Speech Act Norms in a Dialog Discourse - Research Paper Example

Generally a speech act refers to an act that a speaker performs when making an utterance. As elaborated by philosopher J. L. Austin, speech acts are utterances or any meaningful gestures or indications through which any happenings are defined or explained. It is a technical term in linguistics. Speech act can include promises, orders, greetings, requests, complaints, or warnings etc. For example “Hi Helen”, this is a speech act for greeting. “I promise I will buy you the toy”, this dialogue shows that a promise is made. Every dialogue or gesture is a speech act that is referring to an act. The dialogic discourse is a compound speech that includes both events that have happened in the past, also referred as narrative discourse, and repartee discourse which is used to recount a series of speech exchanges (Linguistic terms, 2004). The examples for the dialogic discourse can be: a novel of history that includes events that occurred in the past, and a series of speech exchanges by the writer. SPEECH ACT NORM IN A DIALOGIC DISCOURSE “The only means of strengthening ones intellect is to make up ones mind about nothing to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts,” – John Keats. This saying of Keats is somewhat parallel to the speech act in the dialogical discourse. The mind is the thoroughfare where thoughts emerge as if the mind has some special capacities of bringing up new thoughts (Feito, 2002). Until the conversation or the dialog doesn’t end, the human mind has new thoughts coming in. Speech Act theory refers to the communication that doesn’t “say” things but, also “does” things that is the performance of the act. Whatever is said in the text or message actually corresponds to something that has been done. With the use of words, not only statements are made, but question can be asked, requests are made, commands are given etc.; this is all what the speech act theory is all about. Speech act is actually the performance of several acts at once, characterized by different aspects of the speakers intention. There is an act of saying something and what one does while saying it, such as requesting or promising, and how one is trying to affect the audience (Bach, 1994). For example, the sentence This is a pig sty might be used non-literally to state that a certain room is dirty and filthy, and further, to demand indirectly that it be straightened out and cleaned up. Even when this sentence is used literally and directly, say to describe a certain area of a yard, the content of its utterance is not fully determined by its linguistic meaning in particular; the meaning of the word this does not determine which area is being referred to. Speech act has a deep connection with the dialogical theory. The details of modern dialogical theory have great contribution from the two Russian literary scholars Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975) and Valentin Vološinov (1895–1936). Dialogical theory proposes that language is inherently social. All utterance, even writing, whether actual or imaginary, present or absent, true or false, the reader concludes or assumes the meaning even before the utterance. Dialogical theory proposes discourse generally as the verbal back-and-forth between the addresser and the respondent. Dialogue, however, occurs not just as a verbal back-and-forth; it also happens as a complex feedback system. Before we are talking to anyone else, we are already talking to an imagined other. The reader or the audience anticipates before going further into the words written or told by the speaker/writer. Hence utterance is inherently social in character of the respondent (Scholtz, n.d.). In addition, Mikhail Bakhtin showed that every literary text is always dialogic for the readers and the audiences. The word dialogic does not only refer to one concept, in fact it lets the readers and audiences to percept the words as they understand it. It is not necessary that the text (or message) conveyed by the writer (or speaker) can end up having a single meaning. The reader anticipates the text before the utterance is finished. This theory was presented by Bakhtin in his theory of dialogism. The term that Bakhtin used for this discourse was Centrifugal Discourse: a discourse that is pluralist and dialogical (Scholtz). The speech act standards are therefore present in the dialogical discourse. This exists in all the novels, stories, and even in films. Each text or discourse has multiple meanings. Examples for this are available in our daily lives. A topic is assigned to the student to write all that they know about it. Every student will write what he/she anticipates about the topic, therefore writing different text and discourse. Bakhtin also defined that every individual’s text is an intersection of multiple texts rather than carrying a fixed meaning. This is true in the case of speech act in dialogical discourse. The examples through which this can be made more easy are: “The Eagle has landed”. This text can be perceived by few as that the Eagle, which is a bird has landed on some roof top or a cliff of the mountain, but few who have some knowledge about the spaceships, perceive it as the eagle that is the name of a spaceship which NASA has sent on the moon, and which has now landed on the moon, hence giving dialogical meaning from a single text or discourse. The next thing that emerges in the minds of readers or audience is whether that eagle has landed successfully or not. This is the verbal back and forth that Bakhtin and Vološinov proposed in the dialogical theory. The speech act in this sentence is that information being given to the audience, while the dialogical discourse is the dual meanings that are evaluated from the sentence. Another example can be “We are not going to put up with your behavior any longer” (Stoll, 1996). The meanings can be evaluated in several ways. Few of the audience will take this sentence as words from the boss to terminate or fire an employee, but some will evaluate this sentence as a warning or complaint to the child by his/her parents. The next thing that the reader has in his mind is whether the conversation ends at this point or still carries on, what will be the next thing that the person says to the respondent. This is the imaginary talk that emerges in the reader’s mind. In both the cases, the speech act is the warning in the sentence, while the dialogical discourse is the multiple meanings taken from the text. REFERENCES Linguistic Terms (2004) http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerm Scholtz, A., Speech-Act Theory, Dialogical Theory, Democracy http://www.pods.binghamton.edu/~clas381a/speech-act_dialogue.pdf Bach, K. (1994) Speech Acts http://online.sfsu.edu/~kbach Stoll, P. (1996) Sequence and Hierarchy in Discourse Organization, 120-121. http://rua.ua.es/dspace/bitstream/10045/5387/1/RAEI_09_08.pdf Read More