Lingua inglese III

Lingua inglese III

1) Define the speech act, notion by Austin or Searle

A speech act is an act that a speaker performs when making an utterance, which has a performative function. Austin’s theory is based on locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts; the first level of analysis, the locutionary act, is the act of saying something; the illocutionary act is a way of using language (in saying) and it corresponds to a function such as orders, requests, challenges. The perlocutionary act corresponds to the effects and consequences on the locutor (by saying).

Locution → words

Illocution → function

Perlocutions → effect on the locutor

“Can I remind you that we were supposed to meet for dinner at 8?” → locution

Illocution → asking, reminding, accusing, informing, reproaching (different illocutions of the same locution)

In addition to this, according to Austin, there are five classifications of illocutionary acts:

• Verdictives (this class includes acts of describing, assessing, estimating)
• Exercitives (it includes appointing, ordering, advising, warning)
• Commiseves (promising, betting)
• Behabitives (apologizing, thanking, congratulating)
• Expositives (arguing, denying, asking)

Searle developed speech act theory as a theory of the constitutive rules for performing illocutionary acts; there are five categories of speech acts:

• Declaratives (such as stating): “I resign”; “I baptise this boy Mark Green”
• Representatives (describing): “You look tired”
• Directives (giving orders or advice): “Please leave the room”
• Commissives (promising): “I bet”
• Expressives (emotions)

2) What are the defining features of a performative verb?

A performative verb is a verb that explicitly conveys the kind of speech act being performed, that is to say, it names an action that is performed by saying something, for example, “to promise” or “to recommend”; it is usually in the simple present active and in the first person, but exceptions are “smoking is forbidden”. When you say a word you do the action the word describes.

Ex. admit, advise, order, guarantee, suggest.

Austin gives the following characteristics of performative utterances:

• They belong to the grammatical category of statements
• They occur in the first person singular present active
• They do not describe anything
• They cannot be true or false
• They carry out the act named by the verb

3) Which utterances include an explicit performative verb?

Explicit performative verbs are those whose illocutionary force is made explicit by the verbs appearing in them (promise, order).

Primary utterance: “I shall be there”

Explicit performative: “I promise that I shall be there” (the promise is explicit)

• Name, pronounce, promise, guarantee, apologize, admit, confess, thank, request, beg, suggest, remind, recommend, approve, permit, advise, order, sentence, declare, deny, forbid, predict, warn, do

I – She regrets leaving school

II – I hate you

III – John suggested contacting Bryan when he was in London

IV – I promise I will try to meet the deadline

V – The president declared the meeting open

4) What are the semantic presuppositions of a) and b)? What are they triggered by?

Presuppositions are inferences about what is assumed to be true in the utterance rather than directly asserted to be true; a necessary precondition for the sentence to be true (sentence oriented); anything the speaker assumes to be true (speaker oriented).

There are 10 kinds:

• Existential: a sentence presupposes that something else exists or did exist → triggered by definite noun phrases
• Possessive: triggered by possessive expressions Ex. “Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as evidence of your character”
• Change of state verbs:
  • Stopped, continued, finishes → A had been doing X
  • Started, began → A had not been doing X
  • Left → A was at/with Y
  • Arrived → A was not at Y before
• Factive verbs: clause introduces contains truth or fact - regret, realize, be aware, be sorry, be proud
• Counterfactual Ex. “If I had done x, y wouldn’t have happened” → A did not do X Triggered by the past perfect tense
• Implicative - manage, forget to X happened to Y
• Temporal: triggered by temporal clauses introduced by subordinating conjunctions - before, since, when → X happened
• Cleft construction It wasn’t A who did X → someone else did X
• Comparison and contrast
• Non-restricting, non-defining relative clauses

Entailments are sentences which are automatically true if the original sentence is true; all you need is linguistic knowledge. They are inferences that can be drawn solely from our knowledge about the semantic relationship in a language. The entailments of a sentence can be regarded as those propositions that can be inferred in any context.

Ex. “The painters broke the window”

• Entailment 1 → someone broke the window
• Entailment 2 → the painter did something to the window
• Entailment 3 → the painter broke something

Entailments vs Presuppositions: Presuppositions survive negation and remain constant in interrogative constructions; entailments do not.

a) George didn’t realize that she was ill: factive verb, the introduced clause contains truth or fact “she was ill”. The presupposition is triggered by “didn’t realize”.

b) Jane was on a diet when she got pregnant: temporal. Triggered by temporal clauses introduced by subordinating conjunctions.

5) What are the implicatures in the following exchanges? What maxims are flouted?

Conversational implicatures depend on the context; they are a kind of inference. Speakers cooperate to achieve a shared meaning for utterances. It is inferred from an utterance but it is not a condition for the truth of the utterance; it refers to what is suggested in an utterance, even if neither is expressed nor strictly implied.

They are implications derived on the basis of assumptions. Maxims are flouted when the speakers do not observe them intentionally, but expect hearers to understand correctly, therefore speakers remain cooperative. Implicatures can arise from deliberately flouting/breaking the maxims → speakers can produce implicatures in two ways: observance and non-observance of the maxims.