scholarly journals Polite speech emerges from competing social goals (old ms ver)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erica J. Yoon ◽  
Michael Henry Tessler ◽  
Noah D. Goodman ◽  
Michael C. Frank
Keyword(s):  
Probabilistic Model ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Social Goals ◽  
Theoretic Approach ◽  
Full Model ◽  
Efficient Tool ◽  
Social Language ◽  
Quantitative Accuracy ◽  
Polite Speech

(Find newer version of preprint here: https://psyarxiv.com/67ne8) Language is a remarkably efficient tool for transmitting information. Yet human speakers make statements that are inefficient, imprecise, or even contrary to their own beliefs, all in the service of being polite. What rational machinery underlies polite language use? Here, we show that polite speech emerges from the competition of three communicative goals: to convey information, to be kind, and to present oneself in a good light. We formalize this goal tradeoff using a probabilistic model of utterance production, which predicts human utterance choices in socially-sensitive situations with high quantitative accuracy, and we show that our full model is superior to its variants with subsets of the three goals. This utility-theoretic approach to speech acts takes a step towards explaining the richness and subtlety of social language use.

scholarly journals Polite speech emerges from competing social goals

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erica J. Yoon ◽  
Michael C. Frank ◽  
Michael Henry Tessler ◽  
Noah D. Goodman
Keyword(s):  
Probabilistic Model ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Social Goals ◽  
Theoretic Approach ◽  
Full Model ◽  
Efficient Tool ◽  
Social Language ◽  
Quantitative Accuracy ◽  
Polite Speech

Language is a remarkably efficient tool for transmitting information. Yet human speakers make statements that are inefficient, imprecise, or even contrary to their own beliefs, all in the service of being polite. What rational machinery underlies polite language use? Here, we show that polite speech emerges from the competition of three communicative goals: to convey information, to be kind, and to present oneself in a good light. We formalize this goal tradeoff using a probabilistic model of utterance production, which predicts human utterance choices in socially-sensitive situations with high quantitative accuracy, and we show that our full model is superior to its variants with subsets of the three goals. This utility-theoretic approach to speech acts takes a step towards explaining the richness and subtlety of social language use.

scholarly journals Polite Speech Emerges From Competing Social Goals

Open Mind ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 71-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erica J. Yoon ◽  
Michael Henry Tessler ◽  
Noah D. Goodman ◽  
Michael C. Frank
Keyword(s):  
Probabilistic Model ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Social Goals ◽  
Theoretic Approach ◽  
Full Model ◽  
Efficient Tool ◽  
Social Language ◽  
Quantitative Accuracy ◽  
Polite Speech

Language is a remarkably efficient tool for transmitting information. Yet human speakers make statements that are inefficient, imprecise, or even contrary to their own beliefs, all in the service of being polite. What rational machinery underlies polite language use? Here, we show that polite speech emerges from the competition of three communicative goals: to convey information, to be kind, and to present oneself in a good light. We formalize this goal tradeoff using a probabilistic model of utterance production, which predicts human utterance choices in socially sensitive situations with high quantitative accuracy, and we show that our full model is superior to its variants with subsets of the three goals. This utility-theoretic approach to speech acts takes a step toward explaining the richness and subtlety of social language use.

scholarly journals Contrastive Pragmatics: Apologies & Thanks in English and Italian

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Cuneyt Demir ◽  
Mehmet Takkac
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
American English ◽  
The Status ◽  
Language Competency ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
Remedial Strategies

<p>Awareness of language or language competency has greatly changed from the focus of language itself as form and structure to language use as pragmatics. Accordingly, it is widely accepted that different cultures structure discourse in different ways. Moreover, studies have shown that this holds for discourse genres traditionally considered as highly standardized in their rituals and formulas. Taking inspiration from such studies, this paper employs a corpus-based approach to examine variations of the apology and thanking strategies used in English and Italian. First the apology itself as a form of social action is closely analyzed and then thanking. This study also pays special attention on analyzing and contrasting apology and thanking strategies in American English and in Italian in terms of Marion Owen’s remedial strategies (Owen, 1983), and Olshtain &amp; Cohen’s semantic formulas in the apology speech act set (Olshtain &amp; Cohen, 1983). The purpose of the study is not only to compare apology and thanking speech acts but to also learn their contextual use. The findings suggest that the status and role of the situation affect the speakers’ choice of apology and thanking strategies, and semantic formulas are of great importance.</p>

scholarly journals Speech Acts

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen C. Levinson
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Linguistic Pragmatics ◽  
Recursive Structures ◽  
Core Language ◽  
Core Issues ◽  
Essential Insight

The essential insight of speech act theory was that when we use language, we perform actions—in a more modern parlance, core language use in interaction is a form of joint action. Over the last thirty years, speech acts have been relatively neglected in linguistic pragmatics, although important work has been done especially in conversation analysis. Here we review the core issues—the identifying characteristics, the degree of universality, the problem of multiple functions, and the puzzle of speech act recognition. Special attention is drawn to the role of conversation structure, probabilistic linguistic cues, and plan or sequence inference in speech act recognition, and to the centrality of deep recursive structures in sequences of speech acts in conversation.

Cross-Cultural and Intercultural Pragmatics

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Istvan Kecskes
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Common Language ◽  
Communicative Process ◽  
First Languages ◽  
Intercultural Pragmatics ◽  
Intercultural Interactions ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
Cultural Pragmatics

This chapter discusses the differences between cross-cultural and intercultural pragmatics. While cross-cultural pragmatics compares different cultures, based on the investigation of certain aspects of language use, such as speech acts, behaviour patterns, and language behaviour, intercultural pragmatics focuses on intercultural interactions and investigates the nature of the communicative process among people from different cultures, speaking different first languages. Cross-cultural pragmatics analyses the differences and similarities in the language behaviour of people representing different languages and cultures. Intercultural pragmatics, however—a relatively new discipline—is interested in what happens when representatives of different first languages and cultures communicate using a common language.

REQUESTING SPEECH ACT OF UTTERANCES IN OCEAN’S ELEVEN BY STEVEN SODERBERGH: A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 410
Author(s):  
Nurul Hasanah ◽  
Japen Sarage
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Structural Characteristics ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
The Real ◽  
Syntactic Form ◽  
Pragmatic Analysis ◽  
Actual Use

The term sentence and utterance are made different in terms that the former refers to syntactic structure, while the latter points out the actual function of such a structure in real communication. The same things apply to the terms request and requesting. The first term suggests the structural characteristics of sentence asking people to do something while the second term indicates the real sentence causing people to do something. The first deals with formal grammar while the second deals with pragmatics the actual use of language in communication.This article attempts to see requesting in its possible different syntactic forms as parts of speech acts in Ocean’sEleven by Steven Soderbergh. A pragmatic approach is applied since it uses context as a part of linguistic analysis involving the speaker, addressee, time, location, and genre in the conversation. A syntactic form of a sentence only cannot represent the real meaning of intention.The analysis of speech act of the conversation in the film brings us to an understanding that pragmatics encourage us to comprehend different kinds of setting to achieve requesting as a part of language use. Pragmatics as a branch of linguistics reveals mutual understanding between the speaker and the hearer.

scholarly journals REQUESTIVE UTTERANCES IN SPOKEN JAVANESE OF TEGAL

HUMANIKA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 48
Author(s):  
Mualimin Mualimin ◽  
Marsono Marsono ◽  
Suhandano Suhandano
Keyword(s):  
Social Factors ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Capital City ◽  
The World ◽  
Radio Programs ◽  
Imperative Mood ◽  
Local Languages ◽  
Research Show

Studying  language use as a part of the culture has been carried out for many years in many parts of the world, including in Indonesia. Indonesia which has various cultures has hundreds of local languages in which one of them is Javanese spoken in Tegal. This study is aimed at exploring how the Javanese dialect spoken in Tegal is used in drama radio programs on Pertiwi Radio of Slawi, the capital city of Tegal Regency.The data of the research are in the forms of uttrerances spoken by the characters of the drama containing requestive speech acts using a sociopragmatic approach. The findings of the research show that requestive utterances found in the drama are expressed both directly and indirectly. The direct requestive speech acts are mostly conveyed in utterances with imperative mood,  while indirect requestive ones are in the forms of declarative and interrogative utterances. The choice of utterances is influenced by context of social factors where the language is used and is related to request strategy.

Richard Johnson

1991 ◽  
Vol 18 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 281-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anat Biletzki
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Language Use ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Conceptual Frameworks ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Grammatical Categories ◽  
Pragmatic Analysis ◽  
Change Characteristic

Summary The grammarians of 16th, 17th, and 18th century England were, in the main, conservative, but the elements of continuity and change characteristic of these times make for a strange blend of uniformity and variety in the grammars they produced. Of all the grammatical categories, the treatment of mood is most hesitant, variable, and problematic. Building on this confusion, and taking a cue from the modern discussion of mood which lends itself to pragmatic analysis, the paper asks about pragmatics in the treatment of mood in earlier periods. In this it is claimed that although numerous hints and inklings provide evidence of some pragmatic tendencies, only one grammarian, Richard Johnson, in the Grammatical Commentaries of 1706, comes close to an explicit rendering of moods akin to speech acts and based on language use. His theory of moods is presented and analyzed; it is seen to formulate theoretical, pragmatic principles for moods and, furthermore, to apply such principles in the detailed analysis of specific moods. Johnson emerges as unique in his time for his treatment of moods, but obviously still limited by its conceptual frameworks.

The intentional and the socio-cultural in language use

1994 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Nuyts
Keyword(s):  
Verbal Behavior ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Research ◽  
Recent Debate

This paper is a contribution to the recent debate between a number of anthropologists and philosophers concerning the role of intentions in a theory of verbal behavior. It reviews a number of arguments put forward by ethno- and anthro-polinguists against the intention-centered view of human behavior common in current cognitively oriented language research, and typically represented in John Searle's theory of intentionality and of speech acts. It is argued that these arguments do not affect the assumption that intentions are always and necessarily present in (verbal) behavior (they are based on a much too simplistic view of intentionality), but they do show that intentions as such are insufficient to understand (verbal) behavior. These matters are discussed against the background of Searle's theory of intentionality.

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