The pragmatic status of aesthetic speech acts

The article deals with the problem of pragmalinguistic description of aesthetic speech acts. The authors state that this problem is weakly developed in modern pragmatics. At the very origin of the speech act theory, the aesthetic aspect of utterances was not taken into consideration. Insightfully, J.L. Austin introduced the phenomenon of doing things with words, yet he was mostly focused on institutionalized speech acts and the way they change the social life of people using them. Even later, when following the original Austinian categorizations various classifications of speech acts were proposed, the aesthetic factor was still omitted. Although the aesthetic function is typically and fully realized in works of art, the aesthetics regarding speech acts is not limited solely to the field of literary texts. Hence, the presented analysis is based on both literary and non-literary material. With reference to utility texts, the aesthetic function is discussed mostly on the material of advertising slogans. Aesthetic speech acts are a research object standing at the junction of several linguistic fields, the most important of which are pragmatics and stylistics. In the analysis, the methods of pragmatics and in particular the terms coined by the speech act theorists are used. The apparatus of stylistics is also applied. Methodologically, the analysis falls within the vast scope of so-called pragmastylistics. In the present study, aesthetic speech acts are understood as speech acts that are produced by the sender with an intention to make the receiver have an aesthetic experience, i.e. encounter beauty or ugliness. This kind of aesthetic intention is the core illocutionary force, according to which aesthetic speech acts are determined. As the authors demonstrate, no performative verbs can be ascribed to aesthetic speech acts hence they should be categorized as indirect stimulating affect-creating acts. The aesthetic intention is realized in the form of a separate (free) illocution mainly in literary texts, whereas in the majority of cases it is somehow connected with other illocutionary forces. Thus, the authors indicate three main ways through which the aesthetic intention of the sender may be communicated. Firstly, it can be verbalized as an autonomic act of pure art, entirely subordinated to the realization of aesthetic function. Secondly, the aesthetic impact may accompany some other prime illocutions (e.g. directive, informative). Lastly, there are speech acts that realize primarily the aesthetic function, yet they also contain a secondary, optional informative component. Contribution of the authors: the authors contributed equally to this article. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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