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ONE OF the greatest difficulties students face in foreign language literature classes is learning to recognize language games—wordplay, irony, satire, and the like. While they can usually figure out the gist of the text, its general plot line and setting, they frequently lack an adequately sophisticated knowledge of the language to appreciate subtleties of style or even overt linguistic variations.
This problem can be overcome if students are taught to recognize basic speech-act types—both illocutionary acts and implied perlocutionary intention—so that they can at least make an intellectual response to the language of the text. J. L. Austin in How to Do Things with Words and John R. Searle in Speech Acts and elsewhere have listed numerous types of acts that are performed by using language, and they also list the necessary and sufficient conditions for a specific use of language to count as one of these acts. 1 In addition, H. P. Grice's theory of “implicatures” offers a way to get at the intentions for reader response as encoded in the text. 2 Grice's theory, along with other developments in the theory of perlocutions, makes predictions about how readers are supposed to respond to something in the text, whether or not they do respond that way.
In what follows I examine a number of commonly taught Hispanic narrative texts from a variety of periods and authors as examples of how speech-act theory can be applied in practice. The texts are not difficult, and the analyses are accessible to intermediate-level literature students. Each work is discussed in terms of a feature that is widely associated with it: the sense of suspense in Gabriel García Márquez's Crónica de una muerte anunciada, sociopolitical propaganda in Benito Pérez Galdós's Doñia Perfecta, the autonomy of the character in Miguel de Unamuno's Niebla, and humor in La vida de Lazarillo. The speech-act analysis strategies given for each work can help students see for themselves what they have long had to take on faith from their all-knowing instructors.
The first work is García Márquez's masterful short novel translated as Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Many commentators have pointed out the “almost unbearable tension” that develops in the reader as the novel unfolds (Benson; Carrillo). Mystery stories often produce such suspense; what makes it unusual here is that we know almost from the start the basic outlines of the story, including its dénouement. How does one communicate this tension or develop an appreciation of the technique behind its creation when students are hampered by basic linguistic inadequacies?
One way is to introduce them to a particular type of illocutionary act—the assertion—and show them how Garcia Márquez plays with it. Searle presents the following conditions as necessary and sufficient for an assertion to be effective:
| Propositional content | Any proposition p |
|---|---|
| Preparatory [conditions] | 1. S ( speaker ) has evidence (reasons, etc.) for the truth of p. |
| 2. It is not obvious to both S and H ( hearer ) that H knows (does not need to be reminded of, etc.) p. | |
| Sincerity [conditions] | S believes p. |
| Essential [conditions] | [The proposition] counts as an undertaking to the effect that p represents an actual state of affairs. (66) |
An assertion is an illocutionary act, that is, an act that is performed in uttering something. Normally it leads to a perlocutionary act on the part of the hearer/reader, an act that takes place as a consequence of the illocutionary act (Austin 94–107). While perlocutions are never truly predictable, if all the conditions are met for an effective assertion, the perlocution would most likely be that the hearer/reader would accept the truth of the assertion. (See below for further discussion of the predictability of perlocutions.)
Now consider the following two assertions from the Crónica:
Victoria Guzmán, por su parte, fue terminante en la respuesta de que ni ella ni su hija sabían que a Santiago Nasar lo estaban esperando para matarlo.
Victoria Guzmán, for her part, was absolute in her reply that neither she nor her daughter knew that they were waiting for Santiago Nasar to kill him. (24) 3
“No lo previne porque pensé que eran habladas de borracho,” me dijo.
“I didn't warn him because I thought it was just drunkard's talk,” she told me. (24)
These two examples would appear to comply fully with Searle's conditions. However, García Márquez undercuts the normal perlocution by following the first assertion with “Pero en el curso de sus años admitió que ambas lo sabían cuando él entró en la cocina a tomar el café” ‘But as the years passed she admitted that both of them knew it when he entered the kitchen to have his coffee,’ and the second with “No obstante, Divina Flor me confesó en una visita posterior, cuando ya su madre había muerto, que ésta no le había dicho nada a Santiago Nasar porque en el fondo de su alma quería que lo mataran” ‘Nevertheless, Divina Flor confessed to me on a later visit, when her mother had already died, that she hadn't said anything to Santiago Nasar because in the bottom of her heart she wanted them to kill him.’ In other words, after presenting an assertion, García Márquez pulls the sincerity condition out from under us. The resulting perlocution is that we will doubt the truth of subsequent assertions. This technique is found throughout the Crónica, even in brief statements like this one: “Tres personas que estaban en la pensión confirmaron que el episodio había ocurrido” ‘Three people who were in the boarding house confirmed that the incident had occurred’ (assertion), “pero otras cuatro no lo creyeron cierto” ‘but four others did not think it certain’ (contradiction) (48). The cumulative effect of these statements is to create an air of mystery and suspense throughout the novel; the reader is never sure what is happening since seemingly essential parts of the story evaporate as soon as they appear. 4 The technique is so evident that students have no trouble spotting it once it is pointed out to them.
Benito Pérez Galdós's classic thesis novel Doña Perfecta presents a very different problem. It tries to persuade readers to adopt a certain point of view regarding the world and perhaps to act on that point of view. This intent was abundantly clear when the book was written in the last century, but a modern and foreign audience, not to mention a naive one, needs a good deal of outside knowledge to appreciate the author's perspective. Here we are in the position of trying to analyze a hypothetical effect, a perlocution, that is remote in time. For an intermediate-level literature student the problem can be severe.
A familiarity with Grice's cooperative principle will help students understand Galdós's intentions. This principle holds that in any speech act both parties are assumed to be cooperating and that any apparent violation of this cooperation compact will be interpreted as “implicating” some nonliteral meaning. In other words, we assume that verbal expressions are used with literal meanings in mind.
The impact of this principle can be seen in a simple example: the first word of the title of the first chapter—“¡;Villahorrenda!” Within the fictional world of the novel, the exclamation functions as a warning, an illocutionary act. Its perlocutionary intent for the characters is obvious: the passengers who intend to get off at the Villahorrenda station should get ready. The reader understands this meaning after reading the next few sentences. But when the word is read for the first time, its effect is very different. Its meaning is conveyed by the exclamation points and the word's semantic content. There is no context other than the word's position as a title and the conventions of punctuation. One easily deduces a perlocutionary intention to cause a response in the reader, a feeling of shock or astonishment. 5
More relevant to the overall intention of the novel is the way Galdós uses caricature and exaggeration. In the following example we have the most explicit overstatement of the basic ideological conflict, which says, in part:
Es cuestión de moros y cristianos. … ¿No comprendes que mi sobrino … no es una calamidad, sino una plaga? … Contra ella, querida Remedios, tendremos aquí un batallón de Dios que aniquile la infernal milicia de Madrid. Te digo que esto va a ser grande y glorioso. …
It's a question of Moors and Christians. … Don't you understand that my nephew … is not a calamity but a plague? … Against it, dear Remedios, we will have here a batallion of God that will annihilate the infernal militia from Madrid. I tell you this is going to be great and glorious. … (482)
In the fictitious realm we have an assertion, or a series of assertions. The illocutionary acts directed to the readers are also assertions. Their perlocutionary intent—the provocation of an involuntary emotional response together with a disposition on the part of the reader to reject what is expressed—can he deduced from the obvious violation of Grice's maxims of quality, especially the second one, which says, “Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence” (Grice 45). 6 The reader, recognizing the violation, derives the indicated implicature. As with the assertion in the García Márquez example, students with a fairly low level of target language competence can be taught to recognize such obvious violations.
Austin himself provides us with a way to help students understand what is happening when the main character of Unamuno's Niebla seems to take on a life of his own, independent of his author. (One could always deal with the philosophical or artistic implications of such an autonomy, of course, but when students are having trouble with the language, they may not be ready for such considerations. At the same time, their very need to consider the language carefully can be used to enhance their insight into how the novel works. Austin suggests that the illocutionary acts of literature “will, for example, be in a peculiar way hollow or void if said by an actor on the stage, or if introduced in a poem, or spoken in soliloquy. … Language in such circumstances is in special ways—intelligibly—used not seriously, but in ways parasitic upon its normal use—ways which fall under the doctrine of the etiolations of language” (22).
Thus in the classic confrontation between Unamuno and Augusto Pérez,
—Puede ser. Pero te digo y repito que tú no existes fuera de mí …
—Y yo vuelvo a insinuarle a usted la idea de que es usted el que no existe fuera de mí y de los demás personajes a quienes usted cree haber inventado.
“Maybe. But I tell you and I repeat that you do not exist outside of me …”
“And I again suggest to you the idea that it is you who do not exist outside of me and of the other characters you believe yourself to have invented.” (150)
it is easy to see that both parties to the dialogue are represented as making assertions. However, since to be effective illocutionary acts in general require conventions recognized by all involved in the interaction, both assertions are seen as failing. There are no conventions for making such assertions, and their being uttered by fictional characters makes them hollow.
Once students have learned to think of literary characters as pure language constructs, they are better able to differentiate between such things as story and discourse or plot and theme. Beginning readers can see that the question is not about the autonomy of characters but about the nature of existence.
Humor in literary works, especially when it relies on wordplay and detailed cultural knowledge, is probably one of the hardest features for students to appreciate. Here, too, though, a simple introduction to elements of speech-act theory can be useful.
In Lazarillo de Tormes, the sixteenth-century originator of the picaresque genre, examples of language play abound. The following instance is taken from the episode of the squire where Lázaro is trying to save his master from starvation by helping him overcome his pride. The squire has agreed to try some of the pig's knuckle and is clearly enjoying it:
—Con almodrote—decía—es este singular manjar. “Con mejor salsa lo comes tú,” respondí yo paso.
“With almodrote [a garlic and cheese sauce],” he said, “this is a singular dish.” “You eat it with a better sauce,“ I replied under my breath. (141)
Many students may not recognize the reference to the old saying “Hunger is the best sauce.” But students familiar with Grice's maxims will at least be aware of something implied beyond the text and know to seek it out. Lázaro apparently violates the first maxim of quantity—“Make your contribution as informative as is required” (45)—when he refers to a better sauce without any further explanation. The clear implication is that something further is to be understood, in this instance one of the central motifs of the work. While an intellectual awareness of what is happening does not produce the spontaneous laughter that the text is aiming at, it does at least give the student a greater sense of participation and a basis for enjoying or appreciating the text.
The enhancement of enjoyment and appreciation is probably the most important contribution speech-act act theory has to make in the teaching of literature to undergraduate foreign language students. If students can be taught to recognize that there is more to the texts they are asked to read than a simple story line, their involvement with the process becomes much more complete and much less an exercise in frustration and a matter of trying to figure out “what the teacher wants me to see.” In the end speech-act theory can enable them to read any text more intelligently and to think critically about what they are doing.
The author is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. This article is based on a paper presented at the MLA convention, 27–30 December 1986, in New York.
1 Although other writers have compiled similar lists, the works of Austin and Searle are the classics in the field, and their classifications are quite adequate for our pedagogical purposes. For a good comparison of classifications of illocutionary acts, see Hancher.
2 Mary Louise Pratt has an excellent overview of how this procedure works in her Toward a Speech-Act Theory of Literary Discourse.
3 This translation and all subsequent translations are mine.
4 This section on the Crónica de una muerte anunciada is adapted from Broad.
5 Robert N. Gaines classifies perlocutionary acts as those that affect feelings, those that bring about thoughts, and those that lead to behaviors (209).
6 Grice's maxims, which make explicit the cooperative principle, are:
Maxims of quantity
Maxims of quality
Supermaxim: Make your contribution one that is true.
Maxim of relation: Be relevant.
Maxims of manner
Supermaxim: Be perspicuous.
(45–46)
Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955. Ed. J. O. Urmson. New York: Oxford, 1962.
Benson, John. Rev. of Crónica de una muerte anunciada, by Gabriel García Márquez. Latin American Literary Review 11(1982): 65.
Broad, Peter G. “Unhinged Speech Acts: Narrative Surprise in Crónica de una muerte anunciada. ” Interpretaciones a la obra de García Márquez. Ed. Ana María Hernández de López. Monografías de ALDEEU, Literatura 1. Madrid: Beramar, 1986. 23–29.
Carrillo, Germán D. Rev. of Crónica de una muerte anunciada, by Gabriel García Márquez. Revista Iberoamericana 49 (1983): 647–48.
Gaines, Robert N. “Doing by Saying: Toward a Theory of Perlocution.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 65(1979): 207–17.
Galdós, Benito Pérez. Doña Perfecta. Obras completas. Ed. Federico Carlos Sainz de Robles. Madrid: Aguilar, 1960. 405–501.
García Márquez, Gabriel. Crónica de una muerte anunciada. Barcelona: Bruguera, 1981.
Grice, H. P “Logic and Conversation.” Speech Acts. Ed. Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan. Syntax and Semantics 3. New York: Academic, 1975. 41–58.
Hancher, Michael. “The Classification of Cooperative Illocutionary Acts.” Language in Society 8 (1984): 1–14.
Pratt, Mary Louise. Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1977.
Searle, John R. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1969.
Unamuno, Miguel de. Niebla. 10th ed. Madrid: Colección Austral-Espasa-Calpe, 1963.
La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades. Ed. Alberto Blecua. 2nd ed. Madrid: Castalia, 1984.
© 1988 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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