Volume 3, Issue -1 -

Editorial

Performative Utterances: Seven Puzzles It was John Austin who introduced the word "performative" (which he called "a new and ugly word") into the philosophy of language and linguistics. His original idea was that there are utterances which are more correctly characterized as doing something rather than stating something. Austin wrote: "when I say ‘I do’ (sc. take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife), I am not reporting on a marriage, I am indulging in it." As is well known, Austin went on to work out this notion of a performative utterance (and of a performative expression) in a number of directions, but in the end the attempt to isolate performatives (doings) from constatives (true or false) failed dramatically, and the idea of viewing language use in terms of the performative-constative dichotomy gave way to the study of speech acts: "The total speech act in the total speech situation is the only actual phenomena which, in the last resort, we are engaged in elucidating." But giving up the performative-constative distinction does not mean giving up theorizing about performatives, and there is a cottage industry in the theory of language devoted to them. We identify seven puzzles for theorizing about performatives. We consider how Austin might have dealt with some of them. Finding his answers problematic, we then survey recent theories of performatives and zoom in on the major contenders, identifying one theory in particular for scrutiny and seeing how it fares with the seven puzzles. The upshot is that there is still work to be done understanding performatives.

Code Choice and Face This paper starts by presenting the factors that govern language choices among multilinguals, to show then that they can be seen as the result of face considerations: 1) "Natural" or "efficient" language choice: choosing the language for which the product of the competences of both partners is highest. This maximizes the negative face, i.e. the freedom of action, of both partners. 2) Language practice: choosing a language not because it is the easiest one but because one wishes to practice it. This means reducing one's positive and negative face for the moment in order to increase them in the long run. 3) Prestige or its opposite, fear of losing face by making mistakes. This is clearly the positive face aspect of language choices. 4) And finally, compliance: adapting to the language preferences of one's partner by speaking either his mother tongue, or a language s/he has a preference for. This means reducing one's own negative face in order to increase the one of the partner. Which in turn will contribute to the positive face of both partners, one feeling important because s/he is being complied with, and the other getting the image of a kind and polite person.

On the Pragmatics of Hortatory Subjunctive in Italian Business Letter Discourse This paper is a pragmatic account of the use of the Italian hortatory subjunctive in business letter discourse. According to traditional descriptions of the Italian subjunctive mood which mostly focus on the use of this mood in dependent clauses, the hortatory subjunctive is one of the few remaining examples of subjunctive use in independent clauses. In business letter discourse it is used in independent clauses, always as a formulaic modal expression with the modal verb of volition volere (will). In this paper it is argued that (i) the rare examples of its use seem to confirm that in the Italian language the hortatory subjunctive survives only in very formal (and formulaic) types of writing, business letter discourse being a case in point; and that (ii) in this type of genre the dynamic modality expressed by the subjunctive mood is used only in specific moves within the text for negative politeness reasons. The findings also suggest the need to take a "discourse-approach" to politeness, i.e. to rethink and analyze politeness as a holistic phenomenon which is the result of a number of acts intricately wound together in the text, both at the micro and macro level.

Pragmatic Tactics in Mediation Mediation is the process by which a neutral third-party works with disputing parties to assist them in reaching an acceptable, voluntary settlement of their dispute. Mediators are often faced with competing demands over and above those of the dispute itself. For example, establishing and maintaining control of the mediation process without appearing to bully the disputants, persuading a party to reexamine it's position without appearing to lose their neutrality, and convincing a party that the present offer of settlement is the best possible, given the circumstances, without appearing to be determined to reach closure at all costs. The present paper examines data from labor, divorce, and community mediations (both transcripts and reports from the mediators) to show how mediators reduce tensions like those mentioned above through various devices such as establishing common ground, reframing the issue, use of metaphorical examples, and reliance on innuendo, ambiguity, and equivocation.

Bronislaw Malinowski and Linguistic Pragmatics In 1923 Bronislaw Malinowski repeated his claim for an "Ethnolinguistic theory" which he enforced 1920 in his first linguistic paper and which became the guideline for his "ethnographic theory of language." In 1997 the linguist William Foley published his monograph "Anthropological Linguistics—An Introduction"; and in the same year the anthropologist Alessandro Duranti published his monograph "Linguistic Anthropology." It seems that with the publication of these two standard textbooks the interdisciplinary field of "ethnolinguistics" has finally gained its due importance within the disciplines of anthropology and linguistics. Bill Foley states in his textbook that "the boundary between pragmatics and anthropological linguistics or sociolinguistics is impossible to draw at present." So if we recognize Bronislaw Malinowski not only as one of the founders of modern social anthropology but also as one of the founding fathers of anthropological linguistics, we should have a closer look at Malinowski's importance for pragmatics in general. This paper presents Malinowski's contributions to the ethnographic theory of language, assesses his role as an apologist of anthropological linguistics, and discusses his influence (not only) on (new) developments in linguistic pragmatics.

What Does Only Assert and Entail? This paper investigates the semantics of English only and two equivalent expressions in Japanese - dake and - shika , giving attention to two aspects: (i) the debate over the status of two propositions that are involved in the use of ONLY expressions and (ii) the semantic and pragmatic differences among ONLY items, if any. We claim that a sentence with ONLY expressions entails both the affirmative and negative propositions. This view raises issues with Horn's original claim (1969) as well as van Rooij and Schulz's (2005) while supporting Atlas (1991, 1993) and Horn (2002). We claim then that the difference in strength between the affirmative and negative propositions emerges from what is asserted by that sentence. One of the bases for our claim is that there is a significant difference in behavior between entailment and assertion of a given sentence, following Horn (2002). This difference explains the difference between - dake on the one hand and - shika and - only on the other: - dake differs from only and - shika in that it asserts the affirmative proposition while - shika and only asserts the negative proposition.

But We're American… The presence of American Exceptionalism in the Speeches of George W. Bush This paper defines American exceptionalism as the notion held by Americans that their country is unique and has a specific role to play in the world. The origins of this notion are traced to 17 th century Puritan settlers, who used the metaphor of being "a city upon a hill" to highlight their position as a moral example to the rest of the world. This element from a sacral religion was transformed during the founding of the United States into an element of civil religion, and as such the metaphor and concept of American exceptionalism received a political connotation. The rise of America's political power coincided with a more active role in world politics, which was backed with a rhetoric emphasising unity and America's unique role. The clash between the passive and the more active reading of the exceptionalist metaphor and the struggles between sacral and civil religion coincide during the presidency of George W. Bush. The presence of these elements of political rhetoric is surveyed in a corpus of speeches by President Bush.

Illocutionary and Perlocutionary Acts in Chinese Judge's Attached Discourse After 2002, courts in China have increasingly been introducing certain judicial reforms, one of them being the improvement of trial language. In these courts, the judges append their comments to the case at the end of their verdicts in writing. The Chinese judge's attached discourses resemble the obiter dicta of judges in Western courts, but there are differences. Since the new element was introduced in some courts in 1998, some doubts have been voiced in strong opposition to the new practice, giving rise to a heated academic debate on the issue. This paper investigates and analyses Chinese judge's attached discourse in terms of discourse analysis categories, such as their usage of illocutionary and perlocutionary acts.

On the Notion of Communicational Grammar in Political Linguistics Any communicational grammar may be viewed as a linguistic study concerned with rules responsible for efficient communication, and can be used as a tool for researching almost any issue that falls under the term political linguistics -a sub-field of linguistics which analyzes how ideologies are put into service to legitimate power and inequality. From the linguistic point of view we would perceive discourse to be a dynamic and changing phenomenon, profoundly rooted in its nonverbal context. The core of any discourse is established by particular texts formed by their speaker/writer. The meaning of the texts and their decoding by the hearer/reader seems to depend to a great extent not only on the cognitive processes that take place in the mind of the information receiver but also on the contextual embeddings which are: a) the situational embedding, that is where the text is produced (here: in what type of co-texts the text is situated); b) the social embedding, that is within what social group the text is produced (here: to what type of readers the text is directed to); and c) the cultural embedding, which is apparently the most difficult to grasp, for it directly translates into what we understand under the nebulous term culture (here: what is the cultural preparation of readers who are going to receive the text). The cultural embedding of texts should be held responsible for the projected associations it may induce in the receiver of textual messages and at the same time types of nonverbal cultural scripts and schemata that are supposed to accompany a verbal text. In light of the above, a model in which one has certain verbal texts that trigger certain socially and culturally specific behaviors can be called the communicational grammar of a particular discourse.

Vague References to Quantities as a Face-Saving Strategy in Teacher-Student Interaction The main focus of the present paper is to show how vague language categories can function as a face-saving strategy. The observations made in this article are based on the analysis of one category of vague language, that is, quantifiers in British and American spoken academic discourse. The data used for the present investigation have been obtained from two corpora: the sub-corpus of educational events of the British National Corpus and the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken Discourse. The results suggest that quantifiers as a face-saving strategy are used when self-criticism or criticism towards others is expressed. They are often employed in apologies, promises, self-justifications, when giving advice and in cases of uncertainty. Both students and teachers use quantifiers in these situations, but in teachers' speech they are of special importance, since teachers, if they want to maintain their authority, are especially conscious of their positive face. Paucal quantifiers especially frequently function as a face-saving device since they have a mitigating effect. The use of quantifiers as mitigators is especially evident in those instances where they occur in negative contexts. Such instances demonstrate that the main difference between the two varieties under investigation is that in BE quantifiers significantly more frequently function as mitigators. Finally, it has been observed that quantifiers frequently occur alongside other means of self-distancing and face-saving in both varieties.

An ICQ Message Board Session as Discourse: A Case Study Even though the scope of literature on online communication expands fast, very little attention seems to be paid to instant messengers-programmes providing for one to one communication in real time. It is quite surprising, since such programmes create conditions closest to face to face communication. The similarities and differences between computer-mediated and face to face interaction should be the most apparent in instant messenger mediated communication. The present paper focuses on this type of internet communication. The data sample is a transcript of an online conversation that took place within one day. It is analysed within the framework of Conversation Analysis with regard to turn-taking and the occurrence of discourse markers. Also, attention is paid to the use of minimal responses. Although, as might be expected, face to face and computer-mediated interaction share many features with respect to the above criteria, there arise a few interesting differences.

The Light Subject Constraint in Spoken Spanish The purpose of this study is to explore Chafe's hypothesis (1994) that grammatical subjects obey the light subject constraint (LSC). The data consists of six half-an-hour semiformal interviews with Caracas native speakers recorded in 1987. Chafe's hypothesis is based on the claim that in any given clause one of the referents receives the unique and special status of grammatical subject. Subjects show two types of restrictions: i) from the information load perspective, they tend to code given or accessible rather than new information; and ii) from a referential viewpoint, they can have three degrees of importance: primary, secondary or trivial (1994: 88). Information load (high or low) and referential importance combined constitute the LSC: Chafe's findings prove that in English subjects tend, on the one hand, to be given or accessible and, on the other, of primary or secondary importance. Heavy subjects, on the contrary, tend to be of trivial importance. Broderick 1999 confirms the LSC's existence in a conversational English corpus. All subjects in the corpus have been coded according to information load and referential importance. The results of the analysis show that spoken Spanish also conforms to LSC.

Book Reviews