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Part of
The Functional Perspective on Language and Discourse: Applications and implications
Edited by María de los Ángeles Gómez González, Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Francisco Gonzálvez-García and Angela Downing
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 247] 2014
► pp. 243–260

Searle and Sinclair on communicative acts

A sketch of a research problem

| University of Trier, Germany

John Searle and John Sinclair have worked in very different academic traditions: analytic philosophy and empirical linguistics. Nevertheless, although they work with very different methodological and theoretical assumptions, they both tackle one of the deepest questions in the philosophy of language – the nature of units of meaning – and there are similarities in their models of communicative acts – speech acts and extended lexical units. It is therefore productive to study in how far the two approaches are complementary, and whether their different strengths can be combined. I will give brief examples of how Searle’s model could be strengthened by grounding it in empirical textual and ethnographic data, and therefore – conversely – how Sinclair’s model could be strengthened by giving it a social rationale.

Published online: 16 May 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.247.13stu
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