8.1 Introduction

This chapter considers the relationship between expressions, the smallest unit of pragmatic analysis, and ritual. By so doing, it illustrates how the first methodological take outlined in the synopsis of Part III can be put into practice.

While verbal rituals are often popularly associated with certain formal expressions, from an academic point of view such an association can be very problematic because it is the interactional context – i.e., the ritual frame – which provides a ritual pragmatic function to pragmatically important expressions, i.e., an expression per se is neither ritual nor ‘mundane’. To provide a simple example, ‘Amen’ can be said to be a ‘ritual expression’ – and it is by default in the language use of many millions of Christians! However, this expression may as well be used in non-ritual conversation in phrases like ‘Amen to that’ where its ritual function is only referential. Further, ‘Amen’ may also be used in very mundane contexts such as in the utterance ‘Who the heck gave his Amen to this madness?’ For the ritual pragmatician the question is therefore not so much whether a formal expression is ritual or not, but whether it has a comparably stronger or weaker relationship with interaction ritual. In the case of ‘Amen’ this question is of course clear due to its religious origin and use. However, since interaction ritual involves a complex cluster of day-to-day interactions, the pragmatician needs to consider whether pragmatically important quotidian expressions such as ‘please’, ‘sorry’, ‘hello’ and so on have a stronger or weaker relationship with ritual. Such expressions tend to be often described as ‘ritual’ and associated with politeness. Furthermore, many such expressions are either associated with speech acts which tend to be performed in ritual ways, such as Request and Apology (see Reference Blum-Kulka, House and KasperBlum-Kulka et al. 1989) or others which normally occur in ritual parts of an interaction such as Greet and Leave-Take (see Reference Edmondson and HouseEdmondson & House 1981; Reference Edmondson, House and KádárEdmondson et al. 2023). Figure 8.1, drawn from Reference Edmondson and HouseEdmondson and House (1981: 98), illustrates the relationship between speech acts and ritual:

As Figure 8.1 shows, there is a cluster of structurally ritual speech acts occurring under the ‘Ritual’ label in the typology. Other Substantive speech acts, such as Apologise, gain a ritual function when they are realised by following ritual interactional conventions (see more in Reference Edmondson, House and KádárEdmondson et al. 2023).

Figure 8.1 Edmondson and House’s typology of speech acts

(cited from Reference Edmondson and HouseEdmondson & House 1981: 98).

Following Figure 8.2 quoted in the synopsis of Part III, in the study of the relationship between expressions and ritual, the literal definition of ritual as a form normally serves as a departure point: the rationale of looking at one or more expressions is that the analyst may assume that expression x is likely to have a ritual value. Following a Popperian take in pragmatic research (see Reference Edmondson and HouseEdmondson & House 2011), one however should not set out to prove the validity of such an assumption, but rather investigate whether it is true or not, and if yes, how a particular expression relates to ritual in a more abstract sense, i.e., as a context where rights and obligations are preset. If the relationship between a particular expression and ritual turns out to be relatively weak, the original assumption that expression x is ‘ritual’ in the popular sense needs to be critically revisited. The procedure of research here is thus the following:

Figure 8.2 Procedure of research in the ritual study of expressions.

The relationship between expressions and interaction ritual can be best captured through a contrastive pragmatic lens because the contrastive view allows the researcher to consider how strongly a pragmatically important expression tends to indicate a functionally or structurally ritual speech act when pitted against a comparable expression in another (preferably typologically distant) linguaculture.

In this chapter, I present a case study which I conducted with Juliane House where we contrastively examined comparable expressions associated with the Attitudinal speech act Apologise¹ in the typologically distant Chinese and English linguacultures, in order to examine whether they are more strongly or weakly associated with ritual in an abstract sense.

The structure of this chapter is as follows. In Section 8.2, I revisit the ritual perspective – which has already been discussed in different chapters of this book – by arguing that it provides a more accurate view on the pragmatic use of pragmatically important expressions like ‘sorry’ than the politeness perspective. In Section 8.3, I present a methodological framework through which expressions associated with ritual – which are called ‘ritual frame indicating expressions’ (RFIEs) in this book – can be studied in a bottom–up, corpus-based and contrastive way. Section 8.4 presents the case study, and finally Section 8.5 provides a conclusion.

8.2 Expressions and Interaction Ritual: Retrospection

I believe that – as with various other pragmatic phenomena – the ritual view can provide a particularly reliable insight into the ordinary and conventionalised use of pragmatically important expressions. The use of such expressions has often been approached through the lens of politeness, which however has been a rather controversial area. Once again, I do not intend to pit ritual against politeness, which would be a futile and unhelpful train of thought because these phenomena are complementary and they have a lot in common: ritual at one end of a pragmatic scale represents the realm of communally oriented behaviour, while politeness and impoliteness at the other end of the same scale represent individually oriented pragmatic behaviour. Indeed, politeness and impoliteness are relevant for the study of pragmatically important expressions – however, I believe that they are less relevant than ritual.

A brief retrospection may prove the validity of this argument. Expressions like ‘sorry’ popularly tend to be associated with politeness, and in the field of pragmatics, various scholars have described them as ‘politeness markers’² (see e.g., Reference SifianouSifianou 1992; Reference 245Van MulkenVan Mulken 1996; Reference AijmerAijmer 2009). Yet, the association between form and politeness has been the source of much academic debate. In one particular body of research, which includes, among others, Reference Fraser and NolenFraser and Nolen (1981), Reference House, Blum-Kulka, House and KasperHouse (1989), Reference EelenEelen (2001) and Reference WattsWatts (2003), it has been argued that linguistic politeness, impoliteness and expressions are only loosely, if at all, related, and it is primarily through conventionalisation that their relationship can be identified. In Reference Brown and LevinsonBrown and Levinson’s (1987) seminal work, forms occur as subsets of politeness ‘strategies’; this implies that in their view forms are of secondary importance for politeness theory. Outside of politeness theory, the expression ‘politeness marker’ has continued to be frequently used: in areas such as language socialisation and language learning it is of little importance whether these forms are technically ‘polite’ or not, and researchers engaged in applied linguistics and other areas have often used the concept of ‘politeness marker’ in a rather liberal way (see e.g., Reference Gleason, Pearlmann and GreifGleason et al. 1984; Reference ByonByon 2003). In addition, various politeness scholars such as Reference PilegaardPilegaard (1997), Reference 246YeungYeung (1997) and Reference OgiermannOgiermann (2009) have used this notion to categorise and quantify their data. In a recent paper, Reference SchlundSchlund (2014) has provided a comprehensive overview of the debates surrounding the concept of ‘politeness marker’ and has also proposed a model which – she claims – provides an approach to study the interface between ‘politeness marker’ and politeness itself. Regretfully, Schlund’s research is not fully empirical in scope and, to date, the relationship between expressions associated with polite behaviour and linguistic politeness itself has not been sufficiently captured.

One may argue that the lack of a comprehensive study of the expression–politeness interface is not a coincidence because ultimately an expression per se only becomes polite or impolite if its use (or lack) is interactionally noticed, i.e., if something extraordinary happens in the flow of the interaction. On the other hand, since the Speech Act Realisation Project (Reference Blum-Kulka, House and KasperBlum-Kulka et al. 1989) it has been largely agreed that pragmatically important expressions tend to have a relatively straightforward relationship with speech acts, contextual rights and obligations and, consequently, also with ritual. ‘Straightforward’ here does not mean simple: as Reference House and KádárHouse and Kádár (2021a) pointed out, there are many different types of relationship between expressions and speech acts, well beyond the scope of what is discussed in the current chapter. However, it can be argued that due to the strongly conventionalised relationship between certain speech acts and ritual outlined above (see Figure 8.1), it is less ambitious to study the use of expressions by considering their ritual speech act indicating function than by attempting to consider their relationship to politeness and impoliteness.

8.3 Analytical Framework: The Ritual Frame Indicating Expressions Theory

In this book, pragmatically important expressions are referred to as ‘ritual frame indicating expressions’ (RFIEs). RFIE theory emerged in Reference Kádár and HouseKádár and House (2020a, Reference Kádár and House2020b) in which, with Juliane House, we established an approach for the contrastive pragmatic analysis of expressions, which are pragmatically important and commonly associated with structurally or functionally ritual speech acts. In Reference Kádár and HouseKádár and House (2020a), we defined the concept of a RFIE as follows: such expressions associated with speech acts are not necessarily polite, but rather are markers of standard situations and they indicate awareness of a ‘ritual frame’ underlying standard situations. Our definition of ‘standard situation’ originated in Reference House, Blum-Kulka, House and KasperHouse’s (1989: 115) seminal work – to facilitate the reader’s work, here I quote this definition again:

The concept of a standard situation includes any situation in which rights and obligations prevail. Due to the prevalence of rights and obligations in any standard situation, such situations are ritual in nature. With Juliane House we use the notion of ‘ritual frame’, which has already been thoroughly discussed in this book, to describe pragmatic rights and obligations associated with each standard situation. It is worth noting that the way in which ritual frame is applied in the present bottom–up and corpus-based study of expressions in this chapter differs from how ‘frame’ has been used in a particular body of cognitive research which has been conducted by, for example, Reference Schank and AbelsonSchank and Abelson (1977), Reference Tannen and FriedlTannen (1979), Reference FillmoreFillmore (1982), Reference Barsalou, Lehrer and Feder KittayBarsalou (1992), Reference ChafeChafe (1994), Reference Terkourafi, Lakoff and IdeTerkourafi (2005) and Reference BednarekBednarek (2005). This is because, in such cognitive research, ‘frame’ has often been used in a top–down way, i.e., it was applied in the study of the use of expressions in contexts selected by the researcher. Unlike such research, RFIE theory pursues an interest in the variety of frames a particular RFIE can indicate.

Ritual frame, as the concept is interpreted in RFIE theory, clearly correlates with conventionalisation (Reference TerkourafiTerkourafi 2001). In other words, the more conventional the meaning of a particular RFIE becomes, the less directly related it will be to individualistic politeness (Reference House, Blum-Kulka, House and KasperHouse 1989; Reference WichmannWichmann 2004; Reference TerkourafiTerkourafi 2011), and the more open it is to being deployed as an indicator of a ritual frame.

In the following, I provide an overview of the contrastive pragmatic analytical framework through which one can analyse RFIEs and the resulting standard situational spread of ritual behaviour, in a bottom–up fashion, illustrated by Figure 8.3:

Figure 8.3 Analytical model used in RFIE research.

The procedure depicted in Figure 8.3 consists of two levels. On the first level, the initial task is to identify RFIEs in the linguacultural data that one is intending to compare. Various criteria can be used to identify comparable RFIEs – in the case study reported in this chapter, the criterion was simply to find the simplest and most standard expressions associated with the speech act Apologise according to two panels of five native speakers. Based on such native speaker feedback, it was evident that ‘sorry’ in English is on a par with ‘duibuqi’ 对不起 in Chinese: according to the respondents, these are the most ‘universal’ RFIEs in the two linguacultures.

After the RFIE groups were chosen, a sample corpus needs to be collected. In the case study reported below, a sample of 200 examples featuring a particular RFIE was collected. The next criterion in the first level of analysis is to identify the standard situations which are indicated by a particular RFIE. To ensure that a manageable number of such standard situations were obtained, a threshold of five was applied for 200 examples. In other words, a minimum 2.5 per cent rate of occurrence threshold was used to ensure that a particular standard situation was sufficiently recurrent.

There are various ways in which one can collect a sample dataset of 200 examples. For instance, in the case study, twenty hits were collected by randomly sampling batches of five examples in the corpora. Invalid examples, such as metareferences to a RFIE, were excluded from the data. Due to this approach, the data sampling took place in two stages, firstly by collecting an initial dataset, and then by replacing the invalid examples with valid ones that occurred before the batches of five examples in the corpus.

The following should be noted regarding the use of the concept of ‘standard situation’ in interaction ritual research involving RFIEs. First, it is advisable for such analysis to operate with two preset standard situations, namely ‘institutional with power-salience’ and ‘informal with now power-salience’. The reason why such standard situations are useful is that the sociolinguistic parameter of power attracts ritual behaviour (see Reference KádárKádár 2013), and so featuring formal versus informal standard situations as general categories helps the researcher observe variation in the use of RFIEs. Second, the number of standard situations and the size of the dataset are meant to correlate. In the case study reported below, the four standard situations are in proportion with the dataset of 200 utterances. Third, when using the analytic category of ‘standard situation’ one should remember that any standard situation triggers a sense of awareness of rights and obligations and the underlying ritual frame. So, even in cases when a particular RFIE is used in a non-ritual way, it usually continues to indicate the ritual frame itself, as the case study below will also show.

Let us now discuss the top right-hand box in Figure 8.3, which illustrates the application of the variables of the participatory framework that are used to analyse each RFIE, before a contrastive pragmatic analysis is performed. The analytic model outlined here uses three categories, defined as ‘interpersonal scenarios’, including (1) ‘dyadic’, (2) ‘multiparty’ and (3) ‘public’:

• Dyadic: Interactions in private where there are no overhearers.

• Multiparty: Any interaction involving two participants with either overhearers or situated in a scenario in which dyads are part of a broader relational network. Multiparty interactions tend to feature complex participatory frameworks.

• Public: Interactions which are designed to be accessible to unratified participants (see also Reference GoffmanGoffman 1981).

In order to ensure that the dataset representing one RFIE is comparable with another, it is advisable to create a cluster of interpersonal scenarios and standard situations by breaking down the occurrences of each standard situation that a particular RFIE indicates across the interpersonal scenarios. The tri-fold categories of ‘dyadic’, ‘multiparty’ and ‘public’ are useful because they can throw light on the relationship between a particular RFIE and its speech act-anchor. This speech act-anchor, in turn, is relevant to the study of whether a particular RFIE has a stronger or weaker relationship with ritual (see Figure 8.1), considering that if an expression loses its speech act-indicating function, it also often loses from its interaction ritual value.

After completing the preparatory work, the next step is to engage in contrastive pragmatic analysis, as per the bottom right-hand box of Figure 8.3. The focus of this investigation is the relationship between the RFIEs contrasted and their ‘speech act-anchor’, as well as the related strong weak/strong relationship between RFIEs and interaction ritual. As part of investigating this issue, it is relevant to quantitatively compare ‘speech act anchored’ and ‘non-speech act anchored’ uses of an RFIE. In the case study below, the number of non-speech act anchored occurrences of an expression will be indicated in the tables by underlining and bracketing the figures.

Finally, the bottom left-hand box in Figure 8.3 shows that on the basis of the framework outlined here, one may reach a general view about the relationship between particular RFIEs and interaction ritual. I would caution against making linguacultural conclusions on the basis of such outcomes, e.g., by making arguments alongside the ‘East–West’ dichotomy.

A relevant issue to consider in the RFIE-based study of ritual is performativity. There is a strong correlation between ritual and speech act. Reference AustinAustin (1962) in his now classical work has predominantly used performative utterances which are ritual in nature, such as ‘I appoint you Consul’ (Reference Austin1962: 23), or ‘I welcome you’ (Reference Austin1962: 24). In addition, in ritual research (e.g., Reference HollywoodHollywood 2002), performativity is often mentioned as a key criterion for defining an utterance as ritual. Thus, it is logical to argue that the performative function is prevalent in ritual, while non-speech act-anchored uses of an RFIE also lack performative value.

8.4 Case Study

The present case study explores the relationships between the RFIEs ‘duibuqi’ and ‘sorry’ and ritual. The data of this case study is based on Mandarin Chinese and English corpora of comparable size and comprehensiveness. The Chinese corpus was collected from the Balanced Chinese Corpus (BCC; http://corpus.zhonghuayuwen.org/CnCindex.aspx). The English corpus is the British National Corpus (BNC).

8.5 Conclusion

This chapter has considered how the ritual pragmatician can capture the relationship between expressions and ritual, hence illustrating how the first methodological take of pragmatic research on ritual proposed in this book can be put to practice. I argued that while verbal rituals and expressions have a stereotypically assigned relationship, it is problematic to claim that there are ‘ritual expressions’ – rather, one should examine the relationship between pragmatically important expressions and interaction ritual by considering how such expressions are related to speech acts. Such a study of the relationship between expressions and speech acts provides a gateway to ritual research, considering that some speech acts are structurally ritual as the seminal work of Reference Edmondson and HouseEdmondson and House (1981) has shown, while certain Attitudinal speech acts such as Apologise tend to be realised in ritual ways. I argued that examining the pragmatic features of expressions through the lens of ritual provides a more reliable insight into them than the politeness perspective.

I proposed a framework for the ritual study of pragmatically important expressions, which are called RFIEs in this book. This framework is centred on the relationship between RFIEs and speech acts, and it approaches the relationship between RFIEs and interaction ritual through the concepts of standard situation and interpersonal scenario. This framework is contrastive in scope because the relationship between expressions and ritual is never absolute: RFIEs are always related to ritual to some degree, and the nature of this relationship can be characterised as ‘stronger’ or ‘weaker’ if one looks at the use of such expressions from a contrastive pragmatic angle.

I argued that one should avoid making linguacultural overgeneralisations on the basis of the framework proposed in this chapter. For example, I believe it would be an error to hop on the ‘East–West dichotomy’ bandwagon on the basis of what the case study of this chapter has shown, by arguing that in ‘Eastern’ languages expressions in general are more ritualised than their ‘Western’ counterparts. Such an argument would be very problematic because ultimately interaction ritual manifests itself in such diverse forms of expressions, including expletives studied by Reference Labov and LabovLabov (1972; see Chapter 2) that one simply may not be able to make conclusive statements about the expression–ritual interface.

In the following Chapter 9, we will continue discussing the first methodological take of pragmatic research on ritual, by examining how speech acts associated with ritual can be examined from a pragmatic point of view.

8.6 Recommended Reading

9.1 Introduction

In this chapter we continue discussing the first methodological take in the pragmatic study of ritual proposed in this book, by examining how speech acts associated with ritual can be examined in a replicable way. A key issue in the study of such speech acts is the following: there are many so-called ‘speech acts’, like ‘blessing’, ‘praying’, ‘challenging’ and so on, which are popularly associated with ritual. However, it is very problematic to define such phenomena as ‘ritual’ because that would imply that the ritual pragmatician can ‘identify’ new speech acts ad libitum, just like an anthropologist finding new ritual practices with no equivalent when visiting ‘exotic’ countries and cultures. In Reference House and KádárHouse and Kádár (2023: 1), Juliane House and myself discussed the problematic nature of proliferating speech acts in detail, and here I cite an argument from this study:

This is exactly why there are no so-called ‘ritual speech acts’ (cf. e.g., Reference 243RotaRota 2022) in my view, only speech acts used in a ritual practice or in a ritual context.¹ The task of the pragmatician is to rely on a finite and interactional typology of speech acts – in this book I propose using the one outlined in Figure 8.1 in Chapter 8 because it is a radically minimal and finite typology of speech acts which approaches speech acts as interactional phenomena.

The idea of finiteness of speech acts is not without controversy. In Reference House and KádárHouse and Kádár (2023: 5) we argued as follows regarding this point:

In ritual research focusing on speech acts, the first task of the researcher is therefore to consider how a particular ‘ritual speech act’ can be pinned down with the aid of a replicable typology of speech acts. As part of considering this issue, it is also important to make sure that one does not overinterpret speech act, which is an utterance-level phenomenon by default.² For example, it would have been clearly wrong in Chapter 3 to argue that ritual trash talk in MMA events represents a ‘speech act’! Such phenomena, in my view, can only be studied through speech act analysis if one observes recurrent speech act types through which trash talk and the like are realised.

Once we identify our subject of analysis with the aid of a finite typology of speech acts, the next task is to consider how this speech act is realised in a particular ritual frame. In this chapter, I do this by proposing a replicable methodology which examines realisations of the speech act under investigation through the lens of the units of expressions and discourse.

I investigate the ritual phenomenon of ‘admonishing’ as a case study. Admonishing represents a ritual realisation type of the Attitudinal speech act category Suggest (do-x)/(not-to-do-x) (see Reference Edmondson and HouseEdmondson & House 1981; Reference Edmondson, House and KádárEdmondson et al. 2023). While ancient Chinese admonishing has many distinctive pragmatic characteristics that sets it apart from other everyday realisation modes of Suggest, it is reasonable to subsume admonishing under the illocutionary category of Suggest. When one realises admonishing, he engages in a performative ritual act, often in an unmitigated fashion. Unlike many other forms of Suggest, admonishing is historically embedded (see Reference BaxBax 1981). The act of admonishing is apparent in historical forms of discourse in a number of linguacultures: in many parts of the world, including China, Egypt (Reference LichtheimLichtheim 1976), ancient Europe (see an overview in Reference Dauphinais and LeveringDauphinais & Levering 2005), Renaissance Italy (e.g., Reference TascaTasca 2004) and suchlike, admonishing was a culturally important act. In historical European linguacultures, for instance, there was a particular theological genre – ecclesiastical discourse – associated with this ritual, whereas in China admonishing was a key part of ancient literary discourse on state governance.

As the case study below will demonstrate, admonishing is a ritual worth investigating because the ritual frame in which admonishing in the case study occurs often not only affords but even triggers paradoxical pragmatic behaviour. This paradox stems from the fact that, in many historical linguacultures, admonishing was directed at a recipient – most typically a ruler – who was more highly ranked than the admonisher himself. The case study consists of data drawn from sources dating from before the second century BC, i.e., the ancient period of Classical Chinese. In Chinese, the subject of our research is called jian 諫, a Chinese expression used for ‘admonishing’ in political and governance contexts.

The structure of Chapter 9 is as follows. Section 9.2 provides a brief overview of previous research on ritual admonishing to further point out why it is advantageous for the ritual pragmatician to study such phenomena with the aid of a finite and replicable set of speech acts. Section 9.3 presents the data and methodology of the case study, Section 9.4 includes the analysis, while Section 9.5 provides a conclusion. Note that while similar to Chapter 8, the present chapter reports on a case study, the analytic framework outlined in the methodology section is replicable in other speech act-anchored ritual investigations.

9.2 The Study of Ritual Admonishing as a Speech Act Suggest: Retrospection

Previous research in pragmatics mainly defined ‘admonish(ing)’ as a specific ‘speech act’. Such research includes, for example, Reinach (see an overview of Reinach’s early work in Reference DuBoisDuBois 2002), as well as various studies on Chinese pragmatics (e.g., Reference 231ChenChen 2011). A key problem with such research is what has already been described in this chapter: it is of little use to identify an ‘exotic’ speech act with no linguacultural or contemporary equivalent because such an approach shuts the door on replicability.

Some other researchers considered admonishing outside of the speech act paradigm. In historical pragmatics in particular, a limited number of studies have analysed the act of admonishing in various linguacultural settings, including Chinese (Reference ChenShen & Chen 2019), Old English (Reference Green, Rauch and CarrGreen 1995), Middle English (Reference 236HostetlerHostetler 2012), the French classical period (Reference Kerbrat-OrecchioniKerbrat-Orecchioni 2011) and, of course, the Bible (e.g., Reference HoustonHouston 1993). While various scholars, such as Reference 236HostetlerHostetler (2012), have drawn attention to the face-threatening nature of admonishing, the majority of previous research has focused on admonishing in family contexts where the admonisher is higher ranked than the admonished (for an exception, see e.g., Reference ChenShen & Chen 2019). Admonishing powerful political actors, such as rulers, was also quite common in many historical linguacultures, as the following extract indicates:

Of all the examples from ‘Western’ linguacultures, it is perhaps the Bible which most clearly illustrates the historical importance of admonishing because it includes numerous cases in which the kings of ancient Israel were admonished by the prophets (see an overview in Reference PetersenPetersen 2002). Notwithstanding the important contribution the above-outlined research has made for pragmatics, from a ritual point of view it has failed to conduct replicable research. Such a replicability could have been achieved if these scholars had attempted to consider how the phenomenon under investigation relates to replicable speech acts. The same problem applies to those previous scholars who have considered admonishing directed at those in power. For instance, Reference McCabeMcCabe (2008: 233) distinguishes the speech act category ‘Divine Judgement’ in the context of the Bible – although setting up such a separate speech act category is clearly an unnecessary terminological proliferation. In a similar fashion, Reference HoustonHouston (1993) focuses on prophetic ‘judgements’ when describing face threats in the Old Testament.

The current case study follows the previously introduced approach to admonishing by subsuming it under the speech act category ‘Suggest’. It should be noted that while some scholars such as Reference Kallia, Lakoff and IdeKallia (2005) made a distinction between the speech act categories ‘Suggest’ and ‘Advise’, they have been more often used interchangeably in pragmatics. I agree with this latter view, and in order to integrate the present research into the speech act typology used in Reference Edmondson and HouseEdmondson and House (1981) and Reference House and KádárHouse and Kádár (2021a), I only use the term ‘Suggest’. The definition of Suggest is based on Reference Edmondson and HouseEdmondson and House (1981: 124) who define this speech act as follows:

What makes certain forms of admonishing difficult to study resides in the paradoxical feature of this ritual phenomenon, i.e., that admonishing may not only be provided from a power position but also by the non-powerful side (see more below). In Ancient Chinese studied in this chapter, the relevance of power relations in admonishing is indicated beautifully at the lexical level because Classical Chinese uses two distinct characters for ‘admonishing’, namely:

1. – xun 訓: a term used to describe an instance of admonishment which is delivered by a person in power, such as a father admonishing his child;

2. – jian 諫: a term which describes an instance of admonishment delivered by a minister to a ruler, or a lower-ranking person towards a higher-ranking one.

Jian, as a culturally embedded ritual, has been widely studied in Chinese academia, albeit primarily outside the realm of pragmatics: Chinese scholars have approached the study of jian principally in the fields of literature and political science. Those linguists who have explored jian have mainly focused on its stylistic (see Reference HanHan 2018; Reference KeKe 2012; Reference NingNing 2012) and rhetorical characteristics (see Reference HeHe 2003; Reference Mao and HouMao & Hou 2007). These studies reveal that, in ancient China, admonishing the ruler on matters of governance had long been regarded as a moral obligation of loyal officials and, therefore, became an institutionalised form of ritual behaviour. For instance, during imperial China, an institutional official rank (jianguan 諫官 ‘admonishing official’) was created: officials fulfilling this role were dutybound to critically admonish the ruler when this was perceived to be necessary. Consequently, in historical China, admonishments were not ad hoc in nature, but were conducted in the form of ceremonies. Admonishing the ruler was not without its dangers: just as various Speakers of the British Parliament were executed over the centuries (see Reference 238KádárBull, Fetzer & Kádár 2020), various outspoken Chinese officials were also executed, lost their careers, or were exiled to remote parts of the empire (see Reference ZengZeng 2019). As a result of the dangers that were associated with admonishing, ritual customs were designed to ‘purify’ the participants. Officials performing the act of admonishing wore a special ceremonial robe which differed from the ordinary, highly adorned clothes that officials normally wore in court. Both the ruler and the officials fasted before the rite of admonishing commenced (Reference CaiCai 2009).

As this review of previous sinological research shows, it is definitely worth studying admonishing, which represents a complex ritual, from a pragmatic point of view. In the following, let us discuss the data and methodology through which the present case study aims to achieve this goal. As already mentioned, the methodological take proposed here is replicable in other speech act-anchored ritual inquiries.

9.3 Data and Methodology

The corpus of this case study includes 362 occurrences of admonishing which were chosen on the basis of the above-outlined definition of admonishing, as a realisation type of Suggest. In order to test whether ancient Chinese realisations of admonishing suit this definition, before engaging in a corpus investigation of a large scope, the research team which I led conducted a small pilot study by examining the ancient Chinese Classic The Commentary of Zuo (Zuozhuan 左传). We focused only on cases in which admonishing is made to a ruler. The pilot study revealed that instances of admonishing not only include cases in which the Chinese character occurs as a metapragmatic reference to the act of admonishing, but all other cases in which a Suggest is realised in a face/power-threatening sense (see Reference ChenShen & Chen 2019).

The corpus of this case study consists of the following sources:

The corpus consists only of multiple-source – rather than single-source – manifestations of jian, i.e., this case study focuses on instances in which the admonishment is made in the form of a dialogue between a minister, or a philosopher, and the ruler of a kingdom. As mentioned before, all the sources studied date from before the second century BC, i.e., the ancient period of Classical Chinese. During this time, i.e., before China was united by the Qin Dynasty in 221 BC, various countries fought for hegemony over the empire. Jian flourished during this tumultuous period because it was regarded as a minister’s sacred duty to help his ruler overcome perils and secure victory over other countries by admonishing him if an error in governance had occurred/was perceived to be looming (see e.g., Reference GalvanyGalvany 2012).

Since Classical Chinese was essentially a written language. it is likely that the instances of admonishing that are studied here were reconstructed and edited after the actual events had taken place – which could, potentially, be quite some time later. However, since ancient jian can only be accessed by using sources that are similar to the ones we are employing, I do not think that the present corpus is somehow ‘imperfect’ as that would raise broader concerns regarding the validity of historical pragmatic data in general (see Reference Jacobs, Jucker and JuckerJacobs & Jucker 1995). Also, this case study does not examine whether a particular historical event in the corpus actually took place, as this aspect is of secondary importance to the historical pragmatic study of the realisation of admonishing.

The present case study is anchored in the historical pragmatic analysis of the ways in which the unit of speech act is embedded in interaction. Reference Brinton, Schriffin, Tannen and HamiltonBrinton (2001) defines this approach as ‘diachronically oriented discourse analysis’, while Reference Jacobs, Jucker and JuckerJacobs and Jucker (1995) refer to it as ‘diachronic pragmatics’. It is important to emphasise here again that, according to Reference House and KádárHouse and Kádár (2021a), speech act is inseparable from discourse, and as part of studying the unit speech act we need to focus on both of its realisation through expressions and the ways in which it is embedded in discourse. Accordingly, this case study pursues the following replicable procedure of looking at two different aspects of a ritual phenomenon like admonishing when studying it through the lens of speech act:

1. – Lexical expressions which indicate the standard situation and the related ritual frame of ceremonial admonishments. As already noted in this book, standard situations tend to have a ritual character, and expressions that indicate standard situations can be referred to as ritual frame indicating expressions (RFIEs). It is important to note here that while communicating in standard situations is normally meant to be easier than interacting in other contexts, standard situations can also trigger painfully laborious facework: for instance, highly ritual ceremonies in which facework is of great importance are also standard for those who participate in them. In methodological terms, the departure point for the analysis of expressions in the present corpus is the following: if an expression is found to frequently occur in face-threatening admonishments, then it is very likely that this expression, in some way, indicates that the given admonishment is part of a ritual, i.e., the official or philosopher who realises admonishing as a form of Suggest has a certain sense of right or is even obliged to perform it.

2. – On the discourse level, the methodology proposed here involves identifying recurrent – and, as such, conventionalised – patterns by which instances of a ritual like admonishing are realised. In the present case study, the team of researchers involved defined these means as ‘discursive practices’ to avoid using the term ‘strategy’ as employed by Reference Brown and LevinsonBrown and Levinson (1987) because, as part of the aforementioned paradox, the discursive practices that are being studied here increased, rather than decreased, the face threat that admonishing normally implied.

Figure 9.1 illustrates the operation of the analytic procedure outlined here:

Figure 9.1 Proposed analytic procedure.

Figure 9.1 embodies the argument of Reference House and KádárHouse and Kádár (2021a) that different pragmatic units cannot be studied in a separate way: when it comes to the unit of speech act, we need to systematically consider its lexical and interactional (discourse level) realisations. In the case of studying admonishing, such realisations are highly conventionalised, considering the admonishing triggers a ritual frame, in which rights and obligation and related pragmatic conventions are very clear to all participants involved.

It is worth noting in passing that similar to what has been argued elsewhere in this book, the framework proposed here captures the ritual phenomenon under investigation outside of the conventional politeness paradigm. While issues such as face threat are politeness-relevant, in understanding the paradox identified in the present case study it is of little use to consider politeness in an individualised sense. This is because the face threats involved in admonishing are meant to happen according to the interactional and moral order of the ritual, i.e., they do not represent individual choices but rather ritual rights and obligations. Also, as already noted above, RFIEs and other pragmatic inventories of admonishing often increase rather than decrease face threat, i.e., they do not represent ‘politeness tools’ in the conventional sense.

9.4 Analysis

9.5 Conclusion

In this chapter, we have continued discussing the first methodological take in the pragmatic research of ritual proposed in this book, by examining how speech acts associated with ritual can be examined in a replicable way. A key issue in the ritual study of such speech acts is the following: there are many seeming ‘speech acts’, like ‘blessing’ and ‘admonishing’ itself, which are popularly associated with ritual. However, it is highly problematic to define such phenomena as ‘ritual speech acts’ because that would imply that the ritualist can ‘identify’ new speech acts ad libitum. In order to avoid this pitfall, in the present chapter I have proposed to use a finite and replicable typology of speech acts to capture phenomena associated with ritual. As a case study, the chapter looked at ritual admonishing as a manifestation of the replicable illocutionary category Suggest. I have argued that admonishing is a historically embedded phenomenon, i.e., it is a realisation type of Suggest which existed in an institutionalised, ceremonial form in ancient China and other historical linguacultures.

The case study of the present chapter has pursued a replicable methodological take through which ritual can be approached through the lens of speech acts (see Figure 9.1), by focusing on the RFIEs and interactional practices through which this speech act realisation type operated. I argued that the pragmatic features of admonishing in ancient China are seemingly paradoxical when viewed from a modern etic perspective. The paradox is the following: in many historical linguacultures, an admonishment was directed at a recipient of significantly higher ranking than the admonisher himself. In perhaps no other circumstances was it acceptable to criticise the ruler because of the absolute power and sacred, celestial-like status with which ancient rulers were invested. Certain historical systems of governance, like that of ancient China, permitted admonishing, insofar as this act occurred within a ceremonial ritual frame of interaction, which created a protected interactional environment for the safe operation of the admonishment without challenging the ruler’s authority beyond what was absolutely necessary. This ‘protection’ did not necessarily mean that it was always safe to admonish the ruler, because the admonisher could be executed or demoted. The ritual frame indicated by conventionalised realisations of admonishing Suggest helped to reduce the dangers associated with admonishing, as these dangers would have been considerably greater if the admonishing had unfolded as a non-ritual ad hoc act.

After having illustrated how the first methodological take in the pragmatic research of ritual proposed in this book operates in Chapters 8 and 9, in the following let us move onto the discussion of the second methodological take.

9.6 Recommended Reading

10.1 Introduction

The remaining two chapters of Part III will discuss how the second methodological take on ritual can be put into practice. As was argued before, there are many complex ritual phenomena which can only be studied from a pragmatic angle in a replicable way if one attempts to interpret them through pragmatic units of analysis. Here complexity means that

1. 1. a particular phenomenon is either too broad to be discussed as a single ritual, i.e., it represents a form of ritual behaviour which spans across many different ritual contexts and frames, or

2. 2. like military training, it represents a particular context and related ritual frame which triggers ritual behaviour but cannot be subsumed under a single ritual heading from the pragmatician’s point of view.

In the study of such phenomena, it is advisable for the researcher to depart from interpreting ritual in a bottom–up way by first considering the frame or frames in which the ritual under investigation occurs and then systematically studying how ritual manifests itself in such frames.

The present chapter focuses on the first of these cases: it explores the ritual phenomenon of self-denigration in Chinese, which has already been touched on in Chapter 6. Self-denigration occurs in a broad variety of Chinese interaction rituals and ceremonies, and if one attempts to describe its pragmatic features by relying on data drawn from a single context, one unavoidably risks oversimplifying it. This is why, in Chapter 6, self-denigration was mentioned as part of a broader ritual competition, rather than a ‘ritual’ on its own. In the study of such an interaction ritual phenomenon the arguably best academic practice is to consider how it is used in different interpersonal scenarios with varying power and intimacy and in different phases of an interaction, which both imply varying ritual frames with differing rights and obligations.

Similarly to other chapters in Part III of this book, this chapter provides a case study. This case study will illustrate the operation of a replicable and strictly language-based analytic procedure through which pragmatic phenomena representing the first type of complex ritual outlined above can be studied. The procedure described here can be used for various goals, largely depending on the agenda of the researcher. For example, one may first describe the contextual spread of an interaction ritual to identify differences between its use in contexts dominated by power versus others where the power variable is absent, and then consider how social hierarchy influences language use. In this chapter, I will use the proposed procedure to distinguish purely deferential ritual uses of self-denigration from cases when this phenomenon lubricates the flow of an interaction, which is a relevant issue to consider because this book has a vested interest in the ritual and politeness perspectives.

As was noted before in this book, the notion ‘self-denigration’ refers to the act of humbling oneself, one’s family member, or one’s property/belonging. Self-denigration is often realised in combination with elevating the other, and it is a phenomenon popularly associated with East Asian languages.¹ Self-denigration is an essentially ritual phenomenon: all participants involved in an act of self-denigration usually know that humbling themselves is not necessarily genuine, and also forms of self-denigration tend to ritually reinforce or define the rights and obligations holding for a particular context. Self-denigration therefore has a predominantly social meaning through which the speaker expresses deference by default and indicates both her own social status and that of her interlocutor. For example, in historical Chinese, the self-denigrating expression wansheng 晚生 (‘late born’) was often used by young officials, and by uttering this expression the speaker not only humbled himself but also indicated that he belongs to the elite. While Chapter 6 already described the types of expressions through which self-denigration was realised in Chinese, in the following I outline again the most important types of such expressions:

1. – Adjective+noun compound expressions, such as xiaoren 小人 (lit. ‘small man’), an expression used by speakers of any rank;

2. – Verbal forms, such as guigao 跪告 (lit. ‘announcing on kneel’), an expression used when a lower-ranking speaker tells a piece of news to a higher-ranking hearer.

There are also more complex realisations of self-denigration in Chinese (Reference KádárKádár 2007; see also Chapter 6), but as this list shows, unlike in Japanese and Korean, self-denigration in Chinese is not part of morphology, and in historical Chinese in particular, self-denigration was realised by a rich repertoire of expressions. The case study of this chapter focuses on self-denigration in vernacular Chinese novels written between the mid-fourteenth and the twentieth centuries.

While self-denigration in Chinese has been extensively studied in pragmatics, previous research has often examined this phenomenon in a lexico-semantic way, i.e., through zeroing in on self-denigration by studying the pragmatic function of expressions selected by the researcher at the very outset of the research. As has already been noted, rather than following a top–down approach where one first identifies expressions of self-denigration and then interprets their use, the present chapter relies on a bottom–up model through which self-denigration can be captured in sampled data in phases of interactions, as well as speech acts occurring in these phases.

The structure of this chapter is as follows. Section 10.2 provides a review of relevant literature on self-denigration in Chinese, including previous politeness-anchored research on this phenomenon. The discussion will show that when it comes to self-denigration, once again we have a phenomenon on hand which can be more accurately understood through the ritual perspective than through the politeness one, even though politeness may also have to be considered in the study of certain manifestations of this phenomenon. Section 10.3 introduces our methodology and data. Section 10.4 presents the analysis and results of the case study. Finally, Section 10.5 provides a conclusion.

10.2 The Study of Self-denigration in Chinese: Retrospection

In pragmatics, and in linguistic politeness research in particular, the study of ‘self-denigration’ has a long history, starting with Reference GuGu’s (1990) seminal work. Gu presented self-denigration as a form of politeness, characterised by a strongly ceremonial style. He argued that self-denigration is an essentially Chinese form of pragmatic behaviour, and he used his study of this phenomenon to criticise Reference Brown and LevinsonBrown and Levinson’s (1987) renowned universalist approach to politeness. Gu’s research prompted academic interest in self-denigration in Chinese. Since historical Chinese, unlike its modern counterpart, was honorific-rich, some scholars have examined this phenomenon in historical data including, for example, Reference KádárKádár (2007, Reference Kádár, Culpeper and Kádár2010, Reference Kádár2012), Reference KádárPan and Kádár (2011), Reference XuXu (2013) and Reference LiLi (2022). However, many more scholars have studied this phenomenon in modern Chinese including, for example, Reference ChenChen (1993), Reference HuangHuang (2008), Reference Chen and TrosborgChen (2010), Reference Ren and WoodfieldRen and Woodfield (2016), Reference ChenChen (2019), Reference Mai, Zong and HeMai et al. (2021) and Reference ZhouZhou (2022), to mention some representative examples. An important insight achieved by this latter group of researchers is that they have clarified how self-denigration in the ‘honorific-poor’ modern Chinese linguaculture differs from its historical counterpart. This clarification is important because Reference GuGu (1990) mainly used historical forms of self-denigration to illustrate his views on modern Chinese. Like Gu, many scholars have approached self-denigration in a lexico-semantic way: they first determined which expressions they wanted to study in their data before examining the data itself. An exception to this trend includes the research of Reference ChenChen (1993, Reference Chen2020) who studied self-denigration both as it emerges in interactional responsive moves and as a strategy in academic writing. Some others approached self-denigration in particular speech acts, without however considering their embeddedness in interaction (see e.g., Reference Tang and ZhangTang & Zhang 2009). Such approaches fall short of the full picture of the operation of self-denigration.

Self-denigration has also been studied outside of the Chinese linguacultural context, including, for example, the use of English as a lingua franca on the Internet (see e.g., Reference Walkinshaw, Mitchell and SubhanWalkinshaw et al. 2019; Reference PagePage 2019), academic English writing (e.g., Reference Itakura and TsuiItakura & Tsui 2011), academic discussions (e.g., Reference Mayahi and JalilifarMayahi & Jalilifar 2022; Reference Jalilifar and MayahiJalifilar & Mayahi 2022) and natural conversation (e.g., Reference 230Boxer and Cortés-CondeBoxer & Cortés-Conde 1997), to mention some representative examples. A fundamental merit of such research is that it has made it clear that ‘self-denigration’ is certainly not an exclusively ‘Chinese’ or even ‘East Asian’ phenomenon.² Many such studies on self-denigration were based on discourse analysis, supposedly because self-denigration in ‘Western’ linguacultures tends to be somewhat less formulaic than self-denigration in East Asian linguacultures (see Reference KádárKádár 2007). The current case study aligns itself with this research strand, in that I conceptualise the use of Chinese self-denigrating expressions from an interactional point of view. However, the model proposed will also take one step further: instead of limiting research to the unit of discourse only, I approach the interactional use of self-denigrating expressions in Chinese through the lens of speech acts and larger units of interaction, by integrating the analysis into interaction ritual theory. Examining self-denigration by looking at the building blocks of discourse allows one to consider conventionalised and recurrent uses of self-denigration beyond the use of individual expressions, which is fundamental if one considers that self-denigration in Chinese is an interaction ritual widely present in everyday civilities.

The present case study of self-denigration – and the analytic framework proposed – also allows considering again why the ritual perspective can be particularly useful in the study of the conventionalised use of phenomena associated with politeness. Since self-denigrating expressions in Chinese are honorifics, their research is relevant to previous pragmatic debates on Reference IdeIde’s (1989) notion of ‘discernment’, i.e., the idea that honorifics in Japanese and other honorific-rich languages are by default not used in a strategic way in Reference Brown and LevinsonBrown and Levinson’s (1987) sense (see also Chapter 2). For example, according to Ide, when Japanese students talk about their lecturer, they cannot freely decide whether to ‘strategically’ use honorifics or not because the use of honorifics in such a context is prescribed by the situation. Ide’s criticism of Brown and Levinson was very close to what Reference GuGu (1990) argued about Chinese self-denigration: both Ide and Gu provided critical views on universalistic definitions of politeness. However, several scholars argued that while honorifics in languages such as Japanese tend to indicate social hierarchies, they may also be used strategically. Reference O’DriscollO’Driscoll (1996) was one of the first scholars who raised this issue in general, and Reference OkamotoOkamoto (1999), Reference UsamiUsami (2002) and Reference PizziconiPizziconi (2003, Reference Pizziconi, Kádár and Mills2011) have also all shown that the usage of honorifics can be strategic in Japanese. In Reference KádárKádár (2007), I argued that the same strategic use of honorifics can be observed in historical vernacular Chinese data.³ Many of these scholars have also argued that honorifics are not always used to show politeness, i.e., they can fulfil other interactional functions as well, such as indicating irony, aesthetics, or social distance. In addition, failure to normatively apply honorifics does not inherently entail a face threat: interactants in Japanese and other honorific-rich languages tend to make (often seemingly random) switches between honorific and non-honorific styles (see Reference CookCook 1998, Reference Cook2005). In other words, honorifics afford a dual use: on the one hand they can indicate social hierarchies as described by Ide, while they can also fulfil other interactional goals. I argue that defining self-denigrating honorifics as manifestations of interaction ritual, instead of using the concept discernment – anchored in the politeness paradigm – helps us to capture the above-outlined dual use of honorifics. The concept of interaction ritual implies that self-denigration essentially indicates social hierarchies and related rights and obligations, while at the same time it can help the speaker to lubricate the machinery of interaction. As Chapter 9 has already shown, ritual affords strategic pragmatic behaviour such as downgrading, even though such strategic language use may not overrule the potentially non-strategic nature of a ritual (e.g., the admonishing of a ruler). Lubricating the flow of an interaction is clearly an interactional strategy in the conventional sense of the word.⁴

10.3 Methodology and Data

10.3.1 Methodology

In the following, I outline a methodology that in my view can be used in a replicable way for the study of ritual phenomena like self-denigration in Chinese, which manifest themselves in many different contexts and in the form of different frames, i.e., which are abstract from an analytic point of view.

In this framework, one approaches ritual phenomena through three interrelated units: expressions, speech acts and discourse (see also Chapter 9), with the middle-sized unit of speech acts being at the centre of the analysis. One first collects data from various corpora (see more below) by sampling dialogues which include realisations of the ritual under investigation – in the present case, self-denigrating expressions. During this procedure, one first needs to relate verbal manifestations of the ritual to their interactional context of occurrence, by considering the Type of Talk in which they occur. The concept of ‘Type of Talk’ was proposed in Reference Edmondson and HouseEdmondson and House (1981) and Reference Edmondson, House and KádárEdmondson et al. (2023): it consists of conventionalised episodes which are the building blocks of any interaction. This notion is pragmatic rather than conversation analytic, in that it has been developed to describe recurrent and coherent sequences of interaction from the point of view of speech acts. Type of Talk typically include the following categories: Opening, Core and Closing, with Core consisting of many different sub-types, such as Business, Corrective and Patch-Up Talk. Since each Type of Talk typically consists of certain speech act types, such as the speech act Apologise in Patch-Up Talk to provide a simple example, the study of expression level manifestations of a ritual embedded in Type of Talk also allows us to systematically consider the conventionalised relationship between expressions and speech acts. In Reference House and KádárHouse and Kádár (2021a), Juliane House and myself argued that such a study of the conventionalised relationship between expressions and speech acts in Type of Talk necessitates using a finite and interactional typology of speech acts. The proposed methodological framework is based on Reference Edmondson and HouseEdmondson and House’s (1981) finite typology of speech acts, which I already presented in Chapter 8:

The above typology is finite, consisting of twenty-five strictly interactionally defined speech acts. This means that often-used labels such as ‘refusal’ or ‘agree’ are not speech acts in this system because they only have an interactional but no illocutionary value, unlike the speech acts in this system which all have both interactional and illocutionary values.⁵ As was noted previously in this book, finiteness is a key of this system because – to refer to Willis Edmondson’s seminal thought – it is no use introducing illocutions rather like a conjuror producing rabbits out of a hat, such that nobody knows where they come from, how many more there might be left in, or whether, indeed, the whole procedure is an illusion.⁶ Importantly, the argument here is not that one should make a division between illocution and interaction because the two are inherently interconnected. Rather, illocutions become interlinked through interactional moves, which either Satisfy or Counter/Contra a previous move (see more in Reference Edmondson, House and KádárEdmondson et al. 2023; see also Chapter 11). For example, a Remark (‘Your sweater is beautiful’) can be Countered by a Minimise (‘It’s not at all’), and ritual self-denigration apparently comes into operation here as a speech act stepping into reaction with an Initiating speech act through an interactional move. The following Chapter 11 will outline how to use the above system of speech acts in the study of interactional moves in more detail.

In annotating ritual data according to the approach proposed here, one first needs to define the Types of Talk in which a given verbal ritual phenomenon – in the present case, self-denigrating expression – occurs, and then also annotate the type of speech act in which it is embedded, and also other speech acts co-occurring with that particular speech act.

As was already noted, a key advantage of the approach proposed here is that it allows the scholar to conduct a ritually anchored investigation. For example, in the present case study we will consider how a ritual phenomenon – self-denigration – is related to both interaction ritual conventions and individual strategies, in order to continue considering the relationship between the ritual and politeness perspective. As was already pointed out in this book, certain types of talk are essentially ritual in nature: Opening and Closing Talk (as well as Small Talk, although it is not present in the corpora studied in this chapter) trigger ritual engagement, with strictly defined conventions of language use. This implies that, in such Types of Talk, interaction ritual language use usually fits with what is contextually required and may not serve individual interactional (strategic) agendas by default.⁷ In Business Talk and various other forms of Core Talk, however, interaction is generally goal-oriented and so one cannot usually predict whether an interaction ritual such as self-denigration only serves its conventional role, or rather an individual agenda. It is the above speech act system which helps the researcher to interpret whether such an individual interactional agenda is involved in the realisation of self-denigration, or not. The typology of speech acts in Figure 10.1 includes speech acts which are ritual in nature, such as Greet, Welcome and Leave-Take. Such speech acts tend to occur in ritual interaction, and so they are less relevant for the analysis of whether ritual phenomena like self-denigrating expressions are used strategically or not. However, if there is another speech act involved, and a self-denigrating expression operates as a lexical tool to increase the pragmatic effect of the particular speech act, then it is clear that the given expression is used beyond what is simply necessary.

Figure 10.1 Edmondson and House’s typology of speech acts

(cited from Reference Edmondson and HouseEdmondson & House 1981: 98).

As part of the methodology proposed here, one also needs to consider how an utterance containing a ritually used expression can be classified according to the standard sociolinguistic parameters Social Distance and Power [+/–SD, +/–P]: variation in such parameters implies variation in the ritual frame holding for a particular interaction. In pragmatics, it was the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization (CCSARP) Project (Reference Blum-Kulka, House and KasperBlum-Kulka et al. 1989) which first used the variables of [+/–SD, +/–P] on a large scale. Later on, scholars such as Reference CohenCohen (2008) and Reference McConarchyMcConarchy (2019) introduced other variables, and recently Reference Nilsson, Norrby, Bohman, Skogmyr Marian, Wide and LindströmeNilsson et al. (2020: 2) argued that ‘age, gender, participant roles, medium and venue affect speakers’ choice of greeting form.’ Notwithstanding the importance of such additional variables, the proposed framework relies on the basic [+/–SD, +/–P] variables because they provide insight into the above-outlined question of whether a particular self-denigrating expression is used in a strategic way, or not.

The proposed methodological framework is both qualitative and quantitative. When quantifying data, one needs to count each self-denigrating expression separately.

10.4 Analysis

10.5 Conclusion

This chapter has considered how the second methodological take on ritual can be put to practice. As was argued before, there are many complex ritual phenomena which can only be studied from a pragmatic angle in a replicable way if one attempts to interpret them through pragmatic units of analysis. Specifically, the chapter has studied cases when a particular phenomenon is too broad to be discussed as a single ritual, i.e., it represents a form of ritual behaviour which spans across many different ritual contexts and frames. The chapter proposed a replicable and pragmatics-anchored analytic procedure through which the use of such ritual phenomenon can be studied. This procedure can be used in many ways, depending on the goal of the researcher. The case study of this chapter illustrated one of such uses: I considered how this model can be used to distinguish default deferential ritual uses of self-denigration from cases when this phenomenon lubricates the flow of interaction, i.e., its use becomes strategic. This sense of strategic use bears relevance to politeness research in which the relationship between honorifics and politeness has been broadly discussed. In my view, ritual provides a more accurate framework to consider the default and strategic uses of honorifics as manifestations of ritual behaviour than if one approaches honorifics merely through the politeness paradigm, i.e., through debates on whether honorifics afford strategic (polite) uses or not.

Having argued thus, politeness is certainly not irrelevant for the present case study. As the analysis has shown, in dialogues drawn from historical and historicising Chinese novels, self-denigration very often serves to smooth the flow of an interaction or mimimise offence, along with expressing deference. One would have less likely identified this interactional function of self-denigration had one not used an interactional speech act framework like the present one, by looking at the Type of Talk and speech act types in which self-denigrating expressions occur, hence avoiding departing from the semantic meaning of self-denigrating expressions. This outcome, in turn, shows that politeness becomes relevant for the study of interaction ritual phenomena like self-denigration in Chinese whenever a particular ritual serves the personal agenda of the speaker.

The following Chapter 11 will consider another aspect through which the second methodological take on ritual can be put to use, by looking at a context which triggers ritual behaviour but cannot be subsumed under a single ritual heading from the pragmatician’s point of view.

10.6 Recommended Reading

11.1 Introduction

This final chapter of Part III will consider how the second methodological take on ritual can be used to study a context and a related ritual frame which trigger conventionalised ritual behaviour but cannot be subsumed under a single ritual heading from the pragmatician’s point of view. The foundations of the model proposed are similar to what was discussed in the previous chapter. However, in the study of ritual in specific contexts, one has a different starting point of inquiry than in the study of a ritual phenomenon spanning across many different contexts. That is, instead of collecting sampled manifestations of a ritual phenomenon and then considering their conventionalised uses in different ritual frames, here one examines data occurring in one particular ritual frame in a bottom–up manner. This difference implies a more discourse-analytic and less corpus-based take on language use, which also influences how the elements of the model proposed in the previous chapter are put to use.

To illustrate the operation of this model, I examine ritual bargaining in Chinese markets. Bargaining is a process by which the seller and the buyer of a product negotiate the price of the item on sale. In many parts of the world, bargaining is a conventionalised ritual practice. And in China bargaining is such an important ‘tradition’ that failing to bargain often triggers negative feelings about the buyer, while successful bargaining may become a source of public entertainment and a way of ‘gaining face’ in front of others. While bargaining is therefore definitely a ritual in the popular sense, it is problematic from the pragmatician’s point of view to refer to bargaining per se as a ritual, without considering whether and how it manifests itself in recurrent patterns of ritual language use.

The chapter has the following structure. Section 11.2 discusses how the framework discussed in Chapter 10 should be extended for a discourse-analytic inquiry. Section 11.3 describes various interpretations of the term ‘bargaining’, in order to position the current ritual anchored research, then outlines previous research on bargaining in Chinese markets, and finally introduces the corpus used to investigate Chinese market bargaining in the case study. Section 11.4 is devoted to the data analysis and, finally, a conclusion is provided in Section 11.5.

11.2 Extending the Framework

The model outlined in Chapter 10 approaches ritual language use by examining the phases of an interaction, speech acts, as well as expressions. The model is centred on the finite, replicable and interactionally defined set of speech acts outlined before, through which one can annotate and interpret one’s data. In the present chapter, the framework is applied in a discourse-analytic way. That is, the focus of the analysis is on how speech acts fill certain slots in the structure of a ritual interaction – through this it becomes possible to capture seemingly erratic interactions through a ritual lens. This interactional approach to speech acts is based on Reference EdmondsonEdmondson (1981), Reference Edmondson and HouseEdmondson and House (1981) and Reference Edmondson, House and KádárEdmondson et al. (2023). In this approach, the most basic unit in the interactional structure is an exchange, in which the interactants together co-construct an outcome through individual moves. The terms ‘move’ and ‘exchange’ are based on Goffman (see e.g., Reference GoffmanGoffman 1981). These terms differ from conversation-analytic terms, such as ‘adjacency pair’, although they are not in contradiction with them; as Reference House and KádárHouse and Kádár (2023: 5) argue,

Adopting the concept of ‘move’ means that the second move of the simplest two-part exchange complements or ‘fulfils’ the first (see also Chapter 10). Reference EdmondsonEdmondson (1981) and Reference Edmondson and HouseEdmondson and House (1981) call these two moves in the simplest structural unit of exchange Initiate and Satisfy. For example, a speech act of Request that Initiates an interaction may be either fulfilled or rejected, in everyday terms. Only the ‘fulfilling’ move constitutes a Satisfy of the initiating Request, whereas a rejecting move may itself need to be fulfilled by the speaker making the original Request before an interactional outcome is reached. Remaining with the speech act Request, if a Request is turned down, this move does not ‘Satisfy’ the initiating Request: this is termed a Contra move. Given an Initiate, an interactant may Satisfy or Contra it. A further possible move is a Counter. A Counter is essentially similar to a Contra but has different potential consequences. Firstly, if a Counter is satisfied, the speaker who produced the Satisfy may nevertheless continue to uphold the position which was Countered. That is, a Contra is essentially something final, whereas a Counter is similar to an objection that leads to further negotiation. It goes without saying that the concept of Counter is particularly relevant for understanding the interactional dynamics of the bargaining case study.

The following is an example to illustrate how this structural approach operates:

1. Example 11.1

   A:	I think we should invite the whole family.
   B:	Oh God, their kids are so loutish.
   A:	Yeah, I agree, they’re pretty horrible, but you know, they did put
   	up with our lot last time.
   B:	Oh God, all right, invite them then, and the bloody dog.
   	(Reference Edmondson and HouseEdmondson & House 1981: 41)

The central point here is that A ‘agrees’ with B’s first statement but does not change his opinion about inviting the whole family. In fact, immediately after agreeing with B, A ‘re-presents’ his initial suggestion, i.e., A indirectly states the necessity to invite the family in question because the ritual reciprocation of an invitation is highly conventional. This move is a new Initiate, which is then satisfied by B who accepts the validity of A’s argument of the necessity to reciprocate the invitation.

It is worth noting that in the above example there is only a Counter move but no Contra move. An example featuring a Contra move is as follows:

1. Example 11.2

   A:	Like to come to my party tomorrow night?
   B:	Can’t, I’m afraid – I’ve got something else on.
   A:	Oh, never mind, some other time perhaps.
   	(Reference Edmondson and HouseEdmondson & House 1981: 39)

In this case we have an Initiate–Contra–Satisfy exchange, in which the outcome is said to be negative.

The structural unit of exchange can be integrated into the larger unit of phase – a procedure which we will follow during the data analysis. Phases consist of the Opening, Core and Closing parts of an encounter, with the latter representing the entire interaction. The unit of phase, which also encompasses Types of Talk discussed in Chapter 10, helps the scholar to systematise the different interactional dynamics which hold for various stages of an encounter. Figure 11.1 summarises the various units in the interactional model:

Figure 11.1 The interactional units in the model.

As shown in Figure 11.1, an encounter can be divided into phases, and phases are realised through exchanges. Exchanges themselves are realised through moves, and moves are approached in this study from the perspective of speech acts, interpreted through the typology of speech acts which was discussed in detail in the previous Chapter 10. While most of the illocutionary categories in the typology are self-explanatory, less frequently used categories will be briefly introduced when they occur in the case study analysis below. Along with speech act categories the model also uses the category ‘Supportive Move’, in order to capture a form of language use which facilitates the interactional success of a particular speech act (see also Reference Blum-Kulka, House and KasperBlum-Kulka et al. 1989). The most typical form of a Supportive Move, which will recur in the analysis presented later, is the ‘Grounder’, a move which provides a reason for one’s actions (see Reference Edmondson and HouseEdmondson & House 1981: 46).

Figure 11.2 describes how the above-outlined extended model can be put to use in the study of ritual contexts like market bargaining:

Figure 11.2 The extended analytical model.

The larger interactional units, phases, and their smaller components, exchanges and moves, are in a twofold relationship with one another. Identifying the phases of an encounter helps to segment the data, hence allowing a more systematic and in-depth examination of how exchanges and moves are realised. Examining exchanges and moves through a speech act lens, on the other hand, allows one to capture the recurrent pragmatic dynamics of the phases.

Ritual frame is also in a twofold relationship with both the larger unit, phases, and the smaller units, exchanges and moves. Ritual frame helps the scholar to interpret the pragmatic features of phases, e.g., how Opening and Core Phases are related to one another in terms of their ritual characteristics or the lack of such characteristics. The interactants, on the other hand, talk a ritual ‘into being’ as they follow an interactional ritual pattern that is associated with the various phases. Regarding the smaller units, exchanges and moves, the ritual frame explains why such units are recurrent and conventionalised in the seemingly erratic data. The notion of ritual frame also helps to explain the constraints and affordances of the pragmatic realisation of exchanges and moves, such as why certain speech act sequences that realise ritual aggression are tolerated in a particular ritual exchange (consider the concept of anti-structure discussed in Parts I and II). Ritual frame explains why such aggression is generally not perceived as proper aggression, as the following analysis will also demonstrate. On the other hand, ritual frame comes into operation through the recurrent units, exchanges and moves.

Considering that the proposed extended version of the analytic framework is discourse analytic in scope, the case study outlined below is essentially qualitative, i.e., pragmatic recurrence in the data is not quantified in the strict sense but is rather used to identify patterns of ritual behaviour. While using a proper quantitative analysis is not at all in contradiction with the approach proposed here, audio-recorded interactional corpora like the one used in this case study are often too small to do meaningful quantification in them.

11.3 Positioning the Case Study

The aim of this section is to position the current case study. The section will first discuss two different interpretations of the word ‘bargaining’, in order to discuss exactly how this concept is interpreted in the present ritual-anchored research. It will then outline previous research on bargaining in Chinese markets. Finally, the section will introduce the corpus used to investigate Chinese market bargaining in the case study.

11.4 Analysis

Let us begin the data analysis by examining patterns of the Opening Phase of the Chinese bargaining encounters. As the analysis will demonstrate, Opening is not part of the ritual of bargaining. However, it is relevant to include this phase in the investigation because its analysis provides a more comprehensive description of the data.

11.5 Conclusion and Summary of Part III

This chapter has discussed how the second methodological take on ritual can be used to study a context and a related ritual frame which trigger conventionalised ritual behaviour but cannot be subsumed under a single ritual heading from the pragmatician’s point of view. Market bargaining is a typical manifestation of such a ritual: while both lay and academic observers would agree that it is ritual, for the pragmatician such a general observation is only valid if one is able to pin it down in a replicable way, by using pragmatic units of analysis. The approach proposed in the chapter uses the foundations of the model proposed in the previous Chapter 10. However, it is of a discourse-analytic scope and focuses on language use in one particular ritual frame.

As the case study of Chinese market bargaining has shown, the framework allows us to systematically describe complex interactions such as bargaining in which ritual plays a particularly important role. The analysis has demonstrated that while interactions between sellers and buyers in Chinese markets surprisingly lack ritual Opening and Closing Phases and the related ritual speech act categories – which characterise Opening and Closing Talk in daily interaction – the Core Phase of Chinese market interactions tends to be realised through conventional ritual strategies whenever a bargaining process unfolds. The system of speech acts in interactional slots and the notion of ritual frame provided a replicable framework for capturing the ritual phenomenon under investigation.

The case study has focused on the interactional use of speech acts, considering that the finite, replicable and interactionally defined set of speech acts is in the centre of the model used in both Chapters 10 and 11. However, it is relevant to note the analysis presented here could be complemented with the study of ritual frame indicating expressions (RFIEs) discussed in various previous chapters. As the team of researchers involved in the present study observed, participants of Chinese market bargaining tend to use conventionalised RFIEs to indicate that the aggression is unfolding in a ritual frame, hence deindividuating the aggression involved in the ritual of market bargaining.

The present chapter has once again shown the analytic power of the ritual perspective. In the ritual frame of Chinese market bargaining, the interactants use many forms of language behaviour which would qualify as aggressive and ‘impolite’ in other (non-ritual) contexts of language use. However, provided that their use does not saliently trespass what the ritual frame tolerates they are regarded as acceptable and even expected parts of the ritual of bargaining.

In summary, Part III of this book has covered two major methodological routes through which ritual can be studied in pragmatics, including approaches which depart from interpreting ritual as a form, and others which take ritual as a context as their departure point. I argued that the choice of a particular methodology largely depends on the choice of analytic unit through which a particular inquiry proceeds. What brings all these methodological considerations together is that they all operate with the three core units of pragmatic research – i.e., expressions, speech acts and discourse – with speech acts being at the centre of analytic foci.

After having discussed methodological issues in the pragmatic study of ritual, the following and final Chapter 12 concludes this book and discusses various areas of future research.

11.6 Recommended Reading

12.1 Retrospect

In the following, I provide short synopses of the chapters of this book:

1. – Chapter 1: Provided an introduction, including its objectives and the concept of the ritual perspective, as well as the conventions used in this book.

2. – Chapter 2: Positioned interaction ritual in the field of pragmatics and defined its key features, hence providing a framework to be used in the present book.

3. – Chapter 3: Discussed why and how the ritual perspective can help us to understand and replicably analyse seemingly ad hoc and erratic events, such as mediatised rites of aggression.

4. – Chapter 4: Considered why and how the ritual perspective can help us to understand and analyse social protocols in public discourse, representing seemingly redundant language use.

5. – Chapter 5: Explored the phenomenon of mimesis, which is a typical aspect of ritual behaviour, from a pragmatic point of view.

6. – Chapter 6: Explored the phenomenon of (self-)displaying behaviour, which is another typical aspect of ritual behaviour.

7. – Chapter 7: Examined liminality, yet another typical aspect of ritual behaviour.

8. – Chapter 8: Discussed the relationship between expressions, the smallest unit of pragmatic analysis, and ritual, by proposing a bottom–up, corpus-based and replicable approach.

9. – Chapter 9: Examined how speech acts associated with ritual can be studied without creating ‘new’ speech acts ad libitum.

10. – Chapter 10: Explored how complex ritual behaviour spanning across many different contexts can be described with the aid of corpora, in a bottom–up and replicable way.

11. – Chapter 11: Discussed how complex ritual behaviour in one particular ritual frame can be described with a discourse-analytic and pragmatically anchored methodology.

12.2 Prospect

As the present book has shown, ritual is a fundamental aspect of language use, which needs to be considered if we aim to understand why people use language in the way they do across linguacultures. Clearly, a single book can simply not capture all the fascinating facets of interaction ritual, and it is hoped that future research will witness more interest in various areas of the pragmatic study of ritual, including cross-cultural and intercultural, historical and second-language pragmatic investigations.

As regards the cross-cultural and intercultural study of ritual, various chapters like Chapter 8 have shown that it is worth comparing ritual language use across linguacultures, especially in typologically distant linguacultures. However, to date little contrastive pragmatic work has been done with an explicit ritual focus, and the linguacultures involved in this book have also been limited simply because I had to operate with languages I know. It would be fundamental for future research to fill this knowledge gap, all the more so because the contrastive pragmatic study of ritual would allow us to study ‘ritual-rich’ linguacultures, such as Japanese and Arabic on a par with their ‘Western’ counterparts, without falling into the trap of the so-called ‘East–West dichotomy’. Similarly, the intercultural pragmatic study of ritual would provide new insights into intercultural pragmatics. As the present book has shown, ritual is so much present in our daily language use that often one does not notice that one is interacting in a ritual frame until the frame is breached. Some other rituals, such as market bargaining, require strong competence and understanding of linguaculturally embedded pragmatic conventions. It would be important for future research to consider intercultural encounters by focusing on how language users reinforce and breach ritual frames, and subsequent linguaculturally situated reactions to such behaviours.

The importance of ritual for historical pragmatic research perhaps goes without saying because historical pragmaticians have had a vested interest in ritual for a long time. The present book has also used historical data in various chapters because such data provides intriguing and rich examples of ritual language use for the scholar to consider. Future historical pragmatic research on ritual should ideally include a contrastive take, in particular because historical pragmatics currently heavily focuses on English and other mainstream ‘Western’ linguacultures. A major strength of the ritual perspective is that the key features of interaction ritual discussed in this book exist in every linguaculture, even though their importance may vary in degree. Contrastive pragmatic research comparing culturally embedded historical ritual data could provide new insights into many important questions, such as how historical events and changes influenced the importance of a certain features of ritual – like (self-)displaying behaviour – in social ceremonies and other facets of ritual interaction.

It may be less self-explanatory how second-language pragmatics could benefit from the study of ritual, and it is worth here referring to research I have recently conducted with my colleagues on this area.¹ In these studies, we have found that non-quotidian rituals, like expressing congratulations for someone’s eightieth birthday, are more important than would normally be assumed. While the learner of a foreign language may not have many opportunities to participate at ritual events in her target country, in daily interaction there are many scenarios in which one needs to use such rituals. For example, while a foreigner in China may rarely be invited for someone’s eightieth birthday party, in one’s daily interaction in workplaces and other ‘mundane’ settings it is very easy to encounter situations where one nevertheless needs to express congratulation for such an event, e.g., when someone’s friend mentions that his grandfather just turned eighty. Thus, more research needs to be devoted to the role of pragmatic competence in ritual language use in foreign-language learning.

The existence of these many areas where more research is due shows that the language of ritual is a fascinating phenomenon, which will hopefully trigger further interest in the years to come!