Semantics and Pragmatics Commons^™

Indirect Requests: Sociopragmatic Aspects Of Non-Conventionalised Indirect Directives, Hammed Mohammadpanah

Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations - Archive

Directives are divided into three types, corresponding to different levels of explicitness. To get a hearer who has left the front door open on a cold winter night while taking off their shoes, one can use a direct directive (e.g., Close the door!), a conventionalised indirect directive (e.g., Can you close the door?), or a non-conventionalised indirect directive (e.g., It’s –15 outside.). Inherently implicit in nature, non-conventionalised indirect directives (NCIDs) have been understudied due to being the most context-dependent and form-independent type of directives, which underscores the central role of context-based inferencing and contextual salience in processing and studying them. …

What’S In A Threat: A Corpus-Based, Speech Act And Lexicogrammatical Approach To Threats In English, Natalie Raun Carter

Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations - Archive

Threats can be made without using language at all, but previous research on the language of threats is limited and primarily examines threats with a small amount of constructed data. Building on Austin (1962) and Searle (1965; 1969)’s speech act theory and using a corpus of naturally occurring data consisting of 827 threatening texts from publicly available websites and law enforcement, this dissertation determines what constitutes a threat, as well as the interdependence between words and grammar.

Pragmatically, this dissertation identifies four required felicity conditions that must be met to constitute a threat—building on those set by John Searle, Bruce …