Bilgewater: Context and Cohesion
Task B - Our answers
(13) This was the third interview of the day. (14) The
first had been as she had expected - carping, snappish, harsh, watchful
- unfriendly even before you had your hand off the door handle.
The viewpoint is that of the candidate. The proximal deictic demonstrative
pronoun 'this' in S 13 suggests that the third interview is in the present-time
experience of the candidate (note that the tense is past, however, the
default tense for novelistic narration, so we can see that the sentence
is a 'narrator/character mix': the narrator is taking up the time-viewpoint
of the character). Only the candidate will have experience all three interviews.
In S14 we get the use of the past perfect (pluperfect) tense when the
first interview is referred to in order to make it clear that it counts
as past time from the perspective of the candidate. The string of evaluative
adjectives - 'carping, snappish, harsh, watchful - unfriendly' all indicate
the personal viewpoint of the candidate. Note also the move from the 3rd-person
reference for the candidate to 2nd-person as this sentence proceeds, bringing
us closer to the character's viewpoint.
(19) That had been a long one.
This sentence refers to the second interview. Like the reference to the
first interview in S14, the tense used is past perfect, suggesting that
it is referring to past time for the candidate, and the distal demonstrative
pronoun also suggests temporal, spatial and attitudinal remoteness in
relation to the candidate's present-time experience.
(31) I think Miss Blenkinsop-Briggs has already answered
my questions in the interview this morning.
This is a sentence of the candidate's speech during the second interview.
So, not surprisingly, the viewpoint markers all relate to her. Title +
last name for 'Miss Blenkinsop Briggs' indicates her felt social distance
from the socially superior Miss Briggs, her previous interviewer. The
personal pronouns are 1st-person as they refer to the speaker, and the
present tense of 'think' and present perfect of 'has . . . answered' indicate
present time and recent past time for the candidate respectively. The
proximal deictic expression 'this morning' helps us to see that the first
interview must have taken place on the same day as the second, and that,
by inference, the second interview must be in the afternoon.
(38) And now, here we are. (39) The third interview.
As with S19, in S38 we get proximal deixis, because we are back at the
third interview (as S39 makes clear contextually). This is expressed deictically
through the proximal demonstrative prtonoun 'this', the proximal spatial
deixis of the adverb 'here' and the proximal time deixis indicated by
the shift in the narration to the present tense for the VP.
(70) Shall I come here? (71) Would I like it after all?
Here we have the thoughts of the character at the very end of the passage.
She is asking herself whether she will go to Cambridge and whether she
will like it.
In S70, we have the first person pronoun, because the candidate is referring
to herself, and the proximal spatial adverb 'here'. We also have present
tense because the character is thinking about future time (note that,
unlike many languages, English does not have a future tense, but alludes
to future time by a combination of present tense, adverbials marked for
future and modal verbs like 'will ' and 'shall'). The verb 'come' is also
a proximal deictic, expressing the future possibility of the candidate
moving from somewhere else to where she is presently located.
S71 keeps the tense and pronouns seen in S70, but uses the modal verb
'would' to express hypotheticality. The main verb 'like' also expresses
the candidate's viewpoint, as it is a cognition verb to which she is Subject.
Note, incidentally, how 'after all' suggests that the candidate's experience
until the last interview at least, must have been predominantly negative.
Overall
Overall, what we see in these sentences, taken from across the range
of situations depicted in the passage, is a consistent tendency for the
narrator to take up a complex viewpoint position (spatial, temporal, attitudinal
and conceptual) associated with the candidate, and for that viewpoint
to be marked deictically, as well as in other ways. We will now turn to
some of those other ways.
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