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Spanish Speech Acts

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DOI: 10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal1483

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 Spanish Speech Acts
YULY ASENCIÓN-DELANEY AND JULIETA FERNÁNDEZ

Research in Spanish pragmatics has extensively relied on the body of research that
investigates actions that speakers perform using language—a topic referred to as speech
act theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969, 1976)—to analyze various actions performed with
language—which are often called speech acts—in different social and cultural contexts.
Rather than developing or extending the theory itself (for example by developing tax-
onomies particular to Spanish, as does Guariglia, 1996) most studies have drawn on Searle’s
(1976) taxonomy, which classifies speech acts into assertives (e.g., reporting, announcing),
directives (e.g., requesting, inviting), commissives (e.g., promising, swearing), expressives
(e.g., thanking, apologizing), and declarations (e.g., christening, resigning; see Márquez
Reiter & Placencia, 2005). The classification of utterances into given speech act categories
within this taxonomy is not, however, always straightforward. There are utterances where
the structure of a locutionary act (the act of uttering a meaningful expression) and its
function are directly related (this would be a direct speech act):
?
(1) Me prestas tu libro?
‘Can I borrow your book?’
(An interrogative form translates into a direct request.)

However, in most cases speech acts are performed indirectly (that is, quite often there is no
direct relationship between the linguistic structure and its pragmatic function) and require
speakers’ shared linguistic and nonlinguistic knowledge to infer the illocutionary force (i.e.,
the communicative purpose of the utterance) from a structure that is not usually related to
that act:

(2) Se me olvidó mi libro hoy.

‘I forgot my book.’
(A declarative utterance can translate into an indirect request.)

In addition, both direct and indirect speech acts can be performed using different degrees
of politeness, depending on the communicative situation and the relationship between the
participants in the act:
?
(3) Sería mucha molestia que le pida una carta de recomendación?
‘Would it be too much trouble to ask you for a recommendation letter?’
(A direct request for a recommendation letter using politeness strategies reflected in
the use of the conditional and the formal indirect object pronoun.)

In analyzing and interpreting speech acts, Spanish pragmatics research can be represented
with three approaches (Escandell-Vidal, 2012). The first approach, pragmalinguistics, cen-
ters on the notion that, although the linguistic form and its illocution are related, there is a
clear distinction between the two. For example, imperatives can be used as directives with
The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, Edited by Carol A. Chapelle.
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal1483
2 SPANISH SPEECH ACTS

different illocutionary force (e.g., requests, offers) depending on the relationship between
the interlocutors, the kind of event, the consequences of the action, and other extralinguistic
factors. The second approach focuses on the cultural conventions limiting the choice of lin-
guistic forms and, as a result, on the (im)politeness strategies used across cultures. Research
on Spanish speech acts and politeness is mostly influenced by the work of Grice (1975) on
conversation maxims and the cooperative principle, by Brown and Levinson’s (1987) notion
of face or public self-image and their explanation of politeness strategies, by Culpeper’s
(1996) anatomy of impoliteness, and, more recently, by the rapport management theory pro-
posed by Spencer-Oatey (2005). Politeness can be viewed as the sum of strategies used to
maintain or promote social harmony (Leech, 1983) or as the sum of strategies used to min-
imize the effects of face-threatening acts (Brown & Levinson, 1987). Impoliteness, on the
other hand, refers to strategies oriented toward attacking an individual’s face (Culpeper,
1996). The third approach explores the cognitive principles that link language and action
and uses relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1986) to explain how human beings use cogni-
tive subsystems to interpret linguistic and nonlinguistic evidence in order to infer speakers’
intentions.
Another way of looking at Spanish speech acts and their realization in different contexts is
by analyzing (1) how Spanish compares with other languages in the realization of different
speech acts; (2) intralingual variations due to macro- and microsocial factors; (3) the perfor-
mance of speech acts in intercultural contexts; and (4) the use or acquisition of speech acts
by Spanish second language learners. What follows is an overview of these areas of inquiry.

Cross-Cultural Comparisons of Spanish Speech Acts

Cross-cultural studies in pragmatics compare the speech act realization patterns of indi-
viduals from different cultures or languages. This research is critical given the increasing
frequency of multilingual and multicultural interactions among Spanish speakers in this
era of globalization.
The most influential research in cross-cultural pragmatics is represented by the
Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP; Blum-Kulka, House, & Kasper,
1989), which provided a seminal framework of analysis and methodological instruments
in cross-cultural comparisons between speech acts in different languages. For example,
Blum-Kulka and House (1989) used this framework to compare requesting behaviors across
speakers of (Argentine) Spanish, Australian English, Canadian French, and Hebrew. Their
findings showed that Argentine Spanish speakers used higher levels of directness in their
requests, in comparison with those acceptable for English speakers.
Spanish cross-cultural studies have extensively examined speech acts like directives
and expressives. For instance, Márquez Reiter (2000) examined requests and apologies
performed in Uruguayan Spanish and British English; Choi (2008) contrasted Korean
and Peninsular Spanish compliments; and Liu (2012) explored how Chinese and Spanish
speakers apologize. In general, studies have investigated how social distance, power,
degree of imposition, and severity of offense (in the case of apologies) are understood in
different cultures and how these factors contribute to direct or indirect patterns in speech
act realization.
Many studies attempted to define a style that characterizes the performance of Span-
ish speech acts but failed to capture the complexity of the phenomenon. Some research
points to the tendency of Spanish speakers to display positive politeness and affiliation (e.g.,
Escandell-Vidal, 2012). However, variational studies have uncovered the impact of variables
(e.g., variety of Spanish and context of communication) that have not been addressed in
cross-cultural comparisons but that make the picture quite complex.
 SPANISH SPEECH ACTS 3

Variation in Spanish Speech Acts

Variational pragmatics analyzes language use as influenced by five macrosocial factors

(region, social class, gender, ethnicity, and age) and by microsocial aspects such as power
and social distance (Schneider & Barron, 2008). This field of inquiry gained impetus
after studies such as the one conducted by Schneider (1999), who compared compliment
responses between Irish English and American English, showed that speech communities
of languages are not homogeneous in their use of language.
From the regional variation perspective on Spanish, Márquez Reiter and Placencia’s (2005)
summary of speech act research found that directive and expressive speech acts have been
the most examined and that the varieties most investigated have been Peninsular, Argen-
tinian, Ecuadorian, and Peruvian Spanish. A few years after that, García and Placencia (2011)
indicated that most studies exploring regional variation can be divided into two groups:
those that compare Peninsular Spanish with other varieties of Spanish (see, e.g., Placencia
& Fuentes, 2013 on compliments among female students in Quito and Seville); and those that
compare the communicative style of different varieties of Spanish in Latin America (see, e.g.,
studies by García, 2008, 2009, comparing Venezuelan, Peruvian, and Argentinian speakers
on reprimanding and invitation strategies). Findings have shown that Peninsular speakers
in general have a more direct style, using more expressions of solidarity and more frontal
strategies than speakers of other varieties, such as Andean Ecuadorian, Mexican, Peruvian,
and Chilean Spanish, who prefer a deferential style with indirect strategies, politeness, and
mitigation devices (García & Placencia, 2011).
Within regional variation studies, researchers have also paid attention to subregional
variation. For example, Placencia (2008) investigated how request acts in commercial
contexts compare across Andean Ecuadorian Spanish (i.e., Quito) and Coastal Ecuadorian
Spanish (i.e., Manta) and found that speakers in Quito use more politeness strategies when
performing requests. Variation has also been examined by paying heed to gender (see de
los Heros, 2001 on compliments), age (see Férrer & Sánchez Lanza, 2002 on greetings and
leave-taking), social class (see Placencia, 2011 on compliments), and specific contexts such
as service encounters (see Félix-Brasdefer, 2015 on requests).
Notably, Spanish speech act research has recently described speech acts that occur
in computer-mediated communication. Maíz-Arévalo (2013), for example, investigated
how responses to compliments in face-to-face interactions and in interactions on social
networks like Facebook compared with each other. Her findings suggest that aspects such
as disembodiment, asynchronicity, and lack of privacy play a role in the simplification
or amplification of the strategies observed in face-to-face interactions. Placencia (2012)
explored online peer-to-peer advice about beauty and style given in Spanish in Yahoo!
Respuestas Argentina. She compared this type of online advice to more classic advice
columns in papers and found that in most cases the participants in the online environment
provided advice in a friendly manner, affiliating themselves with the advice seeker. This
area of inquiry is promising, given the increasing variety of online social tools currently
used by speakers and the number of contextual factors that mediate communication events
on the Web.

Intercultural Speech Acts

The intercultural perspective explores the realization of speech acts in contexts in which two
cultures coexist and interact. In some studies speech acts are analyzed in contact situations,
for instance between Spanish and Quichua (see Hurley, 1995 on requests) and between Span-
ish and Zapotec (see Schrader-Kniffki, 2007 on refusals to requests). However, most research
4 SPANISH SPEECH ACTS

in this field has described different speech acts in the United States, where both Spanish and
English are used by bilingual speakers.
Pinto (2012) reports that most of the research on speech acts in the US context shows a
unique intercultural style that combines pragmatic and linguistic strategies from English
and Spanish. For example, Valdés (1981) reported that college students in New Mexico code
switched to English or Spanish to mitigate requests or to introduce softening elements. In
another study, Valdés and Pino (1981) also found that, when responding to compliments,
bilingual speakers used code switching and seemed to lack culture-specific formulas in their
Spanish repertoire. Pinto and Raschio (2007), on the other hand, found that heritage speak-
ers who are more dominantly English employed more indirect strategies when performing
requests than did native Spanish speakers. Dumitrescu (2005) also concluded that, for her-
itage speakers, the most salient characteristic of gratitude expressions was the influence of
English. Gutiérrez-Rivas (2011) analyzed the requests and apologies performed by Cuban
immigrants from different generations living in Miami and concluded that there was a pro-
cess of pragmatic calque, combined with lexical and periphrastic verbal structures that these
bilingual speakers used to perform requests.

Speech Acts in Spanish as a Second Language

This section provides an overview of the research that has examined learners’ use and acqui-
sition of speech acts in Spanish as a second or foreign language (L2 Spanish). It summarizes
studies in the areas commonly referred to as interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) and L2 prag-
matic development. Most of the L2 Spanish literature on speech acts to date has focused on
their use by English-speaking learners of L2 Spanish (with a few exceptions, such as le Pair,
1996).
The L2 Spanish speech acts that have received most attention are requests (e.g.,
Félix-Brasdefer, 2007; Sykes, 2008), followed by refusals (e.g., Félix-Brasdefer, 2008) and
apologies (e.g., Koike, 1989). Other speech acts that have been studied to some extent are
suggestions (e.g., Koike, 1996), compliments (e.g., Smith, 2009), and advice (e.g., Mwinyelle,
2005).
In terms of methodology, the most frequently used instruments to elicit the production of
speech acts have been discourse completion tasks (DCTs) (e.g., Kuriščák, 2006) and role play
(e.g., Félix-Brasdefer, 2007). Other instruments commonly used to measure the production
and comprehension of speech acts are questionnaires (e.g., Dumitrescu, 2005), judgment
tasks (e.g., Rodríguez, 2001), retrospective verbal reports (RVRs; e.g., Félix-Brasdefer, 2008),
and interviews (e.g., Sykes, 2008).
When it comes to design, most studies tend to have a pretest–posttest design (i.e.,
outcomes-based), a single-moment design (i.e., a design in which data are collected at one
specific point in time, grouping all learners by one criterion different from chronological
development), or a cross-sectional design (i.e., a design that compares learners from two
or more cross-sections of a sample, often at different L2 Spanish proficiencies). While
cross-sectional studies have been used to make developmental observations based on
differences observed across sections at different levels of L2 proficiency, single-moment
studies “cannot shed light on development” (Kasper & Rose, 2002, p. 79), but can be used
to explore other topics in ILP, such as L1 pragmatic transfer (e.g., Koike, 1989). A less
frequently used but fecund kind of design is longitudinal (i.e., a design in which the same
participants are followed over time).
Many studies on L2 Spanish speech acts draw on the CCSARP (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989) for
their methodological instruments and framework of analysis in order to explore L2 learners’
use of different strategies and language forms. Taking an example from the most researched
 SPANISH SPEECH ACTS 5

speech act, L2 Spanish requests, beginner learners have been found to have a tendency to
produce L2 requests that are not appropriate to the L2 pragmatic norms in the level of direct-
ness and in the variety or “native-likeness” of strategies and forms used.
Many L2 Spanish request studies indicate that learners tend to progress toward more
pragmatically appropriate requesting patterns in terms of directness (toward more con-
ventionally indirect head acts), toward mitigation (a decrease in want–need statements),
and toward head act orientation (an increase in hearer-oriented strategies). This progres-
sion can be described in terms of a proposed four-stage developmental sequence for L2
Spanish (adult) learners (Félix-Brasdefer, 2007): (1) a prebasic stage, characterized by min-
imal lexical (such as por favor “please”) and nonlexical realizations (final rising intonation,
softening of voice); (2) a basic stage, where learners start using formulas, imperatives with
a few verbs, and want–need statements in the first person singular of present indicative
verbal forms; (3) a stage where formulas are “unpacked” and there is an increasing prefer- ?
ence for conventional indirectness (especially for the query preparatory strategy, e.g. puedes
(tu)…? “can you…?”); although want–need statements are still used, they take conditional
or imperfect forms in order to mitigate the request; and (4) a stage marked by expansion in
internal and external modifiers and grammatical information and by a move toward greater
indirectness.
It has been noted that progression toward more indirect requests does not always nec-
essarily result in increasingly native-like requesting behavior. As a case in point, le Pair
(1996) found that the native speakers of Spanish were more direct (e.g., they used more
imperatives, obligation statements, and want–need statements) than the Dutch L2 Span-
ish learners. The level of directness required in the performance of requests in Spanish
is context-dependent and may be affected by a number of situational variables (Márquez
Reiter, 2000; Félix-Brasdefer, 2007). It is therefore important to capture and analyze the con-
text meticulously in order to describe where an L2 learner is in his/her development of the
interpretive and expressive ability required by a particular speech act.

Conclusion

This succinct overview of the state of Spanish speech act research to date indicates that,
although more research is undoubtedly required (for example, to extend the focus to more
types of speech acts, varieties of Spanish, or modes of communication), speech acts play a
central role within Spanish pragmatics. Importantly, the findings have direct implications
for the teaching of L2 Spanish. Although some aspects of speech acts might present chal-
lenges for L2 learners at different levels of proficiency, most aspects of pragmatics (including
speech acts) can arguably be taught. Thus, continued research and pedagogical focus on L2
Spanish speech acts are recommended in order to develop a better understanding of possible
ways to improve L2 learners’ pragmatic capacities.

SEE ALSO: Cross-Cultural Pragmatics; Second Language Pragmatic Development; Speech

Acts; Speech Acts Research

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Suggested Readings
Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2012). Actos de habla. In S. de los Heros & M. Niño-Murcia (Eds.), Funda-
mentos y modelos del estudio pragmático y sociopragmático del español (pp. 59–81). Washington,
DC: Georgetown University Press.
García, C., & Placencia, M. E. (2011). Estudios de variación pragmática en español. Buenos Aires,
Argentina: Editorial Dunken.
Placencia, M. E., & Bravo, D. (2002). Actos de habla y cortesía en español. Munich, Germany: Lincom
Europa.
Placencia, M. E., & García, C. (2011). Introducción. In C. García & M. E. Placencia (Eds.), Estudios
de variación pragmática en español (pp. 9–25). Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial Dunken.
Siebold, K., & Busch, H. (2015). (No) need for clarity: Facework in German and Spanish refusals.
Journal of Pragmatics, 75, 53–68.

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