1.
Deutschmann, Mats, 1964-
(författare)
Apologising in British English
2003
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The thesis explores the form, function and sociolinguistic distribution of explicit apologies in the spoken part of the British National Corpus. The sub-corpus used for the study comprises a spoken text mass of about five million words and represents dialogue produced by more than 1700 speakers, acting in a number of different conversational settings. More than 3000 examples of apologising are included in the analysis.Primarily, the form and function of the apologies are examined in relation to the type of offence leading up to the speech act. Aspects such as the sincerity of the apologies and the use of additional remedial strategies other than explicit apologising are also considered. Variations in the distributions of the different types of apologies found are subsequently investigated for the two independent variables speaker social identity (gender, social class and age) and conversational setting (genre, formality and group size). The effect of the speaker-addressee relationship on the apology rate and the types of apologies produced is also examined.In this study, the prototypical apology, a speech act used to remedy a real or perceived offence, is only one of a number of uses of the apology form in the corpus. Other common functions of the form include discourse-managing devices such as request cues for repetition and markers of hesitation, as well as disarming devices uttered before expressing disagreement and controversial opinions.Among the speaker social variables investigated, age and social class are particularly important in affecting apologetic behaviour. Young and middle-class speakers favour the use of the apology form. No substantial gender differences in apologising are apparent in the corpus. I have also been able to show that large conversational groups result in frequent use of the form. Finally, analysis of the effects of the speaker-addressee relationship on the use of the speech act shows that, contrary to expectations based on Brown & Levinson’s theory of politeness, it is the powerful who tend to apologise to the powerless rather than vice versa.The study implies that formulaic politeness is an important linguistic marker of social class and that its use often involves control of the addressee.
2.
O’Hagan, Lauren Alex, 1991-
(författare)
Class, Culture, and Conflict in the Edwardian Book Inscription : A Multimodal Ethnohistorical Approach
2018
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This study draws on theories and methodologies from the fields of multimodality, ethnography and book history studiesto explore class conflict and social mobility in Edwardian Britain (1901-1914). Using a dataset of 2,998 book inscriptions, this work investigates the types of inscriptions present in books bought and exchanged in Edwardian Britain; the ways in which inscriptive practices varied according to location, gender, age, social class and occupation; the material and semiotic features of inscriptions; and their communicative and performative purposes. The findingsr eveal that inscriptive choices were primarily influenced by ‘class-based affordances’ that centred on the social status and wealth of book owners, as well as Edwardian social conventions and the specific, well-established norms of each inscription genre or sub-genre. For the working classes, inscriptions represented pride at owning a book for the first time, while the lower-middle classes primarily used inscriptions as symbolic gestures of social mobility to gain social capital and respect from peers .In contrast, the upper classes, who feared the collapse of hierarchical society, saw inscriptions as a way of advertising their wealth and high social status. However, there is some indication that the upper-middle classes were slightly more willing to embrace lower-class inscriptive practices. These findings suggest that we must reframe current conceptions of hegemony as the transmission of values from a dominant social group to a subordinate one, and view it, instead, as a continuous two-way process between different groups .Overall, the study demonstrates how blending multimodal analysis with ethnohistorical methodologies can uncover the important role of the inscription as a material microcosm of the social tensions that existed between class groupsin early twentieth-century Britain.
