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7/29/2019 DS the Lexicogrammatical Reflection of Interpersonal Relationship In
(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi,Singapore and Washington DC)
www.sagepublications.comVol 11(1): 37–57
10.1177/1461445608098497
The lexicogrammatical reflection of interpersonal relationship in conversation
M A R V I N L A M A N D J O N A T H A N W E B S T E R
C I T Y U N I V E R S I T Y O F H O N G K O N G , H O N G K O N G
A B S T R A C T This article reports an attempt to investigate, apart from
the semantics and the pragmatics, how much the lexis and the grammar
of a conversation can help extract interpersonal information about the
interlocutors’ orientations towards each other. The discourse analysed
was extracted from a scene in Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code and its
motion picture adaptation. The adaptation of this scene is similar to the
novel original in terms of the characters’ content of discussion and only
differs in the orientation of the characters to one another. The analysis
focuses on the determination of response types, which are generally classified
as either expected or discretionary, and contribute to the realization of
positive and negative orientations respectively. The distribution of different
types of response is visualized as the interlocutor’s ‘response profile’, which
helps in the realization of his/her orientation to the one to whom he/she is
responding.
K E Y W O R D S : adaptation, context of situation, conversation analysis, interpersonal
orientation, motion picture, novel
1. Introduction
It is a common practice for us to determine what kind of relationship people haveby observing how they talk to each other. The relation between interpersonal
relationship and language production and understanding has been recognized
by various scholars in a range of disciplines including linguistics, sociology,
social psychology, anthropology, philosophy and AI (for example, Halliday and
Hasan, 1985; Malinowski, 1923; St Clair, 2006; White, 1985 and many more).
Originating in sociology, conversation analysts more specifically ‘study the
management of social institutions in interaction’ (Heritage, 1997: 162), and look
into turn management and the repair of conversation, which enables the
extraction of extra-linguistic social/interpersonal information. Examples of thiskind of work include Markee’s investigation of the differences in conversation
A R T I C L E
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repair within speech exchange systems with equal and unequal power rela-tionships (Markee, 2000).
If any linguistic meanings of the conversation are involved in the analysis,they are usually the pragmatics and/or the semantics meanings. While concur-ring with the importance of the pragmatics and the semantics of the conversation
in the understanding of interpersonal relationship between the interlocutors,this article presents a study that investigates how much the lexis and the gram-mar – the more basic or concrete ‘layer’ of meaning – of the conversation canhelp with such concern. More specifically, the study looks into the lexical andgrammatical structures of conversation and examines how they can reflect theorientation of interlocutors towards each other.
To explore how interpersonal orientation is reflected in lexical and gram-matical patterns, this study adopts a comparative approach. It compares con-versations in the novel The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown with conversations in
the motion picture adaptation of the same name directed by Ron Howard froma screenplay by Akiva Goldsman. For the purposes of this article, we will usetwo ‘parallel’ conversations, one from the novel (‘the novel discourse’) and onefrom the motion picture (‘the motion picture discourse’) of the same scene. Inthis particular scene the adaptation is close to the original: in the same physicalenvironment, with the same characters discussing the same topics. The onlymajor difference lies in how the characters orient to one another in the dialogue.This allows most of the features of the conversation to be kept as constants sothat we can focus on the variation in the interpersonal orientation of the inter-locutors. The differences in the lexis and grammar of the two discourses canthus be more readily related to such differences in the orientations.
The value of the comparative approach is the reason why the study analysesconversations extracted from novel and motion picture instead of conversationsoccurring spontaneously in everyday life. The comparison between a noveland its adaptation uniquely opens up the possibility to isolate just one or a fewfeatures of the conversation (in this case, the orientation) for comparison whileother features remain unchanged. Yet the conversations are not as ‘artificial’ asthose ‘experimental’ or ‘researcher-provoked’ ones, which conversation analyststend to avoid (Ten Have, 2007: 9).
Therefore, though working with a novel and its motion picture adaptation,the study is not concerned with literary criticism. Novel and motion picture aretreated here as logs of ‘as-if ’ occurred conversations. The Da Vinci Code was chosenbecause it sets the scenes in the real world. The social interactions occurringin the plot are similar to those which take place in real life. This suggests therelation between the use of language and the interpersonal relationship inthe novel or the motion picture should be relevant to what takes place in oureveryday lives.
2. Theoretical background
2.1. THE SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL PERSPECTIVE
The study adopts an ethnographic-descriptive perspective in order to relate thelexical and grammatical structures of the conversations to the interpersonal
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Lam and Webster: The lexicogrammatical reflection of interpersonal relationship 39
relationship of the interlocutors. Language as code (what language is) and lan-guage as behaviour (what people do with language) are brought together byusing each to explain the other, and by interpreting language in relation to itsplace in people’s lives (Halliday, 1984). Language is considered as a resource formeaning; the code as a systemic resource, a meaning potential; the behaviour
as the actualization of that meaning potential in real life situations. In this pro-cess of actualization, language functions to fulfil a range of human needs, and‘the richness and variety of its functions are reflected in the nature of languageitself, in its organization as a system’ (Halliday, 1973: 20). A systemic descriptionattempts to interpret simultaneously both the code and the behaviour, to specifythe systems from which a linguistic item is derived, that is, the choices embodiedin that item (Halliday and Martin, 1981). Therefore, in analysing instances of language in the conversations, we correlate several systems of the languageat the same time in order to provide a comprehensive linguistic account.
2.2. THE INTERPERSONAL METAFUNCTION
Functions of language that fulfil the range of human needs are categorizedunder the umbrella of three metafunctions, namely the ideational, interpersonaland textual metafunctions. The ideational metafunction refers to the ability toconstrue human experiences, naming entities and building up categories andtaxonomies; the interpersonal metafunction allows people to enact personaland social relationships with each other; the textual metafunction refers to theenabling of text construction in order to facilitate the former two metafunctions,
giving texture to the text to make it operationally relevant (Halliday, 1973;Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004). The interpersonal metafunction of language isthe most relevant to our present investigation. It ‘embodies all use of language toexpress social and personal relations, including all forms of the speaker’s intru-
sion into the speech situation and the speech act’ (Halliday, 1973: 41).
2.3. THE LEXICOGRAMMATICAL STRATUM OF MEANING
Different aspects of meaning of the three metafunctions are organized in strata.The most basic (or the most concrete) stratum of meaning concerns the phono-logical realization. Moving up along the level of abstraction, the next stratum
is the lexicogrammar, then semantics, and finally context as the most abstractstratum (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004). Choices made in a more basic stratumrealize choices in an upper stratum. Reciprocally, choices made in an upperstratum are realized by certain choices in a lower stratum. As mentioned in theIntroduction, the present study focuses on the lexicogrammatical stratum inthe analysis of the linguistic structure of the conversations. Lexicogrammaris quite literally the continuum of lexis and grammar (Halliday et al., 2004).Grammar is seen as the linguistic device for linking together the selections madein various sub-systems of language, and realizing these selections in a unified
structural form (Halliday, 1973).At the lexicogrammatical stratum, the principal grammatical systems in-
volved in the interpersonal metafunction of the English language are those of MOOD, POLARITY and MODALITY. In short, the system of mood is a grammaticalizationof the semantic system of speech function; mood terms are realized (in English)
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by properties of the combination of the Subject and the Finite operator, the
presence of the Wh-element, and contrasts in tone. Clauses are categorized as
declarative, interrogative and imperative, which realize different speech func-
tions. These speech functions can be characterized in terms of the two variables
in the process of exchange in a conversation (Halliday, 1984): the roles defined
by the exchange process (giving versus demanding) and the nature of the ex-changed commodity (information versus goods-&-services). When a speaker
takes on a role of, for example, demanding, at the same time he/she assigns a
complementary role to the addressee, for example, giving (on demand). This leads
to the differentiation of expected and discretionary response by the addressee.
Whether the addressee complies with the assigned role can reflect his/her
orientation towards the role-assigning speaker. This is where lexicogrammar is
linked realizationally, through the semantics of speech function, to one of the
situational context parameters – tenor of discourse.
2.4. TENOR OF DISCOURSE IN THE SITUATIONAL CONTEXT
First proposed by Malinowski (1923), context of situation is defined as the
social functions that determine what language is like and how it has evolved.
A context consists of three features: the field of discourse, the nature of social
action that is taking place, the tenor of discourse, the nature of the relation-
ship, both in long-term and immediate senses, between participants of the social
action, and mode of discourse, the part that language contributes to the symbolic
organization of the text that allows the maintenance, or termination, of the field
and the tenor (Halliday and Hasan, 1985). The interpersonal orientation of theinterlocutors, which is the focus of the present study, is one of the features of
the tenor of discourse.
To paraphrase, this study aims at uncovering the lexicogrammatical struc-
tures of the conversations that realize the interpersonal metafunction, and
such lexicogrammatical structures are related to the realization of speech
functions, thus the orientation as part of the tenor of discourse in the situ-
ational context.
3. Methodology The scene under study involves three characters. They are Robert Langdon, Leigh
Teabing and Sophie Neveu. The scene takes place at Leigh’s private residence.
Almost all of the characters’ speakings in the novel are quoted directly. With
the help of the quotation marks indicating the quoted speech of the characters,the dialogue was extracted to form the novel discourse. What the actors in the
motion picture uttered was transcribed as the motion picture discourse. The
sentences were divided into clauses.
The similarity of the topic discussed by the characters in the two discourseswas justified by studying the clauses that appeared in both discourses, and,
taking a lexicological approach, by comparing the lexical choices of the two
discourses. To contrast the lexicogrammatical structures of the discourses in
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Lam and Webster: The lexicogrammatical reflection of interpersonal relationship 41
terms of the interpersonal metafunction, mood type and corresponding speech
functions of the free major clauses were determined by Halliday and Matthiessen’s
model (2004), which will be introduced in Section 4.3.
Speech functions reflect the kind of role a speaker, as an initiator of the
exchange, assigns simultaneously to him/herself and to the addressee. With
this purpose alone speech act theory could be the most relevant framework foranalysis. For instance, Bach and Harnish (1979) provide a detailed taxonomy
of different communicative illocutionary acts. Speech act theory was not in-
corporated into the analysis because it is concerned with the pragmatics of
language, and the aim of this study is to focus on the lexis and grammar of the
conversations and see how much they can contribute to the understanding of
interpersonal orientation.
After the speech functions were determined, it was then the core step of
the analysis to categorize the response made by the upcoming speaker as a
responder. In practice, the analysis attempted to exhaust any relevant lexicaland grammatical relations exhibited by the initiating and responding clauses.
In general, these categories of response were grouped as expected, neutral
or discretionary, which realized positive, neutral and negative orientations
respectively.
The differentiation of expected and discretionary responses is very much
related to the ‘preference organization’ in conversation analysis. For example,
accepting an invitation is considered to be a preferred contribution to the talk,
while rejecting is dispreferred (Liddicoat, 2007). However, as mentioned above,
the analysis focuses on lexicology and grammar; Halliday and Matthiessen’smodel (2004) was adapted instead for response categorization.
Adapting Matthiessen’s ‘interpersonal profile’ (1995: 410), we have visualized
the distributions of different types of responses by characters’ individual ‘response
profiles’ to show how different interpersonal orientations were realized.
4. Findings and discussions
4.1. GENERAL INFORMATION OF THE DISCOURSES AND THEIR SIMILARITIES
The similarities of the novel and motion picture discourses will be discussed first.All examples, unless otherwise specified, are taken from these two discourses.
The scene under study starts from Leigh’s first entrance in the plot and ends
when Leigh’s manservant intrudes on the discussion (pp. 246–80 in the novel
published by Doubleday in 2003, and 0:58–1:13 in the motion picture, ac-
cording to the DVD recording distributed by Columbia Picture Industries, Inc.in 2006). Both discourses are initiated by Leigh in a similar manner: ‘Sir Robert!
I see you travel with a maiden’ (novel) and ‘Robert. And you travel with a maiden,
it seems’ (motion picture), and end in the same way by Leigh’s saying, ‘Some-
times I wonder who is serving whom.’ Some 817 and 304 clauses were extractedfrom the novel and the motion picture respectively. Within these clauses, there
are 62 minor clauses in the novel discourse and 46 in that of the motion
picture. The proportions of the speakers’ major clauses, as major moves of the
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exchange, are shown in Figure 1. The charts indicate how differently characterscontribute to the content of the conversations. Although Robert is 5 per cent
more ‘talkative’ (and Leigh is 5% less ‘talkative’) in the motion picture than
in the novel, both discourses are similar in that Leigh dominates the conver-
sation as an active speaker, while Sophie and Robert both contribute about the
same amount of speech.Venturing into the content of discussion, we did a comparison in terms of the
ideational metafunction, that is, how similar the two discourses are in construing
the experiences and ideas of the characters. The relevant lexicogrammatical
structure is that of transitivity, involving different types of process, their
participants and circumstances. A total of 84 clauses (28%) in the motion
pictures are similar, or even identical, to clauses in the novel discourse, in that
the similar clauses have the same processes and participants. These clauses
spread out evenly in the motion picture discourse, which shows that the major
moves in the two discourses are similar. Example 1 illustrates how a cluster of clauses is ‘copied’ quite directly from the novel original. Interestingly, the last
orthographic sentence spoken by Robert in the novel extract is spoken by Leigh
in the motion picture.
Example 1The novel discourse (punctuations as original)
Robert: This symbol is the original icon for male, A rudimentary phallus.
Sophie: Quite to the point,
Leigh: As it were,
Robert: This icon is formally known as the blade, and it represents aggression and manhood.
In fact, this exact phallus symbol is still used today on modern military uniforms
to denote rank.
Leigh: Indeed. The more penises you have, the higher your rank. Boys will be boys.
Robert: Moving on, the female symbol, as you might imagine, is the exact opposite. This
is called the chalice. The chalice resembles a cup or vessel, and more important,it resembles the shape of a woman’s womb.
The motion picture discourse
Robert: This is the original icon for male. It’s a rudimentary phallus.
Sophie15%
Robert
15%
Leigh70%
Robert20%
Sophie15%
Leigh65%
The novel discourse The motion picture discourse
F I G U R E 1 . Proportions of major-clause speakers
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tion’; imperative clauses realizes ‘command’; and, although theoretically variousmood structures can realize ‘offer’, very limited lexicogrammatical patterns in
the discourses emerge to realize this speech function: ‘may I . . .’, ‘let me . . .’,
‘I would like to . . .’ and ‘it will be (is) my honor to . . .’. Besides, a few fixed expres-
sions realize certain speech functions. For example, ‘I beg your pardon?’ and ‘If
you’d be so kind as to . . .’ realize commands. It is worth noting that speech act
theory could be of great help here, but as mentioned above, the analysis focuses
on the lexicogrammar approach.
Tone is equally fundamental in realizing speech function. How a clause
actually functions in the exchange depends greatly on the punctuation inthe novel and the tone uttered by the actors in the motion picture. When a de-
clarative clause ends with a question mark, or is uttered with an ‘uncertain’ rising
tone, it realizes ‘question’ instead of ‘statement’. Tone also helps in realizing
speech function of elliptical clause, in which the mood structure is left out.
Consider the following examples.
Example 4
Leigh: Now my dear, the word in French for Holy Grail?
Sophie: Saint-Graal.
Leigh: My dear, that is Mary Magdalene.
Sophie: The prostitute?
Leigh: She was no such thing.
This transcription, as throughout the motion picture discourse, is punctuated
to reflect some aspects of the tones chosen by the actors. The accuracy of the
T A B L E 2 . The speech function matrix
commodity
role goods-&-services information
giving offer statement
demanding command question
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transcript can be increased by adding annotation marking tone selection.Nevertheless, the punctuations here are useful enough to indicate ‘Saint-Graal’as a statement, ‘the word in French for Holy Grail’ and ‘the prostitute’ as ques-tions. Determination of what kind of interrogative these two elliptical clausesare depends on the subsequent answers. A WH-interrogative clause expects
a declarative clause as the answer, so ‘the word in French for Holy Grail’ is con-sidered to be a WH-interrogative. A yes/no-interrogative clause expects apolarity indicator to be the answer. The ‘no’ in Leigh’s response indicates that‘the prostitute?’ is a yes/no-interrogative. This relation between questions andanswers will be elaborated in detail in the next section.
The distribution of speech functions in the characters’ contributions to thedialogue is shown in Figure 4. Between the characters, both Leigh and Robert’scontributions predominantly give information, while Sophie more often makesdemands. In comparing the two discourses, Robert’s proportion of speech
functions are almost the same; the proportion of demands in Leigh and Sophie’sspeeches in the motion picture discourse are significantly greater than in thenovel discourse.
With more ‘demanding’ clauses, the addressees are put under greater pres-sure in the motion picture discourse in revealing their orientations towards theaddressers. This is because the addressee of a demand is obligated to contributeto the next move by giving information or goods-and-services. He/she can onlychoose between complying with the demand or not, which shows clearly his/herorientation towards the initiator. On the other hand, a minor clause realizing aminor move can serve as a possible initiation, and in most of the cases no responseis expected. In such a situation, it is possible for the addressee to show a moreneutral orientation towards the initiator. The following sections will explore howthese responses are categorized and realized, and how they are related to thecharacters’ orientations towards each other.
4.4. CATEGORIZATION AND REALIZATION OF RESPONSES
Table 3 is a summary of the adpoted model (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004) of how responses can be categorized. Another model (Halliday and Hasan, 1976)is also incorporated to better describe how ‘question rejoinders’ (as a kind of
acknowledgement) and ‘answers’ are being realized, which will be discussedin the following sub-sections.
Before the realizations of the response categories are illustrated in thefollowing sub-sections, it is important to emphasize that the analysis has notexhausted all the possibilities in realizing responses. As a natural semioticsystem, language has great elasticity to allow almost an infinite number of realization. The analysis seeks to find as many realizations as the discoursesexhibit. In fact, some of the response categories do not have enough instancesto make reliable generalizations about lexicogrammatical realization. This
will be discussed in 4.4.5.
4.4.1. Acknowledgement Unless a statement is tagged, the addressee is not obligated to provide aresponse. However, un-tagged statements were responded to most of the time.
Acknowledgement is the expected response to a statement.
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Minor clauses that manage the continuity of exchanges may realize acknowl-
edgements. As Examples 4 and 5 show, this kind of minor clause is realized by a
limited set of words that has the lexical linkage of being positive (e.g. ‘okay’, ‘yes’,
‘great’, ‘splendid ’, etc.). Besides, the combination of a first-person pronoun and a
mental process with the polarity in accordance with the statement (as illustrated
by Example 6: ‘I know’, or ‘I agree’, ‘I admit’, etc.) can also realize acknowledge-ment. Example 7 demonstrates that the polarity of an acknowledgement is not
always positive. The ‘nobody’ in the initiating statement realizes negative polarity.
If the response is in positive polarity, it will be considered as a contradiction.
Examples 4–7
(4) Leigh: History has never had a definitive version of the book.
Sophie: Okay.
(5) Sophie: The Merovingians founded Paris.
Leigh: Yes.(6) Leigh: You’ve robbed her of the climax!
Robert: I know, I thought perhaps you and I could . . .
(7) Sophie: I assume nobody is claiming they are proof of Jesus’ marriage to
Magdalene.
Leigh: No, no, as I said earlier, the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is part
of the historical record.
In Example 8, the ‘that’ in Leigh’s response refers to the whole of Sophie’s
statement. With a positive polarity, and the textual linkage of ‘so’, Leigh’s state-
ment is considered as an acknowledgement. Shift to the lexicological side of
the lexicogrammatical continuum, the response in Example 9 is considered as
acknowledgement because there is lexical linkage between ‘ poor ’ and ‘whore’,‘Magdalene’ is repeated and the polarity is kept consistent in the response.
Examples 8 and 9
(8) Sophie: I studied at the Royal Holloway.
Leigh: So then, that explains it.
(9) Sophie: But I was under the impression Magdalene was poor.
Leigh: Magdalene was recast as a whore
All the acknowledgements mentioned above are statements by themselves.However, very often responders acknowledge the preceding statement by de-
manding further information. Borrowing Halliday and Hasan’s terminology
(1976: 214–15), this kind of response is referred to as ‘question rejoinders’.Questions that are directed to the preceding statement, as in Examples 10 and 11,
are considered as question rejoinders. Lexical ties (such as ‘gospels’ in Example
11) are often found in such questions. Fixed expressions demanding information,
such as those in Examples 12 and 13, are also considered as question rejoinders
(a reduced version of Sophie’s response in Example 12 is ‘meaning?’).
Examples 10–13
(10) Robert: If that was true, it’s adding insult to injury.
Sophie: Why?
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Lam and Webster: The lexicogrammatical reflection of interpersonal relationship 49
(11) Leigh: More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet
only a relative few were chosen for inclusion – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John among them.
Sophie: Who chose which gospels to include?
(12) Leigh: Even Christianity’s weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans.
Sophie: What do you mean?(13) Leigh: More specifically, her marriage to Jesus Christ.
Sophie: I beg your pardon?
Example 14 illustrates a kind of question rejoinder that is different from those
mentioned above. It simply repeats the preceding clause, but uses a rising tone
to turn it into a question. Sophie often makes such question rejoinders in both
discourses. Such may be interpreted to convey the responder’s uncertainty about
the preceding statement. This kind of question rejoinder lies between positively
responding to the preceding statement and a negative response as contradiction,
which will be discussed in the next sub-section.Examples 14
Leigh: The Holy Grail is not a thing. It is, in fact . . . a person.
Sophie: The Holy Grail is a person?
4.4.2. ContradictionAs compared with Example 14, Example 15 shows a question rejoinder that
realizes a contradiction. It reverses the polarity and relates to the preceding
statement with an antonym-like lexical item (‘mortal’ versus ‘God ’). It is a
weaker form of contradiction than those which will be described next, becauseresponder still shows his/her uncertainty. According to their relation with the
preceding statements, question rejoinders can be acknowledging, neutral, or
contradicting.
Example 15
Leigh: Until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by many of his followers as a mighty
prophet, a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal man.
Sophie: Not the Son of God?
As Example 16 illustrates, typical contradiction may be made by reversing thepolarity of the preceding statement. Such can be done either by a ‘no’ directed
to the preceding statement, or repeating the preceding clause with the polarityreversed (or attribute the repeated statement with an opposite degree of
modality, such as the use of ‘hardly’ in Example 19). Another way is to attribute
negative lexical meaning to the preceding clause, such as Leigh’s use of the word
‘semantics’ in Example 16 and ‘misunderstanding’ in Example 17. The opposing
pairs in Examples 18–20 (i.e. ‘many’ and ‘some’, ‘ pagan’ and ‘Christian’, and ‘royal’
and ‘ poor ’) show that the preceding statements can be contradicted by using
contrasting lexical pairs.Examples 16–20
(16) Robert: Constantine did not create Jesus’ divinity. He simply sanctioned an already
widely held idea.
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(17) Leigh: The Priory is charged with a single task. To protect the greatest secret in
modern history.
Sophie: The source of God’s power on earth.
Leigh: Ah, a common misunderstanding.(18) Leigh: Fact, for many Christians, Jesus was mortal one day and divine the next.
Robert: For some Christians, his divinity was enhanced.
(19) Leigh: The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor
Constantine the Great.
Sophie: I thought Constantine was a Christian,
Leigh: Hardly, he was a lifelong pagan who was baptized on his deathbed, too weak
to protest.
(20) Leigh: Indeed, Mary Magdalene was of royal descent.
Sophie: But I was under the impression Magdalene was poor.
4.4.3. Answer Answering a yes/no question simply needs to provide the polarity or modality asshown in Examples 21 (‘yes’) and 22 (‘may’) respectively. For WH-interrogative,
the limited set of WH-elements set the criteria on what can be the answer. In
Example 23, ‘where’ signals the answer to be a circumstance (‘in the middle’),
‘how many’ signals the answer to be numeral (‘one’), for ‘what’, it is necessary
for the question and the nominal group in the response to have a lexical tie
(‘drink’ and ‘wine’). For ‘why’, though the possibilities are more variable, a
lexical or grammatical linkage between the question and the response (as the
repeated ‘Constantine’ and ‘Christianity’ in Example 24 and ‘it’ in Example 25)
is still essential.
Examples 21–25
(21) Leigh: I assume you recognize this fresco?
Sophie: I know the fresco, yes.
(22) Sophie: She wrote a gospel?
Robert: She may have.
(23) Leigh: Now, mademoiselle, where is Jesus sitting?
Sophie: In the middle.Leigh: Good.
Leigh: He and his disciples are breaking bread. And what drink?
Sophie: Wine. They drank wine.
Leigh: Splendid.
Leigh: Now a final question. How many wineglasses on the table?
Sophie: One?
(24) Sophie: Why would a pagan emperor choose Christianity as the official religion?
Leigh: Constantine was a very good businessman. He could see that Christianity
was on the rise, and he simply backed the winning horse.
(25) Sophie: Why is it there?Leigh: Conspiracy theorists will tell you it stands for Matrimonio or Mary
Magdalene.
The answers described above are all direct ones. However, questions are
not always answered directly. Halliday and Hasan (1976) provides a detailed
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Lam and Webster: The lexicogrammatical reflection of interpersonal relationship 51
discussion on the ‘indirect response’ to question with three categories: com-
mentary (comment on the question), disclaimer (refusal of answering question,
which is regarded as a discretionary response to question and will be discussed
below), and supplementary response (implying answer). No commentary exists in
the discourses and the supplementary responses are always responding to yes/no
questions. The following are some examples of supplementary responses.
Examples 26 and 27
(26) Sophie: Da Vinci is talking about the Bible?
Leigh: Leonardo’s feelings about the Bible relate directly to the Holy Grail.
(27) Sophie: You’re saying Jesus’ divinity was the result of a vote?
Leigh: A relatively close vote at that.
No explicit polarity indicator (i.e. ‘yes’ or ‘no’) exists in the responses above,
neither is the polarity or modality of the initiating question clarified in the
responses. However, the collocations ‘Da Vinci’ and ‘Leonardo’ (for identificationof collocations, please refer to 4.1.) and the repeated ‘Bible’ and the ‘vote’ in thetwo examples, together with the positive polarity of the responses imply that the
answers to these yes/no questions are positive. Compare with a direct answer, a
supplementary response is less expected, but nonetheless it provides the answer
by implication. This contrast with the category discussed next – disclaimer – in
which the responder does not provide any answer.
4.4.4. Disclaimer
Very broadly speaking, disclaimers refer to responses that appear irrelevant tothe questions raised. In example 26, Sophie asked two questions. The first oneis a WH-interrogative requiring a nominal group to be the answer (realized by
‘what’), and the second one is a yes/no interrogative that requires the clarifi-
cation of polarity or modality as the answer.
Example 26
Sophie: I don’t understand. What power? Some magic dishes?
Leigh: Oh, Robert. Has he been telling you that the Holy Grail is a cup?
No lexical tie exists between the first question (‘power’) and the response, andthere is no polarity or modality given in the response for the yes/no question.
It maybe argued that there is lexical tie between ‘dishes’ and ‘cup’, but in the
response the clause containing the item ‘cup’ itself is a question, which the po-
larity is still inexplicit, so it cannot be considered as a supplementary response.
Therefore, such response is considered to be a disclaimer.
4.4.5. Responses for the exchange of goods-&-servicesThe discussion between characters in this scene is not based on the immediate
physical environment (cf. discussing how to cook a dish in a cooking lesson).Therefore, moves involving the exchange of goods-&-services only bear a
small portion. There are only three offers in each of the two discourses (0.6%
and 1.5% in the novel and motion picture discourse respectively), allowing
too few instances of responses (acceptance and rejection) for generalizing of
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Lam and Webster: The lexicogrammatical reflection of interpersonal relationship 53
As Table 3 shows and the above sub-sections illustrate, most of the responses
are either expected or discretionary. They exert different impacts onto the
initiators, which reflect the responders’ orientations. The next section will relate
different types of responses to differences in orientations.
4.5. THE RESPONSE PROFILE
It is obvious that expected response realizes positive orientation of the responders’
orientation towards the initiators, while discretionary responses realize a
negative orientation. However, different kinds of response realize orientation
in different extents. For example, a responder shows greater positive orientation
by undertaking a command than acknowledging a statement, because it takes
him/her more effort to give goods-&-services than to give information. In
general, for both positive and negative orientations, a response involving goods-
&-services realizes orientation in greater extent than that involving informa-
tion; responding to a demanding initiation realizes orientation in greater extentthan that to a giving initiation. Therefore, responses can be distributed along the
continuum of orientation, as shown in Figure 5.
By intention the ‘neutral’ category occupies a larger space in the continuum,
because it contains several sub-categories. For example, as pointed out in 4.4.2,
question rejoinders can be acknowledging, neutral or contradicting, which are
included in the ‘neutral’ category because they realize less extent of orientation
than contradiction and acknowledgement.
In fact this is a much reduced version of the continuum because it does not
reflect the influence of turn taking management. Consider Example 32 below.Example 32
Leigh: Even Christianity’s weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans.
Sophie: What do you mean?
Robert: Originally, Christianity honored the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday, but Constantine
shifted it to coincide with the pagan’s veneration day of the sun.
Sophie’s question is addressing Leigh, but it is Robert who answers. This
contributes to realizing Robert’s positive orientation towards Sophie. At the same
time, it also reflects his positive orientation towards Leigh, because he is helping Leigh by assuming the obligatory role of giving information and acknowledging
Leigh’s statement preceding Sophie’s question.
– +Orientation
R e
f u s a
l
D i s c
l a i m e r
R e
j e c
t i o n
C o n
t r a d i c t i o n
A c k n o w l e
d g e m e n t
A c c e
p t
A n s w e r
U n d e r t a k
i n g
Neutral
F I G U R E 5 . Continuum of orientation
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Furthermore, addressee management can also complicate the above
continuum. For example, the addressee of a contradiction should be the speaker of
the preceding statement. If, as illustrated by Example 33, the addressee is not
the speaker of the preceding statement (realized by the use of the third-person
pronoun ‘he’ instead of the second-person pronoun ‘you’), that increases the
negative extent in the realized orientation because that signals the responderis trying to ignore the initiator, even though he/she is responding.
Example 33
Robert: There’s virtually no empirical proof.
Leigh: He knows as well as I do there’s much evidence to support it
In order to derive a more comprehensive continuum of orientation, con-
versation analysis would be very significant because turn management and
addressee management is what it is specialized for. Nonetheless, with the concerns
of the present study, the simplified version of the continuum as in Figure 5 isadequate to visualize characters’ orientation towards each other. As the contin-
uum suggests, the polarity of orientation is not in absolute terms. In Figure 6,
the percentages of different response types are plotted along the orientation
continuum. The distributions of the bars reflect the speakers’ orientations: barsclustering towards the left-hand side reflect a more negative orientation, on
the right-hand side more positive and, if the bars cluster in the centre, then a
neutral orientation.
Clearly the characters’ orientations towards each other realized by the novel
discourse tend more toward neutral-positive because there is no bar appearingat the left-hand side of the profiles. The profiles realized by the motion picture
discourse are considerably different: both Leigh and Robert’s orientations
towards each other shift slightly to the negative end; Leigh and Sophie’s orient-
ations towards each other remain neutral-positive, but the distributions of the neutral and expected responses are more even in the motion picture; that
between Robert and Sophie undergo dramatic change to the positive side in the
motion picture.
5. Conclusion
One’s orientation towards the other can be realized from a visualized response
profile of their conversation, such as those illustrated in Figure 6. These response
profiles are produced based on the lexicogrammatical structure of the con-
versations in the two discourses.
However, the situational contexts of these conversations are heavily in-
clined to the verbal plane of interaction, that is, the commodities exchanged
are mostly information. To further explore the potential of how different types
of response can be realized, conversations in situational contexts in which ex-changes are made on the material plane of interaction can be a good comple-mentary source of the lexicogrammatical structures of response types that are
not raised in the present discussion.
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Lam and Webster: The lexicogrammatical reflection of interpersonal relationship 55
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The novel discourse The motion picture discourse
Leigh to Robert
Leigh to Sophie
Robert to Leigh
Robert to Sophie
Sophie to Leigh
Sophie to Robert
F I G U R E 6 . The response profiles
As the response profiles may suggest, it is difficult to quantify orientation
in very accurate points and only an overall tendency can be shown. This may
reflect the indeterminate feature of the interpersonal aspect of language and
social interaction. Even so, information in other strata of meaning obtainedfrom analysis with other approaches (such as conversation analysis and speech
act theory) can help make the response profile more comprehensive, and
thus interpersonal orientation can be described more clearly.
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