15.3283, Sum: Formula for Addressing Absent Reply

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LINGUIST List: Vol-15-3283. Mon Nov 22 2004. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 15.3283, Sum: Formula for Addressing Absent Reply                                                                                                                                                                     

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1)
Date: 22-Nov-2004
From: Jan Lindström < jan.k.lindstrom at helsinki.fi >
Subject: Formula for Addressing Absent Reply 
 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 16:53:34
From: Jan Lindström < jan.k.lindstrom at helsinki.fi >
Subject: Formula for Addressing Absent Reply 
 

Regarding query http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-2560.html#1

I am sorry that it has taken all this time, but I have eventually had the
opportunity to sit down and summarize the replies to my query about formula
(rituals, idioms, locutions) that in different languages may be used to
address the interactional problem of not receiving a response, for example,
to a greeting or a question.

In the terms of conversation analysis, we could say that the problem
concerns adjacency pairs: a speaker who has produced a recognizable first
pair-part move does not receive a presupposed second pair-part move from
another speaker. Because it seems to be a strong social convention that
greetings and questions be responded to, I have got interested in whether
language users have developed routinized ways of dealing with situations
where the other party fails to behave in accordance with the social
convention. To map such routines could be one way of getting culturally
coded evidence that make the existence of adjacency pairs in the
systematics of turn-taking especially visible.

The query resulted in 19 replies which concerned 15 different languages or
varieties: Danish, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Low-Lithuanian,
Marathi (India), Persian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Romanian, Swedish
(standard & Finland Sw.), Tunisian Arabic, and Turkish. I send my thanks
and best regards to all of you who replied; a list of the names of these
helpful people is provided in the end of this summary.


0. CLASSIFYING THE DATA

There are certainly several ways of sorting the expressions I have had the
opportunity to gather. The presentation below provides one possible
classification. I have principally sorted the formula (idioms, locutions)
according to what they seem to highlight in the non-responding persons
conduct; possible reasons for why a person fails to respond, or more
general comments to the other person's conduct and its effect. Thus, we get
the following categories of expressions:

a. REFERENCE TO A PERSON'S ABILITY TO SPEAK
b. REFERENCE TO A PERSON'S ABILITY TO HEAR
c. REFERENCE TO A PERSON'S ATTENTION OR PRESENCE
d. REFERENCE TO A PERSON'S SOCIAL ABILITY OR INVOLVEMENT

Examples from the different categories are provided below.


1. a. REFERENCE TO A PERSON'S ABILITY TO SPEAK

It seems to be fairly usual to refer to a speakers TONGUE, or rather, a
speaker's lack of the tongue, as a possible reason for silence. The common
English locution is thus:

- (What's the matter?) Cat got your tongue?

I do not dare say anything decisive about the origins of this expression;
one source says it might be originally French although not used exactly in
the same form and funtion ('Je donne ma langue au chat'). It is noteworthy,
however, that the same locution seems to have spread to several languages;
it was noted in Brazilian Portuguese:

- O gato comeu a sua lingua?

and Finnish:

- Onko kissa vienyt kielen?

Also other animals can have 'taken' the tongue. Besides the cat, a rooster
could allegedly had gotten the tongue in Finnish, and in Turkish the tongue
might be affected by a dog or a wasp ('Has the dog eaten your tongue?',
'Was your tongue bitten by a wasp?').

Also other kinds of references to a non-functional or a lost tongue seem to
be popular; in German

- Da beisst du dir wohl die Zunge ab, als dass du antwortest!? ('You then
prefer to bite off your tongue rather than to reply?')

in Tunisian Arabic:

- Fi:nu lsanik? ('Where is your tongue?')

in Swedish:

- Har du svalt tungan? ('Have you swallowed your tongue?')
- Har du tappat tungan? ('Have you lost your tongue?')

Instead of the tongue, the problem may be the mouth. Thus, in Marathi one
could say 'Did someone stitch your mouth?'. Or in Romanian, with a
reference to not greeting, one can comment both not raising one's hat and
not saying anything:

- Buna ziua, caciula, ca stapanul n-are gura ('Good afternoon, hat, does
your owner have a mouth?')

In Swedish (Finland) one could also use the figurative expression 'ha
mjölet i munnen' ('to have flour in the mouth').

More general references to a person's unability to speak are also recorded,
thus from Swedish:

- Har du tappat talförmågan / målföret? ('Have you lost your speaking
ability?')

and German:

- Da biste sprachlos!? ('You are unable to speak?')

In sum, speaking is very often supposed to be impossible without the
tongue, which can be lost altogether or at least be affected by an injury.
Speaking may also be difficult if one is not able to open the mouth, or the
mouth is filled with something.


2. REFERENCE TO A PERSON'S ABILITY TO HEAR

Instead of referring to supposed problems with speech production, an issue
can be made of a possible hearing problem. In Danish one could ask if the
other person is deaf:

-Er du doev?

A similar strategy is possible in Marathi with a locution that translates
'Did ears break?' ('Have you become deaf?'). Reference to a hearing problem
can, apparently, motivate the following expression from Tunisian Arabic:

- Fi:n rtust? ('Where have you been diving?')

A very practical thing would, of course, be to ask whether the other person
has heard what was said; thus one could say in Marathi 'Did you hear?' or
'What am I saying?'.


3. REFERENCE TO A PERSON'S ATTENTION OR PRESENCE

If a person does not reply and possibly hear what has been said, one can
refer to the person's attention or presence in a more general fashion than
by referring to functionality of the speech productive and receptive
organs. Certain locutions in Marathi work in this fashion, translating
'Give attention here / Look at here'. Similarly, we have following examples
from Persian: 'What a reception / What an attention'.

Perhaps the following expression from a Low-Lithuanian dialect also belongs
to this general category:

- Ar matee kiaule su skombalel'o? ('Did you see a swine with a [little] bell?')

The locution possibly suggests that the person's attention is elsewhere,
apparently, focussed on some unexpected phenomenon.

The English expression 'Earth to NN' (for instance, 'Earth to Jim') is a
jocular variant in this category of formula; the person not responding is
considered to be off in outer space (cf. Earth to Eagle). This idiom is
probably spreading to other languages, for in Danish one could say:

- Jorden kalder NN. ('Earth is calling NN')

A related kind of metaphor between distance and presence/attention is used
in Tunisian Arabic:

- Essqifa twalit? 'Has the hall become longer?'

although in less cosmic terms.


4. REFERENCE TO A PERSON?S SOCIAL ABILITY OR INVOLVEMENT


>From distance in practice there is no great leap to referring to a social
or emotional distance between the interlocutors. General comments on the
non-responding person's conduct are certainly a common strategy, and can
vary from fairly neutral expressions to more figurative, even indecent and
insulting ones. To begin from the more neutral end, we may note two
expressions from German addressing an absent second pair-part greeting:

- Du hast aber auch schonmal besser gegruesst. ('Well you've greeted better
in the past, too!')

- Der kennt auch keinen mehr. ('Well he doesn't know anyone anymore either.')

Comments to silence after a question would include:

- Du hast es wohl nicht nötig (zu antworten)!? ('You don't seem to think
it's necessary (to reply)')

- Du bist ja so einsilbig? ('You are so one-syllabic.')

Some locutions refer to the insult one feels when the other party seems to
ignore him or her. The German 'he doesn't know anyone anymore' is one
variant of this, and this aspect is present also in the Greek:

- Mila mas kj as mi mas agapas. ('Talk to us even if you don't love us.')

The same applies to the Persian 'I am also a human being.'

More insulting expressions from the initiative taking speaker include the
Tunisian Arabic:

- Wijh ittapsi la yissabah la ymessi. ('Face of a plate does not either bid
good morning nor good afternoon/evening.')

or the French:

-Parle à mon cul, ma tête est malade. ('Speak to my ass, my head is ill.')

It seems generally that many of these expresions in this as well as in the
other categories can have a jocular connotation although they may be
literally dramatic or offensive things to say.

5. CONCLUSION

It was very interesting to be able to collect the types of expressions I
have exemplified above, partly because of the variety in the reference and
figurativeness of the locutions, partly because their very existence in
diverse languages manifests culturally coded awareness of basic turn-taking
principles. Clearly, the expressions have come into being because the
interactional problem of not receiving a response where this is strongly
projected is a central one. So central that the speaker may have a license
to comment on another person's failure to respond. Such a face threatening
move can perhaps be carried out in a little safer manner with the help of a
fixed, possibly even jocular, formula in the language.

However, a word of caution must be said. Some of the people who replied to
my query noted that (at least some of) the expressions above are perhaps
not a very nice thing to say to another person, and that they often
presuppose familiarity, or they are more likely to be addressed to children
than to adults. Of course, making remarks on somebody else's conduct is an
act of bringing up the other person and a display of "knowing better" -
certainly not a preferred way of behaving in a non-familiar context. A less
provacative way of dealing with the problem of getting no reply would be
just to repeat the greeting or the question; thus, the speaker will give a
second chance to the other party, and a possibility to remedy the problem.

Although I have tried to refrain from all too many conclusions when
presenting the particular formulas, since I lack the knowledge of many of
the languages discussed, I have yet made some. Please correct me if there
are any mistakes. I am also still interested in getting more data on the
subject: further examples and possible references to studies of this kind
are most welcome. I would also briefly like to complete my studies on this
subject matter with another query about two other kinds of conversational
formula; those addressing a not adequate response, and those addressing an
evident interruption of a speaker's turn. I will return to this topic in a
separate posting.

Last but not least, many many thanks to the persons in the list below.
Thank you for your help, and thank you readers of Linguist List for your
attention!

Jan Lindström

Associate Professor
Dept of Scandinavian languages and literature
University of Helsinki
Finland


Lits of contributors:

Ananda Lima (Brazilian Portugues)
Kim Schulte (German)
Kevin Caldwell (English)
Nancy Frishberg (English)
Meri Larjavaara (Finnish)
Ioana-Ruxandra Dascalu (Romanian)
Pierre-Aurélien Georges (French)
Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen (Danish)
Karl Reinhardt (English)
Nora Wiedenmann (German)
Aleksas Girdenis (Low-Lithuanian)
Emily M. Bender (English)
Dr. R. Sahragard (Persian)
Veena Dixit (Marathi)
Hitay Yukseker (Turkish)
Esma Maamouri Ghrib (Tunisian Arabic)
Alexis Dimitriadis (Greek)
Cajsa Ottesjö (Swedish [Sweden])
Peter Slotte (Swedish [Finland]) 

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics; Sociolinguistics





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