7.11.2001: Dialogue: speech acts

Overview:

It has been claimed that one of the functions of intonation is to mark dialogue functions.

There are several of these functions:

• utterance cohesion (by accent, rhythm)
• utterance disfluency (by intonation, timing)
• topic, focus, emphasis (by means of accent)
• episodes in a narrative
• speech acts (by means of overall or nuclear contours)
• turn-taking points (by various locutionary, prosodic, paralinguistic, gestural means) speech acts
• starting, finishing and sustaining a conversation (by means of prosodic and paralinguistic markers)

An overview of models of functions of language is given here. Note especially the models of Jakobson for functional constitutive factors in communication (in functional linguistics), and Searle and Austin on speech act theory (in language philosophy).

Tasks:

1. Search the web for information on two of the functions listed above.
2. Find the conditions which must be fulfilled for a speech act to be valid. See for instance Searle's approach to speech act theory.