Abstract
It was pointed out by Austin that the linguistic phenomenon of the “uptake” was important for an analysis of the speech act in conversation. The “uptake”, however, has not been analyzed sufficiently.This paper has analyzed the “uptake” in terms of pragmatics.We have extended the speech act theory by Austin and Searle in order to analyze the “uptake” in terms of pragmatics, and then proposed a framework of the extended speech act theory.It has the following features:
·It newly incorporates two conceptual elements (a hidden prepositional act and an intention) into the existing speech act theory.
· The perlocutionary act and the perlocutionary effect in the existing speech act theory are divided into two kinds of act and into four kinds of effect, respectively.
As a result, the framework of the extended speech act theory has 13 conceptual elements in total.Based on the framework proposed, a diversity of meanings of “hai” in Japanese, which is a typical representation of the “uptake”, has been investigated in terms of pragmatics, in the context of the degree and process of the “uptake”. We have found eight levels in the degree of the “uptake”, and seven stages in the process of the “uptake”.
