scholarly journals Ideologie, ‘egte’ norme en literêre taalhandelinge

Literator ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 37-54
Author(s):  
M. Rossouw
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
South African ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Speech Act Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
African Community ◽  
Ethical Norms ◽  
Different Levels

For many years text-immanent approaches to literature have dominated the scene of Afrikaans literary criticism. This article adds a voice to the ‘spontaneous' discourse in which ethical norms (especially socio-political guidelines), too, come into play when a literary text is studied. Since the context in which a text is written and read is of great importance in such an approach, speech act theory is used in order to determine the intentions (illocutions) of the writer in the texts, as well as the reactions (perlocutions) of readers to the text. The purpose of this is mainly to establish whether critique of ideology manifests itself in speech acts directed towards freedom and dignity for all people. On the other hand there may also be signs of unconscious ideological illocutions in the contradictions which occur within or between the different levels of communication (macro, meso and micro). These contradictions are related to socio-political contradictions which are repressed within the South African community. In order to illustrate this kind of approach, three novels of Etienne van Heerden are discussed, viz. Om te awol (1984), Toorberg (1986) and Casspirs en Campari's (1991).

scholarly journals A Pragma-Stylistic Study of Some Selected Fantasy Novels

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 516
Author(s):  
Dunya Muhammed Miqdad I'jam ◽  
Zahraa Kareem Ghannam Farhan Al-Mamouri
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Speech Act Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Conversational Implicature ◽  
Fantasy Novels ◽  
Figure Of Speech ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Way

The present study tries to investigate the field of pragma-stylistics in literary text in general, and fantasy novels in particular. Therefore, it tries to attest how pragmatic theories are employed stylistically to achieve the aims of the literary writers and to reflect their perceptions. The present study tries to achieve the following aims: Specifying the most dominant categories of speech acts used by characters and the narrator in the two novels to achieve some stylistic effects. Showing how the non-observance of the maxim yield effects on the two levels of interaction, and presenting the most dominant non-observed maxim in the selected fantasy novels. Clarifying the way the difference in the writing period of each novel can affect the readers pragmatically and stylistically through finding out what is the most dominant figure of speech at the character-character level as well as the narrator-reader level of interaction and whether they are employed stylistically or not. The present study is limited to two theories of pragmatics: speech act theory and Grice maxims. And the data of the analysis is limited to the children’s fantasy novels, one is written in the 1950’s, the other in 2000’s. After analysing the data, it is concluded that the most dominant SA that is used is the representative SA. Flouting the maxims yield effects on the two levels of interaction, generating conversational implicature. Finally, the difference in the writing period of each novel affect the readers pragmatically and stylistically through finding out the most dominant figure of speech, which is irony, at the character-character and the narrator-reader level of interaction.

Speech acts and conversational sequencing

1994 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Brassac
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Speech Act Theory ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Conversational Analysis ◽  
Conversational Interactions ◽  
The One

The question of the use of speech act theory in accounting for conversational sequencing is discussed from the point of view of the explanation of linguistic interaction. On the one hand, this question lies at the heart of the opposition between conversational analysis and discourse analysis. On the other, it dominates the discussion around a text by Searle called "Conversation". After summarizing what is at stake in the debate, I focus on the positions of two authors, Dascal and Van Rees, who favor the idea of a possible (and necessary) combination of illocutionary logic and the analysis of conversational interactions. My own position consists in taking into account the new elements that have recently enriched illocutionary logic (particularly the integration of perlocution through the notion of satisfaction conditions) within the framework of an essentially dialogical position. The proposed approach is in agreement with the theses of these two authors and complements them with elements that satisfy their demands.

Linguistic Evidentials and the Law of Hearsay

2021 ◽  
pp. 157-168
Author(s):  
Lawrence M. Solan
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Speech Act Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Legal Evidence ◽  
The Law ◽  
John Langshaw Austin ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores the relationship between how natural language expresses degrees of certainty in the truth of an assertion on the one hand, and how the law handles this issue on the other. This discussion focuses, in particular, on the hearsay doctrine and on the linguistic elements identified as “evidentials:” expressions that include information about how speakers came to know the assertions they make. The hearsay rule bars certain kinds of speech acts from serving as legal evidence, in particular, assertions that report what another person earlier said, and which are offered to express the truth about the events at issue in a case. The author links the law governing hearsay in terms of speech act theory, a connection also drawn by the philosopher John Langshaw Austin, who observed that statements offered to prove the fact of the speech act rather than the truth of the matter asserted are admissible.

scholarly journals EMOTIVE SPEECH ACTS AND THEIR DISCOURSE MODIFICATIONS IN THE LITERARY TEXT

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Svitlana Zhabotynska ◽  
Nataliia Slyvka
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
The Other ◽  
Expressive Speech ◽  
Linguistic Pragmatics ◽  
Cognitive Operations ◽  
Cognitive Semantic ◽  
Regular Patterns

This article focuses on three related theoretical problems: classification of expressive speech acts that till present remains a highly disputable issue of linguistic pragmatics, specificity of emotives as a type of expressives, and the patterns of emotives’ modifications in the current discourse space as it is represented in the literary text. The authors suggest a classification of expressive speech acts built at the intersection of the cognitive (semantic), communicative and semiotic planes that demonstrate distinctions between the classes of behavitives and emotives and between their sub-classes. It is further presumed that emotives, when used in discourse, get modified in accordance with regular patterns compatible with the cognitive operations of elaboration, extension, questioning, and combining described in different cognitive linguistic conceptions. This presumption is confirmed via analysis of positive emotives portrayed in the literary text which, besides the character’s speech proper, describes the other discourse aspects relevant for the illocutionary meaning of a speech act. The patterns of discourse modifications exhibited by positive emotives as a congeneric sub-class are considered to be relevant for the other sub-classes of emotives – negative, bi-polar and ambivalent.

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.

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.

scholarly journals An Analysis of Speech Acts in the Inaugural Address of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as the President of the Republic of Ghana on January 7, 2021

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
John Demuyakor
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Speech Act Theory ◽  
Inaugural Address ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Qualitative Research Design ◽  
The Republic

Speech acts as an important element during communication, because it explains the thoughts of the speaker(s). A speech act is more about what is performed when uttering words and not about individual words or sentences that are known to form the basic elements of human communication. An attempt to do something through speaking is what is known as a speech act and a lot of things can be done through speaking. A speech act is studied under speech act theory and is found in the domain of pragmatics. Using a qualitative research design, the key objective of this study is to analyze the types of speech acts adopted in the inaugural address of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo- Addo as the President of the Republic of Ghana for his second term on the 7th January 2021. This study analyzed the Inaugural Address using Searle’s theory of speech act as a theoretical framework with emphasis on Searle’s five categories of speech act. The study showed that out of a total of 74 locutionary / Statements in the inaugural address,assertive acts are 40.5% of the utterances, commissive acts are 25.6%, while directive, expressive and declarative have small portions, of 13.5%, 12.2%, and 8.2% respectively.

scholarly journals Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet Edward II

2003 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boldizsár Fejérvári
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
The Real ◽  
Edward Ii

It is a common fashion in literary criticism, or 'Lit Crit,' to treat reality, human behaviour, communication, and everything else as though they were 'texts to be read.' This paper proposes to go the other way: it interprets literature (or, more precisely, one literary text, Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead) as a part of reality in which several other layers of the real combine, such as linguistics, science, or other literary texts, most notably Hamlet. While Edward II is not generally considered a direct source for Stoppard's play, this paper shows how, in the wider perspective of 'interreality,' Marlowe's tragedy might interact with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. At the same time it is proved that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, contrary to the critical conception of many, is not a parasitic work 'feeding off' Elizabethan playwrights, but a play that enters a symbiotic relationship with its host (as defined by Hillis Miller).

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