Page 136 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

114 Nathalie van Meurs and Helen Spencer-Oatey

her discourse data that the German participants used for signaling dissent in a
focused and maximized way:
– ‘Dissent-formats’: the speaker provides a (partial) repetition of the prior
speaker’s utterance and then negates it or replaces parts of it with a contrast-
ing element.
– ‘Dissent-ties’: the speaker latches her disagreeing utterance to the prior turn,
and thus produces a syntactic and lexical continuation of the preceding ut-
terance, but then in continuing it demonstrates consequences which contra-
dict the argumentative line of the first speaker.
– Reported speech: the speaker reproduces the opponent’s prior utterance
(maybe several turns later) in order to oppose it.
She also identifies three strategies that the participants use to (try to) end a
confrontational frame:
– Concession, when one participant ‘gives in’.
– Compromise, where a speaker moves towards the other party’s position and
proposes a possible ‘middle ground’.
– Change of activity, where a speaker introduces a new verbal activity, such as
focusing on the situation at hand (e.g., by enquiring ‘what kind of tea is this?’)

These last three strategies could, in fact, be linked with the macro styles of
avoiding, obliging, competing, sharing and problem solving. Concession is an
obliging strategy, compromise is a sharing strategy, and change of activity could
be regarded as an avoiding strategy.
Another example of the detailed analysis of linguistic strategies in conflic-
tive encounters is Honda (2002). She analyses Japanese public affairs talk shows,
and examines the ways in which oppositional comments are redressed or down-
played. Table 3 shows the classification of strategies that she identifies.

Table 3. Redressive Strategies identified by Honda (2002) in her Analysis of Japanese
Public Affairs Talk Shows
Redressive Gloss Example
Strategy
Mollifiers Remarks that precede the ex- – Initial praise
pression of opposition, and – Initial token agreement
downplay its directness – Initial acceptance of the op-
ponent’s point of view
– Initial denial of disagreement
or one’s own remark