Interpreting A Speech Act In Willy Russell's The Wrong Boy

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Conversing constructively indicates the speaker forms an awareness and attentiveness towards the hearer when producing speech. The hearer, in return, interprets the speech act and expresses willingness to continue conversing. As Verschueren (Jef Verschueren 1995, 129.) notes, “successful communication, or the successful transfer of meanings, was seen as a process by which a state of mutual knowledge of a communicative intention was attained…” Consequently, the intention a speech act has, depends on the context and mutual knowledge shared between the speaker and hearer. Using an extract from Willy Russell’s “The Wrong Boy” (Willy Russell 2000), this paper argues how Neville’s inability to produce the correct context when initiating the conversation, prevents him from having a conversation with Raymond. …show more content…

Shall we switch the television off now, Raymond? Only I don’t know why he bothered asking because before I could say owt he’d picked up the remote...” Neville’s abrupt indirect command did not consider Raymond as a participant to a conversation as Raymond was denied the possibility to react. Moreover, the speech act contains no context directed towards Neville’s purpose there. Evidently, Neville disrupts the quantity maxim and relation maxim (Cummings 2015, 210.) as his speech act and action generates a context misinterpreted by Raymond. Hence, the purpose of considering the hearer is not realised. As Cummings (Cummings 2015, 195.) states on the speaker, “… they must be aware of their social relationship to other conversational participants, the particular setting in which the utterance is produced, the beliefs and knowledge that are presumed to hold between speakers and hearers and of how an utterance relates to other parts of the

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