Soundbiters bit

1. Soundbiters bit

2. Living in a contracted dialogistic space The uncomfortable life at Number 10

3. Or appraisal meets CADS over Hutton • Appraisal system descriptive framework • CADS methodology • Hutton inquiry data

4. And social change… • Soundbites, spin and other practices • Technologisation of discourse • Records of discourse are more available and access to what was said is easier. • This has made the moves more evident • And people less trusting • Cultural products created round this theme

5. CADS methodology • Corpus linguistics • Discourse analysis • Quantitative and qualitative methods • Pork butcher approach

6. The data • Hutton Inquiry transcripts • Blair, Campbell and Powell: their testimony at the Inquiry (Parts 1 and 2)

7. the context… • Legal setting: Q and R. • A number of dialogues going on • Constrained by: • A serious occasion • Need to remain coherent with witness statements and documents taken from office computers. (retrospective) • All was being recorded, transcribed and put on the web site (prospective)

8. Corpus • All Hutton: 1,002,836 st. sentence length 18.31 • Number 10: 39,304 St. sentence length: 26,07 • Blair: 13,534 sentences 348 st length 28.60 • Campbell: 17,705 sentences 646 26.05 • Powell: 8,431 sentences 176 st length 17.21

9. Sentence length and ideolect • A pattern of accumulating discourse markers:Turn initiatiors well. Utterance launchers Look, I mean, you know. Overtures as I said, I must say, can I just say. Epistemic stance markers I think, in a sense, as it were. Stance adverbials obviously , really , actually • A thin trickle of proposition in a sea of discourse markers: more spin than substance?

10. Keywords 1 • N WORD Number 10 % Hutton % KEYNESS • 1 hmm 0.58 0.05 826.2 • 2 I 4.34 2.35 696.5 • 6 think 0.98 0.39 312.0 • 7 was 3.00 1.96 244.1 • 9 this 1.31 0.69 223.2 • 10 that 3.97 2.88 196.4 • 11 the 6.56 5.15 192.9 • 12 point 0.41 0.14 170.6

11. Keywords 2 • N WORD Number 10 % Hutton % KEYNESS • 16 thing 0.14 0.03 97.5 • 18 going 0.29 0.12 85.6 • 19 not 1.55 1.10 84.1 • 20 thought 0.20 0.07 83.5 • 24 were 0.82 0.52 73.1 • 25 say 0.43 0.23 72.5 • 26 making 0.12 0.03 71.3 • 27 issue 0.17 0.06 70.7 • 28 saying 0.18 0.06 70.4

12. Keywords 3 • N WORD Number 10 % Hutton % KEYNESS • 15 it 2.01 1.44 • 29 felt 0.13 0.04 66.6 • 31 way 0.22 0.09 62.6 • 35 discussion 0.13 0.05 53.8 • 39 story 0.17 0.07 50.9 • 44 people 0.17 0.08 42.3 • 47 cannot 0.13 0.05 41.1 • 48 false 0.04 - 40.6 • 49 frankly 0.03 - 40.5 • 50 terribly 0.02 - 40.3

13. KEYWORDS 4 • N WORD Number 10 % Hutton % KEYNESS 53 important 0.11 0.04 37.9 • 55 clear 0.14 0.06 37.5 • 57 person 0.11 0.04 36.9 • 61 centrally 0.02 - 34.0 • 62 difficult 0.07 0.02 32.5 • 65 recall 0.12 0.05 29.2 • 66 should 0.22 0.13 29.1 • 67 obviously 0.11 0.05 28.8 • 71 emphasise 0.03 - 26.7 • 73 no 0.48 0.34 26.4 • 76 best 0.06 0.02 26.1

14. Keywords • Indicate salience • Show differences compared with all Hutton corpus • Indicate what the core of a particular pattern might be • At first sight appear normal and innocuous, noise rather than signal

15. Constructing an identity • Individuals and team spirit – who does what to whom with whom? Pronouns • What do people do all day? Kinds of activity– Verbs/Nouns • Engagement and detachment – evaluating, taking responsibility, Modality

16. Pronouns • Mostly to do with discourse management and an interpersonal dialogue but also it, this and that • Oscillation: vague reference and group identity • Lawyers accepted the alternations without comment, encouraging the construction of a joint identity for the team

17. Key verbs from the keywords • Word all HuttonMen at work Keyness • think 0.39% 0.92% 191.2 • thought 0.07& 0.22% 78.4 • say 0.23% 0.48% 77.2 • mean 0.07% 0.21% 57.6 • felt 0.04% 0.13% 45.7 • emphasise - 0.03% 26.5

18. More verb forms • All Hutton Men at Work Keyness • was 1.96% was 3.06% Keyness:199.6 • were 0.52 were 0.83 Keyness: 57.9 • do 0.36% do 0.61% Keyness: 51.1 • cannot 0.05% cannot 0.15% Keyness: 47.4

19. Existential constructions • Cluster All Hutton Men at work • this was 0.07% 0.19 % • that was 0.15 % 0.27 % • it was 0.07 % 0.63 % • there were 0.15 % 0.27 % • there is 0.09 % 0.21 % • Tot: 0.53 % 1.57 %

20. Talking about work • Mental and communication verbs: discourse and stance markers – privileged access • Transitivity: impersonal constructions no-one gets singled out or named. • Locative/ Existential constructions : stuff happens • In the thick of things: indefinite noun phrases often marked for size and number and negative evaluation • Perceivers of a situation; reactors rather than initiators

21. The real protagonists • Word All Hutton Men at Work Keyness • thing 0.03% 0.15% 90.1 • sense 0.03% 0.12% 66.3 • issue 0.06% 0.19% 63.9 • people 0.08% 0.21% 58.6 • point 0.14% 0.29% 45.4 • story 0.07% 0.19% 52.9 • discussion 0.05% 0.12% 28.0

22. Nouns • Text autonomisation or illocutionary text nouns • The vagueness of thing, way, sense • Fuzzy reference referential indistinctness • Patterns in their use: the first, the best, the only, the important (thing, way) • and issue agentless passives and metaphorical usage

23. People • Decisions and choice (the best the only the right the senior) • Part of the dialogistic second guessing about perceptions: people would say

24. The key point • Dialogistic positioning with respect of interlocutors (the BBC’s point of view) • Limiting the range of choice dialogistically (there is no point, little point, a key point, ) • Emphasis: structural foregrounding, lexical focussing around the field of difficulty

25. A kind of spin • Foregrounding : Cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions • Focussing: what the point is • emphasise/important/key/salient/vital/. • Stance adverbials in the keywords: obviously/terribly/absolutely/frankly • Evaluation: best/only way/only thing

26. Hard times and having to The quality of life • Modality: deontic and epistemic, perceived needs and duties, perceptions of reality • HUTTON MEN AT WORK • should 0.13 should 0.24% • Having to: 0.07% 0.20% • Difficulty: 0.02% 0.09% • Semantic field: difficult/complicated etc.

27. Metaphors they live by • Firefighting and weathering the storm • Space and positions • Under fire and at war • Stronger and bigger than us • Uncontrollable and messy

28. In control or at bay? • The data, wordlists, keywords, concordances, point to a different picture from that of the outsider perceptions. • Men at work construct their identity and working reality through their use of particular linguistic features in a build up of patterns

29. What the data shows • On returning to the data (via concordance lines) • We see the keywords correspond to resources linked to a number of dialogistic patterns:

30. Appraisal – dialogistic positioning • particular patterns of dialogistic positioning:the arguability of any utterance can be varied by adjusting the dialogistic status of the utterance to engage with past, present or future communicative exchanges.

31. Constant interaction • taking up, acknowledging, responding to, challenging or rejecting actual or imagined prior and future utterances.

32. Disclaim • Dialogic opposition • resources by which some prior utterance or some alternative position is invoked so as to be rejected, replaced or dismissed as irrelevant

33. Proclaim • Concur - aligns with interlocutor • Pronounce - intrudes self • Endorse - brings in other texts for support • Typically against some opposed alternative increases the interpersonal cost of any ejection /doubting / challenging of the author's dialogic position

34. Expanding and contracting • whether the resources employed present the speaker as opening up the dialogue to more or less divergent positions or as closing it down so as to suppress or at least limit such divergence.

35. Contraction • the space for dialogistic diversity is contracted by what amounts to a pre-emptive rhetorical action - the writer/speaker is presented as seeking to constrain possible dialogistic divergence by overtly and strongly indicating their personal investment in the current proposition/proposal.

36. ‘obviously’ • Any challenge necessitates a direct confrontation with the speaker writer or a confrontation with what is represented as `common-knowledge' or `public opinion'.

37. “the only way” • alternative positions are closed down by being directly rejected or by being replaced.

38. Assertion • Those utterances which employ the form of the bare assertion ignore or deny the dialogic imperative and thereby suppress the basic heteroglossic nature of social reality.

39. Key patterns in the data • Proclaiming and Assertion – • Denial – • Probabilising via privileged access • Relativising or spin –– backgrounding by foregrounding • Justification closing down options

40. Making assertions • Existential and locative expressions • Cluster number 10 All Hutton • this was 0.19 % 0.07% • that was 0.27 % 0.15 % • it was 0.63 % 0.07 % • there were 0.27 % 0.15 % • there is 0.21 % 0.09 % • Tot: 0.53 % 1.57 %

41. denying • No • Not • Cannot • False

42. Probabilising • When epistemic markers are used it is usually with privileged access: • We felt/We thought/I think • Not open to contradiction

43. contracting the space • Illocutionary text nouns thing, way. Fuzzy reference, referential indistinctness but with distinct patterns in their use • the first, the best, the only, the important (thing, way) • All of which close down the options

44. People • Same patterns found with the key word people. Decisions and choice evaluation (the best /the only /the right /the senior) • Part of the dialogistic second guessing about perceptions and pre-empting of reactions: people would say

45. “Look this way” • Point as a keyword • Dialogistic positioning with respect of interlocutors (the BBC’s point of view) • Limiting the range of choice dialogistically (there is no point, little point, a key point, ) • Emphasise: angling the argument to exclude other aspects

46. Spin – angling the position • Foregrounding : Cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions • Focussing: what the point is • emphasise/important/key/salient/vital/. • Stance adverbials in the keywords: obviously/terribly/absolutely/frankly

47. Noblesse oblige • Modality: deontic and epistemic, perceived needs and duties, perceptions of reality • Number 10 HUTTON • Having to: 0.22% 0.04% • No options but one…….

48. Painted into a corner or shutting the door • The data, wordlists, keywords, concordances, point to a habit of dialogistic second guessing and pre-empting. Chronic anticipation Living in an open dialogue

49. An uncomfortable contracted space limited in scope, trapped by its own logic, created by its encoding in language which closes off areas of possible choice • Immobile but twitching • Cripplingly heightened intertextual awareness of others’ reactions • Technologisation strings visible • Short term benefits soon give way to longer term drawbacks

50. Painted into a corner