Closeness and distance through the agentive authorial voiceconstruing credibility in promotional discourse.

  1. Suau-Jiménez, Francisca 1
  1. 1 Iulma - Universitat de València
Revista:
IJES: international journal of English studies

ISSN: 1578-7044,  1989-6131

Año de publicación: 2020

Título del ejemplar: Open Issue

Volumen: 20

Número: 1

Páginas: 73-92

Tipo: Artículo

DOI: 10.6018/IJES.416301 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openAcceso abierto editor

Otras publicaciones en: IJES: international journal of English studies

Resumen

Credibility is a function associated with promotional genres and persuasion, and a powerful marketing concept (Eisend, 2006; Ming, 2006) which provides trustworthiness about the quality of products or services offered by hotels (Suau-Jiménez, 2012a, 2019). It is partly attained through the hotel’s self-mentioning in websites. When this self-mentioning is agentive with action verbs, the main instantiation is the pronoun we, projecting closeness and assertiveness. However, this self-representation is also construed with depersonalized realizations like the hotel’s proper name, other nominalizations or even pronouns like it and they, which provide attenuating aspects and create a sense of distance. The current corpus-based study of 112 hotel websites hypothesizes that this attenuation may diminish closeness of the authorial voice (Brown & Levinson, 1987), thus displaying authority, following disciplinary and generic constraints. Results suggest that discursive closeness and distance, intertwined with personalized and depersonalized self-representations of the authorial voice, may aid to improve credibility.

Referencias bibliográficas

  • Albelda, M. (2013). La atenuación: tipos y estrategias. In J.R. Gómez (Ed.), El español de Valencia. Estudio sociolingüístico (pp. 315-343). Frankfurt Am Main: Verlag Peter Lang.
  • Albelda, M. (2016). Sobre la incidencia de la imagen en la atenuación pragmática. RILI (Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana), 27(1), 19-32.
  • Albelda, M. (2018). La variación genérico-discursiva de la atenuación como resultado de la variación de la imagen. Spanish in Context, 15(2), 348-370.
  • Albelda, M. & Mihatsch, W. (Eds.) (2017). Introducción. Atenuación e intensificación en diferentes géneros discursivos. Madrid-Frankfurt Am Main: Iberoamericana/Vervuert.
  • Atar, C. (2017). Recipient design in students’speaking and writing: some practical suggestions. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, 4(8), 108-120.
  • Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press (Original work published 1979).
  • Briz, A. (2007). Para un análisis semántico, pragmático y sociopragmático de la cortesía atenuadora en España y América. Lingüística Española Actual 29, 1-38.
  • Briz, A. (2011). El español coloquial en la conversación. Madrid: Ariel Lingüística.
  • Briz, A. (2012a). La (no) atenuación y la (des)cortesía, lo lingüístico y lo social: ¿son pareja?. In J. Escamilla & G. Henry (Eds.), Miradas multidisciplinares a los fenómenos de cortesía y descortesía en el mundo hispánico (pp.33-75). Barranquilla: Universidad del Atlántico.
  • Brown, P. & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: some universals of language usage. Cambrige: Cambridge University Press.
  • Cherry, Roger D. (1998). Ethos versus persona: self-representation in written discourse. Written Communication, 5(3), 251-276.
  • Dafouz-Milne, E. (2008). The pragmatic role of textual and interpersonal metadiscourse markers in the construction and attainment of persuasion: A cross-linguistic study of newspaper discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 40(1), 95-113.
  • Dörnyei, Z. (2007). Research Methods in Applied Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Dressen-Hammouda, D. (2014). Measuring the voice of disciplinarity in scientific writing: A longitudinal exploration of experienced writers in geology. English for Specific Purposes, 34, 14–25.
  • Eisend, M. (2006). Source Credibility Dimensions in Marketing Communication – A Generalized Solution. Journal of Empirical Generalisations in Marketing, 10, 2-21.
  • Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Fraser, B. (2010). Pragmatic competence: the case of hedging. In G. Kaltenböck, W. Mihatsch & S. Schneider (Eds.), New Approaches to Hedging (pp.15-34) Bingley: Emerald.
  • Haverkate, H. (1992). Deictic categories as mitigating devices. Pragmatics, 2(4), 505-522.
  • Heritage, J. (2012). The epistemic engine: Sequence organization and territories of knowledge. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45(1), 30-52.
  • Herrando-Rodrigo, I. (2014). A contribution to the study of writers’ self-representation: visible researchers, invisible writers, or how to make medical electronic popularizations trustworthy. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. University of Zaragoza, Spain.
  • Herrando-Rodrigo, I. (2019). Raising awareness around writers' voice in academic discourse: An analysis of writers' (in)visibility. Brno Studies in English, 45(2), 53-76.
  • Holmes, J. (1995). Women, Men and Politeness. London: Longman.
  • Hyland, K. (1998). Hedging in Scientific Research Articles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Hyland, K. (2005). Stance and engagement: a model of interaction in academic discourse. Discourse Studies, 7(2), 173-192.
  • Hyland, K. (2008). Disciplinary voices. Interactions in research writing. English Text Contruction, 1(1), 5-22.
  • Hyland, K. (2015). Genre, discipline and identity. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 19, 32–43.
  • Ivorra-Pérez, F.M. (2014). Cultural Values and their Correlation with Interactional Metadiscourse Strategies in Spanish and Business Websites. Atlantis, 36(2), 73-95.
  • Ivanič, R. (1998). Writing an identity: the discoursal construction of identity in academic writing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
  • Kaplan, N. (2004). Nuevos desarrollos en el estudio de la evaluación en el lenguaje: la teoría de la valoración. Boletín de Lingüística (Universidad Central de Venezuela), 22, 52-78.
  • Kerbrat-Orecchioni, C. (2005). Politeness in France: How to buy bread politely. In L. Hickey & M. Stewart (Eds.), Politeness in Europe (pp. 29-44). Clevendon: Multilingual Matters.
  • Mapelli, G. (2008). Las marcas del metadiscurso interpersonal de la sección ‘turismo’ de los sitios web de los ayuntamientos. In M.V. Calvi, G. Mapelli & J. Santos (Eds.), Lingue, culture, economía: comunicazione e pratiche discorsive (pp.173-190). Milano: Franco Angeli.
  • Martin, J.R. & P.R.R. White. (2005). The language of evaluation. Appraisal in English. London: Palgrave MacMillan.
  • Matsuda, P. & C. Tardy. (2007). Voice in academic writing: The rhetorical construction of author identity in blind manuscript review. English for Specific Purposes, 26(2), 235–249.
  • Matsuda, P. & C. Tardy. (2008). Continuing the conversation on voice in academic writing. English for Specific Purposes, 27(1), 100–105.
  • Ming, Ch. (2006). New Media and Sales Promotion Discourse: Implications on Social Strategy of Credibility Enhancement and Persuasion. Paper presented at the 56th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association. Dresden, Germany, June 19-23.
  • Nelson, N. & M. Castelló. (2012). Academic writing and authorial voice. In C. Donahue & M. Castelló (Eds.), University Writing: Selves and Texts in Academic Societies (pp. 33-51). London: Brill.
  • Sacks, H., E. Schegloff, & G. Jefferson. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking in conversation. Language, 50, 697-735.
  • Sbisà. M. (2001). Illocutionary force and degrees of strength in language use. Journal of Pragmatics, 33, 1791-1814.
  • Schegloff, E. A. (1991). Reflections on talk and social structure. In D. Boden and D. Zimmerman (Eds.), Talk and socials structure: Studies in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (pp. 44-70). Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Schneider, S. (2013). Atenuación léxica y sintáctica. Oralia, 16, 335-356.
  • Schneider, S. (2017). Las dimensiones de la intensificación y de la atenuación. In M. Albelda & W. Mihatsch (Eds.), Atenuación e intensificación en diferentes géneros discursivos (pp. 23-42). Madrid, Iberoamericana/Vervuert.
  • Stock, I. & N. Eik-Nes. (2016). Voice features in academic texts – A review of empirical studies. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 24, 89–99.
  • Suau-Jiménez, F. (2012a). Páginas web institucionales de promoción turística: el uso metadiscursivo interpersonal en inglés y español. In J. Sanmartín Sáez (Ed.), Discurso Turístico e Internet (pp. 125-154). Madrid: Iberoamericana/Vervuert.
  • Suau-Jiménez, F. (2016). What can the discursive construction of stance and engagement voices in traveler forums and tourism promotional websites bring to a cultural, cross-generic and disciplinary view of interpersonality? Ibérica, 31, 199-220.
  • Suau-Jiménez, F. (2019). How hotel websites may discursively adjust to customer preferences using online criticism. Ibérica, 38, 203-226.
  • Suau-Jiménez, F.; Lorés-Sanz, R.; Mapelli, G. & Herrando-Rodrigo, I. (2021 -forthcoming). La interpersonalidad discursiva como alternativa al metadiscurso interpersonal. Onomázein, 54.
  • White, P. (2003). Beyond modality and hedging: A dialogic view of the language of the intersubjective stance. Text, 23(2), 2594-2598.
  • Zhang, W., & Cheung, Y. L. (2018). The construction of authorial voice in writing research articles: A corpus-based study from an APPRAISAL theory perspective. International Journal of English Studies, 18(2), 53-75.
Fuente de los datos: Dialnet