The indexical scope of adios: a relevance theoretic analysis of discursive constructions of gender and institutions and their impact on utterance interpretation

Abstract

Abstract The aim of this special issue of the Journal of Politeness Research is to show what happens when different analytical frameworks are be applied to a single piece of data: a short YouTube clip of a hearing in a USA courtroom. My specific aim in this paper is to show what an indexical analysis of (im)politeness phenomena, that is informed by a relevance-theoretic approach to communication, can bring to light about a short exchange between the judge and the defendant, that would not be evident to most viewers of this clip, and which also would not come to light through the application of the other methodologies demonstrated in this issue. Overall, I show that an analytical framework that takes a pragmatically informed indexical approach to (im)politeness phenomena, would predict and can explain variation between interpretations of an utterance as well as similarities in interpretation. It can therefore be used to address a problem that has always been present in (im)politeness analyses: how to identify and account for the social meanings generated by the use of a linguistic form in context.