Recapitulación: la inevitable relación entre los viajes y el aprendizaje

This category was developed by Durst-Andersen (1995) and applied in Arnsberg and Bentsen’s (2009) cross-cultural study of requests. In their work, it appears as the speaker’s Thought, or mental proposition, which is claimed to rest on her general background knowledge. Within the SAP-model, verbalised thought is construed as a linguistic realisation of the ‘stating-a-problem’ decision model, where the speaker states that there is a problem. In other words, the label is used to distinguish be-tween the category of the SAP-model (on the level of Output) and the speaker’s Thought (on the level of Input). In addition, this decision is prompted by the need to distinguish between the interrogative

sentence structure as a question per se and the interrogative as a request.

On the level of Framing, the speaker can choose to state the problem by asking the hearer wheth-er hwheth-er Thought corresponds to the hearwheth-er’s actual state of mind. This will normally be done by asking a question. Let us consider the following case from the RED (see Appendix VII):

[30]

*P1: Johnny .

*P1: Would you like some more ice cream ?

In [30], P1 was asked to imagine that he invited a colleague, his wife, and their 5-year-old child, Johnny, for dinner. All have finished eating ice cream, and Johnny looks as if he would like to have some more. However, he hesitates to ask about it. The respondent’s background knowledge should have told him that Johnny wanted a final state q (i.e. more ice cream), but did not dare to produce an activity of taking more ice cream (p) because he is a guest. What can ‘remove’ this mental obstacle is the host’s permission, which, according to Durst-Andersen’s (1995) analysis of indirect speech acts in English, should have been a negative question, e.g. Wouldn’t you like some more ice cream?

However, [30] is a positive question, and in line with Durst-Andersen’s logic, the positive ques-tion should be analysed in terms of an alethic request involving Possibility. Why would our respon-dents assess a deontic situation of Permission in terms of Possibility?

In the interviews, the respondents expressed a general reluctance to exercise authority towards children, which, in fact, cancels any need to seek permission from ‘authoritative’ adults. Hence, in this particular scenario, the social variables of status and power seem to overrule the distribution of roles (i.e. a host and a guest) determined by the etiquette. And yet, the equality of status between a grown-up and a child can be interpreted as the absence of any ‘obstacle’, thereby resulting in an alethic perception of the given situation.

Going back to the example in [30], P1 might have had the following Thought:

‘He intends to take some more ice cream with the intention that it be suffi-cient for him to have some more ice cream.’

To put it simply, this Thought reads as He would like some more ice cream, which P1 chose to frame in the form of a question and therefore asked Johnny whether her assumption corresponded to his actual state of mind, Would you like some more ice cream?

Another way of using the category of verbalised thought is when the speaker asks about her Thought by negating the presupposition (for a similar treatment of negated interrogatives in terms of assertions rather than questions, see J. Heritage, 2002). An interesting example of this can be found in the BED (see Appendix VII):

[31]

*P102: Look !

*P102: I’ve told you once !

*P102: Will you please leave my rucksack alone !

[31] is an example of the Bus scenario based on the imperative frame involving Obligation.

In the situation, the speaker is on her way to work on a crowded bus. She is standing close to other passengers being squeezed and pushed on all sides. Suddenly, she feels someone behind her touching her rucksack, so she turns round and asks the person politely to stop doing this. The person behind her does not seem to comply and keeps rubbing against her rucksack. At this moment, the following Thought comes into her mind:

‘He does not intend to produce the activity of leaving me alone (p) with the purpose that p be sufficient for q (I am alone).’

As Durst-Andersen explains (1995:645), this mental proposition has the status of assumption.

However, in the situation at hand the same person keeps ignoring the speaker’s polite attempts to stop him doing it. As a result, the speaker’s assumption becomes a presupposition:

‘He does not intend to stop simply because he does not desire q, nor does he desire p.’

Correspondingly, the speaker’s presupposition He will not leave me alone functions as a key to the linguistic output Will you please leave my rucksack alone!, where the speaker imposes her own will by denying the hearer’s own non-desire.

Let us summarise what we have got. The category of verbalised thought stands for linguistic realisations where the speaker asks the hearer whether her Thought corresponds to the hearer’s actual state of mind (hence the term). Thus, this category always takes the propositional form of question asking. In the light of the fact that verbalised thought arises from the speaker’s assumptions, it will vary from situation to situation. Indeed, as can be seen from [30] and [31], the speaker can either choose to

verbalise her assumption by asking the hearer whether it corresponds to his actual state of mind, or the speaker can opt for verbalising the presupposition by negating her assumption. The outcome of using the two strategies will also differ with respect to the degree of politeness. While [30] will normally be perceived as a polite request, [31] will be associated with impoliteness, as it is understood by Brown and Levinson (1987).