Топик: Косвенные речевые акты в современном английском языке
runs the risk of being socially condemned.”
Ye. Klyuev
2.1. The cooperative principle
An insight into indirectness is based on the Cooperative Principle developed by Paul Grice [4, 14-76]: language users tacitly agree to cooperate by making their contributions to the conversationto further it in the desired direction. Grice endeavoured to establish a set of general principles explaining how language users convey indirect meanings (so-called conversational implicatures , i.e. implicit meanings which have to be inferred from what is being said explicitly, on the basis of logical deduction). Adherence to this principle entails that speakers simultaneously observe 4 maxims :
1) Maxim of Quality:
- Do not say what you believe to be false.
- Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
2) Maxim of Relevance :
- Be relevant.
3) Maxim of Quantity:
- Make your contribution as informative as required.
- Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
4) Maxim of Manner:
- Avoid obscurity of expression.
- Avoid ambiguity.
- Be brief.
- Be orderly.
This general description of the normal expectations we have in conversations helps to explain a number of regular features in the way people say things. For instance, the common expressions "Well, to make a long story short " or "I won't bore you with the details" indicate an awareness of the maxims of quantity and manner. Because we assume that other speakers are following these maxims, we often draw inferences based on this assumption.
At one level, cooperative behaviour between the interactants means that the conversational maxims are being followed; but at another and more important level, cooperative behaviour still operates even if the conversational maxims are apparently broken. For instance, when the speaker blatantly and openly says something which appears to be irrelevant and ambiguous (flouts the maxims of relevance and manner), it can be assumed that s/he really intends to communicate something which is relevant and unambiguous, but does so implicitly:
“ - I don't suppose you could manage tomorrow evening?
- How do you like to eat?
- Actually I rather enjoy cooking myself.” [J. Fowles]
The second remark, instead of being a direct answer (a statement), is a question formally not connected with the first remark. The maxims of relevance and manner are flouted. The inferable implicature is: “Yes, I can.” Analogously, the implication of the third remark is inferred: “I invite you to have dinner at my place.”
If we were forced to draw only logical inferences, life would be a lot more difficult. Conversations would take longer since we would have to say things which reasonable language-users currently infer.
Searle adds one more conversational maxim [45, 126]: “Speak idiomatically unless you have a reason not to.” He exemplifies this maxim like this: if we say archaically “Knowest thou him who calleth himself Richard Nixon? ” ( not idiomatically), the utterance will not be perceived as a usual question “Do you know Richard Nixon ?”
An important difference between implicatures and what is said directly is that the speaker can always renounce the implicatures s/he hinted at. For example, in “Love and friendship” by A.Lourie the protagonist answers to a lady asking him to keep her secret: “A gentleman never talks of such things”. Later the lady finds out that he did let out her secret, and the protagonist justifies himself saying: “I never said I was a gentleman.”
Implicatures put a question of insincerity and hypocrisy people resort to by means of a language (it is not by chance that George Orwell introduced the word “to double speak ” in his novel “1984”). No doubt, implicatures are always present in human communication. V.Bogdanov notes that numerous implicatures raise the speaker’s and the hearer’s status in each other’s eyes: the speaker sounds intelligent and knowledgeable about the nuances of communication, and the hearer realizes that the speaker relies on his shrewdness. “Communication on the implicature level is a prestigious type of verbal communication. It is widely used by educated people: to understand implicatures, the hearer must have a proper intellectual level.” (Богданов 1990:21).
The ancient rhetorician Demetrius declared the following: “People who understand what you do not literally say are not just your audience. They are your witnesses, and well-wishing witnesses at that. You gave them an occasion to show their wit, and they think they are shrewd and quick-witted. But if you “chew over” your every thought, your hearers will decide your opinion of their intellect is rather low.” (Деметрий 1973:273).
2.2. The theory of politeness
Another line of explanation of indirectness is provided by asociolinguistic theory of politeness developed in the late 1970s. Its founder Geoffrey Leech introduced the politeness principle: people should minimize the expression of impolite beliefs and maximize the expression of polite beliefs [36, 102]. According to the politeness theory, speakers avoid threats to the “face” of the hearers by various forms ofindirectness, and thereby “implicate” their meaningsrather than assert them directly. The politeness theory isbased on the notion that participants are rational beings with two kinds of “facewants” connected with their public self-image [26, 215]:
• positive face - a desire to be appreciated and valued by others; desire for approval;