English Justification Discourse: Towards the Illocutionary Force

Abstract

The article studies the illocutions of the English justification discourse based on the speech acts prevalent in the analyzed text fragments. Representing justificative proposition through basic logical structures made it possible to identify speaker’s defensive intention to be a pivotal presupposition of the English justification discourse. The analysis of the speech acts revealed stating a fact and expressing believing to be basic illocutionary constituents of the justification discourse, with the former two being realized in the constantive and the assertive, respectively. When in an interpersonal interaction, the justification speech act proper is referred to as the creditive that suggests vindicative perlocution.

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