APELC Class Notes
Second and fourth juniors and seniors, we did the same as your peers yesterday; check their notes for objectives and details. Thanks to Michele and Johanna in second and Larren and Cassandra in fourth for sharing their narrations. I forgot to do the same Shayne in first and Ben and Leigh in third for reading theirs yesterday, so thanks for that. I appreciate everyone’s bravery.
Apropos of our discussion Tuesday and Wednesday about culture and morality when we talked over Maxine Hong Kingston’s “No Name Woman”, I thought I’d direct you to class notes I wrote in April when I had a similar discussion with last year’s APELCers. I also brought up female circumcision as a challenge to popular cultural relativism and we had an insightful discussion.
Lastly before break, I wanted to list again those speech acts I enumerated in class so that you can compare them to Wardhaugh, the text I assigned for homework. They are:
- Representatives (stating, claiming, describing, insisting, suggesting, swearing, et cetera);
- Expressives (congratulating, thanking, deploring, condoling, welcoming, greeting, et cetera);
- Verdictives (assessing, ranking, estimating, judging, et cetera);
- Directives (commanding, pleading, inviting, questioning, et cetera);
- Commissives (promising, threatening, vowing, et cetera);
- Declaratives (blessing, firing, arresting, marrying, et cetera).
Remember that the examples (the gerund or nounified verbs after each type of illocutionary act) aren’t exhaustive and hardly scratch the metaphorical surface of possibilities. For a “truncated overview” of the concept, read Andrew Cline’s “Speech-act Theory and Rhetoric” at his excellent site Rhetorica.net.
Have a safe, productive break children. I’ll see you a few days into the second quarter.
UPDATE. The page numbers for the Bedford reading have been corrected. Sorry about the confusion.