Indirect communication is a phenomenon pervasive in our daily lives. This book explores this fascinating topic, and provides insights into the psychological processes and the social dynamics underlying indirect communication. Adopting a truly interdisciplinary perspective, it will appeal to students and scholars from diverse backgrounds.
To achieve successful communication, it is crucial to say clearly what we mean, but, at the same time, we need to pay attention to the form of our utterances, to avoid misunderstandings and the risk of offending our interlocutors. To avoid these pitfalls, we use a special category of utterances called 'indirect speech acts' (ISAs) that enable an optimal balance between clarity and politeness. But how do interpreters identify the meaning of these ISAs? And how does the social context influence the use of ISAs? This book attempts to answer these questions. It deals with the main theoretical and empirical questions surrounding the meaning and usage of ISAs, drawing on the latest research and neuroimaging data. Adopting a truly interdisciplinary perspective, it will appeal to students and scholars from diverse backgrounds, and anyone interested in exploring this phenomenon, which is so pervasive in our daily lives.
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Explores the fascinating phenomenon of indirect speech acts, highlighting the situations they are used in, and how they are understood.
1. Classic Speech Act Theoretic Approaches;
2. The Semantics of Sentence-Types;
3. Cognitive and Relevance-Based Approaches;
4. The Comprehension of ISAs;
5. Indirectness, Politeness, and the Social Context;
6. Computational and Artificial Intelligence Approaches to Indirectness;
7. Conclusion; References; Index.
Nicolas Ruytenbeek specializes in experimental approaches to speech acts and politeness, using a combination of corpus data and psychophysiological methods. He is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication, Ghent University.
