The generation of psychosis: a pragmatic approach

The paper discusses the role of speech in the generation of psychosis. The traditional phenomenological approach describes schizophrenic speech as desocialized, autistic and destructive. Based on 'Speech Act Theory', we argue that patients in an acute psychotic state assign maximal illocutionary force to their utterances and mark these speech acts as felicitous. We hypothesize that the pragmatic approach can serve a special role in bilingual patients, the mother tongue being more pronounced in the generation of the psychosis. This view gains support from clinical experience and case studies and can be used as a treatment strategy for bilingual patients.