130 EXPLORATION: INVESTIGATING ENGLISH LANGUAGE Analyse Colleen McCants’ text below to ascertain the norms and conventions of appropriate, polite communication in Second Life. You should consider the following: q What pragmatic linguistic features does she draw attention to? q What evidence of Leech’s (1983) and Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness strategies (from B3) can you find in this training tutorial? Include in this an analysis of the broader communicative contextual features, including advice on body language and physical positioning of avatars. q How are these politeness norms for Second Life similar/different to face-to-face interaction? Politeness in Second Life (McCants 2009) Tutorial overview Use these guidelines to learn about Second Life etiquette. [. . .] Don’t walk into other avatars Bumping into others or, in general, clumsy navigation and communication are to be expected from new avatars. A simple ‘Sorry, I’m new’ will soften the response of others. Don’t be mistaken for a troublemaker, i.e., ‘griefer’, who has no intention of respecting residents, or you may find yourself barred from some regions. Practise navigating your avatar around with the keyboard controls and you will soon be able to avoid clumsy collisions. Don’t ask for a resident’s real life details, e.g., gender or name This is generally considered rude and won’t make you any friends! When you visit the University of Nottingham’s Web Campus, you are welcome to ask whether a person is associated with the University, and information may be volunteered at this point, however, you are not entitled to know. To find out if anyone from the IS Learning team is on the island, click on the telephone box in the sandbox area and you will be given a list of avatar names. Don’t make too much noise! Avoid shouting or speaking in CAPITAL LETTERS in local chat. If someone asks you to go away or seems to be ignoring you, don’t keep on pestering them. If you are using Voice, remember to turn off your microphone when you are listening. No one else wants to hear feedback or the sound of your breathing and sneezing. Don’t leave litter Don’t leave objects on other people’s land. If you do ‘rez’ anything [make an object appear], make sure you take it back into your Inventory or delete it when you have finished. Sandboxes are where you should be practising building and scripting, and you can find one of these on the University’s Web Campus. Even here, where objects you build will be deleted after two hours, try to tidy up after yourself so there is room for the next visitor. DOING POLITENESS 131 Political apologies Apologies provide good exploratory data for examining speech acts and politeness in action. We can draw attention to the performative speech act of ‘I apologise’ through use of the performative verb, and the use of ‘sorry-based units’, as in ‘I’m sorry’, as explicit illocutionary force-indicating device (IFIDs) for apologies, as intro- duced in A3. In collaborative work, Harris, Grainger and Mullany (2006) have presented a taxonomy for defining apologies, focusing upon apologies that take place in the public sphere, and the political arena in particular. Apologies in political contexts have proved to be a fruitful area of data collection in recent years. Harris, Grainger and Mullany (2006: 716) argue that we may well be living in what has been described in the mass media as the ‘age of the apology’. They start by drawing attention to the following text: Sorry Everybody (we tried) (signed) half of America This message was posted by James Zelten on a website entitled sorryeverybody.com, after George W. Bush was re-elected as President of the United States in 2004. The website became so popular that Zelten published a book of responses using a range of apologies from individuals worldwide. Interestingly, the book’s title, Sorry Every- body: An Apology to the World for the Re-election of George W. Bush, includes the two explicit IFIDs. Harris, Grainger and Mullany go on to present the following list of strategies which constitute apologies: 1 An illocutionary force indicating device (IFID) token: (‘sorry’, ‘apologise’) 2 An expression which indicates acceptance of responsibility and/or blame 3 An explanation or account 4 An offer of reparation 5 A promise of future forbearance Harris, Grainger and Mullany (2006: 721) The first two elements in the list, the IFID tokens and expressions of responsi- bility/blame, are regarded as compulsory. q Compile a list of recent occasions when you have apologised in your daily spoken interaction, online communication or written communication using the IFIDs of ‘apologise’ and/or ‘sorry’ and where you have received apologies from fellow interactants using these tokens. q How many of the above strategies were used? q Were you always to blame? q Did you always accept responsibility? q How many of the strategies in points 3–5 were present? Activity 3.2 J 132 EXPLORATION: INVESTIGATING ENGLISH LANGUAGE Now consider the following examples, particularly from the perspective of point 2, responsibility and blame: q Bill Clinton apologising for the United States’ involvement in the slave trade q Tony Blair apologising when he was British Prime Minster for the Irish potato famine q Queen Elizabeth II apologising for the seizure of Maori land. Committing offences In the above activities you may have found that apology performance can be difficult to assign to categories, including the ‘compulsory’ strategy of responsibility/blame. This complexity is related to an ambiguity that exists between strategies 1 and 2. ‘Sorry’ is frequently used to express regret without any sense of responsibility, as in ‘I’m sorry your dog died’ (providing that you did not in fact kill the dog!). In terms of the political apologies given above, we have illustrations of Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and the British monarch apologising for historical events that took place long before they took office, events for which they bore no personal responsi- bility or blame. These public figures appear to be using apologies as moral acts. The notion of morality is related to what constitutes the need for an apology in the first place. How do we decide which actions warrant an apology? Politeness researcher Janet Holmes (1995) has devised a useful list of categories of ‘offences’, often caused by speech acts, along with other actions associated with potential impoliteness or rudeness. Following Brown and Levinson’s strategies, Holmes identifies apologies as forms of negative politeness which attend to negative face needs, characterised as follows: 1 Space offences: e.g. bumping into someone, queue jumping 2 Talk offences: e.g. interrupting, talking too much 3 Time offences: e.g. keeping people waiting, taking too long 4 Possession offences: e.g. damaging or losing someone’s property 5 Social gaffes: e.g. burping, coughing, laughing inappropriately 6 Inconvenience offences/inadequate service: e.g. giving someone wrong item. (Holmes 1995: 167) q Revisit your list of occasions when you have apologised and received apologies. q Which of the above ‘offences’ did you commit/had the apologiser(s) committed? q Are all of these ‘offences’ covered by the above list? Does the list need any addi- tional categories? Another crucial area that needs to be considered alongside offence is level of serious- ness, crucial to determine how apologies are made. Attempt to rank the ‘offences’ on a scale of seriousness, utilising the scale below. Then, ask a group of other individuals to give rankings to these offences. If possible, select people from a range of social and cultural backgrounds. Do you all agree? Can any social or cultural differences be identified? Activity 3.3 J DOING POLITENESS 133 1 Light offences: e.g. bumped into someone accidentally, forgot to return a library book on time. 2 Medium offences: e.g. broke someone’s stapler, kept someone waiting so they were late. 3 Heavy offences: e.g. knocked someone over so they were hurt, inflicted serious damage on someone’s car, insulted someone in public. (Holmes 1995: 171) To assess the effectiveness of an apology it is essential to examine what happens next in an interaction. In reference to the instances you have been discussing above, con- sider the following: q Did the hearer/reader accept/reject the apology? q How many times did you apologise using IFIDs/how many apology tokens did you receive? q What happened in the remainder of the interaction? q Consider the effectiveness of the apologies that you have discussed above in the light of the hearer’s reaction and any subsequent communication with the apolo- giser/‘apologisee’. q Has the relationship between interlocutors been damaged? q How frequently do ‘light’ or ‘medium’ apologies occur in everyday life in your culture? Political apologies in the public eye In order to explore the complexities of political apologies further, conduct an analysis of the following media data, utilising the above taxonomy of apologies and the categories of offence and seriousness. The data include an ‘apology’ uttered by Geoff Hoon, the then Defence Secretary in Tony Blair’s Labour government, regarding a solider who had been killed as a result of not having the appropriate body armour. This ‘apology’ was originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s news programme, Today. It was extensively debated within the mass media immediately after the broadcast, where discussion focused upon whether or not Hoon had actually apologised: I am extremely sorry that Sgt Roberts did not have the enhanced body armour which we expected that he would receive. Some 38,000 sets of that enhanced body armour was sent to theatre. We wanted him to have that equipment. I’m extremely sorry that he did not have it. But – I think this is a crucial issue – ministers were assured that our armed forces were ready for battle. . . . It is a military judgement as to whether soldiers are ready for battle. You would rightly criticise any minister who interfered in such a judgement. Hoon apologises over soldier’s death, but sidesteps blame ( The Guardian ) Grieving widow still waits for Hoon apology ( Daily Mail ) Hoon is shamed into an apology to widow: Nine months to say ‘sorry’ ( Daily Express ) (Harris, Grainger and Mullany 2006: 721) The ambiguity surrounding whether Hoon had apologised or not seems to lie in the area of responsibility/blame, explicitly pinpointed by The Guardian headline. Activity 3.4 J 134 EXPLORATION: INVESTIGATING ENGLISH LANGUAGE Although the IFID tokens are present, pre-modified by an intensifier, ‘extremely sorry’, repeated on two occasions, Hoon does not admit any responsibility/blame and this is thus not enough to constitute a ‘proper’ apology, according to some media sources. The ultimate offer of reparation (point 4) for politicians is to resign. If they admit responsibility and/or blame then it is extremely difficult for them to continue in office. Hoon survived this incident, despite some calls for him to tender his resignation. A larger-scale scandal surrounding a number of British MPs and their abuse of the parliamentary expenses system gripped British politics in 2009. This resulted in a significant number of apologies being issued by politicians from all political parties – a data treasure trove for speech act researchers. One of the most high-profile cases involved the Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin. He issued the fol- lowing apology in what turned out to be an infamous speech: We have let you down very badly indeed. We must all accept the blame and, to the extent that I have contributed to the situation, I am profoundly sorry. (Michael Martin, House of Commons, 18 May 2009) q Analyse this apology according to the taxonomy of apologies and scales of offence and seriousness listed above. q Can this be classified as an apology? q How does this differ from Geoff Hoon’s apology? q Are there any elements missing? q Collect your own set of political apologies and judge whether an apology has taken place according to the above taxonomies and scales. Unlike the Geoff Hoon example, there was general agreement within the mass media that Michael Martin had apologised. However, as there was no ‘offer of reparation’ by Martin, this served only to exacerbate such a high-profile situation (in con- junction with a less-than-convincing display of his linguistic ability to keep the House of Commons under control). Less than 24 hours later, he handed in his resignation following significant pressure from the media, other politicians and the general public. The apology simply was not enough as an offer of reparation, and he thus became the first Commons Speaker to be forced out of office for over 300 years. q Consider the point made above, that we are currently living in the ‘age of the apology’. Politicians are by no means the only public figures who are frequently called upon to apologise in the public sphere. q Come up with a list of other professionals, organisations and institutions who are frequently called upon to apologise in public life. q Can the taxonomy that is applied to classifying politicians’ apologies also be applied in these cases, or does a new/revised model need to be developed? To summarise our data exploration of politeness and speech acts, it is worth highlighting Harris, Grainger and Mullany’s (2006) conclusion that Brown and Levinson’s politeness categories of offending negative face and the need for face repair fall short, given the seriousness of some political ‘offences’. To state that the SYNTACTIC EFFECTS 135 face needs of a bereaved partner have been offended, or the face needs of the British public have been offended by the politicians’ expenses scandal or by Tony Blair’s decision to take Britain to war with Iraq does not seem to cover the seriousness of these offences. According to Mills (2003: 112), apologies should be analysed as ‘judgement[s] made about someone’s linguistic performance’. If political apologies are to be judged by the media and the general public as valid and acceptable, they at least have to contain an explicit IFID, as well as acceptance of personal responsibility/blame. Even then, this may not be enough to avoid the need for resignation. SYNTACTIC EFFECTS The 11 hads Here is a famous riddle. How could you punctuate the following sentence to make it make sense? James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher. (Answer at the end of the unit) Once you have worked out (or seen) the answer, can you explain the syntactic func- tion of each occurrence of ‘had’ to show that they are not in fact identical instances? Try to draw a tree diagram of the sentence. Can you devise another sentence similar to the ‘11 hads’ above with as many un- interrupted repetitions of the same word? How about the similar example: The teacher said that that that that that man wrote should have been underlined. Here, there is ‘that’ as a subordinating conjunction, then ‘that’ as an intensifying demon- strative determiner, then ‘that’ as a piece of quoted material (this exploits the distinction between use – as in the other examples of ‘that’ – and mention), then ‘that’ as another subordinating conjunction, and finally another demonstrative determiner in ‘that man’ to indicate a specific man. Can you repunctuate the sentence to show this, before you look at the answer at the end? Can you devise an even more difficult sentence with more than five ‘thats’? Analysing ambiguity Using what you know about constituent structure and phrases, can you explain as systematically as possible how the following genuine sentences could be interpreted in more than one way? Flying planes can be dangerous. (Sign at a model-aeroplane event in a park) Three-legged iron dog toaster. (Label on a toasting fork in the rough shape of a dog) Activity 4.1 J Activity 4.2 J C4 . points 3–5 were present? Activity 3.2 J 132 EXPLORATION: INVESTIGATING ENGLISH LANGUAGE Now consider the following examples, particularly from the perspective of point 2, responsibility and blame: q. 130 EXPLORATION: INVESTIGATING ENGLISH LANGUAGE Analyse Colleen McCants’ text below to ascertain the norms and conventions of appropriate,. explicitly pinpointed by The Guardian headline. Activity 3.4 J 134 EXPLORATION: INVESTIGATING ENGLISH LANGUAGE Although the IFID tokens are present, pre-modified by an intensifier, ‘extremely sorry’,