A Study On The Pragmatic Strategies In Public Speaking: A Socio-cognitive Perspective

The studies on pragmatic strategies are mainly marked by Grice`s Logic andConversation and Searle`s Speech Act Theory. Being part of pragmatic competence,pragmatic strategy is the study of linguistic structures, or, to introduce a somewhatcomplicated phrasing, the study of varied linguistic forms generated by language users inorder to achieve certain communicative purposes in particular contexts. Lee Iacocca said,“You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get youanywhere.” Thus, it can be seen that the study of pragmatic strategies accounts for a corestatus in pragmatics study.As a form of social communication, public speaking is rather strategic with strongintention. There`s no doubt that the reasonable utilization of pragmatic strategies can helpachieve the best effect in public speaking. With the tendency of current research in pragmaticsand related fields, a close integration of societal and cognitive factors will become animportant research direction for the development of pragmatics in the21st century. Therefore,employing qualitative method, this thesis endeavors to start from the pragmatic effects of thepragmatic strategies. Under the theoretical framework---the socio-cognitive approach topragmatics (SCA), it will mainly focus on possible pragmatic strategies carried out in“Commencement Speeches in Stanford”(10pieces in all) and by what ways the speakersimplemented these pragmatic strategies from a socio-cognitive perspective. Most of thecommencement speeches tend to use similar linguistic devices, though the contents of eachspeech are totally different.All the time, most of the related studies on pragmatic strategies are discussed from theperspective of societal factors in public speaking but lack of the consideration of languageuser`s cognitive factors. However, considering the interaction between societal and cognitivefactors, this thesis endeavors to make the study on how pragmatic strategies are realized inpublic speaking from a socio-cognitive perspective, therefore, provides a new breakthroughfor the study on pragmatic strategies. And there is certain practical value and realisticsignificance in this research.