Speech Act Theory and Communication: a Univen Study.

By Kaburise Ph., 2011 I am asking to be apologised due to my failure to submit my assignment The student is making a request, but his real communicative goal is to apologise. In classic SATheory, apologies and requests are two different acts, since apologies are expressives and refer to the speakers psychological state of mind, while requests are directives and try to push the hearer todo something; however, both these speech acts imply an effort by the hearer in order to avoid apossible face-threating act. In the above case, the student achieves a positive response from the lecturer, since the request is implied in the apology (p. 122): indeed, the lecturer uses the Gricean notion of implicature to understand the students communicative intention, also because she knew that the student is a non-native speaker and a learner of the English language. With these examples, Kaburise demonstrates how linguistic meaning is a process of negotiation and co-construction between the speaker on one side and the hearer on the other side. In chapter 5, then, the author evaluate her findings, by reflecting on the theoretical notion of communication and meaning, as previously discussed in chapter 2 and chapter 3. For Kaburise, the analysis demonstrates how communicative competence is a multi facete d attribute (p. 153), and that means that is not always easy or even possible to assign a univocal communicative intention to a single utterance. Even with this limitation, Kaburise still considers SA Analysis as the most appropriate strategy to examine the realisation of speech acts or functions. In this regard, the author notes the interrelation between the grammatical and pragmatic dimensions: grammatical mistakes may signal a non-native speaker of a certain language, and make the hearer more indulgent of possible pragmatic mistakes. This means that pragmatic principles are more normative than prescriptive (p. 163), and that a violation in the form of the utterance does not always lead to a failure in communication, i.e. in the interpretation of both meaning and function of the utterance. In chapter 6 the author suggests some ways to enhance the communicative competence of second language speakers, by distinguishing between two types of failure: a pragmalinguistic failure and a socio-pragmatic failure. In the first case, Kaburise suggests raising the awareness of the speakers to the possible misinterpretation of their utterances (p. 168), while in the second case it is important to make the learners aware of the pragmatic and discourse norms of the target language. In the authors opinion, a SA Theory approach can be useful in these regards and it can also inform new research on the topic of communicative competence of non-native speakers. EVALUATION: The book has no introduction, but in chapter 1 the author clearly establishes the main topic of the book, the unity of analysis and the theoretical strategies used in the analysis and in the interpretation of the data. The discussion of the theoretical dimensions of meaning and communicative competence in chapters 2 and 3 is well-structured in its argumentation and easy to follow in its theoretical statements. However, one scholars work is often quoted several times in different part of the chapter, and this does not always help in understanding scholars different theoretical approaches concerning communicative competence. The examples sometimes are not helpful in clarifying the theories: indeed, in the case of the property of language, and in particular of the arbitrariness of the linguistic signs, Kaburise uses the examples of onomatopoeia to illustrate that linguistic sings[that] can become motivated, more apparent, less arbitrary, but rather iconic and indexical (p. 52). However, the examples of onomatopoeia are given only for Tshivenda, without claryfing that onomatopoeia is a common feature in all language, and, moreover, that this is a very complex topic for general linguistic theory (see Castagneto 2004 for a bibliographical review). On the other hand,

an important merit of the chapter is to have well summed up the main different works on speech acts, also by using tables: this strategy allows the author to draw a very detailed but still fresh picture of the state of the art in SA Analysis, which is very useful. Chapter 4 offers a well-organised corpus of data, with all the contextual and pragmatic remarks that enable the reader to immediately get the point of the whole work. Kaburise offers very clear explanations of the utterances under analysis, by showing both the differences in speakers and hearers interpretation of the utterances. The study presents various points of interests, in particular concerning the identification of specific common linguistic practices among students at Univen: however, more news about this jargon would have been useful and interesting, and perhaps this could be the object of future research. In chapter 5, Kaburise interprets the previous data, in order to reach conclusions on the complex discussions of both meaning and function of the analysed utterances. By referring back to the previous remarks in chapter 2 and 3 and to the data provided in chapter 4, the author successfully links her findings and her analysis to the previous theoretical frameworks, also adding something new in the field of the data analysis with a SA approach. Finally, in chapter 6 the author does not summarize the conclusions of her work, by preferring to offer instead some suggestions to enhance pragmatic competence when working with L2 learners. In conclusion, Kaburise offers a good analysis of her spoken and written data with an innovative SA analysis approach. The basic theoretical concepts of the analysis are clearly illustrated, and that provides the reader a common background for the interpretation of the findings. The data are very interesting and well-exposed, even if a skilled scholar could use a more detailed analysis of the quoted dialogues between Tshivenda learners and native speakers of English. For example, a fine classification of the problems in L2 speakers communicative competence using SA tools would have been interesting (e.g. by analysing the duration of the silences between turns or the hesitations both in questions and answers).The book is useful for young scholars working on the topic of SA analysis, pragmatics and perhaps even language acquisition. It provides the basic theoretical concepts of both SA and pragmatic analysis, and it serves as a good starting point for future research on communicative competence of non-native speakers of any languages. REFERENCES Bach, Kent. 1975. Performatives are Statements too. Philosophical Studies (28). 229-36. Canale, Michael & Swain, Merrill. 1980. Theoretical bases of communicative approach to secondlanguage teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics (1). 1-47.Castagneto, Marina. 2004. Chiacchierare, bisbigliare, litigare in turco. Il complesso intreccio traattivit linguistiche, iconismo, reduplicazione. Cagliari. Arxiu de Tradicions. Grice, Paul. 1975. Logic and conversation. In Peter Cole & Jerry L. Morgan (eds.). Syntax andsemantics 3: Speech Acts. New York. Academic Press. 41-58. Gumperz, John J. 1982. Discourse strategies. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. Hymes, Dell. 1967. On communicative competence. Philadelphia. University of Pennsylvania Press. Levinson, Stephen C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. Mey, Jacob L. 1993. Pragmatics. Oxford. Basil Blackwell.Richards, Jack C. & Rodgers, Theodore S. 1986. Approaches and methods in language teaching.London. Longman. Saville-Troike, Muriel. 1982. The ethnography of communication. Oxford. Basil Blackwell. Turner, Ken. 1999. The semantics-pragmatics interface. Oxford. Elsevier.