This book departs from the premise that context represents a complex relational configuration which can no longer be conceived as an analytic prime but rather requires a parts-whole perspective to capture its inherent dynamism. The edited volume presents a collection of papers which examine the… read more
The present paper describes the language- and culture-specific communicative practices in Japanese facilitated by the grammaticalized honorific system in the study of societal pragmatics (Mey 2001). The description develops existing descriptions by showing how the use of an honorific or a plain… read more
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… read more
There has been consistent interest in discourse makers over the past couple of decades, and various proposals have been put forth regarding their functions. The present paper analyzes discourse markers in general as indicators of types of connectedness between expositive illocutionary acts… read more
The importance of the concept of follow-ups in political discourse lies in the fact that it captures a dynamic process of political discourse that is not confined to a specific spatio-temporal location. Follow-ups are a part of three-move sequences, preceded by initiating moves and responses, which… read more
The present paper analyzes evidentials and epistemic modals in terms of their contribution to the illocutionary act. In indicating how the speaker acquires knowledge about a thing, event, or situation in the world (by evidentials), or what epistemic attitude s/he has towards a thought (by epistemic… read more
This contribution purports to develop an Austinian speech act theory, in which the illocutionary act is described as the communicative move to the hearer that the speaker evaluates her present utterance as. In saying a performative or non-performative utterance, the speaker specifies or indicates… read more
The present paper gives a speech-act-theoretic explanation of the concept of appropriateness. In the speech act theory proposed in the present paper, the mechanism of performing an illocutionary act is explained as the process whereby a linguistic form, which represents a linguistic convention,… read more
