Reflection: Changing speech act type over time – the example of cursing

Speech acts can change speech act type over time. Consider the speech act of cursing, as elaborated in Culpeper and Semino (2000). The example below reports an act of cursing in early modern England.

[6.13]

And she this Examinate further saith, That about sixe or seuen yeares agoe, the said Chattox did fall out with one Hugh Moore of Pendle, as aforesaid, about certaine cattell of the said Moores, which the said Moore did charge the said Chattox to haue bewitched: for which the said Chattox did curse and worry the said Moore, and said she would be reuenged of the said Moore: whereupon the said Moore presently fell sicke, and languished about halfe a yeare, and then died. Which Moore vpon his death-bed said, that the said Chattox had bewitched him to death.

(Pendle witches, 1612: 47)

At this time, the belief system supported the idea that witches’ words had the power to change the world (e.g. cause sickness and death). Being bewitched was a perlocutionary effect of cursing. Curses were a type of declaration. Now consider an example of recent use:

[6.14]

I looked out of the wind-shaken carriage, where people were moaning and cursing and making vows to start going by bus (BNC G0A 1364, imaginative prose fiction, The Crow Road)

Here, note that the verb collocates with moaning. Today, cursing is more about expressing ill feelings, being bad-tempered and using taboo language; it now fits the expressive group. This particular shift in speech act type represents a shift towards the expression of the speaker’s feelings, a shift that is in tune with Traugott’s (e.g. 1982) hypothesis of a general process of semantic change towards increasing subjectivisation (i.e. the expression of the speaker’s attitude).

There have been numerous other attempts to classify speech acts, of which we should mention Bach and Harnish (1979), Ballmer and Brennenstuhl (1981) and Wierzbicka (1987). The fact that no definitive taxonomy has emerged is evidence of the fact that classifying language functions of any type is very difficult. Having said that, taxonomies have emerged that have sufficed for some analytical purposes (see, for example, the above reflection box involving the analysis of historical change).