Language and Culture

Language and Culture

Assessment #2 – Pragmatic analytic assignment

This assignment will be distributed through the website. The assignment will cover:

Part 1. Elements of speech acts
You will be given some examples of speech acts and for each you will have to identify the locutionary act and the illocutionary act involved.

Part 2. Same form different speech acts
You will be given some examples of speech acts that can have two different meanings depending on the context. You will have to identify the two possible meanings for each one.

Part 3. Analysing speech acts: Direct or indirect speech acts?
You will be given some examples of speech acts and for each you will have to identify the head act, indicate if the head act is direct or indirect and why, identify any internal modification of the head act and indicate what the modification is and identify any external modification of the speech act and identify what sort of modification is involved.

Part 4. Analysing speech acts: Implicature
You will be given some examples of speech acts that are indirect/nonliteral speech acts. They get their meaning because the flout one of more of Grice?s conversational maxims to create an implicature. For each example you will need to identify 1) what the speech act means, 2) which implicatures are being flouted that create the nonliteral meaning.

Part 5. Identifying speech acts
You will be given some examples of speech acts and for each you will have to address the following questions: What speech act is being realised here? You should use the felicity conditions for speech acts presented in class to demonstrate the nature of the speech act and how it is indirect.

Part 6. Different ways of realising speech acts in English
You will be given examples of situations in which a speech act is performed you will need to write three sentences that show how the speech act could be realised in English as (a) a direct speech act, (b) and conventional indirect speech act and (c) a non-conventional indirect speech act. Then you will need to briefly explain how your sentences are examples of each type.