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Given Larry's and Catie's messages about speaker intention and listener
uptake, it called to mind that it may be useful to encase a discussion of
flirting within a framework of Jakobson-ian (football) semiotics, where
an analysis examines the expressive, conative and/or referential
functions of any message. Or, since the Jakobson paradigm gets a little
unwieldy at times, Silverstein's analysis of indexical presupposition and
entailments.<br><br>
erez<br><br>
<br><br>
At 11:12 AM 2/6/04, you wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Just to add to this, Alan Radley
wrote a chapter on the phenomenology of<br>
flirting in Coupland & Gwyn's 2003 edited collection called
"Discourse,<br>
the Body, and Identity", published by Palgrave Macmillan.
Radley<br>
discussed the tensions between the ends and means of flirting and
also<br>
dealt with multiple notions of "play" which I imagine crossover
with<br>
Larry's mention of "as if".<br><br>
Here's a brief review of that chapter from The Linguist List on
October<br>
12, 2003. Vol-14-2750.<br><br>
"Using a phenomenological approach to how flirting is embodied,
Radley<br>
begins his chapter by arguing that flirting reflects a social
valuation<br>
of play, both as a lack of serious commitment in the act of
flirtation<br>
and in the sense that flirtation implies a refusal to hold meaning<br>
static in a more general way. Drawing on Goffmans (1951) discussion
of<br>
categorical and expressive symbols, Radley argues that discourse and
the<br>
body are not really separable when it comes to flirting because
flirting<br>
creates a space in which the possible meaning of delight overlays a
more<br>
mundane meaning that is simultaneously experienced by a body. In<br>
addition, the experience of flirting seems to require the<br>
acknowledgement of the Other. Radley concludes that flirtation
occurs<br>
through simultaneous denotation and performance allowing the
emergence<br>
of non-discursive symbols that may, but do not have to, become<br>
conventionalized."<br><br>
To add to that original review, I think Radley meant that<br>
"conventionalization" would only occur if acts of flirting
were<br>
"recognized" as such by the Other. And, in my view, in a deeper
sense of<br>
intersubjectivity that goes beyond behaviors like flirting to more
basic<br>
processes of recognition of difference in interaction,
"intention" takes<br>
on social value only if it is "recognized" as such.<br><br>
Catie<br><br>
Catie Berkenfield<br>
Ph.D. Candidate<br>
Department of Linguistics<br>
University of New Mexico<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Just a codicil on this: I don't
think it's safe to infer that the<br>
flirter is ready to follow through on the flirtation if the flirtee<br>
gives him/her the appropriate uptake. It may be claimed that the<br>
flirter presents him/herself as having that intention, but flirting<br>
is often an end rather than a means. (The 'sexual intention' may<br>
well be part of the expression of interest, but again, there's
often<br>
an "acts-as-if" pretense here.)<br><br>
larry</blockquote>
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Levon<br>
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