The speech act of forbidding and its realizations

By making the claim that utterances can be interpreted as actions, Austin disputed an assertion widespread amongst philosophers of his time namely that saying something is synonymous with stating something. Numerous philosophers and linguists then attempted to classify verbs according to actions that can be performed with them. Most of these taxonomies include one large and heterogeneous category summarizing speech act verbs that allow the speaker to persuade someone else into doing something. However, there have also been suggestions for subdivision of this group. This book shows that in-depth study of such subcategories is meaningful and provides a comprehensive discussion of the concept of forbidding. The author defines appropriate conditions for this speech act to be recognized as intended. Potential verbs of forbidding are collected and roughly graded by closeness of relationship to the concept. Then they are arranged into groups according to features that they have in common and, finally, it is critically assessed whether their classification mirrors current English usage. As a result, this book will certainly be of great interest to linguists, psychologists and sociologists.

Autorentext

Mag.phil. Birgit Erler has a secondary school teacher accreditation degree in English, psychology and philosophy. She has studied at the University of Innsbruck and at the University of Graz. Currently she is working as an English teacher in Graz, Austria.