A Game Theoretic Pragmatics Analysis On Indirect Speech Acts

During daily communication,the speaker often expresses an intention beyond the literal meaning of his or her utterance.According to Speech Act Theory,this type of pragmatic phenomenon is called indirect speech act.Some indirect speech acts are used so often in daily communication that they can be interpreted out of context.We call this kind of indirect speech acts as conventional.In addition,our usage of indirect speech acts depends on relevant factors in specific situations and,hence the using conditions should be included in the study of indirect speech acts.Traditional theories of indirect speech acts only focus on the hearer’s interpretation,which offers a single visual angle and thus cannot satisfy our requirement of deeply analyzing its convention or its using conditions.The methodology of game-theoretical pragmatics,offering us an angle of interaction between interlocutors,is adopted to study their rational decisions in their use and interpretation of indirect speech acts,and thus is helpful to analyze the related characteristics.With regard to the communication involving indirect speech acts,we distinguish between two kinds of situations,that is,communication under certain cooperation and communication under uncertain cooperation,and we build signaling game models for correspondent situations.With regard to the selection of signaling game models,we introduce Parikh’s meaning function to van Rooij and Sevenster’s model,which makes a distinction between direct speech acts and indirect speech acts as well as avoids interference from false information.With regard to the solution of the model,we choose Franke’s iterated best response(IBR)reasoning as a basic framework.From an inherent visual angle,the IBR reasoning simulates the process of interactive reasoning between interlocutors,and it yields a solution concept that offers better explanation.Based in Franke’s model,we introduce the conceptions of higher-level belief and strategy filter to build a strong IBR reasoning framework,which realizes the quantification of two arguments,that is,sympathy and plausible deniability.We study the relationship between the two conceptions and the using conditions of indirect speech acts from the solution concept of our game-theoretical model.Through building models,reasoning and solving the models,we argue that,the convention of indirect speech acts comes from interlocutors’ rationality and their belief in rationality.We also point out that,the using conditions of indirect speech acts are:in communication under certain cooperation,stronger the sympathy between interlocutors are,more probable they use indirect speech acts;in communication under uncertain cooperation,people more tend to use indirect speech acts.