Speech Act, Conceptual Incommensurability and Cross-Cultural Misjudgment.
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Date
2012
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Ibadan Journal of Theatre Arts
Abstract
Humans are known to be the most advanced creatures that have developed the use of speech. With the aid of speech people have been able to exchange information thereby making coexistence possible. It has also been discovered that it is possible in some cases for the information been conveyed to be misunderstood especially when it is delivered to people of a culture different from that from which it was formed –cross-cultural misunderstanding. It is also the case that beyond communication, speeches can be used to perform certain actions –speech act. This pragmatic property of speech is believed to be justified when a proposition obeys certain rules –felicity conditions. The purpose of this paper is to identify some of the instances where the speech act conditions of one culture fail in another. This was discovered to be due primarily to the different conceptual schemes at work in different cultures. This puts individuals in different cultural standpoints and therefore different points of view –cultural relativism. It concludes by asserting that a reconciliation of the cross-cultural misunderstandings arising from speech act is possible through the suspension of cultural biases. It therefore emphasises the importance of the cultural context in which a speech act was made in the understanding of its actual implication.