17.492, Review: Discourse/Pragmatics: Tannen (2005)

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Subject: 17.492, Review: Discourse/Pragmatics: Tannen (2005)

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1)
Date: 13-Feb-2006
From: Francesca Vigo < vigof at unict.it >
Subject: Conversational Style 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 21:26:09
From: Francesca Vigo < vigof at unict.it >
Subject: Conversational Style 
 

AUTHOR: Deborah Tannen,
TITLE: Conversational Style
SUBTITLE: Analyzing Talk among Friends, New Edition 
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2005
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-2216.html 

Francesca Vigo, Department of Modern Philology, University of 
Catania

DESCRITPION OF THE BOOK

Deborah Tannen's book is the revised version of her 20-year-old 
seminal best seller ''Conversational Style''. It consists of an 
introduction, 7 chapters, one coda chapter, 4 Appendixes, one list of 
reference, two Indexes. A Preface explains the reasons for this new 
2005 edition.

Introduction
The author's aim is to explain the meaning of style with reference to 
conversation, specifying that it is not to be understood in terms of 
oppositive distinctions such as good/bad; whereas it concerns the 
rules, the patterns and the habits which determine and characterize 
human communication.

Following Scollon's (1982) ''double-bind'' concept, Tannen explains 
how talking is a conflictuous activity since it pushes the speakers 
towards two antithetic needs: the need to be independent and the 
need to be part of a group. These mutually exclusive needs involve 
speakers and their relationships in a continuous balancing activity. 
People react differently and conversations styles are examples of the 
different ways in which the speakers deal with this double need. 

The author pursues her aim through the analysis of a two-hour 
conversation among friends which occurred during a Thanksgiving 
dinner in 1998. 

Tannen strongly stresses the importance of what can be defined 
the 'relativity of style'. Starting from Sapir's statement about the 
superiority of variation over the objective behaviour she points out 
how settings are crucial in the development of a conversation and for 
the analysis that may follow. The same participants might behave 
slightly or deeply differently according to the situations they find 
themselves in. Conversational styles are personal and unpredictable. 
They prove necessary in order to analyse and comprehend the 
linguistic choices that help or hinder the construction and the 
communication of meaning in interaction. As a consequence of the 
non-homogeneity of our world the author stresses the virtual need our 
society has to investigate conversational styles in so far as they might 
disclose unexpected patterns which people coming from different 
backgrounds follow interacting with others. Thinking that conversation 
is a homogeneous instinctive linguistic behaviour may lead to totally 
ineffective interaction. Conversely, being able to recognize different 
conversational styles or at least being aware of the possibility of 
different conversational styles makes the interaction between people 
belonging to different groups possible and potentially successful. The 
strength of spoken discourse will be consequently unveiled and, as 
the author plainly hopes, will allow it to stand on the same level of the 
written one.

Chapter two. Conversational style: Theoretical Background
This long chapter consists of 14 sections of various length. 

Starting off from the assertion that discourse analysis is one of the key 
interests of linguistics and that it comprises also conversational 
analysis, the author argues that, since the way conversation is often 
dealt with does not shed light on it, it is now time to turn to a possible 
different mode of analysis which blends together discourse analysis, 
sociolinguistics and those communication studies which focus on 
communicative style. In doing so, she refers to the works of John 
Gumperz and Robin Lakoff.

Before dealing with conversational style the author pauses to reflect 
upon the concept of style and provides definitions and references for 
a deeper understanding of the term and of its conceptual area of 
reference. Her reflections originate from the definition Ervin -Tripp 
proposed in 1972 which defines style as ''the co-occurrent changes at 
various levels of linguistic structure within one language'' similarly to 
what Hymes identifies as register. The author's use of the term style 
comprises both perspectives and refers also to that mix of devices, 
which Ervin-Tripp defines as alternation, that speakers use in different 
contexts. Style is not, however, a special way of speaking as opposed 
to an (im)probable plain way of doing it. Every spoken activity is said 
or done in some way. This way is the style of that action, it implies 
choices which consciously or unconsciously are aimed to an effect. 

How is style acquired? Being a necessary characteristic of the spoken 
activity, style is not a particular skill taught and/or purposefully learnt, 
it is rather an integral part of linguistic knowledge. To give evidence of 
this, the author refers to the works by Ervin-Tripp, Mitchell-Kernan, 
Ochs and Schieffelin, Fillmore and others. 

The concept of style is also put in relation with that of strategy. 
According to Lakoff (1973) three basic principles/rules underlie 
specific linguistic choices, namely distance, deference and 
camaraderie. These lie along a continuum and the choice of one of 
them constructs a strategy that eventually makes up a style. 
Conversational styles stem from the use of some linguistic devices 
suggested by these principles. This three-fold system implies linguistic 
choices at all levels: lexical, syntactical, stylistic and of register. 

After presenting Lakoff's system the author widens this theoretical 
reference background to introduce the work of Goffman, its focus on 
his concept of deference, which is more generally meant 
as 'politeness'. References to several scholars are made, among 
which, Brown and Levinson (1987) and their identification of negative 
and positive faces; Brown and Gillian (1960) and their concept 
of 'solidarity', i.e. one of the two fundamental elements for the analysis 
of social life, the other being power. Tannen also refers to the notion 
of indirectness; to the 'cline of person' proposed by Becker & Oka 
(1975); to Scollon's (1982) crucial description of communication as a 
double bind; and eventually to certain features of discourse grouped 
by Chafe (1982) under the headings ''integration vs. fragmentation'' 
and ''detachment vs involvement''. With this final shift towards 
discourse features the author highlights both how they disclose the 
possible personal involvement in the communicative activity and how 
the accomplishment of closeness in human relationships is not always 
to be considered a positive issue. With the explanatory image of the 
two porcupines borrowed from Schopenhauer the author states that 
getting close is a danger and a need and therefore every act of 
communication must fulfill this double, conflictuous condition.
Conversational style and human interaction are thus strictly related. 

Similarly the linguistic strategies that constitute the conversational 
style arise in response to those used by the others in the interaction. 
In this part of this chapter the author gives evidence of how this 
virtually happens in conversations and what is hidden behind the 
linguistic choices performed by the speakers/participants. Together 
with the linguistic strategies speakers do use frames, subordinate 
categories within which meaning has to be interpreted. With reference 
to Bateson (1972), Van Valin (1977) and Agar (1975) the author 
explains how no meaning can be interpreted except by reference to a 
super-ordinate message about how the communication is intended. 
Together with Gumperz (1982) she demonstrates how speakers 
signal the metacommunicative frame they operate within by using 
paralinguistic and prosodic features. These features are not 
universally shared and fail to work causing misunderstanding 
especially in cross-cultural contexts. 

According to the author the ability to participate appropriately in a 
discussion of any sort depends upon the ability to signal and 
comprehend the relations between elements within utterances and 
across utterances (p.35). 

The study of conversational style is thus mainly the study of the many 
existing ways of signalling how an utterance is meant. Style is not 
planned, it results from choices which fulfill both the need for 
involvement and the need not to impose. 

In the last part of chapter two the author starts to focus more on 'her' 
conversation analysis. The author also presents a list of the features 
used by the speakers which indicate that the load is on interpersonal 
involvement. Among the others we find: topic, pacing, narrative 
strategies and expressive paralinguistics.

However, all of these features can express - or, in Gumperz's terms, 
put the signalling load on - both involvement and rapport. 
Consequently, the author proposes two ways to define the styles 
used by the speakers: high-involvement and high-considerateness 
style. 

The description of the procedure and the analytic method is the topic 
of the following paragraph. The author reminds the reader how logistic 
details are important for such an analysis in so far as they might be 
motivating or somehow hindering factors. 

The interpretative phase follows the recording and the transcription 
and it might pose even more problems because, as any interpretation, 
it is totally subjective. The author is not deterred by this, and proposes 
three replies to those who do not trust interpretation: 1. the multiplicity 
of interpretations; 2. internal and external evidence; 3. the ''aha'' 
factor; the latter being the assertive comments made by the readers 
on hearing her explanation during the playback. 

The last paragraph of the chapter introduces the several topics of the 
conversation and an apology for not having included a complete 
transcription of the conversation but only some key segments.

Chapter Three. The Participants in Thanksgiving Dinner.
Chapter three is a virtual description of the dinner and the participants 
in terms of their national origin, present occupation, relation and 
bonds with the host and with the other guests. They mainly differ for 
their cultural background and for the length of their mutual 
acquaintance/friendship. A diagram showing where everybody was 
sitting around the table is also part of the description.

A picture of the participants' attitudes and behaviours during the 
dinner is evidently showed in some tables which present the results of 
calculations concerning the number of conversational contributions 
and the number of words per episode.

Chapter Four. Linguistic devices in Conversational Style
Chapter four is where the author's reflections on expectations and 
their possible final confirmation are presented. Providing ample 
examples to give evidence of her points the author shows how 
communicative behaviours change according to changes in some 
issues of the conversation as for example when the conversation 
shifted from a personal to a more impersonal topic. However, changes 
were not always homogeneous: some topics proved reassuring for 
some participants but not for all of them. 

>From the precise analyses carried out by the author it is clear that the 
choice of both what and how to tell something was not mutually 
shared. Besides topic shifts the author points out other crucial 
conversational issues/strategies such as the enthusiasm constraint, 
the 'Machine-Gun question', overlap and pace, the mutual revelation, 
the bonding through high-involvement devices, the expressive 
phonology and intonation, persistence, tolerance for noise vs silence, 
all of which richly supported by examples, transcriptions and the 
participants' comments and feedback.

Chapter Five. Narrative Strategies
Integrally related to the conversational devices analysed in the 
previous chapter are the narrative strategies the author deals with in 
this chapter. From her definition of narrative as a prototype she 
maintains that there are several instances of talk that are somehow 
but not entirely similar to narrative. However, aiming at isolating 
segments for her analysis, the author chooses to consider 
narratives/stories (here used as synonymous terms) only those 
accounts that strictly adhere to the definition of narrative as a story 
which recounts events that occurred in the past (p.123). On the other 
hand, since considering the sheer number of stories could be 
misleading, the author calculates also the number of the narrative 
turns as a percentage of the total number of turns. Together with 
some other items, such as the number of words, these figures are 
displayed statistically in a table which proves revealing. 

The stories told during the Thanksgiving dinner are then grouped by 
the author into wholes characterized by strategies or peculiarities. The 
first category to be presented, the story rounds, refers to stories told 
in sequences, a typical feature of conversations as noted by ethno-
methodologists (Ryave 1978) which does not necessarily mean 
similarity of narrative strategies. Length of stories, expressive or 
understated evaluation and response, focusing immediately on the 
main point, use of intonation to covey meaning or as a cohesive tool, 
cooperative vs. impatient prompting, and cultural differences are some 
of the items illustrated by Tannen, who provides a wealth of examples 
and transcriptions to support her claims, to clarify what narrative styles 
are being used and how they can trigger or hinder the conversation 
flow.

Chapter Six. Irony and Joking
This chapter focuses on some distinctive aspects of any person's style 
in relation to a continuum that goes from sarcasm to irony. According 
to the author the analyses of the linguistic, paralinguistic and 
discourse choices made by the speakers to express irony and joking 
and the way they use them in the Thanksgiving dinner conversation 
add further facets to the description of the speakers' conversational 
styles. Tannen virtually counts the ironic or humorous turns of each 
participant to design a table in which ironic turns are also converted 
into percentages of the total number of turns. However, the author 
clearly reminds us that the way the members of the group used irony 
and/or humour is not necessarily their own or a standard form. On the 
other hand their styles of humour and irony, besides being an 
aggregating device, represent what they deemed appropriate for the 
occasion.

Chapter Seven. Summary of Style Features.
In this summarizing chapter the author picks up some of the linguistic 
devices that constitute conversational style emerged during the 
analyses. Quoting Pittenger et al. (1960) the author stresses that, no 
matter how many items have been found, there will always be more to 
be found. A list of the dimensions discussed previously is provided. 
She also clarifies that what has been examined is not a set of discrete 
phenomena but rather dimensions along which conversational 
mechanisms operate (p.181). In the last part of the chapter the author 
tries to define what conversational style is and what its specific 
features are. Unexpectedly, there is no one single definition of 
conversational style nor is it possible to list its features exhaustively. 
The author thus sums up her results and comments. She firmly states 
that conversational style is made up of the specific use of specific 
linguistic devices chosen by the participants with reference to wider 
operating conversational strategies, and also that the study of 
conversational style is no more nor less than the study of 
communication because they share the same features and the same 
conventions. Understanding conversation style means identifying the 
system that links aspects of discourse realization to each other and 
also links this linguistic system to other aspects of human behaviour. 
In this sense, states the author, the study of conversation is the study 
of discourse coherence (p. 189).

Chapter Eight. The study of Coherence in discourse.
A perfect conversation is a conversation in which mutual 
understanding is achieved. Starting from this assumption the author 
pauses on the satisfaction that a shared pace or rhythm may convey 
and on how a satisfactory conversation is a proof of connection with 
other people. It gives a sense of coherence in the world. If, as Becker 
maintains (1995), an aesthetic response is the one in which discourse 
constraints are perceived as coherent, then, the author argues, a 
successful conversation is an aesthetic experience. Clashes in one's 
own conversational strategies and style result in the interruption of the 
conversation, as the author shows by means of examples taken from 
her analyses. This is mainly the problem of cross-cultural 
communication which hinders the creation of a homogeneous 
speaking whole. 

In this chapter the author succeeds in explaining how a shared and 
coherent perception of the world among the various participants in a 
conversation is needed for the communication to flow. Conversations 
become for her epic poetic performances which can be studied in the 
light of an aesthetics of conversation in the spirit and tradition that up 
to now has been applied to literature only. Surprisingly Tannen 
parallels literary language and conversation on the basis of their way 
of building on features that depend, for their effect, on what is called 
subjective knowledge (Havelock 1963; Ong 1967). Face-to-face 
conversation like literature manages variously to touch the 
audience/reader by means of personal/subjective involvement unlike 
what expository prose pursues, i.e. convincing audiences and readers 
without involvement. Hence the author strongly suggests new trends 
for future research to be based on elucidating the relationships among 
various discourse genres, especially the one between casual 
conversation and literary discourse. For this purpose she lists a set of 
features identified in literary language which seem to be basic to 
conversation too. Among others she proposes 3 main groupings: 
rhythm, surface linguistic features, contextualization (ellipsis, figures of 
speech, imagery and detail) and demonstrates, by means of examples 
and references to literature, how they can be retrieved in 
conversations. Putting her insights in relation to Friedrich's revision of 
the Whorf hypothesis she concludes this investigation of coherence in 
discourse asserting that it is an enquiry into the nature of human 
cognition and communication. 

Chapter Nine. Coda: Taking the concepts into the Present.
In this final chapter the author sums up what has happened during the 
twenty years since the book's original publication.

She concentrates on some of the issues she raised in the book and 
describes how they have developed to become cornerstones of her 
approach to language in interaction. The issues she focuses on are 
the ambiguity and polysemy of conversational strategies, the interplay 
of power and solidarity and the linguistic framing of meaning in 
interaction.

Eventually she provides an overview of some of her books that can be 
considered natural widenings of some chapters of this book. From 
That's not what I meant (1986) and Talking Voices: Repetition, 
Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse (1989) arisen from 
the assumptions presented in chapter eight to You Just Don't 
Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (1990) where the 
debate is widened up to comprise issues on gender and language, to 
the more technical volume Gender and Discourse (1994). Her most 
recent books examine conversational styles in workplaces - Talking 
from 9 to 5 (1994) -, the role of agonism in public discourses - The 
Argument culture (1998) and the conversations among adult family 
members - I Only Say This Because I Love You (2001) -.

CRITICAL EVALUATION

Conversational Style is surely a pleasant read. It presents in an 
extremely clear way several fundamental issues of conversational 
analysis, a framework for analysing cross-cultural communication, and 
it manages also to highly stimulate the reader's personal reflections on 
the topic. 

The simplicity with which some crucial issues are dealt with is probably 
functional to one of the author's aims, i.e. to widely raise the awareness 
of those who work within the scope of the disciplines dealing with 
human behaviour who are not necessarily linguists. The author's 
strong belief that a better knowledge of the conversational strategies 
and the acknowledgement of conversational style may help to pursue 
and build successful relationships leads her to repeat some basic 
concepts quite often, whereas she dwells perhaps not enough on the 
theoretical background which supports her claims. Keeping in mind 
possible non-linguist readers some references or quotations may 
result difficult to understand. Key concepts are, at times, too simply 
mentioned. In the central analytic part, while on the one hand 
examples and evidence of claims are necessary and interesting, on 
the other they slow the reading down and make it difficult to follow the 
descriptive flow. The absence of the full transcription to refer to is a 
solution that sometimes proves demanding for the reader.

However, the aim to re-evaluate conversation as a fundamental text 
type worth analysing for the incredible amount of information on the 
human behaviours in interaction it provides, is fully accomplished. By 
paralleling it to literary language and drawing the reader's attention 
towards the many strategies and styles that make up a conversation, 
the author perfectly succeeds in making the audience aware of the 
many facets of conversation and of the key role it could play within the 
more ambitious process of understanding cross-cultural 
communication.

REFERENCES

Agar, Michael (1975) Cognition and events. Sociocultural Dimensions 
of Language Use, ed. Mary Sanches & Ben Blount, (1975), 41-56. 
New York: Academic.

Bateson, Gregory, (1972) Steps to an ecology of mind. New York: 
Ballantine.

Becker, A. L., ed. (1995) Beyond Translation: Essays toward a 
modern philology. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Becker A. L. & I Gusti Ngurah Oka (1995) Person in Kawi: Exploration 
of an elementary semantic dimension. In Becker A. L. (1995) 109-139.

Brown, Penelope & Levinson, Stephen (1987) Politeness: Some 
Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge : Cambridge University 
Press.

Brown, Roger & Gilman, Albert (1960) The Pronouns of Power and 
Solidarity. In Sebeok, Thomas (1960), 253-276.

Chafe, Wallace L. (1982) Integration and involvement in Speaking, 
Writing and Oral Literature. In Tannen, Deborah ed. (1982), 35-53.

Corum, Claudia, Smith-Clark T. Cedric & Weiser, Ann, eds. (1973) 
Papers from the Ninth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics 
Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Department of Linguistics.

Ervin-Tripp, Susan (1972) On Sociolinguistic Rules: Alternation and 
Co-occurrence. In Gumperz, John & Hymes, Dell (1972), 213-250.

Ervin-Tripp, Susan & Mitchell-Kernana, Claudia, eds. (1977) Child 
Discourse. New York: Academic.

Fillmore, Lily Wong (1976) The Second Time Around. PhD 
Dissertation. Stanford University.

Fillmore, Charles, Kempler, Daniel & Wang, William S.-Y., eds. (1979) 
Individual Differences in Language Ability and Language Behaviour. 
New York: Academic.

Fillmore, Lily Wong (1979) Individual Differences in Language 
Acquisition. In Fillmore, Charles, Kempler, Daniel & Wang, William S.-
Y. (1979), 203-228.

Goffman, Erving (1967) Interaction Ritual. Garden City, NY: 
Doubleday.

Gumperz, John J., ed. (1982a) Language and Social Identity. 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gumperz John J. (1982b) Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press.

Gumperz, John J. & Hymes, Dell, eds. (1972) Direction in 
Sociolinguistics. New York: Holt.

Havelock, Eric (1963) Preface to Plato. Cambridge, MA: Harvard 
University Press.

Lakoff, Robin (1973) The Logic of Politeness, or minding your p's and 
q's. In Corum, Claudia, Smith-Clark T. Cedric & Weiser, Ann (1973), 
292-305.

Ochs, Elinor (1982) Talking to Children in Western Samoa. Language 
in Society 11, no. 1:77-104.

Ochs, Elinor & Schieffelin, Bambi B., eds. (1979) Developmental 
Pragmatics. New York: Academic.

Ong, Walter J. (1967) The Presence of the Word. New Haven. 
CT:Yale University Press.

Pittenger, Robert E., Hockett, Charles F. & Danehy, John J. (1960) 
The First Five Minutes. Ithaca, NY: Paula Martineau.

Schieffelin, Bambi B. (1979) How Kaluli Children Learn What to Say, 
What to Do, and How to Feel: An ethnographic Study of the 
Development of Communicative Competence. PhD Dissertation, 
Columbia University.

Scollon, Ron (1982) The Machine Stops: Silence in the Metaphor of 
Malfunction. In Tannen, Deborah ed., (1982), 335-349.

Sebeok, Thomas (1960) Style in Language. Cambridge MA: MIT 
Press.

Tannen, Deborah, ed. (1982) Spoken and Written Language. 
Norwood, NJ: Albex.

Van Valin, Robert (1977) Meaning and Interpretation. Unpublished 
Manuscript. Temple University. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

I'm a researcher in English Language and Translation at the Faculty of 
Foreign Languages and Literatures - University of Catania/Modern 
Philology Dept. My research interests are conversation analysis, 
identity construction through language, World Englishes. My main 
current activity is also teaching undergraduate and BA students.





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