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The book 'Speech Acts in English' by Lorena Pérez-Hernández explores the use of speech acts in English, particularly focusing on directive speech acts and their teaching in English as a foreign language (EFL). It critiques existing EFL materials and provides a comprehensive model along with practical activities to implement research on illocutionary acts. The work aims to bridge the gap in EFL resources regarding the complexities of speech acts, making the information accessible to both educators and learners.

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SPE ECH AC TS I N ENGL ISH

Speech acts, those actions carried out mainly by means of language,

are used in English in a range of complex ways. However, they have
rarely been covered in English as a foreign language (EFL) materials
and textbooks. Bringing together current theories from pragmatics
and cognitive linguistics, this book addresses this gap by providing
a comprehensive model of directive speech acts and showing how to
teach them to learners of English. It provides a review of the strengths
and weaknesses of current theories of illocution and a critical
assessment of existing EFL textbooks. Descriptions of the meaning
and form of directive speech act constructions are given in the
cognitive pedagogical grammar of directive speech acts (included),
which offers a wealth of examples to make the information accessible
to non-specialist readers. The book also provides a wide range of
practical activities, showing how research on illocutionary acts can
be implemented in practice.

l or ena pér e z-h er ná nde z is a tenured associate professor of

linguistics at the University of Rioja. Her recent publications include
Illocution and Cognition. She is a member of the editorial board of the
Review of Cognitive Linguistics, the Human Cognitive Processing Series,
and the International Journal of Marketing Semiotics and Discourse
Studies.
studies in english l anguage

General editor
Merja Kytö (Uppsala University)

Editorial Board
Bas Aarts (University College London)
John Algeo (University of Georgia)
Susan Fitzmaurice (University of Sheffield)
Christian Mair (University of Freiburg)
Charles F. Meyer (University of Massachusetts)

The aim of this series is to provide a framework for original studies of English,
both present-day and past. All books are based securely on empirical research,
and represent theoretical and descriptive contributions to our knowledge of
national and international varieties of English, both written and spoken. The
series covers a broad range of topics and approaches, including syntax,
phonology, grammar, vocabulary, discourse, pragmatics and sociolinguistics, and
is aimed at an international readership.

Already published in this series:

Haruko Momma: From Philology to English Studies: Language and Culture in the
Nineteenth Century
Raymond Hickey (ed.): Standards of English: Codified Varieties around the World
Benedikt Szmrecsanyi: Grammatical Variation in British English Dialects: A Study
in Corpus-Based Dialectometry
Daniel Schreier and Marianne Hundt (eds.): English as a Contact Language
Bas Aarts, Joanne Close, Geoffrey Leech and Sean Wallis (eds.): The Verb Phrase
in English: Investigating Recent Language Change with Corpora
Martin Hilpert: Constructional Change in English: Developments in Allomorphy,
Word Formation, and Syntax
Jakob R. E. Leimgruber: Singapore English: Structure, Variation, and Usage
Christoph Rühlemann: Narrative in English Conversation: A Corpus Analysis of
Storytelling
Dagmar Deuber: English in the Caribbean: Variation, Style and Standards in
Jamaica and Trinidad
Eva Berlage: Noun Phrase Complexity in English
Nicole Dehé: Parentheticals in Spoken English: The Syntax-Prosody Relation
Jock O. Wong: The Culture of Singapore English
Marianne Hundt (ed.): Late Modern English Syntax
Irma Taavitsainen, Merja Kytö, Claudia Claridge and Jeremy Smith (eds.):
Developments in English: Expanding Electronic Evidence
Arne Lohmann: English Coordinate Constructions: A Processing Perspective on
Constituent Order
Nuria Yáñez-Bouza: Grammar, Rhetoric and Usage in English: Preposition
Placement 1500–1900
Anita Auer, Daniel Schreier and Richard J. Watts (eds.): Letter Writing and
Language Change
John Flowerdew and Richard W. Forest: Signalling Nouns in English: A Corpus-
Based Discourse Approach
Jeffrey P. Williams, Edgar W. Schneider, Peter Trudgill and Daniel Schreier
(eds.): Further Studies in the Lesser-Known Varieties of English
Jack Grieve: Regional Variation in Written American English
Douglas Biber and Bethany Gray: Grammatical Complexity in Academic English:
Linguistics Change in Writing
Gjertrud Flermoen Stenbrenden: Long-Vowel Shifts in English, c. 1050–1700:
Evidence from Spelling
Zoya G. Proshina and Anna A. Eddy (eds.): Russian English: History, Functions,
and Features
Raymond Hickey (ed.): Listening to the Past: Audio Records of Accents of English
Phillip Wallage: Negation in Early English: Grammatical and Functional Change
Marianne Hundt, Sandra Mollin and Simone E. Pfenninger (eds.): The Changing
English Language: Psycholinguistic Perspectives
Joanna Kopaczyk and Hans Sauer (eds.): Binomials in the History of English:
Fixed and Flexible
Alexander Haselow: Spontaneous Spoken English: An Integrated Approach to the
Emergent Grammar of Speech
Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer: English Compounds and Their Spelling
David West Brown: English and Empire: Language History, Dialect, and the
Digital Archive
Paula Rodríguez-Puente: The English Phrasal Verb, 1650-present: History, Stylistic
Drifts, and Lexicalisation
Erik. R. Thomas (ed.): Mexican American English: Substrate Influence and the
Birth of an Ethnolect
Thomas Hoffmann: English Comparative Correlatives: Diachronic and Synchronic
Variation at the Lexicon-Syntax Interface
Nuria Yáñez-Bouza, Emma Moore, Linda van Bergen and Willem B. Hollmann
(eds.): Categories, Constructions, and Change in English Syntax
Raymond Hickey (ed.): English in the German-speaking World
Axel Bohmann: Variation in English World-wide: Registers and Global Varieties
Raymond Hickey (ed.): English in Multilingual South Africa: The Linguistics of
Contact and Change
Jeremy J. Smith: Transforming Early English: The Reinvention of Early English and
Older Scots
Tobias Bernaisch: Gender in World Englishes

Earlier titles not listed are also available

SPEECH ACTS IN ENGLISH
From Research to Instruction and Textbook Development

LORENA PÉREZ-HERNÁNDEZ
University of Rioja, Spain
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India
79 Anson Road, #06-04/06, Singapore 079906

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108476324
DOI: 10.1017/9781108677073
© Lorena Pérez-Hernández 2021
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2021
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
names: Pérez-Hernández, Lorena, 1972- author.
title: Speech acts in English : from research to instruction and textbook
development / Lorena Pérez-Hernández.
description: New York : Cambridge University Press, 2020. | Series: Studies
in English language | Includes bibliographical references and index.
identifiers: LCCN 2020020666 (print) | LCCN 2020020667 (ebook) | ISBN
9781108476324 (hardback) | ISBN 9781108700207 (paperback) | ISBN
9781108677073 (ebook)
subjects: LCSH: Speech acts (Linguistics) | English language–Study and
teaching–Foreign speakers.
classification: LCC P95.55 .P46 2020 (print) | LCC P95.55 (ebook) | DDC
401/.452–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020020666
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020020667
ISBN 978-1-108-47632-4 Hardback
ISBN 978-1-108-70020-7 Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
SPE ECH AC TS I N ENGL ISH

Speech acts, those actions carried out mainly by means of language,

l or ena pér e z-h er ná nde z is a tenured associate professor of

General editor
Merja Kytö (Uppsala University)

Already published in this series:

Earlier titles not listed are also available

SPEECH ACTS IN ENGLISH
From Research to Instruction and Textbook Development

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

Speech acts, those actions carried out mainly by means of language,

l or ena pér e z-h er ná nde z is a tenured associate professor of

General editor
Merja Kytö (Uppsala University)

Already published in this series:

Earlier titles not listed are also available

SPEECH ACTS IN ENGLISH
From Research to Instruction and Textbook Development

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

Speech acts, those actions carried out mainly by means of language,

l or ena pér e z-h er ná nde z is a tenured associate professor of

General editor
Merja Kytö (Uppsala University)

Already published in this series:

Earlier titles not listed are also available

SPEECH ACTS IN ENGLISH
From Research to Instruction and Textbook Development

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

List of Figures page xii

List of Tables xiii
Acknowledgements xv
List of Abbreviations xvi

1 Introduction 1
1.1 Teaching Directive Speech Acts: Is There Room for Improvement? 1
1.2 Objectives 5
1.3 Methodology 10
1.4 Chapter Contents 13

2 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts 16

2.1 Speech Acts: The Player All Linguistic Theories Want in
Their Team 16
2.2 Team 1. Codification-Based Theories and the Over-Grammaticalisation
of Speech Acts 18
2.2.1 Weaknesses of the Literal Force Hypothesis and Ross’s Performative
Hypothesis 18
2.2.2 Halliday’s Over-Grammaticalisation of Speech Acts 20
2.3 Team 2. Convention-Based Theories: Indirect Speech Acts 23
2.3.1 Searle: Inference and Convention in Speech Acts 23
2.3.2 Morgan’s Conventions of Usage and Short-Circuiting Implicatures 26
2.4 Team 3. Inference-Based Theories: Over-Pragmatisation
of Speech Acts 27
2.4.1 Standard Pragmatics Approach: Bach and Harnish’s
Speech Act Schemas 28
2.4.2 Direct Access Approaches I: Leech’s Interpersonal Rhetoric 29
2.4.3 Direct Access Approaches II: Conversational Approaches 32
2.5 A Cognitive-Constructional Approach to Directive Speech Acts 35
2.5.1 What Experimental Linguistics Has Revealed about
Speech Act Processing 35
2.5.2 Redefining the Literal Force Hypothesis in terms
of Sentence Type/Speech Act Compatibility 39

ix
x Contents
2.5.3 Revisiting the Notions of Direct and Indirect Speech Acts 43
2.5.4 Constraining Inferences via Cognitive Operations:
Conceptual Metonymy 48
2.5.5 Illocutionary Idealised Cognitive Models and
(Multiple Source)-in-Target Metonymies 50
2.5.6 Assembling the Illocutionary Puzzle: Families of
Illocutionary Constructions 60

3 Critical Assessment of the Representation of Speech Acts in

Advanced EFL Textbooks 69
3.1 Analytical Categories and Corpus of Textbooks for Analysis 70
3.2 Quantitative Assessment of the Treatment of Directive
Speech Acts in Advanced EFL Textbooks 73
3.3 Qualitative Assessment of the Treatment of Directive
Speech Acts in Advanced EFL Textbooks 77
3.3.1 Inclusion of Semantic/Pragmatic Information about
Speech Acts 77
3.3.2 Treatment of the Constructional Nature of Directive
Speech Acts 80
3.3.3 Treatment of Conversational Aspects of Directive
Speech Acts 82
3.3.4 Treatment of Cross-Cultural and Cross-Linguistic
Areas of Discrepancy between L1 and L2 84
3.4 Conclusions and Way Forward: Explicit Instruction through
a Corpus-Based Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar 85

4 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Directive Speech Acts I:

Know-What and Know-How of Directives 88
4.1 Orders 89
4.1.1 The Know-What of Orders 90
4.1.2 The Know-How of Orders 96
4.2 Requests 102
4.2.1 The Know-What of Requests 103
4.2.2 The Know-How of Requests 110
4.3 Beggings 120
4.3.1 The Know-What of Beggings 123
4.3.2 The Know-How of Beggings 130
4.4 Suggestions 136
4.4.1 The Know-What of Suggestions 137
4.4.2 The Know-How of Suggestions 143
4.5 Advice Acts 152
4.5.1 The Know-What of Advice Acts 152
4.5.2 The Know-How of Advice Acts 159
4.6 Warnings 169
4.6.1 The Know-What of Warnings 170
4.6.2 The Know-How of Warnings 177
Contents xi
5 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Directive
Speech Acts II: Activities and Practice Materials 183
5.1 Teaching the Know-What of Directives 186
5.2 Teaching the Know-How of Directives 196
5.3 Teaching Cross-Cultural and Cross-Linguistic Issues
of Directives 208

6 Conclusions 218

References 229
Index 246
Figures

2.1 Cost–benefit and politeness interactions (Leech, 1983: 107) page 31

2.2 Metonymic activation underlying examples (2.17) and (2.18) 53
2.3 Metonymic activation underlying examples (2.19)–(2.22) 55
2.4 (Multiple source)-in-target metonymic operation underlying
the request act in example (2.23) 57
2.5 Conceptual motivation underlying the CAN vs. COULD
YOU DO X? request constructions in examples (2.24) and (2.25) 58
4.1 Force schema underlying the conceptualisation of orders 90
4.2 Force schema underlying the conceptualisation of requests 103
4.3 Force schema underlying the conceptualisation of beggings 123
4.4 Force schema underlying the conceptualisation of suggestions 137
4.5 Force schema underlying the conceptualisation of advice acts 152
4.6 Force schema underlying the conceptualisation of warnings 169
5.1 Force dynamics of orders: S = speaker; F = force; H = hearer 187
5.2 Force dynamics of requests: S = speaker; F = force; H = hearer 187
5.3 Force dynamics of beggings: S = speaker; F = force;
HR/S = hearer as rational/social being; H A = hearer as agent 188
5.4 Force dynamics of suggestions: S = speaker; F = force;
HR = hearer as rational being; H A = hearer as agent 189

xii
Tables

2.1 Deep structure versus surface structure in question for

information versus request interpretation page 20
2.2 Attributes configuring the ONTOLOGY of directive
illocutionary ICMs 51
2.3 Ontology for the illocutionary ICM of the act of requesting 52
2.4 Social variables configuring the STRUCTURE of directive
illocutionary ICMs 59
2.5 STRUCTURE of the illocutionary ICM of the act of
requesting in terms of interactions between attributes, as well
as between attributes and social variables 60
2.6 Realisation procedures for the attributes of the ICM
of requesting 65
2.7 Number of occurrences in iWeb for the realisation
procedures of the requests in examples (2.27)–(2.31) 66
2.8 Base constructions for the act of requesting 67
2.9 Summary of contemporary theoretical advancements
on speech acts 68
3.1 Range and distribution of exercises devoted to the teaching/
practice of directive speech acts in advanced EFL textbooks 74
3.2 Analytical categories for the assessment of current EFL
textbooks as regards their treatment of directive speech acts 77
4.1 The know-what of orders 96
4.2 Base constructions for the act of ordering in English 97
4.3 Imperative base construction + realisation procedures
for orders 99
4.4 Comparison of base constructions for the act of ordering in
English and Spanish 101
4.5 The know-what of requests 111
4.6 Base constructions for the act of requesting in English 113
4.7 Imperative base construction + realisation procedures for requests 114

xiii
xiv List of Tables
4.8 Comparison of base constructions for the act of requesting in
English and Spanish 121
4.9 The know-what of beggings 129
4.10 Base constructions for the act of begging in English 130
4.11 Imperative base construction + realisation procedures
for beggings 131
4.12 Comparison of base constructions for the act of begging in
English and Spanish 135
4.13 The know-what of suggestions 143
4.14 Base constructions for the act of suggesting in English 144
4.15 Imperative base constructions + realisation procedures for
suggestions 145
4.16 Comparison of base constructions for the act of suggesting in
English and Spanish 149
4.17 The know-what of advice acts 160
4.18 Base constructions for the act of advising in English 161
4.19 Realisation procedures for the act of advising 162
4.20 Imperative base construction + realisation procedures for the
act of advising 164
4.21 Solicited and unsolicited bare imperative advice acts 165
4.22 Comparison of base constructions for the act of advising in
English and Spanish 166
4.23 The know-what of warnings 176
4.24 Base constructions for the act of warning in English 178
4.25 Realisation procedures of the act of warning 180
4.26 Comparison of base constructions for the act of warning in
English and Spanish 182
5.1 The know-what of suggestions 190
5.2 The know-what of requests (short version) 197
5.3 The know-what of requests (interactions between attributes
and variables) 203
5.4 Linguistic realisation procedures for combination with
request base constructions 205
5.5 Fieldwork, comparison, and discussion task 209
5.6 Base constructions for requests in English 210
5.7 Base constructions for requests in Spanish 212
5.8 Base constructions for advice acts in English 213
5.9 The know-what of advice acts (interactions with
socio-contextual variables) 214
5.10 Discourse-completion task 215
5.11 Repair and comparison task 217
Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the two anonymous referees who read the initial
book proposal. They helped me to see the weaknesses in my arguments and
provided very good advice on how to improve them. I am also indebted
to Dr Merja Kytö, the general editor of the Studies in English Language
series, for her comments on the final draft of this book.
I would especially like to acknowledge Helen Barton, the commissioning
editor for Linguistics at Cambridge University Press, and her editorial
assistant Isabel Collins, who have been the most helpful allies in the process
of writing this book, providing constant encouragement, and making every
step of the way easy and enjoyable.
There are many people who have provided the necessary life scaffolding for
me to be capable of writing this book. My small family, first and foremost,
who are always there, generously offering the little time and energy they
have to enable me to find the space to write. My friends (Ana, Nuria,
Asun, Chelo, Josefina, Guillermo, and the rest of my dear ‘Epicúreos’,
Alejandro, Miguel Ángel Longas, James Wong), those of the past and
of the present, who have provided pragmatic and emotional support and
the necessary happiness to face the long research hours. And especially
in the last few years, the brave women in ASFAM (Pilar, Raquel, María,
Silvia y Ester), who have opened up a bright path of hope in the power
and possibilities of friendship, shared dreams, altruism, and joint human
actions. My friend, Dr Karine Duvignau, who has so many times provided
a shelter in Toulouse, one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, for me to
write. My dearest friend and mentor Prof. Ruiz de Mendoza, who taught
me to investigate language and to pay attention to detail.
All shortcomings are my own.
The investigation supporting the findings reported in this book has
been financed by FEDER/Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and
Universities, State Research Agency, project no. FFI2017-82730-P and by
the University of La Rioja (PID Convocatoria 2019/20).

xv
Abbreviations

A1 first starters level of proficiency

A2 second starters level of proficiency
BNC British National Corpus
CARLA Centre for Advance Research on Language
Acquisition-University of Minnesota
CEFR Common European Framework of Reference for
Languages
CL cognitive linguistics
CORPES XXI Corpus del Español del Siglo XXI
CREA Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual
C1 first advanced level of proficiency
C2 second advanced level of proficiency
EFL English as a foreign language
F force
FL foreign language
H hearer
HA hearer as agent
HR hearer as rational being
HS hearer as social being
ICM idealised cognitive model
IFIDs illocutionary force indicating devices
ISA indirect speech act
L1 first, or native, language
L2 second/foreign language
S speaker
TB1–TB10 textbooks 1–10

xvi
1

Introduction

1.1 Teaching Directive Speech Acts:

Is There Room for Improvement?
Every day of our lives we use language to tell stories, to express feelings,
to describe the world, and also, as was lucidly revealed by Austin (1962) in
his book How to Do Things with Words, to perform actions. There are some
things we do physically with our hands or legs, and others we do verbally
by means of words. One essential thing we can do and often do primarily
by means of language is to try to influence other people into a certain path
of action. Thus, we can move them to do something in their benefit (by
advising or warning them), in our own benefit (by ordering, requesting, or
begging them), or in mutual benefit (i.e. by suggesting a common course of
action). Actions of this kind, which we carry out linguistically and which
have as their main objective to prompt our interlocutors to do something,
are known in the literature as directive speech acts.
Directives are ubiquitous. We start producing them as soon as we learn to
speak and, for the rest of our lives, we use them on a daily basis. Directives
are useful because they allow us to attain our goals by persuading or pushing
other people to act according to our wishes, but they are not free from
risks. Using directive acts inappropriately can offend our interlocutors. As
a result, the directive act may turn out to be ineffective and our goals may
end up unfulfilled. Alternatively, we may succeed in getting the listener to
carry out the desired action but at a high social cost. Human interaction
is very sensitive to the use of directives, which are a potential source of
interpersonal conflict.
Learning to produce directive speech acts correctly in a second or foreign
language is a crucial but difficult task. Speech acts are rich, kaleidoscopic
concepts, and their use involves juggling with many social, interactional,
and contextual variables at once: the relative power of the speakers, their
social closeness, the formality of the situation, or the cost–benefit of the

1
2 Introduction
action being requested, etc. These are only some of the factors that need
to be considered by a speaker if she wants to produce a contextually and
socially felicitous speech act that stands a chance to be successful. A request
like If you don’t mind, would you please be so kind as to open the window?
functions well in a formal context or in a situation in which the speakers
are strangers to each other, or one of them is more powerful than the other
(e.g. an employee talking to her boss). However, the same request would
most probably sound odd and possibly move the receptor to search for
some ulterior hidden meaning (e.g. irony), if used among close friends in
an informal setting.
In addition, directive speech acts do not have a unique linguistic form. The
system of options offered by language is lavishly exploited in the production
of speech acts, each directive displaying a rich array of possible linguistic
realisations. Some of them are virtually synonymous (e.g. If you don’t mind,
could you please open the window? – If it’s not too much trouble, would you
mind opening the window?). Others differ in order to accommodate the
directive act to the social/contextual variables at stake (e.g. Please, could
you open the window? (formal context) versus Open the window, will you?
(informal context)). As shall be made apparent in Chapter 4, the variety and
wealth of forms and linguistic realisations involved in the production of
each directive speech act is fascinating and a reflection of the creativeness,
flexibility, and communicative power of language.
Their conceptual complexity and formal richness make the learning of
directive speech acts a challenging, demanding, and often strenuous task
for students of a foreign language. Nevertheless, the ability to perform
and interpret speech acts correctly is an essential competence that needs
to be acquired to master the use of a second language. Illocution has,
therefore, become a pivotal aspect of language pedagogy. Shortly after the
inception of speech act theory, textbooks of English as a foreign (or second)
language (EFL) started including sections devoted to the teaching of speech
acts. Several contemporary studies have made manifest, however, that
speech acts are largely underrepresented in current EFL coursebook series
(Vellenga, 2004; Ren & Han, 2016; Pérez-Hernández, 2019), and that their
teaching presents several problematic issues: poor treatment of pragmatic
use of the target language (Cohen & Ishihara, 2013); insufficient contextual
information being provided (Harwood, 2014); and pragmatic strategies
being unsystematically and stereotypically dealt with (McConachy & Hata,
2013). In addition, Pérez-Hernández (2019) has observed a disconnection
between current research advancements on illocution and the extent to
which they have found their way into textbooks and teaching materials.
1.1 Teaching Directive Speech Acts 3
This fissure between theory and practice is manifest in at least three main
areas: (1) contrastive studies between first, or native, language (L1) and
second/foreign language (L2); (2) cognitive analyses of the mental processes
and operations that underlie the production and interpretation of speech
acts; and (3) recent accounts on the idiosyncratic nature of illocutionary
constructions.
More specifically, current EFL textbooks do not take advantage of
contemporary studies on contrastive aspects of the performance of speech
acts in native and foreign languages (Luomala, 2010; Neddar, 2012; Pérez-
Hernández, 2019). The English directive construction Can you pass me
the salt, please?, in which a question about the capacity of the listener to
perform an action is used as a request for him to actually do the action,
is also possible and comprehensible for Spanish speakers (e.g. ¿Me puedes
pasar la sal, por favor?). However, the latter is not a conventional, frequent
way of requesting something in Spanish. Interestingly enough, the directive
construction that Spanish speakers would use in the same context (e.g. ¿Me
pasas la sal, por favor?) does not have a literal counterpart in English (cf. *Do
you pass me the salt, please?). Coverage of this type of mismatch between L1
and L2 in the performance of speech acts has not reached the textbooks.
This may cause EFL students to make mistakes in their production of
speech acts in the L2 based on language interferences and faulty literal
translations from their L1.
Present-day EFL textbooks also ignore relevant aspects of the cognition
of speech acts. For the past three decades, cognitive linguistics has
been mounting up evidence about the metonymic basis of speech act
production (Gibbs, 1984, 1994; Pérez-Hernández, 1996, 2001, 2012, 2013,
2019; Panther & Thornburg, 1998, 2003, 2005; Pérez-Hernández & Ruiz
de Mendoza, 2002, 2011; Ruiz de Mendoza & Baicchi, 2007; Del Campo,
2013; among others). Just as the painter (Picasso) metonymically stands for
its work in I just bought a Picasso, it is also the case, in the production of
a directive act, that asking about one of the preconditions for a successful
request may activate the act of requesting as a whole. By way of illustration,
the utterance Have you got a pen, please? literally asks about one of the
preconditions that needs to be fulfilled for a request to be successful (i.e.
the fact that the listener is in possession of the object that the speaker
needs). However, in the appropriate context, this literal question about one
of the preconditions of requests may metonymically stand for the full act
of requesting and have a similar illocutionary force to that of an explicit
request (e.g. I request you to lend me a pen). As shall become apparent
in Chapters 2 and 4, awareness of this metonymical basis of speech act
4 Introduction
performance, as well as of other cognitive mechanisms (i.e. conceptual
metaphor, force dynamics) that underlie the production and understanding
of indirect directive acts, will prove essential in the design of more powerful
and effective materials for their teaching.
Finally, lack of consideration of formal aspects of illocution, such as the
existence of speech act constructions, is also flagrant in contemporary EFL
textbooks. A reason that explains this may be the fact that illocutionary acts
do not generally exhibit fixed form-meaning pairings, at least not in the sense
in which form-meaning pairings are understood at other levels of linguistic
description (Goldberg, 1995, 2006). Even conventional constructions for the
expression of a specific directive can also often be interpreted literally with
a different illocutionary meaning. This is the case with CAN YOU DO X?
forms (e.g. Can you pass me the salt?), which in different situations can be used
as either conventional requests or as questions about the listener’s ability to
physically perform the stated action. For decades, the observation that one
linguistic form may have different illocutionary forces (e.g. request versus
informative question), depending on the context in which it is used, led to
the belief that a constructional treatment of illocution was unattainable.
Speech acts were subsequently considered a pragmatic phenomenon
dependent on inferential processes to a greater (Bach & Harnish, 1979;
Leech, 1983, 2014; Levinson, 1983; Geis, 1995; Sperber & Wilson, 1995) or
a lesser extent (Searle, 1969, 1975; Halliday, 1978, 1994; Morgan, 1978; Dik,
1989, 1997). Nevertheless, recent studies of how form and meaning are
assembled in the expression of speech acts have revealed that it is, in fact,
possible to speak of speech act constructions (Pérez-Hernández, 2001, 2013;
Pérez-Hernández & Ruiz de Mendoza, 2002, 2011; Stefanowitsch, 2003;
Mauri & Sansò, 2011; Del Campo, 2013; Vassilaki, 2017). As shall be argued
in Chapters 2 and 4, illocutionary constructions are necessarily more flexible
and more ductile than morphological, lexical, or syntactic constructions,
and they exhibit different degrees of codification. Some of them are highly
codified and, therefore, allow only for a directive reading. WOULD YOU
MIND DOING X? constructions, as in Would you mind lending me a pen?,
are highly unlikely to be interpreted with an illocutionary force different
from that of a directive. Others lack full codification, but still display a
certain amount of conventionalisation in the production of directives. I
NEED X constructions, as in I need a pen, could be interpreted as simple
assertions (i.e. I need a pen. I am going to buy one), but in the appropriate
context they are highly conventionalised formulae for requesting people
to do something for us. Their conventional use as directives is reflected in
their high frequency of occurrence and in that they are compatible with
1.2 Objectives 5
some linguistic realisations that are typical of polite directives (e.g. requests,
suggestions), such as the adverb please or question tags (i.e. I need a pen,
please; I need a pen, could you?). Yet other illocutionary constructions fully
hinge on inferential processes for their understanding as directives (e.g. The
pen has run out of ink). To understand this example as a request, the listener
would have to infer that (1) the speaker wants/needs a pen, and (2) that she
is asking him to provide her with one. The lack of conventionality for the
performance of directive speech acts of expressions of this type makes them
less likely to be compatible with the use of politeness markers (i.e. ?The pen
has run out of ink, please).
Speech act constructions are complex, interactive, and multifaceted. This
is only to be expected if they are to adapt themselves to the changing and
varied communicative needs of speakers in different contexts. Despite their
prismatic nature, contemporary studies of speech acts have revealed that it
is possible to build inventories of base constructions for each illocutionary
act, together with repositories of additional linguistic realisation procedures
that can be used to modulate their degree of explicitness and politeness
to adapt them to the users’ needs in different contexts (Pérez-Hernández,
2001, 2012, 2013). Once described and formalised, these illocutionary base
constructions can be taught to students of an L2 to help them improve
their illocutionary performance in the target language.
As argued in this section, there is still ample room for improvement
in the treatment of directive speech acts in EFL textbooks. In addition,
there exists an important gap between present-day theoretical knowledge
on the performance of directives and its implementation in EFL teaching
materials. This book fights the current state of the art in the teaching of
speech acts and argues that neither the complexity of the illocutionary
phenomenon itself, nor the attested disconnection between theoretical
advancements and their pedagogical application, should prevent EFL
textbooks from offering a richer and more accurate portrayal of directive
speech acts in order to facilitate their learning by EFL students. To this
aim, it offers a theoretically updated and psychologically valid account
of directive speech acts translated into a set of instructions and practice
materials for its use by EFL professionals.

1.2 Objectives
The present book identifies those aspects of speech act performance that
are still underdeveloped in current EFL textbooks and applies recent
research findings in the design of a specific set of instructions and practice
6 Introduction
materials for its effective teaching. In this regard, it responds to recent calls
to implement contemporary research in the fields of applied and cognitive
linguistics on the development of more solid textbooks for the teaching of
EFL (Ishihara, 2010; Tomlinson, 2013; Achard, 2018).
By merging content and practical proposals to identify and solve
present shortcomings in the description, explanation, and teaching of
speech acts, this book offers a full-fledged theoretical architecture of
the most representative and frequently used directive speech acts (i.e.
ordering, requesting, begging, suggesting, advising, and warning),
which incorporates contemporary research advancements in pragmatic,
cognitive/constructional, and contrastive aspects of illocution. Theoretical
contents are presented in the form of a corpus-based cognitive pedagogical
grammar of directive speech acts. Practical teaching proposals are the result
of exploiting and implementing this pedagogical grammar into a set of
innovative exercises and activities that can improve current methods of
teaching speech acts to advanced EFL students.
The instructional suggestions and teaching materials included in this
book are based on a thorough investigation of the nature and functioning
of illocutionary acts that brings together research advancements from
diverse but compatible theoretical frameworks. This book represents,
therefore, an attempt to find synergies between strong and relevant
but so far isolated theoretical approaches to illocution. Pragmatic-
functional, cognitive-constructional, and contrastive perspectives on
illocutionary production and interpretation are brought together into a
comprehensive framework that allows an all-encompassing, fine-grained
treatment of illocutionary phenomena. The resulting corpus-based
cognitive/constructional account of speech acts is also compatible with
the experimental data stemming from current psycholinguistic studies on
illocution. Nevertheless, as Achard (2018: 37) remarked in relation to the
contribution of linguistic models to EFL practices, ‘linguists have seldom
made the effort to explicitly spell out the pedagogical ramifications of
their theoretical positions, which makes it difficult for instructors to create
appropriate activities in the classroom’. In this connection, this books
also aims to bridge the existing gap between recent theoretical findings
and their implementation in textbooks and teaching materials. Thus, the
theoretical account on speech acts presented in Chapter 2 supports the
subsequent design of instructions and practice materials for the teaching
of speech acts to Spanish advanced EFL students in Chapters 4 and 5.
While Chapter 2 contains an in-depth discussion on theoretical aspects
of illocution and is, therefore, aimed at a more specialised readership
1.2 Objectives 7
(speech act and EFL theoreticians, postgraduate students of linguistics),
Chapters 4 and 5 are presented in plain, largely jargon-free language
to make the information accessible to designers of EFL instructors and
textbooks interested in creating new teaching activities and materials for
the EFL classroom.
According to the theoretical framework adopted for this investigation,
it is argued that teaching how to perform directive speech acts correctly in
a foreign language involves at least three main objectives.
1. Teaching the semantic and pragmatic attributes and variables that
make up each directive speech act.
2. Teaching the base constructions and related linguistic realisation
procedures that the language system offers for the instantiation of the
semantic and pragmatic knowledge that characterises each directive
speech act.
3. Teaching the areas of discrepancy between L1 and L2 that may result
in difficulties to the EFL student.
Objectives (1) and (2) lead to a cognitive, constructional approach to the
description of speech act categories as form-meaning pairings.
The knowledge that native speakers have about the meaning of each
directive speech act under consideration will be captured in terms of
illocutionary idealised cognitive models (ICMs) (Lakoff 1987; Pérez-
Hernández, 2001, 2013). Illocutionary ICMs include information such as
the communicative purpose for which the act is used (e.g. a request is used
to ask the listener to do something in the speaker’s benefit, while a piece of
advice is used to tell the listener to do something in his own benefit), the
social factors that need to be taken into consideration to decide on the most
suitable linguistic form for the expression of the speech act in a particular
context (i.e. the social distance between speakers, the relative power between
them, etc.), the amount of politeness that the speech act requires (i.e. orders
make use of social power to overcome politeness needs, while beggings
require high amounts of politeness due to the condition of inferiority that
affects the speaker), the social cost of performing a particular speech act (i.e.
requests and orders are costly for the addressee, while pieces of advice and
warnings are not), etc. In other words, illocutionary ICMs are exhaustive
collections of the semantic and pragmatic attributes and variables that
characterise the meaning and conceptual fabric of each directive speech
act. In this manner, readers will be presented with a comprehensive and
accessible description of the meaning side of each directive speech act type
under consideration. Real language examples will be provided to illustrate
8 Introduction
the semantic and pragmatic components of each directive speech act and
to highlight the differences and similarities between them.
The formal side of directives will be approached by offering the base
constructions used in English for their expression. Together with the specific
base constructions, this book also provides an exhaustive collection of
related linguistic realisation procedures corresponding to each of the
semantic and pragmatic components that define the speech acts under
scrutiny. These linguistic realisation procedures are shown to be useful
in further specifying the subtype of directive force of the speech act (i.e.
order, request, piece of advice, warning, beg, or suggestion), in modulating
the degree of explicitness or politeness of the directive act, and in adapting
the illocutionary act to the interactional needs required by each context.
Thus, it will be shown how a base construction like the CAN YOU DO X?
interrogative question can be modulated into a request or a begging
depending on the additional linguistic resources activated by the speaker
(e.g. Can you hold this for a second? – request versus Please, please, please,
can you hold this? – begging).
The complex conceptual nature of illocutionary acts makes it virtually
impossible for speakers to explicitly verbalise all the semantic and
pragmatic components defining a particular directive speech act. Thus,
depending on contextual, social, and politeness requirements, a variable
and limited number of such components are activated linguistically in an
overt manner and, in so doing, they metonymically stand for the whole
speech act. Indirect speech acts will be shown to be grounded on this type
of metonymic cognitive operations that enable speakers to economically
produce illocutions with different degrees of explicitness as required by the
different contextual needs.
Objective (3) asks for careful comparison and consideration of the areas
of overlap and contrast between a L2 and the learner’s L1, as regards both
the conceptual (i.e. meaning) and formal (i.e. linguistic realisations) aspects
of speech act production included in objectives (1) and (2) above. Recent
contrastive analyses show that languages have different constructions and
constructional properties that are likely to cause transfer effects and faulty
representations in a L2 (Hijazo-Gascón, Cadierno & Ibarretxe-Antuñano,
2016; Ruiz de Mendoza & Agustin, 2016). In fact, according to Holme
(2009: 84), one of the main sources of errors for EFL students is their use
of L1 forms and meanings when using an L2. This has prompted many
voices within the cognitive linguistics paradigm to be raised in support
of a greater acknowledgement of the pervasiveness and relevance of
constructions in EFL teaching (Römer, O’Donnell & Ellis, 2014; Achard,
1.2 Objectives 9
2018). Identifying the semantic, pragmatic, and formal mismatches between
the two languages can help students to avoid those traps by serving ‘the
purpose of preparing teaching materials and exploiting these in L2/FL
instruction’ (De Knop & De Rycker, 2008: 2). Despite the relative youth
of construction-based pedagogical approaches, experimental evidence
on the psychological reality of constructions for EFL learners and the
effectiveness of a pedagogical intervention based on the explicit teaching
of form-meaning pairings is mounting up in the literature (Holme, 2010;
Baicchi, 2016; Sung & Yang, 2016).
Altogether, objectives (1)–(3) advocate a contrastive, cognitive-
constructional approach to the teaching of directive speech acts. One of
the central tenets of cognitive linguistics is that language is composed
of form-meaning pairings, also known as constructions (Goldberg, 1995,
2006; Langacker, 2008). Linguistic choices are paired with idealised
representations of reality that include propositional, pragmatic, contextual,
and cultural knowledge. Meaning is, therefore, understood in a broad
sense, as the idealised collection of encyclopaedic knowledge that language
users have about a topic. This view of language allows cognitive linguistics
to explain the motivation of linguistic forms and makes of it a promising
theoretical framework to inform EFL teaching practices and to guide the
design of EFL didactic materials. As Jacobsen (2018: 669) puts it:
Using select, carefully adapted for unprepared audiences, and contextualised
CL concepts in L2 instruction can reveal the perspective of a native speaker
and make form-meaning mappings relatively transparent for L2 learners.
Accordingly, the underlying conceptual characteristics of CLs make it a
good candidate for the role of providing a comprehensive theory that could
successfully support L2 instruction (Achard & Niemeier 2004; Tyler &
Evans 2004; Tyler 2012).
So far, as noted in Jacobsen (2012, 2015), there is mounting experimental,
quantitative (Chen & Oller, 2008; Valenzuela & Rojo, 2008; Jacobsen,
2018), and qualitative evidence that these cognitive linguistics tenets can
successfully be applied to the teaching of diverse aspects of language,
such as phrasal verbs (Dirven, 2001; Liu, 2010), metaphorical/idiomatic
language (Lindstromberg & Boers, 2005; Littlemore & Low, 2006;
Boers & Lindstromberg, 2008; Yasuda, 2010), and grammar (prepositions:
Lindstromberg, 1996; Tyler & Evans, 2004; Tyler, Mueller & Ho, 2011;
tense and aspect: Niemeier & Reif, 2008). There is a notorious lack,
however, of applications of cognitive linguistics to the teaching of higher
levels of language description, among which there is the teaching of speech
acts. As shall be explained in the next section, this book incorporates a
10 Introduction
contrastive, cognitive-constructional approach to directive speech acts into
the EFL teaching practice and the design of EFL teaching materials based
on explicit instruction.

1.3 Methodology
In accordance with the three objectives specified in the previous section,
our proposal advocates an explicit instruction approach to the teaching
of speech acts, which has already been proved to be more beneficial than
implicit L2 teaching (Norris & Ortega, 2000; Ellis, 2001, 2002; Spada &
Tomita, 2010), with specific studies providing evidence about its effectiveness
on the realm of grammar (Sharwood Smith, 1981; Rutherford, 1987; Ellis,
2001), and, more recently, also of pragmatics (Taguchi, 2015; Tello Rueda,
2016). Explicit instruction is also better adapted to the capacities and needs
of advanced students of a L2, who already have the necessary command of
that language to understand the explanations in the L2 explicit instruction
textbook or class. Teachers and authors of advanced EFL textbooks can
profit from their students’ linguistic competence to explicitly teach subtle
nuances of the L2, which at lower levels have to be necessarily taught in a
more implicit fashion.
To facilitate the explicit instruction of directive speech acts, this book
takes a cognitive pedagogical grammar approach to their characterisation.
Taylor (2008: 38) explains that a pedagogical grammar may be defined ‘as
a description of a language [or an aspect of a language] which is aimed
at the foreign language learner and/or teacher, and whose purpose is to
promote insight into, and thereby to facilitate the acquisition of, the foreign
language’. Pedagogical grammar differs from descriptive or linguistic
grammars, which are written by linguists for linguists, and which are not
aimed at meeting the needs of the students and/or teachers of a language
(Dirven, 1985, 1990, 2001). Thus, pedagogical grammars make use of
accessible terminology and represent concepts in a reader-friendly manner
to be able to reach their intended audience. In addition, they place the
focus of attention on those aspects of a language that may pose a problem
or a difficulty for learners and offer succinct, intuitive, and straightforward
explanations of idiosyncratic aspects of the L2 (Taylor, 2008: 38–39).
To comply with the objectives that were set up in Section 1.2, the cognitive
pedagogical grammar offered in this book includes contrastive, cognitive,
and constructional information about speech acts. A word of caveat is in
order. The term ‘grammar’ should not be understood here in a narrow
sense as applying exclusively to morphological and syntactic aspects of
1.3 Methodology 11
language. Cognitive pedagogical grammar inherits the cognitive linguistics
conception of grammar as the collection of form-meaning pairings (i.e.
constructions) that occur at all levels of linguistic description, including
morphology, lexicon, syntax, illocution, and discourse (Goldberg, 1995,
2006; Langacker, 2008; Ruiz de Mendoza & Galera, 2014). Cognitive
pedagogical grammar is, therefore, an adequate tool for the description and
explanation of the directive illocutions under scrutiny. More specifically,
the contrastive, cognitive-constructional pedagogical grammar approach to
directive speech acts adopted in this book can help teaching professionals
(whether teachers, lecturers, and/or textbook authors) to prepare their
teaching sessions and design their didactic materials on this topic, while
it may be useful for postgraduate students and new researchers who are
looking to gain an understanding of the workings of directive illocutionary
acts.1
A second relevant methodological decision on which the present
proposal hinges is the use of real language data for the analysis of both the
semantic and the formal sides of directive illocutionary constructions. At
present, corpus-based cognitive pedagogical grammars are scarce. Meunier
(2008: 99) points to the relative youth of the fields of corpus linguistics
and cognitive pedagogical grammar as the main reason for the lack of
availability of this type of materials. One exception is Carter, Hughes,
and McCarthy’s (2000) Exploring Grammar in Context, which does not,
however, include the description of speech acts.
As noted in Meunier (2008: 102), whether the use of authentic language
in pedagogical grammars and teaching materials is beneficial to the
learning process is a matter of controversy. Some authors defend the
exclusive use of authentic material (Römer, 2004, 2006) and others argue
that learners have more to gain from exposure to prototypical, didactic, and
learner-adapted examples (Widdowson, 2003). The cognitive pedagogical
grammar of directive speech acts offered in this book takes sides with
Valdman’s (2003: 61) equidistant position to the effect that it reflects ‘the
actual speech of target language speakers in authentic communicative
situations, and should conform to native speakers’ idealised view of their
speech use, should conform to expectations of both native speakers and
foreign learners concerning the type of behaviour appropriate for foreign
learners, and should take into account processing and learning factors’.

1 See De Knop and De Rycker (2008), De Knop and Gilquin (2016), Masuda (2018), Gonzálvez-
García (2019), and Ibarretxe-Antuñano and Cheikh-Khamis (2019), among others, for cognitive
pedagogical grammar approaches to different linguistic phenomena.
12 Introduction
Thus, the description and explanation of the meaning and formal sides
of directive speech acts in Chapter 4 stem primarily from the analysis
of authentic instances of language taken from the British National and
the iWeb corpora for English data, and the CREA and CORPES XXI
corpora for Spanish data (see below). Five hundred random instances of
each directive category under consideration have been retrieved from the
aforementioned corpora for analysis. Whenever possible and as required by
the teaching and learning needs, this corpus has also been used to illustrate
the theoretical points offered in Chapter 4, as well as in the development
of activities and practice materials in Chapter 5. In this the present book
follows and acknowledges recent fine proposals on how to effectively use
corpus data in the development of classroom materials for teaching EFL
pragmatics (Bardovi-Harlig, Mossman & Vellenga, 2014a, 2014b; Bardovi-
Harlig & Mossman, 2016; Bardovi-Harlig, Mossman & Su, 2017).
Nevertheless, both illustrative examples of theoretical aspects of speech
acts and those illocutionary act samples included in the activities and
practice materials need not always exhaustively copy the rough data in
the corpora used for analysis. If needed, they have been adapted to meet
teaching and learning requirements. The use of adapted data is especially
useful when the object of study involves higher level pragmatic concepts,
such as directive speech acts. As explained in Section 1.2, the successful
use of directive illocutions often involves managing complex amalgams
of pragmatic, semantic, and conversational knowledge. For teaching and
learning purposes, it is, therefore, clearer to initially present the students
with adapted examples that illustrate the workings of just one or two of
these variables at a time. Once the different strands of knowledge needed
to perform a directive speech act correctly have been mastered, it then
seems the right time to present the students with more complex, corpus-
based samples and exercises that juggle with several of those variables
simultaneously. This book, therefore, adheres to a mixed approach to the
use of corpus data. While the theoretical proposals on the nature of speech
acts are based on the analysis of real language examples, the use of the latter
for illustration or in the design of teaching materials is conditioned to the
teaching needs. Therefore, both adapted and corpus-based examples are
used as required by instructional purposes.
For the English data, the analysis makes use of the British National
Corpus (BNC) and the more recent iWeb corpus, which allows specific
searches for the different varieties of English. Together, these corpora offer
over fourteen billion words, including both written and spoken data, for
analysis.
1.4 Chapter Contents 13
For the Spanish data, the Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual
(CREA) has been chosen, because it has a good balance of written and
spoken sources; together with the Corpus del Español del Siglo XXI
(CORPES XXI), which is yearly updated with twenty-five million extra
forms. Both the CREA and the CORPES XXI allow specific searches on
the Castilian variety of Spanish.
Given the kaleidoscopic and often non-conventional nature of speech
acts, however, the use of corpora may sometimes run short of providing an
exhaustive picture of the semantic and formal characterisation of speech
acts. Therefore, a mixed method has been implemented in order to find
the most exhaustive collection of linguistic realisations for each speech
act type: (1) a corpus-based search has been performed in order to find
indirect speech acts which are introduced by reporting performatives (e.g.
He requested: ‘Could you help me out with this mess?’) in the BNC, iWeb,
CREA, and CORPES XXI corpora described above. In this way, it has been
possible to take advantage of the categorisation made by native speakers of
the speech acts they are reporting; (2) the initial corpus-based list has been
enriched with other directive configurations taken from a thorough revision
of the literature on speech acts and additional research resources, such as the
CARLA (Centre for Advance Research on Language Acquisition-University
of Minnesota) website; and (3) the final collection of speech acts for analysis
has been completed with instances of directive acts that the author has come
across in her everyday life interaction with English native speakers or arising
from her own native speaker’s intuition in the case of the Spanish language.
Before including the linguistic configurations stemming from (2) and (3) in
the final list of linguistic realisations for speech acts, an additional search
of those configurations in rich computerised corpora (i.e. iWeb, Web Corp
Live) has been conducted to assess their productiveness and to confirm
that they are in actual use. Given the indirect nature of speech acts, this
combined method guarantees the necessary degree of exhaustiveness in the
final collection of linguistic configurations.

1.4 Chapter Contents

The contents of the book have been organised as follows.
Chapter 2, What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts,
provides an accessible and reader-friendly outlook on contemporary
theoretical research on speech acts, explaining and illustrating the latest
pragmatic, functional, conversational, and cognitive/constructional
contributions to the understanding of illocutionary phenomena.
14 Introduction
The chapter advocates a contrastive, cognitive/constructional theory
of speech acts, showing how this approach is capable of integrating
pragmatic, semantic, and syntactic aspects of speech acts into a unified and
comprehensive account that is compatible with current psycholinguistic
knowledge on the production and understanding of speech acts. This
chapter also sets the theoretical foundations for Chapters 4 and 5, offering
a full-fledged theoretical proposal on the semantic and formal features
of directive illocutionary acts in terms of illocutionary constructions and
metonymic operations. The semantic side of the constructions is captured
in the form of illocutionary ICMs, and the formal side takes the form of
inventories of base constructions and linguistic realisation procedures. It is
further argued that speakers can modulate the explicitness of their directive
speech acts through (multiple source)-in-target metonymic operations.
At the end of Chapter 2 and stemming from the previous overview of
contemporary theories of illocution, the reader is presented with a relevant
list of theoretical aspects about the meaning and form of speech acts, which
have been found to be essential in their production and understanding, and
which are, therefore, expected to be included in textbooks and instructional
materials in order to guarantee their correct learning. This inventory of
relevant theoretical aspects that need to be taken into account in the
description of directive speech acts will serve as a guide to the critical
assessment of their representation in current EFL textbooks in Chapter 3.
Chapter 3, Critical Assessment of the Representation of Speech Acts in
Advanced EFL Textbooks, reports the results of a study which looks into
a collection of textbooks for advanced EFL students in order to assess their
treatment of directive speech acts. This chapter considers aspects related to
(1) the quantitative representation of directive speech acts in the textbooks
(i.e. determining if there is a balanced portrayal of the most frequent
categories of directive speech acts) and (2) the qualitative treatment of
directive speech acts (i.e. assessing if the depiction of directive speech
acts in EFL textbooks has incorporated the main research advancements
described in Chapter 2).
Chapter 4, A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Directive Speech
Acts I: Know-What and Know-How of Directives, applies the cognitive-
constructional approach to speech acts presented in Chapter 2 to the
task of providing an exhaustive description of the meaning and form of
the six directive speech acts under consideration (i.e. orders, requests,
beggings, suggestions, advice acts, and warnings), including contrastive
considerations about the realisation of these illocutionary acts in Spanish
(L1) and English (L2). The description of the constructional nature of
1.4 Chapter Contents 15
the aforementioned directive speech acts takes the form of a cognitive
pedagogical grammar. Information is, thus, presented in an accessible,
largely jargon-free manner, so that it can be used by teachers and textbook
developers for the explicit teaching of the workings of directive illocutions
to advanced Spanish EFL students. For each directive category, this chapter
offers relevant information about its semantics (i.e. know-what) and its
formal configurations (i.e. know-how).
Chapter 5, A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Directive Speech
Acts II: Activities and Practice Materials, draws on the description of the
meaning and form of directive speech acts reported in Chapter 4 in order
to offer a collection of practical activities for their teaching. Activities are
grouped attending to the semantic, formal, or contrastive aspects that
need to be taught. Some of them are designed to improve the students’
recognition and production of those illocutionary constructions and
linguistic realisation procedures which allow the communication of the
different illocutionary forces. Others are specifically devoted to help teachers
and textbook developers show students (1) the motivation of the form of
directive speech acts in their underlying semantics and force dynamics,
(2) the role of conceptual metonymy in the production of directive speech
acts, and (3) the existence of families of speech act base constructions
whose illocutionary force can be further modulated by means of linguistic
realisation procedures.
The final chapter, Conclusions, summarises the main contributions of
the previous chapters and offers suggestions for future research.
2

What Contemporary Research

Tells Us about Speech Acts

2.1 Speech Acts: The Player All Linguistic

Theories Want in Their Team
The story of theoretical studies of speech acts is one of appropriation:
three all-star teams of linguists, representing largely opposing theoretical
positions about the nature of language, wanting so badly to sign speech
acts for their club that they do not hesitate to simplify their true nature in
order to secure them for their crew.
Team 1 represents those theories which support the belief that language
allows speakers to fully codify what we want to say. Full codification leads
to unambiguous, risk-free linguistic interactions, but it denies two of the
most central and valuable characteristics of language: its creativity and
its flexibility to adapt to diverse communicative needs. Adopting a full
codification view of language, however attractive this position may seem
in terms of cognitive economy and the prevention of misunderstandings,
leads linguists to overlook pivotal aspects of human communication, such
as the indirect uses of language that underlie ironic, figurative, or polite
expressions, among others.
At the opposite end of the spectrum of linguistic theories, supporters
of Team 3 envision speakers of a language as a sort of intelligent, fast-
processing, walking computer that manages to swiftly calculate, on the
spot, the meaning of each expression they hear in their daily lives. This
theoretical stance is capable of accommodating the creativity and flexibility
of so-called indirect forms of language, but it does so at a high cognitive
cost. Granted human brains are powerful devices, however, having to
calculate the meaning of each and every single utterance that we come
across in our daily interactions appears at first sight as a cognitively costly
and time-consuming approach to language. Even computers make use of
rules, patterns, and scripts to automatise frequent and recurrent tasks. Why
would the human mind function differently?

16
2.1 Speech Acts in Linguistic Theories 17
Team 2 holds an intermediate position, allowing for the existence of at
least some conventional means of expressing our thoughts and wishes and,
therefore, for more creative, but also safer, and more cognitively efficient
ways of communicating our thoughts than those proposed by Teams 1
and 3, respectively. As shall be shown in Section 2.3, Team 2 also has deficits
to its game: its advocates defend an all-or-nothing view of conventionality.
Thus, they claim that a speech act is either conventional or not. CAN YOU
DO X? forms, for instance, would be considered conventional expressions
of requests by followers of this team. Section 2.5 provides evidence that
this is often an oversimplification of how the production of speech acts
works. Conventionality is shown to be itself a blurry theoretical category,
which can be modulated linguistically to produce speech acts with a higher
or lower conventional meaning, which thus gradually approach either
the codification or the inferential ends of the illocutionary continuum
proposed by Teams 1 and 3.
For decades, linguists have attempted to confine speech acts into the limits
of radical conceptions of language, in which either codification, convention,
or inferential processes, represented by our three imaginary teams of linguists
above, took pride of place in the explanation of the illocutionary component
of language. This chapter unveils these attempts and argues in favour of a
wide-ranging, comprehensive approach to speech acts that highlights their
polychromatic, ductile, and adaptable nature. In so doing, it will be argued
that the story of speech acts is also the story of a highly fluid player who can
perform equally well for these three teams as required by contextual and
interactional needs, and who resists permanent affiliation.
What motivates the existence of these three codification-, convention-,
and inference-based theories of speech acts is their adherence, or lack of, to
the Literal Force Hypothesis (Levinson, 1983). This hypothesis assumes that
each sentence has an illocutionary force of its own built into it. In other
words, that the speech act conveyed by a sentence derives from its form.
This can be done in two different ways.
i. Using an explicit performative verb that names the speech act that
wants to be communicated, such as beg in No, my lord, I beg you keep
this thing secret (BNC).
ii. Or, alternatively, using one of the three major sentence types in
English (i.e. imperative, interrogative, and declarative), which
have the forces traditionally associated with them (i.e. ordering (or
requesting), questioning, and stating, respectively). According to this,
an interrogative sentence like Can you hear me? (BNC), for example,
would have a questioning illocutionary force.
18 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
Sections 2.2–2.4 below analyse the virtues and flaws of the Literal Force
Hypothesis and explain how either acceptance or rejection of its premises
derives in membership to one of the aforementioned three views of speech
acts. Different theories within each ‘team’ are revised, their weaknesses
exposed, and their strengths pick out, later, to be integrated into our own
theoretical proposal on how speech acts are produced and interpreted
(Section 2.5). The resulting proposal advocates a modified, weaker version
of the Literal Force Hypothesis (Risselada, 1993; Alston, 2000; Kissine,
2011, 2012, 2014) that sets up the possibility of integrating the three existing
antagonistic approaches to illocution into a single, all-encompassing
framework for the study of speech acts and its ensuing application to
language teaching.

2.2 Team 1. Codification-Based Theories and the

Over-Grammaticalisation of Speech Acts
2.2.1 Weaknesses of the Literal Force Hypothesis
and Ross’s Performative Hypothesis
Accepting the Literal Force Hypothesis leads to a rather limited and
rigid view of speech acts. Fully codified, unambiguous linguistic acts are
restricted to those three (i.e. stating, questioning, and ordering/requesting)
that can be expressed by means of the corresponding three universal
sentence types (i.e. affirmative, interrogative, and imperative) or by means
of explicit performatives.
A quick search in the BNC, however, reveals that explicit performatives are
rare in real life communicative exchanges. Simple searches of performative
sentences like I order you to …, I request you to …, I beg you to …, I advise
you to / that …, I warn you to / that …, or I suggest that you … yield less than
twenty results each on average in a hundred-million-word corpus like the
BNC. Speakers of English do not often use explicit performatives to order,
request, beg, advise, warn, or suggest other people to do something. This
is only to be expected since fully explicit, lexicalised acts such as these do
not easily adapt themselves to the varied communicative needs of different
social settings. By way of illustration, in a situation in which a large social
distance or an asymmetrical power relationship between the speakers asks
for a polite request, a performative directive like I request you to repeat it
does not seem to be the best possible choice to make the act as polite as
required by the context. An indirect, conventional request such as Can
2.2 Team 1. Codification-Based Theories 19
you repeat it, please? (BNC), on the contrary, would come through as more
natural. In fact, request constructions of the CAN YOU DO X (please)?
form have a higher frequency of occurrence in the same corpus with one
hundred fifty-nine occurrences.
This latter example reveals yet another weakness of a theory of speech
acts based on the acceptance of the Literal Force Hypothesis. The allegedly
literal force of the three basic sentence types can be interpreted, and it is, in
fact, often interpreted with a secondary illocutionary force. Can you repeat
it, please? displays an interrogative sentence type. According to the Literal
Force Hypothesis, interrogatives are associated with the speech act force of
questioning. Nevertheless, if we consider the context in which this specific
instance of the CAN YOU DO X (please)? construction was uttered, it is
clear, by the addressee’s reaction, that the interrogative sentence was not
primarily understood as a question but rather as a request for him to do
something:
he carefully folded the paper and put it in the desk on top of the blotter.
(laugh) I remember / Can you repeat it please? / Yes. When he had finished
reading, he carefully folded the paper and put it in the desk on top of the
blotter. (BNC)
In fact, even explicit performative sentences can be used to perform
speech acts different from the one named by their performative verbs.
Thus, an act of ordering realised by means of an explicit performative, I
order you to keep this information hidden, can easily be transformed into
a different speech act, such as that of threatening or coercing, just by
adding a disjunctive clause stating a potentially harmful action aimed at
the addressee: I order you to keep this information hidden or I’ ll put you
in prison for life.
The fact that both explicit performatives and the three basic sentence
types can be used with a secondary illocutionary force, different from
the one named by the performative verb or the one traditionally
associated with their sentence form, gave rise to the notion of indirect
speech act (ISA).
There have been attempts to explain the existence and workings of
ISAs without rejecting the Literal Force Hypothesis. Among them,
there are some theories developed as far back as the 1970s, such as Ross’
(1970) Performative Hypothesis and Sadock’s (1974) Idiom Theory
of Indirect Speech Acts. These authors take advantage of the, at the
time, mainstream Chomskyan distinction between surface and deep
20 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
Table 2.1 Deep structure versus surface structure in question
for information versus request interpretation

Deep structure Surface structure

I ask you whether you are able to repeat it
Can you repeat it?
I request you to repeat it

structure to explain the fact that ISAs have a primary and a secondary
illocutionary force.1
An utterance like Can you repeat it? would, according to these accounts,
have two different deep structures, the first one corresponding to its primary
force of a question about the listener’s ability to physically carry out the
stated action, and the second one matching its secondary illocutionary force
of requesting the listener to do the action (see Table 2.1). This solution was
not without problems. The most obvious one stemming from the fact that
these theories did not explain how speakers chose the correct deep structure
in a specific communicative setting. Gordon and Lakoff (1975), who also
accepted the premise of the existence of different explicit performatives
in the deep structures of ISAs, resorted to inference in order to offer a
plausible explanation to how this was done. These theories, however, have
long been abandoned due to the mounting evidence countering them over
the past four decades (see Kaufmann (2012), Leech (1983), and Levinson
(1983), among others, for detailed arguments revealing the inadequacy of
the performative hypothesis accounts on ISAs).

2.2.2 Halliday’s Over-Grammaticalisation of Speech Acts

A more recent attempt to account for speech acts as non-inferential, fully
codified messages has been put forward within the framework of Systemic-
Functional Grammar (Halliday, 1973, 1978, 1994).
The systemic-functional approach takes an original stance as regards the
identification of the basic types of speech acts. Traditionally, these had been
equated with the three universal sentence types (i.e. affirmative-assertions,
interrogative-questions, and imperative-orders) as captured in the Literal

1 The notions of deep and surface structure stem from the generative linguistic tradition (Chomsky,
1964, 1965). Deep structures are theoretical constructs that unify different but related surface
structures. Thus, I hit the table and The table was hit by me would represent two surface structures
that have a roughly similar deep structure, since the agent, patient, and type of action are the same
in both sentences.
2.2 Team 1. Codification-Based Theories 21
Force Hypothesis. Halliday (1994) shifts from a formal to a semantic/
functional criterion for the classification of speech acts. Thus, he looks into
the functions for which they are used. More specifically, he makes use of
two semantic oppositions. The first considers the type of commodity that
is exchanged in a social transaction (i.e. whether the speech act involves a
transfer of information or goods/services). The second assesses the role of
the speaker in the exchange (i.e. whether he is giving or demanding the
commodity). These semantic/functional criteria yield four basic speech act
types: offers (giving + goods/services), commands (demanding + goods/
services), statements (giving + information), and questions (demanding +
information).
The resulting classification of speech act functions is no longer compatible
with the Literal Force Hypothesis, since offers do not have a specific sentence
type associated with them, as commands, statements, and questions do. Does
this asymmetry mean that offers, and all those speech acts that do not have a
specific sentence form associated with them (i.e. begs, suggestions, pieces of
advice, warnings, promises, etc.), cannot be accounted for within grammar?
The systemic-functional model believes that it is, in fact, possible to treat
all speech act types grammatically, without having to resort to inferential
processes belonging to the realm of pragmatics. This is so, according to
Thibault and Van Leeuween (1996), thanks to the idiosyncratic conceptions
of language and grammar held by systemic-functional linguists. In this
tradition, language is understood as a network of interlocking options for
the creation of social meaning (Halliday, 1994: 14). In turn, grammar is
defined as a resource for creating meaning by means of a semantically
motivated careful choice of lexico-grammatical elements within the system
of language (Halliday & Matthiessen, 1999: 3).
Derived from these conceptions of language and grammar, the systemic-
functional tradition contributes two pivotal notions to the study of speech
acts. First, it makes it manifest that speech acts are social constructs
that are used by members of a society. Therefore, their use needs to
consider social aspects (e.g. power, social distance relationships) and also
conform to the needs of social interactions (e.g. politeness, effectiveness
of communication). In this, the systemic-functional approach is close to
pragmatic and cognitive proposals such as those of Leech (1983, 2014),
Panther and Thornburg (1998, 2003), or Pérez-Hernández (2001, 2012,
2013), as will be made apparent in Sections 2.4 and 2.5. Second, the system
of options represented by language offers speakers the potentiality to
produce speech acts unambiguously and in a fairly economical manner,
without needing to resort to costly inferential processes. The following
22 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
example illustrates how this can be done. Let us imagine that a person
wants to request a pair of scissors from someone sitting next to him in an
arts and crafts seminar. He has considered the social factors that affect the
type of request he needs to produce in the context in which the interaction
takes place. Since there is no familiarity between the speakers (i.e. they
do not know each other), the request needs to be polite. Nevertheless,
the politeness requirements are not too high because their social status is
similar, and the context is informal and relaxed. Once the social setting
in which the request is to be uttered has been assessed, the speaker turns
to the lexico-grammatical options that the language system offers him
to produce an effective speech act, which could resemble the following
example: I need a pair of scissors. You have one, don’t you? Can you share
them, please? The resulting request makes use of several linguistic resources
to codify and convey the meaning of the act of requesting: it states the
speaker’s need and expresses the fact that the listener is in possession of
the required object (declarative sentences); it also communicates politeness
directly, through the use of the adverb please, and indirectly, through
the optionality inherent in the interrogative sentence asking about the
capacity of the listener to share the scissors with him. As pointed out by
Pérez-Hernández (2001: 37):
If the systemic-functional proposals are correct, them most of our
illocutionary activity would be linguistically coded by means of delicate
co-patternings of selections on the lexico-grammatical system, which would
result in a higher level of explicitation and, therefore, in an important
economy of effort in cognitive processing.

In fact, since it is rather unlikely that, in the context under consideration,

the previous example would be interpreted as anything other than a request,
it can be concluded that it is possible to fully codify linguistic acts, and
that inference is not necessary in the production of speech acts. However
attractive this view of illocution may be, the systemic-functional proposals
have often been criticised for over-grammaticalising linguistic phenomena
whose nature could also fit into a pragmatic/inferential description. Thus,
the fact that the language system allows the speaker in our previous example
to express his request in a highly codified manner does not necessarily mean
that a less explicit request would have been unsuccessful. The speaker could
have managed to get the pair of scissors by using more implicit expressions
like I need the scissors, (please / could you?), or Can / Could you lend me your
scissors for a sec? In fact, most requests in our corpus are of this second
type, as will be shown in Chapter 4. A sound description of illocutionary
2.3 Team 2. Convention-Based Theories 23
performance should be able to accommodate not only fully explicit speech
acts, but also those that hinge on inferential calculations to a larger or a
lesser extent. The systemic-functional proposals run short of offering this
type of all-encompassing description of speech acts.2

2.3 Team 2. Convention-Based Theories: Indirect Speech Acts

For those linguists who, unlike the systemic-functional followers, still
accepted the validity of the Literal Force Hypothesis, there remained a
different problem, namely that of accounting for those instances of speech
acts in which the literal force expressed by the sentence form or the explicit
performative was not the one intended by the speaker. Example (2.1)
illustrates this puzzle:
(2.1) Albini thinks of Big Black and says, ‘We were a pretty good live
band.’ To anyone in a band now, he advised, ‘Develop your aesthetic
and execute it, you will find your audience, your audience will find
you.’ (BNC)
Develop your aesthetic and execute it is an imperative sentence, which, as
predicted by the Literal Force Hypothesis, has the literal force of an order.
Nevertheless, in this conversation, the utterance is clearly being used with
the additional indirect illocutionary force of advising, as indicated by
the narrator himself. It becomes, therefore, necessary to explain how this
indirect illocutionary force relates to and is derived from the literal one.

2.3.1 Searle: Inference and Convention in Speech Acts

An initial attempt to offer an explanation came from one of the founding
fathers of speech act theory. In his 1975 influential paper, ‘Indirect speech

2 Another functional attempt to offer an account of illocution within grammar (i.e. based on
codification) was carried out by Dik (1989, 1997). This author put forward the notion of grammatical
illocutionary conversion (i.e. the process whereby the literal force of a sentence can be turned into
a derived illocutionary force). This could be done by means of illocutionary conversors. In Please
give me the scalpel the adverb please functions as a conversor that turns an imperative sentence
into a request (Dik, 1997: 243–244). Consequently, Dik argues that the three basic speech act
types associated with the basic sentence forms, together with those illocutionary acts for which a
language provides illocutionary conversors would be dealt with within grammar. All other speech
acts would belong to the realm of pragmatics. In his analysis of English, Dik was only capable of
identifying seven types of derived illocutionary forces. In practice, this meant that, despite Dik’s
attempts to account for speech acts in terms of codification, the vast majority of speech acts resisted
this treatment and had to be accounted for inferentially within a pragmatic theory of language.
24 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
acts’, Searle couched his account of indirect speech acts in terms of inference
triggers, a theory of the conditions of satisfaction for the production of
speech acts, general principles of co-operative conversation (Grice, 1975),
and human inferential abilities. Making use of these theoretical and
processing tools, Searle (1975: 74) argued that the first step in understanding
example (2.1) as a piece of advice is realising that the literal force associated
with the imperative sentence is not the one intended by the speaker. He
further explained that there is usually a trigger that signals the need to find
an alternative indirect illocutionary force matching the speaker’s actual
communicative intention. In example (2.1) this trigger is represented by
the two juxtaposed affirmative sentences following the imperative: you
will find your audience; your audience will find you. These sentences refer
to the benefit that may come from complying with the action expressed
by the imperative: Develop your aesthetic and execute it. The benefit is not
for the speaker but for the listener, who will get an audience. This clashes
with the illocutionary purpose of the literal force of the imperative, since
orders typically result in a benefit for the speaker. The inference trigger sets
off an inferential process that leads the listener to calculate the advising
force of the utterance, taking as a point of departure the initial literal force
of order associated with the imperative sentence form. In this he makes
use of his knowledge of the conditions of satisfaction for the speech act of
advising, such as for instance the fact that the listener is to be the agent of
the proposed action, that the proponent of the action should have superior
knowledge on the topic than the receiver, and that the proposed action
should bring about a benefit for the listener. The speaker in example (2.1)
has the necessary experience and knowledge superiority to issue a piece of
advice because he is the leader of a band himself. The action is proposed
for the listener to be carried out, and it is meant to be beneficial to him.
Therefore, if the speaker is being co-operative, as the Gricean principle of
co-operation leads us to expect, the utterance can be interpreted as a piece
of advice.3
Searle was aware, however, that there are instances of speech acts which
are much less dependent on inference. As opposed to example (2.1), whose

3 For a more exhaustive description of the steps proposed by Searle to derive the indirect illocutionary
force from the literal one, see Searle (1975: 73–74). For analyses exposing the weaknesses of Searle’s
approach to illocution, see Burkhardt (1990), Katz (1990), Rofl (1990), Escandell (1993), Holdcroft
(1994), and Pérez-Hernández (2001).
2.3 Team 2. Convention-Based Theories 25
advising force needs to be calculated as explained, the following examples
are more straightforwardly interpreted as pieces of advice:
(2.2) ‘You ought to wrap up more,’ he advised. ‘Now that it’s winter.
You’ve a terrible cough.’ (BNC)
(2.3) ‘The best thing you can do is go home and tuck yourself up with a
hot-water bottle,’ she advised, pulling on her coat. (BNC)
(2.4) ‘I’d take Mother Benedicta if I were you,’ advised Amsterdam,
trying to dispel the sting of the marquis’s response. (BNC).
Searle (1975: 76) reaches the conclusion that some linguistic forms are more
efficient than others in communicating an indirect force different from the
one codified by its sentence form. He observes this phenomenon in relation
to the act of requesting, where forms like Can you open the door? are more
easily recognised as requests than synonymous realisations like Are you able
to open the door? This was so despite the fact that both sentences questioned
the same preparatory condition (i.e. the capacity of the listener to carry out
the requested action). Searle (1975: 76) concluded that some linguistic forms
have become conventional expressions for conveying certain illocutionary
forces. He does not explain, however, the reasons why they have reached
such conventional status for the expression of indirect speech acts.
Searle starts off from a semantic stance, close to that of linguists in
Team 1 (see Section 2.2), according to which there are several illocutionary
forces that are linguistically codified in the sentence forms (i.e. orders,
questions, and assertions). It is precisely his acceptance of the Literal Force
Hypothesis that leads him to put forward an additional inferential theory
of interpretation for those speech acts which are not linguistically codified
(i.e. indirect speech acts). In this he approaches the postulates of Team 3 (see
Section 2.4). This inferential theory, however, is incapable of accounting
for the existence of conventional instances of illocutions. As pointed out
by Geis (1995), one of the reasons why Searle’s account cannot deal with
conventionality is that it focuses on transactional aspects of speech acts
and overlooks their interactional side. In fact, some conventional forms of
requests with modal verbs in the past tense (e.g. Could / Would you open
the door?) are motivated by the interactional need of acting politely. This
weakness is a direct consequence of Searle’s assumption that speech acts
are essentially linguistic and his failure to realise their social dimension. As
argued by Halliday (1978, 1994), Marcondes (1984), and Geis (1995), among
others, warnings, requests, orders, and other communicative acts are social
constructs that can also be realised by non-linguistic means (i.e. gestures).
26 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
The social nature of speech acts and the interactional factors that affect
their performance will be extensively dealt with by inference-based theories
(see Section 2.4).
Searle, however, can be credited for bringing to the fore the existence
of the especial category of conventional speech acts, which not being fully
codified, are more readily understood than fully inferred/calculated speech
acts. The literature shows several attempts to account for them.

2.3.2 Morgan’s Conventions of Usage

and Short-Circuiting Implicatures
Morgan (1978) was one of the first to take on the challenge of explaining the
functioning of conventional speech acts. In order to do so, he distinguished
between conventions of language (i.e. those that account for the literal,
arbitrary meaning of sentences) and conventions of usage (i.e. those based
on cultural conventions that govern the use of a sentence with a fixed
literal force for the performance of a different act in a particular culture).
Language users have knowledge of conventions of language that account for
the fact that an interrogative sentence (e.g. Can you hold the book?) has the
literal meaning of a question, as predicted by the Literal Force Hypothesis.
Additionally, they are also aware of the convention of usage that justifies
that the same sentence can also be used as a request. In order to understand
why there is a convention of usage by virtue of which a sentence like Can
you hold the book? can be interpreted as a request, it should be possible to
reconstruct the inferential steps leading from its literal force of a question
to its indirect interpretation as a request. This could be done using the
same theoretical apparatus proposed by Searle. Thus, CAN YOU DO X?
forms question one of the preparatory conditions for the performance of
requests. However, it is arguable whether speakers do actually calculate
the requestive value of the sentence in such a burdensome fashion. On the
contrary, they seem to straightforwardly jump to the request interpretation.
Morgan (Morgan, 1978: 274, 263) referred to this phenomenon as short-
circuiting implicatures:
The expression Can you … is not an idiom but has only the obvious literal
meaning of a question about the hearer’s abilities. One can readily see how
the expression could have, via Grice’s maxims, the implicature of a request.
In fact, it has become conventional to use the expression in this way. Thus,
speakers know not only that Can you …? has a literal meaning (a convention
of language): they know also that using Can you… is a standard way of
indirectly making a request (a convention of usage). Both are involved in
2.4 Team 3. Inference-Based Theories 27
a full understanding by the hearer of what is intended in the use of the
expression.
… although Can you pass the salt? is indeed CALCULABLE, it is not in
fact calculated: rather, one gets the point more or less directly, without any
inferential processing.
Thus, thanks to the existence of conventions of usage, speakers can avoid
tiresome calculations and short-circuit the inferential process that would
lead to the interpretation of CAN YOU DO X? forms as requests. Morgan’s
proposal allow us to understand the different functioning of near synonym
constructions, such as CAN YOU DO X? and ARE YOU ABLE TO
DO X?, in terms of degree of conventionalisation. According to his view,
only in the case of CAN YOU DO X? interrogative sentences is there
a convention of usage that explains their interpretation as requests. No
explanation is given, however, about the reasons why these conventions
of usage are established for some linguistic forms and not for others that
are close synonyms. The explanatory power of Morgan’s conventions of
usage and short-circuiting implicatures is not capable either of motivating
the existence of a varied range of slightly different linguistic forms of the
same speech act. Will / Would you hold the book?, Can / Could you hold
the book?, Hold the book, can / will / could / would you?, Would you mind
holding the book?, etc. are all possible instances of conventional requests.
What prompts speakers to use one or the other is often related to politeness
and interactional factors. Just like Searle, Morgan’s view of speech acts
overlooks their social side, thus offering a limited portrayal of illocution.

2.4 Team 3. Inference-Based Theories:

Over-Pragmatisation of Speech Acts
In Sections 2.2 and 2.3 it has been shown how the different attempts to
explain speech acts as either fully codified or conventional acts, respectively,
are not without problems: some of them are not flexible enough to account
for the creativity, flexibility, and economy of language (e.g. Halliday’s
systemic-functional proposal), some fall short of explaining the vast range of
linguistic realisations available for the expression of a speech act (e.g. Searle’s
and Morgan’s accounts), and most of them cannot provide a full picture of
illocutionary performance, since many speech acts, in fact, escape codification
and conventionalisation, requiring inferential processes to a larger or lesser
extent for their full understanding. This section looks into those proposals that
give pride of place to inference in the understanding of speech acts.
28 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
2.4.1 Standard Pragmatics Approach:
Bach and Harnish’s Speech Act Schemas
Bach and Harnish (1979) were among the first linguists to question the
validity of the Literal Force Hypothesis and, consequently, of the role of
codification in speech acts (Dobrovie-Sorin, 1985; Recanati, 1987, 1994;
Dascal, 1989; Bertolet, 1994). Their contribution is relevant, because it paved
the way for some mainstream theories of illocutionary performance in the
last decades, including conversational approaches (e.g. Levinson, 1983; Geis,
1995), pragmatic accounts (e.g. Leech, 1983, 2014), and relevance-theoretical
proposals (e.g. Sperber & Wilson, 1995).
Bach and Harnish (1979: 17) approached speech acts from an extreme
inferentialist viewpoint, according to which their performance is thought
to involve ‘the speaker’s having a special sort of intention (an intention
that the hearer make a certain sort of inference) and the hearer’s actually
making that inference’. Let us consider example (2.1) again, reproduced
here as (2.5) for convenience:
(2.5) Albini thinks of Big Black and says, ‘We were a pretty good live
band.’ To anyone in a band now, he advised, ‘Develop your aesthetic
and execute it, you will find your audience, your audience will find
you.’ (BNC)
Linguists in Team 2 (e.g. Searle, Morgan), who accepted the Literal Force
Hypothesis, would claim that the imperative sentence Develop your aesthetic
and execute it has both a literal force of order (i.e. the one associated with its
imperative sentence form) and an indirect force of advising, which is reached
through several inferential steps (see Section 2.3). In their account, the literal
force is codified in the linguistic form, the indirect force is inferentially
calculated. In addition, it is argued that speakers only bother to calculate the
indirect force when a trigger makes them realise that the literal force does
not fit the context. In contrast to this, the extreme inferentialists in Team
3 reject the Literal Force Hypothesis and widen the scope of the inferential
processes involved in speech act interpretation to the effect that both literal
and indirect speech acts need to be calculated (Bach & Harnish, 1979: 132).
The inferential speech act schemas put forward by Bach and Harnish do
not assume that the imperative in example (2.5) is directly linked to the
illocutionary force of order. On the contrary, these schemas make use of
mutual contextual knowledge and general principles about the nature,
stage, and direction of the talk exchange (i.e. conversational presumption)
to infer whether the imperative sentence is, in fact, intended as an order.
2.4 Team 3. Inference-Based Theories 29
If the contextual information and the conversational presumptions validate
this interpretation, the inferential process would come to an end. However,
since this is not the case in the example under consideration, the listener
needs to continue with her inferential calculations until she reaches the
advising interpretation intended by the speaker.4
Surprisingly enough, when faced with conventional instances of speech
acts, like examples (2.2)–(2.4) above, Bach and Harnish adopt a position
close to that of Morgan. Bach and Harnish (1979: 198) refer to conventional
speech acts, such as If I were you, I would do X pieces of advice or Can
you do X? request forms as standardised. They further argue that in these
cases the inferential route is short-circuited, and the hearer identifies the
speaker’s advising or requestive intent without having to grasp the literal
intent of questioning associated with the interrogative sentence type (see
also Bach, 1998).

2.4.2 Direct Access Approaches I: Leech’s Interpersonal Rhetoric

Following the inference-based path to the analysis of speech acts opened by
Bach and Harnish, other linguists have attempted to investigate the factors
that guide and motivate the inferential interpretation of the intended
force of speech acts. Among them, special attention should be paid to
pragmatic proposals that not only provide a principle-based account of the
inferential mechanisms involved but do so by acknowledging the social and
conversational nature of speech acts.
Undoubtedly, a prominent representative of this trend is Leech’s (1983,
2014) account of speech acts in terms of interpersonal rhetoric. In relation
to the codification/conventionalisation vs. inference dichotomy, Leech
(1983: 17) states the following:
There are important issues which cannot be pursued here, particularly the
question of how far the relation of questions and mands to the illocutions
they typically perform (viz. askings and impositives) is conventional, rather

4 For a detailed description and critical analysis of Bach and Harnish’s (1979) Speech Act Schemas, see
Pérez-Hernández (2001: 41–45). Sperber and Wilson’s (1995) relevance-theoretic account follows Bach
and Harnish in their assumption that even the literal meaning of an utterance needs to be inferred.
They propose their own schema of interpretation based on the Principle of Relevance: first assessing
the literal interpretation, then assessing its relevance, and, if it does not fit the contextual needs,
deriving the non-literal interpretation. Bach and Harnish’s and Sperber and Wilson’s approaches
are known as Standard Pragmatics models, which differ from the so-called Direct Access models
(represented by Leech’s contributions and those of the conversational theories of illocution) in that
the latter make use of contextual information to derive the intended meaning of a speech act directly,
without needing to assess the validity of the literal force of the utterance in the first place.
30 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
than determined by Interpersonal Rhetoric. Kempson (1975: 147) opts for
a conventional mapping of one on to the other set of categories, whereas I
prefer to go the whole pragmatic hog, and attempt an explanation entirely
in terms of Interpersonal Rhetoric.
In other words, Leech takes on an extreme inferentialist approach to the
analysis of speech acts, according to which the distinction between literal
and indirect speech acts becomes irrelevant, and it is necessary to calculate
the meaning of all speech acts. Contrary to Bach and Harnish, Leech does
not consider it necessary to calculate the literal meaning first and then, if
shown that it does not fit the context, to continue with the calculation of
the indirect force. In Leech’s account, speakers make use of contextual and
social information to directly calculate the intended meaning.5 In fact, what
makes his proposal stand out from previous inferential accounts is its focus
on the social dimension of illocution. More specifically, Leech states that the
need to be polite in our social interactions is one of the essential motivations
underlying and guiding the production and interpretation of illocutionary
acts.6 For different reasons, on many occasions in our daily lives we are
forced to carry out linguistic acts that may put our social relations at risk:
acts that involve asking our interlocutors to do something that is costly to
them in terms of time, resources, etc. (e.g. requests, beggings), acts that
may be felt as impositions on their freedom (e.g. orders, threats), acts that
may clash with our listeners’ plans (e.g. suggestions), etc. To minimise or
prevent the social conflicts that may arise from acts like these, speakers
make use of their knowledge of interpersonal rhetoric, a keystone of which
is the Politeness Principle: ‘minimise the expression of impolite beliefs,
and maximise the expression of polite beliefs’ (Leech, 1983: 81). In the case
of directive speech acts, being polite involves, among other things, trying
to minimise the cost of the action that is requested from the hearer (tact
maxim). In order to calculate the cost of the act and the corresponding
degree of politeness needed to compensate for it and to keep interaction

5 This Direct Access model of speech act interpretation has been followed by other authors such as
Gibbs (1994, 2002).
6 Considerations of politeness as motivating factors of speech act performance were also explored by
other contemporary authors like Brown and Levinson (1987). Brown and Levinson’s proposal in
terms of the notion of face (i.e. social image of a person) leads to a binary conception of politeness,
whereby speech acts are either polite (when they maintain people’s face) or impolite (when they
do not). Leech’s pragmatic scales, on the contrary, allow for a scaled gradation in the assessment
of the politeness requirements of particular instances of speech acts, which reflects the needs of
actual social interaction more closely. Leech’s proposals have been chosen for this study due to
their encompassing and detailed nature. For a comparison of Brown and Levison’s and Leech’s
politeness theories, see Pérez-Hernández (1999, 2001).
2.4 Team 3. Inference-Based Theories 31

Figure 2.1 Cost–benefit and politeness interactions (Leech, 1983: 107)

running smoothly, Leech (1983, 2014) puts forward a scale of cost–benefit or

weightiness of the transaction. Figure 2.1 illustrates how different directive
speech acts can be ordered along a scale depending on how costly they are
and how the need for politeness increases with the cost.
A costly action, such as peeling the potatoes, would require a more
polite linguistic realisation than the offer Have another sandwich, which is
beneficial to the hearer.
Directive speech acts are very sensitive to social factors, and their cost
is not the only variable that affects their potentiality for causing social
disruption. As pointed out by Leech (2014: 11), power asymmetries between
speakers (i.e. scale of vertical distance) or the existence of a large social
distance between them (i.e. scale of horizontal distance) may also call for
higher doses of politeness. In asking someone to do something, we may
get by using a simple imperative like Peel the potatoes when talking to a
sibling or a friend, because they are close to us and hold a similar power
status. However, if we wanted a stranger to comply with a costly request,
we would preferably make use of a more polite realisation (e.g. If you don’t
mind, will you peel the potatoes, please?).
Additionally, the degree of politeness of a directive speech act can be
modulated by varying the optionality offered to the hearer to comply
with the action (i.e. scale of optionality) or the indirectness of the act
(i.e. the length of the inferential path linking the illocutionary act to its
communicative goal, scale of indirectness). Requests expressed by means of
interrogative sentences display a higher degree of optionality by default. By
way of illustration, an utterance like Can you peel the potatoes, please? leaves
a door open for the hearer to express non-compliance. On the contrary,
imperatives present the action as unavoidable: Peel the potatoes! Thus,
leaving the hearer without a chance to say ‘no’ is felt as impositive and,
therefore, less polite. Likewise, the more indirect a request is, the more its
32 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
politeness increases, since it is easier for the hearer to deny understanding
of the intended meaning and hence to avoid compliance without losing
face. A highly explicit request expressed by a performative (e.g. I request
you to peel the potatoes) leaves little option to the hearer but to comply with
it. Explicitness reduces optionality and, hence, the politeness of the act.
A highly implicit request like Has someone peeled the potatoes yet?, on the
contrary, allows the hearer to overlook the requestive interpretation and
answer to the question force of the utterance with a simple ‘yes’, ‘no’, or
‘I don’t know’.
Scales, like those of cost–benefit, optionality, indirectness, social power,
and social distance, allow speakers to assess the politeness needed in a
particular interaction and to act accordingly, thus keeping their social
interactions largely free from the conflict inherent to costly speech acts like
directives. In his more recent revision of the politeness of speech acts, Leech
(2014: 14) further argues that pragmalinguistics should be additionally
concerned with the task of revealing the ‘lexico-grammatical resources
of language, their meanings […], and how they are deployed as linguistic
strategies of politeness’. In this, Leech paves the way for a constructional
account of illocution such as the one we shall propose in Section 2.5. His
model, however, runs short of explaining the conceptual operations that
work on illocutionary constructions and which are responsible for their
flexibility and adaptability to different contexts and interactional needs
(i.e. conceptual metonymy). These issues will be addressed in our proposal.
Leech’s scales are also useful in distinguishing between different subtypes
of directives. Thus, orders, requests, and beggings involve a cost to the
hearer, while pieces of advice and warnings are beneficial to them. Requests
and suggestions are characterised by their high optionality, as opposed to
orders or threats. Orders are typically associated with powerful speakers,
while requests and beggings are not. In Chapter 4, we shall make extensive
use of Leech’s scales in our description of the semantic side of illocutionary
constructions.

2.4.3 Direct Access Approaches II: Conversational Approaches

Conversational approaches represent a mainstream group of speech
act accounts that, along with others in Team 3, reject the Literal Force
Hypothesis and place inference at the centre of speech act performance
(e.g. Schegloff, 1979, 2007; Levinson, 1983; Mey, 1993; Geis, 1995; Kasper,
2006). These accounts focus on suprasentential aspects of illocutionary
acts in terms of pre-sequences, adjacency pairs, and preferred/dispreferred
2.4 Team 3. Inference-Based Theories 33
responses. Levinson’s (1983: 361) well-known example of a request for
cigarettes illustrates these notions:
(2.6) A: Do you have Marlboros? (T1)
B: Yeah, hard or soft? (T2)
A: Soft, please. (T3)
B: Okay. (T4)
For a request to be successful it is necessary that the addressee possesses
the object that the speakers wants. Thus, it could be argued that, in
example (2.6), T1 is a simple question about possession, and the actual
request is formulated in T3 (i.e. Soft, please). Levinson points out that the
recurrent occurrence of conversational exchanges like the one in example
(2.6) eventually leads speakers to recognise pre-sequences like T1 as full
requests by dropping the second and third turns of the conversational
sequences.
Example (2.6) also illustrates the notions of adjacency pairs and preferred/
dispreferred response. The notion of adjacency pair constitutes a relevant
contribution of conversational approaches to the study of illocution.
Locastro (2012) explains that it is usually the case that speech acts require
an answer by the addressee in the form of a confirmation, ratification,
or rejection. Questions, for instance, form adjacency pairs with positive
or negative answers. Requests can be followed by the act of compliance
or by a declination to comply, the first one being the preferred option.
Example (2.6) is formed by two adjacency pairs (i.e. question–answer;
request–answer). In addition, preference organisation (Glaser, 2009;
Carroll, 2011) explains that some of those answers are conversationally
preferred (i.e. those that agree with the position of the speaker taking the
first action), and others are dispreferred (i.e. those that show disagreement,
refusal, or rejection). Preferred turns are usually unmarked; and therefore,
they are not preceded by silence or produced with delays or mitigation, as
is the case with dispreferred turns. In the request adjacency pair in example
(2.6), speaker B has chosen the preferred response (i.e. compliance), which
fits the social expectation that one should help others if possible.
As illustrated by the analysis of example (2.6), conversational linguists
believe that illocutionary meaning is not static and dependent on the
speaker’s intention, as proposed by pragmatists and speech act theorists,
but that it is rather built through interaction. A consequence of this is the
emphasis they place on the analysis of large corpora of real data and their
attention to suprasentential aspects of speech act performance. In this, the
conversational analysis approach to illocution also differs from previous
34 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
studies carried out within traditional speech act theory, which focus their
attention on invented examples, most of them restricted to the limits of
the sentence level. Conversational analysis transcends these boundaries and
offers a more realistic account of speech acts. The advantages of considering
conversational issues in the correct performance of speech acts have been
amply dealt with in the literature, and this is, in fact, one of the few research
advancements that has already made its way into current EFL textbooks
(see Pérez-Hernández, 2019).
Leaving aside the ground-breaking contributions to the study of the
interactional, social, and conversational aspects of illocution reviewed in
Sections 2.4.2 and 2.4.3, inference-based accounts of illocution in Team 3, as
a whole, are characterised by their rejection of the Literal Force Hypothesis.
This allows extreme inferentialists to provide a unified account of how
speech acts are understood in terms of inferential calculations. The account,
however, is inconsistent with typological evidence supporting the fact that
most languages display three universal sentence types (e.g. imperative,
affirmative, interrogative). It seems counter-intuitive that these three
linguistic forms would not be somehow linked to three salient meanings
or functions that are equally pivotal in most cultures. Section 2.5 reveals
how a weaker version of the Literal Force Hypothesis may reconcile the
typological evidence about the existence of three universal sentence types
with their use in the expression of different illocutionary acts beyond the
three basic ones of ordering, asserting, and questioning.
An extreme inferentialist stance on speech acts also fails to
acknowledge the fact that some linguistic expressions are more frequently
and extensively used than others for communicating a speech act force
(e.g. CAN YOU DO X? forms are more widely used for expressing a
request than the synonymous ARE YOU ABLE TO DO X? linguistic
realisations). The conventional status of some speech acts, as revealed by
those linguists in Team 2, is a reality that cannot be overlooked. In fact,
some linguists in Team 3 have restated their views on this issue. Leech
(2014: 14), for instance, has recently acknowledged the fact that some
expressions may become highly conventionalised for the performance
of some speech acts. He refers to this process as pragmaticalisation and
further argues that pragmalinguistics should be concerned with the
lexico-grammatical resources of language and with how their frequency
of use leads to their conventionalisation/pragmaticalisation. In Section
2.5, we shall argue that a sound and exhaustive account of speech acts
should also aim at explaining the motivations underlying the wider use
of conventional forms.
2.5 A Cognitive-Constructional Approach 35
2.5 A Cognitive-Constructional Approach to
Directive Speech Acts
The revision of previous theoretical accounts of speech acts in Sections
2.2–2.4 reveals that the portrayals of illocutionary performance are diverse
and often even contradictory. If we thought of those portraits as jigsaw
puzzles, some of them would have relevant gaps. Thus, social considerations
are not taken into account in Searle’s and Morgan’s accounts, the role of
inference is overlooked in Halliday’s functional-systemic approach, the
possibility of full codification is not considered by Bach and Harnish or
Leech, and the motivations of conventionality are not clear in most of
them. These are just some of the missing pieces that render traditional
accounts of illocution somehow incomplete.
While the need to understand speech acts as social constructs (Leech,
2014), rather than as exclusively linguistic in nature (Searle, 1975), or the
advantages of considering the conversational dimension of speech acts
(Levinson, 1983; Geis, 1995; Schegloff, 2007) have gradually been accepted in
the literature; other issues, like the compatibility of the existing typological
evidence supporting the Literal Force Hypothesis, on the one hand, with
the role played by codification, conventionalisation, and inference in the
performance of speech acts, on the other, are still open to debate. In fact,
these three pivotal pieces concerning the relative weight of linguistic form,
convention, and inference in the performance of speech acts have not yet
found their exact place in the puzzle. So far, as shown in Sections 2.2–
2.4, theoretical efforts have, in most cases, been devoted to justifying the
predominance of one of them to the exclusion of the others.

2.5.1 What Experimental Linguistics Has

Revealed about Speech Act Processing
In this connection, experimental studies aimed at assessing the psychological
reality of those competing models have been scarce and often contradictory.
Back in the 1970s, Clark and Lucy’s (1975) experiments suggested that the
interpretation of indirect speech acts took longer than that of literal speech
acts, which was taken as proof that the Literal Force Hypothesis is valid,
and that it is necessary to recognise the direct force of an utterance prior to
the understanding of the indirect meaning intended by the speaker. More
recently, eye tracking experiments have yielded similar results (Yin & Kuo,
2013). In this view, both codification and inference seem to play a role in
speech act processing, and the longer response times in the interpretation
36 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
of indirect speech acts suggest that speakers need to decodify the literal
meaning before calculating the indirect one, as predicted by the Standard
Pragmatics Approaches (e.g. Searle, 1969, 1975; Bach & Harnish, 1979;
Sperber & Wilson, 1995).
As shown in previous sections, indirect speech acts are not, however,
a homogenous category. Some indirect speech acts have become
conventional (Searle, 1969, 1975; Morgan, 1978) or standardised (Bach
& Harnish, 1979) for the performance of specific acts (e.g. CAN YOU
DO X? requests), while others rely exclusively on inferential calculations
(i.e. non-conventional indirect speech acts). Experimental studies have
also attempted to assess the psychological reality of this distinction.
Clark (1979) carried out an experiment based on question–answer pairs,
which showed that the use of conventional forms made it less likely
for the listener to retrieve the literal meaning. Both Clark’s (1979) and
Abbeduto, Furman, and Davies’ (1989) similar experiments provided
evidence supporting a model of likelihood estimates, in which increasingly
specialised linguistic forms for the expression of a given speech act could
decrease the need to access the literal meaning of the sentence in order
to reach the intended interpretation. This set of experiments seems to
corroborate the distinct nature of conventional forms of speech acts and
the prototypical nature of the notion of conventionality itself (i.e. different
instances of speech acts can display different degrees of conventionality).
In much the same vein, Holtgraves’ (1994) experimental comparison about
processing differences between conventional and non-conventional speech
acts shows that the latter require additional processing time. In these
studies, the psychological reality of conventional speech acts seems to be
experimentally corroborated: speakers do rely on the linguistic form of an
expression for its interpretation.
A subsequent collection of experiments carried out by Gibbs (1979,
1984, 1994, 2002), Ervin-Tripp et al. (1987), and Gibbs and Gerrig (1989)
gathered evidence supporting the opposing view, namely, that the intended
illocutionary force is straightforwardly calculated through inferential
processes based on contextual and mutual information, rather than on
the linguistic form of the utterance. The response time tests performed
by these psycholinguists suggested that, when enough contextual
information is available, indirect speech acts do not take longer to be
understood than literal expressions. More recent experiments based on
electroencephalography (EEG) data about neural activity (Coulson &
Lovett, 2010) yield similar response time results. As predicted by proponents
of the Direct Access Approaches (Leech and the conversational approaches
2.5 A Cognitive-Constructional Approach 37
to illocution, among others), these experiments seemed to highlight the role
of inference and contextual information in speech act performance to the
detriment of linguistics cues. Ruytenbeek (2017: 15) points out, however,
that most of these experiments provide rich contextual information to
guide the speaker’s interpretation of the speech act. It would be ‘interesting
to see whether any differences in response times would be found when
more neutral contexts precede the target utterances, i.e. when the request
meaning is not primed by the contexts’.
In sum, experimental data as to whether speakers take longer in
interpreting direct or indirect (either conventional or non-conventional)
speech acts is inconclusive, and this is probably due to the fact that different
experiments present a bias as to providing a higher or lesser amount of
linguistic versus contextual information in their design.
What most contemporary experimental studies do conclude is that there
exist differences in the way direct and indirect speech acts are processed.
Coulson and Lovett’s (2010) measurements of electrical brain activity
reveal a higher amount of memory retrieval in the case of indirect speech
acts. Van Ackeren et al.’s (2012) and Gisladottir, Chwilla, and Levinson’s
(2015) experiments reported an extra activation of the Theory of Mind
areas (medial pre-frontal cortex and temporo-parietal junction) in the
interpretation of indirect speech acts. Pupillometry tests (Tromp, Hagoort
& Meyer, 2016) showed that indirect speech acts have a higher processing
cost which correlates with larger pupil diameters. These studies refer
exclusively to differences between direct versus non-conventional indirect
speech acts. Nevertheless, it should be remembered that previous research
had already revealed response time differences between conventional and
non-conventional indirect speech acts (Clark, 1979; Abbeduto, Furman &
Davies, 1989; Holtgraves, 1994).
All in all, contemporary experimental findings do point to differences
in processing between direct (codified) and indirect (conventional and
non-conventional or fully inferred) speech acts. As pointed out by
Trott (2016) and Ruytenbeek (2017), however, the psycholinguistic and
neuroscience studies carried out to date do not offer detailed explanations
for the cognitive mechanisms involved in the processing of those three
types of speech acts. They do not answer the question of how direct and
indirect (conventional and non-conventional) speech acts are performed.
To overcome this void, the approach to speech acts that will be spelled out
in the next sections seeks to be compatible with current knowledge on the
type of cognitive operations involved in language processing, as described
within the cognitive linguistics framework. The resulting proposal also
38 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
attempts to integrate the relevant pieces of the illocutionary puzzle that
have been identified in our previous discussion of contemporary theoretical
accounts of speech acts, and the existing experimental evidence on their
performance. In particular, our approach will endeavour to be consistent
with the following.
• Typological evidence pointing to the universal existence of three major
sentence types.
• Psycholinguistic and neuroscientific evidence about the differences
in processing and response times among direct (fully codified) and
indirect speech acts (conventional and non-conventional or fully
inferred), accounting for the lower response times needed when either
(1) contextual information or (2) the linguistic form provide cues about
the speech act involved.
• The mainstream theoretical observation that some linguistic forms
display a conventional status and are more frequently used than others
in the communicative realisation of different speech act types.
• Current psycholinguistic evidence that conventional speech acts are
not a homogeneous category, and that their conventionality may be
modulated using linguistic forms with a higher or lower degree of
specialisation for the expression of a speech act.
• The need to transcend the linguistic nature of speech acts and regard
them as social constructs, hence considering interactional (i.e. politeness,
social power, and distance, formality) and transactional (i.e. cost–
benefit) variables in their description.
• The advantages of considering speech acts as a non-static phenomenon
based in interaction and, hence, of adopting a suprasentential and
conversational perspective in their depiction.
In sum, we shall argue that the final speech acts puzzle, in order to
be complete, should include pieces pertaining to the social nature of
illocutionary categories and also to one of their potential realisations (i.e. by
means of language). Since linguistic communication is kaleidoscopic,
and speakers can make use of different mechanisms (i.e. codification,
conventionalisation, and/or inference) in conveying their messages, the
resulting theoretical speech act puzzle should make room for these three
essential aspects of human communication and explain how speakers
resort to one or another mechanism in a principle-based manner and as
required by the context in which the communicative act takes place. In
order to accomplish these objectives, the ensuing theoretical proposal on
speech act performance will take advantage of the current knowledge about
2.5 A Cognitive-Constructional Approach 39
the cognitive operations that underlie human reasoning and inferential
abilities, as described within the cognitive linguistics framework.

2.5.2 Redefining the Literal Force Hypothesis in terms

of Sentence Type/Speech Act Compatibility
Most languages distinguish three sentence types (i.e. affirmative, imperative,
and interrogative) and the Literal Force Hypothesis states that each of
them matches a basic communicative function or speech act (i.e. assertion,
order, and question). Nevertheless, it is an observable fact that these three
sentence types do not match those three basic speech acts univocally. We
can use affirmative sentences to ask for information (e.g. I would like to
know if you are coming) and to give orders (e.g. Please, I want you to stop!),
interrogatives to express orders (e.g. Can you stop, NOW!!!?), imperatives to
formulate questions (e.g. Let me know who’s coming), etc. In addition, each
of the three basic sentence types can also be used to perform a wider range
of speech acts different from the three basic ones.
As shown in previous sections, all speech act instances in which a sentence
type is used with a force that is different from the one originally associated
with it are considered indirect speech acts. If it were really necessary to
decodify the direct meaning before calculating the indirect one, this
should yield longer response times for indirect speech acts. As reported
in Section 2.5.1, however, experimental evidence as to whether direct or
indirect speech acts take longer to be interpreted is inconclusive. The Literal
Force Hypothesis, as it stands, is not clearly supported by the data. What
the experiments do tell us is that there are clear differences between the
processing mechanisms involved in the interpretation of these two groups
of speech acts (i.e. direct versus indirect), as well as between conventional
and non-conventional illocutions. In other words, we interpret direct and
indirect (conventional and non-conventional) speech acts in different ways,
but this does not necessarily mean that some of them are most costly or
time-consuming than the others.
Models of illocutionary performance should be consistent with the
aforementioned experimental findings and should also acknowledge the
typological fact that most languages have three sentence types. In order to
satisfy these two conditions, it is necessary to reformulate the Literal Force
Hypothesis in such a way that it does not force a two-step interpretation
pattern of indirect speech acts, according to which speakers first access their
direct force and only at a later stage derive the indirect one. This original
formulation of the Literal Force Hypothesis is straightforwardly linked
40 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
to higher processing times in the case of indirect speech acts, a fact that
experimental studies have not been able to confirm.
In this connection, some linguists have posed the question of whether
it is actually necessary to posit a strong Literal Force Hypothesis in which
sentence types correspond to specific speech act forces. Granted that
all languages distinguish three sentential forms, Risselada (1993) has
argued that these do not need to be straightforwardly associated with
the three basic functions of ordering, asserting, and questioning. She
proposes a weaker version of the Literal Force Hypothesis which ascribes
less specified illocutionary forces to the three universal sentence types
(Risselada, 1993: 71):
• affirmative sentences: those which present a proposition
• interrogative sentences: those which present a proposition as (partially)
open
• imperative sentences: those which present the content of a proposition
for realisation.
According to Risselada, therefore, the relationship between sentence type
and speech act force is no longer one of univocal association but rather
one of compatibility: each sentence form is compatible with a range of
illocutionary acts.7 Affirmative sentences display the highest standards of
compatibility. Since affirmative sentences simply ‘present a proposition’, they
can be used to express virtually any type of speech act (e.g. representative
acts, like asserting: This car is blue; commissive acts, like promises: I will
buy you the bike of your dreams; and a large collection of directive acts like
requests (e.g. I would like you to read my book), questions for information
(e.g. I would like you to tell me more about yourself ), pieces of advice (e.g.
If I were you, I would consider moving to a bigger apartment), and threats
(e.g. You are going to raise your hands if you don’t want to me to shoot you
in the head), etc.). Imperatives ‘present the content of a proposition for
realisation’, which leads to a lower degree of compatibility. In fact, they
are only compatible with those speech acts that involve a future action by

7 This idea is in line with Alston’s (2000: 186) suggestion to take as the meaning of a sentence its
potential to perform illocutionary acts: ‘A sentence’s having a certain meaning consists in its being
usable to perform illocutionary acts of a certain type’. Kissine (2011, 2012, 2014: 4) and Kissine
and Jary (2014: ch. 2) also provide a case against the univocal association of illocutionary forces
to sentence types. In line with Risselada, these authors define imperatives as those sentence types
‘presenting their propositional content as potential’, which makes them particularly suited for the
performance of directive speech acts but not incompatible with other non-directive illocutionary
forces (e.g. questions for information, offers, etc.).
2.5 A Cognitive-Constructional Approach 41
someone different from the speaker. They can be used to perform directive
acts like orders (e.g. Finish your report by tomorrow), requests (e.g. Finish
your report by tomorrow, please / will you? / can you?), advice acts (e.g. Study
more if you want to pass your exams), warnings (e.g. Don’t cross that road if
you want to be alive), suggestions (e.g. Let’s go to the cinema this evening,
shall we?), threats (e.g. Raise your hands or I’ ll shoot you), and even questions
for information (e.g. Let me know your address, please), among others.
Nevertheless, imperatives do not allow the expression of commissive acts
(e.g. promises, refusals) or representative acts (e.g. asserting, concluding,
remarking, etc.). Finally, interrogative sentences, which ‘present a
proposition as (partially) open’, are compatible with some directive forces
that allow optionality of choice for the addressee to comply (e.g. requests:
Will you help me with this?; beggings: Please, please, please, can you help me
with this?; etc.) but prototypically not as much with other directives that
presume the addressee’s compliance (e.g. warning, ordering); and they are
blatantly incompatible with the expression of representative (e.g. asserting,
concluding, etc.) and commissive acts (e.g. promises, refusals, pledges, etc.).
The redefinition of the Literal Force Hypothesis in terms of compatibility
wires the speakers’ interpretation processes towards a default set of
meanings, thus restricting the potential set of targets to those compatible
with each sentence type. It does not, however, assign a particular
illocutionary force to each sentence type, thus making unnecessary the
two-step interpretation process (i.e. first direct, then indirect force) that
derived from the original formulation of the Literal Force Hypothesis and
that was not supported by experimental findings. If this weak version of
the Literal Force Hypothesis is accepted, then it is only necessary to further
specify the intended illocutionary force of an utterance so that the listener
can choose from those initially compatible with the sentence form. This can
be done linguistically, by making use of lexico-grammatical resources that
further clarify the illocutionary force of the message, or contextually, when
the situational setting itself provides enough clues to reach the intended
interpretation. By way of illustration, consider example (2.7):
(2.7) Turn down the volume
According to the traditional version of the Literal Force Hypothesis, this
utterance displays an imperative sentence form, and it should, therefore,
be associated with the speech act force of orders. Any other illocutionary
force that could be expressed by this utterance in specific contexts (e.g.
requesting, advising, warning, etc.) would have to be calculated after
verifying that the order interpretation does not suit the context at hand.
42 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
By contrast, if the weaker version of the Literal Force Hypothesis is applied
to the interpretation of this utterance, then its imperative sentence form
will simply be taken as an indicator of the range of potential illocutionary
forces that it may express: mostly directive speech acts like orders,
commands, requests, beggings, suggestions, warnings, pieces of advice,
threats, offers, invitations, etc. As it stands, the bare imperative in example
(2.7) is largely underspecified as its exact illocutionary meaning. If no other
contextual or linguistic information is provided, the speaker will be largely
at a loss in its interpretation. Luckily this is rarely the case. Speakers often
provide additional linguistic information that guides the interpretation
of the message; and when they do not, it is usually the case that this
information can be directly retrieved from the context. Let us see each
mechanism in turn. The exact illocutionary force could be further specified
through linguistics means, as illustrated by the following elaborations of
example (2.7).
(2.8) Turn down the volume, will you? / please / if you don’t mind
(2.9) Turn down the volume, if you don’t want to become deaf
(2.10) Turn down the volume, or I’ll punish you
(2.11) Please, please, please, turn down the volume
Each of the examples above activates a key attribute of a specific directive
speech act, thus cutting down or straightforwardly restricting the
interpretation of the illocutionary force of the initial imperative to that of
a particular directive speech act. In example (2.8), the adverb please, the
question tag, or the conditional phrase explicitly conveys the fact that the
addressee has the freedom to decide whether to do the action or not. This
element of optionality is not compatible with directives like orders and
threats, but it is central to the act of requesting, which turns out to be the
most likely interpretation of this example. The utterance in (2.9) makes use
of a conditional phrase that states the negative consequences that the action
of hearing the radio at a high volume may have for the listener. Helping
others avoid costs or harms is central to the nature of the act of warning,
and the imperative is thus very likely to be interpreted as such. In example
(2.10) the juxtaposed phrase communicates the action that the speaker
will carry out against the listener if he does not comply. Stating negative
actions against the addressee in the case of non-compliance is a pivotal
trait of threats, which is the most predictable reading of this imperative.
Finally, the iterative use of politeness markers (e.g. please, please, please) in
example (2.11) reflects an insistence which stems from the lack of power of
the speaker and the intensity of his wanting, both of which define the act of
2.5 A Cognitive-Constructional Approach 43
begging. In all examples above the use of additional linguistic resources has
explicitly activated items of the semantics of different directive categories,
thus guiding the listener to the most likely interpretations.
The clues leading to a final interpretation of the initial imperative in
example (2.7) need not be linguistic, they can also stem from the context
in which the utterance has been produced. Thus, imagine that example
(2.7) is uttered by a boy sharing his room with one of his friends. In this
context in which the social distance between participants is small, it is
already manifest to both speaker and listener that the latter has the freedom
to choose whether or not to do the action. The optionality feature that
characterises the act of requesting is already active and its knowledge
mutually shared by both interactants. This makes it unnecessary to use
additional linguistic resources to make it explicit (e.g. please, if you don’t
mind, etc.). This mutually shared knowledge of the listener’s optionality
makes the order, threat, or begging readings easily discarded and leads to
a request interpretation.
Relying on contextual information is clearly riskier. Speakers may assume
that there is mutual knowledge of the necessary pieces of information for
the interpretation of an illocutionary act, but this may not be the case.
However, all things being equal, it can be entertained, as a theoretical
hypothesis, that the interpretation of sentence (2.7) as a request can be
reached as fast when the optionality variable is activated by the context as
when it is activated by linguistic resources. In fact, this theoretical proposal
fits the experimental data available to date. As shown in Section 2.5.1,
those experiments which were rich in providing contextual information
retrieved fast response times for so-called indirect speech acts (see Section
2.5.1 on Gibbs’, Ervin-Tripp et al.’s and Gibbs & Gerrig’s experiments).
It was also the case that an increase in the linguistic specification of the
force of the act also yielded lower response times for conventional speech
acts (see Section 2.5.1 on Clark’s, Holtgraves’, and Abbeduto, Furman &
Davies’ experimental findings). Those seemingly contradictory results
stemming for experimental studies of speech acts find an explanation in
this theoretical proposal that advocates a weaker form of the Literal Force
Hypothesis in terms of sentence type-speech act compatibility.

2.5.3 Revisiting the Notions of Direct and Indirect Speech Acts

Accepting the revised weaker version of the Literal Force Hypothesis
put forward in Section 2.5.2 naturally leads to a redefinition of the
concepts of direct and indirect speech acts. It can be concluded that a
44 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
speech act is direct when the addressee has enough available information
to be able to recognise its illocutionary force. This information can be
provided linguistically or contextually, as shown in the previous section.
Either way, if there is enough information at the addressee’s disposal, the
interpretation of the illocutionary force of an utterance will be reached
easily and unproblematically. On the contrary, a speech act is indirect if the
information available is not so rich. Lack of information, either contextual
or linguistic, necessary implies a higher cognitive cost, as well as a higher
risk of misinterpreting the intended force of the utterance.
It is important, in this respect, to distinguish clearly between the notions
of indirectness and implicitness. Whether a speech act is explicit or implicit
is a linguistic issue dependent on the degree to which its conceptual nature
has been linguistically revealed. Whether a speech act is direct or indirect,
on the contrary, depends on how much information the speaker has at
her disposal about the conceptual nature of the act, regardless of whether
that information is provided by contextual or linguistic means. Thus, as
argued in Section 2.5.2, a bare imperative, like the one in example (2.7), is
implicit (i.e. the lack of explicitness of its linguistic form does not provide
enough information to determine its illocutionary force) but not necessarily
indirect. If the context provides the addressee with the relevant information,
the illocutionary interpretation of the imperative will be straightforward
(i.e. direct). It should be borne in mind that, since our revised version of
the Literal Force Hypothesis does not assign specific speech act forces to
the sentence types, ‘indirectness’ does not involve a two-step process in
which the literal force needs to be reinterpreted according to the context,
but rather just a higher amount of inferential calculations to determine
which of the illocutionary forces compatible with that sentence form is the
one intended by the speaker.
The notions of indirectness and implicitness have often been merged in
traditional theories of speech acts. The weaker version of the Literal Force
Hypothesis assumed in this piece of research allows us to draw a clear
distinction between them. In addition, it may offer a plausible solution to
the experimental puzzle, reported in Section 2.5.1, regarding the fact that the
process of interpretation of indirect speech acts yielded different response
times in different experiments depending on the degree of contextual cues
available to the addressee. Under the present redefinition of the notions of
indirectness and implicitness, it is to be expected that those speech acts that
are not only implicit (i.e. linguistically underdetermined) but also indirect
(i.e. lacking relevant information, either linguistic or contextual about their
semantics) will show higher response times than those which are implicit
2.5 A Cognitive-Constructional Approach 45
but not indirect (i.e. those for which the context provides relevant cues,
thus making up for the underdetermination of the linguistic form).
Interestingly enough, the newly re-defined notions of direct and indirect
speech acts are capable of showing prototypicality effects. The indirectness
of a speech act may vary depending on the amount of information provided
by the context, through linguistic means, or through a combination of
both. Consider the following examples of requests.
(2.12) Open the door
(2.13) Can you open the door?
(2.14) If you don’t mind, can you open the door?
(2.15) If you don’t mind, can you open the door, please?
(2.16) If you don’t mind, could you open the door, please?
Let us assume a situation between two strangers in which the context does
not provide any relevant information that may help the listener identify
the illocutionary forces of these utterances. In this situation, example
(2.12) would come through as a rather implicit and indirect speech act,
which would probably leave the listener wondering if he is being ordered,
suggested, or requested to carry out the action. The lack of contextual
information, together with the linguistic underspecification of the utterance
(i.e. a simple imperative sentence presenting a proposition for its realisation)
does not ease the interpretation process. Example (2.13), which makes use
of an interrogative sentence type, presents the proposition as partially
open. This is compatible with the illocutionary force of questioning but
also with that of requests (which are characterised by their optionality, see
Chapter 4). The optionality feature, implicitly activated by the use of the
interrogative sentence type, also makes the utterance incompatible with
other illocutionary forces that do not present their content as open but
rather as compulsory (e.g. orders, commands, threats, etc.). Consequently,
the range of potential interpretations of example (2.13) has been reduced,
and its indirectness has decreased. Examples (2.14)–(2.16) activate the
attribute of optionality more explicitly, not only by means of the openness
of the interrogative sentence, but also through the use of the phrase if you
don’t mind, which clearly leaves the decision of carrying out the action in
the hands of the listener. In addition, examples (2.15) and (2.16) also activate
linguistically the attribute of politeness (please, use of past modal could),
which is a characteristic of requests but not compatible with questions
for information. As the explicitness of the linguistic forms increases, the
indirectness of the utterances gradually decreases to the point that examples
(2.15) and (2.16) could hardly be interpreted as anything other than requests.
46 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
The previous explanation of examples (2.12)–(2.16) assumes a neutral
context, which does not provide speakers with relevant information
that can guide them in the interpretation process. The latter, therefore,
relies exclusively on linguistic cues. Under those circumstances, example
(2.12) is fully implicit and indirect, while examples (2.13)–(2.16) gradually
increase their degree of explicitness and directness thanks to the addition
of linguistic cues that guide the interpretation process.
Does this mean that simple imperatives like that in example (2.12)
are always indirect requests simply because they are linguistically
underspecified? Under the present proposal, the answer is no. Let us
imagine a rich context in which the speakers have a similar social status
and in which it is clear that neither of them can impose his will on the
other (e.g. siblings). In this context, it is mutually known by both speakers
that politeness requirements are low or inexistent, and that optionality is
taken for granted (i.e. one does not generally feel under an obligation to act
as told by their equals if one does not want to). The context itself activates
the optionality and politeness attributes characteristic of requests and fills
in the necessary information for the listener to interpret (2.12) as a request
and not as an order. In this context, the simple imperative is as direct and
straightforward an example of request as example (2.16) was shown to be
in the neutral, uninformative context above. Indirectness would only arise
in those cases in which both the context and the linguistic expression fail
to provide the necessary information to identify the intended illocutionary
force of an utterance.
This model also fits well with one piece of experimental evidence about
speech act processing that has puzzled linguists to date: the fact that
examples like (2.12), which have traditionally been considered indirect
speech acts, seem to involve a higher amount of memory retrieval (Coulson
& Lovett, 2010). Going back to our explanation of examples (2.12)–
(2.16) in the presence versus the absence of contextual and/or linguistic
information, it is easy to see in which way the interpretation processes
differ, and the memory retrieval requirements increase significantly in
relation to example (2.12).
In the presence of linguistic information, the listener needs only
retrieve his knowledge of the semantic attributes characterising the
different speech acts compatible with the sentence type, and then see
which one matches those attributes that are activated linguistically. Thus,
example (2.16) activates the attributes of politeness and optionality that
prototypically define requests. The listener only needs to confirm this
2.5 A Cognitive-Constructional Approach 47
matching, by retrieving from his memory the semantics of this particular
speech act type.
When the information derives from the context and not from linguistic
cues, the process of interpretation is not as straightforward. In the case
of the simple imperative in example (2.12), the context tells us that the
speakers, being siblings, are equals as regards their power status and
close to each other in terms of social distance, but it does not activate
explicitly the attributes of optionality and politeness as the linguistic cues
do in example (2.16). These semantic attributes of requests are reached
inferentially and through a process that involves memory retrieval not
only of the speech act categories compatible with the sentence type, but
also of other relevant principles and maxims of social interaction. Thus, the
Politeness Principle and the social distance scale, for instance, inform the
listener that politeness is not as necessary in interactions between people
who are socially close to each other, thus making unnecessary the use of
a polite request; the optionality scale tells him that the closer two people
are in the social distance dimension, the less one can impose on the other,
thus ruling out the potential imposing flavour of the bare imperative.
Since optionality is presumed in this context, many speech acts types
are discarded from the interpretation (i.e. orders, threats, commands).
Additionally, since politeness is not necessary, other directives are ruled out
(i.e. beggings, which require of politeness even when carried out between
socially closed speakers). As a result of these context-based inferences, the
request interpretation is reached.
As explained in the previous paragraphs, our theoretical model is capable
of offering an explanation for the higher memory retrieval requirements
of those speech acts whose interpretation relies exclusively on contextual
information. By way of summarising, linguistic information can directly
activate semantic attributes of speech act categories. Contextual information
can only activate social variables (i.e. social power, social distance,
formality), and then the speaker needs to further retrieve her knowledge
(1) of the semantics of the different speech act categories that are compatible
with the sentence form of the utterance, and (2) of the principles and scales
of social interaction that act on the semantics of speech act categories,
helping listeners to infer which speech act categories are compatible both
with the sentence type of the utterance and with those social scenarios.
The higher memory retrieval requirements of non-conventional indirect
speech acts, as attested in experimental studies, therefore, find a plausible
explanation within this model of illocution.
48 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
2.5.4 Constraining Inferences via Cognitive
Operations: Conceptual Metonymy
As illustrated in Section 2.5.3, the interpretation of speech acts involves a
process in which the listener identifies the illocutionary force intended by
the speaker, among those that are compatible with the sentence type used
for its expression. This process is guided and enabled by cues provided
either contextually or linguistically. Such cues have been shown to reflect
one or more of the characteristic attributes of the speech act type involved
(e.g. optionality, politeness, etc.). If all the attributes of an illocutionary
category were made explicit, the listener would not have any difficulty in
interpreting such an explicit instance of speech act. For different reasons,
however, the fact is that fully explicit illocutions are scarce. One obvious
reason is that speech acts are polyhedral, kaleidoscopic phenomena
whose semantics comprises varied information regarding interactional,
transactional, and social features. To give just one example, the meaning
of requests includes the following:
• the knowledge of who is expected to perform the requested action
(i.e. addressee)
• who is the beneficiary of the action (i.e. speaker)
• the cost of the action and the person upon whom it falls (i.e. addressee)
• the degree of freedom that the addressee has to decide as to whether to
perform the requested action or not (i.e. optionality)
• the politeness requirements of the act of requesting (i.e. requests are
expected to be polite)
• the knowledge of how the cost of the requested action, the social distance
and power relationships between the speaker and the addressee, and the
formality of the context may affect the politeness requirements of the
act, etc.
Making all these semantic ingredients of requests explicit in their linguistic
expression would turn communication into a cumbersome exchange of
long-winded utterances. Often this is also unnecessary, because part of
that semantic information is provided by the context. And many times,
it is not even desirable, because by not making all the semantic items
explicit, the speaker can regulate the indirectness of her illocutionary
acts, thus increasing the optionality granted to the addressee, decreasing
the imposing feeling of her speech acts, and eventually increasing their
politeness. In other words, lack of explicitness can be exploited as a means
of producing speech acts that do not threaten social conviviality.
2.5 A Cognitive-Constructional Approach 49
Granted that full explicit rendering of all the features defining an
illocutionary category is often not an option, the question that arises is how
it is possible for the addressee to identify the speech act category intended
by the speaker on the basis of the linguistic expression of just a few of the
semantic attributes that define it. Cognitive linguists have provided an
answer to this question based on the interaction of two cognitive models:
a non-dynamic model of propositional knowledge organisation (whose
nature may vary slightly in different approaches and may be referred to as
illocutionary frame, propositional cognitive model, or scenario) and a dynamic
cognitive model that operates on the former (e.g. conceptual metonymy).8
The first attempt to explain the interpretation of speech acts in these
terms was put forward by Panther and Thornburg (1998: 759). These authors
coined the term illocutionary scenario to refer to the collection of semantic
attributes defining each illocutionary category that speakers have stored
in their long-term memories. The request scenario was said to consist of
the following elements.
a. Before component
The hearer (H) can do the action (A).
The speaker (S) wants H to do A.
b. Core component
S puts H under a (more or less) obligation to do A.
H is under an obligation to do A (H must / should / ought to do A).
c. After component
H will do A.
S has emotional response.
Speakers do not make explicit all the knowledge they have about requests
when they want to perform this speech act. Panther and Thornburg’s proposal
elaborates on Gibbs’ (1994: 352) insight that ‘speaking and understanding
indirect speech acts involves a kind of metonymic reasoning, where people
infer wholes (a series of actions) from a part’. Thus, Panther and Thornburg
argue that, in order to produce a request, speakers explicitly activate one
of the components of the scenario (e.g. I would like / want a coke, Can you
hold on a sec? – Before component) to evoke the whole illocutionary act. In
this way, metonymic projections on illocutionary scenarios provide natural
inferential schemata for the performance of speech acts.

8 The distinction between dynamic and non-dynamic cognitive models stems from Ruiz de Mendoza
and Galera Masegosa’s (2014) work on cognitive modelling.
50 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
Panther and Thornburg’s model of illocutionary scenarios reflects
the transactional and dynamic nature of speech acts by focusing on the
temporal sequence of events characterising them (i.e. before, core, after
components). Nevertheless, it largely overlooks the social and interactional
side of illocutions. Together with the illocutionary scenario components,
knowledge about the act of requesting also comprises facts about the
politeness needed to make it successful and about how social aspects like the
degree of intimacy or power between the speakers, the cost of the requested
action, or the formality of the context affect the politeness requirements
of the act (Pérez-Hernández, 2001; Huddleston & Pullum, 2002; Pérez-
Hernández & Ruiz de Mendoza, 2002; Mauri & Sansò, 2011; Takahashi,
2012). Formalising all this rich transactional and interactional information
about speech act categories exceeds the potentiality of illocutionary scenarios
and asks for a more comprehensive model of knowledge organisation, as
well as for more specific types of metonymic projections. Section 2.5.5 deals
with these issues in detail and lays out a constructional model of illocution
that attempts to explain how speech act performance is operationalised.

2.5.5 Illocutionary Idealised Cognitive Models and

(Multiple Source)-in-Target Metonymies
In the light of the above observations, a more granular conceptual
characterisation of illocutionary categories is required to account for all
the possible metonymic manifestations of a particular speech act such as
the request instances analysed in the previous examples. In this connection,
different authors such as Pérez-Hernández (2001, 2013), Huddleston and
Pullum (2002), Mauri and Sansò (2011), and Takahashi (2012) have argued
that additional parameters like those of power, cost, benefit, optionality,
and politeness, among others, would be essential for a comprehensive, solid
conceptual characterisation of directive speech acts. As shown above, the
inclusion of this type of attributes exceeds the limits of a scenario approach
and requires of a more comprehensive model of knowledge organisation
for their formalisation.
Pérez-Hernández (2001, 2013) has offered corpus-based evidence about
the potentiality of illocutionary ICMs for this task. Illocutionary ICMs
consist of an ontology and a structure (Lakoff, 1987: 285). In relation to
illocutionary acts, the ontology would comprise the values taken by the
attributes conforming to the semantics of each speech act category (e.g.
addressee’s capability, speaker’s need, cost–benefit, optionality, politeness,
etc.). In turn, the structure would capture the interplays between the
2.5 A Cognitive-Constructional Approach 51
Table 2.2 Attributes configuring the ONTOLOGY of directive illocutionary ICMs

Agent: person who is expected to perform the proposed action (i.e. speaker, addressee,
both of them).
Beneficiary of the action: person who benefits from the action (i.e. speaker, addressee, or
both of them).
Agent’s capability: assessment of the agent’s capability to perform the proposed action.
Speaker’s willingness: assessment of the speaker’s desire that the proposed action is
carried out.
Addressee’s willingness: assessment of the addressee’s desire to perform the proposed
action.
Possession of the requested object: assessment of possession of the requested object by
the speaker or the addressee.
Speaker’s need: assessment of the speaker’s need that the proposed action is carried out.
Cost–benefit: assessment of the cost/benefit of the proposed action.
Optionality: assessment of the degree of freedom granted to the agent to carry out the
proposed action or to opt out.
Mitigation: assessment of the degree to which the cost of the proposed action is
mitigated.
Politeness: assessment of the politeness requirements of the illocutionary act.

different attributes (e.g. how the cost of the requested action affects the
politeness requirements of the act), as well as between those attributes and
certain extralinguistic variables that may affect their assessment (e.g. how
the power relationship between the speakers determines the optionality of
the addressee to decide about his course of action). Since our description
of directive illocutions in Chapter 4 will be based on these theoretical
constructs, let us look in more detail into the nature of the ontology and
the structure of directive speech acts in turn.
The ontology of directive illocutionary ICMs comprises the attributes
listed in Table 2.2 (elaboration of the initial proposal in Pérez-Hernández
(2013: 133–134) based on the new corpus data in this study).
As revealed in previous sections, the description of the semantic side of
illocutionary acts should include considerations about participants (e.g.
agent’s capability, speaker’s needs, etc.), dimensions of social interaction
(e.g. politeness, optionality, etc.), and aspects of the transactions
involved (e.g. cost–benefit, possession of the requested object). By way of
illustration, Table 2.3 displays the specific ontology of the illocutionary
ICM of requesting, which captures the prototypical parametrisation of the
attributes conforming to this illocutionary act.
As shall be made apparent in the remainder of this section, the
exhaustive description of the semantic attributes that define the act of
52 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
Table 2.3 Ontology for the illocutionary ICM of the act of requesting

Agent: addressee.
Beneficiary: speaker.
Agent’s capability: the agent needs to be capable of performing the requested action.
Speaker’s willingness: the speaker wants the requested action to be carried out.
Addressee’s willingness: the addressee’s willingness to carry out the action is required.
Requested object: the requested object should be in the possession of the agent or be
accessible to him.
Speaker’s need: the speaker needs the requested action to be carried out.
Cost–benefit: the requested action is typically costly.
Optionality: the addressee is typically free to decide upon his course of action in relation
to the request.
Mitigation: the cost of the requested action is mitigated/minimised.
Politeness: requests are polite speech acts.

requesting in the form of an illocutionary ICM enhances the scope of its

metonymic exploitation. Additionally, it increases the explanatory power
of a metonymic account of illocution, overcoming some of the limitations
of the illocutionary scenario approach, at least in four different respects.

1. Illocutionary ICMs allow speakers to distinguish different speech act

categories. According to the illocutionary scenario approach, in examples
(2.17) and (2.18) the core component of the request scenario is activated
by means of the imperative sentence, which puts the hearer under the
obligation to hold the book for the speaker. If they both activate the
same component, it would logically follow that they realise the same
act of requesting. However, while the adverb of immediateness now
prompts an order interpretation, the conditional clause if you don’t
mind favours a request reading. The explanatory power of the scenario
approach is not capable of distinguishing specific illocutionary acts
(e.g. orders, requests, warnings, etc.) within the broader category of
directive speech acts.
(2.17) Hold this book now! (Web Corp Live, accessed August 5th,
2012)
(2.18) Hold this book, if you don’t mind (Web Corp Live, accessed
August 5th, 2012)
By contrast, illocutionary ICMs include the necessary information to
allow speakers to distinguish between subtypes of directives like those
in examples (2.17) and (2.18). Thus, both now and if you don’t mind are
2.5 A Cognitive-Constructional Approach 53

Figure 2.2 Metonymic activation underlying examples (2.17) and (2.18)

linguistic resources that help modulate the optionality granted by the

speaker to the addressee to carry out the requested action. Different
directive acts are characterised by allowing diverse amounts of freedom
to the addressee to comply with the speaker’s wishes. Orders, being
prototypically imposing acts, display lower levels of optionality. By
contrast, requests typically exhibit high doses of optionality, offering
the addressee the freedom to refuse to do as solicited. By linguistically
activating the different values of the optionality attribute that
characterise orders or requests, the utterances in examples (2.17), and
(2.18) metonymically activate the corresponding speech act, as shown
in Figure 2.2.
2. Illocutionary ICMs provide motivation for a higher number of speech act
constructions, thus enhancing the scope of their metonymic exploitation.
As pointed out by Pérez-Hernández (2013: 132), illocutionary scenarios,
focusing mainly on sequential aspects of illocutionary performance,
do not provide an explanation for many of the speech act expressions
used in our everyday life interactions. While metonymic exploitation
of Panther and Thornburg’s illocutionary scenario of requesting
accounts for instances of requests based on the before (e.g. Can you
54 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
pass me the book?, I want a book), core (Pass me the book), and after
components (Will you pass me the book?), respectively, it is incapable of
accommodating the following examples of requests, since they do not
metonymically activate any of the components of the scenario.
(2.19) I need a little more information (Web Corp Live, accessed
August 5th, 2012)
(2.20) Have you got a pen? (Web Corp Live, accessed August 5th,
2012)
(2.21) Would you mind washing the car for me? (Web Corp Live,
accessed August 5th, 2012)
(2.22) Would it be too much trouble for you to cook me dinner
tonight? (Web Corp Live, accessed August 5th, 2012)
By contrast, in the illocutionary ICMs approach, example (2.19)
metonymically activates the requesting illocutionary ICM by making
explicit the speaker’s need and optionality attributes. Example (2.20)
does so through the possession of the requested object and optionality
attributes. In example (2.21), the request reading is metonymically cued
by the agent, beneficiary, optionality, and politeness attributes. Finally,
the utterance in example (2.22) also makes use of the cost–benefit
attribute, thorough the use of a question aimed at assessing the cost
of the requested action (i.e. Would it be too much trouble …?).9 Figure
2.3 illustrates the metonymic operations at work in the interpretation
of each the above utterances as requests:
3. The metonymic exploitation of illocutionary ICMs accounts for variations
in the degree of explicitness of speech acts. If examples (2.19)–(2.22) are
observed closely, it becomes apparent that not all instances of requests
metonymically instantiate the same number of attributes of the
corresponding illocutionary ICM. Examples (2.19) and (2.20) only
instantiate two attributes, while examples (2.21) and (2.22) activate
four and five attributes, respectively. This type of metonymic operation,
in which not just one but several source subdomains are mapped onto
the same target domain, has been labelled (multiple source)-in-target
metonymy and has been found to allow for a continuum of degrees
of explicitness in the performance of speech acts (Pérez-Hernández,

9 In examples (2.19)–(2.22) the optionality variable is indirectly activated by the use of declarative
and interrogative sentence types, which as opposed to imperatives, offer the hearer the possibility
of refusing to carry out the proposed action without blatantly losing face. In example (2.20), for
instance, the hearer can simply answer negatively to the question for information (i.e. I haven’t
got one), and thus avoid compliance with the request without coming through as impolite.
2.5 A Cognitive-Constructional Approach 55

Figure 2.3 Metonymic activation underlying examples (2.19)–(2.22)

56 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
2013). Thus, the higher the number of attributes that are made explicit
linguistically and, in turn, metonymically projected onto a particular
illocutionary target domain, the higher the codification of the act
is and the lower the need for inferential mechanisms will be in its
interpretation.10 Example (2.23) illustrates a highly explicit instance
of request which metonymically instantiates seven attributes of this
illocutionary category.
(2.23) If you don’t mind, could you please give me a little jump start
in finding some of these names and their sources? (iWeb).
Figure 2.4 displays the multiple attributes of the illocutionary ICM
of requesting that are projected to render a request interpretation:
addressee as the agent of the action (you), speaker as the beneficiary of
the action (me), optionality granted to the addressee to choose whether
or not to do the action (if you don’t mind), and politeness (please,
oblique modal could). The costly nature of the action is indirectly
activated through the instantiation of the mitigation attribute (a little).
If compared to previous examples like I NEED X OR HAVE YOU
GOT X? (Figure 2.3), example (2.23) illustrates an extreme case of
linguistic explicitation of the act of requesting. The fact that so many
attributes have been instantiated linguistically renders its interpretation
as a different speech act highly unlikely.
4. Illocutionary ICMs account for subtle differences between similar
illocutionary expressions. Previous proposals based on illocutionary
scenarios also run short of capturing the necessary knowledge about
requests to explain the differences between similar instances of speech
acts like the two CAN YOU DO X? interrogative requests in examples
(2.24) and (2.25). Both utterances metonymically activate the same before
component (i.e. the ability of the addressee to carry out the requested
action). Nevertheless, they differ as to their meaning implications.
(2.24) Can you convince him a deal’s already in place? (iWeb)
(2.25) Could you convince him a deal’s already in place?
As shown in Pérez-Hernández (1996), the choice of the oblique modal
in example (2.25) is tied to considerations of politeness that exceed the

10 Pending experimental confirmation, this model of illocutionary performance can at least

entertain the hypothesis of a lower cognitive cost in terms of reaction times in the interpretation
of those speech act expressions offering access to a higher number of subdomains of a particular
illocutionary act.
2.5 A Cognitive-Constructional Approach 57

Figure 2.4 (Multiple source)-in-target metonymic operation underlying the request act
in example (2.23)

information provided by illocutionary scenarios. Common knowledge

about requests also includes the fact that they are inherently polite acts.
This feature distinguishes requests from prototypical orders, threats, and
other directives. The explicit linguistic activation of this central attribute
of the illocutionary category of requests favours its interpretation as such.
The illocutionary ICM model accommodates this distinction through
the additional projection of the politeness attribute. See Figure 2.5 for
a visual representation of the subtle but relevant differences in the
conceptual motivation of examples (2.24) and (2.25).
As shown so far, the ontology of each illocutionary ICM captures
the attributes that define the prototypical instances of a particular
58 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts

Figure 2.5 Conceptual motivation underlying the CAN vs. COULD YOU DO X?
request constructions in examples (2.24) and (2.25)

speech act category and serves as basis for the metonymic activation of
the corresponding illocutionary constructions. Some of the attributes
are scalar in nature and may take different values in different contexts
(e.g. the cost of the requested action may vary, the speaker’s need or
desire that the action is carried out may also change from one situation
to another, etc.). More importantly, the values taken by one attribute
may affect those of others. To give just one example of the potential
interactions between attributes, if the cost of the requested action
increases (i.e. if the speaker is asking for something that has a high
cost in time or effort for the addressee), then the need to mitigate the
cost of the act and the politeness requirements to secure compliance
with the request will also tend to increase.
Additionally, the values taken by the attributes conforming to the ontology
of the illocutionary ICM may also be affected by some social variables,
such as the power relationship between the participants, the social distance
between them, and the formality of the context in which the interaction
is taking place. Thus, if the social power of the addressee is markedly
higher than that of the speaker, the latter will feel a need to increase the
2.5 A Cognitive-Constructional Approach 59
Table 2.4 Social variables configuring the STRUCTURE of directive
illocutionary ICMs

Power: power relationship holding between the speakers. The vertical asymmetries of
power between speakers can stem from their social status as members of different social
classes, professional categories, institutional ranks, or knowledge groups.
Social distance: social distance existing between the speakers. This is a horizontal
dimension pertaining to familiarity or friendship relationships (i.e. friends, strangers,
relatives).
Formality: the formality of the context in terms of its politeness requirements.

optionality, the politeness, and/or the mitigation of his act to guarantee

its success. This is so because speakers are aware of the workings of social
interaction and have learned through experience that imposing their wishes
on someone who is socially more powerful requires some tact.
These interplays between the attributes of an illocutionary ICM or
between one of these attributes and one or more social variables (social
power, social distance, formality) need to be formalised to reach a proper
understanding of the functioning of speech acts. In this book, such
interplays are included in the so-called structure of each illocutionary ICM.
The social variables conforming to such structure are defined in Table 2.4.
These social, extralinguistic variables interact with four of the ontological
attributes (i.e. cost–benefit, optionality, mitigation, and politeness) and
force their reassessment. The specific structure for each illocutionary ICM
will comprise these interactions together with those holding between the
ontological attributes themselves. Thus, by way of illustration, in relation
to the illocutionary act of requesting, some of the interactions conforming
to the structure of its illocutionary ICM are captured in Table 2.5.
These interplays are specific of each illocutionary act category, and they
guide and constrain the speakers’ choice of realisation procedures for the
performance of their speech acts. Thus, even though prototypical requests
are characterised by their politeness, speakers know that in a context of
social familiarity (e.g. mum–son relationship), optionality increases, and
that this, in turn, makes politeness requirements decrease. Thus, in such
a context, an apparently non-polite formula (e.g. a simple imperative like
Mum, pass the salt) will be unproblematically understood as a request.
Before ending this section devoted to the semantics of illocutionary
categories, it is necessary to bring to the front a relevant theoretical
postulate offered as far back as the 1980s by Givon (1989). As this cognitive-
functional linguist remarked, it is essential to approach the study of the
60 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
Table 2.5 STRUCTURE of the illocutionary ICM of the act of requesting in terms
of interactions between attributes, as well as between attributes and social variables

Power–optionality: the relative power of the speakers affects the optionality of the
addressee to perform the action. Thus, the more powerful the speaker, the lower the
addressee’s freedom to decide upon his course of action and vice versa.
Social distance–optionality: the closer the speakers are in the social distance axis (i.e. the
higher their degree of intimacy), the higher the optionality that the addressee has to
choose upon his course of action and vice versa.
Optionality–politeness: the lower the amount of optionality granted to the speaker to
decide upon her course of action, the lower the politeness of the speech act and vice
versa.
Cost/benefit–politeness: the higher the cost of the requested action, the higher the
politeness needs will be in order to secure the addressee’s compliance and vice versa.

semantic fabric of speech acts from a typological perspective. Cross-cultural

studies of illocution will reveal that societies often differ as to the politeness
requirements needed and/or expected for the performance of a particular
speech act, as well as to the degree to which social variables (power, social
distance, formality) affect the realisation of illocutionary acts. Explicit
instruction of these subtle cultural differences in the semantics of speech
acts is pivotal for the correct learning of the illocutionary component of a
second language.

2.5.6 Assembling the Illocutionary Puzzle:

Families of Illocutionary Constructions
The constructional treatment of speech acts is an old longing of linguists
from all traditions. The Literal Force Hypothesis itself was an attempt
to pair linguistic forms (sentence types) with particular illocutionary
forces. Since the very beginning of speech act theory, linguists have tried
to identify fixed form-meaning pairings for the expression of speech acts.
Communication would be all the more straightforward and unproblematic
if speakers had at their disposal clear linguistic formulae with which to
communicate their wishes unequivocally. Following this path of thinking,
Searle (1969) put forward the notion of illocutionary force indicating devices
(IFIDs), which were expressions that were thought to be activators of a
certain illocutionary category. He observed that I’LL DO X formulae, such
as I’ ll buy you a bike, are conventionally understood as promises, and CAN
YOU DO X? expressions activate the illocutionary force of requesting.
Dik (1989, 1997) introduced the notion of illocutionary conversors. These
2.5 A Cognitive-Constructional Approach 61
are certain linguistic items that can change the illocutionary force of an
utterance, such as the tag question Will you? or the adverb please, which
can turn an imperative, usually associated with orders, into a request (e.g.
Turn off the radio, will you? / please). These and similar attempts have not
withheld the test of use, since all the examples corresponding to Searle’s
IFIDs, as well as those stemming from the application of Dik’s (1989)
illocutionary conversors, can ultimately express other illocutionary forces
in alternative contexts (e.g. I’ ll buy you a bike tomorrow, for example, need
not be a promise but just a statement of intention).
As explained in Pérez-Hernández (2013: 140), some years later,
Stefanowitsch (2003) has made a strong case in support of the
constructional nature of some speech act expressions. He argues that
some request constructions display a number of semantic and formal
properties that cannot be predicted from their component parts or from
previous constructions. Thus, the CAN YOU DO X? request construction,
according to Stefanowitsch (2003: 16), displays an agentive subject and
allows preverbal request markers (e.g. please, kindly), alternation of
present and conditional forms (e.g. CAN / COULD YOU DO X?), and
co-occurrence with a preposed subordinate clause explaining the speaker’s
reason for making the request (e.g. Since you are stronger than me, can / could
you please hold this?). This view is largely shared by most contemporary
constructional accounts of illocution (Panther & Thornburg, 2005; Ruiz
de Mendoza & Baicchi, 2007; Brdar-Szabó, 2009; Del Campo, 2013).
However, this proposal does not account for the fact that an expression
like Can you hold this for me?, which contains no request marker and no
preposed subordinate clause, is still unequivocally understood as a request.
Contemporary constructional accounts of illocution also fail to explain
the different degrees of explicitation of request expressions. As shown in
Section 2.5.5, illocutionary constructions can be made more explicit as a
higher number of attributes of an illocutionary ICM are linguistically
realised: Can you hold this? > Can you hold this for me? > Can you please
hold this for me? > Could you please hold this for me? > If you don’t mind / If
it’s not too much trouble, could you please hold this for me for just a sec?, etc.
Pairing full linguistic forms with illocutionary meanings has long failed
as an attempt to describe illocutionary constructions. As was made apparent
in Section 2.5.5 in our description of illocutionary ICMs, the conceptual
nature of speech acts is too complex and dynamic to be confined into a fixed
form. As argued before, it is also often the case that speakers do not want
or need to make all the conceptual material of a speech act explicit, either
because it is not necessary (the context fills in the missing information),
62 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
or because it is interactionally desirable to highlight some aspects of the
semantic fabric of the act over others: if a request is costly, speakers may
appeal to this issue and try to minimise the cost (e.g. Can you step aside
for a sec?), if the addressee’s co-operation is not clear, they may target his
willingness as a strategy to gain his compliance (e.g. If you will, could you
step aside?), if there is a large power asymmetry between speakers, a more
polite realisation may be preferred (e.g. student to headmaster: Could you
step aside please?), while that same politeness will become unnecessary if
the social distance between them is small (e.g. son to his mother: Can you
step aside?), etc.
Does this intrinsic variability make a constructional account of speech
acts unfeasible? This book argues that it is, in fact, possible to offer a
constructional treatment of illocution, as long as the notion of construction
is redefined and adapted to the dynamic, multidimensional nature of speech
acts. Goldberg (1995, 2006) defined constructions as non-compositional
learned pairings of forms and semantic and/or discourse functions in which
one or more of their properties are not predictable from knowledge of other
constructions in the language. Constructions vary in size, complexity, and
generality and include words and idioms, as well as phrasal linguistic patterns
(Goldberg & Suttle, 2010: 469). The orthodox notion of construction,
as defined by Goldberg (1995, 2006) within cognitive linguistics, was
originally designed to account for argument-structure configurations. This
linguistic phenomenon, however, does not need to accommodate the rich
social, transactional, and interactional variability that characterises higher
levels of linguistic description (pragmatics, discourse/conversation), and
that affects so straightforwardly the performance of speech acts. Hence the
need to adapt the original notion of construction for this purpose.
As pointed out by Goldberg and Suttle (2010: 469–470), ‘it is clear that
we need to posit a construction when there is something non-compositional
that needs to be learned [… as well as when usage yields a] highly frequent
form-meaning pairing. […] both the items and the generalisations are
represented within the interrelated network of constructions: the “construct-
i-con”’. As the description of directive speech acts in Chapter 4 will show
in detail, this is certainly the case with speech acts. On some occasions,
illocutionary constructions can be highly idiomatic, while in most cases
they are non-compositional form-meaning pairings motivated by a variable
number of the semantic attributes of illocutionary ICMs. Thus, expressions
like WOULD YOU MIND DOING X? are idiomatically used as
requests as attested by the over 7,000 instances of this construction found
in the iWeb corpus. In turn, CAN YOU DO X? expressions constitute
2.5 A Cognitive-Constructional Approach 63
highly frequent, non-compositional constructions with varying degrees
of conventionality and explicitation. This latter type of illocutionary
constructions, to which we shall refer as fluid illocutionary constructions,
do not exhibit fully fixed idiomatic formulae, but rather they are capable of
adapting themselves to the variable needs of interpersonal communication,
modulating their degree of explicitness and their semantic focus as needed
in a particular situation. Fluid illocutionary constructions consist of a
fixed base construction, which metonymically activates one attribute of
the corresponding speech act category, plus a variable number of optional
realisation procedures, which instantiate other attributes of the same speech
act as needed in each concrete interaction. Consider the following instances
of requests.
(2.26) Can you add a mildewcide to paint at the time of purchase? (iWeb)
(2.27) Can you give me a sample of a recommendation letter? (iWeb)
(2.28) Can you please take a look at the one linked below? (iWeb)
(2.29) Can you describe a bit more the problem with combat controls?
(iWeb)
(2.30) If possible, can you post the solution in the comments? (iWeb)
(2.31) Horace if it’s not too much trouble can you post the locations of the
events here? (iWeb)
All of the examples (2.26)–(2.31) share the same base construction, which
consists in an interrogative sentence of the CAN YOU DO X? type. This
base construction metonymically activates two attributes of the ICM of
requests: the addressee’s capability to perform an action, by means of the
use of the modal verb can, and the optionality attribute through the use
of the interrogative sentence type, which presents an event for its potential
realisation but also leaves open the possibility for the event not taking place
at all. The constructional nature of this base construction for the expression
of requests is attested by its high frequency of occurrence in the iWeb
corpus, in contrast to similar expressions, such as the ARE YOU ABLE
TO DO X? construction, which activates the same attributes but which has
specialised as a question for information. Thus, a random search of 5,000
instances of the CAN YOU DO X? construction shows that 4,304 instances
correspond to requests and only 696 to questions for information. Those
CAN YOU DO X? instances that function as questions for information
display perception or understanding verbs (e.g. hear, see, understand,
etc.), which unlike action verbs (e.g. give, read, sing, etc.), cannot have
the speaker as their beneficiary and, therefore, do not comply with one of
the central attributes of the ICM of requesting. On the contrary, a similar
64 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
search for the ARE YOU ABLE TO DO X? structure reveals that this
construction is used mainly as a question for information in 4,987 of the
cases (e.g. Are you able to state positively whether or not that indentation was
present before the shooting?) and as a request in just thirteen occurrences,
all of which include the politeness marker please (e.g. Are you able to please
provide us some more details regarding your hire?). Experimental studies
have argued (Ruytenbeek, Ostashchenko, & Kissine, 2017) that ARE
YOU ABLE TO DO X? expressions are understood as requests as easily
as CAN YOU DO X? constructions. This is only to be expected, since
both expressions activate the same attributes of the ICM of requesting.
However, the fact that both of them could be understood as requests does
not mean that speakers use them interchangeably. The aforementioned
corpus-based evidence shows a high degree of conventionalisation of the
CAN YOU DO X? base construction for the expression of requests. In
fact, its specialisation for the expression of this illocutionary force becomes
manifest in examples like If you are able, can you check what his current
overall ranking is now? (iWeb), where the division of work between these
two constructions becomes transparent. It has also been argued in the
literature that CAN YOU DO X? forms may also be used to perform other
directive acts, like orders or begs. For example, in a context in which the
speaker is socially more powerful than the addressee, CAN YOU DO X?
may be used to express a polite order. Again, although possible in very
specific contexts, corpus data indicates that this is not the prototypical
use of this construction. The random sample of 5,000 CAN YOU DO X?
instances yields no occurrences in which this construction is used to express
an order. These findings show that previous studies were mistaking the
theoretical potential of the construction with its actual use. The CAN
YOU DO X? formula is rarely found instantiating any other speech act
type than a request in actual usage, and when it does, it corresponds to
non-prototypical instances of other illocutionary categories such as the
aforementioned polite order.
In addition, the CAN YOU DO X? base construction can be further
specified linguistically for the instantiation of requests, so that its directive
flavour is highlighted, and its interpretation as a question for information
is totally ruled out. Let us consider once more examples (2.27)–(2.31),
reproduced here for convenience.

(2.27) Can you give me a sample of a recommendation letter? – beneficiary

(speaker)
(2.28) Can you please take a look at the one linked below? – politeness
2.5 A Cognitive-Constructional Approach 65
Table 2.6 Realisation procedures for the attributes of the ICM of requesting

Beneficiary Me/us, for me/for us

E.g. Can you give me a book? Can you find out the answer for me?
Cost–benefit If it is not too much trouble, if it doesn’t bother you, if it’s not
too much to ask
E.g. If it’s not too much to ask, can you find out the answer for me?
Optionality If possible, if you will, if you are able, maybe, perhaps
E.g. If possible, can you reach me the book?
Mitigation A bit, a little, a sec, for a second, just
E.g. Can you wait for a second?
Politeness Please, kindly, use of conditional modals (could), if you please
E.g. Could you please stay still for a sec?

(2.29) Can you describe a bit more the problem with combat controls?
– mitigation
(2.30) If possible, can you post the solution in the comments? – optionality
(2.31) Horace if it’s not too much trouble can you post the locations of the
events here? – cost–benefit
The words in italics activate additional specific attributes of the requesting
ICM. In example (2.27), the personal pronoun me instantiates the speaker-
as-beneficiary feature. In example (2.28), the adverb please instantiates the
politeness attribute of requests. In example (2.29), a bit functions as a
mitigator of the cost of the proposed action (i.e. mitigation attribute). In
example (2.30), if possible presents the request as tentative thus increasing
the freedom of the addressee to comply with it or to refuse to do it
(i.e. optionality attribute). Finally, in example (2.31) the conditional phrase
if it is not too much trouble directly alludes to the cost of the requested
action, thus instantiating this specific attribute. It should be noted that the
different attributes could be linguistically instantiated by other expressions
with similar semantics. Although the inventory of realisation procedures
for each attribute of the ICM of requesting will be dealt with in detail in
Chapter 4, Table 2.6 includes some illustrative examples.
As shown in Section 2.5.5 in relation to examples (2.19)–(2.23), a single base
construction can also be combined with a varying number of realisation
procedures, thus metonymically activating a smaller or larger number of
illocutionary attributes and yielding instances of requests that differ as to
their degree of explicitness.
The different combinations of the base construction (CAN YOU
DO X?) with specific realisation procedures for the attributes of the request
66 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
Table 2.7 Number of occurrences in iWeb for the realisation procedures of the
requests in examples (2.27)–(2.31)

Number of occurrences
Base structure + realisation procedures for specific attributes (iWeb)

Can you do X? + beneficiary (me) 73,852

Can you do X? + politeness (please) 32,690
Can you do X? + mitigation (a bit) 4,577
Can you do X? + optionality (if possible) 197
Can you do X? + cost–benefit (if it’s not too much trouble) 139

ICM conform to a family of constructions whose members display different

degrees of conventionality. As shown in Table 2.7, different combinations
have been found to have different degrees of productivity in the iWeb
corpus, which suggests that some of them are more conventional than
others.
The above data indicates that illocutionary constructions, just like
constructions at other levels of linguistic description (Goldberg & Suttle,
2010), capture generalisations within a given language. The members of
the CAN YOU DO X? family of request constructions are related via
an inheritance hierarchy, with more abstract, productive constructions
(i.e. base constructions) being directly related to their more conventional
instantiations.
The description of the family of constructions for each speech act
category should include its specific set of base constructions plus the
inventory of realisation procedures that help instantiate further attributes
of the corresponding illocutionary ICM. Table 2.6 captures an illustrative
inventory of realisation procedures for the act of requesting. It is important
to draw attention to the fact that the realisation procedures activate a
very specific set of attributes (i.e. beneficiary, optionality, cost–benefit,
mitigation, and politeness) among those that conform to the illocutionary
ICM of requesting. Other attributes of the same requesting ICM, which
do not function as realisation procedures, seem to have specialised as base
constructions. These include the following: addressee-as-agent, addressee’s
capability, addressee’s willingness, speaker’s need, speaker’s willingness,
and possession of the requested object. An illustrative inventory of base
constructions for requests is included in Table 2.8.
The attributes that activate base constructions correspond to essential
aspects for the realisation of the requested action (i.e. capability, willingness,
2.5 A Cognitive-Constructional Approach 67
Table 2.8 Base constructions for the act of requesting

Attribute of the requesting ICM Base constructions

Addressee-as-agent IMPERATIVE CONSTRUCTION, YOU WILL

DO X
Addressee’s capability CAN YOU DO X?, YOU CAN DO X
Addressee’s willingness WILL YOU DO X?, WOULD YOU BE WILLING
TO DO X?, IF YOU WILL DO X
Speaker’s willingness I WANT X/I WANT YOU TO DO X, I’D LIKE
X/I’D LIKE YOU TO DO X
Speaker’s need I NEED X/I NEED YOU TO DO X, I COULD
DO WITH X
Possession of requested object HAVE YOU GOT X?, YOU’VE GOT X

and possession). Thus, if the addressee cannot physically perform the

requested action or is not in possession of the requested object, there is
no point in addressing the request to him. Similarly, if the speaker has no
desire or need for the requested object or action, there is no need for the
performance of the request at all.
On the contrary, those attributes that correspond to additional
realisation procedures that combine with base constructions are connected
to dimensions of social behaviour and social expectations that could turn
the request more or less successful (see Table 2.6). Thus, modulating the
cost, optionality, mitigation, or politeness of the request may influence the
addressee’s decision as to whether or not to perform the request.
As was the case with the semantics of speech acts (see previous
section), their constructional realisation should also be considered from
a cross-linguistic perspective. Different languages offer diverse realisation
procedures and favour different base constructions. Again, as with the
attributes and variables that conform to the illocutionary ICMs, succeeding
in teaching constructional families of speech acts in an L2 requires a
previous comparison with those constructions available in L1, as well as
explicit instruction aimed at making students aware of the similarities,
differences, and mismatches between the constructions in each language.
Chapter 4 will offer detailed corpus-based inventories of the most prevalent
base constructions and realisation procedures that English speakers use in
their everyday life interactions for the expression of the directives under
investigation. Illocutionary constructions will also be shown to be motivated
by the semantics of speech acts as captured by the attributes conforming to
their corresponding illocutionary ICMs. The constructional approach to
68 What Contemporary Research Tells Us about Speech Acts
Table 2.9 Summary of contemporary theoretical advancements on speech acts

Functional paradigms The notion of speech acts as social, as well as linguistic

constructs
The idea that the language system is capable of offering
enough realisation procedures for the full codification
of speech acts
Pragmatic-conversational The realisation that speech acts show different degrees of
paradigms conventionalisation and inference
The focus on social/interactional aspects of illocution
(i.e. pragmatic scales and variables)
The relevance of conversational aspects of speech act
performance (i.e. adjacency pairs, preference
organisation)
The relevance of the use of real data and sufficient
contextual information
Cognitive-constructional The realisation that speech act categories show prototype
paradigms effects
The realisation that codification, convention, and
inferential processes are not discrete categories
The realisation that the formalisation of the semantics of
speech acts in terms of illocutionary ICMs makes it
possible to capture their conceptual fabric and to
distinguish prototypical cases of each illocutionary
category
The realisation that the formal side of illocutions is
motivated by (multiple source)-in-target metonymical
operations on illocutionary ICMs
The description of the idiosyncratic nature of
illocutionary constructions in terms of base
constructions + linguistic realisation procedures, both
motivated by the semantics of each illocutionary ICM
Focus on the need of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic
comparisons of the illocutionary ICMs and
illocutionary constructional families in L1 and L2 for
their successful teaching

speech acts that is advocated in this book accommodates the most relevant
theoretical findings about the meaning and form of illocutionary acts that
stem from the contemporary cognitive, pragmatic, and functional works
revised in this chapter. By way of summary, Table 2.9 lists those theoretical
advancements that shall guide our revision of the way in which speech acts
are presently being represented in EFL textbooks (Chapter 3), as well as our
pedagogical description of directive speech acts and the subsequent design
of related teaching activities in Chapters 4 and 5, respectively.
3

Critical Assessment of the Representation

of Speech Acts in Advanced EFL Textbooks

Chapter 2 offered a panorama of the main theoretical advancements on

the study of speech acts stemming from a variety of linguistic traditions
(i.e. functional, pragmatic, cognitive/constructional, and conversational
paradigms). In the last sections of the previous chapter, those current
theoretical findings were integrated into a new model of illocutionary
description, in terms of illocutionary ICMs and illocutionary constructions,
which has also been shown to be compatible with current experimental
evidence about the performance of speech acts. The ultimate aim of
this book is to translate this model of illocution, which captures current
knowledge on illocutionary performance, into a cognitive pedagogical
grammar of directive speech acts in English (Chapter 4) and a set of
activities for its teaching to Spanish advanced EFL students (Chapter 5).
It is mandatory, therefore, to justify the need for this endeavour. In this
connection, one question needs to be answered: do current EFL textbooks
offer a quantitatively faithful and qualitatively updated portrait of directive
speech acts, one that is compatible with the theoretical and experimental
findings reported in Chapter 2? Chapter 3 is devoted to providing an
informed answer to this question.
Research on the adequacy of the representation of directive speech acts in
EFL textbooks is not extensive, and it presents some significant weaknesses.
To begin with, most studies on how directive speech acts are dealt with
in EFL course books are based on the analysis of a few isolated speech
act categories. Thus, as regards the general category of directives, which
is the object of our analysis, EFL researchers have devoted considerable
attention to analysing the portrayals of requests in EFL course books
(Barron, 2007; Delen & Tevil, 2010; Koosha & Vahid Dastjerdi, 2012;
Petraki & Bayes, 2013; Aksoyalp & Toprak, 2015; Ross, 2018) and, to a lesser
extent, to studying the representation and instructional material of the act
of suggesting (Jiang, 2006; Ekin, 2013). Data about how EFL textbooks
approach other highly frequent directive categories, such as ordering,

69
70 Representation of Speech Acts in EFL Textbooks
begging, advising, or warning, has received considerably less attention. As
shall be shown in Section 3.2 this lack of research on how EFL textbooks
deal with other speech act categories different from requests is likely to be
a direct consequence of the fact that most course books do not actually
include other directive speech act categories in their syllabus. In connection
with this, the quantitative representation of speech acts in EFL textbooks
(i.e. how many and which speech acts are actually being taught) has been
poorly investigated to date. There are some notable exceptions such as the
works by Soozandehfar and Sahragard (2011), Ulum (2015), Ren and Han
(2016), and Pérez-Hernández (2019), whose findings will be compared with
the data in Section 3.2 below.
Additionally, research on how EFL textbooks approach the teaching of
speech acts is often limited to issues pertaining to a particular theoretical
perspective. Thus, as pointed out in Pérez-Hernández (2019), most reviews
of the treatment of speech acts in EFL textbooks take a conversational
(Boxer & Pickering, 1995; Wong, 2002) or pragmatic stance (Vellenga,
2004; Soozandehfar & Sahragard, 2011; Diepenbroek & Derwing, 2013;
Farashaiyan, Tan & Shahragard, 2018). Other relevant dimensions of the
illocutionary phenomenon, such as its constructional nature, the cognitive
operations that underlie its production and understanding, or the cross-
cultural/linguistic aspects of its semantics and form, are not considered.
Finally, most previous studies on the treatment of illocution by EFL
textbooks are based on exiguous amounts of data, usually comprising just
one course book series (e.g. Soozandehfar & Sahragard, 2011; Akbari &
Sharifzadeh, 2013; Ulum, 2015; Farashaiyan & Muthusamy, 2017;
Farashaiyan, Tan & Shahragard, 2018).
This chapter reports the results of a qualitative and quantitative revision
of directive speech acts in a richer collection of textbooks and through the
application of a set of analytical categories with a broader theoretical scope
(see Section 3.1), with a view to overcoming the aforementioned weaknesses.
The conclusions drawn in Sections 3.2 and 3.3 offer a finer-grained portrayal
of the present-day treatment of illocution in EFL textbooks for advanced
students.

3.1 Analytical Categories and Corpus of Textbooks

for Analysis
This chapter looks into a collection of textbooks for advanced EFL students
and analyses their treatment of the set of directive speech acts chosen for
this study. The chapter considers aspects related to (1) the quantitative
3.1 Analytical Categories and Corpus of Textbooks 71
representation of directive speech acts in the textbooks (i.e. determining
if there is a balanced portrayal of the most frequent categories of directive
speech acts) and (2) the qualitative treatment of directive speech acts. In
relation to the latter, it has been argued in Chapters 1 and 2 that teaching
how to perform directive speech acts correctly in a foreign language involves
at least the following four main objectives.
1. Teaching the semantic and pragmatic attributes and variables that
make up each directive illocutionary ICM.
2. Teaching the constructional nature of illocutionary acts.
3. Teaching the conversational structures in which illocutionary acts
participate.
4. Teaching the areas of discrepancy between L1 and L2, which may result
in difficulties to the EFL student.
These general theoretical hallmarks for the correct teaching of the
illocutionary component of a language can be expanded into more specific
teaching items that closely correspond to the latest theoretical advancements
offered by the different linguistic traditions as revealed in our revision in
Chapter 2.

1. Teaching the semantic and pragmatic attributes and variables that

make up each directive illocutionary ICM:
1.1. transactional attributes: agent, beneficiary, cost–benefit.
1.2. interactional attributes: speaker/addressee’s needs/willingness,
optionality, mitigation, politeness.
1.3. social variables: social power, social distance, formality.
2. Teaching the constructional nature of illocutionary acts:
2.1. set of families of base constructions for each speech act category.
2.2. inventory of realisation procedures that can be used to modulate
the final illocutionary act as required by the interactional/
contextual needs, as well as its degree of explicitness.
2.3. cognitive operations that motivate illocutionary constructions, in
general, and directive illocutionary constructions, in particular:
(multiple source)-in-target metonymies and the specific force
dynamics of each directive speech act.
3. Teaching the conversational structures in which illocutionary acts
participate:
3.1. use of real data and sufficient contextual information.
3.2. adjacency pairs.
3.3. preference organisation: preferred/dispreferred responses.
72 Representation of Speech Acts in EFL Textbooks
4. Teaching the areas of discrepancy between L1 and L2, which may result
in difficulties to the EFL student:
4.1. cross-cultural differences in the semantics/pragmatics of directive
illocutionary ICMs, including culturally-based interactional/social
mismatches (e.g. degree of politeness requirements typical of each
culture).
4.2. cross-linguistic differences in the collection of base constructions
and in the inventory of realisation procedures for each directive
speech act.
The theoretical points summarised above will be used as analytical
categories in Sections 3.3.1–3.3.4 to qualitatively assess the EFL textbooks
under scrutiny. The results of this analysis shall provide a comprehensive
overview of the strengths and weaknesses of current treatments of illocution
in contemporary teaching materials.
The ten EFL textbooks chosen for analysis are all currently being
used in Spanish universities by undergraduate and graduate students
of English studies, as well as in Spanish official language schools by
advanced EFL Spanish students. The corpus of textbooks includes the
following titles:1
Complete Advanced (Cambridge University Press)
English Unlimited Advanced (Cambridge University Press)
Face2face Advanced (Cambridge University Press)
Objective Advanced (Cambridge University Press)
Keynote Advanced (Cengage Learning. National Geographic Learning)
Outcomes Advanced (Cengage Learning. National Geographic Learning)
Navigate Advanced (Oxford University Press)
Solutions Advanced (Oxford University Press)
SpeakOut Advanced (Pearson)
Cutting Edge Advanced (Pearson)
All textbooks in the corpus correspond to the C1 level of proficiency
as established by the Common European Framework of Reference for
Languages (CEFR). As explained in Section 1.3, the type of explicit

1 The aim of this revision is to offer a panorama of the treatment of directive speech acts in current
EFL textbooks, not to single out any of the textbooks for their lack of quality regarding this issue.
For this reason, the results reported in Sections 3.2 and 3.3 make use of anonymous acronyms (i.e.
TB1, TB2, etc.), where TB stands for ‘textbook’, and the number is used simply to differentiate
one from another. The numbers do not bear any relation to the order in which the textbooks have
been listed above.
3.2 Quantitative Assessment 73
instruction advocated in this book is expected to be most useful for
advanced EFL students, those who already have the necessary command
of the English language to understand the explanations in the cognitive
pedagogical description of directive speech acts offered in Chapter 4. For
this reason and for the sake of exhaustiveness, the present review of EFL
textbooks is restricted to this level of proficiency.
The collection of works chosen for analysis aims at being representative
of present-day textbooks for the teaching of English to advanced students.
Therefore, the pivotal criterion for corpus selection has been the variety of
the textbooks in relation to their editorial houses, methodology, age-target,
etc. There are course books from four mainstream publishing houses (i.e.
Cambridge, Oxford, Pearson, and Cengage). Some of them are targeted
to a specific age group, such as Navigate Advanced, English Unlimited
Advanced, and SpeakOut Advanced, which are tailored for adult learners;
while the rest target a broader audience. Some are exam-oriented (e.g.
Complete Advanced and Objective Advanced), some give pride of place to
communication skills and take on a top-bottom approach (e.g. Outcomes
Advanced), and others approach language teaching with a bottom-up
methodology (e.g. Navigate Advanced). Some highlight their use of real
language (e.g. Face2face Advanced) and additionally promise a special focus
on intercultural competence as a ‘fifth skill’ (English Unlimited Advanced).
Finally, others place emphasis on their task-oriented methodology (e.g.
Solutions Advanced, Cutting Edge Advanced). Altogether the collection of
textbooks chosen for the study constitute a varied sample of the different
methodologies, approaches, and trends in current instructional materials
for the teaching of English as an L2 to advanced students.

3.2 Quantitative Assessment of the Treatment of

Directive Speech Actsin Advanced EFL Textbooks
As Table 3.1 illustrates, the representation of directive categories in the
textbooks under scrutiny is largely inconsistent. There is only one textbook
that covers all six categories of directives (TB1). Most textbooks focus on
the same three directives (i.e. requesting, suggesting, and advising) to the
exclusion of others like begging, ordering, or warning, and some of them
deal with only one or two directives (TB2, TB10). The number of activities
devoted to teaching those speech acts is also scarce. In most cases, there is
just one exercise aimed at practising the use of the directive, with only a few
exceptions (e.g. TB4 and TB7) offering up to five exercises for the learning
of advising and requesting acts, respectively. In these same textbooks, other
74 Representation of Speech Acts in EFL Textbooks
Table 3.1 Range and distribution of exercises devoted to the teaching/practice
of directive speech acts in advanced EFL textbooks

Ordering Requesting Begging Suggesting Advising Warning

TB1 1 1 1 2 1 2
TB2 3
TB3 1 2 3
TB4 1 1 2 5 3
TB5 1 3 3 1
TB6 2 1 1
TB7 1 5 2 1
TB8 1 2 1 1
TB9 1 1 1
TB10 1 1

directives receive considerably less amount of attention. Thus, the acts of

ordering and suggesting, for instance, are approached in just one or two
activities.
All in all, the data reveal that the representation of directive speech acts in
the textbooks under analysis is fairly poor, at least from a quantitative point
of view. In the majority of cases not all directive categories are included,
and for those that are given consideration, the number of activities devoted
to their learning varies considerably. In addition, it is observed that there
is no overall logical or systematic planning for the teaching of directive
speech acts at the C1 level of proficiency: which directives will be learned
depends largely on the textbook chosen by each educational institution.
It could be argued that these data are limited to instructional material
for advanced learning, and that the teaching of directives may have already
been undertaken in previous academic stages. This hypothesis seems to
be confirmed by Ulum’s (2015) statistical analysis of the frequency of
occurrence of each sub-category of Searle’s (1976) speech act taxonomy
in EFL textbooks at the starters level (A1 and A2). He concluded that
the representation of illocutionary acts was unsystematic: only directive
and commissive acts are present in the evaluated EFL textbooks, while
assertives, expressives, and declarations are excluded. Thus, it could be
concluded that if enough directives receive considerably attention at initial
stages of the learning process (A1, A2), this makes it unnecessary to teach
them again at more advanced levels, thus allowing space in the C1 and C2
levels of instruction for other illocutionary categories like assertives and
expressives.
3.2 Quantitative Assessment 75
However, Ulum’s (2015) analysis was restricted to just one course book
series (i.e. Yes You Can EFL), and it did not specify which subtypes of
directives were taught at the starters level. In fact, all the examples in his
paper are instances of requests. No information is provided about whether
other directive acts like begging, advising, ordering, or warning were
included in the starters level textbooks. Contradictorily enough, requests
are one of the directive subtypes that receives a higher amount of attention
in our corpus of advanced level course books under analysis. This is not
consistent, therefore, with the hypothesis that the underrepresentation of
directives at the advanced level series is due to the fact that they had already
been taught at earlier stages: requests are included both in the starters and
again in the advanced level textbooks, while other directives are not.
Another piece of research carried out by Pérez-Hernández (2019) looked
in detail into the types of directives taught at three different levels of
proficiency (starters, intermediate, and advanced) in a larger collection of
textbooks, including eight series of course books by mainstream editorial
houses like Cambridge, Oxford, and Pearson. Her findings revealed that
the representation of directives was poor at all three levels of instruction.
Starters textbooks only dealt with requests and suggestions, leaving
aside basic and highly frequent directives like ordering, warning, and
advising. The intermediate level textbooks added some subtypes of orders
(i.e. commands) and other directives like giving instructions, while still
excluding some of the most common types of directive acts: advising,
warning, and begging, among others. The advanced series were incapable
of fully compensating for these gaps in previous levels. Most advanced
textbooks included requests, suggestions, and advising, and only a few
of them enlarged the inventory of directives to incorporate the acts of
recommending or proposing future actions. Nguyen’s (2011) and Ren and
Han’s (2016) papers provide similar data stemming from an analysis of
lower-intermediate textbooks, which again focus on the acts of requesting,
suggesting, and advising to the exclusion of other directives. These studies
are largely compatible with this book’s findings, which also shows that
requesting, suggesting, and advising are the directive acts that receive the
highest amount of attention in all advanced textbooks under scrutiny.
From the above considerations, it can be concluded that the limited
representation of directive speech acts in advanced textbooks series is not
because they have already been taught in previous academic stages. Acts
like requests, suggestions, and, to a lesser extent, advising are taught at
all levels of proficiency (i.e. starters, intermediate, and advanced), while
others are simply and randomly left out in all three levels of instruction.
76 Representation of Speech Acts in EFL Textbooks
An extreme case is that of the act of begging, which has only been found
in one advanced textbook (TB1). Warning and ordering are also largely
underrepresented, with only half the textbooks in our corpus offering some
kind of instructional material about them.
In addition, the amount of exercises made available for the learning of the
six directive speech acts under enquiry was generally small with an average
of just one or two exercises per speech act. In most cases, the space allowed
for the teaching of a particular speech act within an exercise was shared
with other linguistic issues. For example, those exercises that presented the
use of modals like must and have to for the expression of the act of ordering,
also included other uses of the modals, such as the deductive must (TB1).
Some of the activities including directives did not even have the teaching
of the speech act as their main focus. The few instances of warnings that
have been found in the textbooks, for example, appear in exercises that are
mainly concerned with reported speech: the student is given a direct form
of warning (e.g. Don’t touch the stove, or you’ ll get burnt) and is asked to use
a performative verb (i.e. warn) to turn it into a reported speech expression
(e.g. He warned me not to touch the stove …). Since the focus of the exercise is
the teaching of reported speech, no information or instruction is provided
about the directive speech act itself.
Turning to other quantitative dimensions of the data, it was observed
that the amount of attention, understood in terms of the number of
exercises/activities devoted to the teaching of a speech act, was randomly
assigned and not justified from a theoretical or pedagogical point of view.
One may wonder why some textbooks (TB4) offer up to five activities for
the teaching of advising acts and only one for requests, while others (TB7)
devote five exercises to latter and only one to the former. In any case, there
is nothing intrinsically more complex in the conceptual nature of either of
these speech acts that makes one of them more challenging than the other,
or that makes one require deeper practice for its learning.
Although not the focus of this investigation, the planning of the teaching
of directive speech acts throughout the different levels of proficiency
also seems to be largely unsatisfactory. As already indicated in previous
works (Moradi, Karbalaei & Afrad, 2013), a comparison of the request
and advising formulae used in the starters, intermediate, and advanced
instructional material for each of the course book series under enquiry
reveals that the same linguistic expressions are being taught at all levels,
following no specific pattern and with no significant increase in their
difficulty or complexity. CAN / COULD YOU DO X? and I’D LIKE X
requests are the linguistic formulae found in all textbooks. Whether both
3.3 Qualitative Assessment 77
are used, or which one is used at either level of instruction varies greatly
among editorial houses, which again suggests lack of planning based on
pedagogical and/or theoretical criteria.

3.3 Qualitative Assessment of the Treatment of

Directive Speech Acts in Advanced EFL Textbooks
The following subsections offer the results of a qualitative assessment of
the EFL textbooks under scrutiny in relation to the analytical categories
described in Section 3.1. They are summarised in Table 3.2 for convenience.

3.3.1 Inclusion of Semantic/Pragmatic Information about Speech Acts

In Chapter 2, the description of the semantic and pragmatic knowledge
characterising each directive category in terms of illocutionary ICMs was
proved to be one of the keystones of a sound theory of speech acts. In fact,
the information comprised within each illocutionary ICM provides the
grounding and motivation for the choice of speech act constructions and
linguistic realisation procedures to be used in conversational interactions.
Current functional and pragmatic research has evinced the roles and
relevance of several types of attributes and variables in building the
conceptual fabric of illocutionary ICMs (see Sections 2.2.2, 2.4.2, and
2.5.5 for detailed descriptions). By way of summary, transactional attributes

Table 3.2 Analytical categories for the assessment of current EFL textbooks
as regards their treatment of directive speech acts

Semantic/pragmatic AC1. Transactional attributes (e.g. agent, beneficiary, cost)

aspects AC2. Interactional attributes (e.g. optionality, mitigation,
politeness, etc.)
AC3. Social variables (e.g. social power, social distance,
formality)
Constructional aspects AC4. Base constructions
AC5. Realisation procedures
AC6. Cognitive operations (metonymy, metaphor)
Conversational aspects AC7. Adjacency pairs
AC8. Preference organisation
AC9. Use of real data and contextual information
Typological aspects AC10. Cross-cultural mismatches in the semantics of
illocutionary categories
AC11. Cross-linguistic mismatches in the form of speech acts
78 Representation of Speech Acts in EFL Textbooks
inform about the agent, beneficiary, and cost–benefit of the transaction
involved in the directive speech act; interactional attributes capture social
and pragmatic conventions that regulate social exchanges and verbal
interactions (e.g. politeness, optionality, mitigation); and social variables,
like social power, social distance, and formality, have been shown to interact
with the two previous sets of attributes and to be pivotal in determining
their values (e.g. a large social distance increases the politeness, optionality,
and mitigation requirements of the speech act). Altogether they conform to
the ontology and structure of illocutionary ICMs (Section 2.5.5).
The extent to which these semantic and pragmatic items have been
implemented in the textbooks under enquiry is disturbingly low, especially
given the importance of mastering this type of information for the
performance of socially and contextually felicitous speech acts, as has been
extensively argued in the literature.
None of the textbooks under analysis offers information about the
transactional attributes involved in the semantics of directive speech acts or
their interconnections and synergies with interactional and social variables
(e.g. the fact that as the cost of the requested action increases, the politeness
of the act will need to be modulated accordingly). Interactional attributes
and social variables are also largely overlooked. The only interactional
attribute that is given any consideration is that of politeness. Only three
of the textbooks in our corpus offer polite formulae for requests and
suggestions, but they do not offer any instruction as to when such polite
forms should be used (e.g. high cost of the requested action, large social
distance, power asymmetries, etc.). It has also been observed that most
of the illocutionary constructions included in the textbooks are highly
polite (TB3, TB4, TB5, TB7, TB10). This is so especially in connection
with the act of requesting (e.g. COULD / WOULD YOU DO X? forms).
This type of polite requests, however, may not fit many of the everyday
life interactional contexts in which a more relaxed register is expected
and in which the use of such polite formulae may come through as odd,
ironic, or straightforwardly clumsy. No information is offered about which
contexts and which social variables license the use of those markedly polite
illocutionary constructions. Other interactional attributes, such as those of
mitigation and optionality, are not given any consideration.
Regarding social variables only two textbooks (TB3 and TB7) deal with
the formality of the context, and just one of them introduces the variable
of social distance in relation to requests (TB7). The variable of social power,
an essential ingredient in the semantics of some directives (e.g. orders)
does not receive any attention. Most textbooks teach linguistic formulae
3.3 Qualitative Assessment 79
for the production of directive speech acts without instructing students
about the fact that the power relations between the speakers, their social
distance, or the formality of the context often have a bearing on their need
for politeness, mitigation, and/or optionality.
The only exception to the lack of semantic/pragmatic information about
the conceptual nature of directive illocutions is TB7, where a rich number
of illocutionary constructions are offered with some explicit instruction
about the contexts (formal/informal), social variables (distance), and some
of the interactional attributes (politeness) that guide the speaker’s choices
in different situations. Unfortunately, this wealth of information is offered
only in relation to the act of requesting. The rest of the directives included
in this textbook do not display analogous explanations. There does not seem
to be any sound reason why requests require explicit teaching about social
and interactional aspects of their use, while other directives like advising,
warning, begging, ordering, or suggesting do not. As pointed out at the
beginning of this chapter, the act of requesting has received a significantly
higher amount of attention in current theoretical and pedagogical research
than other directives. The poor coverage of the semantic/pragmatic nature
of directives different from requests in the textbooks under analysis may
simply be a reflection of this situation. This brings to the front the need
for detailed theoretical descriptions of speech acts like the one provided
in Chapter 4 for their subsequent implementation in EFL textbooks and
teaching materials.
Our findings on the lack of adequacy of the semantic/pragmatic descriptions
of directive speech acts in the collection of textbooks under analysis are
consistent with previous literature on this issue. Crandall and Basturkmen
(2004), Vellenga (2004), Usó-Juan (2008), Nourdad and Roshani Khiabani
(2015), Ren and Han (2016), and Pérez-Hernández (2019) apprise the lack of
metapragmatic information in EFL textbooks. Diepenbroek and Derwing
(2013: 1) point to the fact that ‘the quality of the pragmatic information
included in textbooks does not allow learners to develop their pragmatic
competence in the target language’. More recently, Borer (2018) and Ton
Nu (2018) not only confirm the paucity of explicit information on pragmatic
aspects of illocutionary performance but also reveal that the few semantic/
pragmatic aspects that are dealt with in the textbooks are inadequate
according to current theories of L2 pragmatic teaching. Farashaiyan, Tan,
and Shahragard (2018) also report a lack of cross-cultural perspective in the
teaching of the pragmatic dimension of illocutionary acts.
All in all, the semantic and pragmatic knowledge of directive speech
acts has been shown to be underrepresented in EFL textbooks: students are
80 Representation of Speech Acts in EFL Textbooks
generally offered a limited number of linguistic forms for each directive,
and related metapragmatic information is insufficient in terms of both
quantity and quality. The amount of practice material is also scarce
(Shimizu, Fukasawa & Yonekura, 2007).

3.3.2 Treatment of the Constructional Nature of Directive Speech Acts

Learning to form grammatically correct sentences is just the first step
towards being able to communicate in a foreign language. As was made
manifest in Chapter 2, however, learning to pair different linguistic formulae
with specific communicative purposes, in particular contexts, and bearing
in mind the interactional and social variables that are at work in each
particular communicative exchange is what is actually needed in order to
master the use of a second language. Examining how the formal, linguistic
realisations of directive speech acts are presented in the textbooks, and
whether they are taught in relation to their specific meanings, is essential in
order to assess the adequacy and effectiveness of current teaching materials.
Previous research on this issue offers a bleak panorama that is confirmed
by the data in our corpus. As already reported in the literature, the main
focus is on the teaching of lists of expressions for the production of each
directive speech act, which are randomly included in grammar sections or
as part of dialogues and/or exercises (Farashaiyan & Muthusamy, 2017).
The number and representativity of the linguistic expressions included in
those lists does not follow any systematic pattern. There are textbooks (e.g.
TB7) offering up to five different formulae for the expression of requests,
three for the act of advising, and two for ordering. Alternatively, TB4
offers four expressions for the act of advising and only one for requests.
Yet other textbooks (e.g. TB1) provide just one linguistic formula for each
directive category. The theoretical description of directive speech acts that
will be presented in Chapter 4 reveals that the English language does not
discriminate among different directive acts as to the wealth of linguistic
formulae that it offers for their realisations. The unbalanced portrayal
found in the textbooks under scrutiny is likely to have a negative impact
in the learning process of EFL students.
Aside from the above quantitative issues, Bouton (1996) points to another
weakness of the treatment of formal and constructional aspects of speech
acts in EFL textbooks: the lack of representativity of the formulae chosen
as teaching targets. In his study on the act of inviting in EFL textbooks, the
invitation formulae presented to the students were found to rarely occur in
published native speakers’ corpora. In this same vein, Nguyen (2011) reported
3.3 Qualitative Assessment 81
that sometimes textbooks stress one formula over others which are equally
or more frequent in real-life use, thus providing teachers and students with
misleading information. This point has also been corroborated by the data
in our corpus. By way of illustration, in relation to the act of ordering, all
textbooks that include this directive in their syllabi offer the same two linguistic
formulae for its expression, namely, the modal verbs must and have to (e.g.
You must study, You have to study). A corpus search for the act of ordering (see
Section 4.1.2 in the next chapter), however, reveals that these are neither the
only, nor even the most frequent linguistic formulae for the communicative
rendering of this directive. The IMPERATIVE construction and declarative-
based constructions like YOU ARE TO DO X, for instance, which are also
amply used by speakers, but are not considered in the textbooks.
In addition, none of the textbooks under scrutiny devotes specific
sections to speech acts. The latter are introduced as part of the teaching of
other grammatical issues. For instance, orders are dealt with when teaching
modal verbs. Requests are introduced when teaching the uses of modal
verbs in the past tense (e.g. could/would). Warnings have exclusively been
found in connection with reported speech, when asking students to use
the performative verb warn to report the corresponding indirect act. The
fact that speech acts are always approached in relation to other linguistic
issues, instead of being treated as independent teaching topics, may explain
their shallow and partial representation in the textbooks under scrutiny.
The analysis of the textbooks chosen for this study also reveals that the
linguistic formulae included in the teaching materials do not distinguish
between illocutionary base constructions and realisation procedures. This
distinction was shown to be relevant in Section 2.5.6, since realisation
procedures act on base constructions to modulate their illocutionary
force, so that they can fit different interactional/social contexts. Thus, the
same base construction (e.g. CAN YOU DO X?) may be combined with
different realisation procedures to modulate its levels of politeness (e.g.
CAN YOU DO X, PLEASE?, COULD YOU DO X?) and even to change
its illocutionary force from one of requesting to one of ordering or begging
(e.g. CAN YOU DO X, PLEASE? versus CAN YOU DO X AT ONCE!!
versus CAN YOU PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE DO X?).
Finally, the description of directive illocutionary constructions in the
textbooks under scrutiny also fails to inform students about the cognitive
operations that motivate them (see Sections 2.5.5 and 2.5.6). By way of
illustration, students are unaware of the fact that questions about ability,
willingness, or possession can metonymically activate a directive category
simply because those are three basic components of the semantics of
82 Representation of Speech Acts in EFL Textbooks
directive acts. Teaching the motivation of illocutionary expressions on
the semantics of the corresponding illocutionary acts is likely to facilitate
the memorisation of those formulae by L2 students, as has already been
shown to be the case in other areas of L2 learning (e.g. prepositions,
metaphors, idioms, etc.; Boers & Demecheleer, 1998; Shaffer, 2004;
Boers & Lindstromberg, 2008; Tyler, 2012).

3.3.3 Treatment of Conversational Aspects of Directive Speech Acts

As explained in detail in Section 2.4.3, conversational approaches to
illocution have highlighted the relevance of considering real language data
in their analysis of speech acts. This theoretical postulate has also been
assessed in relation to the portrayal of illocutionary acts in EFL textbooks,
under the premise that the lack of real language examples can hinder the
correct learning of a foreign language. As pointed out by Nguyen (2011), the
literature provides ample evidence that EFL textbooks do not offer students
adequate opportunities for learning authentic language (Bardovi-Harlig,
2001; Grant & Starks, 2001; Wong, 2002; Vellenga, 2004). In much the
same vein, Jiang (2006: 36) points out that ‘although the new generation
textbooks introduce more linguistic structures … than the old generation
textbooks, the discrepancies between real language use and EFL textbooks
are still apparent’. This has also been made manifest in our assessment
of the linguistic constructions and realisation procedures for directive
speech acts included in our collection of textbooks (Section 3.3.2): the
linguistic expressions that are currently being taught have been found to
be highly formulaic and hardly representative of the wealth and variety of
illocutionary constructions that the English language has to offer. In fact,
out of the ten textbooks chosen for analysis, only five make it clear in their
methodological descriptions that they make use of real language data in the
texts and conversations included in the books. Authors like Bardovi-Harlig,
Mossman, and Vellenga (2014a, 2014b) and Bardovi-Harlig and Mossman
(2016), however, have provided ample evidence about the feasibility of
using corpus-based authentic language for developing teaching materials.
These authors have shown how to use language samples to help students
identify pragmatic routines for speech acts and notice how they are used in
context. The lack of a widespread corpus-based approach to the design of
instructional material for the teaching of speech acts finds little justification
in the time of digital humanities.
The use of real language examples as teaching material becomes pivotal
when assessing the degree to which textbooks succeed in helping students
3.3 Qualitative Assessment 83
to master the conversational/discursive dimension of speech acts. In this
connection, the use of naturally occurring conversations is essential for
students to understand how interactions are locally managed by speakers
by means of adjacency pairs, turn-taking strategies, pre-sequences,
and preferred/dispreferred responses. Back in 2019, I reported on the
assessment of eight EFL textbooks in relation to the attention devoted
to three conversational aspects (i.e. adjacency pairs, pre-sequences, and
preference organisation). My analysis revealed that coverage of these
issues varied largely. In fact, the space devoted to them was found to
be inversely proportional to the proficiency level of the textbooks under
scrutiny, with advanced EFL textbooks paying the lowest degree of
attention to these matters. As I concluded then (2019: 269), ‘the focus
of intermediate and advanced textbooks also shifts towards writing and
reading comprehension tasks, thus focusing on assertive speech acts like
those of describing, speculating, comparing, arguing, etc., which are less
prone to a conversational handling’.
These findings are compatible with the results stemming from the
analysis of the teaching material assessed in this book. As already pointed
out in the two previous sections, the textbooks under scrutiny often
introduce directive speech acts in connection with other linguistic aspects,
such as modal verbs, hedging, or polite/tactful expressions. This approach
generally limits the scope of the explanations to the phrase or sentence level.
Suprasentential aspects of the performance of speech acts, such as adjacency
pairs and preference organisation, are consequently left out.
In those few exceptions in which students are led to consider directive
speech acts in conversations, the scarcity or lack of explicit instruction
about their conversational and/or discursive functioning is recurrent. In
TB2, students are asked to role play a conversation in which one of them
is meant to advise the other. In order to do so, students are given just
one example of a linguistic construction for the act of advising (i.e. I’D
DO X, IF I WERE YOU). No information is added about the preceding
or following conversational turns, and no explicit instruction is provided
about the contexts in which offering a piece of advice is a preferred or
dispreferred conversational move. In some extreme cases, students are asked
to role play a particular directive in the absence of any information about
its semantic, pragmatic, linguistic, or conversational workings. Thus, in one
exercise in TB4, students are asked to formulate suggestions with no prior
instruction about how to produce this speech act correctly and felicitously
in the foreign language. Shockingly enough, this much-needed instruction
is partially and implicitly offered in the following page of the textbook as
84 Representation of Speech Acts in EFL Textbooks
part of an exercise about rephrasing and grammatical inversion (e.g. YOU
SHOULD NOT DO X > UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD
YOU DO X).
As will be made apparent in Chapter 4, offering students corpus-based,
real language examples of the conversational workings of directive speech
acts is possible. More importantly, as regards some directives, looking
beyond the sentence towards higher levels of language description is, in
fact, necessary in order to achieve a realistic description of their formal
layout. As reported in Chapter 4, the act of advising, for instance, is hardly
ever performed within the scope of a single sentence in the data extracted
from our corpus of real language examples. Pieces of advice are generally
scattered in several subordinate and/or juxtaposed sentences and often
realised through one or more conversational turns.

3.3.4 Treatment of Cross-Cultural and Cross-Linguistic

Areas of Discrepancy between L1 and L2
Interest in cross-cultural and cross-linguistic aspects of the teaching of
speech acts started as far back as the 1990s. In Bouton’s (1996) classical
volume on pragmatics and language learning, Cenoz and Valencia (1996)
provide a case for taking into account cultural conventions on politeness
and on the use of linguistic mitigation when teaching EFL students how
to perform speech acts in a second language. According to their findings,
Spanish students of English as a second language make use of less mitigating
devices and more direct formulae for the expression of requests in their
native language and in their conversations in English. The higher need
for politeness and indirectness that characterises the use of requests in
British English had not been properly acquired by the students taking part
in this study, thus pointing to a failure in the teaching of pragmatic and
cultural competence. As this type of socio-pragmatic, cultural competence
is concerned, the comparison of native and non-native speakers of English
and Spanish reveals that both groups are aware of the different situations
and use different degrees of directness according to the context. These
observations in the field of EFL teaching come to confirm the findings of
an extensive body of theoretical research on cross-cultural variations in
the performance of speech acts known as interlanguage pragmatics (Blum-
Kulka, 1982, 1991; Blum-Kulka & House, 1989; Blum-Kulka, House &
Kasper, 1989; Kasper, 1989; Rintell & Mitchell, 1989; among others).
Teachers and researchers of language learning and teaching often agree
on the relevance of including intercultural dimensions of language in EFL
3.4 Conclusions and Way Forward 85
instructional materials (Edelhoff, 1993; Byram & Risager, 1999; Sercu,
2002; Castro, Sercu & Garcia, 2004; Atay et al., 2009). With regard to
this connection, Castro (1999: 92) points out that teachers are now expected
not only to teach the foreign linguistic code but also to ‘contextualise that
code against the socio-cultural background associated with the foreign
language and to promote the acquisition of intercultural communicative
competence’. Nevertheless, as Neddar (2012) states, it is arguable to what
extent the findings in interlanguage pragmatics have actually been given
consideration in EFL textbooks, thus contributing to raising the learners’
awareness of cross-cultural aspects of speech acts.
As early as the 1990s, authors like Kachru (1994) were pointing to the need
to increase classroom practice on cross-cultural aspects of speech acts. The
situation does not seem to have changed much since. More recently, in her
masters’ thesis on the pragmatics of EFL course books for Finnish students,
Luomala (2010) points to the lack of explicit instructional and teaching
materials devoted to making students aware of cross-cultural asymmetries
in the conceptual and formal layout between speech acts in English and
those in their native language. Loumala (2010: 7) remarks that ‘although
some of the necessary pragmatic knowledge can be transferred directly from
the learner’s first language (L1), more often than not the pragmatic rules and
conventions in L1 and a foreign language differ significantly and, therefore,
need to be consciously learned and practiced’. Neddar’s (2010) study on
cross-cultural pragmatic information in Algerian EFL course book series
corroborates these findings. In much the same vein, our own assessment
of advanced EFL textbooks shows that cross-cultural and cross-linguistic
information is not included neither through explicit, nor through implicit
instruction. Given the general consensus on the relevance of mastering
this type of knowledge for the successful performance of speech acts in a
foreign language, Neddar (2012: 5,691) rightly concludes that the exclusion
of interlanguage pragmatics in current teaching materials has more to do
with a lack of knowledge about its methodological implementation than
with a denial of its effectiveness in inducing learning.

3.4 Conclusions and Way Forward: Explicit Instruction

through a Corpus-Based Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar
This chapter has offered an assessment of current EFL advanced textbooks
with a view to determining to what extent contemporary theoretical research
advancements on speech acts have actually been implemented in the
instructional material. As argued in Tomlinson, Dat, Masuhara, and Rubdy
86 Representation of Speech Acts in EFL Textbooks
(2001), textbook evaluation enables teachers, supervisors, administrators,
and materials developers to make judgements about the effects of materials
on the end-users (i.e. learners). The assessment of course books and teaching
materials, as McGrath (2002) points out, is also an essential preliminary step
in the development and administration of language learning programmes.
The findings reported in the previous sections reveal that the amount
of instruction about the semantic, pragmatic, constructional, and
cultural dimensions of directive speech acts in advanced EFL textbooks is
unsystematic and scarce, ranging from limited to non-existent, and varying
greatly depending on the textbook and the speech act under scrutiny. It
is, therefore, necessary to take this attested weakness of present-day EFL
instructional material into consideration in order to make a conscious
move towards the teaching and dissemination of explicit information about
the many sides involved in the performance of directive speech acts in
the language classroom. In this connection, Tan and Farashaiyan (2016)
draw additional attention to the fact that instructors should also be given
sufficient input in guides and relevant materials to facilitate the teaching
of this significant constructs, so that learners can acquire intercultural
communicative competence, and due emphasis can be given to illocutionary
acts performance in teacher training courses.
Section 1.3 has already highlighted the advantages of an explicit approach
to the teaching of pragmatics (i.e. speech acts) in a foreign language. In
general, there is agreement in the literature that pragmatic aspects of
language, like speech acts, are teachable across culturally diverse students
(Grossi, 2009), and that instruction and, more particularly, explicit
metapragmatic instruction, is more effective than other approaches, such
as implicit teaching (Rose & Ng, 2001; Tateyama, 2001; Alcón, 2005;
Rose, 2005; Takahashi, 2005). Reza and Zohreh (2016) offer an exhaustive
bibliographical revision on this matter. As Tello Rueda (2016: 170)
summarises in his review on this issue:
recommendations have been made since the late 1980s, for the inclusion of
explicit pragmatic instruction as part of foreign and second language (L2)
curricula (e.g. Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper, 1989). … Empirical studies
on this direction have analysed the effect of instruction in the development
of pragmatic knowledge dealing with a multiplicity of features. The results
from most of these studies are promising with regard to the positive effect
of pedagogical intervention.
Bringing explicit instruction into the EFL classroom has two main goals,
which closely correspond to Wildner-Bassett’s (1994) distinction between
the development of metapragmatic declarative knowledge, on the one
3.4 Conclusions and Way Forward 87
hand, and metapragmatic procedural knowledge, on the other. The first
goal involves the development of the students’ awareness about all factors
involved in the successful performance of speech acts in the target foreign
language (i.e. semantic, pragmatic, formal, and cross-linguistic knowledge).
This goal will be addressed in Chapter 4 of this book, which offers a
cognitive pedagogical grammar of directive speech acts that attempts
to capture their multi-sided, kaleidoscopic nature and, thus, to pave the
way to a more faithful representation of this linguistic phenomenon in
future EFL instructional materials. The second goal deals with practising
the knowledge acquired through the instruction. To this aim, Chapter 5
suggests samples of activities and exercises that exploit on the conceptual
information included in the directive illocutionary ICMs and on the formal
aspects of the production of directive speech acts (i.e. base constructions
and realisation procedures) provided in Chapter 4.
4

A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of

Directive Speech Acts I: Know-What
and Know-How of Directives

Chapter 4 provides a cognitive pedagogical grammar of six frequently

used directive speech acts: ordering, requesting, suggesting, begging,
advising, and warning. Following the pragmatic and cognitive theoretical
postulates laid out in Chapter 2, both the conceptual layout and the formal/
constructional nature of these acts will be included in the explanation.
The description of the semantics/pragmatics of the directive illocutionary
acts under scrutiny makes use of the information included in their
corresponding illocutionary ICMs. As explained in detail in Section 2.5.5,
illocutionary ICMs are exhaustive collections of semantic and pragmatic
attributes (i.e. agent, beneficiary, capability, willingness, possession, need,
cost–benefit, optionality, mitigation, politeness) and variables (i.e. power,
social distance, formality) that capture the knowledge that native speakers
have about each speech act category. The formal/constructional side of each
directive will be dealt with in terms of base constructions and realisation
procedures, as shown in Section 2.5.6.
All the information reported in this chapter stems from a corpus-based
study on the meaning and form of each directive speech act (see Section 1.3
for a description of the corpora used in the analysis, and Sections 2.5.5
and 2.5.6 for the theoretical basis of the analysis). The present account of
directive speech acts is intended for advanced Spanish students of EFL. It
is also directed at teachers and publishers who intend to include speech acts
in their teaching practice and materials. For this reason, the information
is provided in the form of a pedagogical grammar (see Section 1.3), which
attempts to avoid technical jargon as much as possible. Thus, terms like
illocutionary ICM, illocutionary construction, or realisation procedure
have been substituted for more transparent, lay expressions. Illocutionary
ICMs, for instance, are nothing but collections of semantic/pragmatic
bits of knowledge that speakers need to acquire in order to be capable of
understanding and performing directive acts successfully in a particular
language. Thus, in the ensuing sections we refer to them as the know-what

88
4.1 Orders 89
of directive speech acts (e.g. knowing what an act of order is and what
social, interactional, and transactional attributes and variables define it
in English). The linguistic jargon that characterises the description of the
illocutionary ICMs has also been avoided as much as possible. Specific
terms such as the variables and attributes involved in the description (e.g.
mitigation, optionality, etc.) have been introduced in the form of questions
that clarify their meaning for non-expert readers (e.g. mitigation = does the
speaker attempt to minimise the cost of the requested action?). Likewise,
illocutionary constructions and realisation procedures are just the linguistic
forms that the English language offers for the realisation of each of the
variables/attributes of the illocutionary ICMs. For this reason, they are
labelled as the know-how of directives (i.e. the linguistic kits that English
offers speakers for the expression of those acts). Students, teachers, and
publishers need not know the technical, expert terms, but they do need
the knowledge that lies behind them.

4.1 Orders
Cognitive linguists use a metaphor to describe speech acts. Johnson (1987:
ch. 3) argued that our understanding of speech acts, like that of other
linguistic phenomena (i.e. modality), is metaphorically grounded on the
notion of force:
It should not be surprising, then, to find similar force structures operating
in the structure of speech acts themselves. After all, speech acts are actions;
and since our ‘physical’ and ‘social’ actions are subject to forces, we should
expect that our ‘linguistic’ actions are also subject to forces, metaphorically
understood.
(Johnson, 1987: 57)
Pérez-Hernández and Ruiz de Mendoza (2002) expanded on this idea
and showed how different directive speech acts seem to be grounded on
specific types of forces. Thus, an order is presented as a type of unstoppable
force that pushes a speaker to do something.1 Figure 4.1 visually represents
the underlying force metaphor based on the compulsion force schema
(Johnson, 1987: 45).
H represents the hearer, and the vector F1 represents the order uttered by
the speaker (S). As a result of the force of the order, the hearer is pushed into

1 See Johnson (1987: 57), Talmy (1988), and Pérez-Hernández and Ruiz de Mendoza (2002) for
in-depth accounts of the force dynamics underlying speech acts.
90 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I

Figure 4.1 Force schema underlying the conceptualisation of orders

action. The fact that orders are conceptualised as unstoppable, compulsive

forces is neither arbitrary nor inconsequential: this metaphor derives from
some of the attributes conforming to the semantics of orders, and it is
manifested in their linguistic forms, prototypical orders displaying specific
characteristics of their own. For their orders to be successful and to move
the hearer into action, students need to master the know-what (i.e. what
an order is and which pieces of transactional, interactional, and social
knowledge are involved in its conceptualisation by English speakers) and
the know-how (i.e. the linguistic expressions that the English language
offers for its performance) of this directive speech act category. These are
spelled out in the next two sections.

4.1.1 The Know-What of Orders

What is an order? The speech act of ordering is semantically complex.
It is like a kaleidoscope made up of many little bits and pieces: some of
them are brighter or bigger, some almost go unnoticed. When the viewer
turns the kaleidoscope, the little crystals move around and create new
patterns. In much the same way, not all attributes and variables involved in
the conceptualisation of an order are equally important. Some are shared
with other directives, while others are central to their characterisation as
orders. In addition, as the context changes, those attributes and variables
also move around and produce new patterns, which will require different
linguistic expressions for their correct realisation depending on the power/
social relations between speakers, the formality of the context, or the cost
of the action, among other situational and transactional factors.
Let us then see which pieces of knowledge conform to the meaning of
an order in English, and how their value may vary in different contexts.

Who is to do the action expressed in the order?

The person who is to carry out the action expressed by a speech act is called
the agent, and orders present the hearer(s) as the expected agent:
(4.1) ‘Act like a grown-up,’ Judge Ward ordered Aguilera at one point
(iWeb)
4.1 Orders 91
In this respect orders are similar to other directive speech acts under
scrutiny such as those of requesting and begging, which also have the
hearer as their agent. Advising, warning, and suggesting, however, may
differ in some cases in which the proposed action is to be jointly carried
out by the speaker and the hearer (e.g. Let’s get our feet back under us on
some solid ground, he suggested; iWeb).

Who will benefit from the action expressed in the order?

Traditional accounts have argued that prototypical orders represent a benefit
for the speaker and a cost for the hearer (Leech, 1983; Pérez-Hernández,
2001; Del Campo, 2013). However, the data in our corpus shows that this
is not always the case. In most orders in our corpus, the benefit is, in fact,
for the speaker, as in example (4.2):
(4.2) ‘Stay away from my personal effects!’ the pirate ordered, not liking
the idea of having her clothing searched through or touched by
anyone but herself … (iWeb)
However, it can also be the case that the benefit is not just for the speaker
but for other people under his protection as well:
(4.3) ‘The more prosperous the powerful become, the more distressed
the poor turn. We beg things to be replaced.’ The Emperor
ordered. ‘It is against the public benefit that the powerful
intimidate the poor. It must be stopped and never be allowed to
happen.’ (iWeb)
Additionally, in a small number of examples, the beneficiary of the action
is a third person, as in example (4.4), and even the hearers themselves, as
in example (4.5):
(4.4) ‘Give the boy a pair of shoes with good thick soles and big enough
so he can grow into the them,’ my father ordered (iWeb)
(4.5) ‘Well wait till the sun comes up. Oh geez, get back to the truck
guys! Don’t catch a cold in this fucking rain!’ the captain ordered
(iWeb)

Can the hearer do the action expressed in the order?

According to our corpus data, the capability of the hearer to carry out the
ordered action is taken for granted. The speaker either knows for certain
or assumes that the hearer can do the action and does not entertain any
other scenario. In this, orders differ from requests, for instance, which
92 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
often ask about the hearer’s ability to perform the action as a means of
increasing their politeness (e.g. So as Nguyen requested: can you please set us
up wp-admin and ftp access to your site?; iWeb).
Do speaker and hearer want the action to be carried out?
Whether the speaker and the hearer want the ordered action to take
place or not correlates with whom benefits from the action. As shown
above, in most cases the speaker is the beneficiary, either on her own or
in conjunction with others. On these occasions, the speaker clearly wants
the action to be carried out, as it is sometimes even made manifest in the
expression of the order itself:
(4.6) ‘Your father has finally found a bride for your brother, Itachi is going
to be married soon and when his betrothed comes I want you to be
on your best behaviour, you’re going to have to share your brother
and I don’t want you clinging to him when his bride arrives,’ the
matriarch ordered (iWeb)
When the beneficiary of the order is the hearer or a third party, the speaker’s
wanting the action to take place becomes less relevant. Still, when ordering
someone to do something, the speaker expects the hearer to comply, even
if the proposed action is not in her own benefit.
As regards the hearer, his wanting to carry out the ordered action
is prototypically low, since it generally involves a cost to him. Only in
those situations in which the order is in his benefit (see example (4.5)
above), will his desire to perform the action increase. What is important
to highlight, however, is that whether or not the hearer wants to do the
action is irrelevant for the speaker. When ordering, the latter does not take
into consideration the hearer’s disposition and only expects compliance.
This explains that there is not one single instance of order construction
in our corpus based on the hearer’s willingness to perform the action.
Expressions like WILL YOU DO X? (e.g. Will you vacuum the house for
me?) have not been found in the corpus in relation to the act of ordering. It
could be argued that, when used by a powerful speaker, these expressions
could be understood as orders. Our corpus study shows that, even if
the notion of order is a prototypical category and WILL YOU DO X?
instances of orders could be accommodated as peripheral (polite) instances
of the category, the fact is that native speakers do not prototypically use
these expressions when they want to order someone to do something. The
attested lack of occurrences of order constructions exploiting the hearer’s
willingness or lack of it to carry out the action correlates with the results
4.1 Orders 93
of the analysis of the conceptual layout of orders, according to which the
hearer’s willingness to perform the action is irrelevant to the speaker, who
just expects compliance with her order.

Is the action expressed in the order necessary?

In most instances of orders, the speaker needs the action to be carried out
because he is to benefit from it:
(4.7) ‘Shut up. We need to keep going!’, Hou Qing ordered as he took
the lead once more (iWeb)
Still, even in those cases in which he does not have a strict necessity that
the action is carried out, he still expects compliance with the order.

How much freedom does an order allow the hearer?

Whether or not the hearer follows an order is beyond the speaker’s control,
but when a speaker gives an order, he presents it as non-negotiable. Orders
communicate the idea that the hearer has no freedom to choose a path of
action different from the one expressed in the utterance:
(4.8) ‘… I want you to be on your best behaviour, you’re going to have to
share your brother and I don’t want you clinging to him when his
bride arrives.’ The matriarch ordered. She was sweet and caring like
every other mother, but she was also an Uchiha and she didn’t ask
for things, she’s demanded for them. Sasuke wasn’t being given
an option; his mother’s words were law (iWeb)
As shall be made apparent in Section 4.1.2, this attribute of the meaning of
orders largely influences the formal traits of order constructions.

Does the speaker attempt to minimise the cost of the action?

When giving an order, the speaker does not make any explicit attempt to
bring down the cost of the proposed action. In fact, it is usually the case
that such cost is increased by adding a requirement of immediateness:
(4.9) ‘Get your hands up and against that wall,’ the woman ordered,
stepping away from her slightly. ‘Now!’ (iWeb)

Does the speaker attempt to be polite?

Politeness can be found in any type of speech act. Even threats can be
polite (i.e. Honey, please, if you don’t finish up your soup, I will have to
punish you without playtime). However, as the data in our corpus shows,
94 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
orders are not prototypically polite. Over 99 per cent of the orders in
our data show no overt attempt at being polite. The opposite is usually
the case. Most order constructions include strategies that highlight
their impositive nature and, therefore, render them fairly impolite (e.g.
expressions of immediateness, forceful intonation, vocatives stressing the
hearer’s inferiority, etc.):
(4.10) ‘Girls, into your room, now.’ Her father ordered sternly as he rose
to the door (iWeb)
(4.11) ‘Finish it, NOW!!!’, Alice ordered grimly (iWeb)
(4.12) ‘Sit down, you moron!’ Herrera ordered (iWeb)
In fact, in connection with orders the use of politeness strategies is anecdotal
and, when they are used, they often yield peripheral examples of ironic,
sarcastic, or even humiliating orders, such as the following example in
which politeness is used in an order addressed to a hearer who is clearly
being denigrated by the speaker:
(4.13) ‘Shelby walked over to Sara with a dog leash in her hand. She
clipped the leash to Sara’s collar […] she went to her knees and
crawled behind Shelby. The house was so big that her knees were
very sore by the time they got to the main dining room […] Under
the table please,’ Shelby ordered. (iWeb)

Is social power relevant to the act of ordering?

The power relationship that holds between the speakers is central to the act
of ordering. Orders are about power. An unstoppable force can move an
object if it is strong enough to counteract the weight of the object. Likewise,
a directive speech act is an order if the speaker has enough power over the
addressee to impose her willingness on him. Other directive acts also exercise
power onto the addressee. Threats, for instance, are also impositives. In this
case the power of the speaker comes from the fact that she can somehow
harm or wrong the hearer if he does not comply with her wishes. The power
involved in the act of ordering does not imply this type of retaliation.
All instances of orders in our corpus are uttered by speakers who either
are socially more powerful than the hearers or who adopt a position of
superiority in relation to the latter. The notion of social power has been
found to be quite heterogeneous. The power of the speaker may be
physical, granted by social institutions (a company, the military, the family
hierarchical structure), or linked to social conventions (age, social class,
4.1 Orders 95
knowledge). Examples (4.14)–(4.17) illustrate different sources of the power
exhibited by speakers uttering orders:
(4.14) ‘Itee! Make some tea for your grandfather. Its five o’clock’, ordered
her father (iWeb)
(4.15) ‘Go, find out where he is,’ the king ordered (iWeb)
(4.16) ‘Sign to them to keep off,’ Colonel Forsyth ordered (iWeb)
(4.17) ‘So, now tell me in full detail everything you thought and felt while
you sat within the chamber,’ the Doctor ordered (iWeb)
The power of the speaker may even arise from the moral superiority
stemming from the knowledge that the action expressed in the order is
in the benefit of the hearer or a third party. Example (4.18) illustrates
this: a brother orders his sibling (an equal) to stop seeing her girlfriend
under the premise that it is not good for him to do so. What seems
essential is that the speaker makes use of a real or perceived superiority
to present the action as an imposition that leaves the hearer little freedom
to refuse to comply:
(4.18) ‘You must stop seeing that Russian girl,’ I ordered my brother
[…] Echoing the prejudiced, ignorant sentiment that I had grown
up with, I believed it was wrong to become seriously involved with
a person who does not follow the Hindu religion and is not a
member of the Indian race (iWeb)

Is the social distance between the speakers relevant to the act of ordering?
Our data shows that orders can be performed regardless of the social
distance that exists between the speakers: as long as the speaker has the
necessary power, she can direct her order to people who are socially close to
her (relatives, friends, colleagues) or far away in the social scale (strangers).
EFL learners need to be aware, however, that the closer the speakers are
socially, the higher the need to soften its force and the less impositive
the order tends to be perceived. As example (4.19) shows it is not socially
acceptable to impose on people who are socially close to us, even if we have
the power to do so. The use of the vocative signalling social closeness (i.e.
sweetie) helps to soften the impositive force of the order by acknowledging
the closeness between the speakers:
(4.19) ‘Ok sweetie let me go to sleep on this cloud you’ve given me …’
she softly ordered. Turning her head to the side she continued,
‘… but first give me a kiss Goodnight.’ (iWeb)
96 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
Table 4.1 The know-what of orders

Orders are strong directive speech acts in which a speaker tries to impose a course of
action on the hearer(s). When someone orders someone else to do something, they
communicate the following:
‘I have the necessary power/authority to impose on you a particular course of action. I want
you to do it because it is beneficial to me or to someone that I want to benefit from the
action. I know it is costly to you, but I still expect you to comply with my order.’
What you need to bear in mind to perform a successful order:
• The proposed action may benefit the speaker, the hearer, a third party, or a
combination of the former.
• Orders stem from a need or a desire on the part of the speaker, who takes for granted
that the hearer is capable of performing the action.
• Whether or not the hearer wants to do as told is irrelevant for the speaker, who assumes
that she has the power (either real or perceived) to impose her wishes on the former.
• Prototypical orders are not polite, they do not attempt to minimise the cost of the
proposed action, and they offer little or no freedom to the hearer to refuse to do as
told.
• Orders can be performed in all contexts regardless of their formality, and they can be
directed to hearers regardless of the social distance that separates them from the
speaker.
BE AWARE!!!
• Orders are prototypically not polite and unmitigated. The overt use of politeness or
mitigation gives way to peripheral instances of orders that may be felt as ironical or
may be mistaken for requests.
• You can perform an order regardless of the social distance that separates you from the
hearer, but you should bear in mind that the smaller the social distance between the
participants, the less impositive and forceful your order will be perceived. It is not
socially acceptable to impose on people to which we feel emotionally attached.

Is the formality of the context relevant to the act of ordering?

Orders are not tied to a specific type of context. Around 50 per cent of the
orders in our corpus take place in formal contexts and the other half in
informal situations (see Table 4.1).

4.1.2 The Know-How of Orders

How are orders expressed in English? The analysis of the first 500 instances
of orders returned by the iWeb corpus offers the following portrait of how
English speakers realise this speech act linguistically (see Table 4.2).
Looking at the data, it comes as no surprise that the imperative sentence
type has traditionally been associated with the speech act of ordering. Over
4.1 Orders 97
Table 4.2 Base constructions for the act of ordering in English

Base constructions Occurrences Percentage

IMPERATIVE 436 87.2

YOU DO X 6 1.2
X SHALL BE/DO 6 1.2
YOU ARE (NOT) TO DO X 5 1
YOU MUST DO X 4 0.8
YOU HAVE TO DO X 4 0.8
X MUST DO Y 4 0.8
LET X DO Y 4 0.8
GO DO X 4 0.8
I WANT YOU TO DO X 4 0.8
I WANT YOU + PREPOSITION 3 0.6
SEE THAT X IS DONE 2 0.4
I’D LIKE X 2 0.4
X MUST BE DONE 2 0.4
X WILL BE DONE 2 0.4
YOU HAD BETTER DO X 2 0.4
I ORDER YOU TO DO X 2 0.4
X IS PROHIBITED TO DO X 2 0.4
X IS DIRECTED TO DO Y 2 0.4
X WILL (NOT) BE REQUIRED TO DO Y 2 0.4
THERE BETTER BE X 2 0.4
Total 500 100

87 per cent of the instances of orders in our corpus make use of imperative
sentences as their base constructions:
(4.20) (BARE IMPERATIVE) ‘Release the lady,’ the soldier ordered
(iWeb)
(4.21) (SEE THAT X IS DONE): ‘These men will not be required to work
for two weeks,’ he ordered sternly. ‘And see that good provisions are
handed out to them,’ he added (iWeb)
(4.22) (GO DO X): ‘Right. Go lock the door then so mother won’t be
disturbing us,’ he ordered (iWeb)
The rest of the orders in our corpus make use of a varied array of base
constructions that activate different elements of the meaning of orders,
therefore metonymically activating their interpretation as such. Thus, there
98 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
are some constructions that focus on the speaker’s desire that the action is
carried out by the hearer:
(4.23) (I WANT YOU TO DO X) When she ordered: ‘I want you out
of here now …’ (iWeb)
(4.24) (I’D LIKE X / I’D LIKE YOU TO DO X) ‘I’ d like a rowboat ready
to cast off, mister Quidd,’ the Admiral ordered (iWeb)
There are also some base constructions focusing on the lack of freedom of
the hearer to refuse to comply with the order:

(4.25) (YOU DO X) ‘You stay here and find one,’ he ordered (iWeb)
(4.26) (YOU HAVE TO DO X) ‘You have to taste it before complaining,’
she ordered him (iWeb)
(4.27) (YOU ARE ORDERED TO DO X) ‘You are ordered to co-operate
…’ (iWeb)
Others exploit the impositive flavour of orders and present the realisation
of the action as unavoidable:

(4.28) (X SHALL DO Y) ‘Defendant School District shall pay a fine per

infraction to the Plaintiff …’ the judge ordered (iWeb)
(4.29) (X WILL BE DONE) ‘… whatever we find in the shape of
an upper class in Poland will be liquidated,’ Hitler had ordered (iWeb)

With the exception of those constructions which have a marked impositive

flavour (e.g. YOU ARE TO DO X, YOU HAVE TO DO X, YOU DO X,
X SHALL DO Y, X WILL BE DONE, etc.), the rest of the base constructions
for ordering found in our corpus are also used in the expression of other
speech acts (see sections in relation to requests, beggings, suggestions,
advice acts, and warnings). Imperatives simply present the content of a
proposition for realisation, and this is a goal that is shared by all directive
speech acts. However, as shown in Section 2.5.6, base constructions rarely
appear on their own. They combine with other linguistic strategies that
further activate other aspects of the meaning of illocutions, thus clarifying
the nature of the intended speech act. How is the imperative used when
the aim of the speaker is to perform an order? Table 4.3 summarises the
linguistic strategies that accompany the IMPERATIVE base construction
in the expression of orders.
A central characteristic of the linguistic strategies that combine with the
base constructions used in the expression of orders is that they generally
aim at increasing the imposition and the force of the act. Thus, the three
4.1 Orders 99
Table 4.3 Imperative base construction + realisation procedures for orders

Imperative constructions Occurrences Percentage

BARE IMPERATIVE 254 58.2

IMPERATIVE + IMPOSITIVE INTONATION 116 26.7
IMPERATIVE + EXPRESSION OF IMMEDIATENESS 29 6.7
IMPERATIVE + EXPRESSION DOWNGRADING THE 17 3.9
HEARER
IMPERATIVE + EXPRESSION OF SOCIAL CLOSENESS 17 3.9
IMPERATIVE + EXPRESSION OF POLITENESS 3 0.6
Total 436 100

main realisation procedures that combine with IMPERATIVE base

constructions in the production of orders are (1) a forceful/impositive
intonation, (2) expressions of immediateness, and (3) vocatives downgrading
the hearer and, hence, pointing to the superiority of the speaker, as
illustrated by examples (4.30)–(4.32), respectively.
(4.30) ‘Come on!’ he ordered roughly (iWeb)
(4.31) ‘Get your hands up and against that wall,’ the woman ordered,
stepping away from her slightly. ‘Now!’ (iWeb)
(4.32) ‘Open your mouth whore!’ he ordered (iWeb)
Still, around half of the IMPERATIVE base constructions used in the
expression of orders in our corpus are bare imperatives. The use of bare
imperatives, deprived of any other lexico-grammatical forms that help
to specify the type of directive involved, can be an economic strategy for
performing directives, as long as the semantic attributes of the speech act
that is to be communicated are contextually activated. As regards orders,
EFL students should be aware of the fact that the use of a bare imperative
will be successfully interpreted as an order in contexts in which the power
of the speaker is known to all participants. In relation to the act of ordering,
the superiority of the speaker leads him to not even entertain the possibility
of a refusal to comply by the hearer. Hence, when this is clear from the
context, he does not feel the need to make use of any of the strategies
included in Table 4.3 to force the hearer to obey his order. If speakers are
socially equal, however, the interpretation of the IMPERATIVE base
construction as an order will be ruled out in favour of alternative directive
readings like requests, beggings, suggestions, etc. The examples in which
politeness strategies (i.e. use of the adverb please) are used in connection
with the imperative for the expression of an order are either sarcastic polite
100 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
orders (see example (4.13) above), camouflaged orders, or cases in which the
social distance between the speakers is small (i.e. they are friends, relatives,
long-time colleagues). With respect to the latter, students need to be aware
of the fact that the impositive force of an order is sensitive to the social
distance that exists between speakers. As explained in Section 4.1.1, when
the speakers are socially close (friends, relatives), the imperative is perceived
as less forceful because it is taken for granted that it is not socially acceptable
to impose on people who are close to us. In these cases, if the speaker wants
to maintain the impositive flavour of an order, she should make use of
one of the strengthening strategies described above (i.e. forceful intonation,
expression of immediateness, downgrading vocative). If, on the contrary, she
wishes to soften the strength of the order to adapt it to the requirements of a
short social distance, he can either make use of politeness strategies (example
(4.33)) or simply use expressions that signal the social closeness with the
hearer (example (4.19), reproduced below as example (4.34) for convenience):
(4.33) ‘I wrote it up myself,’ Harper’s secretary replied. […] ‘Dig it out for
me and bring it in here, please,’ Harper ordered (iWeb)
(4.34) ‘Ok sweetie let me go to sleep on this cloud you’ve giving me …’ she
softly ordered. Turning her head to the side she continued, ‘… but
first give me a kiss Goodnight.’ (iWeb)
The data reported in this section suggests that teaching Spanish EFL
students to perform orders in English should necessarily include the most
frequent constructions in Table 4.2. In addition, it would be useful to
explain in detail the use of the IMPERATIVE base construction in the
production of orders, since this has turned out to be the most frequent
linguistic strategy for their expression in English. In this respect, two issues
should be highlighted: (1) if the features included in the know-what of an
order are evident from the context, a bare imperative is one of the preferred,
most prototypical linguistic strategies for ordering someone to do something
in English; and (2) in a less informative context, the order interpretation of
an IMPERATIVE construction can be secured by making use of additional
strategies aimed at increasing its impositive character (i.e. expressions of
immediateness, forceful intonation, downgraders, etc.) or by avoiding those
that soften its force (i.e. politeness strategies, expressions of social closeness).
The strategies offered by the English language for the expression of orders have
been compared with those that are most frequent in Spanish. Such comparison
allows us to alert EFL learners to possible mismatches between both languages.
Table 4.4 shows the number of occurrences and percentages of the
different order constructions in our English and Spanish corpora. The data
Table 4.4 Comparison of base constructions for the act of ordering in English and Spanish

Orders base constructions (English) Number Percentage Number Percentage Orders base constructions (Spanish)

IMPERATIVE 436 87.2 380 76 IMPERATIVE

YOU ARE TO DO X 5 1 13 2.6 VAS A HACER X
YOU MUST DO X 4 0.8 4 0.8 DEBES HACER X
YOU HAVE TO DO X 4 0.8 5 1 TIENES QUE HACER X
YOU (WILL) DO X 6 1.2 29 5.8 (TÚ/VOSOTROS/USTEDES) HARÁS/HARÉIS X
X WILL/SHALL BE/DO X 6 1.2 3 0.6 (ÉL/ELLA/ELLOS/AS) HARÁ(N) X
X MUST DO Y 4 0.8 2 0.4 DEBE HACER X
GO DO X 4 0.8 1 0.2 VE Y HAZ X
I WANT YOU TO DO X 4 0.8 1 0.2 QUIERO QUE HAGAS X
I WANT YOU + PREPOSITION 3 0.6 1 0.2 TE QUIERO + PREPOSITION
X MUST BE DONE 2 0.4 9 1.8 (SE) DEBE HACER(SE) X
I ORDER YOU TO DO X 2 0.4 13 2.6 TE ORDENO QUE…
LET X DO Y 4 0.8 0 0 Possible but not productive
SEE THAT X IS DONE 2 0.4 0 0 Possible but not productive
I’D LIKE X 2 0.4 0 0 Possible, but not productive
X WILL BE DONE 2 0.4 0 0 Possible but not productive
YOU HAD BETTER DO X 2 0.4 0 0 Possible but not productive
X IS PROHIBITED TO DO X 2 0.4 0 0 Possible but not productive
X IS DIRECTED TO DO Y 2 0.4 0 0 Possible but not productive
X WILL BE REQUIRED TO DO Y 2 0.4 0 0 Possible but not productive
THERE BETTER BE X 2 0.4 0 0 Possible but not productive
Not possible 0 0 30 6 QUE HAGA(N) X
Not possible 0 0 9 1.8 A + HACER X
TOTAL 500 100 500 100
102 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
reveals that there are some parallel constructions for the expression of
orders that have a similar frequency of occurrence in both languages.
Among them, the most frequent are the IMPERATIVE, YOU MUST
DO X, YOU HAVE TO DO X, and YOU ARE TO DO X constructions
(white rows in Table 4.4).
Many others are found in both languages, but they are more frequently
used in one of them (light grey rows in Table 4.4). Thus, order constructions
that refer to the speaker’s wanting the action to take place (e.g. I WANT
YOU TO DO X, I WANT + PREP) are found in both languages, but
are slightly more frequent in English. Spanish, on the contrary, displays
a preference towards the use of direct performatives (e.g. TE ORDENO
QUE (I ORDER YOU TO DO X)).
Finally, there are constructions that only arise in the corpus for one
of the languages (dark grey rows in Table 4.4). In some cases, this is so
because there exists no direct counterpart in the other language. Spanish,
for example, makes use of empathic order constructions like QUE
HAGA(N) X (THAT THEY DO X) and A HACER X (TO DO X) that
have no parallel linguistic expression in English. The English corpus also
contains some specific constructions (e.g. THERE BETTER BE X, I’D
LIKE X, and several passive constructions Y IS DIRECTED TO DO X,
Y WILL BE REQUIRED TO DO X) that, although possible, yield no
occurrences in the Spanish corpus, thus indicating that Spanish speakers
do not favour the use of those particular constructions.
The above information about the preferences displayed by each language
in the expression of orders is key to their efficient teaching. Depending
on the target level of proficiency of their students, teachers and textbook
designers can adapt the scope of their teaching content on the basis of
the information included in Table 4.4. Order constructions that are more
frequent and which are similar in both languages can be introduced at
the starter and intermediate levels, while those constructions that display
mismatches between the two languages in terms of frequency of use, and
those that do not exist in the students’ native language, can be dealt with
at latter stages of instruction.

4.2 Requests
The force metaphor is also pervasive in our understanding of requests.
Everyday life expressions like His request moved me to … / pushed me to
… are grounded on the idea that requests metaphorically function as
(linguistic) forces that cause the hearer to carry out the specified action. If
orders were conceptualised in terms of a compulsion force (i.e. a powerful,
4.2 Requests 103

Figure 4.2 Force schema underlying the conceptualisation of requests

unstoppable force as shown in Section 4.1.1), the force schema on which

requests are grounded is characterised by the potential existence of a
blockage or restraint that needs to be removed. Figure 4.2 illustrates the
removal of restraint image schema (Johnson, 1987: 45) that underlies the
conceptualisation of requests according to Pérez-Hernández and Ruiz de
Mendoza (2002: 275).
The restraint needs to be removed so that the force (i.e. linguistic request
uttered by the speaker) can have an effect on the hearer and move him
into action. This restraint metaphorically stands for some of the potential
obstacles that may prevent a request from being successful. Among others,
these may be the lack of capability or willingness of the hearer to comply
with the action, his lack of possession of the object being requested, the
cost of the requested action, etc.
As far as orders are concerned, the higher social power of the speaker
leads him to disregard those potential obstacles. As a consequence, a speaker
issuing an order expects no other move but compliance on the part of the
hearer. The freedom of the latter to decide whether or not to obey the order
is either very low or inexistent. The speaker uttering a request, however, does
not have enough power to issue a compulsive unstoppable force like that of
orders. He is well aware of the fact that he does not have the necessary power
to disregard potential obstacles that may affect the success of the requestive
force of his utterance. Therefore, he needs to acknowledge them and to try
to remove them in order for his request to be effective. This metaphorical
conceptualisation of requests, grounded on the removal of restraint force
schema, helps to understand their semantic make-up (i.e. their know-what),
and it is also manifested in their linguistic forms (i.e. their know-how), as
will be explained in the following two sections.

4.2.1 The Know-What of Requests

Among directive speech acts, requests have attracted a large amount of
research interest both in English and Spanish by most relevant pragmatists
104 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
(Searle, 1969; Brown & Levinson, 1987; Leech, 1983, 2014), cognitivists
(Pérez-Hernández, 1996, 2001, 2012, 2013, 2019; Stefanowitsch, 2003; Ruiz
de Mendoza & Baicchi, 2007; Pérez-Hernández & Ruiz de Mendoza,
2011; Del Campo, 2013; Vassilaki, 2017), and intercultural linguists (Blum-
Kulka, 1987, 1991; Blum-Kulka & House, 1989; Blum-Kulka, House &
Kasper, 1989; Fukushima, 2000; Schauer, 2009), among others.
As opposed to the initial Searleian definition of requests as a classical
all-or-nothing category (1969: 66), nowadays, there is large consensus that
speech acts constitute prototypical categories, which include both central
and peripheral members (Leech, 2014: 137) forming a continuum between
different illocutionary acts. In this section, we present the know-what of the
act of requesting, which spells out the main semantic attributes that conform
to prototypical members of the category and motivate their linguistic
realisations (i.e. their know-how), which shall be described in Section 4.2.2.

Who is to do the action expressed in the request?

The data in our corpus confirms findings by previous authors (e.g. Pérez-
Hernández, 2001; Del Campo, 2013; Leech, 2014) that all requests are
hearer-focused (i.e. they intent the hearer to be the agent of the requested
action). Even requests for permission, whose linguistic forms present the
speaker as the agent (e.g. Can I use your phone to call him?) or those request
constructions that have an impersonal it as subject (e.g. Is it possible to get a
copy of that?) are ultimately meant for the hearer to perform an action. As
Leech (2014: 141–142) notes, this is made manifest by their compatibility
with the politeness marker please (e.g. Can I use your phone to call him,
please?, Is it possible to get a copy of that, please?).

Who will benefit from the action expressed in the request?

Previous studies argue that prototypical requests imply a benefit to the
speaker and a cost to the hearer (Leech, 2014: 137), the size of the cost and
the size of the benefit being scalar and varying from minimal to very large.
According to the data in our corpus, most requests do involve a benefit
to the speaker, as in example (4.35), but they may simultaneously benefit
others as well, as in examples (4.36) and (4.37), both the speaker and the
hearer (e.g. example (4.38)), or the hearer exclusively (as in example (4.39)):
(4.35) ‘Feed me,’ Sadiq Ali requested playfully, when Kamala allowed
the two hours to stretch into lunch (iWeb)
(4.36) ‘So, Bella, tell us a little bit about yourself.’ He requested politely
(iWeb)
4.2 Requests 105
(4.37) ‘Let us go,’ she requested (iWeb)
(4.38) ‘Gentlemen, we need to start getting ready so if you will all follow
me please?’ he requested (iWeb)
(4.39) ‘Please, Mr Darcy. Your head is bleeding. It is not safe for you to
sit up at this time.’ She put her soaked handkerchief down on the
ground. ‘I am afraid my handkerchief was not sufficient, do you
have your own?’ she requested, trying to see if he could comprehend
her. # Mr Darcy hesitated for a moment, then produced one from
his coat pocket (iWeb)
As was the case with orders, all instances of requests share the fact that the
hearer is presented as the agent of an action that has a beneficiary, which
is prototypically the speaker, but could be other people as well.
Whether requests imply a cost to the hearer or not is a more complex
issue. At first sight, since they always require an action by the hearer, they
could be thought to be costly to her at least in the minimal sense of having
to carry out the requested action. However, on some occasions, such action
may result in a benefit for the agent (i.e. hearer herself), as in example
(4.39) above. In these cases, requests could not be properly said to be costly
to the hearer. In example (4.39), the speaker benefits minimally (i.e. by
obtaining compliance with her request), and the hearer is the one that
fully benefits from the action she has been asked to perform. These cases
of requests, which involve a minimal benefit for the speaker and a maximal
benefit for the hearer, together with those which involve a similar benefit
for both speaker and hearer, are peripheral exemplars of the category,
which approximate other directive categories like those of advising and
suggesting, respectively.

Can the hearer do the action expressed in the request?

When a speaker asks someone to do something, he is usually previously
informed about the hearer’s ability to do the action. Otherwise, it would
make no sense to ask him. Thus, in all instances in our corpus, the hearer
is capable of performing the requested action. However, while the speaker
issuing an order takes for granted the capability of the hearer to perform the
proposed action (e.g. Feed me!), requests often question it (e.g. Can / Could
you feed me?). This is done as a means to increase the hearer’s freedom to opt
out from doing the action without infringing social norms of politeness.
Acknowledging the freedom of the hearer to do the requested action is a
direct consequence of the lack of power of the speaker uttering a request,
as opposed to the superiority of that issuing an order.
106 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
Do speaker and hearer want the action to be carried out?
Prototypical requests are uttered by speakers who have a strong desire that
the proposed action is carried out. This is sometimes used as the conceptual
motivation underlying some request constructions:
(4.40) ‘I wish they’d stop, really,’ he requested (iWeb)
(4.41) ‘I would like chocolate mint ice-cream!’ The boy requested to the
clerk (iWeb)
In both examples (4.40) and (4.41) the mere expression of the speaker’s
desire counts as a request for action on the part of the hearer.
Whether the hearer is equally willing to do as requested depends greatly
on who is to benefit from the action and varies largely. If the hearer herself
is among the beneficiaries of the action, then her willingness to act as
requested may increase, as in example (4.42) in which the benefit of looking
for a quality beer benefits both the speaker and the hearer:
(4.42) ‘Could we,’ he requested in a typically dismissive way, ‘meet
at a place that serves imported beer as opposed to the s--t that
Americans drink?’ (iWeb)
Otherwise, the hearer’s willingness to do as requested is expected to be low.
Interestingly enough, as opposed to orders, where the fact that the hearer
might not be willing to perform the action was irrelevant to the speaker,
requests are characterised by displaying concern about this potential lack
of willingness to comply. In fact, the hearer not wanting to perform the
requested action is one of the potential obstacles that may block the success
of the request. Impediments like this can be disregarded when the speaker
has enough social or knowledge power to impose on the hearer a certain
course of action (i.e. orders, pieces of advice). However, as regards requests,
since the speaker does not have such power, the willingness of the hearer or
the lack of it become relevant and, as shall be illustrated in Section 4.2.2,
this serves as conceptual motivation for several request constructions (e.g.
WILL YOU DO X?, WOULD YOU MIND DOING X?).
Is the action expressed in the request necessary?
Prototypically, requests stem from the need of the speaker for an object
or from his need that a particular action is carried out in his benefit. This
semantic attribute motivates some linguistic constructions associated with
requests (e.g. I / WE NEED YOU TO DO X):
(4.43) ‘And we did this all by ourselves. But now we need you to edit this
and maybe help us with words that just don’t sound right before
the class sees it on Thursday,’ Cole requested (iWeb)
4.2 Requests 107
How much freedom does a request allow the hearer?
The lack of power of the speaker to impose her will on the hearer leads to a
prototypically high freedom of the latter to comply with the request or not.
Unlike orders, which have been shown to be non-negotiable, requests are
typically characterised by allowing ample freedom of action to the hearer.
This high optionality is one of the central semantic features of requests and
motivates many linguistic constructions of the declarative and interrogative
sentence types that serve as vehicles for the expression of this speech act.
Declarative sentences simply present a proposition for consideration, and
interrogative sentences characteristically present a proposition as (partially)
open (Risselada, 1993: 71), thus offering the optionality needed in the
expression of requests:

(4.44) ‘Could you teach me how to dance, Misty?’ He requested

(iWeb)
(4.45) ‘Would you pass the grated cheese?’ I requested (iWeb)
(4.46) ‘Yeah, good idea. But before you do, I want you to just stand up
and turn around, Stacy.’ He requested (iWeb)

As opposed to the imperative sentence type, both declaratives and

interrogatives highlight the freedom granted to the hearer to comply with
the request or to opt out and are, therefore, better suited as vehicles for the
expression of this directive speech act. The impositive nature of imperatives
needs to be soften in order to be able to function well as requests, as
shown in examples (4.47)–(4.49). This is done by means of increasing the
politeness or tentativeness of the act (i.e. please, if you can), or by decreasing
the cost of the action (i.e. a little bit).

(4.47) The man requested, ‘Sir, please have my dowry returned to me.’
(iWeb)
(4.48) ‘While you’re out, if you can, take some pictures of the birds
and send them to me.’ She requested and watched him nod
(iWeb)
(4.49) ‘So, Bella, tell us a little bit about yourself.’ He requested politely
(iWeb)

The optionality of the hearer only decreases in specific situations. For

instance, when the request is invited by the hearer (as in example (4.50)),
where the hearer would lose face if he refused to grant the speaker’s wish
after offering to give her anything she needs, or in highly structured
settings where the hearer is expected to comply with the speaker wishes
108 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
by virtue of social conventions (as in the commercial setting depicted
in (4.51)):
(4.50) ‘Anything you need Lute.’ # Luticia’s eyes began to close as her head
turned to the side, a bit of blood started to slip out of her mouth.
‘One story, please one more story,’ she requested of me (iWeb)
(4.51) We smiled eagerly at the young cashier as he rung up our purchase.
# ‘Eighty-seven cents, please,’ he requested (iWeb)
Optionality also decreases in fake requests, those uttered in a polite fashion
by a powerful speaker. As remarked by Leech (2014: 138), a boss addressing
her employee may say something along the line of You might want to collect
those documents before the bank close. In spite of the freedom conveyed by
the tentativeness of the linguistic form, the hearer is well aware of the
superiority of the speaker and of his obligation to comply. These are, in fact,
orders camouflaged as requests or polite orders. Students should be aware
of interactions of this type between the semantic attribute of optionality
and the semantic variable of social power, to the effect that asymmetrical
power relationships may override the effect of the optionality conveyed by
the linguistic form.

Does the speaker attempt to minimise the cost of the action?

Among the obstacles that may lead to an unsuccessful request there is
also the cost of the action. Since the speaker is not powerful enough to
impose her will on the hearer, she needs to carefully consider the cost of the
requested action and attempt to minimise it as much as possible to secure
the hearer’s compliance. The minimisation of cost serves as the grounding
for some request constructions (i.e. IF ONLY YOU COULD DO X, IF
ONLY YOU DID X). It can also be achieved by the use of a particular
set of realisation procedures, mainly adverbs like a little, a bit, just, simply,
a minute, only, etc. By means of illustration, see examples (4.52) and (4.53).
(4.52) ‘When they see a plow truck, just give us the opportunity to do what
we need to do to help them get where they’re going,’ requested
Maroon (iWeb)
(4.53) Simba requested: ‘Taraja, could you stay here a bit while Akili and
I climb out.’ (iWeb)

Does the speaker attempt to be polite?

Politeness has traditionally been considered a defining trait of requests.
However, as was the case with optionality, politeness per se may not lead
to a request interpretation, especially in those cases in which the speaker is
4.2 Requests 109
clearly more powerful than the hearer, and it is obvious from the context
that she has reasons to use such power to coerce the hearer’s course of
action. In asymmetrical relationships, politeness, without optionality, leads
to fake requests or polite orders such as the one in example (4.54):

(4.54) (Team captain to players) ‘Would players three and eleven please
step forward?’ Caius requested (iWeb)
Being aware of this overriding effect of the social power variable, students
will be able to understand that the use of politeness is only a straightforward
signal of requests when the speaker is either socially equal to or inferior
than the hearer. When this situation holds, politeness is an effective way
of overcoming some of the obstacles that may prevent the request from
succeeding (e.g. the hearer’s unwillingness to do the action or the high cost
of the action). This is the reason for the pervasiveness of politeness in the
realisation of requests. However, as shown by the data in our corpus, the
politeness of requests may decrease in several circumstances, such as when
the speaker is more powerful than the hearer (example (4.55)), and when the
beneficiary of the requested action is the hearer himself (example (4.56)),
or both speaker and hearer (example (4.57)). Politeness is also taken for
granted when the speaker and the hearer are socially close (example (4.58)).

(4.55) ‘STEWARDESS SNIPPEE!’ Captain boomed. ‘YOU ARE

REQUESTED ON FLIGHT DECK!’ (iWeb)
(4.56) Then Jill took off her pants and handed them to Jack, as she said,
‘Here, you try on mine!’ As she requested, he tried them (iWeb)
(4.57) ‘Keep our studio clean,’ another sign requested (iWeb)
(4.58) ‘Go down to Thomas and get me some more,’ his father requested
(iWeb)

Is social power relevant to the act of requesting?

Requests can be uttered regardless of the power relationship that holds
between the speakers. Nevertheless, as explained above, students should
be aware of the fact that as the power of the speaker increases, (1) the
need for politeness to secure compliance from the hearer decreases, and
requests gradually fade into more impositive speech acts like orders or
commands, and (2) the optionality of the hearer to decide whether to act
as requested decreases in spite of the politeness used in the expression of the
request. Mutual knowledge of the speaker’s superiority overrules the effects
of politeness and limits the freedom of the hearer to decide on his course
of action, thus turning those instances of requests into more peripheral
members of the category.
110 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
Is the social distance between the speakers relevant to the act of requesting?
Requests can be addressed to people who are both close and distant to the
speaker on the axis of social relationships. Still, students should be aware
of the interaction of this social variable with the semantic attribute of
politeness. As shown above, the closer the speakers are, the lower the need
for overt politeness in the expression of requests will be. In conversations
among socially close people, politeness is taken for granted, since the
unwritten rules of social interaction already apply, and people are not
expected to impose on others who are socially or emotionally close to
them (see example 4.58).

Is the formality of the context relevant to the act of requesting?

Requests are performed in all contexts regardless of their degree of
formality. The use of politeness tends to increase with the formality of the
context. Formal contexts often also imply a larger social distance between
speakers, which also favours the aforementioned increase in the use of
politeness (see Table 4.5).

4.2.2 The Know-How of Requests

Studies on the linguistic formulae used by speakers of different languages
to request someone to do something have flourished since the beginning
of speech act theory. It is possible to distinguish four main lines of
research on this matter, including pragmatic, interlinguistic, cognitive,
and conversational approaches. Within the pragmatic strand, Leech (2014)
has provided one of the most comprehensive works to date, devoting
a full chapter of his book to a qualitative, corpus-based taxonomy of
the different linguistic realisation procedures for requests or, in his own
words, the pragmalinguistic strategies and lexico-grammatical forms
available for the expression of requests in English. His main classification
criterion is based on the degree of directness/conventionalisation of the
different formulae. It does consider some motivating factors, such as cost–
benefit, social distance, and power but ignores others like the capability
and willingness/need of the participants, the formality of the context,
and the potential interactions between semantic variables and attributes,
thus falling short of offering a comprehensive picture of the semantic
motivation that underlies the diverse range of linguistic constructions at
hand for the realisation of requests.
Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper (1989) have delved into the interlinguistic
issues affecting the production of requests, with a view to identifying
4.2 Requests 111
Table 4.5 The know-what of requests

Requests are directive speech acts in which a speaker asks the hearer(s) to carry out an action.
When someone requests someone else to do something, they communicate the following:
‘I want you to do something because it is beneficial to me or to someone whom I also
want to benefit from the action. I know it is costly to you, and I do not have the
necessary power to impose the action on you. I acknowledge your freedom to comply
or to opt out.’
What you need to bear in mind in order to perform a successful request:
• Prototypically, the requested action benefits the speaker, but more peripheral
instances of requests may be intended to benefit the hearer, a third party, or a
combination of the former.
• Requests stem from a need or a desire on the part of the speaker, who does not have
the necessary social power to impose his will on the hearer and who is, therefore,
aware of the fact that he may need to overcome some obstacles in order to get the
hearer to comply with his wish.
• Among the obstacles to overcome, there is the willingness and ability of the hearer to
carry out the proposed action and the cost of the action itself.
• To overcome the aforementioned obstacles, prototypical requests are polite, they
attempt to minimise the cost of the proposed action, and they offer freedom to the
hearer to refuse to do as told.
BE AWARE!!!
• Prototypical requests are uttered by speakers who do not have the necessary power to
impose their will on the hearers. If you are a socially powerful speaker, be aware that your
social power may overrule the effect of politeness and of the prototypical optionality of a
requestive act, thus giving way to cases of fake requests or camouflaged orders.
• You can perform requests in all contexts regardless of their formality, and they can be
directed to hearers regardless of the social distance that separates them from the
speaker. Nevertheless, you should be aware that the higher the formality of the
context or the larger the social distance between the participants, the politer the
request will need to be to secure compliance. Remember that politeness can also be
achieved indirectly by means of minimising the cost of the action and/or increasing
the optionality of the hearer to do as told.
• You should be aware of the fact that the higher the cost of the action, the higher the
need to be polite, to acknowledge the freedom of the hearer to refuse, and/or to
minimise the cost of the action.

cultural idiosyncrasies that need to be taken into account when attempting

to perform a request in a second language.
Cognitive approaches offer a more detailed account of the experiential
grounding (i.e. removal of restraint force schema), cognitive operations (i.e.
illocutionary metonymy), and cultural conventions (ICMs) that motivate
the strategies for requesting (Pérez-Hernández, 2001, 2013, 2019; Ruiz de
Mendoza & Baicchi, 2007; Del Campo, 2013; Vassilaki, 2017).
112 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
Finally, conversational approaches have shown that the expression of
requests often exceeds the limits of a single utterance and have also looked
into the supportive moves and preferred-dispreferred conversational turns
in which requests are involved (Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper, 1989; Faerch
& Kasper, 1989).
In the framework adopted for this book (see Chapter 2), the portrayal
of request constructions brings together these four essential aspects of the
expression of requests. There are not many studies on frequency data for
different request constructions. Not even Leech’s (2014) comprehensive
taxonomy of requesting strategies provides information about their
frequency of use. This type of information, however, is essential for
teaching purposes. Owing to space limitations, EFL course books cannot
possibly cover every single request strategy, which makes it important to
know which are the most frequently used by native speakers in order to
include them in the teaching materials. This information is also useful
when planning the teaching of speech acts throughout the different
levels of instruction. Frequency data can help teachers and editors
to choose the most common constructions for the starters’ level and
gradually increase the difficulty with less frequently used constructions
at the intermediate and advanced levels. Based on the London-Lund
corpus of spoken English, Aijmer (1996: 157) reports two constructions
(i.e. YOU COULD DO X and COULD YOU DO X?) as those showing
a higher frequency of occurrence among educated British speakers from
the 1950s–1970s generation which populated the data of that particular
corpus. Along this line, as shown in Chapter 3, textbooks of English as
a second language offer a very limited number of canonical formulae
for requesting such as CAN / COULD YOU DO X?, IMPERATIVE
+ PLEASE, OR WOULD YOU MIND DOING X? The iWeb corpus,
containing fourteen billion words, offers a slightly different picture and
paves the way for a richer approach to the programming of the teaching
of requests in EFL textbooks.
As can be seen in Table 4.6, the data in this corpus yields a large number
of linguistic constructions with varied rates of occurrence in the expression
of requests in English.
The request strategies taught in EFL textbooks are often restricted to
CAN / COULD YOU DO X?, WILL / WOULD YOU DO X?, WOULD
YOU MIND DOING X? constructions. The use of the IMPERATIVE
construction in association with the politeness adverb please is also a typical
request construction taught to EFL students. The data in our corpus,
however, should lead to reconsider present-day approaches to the teaching
of request strategies.
4.2 Requests 113
Table 4.6 Base constructions for the act of requesting in English

Base constructions Occurrences Percentage

IMPERATIVE 280 56
CAN YOU DO X? 45 9
COULD YOU DO X? 25 5
I WOULD LIKE X
I WOULD LIKE YOU TO DO X 20 4
I WISH X
I WISH YOU TO DO X 15 3
IF YOU WILL DO X 15 3
WILL YOU DO X? 10 2
WOULD YOU DO X? 10 2
DO YOU HAVE X?
HAVE YOU GOT X? 10 2
CAN WE NOT DO X? 5 1
COULD WE NOT DO X? 5 1
MAY YOU DO X? 5 1
I WANT YOU TO DO X 5 1
I NEED YOU TO DO X 5 1
IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO DO X 5 1
IT WOULD BE GOOD IF YOU COULD DO X 5 1
YOU THINK YOU COULD DO X 5 1
WOULD YOU MIND DOING X? 5 1
ANY CHANCE YOU COULD DO X? 5 1
I DIRECT THAT YOU SHALL DO X 5 1
I ASK YOU TO DO X 10 2
I ASK THAT YOU DO X
YOU ARE REQUESTED TO DO X 5 1
Total 500 100

As illustrated in Table 4.6, the IMPERATIVE construction is by far the

most common linguistic formula for the expression of requests in English
with over 50 per cent of the total number of occurrences. The canonical
CAN / COULD YOU DO X?, I WOULD LIKE X, or I WOULD LIKE
YOU TO DO X constructions, among others, occupy secondary distant
positions.
The high frequency of use of the IMPERATIVE construction, however,
calls for a closer examination of its particular use in the realisation of
requests. As can be observed in Table 4.7, bare imperatives constitute over
40 per cent of the total number of the occurrences of imperative-based
request constructions in English.
Using a bare imperative for requesting is an effective strategy but
also a complex and risky one, since imperatives can realise any type of
114 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
Table 4.7 Imperative base construction + realisation procedures for requests

Imperative constructions for requests Occurrences Percentage

BARE IMPERATIVE 115 41

IMPERATIVE + EXPRESSION OF POLITENESS 65 23
(PLEASE)
IMPERATIVE + EXPRESSION OF OPTIONALITY 30 11
IMPERATIVE + EXPRESSION OF SOCIAL 30 11
CLOSENESS
IMPERATIVE + EXPRESSION OF MINIMISATION 20 7
OF COST
IMPERATIVE + EXPRESSION OF SUPERIORITY OF 10 3.6
HEARER
IMPERATIVE + REASON CLAUSE 5 1.7
IMPERATIVE + EXPRESSION PRAISING THE 5 1.7
HEARER
Total 280 100

directive (see the know-how sections for other directives in this chapter).
A successful use of bare imperatives as requests will depend on whether
the semantic attributes of the ICM of requesting (see Section 4.2.1) are
activated contextually. If it is clear that the action is in the speaker’s benefit,
that participants are equals, and that the speaker does not have enough
power to impose his will on the hearer, the bare imperative will be effective
as a request. This is illustrated by example (4.59), in which a lover asks her
partner to tell her that he loves her:
(4.59) ‘Sirius’, meekly she requested, ‘Tell me you love me.’ (iWeb)
Otherwise, alternative directive interpretations may be activated. The
student should also be made aware of the fact that in some contexts,
especially those that are highly formal (e.g. legal documents), the use of
a bare imperative may be a dispreferred construction for requesting even
if all semantic attributes of requests are clearly activated by the context.
Compare the formal request in example (4.60) with a fabricated alternative
that makes use of a bare imperative in example (4.61).
(4.60) ‘I direct that my executors shall arrange for my remains to be taken
to the country of Bali and to be cremated there in accordance with
the Buddhist rituals of Bali’, Bowie allegedly requested in his last
will testament (iWeb)
(4.61) ‘Take my remains to the country of Bali and cremate them there
in accordance with the Buddhist rituals of Bali’, Bowie requested
in his last will testament
4.2 Requests 115
Mastering the use of bare imperatives for the performance of the different
types of directives is a highly complex task. Fortunately, the language
system offers a myriad of lexico-grammatical realisation procedures that
can be used to secure a requestive use of the imperative. These are different
from the lexico-grammatical realisation procedures that lead to an order
interpretation of the IMPERATIVE construction (see Section 4.1.2), and
they are semantically grounded in the semantics of requesting (see the
know-what of requesting in Section 4.2.1). Thus, the lack of social power
of a speaker issuing a request prevents her from being able to impose
her will on the hearer as is the case with other directives like orders and
threats. For this reason, when requesting something, speakers attempt to
achieve the hearer’s compliance through other means. The most frequent
lexico-grammatical realisation procedures used in connection with an
IMPERATIVE construction to secure a request interpretation are those
that express (1) politeness, (2) mitigation of cost, (3) optionality, and
(4) social closeness. As captured in Table 4.7, the most widespread one
among them is the use of politeness through the use of the adverb please or
alternative expressions (e.g. if you please).
(4.62) ‘Please, make way,’ I requested (iWeb)
Also highly frequent is the use of the IMPERATIVE construction together
with expressions of optionality (e.g. if you can / will, if you don’t mind,
question tags like can / could / will / would you?), aimed at enhancing the
freedom of the hearer to refuse to carry out the requested action, and thus,
indirectly, at increasing the tact and politeness of the act:
(4.63) ‘While you’re out, if you can, take some pictures of the birds and
send them to me.’ She requested (iWeb)
IMPERATIVE constructions with vocatives signalling social closeness
and affection also point towards a request interpretation, since imposing
on people who are close to us is generally not socially acceptable:
(4.64) ‘July, wait,’ he requested politely (iWeb)
Likewise, lexico-grammatical forms that mitigate the cost of the proposed
action help to guarantee a request interpretation of IMPERATIVE
constructions. If the speaker had the power to impose his will (as happens
with orders), he would not need to consider the cost of what he asks for or
attempt to mitigate it. In fact, as shown in Section 4.1.2, IMPERATIVE
constructions for orders were not mitigated in the data from our corpus.
Requests realised through IMPERATIVE constructions, on the contrary,
often show mitigation of the cost of the required action through the use
116 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
of adverbs like just and only, diminutives, expressions of diminishing like
a little, a bit, a little bit, etc., or a combination of one or more of these
linguistic resources:

(4.65) ‘So, Bella, tell us a little bit about yourself.’ He requested politely
(iWeb)
(4.66) ‘Just a little off the bottom please,’ requested the unsuspecting lady
(iWeb)
Signalling the superiority of the hearer by means of vocatives expressing
the asymmetric power relationship between participants is also an indirect
way of acknowledging that the hearer is free to comply (i.e. optionality),
thus tilting the interpretation towards that of a request:

(4.67) ‘Sir, come over to our vigil,’ she requested in vain (iWeb)
Another less frequent means of acknowledging lack of power to impose an
action is by alluding to rational arguments in order to persuade the hearer
to comply. Thus, some request IMPERATIVE constructions are either
preceded or followed by reason clauses stating the motives that lead the
speaker to ask the hearer to do something:

(4.68) ‘Ok, look, I’m not good with words so bear with me here,’ I requested
(iWeb)
Finally, IMPERATIVE constructions with vocatives praising the hearers
are also prototypically interpreted as requests because they come through
as polite:

(4.69) ‘Tell me more, you big handsome sailor,’ she requested (iWeb)
All in all, if compared to the IMPERATIVE constructions for orders
(Section 4.1.2) and other directive types (see following sections), the
realisation procedures accompanying IMPERATIVE constructions for
requests are specific enough for hearers to identify them as such and for
speakers to grant the intended interpretation.
While over 80 per cent of order constructions in our corpus are based on
the use of the imperative, the act of requesting offers a more varied range
of construction types for its expression. Nearly 50 per cent of requests
in our corpus are realised by means of declarative or interrogative-based
constructions. The most frequent of them are those that question the ability
of the hearer to perform the requested action (i.e. CAN / COULD YOU
DO X?)
4.2 Requests 117
(4.70) ‘Can you tell me where the bathroom is on this ship?’ She nervously
requested (iWeb)
(4.71) ‘Could you teach me how to dance, Misty?’ He requested (iWeb)
This type of interrogative-based constructions, grounded on an essential
semantic attribute for directives (i.e. the fact that the hearer has to be able to
perform the requested action), gives the latter freedom to refuse compliance
without losing face. In this way, one of the key semantic attributes of
requests (i.e. the fact that they allow optionality to the hearer) is activated.
If the past modal is used, the politeness of the act increases, thus further
activating another essential feature of requesting (i.e. its polite nature).2
Through the metonymic activation of three nuclear semantic variables of
requesting (i.e. ability of the hearer to perform the action, optionality, and
politeness) CAN / COULD YOU DO X? constructions constitute a very
effective means of conveying a request, which explains their productivity
in actual use as shown by the data (see Table 4.6).
In his taxonomy of request strategies, Leech (2014: 148–149) includes
declarative-based ability constructions (i.e. YOU CAN / COULD DO X)
as strategies for requesting. These could, in fact, be used as requests in a
proper context, however, our corpus yields no occurrences for constructions
of this type, except for two variants in which the politeness and optionality
of the act is highlighted through other means. Thus, the constructions
IT WOULD BE GOOD IF YOU COULD DO X and I THINK YOU
COULD DO X activate the politeness and optionality variables by means
of past modals (i.e. it would be good if …) and expressions of tentativeness
(i.e. I think …), respectively. Affirmative ability-based constructions with
no overt politeness or optionality markers are hardly used as requests,
probably because they feel too impositive. Other ability-based interrogative
constructions, like CAN / COULD WE / YOU NOT DO X? (as in Can
we not use that phrase, please?) are far from polite and, as explained in detail
in Leech (2014: 156), are accompanied by a tone of annoyance.
Another group of fairly productive constructions for requesting is formed
by declarative constructions expressing the willingness of the speaker that
the action is carried out (i.e. I WOULD LIKE YOU TO DO X, I WISH
YOU TO DO X):
(4.72) ‘And now, if you will examine the floor,’ the magician requested.
‘All of it. I wish you to assure the audience that there are no hidden
trapdoors.’ (iWeb)

2 For explanations on the politeness of past modals, see Pérez-Hernández (1996) and Leech (2014:
153–155).
118 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
This type of construction also activates the politeness and optionality
variables through the use of past modals or lexical means (i.e. wish is more
tentative than want). The present tense variant (i.e. I WANT YOU TO
DO X), which does not activate the key request attributes of optionality
or politeness, is much less productive in the corpus.
Interrogative constructions that activate the attribute concerning the
willingness of the hearer to perform the requested action are also fairly
frequent (i.e. IF YOU WILL DO X, WILL YOU DO X?, WOULD YOU
DO X?):
(4.73) ‘Would you pass the grated cheese?’ I requested (iWeb)
(4.74) ‘If you will examine the floor,’ the magician requested (iWeb)
Both the interrogative sentence type and the conditional phrase activate
the optionality of the speaker to comply and, in turn, the politeness of the
request. In example (4.73) politeness is also overtly expressed by means of
the use of a past modal.
Finally, requests for objects often make use of interrogative-based
constructions that question the hearer’s possession of the requested object:
(4.75) She put her soaked handkerchief down on the ground. ‘I am afraid
my handkerchief was not sufficient; do you have your own?’ she
requested (iWeb)
The rest of the constructions found in our corpus are much less productive.
This may be due to the fact that some of them are restricted to formal use
(i.e. constructions with performative verbs such as I ASK YOU TO DO X,
YOU ARE REQUESTED TO DO X) or to contexts that require higher
amounts of politeness (i.e. a large social distance between speakers, for
instance, requires the use of formulaic constructions like WOULD YOU
MIND DOING X?; requests involving a very high cost for the hearer also
ask for an increase in the tentativeness, optionality, and politeness of the
construction, e.g. ANY CHANCE YOU COULD DO X?).
All in all, while orders showed a clear preference for imperative base
constructions (around 87 per cent of the total), requests make use of
imperative base formulae (56 per cent) but also of interrogative and
declarative base constructions (44 per cent). The less impositive nature of
declarative and interrogative sentences suits well the necessary optionality
and politeness of requests. As shown above, IMPERATIVE constructions
are generally accompanied by optionality, politeness, and mitigation
realisation procedures which activate the request interpretation and rule
out impositive readings (orders, threats). These same realisation procedures
4.2 Requests 119
can be used in combination with declarative and interrogative-based
constructions to modulate the politeness, optionality, and cost conveyed
by a request, as well as to increase its degree of explicitness.
A comparison of the request constructions in our English and Spanish
corpora yields some asymmetries between the two languages that are also
of interest for EFL teachers and students.
As reported in Chapter 3, the most common request constructions found
in EFL textbooks are the ability-based interrogative formulae CAN /
COULD YOU DO X? and the volitional construction I’D LIKE X / I’D
LIKE YOU TO DO X. Nevertheless, our data from the English corpus
shows that IMPERATIVE constructions clearly outnumber the latter in
actual use. This comes to confirm Bouton’s (1996) and Nguyen’s (2011)
observation that there is a lack of representativity of the formulae chosen as
teaching targets. The request constructions used in EFL textbooks do not
match the actual preferences of real native speakers. In this respect, it would
be more realistic to teach students how to use IMPERATIVE constructions
together with the proper realisation procedures (see Table 4.7) that help
speakers secure a request interpretation.
In addition, it can also be observed that Spanish shows a marked
preference for IMPERATIVE constructions (71 per cent) and direct
questions about the hearer’s course of action (around 11 per cent; E.g. ¿ME
HACES X? = *DO YOU DO X FOR ME?) over other formulae for the
expression of requests. This can be expected from a language that has
already been shown to make a less use of indirectness and politeness than
English (Blum-Kulka & House, 1989; Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper, 1989;
Márquez-Reiter, 2002; Bataller, 2013). Choosing CAN / COULD YOU
DO X? or I’D LIKE YOU TO DO X constructions as teaching targets
for Spanish students of English, when their native language favours other
construction types, does not seem a very effective way of approaching the
teaching of English requests to Spanish speakers. On the contrary, teaching
them the realisation procedures that guarantee a request interpretation
of IMPERATIVE constructions appears as a more natural approach for
students of a language that already displays a preference for this base
construction.
Spanish students would also have to be made aware of the fact that
although the COULD YOU DO X? construction has a similar frequency of
occurrence to that of its Spanish counterpart (¿PODRÍAS HACER X?), the
same construction with a present modal (CAN YOU DO X?) is also widely
used in English. In fact, more widely used than its Spanish counterpart
(¿PUEDES HACER X?).
120 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
There are some English constructions that are easy to teach to Spanish
students, since there exist parallel Spanish forms with a similar rate of
occurrence (white rows in Table 4.8). However, Spanish students of English
should be taught that other constructions show different rates of preference
in each language (light grey rows in Table 4.8). Thus, some are more widely
used in English (e.g. I’D LIKE X / YOU TO DO X; I WISH X / YOU TO
DO X), and others are favoured in Spanish (e.g. IMPERATIVE, QUIERO
QUE HAGAS X (I WANT YOU TO DO X)).
Finally, there are constructions that only arise in the corpus for one of
the languages under scrutiny (dark grey rows in Table 4.8). The English
corpus displays some specific constructions (e.g. IF YOU WILL DO X,
ANY CHANCE YOU WOULD DO X, YOU THINK YOU COULD
DO X, etc.) that, although possible, yield no occurrences in the Spanish
corpus, thus indicating that Spanish speakers do not favour the use of
those particular constructions. More relevant for teaching purposes
are those cases in which there exists no direct counterpart in the other
language. Spanish, for example, makes use of request constructions like
¿ME HACES X? and ¿ME HARÍAS X? (as in ¿Me abres la puerta? = *Do
you open the door for me?) that have no parallel linguistic expression in
English. Students should be made aware of these mismatches in order to
prevent mistakes based on interlanguage interferences.

4.3 Beggings
In comparison to the extensive existing bibliography on requests, the act
of begging has attracted virtually no attention in the literature. A simple
search in Google Scholar retrieves no specific research articles on begs,
other than some scattered mentions of this illocutionary act as an example
of directive speech act. This lack of research interest in the act of begging
parallels its poor treatment in EFL textbooks. As shown in Chapter 3, only
one out of the ten textbooks under scrutiny offered specific teaching on this
illocutionary act with just one passing reference to it. Begging, however, is
not uncommon in everyday life interactions, and reaching proficiency in
a second language should involve the knowledge of how to properly and
effectively produce this speech act.
Like other directives, begs are grounded on force dynamics and
metaphorically conceptualised as a specific type of weak force that
needs to be repeated several times to achieve its aim. This iterative force
acts on the rationality and/or social conscience of the hearer (i.e. H R/S)
and, if successful, turns him into an agent (i.e. H A) and moves him
Table 4.8 Comparison of base constructions for the act of requesting in English and Spanish

Requests base constructions (English) Number Percentage Number Percentage Requests base constructions (Spanish)

COULD YOU DO X? 25 5 25 5 ¿(ME) PODRÍAS HACER X?

DO YOU HAVE X?
HAVE YOU GOT X? 10 2 9 1.8 ¿TIENES X?
I ASK YOU TO DO X
I ASK THAT YOU DO X 10 2 9 1.8 (YO) TE PIDO QUE HAGAS X
I NEED YOU TO DO X 5 1 6 1.2 (LO QUE) YO NECESITO ES
QUE HAGAS X
COULD YOU/WE NOT DO X? 5 1 7 1.4 ¿NO PODRÍAS/PODRÍAMOS
HACER X?
IMPERATIVE 280 56 355 71 IMPERATIVE
CAN YOU DO X? 45 9 10 2 ¿(ME) PUEDES HACER X?
I WOULD LIKE X ME GUSTARÍA X
I’D LIKE YOU TO DO X 20 4 5 1 ME GUSTARÍA QUE TÚ HAGAS X
I WISH X ESPERO X
I WISH YOU TO DO X 15 3 5 1 ESPERO QUE HAGAS X
I WANT YOU TO DO X 5 1 8 1.6 QUIERO QUE HAGAS X
Table 4.8 (cont.)

Requests base constructions (English) Number Percentage Number Percentage Requests base constructions (Spanish)

CAN YOU/WE NOT DO X? 5 1 0 0 Possible but not productive

MAY YOU DO X? 5 1 0 0 Possible but not productive
IF YOU WILL DO X 15 3 0 0 Possible but not productive
WILL YOU DO X? 10 2 0 0 Possible but not productive
WOULD YOU DO X? 10 2 0 0 Possible but not productive
IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO DO X 5 1 0 0 Possible but not productive
IT WOULD BE GOOD IF YOU 5 1 0 0 Possible but not productive
COULD DO X
YOU THINK YOU COULD DO X 5 1 0 0 Possible but not productive
WOULD YOU MIND DOING X? 5 1 0 0 Possible but not productive
ANY CHANCE YOU COULD 5 1 0 0 Possible but not productive
DO X?
I DIRECT THAT YOU SHALL DO 5 1 0 0 Possible but not productive
X
YOU ARE REQUESTED TO DO X 5 1 0 0 Possible but not productive
Not possible 0 0 57 11.4 ¿ME HACES X?
Not possible 0 0 4 0.8 ¿ME HARÍAS X?
Total 500 100 500 100
4.3 Beggings 123

Figure 4.3 Force schema underlying the conceptualisation of beggings

into action. Figure 4.3 illustrates the iteration image schema underlying
beggings, as proposed by Pérez-Hernández and Ruiz de Mendoza (2002:
278–279).
In the world of physics, the repeated exertion of a force generally leads
to a larger effect. Likewise, the repetition of the linguistic act in the case
of beggings is expected to result in a higher likelihood of success. In Pérez
and Ruiz de Mendoza’s (2002: 278) words, ‘linguistic insistence increases
the chances of a speech act being successful’. The reasons why beggings
require this type of insistence will be explained in the know-what of the
act of begging.

4.3.1 The Know-What of Beggings

The act of begging has been defined as ‘an insistent, continual harrying
of someone who is in a position to grant a favour’ (Hayakawa, 1969:
449). To this, Leech (1983: 219) adds that beggings are also characterised
by a marked use of linguistic courtesy, the lack of power of the speaker
to impose her will seemingly being the reason behind this increase in
politeness. Wierzbicka (1987: 53) also states that, when begging, the
speaker assumes that the hearer is not willing to do as required, which
motivates the implementation of two further tactics on the part of the
speaker: (1) letting the hearer know that she is not going to give up easily
and (2) adopting a humble, abject attitude. The inferiority of the speaker
to impose her will and the assumption that the hearer is not willing to
comply, however, cannot justify by themselves the prototypical insistence
and higher politeness of this illocutionary act. Other directives, like
requests or suggestions, also share these attributes, but they do not exhibit
the insistence and extreme use of politeness that characterises beggings.
As shall be argued below, the data in our corpus comes to confirm Pérez-
Hernández’s (2001: 209–233) proposal on the centrality of yet another
semantic attribute for the correct conceptualisation of beggings: the fact
that the speaker has a strong desire that the proposed action is carried
out. Additionally, the know-what of beggings also comprises the following
knowledge.
124 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
Who is to do the action expressed in the act of begging?
Like most directives beggings present the hearer as the agent of the action:
(4.76) ‘Daddy, please stay,’ she begged, ‘Please stay like mommy used to.’
(iWeb)

Who will benefit from the action expressed in the begging?

Beggings prototypically have the speaker as the beneficiary of the action:
(4.77) ‘Girls, can you bring me something to drink … pretty pleaseeeee?’
she begged. (iWeb)
There are, however, some peripheral cases in which both the speaker and
the hearer benefit from the action, as illustrated by example (4.78), in which
the speaker begs the hearer to not commit suicide.
(4.78) In the wake of Sam’s suicide, Brittany couldn’t seem to stop crying
[…] ‘Promise me you won’t take your life,’ her father begged.
‘Promise you’ll come to me before anything.’ (iWeb)
The speaker (i.e. father) benefits because he does not want to lose her
daughter, and the hearer (i.e. Brittany) benefits because she remains alive.
The fact that both speaker and hearer benefit from the action has some
bearings on the form of the act, which though insistent, does not make
use of the politeness mechanisms that characterise those prototypical
instances in which the speaker is the only beneficiary. The fact that the
hearer also benefits from the action makes politeness less necessary and
brings insistence to the front.

Can the hearer do the action expressed in the act of begging?

According to the data in our corpus, speakers uttering beggings
prototypically work under the assumption that the hearer is perfectly
capable of doing the required action, hence the extensive use of imperative-
based instances of begging that simply point the hearer to the desired
action. However, as was the case with requests, when the context requires
higher doses of tentativeness, it is also possible to question the hearer’s
ability to perform the action as a means to increasing the latter’s freedom
to comply (see example (4.77) above).

Do speaker and hearer want the action to be carried out?

Our data confirms previous studies to the effect that the act of begging
displays the highest degree of speaker’s will among directives (Verschueren,
4.3 Beggings 125
1985: 153–154). Speakers uttering a beg have a strong desire that a particular
action is carried out:
(4.79) ‘No, please, I would really like to be left out!’ the man begged. (iWeb)
In this, as remarked by Pérez-Hernández (2001: 209), beggings equal
threats, though each of these speech acts makes use of different strategies in
order to materialise the speakers’ desire that the action is performed. Thus,
while beggings make use of strategies based on insistence, negotiation, and
politeness, among others (see Section 4.3.2 for a detailed inventory), threats
are more prone to resort to blackmailing and coercive means (see Pérez-
Hernández, 2001: ch. 10). Speakers uttering beggings also work under the
assumption that the hearer’s willingness to comply with their proposal is
low (Pérez-Hernández, 2001: 211).
The speaker’s strong desire that the action is carried out, his lack of
power to impose his will on the hearer, and his assumption that the hearer
is probably not willing to comply explain the insistence and higher use
of politeness that characterises the act of begging. Example (4.80) clearly
illustrates these semantic traits:
(4.80) Given Jacob’s history with hobbies, it was no surprise that Jacob’s
father was reluctant to buy him a magician’s kit for his birthday.
‘Geez, Jacob … You sure you wouldn’t rather I got you more guitar
lessons?’ He suggested. Jacob was insistent. ‘Dad, you’ve got to get
me the magician’s kit. This time I’ll stick with it for real. I promise!
Come on, Dad.’ Jacob begged (iWeb)
In fact, in those cases in which the hearer makes his willingness and/or
disposition to comply explicit in advance, politeness and insistence are not
deem so necessary, and the act of begging tends to resemble an average
request for action. This is the case with example (4.81), which is much less
insistent (i.e. there are no repetitions) and less polite (i.e. no overt use of
politeness markers like please) than prototypical pleas like in example (4.76).
(4.81) A cyclist lying on his deathbed asked his best friend to do him a
favour when he’d gone. ‘Anything,’ replied his friend. ‘Just don’t
let my wife sell my bikes for what I told her I paid for them,’ he
begged (iWeb)

Is the action expressed in the act of begging necessary?

Like orders and requests, begs may also stem from the speaker’s needing
an object or from his needing an action to be carried out. This semantic
126 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
attribute motivates some begging constructions based on the expression
of necessity:
(4.82) ‘Please sir, I need medical help,’ I begged, barely able to speak (iWeb)

How much freedom does an act of begging allow the hearer?

The speaker uttering a begging does not have the necessary power to
impose his will on the hearer. The freedom of the latter to do as asked
is therefore high by default. This was also the case with requests, which
respected that optionality and even attempted to increase it as an indirect
means of enhancing the politeness of the act (see Section 4.2.1). Beggings
work differently. Motivated by her strong desire that the proposed action
is carried out, the speaker attempts to somehow limit the chances of the
hearer refusing to comply. Limiting the optionality of the hearer cannot be
done through imposition (as in the case of orders) or through coercion (as
in threats) because of the lack of power that characterises speakers uttering
beggings. Consequently, the powerless but eager speaker favours other
strategies to secure the hearer’s compliance. Among them, she will make
extensive use of a combination of insistence (to make her degree of desire
clear to the hearer) and politeness (to gain the hearer’s compliance while
avoiding imposition). Increasing the expressiveness of the act (by means
of interjections, forceful intonation, lengthening of sounds, etc.) may also
help to increase the hearer’s compliance. These realisation procedures allow
the speaker to convey her strong desire that the action is carried out. The
overt expression of the speaker’s wishes puts the hearer in the position of
having to comply if she does not want to contravene the social expectations
included in the Politeness Principle (Leech, 1983). To a lesser extent, other
strategies, like negotiating, minimising the cost of the action, pampering,
or appealing to justifying reasons, have also been found to be effective
in restricting the hearer’s optionality and moving her to comply with the
speaker’s begging. Example (4.83) illustrates several of them (i.e. politeness,
insistence, negotiation, mitigation, expressiveness):
(4.83) ‘Oh, please don’t Aunt Lucy! I promise I won’t do it again. I’ll give
you everything I have. Just please don’t tell Mum,’ he begged (iWeb)

Does the speaker attempt to minimise the cost of the action?

Previous studies based on more limited data have suggested that beggings,
like requests, minimise the cost of the requested action as a way of persuading
the hearer to comply (Pérez-Hernández, 2001: 214–215). The results of this
corpus analysis, based on 500 instances of beggings, contradict previous
4.3 Beggings 127
findings. Minimisation of cost, although a possible strategy compatible with
the aim of beggings (example (4.81): Just don’t let my wife sell my bikes for
what I told her I paid for them), is not extensively used by English speakers.
When begging, they do not rely on this strategy to achieve their goal,
favouring others such us the use of politeness, negotiation, or the offering
of justifications. It is only natural that minimisation of cost should not be
central to the conceptualisation of beggings. Minimising the cost involves
asking for less, and this contradicts one of the essential semantic attributes
of begging: the fact that the speaker has a strong desire to achieve his goal.
It makes no sense, therefore, to ask for less than what is actually wanted in
order to minimise the cost of the action. The hearer’s compliance is therefore
searched through other means (e.g. politeness, negotiation, etc.).
Does the speaker attempt to be polite?
Politeness, in combination with directness and insistence, has been found
to be a characterising semantic feature of the act of begging. The lack of
social power of the speaker, his high desire to get the hearer to carry out
the proposed action, and his assumption that the hearer may not be willing
to comply motivate the use of politeness as a means to persuade him into
action. Politeness is also a way of humbly acknowledging the inherent
freedom of the hearer to decide for or against carrying out the required
action. Example (4.84) illustrates the extensive use of politeness found in
prototypical beggings:
(4.84) ‘Please, please’ she begged, ‘Rape me, take my money but please
don’t kill me please.’ (iWeb)
The need for politeness decreases when the beneficiary of the action
includes the hearer as well as the speaker (see example (4.78) above), as well
as when the power of the speaker increases or the social distance between
speakers is smaller, as in examples (4.85) and (4.86), respectively:
(4.85) ‘Tell me who you are,’ the King begged, for he was amazed by her
beauty and magic (iWeb)
(4.86) ‘Mama, get me out of here,’ the girl begged (iWeb)
Is social power relevant to the act of begging?
As illustrated by examples (4.76)–(4.86), beggings can be performed
regardless of the power relationship between speakers. Even kings, who
represent a clear-cut instance of social power, may find themselves in the
need of begging in certain contexts (see example (4.85)). Nevertheless, we
have argued that speakers uttering beggings typically lack the power to
128 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
impose their will. As explained in Pérez-Hernández (2001: 216), the hearer’s
power need not arise from an institution. In the case of beggings, the hearer
is the person who has the ability to grant the speaker’s wishes, and this
endows her with an ad hoc superiority over the latter. Thus, in example
(4.85), in spite of his institutional power, the king, who is in love with
the hearer, finds himself in a position of inferiority because of this, being
aware of the fact that his power as king does not grant him control over
the woman’s emotions).
This inferiority of the speaker, whose wishes depend on the hearer’s
disposition, is one of the motivating factors that explains the insistence and
higher levels of politeness that characterise beggings, two strategies used
to overcome this inferiority and to persuade the hearer into compliance.

Is the social distance between the speakers relevant to the act of begging?
Beggings can be performed regardless of the social distance that exits
between speakers. One can beg to a stranger and to an intimate alike.
EFL students, however, should be aware of the interactions of the variable
of social distance with other semantic attributes of the act of begging.
Thus, the data in our corpus suggests that, when begging, the larger the
social distance between the speakers, the higher the need to increase the
politeness of the act will be:

(4.87) The old beggar woman saw Calista and began speaking. ‘Oh
m’lady, would you be so kind as to …’. ‘Get out,’ Calista demanded.
‘Please, I am not asking for much, just food scraps, maybe an old
blanket …’ the old woman begged (iWeb)

On the contrary, example (4.86) above showed how short social distances
are linked to smaller needs of politeness. Pérez-Hernández (2001: 217) has
explained that small social distances correlate with a higher predisposition
of the hearer to grant the speaker’s wishes. In these contexts, the familiarity
between the participants gives the speaker reasons to expect collaboration
on the part of the hearer. This makes politeness and insistence less necessary,
unless the speaker asks for something too costly or too important for the
hearer.

Is the formality of the context relevant to the act of begging?

The corpus under scrutiny yields instances of begging in all types of
contexts, regardless of their formality, though this directive tends to be
more common in informal contexts.
4.3 Beggings 129
Formal contexts are generally more structured and less prone to
expressions of subjectivity or emotions. In our corpus, those beggings
found in formal contexts tend to be less insistent and to rely on negotiation
strategies to secure the hearer’s compliance. Example (4.88), set in the formal
context of a royal audience, illustrates this use of negotiation, in which
the speaker promises something back in return for the king’s compliance.
In addition, this instance of begging does not display the insistence (i.e.
repetitions, intensifiers) or expressiveness (i.e. exclamations, interjections)
that characterise its informal counterparts.
(4.88) Shaqiq went to the Prince. ‘Give me three days, and I will bring
your dog back to you. Set my friends free,’ he begged (iWeb)
Table 4.9 summarises the conceptual layout of the act of begging.

Table 4.9 The know-what of beggings

Beggings are directive speech acts by means of which a speaker insistently asks the
hearer(s) to carry out an action. When someone begs someone else to do something,
they communicate the following:
‘I really want you to do this. I know you have the power to decide for or against doing
it. I acknowledge your power, but I have to keep trying hard to persuade you to do it
because I really want to achieve my goal.’
What you need to bear in mind in order to perform a successful act of begging:
• The speaker, who is the prototypical beneficiary of the action, has a strong desire to
achieve his goal (i.e. to get the hearer to do as told), which leads him to be direct,
unambiguous, and insistent in the expression of his begging.
• The hearer is perceived as being more powerful than the speaker. This power need
not be institutional. Simply the fact that he is the one who can make the speaker’s
wishes come true endows him with an ad hoc superiority.
• The speaker feels that he lacks the necessary power to impose his will on the hearer.
• The hearer is largely free to decide for or against doing what the speaker says.
• The speaker acknowledges and respects the hearer’s optionality by being overtly
polite, but he also keeps trying to achieve his goal by insisting, negotiating with him,
pampering him, and to a lesser extent, minimising the cost of the required action.
BE AWARE!!!
• Politeness is not so necessary when the benefit is for both the speaker and the
hearer, and/or the action is not very costly.
• You can beg someone to do something regardless of how powerful you may be, but
the less (social, institutional) power you have, the more polite you need to be.
• You can beg someone to do something regardless of the social distance that separates
you from the hearer, but the larger the social distance, the more polite you need to be.
• You can beg someone to do something in all contexts regardless of their formality,
but the more formal the context, the less insistent you have to be, and the more
extensive your use of negotiation strategies should be.
130 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
4.3.2 The Know-How of Beggings
The lack of research on linguistic constructions and realisation procedures
for the expression of beggings parallels the virtually inexistent attention
devoted to the teaching of this directive speech act in the ten textbooks
analysed for this study.3 As reported in Chapter 3, only one of them takes
into consideration this speech act. This is done in passing, as part of a
reported speech activity in which students are asked to rephrase a direct act
of begging (i.e. Please, please, don’t wear those old jeans) using the speech verb
to beg. There is no explicit explanation about the semantics of this directive
act, much less about the characteristics of the linguistic construction that is
used as illustration. As shall be made apparent in this section, the English
language offers a rich array of base constructions and realisation procedures
to allow the expression of the act of begging, all of which find a motivation
in the semantic description of the act provided in Section 4.3.1. EFL students
at the advanced level of instruction would surely benefit from the teaching of
at least the most frequent among these constructions. Table 4.10 summarises

Table 4.10 Base constructions for the act of begging in English

Base constructions Occurrences Percentage

IMPERATIVE 374 74.8

I BEG YOU TO DO X 46 9.2
CAN I/YOU/WE DO X? 28 5.6
CAN’T I/WE/YOU DO X? 16 3.2
I WANT/NEED X
I WANT/NEED YOU TO DO X 10 2
YOU HAVE/MUST DO X 8 1.6
COULD YOU DO X? 4 0.8
WON’T YOU DO X? 4 0.8
WILL YOU DO X? 2 0.4
WOULD YOU DO X ? 2 0.4
DO YOU THINK YOU COULD DO X? 2 0.4
YOU’LL DO X (WON’T YOU?) 2 0.4
YOU CAN DO X 2 0.4
Total 500 100

3 The only previous in-depth study of beggings dates from the beginning of the century (Pérez-
Hernández, 2001: ch. 8), and it is based on a smaller collection of examples. The present study
comes to confirm Pérez-Hernández’s (2001) initial conclusions regarding the realisation procedures
that activate each attribute of the begging ICM (i.e. each piece of knowledge included in the
know-what of beggings). In addition, it offers a collection of base constructions for the expression
of beggings in English and a comparison with those of the Spanish language.
4.3 Beggings 131
the quantitative data on begging constructions resulting from the analysis
of the first 500 random occurrences of beggings in the iWeb corpus.
With nearly 75 per cent of the total number of occurrences, IMPERATIVE
base constructions clearly outnumber other linguistic constructions in the
expression of beggings. This is only to be expected since the speaker uttering
a begging has a strong desire to achieve her goal. In turn, this motivates
the use of the imperative as a direct, unambiguous way for the speaker to
communicate the hearer the action that she expects him to carry out.
As has previously been shown to be the case with orders and requests,
IMPERATIVE constructions for the expression of beggings display some
specific characteristics of their own, which constitute an essential teaching
target for EFL students. The realisation procedures that combine with
IMPERATIVE base constructions in the expression of beggings (see
Table 4.11) can be divided into two main groups: (1) those that, assuming
the lack of power of the speaker to impose his will, attempt to persuade
the hearer to do as asked, and (2) those that communicate the speaker’s
strong desire that the action is carried out. Let us see each of them in turn.
How can a powerless, but eager to achieve his will, speaker attempt
to persuade the hearer to do as told? The data in our corpus shows that
in many cases this is done by making use of politeness. The use of the
IMPERATIVE base construction in combination with the adverb please
amounts to over 15 per cent of the total number of beggings in our corpus:
(4.89) The brother then begged him: ‘Please, father, intercede for me to
God that I may be allowed a little more time in which to amend
my life’
Table 4.11 Imperative base construction + realisation procedures for beggings

Imperative construction for begging Occurrences Percentage

BARE IMPERATIVE 13 3.4

IMPERATIVE + EXCLAMATIONS/INTONATION 70 19
IMPERATIVE + EXPRESSION OF POLITENESS 60 16
(PLEASE)
IMPERATIVE + REPETITION 36 9.6
IMPERATIVE + NEGOTIATION (PROMISES) 17 4.5
IMPERATIVE + REASON CLAUSE 7 1.9
IMPERATIVE + EXPRESSION OF MINIMISATION 5 1.3
OF COST
IMPERATIVE + A COMBINATION OF 2 OR MORE 166 44.3
OF THE REALISATION PROCEDURES ABOVE
Total 374 100
132 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
The speaker in example (4.89) also attempts to minimise the cost of the
required action (i.e. a little more time). Mitigation of cost was shown to
be a pervasive strategy in relation to requests. This realisation procedure is
also used in some instances of beggings in our corpus but to a lesser extent
(around 2 per cent). As explained in the know-what of beggings, since
the speaker has a strong desire that the action is carried out, it does not
make much sense to ask for less than what is actually wanted. The higher
degree of speaker’s will that characterises beggings, as compared to that of
requests, provides an explanation for the more limited use of this realisation
procedure. In begging, speakers seem to prefer other persuasive strategies
that do not imply minimising the desired objective. Thus, around 7 per cent
of the IMPERATIVE constructions in our data make use of negotiation or
reasoning strategies as a way to get the hearer to comply. Consider examples
(4.90) and (4.91), respectively:

(4.90) ‘Turn yourself in,’ Phil Vetrano begged his daughter’s killer two
weeks after her death. ‘I will make sure the reward money goes to
the person of your choice. Your sister, your brother, your mother.
It’s a life changer.’
(4.91) ‘Simon, put him down. You’ll hurt him!’ Sean begged

In example (4.90) the speaker attempts to persuade the hearer to comply

with his wish by promising to reward one of his relatives. The use of the
IMPERATIVE base construction followed or preceded by a promise that
benefits the hearer is a fairly frequent realisation procedure for begging. In
example (4.91), the speaker’s strategy of persuasion is based on the provision
of rational arguments for him to do as asked. Thus, the speaker points out
that someone is to be hurt if the hearer does not carry out the required
action. Appealing to the hearer’s rationality by means of a reason clause,
either before or after the IMPERATIVE base construction, is another
common mechanism for begging.
A second group of realisation procedures that combine with imperatives
to render a begging interpretation is grounded on the strong desire of the
speaker to achieve his goal, which is a central aspect of the meaning of
beggings. Examples (4.92)–(4.95) illustrate those realisation procedures that
enable its linguistic instantiation:

(4.92) ‘Oh God,’ the grave keeper begged, praying. ‘Save me.’
(4.93) ‘Don’t do that! Don’t do that! I’ll die.’ He begged hard, but no use
…
4.3 Beggings 133
(4.94) ‘NOOOOOOO!!!! PLEASE, Aaron, STO-HAHAHAHA-P!!!
Stop tickling me, please!’ Mike begged with tears starting to come
out of his eyes
(4.95) ‘Please, don’t murder me? Pretty-pretty-please?’ he begged
The above examples illustrate some recurrent linguistic resources that
accompany IMPERATIVE base constructions when used as beggings.
There are exclamations and interjections (e.g. Oh God, NOOOOO!!!), the
use of a particular type of intonation that may range from persuasive to
insistent (see example (4.95)), and above all the use of repetitions (examples
(4.93)–(4.95)). These realisation procedures allow the speaker to convey his
strong desire that the required action is carried out. In addition, as explained
in detail in Pérez-Hernández (2001: 224–226), linguistic strategies of this
kind exploit the Tact Maxim of the general Politeness Principle (Leech,
1983), according to which participants are expected to maximise benefit to
others. By stating his wishes clearly through an imperative sentence and
by communicating how strong those wishes are by means of exclamations,
interjections, repetitions, etc., the speaker is pragmatically constraining
the hearer’s freedom to opt out. In fact, a refusal to comply on the part
of the hearer would involve a breach of the Tact Maxim and would make
her lose face.
Some of the realisation procedures described above have already been
shown to co-occur with the IMPERATIVE base construction in the
expression of other directives. For example, making use of politeness (e.g.
please) or minimising the cost involved in the action (e.g. just, only) are
strategies that have previously been shown to direct hearers to a request
interpretation of the imperative (see Section 4.2.2). How can we help EFL
students to produce clear-cut instances of beggings that differ from those
of requests that use similar realisation procedures? As shown in Table 4.11,
over 44 per cent of the instances of begging in our sample make use of
a combination of an IMPERATIVE base construction and two or more
realisation procedures among those of the two main groups of resources
describe above. Native speakers favour this mechanism, which is only
natural given that the use of a combination of two or more realisation
procedures together with the IMPERATIVE base construction manages
to activate all the essential key attributes of the act of begging: the speaker’s
strong desire to achieve her goal and the acknowledgement of her inferiority
and lack of ability to impose her will on the hearer. Example (4.96)
illustrates a clear-cut instance of begging that makes use of a combination
134 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
of several linguistic resources to activate the meaning essentials of the
directive under consideration:
(4.96) ‘Oh, please don’t Aunt Lucy! I promise I won’t do it again. I’ll
give you everything I have on you. Just please don’t tell Mum’, he
begged
Thus, in example (4.96) the speaker’s high desire that the hearer
complies with his wishes is conveyed by means of interjections (i.e. Oh),
exclamations, and repetitions (i.e. please … please). In addition, example
(4.96) also exhibits attempts at persuading the hearer to do as told by means
of negotiation strategies (i.e. promises in return of his compliance) and of
the minimisation of the cost of the required action (i.e. just).
All in all, this combination of an IMPERATIVE base construction
plus several realisation procedures manages to activate a clear begging
interpretation and represents a good teaching target for EFL advanced
students.
The rest of the base constructions for begging that have been found in
the data under study display a lower frequency of occurrence. Advanced
students could also be taught that it is possible to beg by means of base
constructions that make use of explicit performatives (i.e. I BEG YOU TO
DO X) or that activate the ability variable (i.e. CAN / CAN’T / COULD
YOU DO X?), the speaker’s willingness (i.e. I / WE WANT YOU TO DO
X), the need for the action to be carried out (i.e. I / WE NEED YOU TO
DO X), or the hearer’s volition (i.e. YOU’LL DO X and WILL / WON’T
/ WOULD YOU DO X?). As can be observed in examples (4.97)–(4.99),
these base constructions also combine with the realisation procedures
described in relation to IMPERATIVE base constructions to secure a
clearer begging interpretation:
(4.97) CAN YOU DO X? base construction + expressions of politeness
(please), exclamations/intonation, negotiation (promise):‘Mom, can
you please stop buying store brand sausage? I will pay for Jimmy
Dean!’ she begged
(4.98) I/WE NEED X base construction + repetition, expression of
politeness (please):‘We need to go to the club now. Please. Please.
Right now,’ she begged and pleaded
(4.99) YOU’LL DO X base construction + repetition (tag question):‘You’ll
come out after supper, won’t you?’ he begged
Comparison with the constructions for beggings in the Spanish corpus
yields relevant information for EFL professionals. The first four base
constructions in Table 4.12 are used in both languages. The first two
Table 4.12 Comparison of base constructions for the act of begging in English and Spanish

Beggings base constructions (English) Number Percentage Number Percentage Beggings base constructions (Spanish)

YOU HAVE/MUST DO X 8 1.6 15 3 TIENES QUE HACER X

I WANT/NEED X 10 2 10 2 QUIERO QUE HAGAS X
I WANT/NEED YOU TO DO X
IMPERATIVE 374 74.8 275 55 IMPERATIVE
I BEG YOU TO DO X 46 9.2 135 27 TE/LE RUEGO QUE HAGAS X
CAN I/YOU/WE DO X? 28 5.6 0 Possible but not productive
CAN’T I/WE/YOU DO X? 16 3.2 0 Possible but not productive
COULD YOU DO X? 4 0.8 0 Possible but not productive
WON’T YOU DO X? 4 0.8 0 Possible but not productive
WILL YOU DO X? 2 0.4 0 Possible but not productive
WOULD YOU DO X ? 2 0.4 0 Possible but not productive
DO YOU THINK YOU COULD DO X? 2 0.4 0 Possible but not productive
YOU’LL DO X (WON’T YOU?) 2 0.4 0 Possible but not productive
YOU CAN DO X 2 0.4 0 Possible but not productive
Not possible 0 30 6 ¡QUÉ + PRESENT SUBJUNCTIVE (2ND
PERSON)!
Possible but not productive 0 20 4 SE RUEGA X/HACER X
Possible but not productive 0 9 1.8 TE/LE ROGARÍA QUE HICIERA(S) X
Not possible 0 5 1 OJALÁ + SUBJUCTIVE (2ND PERSON)
Possible but not productive 0 1 0.2 SI USTED PUDIERA HACER X
Total 500 100 500 100
136 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
(white rows) have a similarly low frequency of occurrence in English and
Spanish. The constructions in the light grey rows (i.e. the imperative and
the explicit performative verb beg) show different rates of occurrence in
the two languages, but they are the most productive base constructions
for EFL teaching purposes. Both languages display a more extensive use
of the imperative than of the performative, although in Spanish the use of
the performative almost triples that in English. The explicit performative is
a very direct, unambiguous way of performing a begging, and the Spanish
language has often been characterised as having a higher tendency to
directness than English.
The dark grey rows in Table 4.12 show those constructions for which our
corpora only yield occurrences for either English or Spanish. All the base
constructions in English are possible in Spanish although, under the light
of the data, they are not particularly productive in the latter language. In
addition, some of the Spanish base constructions not only do not yield
any occurrences in the English corpus, but they do not even have a direct
counterpart in English. This is the case with the ¡QUÉ + PRESENT
SUBJUNCTIVE (2ND PERSON)! base construction:
(4.100) ‘¡Qué no hable, por favor, qué no hable!’ rogué
‘That he PRESENT SUBJECTIVE NEGATIVE-speak, please,
that he PRESENT SUBJECTIVE NEGATIVE-speak!’ I begged
Constructions of this type should be red flagged in EFL textbooks to avoid
potential interferences with the students’ L1.

4.4 Suggestions
Searle (1979: 356) defined suggestions as ‘a weak attempt to get the hearer
to do something’ and included them in the category of directive speech
acts. Other authors have questioned the directive status of suggestions,
arguing that they simply intend to get the hearer to consider the potential
benefits of a particular course of action, rather than attempting to get her
to do the action (Fraser, 1974; Verschueren, 1985; Wierzbicka, 1987). Yet
others have regarded suggestions as components of a broader speech act
that involves the act of advising, using the terms suggesting and advising
almost interchangeably (Hinkel, 1997; Matsumura, 2001, 2003). In fact,
suggestions are often so similar to other directives that some authors have
posed the question of whether suggesting is a speech act category or simply
a mode of illocutionary performance (Pérez-Hernández, 2001: 236–237).
The data in our corpus reveals that the act of suggesting has enough
4.4 Suggestions 137
unique semantic characteristics to be considered a directive category
of its own that differs from those of ordering, requesting, begging, etc.
(see Section 4.4.1). These meaning traits also provide the motivation
for the specific formal features of the base constructions and linguistic
realisation procedures that the English language offers for the expression
of suggestions (Section 4.4.2).

4.4.1 The Know-What of Suggestions

The experiential grounding of the act of suggesting could be represented
by a force vector that works in two times. Initially, the force pushes the
rational hearer (i.e. HR) to consider the suggested action (see Figure 4.4).
This initial force (F), which needs to go through the filter of the hearer’s
rationality and consideration, is thus weakened, and it could even be
blocked by the hearer’s decision. If successful, however, it could turn the
hearer into an agent (i.e. H A) and move her into action.
The fact that the initial force is mediated by the hearer’s consideration
explains some of the semantic characteristics of suggestions as will be
explained below.

Who is to do the action expressed in the suggestion?

The agent of the suggested action can be either the hearer, or both the
speaker and the hearer, as illustrated by examples (4.101) and (4.102),
respectively:
(4.101) ‘If you want, you can skip school today and rest or maybe even
go somewhere fun,’ she suggested (iWeb)
(4.102) ‘Suppose we call the field mice,’ she suggested. ‘They could
probably tell us the way to the Emerald City.’ (iWeb)
As will be made apparent in Section 4.4.2, the identity of the agent has
direct consequences on the type of linguistic formulae used by native
speakers in the expression of this act, with a marked tendency towards the
use of comparatively more tentative constructions when the hearer is the
only agent of the suggested action.

Figure 4.4 Force schema underlying the conceptualisation of suggestions

138 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
Who will benefit from the action expressed in the suggestion?
Previous accounts (Haverkate, 1984; Martínez-Flor, 2005) describe
suggestions as non-impositive directive speech acts that are aimed
at benefitting the hearer. The data in our corpus, however, shows that
suggestions are very little constrained as regards the identity of the
beneficiary of the action. While it is true that a vast majority of the
suggestions in our data involve a benefit for the hearer or for both the hearer
and the speaker (see examples (4.101) and (4.102)), there are also instances
in which the speaker is the only beneficiary (example (4.103)) and others in
which the beneficiary is a third person (example (4.104)).

(4.103) ‘Pretend I am a visiting ambassador from Akram,’ Leo suggested.

‘Why do you get to be the visiting ambassador?’ (iWeb)
(4.104) ‘So, get him another,’ Niklas suggested. ‘He could make a few
credits up there.’ (iWeb)
As pointed out by Pérez-Hernández (2001: 242), this variability in the
identity of the beneficiary makes suggestions ‘a highly heterogenous group,
different instances of which may closely resemble other illocutionary types’.
Examples (4.103) and (4.104), by way of illustration, could be interpreted as
instances of requests. As shall be shown below, however, there are certain
semantic traits that set suggestions apart from other directives.

Can the hearer do the action expressed in the suggestion?

The speaker who suggests a future action works under the assumption
that the chosen agent(s) are capable of carrying it out. In this respect,
suggestions do not differ from other members of the category of directive
illocutions. The ability of the agents to carry out the action motivates some
of the base constructions for suggesting (e.g. YOU CAN DO X, as in
‘You can do something as simple as lighting a candle in their honour,’ Kessler
suggested; see Section 4.4.2).

Do speaker and hearer want the action to be carried out?

Whether the speaker and the hearer want the suggested action to be carried
out could be expected to depend mostly on whether the action results in
a benefit to them or not. In this regard, suggestions have been shown to
be a rather heterogeneous group that sometimes resembles requests (i.e. in
those cases in which the speaker benefits from the action) and sometimes
advising or offering (i.e. if the hearer is the main beneficiary).
4.4 Suggestions 139
However, the modus operandi of this semantic variable displays some
interesting traits. The data in our corpus reveals that, regardless of who
is to be the beneficiary of the action, the hearer’s willingness is generally
unknown and irrelevant to the speaker. In fact, there are no instances
in our corpus in which this meaning attribute is explicitly activated.
Constructions based on the hearer’s wanting to do the action, which are
common in the expression of requests and beggings (i.e. WILL YOU
DO X?, IF YOU WILL DO X, WOULD YOU MIND DOING X?) are
not used in suggesting.
The fact that the speaker uttering a suggestion is not concerned with the
hearer’s disposition to carrying out the action parallels his own indifference
regarding the realisation of the action. When the intended beneficiary is
the hearer or a third person, this could only be expected. However, the
ratings of the speaker’s willingness are kept low even in those situations
in which he is the only beneficiary or the joint beneficiary of the action.
This particularity, which has already been described in previous works
(Fraser, 1974; Verschueren, 1985; Pérez-Hernández, 2001), stands out as one
of the main distinguishing characteristics of the act of suggesting. Holmes
(1983) and Richards (1985) stated that the speaker’s low degree of wanting/
interest that the suggested action is performed explains the weaker force
of suggestions as compared to that of other directives (e.g. requests, orders,
threats, and beggings, among others). It also explains Wierzbicka’s (1987)
observation that suggestions do not require a reply, as opposed to similar
speech acts, like proposals, which do ask for a response in the form of
compliance or refusal.
As will be shown below, the low degree of speaker’s willingness also
explains the workings of other semantic attributes of suggestions, such
as their low minimisation of cost and their scarce use of politeness (see
Section 4.4.2). The latter are defining features of requests and beggings, in
relation to which they act as persuasive strategies that aid the speaker to
move the hearer into compliance. When suggesting, the speaker’s interest
in achieving compliance is lower, and hence his use of persuasive strategies
is also more limited.

Is the action expressed in the suggestion necessary?

In the context of suggestions, the speaker does not have an acute necessity
that the proposed action is carried out. As was the case with the speaker’s
low interest in the performance of the action, this variable triggers low
degrees of minimisation of cost and politeness.
140 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
How much freedom does a suggestion allow the hearer?
Suggestions are non-impositive speech acts. According to some authors,
such as Haverkate (1984), this is due to the fact that they generally involve a
benefit for the agent (i.e. hearer). However, as shown above, suggestions can
also have the speaker and a third person as beneficiaries. Regardless of who
is to obtain the benefits of the action, suggestions still fall within the group
of face-threatening speech acts (Brown & Levinson, 1987) since, by asking
the hearer to consider a future action for realisation, the speaker is somehow
intruding into the hearer’s world and trying to direct his future course of
action. This leads the speaker to attempt to soften his speech act through
enhancing the hearer’s optionality. Since his interest in the action being
carried out is also low, he does not feel the need to force the hearer into
compliance. Thus, the optionality of the hearer is not constrained neither
through persuasion (as in requests or beggings), nor through imposition (as
in orders). On the contrary, his freedom is enhanced through tentativeness
and indirection. Among directive speech acts, suggestions offer the highest
amount of optionality to the hearer. As shall be shown in more detail in
Section 4.4.2, this motivates an extensive use of modal verbs in the past
tense and/or interrogative formulae like the following:
(4.105) ‘Perhaps you could discuss the problem with your wife,’ Blalock
suggested (iWeb)
(4.106) ‘Well now, sweetie, how about this?’ Niecy suggested, ‘how about
we sell or give away all the stuff that Xander and the rest don’t
need, and we use the money to get them new stuff?’ (iWeb)
Even in those cases in which imperatives are used, the optionality of the
hearer is maximised through the limitation or altogether avoidance of
the use of persuasive or impositive realisation procedures. Thus, examples
(4.107) and (4.108) illustrate the lack of overt politeness (e.g. adverb please),
minimisation of cost (e.g. just, a little), and minimisation of optionality
(i.e. expressions of immediateness, forceful intonation) markers. In fact,
the lack of imposition of the imperative in example (4.108) is signalled by
the use of an interrogation mark.

(4.107) ‘Let’s head for the beach,’ Kukui suggested (iWeb)

(4.108) ‘Well, get up and go finish in the toilet?’ I suggested as I once
again closed my eyes (iWeb)
As shown in previous sections, this was not the case with orders, requests,
and beggings. The imperatives used for the expression of these directives
4.4 Suggestions 141
were characteristically accompanied by different types of realisation
procedures intended to coerce the hearer’s optionality through imposition,
persuasion, or insistence.

Does the speaker attempt to minimise the cost of the action?

The high degree of freedom and low degree of imposition that characterise
suggestions make the minimisation of cost largely unnecessary. In addition,
most instances of suggestions involve a benefit for the agent (i.e. hearer),
which makes it even less necessary to reduce the cost of the proposed
action. As will be shown in Section 4.2.2, suggestions display virtually
no overt minimisation of cost. There are, however, some factors that may
prompt the speaker to attempt to cut down the cost of his suggestion.
Among these, there are those cases in which the suggestion involves a clear
cost for the hearer, as in example (4.109) where the speaker attempts to
minimise it through the use of the expression a bit. Minimisation is also
activated when the social distance between the speakers is large (i.e. when
suggesting something to a stranger as in example (4.110)), when there is a
power asymmetry between the participants, or when the formality of the
situation increases.
(4.109) ‘We can go down that little draw and sift a bit,’ Ernie suggested.
‘If that quartz vein ever had anything in it, that’s where it’ll be.’
(iWeb)
(4.110) I turned and faced him [a stranger]. ‘Why don’t we talk a little,
then?’ I suggested. ‘You can tell me a bit about yourself and how
you manage to defeat formidable foes in gym battles.’ (iWeb)

Does the speaker attempt to be polite?

Suggestions are characterised by their lack of overt politeness. None of the
suggestions in our corpus displays the use of the adverb please or is realised
by means of formulaic expressions of politeness (e.g. WOULD YOU
MIND DOING X?). If at all, politeness is conveyed through indirection
(i.e. interrogative sentence types, use of modals in the past tense). These
resources are primarily aimed at increasing the optionality of the agent.
Only secondarily, by decreasing the imposition of the act, they increase
its politeness. The lack of deference is a feature of suggestions that has
been identified in different languages as noted in cross-cultural studies like
those of Rintell (1979), who observed that suggestions were less polite than
requests in both English and Spanish. Politeness is a persuasive strategy
aimed at gaining the hearer’s compliance. Since the speaker uttering a
142 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
suggestion is not as concerned or interested in obtaining such compliance
as is the case with requests or beggings, politeness is not felt as necessary.

Is social power relevant to the act of suggesting?

Suggestions can be performed regardless of the power relation that holds
between participants. Students should be aware, however, that if there is
an asymmetrical power relationship, the speaker may want to attempt to
minimise the cost and/or increase the tentativeness of the act. If the speaker
is more powerful than the hearer, this will help to avoid imposition and
to keep the optionality of the hearer within the limits expected in the act
of suggesting.
(4.111) ‘Why don’t you go ahead and take a little bit of a swim anyway?’
He suggested. ‘Maybe it’ll cool you off.’ (iWeb)
In example (4.111) a father avoids the imposition that may characterise a
paternal command by increasing the tentativeness (i.e. Why don’t you …?)
and by minimising the cost of the action he suggests to his son (i.e. a little
bit).
If the speaker is less powerful, the minimisation of cost and/or an increase
in tentativeness will help keep the imposition of the act low and avoid the
negative consequences of a face-threatening act (see House & Kasper (1981:
143) for similar conclusions). This is the case with example (4.112) in which
the hearer has a higher social status than the speaker. The latter’s suggestion
relies on tentativeness (i.e. Why don’t you …?) and minimisation of cost (i.e.
a bit) to avoid imposition.
(4.112) Somehow Amanda had a hard time thinking of this poor unhappy
girl as a recording star, even though she was clutching a guitar case
to her chest. ‘Why don’t you sit down and rest a bit,’ suggested
Amanda, adopting a solicitous attitude (iWeb)

Is the social distance between the speakers relevant to the act of suggesting?
Most suggestions in our corpus display participants who are socially close.
It is also possible to perform the act of suggesting when the social distance
between participants is large. Students should be reminded that these
situations require higher dose of tentativeness and of minimisation of cost
to avoid imposing on the hearer. See examples (4.110) and (4.112) above.
Is the formality of the context relevant to the act of suggesting?
Most suggestions in our corpus take place in informal contexts. Those
uttered in more formal settings have been found to display higher levels
of minimisation of cost and tentativeness; or alternatively to make use of
4.4 Suggestions 143
Table 4.13 The know-what of suggestions

Suggestions are weak directive speech acts by means of which a speaker asks the hearer(s)
to consider the merits or benefits of a potential course of action. When someone
suggests someone else to do something, he communicates the following:
‘I believe that a particular course of action may be positive for you, for both of us, or for
someone else. You could consider doing it. I have no particular interest in you carrying
out that action, neither do I have the social, institutional, or experiential power to
impose the action on you, but I share it with you for your consideration.’
What you need to bear in mind in order to perform a successful suggestion:
• The beneficiary of the action may be the speaker, the hearer, both of them, or a third
person.
• Regardless of who is to benefit from the action, the speaker shows no special desire or
interest in its materialisation. He merely presents it for the hearer’s consideration.
• Whether or not the hearer wants to do as told is unknown or irrelevant for the
speaker, who respects the hearer’s freedom to comply or refuse to do as suggested.
• In order to respect the optionality of the hearer, the speaker makes no overt attempt
to minimise the cost of the action or to persuade the hearer to comply through
insistence, imposition, or the use of politeness.
BE AWARE!!!
• You can make suggestions in all contexts, regardless of their formality and of the
power relationship or social distance that separates you from the hearer(s). However,
if there are power asymmetries between the speakers, if the social distance between
them is large, or if the context is formal, your suggestions will need to include
attempts to minimise their cost and/or exhibit a higher use of tentativeness.

unambiguous performative verbs that have lexicalised the non-impositive

nature of suggestions (i.e. I SUGGEST THAT YOU DO X). Formal
contexts, by default, tend to be politer. In this regard, suggestions do not
differ from other directives (see Table 4.13).

4.4.2 The Know-How of Suggestions

Research on the linguistic constructions available for the expression of
suggestions is scarce. One of the few existing taxonomies in English is based
exclusively on a compilation of those formulae found in theoretical works
(Martínez-Flor, 2005) and offers no information as to which constructions
are preferred by native speakers. Jiang’s (2006) more extensive corpus-
based classification of suggestions provides quantitative data about the
frequency of occurrence of each construction, as well as a comparison
between those found in real language and those that appear in EFL
textbooks. He concludes that there is a relevant gap between the way native
144 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
speakers perform this speech act, and the linguistic strategies included in
EFL teaching materials. Jiang’s (2006) taxonomy, however, is restricted to
suggestions produced in a very specific setting (i.e. student study groups
and student–teacher office hour interactions), in which speakers have a
fixed social and power status. In this particular setting, the LET’S DO X
construction and performative structures like I SUGGEST YOU DO X,
which do not appear in the textbooks under his analysis, are found to be
some of the most frequently used structures for suggestions. Jiang (2006)
also notices that all textbooks emphasise the use of the modal should
(YOU / WE SHOULD DO X), while his corpus shows that constructions
with have to and need to are used much more often in the registers under
examination. Finally, Jiang (2006) points out that the formulaic expressions
HOW ABOUT DOING X?, WHY DON’T YOU DO X?, etc., which
are ubiquitous in EFL textbooks, are not common at all as expressions
for suggestions in the academic settings under analysis. As Table 4.14
illustrates, the analysis of a larger and more varied corpus, which is not
limited to a single situational setting, yields somehow different results.

Table 4.14 Base constructions for the act of suggesting in English

Base constructions Occurrences Percentage

IMPERATIVE 88 17.6
LET’S DO X 78 15.6
WHY DON’T YOU/WE DO X? 70 14
YOU/WE SHOULD DO X 52 10.4
YOU/WE OUGHT TO DO X 10 2
YOU/WE CAN DO X 46 9.2
HOW ABOUT DOING X? 45 9
YOU/WE COULD DO X 34 6.8
WHY NOT JUST DO X? 15 3
YOU/WE NEED TO DO X 12 2.4
YOU MIGHT DO X
YOU MIGHT WANT TO DO X 10 2
YOU MIGHT WANT TO TRY TO DO X
I SUGGEST YOU/WE DO X 9 1.8
YOU/WE CAN/COULD ALWAYS DO X 7 1.4
YOU/WE’D BETTER DO X 7 1.4
WHAT IF YOU/WE DO X? 7 1.4
WHAT ABOUT DOING X? 5 1
BETTER DO X 4 0.8
WHAT DO YOU SAY TO DOING X? 1 0.2
Total 500 100
4.4 Suggestions 145
The IMPERATIVE and the LET’S DO X base constructions stand
out from the rest as regards their frequency of occurrence in our corpus.
This could be shocking under the traditional speech act theory view of
imperatives as impositive strategies. Following this line of reasoning, Koike
(1994), Hinkel (1997), and Martínez-Flor (2005), among others, state that
imperatives are regarded as the most direct and impolite forms of making a
suggestion. If IMPERATIVE base constructions were actually as impolite
as traditional pragmatists deem them to be, we may wonder why so many
native speakers chose this linguistic strategy for the performance of an
intrinsically non-impositive speech act like suggesting. As was explained in
detail in Chapter 2, however, it is possible to adopt a weaker version of the
literal force hypothesis, according to which imperative sentences are defined
simply as those which present the content of a proposition for realisation
(Risselada, 1993: 71). Under the light of a weaker literal force hypothesis,
imperatives are not impositive per se. In previous sections, it has also been
shown how the combined use of the IMPERATIVE base construction
with specific realisation procedures for the semantic variables of different
directive categories leads to a metonymic activation of specific speech acts.
IMPERATIVE base constructions are combined with impositive linguistic
strategies (e.g. expressions of immediateness, forceful intonation, etc.) to
activate orders; with strategies of mitigation and politeness (e.g. adverb
please, expressions of optionality, mitigation, and social closeness) to yield
requests; and with a combination of strategies of persuasion and insistence
(e.g. repetitions, adverb please, negotiation, and reasoning) to prompt a
begging interpretation. The use of the imperative for the expression of
suggestions also displays some peculiarities of its own as captured in
Table 4.15.
As the data in our corpus reveal, what characterises IMPERATIVE base
constructions in relation to the act of suggesting is their use in isolation. As
defined by Risselada (1993: 71) the imperative simply presents the content of

Table 4.15 Imperative base constructions + realisation procedures for suggestions

Imperative constructions for suggestions Occurrences Percentage

BARE IMPERATIVE 78 88.6

IMPERATIVE + REASON CLAUSE 6 6.8
IMPERATIVE + INTERROGATIVE INTONATION 2 2.3
IMPERATIVE + EXPRESSION OF PROBABILITY 2 2.3
Total 88 100
146 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
a proposition for realisation, and that is precisely the aim of a suggestion:
to present an action for the consideration of the hearer. Bare imperatives
used with a neutral, non-impositive intonation suit well the nature of
suggestions, and this is, in fact, the way in which native speakers use them.
In those rare occasions in which the IMPERATIVE base construction is
found in combination with other linguistic strategies, these are aimed at
increasing the tentativeness of the act (e.g. use of interrogative intonation
or adverbs of probability like maybe, perhaps, etc.). The six occurrences in
which the speaker provides the reasons that motivate him to ask the hearer
to perform the proposed action imply benefits either to a third person (as
in example (4.113)) or both to speaker and hearer (as in example (4.114)),
and they constitute peripheral instances of suggestions which could be also
interpreted as weak requests or pieces of advice, respectively:
(4.113) ‘So, get him another,’ Niklas suggested. ‘He could make a few
credits up there.’ (iWeb)
(4.114) ‘Then don’t bother,’ Ginger suggested. ‘Use the museum as an
excuse to raise the front gate price, to maybe five-fifty, or even
six bucks. A buck isn’t going to cut the traffic down much, especially
since you can advertise the museum as part of the gate price. That
would also help cover the cost of the back-pit improvements.’ (iWeb)
Declarative sentences with modal verbs of ability, necessity, probability,
and obligation are also extensively used as strategies for the expression of
suggestions. Altogether they amount to 32 per cent of the suggestions in
our corpus. Native speakers show a preference for constructions including
the modal verbs should (i.e. YOU / WE SHOULD DO X) and can (i.e.
YOU / WE CAN DO X), which amount to roughly 10 per cent each of
the total number of suggestions:
(4.115) ‘Perhaps you should go to the military museum and see it,’ I
suggested (iWeb)
(4.116) ‘You can tell us about the time you fell into Clearedge Lake,’ Pip
suggested (iWeb)
This contrasts with Jiang’s (2006) findings. According to this author,
declarative base constructions with the modals have to and need to
outnumber those with should. However, it should be taken into account
that his corpus included a limited set of situations (i.e. study groups and
student–teacher interactions). In addition, student–teacher interactions
involve an asymmetrical relationship in which the teacher has a higher
institutional and knowledge power. This could explain the higher frequency
4.4 Suggestions 147
of occurrence of more impositive modals, like have to, in this particular
setting. In our corpus, however, there are no instances of suggestions with
the modal verb have to, and those with need to are just a little over 2 per
cent of the total number of examples. These results, which are in line with
those of Edmondson & House (1981), Banerjee and Carrell (1988), Koike
(1994), Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford (1996), and Alcón and Safont (2001),
seem more compatible with the non-impositive nature of suggestions.
Ability modals and the tentative modal should respect the freedom of
the hearer to choose whether to do the action or not, which is a central
characteristic of suggestions. In this connection, it has been attested that
constructions for suggestions based on modal verbs tend to combine with
an additional linguistic strategy: the use of expressions of tentativeness and
probability. Thus, 62 out of the 171 constructions based on the use of modal
verbs include adverbs of probability like maybe or perhaps, expressions of
tentativeness (e.g. YOU MIGHT TRY AND DO X), or an interrogative
intonation. These linguistic strategies are used to further increase the
optionality granted to the hearer.
The third group of constructions for the expression of suggestions that
stands out in our data comprises a rich collection of interrogative-based
formulae like WHY DON’T YOU / WE DO X?, WHY NOT (JUST)
DO X?, HOW ABOUT DOING X?, WHAT ABOUT DOING X?,
WHAT IF YOU / WE DO X?, etc. Altogether they represent nearly
one-third of the examples in the corpus. Most authors agree that the
interrogative forms employed by using these formulae are typical of
suggestions (Wardhaugh, 1985; Wierzbicka, 1987; Koike, 1994). The vast
majority of them are highly tentative since they do not even make explicit
the identity of the agent of the suggested action (e.g. HOW ABOUT
DOING X?, WHAT ABOUT DOING X?, WHY NOT JUST DO
X?), which again suits well the fact that suggestions are characterised by
allowing high doses of optionality to the hearer. These constructions were
not common in Jiang’s (2006) corpus of teacher–student interactions. The
asymmetrical power relationship between the participants in Jiang’s corpus,
where teachers have knowledge authority over their students, explains that
their suggestions were on average less tentative and made a lesser use of
interrogative formulae like the ones under consideration. In situations in
which the speaker has a higher status than the hearer, the dividing line
between a suggestion and a piece of advice or an order becomes blurry.
The last set of strategies found in our corpus represents a heterogeneous
group that includes constructions based on the use of performative verbs
(e.g. I SUGGEST YOU DO X) and declarative sentences expressing the
148 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
benefits of a certain action (e.g. IT MIGHT BE WORTHWHILE TO
DO X, YOU’D BETTER DO X, BETTER DO X, etc.). None of these
constructions is very productive. Koike (1996) and Koester (2002) have
already argued that performatives are not widely used as suggestions, since
they are felt as too direct and impositive. Martínez-Flor (2005: 175) found
these formulae mainly in formal contexts.
Table 4.16 compares the constructions used in Spanish and English for
the expression of suggestions. The constructions in the white rows have a
similar number of occurrences in the corpora for both languages. As can
be observed, IMPERATIVE base constructions, including LET’S DO X
performatives, which in Spanish correspond to both the first-person plural of
the present subjunctive and the VAMOS A HACER X formula, take pride of
place in both languages with a similar number of tokens. The conventional
formulae for suggestions (i.e. WHY DON’T YOU / WE DO X?, WHAT
ABOUT DOING X?) also have counterparts in Spanish (i.e. ¿POR QUÉ
NO HACES / HACEMOS X?, ¿QUÉ TE PARECE HACER X?). These
constructions show a similar number of occurrences in both languages,
the first one being much more productive in both of them. Likewise, the
use of performative verbs for the expression of suggestions is possible in
both languages, displaying a similarly low degree of occurrence. Given their
existence and their similar degree of occurrence in both languages, these
constructions are expected to be easy for Spanish speakers to learn. This
should be taken into account by EFL teachers and professionals in order to
schedule the teaching of suggestion constructions throughout the different
levels of instruction. The easiest constructions could be programmed for
the initial levels. Those constructions that show differences between the
two languages (light grey and dark grey rows in Table 4.16; see explanation
below) should be dealt with in subsequent years and would most likely
require a larger amount of teaching time and resources.
Suggestion constructions based on the use of modal verbs (i.e. YOU
SHOULD DO X, YOU CAN / COULD DO X, YOU NEED TO DO)
are found in both languages. The English language shows a preference
for the use of modal verbs within declarative sentences, while Spanish
displays a more varied range of formulae based on the use of modal verbs,
including declarative, but also impersonal forms (i.e. LO QUE DEBERÍA
HACERSE ES X (WHAT SHOULD BE DONE IS X), LO QUE SE
DEBE HACER ES X (WHAT HAS TO BE DONE IS X), SE PUEDE /
PODRÍA HACER X (X CAN / COUND BE DONE), and interrogative-
based constructions (i.e. ¿NO PODEMOS HACER X?, ¿NO TENDRÍAS
QUE HACER X?)). The last two do not yield any occurrences in the English
Table 4.16 Comparison of base constructions for the act of suggesting in English and Spanish

Suggestions base constructions (English) Number Percentage Number Percentage Suggestions base constructions (Spanish)

IMPERATIVE 88 17.6 136 27.2 IMPERATIVE (2nd person)

LET’S DO X 78 15.6 41 8.2 VAMOS A HACER X
28 5.6 HAGAMOS X (1st person plural Present
Subjunctive)
WHY DON’T YOU/WE DO X? 70 14 50 10 ¿POR QUÉ NO HACES/HACEMOS X?
WHAT ABOUT DOING X? 5 1 4 0.8 ¿QUÉ TAL SI HACES/HACEMOS X?
I SUGGEST YOU/WE DO X 9 1.8 6 1.2 SUGIERO QUE HAGAS/HAGAMOS X
YOU/WE SHOULD DO X 52 10.4 34 6.8 (LO QUE) DEBERÍAS/DEBERÍAMOS
HACER ES X
YOU/WE OUGHT TO DO X 10 2
YOU/WE CAN DO X 46 9.2 26 5.2 PUEDES/PODEMOS HACER X
YOU/WE COULD DO X 34 6.8 20 4 PODRÍAS/PODRÍAMOS HACER X
WHY NOT JUST DO X? 15 3 8 1.6 ¿POR QUÉ NO HACER X?
YOU/WE NEED TO DO X 12 2.4 2 0.4 NECESITAS/NECESITAMOS HACER X
WHAT IF YOU/WE DO X? 7 1.4 20 4 ¿Y SI HACEMOS/HICIESEMOS X?
Verb in 1st person pl. Present Simple
Indicative or Past Simple Subjunctive
YOU/WE’D BETTER DO X 7 1.4 16 3.2 MEJOR HAZ/HAGAMOS X
LO MEJOR ES QUE HAGAS/HAGAMOS
X
BETTER DO X 4 0.8 10 2 LO MEJOR ES HACER X
ES MEJOR HACER X
QUIZÁS SEA MEJOR HACER X
Table 4.16 (Cont.)

Suggestions base constructions (English) Number Percentage Number Percentage Suggestions base constructions (Spanish)
WHAT DO YOU SAY TO DOING X? 1 0.2 0 Possible but not productive
HOW ABOUT DOING X? 45 9 0 Not possible
YOU/WE CAN/COULD ALWAYS 7 1.4 0 Not possible
DO X
YOU MIGHT DO X Possible but not productive
YOU MIGHT WANT TO DO X 10 2 0
YOU MIGHT WANT TO TRY TO
DO X
Not possible 0 29 5.8 HAY QUE HACER X
Possible but not productive 0 17 3.4 TIENES/TENEMOS QUE HACER X
Possible but not productive 0 12 2.4 (LO QUE) DEBES/DEBEMOS HACER
ES X
Possible but not productive 0 10 2 (LO QUE) DEBERÍA HACERSE ES X
Possible but not productive 0 10 2 (LO QUE) SE DEBE HACER ES X
Not possible 0 10 2 ¿HACEMOS X?
¿ [Present Indicative 1st person pl.] X?
Not possible 0 8 1.6 SE PUEDE/PODRÍA HACER X
Possible but not productive 0 2 0.4 ¿NO PODEMOS HACER X?
Possible but not productive 0 1 0.2 ¿NO TENDRÍAS QUE HACER X?
Total 500 100 500 100
4.4 Suggestions 151
corpus, thus suggesting a low productivity in this language. Spanish also
makes quite a significant use of the modal verb TENER QUE (HAVE TO)
in constructions like TIENES / TENEMOS QUE HACER X (YOU / WE
HAVE TO DO X). At first sight, it may strike as odd that this impositive
modal is used for suggesting. However, a closer look at the examples shows
that their impositive force is generally softened by means of a reason clause
justifying the command and/or pointing out the benefits that the hearer
may obtain if he decides to comply (e.g. ¡Está casi lloviendo! Tenemos que
llegar cuanto antes a un lugar habitable (It’s almost raining! We have to get
to a shelter as soon as possible!)).
Interrogative-based constructions that are possible in both languages
include WHY NOT DO X? and WHAT IF YOU / WE DO X? formulae,
both displaying slightly different amounts of productivity in each language.
Likewise, some declarative constructions based on the statement of what
is considered to be the best course of action according to the speaker (i.e.
YOU’D BETTER DO X, BETTER DO X) are found in both languages
with a slightly higher number of occurrences in the Spanish corpus.
Finally, there is a number of constructions that either are not possible
in one of the languages or are not productive in the corpora (dark grey
rows in Table 4.16). Among these, the HOW ABOUT DOING X?
construction stands out from the rest. This formula has a significant
presence in English (9 per cent of the suggestions in the corpus) but
shows no counterpart in Spanish. This is an English construction to
which EFL materials should, therefore, devote special consideration. EFL
textbooks should also make Spanish EFL students aware of the fact that
some constructions for suggesting that are common in their language (i.e.
HAY QUE HACER X, ¿HACEMOS X?) do not have a direct counterpart
in English. Thus, the impersonal HAY QUE HACER X construction
corresponds to personal constructions like YOU HAVE TO / MUST DO
X in English. The latter do not show productivity in the English corpus,
which is only to be expected since this type of personal constructions are
highly impositive. The impersonal formula in Spanish, on the contrary,
suits well the non-impositive nature of suggestions. Not making explicit
the identity of the agent increases the freedom of the hearer to choose
whether to comply with the suggestion or not. Posing a simple question in
the present indicative tense (i.e. ¿HACEMOS X?) also respects the hearer’s
optionality and, therefore, is useful in the expression of suggestions. These
constructions, however, are not possible in English (*Do we play cards after
dinner?). Spanish EFL students should be made aware of this to avoid
faulty realisations.
152 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
4.5 Advice Acts
Searle (1969) defined the speech act of advice as ‘a weak directive whose
illocutionary force is to suggest a future action to the hearer that the adviser
believes will benefit the former’. Searle used the speech act verb suggest in
the definition of advice acts. In fact, the defining line between these two
illocutionary acts is very thin, and some authors include both within the
group of advice acts (Wierzbicka, 1987: 181–190). Suggesting and advising
also share similar force dynamics. In both cases the speaker directs a force
towards the hearer with the aim of getting her to consider a beneficial future
course of action. If this force succeeds in persuading the hearer that the action
is in her benefit, then it can eventually move her into action. The initial force
(F), which needs to go through the filter of the hearer’s consideration and
rationality (i.e. HR), could be blocked by the latter if deemed unnecessary or
not beneficial (see Figure 4.5). In Section 4.4.1, it was argued that the speaker
uttering a suggestion does not make any overt attempt to persuade the hearer
about the benefits of the suggested action. As will be shown below, this is the
main difference with advice acts. When advising, the speaker does attempt
to persuade the hearer about the benefits of the action, and he does so by
appealing to his rationality (i.e. by presenting the reasons, advantages, and
benefits of the proposed action).4 As a result, the initial force of an advice
act is stronger than that of suggestions and more likely to achieve its goal of
turning the hearer into an agent that moves into action (i.e. H A). Since the
force still needs to go through the filter of the hearer’s consideration, however,
it is not felt as impositive as that of orders or threats.

4.5.1 The Know-What of Advice Acts

Advising is a complex illocutionary category which includes both those
pieces of advice which have been asked for (i.e. solicited advice) and those
which have been uttered spontaneously by the speaker (i.e. unsolicited

Figure 4.5 Force schema underlying the conceptualisation of advice acts

4 In this respect, advice acts differ from requests, which are aimed at the social dimension of the
hearer rather than to his rationality, thus exploiting well-established conventions of politeness and
correct social behaviour, as shown in Section 4.2.1.
4.5 Advice Acts 153
advice). As shall be explained below, it is important to bear this distinction
in mind, since it triggers some special functioning of several semantic
attributes of the act of advising.

Who is to do the action expressed in the advice act?

In accordance with previous accounts, the advice acts in our corpus
prototypically present the hearer as the agent of the proposed action:
(4.117) ‘Move fast and break things,’ as Mark Zuckerberg advised (iWeb)
However, there are also some instances of advice which put forward a joint
action by the speaker and the hearer (example (4.118)), or even an action
that should be carried out by a whole group of people different from them
(example (4.119)):
(4.118) ‘We must be model Christian leaders,’ he advised (iWeb)
(4.119) ‘Businesses have got to start planning for this,’ Kimball advised
(iWeb)
Reformulating Searle’s definition of advice acts under the light of the
corpus data, it can be concluded that advising involves an attempt to get
someone to consider the realisation of a future beneficial action, regardless
of whether the prospective agent of the advice act is exclusively the hearer,
both the speaker and the hearer, or a third person or group of people.

Who will benefit from the action expressed in the advice act?
According to most accounts of advising (Searle, 1969; Tsui, 1994; Trosborg,
1995; Mandala, 1999), this directive act implies a future course of action that
is in the sole interest of the hearer. As can be observed in examples (4.117)–
(4.119) the beneficiary of the action can be either the hearer, both the hearer
and the speaker, or a third party. What seems to define an advice act is that
agent and beneficiary are the same entity. Thus, in example (4.117), if the
beneficiary of the action were the speaker (or someone different from the
agent-hearer), then the speech act would lose its advising force and turn
into an order or request.

Can the chosen agent do the action expressed in the advice act?
According to the corpus data, speakers uttering a piece of advice work
under the assumption that the chosen agent is capable of carrying out the
proposed action. Advising someone to perform an action that he does not
have the ability to carry out would be nonsensical or even ironic in certain
contexts. Thus, the assumption that the agent is capable of carrying out the
154 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
action is sometimes found to be the underlying motivation of some advice
constructions (e.g. YOU CAN DO X, as in ‘You can offer free shipping or
discounts on their first order,’ Smale advised).

Do speaker and hearer want the action to be carried out?

The distinction between solicited and unsolicited advice acts becomes
relevant in relation to whether the speaker and/or hearer are willing to see
the advised action take place.
In the case of solicited advice acts, since it is the prospective agent himself
who asks for advice, her wanting to follow the proposed course of action
is expected to be high. The speaker is also expected to want the action to
be performed. If someone asks for advice and then does not follow it, the
advice giver is entitled to get offended. Compliance is the preferred turn
for solicited advice acts, as illustrated in example (4.120):
(4.120) ‘Do I have to go with them?’ she asked. ‘Yes, you must go,’ they
advised. ‘But Sulaiman will go with you.’ She stepped obediently
into the other boat (iWeb)
Unsolicited advice acts, on the contrary, have traditionally been considered
as non-wilful acts (Merin, 1991), that is to say, as directive acts concerned not
with the wishes of the speaker but with those of the hearer (or prospective
agent). In these cases, the speaker assumes that the hearer will be willing
to follow his advice, since it is in his benefit, but the actual degree of
willingness of the hearer is unknown. Additionally, since the advice has
not been asked for, non-compliance is not felt as impolite as was the case
with solicited advice acts.
(4.121) ‘You want to choose a standard size, such as 24 by 36, or 18 by 24,’
he advised. ‘That way your customers can purchase ready-made
frames for less money.’ (iWeb)
All other things being equal, our data also shows that the speaker’s wanting
the action to be carried out increases as social distance shortens. This is
probably due to the fact that the smaller the social distance between the
speakers, the greater their emotional attachment is. In turn, this explains
that the speaker has a higher desire for the hearer to comply with his piece
of advice. The speaker’s involvement motivates a higher use of politeness as
a means to get the hearer to obey. Example (4.122) illustrates an interaction
between two close friends, where one of them politely advises the other
to lie down after the latter had fainted. Since the speaker is emotionally
4.5 Advice Acts 155
involved with the hearer and wants him to be ok, he also indirectly benefits
from the hearer’s compliance.

(4.122) ‘Bloom, please you’d better lie down.’ Flora advised. ‘No, I’m
fine.’ (iWeb)

Is the action expressed in the advice act necessary?

The speaker uttering a piece of advice does so under the assumption that
the proposed action is somehow necessary for the hearer (or designated
agent). This assumption serves as metonymical motivation for some advice
constructions (see Section 4.5.2):

(4.123) ‘You need to test and learn and start small,’ advised Martin (iWeb)

How much freedom does an advice act allow the hearer?

Like suggestions, advice acts are regarded as non-impositive acts by
Haverkate (1984), because the speaker does not aim at imposing her will on
the hearer. Nevertheless, despite the fact that the speaker does not attempt
to constrain the hearer’s freedom of action, advice acts are still traditionally
regarded as face-threatening acts (Brown & Levinson, 1987). This is so
because they do intend to at least influence the hearer’s future behaviour
and, therefore, they can be perceived on occasions as somehow impositive.
According to our data, advice-givers attempt to guide the hearer’s future
course of action by appealing to his rationality and presenting her with
arguments that support the need/benefits of the proposed action. As will be
argued in Section 4.5.2, those linguistic constructions (e.g. IMPERATIVE
construction, constructions based on modal verbs like YOU MUST /
SHOULD DO X) used in advice acts are seldom found in isolation. They
are systematically accompanied, in the same or different conversational
turns, by clauses stating the purpose of the advice act (example (4.124)),
the reasons why it is beneficial (example (4.125)), and sometimes even by
promises about the positive outcome that will derive from following the
piece of advice (example (4.126)):
(4.124) ‘Make sure you add the .au,’ Joyce advised, ‘in order to avoid
a similarly addressed US website for a Missouri B’n’B offering
romantic …’ (iWeb)
(4.125) ‘My advice would be to really consider it before you friend anyone,’
she advised. ‘Because once you have, it’s a tough spot to get out
of. isn’t the best thing to do.’
156 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
(4.126) ‘Be professional, yet impersonal,’ he advised me, ‘and you’ll get
solid results.’ (iWeb)
This suprasentential characteristic of advice strategies sets them apart from
other impositive uses of the same constructions for the expression of orders
and commands, in which the speaker does not feel the need to provide
rational arguments justifying the proposed action. Thus, the optionality
of the hearer (agent) is generally high in the case of advice acts: if he is not
convinced by the rational arguments provided by the speaker, he does not
have the obligation to follow his advice. However, his freedom may decrease
in certain contexts, especially in those where the beneficiary of the piece of
advice is not only the hearer but also the speaker or a larger group of people:
(4.127) ‘We will need to be careful of our steps and of being seen,’ Trey
advised. ‘I will do all I can to help,’ Bliss said (iWeb)
In example (4.127) there are two beneficiaries (i.e. speaker and hearer). The
freedom of the hearer to opt out is now constrained by the conventions
of politeness at work in our society to the effect that not carrying out
an act that is also needed by the speaker would be considered socially
unacceptable. The preferred conversational turn in these cases, as illustrated
by example (4.127), is one of compliance (i.e. I will do all I can to help).

Does the speaker attempt to minimise the cost of the action?

Hinkel (1997: 5) points out that ‘all advice must be hedged and never given
explicitly to avoid offending the hearer’. As shown above, the potential
imposition involved is largely softened by the fact that the speaker explicitly
justifies his advice act providing rational arguments to highlight its benefits.
On the contrary, hedging based on the minimisation of the cost has not
been found in our corpus data. This is only to be expected since the action
proposed in the act of advising does not seek a cost but rather a benefit for
the agent.

Does the speaker attempt to be polite?

The advice acts in our corpus do not prototypically display overt politeness.
There are only a few examples in which politeness markers have been used
(i.e. adverb please). One of them corresponds to a piece of advice which
benefits other people apart from the prospective agent:
(4.128) ‘Please think back again about your decisions and what you are
doing in the next few years because this is not good for your
country,’ he advised (iWeb)
4.5 Advice Acts 157
Example (4.128) represents a peripheral instance of advising. In fact,
even though it has been categorised as an advice act by the narrator,
its categorisation as a request could also have been possible, since the
prospective agent does not exclusively coincide with the beneficiary of the
action, the latter including other people as well (i.e. the whole country).
Hence the possibility of a request interpretation and its compatibility with
the use of overt politeness.
Politeness has also been observed in examples like (4.122) above, which
is characterised by a small social distance between speaker and hearer. As
explained above in relation to this example, the social closeness between
the participants prompts the speaker to get emotionally involved and,
therefore, eager to get the hearer to comply and benefit from his advice.
In this specific sense, the speaker perceives himself as beneficiary from the
action (i.e. his goal is to achieve his friend’s welfare), which explains the
use of politeness to gain the hearer’s compliance.
As will be explained below in relation to the power variable, politeness
requirements also increase in contexts in which the speaker is less powerful
than the hearer.

Is social power relevant to the act of advising?

In his exhaustive study of advice acts, Hinkel (1997: 5) claims that the
speaker is presupposed to have the right or the authority to give advice.
Advice is normative in the sense that it always entails an evaluation of a
future behaviour or a future action as desirable, good, healthy, etc. The
one who advises ‘describes, recommends or otherwise forwards a preferred
course of future action’ (Heritage & Sefi, 1992). Therefore, advice giving
is prototypically performed in contexts in which participants display an
asymmetrical relationship. The advice giver is in the position to propose
a certain course of action, because he is more experienced, skilled, or
informed than the hearer (Hutchby, 1995; Butler et al., 2010).
The data in our corpus fully confirms previous claims on the existence
of a power asymmetry between those participants involved in an act
of advising. Nevertheless, the power involved in advising is of a special
type and different from the one that characterises speakers uttering more
impositive acts, like orders, commands, or threats. Verschueren (1985: 181)
refers to this power as knowledge power or authority, and different authors
have later on made use of diverse labels, such as rational power (Merin,
1991) or expert power (Spencer-Oatey, 1996), to name the same concept.
Knowledge power stems from an individual’s larger experience (e.g. the
knowledge accumulated by elderly people) or greater understanding of a
158 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
subject or situation (i.e. the one acquired through learning and/or training),
as illustrated by example (4.129) where a teacher advises his students:

(4.129) ‘Rather, focus on taking incremental steps that keep you learning
and growing. It is not only good for your career but also makes
life much more interesting,’ Cambray advised students (iWeb)
Knowledge authority is of a rather weak nature if compared, for example,
to the physical or institutionally-granted power of a speaker uttering a
threat or an order. As pointed out in Pérez-Hernández (2001: 154), this
type of knowledge authority ‘merely entitles the speaker to attempt to
influence the addressee’s future actions’. It is a type of power, therefore, that
does not restrict the hearer’s freedom of action. The distinction between
knowledge and institutional power is not inconsequential. The possession
of knowledge authority allows a speaker who is institutionally powerless
to advice someone who is his equal or who is higher up in the social or
institutional ladder. Our data suggests, however, that in those cases in
which the speaker has knowledge authority but no institutional power,
there is a higher need for politeness. This is the case with example (4.130)
in which a blogger advises other bloggers. He has the necessary expertise to
issue a piece of advice, but no institutional power to impose on the others,
who are his equals on the scale of social power. Consequently, the advice act
is expressed more politely and tentatively through the use of a past modal.

(4.130) ‘I would strongly recommend any bloggers using Google’s Blogger

platform to host their work should start looking elsewhere before
the rug is pulled from under them,’ he advised any other bloggers
out there (iWeb)

Is the social distance between the speakers relevant to the act of advising?
Advice acts can be performed regardless of the degree of intimacy that
exists between participants in a conversation. However, the values taken
up by the variable of social distance may influence the workings of other
attributes of the act of advising. In this respect, it is important to bear in
mind, as explained above, that social distance interacts with the speaker’s
desire that the proposed action is complied with, as well as with politeness
(see discussion on example (4.122)). Curiously enough, our corpus also
shows that, in the case of unsolicited advice, very large social distances
also require higher amounts of indirectness and politeness. Thus, in
example (4.131), a conference speaker addresses an unknown audience
4.5 Advice Acts 159
(i.e. large social distance). Instead of expressing his advice as an action to
be performed by the members of the audience, he simply states it in the
form of a non-compelling declarative sentence without an explicit agent.
(4.131) In his talk he implored wide-eyed hopefuls of any ‘renaissance’
to patiently beware the pitfalls of an overly commercialised path
to normalisation. ‘Better to value self-attraction over promotion,’
he advised (iWeb)

Is the formality of the context relevant to the act of advising?

Advising can be performed in all contexts regardless of their formality.
EFL students, however, should be aware of the fact that formal contexts
ask for more tentative and indirect pieces of advice. See examples (4.132)
and (4.133) by means of illustration:

(4.132) ‘Employers are encouraged to work with their safety and health
committees, worker representatives of workers to prepare a hot
weather plan,’ the board has advised (iWeb)
(4.133) ‘I think the key is providing enterprise alternatives that fulfil
people’s needs,’ Lavenda advised (iWeb)
In example (4.132), set in the highly formal context of a professional
meeting, the board issues its advice for employers by means of a passive
sentence, which increases the indirectness of the act (cf. Work with safety
and health committees, You are encouraged to work with safety and health
committees). In example (4.133), again in a professional formal context, the
piece of advice is formulated indirectly by means of a declarative sentence
which does not make explicit the prospective agent, thus increasing the
politeness of the act (see Table 4.17).

4.5.2 The Know-How of Advice Acts

The textbooks analysed in Chapter 3 were shown to include a rather
modest inventory of linguistic strategies for the expression of advice acts.
Most of them emphasised the use of modal verbs for this task (e.g. YOU
SHOULD / OUGHT TO / MUST DO X), and only a couple of textbooks
offered alternative constructions such as evaluative declarative sentences
(IT’S GOOD TO DO X, DOING X MIGHT BE A GOOD IDEA) or
conventional formulae such as IF I WERE YOU, I’D DO X, or YOU’D
BETTER DO X. As can be observed in Table 4.18, the data in our corpus
160 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
Table 4.17 The know-what of advice acts

Advice acts are weak directive speech acts in which a speaker attempts to benefit
someone by getting him to perform a certain action. When someone advises someone
else to do something, they communicate the following:
‘I have the necessary knowledge authority to present you with a course of action that is
beneficial to you. I ask you to do it because I know it is beneficial to you. I have no
institutional, physical, or social power to impose the action on you, but I expect you
to take advantage of my expertise and to follow my advice.’
What you need to bear in mind in order to perform a successful piece of advice:
• The person who is to carry out the action proposed in your piece of advice can be the
hearer, the speaker and the hearer, or a third person/group of people. What is
important is that the agent of the action is also the one who benefits from it.
• As speaker, you know that your knowledge authority is not enough to impose your
will on the hearer and that you should respect his freedom to decide whether or not
to carry out the proposed action.
• As speaker, when you give a piece of advice you want the hearer to comply with it,
especially when the advice has been solicited by the hearer, or when you are
emotionally involved with the agent’s well-being.
• Advice acts seek the benefit of the prospective agent; therefore, you do not need to
minimise the cost of the action, which is by default beneficial to him.
• Since you need to respect the freedom of the prospective agent, but you also want him
to comply because you know that the action will be beneficial to him, you attempt to
persuade him into action by presenting him with rational arguments that justify the
need to carry out the proposed action.
• When advising, politeness is not necessary by default. It will only be necessary in
some cases (see below).
• You can perform advice acts in all contexts regardless of their formality and regardless
of the social distance or power that separates you from the person to whom you
address your advice, but you need to be aware of some interactions between these
social variables and other attributes of the act of advising. See below.
BE AWARE!!
• If the piece of advice benefits not only the hearer but also you and/or a third party,
you do not need to respect the freedom of the hearer so much, and it is acceptable to
make your advice a bit more compelling through the use of politeness markers that
make the hearer aware of the fact that his compliance is socially expected.
• If you are less powerful than the hearer (social/institutional power), you are expected
to soften your advice by increasing its indirectness and, ultimately, the politeness of
your act.
• If you are socially close to the hearer, you are likely to be more emotionally involved,
you will want him to follow your advice, and you will need to make use of politeness
to achieve his compliance.
• If you find yourself in a formal context, you are expected to decrease the impositive
force of your advice act, preferably by means of indirectness, tentativeness, and
impersonal sentences.
4.5 Advice Acts 161
Table 4.18 Base constructions for the act of advising in English

Base constructions Occurrences Percentage

IMPERATIVE 298 59.6

CONDITIONALS 58 11.6
IF I WERE YOU, I WOULD DO X
DECLARATIVE (EVALUATIVE) SENTENCE 31 6.2
E.G. DOING X IS/CAN BE GOOD, IT WOULD BE
GOOD/USEFUL TO DO X, YOU WOULD DO
WELL TO DO X, I THINK IT IS IMPORTANT TO
DO X
YOU NEED TO DO X 27 5.4
DECLARATIVE SENTENCE (REASON) + 23 4.6
CO-ORDINATING CONJUNCTION (SO)
E.G. SO YOU SHOULD DO X, SO DOING X IS
IMPORTANT, SO IT’S BEST TO DO X
YOU/WE SHOULD DO X 17 3.4
PERFORMATIVE VERBS
E.G. YOU ARE ADVISED TO DO X, I RECOMMEND 14 2.8
THAT YOU DO X, I ENCOURAGE/URGE YOU TO
DO X
YOU HAVE TO DO X 8 1.6
I WANT YOU TO DO X 8 1.6
YOU’D BETTER DO X 6 1.2
YOU/WE MUST DO X 4 0.8
YOU CAN DO X 4 0.8
WHY DON’T YOU DO X? 2 0.4
Total 500 100

shows a much richer taxonomy of base constructions at use by native

speakers (including IMPERATIVE base constructions, DECLARATIVE
constructions based on evaluative sentences or used in conjunction with
co-ordinated clauses expressing reasons/causes, etc.). In addition, according
to our data, those constructions including modal verbs and conventional
formulae that are currently being taught to EFL students are not those
that are preferred by English speakers. Modal verb constructions yield
a low number of occurrences (less than 5 per cent of the total each), and
overused conventional formulae like IF I WERE YOU, I’D DO X roughly
amount to 11 per cent of the cases. By contrast, native speakers exhibit a
marked preference for the use of the IMPERATIVE base construction
for communicating their pieces of advice. This construction is largely
absent from the textbooks under scrutiny, which again makes it manifest
162 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
Table 4.19 Realisation procedures for the act of advising

Realisation procedures for advising Occurrences Percentage

DECLARATIVE SENTENCE (REASON/CAUSE) 276 55.2

SUBORDINATE CLAUSE (REASON/CAUSE) 40 8
E.G. BECAUSE …, SINCE …, GIVEN THAT…
CO-ORDINATE CLAUSE (REASON/CAUSE) 38 7.6
E.G. SO …, FOR …
SUBORDINATE CLAUSE (PURPOSE) 34 6.8
E.G. TO, IN ORDER TO, SO THAT …
OTHERS (PROMISE, POLITENESS MARKERS, ETC.) 20 4
NO ADDITIONAL REALISATION PROCEDURE 92 18.4
Total 500 100

that there exists a significant gap between the real use of English and the
linguistic strategies presently being taught to EFL students.
Wunderlich (1980) states that some speech acts can only be singled
out pragmatically and that advising is one of them, since it cannot be
distinguished from other directives in terms of grammatical or formal
traits. In fact, most of the strategies used in advice giving (e.g. conditionals
(If I were you …), modals indicating probability (It might be better for
you to …), specific formulae (why don’t you …?), imperatives, declarative
sentences with modal verbs of obligation (should, ought to), performatives,
etc.) are also found at work in the expression of other directives. Are
there any formal characteristics that may help to distinguish advice acts
from other directives? If the scope of the study is limited to the sentence
level and the discourse and conversational dimensions are not observed
(as has been reported to be the case in most textbooks, see Alcón &
Safont, 2001 and Martínez-Flor, 2003), it is hard to find distinctive
features in the linguistic strategies used for advising. However, zooming
out on a larger context and considering suprasentential units, it is
certainly possible to observe some distinguishing formal traits of advice
acts. Table 4.19 captures the realisation procedures that accompany
the base constructions used in advising. A significant number of base
constructions are combined (either in the same, the previous, or the
following conversational turn) with a declarative sentence (55.2 per cent)
or clause (subordinate clause: 8 per cent; co-ordinate clause: 7.6 per
cent) stating the cause or reason that justifies the proposed action, as
illustrated in the following examples:
4.5 Advice Acts 163
IF I WERE YOU, I’D DO X Base Construction +
DECLARATIVE (Reason)
(4.134) ‘They’ ll stall,’ Jace advised him. ‘I’d give them a deadline if I were
you.’ (iWeb)
IMPERATIVE Base Construction +
CO-ORDINATE CLAUSE (Reason)
(4.135) ‘Spare your ships,’ Artemisia advised, ‘and do not risk a battle; for
these people are as much superior to your people in seamanship,
as men to women.’ (iWeb)
YOU HAVE TO DO X Base Construction +
SUBORDINATE CLAUSE (Reason)
(4.136) ‘… you’ve got to do what you have to do to make a better life for
yourself and certainly if there are children involved because the
pattern repeats itself,’ she advised (iWeb)
About 10 per cent of the remaining base constructions highlight their
advising nature by combining with subordinate clauses indicating the purpose
of the action or promising a benefit for the hearer in case of compliance with it:
EVALUATIVE SENTENCE Base Construction +
SUBORDINATE CLAUSE (PURPOSE)
(4.137) As a consequence, Johnson advised, ‘The best thing marketers
can do is to broaden their tactics so that they win back consumer
trust and allow influencers to provide authentic buying
recommendations to the consumers looking for a trusted opinion
on what to buy.’ (iWeb)

IMPERATIVE + PROMISE
(4.138) ‘Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything
better,’ advised legendary physicist Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
(iWeb)
Roughly 18 per cent of the total number of base constructions in our corpus do
not combine with any of the realisation procedures described above. It could be
argued that these are cases of advising whose interpretation is purely pragmatic
and that no formal strategy guides the participants in their interpretation as
such. Nevertheless, if the whole conversation is analysed, it becomes obvious
164 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
that this is not the case. All but twelve of the base constructions that do
not combine with further realisation procedures correspond to instances of
solicited advice. The hearer has explicitly asked for the speaker’s advice, and this
somehow frees the latter from adding further justifications. Thus, when the
advice has been solicited, a bare imperative, for example, is straightforwardly
interpreted as a piece of advice and not as an order or a command.
The statement of the reasons why the speaker points the hearer towards
a specific course of action is one of the characteristic semantic attributes of
advising (see Section 4.5.1). The specific power held by the speaker (knowledge
authority versus institutional/physical power) prevents her from imposing
her will on the hearer. This leads her to make use of rational arguments
to achieve the latter’s compliance and to move him into performing an
action that she expects to be beneficial for him. The linguistic strategies
described above (i.e. base constructions + reason/purpose clauses/sentences)
are, therefore, fully motivated by the semantics of the speech act.
Before ending this description of linguistic strategies for advising, a brief
note on the use of the imperative in relation to this directive act is in
order, since this is the base construction that displays a higher number
of occurrences in the corpus. Tables 4.20 and 4.21 illustrate the use of
the imperative in connection with advice acts. As can be observed, nearly
80 per cent of the instances of IMPERATIVE base constructions are used
in combination with other realisation strategies (i.e. declarative sentences,
subordinate or co-ordinate clauses stating reasons or justifications for the

Table 4.20 Imperative base construction + realisation procedures

for the act of advising

Imperative constructions for advising Occurrences Percentage

BARE IMPERATIVE 68 23.1

IMPERATIVE + DECLARATIVE SENTENCE 188 63
(REASON)
IMPERATIVE + SUBORDINATED SENTENCE 12 4
(REASON)
IMPERATIVE + SUBORDINATED SENTENCE 11 3.7
(PURPOSE)
IMPERATIVE + CONDITIONAL (IF YOU WANT/ 7 2.3
NEED)
IMPERATIVE + CO-ORDINATED SENTENCE 5 1.6
(REASON)
IMPERATIVE + PROMISE 4 1.3
IMPERATIVE + PLEASE 3 1
Total 298 100
4.5 Advice Acts 165
Table 4.21 Solicited and unsolicited bare imperative advice acts

Bare imperatives Occurrences Percentage

UNSOLICITED 12 17.6
SOLICITED 56 82.4
Total 68 100

action, etc.). In this respect, IMPERATIVE base constructions function

in a similar way to the rest of the base constructions listed in Table 4.18.
Likewise, as expected, Table 4.21 shows that most instances of bare
IMPERATIVE base constructions are cases of solicited advice. The
formal structure of the conversation, in which the hearer explicitly asks
for advice, guides the interpretation of the imperative as a piece of advice
rather than as a more impositive act (i.e. order, threat, command). By way
of illustration, in example (4.139) the second conversational turn contains
the explicit request for advice (i.e. How do I defend myself?). Since the person
uttering this question is openly asking for directions on how to proceed,
the imperative in the next conversational turn cannot be interpreted as
anything other than a solicited piece of advice.
(4.139) T1. ‘The adult stage of the tick can theoretically cause Lyme
disease, but it’s big, and people usually find it and remove it before
they get sick,’ Fish said. ‘But if you don’t find it, you cannot
remove it.’
T2. ‘How do I defend myself?’
T3. ‘Use tick repellents,’ Sood advised (iWeb)
Let us now compare the advising linguistic strategies in English with those
used by native speakers of Spanish in order to uncover any significant
differences or mismatches worth noting for EFL students. Cross-cultural
studies on advising are scarce. Among them Hinkel’s (1997) study of advice
acts performed with native speakers of Chinese and American English hints
to some cultural differences in the production of advice acts: Chinese subjects
made a wider use of direct advice acts, which suits well the fact that in
Chinese, advice acts are considered acts of solidarity. Table 4.22 captures the
similarities and differences between the base constructions used in Spanish
and in English for the expression of advice acts: those in the white rows are
possible in both languages and display a similar frequency of occurrence in
our corpora; those in the light grey rows are possible in both languages but
more frequent in one of them; and those in the dark grey rows are either not
possible or unproductive in one of the two languages under scrutiny.
Table 4.22 Comparison of base constructions for the act of advising in English and Spanish

Advising base constructions (English) Number Percentage Number Percentage Advising base constructions (Spanish)

IMPERATIVE 298 59.6 242 48.4 IMPERATIVE (2nd person)

Declarative (EVALUATIVE) sentences 31 6.2 52 10.4 Declarative (EVALUATIVE) sentences
E.g. DOING X IS/CAN BE GOOD; IT E.g. LO MEJOR/ /RECOMENDABLE/
WOULD BE GOOD/USEFUL TO IMPORTANTE ES HACER X; ES
DO X; YOU WOULD DO WELL MEJOR/ESENCIAL/IMPORTANTE/
TO DO X; I THINK IT IS INDISPENSABLE HACER X; HACER
IMPORTANT TO DO X X ES BUENO/BUENA IDEA; NO TE
VENDRÍA MAL HACER X
YOU/WE SHOULD DO X 17 3.4 12 2.4 (LO QUE) DEBERÍAS/DEBERÍAMOS
HACER ES X
YOU HAVE TO DO X 8 1.6 12 2.4 TIENES/TENEMOS QUE HACER X
YOU CAN DO X 4 0.8 4 0.8 PUEDES/PODEMOS HACER X
WHY DON’T YOU DO X? 2 0.4 4 0.8 ¿POR QUÉ NO HACES X?
Performative verbs 14 2.8 136 27.2 Performative verbs
E.g. YOU ARE ADVISED TO DO X, I E.g. TE/OS ACONSEJO QUE HAGAS/
RECOMMEND THAT YOU DO X, HAGÁIS X
I ENCOURAGE/URGE YOU TO
DO X
TE RECOMIENDO QUE HAGAS X
IF I WERE YOU, I WOULD DO X 58 11.6 10 2 YO EN TÚ/SU LUGAR, HARÍA X
YO QUE TÚ/USTED, HARÍA X
YOU NEED TO DO X 27 5.4 2 0.4 NECESITAS HACER X
YOU/WE MUST DO X 4 0.8 12 2.4 DEBES/DEBEMOS HACER X
DECLARATIVE SENTENCE 23 4.6 0 Possible but not productive
(REASON) + CO-ORDINATING
CONJUNCTION (SO)
E.g. SO YOU SHOULD DO X, SO
DOING X IS IMPORTANT, SO
IT’S BEST TO DO X
I WANT YOU TO DO X 8 1.6 0 Possible but not productive
YOU’D BETTER DO X 6 1.2 0 Possible but not productive
Possible but not productive 0 5 1 NO TE VENDRÍA MAL HACER X
Not possible 0 9 1.8 HAY QUE HACER X
Total 500 100 500 100
168 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
Although both English and Spanish make a similar use of the imperative
for the expression of advice acts, EFL students should be made aware of
some significant differences between the two languages in relation to the
illocutionary act of advising. The most striking one is the fact that advice
acts based on performative constructions are markedly more frequent in
Spanish than in English, amounting to nearly 30 per cent of the occurrences
in our corpus of Spanish advice acts. While performative-based advising
in English is largely found in formal contexts, in Spanish this type of
explicit advice is acceptable in all contexts. As explained by Hernández-
Flores (1999), this is only to be expected in a culture in which the act
of giving advice is a symbol of high confianza or closeness among the
interlocutors. By contrast, in English this type of explicit advice is generally
felt as a face-threatening act (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Harrison & Barlow,
2009), because it does not allow the interlocutor independence to decide for
herself. In fact, according to Locher (2006), direct advice in English can
only be tolerated if there are indirect acts of advice that support it. This has
been largely confirmed by our constructional analysis of advising which
shows that base constructions for advising rarely occur on their own: over
80 per cent of them co-occur with other realisation procedures that justify
the act of advising by providing rational arguments about the benefits of
the proposed action.
These cultural differences in the conceptualisation of the act of advising
also explain that some tentative base constructions used in English (e.g.
IF I WERE YOU, I’D DO X, DECLARATIVE (EVALUATIVE)
SENTENCE + CO-ORDINATE SENTENCE (SO …), etc.) are not as
productive in Spanish, a language that favours a more explicit and direct
rendering of advice acts. In contrast to these facts, EFL textbooks give pride
of place to conventional formulae like IF I WERE YOU, I’D DO X, and
YOU’D BETTER DO X, and to even less frequent constructions based
on the use of modal verbs (i.e. YOU SHOULD DO X, YOU HAVE
TO DO X) for the teaching of the act of advising to advanced Spanish
students of English. Although the imperative is taught as a strategy for
advice giving, no mention has been found in the textbooks analysed
in Chapter 3 to the realisation procedures that prototypically combine
with IMPERATIVE base constructions for the expression of advice acts
(see Table 4.20). Additionally, little effort is invested in making Spanish
students aware of the fact that advice acts that make use of performative
verbs are not as widespread in English as they are in their native language.
Under the light of these findings, there is ample room for improvement in
the representation of advice acts in present-day EFL textbooks.
4.6 Warnings 169
4.6 Warnings
Warnings are crucial speech acts in human communication, since they
often play a significant role in helping others to avoid costly or negative
scenarios (e.g. injuries, fatalities, loses, etc.). Example (4.140) displays a
prototypical instance of warning:
(4.140) ‘Watch out! Quicksand!’ […] Pickett was in the lead walking
along the sandy bank of a small stream when suddenly his feet
disappeared into the sand. ‘It’s soft here! Stay back!’ he warned
his friend (iWeb)
As example (4.140) illustrates, in their most explicit form, warnings
are complex speech acts that involve a set of at least three illocutionary
acts (Carstens, 2002: 192): an alert (e.g. Beware!, Careful!, Watch out!),
an informative act (i.e. a statement of the hazard and/or consequences of
failure to comply: Quicksand! … It’s soft here!), and an instruction about
what to do or not to do to avoid the hazard (i.e. Stay back!).
The force dynamics of warning combine the insistence of beggings and
the appeal to rationality of advising. Figure 4.6 illustrates the force image
schema underlying example (4.140). An initial force (F1) alerts the hearer,
a second force (F2) makes him aware of the specific hazard he is facing
(Watch out! Quicksand! It’s soft here!), and a third one (F3) attempts to push
the rational hearer into action in a such a way that he can avoid the danger.
By combining declarative and directive forces (i.e. Watch out! It’s soft here!
Stay back!) the speaker attempts to prompt a physical action by the hearer.
In contrast to orders and threats, this action is not imposed but reasoned.
Figure 4.6 illustrates a prototypical instance of warning where the
different components of the aforementioned scenario can be clearly
observed. As shall be further argued in Section 4.6.2, in most instances
of warning, F1 and F2 fuse into one single force, where the alert element
of the scenario is often realised by means of suprasegmental features (e.g.
intonation).
The rich conceptual structure of warnings led some authors (Searle,
1969, 1976; Leech, 1983) to reflect on their hybrid nature. In informing
about the hazard, they come close to representative acts. However, in

Figure 4.6 Force schema underlying the conceptualisation of warnings

170 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
instructing the hearer to follow a particular course of action to avoid a
harm, they also display a directive flavour. It is therefore possible to find
instances of warning that combine both illocutionary forces within a highly
conventionalised formula (e.g. Watch out (directive), because there is a bull
in the field! (representative); Hengeveld, 2017: 23). However, as pointed out
by Leech (1983: 208) there are also instances of warning that are exclusively
representative (e.g. I warn you that the food is expensive) or fully directive
(e.g. I warn you to take enough money). Since the focus of this study is on
directive speech acts and their related constructions, the data collected in
our corpus has been selected to include instances of warnings that display
an overt directive meaning, either in isolation or in combination with a
representative act. Wholly representative warnings can also be interpreted
as directives through inferential means, but the account of these processes
exceeds the constructional scope of this work. In addition, in Section 4.6.2,
it will be argued that the representative element present in some warnings
functions as a type of linguistic strategy that helps to activate key semantic
variables of the warning illocutionary ICM and to distinguish this speech
act from other directives. In fact, warnings are complex speech acts that
combine directive and representative forces, where the latter are subservient
to the former. As has been shown to be the case with the act of advising
in the previous section, a suprasentential and conversational approach to
their study is, therefore, essential in order to capture their formal and
constructional nature.
Within the category of directive illocutions, warnings are also easily
confused with other speech acts. In their study on Iraqi EFL students’
recognition of warnings, Abbas and Saad (2018: 22ff.) found out that over
23 per cent of the students overlapped the speech act of warning with those
of threatening and advising, and around 5 per cent of them did so with
requests and commands. A fine-grained description of the semantics of
warnings is, therefore, essential to guide EFL students.

4.6.1 The Know-What of Warnings

Who is to do the action expressed in a warning?
Warnings prototypically display the hearer as the agent of the proposed
action (example (4.141)), but the speaker can also be included as co-agent,
as in example (4.142).
(4.141) ‘Don’t pout, Peabody,’ Eve warned as they climbed back into the
car. ‘It’s not attractive.’ (iWeb)
4.6 Warnings 171
(4.142) ‘I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government
tries to impact the integrity of our elections … we need to take
action,’ Obama warned. ’And we will at a time and place of our
own choosing.’ (iWeb)
The fact that the speaker is included in the action that is recommended
to avoid a potential negative/harmful scenario has an influence on other
aspects of the act of warning. Since the speaker is also to benefit from
the action, his willingness that the action is carried out increases. The
resulting warning, which aims to guarantee compliance by the hearer, tends
to be more direct and impositive, cutting down on the hearers’ freedom
to opt out (e.g. we need to take action and we will …). Notice that in the
case of advising, when the speaker and a third party were included as
beneficiaries of the action, compliance was sought by means of politeness.
Since warnings are aimed at avoiding a cost/harm, which is more essential
to a person’s well-being than achieving a benefit, politeness is not felt as an
effective enough strategy of persuasion, and it is, therefore, substituted by
more impositive tactics (see below).

Who will benefit from the action expressed in a warning?

Warnings are mostly aimed at helping the hearer to avoid a potentially
negative or harmful situation. However, in some cases, the speaker and/or
a third party may also benefit from the action. Examples (4.141) and (4.142)
illustrate instances of warnings in which the hearer or the hearer and the
speaker together, respectively, benefit from the action. In example (4.143)
a third party appears as the only beneficiary of the warning. Thus, if the
hearer complies with the speaker’s instructions (i.e. by not going outside a
specific number), he will prevent some others from an undesirable negative
situation:
(4.143) ‘If you go outside that number,’ he warned, ‘you strike people who
are either not at ease in a ballroom or else make other people not
at ease.’ (iWeb)

Can the hearer do the action expressed in the warning?

The hearer is expected to be able to carry out the action expressed in the
warning. This motivates some warning constructions, such as the YOU
CAN (ONLY) DO X construction (e.g. ‘You can only push this balloon so
far,’ Allbaugh warned the panel during the presentation. ‘Something is going
to pop.’ (see Section 4.6.2)).
172 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
Do speaker and hearer want the action to be carried out?
Since the action is in his benefit, the hearer is usually willing to take
the warning into consideration and to do as told. Agreement is the usual
conversational turn following a warning and compliance the expected move
by the hearer. The fact that the person(s) chosen as agents in a warning
are generally expected to comply serves as motivation for some warning
constructions:

(4.144) ‘You want to stay away from bones. By pressing hard over a bone,
you’re going to cause pain, not pleasure,’ she warned (iWeb)
On the contrary, the speaker’s wanting the action to be carried out is not as
relevant for the act of warning. Our corpus does not yield many instances
of warning based on the speaker’s willingness that the proposed action
takes place. Expressions of speaker’s wanting (e.g. I’ d like you to …, I want
you to …), which were so common in the performance of requests and
beggings, for instance, are not deemed as efficient strategies for achieving
the hearer’s compliance when the illocutionary point is that of a warning.
The only exceptions correspond to those cases in which the speaker is
also the agent and the beneficiary of the action together with the hearer.
Example (4.145) illustrates this.

(4.145) ‘We know that plastics with BPA have been linked to cancer,
poor brain health, and poor heart health, so we really want to be
careful and get everything with BPA out of our kitchen. And we
certainly don’t want to microwave with it. When you microwave
your food in plastic, the high heat really increases the release of
those chemicals,’ Glassman warned (iWeb)

Is the action expressed in the warning necessary?

Since warnings are aimed at helping someone avoid a cost or negative
scenario, the proposed action is deemed necessary by the speaker and
prototypically taken as such by the potential agent. Many warnings in our
corpus exploit this semantic variable in their constructional layout (i.e.
YOU NEED TO DO X construction):

(4.146) ‘If your company doesn’t have a data management policy that
you can pick up and look at and you don’t know how long you’re
supposed to be keeping things, you need to fix that,’ he warned
(iWeb)
4.6 Warnings 173
How much freedom does a warning allow the hearer?
Warnings are not impositive speech acts. They allow the agent of the
proposed action freedom to do as indicated or to opt out. In this regard,
Crystal (2010) argues that warnings belong to a category of negotiable
directives (i.e. warnings, advice acts, suggestions, etc.), where instructions
are not imposed, and the hearer has optionality to heed or not. This
semantic characteristic explains why virtually all warnings in our corpus
are generally softened by means of juxtaposed or subordinated clauses that
explain the reason for the action (see examples (4.141)–(4.146)). Modals of
tentativeness are also fairly common in the acts of warning (e.g. You might
want to stop eating junk food) and also help to distinguish warnings from
more impositive speech acts like orders or threats (e.g. You want to stop
eating junk food at once!).
The inherent optionality that characterises warnings may decrease on
some occasions. One of them is when the speaker and a third party are
also beneficiaries of the proposed action, as in example (4.142), where the
warning is expressed in a more impositive and non-negotiable fashion
(i.e. … we need to take action and we will at a time and place of our own
choosing). Warnings also cut down on the agent’s optionality when the
amount of the cost or harm to be avoided increases. Thus, the higher the
cost, the greater the need to reduce the agent’s freedom to disregard the
instructions that will help her avoid it. In fact, when there is an imminent or
especially negative scenario ahead, the warnings in our corpus are realised
mainly by sheer imperatives, in the absence of the softening declaratives
that characterise less costly scenarios. Examples (4.147) and (4.148) illustrate
two situations that require non-negotiable warnings:
(4.147) Two more dogs charged Butcher, drove her back. ‘Stop,’ I warned
Rachel (iWeb)
(4.148) ‘Everyone, jump!’ Mario warned as the dragon came near. They
all jumped onto Hacktail’s body successfully (iWeb)

Does the speaker attempt to minimise the cost of the action?

As explained above, warnings are often softened by means of explicative
declarative sentences or modals of tentativeness. This should not, however,
be taken as a sign that warnings favour minimisation of the cost of the
proposed action. Since warnings are directed to avoid a cost or potentially
negative scenario, which is essential to the well-being of the agent, the
proposed action is meant to be carried out in full so that its effectiveness is
not diminished. Thus, while requests, for instance, used minimisation of
174 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
cost to increase their politeness (e.g. Can you just wait a little more?), this
type of cost reduction would feel odd if used when trying to help someone
to avoid a cost (e.g. Just watch out a little! A car is coming!). Warnings are
not generally mitigated.
As pointed out by Pérez-Hernández (2001: 189), however, there is a
particular situation in which the performance of warnings asks for an
increase in mitigation. This is so when the speaker himself is causing the
potential cost or negative scenario that he wants the hearer to avoid. In
these contexts, if the act is not conveniently mitigated, it may come across
as a threat. Mitigation helps to favour a warning reading. Consider the
following example:
(4.149) ‘If you pull out a brochure,’ I warned, ‘I will make you eat it.’
(iWeb)
The utterance in example (4.149) has been categorised as a warning.
However, it could also be interpreted as a threat. The use of mitigation
could favour a warning reading (e.g. Just don’t pull out a brochure, or I may
have to make you eat it). All things being equal, and no irony intended, the
mitigated example activates the non-impositive nature of warnings and
makes a threatening interpretation less likely.

Does the speaker attempt to be polite?

Warnings are beneficial to the intended agents because they are aimed at
helping them to avoid a cost or a negative event. Because of this, they do
not need to resort to politeness as a persuasive strategy, as has been shown
to be the case with other directives which do result in a cost to the agent
(i.e. requests, beggings) and which, therefore, require of face redress in
order to soften their face-threatening nature (Brown & Levinson, 1987).
The use of politeness markers in the expression of warnings is only required
in formal situations in which politeness is mandatory regardless of the
type of speech act that is at stake. This is the case with warnings that are
included in instructions. The formal context and the large social distance
between the speaker and the intended agent ask for the use of politeness,
as in the following example:
(4.150) WARNING: Please make sure you have or obtain your license
activation information before running this procedure if you’re
using the paid PRO or PREMIUM version as this tool will
remove all of the Malwarebytes Anti-Malware program files, logs,
and licensing information from your computer. (iWeb)
4.6 Warnings 175
Is social power relevant to the act of warning?
Like advising, warning requires knowledge authority, whether this
originates in first-hand life experience, training, education, or expertise in
a particular field. Pérez-Hernández (2001: 190) argues that other types of
power (i.e. social, physical, institutional) may interfere in the production
of warnings to the extent that, if they are present in a particular situation
(i.e. there is a physically or institutionally powerful speaker), an increase
in mitigation or politeness may be needed to prevent the act of warning
from being interpreted as an order or a threat. This is precisely the case
with example (4.151), where the speaker has the power granted by an
asymmetrical social relationship (i.e. mother–daughter).

(4.151) ‘Never touch a mushroom without Mommy,’ I warned sternly,

‘not for the first time.’ (iWeb)
Thus, in the absence of the necessary mitigation and/or politeness, the
interpretation of the act as either a warning or an order may be a hard choice.

Is the social distance between the speakers relevant to the act of warning?
The social distance between speakers interplays with other variables like
the degree of speaker’s willingness, mitigation, and politeness. The more
intimate the participants are, the higher the emotional involvement of the
speaker, and the higher his desire for the addressee to follow his warning
and to avoid a potentially negative scenario. This increase in speaker’s
willingness is often paired with a decrease in mitigation and politeness. In
these contexts, warnings are thus more impositive and aimed at cutting
down the risk of non-compliance. Forceful warnings of this kind (see
example (4.151) above) represent peripheral instances of the category which
may resemble other directives like orders.
On the contrary, larger social distances correlate with higher levels of
politeness and mitigation, as illustrated by example (4.150) above. Warnings
addressed at strangers make extensive use of overt verbal politeness (i.e. use
of adverb please).

Is the formality of the context relevant to the act of warning?

Warnings can be performed in all contexts regardless of their formality.
As pointed above, however, the EFL student should be aware of the fact
that the more formal the context, the more polite the warning is expected
to be (see example (4.150)). Table 4.23 summarises the conceptual layout
of the act of warning.
176 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
Table 4.23 The know-what of warnings

Warnings are directive speech acts in which a speaker tells someone to do or not to do an
action so that he can avoid a dangerous, unpleasant, or simply unwanted state of
affairs. When someone warns someone else, they communicate the following:
‘I have the necessary knowledge authority to present you with a course of action that will
prevent you from suffering a cost. I ask you to do it because I know it is in your best
interest to do it. I have no institutional, physical, or social power to impose the action
on you, but I expect you take advantage of my knowledge/expertise and follow my
warning.’
What you need to bear in mind in order to perform a successful warning:
• The person who is to carry out the action proposed in a warning can be the hearer, the
speaker and the hearer, or a third person/group of people. What is important is that
the agent of the action is also the one who will avoid a cost by following it.
• As speaker, you know you that your knowledge authority is not enough to impose
your will on the hearer, and that you should respect his freedom to decide whether or
not to carry out the proposed action.
• Warnings seek a benefit for the prospective agent (=avoidance of cost); therefore, you
do not need to minimise the cost of the action, which is by default beneficial to him.
There is an exception to this, though: if the potential cost is caused by you, then you
do need to mitigate you act in order to prevent it from being interpreted as a threat.
• Since you need to respect the freedom of the prospective agent, but you also want him
to comply, because you know that the action will be beneficial to him, you attempt to
persuade him into action by presenting him with rational arguments that justify the
need to carry out the proposed action.
• When warning, politeness is not necessary by default. It will only be necessary in
some cases (see below).
• You can perform warnings in all contexts regardless of their formality and of the social
distance or power that separates you from the hearer, but you need to be aware of
some interactions between these social variables and other attributes of the act of
warning (see below).
BE AWARE!!
• If the warning benefits not only the hearer but also you and/or a third party, you do
not need to respect the freedom of the hearer so much, and it is acceptable to make
your warning a bit more compelling through the use of directness and impositive
strategies that make the hearer aware of the fact that his compliance is expected.
• If you are more powerful than the hearer (social/institutional power), you are expected
to soften your warning by increasing the politeness of your act. Otherwise, it can be
understood as an order or a threat.
• If you are socially close to the hearer, you are likely to be more emotionally involved,
you will want him to follow your warning, and you will need to make use of
imposition (i.e. reducing mitigation and politeness) to achieve his compliance. On the
contrary, if the social distance with the hearer is larger, you will need to increase the
politeness of your warning to make it socially acceptable.
• If you find yourself in a formal context, you are expected to increase the politeness of
your warning, preferably by means of overt verbal politeness markers (e.g. adverb
please).
4.6 Warnings 177
4.6.2 The Know-How of Warnings
In his foundational work on speech acts, Searle (1969: 67) suggests that most
warnings are essentially hypothetical ‘if –then’ statements: IF YOU DO
NOT DO X, THEN Y WILL HAPPEN. Abbas and Saad (2018) provide
a richer inventory of the linguistic strategies for the expression of warnings
that have been described to date in the literature. They distinguish between
direct strategies (i.e. performatives and conventional expressions like watch
out, be careful, mind, or look out; Austin, 1962; Griffiths, 2006; Goddard &
Wierzbicka, 2013) and indirect procedures (declarative sentences, imperative
and negative imperatives, if-conditionals, interrogative structures, modal
constructions; Sadock, 1974; Wierzbicka, 1987; Goddard, 2011; Goddard &
Wierzbicka, 2013; Radden, 2014). There is, however, no quantitative account
to date about which of these strategies are preferred by native speakers of
English. This information is relevant for the design of EFL textbooks, so that
professionals can choose the more frequently used warning constructions
and/or schedule their teaching throughout the different proficiency levels,
leaving the more complex or less frequent strategies for the higher levels of
instruction. The analysis of the warning constructions in our corpus offers
the following information in this regard.
As was the case with other directives, IMPERATIVE constructions take
pride of place in the production of warnings, amounting to 50 per cent of the
total number of occurrences. They are followed by conditional constructions
(over 19 per cent) which, as already pointed out by Searle (1969), are fairly
productive for the expression of warnings. The use of modal constructions
(i.e. YOU MUST / CAN / NEED / HAVE TO DO X) adds up to around
10 per cent of the total. Performatives are used in slightly over 5 per cent of
the interactions, and DOING X and YOU WANT / DON’T WANT TO
DO X constructions represent a bare 3 per cent of the total each.
Base constructions for warning, like those listed in Table 4.24, do not
generally occur on their own. Only one hundred and forty-eight instances of
bare base constructions have been identified in our corpus (i.e. 29 per cent of
the total number of constructions). Most of them are instances of warnings
in which the potential cost to be avoided is already clear from the context,
which makes it unnecessary to make it explicit. In these cases, a sheer
imperative, for instance, is capable of activating the warning illocutionary
act as a whole in the absence of further explicit information. Example (4.152),
where the danger of looking up at a broken bulb is obvious, illustrates this:
(4.152) Pop! – A bulb broke as its string slid down a cable. ‘Don’t look
up! Don’t look up!’ warned Johnny Robertson, who was winding
the string of lights into a circle on the sidewalk (iWeb)
178 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
Table 4.24 Base constructions for the act of warning in English

Base constructions Occurrences Percentage

IMPERATIVE (DO X/DON’T DO X) 250 50

CONDITIONAL
IF YOU DO/DON’T DO X, THEN Y 98 19.6
PERFORMATIVES
BE WARNED 26 5.2
BE CAREFUL/CAUTIOUS TO/NO TO DO X 20 4
DOING X CONSTRUCTIONS 16 3.2
YOU SHOULD DO X 16 3.2
YOU WANT/DON’T WANT TO DO X 14 2.8
YOU’D BETTER DO X 14 2.8
YOU MUST DO X 14 2.8
YOU CAN DO X 12 2.4
PASSIVES 12 2.4
YOU HAVE TO DO X 6 1.2
YOU NEED TO DO X 2 0.4
Total 500 100

Bare base constructions for warning also correspond to situations in which

the social distance between participants is very short. As explained in
Section 4.6.1, a short social distance triggers a higher emotional involvement
on the part of the speaker, who wants the hearer to avoid the potential harm
at all costs. In order to achieve his goal, the speaker needs to maximise the
impositive power of his act. This motivates the use of bare IMPERATIVE
constructions which resemble orders rather closely. For similar reasons, bare
base imperatives displaying an impositive intonation and including forceful
modals (i.e. YOU HAVE TO DO X) are also used in contexts in which
there is a high urgency to avoid a cost, and/or when the cost to be avoided
is very high. In example (4.153), the vocative (i.e. Talia) makes explicit the
intimacy between the speakers who use their first names to address each
other. In addition, the situation requires a prompt reaction, and hence the
use of the bare IMPERATIVE base construction effectively communicates
the warning reading.
(4.153) Something or someone was near. ‘Talia, do not move,’ he warned
(iWeb)
Finally, base constructions that consist in a main sentence plus a subordinate
clause also tend to occur on their own. This is the case with conditional
warning constructions (i.e. IF YOU DO / DON’T DO X, THEN Y), in
4.6 Warnings 179
which the subordinate clause specifies the action that the hearer should
carry out, and the main clause states the cost that he will be able to avoid
by doing so:
(4.154) ‘Beware!’ they warned the boy constantly. ‘If you but touch the
water, a hand will rise up and drag you down.’ (iWeb)
Similarly, in the absence of other linguistic strategies, DOING X base
constructions also manage to communicate both the proposed action and
the cost that can be avoided if it is taken into consideration:
(4.155) ‘Scrolling through song lists on a cell phone, or texting while
driving is not just irresponsible, it can have tragic consequences,’
Foxx warned (iWeb)
Finally, performative constructions make the warning interpretation clear
by virtue of the meaning of the performative verb that they include:
(4.156) ‘Be warned that using ELMO can lead to many small fuzzy red
creatures appearing in your work area.’ (iWeb)
All base constructions involved in the production of warnings and listed
in Table 4.24 have been previously found to be at work in the expression of
other directives. This may lead to the wrong conclusion that their ultimate
interpretation as warnings lies on inferential processes. Nevertheless,
zooming out beyond the sentence level and looking at the way in which
the above base constructions combine with other linguistic strategies, it is
possible to offer a constructional account of warnings that leaves little or
no space left to inferential calculations. Table 4.25 summarises the main
realisation procedures that combine with the base constructions in Table
4.24 to render a warning reading.
Over two-thirds of the base constructions in Table 4.24 combine with one
or more of the linguistic strategies in Table 4.25 to render a clear warning
reading. As can be observed in the following examples, the base construction
generally communicates the action suggested by the speaker in order to
avoid a negative scenario, and the linguistic realisation procedure states the
reason for doing it, and/or the cost that will be avoided through compliance:
(4.157) YOU’D BETTER DO / NOT DO X CONSTRUCTION +
DECLARATIVE SENTENCE:
‘You better not hold out money like that when you know I won’t
take it,’ he warned, taking a step back. ‘Someone might run up
and snatch it right out of your hand.’ (iWeb)
180 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts I
Table 4.25 Realisation procedures of the act of warning

Realisation procedures for warning Occurrences Percentage

DECLARATIVE SENTENCE (REASON/CAUSE) 202 40.4

DISJUNCTIVE CLAUSE (E.G. OR Y) 74 14.8
SUBORDINATE CLAUSE (REASON/CAUSE) 47 9.4
(E.G. BECAUSE Y, SINCE Y, GIVEN THAT Y)
CO-ORDINATE CLAUSE (E.G. AND Y) 21 4.2
OTHERS (POLITENESS MARKERS, ETC.) 6 1.2
SUBORDINATE CLAUSE (PURPOSE; E.G. TO, 2 0.4
IN ORDER TO, SO THAT…)
NO ADDITIONAL REALISATION PROCEDURE 148 29.6
Total 500 100

(4.158) IMPERATIVE BASE CONSTRUCTION + DISJUNCTIVE

CLAUSE:
‘You must never sleep facing a mirror,’ she warned me, ‘or your
soul will go into the mirror and live in it.’ (iWeb)
(4.159) IMPERATIVE BASE CONSTRUCTION + CO-ORDINATE
CLAUSE:
‘Get those negotiations wrong and the consequences will be dire,’
she warned Wednesday (iWeb)
(4.160) YOU SHOULD DO X CONSTRUCTION + REASON
CLAUSE:
‘You should register with the province because the DA won’t
interact and associate with you legally and having a deed only as
you profess is not enough, but you should give credentials to the
relevant authorities and not ignore protocol,’ she warned (iWeb)
As examples (4.157)–(4.160) illustrate, the combination of any base
construction (i.e. IMPERATIVE, MODAL, etc.) with one of the
aforementioned linguistic strategies makes the central attributes of the
warning ICM explicit (i.e. the cost to be avoided and the action that should
be taken to avoid it) and its interpretation unambiguous. The number
of potential combinations is high, but once EFL students have learned
the pool of base constructions and linguistic strategies at work for this
specific directive act, they are set to perform the act of warning in a fairly
flexible, creative, and at the same time, simple and communicatively safe
way. Whichever combination they choose to use, they will be able to put
across their warning message to their interlocutors.
4.6 Warnings 181
Learning how to perform warnings correctly in a second language is
also facilitated by the explicit teaching of the differences between the
warning constructions used in the target and native languages. Studies
on the interlanguage pragmatic and constructional nature of warnings are
scarce. Bataineh and Aljamal (2009) dealt with the differences in the use
of the speech act of warning between American speakers and Jordanian
undergraduate learners of English. They concluded that the IMPERATIVE
construction was the most widely used by both groups.
A comparison between the warning constructions used by English and
Spanish speakers yields similar results. Half the occurrences of warnings
in both corpora make use of the IMPERATIVE construction, in either
its affirmative (i.e. DO X / HAZ X) or negative form (i.e. DON’T DO
X / NO HAGAS X). Spanish students of English will also find it easy to
learn CONDITIONAL warning constructions and MODAL constructions
(YOU MUST DO X / DEBES HACER X), because they are used in similar
contexts and with a similar frequency of occurrence in their native language.
However, the data in Table 4.26 also shows some areas of divergence between
both languages, which need to be taken into account in the teaching of this
directive act. It is essential to make Spanish students aware of the fact that
performatives (i.e. TE LO ADVIERTO / BE WARNED) are much more
frequent in Spanish than in English. This is connected to the fact that the
acts of warning (like those of advising) are considered acts of confianza and
social closeness in Spanish. Hence, the directness of a performative is not
perceived as an imposition in the Spanish culture. English, on the contrary,
has been shown to have a preference for indirectness and to disfavour the
use of this type of explicit warnings, except in cases in which the urgency
of the situation or the potential high cost of inaction justifies their use. This
preference for indirectness also explains the fact that constructions based on
the use of modal verbs (i.e. YOU CAN DO X, YOU NEED TO DO X),
expressions of willingness (i.e. YOU WANT / DON’T WANT TO DO
X), or passive constructions (i.e. X SHOULD BE DONE) abound in the
English corpus, while they are not as productive in the Spanish one. Table
4.26 shows those constructions that are similar in both languages in the
white rows, those that are preferred by one of the languages under scrutiny
in the light grey rows, and those that are not productive in one of the
languages in the dark grey rows. This traffic light of warning constructions
should ideally guide the choice of strategies to be included in textbooks and
also help EFL teachers and textbook designers to schedule the learning of
the different constructions throughout the curriculum, leaving those which
show mismatches for the higher levels of instruction.
Table 4.26 Comparison of base constructions for the act of warning in English and Spanish

Warning base constructions (English) Number Percentage Number Percentage Warning base constructions (Spanish)

IMPERATIVE (DO/DON’T DO X) 250 50 224 44.8 IMPERATIVE (HAZ/NO HAGAS X)

CONDITIONAL (IF YOU DO/ 98 19.6 63 12.6 CONDITIONAL (Si haces/no haces x,
DON’T DO X, THEN Y) entonces y)
YOU MUST DO X 14 2.8 11 2.2 DEBES HACER X
PERFORMATIVES 26 5.2 112 22.4 PERFORMATIVES
BE WARNED TE LO ADVIERTO
BE CAREFUL (NOT) TO DO X 20 4 40 8 CUIDADO/OJO CON HACER X
YOU HAVE TO DO X 6 1.2 16 3.2 TIENES QUE HACER X
YOU SHOULD DO X 16 3.2 6 1.2 DEBERÍAS HACER X
YOU’D BETTER DO X 14 2.8 4 0.8 MÁS TE VALE/VALDRÍA HACER X
Possible but not productive 0 12 2.4 DECLARATIVE SENTENCES
E.g. The reason why you shouldn’t do E.g. La razón por la que no debes hacer
that is … eso es…
Not possible 0 12 2.4 HAY QUE HACER X
YOU NEED TO DO X 2 0.4 0 Possible but not productive
DOING X CONSTRUCTIONS 16 3.2 0 Possible but not productive
YOU CAN DO X 12 2.4 0 Possible but not productive
PASSIVES 12 2.4 0 Possible but not productive
YOU WANT/DON’T WANT TO 14 2.8 0 Possible but not productive
DO X
TOTAL 500 100 500 100
5

A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar

of Directive Speech Acts II: Activities
and Practice Materials

Contemporary research suggests that an effective approach to teaching

speech acts involves providing explicit instruction on the acts (Tateyama
et al., 1997) and opportunities to practise them (Bialystok, 1993; Morrow,
1995). This chapter offers a sample of activities for teaching directive speech
acts to Spanish advanced EFL students. The teaching and practice materials
have been designed in accordance with the tenets of cognitive pedagogical
grammar (Dirven, 1985, 1990, 2001; Taylor 2008, Ruiz de Mendoza &
Agustin, 2016), which, as explained in detail in Chapter 1, advocates an
explicit instruction approach to L2 teaching.
Explicit instruction is particularly fitted for teaching advanced EFL
students, who already have the necessary command of the English language
to understand the explanations of subtle nuances about a new topic (Rose
& Ng, 2001; Takahashi, 2001, Tateyama, 2001; Rajabia, Azizifara &
Gowhary, 2015a, 2015b). A similar approach could also be used in lower
levels of instruction, although in these cases, using the students’ native
language in the instruction may be required. The use of the students’
first language in the EFL classroom has been a matter of debate, but its
usefulness in explicit instruction approaches to teaching has also been
widely attested (Auerbach, 1993; Hall & Cook, 2013; Blooth, Azman &
Ismail, 2014; Alshehri & Abdulaziz, 2017).
All in all, there is a vast body of research that has provided evidence
of the positive effects of explicit pedagogical intervention in facilitating
the development of EFL students’ pragmatic competence, in general,
and their ability to perform speech acts appropriately in a second and/
or foreign language, in particular (House, 1996; Kasper & Rose, 2002;
Bacelar da Silva, 2003; Martínez-Flor & Fukuya, 2005; Gu, 2011; Rajabia,
Azizifara & Gowhary, 2015a, 2015b). According to Schmidt (1990: 132–134),
the conscious understanding of a certain aspect of language makes it
possible for the learner to analyse it and compare it to what he has learned
before, which, in turn, results in memorising and language acquisition. This

183
184 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts II
conscious process can be considerably assisted through the use of explicit
instruction in EFL teaching. Noticing and deliberately paying attention to
language phenomena has been reported to facilitate language learning and
to be a special prerequisite for adult learners (Schmidt, 1990: 149).
However, as was shown in Chapter 3, EFL textbooks hardly attempt
to teach directive speech acts in an explicit and systematic fashion, most
of them limiting the teaching of speech acts to that of several formulaic
linguistic strategies in isolation from the contextual, social, and interactional
factors that license their use (see also Diepenbroek & Derwing (2013) and
Pérez-Hernández (2019) on the limitations of EFL textbooks in the teaching
of pragmatics and speech acts). This has a bearing on EFL learners, for
many of whom their main sources of pragmatic input are most likely their
EFL textbooks and English language teachers. As a result, their pragmatic
competence is often less advanced than their grammatical knowledge
(Bardovi-Harlig & Dönyei, 1998).
In this connection, Matsumura (2001) claims that living in an EFL
setting had a positive impact on students’ production of advice acts, which
suggests that EFL learners, who do not enjoy the advantages of living in an
EFL environment, may benefit from some pedagogical intervention in the
form of explicit instruction to acquire the necessary pragmatic competence.
In addition, given the limited number and formulaic character of the
linguistic strategies for speech act production included in EFL textbooks,
students are also generally not provided with the necessary knowledge
about illocutionary constructions to be able to produce flexible directives
adapted to particular contextual and situational needs.
Explicit instruction requires directly explaining the pragmatic, semantic,
socio-cultural, and linguistic knowledge related to the target language
(Rose, 2005; Ishihara, 2010; Bu, 2012; Taguchi, 2015). These explanations
should be carried out in plain, jargon-free language and include a rich
collection of real language examples to help students understand them.
The pedagogical cognitive grammar of directive speech acts developed in
Chapter 4 offers the necessary pragmatic and constructional/linguistic
information for the appropriate production of directive speech acts in
English. The basic information about each directive speech act under
consideration has been summarised in the corresponding know-what and
know-how tables. The former includes the pragmatic, social, and contextual
variables that characterise each directive, and the latter the linguistic
constructions and realisation procedures that the language system offers in
order to express the variables and attributes that conform to each directive
speech act. In the ensuing sections, the information provided in this
A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts II 185
pedagogical grammar of directive speech acts will be implemented into a
set of instructional activities that is organised in three categories, depending
on whether they highlight the teaching of the semantics/pragmatics
(i.e. know-what), linguistic strategies and constructions (i.e. know-how), or
cross-linguistic/cultural issues of the directive acts under scrutiny.
The proposed activities encourage learners to carefully observe salient
pragmatic and cognitive phenomena connected with the production and
understanding of directives. By pointing learners towards relevant features of
the input, such observation tasks can help them make connections between
linguistic forms, pragmatic functions, their occurrence in different social
contexts, and their cultural meanings. Some of the activities are specifically
designed to make the most of the cross-linguistic information included in
the cognitive pedagogical grammar of directive speech acts, thus leading
students to notice specific constructions that are only possible in either L1 or
L2, as well as those that are more frequent in L2. Students are thus guided
to learn the information they need in order to develop their pragmatic
competence and their knowledge of those linguistic constructions and
strategies that characterise directive speech acts in English. In accordance
with previous explicit instruction proposals (Fujimori & Houck, 2004),
the type of activities offered include consciousness-raising, knowledge-
development, comprehension, and production-development tasks.
One of the main criticisms that has been made of the representation of
speech acts in current EFL textbooks is the lack of real, authentic language
examples. This means that the speech acts included in teaching materials
are often isolated sentences deprived of a context and presented outside their
naturally occurring discourse (Bardovi-Harlig, 1992). In turn, this limits
the socio-pragmatic information available to the students and invalidates
those materials for teaching purposes at least from a pragmatic stance. As
Judd (1999: 158) remarks in relation to the teaching of apologies, ‘to provide
learners with only one apology formula to apply on the many occasions
when apologies are necessary in English is a misrepresentation of the
complexity of this speech act’. The use of authentic instances of speech acts
within their actual discourse environment has, therefore, been advocated
recently by a growing number of scholars. Koike (1996) and Martínez-Flor
(2005), among others, concluded that learners of a foreign language need
to be exposed to contextualised language in order to recognise speech acts
at both grammatical and pragmatic levels of use. This includes the use of
media materials (audio-visual shows, recorded conversations, etc. (Judd,
1999)), as well as of written and spoken corpora (Bardovi-Harlig, Mossman
& Vellenga, 2014a). In line with this stance, the activities proposed in the
186 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts II
following sections make use of real language examples, except in those
cases in which it is necessary to manipulate them in order to highlight
specific aspects of the nature of speech acts for teaching purposes.

5.1 Teaching the Know-What of Directives

The know-what of directive speech acts included in the cognitive pedagogical
grammar expounded in Chapter 4 shows that each of these illocutionary
acts is a complex conglomerate of interactional, transactional, and social
features. Nevertheless, they all share the fact that they act as forces that
attempt to move the hearer into action. It is, therefore, important to make
students aware of this forceful nature of directives. It is also essential to
make them realise that the intensity of the force is different in each case,
and that this has a bearing on the face-threatening nature of each particular
directive and will also influence other variables, such as the degree of
politeness that is necessary to perform the act correctly or the optionality
that the act grants to the hearer to comply or to refuse to do as told.
Activities 1, 2, and 3 are designed to raise students’ awareness about these
issues. They take the form of consciousness-raising tasks by means of which
learners are exposed to real language examples with attention directed to
the target pragmatic features and sociolinguistic variables of particular
speech events (e.g. participants, power/social distance relationships, formal/
informal contexts).

Activity 1
Observe Figures 5.1 and 5.2. They represent the types of force that can be exerted
by means of two different directive speech acts (i.e. orders and requests). Then,
answer the questions a–e below.
a. Which force is stronger? The intensity of the force is represented by the
thickness of the force vector (F).
b. Which force does not encounter any obstacles in its way to the hearer (H)?
c. Which of the two forces is more likely to have an effect on the hearer (H)
and move him into action?
d. Considering the strength of these two forces, which speaker do you think is
more powerful?
e. Considering the strength of these two forces, which hearer do you think has
more freedom to refuse to comply with what he is told to do?
5.1 Teaching the Know-What of Directives 187

Figure 5.1 Force dynamics of orders: S = speaker; F = force; H = hearer

This activity helps students to visualise the differences in force dynamics

between orders and requests. The visual aid provided by Figures 5.1 and
5.2 should lead them to conceptualise orders as a more forceful directive
than requests: a compulsion force that does not envisage any obstacles in
its way towards the hearer and can, therefore, exert its causative power
over him easily. The answers to the questions and the ensuing discussion
offer the EFL teacher an opportunity to explain some of the defining
attributes of orders (i.e. they are produced by powerful speakers who
do not expect any obstacles in their attempt to move the hearer into
action, and they are received by hearers who have little freedom to refuse
to do as told) and requests (i.e. they are produced by speakers who do
not have the necessary power to impose their will on the hearer, and
they need to overcome some impediments before succeeding in moving
him into action). The teacher can then further explain which type of
obstacles or impediments can get in the way of a successful request:
the lack of willingness of the hearer to comply, his lack of ability to do
as told, or the fact that the requested action is too costly, for example,
could get in the way and prevent the requestive force from moving the
hearer into action. Eventually, the discussion about the obstacles that
prevent a request from succeeding gives the EFL teacher an opportunity
to introduce the notion of politeness, as a persuasive strategy that may
help the speaker to overcome some of those obstacles and to secure the
hearer’s compliance.

Figure 5.2 Force dynamics of requests: S = speaker; F = force; H = hearer

188 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts II

Activity 2
Observe Figure 5.3. It represents the force dynamics of the act of begging.
Compare the intensity and nature of the force(s) involved with those of orders
and requests in Activity 1. Then answer the following questions:
a. Are the force vectors involved in the act of begging as strong as those found
in the acts of ordering and requesting?
b. According to what you see in Figure 5.3, does the speaker uttering a begging
achieve his goal the first time, or does he need to keep trying several times
until he succeeds?
c. From your answers to the two previous questions, what can you conclude
about the power of the speaker uttering a begging? Does he have the
necessary power to impose his will on the hearer?
d. From the fact that the speaker keeps trying to achieve his goal by exerting
several forces, what can you infer about his desire that the hearer carries out
the proposed action? Does the speaker have a strong desire that the action
is carried out?
e. As indicated in Figure 5.3, the forces exerted by the speaker need to act
on the rationality and the social nature of the hearer (HR/S) to eventually
move him into action (HA). Look at the following three examples of begging
and decide whether the speech act is acting on the rationality, the social
conscience of the hearer, or both in order to persuade him to comply with
the proposed action:
(5.1) He then reached out at him. Attempting to grab him and the mother
pulled her son away. # – # The mother shouted at him crying ‘You
leave him alone! He is just a child! I’ ll go! Just don’t hurt him! Please!!’
# She then begged at him (iWeb)
(5.2) # His heart cried out … No! This isn’t right … where is she going?!
his mind raced frantically, trying to make sense of what she was
saying. # ‘I don’t *want* to be apart, April. Don’t go … please,’ he
futilely begged, his eyes moistening again. ‘I want to be with you …
forever … have a family with you … you *can’t* go!’ He was on the

Figure 5.3 Force dynamics of beggings: S = speaker; F = force; HR/S = hearer as rational/
social being; H A = hearer as agent
5.1 Teaching the Know-What of Directives 189
verge of breaking down, again. # April turned to face Nathan and
her hair blew in her face. She gently brushed it over her ear and
smiled. ‘I have to go now …’ # (iWeb)
(5.3) # Then one day in the laundry, in the spring of 1943, she was
approached by a small Jewish man who told her he needed women
to work in the factory. Oscar Schindler’s factory. ‘I don’t know why
I was chosen that day,’ she later said, ‘It’s a question I’ve asked myself
hundreds and hundreds of times. Why me? Why was I chosen to
live?’ # At first, Anna did not want to go and leave her sister Erna.
‘But she begged me. Go. With Schindler, there is life. You must go’,
Anna later said # (iWeb)

After completing this activity, students will have become aware of the main
features of the act of begging: the fact that the speaker has a strong desire
that the action is carried out by the hearer, the fact that the speaker is not
powerful enough to impose her will, and the fact that she needs to act on
the rationality and/or the social conscience of the hearer to persuade her
into action.

Activity 3
Compare the type of force (intensity/nature) used in suggestions (Figure 5.4)
with those that characterise orders, requests, and beggings (see Figures 5.1,
5.2, and 5.3 in activities 1 and 2) and make a list of the main differences
between them. How would you describe the force involved in the act of
suggesting? Is it a strong or a weak force? Is it iterative like that involved in
the act of begging?
Then, read the information about the act of suggesting included in the
related know-what table (Table 5.1) and answer the following questions:
a. Which pieces of information included in the know-what of suggestions
explain the nature of the type of force involved in the act of suggesting?

Figure 5.4 Force dynamics of suggestions: S = speaker; F = force; HR = hearer as

rational being; H A = hearer as agent
190 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts II
Table 5.1 The know-what of suggestions

Suggestions are weak directive speech acts by means of which a speaker asks the hearer(s)
to consider the merits or benefits of a potential course of action. When someone
suggests someone else to do something, he communicates the following:
‘I believe that a particular course of action may be positive for you, for both of us, or for
someone else. You could consider doing it. I have no particular interest in you carrying
out that action, neither do I have the social, institutional, or experiential power to
impose the action on you, but I share it with you for your consideration.’
What you need to bear in mind in order to perform a successful suggestion:
• The beneficiary of the action may be the speaker, the hearer, both of them, or a third
person.
• Regardless of who is to benefit from the action, the speaker shows no special desire or
interest in its materialisation. He merely presents it for the hearer’s consideration.
• Whether or not the hearer wants to do as told is unknown or irrelevant for the
speaker, who respects the hearer’s freedom to comply or refuse to do as suggested.
• In order to respect the optionality of the hearer, the speaker makes no overt attempt
to minimise the cost of the action or to persuade the hearer to comply through
insistence, imposition, or the use of politeness.
BE AWARE!!!
You can make suggestions in all contexts, regardless of their formality and of the power
relationship or social distance that separates you from the hearer(s). However, if there
are power asymmetries between the speakers, if the social distance between them is
large, or if the context is formal, your suggestions will need to include attempts to
minimise their cost and/or exhibit a higher use of tentativeness.

b. Does the interest/attitude of the speaker towards the materialisation of the

action and his respect towards the freedom of the hearer explain the type
and intensity of force that characterises beggings?
c. Why are suggestions not insistent, like beggings?
Reason your answers.

This activity leads students to an understanding of the force dynamics of

suggestions and their connection with the semantic features that define this
directive speech act. It is designed to raise their awareness about the fact
that speakers uttering suggestions are not as eager to achieve compliance as
those uttering beggings, requests, or orders, for example. Students are also
informed about the fact that suggestions respect the optionality/freedom
of the hearer to decide upon his future course of action by avoiding the
insistence and the imposition of beggings and orders, respectively.
As explained in depth in Chapter 4, the know-what of each directive
speech act includes the knowledge of their characterising transactional
5.1 Teaching the Know-What of Directives 191
and social attributes and variables, as well as the interactions that may
exist between them. Activities 4–7 are designed to help students learn
these essential semantic and pragmatic keystones of each directive speech
act. They are also aimed at helping EFL learners to reflect on the potential
interactions between attributes and variables, and on how these may
affect the final form of the directive. These activities include knowledge-
development tasks, which expose learners to pragmatic input and also
have them act on this input by writing a reflection about it, evaluating
the appropriateness of the target pragmatic forms, or selecting appropriate
answers from a list of options.

Activity 4
Read the following examples of warnings and answer the questions below. With
the answers to all the questions try to write a brief description about the act
of warning, highlighting who is to be the agent of the action, who is to benefit
from it, how much power and which type of power do speakers need to carry
out this speech act successfully, how imposing the act is, and how much freedom
does the hearer has to comply or to opt out.
(5.4) I remembered how as a little kid Mom would tell me an old Chinese
superstition. ‘You must never sleep facing a mirror,’ she warned me,
‘or your soul will go into the mirror and live in it.’ A part of me
dismissed her words as a chunk of nonsense, but another part of
me believed her and hence there were no mirrors in my bedroom.
# (iWeb)
(5.5) After an identical Obama threat, US cyber-soldiers shut down the
entire North Korean internet. ‘I think there is no doubt that when
any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections…
we need to take action,’ Obama warned. ‘And we will at a time and
place of our own choosing.’ # (iWeb)
(5.6) # Transport for London, which oversees public transport in the
capital, posted a picture from a traffic camera showing large numbers
of the insects collecting on a traffic light, and warned drivers that
a pedestrian crossing was partially obstructed by bees. It warned:
‘Please approach with caution.’ # (iWeb)
Questions:
a. Who will be performing the proposed action? The speaker, the hearer,
both of them?
192 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts II
b. Who will benefit from doing as warned? The speaker, the hearer, both
of them?
c. Does the speaker have any type of power that licenses him to utter the
warning? Social power? Institutional power? Knowledge power?
d. What do you think the hearer will do? Will he follow the warning and
do as told? How free is he to decide about his future course of action?
Which factors may limit his freedom?

The answers to questions a–d will lead students to consider some of the
main features that characterise the act of warning, as summarised in the
know-what of warnings (see Chapter 4, Section 4.6.1, Table 4.23).

Activity 5
Read carefully the following examples of directives and say which of them
make use of politeness as a strategy to persuade the hearer into action (e.g.
adverb please, question tags, hedges like just, kindly, formulaic expressions like
WOULD YOU MIND DOING X?, etc.):
(5.7) The commander was consumed by fury and the terrorists were
dumbfounded. ‘Shoot at the sky!’ the command ordered. The five
directed their rifles upward, and all five rifles shot. ‘Now shoot him!’
he ordered. The five rifles wouldn’t budge # (iWeb)
(5.8) # ‘We were just having a little fun, Barbie,’ Abby said. ‘You’re just
so fun to tease!’ # ‘Well, could you please stop?’ she requested. ‘I am
in charge here, and I don’t ask for a lot of respect, but …’ # (iWeb)
(5.9) # ‘You know, I should really tell your mother about this?’ # ‘Oh,
please don’t Aunt Lucy! I promise I won’t do it again. I’ ll give you
everything I have on you. Just please don’t tell Mum’, he begged #
(iWeb)
(5.10) # ‘So, do you want to go swimming Sam? Afterwards we can play a
little volleyball to help dry us off,’ Michael suggested as he took off
his sandals # (iWeb)
(5.11) # An engaging presentation might help a good article reach more
audience, but if there is no story ‘all data skills in the world will
mean nothing,’ said Tom Felle, Acting Director, Interactive and
Newspaper Journalism at City University. # ‘Have a nose for stories.
Data is a great way of finding a story. Go and get trained. Journalism
is still king, and it has to be,’ he advised aspiring journalists # (iWeb)
5.1 Teaching the Know-What of Directives 193
(5.12) # Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May called the snap election
three years early in a bid to boost the Conservative majority in
Parliament, which she says will strengthen Britain’s hand in divorce
talks with the European Union. # ‘Get those negotiations wrong and
the consequences will be dire,’ she warned Wednesday # (iWeb)
Now, look at the following modified versions of some of the directive speech
acts above:
(5.7, modified order): Now shoot him! Please! He ordered.
(5.10, modified suggestion): So, do you want to go swimming Sam? Afterwards,
can we please play a little volleyball to help dry us
off?
(5.11, modified advice): Please, have a nose for stories. Data is a great
way of finding a story. Please, go and get trained.
Journalism is still king, and it has to be.
(5.12, modified warning): Get those negotiations wrong, please, and the
consequences will be dire.
We have added a politeness marker (i.e. please) to those directive speech acts that
do not generally exhibit politeness as one of their prototypical features. Some of
these modified versions do not sound natural in English, others have changed
their illocutionary force, and one of them is no longer acceptable in English.
Discuss with you classmates which one of them falls into which of these categories.

Directive speech acts have traditionally been considered face-threatening

acts because they try to influence the hearer’s future course of action to
a greater or lesser extent, thus imposing on his freedom. Because of this
they have also traditionally been connected with the need to use politeness
strategies to minimise the imposition. However, this activity is designed
to show students that politeness is more central to some directives than
to others. It also reveals that for some directives, politeness is not a valid
strategy, as is the case with orders and suggestions (see detail explanations
in the know-what tables for these directive speech acts in Chapter 4).

Activity 6
In activity 5 you have learned how some directive speech acts are more likely
to make use of politeness than others. Thus, while requests and beggings make
an extensive use of this strategy, other directives like suggestions and orders
are characterised by their lack of deference, and yet others, like advice acts
194 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts II
and warnings make use of politeness only in some specific situations. Read the
following examples of warnings and advice acts and try to think of reasons why
they have been produced in a polite fashion. In your answer, you should consider
potential interactions with social variables like power, social distance, and the
formality of the context. If necessary, read the know-what tables (see Chapter 4)
for each of these speech acts before doing the activity.

(5.13) # Then they all heard Bloom’s voice. # ‘What’s going on here?
Where am I?’ She got up slowly # ‘Bloom, please you’ d better lie
down.’ Flora advised # ‘No, I’m fine.’ # (iWeb)
(5.14) # Iraqi Abdallah al Hillali warned the president that the ban would
put the US in jeopardy. # ‘Please think back again about your
decisions and what you are doing in the next few years because
this is not good for your country,’ he advised #
(5.15) # WARNING: Please make sure you have or obtain your license
activation information before running this procedure if you’re using
the paid PRO or PREMIUM version as this tool will remove all of
the Malwarebytes Anti-Malware program files, logs, and licensing
information from your computer. You will need to reactivate the
program using the license you were sent via email. #

By commenting on examples (5.13–5.15), students will become aware of how

different social variables interact with the amount of politeness used in the
expression of warnings and advice acts. Thus, they will realise that small
social distances (i.e. relations between friends, relatives, etc.) favour the use
of polite advice acts, since in these situations the speaker gets emotionally
involved and, therefore, is eager to get the hearer to comply and benefit
from his advice. In this specific sense, the speaker perceives himself as
beneficiary from the action. In example (5.13), for instance, the speaker’s
goal is to achieve her friend’s welfare. Hence the use of politeness to gain
the hearer’s compliance. Politeness is also used in advice acts when the
proposed action benefits not just the hearer but also other people, as is the
case in example (5.14). In these situations, appealing to the hearer’s social
consciousness through politeness strategies is used as a means to make the
advice act more compelling and to secure compliance. Finally, example
(5.15) illustrates a polite warning. EFL students need to be taught that in
formal contexts, like that of a manual of instructions, in which there is
also a large social distance between the speaker and the hearer, warnings
conventionally include politeness markers.
5.1 Teaching the Know-What of Directives 195

Activity 7
Read the following examples of directive speech acts and fill in the gaps with the
performative verb (i.e. ordered or requested) that you think best describes the act.
Justify your answer by commenting on the power of the speaker and the freedom
of the hearer to comply or to refuse to do as told. Remember that orders are
impositive acts uttered by powerful speakers, and that they offer little freedom of
action to the hearer, while requests are polite acts produced by speakers who do not
have the power to impose on the hearer and, therefore, the latter is free to decide
whether to do as told or not. Some of the examples are peripheral instances of the
directive categories under consideration (i.e. polite orders, impolite requests). Can
you explain what makes them appear as less central examples of their categories?
(5.16) # ‘I wrote it up myself,’ Harpers secretary replied. # ‘Do you happen
to have her address out there, by any chance?’ # ‘I don’t know,’
Mollie said, ‘but it would be on the mailing list.’ # ‘Dig it out for
me and bring it in here, please,’ Harper (ordered/
requested) # (iWeb)
(5.17) # ‘Go down to Thomas and get me some more’ his father
(ordered/requested), but it was more of an
(order/request) than anything. ‘And be quick this
time’ # (iWeb)
(5.18) ## ‘Toruos would you mind holding my ankles, so I don’t fall.’
Sajin (ordered/requested) # ‘of course milord’ the
rhino replied as he walked up behind Sajin and firmly grasped his
ankles # (iWeb)
(5.19) # Back aboard Trafalgar, de Bicardi once again heard, ‘torpedo in the
water! Its right above us sir!’ # ‘All stop!’ the captain
(ordered/requested), some stress finally creeping into his voice.
Trafalgars pump jet propulsion ceased, and the sub glided through the
water, a shadow in the deep. ‘Sonar, a report if you please.’ # (iWeb)
(5.20) # ‘Could you teach me how to dance, Misty?’ He
(ordered/requested). # ‘What?’ # ‘You heard me. I don’t know how
to dance.’ # Misty gave this some thought for a second before
coming to a decision. # ‘Ok. I’ll do it.’ # (iWeb)

This activity seeks to make students familiar with the prototypical nature
of speech act categories, and how there can be better or worse instances
of a particular speech act. It is also designed to lead students to reflect on
which are the most essential semantic/pragmatic elements that define each
196 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts II
directive category. Thus, if there is a powerful speaker capable of imposing
his will on the hearer, so that the latter lacks the freedom to refuse to do
as told, the overt use of politeness (which is a characteristic of requests)
may turn the utterance into a fake request or a camouflaged order. This
is the case with examples (5.16), (5.17), and (5.18) in the activity, which are
peripheral instances of orders, displaying the politeness typical of requests
without losing the impositive force that emerges from the powerful status
of the people who utter them (i.e. a boss, a father, a lord).

5.2 Teaching the Know-How of Directives

Directive speech act constructions consist in pairings of linguistic
forms and functions. As explained in Chapter 4, these constructions
are more fluid than those found at the argument-structure level of
linguistic description. Speech acts are complex, dynamic concepts
whose essential transactional attributes interact with several social and
contextual variables in such a way that the final conceptual make-up
of a directive speech act will vary in different contexts. For this reason,
directive speech act constructions are also necessarily fluid. They consist,
as shown in Chapter 4, of base constructions that combine with linguistic
strategies that help tune the former for the needs of different contexts
by activating the necessary attributes and variables of the corresponding
speech acts. In Chapter 4, it was shown how, even though the same base
constructions may be found in the expression of different directives, their
combination with diverse linguistic strategies allows speakers to further
specify them in order to communicate a particular directive meaning.
The corpus-based study of directive speech acts reported in the previous
chapter revealed clear tendencies for each directive to favour different
configurations of base constructions and linguistic strategies, thus paving
the way for a constructional account of speech acts and also providing
useful information for the purpose of teaching directives to EFL learners.
The following activities illustrate possible ways in which the know-how
of directives included in our cognitive pedagogical grammar can be
implemented in the teaching practice and in the design of EFL textbooks.
Activities 8–14 include consciousness-raising, knowledge-development,
and productive-skills tasks in a variety of formats, including role-playing
activities, structured conversations, and discourse-completion tests,
among others (see Bardovi-Harlig & Mahan-Taylor (2003,) Ishihara &
Cohen (2010), Ishihara & Maeda (2010) and Tatsuki & Houck (2010) for
applications of this type of activities to the teaching of pragmatics).
5.2 Teaching the Know-How of Directives 197
One relevant aspect of speech act constructions, as revealed in Chapter 2
(Section 2.5.5), is their metonymic nature. Directive speech acts are
multifaceted, complex concepts. This makes it difficult, hardly economical,
and often communicatively unnecessary for their linguistic forms to reflect
all the attributes and variables that conform to their semantics. Base
constructions and linguistic strategies, therefore, often activate the most
central and/or contextually relevant elements of the directive speech act
that needs to be communicated. Activity 8 aims at raising the students’
awareness of this fact.

Activity 8
Read the following examples of requests. Each of them makes use of a base
construction and several linguistic strategies that metonymically activate some
key elements of the act of requesting. For each of the examples, note down
which pieces of knowledge included in the know-what of requests (short version
included in Table 5.2) are being metonymically activated. The underlined
words are hints that can help you find the answers.

Table 5.2 The know-what of requests (short version)

Requests are directive speech acts in which a speaker asks the hearer(s) to carry out an
action. When someone requests someone else to do something, they communicate the
following:
‘I want you to do something because it is beneficial to me or to someone that I also want
to benefit from the action. I know it is costly to you, and I do not have the necessary
power to impose the action on you. I acknowledge your freedom to comply or to opt
out.’
What you need to bear in mind in order to perform a successful request:
• Prototypically, the requested action benefits the speaker, but more peripheral
instances of requests may be intended to benefit the hearer, a third party, or a
combination of the former.
• Requests stem from a need or a desire on the part of the speaker, who does not have
the necessary social power to impose his will on the hearer and who is, therefore,
aware of the fact that he may need to overcome some obstacles in order to get the
hearer to comply with his wish.
• Among the obstacles to overcome, there is the willingness and ability of the hearer to
carry out the proposed action, the cost of the action, and the freedom of the hearer to
carry out the action or not.
• To overcome the aforementioned obstacles, prototypical requests are polite, they
attempt to minimise the cost of the proposed action, and they offer freedom to the
hearer to refuse to do as told.
198 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts II
(5.21) # After such a wholesome adventure, Denali and I agreed to
postpone work till Saturday (when we would for sure do it,
seriously). ‘Can you wake me up early tomorrow when you head
to the dining hall?’ she requested. # ‘If I can wake up, sure,’ I
promised, ‘And will you wake me up if I don’t wake you up?’ #
(iWeb)
(5.22) # I create the weekly newsletters for his website and also help him
increase his subscribers. He requested today ‘I want you to please
come up with a way to encourage subscribers to cancel, within the
first three sentences of the newsletter.’ (iWeb)
(5.23) # ‘So Bella, tell us a little bit about yourself.’ He requested politely.
I pulled my face out of Edward’s chest and shrugged. # ‘What is
there to tell?’ I questioned # (iWeb)
(5.24) # ‘Will you do me the favour, Octavie,’ requested the judge in
the courteous tone which he never abandoned, ‘to remove that
veil which you wear. It seems out of harmony, someway, with the
beauty and promise of the day.’ # (iWeb)

Activity 8 will make students cognizant of the fact that the base
constructions used in the examples correspond to key elements of the
semantics of requests. The IMPERATIVE base construction selects the
hearer as the agent of the proposed action, the CAN YOU DO X? and
WILL YOU DO X? constructions refer to some of the obstacles that may
prevent the requestive force from moving the hearer into action (i.e. the
hearer’s lack of ability or willingness to comply), and the I WANT YOU
TO DO X base construction reflects the fact that the speaker has a strong
desire that the proposed action is carried out. In addition, several linguistic
strategies combine with these base strategies to metonymically activate
further elements of the semantics of requests. Thus, in example (5.21),
the pronoun me and the interrogative intonation activate the beneficiary
of the action (i.e. the speaker) and the optionality (i.e. freedom) that
requests offer hearers to decide whether to comply with the action or not,
respectively. In example (5.22), the adverb please makes explicit one of the
central features of requesting: the use of politeness as a persuasive strategy
to avoid imposition and to gain the hearer’s compliance. In example
(5.23), the pronoun us makes manifest who is to be the beneficiary of the
action, and the hedging expression a little bit minimises the cost of the
action. Finally, in example (5.24), the courteous tone activates the lack of
imposition and politeness characterises prototypical requests. By making
5.2 Teaching the Know-How of Directives 199
explicit some of the central semantic aspects of requesting through the
flexible combination of base constructions and linguistic strategies, the
expressions in examples (5.21)–(5.24) manage to metonymically activate
the act of requesting as a whole.
The metonymical nature of speech acts also offers speakers the possibility
of producing directives with different degrees of explicitness, as required by
the context and their communicative intentions. Activity 9 illustrates this.

Activity 9
Example (5.25) makes use of the IMPERATIVE base construction, which presents
the hearer(s) as the agent of the proposed action. This makes it compatible with
any type of directive (e.g. order, request, advice, begging, suggestion, warning),
since they all share the aforementioned goal. Can you think of a context in
which example (5.25) would be understood straightforwardly as an order? Think
of the type of person who is licensed to give orders and of the people who are
likely to receive them. Then, fill in the gaps below to create a context in which
the IMPERATIVE base construction can be understood as an order.
(5.25) […] When all men see it, the whole world will be at peace. # ‘Go
ahead!’ the ordered loudly to his .
# They did not have long to wait. A great golden cauldron, big
enough to boil an ox, was set outside the court. (iWeb)
In the absence of a rich informative context like the one you have created
above, the IMPERATIVE base construction could have been understood as
any other directive act. Is it possible to activate linguistically the semantic
features that were activated contextually in example (5.25) (i.e. the existence
of a powerful speaker who can impose his will on the hearer(s))? Look at the
following examples, which have been isolated from their context, and choose the
ones that can be straightforwardly understood as orders. Which one is a better
example of an order? Can you rate the examples from (5.26) to (5.30) according
to how good an instance of order they are (1 = worst instance of order, 5 = best
instance of order)?. Then reflect on the linguistic strategies that allow their
interpretation as such and explain which aspects of the semantics of ordering
they activate explicitly (e.g. powerful speaker, lack of optionality for the hearer,
imposition, etc.).
(5.26) Go ahead, if you please.
(5.27) Go ahead!!! NOW!
(5.28) Private Johnson, go ahead at once!!!
200 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts II
(5.29) Go ahead, and you’ll eventually find what you are looking for.
(5.30) Go ahead, you moron!

The aim of this activity is to make students aware of the fact that
illocutionary constructions are fluid. Their base constructions can be
combined with a varied number of linguistic strategies to metonymically
activate a smaller or larger number of semantic attributes of the directive
speech act that needs to be communicated, thus rendering instances of
speech acts with different levels of explicitness. If the context is rich and
provides the necessary information about participants, as is the case with
example (5.25), then a bare base construction is enough to convey the order
message. In the absence of a context (examples (5.26)–(5.30)), speakers will
rely for their interpretation on the linguistic strategies that accompany the
base construction. Students will realise that example (5.28) is a highly explicit
instance of order, because the vocative makes explicit the power asymmetry
between the participants, and the expression of immediateness (i.e. at once)
and the impositive intonation activate the lack of freedom of the hearer
to refuse to do as told. A powerful speaker, an impositive nature, and the
lack of optionality on the part of the hearer are central features of ordering,
hence the explicitness of example (5.28). Example (5.27) does not make
explicit the asymmetrical power of the participants, but this can be inferred
from the impositive tone and the use of the expression of immediateness
(i.e. Now!), since these are generally used by powerful speakers. The degree
of explicitness of this example as an order is still fairly high. Likewise,
example (5.30) makes use of a vocative that downgrades the hearer, which
helps to present the speaker as somehow (at least psychologically) more
powerful than the hearer. Together with the impositive intonation, this
example manages to convey an order interpretation fairly easily but to a
lesser extent than the two previous examples. Examples (5.26) and (5.29), on
the contrary, do not make any of the features of ordering explicit. Example
(5.26) increases the optionality of the hearer (i.e. if you please), which favours
a request interpretation. Example (5.29) adds an explanation of the benefit
that the hearer will gain by complying with the imperative, which points
to its interpretation as a piece of advice.
Activity 10 represents a knowledge-development activity connected to
the versatility of base constructions to communicate different directive
speech acts unambiguously when combined with the right linguistic
strategies.
5.2 Teaching the Know-How of Directives 201

Activity 10
The base construction YOU HAVE TO DO X has traditionally been connected
with orders. A corpus-based study of directives (see Chapter 4) has shown that it is
also used to convey some other directives, in which a certain degree of imposition
is necessary and compatible with the goal of the act. Look at the following
examples and decide which directive speech act is being communicated. Fill in
the gaps with the appropriate performative verb (e.g. warned, advised, ordered,
requested, etc.). The linguistic strategies that guide the interpretation have been
underlined to serve as hints.
(5.31) # ‘You know, I didn’t like sweet, Woman.’ He replied her with
annoyed look. # ‘You have to taste before complain. Eat! Now!’ she
him. # ‘Bossy witch!’ he complained but opened
his mouth (iWeb)
(5.32) # ‘PLEASE. Promise me, Gabriel,’ Corrine had
him in the hospice, thin and wasted from the cancer that was
killing her. ‘You have to promise.’ # (iWeb)
(5.33) # Here is Grey’s on how to get the best deal on
your next new car. # […] 1. Know what you want. It will take
some time to research which new car fits your buying checklist and
your budget. ‘You have to know what you want and be smart about
it,’ Grey (iWeb)
(5.34) # ‘Everything is viral … immediate … and real-time.’ # ‘It’s an
extraordinary way to become a global business and have a global
relevance and voice. But you have to be cautious and thoughtful about
it,’ he . ‘People don’t always read things the way
they are intended.’ # ‘Starbucks recently found itself defending
and then abandoning a campaign to bring awareness to
promote discussion of racial issues. Baristas were encouraged
to write ‘Race Together’ on cups.’ # (iWeb)

After completing this activity, students will realise that the impositive
flavour of the YOU HAVE TO DO X base construction fares well with
orders (example (5.31)), beggings (example (5.32)), advice acts (example (5.33)),
and warnings (example (5.34)). The impositive nature of orders emerges
from a power asymmetry between the participants. Beggings also make
use of imposition in combination with politeness and insistence. As shown
in Chapter 4 (Section 4.3.1) this is due to the fact that speakers uttering a
202 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts II
begging have a high desire to achieve their goal, which explains their use
of impositive formulae that may be effective in moving the hearer into
action. The imposition, however, is simultaneously softened with politeness
strategies due to the fact that speakers uttering beggings do not have the
necessary power to actually impose on the hearer. In this case, the use of
impositive base constructions is just a means of letting the hearer know
how important it is for the speaker that the action is carried out. As regards
advice acts and warnings, the use of impositive formulae is licensed by the
fact that these acts seek a benefit for the hearer. Therefore, imposition is
not perceived as face-threatening, but rather as an expression of concern
for the hearer, whom the speaker wants to benefit from his knowledge and
from carrying out the proposed action.
This activity could be complemented with the following question to help
students develop their knowledge about this construction further:
It is an interesting fact that the YOU HAVE TO DO X base construction has not
been found at work in the expression of requests and suggestions. Can you think
of which aspects of the semantics (i.e. know-what) of these two directives make
this base construction not useful in these cases? To reason your answers, compare
the know-what of requests and suggestions with that of beggings in relation to
the speaker’s degree of willingness that the proposed action is carried out. Also
compare requests and suggestions with advice acts and warnings regarding the
attribute of cost–benefit (i.e. who is to benefit from the proposed action). The
know-what tables of each of these directives can be found in Chapter 4.
By comparing the attributes of speaker’s willingness and cost–benefit in the
directives under consideration, students will realise that speakers uttering
requests and suggestions do not have such a high degree of willingness for
the action to be performed as is the case with beggings. Also, they will see
that requests and suggestions seek the benefit of the speaker, while advice
acts and warnings aim to benefit the hearer. When the goal is to benefit
some else, the use of imposition is not felt as impolite as when the benefit
is for oneself. Hence the aforementioned compatibility of beggings, advice
acts, and warnings with the notion of imposition communicated by the
YOU HAVE TO DO X base construction is not shared by requests and
suggestions.
Once the metonymic and fluid nature of directive constructions has been
learned, students can be asked to practise the recognition and production
of directive speech acts adapted to a variety of contexts. For this purpose,
they should have at hand the know-what descriptions and the sets of base
constructions and linguistic strategies for each directive speech act reported
in Chapter 4. EFL teachers and textbook designers can choose whether to
use full versions of them or to divide them into modified shorter versions
5.2 Teaching the Know-How of Directives 203
that focus on different constructions or fit the needs of particular contexts.
Activities 11 and 12 illustrate how this can be done.

Activity 11
All directives are sensitive to contextual and social factors, and their forms may
change accordingly. Requests are one type of directive that is specially affected by
these variables. Read the section of the know-what of requests that summarises
possible interactions with contextual and social dimensions of their realisation
(see Table 5.3; full version in Chapter 4, Section 4.2.1).
After reading and commenting on the interactions included in the know-
what of requests, look at the contexts below and choose the most appropriate
realisation of the CAN YOU DO X? base construction. Underline and comment
on the linguistic strategies that have been added to the base construction.
Afterwards, say which interactions between the attributes of requesting and
the contextual/social variables are being highlighted by them.
Context 1. You are with your brother or sister and need to borrow a dictionary
to do your homework. How would you request it from your sibling using the
CAN YOU DO X? base construction. Choose one of the following options:
a. Can you lend me your dictionary?
b. If you don’t mind, could you please lend me your dictionary?
Context 2. You want to take your father’s car to take your boyfriend to the
prom. This is quite a costly favour to ask since your father is very keen on his car
and systematically refuses to let other people drive it. Which of the two versions
of the CAN YOU DO X? base construction below do you think could be more
successful in helping you achieve your goal?

Table 5.3 The know-what of requests (interactions between attributes and variables)

Interactions between cost of the action, politeness, optionality, and minimisation

of cost.
The higher the cost of the action, the higher the need to be polite, to acknowledge the
freedom of the hearer to refuse, and/or to minimise the cost of the action.
Interactions between politeness, formality, and social distance.
You can perform requests in all contexts regardless of their formality, and they can be
directed to hearers regardless of the social distance that separates them from the
speaker. Nevertheless, you should be aware that the higher the formality of the context
or the larger the social distance between the participants, the politer the request will
need to be to secure compliance. Remember that politeness can also be achieved
indirectly by means of minimising the cost of the action and/or increasing the
optionality of the hearer to do as told.
204 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts II
a. Dad, could you lend me your car to take Paul to the prom? Just once, just
tonight?
b. Can you please lend me your car to take Paul to the prom?
Context 3. You ask a stranger for the time. Which realisation of the CAN
YOU DO X? base construction seems more appropriate:
a. Sir, can you tell me the time?
b. Sir, could you tell me the time, please?

Activity 11 teaches students that small social distances do not require high
amounts of politeness (context 1), except when the cost of the requested
action is high (context 2), which asks for higher politeness (i.e. modal in
the past) and minimisation of cost (i.e. Just once? Just tonight?) strategies.
On the contrary, large social distances (context 3) demand higher doses of
politeness (i.e. vocative signalling the hearer’s superiority, modal in the past,
explicit politeness marker please), independently of the cost of the proposed
action, to secure compliance.

Activity 12
Use the linguistic realisation procedures included in Table 5.4 to adapt the
IMPERATIVE base construction for requests to the communicative needs of
the different contexts given below.
Context 1. You are sitting next to your classmate in the library. The book
you need is by his side. Request the book of him. Take into account the social
distance variable in your choice of linguistic strategies.
Context 2. You are talking to the mayor of your city during an informal
meeting between local politicians and citizens. You want to ask her to devote
more resources to keeping the city clean. How would you request it using the
IMPERATIVE base construction? Take into account the power asymmetry
between you and your interlocutor, but also bear in mind that the meeting is
an informal one.
Context 3. You need to ask your best friend to babysit your kids on Friday night
so that you can go out with your new date. This is a big and costly favour to ask
from your friend, since your kids are rather naughty, and your friend does not like
kids so much. Which linguistic strategies would you add to the IMPERATIVE
base construction taking into account the costly nature of this request?
5.2 Teaching the Know-How of Directives 205
Table 5.4 Linguistic realisation procedures for combination with request base
constructions

EXPRESSIONS OF POLITENESS please, kindly, use of modals in

past tense
EXPRESSIONS OF OPTIONALITY if you please, if you will, if
possible, if you can, question
tags (can you?, will you?)
EXPRESSIONS OF SOCIAL CLOSENESS diminutives, endearment terms,
vocatives signalling social
closeness
EXPRESSIONS OF MINIMISATION OF COST a (little) bit, just, a second, a
moment
EXPRESSIONS PRAISING THE HEARER or vocatives (sir, madam, etc.)
SIGNALLING HIS SUPERIORITY

Activity 12 is a production-development task that prompts students to

experiment with the different linguistic strategies that can be combined
with the IMPERATIVE base construction to render requests with varied
degrees of politeness, optionality, and/or minimisation of cost as required
by contextual needs. Thus, context 1, which displays a small social distance
between participants, does not ask for higher dose of politeness and a bare
imperative or an imperative with a vocative signalling the social closeness
between participants suits the context well (e.g. Buddy, pass the book). In
context 2, the informal context licenses the use of the IMPERATIVE base
construction, but the power asymmetry between the participants asks for
some markers of optionality and politeness (e.g. If possible, devote some more
resources to keep the city clean, please). Finally, in context 3, the costly nature
of the request requires of minimisation of cost and the use of politeness
to gain the hearer’s compliance (e.g. Please, babysit for me on Friday. Just
this once!).
As detailed in Chapter 4, while some directives like orders, and to
a lesser extent requests and suggestions, display constructions whose
scope does not generally go beyond the sentence level; others, like
beggings, advice acts, and warnings often make use of suprasentential
configurations in their expression. Their base constructions are thus
combined with one or more clauses or sentences, either in the same or
different conversational turns, in order to activate the relevant semantic
features of the directive act. Activity 13 offers practice on this issue in
relation to the act of begging.
206 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts II

Activity 13
The linguistic realisation of the act of begging often involves the combination
of a base construction (e.g. IMPERATIVE, CAN YOU DO X?, etc.) and
several other linguistic strategies, which involve the use of additional clauses
(e.g. reason, purpose) and sentences realising further speech acts (e.g. promising,
negotiating). Look at the examples of begging below and identify for each
of them the base construction and the additional linguistic strategies. Then,
explain which aspects of the meaning of beggings do each of them help to
activate.
(5.35) # Given Jacob’s history with hobbies, it was no surprise that Jacob’s
father was reluctant to buy him a magician’s kit for his birthday.
‘Geez, Jacob … You sure you wouldn’t rather I got you more guitar
lessons?’ He suggested. Jacob was insistent. ‘Dad, you’ve got to get me
the magician’s kit. This time I’ ll stick with it for real. I promise! Come
on, Dad,’ Jacob begged. Jacob’s father sighed and then replied, ‘Oh,
I don’t know, Jacob. Things are awfully tight right now.’ (iWeb)
(5.36) I took the game out of my pocket and tried to give it back to him,
but he wouldn’t even look at me. […] I didn’t know how bad it was
going to be, but I knew it was going to be really bad. ‘Please don’t
call the police!’ I begged. ‘It was only one little thing and I promise
I’ ll never ever do it again!’ (iWeb)
(5.37) # ‘Will you come tomorrow and pick me up? Bring Theo so he can
see my mum?’ I asked hopefully. My mum would be upset if she
didn’t get to see her grandson too. # He groaned loudly. ‘Can’t you
just buy a return ticket?’ # ‘Finn, please?’ I begged. ‘My mum would
love to see you two.’ That wasn’t strictly true, she would probably
rather not see Finn. ‘Please?’ (iWeb)

After completing this activity, students will realise that the base
constructions (i.e. YOU’VE GOT TO DO X, IMPERATIVE, and CAN’T
YOU DO X?, respectively) are used to specify the actions that the speakers
want the hearers to carry out. Additionally, reason clauses/sentences (i.e.
My mum would love to see you two, It was only a little thing) and promise
acts (i.e. I’ ll promise I’ ll never do it again) are strategies aimed at insisting
and negotiating with the hearer to gain his compliance. Both of them are
motivated by some of the key semantic features of beggings. The use of
insistence reveals the high degree to which speakers uttering beggings want
5.2 Teaching the Know-How of Directives 207
the proposed action to be carried out. The need for negotiation strategies, in
turn, shows that the speaker does not have the necessary power to impose
his will, which leads him to find other ways to achieve his goal.
Advice and warning acts also make use of suprasentential units to put
across their message. In Activity 14, students are asked to put this specific
aspect of the production of directive constructions into practice within
the setting of a role play game. More specifically, students are asked to
practise the production of warnings by taking specific roles in hypothetical
scenarios and interacting with their peers.

Activity 14
Look at the following example of warning:
‘Watch out! Quicksand!’ […] Pickett was in the lead walking along the sandy
bank of a small stream when suddenly his feet disappeared into the sand.
‘It’s soft here! Stay back!’ he warned his friend (iWeb)
As the example illustrates, warnings are complex speech acts that involve a set
of at least three illocutionary acts (Carstens, 2002: 192): an alert (e.g. Beware!,
Careful!, Watch out!), an informative act (i.e. a statement of the hazard and/
or consequences of failure to comply: Quicksand! … It’s soft here!), and an
instruction about what to do or not to do to avoid the hazard (i.e. Stay back!).
The order in which these elements of warning are expressed in real situations
need not be the one in the example above. If the harm or danger is imminent,
the instruction may be given before the informative act. They may even appear
in different conversational turns. Also take into account that the informative
act may be omitted if the negative state of affairs menacing the hearer is obvious
from the context.
Practise giving explicit warnings like the one above in the following situations.
For each of them consider carefully whether your warning should include an
alert, an informative act, and an instruction, or whether some of these elements
of warning can/should be omitted in the context under consideration. Also
think about which should be the correct order of these elements in each context.
Context 1. You are strolling with your friend. He is crossing the street without
noticing that a car is coming at full speed towards him.
Context 2. You are a member of the advisory board of an important business
company. You are discussing the course of actions to be taken to help improve
the results of the company. You have confidential information that attempting
208 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts II
to expand exports to other countries at this moment is too risky. You express this
information in the form of a warning to the rest of the members of the advisory
board. Would the alert element be necessary in this particular interaction?
Would you start you warning with an informative act or with the instruction?

Students should come to the conclusion that the imminent danger in

context 1, and the fact that such danger and its consequences are already
obvious from the context, make the informative act unnecessary. The
speaker uttering a warning in this context would most probably just give
an alert (i.e. Watch out!!) and/or an instruction (i.e. Stop!!).
Context 2 represents a more formal context, and the danger involved is
not imminent. An alert would probably feel too informal in this situation,
and it would be more appropriate to simply offer an informative act
justifying the subsequent instruction.

5.3 Teaching Cross-Cultural and Cross-

Linguistic Issues of Directives
Different languages have developed different constructions for the
expression of directive speech acts, and sometimes, even when the same
constructions exist in L1 and L2, each of them favours the use of particular
linguistic configurations for the production of the same act. As argued in
contemporary contrastive studies this is a potential source of difficulties
for learners of a second language (Hijazo-Gascón, Cadierno & Ibarretxe-
Antuñano, 2016; Ruiz de Mendoza & Agustin, 2016). As Holme (2009) has
noted, lack of awareness of these constructional mismatches may result in
transfer effects and faulty representations, leading the EFL learner to make
errors based on the use of L1 forms and meanings in L2.
Taking a contrastive approach to the teaching of constructions to EFL
students has, therefore, been recently advocated by researchers within the
cognitive linguistics paradigm (Römer, O’Donnell & Ellis, 2014, Ruiz
de Mendoza & Agustin, 2016). As De Knop and De Rycker (2008: 2)
rightly argue, this contrastive approach may serve ‘the purpose of preparing
teaching materials and exploiting these in L2/FL instruction’ with the aim
of helping students avoid mistakes stemming from mismatches between the
semantics, pragmatics, and formal features between two languages. Recent
experimental studies have also provided evidence on the psychological
validity of constructions for EFL students, as well as the benefits that can
be obtained from teaching practices and materials based on the explicit
5.3 Teaching Cross-Linguistic Issues of Directives 209
instruction of constructional aspects of language (Holme, 2010; Baicchi,
2016; Sung & Yang, 2016).
The cognitive pedagogical grammar of directive speech acts offered
in Chapter 4 provides corpus-based information on the constructional
mismatches that exist in the production of directive speech acts in Spanish
and English. Activities 15–21 exploit the aforementioned data for teaching
purposes.

Activity 15
Consider the contexts of situation in Table 5.5 and carry out the following
fieldwork. First read the contexts to at least ten people of your choice, who
should be speakers of your native language, and ask them to complete the gaps
with a directive speech act (e.g. order, request, suggestion, warning, begging,
or advice act).
Then compare the Spanish constructions provided by your informants to the
ones that would be used in English in the same contexts (helping yourselves
with the information included in the know-what and know-how tables for
suggestions in Chapter 4, Sections 4.4.1 and 4.4.2) and discuss the similarities
and differences.

Comparing the L1 and L2 directive constructions that are used to fill

in the gaps in Activity 15 will lead students to realise that there are L1
constructions that are not possible in L2, such as the use of questions in
the present tense as means of suggestions (e.g. ¿Vamos a la discoteca? *Do
we go to the disco?). The activity will also offer students a chance to reflect
on the fact that unsolicited advice to people who have a higher social status
(context 2) is considered a face-threatening act in English and therefore
requires of more indirect constructions than in Spanish. Context 3 will

Table 5.5 Fieldwork, comparison, and discussion task

Context 1. You are with your friends planning what to do on Friday night. You suggest going to
the disco:
Context 2. Your boss is going through a rough phase in his life. You would like to give him a
good piece of advice that helps him solve his problems. You say:
Context 3. Your see that your best friend is going to make a big mistake at work. You want to
warn him and say:
210 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts II
most probably be filled in with performative expressions in Spanish (e.g.
Be warned that …; I warn you that …), but not in English. Students will be
taught that this is connected to the fact that the act of warning (like that of
advising) is considered an act of confianza and social closeness in Spanish.
Hence, the directness of a performative is not perceived as an imposition
in the Spanish culture.

Activity 16
¿ME HACES X?, as in ¿Me pasas la sal? (*Do you pass me the salt?), is one
of the most productive request constructions in Spanish. However, direct
translation of this construction into English (*DO YOU DO ME X?) is not
acceptable. Choose those English request constructions in Table 5.6 that can

Table 5.6 Base constructions for requests in English

IMPERATIVE
CAN YOU DO X?
COULD YOU DO X?
I WOULD LIKE X
I WOULD LIKE YOU TO DO X
I WISH X
I WISH YOU TO DO X
IF YOU WILL DO X
WILL YOU DO X?
WOULD YOU DO X?
DO YOU HAVE X?
HAVE YOU GOT X?
CAN WE NOT DO X?
COULD WE NOT DO X?
MAY YOU DO X?
I WANT YOU TO DO X
I NEED YOU TO DO X
IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO DO X
IT WOULD BE GOOD IF YOU COULD DO X
YOU THINK YOU COULD DO X
WOULD YOU MIND DOING X?
ANY CHANCE YOU COULD DO X?
I DIRECT THAT YOU SHALL DO X
I ASK YOU TO DO X
I ASK THAT YOU DO X
YOU ARE REQUESTED TO DO X
5.3 Teaching Cross-Linguistic Issues of Directives 211
be used to convey a similar requestive meaning in English. Take into account
that the constructions that you choose should be similar in terms of politeness,
optionality, etc., and appropriate to be used in similar contexts.

After considering the politeness and optionality offered by the ¿ME

HACES X? construction in Spanish, EFL students should come to the
conclusion that the most similar English constructions would be CAN
YOU DO X (FOR ME)? and WILL YOU DO X (FOR ME)?
Activity 17 encourages the use of free online corpora to involve students
in consciousness-raising tasks about constructional differences in the
production of requests between English and Spanish. The use of corpus-
based real language data for developing EFL teaching materials has been
strongly advocated as a means of avoiding the already amply documented
mismatches between real language and the one used in textbooks (Cohen &
Ishihara, 2013; Bardovi-Harlig, Mossman & Vellenga, 2014a). This activity
goes one step further, teaching advanced EFL students how to look for real
language data in free online corpora and then guiding them in the analysis of
those data to assess the productivity of a particular construction in L1 and L2.

Activity 17
The CAN YOU DO X (FOR ME)? base construction for requests in English
has a counterpart in Spanish (i.e. ¿(ME)PUEDES HACER X?). However,
this construction is much more frequent and productive in one of these two
languages. Use the iWeb and the Corpes XXI free online corpora for English
and Spanish, respectively, to make a simple search for these two constructions
in collocation with the performative verbs ‘requested’ and ‘pidió’, respectively.
Which of the two languages makes a more extensive use of this construction?
Confirm your findings by checking the know-how section on requests in the
cognitive pedagogical grammar (Chapter 4, Section 4.2.2).
Follow-up question: Which other similar constructions can be used in Spanish
instead of ¿ME PUEDES HACER X? to convey a similar meaning? Look at
Table 5.7, which lists the most common request base constructions in Spanish,
and choose those that may be used in similar contexts.

The students’ searches in the suggested corpora will make them realise
that the CAN YOU DO X? base construction is much more productive
212 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts II
Table 5.7 Base constructions for requests in Spanish

¿(ME) PODRÍAS HACER X?

¿TIENES X?
(YO) TE PIDO QUE HAGAS X
(LO QUE) YO NECESITO ES QUE HAGAS X
¿NO PODRÍAS/PODRÍAMOS HACER X?
IMPERATIVE
¿(ME) PUEDES HACER X?
ME GUSTARÍA X
ME GUSTARÍA QUE TÚ HAGAS X
ESPERO X
ESPERO QUE HAGAS X
QUIERO QUE HAGAS X
¿ME HACES X?
¿ME HARÍAS X?

than its Spanish counterpart ¿ME PUEDES HACER X? With the help
of their teachers they should also come to the conclusion that Spanish has
alternative constructions that can be used in similar contexts (e.g. ¿ME
HACES/HARÍAS X?).
As noted by Taguchi (2011), together with corpus-based activities,
technology has brought exciting new venues for materials and formats used
in pragmatic teaching. When dealing with speech acts, multimedia teaching
materials offer an ideal context in which to learn key pragmatic issues, since
they provide students with the rich socio-cultural setting that surrounds the
act in a natural, catching, and entertaining manner (for a review of Web
sites on the use of multimedia in L2 pragmatics, see Cohen (2008)). This is
especially useful in teaching contrastive aspects of speech acts. Textbook
designers can create specific multimedia materials, but EFL teachers can also
use clips of real movies and TV series for these purposes. Activity 18 suggests
a simple way of taking advantage of real multimedia materials to create a
consciousness-raising exercise that focuses on the differences between the
constructional realisations of speech acts in L1 and L2.

Activity 18
Watch an episode of the well-known TV series Friends and note down all
instances of directives produced by their protagonists. Then translate the directives
literally into your own native language. Would you use the same constructions
in your native language? Are there any constructions that do not exist in your
own language? Which ones would you use to make those acts sound natural in
your language and in the contexts in which they have been used in the TV show?
5.3 Teaching Cross-Linguistic Issues of Directives 213
Activity 18 provides students with real contexts and real L2
constructions for the expression of directive acts. The task of translating
them into their own native language will help them become aware of
possible mismatches both in the form and function of those speech acts.
They will realise, for example, that in Spanish it is more common to
use direct, unmitigated advice acts, while English favours more indirect
forms to avoid imposition. As noted in Chapter 4 (Section 4.5.1), advice
acts in Spanish are considered acts of confianza, and this licenses the use
of more direct formulae in their expression. Activity 19 puts forward a
sample exercise that allows students to put this knowledge into practice
in a production-development task.

Activity 19
Consider the contexts described below and decide which linguistic formulae
you would use to give advice in your own language. Then, think of which
constructions and linguistic strategies would be appropriate in English. You can
choose them from Table 5.8, which includes some of the most common advice
constructions in English. Before doing the exercise and in order to make the
appropriate choices, read again the information included in the know-what

Table 5.8 Base constructions for advice acts in English

IMPERATIVE
CONDITIONALS
IF I WERE YOU, I WOULD DO X
DECLARATIVE (EVALUATIVE) SENTENCE
E.G. DOING X IS/CAN BE GOOD, IT WOULD BE GOOD/USEFUL TO DO X,
YOU WOULD DO WELL TO DO X, I THINK IT IS IMPORTANT TO DO X
YOU NEED TO DO X
DECLARATIVE SENTENCE (REASON) + CO-ORDINATING CONJUNCTION (SO)
E.G. SO YOU SHOULD DO X, SO DOING X IS IMPORTANT, SO IT’S BEST
TO DO X
YOU/WE SHOULD DO X
PERFORMATIVE VERBS
E.G. YOU ARE ADVISED TO DO X, I RECOMMEND THAT YOU DO X, I
ENCOURAGE/URGE YOU TO DO X
YOU HAVE TO DO X
I WANT YOU TO DO X
YOU’D BETTER DO X
YOU/WE MUST DO X
YOU CAN DO X
WHY DON’T YOU DO X?
214 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts II
Table 5.9 The know-what of advice acts (interactions with socio-contextual
variables)

• If the piece of advice benefits not only the hearer but also you and/or a third party,
you do not need to respect the freedom of the hearer so much, and it is acceptable to
make your advice a bit more compelling through the use of politeness markers that
make the hearer aware of the fact that his compliance is socially expected.
• If you are less powerful than the hearer (social/institutional power), you are expected
to soften your advice by increasing its indirectness and ultimately the politeness of
your act.
• If you are socially close to the hearer, you are likely to be more emotionally involved,
you will want him to follow your advice, and you will need to make use of politeness
to achieve his compliance.

of advice acts (a modified short version is provided in Table 5.9). You should
also take into account the fact that while advice acts are considered acts of high
confianza and social closeness within the Spanish culture, English users tend
to understand them as potentially face-threatening acts. This favours the use of
direct explicit advising in Spanish (i.e. imperatives, performatives), as opposed
to the use of more indirect constructions in English (i.e. IF I WERE YOU, I
WOULD DO X).
Context 1. Your child starts acting up in the middle of the street. He is
throwing a tantrum and screaming. A stranger stops by and tries to help by
giving advice on how to handle the situation.
Context 2. Your child starts acting up in the middle of the street. He is
throwing a tantrum and screaming. Your mother is with you and tries to help
by giving advice on how to handle the situation.
Context 3. Your child starts acting up in the middle of the rehearsal of a school
performance. He is throwing a tantrum and screaming and he is spoiling the
rehearsal. Your child’s teacher tries to help by giving advice on how to handle
the situation.

By completing this activity students will learn that Spanish speakers could
use a direct advice in the three situations without risking threatening the
hearers’ social face (e.g. IMPERATIVE base construction, performative
verbs). It should also become apparent that in English context 1 would
require a more tentative advice construction due to the social distance that
exists between the participants (i.e. IF I WERE YOU, I’D DO X, YOU’D
5.3 Teaching Cross-Linguistic Issues of Directives 215
BETTER DO X, etc.). The speaker in context 2 (i.e. the hearer’s mother)
is expected to be more emotionally involved because of her social closeness
with the hearer, and this will lead her to make use of polite realisation
procedures as a strategy to get the hearer to comply with her advice (e.g.
Honey, please, DO X, YOU HAVE TO DO X, YOU NEED TO DO X).
Finally, in context 3, the social distance between the speakers asks for the
use of indirect advice constructions. Additionally, since the beneficiary of
the advice is not just the hearer but also the teacher himself and the rest
of the children taking part in the rehearsal, the teacher is likely to make
use of politeness strategies to inform the hearer that compliance is socially
expected (e.g. IT WOULD BE GOOD / USEFUL TO DO X, PLEASE,
I THINK IT’S IMPORTANT TO DO X).
Discourse-completion tasks can also be a useful classroom activity
to develop students’ ability to produce context-appropriate speech acts
(Eslami-Rasekh, 2005; Limberg, 2015). In this connection, Activity 20
prompts students to elicit responses that include suggestions and beggings.

Activity 20
Form small groups of three or four students and work on the discourse-completion
task provided in Table 5.10. Work together to complete the missing directive(s).
In doing this, help yourselves by checking the information included in the know-
what and know-how of the directives involves (see the corresponding tables in
Chapter 4).Share your answers with the rest of the groups and discuss their
appropriateness. Your discussion should make use of arguments that reflect an
understanding of the information provided in the know-what and know-how
of suggestions and beggings, respectively. Finally, choose the most appropriate

Table 5.10 Discourse-completion task

SUGGESTIONS & BEGGINGS: DISCOURSE-COMPLETION TASK

Context and instructions: You are making plans for the weekend with your friends. You
would like to attend a new arts exhibition in London. Make a suggestion to visit the
exhibition.
You:
Your friends start suggesting other activities. They do not seem to be very excited about
the exhibition. However, you really want to visit it because you brother’s paintings are
part of it. Let your friends know how badly you want to attend the exhibition by
begging them to go.
You:
216 A Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar of Speech Acts II
proposals and act them out for the class. Debate whether the same constructions
would have been used by native speakers of English. Do you think that your
choices have been influenced by your L1 knowledge about these particular
speech acts?

This activity asks students to produce suggestions and beggings that are
adjusted to a specific informal context and that are uttered by participants
who are socially close to each other. The production-development task is
guided by the information included in the cognitive pedagogical grammar
(know-what and know-how) of the directive acts involved. The ensuing
discussion serves the purpose of making students reflect on the adequacy
of the different constructions chosen by each group. By comparing their
proposals and discussing and assessing their appropriateness in the context
under consideration, students should become aware of negative pragmatic
transfers they may be making from their own L1 (Limberg, 2015). The
same objective of developing the students’ L2 pragmatic competence can
be achieved by offering them activities that ask them to analyse and repair
errors in the expression of speech acts within a given context. Activity 21
illustrates this.

Activity 21
Read and analyse the directives in Table 5.11. Then decide whether (1) the
directive chosen by the speaker is the one that best fits the situation, and (2) if
it has been carried out appropriately in the context under consideration. If not,
provide an alternative. If needed, check out the information included in the
know-what and know-how for each directive in Chapter 4.
Discuss your corrections with the rest of the class and act out the pragmatically
appropriate version(s).
Follow-up question: compare the directives chosen to what you would say in
your own language. Would you use the same amount of politeness? Would
you be more or less direct than the speakers in the above contexts? Discuss and
explain the differences that you perceive between the constructions used in
English and those that would be used in your native language.

Repairing activities of this kind (adapted from Limberg, 2015) help to

develop students’ awareness of key semantic, socio-cultural, and linguistic/
5.3 Teaching Cross-Linguistic Issues of Directives 217
Table 5.11 Repair and comparison task

DIRECTIVES: ANALYSE, REPAIR, AND COMPARE TASK

Context 1. Two friends have been playing together the whole afternoon. It is time to go home,
and Pete’s mother has asked them to put things away before leaving. Pete orders his friend to
put things away for him: ‘Dave, put the PlayStation away in its shelf. Now!’
Context 2. You need a kidney transplant. Your sister is the only person compatible with you.
You need to ask her to donate one of her kidneys to you. You say: ‘Ann, you know I need a
transplant. You are the only compatible relative. Would it be possible for you to consider
donating a kidney to me?’
Context 3. You are walking along the street with one of your colleagues. You see a pot about to
fall from one window in the building ahead of you that may fall right on your colleague’s
head. You warn him of the danger: ‘John, stop! That pot is about to fall.’
Context 4. You are attending the first board meeting in your new company. There is an ongoing
discussing about the new measures that need to be taken to improve revenues. You want to
share a suggestion with the rest of the board members: ‘Cut down the prices, and the sales
will go up. That’s what needs to be done, mates!’.
Context 5. Your daughter is about to break a long-term relationship with her boyfriend and
comes to you for advice on what to do. She specifically asks for your advice, and you tell her
the following: ‘Honey, the sooner the better. Do it today and be straightforward!’

constructional aspects of directive speech acts. They also lead them to

put the acquired knowledge into practice by having to propose correct
alternatives, thus developing their competence in the production of L2
directives. The follow-up question leads them to reflect on potential
mismatches with the realisation of those directives in their native language.
6

Conclusions

However well-equipped our language, it can never be forearmed

against all possible cases that may arise and call for description: fact
is richer than diction.
Austin (1979: 195)

There is probably a substantial degree of truth in Austin’s pessimistic quote

about the scope to which language can faithfully describe reality and help us
interact with others smoothly. This is especially true as regards speech acts.
As has been made apparent in the previous chapters, their kaleidoscopic
nature, which involves the mastering of a complex and dynamic interplay
among cultural, pragmatic, transactional, and interactional variables, turns
their learning and appropriate use into a challenge, especially for foreign
language students. This has also taken a toll on EFL textbooks, whose
treatment of speech acts is undisputedly far from satisfactory at present.
Despite the inherent difficulty involved in the use of illocutionary
acts and the ever-present risk of miscommunication, language is to
date our main and most highly developed tool of communication, and
understanding how it works is central to our conceptualisation of reality,
to our ability to convey thoughts, and to meeting our needs to interact
with others and get them to act in our benefit. Bearing this in mind,
the present book has focused on the description of a specific subgroup of
directive speech acts in order to unveil their conceptual nature and to offer
an inventory of the most frequent constructions and linguistic realisation
procedures for their expression in English. This has been done in the form
of a cognitive pedagogical grammar of directive speech acts, which has also
been translated into practical teaching activities, thus offering examples
that can be used for textbook design and serve as a guide for EFL teachers
interested in creating their own teaching materials.
This book is motivated by the attested underrepresentation and
unsystematic treatment of directive speech acts in current EFL textbooks

218
Conclusions 219
(Nguyen, 2011; Ulum, 2015; Ren & Han, 2016; Pérez-Hernández,
2019). The reasons for this poor handling of directives in contemporary
teaching materials may be varied but, as has emerged in the course of this
investigation, there are two main factors that clearly contribute to this
situation. The first is related to the disconnection that exists between the
research carried out in the field of speech acts and its implementation in
teaching materials. Speech acts have been a thriving field of investigation
ever since Austin’s and Searle’s foundational contributions in the 1960s
and 1970s, and speech acts have been approached from a myriad of
diverse, sometimes even contradictory, theoretical perspectives. Research
advancements on speech acts have mounted up over the years, but their
transfer to the teaching practice has not been quite as dynamic. Textbook
designers have often found themselves facing different proposals on the
nature of speech acts with no tools and/or criteria to choose the best suited
for teaching purposes and, in many cases, the pragmatic approach being
an exception to this, with little or no illustration or sample materials to
achieve this. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the treatment
of speech acts in EFL textbook series is often anecdotal, highly formulaic,
and unsystematic.
The second reason behind the underrepresentation of directive speech
acts in current EFL textbooks is undoubtedly the complexity of the task
involved. The multifaceted nature of illocutionary acts and the rich amount
of interactional, transactional, social, and cultural variables that need to
be mastered to produce speech acts appropriately in specific contexts
make their teaching difficult and their learning by EFL students arduous.
This may also explain, at least partially, why EFL textbooks have not yet
approached the teaching of speech acts in a systematic and detailed manner,
limiting their intervention to a small number of highly formulaic directive
expressions, which are not always faithful to the actual constructions
favoured by native speakers. The difficulty of the task, however, should
not prevent teaching professionals from attempting to at least provide their
students with the knowledge of the most frequent directive constructions in
English, the tools to know which of those constructions best fit a particular
context, and the resources to be able to modify them to serve different
interactional and social needs.
This book challenges the current state of the art in the teaching of
directives to advanced EFL students and offers EFL teachers and textbook
designers the necessary information to improve their teaching throughout
the curriculum. To achieve this aim, a revision of current theoretical
approaches on this matter has been carried out, leading to the formulation
220 Conclusions
of a comprehensive theory of speech acts that brings together attested
findings from each of the former approaches. The resulting account of
directive speech acts is based on the evidence drawn from a corpus analysis
of real language data and is compatible with current psycholinguistic
experimental knowledge on speech act production and understanding. To
bridge the gap between theory and practice, this theoretical account of
directives has been offered in the form of a cognitive pedagogical grammar
of directive speech acts that avoids excessive specialised jargon and
provides ample exemplification to make its understanding easier for non-
specialists. Finally, a set of practical implementations has been provided
to illustrate how the knowledge about the meaning and form of directives
included in the cognitive pedagogical grammar can be implemented in
real teaching materials. By offering a comprehensive account of speech
acts, compatible with current research and experimental evidence, in an
accessible manner, this book has tackled the main factors that have so
far prevented a comprehensive and systematic treatment of speech acts
in EFL textbooks. It has taken attested advancements from the different
contemporary approaches to illocution to build a unified psychologically
adequate framework of speech acts; it has spelled out the complexity of
their semantics, their rich interactions with social and contextual variables,
their formal, constructional nature, and their cognitive basis in a reader-
friendly manner; and finally, it has bridged the gap between theory and
practice by showing how to implement the former into the latter. This final
section summarises the main contributions made in each of the chapters of
this book, connects them to current trends, and specifies potential future
research.
Chapter 1 established the relevance of directive speech acts for human
relationships. In a world in which social interaction is central to personal
and professional relations, learning how to produce directives appropriately
in different contexts is proven to be crucial. It was also argued that the
difficulties associated with their learning and the social risks involved in
their use represent an especial challenge for EFL learners and teachers alike,
thus focusing on the treatment of directive speech acts in EFL textbooks
and highlighting their present underrepresentation as an issue of concern.
Chapter 1 asked whether there is still room for improvement in the teaching
of directive speech acts, and it was attested that on the basis of the existing
literature there are at least three areas (i.e. cross-linguistic, cognitive,
and constructional aspects of illocutionary performance) in which the
portrayal of directives in EFL textbooks falls short of taking advantage
of current research advancements. This led to the formulation of the
Conclusions 221
main objectives guiding the investigation reported in this book: (1) revising
current research on illocutionary acts to establish a comprehensive theoretical
framework that is compatible with current experimental knowledge on this
issue, and that integrates already attested facts about speech act performance
with further advancements stemming from a cognitive/constructional analysis
of the subject matter (Chapter 2); (2) identifying those aspects of directive
speech acts that are still underdeveloped or poorly treated in contemporary
EFL textbooks (Chapter 3); (3) offering a cognitive pedagogical grammar
of directive speech acts that supports the theoretical framework described
in Chapter 2 (Chapter 4); and (4) providing a rich collection of practice
materials exploiting the cognitive pedagogical grammar of directive speech
acts in order to enable teachers and textbook designers to take advantage
of the theoretical proposals that are currently missing in EFL textbooks
(Chapter 5). In so doing, this book applies the tenets of cognitive linguistics
to the teaching of directive speech acts, thus opening a new, currently little
explored path to further applications of this theoretical approach to language
within the realm of higher levels of linguistic description.
Chapter 2 revealed that contemporary theories on speech acts are often
skewed towards one of the many aspects at work in this multifaceted
phenomenon: either towards their pragmatic and interactional nature
(Leech, 1983; Brown & Levinson, 1987), their conversational structure
(Schegloff, 1979, 2007; Levinson, 1983; Mey, 1993; Kasper, 2006), or their
cognitive grounding (Pérez-Hernández, 1996, 2001, 2012, 2013, 2019;
Panther & Thornburg, 1998, 2003; Ruiz de Mendoza & Baicchi, 2007;
Vassilaki, 2017), thus running short of offering a comprehensive account
of the various factors involved in illocutionary performance. Additionally,
most theories were shown to fall within one of three main categories
depending on their acceptance or rejection of the Literal Force Hypothesis,
and consequently to give pride of place to codification (Ross, 1970; Sadock,
1974; Halliday, 1978, 1994; Dik, 1989, 1997), convention (Searle, 1975, 1979;
Morgan, 1978), or inference (Bach & Harnish, 1979; Levinson, 1983; Leech,
1983, 2014; Sperber & Wilson, 1995) in the production and understanding
of speech acts. As a result, many of those theories display an unbalanced
tendency towards either the over-grammaticalisation or over-pragmatisation
of illocutionary phenomena. Despite their attested limitations, Chapter 2
explored the advancement and insight into the nature of illocutionary
acts provided by each of the theories under revision. Thus, functionalists
and pragmatists were credited for revealing the pivotal role of politeness
and the interactional/social dimensions of illocutionary performance.
Conversationalists brought to the fore the advantages of using real language
222 Conclusions
data and of considering larger chunks of language beyond the sentence level.
Cognitivists placed the focus on the cognitive mechanisms that underlie
the production and understanding of speech acts. Bringing together the
advancements provided by each of these theoretical threads into a single
unified framework was argued to be not only desirable but also necessary
in order to have a full understanding of this linguistic phenomenon.
No matter how linguists will attempt to overcome the limitations
of these partial accounts of illocution, what seems uncontroversial at
this stage is that new proposals need to be compatible with the existing
experimental evidence on the psychology of speech acts (Coulson &
Lovett, 2010; Van Ackeren et al., 2012; Gisladottir, Chwilla & Levinson,
2015; Tromp, Hagoort & Meyer, 2016; Trott, 2016; Ruytenbeek, 2017). For
this reason, Chapter 2 also included a revision of current psycholinguistic
works on the cognition of directives. At first sight, the experiments
carried out to date seemed to yield inconclusive results. Some of them,
based on reaction times (Clark & Lucy, 1975) and eye tracking tests
(Yin & Kuo, 2013), suggested that speakers need to decodify the literal
meaning before calculating the indirect one, thus confirming the validity
of the Literal Force Hypothesis. A second group of reaction time tests
(Ervin-Tripp et al., 1987; Gibbs & Gerrig, 1989; Gibbs, 1994, 2002) and
electroencephalography experiments (Coulson & Lovett, 2010) revealed
that indirect speech acts do not take longer to be understood than literal
expressions, thus refuting the need for the Literal Force Hypothesis.
A third group of experiments proved the psychological reality of
conventional speech acts, based on the lower reaction times needed for the
interpretation of this type of conventional forms (Clark, 1979; Abbeduto,
Furman & Davies, 1989). As recently pointed out by Ruytenbeek
(2017: 15), this seemingly contradictory finding is most probably due to
the fact that different experiments provide differing amounts of linguistic
versus contextual information in their design. Despite their scarcity and
apparent inconclusiveness, most contemporary experimental studies were
found to converge in one point: the fact that there exist differences in
the way direct and indirect speech acts are processed. Experiments are
conclusive that indirect speech acts involve a higher amount of memory
retrieval, an extra activation of the Theory of Mind areas, and also result
in larger pupil diameters, which points to a higher processing cost than
that of direct speech acts (Coulson & Lovett, 2010). These findings
directed us to consider the cognitive mechanisms that underlie speech
act production and understanding with a view to proposing a theory of
speech act performance that actually accounts for the differences in the
Conclusions 223
processing of direct, indirect, and conventional speech acts as revealed
by contemporary experimental studies.
Evidence was also provided about the need to adhere to a weaker version
of the Literal Force Hypothesis (Risselada, 1993), which was redefined in
terms of sentence type/speech act compatibility, as opposed to the original
formulation involving a univocal association between the form and the
illocutionary force of a sentence. The weaker version of the Literal Force
Hypothesis advocated in Chapter 2 was shown to still be compatible with
the typological evidence about the existence of three major universal
sentence types. It was also found to be useful in wiring the speakers’
interpretation processes towards a default set of meanings, restricting
the potential targets to those compatible with each sentence type. More
importantly, it was also shown that, unlike the original Literal Force
Hypothesis, this weaker version does not impose a two-step interpretation
pattern of indirect speech acts, where the literal meaning needs to be
accessed before the indirect one is derived, thus directly leading to higher
processing times for indirect speech acts, a fact that experimental studies
had not been able to confirm. A weak Literal Force Hypothesis in terms
of compatibility, on the contrary, was found to be capable of accommodating
the differences in processing among direct and indirect (conventional and
non-conventional, or fully inferred) acts, as well as of accounting for the
prototypical nature of the category of conventional speech acts, without
necessarily singling one of them out as more time-consuming than the
others. It was further hypothesised that the amount of time that it takes
speakers to interpret the meaning of a speech act is rather a function of the
degree of linguistic specification of the utterance used for the expression of
a particular illocutionary act and the amount of contextual information
available to fill in the information missing in the linguistic form. If the
context is rich, an unspecified utterance could be interpreted as fast as one
that is linguistically explicit. This hypothesis fits some of the experimental
data available to date, which points to equally low processing times for
direct, conventional speech acts (i.e. linguistically specified) and indirect,
non-conventional speech acts, as long as sufficient contextual information
is provided for the latter (Section 2.5.1).
The acceptance of a revised weaker version of the Literal Force
Hypothesis, together with the fact that the traditional distinction between
direct and indirect speech acts is not paralleled by different processing
times in experimental studies, led to a redefinition of the notions of direct
and indirect speech acts. It was concluded that an act is direct when the
addressee has enough available information to be able to recognise its
224 Conclusions
illocutionary force effortlessly, regardless of whether this information is
provided linguistically or contextually. On the contrary, an act would
be considered indirect if the information available is not rich enough to
reach the intended interpretation unequivocally. This lack of information,
either contextual or linguistic, was also argued to be responsible for higher
response times, a higher cognitive cost in terms of memory retrieval, and
a greater risk of misinterpretation.
In addition, Chapter 2 showcased the importance of the notions of
conceptual metonymy and illocutionary construction as key analytical
categories in the explanation of the process of interpretation of both direct
and indirect speech acts. Hearers need to identify the illocutionary force
intended by the speaker as being compatible with the sentence type used
for its expression. In this process, they are guided by linguistic and/or
contextual cues, which activate one or more of the characteristic attributes of
the intended speech act. As already argued, speech acts are highly complex
concepts, involving a high number of attributes (i.e. optionality, willingness,
capability, mitigation, politeness, etc.) together with the interplays between
them and with other social variables (i.e. formality, social power, and
distance). Full linguistic rendering of these attributes and variables is not
always desirable (i.e. speakers may prefer to formulate their speech acts in
a more indirect way in order to increase their optionality and politeness
and to decrease their impositive flavour), is rarely necessary (because the
context often fills in the missing information), and is hardly economical,
since full explicitation would result in rather long-winded, cumbersome
utterances. Hearers, therefore, make use of metonymic processes to infer
the intended illocutionary meaning on the basis of the cues provided by
the linguistic expression and the contextual information available (Gibbs,
1994; Panther & Thornburg, 1998; Pérez-Hernández, 2013). In Chapter 2,
it was argued that these metonymic projections are possible thanks to the
fact that speakers have systematised the necessary knowledge about each
speech act category in the form of idealised illocutionary cognitive models
that are available in their long-term memory. It was further noted that the
metonymic exploitation of these illocutionary ICMs involves a special type
of mapping where one or more elements in the source domain are mapped
onto the target domain (i.e. (multiple source)-in-target metonymies). The
number and centrality of the attributes of the illocutionary ICMs that are
mapped onto the target domain is, therefore, flexible, thus allowing for a
continuum of explicitness in the expression of speech acts.
Chapter 2 also addressed the question of whether a constructional
account of directive speech acts is possible. Building such a constructional
Conclusions 225
account faces difficulties stemming from the complex and fluid nature of
speech acts, whose forms are constantly reshaped as needed by the ever-
changing transactional, interactional, and contextual situations in which
the speech act is to be uttered. For this reason, pairing full linguistic
forms with illocutionary meanings has long failed to describe speech
act constructions (e.g. Searle’s IFIDs; Dik’s illocutionary conversors, etc.).
Chapter 2 provided arguments to the effect that dealing with constructions
at higher levels of linguistic description (i.e. pragmatics, discourse) requires
a somewhat different and more flexible approach. In line with Goldberg
and Suttle’s (2010: 469–470) recent definition of constructions as form-
meaning pairings that display a high frequency of use, evidence was
provided about the existence of sets of illocutionary base constructions for
each directive speech act under investigation. It has also been shown how
these base constructions can be further specified by means of linguistic
realisation procedures to communicate a specific directive meaning with
diverse degrees of explicitness. The combination of base constructions and
realisation procedures gives way to families of speech act constructions with
varying degrees of conventionality, as determined by their frequency of
use. In this regard, the present account differs from other contemporary
proposals on illocutionary constructions (see Stefanowitsch, 2003; Ruiz de
Mendoza & Baicchi, 2007; Brdar-Szabó, 2009; Del Campo, 2013).
Chapter 3 reported the results of an analysis of ten advanced EFL
textbooks in relation to their representation of directive speech acts and the
extent to which they have engaged with the theoretical advancements on
illocution described in Chapter 2. In providing an informed answer to the
question of whether current EFL textbooks offer a quantitatively accurate
and qualitatively up-to-date portrayal of directive speech acts, Chapter 3
justifies the need for the present book. The exploration of the collection
of EFL textbooks under analysis has revealed that their quantitative
representation of directives is weak and inconsistent. While most textbooks
include some popular directive acts like requests, suggestions, and advice
acts; other illocutionary acts like beggings and warnings are absent from
the vast majority of textbooks. In addition, it was also observed that the
number of activities/exercises devoted to each speech act was generally low
(i.e. one activity per act), with again the exception of the acts of requesting,
suggesting, and advising, which would feature up to five activities in some
of the textbooks.
In connection with qualitative aspects of the representation of directive
speech acts in EFL textbooks, Chapter 3 concluded that most of them
overlook the teaching of the essential pieces of information students need
226 Conclusions
to gain a clear understanding of the workings of these speech acts. Thus,
instructional material on the semantic attributes that conform to each
directive act (i.e. agent, beneficiary, cost/benefit, optionality, politeness,
etc.), or about their interconnections and synergies with other pragmatic
and social variables (i.e. social distance and power, formality) was absent
from the vast majority of the EFL textbooks under scrutiny. The only
interactional attribute that was found to receive some consideration was
that of politeness, but no systematic explanation was offered about the type
of contexts and/or situations that make its use necessary. Regarding the
effects of social variables on the performance of directives, only three of the
textbooks dealt with those of social distance and formality. Social power
was overlooked in all of them. Still these variables were considered only in
relation to the act of requesting, the rest of directives lacking analogous
explanations.
Regarding the formal and constructional aspects of speech acts, the
exploration of the textbooks revealed that their approach to the teaching
of directives is limited to offering students random lists of expressions and
that, in addition, the formulae chosen as teaching targets are far from
representative of those actually used by native speakers. Students are not
taught the motivation of those forms, or the mental mechanisms (i.e.
metonymy) that enable the use of largely unspecified forms to activate
a particular directive meaning. Neither are they informed about the
possibility of modulating the degree of explicitness, imposition, politeness,
etc. of their acts by means of combining realisation procedures with
the base constructions associated with each directive act. As Boers and
Lindstromberg (2008), Holme (2009), and Tyler (2012), among others,
have pointed out making students aware of the constructional nature of
language and the semantic motivation underlying linguistic forms helps
them wed form to meaning and facilitates learning and memorisation.
Chapter 3 also revealed that the use of real language data in instructional
materials is not widespread, with only half the textbooks under analysis
committed to this practice. In the absence of real examples within their
context of use, it comes as no surprise that most EFL textbooks also
overlook conversational aspects of illocutionary performance, including
the fact that some acts are produced through more than one conversational
turn and are beyond the scope of single sentences. Much in the same
vein and as previously attested in the contemporary studies of Neddar’s
(2010, 2012) and Luomala’s (2010), the EFL textbooks under consideration
were found to neglect cross-linguistic and cross-cultural issues of directive
speech acts performance.
Conclusions 227
As Neddar (2012: 5691) rightly remarks, the omission of cross-cultural/
linguistic issues of illocutionary performance in EFL textbooks has to
do more with a lack of knowledge in its methodological implementation
than with a denial of its effectiveness in inducing learning. Similarly,
the attested exclusion of conversational, constructional, and pragmatic
key aspects of illocution in EFL textbooks may stem from the lack of
co-operation between speech act theoreticians, on the one hand, and
teaching professionals and textbook designers, on the other, as well as to
the shortage of works providing the latter with the necessary information,
together with rich sample materials about how it can be implemented.
Having attested the fact that EFL textbooks rarely make use of the
theoretical advancements described in Chapter 2, Chapters 4 and 5 set out to
fight this unproductive disconnection between theory and practice, as well
as the underlying idea that teaching speech acts properly and in an effective
manner is too complex a task to be systematically tackled in EFL textbooks.
It was argued that this endeavour would, in fact, be possible if teachers and
textbook designers had at their disposal the necessary information about
the semantics and formal nature of speech acts to endow their teaching
with an explicit instruction approach. To this end, Chapter 4 offered a
corpus-based cognitive pedagogical grammar of directive speech acts based
on the theoretical postulates spelled out in Chapter 2. Both the semantic/
pragmatic knowledge associated with each directive under consideration
(i.e. their know-what) and the base constructions and realisation procedures
offered by the English language for their expression (i.e. their know-how)
were described and extensively exemplified with real language data from
the iWeb corpus. Cross-linguistic comparisons of the constructions used in
English and Spanish for each directive speech act under consideration were
also included with the aim of providing the necessary information about
potential learning difficulties stemming from mismatches between the
two languages. Additionally, suprasentential and conversational aspects of
illocutionary performance were considered when relevant to the workings
of the speech acts (e.g. advice acts, warnings).
Chapter 5 presented activities that show how the information in
Chapter 4 can be implemented in EFL textbooks and in the classroom
practice. They tackled semantic/pragmatic (i.e. know-what), linguistic
and constructional (i.e. know-how), and cross-linguistic/cultural issues,
thus offering practice on the three pivotal aspects of directives included
in their associated cognitive pedagogical grammar proposed in Chapter 4.
The type of activities chosen included consciousness-raising, knowledge-
development, comprehension, and production-development tasks. In the
228 Conclusions
design of these activities, real language data from several corpora was
used whenever teaching purposes allowed it, thus offering rich contexts in
order to grant students access to pragmatic, conversational, and situational
aspects of the directives involved.
In contrast to Chapters 2 and 3, which were addressed to a more
specialised readership, with expert knowledge on the topic of speech acts,
Chapters 4 and 5 kept the terminological jargon to a minimum to facilitate
their use by EFL teachers and textbook designers, as well as by graduate
and postgraduate students wanting to explore the field of directive speech
acts. These two chapters provide evidence of the potential pedagogical
applications of cognitive linguistics to EFL teaching. Although beyond the
scope of this book, further experimental evaluation of the effectiveness of
these pedagogical applications will be essential for assessing the theoretical
plausibility of the cognitive framework itself (Langacker, 2008: 66).
This book had two major aims. First, to offer a unified model of
illocution that integrates contemporary theoretical advancements and
that is compatible with current experimental findings on the workings of
speech acts and, second, to translate this model into a cognitive pedagogical
grammar of directive speech acts and a collection of practice materials
that help to enable their efficient teaching to advanced EFL students.
Throughout the chapters, linguistic evidence has been provided to support
the argumentation, formulated on the basis of real language examples and
tested against alternative hypotheses when needed. For practical reasons,
the scope of the investigation has been limited to directive speech acts.
Future research will need to be carried out to assess the possibility of
extending the same theoretical framework to other speech act types, like
expressives, commmissives, or assertives. Further empirical validation
from other disciplines and from experimental analyses, both in the fields
of psycholinguistics and foreign language learning/teaching, will also be
needed to lend stronger support to the claims presented in these pages. This
book thus opens up new complementary lines of investigation in the field
of empirical testing that go beyond the scope of the present research. In
the meantime, it is this author’s hope that the information provided here
can contribute to setting the grounds for a more comprehensive approach
to the illocutionary phenomenon, as well as for a more efficient teaching
of this complex but communicatively essential and powerful dimension
of language.
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Index

Abbas, L. H., 170, 177 conditions of satisfaction, theory of, 24

Achard, 9 preparatory condition, 25, 26
adjacency pair, 33, 71, 83 confianza, 168, 181, 210, 213
advice acts construct-i-con, 62
solicited, 152–154 construction, 8, 62
unsolicited, 152–155, 158 constructional accounts of illocution, 61
Agustin, P., 183, 208 contrastive approach. See cross-cultural
Aijmer, K., 112 approach
Alcón, E., 147, 162 convention, 17
Austin, J., 177, 218 of language, 26
authority. See illocutionary ICM variables, of usage, 26
knowledge power conventionalisation, 27, 29, 35, 64, 110
degree of, 27
Bach, K., 28–29, 35 conversational approaches, 32–34, 36, 82, 112
Baicchi, A., 61, 104, 209 conversational presumption, 28
Bardovi-Harlig, K., 82, 147, 185, 211 co-operation, principle of, 24
Bataller, R., 119 Coulson, S., 36, 46
Blum-Kulka, S., 84, 104, 110, 119 cross-cultural approach, 72, 84, 85
Borer, B., 79 cross-cultural studies of illocution.
Bouton, L., 80, 84, 119 See cross-cultural approach
Brdar-Szabó, R., 61 cross-linguistic approach, 72, 84
Brown, P., 30, 104, 140, 155, 168, 174 Crystal, D., 173

Carstens, A., 169 De Knop, 9, 208

Castro, P., 85 De Rycker, T., 208
Cenoz, J., 84 Del Campo, N., 61, 91, 104, 111
Chomsky, N., 20, 232 Derwing, T., 79
Clark, H. H., 35 Diepenbroek, L. G., 79
codification, 16, 27, 28, 29, 35, 56 Dik, S. C., 4, 23, 60, 61, 233
cognitive linguistics, 3, 8, 11, 39, 62, 208, 228 direct access approaches, 29, 36
cognitive operations, 37, 81, 111 directives, 69, 73, 75, See also speech
(multiple source)-in-target metonymy, acts, directive
54, 71 advice acts, 70, 73, 83, 152, 159
conceptual metonymy. See metonymic beggings, 70, 73, 81, 120
operation negotiable, 173
force dynamics, 71, 120, 187, 190 non-negotiable, 173
cognitive pedagogical grammar, 87, 88, orders, 53, 57, 69, 73
183, 196 requests, 53, 61, 73, 81, 104
directive speech acts, of, 87, 209, 218 suggestions, 69, 73, 83, 136
cognitive-constructional approaches, 35, 111 threats, 57
conceptual metaphor, 89 warnings, 70, 73, 81, 169, 191

246
Index 247
directives, know-how of Haverkate, H., 140, 155
advice acts, 159–168 Havertake, H., 138
beggings, 130–136 Hayakawa, S. L., 123
orders, 96–102 Hernández Flores, N., 168
requests, 110–120 Hinkel, E., 136, 145, 156, 157, 165
suggestions, 143–151 Holme, R., 209
warnings, 177–182 Holmes, J., 139
directives, know-what of House, J., 84, 104, 110, 119, 142
advice acts, 152–160 Huddleston, R., 50
beggings, 123–129
orders, 90–96 IFIDs. See illocutionary force indicating
requests, 103–110 devices
suggestions, 137–143 illocutionary construction, 4, 60–68, 69,
warnings, 170–176 See also directives, Know-How of
directness, 110, 136 base construction, 8, 63, 71, 81, 87, 88
Dirven, R., 183 family of constructions, 66
fluid illocutionary construction, 63, 196, 200
EFL textbooks, 69–87, 119, 120, 143, 168, 177, 184 inventory of base constructions for
qualitative treatment, 71, 72, 77–87 requests, 66
quantitative representation, 71, 73–77 realisation procedure, 8, 59, 63, 71, 77, 81,
Ervin-Tripp, S., 36 87, 88
expert power. See illocutionary ICM variables, request construction, 61
knowledge power illocutionary conversors, 23, 60
explicit approach, 86 illocutionary force
explicit instruction, 10, 60, 79, 83, 183, 209 direct, 35
explicit performative, 17 indirect, 23, 28
explicitness, 32, 44, 54, 63, 65, 119, 199, 200 literal, 19, 23, 26
secondary. See illocutionary force, indirect
face, 30, 133, 174, 214 illocutionary force indicating devices, 60
face-threatening acts, 155, 168, 186, 193, 202, illocutionary ICM, 7, 50–60, 69, 77, 88, 111
209, 214 directive, 87, See also directives,
force schema, 89 Know-What of
advice acts, 152 ontology, 50–52, 78
beggings, 120–123, 188 requesting ICM, ontology, 51
compulsion, 89, 187 requesting ICM, structure, 59
iterative, 120 structure, 50, 59–60, 78
orders, 89 illocutionary ICM attributes, 51–52, 71,
removal of restraint, 103 77, 88
requests, 102–103 addressee’s willingness, 51
suggestions, 137, 189 agent, 51
warnings, 169 agent’s capability, 51
Fraser, B., 136, 139 beneficiary, 51
Fukushima, S., 104 cost–benefit, 51
interactional attributes, 71, 78
Geis, M., 25, 28, 32, 35 mitigation, 51
general principles of cooperative conversation. optionality, 51, 53
See cooperation, principle of politeness, 51, 56, 78, 84
Gerrig, R., 36 possession of the requested object, 51
Gibbs, R. W., 36, 49 scalar, 58
Givon, T., 59 speaker’s need, 51
Goldberg, A. E., 62 speaker’s willingness, 51
transactional attributes, 71, 77
Halliday, M. A. K., 20–23, 25, 27, 35 illocutionary ICM variables, 59–60, 71, 77, 88
Harnish, R. M., 28–29, 35 formality, 59, 78
Hartford, B. S., 147 institutional power, 158, 164, 175
248 Index
illocutionary ICM variables (cont.) Mauri, C., 50
knowledge authority. See illocutionary ICM Merin, A., 157
variables, knowledge power metapragmatic declarative knowledge, 86–87
knowledge power, 157 metapragmatic procedural knowledge, 87
physical power, 175 metonymic operation, 54
social distance, 59, 78 Morgan, J. L., 26–27, 35
social power, 59, 78, 175
illocutionary idealised cognitive model. Neddar, B. A., 85
See illocutionary ICM Nguyen, Th. Th., 80, 82, 119, 219
illocutionary metonymy, 111
illocutionary scenario, 49, 52, 53, 56 optionality, 32, 186
after component, 49, 54 over-grammaticalisation, 22
before component, 49, 53, 56 over-pragmaticalisation, 27–34
core component, 49, 52, 54
inferential schemata, 49 Panther, K. U., 3, 21, 49, 53, 61, 231, 240, 243
request scenario, 49, 52 pedagogical grammar, 10–11
illocutionary scenario of requesting. See Pérez-Hernández, L., 3, 4, 7, 22, 34, 50, 51, 53,
illocutionary scenario, request scenario 54, 56, 61, 70, 75, 79, 83, 89, 91, 104, 111,
image schema. See force schema 123, 125, 126, 128, 133, 138, 158, 174, 184, 219
implicitness, 44 performative hypothesis, 19
indirectness, 44, 46, 84, 119 politeness, 32, 38, 47, 119, 141, 156, 158, 174, 186,
inference, 27, 29, 32, 35, 37 187, 192, 194, 196, 198, 201, 204
inference trigger, 24 Politeness Principle, 30, 47, 126, 133
interlanguage pragmatics, 84 tact maxim, 30, 133
interpersonal rhetoric, 29 practice activities, 185
comprehension tasks, 185
Jiang, X., 82, 143, 146 consciousness-raising tasks, 185, 196, 211, 212
Johnson, M., 89, 103 discourse-completion tasks, 215
Judd, E. L., 185 knowledge-development tasks, 185, 191,
196, 200
Kasper, G., 84, 104, 110, 119, 142 production-development tasks, 185, 205,
Kissine, M., 64 213, 216
Koike, D., 145, 147, 185 productive-skills tasks. See practice
activities, production-development tasks
Lakoff, G., 50 repairing activities. See practice activities,
Leech, G., 21, 28, 29–32, 34, 35, 36, 91, 104, 108, production-development tasks
110, 117, 123, 133, 169 pragmalinguistics, 32, 34
Levinson, S. C., 20, 28, 30, 33, 35, 104, 140, 155, pragmatic approach, 110
168, 174 pragmatic scales
linguistic underspecification, 45 scale of cost–benefit, 31
literal force. See illocutionary force, literal scale of horizontal distance. See scale of
Literal Force Hypothesis, 17, 18–29, 32, 35, 60 social distance
compatibility, 41 scale of indirectness, 31
weak version, 18, 34, 39–43, 145 scale of optionality, 31
Literal Force Hypothesis, revised version scale of social distance, 47
of. See Literal Force Hypothesis, weak scale of vertical distance, 31
version pragmaticalisation, 34
Locher, M. A., 168 preference organisation, 33, 71
Lovett, C., 36, 46 preferred/dispreferred response, 33, 71, 83
Lucy, P., 35 pre-sequence, 33, 83
Luomala, P., 85 Pullum, G. K., 50

Márquez-Reiter, R., 119 rational power. See illocutionary ICM variables,

Martínez-Flor, A., 138, 143, 145, 162, 185 knowledge power
Matsumura, S., 136, 184 relevance, principle of, 29
Index 249
requests, 69 indirect, 19, 24, 25, 30, 35, 37, 39, 43–47
Richards, J. C., 139 ISA. See speech acts, indirect
Rintell, E. M., 141 literal, 30, 35
Risselada, R., 40–41, 145 non-conventional, 13, 36, 37, 38, 39, 47, 232
Ross, J. R., 19 prototypical, 57, 195
Ruiz de Mendoza, F. J., 61, 89, 104, 183, 208 representative, 41
Ruytenbeek, N., 37, 64 social constructs, 21, 25, 35, 38
Spencer-Oatey, H., 157
Saad, Q. K., 170, 177 Sperber, D., 28
Sadock, J. M., 19 standard pragmatics approach, 28–29, 36
Safont, P., 147, 162 standardised. See speech acts, conventional
Sansò, A., 50 Stefanowitsch, A., 61, 104
scenario approach. See illocutionary scenario Suttle, L., 62
Schauer, G., 104 systemic-functional grammar, 20–23
Schegloff, E. A., 35
Schmidt, R. W., 183 Taguchi, N., 212
Searle, J. R., 23–26, 27, 35, 60, 104, 136, 153, Takahashi, S., 50
169, 177 Taylor, J. R., 183
short-circuiting implicature, 26 Tello Rueda, Y., 86
social variables. See illocutionary ICM Thornburg, L., 3, 21, 49, 53, 61, 231, 240, 243
variables Ton Nu, A. T., 79
speech act construction. See illocutionary Tyler, 9, 82, 226
construction
speech act schemas, 28 Ulum, O. G., 74–75, 219
speech acts, 17
assertive, 74 Valencia, J. F., 84
codified, 27 Vassilaki, E., 111
commissive, 41 Vellenga, H., 2, 12, 70, 79, 82, 185, 211,
conventional, 25, 26, 27, 34, 36, 39 230, 245
direct, 43–47 Verschueren, J., 124, 136, 139, 157
directive, 1, 10, 53, 62, 69, 75, 80, 82, 86, 88,
98, 136 Wardhaugh, R., 147
explicit, 44, 48 Wierzbicka, A., 123, 136, 139, 147, 152
expressive, 74 Wilson, D., 28
implicit, 44 Wunderlich, D., 162

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