Discussion

fine balance between satisfying the employees’ needs and preserving respect and control.

In this case, the cooperative speech acts would be used to accomplish the former and the territorial ones the latter. The statistics of Claire’s presentation, however, indicate that she used 44 cooperative acts (38.2%) and only 6 territorial ones (5%). There can be two possible explanations for this: first, there is an inconsistency in Claire’s choice of role and audience and her choice of speech acts; or second, her management style determines this preference. The first case might have stronger instruction implications since it could signal that the student failed to contextualise the presentation well, perhaps due to her lack of understanding of the genre in question. As the audience in all the presentations consisted of the students in the group and the co-assessors, who were not notified of the context prior to the presentation and had to figure this out from the content of the talk, their reactions could serve as a type of “litmus test” of the transparency and consistency of the contextual features of the genre. Namely, whether the audience managed to fully understand the situation of the presentation would highly likely be evident from their questions in the Q&A sessions and possibly even from some of their reactions (murmur, laughter) during the speech. In the case of Claire’s presentation, the audience’s uptake is evident in their reaction to her questions and jokes, as well as the Q&A exchange, signalling that they are “on board” in the simulation of a real presentation. Therefore, Claire’s strong sales tactics used in an internal presentation here would most likely not indicate her weak contextualisation of the talk, but rather her very socially oriented, democratic and easy-going leadership style.

Another issue of the synchronisation of the context and content of the talk arises in Zack’s presentation. In this case, the presenter’s high position as the CEO of the market research company is inconsistent with his very superficial and brief coverage of the major

points of his talk, as well as the avoidance of detail and responsibility in the Q&A session.

In a real business presentation, this would count as very risky and face-threatening behaviour (Brown & Levinson, 1978), putting the retention of the tender and the clients at stake. The audience seems to be aware of this and probes him for fuller details on the statistics of the market research, which Zack avoids answering by passing the responsibility to “some colleagues”. During instruction on handling questions, students were, indeed, advised to refer questions they cannot answer to colleagues who are responsible for the field in question or to individuals higher up in the management who can deal with the more difficult issues. In fact, “calling on higher authority” is a frequent defensive strategy. The unfortunate thing in this example is that there ought not to be a higher authority than the CEO himself. The automatic application of the strategies discussed during instruction, without considering their appropriateness could explain the huge discrepancy in the co-assessors’ marks for handling questions. One of the teachers identified the strategies taught in class and so decided to award Zack almost maximum points for handling questions (4.5 out of 5), whilst the other instructor was of the opinion that the presenter was not dealing with the questions seriously, despite using some textbook phrases and gave a mark of only 2. Zack’s lack of seriousness is also evident in the irony used to deal with some of the questions, which in real presentations might be quite an insult to the audience. It would seem that the presenter himself is not “on board”

in this case and has not immersed himself fully in the simulation.

The issue of taking the presentation seriously in terms of its communicative purpose is also connected to Dan’s performance. In this case, the problem is that apart from the wish the pass to Presentation Skills exam, it is impossible to determine what incentive could have driven the presenter to give this talk. From the content of the

presentation it is difficult to tell what, if any, gain the audience has by listening to the speech, or indeed what the presenter’s stake in it is. Not only does this presentation not live up to the expectations of a business presentation, according to the Event Analysis, but it does not even fit the definition stated at the beginning, i.e. there is no commercial advantage to be gained from this talk by either the presenter or the audience. Obviously, this presentation simply does not match the genre, although it could probably easily pass for an academic presentation or a lecture on population decline. This informative or academic aspect is supported by the speech act count, which reveals that the talk is almost entirely informative, with almost no interpersonal (cooperative or territorial) functions.

The problem of lack of communicative purpose and commercial advantage is exacerbated by the very long sentences and speech acts. Most of the functions or speech acts are performed in a very verbose way by using many unnecessary and complex words.

This results in only 60 acts being performed in 16 minutes, which, as previously stated, is very low compared to the other presentations. In other words, to use Austin’s phrase, the presenter is not doing much with his words on either the general level of the communicative purpose of the presentation, or on the micro level of individual speech acts. Still, this presentation received much higher marks than Nina’s performance, which was hindered by her frequent territorial strategies and where her weak English undermined her role in promoting the language organisation.

Based on the above discussion, it now becomes possible to readdress the primary research questions of this study, namely, the differences between the higher and lower graded presentations and which features distinguish the higher graded ones. On the whole, the higher graded presentations have a clearer communicative purpose and greater role fulfilment by the presenter. There is a slight confusion in Judith’s performance concerning

whether it is an internal company presentation or an external one to potential customers.

The content is consistent with the latter, yet she introduces herself as the Head of R&D and not a sales person. The audience picks up more on the content and style (a demonstration) and believes the talk to be a sales presentation, which is evident from their questions about where and at what price they can obtain the product.

The higher graded presentations have a much greater frequency of cooperative speech acts, which on the whole is consistent with sales presentations where the presenter has a strong commercial incentive in impressing the audience. The three higher presentations total up a surprising 100 cooperative speech acts (31.3%), compared to a mere 10 territorial ones (3.1%), out of an overall of 319 acts in the combined 30 minutes of presenting. It seems sales presentations are events where the presenter is particularly concerned about maintaining positive face or self-image, “crucially including the desire that this self-image be appreciated or approved of” (Brown & Levinson, 1978, p. 61) by the audience. The variables of social distance and power relations in this situation, combined with the communicative purpose (to sell or promote something), compel the speaker to bridge the gap with the audience. Thus, this type of discourse includes recurrent projected questions (McCarthy & Carter, 1994) making it appear more akin to dialogues.

The lower graded presentations have more evident gaps in contextualisation and less satisfactory role fulfilment by the speakers. In the case of Dan, almost no contextual information is provided. Zack and Nina, on the other hand, do provide details on the setting and the participants, but both fail to live up to their roles. One of the most important findings concerning the lower graded presentations is the tendency to simply go through the motions of a presentation, without making adjustments to the circumstances, particularly evident in Zack’s presentation. Also, in the same presentation, there was the

problem of “stepping out of the role”. The speaker, unfortunately, did not take the simulation very seriously. The content and nature of Dan’s and Nina’s speeches made them more akin to advisory or info sessions, as opposed to business presentations with a commercial end. The speech act statistics of the three presentations indicate a much lower frequency of positive cooperative acts, only 49 (17.7%), as opposed to a total of 39 territorial strategies (14.1%), mostly used by Nina. In a combined longer time of 37 minutes, the overall speech act count was also noticeably lower, just 276, due to the very excessive lengths of individual acts in Dan’s presentation and the short time of Zack’s.

This would indicate that the lower graded presenters are much more likely to be concerned with negative face strategies, maintaining their personal space, their “freedom of action and freedom from imposition” (Brown & Levinson, 1978, p. 61) than the approval of the audience, as is the case with the higher graded ones. On the whole, though, these talks are less interactional than the ones with higher marks and are therefore highly monologic.