Speech acts

The notion ‘delocutive derivation’ was introduced by Emile Benveniste (1902–1976) in a paper published in 1958. It appears to have gone unnoticed at the time. However, when the article was reissued in Benveniste’s Problèmes de linguistique générale (1966), things seem to have changed dramatically, in particular in 1972, when Ducrot made a connection between ‘delocutivity’ and ‘performativity’ (e.g., promettre = dire je promets), leading in 1975 delocutivity back to the side of a semantic reinterpretation (e.g., je trouve que). Subsequently, Cornulier (1976) introduced the concept of ‘autodelocutivity’ and Anscombre, in a series of articles from the late 1970s and early 1980s, attempted a theorization of this notion. Since then, the subject fell into oblivion. The object of the present paper is twofold: 1) It tries to understand the cometic rise of a notion on the linguistic horizon; 2) to demonstrate that notion ‘delocutive derivation’ is a fundamental mechanism that linguistics, both synchronic and diachronic, would make a mistake in ignoring, to the effect that its ‘enunciative’ specificity masks a much more general mechanism, namely, that of natural metalanguage, and beyond, that of metonymy.

Elsewhere I tried to show that Nietzsche has a Humean solution to “Is vs. Ought” problem (Demirel, 2019). His notion of causality as free will is Humean causality, viz., habit; his picture of the mind is epiphenomenal,  with clear Humean traces as he rejected noumenal self and “I” as a given; he takes “Is” to be type-facts, facts about what character one is, and “Ought” to be the second-nature of human beings as build upon the type-facts. And the communal feeling of a natural being, viz. feeling of responsibility given the causality of free will, links “Is” with “Ought” just as Mounce claimed Hume meant them to do.

Political language is overtly different in intention and context from any other language use. The current paper aims at examining contextually and intentionally the current president of Zimbabwe, Commander Dambudzo’s speech. It draws on the speech act theory as propounded by Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) to analyse the utterances produced by the politician to his people in order to decode the messages conveyed. In the main, the results unveil that such intentions as thanking, instructing, commanding, requesting, etc; cover the entire speech of the president and therefore, fit with the context in which it is delivered.

This study aimed to describe the use of speech acts in the form of locutionary acts, illocutionary acts, perlocutionary acts, and expressive speech acts used by foreign learners in the learning process of Indonesian Language for Foreigners (BIPA). This research used descriptive qualitative method. The subject of this research was a Polish student who had been joining Darmasiswa Program at UPT Bahasa, Universitas Sebelas Maret. The technique of collecting data was by using free-listening-participating-speaking (SBLC). The technique of analyzing data was by using the interactive model. The interactive model used in this research was the extralingual interactive model. The results showed that there were types of locutionary acts, illocutionary acts, perlocutionary acts, and functions of expressive speech acts consisting of Abstrak Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mendeskripsikan penggunaan tindak tutur berupa tindak tutur lokusi, ilokusi, perlokusi, dan tuturan ekspresif yang digunakan pemelajar asing dalam proses pembelajaran Bahasa Indonesia bagi Penutur Asing (BIPA). Metode yang digunakan adalah deskriptif kualitatif. Subjek dalam penelitian ini adalah mahasiswa asing asal Polandia yang sedang mengikuti program Darmasiswa di UPT Bahasa Universitas Sebelas Maret. Teknik pengumpulan data adalah teknik perekaman dengan metode simak bebas libat cakap (SBLC). Analisis data menggunakan metode padan ekstralingual. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa terdapat jenis-jenis tindak tutur lokusi, ilokusi, perlokusi dan fungsi tuturan ekspresifnya yang terdiri dari tuturan ekspresif mengucapkan selamat, terima kasih, mengkritik, mengeluh, memuji, meminta maaf, menawarkan, serta memotivasi. Kata Kunci/frase: tindak tutur, tuturan ekspresif, BIPA

Since the 18th c., the Danish indirect object (IO) has undergone a narrowing of its semantic potential, and Heltoft (2014) claims that free, non-governed IOs (FIOs) are no longer possible in present-day Danish. The paper presents an empirical test of this claim based on data from the LANCHART corpus of spoken Danish. The corpus findings suggest prima facie that the FIO construction is indeed no longer an option. However, the paper shows that the very few FIOs found in the corpus call for an analysis of pragmatic preconditions. It is suggested that the FIO presupposes aspects of regulative speech acts, which are rarely found in the text types of the LANCHART corpus, and the paper points out methodical problems in quantitatively oriented corpus-based assessments of grammatical systems.

How should we undertand the role of norms—especially epistemic norms—governing assertive speech acts? Mitchell Green (2009) has argued that these norms play the role of handicaps in the technical sense from the animal signals literature. As handicaps, they then play a large role in explaining the reliability—and so the stability (the continued prevalence)—of assertive speech acts. But though norms of assertion conceived of as social norms do indeed play this stabilizing role, these norms are best understood as deterrents and not as handicaps. This paper explains the stability problem for the maintenance of animal signals, and so human communication, for we are animals too, after all; the mechanics of the handicap principle; the role of deterrents and punishments as an alternative mechanism; and the role of social norms governing assertion for the case of human communication.

Smart speakers such as the Google Home and the Amazon Echo have recently become popular internet-connected consumer devices. They have the seemingly magical capacity to hear user 'invocations' and provide intelligent responses in natural language. They answer users' calls with facts, calculations, recipes, news, music, scripted chit chat and even turn the lights on. This paper analyses and categorises popular smart speaker commands and extends Austin (1962) and Searle's (1976) analysis and classifications of speech acts to develop a typology of invocationary acts. Analysing this array of acts helps to evaluate the significance and implications of this new media form.

In diesem Text untersuche ich die Bedeutung des gehäuften Aufkommens und der wachsenden Salonfähigkeit von Hate Speech in der demokratischen politischen Debatte der letzten Jahre.  Ich stelle die These auf, dass dies weder einfach als Zerfall von Sitten zu werten sei, wenn PolitikerInnen in demokratischen Staaten Hate Speech einsetzen, noch eine befreiende Erweiterung von Meinungsfreiheit in Folge von Enttabuisierungsprozessen darstelle und genauso wenig die Erhärtung der Fronten des politischen Kampfes wiederspiegele (Letzteres ist eher Ergebnis nicht Ursache von Hate Speech). Wie im Titel steht, ist es nicht Hass, der spricht, wenn Hate Speech als Mittel der Politik eingesetzt wird, sondern eine in Institutionen sedimentierte Tradition.
Hate Speech ist vielmehr Teil der Konstitution einer umfassenden ideologischen Formation und Veränderung demokratischer Diskurse, in der eine Reihe von Begriffen eine neue Bedeutung erhalten und neue Sinnzusammenhänge herstellen, und in der Hate Speech als demokratische Praxis legitimiert wird.

Proposing a revised semantics of Iatridou & Tatevosov's (2016) 'our even'. 'Our even' is an instance of even where it scopes over entire questions. I raise challenges for the current account, and suggest an updated one, which addresses these issues. Within the revised proposal: (i) ‘our even’ scopes over a question speech act operator.
(ii) ‘our even’ operates on a contextually supplied scale of ‘usefulness towards resolution of a decision-problem’, based on ideas from decision theory (such as in Ginzburg (1995) and van Rooy (2003b, 2004)).
(iii) even is analyzed within the framework of Greenberg’s (2015, 2018) gradability-based semantics.

On the basis of the linguistic and extralinguistic data gathered from a variety of Old Russian (henceforth OR) and Middle Russian (henceforth MR) written sources (the Laurentian Codex of the Tale of Bygone Years, the corpus of birch bark letters, Daniel the Traveller's Pilgrimage, Afanasij Nikitin's The Journey Beyond Three Seas, testaments and treaties signed between princes, Avvakum's Life, and other texts retrieved from the OR and MR subcorpora of the Russian National Corpus), this paper explores the possible reasons for the absence of preverbed proto-perfective first person non-past forms of prositi 'to ask (for)' in directive speech acts up to the second half the 18 th century. It is argued that this restriction can be primarily accounted for on the basis of morphosyntactic and sociolinguistic evidence, namely, on the one hand, the actional properties of verbs of communication and, on the other, the lack of a proper allocutionary pronoun (in the sense of a T-V distinction) consistent with the etiquette of hierarchically-oriented social relationships.

In “Other Minds,” J.L. Austin advances a parallel between saying ‘I know’ and saying ‘I promise’: much as you are ‘prohibited’, he says, from saying ‘I promise I will, but I may fail’, you are also ‘prohibited’ from saying ‘I know it is so, but I may be wrong.’ This treatment of ‘I know’ has been derided for nearly sixty years: while saying ‘I promise’ amounts to performing the act of promising, Austin seems to miss the fact that saying ‘I know’ fails to constitute a performance of the act of knowing. In this paper, I advance a defense of Austin’s position. I diagnose the principal objections to Austin’s account as stemming from detractors’ failure to acknowledge: (1) that Austin never characterizes ‘I know’ as a pure performative; (2) that saying ‘I know p’, unlike simply knowing p, occurs in specific interpersonal contexts in which others rely on our knowledge claims; (3) Austin’s considered account of the felicity conditions of performative utterance; (4) Austin’s ultimate repudiation of the performative/constative distinction. I conclude that Austin’s treatment of ‘I know’ rests on a more general commitment to the intrinsically normative nature of ordinary language.

With the advancement of information and communication technology, the study of speech acts is
not only restricted to language philosophers but includes researchers who are interested in the
study of speech acts in conversational corpora (Archer, Culpeper, & Davies, 2008; Cheng, 2009;
Cheng & Tsui, 2009; Cheng & Warren, 2005, 2006; Jucker, 2009; Seto, 2009, 2010). Other
researchers have attempted to develop software that can automatically identify speech acts from
corpus data, resulting in annotated corpora in specific domains for different tasks (Allen and
Core 1997; Bunt, 2009, 2011; Carletta et al., 1997; Dhillon et al, 2004; Geertzen, Petukhova, &
Bunt, 2007; Stiles, 1992; Stolcke et al., 2000; Weisser, 2003). In this paper I present an attempt
to annotate speech acts in business meetings in the business sub-corpus of the Hong Kong
Corpus of Spoken English (Prosodic) (HKCSE (Prosodic)) with the aid of a computer-mediated
program SpeechActConc designed by Chris Greaves for the analysis of the annotated corpus
data. SpeechActConc is capable of automatically identifying annotated speech acts in a corpus,
displaying information about each speech act and concordancing speech acts, listed by frequency
and sorted by co-occurring or co-selected speech acts to the right and left of the centred speech
acts. It can also automatically find 2, 3, or 4 speech act co-occurrences (Cheng, Greaves, &
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Warren, 2005, 2006; Cheng, Greaves, Sinclair, & Warren, 2009). I will analyze the speech acts
in the annotated corpus to explore the use and patterns of speech acts in business meetings in
Hong Kong to find out the relative frequencies of occurrence of different speech acts in business
meetings, to explore the predictable sequencing patterns of speech acts, to identify the
characteristic lexical-grammatical patterns or linguistic realizations of different speech acts, and
to put forward some possible implications for ESP teaching.

ABSTRAK
Iklan sebagai salah satu bentuk komunikasi memunyai peran penting untuk memperkenalkan suatu produk kepada masyarakat. Tuturan iklan merupakan fenomena menarik untuk diteliti dari berbagai aspek pragmatik, salah satunya adalah tindak tutur. Penelitian ini mengkaji tindak tutur pada wacana iklan berbahasa Jawa di radio. Penelitian bersifat deskriptif kualitatif ini memaparkan bentuk tindak tutur dan konteks tuturan dalam wacana iklan berbahasa Jawa di radio. Strategi yang digunakan adalah analisis isi. Berdasarkan analisis isi diperoleh hasil bahwa bentuk tuturan dalam wacana iklan berbahasa Jawa di radio meliputi tindak tutur representatif, direktif, ekpresif, komisif, dan deklaratif. Tindak tutur representatif digunakan dalam konteks memberi tahu, menyatakan, mengakui, melaporkan, menjelaskan, menyebutkan, dan memberikan kesaksian. Tindak tutur direktif digunakan dalam konteks menyuruh, mengajak, mengimbau, menyarankan, dan mengingatkan. Tindak tutur ekspresif digunakan sebagai evaluasi dalam konteks memuji, mengkritik, dan mengeluh. Tindak tutur komisif digunakan hanya dalam konteks memastikan. Tindak tutur deklaratif digunakan dalam konteks melarang, menegaskan, dan meyakinkan. Kata kunci: tindak tutur, konteks, iklan, bahasa Jawa, radio.

ABSTRACT
Advertising as one form of communication has an important role to introduce a product to the community. Advertising is an interesting phenomenon to be examined from various aspects of pragmatic, one of which is the act of speech. This study examines the acts of speech on the discourse of Javanese advertisement on the radio. This descriptive qualitative research describes the form of speech acts and the context of speech in the discourse of Javanese ad on the radio. The strategy used is content analysis. Based on the content analysis, it is found that the form of speech in the Javanese language advertising discourse in the radio includes the act of representative speech, directive, expressive, commissive, and declarative. Representative speech acts are used in the context of notifying, declaring, acknowledging, reporting, explaining, mentioning, and giving testimony. The directive speech acts are used in the context of commanding, referring, appealing, suggesting, and reminding. Expressive speech acts are used as evaluation in the context of praising, criticizing, and complaining. Commissive speech acts are used only in the context of making sure. Declarative speech acts are used in the context of prohibiting, asserting, and reassuring.

La importancia de la prosodia como vehículo de sentido lingüístico y social es reconocida por numerosos autores (Searle, 2009 y 2014; Quilis, 1993; Martín Butragueño, 2014; Martinet, 2005). Sin embargo, los rasgos prosódicos del español de Guadalajara (México) han sido poco estudiados hasta ahora. Esta contribución se propone dar cuenta de algunas configuraciones del tonema de actos de habla asertivos y expresivos con miras a contribuir a la descripción de esta variedad del español mexicano. Este artículo es el resultado de una investigación enmarcada en el modelo métrico-autosegmental -que tiene como base la fonología generativa- y la teoría de los actos de habla. Los informantes fueron jóvenes de entre 20 y 34 años con nivel de estudios alto. Finalmente, los datos analizados fueron obtenidos de entrevistas semidirigidas y corresponden a datos de habla semiespontánea, por lo que este trabajo se enmarca en la prosodia basada en el uso.

Este trabajo analiza el empleo de usted en un corpus de grabaciones y textos literarios. En el habla de Medellín usted se utiliza para expresar distancia (jerárquica, social, etaria, etc.), pero también puede observarse su uso para indicar solidaridad, confianza, reproche, impersonalidad, a través de dos ámbitos: el familiar y el de las relaciones sociales no familiares (amigos). Se presentan varios casos de alternancias entre vos y usted, con el fin de examinar las funciones pragmáticas, según el contexto situacional y el papel que desempeña la cortesía en los actos de habla en que aparece empleado dicho pronombre. También se busca indagar la importancia de los elementos nominales en esta forma de tratamiento, objeto de estudio. Finalmente, se resaltan aquellos aspectos de orden pragmático observados en las alternancias, que posibilite a los investigadores continuar en esta misma dirección dentro del español regional.

Organizations or associations’ acceptance speeches are quite synonymous to presidential inaugural speeches; they express the agenda of an elected candidate’s declaration of their electioneering campaigned plans and goals made while canvassing and soliciting for votes. These agenda are restated for emphasis and documentation of the candidate’s official inauguration or swearing - in .Though speeches of presidents and head of states are mostly subjected to linguistic and non-linguistic analysis, other forms of political campaigns such as that of prominent organizations or associations’ heads or presidents have attracted little documentation of illustrative linguistic or non-linguistic analysis. This paper, therefore, focused on the acceptance speech delivered by the 29th Nigerian Bar Association (NBA)’s president, Paul Usoro, SAN FCIArb, on the 4th of September, 2018. It aimed at examining the use of words conveyed by the NBA president for the purpose of identifying the goals of the pragmatic acts involved in the delivered speech. Jacob Mey’s (2001) Pragmatic acts theory was employed for a descriptive analysis, and statistical details for quantitative analysis.
Hence, this paper attempts to add to the understanding of rhetoric and the political agenda in law organizations or associations.
Keywords: acceptance speech, language of politics, Paul Usoro, NBA, law, pragmatic acts.

In this paper I argue that in order to properly account for group speech acts, we need to fundamentally reconceptualize, the force-content opposition. This is because in a group speech act, a group presents itself as taking a position such as an assertion, a promise or an order, that is, it presents itself as the subject of such a position. But on the received understanding of the force / mode of speech acts and so-called propositional attitudes and their propositional content, only the latter is representational, so that only what the subject is e.g. asserting is represented, not the subject and the position it takes. Against this I argue for a representationalist account of mode / force, according to which they are to be understood in terms of the self-awareness of subjects. Individual and collective subjects are aware of whether they take a theoretical or practical position towards the reality of a state of affairs and indicate this position in their speech. This often involves pre-conceptual and grammaticalized content, which is importantly different from the conceptual content philosophers have usually focused on. I show that the ‘Frege point’ cannot establish the received force-content dualism and that, on the contrary, the view that force is representational allows a satisfactory response to the puzzles the ‘Frege point’ is based on. In the final section of the paper, I show how on the basis of the account developed we can give a more satisfactory analysis of the speech act of inviting a joint commitment and answer two important questions Bernhard Schmid has raised about group speech acts, namely whether there are 1st person plural Moore-sentences and a 1st person plural form of 1st person authority. I argue that the singular and plural cases can be treated in parallel.