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Comprehending illocutionary force.
1Department of Psychological Science, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana 47306, USA. 00t0holtgrav@bsu.edu
Memory & Cognition
|March 30, 2001
Summary
Understanding conversational remarks involves recognizing the speech act performed. Comprehension is faster and more accurate when the utterance's intended speech act is identified, suggesting its crucial role in communication.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Science
- Philosophy of Language
Background:
- Speech act theory posits utterances have propositional content and illocutionary force.
- Comprehension of conversational remarks may involve recognizing the intended speech act.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether utterance comprehension necessitates speech act recognition.
- To determine the role of speech act recognition in understanding conversational remarks.
Main Methods:
- Four experiments utilized a recognition probe reaction time procedure and a lexical decision task.
- Participants read remarks and responded to probes related to the utterance's speech act.
Main Results:
- Participants were slower and made more errors when probes represented the speech act.
- Faster verification of target words related to the speech act was observed.
Conclusions:
- Speech act recognition appears to be a significant component of conversational remark comprehension.
- This finding supports the integration of pragmatic understanding in psycholinguistic models.