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Article published In:
Languages in Contrast
Vol. 21:1 (2021) ► pp.28–57

Parliamentary directives in New Zealand and Bosnia and Herzegovina

A contrastive study

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The main aim of the present paper is to compare the realization patterns of directive speech acts produced by the Speaker of the House of Representatives of New Zealand and the Speaker of the House of Representatives of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The paper focuses on head acts only, disregarding modification. Head acts are analyzed and compared in terms of their explicitness and implicitness, as defined in the framework proposed by Vine (2004a, 2004b). Overall results show that explicit head acts were dominant in both data sets. Furthermore, significant differences were noticed in terms of the findings for certain sub-forms of the explicit head acts, such as the imperative form, which is more frequent in parliamentary directives in Serbian, as are performative verbs. Modal verbs were typical of the parliamentary directives in English. The results are discussed in the context of the findings of previous relevant studies.

Keywords: parliamentary directives, New Zealand, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Bosnian/Croatian/English/Serbian
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Terminological issues
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Data collection
    • 3.2Data analysis
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Explicit head acts
      • 4.1.1Imperative sentences
        • 4.1.1.1Second-person imperatives
        • 4.1.1.2Third-person imperatives
        • 4.1.1.3First-person imperatives
        • 4.1.1.4Imperative sub-forms: Summary and discussion
      • 4.1.2Declarative sentences
        • 4.1.2.1Declarative sentences with performative verbs as main verbs
        • 4.1.2.2Declarative sentences with modal verbs
        • 4.1.2.3Other declarative sentences
        • 4.1.2.4Declarative sub-forms: Summary and discussion
      • 4.1.3Interrogative sentences
        • 4.1.3.1Interrogative sub-form: Summary
    • 4.2Implicit head acts
      • 4.2.1Partial head act
        • 4.2.1.1No agent or action
        • 4.2.1.2No action
        • 4.2.1.3Other fragments
      • 4.2.2Focus on others
        • 4.2.2.1Focus on beneficiary’s wishes or desires/needs
        • 4.2.2.2Focus on addressee’s need or addressee’s breach
        • 4.2.2.3Focus on object or item
      • 4.2.3Implicit head acts: Summary and discussion
  • 5.General discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 January 2020
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.19001.bak
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