прагматика и медиа дискурс / 语用学关键概念 Key Notions for Pragmatics (2009)

Commurllcation 79

language situation, adding polemically that politically correct terminology often fails to describe actual reality. \"'ith respect to immigrant communities, with Holland as perhaps the most dramatically salient case, European intellectualsand politicians are increasinglyfacingthe same issue. Globalization ismakingrelianceon especially'ltigh context' cultures{cf. Hall l976) increasinglyproblematic to sustain,and in the absence ofguaranteed 'natural' solutionsto theproblems this raise,c;) there is agrowing pressure in favour ofstrategies for developing solutions that are culturally sustainable (as well as socially'constructible').

8.Business communication

Until fairly recently. the fields ofhuman communication and business communication had littleincommon.1hefactthat inbusinesscontextsmessages ru·erootedinsomething elsethanspeakers'personalcommunicativeinteractionsandintentionsconstitutedafun· damental difference: the feature. ofbusiness communication were understood tohavea great deal todo withbusinessandratherless todowith ordinarycommunication.

The difference ren1ains obvious in the most salient form ofbusiness·driven com· munication in the community. i.e., advertising: knowing the difference b tween even the noblest forms ofadvertisingand ordinarycommunication is anelementary part of contemporary communicative competence. One way ofpinning it down would be to say that Habermas' validity presumption of 'tmtlifulness' (rather than simply 'truth') is absent in the case of advertising: there is merely a disembodied intention to sell the product, detached from any personal conunitment (which is what truthfulness derives from). As a property of communication, this is more fundan1ental than the quality maxim of'truth': advertising standards may prevent (the more blatant forms of) deceit, but cannot provide advertisements with a real personal sender who genu· inely wants to interact with me. This entails a degenerate status for advertisements considered ascommunication,which rubsoffevenon neighbouring messages, cLe.g.> YangandOliver (2004): theperceived newsvalueofhard newson the internet declines significantly in the presence ofadvertisements.

When itcomestootherformsofbusinesscommumcationthansalesadvertisements, however.general mechanismsin human communication haveacquireda new relevance owing to changes in the understandingofwhat constitutes a businessorganization. The 'classical' industrialview(from AdrunSmith toFrederick WinslowTaylor) was that from a business point ofview employees were essentially an extension ofthe machine,c; they operated. Communication, accordingly.wasa kind ofbutton that onecould press when the need arose. designed to ensure smooth functioning of tl1e whole 'machinery: The changesthat are associatedwith thedeclineofthe role ofmassindustrial production <md the ascendancyof'immateriat•products, mostsalientlythewhole'virtual' sector(cf. also

8o Peter Harder

the section below on 'mass communication'), hasbrought about a radical change.divert· ing attention from nuts and bolts to more human factors. Orgauizatiom, including their effec tiveness. came to be understood as involving (organizational) culture as a key fac· tort also in economic terms: performance had to be understood as crucially depending on human identity and interaction (cf. Hatch 1997: 52-54, 201 ), changing the preferred understanding of business organization from a mechanical to a social construction. A salient example ofa communicative genre that made its W<l)' into business communica· tion is storytellbtgt cf. Gabriel (2000).

In terms of internal business communication this meant that the world of busi· ness opened up to being understood in anthropological terms, and organi7.ational communication assumed its place in the context of human communication generally. Values, artefacts and underlying assumptions (cf. Schein 1985) determine the way a business functions, and management depends on the abilit)' to conununicate in ways that retlect the nature ofan organization as a W'ittgensteinianform of life.

Thic; change also raises the imercu/tura/issue, in two dimensions. lntemally, cf. Schein (1985), different employee groups may have different cultures (and differences between genders may be regarded as a species of cultural difference, cf., Tannen 1996: 7) and thus they also need a shared platform in order to fw'lction as a group. The external dimension, however, is more obvious in an age ofglobalization, and has given rise to an explosive development in the study ofintemational differences in orga tizational culture (Hofstede 1991) and communication (d, e.g.. Pan. Scollon & Scollon 2002). Cultural factors permeate patterns of communication to such an extent d\at succe.c;sful busine.o;s transactions in a global age may depend on a major effort in intercultural education and 'platform-building.

Also in the area ofpublic relations, there has been a change in the strictly mechani· cal view of business communication. The external implication of the 'machine opera· tor' metaphor was an atternpt to control the outward environment with the same ideal mechanical precision as the organization itself. Tilis gave rise to the model of public relations knm"'l'l as 'press agentr cf. Doziert Grunig & Grunig (1995): communica tion was strictly oneway and designed to impose the views of the corporation on the world. However, just as intemally the working ofan organization turned out to depend on human factors beyond mechanical control, so did the external succe.c;s of an organi· zation turn out to depend on its position in a larger network crucially involving human dimensions. The concept of 'stakeholder' as opposed to 'shareholder' emphasizes that successful performance rna)• depend on the ability to communicate more than just bottom lines. ·rwo-way, S)rtnmetricalcommunication' (cf. Dozier, Grunig & Grunig 1995). seeking to bring about mutual understanding and acceptance between corporation and stakeholders, even at the cost of having to alter corporate goals and strategies, may also be sound business policy. This too involves cultural issues. including values: the inter· national pharmaceutical companies, for instance, have an interest in whether they are

Commur)lcation 81

perceivedas producersof good health or as money machines, and topdown persuasion is not likely to be the only tool required. A new form of communication, sometimes called 'social advertising. has come into existencein order to serve the need to be seen as sensitive and willing to make concessions with respect to issues of public concern.

Obviously, the fact that managersof business communication havetaken on board a view which involves thefull panoply of human factorsdoes not mean that there is no longer anydistinctionbetweenpersonal, 'existential' communication and communica­ tion in a business context. Corporations are always 'strategic• in Habermas' sense, i.e., they always have ulterior purposes beyond seeking understanding, or they would be wasting their shareholders' money. But the analysis ofbusiness communication thus demands the same subtlety, and awareness ofall the same factors, as the analysis of human communication in general. plus the additional task ofuncovering the precise relations between those factors and the ulterior strategic motives.

9.Mass communication

In order to deal withthe complexity of themodern communicativescene.it is essential to be aware of the ontological complexity that it reflects. The basic duality that was introduced abovestillexists:communication adds to theinformation that is 'naturally' available;but moreandmoreof the stuffof which the human situation is madeappears to bebased, in turn, on mass communication and information.This is especially strik· ing in relation to the media situation in the \IVestern world.

Technical advances in communication technology during the twentieth century have radically increased and changed the role of communication itself and thereby also the human environment in which communication occurs. This process is some· times claimed to be overshadowing (or even undoing) the results of the invention of printing, because of the increasing role of pictures and the concomitant reduc­ tion in the role that linguisttcally coded communication has played since Gutenberg (cf. McLuhan 1971; Postman 1986). Mass communication in the form it takes in the electronic media, combining the immediacy of pictures and the oral medium with production for a global audience, repre.sents a new stage in the detachment of com­ munication from concrete hun1an interaction.

In the context of market forces which place media in a focal position. the role of communication as a key consumer commodity is in the process of changing the balance between events 'in themselves: i.e.. as something taking place between participants, and 'media events' defined by the spectator or consumer role. This is true especially for activities such as sports games: in many cases. media forces are causally prior to forces a ociated with the activities in themselves. The same thing occurs in the case of communicative events; the two aspects are collocated in the

81P t r Harder

phrase 'talk show In such cases, neither information nor interaction seems to be

the point of communication. Rather, mass communication is assmning the role of an ontological domain in its own right, understandable only in terms of the way it relates to other domains such as family life. material production. etc.

Vl/e saw in the beginning that communication only gradually emerges as some· thing distinct from ordinary non-communicative processes of information-gathering and interaction. \1\Tith modem mass communication, it has developed into something that is changing the fabric of everyday life thus in a sense becoming once more indistinguishable from the rest ofwhat goes on, although from the opposite perspective. However, rather than becoming too overwhelmed by the perspectives ofthis fascinating change, I thinka down-to-earth note is appropriate in conclusion.

Harking back to the emphasis on the active role of individual communicators in shaping both contexts and messages, we should remain aware that everything that plays a role in communication must play a role in relation to the individual commu· nicator. Above. I have stressed the risk of over-emphasizing the extent of the freedom that obtains within the course ofa communicative exchange; in concluding, however, I would like to turn around again and emphasize that the sort of things that happen when people meet and talk are the stutf of which human life is made. It has always been the role of communication to function as an aspect of shared group life in a given environment - and so it will remain. The increasing roleoflarge-scale processes operating over the individual's head is not likely to change the fact that U\e elementary quality of life is bound up v.'ith the interaction, including communicative interaction, that you have with people close to you - and the role ofelectronic mass communica· tion is ultimately dependent upon the significance assigned to it within that primary group.

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Context and contextualization

Peter Auer

University ofFreiburg

1.Preliminaries

Oneof the widelyuseddefinitions of pragmatics (andnot the most infelicitousone) is that it deals with the ways in which linguistic utterances become meaningful through their relation to context(s), ways which allow "narrowing down the communicative possibilities of the message as it exists in abstraction from context" (Leech 1975: 77). Consequently, 'context' has become a central notion of pragmatic thinking. Rather thangi\ringan exhaustive overview ofsuchthinking, thisarticle will attemptto outline some of the theoretical problemsthathavearisen in the discussionof the text-context link, and develop criteria according to which 'tlleorie,o; of context' can be categorized and evaluated.

\h/hat is to be considered a 'context' and what the 'text' {or, more generally, the 'focal lsemioticl event' see Goodwin & Duranti 1992) which it surrounds, is a question that cannot be decided on the basis of 'objective facts': observables do not neatly categorize themselves under these two labels. Instead, seeing something as a focal eventand other thingsas its contextisalready a11 interpretation of the perceived stimuli in somebody's environment.

In order to underline the perceptual and interpretive character of 'focal events' and 'contexts it has been proposed to conceive of them in terms of a figure-ground relationship{Goodwin & Duranti 1992: lOtf). 'Focal events'asfigures are perceivedas "welloutlined,sharplydefined,andwellarticulated' whilecontextsasgrounds"appear far more amorphous, problematic. and less stable" (Goodwin & Duranti 1992).

Another metaphor well suited to highlight the interpretive aspe<:t of the notion of 'context'isHusserl's 'horizon' (Si tultorizont,cf. Gadamer 1972:286tf.):whilethe meaning ofany eventor thingcannot beunderstoodbysomeone who doesnot takeinto account itshori1..onproper!)'•the horizon itself dissolvesas soon as weattempt to describeorana lyzeit; for whoever tries to reach the horizon v.•ill onl)rfind himself in another situation whichopens up yet anotherhorizonas farout of reachas the original one.

BotJl U\e figure-ground and the horizon metaphor hold true for lay identification of 'focal events' against their background orcontextt just as well as forlinguistic theo· ries. which usually work out the details of the linguistic datum {the 'figure'). but gloss over the context (the 'ground') in which it is embedded and/or from which it receives its particular interpretation. Any attempt to turn a part of the 'ground' or 'horizon'

88Peter Atrer

c. The relevant indexedelementsare looked upon as real world objects 'out there; to which deictic structures refer. As a consequence, context features are regarded as existent prior to and independent ofspeakers' linguistic activities in or relative to them. (Theincompatibilityofsuchapointofviewwiththeabove-mentionedgestalt approach to context will be noted• a critique maybe found in Hanks 1990).1

One way to show that this approach to context is restrictive is to enwnerate linguistic structures other than deictic expressions in their denotational function, which never­ theless index entities outside the 'focal event \!Vhat immediately comes to mind here are systems of honorifics which, in many languages. relate to participants' social roles; here) we may includestructurallysimplesystemssuch as forms ofaddressor the tu/vous pronominaldistinction,butalsoelaboratesystemssuch as thoseofJapaneseorJavanese. which affect major parts ofthe grammar and lexicon. In this case ofwhat is sometimes misleadingly called 'social deixis? it is not a denotatum in the 'real world out there' which is indexed, but rather a perceived social relationship between the speaker and the addressee, or the referent, or all three. But, ofcourse, notonly honorifics are chosen relative to social {role) relationships. Variationist and interactional sociolinguists as well as linguistic anthropologists have accumulated evidence for the claim that varia· tion permeates grammar, from phonetics up to turn·taking this variation (including its 'ideological' underpinnil'g as part of a 'habitus' In the sense of Bomdieu) is pal'tly an index ofspeakers' and recipients' socialcategories,and ofthesocial relationship that holdsbetween them. The selection ofa varietyfrom a repertoirebeitastyle.register, dialect. vernacular, or language issubjectto the same complex ofcontext variables.

Another large area of linguistic structure which eschews the narrow reading of context-dependence maybe subsumed underthe heading of'subjectivity: {The term alludes to Benveniste's 'subjectivite dans le langage' of 1958. Present-day terms would be 'empathy: perspective' or 'point ofview'). Contrary to the narrow readingofcon· text in which speakers enter only to the degree that they fix the ·origo' for denota· tiona] action, the impact ofthe speaking subject under this view extends to how his or her life-world, likingsand dislikings. identification with personsorevents referred to. etc., is refiected in and indexed b)' syntax and morphology. lexicon and prosody. This is particularly clear in the case of what Jakobson (1971) has caJied 'eviden· tials', i.e.• grammatical (morphological) means by which a speaker signals his or her

1. For a thorough cntiqueofthe narrow approach to context, the reader is referR-d to Schneider (1993) and Sitverstein ( 1976, 1992). According to Silverstein.the privileged position ofthe narrow construal ofcontext in lingutstics is rdatcd to (and even a consequence of) the semioticallr based 'limits of (speakers•! awareness' which biases their metalinguistic abilities towards 'referential, segmental and maximallycreative•features oflanguage.

2. The term is misleading if the notion of dei.'<is is restricted to dcnotational or referential indcxicals.