Pradhana Deswara

Pradhana Deswara
Shift Class B
SPEECH ACTS
Background of Speech Acts:
Speech Act Theory emerged in the 1960s against the backdrop of theories
focused on language structure and individual sentences which were mainly
analysed according to their descriptive qualities. Such ‘sentences’ were seen to
have a truth value, i.e. they could be either true or false, and were also referred to
as ‘constatives’. Examples of constatives are sentences like ‘The sky is blue’ or
‘The cat is in the house’.
Definition of Speech Acts:
A speech act in philosophy of language and linguistics is something

expressed by an individual that not only presents information, but performs an
action as well. For example, the phrase "I would like the kimchi, could you
please pass it to me?" is considered a speech act as it expresses the speaker's
desire to acquire the kimchi, as well as presenting a request that someone pass the
kimchi to them.
The contemporary use of the term goes back to J. L. Austin's development of

performative utterances and his theory of locutionary, illocutionary, and
perlocutionary acts. Speech acts serve their function once they are said or
communicated. These are commonly taken to include acts such as apologizing,
promising, ordering, answering, requesting, complaining, warning, inviting,
refusing, and congratulating.
Austin’s Revised Theory and Felicity:
In Austin’s revised theory, Austin distinguishes three kinds of action within

each utterance:
(1) Locutionary Act:

this is the actual utterance itself, i.e. the physical act of producing an
utterance and its apparent meaning.
(2) Illocutionary Act:

this is the intended meaning of the utterance. The illocutionary act
tends to be the focus of analysis in Speech Act Theory and is often
referred to as the ‘illocutionary force’ of an utterance.
(3) Perlocutionary Act:

the effect that is achieved through the locution and illocution.
Examples include inspiring, persuading, convincing and so forth.
Speech Acts Classifications:
Austin, and later Searle (1976), turned their attention to the identification of
different kinds of speech act function in language. He establishes a number of
meta-categories of speech acts that follow patterns of felicity conditions, and
suggests the following classification of basic acts (as outlined in Levinson, 1983:
240):
(1) Representatives:
which commit the speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition
(paradigm cases: asserting, concluding, etc.)
(2) Directives:
which are attempts by the speaker to get the addressee to do something
(requesting, questioning)
(3) Commissives:
which commit the speaker to some future course of action (paradigm cases:
promising, threatening, offering)
(4) Expressives:
which express a psychological state (paradigm cases: thanking, apologising,
welcoming, congratulating)
(5) Declarations:
which effect immediate changes in the institutional state of affairs and
which tend to rely on elaborate extralinguistic institutions (paradigm cases:
excommunicating, declaring war, christening, firing from employment).
Speech Acts in Discourse Analysis:

The lowest rank consists of ‘acts’, which are more general than the
speech acts in Searle’s categorisation scheme but can be further classified at
the level of ‘sub-act’. Sinclair and Coulthard differentiate between meta-
discursive, interactive and turntaking acts. Their three initiating (interactive)
acts at the exchange level are:
(1) informative.
(2) directive.
(3) elicitation.
Indirect and Direct in Speech Acts:

The notion of ‘indirectness’ of a speech act is often related to the
grammatical form of a sentence. It occurs when the ‘locution’ is apparently
at odds with the ‘illocution’ of an utterance. When the illocutionary force is
in line with the linguistic form, we can expect the following patterns:
1) declarative = assertion
2) imperative = order/request
3) interrogative = question
Searle (1975: 61) gives the often quoted example:
X: Let’s go to the movies tonight.

Y: I have to study for an exam.
Indirectness in speech acts occurs when the locution, i.e. the words
that are being used, does not fully determine the illocutionary force of the
same utterance. The question of how we ‘disambiguate’ this type of
indirectness, or how we know what a speaker means when they are not
saying it in a direct way, has led scholars to consider the processes we use to
‘infer’ meaning of indirect utterances.
Levinson (1983:102) gives the following example:
A: Where’s Bill?
B: There’s a yellow VW outside Sue’s house.
Conclusion:
Speech act is a part of pragmatics where there are certain aims beyond
the words or phrases when a speaker says something. Speech acts are
acts that refer to the action performed by produced utterances. People can
perform an action by saying something. Through speech acts, the speaker
can convey physical action merely through words and phrases. The
conveyed utterances are paramount to the actions performed. In regard to
the English as a foreign language, there are things to consider. It is easy
for the speakers or listeners to determine the intended meaning of
utterances if they are spoken in the mother tongue. Factors such as
idiomatic expressions and cultural norms are not function as barriers to
determine the intended meaning.

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Background of Speech Acts:

Definition of Speech Acts:

A speech act in philosophy of language and linguistics is something

The contemporary use of the term goes back to J. L. Austin's development of

Austin’s Revised Theory and Felicity:

In Austin’s revised theory, Austin distinguishes three kinds of action within

(1) Locutionary Act:

(2) Illocutionary Act:

(3) Perlocutionary Act:

Speech Acts Classifications:

Speech Acts in Discourse Analysis:

Indirect and Direct in Speech Acts:

Searle (1975: 61) gives the often quoted example:

X: Let’s go to the movies tonight.

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