 and June 2007. The term socialista was chosen because it was the noun that had most changed in its frequency over the 21 quarter-year periods in the corpus. Plotting a graph of the trends in the frequencies of both SOCIALISTA and BOLIVARIANO (and their related forms socialismo and bolivarianismo) revealed four distinct periods in the corpus, in which the trends in the frequencies of these lemmata vary. For each of these four periods, the most frequent collocates of the forms under investigation were obtained. This permitted the presentation of some of the ways in which they have changed

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over the five and a half years covered by the corpus. Some possible reasons for these changes were then explored. The first conclusion that can be drawn relates to the periods defined. It is quite remarkable that the first two periods identified – or three if one allows for the disruption caused by the presidential inauguration in January 2007 – seem to be divided into individual years. (One can only go so far as to say ‘seem to’, since the intervals studied are only quarteryear periods and so further division of the corpus would be required to substantiate this claim.) This suggests that Chávez has a long-planned ‘roadmap’ for the country and what he wants to do from year to year. The data indeed show that Chávez has taken his audience through a carefully constructed argument, first describing socialist theory, then showing how it was already central to Venezuelan history and religion, before finally exhorting the population to convert their industries to the socialist model. This finding goes against the traditional argument that he is unpredictable and haphazard in how he makes decisions. Chávez coined a neologism with nationalist overtones: Bolivarianism. This term, which was initially used to describe the Bolivarian Circles, was then used to relay his plans for the country in general at a time when he could not risk describing these as ‘socialist’ because the argument described above was not yet complete. Once it had served its purpose, I would argue, Chávez forced a semantic change in ‘Bolivarian’ to restrict the understood meaning of the term to describing only the education and social policies that had been founded previously. Despite this, he purposely reduced its frequency at the launch of his socialist project at the start of 2007 in order to avoid potential confusion among the population at this critical juncture. Finally, the above conclusions need to be viewed with some caution. My corpus only contained the issues discussed on the Aló Presidente broadcast, for the rest of his discourse (speeches, conversations with ministers, memos) were not available. As such, these conclusions can only be said to refer to the editions of the programme in the corpus, and not to anything wider about Chávez or his policies.

Notes 1. See Smith (2006) for a diachronic investigation of the link between social change and use of the related word ‘work’. 2. Stubbs’s (2001) typographical convention is to italicise exact word forms in a corpus (e.g. /socialismo/, which would match only ‘socialismo’) and to present lemmatised forms in upper case (e.g. SOCIALISTA, which would match both ‘socialista’ and ‘socialistas’).

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3. Z-score is the difference between frequency of the node in the corpus under investigation compared with the mean of the frequency in that corpus and the reference corpus, divided by the standard deviation of that result. MI score is calculated from the probabilities of a given collocation occurring in the corpus compared to the probability of it being found by chance. MI has been criticised for its tendency to emphasise rare events, and so cubing the sum of all occurrences in the formula may be used to lessen this effect, the MI3 score. 4. Transcripts of seven editions are not included as these were not available. It should additionally be noted that autumn 2006 has no texts in the corpus since the programme was suspended during the Presidential election campaign run at that time. 5. http://alopresidente.gob.ve/transcripciones 6. The ‘propaganda model’ states that news stories must pass through five ‘filters’ before being featured in the mass media (concentrating predominantly on the US media). The filters are: (1) the ownership of the media and the owner’s desire for profit; (2) the reliance upon advertising to fund the newsgathering process, which puts radical publications at a disadvantage, since advertisers are less likely to back them; (3) the reliance on news agencies and press conferences to source news and ‘experts’ to comment on it, all of which may be funded by parties with an interest in the story; (4) the risk of receiving ‘flak’ from the audience or interested groups; (5) a requirement to criticise communism (since updated to a requirement to praise capitalist markets). The authors claim that the existence of these filters hinders any attempt by the media to be ‘objective’. 7. XML (eXtensible Markup Language) – promoted by the Internet standards body W3C, this is a format for interchange of almost any data between different computer systems. 8. The procedure used by the software code was as follows: 1. Take a word list generated in CSV format by WordSmith Tools 2. Iterate through the word list, line by line 3. For each token: a. Iterate through each quarter-year b. For each quarter-year period: i. Add the type frequency to a running total which will be used to create a mean after all periods are completed ii. Obtain frequencies for each year c. Calculate frequency of the type per 1000 tokens per year, to 5 significant figures d. Calculate the frequency of the type per 1000 tokens for the whole corpus e. Calculate the total standard deviation across every year f. Use the log-likelihood score to compare each year to every other combination of years g. Save the result if this is over 499 4. Continue with the next type.

162 Spanish at Work 9. Author’s translation. 10. The philosopher and educator Simón Rodríguez was Bolívar’s mentor and tutor. The latter learnt much of his politics from him. 11. It should be noted, however, that only three editions of Aló Presidente were actually broadcast during this period because of the Presidential election campaign.

Part III Discourse, Interpersonal Relations and the Workplace

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12 Discourse, Interpersonal Relations and the Workplace in the Spanish-Speaking World Nuria Lorenzo-Dus

This final part of Spanish at Work examines the role played by task and interpersonal oriented discourse in several workplace settings and activity types, ranging from business meetings and university group work discussions (Chapter 14), to ‘small talk’ in bars (Chapter 15) and serviceproviding calls within call centres (Chapter 16). In one case (Chapter 13) attention is paid to the impact on psychotic patients’ discourse, some of whom live in conditions of extreme poverty, of the health (psychiatric hospitals) and social care (shelters for the homeless) institutions that care for them as part of their day-to-day activities. Unlike Parts I and II, therefore, this part of the book is not focused on one, however heterogeneous, institutional domain (the media, politics) but on individuals’ negotiation of different interactional goals within varied workplace settings. Central to such negotiation processes and practices is the relative salience assigned by those involved to interpersonal and transactional concerns. Spencer-Oatey and Jiang (2003) capture these processes and practices in terms of the weightiness allocated to different ‘sociopragmatic interactional principles’, i.e. to different sociocultural norms and values that constrain individuals’ language usage. Two main sociopragmatic interactional principles are identified by Spencer-Oatey and Jiang (2003) across cultures and languages: ‘face’ concerns and ‘task’ concerns.1 The former include concern for both one’s own face and that of others. The latter orient towards efficiency and task achievement. Managing the ‘appropriate’ balance between face and task concerns in interaction is paramount, for failure to do so ‘may result in mild to strong evaluative judgments of the speaker’ (Spencer-Oatey and Jiang 2003: 1635). 165

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This begs the question of how individuals negotiate face and task concerns across workplace settings. In those settings involving members of the general public interacting with members of a professional organisation or institution, it is generally the latter who tend to adhere most noticeably to the required ritualised patterns and structures of talk of their workplace (cf. e.g. Drew and Heritage 1992; also Chapter 1), including achieving the ‘right’ balance of task and face concerns. Members of the public, for their part, may have different levels of knowledge of the expected patterns and structures of talk to be followed in their interactions with institutional representatives and may, therefore, not always be aware of the salience of task vis-à-vis face concerns. The potential mismatch between institutional representatives and ‘laity’ when interacting within the confines of an institution has been seen as an explanatory factor in understanding why interactions within a range of workplace/professional settings tend both to be conducted on an asymmetric basis and to display some level of formality (cf. Agar 1985). Asymmetric, task-driven talk – one must hasten to add – is not representative of all communicative practices across all workplaces. A number of studies have, for instance, noted the infiltration of conversational practices into public (e.g. Fairclough 1992) and, relevantly here, workplace spaces (e.g. Cameron 2000). This has led to a series of workplace communicative practices that seemingly aim at levelling out any sense of power imbalance and, in some cases, at creating a sense of rapport. The permeability of social (face oriented) and work (task oriented) talk within the workplace has also been documented in a number of cultures, including the use – and multiple functions – of ‘small talk’ therein (e.g. Coupland 2000a, Holmes and Stubbe 2003; cf. also Chapter 14). The orientation of talk in workplace domains towards face concerns is particularly important within the Spanish-speaking world given that the latter, as discussed in Chapter 1 and illustrated throughout the chapters of this book, cannot and should not be homogenised. Important differences have been found, for example, regarding the precise salience of face vis-à-vis task concerns, as well as the particular aspects of face being focused on by interactants (cf. Márquez Reiter and Placencia 2005, Placencia and García 2007). In their review of sociopragmatic variation in the Spanish-speaking world, Márquez Reiter and Placencia (2005) conclude, for instance, that Peninsular Spanish speakers display across a range of situational contexts higher degrees of orientation towards positive politeness than do speakers of Latin American varieties of Spanish. Also a number of

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studies on Peninsular and Argentinean Spanish interaction (both in institutional and conversational settings) indicate that sociocultural values of confianza and autoafirmación underpin the salience and particular realisation (through, respectively, affiliation and autonomy) of face concerns (cf. e.g. Bravo 1999, Hernández Flores 1999, Lorenzo-Dus 2007). Furthermore, Fitch (1991) shows that in transactional encounters with, in particular, regular service providers, Colombians pay considerable attention to interpersonal or relationship concerns. She locates this feature of workplace interaction within a general cultural orientation towards ‘connectedness’. Given the above, and bearing in mind the idiosyncrasies of ‘face’ across the Spanish-speaking world, it is not surprising that there is a growing literature on the characteristics of what may be broadly referred to, following Fitch’s (1991) term, as ‘connectedness talk’ in workplace settings across the Spanish-speaking world. These include studies on politeness and impoliteness in a range of settings.2 Atenuación has been found to be an important aspect of talk at work in a number of Spanish-speaking workplace settings. Atenuación is defined by Briz (2003: 17) as follows: [la atenuación] es un recurso estratégico dentro de la actividad argumentativa y conversacional que busca la aceptación del oyente, ya sea de lo dicho y del decir o del propio hablante. [. . .] [permite] mitigar, suavizar, restar fuerza ilocutiva, reparar, esconder la verdadera intención. atenuación is a strategic resource within argumentative and conversational activity, which seeks to elicit the hearer’s acceptance of either what has been said/it is being said or of the speaker him/herself. [. . .] [it allows the speaker] to mitigate, soften, weaken the illocutionary force, to do repair, to hide (the speaker’s) real intention. (Emphasis in the original) Atenuación strategies fulfil both linguistic and social functions. Linguistically, they are used in order to dar a entender menos de lo que realmente se dice o hace (‘convey less than what one really says or does’). Socially, they are used to proteger la imagen del yo o del tú ante lo dicho/hecho o como manifestación de cortesía (‘protect one’s or the other’s face in the light of what one has said/done or as a manifestation of politeness’; emphasis in the original) (Briz 2003: 44). In a study of (im)politeness in fiscal and bank institutions in the city of Bahía Blanca, which belongs to the Bonaerense Spanish variety, for

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instance, atenuación was found to play a particularly important part in the negotiation of face–task concerns (Julián 2009). Commands and requests were seen to be regularly mitigated both by the employees at fiscal institutions and by the citizens/customers with whom they interacted. This mitigation was achieved through, among other means, use of: impersonalisation (‘impersonal se’), desactualizadores,3 diminutives and a series of ‘accompanying devices’. Examples of the latter include expressions such as por favor (please), si no es mucha molestia (if it is not too much trouble) and ‘preliminary utterances that announce and prepare a potential face threatening act’ (Calsamiglia Blancafort and Tusón Valls 2002: 170). Questions, too, were mitigated in the workplaces examined by Julián (2009) through the use of preparators (e.g. tenía que hacer una pregunta, ‘I had to ask a question’) and modalizadores (e.g. si querés, ‘If you like’). Interestingly, mitigating strategies in this study featured less prominently in the data from the banks than they did in the data from fiscal institutions, something that the author suggests reflects the relative brevity and frequently mechanical nature of the transactions involved in the former.

Overview of chapters Workplace interaction in the Spanish-speaking world, then, emerges as a rich, varied set of practices that display an orientation towards ‘connectedness’ but also retain a number of strategies of atenuación, to name but two broad possibilities. Face and task concerns, moreover, are realised in different ways according to situational and cultural factors. The first three chapters in this part of the book, as noted above, delve deeper into this fascinating – and complex – aspect of interaction within workplace settings. In Chapter 13, Fant focuses on speakers’ use of two discursive processes, intersubjectivity management and argumentation, as tools for consensus establishment and conflict resolution within two related activity types, each situated in a workplace setting: business negotiations and problem-solving in university students’ workgroups. Intersubjectivity management is a newly coined term referring to a set of conversational phenomena, which are regarded as manifestations of a comprehensive process whereby common ground and mutual understanding are co-constituted in dialogue. This process takes place at the micro-level of dialogue and is implemented by means of signals which are usually backgrounded and, more often than not, multi-modal. Argumentation, a far more explored field of research, is regarded in this

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chapter as a process situated at the macro-level of dialogue and essential in the global organisation of dialogue. Fant’s data are based on video recordings of multi-party dialogues carried out in two varieties of Spanish: Peninsular Spanish in the business negotiation (elicited data) and Chilean Spanish in the students’ workgroup (naturally occurring data). Fant’s analysis shows argumentation processes to become effective only when supported by appropriate intersubjectivity management signals. In particular, acceptance moves are found to lead to consensus only if they are combined with intersubjectivity devices which signal a high degree of common ground. In Chapters 14 and 15, service encounters are examined in different Spanish-speaking contexts and involving different forms of interaction (face to face and telephone). Drawing on the literature on small talk and politeness, Placencia and Mancera Rueda (Chapter 14) analyse the use and functions of rapport-building talk in service encounter interactions in bars frequented by regular customers in Seville. The study is based on observation and recordings of naturally occurring interactions in these bars at breakfast time. Their analysis shows that bartenders routinely engage in different types of rapport-building talk with most customers, co-constructing the encounter as a friendly, sociable event. It also reveals rapport-building talk to be a vital form of talk for bartenders at their workplace both in terms of securing continued custom and adding some stimulation to their work. In Chapter 15, in turn, Márquez Reiter explores the manifestation and negotiating of face and task concerns within a service call between a telemarketing agent (the institutional representative) and a prospective client, both in Latin America. Although both call participants speak Spanish as their first language, the agent is from Uruguay (Montevideo) and the prospective client is from Argentina (Buenos Aires). Márquez Reiter considers their interaction as a case of intercultural communication. Although there are a number of linguistic similarities between Montevidean and Bonaerense Spanish, she argues, there are also some (perceived) cultural differences between them. Her analysis integrates a sociopragmatic framework (in its attention to face and politeness) and an ethnomethodological/conversation analytic one (cf. Chapter 1). In doing so, her aim is not ‘to advocate the general superiority’ of one framework over the other but to explore the potentially unique contributions that each has to make to understanding the manifestation and negotiation of face in interaction. Márquez Reiter’s analysis of the opening sequence of the telephone conversation reveals a number

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of manifestations of face, including the kind of orientation towards connectedness that has been discussed above. At the same time, considerations of negative face (overlapping to some extent with Briz’s (2003) notion of atenuación) were attended to by the participants in the call, which the author explains as part of company requirements but also as ‘socioculturally essential’. Overall, her analysis concludes that face is dynamically co-constructed in accordance with contextual and interactional factors. Pardo’s investigation of psychotic discourse in Chapter 16, as noted above, is not directly concerned with the manifestation or negotiation of face in workplace settings. It is, however, centrally concerned with how medical and social care institutions relate to those they are entrusted to care for. Pardo’s analysis is driven by a desire to explore ways in which critical discourse analysis, and in particular an innovative analytic method known as synchronic–diachronic analysis (Pardo 2008b), can be used alongside other disciplines to improve these institution– citizen relationships. In the specific case study examined in Chapter 16, these citizens are psychotic or delusional patients, mostly living in conditions of extreme poverty and/or homelessness in two Latin American countries/cities: Argentina (Buenos Aires) and Chile (Santiago). Critical analysis of the discourse generated – through elicited life stories, diaries and other materials – by these individuals enables the author to identify and characterise several dimensions and degrees of communicative and cognitive deterioration in them. It also, and most crucially, enables correlations with the type of medical (e.g. private inpatient/outpatient clinic, state hospital) or social care (shelter) institution in which patients with different symptoms are staying, including those who are not institutionalised (medicalised) at all and live on the streets. The findings are revealing. Overall, more severe degrees of cognitive and communicative deterioration exist among those surveyed individuals who are ‘under the wings of an institution, be it a hospital, a clinic or a shelter’. Individuals therein appear to have limited discursive practices (lead very isolated existences) and are often either treated as children or simply neglected. Homeless delusional patients, in contrast, appear to form their own ‘street families’ and networks, and are required to stay interactionally active in order to survive on the streets. Pardo stresses that these results are neither to be interpreted as a celebration of homelessness nor as a recommendation for the non-medicalisation of psychosis treatment. Rather, they call for action regarding current conditions, opportunities and quality of life that the institutions examined in the study offer to their patients.

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Notes 1. Space limitations preclude detailed discussion of face (and other face-related notions here) here but see Chapter 15. 2. Examples include: civil servants’ offering information and advice to members of the public at these civil servants’ institutions in Ecuador (Placencia 2001) and Argentina (Ferrer 2003), and health and social care workers interacting with members of the public in Rosario, Argentina (Sánchez Lanza 2003). They also include studies centred on the classroom (e.g. Gabbiani and Madfes 2006) and institutional telephone calls (e.g. Orlando 2006), both in a Uruguayan context. In Spain, for instance, Prego Vázquez (2007) has examined the mechanisms whereby interactional power is embedded into the negotiation of professional selves and others within a semi-public company in Galicia. And Bolívar (2008) has contrasted the use of (im)politeness in public and private businesses in Argentina. 3. Desactualizadores are modal, temporal and deitic particles that create distance between the speaker and his/her face-threatening act, such as use of the conditional and indicative imperfect preterite tenses (Calsamiglia Blancafort and Tusón Valls 2002).

13 Managing Intersubjectivity and Establishing Consensus in Two Activity Types: Business Negotiations and Student Workgroups Lars Fant

Introduction Problem-solving is a central component in an extensive array of human ‘activity types’ (Levinson 1992) involving various forms of spoken and written communication. The study of problem-solving interaction in face-to-face encounters is a domain hitherto of marginal concern in Hispanic pragma- and sociolinguistics. The aim of this contribution is to shed light on a few general mechanisms involved in problem-solving, with particular focus on two institutional activity types that share certain traits but are also very different with regard to the genre rules they are governed by. The first of these, ‘business negotiation interaction’, is characterised by the distribution of its participants into two (or more) parties with partially conflicting, partially convergent interests (Donohue 1981: 274). The interaction patterns found in this activity type are more often than not confrontational and openly argumentative in nature. The second activity type could best be termed ‘problemsolving in students’ workgroups’ (Harvey 2006). The interaction here is one which takes place when university students meet in order to find joint solutions to tasks they have received in the course of their studies.1 The data drawn on for analysing interaction of the first activity type are a transcribed recording of a simulated negotiation performed in Spanish between two teams of professional business people. One of the teams consists of two Swedish people who live in Spain and are highly proficient users of their L2 Spanish, while the second team comprises 172

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two native speakers of Peninsular Spanish. As regards the second activity type, students’ workgroups, the data are a transcribed recording of a naturally occurring multi-party interaction whose participants are Chilean higher education students. The recording was taken from the extensive GRUPES corpus (Harvey 2006, Fant and Harvey 2008, Núñez and Oyanedel in press). Both sets of data were transcribed according to the Transana system (for details, see www.transana.org). In order to account for the mechanisms of problem-solving, two theoretical models will be resorted to. One of these models (Gille 2001) concerns the ideational and discursive plane of communication and involves the notions of argumentation and argument management. The analysis regarding this plane will be referred to as macro-level analysis in the present context. The second model involves mechanisms of the interactional plane of communication and addresses a group of phenomena under the heading ‘intersubjectivity management’ (Fant 2007a, b, Fant and Harvey 2008); the corresponding analysis will henceforth be referred to as micro-level analysis. Although the present study may be seen as explorative in the sense of applying models of analysis to empirical interactional data, it is also driven by specific research questions. The first, all-encompassing question is by which linguistic means participants in conflict- and problem-solving within institutional contexts seek and obtain consensus in dialogue. The second question concerns which particular effects the establishment of consensus has on topic selection and topic management within these contexts. Thirdly, considering that two distinct planes of analysis are involved (and provided the proposed models of argumentation and intersubjectivity management prove operational), a natural question that arises is to what extent these two processes are interdependent.

Intersubjectivity management Intersubjectivity, taken in a broad social–psychological sense, refers to a state of focus, knowledge, understanding and appraisal shared by two or more participants of a communication event, at a particular point of that event. In this sense, it is closely related to the concepts of mutual knowledge (Clark and Marshall 1981, Gibbs 1987) and common ground (Cicourel 1973, Clark 1996). The notion of intersubjectivity has been used by Bakhtin (see e.g. Bakhtin 1986, Bubnova 2000) and has been developed and elaborated by Rommetveit in a number of studies (particularly Rommetveit 1979, 1985). It has also been used, among others,

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by Heritage (1984), Wertsch (1991, 1998) and Linell (1998) to refer not only to a cognitive but also to an affective state existing between interactants. In the present context, however, intersubjectivity (henceforth IS) will be understood in a more restricted sense, directly related to the structure of dialogue and describable in terms of use of specific linguistic devices which have specific functions and produce specific effects. The proposed model for intersubjectivity management (henceforth ISM) draws largely on work on feedback processes in speech such as Yngve (1970), Schegloff (1982) or Allwood et al. (1992), and, as regards Spanish, Fant (1996), Briz (1998) and Vázquez Veiga (2000). It also draws on the model for initiative/response analysis proposed by Linell et al. (1988), applied to Spanish by Fant (1996) and Briz (1998). ISM is regarded as co-constructional action (Jacoby and Ochs 1995) and as an essential component in the process of co-constitution in dialogue (Linell 1998, Arundale 1999). It deserves underscoring that this process is more often implemented by means of bi- or multi-modal devices (Taylor et al. 1989) than with purely verbal markers. By means of ISM devices, the participants of a dialogue – regardless of whether it takes place within an institutional activity or not – ‘negotiate’ the extent to which the ideational and pragmatic content expressed will be accepted as shared knowledge and give rise to a mutual understanding. It is assumed that interactants, motivated by their willingness to cooperate, will by default (though far from always) strive to establish or restore a maximum degree of IS. This will be done repeatedly and in short intervals throughout the event. It is also assumed that the distribution of ISM devices will be coordinated with the division of turns into dialogue units (or turn-constructional units; Sacks et al. 1974) so that, for each unit, an ISM signal is expected to be produced. Two basic types of ISM acts are involved: (1) affirmative acts of claiming or confirming IS, and (2) avoidance acts of refraining from claiming or confirming IS. Depending on whether an act belongs to an initiative or a response move, it will be understood as either (refraining from) claiming or (refraining from) confirming, respectively. Furthermore, affirmative acts are taken to be produced along a scale (Fant 2005) that comprises six degrees: maximum IS (+3), high IS (+2), some IS (+1), some lack of IS (−1), low IS (−2) and minimum IS (−3). Only confirming acts can take all six values. Claiming acts are assumed to range across four values: from (+2) to (−2). This assumption is based on the consideration that, since IS is a co-constructed state and ISM a co-constitutive process, true co-constitution can only occur in and

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through a confirmation act. Accordingly, maximum degrees (+3 and −3) are attributed only to confirmation acts. ISM devices can be seen as operators on propositional content. ISclaiming devices operate on content expressed by the speaker itself, whereas IS-confirming devices operate on content expressed by the previous speaker (except, of course, in case of the speaker who produces the confirming device enacting two parallel voices in the same turn). Only by means of ISM devices that confirm maximum (+3) or high (+2) degree will positive IS be co-constitutively attained with regard to a given topic. IS can be seen as consisting of a cognitive and an affective component. The cognitive component will be referred to as ‘shared knowledge’ and the affective component as ‘mutual understanding’. By signalling mutual understanding, the speaker conveys to the interlocutor(s) that the evaluation of the current topic is shared.

Verbal markers Two functional categories of verbal markers are involved in ISM: feedback-claiming expressions, which are used in initiative moves, and feedback-giving expressions, which are used in response moves. Whereas the latter category has been accounted for theoretically in several studies, notably Allwood et al. (1992), and both categories have been the subject of a large number of empirical studies, surprisingly little work has addressed both categories as manifestations of a holistic process. The most typical representatives of feedback-claiming in English, the so-called tag questions (‘isn’t it?’, ‘don’t they?’, ‘wouldn’t we?’, and so forth) have been thoroughly described from various perspectives, whereas functionally corresponding expressions in Spanish such as ¿no?, ¿sí?, ¿(no es) verdad? or ¿(no es) cierto? have not been as lucky.2 Feedback-givers have two separate functions: minimal response and back-channelling. The difference between the two is that while minimal responses are turn-claiming in nature and are often used as the starting point of a new turn, back-channelers – though typically occurring at transition-relevance points (Sacks et al. 1974) – are not understood as claiming the turn from the current speaker. The division line is fuzzy, however, for turn-claiming depends on many different contextual factors and, above all, one and the same formal marker can often do both jobs. Frequent feedback-givers occurring in all varieties of Spanish are mm (‘message received’), ya (‘message received and understood’), claro

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(‘message received, understood and judged to be obvious information’), sí (‘message received and understood’ + ‘confirming the non-negated propositional content of the preceding utterance’), no (‘message perceived and understood’ + ‘claiming the opposite of the non-negated propositional content of the preceding utterance’) and ah (‘message received, understood and judged to be new or dissonant information’; this marker often combines with sí, no, ya or claro). Prosodic markers Although verbal markers are essential devices in ISM, prosodic signals are just as important. Among the various types of prosodic markers, endtones (i.e. intonational contours appearing at the end of tone groups) seem to be the category most closely connected with ISM (Brazil 1997, Fant 2006). Simple end-tones may be distinguished from composite endtones. In Spanish, and presumably in most languages, three simple endtones may be distinguished (cf. Navarro Tomás 1944): ↑= rising tone, understood as signalling low or minimum IS. When closing an initiative move, the typical intended interpretation is ‘request for response’, which corresponds to the traditional notion of question. However, in an initiative move which corresponds to a dialogue unit (turn-constructional unit) where the speaker selects him/herself as next speaker (Sacks et al. 1974), the signalling of low IS is reinterpreted as a mere continuity signal. When ending a feedback-claiming (initiative) move, the intended interpretation is ‘request for confirmation’. In feedback-giving (response) moves, finally, the rising tone (e.g. sí ↑ ‘yes ↑’) is normally meant to be interpreted as a request for additional content. ↓= falling tone, understood as signalling high or maximum IS. In initiative moves, the falling end-tone is generally perceived as a ‘declarative’ signal, i.e. as a claim of shared knowledge. In response moves, the falling end-tone is used for confirming that the content of the preceding turn represents shared knowledge. →= level tone, understood as ‘refraining from signalling any degree of IS’. This value represents the same meaning regardless of whether the tone appears in an initiative or a response move. As regards composite end-tones, the model proposed in Fant (2006) predicts that both aspects of IS – shared knowledge and mutual understanding – are signalled separately in the sense that the first part of the composite tone represents mutual understanding and the second part

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shared knowledge. The most frequent composite tone in the activity types under consideration appears to be the rise–fall (↑↓), which is understood as low mutual understanding plus high shared knowledge. The contradictory nature of this signal, meaning something like ‘we share this information though we may not see it in the same way’, explains its connotation of emphasis or accentuated commitment. This connotation is present in initiative and response moves. The opposite type of composite end-tone, the fall–rise (↓↑), presumably signals the inversion of the meaning of the rise–fall, namely high mutual understanding plus low shared knowledge. This type of signal, which means something like ‘we see these things in the same way but there is a piece of information that we do not share’, is likely to appear in polite or rhetorical questions used for underscoring the speaker’s willingness to reach consensus. In response moves, the fall–rise seems to be used typically to hedge the signalling of non-shared knowledge (ah sí ↓↑ ‘really↓↑’). Mutual contextualisation between verbal and prosodic markers Prosodic signals never occur in isolation (when they seemingly do, they are in fact superimposed on non-verbal vocalisations). Verbal discourse markers, in turn, can hardly be produced without a co-occurring prosodic signal. Verbal and prosodic components jointly build a complex bimodal signal where the prosodic part provides the immediate context for the verbal part, and vice versa (Selting 1996). To complicate things further, gesture often enters the picture giving rise to even more complex, multi-modal signals. The following exchange (1) is an example of basic bi-modal signalling in ISM: (1)

A: Tienes hambre, ¿no↑? (‘You’re hungry, aren’t you?’) B: Sí↓, un poco. (‘Yes, a little.’)

Here, the verbal discourse marker ¿no? combines with a rising end-tone (↑) into a bimodal marker. The meaning of the verbal component, which can be stated ‘take this as information I understand to be correct’, is here contextualised by the claiming of low IS that goes with the prosodic component, and vice versa, which jointly conveys the meaning ‘confirm whether you’re sharing this or not’. The corresponding confirmation is accomplished by speaker B by means of another bimodal marker, sí↓, which combines the verbal meaning ‘being in accordance with the previously expressed non-negated propositional content’ with the prosodic meaning high/maximum IS.

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The same bimodal marker may convey different meanings depending on whether it appears in an initiative or in a response move. As an example, a ‘no’ pronounced with a rise–fall (no↑↓) in a response move will convey the maximum degree of negative IS (low mutual understanding, plus claiming the inversion of the propositional content previously uttered by the other speaker as shared knowledge). In an initiative move, however, the same marker will convey some degree of positive IS (low mutual understanding, plus claiming a high degree of shared knowledge for the propositional content previously expressed by the speaker him/herself). In sum, the kind and degree of IS conveyed depend on (i) whether the signalling occurs in an initiative or a response move, (ii) the semantic meaning of each separate component, and (iii) ways in which the different components contextualise each other. Analysis of ISM in empirical data In order to study how ISM is implemented in spontaneous dialogue an episode will be examined, which has been taken from an event in which a workgroup of Chilean higher education students are engaged in the task of preparing a didactic unit for Chilean history and society in primary education. This episode, named Ya, bacán (‘Okay, brilliant!’), constitutes a side-sequence in the topic development. It is 66 seconds long, consists of 25 turns split into 35 dialogue units and has a clear beginning and end. The participants are four female students of education during their first year at university: Celia, Olaya, Paula and Tania (pseudonyms). Celia has assumed the role of secretary, typing on the computer what the group agrees on, whereas Tania consistently takes the role of chairperson. The discussion has hitherto circled around details of the contents meant to be included in the didactic unit. At the start of the episode, Tania unexpectedly comes up with a problem regarding the dimension of the task: (2) Tania (2–3)3 : tengo una duda↓/ tengo una duda como al respecto muy general↓// por ejemplo si este es un contenido mínimo↓/// esto de acá↓// cómo nosotras vamos a hacer una unidad entera↑/ en base a un solo contenido↓ I have a problem, I have a sort of very general problem with this, for instance, if this is a minimal topic, this here, how are we going to make a whole unit based on one topic only?

Tania here repeatedly resorts to falling end-tones in order to claim IS for her opening point (duda↓, general↓) as well as for presupposed elements

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(mínimo↓, acá↓, contenido↓), whereas the question itself – as could be expected – is pronounced with a rising tone (entera↑) claiming low IS. In the turns that follow, however, more marked patterns appear: (3)

Celia (4): Tania (5–8):

Paula (9): Tania (10):

por qué no→ why not? porque una unidad son cinco horas o sea una unidad→ cuánto tiempo↓ es de dedicación se- temporal cinco horas semanales↓ o cuánto tiempo↓// una unidad temporal puede demorar Because one unit is five hours, I mean, one unit, how much time is that in terms of week-time consumption, or how much time can a time unit take? un semestre ↓po one semester, of course ya ↓po yeah, sure

Celia (4), by means of a level end-tone, cautiously avoids making any IS claims, which compensates for her rather strong verbal questioning of the relevance of Tania’s point. Tania’s reaction is first to repeat the level tone (unidad→) and then return to her affirmative style by resorting to falling end-tones, not only for expressing presupposed content (cuánto tiempo↓)4 but also when presenting a true doubt where she actually needs to be confirmed (cinco horas semanales↓). Paula (9) gives the answer, ‘one whole semester’, ending with a bimodal marker, ↓po, which gives strong emphasis to the confirmatory act performed. Tania (10) accepts this by recycling Paula’s ↓po. In the following turns, it becomes obvious that Tania has not fully realised the difference between ‘unit’ and ‘topic’. Paula reminds her that in this task, one unit consists of four minimal topics, an input which Tania reluctantly seems to accept. Celia and Paula jointly continue their persuasion effort: (4) Celia (18):

es que las unidades de acá no son las mismas unidades que hacís tú↑ y’ know, these units here are not the same units as you are doing Paula (19): en cuatro clases ya pasaste ese tema↓ in four lessons you’re already done with that topic Tania (20): por eso ↓po what I’m telling you!

While Celia (18) by means of a rising tone claiming low IS attenuates the force of what she obviously intends to be an affirmation, Paula (19) in a

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more direct fashion, by means of a falling end-tone, claims high IS for the clarification she adds. Tania’s (20) response is a strong confirmatory response move, por eso (literally: ‘because of this’), meaning that the information referred to is precisely what she has been claiming herself. Once more she resorts to the strongly confirmatory bimodal marker ↓po. After this passage, two more issues are successively resolved: the number of lessons foreseen for each minimal topic and the number of minutes foreseen for each lesson. These clarifications being made, a conclusion can be drawn regarding the dimension of a ‘minimal topic’: (5)

Tania (27): Paula (28): Olaya (29): Tania (30):

entonces voy a tener dos semanas de esto↑ then I’ll have two weeks of this claro↓ sure una semana y media↑↓ no sé↑ one week and a half, I don’t know . . . ah ya↑↓ bacán ya↑↓ ba(cán) // ya↑↓ oh yeah, brilliant! Brilliant, yeah!

Tania (27), in spite of expressing a rather obvious conclusion, chooses to claim low IS (esto↑) as a request for confirmation. Confirmation is fully granted by Paula (claro↓, value +3). Olaya’s (29) objection is expressed by means of a rise–fall claiming ‘some degree of IS’ (y media↑↓, +1) followed by an expression of insecurity whereby low IS is being claimed (no sé↑, value −2). This rather weak objection, however, goes unnoticed, whereas Tania (30) enthusiastically confirms her acceptance of her own conclusion. Interestingly but not surprisingly, she twice combines the minimal response marker ya with a composite rising–falling endtone. By using this bimodal device, two meanings are simultaneously conveyed: acknowledging previous lack of mutual understanding and confirming the shared knowledge just accomplished. In the turns that follow, Tania formulates conclusions regarding the task’s dimension, and consensus is rapidly attained: (6)

Tania (31):

Olaya (32): Paula (33):

entonces vamos a hablar de TOdo esto cómo vamos a vamos a hacer UNa uni- unidad gigante↓ nosotras de este tema↓ then we’re going to talk about all this, how we, we’re going to make one giant unit on this subject (INAUDIBLE) sí↑↓ hagamos esto yes, let’s do that

Intersubjectivity and Consensus in Two Work-Related Activity Types Olaya (34): Tania (35):

181

ya↓ yeah ((HANDS CELIA A PIECE OF PAPER )) tenís esto pa’ copiá la cuestión↑ here you’ve got to plot it all down

Tania (31), now more sure of herself, returns to her previous strategy of using simple fall-tones in order to claim high IS for, and thereby assert, her point (gigante↓, tema↓). She is confirmed both by Paula (33) and Olaya (34), the former using the bimodal marker sí↑↓, presumably conveying high IS (+2) and the latter the bimodal marker ya↓, conveying maximum IS (+3). The state of IS attained is indirectly confirmed by Tania’s (35) nonverbal action of handing Celia, the ‘secretary’, the piece of paper with the notes that she has taken. The rising tone with which she accompanies her request signals low IS, which is here to be understood as a non-imposing politeness strategy.

Argument management Argumentation is a field of study situated on the borderline between social psychology and discourse linguistics. In the present context, in order to describe argument management (henceforth AM) in dialogue, a model proposed by Gille (2001) and drawing, to a not negligible extent, on Jacobs and Jackson (1982), will serve as a framework. AM moves According to the Gille (2001) model, a series of moves are distinguished which serve argumentative purposes and can be regarded as constituting a presumably exhaustive inventory of tools for argument management. First, there are opening moves, of which two subcategories can be distinguished: initial opinions (IO) and associated opinions (AO). An ‘opinion’ is here understood as an explicit or partially implicit message that the speaker or speakers will orient to in the subsequent dialogue. As the term indicates, an IO is a starting point, whereas AOs are ideas connected with an IO in a metonymical relation (cause–effect, part–whole, etc.) and may emerge at any point of an episode or event. IOs can be seen as manifestations of topic introduction and AOs as manifestations of topic development. Second, two types of simple response moves can be distinguished: acceptances (AC) and rejections (RJ). These two types are not argumentative per se, but are an essential part of AM. They can

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address either opinions (initial or associated) or core argumentative moves (see below). Third, a number of argumentative core moves can be distinguished: • supports or ‘pro-arguments’ (PA) which correspond to utterances given in favour of an opinion or another core move; • rebuttals or ‘counter-arguments’ (CA) which correspond to utterances that go against an opinion or core move; • ‘concessions’ (CC), which are utterances, or parts of utterances, that lend support to an opinion, core move or general idea that goes against the speaker’s main line of argumentation, often corresponding to the ‘true enough’ part of a ‘true enough . . . but’ sequence. • ‘reservations’ (RS) which are utterances, or parts of utterances, that qualify the strength of an AC or a PA. Finally, there are two categories of moves, which without being argumentative per se constitute important links in AM: information requests (IR) and information deliveries (ID). IRs are produced in order to trigger IDs, the content of which, in turn, is typically used by the requesting party for developing his/her argumentation. On the other hand, an ID may be produced by a participant without being elicited by a preceding IR, normally with the intention of preparing the terrain for a new opening or core move. Analysis of AM in empirical data In a recording carried out in Madrid, two teams are opposing each other in a simulated negotiation, where the Research Department (performed by two native Spaniards, here named Jordi and Julia) and the Development Department (performed by two Swedes living in Spain, here named Arne and Lisa) try to reach an agreement about when to launch a new product developed by Research. The former’s interest is to have the launching done as soon as possible, while the Development representatives, disillusioned by past experience, require more tests to be done. The dialogue is generated from an artificial set-up. However, all four participants are professional negotiators and stand out as cognitively and emotionally committed to the task. Apart from initial instructions given to each team concerning details of the issue and goals to achieve, this workplace role-play is entirely open-ended with a spontaneous dialogue.

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In order to show the mechanisms of AM in this activity, a sequence, Las pruebas sí (‘The tests, right’), was chosen where the confrontation between the parties is particularly sharp. The sequence lasts for 90 seconds and comprises 15 turns split into 33 dialogue units. At the beginning of the sequence, Julia and Jordi jointly argue against Development’s proposal to let the product go through a four-month testing period before launching: (7)

Julia (1):

Jordi (2):

entonces realmente esperar es- yo creo que: es es simplemente::: no sé dilatar el tema→ so waiting is really, I think it simply means delaying the issue . . . sí dila- dilatar el tema y y gastar más↓ no yes, delaying the issue and spending more money, doesn’t it?

Here, Julia (1) produces a CA (‘delaying the issue’), which is recycled and further supported (‘spending more money’) by Jordi (2). At this point, Jordi changes his strategy and comes up with a new suggestion (AO): ‘consulting the technicians’. (8)

Jordi (4, 6):

si queréis podemos traeros a los técnicos↑ y que tengáis una conversación con ellos ↑↓con los técnicos que han elaborado el informe↓ no If you wish, we could bring in the technicians so you can have a chat with them, the technicians who wrote the report, right?

Arne’s direct response is to quickly accept Jordi’s suggestion (Arne 7, AC) and then present an alternative topic, namely ‘the costs’ (Arne 8, ID): (9)

Arne (7): Arne (8):

bien↓ fine y también era el tema de de: la pasta↓no↑ and there was also this issue of cash, wasn’t there?

After an attempt to develop the topic of costs, Arne presents a revised version of his original bid, offering a three-month instead of a fourmonth delay (IA): (10)

Arne (12): yo creo que podemos apretar un poco y hacerlo en tres meses↓ no I think we can squeeze it a bit and make it three months, can’t we?

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Julia’s response is to reject Arne’s offer (Julia 16; RJ), giving a series of arguments in support of her rejection (PO): ‘insufficient time for repeating tests’ (17), ‘opposite party being unaware of relevant facts’ (21), and ‘high costs’ (18, 23a) leading to ‘difficulties in market introduction’ (23b, 24): (11)

Julia (16):

hombre en tres meses no sería posible→ oh no, in three months it wouldn’t be possible, porque no hay tiempo de repetir unas pruebas en tres mesesbecause there’s no time for repeating tests in three months. por eso claro realmente: una cosa que tenemos clara que está funcioque no va a funcionar↑↓/meternos en un proyecto de cuatro meses más/ es mucho dinero mucho:: for this reason, of course, one thing that is perfectly clear to us, that will wo-, that it won’t work getting involved in a project that’ll take four more months, it means a lot of money, a lot of . . . yo no sé si habéis estudiado este tema ↑↓ I don’t know whether you have considered this issue y esto puede cargar mucho en el precio final del del producto and this may weigh heavily on the final price of the- the product, y hacerlo mucho más difícil su introducción↑↓ and make it much more difficult to introduce on the market, con lo cual e: estamos frenando↑↓ realmente el desarrollo de este: producto which means, uh, that we’re putting serious obstacles to the development of this product

Julia (17): Julia (18):

Julia (21): Julia (23a):

Julia (23b): Julia (24):

At this point, Jordi opens a side-sequence asking Arne for a clarification (IR) which Arne readily provides (ID): (12)

Jordi (26):

Jordi (27): Arne (28):

es que yo no sé si cuando Arne comentaba esto↑ si se refería/ a las pruebas ↑ o a lanzar el tema Actually, I don’t know when Arne made his comment, whether he meant the tests or the launching a qué te referías con los tres meses↓ what did you mean by ‘three months’? a las pruebas → a las pruebas↓ sí the tests, right. The tests

Jordi implicitly rejects (RJ) Arne’s answer and is supported by Julia, who formulates her rejection (RJ) in a more explicit manner: (13)

Jordi (30):

tú insistes en las pruebas↓ so you keep insisting on the tests!

Intersubjectivity and Consensus in Two Work-Related Activity Types

Julia (32):

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no hay que hacer pruebas y ves→ there is no need for any tests, and do you realise, . . . .

Throughout this sequence, it is obvious that the fundamental conflict concerning the timing of the launch remains unresolved. No consensus is reached, except on one point (Jordi 6, Arne 7), namely that the technicians responsible for the original report should be consulted. This point, however, is not developed and the parties return to their original positions, arguing for and against the longer and the shorter delay.

Conjoining both parameters ISM and AM belong to different planes of linguistic expression: while AM is a process characteristic of global discourse organisation, ISM is an online process locally implemented on the micro-level of interaction. However, in the process of co-constitutive meaning creation, these two processes not only run parallel to, but are also dependent on, each other. In two samples of dialogue, one from each set of data, the ways in which the interlock between these processes is manifested, and to what extent it can generate consensus establishment, will be examined and discussed. Consensus established, problem solved Let us, to begin with, go back to the sequence Ya, bacán, where processes of ISM were identified and analysed. At an early stage (see (14)), Tania produces an information request (IR). The answer to this request is given by Paula (ID), who confirms maximum IS. Tania’s subsequent move (ya ↓po) is an acceptance (AC) move supported by a reconfirmation of maximum IS: (14)

Tania (8): Paula (9): Tania (10):

[ . . . ] cuánto tiempo↓ // una unidad temporal puede demorar for how long can a time unit last? un semestre ↓po one semester, of course ya ↓po yeah, sure

This exchange results in a partial consensus as regards the subtopic ‘duration of the didactic unit’. However, this consensus brings no final solution to the whole issue of the task’s dimension, which means the sequence will have to continue before the preceding topic (= the

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content matter of the didactic unit) can be resumed. A further step forward in this endeavour can be seen in (15): (15)

Celia (18):

Paula (19): Tania (20):

es que las unidades de acá no son las mismas unidades que hacís tú↑ y’know, these units here are not the same units as you are doing. en cuatro clases ya pasaste ese tema↓ in four lessons you’re already done with that topic por eso ↓po what I’m telling you!

Here, both Celia and Paula present counter-arguments (CA) against what they perceive to be Tania’s view. Celia’s move is combined with a claiming of low IS (rise-tone, −2), which rather weakens her point, whereas Paula’s move is connected with a claiming of high IS (fall-tone, +2). Tania gives her acceptance (AC) to Celia’s and Paula’s points in a response move that confirms maximum IS.5 Since Tania has now adopted her interlocutors’ views on essential points, the ground is prepared for a more comprehensive consensus. A few more details need to be made clear, however, such as the number of weeks and lessons to be dedicated to each minimal topic, and the length of each lesson. After these details have been made explicit (units 21–25), the following exchange takes place between Tania and Paula: (16)

Tania (27): Paula (28):

entonces voy a tener dos semanas de esto↑ then I’ll have two weeks of this claro↓ sure

In this exchange, Tania produces an information request (IR) claiming low IS (−2). Paula responds by delivering an answer (ID) which implies the acceptance (AC) of the propositional content conveyed by Tania’s utterance. Paula’s choice of marker (claro↓) signals the confirmation of maximum IS, which means consensus is now attained as regards the last details to be clarified. What remains to be done is to acknowledge consensus on the encompassing topic, the dimension of the task, which is accomplished through the following exchanges: (17)

Tania (30–31):

ah ya↑↓ bacán ya↑↓ ba(cán) // ya↑↓ entonces vamos a hablar de TOdo esto cómo vamos a vamos a hacer UNa uni- unidad gigante↓ nosotras de este tema↓ oh yeah, brilliant! Brilliant, yeah! Then we’re going to talk about all this, how we, we’re going to make one giant unit on this subject.

Intersubjectivity and Consensus in Two Work-Related Activity Types Paula (33): Olaya (34):

187

sí↑↓ hagamos esto yes, let’s do that ya↓ yeah

After producing a move of general acceptance (AC) and confirming high IS (ya↑↓ bacán, +2), Tania proceeds to reformulate what she takes to be the objective of the workgroup’s task. This move, from the perspective of AM, is an associated opinion (AI). From the perspective of ISM, it is a response move where the falling end-tone signals a claim for high IS (+2). Paula’s and Olaya’s response is to produce simultaneous acceptance moves (AC) that, in turn, are response moves confirming high IS (+2, Paula) and maximum IS (+3, Olaya), respectively. The result can be readily identified in the dialogue: Tania hands her handwritten piece of paper to Celia so that she can type the notes. This action seals the consensus, marks the closing of the side-sequence, and allows the participants to return to the former topic. In all four passages analysed, each accomplished step of consensusbuilding is based on a combination of an AM with the confirmation of high or maximum IS. Furthermore, in order for the current problem to be perceived as solved, consensus needs to be attained about all subtopics considered relevant by the participants. Thus, AMs that can be interpreted as addressing the problematic topic as a whole are to be expected for the topic to be perceived as concluded.

Consensus established, conflict only partially solved Conflict- and problem-solving is not always as (relatively) unproblematic as we have seen in the Ya, bacán episode. In the negotiation sequence where AM was analysed above (Las pruebas, sí), the parties seemingly got no closer to each other. In order to assess the level of consensus attained in this event, we need to examine what happens towards the end of the simulated workplace negotiation. In a sequence named Lo que dijimos antes (‘What we said before’), AM moves will now be examined in combination with the co-occurring initiatives and responses by means of which levels of IS are claimed or confirmed. The duration of this sequence is 27 seconds and it comprises 10 turns split into 13 dialogue units. Before the sequence starts, the Research representatives Jordi and Julia have repeated their proposal to consult the technicians who wrote the original report. Development representative Arne accepts this proposal in a turn consisting of units 1–3 and 5:

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Arne (1–2): Arne (3): Julia (4): Arne (5):

bueno↑↓ podemos verlos→ okay. We can see them. estamos a lunes hoy↓ no↑ today is Monday, isn’t it? ahá↑ aha. e:: vernos con esta gente el el miércoles y sin falta llegar a una: a una cosa u otra↓no↑ uh, see these people on Wednesday and definitively come to one conclusion or the other.

In (18), Arne starts by giving his approval (AC), although with an ambiguous IS signalling: he produces a bimodal marker (bueno↑↓) confirming high IS (+2), followed by a level end-tone signalling abstention. After this, he initiates a side-sequence by means of IR concerning which weekday it is. His request is responded to by Julia by means of an ID (aha↑) where she signals a reduced degree of IS (−1), the most likely interpretation of which, however, is ‘go on speaking’. Arne then continues his turn by developing the issue of when and under what conditions the meeting with the technicians is to take place. This is an associated opinion (AO) combined with a claim for low IS (no↑, −2) which is to be interpreted as the speaker’s expectation for the opposite party to give their confirmation. A somewhat reluctant response is provided by Jordi and Julia simultaneously: (19)

Jordi (6): Julia (7):

me parece bien→ I think that’s fine mhm↓

Although both are AC moves, the ISM signal produced by Jordi (level tone) is an abstention to confirm IS. Julia’s choice of marker, albeit a signal of maximum IS, hardly reveals any enthusiasm. Accordingly, some doubts subsist whether the responses could be interpreted as establishing true consensus. Arne (8) proceeds, however, as if this was the case. He continues talking about the time of the meeting, and gets a new response from the opposite party: (20)

Arne (8): Jordi (10): Julia (11):

hacemos eso↑↓ lo que dijimos antes o sea por la mañana↑↓ we’ll do that. What we said earlier, in the morning, that is. miércoles por la mañana↓ miércoles por la mañana↓ Wednesday morning.

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189

Arne is here simply restating his earlier AO, but now in combination with a signal of lower IS – the rise–fall twice repeated in his initiative move indicates simultaneously a low degree of mutual understanding and a high degree of shared knowledge, which sums up as signalling ‘some IS’, +1. His hesitation is understandable, considering the opposite party’s uncommitted earlier responses. This time, however, Jordi’s and Julia’s acceptance moves are more unequivocally formulated and combined with signals confirming maximum IS. At this point the parties have come to an agreement and an apparent consensus has been established, but only regarding a minor aspect: the upcoming meeting with the technicians. The basic conflict, concerning the timing of the launch and the need for more tests, has not been resolved. Accordingly, it comes as no surprise when Julia continues her turn by addressing the conflictive issue once more: (21)

Julia (12–13):

lo que pasa es que sería bueno que realmente quedara claro cuál es la razón: real → o sea cuál es lo que os da miedo dentro de todo el informe que os hemos presentado de que no pueda funcionar↑↓ The thing is it would be good if you made clear which is the true reason, I mean, what makes you afraid in this whole report that we have submitted that this wouldn’t work

These observations allow us to conclude that, in the process of conflictand problem-solving, subtopics which have not been exhausted are likely to be readdressed sooner or later, in spite of consensus being attained in other subtopics, or an apparent consensus being confirmed as regards the problem as a whole.

Conclusions In this study, two dynamic aspects of spoken interaction have been described within two workplace activities: lesson planning and business negotiation. Both aspects have been found to be intertwined, one being intersubjectivity management (ISM) and the other argument management (AM). ISM comprises a set of micro-level devices which are used for regulating interaction and are produced in practically every dialogue (turn-constructional) unit. In their capacity of basic tools in the co-constitution of dialogue, ISM markers are ubiquitous in all types of non-scripted interaction. AM, on the other hand, comprises a set of moves which belong to the global pragmatic plane of dialogue. AM is an essential component in a majority of spoken and written genres, and

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particularly so in institutional activity types. In specific types such as debates or business negotiations, AM is foregrounded and often becomes thematised. The analysis of the two institutionally situated events considered in the present study has shown that confirming intersubjectivity at relevant points is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for consensus establishment. In fact, consensus-building and conflict-solving in dialogue depend crucially on the coupling between IS markers and AM moves, in the sense that only those AM moves that are supported by IS signalling become effectual. Only when an acceptance move (AC) is supported by a signal confirming high or maximum intersubjectivity, can consensus be established with regard to the topic of immediate concern. Furthermore, the establishment of consensus concerning a topic, or group of topics that has been perceived as unresolved, typically leads to the closing of that topic or topic group and, usually, to the opening of a new one. If, on the other hand, topic change should occur without consensus having been unequivocally confirmed, the former topic will be perceived as suspended and liable to be reopened at a later stage.

Transcription conventions Sign Tania (12) (INAUDIBLE) (esto) es UNa unidad ((LAUGHS)) [ ] / // /// (3.0) § para↓ ↑ → ↑↓

Meaning name of speaker dialogue unit number ‘12’ within the sequence inaudible segment uncertain transcription prominent syllable non-verbal action overlapping segment short silence ∼0.5 seconds silence 0.5–1.0 seconds silence 1.0–1.5 seconds extended silence measured in seconds latching (neither pause nor overlap between turns) self-interruption falling end-tone rising end-tone level end-tone rising–falling end-tone

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Notes 1. The present study draws largely on, and parts of the analysis roughly coincide with, Fant and Harvey (2008). 2. An important contribution to the description of these markers, however, is Ortega Olivares (1985), who terms them comprobativos (‘checkers’ or ‘uptakers’). 3. The numbers within parentheses refer to the order of dialogue (turnconstructional) units within the episode. 4. Falling end-tones are characteristic of WH-questions and either occur at the question word itself or at the end of the unit. Their meaning is to claim IS for the presupposed part of the questions. 5. At the same time, Tania (20) includes an initiative conveying the meaning ‘this is what I already meant to say’, which is obviously untrue.

14 Vaya, ¡qué chungo! Rapport-Building Talk in Service Encounters: the Case of Bars in Seville at Breakfast Time1 María Elena Placencia and Ana Mancera Rueda

Introduction Drawing on the literature on small talk (cf. e.g. collections of papers in Coupland 2000a, Placencia and García 2008) and politeness (cf. e.g. Aston 1988a, Spencer-Oatey 2000, 2008), this chapter examines rapportbuilding talk in service encounter interactions in bars in Seville. By rapport-building talk, we mean conversational activities that go beyond the service transaction and participants’ roles as service providers or customers. These are activities seemingly aimed at reducing interpersonal distance and reaffirming friendly relations between, in our study, bartenders and customers.2 We aim to show that rapport-building talk for bartenders is in fact ‘an intrinsic part’ of talk at work (Coupland 2000b: 6). Rapport-building activities have been found to range from the more or less creative/individualised (Aston 1988a, Placencia 2004) to the ritualised (e.g. greeting and leave-taking exchanges) – something Holmes (2000) depicts in terms of a continuum (see Figure 14.1) in her discussion of (small) talk at work. Holmes (2000: 39) locates ritualised forms of talk (under Malinowski’s ([1923] 1972) ‘phatic communion’ label) and ‘core business talk’ at opposite ends of the continuum, with two other forms placed between them: ‘work-related talk’ (off-topic) and ‘social talk’ (more individualised than phatic communion and where ‘contact per se is foregrounded’). Social talk and phatic communion fall under the label of ‘small talk’. The same continuum can be employed to describe talk in service encounters in the present study, although we propose qualifying social 192

Rapport-Building Talk in Service Encounters

Core business talk

Work related talk

Social talk

193

Phatic communion

Small talk Figure 14.1 Small talk (Source: Holmes 2000: 38)

Core service talk Service-related talk Creative/individualised social talk Phatic talk Rapport-building talk

Figure 14.2 A revised continuum for analysing small talk in service encounters

talk as creative/individualised, since phatic talk is also a type of social talk (cf. Figure 14.2). For us, however, even phatic talk can include a creative or individualised element. This can be seen through speakers’ choice of particular greeting and other formulas. We are also of the view that rapportbuilding talk is not circumscribed or limited to particular sections of interaction, as suggested by Laver (1975, 1981). Rather, it can be interspersed in core service talk, with certain conversational markers – for example enacting affiliation in an exchange which is otherwise purely transactional. As Tracy and Naughton (2000: 71) observe with reference to Malinowski’s ([1923] 1972) practice of treating phatic and nonphatic talk as mutually exclusive, ‘exchanges can have features of both phatic and non-phatic talk’, and institutional and sociable roles seem to become intermixed. Relational aspects of (face-to-face) service encounters have been examined from a pragmatic or discourse analytic perspective in a range of sociocultural and situational contexts.3 Also, some sociological studies on bars have emphasised their role as (semi)public spaces in the life of towns and cities (e.g. Oldenburg 1989). However, service encounter interactions in bars, as far as we know, have not been examined from discourse or pragmatic perspectives. This is an important omission generally and specifically with regard to Spain, where bars constitute a focal point for meeting others even at breakfast time. Indeed, local bars in Spain at breakfast and other times seemingly represent one of those third places – ‘beyond the realms of home and work’ (Oldenburg 1989: 16) – where people gather

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informally on a regular basis for ‘time out from life’s duties and drudgeries’ (1989: 21). In these regularly frequented bars – unlike those dependent on passing trade in shopping/transit areas – bartenders engage in different types of rapport-building talk with most customers, these encounters being discursively co-constructed as friendly, sociable events.

Methodology: data and procedure Our data come from observation and recordings of 70 episodes of service encounter interactions in two university-oriented bars in Seville that customers tend to frequent regularly and where they and service providers are therefore familiar with each other. For the purposes of contrast, we also collected data from bars in a shopping/service area, consisting likewise of 70 interactions, where most customers are unfamiliar with the bartenders. The data were collected between 8: 00 a.m. and 12: 00 noon over a period of two weeks. Permission was obtained from the bar owners to record interactions and a notice at the entrance informed customers of such. We recognise the possibility that customer–bartender interactions may have been slightly influenced by participants’ knowledge of their being recorded. However, we do not think this would have been a serious problem. As Malone (1997: 152) has suggested, interactions demand participants’ attention as otherwise they can come to a halt. Also, both waiters and customers in bars are accustomed to conducting interactions in public and being overheard by others, especially as their exchanges are sometimes made in very loud voices. We are also aware of our not being able to gain access to the social backgrounds of customers. These are common difficulties in using spontaneous data in discourse analysis research (cf. Félix-Brasdefer 2007, Placencia 2008a). Indeed, in order to examine the effect of social variables such as age and gender, scholars like Schneider (2008) have opted for data elicited through production questionnaires. However, while this method may work well when examining small talk in first-time encounters (as in Schneider’s study), it is less helpful when studying small talk among people who know each other given that their shared knowledge/common ground (Enfield 2006) is often what is relevant in the management of rapport. Such common ground is very difficult, if not impossible, to recreate through experimental means. Also, in our study, the social background of

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participants may be assumed to be fairly uniform, since our corpus was collected in bars frequented mostly by university lecturers, administrative staff and students. Although we did not factor into our subsequent analysis the customers’ age/gender, all but one of them were adults; 63 were male and 39 were females. All the bartenders were male.

Analysis Like many service encounters, those examined here are routinised events in their basic structure. This structure is normally characterised by the establishment of initial contact, the offer of/request for service (specification/clarification of customer’s requirements), provision of service, request to make payment, statement of amount to be paid, and payment/termination of contact.4 Example (1) illustrates this basic structure. (1) A (customer)/B (bartender)/C (customer)5 A1: Hola↓/ buenos días→

Establishment of initial contact

‘Hello good morning’ B1: Buenos días→/ ¿qué vas a tomar/ hijo↑?

Offer/confirmation of service

T

‘Good morning, what are you going to have, my son?’ Service request

A2: Dame un cafelito para llevar cuando tú puedas/ Pepe ‘GiveT me one coffeeD to take away when youT can, Pepe’ B2: Vale/ ¿y la chica de la ventana qué quiere↑? ‘Fine, and the girl by the window, what would she like?’ C1: Un manchaíto// ponme un manchaíto↓ ‘A

latteD ,

giveT

me a

Offer of service for accompanying customer Service request

latteD ’

B3: Bien // el tuyo calentito→ ¿no Paco↑? ‘Fine, and youT like yours hotD , don’t youT , Paco?’

Clarification of customer’s requirements

A3: Sí/ sí/ el mío sí↑ ‘Yes, mine yes’ [. . .] B5: Toma/ mi alma→

Provision of service

‘There youT are, my soul’ [. . .] A5: ¿Cuánto es↑? ‘How much is that?’

Request to pay

196 Spanish at Work B6: Uno sesenta y cinco↓

Statement of amount to be paid

‘One sixty five’ A6: Toma/ cóbrate↓ T

T

‘Here you are, charge me’ B7: Muchas gracias↓/ ¿eh↑? ‘Thanks very much, all right?’ A7: Bueno . . . // hasta luego↓ ‘Fine . . . see you later’

⎫ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎬ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎭

Payment/termination of contact

Although rapport maintenance and enhancement can feature at any of the above stages, they were more prominent in our corpus during the opening and closing sections of the encounters in line with Laver’s (1975, 1981) findings. Individualised/creative manifestations of rapport occurred before, after or during the main transaction. Rapport-building conversational markers and other affiliation tokens, for their part, were interspersed throughout the interaction, from greetings and requests for service, to payment and leave-taking. Phatic interchanges As far as openings are concerned, in order to establish initial (verbal) contact, greetings may be exchanged (cf. (1) above), but the occurrence of an exchange of greetings is certainly not fixed. For example, greetings are not normally exchanged if the customer produces his/her request immediately after the greeting: (2) A (customer)/B (bartender) A1: Hola→/ ¿me pones↓ una menta-poleo↑? ‘Hello, will youT giveT me a peppermint tea?’ B1: [Nods and soon afterwards places the requested drink on the counter]

Customers normally produce the initiative greetings when they get to the counter, as in (1) and (2). Yet there can be some variation. For instance, if the customer has been waiting to be served, the initiative greeting may be produced by the bartender instead, followed by an offer/confirmation of service, as in (3): (3) A (customer)/B (bartender) B1: Buenas Pedro/ paté// ¿no↑? ‘Morning Pedro, pâté, is that right?’ A1: Sí, sí, paté . . . ‘Yes, yes pâté . . .’

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Greetings, whoever (first) produces them, are ways of acknowledging one’s interlocutor and re-establishing a relationship by displaying recognition, and confirming that ‘everything is all right’ (Chaika 1989: 44). Therefore, they usually constitute the first mechanism employed for maintaining rapport in the interactions examined. Moreover, they can be modulated through the choice of greeting formula (e.g. informal forms such as hola in (2) or buenas in (3) which exhibit familiarity) as well as other lexical items. In the following example, a first name replaces the initiative greeting produced by the bartender displaying a close relationship with his customer through the choice of a hypocoristic form (Manolo for Manuel), as well as enthusiasm for the encounter manifested through prosodic cues: (4) A (customer)/B (bartender) B1: Manolooo↑/ A1: Buenas↓/ ‘Morning’ B2: Lo de siempreee→/¿no? ‘The usual, is that right?’

Skipping the initial stages of the interaction – a kind of ellipsis – and moving directly into service provision may also constitute a rapport enhancement mechanism. It involves anticipating clients’ wishes to the extent that customers do not even need to formulate their request or be consulted about it at all. There are a few examples of this in the data examined where the bartender, on seeing particular customers enter the bar, gets their drinks ready and places them on the counter. More common, though, are requests for confirmation of service, where the bartender anticipates clients’ wishes, but still seeks confirmation from them, as in (3) and (4) above. Regarding farewell utterances, they tend – like greetings – to be initiated by the customer, and are normally responded to with another farewell utterance. Consider this example: (5) A (customer)/B (bartender) A3: Adiós↓ ‘Goodbye’ B2: Hasta luego// hijo→ ‘See you later, son’

Also, like greetings, farewell utterances may be modulated through the choice of formula, accompanying address form and co-occurring actions, such as welfare wishes. Through formulas such as hasta luego,

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hasta mañana, and so forth, customers and service providers seemingly offer mutual reassurance by articulating their expectation of a continuing (service) relationship: (6) A (customer)/B (bartender) A4: Hasta el lunes/ ¿eh↑?// que tengas buen fin de semana→ ‘See you on Monday, won’t I? HaveT a nice weekend’ B5: Hasta el lunes↓ ‘See you on Monday’

Welfare wishes, as in (6) above, which may be given by both customers and service providers, together with what Laver (1975: 230) refers to as ‘admonitions’ (cf. (7)), or ‘benedictions’ (cf. (8)), serve to consolidate the relationship by displaying concern for the other person: (7) A (customer)/B (bartender) B7: Gracias↓/ ‘Thanks’ A8: . . . cuídate↑// ‘. . . takeT care’ (8) A (customer)/B (bartender) B4: Hasta luego↑// ‘See you later’ A8: ¡Con Dios!// ‘God be with you!’

Creative/individualised rapport-building activities Under this category we find a wide range of activities initiated both by bartenders (39 instances) and customers (35 instances) in the bars in the university context. They include, among others, taking notice and making personal observations, as well as self-disclosures, telling anecdotes, expressing commiseration, giving advice on matters other than the actual transaction, assessing news stories, teasing, exchanging gossip and playful insults.6 We exemplify some of these activities below. The bartenders appear to be very skilled at noticing changes in their customers’ appearance or mood, as well as in recognising any prolonged absences. They react to these changes or absences sometimes seriously but most of the times jokingly, i.e. within what Spaniards would colloquially call a cachondeo or play frame. Taking notice in this way encourages (playful) complimenting behaviour, how-are-you enquiries, the eliciting of personal troubles, and so forth. In (9), for instance, the bartender responds to his customer’s greeting in A1 with an expression

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of pleasant surprise (hombre, Juan), followed by a jocular complaint about his prolonged absence (B1). He playfully calls his customer monstruo (literally, monster) and teases him about his absence (qué ¿estás perdido?). The customer goes along with this teasing by agreeing that he had been ‘lost’ (A2). In B2, the bartender reverts to the service frame: (9) A (customer)/B (bartender) A1: Buenos días ‘Good morning’ B1: Hombre↑// Juan// ¿dónde estabas↑ monstruo? ¿Qué?, ¿estás perdido↑? ‘[conversational marker displaying surprise] Juan, where have youT been awesome? What happened? Have youT been lost?’ A2: Sí/ ya ves→ ‘Yes, that’s the way it’s been’ B2: Manchado/ ¿no↑? ‘A latte, is that right?’

Example (10) below illustrates the bartenders’ practice of noticing changes in customers’ appearance. In B2, this happens via a compliment to a female customer, which seems to double as a greeting (¡qué guapa estás!). Such compliments are regarded as face-enhancing in that they convey appreciation of one’s interlocutor, thus reinforcing the latter’s positive face (Haverkate 1994). The customer does not take the compliment very seriously, indeed rejects it in a teasing way by accusing the bartender of being a flatterer in turn C2: (10) B (bartender)/C (customer)/D (bartender) D1: Hombre↑// aquí tenemos a Mariola e Isabel↑ ‘[conversational marker displaying surprise] here we have Mariola and Isabel’ B2: Isabel/ ¡qué guapa estás↑! ‘Isabel, youT look great!’ C2: Anda/ anda/ ¡qué pelota qué pelota↑! ‘ComeT on, comeT on youT ’re just flattering me!’

In (11) below the bartender notices the pattern of a dress that a customer is wearing. The comment he makes in B1 is not a clear compliment, but has elements of teasing, suggesting that the pattern is too heavy. The teasing becomes clearer in B3 with the bartender’s comment about spring having already arrived in the high street, as reflected in what the customer is wearing, and the laughter that follows this comment. The customer goes along with the play frame, further developing it by saying that on that very day she is in fact playing a fairy-tale character with the name (Blanca) Flor, that is, like the flowers on her dress (A3). The play frame continues for another two turns. Nevertheless, in A4 the customer

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moves back into the service frame by placing her order: ponme un bombón. The teasing on the part of the bartender then resumes, and verges on flirting when he turns her customer’s order into a piropo or compliment with an amorous overtone (Achugar 2002) in turn B3: Bombón, lo que tú eres, morena. The customer rejects the compliment in a playful way (A5): (11) A (customer)/B (bartender)/D (bartender) A1: ¡Hola// chicos↑! ‘Hi guys!’ B1: Buenas/ niña. ¡Qué floreada vienes hoy! Tienes más flores que . . . ‘Morning, girl. YouT are really flowery today. YouT have more flowers than . . .’ A2: Claro// ¿has visto↑? ‘But of course, that’s right’ B2: Eso Carmen/ la primavera ya en El Corte Inglés [laughter] ‘That’s right Carmen, spring has arrived at El Corte Inglés’7 [laughter] A3: Sí/hoy soy Blancaflor→ ‘Yes, I am Blancaflor today’ D1: ¿Y los zapatos también son de flores↑? ‘Have your shoes got a flower pattern too?’

A4: B3: A5:

¿Los zapatos? Claro // Anda/ Paco/ ponme un bombón→ ‘My shoes? Of course. ComeT on Paco, giveT me a bombón’8 Bombón→ lo que tú eres→ morena↓ ‘A bombón is what youT are, morena’9 Anda/ anda/ no me seas zalamero . . .→ ‘ComeT on, comeT on, don’t be such a flatterer’

Teasing, then, occurs with both male and female customers and around different topics. In some cases, it seems to be part of a joking relationship (Placencia 2004, Radcliffe-Brown 1952): it is conventional and not meant to cause offence. Insults such as hijo de puta and maricón, in (12), also appear to form part of the play frame on such occasions: (12) E (customer)/B (bartender) E8: Sí/ sí/ ándate con ojo// que te pongo también a ti una multa ‘Yes, yes, you’dT better be careful as I can give youT a fine too’ B13: Pero no era que tú no multabas/ ¿hijo de puta↓? ‘But didn’t youT say youT didn’t deal with fines, son of a bitch?’ E9: Anda ya/ maricón→/ dime qué te debo ↑ ‘ComeT on, youT faggot, tellT me how much I owe youT ’

Such exchange of insults illustrates a kind of male humour, reminiscent of Labov’s (1972) ritual insults among young male adults in New York, where the participation frame in which they are exchanged makes it clear to participants that the insults are not to be taken at face value.10 Bartenders are also good at noticing changes of mood in their customers. In (13), for instance, the bartender produces a type of

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how-are-you enquiry to a customer (B2), showing that he has noticed that he is somewhat worried. This enquiry leads him to ascertain what his customer’s trouble is (A3, A4), which, in turn, gives him the opportunity to convey solidarity by showing disbelief and horror at his customer’s plight (¡Qué horror!). The customer provides further details, and in (B6) the bartender once more displays empathy and affiliation with his customer when he says vaya, ¡qué chungo!: (13) A (customer)/B (bartender) B1: Un café/ ¿no/ Paco↑? ‘One coffee, is that right Paco?’ A1: Sí/ por favor→ ‘Yes, please’ B2: ¿Qué pasa con esa cara↑? ¿Tenemos mal día↑? ‘What’s with the long face? Are we having a bad day?’ A2: Sí/ mal día↓ . . . ‘Yes, a bad day . . .’ B3: ¿Y eso↑? ‘And why is that?’ A3: Una multa↓ ‘A fine’ B4: Vaya . . . ¿y cuánto↑? ‘Oh no . . . how much?’ A4: ¿Cuánto↑? ¡Ciento ochenta euros la multa↑! ‘How much? One hundred and eighty euros the fine was!’ B5: ¿Ciento ochenta↑? ¡Qué horror↑! ¿y eso cómo ha sido↑? ‘One hundred and eighty? How awful! And how did that happen?’ A5: Nada/ que aparqué malamente↓ // Es que fue cuando el partido del Betis→ ‘It’s just that I didn’t park properly. It was during the Betis11 match’ B6: Vaya/ ¡qué chungo↑! ‘Oh no, that was really nasty!’

Bartenders in the interactions examined are also good at remembering where they left off when last they saw different customers. In (14), the bartender enquires about the health of his customer’s friend or relative (B3), thus displaying interest in his customer’s social relations. He receives a reply in (A4) that suggests that the person in question, who is in hospital, is gradually improving as he is soon to be released from some kind of specialist unit. In B4 the bartender changes the interactional frame from a serious to a play frame by suggesting that the patient will soon be back at the bar causing trouble as before, thus jokingly expressing optimism about his recovery. This optimism is shared by the customer in A5, who expresses agreement with the bartender’s assessment and adds to the joking exchanges by specifying the kind of trouble that the patient will create when he returns, given his enthusiasm for a particular football club (. . . dando guerra con el Betis . . .). Through these

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humorous exchanges, the bartender and customer converge in their assessment of the condition of the patient, their optimism about his recovery and their wish to see him well soon: (14) A (customer)/B (bartender) B3: Oye// ¿qué tal va el enfermo↑? Cuéntame/ cuéntame↑ ‘ListenT , how is the invalid doing? TellT me about it, tellT me’ A4: Va bien/ poco a poco va mejorando/ ya la semana que viene lo bajan a planta ‘He’s doing well, gradually getting better. Next week he’ll be moved down to the ward already’ B4: Sí/ dentro de poco ya está aquí otra vez/ dando guerra→ ‘Yes, and he’ll soon be back here getting on our nerves’ A5: Eso↓ / dando guerra con el Betis para arriba y el Betis para abajo↓ ‘That’s right, getting on our nerves with Betis here and Betis there’ B5: Sí/ a ver si lo vemos pronto→ ‘Yes, we hope to see him soon’ A6: A ver/ a ver→ ‘Let’s hope so, let’s hope so’

The bar at breakfast time also seems to be a place for light-hearted whingeing for both customers and bartenders.12 In (15), the bartender starts a whingeing sequence by complaining about the amount of work they have had that day (B1), and is joined in the whingeing by another bartender in D1 for whom there is so much work that it is almost a crying matter. The play frame is marked in B2 by the exaggerated remark the bartender makes – that they have had about 3000 customers – and is followed by laughter. Both customer and bartenders develop further talk within this frame and end up philosophising about the role of crying and laughter in everyday life (D4, A6): (15) A (customer)/B (bartender)/D (bartender) B1: ¡Qué de trabajo↑! ‘So much work!’ A1: ¿Muchos clientes hoy↑? ‘Many customers today?’ B2: Sí↓/ ¡unos tres mil! [laughter] ‘Yes, about three thousand’ [laughter] D1: Sí↑/ ¡qué trabajo!/ esss– ¡¿para llorar?! ‘Yes, there’s so much work that I feel like crying’ A2: Ya no estamos en Feria↑/ ¿eh? ‘Remember that we are no longer in the Feria13 season’ D2: ¿Por qué? ‘Why?’ A3: Que ya→/ no estamos en Feria ya→/ podemos llorar/ ya→/ ¡porque no estamos en Feria ‘I said that we are no longer in the Feria season so we can now cry’ [. . .]

Rapport-Building Talk in Service Encounters D4:

[. . .] A6:

203

Hay momentos para todo↑/ algunos para reír y otros para llorar↓// nos toca reírrr/ y nos reímos↓/ nos toca llorarrr/ y lloramos↓// así somos↓/ ‘There are appropriate times for everything, for laughing and for crying; when it’s time to laugh we laugh, when it’s time to cry we cry. That’s the way we are’ . . . siempre es mejor reír que llorar→/ pero no demasiado↓/ ‘. . . it’s always better to laugh than to cry, but we shouldn’t laugh too much’

It is interesting to see also how forcefully customers and bartenders express their opinions and their disagreement with each other, as in A6 above, without causing offence. Such a style of self-affirmation, according to Thurén’s (1988) study on gender relations in a neighbourhood in Valencia, is expected in friendly situations where it is important to display one’s personality by trying to convince others of what one really thinks.14 The assertive expression of personality, however, may not necessarily be specific to Spanish culture, but to ‘third places’ where people feel at ease to express themselves freely, as if ‘at home’ (Oldenburg 1989). A final example of individualised rapport-building talk is an enquiry by the bartender in (16) about his customer’s plans for the weekend (B3), which elicits whingeing/joking about women dominating men, to which the bartender also contributes: (16) A (customer)/B (bartender) B3: Pedro→ ¿qué vas a hacer este fin de semana↑? ‘Pedro, what are youT doing this weekend?’ A3: Pues no sé → / a lo mejor voy a la playa ↑// como hace ya buen tiempo → ‘Well, I don’t know. I might go the beach since the weather is good’ B4: ¿No vas a ir a jugar al futbito↑? ‘Aren’t youT going to play five-a-side?’ A4: No ↓// porque la parienta se quiere ir a la playa ↓// ‘No, because the missus wants to go to the beach’ B6: Total↑/ que lo que diga la parienta → / ‘Whatever the missus says’ A6: Pues claro → / tío ↓// las mujeres llevan siempre los pantalones [laughter] ‘Of course, mate. Women always wear the trousers’ [laughter]

More specifically, in A4, the customer talks about his forthcoming weekend activities being constrained by his wife, referred to in an impersonal but joking manner as la parienta (‘the missus’, literally, ‘the female relative’). The bartender shows that he understands his customer’s ‘predicament’, presenting it in B6 as a general rule that a wife’s wishes must be respected. The customer concurs saying in A6 that women are the ones who ‘wear the trousers’. This admission that men are resigned to having a supposedly subordinate position vis-à-vis women leads to laughter

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(B6). This is a type of whingeing/joking among men that also appears in other sociocultural contexts in the Spanish-speaking world (cf. Placencia 2008b).

Conclusions We have provided a number of examples of a range of conversational activities in interactions between customers and bartenders in bars in Seville at breakfast time that go beyond the business exchange. They include ritualistic and individualised creative forms that show that considerable attention is paid to rapport-building in interactions in that environment. In fact, the service encounters in these bars often resemble a tertulia, or ‘chat among friends’, where interest is taken in the other person’s private life, personal disclosures are made, and so forth. And yet, the interchanges in the interactions examined here are mostly about mundane rather than any serious or particularly intimate matters. This appears to be in line with Knapp’s (1978: 111) observation that ‘small talk is characterized by breadth, not depth’. Through these rather mundane activities, though, different identities are brought to the fore, relationships are confirmed and channels are kept open for further interaction. Local bars seemingly offer a place for casual socialising at breakfast, and other, times. The regularity of contact is one enabling factor. As Oldenburg (1989: 33–4) stresses, it is the regulars who ‘give the place its character’ and ‘set the tone of conviviality’. Social talk between bartenders and customers is also facilitated by spatial, temporal and structural factors. Regarding the former, it has been argued that the setting of service encounters can encourage or impede (social) talk (McCarthy 2000, Mitchell 1957). Bars in Spain tend to have wide counters around which customers sit or stand in close proximity to each other and to the bartenders, a habit which encourages and facilitates talking. Concerning temporal aspects (cf. McCarthy 2000), the nature of the encounter also facilitates social talk in that no matter how small the order is, it takes some time to prepare and consume. There is thus time for talk beyond the transaction. This is unlike briefer service encounters such as those at the baker’s, where the products are ready at hand and the encounters can be very swift (Placencia 2005), giving room for fleeting relationships only.15 Finally, the structure of the service encounters under investigation, in which payment is made after consumption, ensures that customers and bartenders engage in further talk before the encounter is completed.

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It is noteworthy, too, that bartenders and most customers in our study are neither intimates (although they may give the appearance of being so) nor strangers. Instead, they seem to occupy an intermediate position – being in what Wolfson (1988) called ‘the bulge’. This seems to encourage social talk/rapport promotion. Interactions among participants in the bulge have been found to require more interpersonal effort than interactions at both extremes of the bulge (cf. Placencia 1997). Silence among strangers in service encounters (and intimates in other contexts) is acceptable (or may even be desirable), but is less so among participants in the bulge. Not being talkative in this context would be regarded as unfriendly. Yet another related factor is the expectation of continuity in the relationship among the regular customers and service providers (e.g. in the university environment in the case examined here), unlike the environment with passing customers. Regarding the functions of rapport-building talk in the context examined, these appear to be multiple, including social, psychological and material aspects (Morrill and Snow 2005). By projecting a friendly and upbeat image through humour and avoiding ‘wallow[ing] in pity over misfortunes’ (Oldenburg 1989: 25–6), bartenders contribute to creating a relaxed, fun atmosphere where customers can feel free to talk and unwind.16 Conversely, small/rapport-building talk appears to be a vital form of talk for bartenders at their workplace in terms not only of securing continued custom but also in terms of adding some interest/fun to their work. Finally, the extent to which the talk considered here can be described as an Andalusian or Spanish practice more generally,17 or how it differs from talk in bars in other sociocultural contexts, are issues for future investigation.18 While the literature (on politeness) has tended to portray Spaniards as positive-politeness oriented in general (cf. Haverkate 1994, 2004, Hickey 1991, Vázquez Orta 1995), and Andalusians as being loquacious (Hernández López and Placencia 2004, Narbona Jiménez et al. 1998), in this study we have highlighted, among other things, the fact that interactants’ interpersonal history naturally plays a role in the use of affiliation/positive politeness in service encounters. Customers and service providers in bars in a university environment seem to have (relatively) long relationship histories, developed through regularity of contact, which provide plenty of conversational material. Histories in contexts where there is no regularity of contact appear to be non-existent or limited, thus restricting the kind of talk that can take place during service encounters. What is more, the ethos of the bar/cafeteria may also play a role. In this respect, it would

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be interesting to examine whether foreign chains like Starbucks also constitute a ‘third place’ for public sociality and the construction of the transaction as a sociable event rather than a mere service exchange.

Notes 1. This chapter builds on a presentation at the II Linguistic Impoliteness And Rudeness (LIAR) Conference, Lancaster 2009. We are grateful to the reviewers and to Dr Lorenzo-Dus for their valuable comments. 2. Such activities may also, of course, perform other functions. 3. These include interactions at the hairdresser’s (e.g. De los Heros and Montes 2008, McCarthy 2000, Placencia 2007); at the baker’s (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 2005); at the chemist’s (Callahan 2006, Hernández López and Placencia 2004), in supermarkets (Kuiper and Flindall 2000) and in other kinds of shops (e.g. Antonopoulou 2001, Callahan 2006, Kong 1998, Placencia 2004, Traverso 2007). 4. Not all interactions proceed in a linear manner, as they can become intermixed with other interactions, and sometimes other customers interrupt. 5. Transcription conventions correspond to those developed in Briz (1998) and Briz et al. (2002). Additionally, in the translations, T is used to mark tú address, V is used to mark usted address; and D to mark use of a diminutive. 6. By contrast, in the environment where the customers are passing, there were only two instances of individualised talk beyond the transaction: one when a bartender tripped and fell down and a customer expressed concern, the other one, when a customer requested a particular drink and made a selfdisclosure about her health as an explanation of her request (cf. Mancera Rueda and Placencia, in press). 7. El Corte Inglés is a large department store chain in Spain. While its name (literally, the English cut/style) alludes to English style of couture, the chain is an icon for Spanish lifestyle and fashion. 8. A bombón is a very sweet mixture of coffee and condensed milk. 9. Moreno/a, a compliment commonly used in southern Spain, alludes to what one may refer to as a Latin beauty – brown eyes and dark hair and skin. 10. In the Spanish-speaking world, the use of taboo words as insults, with an affiliative function, has also been mainly linked to youth/teenage talk (cf. Stenström 2008, Zimmerman 2002). 11. The (Real) Betis (Balompié S.A.D.) is one of the two main football clubs in Seville; the other one is Sevilla. There is intense competition between the two clubs and their supporters. 12. Clyne (1994: 49) defines whingeing as ‘long or repeated expression of discontent not necessarily intended to change or improve the unsatisfactory situation’. He observes that whinges are ‘very common in work situations’ and that they ‘promote an outlet for emotions and can be regarded as a type of phatic communication’ (1994: 50). See also Boxer (1993). 13. The Seville Feria is a week of celebrations with entertainment, dancing, drinking and eating that takes place two weeks after Easter.

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14. Concerning self-affirmation as a trait of the communicative style of Spaniards, see also Bravo (1999), Fant (1989), Hernández Flores (1999), Hickey (2005) and Lorenzo-Dus (2007), among others. 15. Morrill and Snow (2005: 17–18) propose a continuum of interpersonal relationships that goes from the ‘fleeting’, or transient in character, to the ‘anchored’. The latter refer to relationships ‘anchored in more durable emotional and behavioural interdependencies’, yet ‘tied to a particular place’ as in the relationships of regulars at a bar epitomised in the American TV series Cheers. 16. This latter function made headlines in 2009 when a bar in Cullera (Valencia, Spain) encouraged customers to use insults during service transactions to help them deal with the stresses and strains of the recession, thus explicitly promoting bar talk as a kind of therapy. ‘Dame una cerveza, imbécil! Un bar de Cullera quiere insultos’, Reuters España, 18 June 2009, http://www.es.reuters.com/article/. . ./idESMAE55H0O320090618 (last accessed June 2009). 17. Native speakers from northern and central Spain have commented that the cachondeo in service encounters (and possibly other contexts) is much more prevalent in Andalucía than in other regions in Spain. This possibly fits with Hickey’s (2005: 320) observation that Southerners in Spain are ‘more positive-polite and effusive’ than Northerners. 18. For instance, a newspaper interview in the Saturday Guardian with a bartender in a Manchester pub points to some possible similarities and differences (‘A Working Life: the Bartender’, Work, Saturday Guardian, 11 July 1999).

15 How to Get Rid of a Telemarketing Agent: Face-Work Strategies in an Intercultural Service Call∗ Rosina Márquez Reiter

Introduction In this chapter, I examine how face is manifested in an intercultural service call between a Uruguayan telemarketing agent and a prospective Argentinean client. By doing so, I aim to contribute to the extensive body of research that has examined face in interaction and to research that has investigated aspects of the interactional behaviour of Spanish speakers in mediated service encounters (cf. Codó Olsina 2002, Márquez Reiter 2005, 2006) and thus, add to our knowledge of institutional talk in Spanish, a language which – as discussed in Chapter 1 – until now has received very little attention when compared, for example, to English (cf. e.g. Drew and Heritage 1992, Holmes and Stubbe 2003), French (Boutet 2005, Pène et al. 2001), Italian (Aston 1988b, BargielaChiappini and Harris 1997) or German (Müller 2003), to mention a few. The interaction I analyse here is a service call in which an institutional representative, from a multinational time-share company, telephones a client for the purpose of having the client’s membership renewed. The call is a service encounter, that is, a social interaction between a service provider and a client in some service area (Merritt 1976). The conversational participants are: an institutional representative and a client. The situational context of the call is transactional rather than relational, and the conversational participants’ contributions are oriented toward the achievement of a task, namely, the institutional representative wants to obtain a sale and, the client wants to obviate any possible avenues for the former to attain her goal. 208

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Nowadays human beings spend a considerable amount of time both requesting and being offered services over the phone. The modern pervasive nature of negotiating services over faceless interactions, either via the telephone or the Internet, is commonplace in both developed and developing capitalist economies. This is evidenced, among other things, by the relatively late trend in developed economies to outsource their call centres to developing economies (e.g. India) where more economically sustainable business platforms are offered, and also by the late tendency of (privatised) public utilities in some developed and developing economies to deal with their customers via a call centre so as to maximise existing human resources and ‘improve’ customer services. Therefore, mediated service encounters operated from call centres play a key role in modern consumer behaviour as far as the exchange of certain goods and services are concerned. Given the ubiquity and routine nature of this kind of mediated service encounter, it provides us with a suitable context in which to examine face. Moreover, given that face is a primary concern of individuals in interaction and that the conversation examined is an unsolicited transactional call where the participants have opposite conversational goals, manifestations of face can be expected, if only at the level of politeness, in the participants’ efforts to achieve their conversational goal without causing offence. The literature on Spanish service calls is rather scant and mainly based on intracultural studies in one variety of Spanish (Márquez Reiter 2005, 2006 – Montevidean Spanish). At the same time, studies of intercultural communication in Spanish have principally examined Spanish in contact with other languages (cf. e.g. Schrader-Kniffi 2004, Zimmerman and de Granda 2004, Roca and Jensen 1996), rather than contact between native speakers of Spanish from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The call analysed is intercultural and represents a primary occasion for contact between members of different cultural groups, albeit closely related ones. Montevidean and Bonaerense Spanish share a number of linguistic similarities although there are some (perceived) cultural differences between them. The variety spoken in Montevideo has a great deal in common with that spoken in Buenos Aires, to the extent that some experts claim that is not always possible for native speakers of these varieties to distinguish a Bonaerense from a Montevidean (Lipski 1994). The dialect similarities between Montevideans and Bonaerenses may be one of the reasons why the interaction analysed does not show any cases of misunderstanding, a common topic in intercultural communication,

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but a tacit understanding between the interlocutors of the pragmatic force of each other’s utterances. In this chapter, I examine manifestations of face in an intercultural service call in contemporary institutional context. First, I present a brief orientation to the concepts of face, face-work and politeness. Second, I discuss the background and methodology of the study. Third, I analyse how face is manifested in the different conversational sequences with special attention to the opening, where most face concerns are verbalised. Finally, I present the conclusions of the study.

The notions of face and face-work Since the publication of Brown and Levinson’s (1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Use there has been a proliferation of studies on politeness, mainly, though not exclusively, from a face-work perspective. Despite the increasing interest in politeness, as reflected by the extraordinarily large numbers of articles, monographs and the creation of politeness forums (www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ea/politeness/, www.edice.org), things are far from being settled. Most of the studies which have been carried out have (in)directly dealt with the face-saving view and, in so doing, provided (further) support for (aspects of) the theory, proposed revisions to it and some have even rejected (aspects of) it. The face-saving view has not only triggered a wealth of politeness studies in a great variety of languages/cultures but has also played an important role in alternate approaches to (im)politeness phenomena (cf. e.g. Bravo 1999, Spencer-Oatey 2000, Culpeper 1996, 2005, Arundale 2006). Given the existence of theoretical re-examinations of the concepts of face and face-work (Bargiela-Chiappini 2003), my primary purpose is not to present an elaborate literature review of face. Rather, my efforts in this section are directed at: (1) providing a brief orientation to and updating some of the limitations that have already been described as far as Brown and Levinson’s face dichotomy is concerned; (2) assessing the degree to which recent research has been successful in overcoming the limitations associated with earlier studies of face; and (3) based on this assessment, demonstrating that future studies need to show greater consideration for the importance of levels of analysis in understanding face. Central to Brown and Levinson’s theory and to some of the approaches which have recently emerged is the concept of ‘face’, the self-image that competent adults present to others and recognise others have, with its two universal basic desires for face: negative and

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positive face, broadly speaking, the desire for dissociation and association, respectively. One of the most important criticisms levelled against Brown and Levinson’s understanding of face voiced by proponents of new and earlier models and made by primarily Asian (Matsumoto 1988, Ide 1989) and African (Nwoye 1989, Strecker 1993) scholars, is its Western orientation as evidenced by the emphasis on the individual and his/her territory. This is probably the result of Brown and Levinson’s interpretation of Goffman’s notion of face and their inadvertent exclusion of the ‘public’ element from it.1 Matsumoto (1988), Ide (1989), Nwoye (1989), Gu (1990) and Kong (1998), among many other scholars, see Brown and Levinson’s face, and in particular their negative face, as inapplicable to societies where group membership is more prominent and where face, at least understood in Brown and Levinson’s terms, is not regarded as the key motivation behind interactional behaviour. Reconceptualisations of positive and negative face and therefore of positive and negative politeness, have been proposed to account for the inapplicability of Brown and Levinson’s face dichotomy in some cultures and for the cultural variability observed. Ide (1989) suggests that discernment rather than face is what motivates Japanese politeness, while Nwoye (1989) and Strecker (1993) argue that group face, rather than Brown and Levinson’s individualistic face, is what underlies Igbo and Hamar politeness respectively. Matsumoto argues that the constituents of face are culture-dependent, a view echoed in Spanish by, for example, Bravo (1999) and Hernández Flores (1999), who maintain that affiliation and autonomy rather than negative and positive politeness respectively explain polite behaviour in Spanish (Peninsular Spanish, Argentinean Spanish) and that these two wants are interactionally realised according to sociocultural premises (confianza, autoafirmación). On the other hand, Fukushima (2000) claims that Brown and Levinson’s negative face accurately describes modern Japanese politeness patterns and a vast array of Hispanists have found the distinction useful in explaining politeness in the cultures examined.2 The picture that emerges is contradictory, with some scholars arguing that Brown and Levinson’s face is inapplicable to some cultures and suggesting that the components of face are culture-specific, and other investigators indicating that Brown and Levinson’s face dichotomy is indeed applicable to those very same cultures. Besides the inconsistency of the research findings, it would be fair to argue that if Brown and Levinson’s scheme of face is not valid in some cultures, then it is also likely to be unhelpful in the study of several other cultures (O’Driscoll

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1996, Márquez Reiter 2000). As observed by Holtgraves (2002), scholars who have been unable to apply (aspects of) Brown and Levinson’s notion of face have explained its irrelevance by arguing that face is manifested differently in particular cultures. Holtgraves further rightly notes that ‘specification of the manifestations of face within a culture needs to be undertaken before the theory can be tested within that culture’ (2002: 59). In addition to whether Brown and Levinson’s theory is falsifiable or not, an understanding of face from a solely emic perspective, even when the social/public element is included (i.e. conceptualising face from within the system as composed by culture-specific norms, which may or may not be shared by other cultures) would make cross-cultural research untenable. From a reductionist perspective, one could claim that some of these culture specificities are recoverable by Brown and Levinson’s negative and positive face. Specifically, and as I pointed out in earlier work, echoing O’Driscoll (1996), neither positive nor negative face are primary concepts but compounds derived from a combination of ‘wants dualism’. The essence of being ‘unimpeded in one’s actions’ is the desire to be free from ties of contact and those needs which involve contact, to a greater or lesser extent, are ‘positive’ wants. It then follows that the needs of this universal face are inherent in the human condition though its constituents are culturally variable (Márquez Reiter 2000). A similar view has been voiced by Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey (1988), who maintain that Brown and Levinson’s positive face refers to the need for association or interdependence and their negative face to the need for dissociation or independence – two psychological universals which cut across cultural boundaries (Triandis 1980). They explain that the value orientations of a culture will influence cultural members’ attitudes toward pursuing one set of face-work more actively than another. Politeness is a form of social interaction that mediates between the individual and the social. The polite or impolite act is performed by an individual whose choices for the instrumentality of such an act are based upon collective norms and whose motivation in performing the act is that of structuring social interaction. (Márquez Reiter 2000: 3) Politeness is a constituent of unmarked behaviour in that it is expected according to the particular rights and obligations of the interlocutors in a given interaction and thus passes unnoticed. Although face is the

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motivation behind politeness, not all face-work is politeness despite the fact that the former includes the latter. As Shimanoff (1994: 159–60) explains, ‘[F]acework may be defined as behaviors which establish, enhance, threaten, or diminish the images/identities of communicators. The images/identities of communicators have been linked to the basic needs of approval and autonomy’ (Brown and Levinson 1987 [1978]). Shimanoff further claims that whereas face-work may be directed toward oneself or another, politeness can only be directed toward another. Having briefly explained my understanding of face and politeness and assessed the (lack of) success in overcoming some of the limitations identified in the literature, I will now briefly dwell on the levels of analysis that are necessary to better understand face in interaction. Arundale (2006) has recently proposed an understanding of face to account for both its relational and interactional manifestations. While it would be fair to say that the relational aspect of face has been sufficiently theorised and accounted for (i.e. orientation towards interdependence/association/positive politeness and independence/dissociation/negative politeness), the interactional aspect has been, relatively speaking, somewhat underexamined. This is partly the result of the methodological tools that have been deployed to examine face-work and politeness phenomena in general. Most of the analyses that have been carried out, including some of my earlier work, have employed coding schemes that are mainly based on speech act theory.3 Arundale’s (2006) proposal could thus be said to be partly methodological in that it calls for a microanalysis of the unfolding of politeness in interaction and, therefore, of how face emerges in interaction rather than simply being an individually rooted construct. While the inclusion of units of analysis from neighbouring disciplines such as ethnomethodological conversation analysis within a sociopragmatic framework is a view I concur with and a methodological stance I have taken in recent work (Marquez Reiter 2005, 2006), it could be argued that due to differing ontologies (i.e. constructivism versus critical realism) and claims about the results obtained (i.e. recurrent versus generalisable patterns), some scholars may find the integration of approaches incompatible (cf. Márquez Reiter 2006). Given the current conflicting reports of research into politeness and face, I will not advocate the general superiority of any theoretical and/or methodological perspective over another. Rather, I see theoretical and methodological value in embracing an integrative approach as both sociopragmatics and conversation analysis make potentially unique contributions to an overall understanding of face of interaction.

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Methods and background For this study I gathered several kinds of data over a one-month period in 2006. The primary data for this study are a recorded call between an institutional representative, the caller, and a potential client, in this case the called. The call forms part of a 200-hour service call database from a call centre. Secondary data are recorded informal interviews with institutional representatives from the call centre4 and field notes from (non-) participant observation (cf. Spradley 1980). The analysis also draws upon the call centre’s training manual for outbound calls, that is, calls made by agents to (potential) clients. The call centre where the data come from is the Latin American operation of a multinational time-share company. It has more than 200 agents all of whom are native speakers of Spanish, with the vast majority being speakers of Montevidean Spanish. The agents have completed secondary school and more than a third of them have university degrees or similar.5 The vast majority of the clients are also native speakers of Spanish and come from a variety of Latin American countries. Due to the nature of the product offered by the company and the socio-economic situation of the countries where the client pool comes from, these time-share holders belong to the (upper) middle class in their respective countries. Call centre agents are required to attend a two-week training course before they start their work in the call centre. During the training period, they are given information about the company’s product and operations across the world and, in particular, about the Latin American operation. They are also given training in managing calls. Specifically, they are told to follow a script for placing outbound calls. Below are the in-house rules for the opening: (1) In-house rules for the opening: • Greet the (potential) client and provide organisational identification: Buen día, mi nombre es (nombre y apellido), y le estoy llamando de X Latinoamérica, su empresa de Intercambio Vacacional ‘Good morning, my name is (first name and surname) and I am calling youU from X Latin America, your holiday exchange company’ • Explain the reason for the call Le estoy llamando porque tenemos una promoción especialmente para usted . . . ‘I am calling youU because we have a promotion especially for youU



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The recommended opening sequences are similar to those observed in English institutional calls and are in line with the company’s global image, though locally adapted to the Latin American market. This is evidenced by the prescribed precedence of relational elements (greetings, self-identification) over transactional ones (organisational identification) and a deferential attitude (the inclusion of titles, first names and surnames) that address a general Latin American interpersonal orientation (Daskal Albert 1996) where the expression of simpatía6 and respect are emphasised. This form of respect does not so much address considerations of space but given social power differences between the participants as reflected by expressions of deference (i.e. title + first name + surname). Both agents and clients are aware of the fact that their calls may be monitored for quality control procedures. Call centre employees were told that a researcher would be collecting data in situ for the purposes of examining communication in Spanish and permission was obtained from the company to use the data.

Analysis The call selected for this study is illustrative of the lack of stylistic formality preliminarily observed in a vast number of the company’s calls with Bonaerense clients, as reflected by the presence of humorous comments and its generally non-formulaic nature. This ‘informality’ coincides with that reported in studies of intra- and cross-cultural nonmediated service encounters in River Plate Spanish (Márquez Reiter and Placencia 2004, Márquez Reiter and Stewart in press for Montevidean Spanish v. Ecuadorian Spanish (Quito) and Montevidean Spanish v. English (Edinburgh), and Sánchez Lanza 2003 for Argentinean Spanish (Rosario)) and, with some of the comments made by agents during interviews: (2) [Montevidean male agent – 35 years old] Con los porteños hay que ir con pie de plomo porque te toman el pelo de lo lindo y en un minuto de descuido te reputean por nada para mostrarte que ellos son más porque tiene plata y vos no, y todo para controlar la conversación y conseguir lo que quieren, como por ejemplo semanas de arriba, conocen el sistema como la palma de su mano y siempre tartan de garronear algo ‘With the “porteños” one has to tread carefully because they really pull your leg and in a moment of carelessness they really insult you for nothing to show you that they are more than you because they

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have money and you don’t, and it’s all aimed at controlling the conversation and getting what they want, like for example free weeks, they know the system like the palms of their hands and always try to get freebies’ (3) (Montevidean female agent – 25 years old): Yo estoy acostumbrada a lidiar con ellos y pese a que se toman todo para la joda y muchas veces te mal tratan, hablándote de ‘pendeja de mierda lo que vos ganás en un mes yo lo saco por día, no me hinchés las pelotas’, los ignoro porque son buenos compradores y así hablan ellos. Yo igual les revendo. Seguramente porque soy judía: lo que se hereda no roba, che! Simplemente hay que saber cómo llevarlos ‘I’m used to dealing with them and although they don’t take anything seriously and often treat you badly, calling you “fucking bitch what you earn monthly is what I make in a day, don’t break my balls”, I ignore them because they’re good customers and that’s how they speak. I still get them to buy a lot. Surely because I’m Jewish: hey, it seems to run in the family’ It is interesting to note from the above interviews that the alleged curt behaviour is attributed to the clients only and hence suspiciously one-sided. As we will see, the telemarketing agent deviates from the prescribed in-house rules showing a certain orientation toward informality and considerable tenacity in trying to achieve a sale despite the client’s overt lack of interest. Also of interest are the meta comments made by the agents with respect to the profile of Bonaerense clients, particularly the strategies deployed by the clients in order to obtain further benefits and/or get rid of the agent and those employed by the latter to pursue their conversational goal (tread carefully, ignore curt behaviour). Bonaerense clients are thus depicted as powerful consumers by virtue of their spending power, their institutional acculturation, their demanding nature and proactiveness in trying to control the conversational outcome. In what follows, I present an analysis of how face is manifested in the conversation with particular attention to the opening, where concerns for face are mostly verbalised. The analysis takes account of the conversational sequences that precede and follow the expression of face in order to give an overall picture of the place within the conversation where considerations of face are manifested. Openings are one of the many points at which people may initiate their social interactions, thus constituting a prime opportunity

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for participants to (re)establish their relationships for that occasion (Schegloff 1986). During openings, participants’ identification and how they relate to one another other through talk become primary issues.7 Structurally, the task of establishing who they are at the initial stages of the opening, following the summons–answer sequence and preceding an explanation of the reason for the call, is procedurally essential for the type of telephone conversation – an institutional call where the participants do not know each other – to continue (cf. Baker et al. 2001, Zimmerman 1992, Cheepen 2000, Tracy and Anderson 1999). Equally important are the verbal elements chosen to formulate these sequences as they also help to (re)establish who the participants are in respect to one another as evidenced by the roles they assume, how they frame the interaction and the stylistic preference expressed (e.g. degree of (in) formality (i.e. T/V distinction), deference, and so forth). It is not surprising, therefore, that face concerns are mainly verbalised at this stage of the conversation. The opening of this call may sound rather different from that which consumers who live in an English-speaking culture may have experienced in that transactional details are not provided until line 9, when it is explicitly requested by the call-taker. As observed in several other outbound calls and as emerged in some of the interviews, the agent’s reluctance to provide essential transactional information at the initial stages of the call appears to underlie her need to ensure communication with the right call recipient. The agent’s interactional behaviour is primarily self-oriented as it focuses on her conversational needs, backgrounding those of the call-taker and deviating from expected norms, both institutionally and interactionally (delay in providing organisational identification and the reason for the call). This, together with the lack of verbal elements showing consideration for the call’s possible inconvenience, makes the opening reminiscent of that of an everyday call where identification may be established through (other) recognition (Márquez Reiter 2006), as shown below: (4) (T = telemarketing agent; C = called – the account holder; C2 = call-taker – the wife of the account holder.) 1. 2. 3. 4.

C2: Hola↑ ‘hello’ T: Hola [con el señor↓] ‘hello’ Mr.’ C2: [Ho:lá↑] ‘hello’ T: Ho:la↓ con el señor Roberto Pérez↓ ‘hello’ with Mr Roberto Pérez

218 Spanish at Work 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

C2: Sí : : ↑ (.) sí : : ↑ ‘Yes Yes’ T: Holá↓ si me escucha bie:n↑ ‘hello yes can youU hear me well C2: Sí sí sí↓ (.) pero [él está ocupado↓] de dónde está habla:ndo↑= ‘Yes yes yes but he is busy where are youU calling from T: [Podría hablar-↑] ‘Could I speak to’ T: = De X Latinoamérica Leticia Matos le habla:↓ ‘From X Latin America Leticia Matos speaking’ C2: A : h↑ sí : ↓ qué pasa querida↑ ‘Um yes what’s up my love’ T: E : : : h [m : : usted se encar-] ‘Um are youU in char’ C2: [Holá↓]= ‘hello’ T: = Sí↑ hola↓ usted se encarga de : : : : de resolver todo lo que tiene que ver con la cuenta de X Latinoamérica↑ ‘yes hello are you in charge of resolving everything to do with the account with X Latin America’ (.2) C2: E : : h e:h mi esposo↑ es↓ ‘Um it’s my husband is’ T: Bie:n↓= ‘OK’ C2: = Querés hablar con él directame:nte↑ ‘Do youV want to speak to him directly’ T: Bue:no↓ mejo:r↑ ‘OK better’ C2: Buém↓ = vení Robér↓ (por fuera del micrófono) ‘OK Roberto come here’ (not into the receiver)

As can be seen in the opening, the call starts with an exchange of hellos followed by a switchboard request to speak to the account holder. Although Hola (‘Hello’) is one of the possible ways in which participants may informally greet each other at the onset of a call, it is conditionally relevant to its first pair part, in this case, to the answer to the summons, realised in this variety of Spanish by Hola rather than Diga (‘Tell me’) or Bueno (‘Well’), to mention a few. In uttering Hola (‘Hello’) with rising intonation at the beginning of the call, both participants try to establish if/that the channel of communication is open (see overlap at lines 2 and 3). This is followed by a switchboard request, con el señor Roberto Pérez (‘can you put me through to Mr Roberto Pérez’), at the first available opportunity, when the agent realises that the call-taker cannot be the client by virtue of her voice. Although the elliptical request also deviates from the interactional behaviour prescribed to agents, it

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is faithful to the standard level of deference that agents should convey, namely it comprises title, first name and surname. The call-taker confirms at line 5 that the caller has reached the right number and implicitly requests that the agent identify, as illustrated by the micropause and subsequent repetition of the lengthened affirmative particle, hence implying that something else is expected from the caller. The agent, however, does not take this up until the call-taker explicitly requests so at line 7. The call-taker’s request is preceded by a disarmer should the target of the call not wish to take it. It thus functions as a strategy to protect the call-taker’s own face and her husband’s need for autonomy (i.e. the imposition of a marketing call), in the event that she may deem the call to be unsuited or inopportune and wants to end it quickly rather than pass it to her husband. The agent responds at line 9 with a shorter version of the prescribed organisational identification as shown by the absence of a brief description of the company’s business. This is followed by a direct request for the agent to give the reason for the call. The directness of the call-taker’s requests shows what she understands are her rights, the caller’s institutional obligations, and assumed expectations of how a call of the kind should proceed. The request is, however, mitigated by the presence of an explanation (see disarmer at line 7) and an endearment term, querida (‘my love’), thus showing concern for the agent’s personal need for independence, that is, her negative face, in what might otherwise be interpreted as a command. Given that it had been ascertained that the call-taker is probably the wife of the client (see lines 4–7) rather than a domestic employee or a dependent, by virtue of her voice, which signals that of a middle-aged woman, and confirmed by the call-taker’s request for the reason for the call at line 10, rather than provide the reason for the call, the caller asks a filler question to check the call-taker’s authority over the account. The question is initiated at line 11, prefaced by the lengthened hesitation marker E : : : h (‘Um’) and completed at line 13. It is a dispreferred indirect switchboard request that underlies the agent’s cultural assumptions of the role that (upper) middle-class Bonaerense wives have in the family. Essentially, (upper) middle-class Bonaerense wives are believed to have a casting vote over the choice and type of family holidays and, sometimes are also responsible for the household finances, thus in some cases, they could be the right person to talk to.8 As the request is nonconventionally formulated, it tactfully addresses the possibility that the call-taker might be the right person to talk to after all. Consideration for the call-taker’s negative face is further expressed at line 18 where the

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agent accepts the offer to speak to the call-taker’s husband with mejor (‘better’), thus showing concern for the call-taker’s positive face in that mejor (‘better’) implies that it would not be out of the question to discuss the matter with her but that it would be preferable to do so with the account holder himself. As shown below, the conversation with the account holder starts with an exchange of hellos at lines 21 and 22 followed by an elliptical request for identification by the agent. The request for identification, in line with her preceding contributions, deviates from that prescribed by the company in terms of its sequential occurrence (i.e. after a neutral/formal greeting and before organisational identification) and in lessening the level of deference that should be expressed (i.e. omitting the client’s surname). The client confirms his identity at line 24 with sí (‘Yes’) with descending intonation and the agent proceeds to greet him and to provide self and organisational identification. The greeting offered, cómo le va (‘how are youU ?’) is the first pair part of a how-are-you exchange. Although the exchange of ‘how are yous’ is not part of the house rules, it was present in the vast majority of the calls observed. Its occurrence in this call precedes the proffering of identification and thus indicates its routine politeness function in that a response is not structurally essential for the type of call to continue. The observed presence of ‘how are yous’ in this and other calls within the database represents a case of synthetic personalisation (Fairclough 1989, 1993) by which the agent attempts to appear simpática (cf. Triandis et al. 1984, Márquez Reiter 2005, 2006, Márquez Reiter et al. 2005), and as a result, convey a likeable image of herself and thus enhance her chances of keeping the client on the line for longer while minimising the imposition of an unsolicited call. (5) (continuation of call in (4)) 20. (.4) 21. C: Holá:↓ ‘Hello’ 22. T: Holá señor Roberto:↑ ‘Hello Mr Roberto’ 23. (.) 24. C: Sí ↓ 25. T: Cómo le va↑ Leticia Matos de X Latinoamérica le habla:↑ ‘How are you Leticia Matos from X Latin America speaking’ 26. C: De quién↑ ‘From who’ 27. T: De X Latinoamérica↑ ‘From X Latin America’

Face-Work Strategies in an Intercultural Service Call 221 28. (.) 29. C: X↓ [a : h↑] 30. T: [H : : m : ↓] 31. T: Cómo está uste:d] ‘How are youU ’ 32. C: Y a hasta ahora bien↓= ‘And until now well’ 33. T: =me ale:gro↓ (riendo) ‘I’m glad (laughing)’ 34. C: Qué le pasa↑ ‘What is up with youU ’ 35. T: E : : : h m : : quería contarle cuál es el motivo de mi llamada↓ (.) Usted tiene↑ bueno↓ tiene una propiedad verda:d↑ en la hostería del Y↓ ‘Um m I wanted to tell youU the reason for my call (.) You have well a property right in hotel Y’ 36. C: Sí : ↓ ‘Yes’ 37. (.) 38. T: Oke[ : y : ↑] 39. C: [Sí↓] si no: pero ya ha : : : y : (.2) creo que una vez me llamaron yo les dije que no iba (.) no iba : : a seguir↓ porque::↑ está en venta↓ (.) quiere comprarla↑ ‘Yes yes no but there is already (.2) I think I was called once and I told them that I wasn’t going to (.) going to continue because it’s for sale (.) do youU want to buy it’ 40. T: Ja : : : ja : : : ↑ ojalá pudiera↑ [(lanza una carcajada)] ‘Ha ha I wish I could [(bursts into laughter)] 41. C: [(ríe muy pícaro)] [(laughs cheekily)]

Once recognition is effected, the agent reiterates the how are you, albeit in a slightly more formal way as evidenced by the inclusion of usted,9 at line 31. It is at this point that the client responds to the greeting. The response is dispreferred in accordance with his preceding contributions. Rather than respond to the ‘how are you’ with an expected second pair part, that is, a routine politeness formula, the client responds ironically with Y hasta ahora bien (‘and until now well’), at line 32. The client’s response is a metapragmatic act. According to Thomas (1995: 767) through these acts ‘dominant participants make explicit reference to the intended pragmatic force of their own or their subordinate’s utterances’. In the case of this call, the client, who is the dominant party in as much as it is up to him to renew his membership or not, markedly conveys that he is aware of the possible reason for the call and that he does not welcome it. In doing so, he attempts to effectively remove any possibility of negotiating the interactional outcome (Thomas 1995). This

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is immediately responded to by the agent, as observed by the latching of lines 32–3, with a routine formula followed by contained laughter. The laughter, unlike the routine verbal element of the turn, is also metapragmatic in that it reflects the agent’s interpretation of the client’s second pair part as unforeseeable according to what routine dictates in these cases (Caffi 1998). The client reacts to the agent’s laughter with yet another metapragmatic act at line 34. Due to the pragmatic ambivalence of Qué le pasa↑ (‘What’s up with youU ?’), the client communicates mocking and a dissociative attitude to the interaction while implicitly requesting that the agent specify the reason for the call. The client’s metapragmatic comments foreground the caller’s personal rather than her professional face, and produce, if only momentarily, a change in the style and register of the conversation. After a brief moment of realignment, as evidenced by the lengthened hesitation markers initialling the reason for the call (E : : : h m : : ‘Um m’) at line 35, the agent starts to explain the reason for the call and the negotiation of the business exchange (Bailey 1997) commences. In line with her previous conversational contributions, the agent does not provide the full reason for the call until much later in the call, at line 66. Nonetheless, the reason for the call is perfectly clear to the client as evidenced by some of his metapragmatic contributions that reflect both institutional acculturation and a desire not to have the membership renewed (see line 32). The client explicitly expresses his disinterest in the call by means of a grounder, an explanation intended to leave no doubt as to his conversational intentions and thus help to politely bring the conversation to a close. The grounder is followed by an offer to sell the property to the agent instead, as illustrated at line 39. The offer functions as metapragmatic act by which the client reverses the conversational roles, assuming that of seller and putting the agent in the ironic position of prospective client, thus showing his lack of seriousness and undermining the agent’s professional face. The agent responds at line 40 by sharing the joke in her capacity as a fellow human being who is unable to afford such luxuries.This shared metapragmatic awareness reflects similarities in the underlying ‘cultural presuppositions of the participants as well as the different kinds of the unsaid’ (Caffi 1998: 585). Verbalisations of face concerns appear to respond to social conventions calling for the expression of politeness and to the nuances of the conversation. In the first case, considerations of face grow out of the ongoing interaction and are presupposed by the interactional and

Face-Work Strategies in an Intercultural Service Call 223

social context. In the second case, face emerges upon marked conversational behaviour; specifically, when metapragmatic comments are made. In these instances, face is manifested as the participants attempt to diminish and re-establish their identities.

Conclusion The call examined is illustrative of the lack of formality and personalisation exhibited in other calls between Montevidean agents and Bonaerense clients within the database and is in line with the level of relative informality reported in related studies. Although the same tasks as those identified in English institutional calls are achieved, they occur in a different place in the conversation. This is reflected by the place in the conversation where some sequences occur (i.e. organisational identification), the omission of full address terms (i.e. title + first name + surname), the occurrence of humorous metapragmatic acts and the length of the call itself (over 140 turns), reminiscent of an everyday call between friends. The length of the call and the delay in providing expected transactional information reflect a different understanding of time. Time seems to have a lower value than that generally assigned to in the West; it seems to be low cost, a free good (Goffman 1967). Therefore, a request for one’s time may be difficult to refuse without incurring offence and being impolite. Unlike English, where time and politeness appear to be in conflict in the sense that time concerns often override politeness ones, time, no doubt influenced by economics, is readily available here. Thus, an unsolicited service call may not be seen as imposing. The conversational features observed in this call show an orientation toward connectedness (Fitch 1991; cf. Chapter 12) – as illustrated by the humorous comments made, the length of the call and the fact that it does not seem to be seen as imposing despite the social distance between the participants – and also express respect. Respect is mainly shown by the agent in the inclusion of titles marking the social power asymmetry between the participants and the agent’s formulation of his contributions, which reflect an orientation to negative politeness (e.g. indirectness) and a non-deferential attitude. Although the call is intercultural, in that the participants are from different cultural groups, they are native speakers of Spanish. More importantly, they have a dialect in common and come from cultures in contact (that is, cultures which are in frequent contact with each other via tourism, trade, television and the like) and are thus generally

224 Spanish at Work

familiar with each other’s ways. It is perhaps for this reason that misunderstandings of the type commonly reported in intercultural studies were not found in the data. With this in mind, face concerns were found underlying the expression of politeness and in response to marked conversational behaviour. Considerations of face, in particular of negative face, were observed in a ritualistic conversational sequence – the opening – in that it is generally performed according to ‘appropriate patterned behavior’ (Rothenbuhler 1998: 27). In the case of a transactional call of the kind examined here, routine politeness is not only expected by the company but socioculturally essential. Face was also manifested during the unfolding of metapragmatic acts. They were initiated by the client to leave the agent in no doubt as to his conversational intentions. This occurred in the initial phases of the call, in the ‘how are you’ exchange and in the response to the reason for the call. They were humorously realised, reflecting the relative relatedness expressed in the conversation. The fact that they were produced in a relatively routine sequence adds comical effect in that they are not expected ritual behaviour. These metapragmatics acts, however, were produced to undermine the legitimacy of the call and, by default, diminish the caller’s professional face. As a result of which, the agent realigns herself and tries to re-establish her conversational identity in an attempt to proceed to the reason for the call, shift conversational direction and attain her conversational goal. Face therefore was manifested as part of the conversational politeness norms for the occasion and grew out of the ongoing interaction upon marked interactional behaviour. It was contextually given or motivated as shown by the negative politeness orientations of some of the routine phrases employed, and dynamically constructed when one of the participants deemed that some of his utterances might be potentially threatening to the negative face of his interlocutor. Face also emerged as the participants try to re-establish their conversational identities in the light of a conversational shift. In both cases, face was observed as verbalised conversational behaviour. Owing to the nature of the interaction, possible manifestations of face as signalled by extralinguistic elements that would provide insights into the ones examined here cannot be considered. The aim of this chapter has been to examine how face is manifested in an intercultural service call. To this end, the opening sequence of a conversation between a Montevidean telemarketing agent and an

Face-Work Strategies in an Intercultural Service Call 225

Argentinean client was chosen. The manifestations of face observed here are said to apply to this call only. Other calls within the database may or may not present similar manifestations but this remains to be seen. What the analysis has shown is that considerations of face emerged as contingent upon the interaction and were called upon by contextual factors. In both cases face was dynamically co-constructed.

Transcription conventions [ ] = ‘underscoring’ :: ‘volume’ ↓ ↑ ()

beginning of overlap end of overlap latching indicates a cut-off of the prior word or sound indicates emphasis indicates pitch rise is indicated with capital letters indicates falling intonation indicates rising intonation indicates that no hearing could be achieved for the talk or item

Grammatical glosses T/V

U

indicates the use of the familiar second person singular tú and/ or vos indicates the use of the unfamiliar second person singular usted

Notes ∗ Reprint: Rosina Márquez Reiter, ‘How to get rid of a telemarketing agent? Facework strategies in an intercultural service call’, in Bargiela-Chiappini, Francesca and Haugh, Michael (eds) Face, Communication and Social Interaction (London: Equinox, 2009) 55–77. © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2009.

1. It should be noted that Goffman’s definition has not been without critics either. Arundale (2006) recently pointed out, based on a criticism made earlier by Schegloff (1988), that Goffman’s understanding of interaction can also be said to be individualistic in that it primarily focuses on the ‘ritual requirements’ of the situation and individual participants, rather than on how the interaction is co-constructed. 2. See Márquez Reiter and Placencia (2005) for details of the studies. The discrepancy regarding the applicability of Brown and Levinson’s (1987) face can also be found in studies of politeness in other languages/cultures. Consider Greek and Chinese where Sifianou (1992), unlike Pavlidou (1994) and other

226 Spanish at Work

3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Greek scholars, has found the distinction useful in comparing Greek politeness patterns cross-culturally, while Kuiper and Tan Gek Lin (1989) found it helpful in describing the communicative norms of Singapore Chinese; however, Gu (1990), Mao (1994) and Pan (1995), among others, have claimed its irrelevance to mainland Chinese culture. This is not a criticism of earlier politeness research which sought, among other things, to identify the pragmalinguistic conventions behind the realisation of speech acts in several languages based on research instruments aimed at collecting large enough instances of the speech acts under examination. Informal interviews with institutional representatives (i.e. telemarketing agents) were conducted during their breaks and in the call centre’s van that collects/takes employees to/from their homes. Ten hours of recorded informal interviews were collected. This information was gathered from the Human Resources Department. A permanent and desirable quality by which an individual is regarded as likeable and even cooperative (Triandis et al. 1984). Schegloff (1986) describes this process as a ‘gatekeeping job’. This information was gathered from interviews with agents and observations of other calls to Bonaerense clients. With Spanish being a pro-drop language, the inclusion of usted is syntactically unnecessary. Unlike other dialects of Spanish (e.g. Caribbean varieties), in River Plate Spanish redundant subject pronouns are uncommon.

16 Discourse as a Tool for the Diagnosis of Psychosis: a Linguistic and Psychiatric Study of Communication Decline1 María Laura Pardo

Introduction This chapter demonstrates how critical discourse analysis (CDA) can play a valuable role in the diagnosis of psychosis. Psychosis, after all, emerges in an economic, social and political context that influences psychotic patients’ relative decline and health care opportunities. Such opportunities for patients in this study ranged from total absence, in the case of homeless people, through to various levels of state and institutional involvement – patients lodged in shelters, inpatients at private clinics, and outpatients at state hospitals. The chapter, therefore, also reflects upon the role of psychiatric institutions (or their absence) in the diagnosis and care of delusional patients. This study draws upon my research over the past 20 years into different aspects of psychosis (cf. e.g. Pardo and Buscaglia 2008, Pardo and Dorfman Lerner 1999, 2001) and is strongly multidisciplinary, integrating discursive, psychiatric and mental perspectives. I therefore begin by reviewing literature on psychosis from within this multidisciplinary approach. This is followed by a description of my methodology. Next, the main results of the study are presented and discussed via illustrative examples from the corpus. The chapter concludes with some data-driven reflections on the use of CDA as a tool for the diagnosis of psychosis and on the role of psychiatric institutions in the diagnosis and care of psychotic patients. 227

228 Spanish at Work

A multidisciplinary approach to the study of psychosis Psychosis is a mental illness traditionally defined as a loss of reality sense or judgement with alteration of the person’s mental life characterised by hallucination and delusion (Freud 1981 [1924]). It is often used as a generic term, encompassing different symptoms/conditions: paranoia, erotomania, messianism and so forth. Much has been written about psychosis and its relationship with language from a psychiatric and psychoanalytical perspective but seldom has it been approached from a linguistic/discursive standpoint. Yet most authors agree that madness inevitably involves language (e.g. Wilce 2004). There is even an old debate about whether schizophrenia, which epitomises madness, is a thought or a language disorder – a sterile dispute since this illness provokes the collapse of such distinction (cf. Crow 2000, Wilce 2004). Crow (2000) focuses on the incidence of psychosis, which has remained constant over time irrespective of psychotics tending to procreate less than the rest of the population. A recent World Health Organisation study across ten countries, including in Africa and Asia, found 1–2 per cent of the resident populations to be psychotic (Jablensky 1992). It is thus probable that there is no psychosis-free society on earth, albeit environments may affect relative prevalence and development. This leads us to Crow’s (2000) ‘central paradox’: whereas the psychotic state is structurally associated with a substantial biological disadvantage, i.e. a decrease in reproduction, psychotic genes do not seem to disappear from the population.2 Psychosis is indeed a – probably ‘the’ – Homo sapiens disease. Crow (2000) argues that the origin of schizophrenia coincided with that of genetic transformation (speciation) prior to the process of human diaspora. The physiological functions of the human being connected with this process are the capacity for complex social relationships, intelligence, language and possibly consciousness. Language is biologically the most important of these functions. Communication is necessary for survival in socially organised species and is closely related to intelligence, which in turn is difficult to define. Consciousness might be seen as an epiphenomenon of a ‘secondary representational capacity’ that would account for language (Crow 2000: 119). In view of these considerations, Crow wonders whether psychosis is indeed the price of language.

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Biology, language and speech Many writers approach psychosis from an innatist view of language (e.g. Crow 2000), while others subscribe to Voloshinov’s social constructionist theory of language (e.g. Fernyhough 2004, Seikkula et al. 2006, Skinner et al. 2001). I draw on both on the basis that we are born with certain principles and parameters but others arise from our experience of a particular language. Moreover, even innate principles develop as a result of such experience (cf. Chomsky 1979, 1999). Bakhtin’s (Voloshinov’s) dialogic view has influenced language studies enormously. It suggests a multiplicity of inner ‘voices’ linked to the speaker’s social experiences. Language only exists in dialogic communication between speakers (Bakhtin 1988). Communicating entails willingness to say something to someone else by means of dialogue, either external or internal, depending on whether the other/s are actually present or represented by voices. Inner dialogue can take place through the internalised voices of the individual’s parents, school, religion and so forth. It can also manifest itself in discourse. The latter can be seen in the argumentational component of every text, since conducting a dialogue with other voices involves arguing with them. Argumentation might be considered both as part of a textual practice developed within certain discursive practices (genres) and as inherent in language – hence its presence in every text. It reveals the voices that alternate in the speaker’s discourse. The speaker’s stance, reasons and qualification of certain arguments, together with the guarantees and grounds for them (cf. Toulmin 1958), explain the polyphony that runs through language and thought. As a consequence of this argumentational character of language, there is always a certain degree of argumentation in the texts we produce. Even when we talk to ourselves, or think about what we must do, we advance arguments to ‘others’. These may be real people or, for instance, an ideal ‘ought’ comprising different voices on ethical and moral questions examined at some point in our lives. Therefore, I contend that language (not just speech or a particular tongue) is an innate biological system that confers rationality and communicativeness on the human species, introducing the ‘other’. The ‘other’s’ presence seems to be built into language, its role being to differentiate us and provide us with identity, which would be associated with the preservation of the species through sexual intercourse. This being the case, psychic (mental, neural) and language structures must adjust to each other. Although psyche and language are innate, the

230 Spanish at Work

construction of a particular individual’s psyche and speech take place simultaneously. Therefore, an individual’s personality structure must also adjust to his/her language structure.3 Research on psychosis and language has revealed the existence of a language continuum, ranging from health to pathology (Pardo and Buscaglia 2008, Pardo and Lerner 1999, 2001). Language is characterised by the persistence of argumentational and dialogic structures regardless of significant cognitive and communication decline. ‘Other voices’, both internal and external, are still observable in psychotic and verbal hallucination discourse. Moreover, deaf-born people who have not received sign language or even oral training (Pardo and Buscaglia in press) suffer from such hallucinations. These voices, whether ‘heard’ or ‘thought’, that speakers recognise as alien mark the introduction of the ‘other’. The problem of verbal hallucinations has often been explained in terms of referentiality and the deterioration of the deictic capacity: speakers would not perceive the voices they hear as their own. Nevertheless, their discourse shows a correct exercise of such capacity. As Leudar and Thomas (2000) observe, a well-established developmental psychology position sees mental capacities as internalised social practices (Rogoff 1990, Vygotsky 1934, Werstch 1985), human experience being dialogically organised at some level (Bakhtin 1981, 1988). Therefore, inner speech has representation and pragmatic properties.

Methodology Data and procedure The speaker’s self-realisation and the introduction of the ‘other’ through language should, as argued above, be argumentatively present in discourse. This provides the methodological relevance of using life stories as data in my research. Specifically, the reference corpus for this study consists of approximately 120 interview-elicited life stories of homeless people. It has been gathered since 2003 by two research teams: one in Buenos Aires (Argentina) and one in Santiago (Chile). The Buenos Aires team worked on the streets themselves, whereas the Santiago team worked in a series of shelters, where the homeless were lodging. These homeless people usually start by spending a night or two in such shelters in order to have a shower, a hot meal and to sleep in a proper bed, but end up living there for long periods (six months to years) or even permanently.

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Researcher involvement was restricted to the minimum necessary for these life stories to be told as naturally as possible. Researchers were aware that life stories constitute a joint creation and have a therapeutic effect on those who need to be listened to. This consciousness shaped the responsibility with which they performed their role. A form was compiled with each interviewee’s data, including their age, socioeconomic status and family members. Although no specific questions were pre-prepared, all interviewees were asked what they thought would make them happy. This was designed to determine emotional, family or economic problem solutions that they believed would bring them a feeling of contentment.4 Delusional discourse appeared in a small proportion of the life stories collected by both teams. It was this finding, rather than a priori intention to examine a delusional population, that triggered my study. Moreover, differences in cognitive and communicative deterioration between delusional street dwellers and delusional shelter lodgers were soon detected. This prompted a tentative hypothesis of a relationship existing between psychotic deterioration and residential spaces. To further explore the role of institutional spaces (since only data from shelters had been collected at that point), life stories were collected from patients diagnosed as psychotic in two Buenos Aires hospitals.5 This was done during inpatient psychiatric sessions in private clinics and private therapy sessions with patients living at home. Written material produced by these patients (e.g. journals, poems and letters) was therefore also added to the corpus.

Theoretical framework This work uses a method of analysis that I developed recently to help investigate the dialectic process involving social, discursive and textual practices within my overall CDA approach (Pardo 2008b): the linguistic method of synchronic–diachronic category analysis (synchronic– diachronic, henceforth). This method accounts both for the categories required by any basic theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967) and for the linguistic properties through which such categories materialise in a given text (textual practice). Without excluding the grammatical component of language, it generally adopts a semantic approach, distinguishing between grammatical and semantic categories. Person, verb, pragmatic operators, time and space constitute examples of the former, and ‘street’, ‘prison’, ‘family of origin’, ‘street family’, and so forth are instances of the latter.

232 Spanish at Work

Grammatical categories do not vary from text to text, which makes it possible to provide a succinct description: • Speaker/Protagonist (S/P): Any pronominal person or nominal referent that supports the Speaker’s arguments, regardless of its position as grammatical or logical subject of the utterance. • Verb 1: Speaker/Protagonist’s actions or states. • Actor/s: Any pronominal person or nominal referent opposing the Speaker/Protagonist’s arguments. • Verb 2: Actors’ actions or states. • Time and place: The temporal and spatial orientation necessarily present in every text. • Pragmatic operator: A category that performs different functions, such as pointing to the correct interpretation of certain parts of the utterance or to the way in which different utterances should be linked together, or appealing to the listeners/readers and seeking their complicity. • Negation: A non-mandatory, ‘floating’, category that may affect the verb or other words or utterance parts. Semantic categories are examined both in themselves (in the diachrony of the text) and in relation to other categories (in the synchrony of an utterance). The criterion used to identify them has been drawn from the lexical domain, namely that series of repetitions provide texts with cohesion and therefore also entail grammatical repetition. Therefore, and unlike grammatical categories, semantic categories cannot be deduced or determined a priori. They must be induced from the analysed text itself. In the synchronic–diachronic method, semantic and grammatical categories are analysed jointly.

Discourse as a tool for the diagnosis of psychosis As discussed earlier, although the relationship between speech, language, psychiatry, psychoanalysis and cognition has been widely debated, the role of language in context – discourse – within this relationship has not. Yet, delusion may be considered as a narrative arising from false beliefs and embedded in a discourse which is itself grounded in socially accepted views, with which this narrative unsuccessfully attempts to coexist harmoniously. Delusional discourse may adapt to socially accepted discourse depending upon its degree of fixity, rigidity or illness. Delusion is, therefore, a discursive representation of the

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233

speaker’s own worlds, which they construct from one or more false beliefs and seek to conform to the non-delusional representations of their belief systems. It represents the speaker’s pathology, expressing it metaphorically. It is a form of cure through which the ego liberates itself to account for its madness (Freud 1981). Delusion releases madness, reveals the patients’ disease and restores their symbolic capacity. Psychotic individuals that have largely lost their capacity for representation and symbolisation no longer experience delusion. They often become isolated in their illness and suffer from what they consider as identity loss. Delusion would therefore play the role of the ‘other’ – the one who confers identity on the ‘self’. Analysis of delusional discourse in the corpus for this study revealed a cline of cognitive and communicative decline, comprising five dimensions: (1) argumentation, (2) discursive consciousness of delusion (a kind of metalanguage for psychosis), (3) metaphor, (4) lexicon and (5) deixis.6 These dimensions were, in some cases, found to display degrees of cognitive and communicative deterioration. This section describes all these dimensions and degrees, illustrating their features through samples from the corpus. (1) Argumentative dimension, reasons, evidence and dialogue Argument and dialogue comprise the structure or scaffolding of language, constituting its most important dimension, which also happens to be the most resistant to deterioration. Alien voices are necessary to construct the speaker’s identity – however pathological – even if they may become repetitive and refer back to the ‘self’. As aforementioned, delusion plays the role of the (most significant) ‘other’. Four degrees of argumentation were identified within this dimension: (1.1) argumentative structures and voices; (1.2) difficulty in moving from one person to another (direct and indirect discourse); (1.3) recurrent use of the first person and self-referentiality; and (1.4) absence of alien voices and catatonic mutism. (1.1) Argumentative structure and voices Speakers within this dimension in the corpus give reasons, provide data to substantiate them and make claims that require demonstration. They provide very little, however, in the way of what linguists call evidence. Extracts (a) and (b) illustrate, respectively, the discourse of a patient with minor and with major deterioration.

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(a) [Speaker: AR, a 70-year-old female erotomaniac graduate psychologist. She has been privately undergoing therapy for the last 40 years. Her family supports her at home.] Pragmatic operator

Time

Speaker

Verb 1

Other actors. Tasks

hice cargo

de mi

Place

Verb 2

Consequences

[Desde muy chica yo me

hermana llevando-

-la

y trayendo-

-la

de

la

escuela además

de tener que realizar

tareas

en casa

la

que debían ser

casi perfectas para

no

recibir Había días

Pero

que me

despertaba con el forme propósito de hacer para no recibir

algún chirlo o rezongo

todo bien algún castigo imposible

siempre

algo

fallaba]

(Ever since I was a small child [I was] in charge of my sister, taking her to school and bringing her back, besides having to do the household chores, which had to be almost perfect. There were days on which, not to get a smack or hear any grumbling, I woke up determined to do it all right not to get punished, but [it was] impossible: there was always something wrong.)

AR provides data supporting her argument that she used to take care of her sister and do the household work. She gives reasons (fear of

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235

being punished) for the way (‘all right’, ‘almost perfect’) in which she performed such tasks. Her ‘claim’ (cf. Toulmin 1958) that punishment was inevitable is partly grounded on subjective evidence: despite her being ‘determined to do it all right’, ‘there was always something wrong’, which made perfection impossible. Thus, the cause–effect relationship characteristic of argumentation is also present in her discourse. AR argues by deploying strategies that enable her to justify her careful approach to domestic chores. This narrative about the past is advanced as evidence of what she holds ‘true’. (b) [Speaker: SD, a 23-year-old female hebephrenic schizophrenic,7 hospitalised in a private clinic. Unlike AR in (a), SD is very young and her mother claims to be unable to provide home care.] Pragmatic operator

Spea- Verb 1 ker

Hospital

Discharge

Other actors

Verb 2

Time

[se lo suplico me

perjudicaría

yo

soy y sigo

de permanecer

Jamah eletroshock cosa por el estilo mi síntoma sana con una pena en el alma un llanto una tristeza una nostalgia en el poli

de empezar

todos los días semejante rutina en el poli uyy gente cucú gente agresiva los doctores con suhhh jeringa, camisah de fuerza, camisa de fortalezah, camisah de forze, camisa de forze

a mí

de repente

alterado

me

de repente provoca

pánico

236 Spanish at Work (Continued) Pragmatic operator

Speaker

Verb 1

Hospital

Discharge

y

Other actors

Verb 2

Time

usted a los pacientes igual

le

ceden

vacaciones y

a mí que

siempre le digo

lahh vacaciones

es

injusto Total

seguiré

los remedios

en casa]

([I] beg you, never electroshock, anything like that, [it] would harm me. My symptoms, I am healthy, and still there is such a sorrow in my soul, such crying, such nostalgia, about staying in the clinic, about starting everyday, such routine in the clinic. Goodness! Cuckoo people. All of a sudden, aggressive people, doctors with their syringes, straitjackets [. . .] suddenly it makes me panic. And all the same you grant your patients holidays, and whenever [I] tell you [about] ah! Holidays at home . . . it is unfair: [I] will go on taking my medicines anyway.)8 Despite what SD’s serious diagnosis might suggest, her text maintains its argumentative structure. Literalness, destructuring and the supposed creation of neologisms do not render language childlike in her case (as is often claimed for schizophrenics), for whereas children build a completely new speech framework, cases such as SD’s show the remnants of a slowly crumbling language. The blanks in her text, though, can be filled in by considering other lexical items in the discourse and their relations with what is missing, which reveals the existence of other voices and a communicative goal. All the mandatory grammatical categories are present in SD’s text, even though the ‘other actors’ category is poorly constructed. She preserves her identity through the ‘speaker’ category. It is the semantic categories ‘hospital’ and ‘discharge’ that work, in practice, as the ‘other’ that must be challenged.

Discourse as a Tool for the Diagnosis of Psychosis

237

(1.2) Voices and the difficulty of moving from one person to another: direct and indirect discourse The difficulty in moving from one grammatical person to another can be observed in patients within the corpus with a significant cognitive and communication deterioration, like JC’s in extract (c) below, who tend to ‘enact’ their arguments through direct discourse. This is because use of indirect discourse (i.e. indirect introduction of the other’s speech) entails a greater integration of the other’s voice into their own (the speaker’s discourse) and therefore a transformation of their utterances to fit it, which these patients are unable to achieve. Therefore they resort to direct discourse, which only requires the literal reproduction of others’ speech. (c) [Speaker: JC, a 49-year-old male street dweller suffering from paranoid delusion. JC was lodged in a shelter when interviewed.] Ant

[la hormiga grandota la chiquitita

Verb 2

Speaker

pica] [Labura, va y viene [. . .]] [cómo labura]

chiquitita

es

dura, dura,

es

como todo todos la

Verb 1

Therapy

[Igual saqué

una terapia]

Pragmatic operators/ connectors

Time

[Y pero

miro

se

choca ¿para dónde vas?] [¿Vamos para Constitución?]

[No, tengo que ir a trabajar que esto y esto hago yo yo

[¿Tendrá tendrá

mirá][ché,

a veces una terapia] sindicato, todo?]

(The big ant, the small one bites. [It] works, comes and goes [. . .] How [it] works! All the same, [I]’ve got therapy. [The] small one is tough, tough

238 Spanish at Work

[it] is. But [this] is like everything else: [I] look at it [and it] crashes. ‘Look! Where are [you] going? Shall [we] go to Constitución [Station]?’ ‘[I] don’t have to go to work, this and that: sometimes I, I do therapy.’ Will [it] have, have a trade union, all [that]?) In (c), JC’s use of direct discourse is illustrated by the personified ants’ questions (‘Look! Where are [you] going? Shall [we] go to Constitución [Station]?’), as well as by his answer to the ants (‘[I] don’t have to go to work . . .’). This dialogue leads to JC posing a question to the interviewer about an ant: ‘Will [it] have, have a trade union . . .?’ (1.3) Recurrent use of the first person and self-referentiality Extract (d) illustrates the recurring use of the first person and selfreferentiality in patients within the argumentative dimension in our corpus. It is produced by SD, the speaker also in (b) above. (d) PragSpeaker matic operator

Verb 1

Verb 2

Hospitalisa- Self-view tion

Time

Clinical motives

[Es una cosa de simplemente eh

Yo . . . yo . . . me

irrité

en la entrevista

de repente

lolamos y

yo

yo

le toqué

la psicóloga

soy

el tema de mi juventud una simple lola en mi juventud

divirtiéndo-me

jamás loca

y

elaborando se confundió todo]

Family

Discourse as a Tool for the Diagnosis of Psychosis

239

(It is a matter of simply h’m . . . I . . . I . . . got annoyed during the interview with my mother and the therapist. Suddenly [we] had fun: I simply touched on the subject of my youth: I am just a young person, enjoying myself, working things out, never mad, and everything got mixed up.) By and large, the frequent and explicit use of the first person singular indicates the fixity and certainty of delusional discourse. Psychotic patients need to anchor their speech in their own subjectivity, in the little language they can still hold on to, which, in Crow’s (2000) words, ‘hangs by a thread’. In (d), SD’s therapist appears as a mere antagonising agent that opposes her desires. Seldom in her discourse do the other voices really act. The only instance we find occurs in the verb 2 category, when SD refers to the confusion about her being mad. This is attributed to something – a ‘secret’, as she later claims – that she cannot, does not know how to and does not want to talk about. Her own self is the source from which she constantly draws her discursive identity. (1.4) Absence of alien voices and catatonic mutism This constitutes the most serious alteration of the argumentative dimension: the patients’ psyche becomes catatonic and, as Grice (1975: 49) would put it, their ‘lips are sealed’. The cooperation principle no longer applies. (2) Discursive consciousness of delusion/mental disease In the corpus this second dimension appeared in the discourse of patients who claimed to be aware of a ‘conflict’ that caused their minds to ‘scatter’, making it difficult for them to concentrate. Although these patients may not have known that they were either psychotic or very ill, they felt that there was something amiss that they could not address on their own – hence the need for therapeutic support. Two degrees of deterioration within this discursive consciousness dimension were identified: (2.1) explicit use of the first person singular as agentive subject; and (2.2) use of the third person singular. (2.1) Explicit use of the first person singular as agentive subject Example (e) illustrates the discursive consciousness of the delusion/mental disease dimension, while also showing the argumentative dimension relative to the dialogic principle (cf. (1)).

240 Spanish at Work

(e) [Speaker: OR, a 47-year-old male borderline patient undergoing therapy.] Disease

Speaker

Un lío que

Verb 1

Therapy

Pragmatic operator

no me

puedo sacar encima

de

me

doy cuenta

yo

necesitaría

una terapia

necesitaría

una ayuda

que porque

en el conflicto que esto

me

ocasiona

porque

tengo mucha dispersión

me

cuesta mucho

la atención de las cosas

(A mess that I can’t get rid of because I’m aware that I would need therapy, [I] would need help in this conflict because this causes my mind to scatter a lot, [it] is hard for me to pay attention to things.) In (e), the semantic categories ‘disease’ and ‘therapy’ represent ‘otherness’. Explicit references to the ‘self’ are accompanied by verbs that suggest the patient’s awareness of his illness and need of help. He sees delusion as a ‘mess’, a ‘conflict’ that makes his mind ‘scatter’. However, there is a certain resistance that prevents him from wholly accepting his plight, indicated by the mitigating function of the modal verb in ‘I would need’ therapy.

(2.2) Use of the third person singular In (f) JC uses the third person singular feminine to refer to himself. ‘Charge her with it’, he says, the Spanish adjective ‘paranoica’ (paranoid) also being feminine. This mediation between the psychiatrist’s diagnosis and his own self is not consciously accepted: JC disagrees with it, although he recognises that it helped him obtain social security protection.

Discourse as a Tool for the Diagnosis of Psychosis

241

(f) [Speaker = JC.] Time

Speaker

Verb 1

Disease

[Un día

yo

agarré

a un psiquiatra, la

mandé al carajo

Connector

Social Security

y

va-mos -mos.]

a ver si imputa-

la

me

sirvió

eso

[y para el ANSES]

(One day I got hold of a psychiatrist, sent her to hell, and [she] wrote ‘paranoid’, ‘delusion’ [in her report] this . . . let[’s] see if [we] charge her with it. And this was useful to me [i.e. was used] for social security [purposes].)

(3) Metaphorical dimension (3.1) Double reference The metaphors used by patients with minor cognitive and communication deterioration in the corpus had a double referent. Firstly, they may represent a real component of their situation: ‘half steam’, for example, may mean ‘more slowly, with less energy than usual’. Secondly, if the speaker suffers from a cardiac condition, ‘steam’ may refer to the power operating the heart, unconsciously seen as the engine of the body. Whereas non-psychotics have the capacity for both single and double metaphors, double (unconscious) meaning can be interpreted as a sort of metalanguage (cf. Chapter 1) for psychosis. The greater the cognitive and communication deterioration, however, the more ‘literal’ metaphors become, mental illness eventually destroying the patient’s symbolic capacity and the possibility of unconscious meaning. Example (g) illustrates the use of double-referent metaphors.

(g) [Speaker: AF, a 33-year-old female university-educated psychotic in therapy and on medication.]

242 Spanish at Work Pragmatic operator Transition Verb 2 que sé yo

lo que

Mechanism metaphor Time for disease

pasa es

que

es

que

es

que

un mecanismo

un mecanismo se presionó

y

que

estuvo

latente

siempre

y

que

estuvo

latente

siempre

se apretó

se

disparó

a los trece años

(I don’t know, what happens is that [it] is a mechanism, that [it] is a mechanism that has always been pushing, and that has always been latent, and that has been latent, and that was set off, was triggered off at 13.)

This patient had a long history of personal dissatisfaction and claimed to have been mentally ill since she was 13. The semantic categories in (g) are essentially ‘mechanism’ and ‘disease’, AF metaphorically conceiving the latter in terms of the former. ‘Transition’ is a grammatical category that allows her narrative to move forward. AF’s metaphor refers chiefly to herself as a mechanism that was initiated when she was 13, giving her identity. This reveals a world or space that enables self-construction and knowledge through metaphor-generated hypothesising. A high degree of isomorphism is also evident. The first person singular is explicitly repeated in excerpt (h), also by AF. The only ‘other voice’ is that of a ‘toad’, which AF is herself.

(h) Speaker

Metaphors for disease

Verb 1

Fear

yo

le

tengo

miedo

tengo

fobia

a los sapos le

no sé si por ahí

Pragmatic operator

Verb 2

Discourse as a Tool for the Diagnosis of Psychosis el sapo

243

no soy no sé que por ahí

el sapo yo

soy

¿no?

no sé como que

¿qué representa

el sapo? yo

Represento algo repelente algo tan espantoso, tan, tan horrible Como toda mi locura, la, la, la en todo ese sentimiento

¿no?

[Pareciera que

concentré

¿no?

(I’m afraid of toads, [I]’m phobic [about them]. I don’t know, maybe it is I who am the toad, [I] don’t know, perhaps I am the toad, aren’t I? [I] don’t know, like . . . What does the toad stand for? [I] represent something repulsive, something so awful, so very horrible, don’t I? It would look as if all my madness were concentrated on this feeling, wouldn’t it?) AF explains the meaning of the metaphor at the reality level: ‘I am the toad . . . something repulsive . . . so awful’. At the delusional level (target domain), the toad represents the part of her that she is phobic about, of which she is afraid and where all her madness is concentrated. The toad is, therefore, both the speaker herself and her madness. This interpretation is confirmed further in the interview, when AF states: My feeling of being alive is the same as when I had just turned 13, isn’t it? It is the same thing inside, that thing, that thing as when I see a toad, isn’t it? That thing of, h’m . . . rottenness, that horrible thing, isn’t it? That thing of fear and death, that death to free myself from fear . . . then I lived the life of the toad. In (h), furthermore, question tags work as pragmatic operators, constituting the only connection between self and other (interviewer). (3.2) Single reference The next excerpt is illustrative of cases of major communication deterioration in the corpus. It is almost a monologue, with practically no interaction between the speaker and the interviewer. The former

244 Spanish at Work

does not offer any reasons in support of his claims. False beliefs are advanced without comment: their extreme fixity and certainty exclude doubt. His use of non-referential or, rather, deictically neutral terms results in ambiguity. There is only one metaphor in the life story of this speaker: (i) [Speaker: ON, a 54-year-old male street dweller suffering from megalomaniac delusion. ON has just rejected the idea of his being depressed, referring to his condition in terms of ‘a big cloud’. His interviewer rephrases it as ‘disconnection’, at which point example (i) begins.] Pragmatic Disease operator

Verb 2

House

Speaker Verb 1

Time

[Una desconexión, Como quien dice, ¿no? porque

me iban a sacar de mi casa, yo

entonces

me

agarré . . . agarró

esa chifladura y bueno pero

fueron

pero

fue

poquitos días

Una buena experiencia]

(A disconnection, as it were, wasn’t it? Because [they] were going to throw me out of my house: I had this fit of madness. Then, well . . . [it] lasted [only] a few days but . . . but [it] was a good experience.) In (i), ON rejects the analogy he has previously suggested, talking of a fit of madness: he did not suffer from depression but just experienced a bout of insanity that, fortunately, lasted only a few days. Thus, he plays down the episode and unconsciously avoids the use of metaphor. (4) Lexical dimension (4.1) Delusion-related topics Analysis of the lexicon of delusional speech in the corpus revealed its revolving around four main topics, namely (1) guilt and culprits,

Discourse as a Tool for the Diagnosis of Psychosis

245

sometimes including ‘confusion’ as the cause of delusion; (2) disorder; (3) deformity; and (4) gradual loss of freedom. Excerpt (j) provides an illustration of topics (1), (2) and (4). Excerpt (k) is illustrative of topic (3) (relevant lexis has been underlined in both excerpts).

(j) [Speaker: JC.] El mal que uno ha hecho. El mal es uno mismo. . .uno mismo. [. . .] Uno mismo se buscó el mal. (guilt) [. . .] Sí, estuve internado (en el Borda). [. . .] Me tocó un percance en el ’91 porque fui a parar, desgraciadamente, por [. . .] la justicia, por, por, por, esto y aquello, la verdad, [. . .] estuve en la unidad 20 carcelaria de ahí adentro, del Borda, 7 meses. [. . .] fue una equivocación (disorder) [. . .] te voy a explicar algo, la libertad es lo más lindo que hay. Pero yo conozco lo que es estar en una cárcel por mi alcoholismo estuve 15 años en Devoto. (Loss of freedom) The evil that one has done. . .It is oneself . . . oneself that is evil [. . .] One has brought evil on oneself. (guilt) Yes, [I] have been hospitalised (at the Borda [a psychiatric hospital in Buenos Aires]) [. . .] [I] had a mishap in 1991, because [I] ended up [there], unfortunately, because [. . .] of [the] justice [system], because of, because of, because of this and that; actually, [. . .] [I] was in prison unit No. 20 there, at the Borda, for 7 months; it was a mistake (disorder) [. . .] [I]’m going to explain something to you: freedom is the nicest thing there is. But I know what it’s like to be in jail: [I]’ve spent 15 years in Devoto [jail] for alcoholism. (Loss of freedom) (k) [Speaker: AF.] Cuando empecé a deformarme [. . .] A lo bestia contestaba [. . .] Soy un sapo. . .tan repelente, tan repulsiva, que tan, tan, tan, repulsiva que la muerte es lo único que puede liberarme [. . .] El pánico de ver que soy una masa, una masa así, ¿no? . . . Hasta que llegue un momento en que ya mi rostro esté lleno de marcas [. . .] Estoy condenada a las marcas, estar marcada [. . .] Siempre fui así un monstruo [. . .] Estoy condenada a llevar una vida de sapo, a ir saltando, repeliendo a todos y a mímisma. When [I] started to get deformed [. . .] [I] answered like a beast [. . .] [I] am a toad . . .so disgusting, so repulsive, that . . . so very, very repulsive that only death can free me [. . .] I panic when I see that [I] am a lump, a lump, like this, aren’t I? . . . Till my face is full of spots.[. . .] [I]’m doomed to have spots [. . .] [I]’ve always been like this, a

246 Spanish at Work

monster. [. . .] [I]’m doomed to lead the life of a toad, to leap around, repelling everybody and myself. In (k), AF sees herself as a toad, condemned to be such forever, and elaborates on this image by means of other metaphors/lexemes. The spots, which she shares with the toad, represent not her ageing process but her having to live with the disease, which makes her hate herself and attempt suicide. (4.2) Sex as a topic In cases of minor communication deterioration, limited discussion of sex as a topic tended to reveal the absence of a full sexual life. It was as if the failure of other voices to penetrate the patients’ discourse would translate into lack of physical penetration. Conversely, in cases of major communication deterioration, too many (even crude) references to sex were found, these reflecting cortical disinhibition (cf. example (l) below). There was still no penetration, although masturbation appeared frequently as means to relieve anxiety and stimulate the patients’ ego. (l) [Speaker: AR.] Queridos genitales, Hoy quiero enviarles esta carta porque, en verdad, sí que nunca los tuve muy en cuenta, a tal punto que si tuviera que decir cómo son, no sabría. [. . .] Dear genitalia, Today [I] want to write to you because [I] have never really taken much notice of you, so that if [I] had to describe you, [I] wouldn’t know how. [. . .]

(4.3) Word restoration Classical psychiatry claims that psychotics ‘create’ new terms. Analysis of their discourse in this corpus, on the contrary, reveals that delusional patients with major cognitive and communicative deterioration tended to forget words. They substituted onomatopoeic or similar expressions for the missing meaning, while keeping the structure of the word such as the verb form. Their alleged creativity was thus the result of cognitive decline – memory failure and attention deficit. For instance, speakers said entología (‘entology’) instead of ontología (‘ontology’) (meaning a wide-ranging science), asolado (‘aloned’), instead of aislado (‘isolated/ left alone’, or – as in (d) – lolamos (‘[we] had fun’),

Discourse as a Tool for the Diagnosis of Psychosis

247

which is a first person plural verb form derived from the noun lola (‘a young person’). (5) Deictic dimension Two phenomena were identified in our corpus within this dimension: a marked use of deictically neutral or non-referential terms and words with multiple meanings, and an absence of connectors. Excerpt (m) illustrates these. (m) [Speaker: PL, a 32-year-old male street dweller suffering from paranoid delusion.] Speaker

Street

Verb 2

Verb 1

Listener’s curiosity [En miles de cosas

que ni podés llegar a imaginar] [En las que sabés] [Involucrar-me a mí

sin haber hecho

nada, en cosas que

jamás hice]

(In thousands of things that [you] can’t even imagine . . . that [you] know . . . to implicate me, without having done anything, in things [I]’ve never done.) In (m) PL uses words with multiple meanings, like ‘things’ (‘that [you] can’t even imagine’), and terms without referent, such as ‘anything’. There is also a total absence of connectors in his discourse. This use of non-referential and multiple-meaning words, which leaves listeners puzzled and arouse their curiosity, is characteristic of paranoid delusional discourse. In summary, synchronic–diachronic analysis of the life stories in the corpus enabled identification of five dimensions of cognitive and communicative deterioration and various degrees of severity. The interrelationship between dimensions and degrees is schematically presented in Table 16.1.

Psychotic discourse in context As mentioned in the Methodology section, the corpus for this study consisted principally of life stories by patients with very different

248 Spanish at Work Table 16.1 Dimensions and degrees of cognitive and communicative deterioration in the corpus Minor cognitive/ communicative deterioration

Major cognitive/ communicative deterioration

Argumentative Evidence dimension

Reasons Dialogue Indirect discourse

Frequent use of first person singular Direct discourse

Absence of reasons Lack of alien voices High frequency of first person singular in agentive case

Discursive consciousness of delusion

Use of first person singular in agentive case to refer to delusion

Use of third person singular to refer to delusion

Lack of awareness Disease attributed to speaker by others

Metaphor

Double reference

Single reference

Absence of metaphors Literal meaning

Lexicon

Delusion-related topics

Lack of Word Excessive reference reference to restoration to sex sex

Deixis

Non-referential or deictically neutral terms Multiple-meaning words

Absence of connectors

backgrounds. Specifically, patients were either homeless, lodging in shelters, or being treated in different types of psychiatric institution. Correlation of the dimensions and degrees of psychotic discourse aforementioned with available background information on the authors of this discourse revealed the following: • Minor cognitive/communicative deterioration was predominantly found in the life stories of those patients who were part of what was termed ‘emotionally containing families’. These patients were following therapy and displayed varied discursive practices. • Medium to major cognitive/communicative deterioration was found in homeless patients who were part of street families (‘nonemotionally containing families’). These patients were not under medication and also displayed varied discursive practices.

Discourse as a Tool for the Diagnosis of Psychosis

249

• Major cognitive/communicative deterioration was found in patients who were part of ‘expelling families’. These patients were staying in state and private hospitals and clinics, and in some cases in shelters. Surprisingly, it was delusional street dwellers and psychiatric/psychotherapeutic outpatients emotionally contained by their families who showed minor deterioration, whereas private clinic inpatients and homeless people lodged in shelters showed major deterioration. People living on the streets need to keep active certain cognitive and communicative capacities. Patients in hospitals, clinics and shelters, however, are often treated as children and subjected to a system of ‘favours’ by caregivers, thus becoming unable to perform minimum health and personal hygiene functions. Ultimately, street, shelter and hospital life are the outcome of the failure/inability of certain families to take adequate care of their members. A possible explanation for the above findings, therefore, is that homeless patients must socialise and use language in order to survive; whereas those staying in shelters have their basic needs covered and lead a more isolated existence, not necessarily being encouraged to interact with others. The latter is also the case for inpatients at public hospitals and private clinics. Patients’ family of origin (emotional container or absent/expelling) and the importance attached by this family and/or the state to psychiatric/psychotherapeutic treatment also appeared to play an important role in the degree of cognitive/communicative deterioration experienced by patients in this study. Major cognitive deterioration was found in inpatients and individuals expelled from their families and in those lodged in shelters, whereas those whose families provided emotional containment (receiving outpatient treatment) and those living on the streets (without medication) showed only minor and medium deterioration, respectively. In the case of the latter, analysis of their life stories also revealed that although their family of origin had failed to contain them emotionally, they had then formed ‘street families’, i.e. networks of friends and acquaintances, and even found partners and had children, which had kept them active.

Conclusions Two main conclusions can be drawn from this study. The first, and perhaps the most significant, is that psyche, mind and brain need language

250 Spanish at Work

in order to construct an individual human being. In this respect, speech and discourse are more eloquent than any other model researchers may create. Psychotic discourse has been characterised in different ways by psychiatric, medical and genetics practitioners. Some have stressed, for example, the deterioration of the deictic function. Deictic and lexical ambiguity, however, enables psychotic patients to conceal their illness while telling their own stories, and is not present when they discuss other subjects. Yet, speakers in general use ambiguity to avoid being specific about things that they know are not right or might put them in an awkward position or lead the listener to disbelieve what they intend to say. Others have maintained the dialogic structure of discourse and then denied it in the case of verbal hallucinations. Now psychosis is a disorder that affects language as a symbolic representation system but does not abolish its dialogic nature: patients suffering from verbal hallucinations only interpret some inner voices as alien. Thus, we cannot draw a distinction based on this criterion. This study, in contrast, has accounted for some of the chief dimensions of psychotic discourse as well as for the different degrees of cognitive/communicative deterioration in psychotic/delusional patients. The study was not intended to reflect all possible degrees of psychotic illness – only those most noticeable in patients that still possessed a certain communicative structure. This was because of priority being given to patients who can still recover some of their communicative and cognitive functions, for the ultimate goal of the synchronic–diachronic analysis reported in this chapter is to work with other disciplines in a joint effort to slow down these patients’ decline. The second main conclusion emerging from this study concerns the role played by social care and psychiatric institutions in the diagnosis and treatment of psychotic patients. The findings here were surprising: homeless patients generally displayed less severe degrees of cognitive/communicative deterioration than those ‘under the wings’ of an institution, be it a hospital, a clinic or a shelter. This is not to be interpreted as indicative of life on the streets being better than life in psychiatric or social care institutions. It does suggest, however, that the conditions, opportunities and quality of life of psychiatric patients and delusional individuals would be enhanced by stimulating environments where they were offered a variety of discursive practices and neither treated as children nor neglected.

Discourse as a Tool for the Diagnosis of Psychosis

251

Dedication In loving memory of Beatriz Dorfman Lerner, dearest friend and psychiatry professor, who passed away on 28 June 2009.

Notes 1. I am grateful for Virginia Buscaglia’s advice on the psychiatric aspects of this chapter, for Dr Beatriz Dorfman Lerner’s comments, contribution to the corpus and continual guidance, and for Mónica Descalzi’s translation of this chapter into English. 2. The term ‘disadvantage’ does not entail a judgement on the patient’s worth as a person. 3. By ‘psyche’ I mean the Freudian psychic system, i.e. a certain inner disposition in which psychic locations are assigned different functions in a fixed temporal order, similar to that of a reflex system. 4. Though not within the remit of this chapter, it is interesting to note that economic matters were rated much lower than family issues by these interviewees. 5. The hospitals were: the Borda Institute and the Hospital Teodoro Álvarez. In this and previous clinic and hospital work, the Buenos Aires team worked under the guidance of psychiatrist advisor Dr Buscaglia. 6. These dimensions are not meant to exhaust possible approaches to delusional discourse. 7. Hebephrenia is a form of schizophrenia, a post-pubertal disorder characterised by childish mannerisms, passivity, grossly inadequate behaviour and severe personality disintegration. 8. Translator’s note: subject omission is grammatically correct in Spanish.

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Author Index

Aaltonen, B., 272 Abad, Ángeles, 18, 252 Achugar, Mariana, 200, 252 Agar, Michael, 12, 166, 252 Aguessy, H., 257 Ahlsén, Elisabeth, 252 Alakare, K., 272 Alcina Franch, Juan, 24, 252 Alexandre, Víctor, 145n.7, 252 Allen, Robert, 260 Allwood, Jens, 174–5, 252 Almeida, Manuel, 18–19, 252 Álvarez, Rosario, 18, 270 Alvarez-Caccamo, Celso, 49n.10, 252 Álvarez Martínez, Mª Ángeles, 252, 256 Anderson, Bob, 8, 272 Anderson, D., 217, 274 Antonopoulou, Eleni, 203n.6, 252 Aponte Moreno, Marco, 146, 252 Aquín, Nora, 94, 259 Arceo Vacas, José Luis, 252 Armas Ayala, Alfonso, 252 Arundale, Robert, 174, 210, 213, 225n.1, 252 Aston, Guy, 192–3, 208, 253 Atkinson, David, vi, x, 31, 91, 130–45, 263 Atkinson, John Maxwell, 150, 253, 255 Attridge, Derek, 270 Ávila, Raúl, 23, 25–6, 33, 253, 276 Bachmann, Iris, v, x, 14–15, 50–66, 253 Bailey, Benjamin, 222, 253 Baker, Carolyne, 217, 253 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 11, 15n.1, 95, 173, 229–30, 253, 255 Bally, Charles, 271 Bargiela-Chiappini, Francesca, 208, 210, 225, 253 Barker, Chris, 21, 253

Barreto, Daniel, 18, 253 Barron, Anne, 270, 272 Basso, Raquel, 256 Bauman, Zygmunt, 94, 253 Bayley, Paul, 111, 253, 262, 274 Bechelloni, Giovanni, 268 Bell, Allan, 112, 253 Benwell, Bethan, 111, 253 Beswick, Jaine, v, x, 14, 35–49, 254 Bhagat, Rabi S., 256 Biber, Douglas, 254 Blakar, R. M., 271 Blanco, Carlos, 147, 254 Blas Arroyo, José Luis, 89, 111, 254 Blecua, José Manuel, 24, 252 Blommaert, Jan, 51, 53–4, 254 Blondheim, Menahem, 254 Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, 2, 254 Boden, Deirdre, 1, 254 Bokhorst-Heng, Wendy, 142, 254 Bolívar, Adriana, 89, 111, 146–7, 171n.2, 254 Borzeix, Annie, 269 Bou Franch, Patricia, 258 Bourdieu, Pierre, 150, 254 Boutet, J., 208, 254 Bouwhuis, Don G., 273 Boxer, Diana, 206n.12, 254 Boyd, Aleksander, 146, 276 Bravo, Diana, 167, 207n.14, 210–11, 254, 259, 261, 271 Brazil, David, 176, 254 Brittos, César Cruz, 270 Briz, Antonio, 167, 174, 206n.5, 254, 258, 261 Brown, Penelope, 116, 124, 128, 210–13, 225n.2, 254 Bubnova, Tatiana, 173, 255 Buonanno, Milly, 268 Buscaglia, Virginia, 227, 230, 251n.5, 269 Button, Graham, 255 278

Author Index Caffi, Claudia, 222, 255 Callahan, Laura, 206n.3, 255 Calsamiglia Blancafort, Helena, 168, 171, 255 Cameron, Deborah, 2, 166, 255 Cameron, Richard, 265 Cano Aguilar, Rafael, 263, 267 Carbó, Teresa, 89, 255 Carbonero Cano, P., 263 Carter, Ronald, 151, 273 Carvalho, Ana Maria, 64, 255 Casey, Neil, 255 Castellano, A., 18, 267 Castelló Cogollos, Enric, 21–2, 29–30, 255 Castillo-Lluch, Mónica, 270 Chaika, Elaine, 197, 255 Chambers, Jack K., 267 Cheepen, Christine, 217, 255 Chen, E. et al., 255 Cheng, Winnie, 255 Chilton, Paul, 111–12, 129n.8, 255, 274 Chomsky, Noam, 86, 150, 229, 255, 261 Chumaceiro, I., 89, 255 Cicourel, Aaron, 173, 255 Clark, Herbert H., 173, 255–6 Clyne, Michael G., 206n.12, 256 Codó Olsina, Eva, 208, 256 Cole, Peter, 260 Collins, James, 254, 256 Conrad, Susan, 254 Corbella Díaz, Dolores, 252, 256, 267, 276 Corrales Zumbado, Cristóbal, 18, 256, 276 Coulmas, Florian, 263, 273 Coupland, Justine, 166, 193, 256, 261, 263, 265, 274 Coupland, Nikolas, 11–12, 256 Cox, J. Robert, 262 Crow, Tim, 228–9, 256 Culpeper, Jonathan, 210, 256 Cunningham, Stuart, 50–1, 273 Dader, José Luis, 89, 256 Dash, J. Michael, 65n.1, 256 Daskal Albert, Rosita, 215, 256 Davies, Bronwyn, 112, 256 Dávila, Arlene, 52–3, 256

279

de Jong, Eloisa, 94, 256 de Granda, G., 209, 276 De los Heros, Susana, 257 Del Valle, José, 38, 40, 53, 59, 64, 257 Deumert, Ana, 273 Díaz Alayón, Carmen, 252, 256, 271 Díaz Benítez, Juan José, 257 Díaz Guerrero, Rogelio, 257 Dicker, Susan, 74, 257 Diop, Cheikh Anta, 257 Dirven, René, 262 Dobao, Antón, 35, 42–7, 257, 276 Domínguez, Óscar, 18, 257 Domínguez-Seco, Luzia, 38, 40, 47, 257 Donohue, William A., 172, 257 Drew, Paul, 1, 3, 8n.1, 166, 208, 253, 257, 264, 272 Drummond, Phillip, 21, 257 Duchêne, Alexandre, 257 Duranti, A., 275 Dyer, Judy, 16, 257 Ehlich, Konrad, 258 Ellner, Steve, 146, 257 Emmison, Mike, 253 Enfield, N. J., 194, 257 Ensslin, Astrid, 20, 43, 262–3 Estévez González, Fernando, 259 Fabb, Nigel, 270 Fairclough, Norman, 51, 97, 107, 109, 142, 166, 220, 258 Falk, Johan, 261 Fant, Lars, vi, x, 2, 168, 172–91, 207n.14, 258, 261 Fecé, José L., 22, 30, 258 Félix-Brasdefer, César, 194, 258 Fernández, Miguel Anxo, 41, 258 Fernández García, Francisco, 89, 259 Fernández Rei, Elisa, 257 Fernández Rei, Francisco, 39, 259 Fernyhough, Charles, 229, 259 Ferrer, María Cristina, 171n.2, 259 Fine, Jonathan, 275 Firpo, Arturo, 264 Firth, Alan, 253 Firth, John Rupert, 148, 259 Fitch, Kristine, 167, 223, 259 Flege, James, 49n.8, 259 Flindall, Marie, 206n.3, 263

280 Author Index Foucault, Michel, 259 Fukushima, Saeko, 211, 259 Fulcher, Glen, 266 Fraenkel, Beatrice, 269 Francis, David, 4, 261 Frank, Roslyn, 262 Gabbiani, Beatriz, 171n.2 Gaeta, Carlos, 277 Galván Tudela, José Alberto, 18, 259 Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar, 5, 70, 80, 259 García, Ofelia, 263 García, Carmen, xii, 166, 193, 252, 257, 264, 270, 273 García Canclini, Néstor, 51–2, 259 García Gómez, Antonio, 2, 259 Gattino, Silvia Rosa, 94, 259 Gibbs, Raymond, 173, 259 Giles, Howard, 18, 259 Gille, Johan, 173, 181, 259, 261 Glaser, B., 231, 260 Godsland, Shelley, 268 Goffman, Erving, 5, 88, 223, 260, 272 Golluscio, Lucía, 262 González Cruz, Mª Isabel, v, x, 13–14, 16–34, 260 Goodwin, Charles, 87, 260 Goodwin, Margaret, 87, 260 Gott, Richard, 146–7, 260 Graham, Clayton, 129n.2, 263, 276 Greenbaum, Sidney, 270 Grice, H. Paul, 119, 128, 239, 260 Griffiths, Alison, 21, 260 Grosfoguel, Ramón, 275 Gu, Y., 211, 226n.2, 260 Gudykunst, William, 212, 260 Guerra, Pancho, 260, 271 Guibernau, Montserrat, 131, 260 Gumperz, John J., 16, 260 Gunnarsson, Britt-Louise, 260 Gustavsson, Lennart, 264 Haarakangas, J. Keränen, 272 Hacohen, Gonen, 254 Hampton, Keith, 80, 275 Harnecker, Marta, 260 Harré, Rom, 112, 256 Harris, Richard M., 263 Harris, Sandra, 111, 208, 253, 260

Harvey, Ana María, 172–3, 191n.1, 258, 261 Haverkate, Henk, 199, 205, 261 Heller, Monica, 50–2, 257, 261 Hellinger, Daniel C., 146, 257 Heritage, John, 1, 3, 166, 174, 208, 255, 257, 261, 264 Herman, Edward S., 150, 261 Hermida Gulías, Carme, 44, 49n.11, 261 Hernández Alonso, César, 258 Hernández Flores, Nieves, 2, 167, 207n.14, 211, 261 Hernández López, Mariola, 205, 206n.3, 261 Hester, Stephen, 4, 261 Hickey, Leo, 205, 207n.14, 261, 263 Hofmann, Sabine, 261 Hofstede, Geert, 261 Holland, Dorothy, 273 Holmes, Janet, 18, 166, 192–3, 208, 261 Holtgraves, Thomas, 212, 261 Hutchby, Ian, 4, 262 Hutcheson, Sandy, 265 Hymes, Dell, 95, 97, 262 Ide, Sachiko, 211, 262 Ilie, Cornelia, 111, 262 Iñigo-Mora, Isabel, 129n.1, 262 Jablensky, A., 228, 262 Jackson, Sally, 181, 262 Jacobs, Scott, 181, 262 Jacoby, Sally, 111, 174, 262, 268 James, Allan, 259 Jameson, Frederic, 94, 262 Jaworski, Adam, 12, 262 Jefferson, Gail, 271 Jensen, John, 209, 271 Jiang, Wenying, 7, 165, 273 Johnson, Sally, 20, 43, 253, 262–3 Jones, Bart, 146–7, 155, 262 Joseph, John E., 17, 262 Joshi, Aravind, 256 Julián, Gisele, 168, 262 Juvonen, Päivi, 264 Kabatek, Johannes, 35, 42, 45, 49nn.9–10, 262, 270 Kachru, Braj B., 16, 262–3

Author Index Kasper, Gabrielle, 263 Kaste, Martin, 81, 276 Kelly-Holmes, H., 31, 263 Kendon, Adam, 263 Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine, 206n.3, 263, 266 Klinge, Alex, 258 Knapp, Mark L., 262–3 Koike, Dale, 129n.2, 263 Kong, Kenneth C. C., 206n.3, 211, 263 Kotschi, Thomas, 258 Kroskrity, Paul, 263 Kuiper, Koenraad, 206n.3, 226n.2, 263 Laborda Gil, Xavier, 129n.1, 263 Labov, William, 263 Lagarde, Christian, 271 Lamíquiz, Vidal, 16, 263 Landis, Dan, 256 Lavandera, Beatriz R., 86, 97–8, 104, 263 Lave, Jean, 111, 263 Laver, John, 196, 198, 263, 265 Leather, Jonathan, 259 Lebrón, Marisol, 77, 276 Leech, Geoffrey, 270 Lehtinen, K., 272 Le Page, Robert Brock, 264 Lerner, Beatriz, 227, 230, 251, 269 Leudar, I., 230, 264 Levín, Silvia, 108, 264 Levinson, Stephen C., 6, 116, 124, 128–9, 172, 213, 254, 257, 264 Liebes, Tamar, 21, 264 Lievrouw, Leah, 70, 264 Lillis, Theresa, 273 Livingstone, Sonia, 21, 70, 264 Linell, Per, 85, 112, 174, 260, 264 Lippi-Green, Rosina, 39, 264 Lipski, John M., 59, 209, 264 Llamas, Carmen, 257 López, Mark Hugo, 68, 81n.5, 264 López-Pumarejo, Tomás, 21, 264 Lorda Mur, Clara Ubaldina, 89, 264 Lorenzo, Antonio, 25, 264 Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria, ii–iii, v–vi, ix, 1–15, 70, 85–92, 129n.4, 142, 165–71, 206n.1, 207n.14, 259, 264 Lorenzo Suárez, Anxo M., 36–8, 264

281

Loureiro-Rodriguez, Veronica, 38–43, 47, 49n.10, 265 Louw, Erik, 21, 265 LuMing, Mao, 265 MacCabe, Colin, 270 McCallion, Michael, 32, 265 McCarthy, Michael, 204, 206n.3, 265 McHoul, Alec, 8n.1, 253, 261, 265 McLaren, Margaret, 265 Madfes, Irene, 171n.2, 259 Maffiotte, Juan, 25, 265 Major, Roy, 49n.8, 265 Malanca, Patricia, 94, 265 Maldonado-Torres, Nelson, 275 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 265 Malone, Martin, 265 Mancera Rueda, Ana, vi, xi, 169, 192–207, 265, 270 Marchese, Mariana Carolina, vi, xi, 90, 93–110, 265 Mariño Paz, Ramón, 37, 49n.6, 266 Mar-Molinero, Clare, v, xi, 5, 7–8, 15, 36, 41, 49n.2, 65n.1, 67–82, 257 Márquez Reiter, Rosina, vi, xi–ii, 166, 169, 208–26, 266, 272 Martín-Barbero, Jesús, 51, 56, 64, 266 Martínez, Clarisa, 94, 266 Martín Rojo, Luisa, 89, 111, 266 Marshall, Catherine, 173, 256 Matsumoto, Yoshiko, 211, 266 May, Albert, 267, 276 Medina López, Javier, 252, 267 Mehan, Hugh, 8n.1, 267 Méndez, Ana Irene, 146, 267 Mendoza-Denton, Norma, 267 Merritt, Marilyn, 208, 267 Mesthrie, Rajend, 273 Mey, Jacob, 40, 255, 267 Mignolo, Walter, 52, 65n.1, 267 Milroy, James, 38, 267 Milroy, Lesley, 38, 267 Mingo, Graciela, 95, 267 Mitchell, Terence F., 204, 267 Moneta, Carlos Juan, 51, 259 Monteagudo, Henrique, 270–1 Montes, Cecilia, 206.3n, 257 Montgomery, Martin, 111, 267 Montoya Martínez, Jesús, 268 Morales-López, Esperanza, 135–6, 270

282 Author Index Moreno Fernández, Francisco, 267 Morera, Marcial, 19, 29, 256, 264, 267, 271 Morgan, J. L., 260 Morgenthaler García, Laura, 258 Morillo-Velarde Pérez, Ramón, 267 Morín, A., 18, 267 Morrill, Calvin, 205, 207n.15, 267 Mullany, Louise, 257 Müller, A., 267 Müller, Henrik H., 208, 258 Narbona Jiménez, Antonio, 205, 267 Naughton, Julie M., 193, 274 Neel, Françoise, 273 Newcomb, Howard, 21, 268 Nino Murcia, Mercedes, 265 Nivre, Joakim, 252 Noblía, María Valentina, 107, 268 Nordberg, Bengt, 260 Núñez, Paulina, 48, 173, 268 Nyowe, Onuigbo, 268 Oakes, Michael P., 149, 268 Oberholzer-Gee, Felix, 78, 268 Ochs, Elinor, 111, 174, 262, 268 O’Donnell, Hugh, 21–2, 268 O’Driscoll, Jim, 211–12, 268 Oesterreicher, Wolf, 258 Oldenburg, Ray, 192–3, 203–5, 268 Orlando, Virginia, 171n.2, 268 O’Rourke, Bernadette, 37, 268 O’Shanahan, Alfonso, 268 Ortega, Gonzalo, 256, 264, 271 Ortega Olivares, Jenaro, 191n.2, 268 Ortiz, Tulio, 268–9 Otheguy, Ricardo, 263 Oyanedel, Marcela, 173, 268 Paira, Marisa, 256 Pan, Y., 226n.2, 268 Pardo, María Laura, vi, xi, 85, 94, 96–7, 104, 108–9, 170, 227–51, 268–9 Paredes Nuñes, Juan, 268 Paterson, Richard, 257 Pavlidou, Theodossia, 225n.2, 269 Pène, Sophie, 208, 269 Pennycook, Alistair, 142, 269 Pérez de Ayala, Soledad, 111, 269 Pérez Morera, Jesús, 18, 269

Petersoo, Pille, 269 Placencia, María Elena, vi, xi–ii, 192–207, 215, 225n.2, 252, 257, 261, 264–6, 269–70, 272–3 Potowski, Kim, 265 Pratt, Mary Louise, 59, 270 Prego Vázquez, Gabriela, 171n.2, 270 Pujante, David, 85–6, 89, 133, 135–6, 270 Quilis Morales, Antonio, 32, 258, 270 Quintero Sánchez, Oliver Javier, 25, 270 Quirk, Randolph, 142, 270 Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., 200, 270 Rainey, Isobel, 266 Rapley, Mark, 253, 261 Rebouças, Edgard, 51, 55, 270 Regueira Fernández, Xosé Luis, 35–9, 41, 43, 46, 48, 49n.3, 257, 270–1 Repetto, Silvia, 94, 265 Reppen, Randi, 254 Ricardo, Valério, 263, 270 Rice, Ronald, 70, 271 Riedlinger, Albert, 271 Ritchie Key, Mary, 263 Roberts, Celia, 2, 271 Roca, Ana, 209, 271 Rodríguez, Francisco, 147, 271 Rodríguez, María Clara, 94, 271 Rogoff, Barbara, 230, 271 Rommetveit, Ragnar, 173, 271 Rothenbuhler, E., 224, 271 Rothman, Jason, 265 Sacks, Harvey, 174–6, 271–2 Sag, Ivan, 256 Saldívar, José David, 275 Samper Padilla, José Antonio, 24, 271 Sánchez Lanza, Carmen, 171n.2, 215, 271 San Martín, Gustavo, 106, 277 Santamarina, Antón, 39, 271 Santana Díaz, M. B., 34n.12, 271 Sarangi, Srikant, 2, 271 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 149, 154, 271 Scannell, Paddy, 55, 272 Schäffner, Christine, 274 Schegloff, Emanuel, 174, 217, 225n.1, 226n.7, 271–2

Author Index Schiffrin, Deborah, 273, 275 Schilling-Estes, Natalie, 267 Schlesinger, Philip, 21, 272 Schneider, Klaus P., 194, 270, 272 Schrader-Kniffki, Martina, 209, 258, 272 Schwartz, Jorge, 272 Scott, Mike, 149, 262, 272 Sechehaye, Albert, 271 Seikkula, J., 229, 272 Seiler, Robert, 276 Selting, Margret, 177, 272 Sharrock, Wes, 8, 272 Shifter, Michael, 147, 272 Shimanoff, Susan, 213, 272 Shore, Elena, 77–8, 277 Sifianou, Maria, 225, 252, 272 Silverman, D., 8n.1, 272 Silverstone, Roger, 70, 272 Sinclair, John M., 50–2, 53, 151, 273, 277 Siqueira Bolaño, Valério Ricardo, 270 Skinner, Debra, 229, 273 Slembrouck, Stef, 254, 256 Smith, Dominic, vi, xii, 91, 146–62, 273 Snow, David A., 205, 207n.15, 267 Sopeña, Emma, 258 Spencer-Oatey, Helen, 7, 165, 193, 210, 273 Spradley, J., 214, 273 Stenström, Anna-Brita, 206n.10, 273 Stewart, Miranda, vi, xi–ii, 8, 40–1, 49n.4, 90–1, 111–29, 215, 257, 261, 263, 266 Stockwell, Peter, 257, 263 Stokoe, Elizabeth, 111, 253 Strauss, A., 231, 260 Strecker, Ivo, 211, 273 Stubbe, Maria, 166, 208, 261 Stubbs, Michael, 148, 273 Sutil, Guillén, 263 Svartvik, Jan, 270 Swann, Joan, 16, 273 Tabouret-Keller, Andrée, 16, 264, 273 Taiwo, Rotimi, 259 Tan Gek Lin, Daphne, 226n.2, 263 Tannen, Deborah, 272 Taylor, Paul, 174, 264

283

Taylor, Martin M., 68, 273 Teubert, Wolfgang, 148, 273 Thomas, Jenny, 221 Thomas, P., 230, 264 Thurén, Britt-Marie, 273 Ting-Toomey, Stella, 212, 260, 272 Tognini-Bonelli, Elena, 148, 274 Tolson, Andrew, 274 Tomás, Cortés, 277 Toulmin, Stephen, 229, 235, 274 Tracy, Karen, 193, 217, 274 Traverso, Veronique, 206n.3, 266, 274 Triandis, Harry, 212, 220, 226n.6, 274 Trudgill, Peter, 267 Trujillo, Ramón, 18, 274 Tuñez, Miguel, 258, 261 Turner, Graeme, 21, 274 Turner, R., 272 Tusón Valls, Amparo, 168, 171n.3, 255 Valsiner, Jaan, 273 Van Dijk, Teun, 86–91, 107, 111, 130, 134, 136, 140, 144n.6, 266, 274 Vasallo de Lopes, Maria Immacolata, 32, 274 Vázquez Orta, Ignacio, 205, 274 Vázquez Veiga, Nancy, 174, 274 Vega Cantor, René, 108, 274 Vera-Cazorla, Jesús, v, xii, 13–14, 16–34 Vygotsky, Lev S., 230, 275 Wachtmeister Bermúdez, Fernando, 261 Wagner, Johannes, 258 Wainerman, Catalina, 94, 275 Waldfogel, Joel, 78, 268 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 53, 275 Watson, Graham, 276 Weber, Max, 86, 275 Wellman, Barry, 80, 275 Wenger, Etienne, 111, 263, 275 Wertsch, James V., 174, 275 Weyland, Kurt, 92n.1, 275 Whalen, Jack, 8n.1, 275 White, Anne M., 268 White, Cindy H., 267 Willard, Charles Arthur, 262 Wilce, J. M., 228, 275

284 Author Index Williamson, Robert C., 42, 275 Williamson, Valerie L., 42, 275 Willis, Janet, 257 Wodak, Ruth, 2, 131, 142, 275 Wolfson, Nessa, 205, 275 Woolard, Kathryn, 1, 38, 275 Wooton, A., 272

Yngve, Victor, 174, 275 Zilles, Ana Maria Stahl, 61, 275 Zimmerman, Dan, 8n.1, 275 Zimmerman, Don, 1, 8n.1, 217, 254, 275–6 Zimmerman, Klaus, 206n.10, 209, 258, 276

Subject Index

accent(s) Canarian, 13, 18, 25–6, 30, 32 Castilian, 29, 47 English, 264 Galician, 44 reactions to, 259–60 regional variation, 18, 39, 41, 43, 59 role in election campaigns, 80 and television, 22, 47 Venezuelan Spanish, 25 advertising, 15, 30, 33n.2, 54, 60–5, 67, 73–81, 161n.6 Africa, 228 African, 211 Aguado, General Mena, 144n.3 Aló Presidente, 89, 91, 146–62, 273 anaphora, 139 Andalusia (Andalucía), 21, 23, 41, 141, 205, 207n.17, 267 Andalusian Spanish, 19 Argentina, 7, 54–6, 87, 90, 94, 97, 106, 108–9, 169–70, 171n.2, 208–26, 230, 259, 264, 269, 271 see also Buenos Aires argumentation, 85–6, 168–9, 173, 181–2, 229–30, 233–5, 262 Asia, 228 Asian, 211 asymmetrical power, 124, 166 atenuación, 167–70 Aznar, José María, 86, 131, 134–6, 270, 274 Bahía Blanca, 167, 262 see also Argentina Basque Country, the, 23, 37 Basque language, 22 bilingualism, 36, 38–41, 69, 73–4, 265, 271, 275 bilingüísmo harmónico, 38–40 bimodal markers, 177–81, 188 Blair, Tony, 150

Bolívar, Simón, 147, 153, 162n.10 Bolivarianism, vi–viii, 89, 91, 146–62 Bonaerense Spanish, 209–26 see also Argentina; Buenos Aires Brazil, 51–2, 55–7, 59, 60–1, 87, 147, 176, 252 Brazilian diaspora, 7, 14: Brazilian diaspora television, v, 7, 14–15, 50–66, 253 Brazilian Portuguese, 275 São Paulo, 56, 59, 61, 64 see also Portuguese; television discourse British National Corpus (BNC), 151 broadcast media, xi, 5, 13–14 see also radio broadcasting; television discourse Brownback, Sam, 71 Buenos Aires, vi, xi, 56, 64, 90, 93–110, 230–51 see also Argentina Bush, President George W., 68, 81n.5, 142 Cádiz Cortes, 133 Canada, 50, 54, 65n.1 Canales, Johnny, 76 Canary Islands, the Anglo-Canarian contact, x Canarian identity, v, 13, 16–34 Canarian Spanish, x, xii, 7, 12–14, 17–20 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, x, xii, 24, 253, 256–7, 260, 271 La Revista Canaria, 31 capitalism, 94–5, 108, 114, 156–7, 159, 161n.6, 209, 262 Caribbean, the, 19, 65n.1, 226n.9, 256 Castilian, v, 5, 7, 12–14, 35–49 Castilianisation, v, 14, 35–49 Castro, Fidel, 158

285

286 Subject Index Catalan, vi, 130–45 Parliament, 88 Statute of Autonomy, vi, 130–45 catatonic mutism, 233, 239 Chávez, Hugo, vi, xii, 85, 89, 91, 146–62 see also Venezuela Chile, 7, 87, 169–70, 178, 230, 269 Chinese, 142, 225–6n.2, 260, 268 Clinton, Hillary, 67, 71–6, 80 Clinton, President Bill, 76 code-mixing, 59–61 code-switching, 58, 60–3, 77, 80 codification, 39–40 cognition, 86, 174, 232, 257, 271, 274–5 cohesion, 114, 232 Colombia, 167, 259 colonisation, 19, 25, 33n.4, 266 commodification, 50–1, 261 Communism, 156, 161n.6 Community of Practice (CofP), 113–14, 129 Conde, José, 77 Constitución Española (Spanish Constitution, 1978), 37, 131, 140–1, 155 Convergència i Unió, 113 conversation analysis, x–xi, 169, 208–26, 255, 258–60, 262–5, 271–2 cooperation principle, 239 see also Gricean Maxims corpus linguistics, vi–vii, xii, 16–34, 43, 91, 146–62, 230–51 Corte Inglés, El, 200, 206n.7 Cox, John, 71 critical discourse analysis (CDA), x–xi, 54, 93–110, 131, 133, 144, 170, 227–51, 258 cross-cultural communication see under intercultural communication Cuba, 77, 146 debate parliamentary, vi, 7, 85, 89–90, 111–29 televised electoral, 2, 73, 88–9

deixis, 58, 128, 135–6, 138, 230, 233, 247–50, 254, 269 diachronic linguistics, 149–61 dialects of Spanish, 18 in Andalusia, 23 in the Canary Islands, 23, 34 Caribbean, 226 Galician, 14, 39–40, 45–8, 49n.10 Montevidean and Bonaerense, 209, 223 non-standard, 18 use in broadcast media, 22–4, 36, 41, 43–7 see also accent dialectology, x, 14, 259 dialogue interpreting, xii, 168–9, 173–91, 229, 233, 238, 248, 254–5, 259, 264, 272 diaspora, v, 7, 14–15, 50–66, 228, 273 diglossia, 35, 40–3, 47, 265 direct and indirect discourse, 233, 237–9, 248 discourse and interpersonal relations, vi, 165–251 in political institutions, v–vi, 85–162 and psychosis/psychiatry, vi, 227–51 and the workplace, vi, 165–251 see also critical discourse analysis discrimination, 39, 43, 264 see also immigration; racism Dodd, Chris, 73 Dorados del Norte, 76 economics, 33n.4, 47, 56, 64, 95, 97, 116–22, 128, 158–9, 209, 214, 223, 227, 231, 251n.4 Economist, The, 147, 257 Ecuador, 171n.2, 215, 269–70 Edinburgh, 215 education in Argentina, 153–60 in the Canary Islands, 18 in Chile, 173, 178 in Galicia, 35–40, 42, 48 in Latin America, 87–8 NALEO Education Fund, 68, 81n.3, 276 as a sociolinguistic variable, 178, 214, 229, 241

Subject Index teacher/pupil power relations, 3, 124 university as a workplace setting, 7, 165, 168, 172–91, 194, 198, 205 and the US presidential elections, 69, 79, 82n.12 Edwards, John, 71 ellipsis, 197, 218, 220 English, 4, 12, 15, 20, 25–7, 33, 50, 56, 59–63, 65–6, 70, 72–4, 76–80, 82, 175, 206n.7, 208, 215, 217, 223, 254–6, 256, 259, 262–4, 266, 269–70 Enlightenment, the, 133 Esquerra Republicana, 113 ETA, 136 ethnomethodology, 169, 213, 261, 272, 276 face-work strategies, vi, xi–xii, 7, 57, 116, 119, 165–71, 199–201, 208–26, 252–4, 265–6, 268, 272–3 see also politeness feedback processes, 174–6, 252 Franco, General, 37, 135, 260 French, xii, 25, 50, 52, 65n.1, 74, 208 French Revolution, the, 133 Galicia(n), v, x, 7, 12–14, 35–49 galeguismo, 37 historical context of, 36–7 Lei de normalización linguística (Law of Linguistic Normalisation), 38, 48nn.1, 2 phonology, 44–9 press: El Correo Gallego, 48; La Voz de Galicia, 49 Santiago de Compostela, 44, 257–8, 261, 266, 270 Xunta (Galician government), 37, 48: Alberto Núñez Feijóo, 48 see also regionalism genre, 7, 12–13, 20, 32, 54, 77, 90, 95–8, 106, 108, 149, 155, 172, 189, 229, 253, 264–5, 267 German, 74, 208, 269 globalisation, xi, 2, 8, 56, 108, 253, 257–8, 261, 266 glocalisation, 2, 80, 275

287

González, Felipe, 88–9 grammar, x, 13, 17, 19–20, 270 Galician, 46 lexico-grammar, 13, 17, 25–8, 31 periphrastic form, 20, 96 in political discourse, 96–110, 151–9 pronouns, 20, 61, 66n.7, 76–7, 91, 121, 128, 135, 139–44, 226n.9, 269 in psychotic discourse, 231–51 tense, 20, 26, 102, 171n.3 Greek, 225–6n.2, 252, 269 Gricean maxims, 119, 128 see also cooperation principle; implicature; presupposition GRUPES corpus, 173 Guanche language, 17, 20, 27, 30 Guardian, The, 77 Guatemala, 60 Guevara, Che, 157 health care, 76, 79, 82n.13, 147, 151, 165, 171n.2, 201, 206n.6, 227–51, 262 see also medical discourse hegemony, 12, 32, 36, 64, 146, 257, 270 heteroglossia, 11 homelessness, 94, 98, 159, 165, 170, 227, 230, 248–50 housing discourse, vi, 85, 90, 93–110 see also Argentina; Buenos Aires; homelessness; poverty; Social Development Secretariat humour, xii, 34n.12, 121, 200–5, 215, 221–4 Hussein, Saddam, 86, 135 see also Iraq War hyperbole, 122, 140 Ibero-Romance languages, x identification, 220 identity construction, 5, 11, 14, 16, 24, 111–29 immigration, 57, 60–4, 72, 74, 76, 79, 82n.12, 87–8, 111 impersonalisation, 117, 168 implicature, vi, 114–45, 264 ImpreMedia, 68–9, 81n.1, 276

288 Subject Index indexicality, 54 India, 209 institutional discourse definition, 2–3 English-speaking contexts, 1–3: Institutional Talk Programme (ITP), 2–4 in a psychiatric setting, 227–51 the study of ID in Spanish, 1–6 see also political institutions; workplace discourse Instituto Cervantes, 40, 81 intercultural communication, x–xi, 208–26 interdiscursivity, 97, 106 Internet, the, 12, 15 blogs, 5, 12, 67, 70–1, 81 digitisation of broadcast media, 44, 67, 70–81, 85 e-commerce, 209 and elections, 70–2 as an institutional setting, 1, 5, 7 social networking, 70–1, 75, 80: Facebook, 70–1, 81; Flickr, 71; Meetup, 71; MiGente (MyPeople), 71; MySpace, 70–1; Twitter, 7, 70, 81; YouTube, 5, 7, 12, 15, 67, 70, 74–7, 80–2, 267, 276 interpersonal relations, 165–251 intersubjectivity, vi, 168–9, 172–91, 271 intertextuality, 97, 138 intonation, 176, 218–25, 254 see also prosody Iran, 146 Iraq War, 79, 86–7, 134–5, 270, 274 see also United States of America Irish, 31, 263 irony, 34n.12, 114, 117, 123, 125–6, 128, 221–2, 143 see also humour Italian, 208 Japanese, 211 Jewishness, 216 Kennedy, Ted, 67, 80 Kerry, John, 142 keyword, 149–51

language planning, 37–40, 254 see also devolution language policy, xi, 7, 14 Latin America, 7, 52 education, 87–8 Latin American Spanish, 17, 19–20, 61, 264 ‘Latino’ and ‘Hispanic’ identity, 14–15, 52 Latino Policy Coalition (LPC), 78 Latino press, 78–9 social class, 74, 87, 214, 219 see under individual countries lemmatisation, 148–61 lenguas propias, 1 lexico-grammar see under grammar lexicographical sources, 25, 34n.12 lexis, 16, 19, 29, 37, 124, 128, 140, 147, 245 linguistic authenticity, 51, 262, 275 centralisation, 48 ideologisation, 11–12, 39, 17, 20 ideology (in Spain), v, 14, 35–49 levelling, 40, 45–7 normalisation, 38, 48n.1, 49n.2, 270–1 see also Galician Madrid government, 40–1, 49n.3, 90, 112 institutions, 81 linguistic research, 182–5 press, 48 Telemadrid, 23, 32, 41, 252 terrorism, 136 McCain, John, 67, 71–7, 81n.5 media discourse analysis, xi medical discourse, 8n.1, 90, 106–8, 151, 170, 250, 272 see also health care metalanguage, 11–12, 15n.1, 29, 80, 233, 241 metapragmatic acts, 221–4, 252, 255 metaphor, 87, 89, 117–19, 123, 128, 136–40, 233–48, 252 metonymy, 181

Subject Index Mexico, 54, 57, 60, 89, 156, 253, 255, 257–9, 272 Mexican people, 58 Mexican Spanish, 59 Mexicanisms, 26 Tijuana, 54, 57–9, 64 migration, x–xi, 19, 41, 51–4, 57, 60–5, 72 see also immigration Ministry for Popular Power in Communication and Information (MINCI), 149 see also Venezuela mitigating strategies, 104, 168, 240 Moltalbán, Eduardo, 29 monolingualism, 50, 52 Montevideo, 7, 169, 209–26, 259, 266, 268 see also Uruguay Movimiento Quinta República (MVR), 147 multilingualism, x, 14, 43, 48, 53, 59, 254, 256–7, 275 see also monolingualism multi-modal discourse, 17, 168, 174, 177, 273 music jingles, 15, 67 journalism, 55–6 popular, 22, 51, 67, 75–9, 81n.2, 150 NALEO, 68–9, 81nn.1, 3, 276 narrative, 21, 33n.5, 232, 235, 242, 273–4 metanarrative, 33n.5 nationalism, 37–40, 48, 88, 133–6, 144, 254, 260, 271 nationality, 16, 22 see also regionalism naturalisation practices, 13, 105 negative other-presentation, 87, 114–24, 134–40 see also positive self-presentation; persuasion neo-liberalism, 90, 94, 97, 108–9, 156 neologism, 91, 160, 236 New Labour Party, 142, 150, 258 nominalisation, 96, 103, 105

289

Obama, Barack, 67, 71–82, 259 Amigos de Obama group, 75, 77, 82n.14 Omar, Don, 77 orality, xi Orozco, Miguel, 76–7 the ‘other’/‘otherness’ 139–40, 143, 229–30, 233, 236, 240 Partido Popular, 91, 113, 130–1, 135–44 see also Mariano Rajoy Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), 131–2, 136 passivity, 96, 109n.2, 118–19, 128, 251n.7 pathology, 230 Peninsular Spanish, 166–7, 169, 173, 211, 258, 266 Perdomo, Rafael, 29 persuasion/persuasive discourse, 7, 85–90, 146, 150, 179 phatic communion, 193–8, 206n.12, 263, 265 phonetics, 13–14, 19, 23–5, 29, 31, 36, 39–40, 41–2, 44–8, 49n.8, 60–1, 256 aspiration, 13–14, 19, 24, 29, 31–2, 61 gheada, use of, 14, 45–9 neutralisation, 45–7 Seseo (loss of contrast), 19, 24, 29 software, 44 substitution, 19 velar nasal, use of, 46–7 Yeismo, 19 see also Galician phonology Piccolotto, Sylvie, 55 politeness/impoliteness phenomena, x–xii, 166–9, 171n.2, 181, 193, 205, 206n.1, 209–13, 220–6, 252–4, 256, 259–66, 268–70, 272–4 see also face-work strategies political devolution, 35–40, 131 implicature, vi, 130–45 institutions: discourse, performance and persuasion in, v–vi, 7, 85–162 state discourse, 85, 94–110

290 Subject Index Portuguese, x, 7, 12, 15, 20, 38–9, 49n.5, 50–2, 55–6, 58–66 Brazilian Portuguese, 61, 275 Galician-Portuguese, 20, 36 see also Galicia(n) positioning, 91, 112–14, 119, 122–9, 256, 274 positive self-presentation, 87, 89–90, 134–8 see also negative other-presentation; persuasion postmodernity, 94, 97, 108, 109n.1 poverty, vi, xi, 93–110, 146, 165, 170 pragmatics, x–xii, 61, 111, 194, 224, 252–6, 259–61, 263, 265–6, 268–70, 272–4 prestige norm, 12, 14, 18, 29, 36, 38, 41, 43, 46–7, 257 press/print media, 12, 54, 73, 85 in Galicia: El Correo Gallego, 48; La Voz de Galicia, 49 in Latin America, 78–9 in Madrid, 48 in the United States of America: The New York Times, 77, 81n.4, 82n.17; The Washington Post, 79, 82n.18 see also under individual newspapers presupposition, 115, 120–9, 178–9, 191, 222 principles and parameters, 229 prison, 87, 147, 231, 245, 259 pronunciation, v, 13–14, 17, 19, 24–6, 29, 31–2, 34, 36–7, 39–47, 61, 256–7 propaganda, 71–2, 150, 161n.6 prosody, 40–1, 176–80, 197–8, 272 psycholinguistics, 16 psychotic discourse, vi, 1, 165, 170, 227–51 Puerto Rico, 69, 74 see also United States of America Pujol, Jordi, 88 Puntabrava (Puntabrava’s Oath), 17, 21, 24–6, 29–34 racism, xi, 78–9, 87–8, 274 see also discrimination; immigration radio broadcasting, v, 7, 12–15, 18, 35–49, 54, 73, 85 in Andalusia, 41

Galician Broadcasting Corporation (Compañía de Radio Televisión Galega (CRTVG)), 43–6 Radio Galega, 35, 41, 44–6 Radio Nacional de España, 41 Radio Popular de Lugo, 41 Radio Popular de Vigo, 41 Sociedad Española de Radiodifusion (SER), 41 Rajoy, Mariano, vi, 91, 130–45 see also Partido Popular rapport-building talk, 192–207 rationality, 229 RBTI Network Inc., ix Real Academia Española (RAE), 40, 81 Galega, 43, 272 reductionism, 212 regional identity, 13–14, 17, 22, 57, 254 regional languages, 1, 5 see also lenguas propias regionalism, x, 13–14, 37, 88 see also galeguismo; nationalism register, 29, 32, 222 rhetoric, 85–6, 89, 91, 108, 111, 114, 143, 146–62, 274 rhetorical strategies, 91, 114, 124, 129–30 Richardson, Bill, 71–3, 80 River Plate Spanish, 215, 226 see also Bonaerense Spanish Rodríguez, Simón, 162n.10 Rodríguez Zapatero, President, 119, 127, 131, 139–41 Romney, Mitt, 71–2 Rosario, 171, 215 see also Argentina Russia, 147, 157 Santiago, 7, 170, 230, 257–8 see also Chile Saturday Guardian, 207n.18 Scandinavia, x, 2 see also Sweden schizophrenia, 228, 235, 251n.7, 255–6, 262 second language acquisition, x, 36, 40–2, 259, 263, 265, 275 self-referentiality, 233, 238–9

Subject Index semantics, x, 91, 106, 134, 157, 160, 178, 231–2, 236, 240, 242, 252, 260 September 11th, 2001, 111, 135, 267 see also terrorism Seville, 192–207 sign language, 230 small talk, viii, xi, 166, 192–4, 204, 255–6, 261, 263, 265, 272, 274 social care, 165, 250, 170–1 constructionism, 229 Development Secretariat of Buenos Aires City, vi, 90, 93–110 networking, 70–1, 75, 80 networks, 7, 49n.10, 249 power, 39, 109, 215, 223 psychology, 181, 261, 268, 274–5 stigmatisation, 24, 40, 59 see also Buenos Aires; housing discourse; Internet socialism, vi–viii, 91, 146–62 sociolinguistics, x–xii, 3, 13, 16–18, 20, 24, 38, 42–3, 172, 252–4, 256–7, 260–4, 266–7, 269, 271–3 sociolinguistic variables age, 24, 117, 194, 219, 231 employment/occupation, 16, 90, 42, 94–5, 108–9, 147 ethnicity, 16, 37–9, 51, 254, 264 gender, 16, 24, 194, 203, 219, 259, 272–3 geographical location, 16, 19, 36, 51, 56, 73 race, 78–9 social class, 16, 24, 39, 143: in the Canary Islands, 32; in Galicia, 36, 47; in Latin America, 74, 87, 214, 219 sociocultural, x, 2, 4–5, 17, 24, 38, 165, 167, 170, 192, 204–5, 211, 224, 254, 260–1, 271 socio-political, 36, 90–2, 94 see also education sociopragmatics, 2, 165–6, 169, 213, 273 see also politeness Solbes Mira, President, 113–18, 128

291

span, 149 Spanglish, 59, 64 Spanish-speaking world globalisation, xi identities, v, 11–82 languages, v, x–xi, 11–82 see also Canarian; Castilian; Catalan; Galician; Latin America speech vi, 7, 130–45 and biology, 229–32, 236–7, 239, 244, 250, 253, 258–9, 275 Canarian, 18, 26, 32, 34n.12 feedback processes in, 174 formulaic, 263 parliamentary: of José María Aznar, 135, 270; of Hugo Chávez, 146–62; of Jordi Pujol, 88; of Mariano Rajoy, vi, 91, 130–45 speech act theory, xi, 213, 226n.3, 260 standardisation, 14, 23, 29, 32, 39, 49n.4, 51, 257 statistics, 151–61 style, 76–7, 114, 152, 179, 222, 253, 256 style guide, 41, 47, 49n.7 stylistics, 41, 95, 155, 215–17, 263 Suhr, Walter, 76 Sweden, 2, 172, 182, 258, 262 synchronic–diachronic analysis, 149, 170, 231–50 syntax, xi, 16, 40, 43, 226, 260 synthetic personalisation, 220, 223 taboo language, 28, 89, 111, 198, 200, 206n.10, 207n.16, 215, 254, 262–3 Tabuenca, Santiago, 31 task concerns, 7, 165–9 see also face-work strategies television discourse, ii, 7, 12–13, 85 in Brazil: América Legal, 55, 61–5; Brazilian diaspora television, v, 7, 14–15, 50–66, 253; Globo, 51, 54–5, 65n.4, 270; Martins, Cintia, 61–3; Planeta Brasil, 54–65, 253; Rede Brasileira de Televisão Internacional (RBTI), ix, 54, 65n.4 Israeli television, 2

292 Subject Index television discourse – continued satellite television, 32, 51, 54 in Spain: Basque Television (ETB), 22; Canal 9, 23; Canal Sur (Andalusia), 21, 23; Canarian television, v, 16–34: TVC (Televisión Canaria), 13, 17–18, 22–4, 31, 33n; Galician Broadcasting Corporation (Compañía de Radio Televisión Galega (CRTVG)), 43–6; and political leaders, 88–9; Telemadrid, 23, 41; TV3 (Catalonia), 21–2; TVG (Galicia), 21, 43–4, 46 Telemundo, 73, 78 telenovela, v, 7, 13–14, 16–34, 47, 264, 268, 274: soap operas, 1, 12, 21–2, 33n.5, 260, 264, 268, 274 TeleSur, 150, 156 in the United States of America: Cheers, 207.15n; CNN, 51, 70, 261; MSNBC, 70 Univisión, 69, 73, 78, 81n.3 see also Puntabrava terrorism, 135–6, 147 see also September 11th, 2001 text messaging/texting, 72, 81 tonalisation, 97 top-down talk, 4–5 Transana system, 173 ‘transition’ to democracy in Spain, 37, 131, 260 transnational identity, 11–12, 14 media space, 51 Turkish, 252 United States of America, 7, 50, 58, 62, 264, 277 California, 77, 81n.5 Chicago, 73, 82n.13 Colorado, 68 Florida, 60, 68, 8n.5 Indiana, 68 Los Angeles, 64, 73, 82n.17 Miami, 60–1, 73

Nevada, 68, 81n.5 New Jersey, 81n.5 New Mexico, 68, 72 New York, 73, 200, 255 The Bronx, 62 North American Revolution of 1776, 133 presidential elections, v, 14–15, 67–82: Democrat/Republican party politics, 67–82 press: The New York Times, 77, 81n.4, 82n.17; The Washington Post, 79, 82n.18 Virginia, 68 Uruguay, xi, 7, 169, 171, 208, 255, 266, 268 Venezuela, 7, 25–9, 85, 89–90, 111, 146–60, 254, 260 see also Chávez, Hugo vernacular, 29, 42–3 visual communication, 17, 25, 30–1, 261 Voltio, Julio, 77 war discourse of, 111, 267 in Iraq, 79, 86, 270, 274 Spanish Civil, 143 WordSmith Tools, 149, 161n.8, 272 workplace discourse, 165–251 business negotiations, vi, 2, 7, 165, 172–91 call centres/telemarketing, vi, 4–5, 7, 50, 165, 169, 208–26 interviews, 6 schoolteaching, 3, 6, 8n.1 service encounters/bars, vi–viii, xi, 1, 5, 7, 165, 169, 192–226 see also small talk student workgroups, vi, 7, 172–91 tourism, 25, 50, 223 World Health Organisation, 228 World Social Forum, 147, 157 Xeración Nós (Our Generation), 37 Yankee, Daddy, 75, 77