Indirect Speech Acts

Pragmatics

Direct speech act

Direct match between sentence type and illocutionary force

Indirect speech act

No direct relationship between sentence type and illocutionary force

Literal force hypothesis

The view that there is a direct structure-function correlation in speech acts and that sentence forms are by default direct reflexes of their underlying illocutionary forces

Problems with literal force hypothesis

• Speech acts where even the direct link between performative verbs and speech acts breaks down (e.g., I promise to sack you if you don’t finish the job by Monday. The performative verb is promise, but the illocutionary force that is most naturally ascribed to this speech act is that of a threat or a promise).

  • Most usages as indirect - e.g. requesting is rarely performed by means of imperative - instead carried out indirectly.

Dual illocutionary force (Searle)

• An indirect speech act has two illocutionary forces - one literal//direct and the other not.

• Literal/direct force is secondary; non-literal is primary.

• Performing of and understanding of indirect speech act involves some kind of inference - along lines of Grice’s rational, co-operative model of communication

  • Indirect speech acts frequently conventionalised - e.g. pre-requests as requests

Short-circuited implicature (Morgan)

• While relevant conversational implicature is in principle calculable, it is not in practice calculated.

Conversational postulates (Gordon & Lakoff)

• inference rules that reduce the amount of inference needed to interpret an indirect speech act

Idiom model

• Sentences like Can you pass the salt? are semantically ambiguous, and the request interpretation constitutes a speech act idiom that involves no inference at all.

  • Sentence is recognised as request with no question being perceived

Failures of idiom model

• Idiom analysis fails to capture fact that the meaning of indirect speech act can frequently be derived from the meaning of its components

  • Idioms turn out to be quite comparable cross-linguistically

Reasons for using indirect speech act

Politeness:

• the more indirect a speech act, the more polite