FAQ

Formulating hypothetical talk: An action-driven approach to communicating stance in business meetings

Publication date: 28.02.2023

Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis, 2023, Volume 140, Issue 1, pp. 1 - 25

https://doi.org/10.4467/20834624SL.23.001.17261

Authors

,
Helena Lohrová
University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice
, Czech Republic
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-8735 Orcid
All publications →
Almut Koester
WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1775-5026 Orcid
All publications →

Titles

Formulating hypothetical talk: An action-driven approach to communicating stance in business meetings

Abstract

The article focuses on the deployment of hypothetical talk in the CANBEC and CCI corpora of business meetings and examines its use as a discursive tool for communicating stance in encounters where participants represent (potentially) incompatible positions. Through the use of hypothetical talk, interactants signal the potential for agreement and resolution by testing the other participants’ position and their preparedness to shift their view. It is argued that although talk introduced to the meeting may be hypothetical, the stance communicated is real. The analysis provides insights into actions applied to resolve impasse or conflict situations, particularly through the rhetorical move of formulating. Formulating aims to resolve or summarize talk at a particular instance in time. The act of formulating requires an evaluative step on the part of the participants in order to consider their contributions or their opposition to the formulation. It is, therefore, of interest to examine how talk that is known to be hypothetical – hence essentially unreal, speculative, potentially untrue or even counterfactual – can be allowed to feature in meetings discourse and to influence a meeting’s outcome. Two theoretical models were applied to understand this – Du Bois’s (2007) “stance triangle” and Hunston’s (1989, 1994, 2011) three functions of evaluation. These offered a new perspective on the role of hypothetical talk in business meetings, where, as the results demonstrate, hypothetical talk is used to signal stance, test that of the other participants, and advance the speakers’ goals. By integrating the two models and applying them in order to understand how hypothetical talk is formulated in business meetings, it was possible to conceptualize the process through which meeting participants evaluate and act upon talk, by making “real life decisions” upon information which has initially been introduced to the meeting as hypothetical.

References

Berger P.L., Luckmann T. 1996. The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. New York: Penguin Books.

Clift R., Holt E. 2007. Introduction. – Holt E., Clift R. (eds.). Reporting talk: Reported speech in interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1–5.

Drew P. 2003. Comparative analysis of talk-in-interaction in different institutional settings: A sketch. – Glenn P., LeBaron C.D., Mandelbaum J. (eds.). Studies in language and social interaction: In honor of Robert Hopper. Mahweh: Lawrence Erlbaum: 293–308.

Du Bois J. 2007. The stance triangle. – Englebretson, R. (ed.). Stancetaking in discourse. Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins: 130–182.

Englebretson R. (ed.). 2007. Stancetaking in discourseSubjectivity, evaluation, interaction. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Garfinkel H., Sacks H. 1970. On formal structures of practical action. – McKinney J.C., Tiryakian E.A. (eds.). Theoretical sociology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts: 338–366.

Goffman E. 1974. Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. New York: Harper & Row.

Heritage J. 1985. Analyzing news interviews: Aspects of the production of talk for an “overhearing” audience. – Van Dijk T. (ed.). Handbook of discourse analysis. London: Academic Press: 95–119.

Heritage J., Watson D.R. 1979. Formulations as conversational objects. – Psathas G. (ed.). Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology. New York: Irvington: 123–162.

Hicks M.J. 2004. Problem solving and decision making: Hard, soft and creative approaches. [2nd edition]. London: Chapman & Hall.

Holt E. 1996. Reporting on talk: The use of direct reported speech in conversation. – Research on Language and Social Interaction 29.3: 219–245.

Holt E. 2016. Indirect reported speech in interaction. – Capone A., Kiefer F., Lo Piparo F. (eds). Indirect reports and pragmatics. Perspectives in pragmatics. [Philosophy & Psychology 5.]. Cham: Springer International Publishing: 167–187.

Holt E., Clift R. 2007. Reporting talk: Reported speech in interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hunston S. 1989. Evaluation in experimental research articles. [unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Birmingham].

Hunston S. 1994. Evaluation and organisation in academic discourse. – Coulthard M. (ed.). Advances in written text analysis. London, New York: Routledge: 191–218.

Hunston S. 2011. Corpus approaches to evaluation: Phraseology and evaluative language. London, New York: Routledge.

Hunston S., Thompson G. (eds.). 2000. Evaluation in text: Authorial stance and the construction of discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Koester A. 2014. “We’d be prepared to do something, like if you say…” Hypothetical reported speech in business negotiations. – English for Specific Purposes 36: 35–46.

Koester A., Handford M. 2018. It’s not good saying “Well it it might do that or it might not”: Hypothetical reported speech in business meetings. – Journal of Pragmatics 130: 67–80.

Koester A., Lohrová H. [forthcoming]. “So what we thought was the best way of doing it…”: Formulating Hypothetical Talk in Business Meetings. – Journal of Pragmatics.

Lehrer A. 1989. Remembering and presenting prose: Quoted speech as a data source. – Discourse Processes 12: 105–125.

Lohrová H. 2011. Internal meetings: The process of decision-making in workplace discourse. [unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Birmingham].

Lohrová H. 2015. Decision-making in meetings discourse: Applied linguistic research. Praha: Academia.

Mayes P. 1990. Quotation in spoken English. – Studies in Language 14.2: 325–363.

Myers G. 1999. Unspoken speech: Hypothetical reported discourse and the rhetoric of everyday talk. – Text 19.4: 571–590.

Pascual E. 2014. Fictive interaction. The conversation frame in thought, language, and discourse. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Schegloff E.A. 1996. Turn organization: One intersection of grammar and interaction. – Ochs E., Schegloff E.A., Thompson S.A. (eds.). Interaction and grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 52–133.

Schegloff E.A. 2007. Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tannen D. 1989. Talking voices: Repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thompson G., Hunston S. 2006. Evaluation in text. – Brown E.K., Anderson A. (eds.). Encyclopedia of language & linguistics. [2nd edition]. Boston: Elsevier: 305–312.

Voloshinov V.N. 1971. Reported speech. – Matejka L., Promorska K. (eds.). Readings in Russian poetics: Formalist and structuralist views. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press: 149–175.

Willing K. 1992. Talking it through: Clarification and problem-solving in professional work. Sydney: National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research.

Information

Information: Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis, 2023, Volume 140, Issue 1, pp. 1 - 25

Article type: Original article

Titles:

Polish:

Formulating hypothetical talk: An action-driven approach to communicating stance in business meetings

English:

Formulating hypothetical talk: An action-driven approach to communicating stance in business meetings

Authors

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-8735

Helena Lohrová
University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice
, Czech Republic
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-8735 Orcid
All publications →

University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice
Czech Republic

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1775-5026

Almut Koester
WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1775-5026 Orcid
All publications →

WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria

Published at: 28.02.2023

Article status: Open

Licence: CC BY  licence icon

Percentage share of authors:

Helena Lohrová (Author) - 50%
Almut Koester (Author) - 50%

Article corrections:

-

Publication languages:

English