Abstract
The present paper examines Austin’s (How to do things with words. Oxford University Press, Oxford. [First edition 1962], [1962]1975) speech acts theory and Mey’s (Pragmatics: an introduction (2nd edn). Blackwell, Oxford, 2001) pragmatic theory, and show their theories are based on similar understandings of how language works as a communication tool. This contention is assessed by comparing and contrasting (i) Austin’s (How to do things with words. Oxford University Press, Oxford. [First edition 1962], 1975) felicity conditions with Mey’s concept of situated speech acts, and (ii) Austin’s (How to do things with words. Oxford University Press, Oxford. [First edition 1962], 1975) distinction between illocutionary act types and actual illocutionary acts performed in real situations, with Mey’s (2001) distinction between pragmemes and pragmatic acts (i.e. practs) as instantiated, individual acts of a pragmeme. Because of their similarities, Mey’s (Pragmatics: an introduction (2nd edn). Blackwell, Oxford, 2001) pragmatic theory suggests how Austin’s speech act theory should be interpreted as a pragmatic theory. We will show that situatedness of speech/pragmatic acts does not only lie in the social, physical, and cognitive situation, but also in the discourse situation in which the expositive illocutionary act type brings about effects.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
The compatibility of Mey’s concept of situated speech acts with Austin’s concept of felicitous speech acts was first pointed out by Oishi (2009).
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
As Austin’s felicity conditions (Γ.1) and (Γ.2) specify, to perform an illocutionary act (pract) is often to have a certain thought or feeling, or to intend to conduct her/himself subsequently. This is an important aspect of performing an illocutionary act (or pract), but it is not directly related with the present topic, so we do not include this in the main argument.
- 6.
Question marks are Austin’s.
- 7.
- 8.
Oishi and Fetzer (2016) claim that discourse connectives indicate the type of illocutionary act that the present utterance attempts to perform.
- 9.
The act of denying should belong to group 5 because the speaker typically denies statements, that is, the states of affairs described or stated about, rather than states of affairs themselves.
- 10.
The acts in the parentheses are marked with a question mark in Austin’s list.
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Oishi, E. (2016). Austin’s Speech Acts and Mey’s Pragmemes. In: Allan, K., Capone, A., Kecskes, I. (eds) Pragmemes and Theories of Language Use. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 9. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43491-9_18
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