Halyna D. Malyk Speech Acts and Events

Speech Acts and Events Across Cultures:

Universality and Ethnospecificity

Though speech acts are universal phenomena, they have their peculiarities across cultures and even genders. Cultural patterns, customs and ways of life are generally reflected in speech acts and events because communication and culture are mutually interdependent and mutually influential. Much research has been done in comparing cross-cultural and gender differences in speech acts.

Cross - cultural differences in the domain of speech acts are determined by

1. 
   differences among languages and
   
2. 
   differences among cultures.
   

Variations cab be interlanguage and intralanguage.

Some cultures - Japanese can serve as an example - possess highly conventionalized speech acts characterized by social differentiation (Акишина, Камогава 1974:12).

Directives

Direct, request, ask, question, inquire, interrogate, urge, encourage, discourage, solicit, appeal, petition, invite, convene, convoke, beg, supplicate, beseech, implore, entreat, conjure, pray, insist, tell, instruct, demand, require, claim, order, command, dictate, prescribe, enjoin, adjure, exorcise, forbid, prohibit, interdict, proscrice, commission, charge, suggest, propose, warn, advise, caution, alert, alarm, recommend, permit, allow, authorize, consent, invoke, imprecate, intercede.

In order for directives/requests for action to be heard and interpreted as legitimate, they must satisfy certain felicity conditions (Gordon and Lakoff 1971:64);

1. 
   Speaker wants hearer to do act.
   
2. 
   Speaker assumes hearer is able to do act.
   
3. 
   Speaker assumer hearer is willing to do act.
   
4. 
   Speaker assumer hearer would not do act in the absence of the request.
   

According to N.Bonvillain, “directives are particularly sensitive to contexts of speaking and to specific social characteristics of the issue and addressee. Their complexity stems from the fact that a speaker should phrase requests so as to have the greatest likelihood of positive result, namely compliance; but because a social relationship of some sort exists between interlocutors (even if it is one of “stranger”), speakers must be sensitive to addressees’ feelings. An issuer of directives needs to navigate between two extremes of clarity: He must make his request clear enough so that the addressee comprehends the directive intent, yet he must also pay attention to the addressee’s needs not to be imposed on by a blunt presumption of the speaker’s power (1997:111).”

Largely because of the demand directives place on the addressee, and because of the fact that they can be realized by a variety of syntactic forms, the choice of directive type can express a great deal about the social context of discourse and the relative status of the interlocuters, e.g. their age, sex, occupation, and familiarity (Ervin-Tripp, 1976)

Directives can be oriented to various elements of the request matrix (Blum-Kulka and Olshtain 1984:203):

1. 
   Hearer-oriented: Could you help me?
   
2. 
   Speaker-oriented: Do you think I could borrow your book?
   
3. 
   Speaker and hearer-oriented: Could we please clean up?
   
4. 
   Impersonal: It might be a good idea to get it done.
   

Directives can be mitigated through various types of linguistic devices (Blum-Kulka and Olshtain 1984:203-205):

1. 
   Syntactic downdraders or mitigation:
   

1. 
   Interrogative: Could you do the cleaning up?
   
2. 
   Negation: I wonder if you wouldn’t mind dropping me home?
   
3. 
   Past tense: I wanted to ask you for a postponent.
   
4. 
   Enbedded “if’ clause: I would appreciate if you left me alone.
   
1. 
   Pragmatic mitigation:
   
   1. 
      Consultative devices (indirectly asking for addressee’s cooperation): Do you think I could borrow your notes from yesterday?
      
   2. 
      Understaters (minimizing requests): Could you tidy up a bit before I start?
      
   3. 
      Hedges (avoiding commitment): It would really help if you did something about the kitchen
      
   4. 
      Downtoner (signalling possibility or noncompliance): Will you perhaps be able to drive me?