Performing Speech Acts: Focussing on Local Cultural Norms in the Englishes We Use

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Author(s): Maya Khemlani David (University of Malaya, Malaysia)and Aliyyah Nuha Faiqah Azman Firdaus (University of Malaya, Malaysia)
Copyright: 2021
Pages: 17
Source title: Redefining the Role of Language in a Globalized World
Source Author(s)/Editor(s): Ai-Ling Wang (Tamkang University, Taiwan)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-2831-0.ch005

Keywords: Information Science Reference / Linguistics / Literacy and Language Studies / Media & Communications

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Abstract

When we speak we use speech acts. Examples of speech acts include performing greetings, giving compliments and responding to compliments, making complaints and responding to complaints, making and responding to requests, congratulating, and consoling. In English language textbooks we normally see one response to some of these speech acts. For example, “thank you” as a response to a compliment or “good morning/afternoon/evening” as a greeting. As English has become a world language spoken by non-native speakers of English, many non-nativised cultural norms when performing speech acts are noted in real-time interactions. In this chapter, examples of nativised speech acts expressed in acceptable English are drawn from a number of data sources ranging from both real-time interactions, literary sources, which are a reflection of life, and social media, which encompass Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp messages. Pedagogical ramifications of such authentic real-time data are discussed. The result will be the teaching of the English emerging from localised cultural norms in the speech acts we perform.

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