Speech Act Taxonomy

Figure 3. Hierarchy of intentionality including Bhatia's promotional genre moves.

- Behabitives: expressing social behaviour and attitudes; apologising, congratulating, cursing.

There are, however, certain overlaps in these categories. For example, stating a very negative opinion or verdict and cursing could sound similar while a positive appraisal can be seen as a congratulation. Also in warnings, threats and self-orders one is committing oneself to doing something, so these acts coincide in this respect with comissives. The difference is probably that in the case of the latter category, the listener would prefer the act to be made, while in the former one the act is highly likely to be against the wishes of the listener. The point is also present in Searle’s (1969) fourth necessary condition and second constitutive rule for performing a promise. In keeping with this, a promise is made if the speaker believes the action is in the interest of the hearer and if the hearer would prefer the speaker to perform the action. However, it is at times difficult to judge what the hearer would prefer and one would have to be very familiar with the context and audience to be able to make such a judgement.

Searle (1975) sees six problems with Austin’s taxonomy and proposes his own based on “twelve significant dimensions of variation in which illocutionary acts differ”

(p.2). Searle’s taxonomy consists of:

- Assertives: committing the speaker to something being the case; boast, complain, conclude, deduce;

- Directives: attempts by the speaker to get the hearer to do something;

command, request, beg, plead, challenge, defy, invite;

- Comissives: commit the speaker to a future course of action; promise, vow, oppose, bet;

- Expressives: express a psychological state towards the propositional content;

thank, congratulate, apologise, condole, deplore;

- Declarations: performatives like declare, name, define.

Although this taxonomy is based on those very complex twelve dimensions, it is still problematic. Searle himself admits that some members of the declarative category may overlap with certain assertives. Also, there seems to be an internal conflict or contradiction. For example, “to vow” or “promise” seem to be of a very different nature than “to oppose”, which would probably not be in the interest of the hearer. A similar contradiction is seen in the directives as it is difficult to comprehend how a command and an invitation could belong to the same group taking into consideration that the perlocution in these two cases is likely to be very different.

For the purposes of this model which is supposed to serve as an analytical instrument for business presentations, neither of these taxonomies is deemed to be appropriate as the criteria for categorisation cannot yield groups of speech acts that would be possible to bring in line with the hierarchy of intentionality. What is needed is a system of classification whose criterion would be linked to the notion of intentionality. This is why language functions were considered to be a particularly convenient foundation for the new taxonomy. We use language to perform certain functions within our society, and there are several classifications of the types of functions that we employ. These categorisations provided the basis for the design of the new taxonomy.

A systematic review of various language function classifications is put forward by Halliday, (Halliday & Hasan, 1989) and includes the frameworks of Malinowski, Bühler, Britton and Morris. Figure 4 shows Halliday’s overview of language functions (Halliday

& Hasan, 1989, p. 15). The figure compares and groups all the frameworks and categories

into a system which clearly displays the correlations and overlaps of the theories. This sparked off the idea that it is possible to combine these groups of functions into a system for classifying speech acts according to the general function they perform. Speech acts are illocutions performed in a specific situation and, as we have seen, can be considered to be the minimal units of communication. Language functions, on the other hand, are slightly more general concepts describing the purposes to which we employ language within our society. Both concepts can be linked to the notion of intentionality and therefore language functions were considered to be the ideal foundation for the new speech act taxonomy.

pragmatic magical Malinowski

(1923)

narrative active

representational [3^rd person]

conative [2^nd person]

expressive [1^st person]

Bühler (1990)

transactional expressive poetic Britton

(1970) informative conative

information talking

grooming talking

mood talking

exploratory talking

Morris (1967) informative uses

(orientation to content)

interactive uses (orientation to effect)

imaginative uses control

other

mutual support

express self

ritual poetic

Figure 4. Halliday's overview of language functions.

According to Halliday’s review, Malinowski (1923) claims that there are two general language functions, magical (control over the environment) and pragmatic (language as a form of action), the latter being subdivided into narrative (storing and

transmitting information) and active. Bühler’s (1990) system has three categories:

representational (1^st person), conative (2^nd person), expressive (3^rd person). The expressive, 3^rd person is similar to Malinowski’s narrative function, whereas the other two are similar to the active pragmatic functions. Britton (1970) also has three groups: transactional, expressive and poetic. The poetic is comparable to Malinowski’s magical group and the transactional functions can be further subdivided into informative and conative. Morris (1967), on the other hand, distinguishes four types of “talking”: information (related to representation and narrative), grooming (similar to conative), mood (expressive) and exploratory (connected to poetic and magical). Finally, Halliday lists his own categories:

informative, where the orientation is to the content; interactive uses, where the orientation is to the effect (control over others, mutual support or expressing oneself); and imaginative uses, which can be ritual and poetic.

For the new taxonomy, all the above frameworks were fused to end up with three main categories: organisational, informative and interactive acts. Organisational acts reflect and regulate the structure of the discourse. They are similar to Austin’s metalinguistic expositives and their function is to explicitly mark how the discourse is organised and in what way the arguments are related. Due to the monologic nature of presentations, it was particularly important to include a separate category for these acts because there is no turn-taking to organise the talk. Consequently, these structural devices gain a particular significance for the genre of presentations. Informative acts convey information in a relative neutral manner and are not of an interpersonal character. This group is similar to the narrative, informative and representational functions mentioned above. The third category is interactive or interpersonal acts, which are used to accomplish some sort of social function and can be related to the grooming, mood, expressive and

conative functions. This group, however, seems to be too wide and encompasses too many varied acts. Perhaps this is the reason why Halliday subdivides it further into three other categories. From the analysis of presentations though, it seems that when the speakers are interacting with the audience there are two general directions. Originally these two directions were termed as positive and negative illocutions alluding to Brown and Levinson’s (1978) positive and negative face wants. The positive face wants stem from the desire to be approved of and in a presentation would presumably mean that the presenter would involve the audience, interact with them and in general try to make a good impression. The negative face wants result form the need to be unimpeded, independent and free. Obviously, for presentations the former group of functions would be more appropriate as it would help the presenter to convince the audience to engage in commercial activity more easily. These two basic human needs are also discussed by Widdowson (1983) who claims that “human communication involves the reconciliation of two opposing forces” (p. 47). On the one hand, we have the territorial imperative catering to the negative face wants and making sure that the individual’s schematic life space is protected. On the other hand, we have the cooperative imperative taking care of the positive face wants of gaining social approval and status. Widdowson’s terminology seemed particularly descriptive and illustrative of the two opposing directions for the interpersonal acts and was adopted to label the two subcategories. This ultimately resulted in a system of four categories of speech acts: organisational, informative, territorial and cooperative.