inquiry about flirtatious language

[Catie Berkenfield]

Just to add to this, Alan Radley wrote a chapter on the phenomenology of
flirting in Coupland & Gwyn's 2003 edited collection called "Discourse,
the Body, and Identity", published by Palgrave Macmillan. Radley
discussed the tensions between the ends and means of flirting and also
dealt with multiple notions of "play" which I imagine crossover with
Larry's mention of "as if".

Here's a brief review of that chapter from The Linguist List on October
12, 2003. Vol-14-2750.

"Using a phenomenological approach to how flirting is embodied, Radley
begins his chapter by arguing that flirting reflects a social valuation
of play, both as a lack of serious commitment in the act of flirtation
and in the sense that flirtation implies a refusal to hold meaning
static in a more general way. Drawing on Goffmans (1951) discussion of
categorical and expressive symbols, Radley argues that discourse and the
body are not really separable when it comes to flirting because flirting
creates a space in which the possible meaning of delight overlays a more
mundane meaning that is simultaneously experienced by a body. In
addition, the experience of flirting seems to require the
acknowledgement of the 
Other.
 Radley concludes that flirtation occurs
through simultaneous denotation and performance allowing the emergence
of non-discursive symbols that may, but do not have to, become
conventionalized."

To add to that original review, I think Radley meant that
"conventionalization" would only occur if acts of flirting were
"recognized" as such by the Other. And, in my view, in a deeper sense of
intersubjectivity that goes beyond behaviors like flirting to more basic
processes of recognition of difference in interaction, "intention" takes
on social value only if it is "recognized" as such.

Catie

Catie Berkenfield
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Linguistics
University of New Mexico

> Just a codicil on this: I don't think it's safe to infer that the
> flirter is ready to follow through on the flirtation if the flirtee
> gives him/her the appropriate uptake. It may be claimed that the
> flirter presents him/herself as having that intention, but flirting
> is often an end rather than a means. (The 'sexual intention' may
> well be part of the expression of interest, but again, there's often
> an "acts-as-if" pretense here.)
>
> larry