Pragmatics Of Speech Actions

This volume provides extensive critical information about current discussions in the study of speech actions. Its central reference point is classic speech act theory, but attention is also paid to nonstandard developments and other approaches that study speech as action. The first part of the volume deals with main concepts, methodological issues and phenomena common to different kinds of speech action. The second part deals with specific kinds of speech actions, including types of illocutionary acts and some discourse and conversational phenomena. Reduced series price (print) available! [email protected].

In the study of language, as in any other systematic study, there is no neutral terminology. Every technical term is an expression of the assumptions and theoretical presuppositions of its users; and in this introduction, we want to clarify some of the issues that have surrounded the assumptions behind the use of the two terms "speech acts" and "pragmatics". The notion of a speech act is fairly well understood. The theory of speech acts starts with the assumption that the minimal unit of human communica tion is not a sentence or other expression, but rather the performance of certain kinds of acts, such as making statements, asking questions, giving orders, describing, explaining, apologizing, thanking, congratulating, etc. Characteristically, a speaker performs one or more of these acts by uttering a sentence or sentences; but the act itself is not to be confused with a sentence or other expression uttered in its performance. Such types of acts as those exemplified above are called, following Austin, illocutionary acts, and they are standardly contrasted in the literature with certain other types of acts such as perlocutionary acts and propositional acts. Perlocutionary acts have to do with those effects which our utterances have on hearers which go beyond the hearer's understanding of the utterance. Such acts as convincing, persuading, annoying, amusing, and frightening are all cases of perlocutionary acts.

The volume provides a thorough look into Marina Sbisà’s distinctive, Austinian-inspired approach to speech acts. By gathering original essays from a world-class lineup of philosophers of language, linguists, social epistemologists, action theorists, and communication scholars, the collection provides the first comprehensive critical treatment of Sbisa’s outstanding contribution to speech act theory.

Normativity and Variety of Speech Actions embraces papers focused on the performative dimension of language. The volume gathers novel papers discussing normativity and various other problems in speech-act theory.

This book collects seventeen essays published between 1984 and 2020, in which Marina Sbisà develops her distinctive approach to speech acts and related pragmatic phenomena. Drawing inspiration from the work of J. L. Austin, the essays examine the categories of speech act theory and apply these categories in the context of natural discourse and conversation, with the aim of providing an accurate analysis of how speech can be action. Sbisà devotes particular attention to normative aspects of language and language use: speech acts reshape the normative context in which they occur by assigning or unassigning deontic properties to relevant parties. Emphasis is placed on the normative aspect of linguistically mandated presuppositions as well as the rational grounds of implicature. The conventionalist view of speech acts developed here turns on the role of intersubjective agreement in deontic updating, in a framework that shifts focus from single utterances to discursive sequences and conversational interaction. This view challenges the main tenets of a Gricean intentionalist understanding of speech act performance, paving the way for a theory of speech actions centred on the normatively transformative power of illocution. Throughout the essays, examples and applications are given to illustrate how the view put forward contributes to understanding the social and political dimensions of linguistic activity, such as hidden persuasive strategies, power imbalances both within and outside the context of conversation, and the relevance of language and discourse to gender issues.

This work consists of an examination and revision of some of the main theses of Speech Act Theory in relation to the problem of ideology and action-guiding language. Starting from the idea that linguistic philosophy must take into account how the social structure of the linguistic community may influence and direct the way its language is used, a critical method of analysis is proposed, developing Speech Act Theory in a way suitable for this purpose. The main guideline of this proposal is the consideration that a theory of action rather than a theory of meaning should be taken as central in the analysis of language. The notion of illocutionary force, the problem of intentions and conventions in the constitution of speech acts, the definition of context, and the classification of speech acts, are then discussed. Based on the conclusions of this discussion a pragmatic method for the analysis of language is formulated.

This book provides positive evidence regarding the validity of the language used in sitcom and drama audiovisual genres and its possible applicability to the teaching of pragmatics in English as second and foreign language contexts. The first part of the text includes a description of pragmatics and its components, speech act theories development, and the use of audiovisual input for the teaching of pragmatic aspects. The second section is devoted to the sitcom and drama transcripts analysis of direct and indirect realisations of multiple speech acts as pragmalinguistic resources, sociopragmatic variables that may influence conversation, such as politeness needs and context, and interactional patterns, including turn-taking, sequences and adjacency pairs. The book provides insightful quantitative and qualitative results which will serve to confirm, along with previous research, the usefulness and validity of this type of input, not only for teaching pragmatics, but also for the development of tasks and activities with different pedagogical outcomes and students’ needs. As such, this volume is a useful resource for pragmaticians and discourse analysis scholars since its complete analysis of transcripts justifies the validity of audiovisual input and its different applications.

Speech Actions in Theory and Applied Studies, the first of the two volumes of Pragmatic Perspectives on Language and Linguistics, brings together twenty essays which critically examine linguistic action and explore ways in which it can be accounted for. The articles presented in this collection are all focused on “doing things with words”, but in most cases do not subscribe to speech act theory in the tradition of John L. Austin and John R. Searle. The linking thread through the volume is not a theoretical commitment to one of the speech-act theoretical models, but the authors’ perspective on language as a means of action, how linguistic expressions become effective in context and how this effectiveness can be explicated. The papers represent different pragmatic approaches and varied levels of expertise in the research area; among the authors there are eminent linguists and philosophers, well established researchers, and young beginners. The texts include purely theoretical discussions, case studies, reports on research in experimental pragmatics, contrastive and corpus studies, and considerations of the pedagogical implications of pragmatic reflection on the nature of language. Without purporting to cover all relevant topics, this variety reflects the complex character of linguistic pragmatics and integrates studies which cross-cut other research fields. The book is divided in three parts. The seven papers gathered in the first part of the volume, “Speech Action in Theory”, are concentrated on theoretical issues pertaining to speech as a type of action with emphasis both on linguistic forms (e.g. fragments) and theoretical commitments and particular theories’ explanatory power. Part two, “Case Studies & Experimental Pragmatics”, includes reports on research into irony processing in Polish and in English as a second language, intercultural differences in interactions broadcast in the media, power relations in doctor/patient interaction, and metaphors in media discourse at the time of crisis. Part three, “Pragmatics, Grammar, and Language Pedagogy”, contains five essays, which explore both more “formal” pragmatics through analyses of grammatical forms and the interface which the analysis of these forms share with context-grounded research, and the practical implications of pragmatic knowledge in language didactics. This collection is supplemented by the essays gathered in volume two, entitled Pragmatics of Semantically Restricted Domains.