This Element outlines current issues in the study of speech acts. It starts with a brief outline of four waves of speech act theory, that is, the philosophical, the experimental, the corpus-based and the discursive approaches. It looks at some of the early experimental and corpus-based methods and discusses their more recent developments as a background to the most important trends in current speech act research. Discursive approaches shift the focus from single utterances to interaction and interactional sequences. Multimodal approaches show that the notion of 'speech act' needs to be extended in order to cover the multimodality of communicative acts. And diachronic approaches focus on the historicity of speech acts. The final section discusses some open issues and potential further developments of speech act research.
By:
Andreas H. Jucker (University of Zurich)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 4mm
Weight: 124g
ISBN: 9781009421492
ISBN 10: 1009421492
Series: Elements in Pragmatics
Pages: 76
Publication Date: 24 October 2024
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
1. Introduction: the philosophical foundations; 2. The empirical turn in speech act studies; 3. Corpus-based approaches; 4. 'Is that supposed to be an insult or a compliment?' Discursive approaches; 5. 'He gave an apologetic shrug': speech acts and multimodality; 6. 'O, cry you Mercy, sir; I have mistook': the diachronicity of speech acts; 7. Open issues and outlook; data sources, corpora and dictionary; References.
