Text 13

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 362.

Geoffrey leech: Principles of Pragmatics. Longman 1983, pages 177-8

In referring to human conversational behavior, as to other areas of experience, our language provides us with categorical distinc­tions. But it is to commit a fundamental and obvious error to assume that the distinctions made by our vocabulary necessarily exist in reality. Language provides us with verbs like order, request, beg, plead, just as it provides us with nouns like puddle, pond, lake, sea, ocean. But we should no more assume that there are in pragmatic reality distinct categories such as orders and

requests than that there are in geographical reality distinct cat­egories such as puddles, ponds and lakes. Somehow, this assump­tion slips unnoticed into Searle's introduction to his taxonomy:

What are the criteria by which we can tell that of three actual utterances one is a report, one a prediction and one a promise? In order to develop higher order genera, we must first know how the species promise, prediction, report, etc. differ from one another.

(Searle, J. 1979.: Expression and Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, page 2.)

But it would be strikingly inappropriate if one were to begin a treatise on expanses of water on the world's surface in this way:

What are the criteria by which we can tell that of three actual expanses of water, one is a puddle, one a pond, and one a lake? In order to develop higher order genera, we must first know how the species puddle, pond, and lake differ from one another.

In defence of Searle it could be argued, first, that the comparison is unfair: if one had chosen monkeys and giraffes (say) instead of ponds and puddles, the example would have been less ridiculous. But my reply is (a) that one has no right in advance to assume that such categories exist in reality (although one might discover them by observation); and (b) that in actuality, when one does observe them, illocutions are in many respects more like puddles and ponds than like monkeys and giraffes: they are, that is to say, dis­tinguished by continuous rather than by discrete characteristics.

t> What exactly is the argument being presented here against the idea that we can identify a speech act as a prediction or not?

l> What would distinguish the definition of a puddle, in Leech's view, from the kind of definition of a promise presented in Text 12?

[> Do you think that Leech's argument is based on an important issue, or just a minor point? How do you think Searle would respond to this criticism from Leech?

104 READINGS

READINGS I05

Chapter 7

Politeness and interaction