The distance between illocution and perlocution: A tale of different pragmemes to call for social distancing in two cities

Xiaowen Wang; Kathleen Ahrens; Chu-Ren Huang

doi:10.1515/ip-2022-0001

Article

The distance between illocution and perlocution: A tale of different pragmemes to call for social distancing in two cities

Xiaowen Wang is an Associate Professor and Director of the Research Center for English Education and Linguistic Studies at the School of English Education, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, and an Associate Editor of The International Journal of English for Specific Purposes. She will receive her doctoral degree with distinction from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research focuses on data-driven approaches to applied linguistics, including computational analyses of medical discourses, ontology-based termbanks, and data-driven learning.
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Kathleen Ahrens is a Professor in the Department of English and Communication and member of the Research Centre for Professional Communication in English at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She is Chair of the Executive Committee for the Association for Researching and Applying Metaphor and former President of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities. Her inter-disciplinary approaches to the study of metaphor include running behavioral crowd-sourcing, neuro-imaging, and reaction times studies, as well as analyzing metaphor use through corpus-based approaches.
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Chu-Ren Huang is a Chair Professor at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He is fascinated by what language can tell us about human cognition and our collective reactions to natural and social environments. His recent books include A Reference Grammar of Chinese, A Student Grammar of Chinese, and The Cambridge Handbook of Chinese Linguistics all from CUP, and Mandarin Chinese Words and Parts of Speech, and The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Applied Linguistics both from Routledge. He recently published in Behavior Research Methods, Computational Linguistics, Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theories, among others.

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From the journal Intercultural Pragmatics Volume 19 Issue 1

Abstract

On the basis of Mey’s Pragmatic Act Theory, this paper investigates the cross-cultural and cross-language variations in the pragmemes to call for social distancing in public health campaigns to combat COVID-19. We compare the officially released posters calling for social distancing in English and Chinese in two neighboring cities with distinctive socio-cultural contexts – Guangzhou and Hong Kong. Our main findings are: (1) Guangzhou takes one pragmeme to suit a short illocution-perlocution distance in calling for social distancing – “admonition,” and Hong Kong takes two pragmemes to meet a larger illocution-perlocution distance – “recommendation” and “reminder”; (2) Cross-cultural differences between the two cities are manifested in the individuated pragmatic acts of the pragmemes in both propositional contents and metapragmatic co-construction of personal references, polarity, modality, and mood; and (3) In both cities, cross-language differences can be observed in the propositional and metapragmatic dimensions of pragmatic acts, with the English posters bearing a weaker sense of addressee obligation than the Chinese. Adding the new angle of illocution-perlocution distance, our rethinking of the illocution versus perlocution dichotomy in pragmemes leads to an elaboration of the classical perlocution formula proposed by Austin in 1962.

Keywords: perlocution formula; Pragmatic Act Theory; pragmeme; social distancing; speech act

Corresponding author: Chu-Ren Huang, Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, China; and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University-Peking University Research Centre on Chinese Linguistics, Hong Kong SAR & Beijing, China, E-mail: churen.huang@polyu.edu.hk

Funding source: Youth Foundation of Humanities and Social Sciences

Award Identifier / Grant number: 21YJC740058

Funding source: Macau Higher Education Fund

Award Identifier / Grant number: SS-UMAC-2020-10

About the authors

Xiaowen Wang

Xiaowen Wang is an Associate Professor and Director of the Research Center for English Education and Linguistic Studies at the School of English Education, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, and an Associate Editor of The International Journal of English for Specific Purposes. She will receive her doctoral degree with distinction from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research focuses on data-driven approaches to applied linguistics, including computational analyses of medical discourses, ontology-based termbanks, and data-driven learning.

Kathleen Ahrens

Kathleen Ahrens is a Professor in the Department of English and Communication and member of the Research Centre for Professional Communication in English at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She is Chair of the Executive Committee for the Association for Researching and Applying Metaphor and former President of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities. Her inter-disciplinary approaches to the study of metaphor include running behavioral crowd-sourcing, neuro-imaging, and reaction times studies, as well as analyzing metaphor use through corpus-based approaches.

Chu-Ren Huang

Chu-Ren Huang is a Chair Professor at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He is fascinated by what language can tell us about human cognition and our collective reactions to natural and social environments. His recent books include A Reference Grammar of Chinese, A Student Grammar of Chinese, and The Cambridge Handbook of Chinese Linguistics all from CUP, and Mandarin Chinese Words and Parts of Speech, and The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Applied Linguistics both from Routledge. He recently published in Behavior Research Methods, Computational Linguistics, Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theories, among others.

Acknowledgements

Xiaowen Wang would like to thank Miss Panyu Qin and Miss Chunhong Huang at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies for their assistance.

Research funding: This study was funded by the Humanities and Social Science Fund of Ministry of Education, China (Grant No.: 21YJC740058), http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013139. Huang’s work is also partly funded by the Specialized Subsidy Scheme for Macao Higher Education Institutions in the Area of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences of Higher Education Fund (Grant No.: HSS-UMAC-2020-10).

Appendix: Detailed linguistic analyses of poster texts in Hong Kong and Guangzhou

The appendix is available on the website of the authors’ research team. The direct download link is: http://llt.cbs.polyu.edu.hk/static/upload/blog/Appendix-Detailed_linguistic_analyses_of_COVID-19_poster__texts_l55cLSa.pdf.

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Published Online: 2022-02-24

Published in Print: 2022-03-28

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Keywords for this article

perlocution formula; Pragmatic Act Theory; pragmeme; social distancing; speech act