An interactional approach to speech acts for applied linguistics

1 Introduction

In this paper, we present an approach for applied linguistic research to investigate speech acts in an interactionally anchored way. A key advantage of this approach is that it allows us to explore language learning problems which we would not be able to identify and explain through more traditional approaches to speech acts.

In applied linguistics, many scholars now certainly study speech acts in an interactional way, but to date little attempt has been made to apply a rigorous and finite interactional system of speech acts through a clearly defined procedure. For example, while with the surge of discursive pragmatics (Kasper 2006) and research on interactional competence (Young 2011) various L2 pragmaticians have adopted an interactional view on speech acts, such research essentially focused on how speech acts get co-constructed in longer stretches of interaction. We are certainly in agreement with this body of research, and we believe that the interactional typology of speech acts we are proposing neatly complements such research due to two interrelated reasons. Firstly, our system was designed to capture speech acts on the level of utterance, and by so doing one is able to quantify and contrast one’s data. Secondly, such previous research has been interactional in a somewhat different way from what we are proposing here: while other scholars studied speech acts in interaction, they did not rely on an interactionally situated typology per se. Thus, the model we present is not at all in contradiction with such research but rather complements it.

Our model also helps us to revisit some traditional shortcomings in the field. Many scholars tended to invent new speech acts whenever it suited their line of argument, conflated illocutionary categories with interactional ones, or focused only on isolated speech acts.

As regards the case of inventing new speech acts, using ad hoc categories such as ‘confessing’ and ‘reminding’ is unhelpful if our goal is to undertake replicable research based on speech acts with relevance to applied linguistics. If one wants to understand speech act-related irritations experienced by L2 learners, it is advisable to systematically investigate contrastive differences and similarities between the learners’ L1 and L2, without however falling into the trap of the strong contrastive hypothesis.^[1] Yet, it is only possible to contrastively examine pragmatic phenomena which are conventionalised to a comparable degree in both the learner’s L1 and L2 (cf. House and Kádár 2021a).

Regarding the case of conflating illocutionary and interactional categories, e.g. defining interactional categories such as ‘refusing’ and ‘agreeing’ as speech acts, this conflation compromises the rationale of the concept of speech act. Accordingly, Edmondson (1981), Edmondson and House (1981), and Edmondson et al. (2023) argue that a systematic use of speech acts in the study of interaction can be achieved if we rely on a finite number of speech act categories and various interactional moves through which speech acts are interconnected in interaction. For example, the speech act Request may be ‘refused’ in interaction through many different speech acts, such as Opine, Request(not-to-do-x), Suggest, Tell, and so on (see Figure 1). All such speech acts function as a response to a Request, i.e., they do not represent the speech act of refusal, but rather they are speech acts through which the interactional phenomenon of refusing can be realised.

Figure 1:

Our typology of speech acts.

Regarding zeroing in on one particular speech act in isolation, this isolationist view ignores the fact that speech acts cannot be separated from interaction, and they should always be analysed from the departure point of interaction in a bottom–up way.

In this paper, we first provide a critical review of previous research involving speech acts based on the above-outlined issues. Following this, we present our approach through which speech acts can be studied in a more interactionally anchored way. Finally, we describe a case study featuring perceptions of Chinese learners of English regarding conventions of extracting oneself in the Closing phase of an interaction in English while the other keeps on talking. This case study illustrates how our methodological procedure can be applied in practice.

2 Review of selected literature

Regarding the invention of new speech acts whenever it suits the researcher’s agenda, this has been such a common issue that we cannot provide here an overview of such ‘speech acts’ in applied linguistics. We believe that the idea of inventing speech acts ad libitum appeared in the literature as early as Wierzbicka’s (1985) study, which triggered a wealth of ‘innovative’ speech act categories, such as that of ‘self-sacrifice’ (for a recent example see Allami and Eslamizadeh 2022). Proliferating speech acts ad libitum shuts the door on replicability: when it comes to ‘newly invented’ speech acts, there is unavoidably a strong variation across languages in terms of their conventionalised existence (see House and Kádár 2021a). This variation becomes particularly problematic in the study of the global classroom where students come from many different linguacultural backgrounds.

Regarding the conflation of illocutionary and interactional values of a communicative act, many applied linguists have taken for granted that ‘refusal’ is an illocutionary category (see e.g. Cohen 2005; Eslami 2010; Félix-Brasdefer 2008, and many others), some others have claimed the same about ‘agreeing’ (see e.g. Holtgraves 2007; LoCastro 2000; Maynard 1990), and still some others have argued similarly about ‘compliment response’ (see e.g. Culpeper and Pat 2021; Ishihara 2010; Sharifian 2008; Yu 2004; Zhang 2021). To illustrate the problemacy of such a conflation, let us refer here to the case of compliment response. Responding to a compliment is an interactional move and this move can be realised by different speech acts. Without systematising such responses as replicable speech acts, one unavoidably fails to capture linguacultural conventions of speech act realisation in the interactional move of responding to a compliment.

As regards zeroing in on preset speech act categories, such as Apology and Request, in applied linguistics this pre-determination of the object of analysis unavoidably led to a top–down take on speech acts (see e.g. Cunningham 2017; Kasper and Blum-Kulka 1993; Olshtain and Cohen 1990; Rose and Ono 1995; Vacas Matos and Cohen 2022; Woodfield 2012). While this approach allows one to examine speech act performance, it cannot capture more complex speech act-related problems, which only emerge when one views speech acts embedded in interaction in their whole complexity. For example, some scholars have studied the speech act Greet in isolation by focusing on different realisations of greeting (e.g. Shleykina 2016). Such a focus distracts the researcher away from studying the speech act Greet in an interactionally embedded way. In our view, it is more fruitful to examine linguaculturally situated L1 and L2 conventions of speech act realisation in the larger Opening phase of an interaction where Greet tends to occur, instead of studying Greet in isolation (see House and Kádár 2022). Accordingly, we believe it is essential to consider whether the Opening phase of an interaction tends to be realised by Greet or another speech act in the L2 linguaculture, and how this compares with the pragmatic conventions of Opening in the L1 linguaculture. Such differences can in turn help us to better understand irritations expressed by L2 learners.

As the above critical observations have shown, there is a need for an interactional typology of speech acts in applied linguistic research.

3 Our approach

In the following, let us outline our approach which we believe can resolve the above-outlined issues. This approach, which is currently being developed into a comprehensive applied linguistic framework (see House and Kádár forthcoming), has its roots in an interactional typology of speech acts, which was originally proposed by Edmondson and House (1981) and published in a renewed and extended version in Edmondson et al. (2023). The following figure presents this typology of speech acts:

This typology includes 25 speech acts, which were derived on the basis of an empirical bottom–up study of corpora. Speech acts in this typology are divided into the two major types of ‘Substantive’ and ‘Ritual’. The ‘Substantive’ group includes speech acts which are considered to be ‘meaningful’, while ‘Ritual’ speech acts tend to occur in specific parts in an interaction and are, therefore, highly predictable, and have a social meaning, such that the literal meaning of the utterance – if any – is almost incidental to the significance of the utterance for the interactants. As House and Kádár (2021b) argued, this typology represents the default function of speech acts, and any speech act can ‘migrate’ into other slots in the typology. For example, in certain contexts, a Substantive Attitudinal speech act can take on a Ritual function. When one examines speech acts embedded in certain phases of interaction rather than focusing on isolated speech acts, the above typology prompts one to consider which speech acts are frequented in a given interactional phase in the learner’s L1 and L2.

For example, our case study below features a particular type of Closing phase in which one interactant intends to leave the scene, i.e. extracts herself from the interaction, while the other keeps on talking. As we will show, English-speaking conventions of extracting oneself can be challenging for foreign learners of English because extracting oneself from an interaction may trigger significant face-threat to one’s interlocutor. We do, however, not set out from the hypothesis that it is always one particular speech act through which extracting is realised, even though the speech act Extractor in our typology seems to be an ideal candidate in this respect. Instead of zeroing in on Extractor straightaway, we first attempt to contrastively systematise all the speech acts through which Closing an interaction can be realised in English and the L1 of foreign language learners when it comes to a situation where extracting is needed.

Over recent years, in Edmondson et al. (2023), House et al. (2021), House and Kádár (2021a), and House and Kádár (2022) we proposed the following procedure through which the above typology can be put into operation in L2 research:

As Figure 2 shows, we use contrastive analysis to identify various L2 pragmatic issues, including speech act-related ones. In this contrastive segment of research, one may fruitfully rely on various types of corpora: for example, in our case study below we use a corpus compiled through DCTs. This corpus-based study is complemented by what we call ‘ancillary research’. The goal of ancillary research is either to triangulate the data, or, as in our case study below, to identify a problem related to language learning and teaching. While the label ‘ancillary’ may suggest a subordinate role, no subordination is intended here. As Figure 2 shows, the ancillary part of the analysis may either precede or follow the corpus-based contrastive analysis, depending on the particular design of a study. The major bolded box in Figure 2 refers to the fact that L2 pragmatic research necessarily involves a cross-cultural pragmatic focus.

Figure 2:

Our procedure.

4 Case study

5 Conclusion

In this study, we have suggested an approach through which speech acts can be examined in an interactionally-anchored way in applied linguistic inquiries. By so doing, we have addressed various issues regarding the way in which speech acts have been studied in applied linguistics in general and L2 pragmatics in particular. The proposed approach builds on an interactional typology of speech acts, which allows one to capture what happens in interactional phases such as Closing, which may be surprisingly irritating and challenging for foreign language learners. Paradoxically, such phases of interaction are often presented in an overly simple fashion in English language programmes.

The proposed approach allows us to critically examine why and how certain speech acts trigger irritations and difficulties for L2 learners. Here we would also like to briefly revisit the problematic nature of relying on sweeping overgeneralisations in applied linguistics, often centering on the so-called ‘East-West divide’ (see e.g. Kobayashi 2011; Simpson 2008 among many others). As soon as we start to rely on such overgeneralisations, e.g. by talking about ‘East-West classroom culture conflicts’, we unavoidably follow a top–down logic where we set out to prove the validity of an assumption we hold at the very outset of our research. Such an approach seems to us to be essentially misguided, and we are certainly not alone with this view (see Leech’s 2007 seminal study). We therefore suggest that as part of considering speech acts in an interactional way as we suggested here, applied linguists should ideally also follow a strictly bottom–up view on problems of language learning and teaching, in the spirit of Karl Popper (see Edmondson and House 2011). According to Popper’s classic research paradigm, one should never set out to prove one’s assumption, but rather attempt to falsify it and then, if necessary, propose a revised assumption, and so on. The approach we have proposed is typically Popperian, in that in investigating learner irritations we have distanced ourselves from common a priori assumptions about Chinese and British cultural differences that might have been responsible for learner irritations. Rather, we have narrowed our focus to strictly language-anchored interactional issues through the lens of speech acts.

In our case study, we have considered instances of learner irritation arising at a particular point in time, in order to illustrate how one can operationalise the proposed framework. In future research, the study presented in this paper may be fruitfully combined with developmental and diachronic research.