Speech act attenuation in the history of English: The case of apologies

Abstract

This paper develops a new theoretical framework to describe the long diachrony of speech acts. Such an undertaking requires a careful reconsideration of some of the basic properties of the nature of speech acts. It requires a clear differentiation between the functional profile, or illocutionary potential, of a speech act, the range of expressions that are typically used to perform it, and the metacommunicative expressions that are used to talk about it. It also requires a clear understanding of the integrity of the speech act in order to make it comparable across different time periods. It is suggested that the diachronic development of speech acts is both a gradual process with limited short-term effects that-over a long period-lead to more substantial differences and a process of attenuation, i.e. a progressive weakening of its illocutionary force. As an example, this paper traces the long diachrony of apologies in the history of the English language, from Old English up to Present-day English. Apologies originate in Old English penitential acts and confessions to God which in the course of time underwent a process of attenuation that first turned them into secularized appeals to a human addressee for forgiveness, subsequently to expressions of regret and eventually to speech acts that are often no more than a token acknowledgement of some minor infraction. The final section gives an outline of how this new theoretical framework of speech act attenuation can be applied to other speech acts, such as promises and greetings.

“Face” in Retrospective: A Survey of Thanking in Old Saxon and Old High German

“…Our understanding of politeness, face work, and speech acts is based on synchronic observations of interactional behaviors among speakers of different communities. This understanding also holds the assumption that these concepts can be found in a more or less identical form in earlier sources (Jucker and Kopaczyk, 2017;Jucker, 2019). Unfortunately, that is not always the case.…”

“…However, "such pro les are not always very precise and they sometimes con ict with our everyday understanding of these speech acts" (Jucker, 2019:3). Such a con ict can limit the depth of pragmatic analysis of speech acts, especially in historical discourse (Jucker, 2019). The current study also draws upon Searle´s de ned pro le of the speech act of thanking, which takes place when the addresser, after bene ting from an act done by the addressee, feels grateful and expresses this feeling to the latter (1976:63).…”

Responding to thanks

“…Tracing the "long diachrony" of apologies, Jucker (2019) argues that apologies (and presumably also responses to apologies) have become more common, often uttered for minor infractions, which the apologizer playfully calls attention to with new expressions such as oops, whoops and my bad. Thus, the "illocutionary potential [of apologies] has been maximally weakened, i.e., attenuated, and they are fully pragmaticalized, i.e.…”

El enunciado lo siento como disculpa: análisis diacrónico

“…13 Jucker (2019), siguiendo a Claridge y Arnovick (2010), define pragmaticalización como la pérdida de transparencia semántica de un elemento al hacerse dependiente del contexto comunicativo. En el caso de lo siento como enunciado de condolencias, pasa a expresar una sensación necesariamente negativa hacia una situación, lo cual no es el caso en su valor asertivo: puede sentirse alegría o cualquier otro sentimiento positivo.…”