Page 487 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

The prepositional content is P uttered in context / given preparatory condition L—namely that P uttered by speaker a in context i at time / is true in world w,. The sincerity condition ¥ on the assertion P uttered in context / is that a believes that P.
Overt performance of one illocution may commit S to another which is not overtly performed; for exam- ple, if S warns H that H is in danger, then S is also committed to the assertion that H is in danger: like- wise if S successfully testifies, reports, or complains that/?, s/he is committed to the assertion that/?. Thus, according to Searle and Vanderveken, a complaint differs from an assertion in that there are additional clauses in its preparatory and sincerity conditions, respectively: [ZH(i,P)u{the state of affairs that P is bad, P}]; and pFh(/,P)u{dissatisfaction (P)}] (1985: 191). It can clearly be seen from these that the illo- cution of assertion is properly included within the illocution of complaint. Their logic allows for many other properties of illocutionary forces to be formal- ized.
Here, it is only possible to glimpse a fragment of illocutionary logic. It is in the process of development, and is not yet integrated with theories of lexical and sentence meaning. Additionally, there is independent development of formal theories of communicative intentions within the field of artificial intelligence that go beyond single utterances (see Cohen, et al. 1990).
14. Speech Acts and Intercultural Pragmatics
Different cultural conventions and belief systems in different language communities result in different cooperative conventions. For example, there are different linguistic politeness strategies to reflect the culturally validated perceived roles of S and H, and whatever is being spoken of. Social interactive prac- tices such as societal attitudes to the roles of men and women vary greatly across cultures; and, as a result, so do the language conventions which people use. Acts of complimenting and thanking are more frequent in Anglo communities than in, say, China or Africa. The Japanese and Chinese find refusing more offensive than Americans do, and so refuse off-record by using proverbs and impersonals. Preparatory conditions on illocutionary acts defined for one language cannot be expected to be universal. Intercultural mis- communication arises from the assumption that the language strategies appropriate to the delivery of the intended meaning in Lx can be used with equal efficacy in Ly. For instance, direct translation of the English Would you like to go the cinema with me? into Polish Czy mialabys ochote. pojsc ze mnq do kina? will be interpreted as a direct question and not an invitation; the counterpart Polish invitation Mozebysmy poszli do kina? 'Perhaps we would go to the cinema?' will probably misfire in English as an intended invitation, because the off-record implication in Polish—'if I
asked you?'—is lost (cf. Wierzbicka 1991:29. Other Polish speakers strongly disagree with Wierzbicka's intuitions claiming that Czy mialabys . . . is a polite invitation and Mozebysmy . . . a suggestion).
All major speech act theorists have ignored cultural diversity, leaving it to empirical studies such as the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) to investigate (cf. Blum-Kulka, et al. 1989). This project investigated and confirmed cultural differences in strategies for requesting and apologizing in German, Hebrew, Danish, Canadian French, Argentinian Spanish, British, American, and Aus- tralian English. For instance, both Americans and Hebrews generally prefer to use on-record H-oriented requests rather than off-record ones, but the second preferences differ: Hebrews prefer S-dominant direct requests, whereas Americans favor the off-record strategy. Interacting with familiars but not intimates, Slavs, Hebrews, and Germans use direct on-record requests mitigated with, for example, modal particles and diminutives (cf. Wierzbicka 1991); English lacks such devices and therefore uses fewer S-dominant stra- tegies. There is much ongoing research into illocutions which touch on politeness concerns, because it is so very important to avoid inadvertently causing offense in social interaction, especially when H is from ano- ther culture.
IS. Speech Acts and Discourse
Speech act theories have treated illocutionary acts as the product of single utterances based on a single sentence, thus becoming a pragmatic extension to sen- tence grammars. In real life, people do not use isolated utterances: U functions as part of a larger intention or plan. Attempts to break out of the sentence-grammar mold were made by Labov and Fanshel (1977) and Edmondson (1981), and then increasingly by researchers into cross-cultural spoken discourse (see Blum-Kulka, et al. 1989). The field of artificial intel- ligence has taken up speech acts in the context of modeling S's plans and intentions when uttering U (see Cohen, et al. 1990). Consider the following inter- change in a pharmacy:
Customer:
Server:
Customer:
Do you have any Actifed? [Seeks to establish preparatory condition for transaction and thereby implies the intention to buy on condition that Actifed is available.]
Tablets or linctus? [Establishes a preparatory condition for the transaction by offering a choice of product.]
Packet of tablets, please. [Requests one of products offered, initiates transaction. Notice that in this context, even without the IFID 'please,' the noun phrase alone will function as a requestive]
Speech Act Theory: Overview
465