Book review

Perspective and Perspectivation in Discourse

Graumann, Carl Friedrich and Werner Kallmeyer (eds.) 2002. Perspective and Perspectivation in Discourse. Amsterdam and Phildelphia: John Benjamins

Reviewed by Michael Pleyer, Department of English Literature and Linguistics, University of Heidelberg, Germany.

Concepts like 'perspective', 'perspectivation', 'point of view' and other related notions have come to be established among the most important topics in all disciplines concerned with how meaning is constituted and negotiated in interaction (e.g. Hühn et al. 2009, Köller 2004, Moll & Tomasello 2007, Verhagen 2007). However, although the importance of these concepts is generally acknowledged, it has proven quite difficult to define and explicate them precisely. The same holds for the elucidation of their role in interaction. It is especially regarding the latter point that the present volume, Perspective and Perspective in Discourse, is particularly relevant.

The proposed aim of this volume, edited by the late Carl F. Graumann (University of Heidelberg) and Werner Kallmeyer (Institute for the German Language), is to help fill the gap between the general, common-sense understanding of the notion of 'perspective' and the analytical insights into its interactive dynamics and cognitive structure gained by linguistics, psychology, and related disciplines.

Perspective and Perspectivation in Discourse is organized into an introduction and four parts. Part A comprises papers focusing on the overall structure and communicative function of what the editors call 'perspectivity'. The papers in part B deal with perspective-setting, or perspectivation, in discourse and interaction from a broadly conversation-analytic perspective, whereas the papers in Part C discuss differences and divergences in perspective in a way that is more psychologically-oriented. Finally, the papers in part D address the topic of perspective in narrative, or 'reconstructive', texts.

In their introduction, Graumann & Kallmeyer set the stage by briefly discussing some of the core notions in the study of perspective and perspectivation in discourse. They also sketch some important areas of research in linguistics, psychology, sociology and related disciplines, as well as their history.

Part A - Perspectivity: Structure and Functions

In the first paper of this section, Klaus Foppa elaborates on the difference between knowing something - which can be objectively verified - and having a perspective on something, which cannot be (dis)proven but which has to be negotiated in conversation.

In his article, Carl F. Graumann points out that every subject looks at the world not only from a specific spatial point of view, but also from a specific mental point of view. Cognition and communication are thus fundamentally perspectival, but usually this is only made explicit under specific circumstances.

Per Linell's paper gives a list of fifteen properties of perspectives, i.e. "specific ways of viewing, understanding, and portraying the things talked about" (p.41). He argues that the term "is not, and cannot easily be made into, a very precise notion" (p.53) and that not everything should be treated under the heading of perspective, which is essentially a discourse-based notion.

Von Stutterheim and Klein argue that speakers express their perspective by making linguistic choices on the lexical, structural, and contextual level, and that these choices are constrained by the properties and possibilities of the language in question.

In the last paper of this section, entitled "Grammaticalization of perspectivity," Gisela Zifonun describes current research on alternative patterns of conceptualization that are petrified in grammar. She focuses especially on different theories of semantic roles and grammatical converses and how these are related to different models of perspectivation.

Part B - Perspectivation in Discourse and Interaction

In the first paper of Part B, Werner Kallmeyer concerns himself with "verbal practices of perspective grounding" from the point of view of a rhetorically oriented conversation analysis. Based on an analysis of a sample of transcribed conversations in conflictual settings, he shows the ways interlocutors manifest and contextualize their own perspectives and indicate their relevance for the interpretation of their own actions as well as those of others.

Inken Keim, in her chapter, also stresses that verbal interaction is structured as a process of mutual perspective-taking and -setting. She presents a case study of how a conflict mediator sets perspectives and relates her own and other perspectives to one another when mediating interactions of antagonistic Eastern and Western groups after the unification of Germany.

The topic of Ursula Bredel's paper is how perspectives can be established through the self-positioning use of the second person singular pronoun. Bredel argues that by using the self-positioning du (you), the speaker establishes a discursive carrier of perspective that is easier for the hearer to relate to. This enables the speaker not only to simply "relate his experience to the hearer (mitteilen)" but also to "share it with him (mit ihm teilen)" (p. 175).

"Strategic uses of self and other perspectives" are the focus of Alissa Shethar's chapter, in which she analyzes how Germans in the East manifest and legitimate their perspectives in both everyday life and political debates. It is especially in political debates that politicians from the East explicitly reflect on their perspective in order to defend themselves against attempts of Western politicians who try to marginalize their perspective.

In the last chapter of this part, Helga Kothoff gives an account of how speakers express ironical contrastive double perspectivation through echoic irony: Speakers pseudo-quote or -cite somebody's past statement but at the same time express their own differing perspective on the utterance.

Part C - Perspectivity: Differences and Divergences

In the first paper of this part, Sabine Otten and Amélie Mummendey report that people interpret social discrimination and aggression differently depending on whether they evaluate the events from the perspective of an actor, a recipient, or an observer.

Gerold Mikula, in the second paper, finds the same effect in interpretations of injustice in close relationships.

Problems in perspective-setting and -taking that arise in interactions between people with cerebral palsy and unimpaired speakers are the focus of Ivana Marková and Sarah Collins' chapter. Speakers with cerebral palsy are highly innovative in using their limited communicative resources, but unimpaired speakers often have problems in taking the impaired speaker's perspective because they rely too much on conventionality and often do not recognize the impaired speaker's creative attempts at perspective-setting.

Jeanette Schmid, in her paper, compares strategies of perspectivation in real and mock court closing speeches of experts and laypersons using the Linguistic Category Model of Semin & Fiedler (e.g. 1991). She demonstrates that on the linguistic level prosecutors and defense attorneys differ in their perspectival evaluation of victim and defendant, but that crucially, they seem to be unaware of the strategies of perspectivation they employ.

Part D - Perspectivity in Reconstructive Genres

The last part of the volume starts with Peter Canisius' discussion of a significant change in the history of modern narrative fiction in terms of the narrative perspective adopted. Canisius observes a change from an omniscient outer perspective to an inner perspective of a reflector who is limited in his knowledge, observations and reliability.

In her chapter, Uta Quasthoff analyzes expert testimonies in court and attests a difference between two kinds of perspectival stances and contextualization when relating narratives, namely an uninvolved reporting mode, and a 'scenic' or 'replaying' mode.

Susanne Günthner describes how speakers express their own perspective and evaluations on an event when reporting on past dialogues. Specifically, Günthner analyzes how reporters employ metapragmatic devices like code-switching and intonation as means to imprint their perspective onto the reconstructed event.

In the last paper of the volume, János László and Tibor Pólya report on their experiments investigating the role of narrative perspective on cognitive processing and the construction of mental images.

Evaluation

Apart from Kallmeyer's cursory mention of Langacker's Cognitive Grammar (p. 138n), some passing references to Fillmore's Case Grammar (p. 95, 116, 138n, 144, 162n), and one to Liebert et al. (1997) (p. 4), the last paper by László and Tibor is the only one explicitly relating to Cognitive Linguistics (and the mental spaces model of Fauconnier (1985)) (p. 379f.).

Still, the present volume has much to offer Cognitive Linguists interested in perspective and perspectivation in discourse. This is especially so because, although the perspectival nature of language has been emphasized in Cognitive Linguistics from the very beginning (cf. Geeraerts 2006, Langacker 1987, Verhagen 2007), the interactive, discourse-based dimension of language has been neglected until quite recently (cf. Fauconnier 2004, Kleinke 2010, Langacker 2001). This is where the present volume offers a wealth of interesting results and approaches that can be fruitfully incorporated into Cognitive Linguistics.

However, this is also where one of the main points of criticism regarding the present volume manifests itself. As I pointed out above, the notion of perspective is still not very well defined, and although the present volume has contributed much to understanding the role of perspective and perspectivation in interaction, the question of what exactly a 'perspective' is and how it is to be modeled linguistically is not addressed satisfactorily beyond some interspersed comments.

Nevertheless, an integration of the results of the current volume with theories of perspective in Cognitive Linguistics definitely seems like a promising and fruitful enterprise for the future, and this book is an important step in that direction.

References

Fauconnier, Gilles. 2004. Pragmatics and Cognitive Linguistics. In: Laurence R. Horn and Gregory Ward (ed.): Handbook of Pragmatics. Malden, MA: Blackwell (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics 16), 657-674.

--- .1985. Mental Spaces: Aspects of Meaning Construction in Natural Language. Cambridge: Bradford Books.

Semin, Gun R. and Klaus Fiedler. 1991. The Linguistic Category Model, its Bases, Applications, and Range. European Review of Social Psychology 2: 1-30.

Geeraerts, Dirk. 2006. Introduction: A Rough Guide to Cognitive Linguistics. In Dirk Geeraerts (ed.), Cognitive Linguistics: Basic Readings. Berlin: de Gruyter (Cognitive Linguistics Research 34), 1-28.

Hühn, Peter, Wolf Schmid and Jörg Schönert (eds.). 2009. Point of View, Perspective, and Focalization: Modeling Mediation in Narrative. Berlin: de Gruyter (Narratologia / Contributions to Narrative Theory 17).

Kleinke, Sonja. 2010. Speaker Activity and Grice's Maxims of Conversation at the Interface of Pragmatics and Cognitive Linguistics. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 3345-3366.

Köller, Wilhelm. 2004. Perspektivität und Sprache : Zur Struktur von Objektivierungsformen in Bildern, im Denken und in Der Sprache. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Vol. I. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

--- . 2001. Discourse in Cognitive Grammar. Cognitive Linguistics 12: 143-188.

Liebert, Wolf-Andreas, Gisela Redeker and Linda R. Waugh (eds.). 1997. Discourse and Perspective in Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins

Moll, Henrike and Michael Tomasello. 2007. Co-Operation and Human Cognition: The Vygotskian Intelligence Hypothesis. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 362: 639-648.

Verhagen, Arie. 2007. Construal and Perspectivization. In Dirk Geeraerts and Herbert Cuyckens (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 48-81.

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