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Indirect speech acts are commonly used to reject proposals and to make requests. For example, if a speaker asks, "Would you like to meet me for coffee?" and the other replies, "I have class", the second speaker has used an indirect speech act to reject the proposal.
The indirect speech sentence is then ambiguous since it can be a result of two different direct speech sentences. For example: I can get it for free. OR I could get it for free. He said that he could get it for free. (ambiguity) However, in many Slavic languages, there is no change of tense in indirect speech and so there is no ambiguity.
The first four the verbs in the last example above are perfect subjunctive, which in an indirect question may represent an imperfect, perfect, or pluperfect tense in the original speech. The last verb ignōrāre is an infinitive, since it is a rhetorical question resembling a statement ('there is none of us who doesn't know') more than a question.
Asking a question is an example of what Austin called an illocutionary act. Other examples would be making an assertion, giving an order, and promising to do something. To perform an illocutionary act is to use a locution with a certain force. It is an act performed in saying something, in contrast with a locution, the act of saying something.
Accumulatio – the emphasis or summary of previously made points or inferences by excessive praise or accusation.; Actio – canon #5 in Cicero's list of rhetorical canons; traditionally linked to oral rhetoric, referring to how a speech is given (including tone of voice and nonverbal gestures, among others).
Searle (1975) set up the following classification of illocutionary speech acts: assertives = speech acts that commit a speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition; directives = speech acts that are to cause the hearer to take a particular action, e.g. requests, commands and advice; commissives = speech acts that commit a speaker to some ...
Free indirect discourse can be described as a "technique of presenting a character's voice partly mediated by the voice of the author". In the words of the French narrative theorist Gérard Genette, "the narrator takes on the speech of the character, or, if one prefers, the character speaks through the voice of the narrator, and the two instances then are merged". [1]
the speech act may be reported using the following words: Batman said that he needed a special key for the Batmobile. with the present tense need replaced by the past tense needed, since the main verb of saying (said) is in the past tense. Further examples can be found at Uses of English verb forms § Indirect speech.