Speech Acts

Préface
This Element is an introduction to research methods in speech acts, including discursive, multimodal, and diachronic approaches.

Texte du rabat

This Element outlines issues in the study of speech acts. Discursive approaches shift the focus to interaction and interactional sequences. Multimodal approaches show that the speech act needs to be extended to cover the multimodality of communicative acts. Diachronic approaches focus on the historicity of speech acts.

Contenu

1. Introduction: the philosophical foundations; 2. The empirical turn in speech act studies; 3. Corpus-based approaches; 4. 'Is that supposed to be an insult or a compliment?' Discursive approaches; 5. 'He gave an apologetic shrug': speech acts and multimodality; 6. 'O, cry you Mercy, sir; I have mistook': the diachronicity of speech acts; 7. Open issues and outlook; data sources, corpora and dictionary; References.