What are speech acts?
Speech acts or performatives refer to how utterances can function as actions (promising, commanding, apologizing)
A lot of what we say is more based on action rather than representation
What did Austin distinguish between when discussing these speech acts?
Locutionary act: the act of speaking itself and the literal meaning of the words spoken
Illocutionary act: the intent or purpose behind the speech
Perlocutionary act: the effect the speech has on the listener
What are the felicity conditions?
They are the criteria that must be met for a speech act to be considered successful or “felicitous”
What is perfomativity?
It refers to the manifold (culturally specific and ideologically shaped) ways that language is used to do things in the world
What are the six functions of language according to Jakobson?
Referential
Emotive
Conative
Phatic
Metalingual
Poetic
What is referential?
It is the way language communicates information, specifically how it is oriented toward the context of the message. This is what linguistic anthropologists refer to when they talk about language’s “referential” or “denotational” meaning (“constantive” as opposed to “performative” in Austin’s language)
What is emotive?
It is the way we express things about ourselves/communicating about our internal states. It centres on the speaker or addresser. e.g., “I’m so happy today”
What is conative?
They are the things we say to express an attitude/wish/desire from someone else. It is oriented toward the addressee. e.g., “Please close the door”, “Please speak more quietly”
What is phatic?
It is about the establishment of communication. - It focuses on the contact between speaker and listener (e.g., “You there?”, “You know?”).
What is metalingual?
This is language about language. It centers on the code of communication. E.g., “What does this mean?”, “When should use that word”, “Don’t say it like that.”
What is poetic?
This is language for the sake of language (wordplay, alliteration, rhyme, essentially not for the use of communication but rather the pleasure of language itself). It focuses on the message itself, e.g., rhymes, wordplay.
What is agency?
It refers to a capacity for intentional human action (or in some broader definitions) for any capacity to act or have effects in the world. It has a quite literal linguistic basis as the way in which we formulate/express agency in language can affect how we experience the world socially and psychologically.
Agency is also a cultural and linguistic concept that is understood and formulated in different ways - and this can even be seen at the levels of grammar and linguistic practice
What is linguistic typology?
It is the study of the systematic classification and comparison of languages based on their structural features (e.g., syntax, morphology, phonology) to identify patterns, universals, and diversity across human languages. Languages have different structures but they differ based on how they frame agency.
What is the argument of structure and agency?
These different arguments are usually symbolized as follows:
A = agent of transitive verb
O = object of transitive verb (also symbolized as P for “patient”)
S = core argument (i.e., subject) of intransitive verb
What is a speech genre?
It refers to how language use is shaped by socially specific “genres” of communication (e.g., jokes, lectures, prayers, stories, speeches, university lectures). The interpretation of speech acts and their effectiveness as forms of social action is closely shaped by their coherence and recognizability as known genres of speech.
