- Email: [email protected]
Speech acts and linguistic research
646
Book reviews / Journal of Pragmatics 29 (1998) 639-658
References Wagner, S., Ellen Winner, Dante Cicchetti and Howard Gardner, 1981. 'Metaphorical' mapping in human infants. Child Development52: 728-731.
Elisabetta Fava, ed., Speech acts and linguistic research. Proceedings of the workshop, July 15-17, 1994, Center of Cognitive Science of New York at Buffalo. Padova: Nemo, 1995. 153 pp. Reviewed by Corinne Rossari, Department of Linguistics, University of Geneva, 2 rue de Candolle, CH-1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland. Phone: +41 22 705 73 49; Email: Corinne.Rossari@ lettres.unige.ch The present volume is a selection of papers discussed at the workshop on 'Speech Acts and Linguistic Research' held during the First International Summer Institute in Cognitive Science, at Buffalo, NY, in July 1994. The collected papers give an idea of the aim of the workshop, which was to discuss some issues about the interrelations of speech acts and linguistic theories. In the introduction, the editor, Elisabetta Fava, insists on the marginal character of the field. According to her, the mentioned interface has been only partially explored: "On the one hand, only a few of the language phenomena dealt with in speech act theory have been the object of intensive research in linguistic theory. On the other hand, the literature on speech acts has revealed only desultory interest in linguistic theories" (p. ix). She justifies this perspective by taking the Extended Standard and Government and Binding Theories as examples. Speech act phenomena have admittedly been neglected in these approaches. However, in the field of discourse analysis, the interrelation has been treated abundantly, for instance, in approaches concerned with the interpretation of discourse connections in the Saussurean 'langue' (cf. Ducrot, 1972), as well as in approaches which focus on conversational structures (cf. the Geneva discourse analysis model developed in Roulet et al., 1985) or on principles of utterance interpretation (cf. Moeschler and Reboul, 1994). In contrast, Elisabetta Fava insists upon the fact that quite a few approaches have been interested in studying speech acts: "The applications of the categories and distinctions of speech act theory have been fruitful in many different areas, not necessarily related, such as psychology, artificial intelligence, sociology, law and so forth" (p. vii). The selected papers give a good idea of the complexity of the linguistics/speech act interface, by presenting many facets of speech act analysis in different languages (Japanese, Korean, Italian, and Dutch). Many theoretical currents are taken into account, including Sperber and Wilson's (1986) theory of relevance, Levinas'(1961) theory of totality and infinity, and Vanderveken's (1990) theory of speech acts. Empirical questions are addressed about acquisition problems, discourse interpreta-
Book reviews / Journal of Pragmatics 29 (1998) 639--658
647
tion, indirect speech acts, illocutionary force derivation, analysis of grammatical markers (mood and modality indicators, sentence final particles) and suprasegmental markers (intonation). Because of this plurality, it is difficult for the reader to perceive a general trend in the book. However, the first two sections show some homogeneity in the choice of the papers. The book is divided into four parts: a foreword, two sections, and a special section dedicated to "forms and functions in grammatical theory". The first section is comprised of articles that deal with speech acts from a theoretical point of view; the theoretical perspectives dealt with include historical approaches and approaches based on pragmatic and philosophical theories. The second section contains articles from an empirical point of view, and deals with verbal and prosodic markers used in the interpretation of speech acts in general and speech acts in particular languages. It is difficult to find a global theme behind the special section, because it contains two articles on unconnected problems: the first addresses a grammatical problem, while the second has to do with a reference task in dialogue. This section weakens the global coherence of the book, because it is not possible for the reader to link the discussion in these two papers with the general theme of the linguistics/speech act interface. The foreword presents the aims of the workshop and the book's content, but also introduces the reader to the notion of speech act by browsing through various domains of social sciences where this notion is used. This allows the reader to realize that the concept of speech act has been somewhat diffracted as it became increasingly popular. Let us now examine the content of each paper more specifically. The first section opens with a historical paper by Brigitte Nerlich which allows the reader to locate the notion of speech acts among different currents and authors and understand the origins of the concept. The other papers in this section are concerned with the interpretative aspects of speech acts. The first two present hypotheses on speech act interpretation relying on general cognitive principles, independent of particular languages, whereas the cognitive hypothesis presented in the third paper is grounded on empirical observations from Japanese. As an alternative approach to relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1986), Katarzyna M. Jaszczolt proposes Levinas' (1961) theory of Totality and Infinity. According to this theory, speech act interpretation is based on psychological attitudes and on a doubly dynamic perception of conversation: "the interpretation is created in-between the interlocutors" (p. 35). Using a model of communication based on the principle of relevance, Alessandro Lenci discusses the problem of the interpretation of indirect speech acts. He proposes a conception in which the linguistic structure of the utterance is not directly associated with the interpretation of illocutionary force. The principles which govern interpretation are restricted to inferential procedures (principle of relevance) based on a rational conception of human behavior. "Speech act recognition is always a pragmatic process. Sentence types offer the initial clues and direction to drive the inferential process in order to understand the illocutionary intentions of the speaker" (p. 52). Susumu Kubo presents a cognitive model of interpretation of potential illocutionary forces anchored to the description of the illocutionary force markers in Japanese. The analysis of this particular category of markers allows him to provide
648
Book reviews /Journal of Pragmatics 29 (1998) 639--658
empirical support for the rules proposed by Vanderveken (1990) for determining illocutionary forces. In the second section, different markers connected with speech acts are analyzed from different perspectives in different languages. Mood and modality markers are analyzed for Korean from an acquisition perspective by Chungmin Lee, who shows that the acquisition of this type of markers is hierarchical: a Korean child first acquires the mood markers and, second, the modality markers. The distinction between mood and modality leads her to question the controversy in acquisition theories about the order in which deontic and epistemic modalities are learned by children. "The controversy over deontic vs. epistemic," she argues, "first arises from not distinguishing between mood and modality" (p. 87). Emanuela Cresti addresses the problem of the identification and meaning of speech act units from a perspective that takes into account the informational and prosodic structure of spoken Italian. She appeals to intonation-based criteria to define the topical units of utterances. Then she uses these units (which she considers to be optional) to determine the illocutionary force (which is mainly controlled by the 'comment' unit). Hiromi Oda studies sentential final particles in Japanese from an interactional perspective to discover how interpersonal relations are constructed by the speakers in conversation. The function of these markers is determined by analyzing two parameters, a sociocognitive one (the perceptual distance between hearer and speaker) and a perlocutionary parameter (the force of influence intended by the speaker). The last section of the book contains two papers which have no special connection to the main problem of the linguistics/speech act interface. In this respect, this section is not as coherent as one may wish. Louise H. Comelis examines the status of the agent role in passive sentences, hypothesizing that passive agents are presented as non-prototypical agents, and that the causal events expressed by a passive are not seen from the perspective of the passive agent. Her hypothesis is based on a statistical analysis of the types of agents in a Dutch corpus. In the second paper, Anita H. M. Cremers describes the principle that determines the reference of an object in a shared domain. She evaluates the principle of minimal cooperative effort (according to which it is possible to predict the choice of a mood of reference in relation to the localization of the target object) on an experimental basis. Except for the last two papers, each paper in the collection discusses a problem that is directly or indirectly connected with some particular facet of the linguistics/speech act interface. On the whole, the book provides an overview of the main pragmatic theories that deal with speech acts and offers various linguistic illustrations of the relevance of speech acts. It will therefore be useful to any researcher who is concerned with this topic, no matter which perspective she or he adopts. The eclectic choice of approaches and the clarity of most papers make this book appropriate for scholars who want to understand the importance of speech acts in linguistic research.
References Ducrot, Oswald, 1972. Dire et ne pas dire. Principes de srmantique linguistique. Paris: Hermann.
Book reviews / Journal of Pragmatics 29 (1998) 639-658
649
Levinas, Emmanuel, 1961. Totalit6 et Infini. The Hague: Nijhoff. Moeschler, Jacques and Anne Reboul, 1994. Dictionnaireencyclop6diquede pragmatique. Paris: Seuil. Roulet, Eddy, Antoine Auchlin, Jacques Moeschler, Christian Rubattel and Marianne Schelling, 1985. L'articulation du discours en franqais contemporain.Bern: Lang. Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson, 1986. Relevance: Communicationand cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. Vanderveken, Daniel, 1990. Meaning and speech acts. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Srikant Sarangi and Stefan Siembrouck, Language bureaucracy and social control. London: Longman, 1996. 232 pp. Reviewed by John Wilson, School of Behavioural and Communication Sciences, University of Ulster, Newtownabbey, Co. Antrim, BT37 OQB, Northern Ireland, UK. This text appears as part of the 'Real Language' series where the goal is to focus on natural data and to consider such data in terms of the relationship between language, society, and social change. Sarangi and Slembrouck's text clearly fulfils such a goal. It makes exemplary use of a wide range of natural data (including an extensive set of examples as appendices), and considers this data in relation to its social and individual functions within the interactional construction of bureaucratic encounters. The term 'construction' is important here. Sarangi and Slembrouck make clear from the beginning that bureaucracy and social control are not easily defined a priori concepts (Chapter 1). They are not simply located within formal institutions and processes, but rather are constituted in and through language. There are hints here of a post modern and social constructionist kind (for example Shotter, 1995; Lyotard, 1984), but the link remains more implicit than explicit throughout, Certainly there are arguments about the organisation and construction of bureaucratic roles and identities but this is structurally formalised within a standard (as opposed to 'grand': Lyotard, 1984) linguistic metanarrative. But the work is none the worse for that. Indeed, here we see the value for a constructivist tradition of a solid and wide ranging linguistic critique of particular forms of social practice. It is important to understand here that 'social control,' as constituted in language, is revealed at both the level of interaction (micro) and the broader and more general level of social action (macro). Although it is clearly recognised that these two at once create and are created by each other. Bureaucracy concerns and affects us all, and one of the central concerns of this text is with the extension of 'bureaucratisation' as part of our everyday lives. This is exemplified in Chapter 2, where it is argued that modes of talk and decision making are moving beyond the limits of what we normally consider to be bureaucratic practice. Bureaucracy encoded as a discourse type shifts and changes in often subtle and unnoticed ways. As one example, Sarangi and Slembrouck show how product advertising styles and techniques become vehicles for bureaucratic control. Here, advertising shifts from product representation to the invocation of
Book reviews / Journal of Pragmatics 29 (1998) 639-658
References Wagner, S., Ellen Winner, Dante Cicchetti and Howard Gardner, 1981. 'Metaphorical' mapping in human infants. Child Development52: 728-731.
Elisabetta Fava, ed., Speech acts and linguistic research. Proceedings of the workshop, July 15-17, 1994, Center of Cognitive Science of New York at Buffalo. Padova: Nemo, 1995. 153 pp. Reviewed by Corinne Rossari, Department of Linguistics, University of Geneva, 2 rue de Candolle, CH-1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland. Phone: +41 22 705 73 49; Email: Corinne.Rossari@ lettres.unige.ch The present volume is a selection of papers discussed at the workshop on 'Speech Acts and Linguistic Research' held during the First International Summer Institute in Cognitive Science, at Buffalo, NY, in July 1994. The collected papers give an idea of the aim of the workshop, which was to discuss some issues about the interrelations of speech acts and linguistic theories. In the introduction, the editor, Elisabetta Fava, insists on the marginal character of the field. According to her, the mentioned interface has been only partially explored: "On the one hand, only a few of the language phenomena dealt with in speech act theory have been the object of intensive research in linguistic theory. On the other hand, the literature on speech acts has revealed only desultory interest in linguistic theories" (p. ix). She justifies this perspective by taking the Extended Standard and Government and Binding Theories as examples. Speech act phenomena have admittedly been neglected in these approaches. However, in the field of discourse analysis, the interrelation has been treated abundantly, for instance, in approaches concerned with the interpretation of discourse connections in the Saussurean 'langue' (cf. Ducrot, 1972), as well as in approaches which focus on conversational structures (cf. the Geneva discourse analysis model developed in Roulet et al., 1985) or on principles of utterance interpretation (cf. Moeschler and Reboul, 1994). In contrast, Elisabetta Fava insists upon the fact that quite a few approaches have been interested in studying speech acts: "The applications of the categories and distinctions of speech act theory have been fruitful in many different areas, not necessarily related, such as psychology, artificial intelligence, sociology, law and so forth" (p. vii). The selected papers give a good idea of the complexity of the linguistics/speech act interface, by presenting many facets of speech act analysis in different languages (Japanese, Korean, Italian, and Dutch). Many theoretical currents are taken into account, including Sperber and Wilson's (1986) theory of relevance, Levinas'(1961) theory of totality and infinity, and Vanderveken's (1990) theory of speech acts. Empirical questions are addressed about acquisition problems, discourse interpreta-
Book reviews / Journal of Pragmatics 29 (1998) 639--658
647
tion, indirect speech acts, illocutionary force derivation, analysis of grammatical markers (mood and modality indicators, sentence final particles) and suprasegmental markers (intonation). Because of this plurality, it is difficult for the reader to perceive a general trend in the book. However, the first two sections show some homogeneity in the choice of the papers. The book is divided into four parts: a foreword, two sections, and a special section dedicated to "forms and functions in grammatical theory". The first section is comprised of articles that deal with speech acts from a theoretical point of view; the theoretical perspectives dealt with include historical approaches and approaches based on pragmatic and philosophical theories. The second section contains articles from an empirical point of view, and deals with verbal and prosodic markers used in the interpretation of speech acts in general and speech acts in particular languages. It is difficult to find a global theme behind the special section, because it contains two articles on unconnected problems: the first addresses a grammatical problem, while the second has to do with a reference task in dialogue. This section weakens the global coherence of the book, because it is not possible for the reader to link the discussion in these two papers with the general theme of the linguistics/speech act interface. The foreword presents the aims of the workshop and the book's content, but also introduces the reader to the notion of speech act by browsing through various domains of social sciences where this notion is used. This allows the reader to realize that the concept of speech act has been somewhat diffracted as it became increasingly popular. Let us now examine the content of each paper more specifically. The first section opens with a historical paper by Brigitte Nerlich which allows the reader to locate the notion of speech acts among different currents and authors and understand the origins of the concept. The other papers in this section are concerned with the interpretative aspects of speech acts. The first two present hypotheses on speech act interpretation relying on general cognitive principles, independent of particular languages, whereas the cognitive hypothesis presented in the third paper is grounded on empirical observations from Japanese. As an alternative approach to relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1986), Katarzyna M. Jaszczolt proposes Levinas' (1961) theory of Totality and Infinity. According to this theory, speech act interpretation is based on psychological attitudes and on a doubly dynamic perception of conversation: "the interpretation is created in-between the interlocutors" (p. 35). Using a model of communication based on the principle of relevance, Alessandro Lenci discusses the problem of the interpretation of indirect speech acts. He proposes a conception in which the linguistic structure of the utterance is not directly associated with the interpretation of illocutionary force. The principles which govern interpretation are restricted to inferential procedures (principle of relevance) based on a rational conception of human behavior. "Speech act recognition is always a pragmatic process. Sentence types offer the initial clues and direction to drive the inferential process in order to understand the illocutionary intentions of the speaker" (p. 52). Susumu Kubo presents a cognitive model of interpretation of potential illocutionary forces anchored to the description of the illocutionary force markers in Japanese. The analysis of this particular category of markers allows him to provide
648
Book reviews /Journal of Pragmatics 29 (1998) 639--658
empirical support for the rules proposed by Vanderveken (1990) for determining illocutionary forces. In the second section, different markers connected with speech acts are analyzed from different perspectives in different languages. Mood and modality markers are analyzed for Korean from an acquisition perspective by Chungmin Lee, who shows that the acquisition of this type of markers is hierarchical: a Korean child first acquires the mood markers and, second, the modality markers. The distinction between mood and modality leads her to question the controversy in acquisition theories about the order in which deontic and epistemic modalities are learned by children. "The controversy over deontic vs. epistemic," she argues, "first arises from not distinguishing between mood and modality" (p. 87). Emanuela Cresti addresses the problem of the identification and meaning of speech act units from a perspective that takes into account the informational and prosodic structure of spoken Italian. She appeals to intonation-based criteria to define the topical units of utterances. Then she uses these units (which she considers to be optional) to determine the illocutionary force (which is mainly controlled by the 'comment' unit). Hiromi Oda studies sentential final particles in Japanese from an interactional perspective to discover how interpersonal relations are constructed by the speakers in conversation. The function of these markers is determined by analyzing two parameters, a sociocognitive one (the perceptual distance between hearer and speaker) and a perlocutionary parameter (the force of influence intended by the speaker). The last section of the book contains two papers which have no special connection to the main problem of the linguistics/speech act interface. In this respect, this section is not as coherent as one may wish. Louise H. Comelis examines the status of the agent role in passive sentences, hypothesizing that passive agents are presented as non-prototypical agents, and that the causal events expressed by a passive are not seen from the perspective of the passive agent. Her hypothesis is based on a statistical analysis of the types of agents in a Dutch corpus. In the second paper, Anita H. M. Cremers describes the principle that determines the reference of an object in a shared domain. She evaluates the principle of minimal cooperative effort (according to which it is possible to predict the choice of a mood of reference in relation to the localization of the target object) on an experimental basis. Except for the last two papers, each paper in the collection discusses a problem that is directly or indirectly connected with some particular facet of the linguistics/speech act interface. On the whole, the book provides an overview of the main pragmatic theories that deal with speech acts and offers various linguistic illustrations of the relevance of speech acts. It will therefore be useful to any researcher who is concerned with this topic, no matter which perspective she or he adopts. The eclectic choice of approaches and the clarity of most papers make this book appropriate for scholars who want to understand the importance of speech acts in linguistic research.
References Ducrot, Oswald, 1972. Dire et ne pas dire. Principes de srmantique linguistique. Paris: Hermann.
Book reviews / Journal of Pragmatics 29 (1998) 639-658
649
Levinas, Emmanuel, 1961. Totalit6 et Infini. The Hague: Nijhoff. Moeschler, Jacques and Anne Reboul, 1994. Dictionnaireencyclop6diquede pragmatique. Paris: Seuil. Roulet, Eddy, Antoine Auchlin, Jacques Moeschler, Christian Rubattel and Marianne Schelling, 1985. L'articulation du discours en franqais contemporain.Bern: Lang. Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson, 1986. Relevance: Communicationand cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. Vanderveken, Daniel, 1990. Meaning and speech acts. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Srikant Sarangi and Stefan Siembrouck, Language bureaucracy and social control. London: Longman, 1996. 232 pp. Reviewed by John Wilson, School of Behavioural and Communication Sciences, University of Ulster, Newtownabbey, Co. Antrim, BT37 OQB, Northern Ireland, UK. This text appears as part of the 'Real Language' series where the goal is to focus on natural data and to consider such data in terms of the relationship between language, society, and social change. Sarangi and Slembrouck's text clearly fulfils such a goal. It makes exemplary use of a wide range of natural data (including an extensive set of examples as appendices), and considers this data in relation to its social and individual functions within the interactional construction of bureaucratic encounters. The term 'construction' is important here. Sarangi and Slembrouck make clear from the beginning that bureaucracy and social control are not easily defined a priori concepts (Chapter 1). They are not simply located within formal institutions and processes, but rather are constituted in and through language. There are hints here of a post modern and social constructionist kind (for example Shotter, 1995; Lyotard, 1984), but the link remains more implicit than explicit throughout, Certainly there are arguments about the organisation and construction of bureaucratic roles and identities but this is structurally formalised within a standard (as opposed to 'grand': Lyotard, 1984) linguistic metanarrative. But the work is none the worse for that. Indeed, here we see the value for a constructivist tradition of a solid and wide ranging linguistic critique of particular forms of social practice. It is important to understand here that 'social control,' as constituted in language, is revealed at both the level of interaction (micro) and the broader and more general level of social action (macro). Although it is clearly recognised that these two at once create and are created by each other. Bureaucracy concerns and affects us all, and one of the central concerns of this text is with the extension of 'bureaucratisation' as part of our everyday lives. This is exemplified in Chapter 2, where it is argued that modes of talk and decision making are moving beyond the limits of what we normally consider to be bureaucratic practice. Bureaucracy encoded as a discourse type shifts and changes in often subtle and unnoticed ways. As one example, Sarangi and Slembrouck show how product advertising styles and techniques become vehicles for bureaucratic control. Here, advertising shifts from product representation to the invocation of