Cover not available

Article published In: Constructing and Negotiating Identity in Dialogue:
Edited by Răzvan Săftoiu
[Language and Dialogue 5:1] 2015
► pp. 45–61

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Dialogic representations of Britishness and Irishness

A pragmatic view

 | Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Romania
Published online: 23 June 2015
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.5.1.03ajt
Speakers construct their identities by careful choice of the appropriate linguistic features that will convey the specific social information that identifies them as part of a particular speech community (cf. Riley 2007, Joseph 2004). The social constructionist approach focuses on how social actors use linguistic and other cultural resources in the ongoing construction and re-construction of personal and group identity in interaction. Under such a view, identity (and hence ethnicity) is necessarily dynamic (Schilling-Estes 2004). Recent research on fictional characters and scripted discourse has proved the legitimacy of this scholarly area among language studies (Kozloff 2000, Culpeper 2001, Walshe 2009, Eder et al. 2010, Dynel 2011, Furkó 2013). This paper investigates several possibilities for the dialogic construction of the British and Irish ethnic stereotype. Drawing the distinction between real and fictional characters (Culpeper 2010), the micro-sociolinguistic, pragmalinguistic analysis of my corpora, taken from contemporary cinematographic representations of Britishness and Irishness, aims to compare some of the strategies that interactional partners employ, and which reveal several facets of their identities.
References (45)
Ajtony, Zsuzsanna. 2013. “Various Facets of the English Stereotype in Downton Abbey – A Pragmatic Approach.” Topics in Linguistics 121: 5–14.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Amador Moreno, Carolina P. 2005. “Discourse Markers in Irish English: An Example from Literature.” In The Pragmatics of Irish English, ed. by Anne Barron, and Klaus P. Schneider, 73–100. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Attardo, Salvatore. 1994. Linguistic Theories of Humor. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis. Berlin / New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barron, Anne, and Klaus P. Schneider (eds). 2005. The Pragmatics of Irish English. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, Roger, and Albert Gilman. 1960. “The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity.” In Style in Language, ed. by Thomas Sebeok, 253–276. MIT Press. Reprinted in. Language and Social Context, ed. by P. P. Giglioli, 1972, 219–231. London: Penguin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary, and Kira Hall. 2005. “Identity and Interaction: A Sociocultural Linguistic Approach.” Discourse Studies 71: 584–614. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Caunce, Stephen et al. 2004. Relocating Britishness. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H., and Richard J. Gerrig. 2007. “On the Pretense Theory of Irony.” In Irony in Language and Thought: A Cognitive Science Reader ed. by Raymond Gibbs, and Herbert L. Colston, 25–33. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Colley, Linda. 1994. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837. London: Pimlico.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan. 2001. Language and Characterisation. People in Plays and Other Texts. Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. “Conventionalised Impoliteness Formulae.” Journal of Pragmatics 421: 3232–3245. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Doyle, Brian. 1989. English and Englishness. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dynel, Marta. 2011. “Stranger than Fiction? A Few Methodological Notes on Linguistic Research in Film Discourse.” Brno Studies in English 37 (1): 41–61. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eagleton, Terry. 2001. The Truth about the Irish. New York: St. Martin’s Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eder, Jans et al. (eds). 2010. Characters in Fictional Worlds: Understanding Imaginary Beings in Literature, Film and Other Media. Berlin: de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fox, Kate. 2005. Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour. London: Hodder.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Furkó, Bálint Péter. 2013. “Irish English Stereotypes. A Variational Pragmatic Analysis.” Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica 5 (2): 123–136. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1967. Interaction Ritual. Essays on Face-to-Face Behaviour. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heidbrink, Henriette. 2010. “Fictional Characters in Literary and Media Studies: A Survey of the Research.” In Characters in Fictional Worlds: Understanding Imaginary Beings in Literature, Film and Other Media, ed. by Jans Eder, 67–110. Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hickey, Raymond. 2007. Irish English: History and Present-day Forms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hornsey, Matthew J. 2008. “Social Identity Theory and Self-categorization Theory: A Historical Review.” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2 (1): 204–222. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Howard, Judith A. 2000. “Social Psychology of Identities.” Annual Review of Sociology 261: 367–393. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jaworski, Adam, and Nikolas Coupland (eds). 2006. The Discourse Reader. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Joseph, John E. 2004. Language and Identity: National, Ethnic, Religious. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kallen, Jeffrey. 2005. “Silence and Mitigation in Irish English Discourse.” In The Pragmatics of Irish English, ed. by Anne Barron, and Klaus P. Schneider, 47–72. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kozloff, Sarah. 2000. Overhearing Film Dialogue. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leerssen, Joep. 2007. “The Poetics and Anthropology of National Character (1500-2000).” In Imagology. The Cultural Construction of Literary Representation of National Characters, ed. by Manfred Beller, and Joep Leerssen, 63–75. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lucas, John. 1990. England and Englishness. Ideas of Nationhood in English Poetry 1688-1900. London: The Hogarth Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lynch, Sara. 2013. A Corpus Based Analysis of the Presence of ‘Sorry’ in Irish English Discourse. MA Thesis. [URL]. Retrieved 6 June, 2014.
Martin, Gillian. 2005. “Indirectness in Irish-English Business Negotiation: A Legacy of Colonialism?” In The Pragmatics of Irish English, ed. by Anne Barron, and Klaus P. Schneider, 235–268. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Paxman, Jeremy. 1998. The English: A Portrait of a People. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Richardson, Kay. 2010. Television Dramatic Dialogue: A Sociolinguistic Study. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Riley, Philip. 2007. Language, Culture and Identity. An Ethnolinguistic Perspective. London: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schilling-Estes, Natalie. 2004. “Constructing Ethnicity in Interaction.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 8 (2): 163–195. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, Helen. 2007. “Theories of Identity and the Analysis of Face.” Journal of Pragmatics 391: 639–656. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Taraldsøy Østebøvik, Silje. 2010. “Sure it wouldn’t be right”. Sure as a discourse marker in A corpus of Irish English from the 18th to the 20th century. MA dissertation. The University of Bergen. [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vaughan, Elaine, and Brian Clancy. 2011. “The Pragmatics of Irish English.” English Today 27 (2): 47–52. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Walshe, Shane. 2009. Irish English as Represented in Film. University of Bamberg Studies in English Linguistics. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ward, Paul. 2004. Britishness since 1870. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. “The End of Britishness? A Historical Perspective.” British Politics Review 4 (3): 3. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre, and Dan Sperber. 1992. “On Verbal Irony.” Lingua 871: 53–67. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre. 2006. “The Pragmatics of Verbal Irony: Echo or Pretense?” Lingua 1161: 1722–1743. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue