Prática de Shadowing: SEM141 - Speech Acts - An Overview - Aprenda a falar inglês com vídeo

Any semantic theory must give an account of word and sentence meaning, explaining their nature and the relations between them.

Yet, such a semantic theory has little to say about any structures other than standard declarative sentences

or about semantic aspects involved in conversation.

Look at the following anomalies.

there please.

Well, here the adverb there is illegal in this context.

Rather it should be come here please, that is, from an external position to the position of the interlocutor.

Or take this one.

I hereby run to the station.

Well, here the adverbial hereby requires a so-called performative verb,

that is, a verb that performs a certain action such as promise, declare but run is not such a verb.

What do you think about this one here?

I promise I'll come to your party.

That's not really me, is it?

Anyway, the term promise normally involves that the addressee wants the promise to be realized.

Is that the case here?

Do you really want me to turn up at your party?

I don't know.

Well, here is my final example.

The table is under the ashtray.

Here we have a problem of perspective.

Small objects are mentioned first if they are related to larger objects.

Thus, the table is under the ashtray is only acceptable in this situation.

If the ashtray is at least as big as the table, maybe in a fairy tale world.

The goal of pragmatics is to define these and other non-truth functional aspects of meaning, hence a more general approach to meaning.

The modern use of the term pragmatics goes back to the American philosopher Charles William Morris,

who defined pragmatics as the study of the relation of signs to interpreters.

Thus, we need to make a distinction between the usual meaning of a word

or a sentence and the meaning it has in specific circumstances.

That is, we need to differentiate between meaning and use.

Here is an example.

Imagine someone says, it's fairly hot in here, which is the case because there are all the lamps around me.

Now, what does this utterance mean?

Well, it probably means that you could say some unknown person notices

that the temperature at the location of the speaker is currently above average.

That's the plain meaning.

And what about the use?

Well, the use could be something like this.

Someone is intended to open the window.

Now this dichotomy between semantics, the meaning on the one hand, and pragmatics, the use, is controversial among linguists.

Perhaps the most useful distinction is made in terms of sentence meaning versus utterance meaning,

where the latter includes all secondary aspects of meaning.

Two fields constitute the core of linguistic pragmatics,

the analysis of utterances and the analysis of conversation.

We will focus on utterances in this e-lecture.

In a now famous little book entitled How to do things with words,

with words, which was posthumously published in 1962,

John Langshaw Austin pointed out that a large number of utterances are part of an action, that is, they are performative.

For example, I hereby name this ship HMS Titanic.

This utterance is clearly in action.

As soon As it is uttered by the person who is entitled to utter it, the ship will have been named accordingly.

Thus uttering this sentence is an action of baptism.

Oh, here's another one.

There's a dog in the field.

Well, this utterance is likely to be understood as a warning.

Well, and how do you understand this?

Don't do that.

Well, maybe as an order or a request.

The peculiar thing about these sentences is that they are not used to state things.

That is, they are not just conceptive, but rather actively do things.

Furthermore, such utterances cannot be assessed as true or false, but only as appropriate or inappropriate.

How this is done has been manifested in speech act theory.

Now besides the insight that utterances are used to perform actions,

speech act theory assumes that speakers are simultaneously involved in three different speech acts when uttering a sentence.

Let us analyze these acts using our utterance don't do that.

The first of these acts is the so-called locutionary act.

This is the act of uttering a sentence with its meaning comprising phonetic and syntactic aspects corresponding to any meaningful utterance.

What does don't do that mean?

Well, it first of all addresses an unknown person,

you, the covered subject, the addressee of the speech act.

Then don't, well that's the opposite of allowance, this is the symbol for negation in logic.

So someone is not allowed to perform something.

So you're not allowed to perform something.

What is it that you're not allowed to perform?

Well, it's the overt object, probably this object here, this socket,

the object of the sentence meaning an unknown entity.

Well, as I said in this case, the socket.

So, the locutionary act is related to the basic linguistic analysis of an utterance.

Central to speech act theory is the illocutionary act.

It describes what the speaker does by uttering a sentence, that is, in performing the locutionary act.

For example, commanding, promising, threatening, warning, and so on and so forth.

The intended effect of an utterance used to perform a certain elocutionary act is known as elocutionary force.

Most elocutionary acts are implicit.

That is, they lack a particular performative verb signaling the act.

So, don't do that is an implicit order.

However, we can easily make an implicit act explicit.

An elocutionary act is explicit if the utterance contains a performative verb, that is a verb that denotes the act.

The optional adverb hereby can be inserted into such a performative utterance to stress its performative nature.

Well, here is the explicit elocutionary act.

Now, such an explicit elocutionary act or performative utterance follows a specific linguistic formula.

It always has a subject which must occur in the first person singular.

Then we have the optional adverbial hereby and a verb.

And the verb, quite interestingly, must be used in the simple present tense.

Now compare the following.

If I said, I am hereby ordering, this would not be in order at all.

It would be an explanation of what I'm doing at a particular time.

So it must occur in the simple present tense.

And then of course we have an optional object which,

if we use it, must occur in the second person, singular or plural.

100

There are some cases where the object could occur in the third person, for example, in the act of baptizing,

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I hereby name this ship, for example.

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Even if you use performative utterances, the interpretation might not necessarily be clear.

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My father, and I remember this very well, often said to me, My dear son, I promise if you do that again, I will.

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It was a warning, wasn't it?

105

Shall I tell you the whole story?

106

Well, I'd better not.

107

Let's finally look at the perlocutionary act.

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The perlocutionary act denotes the effects on the listener by means of performing the illocutionary act.

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The effects are special to the situation and may or may not be what the speaker intended.

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Don't do that.

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Well, what is the intention?

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Well, either the speaker succeeds in preventing the listener from touching the dangerous object or not.

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All speech acts have to follow certain felicity conditions.

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I love that word.

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An alternative would be appropriacy conditions.

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Now, these conditions have to be satisfied for the performance of a speech act to be recognized as intended.

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There are cases where the performance of a speech act will be infelicitous or, if you prefer, inappropriate, if the speaker is not a specific person in a specific context.

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Here are some examples of declarations.

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I declare open the Olympic Games.

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Well, can I do it?

121

Certainly not.

122

I'm not the person who is entitled to do so.

123

So I have just violated one felicity condition.

124

I sentence you to six months in prison.

125

Again, I can't do that.

126

Or could you say something like, I hereby finish my oral exam?

127

You'd love to, but you can't because it's your examiner who is entitled to do that.

128

So you see declarations just like the other illocutionary acts such as promising or threatening, they have to follow certain conditions.

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Austin's approach identifies several such conditions ranging from preparatory conditions,

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that is the necessary condition for a speech act such as the correct person who performs it,

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to propositional conditions where an act needs to say certain things about the world which are in line with the speech act.

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These conditions will be discussed in a separate e-lecture about speech acts.

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Now many efforts have aimed at categorizations of the types of speech acts possible in language.

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In fact, some acts are so universal and fundamental that they are grammaticalized into the same basic sentence types in most languages.

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So, for example, into statements, into questions, to orders.

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However, this typology only associates sentence types with their most literal, unmarked elocutionary force.

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Generally, the set of speech acts recognized by the speakers of a language is much more diverse and more finely grained.

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A more sophisticated scheme was proposed by John Searle who was born in 1932.

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He suggested that all speech acts fall into five main categories.

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Representatives, things such as boasting or bragging, I'm an excellent footballer, would be such an act.

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Directives or commands.

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Commissives such as promising, well we've heard about some examples here here, expressive emotional responses, something like,

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oh please forgive me, and of course, declarations.

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With this e-lecture, you should now have some basic understanding of the fact that you can actually do something with language,

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and that you can achieve particular effects.

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So pragmatics is more than mere analysis of language.

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It is the examination of language and its effects you can achieve with it.

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This e-lecture concentrated on the effects you can achieve with utterances.

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A follow-up e-lecture will add the central principles of conversation. So see you then.

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Vocabulário e dicas de fala para esta lição

Esta aula de conversação de nível C1 usa o vídeo “SEM141 - Speech Acts - An Overview”. As palavras que mais se repetem: utterance, speech, sentence, meaning, condition. Este vídeo tem 149 frases e 1683 palavras para praticar shadowing. A fala dura 14:18. O falante mantém um ritmo estável de cerca de 118 palavras por minuto, confortável para o shadowing. Apenas 81% das palavras estão entre as 3.000 mais comuns do inglês, por isso o vocabulário é exigente.

Vocabulário principal deste vídeo

As 15 palavras mais avançadas do vídeo, com pronúncia e significado:

Palavra	Pronúncia	Significado
utterance substantivo	/ˈʌtəɹəns/	expressão, manifestação
hereby advérbio	/hɪɹˈbaɪ/	com isso, assim
verb substantivo	/vɝb/	verbo
pragmatic adjetivo	/pɹæɡˈmætɪk/	pragmático, prático
utter verbo	/ˈʌtəɹ/	articular, balbuciar
explicit adjetivo	/ɪkˈsplɪs.ɪt/	explícito
intend verbo	/ɪnˈtɛnd/	pretender, tencionar
ashtray substantivo	/ˈæʃ.tɹeɪ/	cinzeiro
illocutionary adjetivo		ilocucionário, ilocucional
implicit adjetivo	/ɪmˈplɪsɪt/	implícito
semantic adjetivo	/sɪˈmæntɪk/	semântico
linguistic adjetivo	/lɪŋˈɡwɪstɪk/	linguístico
optional adjetivo	/ˈɑp.ʃə.nəl/	opcional, facultativo
addressee substantivo	/ˌædɹɛˈsiː/	destinatário, destinatária
adverbial adjetivo	/ædˈvɝbi.əl/	adverbial

Phrasal verbs que você vai ouvir

Palavra	Significado
point out verbo	apontar

Frases que vale a pena repetir

Frases curtas e completas do vídeo que você pode usar na conversa do dia a dia:

What do you think about this one here?
I promise I'll come to your party.
That's not really me, is it?
What is it that you're not allowed to perform?
Shall I tell you the whole story?

Gramática neste vídeo

As estruturas que o falante mais usa, com as palavras exatas do vídeo:

Estrutura	No vídeo
Frases condicionais if + oração, will/would + verbo — uma condição e seu resultado	if you do that again, I will
“Used to” used to + verbo — um hábito ou estado do passado que não é mais verdade	used to state · used to perform
Voz passiva be + particípio passado — o foco está no que acontece, não em quem faz	be realized · are mentioned · is intended
Orações relativas who / which + oração — informação extra sobre uma pessoa ou coisa	here, which is · words, which was · person who is

Pronúncia para ficar de olho

O falante usa 19 contrações e formas reduzidas, como don't, I'm, can't. Diga-as na forma curta, do jeito que você ouve.

Os sons de “sh” e “zh”: ashtray /ˈæʃ.tɹeɪ/, optional /ˈɑp.ʃə.nəl/, categorization /ˌkæt.ə.ɡə.ɹaɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, negation /nɪˈɡeɪʃn̩/, differentiate /dɪf.əˈɹɛn.ʃi.eɪt/
Palavras longas — acerte a sílaba tônica: adverbial /ædˈvɝbi.əl/, felicity /fəˈlɪsəti/, inappropriate /ˌɪnəˈpɹoʊpɹi.ət/, anomaly /əˈnɑ.mə.li/, categorization /ˌkæt.ə.ɡə.ɹaɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/

Como praticar com este vídeo

Ouça o vídeo inteiro uma vez sem falar e anote as palavras que você não conhece.
Faça shadowing frase por frase na velocidade normal, repetindo cada uma até o seu ritmo ficar igual ao do falante.
Grave a sua voz e compare com o original, prestando atenção a palavras como utterance, hereby, verb.

O que é a Técnica de Shadowing?

Shadowing é uma técnica de aprendizado de idiomas com base científica, originalmente desenvolvida para o treinamento de intérpretes profissionais. O método é simples, mas poderoso: você ouve áudio em inglês nativo e repete imediatamente em voz alta — como uma sombra seguindo o falante com 1-2 segundos de atraso. Pesquisas mostram melhora significativa na precisão da pronúncia, entonação, ritmo, sons conectados, compreensão auditiva e fluência na fala.

Técnica de shadowing: leia o guia completo passo a passo →

Prática de Shadowing: SEM141 - Speech Acts - An Overview - Aprenda a falar inglês com vídeo

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