ATTITUDE AND EMAIL INTERACTION: some possibilities for exploration
Goffman (1981) in Chapter One of his Forms of Talk outlines the differences between what he sees as significant for the characterisation of conversation: the differentiation of Responses and Replies. His interest is directed towards outlining what constitutes the units or moves in any conversation and how these can determine the meaning of what is going on in any interactive situation. In Goffman's model, Responses may occur in any form as a reaction to a prior communicative act, whereas Replies are subcategories of Response -
..in which the alignment implied and the object to which reference is made are both conveyed through words and their substitutes; furthermore, this matter is addressed by the response is itself something that a prior speaker had referred to through words. (op cit: 35)
Furthermore, while Replies may address themselves to the reference matter of the prior contribution in any conversational series, a Response may
..break frame and reflexively address aspects of a statement which would ordinarily be 'out of frame', ordinarily part of transmission, not content - for example, the statement's duration, tactfulness, style, origin, accent, vocabulary, and so forth. (op cit: 43)
Goffman in this chapter is concerned to be able to specify the basic conversational unit, and how such units may be structurally linked in interactional situations. If his fundamental distinction between response and reply is taken into account, then links between posts in a thread and their relevance to prior contributions can be more precisely traced. In the following sections, some implications of considering texts from the perspective of their response status in the context of an on-going conversation, will be briefly discussed in terms of their relationship to the notion of Appraisal.
The two texts here used as examples have been taken out of their interactional context for the purposes of analysis in order to make a comparison of discourse semantic features. For this reason, the parts of the original posts which were not written by the posters have been removed from consideration. However, the construction of certain evaluative positionings in these texts were not made without reference to prior statements, and in general, these types of texts actually form long turns or (sometimes series of) exchanges in the context of a longer thread, or conversation. The bounds of these threads are usually determined by subject line, but sometimes the ideational relevance to the original topic may eventually shift in referential orientation. This happens as contributions, or posts in response to prior contributions, move away from a topic in a variety of directions. Theoretically, such thematic and topical shifts in referential orientation could be mapped by 'content' analysis of sequences of posts in a so-called thread (see for example Ekeblad 1998, 1999), and in Module 3, Chapter 5, I show how the sequence of targets of appraisal can also highlight identity chaining and hence topic shift in a series of related posts.
In section 1.3.3 above, the discussion focussed on the features of this mode of interaction and the strategies commonly employed by email listmembers in compensating for the lack of what Halliday (1985 & 1994) terms the 'fluidity' of phonic channel interaction. It was pointed out in Part 1 of this module (available elsewhere) that contributors may choose to simulate the turn-taking of phonic channel interaction by means of inserting stretches of text from (a) prior contribution(s) into the post they write. In this manner, such overt extra-vocalising quotations serve as reframing moves, indicating to the audience what it is they are responding to. If a Response is to be classed as a Reply, however, some type of relevance needs to be indicated, and these insertions are one of the means of overtly indicating relevance which email listmembers have generally employed. Module 3 Further elaborates a framework and findings related to favoured or list norm-al means of indicating relevance and thus response status.
In the context of this study, the construction of relevance, via the quoting of a selected stretch of prior text as a framing move, and as an indicator of 'relative interactivity' as was contended above in Part 1, will be briefly illustrated. This is in order to more coherently account for the field or ideational orientation of the two texts in question, since it was earlier pointed out (1.3.1)* that attitudinal values seemed to be related to the field or topic of the arguments presented in each text. This may in turn have something to do with ideological implications attaching to orientation to field, and thus use of specialist terminology relating to the valorisation of certain institutions, and institutional norms, and their 'orders of discourse' for example. Topic maintenance may also be used as a means of enhancing, or keeping certain ideological positions in play. Similar observations have been made by Martin & Rose (2003: 64 interalia).
Text1 opens with the following sequence:
Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 08:04:22 +0000
From: "Simon" <email>
Subject: Re: "Just Say Delete" (Was: Re: a last bouquet)
John:
> The analogies of "diner/coffeehouse" and "informal seminar" are both ways of > representing the importance of informality and a social side as opposed to a
> complete task focus.
>
> Some years ago I did some research for a minor thesis looking at the
> effectiveness of task groups within three organizations. Two of the factors
> influencing the effectiveness of the groups were Task Leadership and
> Socio-emotional Leadership.
The post opens with a [naming: addressing] move, designating John as both the ideal Addressee, as well as the writer responsible for the part of the prior post quoted here, and to which Simon is responding. This quotation, as an [extra-voc: quoting: framing] move completes the opening sequence and serves to frame what is to come (see Module 3, Chapters 2 and 4). What is noteworthy in this context is the relevance and referentiality which is maintained throughout the response constructed by the poster identity Simon in the body of the post which follows it. The obvious lexical items which are taken up and used by this writer in the rest of the post have been underlined above. This would demonstrate that this post, as response in context, can be classed as a Reply in a Goffmanian sense, since it directs itself to elaborating on the comments quoted in the framing sequence, and extending and enhancing the ideas presented there (c.f. Halliday 1994: 220). For example, in sentence 1.3, the writer first acknowledges his own view of 'task as analogy', then elaborates by giving further detail - 'harking back to its roots in tax or an onerous duty to be paid'. He then goes on to make an extension for this analogy, by giving its 'definition' an additional element, an alternative view of 'task': 'In Bion it has more positive connotations,' (1.4). The theme of 'task as analogy' is continued throughout the text, and an analogy of seminars held in diners in the clause complexes 1.18 - 1.20 again makes explicit reference to the propositional content of the quoted material.
In looking at Text2 in context, it too uses the device of quoted material from a previous post in order to make relevant the observations that follow:
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 16:13:46 -0500
From: Sarah<email address>
Subject: Baby Talk or So Happy Together
1Susan, and (Roy - I just got your post)
Susan's:
1a"Sarah, I'm sorry if these musings of mine make you feel at all targeted. 1bI thought about not sending them, but as it is a question that has been brought out into the open, then I think I will."
Given this framing context, we can interpret Text2 in a slightly different light, since it is in some sense actually addressed to Roy (whose 'honesty in communication' is used as a reference point in the text), as well as to the 'you' (Susan) who appears in the first sentence. In the quoted excerpt from a prior post, this contributor explicitly apologises for perhaps 'targeting' one of the Addressee(s) of that post, Sarah, who has here picked up the notion of being 'targeted', and uses this as the topic on which she bases the rest of her message.
In terms of evaluative positioning being more likely to engender a response, sentence 1a uses a [naming: addressing] move to first establish Sarah as the Addressee, which in itself is notable for email interaction, in that such [naming: addressing] moves overtly construct an ideal recipient, and thus function as interactive prospection (discussed in detail in Module 3, Chapter 2). These classes of move tend to 'prospect' a response, especially when, as in this case, the Addresser clearly refers to a self as source of evaluations which are also linked in some way to the Addressee's status in the group. Sentence 1a clearly falls into this category.
In other words, the proposition in 1a could be rendered as: I think that these musings of mine might make you feel targeted, in which Sarah is the target of an Appraisal (albeit highly modalized) in which she is characterised as suffering from negative [affect: insecurity]. It might not be so surprising, then, to read Sarah's response as a Reply which directly addresses this Appraisal of her Attitude. Moreover, the previously noted prevalence of values of [affect: insecurity] in this text can be viewed as entirely relevant to the context realised by the framing quotation.
In terms of Engagement, the quoted, framing, utterance is clearly dialogistically expansive. A more or less heteroglossic (or rather, intertextual - referring to former texts from the list as community) space is achieved through reference to voices such as the self (these musings of mine) and the Addressee (you feel ) - as well as the sentence which follows, alluding to the group as also being responsible for these musings of mine, when she says that it is a question that has been brought out into the open . It also functions dialogistically to the extent that it leaves open the negotiatory space by apologising ( I'm sorry) for something she imagines might or might not be acceptable on the part of her ideal recipient (if these musings...make you feel ). In this way, the quoted excerpt can be classed, in hindsight at least, as a good example of what I have been calling an Interactive move, likely to engender a response from an Addressee, or audience member.
Both texts were once part of a dynamic interactive context. Thus, the posts which realised these texts can be seen as the product of a series of contributions which preceded them, and the initiation of other responses which followed. Both posts were chosen for their formatting in the 'relevance-in' style outlined in section 3.3 of Part I of this module, a style in which parts of a previous post are selected as the relevant chunks which need addressing, or which motivate the response. This module has argued that texts, and perhaps specifically email-list generated texts, can be analysed as series of evaluative positioning moves, or strategies which articulate, or develop the coherence of the message overall, as a function of the interrelationship of its rhetorical units.
Given this perspective, the next step in an analysis of interactive context is to work 'outwards' so to speak: to look at the previous contribution(s) which the node-post quotes, or to which it refers, and to look at contributions which later make reference to this post. Those sections quoted from a previous contribution need to be examined within their original co-text, in order to discover what, if any, indicators there are in these specific quoted sections which set them apart from the rest of the parent text. While Goffman (op cit) maintains that the respondee must indicate the relevance they found in any previous contribution, my interest in such an extension is in finding any recurrent features of these sections of 'relevant chunks' which either mark them as, for example, 'highly involved', or which correlate with other aspects of the interaction, such as personal poster preferences or styles, or especially, local use of Appraisal.
Module Three will report on the findings of a study focussed on some wider aspects of the context of interaction of a mailing list community of practice by using appraisal as the tools of analysis.
This short exercise in analysis using the system of Attitude, was made in order to demonstrate some of the ways that this type of analysis can be used to characterise the unfolding of the text, the evaluative positioning which the Addresser favours, and the inter-related nature of field (and hence, experiential and ideational values) and evaluative stances. It was also presented as a way in which such values may be investigated as contributing to further understanding of the workings and basis for rhetorical organisation potential (Module 3, Chapters 1 and 2) in this mode of interaction. This was linked to the need to look at indicators of relative interactivity and the construction of tenor in texts created in this context of interaction, as was discussed in Part I of this module (2). In Module Three, this framework, in conjunction with a number of other approaches, will be used to investigate and comment on the analyses of a corpus of texts from a particular written-speech discourse community in order to characterise its conventional patterns of exchange and negotiation, and within this, present a means for investigating the nature of textual persona, or identity, as the creative use of such conventions in making context-dependent meanings. It is envisaged that the framework presented here, together with that presented in Module One, will prove a useful means for describing expository texts in general, characterising the context of interaction of other CMC text-based interfaces, while extending the Appraisal framework in the area of invoked attitude.
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[note1] "Attitude and email interaction" comprises Part II of 'Module 2'. Anyone interested in obtaining a copy of Part I - a discussion focussing on features of the material situational setting, writtenness v spokenness, mode as channel and medium, etc - is asked to contact me by email.
[note2] Module 3 is in preparation. Stay tuned for updates on this space - drafts may be posted at anytime.
Back: Section 4: 4. Attitude and Discourse Structure