Косвенные речевые акты в современном английском языке

Косвенные речевые акты в современном английском языке

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION…………….……………………………………….3

1. INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS: FORM VERSUS FUNCTION…………5

2. WHY DO SPEAKERS HAVE TO BE INDIRECT?…………………..7

2.1. The cooperative principle…………………………………………….7

2.2. The theory of politeness ……………………………………………...8

3. HOW DO HEARERS DISCOVER INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS

AND “DECIPHER” THEIR MEANING?…………………………….10

3.1. The inference theory………………………………………………...10

3.2. Indirect speech acts as idioms?…………………………………...…12

3.3. Other approaches to the problem……………………………………13

4. ILLOCUTIONS OF INDIVIDUAL UTTERANCES WITHIN A

DISCOURSE………………………………………………………….14

5.INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS IN ENGLISH AND UKRAINIAN……..16

5.

6.EXAMPLES OF INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS IN MODERN

ENGLISH DISCOURSE………..…………………………………….18

6.1. Fiction………………………………………………………………18

6.2. Publicism……………………………………………………………20

6.3. Advertising………………………………………………………….21

6.4. Anecdotes…………………………………………………………...21

7. INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS AS A YARDSTICK OF COMMUNI-

CATIVE MATURITY AND MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING …..….23

CONCLUSIONS……….……………………………………………..25

РЕЗЮМЕ……………….…………………………………………….27

LITERATURE….…………………………………………………….28

INTRODUCTION

“A great deal can be said in the study of

language without studying speech acts,

but any such purely formal theory is

necessarily incomplete. It would be as if

baseball were studied only as a formal

system of rules and not as a game.”

John Rogers Searle

In the late 1950s, the Oxford philosopher John Austin gave

some lectures on how speakers “do things with words” and so

invented a theory of “speech acts” [10, 40] which now occupies

the central place in pragmatics (pragmatics is the study of how

we use language to communicate in a particular context). Austin

highlighted the initial contrast between the constative and the

performative. While constatives describe a state of affairs,

performatives (explicit and implicit) have the potential to bring

about a change in some state of affairs. Classical examples of

performatives include the naming of a ship, the joining of two

persons in marriage, and the sentencing of a criminal by an

authorised person. Austin distinguished between the locution of a

speech act (the words uttered), its illocution (the intention of

the speaker in making the utterance) and its perlocution (its

effects, intended or otherwise). Whereas constatives typically

have truth conditions to comply with, speech acts must satisfy

certain “felicity conditions” in order to count as an action:

there must be a conventional procedure; the circumstances and

people must be appropriate; the procedure must be executed

correctly and completely; often, the persons must have the

requisite thoughts, feelings, etc.

John Austin’s theory of speech acts was generalized to

cover all utterances by a student of Austin's, John Rogers Searle

[43, 69]. Searle showed that we perform speech acts every time we

speak. For example, asking “What's the time?” we are performing

the speech act of making a request. Turning an erstwhile

constative into an explicit performative looks like this: “It is

now ten o’clock” means “I hereby pronounce that it is ten o’

clock in the morning.”

In such a situation, the original constative versus

performative distinction becomes untenable: all speech is

performative. The important distinction is not between the

performative and the constative, but between the different kinds

of speech acts being performed, that is between direct and

indirect speech acts. Searle's hypothesis was that in indirect

speech acts, the speaker communicates the non-literal as well as

the literal meaning to the hearer. This new pragmatic trend was

named intentionalism because it takes into account the initial

intention of the speaker and its interpretation by the hearer.

Actuality of research:

The problem of indirect speech acts has got a great

theoretical meaning for analysis of the form/function relation in

language: the same form performs more than one function. To

generate an indirect speech act, the speaker has to use

qualitatively different types of knowledge, both linguistic and

extralinguistic (interactive and encyclopaedic), as well as the

ability to reason [45, 97]. A number of theories try to explain

why we make indirect speech acts and how we understand their non-

literal meaning, but the research is still far from being

complete.

The practical value of research lies in the fact that it is

impossible to reach a high level of linguistic competence without

understanding the nature of indirect speech acts and knowing

typical indirect speech acts of a particular language.

The tasks of research:

analysis of the theories on indirect speech acts;

finding out why interlocutors generate indirect speech acts

instead of saying exactly what they mean;

comparing typical indirect speech acts in English and in

Ukrainian;

providing examples of indirect speech acts in various

communicational situations.

The object of research is a speech act as a communicational

action that speakers perform by saying things in a certain way in

a certain context.

The subject of research is an indirect speech act as the

main way in which the semantic content of a sentence can fail to

determine the full force and content of the illocutionary act

being performed in using the sentence.

Methods of research include critical analysis of scientific

works on the subject, analysis of speech of native English

speakers in various communicational situations, analysis of

speech behavior of literary personages created by modern British

and American writers.

INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS: FORM VERSUS FUNCTION

“Communication is successful not when

hearers recognize the linguistic meaning of the

utterance, but when they infer the speaker's

meaning from it.”

Dan Sperber and Deidre Wilson

Most of what human beings say is aimed at success of

perlocutionary acts, but because perlocutionary effects are

behavioural, cognitive, or emotional responses they are not

linguistic objects. What linguists can properly look at, however,

are the intentions of speakers to bring about certain

perlocutionary effects which are called illocutionary intentions.

The basis of a speech act is the speaker’s intention to

influence the hearer in a desired way. The intention can be

manifested and latent. According to O.G. Pocheptsov [13,74],

latent intentions cannot be linguistically analyzed while

manifested intentions can be divided into evident and inferable.

The illocutinary intention of indirect speech acts is inferable.

Three broad illocutionary categories are normally

identified – a statement, a question and a command/request -

having typical realisations in declarative, interrogative and

imperative verb forms. But sometimes the syntactic form of a

sentence is not a good guide to the act it is performing. In

indirect speech acts the agreement between the intended function

and the realised form breaks down, and the outward (locutionary)

form of an utterance does not correspond with the intended

illocutionary force of the speech act which it performs [37,

263]. In indirection a single utterance is the performance of one

illocutionary act by way of performing another. Indirect speech

acts have two illocutionary forces [45, 195].

Searle’s classical example of an indirect speech act is the

utterance “Can you pass the salt?” Without breaking any

linguistic norms we can regard it as a general question and give

a yes/no answer. But most often hearers interpret it as a

request. Likewise, the utterance “There's a fly in your soup”

may be a simple assertion but, in a context, a warning not to

drink the soup. The question “What's the time?” might, when one

is looking for an excuse to get rid of an unwelcome guest, be

intended as a suggestion that the guest should leave.

Analogously, the statement “I wouldn't do this if I were you” has

the congruent force of an imperative: “Don't do it!”

In his works Searle gives other interesting examples of

indirect speech acts: Why don’t you be quiet? It would be a good

idea if you gave me the money now. How many times have I told you

(must I tell you) not to eat with your fingers? I would

appreciate it if you could make less noise. In some contexts

these utterances combine two illocutionary forces and sound

idiomatic, even though they are not idioms in the proper sense of

the term. Each utterance contains an imperative (secondary

illocution) realized by means of a question or a statement

(primary illocution).

Paul Grice illustrates indirectness by the following

utterances [4, 22]: “There is a garage around the corner” used to

tell someone where to get petrol, and “Mr. X's command of English

is excellent, and his attendance has been regular”, giving the

high points in a letter of recommendation. A simple example of an

indirect speech act gives B.Russel: “When parents say ‘Puddle!’

to their child, what they mean is ‘Don’t step into it!’ [41,

Страницы: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7



Реклама
В соцсетях
рефераты скачать рефераты скачать рефераты скачать рефераты скачать рефераты скачать рефераты скачать рефераты скачать