Louise Mullany

The pragmatics of political apologies

Despite the wealth of literature generated over the past two decades on the apology as a speech act, the political apology has been relatively neglected as a research topic. This article aims to examine the pragmatics of such apologies as a generic type of discourse by identifying their salient characteristics: they are in the public domain and highly mediated; they are generated by (and generate) conflict and controversy; on the basis of media and viewer evaluations/judgements, they need to contain both an illocutionary force indicating device (Ifid) and an explicit expression of the acceptance of responsibility/blame for the ‘offence’ in order to be clearly perceived as valid apologies; and they rarely, if ever, involve an expression of absolution. Drawing primarily on data concerning recent political events in the UK (especially the Iraq War), the article attempts to set out and illustrate the different types of political apology. The resulting analysis is related both to previous and current apology research and to recent developments in politeness theory.

Health communication and adolescents: what do their emails tell us?

BACKGROUND It is widely known that barriers exist in communication between adolescents and health professionals. However, little is known about the actual language used by young people articulating such difficulties and whether email might allow them to overcome these problems. OBJECTIVES The aims of this study were to investigate concerns and difficulties relating to communication among adolescents seeking online health advice. METHODS The study design was a corpus linguistic analysis of a million-word adolescent health email database based on 62 794 emails from young people requesting health advice from a prominent UK-hosted and doctor-led website. RESULTS Young people reported various concerns about their health. They described numerous difficulties in disclosing such concerns to other people, in particular to parents and doctors. However, they readily expressed their concerns by email, displaying elevated levels of directness, particularly in relation to potentially sensitive or embarrassing topics. CONCLUSION Email has the potential to facilitate and supplement face-to-face consultations with health professionals. Increased adoption of email by health providers may be an efficient means of engaging with a generation often reluctant to access more traditional health care services and thus encourage them to enter the primary care setting more readily.

“Girls on tour”: Politeness, small talk, and gender in managerial business meetings

Abstract Politeness at work is examined in this paper by focusing on small talk as a form of linguistic politeness in relation to gender in business meetings. The paper embarks on a theoretical discussion of politeness and small talk, and also critically examines recent theoretical developments in the area of language, gender and politeness. Politeness is conceptualized from a communities of practice (CofP) perspective (Mills 2002, 2003). Butlers (1990) model of performativity, along with the CofP approach and the notion of gendered discourses are integrated to form an overall framework for the data analysis. Small talk is analyzed in managerial meetings, drawing on data taken from two ethnographic studies of UK businesses. Small talk is highlighted as a multifunctional device and the importance of power when analyzing politeness in the workplace is emphasized. The analysis indicates that, despite being stereotypically associated with unimportant, trivial feminine discourse, small talk is utilized in powerful ways in the public context of workplace meetings. Women managers use small talk strategically to create solidarity/collegiality, as an in-group identity marker, and also as a device to place social distance between themselves and men within their CofPs.

Language, gender and feminism : theory, methodology and practice

1. Contemporary Issues in Language, Gender and Feminism 2. Why We Still Need Feminism 3. Theorising Gender 4. Feminist Linguistic Approaches 5. Methodological approaches 6. Sexuality 7. Sexism 8. Future Directions

‘Become the man that women desire’: gender identities and dominant discourses in email advertising language

Haraway (1985, 1991) presents a futuristic, utopian vision of a gender-free space as the distinction between human and machine becomes indistinct in the age of global technologization. This article explores how such an idealized perspective corresponds with the current reality of gender identity in cyberspace. The fluidity of gender identities is examined by conducting a linguistic analysis of the strategies advertisers use to address their targeted subjects via electronic mail (email). The option of gender neutrality is available within email as a user’s gender identity can be concealed by a non-gender specific user name, and data are analysed from a series of messages sent to a non-gender specific email account hosted by one of the world’s largest email service providers. While the fluidity of gender identity can be clearly observed, a quantitative analysis reveals that the targeted gender identity is one of heterosexual masculinity. Despite recent statistics that women now use the Internet just as frequently as men, disembodied advertisers can be viewed constructing fictional personae to entice male recipients to pay for heterosexual pornography or products to enhance male heterosexual performance. When female gender identity is invoked within these messages, women are viewed as passive and consumable (Mills, 1995). Therefore, instead of producing an environment where distinctions between genders are diminished as Haraway hoped, binary oppositions are intensified as the dominant gender discourses of femininity and masculinity are produced and reproduced through these messages.

Introduction: Applying politeness research to health care communication

In recent years there has been an increasing emphasis placed upon the importance of producing academic research which aids the advancement of effective communicative practices within health care settings (Iedema 2005a; Brown et al. 2006; Sarangi 2006). Despite the integral role that the successful negotiation of linguistic politeness can play in aiding the effectiveness of health care communication, politeness currently remains an under-researched area of investigation. A handful of studies do exist (Robins and Wolf 1988; Lambert 1995, 1996; Speirs 1998; Grainger 2002, 2004; Jameson 2003; Norris and Rowsell 2003; Delbene 2004; Woolhead et al. 2005), but overall there is a real necessity for empirical investigations to be produced in a wide variety of health care contexts. It is the intention that the publication of this special issue will add much needed evidence to this field of research. The papers in this collection can be seen as belonging to the recent surge of publications investigating the importance of politeness in a range of institutional and professional settings, including the very first special issue of this journal in 2006, Politeness at Work, as well as other recent publications including Holmes and Stubbe (2003); Mullany (2004, 2008); Holmes and Schnurr (2005); Harris et al. (2006); Bousfield (2008); Limberg (2008); and Schnurr et al. (2008). In their introduction to Politeness at Work, Mills and Beeching (2006a) draw attention to a set of guidelines for future research that appear in Bargiela-Chiappini and Harris’ (2006) position paper. Bargiela-Chiappini and Harris (2006: 27) advocate that, in order to advance the field of politeness research in the workplace, future studies should aim to fulfil the following criteria:

Im/politeness, Rapport Management and Workplace Culture: Truckers Performing Masculinities on Canadian Ice-Roads

This chapter analyses the interplay between linguistic im/politeness, gender and workplace culture in a series of interactions between groups of men working on Canadian ice-roads as seasonal truck drivers. The data are taken from the documentary series Ice Road Truckers, which has been broadcast on a number of commercial television networks in a range of locations including the USA, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands.1

Analysing Workplace Interaction

In this chapter, the analytical frameworks designed to analyse workplace interaction are outlined. Whilst these frameworks are utilized in particular to focus on workplace meeting interaction, in principle they can be applied to interactional data in a range of institutional settings. As part of the centralist, interdisciplinary approach outlined in Chapter 1, analytical frameworks from interactional sociolinguistics are integrated with tools from pragmatics and critical discourse analysis (CDA). This aligns with Sarangi and Roberts’s (1999) point that, in order to produce a ‘thick description’, researchers need to draw upon a combined analytical approach. Furthermore, Holmes et al. (1999) argue that an integrated analytical approach is essential in order to account for the fundamental role that power plays in governing workplace talk:

Im)politeness and Gender

This chapter maps out key developments in gender and (Im)politeness scholarship, focusing on theories and concepts which have advanced the field and contributed to its theoretical and methodological sophistication. The authors chronologically catalogue the most seminal work, highlighting the significant role that gender has played in politeness research since its inception. Aiming to facilitate innovative approaches in contemporary research, the chapter also presents specific examples of recent case studies which shed light on how the interdependencies between (Im)politeness, gender and identities can be productively explored. The chapter concludes with an overview of avenues for future research, shedding light on underinvestigated topics such as intersectionality and diversifying the field to examine gender and (Im)politeness in a much broader range of languages and cultures.

The problematic case of gender-neutral pronouns: A response to "A Modest Proposal"

ABSTRACT A response to Moser and Devereux (2017), “A Modest Proposal.”