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Файл:Discourse Strategies in Use. Учебное пособие
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made with the help of imperative utterances which may be regarded as directive speech
acts. These are stimulating recommendations of a cook:
Cheesy mashed Potatoes
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. In a large bowl, mix together mashed potatoes, cheddar cheese, sour
cream, parmesan cheese, bacon, onion, salt, pepper, and garlic.
3. Place potato mixture in a greased 2-quart casserole dish.
4. To make the topping, place the melted butter, parmesan cheese, bacon,
and bread crumbs in another bowl and mix well.
5. Spread topping mixture over potato mixture.
6. Bake for 30 minutes or until topping is golden brown.
Of course, stimulating formulas are different in their primary intentions. Some of
them are conventional, that is to say, they are regarded as norms of social regulations and
are not possible to be ignored by law-abiding people.
Ex: Keep off the grass!
Others, like the recipe given above, are of advisory or instructive character. You
may read this recipe, but it is not necessary to make this dish.
Ex: I advice you to go to some seaside resort (is given by your doctor as one of all
possible ways of treatment).
TASK 1: Make a list of stimulating recommendations, pieces of advice, instructions
and commands you usually give while being at work. In what situations do you use
stimulating strategy at work?
TASK 2: a) Read the following conventional directives:
No bags beyond this point. No smoking. Beware of the dog. Ambulance Cars only.
Safety shoes required. Ear protectors must be worn.
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b) What conventional directives can be observed in your country? What
3 2 1
4 5 6
conventional regulations would you add to those that exist?
8) What instructions and professional pieces of advice can the representatives of
these occupations give to you? (picture 5)
Picture 5 – Professional advice
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7 Promissive Strategy
7.1 Theory
Promissive strategy is the intentional strategy based upon the speech act of promise.
It’s a very important communicative strategy if to take into consideration the comissive
function of our language. Promissive speech acts are used very often in our everyday life,
but not all the members of human interaction know how to promise effectively and
correctly in order to get the before-planned perlocutive effect. From the point of view of
intentional components every promissive speech act may be regarded as containing three
types of intentions:
- informative intention;
- communicative intention proper;
- persuasive intention.
Informative intention is the intention of the speaker to reflect the relative part of the
objective reality in one and the same speech act.
Communicative intention shows the intention of the speaker towards the fact being
stated with the help of informative intention.
Persuasive intention is the intention of the speaker to persuade the listener of his
sincerity.
Ex: I heartily promise that you will get this present.
You will get this present – informative component;
I promise – communicative component;
Heartily – persuasive component.
If the speaker knows how to express all these intentional components in his speech,
his promissive strategy may be considered as successful.
Promissive strategy is often realized within one and the same promissive speech
act.
The principles of its realization are the following:
1) If you want to express you promissive intention explicitly for the listener to
catch your intention without mistake, use:
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- performative formulas with the verbs and expressions of “promise” row.
Ex: I promise, I give you a promise, I make a promise, I vow, I pledge, I guarantee,
I swear etc.
- relative comments which will reveal your intention.
Ex: I will do it for you. It’s a promise.
2) Implicit promises may be given just by representing the informative
component of your intention. Don’t forget, that promises are always referred to the future,
so grammatical means of expressing future should be used here.
3) Use special intentional intensifiers to make your promise more “persuasive”.
7.2 Practical assignments
1) There are two kinds of explicit promissive speech acts:
- a complex speech act
Ex: I promise that I will go to the theatre with your friend.
- a simple speech act
Ex: I promise to go to the theatre with your friend.
TASK 1: In two different ways express you promissive intention:
- to buy a new toy for your child
- to visit your parents on Sunday
- to read that dull book to the end
- not to wear this terrible tie anymore
- to take your sister to the restaurant
- not to eat fat food
- to go in for sport
- to be friendly towards your neighbours
TASK 2: “Snow-ball” memory work with simple speech acts of promise.
1 student: I promise to read this book…
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2 student: I promise to read this book. I promise to write this letter …
3 student: I promise to read this book. I promise to write this letter. I promise to visit
this man …
2) The most interesting part of promissive techniques is their persuasive component.
It is expressed with the help of various intentional intensifiers among which are the
following:
1) Intonation intensifiers (voice stressing)
Ex: I PROMISE you to go there.
2) Morphological intensifiers (the so-called grammatical metaphor)
Ex: I do promise you to go there.
3) Performative verb modifiers
Ex: I heartily promise you to go there.
4) Various kinds of repetition
Ex: I promise you to go there. I promise!
All these intensifiers make our promises more persuasive and emphatic. But the
most remarkable kinds of promissive intensifiers are restrictive formulas and “value”
intensifiers.
Restrictive formulas are the utterances in which the speaker “restricts” his chances
not to keep the promise. He states the punishment for his or her possible breaking the
promise. These formulas bear a great persuasive potential.
Ex:
a) I swear I will refuse the hand of this man in the church. If I do not, may I fall
dead upon the pavement! (Dickens)
b) And if I perjure myself in this oath, may the full curses of heaven and hell be
wreaked upon me! (Bulwer-Lytton)
“Value” intensifiers contain the values by which we swear while giving a promise.
Ex:
a) … I, Sir Gawaine, so send him word, that I promise him by the faith I owe unto
God and to knighthood, I shall never leave him till he have slain me or I him. (Malory)
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b) “Upon my honour, upon my life, upon my soul, Miss Summerson, as I am a living
man, I'll act according to your wish! I'll never go another step in opposition to it. I'll take
my oath to it if it will be any satisfaction to you. […]” (Dickens)
c) For, by my father's reverend tomb, I vow
They shall be ready at your highness' will
To answer their suspicion with their lives.
(Shakespeare)
TASK 1: Think over 5-7 restrictive formulas and use them in the promissive speech
acts of your own.
TASK 2: Think over 5-7 “value” intensifiers and use them in the promissive speech
acts of your own.
3) Make up a dialogue in which one person is promising and the other doesn’t
believe his (her) promise. Try to persuade your partner of your promise being sincere.
4) Read the oaths given below. Analyze the elements of promissive strategy used in
the texts of oaths.
Oath of Office
I, (Full Name) having been appointed a (Rank), in the United States Air
Force, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the
United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith
and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental
reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the
duties of the office upon which I am about to enter, so help me God.
Physician's Oath
At the time of being admitted as a Member of the Medical Profession,
I solemnly pledge myself to consecrate my life to the service of humanity.
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I will give to my teachers the respect and gratitude which is their due;
I will practice my profession with conscience and dignity;
The health of my patient will be my first consideration;
I will respect the secrets which are confided in me;
I will maintain by all the means in my power, the honor and noble traditions
of the medical profession;
My colleagues will be my sisters and brothers;
I will not permit consideration of religion, nationality, race, party politics or
social standing to intervene between my duty and my patient;
I will maintain the utmost respect for human life; even under threat,
I will not use my medical knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity.
I make these promises solemnly, freely and upon my honor.
5) Think over the texts for the following oaths:
- a confirmed bachelor’s oath
- an optimist’s oath
- an honest person’s oath
6) Think over the text of the oath for the representatives of your (future) profession.
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8 Manipulative Strategy
8.1 Theory
Speech manipulation is one of the most interesting phenomena of human behaviour.
First manipulators appeared at one time with the ability of people to communicate with
each other. Since that time the manipulative level of communication is always being in
use.
The main aim of manipulation is to get what you wish from your interlocutor
without taking into consideration his wishes and interests. So, manipulation – is intentional
and implicit inducement of an interlocutor to make some decision or action or to get into
some emotional state. In comparison with rational persuasion (when the speaker appeals to
logic), manipulation mostly appeals to our emotional sphere or to some psychophysiological mechanisms of our perception. Some means of speech manipulation are
harmless (some cases of domestic speech manipulation, such as, for example, “harping”
technique); others can cause fatal consequences. Knowing manipulative techniques one
can resist manipulators’ influence and say “No!” to any manipulation. There is a great
variety of speech manipulative means. Let’s talk about the most widespread of them:
1) As manipulation deals with emotions, it directly appeals to them in various ways:
- Appellation to fear. Fear is connected with our instincts of self-preservation, that’s
why manipulation techniques are very effective if being based on this. Appellation to fear
can be expressed through direct and indirect menacive speech acts.
It can also be observed in “dramatizing the situation” technique. Here the future of a
person or audience is presented in a very pessimistic way (“which will happen in case you
don’t do what manipulators mean you to do”).
Ex: One month more – and you will see tanks in this square! (This is what will
happen if you vote for them!)
- Appellation to shame. It is widely used by manipulators in many kinds of
discourse.
Ex: Don’t you know the last data on this …? Didn’t you read …?
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People are usually ashamed of not having read some book or not knowing some
news, and manipulators use their confusion for their purposes.
Another means of appellation to shame being used here is the so-called “What will
your mother say?” technique. Manipulators name the person whose opinion, respect and
feelings are very important for an interlocutor:
Ex: Only think what your students will think of you!
Just imagine what Mr. Black, your boss, will say if you do / don’t do …
What our children will say to us if …?
- Appellation to dignity. Very often used by politicians.
Ex: For how long can Russian people live in this humiliation?
There can be given a great number of appellation-to-emotions examples.
2) Manipulative techniques very often make play with human needs. There are
several groups of needs we are guided by in our life. This guidance is successfully used by
manipulators.
- Physiological needs (life, health, food, dwelling, etc.).
- Needing safety and future stability.
- Needing to belong to some group of people (family, friends).
- Want of being respected and recognized.
- Necessity of self-realization and self-expression.
Manipulation by human needs is effectively used in advertising and politics.
Ex: Do you want to join our club of the healthiest people? Then buy …
We will give economic stability to you and your children.
3) Manipulative argumentation has some rules as well.
- Order of arguments. The most persuasive order of arguments is the following:
1. a strong argument,
2. a weaker argument,
3. the strongest argument.
- “The third question”. If you want to get a positive answer to your question, put it
third in the row of three questions. This very question should be preceded by two
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unimportant questions which require a positive answer. Then the answer to the third
question is sure to be positive.
This rule has a well-grounded physiological explanation: when a person hears or
says “No!”, adrenalin comes into his blood, and he or she gets to be ready for resistance
and defense. On the contrary, on hearing or saying something positive (“Yes!”), a person
gets hormones of happiness (endorphins) into his blood. When a person has got two
portions of such hormones, he or she can relax and it’s very difficult to say “No!” after
that.
- “Black and white”. A manipulator can present a situation as having only two ways
of choice for a listener – a “black” choice and a “white” one.
Ex: Either you go to the theater with us, or we all stay home.
The manipulator in this case doesn’t give any other alternatives: why not to go to
the cinema or to the park, for example?
- “Labeling and insulting”. It’s one of the dirtiest tricks of manipulation. Explicit or
implicit insulting humiliates a listener and brings him into the emotional state of confusion,
resentment and rage, thus giving no chance for constructive thinking.
Ex: Dear Mr. White! I have never thought highly of your intellectual faculties!
This technique can be used towards some third (very often absent) party.
Ex: Those idiots in Duma …
All these techniques are successfully used in advertising and political discourse.
The main feature of these kinds of discourse is the character of their listener – it’s a big
audience, as a rule.
Politicians very often use manipulative strategy in their public speeches. Very often
these speeches have promissive hyper-intention. All the manipulative techniques
mentioned above work in this kind of discourse as well. Politicians very often make play
with our needs and emotions, label and hold up to shame their opponents. Some additional
techniques of the political discourse are the following:
- “I’m one of you” technique. Very often politicians stress their belonging to the
group of common people for them to believe that they know their needs and wishes.
Ex: I am from and ordinary family. I know how difficult it is …
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