Indirect speech acts in modern English discourse. - Косвенные речевые акты в современном английском дискурсе

indirect speech acts generated by heroes of works written by

modern British and US authors.

a) In the short story “The Life Guard” by John Wain young

Jimmy Townsend works as a beach lifeguard. One morning he wants

to get rid of an unwelcome visitor in his hut at the beach and

asks him to quit using an indirect speech act (a representative

with the illocutionary force of a directive): “I’m going swimming

now. I have to keep in practice.” The visitor, however, does not

understand the implication and answers: “I am not stopping you.”

Jimmy tries another indirect speech act: “I have to leave the hut

empty.” The implication dawns on the visitor, but he is not sure:

“You mean nobody is allowed in the hut?” Jimmy uses an indirect

speech act to invite the visitor to join him for a swim (a

request disguised as a question): “Why don’t you come in swimming

with me if you want something to do?”

To prove his efficiency as an instructor, Jimmy wants to

teach swimming to an old fat lady. The woman wants Jimmy to leave

her alone, but being polite, avoids a command and uses

representatives with the illocutionary force of a directive: “The

water is cold?”; “It’s the first time I am on the beach this

year”; “I’ll never swim the Channel, that I do know.”

Scared that he will be fired because no one needs a

lifeguard at a safe beach, Jimmy plans to arrange a fake rescue.

He asks his former schoolmate to pretend drowning: “I want you to

go in swimming, pretend to get into trouble, wave to me, and I’ll

swim out and tow you back to shore.” The boy declines Jimmy’s

idea using an indirect speech act (a question with the

illocutionary force of a statement): “What d’you think I am,

daft?”

b) In Thorton Wilder’s novel titled "Heaven’s my

destination" a young man named Mr.Brush asks Mr. Bohardus, a

forensic photographer, to sell a photograph:

“- There, now, I guess, we got some good pictures.

- Do you sell copies of these, Mr.Bohardus?

- We're not allowed to, I reckon. Leastways there never was

no great demand.

- I was thinking I could buy some extra. I haven't been

taken for more than two years. I know my mother would like some.

Bohardus stared at him narrowly.

- I don't think it shows a good spirit to make fun of this

work, Mr.Brown, and I tell you I don't like it. In fifteen years

here nobody's made fun of it, not even murderers haven't.

- Believe me, Mr.Bohardus, said Brush, turning red, "I

wasn't making fun of anything. I knew you made good photos, and

that's all I thought about."

Bohardus maintained an angry silence, and when Brush was

led away refused to return his greeting”.

The question “Do you sell copies of these, Mr.Bohardus?”

has another meaning, that of a compliment. Compliments have a

restricted sphere of usage, and the photographer’s negative reply

showed that under the circumstances it was not appropriate to

compliment a policeman. The compliment was rejected in a

friendly manner. But Brush broke the standard scheme of an

indirect speech act and turned a compliment into a literal

request. The policeman was insulted: he thought that Brush mocked

at him. Brush tried to make amends, but to no avail. Brush

violated the communicative convention, and his words were

interpreted as an affront.

c) Earl Fox, the protagonist of the novel “Live with

lightning” composed by Mitchell Wilson, is a famous physicist

aged 50. His social status is high, but he falls out of love with

his science and feels inner emptiness and despair. The author

uses a rhetoric question to describe the first fit of Fox’s

indifference to physics:

“Realization had come slowly, against his reluctance. He

was listening to a paper being read, and he found himself asking

“Who cares?” It was the first open admission that curiosity was

dead.”

Rhetoric questions are pseudoquestions because the speaker

knows the answer and does not ask for information. On the

contrary, a rhetoric question conveys some information to the

hearer and seeks to convince the hearer of something [15,97].

What Fox meant by the question “Who cares?” was the statement

statement “Nobody cares.”

d) Further on in Mitchell Wilson’s novel, Fox interviews

Eric Gorin, a young scientist who applied for a job in his lab.

Closing their conversation, Fox wants to show his friendliness by

asking a formal personal question: "And did you have a pleasant

summer, Mr. Gorin?” Its nonliteral meaning is that of a

directive:

“Relax. Don’t be so tense.” Fox expects a conventional reply

“Yes, thank you”, but Gorin’s utterance breaks the rules of

speech etiquette: “A pleasant summer?” Erik was silent for the

time of two long breaths. “No, sir,” he said explosively. “I damn

well did not have a pleasant summer!” Fox is startled into

silence: Gorin not only took the question literally, but did not

follow the politeness principle as well.

e) “I'm not quite sure how long you've known the

Fieldings” (J. Fowles); "I'm dying to know what you did with all

the lions you slaughtered," said Susie Boyd (S. Maugham); “I'd

like to know why she's gone off like this.” (J. Fowles).

Indirect questions in the utterances above are compound

sentences whose principle clauses contain predicates of cognition

while subordinate clauses specify the desired information.

f) Indirect speech acts are frequent when a person of a

lower social status addresses a person of a higher social status.

Often they contain additional markers of politeness like

apologies, appellations to the hearer’s volition, etc. For

instance, a maid says to her mistress: “I'm sorry to have

disturbed you, Madam... I only wondered whether you wished to see

me.” (D. du Maurier). A visitor says to his hostess: “I only want

to know the truth, if you.will tell it to me” (E. Voynich).

g) “A question in a question” is also an indirect speech

act. The speaker asks if the hearer is knowledgeable about

something, and the informative question is included into the

whole construction as a complement. Such utterances give the

hearer a chance “to quit the game” by answering only the direct

question, e.g. "Do you happen to know when it is open?" - "Oh,

no, no. I haven't been there myself" (L. Jones).

h) A reliable way to be polite is to express a

communicative intention as a request to perform it. Such a

request can be formulated as a separate utterance, a part of an

utterance or a composite sentence, for instance: “May I ask you

where you are staying?” (C. Snow); “Might I inquire if you are

the owner?” (L. Jones); “What are your таin ideas so far, sir, if

you don't mind me asking?” (K. Amis); “I should be very much

obliged if you would tell me as exact as possible how Mrs. Haddo,

died” (S. Maugham); “Would it bother you if I asked you a

question about how you lost your job with Axminster?” (D.

Francis).

i) A gradual transition from an indirect speech act

complying with the politeness principle to an impolite direct

speech act with the same illocutionary force is shown in an

episode of the popular cartoon “Shrek”. After Shrek had rescued

Princess Fiona from the dragon, the girl asked him to remove his

helmet, so that he could kiss her: “You did it! You rescued me!

The battle is over. You can remove your helmet now.”

The italicized utterance is an indirect speech act (a

representative with the illocutionary force of a directive).

Shrek, however, is unwilling to put off his helmet: he does

not want the girl to see that he is an ogre. To make him obey

her, Fiona uses another indirect speech act: “Why not remove your

helmet?” and then a rather impolite directive: “Remove it! Now!”

2. Publicism

Indirect speech acts are widely used in publicistic works

when the speaker or the writer aims at convincing the

interlocutor of something. A quotation from an article published

by “The Times” dated June 12, 1999, exemplifies this:

“The claim that the Earl of Oxford, or Bacon, or any other

grandee must have written “Shakespeare” seems to be born largely

of a snobbish conviction that a provincial grammar-school boy

could not have produced that corpus of world masterpieces. Yet

outstanding literary achievement is more likely to come from such

a background than any other.

With the exception of Byron and Shelley, all our greatest

writers have been middle-class, and most of them provincials. If

Marlowe, a Canterbury shoemaker’s son, could re-create the worlds

of Edward II and Tamburlaine, why should not a Stratford glover’s

son depict courtly life at large? The argument that it would take

an aristocrat to know how royalty behaved and thought ignores the

imaginative power of well-read genius.”

The journalist’s argument “The claim … seems to be born

largely of a snobbish conviction that a provincial grammar school

boy could not have produced that corpus of world masterpieces.”

contains two speech acts. On the one hand, it is a representative

giving a negative, critical appraisal. On the other hand, it is

an indirect expressive (a protest).

The argument “If Marlowe, a Canterbury shoemaker’s son,

could re-create the worlds of Edward II and Tamburlaine, why

should not a Stratford glover’s son depict courtly life at

large?” is another indirect speech act. Formally, it is a

question, but in essence it is an indirect statement (a

representative).

Another article in “The Times” of November 13, 1999 is

devoted to the safety of flights of private airplanes:

“…Their central, and only, point is not an argument but a

prejudice - that safety and private sector are incompatible. This

is obviously wrong, as the impressive history of this country's

airlines and airports makes plain”.

The utterance “It's not an argument, but a predjudice -

that safety and private sector are incompatible” is a

representative, but on the other hand, the author protests

against the point of view taken by his opponents, and this

utterance can also be regarded as an indirect expressive.

Evidently, indirect speech acts influence the quality of

argumentation, and that is crucial for publicism. They amplify

the speaker’s impact upon the hearers’ feelings and emotions.

3. Advertising

Indirect speech acts are widely used in advertising.

Advertisements can perform various literal functions combining

representatives (information on the product), commissives (safety

or quality guarantee), expressives (admiration for the product),

etc. But the pragmatic focus of any advertisement is always a

directive: “Buy it now!”

For example, the advertisement: “You’ll see Tefal in

action! Purchasing the new model, you get a present!” is a

directive disguised as a commissive (a promise). Often the

implication is biased from the product to its potential user,

like in the slogan: “L’Oreal, Paris. Because I’m worth it” (a

directive camouflaged as a representative).

4. Anecdotes

Indirect speech acts are often the heart of an anecdote

[17]: Two businessmen made a fortune by means of forgery and were

doing their best to be considered aristocrats. They even had

their portraits painted by the most famous and “expensive”

artist. The portraits were first displayed at a grand rout. The

businessmen brought the most influential critic to the portraits

hoping to hear the words of admiration and compliments. The

critic stared at the portraits for a while, then shook his head

as if something important were missing and asked pointing at the

space between the portraits: “And where is the Savior?”

The implication of the question is unambiguous: Jesus

Christ between the two robbers. The critic made up a complicated

indirect speech act: he disguised an evaluative representative:

“You are two scoundrels, of that I am sure” as a question “And

where is the Savior?”

Anecdotes often play with a wrong understanding of the

speaker’s illocutionary point by the hearer, for example:

Someone knocks at the window of a peasant’s house at 3

a.m.:

- Hey, you need any firewood?

- No, go away, I am sleeping.

In the morning, the peasant saw that all the firewood

disappeared from his shed.

In this funny story the peasant took the question for an

offer, and his interlocutor (hardly by mistake) took the refusal

as the answer.

7. INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS AS A YARDSTICK OF COMMUNICATIVE

MATURITY AND MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING

“Нам

не дано предугадать, как слово

наше отзовется”.

Ф.Тютчев

Understanding of indirect speech acts is not a man’s

inborn ability. Younger children whose communicational skills are

not yet well developed perceive only one illocutionary force of a

speech act, the one deducible from the syntactic form of an

utterance. For instance, once my four-year-old son was carrying

home a paintbrush I just bought for him. On our way home he often

dropped it. I said: “You let your brush fall a hundred times!”

meaning a directive: “Be more careful!” The boy, however, took my

words literally and replied: “Of course not, mom. I dropped it

only six times!”

Here is another example of communicational immaturity. A

boy of seven phones to his mother’s office:

- I’d like to speak to Mrs. Jones, please.

- She is out. Please call back in a few minutes.

- OK.

The boy reacted to the utterance “Please call back in a few

minutes” as to a request while the communicative situation

required answering “Thank you” (for advice) instead of “OK”.

If the hearer does not recognize the speaker’s

communicative intentions, a communicative failure will follow.

For example, asking, “Where is the department store?” one may

hear: “The department store is closed” in a situation when one

needs the department store as an orienting point.

Quite often a question is understood as a reproach, e.g.

- Why didn’t you invite him?

- Invite him yourself if you want to.

- I do not want to invite him. I am just asking.

Surprise can be taken for distrust:

- Does it really cost that much?

- Don’t you believe me?

Sociolinguistic research shows that everywhere in the

civilized world women tend to use more indirect speech acts than

men. Educated people, regardless of their sex, prefer indirect

speech acts to direct ones. Correct understanding of indirect

speech acts by an adult is an index of his or her sanity [9,90].

On balance, the question How to do things with words?

cannot be answered easily and unambiguously: just build your

utterance in accordance with certain rules or use one of the

“moulds”, and you will avoid a communication failure.

A chasm of incomplete understanding always separates

communicants, even most intimate ones, and indirect speech acts

often make it deeper. Yet, only words can bridge the chasm

conducting the thought from one shore to the other. Every time

the bridge is to be built from scratch, and choosing linguistic

means, the interactants must take into account the distance, the

“weather” conditions, the previous mistakes, both their own and

other people’s, and “the weight” of the thought to be conveyed.

Finally, the thought is worded and set off, but we can only guess

what awaits it on the other shore. We are helpless there, and our

thought is now in the hearer’s power.

CONCLUSIONS

Correspondence between the syntactic form of an utterance

and its pragmatic function is not always 1:1. The same syntactic

form can express various communicative intentions. On the other

hand, to express a communicative intention we can use a variety

of linguistic means. Therefore, in speech there are many

constructions used to express not the meaning fixed by the system

of language, but a secondary meaning that is conventional or

appears in a particular context. Speech acts made up by means of

such constructions are indirect. In indirect speech acts, the

speaker conveys the non-literal as well as the literal meaning,

and an apparently simple utterance may, in its implications,

count for much more. Hence, it is very important to study not

only the structure of a grammatical or lexical unit and its

meaning in the system of language, but also the pragmatic context

shaping its functioning in communication.

A number of theories try to explain why we generate

indirect speech acts and how we discover them in each other’s

speech. The inference theory brought forward by John Searle

claims that we first perceive the literal meaning of the

utterance and find some indication that the literal meaning is

inadequate. Having done that, we derive the relevant indirect

force from the literal meaning and context.

Another line of explanation developed by Jerrold Sadock is

that indirect speech acts are expressions based on an idiomatic

meaning added to their literal meaning.

Jerry Morgan writes about two types of convention in

indirect speech acts: conventions of language and conventions of

usage. Conventions of usage express what Morgan calls "short-

circuited implicatures": implicatures that once were motivated by

explicit reasoning but which now do not have to be calculated

explicitly anymore.

According to the relevance theory developed by Sperber and

Wilson, the process of interpretation of direct speech acts does

not at all differ from the process of interpretation of indirect

speech acts. Furthermore, it is literal utterances that are often

marked and sound less natural than utterances with indirect

meaning.

Speech act theories have treated illocutionary acts as the

products of single utterances based on single sentences with only

one illocutionary point - thus becoming a pragmatic extension to

sentence grammars. The contribution of the illocutions of

individual utterances to the understanding of topics and episodes

is not yet well documented.

Pragmatic research reveals that the main types of indirect

speech acts are found in all natural languages. Yet, some

indirect speech acts are specific for a group of languages or

even for a particular language. Conventional indirect speech acts

must always be taken into account when learning a foreign

language. They often make the communicative center of utterances

and sound much more natural than direct speech acts.

Indirect speech acts are widely used in everyday speech, in

fiction, and in publicistic works because they influence the

quality of argumentation and amplify the impact upon the hearer’s

emotions. Indirect speech acts are the driving force of

advertisements whose illocutionary point is always a directive:

"Buy it now!"

It has been found that indirect expressives, directives

and representatives compose the most numerous group of indirect

speech acts in modern English discourse.

The use of indirect speech acts in discourse has been

studied by a number of linguists, cognitive scientists, and

philosophers, including Searle [18], [19], [43], [44], [45];

Grice [4], [30]; Ballmer [23]; Kreckel [34]; Clark [27];

Partridge [40], Cohen [28], Pocheptsov [13], Romanov [16].

Yet, the research of indirect speech acts is still far from being

complete.

РЕЗЮМЕ

Робота присвячена непрямим мовленнєвим актам у сучасному

англійському дискурсі. Непрямі мовленнєві акти – це мовленнєві дії, що

здійснюються за допомогою висловлювань, які мають дві іллокутивні сили,

тобто мовець має на увазі одночасно і пряме значення висловлювання, і

щось більше. Типові приклади непрямих мовленнєвих актів – це ввічливі

прохання у вигляді запитань або твердження у вигляді запитань (риторичні

питання). Непрямі мовленнєві акти привутні в усіх мовах, проте в кожній

мові вони мають свої особливості.

Розділи 1 - 4 є теоретичними. У них розкривається сутність

непрямих мовленнєвих актів, розглядаються причини їхньої широкої

поширеності в мовленні на прикладі англійського дискурса,

аналізуються існуючі теорії, що пояснюють механізм розуміння

співрозмовниками непрямих мовленнєвих актів, з'ясовується внесок

іллокутивної сили окремих висловлювань у процес розуміння усього

дискурса.

Розділи 5 - 7 мають практичний характер. У них порівнюються

конвенціональні непрямі мовленнєві акти англійської й

української мов, що використовуються в типових ситуаціях

спілкування; наводяться приклади непрямих мовленнєвих актів в

творах сучасних британських і американських авторів, газетах,

рекламних роликах; доводиться, що розуміння людиною непрямих

мовленнєвих актів є мірилом його комунікативної зрілості.

Особливо підкреслюється, що оскільки непрямі мовленнєві акти

грають істотну роль у мовному впливі на співрозмовника, в етиці,

у повсякденному спілкуванні і носять конкретномовний характер, їх

необхідно враховувати при вивченні іноземних мов.

Ключові слова: непрямий мовленнєвий акт, теорія

мовленнєвих актів, текст, дискурс, локуція, іллокуція,

перлокуція, комунікативний намір, принцип кооперації, принцип

увічливості, іллокутивна сила, мовленнєва поведінка,

комунікація, прагматика, контекст.

LITERATURE

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