The Discourse of Indirectness: Cues, Voices and Functions PDF
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The Discourse of Indirectness Cues, voices and functions edited by Zohar Livnat Pnina Shukrun-Nagar Galia Hirsch John Benjamins Publishing Company The Discourse of Indirectness Pragmatics & Beyond New Series (P&bns) issn 0922-842X Pragmatics & Beyond New Series is a continuation of Pragmatics & Beyond and its Companion Series. The New Series offers a selection of high quality work covering the full richness of Pragmatics as an interdisciplinary field, within language sciences. For an overview of all books published in this series, please see benjamins.com/catalog/pbns Editor Associate Editor Anita Fetzer Andreas H. Jucker University of Augsburg University of Zurich Founding Editors Jacob L. Mey Herman Parret Jef Verschueren University of Southern Belgian National Science Belgian National Science Denmark Foundation, Universities of Foundation, Louvain and Antwerp University of Antwerp Editorial Board Robyn Carston Sachiko Ide Sandra A. Thompson University College London Japan Women’s University University of California at Santa Barbara Thorstein Fretheim Kuniyoshi Kataoka University of Trondheim Aichi University Teun A. van Dijk Universitat Pompeu Fabra, John C. Heritage Miriam A. Locher Barcelona University of California at Los Universität Basel Angeles Chaoqun Xie Sophia S.A. Marmaridou Zhejiang International Studies Susan C. Herring University of Athens University Indiana University Srikant Sarangi Yunxia Zhu Masako K. Hiraga Aalborg University The University of Queensland St. Paul’s (Rikkyo) University Marina Sbisà University of Trieste Volume 316 The Discourse of Indirectness. Cues, voices and functions Edited by Zohar Livnat, Pnina Shukrun-Nagar and Galia Hirsch The Discourse of Indirectness Cues, voices and functions Edited by Zohar Livnat Bar-Ilan University Pnina Shukrun-Nagar Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Galia Hirsch Bar-Ilan University John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of 8 the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984. doi 10.1075/pbns.316 Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress: lccn 2020032624 (print) / 2020032625 (e-book) isbn 978 90 272 0777 7 (Hb) isbn 978 90 272 6056 7 (e-book) © 2020 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com This book is dedicated to Prof. Elda Weizman in recognition of her outstanding lifelong contribution to the study of indirectness. Her pioneering work, bridging multiple research domains – including cross-cultural pragmatics, translation theory, political and media discourse, and corpus studies – has influenced numerous developments in the understanding of the concept. This book is an expression of our profoundest gratitude to Prof. Elda Weizman, who has been a constant inspirational force driving the writing of several chapters of this volume. Table of contents Introduction 1 Zohar Livnat, Pnina Shukrun-Nagar & Galia Hirsch Part I. Cues for indirectness: The inferential view Irony, humor or both?: The model revisited 19 Galia Hirsch “My refrigerator is as much in the dark as I am”: Metaphorical irony in context 39 Zohar Livnat “Hero, genius, king and Messiah”: Ironic echoing in pro-ethos and anti-ethos readers’ comments on Facebook posts 59 Pnina Shukrun-Nagar Part II. Voices in the text: The dialogic-intertextual view Indirectness and co-construction: A discourse-pragmatic view 85 Jacob L. Mey Whose line is it anyway? Three pragmatic cues for distinguishing between the implied-author and narrative voices: The case of Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome 97 Talli Cedar Anne Frank’s Diary – The Graphic Adaptation as a case of “indirect translation”: Integrating the principle of relevance with Bakhtinian concepts 119 Rachel Weissbrod & Ayelet Kohn Part III. (In)directness as an effective choice: The functional view Indirectness and effectiveness of requests in professional emails: A case study 145 Hassan Atifi & Michel Marcoccia Directness and indirectness in a presidential debate 167 Luisa Granato The Discourse of Indirectness “The hon. Gentleman says this is rubbish; it is absolutely true”: The strategic use of references to truth in Prime Minister’s Questions 203 Anita Fetzer “Do you condemn?”: Negotiating power relations through (in)direct questions and answers design in ethno-political interviews 231 Zohar Kampf Index 253 Introduction Zohar Livnat1, Pnina Shukrun-Nagar2 & Galia Hirsch1 1Bar-Ilan University / 2Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Indirectness has been a key concept in pragmatic research for over four decades. It is widely acknowledged that indirectness is basic to the way in which utterances convey meaning, and that a variety of meaning-making processes fall under this term. Thus, the notion of indirectness as a technical term does not have an agreed- upon definition and remains vague and ambiguous. Traditional pragmatic theories (Searle 1969; Grice 1975) regarded utter- ances as having a basic propositional content, termed ‘literal meaning’ in Searle’s work on indirect speech acts and ‘what is said’ in Grice’s work on conversational implicatures. These theories view indirect meaning as a deviation from the basic content of the utterance, or describe indirectness in terms of a gap between the utterance’s literal meaning and the speaker’s intention. Thus, an indirect utterance is considered to convey something more than or different from its literal mean- ing (Brown & Levinson 1987). Indirectness is created by the speaker through the utterance’s design, and if the hearer recognizes it as an intentional act of implying meaning other than the literal one, the latter might try to infer the implied speak- er’s meaning. Over the years, various critiques of Grice’s and Searle’s ‘Standard Pragmatic View’ (Gibbs 1999) have been put forward; some related to the prob- lematic nature of the notion of literal meaning itself (e.g. Ariel 2002; Recanati 2002, 2004), which makes the distinction between literal and indirect meaning theoretically difficult to sustain. Moreover, according to Leech (1983) and Levinson (1983), the assumption that literal meanings exist necessarily means that almost all utterances are indirect to some extent (Levinson 1983: 264), since they hold some shades of meaning that are derived from the context, rather than just from the words themselves. Another way of capturing the difference between direct and indirect meaning views it from the addressee’s perspective, emphasizing the process of interpreta- tion. While in Speech Act Theory, the focus is on the actions performed by the speaker, Grice presents a more reciprocal view of communication, which he con- ceives as a cooperatively rational activity performed by both participants (Dynel 2018). In Relevance Theory, however, the focus moves to the interpretation pro- cess itself. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.316.int © 2020 John Benjamins Publishing Company
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