27

CHAPTER II - THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

The present study follows an eclectic model for analysis that combines Fairclough's
Critical Discourse Analysis (1992a, 2001) and Anna Freud's (1946) and Vaillant's (1977)
discussion of defense mechanisms. Since turn-taking (Sacks and Schegloff 1974) and
functional grammar are important tools in Fairclough's model, this chapter will include a
description of them as well.

2.1. Critical Discourse Analysis: Principles and Practitioners

CDA began in the early 1990's primarily as a practice to investigate the abuse of
power in discourse. After a symposium in January 1991 at Amsterdam where eminent
scholars as Fairclough, Wodak, Van Dijk, Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen met and
discussed critical concepts, CDA became a full-fledged linguistic practice. Fairclough
and Wodak (1997) describe it as a social practice or rather a political and ideological
practice performed through language. They (1997) describe the approach in their own
words as:
CDA sees discourse - language use in speech and writing - as a form of 'social
practice'. Describing discourse as social practice implies a dialectical relationship
between a particular discursive event and the situation(s), institution(s) and social
structure(s) which frame it. A dialectical relationship is a two-way relationship:
the discursive event is shaped by situations, institutions and social structures, but
it also shapes them. To put the same point in a different way, discourse is socially
constitutive as well as socially shaped: it constitutes situations, objects of
knowledge, and the social identities of and relationships between people and
groups of people. It is constitutive both in the sense that it helps to sustain and
reproduce the social status quo, and in the sense that it contributes to transforming
it. Since discourse is so socially influential, it gives rise to important issues of
power. Discursive practices may have major ideological effects: that is, they can
 28

help produce and reproduce unequal power relations between (for instance) social
classes, women and men, and ethnic/cultural majorities and minorities through the
ways in which they represent things and position people ... both the ideological
loading of particular ways of using language and the relations of power which
underlie them are often unclear to people. CDA aims to make more visible these
opaque aspects of discourse (1997: 258).
Critical linguistics (CL), followed by a group of East-Anglia University experts such as
Roger Fowler, Kress and Robert Hodge (1979), is considered a predecessor wherein a
systematic analysis of public discourse could show how discourse was exploited for
power and ideological interests of certain dominant groups but now the terms CDA and
CL are interchangeable, with the former being more popular. As Wodak writes:
for CDA, language is not powerful on its own - it gains power by the use
powerful people make of it. This explains why CL often chooses the perspective
of those who suffer, and critically analyzes the language use of those in power,
who are responsible for the existence of inequalities and who also have the means
and opportunity to improve conditions (2001: 10).
Its principles have been outlined by Fairclough and Wodak (1997) as follows:
1. CDA's object of inquiry is social problems. It is interdisciplinary in analysis,
concerned with the linguistic nature of sociocultural processes or problems, not
exclusively with language use.
2. Power and discourse are interrelated topics of study in CDA. An example that can be
cited to show the discursive nature of power mediated and negotiated through
discourse is that of political interviews. A rigorous study would examine the present
and long-term effects of power relations manipulated and managed through discourse.
3. Society and culture shape discourse and are shaped by it. Social life can be
categorized into representations of the world, relations between people and their
social and personal identities, and use of language assists in reproducing or changing
these forms and thereby society at large.
4. Ideologies are the social tools for establishing or dismantling power relations either
through speech or writing. Language use in texts is ideological hence it is essential to
 29

analyze texts for the manner in which they are interpreted and the effects they
produce. Only then can social reality and its representations be understood.
5. Discourses are intertextually linked to their predecessors or contemporaries,
embedded in ideology, culture and history and can only be comprehended with
reference to them.
6. The connection between text and society is indirect and can be made obvious through
'orders of discourse' (Fairclough 1992a), a socio-psychological approach (Wodak and
Meyer 2001) and a socio-cognitive model (van Dijk, 1985c, 1993b).
7. CDA is a systematic method that is interpretative and explanatory. It surveys the
relations between the text, society ideologies, power play, new contexts and
information to analyze and highlight social conditions. However the interpretations
and explanations are not closed and fixed but open and dynamic.
8. CDA is a "socially committed scientific paradigm" (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997:
279-80) that views discourse as social behaviour. Its central objective is "to uncover
opaqueness and power relationships" (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997: 280) and is thus
self-reflexive, making explicit its interests and is interested in the practical issues.
CDA practitioners use heterogenous theoretical models to fulfill their aims as van
Dijk states that most of them have shared perspectives on doing linguistic, semiotic or
discourse analysis (1993b). CDA is heavily influenced by the writings of the
philosophers Michel Foucault (1989), Antonio Gramsci (1971) and Althusser (1971).
Power is wielded through discourse and discursive subjects and ideological manipulation
occurs through social institutions. Discourse is linguistically created; therefore its
analysis will reveal how meanings are negotiated, ideologies constructed and
reconstructed to dominate and subjugate the 'other' or the subaltern and how all this
happens through the sociopolitical matrix. Mikhail Bakhtin's (1994) and Valentin N.
Volosinov's (1994) views on language and intertextuality, a term coined by Julia
Kristeva (1986), became an essential tool in the hands of the critical discourse analysts.
Bakhtin explored the interrelatedness between different texts, each echoing its
predecessors and contemporaries, their dialogic property and genre theory - the creation
of texts by combining socially-determined genres for various purposes like advertising.
Thus CDA is critical in two senses: firstly through its adoption of tools of critical
 30

linguistics and secondly via its self-reflexivity reflecting its interests and the historical
contexts of discourse formation (Titscher 2000).
Gilbert Weiss and Wodak (2003) are of the view that CDA is an interdisciplinary
approach, not a single model but a conglomeration of different models advocated by
scholars, based on differing theoretical backgrounds and data. The definitions of concepts
like ideology, discourse, power and grammar, varies and so does the orientation and
analysis. Thus the term 'school' or 'programme' would be more appropriate for such an
enterprise. Any criticism against CDA should specify the researcher and his model, and
cannot be blindly addressed to the practice as a whole. Other linguists as van Dijk
(1993b) suggest that it is better to use the term Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) because
of the heterogeneity of theories and models followed. CDA theorists differ on several
grounds: some include a historical approach, some, the functional approach of Halliday
(1976, 1994), while others stress on the multi-functionality of texts, and yet others on
socio-cognitive processes. The French Discourse Analysts as Michel Pecheux lay
emphasis on Althusser's concept of ideology and Foucault's notion of discourse.
Similarly, the linguist Utz Maas, combined Foucault's framework with a hermeneutic
methodology which he refers to .as reading analysis. Even the Duisberg School of
Siegfried Jager, following Foucault, has turned its attention to the linguistic, iconic and
symbolic (topoi) features of discourse, studying the New Right in Germany (cited in
Fairclough and Wodak, 1997). The Critical Linguists focus on practical ways of textual
analysis especially through Halliday'S systemic grammar. The school of 'social
semiotics' (Kress and Hodge, 1979) is similar to 'critical linguistics' in using Halliday
but the material is not just verbal texts but even visual ones as for example, photographs,
films, Renaissance paintings. Fairclough (1992a, 1992b, 1993, 1995, 2001, 2003)
focuses on discursive analysis of sociocultural processes and institutions employing
Hallidayan grammar, genre types and intertextuality and he has investigated the discourse
of politics, advertising, marketization of British universities, doctor-patient interaction
and language education. Socio-cognitive studies of van Dijk (1985c, 1991, 1993b, 1997)
have investigated racism and prejudices in schools and newspapers by the tools of
personal and social cognitive processes. Wodak's Discourse-Historical Method (1986,
1989, 1991, 2002) has successfully analyzed issues of racism, anti-Semitism, sexism,
 31

medical language in hospitals, employing the historical context and socio-psychological

elements of race, class, gender etc. Lastly, Ron Scollon (cited in Wodak and Meyer 2001)
has developed his version of CDA called Mediated Discourse Analysis (MDA) that lays
primary emphasis on social action, than discourse. However despite such varied
approaches and data, CDA has almost never attempted an analysis of literary discourse.
That task is left to the stylisticians or discourse analysts. (Toolan 2002). For the present
research the model proposed by Fairclough (1992a, 2001) has been chosen and a detailed
description of it will now be given below.

2.2. Fairclough's CDA and other Non-Critical Approaches

Fairclough (1992a) gives an exposition of CDA by comparing it to other non-

critical methods of discourse analysis and arguing that though each is incisive and
engaging yet it lacks the critical perspective to study language. Sinclair and Coulthard's
(1975) discourse analysis lacks the tools for the investigation of power, and the meanings
and functions of utterances produced by the teacher or pupils are ambiguous,
questionable and open to interpretation. Schegloff, Sack's and Jefferson's Conversational
Analysis (1974) also steers clear of descriptive categories of power-play, assuming
conversation to be harmonious and collaborative with equal distribution of floor rights
among the speakers which is certainly not the case. The feature of sequential organization
has been questioned as the sole and comprehensive unit of discourse understanding
because in any conversation, the participants need to make judgments about themselves,
the context, the discourse type which involves more complex processes of discourse
interpretation and production, not covered by the approach. Hence CDA becomes
necessary to provide an explanation of these hidden processes. Similarly, Labov and
Fanshel's (1977) model to study therapeutic discourse, though exhaustive, is not critical
because of the following reasons: paralanguage is difficult to interpret, their view of
heterogeneity of speech styles is static and fixed, not open to historicity and not much
attention has been given to the nature of implicit propositions that underlie the discourse
of patients. Potter and Wetherell's (1987) discursive psychology is criticized for its
unclear distinction between form and content which ignores the interpersonal aspect of
 32

meaning in analysis and their variable view of the self in psychology which requires a
richer explanation and framework, not given by them. The last two approaches of the
Critical linguists and Pecheux are critical to some extent but are not blemish-proof.
Fairclough agrees with the Critical Linguists Fowler et al (1979) that correlational
sociolinguistics needs to change for here the effect or relation between variables is
examined without attention to its origin, repercussions or effect on society. Thus
linguistic studies need to be more critical in assessing these relations which is ably done
by Critical Linguistics but Fairclough also cites their limitation stating that their research
was restricted mainly to the written medium and the manifestation of ideology in
discourse. Lastly he discusses Pecheux's theory as too abstract and unsatisfactory in an
attempt to be critical - a Marxist-linguistic analysis. Texts are treated as products and
mostly a semantic analysis of 'key words' is provided in the name of a linguistic analysis
of ideology.

2.3. Fairclough's Model

As distinguished from the above frameworks, Fairclough's model of CDA is

known as TODA "textually - (and therefore linguistically) oriented discourse analysis"
(1992a: 37). In the present study I will use terms CDA and TODA interchangeably since
here CDA stands for Fairclough's approach.
A major part of its conceptual terminology is borrowed from Foucault but it
differs from the latter in two ways: firstly Foucault concerns himself with specific types
of discourses as that of medicine, psychiatry, economics, grammar but Fairclough's
object of inquiry is any from of discourse. Secondly, writing and speech, both are subject
matter in TODA but not in Foucault's discourse which is more abstract and conceptual. A
number of Foucauldian ideas have been adapted by Fairclough.
Firstly, according to Foucault, the object of discourse, the object of study in a
discipline, are constructed and changed by the discourse itself or by the discursive
formation. Such discursive formations are derived from an interrelationship of "between
institutions, economic and social processes, behavioural patterns, systems of norms,
techniques, types of classification, modes of characterization" (1989: 49) and these
 33

relations are not present inside the object but "enable it to appear, to juxtapose itself with
other objects, to situate itself in relation to them, to define its difference, its irreducibility,
and even perhaps its heterogeneity" (Foucault, 1989: 50), that is, these relations are
instrumental in the formation of objects.
Secondly, the subject of discourse is a part of the discourse, positioned by its
enunciative modalities. Fairclough describes enunciative modalities as "types of
discursive activity such as describing, forming hypotheses, formulating, formulating
regulations, teaching, and so forth, each of which has its own associated subject
positions." (1992a: 43). Foucault gives an example of medical discourse where the doctor
is positioned by the elements of discourse and the enunciative modalities used by each:
"some of which are concerned with the status of doctors, others the institutional and
technical site from which they speak, others their. position as subjects perceiving,
observing, describing, teaching, etc" (1989: 59). In short, the subject is not a unified
whole but a dispersed fragmented entity, positioned by a system of relations in discourse
and positioning others by these modalities.
Thirdly, the formation of concepts in a particular discourse or discourses can be
done by the "battery of categories, elements and types which a discipline uses as an
apparatus for treating its field of interest" (1992a: 45). Fairclough is of the view that the
concepts in a discourse can be intra-textual, within the text, or extra-textual, outside the
text, drawn from other texts and discourses. Intra-textual relations are the various ways in
which "groups of statements may be combined, (how descriptions, deductions,
definitions, whose succession characterizes the architecture of a text, are linked
together)" (Foucault's italics, 1989: 63). Extra-textual relations refers to interdiscursivity,
that is how information can be used across discourses. The concepts are ever-changing,
giving rise to intertextuality and interdiscursivity in texts, a useful tool in TODA.
Fourthly, any discursive formation is defined by certain themes or theories that
are called strategies by Foucault (1989) and these strategies are governed by
interdiscursive and non-discursive practices. The latter lends materiality to discourse
(Fairclough 1992a) linking discourse to the non-discursive institutional practices.
Fifthly, Foucault's conception of power is of a "productive nature, that it produces
as well as represses" (Mills, 1997: 37). Power is ubiquitous and implicit in "all domains
 34

of social life" (Fairclough, 1992a: 50). It is not imposed from outside at the macro-levels
but developed from inside at the micro-levels. For example the power of the education
system is enforced not from outside but from inside, through the discursive and non-
discursive practices, the institutions and the statements that create the discourse of
education. The Foucauldian notion of power operationalized in TODA are:
the discursive nature of power - the practice and techniques of modern
'biopower' (e.g. examination and confession) are to a significant degree
discursive; the political nature of discourse - power struggle occurs both in and
over discourse; the discursive nature of social change - changing discursive
practices are an important element in social change (Fairclough, 1992a: 56).
Thus Fairclough adopts the following notions from Foucault:
1. The discursive nature ofthe subject
2. Its positioning and the positioning of others through discourse
3. The relations among discourses that lead to interdiscursivity
4. The discursive and non-discursive practices that materialize power
Fairclough (1992a) borrowed the idea of ideology largely from Althusser (1971) as
notions that are materially present in institutional practices, that interpellate (position)
and thereby create subjects and ideological state apparatuses (education, media,
bureaucracy, police) that are sites of class struggle and have stakes in them. Ideology has
been known as a property of structures and codes or discourse or texts but Fairclough
sees it as stable constructions of reality built into discursive practices, which lead to
power sustenance, reconstruction or transformation. It is in orders of discourse and events
that reproduce it, and "are most effective when they become naturalized, and achieve the
status of common sense ... " (1992a: 88). Word meanings, presuppositions, metaphors and
coherence are its indicators. All discourse is not ideological but Fairclough maintains like
Althusser that its inextricably linked to society like a 'social cement' and hence certain
discourses are more ideological than others such as advertising vis-a.-vis physical
sciences. In consonance with ideological formation, is the issue of power or hegemony. It
is "leadership as much as domination across the economic, political, cultural, and
ideological domains of a society ... of one of the fundamental economically-defined
classes and alliance with other social forces ... " (1992a: 92) but it is never fully achieved
 35

and hence a site of constant struggle to build, sustain, break relations of domination and
subordination. Ideology, as Fairclough (1992a) informs us, is an element of this not only
as interpellation of subjects but in the Gramscian sense of subjects being structured by
diverse conflicting or overlapping ideologies, inherent in their practices. Commonsense is
the naturalization of ideologies and the repertoire of effects of past and present
ideological struggles. This means ideology is constantly being structured or restructured
through hegemony and this is seen in discourse. Hegemony, is not viewed as the rule of
the dominant class over the other but as a framework or matrix carried out by multiple
individuals and institutions for the exercise of power relations.
It provides a model: in education, for example the dominant groups also appear to
exercise power through constituting alliances, integrating rather than merely
subordinating groups, winning their consent, achieving a precarious equilibrium
which maybe undermined by other groups and doing so in part through discourse
and through the constitution of local orders of discourse. It provides a matrix: the
achievement of hegemony at a societal level requires a degree of integration of
local and semi-autonomous institutions and power relations, so that the latter are
partially shaped by hegemonic relations .... (1992a: 93)
Thus hegemonic control takes place through exercise of power across institutions and
discourses, creating a matrix of linkages. In TODA, language is discursive and it creates
social reality that is built through an interface with ideology, power, hegemony and
context. CDA views discourse as social practice: "language is a part of society, and not
somehow external to it. Secondly, that language is a social process. And thirdly, that
language is a socially conditioned process, conditioned that is by other (non-linguistic)
parts of society" (2001: 18-19). Expressed simply, language is a part of social phenomena
and it becomes social practice when we analyze it in texts when it is called discourse that
includes processes of production and interpretation. Thus discursive practice is a part of
social practice and is concerned with the processes of text production, distribution and
consumption which vary according to social contexts. Production positions the producer
and if transparent and clear, it reveals his stance. For example in newspapers the
producer's viewpoint is known or remains obscure depending on who writes, what and
where, in the editorial or the front page. Distribution can be simple like an informal
 36

conversation or complex, as news broadcasting that is mediated across multiple channels

at multiple levels. Consumption can be individual or collective, as in personal letters and
administrative documents respectively. Fairclough uses the word 'text' in the Hallidayan
sense referring to both spoken and written mediums and discourse as the entire process of
social interaction which includes a text. The terms 'discourse' and 'practice' are actional
or conventional: they refer to either what persons do or say on a particular occasion or
what they do or say habitually. This is known by treating the discourse as a text, thus we
have three levels: text, discourse and society, and TODA is an interface between these.
Discourse is determined by social structures or social preconditions which enable people
to act in a particular manner. In Fairclough's words "people are enabled through being
constrained: they are able to act on condition that they act within the constraints of types
of practice - or of discourse" (2001: 23). Thus each person is positioned by the orders of
discourse, "the social orders looked at from a specifically discoursal perspective" (2001:
24) and a social order in turn is the different social institutions under which we function,
namely, the situation, the action and the practice associated with it. It has been
represented by Fairclough (2001) as:

Types of Practices Types of Discourses

Actual Practices Actual Discourses

Three stages of CDA can be stated on the basis of correspondence between discourse
and society:
A) Description - of the formal features of any text - close textual microanalysis.
B) Interpretation - the 'macro-sociological' analysis of the relationship between the text
and social interaction where the text is considered a product of the production,
distribution and consumption.
C) Explanation - the last stage which involves the macro-relationship between social
interaction and social context, how the phases of production and interpretation take place
and what are its social effects.
 37

2.3.1. Description

The stage of description comprises several linguistic properties which are

vocabulary, transitivity, modality and other textual features (sentence structure, active/
passive voice, nominalization, simple/complex sentence type, cohesive devices and
experiential, relational and expressive values of grammatical categories). Turn-taking,
another essential feature, is explained in detail later in 2.2.

2.3.1.1. Vocabulary

It includes the values attached to words. Experiential value relates to how the text
producer represents the social reality, his knowledge and beliefs. This requires an
examination of the classificatory schemes used to organize a particular discourse, the
ideologically contested words and their meaning, relations of antonymy, synonymy and
hyponymy and cases of rewording or over-wording which indicate a preoccupation with
some particular dimension or sphere of society. For example, advertisements for
personality development classes can have an overuse of words related to personality,
growth, boosting of confidence, negation of depression and so on, signaling its
ideological nature. Relational lexical items allude to social relations acted through the
text seen through euphemisms and marked formality and informality in style. For
instance in The Crucible (1952) Abigail's uncle Reverend Parris uses the pronoun 'you'
in questioning her about the revelry and dancing in the forest with other girls. In this
manner he squarely puts the blame on her for tainting the family's reputation by
indulging in prohibitive activities. It aids in the creation of relations between the
producers and its audience. Expressive values show the text producer's evaluation of the
social world and social identities. In the above example Miller indicates the strict
puritanical ~ttitude of the uncle against all forms of entertainment including dancing.
These values, according to Fairclough (2001), can be diagrammatically represented as:
 38

Experiential Knowledge and Beliefs

Relational Social Relations

Expressive Social Identities

The next vocabulary feature is a metaphor which represents one class of objects as
another, typically found in literary discourse. However it can be seen in any discourse
and it is the network of metaphors, possessing ideological significance that is of
relevance in textual analysis. For instance in Henrik Ibsen's Dol/'s House, the heroine
Nora is metaphorized by her husband Torvald in endearing images of a bird which in fact
underscore her mental and physical weakness and characterize Torvald's discourse as
patriarchal.

2.3.1.2. Transitivity

Fairclough (1992a, 2001) broadly discusses transitivity, modality, sentence type

and nominalization as tools in his textual analysis. This section deals with Halliday's
functional grammar (1994) which is a theory of interrelated units:
a theory of meaning as choice, by which language, or any other semiotic system,
is interpreted as networks of interlocking options ... It is a theory "about language
as a resource for making meaning. Each system in the network represents a
choice: not a conscious decision made in real time but a set of possible
alternatives, like 'statement/question' or 'singular/plural' or 'falling tone/level
tone/rising tone. (1994: xiv, xxvi)
Choice imparts intentionality to the speaker, his or her decision to choose a particular
word, phrase or clause which reveals the way he or she exercises power and domination
and subscribes to a particular ideology. In terms of defense mechanisms, linguistic choice
helps deterniine the language used to express or act out the defenses and how they
correlate with power relations, the worldview of the speaker and his or her identity.
 39

Fairclough (2001) draws upon Hallidayan grammatical terminology to explicate his

theory, particularly transitivity and modality.
Transitivity helps explain our experience of objects, events and persons "it
consists of 'goings-on' - happening, doing sensing, meaning, and being and becoming ...
Thus as well as being a mode of action, of giving and demanding goods and services and
information, the clause is also a mode of reflection, of imposing order on the endless
variation and flow of events" (1994: 106). The experiential value of grammatical forms
can be known through transitivity, that is, the types of processes (verbs) and participants
(nouns) and, functional relation between them in terms of subjects or agent (S), objects,
(0), complement (C) and verbs (V) and the circumstantials about the process (adverbials
and prepositional phrases). These processes are of the following types:
a) Material: processes of doing or action that show that something is done to someone or
an activity is carried out. The person doing the action is the Actor, the action is
directed to the Goal, another person or object. Material processes included
intransitive cmd transitive verbs. They answer the question 'what is one doing?' Eg:
The hunter caught the tiger.
(Actor) (Goal)
b) Mental: These are processes of feeling, thinking and percelvmg. They have a
participant who is human called the Senser and that which is sensed, felt or thought is
the Phenomenon. Normally the mental process occurs in the simple present tense.
They answer the question 'what is one feeling! thinking?'
Eg: I was frightened of ghosts.
(Senser) (Phenomenon)
The Senser can be a thing if it feels or thinks.
Eg: The empty house was longing for a visitor.
(Senser) (Phenomenon)
c) Relational: The relational process is denoted by the forms of the verb 'be'. It either
identifies X as an attribute of Y or X is the identity of Y in the following cases:
 40

Intensive Sarah is wise Tom is the leader

Circumstantial The fair is on a Tuesday Tomorrow is the 10th

Possessive Peter has a piano The piano's is Peter

(Halliday, 1994: 119)

d) Behavioural: This process is partly material and partly mental and it refers to the
psychological and physiological behaviour of humans such as breathing, looking,
crying, laughing, smiling etc. The participant who is behaving or acting is the
Behaver but the action is an activity, like a material process.
e) Verbal: The verbal process includes verbs of saying and it can be both in direct
speech (Quoted) and indirect speech (Reported). The person who says is the Sayer,
the content is the Verbiage, the Receiver is the individual to whom the content is
directed and the Target is the entity that is spoken of, or target of the speech. In the
example below the that-clause constitutes the Verbiage.
Eg: He said that she always praised him.
(Sayer) (Target) (Receiver)
f) Existential: This process is a combination of the material and relational and it refers
to anything that exists, happens or is there. Represented by the verb 'be' or other
verbs such as 'exist', 'happen', 'arise', 'occur', 'come about' etc. The event or object
which seems to be there or exist is called the Existent. Normally circUmstantials give
information about the Existent. Eg: There was an old man on the road.
(Existent) (Circumstantial)
Apart from the verbal and nominal element, the circumstantials provide us information
about the activity. The extent of the action, its manner, its location, its cause, its time and
duration is all known through adverbials and prepositional phrases.
Eg: The concert will be held in Vienna.
(Circumstantial)
 41

2.3.1.3. Modality

Modality is the other pertinent aspect that is expressed by modal auxiliary verbs
such as may, must, can, should and through adverbs and tense markers. Halliday (1994)
discusses mainly four types of modality: probability (probability of an action), usuality
(frequency of an action), obligation (compulsion of an action) and inclination (keenness
to perform an action). Fairclough (1992, 2001) states that modality concerns either the
relations among participants (relational modality) or the writer's claims to authenticity
(expressive modality). Modality is an index of authority and obligation, a component of
power asymmetry. The use of pronouns such as 'we' and 'you' signal degrees of
inclusion and exclusion of the interpreter and are. attempts at personalization or
impersonalization, hence they are significant. For instance in The Crucible (1952) during
the trials for witchcraft the judges maintain a strict distinction between themselves and
the accused, the flawless superior and the blame-worthy inferior, by their repetitive use of
'you' and 'our'. Also the charge acquires a degree of certainty through the modality
'have given':
Hathorne's Voice. Now, Martha Corey, there is abundant evidence in our hands to
show that you have given yourself to the reading of fortunes. Do you deny it?
Martha Corey's Voice. I am innocent to a witch. I know not what a witch is.
Hathorne's Voice: How do you know, then, that you are not a witch? (CP, 1957:
285)

2.3.1.4. Other Textual Features

Sentences are mainly of three kinds depending on the verbs: the 'actions' type
(SVO), the 'events' type (SV), the 'attributions' or 'relational' type (SVC) and 'mental'
type employing verbs of knowing (think), perceiving (hear, smell) and feeling (enjoy).
SVO sentences contain an animate agent and an animate or inanimate patient for
example: Tom hit the ball where 'Tom' is an agent and the' ball is the patient, the
 42

receiver of the action. SV sentences have just one participant, an animate or inanimate
agent for example: She fainted where 'she' is the agent. The moot question is what issues
do SV sentences address. If it is a reply to the question 'what has happened?' then it is an
event but if it answers what the subject was or is doing then Fairclough classifies it as a
non-directed action. The above example falls in this category. A SVC sentence also
consists of just one participant but it is followed by an attribute, possessive if the verb is
'have' and non-possessive (adjectives) if the verbs 'feel', 'seem', 'look' and forms of
'be' are used for example: She is nice. Here the non-possessive attribute is used as the
verb is a 'be' form. An example of the 'mental' sentence structure is 'I am feeling happy'
verbalizing a positive affective state.
The sentence types chosen by the text producer reveal the intentions and
ideologies, vested interests and modes of deception and manipulation resorted to by him.
In addition, attention should be paid to the following issues: obscurity of agency,
transparency of processes, the active/passive voice, positive/negative sentences and the
use of nominalizations (conversion of a verb into a noun) for example: the packaging
industry. The use of all these items especially nominalizations indicate obfuscation of
causality, hidden ideologies and freedom from responsibility and hence assume
relevance. In The Crucible (1952) Miller chooses the active voice and the SVO sentence
type to outrightly condemn the Church and its custodians for breeding in the people the
fear and awe of the devil himself. His stance - a critique of ecclesiastical practices - is
made obvious by his choice of the grammatical structure: "The Catholic Church through
its Inquisition, is famous for cultivating Lucifer as the arch-fiend, but the Church's
enemies relied no less upon the Old Boy to keep the human mind enthralled" (CP, 1957:
249).
Apart from experiential values, relational values of grammatical categories can
also be present in the text. Since this concerns the text's relation to society, the modes of
sentences, modality and pronoun usage are the main exploratory issues. The sentence
modes - declarative, imperative and interrogative - are typically associated with
statements, commands and questions respectively which reveal differing power relations
but the situation becomes complex since they can be employed to issue several types of
speech acts, camouflaging various ideologies and judged on the basis of the reader's
 43

assumptions. The mood of the sentence is also telling since many times a sentence
assumes importance because it does not match with its mood.
Eg: Keep quiet!
This is both an order and an exclamative since it reveals the irritation of the
speaker.
The next topic (Fairclough 1992a, 2001) deals with the expressive values of grammatical
features, that is, expressive modality. Depending on the possibility or certainty of an
action (auxiliary verbs) and the categorical or non-categorical commitment to truth (verb
forms), the text producer can make tall claims of transparency and authenticity and thus
be ideologically polarized which is a fertile ground for analysis. The other textual
features are simple and complex sentences. The linking of simple sentences is generally
done through connectors called cohesive devices like repetition, substitution, reference
and temporal, spatial and logical markers and all of these provide cues about ideologies
that are taken as commonsense assumptions. Likewise, subordination in complex
sentences demonstrates presuppositions unlike coordination where both the clauses carry
equal information. The use of pronouns (he, she, it, this and that) and the definite article
for referring to material inside and outside the text respectively also confirm the presence
of presuppositions which go hand in hand with prevailing ideologies. In the above
example the act of reading and practicing witchcraft is embedded in Hathorne's
interrogation of Martha, marked by pronouns and the definite article.
The type of interactional conventions (dialogue or monologue) in a text hint at
hidden processes and it is here that Fairclough (1992a, 2001) discusses the tum-taking
mechanism, central to any conversation and the ways in which power or bias can be
established or thwarted by devices of interruptions, topic control, ambiguity, enforcing
explicitness and formulation or rewording. The dynamics of tum-taking are a part of
Sacks and Schegloffs model which will be discussed later. The last query of textual
analysis concerns the existence of macro structures in the text: event, causation,
preemptive action, crisis management, after-effects. Such global structuring is essential
as it confirms the participant's expectations about the text and perpetuates ideological
patterns.
 44

2.3.2. Interpretation

The interpretative process is the activation of member resources (MR) often

called background knowledge and it broadly includes the tools of speech acts,
presuppositions, schemas and intertexuality. The following table by Fairclough (2001)
shows the interpretative level and the process involved, that is, what is activated at that
particular level.

Interpretative Procedures (MR) Resources Interpreting

Social orders Situational context

iInteractional history Intertexual context

!Phonology, grammar, vocabulary Surface of utterance

Semantics, pragmatics Meaning of utterance

Cohesion, pragmatics Local coherence

Schemata Text structure and 'point'

Interpretation can be done in levels that are interdependent, relating to one another and
cumulative. The first level is the rudimentary surface of utterance. Here the reader has to
make sense of the auditory and orthographic symbols as words, phrases and sentences by
relying on their linguistic knowledge of phonology, grammar and vocabulary. Then they
have to assign meanings to the sentences or utterances which roughly correspond to the
semantic propositions or ideas to decipher the meanings of utterances as a whole. For this
the interpreter draws upon his semantic and pragmatic repertoires especially speech acts.
Speech acts or the 'force' of an utterance are actions performed in speech and they
portray power in the degrees of directness, politeness, and distance embedded in the way
questions, requests, answers and commands are stated. Next he or she has to relate
utterances to produce a coherent sequence through cohesive devices of subordination,
 45

coordination, ellipsis, substitution and so on. They can also interpret in the absence of
these devices on the basis of inferences built on implicit assumptions and pragmatic
conventions of interaction. The fourth level is a matter of global coherence which can be
understood by matching the text with schemata (representations about discourse
organization) and by topic summary. Schemata, frames and scripts are interdependent
concepts and roughly mean mental frameworks of the world around us: schemata are
about social behaviour, frames about topic or subject matter and scripts are about subjects
and relations among them. Together they constitute the implicit assumptions underlying a
text about persons, objects, abstractions and processes. The topic not only includes the
central argument but also its relational and expressive aspects and therefore the term
'point' is used by Fairclough to refer to it.
The next level in comparison with the first is related to the socio-institutional
matrix. Interpreters comprehend a context via external cues about the situation,
participants, topic and their representations of social orders. The social order consists of
determining the institutional setting and the situational setting of interaction which are
interdependent. In classifying the social setting one has to classify a corresponding
discourse type from the associated 'order of discourse'. Generally:
an institutional social order sets up as recognized situation types a relatively small
number of conventional combinations of values for situational dimensions; and
each situation type can be thought of partly in terms of a discourse type, which is
a conventionalized combination of values for the four dimensions of discourse
types (Fairclough, 2001: 126).
This means an institutional setting will have a limited number of situation types each of
which have a discourse type. Fairclough (2001) views a discourse type in Hallidayan
terms (1994) , as a 'meaning potential' - a sum total of possible experiential, expressive,
relational meanings that draw upon background knowledge (MR) and interpretative
procedures such as vocabulary, semantic relations, pragmatic conventions, schemata,
frames and scripts. So each situation will have its own discourse under the following
headings:
1. The content and terms of the ongoing activity, the topic of interaction and its aim or
purpose. For example a typical classroom situation can be judged by the activity of
 46

question-answers between the teacher and students, on a particular topic, the aim of
which is assessment of the students' knowledge.
, 2. The subjects who are positioned by the discourse as speaker, listener, spokesperson,
overhearer and so on. These positions are variable and multi-dimensional. In the
classroom example there will be the positions of the teacher and the learners.
3. Next are the relations among the subjects in the situation like that of power, social
distance, solidarity, exclusion.
4. The last element is. the role played by language SInce almost all interaction in
institutional and social settings take place through language in different genres,
registers, channels. Thus "language is being used in an instrumental way as a part of a
wider institutional and bureaucratic objective ... " (Fairclough, 2001: 124). Thus
language determines connections outside a text and inside too among the various
parts. For instance in The Crucible (1952) a specific discourse type of courtroom
interrogation is created by the judges in questioning the common folk. The latter are
positioned as the weaker party by way of their answers while the judges' question
them about witchcraft.

What's going on? (activity, topic, Contents

purpose)

Who's involved? Subjects

In what relations? Relations

What's the role of language in what is Connections

going on?

(Fairclough 2001)

The other element in interpretation is the interactional history which can be understood
through the intertextual context and presuppositions. Presuppositions are "text producer's
interpretations of intertextual context" (Fairclough, 2001: 127) known by textual features
like definite article, subordination, wh-questions and that-clauses. They are manipUlative
 47

tools in the hands of the text creators and coupled with negation, they are employed to
impose or perpetuate a particular ideology as natural commonsense thinking, and can be
both sincere and deceptive. Presuppositions lend a dialogic quality to the text, similar to
intertexuality. The term intertextuality was given by Julia Kristeva in her work on
Bakhtin (1986) and it refers to the link between texts of an author with his other works
(horizontal relation) or those of other authors (vertical relation). Bakhtin was of the view
that speaker utterances were linked to those before and after his or hers and was extended
by Kristeva to texts echoing its predecessors and contemporaries and so in turn
remoulding the past or history. For example in The Crucible (1952) witchcraft hysteria
parallels that of McCarthyism. This relationship has an hegemonic angle in how texts can
reshape present genres. Fairclough distinguishes between manifest and constitutive
intertextuality. In the former the presence of other texts is explicitly known by
presuppositions, negations, irony and metadiscourse (producer distances himself from the
text to control it after defining various levels in it). Constitutive intertexuality or
interdiscursivity is how a discourse type is composed through the elements of orders of
discourse. It occurs on a larger social scale where discourse types can be genres, styles,
activity types, or discourse itself. Interdiscursivity helps to mix and change discursive
social structures in simple or complex ways. Intertexuality has a social use in TODA: it
aids in reconstructing discourse types and thereby the socio-institutional settings and
subject formation by specifying the distribution and consumption of texts. It operates in
the discourse of advertising where different genres and styles work to produce a text for
the product.

2.3.3. Explanation

The last stage of TODA, explanation, is at a macro-level, seeing discourse as

social struggle within the imposition of power. It asks questions about the role of power
in institutionally establishing discourse, how much background knowledge serves as
ideologies and the effects of both these conditions. When MR or background knowledge
are employed in interpretation of a text, they are being reproduced and it is this
reproduction of discourse which gives it stability and life. This stage is concerned with
 48

how discourse becomes social practice and what effects reproduced discourses can have
on social structures, in either maintaining or transforming them: " ... any discourse is
therefore shaped by institutional and societal relations, and contributes (if minutely) to
institutional and societal struggles" (Fairclough, 2001: 136). Changed discourse shows a
creative relation between the text producer and the text and unchanged discourse signals
a normative and unproblematic relationship. The critical discourse analyst has to
understand these stages in a dispassionate objective manner and apply them to the text to
unearth the nexus between ideology, power, context and society. The present study
attempts to examine the discursive nature of language, power and defense mechanisms,
the type of defense mechanisms used in situations, their discursive effects and creation of
identities, whether their is a relation between the exercise of power and defense
mechanisms and how does the positioning of individuals occur through the matrix of
discourse, ego defenses and power.

Vocabulary

Transitivity

Modality

Textual Features
(sentence type, mood,
cohesion, nominalization)

Turn-taking

Speech Acts

Presuppositions

Schemas

Intertexuality

(Fairclough 1992a, 2001)

 49

2.4. Turn-Taking

One o.f the to.o.ls in TODA is the turn-taking mechanism. The turn-taking mo.del
(Sacks, Scheglo.ff and Jefferso.n 1974) has its roo.ts in the ethno.metho.do.Io.gical appro.ach
o.f Haro.ld Garfinkel and Aaro.n Cico.urel. Influenced by Alfred Schutz' pheno.meno.Io.gy,
Garfinkel saw humans as active participants in the interactio.nal process and he So.ught
and described tho.se co.mmo.n everyday procedures thro.ugh which peo.ple created their
o.wn So.cial o.rder. Later, ethno.metho.do.Io.gy paved the way to. Membership Catego.rizatio.n
Device (MCD) analysis which further led to. CA. The develo.pment o.f Co.nversatio.n was
co.nco.mitant with the decline in Cho.mskyan Linguistics and the gro.wth o.f pragmatics and
disco.urse analysis. Titscher et al (2000) discuss the theo.retical assumptio.ns o.f
ethno.metho.do.Io.gy, shared by MCD and CA in the fo.llowing manner:
1) Perfo.rmative nature o.f So.cial reality - o.f ho.W an individual makes sense o.f reality
o.r his surro.undings. Garfinkel (1952, cited in Titscher et al 2000) was interested
in daily activity as a backdro.P and a basis fo.r interactio.n and nego.tiatio.n. So.cial
meaning is perfo.rmative as it is created and validated lo.cally by participants in
co.nversatio.n, language being a part o.f this structured pro.cess.
2) Indexicality - refers to. the fact that all so.cial pheno.mena are co.ntext-bo.und. The
use and meaning o.f language is determined by its co.ntext which in turn is part o.f
the process o.f interactio.n. Co.ntext is thus no.t iso.lated and o.bjective. It shapes
language and CA takes into. acco.unt the Io.cal, no.t the bro.ader, co.ntext since its
fo.CUS is micro.analysis o.f talk.
3) Reflexivity - means actio.ns and co.ntexts determine o.ne ano.ther and so. are
created recipro.cally. In CA the language which is meaningful in co.nversatio.n is
taken to. be a part o.f the co.ntext and in turn pro.vides the base fo.r the next
utterance.
4) Demo.nstrability - refers to. the rules and co.nventio.ns that interlo.cuto.rs use to.
make their actio.ns·clear and reco.gnizable, as elabo.rated by Schiffrin (1994).
CA develo.ped as an independent discipline in the 1970's thro.ugh the wo.rks o.fHarvey
Sacks (1972, 1985, 1999), Emanuel A. Scheglo.ff(1972, 1997, 1999) and Gail Jefferso.n
 50

(1988) and their combined writings (1974, 1977). Turnbull (2003) is of the view that in
CA talk is orderly:
The orderliness of talk arises from the orderly methods participants use together
to create talk. Whereas orderly methods are used to produce talk, participants also
use those methods as inferential mechanisms for drawing interpretations about
what is being done in talk. Further, the orderly methods for doing talk are (1)
social and (2) structural. The methods are social in the sense that they are tools or
resources provided by a culture. A child born into a culture gradually acquires
those orderly methods. Thus, even though individual persons use the methods in
talk, the methods are resources of the culture. The structural nature of the orderly
methods for doing talk derives from the adjacent positioning of utterances and of
turns (Turnbull, 2003: 141).
Conversation implies both spontaneous and formal talk in multitudinous settings.
Schegloff uses the term in a general manner, inclusive of "chats as well as service
contacts, therapy sessions as well as asking for and getting the time of day, press
conferences as well as exchanged whispers of 'sweet nothings'" (1972: 350). Stephen
Levinson modifies it to include social domains. For him conversation is "the familiar
predominant kind of talking which two or more kind of participants freely alternate in
speaking, which generally occurs outside specific institutional settings like religious
services, law courts, classrooms and the like" (1983: 284). CA has successfully increased
our understanding of talk in various settings: legal (Blimes 1992; Greatbatch and
Dingwall 1997; Church 2009), pedagogical (Heller and Barker 1988; McHoul 1978,
1990; Maynard 1988; Macbeth 2004), medical (Maynard 1991; PerakyHi et al 2008),
gender-related (Speer 2005) political (Molotch and Boden 1985, Hausendorf and Bora
2006) and literary discourse (Herman, 1995).
There are different modes of conversational analysis depending on their
methodology and object of inquiry. The data are naturally occurring conversations, and
not isolated texts, that are mostly audio-taped and transcribed without application of
statistical procedures. The objective is to discover sequential patterns of talk (turn-
taking), the emphasis being on what is 'there', and not on what can be 'there'. Analysis is
inductive with the investigator trying to study the structures in the data concerned and not
 51

on the basis of some a priori theory regarding what ought to be there. The participants'
immediate or manifest meanings are the focus though attention is also paid to other
meanings since they might contradict with the former in producing surprising results. The
local or endogenous context is taken into account and exogenous factors such as
interactant's gender, race, role, relationship, culture, history, linguistic competence,
personality, goals and intentions are discussed only if the interlocutors are oriented to
them
According to Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974), the turn-taking machinery is
integral to conversation and consists of a set of procedures for organizing the selection of
'next speakers' and for locating the transition to himlher. It functions in various settings-
meetings, debates, interviews, ceremonies, business interactions and law courts - and is
the focus of meticulous investigation. The reason for such a stance is, the preponderance
of turn-taking in everyday interaction which makes it 'context sensitive' to variation and
also 'context free' since the general rules are more or less same in all kinds of talk.
Commenting upon the structure of conversation, Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974)
observed it incorporates the following 'grossly apparent facts'-
1) Speaker-change recurs, or at least occurs
2) Overwhelmingly, one party talks at a time
3) Occurrences of more than one speaker at a time are common, but brief
4) Transitions (from one turn to next) with no gap and no overlap are common.
Together with transitions characterized by slight gap or slight overlap, they make
up the majority of transitions
5) Turn order is not fixed, but varies
6) Turn size is not fixed, but varies
7) Length of conversation is not specified in advance
8) What parties say is not specified in advance
9) Relative distribution of turns is not specified in advance
10) Number of parties can vary
11) Talk can be continuous or discontinuous
 52

12) Turn-allocation techniques are obviously used. A current speaker may select a
next speaker (as when he addresses a question to another party); or parties may
self-select in starting to talk
13) Various 'turn-constructional units' are employed; e.g. turns can be projectedly
'one word long' or they can be sentential in length
14) Repair mechanisms exist for dealing with turn-taking errors and violations; e.g. if
two parties find themselves talking at the same time, one of them will stop
prematurely, thus repairing the trouble
(1974: 700-01)
A turn-constructional component can be anything from a word, phrase, clause to a
sentence in a turn. The completion of such a unit, which signals another participant to
speak, constitutes an initial transition-relevance place (TRP). A turn is not always equal
to a sentence and both prosodic and pragmatic factors constitute a TRP. Thus, according
to Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974) there are rules for turn allocation signalling:
1) If the current speaker selects another then the latter is obliged to speak.
2) If the current speaker does not select then self-selection can happen. Whoever
starts first gets the floor.
3) If the speaker does not select another person, he or she can continue.
4) If the third rule occurs then the first three rules reapply at the next TRP.

2.4.1. Role of Silence: Gap, Overlap and Pause

Talk is structured so as to allow one speaker to speak at a time and avoid clashes.
"In the appropriate situation, 'you,' gaze, pointing or gesturing, intonation, and the topic
at issue can all be used to select the next speaker" (Turnbull, 2003: 145). Sometimes
more than one person can talk causing an overlap. This can be due to many people self-
selecting simultaneously or the apparent completion of a turn because of phonological
variation. In Death of a Salesman (1949) when Willy is narrating his life to his boss
Howard, Howard's son rattles off the nanles of the capitals of American states (playing
on a machine) and his speech overlaps with that of his father in one instance:
His Son. continuing. "The capital ... "
 53

Howard. Get that in alphabetical order! The machine breaks offsuddenly. Wait a
minute. The maid kicked the plug (CP, 1957: 178).
Before A completes his turn, B starts to speak, creating an overlap. Other kind of
overlaps can be in the form of backchannel support - 'yeah', 'hmm', 'uh huh' -
commonly seen in storytelling sequences as permission to let the speaker hold the floor
rights for sometime during his/ her narration. Interruptions, violations of turn-allocation,
can also occur, becoming inferentially significant.
Silence has a significant role in speech exchange. Sacks et al classify it into gaps,
pauses and lapses that are gauged according to their place in the interaction. Delayed
silence at the end of a turn is a gap, which can be reduced by the speech of another. When
a speaker stops and another does not begin then a lapse occurs. That is "a series of rounds
of possible self-selection by others and self-selection by current [speaker] to
continue ... may develop ... " (Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson, 1974: 715), but if neither the
current speaker nor the selected speaker talk, then a lapse in the conversation occurs.
Vimala Herman notes that the use of such a non-speech option makes a lapse into "an
attributable silence- attributable, that is, to the lapser as his or her silence" (1995: 83). In
comparison to a lapse, a pause occurs within a turn (intra-turn) and is not filled by
another. In Death of a Salesman (1949) a conversation between Willy and Bernard about
Biff, Bernard speaks and then is silent for sometime before he resumes. Willy does not
utter in the meanwhile, thus constituting a lapse:
Bernard.... And I got the idea that he'd gone up to New England to see you. Did
he have a talk with you then?
Willy stares in silence.
Bernard. Willy? (CP, 1957: 189).
Turn order and its relative distribution is not fixed because of the variety of options in
turn allocation. Turn size too differs, for the unit length and their linguistic complexity is
diverse. Thus speech structure can be A-B-A-B or it can be A-B-C-A-B. For instance at
the beginning of Act II in the same playas mentioned above, the dialogue is dyadic:
Willy. Wonderful Coffee. Meal in itself.
Linda. Can I make you some eggs?
Willy. No. Take a breath.
 54

Linda. You look so rested, dear (CP, 1957: 173).

2.4.2. Adjacency Pairs

The mechanics of turn taking does not determine what will be said or done in
advance; it functions independent of the content that can be regarded as its flexibility.
The turn-taking system favours a small number of co-speakers. Besides tum-taking and
allocation techniques the other tools of CA are adjacency pairs, preference organization
and repair mechanisms. There are turn sequencing patterns like adjacency pairs which
includes question-answer (Q A), greeting-greeting (G G), comment-comment (C C),
invitation-acceptance/decline (I AID), summons-answers (S A), intimacy and alternative
sequences. The first components in each are known as 'first pair-parts' (questions) that
set the constraints for what the second part (answers) should be, that is the second part of
the pair is conditionally relevant to the first. However the validity of concept has been
questioned by Amy B. Tsui (1989) suggesting that a three- part exchange is a more
plausible occurrence socially and structurally. The strict single pair adjacency pairs can
be expanded by embedding to include 'insertion sequences', pre- sequences, post-
sequences, intimacy and alternative sequences. An insertion sequence operates when the
hearer does not respond to the speaker in the expected manner (the second part of an
adjacency pair) but starts another sequence which is embedded and relevant for
completing the initial adjacency pair of the speaker. Pre-sequences are produced to check
whether there is sufficient uptake for the intended first-part of an adjacency pair. While
discussing their financial affairs, in Death of a Salesman (1949), Willy begins the topic
first and Linda's response with a 'well' can be considered a pre-start to the issue.
Willy. What do we owe?
Linda. Well, on the first there's sixteen dollars on the refrigerator-
(CP, 1957: 148).
Similarly post-sequences are follow-ups or ratifications of the second-part of an
adjacency pair. In All My Sons (1947) Joe Keller asks the neighbourhood boy Bert to
utter the abuses which he and his friends spoke in their games and when he refuses, Joe
ratifies his decision:
 55

Bert. I can't, Mr. Keller.

Chris, laughing. Don't make him do that.
Keller. Okay, Bert. I take your word. Now go out and keep both eyes peeled
(CP, 1957: 65).
Intimacy sequences are dialogues uttered to reveal feelings of mutual regard, reciprocity,
romance and intensity whereas alternative ones are those where phatic communication
(social exchange) becomes the focus of the talk without any personal involvement of the
participants as in greetings or farewells. An intimacy sequence between Willy and his
mistress in Death of a Salesman (1949) shows their longing for each other:
Willy. Oh, two weeks about. Will you come up again?
The Woman. Sure thing. You do make me laugh. It's good for me. She
squeezes his arm, kisses him. And I think you're a wonderful man
(CP, 1957: 150).
The orderliness of adjacency pairs is indicated by conditional relevance - the
second-part of a pair is expected after the first-part is produced to continue talk. In other
words, conditional relevance constitutes interaction. It aids in interpretation of talk and its
absence becomes noticeable precisely because it is expected. However some adjacency
pairs are non-terminal like Summons-Answer (S-A), obliging the summoner to speak
again after his summon has been answered, unlike a question where there is no obligation
on the questioner to talk again. Thus we can say that an answer is conditionally relevant
on a summon, that is, given a summon, an answer will be expected immediately. In a Q-
A sequence time can lapse before an answer is given. A summon is repeated only till an
answer is not given; an answer terminates a summon. Ann, the protagonist in All My Sons
(1947) confronts Chris' mother asking her to side with the son to expose the father's
misdeeds and when she refuses a S-A sequence follows in the end:
Ann, to Mother. You know what he's got to do! Tell him!
Mother. Let him go.
Ann. I won't let him go. You'll tell him what he's got to do ...
Mother. Annie!
Ann. Then I will! (CP, 1957: 124)
 56

Sequential distribution also includes conversational openings and closings.

The question-answer sequence is a very common initiating device and its various types
are a 'one-word question', for example 'what? or who?' where the first part is repeated
with a question intonation. Another is the use of tag-questions like 'you know?' or 'is
he?' which explicitly marks the end of a turn, selecting another person as the speaker,
putting it in the category of a 'recompleter' or 'post-completers' as in this conversation
about Bernard in Death of a Salesman (1949):
Willy. Bernard is not well-liked, is he?
Biff. He's liked, but he's not well-liked (CP, 1957: 146).
Yet another is the S-A sequence. Like the opening of a conversation, its closing is also a
part of the turn-taking process. The closing should be such that "one speaker's
completion will not occasion another speaker's talk, and that will not be heard as some
speaker's silence" (Sacks and Schegloff, 1999: 264). Pre-closings such as 'ok', 'so-oo',
'well' and proverbial sayings for instance, 'things always work out for the best' are
different ways to initiate the end of a dialogue. Routine questions like "well, I'll let you
get back to your books" and "why don't you lie down and take a nap?" (Sacks and
Schegloff, 1999: 269) are other possible manners of bringing talk to a closure. In the
same playas mentioned above Bernard initiates a pre-closing before bidding farewell to
Willy:
Bernard. But sometimes, Willy, it's better for a man just to walk away.
Willy. Walk away?
Bernard. That's right.
Willy. But if you can't walk away?
Bernard, after a slight pause. I guess that's when it's tough. Extending his
hand: Good-by, Willy.
Willy, shaking Bernard's hand. Good-by, boy (CP, 1957: 190).
In CA, there is a preference for certain kinds of responses in the form of second-
parts of adjacency pairs. For example the preferred response to a greeting would be a
greeting or it will tantamount to an insult. According to Jack Blimes (1988) preference is
not a single concept but a conglomeration of related concepts. For every tum there are
three options: a preferred answer (X), a dispreferred one (Y) or neither of the two (N)
 57

which is the equivalent of a dispreferred. The choice shows how meaning is created in
discourse. Blimes (1988) cites Anita Pomerantz (1975) in elaborating his argument. She
has built on the notion of dispreferreds by noting that they are of two types: accounts or
explanations and delays via pauses and vocal hesitations. Moreover, there is no
straightforward relation between preference and agreement since sometimes is can be in
the form of disagreement when speakers engage in self-denigration. Pre-sequences are
spoken to gauge whether a response would be preferred or dispreferred (discussed in
Blimes 1988).

2.4.3. Repair Mechanisms

Equilibrium and collaboration are the general objectives of a conversation which

can get marred by the errors and violations in turn-taking, reSUlting in misunderstandings.
However there are repair mechanisms to improve the situation.
Questions such as, 'who me?' and practices of etiquette concerning 'interruption'
and complaints about it, the use of interruption markers such as 'excuse me' and
others, false starts, repeats or recycles of parts of a tum overlapped by others- as
well as premature stopping (i.e. before possible completion) by parties to
simultaneous talk - are repair devices directed to troubles in the organization and
distribution of turns to talk (Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson, 1974: 724).
Repair usually takes place with a tum but they might extend across many
turns, depending upon the rules of turn allocation: whether a speaker selects another or
continues to speak or another person self-selects himselflherself. Repairs can be self-
produced or produced by others. In Death of a Salesman (1949) on being asked what Biff
did on meeting Oliver, he admits stealing his pen in a self-repair response: " .. .I can't
explain it. I -Hap, I took his fountain pen" (CP, 1957: 197). They can be classified
according to who performs the repair, who initiates and in what turn sequence: self-
repair/ self-:-initiation, self-repair/other-initiation, other-repair/ self-initiation, other-
repair/other-initiation. These can occur at four places: within the turn that contains the
repairable (error), after the first but before the second tum, at the transition point, in the
second turn and in the third turn (Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson 1977). Error correction
 58

also demonstrates how a speaker mediates his social and personal identity in interaction
(Jefferson 1974). Levinson (1983) states that when someone else repairs the speaker's
violation, it could be considered offensive or indicate power imbalance, thus for the
maintenance of harmony, self-repair is preferred. One kind of repair device is the
reproach-account-evaluation of account structure (Cody and McLaughlin 1985) where a
mistake is reproached, followed by an account or reason for its occurrence and then the
evaluation or assessment by the offended party. In the following repair sequence
belonging to the same playas stated above, Willy is reproached by his mistress for not
getting the stockings and he continues to give an account of it by denying the fact that he
had promised.
The woman. Where's my stockings? You promised me stockings, Willy.
Willy. I have no stockings here!
The Woman. You had two boxes of nine sheers for me, and I want them!
(CP, 1957: 207)
Backchannel support in the form of minimal responses 'uh, hmm', facial expressions,
gaze, selection of the interactant by name - all these aid the process of turn-taking
especially repair mechanisms. In addition participants must maintain intersubjectivity
(understanding of each other's utterances and their actions thereby) for the conversation
to proceed especially in case of repair mechanisms (Schegloff 1997).

2.4.4. Topic

A crucial aspect of conversation is the topic shared by the partners. Brown and
Yule are of the view that "the notion of topic is clearly an intuitively satisfactory way of
describing the unifying principle which makes one stretch of discourse 'about' something
and the next stretch 'about' something else" (1983: 70). Topics are a source of
conversation, indicating that a piece of information is 'tellable' and if this is not so then
talk can be nullified. Topics can be divided further into sub-topics, raised by various co-
conversationalists or different aspects of the same topic can be discussed. Topic
management is a significant clue to the relationship of the participants. Normally a topic
creates collaborative support amongst the speakers but sometimes it can cause clashes
 59

with each person continuing on his content, ignoring that of the other participant. Such
turn-skips are common in interaction.
Despite its wide applicability, CA had been criticized on several fronts by noted
linguists (cited in Titschner 2000). Teun van Dijk is of the view that the researcher's own
categories and perceptions are imposed on the texts for a more comprehensive
understanding. Kotthoff (1996) argues that the claim of conversational analysts of finding
social phenomena such as age, gender, race presupposes a knowledge of cultural and
power differences relevant to a conversation, where as the truth is that such know-how
can only come through systematic analysis of conversation. Hence the circularity defeats
the claim. Grubes (1996) and Cicourel (1992) pressed for a broader notion of context as
opposed to the study of local context which is rather restrictive. Also, the minimal role of
linguistic structures in CA has been derided (Kallmeyer 1988), hence a serious attempt
has been made (Gulich and Kotschi 1987) to change it. (All the references in this
paragraph are cited in Titscher et al 2000).
Thus CA alone is an insufficient approach or as Fairclough puts it a non-critical
one. It is ably complemented by the other tools of CDA to give a comprehensive
understanding of the text.

2.5. Defense Mechanisms: Meaning and Description

Defence mechanisms, a key concept in psychoanalytic theory, was the brainchild

of Sigmund Freud but was elucidated by his daughter Anna Freud in The Ego and the
Mechanisms of Defense (1946), a classic in ego psychology. Freud proposed the term
defense in the monograph The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence (1894) stating that it occurred
in his patients due to an incompatible idea or impulse in their mental life, which was so
overpowering for the ego that the individual decided to forget it.
For a long time defense was considered synonymous to another fundamental
psychoanalytic notion - repression - especially in the case histories on hysteria in
Studies on Hysteria (1893-95). While discussing the famous cases of Miss Lucy R. and
Elizabeth von R., Freud talked of defenses adopted by the ego when painful feelings or
thoughts were repressed from the conscious mind. Lucy R.' s determination to leave the
 60

house of her widower employer, her mother's insistence to call her back coupled with the
uncomfortable behaviour of the other servants at the employer's home revealed, after
much questioning, her repressed love towards her employer and her hopes of uniting with
him. The repression took a somatic form, the distaste of a particular smell in that house.
This repression, according to Freud, was the basis for hysteria and a defense adopted by
the ego against the overpowering feeling as he wrote:
the basis for repression itself can only be a feeling of unpleasure, the
incompatibility between the single idea that is to be repressed and the dominant
mass of ideas constituting the ego. The repressed idea takes its revenge however
by becoming pathogenic (Freud, 1974: 180-81).
He further elaborated that:
the hysterical method of defence ... lies in the conversion of the excitation into a
somatic innervation; and the advantage of this is that the incompatible idea is
repressed from the ego's consciousness ... when this process occurs for the first
time there comes into being a nucleus and center of crystallization for the
formation of a psychical group divorced from the ego - a group around which
everything which would imply an acceptance of the incompatible idea
subsequently collects (Freud, 1974: 187-88).
The formation of this psychical group gave birth to the idea of defense. Towards the end
of his academic career, in the appendix to Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926)
Freud recognized defense as an all-encompassing term containing several mechanisms of
which repression was one such type.
In the psychoanalytic tradition, the occurrence of defenses can be understood with
regard to the tripartite structure of the human personality given by Freud namely the id,
ego and superego. The id, a reservoir of aggressive and sexual instincts, sought only
instant gratification and was based on the pleasure principle. The superego embodied the
moral conscience and was a constant check on the ethical and non-ethical actions of
people. The ego functioned between these two extreme dimensions, mediating and
controlling the uncontrollable instinctual id and moral superego. The ego was the
executive dimension of the psyche, based on the reality principle, tempering the instincts
and allowing a safe outlet for them in accordance to the external circumstances and
 61

simultaneously subduing the excessive guilt springing from unethical actions. According
to Anna Freud (1946), defenses were measures adopted by the ego against the superego
and id, primarily the latter.
Different instinctual impulses are perpetually forcing their way from the id into
the superego, where they gain access to the motor apparatus, by means of which
they obtain gratification. In favourable cases the ego does not object to the
intruder but puts its own energies at the other's disposal and confines itself to
perceiving (1946:6).
However, most of the times the impulses can be the source of conflict between the three
psychical dimensions. The hedonic id where "there is no synthesis of ideas, affects are
liable to displacement" (Anna Freud, 1946: 7) is in complete contrast to the ego where
the:
association of ideas is subject to strict conditions" and "the instinctual demands
can no longer seek gratification without much ado - they are required to respect
the demands of reality, and, more than that, to conform to ethical and moral laws
by which the super-ego seeks to control the behaviour of the ego (ibid.).
Such instinctual inroads are not tolerated by the ego which adopts measures to protect
itself from the sovereignty of the impulses, thus giving rise to defense mechanisms.
The impulses continue to pursue their aims with their own peculiar tenacity and
energy, and they make hostile incursions into the ego, in the hope of overthrowing
it ... The ego on its side becomes suspicious; it proceeds to counter-attack and to
invade the territory of the id. Its purpose is to put the instincts permanently out of
action by means of appropriate defensive measures, designed to secure its own
boundaries (Anna Freud, 1946: 7-8).
Apart from explaining the origin and types of mechanisms, Anna Freud (1946) discusses
the situations under which defenses are employed namely super-ego anxiety (anxiety due
to fear of the superego and its restrictions), objective anxiety (anxiety due to fear of the
external world), instinctual anxiety (anxiety due to the fear of the overpowering instincts)
and the conflict of impulses themselves. To avoid pain from ego-dystonic impulses or
affects, defenses are adopted. Anna Freud's construction of defenses was an
advancement of her father's work since it described defenses in action but still they were
 62

rooted in the classical psychoanalytic tradition wherein "defenses are directed against
internal danger. Such a danger leads to the experience of intrapsychic conflict, usually
between the superego and the id or between the ego and the id" (Hentschel, 2004: 6). The
terms 'ego defenses' and 'defensive action' were employed by Anna Freud (1946)
because the ego was considered the site of their emergence and clash. Defensive action
refers to the defense mechanism in action, in speech or behaviour of the speaker.
Hentschel (2004) states that the modem conception of defenses as modes of
adaptation and maturity is quite different from the psychoanalytical perspective (Vaillant
1977, 1992; Cramer 2006). Vaillant (1992) spelt out the major features of classical
psychoanalytic defenses as follows:
1. Defenses are a major means of managing instinct and affect
2. They are unconscious.
3. They are discrete (from one another).
4. Although often the hallmarks of major psychiatric syndromes, defenses are dynamic
and reversible.
5. They can be adaptive as well as pathological (1992: 4).
According to him defenses are mental responses to everyday situations, events and
people, a means of dealing with problems. Like Freudian mechanisms, they are
unconscious, dynamic, pathological but are also normal modes of adapting to the
surroundings, practised by normal people. Vaillant (1977) defines them as:
unconscious, and sometimes pathological, mental processes that the ego uses to
resolve conflict among the four lodestars of our inner life: instincts, the real
world, important people, and the internalized prohibitions provided by our
conscience and our culture, elaborating their uses:
to keep affects within bearable limits during sudden life crisis (e.g., following a
death);
to restore emotional balance by postponing or chanelling sudden increases in
biological drives (e.g., at puberty);
to obtain a time-out to master changes In self-image (e.g., following major
surgery or unexpected promotion);
 63

to handle unresolvable conflicts with people, living or dead, whom one cannot
bear to leave (e.g., the lawyer's wife, the hematologist's mother);
to survive major conflicts with conscience (e.g., killing in wartime, putting a
parent in a nursing home) (1977: 10).
Vaillant's classification of defenses (1977) based on the longitudinal study of
healthy men (The Grant Study Men) demonstrates a cline of defenses ranging from the
psychotic, immature, neurotic to the mature ones. It is thus developmental in nature
indicating a healthy adaptation if mature mechanisms are employed and unhealthy if
those from the other end of the cline are used. Thus defenses show a human's behavioural
and mental 'adaptation to life.' In addition, Vaillant's classification forms the basis of the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), the Bible of psychiatry, unlike the other
classification of Horowitz (1989) which includes mechanisms of Freud, Vaillant and
some of Horowitz's own coinages. DSM is the standard criteria for evaluating mental
disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association. The aforesaid were some
reasons for choosing Vaillant's taxonomy as one of the guidelines for the present study.
Anna Freud's work also forms the theoretical basis for the present thesis because she was
the first to explain and expand the defenses and the situations for their adoption, after her
father Freud's introduction of the concept.
Other researchers such as Lazarus and Folkman (1984) have attempted to
reconceptualize defenses as conscious, coping mechanisms and to some extent it holds
true since defenses are essentially a human being's manner of surviving through
difficulties but the issue is debatable with most researchers preferring the older
conceptualizations by Anna Freud, VaiIlant and Horowitz (1946, 1977, 1989) as
unconscious measures of the ego. Several researchers have provided taxonomies,
questionnaires and rating scales to measure defenses (Meissner 1981; Perry 1990; Bond
1984; Vaillant 1977, all these are cited in Vaillant 1992) which demonstrates that
defenses are primarily known through speech and behaviour. In fact Walter Weintraub
(1981) has even studied the linguistic correlates of defense mechanisms. Thus the present
dissertation aims to investigate defenses in action, that is "to study in detail the situations
which call forth the defensive reactions" (Anna Freud, 1946: 57) along with a critical
discourse analysis in select plays of Arthur Miller to see the relations between ego
 64

defenses, power play and language. This research aims to examine through the study of
language, the types of defense mechanisms used by participants, their verbal and
nonverbal aspects, the relations between domination and defense mechanisms and the
positioning of individuals through such an interplay to provide a more comprehensive
understanding of the text.
A detailed description of the defenses follows subsequently after their schematic
representation. The term defense mechanisms and ego defenses will be used
interchangeably in this study to refer to the same phenomenon.
The mechanisms discussed by Anna Freud (1946) are: regression, repression,
projection, denial, introjection, isolation, undoing, reaction-formation, turning against the
self, phantasy, displacement, altruism, sublimation. Vaillant's classification mainly
includes these but he also adds some of his own. Furthermore, he categorizes some of the
ego defenses such as isolation, undoing and rationalization under one heading termed
intellectualization.

Levell Psychotic Psychotic Projection

Psychotic Denial
Distortion

Level II Immature Projection

Fantasy
Hypochondriasis
Passive-Aggressive
Behaviour
Acting Out

Level III Neurotic Intellectualization (includes

rationalization, undoing,
isolation)
Repression
Displacement
Reaction Formation
Dissociation (Neurotic
Denial)
 65

Level IV Mature Sublimation

Altruism
Suppression
Anticipation
Humour

(Adapted from Vaillant, 1977: 80)

2.5.1. Level I: Psychotic Mechanisms

At the lowest end of the scale, these mechanisms "rearrange reality" for the user
"but to the beholder the user of such mechanisms appear crazy" (Vaillant, 1977:81).
There is a break: in reality due to overwhelming· conflict between the psychical
institutions and/or the impulses for the user of psychotic defenses and the users usually
do not know that they need medical intervention in the form of therapy, counselling and
drugs. They can be found in dreams and in young children below five (Vaillant 1977).
1) Delusional Projection - It consists of "frank delusions about external reality, usually
of a persecutory kind" (Vaillant 1977: 81) found in paranoid schizophrenia, delirium and
organic brain diseases. Either the patient perceives another person's feelings in oneself or
vice versa, for example, the sufferer might say that he is possessed by the devil. It is
different from the immature defense of projection where blame is put on others to relieve
tension.
2) Psychotic Denial - Freud considered psychotic denial as synonymous to
hallucinatory confusion, a condition in psychosis, and in The Neuro-Psychoses of
Defense (1894) he cited the case of a girl who refused to believe that her love for a
particular person was not reciprocated. She waited for this man on a day of family
celebration and when he did not arrive she went into denial, overcoming her hysteria.
When all the trains by which he could arrive had come and gone, she passed into
a state of hallucinatory confusion: he had arrived, she heard his voice in the
garden, she hurried down in her nightdress to receive him. From that time on she
lived for two months in a happy dream, whose content was that he was there,
 66

always at her side, and that everything was as it had been before (before the time
of the disappointments which she had so laboriously fended off) (Freud, 2010:
313).
Later he coined the term verleugnung to refer to such a 'denial of external reality',
translated by James Strachey as disavowal. In The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and
Psychosis (1924), Freud clarified the difference between the two and thereby the form of
denial: unlike neurotic denial which takes cognizance of reality, psychotic denial literally
negates reality, that is, the person refuses to acknowledge reality. A woman in love with
her dead sister's husband could deal with the conflict in the above two ways: by denying
her impulse, that is, her love for her brother-in-law (neurotic denial) or by denying the
death of her sister (psychotic denial). A distinguishing feature is the "use of fantasy as a
major substitute for other people - especially absent other people (e.g., "I will make a
new him in my own mind")" (Vaillant, 1977: 383). An example from Miller can be seen
in All My Sons (1947) where the protagonist's mother Ma Keller does not accept the
death of Larry, her elder son. Anna Freud clarified that denial as a specific defense is
different from other defenses of repression, projection, reaction formation, undoing etc all
of which include denial in the general sense, "repression gets rid of instinctual
derivatives, just as external stimuli are abolished by denial" (1946: 190). Further, denial
of external reality could be in the form of building phantasies, in language or in
behaviour (Anna Freud 1946).
3) Distortion - Distortion, as a process, featured predominantly in Freud's writings on
dream analysis revealing the unconscious. In Notes Upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis
(1909c), Freud noted how obsessional ideas where distorted like dreams, hinting at the
defensive process of distortion: "its distortion enables it to persist, since conscious
thought is thus compelled to misapprehend it, just as though it were a dream; for dreams
also are a product of compromise and distortion, and are also misapprehended by waking
thought" (Freud, 2010: 2175). Here, the user grossly reshapes external reality to suit inner
needs. It includes unrealistic megalomaniacal beliefs, hallucinations, wish-fulfilling
delusions and employment of sustained feelings of delusional superiority... It can
encompass persistent denial of personal responsibility for one's own behaviour" (ibid.).
In distorting reality a person can think and engage in obsessive or compulsive behaviour
 67

as Vaillant states the instance of a man who believed that if he did not clean his alcohol-
glass he would be guilty of committing suicide. The difference between projection and
distortion is that in the former disagreeable affect is attributed to another person but in the
latter it is changed to pleasant feelings and merged with one's personality. A typical case
is of a religious convert who sincerely believes that God lives inside him.

2.5.2. Level II: Immature Mechanisms

Common in healthy persons, these mechanisms are often termed as character

disorders in modem day psychiatry because users of these mechanisms persist in their
behaviour despite help from others such as alcoholics, hypochondriacs, con-men,
demagogues. Vaillant prefers the term immature defenses elaborating that they are:
ways we cope with unbearable people '" they effect a merging of personal
boundaries. They induce a breakdown of clear knowledge of what is mine and
what is thine ... in an unconscious effort to preserve the illusion of interpersonal
constancy, immature defenses can permit unsatisfactory mental representations of
other people to be altered. Such internalized people can be conveniently divided
into good and bad parts; they can be projected or combined with other
representations" (1977: 160-161).
Immature mechanisms can change into higher-order defenses either through interpersonal
support, confrontation by family and peers or potent psychotherapy.
1) Projection - In Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defense (1896) Freud
discussed the role of projection in paranoia as:
In paranoia, the self-reproach is repressed in a manner which may be described as
projection. It is repressed by erecting the defensive symptom of distrust of other
people. In this way the subject withdraws his acknowledgement of the self-
reproach .... (Freud, 2010: 403)
Also, in A Metapsychological Supplement to the Theory of Dreams (1917) Freud
considered dreams to be a kind of projection "an externalization of the internal process"
(1984: 231). Anna Freud (1946) was of the view that projection of guilt was used, as a
survival strategy, in identification with the aggressor in the external world, when the user
 68

could not control and overpower the circumstances. An individual's guilt for certain
actions was projected on another, making the other feel guilty. Stating that repression and
projection were similar in that they "break the connection between the ideational
impulses and the ego" she differentiated between the two, " in repression the
objectionable idea is thrust back into the id, while in projection it is displaced into the
outside world" (1946: 132). Vaillant specifies the types of people who use projection as,
"the prejudiced, the injustice collector, the pathologically jealous spouse, and the
professional rebel. No one is harder to reason with than the person who projects blame ... "
(1977: 162).
2) Fantasy - Freud explained the role of fantasy in several of his writings on children,
sexuality, neurosis and psychosis. Fantasy mainly provides a legitimate outlet, for one's
thoughts and affect which could not be expressed otherwise in society, especially so in
the autistic play of children. As Freud put it in Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
(1916-17) "in the activity of phantasy human beings continue to enjoy the freedom from
external compulsion which they have long since renounced in reality" (1973: 419). In
Family Romances (1909a) Freud proposed how fantasy could prevent incest: " ... the
young phantasy-builder can get rid of his forbidden degree of kinship with one of his
sisters if he finds himself sexually attracted by her" (1977: 224). In The Analysis of a
Phobia in a Five-Year Old Boy (1909b), the elucidation of the now famous case of Little
Hans, Freud once again showed how the phantasy of two giraffes, representing his
parents, was employed to dissolve conflict towards the parents and that of having a
number of children revealed his desire for a virility and a genital organ like his father.
Anna Freud (1946) further explained the mechanisms through which fantasy could be
enacted namely by denying reality, in language or in behaviour and this mode of action is
adopted in symbolic play by children
. .. the infantile ego is free to rid of unwelcome facts by denying them, while
retaining its faculty of reality testing unimpaired ... it utilizes all manner of
external objects in dramatizing its reversal of real situations. The denial of reality
is also, of course, one of the many motives underlying children's play in general
and games of impersonation in particular (1946: 89).
 69

Thus in the child's fantasy-world, dolls become mothers and wood pieces become cars or
trains. Vaillant prefers the term schizoid fantasy because the users are mostly lonely
persons who engage in autistic play to resolve conflict for instance the recluse creates a
group of imaginary friends. He says that unlike psychotic denial, fantasy users do not
"fully believe in or insist upon acting out his fantasies" but "to gratify unmet needs for
personal relationships and to obliterate the overt expression of aggressive or sexual
impulses towards others" (1977: 384).
3) Hypochondriasis - Hypochondria was described by Sigmund Freud in relation to
organic diseases since one of the surface similarities between the two is that the patient
complains of pain in one of the bodily areas. In On Narcissism: An Introduction (1914),
Freud wrote,
Hypochondria, like organic disease, manifests itself in distressing and painful
bodily sensations, and it has the same effect as organic disease on the distribution
of libido. The hypochondriac withdraws both interest and libido - the latter
specially markedly - from the objects of the external world and concentrates both
of them upon the organ that is engaging his attention. A difference between
hypochondria and organic disease now becomes evident: in the latter the
distressing sensations are based upon demonstrable changes; in the former this is
not so (1984: 76).
In hypochondria the reason for the pain is the affect or feelings of unpleasure whereas in
organic disease it is bodily. The psychological becomes somatic. Vaillant (1977) explains
the features of hypochondriasis as:
1. interpersonal conflict, arising out of bereavement, loneliness, aggressive impulses, is
displaced onto some body part.
2. hypochondriacs covertly accuse and punish others for the conflict.
3. containing a reproach towards others within one's own body satisfies the
hypochondriac's conscience.
4. thus affect is exaggerated through the body.
4) Passive-Aggressive Behaviour - In Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (1915) Freud
postulated that instinctual impulses can undergo the following defensive measures:
 70

reversal into its opposite (reaction formation), turning round upon the self, repression and
sublimation. He explained passive aggressive as:
the turning round of an instinct upon the subject's own self is made plausible by
the reflection that masochism is actually sadism turned round upon the subject's
own ego ... the turning round upon the subject's self and the transformation from
activity to passivity converge or coincide (1984: 124).
The modem day term passive-aggressive was anticipated by Freud when he stated these
two dimensions in the same paper: "the earlier active direction of the instincts persists to
some degree side by side with its later passive direction, even when the process of its
transformation has been extensive (1984: 128). In other words, it is aggression towards
others in the form of passivity or aggression towards self. Vaillant (1977) notes that such
behaviour includes procrastinating work and attention-seeking silly or provocative
behaviour that might affect others, to mention a few forms of reacting. He is of the view
that this defense can be related to Anna Freud's notion of identification with the
aggressor wherein identification allows the victim to become the victimizer. Some well
known examples of the users of this defense are the:
martyrdom of the inwardly enraged housewife who makes her family miserable",
"the rejected lover" who "cuts her wrist because her boyfriend cannot stand the
sight of blood" and ''the men confined in high security prisons for violent crimes
... engage in a wide variety of self-destructive behaviour .... " (Vaillant, 1977:
185-86)
5) Acting Out - Not included in traditional psychoanalysis, this defense is part of
Vaillant's terminology who defines it as "direct expression of an unconscious wish or
impulse in order to avoid being conscious of the affect that accompanies it" (1977: 284).
He (1977) further states that two distinguishing features of the defense are the rapidity
with which the impulse is changed into action preventing the user from feeling or
thinking about it and the expression of the impulse allows the user to transgress societal
norms, that is, while acting out the individual can ignore socially forbidden rules and
behaviours. Common examples are drug addiction, substance abuse, criminal behaviour
and perversions.
 71

2.5.3. Level III: Neurotic Mechanisms

These mechanisms, common in healthy people, neurotics, and adults facing

severe stress, were detailed by Freud in his discussions on neuro-psychoses and deal with
how "feelings could be ingeniously separated from their ideas, their owners and their
objects" (Vaillant, 1977: 125). For the same reason, Vaillant has grouped the mechanisms
of intellectualization, repression, displacement and reaction formation under this heading.
The pathological users of these defenses can be significantly cured by psychotherapy.
1) Intellectualization - In Vaillant's taxonomy, intellectualization is an umbrella term
subsuming the psychoanalytic defenses of isolation, undoing and rationalization and is
linked to the obsessive-compulsive personality type. The key characteristic of this
defense is the presence of the idea in consciousness but absence of affect. In other words,
people who isolate, rationalize and undo impulses, intellectualize it in such a manner that
the idea is present but the emotion is missing. It refers to a cold, emotionless and logical
manner of dealing with situations. Thus Vaillant states that they can think and talk about
"instinctual wishes in formal, affectively bland terms" and not act on those wishes (1977:
385). According to Anna Freud, intellectualization was extensively used by adolescents
not to solve problems but to daydream. This habit of abstract thinking was suggestive of
"a tense alertness for the instinctual processes and the translation into abstract thought of
that which they perceive ... the perception of the new instinctual demands of their own
id, which threaten to revolutionize their whole lives" (1946: 177).
2) Isolation - In Notes Upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis (1909c), Freud used the
term 'isolation' for the first time in relation to the activity of obsessional persons
referring to a patient's act of reading the prayers quickly or shortening the prayers, to
prevent his feelings of love for a particular girl from interjecting in between. The activity
however failed in the case of the obsessive but the defense of isolation was formally
conceptualized. It was elaborated in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926) as "the
experience is not forgotten but instead it is deprived of its affect and its associative
connections are suppressed or interrupted so that it remains as though isolated ... " (1979:
 72

276). In The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence (1984) Freud hinted at the same process while
discussing hysterical conversion: "If someone with the disposition lacks the aptitude for
conversion, but if, nevertheless, in order to fend off an incompatible idea, he sets about
separating it from its affect, then that affect is obliged to remain in the psychical sphere"
(Freud's italics, 2010: 307). He pointed towards the interrelationship between repression
and isolation, stating that repression of traumatic events isolated the affect, leaving
behind only the ideational content which was viewed as insignificant.
3) Undoing - In Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926) Freud discussed the defense
of undoing as " endeavours, by means of motor symbolism, to 'blow away' not merely
the consequences of some event (or experience or impression) but the event itself' (1979:
274). He further explained that undoing was common in neurotics and normal people
where both try to negate the event but a normal person "will simply pay no further
attention to it or its consequences" but "the neurotic person will try to make the past itself
non-existent" (ibid.). Freud (1909c) also discussed the mechanism of undoing in one of
his famous case study of the Rat Man whose obsessional fears about events in another
world were nothing but an attempt to undo his father's death.
4) Rationalization - In the same paper on obsessional neurosis (1909c) Freud
propounded another related mechanism of rationalization citing the example of a lover
who was tom between love and hate for his beloved and in this interpersonal conflict he
performed obsessional acts such as putting a stone on the road on which the girl travelled
in order to hurt her and then being remorse stricken and removing the stone. Such
ambivalent acts or compulsive acts "in successive stages of which the second neutralizes
the first, are a typical occurrence in obsessional neurosis. The patient's consciousness
naturally misunderstands them and puts forward a set of secondary motives to account for
them - rationalizes them, in short" (Freud, 2010: 2152). In other words, the individual
provides justifications for his or her behaviour. Thus in all the three defenses of isolation,
undoing and rationalization, the user intellectualizes or abstractly thinks of the actions
and events, reducing the emotion related to it, to deal with the stress of the situation.
5) Repression - Known as verdriigung in German, the concept of repressing ideas was
worked upon by Freud's predecessors J.F. Herbert, Theodor Meynert and Schopenhauer;
however it was Freud who brought the role of affect into play. In discussing the cases of
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Lucy R. in Studies in Hysteria (1893-95) Freud thought repression to be the defense

adopted in hysteria when an impulse or idea was incompatible with the ego leading to the
absence of the idea from consciousness. In The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence (1984)
Freud explained the aftermath of repression:
by this mean the ego succeeds in freeing itself from the contradiction [of the
incompatible idea or feeling]; but instead it has burdened itself with a mnemic
symbol which finds a lodgement in consciousness ... either in the form of an
unresolvable motor innervation or as a constantly recurring hallucinatory
sensation ... consequently the memory-trace of the repressed idea has, after all,
not been dissolved; and from now on, it forms the nucleus of a second psychical
group (2010: 306).
The repressed ideas were available with or without hypnotic treatment, sometimes
through careful questioning by the psychoanalyst. In addition, "there is always a
connection between the repression of an instinct and the nature and quality of the instinct
repressed" (Anna Freud, 1946: 167) as seen in hysterics who represses sexual instinct
related to object-wishes but are lax on aggressive instincts. A "curious forgetfulness"
characterizes repression such as memory lapse or loss of sensation from an organ of the
body "because the affect surrounding the idea remains in consciousness and because the
repressed idea has an uncanny way of returning - albeit in disguised form" (Vaillant,
1977: 128). Repression includes denial but differs from the latter in that it blocks
conscious acknowledgement of inner feelings whereas in denial external situations are
not acknowledged. For example, if a man bereaves for a kin but forgets who he is
bereaving for, then it is repression but if he denies the death of the person or his own
tears, it is denial (Vaillant 1977).
6) Displacement - Freud hinted at the defense of displacement (verschiebung) in The
Neuro-Psychoses of Defence (1984) when he discussed how feelings could be transferred
from one object/person to another: "the affect of the obsession appears to him, in other
words, as being dislodged or transposed ... " (2010: 309). In the same paper he used the
word displacement in association with the neuroses of defence, asserting that it was the
basis of phobias:
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in mental functions something is to be distinguished - a quota of affect or sum of

excitation - which possesses all the characteristics of a quantity (though we have
no means of measuring it), which is capable of increase, diminution, displacement
and discharge and which is spread over the memory-traces of ideas .... (Freud,
2010: 314-15)
In Obsessive Acts and Religious Practices (1907) he saw the link between displacement
and obsessional neurosis: "the mechanism of psychical displacement, which was first
discovered by me [Freud] in the construction of dreams, dominates the mental processes
of obsessional neurosis" (2010: 1909). Anna Freud, like her father, was of the view that
process of displacement and condensation predominantly featured in dream-distortion but
she believed that defense mechanisms were not just the result of the ego's battle against
the id and superego but sometimes they were instinct-based and helped in the creation of
other mechanisms. She elaborated that, "the readiness with which such processes
[instincts] can be displaced assists the mechanism of sublimation, by which the ego
achieves its purpose of diverting the instinctual impulses from their purely sexual
goals ... " (1946: 192). Practical jokes, wit consisting of malicious intent, social or
political caricature, phobias, prejudice and racist feelings involve displacement (Vaillant
1977).
7) Reaction Formation - It refers to the complete reversal of behaviour or action from
what it was originally described proverbially by Freud in his Three Essays on the Theory
of Sexuality (1905a) as "a young whore makes an old nun" (1977: 163). In the same
paper he linked sublimation and reaction-formation, considering the latter to originate in
childhood and to be the cause of many perversions in adult life:
a sub-species of sublimation is to be found in suppression by reaction-formation,
which as we have seen, begins during a child's period of latency and continues in
favourable cases throughout his whole life ... the multifariously perverse sexual
disposition of childhood can accordingly be regarded as the source of a number
of our virtues, in so far as through reaction-formation it stimulates their
development (1977: 163-64).
However, later in his career Freud distinguished between the processes of reaction-
formation and sublimation. His daughter Anna Freud (1946) found reaction-formation to
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be an important tool for repressing feelings and thoughts by reversing them and thereby
behaviour. Extreme penance or religious activity after a life of debauchery, or disgust
towards alcohol or cigarettes after excessive consumption earlier on, are examples of
reaction formation. In the Grant Study Men, Vaillant (1977) found that of all the neurotic
mechanisms, reaction-formation was inversely proportionate to maturity levels.
8) Dissociation - In Studies in Hysteria (1983-95) Freud saw the role of dissociation in
hysterical conversion:
.. , in every case of hysterical paralysis, we find that the paralyzed organ [arm] or
the lost function is involved in a subconscious association which is provided with
a large quota of affect and it can be shown that the arm is liberated as soon as this
quota is wiped out (cited in Vaillant 1992: 14).
Freud gave the salient feature of dissociation as splitting in The Neuro-Psychoses of
Defence (1984): "the splitting in the content of consciousness is the result of an act of
will on the part of the patient..." (2010: 303). For Vaillant dissociation was the same as
neurotic denial and he defines it as "temporary but drastic modification of one's character
or of one's sense of personal identity to avoid emotional distress" (1977: 385), that is,
there is such an alteration in the person's affect that tension or pain arising from it
becomes insignificant. For instance, the pain of meeting an old flame becomes irrelevant
when the user gets drunk and laughs over the past. It is the only mechanism that is
voluntary and the difference between dissociation and suppression is that the former
abolishes or removes anxiety but the latter reduces it (Vaillant 1977).
9) Splitting - This mechanism is not a part of Vaillant's taxonomy but very much a part
of traditional psychoanalytic thought. In Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence
(1940) Freud explained the role of this mechanism in children in deciding whether to give
in to instinctual demands or consider reality which teaches contrariwise:
there is a conflict between the demand by the instinct and the prohibition by
reality. But in fact the child takes neither course, or rather he takes both
simultaneously, which comes to the same thing. He replies to the conflict with
two contrary reactions, both of which are valid and effective. On the one hand,
with the help of certain mechanisms he rejects reality and refuses to accept any
prohibition; on the other hand, in the same breath he recognizes the danger of
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reality, takes over the fear of that danger as a pathological symptom and tries
subsequently to divest himself of the fear ... the instinct is allowed to retain its
satisfaction and proper respect is shown to reality (1984: 461-62).
In An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1938) Freud discussed the role of a split in neurotic
jealousy where two different attitudes were formed and the relative strength of either
determines whether the user would suffer from psychosis or delusions: "two psychical
attitudes have been formed instead of a single one ... one, the normal one, which takes
account of reality, and another which under the influence of the instincts detaches the ego
from reality" (2010: 5008). Thus the Freudian sense of splitting (between instinct and
reality) is different from the object-relations perspective where there is a split between
the object and self-representation.

2.5.4. Level IV: Mature Mechanisms

These mechanisms integrate one self to society in terms of their interpersonal

relationships, affect and behaviour. In other words people function as assimilated
members of society having holistic personalities. Others perceive the users of these
mechanisms as virtuous but Vaillant (1977) cautions that sometimes under extreme
duress people can regress to lower-level mechanisms.
1) Sublimation - In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905a) Freud explained
sublimation as the process which converts the instinctual impulse into something socially
acceptable:
historians of civilizations appear to be at one in assuming that powerful
components are acquired for every kind of cultural achievement by this diversion
of sexual instinctual forces from sexual aims and their direction to new ones - a
process which deserves the name of sublimation (1977: 94).
Freud elaborated the role of this defense in artistic creativity later in the same paper: "this
enables excessively strong excitations arising from particular sources of sexuality to find
an outlet and use in other fields so that a not inconsiderable increase in psychical
efficiency results from a disposition which itself is perilous" (1977: 163). Vaillant is of
the view that in stressful situations successful adaptation is possible through "creative and
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successful transmutation" (1977: 91) for unlike displacement which segregates feeling
from object and intellectualization which segregates feeling from idea, sublimation
"permits idea, object, and attenuated emotion to remain together in overt behaviour"
(Vaillant, 1977: 97).
2) Altruism - Freud discussed the role of altruism in love in the Introductory Lectures
on Psychoanalysis (1916-17) but Anna Freud (1946) described it as a positive form of
projection:
the mechanism of projection disturbs our human relations when we project our
own jealousy and attribute to other people our own aggressive acts. But it may
work in another way as well, enabling us to form valuable positive attachments
and so to consolidate our relations with one another. This normal and less
conspicuous form of projection might be described as 'altruistic surrender' of our
own instinctual impulses in favour of other people (1946: 133)
She reported the case of a woman who though unmarried and childless lived happily
because of her altruistic tendency of finding her own happiness in those of others. This
woman "had projected her own desire for love and her cravings for admiration on to her
rival and, having identified herself with the object of her envy, she enjoyed the
fulfillment of her desire" (1946: 137). Thus welfare of others, vicarious living and
selflessness are major features of altruism. Vaillant calls it "constructive and instinctually
gratifying service to others" (1977: 386). The concept of altruism has been revised by
Beth J. Seelig and Lisa S. Rosof (2001) wherein they discuss five types of altruism
ranging from normal to pathological: proto altruism and generative altruism being normal
and mature behaviours, not defense mechanisms while pseudo-altruism and psychotic
altruism border on the pathological. Conflicted altruism falls between the normal and
abnormal. Unlike Vaillant and Anna Freud's discussion on altruism, Seelig and Rosors
view is much wider to include altruism as an adaptive normal behaviour and also as a
defense mechanism.
3) Humour - Humour as a defense, as a mirror of the unconscious and in relation to wit
was extensively discussed by Freud in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious
(1905b). He regarded humour as "the highest" defense mechanism that curtails tension or
pain and releases pleasure even when the pain interferes with it:
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it scorns to withdraw the ideational content bearing the distressing affect from
conscious attention ... and thus surmounts the automatism of defence. It brings
this about by finding a means of withdrawing the energy from the release of
unpleasure that is already in preparation and of transforming it, by discharge,
into pleasure (Freud, 2010: 1807)
Also, the emotions which are replaced by humour can be varied ranging from pity,
sorrow, anger, jealousy, pain, sensitivity etc making the mechanism of humour very
general. Vaillant builds ·upon Freud's ideas, pointing out the sites of humour as "wit,
clowning, and caricature" where "emotional affect [was] displaced or concealed" (1977:
117).
4) Suppression - Freud hinted at the defense of suppression (unterdruckung) in The
Neuro-Psychoses of Defence (1894) while discussing hysteria and the patient's mental
life:
an occurrence of incompatibility that took place in their ideational life - that is to
say, until their ego was faced with an experience, an idea or a feeling which
aroused such a distressing affect that the subject decided to forget about it because
he had no confidence in his power to resolve the contradiction between that
incompatible idea and his ego by means of thought-activity (Freud, 2010: 303).
Though Freud did not explicitly differentiate between repression and its close cousin
suppression yet he did state in the Interpretation of Dreams (1900) that repression was
more closely associated to the unconscious. Vaillant (1977) clears the confusion by
clarifying that, "suppression implies an element of choice and a conscious awareness of
the affective significance of the idea, and repression does not" (1977: 131). He elaborates
its characteristic features as "looking for silver linings, minimized acknowledged
discomfort, employing a stiff upper lip and deliberately postponing and not avoiding"
(1977: 386).
5) Anticipation - This mechanism, a part of Vaillant's classification, refers to
"premature but mitigating emotional awareness of future inner discomfort" (1977: 114),
that is, planned awareness of future events which might be distressing such as death,
surgery, separation and so on. This mechanism works on the principle that by anticipating
tension one can reduce it.