ABSTRACT
As anticipated in A12 and B12, we offer here some further suggestions about how Habermas’s model of universal pragmatics can be applied to real discourse. We also noted in B12 that Montgomery (1999) is an exploration of the way validity claims are played out in the public discourse that followed the death, in August 1997, of Diana, Princess of Wales. Montgomery offers an overview of the tribute made by the (then) British Prime Minister Tony Blair and locates in the linguistic and paralinguistic structure of the speech the features that triggered the overwhelming public reception of this speech as being sincere. He then examines the verbal tributes offered by the Queen and by Earl Spencer (Diana’s brother). He examines in detail the linguistic properties of these speeches, and readers are strongly encouraged to refer to the original article for these insightful analyses. However, Montgomery also focuses on the interpretative frameworks through which these two speeches were assessed and understood by members of the public, across a range of mediated contexts including studio discussions, interviews, vox pops and reports. Some of this material is reproduced here.
