Concept
Utterance
Overview
In spoken language analysis, an utterance is a continuous piece of speech, by one person, before or after which there is silence on the part of the person. In written language, utterances only exist indirectly, through their representations or portrayals. They can be represented and delineated in written language in many ways.
In spoken language, utterances have several characteristics such as paralinguistic features, which are aspects of speech such as facial expression, gesture, and posture. Prosodic features include stress, intonation, and tone of voice, as well as ellipsis, which are words that the listener inserts in spoken language to fill gaps. Moreover, other aspects of utterances found in spoken languages are non-fluency features including: voiced or unvoiced pauses (e.g. "umm"), tag questions, and false starts, or when someone begins uttering again to correct themselves. Other features include fillers (e.g. "and stuff"), accent/dialect, deictic expressions (utterances such as "over there!" that need further explanation to be understood), simple conjunctions ("and", "but", etc.), and colloquial lexis (everyday informal words).
Utterances that are represented or portrayed in writing are planned, unlike utterances in improvised spoken language. In written language there are frameworks that are used to portray this type of language. Discourse structure (which can also be found in spoken language) is how the conversation is organized, in which adjacency pairs - an utterance and the answer to that utterance - are used. Discourse markers are used to organize conversation ("first", "secondly", etc.). Lexis denotes the words being used in a text or spoken; these words can create a semantic field. For example, a semantic field of love can be created with lexical choices such as adore, admire, and care.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Utterance is discussed.
In considering the mode in which vocal utterances express emotion, we are naturally led to inquire into the cause of what is called “expression” in music. Upon this point Mr.
Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
They did not “begloom” themselves to death—that do people fabricate! On the contrary, they—LAUGHED themselves to death once on a time! That took place when the unGodliest utterance came from a God himself—the utterance: “There is but one God! Thou shalt have no other Gods before me!”— —An old grim-beard of a God, a jealous one, forgot himself in such wise:— And all the Gods then laughed, and shook upon their…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra
names the idea
The use of our own language has led us to neglect it so far as to forget it altogether. Let us study children and we shall soon learn it afresh from them. Nurses can teach us this language; they understand all their nurslings say to them, they answer them, and keep up long conversations with them; and though they use words, these words are quite useless. It is not the hearing of the word, but its accompanying…
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile
states what it is
On the whole, is it not an utterance, this Mystic Song, at once of one of the greatest human souls, and of the highest thing that Europe had hitherto realised for itself? Christianism, as Dante sings it, is another than Paganism in the rude Norse mind; another than 'Bastard Christianism' half-articulately spoken in the Arab Desert seven-hundred years before!--The noblest _idea_ made…
Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, and
opens on it; names the idea
5, 6); that is to say, he abhorred all that he had desired before, and that he was sorry that he had been in dust and ashes; comp. “and he sat down among the ashes” (ii. 8). On account of this last utterance, which implies true perception, it is said afterwards in reference to him, “for you have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.”
Moses Maimonides, The guide for the perplexed
names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Utterance
Related ideas
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Contextualism.