The affective foundation of speech

According to Language into Act Theory, the identification of illocutionary types in speech is based on two premises: a) the speaker's affect is the activating force of illocution; b) prosodic contours convey the illocutionary force. This paper aims to clarify both assumptions by presenting arguments that link affect to prosody and prosody to pragmatic activities. The first part is dedicated to sketching the theoretical framework (Human Birth Theory), grounding the concept of affect, which must be distinguished from emotion and attitude. It focuses on its application to the domain of language performance and the relation between affect and prosody. The second part presents empirical arguments supporting the idea that prosodic contours guide the interpretation of illocution. The “Taken-for-granted assertions,” “Evident assertions,” “Requests for confirmation,” and “Open questions,” illocutionary types not identified in previous corpus-based taxonomies, are shaped by dedicated prosodic contours and defined according to pragmatic parameters. Parameters are scalar and connected to the speaker’s affective force: a) the speaker’s commitment to the truth, the relevance of the content, and the speaker’s affective involvement for assertions; b) the speaker’s estimation of the addressee’s knowledge, the type of linguistic behavior requested, and the speaker’s affective involvement for questions. The distinction between prosodic contours bearing illocutionary value and the prosodic properties that are a function of the speaker’s attitude is faced, showing that the latter does not change the prosodic model. The comparison between “Taken for granted assertion” and “Open question” shows how subtle prosodic cues can change the pragmatic interpretation.