WELCOME

This blog is essentially about anything related "farfetchedly" or directly to linguistics. In order to not bore you, I will try to apply random linguistic theory to or explain them through fun/interesting TV series, movies, comics, novels, etc.

There is no order in which I will deal with the specific topics. I usually watch something interesting worth explaining or commenting on and then search for theory from different sources.

Please don't take this blog too seriously. Even though I always try to give the year, type and title of the source, there may be mistakes. And obviously, I won't give the whole theory surrounding a topic, but rather what I think is important to what I want to mention in relation to the series, movie and so on.

As I am still studying (Complutense University in Madrid) and not a native English speaker, I kindly ask you to pardon all the possible grammar or subject-related mistakes. Of course, any comments, suggestions, and opinions are more than welcome.

Thanks a lot and enjoy the stay :) Greets,

Lingueek.

INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS

Through this comic stripe taken from Calvin and Hobbes we can see a good example of Indirect Speech Acts.

Calvin

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SPEECH ACTS IN EVERYDAY LIFE

Finally, in order to complete this "unit", here's an audio file recorded by a fun guy who speaks about Speech Acts and how, knowing on what they're based, people mainly uses them to "lie".

Needless to say, this is a parody. Nevertheless, we get many nice examples of how Locutionary, Illocutionary and Perlocutionary acts are performed in real life.


Taken from Youtube.com and converted into MP3 with the kind permission of  http://www.youtube.com/user/BenLoka?feature=watch

As Linguistics is a huge field of study, I recommend you to have a look on these pages, mainly online journals about Ideology, Stylistics, Pragmatics, Semantics, etc.

- http://www.discourses.org/resources/journals/
- http://www.davidcrystal.com/David_Crystal/stylistics.htm
- http://www.equinoxpub.com/JAL
I had the pleasure of attending a talk about Ideology recently, given by Teun Van Dijk. This is his page:

There is also a very interesting link about the pronunciation in many different languages which I discovered recently:

SPEECH ACT THEORY in The Big Bang Theory

Once understood what a speaker can do (and most of the time does unknowingly) with language and how this is reflected in utterances, we may understand better the main character Sheldon Cooper and why he is the funniest one of the sitcom.

In other words, Sheldon does not perceive these uses people make of language, and thus, is utterly unable to perceive irony, sarcasm, etc. when somebody is messing with him or, on the contrary, when his friends do actually mean what they are saying.

Here you have a video which illustrates his "social/linguistic clumsiness":

Obviously, there are more factors (tone, gestures, facial expression) besides only the words Penny uses which hint that she does not want to be a waitress at the Cheescake Factory for the rest of her life.

It goes even further when Leonard asks somewhat rhetorically:
"For God's sake, Sheldon. Do I have to pull out a sarcasm sign everytime I open my mouth?"
As usual, Sheldon doesn't get the point and asks -more interested in the apparent fact (according to Leonards previous utterance): "You have a sarcasm sign?!".

The latter question is actually about another interesting topic: Presupposition.

INTRODUCTION TO SPEECH ACT THEORY

In order to understand what I will explain through some hilarious scenes from the American sitcom The Big Bang Theory, here you have a short Power Point Presentation about Speech Acts (Austin, 1962).

Speech acts