lecture_recording_on_06_March_2025_at_11.07.31_AM

Speech Acts

Communicative actions that convey meaning through utterances, including performances such as promising, questioning, and directing.

Direct Speech Acts

Instances where the syntactic form of a statement directly matches its intended meaning or communicative force.

Indirect Speech Acts

Instances where the syntactic form of a statement does not match its intended meaning, relying on context or further interpretation.

Declarations

A type of speech act that brings about a change in the external world, such as pronouncing someone married.

Felicity Conditions

The set of specific circumstances required for a speech act to be successfully performed.

Politeness Strategies

Linguistic tactics used to mitigate face-threatening acts in communication to maintain social harmony.

Representatives

A category of speech acts that convey information or describe states of affairs.

Directives

A category of speech acts intended to get the hearer to do something, often appearing in imperative form.

Expressives

Speech acts that express the speaker's feelings or attitudes toward a situation.

Commissives

A type of speech act where the speaker commits to a certain course of action, such as promising.

Social Relationships

The contextual factors influencing how directives and requests are interpreted, including power distance and intimacy.

Cultural Variations

Differences in communication styles and politeness norms across various cultural contexts.

Sincerity Condition

The requirement that the speaker genuinely intends to fulfill the promise expressed in a commissive speech act.

Propositional Condition

For directives, this condition states that the speaker predicates an action that the hearer must perform.

Negative Face

The desire to be free from imposition or intrusion in social interaction.

Positive Face

The desire to be liked and accepted by others in social contexts.

Power Distance

The extent to which less powerful members defer to more powerful members in social relationships.

Multilingualism

The ability to communicate in multiple languages, often influenced by social, political, and cultural factors.

High and Low Varieties

Distinctions in language use based on formality, context, or social status, such as standard vs. colloquial language.