By: JM
I’m writing this post having been inspired by our last lecture given by Dr. Julie Kerekes on pragmatics. During the lecture, we learned about ‘speech acts’ and how these might be realized through a variety of phrasings. For example, to achieve the speech act of making an invitation, we could say “Wanna grab a bite?” or “I was wondering if you might want to get something to eat”. I’ve always understood these differences in speech act realizations as that of appropriateness; that is, speech which is congruent to its context. Thus, we would probably use a casual expression if the context is such that we are familiar with the interlocutor, and perhaps use an expression that is more polite or distant in formal contexts. If someone were to break these norms of appropriateness, especially a racialized speaker, they would probably be seen through some sort of deficiency-based lens as an ‘incompetent’ or ‘improficient’ speaker. How has that come to be?
Continue reading “Pragmatics, raciolinguistically.”