Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
934022 Journal of Pragmatics 2007 14 Pages PDF
Abstract

Zora Neale Hurston was the most prominent woman in the Harlem Renaissance. “As an ethnographer and writer, she … is now considered one of the defining authors of the African American literary tradition” (Robinson, 2005, :272). Following the suggestion of Hill (1996), and of Plant (1995), this essay links Hurston's ethnography and fiction with a discussion of performative speech acts. In particular, Hurston's work is linked to a conventionalist/intentionalist debate about how illocutionary speech acts should be interpreted.

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Social Sciences and Humanities Arts and Humanities Language and Linguistics