Evaluative metadiscursive comments and face-work in conversational discourse

Abstract

In this article, we analyze the relationship between evaluative metadiscursive comments and face work in conversational interaction. Speakers, in their use of evaluative metadiscursive comments, accept responsibility for the unpleasing or unexpected content of their utterances, all the while signaling that they themselves should not be prejudiced by a negative judgment that may stem from their talk. We first discuss three features of these comments that can differently affect the image speakers construct of themselves in conversation: (a) the type of qualifier at the centre of the comment (evoking either the unusual nature of talk or a negative judgment or emotion on the part of the interlocutor); (b) the face-threat to the speaker that stems from the talk targeted by the comment (a negative judgment on the speaker's self-worth or an objection to the discourse itself); and (c) the location of the comment in the speaker's discourse (either prefacing or following the targeted talk). Then, we relate the quantitative differences observed in their use in a corpus of sociolinguistic interviews to characteristic features of this type of speech activity. The evaluative metadiscursive comments analyzed are taken from the sociolinguistic interviews that form the 1984 Montreal corpus of spoken French.