Revising SAT: Speech Act Schema (SAS)

The schematic approach to SA has rarely been employed in cognitive research, although Toolan (1998) and Short (2007) in stylistics, Harnish and Bach (1979) in discursive psychology, and van Dijk (1981) in pragmatics are exceptions. However, Toolan’s (1998) and Short’s (2007) work does not directly deal with the specifications of SAS: it is only briefly implied in their interpretive frameworks. As cognitive psychologists, Harnish and Bach (1979) approach this concept more directly and comprehensively and the cognitive aspects of their model are more dominant than those suggested by pragmatics. In a seminal study on cognitive theory in pragmatics, van Dijk (1981) suggests a schematic approach to pragmatic theories, including SA, in which he envisages pragmatic comprehension as part of a general theory of information processing. However, he discusses the schematic comprehension of the pragmatic theories rather generally and fails to describe the specifications of his suggested pragmatic comprehension thoroughly.

In his suggested model for classification of SAs, Toolan (1998) implies the concept of schema. He classifies all SAs into generic categories of offer, request, inform and question. Then, he sets some principles for the canonical SA and the stereotypical context of its occurrence. Each label includes certain specifications and covers a range

1 _{In drama-cinematic texts, the genre of comedy employs the foregrounding effect through deviating from}

the prototypical SA principles. The different style of a specific SA attributes to delineate the characters and the contrast among them, and counts as a clear source of humor.

of utterances. For example, the rubric of Request includes ‘any conversational act in which a speaker seeks goods or services from the addressee, such as commands, demands, request, pray, etc.’ (ibid., p. 144). Toolan asserts that the characterizations of the proposed types of SA are ‘tendencies, fitting canonical instances fairly well and other instances more loosely or not at all’ (ibid., p. 151). Toolan’s description of SA categories is nonetheless consistent with the specification of schema as a flexible construct which is prone to change.

Similarly, grounding their proposed model on Austin’s (1962) and Searle’s (1969) SAT, Bach and Harnish (1979:3) suggest that the generic components of a given SA can be schematically delineated as follows:

[S=speaker, H=hearer, E=expression, L=language, C=context of the utterance]. Utterance act: 1 S utters E from L to H in C.

Locutionary Act: S says to H in C that so-and-so. Illocutionary Act: S does such-and-such in C. Perlocutionary Act: S affects H in a certain way.

In this intimately related process, S says something to H by uttering E, and thereby S does an act, and by carrying out this act, S affects H. The intended SA is performed felicitously or happily (Austin, 1962) when H understands the force of the locution.

Harnish and Bach (1979) also claim the interactants may rely on two types of presumptions to comprehend a SA. In other words, their SAS includes the ‘linguistic’ and the ‘communicative presumptions’ (p. 7). The former, analogous with Chomsky’s (1965) ‘linguistic competence’, refers to the linguistic knowledge possessed by speakers in a particular linguistic community. The latter, ‘communicative presumption’, indicates the mutual knowledge by which the hearer can distinguish a ‘performative’ act from a ‘constative’ act and the intended illocutionary force (see 3.2 for discussion of performative and constative acts). The inference the hearer makes about the illocutionary force of the utterance is based on the ‘mutual contextual beliefs’ (MCBs) or the salient contextual information which, especially in the case of indirect SAs, give(s) rise to a specific inference (p. 5). By indicating the mutual contextual beliefs,

1 _{‘Utterance Act’ for Bach and Harnish (1979) is what Austin (1962) calls ‘phatic act’. By utterance act,}

they mean an act which involves producing the sounds of a certain language reported by direct quotation (p. 283).

Harnish and Bach amend one of the important limitations of Austin’s (1962) theory that is the lack of context(s) (Culpeper, 2010; Thomas, 1995). However, they do not specify how aspects of context can affect the interactant’s interpretation of their SAs.

With regard to the taxonomies of SAs and their illocutionary forces, different taxonomies of illocutionary acts have been proposed (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1975; Harnish and Bach, 1979). All the taxonomies roughly categorise SA into four or five general groups with different labels but almost with the same content: ‘directives’, (speakers try to get their listeners to do something, for example, begging, commanding, requesting), ‘commissives’, (speakers commit themselves to a future course of action, for instance, promising, guaranteeing), ‘expressives’, (speakers express their feelings, for example, apologizing, welcoming, sympathizing, ‘declarations’ (the speaker’s utterance brings about a new external situation, for instance, christening, marring, resigning), and ‘representatives’ (speakers convey their belief about the truth of a proposition, for example, asserting, hypothesizing) (Crystal, 2003:427). The current study draws on Harnish and Bach’s (1979) taxonomy of SAs and the illocutionary forces. This is mainly because although Austin’s (1962) model includes a rich variety of illocutionary act types, there are no clear principles by which they amalgamate into the five classes. Searle’s classification, though more principled and systematic, displays some overlap in classifying illocutionary force(s). On the contrary, the fundamental idea of Harnish and Bach’s (1979) taxonomy is that the illocutionary intents, by which types of illocutionary acts are distinguished, are all homogeneous with the SAS. That is to say, the SAS represents the general form of illocutionary intention and inference, and the entries in their taxonomy provide the content, as is evident in the description of SAS: the identification of the illocutionary force being performed (Harnish and Bach, 1979:40).1 Moreover, Harnish and Bach’s taxonomy is more consistent with the theoretical framework of the research, where SAs are conceptualized as schemas. Another characteristic of Harnish and Bach’s (1979) taxonomy is its comprehensiveness and explicitness. It covers many types of illocutionary forces in detail, not only labeling

1 _{For instance, the outline of the specifications of assertives (belong to the category of constatives), are as}

follows:

(e= expression, S=speaker, P=proposition, H=hearer) Assertives (affirm, assert, say, state, claim, and etc.) In uttering e, S asserts that P if S expresses:

i. the belief that P, and

them but specifying what distinguishes them. They (1979) divide communicative illocutionary acts into four general categories, naming ‘constatives’, ‘directives’, ‘commissives’, and ‘acknowledgments’; which, as they claim, corresponds roughly to Austin’s ‘expositives’, ‘commissives’, ‘exercitives’, and ‘behabitives’, respectively, and closely to Searle’s ‘representatives’, ‘directives’, ‘commissives’, and ‘expressives’ (ibid., p. 40-41, for Harnish and Bach’s (1979) classification of communicative illocutionary acts see Appendix 7). The specifications and instantiations of Harnish and Bach (ibid.) are discussed in the course of the SA analysis in Chapters 5, 6 & 7.

3.3.1 SAs and the effect of multimodal aspects

Taking into account paralinguistic cues, particularly gestures, Kendon (2004) argues that the propositional content of the utterance can also be conveyed through gestures, which are capable of performing actions and, hence, add further information:

Speakers also use gestures as part of the way in which they ‘do things’ with utterances. A speaker always produces an utterance to achieve something. As a participant in conversation I may complain, evaluate, disagree, refuse, plead, assert, maintain something in opposition, mock, attack, retreat, show deference, ignore, exhibit skepticism, give an honest answer, ask, and many other things. As has long been noted, gestures often play an important part in carrying out such actions. (2004:225)

Therefore, as Kendon (2004) implies, paralinguistic cues (gestures, gaze behaviour, facial expressions) are capable of encoding meaning besides those already realized on the verbal plane of an utterance; some of which seem to be closely linked to the type of illocutions such as assessment, evaluation, and subjective perspective.

Van Dijk (1981) aims more specifically at the pragmatic aspects of SAs. Such consideration is noticeable in his specifications of (prior) knowledge, on which interactants draw to understand a SA. He explains that the comprehension of certain utterances, such as SAs, is based on different sources of knowledge: the ‘structure of the utterance’ (as defined on the basis of the grammatical rules), the ‘paralinguistic properties’ (e.g. speed, stress, intonation, pitch, etc. on one hand, and gestures, facial expression, body movements, etc. on the other), the ‘perception of the communicative context’ (presence of objects and other persons), the ‘prior knowledge about the interactant(s)’ (the knowledge derived from the previous speech acts, other kinds of

general world-knowledge, although van Dijk does not specify the contents of this type of knowledge (p. 218).

Taking into account the paralinguistic properties, van Dijk’s (1981) model, in comparison with Harnish and Bach’s (1979) and Toolan’s (1998), is more consistent with the implication(s) and comprehension of SAs in stage play and film, as these two media utilize multiple ‘modes’ and different visual semiotic resources to communicate meaning. In film, some SAs, such as order or denial, can be communicated visually by the facial expression and eye vector, as an invisible line connecting two participants; an actor and a goal (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996). Cinematic devices, such as lighting or camera movement, can also establish or underpin the value or the force of SAs.

A good example of how film’s multimodal devices can reinforce the force of characters’ SAs is the confession scene in Bergman’s Winter Light (1963). In a sequence of the film, the co-deployment of contrastive and sheer light together with close-ups of the characters’ face and also the shot order in the form of shot-reverse- shots – an editing technique widely used in dialogue sequences in which characters exchange look – evoke and reinforce the impression of confession. The sequence shows a priest confessing to Johan, a fisherman tormented by anxiety about his own troubled relationship with God. The priest’s alienation and loss is reinforced multimodally by his hesitant voice and straight vectors which he (as the actor) establishes with Johan (as the goal) in the form of a fixed and long gaze to convince him that as an ignorant, spoiled and anxious clergyman, he is ineligible to show him the right way (Grab 3-1). The shot- reverse-shots of the characters’ CUs of the clergyman’s hesitant and agitated face to Johan’s apprehensive and uneasy face contribute to convey the force of the clergyman’s confession.