语言学 间接言语行为分析与应用

An Analysis and Application of Indirect Speech Acts

Sun He

孙和

Class 2, Grade 2012

No. 312045108012

The School of Foreign Language

China West Normal University

A Paper for General Linguistics

Dec., 2012

An Analysis and Application of Indirect Speech Acts

Abstract:

Searle’s most important contribution to speech acts theory is that he is the first one who puts forward indirect acts theory(ISA). This paper mainly focuses on that indirect speech acts can present the mutual social distance, show the evasion of some subtle problems and indirect speech acts are some linguistic skills which can reach certain purposes in communication. At the end of this paper, I will talk about the enlightenment of indirect speech acts in English teaching and talk about what we should do to solve these problems.

Key Words: pragmatic function, indirect speech acts, utterance, English teaching

1.Introduction

Speech act is a technical term in linguistics and the philosophy of language. The contemporary use of the term goes back to J. L. Austin's discovery of performative utterances and his theory of locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts. Speech acts are commonly taken to include such acts as promising, ordering, greeting, warning, inviting and congratulating. Among the speech acts there are direct and indirect acts. The indirect acts is a roundabout way of talking. That is to say, people do not express their thoughts in a direct way but through indirect or euphemistic ways to fulfill their purpose in communication. The indirect of language appears when there is an inconformity between the literal meaning and the implication message. Speech act theorist Searle puts up indirect speech act theory to express the indirective of language based on the speech act theory itself. And he defines an indirect speech act is a speech act performed indirectly by performing another speech act.

Searle has divided the indirect speech act into indirect speech acts and non-conventional indirect speech act. The former is implicit content according to the sentence syntactic form, word itself with the conventional meaning to decide. According to the habit can immediately infer indirect " illocutionary force "

( meaning ), can be used to explain the idiom theory.The latter rely mainly on both sides of the known information and speak in context to infer the "illocutionary force", can push theory to explain.

2. Development of indirect speech acts

Searle is the man who offered the idea of indirect speech acts, but out of a lot of reasons such as philosophy foundation, research limitation and so forth, his study in indirect speech acts has not goes so deep. Later on, another speech acts theorist Grice started his journey to research for the detail of indirect speech acts theories.

Grice, wants to explain the phenomenon of indirect speech through the "conversational implication (conventional implication), he thinks, in all communication, in order to achieve specific objectives, there exists the Conversational Cooperative Principle between the speaker and hearer ( cooperative principle ). These principles are embodied in four maxims: the maxim of quantity, provide the required for information, but also not too little; quality standards, not to mention the lack of evidence, or that are false words; association rule, not to say and speak to unrelated words (i.e. one); attitude maxim, avoid ambiguity, ready to accept either course or wordy words, language should be organized. However, when it comes to be in actual conversation, out of social needs, people often purposefully violates some cooperation principle.For example, to speak in order to conceal the truth lies, is not obedient. More people sometimes violates a principle to make the person feels to achieve certain effects or suggesting something, then it means obedient person that he called " conversational implication ". No doubt, " conversational implicature " is an important expression of indirect speech.

Recent years, the topic of indirect speech acts has won a lot of attention. For example, in asking if a person can open a window, the speaker can indirectly request the person to open the window.

2.1 Can you open the window?

Sentence 2.1 is an interrogative sentence. It can be said to have two meanings. First, the literal, direct meaning of sentence 2.1 is reflected in interrogative sentence type. The second meaning of the sentence is an additional, indirect meaning which is a