Speech Acts and Speech GenresAn Axiological Linguistics Perspective

WYDAWNICTWOWYŻSZEJ SZKOŁY FILOLOGICZNEJ

WE WROCŁAWIU

Michał Post

© Copyright by Michał Post and Wyższa Szkoła Filologiczna we Wrocławiu, Wrocław 2013

Reviewers: Piotr Stalmaszczyk, Aleksander Szwedek

Proofreading: Edward Szynal

Typesetting: Sylwia Rudzińska

Editorial reading: Barbara Woldan

Cover design: Konstancja Górny

KEY WORDS: linguistic pragmatics, linguistic genology, axiological linguistics, speech act, speech genre

WYDAWNICTWO WYŻSZEJ SZKOŁY FILOLOGICZNEJ WE WROCŁAWIU50–335 Wrocław, ul. Sienkiewicza 32, tel. (+48 71) 328 14 14fax (+48 71) 322 10 06, http://www.wsf.edu.pl, e-mail: wsf@wsf.edu.plWydanie I.

ISBN 978-83-60097-19-9

Contents

Acknowledgments VIntroduction 1

Part I: Methodological background1. The discourse context 92. A unification of speech acts and speech genres 313. From Linguistic Axiology to Axiological Linguistics 53

Part II: Axiological aspects of speech acts4. Perlocution in its speech act context 755. A valuation-based interpretation of perlocution 916. Perlocutionary effects in the valuation-based framework 1077. Perlocutionary acts in the valuation-based framework 125

Part III: Axiological aspects of speech genres8. Themes and values of speech genre templates 1499. Lexis of speech genre templates 171

Summary and research proposals 193Appendix 197Bibliography 201Author and subject index 217Summary in Polish 223Summary in German 227

III

ACknowledgments

Many people have contributed to the content and the production of the present book, and I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to them.

I am particularly indebted to Professor Tomasz P. Krzeszowski, who in my student years taught me linguistics at the Institute of English Philology of the University of Łódź, and whose scholarly work was an important point of refer-ence in my further studies. This book reflects directly a great deal of Professor Krzeszowski’s illuminating ideas and proposals concerning values and valua-tions in language.

Grateful thanks go to Professor Zdzisław Wąsik, who offered to share his experience and expertise with me as regards linguistic and editorial cases. I have benefited greatly from the talks and discussions that we had during the preparation of the book and at the final stage of its writing.

This study is a synthesis of the research I conducted at the University of Wrocław, at the University of Opole, and at the Philological School of Higher Education in Wrocław. I am indeed grateful to my seminar students at those schools for their comments, explanations and criticisms – which proved in-valuable in clarifying many of my concepts of speech acts and speech genres.

I want to express my sincere thanks for Ryszard Opala, M.Sc., Chancellor of the Philological School of Higher Education in Wrocław, for his encourage-ment and support, and especially for enabling me to publish this book.

Warm thanks to Sylwia Rudzińska and Barbara Woldan, members of the WSF editing team, for their work with the typescript, and to Konstancja Górny for the cover design. Thanks to Dr. Edward Szynal for proofreading.

Last and not least, I wish to thank all those who in various ways have helped to materialize this project, but whose names I have failed to mention.

All responsibility for the quality of the final product remains with me.

Michał PostWrocław, April 2013

V

IntroduCtIon

The present book is about speech acts and speech genres. Speech Act Theory and Speech Genre Theory to which they belong had been two separate branches of linguistic studies until the mid-1960s of the 20th century, when the text and discourse research brought them close to each other. Between the mid-1960s and the early-1970s, the researches on text and discourse came to acquire the status of a cross-discipline enterprise. Speech Act Theory and Speech Genre Theory were incorporated into this gradually emerging discipline.

Accordingly, the discussion of speech acts and speech genres in the pre-sent work presupposes the general background of text and discourse studies (cf. Duszak 1998; Miczka 2002; Freedman & Medway 2004 [1994]; Witosz 2005; Bartmiński & Niebrzegowska-Bartmińska 2009) in which they play im-portant roles. It should not be forgotten, however, that speech acts constitute the central part of Linguistic Pragmatics, while speech genres are what Genol-ogy1, both Literary and Linguistic, is about. Contributing to text and discourse studies, and remaining in a dialogical relationship to each other, both the dis-ciplines preserve their identities and their autonomies. As regards the research perspective adopted here, we have looked upon speech acts and speech genres from the position of Axiological Linguistics (Puzynina 1982, 1992a, 2003; Krzeszowski 1997, 1999, 2012; Post 2011, 2013a).

For its general background the present study makes use of two general methodological assumptions of text and discourse analysis2. Firstly, from the view point of structural complexity the term text covers the entire continuum of structures ranging from a single sentence (or less than that) to coherent and cohesive, indefinitely long sequences of sentences. However, longer oral and written texts are not just straightforward combinations of sentences, un-derstood as products of verbal performance (see de Beaugrande and Dressler 1981). Necessarily, they are to be considered in contexts and the earlier rec-ognized formal properties of texts should be complemented by strategies of 1 According to David Duff (2000: xiii) the term genology was coined by Paul Van Tieghem (1871–1948) in1920 and it denoted the branch of literary theory that is concerned with the study of genres. Except for Poland,the term genology is rarely used; instead, the term genre studies have been in circulation. The Polish equiva-lent term genologia has been used since 1945. Since 1982, with Antoni Furdal’s postulate of the same year,the term came to be used with the adjectives literacki ‘literary’ and lingwistyczny ‘linguistic’. All throughthis book we will be using their English translational equivalents literary genology and linguistic genology.2 Anna Duszak (2008: 105 [2002]) suggested that, traditionally differentiated, Text Linguistics and DiscourseAnalysis are not opposites in the light of the dominating and the relevant philosophy of language. We shouldalready accept the fusion of these two disciplines resulting in a broader area of research on communicationphenomena: Text Linguistics = Discourse Analysis. However, we retain and use the term text and discourseanalysis in the present study.

1

Introduction2

production and comprehension of texts in contexts too. Secondly, languages have models/templates for texts and discourses, known under different names, such as genre, speech genre, speech genre template, textem, prototype, etc. among other things. Such templates motivate both short, one-sentence texts as well as long, multi-sentence ones (cf. Gajda 2008 [1993]; Grochowski 2004; Wojtak 2008a).

In the research reported in this book, one-sentence texts and multi-sentence texts constitute actualizations of text and discourse templates, which mediate between texts understood as their contextual actualizations and discourses un-derstood as communicative events. We will argue that Speech Act Theory and Speech Genre Theory are similar to each other in that they both use the concept of template. For the former theory the earliest proposal in this respect had the form of the complex of felicity conditions on the successful performance of a speech act. In the latter theory, from its very beginning, the template has been a cluster of compositional properties, thematic properties and stylistic proper-ties. Recently pragmatic-situational properties and axiological properties have been added to this set.

As indicated above, we have taken an axiological perspective on speech acts and speech genres. Specifically, two methodological assumptions of Axi-ological Linguistics have been applied. According to the first assumption lan-guage and language expressions, in addition to naming various elements of the world, that is, having denotations, are also the instruments of valuations. Speakers use them as essential elements of their strategies of axiological cal-culations. In this study, valuation-based interactions have been illustrated as being involved in the performance of speech acts. The second adopted assump-tion is that language and consequently the texts produced with it are the bear-ers of values, accepted, applied and followed by the speakers. We argue that such axiological markings should be viewed as inherent elements of the axi-ological component of text and discourse templates.

The present work is rooted in English and Polish linguistics which have provided ideas, illustrations and references for the discussion of speech acts and speech genres respectively. Thus our discussion of speech acts will chiefly be embedded in English linguistics; specifically, it will be based on the se-lected works stemming from the John Austin and John Searle tradition of the analysis of such acts. As regards speech genres, Polish linguistics and the researches stemming from Mikhail Bakhtin’s tradition, dominant in Poland, have provided the background for their discussion. Following this tradition, we have chosen to use the terms Linguistic and Literary Genology for genre studies. One of the consequences of our reliance on English and Polish lin-guistics, all throughout the essay is that we shall be intentionally, and rela-tively freely, illustrating our claims, suggestions and argumentations with the

Introduction 3

data both from Polish and English. We think that this practice is also justified by the main goal of the research, which is a construction of a general frame-work for speech acts and speech genre, the phenomena shared by the two lan-guages, relying on the data and the findings of Polish and English linguistics.

The present book consists of three distinct parts. The first part constitutes a METHODOLOGICAL BACKGROUND for the analysis and it consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 presents the text-and-discourse background for the presentations and discussions in the following parts of the study. The develop-ment of research in text and discourse has been described in detail on the basis of many available sources (see for example de Beaugrande & Dressler 1981; van Dijk 2008). To complement these accounts we underline a largely over-looked view that the interest in text and discourse emerged also as a natural and inevitable consequence of the permanent interest of structuralist and post--structuralist linguistics in the consecutively larger language units. Chapter 2 proposes a way to integrate speech acts and speech genres, and also indicates some relevant points in common which justify their integrated analysis. We suggest that both speech acts and speech genres belong to and are the elements of the linguistic communication situation, and that they are complementary to each other3. Both speech acts and speech genre are value-laden. Accordingly the purpose of Chapter 3 is to constitute the axiological part of the background for the presentation and discussion of speech acts and speech genres in the fol-lowing parts of the study. We overview here the evolution of the approaches to values and valuations in language and linguistics, which has inevitably re-sulted in the establishing of Axiological Linguistics. The chapter also includes a selective presentation of two major proposals in the field of Axiological Linguistics, that is, Jadwiga Puzynina’s RESIDUAL approach and Tomasz P. Krzeszowski’s HOLISTIC approach.

The second part of the book is concerned with AXIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF SPEECH ACTS. Here, we propose an alternative view on the interaction of the three sub-acts of the speech act, that is, we offer a perlocutionary inter-pretation of speech acts. In our approach, illocutionary and locutionary acts are vehicles for executing the speaker’s perlocutionary intention encoded in his perlocutionary act. We reject the views aiming at diminishing the significance of perlocutionary acts by treating them as mere results or by-products of illo-cutionary and communicative acts.

Chapter 4 constitutes a background for the discussion of perlocutionary speech acts in the following four chapters of the study. It surveys what we take 3 According to Professor Zdzisław Wąsik (in personal communication) our specific interpretation is consistentwith the general view on acts and genres of speech as an integrated duality of two existence modes of thesame communicative event. It is once realized as text-processing – PRACTICES and, on another occasion,as stabilized text-products – PATTERNS, involved in the activities and knowledge of communication parti-cipants (cf. for a detailed discussion see Wąsik 1987, 2003). Speech acts encode – the PRACTICE, while speechgenres regulate the encoding via their templates – the PATTERN.

Introduction4

to be the central issues in the discussions of perlocutions. Specifically, present-ed are the issues pertaining to the illocution/perlocution distinction and issues pertaining to perlocutionary effects and perlocutionary acts. Chapter 5 outlines a framework for an axiological analysis of perlocutionary acts and perlocution-ary effects, the indispensable element of which is the hearer. The locutions used by the hearer are the direct exponents of value-laden perlocutionary effects and indirect representations of the perlocutionary acts performed by the speaker. A part of the interaction between the speaker and the hearer involves the valu-ations of the speaker’s utterance by the hearer. Chapter 6 offers a taxonomy of perlocutionary effects distinguished on axiological grounds. We discuss in detail the three types of perlocutionary effect, that is, default perlocutionary ef-fects, intended perlocutionary effects and actual perlocutionary effects. To our knowledge, the concept of default perlocutionary effect has not been proposed anywhere in literature before and it has been introduced and discussed in this monograph as such. Default perlocutionary effects are conventionally associ-ated with the speaker’s illocutionary acts. In contrast to intended and actual perlocutionary effects, they are relatively independent of both the speaker and the hearer. In Chapter 7 the first part of our discussion is concerned with the proposed classification of perlocutionary acts, which has been based on the hearer’s judgment of the speaker’s perlocutionary purpose. In keeping with the GOOD–BAD axiological dichotomy underlying our discussion of perlocution, the speaker undertakes ‘to do good to the hearer’ or ‘to do bad to the hearer’4. In the second part of the chapter, we demonstrate that violations of felicity con-ditions on speech acts affect the emerging of actual perlocutionary effects. Our hypothesis is that the speaker’s manipulation of felicity condition is dictated by his/her attempts to minimize, reduce or override the default perlocutionary effect associated with each illocutionary act, the ultimate goal being to evoke the intended effect in the hearer.

The third part of the book deals with AXIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF SPEECH GENRES and it consists of two chapters. A speech genre template is defined on several levels, that is, compositional, thematic and stylistic, each level representing different generic aspects. The original three levels have been supplemented with an additional axiological level integrated with the former three. In this part of our study we discuss in detail two aspects of the axiologi-cal level of speech genre template, that is, values and their related value-laden lexis.

In Chapter 8 the discussion involves the two hypotheses. One is that each speech genre has its unique hierarchical thematic structure. According to the

4 Roman Kalisz and Wojciech Kubiński (1993: 81) made a similar observation: “… the assessment of whethera particular state of affairs or acts is desirable or undesirable from the vantage points of the interlocutorsengaged in a discourse is an important element of this discourse and as such may have far reaching conse-quences”.

Introduction 5

other one the types of values are conditioned and determined by various physi-cal and other properties, that is, so-called bearers of values. For speech genres, these other properties are the themes of the speech genre template, that is, macro themes and micro themes. We demonstrate that themes and values are indirectly connected via the concept of bearer of values, but they are connected so in a reconstructible way, with the consequent non-isomorphic hierarchy of themes and the hierarchy of values. Chapter 9 considers the issue of collec-tions of words connected with individual speech genres, which give individual features to their textual actualizations. Such open repertoires of words are per-manently linked with the macro themes and the micro themes of each speech genre. Because themes are bearers of values of a given genre, both themes and values of the genre template are embedded in the same inventory of lexemes. However, due to the lack of complete isomorphism of the hierarchies of themes and the hierarchies of values, it is necessary to distinguish between differently structured lexical fields of themes and lexical fields of values of the same col-lections of words.

The present study reports the results of our attempt to work out an integrat-ed account of speech acts and speech genres. The suggested platform of inte-gration is constituted by the linguistic communication situation, an essential element of discourse. We argue for, and provide evidence that, the concepts of speech act and speech genre focus on different aspect of the same complex phenomenon of communication situation; therefore, their joint treatment is by all means methodologically justified. Our integrated account of speech acts and speech genres is also interdisciplinary in character, as it is contingent on Linguistic Pragmatics, Linguistic Genology and Axiological Linguistics. We hope that due to its integrative and interdisciplinary character, the account will offer methodological proposals for both speech act research and the speech genre research, and ultimately for their superordinate domain of text and dis-course analysis.