English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies ISSN 2640-9836 (Print) ISSN 2640-9844 (Online) Vol. 1, No. 2, 2019 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls 88 Original Paper A Pragmatic Analysis of Margaret Ogola’s the River and the Source and I Swear by Apollo Nicholas Onyango Oloo1*, Prof. Francis Owino Rew1 & Dr. Robert Onyango Ochieng’1 1 Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Literature, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology, Bondo, Kenya * Nicholas Onyango Oloo, Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Literature, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology, Bondo, Kenya Received: June 22, 2019 Accepted: July 9, 2019 Online Published: July 11, 2019 doi:10.22158/eltls.v1n2p88 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/eltls.v1n2p88 Abstract This paper aims at interrogating the significance of pragmatics in analyzing Margaret Ogola’s two novels; The River and the Source (1994) and I swear by Apollo (2002). The researcher analyses the characters’ conversational turns in the novels using Austin (1962) and Searle 1969 Speech Act Theory. The study employs an analytical research design using a mixed method data analysis. The findings indicate that every utterance used by a character performs three simultaneous acts namely; a locutionary, an illocutionary and perlocutionary. In addition, the data shows that every utterance produced by a character in the novels could be categorized under one of the five major categories of speech acts proposed by Searle (1969); representatives, expressive, directives, commisives or declarations. The study found that the representatives are the most dominant in both novels while declarations the least. The study also reveals that each major speech act contains a wide range of sub acts or illocutionary forces which are distinguished based on their felicity conditions. The study therefore proposes that pragmatic analysis be adopted as an effective tool in the analysis of the characters’ verbal interactions in novels. In addition, further research could be conducted on pragmatic analysis of novels by other writers. Keywords speech act, locutionary, illocutionary, perlocutionary, types of illocutionary speech acts, felicity conditions www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 1, No. 2, 2019 89 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 1. Introduction Pragmatics is primarily concerned with what people mean by the language they use in particular contexts. Cruse (2006) argues that pragmatics deals with aspects of meaning that are not looked up but which are worked out on particular occasions of use. In novels, the literal or denotative meaning of an utterance might be insufficient to comprehend the interpersonal conversations of the characters and the social situation in which they are used. Therefore, pragmatics could provide a useful approach to analyses the characters’ use of language in their social interactions in the novels. One important pragmatic concept which relates utterance meaning to context is that of speech act (Leech & Short, 2007). Speech acts constitutes the core of pragmatic competence, hence, in order to comprehend the conversational interactions of the characters in the novel, a pragmatic analysis could be beneficial. Kaburise (2011), states that pragmatic investigation of utterances is a combination of a syntactic and semantic examination and the study of meaning in relation to speech situation. She further postulates that pragmatic analysis deals with utterance meaning rather than sentence meaning. 2. Literature Review Speech Act Theory was developed by Austin (1962) who states that language is not only used to say something but to do something which he identified as linguistic or speech acts. Speech act is an integral part of any communicative situation involving a speaker, hearer and there are many kinds of acts associated with the speaker’s utterances such as making statements, asking questions, giving orders, greeting and warning. Austin (1962) was the originator of the term “speech act”. In his William James lectures which he delivered at Harvard in 1955, and posthumously published under the title How to Do Things with Words (1962), he developed his first systematic theory of utterances as human action and derived his theory from the basic notion that language is used to perform actions. According to Austin (1962) the concept of “speech act” and his speech act theory was built on the basis of the belief that speakers do not only use language to say something, but to do something. Therefore, utterances whether spoken or written in literary or non-literary contexts are regarded as speech acts. In addition, to support Austin’s speech act concept, Searle (1969), who was Austin’s student observed that the theory of speech act starts with the assumption that the minimal unit of human communication is not a sentence or other expressions, but rather the performance of certain kinds of acts, such as making statement, asking questions, giving orders, describing, explaining, apologizing, thanking, making promises and so on. This is what the current paper attempts to unravel by investigating how pragmatic analysis of speech acts are used by the characters in the novel to perform specific functions. Speech Acts are part of language use and a speaker or a writer cannot speak or write without using them (Adams, 1985). This fact is derived from Austin’s insight that to say something entails performing certain communicative functions with these words (Austin, 1962). This study interrogated whether pragmatics using speech act analysis could be relevant to the analysis and interpretation of literary dialogue in the novel. Bredella (1992) observes that when reading a literary text, the reader has to deal www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 1, No. 2, 2019 90 Published by SCHOLINK INC. with two kinds of speech acts, the individual speech act of the narrator or character in the text and text as a whole and that it is the relationship between these two kinds of speech acts that elicits the reader’s interpretative efforts and enriches the reading experience. Therefore, when reading any literary work, we need to perform a speech act analysis. Adams (1985) noted that speech act theory briefly held out the hope for many literary critics that linguistic analysis had at last provided a golden key for literary interpretation. However, this hope soon faded away and speech acts have not been given the close attention and recognition that they deserve as far as analysis of dialogue in a novel is concerned. This study is therefore based on the assertion that pragmatic analysis of speech acts has important applications in the reading, analysis and interpretation of the characters’ conversations and author’s meaning intentions in the novel. Ogola’s novels The River and the Source and I Swear by Apollo have received considerable attention and analysis from literary scholars (Wahove, 2014). There is however, currently no known study on speech act analysis of her novels. A survey of the available critical works on Ogola’s novels reveals that no research has been carried out as far as application of pragmatic theories and principles is concerned. Speech acts in the novel are acts that are uttered within the novel such as requests, promises, thanking, asserting and others said or written by the character or by the author in a novel. The words of a speech act do what they say and as Miller (2001) contends “they are speech that acts, rather than describes” (p. 2). Utterances perform three kinds of acts which include locutionary, illocutionary and the perlocutionary acts and on any occasion, the action performed by producing an utterance will consist of these three speech acts (Austin, 1962). The locutionary act is the basic act of utterance, or producing a meaningful linguistic expression. It is the utterance of a sentence with determinate sense and reference. Austin says that locution is the actual form of words used by the speaker and their semantic meaning (Yule, 1996). The illocutionary act on the other hand is an utterance with some kind of function in mind. According to Austin, the illocutionary act is what the speaker is doing by uttering those words such as commanding, offering, promising, threatening, thanking, and apologizing and many more. Yule (1996, p. 48) states that the illocutionary act is performed via the communicative force of an utterance. The concept of illocutionary force is closely associated with the notion of the illocutionary act, “which is the communicative plan or design behind a speaker’s remark” (Leech, 1983, p. 200). The perlocutionary act is the bringing about of effects on the audience by means of uttering the sentence, such effects being special to the circumstances of the sentence (Levinson, 1983). Searle (1969) came up with five basic kinds of speech act that one can perform in speaking depending on what the speaker’s purpose is in expressing the proposition. He classified speech acts into five categories of representatives or assertives, directives, commisives, expressive, and declarations. First and foremost, representatives or assertives are those kinds of speech acts that the utterances commit the speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition. These are speech acts which state what the speaker believes to be the case or not. This class includes stating, suggesting, criticizing, replying, concluding, predicting, denying, disagreeing and reporting. The acts are used by the speaker to represent a state of www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 1, No. 2, 2019 91 Published by SCHOLINK INC. affairs. Secondly, according to Searle (1969) directives are those kinds of speech act that speakers use to get someone else to do something, that is illocutionary acts designed to get the addressee to do something such as requesting, questioning, commanding, ordering, and suggesting. It intends to produce some effects through action on the hearer. When speakers utter a directive, they attempts to get the listener to do something such as; ordering, commanding, requesting, advising, and recommending. Therefore, the speaker is trying to get the listener to carry out some action (Yule, 1996). This act represents what the speaker wants..This speech act embodies an effort to direct the hearer towards the speaker’s goal. Another type of speech acts are commisives. Searle (1969) explains that commissives are the utterances that commit the speaker to some future course of action or illocutionary acts that commit the speaker to do something. Commissives also express the speaker’s psychological attitude towards the state of affairs such as promising, threatening, offering, refusal and pledges. By uttering commisives, the speaker is committing himself or herself to some future course of action. Expressive on the other hand, are those kinds of speech acts that the utterances express a psychological state that is illocutionary act that undertake to represent a state of affairs. They state what the speaker feels like thanking, apologizing, welcoming, congratulating (Searle, 1969, 1975). They have the function of expressing, or making known, the speaker’s psychological attitude towards a state of affairs. These speech acts express the speaker’s inner state which says nothing about the world. Some of the examples are thanking, congratulating, pardoning, blaming, praising and condoling. These psychological states can be statements of pleasure, pain, likes, dislikes, joy, or sorrow which are experienced by the speaker. Finally, declarations are those kinds of speech act that the utterances effect immediate changes in the institutional state of affairs and which tend to rely on elaborate extra-linguistic institutions, that is illocutionary acts that bring about the state of affairs they refer to such as declaring war, firing from employment, christening, excommunicating (Yule, 1996). In order to perform a declaration appropriately, the speaker has to have a special institutional role in a specific context. These acts are normally performed by someone who is especially authorized to do so within some institutional framework such as a judge sentencing offenders. When a speaker utters a declaration, his/her words bring about a new state of affairs. The five categories of speech acts clearly suggest the basic kinds of action that one can perform in speaking as well as paradigms of different speech acts. Therefore, characters in the novels just like in normal everyday conversation, do nothing more than expressing actual state of affairs, expressing some psychological state, feelings or attitudes about a given state of affairs, committing themselves to the doing of some action in the future, attempting to get their conversational partner carry out an action and finally bringing about some state of affairs (usually of an institutional sort) by the virtue of the utterance itself. In performing each of these acts, the speaker usually performs other acts as well because each major speech act contains a wide range of sub acts. The categories enable the better www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 1, No. 2, 2019 92 Published by SCHOLINK INC. understanding of language user’s discourse meaning and communicative intentions in social interactions in the novels. Searle’s (1969) five categories of speech acts: representatives, directives, expressive, commissives and declarations have conditions which must be satisfied in a certain context for their communicative purposes to be achieved. Therefore, for each of these categories of speech act to achieve its illocutionary force or purpose, certain conditions must be met. These conditions have been called felicity or appropriateness conditions which were first introduced by Austin (1962) and further developed by Searle (1969). The first condition is the propositional content condition that guides the participants to fulfill the actions expressed by their performative utterances. The second is the preparatory condition which determines the appropriate settings in which a performative utterance should be uttered. The third is the sincerity condition that deals with the psychological aspects of the participants such as: feelings, intentions and thoughts. The fourth condition is the essential condition, which commits speakers to undertake the actions expressed by their performative utterances. In a study carried out by Leongkamchorn (2011), the findings revealed that all categories of speech acts and their sub acts have their own sets of the four felicity conditions-propositional, preparatory, sincerity and essential- which make the utterances achieve their communicative intentions in the speech situation. 3. Methodology 3.1 Research Design This research is mainly library based as it involves textual study in which data presented for analysis is collected from the primary text and other secondary sources as guided by the study objectives. For this reason, the paper adopts an analytical research design that uses both qualitative and quantitative methods. In an Analytical Research design, the study has to use facts or information already available, and analyze them to make a critical evaluation of the material (Kothari, 2004). Therefore, analytical research involves the in-depth study and evaluation of available information in an attempt to explain a phenomenon and is primarily concerned with testing hypothesis and specifying and interpreting relationships, by analyzing facts or information already available. 3.2 Data Collection and Analysis The data in this study is taken from the utterances of the characters in the two novels. The data is in form of words, phrases, and sentences extracted from the novels. Therefore, the study adopts content analysis methods of data collection, findings, interpretation and analysis. Content analysis consists of analyzing the contents of documentary materials and texts such as books, magazines, newspapers and the contents of all other verbal materials which can be either spoken or printed (Mouton, 2001). For the purposes of this research, content analysis technique involved critically reading the novels and making notes on the pages that might contain the required data in form of utterances containing Searle’s speech acts classification. The research applied analytical research design by adopting both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze the data. Qualitative method was applied to analyze the data in form of utterances in the novel. Dornyei (2007, p. 24) states that “qualitative research involves data collection www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 1, No. 2, 2019 93 Published by SCHOLINK INC. procedures that result primarily in open-ended, non numerical data which is then analyzed primarily by non-statistical methods”. Content analysis was used to analyze qualitative data. Quantitative method was used to count the number and percentage of speech acts and their illocutionary forces used by the characters and to draw conclusions on which types of speech acts and illocutionary forces were predominantly or least used. 4. Data Presentation and Discussion Table 1. Breakdown of Speech Acts in the River and the Source and I Swear by Apollo SA Representative Directive Expressive Commissive Declarations Total Frequency 55 26 27 09 04 121 Percentage 45.5% 21.5% 22.3% 7.4% 3.3% 100% The analysis of the characters’ utterances from the two novels, demonstrate that each of the utterances performs specific speech acts depending on the speech situation and the felicity conditions. The analysis of the utterances in the two novels reveals that the characters’ speech acts could be analyzed within the framework of Searle’s five major categories of speech acts, namely representatives, directives, expressive, commisives and declarations as discussed in chapter two of the literature review. In addition, the findings from the study indicate that each of the major categories of speech act contains a wide range of other sub acts or illocutionary forces determined by the felicity conditions of the utterance in the two selected novels for the present study, 121 excerpts were selected for analysis of their pragmatic speech act interpretations. The study reveals that all the five illocutionary speech acts, namely: assertives, commissives, directives, expressive and declarations are used in the selected novels with varying frequencies with the representatives being the most dominantly use while the declarations are the least. The analysis of the data found that within the five major categories of speech acts used in the two novels, there were a total of thirty six sub acts or illocutionary forces. From Table1 it is evident that the representative speech act has the highest frequency of occurrence in the two novels with 55 utterances out of the total 121 utterances representing 45.5%. The expressive speech acts with 27 utterances represents 22.3% of the total 121 utterances whereas the directive speech act with 26 utterances represents 21.5%. The commissive speech act with 9 utterances represents 7.4% of the total 121 utterances. Finally, the declaration speech act has the least frequency with 4 instances representing 3.3% out of the total 121 utterances in the two texts. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 1, No. 2, 2019 94 Published by SCHOLINK INC. Table 2. Breakdown of Representative Speech Acts in the River and the Source and I Swear by Apollo Illocutionary force Frequency Percentage Asserting 35 63.64% Informing 05 9.09% Criticizing 05 9.09% Predicting 02 3.64% Reminding 02 3.64% Introducing oneself 02 3.64% Blaming 02 3.64% Introducing someone else 01 1.81% Wondering 01 1.81% Total 55 100% Since each major speech act contains other sub acts or illocutionary forces indicating the specific use of the utterance in the speech situation. Table 2 shows that the representative speech act in the two novels performs other acts such asserting, informing, criticizing, predicting, reminding introducing oneself, blaming, introducing someone else and wondering. The illocutionary force of asserting has the highest frequency in the two texts with 35 occurrences representing 63.64% of the total 55 utterances. The illocutionary forces of informing and criticizing have 5 utterances each representing 9.09 % of the total 55 utterances. The illocutionary forces of predicting, reminding, introducing oneself and blaming have 2 occurrences each representing 3.64%. The illocutionary forces with the least frequency are; introducing someone else and wondering which appear only once representing 1.81% of the total 55 utterances. Table 3. Breakdown of Directive Speech Acts in the River and the Source and I Swear by Apollo Illocutionary force Frequency Percentage Asking 03 11.5% Pleading 03 11.5% Warning 01 3.8% Advising 07 26.9% Encouraging 04 15.4% Ordering 04 15.4% Instructing 02 7.7% Requesting 02 7.7% Total 26 100% www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 1, No. 2, 2019 95 Published by SCHOLINK INC. The analysis of the utterances in the two novels show that the characters use the directive speech acts in their interactions for the purposes of encouraging, ordering, asking, pleading, instructing, advising, warning and requesting. The illocutionary force of advising has the highest frequency with 7 occurrences representing 25.93% of the total 27 utterances of directive speech act in the two texts as the information in Table 3 shows. The illocutionary forces of encouraging and ordering have the second highest frequency with 4 utterances each representing 15.4% of the total 26 utterances. Asking and pleading illocutionary forces have 3 instances of occurrences representing 11.5% whereas the illocutionary forces of instructing and requesting have 2 instances of occurrences each representing 7.7%. The illocutionary forces with the least frequency of occurrence is warning with 1 instance of occurrence representing 3.8%. Table 4. Breakdown of Expressive Speech Acts in the River and the Source and I Swear by Apollo Illocutionary force Frequency Percentage Liking 03 11.11% Praising 02 7.41% Happy 02 7.41% Sad 01 3.70% Thanking 06 22.22% Apologizing 05 18.52% Despair 03 11.11% Fear 02 7.41% Greeting 01 3.70% Dislike 01 3.70% Pitying 01 3.70% Total 27 100% The findings presented in Table 4 shows the frequency of occurrences of the illocutionary forces of expressive speech acts in the two texts. The table indicates that the illocutionary force of thanking has the highest frequency at 6 instances representing 22.22% of the total 27 utterances. The illocutionary force of apologizing has the second highest frequency with 5 instances accounting for 18.52% of the total. This is closely followed by despair and liking illocutionary forces which have 3 instances of occurrence each representing 11.11%. The illocutionary forces of fear, being happy and praising appear in 2 instances each representing 7.41%. Dislike, greeting, pitying and being sad are the illocutionary forces with the least frequency of occurrence at 1 instance each representing 3.70% of the total 27 utterances of expressive speech acts in the two texts. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 1, No. 2, 2019 96 Published by SCHOLINK INC. Table 5. Breakdown of Commisive Speech Acts in the River and the Source and I Swear by Apollo Illocutionary force Frequency Percentage Threatening 04 44.4% Refusing 03 33.3% Promising 01 11.1% Swearing 01 11.1% Total 09 100% The study also found that the characters in the novels use commissives in their utterances. As Table 5 indicates, the data analysis indicates that there are four illocutionary forces of commissive speech acts in the two texts. The data shows that of the four, the illocutionary forces of threatening have the highest frequency with 4 instances representing 44-4%. The act of refusing has the second highest frequency at three instances of occurrences representing 33.3 % of the total 8 utterances. The illocutionary forces of promising and swearing have one instance of occurrence each representing 11.1%. Table 6. Breakdown of Declaration Speech Acts in the River and the Source and I Swear by Apollo Illocutionary force Frequency Percentage Baptizing 01 25% Conferring 01 25% Declaring 01 25% Blessing 01 25% Total 04 100% The findings as shown in Table 6 indicate that the declaration speech acts are the least performed in the two novels. This is because declarations are used in legal or institutional contexts which are rare in the two novels. Information in Table 6 shows the breakdown of illocutionary forces of declaration speech acts in the two texts. From the table, it is evident that each of the four illocutionary forces of baptizing, conferring, declaring and blessing occur in just one instance each in the two texts each representing 25% of the total 4 utterances of the declaration speech act. 5. Conclusion The objective of this research was to investigate the use of pragmatics as an alternative approach within the linguistic field to read, analyze and comprehend dialogue in the novels. A close reading and t analysis of the novels reveal that the application of pragmatic aspects of speech acts and felicity conditions in the analysis of the characters’ utterances in the novels, are quite valid in interpreting the character’s and author’s meaning intentions in particular contexts within the texts. This research has www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 1, No. 2, 2019 97 Published by SCHOLINK INC. shown that every utterance uttered by a character in the novel is used to serve a particular purpose or function in the novel. The analysis has also revealed that every utterance in the novel produced by the characters can be categorized under one of the five major categories proposed by Searle (1969). The study reveals that representatives are the most dominant with the highest frequency of use in the utterances of the characters in the two novels with 45.5% of the total 121 utterances. The expressive speech acts, come second in terms of frequency with 22.3% and the directive speech acts, third at 21.5%. The commissive speech acts, are fourth with 7.4% and the least in terms of frequency are the declaration speech acts with a paltry 3.3% of the total 121 utterances. The study therefore concludes that Ogola in her novels is more inclined to use representative speech acts in the dialogue of her characters than declarations. The study also showed that there are thirty six sub acts used in the two novels. These sub-acts are distributed among the five major categories of speech acts with the representatives having nine sub-acts of asking, pleading, warning, advising, encouraging, ordering, instructing and requesting. The expressive had eight sub acts of asking, pleading, warning, advising, encouraging, ordering, instructing and requesting. The expressive had the highest sub acts with eleven illocutionary forces of liking, praising, happy, sad, thanking, apologizing, despair, fear, greeting, dislike and pitying. The commissives had four sub acts of threatening, refusing, promising, and swearing. Finally, declarations speech acts had four sub acts of baptizing, conferring, declaring and blessing. This research establishes that pragmatic tools of speech acts and felicity conditions could be applied to comprehend and appreciate conversations in the novels. Hence, this paper proves that pragmatics is a useful field in the analysis and appreciation of conversations in the novels. 6. Acknowledgement I sincerely thank my distinguished supervisors Professor Francis Owino Rew and Dr. Robert Onyango Ochieng’ for their scholarly advice, dedication, expert and selfless guidance in writing this research paper. However, I bear the sole responsibility for any shortcomings this research paper may have. References Adams, J. K. (1985). Pragmatics and Fiction. Amsterdam: Benjamin’s. https://doi.org/10.1075/pb.vi.2 Austin, J. L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words. New York: Oxford University Press. Babbie. Bredella, L. (1992). The Pragmatics of Literary Texts. Berlin: Monton de Grayter. Dornyei, Z. (2007). Research Methods in Applied Linguistics: Quantitative and Mixed Methodologies. 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