The Choice of Opting Out

The Choice of Opting Out

MALGORZATA P. BONTKOWSKAWarsaw University

Pragmatic research dealing with speech acts has invariably focused onanalysing the speaker's performance of speech acts (strategies employed,factors affecting speech-act performance, etc.). This paper argues for includingthe analysis of the 'opting out' choice (the speaker's decision not to perform aspeech act) into the realm of pragmatic study. The opting out choice is as mucha pragmatic choice as any strategic choice employed in speech-act per-formance, made through activating the same components of pragmaticknowledge. Analysing reasons for opting out reported by speakers can helpvalidate claims about conditions for speech acts and factors influencingspeech-act performance. The data presented to illustrate the point come fromthe study of the speech act of complaining.

My aim in this paper is to argue that pragmatics should expand its researchinterest to include not only the study of how speakers perform speech acts butalso the investigation of instances where they decide not to perform them, i.e.when they make what I shall refer to as the 'opting out' choice. The paperconsists of two parts: in the first part I shall attempt to justify my claim thatopting out should be a legitimate object of pragmatic study, whereas in thesecond part I shall try to show the usefulness of studying the opting out choiceand propose a way of doing it by presenting some data from my study of thespeech act of complaining (Bonikowska 1985a; 1985b).

1. OPTING OUT AS PRAGMATIC STRATEGIC CHOICE

The study of speech acts, initiated by the well-known work by Austin,developed later by Searle and his followers, has gone a long way since thepublication of Austin's lectures in 1962. Methodologically, there has been agradual shift from the early speech-act theorists' reliance on intuitive fabricateddata to a data-based approach aimed at discovering how speech acts are reallyperformed and how their performance is influenced by the context of thespeech-act situation (Hymes 1972). Brown and Levinson (1978) in their studybased on data from three languages (English, Tamil, and Tzeltal) showed theinfluence of sociological factors on the choice of politeness strategies in speech-act performance.

A series of studies set out to investigate the performance of particular speechacts in terms of strategies employed by speakers (e.g. Fraser's (1981) study onapology; Coulmas's (1981b) on thanks and apology; Wolfson's (1983) andManes's (1983) on complimenting, and Edmondson's (1981) on apology andits relationship with thanks and complaints). The data in those studies weresometimes gathered by means of the ethnographic method (collecting naturally

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170 THE CHOICE OF OPTING OUT

occurring speech in authentic contexts) but more frequently by means of variouselicitation techniques, such as role play and questionnaires. Although ethno-graphic data, being fully natural, are clearly more valid, for some researchpurposes (the need for a large corpus, manipulation of contextual factors, etc.)elicited data may be superior.

Elicitation instruments used in pragmatic research such as the studiesmentioned above have several shortcomings. Role play can be criticized on thegrounds that, as in a language teaching context, it requires a special knack forrole playing and not all individuals feel at ease with this technique. In so-called'discourse completion' questionnaires (cf. the elicitation instrument used in theCross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP)—see papers inApplied Linguistics 3/3) the respondent is required to adopt various roles, forexample of a father or principal, which are clearly distant to him/her. It is ratherunrealistic to base any conclusions on linguistic performance produced by anindividual who is forced to act in a role he or she has no experience of. Also,most probably for reasons of convenience and ease of analysis, respondents areoften asked to provide one-sentence utterances in their performance of speechacts. This also contradicts real-life language use where no such restrictions exist.Finally, a serious shortcoming of such questionnaires is that they force thesubjects to perform linguistically in situations in which, in real life, they mightchoose to opt out.

In real-life speech situations the speaker (S) always has a choice of notperforming the act, i.e. opting out. Clearly, this strategic choice is more likely tobe made if S is faced with a situation calling for the performance of a highly face-threatening act (FTA) (Brown and Levinson 1978) such as, for example,criticizing or complaining, than a less threatening one, such as, for example,inviting or offering. Brown and Levinson (1978: 77), talking about the fifthstrategic choice available to S, 'Don't do the FTA', say that the pay-off of thischoice consists in avoiding causing offence to the hearer (H) but: 'Of course Salso fails to achieve his desired communication, and as there are naturally nointeresting linguistic reflexes of this last-ditch strategy, we will ignore it in ourdiscussion henceforth' (my emphasis).

I disagree with the first part of the statement and below give examples ofinstances where, in spite of the choice available to S 'Don't do the FTA'(linguistically), S may still achieve his or her communicative goal by othermeans.

As for the latter part of Brown and Levinson's statement, I believe that a lackof 'linguistic reflexes' is not a sufficient reason for excluding the opting outchoice from pragmatic considerations. Even if the study of this choice does notprovide us directly with linguistic data to work on, there are sound argumentsfor being interested in it, as I shall try to show below.

Quirk (1978) introduces a distinction between 'act of referring' and 'mannerof referring': decisions determining 'act of referring' are culture specific andconsist of judging contextual factors (e.g. social distance, power, rights orobligations) in order to decide whether it is appropriate to perform a given act,

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whereas decisions about 'manner of referring', which are language specific,concern linguistic choices related to encoding S's illocutionary force in anappropriate way. This dichotomy corresponds to Thomas's (1981) distinctionbetween two kinds of judgments involved in making a pragmatically successfulutterance, viz. 'sociopragmatic' and 'pragmalinguistic' judgments. The formerare in fact social before they are linguistic as they rest upon S's assessment ofcontextual factors, the importance of which differs from culture to culture. It isprecisely these sociopragmatic decisions, the decisions concerning 'act ofreferring', that govern what is and what is not mentionable in certain contexts ina given culture or speech community both in terms of taboo topics and in termsof speech acts, the mention or performance of which may be consideredinappropriate in certain circumstances. I subscribe to the opinion presented byThomas (1981:32) that'... deciding "whether to refer" (whether an attempt atan FTA can be made, whether something is or is not "mentionable") is as much apragmatic decision as deciding "how to refer"' (my emphasis).

Quirk's and Thomas's distinctions resemble that introduced by Canale(1983) between judgments relating to 'appropriateness of meaning' as opposedto those relating to 'appropriateness of form'. The former refer to 'the extent towhich particular communicative functions (e.g. commanding, complaining andinviting), attitudes (including politeness and formality), and ideas are judged tobe proper in a given situation' (Canale 1983:7), whereas the latter concern 'theextent to which a given meaning (including communicative functions, attitudesand propositions/ideas) is represented in a verbal and/or non-verbal form thatis proper in a given sociolinguistic context' (ibid.).

The general ideas underlying Thomas's, Quirk's, and Canale's distinctionsseem to be of a similar nature. The judgments involved in the production/interpretation of speech acts can be seen as belonging to the two areas of'whether to perform' and of 'how to perform':

Table 1: Judgments involved in the production/interpretation of speech acts

'Whether to perform' 'How to perform'

Quirk Act of referring Manner of referringThomas Sociopragmatic judgments Pragmalinguistic judgmentsCanale Appropriateness of meaning Appropriateness of form

The opting out choice is made on the basis of a judgement which can bedescribed as belonging to the left-hand side of Table 1. As such, it should beconsidered as pragmatic and thus of interest to pragmatic study. It is of interestnot only from the sociopragmatic but also from the pragmalinguistic point ofview: factors pertinent to sociopragmatic decisions have direct bearing on theproducts of pragmalinguistic judgments. The way the illocutionary force isencoded in an utterance, i.e. the extent to which and the way it is mitigated (seeFraser 1980; G. Lakoff 1972; R. Lakoff 1973), and the choice of politenessstrategies (Brown and Levinson 1978), depends on the sociopragmaticevaluation of a given speech-act situation.

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The relevance of the opting out choice for pragmatic research can also beshown if it is viewed within the framework developed by Faerch and Kasper(1984), who postulate that pragmatic knowledge should be accounted for by thecombination of 'declarative' (static) and 'procedural' (process or dynamic)knowledge. The former has the following components: linguistic knowledge(conventional ways of performing speech acts); speech-act knowledge (condi-tions for speech acts); discourse knowledge (co-occurrence of acts in adjacencypairs); socio-culrural knowledge (social consequences of performing particularacts in a given speech community); contextual knowledge (importance of factorssuch as power, social distance, etc.), and knowledge of the world. The relevantcomponents are selected and combined by means of the application of theprocedures representing procedural knowledge to serve the purpose ofproducing utterances through which speakers can reach their communicativegoals.

Faerch and Kasper go on to show that these two types of pragmaticknowledge interact in the following phases:

(a) Context Analysis. S combines speech-act knowledge with knowledge ofcontext to determine whether conditions for a given speech act obtain.

(b) Actional-goal Formulation. Having established if the conditions obtain, Sformulates the actional goal by activating context knowledge referring to S-Hrelationship factors (power, social distance, rights/obligations, etc.). Theconditions for a speech act may hold but S may still decide to opt out due to, forexample, the degree of Ifs power over him or her. If the decision to perform theact has been made, S formulates the modal goal, i.e. by activating socioculturaland contextual knowledge components, S determines the interactional implica-tions of the act (whether it is highly face-threatening, neutral, or supportive tothe participants' face) and, consequently, decides whether and to what extentthe illocutionary force of the act has to be modified. The outcomes or these twophases serve as a basis for the next phase.

(c) Verbal Planning. During this phase the linguistic knowledge is activated toplan the actual linguistic realization of the act.

(d) Monitoring. At this stage plan shifts may appear which may be due to H'sreactions to S's performance, etc.

It is during the Context Analysis and/or Actional-goal Formulation stagesthat S makes the decision whether to perform the act or to opt out. The optingout choice is made through activating the same components of declarativepragmatic knowledge and by means of the same procedures that are activated inthe performance of speech acts. Context Analysis takes place both in the case ofperformance and non-performance of speech acts. In the latter case, however,further phases are blocked whereas in the former S continues the process untilthe stage of producing the linguistic realization of the act. Some instances ofopting out are motivated not by S's decision that the conditions for the speech

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act do not obtain but by his/her estimation of S-H relationship factors (power,social distance, etc.) as not allowing his or her performance of the act. This sortof opting out choice is made at the Actional-goal Formulation phase, which insuch cases is the last phase in the process, after which the further phases areblocked. Enquiring about the speakers' reasons for opting out can provide aninsight into what is going on during the two phases of Context Analysis andActional-goal Formulation. In this way we can obtain knowledge which canusefully support conclusions drawn from the study of linguistic utteranceswhich are end-products of the complete process in the case of S's performing agiven act. As such, opting out should be seen as one of a variety of pragmaticchoices open to speakers and should thus be of interest to pragmatics.

2 . WHY INVESTIGATE THE OPTING OUT CHOICE?

The reasons motivating the opting out choice can have explanatory/confirmatory value in describing conditions for speech acts and the role ofcontextual factors, and can therefore validate theoretical claims about thenature of speech acts. It is often said that the investigator has no access to S'sintentions and thus can only study the utterances produced by S (or, as Leech(1983:35) puts it, 'publicly conveyed meaning') to determine their illocutionaryforce, factors motivating the particular way of encoding the force linguisticallyas well as the processes leading to the production of utterances. By analyzingwhat motives speakers report as lying behind the opting out choice (i.e. whatgoverns and motivates the 'act of referring') we can gain knowledge about thenature of the act in terms of conditions and get insight into what determines the'manner of referring' if the decision to perform the act has been taken. Thussociopragmatic judgments and motivating factors can have explanatory powerin describing products of pragmalinguistic decisions, i.e. in explaining why S hasencoded his or her illocutionary force in the way he or she has done.

In 1985,1 carried out a study of the speech act of complaining. The subjectswere 46 university students (23 male and 23 female). They were under-graduates studying in 25 subject areas at the University of Lancaster, agedbetween 18 and 23 (mean age 19.9). All of them were born in England withBritish English being their native language. The data were gathered by means ofa questionnaire which contained 14 situations differing along the dimensionsthe influence of which I wanted to determine, namely two contextual factors: (1)Power of H over S and (2) Distance between S and H (estimated on the basis offrequency of interaction), and reversibility of the offence about which Scomplains.

The questionnaire was constructed in such a way as to eliminate some of thedisadvantages of similar instruments which I mentioned above. Firstly, thesubjects were not asked to adopt artificial roles; in all the situations they arethemselves' and do not have to change their identity. Secondly, all the situationsare designed to reflect situations which can realistically happen to universitystudents. Whenever a subject reported critically in the 'Comments and remarks'

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part below the questionnaire proper (e.g. 'I couldn't possibly have found myselfin a situation like this') his or her self-report was excluded from the analysis.

Below are the 14 situations included in the questionnaire.

Situation 1You had an important exam on Thursday morning. A few days before youordered a book which you needed for your exam. You got a note from thelibrary saying that the book would be available for collection on Wednesday,just before the library closed. You asked your friend to collect it for you whileyou were busy revising. When he brought it back, you discovered it was thewrong volume. It was too late to go to the library and you couldn't borrow thebook from anyone. As a result, you did badly in the exam the next day. Now youare in the library returning some other books.

Situation 2Your professor was supposed to mark and return your essays to your group byMonday morning. It's Thursday and the essays are not back. Your group ishaving an exam soon.

Situation 3You let your friend use your flat while you were away in the mountains. Whenyou got back, you found it in an awful mess though your friend knew when youwere coming back. You had to clean up all the mess yourself.

Situation 4You're renting a room, but because the landlady's son is coming back homeyou'll have to move out next term. Your landlady promised to help you find newaccommodation. She was to have a word with some of her friends and let youknow last week. She didn't. You haven't started looking for a room on your ownas you hoped to find a new place to stay through her.

Situation 5A new student in your group borrowed your notes and was supposed to leavethem for you in the Department before the weekend. You checked twice butthey weren't there. You found them in the Department on Monday. Youplanned to do some work over the weekend which you couldn't do without yournotes.

Situation 6You are in a restaurant. You have been waiting for over twenty minutes but thewaiter hasn't come to take your order. You see him passing by on his way to thekitchen.

Situation 7Last Saturday you went to a party in your friend's cottage. There were some ofyour university teachers there. One of them promised to give you a lift back

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because you told him you had to be back by midnight In spite of this, he leftwithout letting you know. There was no one else with a car and you couldn't get ataxi. You walked back in pouring rain. It took an hour.

Situation 8New people moved into the flat next door about two weeks ago. You haven'ttalked to them yet because you were away. It's three ajn. and there is a verynoisy party going on in their flat. The music is terribly loud. You've heard fromother neighbours that this has happened several times already. You cannotsleep.

Situation 9Your friend promised to make an appointment for you with his dentist and callyou back with all the details and the dentist's phone number and address. Heknew it was very urgent. He didn't get in touch with you. You tried to ring him upbut he wasn't in. You had to arrange to see another dentist, which took a longtime and caused you a lot of pain and inconvenience.

Situation 10A couple of weeks ago you had a confidential conversation with one of youruniversity tutors whom you know quite well and have always respected a lot.During the conversation you told the tutor some personal things about yourselfwhich you have never told anyone else. Later you discovered that two otherpeople knew about these things, which caused you embarrassment.

Situation 11You helped your friend to paint his room and the kitchen. In return, hepromised to lend you his car over a weekend but he hasn't done so yet. Hopingto get his car last weekend, you planned a trip to the Lakes but it didn't work outas you didn't get the car. You'd like to go to the Lakes this coming weekend.

Situation 12You've bought a new lamp which is quite expensive. At home you notice thatthere is a scratch on it which looks awful. You could remove it yourself byputting a coat of paint over it.

Situation 13Your flatmate has a dreadful habit of smoking strong cigarettes in the bathroom.You, as well as the third person you share the flat with, are non-smokers andfind it difficult to put up with the smell and the cigarette butts which you oftenfind on the bathroom floor.

Situation 14You had an appointment with the Head of your Department at eleven thirty.You've never talked to the Head of the Department before. You've been sittingin the hall and waiting for over half an hour. You are in a hurry.

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In each situation the description was followed by the choice: "Would you react/say anything in this situation? If not, why not? If so, what would you say?' Givingthe subjects a chance to opt out was motivated by the reasons I outlined above.

The self-report design of the instrument is obviously open to variouscriticisms, for example the question of authenticity, or of requiring the subjectsto analyse performance which in normal circumstances they seldom monitor,but as McDonough (1978: 135, 136) states: 'While these considerations limitthe accuracy of self-reports, they do not imply rejection of them' since 'it shouldbe obvious that internal validity or accuracy is a problem to be faced by all formsof enquiry.' Accepting the imperfections of the self-report should not, in myview, make us ignore and abandon this useful way of obtaining first-handexperience data (cf. the very interesting discussion in Marton, Hounsell, andEntwistle 1984).

I analysed the reasons for opting out reported by the subjects and found themfalling into four broad categories:

(1) Reasons related to conditions for the act of complaining;(2) Reasons related to the relationship of the act to S's goals;(3) Reasons related to the relationship of the act to the social goal;(4) Reasons related to contextual factors (Power and Distance).

Each of these categories will be described below and illustrated with examplesfrom the data.

2.1. Conditions for the act of complainingAnalysing a situation from the point of view of conditions for a particular speechact in order to decide whether these conditions obtain or not is done at whatFaerch and Kasper (see above) call the Context Analysis phase. When subjectsreport reasons for opting out in which conditions for speech acts are reflected, itbecomes evident that opting out is motivated by the subjects' assessment thatsuch conditions which are necessary for the act in question do not obtain. Thiscan provide support for theoretical accounts of speech-act conditions.

The theoretical model of the speech act of complaining I developed in mystudy described the act as implicating the following conditions:

(a) S believes that there is a state of affairs (act A);(b) S believes that A is at cost to S;(c) S believes that H is responsible for causing A;(d) S blames H for causing A.

It is not the purpose of this paper to expand on these conditions but they arementioned to show that the reasons reported by the subjects reflect theseconditions and can be classified into three categories corresponding toConditions (b)-(d). (Condition (a) is exceptional in that if it did not obtain therewould be no question of performing or not performing the act in the first place.)

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Category 1. No offence—corresponding to Condition (b). S does not perceiveA as an offence because he or she thinks H is justified in/excused for causing it.This may be because:

— S thinks H had good reasons for causing A (lack of time, forgetting, causingA by accident, or not knowing the rules), e.g.:

'It was a genuine mistake.' {Situation 1)

— S thinks causing A may happen to everyone (including him/herself), e.g.:

'We all have terrible habits and I think you have to put up with things.'{Situation 13)

Category 2. H's responsibility—corresponding to Condition (c). S does nothold H responsible for A because:

— S views him/herself as responsible for A, e.g.:

'I shouldn't have left revision till the last day.' (Situation 1)

— S is not certain who is responsible for A, e.g.:

'It could have been a mistake on the part of anyone.' (Situation 1)

— S believes that someone else, not H, is responsible, e.g.:

'It's not that librarian's fault.' (Situation 1)

Category 3. Blame—corresponding to Condition (d). Despite H's responsi-bility, S does not blame H openly, feeling that he or she has no right to do so, e.g.:

'He was doing me a favour anyway.' (Situation 7)

With the above conditions not holding in S's view the act could not have beenperformed sincerely. The subjects' mentioning of these three categories ofreasons corresponding to Conditions (b)-(d) proves that language users doperceive these conditions as important for the act of complaining to beperformed successfully.

In the remaining category of reasons the conditions for the act of complainingare assumed to hold but S decides to opt out as a result of calculating the weightof the act in relation to his/her goals or to S-H relationship (social goal). In theformer case, therefore, the pragmatic process was blocked at the ContextAnalysis stage, at which speakers concluded that speech-act conditions did notobtain, whereas in all the remaining cases the process proceeded one stagefurther, viz. to the Actional-goal Formulation stage, to be blocked there.

2.2. The act of complaining as related to S's goalsS may view the act as not worth performing as it would not further his/her goalsor could even be detrimental to them. The former is the case especially in those

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situations where there is nothing to be gained by way of compensation apartfrom 'moral satisfaction', as, for example, in Situation 1:

It would be too late for anything to be done so it's not worth making an issueout of it.'

S may also conclude that there are better ways of achieving his or her goals(complaining to someone else, waiting for H's initiative, acting non-verbally),e.g.:

Td go and complain to his secretary or the general office.' (Situation 14)

'I'd bring up the topic only if she wanted to speak to me about it.' (Situation 4)

Td probably be more subtle: opening windows, sweeping out every day, etc'(Situation 13)

The last example is interesting as a counter-example to Brown and Levinson'sclaim that by choosing 'Don't do the FTA' strategy 'of course S also fails toachieve his desired communication' (my emphasis). S may express disapprovaland blame by means of conspicious non-linguistic acts such as openingwindows, etc. which convey the illocutionary force of complaint: 'I think thatyour smoking is bad and I want you to stop it.' The subject views this non-linguistic act of complaining as 'more'subtle' (i.e. less face-threatening),presumably because it does not constitute an open attack on H and does nottherefore threaten S's positive face openly.

2.3. The act of complaining as related to the social goalAs has been said, the act of complaining is a face threatening act, clashing withthe social goal of preserving social harmony between S and H. S may decide toopt out, viewing the act as not worth the social friction which it may cause, e.g.:

'He may be offended; this could finish our relationship.' [Situation 7)

2.4. The act of complaining and contextual factorsFinally, there are reasons for opting out related to Power and Distance. Even ifnot explicitly stated as the reasons for the opting out choice, they seem tounderlie many of the reported reasons as greater Power difference or Distancemake the act of complaining appear to be more threatening, e.g. 'I wouldn'tdisturb him if I didn't know him' (Situation 14). The highest number of optingout responses occurred in -(-Power and/or +Distance situations. An example ofthe former occurs in Situation 10 where H was S's university teacher and Sdecides to opt out because:

'I wouldn't feel able to tackle a person in a higher position than myself.'

Examples of the latter occur when S opts out of performing the act ofcomplaining because he or she does not know H well enough and thereforeperceives the act as too face-threatening, e.g.:

'I'd like to know who they were before I started nagging at them.' (Situation 8)

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Performing the act of complaining seems to be more socially acceptable in S'sview if the distance between S and H is small (i.e. if they know each otherpersonally).

The categories outlined above are by no means discrete and there is definitelya great deal of interdependence between them. They are often combined inindividual responses, thus reflecting the complexity of the processes underlyingperformance of speech acts and sociopragmatic judgments. A more detailedanalysis could aim at establishing the relative importance of individual factorsdiscussed above in order to find out in what configurations speakers are mostlikely to make the opting out choice.

Finally, some of the reasons for opting out shed light on such issues as:

— the ways in which the act of complaining could be performed to reduce theface-threat, e.g.:

'Unless I knew him well I wouldn't be able to make a joke of it:(Situation 7)

'Maybe a subtle hint...' (Situation 7)

— S's long-term goal as related to the act of complaining. Some responses showS's reluctance to perform the act which is face-threatening to H because ofS's concern with long-term goals, such as being on friendly terms with Hbecause of advantages this may bring about, e.g.:

1 would say nothing, not wanting to affect the outcomes of the discussion.'(Situation 14)

'It's him who gives out degrees so it's just as well to appease him.'(Situation 14)

— repetitive A and the act of complaining. Whether A has happened once ormore is also an important factor in S's decision to perform an act or to optout. S is more likely to refrain from performing the act if he or she believes Ais a one-off offence, e.g.:

'Anyone can forget once.' (Situation 9)

If it did persist, I would perhaps ask them to consider warning both theneighbours and me first.' (Situation 8)

3. CONCLUSIONThis paper has aimed at showing that non-performance of speech acts is asmuch a legitimate area of pragmatic interest as performance of acts. Non-performance is the result of choices based on the same pragmatic judgments andmade in the process of activating the same components of pragmatic knowledgeas those employed by speakers in their speech-act performance. Furthermore,investigating the reasons speakers report as motivating their opting out choicescan shed light on the nature of the act under study (its conditions, relationship toS's goals, and to S-H mutual relationship), factors influencing sociopragmatic

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decisions, and the role of contextual factors in speech-act performance. Theseinsights can be valuable to theoretical pragmaticists interested in describingspeech acts and also to researchers concerned with the pragmalinguistic level ofanalysis (speech-act realization strategies) both from the intracultural and fromthe cross-cultural perspectives. In the case of the former, analysing reasons foropting out can provide support for theoretical descriptions of speech-actconditions and their relative importance. As for the latter, valuable insights canbe gained with respect to contextual factors influencing the way speech acts areperformed linguistically; it is exactly the same contextual factors that determinethe degree of mitigation of the illocutionary force in actual speech-act realiza-tions, this being due to politeness reasons or concern with S's own goals.

As far as the methodology employed in this study is concerned, I would notwish to claim that the whole of pragmatics should rely solely on elicited/experimental data. My argument was meant to show that the intuitive fabricateddata on which the standard speech-act theory was initially based could, andshould, be supported with other kinds of data, both ethnographic and elicited. Ifa variety of methods are used, the conclusions drawn from pragmatic researchcan be more reliable and insightful. It seems to me that, despite all thedrawbacks of this sort of procedure, it is necessary to try to obtain informationon speech-act performers' perceptions of what is involved in speech-actperformance or non-performance, what factors are taken into account, andwhat conditions are viewed as important (i.e. generally, what in speakers' viewsunderlies sociopragmatic judgments which lead to pragmalinguistic ones). If thisperspective is ignored, we are left with studying ready-made utterances relyingentirely on our own intuitions as to what was going on in speakers' minds whileproducing them.

(Received August 1986)

NOTEI would like to thank Dr J. Thomas, under whose supervision I carried out my research atLancaster, and Professor G. N. Leech, for reading and commenting on earlier drafts ofthis paper.

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