35.2198, Review: Speech Acts in English: Pérez-Hernández (2023)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-35-2198. Tue Aug 06 2024. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 35.2198, Review: Speech Acts in English: Pérez-Hernández (2023)

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Date: 07-Aug-2024
From: Keziah Pam [keziahpam16 at gmail.com]
Subject: Semantics: Pérez-Hernández (2023)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/34.2993

AUTHOR: Lorena Pérez-Hernández
TITLE: Speech Acts in English
SUBTITLE: From Research to Instruction and Textbook Development
SERIES TITLE: Studies in English Language
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2023

REVIEWER: Keziah Pam

SUMMARY

The book, Speech Acts in English by Lorena Pérez-Hernández, edited by
Merja Kytö et al, contains six chapters. The text discusses general
issues relating to Speech Acts in English as they are used in a
variety of complex ways. All the chapters are incisively written and
they provide insights into the specifics of speech acts especially as
they relate to English as a Foreign Language (EFL), which hitherto was
rarely given attention. The text harnesses current theories from
pragmatics and cognitive linguistics via pedagogical approaches for
learners of English. The book also “incorporates a contrastive,
cognitive-constructional approach to directive speech act into the EFL
teaching practice and the design of EFL teaching materials based on
explicit instruction” (pp. 9-10). The work draws its data for analysis
from the British National Corpus (BNC) and the more recent iWeb corpus
for English, the Corpus de Referencia del Espańol Actual (CREA) and
Corpus del Espańol del Siglo XXI (CORPES XXI) for Spanish, and
everyday life interactions of the author. Contrastive realisations of
these illocutionary acts in Spanish (L1) and English (L2) are
considered in the text.

The introduction, which serves as the first chapter of the book,
explores possible improvement for the teaching of directive speech
acts. Pérez-Hernández suggests that actions carried out linguistically
that prompt a speaker’s interlocutor to do something are known as
directive speech acts and that learning to use and process directive
speech acts in a foreign or second language is a crucial but difficult
task (p. 1). The use of directive speech acts constitutes a problem to
our interlocutors (can offend them) if used inappropriately. This may
subsequently render the directive act ineffective and the goals
therefore defeated. Social and contextual variables must be taken into
consideration when choosing an appropriate directive speech act. She
points out that what makes the learning of directive speech acts
particularly problematic and a strenuous task for students of a
foreign language is the conceptual complexity and formal richness,
since language users have an array of choices to choose from. Be that
as it may, illocution is pivotal in language pedagogy, since the
ability to interpret speech acts correctly is an essential competence
that needs to be acquired to master the use of a second language. The
text explains that although some textbooks of EFL have tried over the
years to devote sections to the teaching of speech acts, their
teaching presents several problematic issues. This suggests that there
is ample room for improvement, and to this end, the text serves as a
rich resource (for directive speech acts) that is theoretically
updated and also a psychologically validated account of instructions
and practice materials for EFL users.

The second chapter, titled: “What Contemporary Research Tells Us about
Speech Acts,” x-rays theoretical aspects of illocutions aimed at a
more specialized readership for advanced students of linguistics and
other EFL professionals.  The chapter argues for a contrastive,
cognitive-constructional theory of speech acts that is able to harness
“pragmatic, semantic, and syntactic aspects of speech acts into a
unified and comprehensive account that is compatible with current
psycholinguistic knowledge on the production and understanding of
speech acts” (p. 14). The chapter also argues in favour of “a
wide-ranging, comprehensive approach to speech acts that highlights
their polychromatic, ductile and adaptable nature” (p. 17). Chapter
Two further hinges the strength of its arguments on the weaknesses of
earlier theories of illocution. For instance, the stance of
codification-based theories and the over-grammaticalisation of speech
acts are challenged after a search through the BNC showed that
explicit performatives are rare in real life exchanges: speakers of
English seldom use performatives (I beg you to…, I order you to…) in
everyday exchanges. Even the so called explicit performatives can be
used to perform speech acts other than the ones named by their
performative verbs. The chapter reports Halliday’s (1994) shift from a
formal to a semantic or functional criterion for the classification of
speech acts, with the systemic-functional approach taking a pivotal
position because of the idiosyncratic conceptions of language.
Inference-based theories of over-pragmatisation of speech acts are
also questioned here. Pérez-Hernández says Leech (1983) “takes an
extreme inferentialist approach to the analysis of speech acts,” hence
making the distinction between the literal and indirect speech acts
irrelevant (p. 30). Drawing inferences should not be critical to the
understanding of speech acts. The chapter concludes by listing
theoretical advances (p. 68) used to guide further discussions in the
text.

In the third chapter, Pérez-Hernández critically assesses how speech
acts have been treated in Advanced EFL Textbooks ab initio, which she
observes is not extensive enough given that most of the studies were
based on a few isolated speech act categories. Another weakness is
that data often revolves around directive categories and is limited to
particular theoretical perspectives. The chapter, using ten textbooks,
ascertains the authenticity and the relevance of the quantitative as
well as qualitative approach of EFL textbooks, especially as they
relate to current advances in the treatment of speech acts in
contemporary theories of illocutions. The chapter argues that “none of
the textbooks under analysis offers information about the
transactional attributes involved in the semantics of directive speech
acts or their interconnections and synergies with interactional and
social variables” (p. 78). This assessment was carried out to examine
the extent to which contemporary theoretical research advances on
speech acts have actually been implemented in advance instructional
materials. The chapter concludes that “the amount of instruction about
the semantic, pragmatic, constructional and cultural dimensions of
directive speech acts in advanced EFL textbooks is unsystematic and
scarce, ranging from limited to non-existent, and varying greatly
depending on the textbook and the speech act under scrutiny”;  it is
therefore expedient to consider this going forward (p. 86).

Chapter Four draws from a corpus-based study on the meaning and form
of each directive speech act and makes apparent the fact that the
variety and plethora of forms and linguistic realisations involved in
the production of each directive speech act arefascinating and also a
reflection of the creativeness, flexibility, and communicative power
of language at the disposal of language users. The description of the
constructional nature of the six directive speech acts (ordering,
requesting, begging, suggesting, advising, and warning) explores the
form of the cognitive pedagogical grammar. The chapter contains a rich
resource of data (presented within their context of use) that can be
useful to teachers and textbook developers in the instruction of
directive illocutions for EFL, ESL and whatever the status of English
is to a speaker in general. The information offered about semantics
and its formal configurations is what Pérez-Hernández calls
‘know-what’ and ‘know-how’ respectively.

The fifth chapter, captioned, A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of
Directive Speech Acts II: Activities and Practice Materials, takes a
practical approach to  exploring the meaning and form of directive
speech acts. Following the pedagogical approach of the text, this
chapter in particular provides numerous practical activities for
teachers as well as EFL learners. These activities are grouped
according to the semantic and contrastive aspects. The contexts of
usage are also provided to serve as a guide in the analyses.

Chapter Six concludes the text by summarising the preceding chapters
and highlighting the major focus of the text. The chapter proffers
suggestions for further research as well. A detailed list of sources
for further research in the series is also provided.

EVALUATION

This text stands at a higher pedestal in comparison with other
textbooks of EFL that have been written over the years to explicate
the teaching of speech acts, in that their pedagogy exhibits several
problematic issues like: poor treatment of pragmatic use of the target
language (Cohen & Ishihara, 2013); insufficient contextual information
(Harwood, 2014); and unsystematic and stereotypical treatment of
pragmatic strategies(McConachy & Hata, 2013). There is also the issue
of underrepresentation of speech acts in current EFL coursebook series
(Vellenga, 2004; Ren & Han, 2006; Pérez-Hernández, 2019). This text,
given its pedagogical outlook, addresses these issues to bridge the
disconnections:  theory and practice  is given precedence amidst other
variables. The book offers a fresh perspective to the study of speech
acts for undergraduate as well as graduate students of English. The
numerous pitfalls pointed out serve as a good starting point for
textbook writers in speech acts, especially for pedagogical purposes.
The book also serves as a reference for future research, given its
wide survey of previous books hitherto and identification of gaps in
the assessed texts. The choice of the sources of data used on speech
act instantiations provides a rich data bank and continuum for future
studies.

It is however quite ambitious to incorporate all that goes under the
rubrics of pragmatic, semantic, and syntactic aspects of speech acts
into a unified and comprehensive account  compatible with current
psycholinguistic knowledge, as proposed in the second chapter.
Language users can use language for their own purposes and not
necessarily be bound by the typical or expected ways of using
language, as long as they understand what they are ‘doing with it’ and
are sure that their interlocutors are also able to understand (Mey,
2001). The pragmatic acts theory is a response to some complexities
and inadequacies not well accounted for in the speech act theory. For
example, Mey observes that “while speech acts, when uttered in
contexts, are pragmatic acts, pragmatic acts are not speech acts (not
even indirect ones)” (p. 216). This suggests that there is still a
lacuna in the study of speech acts.

The overall output, content and intent of the text is however
meticulously argued and substantively supported with ample empirical
evidence. The book is a must-read for teachers and textbook developers
or researchers in the area of speech acts, EFL as well as ESL
learners, and anyone interested in speech acts in particular and
pragmatics in general.

REFERENCES

Cohen, Andrew D. & Ishihara, Noriko. 2013. Pragmatics. In B.
Tomlinson, ed., Applied linguistics and material development. London:
Bloomsbury, pp. 113-126.
Halliday, Michael Alexander Kirkwood. 1994. An introduction to
functional grammar, 2nd ed. London: Edward Arnold.
Harwood, Nigel. 2014. Content, consumption, and production: three
levels of textbook research. In N. Harwood, ed., English language
teaching textbooks: Content, consumption, and production. Basingstoke:
Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 1-41.
Leech, Geoffrey. 1983. Principles of pragmatics. New York: Longman.
McConachy, Troy. & Hata, Kaori. 2013. Addressing textbook
representations of pragmatics and culture. ELT Journal, 67 (3),
294-301.
Mey, Jacob.  2001. Pragmatics: an introduction. 2nd ed. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Pérez-Hernández, Lorena. 2019. From research to the textbook:
assessing speech acts representation in course book series for
students of English as an L2. Spanish journal of applied linguistics,
32 (1), 248-276.
Pérez-Hernández, Lorena. 2021. Speech Acts in English: From Research
to Instruction and Textbook Development. India: Cambridge.
Ren, Wei & Han, Zhengrui. 2006. The representation of pragmatic
knowledge in recent ELT textbooks. English language teaching journal,
70 (4), 224-243.
Vellenga, Heidi. 2004. Learning pragmatics from ESL & EFL textbooks:
how likely? The electronic journal of English as a second language, 8
(2), 1-18.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Dr Keziah Jonah Pam is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English,
University of Jos, Nigeria. Her interests lie in Pragmatics and
Diachronic Linguistics. She has written and published widely in these
areas both locally and internationally.



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