Journal ArticleDOI
Indirect Speech Acts
Nicholas Asher,Alex Lascarides +1 more
TLDR
It is shown how a formal semantictheory of discourse interpretation can be used to define speech acts and to avoid murky issues concerning the metaphysics of action.Abstract:
In this paper, we address several puzzles concerning speech acts,particularly indirect speech acts. We show how a formal semantictheory of discourse interpretation can be used to define speech actsand to avoid murky issues concerning the metaphysics of action. Weprovide a formally precise definition of indirect speech acts, includingthe subclass of so-called conventionalized indirect speech acts. Thisanalysis draws heavily on parallels between phenomena at the speechact level and the lexical level. First, we argue that, just as co-predicationshows that some words can behave linguistically as if they're `simultaneously'of incompatible semantic types, certain speech acts behave this way too.Secondly, as Horn and Bayer (1984) and others have suggested, both thelexicon and speech acts are subject to a principle of blocking or ``preemptionby synonymy'': Conventionalized indirect speech acts can block their`paraphrases' from being interpreted as indirect speech acts, even ifthis interpretation is calculable from Gricean-style principles. Weprovide a formal model of this blocking, and compare it withexisting accounts of lexical blocking.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Power and indirectness in business correspondence: Petitions in Colonial Louisiana Spanish
TL;DR: This article studied the relationship between politeness and politeness in the Spanish of Colonial Louisiana and found that subordinates in Colonial Louisiana made extensive use of a conventionally direct request strategy which was employed in a formulaic manner in business communication.
Journal ArticleDOI
Investigating Pragmatic Competence: The Case of Requests in Interchange Series
TL;DR: Results showed that Richard’s Interchange Series fail to include materials which are needed for meaningful and face saving communication when resort to different kinds of requests is required and there is no balance between the presentation of internal and external modifications in the different books studied.
A speech act analysis of status updates on facebook: the case of Ghanaian university students
TL;DR: In the last half a decade, social network sites (SNSs) have wrought a tremendous impact on interpersonal communication across the world to the extent that it can be postulated, arguably, that such sites/platforms represent the commonest new media in Ghana.
Dissertation
A Cross-Sectional Study of Iranian EFL Learners' Realization of Request Speech Acts
TL;DR: This is the thesis of Dr. Gulsen Musayeva Vefali, a master of Arts in English Language Teaching from Eastern Mediterranean University, Faculty of Education, Dept. of English Language teaching, which aims to improve the quality of teachers' English language teaching in Syria.
ere : une approche didactique pour l'enseignement et l'apprentissage de l' ecrit en FLE en milieu universitaire australien
TL;DR: In this article, Barre-De Miniac et al. examine the notions of representations sociales and de rapport a l'ecriture (Barre-de Miniac 2000), situees dans un contexte plurilingue.
References
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Book
How to do things with words
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors presented a series of lectures with the following topics: Lecture I * Lecture II* Lecture III * Lectures IV* Lectures V * LectURE VI * LectURES VI * LII * LIII * LIV * LVI * LIX
Book ChapterDOI
Logic and Conversation
TL;DR: For instance, Grice was interested in Quine's logical approach to language, although he differed from Quine over certain specific specific questions, such as the viability of the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements.
Book
Head-driven phrase structure grammar
Ivan A. Sag,Carl Jesse Pollard +1 more
TL;DR: This book presents the most complete exposition of the theory of head-driven phrase structure grammar, introduced in the authors' "Information-Based Syntax and Semantics," and demonstrates the applicability of the HPSG approach to a wide range of empirical problems.