Cross Cultural Communication

SUMMARY

SPEECH ACTS AND SPEECH GENRES ACROSS LANGUAGES

AND CULTURES

By Anna Wierzbicka

Hayat M. Ohorella

P0600208015

A Framework for Analyzing a Culture’s Forms of Talk

Every culture has its own repertoire of characteristic speech

acts and speech genres. The idea that different cultures can be
studied and compared via their characteristic speech genres has by
now become widely accepted, although it is seldom recognized that
this statement applies to simple speech acts as much as to complex
speech genres.

The authors of a recent study (Fracer – Rintell – Walters,

1980: 78) say that their research is based on the following
assumptions: “Every language makes available to the user the
same basic set of speech acts, such as requesting, apologizing,
declaring, and promising, with the exception of certain culture-
specific ritualized acts such as baptizing, doubling at bridge, and
excommunicating”. Underlying this assumption is “the claim that if
one language permits an act such as requesting, every other
language will. Though there may be certain exceptions as moves
from the basic everyday acts such as requesting to the more
culture-specific ones such as baptizing, exceptions to this claim
have not arisen and do not appear likely, given what we know today
about language” (1980: 79).

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Cross Cultural Communication

Some examples: English vs. Japanese

There are many languages which have no exact equivalent of

the word warning and which have, instead, words for models of
communication which have no equivalents in English. For example,
Japanese has the word satosu, which combines some of the
components of the English concept codified in the word warning
with some other components: an assumption that the speaker has
authority over the addressee, the intention of protecting the
addressee from evil, and good feelings toward the addressee (see
Nevile, 1981). In English, the assumption of authority is encoded in
verbs such as order and forbid, but it is never combined (lexically)
with the intention to protect. This combination of components: “I
am your superior; I am resp[onsible for you; I don’t want you to do
anything bad; I care for you”, is a characteristic feature of Japanese
culture, in which the relationship between a superior and
subordinate is likened to that between a parent and a child (see
Nakane, 1970, 1972; Lebra 1976; Smith 1983), and this feature is
reflected in the meaning of the Japanese verb satosu.

Using semantic metalanguage based on universal semantic

primitives shows that both the similarities and the differences
between different speech acts clearly and explicitly. For example,
the relationship between warn and threaten can be represented
along the following lines (cf. Wierbicka 1987):