Intercultural Difference and Speaker's Intention

Intercultural Difference and Speaker＇s Intention

Abstract:Every word has its meaning, which includes both surface meaning and

deep meaning. To achieve certain pragmatic effects, speakers often have certain

intention when saying something. People in different cultures think differently with

the same utterance, which is attributed to intercultural difference.

Key words: Intercultural Difference; Effects; Speaker’s Intention

isolated three basic categories of speech act theory: locutionary

act—the utterance of a sentence with determinate sense and reference, illocutionary

act—“In saying X, I was doing Y”, perlocutionary act—“By saying X I did Y” or “By

saying X and doing Y, I did Z”. Among the three speech acts, Austin put the emphasis

on illocutionary act.

However, Searle, Austin’s gifted pupil perfected Austin’s theory and, at the

same time, he claimed that the meaning of a sentence is entirely determined from

within. About this point, I cannot agree with the author more who had written a paper

named “Meaning and Speech Act Theory”, through which he emphasized the

importance of speaker’s intention in the speech act theory.

“… If the speaker uses the sentence metaphorically, then it has the metaphorical

meaning which the speaker intends it to have.” A sentence only has its sentence

meaning, while the speaker entrusts it different understanding by intention. To get

communication proceeded smoothly, the hearer has to gain knowledge of the speaker’s intention. In other words, the speaker and the hearer, rather than anyone, are the

most important subjects of the whole communication.

By intention, different people from different races, countries, even different

provinces in the same country, have different concepts. We just focus on the

difference between Eastern and Western countries. There are two examples in the

following.

Example one: An English student came to China as an exchange student and

lived with a Chinese family. On his first day in the house, he said,” It is a little hot

today, isn’t it?” On hearing this, the Chinese host opened the air-conditioner

immediately.

Example two: A Chinese student went to England as an exchange student and

lived with an English family. Some days after his arrival at the house, he said,” It is

hot in there, isn’t it?” The English host was watching TV at that time and replied “Yes,

this is the weather in this season.”