Situation-bound utterances as pragmatic acts

Abstract

The goal of the paper is to discuss how situation-bound utterances ( Kecskes, 1997, 2000, 2003) relate to pragmemes ( Mey, 2001) that refer to generalized pragmatic acts. In pragmatic interpretation the cognitive- philosophical line of research appears to put more emphasis on the proposition expressed (e.g. Horn, 2005; Levinson, 2000) while the socio-cultural interactional line (e.g. Verschueren, 1999; Mey, 2001) underscores the importance of allowing socio-cultural context into linguistic analysis. Following the socio-cultural interactional line Mey claimed that the explanatory movement in a theory of pragmatic acts is from the outside in: “the focus is on the environment in which both speaker and hearer find their affordances, such that the entire situation is brought to bear on what can be said in the situation, as well as on what is actually being said ( Mey, 2001:221).” In the paper I will argue that from the perspective of SBUs the explanatory movement should go in both directions: from the outside in and from the inside out. This is because SBUs not only fit into and bound to certain situations but they also create and help to maintain those situations.