Speech Acts, Criteria and Intentions
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A Cross-Cultural and Pragmatic Study of Felicity Conditions in the Same-Sex Marriage Discourse
Journal of Foreign Languages, Cultures and Civilizations June 2016, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 58-72 ISSN 2333-5882 (Print) 2333-5890 (Online) Copyright © The Author(s). All Rights Reserved. Published by American Research Institute for Policy Development DOI: 10.15640/jflcc.v4n1a7 URL: https://doi.org/10.15640/jflcc.v4n1a7 A Cross-Cultural and Pragmatic Study of Felicity Conditions in the Same-Sex Marriage Discourse Hashim Aliwy Mohammed Al-Husseini1 & Ghayth K. Shaker Al-Shaibani2 Abstract This paper investigates whether there are Felicity Conditions (FCs) for the same-sex marriage as being a contemporary practice of marriage relations in some countries. As such, the researchers adopt Austin’s (1962) Felicity Conditions (FCs) to examine if conditions of satisfaction are applicable to the same-sex marriage in Christian and Islamic cultures. The researchers focus on analysing and discussing the social, religious, and linguistic conventional procedures of the speech acts of marriage, specifically in the same-sex marriage discourse. We find out that same-sex marriage in Christianity is totally different from the traditional marriage with regard to the social, religious, and linguistic conventions. Consequently, we concluded that same-sex marriage discourse has no FCs in contrast to the traditional marriage in Christianity as well as marriage in Islam which has not changed in form and opposite sex marriage. Keyword: Felicity Conditions; homosexual relations; marriage speech acts; same-sex marriage discourse; conventional procedures 1. Introduction Trosborg (2010, p.3) stated that one can principally affirm that all pragmatic aspects, namely speech act theory and theory of politeness, may be liable to cross-cultural comparisons between two speech communities and/or two cultures. -
Performative Speech Act Verbs in Present Day English
PERFORMATIVE SPEECH ACT VERBS IN PRESENT DAY ENGLISH ELENA LÓPEZ ÁLVAREZ Universidad Complutense de Madrid RESUMEN. En esta contribución se estudian los actos performativos y su influencia en el inglés de hoy en día. A partir de las teorías de J. L. Austin, entre otros autores, se desarrolla un panorama de esta orientación de la filosofía del lenguaje de Austin. PALABRAS CLAVE. Actos performativos, enunciado performativo, inglés. ABSTRACT. This paper focuses on performative speech act verbs in present day English. Reading the theories of J. L. Austin, among others,. With the basis of authors as J. L. Austin, this paper develops a brief landscape about this orientation of Austin’s linguistic philosophy. KEY WORDS. Performative speech act verbs, performative utterance, English. 1. INTRODUCCIÓN 1.1. HISTORICAL THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1.1. The beginnings: J.L. Austin The origin of performative speech acts as we know them today dates back to the William James Lectures, the linguistic-philosophical theories devised and delivered by J.L. Austin at Harvard University in 1955, and collected into a series of lectures entitled How to do things with words, posthumously published in 1962. Austin was one of the most influential philosophers of his time. In these lectures, he provided a thorough exploration of performative speech acts, which was an extremely innovative area of study in those days. In the following pages, Austin’s main ideas (together with some comments by other authors) will be presented. 1.1.1.1. Constative – performative distinction In these lectures, Austin begins by making a clear distinction between constative and performative utterances. -
John Rogers Searle and His Contribution to Speech Act Theory
JOHN ROGERS SEARLE AND HIS CONTRIBUTION TO SPEECH ACT THEORY RANSHING PRATAP RAMDAS Ph. D. Research Scholar Department of English Dr. B.A. M.U. Aurangabad (MS) INDIA Pragmatics is the branch of linguistics which studies the meaning communicated through language. Pragmatics studies the process by which native users of a language use native language. Pragmatics studies the meaning in the context sentence is made. Pragmatics is the newer area of language study in linguists. The important development in the pragmatics is the origin of speech act theory. J. L. Austin is the originator of the Speech act theory. According to J. L. Austin all utterances are some type of speech act. People not only produce utterances to convey their feelings but also perform actions in between their speech. Even a simple utterance such as ‘Violets are blue’ might be regarded as a special type of act namely the act of making a statement. This overall approach to language study is known as ‘speech act theory’. INTRODUCTION John Rogers Searle He is born on 31 July 1932. He is an American Philosopher. He is widely noted for his contribution to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, social philosophy. Searle began his early college education at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. He received all his university degrees, B.A., M.A., and D. Phil from Oxford University. He held first position in a faculty. He has five honorary doctorate degrees from four different countries and is an honorary visiting professor. In 2000, he received the Jean Nicod Prize, in 2004 the National Humanities Medal and in 2006, the Mind and Brain Prize. -
Exclamatives, Normalcy Conditions and Common Ground
Revue de Sémantique et Pragmatique 40 | 2016 Exclamation et intersubjectivité Exclamatives, Normalcy Conditions and Common Ground Franz d’Avis Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/rsp/279 DOI: 10.4000/rsp.279 ISSN: 2610-4377 Publisher Presses universitaires d'Orléans Printed version Date of publication: 1 March 2017 Number of pages: 17-34 ISSN: 1285-4093 Electronic reference Franz d’Avis, « Exclamatives, Normalcy Conditions and Common Ground », Revue de Sémantique et Pragmatique [Online], 40 | 2016, Online since 01 March 2018, connection on 10 December 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/rsp/279 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/rsp.279 Revue de Sémantique et Pragmatique Revue de Sémantique et Pragmatique. 2016. Numéro 40. pp. 17-34. Exclamatives, Normalcy Conditions and Common Ground Franz d’Avis Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz 1. INTRODUCTION The starting point for the search for exclamative sentence types in a lan- guage is often the description of a certain function that utterances of sentences of that type would have. One formulation could be: With the use of an excla- mative sentence, a speaker expresses that the state of affairs described by a proposition given in the sentence is not in accordance with his expectations about the world.1 Exclamative utterances may include an emotional attitude on the part of the speaker, which is often described as surprise in the literature, cf. Altmann (1987, 1993a), Michaelis/Lambrecht (1996), d’Avis (2001), Michaelis (2001), Roguska (2008) and others. Surprise is an attitude that is based on the belief that something unexpected is the case, see from a psychological point of view Reisenzein (2000). -
Felicity Conditions for Counterfactual Conditionals Containing Proper
Counterfactuals in Context: Felicity conditions for counterfactual conditionals containing proper names William Robinson A thesis Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts University of Washington 2013 Committee: Toshiyuki Ogihara Barbara Citko Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Linguistics 2 ©Copyright 2013 William Robinson 3 University of Washington Abstract Counterfactuals in Context: Felicity conditions for counterfactual conditionals containing proper names William Robinson Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Toshiyuki Ogihara PhD Linguistics Linguistics This thesis provides felicity conditions for counterfactual conditionals containing proper names in which essential changes to an individual are counterfactually posited using contrastive focus in either the antecedent or consequent clause. The felicity conditions proposed are an adaptation of Heim’s (1992) CCP Semantics into Kratzer’s (1981) truth conditions for counterfactual conditionals in which the partition function f(w) serves as the local context of evaluation for the antecedent clause, while the set of worlds characterized by the antecedent serves as the local context for the consequent clause. In order for the felicity conditions to generate the right results, it is shown that they must be couched in a rigid designator/essentialist framework inspired by Kripke (1980). This correctly predicts that consequents containing rigid designators are infelicitous when their input context—the set of worlds accessible from the antecedent clause— does not contain a suitable referent. 4 Introduction We use counterfactual conditionals like (1a-b) to make claims about the “ways things could have been,” not about the way things actually are1 (Lewis 1973, p.84). The antecedent clause of a counterfactual conditional posits a change to the actual world from which the consequent clause would/might follow. -
Rutgers Semantics Workshop
THE DETERMINATION OF CONTENT Zoltán Gendler Szabó Yale University Abstract: I identify a notion of compositionality at the intersection of the different notions philosophers, linguists, and psychologists are concerned with. The notion is compositionality of expression content: the idea that the content of a complex expression in a context of its utterance is determined by its syntactic structure and the contents of its constituents in the contexts of their respective utterances. Traditional arguments from productivity and systematicity cannot establish that the contents of linguistic expressions are compositionally determined in this sense. I present a novel argument for this thesis based on plausible premises about literal use and a detailed defense of the compositionality of speech-act content. Jerry Fodor writes: “So non-negotiable is compositionality that I’m not even going to tell you what it is.”1 He has a point. Some sort of compositionality is beyond dispute: there must be a recursive mechanism underlying linguistic competence. At the same time, it has proven exceedingly difficult to state the principle precisely without falling into triviality or falsehood. Despite this, I think we should keep trying. The need for clarity is underlined by the fact that in the paper which contains the quote above, Fodor actually argues against the compositionality of natural language. He does so in order to argue for the compositionality of human thought. He reasons as follows: either thought or language must be compositional, and if language isn’t thought must be. This, in turn is supposed to show that thought is explanatorily prior to language: for whichever of the two is compositional must be what is meaningful in the first place. -
324 10 2 Pragmatics I New Shorter
Speaker’s Meaning, Speech Acts, Topic and Focus, Questions Read: Portner: 24-25,190-198 LING 324 1 Sentence vs. Utterance • Sentence: a unit of language that is syntactically well-formed and can stand alone in discourse as an autonomous linguistic unit, and has a compositionally derived meaning: – A sentence consists of a subject and a predicate: S NP VP. – [[ [NP VP] ]]M,g = 1 iff [[NP]]M,g ∈ [[VP]]M,g • Utterance: The occurrence (use) of a sentence (or possibly smaller constituent that can stand alone) at a given time. • Bill: Sue is coming. Jane: Yes, Sue is coming. – Two utterances of the same sentence. Same meaning. • Bill: “I am tired.” Jane: “ I am tired, too” – Two utterances of the same sentence. Two different meanings. • Semantics studies the meaning of sentences; pragmatics studies the meaning of utterances. LING 324 2 Semantic Meaning vs. Speaker Meaning • A: Most of the people here seem pretty glum. • B: Not everybody. The man drinking champagne is happy. • A: Where? • B: That guy! (pointing) • A: He’s not drinking champagne. He’s drinking sparkling water. The only person drinking champagne is crying on the couch. See? • B: Well, what I meant was that the first guy is happy. [c.f. Donnellan 1966, Kripke 1977] LING 324 3 • The semantic (or expression) meaning of a sentence (or a smaller constituent) is its literal meaning, based on what the words individually mean and the grammar of the language. • The speaker’s meaning of a sentence is what the speaker intends to communicate by uttering it. • These often coincide, but can diverge. -
What Is a Speech Act? 1 2
WHAT IS A SPEECH ACT? 1 2 What is a Speech Act? John Searle I. Introduction n a typical speech situation involving a speaker, a hearer, and an utterance by the speaker, there are many kinds of acts associated with Ithe speaker’s utterance. The speaker will characteristically have moved his jaw and tongue and made noises. In addition, he will characteristically have performed some acts within the class which includes informing or irritating or boring his hearers; he will further characteristically have performed acts within the class which includes referring to Kennedy or Khrushchev or the North Pole; and he will also have performed acts within the class which includes making statements, asking questions, issuing commands, giving reports, greeting, and warning. The members of this last class are what Austin1 called illocutionary acts and it is with this class that I shall be concerned in this paper, so the paper might have been called ‘What is an Illocutionary Act?’ I do not attempt to defi ne the expression ‘illocutionary act’, although if my analysis of a particular illocutionary act succeeds it may provide the basis for a defi nition. Some of the English verbs and verb phrases associated with illocutionary acts are: state, assert, describe, warn, remark, comment, command, order, request, criticize, apologize, censure, approve, welcome, promise, express approval, and express regret. Austin claimed that there were over a thousand such expressions in English. By way of introduction, perhaps I can say why I think it is of interest and importance in the philosophy of language to study speech acts, or, as they are sometimes called, language acts or linguistic acts. -
Constructional Meaning and Compositionality
Constructional Meaning and Compositionality Paul Kay International Computer Science Institute and Department of Linguistics University of California, Berkeley 5 Laura A. Michaelis Department of Linguistics and Institute of Cognitive Science University of Colorado Boulder Contents 10 1. Constructions and compositionality 2. Continuum of idiomaticity 3. Kinds of constructional meanings 4. Model-theoretic and truth-conditional meaning 5. Argument structure 15 6. Metalinguistic constructions 7. Less commonly recognized illocutionary forces 8. Conventional implicature, or pragmatic presupposition 9. Information flow 10. Conclusion 20 11. References Abstract One of the major motivations for constructional approaches to grammar is that a given rule of syntactic formation can sometimes, in fact often, be associated with more than one semantic 25 specification. For example, a pair of expressions like purple plum and alleged thief call on different rules of semantic combination. The first involves something closely related to intersection of sets: a purple plum is a member of the set of purple things and a member of the set of plums. But an alleged thief is not a member of the intersection of the set of thieves and the set of alleged things. Indeed, that intersection is empty, since only a proposition 30 can be alleged and a thief, whether by deed or attribution, is never a proposition. This chapter describes the various ways meanings may be assembled in a construction-based grammar. 1. Constructions and compositionality 35 It is sometimes supposed that constructional approaches are opposed to compositional semantics. This happens to be an incorrect supposition, but it is instructive to consider why it exists. -
Graduate Courses » Spring 2009
Graduate Courses » Spring 2009 525 Philosophical Analysis: Speech Act Theory Section Day Time Instructor Room Reg Number KEA Tuesdays 1:00-2:50 PM John Kearns Park 141 159204 Although it may be possible to trace a concern with language and acts of using language to philosophers in earlier periods, and in non-English-speaking countries, we will understand speech act theory to have originated in the mid- twentieth century, primarily among English-language philosophers. We‟ll look at the problems, and the phenomena, to which speech act theory is a response. And we will consider the theories articulated and developed by J L Austin and John Searle, both to gain an understanding of these theories, and to determine how well they address the problems and capture the phenomena. We will also consider other, more recent, discussions of speech acts and of their importance for understanding language and its use. 528 Philosophy of Language Section Day Time Instructor Room Reg Number MCG Tuesdays 4:00-5:50 PM Michael McGlone Park 141 275943 This seminar will focus on propositional-attitude-ascribing sentences—e.g., „Copernicus believed that the planetary orbits were circles‟ and „George IV wished to know whether Scott was the author of Waverly‟—certain puzzles regarding such sentences, and the manner in which these puzzles are related to issues concerning the semantics of singular terms and the foundations of semantic theorizing. There will be two parts to the course. The first part will focus on historically significant discussions of attitude-ascribing sentences and related issues. Our first focus will be Gottlob Frege‟s (1889) views regarding such sentences, the nature of propositions, and the nature of semantics. -
Japanese Modality
Japanese modality - Possibility and necessity: prioritizing, epistemic, and dynamic Magdalena Kaufmann and Sanae Tamura Preliminary draft of chapter 13 for The Handbook of Japanese Semantics and Pragmatics, ed. by Wesley Jacobsen and Yukinori Takubo; Moulton de Gruyter. Version: Jan 30, 2017. Comments most welcome to [email protected] or santamura@gmailcom. Please don’t cite without checking for newer versions. 1 Introducing ‘modality’ One of the most fascinating properties that set apart human languages from other systems of com- munication is their sheer unlimited capacity to abstract away from the actual situation, generally referred to as displacement. Displacement along the temporal dimension allows speakers to talk about circumstances and events obtaining at different times and to relate them to their actual now (see Chapter III.2). Displacement along the modal dimension allows speakers to talk about circum- stances and events that need not be part of the actual course of events at all. For this, languages use content words (like belief or seek), morphological marking (like the Romance subjunctives), func- tional words (like the English modal auxiliaries), as well as complex constructions. ‘Modality’ can then be defined as the category of grammatical devices that serve to express displacement along the modal dimension. In the following, we will build on this understanding to present an overview over the relevant expressions and constructions in contemporary Japanese. While relatively standard in current formal semantic theories (cf. Portner 2009, Hacquard 2011), our understanding of modality is largely orthogonal to the tradition in Japanese linguistics and func- tional or cognitive approaches in Western linguistics (see Larm 2006; Narrog 2012 for recent overviews in English). -
A Pragmatic Analysis of Speech Act of Requests Expressed by the Characters in Office Space a Thesis
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Lumbung Pustaka UNY (UNY Repository) A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF SPEECH ACT OF REQUESTS EXPRESSED BY THE CHARACTERS IN OFFICE SPACE A THESIS Presented as a Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Attainment of a Sarjana Sastra Degree in English Language and Literature By: Mochamad Rifki Fahrurrozi 10211144026 ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE STUDY PROGRAM ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ARTS YOGYAKARTA STATE UNIVERSITY 2015 DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to: My beloved mother and father without whom none of the successes over the last 5 years would have been possible ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Alhamdulillah, all praise be to Allah SWT, the Almighty. Without Him, I would not have completed this thesis writing. I would like to give my deepest thanks to: 1. Drs. Suhaini Muhammad Saleh, M.A., my first supervisor, and Paulus Kurnianta, M.Hum., my second supervisor, for their guidance, support, suggestions, as well as valuable understanding in this thesis completion; 2. Donald J. Nababan, S.S., M.Hum., my academic supervisor, for his guidance during my study in the university; 3. my parents, Pak Sumarjono and Bu Lasmini, for everything they have given to me, for their everlasting love and support, so I can finish this thesis; 4. my two sisters: Mbak Rina and Fitri, my brother-in law, Mas Nur, and my uncle, Mas Tri, for their support and encouragement; 5. all my friends in Kay Ramen, Bobi Tei and Sunrise restaurant: Mas Burhan, Mbak Nana, Tiara, Kotrek, Popo, Dwi, Fian, Doni, Nadia, for their motivation and memories; 6.