El discurso desde el estudio de caso entre pacientes expertos e investigadores

The largest group of closing salutations in English comprises salutations expressing “good wishes”. The meanings expressed are similar, but not identical, variation depending on the lexical constituents and, in specific cases, resulting from a process of lexical reduction or expansion from a so-called derivational base (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014). I will start from Best wishes because it is the most frequent salutation in Wordbanks,31 and because it can be considered as the derivational base, so to speak, of all other closing salutations expressing “good wishes”.

9.3.1 From ‘Best wishes’ to ‘Best’

Best wishes is used both in letters to people whom the sender knows and people whom the sender does not know. When the name of the recipient is specified, Best wishes can be combined with different forms of address: in example (1) the recipient is addressed by first name, whereas in example (2) as Mr. plus surname:

(1) September 11, 2008 Dear Paul,

“The best and most lasting friendships are based on admiration”, you write. […]

Best wishes

John

(Paul Auster & J.M. Coetzee, Here and Now, 2013:13)

(2) Dear Mr. Farese, I’m reading your file…

31 _{There are 480 hits of Best wishes in Wordbanks, more than for any other closing salutation.}

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Best wishes,

(first name and surname)

In example (3), the recipient is addressed as ‘customer’ without the name being specified:

(3) Dear Customer,

You will find enclosed a copy of “The Rag”, Ragdale Hall's newsletter, of which this is the very first issue. […]

Best Wishes

(name and surname) Managing Director

(Collins Wordbanks, brephem)

In (1) and (2) Best wishes is combined with forms of address which express opposite attitudes: first-name address expresses the attitude ‘I think about you like I can think about someone if I know this someone well’ (Chapter 12), whereas Mr. plus surname expresses the attitude “I don’t think about you like this: ‘I know this someone well’” (Wierzbicka 2015, chapter 12). This suggests that Best wishes is compatible with both these attitudes. However, none of the respondents to the survey who are lecturers reported using Best wishes in an e-mail to a student whom they know well, for example a student whom they are supervising. Many commented that they use Best wishes in e-mails to prospective graduate students asking to be supervised, students whom they do not know at all. Noticeably, in his letters to Auster, Coetzee used Best wishes only once, in one of the earliest letters. The fact that Coetzee stopped using Best wishes in the next letters suggests that he felt that this salutation was not suitable anymore once correspondence between the two had become more frequent and the two got to know each other better. Taking the native speakers’ comments and the frequency of Best wishes in Here and Now into account, I propose that the invariant meaning of Best wishes includes a component “when I say this, I don’t think about you like this: ‘I know this someone very well’”. The attitude “I don’t think about you like this: ‘I know this someone well’” would exclude first names, and “I think about you like this: ‘I know this someone well’” would be incompatible

with Mr. plus surname. The expressed attitude “I don’t think about you like this: ‘I know this someone very well’” is compatible with all contexts of use of Best wishes and therefore is the most plausible hypothesis for the semantic invariant.

The other component of the meaning of Best wishes is the dictum, which can be pinpointed analysing the lexical constituents: the semantic contribution of wishes can be paraphrased as ‘I want many good things to happen to you’; the constituent Best, in turn, indicates that these wishes are not just ‘good’, but ‘very good’. In sum, the dictum of Best wishes can be captured with a component “I say: ‘I want many very good things to happen to you’”. Having pinpointed both the expressed attitude and the dictum, the explication for the meaning of Best wishes only needs to be complemented by the scenario captured in section [A] presented in the previous section:

Best wishes

[A] WHAT I WANT TO SAY TO YOU NOW

I want to say something good to you now, like people often say when it is like this:

they say some things to someone for some time in writing [m] at some point [moment] they think like this:

“I don’t want to say more to this someone now” [B] WHAT I SAY

I say: “I want many very good things to happen to you” [C] HOW I DON’T THINK ABOUT YOU WHEN I SAY THIS

when I say this, I don’t think about you like this: “I know this someone very well”

There are some contexts in which Best wishes competes with the salutation Best, for example in combination with first names, as in (4):

(4) 23/6/2015

Dear Gian Marco,

That's fine of course. I could come over this afternoon - let me know when would suit you? I'm just across the road so it won't take me long to come over.

Best

(first name)

The question is what implications the reduction from two lexical constituents (best and wishes) to one (best) has for the interactional meaning. Before analysing the meaning of Best, it is necessary to discuss how it is used. The respondents to the survey expressed opposite comments. All the middle-aged respondents see Best as a relatively recent development. One of them, a native speaker of Australian English, commented: “best to my mind is a recent e- mail development, so I associate it with the trendier of my friends and colleagues (younger or those who deal with a lot of email traffic, and perhaps social media etc.)”. By contrast, two older respondents (also native speakers of Australian English) commented that in their life “no one has yet used this abbreviation” and that they find it “very annoying” and “too short”. The fact that the older respondents are either unfamiliar with Best or do not accept it suggests that this salutation is, in all likelihood, the result of an ongoing generational change in language use. My body of data includes e-mails signed with Best written by speakers of British English (example 4) and Australian English (examples 5a and 5b in Appendix A), but no example for American English. However, the results of an unscientific survey conducted by an American journalist indicate that about 75% of the respondents used Best in e-mails, which indicates that Best is used, to some extent, in American English, too.32 Apart from mentioning the percentage of use, the journalist also made some comments on the meaning of Best which I report here:

It’s time to stop using ‘best’. The most succinct of e-mail signoffs, it seems harmless enough, appropriate for anyone with whom you might communicate. ‘Best’ is safe, inoffensive. It’s also become completely and unnecessarily ubiquitous. […] The problem with ‘best’ is that it doesn’t signal anything at all. (emphasis added)

The points made in the article are reiterated by the journalist in a face-to-face discussion with two colleagues: “You can continue using ‘Best’, but it’s just meaningless, and empty, and can come off as “short”…and you don’t have to do it, just free yourself from ‘Best’”.33 As

32 _{http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-02/the-best-e-mail-signature-is-actually-the-worst, last accessed}

30/7/2015.

33 _{Video available on the webpage.}

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against this, I would argue that even though Best is a reduced form it is not meaningless, considering that even those speakers who claim, at first, that there is no difference between Best and Best wishes eventually admit that to some people they only use one but not the other. One point made by the journalist which is consistent with the comments of the respondents is that Best often “comes off as short”. I suggest that the choice of a lexically reduced expression is motivated; those speakers who have in their repertoire of closing salutations both Best and Best wishes choose Best when they want to convey the same message as Best wishes, but in one word only. Lexical reduction is the semantic strategy to achieve this, and as such it is part of the cognitive scenario inherent in the interactional meaning of Best. The way of thinking associated with the lexical reduction can be captured with a component “I think like this: ‘I can say it to this someone with one word’”.

It could be asked if it would not be better to posit a component ‘I don’t want to say more’ or ‘I want to say less’. To ‘say less’, however, is not the reason for the lexical reduction. The dictum of Best can be paraphrased as ‘I want very good things to happen to you’, the absence of wishes being captured by not positing the prime VERY in the component. It could also be asked if a component ‘I can say it to this someone in a very short time’ could be posited, by analogy with the explications for Hi and Ciao presented in Chapters 3 and 4. However, since closing salutations are used in written language, which is asynchronous and does not permit simultaneity of interaction, a component stating that one wants to ‘say something in a short time’ or ‘for some time’ would be inappropriate.

In addition to lexical reduction, the meaning of Best differs from the meaning of Best wishes in three other respects. First, it is significant that in my body of data Best is used only in e- mails, never in letters, in which the recipient is addressed by first name; this suggests that, unlike Best wishes, Best is only compatible with first-name address and therefore the attitude expressed is “I think about you like this: ‘I know this someone well’”.

Second, the collected e-mails are consistent with the respondents’ comments in indicating the frequency of e-mail exchanges as a determinant factor for Best. Noticeably, both (5a) and (5b) in the Appendix were written by the same person to the same recipient on the same day, and both were signed off with Best plus first name. High frequency of exchange is compatible with the lexical reduction; the more frequent the e-mail exchanges with the same person, the less time is spent saying “something good” to the addressee at the end of the e-mail, and the more likely the use of a shortened expression. High frequency of exchange, too, is part of the cognitive scenario of Best; the way of thinking associated with high frequency of exchange can be captured with a component “I think about you like this: ‘I can often say things to this someone, this someone can often say things to me’”, which is not part of the meaning of Best wishes.

Third, several native speakers who use Best commented that they never use it in e-mails to their superior at work, however frequently they write to this person. Similarly, the respondents to my survey who are students commented that they do not write Best to their lecturers and supervisors. This suggests that there is an expressed attitude in the interactional meaning of Best which is not felt to be suitable for exchanges with one’s superiors in an institution. I suggest that this expressed attitude is “I think about you like this: ‘this someone is someone like me’”, and this component, too, is not part of the meaning of Best wishes.

In sum, the interactional meaning of Best can be explicated as follows:

Best

[A] WHAT I WANT TO SAY TO YOU NOW

I want to say something good to you now, like people often say when it is like this:

they say some things to someone for some time in writing [m] at some point [moment] they think like this:

“I don’t want to say more to this someone now” [B] WHAT I SAY

I say: “I want very good things to happen to you” 176

[C] HOW I DON’T THINK ABOUT YOU WHEN I SAY THIS

when I say this, I think about you like this:

“I know this someone well, this someone is someone like me

I can often say things to this someone, this someone can often say things to me because of this, I can say this to this someone with one word”

The process of lexical reduction which I have discussed in this section is investigated from a synchronic perspective, not diachronic. Although it is true that historically Best wishes is the derivational base and that Best came later, the meaning of Best does not evolve historically from that of Best wishes. In current English the two salutations coexist, and in some contexts they compete (e.g. in combination with first names), therefore they have to be analysed separately without assuming a diachronic semantic relation.

9.3.2 ‘All the best’ and ‘All best’

Best is also a constituent in the closing salutations All the best and All best. In this pair, too, as I will show, there is a semantic relation of derivational base (All the best) and reduced form (All best). For this reason, I will first analyse the meaning of All the best. The differences between All the best and Best wishes lie both in the dictum and in the expressed attitude. The differences in the dictum are due to the presence of the lexical constituent all, which is not part of Best wishes. All contributes to the dictum of All the best in two ways. First of all, it indicates that the sender wants to say more than just Best wishes, an idea which can be captured with a component ‘I want to say more’. Secondly, it contributes by adding meaning to the dictum of Best discussed in the previous section. Being a semantic prime, the meaning of ALL is

intuitively clear, and can be combined with the meaning of Best in a composite component ‘I know that many things will happen to you after this, I want all these things to be very good’.

The differences in expressed attitude between All the best and Best wishes can be identified looking at how All the best is used. The respondents to my survey commented that they have

recently written All the best to someone with whom they did not expect to be in contact again for some time, whereas (in)frequency of contact is irrelevant to Best wishes. The respondents’ comment is consistent with the dates in which two letters signed off with All the best were written by Coetzee to Auster:

(6) January 26, 2009 Dear Paul,

You seem to treat sports as a mainly aesthetic affair, and the pleasures of sports spectatorship as mainly aesthetic pleasures. […]

All the best

John

(Paul Auster & J.M. Coetzee, Here and Now, 2013:40)

(7) April 6, 2009 Dear Paul,

Before you tell me what you think of the pleasures of competition, I have a preemptive comment to make. […]

All the best

John

(Paul Auster & J.M. Coetzee, Here and Now, 2013:52)

Noticeably, there is a three-month gap between the first and the second letter, with only two other letters written by Coetzee in between, signed with different salutations (Yours ever and All good wishes). The same time lapse characterises examples (8) and (9) in Appendix A, two personal e-mails. In all cases, the three-month gap supports the hypothesis that the first time All the best was used the senders did not expect to write again to that person soon. If this hypothesis is taken into consideration, infrequency of contact becomes an important factor for the use of All the best, and suggests, in turn, that the interactional meaning includes a semantic component “when I say this, I don’t think about you like this: ‘I can say more to this someone after a short time’”.

The difference in expressed attitude between All the best and Best wishes is also reflected in the way the recipient is addressed. In my body of data, the recipients of All the best are addressed either by first name or as all (Dear all in example (10) in Appendix A), but I have

found no example in which the recipient of All the best is addressed as Sir/Madam or as Mr./Mrs. plus surname, forms of address which are found in e-mails signed off with Best wishes. This suggests that All the best is incompatible with the expressed attitude “when I say this, I don’t think about you like this: ‘I know this someone well’”, whereas it is compatible with the attitude “I think about you like this: ‘I know this someone well’”. However, taking the infrequency of contact into account it seems implausible to posit such a component for the semantic invariant. A component “I don’t think about you like this: ‘I know this someone very well’” is more plausible, because it is both compatible with first names and does not state that all the people with whom one is not in very frequent contact are people about whom one would profess to think ‘I know this someone well’.

In sum, the interactional meaning of All the best can be explicated as follows:

All the best

[A] WHAT I WANT TO SAY TO YOU NOW

I want to say something good to you now, like people often say when it is like this:

they say some things to someone for some time in writing [m] at some point [moment] they think like this:

“I don’t want to say more to this someone now” [B] WHAT I SAY

I say: “I want many very good things to happen to you” I want to say more

I want to say:

“I know that many things will happen to you after this, I want all these things to be very good” [C] HOW I DON’T THINK ABOUT YOU WHEN I SAY THIS

when I say this, I don’t think about you like this:

“I know this someone very well, I can say more to this someone after a short time”

It is important to specify that the professed way of thinking portrayed in [D] is a composite

expressed attitude, not a single one. Having explicated All the best, it is now possible to see in what way All best differs from it.

Interestingly, some of the older respondents commented that they either did not think that anyone would write All best or that this phrase “is not proper English” because of the “missing” article, whereas no such comment was made by any of the younger respondents. Evidently, All