Stiles_Classification of Intersubjective Illocutionary Acts

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Classification of Intersubjective Illocutionary Acts Author(s): William B. Stiles Source: Language in Society, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Aug., 1981), pp. 227-249Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4167215Accessed: 16-09-2015 21:12 UTC

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Lang. Soc. 10, 227-249. Printed in the United States of America

Classification of intersubjective illocutionary acts

WILLIAM B. STILES

Miami University

A BSTRACT

An illocutionary act presupposes not only a speaker, but also an other who is the intended recipient of the utterance's illocutionary force. Thus every illocutionary act has an intersubjective component; it connects two centers of experience in a particular way. This article proposes that the intersubjective illocutionary force of an utterance depends on (i) whether it concerns the speaker's or other's experience, (2) whether it takes the speaker's or other's viewpoint, and (3) whether or not the speaker must presume specific knowledge of the other to make the utterance. These three dichotomous principles of classification are called source of experience, frame of reference, and focus, respectively. The eight possible combinations of "'speaker" and "other" values define a mutually exclusive and exhaustive set of families of intersubjective illocutionary acts - Disclosure, Advise- ment, Edification, Confirmation, Question, Interpretation, Acknowledg- ment, and Reflection - which I have elsewhere called "verbal response modes." The modes are associated with characteristic grammatical forms, which retain a "formal" portion of their illocutionary force even when used to express a different intent, yielding a taxonomy of 64 distinct form-intent combinations. Differences between this taxonomy and other taxonomies of illocutionary acts are partially traceable to the present system's roots in the study of psychotherapeutic processes and the previous systems' roots in the study of explicit performatives.

In his I955 William James lectures at Harvard University, J. L. Austin (I975) defined an illocutionary act as the act performed in making an utterance, as distinct from simply uttering the words (a locutionary act), from producing some external effect on the actions or attitudes of others (a perlocutionary act), and from the propositional content (if any) of the utterance. For example, in uttering "Who was Aristotle?" the speaker asks a question; in uttering "The cat is on the mat," the speaker makes a statement (or an assertion, etc.). Questioning and stating (asserting) are illocutionary acts.

As implied by Austin, and subsequently elaborated by Searle (1969), Vendler (1972), and others, the illocutionary force of an utterance depends on the speaker's communicative intent, which must be inferred in context. The same words may have different illocutionary forces - or no illocutionary force - in

0047-4045/81/020227-23 $2.50 (? 198I Cambridge University Press

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different contexts. For example, the utterance, "The wastebasket is full," may be a simple assertion, or it may have the force of a directive if addressed to someone who is responsible for emptying the wastebasket. My utterance, "Shut the door," has the illocutionary force of a command (directive, order, request, suggestion, etc.) if I intend to command someone to shut the door. However, in the context of this article, "Shut the door" has no such force since 1, the author, am not commanding you, the reader, to do anything.

Searle's and Vendler's analyses show that illocutionary acts presuppose a speaker - a center of experience whose intent defines the act. To this I would add that illocutionary acts also presuppose an intended recipient. That is, illocutionary force must be on some other person. For example, "Shut the door" has directive force only on the person addressed, not on anyone who overhears. If there is no intended recipient, there is no illocutionary act. (However, the recipient may be a diffuse collectivity, such as the readership to whom the assertions in this article are addressed.) The illotLutionary force on the recipient is entirely determined by the speaker and is distinct from the perlo(utionaryv effect. For example, my telling someone to "Shut the door'" has the illocutionary force of a directive on that person regardless of whether the perlocutionary effect is com- pliance, refusal, anger, or incomprehension.

My view is thus that every illocutionary act includes an inter.subjective aspect; it connects two centers of experience in a particular way (cf. Russell & Stiles 1979). The intersubjective illocutionary force of an utterance describes the particular quality of the impact of one center of experience on another. Or, to put it another way, the intersubjective aspect of an illocutionary act is that which defines the relationship of speaker to other for that utterance.

Like Austin (0975), Searle (1969), Vendler (1972), Ohmann (1972), Fraser (1975), Green (I977), Hancher (1979), Wunderlich (1976, reviewed by Aijmer 1980), Bach and Hamish (1979), and others, I recognize family resemblances among illocutionary acts. For example, commands, orders, suggestions, advice, permission, and prohibition are all attempts by the speaker to guide the other's behavior. Similarly, statements, assertions, reports, claims, contentions, and affirmations are all representations of objective reality. Within such families, the labels overlap greatly (for example, many utterances could be described equally well as statements, assertions, or reports), whereas the distinctions between families seem much sharper. This suggests the existence of underlying dimensions or principles by which families are kept segregated.

A TAXONOMY

This article presents three principles of classification, each of which uses the natural dichotomy of speaker versus other. An utterance can have either speaker or other as its source of experience; it can use the speaker's or the other's fr(ame Of reference; and it can have either speaker or other as its focus. The eight

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INTERSUBJECTIVE ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS

possible combinations of "speaker" and "other"values of these three principles define mutually exclusive families of intersubjective illocutionary acts. The eight categories, which I have elsewhere (Stiles 1978b, 1979) called verbal response modes (VRMs), are Disclosure (D), Advisement (A), Edification (E), Confirma- tion (C), Question (Q), Interpretation (I), Acknowledgment (K), and Reflection (R). This taxonomy is summarized in Table i . It has evolved from a list of modes identified in naturalistic observation of interacting dyads by Gerald Goodman (Goodman & Dooley 1976).

The principles are based on a psychological conception of human cognitive processes which views individuals as centers of experience, and experience as a continuous stream that takes place within each center. Each communicative act can be construed as a point of contact (or attempted contact) between two streams. In order to convey two distinct points of experience, two communicative acts are necessary.

The grammatical realization of the communicative act is the utterance, which is the scoring unit for the VRM taxonomy. My tentative enumeration of what counts as an utterance includes each independent clause, each nonrestrictive dependent clause, each element of a compound predicate, and each term of acknowledgment, address, or salutation. The enumeration is intended to avoid cases in which the sense of one utterance demands two different classifications.

Principles of classific ation

Source of experience refers to whether an utterance concerns the speaker's or the other's ideas, information, feelings, or behaviors. The topic of a Disclosure, an Advisement, an Edification, or a Confirmation is the speaker's experience, whereas the topic of a Question, an Interpretation, an Acknowledgment, or a

TABLE I. Taxonomy of intersubjective illocutionary acts

Principles of classification Act categories

Source of Frame of experience reference Focus (verbal response modes)

Speaker Disclosure (D)

Speaker Speaker Other Advisement (A)

Other Speaker Edification (E) Other Confirmation (C)

Speaker Speaker Question (Q)

Other Other Interpretation (I) Other Speaker Acknowledgment (K)

Other Reflection (R)

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Reflection is the other's experience. For example, the Disclosure, "I wish I had kept my baseball card collection," concerns the speaker's experience (a wish) whereas the Question, "Where are the paper towels?" concerns the other's experience (knowledge of the paper towels' location). Similarly, the Edification, "The Reds beat the Astros,'" conveys information held by the speaker, whereas the Acknowledgment, "Oh," conveys receipt of the other's communication.

Frame of reference refers to whether the experience (i.e., the central topic of the utterance) is expressed from the speaker's own viewpoint or from a viewpoint shared with the other. A frame of reference is the constellation of ideas, feelings, memories, etc. that gives an experience the meaning it has in a particular utterance; it consists of the mental associations - the related "experiences" - that surround the central experience. The relation of an experience to its frame of reference is like that of figure to ground or of an event to its context. Every experience may be construed in alternative frames of reference. Frames of reference, like experiences, are infinitely varied; however, the taxonomy distin- guishes only speaker versus other. The taxonomic issue is only whose associations give the central experience the meaning it has in a particular utterance, not what those associations are.

Strictly speaking, of course, every meaningful utterance uses the speaker's frame of reference. It cannot get its meaning exclusively from the other's frame of reference, or else the speaker would not understand his or her own utterance. Thus the distinction is technically whether an utterance uses only the speaker's own frame of reference or a frame of reference that is shared with the other. As shown in Table i, Disclosure, Advisement, Question, and Interpretation use the speaker's frame of reference; whereas Edification, Confirmation, Acknowledg- ment, and Reflection use a frame of reference that is shared with the other. To illustrate, the Disclosure "'I'm angry with him" takes the internal perspective of the speaker, whereas the Edification "He insulted my sister" takes an external perspective that is shared with all objective observers, including the other. The Interpretation "'You are mistaken" evaluates the other's experience from the speaker's viewpoint whereas the Reflection "You don't like what he did" takes the other's internal viewpoint.

Focus refers to whether the speaker implicitly presumes to know what the other's experience or frame of reference is or should be. An utterance is focused on the speaker if it does not require such a presumption; it is focused on the other if it does require such a presumption. Disclosure, Edification, Question, and Acknowledgment are focused on the speaker in that no specific presumption about the other is required. Advisement, Confirmation, Interpretation, and Re- flection are focused on the other in that each requires some specific presumption about the other's private experience or volitional behavior (what it is, has been, will be, or should be) in order to have the meaning it does have. For example, the Disclosure "I don't like cauliflower" reveals the speaker's experience in the speaker's frame of reference and presumes nothing of the other (focus on

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speaker), whereas the Advisement "Eat your cauliflower" presumes to impose an experience on the other (focus on other). The Acknowledgment "Mm-hm" concerns the other's experience in the other's frame of reference but requires no specific presumption of knowledge of the other, whereas the Reflection "You don't want to eat any cauliflower" presumes specific knowledge of the other's experience as viewed by the other.

Each of the eight categories generated by combining these principles entails both a speaker and an intended recipient. For example, in a Disclosure, the speaker reveals private experience to the other; in an Advisement, the speaker guides the behavior of the other; in a Question, the speaker asks for information from the other. In this sense, each utterance is a distinct microrelationship between speaker and other. The taxonomy is a conceptual bridge from individual speech acts to two-person discourse and interpersonal relationships. As Brown and Levinson (1978: 6o) put it:

We believe that patterns of message construction, or 'ways of putting things,' or simply language usage, are part of the very stuff that social relationships are made of ... Discovering the principles of language usage may be largely coincident with discovering the principles out of which social relationships, in their interactional aspect, are constructed: dimensions by which individuals manage to relate to others in particular ways.

Since each utterance has a source of experience, a frame of reference, and a focus, it is not possible to isolate the principles - to give examples of source of experience independently of frame of reference and focus for instance. In combination, the principles modify each other, giving each mode its unique character. Consequently, different modes may seem more distinctive than a simple additive combination of principles would suggest. For example, Disclosures (e.g., "I wish I had time to go with you") may seem greatly different from Questions (e.g., "Would you like to go with us?") even though they differ in only one principle (source of experience). Presuming no knowledge of the other's experience (focus on speaker) differs when speaking of one's own experience (Disclo- sure) versus when speaking of the other's experience (Question). Questions involve a paradox - speaking of something about which nothing is presumed - which gives them their "'empty," "incomplete," or "seeking" character (Goody 1978), whereas Disclosures involve no such paradox.

Conversely, the principles may combine in ways that make modes more similar than would be expected. To illustrate, Disclosures ("I feel ill-at-ease") and Reflections ("You feel ill-at-ease") differ in all three principles (Table i), but they are alike in that the source of experience, frame of reference, and focus all match (all are "speaker" for Disclosure; all are "other" for Reflection), so that both express subjective experiences from the viewpoint of the experiencing one. Thus, the principles offer accounts of similarities and complementarities, as well as of distinctions among the modes.

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The principles also help to explain why different categories are prey to different infelicities - for example, why an Edification's happiness (in Austin's 1975 sense) depends on its truth, whereas a Disclosure's happiness depends on its sincerity and an Advisement's happiness depends on its feasibility. In each case, an utterance's felicity is judged only in relation to its own frame of reference, given the presumptions made about it (focus). Thus the felicity of [isclosures, Advisements, Questions, and Interpretations is judged from the speaker's internal viewpoint, whereas the felicity of Confirmations and Reflec- tions must be judged from the other's internal viewpoint (i.e., the other's private frame of reference, of which the speaker presumes knowledge), and the felicity of Edifications and Acknowledgments must be judged from an external viewpoint (i.e., a frame of reference which is shared with the other but about which no specific knowledge is presumed). In this sense, the taxonomy uses episte- mological principles, rather than social meaning or conventional usage, to distinguish among classes of illocutions.

VRM categories

Consideration of each of the categories ("'modes") in turn may help elucidate the three principles and the different felicity conditions.

A Disclosure, such as "I used to be afraid of spiders," reveals the speaker's experience (the fear) in the speaker's frame of reference (the associated feelings and memories), and it is focused on the speaker (no need to presume specific knowledge of the other). Thus reports of the speaker's subjective experiences - thoughts, feelings, perceptions, intentions, and so forth - are Disclosures. To be felicitous, a Disclosure must be sincere, i.e., the speaker must actually have had an experience with the reported meaning. The criterion of sincerity is the speaker's private frame of reference.

An Advisement, such as "You shouldn't work so hard,'" concerns the speaker's experience (the idea of working less) and uses the speaker's frame of reference (the feelings, knowledge, biases, reasons, etc. behind the suggestion), but it is focused on the other (it presumes to impose the speaker's experience on the other). Thus suggestions, advice, orders, commands, permission, and prohibition are Advisements. To be felicitous, an Advisement must be feasible, i.e., the speaker must believe it possible for the other to follow the guidance offered (to have the experience the speaker seeks to impose).

An Edification, such as "He drove away in a black limousine," concerns the speaker's experience (the knowledge of what happened). It presumes no specific knowledge of the other (focus on speaker), yet it uses other's frame of reference. The sense to be made of this apparent contradiction is that the frame of reference is one shared with anny other. It makes no specific assumptions about the intended recipient's private experience. Such a commonly shared frame of reference is "objective" reality - i.e., knowledge that anyone in the right place at the right time with the right skills could have. Thus statements of fact, assertions, descrip-

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tions, characterizations, etc. are Edifications. To be felicitous, an Edification must be true; the reported information must fit the objective facts.

A Confirmation, such as "We [You and I] never agree on anything," places the speaker's experience (the lack of agreement) in a shared frame of reference. The speaker presumes to know the other's frame of reference and to use it as a context for the utterance. Thus agreement, disagreement, and expressions of shared attitudes or experience are Confirmations. To be felicitous, a Confirma- tion must be both sincere - the speaker's experience must be accurately rendered - and insightful - the speaker must know the meaning of that experience to the other. In other words, the felicity of a Confirmation depends on accurate repre- sentation of the private experience of both speaker and other.

A Question, such as "Did you remember to go to the bank?" concerns the other's experience (knowledge of whether or not he went to the bank), uses the speaker's frame of reference (in effect, the speaker seeks information to place in her own frame of reference), and focuses on the speaker (no specific presumption of knowledge of the other is needed; if she knew, she wouldn't have to ask). To be felicitous, a Question must be answerable by the other, or at least the speaker must believe it to be answerable; i.e., the speaker must believe that the other could have the knowledge that fits into the speaker's frame of reference.

An Interpretation, such as "You just contradicted yourself," concerns the other's experience (in this case, the other's volitional verbal behavior), but places it in the context of the speaker's frame of reference (using her own knowledge, memories, etc., the speaker judges the other's behavior as contradictory). It is focused on the other in that the speaker presumes specific knowledge of the other's experience (or volitional actions) in order to assess it. Thus judgments, evaluations, labeling, and explanations of the other are Interpretations. Note, however, that assessments of third parties or objects (e.g., works of art) are not classified as Interpretations in this taxonomy, although they might be called "interpretations" colloquially. To be felicitous, an Interpretation must be acute - it must accurately characterize the other's experience in terms of the frame of reference being used by the speaker.

An Acknowledgment, such as "Mm-hm" or "Yeah" or "Well," concerns the other's experience and uses the other's frame of reference but is focused on the speaker, i.e., it requires no specific presumption about the other's experience or frame of reference. The seeming paradox of an utterance being about something of which no understanding is presumed is resolved by the lack of propositional or referential content. Acknowledgments merely signal reception of or receptiveness to communication from the other; they are "back-channel'" responses (cf. Duncan 1972, 1974). Salutations, such as "Hello," and terms of address, such as names and titles, convey receptiveness to the other's communication and are classed as Acknowledgments. To be felicitous, an Acknowledg- ment requires only that the other have something to communicate; that is, it must be timely with respect to the other's discourse.

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A Reflection, such as "You feel left out," concerns the other's experience, as viewed from the other's frame of reference, and it is focused on the other - the speaker must presume to understand the other's communication in order to re- state it. Repetitions, rephrasings, summaries, and clarifications are Reflections. To be felicitous, a Reflection must be empathic it must accurately articulate what the other is experiencing from the other's viewpoint.

Mode forms, mixed modes, and indirec t speech acts

Each of the eight mode intents is associated with a more-or-less distinctive set of grammatical features, prominently including person and mood. However, fre- quently the grammatical form associated with one mode is used to express the intent of a different mode. For example, "Did you know that two-thirds of the known food plants originated in the New World?" is Question in form, but apparently has the intent of Edification - transmission of objective information. Similarly, "I wish you would stop clearing your throat" uses a Disclosure form to convey an Advisement intent - an attempt to guide the other's behavior.

The association of each mode's form with its VRM classification is stronger than an indicator, since some of the illocutionary force is retained by a form even when it is used to express a different intent. Thus, "I wish you would stop clearing your throat" retains some of the force of Disclosure even though it evidently has the same intent as "Stop clearing your throat" (Advisement). Each utterance may be construed as conveying two levels of intersubjective information: a formal (explicit, surface) level, which is conveyed by grammatical form, and an intentional (implicit, deep) level, which must be inferred from context.

Table 2 gives a tentative summary of grammatical features associated with each of the eight modes. These form descriptions represent a rough consensus of myself, my collaborators, and coders who have applied the system to transcripts

TA BLE 2. SummarY of verbal response mode forms

Disclosure: First person singular or first person plural where the other is not a referent. Advisement: Imperative or second person with verb of permission, prohibition. or obligation. Edification. Third person. Confirmation: First person plural where other is a referent or compound subject that includes

reference to both speaker and other. Question: Interrogative, with inverted subject-verb order or interrogative words (e.g.,

"Who," "What," "When," "Where," "How"). Interpretationn: Second person with predicate denoting an attribute or ability of the other. Acknowledgment: Nonlexical utterances ("Mm-hm," "Oh"); contentless lexical utterances

("Yes," "No"); terms of address and salutation ("Dr. Smith," "Sir," "Hello ").

Reflection: Second person with predicate denoting an internal experience or volitional action of the other; finishing other's sentence.

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TABLE 3. Matrix of pure and mixed modes

Form

Intent D A E C Q I K R

Disclosure (D) D(D) A(D) E(D) C(D) Q(D) I(D) K(D) R(D) Advisement (A) D(A) A(A) E(A) C(A) Q(A) I(A) K(A) R(A)

Edification (E) D(E) A(E) E(E) C(E) Q(E) I(E) K(E) R(E) Confirmation (C) D(C) A(C) E(C) C(C) Q(C) I(C) K(C) R(C) Questions (Q) D(Q) A(Q) E(Q) C(Q) Q(Q) 1(Q) K(Q) R(Q) Interpretation (I) D(l) A(l) E(l) C(O) Q(l) 1(1) K(l) R(l) Acknowledgment (K) D(K) A(K) E(K) C(K) Q(K) I(K) K(K) R(K) Reflection (R) D(R) A(R) E(R) C(R) Q(R) 1(R) K(R) R(R)

Note: The form abbreviation is written first, followed by the intent abbreviation in parentheses. For

example, D(A) means Disclosure form with Advisement intent.

of dialogue as to which grammatical features typically express the eight intents defined by the principles of classification.

The 64 possible combinations of the eight forms (Table 2) and eight intents (Table i) can be pictured as an 8 x 8 matrix which contains eight pure modes - in which form and intent coincide - and 56 mixed modes - in which form and intent differ. This matrix is given in Table 3. As a notational convention, the form abbreviation is written first, followed by the intent abbreviation in parentheses. For example, D(A) means Disclosure form with Advisement intent, which may be read as "Disclosure in service of Advisement.'"

The matrix in Table 3 serves as a kind of periodic table for intersubjective illocutionary acts. In any particular kind of discourse, many of the modes are rare; however, examples of most of the modes have been found in research on various interpersonal relationships (Stiles, Putnam, Wolf, & James 1 979b; Stiles & Sultan 1979; Stiles, Waszak, & Barton 1979; Stiles & White, in press). Like chemical elements, mixed modes have properties that are distinctive and yet partially predictable from their position in the table. As an illustration, "Yes" and "No" answers to closed questions are generally classified K(D) or K(E).

(Do you feel comfortable?). Yes. K(D) (Did he bring his guitar?) Yes. K(E)

The first answer reveals internal experience; the second transmits factual information. The present taxonomy's descriptions of them, "Acknowledgment in service of Disclosure" and "Acknowledgment in service of Edification," express both their formal reference to the wording of the inquiries, and their intentional communication of subjective or objective information.

Just as the same form (e.g., "Yes") can express different intents, the same

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intent can be expressed in alternative forms; for example, the following utterances express approximately the same guiding intent.

Give me a match. A(A) Could I have a match? Q(A) I need a match. D(A) There are matches in that drawer. E(A) (Shall I get you some matches?) Yes. K(A)

Obviously, accurate classification requires knowledge of context and circum- stances. However, these are used to infer the speaker's intent; once the intent is known, the classification is unambiguous. For example, in saying "There are matches in that drawer," does the speaker intend to request action by the other? If so, the intent is unequivocally Advisement. If not, the intent is Edification.

The table of mixed modes (Table 3) adds system to the study of indirect speech acts (e.g., Davison 1975, Searle 1975). The concept of an indirect speech act - that the surface syntactic form of an utterance does not match its illocutionary force - logically requires some system of parallel classification of form and intent, to distinguish when they match and when they do not. The VRM taxonomy provides such a system. (On the other hand, the mixed modes do not exhaust the concept of indirect speech acts, as there are some indirect construc- tions that are not mixed modes. For example - from Davison ( 1975) - in "May I ask if you intend to sue?" Q(Q), form and intent are the same mode. but differ in content.)

Advantages of the taxonomy

The advantages of the VRM taxonomy's derivation from principles of classification include mutual exclusivity, exhaustiveness, and a systematic basis for group- ing related categories, all of which are standard desiderata for verbal coding schemes (Holsti 1969; Lazarsfeld & Barton 1951; Russell & Stiles 1979). The eight modes are mutually exclusive insofar as the three principles are dichotomous; each combination of "speaker" and 'other" values yields a unique category. The list is exhaustive insofar as "speaker" and "other" exhaust the mem- bership of the communicator-recipient dyad; all possible combinations have been accounted for. Of course, in normal discourse there are many utterances that are ambiguous, but the ambiguity concerns what the speaker's illocutionary intent is, not how to classify it once it is known.'

The claim of exhaustiveness means only that every utterance can be classified, not that the classification exhausts its illocutionary force - much less its meaning or function. In a detailed analysis of a particular stretch of discourse, the VRM system is only one of many complementary perspectives that might be applied.

Since the VRM intent categories are derived from principles which are tied to a

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psychological model of human cognitive and communicative processes (i.e., experience, frame of reference, focus), and from the speaker-other dichotomy, with no specific assumptions about content or context, they should be equally applicable in any culture. The VRM formulation thus complements the hypothesis advanced by Miller (1970) and Dore ( 975) that illocutionary force is a language universal. Similarly, the VRM model bears on the ontogeny of speech acts, in that the speaker-other dichotomy is an early and fundamental aspect of every child's experience. It is thus not surprising that in Dore's (1974, 1979) classifications of primitive conversational acts, prelinguistic and early linguistic expressions seem to fall naturally into categories that closely resemble VRM intent classes. The distinct microrelationships may act as a natural selective pressure favoring distinctive grammatical forms in the evolution of language.

The cross classification of utterances by the three principles and by form and intent yields great flexibility in quantitatively representing the results of coding. Utterances can be grouped by their form (regardless of intent), by their intent (regardless of their form), or by the 64-fold intersection of form and intent (Table 3).

Moreover, utterances can be grouped according to one of the principles at a time. For example, a segment of discourse can be described by the proportion of a speaker's utterances that concern the speaker's experience regardless of their frame of reference or focus. These proportions have been given names meant to approximate their psychological impact (Stiles 1978b). The proportion of utterances whose source of experience is the speaker (Disclosure, Advisement, Edifi- cation, Confirmation) is called informativeness, whereas the proportion whose source of experience is the other (Question, Interpretation, Acknowledgment, Reflection) is called attentiveness. The proportion of utterances that use the speaker's frame of reference (Disclosure, Advisement, Question, Interpretation) is called control or directiveness, whereas the proportion that uses the other's frame of reference (Edification, Confirmation, Acknowledgment, Reflection) is called acquiescence or nondirectiveness. The proportion of utterances that are focused on the speaker (Disclosure, Edification, Question, Acknowledgment) is called unassumingness, whereas the proportion that are focused on the other (Advisement, Confirmation, Interpretation, Reflection) is called presumptuousness. Research on a variety of social roles and relationships has supported the construct validity of these role dimensions (Cansler & Stiles, in press; Premo & Stiles, submitted for publication; Stiles 1979; Stiles, Putnam, James, & Wolf 1979; Stiles, Waszak, & Barton 1979; Stiles & White, in press).

The VRM system is supported by a published coding manual (Stiles I978a), which gives specifications for unitizing as well as for coding form and intent, and by computer programs (documented in the manual) for compiling data, calculat- ing summary statistics and rates of intercoder agreement, and preparing feedback for coders. This software is essential for efficient handling of the large volume of data generated by empirical applications of the taxonomy.

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Empirical applications

The VRM taxonomy has been used to study psychotherapy sessions (McDaniel, Stiles, & McGaughey, in press; Stiles I979; Stiles, McDaniel, & McGaughey 1979; Stiles & Sultan 1979), medical interviews (Stiles, Putnam, James, & Wolf 1979; Stiles, Putnam, Wolf, & James 1979a, 1979b), student-professor interactions (Cansler & Stiles, in press; Stiles, Waszak, & Barton 1979), and conversations of married couples (Premo & Stiles, submitted for publication), and parents and children (Stiles & White, in press). Applications to political campaign ora- tory and to courtroom interrogation of witnesses are in progress.

Among the results so far has been the finding that psychotherapists who represent different theoretical orientations use systematically different profiles of modes (Stiles 1979). For about go percent of their utterances, client-centered (nondirective) therapists used the other's frame of reference (i.e., Reflection, Acknowledgment, Confirmation, or Edification; see Table i), whereas gestalt (directive) therapists used the speaker's frame of reference (i.e., Interpretation, Question, Advisement, or Disclosure), and psychoanalytic therapists used the other as source of experience (i.e., Question, Interpretation, Acknowledgment, or Reflection). These profiles conform to the prescriptions and proscriptions of their respective theories of psychotherapy; the VRM principles form a bridge between psychotherapeutic theory and practice.

Curiously, psychotherapy clients use about the same profile of modes, consist- ing mainly of Disclosure and Edification, regardless of the theoretical orienta- tion or mode profile of their therapist (McDaniel, Stiles, & McGaughey, in press; Stiles & Sultan 1979).

Application of the taxonomy to medical interviews (Stiles, Putnam, Wolf, & James 979a, 1979b) has shown that physicians and patients use very different profiles of modes and that these profiles change systematically from the initial, medical history segment of the interview, to the physical examination, to the concluding segment. Comparison of patterns of mode use with patients' satisfaction with their medical encounter (measured by questionnaire) identified two distinct types of verbal exchange that were associated with greater patient satisfaction. These were (i) exposition exchanges in the medical history, in which patients used Edification and Disclosure forms to tell their story in their own words while physicians gave Acknowledgments, and (2) feediback exchanges in the conclusion, in which physicians gave Edifications - objective information about illness and treatment - while patients gave Acknowledgments and asked Questions. Five other types of verbal exchange were identified which had recog- nizable medical functions, but were unrelated to patient satisfaction (Stiles, Putnam, Wolf, & James 1979a).

As the medical interview results illustrate, VRM use reflects features of the task and of the participants' social roles and relationships (e.g., relative status, intimacy) independently of the propositional content of the discourse. This pat-

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tern is consistent with the intersubjective character of the modes (Russell & Stiles I979; Stiles, in press). It also may make the VRM system a useful tool for comparative studies of social roles and relationships across settings and cultures.

COMPARISONS WITH OTHER APPROACHES

This section compares the VRM approach to illocutionary acts with (i) the traditional approach of Austin (I 975) and Searle (1969, 1976) and its emendation by Hancher (1979); (2) the empirical and functional classification of children's speech acts by Dore (1974, 1975, 1977, 1979; Dore, Gearhart, & Newman 1978); and (3) the analysis of politeness by Brown and Levinson (1 978). These approaches start from very different points and are largely complementary rather than competitive, although there are some disagreements. A comparison can show the strengths and limitations that accrue to each by virtue of their starting points.

Comparison with traditional speech act theory

In Austin's (1975) development, the concept of the illocutionary grew from the study of explicit performatives. Explicit performative verbs have the curious property of naming the illocutionary act performed in uttering them in first person singular present indicative active sentences. For example, if I say "I promise X, " I have promised X; if I say "I thank you," I have thanked you; if I say 'I assert that p," I have asserted that p. Saying makes it so.

This historical association of explicit performatives with illocutionary acts has been maintained by subsequent taxonomists (including Searle 1969, 1976; Vend- ler 1972; Ohmann 1972; Green 1977; and Hancher 1979). However, as Austin showed, illocutionary force is a general characteristic of utterances, by no means restricted to explicit performatives. Explicit performatives are necessarily limited to actions that are verbal; nonverbal mental or physical actions by speaker or other and actions by nonhuman agencies are excluded. Otherwise how could saying make it so? Nevertheless, despite awareness that explicit performatives are a special case, taxonomists have proceeded to build their systems around performative verbs.

From the perspective of the present classification system, whose roots are in study of psychotherapeutic techniques (Goodman & Dooley 1976; Stiles 1979), the association with performatives appears to have been severely limiting. Most obviously, all explicit performative utterances are first person singular and so would be classified Disclosure in form according to the present taxonomy (Table 2). (A justification for this classification is that the referent of ''I" is the center of experience where the illocutionary force originates.) Although form does not necessarily constrain intent, usage and vocabulary emphasize pure modes over mixed modes; so performative verbs are most likely to describe Disclosure intents. Not surprisingly, then, taxonomies of illocutionary acts have typically

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included several categories for the intersubjective illocutionary force of Disclo- sure and no categories for some other modes. Searle's (1976) five-category scheme is illustrative. Commissives, which commit the speaker to some future course of action, and expressives, which express the speaker's psychological state, are obviously subclasses of Disclosure intent. Representatives, which commit the speaker (in varying degrees) to the truth of some proposition, are primarily Edification in intent, although this category might house some other modes as well. Directives, which are attempts by the speaker to get the other to do something, correspond primarily to Advisement intent, although Searle also included Questions in this category.2 De(clarations, which are utterances whose "successful performance guarantees that the propositional content corresponds to the world" (13), such as declarations of war or marriage, are more heterogeneous; most of Searle's examples are Edifications - ""War is hereby declared" E(E) - or Disclosures - "I resign" D(D) - but some are also Interpre- tations - "'You are out" I(I); "'You are guilty" I(I). Interestingly, as comparison with Table i shows, Searle deals most explicitly with Disclosure intent and with illocutionary forces that differ from Disclosure in only one of the three principles of classification, i.e., with Edification, Advisement, and Question. He largely ignores the four remaining modes, Confirmation, Acknowledgment, Interpreta- tion, and Reflection, which differ from Disclosure in two or three of the principles. This relative elaboration of Disclosure and modes similar to Disclosure is characteristic of taxonomies that trace their lineage to Austin. It seems likely that this gradient, which declines with distance from Disclosure, parallels the repre- sentation of mode intents among performative verbs.

Incidentally, I have no objection to systems of subcategories of Disclosure; my point is only that classifications of illocutionary acts have been distorted by their historical association with performatives.

The process of psychotherapy focuses attention on how language impacts interpersonal relationships (e.g., Labov & Fanshell 1977). Therapists must be concerned with the intersubjective illocutionary force of their interventions, since their stock-in-trade is the use of language to create and maintain therapeutic relationships. Therapists' interest in the inner lives of their clients has led to an emphasis on verbal interventions that (in terms of the present principles) concern the clients' experiences and are focused on the clients, i.e., Reflections and Interpretations. This emphasis, shown by numerous categories and subcategories for Reflections and Interpretations, is apparent in theorists' technical recommendations (e.g., Freud 1 958; Rogers 195 1 ), in counselor and therapist training systems (e.g., Carkhuff 1969; Goodman & Dooley 1976; Ivey 1971), and in

coding systems used for psychotherapy research (see reviews by Kiesler 1973; Marsden 1971; Russell & Stiles I979). Categories that concem the other's ex-

perience but are focused on the speaker, i.e., varieties of Acknowledgment and Question, are also far better represented in these sources than in taxonomies of illocutionary acts developed by linguists and philosophers.

Hancher's (1979) modification of Searle's taxonomy shares the view that the

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interpersonal context should be incorporated in a taxonomy of illocutionary acts. However, Hancher's solution - to admit categories that require collaboration of two or more individuals, such as cooperative commissives (e.g., contracts, marriages), and reciprocal cooperative declarations (e.g., gifts, sales, appoint- ments) - diverges sharply from the VRM solution. Hancher seems to have focused on the performative aspect of speech acts - whether saying makes it so. Contracts, sales, marriages, and so forth are instances in which cooperative linguistic behavior is required to "make it so." My disagreement with Hancher concerns whether to call these complex performances illocutionary acts.

The VRM taxonomy rests on the essential separateness of communicating centers of experience. "Shared" experiences or frames of reference are shared only in the speaker's assumption, and the VRM code is unchanged if the speaker's assumption is mistaken or if the utterance is infelicitous or misun- derstood. I believe that analytic rigor is best served by preserving the single utterance - the conversational act - as the unit of illocutionary force and by treating Hancher's cooperative performances as complex phenomena that require distinct illocutionary acts by more than one person.

This view does not contradict development of taxonomies of cooperative performatives - verbal performances by two or more people that change the social world (e.g., the ownership of something). I see Hancher's contribution as a generalization of Austin's (and Searle's) concept of performativity to performances that require multiple, complementary illocutions.

Comparison with Dore's classification of children's conversational acts

Dore 's ( 978, 1979; Dore et al. 1 978) classification of children's conversational acts was developed empirically to encompass a particular body of observation, which consisted of conversations of nursery school children with each other and with their teachers. The 1978 version drew on earlier analyses of communicative intentions of younger children (e.g., Dore I 974, 1977) and was well informed by the theories of speech acts of Austin, Searle, and others.

Dore's system includes six major divisions: requestives (solicit information or actions), assertives (report facts, state rules, convey attitudes, etc.), performatives (accomplish acts and establish facts by being said), responsives (supply solicited information or acknowledge remarks), regulatives (control personal contact and conversational flow), and expressives (nonpropositionally convey attitudes or repeat others), plus a miscellaneous group that includes uncodable utterances, silences, and nonverbal responses. Each of these major classes is subdivided into three to eight specific codes, yielding 35 coding categories, plus the three residual categories.

Dore's scoring unit is the conversational act, or C-act, which appears comparable to the VRM unit, the structure.

Dore's categories "'are formulated at a level close to gramnmnatical form, although they are not defined by form but rather bv the conventional illoc utionarv force offorms" (Dore et al. 1978: 370, italics in original). Thus Dore's system

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codes only communicative intent; grammatical forms are used as clues to intent, but are not coded separately. In this way, Dore admits the possibility of indirect speech acts (form-intent discrepancies); however, his system makes no explicit provision for them.

The VRM system's eight intent categories are most comparable to Dore's six major classes (requestives, assertives, etc.) rather than his 35 subcategories, which represent a more fine-grained analysis. Many of Dore's subdivisions could also be subdivisions of VRM intent categories; for example, Dore's seven subdivisions of assertives include (roughly) five subtypes of Edifications - iden- tifications (ASID), descriptions (ASDC), attributions (ASAT), rules (ASRU), and explanations (ASEX), and two subtypes of Disclosure, internal repoits (ASIR) and evaluations (ASEV).

The two systems' core difference is that the VRM taxonomy is systematically based on psychological principles of classification, whereas Dore's is constructed ad hoc (albeit with considerable sophistication) from a particular body of discourse, based on empirical and intuitive consideration of social functions that may go beyond illocutionary force. The lack of clear principles of classification makes the discrimination of major from minor categories a matter of intui- tion, which is very susceptible to biases reflecting the particular relationship being studied.

Dore explains, "Each scoring of a C-act is essentially, then, a hypothesis about how the speaker intends his utteranc e to be interpreted in the c ontext of the c)onversation and what he expects the listener to do about it" (Dore 1978: 414, italics in original). Dore's system thus uses multiple bases of classification; some categories are defined primarily by their illocutionary force (assertives, requestives), some by their place in a conversational sequence (responsives), some by their social function (performatives, regulatives), and some by their content (expressives).

Defining categories by different principles interferes with mutual exclusivity (Russell & Stiles 1979); in order for Dore's categories to be mutually exclusive, it is necessary to set (arbitrary) priorities among the principles. Although Dore does not address the issue in these terms, some priorities are implicit in his definitions and examples. For example, conversational sequence seems to take priority over illocutionary force in discriminating responsives from assertives - "I am afraid of spiders," D(D) in the VRM system, would be scored ASIR (internal report) if it initiated a topic, but RSPR (product answer) in response to the question, "'What are you afraid of?"

In the VRM system, context and sequence are often essential for judging a speaker's intent, but they are never defining features of a category. The social functions of and sequential dependencies among classes of illocutions are a matter for empirical research, whereas in Dore's system, certain dependencies are assumed (presumably because they were observed in the conversations he studied) and built into the category definitions.

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In an empirical system, such as Dore's, at best all observed responses fit into one of the classifications, but there is no theoretical assurance that every future response will fit into some class. There is no reason to suppose the system will be exhaustive when applied to some other kind of interaction.

The substantive results of Dore's work imply that illocutionary force is an early, universal, and formative pressure on the development of language in children (Dore I974, 1975, 1979). "Primitive speech acts," which are classifi- able in illocutionary taxonomies including the VRM system, precede children's competence to express them grammatically. An intriguing hypothesis (Dore I979) is that conversation competence (use of illocutionary force) and linguistic competence may have somewhat independent courses of early development and are conjoined only after each has partially matured by itself. Casting this hypothesis in VRM terms, form and intent may have somewhat independent ontogenies, that gradually interact, shape each other, and mesh. The categories shown in Table 2 may thus reflect the ontogenetic impact of illocutionary force on grammar.

Comparison with Brown and Levinson's theory of politeness

Brown and Levinson's (1978) theory of politeness proposes to account for strik- ing commonalities in linguistic minutae across cultures and language families by reference to common human social needs, summarized as face. Positive face refers to needs for caring, good opinion, friendship, intimacy, and shared pur- pose. Negative face refers to needs for deference, privacy, freedom, territory, non-infringement, non-intrusion, and non-imposition. Since face needs require others' cooperation, it is in general in the mutual interest of interactants to work to maintain each other's face. Politeness is then the set of strategies that people use to this end. Because face is a universal need, similar strategies evolve independently in different cultures to meet it.

A central concept in Brown and Levinson's analysis is that of the face- threatening act, or FTA. FTAs are "those acts that by their nature run contrary to the face wants of the addressee and/or of the speaker" (70). Acts that suggest that the speaker may impede the hearer's freedom of action threaten negative face; acts that suggest that the speaker does not care about the hearer's feelings, wants, etc., threaten positive face. Politeness then consists of ways of minimizing or undoing FTAs.

Brown and Levinson have constructed a hierarchy of politeness - of strategies for avoiding, minimizing, or undoing FTAs - and developed a conceptual al- gorithm for predicting which strategy a speaker will use, depending on the FTA's seriousness. They identify three sociological variables that largely determine an FTA's seriousness: (i) the social distance (versus intimacy) of the interactants, (2) their relative power, and (3) the absolute ranking of the imposition in that culture.

In general, an FTA is more serious - and mandates greater politeness - if the

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act is a greater imposition, if the speaker is relatively less powerful, and if the interactants are socially more distant. At the extremes, politeness is irrelevant. Acts that impose little and are done by speakers who are relatively powerful or on intimate terms with the other are done on record, without redressive action, baldly. Acts that impose much by speakers who are socially inferior or distant from the other are simply not done (except in grave emergencies). However, in a broad middle range of seriousness, FTAs are done on record with redressive action, either positive politeness (directed toward positive face) or negative politeness (directed toward negative face), or they are done off record, in the form of hints or manipulations (cf. footnote i).

VRM theory is not a theory of politeness, but it is complementary to Brown and Levinson's analysis in several respects. To begin with, VRM theory, even more basically than Brown and Levinson, seeks to explain linguistic universals by tracing them to fundamental psychological and social principles. VRM theory proposes its categories - intersubjective illocutionary acts - as an exhaustive array of microrelationships that follow from the conception of one "center," who has experiences, frames of reference, and presumptions about another center, communicating with that other center. The categories are universal because these elementary characteristics of people are universal. Consequently, grammatical forms to express the microrelationships tend to evolve independently across cultures (cf. Dore I979, discussed earlier).

The VRM system's principles can be conjoined with the face needs and ration- ality Brown and Levinson (1978: 63) attribute to their "Model Person" to begin to flesh out this "cardboard figure.'" A crucial connecting idea is that the VRM microrelationships vary systematically in their degree of imposition. That is, some modes intrinsically threaten face, and hence tend to require redressive action, whereas other modes make less imposition and may even serve as redressive action.

The systematic variation is best described in terms of the role dimensions, presumptuousness versus unassumingness, directiveness versus acquiescence, and informativeness versus attentiveness, which correspond to the principles focus, frame of reference, and source of experience, as previously explained. Presumptuous (focus on other) modes intrinsically threaten negative face because they presume knowledge of the other's experience or frame of reference and hence invade the other's privacy.3 Directive (speaker's frame of reference) modes also tend to threaten negative face by restricting the other's freedom within the conversation (and sometimes beyond the conversation as well). On the other hand, attentive modes (other's experience) can support positive face by demonstrating interest and hence conveying that the other is admirable and has something important to say.

Table 4 summarizes a hierarchy of "familiarity" of modes, presented elsewhere (Premo & Stiles, submitted for publication), which incorporates these relations to positive and negative face. It may also be interpreted as a hierarchy of

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TABLE 4. Hierarchy of verbal response modes in terms of their familiarity or degree of imposition

Familiarity Verbal response

rank mode Role dimension values

I Acknowledgment Unassuming, acquiescent, attentive 2 Edification Unassuming, acquiescent, informative 3 Question Unassuming, directive, attentive 4 Disclosure Unassuming, directive, informative 5 Reflection Presumptuous, acquiescent, attentive 6 Confirmation Presumptuous, acquiescent, informative 7 Interpretation Presumptuous, directive, attentive 8 Advisement Presumptuous, directive, informative

imposition and hence as a hierarchy of seriousness of FTAs for a given level of social distance and relative power. This formulation yields several interesting predictions: (i) individuals who are on relatively intimate terms should use more highly ranked (i.e., presumptuous, directive, informative) modes than individuals who are socially distant, for a given task; and (2) individuals with greater relative power should use more highly ranked modes than individuals with less relative power. These follow because with greater intimacy and relative power, the seriousness of a given FTA is lower, so it is more likely to be done "on record." Perhaps most interestingly, (3) the hierarchy specifies which indirect speech acts (mixed modes) should be regarded as polite, their relative degree of politeness, and an explanation of why they are polite in terms of the role dimensions.

The first two predictions have received clear empirical support. In controlled laboratory conversations, married couples were more familiar than strangers, as measured by the mean familiarity rank of their utterances (Premo & Stiles, submitted for publication), consistent with the hypothesized relation of politeness to social distance. Studies of conversation between people differing in relative status or social power, including teachers and students (Cansler & Stiles, in press; Stiles, Waszak, & Barton 1979), physicians and patients (Stiles, Putnam, James, & Wolf 1979), psychotherapists and clients (Stiles & Sultan I979), and parents and children (Stiles & White, in press), have shown the higher status member to be reliably more presumptuous (i.e., to use a higher proportion of the higher ranked focus-on-other modes), consistent with the hypothesis that greater relative power reduces the seriousness of one's FTAs.

The third prediction - the structuring of indirect speech acts - has not been tested quantitatively; however, the hypothesis is consistent with a variety of previous observations. It suggests that higher ranked intents (Table 4) can be redressed (made less serious - more polite) by being expressed in lower ranked

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grammatical forms. Most obviously, any alternative form should reduce the seriousness of an Advisement, the highest ranked mode. A particularly common example is expressing the presumptuous, directive, informative intent of an Advisement in the unassuming and attentive (but still directive) form of a Ques- tion,4 e.g., "Would you pass the butter?" Q(A). Probably a majority of the indirect speech acts discussed by previous authors (e.g., Davison I975; Ervin- Tripp 1976; Searle 1975) have been Advisement intents redressed in unassuming forms, testimony to the face-threatening effect of directives and the pervasive effect of politeness on language use.

This use of indirect speech acts fits many of Brown and Levinson's negative politeness strategies including "be conventionally indirect," "Question, hedge," "Impersonalize speaker and hearer; avoid the pronouns 'I' and 'you,' " "State the FTA as a general rule," and "Nominalize." (The last three, in effect, specify Edification forms, which are low in imposition, as shown in Table 4.) Note, however, that according to VRM theory, the choice of forms is not merely conventional. In every mixed mode, the form systematically modifies the utterance's illocutionary force specifically to resemble the force of the form - to be more unassuming or presumptuous, acquiescent or directive, and attentive or informative. Whenever social role requirements differ from task requirements on any of these dimensions, it may be expected that people will tend to use mixed modes, with the forms constrained by social relationships and the intents constrained by the task at hand. Politeness is a major example - redressing utterance intents that are too presumptuous or directive for the speaker's relative power or intimacy with the other - but it is not the only example. For instance, lecturers, whose task constrains them to present facts (i.e., Edification intents) may at times use presumptuous forms as a way of expressing their higher status vis-a-vis their audience, e.g., "We have here an example of Picasso's blue period" C(E).

SUMMARY

This article's central thesis is that illocutionary force presupposes a target as well as a source. The VRM taxonomy is a classification of intersubjective illocutionary acts, i.e., a classification of possible microrelationships of speaker to other. The universality of speaker and other as distinct centers of experience implies that the taxonomic categories are universal. The categories' distinctness puts a deep pressure on languages to develop distinctive grammatical forms to express them. Although its construction is formally analytic - i.e., based on conceptual principles of classification - the VRM system has much in common with previous linguistic taxonomies of illocutionary acts, with empirical coding systems developed to measure conversations, and with analyses of the contribution of language to social relationships.

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NOTES

I thank Robert Elliott, Britton J. Harwood, Robert L. Russell, James J. Sosnoski, and this journal's editor, Dell Hymes, for their comments on drafts of this article. I. The term "intent" does not imply that mind-reading is necessary to code utterances. As Bach and Harnish (1979) put it, building on Grice's (1957) analysis of meating, illocutionary force is a reflexive intent, by which they mean it is intended to be recognized as intended to be recognized. "The intended effect of an act of communication is not just any effect produced by means of the recognition of the intention to produce a certain effect, it is the recognition of that effect. " (Bach & Harnish 1979: 15, italics in original). Illocutionary intents are thus on record, in Brown and Levinson's (1978) sense. Coding VRM intent (or any other category of illocutionary force) requires no assessment of the speaker's private merdtal state beyond that required of the utterance's intended recipient.

To count as an illocutionary act, an utterance must be intended to secure uptake; however, it need not actually secure uptake. A Question is still a Question if the other misunderstands it or is distracted and does not hear it. My conception thus differs slightly from those who require that uptake be secured (cf. Dore, Gearhart, & Newman 1978: 339, 348; Bach & Harnish 1979: 15). Similarly, an illocutionary act need not be felicitous nor must a speaker be "committed" to its felicity for it to have its illocutionary force. Unanswerable Questions are still Questions; insincere Disclosures are still Disclosures; and false Edifications are still Edifications, even if both speaker and other are aware of the falsity, e.g., "The moon is made of green cheese" E(E).

Incidentally, elements of the formula, "intended to be recognized as intended to be recognized," can be progressively pared away to define several additional, deeper levels of intent (all "off record" in Brown & Levinson's 1 978 sense). Hints are only intended to be recognized as intended (but not as intended to be recognized). Manipulations are only intended to be recognized (but not as intended). Deceptions are only privately intended (i.e., private experiences not intended to be recognized). Finally, self-deceptions may be defined as utterances driven by unconscious experiences whose expression is not intended or recognized by the speaker. To illustrate, "The wastebasket is full" could be E(A) - i.e., on record as an Advisement intent (intended to be recognized as intended to be recognized) - if the other were known to have the responsibility of emptying the wastebasket when it is full. In that case, it is equivalent to "Empty the wastebasket" A(A), and a response such as "Okay," or "I'll do it during the next commercial," would be appropriate. In a relationship where emptying the wastebasket is a shared chore, the Advisement underlying "The wastebasket is full" might be a hint - intended to be recognized as intended, but off record - which could be abbreviated E(E(A)). Or it might be a manipulation - intended to be recognized, but ingenuous - abbreviated E(E(E(A))), seeking a response such as "Would you like me to do it for you?" (This response would be sarcastic if the Advisement intent were at the hint level.) In another relationship, the Advisement could be a wish that was not intended to be recognized, i.e., a deception, E(E(E(E(A)))), in which case an offer of help might be met with chagrin that the wish had leaked through. Finally, the Advisement might (if we believe Freud) be a self-deception, say, a guest's unconscious obsessive desire for cleanliness that motivates the ostensibly objective observation, "The wastebasket is full" E(E(E(E(E(A))))).

Obviously, it would be a hopeless task to code utterances' intents at all of these levels; applications of the VRM system use only the illocutionary, "on record" level. Nevertheless, it is often possible to discern deeper levels, and keeping them in mind can help clarify discriminations. 2. This lumping of Questions and Advisements in one category seems inconsistent with consider- ing Question-Advisement combinations as indirect speech acts (Searle 1975). For example, both the form and the intent of "Would you move your car?" Q(A) appear to be scorable as directives in Searle's system. 3. The evolution of t and v forms of second person pronouns may be related to the face- threatening aspect of presumptuous modes. As Table 2 shows, second-person forms are invariably presumptuous (i.e., Advisement, Interpretation, or Reflection) and hence tend to be FTAs. There may thus be a universal pressure on languages to develop conventional ways to show respect or deference when using second-person forms, i.e., to undo the intrinsic FTA of presumptuousness. 4. According to Table 4, an Edification form would be more polite, but by being acquiescent, it might fail to accomplish its mission; e.g., "The butter is in front of you" E(A) might be construed as

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an offer rather than a request. Most polite of all, but also less efficient, would be an Acknowledgment form, which would require waiting for an appropriate context, e.g., (at last!) "Would you like me to pass you the butter?" "Yes" K(A).

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Stiles_Classification of Intersubjective Illocutionary Acts

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