Speech acts

Students are frequently not given the background of the pragmatic knowledge to understand the language in their learning activities. Students tend to have difficulty to understand the intended meanings carried by speech acts. This problem then lead the researchers to do study which aim is to find out the kinds of speech acts employed in the speech of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and to describe the applications of speech acts from the speech in teaching speaking. By classifying the kinds of speech acts proposed by Searle, the study shows that 115 data of speech acts found including assertives (65.21%), expressives (6.96%), directives (25.21%), commissives (1.74%), and declaratives (0.86%). Some of the speech acts categories found can be applied in teaching speaking by using them as the teaching materials. In this study, congratulating illocutionary forces of expressives are and can be applied for senior high school students in grade X semester 1.

Meaning-making is at the center of all human communicative events. Communication is an exchange of meanings encoded in written or spoken words, non-verbal cues, signs, symbols, and so on. Creating, exchanging, and interpreting meaning is ingrained in human nature since prehistoric times. Language is the most sophisticated medium of communication. It is through language that we set meanings or in other words — refer, define, and signify the things in nature and the ideas in our mind. (Griffiths, 2017)
The term ‘meaning of meaning’ was first coined by anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski in 1923. According to him meaning is related to multiple phenomena. It has various facets and these features are related to the external world (extra-linguistic factors) and the linguistic properties (phonetics, morphology, syntax, and semantics)
The concept of meaning is vast and has many moving parts. Questing for the answer — ‘what is the meaning of meaning’ makes us take a multi-disciplinary approach; from linguistics, philosophy, neurology, to semiotics. In this essay, I will reflect on the meaning of ‘meaning’ from a multidisciplinary approach, discuss the challenges of doing meaning, and the role of context in understanding the meaning of words and sentences.

Lanin-Kettering and Harrow (1985) argue the traditional position that schizophrenia is a thought disorder. Chaika and Lambe (1985) counter that it is a speech disorder at the syntactic-discursive level, and not a thought disorder. On the basis of state-of-the-art research in linguistics, it is suggested that the symptoms of schizophrenia are evidence of neither a thought disorder nor a syntactic-discursive

Several new spoken corpora have seen the light of day in recent years. Few, however, are comparable to a corpus from an earlier period to facilitate diachronic investigations of spoken language. The new London–Lund Corpus 2 (LLC–2) of spoken British English, collected 2014–2019, fills this gap. The size and design of LLC–2 are comparable to those of the world’s first spoken corpus, the London–Lund Corpus (LLC–1) with data mainly from the 1960s–1970s, which means that, together, the two corpora allow us to make principled diachronic comparisons of speech over the past 50 years. This paper has two aims: (i) to critically examine the methodological aspects of the London–Lund Corpora as a diachronic resource, and (ii) to demonstrate the usefulness of the resource based on a case study of the development of constructions expressing advice in spontaneous conversation.
One of the most important challenges of the compilation of LLC–2 was to capture recordings of conversations that are comparable to those in LLC–1 in terms of the situational contexts in which they occur. In order to overcome this challenge, a large number of the conversations in LLC–2 were recorded at the University College London, which was also the main site of recording for LLC–1. This gave us speech situations that revolve around similar subject matters (e.g., common-room conversations, tutorials), and it also ensured that the speakers in LLC–2 share many of the same characteristics with those in LLC–1.
The usefulness of the London–Lund Corpora as a diachronic resource is demonstrated in a case study of the development of constructions expressing advice in spontaneous conversation. Advice is a pervasive feature of human communication, but it is also a notoriously sensitive undertaking where language plays a crucial role. Advice can be expressed in a variety of ways, ranging from more deontic (e.g., imperatives; do it!) to less deontic constructions (e.g., various types of modals; I would do it). Based on a quantitative analysis of a large number of constructions expressing advice in the London–Lund Corpora, this case study aims to find out whether speakers today prefer or avoid constructions that assert power and authority compared to 50 years ago (Leech, 2003). The preliminary results suggest an increased preference for advice to be expressed in more direct ways. A closer inspection of the distribution of the advice constructions shows that there are conversations in both corpora that slightly skew the results; i.e., they occur in advice-heavy contexts that do not exist in the other corpus (e.g., study abroad sessions in LLC–2). However, the overall distribution of the constructions is relatively even, thus suggesting that the London–Lund Corpora are a suitable resource for studying recent change in spoken English.

References
Leech, G. (2003). Modality on the move: The English modal auxiliaries 1961–1992. In R. Facchinetti, M. Krug & F. Palmer (Eds.), Modality in contemporary English (pp. 223–240). Mouton de Gruyter.

This paper attempts to provide certain advice for Georgian teachers of English who aim to develop both the linguistic and communicative competences of their students. Hence, the paper focuses on the challenges related to the development of linguistic competence, embracing vocabulary and grammar issues. In this regard, typical errors of Georgian learners of English are analysed. Hints are provided as to what issues should be addressed with the aim of avoiding native language interference. The theoretical basis for the given research embraces scientific works by R. Lado, C. Fries, C. Prator, G. Leech and other scholars. The use of the contrastive method has enabled the author to identify the basic semantic and structural differences between the native and the target languages (in this case, Georgian and English). The empirical material has been collected and analysed during twenty years of teaching experience at the English Department of Tbilisi State University. It is widely known th...

B lasphemy allegations are a sensitive issue in today's Pakistan. After describing the socioreligious history of such accusations, I will show how the increasing digitalization of Pakistan's public spheres has exacerbated a situation in which an accusation of blasphemy has little or no possible response. The moment such accusations enter a public arena (online or offline), their verdictive force often leads to life-threatening consequences for the accused person. To analyze such accusations, I will provide some background on Pakistan's blasphemy laws. To explore accusations of blasphemy theoretically, I will locate them within the conceptual framework of extreme speech and then turn toward speech act theory to understand how such accusations unfold their force-and often with life-threatening effects. Setting the Scene: Pakistan's Blasphemy Laws The blasphemy laws continue to divide Pakistan's society. Many religious scholars argue that the laws represent the Quran and the Sunna and, therefore, cannot be abolished or amended without committing blasphemy in the act (Sayālvī 2016; Turābi, n.d.; Qadrī 2012). More liberal interpretations maintain that the ambivalent nature of the laws make them prone to misuse and to being used as an instrument of personal animosity (Siddique and Hayat 2008; Abbas 2013). Studies show that blasphemy cases have steadily increased since the 1980s (Siddique and Hayat 2008, 322-327). Quoting the Center for Social Justice, a 2016 report by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan states that at least 1,472 people were accused of blasphemy between 1987 and 2016. The biggest portion of this number is made up of Muslims (730) and Ahmadis (501), followed by Christians (205) and Hindus (26).1 Furthermore, the report points out that in 2015 alone, courts found fifteen of twenty-five acquitted cases to have been fabricated based on personal vendettas. The remaining cases were cleared on the basis of a lack of evidence or the accused person being declared insane (Human Rights Commission of Pakistan 2016, 96). Liberal Pakistanis take such reports as supporting their stance that the blasphemy laws represent a relic of the past and thus should be amended or abolished. A discussion of the blasphemy decrees and their advantages and disadvantages

This paper proposes the interpretation of video games as discourse (in the explanation of discourse commonly used in linguistics and studies of natural language, not as understood in semiotics or cultural studies) to explore further the dynamics through which video games can propose structured meaning and articulate an argument. Such topic is especially relevant for video games with an agenda, whose goal is not just to produce an engaging game experience, but also to convey a message and have some control over the desired outcome (persuasion, information, expression, aesthetic experience). The notion of discourse can help classify serious games according to their specific aim, and can help understand how meaning production in procedural rhetoric takes place.

We propose a framework for explaining difference in difficulty of various pragmatic phenomena. In particular, we investigate the ability to comprehend direct, indirect, deceitful, and ironic communicative acts. Our main prediction is that there is a gradation of difficulty in their comprehension. Such a prediction is grounded on the assumptions that the various phenomena involve both mental representations of different complexity and different inferential load. A further prediction is that a communicative act has in principle the same difficulty of comprehension, whether performed through speech acts or communicative gestures. The underlying assumption is that the construction of the meaning of a communicative act is independent of the input modalities. We validate our predictions through an experiment on 160 children, with 40 in each of the following age groups: 2.6 to 3 years, 3.6 to 4 years, 4.6 to 5.6 years, and 6 to 7 years. The results confirm the predicted gradation of difficulty both for the different sorts of speech acts and for the communicative gestures. Also, the results, when broken down by each phenomenon, show that participants performed equally well in speech acts and in communicative gestures. We conclude with a discussion of the possible implications of our results for linguistic and gestural communication research.

Selon Michel Deguy, l’aphasie chez les personnages de la comédie marivaudienne correspond à un «moment de crise,  d’étourdissement ou les choses se défont “ (La machine matrimoniale, 245). Deguy insiste que ce moment capital est le fait exclusif du théâtre marivaudien, le seul lieu possible de l’épreuve, moment suprême d’authenticité. Prenant l’exemple de La vie  de Marianne, ce travail revient sur les modalités de l’épreuve  dans le texte narrative et montre comment ce texte est celui de la parole perdue et reconquise, texte où le jeu d’aphasie et de prolixité révèle enfin la parole authentique de l’être libre.

Complaint speech act is part of expressive speech acts. However, these potentially threaten the face of the hearer. The speaker will use boosters expression in complaining strategy to express their emotion. Boosters expression as a linguistic marker is not only appeared in real life communication but also literary works. The issues are cultural differences and each language may have an effect of using it. Thus it raises a question of how booster expression used in complaining speech acts as a strategy to communicate between speaker and hearer in the novel. This paper aims to explore boosters expression in complaining speech acts used by the characters in the novel The A.B.C Murders written by Agatha Christie (1936). Data were the utterance made by the characters in the novel The A.B.C Murder. Data were taken by document analysis in classifying boosters expression in complaining speech acts. The results show that 1) there are fifteen characters used boosters expression in employing complaint speech acts, 2) Boosters' expression form used by the characters in employing complaint speech acts are adjunct, comment adjunct, intrinsic booster, and fixed expression.

Abstract. The paper provides a taxonomy of group speech acts whose main division is that between collective speech acts (singing Happy Birthday, agreeing to meet) and group proxy speech acts in which a group, such as a corporation, employs a proxy, such as a spokesperson, to convey its official position. The paper provides an analysis of group proxy speech acts using tools developed more generally for analyzing institutional agency, particularly the concepts of shared intention, proxy agent, status role, status function, convention and constitutive rule.

Language acquisition involves more than learning the abstract structures of linguistic competence. The child also has to learn how to use linguistic structures appropriately. In this paper, the speech act is proposed as the unit of analysis for studying the pragmaties of early chtld language. The results of a study of children's uses of single-word utterances are reported, and the data are analyzed in terms of "'primitive speech acts."

This paper builds upon Mary Kate McGowan’s analysis of the mechanisms of harm in conversations (McGowan 2004; 2009). McGowan describes how a speaker’s intervention might constitute harm by enacting what is permissible to do in the conversation thereafter. We expand McGowan’s analysis in two ways: first, we use her account to argue for the potential of interlocutor’s silence, not only speaker’s intervention, to enact harm;  second, we introduce a new party into the picture: observers of the conversation. We propose that not only interlocutors who contribute to harm through action, but also those who do so by omission are morally responsible for that harm. We focus on one aspect of conversations: introduction of presuppositions. We argue that when the presupposition is morally problematic (e.g., sexist, ableist, racist, homo-, trans- or xeno-phobic),  interlocutors have a moral responsibility to block it. This responsibility comes in degrees, and, importantly, depends on whether the interlocutor’s speech capacity is diminished by the harmful presupposition (i.e. whether the interlocutor is being silenced). Unlike common approaches to harm in speech, which take the unit of analysis to be the speaker-interlocutor relationship, we take as unit of analysis the relationship between the pair speaker-interlocutor and an observer. Problematic presuppositions introduced in conversations can harm observers overhearing these conversations (as well society as a whole), and prevention of such harm motivates our proposal for attribution of responsibility to interlocutors.
We proceed as follows. First we review the dynamics of presupposition introduction. Second, we briefly introduce McGowan’s analysis of conversational pragmatics, subscribing to her account that some conversational moves constitute a special type of harm related to oppression, and outline a taxonomy of the pathways through which harm can be inflicted upon observers and the society as a whole. In the third part we articulate our argument that in the cases of presupposition introduction considered here, interlocutors are not merely allowing harm, but actively doing it, and put forward our proposal for responsibility attribution. Finally, we address potential objections, and situate our proposal within a broader project to fight oppressive speech.

As part of a larger project on media identities and roles, this paper presents a methodological framework for the investigation of editorials' genre(s), ''genre'' being primarily defined in terms of the purpose of the text type. The methodological framework follows the first steps of Askehave and Swales' ''text-driven procedure for genre analysis'' (2001) and combines different types of analysis: complex speech acts representing the general line of argumentation, delimitation of the public spheres through the definition of the directives' addressees, positive and negative ATTITUDE values, and types of professional roles in which editorialists present themselves. The application of this framework to a corpus of Le Monde's editorials uncovered how the general structure of the editorials serves their stated purpose and more. Indeed, it revealed the concept Le Monde has of its role in the national, European, and international public spheres. It showed very clearly that Le Monde as a media is not only a place where some public sphere's interactions can take place, but also that it is a full participant in various public spheres with its own values and positions. The application of the proposed framework unveiled fragments of Le Monde's identity, but for a fuller description of its role(s), an enrichment of the framework is needed. #

In this book chapter, Dojčinović focuses on the specific research and analytical project within the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the ICTY in the trial of Ratko Mladić, the Commander of the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS). (For more, see: https://humanrights.uconn.edu/icty-digital-archive/#predrag) The analytical model designed and utilized throughout this trial is based on the specific speech acts and utterances identified in all categories of evidence indicating genocidal and persecutory intent of the Accused shared with other members of the joint criminal enterprise (JCE) at all levels. The chapter places strong emphasis on the semantic content of the utterances, the type of intent identified in the utterances, the effect they may have had on the principle perpetrators, as well as their relevance, probative value and modes of admissibility as a special category of evidence. Ultimately, the chapter demonstrates that international criminal proceedings have seen the emergence of a new type of key evidence: a cognitive, linguistic, contextually-determined manifestation of mens rea within a shared historical, political and cultural referential framework. Dojčinović argues that this emerging body of evidence requires a new set of rules and methods in international criminal proceedings, and a more comprehensive intellectual, scientifically-minded approach to the identification and interpretation of mental elements in mass atrocity crimes.

The present research is directed to analyze the evaluation of gender-conditioned language change in its present state. In the article theoretical and experimental investigations of Russian and foreign scientists, studying the influence of the gender factor on speech behavior are observed.

Estudio sobre la teoría de los actos de habla de Searle y Habermas. Tras analizar los principales puntos de conflicto entre ambos autores, se defiende la posición de Habermas a partir de los problemas de la taxonomía de los actos de habla propuesta por Searle.

I try to suggest, in my paper, that cognitive propositional attitude verbs, when uttered in first person, can be regarded as expressing the illocutionary force of an explicit speech act. For this, I first show how a sentence of the form 'I believe that p' can pass Austin's 'hereby test'. Secondly, I emphasize two different uses of the first person propositional attitude utterances and point to the relation between these uses and two kinds of speech acts - expressives (or behavitives) and assertives, respectively. In the second part of the paper I try to indicate how my approach could be used to solve some of the problems traditionally related to propositional attitude statements, including Frege's puzzle of substitutivity. For this, I suggest that sentences of the form 'X believes that p' should be regarded as reporting on speech acts which X has (or could have) done. In the end of my paper I hint at a few ways in which my pragmatic approach of propositional attitudes could be further developed.

Distributed work is an increasingly common phenomenon in a number of technical and professional settings, and the complexity of this work requires high degrees of knowledge sharing and integration that move beyond assembly-line approaches to collaboration. Since participants in distributed-work settings rely almost exclusively on written and spoken language to mediate their collaborative relationships, professional communication faculty need educational approaches that empower students with language practices designed specifically to support effective teaming in these complex environments. To address this need, we employ discourse analysis and Speech Act Theory to identify these language practices in a case study of two cohorts of distributed, interdisciplinary, and cross-cultural student teams. The findings show correlations between language practices and successful collaboration. These correlations have significant implications for teaching and practice.

My data comes from participant observation among and interviews with several dozen white Kenyans, aging former settlers and the descendants of former settlers, mostly of British descent, across several years in the 2000s. Some of them are third-or fourth-generation Kenyan, and those in the younger generation work in an array of industries, including tourism (with safari

Gossip is often serious business, not idle chitchat. Gossip allows those oppressed to privately name their oppressors as a warning to others. Of course, gossip can be in error. The speaker may be lying or merely have lacked sufficient evidence. Bias can also make those who hear the gossip more or less likely to believe the gossip. By examining the social functions of gossip and considering the differences in power dynamics in which gossip can occur, we contend that gossip may be not only permissible but virtuous, both as the only reasonable recourse available and as a means of resistance against oppression.

Estudios de Lingüística Aplicada, año 32, número 60, diciembre de 2014, pp. 187-191 Elena Nuzzo y Phyllisienne Gauci. Insegnare la pragmatica in italiano L2. Recenti ricerche nella prospettiva della teoria degli atti linguistici. Roma: Carocci, 2012. 144 págs. (Biblioteca di testi e studi, 749) Por Pilar Robles Garrote università di romA lA sApienzA, dipArtimento di studi europei, AmericAni e interculturAli

This study investigated the similarities and differences between Egyptian Arabic and US English communication style by focusing on the speech act of making refusals. A modified version of the 12-item discourse completion test (DCT) developed by Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Weltz (in: R. Scarcella, E. Anderson, S. Krashen (Eds.), Developing Communicative Competence in a Second Language, Newbury House, New York, 1990, p. 55) was used to elicit data. The DCT consisted of three requests, three invitations, three offers, and three suggestions. Each situation type included one refusal to a person of higher status, one to a person of equal status, and one to a person of lower status. To more closely simulate real-life communication and because Arabic is a diglossic language, an interviewer read the situation aloud and the participants responded verbally on audiotape, Egyptians in Arabic and Americans in English. Audiotapes were transcribed, the Egyptian tapes into Arabic and the American tapes into English. Thirty US interviews resulted in 358 refusals and 25 Egyptian interviews resulted in 300 refusals. The refusals were divided into strategies. Using a modified version of the coding categories developed by Beebe et al., two trained coders categorized the strategies. Intercoder reliability was 89% for the US data and 85% for the Arabic data. Data were analyzed according to frequency types of strategies, the direct/indirect dimension of communication style, gender, and status. Results suggest that both groups use similar strategies with similar frequency in making refusals. They differ, however, in the frequency of indirect strategies with Egyptian males using less indirection than Americans. r

In her chapter, 'Varieties of Pejoratives', Robin Jeshion distinguishes pejorative lexical items, pejorative uses of words, and pejorative speech acts. She surveys and taxonomizes pejorative nicknames, thick terms, and slurs, including canonical, descriptive, and gendered slurs, as well as those terms explicitly encoding group stereotypes.

Behan's work, and particularly 'The Quare Fellow', shares a twofold message: art is an agent of truth and the truth about society and the individual is that they have lost all moral being. Criticism is directed at both the individual and society for appropriating mechanisms of power and constructs of truth that make life easier but shallower. This claim is substantiated by analysing an excerpt from the play primarily in terms of the characters' speech acts.

语言是交流沟通的工具，是维系人与人之间关系的桥梁和纽带。在世界经济快速发展的今天，语言交流变得越来越重要，它已经成为经济交流发展的助推剂和润滑剂。为了保证语言交流的顺利进行，使用某些方法和手段对语言进行调节就成了必然。这种调节手段在语言范畴中可以称之为礼貌用语。礼貌，作为人类社会一种普遍存在的现象，其主要功能就是运用礼貌的语言行为来避免交际中不必要的误会与冲突，达到交际的目的。作为一个异国他乡的学者来到中国，最重要和必须首先面对的问题就是语言沟通。而要学会语言沟通的前提就是要搞清楚异乡它国的礼貌用语以及这些用语与本国的异同。不同的国家和语言群体用不同的方式表达礼貌。

J.L. Austin’s insight that language should be treated as a domain of human action, rather than merely as a tool for the transmission of information, has been enormously influential. His analysis of speech acts continues to be widely utilised in a vast number of fields, from the philosophy of language to social and political philosophy, the philosophy of law, gender and literary studies, as well as a variety of social sciences. Yet scholars have so far focused on performative utterances and illocutionary acts, while the perlocutionary dimension of speech has generally been dismissed as unessential. This special issue, drawing inspiration from Stanley Cavell’s seminal work on passionate utterance, aims to shed new light on the philosophical, moral and political relevance of the perlocutionary.

Be´roul's Roman de Tristan presents readers with the various processes of ''seeming,'' a boundary situated between the materialized artifact of the factual, and the artificial paradigm of fiction, stressing, above all, the ''made-ness'' of truth. One of the most profound moments of rupture in Be´roul's poem comes during Yseut's escondit (her legal response to charges of adultery) to King Mark at Mal Pas, where truth is reified against notions of criminality and disease, and is constructed, like written histories, in the spaces between memory and amnesia. Yseut's escondit is exculpatory in its focus on the spectacle of the deformed body of the leper-Tristan; the leper-Tristan becomes emblematic of the ways in which narratives are deployed as truth when they only have the appearance of truth, shifting the truth-claim toward a process of reading and interpretation rather than speech act.

Given the scarce literature on the Arabic academic book reviews (BRs) and the relatively under-searched praise and criticism speech acts, this study investigates praise and criticism as reflected in the evaluative voice of Arabic academic BRs. It aims to identify the evaluated aspects, the conventional lexical resources, praise and criticism strategies, and how politeness is achieved. To this end, the non-reactive fully naturalistic approach was used to collect data from 30 academic BRs. The corpus was analyzed qualitatively, and drawn chiefly on the speech act theory, Brown and Levinson's notion of politeness, and Leech's maxims of politeness. Results showed that praise and criticism were for the author and the authored. Lexical resources were affective, judgmental and appreciative, and presenting formulaic evaluation. Praise was for general and specific aspects of content, style, usefulness and relevance to the field, publishing standards, readership, and author's repu...

Freedom of expression is a vital democratic right, but if it is to be protected and preserved, it is equally vital that the limits of free expression are properly understood. Such limits are common enough, as for instance in the age restrictions imposed on public attendance at the screenings of certain films. These restrictions may be generally accepted, while state restrictions on public demonstrations
or picketing often prove highly contentious. If there are limits to freedom of expression, the case for them needs to be made thoroughly, for otherwise charges. That, in brief, is the aim of this book.
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION 22(2) 256

Poster presented at the International Association for the Study of Dreams, 34th Annual International Conference, June 16-20, 2017. The poster outlines a study on avatar animation of dreamer motor behavior from electromyography collected at the University of Texas, Austin, Cognitive Neuroscience Lab in 2016.

Research on compliments has demonstrated that responding to compliments is far from easy since it entails a clash between the politeness maxims of agreement and modesty. The question that arises is what happens when communication does not take place face-to-face but is computer-mediated and the contextual conditions are markedly different. The aim of this paper is to answer this question by analyzing computer-mediated responses to compliments in Spanish as opposed to their face-to-face counterparts. It is hypothesized that the different contextual conditions will have a core role to play in how interlocutors respond to compliments in computer-mediated communication, more concretely in a social network like Facebook, where compliments are pervasive. Data have been analyzed from a netnographic and systemic functional approach and supplemented by semi-structured interviews with eight of the participants. Results show that aspects such as disembodiment, asynchronicity or relative lack of privacy have a crucial say in how online users respond to compliments; leading both to a simplification of some face-to-face strategies and the amplification of others and resulting in a whole different system of responses.

Peu d'études portent sur l'émergence des habiletés phonologiques chez les jeunes enfants. Après avoir rappelé les deux hypothèses les plus fréquentes à propos de l'émergence des habiletés phonologiques, une hypothèse socioconstructiviste, selon laquelle les adultes pourraient orienter l'attention de l'enfant sur certaines unités constituant les mots, est examinée. Neuf dyades assistante maternelle-enfant (2;3 ans environ) ont été filmées dans le but de répertorier les interventions portant sur les unités des mots dans différents contextes (lecture et jeu imagier). L'analyse des corpus indique que la fréquence de ces interventions ainsi que leur nature varient selon l'adulte et les contextes, et qu'elles portent le plus souvent sur la syllabe.

Publicado em:
in: SILVA, Roberval Texeira e/ YAN, Qiarong/ ESPADINHA, Maria Antónia/ LEAL, Ana Varani (eds.): Anais do III SIMELP: A formação de Novas Gerações de Falantes de Português no Mundo, simpósio 14: Gramática comunicativa da língua portuguesa [CD-ROM]. Macau: Universidade de Macau, 37-50.

Resumo: Numa gramática comunicativa a descrição dos atos de fala é de uma importância central. Na gramaticografia do português, porém, – com poucas exceções (p.ex. gramática alfabética Le Portugais de A à Z (Carreira / Boudoy, 1993 e a brevíssima adaptação ao português da tipologia dos atos de fala de Searle na Gramática da Língua Portuguesa de Maria Helena Mira Mateus et al., 6a ed. 2003, pp. 73-80) – os atos de fala costumam não ser tratados. Considerando o ato de fala como unidade mínima do texto, esta comunicação objetiva indagar o lugar dos atos de fala na concepção de uma gramática comunicativa do português (cf. também Schmidt-Radefeldt, 2003). Proporemos, além disso, uma tipologia mais diferenciada e adequada à descrição de uma língua do que as tipologias oriundas da filosofia da linguagem. Apresentaremos com base nos resultados dos trabalhos contrastivos de Johnen/ Weise/ Schmidt-Radefeldt (2003), Johnen (2004) e Schmidt-Radefeldt (2006: 8-179) exemplos que mostram que (especialmente para uma gramática comunicativa concebida para a área de Português Língua Estrangeira) não basta listar catálogos de realizações de atos de fala como é feito no Nível limiar (Casteleiro / Meira / Pascoal, 1988) e no Certificado de Português (Morais et al., 1999), mas que faz-se necessário também descrever padrões de sequências de atos de fala, bem como as funções convencionalizadas de cada ato de fala em português uma vez que as línguas divergem também nisso o que dificulta a aquisição de uma competência comunicativa alta na língua alvo.