A cross-cultural approach to the negotiation of individual and group identities: parliamentary debates and editorial meetings

Abstract

This article draws on interactional pragmatics and a cross-cultural approach (UK, France, Spain) to investigate the negotiation of individual and group identities in two different speech events, parliamentary debates and editorial meetings. The cross-cultural examination of the use of linguistic resources for signalling ‘social role, boundaries and bonds’ (Chilton, P., Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge, 2004, p. 48) serves to explore how speakers use language strategically to position themselves and others, renegotiate or resist positioning, offer rallying points and forge ‘defensible alignments’ (Goffman, E., Forms of Talk. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981, p. 325). In the case of personal deixis, it shows that both quantitative and qualitative methods can be used to pinpoint cultural specificities – for example, a more frequent use of explicit performatives in the Spanish and, particularly, the French data to hedge commitment to propositions, and, in English-language parliamentary debate, a use of truth hedging signalling strong commitment for coercive interactive positioning. In the case of indeterminacy of reference, in, for example, the use of ‘asides’, in the English-language editorial meeting humour was used to bond participants in the pursuit of common goals; cultural allusion and references in Latin and English were used in the Spanish parliament for positioning; verbal wit and virtuosity were particularly important in the community of practice of the French parliament.

Desde la perspectiva de la pragmática interaccional y dentro de un enfoque transcultural, (R.U., Francia, España), este artículo examina la negociación de identidades tanto a nivel individual como de grupo en dos eventos de habla muy diferentes; los debates parlamentarios y las reuniones de la dirección de periódicos regionales. El análisis transcultural del uso de ciertos recursos lingüísticos que se emplean para señalar papeles, delimitar fronteras y crear lazos sociales (Chilton, P., Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge, 2004, p. 48) sirve para explorar cómo los hablantes se valen de la lengua de modo estratégico para posicionarse a ellos mismos y a otros, y para renegociar o resistirse a este posicionamiento, ofrecer puntos de acuerdo y crear ‘alineamientos defendibles’ (Goffman, E., Forms of Talk. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981, p. 325). En cuanto a la deixis personal, demuestra que se pueden emplear métodos tanto cuantitativos como cualitativos para dilucidar especificidades culturales – por ejemplo, el uso más frecuente de performativos explícitos en los datos españoles, y sobre todo, los franceses para modalizar epistémicamente el compromiso del hablante con una propuesta, y, en los debates parlamentarios de lengua inglesa, el uso de una modalización de la verdad que señale un fuerte compromiso con el fin de conseguir un posicionamiento interactivo coercitivo. En caso de la indeterminación de referencia, en el uso de lo que denomino los ‘asides’, por ejemplo, en la reunión de la dirección de lengua inglesa se empleaba el humor para crear lazos entre los participantes y así perseguir objetivos comunes; en el parlamento español se empleaban alusiones culturales y referencias en lenguas latín e inglés con fines de posicionamiento; y en la comunidad de práctica que es el parlamento francés el ingenio y el virtuosismo verbal gozaban de una importancia capital.

Keywords:

• interaction
• cross-cultural
• French
• Spanish
• English
• workplace
• identity

Notes

1. The first corpus was recorded in Lyon at the offices of one of the then leading French regional newspapers, Lyon Matin, as part of a corpus to be used in the production of an advanced French Language course (Scottish Universities French Language Research Association, 1983). The second was recorded at the Spanish newspaper El Norte de Castilla as part of a parallel corpus to provide a Spanish language course (Stewart, Mason, McDowall, & Swanson, 1987) and I recorded the final corpus, in 2010, in the offices of The Scotsman, a UK regional and Scottish national newspaper serving a similar constituency. All participants in the editorial meetings signed consent forms allowing this data to be stored and used for academic research. Clearly, these are three individual corpora, recorded at different times, in different regional locations and in different newspapers and in no way purport to be representative of national practices. They are still useful for demonstrating the effectiveness of this particular cross-cultural approach to the data.

2. It should be remembered, particularly with cross-cultural studies such as the present one, that cultural context may have a role to play in interpreting the degree of commitment signalled by a given cognitive hedge – in a system where belief is more important than rationality, it is very possible that ‘I believe’ could signal greater commitment on the part of a speaker than ‘I know’.

3. AntConc concordancing software was used to identify all instances of the personal pronouns used and centre segments around this node word; however, the analyst was required to determine whether a given unit functioned as a hedge. For this study, I identified all occurrences of the first person pronoun in French and English with AntConc and then manually computed the different types of hedge. In Spanish, where pronominal absence is the norm, I computed the frequencies manually.