Topic 3

 Speech action I

Speech acts. The origin and the development of the theory is presented and the most widely accepted classifications of speech acts are discussed. The key notion of performativity is seen as a phenomenon based on the notion of coincidence first introduced by Koschmieder (1934) as a “coincidental imperfectiveness“ . Again, Reichenbach´s tense decomposition seems to be an adequate tool to show the core of it: The specific feature of verbs which can be used performatively (exclusively imperfectives) is that in an utterance meant as a performance of a speech act the point of speech, point of event and the point of reference coincide. Most specifically, what coincides is the point of event identical with illocution and the point of speech, extension of it, i.e. locution. Performativity is always a property of an utterance (utterance-event), not of the sentence form itself. In the semantic viewpoint, illocutionary verbs are accomplishments, therefore, in reporting illocutionary acts both imperfective and perfective verbs can occur.

Further, direct and indirect speech acts are discussed and modifications of illocutionary functions are presented. In Czech, constructions with modal verbs, use of Conditional mood instead of Indicative and use of the so-called free (non-syntactic) Datives can be seen as pragmatic equivalents of hedging. The very notion of indirectness has become a highly frequented topic of pragmatic treatises linking this way the speech acts theory and conversational analysis.

Maxims of conversation and implicatures. Particular  and generalized conversational implicature, conventional implicature, scalar implicatures using the Aristotelian square of oppositions, with special attention to Czech pronouns/quantificators. Czech language has no verb reflecting the difference between imply (implication in a logical sense) and implicate (application of an implicature) so certain terminological adaptations had to be done. The chapter also presents the development of the so-called neo-Gricean theory of meaning (relevance theory, explicature, Levinson´s Q-implicatures, M-implicatures, I-implicatures, clausal implicatures. Further, the results of application of politeness principle and the theory of politeness are dealt with. The theory of politeness and impoliteness is shown in its current diversity, abandoning the Brown´s & Levinson´s older construct, with special attention to Czech im/polite forms of utterances (sub-chapter on Czech speech-etiquette). In general, the chapter concentrates on context-bound circumstances of addressee´s utterance interpretation,  regarding also irony and certain  kinds of remedial speech strategies.