Speech act theory

Kendra and I have discussed on various occasions the differences in scholarly uses of the term speech act theory. She means it in a linguistic sense, one of those meta-linguistic features of language that supply meaning not embedded in either its morphological or phonemic level, marked syntactically but perhaps not governed thereby. I mean it more in the anthropological sense of intentionality, of cultural manipulation, where saying something has the effect of erecting, or correcting, certain expectations in the audience. It can also have an impact on the speaker, because in fact the saying aloud of something changes the ontological status of that which has been evoked. It can make ghosts disappear, for instance, to yell out, humm ho! It is performative and contextual, but it is also doing something very immediate. 

She's now in the manuscript course. I wonder if she'll find they speak to her? 

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