Chapter 5 Data Analysis (2): Pragmatic Strategies in Agreement
5.7. Summary of Pragmatic Strategies in Agreement
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(1) For strategies by six subcategories of agreement, emphasis in AM is significantly different from it in APC (P=.041), EPC (P=.001), AM+APC (P=.007), and APC+EPC (P=.013), but not from it in AM+EPC (P=.307). In other words, both AM and AM+EPC are the subcategories emphasis is frequently applied in. AM and AM+EPC are the subcategories with direct illocutionary force of agreement.
By the application of emphasis, speakers can make the strength of AM and AM+EPC even more forceful. Therefore, if speakers want to agree with others by maximized agreement, they may choose to perform emphasis in AM alone or AM+EPC.
(2) For elaboration by six subcategories of agreement, EPC’s elaboration is
significantly different from AM’s (P=.002), APC’s (P=.004), AM+APC’s (P=.002), but not significantly different from AM+EPC’s elaboration (P=.341) and
APC+EPC’s ones. It means that elaboration is frequently applied both in EPC and AM+EPC. The result is very reasonable because elaboration is extension of information which can be appropriately performed in the structure of extra propositional content. Hence, elaboration occurs mostly in EPC and AM+EPC.
(3) Based on the results above, division of pragmatic labor is found: emphasis is often performed in HA (i.e. AM); whereas, elaboration is often performed in SM, especially in EPC. Besides, both emphasis and elaboration are also frequently performed in AM+EPC of HA+SM.
5.7. Summary of Pragmatic Strategies in Agreement.
This section summarizes the major findings of pragmatic strategies in agreement.
Pragmatic strategies are divided into textual rhetoric strategies (TRS) and interpersonal rhetoric strategies (IRS). Under TRS, four strategies are found:
emphasis, elaboration, account, and clarification. And under IRS, two strategies are
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found: supporting and concession. When TRS and IRS are compared, the front is performed significantly more than the later one. It means when people perform pragmatic strategies in agreement, most of them are primarily used to meet the end of clearness and efficiency of message transmission, but not interpersonal relationship.
(1) For pragmatic strategies in agreement by subjects as a whole, two major findings are listed below:
First, For TRS in general, emphasis is performed mostly, followed by
elaboration and which in turn followed by account and clarification. Therefore, the priority order of strategies in TRS is like what is listed below:
This priority order indicates that it is primary to make sure agreement is expressed efficiently and forcefully. Then, to deal with sufficiency of message content is secondary.
For IRS in general, the frequencies of supporting and concession are similar to each other in this study. It means that when people perform IRS, it is sometimes for the purpose of showing rapport and solidarity and sometimes for showing partial agreement to avoid conflict.
(2) When speaker’s gender alone or hearer’s gender alone is considered in the use of pragmatic strategies, in general, for men’s TRS, strategies can be divided into three groups according to the frequencies; whereas, for women’s TRS, strategies can only be divided into two groups as what are listed below.
{ }
CLAR ACCEMP > ELA >
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For men:
For women:
The priority orders of TRS show that men and women differentiate from each other on the performance of elaboration. For men, elaboration ranks second; but for women, elaboration ranks first, which is as significant as emphasis. Perhaps it is because for women, making more effort to benefit others by providing extra information about the discussed referent is an important way to express politeness and to strengthen solidarity between other and self.
(3) When categories of agreement content structure are considered, in HA, the most frequently used strategy is emphasis in TRS and concession in IRS. Not many strategies are performed in HA because it is self-intrinsic.
(4) In HA, gender has no impact on people’s choice of pragmatic strategies.
(5) In SMs, emphasis and elaboration in TRS and supporting in IRS are the strategies frequently applied by Mandarin speakers. The reason is that SMs, as the adjunct to modify the strength of agreement, can be used to make repetition or add extra information about the discussed referent. And these strategies enable people to fulfill the purpose of using SMs so that the strategies are frequently performed here.
{ }
CLAR ACCEMP > ELA >
{ }
EMP >ELA
{ }
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Another important finding is: a division of pragmatic labor is located on the use of IRS in HA versus in SM. That is, concession is mostly performed in HA, while supporting is mostly performed in SM.
(6) For pragmatic strategies in SM by gender, significant difference is only found when both speaker’s and hearer’s genders are taken into consideration. To be specific, FF’s elaboration is performed significantly more than MF’s elaboration.
It means that speaker’s gender has influence on female hearers’ receipt of elaboration. For FF, like what have been mentioned above, because the interlocutors are both women, they emphasize on elaborating each other’s contribution to show strong involvement and to establish solidarity.
(7) For pragmatic strategies in HA+SM by subjects as a whole, emphasis and elaboration are also the strategies frequently occur in HA+SM. The reason is as what have mentioned in the use of SMs.
(8) In HA+SM, men’s and women’s patterns are back to the pattern of pragmatic strategies in general. For men, emphasis is the highest, followed by elaboration, and which in turn followed by account and clarification. By contrast, for women, elaboration is as important as emphasis so that both strategies rank first, while account and clarification rank second.
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Chapter 6 Conclusion
This chapter concludes the thesis based on the findings of the previous chapters.
Afterwards, limitations of this study and suggestions for future studies on agreement are given.
6.1. Summary of the Major Findings
This section summarizes the major findings of this study. Findings of agreement in general are presented first. Then, the influence of the social factor—gender is
depicted.
6.1.1. Agreement in General
To answer the research questions and verify hypotheses of this study, findings for agreement in general can be divided into two parts: categories of agreement, and degrees of agreement.
(1) Categories of Agreement
Research question A: Among the three categories of agreement (namely, head act alone HA, supportive move alone SM, and head act with supportive move HA+SM), which category is more preferred by Mandarin speakers?
Hypothesis A-1: Head act alone (HA) would occur more frequently than supportive moves alone (SM).
Finding A-1: Statistic results show that HA is not used significantly more than SM.
Hypothesis A-1 is thus not verified. One possible reason to explain this phenomenon is that because SM, although indirect, could still be used to effectively express agreement because interlocutors in this study are either close
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friends or couples, who share much background information which can help hearers receive the intention of agreement through inference. Other explanation is that using SM alone can express high involvement and thus establish solidarity.
Hypothesis A-2: Head act alone (HA) would occur more frequently than head act with supportive move (HA+SM).
Finding A-2: Statistic results of this study show that HA is performed significantly more frequently than HA+SM, Thus, Hypothesis A-2 is verified. It means that direct and simple method to make agreement is preferred.
Hypothesis A-3: Head act with supportive moves (HA+SM) emerges more frequently than supportive move alone (SM).
Finding A-3: Statistic results of this study show that SM is used significantly more frequently than HA+SM. Hypothesis A-3 is not verified.
(2) Degrees of Agreement
Research question B: Among the various kinds of agreement by degrees, which one is used more frequently, agreement without contingency (including upgrading and preserving agreement) or agreement with contingency (i.e. downgraded agreement)?
Hypothesis B-1: Agreement without contingency (WOC) would occur more frequently than agreement with contingency (WC).
Finding B-1: Statistical analysis indicates that WOCs are performed significantly more frequently than WCs. Hypothesis B-1 is thus verified. It means that people avoid using downgrading agreement, which carries connotation of disagreement which may bring forth misunderstanding or conflict.
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Hypothesis B-2: Upgrading agreement is more frequently applied than preserving agreement.
Finding B-2: According to statistic results of this study, upgrading agreement is performed significantly more frequently than preserving agreement. Thus, Hypothesis B-2 is verified. A possible reason is that people want to fulfill hearers’ positive face wants so that they frequently maximize agreement.
Besides the findings given above, this study aims at the interaction between categories of agreement and agreement by degrees, which is not investigated before. It is found that in various categories of agreement, Finding B-1 and Finding B-2 are repeated. In other words, when categories of agreement and degrees of agreement are interacted, the concept of degrees of agreement is more important than that of categories of agreement. That is, in every category of agreement, maximization of agreement is enacted frequently.
One of the purposes of this thesis is to bridge the gap for the unexamined pragmatic strategies in agreement. Unlike previous studies of agreement (Pomerantz, 1984; Kotthoff, 1993; Kuo, 1994; Mulkay, 1985; Baym, 1996; Rattai, 2003), in which pragmatic strategies in agreement are not examined, it is found in this study that textual rhetoric strategies are used significantly more than interpersonal rhetoric strategies. Besides, for the use of textual rhetoric strategies, it is found that the strategies performed most frequently are emphasis and elaboration, which means that people’s primary goal is to meet the end of clarity and expressivity of information.
6.1.2. Agreement by Gender
This thesis points out how men and women differ from each other in agreement constructions as well as related pragmatic strategies, which is not specifically pointed out in the previous gender studies on agreement (Kalcik, 1975; Leet-Pellegrini, 1980;
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Edelsky, 1981; Coates, 1989; Holmes, 1995: 60). The following paragraphs show major findings of the influence of gender in the use of agreement.
Research Question C: Is gender an influential factor to the construction of agreement?
Hypothesis C-1: Speaker’s gender is a significant factor to manipulate the construction and pragmatic strategies in the performance of agreement.
Finding C-1: Speaker’s gender is an influential factor in agreement, which can be verified by several findings below. First, for categories of agreement, male speakers apply HA significantly more than SM; whereas, female speakers has no significant difference in the comparison of HA and SM. It means that when making agreement, men may put more emphasis on efficiency of message transmission than women do. By contrast, female speakers frequently use both HA and SM. Female speakers’ use of SMs, which can be applied to show high involvement in conversations, may mean to fulfill the functions of politeness, solidarity, and rapport which are highly revered by women.
Second, for degrees of agreement, female speakers perform WOC much more frequently than male speakers do. It means that women try harder than men in reinforcement of agreement and avoidance of using downgrading agreement.
Third, for pragmatic strategies in agreement, male speakers and female speakers differ from each other on the use of elaboration. Elaboration, which can show high involvement, is a strategy frequently used by women.
Hypothesis C-2: Hearer’s gender is a significant factor to determine people’s ways of construction and choice of pragmatic strategies in agreement.
Finding C-2: Hearer’s gender is verified to be an influential factor in agreement. First, for the categories of agreement, female hearers receive significantly more EPC
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than male hearers do. It means that people may think female hearers like to be agreed through the way of building on each other’s contribution to show high involvement. By contrast, people may think male hearers, putting more
emphasis on the efficiency of message transmission, may not like to be agreed by EPC for consuming time to decode agreement.
Second, when HA and SM are compared, male hearers receive significantly more HA than SM; whereas, female hearers receive similar amounts of HA and SM. Perhaps it is because people think efficiency of information exchange is the first priority for male hearers. And for female hearers, people may think they prefer to be agreed by showing high involvement and elaborating more on their contributions.
Third, for pragmatic strategies to show agreement, female hearers receive significantly more elaboration than male hearers do. It means that people may think that women like to be agreed by flouting the Quantity Maxim in CP (Grice, 1975), which is often used to show politeness.
Hypothesis C-3: When both speaker’s and hearer’s genders are considered, gender is a significant factor to manipulate the construction and pragmatic strategies in the performance of agreement.
Finding C-3: When both speaker’s and hearer’s genders are considered, gender is an influential factor in agreement. First, for categories of agreement, significant difference is only shown in the comparison of SMs used by FF and FM. To be specific, the FF group applies much more SM (especially the subtype EPC) than the FM group does. It means that women, unlike men, are easily influenced by hearer’s gender and change their behavior on the usage of SM.
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Second, for degrees of agreement, in general, FF and FM use WOC significantly more than WC. Additionally, FF is the only one group among the four that use significantly more upgrading agreement than preserving agreement.
In other words, women are the one who try hard to maximize agreement to fulfill hearers’ positive face wants.
Based on the results above, women are the one who makes more effort to make agreement forceful. Furthermore, when interlocutors are both women, this tendency becomes more obvious. Perhaps it is because that for women, the purpose of
communication is to reach consensus, maintain solidarity, and avoid conflict between self and other (Tannen, 1994). Besides, women are more hearer-oriented and more willing to fulfill hearers’ positive face wants (Brown and Levinson, 1978; Woods, 1997). Therefore, women and men differentiate from each other in the way to make agreement.
It is concluded that gender differences occur in the construction and pragmatic strategies of agreement. Thus, in general, gender is an influential factor to the construction of agreement.
6.2. Limitations and Suggestions
This thesis tries to examine how agreement is constructed and how pragmatic strategies of agreement are performed in Chinese culture, and to figure out how speaker’s gender, hearer’s gender, and both speaker’s and hearer’s genders influence the performance of agreement. However, some limitations exist in this study. The following suggestions may remedy these limitations.
First, due to limited time and data of agreement, the linguistic markers coding agreement are not analyzed in the current study. Future studies, with sufficient amount
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of data, can linguistic markers be categorized and studied in detail. At that time, more importantly, will the way of interaction between these linguistic markers and the categories of agreement be identified.
Second, due to time limitation, the referential contents of agreement (or the topic of propositional content), are not investigated in this thesis. These referential contents may also influence the agreeing party’s choice of construction, degrees, and pragmatic strategies of agreement. In future studies, the interaction between referential contents and the usage of agreement should be examined.
Third, due to time limitation, follow-up interviews are not conducted to confirm patterns found in this study. Therefore, all of the interpretation and explanation made are not fully justified. In future studies, follow-up interviews should be made to secure more holistic and countable explanations for findings in agreement.
Fourth, social factors other than gender (such as age, social status, or educational level, familiarity, and intimacy) should be considered in order to obtain a more
holistic view on the usage of agreement. Data of this study are adapted from NCCU corpus of Mandarin, which is not sociolinguistically designed, so only social factor, gender, is examined. It is highly expected that some other, social factors, if not all, would cast critical impacts on people’s ways to show agreement.
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