Introduction
According to Hofstedeâs cultural dimensions theory, which is based on a worldwide survey of employee values, New Zealand workplaces score low for power distance (Hofstede 2001, p. 87). This reflects a desirability to have an equal distribution of power, and this is evident in the informal way that people communicate in white-collar professional workplaces (retrieved from http://âgeert-hofstede.âcom/ânew-zealand.âhtml). From a linguistic point of view, this informality can be signalled in a range of ways, from the use of first names by all staff to the use and acceptance of marked vernacular forms, and qualitative research in New Zealand workplaces has noted linguistic evidence of this informality; see for example Holmes, Marra and Vine (2011).
In this chapter, I explore the use of eh, you know and I think in a corpus of naturally occurring white-collar work-focused interactions recorded in New Zealand workplaces, providing corpus-based evidence for previous findings about workplace formality. The patterns observed are compared to data from formal, semi-formal and informal genres collected for the New Zealand component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-NZ) (Vine 1999) and the Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English (WSC) (Holmes, Vine and Johnson 1998). The aim in providing these comparisons is to gauge how informal the New Zealand workplace data is and whether these pragmatic markers provide a useful indication of the formality level of the discourse.
Leech and Svartvik (2002, p. 30) define formal language âas the type of language we use publicly for some serious purpose, for example in official reports, business letters, regulations and academic writingâ. In many corpora, such as the components of the International Corpus of English (ICE), both public and private categories of data are included with the aim of sampling both formal and informal speech and writing styles (Greenbaum 1996). The formal speech styles included in both ICE-NZ and WSC include public unscripted monologues (Holmes et al. 1998, p. 14; Vine 1999, p. 11); semi-formal genres include broadcast interviews; while the informal sections include private conversations (Holmes et al. 1998, p. 14). For the purposes of this study, these three genres provide three reference points along what could be perceived as a continuum of formality.
The workplace comparison comes from a specialised corpus; that is, a corpus âdelimited by a specific register, discourse domain, or subject matterâ (de Beaugrande 2001, p. 11; see also Hunston 2002, p. 14). In particular, it is drawn from workplace data collected by the Language in the Workplace Project (LWP) (retrieved from http://âwww.âvictoria.âac.ânz/âlwp). Since 1996, the LWP has been collecting data from a range of different New Zealand workplaces. Data from white-collar workplaces is examined in this study and involves both smaller informal meetings as well as larger more formal ones. Communication between colleagues in the workplace on work-related topics is a context where more formal language could be expected compared to conversations between friends, but how does it actually compare to conversational data, broadcast interviews and public monologues? And is there a difference between smaller informal and larger formal meetings?
Spoken Language and Pragmatic Markers
McEnery, Xiao and Tono (2006, p. 105) observe that spoken conversation is more âvagueâ than written language, and Knight, Adolphs and Carter (2013, p. 135) note that âa pervasive feature that relates to levels of formality in discourse is the use of hedgingâ. They include you know and I think in the list of hedging devices they investigate in digital discourse. Nikula (1997, p. 197) notes that hedging is characteristic of informal speech, with an absence of hedging making non-native speakers sound formal, while Brinton (1996, p. 33) notes that pragmatic markers are associated with oral rather than written discourse and with informality.
Knight et al. (2013, p. 148) suggest, however, that the situation is not quite this straightforward, commenting that âmore formal spoken and written contexts use more hedges than the informal onesâ. Farr and OâKeeffe (2002) found the hedge they examined (the modal would) was most frequent in institutional settings, with lower frequencies occurring in conversations between family and friends. The exact hedges being examined are of relevance, as well as the specific contexts under examination. Knight et al. (2013) list 30 common hedges and a quick look at the 15 most common of these in Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad and Finegan (1999) shows that seven were more common in conversation than in academic writing, four had similar frequencies, while four others were more common in academic writing than in conversation. Before I look at the specific pragmatic markers that are examined in this chapter, I will briefly discuss issues related to terminology and definitions.
Pragmatic Markers
As is evident already from the discussion above, there are a number of labels which are used for the items which are the focus of this study, for example, pragmatic markers, discourse markers, hedges (see Brinton 1996, p. 29; Fraser 1998, p. 301; Jucker and Ziv 1998). There are also many variations in how the terms are defined. Some definitions focus on structural aspects; for example, Schiffrin (1987, p. 31) defines discourse markers as âsequentially dependent elements which bracket units of talkâ, while others include expressive factors; for example, how discourse markers âexpress attitudes and emotionsâ (Bazzanella 2006, p. 449). Interactive factors, that is, âthe relationship between the speaker and the hearerâ may also be highlighted (Mosegaard Hansen 1998, p. 42), together with cognitive considerations, showing how the speaker signals their âunderstanding of what the situation is all about with respect to the argumentative relations built up in the current situationâ (Fischer 2007, p. 47).
The aspects of the particular items focused on and the perspective taken also influence the label they are given. Schiffrin (1987) uses discourse marker as a label because she is focusing on the discourse-organising functions of the items she examines. Others use the term hedge because they examine tentativeness, politeness and affective aspects. Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen (2006) use the label pragmatic marker as a broad term which can then be subclassified further according to more functional and formal characteristics; for example, discourse markers, adverbial connectors and routines are all seen as subcategories of pragmatic markers (Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen 2006, p. 3).
For the ...