Narratives in Conversation as Pragmemes

Abstract

In illocutionary terms, narrative is a representative speech act: it describes people and events in the past. In a conversational slot, this representative act can acquire the force of a confession, accusation, warning, excuse etc., and thus realize an illocutionary force (or pragmeme) different from the representative force.

Extrapolating from Searle (Speech acts. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1969; Indirect speech acts. In P. Cole and J. Morgan (eds) Syntax and semantics: speech acts, vol 3. Academic Press, New York, 1975), one can say that narratives are direct representatives, and perhaps indirect expressives or directives, working from the literal to the indirect, contextual force. But from the perspective of the pragmeme theory, it is the contextual slot which determines the pragmeme realized by a narrative. My contribution considers what non-representative pragmemes narrative can realize, which indirect illocutionary acts in particular slots, how a story might function as a directive, an expressive, a commissive or a declaration. It will show how a story about an unfortunate incident can function as a directive (warning, advising), perhaps with an explicit ‘moral’ tacked on as in fables, and how a story can function as an indirect expressive, as when one tells a story in order to make excuses, and thereby produces an indirect apology.

These issues will be discussed on the basis of examples from natural conversation with an eye to drawing out potential consequences for pragmeme theory.