A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF SPEECH ACTS IN THE GENRE HOROSCOPE
A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF SPEECH ACTS IN THE GENRE HOROSCOPE1
Gabriela BUENO SANTOS
1. Introduction
In attempting to express themselves, people do not only produce utterances containing grammatical structures and words, they perform actions via those utterances. (Yule, 1996). That means that when we use language we are not only speaking, telling, saying or writing something. We are also apologizing, complaining, complimenting, inviting, promising or requesting. Speech acts are the actions performed via utterances (e.g. apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise, request) and speech events are the circumstances in which these utterances take place.
As mentioned before, when we write something we are not only writing, we have a purpose behind that writing and expect that writing to have a certain effect on the readers. Therefore, we can assume that genres “do” something. What do horoscopes do, for example? This question will be answered in the results and discussion section. And why analyze horoscopes? The choice for this genre was made considering three reasons: presence in history, presence in the western media, and lack of research in the linguistic field. During my TFG research and analysis I found out that horoscopes have been present in the history of mankind for about 4 thousand years and have influenced the behavior and actions of powerful men and women, regulating their behavior. I also discovered that seventy millions of Americans start the day reading their horoscopes in the newspaper, which was the first type of media to publish horoscope columns, in 1930. And finally, I have decided to analyze this genre due to the fact that there are no analyses of the genre horoscope in the linguistic field published until now.
2. Methodology
A corpus of 15 horoscopes for the sign of Aries (my sign) was taken from 5 magazines, 5 newspapers and 5 websites that contain a horoscope or astrology section. These predictions are daily, weekly or
Gabriela BUENO SANTOS
1. Introduction
In attempting to express themselves, people do not only produce utterances containing grammatical structures and words, they perform actions via those utterances. (Yule, 1996). That means that when we use language we are not only speaking, telling, saying or writing something. We are also apologizing, complaining, complimenting, inviting, promising or requesting. Speech acts are the actions performed via utterances (e.g. apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise, request) and speech events are the circumstances in which these utterances take place.
As mentioned before, when we write something we are not only writing, we have a purpose behind that writing and expect that writing to have a certain effect on the readers. Therefore, we can assume that genres “do” something. What do horoscopes do, for example? This question will be answered in the results and discussion section. And why analyze horoscopes? The choice for this genre was made considering three reasons: presence in history, presence in the western media, and lack of research in the linguistic field. During my TFG research and analysis I found out that horoscopes have been present in the history of mankind for about 4 thousand years and have influenced the behavior and actions of powerful men and women, regulating their behavior. I also discovered that seventy millions of Americans start the day reading their horoscopes in the newspaper, which was the first type of media to publish horoscope columns, in 1930. And finally, I have decided to analyze this genre due to the fact that there are no analyses of the genre horoscope in the linguistic field published until now.
2. Methodology
A corpus of 15 horoscopes for the sign of Aries (my sign) was taken from 5 magazines, 5 newspapers and 5 websites that contain a horoscope or astrology section. These predictions are daily, weekly or
References: Yule, G. (1996) Pragmatics. London: Longman