Language as Social Action: Social Psychology and Language Use

Abstract

Language as Social Action: Social Psychology and Language Use by Thomas M. Holtgraves. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2002,xii+232 pp. Reviewed by Santoi Leung Teachers College, Columbia University Given the diversity and number of disciplines topic that take an interest in the social aspects of language use, providing an interdisciplinary perspective on this would be a challenging prospect for many scholars. Holtgraves, a social psy- chologist, meets this challenge in an admirable fashion. The book's stated aim, as outlined in the introductory chapter The Social Bases of Language and Linguistic Underpinnings of Social Behavior, social action is to approach the topic of language use as is from an interdisciplinary viewpoint, and the material covered an impressive, wide ranging synthesis of research from the fields of philosophy, lin- guistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, anthropology, and cognitive and social psy- chology. Fundamental to the approach taken is the reciprocal relationship between language and social context: ignored and is How the social dimensions of language cannot be how social psychological processes are mediated by language. A chapter devoted to each of five major themes of language use: language as action, lan- guage as interpersonal action, language as contextualized action, language as co- ordinated action, and language as thoughtful action. Chapter One, Speech Acts and Intentions: The Things We mental insight in explicating the Do With Words, reviews the core aspects of speech act theory, starting with Austin's (1962) funda- pragmatic function of language, and moving onto a description of Searle's (1969) speech act taxonomy and felicity conditions. A discussion that may be of more interest to those already familiar with the basic is tenets of speech act theory intentionality. e.c. how hearers recognize literal illocutionary force is a problematic issue, particularly in the case of indirect speech acts, where the intended illocutionary force differs from the illocutionary force. Two contrasting approaches are considered: those that e.g., assume inferential processing, Grice's (1975) theory of conversational implicatures, and those that suggest a direct or idiomatic approach to recognition. Holtgraves observes that illocutionary less than illocutionary force force interpretation has been studied tion, much produc- and regards this lack of attention paid to the hearer as a deficit in speech act theory's social credentials. Language as interpersonal action is addressed in the next two chapters. Chapter Two, The Interpersonal Underpinnings of Talk: Face Management and Politeness, considers the interpersonal aspects of language production. cinct review of is A suc- Brown and Levinson's (1987) influential politeness theory model provided, with a discussion of the concept of face, face-threatening acts, and the Issues in Applied Linguistics ISSN 1050-4273 Vol. © 2002, Regents of the University of California 3 No. Ill - 11