What Are You Saying to Your Dog, and Why Are You Saying It?: A Pragmatic Exploration of Dog-Related Speech

This thesis investigates the pragmatics of dog-related speech, or the ways in which people use language when speaking around dogs. I will focus on several varieties of speech that are directed to or through a dog but are in fact intended for another human present. In particular, I will look at a phenomenon that I will refer to as “interactive dogcourse” where members of the ingroup of “dog people” enact within a unique linguistic framework in which they perform in a ritualized way of talking, specific to speech with dogs, that possesses at its core a playful, and often teasing, undertone. I argue that interactive dogcourse allows for a range of things, including: expressing ideas otherwise seen as socially unacceptable, forming and strengthening relationships, creating and enacting a specific identity, using the dog as an interactional resource (drawing from Tannen 2004), reducing the severity of face-threatening acts (drawing from Brown and Levinson 1987), and framing speech in a specific way with respect to a certain audience (drawing from Allan Bell 1984). This thesis will examine both how and why people utilize dog-related speech and interactive dogcourse to communicate with others by analyzing the form taken by such speech events, the function of dog-mediated speech, and the power/effect of the language itself