Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse

Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse PDF Author: Mary Louise Pratt
Publisher: Midland Books
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse

Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse PDF Author: Mary Louise Pratt
Publisher: Midland Books
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description


Speech Acts in Literature

Speech Acts in Literature PDF Author: Joseph Hillis Miller
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804742162
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
This book demonstrates the presence of literature within speech act theory and the utility of speech act theory in reading literary works. Though the founding text of speech act theory, J. L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words, repeatedly expels literature from the domain of felicitous speech acts, literature is an indispensable presence within Austin's book. It contains many literary references but also uses as essential tools literary devices of its own: imaginary stories that serve as examples and imaginary dialogues that forestall potential objections. How to Do Things with Words is not the triumphant establishment of a fully elaborated theory of speech acts, but the story of a failure to do that, the story of what Austin calls a "bogging down." After an introductory chapter that explores Austin's book in detail, the two following chapters show how Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man in different ways challenge Austin's speech act theory generally and his expulsion of literature specifically. Derrida shows that literature cannot be expelled from speech acts—rather that what he calls "iterability" means that any speech act may be literature. De Man asserts that speech act theory involves a radical dissociation between the cognitive and positing dimensions of language, what Austin calls language's "constative" and "performative" aspects. Both Derrida and de Man elaborate new speech act theories that form the basis of new notions of responsible and effective politico-ethical decision and action. The fourth chapter explores the role of strong emotion in effective speech acts through a discussion of passages in Derrida, Wittgenstein, and Austin. The final chapter demonstrates, through close readings of three passages in Proust, the way speech act theory can be employed in an illuminating way in the accurate reading of literary works.

Speech Acts and Literary Theory

Speech Acts and Literary Theory PDF Author: Sandy Petrey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134983735
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This book, first published in 1990, combines an introduction to speech-act theory as developed by J. L. Austin with a survey of critical essays that have adapted Austin's thought for literary analysis. Speech-act theory emphasizes the social reality created when speakers agree that their language is performative - Austin's term for utterances like: "we hereby declare" or "I promise" that produce rather than describe what they name. In contrast to formal linguistics, speech-act theory insists on language's active prominence in the organization of collective life. The first section of the text concentrates on Austin's determination to situate language in society by demonstrating the social conventions manifest in language. The second and third parts of the book discuss literary critics' responses to speech-act theory's socialisation of language, which have both opened new understandings of textuality in general and stimulated new interpretations of individual works. This book will be of interest to students of linguistics and literary theory.

Speech Acts

Speech Acts PDF Author: John R. Searle
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521096263
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
'This small but tightly packed volume is easily the most substantial discussion of speech acts since John Austin's How To Do Things With Words and one of the most important contributions to the philosophy of language in recent decades.'--Philosophical Quarterly

Literary Speech Acts of the Medieval North, Volume 552

Literary Speech Acts of the Medieval North, Volume 552 PDF Author: Eric Shane Bryan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780866986106
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
This volume brings together examinations of pragmatic meaning and proverbs of the Medieval North. Pragmatic meaning, which relies upon cultural and interpersonal context to go beyond the simple semantic and grammatical meaning of an utterance, has a fundamental connection with proverbs, which also communicate a deeper meaning than what is actually said. Essays in this volume explore this connection by examining the language of generosity, conversion, friendship, debate, dragon proverbs, and saints' lives. These essays are inspired by the works of Thomas A. Shippey, who has been a pioneer in the study of wisdom poetry and pragmatics in medieval literature.

Speech Act Performance

Speech Act Performance PDF Author: Alicia MartĂ­nez-Flor
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027288364
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Speech acts are an important and integral part of day-to-day life in all languages. In language acquisition, the need to teach speech acts in a target language has been demonstrated in studies conducted in the field of interlanguage pragmatics which indicate that the performance of speech acts may differ considerably from culture to culture, thus creating communication difficulties in cross-cultural encounters. Considering these concerns, the aim of this volume is two-fold: to deal with those theoretical approaches that inform the process of learning speech acts in particular contextual and cultural settings; and, secondly, to present a variety of methodological proposals, grounded on research-based ideas, for the teaching of the major speech acts in second/foreign language classrooms. This volume is a valuable theoretical and practical resource not only for researchers, teachers and students interested in speech act learning/teaching but also for textbook writers wishing to have an informed opinion on the pedagogical implications derived from research on speech act performance.

The Literary Speech Act

The Literary Speech Act PDF Author: Shoshana Felman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Speech Acts, Speakers and Hearers

Speech Acts, Speakers and Hearers PDF Author: Henk Haverkate
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027280029
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
This study is an inquiry into the pragmatics of speaker and hearer reference. It falls into a theory-based and a description-based part. The former covers three topics: (a) the categories of speaker and hearer as opposed to the category of nonparticipants in the speech act; (b) the interactional roles of speaker and hearer as defined by the illocutionary point of the speech act and the preconditions underlying its successful performance; (c) the decomposition of the speech act as a model for describing strategies in verbal interaction. The object of the descriptive part of this study is to survey the different realizations of the categories of speaker and hearer reference and the strategic effects speakers intend to bring about by employing them. For this purpose, a language-specific analysis is applied to the system of speaker and hearer reference in Peninsular Spanish. For the sake of homogeneity, Peninsular Spanish is also chosen as the object language for the discussion of the general language phenomena which are treated in the theoretical discussion.

Speech Acts Across Cultures

Speech Acts Across Cultures PDF Author: Susan Gass
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 311021928X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
This book investigates the notion of Speech Act from a cross-cultural perspective. The starting point for this book is the assumption that speech acts are realized from culture to culture in different ways and that these differences may result in communication difficulties that range from the humorous to the serious. Importantly, a recurring theme in this volume has to do with the need to verify the form, the function and the constraining variables of speech acts as a prerequisite for dealing with them in the classroom. The book deals with three major areas of Speech Act research: 1) Methodological Issues, 2) Speech Acts in a second language, and 3) Applications. In the first section authors discuss general issues of methodology and present data in an effort to detail the efficacy of different methodologies. Research clearly shows the effect of methodology on the results. This section is followed by a discussion of specific speech acts, including speech acts and strategy use that have as their goal the creation and maintenace of solidarity (i.e. greetings, compliments, apologies) and speech acts that involve face-threatening acts (i.e.complaints, favor-asking, suggestions). In the final section, authors consider applications of speech act research within the context of advertising and business relationships.

The Scandal of the Speaking Body

The Scandal of the Speaking Body PDF Author: Shoshana Felman
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 080474453X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Imagining an encounter between Moliere's Don Juan and Austin, this bold yet subtle meditation contemplates the seductive promises of speech and of love, in a telling exchange among philosophy, linguistics, literature, and Lacanian theory."