Journal articles on the topic 'Perlocutionary effects'

Language aptitude and perlocutionary acts and effects have been subjects of extensive research since their true beginnings in the 1950’s and 1960’s, respectively. On the one hand, Carroll and Sapon (1959), Pimsleur (1966), or Biedroń (2012) aimed at revealing the factors responsible for a learner’s sixth sense for languages. On the other hand, almost simultaneously, Austin (1962) introduced the tripartite division of a speech act, with locutions, illocutions, and perlocutions as the integral components, later developed by Searle (1969), who shed new light on the Speech Act Theory (SAT). At that time, however, the role of the perlocutionary component was significantly diminished, since the primary goal of pragmatics was to investigate the speaker’s intentions. Gradually, the role of perlocutionary acts and effects changed and more attention was drawn to the perlocutionary aspect. In 1979, Cohen, Davis and Gaines highlighted the fact that perlocutionary acts have perlocutionary goals, which might be observed by the subsequent effects utterance have on the listener. In 2013, Post offered a new insight into the SAT and suggested that the role of perlocution ought not to be diminished, but enhanced and intensified. In 2015, Świątek suggested a contrasting approach to both concepts and combined them to investigate the role of individual differences responsible for one’s verbal perlocutionary giftedness. The research revealed that the aspects like verbal aptitude, anxiety, willingness to communicate, or personality type had considerable impact on perlocutionary skills and the desired perlocutionary effects. Świątek’s approach shed new light on the research on pragmatic aspects of glottodidactics and opened a new chapter in that field of science. The aim of the presentation is to concentrate on yet another fundamental factor of perlocutionary giftedness, i.e. non-verbal aspects in its manifestation. The research, based on experiential and comparative methods as well as individual case analysis, aimed at revealing a strong link between verbal perlocutionary giftedness and the accompanying non-verbal aspects of communication, such as kinesics, proxemics, vocalics, or posture, which affect the listener’s decisions, who then complies with the speaker’s will.

Abstract Pragmatics has focused predominantly on the locutionary form and illocutionary force of utterances but largely ignored their perlocutionary effects. A shift toward the perlocutionary would require much greater attention being given to the historical and political context in the production and reception of utterances, as well as to interpretation as a performative process. This paper takes as empirical data a press report on the performance of a particular speech act by Donald Trump and its perlocutionary effect both on his addressee and on the readers of the incident as reported in the online versions of the New York Times and Die Zeit. It shows the value of focusing on perlocution for the study of political discourse in these global times. It also shows what pedagogical purchase can be gained by discussing perlocutionary acts and effects in communicative language teaching, rather than focusing exclusively on illocutionary acts.

<p>Abstract: Illocutionary act is an important part in order to understand the speech acts. It is related to the speaker’s intention in the conversation, and it can be seen from the utterances. In contrast, Perlocutionary act is the effect of the utterance which the speaker said to the hearer. This act does not consist of certain things in certain ways, but it is having certain effects. The literary works of concern for this study is The Book of Lost Things novel. The purpose of this paper is to describe the Illocutionary and Perlocutionary acts employed by the characters in the novel. The finding of this study indicates that the characters in The Book of Lost Things employed all types of Illocutionary acts and responding to that using Perlocutionary acts. It can be concluded that the used of Illocutionary and Perlocutionary acts can be found in this novel.</p><p>Key Words: illocutionary act; perlocutionary act; speech act; the book of lost things.</p>

One of the major open issues in semantics and pragmatics concerns the role of convention in relating sentence types with illocutionary acts and perlocutionary effects. For the type-to-illocution connection, some degree of force conventionalism seems to be widely accepted. In contrast, Austin (1962) and many subsequent researchers have assumed that perlocution is not a matter of convention, but rather arises inexorably from illocution, content, and context. In this paper, we challenge this fundamental assumption about perlocution with evidence from a new perception experiment focused on perlocutionary effects relating to the listener’s conception of the speaker as a social actor. We find that these effects are predictable from sentence type plus intonation (‘type + tune’), that they vary by type + tune, and that they are consistent across a wide range of sentence contents, contexts, and illocutionary inferences. We argue that these conventions are naturally incorporated into existing work on sentence-type conventions.

The dangers associated with traffic violations on the highways cannot be overemphasized. This work, therefore, examines the communicative effectiveness of cautionary notices on Nigeria highways, where these cautionary notices are mostly found, by looking at the attitude of the motorists towards the cautionary notices and the attention people generally paid to them. This study, which is descriptive, drew its data from the major highways in Nigeria where these notices were erected by notable construction companies as well as other corporate bodies. The analyses of these notices were based on the performed acts of the speech act theory, as these notices, in the view of many, are not considered as ordinary graphics, writings and symbols because of their significance on both the writers and the readers. The study carefully examines how the intention of these cautionary notices is achieved in the communication between the dispatcher and recipient in order to determine the effectiveness of these notices on the behavior of the motorists. The work thus brings out the critical discourse elements of the subject matter. Findings reveal that some of the cautionary notices are regarded as warnings while some are viewed as a combination of warning and advice. The study further shows that the use of cautionary notices has helped in the maintenance of law and order on the highway especially among vehicle owners, making them to be security conscious and thus helping to eradicate preventable deaths through over speeding and sundry vices. Finally, the study reveals that the use of cautionary notices is a new dimension in the area of linguistic landscape and if the use is further encouraged, it would help to maintain peace, orderliness, and guide against fatal accidents on the highways.

Building a new society can be implemented through cutting the chain of a certain generation. Then, brainwash to younger one will be the powerful weapon to change the face of the society by the authority. This study analyzes the use of perlocutionary acts used by characters in Sirley Jackson's short story, The Lottery, that tells the redaers about the culture of horror expressed by the characters to reshape the face of the society. The descriptive qualitative method was used to investigate the essence of the culture of horror through perlocutionary acts. Besides, the contextual method was also applied to support the meaning of the culture of horror in the form of narration in the short story. The result of this study is that the perlocutionary acts used have 4 out of 5 parts according to the speaker's expression, namely: a) convincing, b) inviting, c) blocking, d) surprising. Then the effects of this perlocutionary act can create a horror effect based on the context, culture, and background of the story.Building a new society can be implemented through cutting the chain of a certaingeneration. Then, brainwash to younger one will be the powerful weapon to changethe face of the society by the authority. This study analyzes the use of perlocutionaryacts used by characters in Sirley Jackson's short story, The Lottery, that tells theredaers about the culture of horror expressed by the characters to reshape the faceof the society. The descriptive qualitative method was used to investigate the essenceof the culture of horror through perlocutionary acts. Besides, the contextual methodwas also applied to support the meaning of the culture of horror in the form ofnarration in the short story. The result of this study is that the perlocutionary actsused have 4 out of 5 parts according to the speaker's expression, namely: a)convincing, b) inviting, c) blocking, d) surprising. Then the effects of thisperlocutionary act can create a horror effect based on the context, culture, andbackground of the story.

This research is aimed at finding the illocutionary act types performed by Niana Guerrero in her YouTube videos and the perlocutionary effects performed by the hearers in Niana Guerrero’s YouTube videos. This research employed a qualitative descriptive research. The subjects of this research were two of the most viewed videos uploaded from May 2019-August 2019. After listing, selecting, and collecting the videos, the videos were watched several times to ease the researcher in transcribing them. In analyzing the data, the researcher only took the interactional conversations which enabled Niana to deliver her intentions to the hearers directly and enabled the hearers to fulfill Niana’s intentions directly as well. The illocutionary act data performed by Niana Guerrero were classified using an instrument following Searle’s theory and the perlocutionary effect data performed by the hearers were classified using an instrument following Gu’s theory. The first finding showed four illocutionary act types performed by Niana Guerrero namely representative, directive, commisive, and expressive. The second finding showed all of the six perlocutionary effect types performed by the hearers namely motor reflexive response, emotive response, cognitive response, negative response, verbal response, and physical response. By performing four types of illocutionary acts, Niana Guerrero may have various ways to express her intentions to the hearers. Meanwhile, the hearers may have various ways to fulfill Niana Guerrero’s intention by performing six types of perlocutionary effects. These speech acts create the communicative effects that cause Niana Guerrero having many subscribers and viewers in her YouTube channel by establishing highly interactive, joyful, and interesting situation.

Pragmatic competence includes the capacity to express illocutionary force and successfully achieve perlocutionary effects, in order to guarantee fully functional communication exchanges. Alzheimer’s Disease is characterized by a constellation of limitations derived from progressive cognitive impairment, which is usually viewed as a global uniform phenomenon. In this paper it is argued that looking independently at the loss and recovery of pragmatic function related to illocutionary and perlocutionary abilities can be a productive way of understanding the progressive deterioration of communicative capacities by patients or their improvement under targeted treatment.

After staging the shipwreck of the constative-performative distinction halfway through How To Do Things With Words, J.L. Austin goes on famously to “make a fresh start on the problem.” He relinquishes the original opposition between making statements and doing things and then introduces a ternary account of speech acts. He distinguishes between locutionary acts (in which we produce sounds with “a certain sense and a certain reference”[95]), illocutionary acts (in which we perform acts such as “asking or answering a question, giving some information… announcing a verdict...and the numerous like” [98-99]), and perlocutionary acts (in which we “produce consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts or actions of an audience, or of the speaker, or of other persons”[101]). For all the philosophical ink that has been spilled on Austin, not much has been devoted to perlocutions. Locutions and illocutions get almost all the action.Stanley Cavell has been one of the few philosophers to emphasize the importance of the perlocutionary for speech act theory. In his forward to the second edition of Shoshana Felman’s The Scandal of the Speaking Body and in his essay “Performative and Passionate Utterances,” Cavell assumes, as Stephen Mulhall puts it, that Austin believes that “the perlocutionary effect of any utterance [is] extrinsic to its sense and force” and thus that the perlocutionary can be opposed to the illocutionary act. Because Austin maintains that the illocutionary is conventional and the perlocutionary is not (121), Cavell argues that illocutions come down on the side of the Law, while perlocutions give voice to Desire. Where the illocutionary is scripted and prescribed, the perlocutionary opens up space for improvisations. According to Mulhall, Cavell proposes a radical innovation to Austin’s theory by suggesting that the perlocution is “as internal to any genuine speech-act as are its locutionary and illocutionary dimensions.” I am going to argue in this essay that Cavell does not really revise Austin’s theory. He gives voice to what Austin actually says.

AbstractThis article inquires into the effects of public apologies. It argues that the focus of most scholars of public diplomacy or conflict resolution on the conflict solving capacity of public apologies is limited and prevents an open and responsive analysis of empirical apology processes. Drawing on speech act theory as developed by John L. Austin and some of his critics it suggests that existing apology theory should broaden its perspective and also take the perlocutionary, that is, the unintended social effects of public apologies into account. The article illustrates its theoretical argument with the example of the Czech-German apology process. The apologies issued between these countries since 1989 suggest that the conflict solving performance of the apologies was exceeded by the unintended social consequences in both, the apologising country as well as the country receiving the apology.

Effective communication in task-oriented situations requires high-level interactions. For human–agent collaboration, tasks need to be coordinated in a way that ensures mutual understanding. Speech Act Theory (SAT) aims to understand how utterances can be used to achieve actions. SAT consists of three components: locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act. This paper evaluates the agent’s verbal communication while collaborating with humans. SAT was used to anatomize the structure of the agent’s speech acts (locutionary acts), the agent’s intention behind the speech acts (illocutionary acts), and the effects on the human’s mental state (perlocutionary acts). Moreover, this paper studies the impact of human perceptions of the agent’s speech acts on the perception of collaborative performance with the agent.

The study of Buhari’s statements on “jailing of more thieves,” “rule of law should be subjected to national interest,” and “being fair in federal appointments” seem not to have been approached from speech act perspective. As such, this paper analyses the locutionary acts, illocutionary acts, and the perlocutionary effects of Buhari’s statements on the above subject matters. The data were obtained from the online version of Nigerian Dailies. Austin’s speech acts theory serves as the theoretical framework for data analysis. The findings of the study reveal that Buhari’s statement on “jailing of more thieves” is based on fact that he has already jailed some high-profile Nigerians since he was elected as the President of Nigeria. The findings of the study reveal the locutionary and illocutionary acts of Buhari’s statements. The study also shows how Buhari’s statements abided by or flouted Austinian felicity conditions. The perlocutionary effects of the statements were also identified.

The word “Murzyn”as a perlocutionary speech act Whilst an array of words is used by white Poles to describe and denote Black people both outside Poland and within the country itself, in recent years, a heated public debate has taken place in Poland concerning the on-going use of the term Murzyn in everyday speech acts and in public discourse. The word actively reproduces anti-black stereotypes and racist meanings, and also conceals the prejudice, not least by virtue of the fact that a number of White Polish public persons claim that Murzyn is a neutral word used inoffensively to refer to Black people. Recently, as the demonstrations after George Floyd’s death spread across Europe, the continuing use of the term has been widely protested by Poles of African descent, and a growing number of Polish linguists argue against the word’s assumed neutrality. In this article, I draw upon the internalism and externalism in communication theory as I demonstrate perlocutionary effects of the word Murzyn from semi-interviews conducted with black Poles in 2014 and 2020, and utterance of Poles of African descent from media discourse between 2011 and 2020. With regard to the histories, experiences, and perspectives of Black communities in Poland, I argue that the derogatory meaning of the word depends largely on its effects on thoughts and feelings of the recipient, namely the pragmatic perlocution and the externalist communication theory, and less on the intention of the speaker and the internalist communication theory.

This article examines a frequent assumption of sociological accounts of knowledge: the idea that knowledge acts. The performativity of knowledge claims is here analysed through the prism of ‘sociological excuses’: the idea that sociological explanations can act as ‘excuses’ for otherwise unacceptable behaviour. The article builds on Austin’s distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary effects to discuss the relationship between sociological explanation, sociological justification and sociological critique. It argues that understanding how (and if) sociological explanations can act requires paying attention to social and political conditions of performativity and their transformation in late liberalism.

The paper begins with an overview of the relevance of functional/text linguistics, skopos theory, and the cultural-studies approach to the study of (literary) translation. It then examines the textual significance of leitmotifs as ‘vertical translation units’, since both are found to be related to repetitions of a rank-free text element in formulating a network of signification. In leitmotif-conscious translating, it argues, the accountability between the source and target texts can be observed at this level of textual network, while the translation, as a literary text, may induce different perlocutionary effects when functioning in a different cultural milieu.

Abstract In recent years, philosophers have begun to uncover the role played by verbal conduct in generating oppressive social structures. I examine the oppressive illocutionary uses, and perlocutionary effects, of expressives: speech acts that are not truth-apt, merely expressing attitudes, such as desires, preferences, and emotions. Focusing on expressions of disgust in conversation, I argue for two claims: (1) that expressions of disgust can activate in the local, conversational context the oppressive power of the underlying structures of oppression; (2) that conversational expressions of disgust can, via the pragmatic process of presupposition accommodation, contribute to morally problematic cases of disgust contagion.

The article analyzes the presence of Conceptual Metaphors (CMs) in a XVII-century ballad in their interaction with popular proverbs as supplementary symbolizing patterns. The article will try to show the complexity of the mental processing involved in a special case of love disputation, in which CMs are made to interact with proverbs in order to produce implicatures. The use of CMs in the text and their interplay with proverbs and popular wisdom produce some unpredictable perlocutionary effects, which are not only significant indicators of the speakers⟠ideology and point of view, but also trigger communicative effects and a âœproliferation of meanings⠝ which confirm, or disrupt, certain socially âžinherited⟠conceptual structures both reflecting and shaping the thought patterns of a community.

The goal of this article is to examine the context-dependent nature of acts of confiding in political interviews and to identify its genre-specific constraints and requirements. It looks at their distribution in British and French political interviews with regard to form, function and possible perlocutionary effects. The communicative act of confiding is compared and contrasted with disclosure, self-disclosure and revelation, and the necessary and sufficient conditions required for confiding in a felicitous manner are examined. Particular attention is given to the genre’s status as mediated and public discourse with public and political information. The most prominent strategies for realizing acts of confiding are analyzed by comparing and contrasting implicit and explicit realizations as well as their communicative functions in the British and French data.

Abstract In this article, two major paradigms within cognitive stylistics, the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and the Conceptual Integration Theory (CIT), are applied as largely complementary approaches to discuss the scope and implicatures of the central metaphorical image of Copp’s Return to the wayes of Truth (1651), a text written by one of the most famous radical preachers of the Civil War period as a plea to be released from prison. The article will focus on how the linguistic and cultural contexts of Coppe’s prophetic writing, in their interaction with the dynamic conceptual relationships of a conceptual integration network, open up new possibilities of perspectivizing and insinuating radically different meanings and implicatures: the use of blends in Coppe’s text has a direct effect on the structure of the analogies that can be made between mental spaces, thereby triggering new meaning effects, supplementary symbolizing patterns, and unpredictable perlocutionary effects.

In this research, there are two objectives. First, to identify the kinds of flouting maxim performed by the main character in The Edge of Seventeen movie and Second, to find out the effect of flouting maxim performed by the main character in the movie. The method used in this research is descriptive qualitative method. The data of this research are twenty dialogues of The Edge of Seventeen movie which is containing flouting maxim. In analyzing the data, the researcher found that Nadine as the main character of the movie flouted all types of maxim. The most flouting maxim used by Nadine is floating maxim of quantity and, the least flouting maxim performed by Nadine are flouting maxim of quality and flouting maxim of manner. For the effects, Nadine gave seven effects based on Austin’s Perlocutionary effect theory to the other character of the movie. The seven effects based on Austin’s theory are annoying, boring, convincing, causing, getting the hearer realize something, getting the hearer to do something, and insulting. Further, the effect that mostly performed by Nadine in the movie is getting the hearer realize something effect.

This research aimed at analyzing the speech act used in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie. This research was conducted in descriptive qualitative. The primary sources of data were utterances in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie. This research also used its movie script as a secondary source. The data were collected through observation and documentation techniques and analyzed through the stages of data reduction, data display, verification, and conclusion. The research result showed that the utterances have locutionary act or took the form of declarative, interrogative, imperative and exclamation and those were used to express the direct/indirect illocutionary act of declarative, representative, expressive, directive and commissive. Besides, the use of theforms and their illocutionary acts brought about the result of the perlocutionary acts of belief, annoyance, surprise, enlightenment, confirmation, rejection, obedience, information, happiness/satisfaction, and action. This research enriched the knowledge and understanding of the variety of structures, functions, effects, and classification of language in society.

In the discourse of political interviews, references to participants can be expressed explicitly by proper nouns and forms of address, and they can be expressed implicitly by personal pronouns and other indexical expressions. The meaning of personal pronouns is context-dependent and retrievable only by inference, and therefore is less determinate. Furthermore, it can shift according to the status of the participants in interaction. This may occur both in terms of social roles and in terms of roles in talk and footing. In this context, an analysis was conducted of televised political interviews broadcast during the 1997 and 2001 British general elections and just before the war with Iraq in 2003. Question-response sequences were identified in which politicians made use of pronominal shifts as a form of equivocation. These sequences were analyzed in the context of Bavelas et al.s (1990) theory of equivocation and Goffmans (1981) concept of footing. The polyvalent function of pronominal shifts, their potential perlocutionary effects and strategic advantages are discussed.

Abstract In this paper, we analyse and discuss an utterance/pragmeme/pract proffered by US President Donald Trump and addressed to FBI Director Comey: ‘I hope you will let Flynn go’.1 We consider the explicature of this utterance (‘I hope you will drop the Russian investigation concerning Flynn’) and its illocutionary and perlocutionary effects. We argue that while Republicans opt for an Austinian or Searlean analysis, in the attempt to deny that this utterance constituted an attempt to influence Comey, there are reasons for adopting a Strawsonian analysis, casting it in the framework of pragmemes, devised by Mey (2001), that frame a socio-pragmatic analysis of utterance interpretation within context. This analysis shows, Trump illicitly tried to persuade Comey to drop the Russian investigation, and therefore attempted to interfere with the judiciary system. A reasoned case can be made for saying that Trump had the intention of interfering with America’s federal court system through this utterance.

Abstract Even though there seem to be no objectively defined criteria about what constitutes hate speech, a lot of legislation and policy making currently aims at combating it. This paper sets out to define hate speech under its standard legal understanding of ‘incitement to discriminatory hatred’, by adopting a speech-act theoretic perspective. My main proposal is that the Austinian distinction between illocution and perlocution can be pivotal in this process, since hate speech may be an illocutionary act that is typically tied to the recognition of a speaker’s intention to incite discriminatory hatred, but one which can only be defined if one takes into account its speaker’s intended perlocutionary effects; that is, the intention of the speaker to trigger a particular kind of response from some audience. Against this backdrop, I turn to show how a reworked Searlean notion of felicity conditions can be usefully applied in the delineation of hate speech under this legal conception.

The evolution of social media has opened a new vista in digital communication across the world, Nigeria inclusive. Since the confirmation of the index case of Coronavirus in Nigeria, a lot of news on the subject which are largely considered by the World Health Organization to be false, had gone viral on the social media space. This study essentially examines some of those messages on WhatsApp that were circulated across Nigeria. Five WhatsApp messages collected between March – June, 2020 were analysed using the framework of Austin’s Speech Acts with insights from the Conversational Maxims of Grice’s Cooperative Principles. The main objective of this analysis is to unravel the communicative effects of language. Findings show that the writers of those WhatsApp messages carefully manipulate some linguistic features to make such messages perform some illocutionary acts as well as trigger some perlocutionary moves in the minds of the readers. This buttresses the fact that language is used to achieve both linguistic and non linguistic aims.

This article examines the discursive construction of ordinariness in the context of mediated political discourse, considering in particular contexts, in which ‘non-ordinary speakers’ quote ordinary people, bring them into the mediated public arena and assign them and their quoted contributions the status of an object of talk, and in which ‘ordinary speakers’ follow up on the ‘brought-in-ordinariness’. The contexts under investigation are Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) transmitted in the social media and commenters’ posts on the exchanges between the Prime Minister’s and Leader of the Opposition’s bringing-in-ordinariness. The Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition treat the ‘brought-in-ordinariness’ in an ordinary manner by naming quoter and quoted and providing responses to the quoted questions while accommodating the political elite in their contributions; some of the ordinary commenters take up the ‘brought-in-ordinariness’ by negotiating its perlocutionary effects with evaluative metacomments. The ‘brought-in-ordinariness’ receives various kinds of uptakes, ranging from enthusiastic responses hailing true democracy to negative responses criticizing the non-professional manner of doing politics.

Alternative assessments have increasingly gained attention in L2 writing. One of the areas of research which has received much attention in the literature of ELT is the use of self- and peer-assessments and their effects on developing the writing ability of ESL/EFL learners. The purpose of this study was to find the effect of self- and peer-assessments on the argumentative writing performance of intermediate Iranian EFL learners. For this purpose, 36 intermediate EFL students were selected and homogenized based on the results of Oxford Quick Placement Test and an argumentative writing which served as the pre-test of this study. They were then randomly assigned into control and experimental groups to receive different treatments. The compositions of participants in the control group were assessed using traditional teacher-assessment while for the experimental group, self- and peer-assessments were used writing assessment. The results of post-test indicated that the use of self- and peer-assessments significantly affected the writing ability of the learners. Based on the obtained results, it was concluded that using alternative assessments for Iranian EFL students could be helpful in overcoming some of their argumentative writing difficulties. The results of this study have clear implications for both learners and teachers and other stakeholders of ELT. They can use these alternative assessments as a learning opportunity to lower the anxiety and improve the argumentative writing skill of the students. s, but they were permanently different in illocutionary acts. Finally, in terms of perlocutionary acts, the candidates were mostly intended to get the hearers know by their assertion, explanation, clarification, argumentation, etc.

This article aims to present multilingual advertising from the point of view of translation. In particular, I will focus on the case of the Spanish airline Vueling whose signature feature is the mixture of languages in its advertising campaigns. The method of analysis used in this study will be the pragmalinguistic model used by Hickey (1999) in the translation of humorous texts since humor is the main function of Vueling advertisements. This model is based upon the individual analysis of each one of the three elements in the speech act (locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary) of the source text in order to render a translation triggering the same effects on the target reader as the ones provoked on the source reader. This method of analysis will be applied to several examples of ads as well as their translations into English. The main conclusions of this study show the importance of stylistic equivalence in this type of translations—sometimes over semantic and pragmatic equivalences—since it is precisely the code-switching feature and the formal contrast that produces on the reader what creates the comical effect so characteristic of these campaigns.

Jokes are special kinds of texts: they do not communicate something about the real, existing world like some other kinds of texts do, because they are worlds in themselves. These units of discourse consist of two components: a build-up and a punch line, the latter being the source of humour, mainly because it possesses elements of surprise. Although mostly fictitious, jokes do make use of an element of truth, or at least some common knowledge. They can also be seen as speech acts, acts of humour with the perlocutionary effect to amuse in mind. When De Beaugrande and Dressier's characteristics of a successful text are applied, jokes can be seen to fit the description. As in the case of other literary genres, jokes can be described as fiction because they are also special expressions with well-defined conventions. These special kinds of texts are spontaneously recognised for what they are. When those elements distinguishing jokes as such are removed, the effects jokes have are cancelled. These removed elements are thus proved to be essentials. The element of surprise, caused by the condensation of several meanings in the punch line, seems to be of vital importance in this respect. Jokes are intended to amuse. Jokes are consciously told with this purpose in mind and they are noticed because of that. It will be argued, using appropriate examples, that these special effects are achieved by means of the principle of interest. The exploitation of pragmatic means is used to attain this.

Anti-racial vilification legislations exist on a wide range and are supported by civil organizations as well as the two major political parties in the United States. As Public concerns about expressions of racial hatred exacerbated lately, racial derogatory comments and racial violence were evident in several areas in the U.S and became part of daily rhetoric. It seems that these legislations consolidated counterproductive effects and gave rise to racial differences rather than encrypting them. Furthermore, hate discourse was encumbered by the residue of long history of slavery and racial segregation. The American president who is supposed to be the role model for the common American man and woman failed to take the lead and proved to lack commands of leadership as well as initiatives of healing the nation in the midst of the present state of unrest and confusion. He has been abusive and having no commands of domestic policy. His discourse failed to live up to the expectations of the American people in suppressing racial and discriminatory remarks. On the contrary, he brags of being racist and bluntly uses hate expressions. In addition, he tries to systematize and institutionalize racism and discrimination. By using racist hate speech utterances as well as hate-speech acts, the president appears as a person with modest linguistic commands as his poor knowledge of illocutionary and perlocutionary effects of his utterances is prevalent. The analysis of Donald Trump’s hate-speech-acts can be identified as raising validity claims which enact discrimination and support inequality in society.

The regulation of speech is a highly sensitive and always evolving ethical, political, and legal issue. On the one hand, hateful and hurtful speech is on the rise, especially, but not exclusively, with regard to the relationship between Islam and the West. We can also think of the radicalization of discourse brought about by the interactive phase of the Internet. On the other hand, demands for the suppression of certain forms of speech proliferate. After reviewing the argument for freedom of expression, I argue that while the notion of harm defended by Millian liberals is too narrow, an “offence principle” is too broad. After defending hate speech laws, I concede that such laws need to target only the speech acts that express the most severe forms of aversion and denigration toward the members of a specific group. I then reflect on the status of “hurtful speech”, which I see as including the performative utterances that stop short of being hateful but nonetheless erode, through their illocutionary force and perlocutionary effects, the social standing and bases for self-respect of those who are targeted. I conclude that the free speech debate reveals a limit of liberal political morality and leaves liberal normative theorists with an uncomfortable predicament, as they have to rely more on the complementary role of pro-social personal dispositions and civic virtues than they generally wish to.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse the process by which “analogue” corporate reports produced under a “paper paradigm” are translated into a machine language as required by digital reporting. The paper uses Austin and Searle’s linguistic speech act theory to examine how digitally translating reporting information into atomised data affects the infrastructure and practice of accounting.Design/methodology/approachExtensive interview and observation evidence focussed on the IFRS Foundation’s digital reporting project is analysed. An interpretive approach is informed by the concepts of L compatibility, illocution and perlocutionary acts which are drawn from speech act theory.FindingsTwo key sites of translation are identified. The first site concerns the translation of accounting standards, principles and practices into taxonomies for digital tagging. Controversies arise over the definition of accounting concepts in a site populated by accounting and IT-orientated experts. The second site of translation is in the routine production and dissemination of digital reports which impacts the L compatibility between preparers and users.Originality/valueThe paper highlights a previously unexplored field of translation in accounting and contributes a unique perspective that demonstrates that machine translation is no longer marginalised but is the “primary” text with effects on the infrastructure and practice of accounting. It extends speech act theory by applying it to the digital domain and in the context of translation between languages.

This paper examined the speech acts used by Namibian Members of Parliament (MPs) during parliamentary proceedings. The main aim of this paper was to explain speech acts and show their intended persuasive effects in parliamentary discourse. Austin (1962) introduced three types of speech acts, locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary. The paper attempted to critically demonstrate how MPs use persuasion strategies in their debates. These speech acts were uttered through assertives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declaratives, as classified by Searle (1969). A qualitative approach was used in this paper whereby the Hansard were used to collect data. A purposeful sampling focusing on some MPs was used. This paper was guided by two theories, Austins Speech Act Theory and Aristotles Theory of Rhetoric. The need to apply rhetorical skills in debates is widely advocated for. Although not all members of parliament have a wide knowledge of rhetoric, acquiring and employing skills on rhetoric are prominent aspects of parliamentary debates. The findings of the paper revealed that members of parliament have the potential to use a variety of persuasive strategies in their speech acts by means of some rhetorical devices. It was concluded that most MPs deliberately make use of these speech acts as a persuasive mechanism in their discourse. Being the first study in parliamentary discourse in Namibia with regards to rhetoric, it is considered to be unique and adds value in the field of linguistics. It also serves as a pioneering research to researchers in political rhetoric.

This article discusses the violation implicature of cooperative principle of discourse on corruption of Indonesia Lawyers Club. The applied theories are: (1) Searle’s speech acts (1969); (2) Austin’s Locutionary, Illocutionary, and Perlocutionary (1962); (3) Grice’s conversational implicatures and cooperative principles (in Leech,1993); (4) Levinson’s pragmatics and semantic deviation (1983), Parker’s pragmatics (in Rahardi, 2005;48); (5) Spencer and Wilson’s relevance theory (in Rahardi, 2010). Data were gathered by means of listening and recording. The speeches were analyzed by employing the maxim violation and implicatures theories. The violation of cooperative principle implies (1) the speakers fully comprehend the speech, (2) Government has insufficient budget to pay the judges of regional anti-corruption court, (3) Government seems skeptical about the regional judge selection test, (4) The speakers are fully confident that they posses capability of eradicating corruption, (5) Both payment and allowance of the regional judge of anti-corruption court do not receive scholarly attention that have made difficult for them to work as law enforcers and as justice enforcers, (6) Some negative effects emerged by virtue of the poor planning of the establishment of the regional court, (7) The anti-corruption court lost dignity; The role of Judicial commission is not effective in providing guidances to the judges, (9) All elements have committed corruption like termites keep encircling nation, (10) issues on corruption are not seriously discussed (11) regional elections indirectly trigger corruption.

Political interviews are defined as question- and answer sequences in which interviewers and interviewees negotiate validity claims. Looked upon from an interpersonal angle, the interviewer sets up a position and requests the interviewee to ratify their claim by expressing alignment or non-alignment. This contribution examines the expression of non-alignment in a corpus of 12 interviews between journalists and the losers of the general elections in Britain (1997) and Germany (1998). The data share identical external parameters, very similar contextual features and almost identical argumentation strategies. In spite of that, the expression of non-alignment differs significantly. This is primarily due to language-specific preferences for the realization of turn-initial positions and their functions as interpersonal, topical and textual themes. In the British data, multiple themes are more frequent for the expression of non-alignment and thus assigned the status of a preferred variant; their sequential organization adheres to the sequence [[textual theme] [interpersonal theme] [topical theme]], which indicates that a negotiation of meaning is intended. Single topical themes are less frequent and therefore assigned the status of a dispreferred variant indicating that a negotiation of meaning is not intended. In the German data, the sequential organization of multiple themes does not display that kind of preference pattern and multiple themes do not necessarily indicate that a negotiation of meaning is intended. Regarding possible perlocutionary effects, the expression of non-alignment in British English is more process-oriented and thus more dynamic, while its German counterpart is more product-oriented and thus more abrupt.

Declarative speech acts are those acts that affect immediate changes in the world via their utterance. The specification of declarative speech acts raises problematic area as not all declarative utterances serve out performatively. The specificity of pragmatic conditions of declarative acts lead to another problem in that setting out the same function and affecting the same immediate change would not similarly be lexicalized in the two different natural languages. Therefore, declarative speech acts will pose difficulties for translators if they are unaware of categorizing their pragmatic conditions appropriately and integrating their process interpreting with affecting immediate perlocutionary purposively. Accordingly, it aims at: 1) setting some felicity conditions for determining sensibly whether the specified declarative expressions serve out performatively as genuine declarative acts or not. 2-Examining whether English declarative acts are perceived performatively in Arabic. 3- Exercising to what extents do the translators transfer declarative intentioned effects. and 4- Proposing certain pragmatic parameters for interpreting situational bounded expressions and providing some remedies for mistranslated verbs. The objective of the study is fairly confined to a number of declarative acts selected from dialogues, comments, statements and debates of English TV (e.g. Al-Jazeera TV, BBC, among many others). The main result shows that declarative acts are performatively influenced by contextual nature. The result also shows that many declarative expressions can alternatively name different illocutionary act. From functional perspective, the perception of English declarative acts is different from the Arabic one. Thus, the most accurate rendering of declarations is based on the correspondence between perception and immediate perloctionary affects.

AbstractIf one takes the view that utterance meaning is the product of interactional processes, then intended perlocutionary effects should be receiving more attention; indeed, their occurrence (or nonoccurrence, for that matter) has a direct influence on the circumstances that determine the range of possible language choices for both speaker and hearer.

AbstractOne of the key debates about applying virtue ethics to business is whether or not the aims and values of a business actually prevent the exercise of virtues. Some of the more interesting disagreement in this debate has arisen amongst proponents of virtue ethics. This article analyzes the central issues of this debate in order to advance an alternative way of thinking about how a business can be a form of virtuous practice. Instead of relying on the paired concepts of internal and external goods that define what counts as virtuous, I offer a version of speech act theory taken from Paul Ricoeur to show how a business can satisfy several aims without compromising the exercise of the virtues. I refer to this as a polyvalent approach where a single task within a business can have instrumental, conventional, and imaginative effects. These effects correspond to the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary dimensions of meaning. I argue that perlocution provides a way in which the moral imagination can discover the moral significance of others that might have not been noticed before, and furthermore, that for such effects to be practiced, they require appropriate virtues. I look at two cases taken from consultation work to thresh out the theoretical and practical detail.

Gugon Tuhon (GT) is a Javanese proposition found in the community as a learning tool. This study explains baby care GT in the village of Bulurejo, Kediri, East Java. Currently, GT is poorly understood and obsolete. Therefore, the research problem of this paper is how can the meaning of GT be understood by mothers in the village of Bulurejo and what does the effect of understanding GT? This study used 8 GT from www.sastra.org, and an interview was conducted with a dhukun (traditional healer) to get in-depth data. This study uses qualitative method and Speech Act theory by Austin (1984) on locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act to identify the meanings of GT understood by mothers, and the theory of language attitudes by Triandis (1971) and Knops (1987) to explain the effects. The hypothesis of this paper is that the understanding of baby care GT as an illocutionary act is less understood, compared to the meaning of locution and perlocution. GT is understood and done by mothers as means of self-defense of fear and gaining knowledge of parents who convey GT. This research is expected to provide knowledge about GT baby care for mothers and support GT preservation.

Sitting in near darkness about eighteen inches from the screen, he turned the channel selector every half minute or so, sometimes much more frequently. He wasn't looking for something that might sustain his interest. Hardly that. He simply enjoyed jerking the dial into fresh image-burns. He explored content to a point. The tactile visual delight of switching channels took precedence, however, transforming even random moments of content into pleasing territorial abstractions. -- Don DeLillo (16) DeLillo captures in a few lines key aspects of a cultural narrative concerning how technology has sped up human lives. The speeds at which forms are transmitted and affect the ways we apprehend the world. Speed is enjoyable. Speed abstracts. Speed is visceral. Speed fragments. We are both agents of its processes and subject to its force. Like DeLillo's channel surfer then you may explore the content of this 'speed' issue of M/C with a certain mobility, and yet you are constrained to pass through at some speed. If you're interested please hang around for a while... This issue acknowledges the reification of speed, its elevation into a mysterious quality continuous with general cultural conditions. It has ceased to be a variable among and equal to others, or one that gains its value from local happenings. It is a cultural dominant. And in this usage speed has, of course, come to stand for high speed, not slow or any speed. Virilio, the founder of dromology, is perhaps the outstanding contemporary theorist of inherent speed culture. He urges that political analysis must start from a recognition of speed, viewing it as intertwined with current conditions of technology and capitalism. The force of speed needs thinking through though. Is it Virilio's generalised tyranny, a global accident? What is at stake? One possible answer to this question can be drawn from the very definition of 'speed': as anyone who has ever rushed to make a date they were late to would know, speed expresses a relationship between space and time, between a distance covered and a time elapsed. As the noted Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman writes, "'distance' is a social product; its length varies depending upon the speed with which it may be overcome (and, in a monetary economy, on the cost involved in the attainment of that speed" (12). The higher the speed, the greater the distance covered in any given time period -- and the secret to attaining the speed is the ability to pay the price. For those who can meet the price, space is dematerialised: communication, movement, the satisfaction of desires, is instantaneous. The residents of the first world who are empowered by the new economic processes, who can pay for the speed, "live in a perpetual present, ... are constantly busy and perpetually 'short of time'". For those who -- for whatever reason -- cannot afford the speed, time is decomposed by space, trapped by and in space. As Bauman argues, those without the access to speed are "marooned in the opposite world ... crushed under the burden of abundant, redundant and useless time they have nothing to fill with" (88). As Bauman succinctly and pithily puts it: "rather than homogenising the human condition, the technological annulment of temporal/spatial distances tends to polarise it" (18). Speed is a cultural dominant because its possession -- or the lack thereof -- defines people's social and economic future: it marks one's cards, determines one's destiny, more precisely, more forcefully and more thoroughly than any genetic sequence identified by the Human Genome Project ever could. In this light, our contributors take us through an excursus of the range, limits and functions of speed. Our feature writer, Esther Milne, takes a historical perspective on the perceptual reconfigurations of space and time that come with changes in communications and transport technologies. She observes how twentieth-century commentators including Marinetti, Harvey and Castells have heralded the arrivals of new temporal regimes on the basis of technological and economic changes. However, by examining eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English reactions to the use of the mail coach, train and telegraph to relay messages, she identifies a longer tradition of commentary on communication technologies, which sets up themes -- such as the possible alienation of messages from physical bodies -- that are still applied today. Claudia Mesch, in her contribution "Racing Berlin: the Games of Run Lola Run", takes us into the Berlin of Tom Tykwer's recent movie Run Lola Run. Playfully using the multiple narrative style of the movie, Mesch alternately discusses the film's narrative and visual form to comment upon its characterisations; its physical and spatial location to comment upon its intra- and extra-diagetic textualities; and its filmic tropes and conventions to comment upon the historical, geo-political and mythic existence of Berlin as a lived space. In a timely review article of Virilio's latest book The Information Bomb, John Armitage reflects upon Virilio's current thinking about speed, digital technologies and the state of the world. He outlines the metaphors of the militarisation of information that Virilio is using to describe the social and political effects of an explosively fast technoculture, and contrasts Virilio's thinking with that of Negroponte and Baudrillard. Sadeq Rahimi explores the shrinking of time and the virtualisation of space to question how identity is redefined in the postmodern condition. Utilising the work of Helga Nowotny, Paul Virilio, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, amongst others, Rahimi argues that the self-identity constructed by these changing social conditions can no longer be described as human -- bound as this is by both space and time -- and calls for the theoretical and philosophical development of a new, posthuman theory of identity. Writing at the time of millennium fever McKenzie Wark takes a 'detour' away from the incessant media multiplication of a single moment by contemplating the enduring architectural media of ancient Egypt. Wark is thereafter able to put into relief how the twentieth century mummified change itself and in doing so has created new media empires designed to extend their dominion through momentary saturations of space. The tour stops by Valery, Innis, Microsoft, Time-Warner and the London Millennium Dome. Brian Ward draws our attention to the social and cultural experience of speed, and the ways to which speed is the result of an obsession, under capitalist rationalities, with notions of progress, advancement and unique sensation. Discussing the function of speed within the proto-Fascist philosophy of the Italian Futurist movement, Ward points to the way its overt fascination with speed foregrounds a more latent, yet no less obsessive, preoccupation with speed and progress within contemporary Western metaphysics. In "Fleshing Out the Maelstrom" Paul Taylor shows how the recent Biopunk fiction of Jeff Noon and Michael Marshall Smith plays out a contemporary ontological confusion between the physical and the informational. Going beyond Cyberpunk's exaggeration of digital abstractions, Biopunk metaphorises information's colonisation of the physical world as a "an alarming maelstrom of biological uncertainty" in which a fecund capitalism breeds mergers, images, and a smorgasbord of private products that overrun social life. In "Waiting for Instantaneity" Maya Drozdz reflects upon the temporal paradoxes of cyberspace. She questions Virilio's and Baudrillard's suppositions of realtime mediation arguing that movement in cyberspace is "subordinate to connection speed and loadtime", which means all online content is mediated by the temporalities of its transmission. She outlines online narratives that have arisen to accommodate and investigate the discrepancy between transmission time 'as it happens' and its perception and draws parallels with filmic techniques for creating temporal continuity. Kate Eichhorn also examines speed of the Net applying it to arguments about the effectivity of hate speech. She shows how the "speed and subsequent loss of orientation" that Virilio associates with virtual environments may actually prove the grounds for its recuperation. While cyberhate may still injure, the speed at which it may be recontextualised by parody, critique and the mobility of the reader disrupt its perlocutionary effects. In contrast to Ward, Gwendolyn Stansbury argues against the speed of contemporary life. Extrapolating the Slow Food movement's critique of fast food, she posits the negative effect that the modern pace of life has on the communal experience of preparing and eating food together. Finally, as a special feature this issue, we bring you a recording of a seminar recently presented by the noted Dutch media activist and theorist Geert Lovink at the Media and Cultural Studies Centre at the University of Queensland. Entitled "Directions for Cyberculture in the New Economy", it reprises a paper he presented at the "Tulipomania" conference held not long ago in Amsterdam, exploring the changes and potential of online activism and culture as it speeds headlong towards complete commercialisation. Greg Hearn and David Marshall respond to Lovink's views, and a lively audience discussion, ranging from AOL users to cyberwarriors, follows. Geert Lovink visited Brisbane as a participant in Alchemy, an International Masterclass for New Media Artists and Curators, which was organised by the Australian Network for Art and Technology in association with the Brisbane Powerhouse -- Centre for the Live Arts from 8 May to 9 June 2000. M/C and the Media and Cultural Studies Centre are highly grateful to ANAT and Geert Lovink as well as the Australian Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy for making this event possible. Guy Redden & Sean Aylward Smith -- 'Speed' Issue Editors References Baudrillard, Jean. "The Ecstasy of Communication." The Anti-Aesthetic. Essays on Postmodern Culture. Ed. Hal Foster. Washington: Bay Press, 1983. Bauman, Zygmunt. Globalization: The Human Consequences. New York: Columbia UP, 1998. DeLillo, Don. Players. New York: Random House, 1989. Jameson, Frederic. "Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism." New Left Review 146 (1984). Citation reference for this article MLA style: Guy Redden, Sean Aylward Smith. "Editorial: 'Speed'." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.3 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/edit.php>. Chicago style: Guy Redden, Sean Aylward Smith, "Editorial: 'Speed'," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 3 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/edit.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Guy Redden, Sean Aylward Smith. (2000) Editorial: 'speed'. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(3). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/edit.php> ([your date of access]).

In foregrounding the performative character of hate speech, legal scholars and activists have sought to demonstrate why hate speech should be prohibited not only on the basis of what it says but on the basis of what it does. In this article I examine the conditions upon which hate speech has been posited as performative speech in order to consider how virtual environments trouble existing understandings of hate speech. In particular, this article seeks to show how cyberspace may in fact create the conditions for a more immediate and radical recontextualisation and recirculation of hate speech where speed operates as a potential source of resistance. In foregrounding the performative character of hate speech, legal scholars and activists have sought to demonstrate why hate speech should be prohibited not only on the basis of what it says but on the basis of what it does. In this article I examine the conditions upon which hate speech has been posited as performative speech in order to consider how virtual environments trouble existing understandings of hate speech. In particular, this article seeks to show how cyberspace may in fact create the conditions for a more immediate and radical recontextualisation and recirculation of hate speech where speed operates as a potential source of resistance. Judith Butler maintains that "speech is always in some ways out of our control" (15). This is not to suggest that our speech is bound to misfire. Instead, Butler's claim draws attention to the range of possibilities located precisely within the failed speech act, revealing how such misfires offer the possibility that certain words which carry the potential to injure may eventually become "disjointed from their power to injure and recontextualised in more affirmative modes" (15). Whereas Langston suggests that such speech events inevitably work to silence intended victims, Butler recognises how the subject may also be inaugurated through such linguistic injuries. She maintains that to be injured through language is to "suffer a loss of context, that is, not to know where you are" (4). The "loss of context" or disorientation she claims might result from hate speech not only suggests that hate speech is context-specific but also that hate speech, understood as a performance, might transform or even produce a speaker's social location. In this view, the very words used to "put someone in their place" may also enable people to speak up from their position on the margins of power. Thus, the repetition of hate speech does not necessarily reinforce certain words' power to injure but may result in a pattern of "slippages" which enables the meaning and force of such speech to eventually come undone. In order to understand the impact of hate speech in virtual environments, it is useful to consider how the spatial and temporal character of cyberspace affects the repetitions to which Butler refers. While we typically speak of cyber-space, the emergence of cyberspace has arguably resulted in an increased preoccupation with time. For Virilio, the shift from space to time appears to be most visible in cyberspace, which he maintains does not represent a space so much as a particular temporal dimension where speed, not territory, holds the most strategic value. However, he further maintains that we have also reached a moment when humans, who have already surpassed the sound and heat barriers, are left with nothing to race against but speed of light -- something which can never be surpassed. And, as he warns, like other technological revolutions, this one is bound to result in an accident, this time not a physical one but instead one which will throw history itself into a disarray. "Cyberspace looms up like a transfer accident in substantial reality", he warns, "what gets damaged is no longer the substance, the materiality of the tangible world, it is the whole of its constitution" (Open Sky 131). Thus, cyberspace not only appears to give rise to an accelerated sort of time but to create the conditions under which we run the risk of suffering a "fundamental loss of orientation" (Speed and Information). I would like to consider how the speed and subsequent loss of orientation Virilio associates with virtual environments may in fact be the very condition which opens up the possibility for a more immediate and radical recontextualisation of hate speech in such spaces. In positing cyberspace as a radically discontinuous space, Virilio implies that cyberspace may represent a break with history itself. One need only consider how quickly existing forms of inequity have become entrenched in cyberspace to understand the extent to which it is not an entirely new or autonomous space. It follows then that the pattern of perlocutionary effects which apparently enables certain words to injure is not disrupted simply because such words are circulating in a virtual space. However, this is not to suggest that subordinate speech necessarily acts identically on line and off. If to be injured through language is to "suffer a loss of context, that is, not to know where you are" (Butler 4), what might it mean to suffer a loss of context in cyberspace? What might it mean to become disoriented in a space where one's context is always and already destabilised? And, what sorts of possibilities are created in cyberspace when one is thrust into an ill-fitting or undesirable social location? I maintain that in cyberspace the potential to suffer a loss of context as a result of a linguistic injury is always partially foreclosed by the fact that one never knows precisely where one is to begin with. It follows that in cyberspace the intended victim of a verbal assault is also at least less likely to become disarmed, debilitated, and silenced. Without overemphasising the agency one gains in virtual environments, is it not possible that one's ability to "talk back", while not guaranteed, may be made significantly more likely, if only due to the fact that one's rhetorical skills are unlikely to be rendered worthless in the face of physical threats? To illustrate the extent to which the illocutionary force of hate speech may be undermined by the spatial and temporal character of virtual environments, I draw attention to Reverend Phelps's "godhatesfags.com" site. Once you move past the yellow construction sign reading "Warning -- Gospel Preaching Ahead", you discover a list of Bible Passages which apparently confirm the site's claim that "god hates fags". The site also contains a list of so-called "fag churches" and a variety of news items that draw attention to the supposed dangers of the growing global gay agenda. However, while the Website is clearly offensive, it also seems to produce the possibility for politically promising misinterpretations. The Website's editorials on subjects as diverse as Canada's "gay Mafia" and Finland's allegedly lesbian Prime Minister and news about Phelps's intention to carry out "missionary work" in both of these demonic nations seems more likely to amuse than offend many of the site's visitors. The site's tendency to misinterpellate everyone from lesbians to P-FLAG mothers as "fags" may be read as another amusing misfire, another failed attempt on the part of Phelps to demonise gays, lesbians, and their supporters. While Phelps's claims are bound to misfire in any context, the ability to find Phelps's claims immediately humourous appears to be at least partially linked to their context. People who seek to prohibit hate speech not only on the basis of what it says but also on the basis of what it does typically maintain that the effects of hate speech are immediate, final, and ultimately, debilitating (Langston; MacKinnon; Matsuda et al.). In cyberspace, such claims appear to be even less easily established than in the material world. As previously argued, the speed associated with virtual environments seems to produce a disorienting effect, making the potential to suffer a "loss of context" in the face of a linguistic "attack" at least less likely. In addition, in contrast to the material world, where an encounter with hate speech is likely to lead to a feeling of entrapment if not complete debilitation, cyberspace invests people with an unprecedented degree of mobility. As a result, in sharp contrast to the experience one might have encountering Phelps's message in a public space near their home, the person who encounters Phelps's message online, where neither proximity nor distance hold their traditional values, can escape both quickly and with little effort. However, it is also important to consider the extent to which the speed associated with virtual spaces may also affect the pace at which potentially injurious words, images, and ideas are recirculated and recontextualised. Building on Butler, I have emphasised that hate speech is always repeatable speech. If we take for granted the fact that cyberspace not only increases the amount of speech generated but also the rate at which such speech is recontextualised and redeployed, it would appear as if the potential exists both for the amount of hate speech in circulation to increase and for such speech to be repeated more often and more rapidly. If we further accept the claim that the repetition of hate speech is always an imperfect one, bound to result in some loss of meaning or minor transgression, it becomes possible to see how this highly indeterminable context may also enable hate speech to be reclaimed more quickly. Once again, "godhatesfags.com" serves as a useful example. Shortly after Phelps's Website appeared, online monitoring organisations, including Hate Watch, established direct links to the site. The link between Hate Watch and "godhatesfags.com" not only serves to place Phelps's online activities under surveillance but also to recontextualise the site. Viewed through their link, Phelps's site is quite literally framed by the Hate Watch site, and subsequently, recontextualised by their anti-hate discourse in a surprisingly direct manner. In addition, various features of Phelps's site have also been parodied and appropriated. "Godhatesfigs.com", which among other features includes a list of bible passages which allegedly confirm the Website's claim that "god hates figs", is one such example. The creators of "Godlovesfags.com" gained notoriety when they managed to steal Phelps's domain name and redirect all "godhatesfags" visitors to their counter site for seventy-two hours. "Godhatesphelps" is another site that seeks to parody and repeat aspects of Phelps's message in an effort to reveal the absurd nature of Phelps's claims. Shortly after Phelps's Website appeared, online monitoring organisations, including Hate Watch, established direct links to the site. The link between Hate Watch and "godhatesfags.com" not only serves to place Phelps's online activities under surveillance but also to recontextualise the site. Viewed through their link, Phelps's site is quite literally framed by the Hate Watch site, and subsequently, recontextualised by their anti-hate discourse in a surprisingly direct manner. In addition, various features of Phelps's site have also been parodied and appropriated. "Godhatesfigs.com", which among other features includes a list of bible passages which allegedly confirm the Website's claim that "god hates figs", is one such example. The creators of "Godlovesfags.com" gained notoriety when they managed to steal Phelps's domain name and redirect all "godhatesfags" visitors to their counter site for seventy-two hours. "Godhatesphelps" is another site that seeks to parody and repeat aspects of Phelps's message in an effort to reveal the absurd nature of Phelps's claims. References Austin, J.L. How to Do Things with Words. 15th ed. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1997. (Original work published in 1962.) Butler, Judith. Excited Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge, 1997. Langston, Rae. Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts. Philosophy and Public Affairs 22 (1993): 293-330. Matsuda, M.J., et al. Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment. San Francisco: Westview Press, 1993. MacKinnon, C. Only Words. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993. Virilio, Paul. "Global Algorithm 1.7: The Silence of the Lambs: Paul Virilio in Conversation (with C.Oliveira)." CTHEORY 1995. 18 June 1999 <http://www.ctheory.com/ga1.7-silence.php>. Virilio, Paul. Open Sky. Trans. J. Rose. New York: Verso, 1997. Virilio, Paul. "Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!" CTHEORY 18.3 (1995). 18 June 1999 <http://www.dds.nl/~n5m/texts/virilio.htm>. Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromololgy. Trans. M. Polizzotti. New York: Semiotext(e), 1986. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Kate Eichhorn. "Cyberhate and Performative Speech in Accelerated Time(s)." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.3 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/cyberhate.php>. Chicago style: Kate Eichhorn, "Cyberhate and Performative Speech in Accelerated Time(s)," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 3 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/cyberhate.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Kate Eichhorn. (2000) Cyberhate and performative speech in accelerated time(s). M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(3). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/cyberhate.php> ([your date of access]).