Date: 27-Jul-2011
From: Sixta Quassdorf <sixta.quassdorfunibas.ch>
Subject: Syntactic Variation and Genre
E-mail this message to a friend
Discuss this message
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/21/21-5233.html
EDITORS: Dorgeloh, Heidrun and Anja WannerTITLE: Syntactic Variation and GenreSERIES TITLE: Topics in English Linguistics [TiEL] 70PUBLISHER: De Gruyter MoutonYEAR: 2010
Sixta Quassdorf, Department of English, University of Basel, Switzerland
SUMMARY
Dorgeloh & Wanner's collection of papers derives from a workshop held at theannual meeting of the German Linguistic Society in 2007. Besides a comprehensiveintroduction by the editors, it contains 12 methodologically variegated paperson the interrelationship between syntactic phenomena and genre. It is the credoof the editors that methodological variety is essential to capture fluidconcepts such as genre. Genre is theoretically conceived of as ''patternedpractice'' of ''social action'' on a ''low level of generality'' (p. 10). However,the volume exemplifies that research in practice may range from rathercoarse-grained to very fine-grained concepts. Accordingly, the collection seenin its entirety explores the limits of generality at both sides.
The introduction provides an overview of the state of the art and discussesdefinitions of syntactic variation and genre from the angle of variouslinguistic strands. A usage-based, functional approach and thedescriptive-interpretative paradigm are favoured. Syntactic variation isunderstood to be a question of choices in specific contexts rather than areservoir of two or more ontologically existent variants within the linguisticsystem. Genre variation, in turn, is seen in relation to communicative needs: as''patterned action'' they are able to provide contextual clues helping to easelanguage production and interpretation. A short summary of the individual papersrounds the introduction off.
The papers are grouped in two parts: The first part covers six papers focusingon genre issues and their relationship to syntactic phenomena, while thearticles in part two concentrate on syntactic variation, which is discussed inview of its occurrences in specific genres.
The first paper ''Genre as difference: The sociality of linguistic variation'' byJanet Giltrow, starts with an historical overview of genre and syntax inlinguistic theory. The new-rhetorical notion of genre as ''social action'' (Miller1984), which places genre at the level of contextually-bound communicativesituations, clashes with the aim of traditional syntactic theory for utmostabstraction. Giltrow's empirical study on deontic modality in different types ofacademic papers then shows that the interpretation of deontic structures iscontext-sensitive: academic papers do not normally use deontic constructions asa directive, but as a qualitative comment on the research discussed. Shesuggests that as soon as form is related to function, genre as a low-levelcategory is ''a useful partner'' for studies in linguistic variation (p. 47).Besides her comprehensive theoretical overview and her revealing empirical study(although one might argue that she relates a semantic rather than a syntacticphenomenon to contextual effects), her contribution is also a thought-provokingstudy in view of the transition between what Grice would call ''occasional'' and''timeless'' meaning (cf. Grice 1957:379 f.). The ''timeless'' (i.e.decontextualised) directive meaning of deontic structures changes to specificqualitative comments on the ''occasion'' of different types of academic papers;yet within that genre, the qualitative meaning has become almost ''timeless,''that is conventionalised.
Tuija Virtanen approaches genre from a very analytical angle in ''Variationacross texts and discourses: Theoretical and methodological perspectives on texttype and genre.'' Based on her differentiation between text and discourse types(cf. Virtanen 1992) - that is, between formal and functional aspects of textssuch as narrative strategies (form) in expository texts (function) - she nowtakes a step further and relates text type to genre. A sample analysis ofdifferent tokens of the genre ''encyclopaedic article'' shows that a) genre can berealised by different text types, b) people can differentiate between genreswell, but are not necessarily aware of text/discourse type differentiations andc) genre and text/discourse types are therefore different categories. These haveto be differentiated to disclose the various factors determining thetext-context interface. Even though her model is probably not yet exhaustive,Virtanen's account without a doubt sensitises the researcher for necessarydiscriminations and shows a suitable path of research to follow.
Maurizio Gotti's ''A new genre for a specialized community: The rise of theexperimental essay'' continues with the subject of ''genre emergence'' in anhistorical setting: the experimental essay in the late 17th century in England.Although the birth of this genre can mainly be attributed to a specifichistorical figure, Robert Boyle, Gotti explains its success with the newrequirements of the discourse community of empirical scientists: instead ofgeneral philosophical expositions, the new experimental paradigm depends onsharing data that has to be described rather than argued about. Moreover, Gottishows that not only the dissemination of new scientific knowledge, but also''socialization purposes'' (p. 106) within the discourse community contribute tobrevity, lack of assertiveness, perspicuity and objectivity as conspicuous novelfeatures of the experimental essay. Apart from the all-embracing historicalaccount, the implicit discussion of the fact that a genre can also be createdand taught is a further merit of this article. The role and conditions of''invention'' and ''teaching'' of (certain) genres in relation to their''emergence''has, as far as I know, generally been disregarded.
Javier Pérez-Guerra & Ana E. Martínez-Insua's article, ''Do some genres or texttypes become more complex than others?'' represents an almost modern variant ofthe ''experimental essay'' with their primarily quantitative analysis of syntacticcomplexity. Syntactic complexity is measured according to eight formal criteriasuch as size and length of sentence constituents, syntactic density, depth,efficiency, etc. The diachronic study explores the complexity of subjects,objects and adverbials in letters and newspapers since 1750, meaning a rathercoarse-grained concept of genre has been applied. However, this choice and theauthors' methodology are justified by the generality of the research question,and by their results: it may not be surprising that more complex syntacticstructures are found in news than in letters, but that no significant changesover time are recorded, a valuable finding with cognitive implications.
Wolfgang Imo's contribution, ''Mein Problem ist/mein Thema ist ('My problem is/mytopic is'): How syntactic patterns and genres interact,'' explores how far genreswitch in oral communication can be triggered by specific constructions. Hestudies two different radio formats: psychological counselling vs. a small talkprogramme, which he finds to correlate with specific preferred constructions inGerman, i.e. ''My problem is/my topic is.'' Imo finds that a caller who says ''myproblem is,'' may trigger a switch from small talk to a counselling session,whereas this does not happen if the callers introduce their contribution with''my topic is.'' Imo's subject is inspiring, and his observation that certainconstructions can trigger a genre switch is certainly correct and ties in withWray's notion that formulas ''will often be pre-associated with particularovertones or significance'' (Wray 2008: 20). On the other hand, the articleappears a little too positivistic and it is less convincing in its methodologythan others in the volume. Imo does not consider further pragmatic factorsinfluencing the success or failure of communication, as expounded incommunicative models by Jacobson (1960), Schulz von Thun (1981) and others, nordoes it become clear whether or not he had tested for counterexamples. Moreover,it is surprising that his examples do not contain the formula ''my problem/topicis'' as his title and the text suggest: it is the keywords ''problem'' vs. ''topic''whose semantics seem to ''do the trick'' alone. As such, his connection toConstruction Grammar seems a little forced, even if one grants that lexemes arealso constructions. However, if one reads this article as a work in progresswith preliminary results, it is stimulating and the inclusion in the collectionis worthwhile.
Cornelius Puschmann's article '''Thank you for thinking we could': Use andfunction of interpersonal pronouns in corporate web logs'' is a study incomputer-mediated communication (CMC). He explores inter-personal pronouns(IPPs) in the emerging genre of corporate blogs; that is to say the studyoperates on the lower pole of generality. Corporate blogs are found to be ahybrid between personal blogs and business communications serving ''companies topersonalize their communication'' (p. 172). Puschmann is able to show that a)IPPs can serve as implicit genre markers and b) the overall use of first personplural is typical for corporate blogs. The richness of aspects to the study ofIPPs and blogs, which Puschmann offers, is remarkable, yet the logical link isnot always obvious. As a result, the article almost entices the reader toproceed to Puschmann's entire dissertation (2010), from which the article isapparently derived and where these slight communicative gaps would certainly beclosed.
Part two of the collection starts off with Susanne Günthner's article on''Grammatical constructions and communicative genres.'' Günthner argues in herqualitative study - similarly to Imo - that specific constructions are typicalfor specific genres and vice versa. She focuses on constructions used ininformal spoken language, which in other contexts would be regarded asungrammatical, such as German what-constructions in informal reproaches. Thus,dependencies of certain constructions on genre are clearly demonstrated.Günthner's study is located at the very low end of the scale of generality:''reproaches'' are in classical pragmatics labelled ''speech acts'' (Searle 1969)rather than ''communicative genre,'' a term which connects her to sociolinguisticsand anthropological linguistics. One may wonder, however, whether thisamplification of terminology is necessary.
Britta Mondorf's ''Genre effects in the replacement of reflexives by particles''is again a very sound diachronic and diatopic study of three resultativeconstructions, which can be formed either with a reflexive or a particle such as''to brace oneself'' vs. ''to brace up.'' She quantitatively relates the occurrencesof the alternative structures in different text types, in written vs. spokenEnglish, and in British vs. American English. Her empirical data show thatparticle constructions are winning ground at the expense of the reflexive oneach of the studied dimensions, especially in spoken informal language and infictional texts. Only religious and scientific genres have not as yet followedthis general trend, as they are highly conventionalised and therefore ratherconservative.
Johannes Kabatek, Philipp Obrist & Valentina Vincis' most insightful article''Clause linkage techniques as a symptom of 'discourse traditions':Methodological issues and evidence from Romance languages'' links the evolutionof specific constructions with a study of cross-genre variation. In other wordsa diachronic study is fine-tuned by a synchronic cross-section according todiscourse communities. The contribution is based on discourse tradition theory(Koch 1997, Oesterreicher 1997, Coseriu 1988 and Schlieben-Lange 1983) whichassumes that utterances are not only shaped by the grammar of a language, butalso ''by concrete utterances that have already been produced: utterances thatare part of the tradition of a community, or discourse traditions'' (p. 250). Theauthors present a quantitative study on clause linking techniques using aspecialized historical corpus of Romance texts which exemplifies that synchronicvariation must not be excluded as ''noise'' from diachronic studies, but that amore fine-grained genre analysis, which takes into account the communicativecontexts, is the more appropriate way to cope with the complexity of languageevolution.
Rolf Kreyer's paper, ''Syntactic constructions as a means of spatialrepresentation in fictional prose,'' discusses six fronted locativeconstructions, which, in line with cognitive perception theories, mirror thenatural gaze of an observer. The quantitative analysis demonstrates that despitethe differences in frequency of occurrence, the functionality of the sixconstructions in terms of information status and textual function are rathersimilar. This finding is very interesting as it seems to provide empiricalevidence of synonymy, which is ''banned'' in a number of syntactic theories (e.g.Goldberg 1995). Kreyer, however, does not follow this line of thought, butconcludes, amongst other things, that some of these ''constructions contribute toour conception of the genre prose fiction'' (pp. 299-300). This, in turn, issurprising as a comparative study with other narrative genres is missing.Moreover, one may wonder whether ''prose fiction'' would not be bettersubcategorised into further literary sub-genres like children's writings, crimefiction or romance, etc. If we want to render conclusions about general ''prosefiction'' valid, a truly balanced corpus, which is able to level out authorialidiosyncrasies, the variety of implied readers and specifics of subjects - ifsuch a thing is possible at all - must certainly be larger than the sectionlabelled ''prose fiction'' in the BNC, on which the study is based.
In contrast, Susanne Jantos' ''Agreement in educated Jamaican English: Acorpus-based study of spoken usage in ICE-Jamaica,'' gives a convincing exampleof a solid study on a higher level of generality. This quantitative studythoroughly explores subject-verb agreement in three spoken genres of educatedJamaican English, namely a) direct conversation, b) class lessons and c)broadcast news, and relates the morphosyntactic variable to several factors,such as conceptual agreement (i.e. implicit plurals in abstract singular nouns),proximity principle (i.e. agreement with the nearest noun instead of the subjectnoun), contractions ('there is' vs. 'there's'; 'don't' vs. 'do not') anddifferent behaviour of auxiliaries and full lexical verbs. Although, as could beexpected, grammatical agreement was found to increase with increasing formality,the observed patterns are not evenly distributed. Genre characteristics, such asa higher percentage of heavy subject constructions and collective nouns inbroadcast news, or of indefinite pronouns and the influence of Jamaican Creolein direct conversation seem influential, so that one cannot speak of generaltrends of linguistic development, but of genre-dependent changes.
The last article by Theresa Heyd, '''I know you guys hate forwards': Addresspronouns in digital folklore,'' chronicles a quantitative study on the emergentgenre of email hoaxes. After a short introduction into the concept of digitalfolklore, Heyd elaborates on the form and functions of address in email hoaxes.The popularity of certain oral, informal addresses such as ''you guys'' isinterpreted as a solution to a specific communicative requirement. The author istherefore wisely reluctant to postulate a language change on its way, but arguesthat emergent digital genres possibly offer oral forms a first access point intothe written mode. From there, it may spread into other genres, as genres areinterwoven and interacting like the inhabitants of an ecological environment.Although overall a very stimulating study, the link between her theoretical andempirical expositions becomes more convincing if one also refers to her 2008monograph.
EVALUATION
Without a doubt, the volume in its entirety is inspiring. The intellectualstandard is high, and there are only a few minor flaws in individual papers. Twopoints may be interesting to dwell on a bit further: First, as mentioned above,the articles implicitly circle around one question in different guises: theright scale of generalisation. As happens with traditional fuzzy concepts suchas genre, it is difficult to delineate and take into account all influentialfactors, which, to make matters still more complicated, may vary from case tocase. To show that the scale of ''genre'' may successfully change according to theresearch question is one of the major positive side effects of this volume. Eventhough Saussure teaches us that language is arbitrary, and in cognitivelinguistics we believe that words are but pointers to experiences and thatmeaning is situated and not stable, once we do research, linguists tend to thinkthat terminology ought to capture an everlasting ontology. The present volume,instead, offers a more dynamic, and, in my opinion, a more realistic view on howto treat categories which are intuitively easy to identify but logically hard tograsp.
Second, looking at the definition of genre as ''patterned practice'' of ''socialaction'' (p. 10) or ''sedimented patterns, [...] which are part of [one's]communicative knowledge'' (p. 197), or Virtanen's view of text/discourse types as''heuristics that facilitate discourse production and interpretation'' (p. 54), ananalogy can be drawn to psycho-social explanations for formulaic language as''one of several solutions to a non-linguistic problem'' (Wray 2008: 21). Seen inthis light it is interesting to note that cognitive concepts in phraseology andgenre studies seem to converge, even though genre embraces a much largerlinguistic unit. The case of Boyle's Experimental Essay (as described in Gotti'sarticle) even shows that not only lexical sequences but also genres may be''quoted.'' On the other hand, the volume points to the fact that this analogy hashardly ever been drawn and that genre studies operate as yet independently fromphraseology. Accordingly, references to the works of Kuiper (e.g. Kuiper 1996),for instance, who has been working on the interface between phraseology andgenre studies for years, are missing. It is therefore a desideratum for thefuture to bring these two research fields together.
The articles are all written in an accessible style, so that the publication issuitable not only for experts, but also for students of linguistics. It isrecommendable to all who want to broaden their horizons and embark on linguisticstudies at the borders of traditional sub-disciplines.
REFERENCES
Coseriu, Eugenio. 1988. Sprachkompetenz. Grundzüge der Theorie des Sprechens.Tübingen: Francke.
Goldberg, Adele E. 1995. Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach toArgument Structure. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.
Grice, Paul. 1957. ''Meaning.'' Philosophical Review 66. 377-88.
Heyd, Theresa. 2008. Email Hoaxes: Form, Function, Genre Ecology. (Pragmatics &Beyond New Series 174). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Jacobson, Roman. 1960. ''Linguistics and Poetics.'' In Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.).Style in Language. New York: MIT Press. 350-377.
Koch, Peter. 1997. ''Diskurstraditionen. Zu ihrem sprachtheoretischen Status undihrer Dynamik.'' In Barbara Frank, Thomas Haye & Doris Tophinke (eds.), Gattungenmittelalterlicher Schriftlichkeit. (Script Oralia 99). Tübingen: Gunter Narr. 43-79.
Kuiper, Koenraad. 1996. Smooth Talkers: The Linguistic Performance ofAuctioneers and Sportscasters. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Miller, Carolyn R. 1984. ''Genre as social action.'' Quarterly Journal of Speech70. 151-167.
Oesterreicher, Wulf. 1997. ''Zur Fundierung von Diskurstraditionen.'' In BarbaraFrank, Thomas Haye & Doris Tophinke (eds.), Gattungen mittelalterlicherSchriftlichkeit. (Script Oralia 99). Tübingen: Gunter Narr. 19-41.
Puschmann, Cornelius. 2010. The Corporate Blog as an Emerging Genre ofComputer-Mediated Communication: Features, Constraints, Discourse Situation.(Göttinger Schriften zur Internetforschung.) Göttingen: UniversitätsverlagGöttingen.
Schlieben-Lange, Brigitte. 1983. Traditionen des Sprechens. Elemente einerpragmatischen Sprachgeschichtsschreibung. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.
Schulz von Thun, Friedemann. 1981. Miteinander reden: Störungen und Klärungen.Psychologie der zwischenmenschlichen Kommunikation. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1981.
Searle, John R. 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Virtanen, Tuija. 1992. ''Issues of text typology: Narrative - a 'basic' type oftext?'' Text 12. 293-310.
Wray, Alison. 2008. Formulaic Language: Pushing the Boundaries. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Sixta Quassdorf holds a Lizentiat (equivalent to M.A.) from Basel University in English philology, general linguistics and philosophy. She has a broad interest in linguistics ranging from philosophical, historical, formal-theoretical to pragmatic and usage-based issues. She has been collaborator with several research projects at the University of Basel and is doing her PhD in English linguistics on historical phraseology.
Page Updated: 27-Jul-2011
|