The functions ofI thinkin political discourse

Abstract

The expression I (don't) think has in recent years received a fair amount of attention from different viewpoints and in different linguistic frameworks. After a brief survey of the most important literature on the subject, this article examines the occurrence of I think in political discourse as compared with its use in informal conversation. On the basis of two samples of 100 instances each from casual conversations and radio political interviews, the expression is looked at from the points of view of syntax, intonation, the semantics of the proposition, collocation, and the wider context of the interaction taking place. It is shown that the expression has a complex of meanings which cannot simply be labelled ‘uncertainty’or ‘lack of commitment’. Depending on the context, it can signal a tentative attitude or authoritative deliberation. It is further argued that an understanding of the extralinguistic situation and the cultural meaning of the genre, including the power and status of interactants, is essential if one wishes to interpret the selection of I think in individual instances.

Beyond modality and hedging: A dialogic view of the language of intersubjective stance

“…Other researchers interested in intersubjective positioning have demonstrated the importance of attending to the nature of the proposition. Thus, for example, various writers on the phrase I think have demonstrated the need to attend to whether the proposition is a 'fact' (a claim about some observable, verifiable state of affairs in the experiential world ) or some type of 'opinion' (see, for example, Stubbs 1996or Simon-Vandenbergen 2000. They have shown that the meaning or rhetorical functionality of I think varies according to the nature of the proposition (i.e., 'fact' versus 'opinion') it modulates.…”

“I think” in political speech

“…This provides some evidence that the political leaders treated the second and third debates less as conversations and more as political speeches. In order to examine the communicative functions of initial I think in the prehead, head and tonic I manually examined all 254 tokens in context by (a) considering the surrounding co-text, (b) the presence of lexical items signalling obligation, necessity, desirability tentativeness and uncertainty, (c) the presence of non-junctural pauses, hesitation markers and filled pauses, and (d) whether or not the I think was commutable by modal expressions such as probable, see Boye andHarder (2007), Fetzer (2014), Kearns (2007), Kaltenböck (2009), Simon-Vandenbergen (2000, and Van Bogaert (2010) for further information on methods used to disambiguate different uses of I think.…”

“…Prehead There were four uses of I think found in prehead position, two of which have been previously described by Simon-Vandenbergen (2000) in her investigation of I think in political interviews. The first use indicates the strength of the speakers' commitment to the proposition.…”

“…International Review of Pragmatics (2017) by Simon-Vandenbergen (2000) that the meanings realised by initial I think in political interviews are also found in televised pre-electoral debate and distinct from those found in conversation. Unsurprisingly no evidence was found for a one-to-one relationship between the three grammatical structures, main clause, comment clause and discourse marker, identified by Dehé and Wichmann (2010) and the 4 meanings realised by the use of initial I think in the leaders' debate.…”

“…These are from a semantic viewpoint (e.g. Urmson, 1952;Thompson and Mulac, 1991a;Simon-Vandenbergen, 2000), according to their syntax (e.g. Thompson and Mulac, 1991b;Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartik, 1985;Halliday and Matthiessen, 2014), according to their use (e.g.…”