A Linguistic Approach to Speech Acts: With Regard to Privilege, Feelings, Disfluency, and Reportability

Abstract

While advocating the idea that spoken language is fundamental, contemporary linguistics actually concentrates on research into written language, and research on spoken language (other than research on speech itself) cannot be said to be flourishing. Even if, perhaps, such research could be described as flourishing recently, the studies involved tend to have the nature of conversation analysis or ethnomethodology, and there would appear to be a lack of what one could call linguistic studies. However, is it truly the case that looking at spoken language from a traditional linguistic stance, by focusing on the forms, structures, and meanings of words and phrases, brings no insights into view? In this paper, I will attempt to propose “privilege,” “feelings,” “disfluency,” and “reportability” as four perspectives for discussing the speech acts that make up the core of spoken language, based on my own linguistic studies of spoken Japanese language.