OAP 13

156 of interactive features is represented in one occurrence: the imprecise quantifier ‘pretty much’, albeit used as the modifier of an adjective, but, no doubt, realising a hedging function.

157 Interactive

features

+/- no of occurrences

type of

linguistic exponent

illustrations Personal deictics + 20 1^st person pronoun

2^nd person pronoun

Markers + 2 single-phrase

marker

so Imprecise

quantifiers

+ 1 other less frequent types

pretty Table 34: An overview of the interactional composition of OAP 13

In line with most of the presentations investigated thus far, the presenter of OAP 13 does not omit to unequivocally define the main focal of her talk: do students need three or more hours of English per week. Although the speaker applies signposting signals, as opposed to the OAPs where this feature has been identified previously, these indications only amount to a single word or a phrase, sounding like subheadings read out loud from a paper (e.g. About the project). The first major content point the presenter raises and elaborates on concerns the research design. The identification of the research method followed by a succinct overview of the main steps of the empirical procedure, worded by the presenter in an easy-to-understand fashion, suggests that she has a profound understanding of the processes involved and projects a relative-expert-like image: It is a quantitative research project because Alderson used statistical data in the write-up of the research project, and the design that he uses was a survey. He included a questionnaire for them, then he included a case study for a mixture of both of them. The case study is to compare the findings they had.

This unassuming but, nonetheless, lucid account is followed by clearly articulated position, felt to conducive to the affirmation of the presenter’s epistemic stance: I consider the questionnaire to be important because it contains questions about students;

whether they had private lessons or how long they’ve been learning English or a combination of both. The speaker’s epistemic stance is further buttressed by what has previously been identified as labelling (cf. OAP 10), whereby the presenter attaches a

158 value judgment of particular empirical acts, very often through the use of a single adjective. This kind of judgmental attitude is attested with reference to the author’s document analysis (He describes the syllabus – he is very precise) and the displaying of statistical data (He included tables, which have statistics in them to help you virtually understand what‘s going on; and he is extremely meticulous).

However, besides the single-words positive appraisals, the presenter embarks on a relatively protracted critique of some of the author’s solutions with regard to issues of research methodology and data presentation. In her ever intensifying series of critical remarks, the speakers does not appear to show any intention to employ imprecise quantifiers or any other hedging devices to cushion the force of her often denigrating claims but adopts a predominantly brow-beating attitude. This unmitigated series of negative remarks is especially prominent in the presenter’s commentary on statistical procedures. This flippant treatment of methodological issues which would definitely deserve more attention does not seem to aid audience engagement but even conveys a slightly condescending attitude towards the audience: In my opinion, that’s not very good because he includes lots of trivial information; for example, if you look at ‘Mean FD’, and he barely explains what that means. And, for example, he includes things, like how boys and girls performed on this proficiency test, and that’s something he explicitly wrote, but you don’t have to know about that.

In what follows, however, the presenter, presumably inadvertently, temporarily relinquishes her position as a knowledgeable source of information by not concealing her ignorance of certain statistical operations employed by the researcher. However, a clumsy a step this might be labelled, and even though it clearly undermines her relative-expert-like epistemic stance, this seeming blunder does, in fact, do the speaker good service in terms of repairing relations with the audience by relying on the tool of

159 emotional engagement: And, yeah, he uses abstract figures and the Cronbach Alpha, which again he explains very briefly, and which doesn’t have anything to do with the entire thing, and which, frankly (presenter is giggling), I don’t understand very well, either. So I won’t tell you about it.

This relatively short detour from the main critical track that the presenter has been pursuing, however, does not prevent her from resuming her unyieldingly caustic critique: And also a big mistake is I think about sociability speaking factor, which is, at large, a lot of data he presents. A large part of this data is insignificant or not significant because he doesn’t take them into account during his analysis. The continued use of negative epithets is observed in the remainder of the critique, too: (...) he is kind of biased; contrary to what he said (...). At the same time, it is important to realise that her critical statements are not without a purpose elevating the scope of the discourse from a mere diatribe to a discussion that promotes joint thinking and assessment by highlighting controversies and reinforcing a sense of tension (cf.

Morita’s (2000) definition of ‘strategies to engage the audience’ (pp. 291-292)): So what you can see is totally the opposite of what he was thinking. He might have expected that three hours per week will result in lower test scores, but if you look at it, three hours had the highest scores, which is I think weird (presenter is giggling). As this example also shows, OAP 13 displays susceptibility to applying emotionally marked adjectives (e.g. weird, or in absurd, found in a different utterance) to convey a sense of conflict, which is to be resolved by the shared efforts of the presenter and the audience.

The speaker’s conscious tendency to exhort the audience to take part in the joint resolution of contentious points is also made obvious by the textual environment the critically phrased controversies occur in. On the hand, such instances are characterised by signposting expressions (e.g. And finally), meant to ensure that members of the

160 audience are registering the manner the presenter draws on to segment information. On the other hand, the utterances concerned are marked by the extensive presence of an interactive feature, i.e. personal deictics (mostly first and second person pronouns), in their immediate vicinity.