What we meant by that was “let’s do this”. The interpretive metatext as pending account

Abstract

This paper investigates the use of a semiotic macrostructure called a pending account as an interpretive metatext to configure strategy texts’ motivational affordances and lend authority to deontic claims. Interpretive metatexts tell us what another text means; if they use a pending account to do so, they tell us what it means by telling us what we should do; and they tell us what we should do by telling us what inclines us to act in a certain way, either by verbalizing habits or convoking scripts and passions. Pending accounting is a speech genre oriented towards inducing action. Peircean and Greimasian semiotics suggest two different ways in which emotion is coupled to other sensemaking registers to set up these inducements. If Peirce teaches us how feelings set off an effortful inquiry oriented towards the fixing of belief, Greimas explains how passions (as well as scripts) play an important part in sanctioning and thereby (de)commissioning action. The paper shows how the two semioticians can be combined to explain how emotion is used to articulate and authorize pending accounts, based on an illustrative analysis of four interpretations of the 2020 Brexit withdrawal agreement.