speech acts

hello everyone, sorry for the late post- apparently hospitals arent equipped with a wireless connection for patients to use, so i couldnt access the worldwideweb at all during my week stay there. in case your wondering i was admitted for a cornea ulcer :/, damn contact lenses. i had needles scrapping my eye every other day and drops in my eye that had the sensation of like a paper cut, but on my eye. i couldnt open my eye, and even if i did, the light would hurt it, so yupp i felt like a pirate during that week.

anyway, i find it rather interesting to examine the ways in which different cultures react to compliments or even insults. i read somewhere that someone labelled speech acts as 'intercultural danger zones' which i find rather funny hahaha. well, i guess a compliment to one may be seen as an insult to another. a friend of mine was telling me about how she was complimented by a foreigner friend of hers on how her skin was so 'moist'. while her friend did mean it in a positive way, my friend was alarmed for a moment and quickly took out her cleannclear oil blotters to de-oil her 'shining' face, haha. i guess this is an everyday example of how misintepretations happen, and i do agree that such differences in intepretations of speech acts could be problematic especially with such a diverse range of cultures in the world. but i guess with globalisation and everything this matter can be easily resolved i the near future.

oh, i also found that the speech act theory is linked to the censorship laws in singapore. the speech act theory basically states that “people do more things with words than convey information, and that when people do convey information, they often convey more than their words encode.” hmmm, i guess this is why the government is so strict on any kinds of potentially conflictive movies, and perhaps even things like protests which can disrupt our national stability.
hmmm, words are really powerful, which i guess is why charismatic leaders are always more popular among the general masses.