SPEECH ACT THEORY

CHAPTER 3

SPEECH ACT THEORY

3.1. Definition
Speech Act is a term taken from the work of philosophers of language, J. R. Searle and
J. L. Austin in particular. Speech act theory has to do with the functions and uses of language.
It originates from Austin's (1962) observation that while sentences can often be used to report
states of affairs, the utterances of some sentences, such as (1) and (2), must in specified
circumstances be treated as the performance of an act:
(1) I bet you six pence it will rain tomorrow.
(2) I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth.
By uttering such sentences the speaker actually names the ship or makes the bet.
Actually, when speaking, we perform acts, such as giving reports, making statements,
asking questions, giving warnings, making promises and so on. Speech acts are all the acts
we perform through speaking - all the things we do when we speak.
Speech acts are not identifiable with the sentence or with any other level of
grammatical description. Speech acts can not be equated with utterances, either. For instance,
a single utterance I'm hungry can be used to perform more than one act (informing and
requesting). Neither can they be equated with the notion of turn as an interactional unit, for it
may take several turns to accomplish a single act, or conversely, several acts may be
performed within a single speaker turn.
3.2. The performative
A performative is one utterance that actually describes the act that it performs, i.e. it
performs some act and simultaneously describes that act. “I promise to come back tomorrow”
is a performative because in saying it the speaker actually does what the utterance describes.

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Meanwhile, “John promised to come back tomorrow” is not a performative because this
utterance does not simultaneously does what it describes.
G. Leech (1974) points out the syntactic markers of the performative as follows.
- The subject is the first person (I or we);
- The verb is in the simple present tense;
- The indirect object, if one is present, is YOU;
- It is possible to insert the adverb HEREBY;
- The sentence is not negative.
For example: I hereby declare to you my innocence.
Nevertheless, there are exceptions to this pattern. For example:
(3) You are hereby forbidden to leave this room.
(4) All passengers on flight No. 47 are requested to proceed to gate 10.
(5) I suggest that you see a psychiatrist as soon as possible.
(Heasley and Hurdford 1983, p. 238)
3.3. Classification of speech acts
According to Searle (cited in Richards 1985 : 104-105), speech acts can be grouped
into a small number of basic types, based on the speaker's intention.
1. REPRESENTATIVES: The purpose of this class is to tell people how things are; for
example, we assert, claim, say, or report.
2. DIRECTIVES: This class includes all speech acts whose primary point is that they count
as attempts on the part of the speaker to get the hearer to do something.
3. COMMISSIVES: Commissives are those illocutionary acts whose point is to commit the
speaker to do something.
4. EXPRESSIVES: : The point of this class is to express feelings and attitudes about states of
affairs.
5. DECLARATIONS: Declarations are speech acts bringing about changes in the world
simply through their successful execution.
3.4 Locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts
Austin, in his well-known, three-fold division of speech acts, named them
locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. A locutionary act is the act of saying

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something in the full sense of "say". In the locutionary act, we are saying something but we
may also use the locution for particular purposes - to answer a question, to announce a
verdict, to give a warning, etc. In this sense, we are performing an illocutionary act. Finally,
there is a perlocutionary act, which can be described in terms of the effect which the
illocutionary act, on a particular occasion of use, has on the hearer.
Meanwhile, Searle (1965) chooses not to separate an utterance into the three acts,
preferring to see it as consisting of two parts: a proposition and a function-indicating device
which marks the illocutionary force. Proposition is the literal meaning of an utterance;
meanwhile, the illocutionary force is the communicative function of that utterance. For
example, the proposition of “How are you?” is an inquiry of the health of the other person,
but this question is meant as a greeting, which is the illocutionary force. (Cf. Hurford and
Heasley 1983: 240-9)

3.5. Linguistic form and illocutionary force

Traditionally, there is an assumed fit between sentence type and illocutionary point:
declarative sentences are used for making assertions, imperative sentences for orders, and
interrogative sentences for asking questions.
However, the assumed fit between sentence type and illocutionary force has been
strongly criticized (Matthews 1972, Labov 1972). In general, the fit between sentence type
and function is only typical, not absolute. Declarative sentences are not always assertions, but
can function as questions, or as orders. Syntactic imperatives may function as other speech
acts than orders, as in a sentence like "Spare the rod and spoil the child".
We can not just neatly classify utterances according to their grammatical forms: there
is no single one-to-one relation between the form of an utterance and its function. On the
contrary, it appears that, except for the conventional etiquette, almost any utterance can have
almost any function in some context of situation. It is not only the form of an utterance which
determine how we come to interpret it, but the characteristics of the whole speech situation
count.
Coulthard (1985 : 20) quotes Searle's (1965) example of a single sentence which may
have different functions in different situations:

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Suppose at a party my wife says "[t's really quite late". That utterance may be
at one level a statement of fact; to her interlocutor, who has just remarked on
how early it was, it may be (and be intended as) an objection; to her husband
it may be (and be intended as) a suggestion or even a request ("Let's go
home") as well as a warning ("you'll feel rotten in the morning if we don't")
(Searle 1965).
Discourse value, in fact, is not a constant but varies according to the type of discourse,
the relations between the participants, and/ or the influence of the setting and the topic.

3.6. Direct and indirect speech acts

One paradoxical fact about communication is that quite often we say one thing and
apparently mean something else: a request expressed in the form It's hot in here; a promise
hidden behind a simple declarative I won't mention it; or a warning concealed in the
statement The dog bites.
Searle (1975, cited in Brown and Yule 1983 : 232) talks of indirect speech acts as cases
in which one illocutionary act is indirectly expressed by way of performing another.
The choice between saying indirectly, and directly, unambiguously is not a choice
between separate speech acts but rather the speaker's natural response to social and
psychological factors. Wardhaugh (1985 : 33-34) maintains a certain indirectness rather than
directness seems to be the norm in speech:
We rarely attempt to make fully explicit what we have to say but rely on the
intuitions of others, their common sense, and a general idea about what we
assume everybody knows and expects in order to get our points across. We
tend to avoid the naked use of power or position and are generally reluctant to
indulge in plain, blunt speaking in the form of either unequivocal commands
and confrontational questions.[...]. Effective communication requires the
various participants to be gentle with one another, even though that very
gentleness can sometimes lead to failure.

As a result, we should not always take everything we hear literally: it is often not
possible to infer the illocutionary force of an utterance from its surface form in isolation.
Correct interpretation of a speech act depends both on the linguistic form of the utterance and
the context of situation in which it occurs.
In other words the total meaning of an utterance derives from its context as well as
from its actual grammatical form. However, it is not necessarily always so, as the

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illocutionary force of some indirect speech acts tends to become conventionally established
as the standard idiomatic forms.
Indirectness poses a problem in cross-cultural communication. Searle (1975, cited in
Richards 1985 : 114) reminds us that the standard forms for one language may not maintain
their indirect potential when translated into another language because (a) the translation may
not be idiomatic in the second language, and (b) the resulting forms may not be those that are
conventionally indirect speech acts.
Therefore, in cross-cultural communication, being direct or indirect may result in
misunderstanding or conflict. Wardhaugh (1985: 41) gives the example of a simple
peremptory Bring me two rice to a waiter, which can be carried out without offending the
waiter in some languages but not in an English language environment. Hatch (1983: 124-125)
cites how Johnston (1973)'s inability to use indirect forms in French hurts her land-lady
during her summer vacation in France:
For example, when all the buckets disappeared from the second floor
bathrooms, I didn't know if the woman in charge of the house needed to know
it or not. In English. I would have dropped this information in passing, in a
dependent clause, when I was talking about something else, and expected her
to pick up on it if it were important and otherwise to ignore it. But in French I
had no option but to do nothing, or to tell her explicitly: "the buckets have
disappeared - is it important ?" To tell her all the small things like this seemed
like bothering her with a lot of trivial details. In this particular case, her
attitude was, " What are you telling me for ?" And I resolved never to tell her
anything again.

3.7. Speech acts and cross-cultural communication

Although speech act strategies are to a certain extent universal, the performance of
speech acts, as Candlin (1978, cited in Richards 1985 : 115) stresses, depends on "culturally
specific appropriateness criteria". There is evidence to suggest that speech act patterns may
differ substantially from language group to language group. To quote Wolfson (1981),
"speech acts differ cross-culturally not only in the way they are realized but also in their
distribution, their frequency of occurrence, and in the functions they serve". For example,
with regard to greetings, it is different from culture to culture. Thus,
Greetings in many (perhaps all) speech communities may include questions
about the addressee's health, for example, "How are you?". In English, Hindi,
Spanish, French, and many other languages such questions are largely ritualistic and

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need not be answered sincerely. In English, "How are you?" is often not answered at
all. In Arabic, on the other hand, the question must be answered, and in almost all
contexts the only appropriate answer is the ritual response formula "ilhamdulillah"
("praise to God"). In Thai, however, "Sabaaj dii ryy?"("How are you?") is a
nonritualistic, marked greeting, generally used only if one person has not seen the
other for a long time and/or is sincerely concerned about his or her health. The
unmarked greeting form in Thai is "Paj naj?" ("Where are you going?"). Transfer of
unmarked formulas could well lead to English speakers judging Thais to be far too
curious about the other's whereabouts, whereas Thais may wonder why English
speakers are so concerned about health problems. (J. Fieg, personal communication;
cited in Richards 1985 : 122).

An incident which illustrates a contrast between Japanese and American use of

apologies may help to demonstrate how cultural assumptions determine what is considered to
be appropriate language behavior:
An American woman went to Japan to marry a Japanese man and was
stopped at Haneda airport because there was a problem with her Visa. In the ensuing
confusion she did not fill out a form for her unaccompanied baggage. When her
baggage arrived at Osaka Port several weeks later, she couldn't get it out of customs
without this form. Her husband was told she should write an apology and send it with
her passport, to Tokyo. She was incensed at the idea of having to apologize for
something that she was convinced was not her - fault, since the Haneda authorities
were to blame for not giving her the appropriate form. However, her husband told her
to write the apology anyway, which she did, and promptly received her baggage with
no further trouble; except that this American woman felt she had been made to
shoulder the blame for what she felt was Japanese incompetence. (Naotsuka, 1978,
cited in Smith 1987 : 1).

The problem was due to different cultural assumptions about what language behavior
was appropriate. To the Japanese an apology was appropriate; to the American, it was not.
The problem was caused by the American being unaware that in Japan apologies are not only
an admission of fault as they usually are in the United States, but also a social lubricant,
where both parties in any interaction accept mutual responsibility for the content as well as
the tone of the interchange.

DISCUSSION AND ACTIVITIES

1. What is speech act? Give examples.
2. Discuss locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. Give examples.
3. Discuss direct and indirect speech acts. Give examples.

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4. What is a performative? Give examples.

5. Can you find some examples of speech acts of which the propositions in English and
Vietnamese are different? Are the same?
6. Which of the following utterances qualify as explicit performatives.
a. I testify that she saw the accident.
b. I know that she saw the accident.
c. I suppose that she will.
d. I challenge you to a bet.
e. He bet her $250 that he would win.
f. I fine you $100 for possession of marijuana.
g. I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth.
h. I swear I did not do it.
e. I swore I did not do it.
7. Would the main purpose of making the following constatives be simply to describe some
existing state of affairs? Provide a context and say what they might mean.
a. I love you.
b. There is a wasp in your left ear.
c. You are a fool.
8. Describe some of the likely perlocutionary effects of the following utterances.
a. A teacher to student: May I have your attention, please?
b. A neighbor: Fire!
c. A student to a student: Thanks a lot.
9. Say what illocutionary acts are performed by the following interrogative clauses.
a. Must you make so much noise?
b. Can you pass me that hammer?
c. Isn’t it a lovely day!
d. Will you have some more ice-cream?
e. Why don’t you apply for that job?
f. How are you?
g. May I sit here?

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10. Read the following conversations and analyze them in terms of speech acts. (Taken from
Streamline English - Departures, by Harley and Viney, 1978)
a. A: Please, sit down.
B: Thank you.
A: Tea?
B: Yes, please.
A: Sugar?
b. A: Mrs. Connor, could you pass the salt please?
B: Certainly.
A: Thank you very much.
B: And the pepper?
A: No, thank you.
c. A: Good evening.
B: Good evening.
A: Half of bitter, please.
B: Here you are, sir.
A: Thank you very much. How much is that?
B: 80c.
d. A: Please come in.
B: Thank you.
A: Please, . . . sit down. Would you like a cup of tea?
B: Yes, please.
A: How about a biscuit?
B: No, thanks. I’m on a diet.
e. A: Goodnight, Andrew.
B: Goodnight, Colin.
A: Have a good holiday!
B: Thanks.
A: Don’t forget . . . send me a postcard!
B: OK. . . .Oh, I haven’t got your address.

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A: That’s OK. You can send it to me at the office.

B: All right. ‘Bye.
A: ‘Bye.
f. A: Good afternoon.
B: Good afternoon.
A: Could you repair these shoes, please?
B: Yes, certainly. When do you want them?
A: As soon as possible.
B: Is Thursday afternoon OK?
A: Yes, that’ fine.

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