Speech Acts: some notes useful for the assignment Vladimir Žegarac University of Madeira 11/11/2016

Pragmatics 1.How do people communicate more than what the words or phrases in their utterances might mean by themselves, and how do people make their interpretations? 2.Why do people choose to say and/or interpret something in one way rather than another?

Pragmatics 3. How do people's perceptions of contextual factors (for example, who the interlocutors are, what their relationship is, and what circumstances they are communicating in) influence the process of producing and interpreting language?"

Pragmatics One definition: Pragmtics is the study of the cognitive- psychological mechanisms of human communication. How do we communicate? Many diferent answers. Speech act theory: We communicate by doing things with words.

What is the difference between SEMANTICS and PRAGMATICS? The question for SEMANTICS: What do the words and combinations of words (phrases and sentences) mean? Question for PRAGMATICS: What does the speaker (i.e. communicator) mean by using particular words (frases, sentences) on a particular occasion?

How do we do things with words? Speech act theory answer: By producing and interpreting speech acts (more precisely, communicative acts). What are the main types of SPEECH ACT? DIRECT speech acts and INDIRECT speech acts.

Direct Speech Acts Speech Act Sentence Type Function Examples Assertion Declarative. conveys information London is the capital of Great Britain. Question Interrogative makes others give information Is the window open? Orders and Requests Imperative makes others to behave in certain ways Open the window.

Some speech acts are not closely related to particular types of sentences. Example: Threats/Warnings (If you steal my car, I will kill you./If you do not study hard, you will fail the exam.)

Indirect Speech Acts - There are different ways of doing the same thing with words. QUESTIONS: Direct: Did Peter get the highest grade on the exam? Indirect: Do you know if Peter got the highest grade on the exam? I would like to know if Peter got the highest grade on the exam. I wonder whether Peter got the highest grade on the exam.

REQUESTS (for action): Direct: (Please) open the window. Indirect: Could you open the window? Do you mind opening the window? I would like you to open the window. The window is still open! I have asked you a thousand times to open the window

Getting Something at the Table I am eating at a table with other people. I want the salt. It is relatively far from me. What can I do / what should I do or say? 1. Stand up and reach for it. 2. Say: "Pass the salt, will you?" 3. Say: "Can you pass the salt, please." 4. Say: "I like my food quite salty."

How many speech acts are there? It is possible to use the term speech act for any social action we perform by means of words (communicative acts). For exemple, ANSWERS, INVITATIONS, REFUSALS, and many other things we do with words could be consideredspeech acts. I think i tis important to be aware that they are institutionalised speech acts. In other words, there are some generally accepted ways of performing them and (competent) communicators must have knowledge about how such speech acts are performed. They may be more or less conscious/aware of this knowledge.

Institutionalisation What do we mean by INSTITUTIONALISED? Here is a brief passage from a book by John Searle: If people believe that a certain set of relationships in which they are involved is a case of friendship, date, cocktail party, then the possession of each such status is constituted by the belief that the relationship does in fact possess that status, and the possession of that status carries with it certain functions. This is shown by the fact that the people involved have certain sorts of justified expectations from a friendship/date/cocktail party, which they do not have from na identical set of arrangements about which they do not believe that it is a friendship/date/cocktail party. … If the rights and duties of friendship suddenly became a matter of some grave legal or moral question, then we might imagine these informal institution becoming codified explicitly, though of course, explicit codification has its price. It deprives uso f the flexibility, spontaneity, and informality that the practice has in its uncodified form. (Seale, 1996: 88)

Speech Acts and Institutionalisation SPEECH ACTS, the things we do with words, can also be institutionalised. Important point: they are insitutionalised in different ways in different cultures. So, your projects could focus on the different ways in which particular speech acts are institutionalised in different cultures. In carrying out your research, you may find the concept of FELICITY CONDITIONS useful.

Felicity Conditions A speech acts can be "felicitous" or "infelicitous" depending on whether it satisfies a set of conditions, which are conventionally/standardly associated with that act (see Austn, 1962). There are three particularly important conditions: Propositional content condition Preparatory condition Sincerity condition Essential condition

Example: Warning Propositional content condition: it is a future event Preparatory precondition: 1) the speaker believes the event will occur and be detrimental to the hearer; 2) the speaker believes that it is not obvious to the hearer that the event will occur Sincerity condition: the speaker genuinely believes that the event will be detrimental to the hearer Essential condition: the utterance counts as an attempt by the speaker to have the hearer recognize that a future event will be detrimental.  

For your assignments Choose a speech act and describe how it is institutionalised and performed in a culture that you are familiar with or compare how the same speech act is performed in different cultures.

References Searle, John R. (1996) The Construction of Social Reality. London: Penguin Books Austin, John L. (1962) How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.