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3 Macropragmatics
Speech act theory The cooperative principle The politeness principle
Felicity conditions :
Circumstances under which it would be appropriate to interpret something as a particular type of speech act.
Felicity conditions
1. General conditions 2. Content conditions 3. Preparatory conditions 4. Sincerity condition 5. Essential condition
(2) a. Husband: Thats the phone. b. Wife: Im in the bathroom. c. Husband: Okay.
Its illocutionary acts are: (i) a refusal to comply with the request (ii) a request to her husband to answer the phone instead.
(2) a. Its cold outside. b. I hereby tell you about the weather. c. I hereby request of you that you close the door.
Whenever there is a direct relationship between a structure and a function, we have a direct speech act. For example, a declarative used to make a statement is a direct speech act, but a declarative used to make a request is an indirect speech act. As illustrated in (2), the utterance in (2a) is a declarative. When it is used to make a statement, as paraphrased in (2b), it is functioning as a direct speech act. When it is used to make a command/request, as paraphrased in (2c), it is functioning as an indirect speech act.
Requests are often performed indirectly. Their indirectness has certain characteristics that tend to group requests into the following types
Assignments
I. Define the following terms briefly: Speech act theory II. Someone stands between you and the TV set you were watching, so you decide to say one of the following. Identify which would be direct and which would be indirect speech acts. (1) Move! (2) Youre in the way. (3) Could you sit down? (4) I cant see anything. (5) Please get out of the way.
(3) a. Could you pass me the salt, please? b. Would you open this for me?
One of the most common types of indirect speech act in English, as shown in (3) has the form of an interrogative, but is not typically used to ask questions, that is , we do not expect an answer, but we expect action.