LINGUIST List 25.2425
Wed
Jun 04 2014
Review: Ling. Theories;
Pragmatics; Syntax: Del Campo Martínez
(2013)
Editor for this issue:
Mateja Schuck <mschucklinguistlist.org>
Date: 04-Mar-2014
From: Kim Jensen
<kim
cgs.aau.dk>
Subject: Illocutionary
constructions in English: Cognitive motivation
and linguistic realization
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Book announced at
http://linguistlist.org/issues/24/24-4809.html
AUTHOR: Nuria Del Campo Martínez
TITLE: Illocutionary constructions in English:
Cognitive motivation and linguistic
realization
SUBTITLE: A study of the syntactic realizations
of the directive, commissive and expressive
speech acts in English
SERIES TITLE: Europäische Hochschulschriften /
European University Studies / Publications
Universitaires Européennes - Band 497
PUBLISHER: Peter Lang AG
YEAR: 2013
REVIEWER: Kim Ebensgaard Jensen, Aalborg
University
SUMMARY
This book addresses syntactic realizations of
directive, commissive and
expressive speech act functions in English. It
grows from a dissertation that
adopts and seeks to further develop the Lexical
Constructional Model
(henceforth LCM).
It contains fifteen chapters, including an
introduction and a conclusion.
Chapter 2 accounts for the theoretical
framework del Campo Martínez' treatment
of illocutionary acts. Chapters 3 to 15 provide
a catalog of illocutionary
constructions, each discussing a particular
illocutionary act function and
analyzing its constructional realizations.
Chapter 15 concludes.
The introduction, chapter 1, addresses previous
work in speech act theory and
analysis, distinguishing between grammatical
speech act theories, which focus
on the codification of speech act functions
(e.g. Searle 1969, Halliday 1994,
Dik 1989), and inferential speech act theories,
which focus on the role of
inference in decoding of speech act functions
(e.g. Bach & Harnish 1979, Leech
1983), suggesting that both are insufficient in
terms of which phenomena they
can actually account for. She argues that a
cognitivist approach may enable
linguists to fill the gaps that grammatical and
inferential speech act
theories fail to address. According to del
Campo Martínez, illocution is a
matter of applying cognitive processes and
inferential schemas to situational
cognitive models. Moreover, illocutionary
functions are linked to
constructional structures. To address this, del
Campo Martínez adopts LCM
(e.g. Ruiz de Mendoza & Mairal 2011) and
argues that speech acts draw on a
cost-benefit idealized cognitive model (Ruiz de
Mendoza & Baicchi 2007). Del
Campo Martínez' study takes a
semantics-oriented stance towards
illocution
rather than a pragmatics-oriented one, which is
made possible by cognitivist
conceptions of semantic structures and
processes. Del Campo Martínez also
accounts for her method of analysis in the
introduction. She draws on corpus
data retrieved from the Corpus of Contemporary
American English (COCA) and the
British National Corpus (BNC), arguing,
however, that the best empirical
approach to illocutionary data includes
metalinguistic intuitive judgments.
Essentially, the method consists of elaborating
a list of constructions in the
corpora that do illocutionary work; she defends
this method by comparing it to
the lexicologist's challenge of deciding class
membership of lexical items.
While drawing on corpus data, and acknowledging
the usefulness of statistical
analysis, del Campo Martínez's position is 1)
that statistical analysis is
merely a complementary tool to cognitive
linguistic qualitative analysis, 2)
that it does not have explanatory value, and 3)
that it is not able to reveal
all constraints that apply to language
production. Del Campo Martínez thus
refrains from applying any statistical analysis
beyond counting occurrences
realizations of utterance functions, dividing
them into construction types and
their tokens of occurrence.
Chapter two is entitled 'A cognitive approach
to illocution'. Spanning 85
pages, this massive chapter contains heaps of
important information. The first
subsection provides an overview of conceptual
representation in cognitive
accounts of language in general. Her overview
of these concepts takes del
Campo Martínez to Ruiz de Mendoza's distinction
between low and high levels of
linguistic description. Low levels cover
specific levels of conceptual
representation that involve entrenched links
between elements of encyclopedic
knowledge. High levels are generic levels of
conceptual representation that
are derived from low levels via generalization
and abstraction over
commonalities of low level structures. The
second subsection provides an
overview of cognitive approaches to grammar.
Del Campo Martínez concludes the
“main weakness of constructionist approaches
concerns their inability to give
a solid explanation of the element that
constrain the unification of syntactic
patterns and lexical entries” (p. 44). Having
covered the essentials of
cognitive linguistics and constructionist
approaches to grammar, and having
pointed out what she perceives to be their
weaknesses, Del Campo Martínez
devotes the third subsection to describing LCM.
Combining principles from
construction grammar with principles from
so-called projectionist functional
grammar models such as Role and Reference
Grammar (e.g. Van Valin & LaPolla
1997) and Functional Grammar (e.g. Dik 1989)
should, according to del Campo
Martínez, cover the gaps left by its parent
models. According to LCM’s
proponents, the model ensures consistency and
simplicity in the study of
meaning construction. In simple terms, LCM
integrates four constructional
layers: namely, argument structure
constructions, implicational constructions,
illocutional constructions, and discourse
constructions, all of which are
governed by their own internal constraints. Two
cognitive processes control
the interaction between lexemes and
constructions. The process of cued
inferencing covers inference of implicit
information from utterances via
linguistic and contextual clues. The process of
subsumption incorporates low
level structures into high level structures,
resulting in semantic
representations ready for syntactic
realization. LCM distinguishes between
lexical templates and constructional templates.
The former draws on the
logical structures associated with lexemes in
Role and Reference Grammar and
the semantic primitives suggested by Wierzbicka
(1996). The latter encompasses
distinctive semantic, pragmatic, and contextual
parameters within the same
lexical domain. There are four types of
constructional template in LCM, which
correspond to the four levels mentioned above.
The most important
constructional template type in relation to del
Campo Martínez' study is the
illocutionary construction, which is a
constructional templates realize
illocutionary functions, which in LCM is linked
up with the cost-benefit
model. The fourth subsection addresses in
detail the cost-benefit model, which
consists of a number of idealized social
interaction and relation types which
are formulated as conditional structures. Two
examples are “If it is manifest
to A that a particular state of affairs is not
beneficial to B, and if A has
the capacity to change that state of affairs,
then A should do so” (p. 78) and
“If it is manifest to A that A is responsible
for a certain state of affairs
to be to A's benefit, A may feel proud about
this situation and make it
manifest to B” (p. 79).
Conventionalized (and non-conventionalized)
illocutionary constructions codify
scenarios in this cognitive model. For
instance, a request like 'Could you
bring me a glass of water' codifies the
following idealized scenario in the
cost-benefit model: “If it is manifest to A
that a potential state of affairs
is beneficial to B, then A is expected to bring
it about” (p. 78), such that
the bringing of water is beneficial to the
speaker and the listener is then
expected to bring the speaker a glass of water.
In this subsection, del Campo
Martínez also presents her specific approach to
illocution which draws on and
refines the framework already provided in LCM.
Thus, she introduces a system
of formulation of high-level models that
generate the low-level scenarios in
the cost-benefit model, and a specification of
constructional realization of
illocutionary functions.
The remaining chapters, save chapter 15, offers
del Campo Martínez' analysis
of constructional realizations of speech act
types, which each chapter
addressing its own speech act type. The speech
act types covered are orders,
requests, advices, offers, promises, threats,
congratulations, thanks,
apologies, pardons, condolences, and boasts.
These chapters are similarly
organized, so that a description of the general
structure will suffice here.
The first part discusses the semantics of the
speech act type in question,
linking it up with the cost-benefit model such
that the codified conventions
and parameters associated with the speech act
type are specified. This is
followed by an overview of constructional
realization procedures of the speech
act type in question. The analysis is tied in
with the three basic sentences
types – namely, imperative, declarative, and
interrogatives. Before going
through these a quantitative overview is given
in which the distribution of
constructional types and tokens over the three
sentence types is offered
(using raw frequencies). The qualitative
analysis takes the form of a
construction-by-construction description of the
realizations of the act
function in question, belonging to each of the
three sentence types. Each
description is accompanied by a few examples
from COCA and BNC. To give an
example of the nature of her analysis, del
Campo Martínez finds that, within
the domain of imperative realizations of the
speech act of advising, there are
two constructions the collective number of
occurrences of which is sixteen:
'consider VP' an 'think about VP'. The former
is described as asking the
listener to evaluate the benefits of doing
something, presenting the act as a
hypothetical one rather than a real one. The
latter is described as having the
same premise as the former, but 'think about'
requests an evaluation by the
listener which is less careful. Thus, del Campo
Martínez offers not just
descriptions of the constructional realizations
in question; she also
addresses the differences and similarities
between several of the
constructions within a given illocutionary
domain. At the end of the day, the
analysis strikes me as catalog of illocutionary
constructions, which is
definitely useful -- both because of the
descriptions that are provided and
with a view to future research.
EVALUATION
Del Campo Martínez' book is definitely
interesting, and provides some
interesting insights into speech acts from a
constructional perspective. There
has been a general focus on semantics in
construction grammar, although
pragmatics has always been considered part of
what constitutes in the content
of a construction. For instance, Croft (2001)
includes discourse-pragmatics on
the content plane of a construction, and
Fillmore et al. (1988) operate with
the idea of pragmatic points in their treatment
of idiomatic constructions.
However, systematic studies of pragmatic
aspects of constructions are still
few and far between, so, in that sense, del
Campo Martínez' dissertation is
definitely a contribution to both construction
grammar and illocution theory
that should not be underestimated.
I have some reservations though. I am not quite
sure I agree with Martinez'
use of frequency and quantification in her
analysis. The quantitative aspect
of her analysis was mentioned above, but here
is a closer description. For
each of the three sentence types, she
identifies the number of construction
types within its domain, and then specifies the
overall token frequency of the
types collectively. For instance with the
speech act of boasting, there are 11
declarative construction types, 2 interrogative
construction types, and 2
imperative construction types. In all there are
270 occurrences of declarative
speech acts of boasting, 14 occurrences of
interrogative speech acts of
boasting, and 6 imperative speech acts of
boasting. These numbers are taken to
be correlate with mechanisms of codification.
Thus, in the case of boasting,
declaratives are seen as being particularly
suitable vehicles of boasting, as
the high frequency of occurrence of boasting
declarative constructional
realization tokens correlates, in del Campo
Martínez' analysis, with the fact
that boasting essentially is a statement on the
state-of-affairs. Imperatives
and interrogatives, on the other hand, are not
suitable for boasting, because
of their non-declarative utterance functions,
and this correlates with the low
token frequency or constructional realizations
within their domains. Such
correlations may well hold. Indeed, it seems
logical that there should be a
correlation between frequency of occurrence and
compatibility or
incompatibility between utterance function and
illocutionary function.
However, because the data have not been
statistically tested, we cannot know
whether or not these correlations are actually
statistically significant, and,
strictly speaking, Martinez' quantifications do
not -- from a statistical
perspective – provide much evidence. Had they
been tested for significance,
then we would at least know whether or not the
correlations were coincidental
or not. Moreover, a more fine-grained approach
to frequencies might also have
been interesting and have shed some light on
the use of the speech act
constructions. For instance, it would be
interesting to know if there are
differences in frequency among the
constructional realizations of a given
illocutionary function within the domain of one
sentence type. For instance,
is 'can I congratulate you on NP' a more or
less frequent imperative
realization of the thanking speech act function
than 'may I congratulate you
on NP'? And are there differences in
association patterns among different
realization patterns?
However, del Campo Martínez does provide
arguments for her use of
quantification, so she can obviously not be
accused of not having considered
the usability of statistics. The monograph was
originally a dissertation, and
dissertations are often subject to space and
time limitations. With that in
mind, I find the scope of del Campo Martínez'
study completely satisfactory.
Because it is essentially a dissertation, the
volume is of primary interest to
researchers in pragmatics and construction
grammar, and not relevant as
teaching material -- although students working
on a project on illocution
would probably find it very useful.
These reservations aside, del Campo Martínez'
study is an important
contribution to construction grammar and
cognitive linguistics in general, and
to LCM in particular. As mentioned above, by
addressing a pragmatic issue, it
has generated important knowledge that
construction grammarians in general can
draw on in future research, and it reminds us
that pragmatics (even if
oriented towards conceptual semantics in this
case) does have a place in
constructionist-cognitivist theory. Secondly,
given that LCM is a recent
theory, still being developed, del Campo
Martínez' treatment of illocutionary
constructions within that framework is
undeniably a contribution to LCM that
will, I really hope, leave an imprint on LCM
and play a role in its future
development. Lastly, and this is to me the most
important contribution, the
many illocutionary constructions identified by
del Campo Martínez in this
study are now available to be further
investigated, tested, and elaborated
upon by linguists in the future (including
herself, I hope). And the discovery
of phenomena is, after all, one of the most
important contributions one can
make to any science.
REFERENCES
Bach, Kent & Robert M. Harnish. 1979.
Linguistic communication and speech
acts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Croft, William A. 2001. Radical construction
grammar: Syntactic theory in
typological perspective. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Dik, Simon. 1989. The theory of functional
grammar: The structure of the
clause. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Fillmore, Charles, Paul Kay and Catherine
O'Connor (1988). Regularity and
idiomaticity in grammatical constructions: The
case of let alone. Language 64.
501–38.
Halliday, M.A.K. 1994. An introduction to
Functional Grammar. 2nd ed. London:
Edward Arnold.
Leech, Geoffrey. 1983. Principles of
pragmatics. London: Longman.
Ruiz de Mendoza, Francisco R. & Annalisa
Baicchi. 2007. Illocutionary
constructions: Cognitive motivation and
linguistic realization. In Kecskés,
István & Laurence R. Horn (eds.),
Explorations in Pragmatics: Linguistic,
Cognitive, and Intercultural Aspects. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter. 95-128.
Ruiz de Mendoza, Francisco R. & Ricardo
Mairal. 2011. Constraints on syntactic
alternation: Lexical-constructional subsumption
in the Lexical Constructional
Model. In Guerrero, Pilar (ed.),
Morphosyntactic alternations in English:
Functional and cognitive perspectives. London:
Equinox. 62-82.
Searle, John R. 1969. Speech acts: An essay in
the philosophy of language.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Van Valin, Robert, and Randy LaPolla. 1997.
Syntax: Structure, Meaning and
Function. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1996. Semantics, Primes and
Universals. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Kim Ebensgaard Jensen is an associate professor
of English at Aalborg
University where he teaches courses in English
linguistics and discourse
analysis. His research interests include
cognitive linguistics, construction
grammar, and corpus linguistics.
Page Updated: 04-Jun-2014