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 and Literary Theory

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

Get Book

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 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 Act Theory and Pragmatics

Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics PDF Author: John Searle
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400989644
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
In the study of language, as in any other systematic study, there is no neutral terminology. Every technical term is an expression of the assumptions and theoretical presuppositions of its users; and in this introduction, we want to clarify some of the issues that have surrounded the assumptions behind the use of the two terms "speech acts" and "pragmatics". The notion of a speech act is fairly well understood. The theory of speech acts starts with the assumption that the minimal unit of human communica tion is not a sentence or other expression, but rather the performance of certain kinds of acts, such as making statements, asking questions, giving orders, describing, explaining, apologizing, thanking, congratulating, etc. Characteristically, a speaker performs one or more of these acts by uttering a sentence or sentences; but the act itself is not to be confused with a sentence or other expression uttered in its performance. Such types of acts as those exemplified above are called, following Austin, illocutionary acts, and they are standardly contrasted in the literature with certain other types of acts such as perlocutionary acts and propositional acts. Perlocutionary acts have to do with those effects which our utterances have on hearers which go beyond the hearer's understanding of the utterance. Such acts as convincing, persuading, annoying, amusing, and frightening are all cases of perlocutionary acts.

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.

Literature as Conduct

Literature as Conduct PDF Author: Joseph Hillis Miller
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780823235391
Category : Conduct of life in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
The work of a master critic, this book draws on speech act theory, to investigate the many dimensions of doing things with words in Henry James's fiction. The author shows that three modes of speech act occur in James's novels and the action of each work is brought about by its own idiosyncratic repertoire.

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


Foundations of Speech Act Theory

Foundations of Speech Act Theory PDF Author: S.L. Tsohatzidis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134866984
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 518

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Book Description
Foundations of Speech Act Theory investigates the importance of speech act theory to the problem of meaning in linguistics and philosophy. The papers in this volume, written by respected philosophers and linguists, significantly advance standards of debate in this area. Beginning with a detailed introduction to the individual contributors, this collection demonstrates the relevance of speech acts to semantic theory. It includes essays unified by the assumption that current pragmatic theories are not well equipped to analyse speech acts satisfactorily, and concludes with five studies which assess the relevance of speech act theory to the understanding of philosophical problems outside the area of philosophy of language.

From Utterances to Speech Acts

From Utterances to Speech Acts PDF Author: Mikhail Kissine
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107328349
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Most of the time our utterances are automatically interpreted as speech acts: as assertions, conjectures and testimonies; as orders, requests and pleas; as threats, offers and promises. Surprisingly, the cognitive correlates of this essential component of human communication have received little attention. This book fills the gap by providing a model of the psychological processes involved in interpreting and understanding speech acts. The theory is framed in naturalistic terms and is supported by data on language development and on autism spectrum disorders. Mikhail Kissine does not presuppose any specific background and addresses a crucial pragmatic phenomenon from an interdisciplinary perspective. This is a valuable resource for academic researchers and graduate and undergraduate students in pragmatics, semantics, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics and philosophy of language.

Speech Acts in English

Speech Acts in English PDF Author: Lorena Pérez-Hernández
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108476325
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
This book merges theory and practical activities to show how research on speech acts can be implemented in EFL teaching.

Corpus Pragmatics

Corpus Pragmatics PDF Author: Karin Aijmer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107015049
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
The first handbook to survey and expand the burgeoning field of corpus pragmatics, the intersection of pragmatics and corpus linguistics.