LINGUIST List 25.2454
Thu
Jun 05 2014
Review: Discourse
Analysis; Sociolinguistics: Kádár
(2013)
Editor for this issue:
Mateja Schuck <mschucklinguistlist.org>
Date: 03-Jan-2014
From: Sukriye Ruhi
<sukruh
metu.edu.tr>
Subject: Relational Rituals
and Communication
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Book announced at
http://linguistlist.org/issues/24/24-3409.html
AUTHOR: Dániel Zoltan Kádár
TITLE: Relational Rituals and Communication
SUBTITLE: Ritual Interaction in Groups
PUBLISHER: Palgrave Macmillan
YEAR: 2013
REVIEWER: Sukriye Ruhi, Middle East Technical
University
SUMMARY
‘Relational Rituals and Communication’ can be
viewed as the full-blown
product of Kádár’s longstanding interest in
linguistic rituals and
ritualization (e.g., Kádár, 2007). The
monograph is theoretical in orientation
and argues for a discursive and relational
approach to researching
constructive and destructive rituals in
interpersonal communication. It
illustrates the approach with data drawn from
both written and spoken language
in a variety of social contexts and languages.
Drawing on insights and
concepts from various fields such as
anthropology, cultural history,
(im)politeness, and psychology, the book offers
an innovative perspective on
how people (re-)create their interpersonal
relationships through ritual acts.
With this work, Kádár aims to
- offer a discursive, relational perspective on
the ritual aspects of
communication, particularly in the context of
in-group social networks,
- examine how ritual relational practices shape
discourse and our relations
with people,
- show that rituals and ritualization are wider
in scope in interpersonal
communication, both in terms of the ‘unit’ of
the ritual act and in terms of
the social contexts in which rituals are
performed.
Chapter One opens with the book’s motivation,
and presents preliminaries for
its relational and discursive approach to
rituals and rituality in language
use and interaction. It highlights the book’s
scope as a study on relational
rituals primarily in in-group social networks,
and situates the relational
approach against the background of traditional
approaches to rituals such as
in the foundational work of Durkheim
(1912/1995). Contrary to the idea that
interaction in contemporary Western societies
is characterized by
deritualisation (e.g., Burke, 2005), Kádár
argues that rituality in language
use is very much a part of both Western and
Eastern societies, albeit in
different forms. The author defines and
describes the characteristics of
relational ritual in the following manner:
“Relational ritual is a
formalised/schematic, conventionalized and
recurrent act, which is
relationship forcing, i.e. by operating it
reinforces/transforms in-group
relationships. “Ritual is realized as an
embedded (mini-)performance
(mimesis), and this performance is bound to
relational history (and related
ethos), or historicity in general (and related
social ethos). Ritual is an
emotively invested affective action, as
anthropological research has shown”
(pp. 11-12).
Chapter One continues with a discussion of the
data and the data analytic
methodology employed in the study. Kádár
underscores that the discursive
approach necessitates the analysis of “longer
stretches of interaction” (p.
14), to observe how rituals are deployed in
interaction. The discursive
methodology is complemented by a look at the
data from both participant and
theoretical perspectives. In line with this
approach, the author utilizes data
from diverse languages (English, Hungarian and
Chinese), comprising
conversations with his family and friends,
“post-event interviews” (p. 18),
computer-mediated communication, historical
epistolary discourse, and literary
works.
Chapter Two presents the theoretical framework
and expands on the features of
relational rituals. The first two features
identified in the definition of
relational rituals are their
“formalised/schematic and conventionalised”
nature and their recurrence. Kádár places
relational rituals within the
innermost circle of three concentric circles
comprising (linguistic) acts that
have relatively fixed forms. Ordered from the
outermost towards to innermost,
these are: Schematic acts, conventional
relational acts, and ritual relational
acts. Schematic acts are defined as
“pre-existing forms of behaviour used in
recurrent ways that are readily recognisable to
members” (p. 25). Relational
rituals share with schematic acts their
reference to the relational history of
the interactants and their possible lack of
transparency to the outsider.
Conventional relational acts form the next
level of the inner circle. These
are acts that pertain to relating and may
operate in both societal and
in-group networks. They create normative
expectancies and acquire fixed
pragmatic meanings for the group in question
(p. 42). While relational rituals
are also conventionalised, they are
distinguished by an emphasis on “mimetic
performance” (ibid.). Kádár describes the
central feature of mimetic
performance as the enactment and re-enactment
of “certain beliefs and values”
(p. 45). Ritual practice thereby co-constitutes
relations in a ‘ritual
moment’. Quoting Koster (2003: 219), Kádár
states that the ritual moment
creates “a temporary destruction of awareness
of the wider meaningful
relations of one’s individuality and the
reduction of the self to the
immediate experience of the here and now” (p.
48). Performance is central to
the understanding of ritual in the book, and I
give one example below to
illustrate a number of recurring themes in the
argumentation: how rituals may
‘neutralise’ to a convention or disappear; how
they may crucially depend on
relational history; how they may interface with
politeness; and how they
differ in the extent of their possibility of
being recognised by outsiders to
a relational network.
During his stay in Taiwan, the author went to
martial art training sessions
every day, where he became friends with a
Taiwanese who was attending a
Chinese chef school and who was keen to talk
about Chinese recipes and advise
the author on what Chinese dishes to taste. It
became the author’s habit to
greet his friend with the question “What do we
need to eat today?” uttered in
Chinese. The greeting enhances the “Taiwanese
person’s professional identity
as a chef” and thus has politeness value for
the interactants (p. 41). But it
also displays a performance value as it harks
back to their conversations
about Chinese food. In this respect the
utterance is not transparent as an
in-group conventionally polite act of greeting
to an outsider. However, the
author remarks that the greeting lost its
ritual value in time and “was
responded to with a standard ‘Hi’ and ... was
normatively expected to occur”
(p. 43). He cautions, however, that ritual
value may be different for the
participants in an interaction.
The focus of Chapter Three is on the
constructive and discursively organised,
fixed formal and functional properties of
in-group rituals and network
identity formation, which may rely on in-group
ethos and topics that are
significant for the network. In this chapter
Kádár draws here on both e-mail
and historical Chinese epistolary discourse. He
underscores that besides
network identity formation, rituals allow
people to “act beyond social
conventions” (p. 62) and thereby prevent
offence.
Chapter Four develops a typology of relational
rituals based on their
visibility to outsiders rather than the size of
the network. Ordered with
respect to transparency from the least to the
most transparent, these are
covert, personal, in-group, and social rituals.
The first type includes
rituals that are described in psychology as
compulsive (delusional) rituals
which relate the performer to imaginary
entities (e.g. imaginary relatives) or
compulsive behaviour (e.g. touching people
several times when they touch the
performer). Covert rituals may evoke negative
evaluations and be considered
unconventional for network insiders and
outsiders. Irrespective of the
evaluation, Kádár notes that they assist
“social ‘survival’” (p. 89). Personal
rituals, on the other hand, are more likely to
conform to network expectancies
(e.g. praying). Significantly, covert rituals
may become personal rituals if
they are not negatively evaluated (e.g., talk
between parents and children on
imaginary entities). Similarly, if taken up by
the in-group, personal rituals
may become in-group rituals. The author notes
that the last two types also
differ in terms of accessibility. Yet another
difference between in-group and
social rituals concerns their lifespans such
that the former is more likely to
disappear if the relational network no longer
exists.
The cognitive dimension of relational rituals
is further examined in Chapter
Five with respect to their recognition in
interaction and to their affective
value. Regarding the noticing of rituals, Kádár
argues that rituals may rise
from “consciousness” to “awareness” through the
performer’s reflexive
awareness that the ritual may be more
noticeable to other participants. From
the perspective of the participant, the ritual
may become “marked” if it is
counter to expectations or if the participant’s
“interactional situation”
changes (p. 110). Based on this terminology,
the author mainly discusses how
rituals may be (strategically) brought from
unmarked consciousness to marked
awareness to effect relational outcomes (e.g.
avoiding relational tension and
giving face). Following earlier work, Kádár
describes emotion as an “internal
response” and affection as a “process of social
interaction”, which produces
emotion. While short-term emotions may be tied
to interaction per se,
long-term emotions produced by rituals concerns
feelings of relatedness and
are referred to as affectivity/affection (pp.
114, 125, 197). The author
underscores that emotion in ritual may not have
a means-ends pattern and that
they may fluctuate during the interaction
itself.
Chapter Six investigates destructive rituals,
which are defined as acts that
stigmatise a person and corrupt the
relationship. The analysis shows that some
forms of impoliteness also occur in destructive
rituals, with the difference
that destructive rituals are recurrent
phenomena. Kádár explains that the
destructive rituals in his data fall into three
types. Ordered from the least
visible to the most visible these are:
Recurrent non-doing (e.g., exclusion
from social events); recurrent covert offence
(e.g., seemingly harmless but
destructive jokes; and recurrent reference to
the stigma (e.g., personal
features) (pp. 148-160). The analysis also
points to the significance of
recognising rituals, but this time it is
observed that stigmatised persons
attribute the higher-order intention of
planning (Talliard 2002; Bratman,
1999) to victimise the person.
Chapter Seven, the conclusion, first summarises
the advantages of viewing
rituals as discursive relational phenomena.
Kádár notes that the relational
approach places rituals within the broader
context of
schematic/conventionalised acts, thereby
allowing for their contextualised
investigation. He further notes that the
approach also provides a framework
for researching the ritual-politeness interface
at the discursive level. Based
on findings in his ongoing cross-cultural
project on rituals, Kádár points out
the need to research the cross-cultural
significance attached to social
rituals and ideologies of rituality. Further
avenues of research are also
notedm, such as studying historical
conceptualisations of rituality, the
function of discursive repetition in the
development of ritual, and rituals
between networks.
EVALUATION
With its explicit focus on relating,
‘Relational Rituals and Communication’
offers a new dimension to researching
(linguistic) rituals from a discursive
perspective. As already noted, this work charts
the analytic framework from
both the participant and the theoretical
perspectives. A further significant
contribution is that it moves beyond the study
of conventionalised
(ritualistic) speech act analysis to show that
rituals may be expressed
through words, phrases and discourse frames.
One of the volume’s strengths is
the variety of languages used to illustrate the
framework. As such the book
promises to be a valuable resource for graduate
students and researchers
investigating rituals and communication in
pragmatics, social interaction,
(im)politeness, and cultural anthropology. In
the following I dwell on some
theoretical aspects that are intended to
develop future research, and point to
a terminological issue, with a suggestion for
re-wording.
With good reason, Kádár’s definition of
relational rituals highlights the
emergence of ritualised language from the
relational history or the social
ethos of the participants. In this respect, the
ritual practices that the
author discusses can be interpreted as dialogic
in the Bakhtinian sense in
that one hears polyphonic voices and discourses
(Bakhtin, 1981) that
(re-)create and (re-)shape ritual performances
and frames of interaction
(e.g., the greeting reported in the summary).
Intertwined with polyphony is
the notion of chronotopes, which place
individuals within multiple time-space
dialogic interaction frames (Bakhtin 1981:
252). Systematically incorporating
such a dialogic understanding of ritual
performance would enrich the analysis
of ritual moments in terms of changes in
footing in the sense of participation
statuses (Goffman, 1979/1981) and the social
frameworks (Goffman, 1974) that
are evoked in both constructive and destructive
ritual practices. Expansion of
the framework along these lines would fall
neatly into the analytic approach
in the work as the author himself too
frequently refers to the animation of
voices and in-group ethos (e.g., pp. 19, 59).
As ritual performance is closely
related to discursive identity construction
(Koster, 2003), a dialogic
analysis could further elaborate how and what
aspects of (relational) identity
are brought to consciousness and
(strategically) employed in ritual
practices.
Such an analytic approach could also open the
way to future discursive
investigations of the interplay between
relational rituals and power.
The recognition of a ritual practice is a
significant aspect of the discursive
framework developed by Kádár. The author
proposes two sets of terms in
discussing ritual practice that is considered
normative for interactants and
cases of ritual practice that are made
discursively salient either through
shifts in ritual frames effected by implicit
and explicit metapragmatic
language or through metapragmatic talk on the
ritual practice itself:
‘consciousness’ and ‘unmarked’ for ritual
practice that is uncontested by
participants; and ‘awareness’ and ‘marked’ when
a ritual practice becomes or
is made salient through metapragmatic devices
(Verscheuren, 2000) or
discourse. Since the analyses of the data
concern metapragmatic language and
discourse, a more suitable term in describing
salient ritual practice
recognition could be ‘metapragmatic awareness’,
as ‘consciousness’ and
‘awareness’ are used in overlapping senses both
in everyday language and in
the technical literature, where terminology is
notoriously varied (Velmans,
2009). It also seems to be more appropriate
given the discursive analytic
approach employed in the book.
REFERENCES
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1981. The Dialogic
Imagination. Austin, TX: University of
Texas Press.
Bratman, Michael E. 1999. Faces of Intention:
Selected Essays on Intention and
Agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Burke, Peter. 2005. The Historical Anthropology
of Early Modern Italy: Essays
on Perception and Communication. Cambridge/New
York: Cambridge University
Press.
Durkheim, Emile. 1912/1995. Karen E. Fields
(trans.), The Elementary Forms of
Religious Life. New York: The Free Press.
Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay
on the Organization of
Experience. New York: Harper & Row.
Goffman, Erving. 1979/1981. Footing. In Forms
of Talk (pp. 124-159).
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press.
Kádár, Daniel Z. 2007. On historical Chinese
apology and its strategic
application. Journal of Politeness Research.
Language, Behaviour, Culture 3.
125-150.
Koster, Jan. 2003. Ritual performance and the
politics of identity: On the
function and uses of ritual. Journal of
Historical Pragmatics 4. 211-248.
Taillard, Marie-Odile. 2002. Beyond
communicative intention. UCL Working
Papers in Linguistics 14. 189-206.
Velmans, Max. 2009. Understanding Consciousness
(2nd. edn). London/New York:
Routledge.
Verschueren, Jef. 2000. Notes on the role of
metapragmatic awareness in
language use. Pragmatics 10. 439-456.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Sukriye Ruhi retired from Middle East Technical
University as professor of
linguistics in 2012. She is currently manager
of the Spoken Turkish Corpus
project. She has published articles and
chapters on face and (im)politeness,
and continues research in these areas, along
with research on emotion in
relating, and corpus linguistics.
Page Updated: 05-Jun-2014