Date of Graduation
2000
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Type
MA
Committee Chair
Johan Seynnaeve
Abstract
Recent research in linguistics, and specifically within the field of applied linguistics, has been concerned with the different ways that speech acts are realized in different languages. This is so that language learners can learn to adequately conform to those norms in the target language. However, much of this research has assumed that all speakers of the relevant languages, such as American English, for example, are homogeneous, that they all perform the given speech acts in the same ways. I argue that this is an erroneous assumption: just as there is phonological variation, for example, between dialects of a language, we must consider that there may be dialect variation in this aspect of language as well. I conduct a study that examines the ways that two different speech communities realize the speech act of advising in American English. These are speakers of African American English and of European American English.
Recommended Citation
Jose, Brian, "Speech acts as a focus of variation studies: AAE vs. EAE." (2000). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 10490.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/10490