scholarly journals Metaphorical Language in Best-Selling Books: Byrne's The Secret, the Power book as a Case Study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanan Ali Amaireh
Keyword(s):  
Speech Act ◽  
Speech Act Theory ◽  
Writing Style ◽  
Written Discourse ◽  
Rhetorical Device ◽  
Metaphorical Language

In this paper, an attempt is made to study the metaphorical language used in one of the best-selling books, The Secret, the Power by Rhonda Byrne (2010). A lot of literature has been made on analyzing metaphors in different genres, yet how metaphorical language is employed in best-selling books gained little attention from discourse analysts, so this study comes to fill this gap in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to focus on this crucial field of written discourse and best-selling books in particular. It will investigate the linguistic techniques which are employed in a way to persuade the audience to change their behavior or ideas and adopt new ones, especially the use of metaphorical expressions and storytelling. Metaphors will be analyzed according to Lakoff & Johnson’s (1980) perspective of metaphorical expressions and the "Speech Act Theory" proposed by Austin (1962) and Searle (1969). The paper concludes that metaphorical language is an integral part and pervasive in Byrne's writing style. She uses metaphorical expressions to deliver her message indirectly to convince the audience to adopt her ideas to call them for action. The analysis shows that storytelling is also employed by the author as a rhetorical device to persuade the audience of her thoughts.

scholarly journals Discourse Analysis from the Perspective of Austin’s Speech Act Theory and Searle’s Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts: A Case Study of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 198-203
Author(s):  
Andreea-Veridiana Farcasel-Jensen ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Speech Act Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Power Relationship ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Research ◽  
Illocutionary Acts ◽  
The Yellow Wallpaper ◽  
Short Narrative

A focus on discourse analysis, this study presents a particular interest in the power relationship artfully constructed by Charlotte P. Gilman in three dialogue instances in her most memorable short narrative, The Yellow Wallpaper. With the awareness of gender differences in mind in terms of how men and women use language, Gilman evinces the ways in which language could be a medium of silencing the other. Consequently, this paper carefully examines the protagonists’ discourses through J. L. Austin’s speech act theory and John Searle’s taxonomy of illocutionary acts. The corpus of the study consists of the utterances of the husband/doctor and of the wife/patient, and both the quantitative and qualitative research methods have been employed for the data analysis. The results have shown that the patriarchal discourse, originally dominated by representatives (opinions, facts) and directives (commands, orders, advices, and refusals), produces utterances meant to fabricate reality (erroneous diagnosis) and generate refusals, whereas the discourse of the other consists mainly of representatives- true statements and opinions -which contradict men’s reality in the journey to achieving self-assertion and selfexpression.

The struggle between the power of language and the language of power

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mette Marie Roslyng ◽  
Gorm Larsen
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Speech Act Theory ◽  
Illocutionary Force ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Scientific Language ◽  
Analytical Strategy ◽  
Speech Genres ◽  
Power Of Language

Abstract In this study we look at how pro- and anti-vaccination groups construct alternative knowledge and facts discursively and linguistically in order to challenge or support the established scientific knowledge on vaccines. Through this case study we wish to examine how the power of language interacts with a language of power when memes in creative ways mimic, produce and reproduce scientific language and practices. Drawing on a dialogical-semiotic and a discourse theoretical analytical strategy, we, first, adopt Austin’s speech act theory and Bakhtin’s concept of speech genres to argue that memes are performative with an especially illocutionary force and are made up of alien language from scientific discourses. Second, we argue that Laclau’s discursive approach to how political positions are articulated in an antagonistic terrain allows us to see vaccination memes as either subversive or supportive of a scientific social imaginary.

scholarly journals A Case Study on Characters in Pride and Prejudice: From Perspectives of Speech Act Theory and Conversational Implicature

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 136
Author(s):  
Xiaoyu Ma
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Speech Act Theory ◽  
Pride And Prejudice ◽  
Conversational Implicature ◽  
The Enlightenment

<p>Speech act theory and conversational implicature, as research approaches in discourse analysis (DA), have been applied successfully to investigations in such fields as philosophy, linguistics, psychology and literature criticism. This paper aims to employ a synthesized model of these two theories to make a tentative study of the “literature language” and the characters in the literary work—<em>Pride and Prejudice</em>—to testify whether these research methods contribute to the readers’ understanding and appreciation of this masterpiece. The results of the study show that, to a certain extent, the image of the characters in a particular context in this literary work has been successfully demonstrated in terms of these two approaches in DA and it has been proved that “literature language” can be analyzed by means of DA theories. In addition, the study may contribute to the enlightenment of effective and creative approaches in literature as well as college movie English audio-visual-oral course teaching.</p>

Communication And Speech Act Theory : A Contextual Study Of Language

2016 ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
Makhlouf Abdelkader ◽  
Driss Mohamed Amine
Keyword(s):  
Speech Act ◽  
Speech Act Theory ◽  
Contextual Study

New Work on Speech Acts

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Speech Act Theory ◽  
New Work ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Recent Advances ◽  
Current Thinking ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Relationship

The essays collected in this book represent recent advances in our understanding of speech acts-actions like asserting, asking, and commanding that speakers perform when producing an utterance. The study of speech acts spans disciplines, and embraces both the theoretical and scientific concerns proper to linguistics and philosophy as well as the normative questions that speech acts raise for our politics, our societies, and our ethical lives generally. It is the goal of this book to reflect the diversity of current thinking on speech acts as well as to bring these conversations together, so that they may better inform one another. Topics explored in this book include the relationship between sentence grammar and speech act potential; the fate of traditional frameworks in speech act theory, such as the content-force distinction and the taxonomy of speech acts; and the ways in which speech act theory can illuminate the dynamics of hostile and harmful speech. The book takes stock of well over a half century of thinking about speech acts, bringing this classicwork in linewith recent developments in semantics and pragmatics, and pointing the way forward to further debate and research.

God’s liturgical activity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Wolterstorff
Keyword(s):  
Speech Act ◽  
Speech Act Theory ◽  
The People ◽  
Ancient Times

It is typical of Christian liturgical enactments for the people to pray and take for granted that God will act in the course of the enactment. This chapter first identifies and analyzes a number of ways in which God might act liturgically and then discusses at some length what might be meant when the people say, in response to the reading of Scripture, “This is the word of the Lord.” After suggesting that what might be meant is either that the reading presented what God said in ancient times or that, by way of the reading, God speaks anew here and now, the chapter suggests a third possibility by going beyond speech-act theory to introduce the idea of a continuant illocution in distinction from an occurrent illocution. Perhaps the reference is to one of God’s continuant illocutions.

Sentence mood

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Portner
Keyword(s):  
Speech Act ◽  
Speech Act Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Major Topic

Sentence mood is the linguistic category which marks the fundamental conversational function, or “sentential force,” of a sentence. Exemplified by the universal types of declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentences (as well as by less-common types), sentence mood has been a major topic of research in both linguistics and philosophy. This chapter identifies the two main theories which address the topic, one based on speech act theory and the other on dynamic approaches to meaning. It explains and evaluates current research which uses the two theories, and identifies the most important insights which come out of each.

Sexual Harassment, Speech Acts, and Public Secrets in U.S. Higher Education

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Debenport
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Sexual Harassment ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Speech Act Theory ◽  
Discursive Space ◽  
Online Conversations ◽  
Survey Responses ◽  
Discursive Representations

This chapter draws on data from U.S. higher education to analyze the ways that the language used to describe sexual harassment secures its continued power. Focusing on two features viewed as definitional to sexual harassment, frequency and severity, the discussion analyzes three sets of online conversations about the disclosure of abuse in academia (a series of tweets, survey responses, and posts on a philosophy blog) from grammatical, pragmatic, and semiotic perspectives. Unlike most prior research, this chapter focuses on the language of victims rather than the intentions of harassers. The results suggest that speech act theory is unable to account fully for sexual harassment without accepting the relevance of perlocutionary effects. Using Gal and Irvine’s (2019) model of axes of differentiation, the chapter demonstrates how opposing discursive representations (of professors, sexual harassers, victims, and accusers) create a discursive space in which it becomes difficult for victims to report their harassers.

scholarly journals Uttering geographies: Speech acts, felicity conditions and modes of existence

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (6) ◽  
pp. 1124-1140
Author(s):  
Miles Ogborn
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Speech Act Theory ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Human Speech ◽  
Everyday Talk ◽  
Modes Of Existence

The geographies of speech has become stuck in a form of interpretation which considers the potentially infinite detail of spoken performances understood within their equally infinitely complex contexts. This paper offers a way forward by considering the uses, critiques and reworkings of J.L. Austin’s speech act theory by those who study everyday talk, by deconstructionists and critical theorists, and by Bruno Latour in his AIME (‘An Inquiry into Modes of Existence’) project. This offers a rethinking of speech acts in terms of power and space, and a series of ontological differentiations between forms of utterances and enunciations beyond human speech.

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