Page 211 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

Ritual and style across cultures 189

5.6. Pathetic keying
A number of rhetorical strategies contribute to the pathos-laden quality of the
toast, for example, explicit ‘upgrading’.
4 (––) its significance extends far (–) beyond (––)
5 the bound of our purely professional,
6 pedagogic (––) linguistic (––) (––) interests. (–)
and the many uses of metonymy, already mentioned.
Pathos certainly is not contextualized exclusively on the verbal level. Like
all “keyings” it also makes use of prosodic strategies, like the many pauses and
the slow tempo of speech evident throughout data 3.
Keyings are an important subgroup of contextualization which have been as
yet little studied. They influence both the meaning of an utterance and its prag-
matic function, and they modulate the truth conditions of a discourse, the re-
lation to reality; in humor or in eccentric speech, for example, they are loosened
(Kallmeyer 1979); in pathos, as well, but in a different direction. In joking one
can play with incongruent double framings, while in pathos the double framing
is congruent: value systems (e.g., a current-concrete frame and a general or tran-
scendent one) are brought into alignment. In lines 22–27 the speaker begins
with a rather everyday remark (“our thoughts develop”) and ends with an eccen-
tric metaphor (“our hearts now beat more in synchrony”). The value of the in-
tensified exchange of thoughts is thus raised.
Kern (1994: 398), one of the few linguists who has written about the
“scorned communicative stance” of pathos in recent times, suspects that pa-
thos-laden speech acts undergo, by means of special mechanisms, a paradig-
matic mythologizing of everyday affairs. In fact, this is just what Prof. K. at-
tempts. A conference of Germanic scholars, in and of itself no extraordinary
occurrence, is elevated to a rare if not impossible (except perhaps in a mythi-
cal realm) event: the synchronous beating of hearts. Kern characterizes this
second level of the mythological as a diffuse conglomerate of meanings,
which can be described here on the level of metaphor, metonomy and rhetori-
cal three-part lists: thoughts develop more strongly, ideas develop more co-
herently, hearts beat more in synchrony. Pathos presumes a shared frame of
values, morals and feelings.
According to Aristotle (Nikomachean Ethics and Rhetoric), pathos touches
the emotions (cf. Staiger 1944: 79) and “incites sleepy existence,” in Staiger’s
words (1944: 80).
The Georgian, Russian and Kazakh toasts unify shared, honored objects
with expressions of praise. The speakers display high emotional involvement,
which is meant to be shared by auditors, and it is affirmed in the clinking of
glasses and drinking. The informational value is, in most cases, far less relevant
than the evocation of a shared feeling of respect. This is what the ceremony is
meant to confirm, renew and strengthen. Those who clothe the objects of shared