A Study On Commissive Speech Acts In Modern Chinese

Commissive speech acts refer to the undertaking of commitment to some future actions made by the speaker or both the speaker and hearer.As an important category of speech act theory,it exists in various fields of people?s life.The process of commitment speech communication is also the process of realizing the intention of commitment communication,that is,the process in which the speaker(the promisor)determines a specific discourse form.The process of speaker?s selection is complicated,which is restricted by both internal language structure and external factors.The conditions of the selection process,namely,the realization mechanism of commitment discourse form,is the core issue of this study.The dissertation consists of five chapters and a conclusion:Chapter One introduces the research object,research status,research framework,research questions,corpus sources and the significance of the research.At present,researchers mainly explain the commissive speech acts from the perspective of form,which is difficult to reveal how these forms are generated.From the functional point of view,this paper regards the expression of fulfilling commitment as a kind of commissive speech acts,interpreting it from a holistic perspective.This paper discusses the realization mechanism of commitment discourse in the process of realizing the communicative intention of commitment.Chapter Two investigates the connotation,characteristics and structure of commissive speech acts.There are clear boundaries and obvious characteristics between commissive speech act and other speech acts.Its underlying structure exists in all speech forms expressing commitment intention.Four elements are identified in the commissive speech acts structure based on the communication experience,namely,the subject of commitment,the intention of commitment(including the intention of commitment and the matter of commitment),the form of commitment and the context.No matter these elements appear in discourse or not,they always exist as part of the structural elements.As a whole schema,commitment behavior(or event)exists in people?s long-term memory.Chapter Three explores the linguistic representation of commissive speech acts.At the linguistic level,words represent semantic categories and they are the most basic symbolic units with referential functions.Among the four elements of the commissive speech acts structure,only commitment intention can be expressed at the linguistic level.Verbs and some words expressing the speaker?s intention are the main ones that can express the intention of commitment.Chapter Four analyzes the discourse form of commissive speech acts.There are many kinds of speech forms expressing the communicative intention of commitment in communication.Firstly,we sum up 64 possible semantic forms for expressing the communicative intention of commitment;secondly,according to language experience and linguistic data,we sort out 23 semantic forms in Chinese;thirdly,from the overall perspective of commissive speech acts and the structural elements of commissive speech acts,the specific discourse forms are discussed to lay a foundation for further discussion on the formation mechanism of commitment discourse form.Chapter Five explores the discourse realization of commissive speech acts.The process of realizing communicative intention is the speaker?s choice through three stages: firstly,at the semantic level,people decide which commissive speech acts structural elements should be realized as specific discourse forms;secondly,the non-linear structural elements are arranged in the linear form;thirdly,semantic structure and language symbols are realized as specific discourse forms.This chapter focuses on the conditions and principles in the process of choice,that is,the formation mechanism of the form of commitment discourse.The conclusion part summarizes the main findings,points out the limitations of the present study and gives recommendations for future research.Firstly,the characteristics of commissive speech acts are summarized;secondly,the structure of commissive speech acts is constructed;thirdly,the linguistic representation and discourse forms are distinguished;fourthly,the realization mechanism of commitment speech is explored and summarized.Suggestions for future research are also provided: First,it is necessary to do further analysis on linguistic data.The speech forms of expressing commitment are various,and there are kinds forms of speech act structural elements expressing commitment in discourse.The extraction of the specific realization forms of the structural elements of commissive speech acts needs further exploration,especially in the part of commitment matters.More types of speech forms expressing commitment matters need to be further summarized.Second,in the process of realizing the communicative intention of commitment,the subject of commitment makes choices according to complex conditions,and this study finds some of them,which partly explain specific discourse forms and provide suggestions for future research,but a systemic study is needed.Third,the study is a lack of comparison between Chinese and another language(such as English)in the process of realizing the communicative intention of commitment at the linguistic and discourse levels.By comparison,a better understanding of the formal features of Chinese expressions of commitment intention could be achieved.