32.2480, Review: English; Anthropological Linguistics; Pragmatics; Semantics: Pérez-Hernández (2020)

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Subject: 32.2480, Review: English; Anthropological Linguistics; Pragmatics; Semantics: Pérez-Hernández (2020)

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Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2021 23:10:00
From: Jonathon Ryan [jgr3 at students.waikato.ac.nz]
Subject: Speech Acts in English

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36703117


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/31/31-3835.html

AUTHOR: Lorena  Pérez-Hernández
TITLE: Speech Acts in English
SUBTITLE: From Research to Instruction and Textbook Development
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2020

REVIEWER: Jonathon Ryan, Waikato Institute of Technology

SUMMARY 

This book concerns the teaching of speech acts in English as a foreign
language, offering a detailed conceptual model applicable to the development
of language teaching materials. The author focuses on the class of directive
speech acts, specifically orders, requests, beggings, suggestions, warnings
and advice giving, from which a more generally applicable model is
illustrated.

For a general pragmatics audience, the second chapter will be of particular
interest in its enlightening discussion of current theoretical approaches to
speech acts. The author distinguishes three established approaches to speech
acts, which each pivot around their commitment to or rejection of the
hypothesis that speech acts are encoded within the form of sentences. These
are codification-based (i.e. grammatical) theories, convention-based theories,
which appeal to routinized cultural practices, and inference-based theories,
which draw heavily on the role of processes of sense-making within the context
of the utterance. Pérez-Hernández identifies the contrasting strengths and
omissions of these three approaches and in so doing convincingly builds the
case for a revised account of speech acts.

>From there, Pérez-Hernández presents a cognitive-constructional framework,
involving a granular approach which enables distinctions to be made at three
key levels of analysis. At the first level, this involves analyzing classes of
speech acts (e.g. those classifiable as directives) in terms of illocutionary
idealized cognitive models (ICM). These models are comprised of relevant
semantic, pragmatic and structural elements, which in the case of directives
include considerations such as identifying the agent, beneficiary,
willingness, optionality and so on. At the second level, the varieties of
speech act (e.g. orders vs. requests) are distinguished according to different
settings holding among one or more of these elements (e.g. orders and requests
differing in terms of optionality). At the third level, different formulations
of the same speech act are understood as encoding variations along these
dimensions and also in response to social variables. For instance, different
request formulas (e.g. I need X; Have you got X?; Would you mind doing X for
me?) vary in such ways as the strength of speaker need and whether the
addressee has possession of the object, as well as in response to the social
variables of power, distance and formality (incorporated in the framework
under ‘structure’).

Of particular relevance to language teachers here in this chapter is the
author’s arguments around ‘base constructions’ and ‘realization procedures’.
Base constructions are described as formulas such ‘Can you do X?’ that are
frequently used to perform a particular class of speech act (e.g. directives).
When using such a construction, the speaker draws upon realization procedures
to adapt the expression to the context. For instance, to acknowledge the
beneficiary of a request, ‘me’ or ‘us’ might be added (e.g. Can you pass me
the book?) while to encode politeness, modality or ‘please’ might be added. In
other words, a set of basic sentence formulas can be presented to learners,
with a series of further rules about how to adapt them to the specific context
and communicative need. Such an approach promises a systematically teachable
way of tackling an entire class of speech acts, in which formulas may be
selected on grounds of utility and graded in terms of complexity, and then
revisited in further depth.

The focus of Chapter 3 is a relatively brief analysis of the presentation of
directive speech acts in ten advanced EFL textbooks. It will come as little
surprise to those working in second language pragmatics that the books provide
very little coverage of directive speech acts, nor that what is included is
highly inadequate. Nevertheless, the point is an important one and
Pérez-Hernández builds a suitably strong case.

In Chapter 4, the most extensive of the book, Pérez-Hernández applies her
framework in a ‘cognitive pedagogical grammar’ of directive speech acts based
on findings derived from corpus data. Each of the six types of directive act
are addressed separately and in convincing detail. The technical terminology
of the earlier chapters is simplified for communication to a broader audience,
in particular through the use of questions that help the non-expert reader to
classify phenomena. Alongside reader-friendly descriptions, helpful tables are
provided of base constructions, realization procedures and crosslinguistic
comparisons for Spanish learners of English. Included in the tables are
sometimes surprising details about the frequency of occurrences across the
iWeb corpus and the identification of structures which appear in one of the
two languages but which are not productive in the other.

Chapter 5 presents and discusses 21 teaching activities based on principles of
cognitive pedagogical grammar, including “consciousness-raising,
knowledge-development, comprehension, and production-development tasks” (p.
185). The author makes clear that these were designed with advanced Spanish
EFL learners in mind, but they nevertheless provide useful guidance for
teachers of other languages and levels. Overall, the activities involve a
broadly similar approach to teaching pragmatics as established in other
publications (e.g. Tatsuki & Houck, 2010) where learners are tasked with
reflecting on context and analysing specific uses of language. 

EVALUATION

In focusing on directive speech acts, especially in relation to advanced
Spanish EFL learners, this work is able to delve into considerable depth. In
so doing, the author builds a model suitable for applying to other speech act
phenomena for second language learners in general. Among the highlights of the
work are the insightful discussion of speech act theory and the granular
approach to analyzing related types of speech act. Undoubtedly, the book will
serve as a valuable resource for reference within the field of second language
pragmatics and I would hope that it finds its way into the hands of textbook
writers and other materials writers. It is worth reiterating the conclusion of
Chapter 3 that current second language textbooks – almost without exception –
do not serve well the needs of language teachers and learners.

While I do enthusiastically endorse this book, it is also worth considering
how its approach might also be a useful springboard to further considerations.
One thing I had been hoping to see was discussion of some of the basic
assumptions underlying the way speech acts are conceived. A key resource here
is the important recent work of Enfield and Sidnell (2017), who articulate the
compelling view that to speak is to act, as also found in the language
philosophy of Wittgenstein (1958) and in the foundation texts of conversation
analysis (e.g. Sacks, 1995) and in the highly productive work which has
followed. In this view, what we tend to label as speech acts are merely
categories of action which are so common and readily grasped that people have
developed ordinary-language labels for them. However, the vast majority of
actions found within an ordinary conversation defy ready labeling, and a
single utterance may in fact be performing more than one action
simultaneously.

This raises a number of challenges for a speech act approach to second
language pedagogy, including the question of determining on what basis speech
acts should be selected for a curriculum, given that no master list exists (or
is possible) and that most actions defy labeling. If nearly all speech
involves actions, within what parameters does it make sense to focus on a
certain – presumably narrow – selection of speech acts at the expense of most
others? And perhaps most fundamentally, can we identify a set of highly
productive principles underlying actions much more generally and which would
be more usefully taught than the distinguishing features of a handful of
speech acts?

Also worth considering from here is whether the analytical focus of speech act
theory is optimally useful for language teaching. I refer here to the way
speech acts are conceived by theorists as essentially utterance-level
phenomena and the assumption that these can be adequately analyzed in
isolation from the surrounding talk. This is one of the key criticisms of
speech act theory levelled by those adopting a perspective informed by
conversation analysis (CA), which holds as fundamental the observation that
talk occurs in a sequential environment. That is, speech acts do not simply
arise suddenly out of nowhere, but in relation to some prior action, and they
will in turn (almost certainly) shape the talk that follows. Consequently, one
way of wording a particular request, for instance, might generate a very
different course of action from another. For language learners, it is also
essential to understand that there is very often work required to build up to
the point where a speech act might be appropriately delivered (Wong & Waring,
2021). For instance, rather than producing a request out of the blue (Can I
have an extension on my essay?), it may be helpful to foreshadow it in some
way, such as through identifying the problem or need (‘I’ve been dealing with
a family emergency over the last few days’). Indeed, there is substantial
evidence to indicate that there is a preference for avoiding requests in favor
of eliciting an offer (e.g. Schegloff, 2007). Although Pérez-Hernández does
touch on CA perspectives in passing, like speech act theory generally, the
book is primarily focused on the level of the single, individual utterance
that goes on record as performing an action. 

Nevertheless, in focusing on a speech act perspective, Pérez-Hernández has
produced a very interesting and worthwhile book. It is one that I recommend
particularly to curriculum writers and materials developers working in second
language teaching, but it will also be of substantial interest to researchers
working more generally with speech act theory. Language teachers with an
interest in pragmatics and with a desire to expand their own practice will
also find considerable value in the teaching suggestions.

REFERENCES

Enfield, N. J., & Sidnell, J. (2017). The concept of action. Cambridge
University Press. 

Sacks, H. (1995). Lectures on conversation (Vol. I & II). Blackwell. 

Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in
conversation analysis (Vol. 1). Cambridge University Press.

Tatsuki, D. H., & Houck, N. R. (Eds.). (2010). Pragmatics: Teaching speech
acts. TESOL Press. 

Wittgenstein, L. (1958). Philosophical investigations (G. E. M. Anscombe,
Trans.; 3rd ed.). Prentice Hall. 

Wong, J., & Waring, H. Z. (2021). Conversation analysis and second language
pedagogy: A guide for ESL/EFL teachers (2nd ed.). Routledge.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Jonathon Ryan is a Principal Academic Staff Member at Wintec, New Zealand. He
publishes mainly in areas of L2 pragmatics, particularly in relation to
reference.





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