This study aimed to gain understanding of the directive behavior of 4- and 5- year-old English-speaking children in child-to-child and child-caretaker interactions. The research analyzed 660...Show moreThis study aimed to gain understanding of the directive behavior of 4- and 5- year-old English-speaking children in child-to-child and child-caretaker interactions. The research analyzed 660 directives extracted from 10 hours of video recordings. The findings showed that the compliance with the directive was influenced by the speaker's familiarity with their surroundings and the degree of directness of the directive. Additionally, children who were more familiar with each other used more indirect directives, while 4-year-olds used more indirect directives than 5-year-olds. A pattern was observed where children phrased their directives differently when speaking to a teacher or to a peer, with directives to teachers being less direct and relying more on the teacher's inference skills.Show less
Social media have increased the ways in which people can and do communicate with each other. This could have consequences for speech act theory as founded by J.L. Austin and refined by J. Searle....Show moreSocial media have increased the ways in which people can and do communicate with each other. This could have consequences for speech act theory as founded by J.L. Austin and refined by J. Searle. This thesis shows that the introduction of social media has led to the existence of a new illocutionary act that is not covered by existing speech act theory: the illocutionary act of hashtagging. It is argued that hashtagging is a meta-speech act that has no counterpart offline and is deserving of its own category within existing speech act theory.Show less
In the Dutch court of justice, judges judge threats based on the ‘Wetboek van Strafrecht, art. 285’. Jurisprudence shows that three criteria need to be met in order for a threat to be prosecutable....Show moreIn the Dutch court of justice, judges judge threats based on the ‘Wetboek van Strafrecht, art. 285’. Jurisprudence shows that three criteria need to be met in order for a threat to be prosecutable. The hearer of the threat must have knowledge of the threat, the perpetrator must have had the intention to threaten and the hearer must have experienced a reasonable amount of fear. Analysis of jurisprudence concerning threats shows that judges do not apply these criteria systematically, sometimes resulting in disputable judgements. By using the speech act theory and pragma-dialectics, we can discern two types of threats: expressive threats, wherein the speaker expresses an emotional state and instrumental threats. The speaker uses these threats to force the hearer to do something. Corpus study of cases with threats and the jurisprudence shows that expressive threats pose the greatest challenge in the Dutch legal system. These threats are often similar to speech acts like challenges and insults, making it difficult for judges to apply the criteria to determine if a threat is prosecutable or not. By using the speech act theory and pragma-dialectics, judges can become more aware of the similarity of threats to other speech acts and thus judge them more objectively and in a more systematic way.Show less
