The definition of the word “advice” has not been differentiated clearly in the previous studies (Hinkel, 1997; Locher, 2006; Matsumura, 2001; Searle, 1976; Vanderveken, 1991).
Therefore, a problem of terminology remains here: Do advice, suggestions and recommendations mean the same? Searle (1976) contrasts the speech act of advice with that of a request by saying that advice-giving has a weaker directive force than request in that
“Advising you is not to try to get you to do something in the sense that requesting is. Advice is more like telling you what is best for you” (p.67). According to Vanderveken (1991), the word “suggest” has two illocutionary forces, including an assertive force and a directive force.
To further examine its illocutionary forces, he states that “suggest” makes a weaker attempt to get the hearer to do something in its directive force. As for “advise” and “recommend,” on the other hand, he specifies that “to advise is to suggest that a hearer do something with the
special preparatory condition that is good for him or her” (p.157), while “to recommend is to advise with the additional preparatory condition that the prepositional content is good in general (and not only for the hearer)” (p.157).
The explanation given by Vanderveken, however, does not seem to be clear. Some researchers use the terms interchangeably. For example, Hinkel (1997) and Matusmura (2001) use the term “advice”; nevertheless, some of the scenarios used in investigating advice in their studies can be considered as eliciting suggestions. As pointed out by Locher (2006), advice is a combination of assessment and judgment. She also adds that giving advice, unlike other speech acts, comprises an additional component: a future action that is recommended by the advice-giver. The above definitions are found in dictionaries. In Oxford Dictionary, advice is defined as “a guidance or recommendation concerning prudent future action, typically given by someone regarded as knowledgeable or authoritative”1; as Collins Dictionary defines, advice is “a recommendation as to appropriate choice of action;
counsel.”2 Therefore, it is this combination of assessing, judging, and directing that embodies advice-giving.
In Searle’s classification (1976), giving advice is a type of directive speech act.
Directives have a directive illocutionary point that entails an obligation (strong or weak) that the speaker puts on the hearer. As discussed in Section 1.2.1, directives and commissives have the same illocutionary point or direction of fit. However, the difference between the two lies in achieving the success of fit. In a directive, the responsibility is on the hearer, while in a commissive, it is the responsibility of a speaker. In other words, in directives, the hearer carries out the action expressed in the propositional content. The preparatory condition for
1 Taken from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/advice
2 Taken from http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/advice
directives is that the hearer carries out that action expressed in the propositional content and the sincerity condition is that the speaker desires or wants the hearer to carry it out. However, in commissives, the speaker commands himself to carry out a future action. For instance, the propositional content of “I want you to come with me to the store” is you (the hearer) coming to the store with me (the speaker). In Searle’s view, to perform a speech act is to obey certain conventional rules that are constitutive of that type of act. Searle develops the original Austinian felicity conditions into a new classification of four basic categories, i.e. (i) propositional content, (ii) preparatory condition, (iii) sincerity condition, and (iv) essential condition (Searle, 1969; 1976). Table 2-1 presents Searle’s felicity condition for advising.
Table 2-1 Searle’s Felicity Condition for Advising (1969:67) (A: future act; H: hearer; S: speaker)
Felicity condition Definition in advising Propositional content Future act A of H.
Preparatory condition
1. S has some reason to believe A will benefit H.
2. It is not obvious to both S and H that H will do A in the normal course of events.
Sincerity condition S believes A will benefit H.
Essential condition Counts as an undertaking to the effect that A is in H’s best interest.
The so-called “felicity conditions” refer to the conditions that must be in place and the criteria that must be satisfied for a speech act to achieve its purpose. The most fundamental component of an act of advising is the propositional content delivering from an advice-giver to an advice-receiver. The propositional content of advising describes some future problems or choices the hearer is confronting, and is usually an utterance or a statement to accomplish a future action. The preparatory conditions state that the authority of the speaker and the
circumstances of the speech act must be appropriate to its being performed successfully. In the case of directives, this condition refers to that the hearer can carry out the action expressed in the propositional content. Moreover, the speaker has reason to believe that choosing one way or another can affect the interests of the hearer. The advice is beneficial to the hearer, not to the speaker; otherwise the advice would be defective. Next, the sincerity condition is related to whether the speech act is being performed seriously and sincerely by the speaker. In other words, the advice-giver desires or wants the hearer to carry out the advice, and the speaker should honestly believe that the hearer will benefit from knowing in advance about means to solve the problem or make the best choice. Last but not least, the essential condition involves whether the speaker intends that an utterance be given by the addressee. That is, the action of telling the hearer how to proceed by offering the hearer a way to solve the problem or make the best choice.
Previous studies (Al-Shboul et al. 2012; Hinkel, 1997; Matsumura, 2001) on the speech act of advice further categorize advice into three types, as presented in Table 1-4. In addition to the types of advice mentioned in Chapter One, Locher (2006) investigated the categories of discursive moves that make up a unit in online advice-giving as presented in Table 2-2.
Table 2-2 Discursive Moves in Locher (2006:62) Discursive moves Explanation
advice
three different syntactic types of advice are distinguished with type-tags
-declaratives (decl)
-interrogatives (int-a: inviting an action) (int-i:inviting introspection) -imperatives (imp-a: inviting an action) (imp-i:inviting introspection)
list if there is more than one piece of “advice” of the same syntactic form, this is indicated by adding the attribute ‘list’
assessment assessment and/or evaluation of the questioner’s situation; and uptake of the questioner’s narrative; support of the reader
disclaimer
a special kind of assessment, in which it is pointed out that the information given is incomplete or cannot match expectations due to the site’s limitation
explanation
an explanation of a point just made; a type-tag indicates which element is being further explained, namely ‘advice’, ‘assessment’,
‘disclaimer’, ‘farewell’, ‘general information’, ‘metacomment’, ‘open category’, ‘own experience’, ‘referral’
farewell farewell, good-bye
general information general information (however, if there is a personal link to the questioner’s situation, then it should be labeled as ‘assessment’) metacomment text-structuring comments (e.g. as to your second question) open category a category for moves that do not fit any other category
own experience
Lucy offers a ‘personal’ anecdote, despite the fact that Lucy is no real
personreferral
‘referral’ can be considered a special kind of advice, in that it refers the questioner to professional, personal help as well as phone numbers, addresses, books, etc.; as for ‘advice’, there different syntactic types are distinguished and the list option is available (cf.
‘advice’)
In the present study, how a person employs these types of advice depends on politeness will be discussed in Section 2.2. Moreover, Locher’s grouping of discursive moves, except for her explanation for advice, is also applied to analyze the strategies in giving advice.