The object of a (meta)pragmatic analysis is metacommunication. In a first go, it can be defined as communication about (selected aspects of) communication. Usually, the communication talked about is neither communication ‘as such’ (the abstract and general possibilities and impossibilities of communication) nor some definite previous or future communication, but the ongoing communication. Paul (1999: 98) characterizes it immanently as ‘practical speech reflection’. Quite orig- inal is Anton’s view contrasting it with communication.
[W]e routinely and commonly attend not to speech but simply from it. That is, when we listen with [sic!] one another in our everyday encounters, we routinely listen from our speech to the thought so intended. (Anton 1998: 198–199)
This behavior contrasts with what happens in particular circumstances, where we explicitly attend to the speech itself. In Leder’s [1990] terminology, moments of breakdown manifest speech ‘dys-appearance.’
Reconsider the case of reading a novel: I may be engrossed in the story, simply attend- ing from the sentences to the story, but then, a misspelled word, a foreign word, or per- haps a too-recondite one appears. Now, I consciously and explicitly reflect to the word […]. Speech, then, is routinely an absent body, an intentional arc which disappears for the sake of the meaning so intended. (Anton 1998: 199)
What Anton’s circumscription brings out nicely is a kind of break separating com- munication from metacommunication, a sort of strained dialogical structure, which is not attributable to a change in speakers (or voices), but to a change in the level of communication. This is mainly brought about by a functional change from practi- cal acting to reflecting.3
The change in level is often notable in that it involves a change from ordinary language to metalanguage. Metalanguage is commonly understood as the language referring to language; it represents what Verschueren (1998: 55) calls the object notion of metalanguage.4 It is, however, not an autonomous language (not even
where linguists use a metalanguage). When members of a speech community en- gage in metacommunication, the metalanguage used does not consist of compli- cated terminology but of ordinary words, mainly nouns (such as chat or denial) and verbs (such as promise or argue), whose feature that distinguishes them from other words is their function to refer not to something in the world out there but to some aspect of speech.5
1.1. On full forms of metacommunication
Though metacommunication is always embedded in primary communication, its extension can vary considerably. For the purpose of this article, it will be sufficient to simply differentiate between full and reduced (or abbreviated) metacommuni- cative forms. A full form consists of at least one metacommunicative utterance; anything below utterance level can no longer be considered metacommunication proper, but is, of course, still metacommunicative.6 If primary communication is
the on-line event, then metacommunicative utterances (and more extended forms) cause such an articulate deviation from it that they appear as ‘off-line’, as it were (cf. Hübler and Bublitz 2007: 12). The boundary between primary communication and metacommunication is usually not marked in strictly formal terms (except for those cases in which a speaker refers to some previous utterance within the current communicative situation by using some speech reporting frame (I said …, you said …); for references to utterances outside the current situation, cf. below). The shift in level is identified, rather, in pragmatic terms.
The following questions are meant to delineate the main pragmatic parameters that apply for analyzing metacommunication. They pertain to the issue/topic chosen, to the intention pursued, and to some frame conditions of metacommuni- cation (for a more detailed treatment and examples of full-length analyses, cf. Bub- litz and Hübler (eds.) 2007).7
(1) What are the topics of metacommunication? Though always referring to particular speech events, either single or serial, the topical scope can be generic as well as specific. Metacommunicative topics of a more generic kind may, for in- stance, concern the problem of effability (I don’t have words which could ad- equately express how I feel or ‘Love’ is just a gross label), the mode chosen (You don’t have to touch me when you want something from me or Could you speak up a bit?), or questions of participating in a conversation (Why do you always want to dominate conversation? or You never take part in this kind of talk). They may be comments that operate with general principles, norms and maxims; thus Grice’s maxims find rich application (e.g., the maxim of quality in Are you telling the truth?, the maxim of quantity in Just give us the gist of it, the maxim of relevance in Come to the point, please! and the maxim of manner in Let me just finish this story before we leave) as well as Leech’s politeness principle (Stop being so pat- ronizing!).
More specific metacommunicative topics may concern illocutionary functions (Is that a complaint?), acts of reference (Who are you talking about?) or predi- cation (That’s a very euphemistic formulation or What do you mean by ‘insinu- ation’?). Or they may concern matters of discourse organization. These include performing or holding back certain speech acts (Give me your permission to do so, please), announcing a speech act (And now I will disclose my next plans), or steer- ing an ongoing discussion (We’ve got three requests to speak; first Lila, then John,
then Karen). Comments relating to the text structure (such as But the real sensation is coming now) may occur within longer turns.
(2) What for or why? These are the central questions for any pragmatic ap- proach to communication. The purposes that metacommunicative utterances in particular pursue are in part prefigured by their topic.8 Thus they concern the or-
ganization of discourse, including the textual structure of longer stretches of utter- ance (So far we have been describing a state of affairs; now we may turn to …); they help secure an adequate understanding, including attempts at rendering a speech act function more precise (Is this a complaint or an accusation?) and other kinds of monitoring. Their sense is to prevent or repair misunderstandings.
Another common purpose of metacommunicative comments is evaluative, mainly critically, in nature, in as far as what is topicalized marks or implies a negative deviance from what is to be expected (But I am repeating myself). Where such comments are self-critical, they often represent a preventive measure antici- pating criticism from others.
Besides general communicative norms and principles, which provide the stan- dard for (metacommunicatively) evaluating a given utterance, other standards seem to have been availed of recently as well. They are based on what has become known under the label of critical language awareness (cf. Fairclough ed. 1992), which Coupland and Jaworski (2004) characterize (rather critically in tone) thus: The growing obsession with “good” communication (Cameron 2000) is filled by a com- munication industry happily producing prescriptive orders of metadiscourse which are constitutive of new social orders. These meta-discourses are based on various regimes of verbal hygiene (Cameron 1995) and codifications of communication skills. (Coup- land and Jaworski 2004: 39)
The underlying intentions are certainly honorable: to contribute – on the mental level – to the social goal of emancipation.
Farther reaching objectives, i.e., objectives that go beyond the associative link with the communicative aspect topicalized, may consist in securing the partici- pants’ receptivity or even in raising conflict, in a constructive or destructive key. The last example (But I am repeating myself) and its variant (You are repeating yourself) can well illustrate these purposes. And in a still wider perspective, such metacommunicative comments may be used for defending or questioning com- municative norms (the speaker subscribing to a culture-specific norm of brevity and conciseness) or even creating/modifying personal identities as communicators (profiling him- or herself as a critical, assertive person with a social status that en- titles him or her to utter things of that sort).
(3) Who is the target? Though comments on utterances may appear completely depersonalized, the speaker of the utterance commented on is nonetheless the ulti- mate target of such comments. In principle, any participant in a communication can be the target; we thus can roughly differentiate between comments directed at
oneself and comments directed at some other speaker (cf. Hübler and Bublitz 2007: 15–16).
In principle, metacommunicative actions are reciprocal and egalitarian, wherever symmetrical relations between participants in an interaction are given – or should be given (cf. Habermas 1971). There are interactive frames, however, which do not allow for symmetry; in the classroom or the courtroom, for example, the rights for metacommunicative utterances are asymmetrically distributed. This pertains, of course, primarily to the right of commenting on the contribution of the other party. But even self-commenting may show restrictions, especially where the possibility for a certain communicative move (such as changing the topic, or launching into a longer discourse) is not readily available; one may have to choose the form of asking for permission to add something not really to the point instead of simply announcing that one is going to do that.
(4) What are the forms of realization? The examples illustrating the various points have already provided a variety of examples of how a speaker’s metacom- municative intentions can be realized. Since any metacommunicative activity is based on a reflexive and diagnostic analysis, a commenting utterance seems to be the most direct equivalent, either a categorical (I am talking too much or You are talking too much respectively) or a modalized one (Do I talk too much? Maybe, I am talking too much or I think you are talking too much respectively). Another op- tion is to operationalize the analysis in terms of a corresponding action to be taken (I should not talk that much or Stop talking that much, Could you stop talking too much? respectively). Where the target is not the speaker him/herself, such meta- communicative utterances, especially if they are critical, are likely to provoke some reaction (That’s ok or I’m always supposed to keep my mouth shut!), and this could even lead to extended sequences.
As to the position of metacommunicative clauses, it is most common that they follow the utterance that they refer to. Only where the speaker takes him/herself as target may we find a reversed order, in which the utterance referred follows. This restriction, of course, is not surprising; it is, after all, only in this circumstance that the speaker of a metacommunicative utterance knows what it will be that s/he (ca- taphorically) refers to.
A systematic treatment of how the various aspects interact would certainly be desirable, but is currently not feasible.
Certain meta-phenomena have so far not been taken into account – for good reasons: Though they consist of reflexive language (in the sense of Lucy 1993) and though they contribute to the ongoing communication, they do not result in meta- communication. Their common denominator consists in their being reportive in some way or another, i.e., they refer to instances of direct speech outside the cur- rent communicative situation and either reproduce them or sum them up.9
The most common forms are direct and reported speech, which are usually framed (introduced or rounded off) by a phrase containing a verb of saying (He
said, “ …” or She told me that …), a performative verb (He promised to stop smok- ing), or one of a more interpretative character (He insisted that …). They lack, to quote Meyer-Hermann (1978: 128), the defining feature that “the object referred to and predicated about is a communicative interaction (sequence) or part belonging to the same interactional unit as the metacommunicative speech act”. These ‘meta- representations’, as Wilson (2000) calls them, refer to speech events outside a given communicative situation and can therefore be considered ‘extracommuni- cative’ (cf. Ungeheuer 1970). Due to their extracommunicative character, these speech references get absorbed in the primary discourse either as instrument or ob- ject. Newspaper articles are a common source for illustration; examples of another kind are literary analyses or philosophical language essays.
A phenomenon that is not extracommunicative and still represents hardly an in- stance of metacommunication is the so-called echo-utterance, where the speaker echoes the preceding speaker by repeating some linguistic material yet giving a specific turn to it; cf. Sperber and Wilson (1986), Wilson (2000); Graf (2007). Echo-questions (You’ve got frequent-flyer status with which company?) try to re- elicit a certain part of the preceding utterance that the addressee either did not understand or feels provoked by. Echo-statements such as in the following example
He: It’s a lovely day for a picnic
[They go for a picnic and it rains]
She: (sarcastically): It’s a lovely day for a picnic, indeed.
(Sperber and Wilson 1986: 239)
usually just convey attitudes10 towards the propositional state of affairs quoted/
echoed. In neither case are we confronted with instances of metacommunication; the echo-utterances are information-oriented (in that they elicit information or evaluate information) and do not concern some formal aspect of communication. Where they cause a break, as in the information-seeking reading of the echo-ques- tion above, they do not transpose the ongoing communication onto the meta-level. Another quotative variant, which is not extracommunicative either but func- tions within an ongoing communicative situation, is at least a strong candidate for metapragmatics. The reference is to parody, which is defined as imitating the char- acteristic style of a speaker (or an author or a work of his/hers) with the intention to ridicule or achieve a comic effect. We usually associate a literary genre with it, but parody also occurs in ordinary life and everyday conversation. The illustration that follows is taken from a piece of literature, but the parodist here is not the author himself but one personage in his (realistic) drama.
Nick: I try not to …
George: Get involved. Um? Isn’t that right? Nick: Yes … that’s right.
George: I’d imagine not. Nick: I find it embarrassing.
Nick: Yes. Really. Quite.
George (mimicking him): Yes. Really. Quite. (Then aloud, but to himself:) It’s dis- gusting!
(Edward Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? New York: Pocket Books, 1966: 90)
The parodistic mimicking performs the metacommunicative act inexplicitly, but could be made explicit – as is illustrated in the given example by the aside with which George’s turn ends; both modes convey his disgust at the way in which Nick expresses himself. As is also shown by the example, parody – at least in everyday conversation where it is used only occasionally – shows something similar to, but weaker than, the break which marks the boundary between communication and metacommunication: the ongoing dialogic flow comes to a halt. With Bally (1965), we could characterize this inexplicit type of metacommunication as mode vécu, contrasting with the mode pur of explicit metacommunication (cf. below).
Stylization, as treated by Coupland (2004), and some forms of irony provide other instances of such inexplicit metacommunication. They represent double- voiced utterances in the sense of Bakhtin (e.g., 1981) in that they are moving on two different levels (the level of primary communication and the level of meta- communication, which consists in exaggerated imitation) and yet are united in one utterance.
1.2. On abbreviated forms of metacommunication
The subtitle already links this part directly to section 1.1 where full forms of meta- communication were tackled. The same (meta-)pragmatic aspects are applicable here as well. They will, consequently, be expounded by the same guiding ques- tions; merely the order will be slightly altered, starting this time with the most dis- tinctive feature, i.e., the formal make-up.
(1) What are the forms of realization? The means allowing for abbreviated metacommunication are quite easy to delineate. They mainly consist in adverbials that typically operate on the whole proposition of the given utterance. The most concise forms are disjuncts (such as frankly); slightly more ‘voluminous’ are prep- ositional phrases/clauses (such as in short), infinitive clauses (such as to tell you in a few words) and participial clauses (such as bluntly speaking). They usually can be expanded to a fully fledged metacommunicative utterance (I’ll be very frank with you; I will sum it up in a few words; I don’t want to fuss around but say bluntly what I have in mind). Being briefer than their elaborated counterparts, they are better integrated into the dialogical flow; the communicative break they cause is more subtle, and at best syntactically marked off from the main clause providing the propositional content of what is primarily communicated. While the full forms of metacommunication were characterized as off-line phenomena (seen from the perspective of ongoing primary communication), the abbreviated variants keep the
communication on-line, in a manner of speaking. It is therefore no wonder that they are unlikely to open up metacommunicative (side-)sequences.
(2) What are the topics that the adverbials cover? Quirk et al.’s (1985) classifi- cations of adverbs/adverbial provide a comprehensive overview. Of prime rel- evance are style disjuncts and – with some restrictions – conjuncts.
According to Quirk et al., style disjuncts convey “the speaker’s comment on the style and form of what he is saying, defining in some way under what condi- tions he is speaking as the ‘authority’ for the utterance” (Quirk et al. 1985: 615). The metalinguistic character can (often) be brought forth explicitly by transform- ing the disjunct into a clause in which the adverbial (turning into a process adjunct) is linked to a verb of speaking with ‘I’ as subject. (e.g., Frankly, I am tired – I tell you frankly, I am tired).11
In line with Quirk et al. (1985: 615 ff.), we can subclassify style disjuncts. One group of adverbs that is of interest focuses on the manner in which an utterance is made; with their help, a speaker can either refer to the style of his/her utterance (e.g., bluntly, briefly, simply) or include some modal overtones (e.g., truthfully). Recall that longer variants are also available, such as prepositional phrases, or (in-)finitive and participial clauses (cf. above). The other group of interest consists of adverbs (and adverbial expressions) which characterize the make-up of a formu- lation, whether it has to be taken, say, figuratively or literally. Again, some ex- pressions may be tinged with modal overtones. Thus, an utterance like Hawkins was not, strictly speaking, a traitor may address not only the issue of whether the word traitor is a suitable term for Hawkins’s behavior but also the issue of whether or not Hawkins is a traitor. In addition, there are some adverbs of degree (belong- ing to the category of subjuncts) that can serve the same metalinguistic purpose: compromisers (such as kind of, sort of) and approximators (such as almost, vir- tually) provide indications as to the reliability and adequacy of the lexical ex- pression chosen. In uttering, for example, He is kind of a traitor or He virtually stole the money the speaker may want to let the listener know that the verdictive terms ‘traitor’ and ‘steal’ respectively are not to be taken literally, but come close. These adverbials can, in general, be linked up again with some conversational principle, norm or maxim. A speaker using truthfully in his/her utterance echoes Grice’s maxim of quality, using briefly his maxim of quantity, while with figu- ratively he alludes to his maxim of relevance (by flouting it), and with frankly to his maxim of manner.12 Adverbs like sort of pay tribute to Leech’s politeness principle
in as far as they may render the utterance more palpable.
The second set of adverbials that – in part – can be interpreted in a metacom- municative key are conjuncts/conjunctions. They are text-structural markers that specify how an utterance fits into the surrounding discourse “in which what is to follow is systematically connected to what has gone before” (Halliday and Hasan 1976: 227). Not all of the 7 conjunctive roles (and sub-roles) between which Quirk et al. (1985: 634 ff.) distinguish (i.e., listing, summative, appositional, resultive, in-
ferential, contrastive, transitional) are metacommunicative. The ones that do not qualify for inclusion are those that establish the co-textual link purely in terms of content, not of form. The ones whose use allow for a pragmatic interpretation as being metacommunicative are adverbs of ‘enumerative listing’ (such as first, sec- ond, third; to begin with, next, to conclude), ‘summative’ expressions (such as in conclusion, to summarize), contrastive adverbs with a ‘reformulatory’ (such as more accurately, alias, in other words) or ‘replacive’ meaning (as in alternatively,