Utterance Act Linguistics (UAL)

chapter 1 Utterance Act Linguistics (UAL) Introduction Since Ferdinand de Saussure carried out his seminal work, French linguistics has developed along its own particular course. Saussure’s direct successor, Charles Bally, laid down the foundations of what French linguists today call la linguistique de l’énonciation, since its pivotal point is the énonciation, i.e. the utterance act (including the illocutionary acts) and all the words and construc- tions encoding instructions for the performance of these acts. This concept of énonciation does not exist as such in English linguistics. In his book on semantics, John Lyons (1977) noted this particularity, and suggested a translation of the French term into English: Now the term ‘utterance’ (unlike, for example, the French ‘énonciation’ and ‘énoncé’) is ambiguous in that it may refer to a piece of behaviour (an act of uttering: French: ‘énonciation’) as well as to the vocal signal which is a product of that behaviour (French ‘énoncé’). (p. 26) Following Lyons, I propose to introduce the new term utterance act linguistics.1 Utterance act linguistics (henceforth UA linguistics) has provided the framework for much linguistic theorising. In this chapter, I first give a brief histori- cal survey of UA linguistics, and then introduce the six utterance act theories which, in my view, have had the greatest influence on French linguistics. This leads me to a discussion of the basic terminology and the conceptual back- ground of UA linguistics in general and of my own approach to polyphony in particular. 1 In the few introductions in English that exist, the French term Linguistique de l’énonciation has been translated as Enunciation linguistics (e.g. Marnette, 2005; Nølke, 2007a). It seems to me, however, that Lyons’ ‘translation’ is to be preferred. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��7 | doi ��.��63/978900434�53�_003 6 chapter 1 1 Short History and General Characteristics 1.1 Origins UA linguistics has its roots in Saussure’s work, but it was Bally who introduced the construction of the utterance act as a topic in linguistic studies. In his Linguistique générale et linguistique française (1932) he takes up the medieval distinction between MODUS and DICTUM and anchors it in the linguistic form. He shows how different structures which are typically associated with speech can be marked in the language system. They are, as we would put it today, coded in the language. Thus, in the following two simple sentences (1) and (2): (1) Peter thinks that Mary will come back tomorrow. (2) Hopefully, Mary will come back tomorrow. MODUS is exemplified by Peter thinks and Hopefully respectively, and DICTUM by Mary will come back tomorrow. Since MODUS involves discourse participants—in this case Peter in (1) and the speaker in (2)—it is a kind of pragmatic element. Indeed, from the very beginning, the delicate distinction between semantics and pragmatics, which has given rise to so much debate in Anglo-Saxon linguistics, has never really existed in UA linguistics, and within this framework discussions about the semantics-pragmatics interface do not make much sense. 1.2 Émile Benveniste If UA linguistics can thus be traced back to Bally’s work, it was his successor Émile Benveniste who developed it into a genuine linguistic theory in his 1966 book Problèmes de linguistique générale. He gave the fifth chapter the reveal- ing title of ‘L’homme dans la langue’ (Man in language). Benveniste preserves Saussure’s methodological distinction between langue and parole, where langue is the theoretical object, but in a manner of speaking he reverses the analytical approach. While Saussure argues that the theoretical object (langue) can in no way allude to the utterance act—it is a code understood as a correspondence between the phonetic reality and the psychological reality that it expresses— Benveniste claims that this ‘code’ incorporates indications as to the utterance act as a constitutive element. According to Benveniste, it contains a general description and a classification of the different possible discourse situations as well as instructions for linguistic behaviour, i.e. specifications of certain types of interpersonal acts that the speaker might carry out by using the code. The code is thus no longer (directly) concerned with psychological, notional or referential content but (directly) with the act of producing speech..

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