SPEECH ACTS AND IMPLICATURES

Paper Summary:

This paper reviews and discusses speech acts and implicatures in relation to pragmatics. According to the paper, any time a person talks, they perform a speech act, for language is not just a logical system and, therefore, the context and the intention of the speaker are extremely important. This paper tries to sum up the points of view of John L. Austin, John R. Searle and Paul Grice as far as speech acts and implicatures are concerned, trying to draw parallels with the seminar as often as possible.

Outline:
Austin's Contribution to the Study of Speech Acts
Searle's Classification of Speech Acts
Grice's Work on Implicatures: The Cooperative Principle

From the Paper:

"In this perspective, implicatures (that is to say, the implied meaning that is based on the assumption that the speaker follows the cooperative principle and the four maxims) are made possible by the cooperative behaviour of both the speaker and the listener. Those implicatures are first implied by the speaker, and then inferred by the listener: we may call them "invited inferences". Even if it is very important for the listener to assume the speaker is being cooperative (that is to say, that he follows the conversational maxims), this may not be the case every time: when one or more conversational maxims are apparently broken, this may give rise to implicatures as well. One can classify implicatures into two categories: conversational and conventional implicatures. Conversational implicatures rise out of the breaking of the conversational maxims, whereas conventional ones do not interact with those maxims. "

Sample of Sources Used:

• Ackerman, Farrell & Adele Goldberg. 1996. Constraints on Adjectival Past Participles. In Adele E. Goldberg (ed.), Conceptual Structure, Discourse and Language. CSLI Publications.
• Ackerman, Farrell & Gert Webelhuth. 1997. "The Composition of (Dis)continuous Predicates: Lexical or Syntactic?" Acta Linguistica Hungarica 44 (3-4), 317-340. Akademiai Kiado, Budapest; Hungary.
• Ackerman, Farrell & Gert Webelhuth. 1999. "A Lexical-Functional Analysis of Predicate Topicalization in German". American Journal of Germanic Linguistics and Literatures 11.1:1-65.
• Ackerman, Farrell & Gert Webelhuth. 1999. "The Treatment of Complex Predicates in Transformational and Non-transformational Theories of Syntax". In Robert D. Borsley & Kersti Borjars (eds.), Non-transformational Syntax: A Guide to Current Debate. Oxford, UK & Cambridge, USA: Blackwell.
• Bybee, Joan. 1998. A functionalist approach to grammar and its evolution. Evolution of Communication 2.2.249-278.

More papers on SPEECH ACTS AND IMPLICATURES:

• Analytical Essay # 74348 : "Analysis of the Speech Acts"
• Comparison Essay # 39644 : "The Speech Act and Implicit Meaning"
• Analytical Essay # 134359 : "Analysis of Acts and Philippians"

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