Tasks in Cultural Linguistics Task 1

4. Sincerity conditions require the speaker to be sincere.

Someone warning must genuinely believe that the future event will not have a beneficial effect; someone who promises to do something must genuinely intend to do it; someone congratulating someone must feel pleasure at that person’s good luck or success; someone making a statement must believe it to be true, and so on.

5. Essential condition defines the essential nature of the speech act. The essential condition combines with a specification of what must be in the utterance content, the context, and the speaker’s intentions, in order a specific speech act to be appropriately (felicitously) performed.

For instance, if someone makes a promise, they must intend their utterance to count as putting them under an obligation to carry out what is promised.

Let’s consider all these conditions for requesting.


Activity 5. SS will do these exercises and find synonyms in their target language.

General condition: the speakers must understand the language.

Content condition: the requested act is a future act of the hearer.
Preparatory precondition: 1) the speaker believes that the hearer can perform the requested act; 2) it is not obvious that the hearer would perform the requested act without being asked.
Sincerity condition: the speaker genuinely wants the hearer to perform the requested act
Essential condition: the utterance as an attempt by the speaker to have the hearer do an act.


5. Direct and Indirect Speech Acts.
Direct speech act. In a direct speech act there is a direct relationship between a structure and a function of a speech act.

Examples: Direct speech acts