| dc.description.abstract | This is a pragmatic study that aims at an application of speech acts theory to Gikuyu). The data used includes selected single sentences and speech situations in form of ritual perfomatives that are elaborate and more realistic. The latter enable the addressee to understand speaker meaning effectively since the interpersonal communication is based on actual context. These ritual perfomatives have been utilized to disambiguate iIlocutionary force so that the speaker does not speak of one utterance having two or more illocutionary forces due to inadequate context. It also facilitates analysis of felicity conditions required to make the speech act successful. and the scale of politeness in any speech act.
This study is centered on two major classifications of speech acts that is, the explicit and implicit categories. In investigating meaning in speech acts we are able to establish the relationship between these two classes of speech acts. Chapter one is an introduction to the study. It consists of the following sections: a background to the language a background to the study, the statement to the problem the objectives and hypotheses of the study, the rationale literature review theoretical framework, scope and limitations and the research methodology.
Chapter two discusses the conceptual issues related to the main principles in Speech acts theory. It lays a foundation on which communicative interpersonal interaction, which involves speaker and hearer, and the context of an utterance and its meaning potential is built. It places speech acts in pragmatics and explains the principles and tenets on which the theory operates. The chapter mainly deals with recovery of meaning from utterances by the hearer by understanding what they count as doing.
Chapter three is an analysis of explicit and implicit speech acts in Gikuyu using superficial sentences or what Lyons (1977) refers to as basic speech acts as our data. These are individual or single utterances that perform action. The aim of this chapter is to bring out the differences and the relationships between explicit and implicit speech acts and demonstrate how the hearer recovers illocutionary force from both. The analysis of these sentences using the speech acts theory leads us to realize the importance of context and in particular in a speech situation. in determining the illocutionary force of an utterance. The role of the speaker in determining politeness in speech acts is also analyzed.
Chapter 4 is an analysis of explicit and implicit speech acts in Gikuyu ritual performatives, which act as speech situations to facilitate a more correct and ambiguity free recovery of illocutionary fOI1:e by the hearer. This chapter demonstrates that explicit and implicit speech acts are best interpreted in a naturally occurring speech situation. The main determining factor of politeness in communication in Gikuyu is the attitude of the speaker and not the nature the speech act used.
Chapter 5 concludes the study and discusses the findings of the study and its conclusions. Our findings show that the speech acts theory is generally universal and can be used to describe Gikiiyii but not without some failures. One such example is that in Gikuyui; we find a perfomative clause with more force than the performative verb in English. This performative clause has a different structure from the English speech act verb. | en_US |
