Gigi Becali’s discourse

Introduction
After the 1989 Revolution, Romania’s situation has changed so much that even now, in
2008, as a member of the EU, there are things happening that have no logic. It is hard to
understand that democracy in our country meant only political pluralism. The active
population of the country were just a weapon in the hands of the politicians that followed
Ceauşescu’s death. I, for one, find Becali’s actual position one of the most outstanding
facts in Romanian politics today.

As a politician, Gigi Becali is by far the most uneducated, uncivilized and defying person
to dominate the image of Romania’s state apparatus. I chose Gigi Becali’s speech to see if
there is any taming phenomenon in what concerns the “talk in institutional settings”, by
that meaning when does the formal become informal in political speech. For that, I
analyzed a short part of “Zece pentru Romînia” talk-show from Realitatea TV, moderated
by Mihai Tatulici. I must mention that I provide the transcription of the conversation
fragment according to the following conventions: “.” indicating clause final falling
intonation; “?” for clause final rising intonation; “,” representing a slight rise; “(.)” means
a short hesitation within a turn and “(2)” a inter-turn pause longer that 1 second, the
number indicating the seconds. For latched utterances with no discernable gap between
the prior speaker and the next one I used “= =” and the onset of overlapping talk is
marked by “[”. Written in Caps, are segments/ syllables/ words or sequences of words
that are loud comparing the surrounding talk and “underlined item” shows segment s/
syllables/ words that are particularly stressed relative to the surrounding talk. “::” draws
attention on the fact that there are lengthened syllables or vowels and “[]” states unclear
passages. The conventions used here are taken from Coposescu’s book “Issues of
pragmatics” (Coposescu, 2007: 138).

What I am interested in is how the co-operative principles function when analyzing the
data that I provide. Grice, the one who formulated the principles of co-operative
principles, stated that one must make his contribution such as is required, at the stage at
which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which he is
engaged and identified four types of maxims which I will further discus in my paper.

Analysis
First of all, I would like to describe the context in which the discussion in the data and
state all the details. As I said before, the fragment is part of a talk show from Realitatea
TV, called “Zece pentru Rominia”. There was a green table at which sat five cultural
figures in Romania who were supposed to comment on the nominee’s for the race to win
the Best Writer in Romania. As a special guest, Gigi Becali was invited to debate on the
subject. The participants in the short conversation I selected are Gigi Becali- politician,
Mihai Tatulici- presenter and Alex Ştefănescu, a writer. Wanted to be a formal
institutional talk, Gigi Becali’s characteristic speach trasforms it into an almost totally
informal one. The distinctiveness of formal types of institutional settings is based on the
close relationship between participants’ social roles and the forms of talk in which they
engage. Studies of formal settings have focused on the ways in which participants orient
to a strict turn-taking format called turn-type pre-allocation. As a talk-show, the presenter
should be the one to ask more questions and moderate the debate, but there is no rule to
that, as the guests can also ask questions on their own. Of course, the participants n the
discussion should use a moderate tone of voice and wait for their turns to answer or ask
questions. This is not the case. Just taking a short glimpse on the data and one can notice
the high number of overlapping. This happens mostly because Gigi Becali does not wait
his turn to talk and also because there is a lack of respect between the participants. This
can be seen from the tone used in the dialog and the way the dialog itself develops.

Furthermore, while Stefanescu’s speech remains formal even if there is a clear tension
between the two speakers, Becali’s tone of voice rises during the conversation and is
completely informal:” Taci din gură.”; “Acum am citit, am văzut cum vă numiţi şi vă
spuneam scriitor, da:’ dacă nu aveaţi aia cu placa în faţă nu ştiam cum vă numiţi” and so
on. While the two speakers continually overlap with each other, the moderator, Mihai
Tatulici finds himself in the position in which he can only draw attention to Becali on one
fact. Therefore, we can see the case of a self-initiated other repair: “DOMNU’ BECALI,
unii scriitori nu mîncau, să ştiţi.” Since it is the case of the presentor, according to the
institutional talk, he should be objective, whereas Mihai Tatulici clearly states his opinion
and by this the rules of this type of speech are disobeyed (same line as above).

In the introduction I stated that Grice formulated four types of maxims in a typical co-
operative talk. In the followings I will see if these four maxims are respected or not.
Maxim of quantity is when one makes his contribution as informative as is required for
the current purpose of the exchange. It is not allowed for one’s contribution to be more
informative than is required. Gigi Becali flouts the maxim of quantity as all his
interventions are unasked for (lines 4, 6, 10, 12, 14). The Maxim of quality states that one
should not affirm something whether he does not have evidence in order to support it.
This rule too is avoided by Becali as he states: “Nu puteţi dumneavoastră, nu puteţi să
scrieţi dacă nu sunt oameni ca mine care să creeze (-) locuri de muncă şi oameni care să
primească salarii, nu puteţi...n-aveţi hîrtie, n-aveţi stilouri cu ce să scrieţi dacă nu sunt
eu.” The maxim of relation sais that one must be relevant in everything they say. In this
case, Both Becali, who is uncapable of listening to the other speaker and talking to him
using the same registre, tonality, etc., and Tatulici who becomes irelevant when stating
„DOMNU’ BECALI, unii scriitori nu mîncau, să ştiţi”. Last but not least, the maxim of
manner is that which asserts to avoid obscurity of expression and ambiguity and also be
brief and orderly. Becali does not respect neither of them.

Furtermore, there are cases in which Becali is ignored by speaker one as he is considered
to say something irellevant (lines 1-7). Not only that he interrups the person talking
without giving him the opportunuty to finish his ideas, but also tries, through a rise of
tone, his own superiority to the actual speaker.

One final remark I want to make is that there is a lack of use of hedges. Hedges are
certain expressions used to mark that speakers may be in danger of not fully adhering to
the principles. Whereas Becali’s speech lack this sort of expressions, Stefanescu’s is a
little richer, as he uses linking words such as “deci”, “Aşa”, “in al doilea rind” and so on.
Conclusion
there are certain rules to be followed when entering a conversation and especially a
formal institutional one. Not only that the laguage used must be formal and appropriate to
the context and subject of discussion, but certain tones of voice, respect must be present.
In Romania, the political speeches lack all these, usually turning into a real circus. This
happens especially when people like Gigi Becally, witout any education, culture and
sense of civilisation, is promoted ad brought in front, publicised and allowed to occupy
such an important position in a state.

Of course, Alex Stafanescu was right when stating that this was a wrong choise of
invitation, bringing a person who has nothing to do with culture, to comment on the
nominees for the best writer of Romania. As a result, all co-operative principles are
broken, overlapping becomes the dominating feature of the talk, and language is used
wrongly.