26/11/2022

Discourse Analysis

Lecture Seven
Strategic Interaction

Lecturer
Prof Albashir Ahmed

Autumn 2022/2023

Strategic interaction
• Actions made by utterances like greeting,
requesting, threatening, or apologizing taken alone
do not constitute conversations.
• Conversations happen when multiple actions are
put together to form activities: we chat, we debate,
we flirt, we counsel, we gossip, we commiserate….
• We use conversations to show that we are certain
kinds of people and to establish and maintain
certain relationships with whom we are talking.
• We do not, however, engage in these activities and
construct identities and relationships by ourselves.

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• We must always negotiate ‘what we are doing’ and

‘who we are being’ with whom we are interacting.
• We call the methods we use to engage in these
negotiations conversational strategies, which are of
two types: face strategies and framing strategies.
• Face strategies have to do more with showing who
we are and what kind of relationship we have with
the people with whom we are talking.
• Framing strategies have to do more with showing
what we are doing in the conversation , for
example, arguing, teasing, flirting or gossiping.
• These two concepts come from an approach
known as interactional sociolinguistics

• Interactional sociolinguistics an approach for

analyzing conversations which is concerned with …
1. the ways people signal and interpret what they are
doing and
2. who they are being in social interaction.
• John Gumperz (1982) argued that people belonging
to different groups have different ways of signaling
& interpreting cues about conversational identity
and conversational activities,
• This may result in misunderstandings and conflict.
• Goffman argued that social actors, like stage actors,
use certain ‘expressive equipment’ like costumes,
props, and settings to perform certain ‘roles’.

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• Our goal in these performances is to promote our

particular ‘line’ or version of who we are.
• Most of the time, other people help us to maintain
our line, and we help them to maintain theirs but
people’s ‘lines’ are not always compatible,
• This means they need to negotiate an acceptable
common ‘line’ or else risk spoiling the performance
for one or more of the participants.
• It was Goffman who contributed to discourse
analysis the concepts of face and frames.
• By ‘face’ he meant ‘the positive social value a
person effectively claims for himself by the line
others assume he has taken’.

• For Goffman, a person’s face is tied up with how

successful s/he is at ‘pulling off’ their performance
and getting others to accept his/her ‘line’.
• By ‘frames’ he meant ‘definitions of a situation
(that) are built up in accordance with principals of
organization which govern events.’
• The concept of ‘framing’ relates to how we
negotiate these ‘definitions of situations’ with
others and use them as a basis for communicating
and interpreting meaning.

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• Showing who we are: Face strategies

• Social identity is a complex topic, thus, this section
will focus on one fundamental aspect of identity:
• That is, our identities are always constructed in
relation to the people with whom we interact.
• Some people are our friends, others are complete
strangers, some are our superiors and others are
our subordinates, etc.
• In addition to the information about the topic, we
also convey information about how close to/distant
from the people with whom we are talking.
• We also convey whether we are social equals or
whether one has more power than the other.

• The strategies we use to do this are called face

strategies.
• We define face as ‘the negotiated public image
mutually granted to each other by participants in a
communicative event’ (Scollon and Jones 2011).
• There are three important aspects to this definition:
1. one’s face is one’s public image rather than one’s
‘true self’; the social image that constitutes face is
not the same in every interaction;
2. This image is ‘negotiated’: it is always the result of
a kind of ‘give and take’ with the people with
whom we are interacting, and thus it may undergo
multiple adjustments.

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3. This image is ‘mutually granted’: being successful

in presenting a certain face in interaction depends
on how much the people with whom we are
interacting cooperate with us.
• This is because face is the aspect of our identity
which defines us in relation to others.
• If one person’s idea of the relationship is different
from the other person’s idea, chances are one or
the other will end up ‘losing face’.
• Thus, the everyday ideas of ‘giving face’ and ‘losing
face’ are quite important in our definition of face.
• There are two types of strategies we use to
negotiate our identities and relationships.

1. Involvement strategies, which we use to establish

or maintain ‘closeness’ with whom we interact – to
show them that we consider them our friends.
• These include things like …
calling people by their first names or nicknames,
using informal language,
showing interest in someone by, for example,
asking personal questions, and
emphasizing our experiences or points of view.
• While such strategies can be used to show
friendliness, they can also be used to assert power
over people.

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 Teachers, for example, use such strategies when

interacting with young students, and bosses use
them when interacting with their employees.
2. independence strategies, which we use to
establish or maintain distance from the people
with whom we are interacting because …
we are not their friends, or
we wish to show them respect by not imposing
on them.
• They include using more formal language and terms
of address, trying to minimize the imposition, being
indirect, apologizing and trying to depersonalize the
conversation.

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• These two kinds of face strategies correspond to

two contradictory social needs that all humans
experience:
1. we all have the need to be liked (positive face),
2. we all have the need to be respected (in the sense
of not being imposed on or interfered with
(negative face).
• When we interact with others, we must attend to
their need to be liked and respected, and protect
our own need to be liked and respected.
• How we balance and negotiate these needs in
communication is fundamental to the way we show
who we are in relation to the people around us.

• Showing what we are doing: Framing strategies

• In order to understand one another, we have to
interpret what other people say in the context of
activity in which we are mutually involved.
• One could think of many examples of utterances
whose meanings change based on what the people
are doing when they utter them.
• The meaning of ‘please take off your clothes’ said
by a doctor in the context of a medical examination
is different from when it is uttered in the context of
his or her apartment.
• Different activities require different expectations
about what things will be said and interpreted.

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• We call these sets of expectations frames.

• We bring to interactions expectations about the
activity in which we are engaged, which Goffman
called the primary framework of the interaction.
• For example, a patient in a medical examination,
will expect the doctor will touch them, and they
interpret this behavior as a method for diagnosing.
• When we attend a lecture, we do so with an idea of
what the activities of delivering a lecture and of
listening to a lecture involve.
• However , when interacting, we often engage in a
variety of different activities within the primary
framework.

• While lecturing, for example, a lecturer might give

explanations, tell jokes, or even rebuke members of
the audience if they are not paying attention.
• Similarly, medical examinations might include
multiple frames.
• A doctor may use a ‘playing’ frame while examining
a child, and then switches back to a ‘consultation’
frame when talking with the child’s mother.
• When we are interacting with people, we change
the activities we are involved in as we go along
• We need ways to signal these ‘frame changes’ and
ways to negotiate them with the people with whom
we are interacting.

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NEGOTIATING RELATIONSHIPS AND ACTIVITIES

• Power and politeness
• When we interact with someone we communicate
something about our relationship with them.
• We do this by using various discursive strategies,
divided into two categories: involvement strategies
and independence strategies.
• Involvement strategies are strategies people use to
communicate friendliness or solidarity,
• independence strategies are strategies people use
to communicate respect or deference.

• In many cases, both parties in an interaction share a

clear idea about how close they are and whether
one has more power than the other,
• In other cases, participants in interaction need to
negotiate their relationship.
• Thus, people move from more distant to closer
relationships, or when one person wishes to
challenge another person’s assertion of power.
• We approach interactions with expectations about
how strategies will be used to communicate
information about power and intimacy.
• These expectations of face systems are three types:

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1. Independence strategies (deference face system)

are likely to be used when parties are socially
distant but relatively equal.
2. Involvement strategies (solidarity face system) are
likely to be used when people are close and
relatively equal.
3. When interactants have different power, the more
powerful is likely to use involvement strategies and
the less powerful uses independence strategies.
• These ‘systems’ should not be treated as ‘rules’, but
as broad expectations people draw upon to decide
how to act towards others and interpret others’
behavior towards them.

• People employ both independence and

involvement strategies, mixing them tactically
depending on the situation and what they are
trying to accomplish in the interaction.
• An example of the way participants often
strategically mix independence and involvement
strategies can be seen in the following conversation
between a senior engineer (Martin) and his
subordinate (Ollie) reported in Ladegaard (2011):

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• Martin, the more powerful participant, begins using

involvement strategies, wishing him happy birthday
(although it is not his birthday) and laughing.
• Ollie, though friendly, uses more independence
strategies, accepting the inappropriate birthday wish
and using words like ‘actually’ and ‘a while’ to soften
his revelation that it is not his birthday,
• Then offers Martin pastry in a way designed not to
impose on him (‘…if you’re interested’).
• If they were equals and friends, the inappropriate
birthday wish might have been answered directly like,
‘What are you talking about? My birthday was ages
ago!’, and the offer of pastry might have been more
insistent (Have some Danish!).

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• This mixture of involvement and independence

strategies in the beginning of the conversation is
expected within a hierarchical face system.
• What happens next in the conversation, however, is
rather interesting.
• Martin, the more powerful person, changes to
independence strategies, asking Ollie how busy he
is & stating that he does not wish to impose on him.
• In fact, he acts so reluctant to make the request
that Ollie practically has to drag it out of him (‘but
Sam called you said… and he?’).

• This shift in politeness strategies, with the more

powerful using independence strategies and the less
powerful using involvement ones does not really
reflect a shift in power.
• Rather, it is a clever strategy Martin has used to make
it more difficult for Ollie to refuse the request by
putting him in the position of soliciting it.
• Although our expectations about face systems form
the background to how we communicate about
relationships, people often strategically confound
these expectations to their own advantage.
• The topic of the conversation is a further factor that
determines which strategy is used to communicate
relationship with others.

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• When the topic is serious or embarrassing for either

party, or in which the weight of imposition is great,
independence strategies will be more common.
• When the topic is less serious, the outcome more
predictable & the weight of imposition is relatively
small, involvement strategies are more common.
• Face strategies are resources that people use to …
negotiate social distance,
enact power relationships, and
manipulate others into doing things which they
may not normally be inclined to do.

• Involvement strategies might be used with another

not because they are close, but to create the
impression that there is a power difference.
• Similarly, independence strategies might be used
not to create a sense of distance, but to endow the
topic under discussion with a certain ‘weightiness’.
• In other words, face strategies are not just
reflections of the expectations about relationships
that people bring to interactions but resources to
manage and change those relationships on a
moment‐by‐moment basis.

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• Framing and contextualization cues

• A further use of conversational strategies is
communicating something about what we are
doing, ( e.g. the degree of imposition)
• They are used to signal to people what we are doing
in an interaction, (e.g. arguing, joking, making a
small talk or commiserating).
• When we speak, we communicate not just the
message contained in our words, but also
information about what we are doing and,
therefore, how our words should be interpreted.
• We call the signals we use to communicate this
information contextualization cues.

• There are basically two kinds of frames:

broader primary frameworks which consist of
relative stable expectations we bring to particular
situations (like lectures or medical consultations),
smaller, more dynamic interactive frames, which
consist of our negotiated ideas about what we
are doing moment by moment in a conversation.
• Contextualization cues are important in both
signaling primary frameworks, and in helping us to
manage and negotiate interactive frames.
• Sometimes contextualization cues are verbal; we
signal what we are doing through our choice of
topic, vocabulary, grammar, etc.

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• Sometimes these verbal cues involve adopting a

particular social language or certain genres
associated with particular kinds of activities.
• A doctor, for example, might begin a consultation
with a small informal talk about the weather or a
sports team before s/he starts ‘talking like a doctor’.
• One of the ways we signal shifts in frames verbally
is through discourse markers which mark the end of
one activity & the beginning of another.
• A lecturer, for example, might move from the
pre‐lecture chatting frame to the formal lecture
frame with words like ‘Okay, let’s get started…’

• Similarly, the doctor might move from small talk to

the more formal medical examination by saying
something like ‘So, how are you feeling?’
• Discourse markers typically consist of words like
okay, so, well, and anyway, as well as more formal
connectors like first, next, and however.
• It is important to remember that discourse markers
do not always signal a shift in frame –
• Sometimes they signal other things like the
relationship between one idea and another.
• Contextualization cues are another way, by which
people signal what they are doing when they talk.

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• They include also nonverbal signals delivered

through things like gestures, facial expressions,
gaze, our use of space,
• They also include paralinguistic signals delivered
through alterations in the pitch, speed, rhythm or
intonation of our voices.
• These non‐verbal and paralinguistic
contextualization cues are sometimes more subtle
than verbal strategies and so easily misunderstood.
• Interactive frames are not static, but can change
rapidly in the course of an interaction.
• They are also interactive – they are always a matter
of negotiation between participants.

• Framing strategies signal what we are doing, and

play an important role in managing relationships.
• The following example given by Deborah Tannen
(2004) shows how people use pets to frame and
reframe their utterances.
• It is a conversation between Clara, and her
husband, Neil, in the presence of their dog, Rickie.
– Clara: You leave the door open for any reason?
((short pause, sound of door shutting))
– —> <babytalk> Rickie,
– —> he’s helpin burglars come in,
– —> and you have to defend us Rick.>

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• Clara shifts frames from talking to her husband to

talking to the dog by altering her voice quality
(adopting high pitched and playful tone ‘baby talk’).
• In a sense, though, she is still talking to her
husband, communicating to him ‘through’ the dog
the potential seriousness of leaving the door open.
• By addressing her remarks to the dog, however, and
by adopting a different tone of voice, she shifts the
frame from scolding to playing,
• This allows her to get the message across without
threatening her husband’s face.
• Sometimes participants will experience
disagreement regarding ‘what’s going on’.

• The way one person frames the conversation may

be at odds with the other person’s wishes,
expectations or interpretation of the situation.
• In some cases, they may simply accept the framing
that has been imposed by the other person,
• In others, they may contest or resist it by…
attempting to reframe the conversation using
their own contextualization cues or
breaking the frame altogether and engaging in a
‘meta‐conversation’ about ‘what’s going on’.
• The film When Harry Met Sally (1988) contains
good examples of characters competitively
negotiating frames in interaction.

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• In the following example, Harry, who is going out

with Sally’s best friend, tells Sally that he thinks she
is attractive, which led to a negotiation about what
such a statement means based on what he was
‘doing’ when he said it.

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• In this example, Harry tries to frame his initial

compliment as an ‘objective observation’ using
formal language like ‘empirically’.
• Sally, however, labels what he is doing as a ‘come
on’, a label which he first resists with the question,
‘Can’t a man say a woman is attractive without it
being a come‐on?’, framing the accusation as
unreasonable and possibly sexist.
• He then half accepts her framing and offers to ‘take
it back’.
• This acceptance is only partial because he frames it
as ‘hypothetical’ (‘Let’s just say for the sake of
argument it was a come‐on…’).

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• Sally, however, does not accept his retraction,

framing a ‘come on’ as an irreparable breech,
• Harry responds to this by again shifting frames from
conciliation to mocking (‘What are we supposed to
do now? Call the cops?’).
• What happens after this is particularity interesting.
• After agreeing to ‘let it lie’, that is, abandon this
particular negotiation about framing, Harry then
issues what is unambiguously a ‘come‐on’,
• Then he deflects her objections by again engaging
in meta‐conversation about his own framing (‘See
what I did? I didn’t let it lie… I said I would and then
I didn’t… I went the other way…’).

• Part of the humor in this scene lies in the fact that it

foregrounds the process of framing itself, a process
which is usually left tacit in conversations.
• It also shows how complex and contentious
negotiations of framing can be, with parties shifting
frames, breaking frames and reframing them.
• They also superimpose frames on top of other
frames in order to create strategic ambiguity (as
when Harry imposes a ‘hypotheictal’ frame onto his
admission of guilt).

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ANALYZING CONVERSATIONAL STRATEGIES

• In this section we will further explore the strategies
we use to manage relationships (face) and activities
(frames) in interaction.
• The examples are from computer‐mediated
interactions like Facebook and MSN Messenger.
• Mediated interactions are different from face to
face spoken conversations in a number of ways.
1. In computer mediated communication, people
type their ‘utterances’ rather than speaking them.
2. the interaction is asynchronous, involving a ‘time
lag’ between production and reception

3. The non‐verbal and paralinguistic resources

available in face‐to‐face communication are not
available in computer mediated communication.
• This is significant because these are the resources
people use as contextualization cues to frame their
conversational activities, and
• They can also play an important role in the face
strategies of involvement and independence.
• Users of text based communication tools, then,
need to make use of different resources such as
graphics, emoticons, orthography and punctuation
to fulfill the functions done by non‐verbal and
paralinguistic resources.

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• Face strategies on Facebook

• Social networking sites are designed to give users
tools to communicate about and manage their
social relationships with others.
• In Facebook, for example, ‘the negotiated public
image mutually granted to each other by
participants in a communicative event.’
• Users of Facebook are centrally concerned with
constructing and maintaining their ‘public images’,
with saving face, and with ‘giving face’ to others.
• People on Facebook have many Facebook ‘friends’,
and yet they do not enjoy the same kind of
relationships with all of these ‘friends’:
•

• With some of them they are socially close, and with

others they are socially distant;
• Some of them are their social equals, while others
are in a hierarchical relationship with them.
• The problem with Facebook, however, is that it is
biased towards a face system of symmetrical
solidarity.
• Nearly all of the resources it makes available, from
the initial mechanism of ‘friending’, to photo
sharing, to the exchange of virtual tokens like
‘pokes’ and ‘vampire bites’ are designed to express
involvement.

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• For some users this is not a problem — the whole

point of a social networking site for them is to help
them get closer to those in their social network.
• It is not a problem for the company that runs
Facebook since the more people share with one
another using involvement strategies, the more
information about them is available to sell to
advertisers.
• It is a problem when people who are accustomed to
hierarchical or deference face systems in face to
face communication have to negotiate their
relationships in an environment that is biased
towards involvement.

• This is obvious, for instance, when students and

professors or employees and employers become
‘friends’.
• The relationships people enact in these interactions
are not just negotiated between the interactants,
but also displayed to a larger audience.
• The example below illustrates how one of my
students strategically mixed independence and
involvement strategies when ‘tagging’ me in a
picture in her photo album.

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• The first thing that should be noted regarding this

example is that ‘tagging’ someone in a photo on
Facebook is a clear example of involvement.
• Not only does it assume a relationship of solidarity,
but also makes the assumption that the person
tagged does not mind advertising this relationship.
• Consequently, it is also a threat to the ‘negative face’
of the person who has been tagged, potentially
violating their desire for privacy.
• Other involvement examples are the complimentary
message, the informal language & the use of
emoticons (:&:D) & unconventional spelling and
punctuation (‘ur’, ‘jokessssss’, & the repetition of the
exclamation point at the end of the message).

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Activity
• Analyze the postings on Facebook or some other social
network service you use.
• Does this service encourage the adoption of a
particular face system among users?
• Do the people in your network (including yourself) use
mixtures of independence and involvement strategies
when interacting with people with whom they have
different kinds of relationships?
• How do people who are socially distant or who are in
hierarchal relationships manage face strategies?
• Can you find examples of interactions which would
have been managed differently had they taken place
face‐to‐face?

• Contextualization cues in instant messaging

• Unlike face to face conversations, text‐based
computer mediated communications do not have
access the resources used to issue contextualization
cues, such as body language, facial expressions and
paralinguistic signals.
• As a result, they have developed a multitude of
other ways with which to frame and reframe their
utterances, including emoticons, screen names,
status updates, unconventional spelling, creative
use of punctuation, and code‐mixing (the mixing of
words from different languages).

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• Below is an example of how resources can be used

as contextualization cues in instant messaging.
• It is an excerpt from a conversation between two
university students in Hong Kong, one a female
named Tina, and the other a male named Barnett.
– Barnett: u're....~?!
– Tina: tina ar.......
– Tina: a beautiful girl........
– Tina: haha...
– Tina: ^_^
– Barnett: ai~
– Barnett: i think i'd better leave right now....^o^!

• The conversation starts out with Barnett asking for

clarification of Tina’s identity.
• The tilde (~) here signifies a lengthening of the
previous utterance, giving it a playful, insistent
quality.
• Tina replies with her name, followed by Romanized
final particle (‘ar’), which in Cantonese is often used
to soften affirmative statements so they do not sound
too abrupt, followed by a number of ellipsis marks
(…) indicating that there is more to come.
• In her next message she elaborates on her identity,
referring to herself as ‘a beautiful girl’, which might be
interpreted as either a boast or an attempt at
seduction.

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• In her next two messages, however, she puts a

‘joking frame’ around her previous description with
the words ‘haha…’ and a smiling emoticon (^_^).
• Barnett replies with ‘ai’ a Romanization of the
Cantonese word 哎, often used as an expression of
pain, frustration or indignation, which he lengthens
with a tilde (~) in the same way it might be if
spoken in a particularly exaggerated way.
• He then adds, in the next message, that he thinks
he had better leave the conversation, but reframes
this as a playful threat with the humorous emoticon
^o^ , which represents the face of a clown.

• What is going on in this short exchange, of course,

has very little to do with Tina giving an objective
appraisal of her looks or even boasting, or with
Barnett expressing concern and threatening to
terminate the conversation.
• Instead, this is clearly an episode of playful teasing
or flirting.
• Without the contextualization cues supplied by
such things as punctuation, emoticons, and tokens
like ‘haha’, however, the conversation would take on
a very different meaning.

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Activity
a. Choose an utterance which you might send to your
friend via instant messaging such as ‘u finish hw?’
(‘have you finished the homework?) and discuss
how the message could be ‘framed’ differently
(e.g., a warning, an offer, a boast, a complaint, a
sympathetic remark, etc.) by attaching to it one of
the emoticons offered by MSN Messenger
b. Save an instant messaging conversation as a
‘history file’ and analyze it in terms of how things
like code choice, spelling, punctuation, emoticons
and capitalization are used to strategically frame
and re‐frame messages.

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