Metaphorical projection, subjectification and English speech act verbs

Mikhail Kissine

doi:10.1515/flin.2010.013

Article

Metaphorical projection, subjectification and English speech act verbs

Mikhail Kissine

Published/Copyright: December 8, 2010

Published by

Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Submit Manuscript Author Information Explore this Subject

From the journal Volume 44 Issue 2

Previous approaches to non-illocutionary uses of speech act verbs (SAVs) concentrated on commissive verbs like promise and threaten, claiming that their non-illocutionary uses result from a subjectification process, and that they therefore describe a subjective relation. Some uses of assertive and directive SAVs do not conform to this pattern: they involve a metaphorical projection whose source domain is the basic level of cognitive apprehension where directive speech acts are perceived as manifestations of an internal necessity and assertive speech acts as direct signs of states of affairs. It is argued that subjectification approaches went wrong when characterising non-illocutionary uses of commissive SAVs in purely subjective terms. Non-illocutionary uses of promise and threaten are better accounted for by a metaphorical projection whose source domain is the conceptualisation of commissive speech acts as highly reliable signs of future states of affairs.

Keywords:: speech act verbs; subjectification; metaphorical mapping; modality; illocutionary acts

Received: 2009-09-23

Accepted: 2010-01-17

Published Online: 2010-12-08

Published in Print: 2010-December

You are currently not able to access this content.

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/flin.2010.013

Keywords for this article

speech act verbs; subjectification; metaphorical mapping; modality; illocutionary acts