Chapter Two: Theoretical Background and Literature Review 2. Introduction This study intends to show the basis of theoretical background of this study, moreover, it pinpoints on the studies and literature concerning death phenomenon from different perspectives. 2.2 Theoretical Background reference to death can be considered within pragmatic framework, so to more illustration, I will focus on pragmatic definitions and its component: pragmatic is defined as "the study of those aspects of meaning that cannot be predicted by linguistic knowledge alone and takes into account knowledge about the physical and social world"(Peccei,1999:2) leech (1983) divides pragmatic into two components; pragmalinguistics which concerns on choosing an appropriate form, and sociopragmatic, which concerns appropriateness of meaning in social context. Speech act is any utterance having a certain function in communication, speech act theory is formed by J. L. Austin in the 1930 where presented in the lecture given on Oxford 1952-54. This lecture is systemized and classified in his famous work ''how to do things with words'' in 1962. Before Austin(1962), the school of thought in philosophy (logical positivism) has adapted the theory ''descriptive fallacy'', that the function of language is how making a true or false statement, Austin made two observation against this school, first; some expressions or utterances are not employed to make true or false statement e.g. imperative sentence, second; some declarative sentence are made to do things . accordingly, Austin generates two
concepts, performative language, in which to do things, whereas, constantive language, in which to make a statement having yes or no judgment. When speaker says an utterance, he/she utters for specific purpose, that what Austin claimed that all utterances perform particular act via communicative force of utterance. He distinguishes acts by calling these the locutionary act, illocutionary act, perlocutionary act, respectively: 1. Locutionary act is the making a meaningful expressions or utterances 2. Illoctionary act is an action intended to be performed such as asking, answering and promising etc. 3. perlocutionary act is the effect of utterance upon the feeling and thought of addressee in uttering a sentence or expressions. Speech act includes complaints, compliment, refusal, request and suggestion.
The term "speech act" has been used by Crystal (1992: 362) to refer to a communicative activity defined with reference to the intentions of a speaker while speaking and the effects achieved on a listener. Speech community term explains how people use language appropriately in a certain community shared by a set of norms and values, Gumperz ( ---) any human aggregate characterized by regular and frequent interaction by means of a shred body of verbal signs and set off from similar aggregates by significant differences in language use. he states that not all individuals within a speech community have equal control of the entire set of superposed variants current there.\
Communicative competence and the speech community have received good amount of attention from scholars like Hymes (1962, 1964c) his study was focused on language use across speech communities and Chomsky (1959) his theory of
generative grammar and he went to on to propose a mentalistic model of grammar, to be understood as''concerned with discovering a mental reality underlying actual behavior"(Chomsky 1965:4) he distinguishes between competence and performance (observed language behavior )and competence(tacit knowledge of native speaker) linguistics theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener in a completely homogeneous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors(random or characteristics)in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance.this seems to me to have been the position of the founder of modern general linguistics, and no cogent reason for modifying it has been offered.(chosmsky 1965:3-4)
Hymes (1972:56) defines a speech event as an activity or aspects of an activity that are directly governed by rules for the use of speech. he looks at speech community as a group sharing rules and norms for interpretation at least one linguistics variety Haymes (1972). Swales(1990)defined discourse community as a group whose members have common goals, intercommunication mechanisms, particular genres and specific lexis.
Reference to somebody is a worthy topic in pragmatics study, pragmatics gives importance to referring as a discourse process and shed light on explicit and implicit reference. Grice (1975) describes refereeing items as pragmatic processes through which the hearer infers the speaker's intention.in his theory of conversational
implicature, Grice (1961, 1975, 1978,1989) identified a set of principle that make language effectively in communication. This theory called co-operative principle divided into maxims of conversation classified into four categories: quality, quantity, relation and manner. Quality: be truthful. Quantity: be informative as required. Relation: be relevant. Manner: be perspicuous. Co-operative can be best defined as "how to make your conversational contribution such as required at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged"(Grice 1974: 45). Based on Austin theory of speech act, we can conclude two subtypes of speech act; if there is match between sentence type and illoctionary force, there is a direct speech act, on the other hand, if there is no match between sentence type and speech act, there is an indirect speech act, this can be illustrated by examples *I ask you to answer this item *ask this item *could you answer this item? Fisrt one is an explicit performative use to make request, the second is an imperative sentence ,both are used as a direct speech act,whereas , the third is an interrogative sentence employed to make a request having indirect speech act. Indirect speech act always correlate with impoliteness device which have a numerous literature dealing on it,such leech(1983). Politeness involves using behaviors that show positive awareness of others(Thomas, 1995:150) Huang(2006) mentioned four main theoretical models of
politeness: 1) social norm model 2)the conversational maxim model(leech 1983, 2003) 3)face saving model(Brown and Levinson 1978, 1987) and 4)conversational conract model faster, 1990). This study confides at the most comprehensive and influential 'face saving model' (Brown and Levinson 1978, 1987), they defined face is 'the public self-image that every member wants to claim himself' (brown and levinson 1987:61) Face is considered in any culture as mirror for both individual and society of their impression and behavior toward each other, there are two aspects of face; positive and negative face. At the central concept of brown and levinson theory is the notion" face" which is considered to be universal notion in any human society. Brown and levinson stand on (goffman's1967 and they extended his theory to divide face into "positive face" and "negative face". Positive face" refers to persons intended to be accepted and liked by other by using speech strategies that emphasizing the solidarity with hearer, for example informal pronunciation, shared dialect or slang expressions, nicknames, more frequent to speaker or hearers as 'we' and request which are less indirect (Peccei: 1999: 64). Whereas, "negative face" tends to preserving and satisfying negative face of people showing the differences with hearer. Negative politeness emphasize on the using 'mitigating device', and expressions that "soften the blow ', like 'please', 'possible', 'might', ''I'm sorry but'….etc. (ibid: 65).
According to Wolfson (1989: 67): In deciding how much to take another person’s feelings into account, we have three factors to consider. First, people are usually more polite to others when they are of higher status or perceived of as being powerful; second, people are generally more polite to others who are socially distant; and third, we are usually more polite in relation to the gravity of the threat we are about to make to others’ face.
Language is used as means of communication which is considered as a vehicle of social movement, Van De Walle(1993: 42) states that communication not only involves transferring a message but also establishing and maintaining or changing social relationship. Succinctly, human beings are aware of the fact that the more polite person will be more liked depend on mutual respect. There are many types of speech acts may threat face such as complaint, disagreement, disapproval which is so called face threating acts(FTAs). Brown and Levinson makes a distinction between acts that threaten negative face and those that threaten positive face. Acts that threaten positive face such as: disapproval, accusation, criticism, disagreement and insult. acts that threaten negative face such as: advice, order, suggestions and warning. however, they identify the overlapping in the classification of FTAs, because some FTAs threaten both negative and positive face(e.g., complaints, interruptions, threats, strong expressions of emotion, requests for personal information). (Brown and Levinson: 1987: 67).
According to strength or weightiness an FTAs, Brown and Levinson outline three cultural variable to measure FTAs, first, the social distance(D) between speaker and addressee, second, the relative power(P) of the addressee over the speaker, third, absolute ranking (R) of imposition in a particular culture. They acknoweledge that some complex composition of values may be involved in assessing the danger of FTAs. This means that not P, D and R are only factors, but simply they subsume all others(status, authority, occupation, ethnic identity, friendship, situational factors, etc.) that have a principle effect on such assessment (ibid:80). Although Brown and Levinson recognize the concept of face may differ in different cultures, they adapt a universal theory in which their claims for universals
amount to:1.the universality of face, which is describable as two kinds of basic wants; 2.the potential universality of strategies available to persons in any culture as rational means of dealing with the face of others; 3.the universality of the mutual knowledge between interactants of 1 and 2 (Brown and Levinson, 1987:248).
Euphemism is a discourse strategy used to mitigate with interlocutor by avoiding any taboo or scared expressions which is employed to build a social function. most of our speech tends to be euphemistic particularly in talking about death,
sickness,
killing,
allan
and
burridge
(2006;-_distinguish
between
orthophemism, euphemism,dysphemism as illustrated in the figure number 1
dysphemism can be considered as taboo and impoliteness device ; /estashhad / /mat/ /engatal/ Whereas, orthophemism and euphemism more preferred and mitigated than dysphemism . it is more favourable in any community to say figurative utterance like /estashad/ ''being martyed'' or /twfi/ ''pass away'' instead to say /end'as / or /engatal/.
Allan and Burridge (1991:11;26)tries to differentiate between euphemism and dysphemism; A euphemism is used as an alternative to a dispreferred expression, in order to avoid possible loss of face either one’s own face or, through giving
offense, that of the audience, or of some third party. however, .A dysphemism is an expression with connotations that are offensive either about the denotatum or to the audience, or both, and it is substituted for a neutral or euphemistic expression for just that reason. Alkatib(1995: 451) states that'' a euphemism can be defined as an inoffensive word or phrase use in replacement of one considered offensive or hurtful by a particular speech community. Such words are usually concerned with sex, death, religion, or excreta''. اقرا كتاب ا 2.5. Communicative Competence Hymes (1974) introduced the concept of communicative competence. He argued that communication is not governed by fixed linguistic rules. It is, however, a two-step process in which the speaker first evaluates the social context of the speech and then select among the communicative options available for encoding his intent. In other words, linguistic competence is not the only element responsible for communication. Rather, an interaction is perceivable between linguistic knowledge and society. Communicative competence postulates linguistic diversity or a repertoire of linguistic codes for the same concept. On the basis of the situation, the competent speaker can choose an appropriate code. In doing so, the speaker uses the so-called knowledge of the components of speech (i.e. SPEAKING). According to Hymes, any speech situation possesses eight defining features: (1) S refers to the setting (i.e. the time, place, physical circumstances, and psychological setting or scene); (2) P refers to participants (i.e. speaker, addressor, hearer, and addressee); (3) E refers to the ends (i.e. purpose, outcomes, and goals); (4) A refers to act sequences (i.e. message content and message form); (5) K refers to keys (i.e. manner/spirit in which something is said); (6) I refers to instrumentalities (i.e. channels and forms); (7) N refers to norms (i.e. norms of interaction and interpretation); and (8) G refers to genres (i.e. categories of communication).
