Pragmatic Peculiarities Of Insincere Speech Acts In Z. Smith’s ‘On Beauty’

Abstract

University novels, being a part of fiction discourse, comprise elements commonly associated with everyday life and making it true-to-life an author uses a make-believe strategy. Thus it encourages studying speech acts in fiction. University novel is a component of the English and American fiction discourse and a unique genre, academic environment of which is characterized by a defined setting, protagonists as well as original themes. University novel covers a wide range of topical issues and events that occur outside universities and are drastically discussed by teachers and students alike. Based on ‘On beauty’ university novel the article investigates insincere speech acts of various types, illustrating both quantity and quality of each selected group. With the help of general linguistic methods (elements of intent analysis, speech act analisys, etc.) true intentions of a speech act are reveald by the context. Perlocutionary force of deceit is mostly realised by assertives. Quesitives being the least frequent category of insincere speech acts are mostly used in small talks and generally pretending to be polite. The research shows that insincere speech is commonlycharacterized by pauses, hesitations, repetitions, and paralipses. The article also reveals some syntactic and structural peculiarities of insincere speech acts as found in the university novel ‘On Beauty’ by Z. Smith.

Keywords: Assertivescommissivesdirectivesexpressivesfiction discourseinsincerityquesitivesspeech actuniversity novel

Introduction

The research discusses the importance of understanding some specific features of university novels as an integral part of fiction discourse or to be more precise, university discourse. Academic novels explain indicative events and changes as well as the most essential tendencies in the development of science and education, language, art, culture, politics and national identity as well as alienation of emigrants. Absorbing some features of other genres, such as initiation, historical and modernist novel as well as romance, this type of genre is unique in itself. University novel seems to be resourceful for researchers of fiction discourse, intercultural communication, stylistics, text linguistics, and pragmatics. It possesses singular linguo-stylistic, sociocultural, and linguistic discourse peculiarities.

Problem Statement

The purpose of the research consists in revealing and analysing some specific features of the university discourse from the standpoint of insincere speech acts. One of its objectives is also connected with the study and analysis of literature on the phenomenon of non-fiction academic or university environment. Thus, the experts in the field assert that:

The university environment is, first of all, a community of the most educated, qualified and authoritative scientists. The higher school is a closed language environment with a given system of internal and external communication, which is characterized as intercultural. The cultural atmosphere of people is a perfect way to adapt to the existing physical and biological surroundings. Cultural traditions make life easier by providing ready problem-solving solutions, establishing models of relationships and determining ways to preserve the unity of nation, group or organization. ( Lingvokultura universiteta, 2016, p. 68)

Research Questions

In the course of the research it is possible to identify some peculiarities of the English and American university novels such as modeling of protagonists on stereotyped images, a description of various educational traditions and recurring themes such as methods of teaching, education, language and society, generation gap, politics, discrimination, family issues, wars and war conflicts, etc. One of the objectives of the study aims at examining linguistic personality of a lecturer as reflected in their speech by using insincere speech acts. The main issue is to analyse and show peculiarities (if any) of insincere speech acts in the university novels.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the research consists in revealing and analyzing some specific features of the English fiction discourse, to be more precise these are: peculiar linguistic features of university novels as a genre, functioning of insincere speech acts in university novels, general peculiarities of insincerity in fiction.

Research Methods

In compliance with the purpose of the research, the following methods have been undertaken: the analysis of the literature (fiction and non-fiction) and the publications concerning the studied problem, contextual, descriptive, cultural-historic and comparative analyses. General lingustic methods are used in the research: linguopragmatic method (in communication influence analysis), intent-analysis (general analysis of intentions in sincere and insincere speech acts, false intentions of a speaker), speech act analysis (description of general and basic characteristics of various speech acts and how they are performed in a language), description (descriptions of the results);

Findings

On the basis of this stage of the research we can conclude that in general academic environment can be characterized by the following features: 1) it is a closed intercultural language environment with a given system of internal and external communication, 2) it is a perfect way to adapt to the existing physical and biological surroundings, 3) its cultural and academic traditions make life easier by providing ready problem-solving solutions, determining ways to preserve the unity of a group or organization, society or nation.

All in all a sum of 48 insincere speech acts being analyzed and the general analysis shows that the results of the taken university novel coincide greatly with the analysis of insincere speech acts in modern English fiction ( Kozhukhova & Chiglintseva, 2018). Thus the idea of general distribution of speech acts (including insincere) is more or less the same (Table 1 ).

Depending on intentions of an insincere linguistic personality five types of insincere speech acts can be identified: assertives, quesitives, expressives, directives and comissives. The analyzed novel shovs the assertives prevail. Such a peculiarity, as we see from Table 1 , is not a unique feature of university novels only. As a rule, assertives give information on a fact or event. Insincere assertives are used to make a speaker do something or evoke certian emotions or win round:

‘Just come back weekends. Go to church. Sunday lunch. Family stuff.’

<...> He handed them to Howard, who pushed them into his pocket without looking, So, he hates the idea of this marriage even more than I do, thought Howard. He can barely even be more polite tome .

Insincerity of almost all linguistic material is revealed on the context level, taken out of context the speech act above can be considered a standard example of phatic communication, but usage of simple sentences does not imply interest and involvement into the conversation.

Expressives are characterized by the presence of emotionally colored, evaluative vocabulary; on the syntactic level emotions are conveyed with the help of exclamatory sentences. In the given example, which can be interpreted both as an expressive and assertive, we see the high emotions of the utterance due to the repetition of phrases, emphasis (which italicised, though within this research we subtitute italicised emphasis with non-italicised lexemes), emotional lexemes too, really, completely :

‘Yes – of course, of course, of course, no one’s saying there’s an argument – I’m just saying, and I’m hoping your father will appreciate this, that Jerome’s really too young – and he’s younger than he actually is – emotionally he’s much younger, completely inexpreienced – much more so than you probably realize –‘

<...> ‘I think they are both much, much too young to get married, Michael, I really do” .

For commissives where a speaker makes a promise to carry out an action, the usage of performatives with the semantics of promise in the illocutionary part is typical. Eg., being from London and having a strong English accent, Professor Howard Belsey did not achieve the same success as his American colleagues. A small group of students attend his lectures, but the professor continues to conduct his optional course in history of art, knowing in advance about the inevitable failure. Students pay attention only to the pragmatic side of any issue. They are primarily interested in their own careers and prosperity. The choice of lecture courses by university students is a humiliating procedure for teachers, especially for Professor Howard Belsey. He is not able to meet the expectations of his students: “<…> the likelihood of the professor in question having any real-world power that might translate into an actual capacity to write that letter which would effectively place them – three years from now – on an internship at the New Yorker or in the Pentagon or in Clinton’s Harlem offices or at French Vogue – and that all this private research, all this Googling, would lead them rightly to conclude that taking a class on ‘Constructions of the Human’, which did not come under their core requirements for the semester, which was taught by a human being himself over the hill, in a bad jacket, with eighties hair, who was under-published, politically marginal and badly situated at the top of a building without proper heating and no elevator, was not in their best interests. There’s a reason it’s called shopping.” . Hyperbole “recommendations that will help to get an internship at the New Yorkeror in the Pentagon or in Clinton’s Harlem offices or at French Vogue” makes the situation comical. Assistant Smith J. Miller was well aware of Howard’s state of affairs, but in an effort to encourage he promises a full house at the professor’s lectures: ‘Ah got a good feelin’ about this semester,’ said Smith, and whistled and released his sprightly Southern chuckle. ‘Expectin’ standing room only’ .

When using directives, the speaker wants the recipient to take some action. Moreover, the fulfillment of actions is not required:

‘Victoria, go and see on the stew, please. Go’

Victioria stood up and slammed her chair into the table. <...>Mrs. Kipps smiled again.

Insincerity in this case is realized by indirectness - formally we see a direct request (simple infinitive + politeness marker please . A special attention should be paid to the formula of the request, while standard requests in English usually have an indirect form and contain modality or other modifiers in their expression), which is intensified by the verb in the imperative mood. Further, the context shows that Mrs. Kips thus got rid of the undesiredspeaker (or, listener)

Insincere quesitives are speech acts containing a question in the answer on whish a speaker is not is not interested. Most commonly they are used to maintain a conversation and to implement a politeness strategy, also participants of communication can use insincere quesitives to hide the fact of deception or true feelings, as well as to delay time:

‘Suddenly she was behind him. ‘Where’s the Kippses’ phone number?’ she demanded, although they both knew the answer to this one’.

In this case, we are faced with an insincere conventionalized indirect speech act, which is interpreted as demand in the speech support group. This requirement can be considered insincere given the previous remark in which it was supposed to discuss an unpleasant topic:

‘What did you say?’ asked Kiki. ‘What are you saying? I can’t hear you’ .

A demand ‘Where’s the Kippses’ phone number? has the intention to delay time and change the topic.

Conclusion

At this stage of the study we have come to the conclusion that university novel is an integral part of fiction discourse. It is a unique genre, academic environment of which is characterized by specific features. The study of linguistic personality of a lecturer reveals manifestation of its individual characteristics; allows to identify the concepts, ideas and values relevant to native speakers and to the representatives of different linguo-cultural communities. University novels illustrate significant events and changes, as well as essential trends in the development of language, art and culture. The characters are constructed on stereotyped images that make the reader recognize their teachers, colleagues or students, as well as experience a different range of feelings and emotions.

The data shows the usage of insincere speech acts both in the university environment and outside it (in this case, it is not the environment that forms the way of sincerity / insincerity, but the linguistic personality itself). Based on the results of the analysis, two main conclusions can be made: 1) insincerity is “revealed” due to the context or group of speech accompaniment and 2) insincerity can be in a borderline state with indirectness.

Thus, the English university novel is an inexhaustible source for researchers of its specific features.

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