Essay plan

Essay plan - paragraph 1 and summary

Throughout text CC, it is made apparent that Juliane is the more dominant speaker. Maureen's use of negative face, makes Juliane feel more powerful as Maureen lowers her own status to avoid the face threatening acts. When Maureen says 'do you (.) can you' she flouts the maxim of manner because she doesn't ask the question, she merely hints at it, also the use of the pause makes it clear that Maureen is nervous asking and she then repairs the sentence to change it to 'can' which lowers her status even more by asking a question. She does this also to avoid the face threatening acts, which forces us to look at the implicature using our pragmatic understanding. Fairclough believes that there is always a more dominant speaker in any conversation, and text CC supports his theory. Juliane interrupts Maureen twice during the conversation possibly to assert her dominance and reduce Maureen's whilst belittling her. The declarative 'you're' in 'you're joking' makes it seem as though Juliane thinks it's Maureen's fault as opposed to the man she tried to get the tickets off of. This implies that Juliane is more powerful because she directly addresses Maureen and isn't worried about what she would reply as she knows she is the dominant person in the conversation and Maureen isn't.

Because of Maureen's use of negative face whilst talking to Juliane to avoid the face threatening acts, Juliane is much more powerful in the conversation and by far the more dominant speaker. This shows that Fairclough was correct when he said that in a conversation there is always someone more dominant, therefore being unequal encounters.