Original scientific paper
SPEECH ACTS OF OBJECTION IN THE PLAY LOOK BACK IN ANGER BY JOHN OSBORNE
Daniela Matić
orcid.org/0000-0002-4409-733X
; Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Split
Abstract
This paper studies speech acts of objection within local pragmatic acts extracted
from the play Look Back in Anger by John Osborne. In this analysis
the theoretical postulates in J.L. Austin, J. Searle and speech act theory,
Politeness Principle by P. Brown and S. Levinson and Cooperative Principle
by H.P. Grice were drawn upon. In Ivanetić (1995) the listener can
accept the speech act of objection, reject it or avoid speaking their mind
by changing the subject or evading explicit comment. This paper, however,
shows that in most cases the speech acts of objection are not provoked by
immediate verbal or nonverbal action of the interlocutor, that very often
the listener’s verbal reaction as the second part of the adjacency pair is
missing and that silence is a very powerful and aggressive nonverbal answer
to the speaker’s verbal action. It is also shown that rich and noisy
verbal expression on the one hand and silence on the other are, though
opposed, two discourse strategies that hide real reasons for interlocutors’
dissatisfaction and contribute to the indirectness of their discourse.
Keywords
speech acts; pragmatic acts; objection; silence as a nonverbal act
Hrčak ID:
229735
URI
Publication date:
7.12.2011.
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