Introducing English Linguistics

Commissives
okay um, now I 
promise to, give out the uh, the the uh, take home essay,
final, assignment, today 
(MICASE LES315SU129)
I 
pledge to recycle as much waste as possible at home and/or I pledge to
help organise recycling at work or at school/college. 
(BNC G2V 2448)
Declarations 
I 
declare the meeting closed.
(BNC GUD 618)
The friar raised his hand. “Absolvo te,” he intoned. “I
absolve you.” 
(BNC F9W 791)
Expressives
I 
thank you all again for the very hard work and real effort put into our
business at all levels through 1992 without which we would not be able
to have the confidence to face the coming year. 
(BNC HP4 1215)
We 
congratulate Mr. Hay on this well deserved honour.
(BNC GXG 624)
While performative verbs such as apologize and  promise are common in
everyday usage (the 100-million-word British National Corpus contains
thirty-two examples of I apologize in conversation), many performative verbs,
as the examples above illustrate, are restricted in usage and sometimes
occur in conjunction with the highly formal and legal-sounding expression
hereby (only 3 of 258 examples of hereby in the BNC occur in conversation).
For this reason, most performatives would be quite inappropriate in other
contexts, as the rather tongue-in-cheek example below illustrates:
As titular Chief o’ the Clan McTaylor, I hereby order you to remove that
mauve and puce tea-towel from your web site. 
(downunderandbeyond.blogspot.com/2006/03/tartan-tastic.html, 
accessed June 6, 2008)
Speech acts can also be either direct or indirect. A speech act is direct if
its intent is clearly conveyed by the words and structure of the utterance.
For instance, each of the three examples below is a directive. 
That’s enough go away 
(SBCSAE)
Will you go away 
(SBCSAE)
I’m really uncomfortable with your being here now 
(invented example)
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INTRODUCING ENGLISH LINGUISTICS

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However, only the first example is a direct speech act because the direc-
tive,  go away, is in the form of an imperative sentence, a form conven-
tionally associated with a directive. The other two examples are indirect.
The second sentence is a yes/no question. Typically, such structures elicit
a yes or no response. But in this context, the speaker is asking an individ-
ual to leave but in a less direct manner. The third example is even more
indirect. It is in the form of a declarative sentence, a form most closely
associated with, for instance, a representative. But in the appropriate con-
text, this example too could have the intent of asking someone to leave,
though its high level of indirectness would certainly leave room for ambi-
guity and potential misinterpretation.
In English, indirectness is very common with directives and is typically
associated with yes/no questions, particularly those of the form could you
or would you:
Okay would you open the front uh the screen door for me please 
(SBCSAE)
Would you mind just moving the screen back 
(BNC H9C 3769)
Could you grab me a box of tea 
(SBCSAE)
Could you take your coats off please and come into the blue room 
(BNC F77 3)
In other cases, declarative sentences are used that contain modal verbs of
varying degrees of indirectness. By using the modal verb should in the
example below, the speaker is suggesting fairly strongly that the addressee
take an introductory composition class. 
You should take Intro Comp next semester. 
(MICASE ADV700JU047)
However, if might want to/wanna is used instead, the command becomes
more of a suggestion:
Well you might wanna major in English 
(MICASE ADV700JU047)
Indirectness in English, as will be demonstrated in a later section, is very
closely associated with politeness, since issuing a directive requires vari-
ous strategies for mitigating the act of trying to get someone to do some-
thing, an act that can be considered impolite if not appropriately stated.
Finally, speech acts can be literal or non-literal. Many figures of speech in
English are non-literal in the sense that the speaker does not really mean
what he/she says. It is quite common in English for individuals to postpone
saying or doing something by uttering an expression like I’ll explain why in a
minute (BNC F77 450). However, the person uttering this example does not
literally mean that his/her explanation will be forthcoming in precisely
sixty seconds. Likewise, in Yes I know it’s taken me forever to write you (ICE-GB
W1B-001 106), the speaker uses forever as a means of acknowledging that
The social context of English
53

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his/her letter has been long forthcoming; in and I mean there’s millions of lig-
aments and millions of tendons you know well not millions but I mean (SBCSAE), the
speaker actually explicitly states that his utterance is non-literal: the human
body does not really contain millions of ligaments or tendons.
In other cases, literalness can be more ambiguous. For instance, it’s
quite common to open a conversation with an expression such as So how
are you or  How’s everything. However, the person uttering these examples
does not necessarily want to know how the addressee is feeling. And
embarrassment can result if the addressee does indeed respond by telling
the speaker how badly, for instance, he/she is feeling. The utterance We live
close enough for goodness sake let’s get together one night (BNC KBK 3549) is sim-
ilarly ambiguous. Does the speaker really want to get together with the
addressee, or is this simply a way of closing a conversation?