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Part of
The Pragmatics of Adaptability
Edited by Daniel N. Silva and Jacob L. Mey
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 319] 2021
► pp. 37–54

Chapter 2
How do we adapt ourselves in performing an illocutionary act?

| Tokyo University of Science

The present chapter examines the idea that language users adapt to linguistic/societal conventions to communicate with each other by describing the mechanism in which they perform an illocutionary act and engage in a communicative exchange. Austin’s ([1962]1975) felicity conditions are scrutinized to show how a speaker executes her/his own illocutionary act by utilizing and adapting to linguistic/societal conventions that specify illocutionary acts, their effects, the addressers, the addressees, and the contexts. There are linguistic/societal conventions which allow/force a speaker to specify the social relationship between the speaker and the hearer, and/or (in)formality of the speech situation. This is illustrated by examining the act of apologizing in Japanese, in which honorific marking is grammaticalized. There are also linguistic/societal conventions which specify illocutionary effects in discourse, which are analyzed as effects of expositive-type illocutionary acts (Austin ([1962]1975).

Keywords: adaptation, illocutionary acts, expositives, J. L. Austin, discourse
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The speaker/the addresser, the hearer/the addressee and the circumstances of the speech situation/the context
  • 3. Different linguistic/societal conventions of performing illocutionary acts
  • 4.Illocutionary acts in discourse
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 March 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.319.02ois
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