Several framing moves in both opening and closing sequences have now been examined by reference to textual data. Looking again at the main example, is it possible to identify the same types of structural moves in the main body of the text, and is it possible to make any predictions about reader position and response by reference to features of the lexicogrammar which might signal the functions of these moves and their position in the structure of the message? Firstly, what I have labelled the boundary frame is realised by the following: ---------------------------
2. Stephen wrote: [N]
(snip)
>Toyota Tercel, '89, 78,000miles
>Net Dynamics control group [Q]
3. LOL! control group...that's a good one! [Com]
(2.1), although not strictly speaking a 'Problem', is definitely something that needs to be commented upon at (3), where the first part of the 'sentence' realises a Response (laughing out loud), the second part, '...that's a good one!' an Evaluation.
At (2), the simple past finite declarative says without fear of contestation that something happened, a certain locution, and furthermore it is going to be paratactically projected now (use of formatting features ':' and '>' significant here). At (2.1), 'snip' signals that a piece of 'what Stephen wrote' has been cut, and that what he needs to comment upon is the leftover piece, in other words, that this particular piece is the 'Problem'; a problem of definition. Stephen has defined himself as a member of a self-proclaimed group; a 'control' group. The writer's Response at (3) is to 'laugh out loud' at such a notion, which he then 'Evaluates' as 'a good one', ie, 'a good joke' (reference to western English code necessary to retrieve 'that's a good one' = that's a good joke/ that's funny). In terms of Brown & Levinson's notion of FTAs, the strategies employed by the writer for making this comment on Stephen's identity and his proclamation of membership of a control group which does not exist, might be seen to be employing several, notably, Strategies 1. 4 and 1. 8. (see 9.5.1). The net effect, however, is that the writer is asserting his position of power in relation to Stephen by in effect dismissing as a joke, his attempt to define the field of play in his own way. On the other hand, this joking could also be interpreted as a mark of approval, and the evaluation 'good one' entirely genuine. In some measure, then, this could be seen as employing 'Off record' mitigators, especially strategy 9.8 or all of 10. ( see Appendix 6) Section 4 which forms the main exchange of the message, involves an interplay between quoted material and rebuttal, or Comment: Clarify: explain/ Opinion/Tell. ---------------------------
4. Steve R-----, MD wrote:
4.1 >I'm sorry if you feel my sig is pissant and
>obnoxious. I don't(so far), but will dispense with it the
>instant I feel its liabilities outweigh its benefits.
4.2 I did not write that I felt *your* sig is pissant and
obnoxious. I wrote, in response to your question:
4.3 >>To turn the sig question on its head, I've
>>wondered from time to time why some PhDs on this list
>>_don't_ include that in their sigs. Anyone care to
>>comment?
4.4 >I don't largely because I feel it's obnoxious. In
>graduate school, I once worked for a consultant who
>consistently had his name on all the firm's materials as:
>"Dr. Pissant Schlmiel, Ph.D." (Name changed to protect me
>if he's still alive and somehow on the Net.)
>He *was* a pissant, and this over-usage was typical.
The opening move at (4) is another nominating 'act', again the declarative finite is used, but the significant feature here is that rather than naming Steve by his first name only, the writer enacts a distancing ploy by calling him by his whole name and appending the identifier 'MD'. This refers to the way Steve typically signs himself (or DID at that juncture in ND history). Quoted material by Steve then follows. Here again, the functional moves in terms of the problem-solution discourse structure are realised by Situation at (4); Problem, what Steve actually 'wrote' at (4.1); and Response to 'what Steve wrote' at (4.2). The writer denies the propositional content of Steve's contribution, changing it from his 'I am sorry if you felt' to 'I did not write that I felt'. A significant feature here is the use of the asterisk* to bound the word 'your', drawing even more nonverbal attention to it, and in this case intimating that Steve has misinterpreted the writer's original words, which he then goes on to quote with the preface 'I wrote' signalling a paratactic projection of what is to come: a Clarify: explain. He also defines this previously written text as a response to something Steve 'asked' earlier ('your question'), which he quotes first at (4.3). Here, the Response serves to form a Solution by recalibrating the Situation, saying that the Situation is actually what 'you' (Steve) wrote (4.3), and that within that Situation was a request for action ('Anyone care to comment?') which the writer responded to by making the contribution which appears as (4.4). In this way, he makes the same statement again: the Response is encoded as 'I don't', then the Evaluation of this Response follows, signalled by the conjunction 'because': In other words, 'I am about to tell you the reason for this Response'. The reason why Barry 'doesn't' (use a sig file with a PhD) is encoded in words of high modality, or evaluative lexis: 'obnoxious', 'pissant', and 'over-use' which is 'typical' of people of that type. In this way, the writer wants to distance himself from the Dr Pissant Schlmeils of this world. The final 'exchange' again presents a Response/ Solution to an earlier Problem, that of Steve's misinterpretation at (4.1) that Barry felt *his* sig file was 'pissant and obnoxious'. The writer in a Clarify: explain move says:
5. I made this name up partially because his real name is Steven XXXX, and I did not want to have anyone thinking I was referring to you.
5.1 Didn't work anyway.
He 'made up' the name: the declarative states the certainty that he did it in the past, for a reason: 'because' the person's real name 'is' present tense, relational process, declaring certainty, the same as the interlocutor, in this case, Steve. Furthermore, he 'did not want to have anyone thinking': negative polarity in the mood suggests the possibility of a positive polarity, and a rather long infinite predicate, begs the question 'thinking what?'. Up until this point, it seems as if the writer is addressing an audience who will judge his actions in the light of the evidence he has presented. The writer's use of subjects in this whole post is indicative of where his orientation lies: there are 13 third person singular subjects, and 9 first person subjects (see Table A for a list of subjects and finites). Even though Steve is ostensibly being addressed here, it is not done directly 'man to man' but played out for the benefit of others. The next move (6), the preclosing sequence where a phase shift can be seen, makes this orientation to audience explicit, and Steve is actually referred to in the third person, as the object of inquiry. However, at the end of (5) the writer makes the only overt address to a 'you', which we must assume is directly addressed to the 'culprit' himself. He then makes an Evaluation of his Response to the original Situation at (5.1) where he says that 'it' did not work, ie, that Steve still made this error of judgement. It is directly after this at (6) that the writer turns to address the audience, and request that they explain Steve's behaviour, using in-group language turned into a type of joking, conversational style, as evidenced by subject elision. In this way, it would seem that he attempts to distance himself from the likes of Steve, and attempts to assert solidarity with the other 'shrinks' onlist. Using Brown and Levinson's typology, (Appendix 6) he could be said to have used Strategies 1. 4, 1. 7 and 1. 8; 2. 12 and 2. 13; and 10. 15 to enlist this solidarity. Another view might be that the use of the modally 'marked' lexical item 'shrinks' as attribute would cue the audience to read the questions which follow as to be taken lightly, and hence as an apology for his impolite 'performance'. 6. Hey Netdynamo shrinks: what did Steve do here? 6.1 Countercountertransference? projection? Jung/Freudian slip? A final marker of parody at (7.1), which could be seen as a type of 'Flaming' move, calling the whole topic of sig files into question as valid, is to use as identifier the type of car he presumably drives, a direct reference to the sig file of Stephen which he quotes in the opening framing sequence, and which he has already characterised as a good joke.
The question now might be, in what context may the reader assume this post appears. How might the reader orient him/herself to the speech event? Firstly, it is obvious that this post has been preceded by at least three other posts in the thread, one by Stephen, one by Steve, and one by the writer himself. This can be seen through the use of quoting of parts of those messages in the text above.at (2.1), (4.1), (4.3) and (4.4). The field of the discussion obviously revolves around identity and the way it is portrayed on this list, specifically whether the use of 'identifiers' is necessary or appropriate, and more specifically, what amount of detail they should show. The post's 'fulcrum' seems to be the original eliciting move made in a previous post by Steve (4.3) where he asks why more holders of PhDs do not use this identifier in their sig files. The subject line also labels the thread 'SIGnifiers'. That this is intimately related to the tenor of the discussion needs no argument, as the topic itself is one of personal identity. At a more delicate level, however, this post shows that the writer assumes that he is talking to an audience comprised of psychologists and other carriers of academic qualifications, and that he feels no need to defer to them, except by alluding to in-jokes and jargon, calling on an assumed intertextuality. Apart from the tone which is conversational and direct, obvious use of the Discourse of psychology is evident in the preclosing sequence at (6) and (6.1) where he asks the 'audience' what Steve did, and uses such terms. We might also retrieve the fact that the piece snipped at move (2.1) is part of a much longer 'sig file' alluding to personal characteristics not related to academic qualifications. Reference to the relevant posts in this thread can be found in Appendix 2: sig files thread, and it can be seen that 'predictions' of this nature are borne out. What may be expected to follow this post? Predictions on the field and tenor might be possible: that the Steve mentioned in this post would need to defend his position in the group by responding to the appraisal of his behaviour, that perhaps the other 'shrinks' onlist might feel moved to make some sort of joking response acknowledging their solidarity in this matter, or conversely, distancing themselves from the tenor of the post by asserting some type of difference in orientation, or an affiliation with those who use sig files identifying their academic credentials. This, however, seems unlikely as Steve has already asked why more of the PhDs _don't_ use this identifier in their sigs (baseline dashes '_' around a word are conventions by which a word or phrase may be emphasised, and is roughly correlated with the use of italics in other written modes. Email does not have this facility). This may be another reason why Barry felt safe in casting Steve in an out-group role. That the writer has done this is, signalled by the lack of FTA- mitigating moves or language used in relation to his discussion of Steve, whereas his orientation to the 'onlookers' has been mitigated by the use of the 'politeness' strategies or metacommunicative frames mentioned above. In this way, the main exchange of the post, while realising a Response in the broadest terms, might also be labelled 'Flame' (cf 8.6), which is a type of post or comment that is seen or felt as an 'attack', usually of a personal nature, and certainly begs a response. The question of how to identify a 'flame' has been topical in list discussions occasionally, and an example of a post made in response to a Muse on the part of one of the participants about what constituted a flame was intended to demonstrate what such a post might 'feel' like, and appears in Appendix 4: exchanges: Flame War Thread excerpts. A look at the posts which precede this example and those which follow in the 'speech event' bounded by this thread, will show that some of the predictions made above are borne out (see Appendix 2 which is an abridged version of the two days of digests from which the thread was taken. Posts are numbered according to the sequence in which they originally appeared. The main example is number 18). The modality markers in these posts show that 'uptake' or 'perlocutionary force' does seem to have relationship to the actual locutions, if not the illocutionary force of the texts themselves. In other words, an observer may be able to 'predict' what has gone before and what might possibly be initiated by any post in a thread, although they may not be able to correctly retrieve the poster's intent, especially if they have little knowledge, or experience of the list culture and the general field or tenor of discussions. However, it seems that given a knowledge of the code of interaction, it may not be so difficult to reconstruct the actual context of the speech event. What follows is the 'response' (Appendix 2: number 34) to the main example post discussed above, looked at in terms of the exchange structure framework as outlined at 8.5-8.10, and with a brief comment on some of the more obvious markers of modality. **34. ----------------------------
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 1996 01:47:09
-0800
From: Steve
Subject: Re: SIGnifiers
Barry:[Nominate]
True, you didn't come right out and call *my* sig pissant
and obnoxious. [Setting: reason/ FTA mit: 1.6, 1. 7]
Instead, you asked me inan apparently annoyed way to
drop my sig, and soon afterwards said it would be obnoxious
for *you* to use yours. [Comment: Clarify: identity] {Situation}
Seems there are two ways to interpret this: [signal:
Comment:Opinion] you and I are both obnoxious if we
use sigs, or your sig is obnoxious while mine isn't.[Comment:
Clarify: paraphrase]{Response/Solution to Situation}
If it's the latter, you have my apologies and
condolences.[Comment: {Evaluation}]
-------------------------
elision of subject 'it' at signal move allows conversational tone; thematicization of 'seems', distancing himself from the conclusions of the 'two ways to interpret'. last sentence is obviously sarcastic. This seems to be signalled by a nominalising of the apology, and skirting the process of apologizing itself, thematically underlined by 'if'. obvious markers of modality: 'you didn't' confrontational stance, negative polarity -> 'come right out' (and be confrontational yourself); 'you' in clause subject position used throughout signalling orientation of direct address, contrasts with Barry's stance in responded-to post; 'an apparently annoyed way': modalization: low probability, objective explicit; 'Seems' (there are...): modalization: high probability, objective implicit; repetition of lexical item 'obnoxious' in a variety of positions: Appreciation: reaction: negative (cf Martin 1996)
------------------------------
Likewise, since we started this thread
with your displeasure toward my sig,
[reFrame: Loop] {Situation} re-naming your old sig-using acquaintance
"Pissant
Schlmiel" felt hostile. [Comment: Clarify: personal reaction] {Response/Problem}
I'll leave it for our savvy audience of onlookers to decide if it's my
projection, your hostility, or something else. [Comment: {Evaluation}]
------------------------
'we started' orientation past, inclusive personal pronoun about nature of speech event and participants: 'your displeasure' started it. long nominalised clause as 'subject' allows speaker to distance himself from the feeling of hostility, which is also past;'felt'. indicates that he is aware of interlocutor's stance wrt audience by naming them 'our savvy audience of onlookers' in effect calling on solidarity with them; 'leave' them to 'decide' ie make judgement/evaluation. This is signalled by a change in mood orientation, where the writer 'will' do something, rather than addressing past actions which have affected present stance. The matter is disposed of by reorienting to the future and the judgement of 'onlookers' rather than the two of them and the present/past, which has been the orientation of the post up until that point. 'my projection, your hostility or something else' (FTA mit: 10. 12); attribute 'hostility' qualified by 'your': reorienting to interlocutor.
----------------------------
Speaking of hostility, Hi Robert.
[reFrame: loop/reference]
[Naming/Greeting?]It's interesting to see folks I know from other lists.
reFrame: Setting: reason] Sylvia and I know each other from psych lists
where we talked
at length about psychiatric labeling of _people who_ hear voices, see
visions,
and so forth. {Situation} Sylvia's value-free label "People Who" remains
something I keep around in my head. Though we represented different camps-and
our sigs showed it! -- I felt we reached some common ground in those
discussions.
In contrast, I never could tell where Robert was coming from, though
he often
seemed angry. [Comment: Opinion] {Response} I suppose seeing the same
folks
on different lists might help distinguish personality traits from list-specific
roles. The same is as much true for me, of course, as for anyone I've
mentioned.[Comment: {Evaluation}] BTW, what does "baF" mean? And what's
the
deal with the chess game? [PreClosing move: Request: hook] Steve R----
MD
[sig] <long sig inc address and affiliation> [identifier]
----------------
The last exchange in this post needs to be reframed, because it addresses another parallel thread that was going on at the same time. 'Speaking of hostility', a moodless theme, is linked to another participant by name. Even without the mood, the explicit reference to hostility in this way signals the writer's attitude towards this person, who he appears to greet, but thereafter ignores in favour of addressing the 'onlookers' about people encountered on other lists, who he labels 'folks'. He then refers to Sylvia who was an active participant on this list at the time, setting out in what way he 'knows' her, and claiming 'common ground'. He goes on to distance himself from Robert, about whom he 'could never tell'. The exchange is summed up by a personal view signalled by the theme-subject 'I' teamed with a mental process verb 'suppose', and that the degree of probability is tentative is underlined by the use of the modal operator 'might' teamed with 'help distinguish': it is not yet sure. The writer makes an evaluation of this idea in the sentence which follows, by denying distance from others in his stance: this time with a relational process verb in the present tense, and emphasised by the modal adjunct 'of course'. Because both of these participants are mentioned by name; one distanced, the other included, a prediction might be for the two so named to respond accordingly. In fact the conversation bifurcates just after this, but not so predictably: another participant picks up the role aspect of list participation, and in what is actually a 'response' post, initiates another thread called 'Mobile Roles', to which Steve responds. This is responded to by Robert, who, predictably, takes the role of antagonist assigned him. The closing sequence is realised by a typical change of orientation where the writer asks the audience two questions related to other parallel threads, marked by the theme 'BTW', shorthand for 'by the way', and a conversational 'And what's the deal'. This could be seen as an attempt to elicit responses from the group members, thus claiming back some of the solidarity he may have lost due to his confrontation with Barry, at the same time putting himself in the K2/A1 position. Reference to the so-called 'big six' (Appendix 1:1) will show that in this post, Steve has used at least three of the points listed as encouraging responses.