Wong, Jock (2016). A critical look at the description of speech acts. In Alessandro Capone, & Jacob L. Mey (Eds.), Interdisciplinary studies in pragmatics, culture and society (pp. 825-855). Cham: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-12616-6_32
For John Searle, philosophy of language was the attempt to come up with philosophically illuminating descriptions of some of the general features of language. It was to concern itself only incidentally with particular elements in a particular language. The problem is that understanding the general features of language requires a metalanguage that contains general features of language; a metalanguage that contains particular elements associated with particular languages (or, in other words, an ethnocentric metalanguage) does not fit the bill. Yet, this is precisely how the study of speech acts, which originally came under the ambit of language philosophy, is often conducted – with an ethnocentric metalanguage. It seems paradoxical that while scholars who study speech acts directly or indirectly engage in the pursuit of language universals, the metalanguage they use often effectively prevents them from reaching that goal.
This chapter argues that, if we want to fruitfully study speech acts in world languages, we should employ an analytical tool that is minimally ethnocentric, such as the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). It helps us recognize speech acts from any language, even if there is no English word for them, and it allows us to understand them from the inside.
This chapter also argues that we should refrain from “comparing” speech acts by asking how people in various cultures perform the same speech act because this would necessitate the use of a language-specific speech act verb (e.g., request, apologize). A more fruitful way might be to formulate a generic situation using NSM and ask how people in various cultures respond in/to that situation.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
