Holly’s approach to the analysis of supportive interchanges

In 1979 the German linguist Werner Holly completed a thesis entitled Imagearbeit in

Gesprächen. Zur linguistischen Beschreibung des Beziehungsaspekts, of which the English transition is Image work in conversations: The linguistic description of the relational aspect.

In this research, Holly advances Goffman’s essays on face, image, and ritual interchanges from a linguistic point of view. Holly works with a mixed corpus of empirical data, and provides a very impressive early approach to the systematic, linguistic analysis of face work in interactions. I will briefly outline Holly’s advancement of Goffman’s outlines in the area of

PRIMING ACTION

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REMEDY

RELIEF

ritual interchanges. In particular, I will focus on his classification system of supportive

interchanges. As Holly’s interpretation of remedial interchanges is rather similar to Goffman’s approach, I will not delve into this aspect of his work any further in this discussion.

Holly (1979) develops his book under the influence of two dominant paradigms, i.e.

Speech Act Theory and Conversation Analysis. His approach is an original attempt to organise Goffman’s ideas on ritual communication into a coherent system, and to apply it to the analysis of natural conversations. He begins by providing a more precise explanation of what Watzlawick, Beavin and Jackson (1967) call the “relational aspect” of communication (as opposed to the aspect of content). According to Holly (1979: 19f), speech acts are complex with respect to relational meanings; he describes “layers of speech acts”

(Sprechaktschichten).³⁷ Moreover, he holds that one of these layers is constituted by ritual interchanges and image work, i.e. activities that ensure the mutual affirmation of interactants as respected individuals (Holly 1979: 23). Holly also demonstrates that all aspects of

relational work are closely interconnected, which accounts for why it is impossible to describe ritual interchanges in isolation (Holly 1979: 25). In this respect, Holly avoids the trap in which Brown and Levinson (1987) seem to have been caught – he does not translate Goffman’s concepts into context-free analyses of single speech acts, but he concentrates on the discourse level of communication.

After discussing the status of ritual interchanges with respect to relational work, Holly goes on to develop his own interpretation of ritual interchanges after Goffman, which he then applies to a small corpus of recorded conversations. This corpus contains conversations gathered mainly from TV or radio talk shows, from academic contexts (e.g. a linguistic exam, and conversations recorded in class), and from a self-awareness group. In partial analogy with Goffman (1971), Holly (1979: 51f) mentions four types of supportive interchanges, which he generally refers to as confirmative ‘sequences’ (Sequenzen):

a) Ritualisation of identificatory sympathy b) Ritual offerings

c) Rituals of ratification d) Access rituals

While it appears that Goffman uses the term ‘ritual offerings’ as a synonym of ‘confirmative interchanges’ and, simultaneously, as a label for the first step of a confirmative interchange (cf. Goffman 1971: 93), Holly interprets Goffman’s somewhat ambiguous description differently. He treats ’ritual offerings’ as constituting a subcategory in their own right, using

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37 The other three layers are described in terms of the elementary illocution (which indicates how the hearer is supposed to understand the proposition), turn taking (which provides the microsocial context), and role taking (which constitutes the macrosocial context) (Holly 1979: 22f).

the label for examples such as POLITE OFFERS, INVITATIONS, WELCOMING and INTRODUCING. In Holly’s system there is a strong overlap between the categories of

‘identificatory sympathy’ and ‘ritual offerings’; for this reason I will subsume the latter category under the former in my own approach (cf. Section 14.1).

In addition, Holly elaborates the two-step structure of supportive interchanges by means of prototypical activity types that are employed as initiations and acknowledgements respectively (cf. Table 5.3). Holly (1979: 50) attributes the couples OPENING –

CONFIRMATION and CLOSURE – CONFIRMATION to Schegloff (1968) and Sacks and Schegloff (1973), but he mainly designates couples of activity types on the basis of his own corpus analyses. His system follows a rather clear-cut logic: The first set of rows in Table 4.8.1 lists confirmative sequences of the type (a) (ritualisation of identificatory sympathy);

and it is concerned with those interchanges which are directed at the initiating interactant’s image. The prototypical action type couples that Holly mentions in this context are SEEKING INTEREST – SHOWING INTEREST, SEEKING INFORMATION – PROVIDING

INFORMATION, and SELF-PRAISE – AGREEMENT/CONFIRMATION.

The next set of rows in the table also contains confirmative interchanges of the type (a), but the prototypical action type couples enumerated here are concerned with those interchanges directed at the responding interactant’s image: SHOWING INTEREST – THANKS/AGREEMENT, ASKING QUESTIONS AS EVIDENCE OF INTEREST – THANKS/ANSWERING QUESTIONS, and COMPLIMENT, PRAISE –

THANKS/AGREEMENT; THANKS/MITIGATION; THANKS/DEFLECTION;

THANKS/RECIPROCATION; or THANKS/POLITE RENUNCIATION.

The following sets of rows provide similar examples with respect to the other three types of ritual interchanges, though it must be noted that Holly does not name any examples for ritual offerings directed at the initiating interactant’s image.

As can be seen from the last example, for some types of supportive interchanges Holly provides a wide range of possible responses. However, the variants of confirmative responses have in common their ratifying function: It is only when the second move, i.e. the confirmative response, is done that the first confirming move is accepted as a valid ritual act.

Also, Holly emphasises the fact that most of the patterns he presents do not only have a ritual function, but also an instrumental one. For instance, while an introduction of the interactant A to the interactant B is a ritual move, at the same time it fulfils the primary purpose of providing information about interactant A to interactant B (cf. Spencer-Oatey 2005). Thus, according to Holly (1979: 51), the distinction between ritual and instrumental functions of interchanges is analytical rather than empirical in nature.

However, Holly claims that not all confirmative moves are ratified with other confirmative moves.

Type INITIATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENT a) Ritualisation of identificatory sympathy

(a - I)

(= Type a - directed to the initiating interactant)

SEEKING INTEREST SHOWING INTEREST

SEEKING INFORMATION PROVIDING INFORMATION

SELF-PRAISE etc. AGREEMENT/CONFIRMATION

(a - R)

(= Type a - directed to the responding interactant)

SHOWING INTEREST THANKS/AGREEMENT

ASKING QUESTIONS AS EVIDENCE OF INTEREST

THANKS/ANSWERING QUESTIONS

COMPLIMENT, PRAISE, etc. THANKS/AGREEMENT;

THANKS/MITIGATION;

THANKS/DEFLECTION;

THANKS/RECIPROCATION;

THANKS/POLITE RENUNCIATION b) Ritual offerings

(b - R)

(= Type b - directed to the responding interactant)

POLITE OFFER THANKS/ACCEPTANCE

INVITATION THANKS/POLITE DECLINE

WELCOMING THANKS

INTRODUCING APPRECIATING (with respect to third parties)

c) Rituals of ratification (c – I)

(= Type c - directed to the initiating interactant)

NOTIFICATION (of change) ACKNOWLEDGEMENT;

APPRECIATION; AGREEMENT;

EXPRESSION OF UNDERSTANDING;

CONGRATULATION; EXPRESSION OF AMAZEMENT; EXPRESSION OF CONDOLENCES

(c – R)

(= Type c - directed to the responding interactant)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT;

APPRECIATION; AGREEMENT;

CONGRATULATIONS;

EXPRESSION OF CONDOLENCES

THANKS/MITIGATION, etc.

d) Access rituals (d - I/R)

(= Type d - directed to the initiating and the responding interactant)

GREETING GREETING

SAYING GOODBYE SAYING GOODBYE

OPENING CONFIRMATION

POSSIBLE PRE-CLOSING ACCEPTANCE/DECLINE

CLOSURE CONFIRMATION

Table 5.3: Compilation of the four types of confirmative ritual interchanges and a selection of typical action types exemplifying them; Holly 1979: 51f; translation and explanations in the left column mine

For instance, he argues that compliments are often followed by instances of self-criticism (SELBSTKRITIK) or by downtoning reactions (ABSCHWÄCHUNG), which are based on the ritual requirement of modesty (Holly 1979: 78). Also, he remarks that interactants may feel the need to attenuate overly positive self-presentations of their fellow interactants. I will return to this important phenomenon in the contexts of the analysis of positive feedback (cf.

Chapter 9), self-evaluative clusters (cf. Chapter 13), and face work (cf. Chapter 14). All in all, Holly’s approach to the analysis of confirmative sequences offers a useful analytical tool for linguistic research on face-enhancing sequences.

Im Dokument “I am my own worst enemy” (Seite 109-113)