CHAPTER THREE: SPEECH ACTS

3.1. Introduction:

The term speech act has been used by Crystal (1992: 362) to refer to a communicative
activity defined with reference to the intentions of a speaker while speaking and the effects
achieved on a listener. Forms of language generally serve specific communicative functions.
An interrogative like How about a cup of tea? is usually a grammatical form functioning as a
question. A question, however, is a basic speech act which can function as an invitation. For
instance, the question Can you pass the salt? uttered at a dinner table does not signal the
speaker's attempt at eliciting information about the listener's abilities or inabilities. It rather
functions as a request for action. This manifests the fact that linguistic forms are not always
unambiguous in their functions. For illustration, consider the following sentence uttered by a
frustrated adult who is late for work on a rainy day:

I can't find my umbrella?

This may possibly be a frantic request for all the people in the household to join in the
search for the umbrella.

According to Crystal (1992: 72), “communication is the transmission and reception of

information between a signaler and a receiver”. In other words, it is the exchange of ideas,
information, etc. between two or more persons. However, speech act theory states that
communication is more than the transmission of information. It is clear that Crystal’s (1992)
definition is ‘rudimentary’, and it needs to be expanded. Communication is usually regarded
as the combination of speech acts, a series of elements with purpose and intent. A good
number of characteristics have been proposed for communication. These characteristics have
been proposed to represent communication as being purposive, functional, and designed to
bring about some effect on the environment of hearers and speakers. In fact, any definition of
communication should highlight that it relies on activities accompanied with certain
contextual, sociolinguistic, cross cultural dimensions.

3.2. Definitions of speech acts

Early studies in speech acts stem from the field of philosophy (e.g., Austin 1962; Grice
1975; Habermas 1988 and Searle 1969, 1975, 1986) and have been expanded and amplified
on by scholars from a number of different fields (e.g., linguistics – Sadock 1974;
anthropology – Hymes 1974; Gumperz 1982; child language – Och – Schiefflin 1979). What
these studies have in common is the assumption that fundamental to human communication is

1
the notion of speech act, that is, the performance of a certain act through words (e.g.,
requesting, refusing, complimenting, inviting, etc...).

Linguists and language philosophers tackle the notion of speech acts taking into
consideration different perspectives. The language philosopher Austin (1962) was the first to
introduce the concept of speech act, and his theory of speech acts was initially further
developed by Searle (1969). Austin (1962:12) points out that, in their ordinary use of
language, people do not only produce utterances to merely say things about the world; rather,
people also produce utterances in order to do things. In other words, according to Austin,
people also use language in order to perform certain actions.

Developing further Austin’s (1962) speech act theory, Searle (1969:16) considers
speech acts as “the basic or minimal units of all linguistic communication”. Searle prefers
using the term speech act to refer to what Austin calls illocutionary act. Moreover, according
to Searle (1969:24), a speaker’s performance of a speech act involves three different acts
which make up the complete speech act. These three acts are “utterance act” (uttering words),
“propositional act” (referring and predicating) and “illocutionary act” (e.g., stating,
commanding, or requesting).

Downing and Locke (2006:176) state that “speech acts are the acts we perform through
words. Certain general speech acts are basic to everyday interaction; these are statements,
questions, exclamations and directives, the latter covering orders, requests and instructions
among others”. Downing and Locke (2006:176) explore both direct and indirect speech acts.
In their illustration of direct speech acts, they clarify the point that each of these “basic speech
acts is associated in the grammar with a type of clause: the declarative is typically used to
encode a statement, the interrogative a question, the imperative a directive and the
exclamative an exclamation.” However, Downing and Locke (2006) illustrate that indirect 1
correspondences are also common in English.

According to Miller (2006:3), “a speech act is an utterance that serves a function in

communication. Some examples are an apology, greeting, request, complaint, invitation,
compliment or refusal.” A speech act might contain just one word such as ‘No’ to perform a
refusal or several words or sentences such as: I’m sorry, I can’t, I have a prior engagement.
Miller (2006:3-4) confirms that it is important to mention that “speech acts include real-life
interactions and require not only knowledge of the language but also appropriate use of that
language within a given culture. Socio-cultural variables like power, social distance, and

1
See section (3.8) for indirect speech acts.
2
situational setting influence the appropriateness and effectiveness of politeness strategies used
to realize directive speech acts”.

Widdowson (1996:131) states that speech acts are acts of communication “performed
by the use of language, either in speech or writing, involving reference, force, and effect”. On
the other hand, according to Suzuki (2008:87), the concept speech act refers to the realization
of the speaker’s (S’s) intention in a single or a sequence of utterances.

According to Abbas (2012:336), speech acts are one of the most important components
of pragmatic competence. They are also defined as “the minimal units of linguistic
communication”. Abbas (2012:336) states that speech acts constitute the core of pragmatic
competence and this feature of speech acts has made them the focus of many studies
conducted in the Applied Linguistic field.

Mey (2001:219) and Zielinska (2011:138) present the notion of situated speech acts.
They stress the importance of considering the context in defining speech acts. In this respect,
Mey (2001:219) states:

Speech acts, in order to be effective, have to be situated. That is to say, they both rely
on, and actively create, the situation in which they are realized. Thus, a situated speech act
comes close to what has been called a speech event in ethnographic and anthropological
studies (Bauman and Sherzer, 1974): speech as centered on an institutionalized social
activity of a certain kind, such as teaching, visiting a doctor’s office, participating in a tea-
ceremony, and so on. In all such activities, speech is, in a way, prescribed: only certain
utterances can be expected and will thus be acceptable; conversely, the participants in the
situation, by their acceptance of their own and others’ utterances, establish and reaffirm the
social situation in which the utterances are uttered and in which they find themselves as
utterers (Mey, 2001:219).

Therefore, on many occasions, a physical setting alone is not enough to codify a

situation being talked about—i.e., as noted by Mey, pragmatic factors often co-define the
situation. According to Zielinska (2011:138), elaborate discussion concerning the need for
including pragmatic factors in interpreting truth conditions of a sentence must be considered.

In illustrating the importance of mastering sociolinguistic competence in English

language teaching, Baleghizadeh (2007:146) defines “a speech act as a functional unit in
communication”. Speech acts have an important role in effective communication and hence
are important components of sociolinguistic competence to be mastered by learners.
Baleghizadeh (2007:147) reaffirms that

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 It is now quite clear why speech acts have an important role in our daily use of
language: they are important because they allow us to perform a wide range of functions.
They enable us to compliment, apologize, request, complain, etc. Now if speech acts give us
the chance to do all this in our native language for sure they can do the same thing in the
second/foreign language that we are attempting to learn. It is important to master speech acts
while learning a second language because they not only facilitate the process of
communication, but also make it more effective. The important question to be considered is
this: Are speech acts haphazardly picked up in the process of second language acquisition, or
should they be systematically taught?

Asher and Lascarides (2006:6) provide formal account of speech acts. They state that
“many types of speech acts must be understood relationally, because successfully performing
them is logically dependent on the content of an antecedent utterance”. For example, if one
uses an utterance to conclude something, then that conclusion must be relative to some
antecedent hypothesis or argument. Answering is also inherently relational: an answer is an
answer to some prior question.

In clarifying the cross-cultural dimension of speech acts, Wierzbicka (1991) claims

that most of the early definitions of speech acts are ethnocentric, and that thus they fail to take
into consideration what she believed is one of the most important characteristics of speech
acts, namely cultural specificity. She says that, cultural values and characteristics such as
indirectness, objectivism, courtesy, and cordiality are reflected in the way speakers produce
speech acts. Not taking this into consideration can have serious practical implications.
Moreover, Wierzbicka (2003:vi) point out that since people interact in cultural contexts which
are governed by specific cultural norms and values, speech acts are performed and understood
according to these norms and values.

Similarly, according to Gass (1996:1), “Not only does the linguistic realization of the
same speech act differ, but the force of a speech act might differ”. For example, in some
cultures to refuse an invitation may necessitate much “hedging” or “beating around the bush”
before an actual refusal might be made. In other cultures, a refusal may not necessitate as
much mitigation.

There is an argument shared by some philosophers and linguists in favour of the

possible extension of speech act theory to discourse analysis. This argument is the following:

Speech acts are not isolated moves in communication: they appear in more global units of
communication, defined as conversations or discourses (Vanderveken, 1994: 53).

4
 To sum up, the study of speech acts focuses on the “action” dimension of utterances,
thus going beyond the study of syntactic form and semantic meaning by adding
“illocutionary meaning”. “Utterances, when made in specific situations, are thus defined
not merely as expressions of sentences or propositions but also as social acts such as
assertions, promises or threats” (van Dijk, 2009: 13). It seems that there is an agreement
among most linguists and philosophers that speech acts are the minimal units of linguistic
communication. So far, we have seen that some scholars present a narrow sentence-
oriented view in exploring speech acts. However, there is a need to deal with speech acts
from a context-oriented view taking into consideration external pragmatic factors that
affect the communication as a process. The next section tackles the speech act theory in
detail.

3.3. Speech Act Theory.

Speech act theory stems from philosophy of language. It was initiated by J. Austin in
How To Do Things With Words (1962). Austin distinguished constative utterances from the
performative ones. Unlike the constatives that simply provide information, the performatives
create a world, in which a certain action can be performed by the speaker or the hearer. The
truth/falsity criterion is applicable to constatives, because they describe world with words, but
not to the performatives, which create world with words (cf. Zimmerman 2005:14).

The theory was further developed by J. Searle in Speech Acts (1962) and subsequent
work. Searle has defined speech acts more broadly as basic units of communication. Central
to the theory, as expounded by Searle (2002), is the principle of expressibility: whatever can
be meant can be said, while the intention of an utterance can be deciphered by a hearer who
has a sufficient linguistic competence. Speech acts provide information (words relate to
world), impose directives on the hearer (words create world, in which the hearer is expected
to perform an action), or commit the speaker to a certain action. As will be illustrated in
section (3.4.), the speech act taxonomy is based on these functions with a set of rules defining
each class of speech acts.

Searle (1962) believes that, given the propositional content is already understood, the
exact meaning of speech act is determined by its assignment to the taxonomy of illocutionary
roles. According to Kannetzky (2002:78), Searle’s “principle of expressibility aims at
ensuring the context-independent meaning of utterances”. Later on, Searle (1968:18) admits
the principle requires at least one additional condition, namely an appropriate background or
context of the speech act.

5
 Moreover, and later on in elaborating the theory of speech acts, Searle (2002:4) states
his notion of intentionality. The methodology he had used for analyzing speech acts was to
analyze the necessary and sufficient conditions for the successful and non-defective
performance of the act. According to Searle (2002: 8), “the most fruitful way to analyze
intentional states is to analyze their conditions of satisfaction”. Searle (ibid: 8) adds that “If I
have a prior intention to perform an action, then it is part of the conditions of satisfaction of
that prior intention, that it should cause the performance of the action that constitutes the rest
of its conditions of satisfaction”. Therefore, “precisely because intentional states are states
and not facts, there are no conditions for their successful performance” (ibid:8).

In other words, speech acts are the basic or minimal units of linguistic communication
(Searle 1976:16). They are not mere artificial linguistic constructs as they may seem, and
their understanding together with the acquaintance of context in which they are performed are
often essential for decoding the whole utterance and its proper meaning. According to Searle
(2007:31), “the theory of speech acts tells us something about the structure and functioning of
illocutionary acts”.

A central part of Searle’s theory is the idea that “speaking a language is performing acts
according to rules” (Searle 1969:36-7), where by “rule” he means a conventional association
between a certain kind of act and its socially determined consequences. These are
CONSTITUTIVE RULES, he said, in the same sense that the rules of chess are constitutive
of the game itself. To perform an illocutionary act, according to Searle, is to follow certain
conventional rules that are constitutive of that kind of act.

The single greatest criticism Searle presented toward Austin’s work concerned the
notion of speech act versus speech act verbs. According to Searle, Austin not only failed to
recognize the difference between these two notions, but he also equated the existence or non-
existence of speech act verbs with speech acts themselves, using the two terms basically
interchangeably. However, according to Mey (2001:105-110), Searle advocated that “it is
quite possible for a speaker to perform a speech act without using a speech act (performative)
verb”. A case in point is exemplified in the following utterance:

Ahmed: I have an exam tomorrow.

This statement may be just that, a statement whose force expresses a declaration of the reality
in which the speaker finds himself (he has an exam tomorrow). However, if uttered to
someone else, the same utterance may also carry the force of a refusal, in this case a refusal of

6
an invitation, albeit an indirect one. Notice, however, that there is no such performative or
speech act verb included in the utterance (Emphasis is mine).

There are other scholars who suggested certain points as contributions towards a more
practical speech act theory. Geis (1995) introduces his Dynamic Speech Act Theory in which
he argues that “it is necessary to play emphasis on the social interactional nature of utterances
and treat them as communications rather than merely focus on their linguistic nature”. Then,
he strongly recommends that the study of speech acts should carefully take account of the
effect of social features of context such as social relationships between participants,
psychological states, and attitudes of participants, etc. in which utterances happen.

Therefore, John Searle (1969) has been credited with the speech act theory. He brought
greater systematicity to the ideas which Austin had so perceptively explored. He focused on
the idea that meaning is a kind of doing. He claimed that the study of language is just a sub-
part of the theory of action. In fact, Searle crystallized the concepts of illocutionary act and
illocutionary force to the extent where one can reasonably speak of his speech act theory as
the classical account which functions as a point of departure for subsequent work on speech
acts. The term speech act theory is in practice a reference to illocutionary acts. Perlocutionary
acts are usually neglected. Most linguists focus on the speaker’s meaning in their
investigation to speech acts. The inclusion of the listener’s meaning is also important. There
is a need to explore the way the listener interprets a certain speech act in a certain situation.
Therefore, this study presents a different dimension by tackling both speaker’s and listener’s
meanings in exploring the speech act of inviting in Palestinian Arabic and American English.

Real-life acts of speech usually involve interpersonal relations of some kind: A speaker
does something with respect to an audience by saying certain words to that audience. Thus it
would seem that ethnographic studies of such relationships and the study of discourse should
be central to speech act theory.

3.4. Classification of speech acts:

Speech act theory lends itself to establishing systems of classification for illocutions.
According to Allan (1998) there are two ways of classifying speech acts. One is what he calls
“a lexical classification”, which distinguishes among speech acts according to the
illocutionary verbs they express. The second approach classifies them “according to the act
they express”, such as requesting, apologizing, promising, and so on.

According to Austin, the same utterance could at the same time constitute three kinds of
acts:
7
(1) a locutionary act (or locution): The particular sense and reference of an utterance;

(2) an illocutionary act (or illocution): The act performed in, or by virtue of, the performance
of the illocution; and

(3) a perlocutionary act (or perlocution): The act performed by means of what is said
(Wagner, 1999).

Austin focused on the second of these acts. The locution belongs to the traditional
territory of truth-based semantics. The perlocution belongs strictly beyond the investigation of
language and meaning since it deals with the results or effects of an utterance. The illocution
occupies the middle ground between them. This ground is now considered the territory of
pragmatics, of meaning in context. Austin emphasizes his claim that only the verbs used to
describe illocutions can be used as performative verbs.

However, an illocutionary act cannot be successfully achieved without confirming to

some conditions. Therefore, Austin (1962) proposes a set of felicity conditions which will be
illustrated in section (3.5).

On a final note, while the formalized classification system proposed by Austin (1962:
150-163) has been labeled “problematic” (see especially Searle 1969, 1977, 1981; Leech
1983; and Mey 1993), it is worth a brief look inasmuch as it serves as the basis for much of
the literature generated to date on the subject of speech act theory.

VERDICATIVES

Verdicatives are those utterances rendering a verdict or a judgment of some sort. However,
such judgments need not be final.

Example: I find his sense of humor very unique.

EXERTIVES

These utterances exercise their own power, rights, or influence.

Example: I order you to stop running.

COMMISSIVES

These utterances include promises to do some future act, announcements of intentions to do

some future act, or espousals.

Example: I plan on finishing my thesis this year.

8
BEHABITIVES

Austin states that this category comprises “a very miscellaneous group … which includes
apologizing, congratulating, commending, cursing, etc.

Example: I apologize for not returning your phone call sooner.

EXPOSITIVES

Austin admits that this category is “difficult to define.” He adds that these utterances are
expository in nature and that their goal is to make clear how other utterances fit into
discourse.

Example: I argue that classifying apologies is a complex task.

The end of this section presents the reader with a brief summary of the criticisms
offered by J. P. Searle of Austin’s speech act classification system as reviewed above, and an
overview of the contributions made by Searle in the awake of such criticism. In fact, Searle
(1979), as an improvement of the classification of the speech acts proposed by Austin,
classifies speech acts into:

a) Assertives: commit S(peaker) to the truth of some proposition;

b) Directives: count as attempts to bring about some effect through the action of H(earer);

c) Expressives: count as the expression of some psychological state;

d) Commissives: commit S to some future action;

e) Declaratives: are speech acts whose "successful" performance brings about the
correspondence between the propositional content and reality.

(cf. Leech and Thomas, 1985: 179)

According to Zaefferer (2006:2), “At its time Searle’s proposal constituted a

tremendous step forward towards a principled terminology in speech act theory”. It replaced
the rather poorly defined classification outlined in the last lecture of Austin’s How to do
things with Words (Austin 1962) with a much more systematic account based on a
decomposition of the notion of illocutionary force into its main factors. Searle found out that
“there are (at least) twelve dimensions of variation in which illocutionary acts differ from one
another” (1975:345): 1. Point or purpose; 2. direction of fit; 3. expressed psychological state;
4. strength of the point; 5. status of participants; 6. relations to interests of participants; 7.

9
relations to rest of discourse; 8. propositional content; 9. non-linguistic performability; 10.
dependence on extra-linguistic institution; 11. possibility of performative use of describing
verb; 12. style.

Moreover, Zaefferer (2006:2) presents a critique of Searle’s classification. He states

that “Although the resulting classification is based mainly on the first three of these factors
represents certainly a major improvement over its predecessor, at closer scrutiny this account
turns out to be less systematic than it looks”.

Searle’s classification is “not exhaustive” and according to Levinson (1983: 240), it

lacks “a principled basis”. In fact, conversations are multifunctional. Some utterances can
perform several speech acts simultaneously. Yet, Searle’s classification helped to become
aware of basic types of illocutionary acts and their potential perlocutionary effect on the
hearer.

While Searle classifies speech acts (illocutionary acts, in fact) into five categories, Thuy
(2007) and Bach and Harnish (1979) consider illocutionary acts as communicative actions
and hence divide them into four classes (constatives, directives, commisives and
acknowledgements) according to distinctions between the expression of beliefs, attitudes,
intentions or desires to act or to cause others to act and show their feelings.

Taking into consideration various criteria, other scholars present different systems of
classification. Todd’s (1983) classification of speech acts is based on a “Preliminary Speech
Act Category System”. He classifies speech acts as follows:

A. Statements (expositives, representatives, as-sertions) reports / quotes / instantiations /

claims / stimulations / inferences;

B. Directives (requests, orders, exercitives) suggest / request / order / request object / agree as
to truth / expression of approval / sympathy / support / com-mitment / direct action / direct /
indirect;

C. Questions / wh-form / yes/no form / tag form / intonation-only form / information-only

versus other uses /

D. Re-actives (various kinds of agreement or disagreement with what has previously been
stated) agree as to truth versus disagree as to truth / give attention / ac-cede (agree to commit,
or actually do) versus refuse;

10
E. Expressives / give approval versus disapproval (sympathy, regret, exasperation, etc.) direct
versus indirect (accusation, disagreement, etc.);

F. Commissives / promise, offer, vow, etc.

Adopting the notion of politeness2 as an important criterion, Parvaresh and Rasekh

(2009:4) advocate Leech’s (1983) classification. According to this classification, illocutionary
goals are divided into four categories of a) competitives, b) convivials, c) collaboratives, and
d) conflictives based on how they relate to the social goal of establishing and maintaining
comity. Being in agreement with this kind of classification, Parvaresh and Rasekh (2009:4)
state that the first (competitives) and the last category (conflictives) were regarded as impolite
with the latter being the rudest; and the second (convivials) and the third category
(collaboratives) were regarded as polite in nature (cf. Parvaresh and Rasekh, 2009).

According to Searle’s categorization, the target speech act of this study, invitation 3, is a
directive, which demands the hearers’ response to the speakers’ proposal of doing something;
and if a positive response is given, the hearer confines himself –herself to a future act.
However, taking into consideration politeness as a criterion, the speech act of inviting might
belong to other categories as will be illustrated in detail in chapters 9, 10 and 11.

To sum up this section, in nearly all of these studies, there are many more dimensions
than are needed to form a taxonomy with a small number of basic categories. It is interesting
to note that in almost all of the schemes that have been put forward, the imprint of Austin’s
original, highly intuitive compartmentalization is clearly visible. Austin’s class of
commissives, for example, seems to survive intact on everyone’s list of basic illocutionary
types. Searle (1975b) presented a taxonomy of illocutionary acts based on a number of
essentially pragmatic parameters, some of which are closely related to the notion of felicity
conditions. The most important of the added parameters is what Searle called DIRECTION
OF FIT. This has to do with whether the words are supposed to fit the facts of the world or
whether the world is supposed to come to fit the words. On the other hand, Leech (1983)
adopts politeness as his basic criterion in suggesting a taxonomy of speech acts. Therefore,
Searle’s and Leech’s contributions are very significant. That is why their contributions are
adopted as theoretical framework for the purpose of exploring invitations in PA and AE.

3.5. Speech Acts and Felicity Conditions:

2
See chapter 5 on politeness.

3
See chapter 7 on classifications of invitations.
11
 Any account of speech act theory should never overlook the so-called felicity
conditions. According to Austin (1963: 63), the term felicity conditions refers to the criteria
which must be satisfied if a speech act is to achieve its purpose. In other words, for a speech
act to be appropriately performed or realized, there are some conventions. These are referred
to as felicity conditions or the so-called social conventions. The speakers and the listeners
should heed these conditions to guarantee the achievement of the purposes for which any
given speech act is performed. Therefore, the term of felicity conditions was proposed by
Austin who defines them as follows (Austin, 1962: 14 – 15):

A. There must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a certain conventional

effect, that procedure to include the uttering of certain words by certain persons in certain
circumstances.

B. The particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate for the
invocation of the particular procedure invoked.

C. The procedure must be executed by all participants both correctly and completely.

D. Where, as often, the procedure is designed for use by persons having certain thoughts or
feelings, or for the inauguration of certain consequential conduct on the part of any
participant, then a person participating in and so invoking the procedure must intend so to
conduct themselves, and further must actually so conduct themselves subsequently.

On the other hand, several types of felicity conditions have been suggested by Searle
(1981). The conditions which were required to be present if a given speech act was to be
effectively performed, were used by Searle to offer definitions of various speech acts. Searle
proposes four kinds of rules on the basis of these conditions:

(1) Propositional Content Rules: specify the kind of meaning expressed by the propositional
part of an utterance;

(2) Preparatory Rules: delineate the conditions which are pre-requisite to the performance of
the speech act;

(3) Sincerity Rules: outline the conditions which must obtain if the speech act is to be
performed sincerely;

(4) Essential Rules: specify what the speech act must conventionally count as.

In addition to having the knowledge of the four conditions, interlocutors have to assign
functions to a number of infinite sentences for attaining the intended meaning from each
12
other. As no sentence is function-free in the context, interlocutors must recognize the category
of the illocutionary act of each sentence to communicate successfully and avoid
misunderstanding in cross cultural situations.

When an invitation is offered, the four conditions must be conformed to achieving the
function of inviting. First of all, the utterance of the invitation concerns Propositional Content
Condition. As to the Preparatory Condition, the inviter must have the ability to offer the
invitation and, similarly, the invitee must have high possibility to receive the invitation. Next,
the inviter must intend to invite sincerely according to Sincerity Condition. Finally, when the
inviting sentences are uttered by the inviter, the invitation act must be done in the future in
accordance with Essential Condition.

Yule (1996:50), working on originally Searle’s assumptions, proposes further

classification of felicity conditions into five classes:

1. General conditions presuppose the participants’ knowledge of the language being

used and his non-playacting,

2. Content conditions concern the appropriate content of the utterance.

3. Preparatory conditions deal with differences of various illocutionary acts (e.g. those
of promising or warning).

4. Sincerity conditions count with speaker’s intention to carry out a certain act, and

5. Essential conditions combine with a specification of what must be in the utterance

content, the context and the speaker’s intention in order for a specific act to be
appropriately (felicitously) performed.

Therefore, felicity conditions determine whether a certain speech act is successful.

Speakers of a language, however, may sometimes fail to commit the felicity conditions of an
utterance for one purpose or another. According to Lyons (1977: 157), the utterance Will you
drive? is inappropriate as a request if the speaker knows that the hearer has not learnt to drive,
and the mutual recognition of such inappropriateness would, in turn, lead to an interpretation
of a different order (e.g. joking, sarcasm, etc.). Austin (1962) refers to such utterances as
infelicitous. However, according to Grice (1975) such utterances are regarded as implicatures.

3.6. Speech situation, speech event and speech act

In order to study the communicative behavior within a speech community, it is

necessary to work with units of interaction. Hymes (1972b:58-9) suggested that a “nested
13
hierarchy” of units called the speech situation, speech event, and speech act would be useful,
and his suggestion has been widely accepted. The three units are a nested hierarchy in the
sense that speech acts are part of speech events which are, in turn, part of speech situations.
Hymes described speech situations as “situations associated with (or marked by the absence
of) speech”. The examples he gives are ceremonies, fights, hunts, or lovemaking. As Hymes
sees it, speech situations are not purely communicative; they may be composed of both
communicative and other kinds of events. “Speech situations are not themselves subject to
rules of speaking, but can be referred to by rules of speaking as contexts” (Fasold, 1990:42-
43).

Speech events, on the other hand, are both communicative and governed by rules for
the use of speech. “The focus on speech events has emerged as one of the most important
contributions of ethnographers speaking in the analysis of speech habits of communities”
(Gumperz 1972:16-17). A speech event takes place within a speech situation and is composed
of one or more speech acts. For example, a joke might be a speech act that is part of a
conversation (a speech event) which takes place at a party (a speech situation). It is also
possible for a speech act to be, in itself, the entire speech event which might be the only event
in a speech situation. A single invocation which is all there is to a prayer when that prayer is
the only event in a rite is the example Hymes (1972b:59) gives.

The third level in the hierarchy is the speech act. ‘Speech act’ is the simplest and the
most troublesome level at the same time. It is the simplest because it is the “minimal term of
the set” (Hymes 1972a:56). It is troublesome because it has a slightly different meaning in the
study of the ethnography of communication from the meaning given to the term in linguistic
pragmatics and in philosophy (for example, Austin 1962, chapter 4), and because it seems it is
not quite “minimal” after all. According to Hymes, a speech act is to be distinguished from
the sentence and is not to be identified with any unit at any level of grammar. A speech act
could have forms ranging from, ‘By the authority vested in me by the laws of this state, I
hereby command you to leave this building immediately’, to, ‘Would you mind leaving now?,
to, ‘I sure would like some peace and quiet’, to, ‘Out!’ (all interpretable as commands, if the
context is right). For Hymes, a speech act gets its status from the social context as well as
grammatical form and intonation. As he puts it, “the level of speech acts mediates
immediately between the usual levels of grammar and the rest of a speech event or situation
in that it implicates both linguistic form and social norms” (Hymes 1972a:57).

Although speech acts were proposed as the minimal component of speech events, it has
become clear that they are not actually quite “minimal” (Coulthard 1977:40). Hymes

14
mentions jokes as an example of a speech act, but some jokes, like knock-knock jokes or
riddles, require speech moves by more than one speaker. For example:

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Joe and Angie.

Joe and Angie who?

Joe momma angie daddy! (Your momma and your daddy)

Or

What do you get when you cross a watermelon with a persimmon?

I don’t know, what?

A fruit that’s impossible to split the seeds out. (Coulthard 1977:40)

To sum up, since this research has to do with invitations, within a community one finds
many situations associated with speech, such as meals, parties, etc. These situations, however,
are not in themselves governed by consistent rules throughout. Consequently, a simple
relabeling of them in terms of speech will not do much. It is, therefore, more useful to restrict
the term speech event to activities that are directly governed by rules or norms for the use of
speech. Samples of conversations occurring in such activities as private conversations, class
lectures, etc. belong in this category. Speech acts, in a narrower sense, are the minimal terms
of the set "speech situation, speech event, and speech act". A speech act is an utterance which
functions as a functional unit in communication. It serves as the minimal unit of analysis.
Speech acts are conditioned by rules of conduct and interpretation. Acts such as, inviting,
refusing, thanking, etc. belong in this category.

3. 7. Macro and Micro speech acts

According to Stein (1992:262), conversation functions “in a well-structured,

hierarchical manner”. It contains a series of local speech acts. These two kinds of speech acts
are often referred to as “micro-” and “macro-speech acts” (van Dijk 1981).

Since micro- and macro- speech acts have such an intertwined relationship, they tend to
be constructed as “resembling the relationship of part and whole, element and set or member
and class (van Dijk 1980:3-9). Van Dijk (1977:238) argues:

Just like action in general, speech-act sequences require global planning and
interpretation. That is, certain sequences of various speech acts may be intended and

15
 understood, and hence function socially, as one speech act. Such a speech act performed by a
sequence of speech acts will be called a global speech act or a macro-speech act.

For example, a micro-speech act, be it an assertive or a directive, has its own

characteristics, or properties; therefore, it can be understood on its own terms without being
“referred up” to any macro-speech act. Its essential dimensions, such as the purpose of the act
and the direction of fit between words and the world, will remain intact regardless of what
kind of macro-speech act it belongs to.

On the other hand, although our conception and full understanding of any macro-speech
act within a discourse does, in one way or another, trace back to or call upon the meaning of
low-level micro-speech acts, it has its own cognitive “necessity” (van Dijk 1981:210). In
order to secure the overall discourse coherence, to comprehend local speech acts, we have to
mentally formulate some macro-speech acts relative to the topic discourse but not necessarily
derivable from each and every micro-speech act.

In fact, van Dijk (1981) uses the term macro- speech acts to refer to sequences of
speech acts which have an overall unity. This “overall unity”, according to Eemeren (1983),
implies that the macro- speech act consists of a group of speech acts which are in some way
related and thus constitute a whole. But van Dijk goes on to comment: ‘Thus we can overall
issue a request or a protest in a letter which itself consists of all sorts of other speech acts, e.g.
assertions, questions, suggestions, etc.’

Ferrara (1985), drawing on van Dijk (1977, 1981), explains the need to talk about
macro speech acts. Ferrara argues that speech act theory must be extended to capture the core
action of discourse. He claims that there is a distinction between understanding the text
semantically (what the talk means) and understanding the text pragmatically (what the talk
does). According to Ferrara, capturing “what the text does” involves identifying the set of
macro speech acts that “underlies the entire text and insures its pragmatic coherence”
(1985:149). Although the macro speech act is composed of myriad single speech acts in the
text, it can only be determined by reference to the dominant speech acts in the text. Ferrara
(1995) thus argues for a broader unit of analysis, the macro speech act, as a way of more
effectively investigating the relationship between language and action.

Similarly, to capture the interactive nature of speech acts, Edmondson suggested that
speech acts be examined as speech act sequences: “a sequence of speech acts, rather than
having a closed pair of such acts” (1981: 55).

3. 8. Indirect Speech Acts:

16
 Pragmatics literature classifies speech acts according to the degree of their explicitness
or directness. Speech acts have been divided into direct speech acts and indirect speech acts
(Leech, 1983; Searle, 1969, 1979, 1975). Accordingly, direct speech acts are those acts where
the utterance explicitly abides by its felicity conditions (especially the structural ones)
whereas indirect acts rely more on context in order to reconstruct the underlying speech act
performed. Thus speech acts could be placed on a continuum ranging from the most direct
down to the least direct act which may even be confused with a normal constative utterance.

Searle (1975) argues for a distinction of speech acts into direct speech acts and indirect
speech acts, and he claims that indirect speech acts are cases in which the literal meaning of a
speech act is not equal to its intended meaning. Leech (1983:97) regards the use of indirect
speech acts as a “hinting strategy” to utter “an illocution whose goal is interpreted as a
subsidiary goal for the performance of another illocution. Searle (1975) defines direct and
indirect speech acts in terms of “means-ends analysis”, which explains speaker’s problem-
solving strategy.

Searle (1975:62) views indirect speech acting as a combination of two acts, a primary
illocutionary act, and a secondary one. Moreover, in his speech act theory, Searle (1975) took
the line that there are basically two types of indirectness: conventional indirectness and non-
conventional indirectness (Emphasis is mine). Conventional indirectness refers to those
utterances which are standardized to perform only those acts conventionally designated for
certain functional purposes which are not assigned to them in their grammatical forms
(Searle, 1975). In the case of “Can you pass the salt?” both the means, i.e., the kind of ability
that is used as an indirect utterance, and the form, i.e., the exact wording (e.g., “can you” as
opposed to “are you able to”) are conventionalized to signal the illocutionary force.

The second type of indirectness, non-conventional indirectness, also referred to as

“hints”, comprises those utterances, which are ambiguous on either prepositional content or
illocutionary force or both. For example, by replying “I have to study for an exam” to an
invitation to a movie, the literal meaning of the utterance and the intended meaning, i.e.,
refusal, do not match. There is no systematic relation between the utterance and rejecting a
proposal as there is between “can you pass the salt” and its directive illocution. Its meaning is
very much context embedded. Non-conventional indirectness is “pragmatically vague,
heterogeneous in realization, high in deniability potential and infinite in number” (Searle,
1975).

For more clarification, according to Searle (1975), parts of indirect speech acts are
conventionally used to perform certain functions. Searle lists some linguistic forms
17
conventionally used to perform the function of directives. The conventionally indirect
directives are listed as follows:

Group 1 Sentences concerning H’s ability to perform A:

Can you reach the salt?

Group 2 Sentences concerning S’s wish or want that H will do A:

I would like you to go now.

Group 3 Sentences concerning H’s doing A:

Will you quit making that awful racket?

Group 4 Sentences concerning H’s desire or willingness to do A:

Do you want to hand me that hammer over there on the table?

Group 5 Sentences concerning reasons for doing A:

Why not stop here?

Group 6 Sentences embedding one of these elements inside another;

also, sentences embedding an explicit directive illocutionary verb

inside one of these contexts.

Might I ask you to take off your hat? (pp.268-269)

In illustrating indirect speech acts, McGowan, Tam and Hall (2009:496) explore another
example as illustrated below:

David approaches Monica at a club and says, ‘Hey, let’s dance,’ to which Monica replies, ‘I
don’t like this song.’

Notice that Monica’s utterance is literally a statement about her dislike of a particular
song. However, in this context, her utterance is also a rejection of David’s invitation.
Moreover, to reject David’s invitation is Monica’s primary illocutionary intention and she
satisfies that intention by way of making a statement about her dislike of a particular song. As
one can see, on the standard account, this utterance constitutes two distinct illocutionary acts:
the primary indirect illocutionary act of rejecting (David’s invitation to dance) and the
secondary direct illocutionary act of stating (her dislike of a particular song).

Searle (1975) extends the standard account by explaining how the addressee manages to
recognize the primary (indirect illocutionary) intention of the speaker. In other words, Searle
accounts for how the indirect speech act is successfully communicated. Appealing to Gricean-

18
style reasoning, Searle offers a potential reconstruction of how David might come to realize
that Monica’s statement is really a rejection of his offer:

Step 1: David made a proposal to Monica, and in response she has made a

statement to the effect that she does not like the song that is being

played (facts about the conversation).

Step 2: David assumes that Monica is cooperating in the conversation and

that therefore her remark is intended to be relevant (principles of

conversational cooperation).

Step 3: A relevant response must be one of acceptance, rejection,

counterproposal, further discussion, etc. (theory of speech acts).

Step 4: But her literal utterance was not one of these, and so was not a

relevant response (inference from Steps 1 and 3).

Step 5: Therefore, she probably means more than she says. Assuming that

her remark is relevant, her primary illocutionary point must differ

from her literal one (inference from Steps 2 and 4).

Step 6: David knows that people normally do not dance to songs they do

not like (factual background information).

Step 7: Therefore, Monica probably does not want to dance to a song she

does not like (inference from Step 6).

Step 8: A preparatory condition of accepting an offer is to want the thing

being offered (theory of speech acts).

Step 9: Therefore, David knows that Monica has said something that has

the consequence that she probably does not want to dance with him

(inference from Steps 1, 7, and 8).

Step 10: Therefore, her primary illocutionary intention is probably to reject

the offer to dance (inference from Steps 5 and 9).

( McGowan, Tam and Hall 2009:496)

19
 To summarize this in a more straightforward way: David invites Monica to dance. She
responds to what he said, but her utterance, on the surface anyway, does not appear to be a
response to his invitation. Since David presumes that Monica is a cooperative communicator,
he infers that Monica’s primary illocutionary intention diverges from the literal meaning of
her utterance. That is, David realizes that Monica must mean something more than what she
literally said. Using shared background information, David realizes that Monica is unlikely to
want to dance to a song she dislikes, so he infers that her primary illocutionary intention is to
reject his offer.

Notice that a crucial step in David’s reasoning occurs at step 8 when he realizes that
what Monica actually said means that an important pragmatic pre-condition for accepting his
offer is unmet. As a result, David realizes that Monica intends to reject his offer. Thus, as one
can see, Searle’s theory of speech acts has an important role in explaining how David
manages to recognize Monica’s primary illocutionary intention to reject his offer. As Searle
stresses, there is an important connection between what Monica actually said and one of the
conditions for the indirect speech act that she primarily intended to perform.

In talking about invitations, the target of this study, here is an example originally due to
Searle (1975:61). Somebody says to a friend:

Let’s go to the movies tonight.

And the friend answers:

I have to study for an exam.

In the example above, the second utterance in fact is a rejection of the proposal contained in
the first, while seeming to be completely unrelated to it and not containing any overt or
hidden negation, denial or rejection, or even a mention of the rejected offer. It is obvious that
in our daily conversations, interlocutors intentionally use a large number of indirect
utterances, instead of direct speech to achieve the goals of communication for some reasons,
such as politeness consideration or sarcastic purpose. Therefore, any indirect speech act is a
combination of two acts, a primary illocutionary act (in the example above, rejecting a
proposal), and a secondary one (in this case, making a statement), where the primary act
operates through, and in force of, the secondary one.

According to McGowan, Tam and Hall (2009:491), it is well known that a single
utterance, on a single occasion, can serve multiple purposes. When, for example, a woman
says, ‘I’m not feeling well’ in response to an invitation to a date, her utterance both describes

20
her state of wellbeing and it also functions as a refusal of that invitation. When a particular
utterance serves such multiple purposes, it is an indirect speech act. In this case, the direct and
literal assertion (that the speaker is not feeling well) also manages to communicate the
woman’s indirect and non-literal refusal.

For more illustration, “Can you come to my house?” is a syntactic form which is
conventionally used to perform the function of invitation. The inferential procedure by the
hearer is described as follows:

STEP 1: The speaker asked me a question about my ability to come to his

house (the fact of the conversation).

STEP 2: I assume that he is cooperating in the conversation and his

utterances have some aim (cooperative principle).

STEP 3: In the situation, the utterance does not indicate a theoretical

interest in the ability to come to his house (background information)

STEP 4: It is probable that the inviter knows the answer of the question is

yes (background information).

STEP 5: Therefore, he probably does not intend to ask a question but to

give another illocutionary point.

STEP 6: A preparatory condition for a directive illocutionary act is the

ability to perform the act (theory of speech acts).

STEP 7: Therefore, the speaker asks me a question. The affirmative answer

of which entails the preparatory condition for inviting me to come

to his house.

By correctly inferring the literal meaning from the primary illocutionary act, the hearer
can successfully interpret the question as an expression for invitation by relying on the
inferential abilities of the hearer and mutually shared linguistic and extra-linguistic
information. According to Wagner (1999:15), the hearer’s job is a complex one: he needs to
develop a strategy for establishing the existence of an illocutionary point beyond the
illocutionary point present in the structure of the utterance. In the case of nonliteral
utterances, we do not mean what our words mean but something else instead. With

21
NONLITERALITY the force or the content of the illocutionary act being performed is not the
one that would be predicted just from the meanings of the words being used.

Therefore, as one sentence may carry more than one meaning and function,
conversation inference between speaker and hearer must be well operated for the two
interlocutors to attain each other’s intended meaning in conversation. According to Searle
(1975), attaining the intended meaning of indirect speech acts heavily relies on inference,
with some tools necessarily involved to well operate the inference. Devices for inference
include theory of speech acts, cooperative principle, mutual background information between
interlocutors, and inference ability. Downing and Locke (2006:176) add that “Hearers use
inference to recover the intended meaning of specific points in a conversation, based on
assumptions of cooperativeness, truth, relevance and cultural knowledge”.

There are numerous contextual factors operating on both micro- and macro- social
levels, which may determine the way in which a given speech act is realized. Examples of
contextual factors include, but are not limited to: 1) the situation, 2) the roles of the speaker
and the hearer, 3) past conversational history between participants, 4) manner of speaking, 5)
the domain of interaction, and 6) prescribed social conventions operating for a given event,
eg., filing a lawsuit. In sum, neither Austin nor Searle mentions the notion of context as it
related to the validity and legitimate performance of speech acts.

Indirectness, as an effective communicative skill, is widely used to achieve certain

goals. When people speak or behave indirectly, they must have various purposes or motives
beneath, which need our attention to find out. In fact, the notion of indirect speech acts is still
a fertile field of study.

Mey (2001: 111) states that “Often, we may have to disregard that form, and instead
look for a ‘deeper’ or ‘implied’ meaning. According to Pinker, Martin and Lee (2008:838),
“people often don’t blurt out what they mean in so many words but veil their intentions in
innuendo, euphemism, or doublespeak”. The surface form of a particular linguistic expression
does not always and necessarily tell the truth about what it is doing. According to Chen
(2010:148), this straightforward means is not unique. In fact, in daily life, in most cases,
people do not utter what they intend to say directly and without preamble, but insinuate to
others to express their thought indirectly and implicitly.

Similarly, Zhang and You (2009:99) state that in our daily communication, we always
“want to form and keep good relationships with others, avoid embarrassment,
misunderstanding or friction, and maintain interpersonal and social harmony”.

22
 According to Locastro (2006) and AlFattah (2010), the use of indirectness leaves the
speaker a way out if he is challenged by the addressee. Indirectness provides “means to deny
perceived intentions, avoid conflict and escape from responsibility for an utterance allows the
speaker to avoid responsibility for a direct request (Locastro, 2006).

The notions of indirectness and politeness4 have generated much discussion among
linguists and pragmaticians (e.g. Brown and Levinson, 1987; Fraser, 1978; Lakoff, 1973;
Leech, 1983; Searle, 1975). Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) made a strong connection
between the two, arguing that a higher degree of indirectness shows more politeness. That is,
the more the speaker risks loss of face in performing an act such as a request, the more
indirect the strategy he or she uses to be polite. In their model politeness means to minimize
the threat of face loss incurred by performing the act, and indirectness is a strategy used to
achieve the goal (Kobayashi and Rinnert, 1999:1174). Brown and Levinson (1987) state that
the degree of indirectness is inversely proportional to the degree of face threat. Consequently,
the greater the face threat, the greater the need to use linguistic politeness and the more
indirectness is used (Locastro, 2006). Therefore, indirectness is frequently regarded as polite,
although researchers on this topic (Locastro, 2006: 123) and Thomas, (1995: 119-192)
regards indirectness, both conventional and conversational, as a strategy to achieve
communicative goals, face-saving being one.

Leech (1983:108) maintained the same parallel relation between indirectness and
politeness, offering two rationales:

(1) Indirectness increases the degree of optionality, and (2) when an illocution (speech
act) is more indirect, its force tends to be diminished and more tentative.

The notion of politeness and its relation with invitations will be explored in detail in
the next chapters. However, in conclusion, what is or is not taken to be a polite utterance
depends completely on the moment of the utterance in linguistic practice and relies on the
participants' habits in the verbal interaction.

To sum up, the motivation for indirectness seems to be more or less clear but the
question most linguists deal with is: How is it possible that the hearer understands what the
speaker actually communicates by his utterance? To answer this cardinal question, the theory
of implicature and the cooperative principle have been developed.

3.9. Speech acts and the Cooperative Principle (CP):

4
A detailed exploration of indirectness and its relation to politeness is available in Chapter 5.
23
 While verbal exchanges go beyond sentential level to involve conversation inference,
the interlocutors need a communicative principle consented to both interlocutors to ensure
that their verbal exchanges in the conversation comply to cooperation, which is the basic
requirement to have a successful communication. Grice (1975:45) proposes “Cooperative
Principle”, claiming that the principles control speech acts to achieve verbal exchange. One
could assume that the interactants in a conversation have to regard what Grice (1957) calls the
cooperative principle:

"Make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted
purpose of direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged."

According to Grice, the Cooperative Principle (CP, hereafter) includes four maxims, as
given below, and these maxims and their submaxims can be implemented either by
conformation or violation.

(1) Maxim of Quantity:

(a) Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the
exchange;

(b) Do not make your contribution more informative than is required;

According to Widdowson (2007), there is no need to give information by means of

language if it is already common knowledge. He says “If they underestimate how much
context is shared and so overtextualize by producing too much language then what they say
will be heard or read as pointlessly wordy, or verbose. If, on the other hand, they overestimate
the extent of shared contextual knowledge, and so under-textualize, then what they say will be
heard read as obscure” (2007:57).

(2) Maxim of Quality: Try to make your contribution one that is true, specifically:

(a) Do not say what you believe to be false;

(b) Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence;

Yule (1996) says that the importance of the maxim of quality for cooperative
interaction in English may be measured by the number of expressions which we use in our
conversation to show that what we are saying is not totally accurate. He mentions the
examples below for more illustration:

A- As far as I know, they are married.

24
 B- I may be mistaken, but I thought I saw a wedding ring on her finger.

C- He could not live without her, I guess. (Ibid: 38 ).

The initial italicized phrases of A and B, and the final phrase of C are notes to the listener
regarding the accuracy of the main statement.

(3) Maxim of Relation: Do make your contribution relevant;

According to Widdowson (2007:61) relation is “to make what you say relevant to the topic or
purpose of the communication”.

(4) Maxim of Manner: Be perspicuous and specifically:

(a) Avoid obscurity. (b) Avoid ambiguity.

(c) Be brief. (d) Be orderly.

These maxims are not rules that conversationalists are required to obey. Rather they are
rational and logical principles to be observed for a coherent and efficient communication of
meaning by cooperation between interactants. Grice is only referring to the kind and degree of
cooperation that is necessary for people to make sense of one another’s contributions. In some
occasions, interactants may decide to flout some of Grice’s four maxims, to be uninformative,
evasive, irrelevant or obscure. Still, their ambiguous behavior is itself intended to be
meaningful, and is going to be inferred as meaningful by the recipient “Implicuture”. Grice
(1975:32) says “If the maxims are breached, or ostentatiously flouted, the hearer infers that
the speaker must have something else that is that speaker must have had some special reason
for not observing the maxims”. He says flouting the maxims also leads to implicatures.

In fact, the conversational implicature is a message that is not found in the plain sense
of the sentence. The speaker implies it. The hearer is able to infer (work out, read between the
lines) this message in the utterance, by appealing to the rules governing successful
conversational interaction. Grice (1975:32) proposed that implicatures can be calculated by
understanding three things:

1. The usual linguistic meaning of what is said.

2. Contextual information (shared or general knowledge).

3. The assumption that the speaker is obeying what Grice calls the cooperative principle.

25
 Leech and Thomas (1985: 181) define conversational implicatures as "pragmatic
implications which the addressee figures out by assuming the speaker's underlying adherence
to the CP". The blatancy of the flouting of the maxims leads to the generation of a
conversational implicature. Therefore, Grice distinguished between what is SAID in making
an utterance, that which determines the truth value of the contribution, and the total of what is
communicated.

Many commentators have assumed that Grice's cooperative principle is built on some
prior notion of human benevolence and cooperativeness. They have argued that Grice is
making some kind of ethical claim about human behavior (cf. Kiefer, 1979; Platt, 1977, 1982;
Sampson, 1982 and Pinker, 2007). But nothing is further from the truth. The cooperative
principle functions as a device to explain how people arrive at meaning. There is certainly no
assumption that people are inevitably truthful, informative, and relevant in what they say (see
Thomas, 1986: chapter 2). In other words, a speaker may sometimes maliciously and falsely
tell the hearer what he himself does not believe to be true. This flouting of a maxim can serve
as a good device for leading the addressee toward a covert, implied meaning (cf. Grice, 1975).
This last kind of explanation of the cooperative principle is basic to what Grice called
Conversational Implicatures.

The cooperative principle has been criticized on two grounds:

1. The cooperative principle cannot, in itself, explain why people are often so indirect in
conveying what they mean;

2. It fails to account for what the relationship between sense and force (considering non-
directive utterances) is.

It has also been argued that the cooperative principle does not stand up to the evidence
of real language use. Larkin and O'Malley (1973), for instance, argue that the majority of
declarative sentences do not have an information bearing function. Keenan (1976) believes
that the maxims of the cooperative principle are not universal to language because there are
linguistic communities to which not all of them apply.

Grice does not of course prescribe the use of such maxims. Nor does he (I hope)
suggest that we use them artificially to construct conversations. But they are useful for
analyzing and interpreting conversation, and may reveal purposes of which (either as speaker
or listener) we were not previously aware. Very often, we communicate particular non-literal
meanings by appearing to “violate” or “flout” these maxims. If you were to hear someone

26
described as having “one good eye”, you might well assume the person's other eye was
defective, even though nothing had been said about it at all.

The author of this theory, an English language philosopher Paul Grice, scientifically
clarifies the subject of mutual speaker-hearer understanding and says that we are able to
converse with one another because we recognize common goals in conversation and specific
ways of achieving these goals. In any conversation, only certain kinds of moves are possible
at any particular time because of the constraints that operate to govern exchanges
(Wardahaugh, 1992: 289). According to Grice, there is a set of over-arching assumptions
guiding the conduct of conversation which arise from basic rational consideration (Levinson,
1983: 101). Levinson also adds to this that the assumptions can be understood as guidelines
leading the course of the conversation (Levinson, 1983: 101).

Speech act theory and the cooperative principle have created much debate. In fact,
Grice’s influential articles (1957, 1967), while not dealing directly with the problems that
occupied Austin, nevertheless have had a profound influence on speech act theory. In the
earlier of these papers, Grice promulgated the idea that ordinary communication takes place
not directly by means of convention, but in virtue of a speaker’s evincing certain intentions
and getting his or her audience to recognize those intentions (and to recognize that it was the
speaker’s intention to secure this recognition.) This holds, Grice suggested, both for speech
and for other sorts of intentional communicative acts. In his view, the utterance is not in itself
communicative, but only provides clues to the intentions of the speaker.

Grice (1975) suggests four categories of maxims that are applicable to linguistic actions
but which have analogues in other types of actions. The maxims given here are applicable to
actions in general but apply to speech acts as a special case.

While not denying the role of Gricean intentions in communication, Searle (1970:49-
50) argues that such an account is incomplete because 1) it fails to distinguish communication
that proceeds by using meanings of the kind that only natural languages make available, and
2) it fails to distinguish between acts that succeed solely by means of getting the addressee to
recognize the speaker’s intention to achieve a certain (perlocutionary) effect and those for
which and those for which that recognition is “…in virtue of (by means of) H[earer]’s
knowledge of (certain of) the rules governing (the elements of) [the uttered sentence]” (Searle
1970: 49-50). These Searle labels ILLOCUTIONARY EFFECTS.

Searle (2002) states that his objections to Grice rest on the fact that Grice was confusing
meaning with communication. Searle (2002:8) argues that:

27
 Within a speech act we need to distinguish the part which represents conditions of
satisfaction in one or the other illocutionary modes, from the part that has to do with
communicating that whole package to a hearer. Meaning, in short cannot be identified with
communication. Grice gives a theory of communication, not a theory of meaning. I analyzed
meaning, then, in terms of a double level of intentionality in the performance of the speech
act.

Searle (2002:4) adds

By analyzing meaning in terms of the intention to produce an effect on a hearer, Grice

treats as identical two distinct features of the speech act: the content and force of the speech
act (the meaning of the utterance) on the one hand, and the communication of that content
and force to the hearer (the production of the effect), on the other. By giving an account of
meaning in term of intentionality, and distinguishing meaning from communication, I
believe I got a much simpler and a more powerful theory of speech acts.

To sum up this section, Pinker (2007:443) argues that the cooperative principle is a
good start, but it is not complete. “Like many good-of-the-group theories in social science, CP
assumes the speaker and the hearer are working in perfect harmony. We need to understand
what happens when the interests of a speaker and a hearer are partly in conflict, as they often
are in real life” (Pinker, 2007:443)

3.10. Universality versus Culture-Specificity of Speech Acts

When it comes to linguistic behavior like speech acts, the issue of universality versus
culture-specificity has been of great interest to pragmatics. Some scholars claim that speech
acts operate by universal principles of pragmatics (e.g., Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969, 1975,
1979), by which communicative interaction between speaker and addressee is governed, as
well as by some general mechanisms such as principles of cooperation (Grice, 1975) or of
politeness (e.g., Brown & Levinson, 1978, 1987; Leech, 1983). Furthermore, it is suggested
that the strategies for realizing specific linguistic behavior are essentially identical across
different cultures and languages, although the appropriate use of any given strategy may not
be identical across speech communities (Fraser, 1985). In contrast, other theorists maintain
that speech acts vary in both conceptualization and realization across languages and cultures,
and that their modes of performance are mainly motivated by differences in deep-seated
cultural conventions and assumptions (e.g., Blum-Kulka, House, & Kasper, 1989; Green,
1975).

The issue of universality versus culture-specificity in speech act studies is still hotly
debated. Typical of this debate are the opposing views of Searle (e.g., 1975) and Wierzbicka
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(e.g., 1991). For example, Searle (1975), supporting Austin's (1962) claim that speech acts are
semantic universals and hence not culture-bound, maintains that across languages and
cultures, there are general norms for realizing speech acts and conducting politeness behavior,
and that while the forms embodying these norms may vary from one language to another, the
cross-cultural differences are not that important. However, Wierzbicka (1991), providing
examples from Polish and Japanese, objects to this universalistic stand and contends that
choosing circumstances for performing certain speech acts is based on cultural norms and
values rather than on general mechanisms. She argues that any existing claims to universality
in speech act behavior are necessarily subjective and ethnocentric. Given the fact that only a
few speech acts and languages have been studied in the literature, existing claims for
universality are severely called into question by studies such as Wierzbicka's (Yu, 2005).

To examine whether there are universal pragmatic mechanisms in speech act

realization, Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper (1989) engaged in a comprehensive study that
can be considered the most ambitious and comprehensive speech act study to date--the Cross
Cultural Speech Act Realization Project. They focused on three linguistic varieties of English
and five other languages to investigate whether or not there were universal pragmatic
principles in the realization patterns of requests and apologies. Although seeming to support
claims for universal categories of main request and apology strategies, their findings indicated
not only that the particular manifestations of these strategies were not similar across
languages, but that these strategies carried different social meanings across cultures.
Nevertheless, there was an inherent flaw in that study, that is, its potential Western bias, for
all languages studied were either Western or heavily affected by Western cultures. It is
conceivable that only when speech act research is extended to include more non-Western
languages, especially those like Chinese and Arabic which are reputed to bear very different
socio-cultural conventions from the Western languages, could substantive universal claims be
warranted (Yu, 2005). Accordingly, the present cross-cultural study widens the scope of
speech act studies by examining the speech act of inviting in Palestinian Arabic, and may
hence shed some light on the issue of universality versus culture-specificity.

3.11. A critique of the Speech Act Theory:

Speech act theory has been commented upon by many linguistic philosophers. Even
though influential in a number of fields, it has not been without its critics. One significant
misconception that may stem from Searle's classification of speech acts is that each
conversation consists of only one single speech act. A good number of conversations,
however, are multifunctional. According to Labov and Fanshel (1977: 29), "most utterances

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can be seen as performing several speech acts simultaneously." Conversation is not a chain of
utterances, but rather a matrix of utterances and actions "bound together by a web of
understanding and reactions."

Flowerdew (1990: 81-103) lists the most important flaws and drawbacks of the speech
act theory. These flaws are perceivable in the following domains:

1) The exact number of speech acts;

2) Discrete categories versus scale of meaning;

3) Indirect speech acts and concept of literal force;

4) Contrast between specific and diffuse acts;

5) Size of speech act realization forms;

6) Relation between locution, illocution, and interaction; and

7) Relation between the whole and the parts in discourse.

LoCastro (2006) also claims there is a need to expand the analysis of speech acts in
isolation to study them in context, since the comprehension of the pragmatic meaning implied
in a speech act must take into consideration not only linguistic forms but all other contextual
and interactional factors. In this regard, Kasper (2006) argues for the need to analyze speech
acts in interaction by applying a discursive approach to speech act pragmatics.

Vanderveken (1994:53) argues that “There is a common sense argument shared by

philosophers and linguists in favor of the possible extension of speech act theory to discourse
analysis”. Vanderveken (1994:53) adds that “Speech acts are not isolated moves in
communication: they appear in more global units of communication, defined as conversations
or discourses”.

Likewise van Dijk (2008:vi) states that speech act theories have “formally accounted
for some of the properties of Speakers and Hearers, such as their knowledge, wishes or status,
so as to formulate appropriateness conditions, but have not further pursued a systematic
analysis of such contextual conditions”.

Martines-Flor and Uso-Juan (2010:8) present a prolonged critique of Searle’s theory of

speech acts. One of the most important issues that they have argued against Searle’s (1976)
suggested typology that refers to the fact that the illocutionary force of a concrete speech act
cannot take the form of a sentence as Searle considered it. They claim that a sentence is a
grammatical unit within the formal system of language, whereas the speech act involves a

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communicative function. Moreover, Martines-Flor and Uso-Juan (2010:8) defend
conversation contextual analysis as the most suitable proposal to be applied in speech act
research.

Thomas (1995) criticizes Searle’s Typology on the grounds that it only accounts for
formal considerations. In fact, she states that speech acts cannot be regarded in a way
appropriate to grammar as Searle tried to do and suggests these functional units of
communication may be characterized in terms of principles instead of formal rules. In line
with Leech (1983), who focuses on meaning and presents a functional perspective of speech
acts against a formal viewpoint, Thomas (1995) also suggests “functional, psychological and
affective factors influencing speech acts”. Additionally, as claimed by her, distinguishing
among speech acts in clear-cut categories following Searle’s rules is not always possible.

Zimmerman (2005:19) criticizes speech act theory and focuses on the way indirect
speech acts are dealt with in Interactional Sociolinguistics. He affirms that Speech Act Theory
also recognizes indirect speech acts (as those in which form does not match the intention), but
does not fully account for “symbolic value of speech”. It considers “situational cues as
marginal to what is said”. In contrast, Interactional Sociolinguistics deals primarily with these
aspects of verbal communication. Insofar as any speech act intention is modified in respect to
anticipated behavior of other participants, all speech acts are multifunctional and are to a
certain degree indirect. Their multiple meanings are revealed by relating them to a linguistic
system of social interaction. The interpersonal conventions, ambiguity, avoidance devices,
face saving and risk taking aspects of linguistic behavior are the means by which the
discourse participants are aligned (or realigned) according to their roles in defining the
conversational framework and accepting it. For instance, interrogative form can be employed
in directives, reminders, in nagging, and in other speech acts widely different from
information requests (Boxer, 2002). According to Zimmerman (2005:19), the differentiation
of meaning depends on contextualization cues: the non-verbal signals that are intuitively
decoded, as well as the verbal signals, such as the details of intonation, and also lexical and
syntactic choices.

Habermas (1988) sees the importance of Searle's approach in that he considers

language as a means for coordinating actions. He criticizes Searle, however, for overlooking
the orientation of the participants. According to Habermas (1988), Searle does not distinguish
between the situation in which H performs the requested act because he wants to evade
sanctions, and the situation in which he does so because he accepts the validity of S's claims
in a rational way. According to Habermas (1988), communication succeeds only when H does

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what is requested because he considers the request to be valid. When he does not accept the
validity claim of S, the communication has not eo ipso failed but can be continued by
negotiating about the validity claims.

Masaki (2004:33) illustrates Strawson’s (1969) critique on Speech Act Theory.

According to Masaki (2004), “Strawson views speech acts as not necessarily dependent on
conventions that function as connecting factors between utterance and what is meant by it”. In
other words, a person can act without using an existing convention all the time in order to
perform an act by saying something. Instead, the contention by Strawson is that it is
“intention” that takes a role of acting by saying something.

To sum up this section on speech acts, speech act theory is a widely disputed field and
issues such as what speech acts are and how they are classified seem to be culture specific,
and not as universal as some of the studies presented above have described. Evidence on
speech act perception and realization from different cultures have demonstrated that more
research needs to be done in order to provide a theory that has an integrated approach to
speech acts. Thus, besides carefully defining the term used in the research and creating an
appropriate taxonomy, social, cultural, and pragmatic influences on the meaning, perception,
and production of speech acts need to be considered.

3.12. Speech Act Research:

Speech act studies can be classified into four broad categories. First, there are those
studies that are referred to as intra-lingual as they focus on examining speech acts within a
single language or culture, such as apologies in Arabic (Samara, 2010), apologies in Korean
(Hahn, 2006) compliments in Chinese (Yuan, 1998), requests in Yemeni Arabic (Al-Marrani
& Sazalie, 2010) or congratulations in Peruvian Spanish (García 2009). These studies, in fact,
explored speech acts’ strategies in regard to speakers’ native language (see also Al-kahtani,
2005; Cheng, 2009; Karimnia & Afghari, 2010; Sharifian, 2005).

A second group of studies is referred to as cross-cultural, and these examine the

realization of speech acts in two or more languages or cultures; for example, comparing the
speech act of apology in Arabic and American English (Bataineh, 2004) and thanking in
English and Spanish (Pablos-Ortega, 2010), or examining refusal strategies in German and
American English (Beckers, 1999). The present study falls within this category since it
tackles the speech act of inviting in Palestinian Arabic and American English by highlighting
differences and similarities that exist in the two speech communities.

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 A third group of studies examines the effectiveness of different data collection methods
in speech act research, such as comparing writing-based data collection instruments to
observation of naturally-occurring speech (Golato, 2003).

A fourth group of studies focuses on the language learner by examining how learners
perform speech acts and how their performance compares to that of native speakers of L1 and
L2. These learner-centered studies are generally referred to as interlanguage pragmatic
studies. Some of these studies also investigated characteristics of non-native speakers’ speech
acts in comparison to native speakers (Ahmadian & Vahid Dastjerdi, 2010; Al-Eryani, 2007;
Bryant Smith, 2009; Parvaresh & Eslami Rasekh, 2009; Wannaruk, 2008; Wolfson, 1981).
The present study belongs also to this category since it focuses on language learners and their
performance.

Therefore, the interlanguage pragmatic studies can also be further subdivided into four
subcategories: descriptive studies, instruction-based studies, study-abroad studies, and studies
investigating the realization of speech acts online. The descriptive studies describe the
strategies used by learners and compare them to those used by native speaker of L1 and L2.
The word strategies here refers to the semantic formulas speakers use to perform a certain
speech act. For example, the strategies used for performing the speech act of refusal may
include: apologizing, thanking, giving an excuse, giving an explanation, expressing hesitation,
setting conditions for acceptance, expressing empathy etc. Analysis of these strategies also
includes an examination of the mitigation devices speakers use to soften the illocutionary
force of their refusals (e.g., hedging devices such as modifiers or quantifiers). Tamanaha
(2003), for example, examined the realization of the speech acts of apology and complaint by
American learners of Japanese and compared their performance to that of native speakers of
Japanese and native speakers of American English.

The second sub-category of instruction-based studies (also called interventional studies)

includes studies that examine the effects of instruction on the development of the language
learner’s pragmatic competence. For example, Rueda (2004) looked at whether pragmatic
instruction improved Colombian EFL learners’ ability to produce the speech acts of requests,
apologies and compliments appropriately and whether the effects of such instruction were
retained over time.

The third sub-category of study abroad studies includes studies that are usually
longitudinal and examine the effects of study abroad programs on the foreign language
learner’s acquisition of pragmatic competence. For example, Warga and Scholmberger (2007)
investigated the effects of immersion in the target language community on the pragmatic
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competence of a group of learners. They specifically examined the development of the
pragmatic ability in the production of the speech act of apology by a group of Austrian
learners of French who spent ten months studying at the University of Quebec in Montreal,
Canada.

Finally, the fourth sub-category of interlangauge speech act studies refers to those
studies that explore how language learners realize speech acts online. This is a new but
growing field of investigation. Chen (2004), for example, investigated how Taiwanese
students communicated meaning successfully in their e-mail correspondence with their
American counterparts. He examined how the Taiwanese students’ speech act behavior as
well as their cultural background affected their communication online. Although some might
argue that this group of studies belongs to the sub-category of descriptive studies, the use of
the medium of computer-mediated communication, and what it entails in terms of the type of
language used as well as other methodological implications warrants the investigation of this
line of research under a separate category.

With regard to data collection methods, most of speech act studies have used the
Discourse Completion Test (DCT), which was first introduced by Blum-Kulka (1982). This
popular elicitation instrument consists of descriptions of a number of scenarios, each of which
requires the participant to produce a certain speech act (e.g., apology, complaint,
compliment). Participants can perform the speech act in writing (written DCT) or orally (oral
DCT). Other data collection methods include the role play which involves the researcher or
some other native speaker role playing, or acting out, a number of scenarios with the
participants. These scenarios are designed to elicit specific speech acts. Speech act data can
also be collected through observation of naturally-occurring speech as it is the case with this
study.

Some of these different methods will be explained in detail in this study. Data analysis
in speech act research has usually included both quantitative and qualitative methods. Almost
all speech act studies include frequency counts of the different strategies used by speakers in
realizing speech acts. In many of these studies both descriptive and inferential statistics are
used. Qualitative analysis is also used, especially in studies that use naturally-occurring data
or role play data.

Furthermore, many pragmatic studies have been involved with investigating the
influential factors in speech act performance such as gender (e.g. Allami, 2006; Bryant Smith,
2009; Sumhung Li, 2010) and proficiency (e.g. Allami & Naimi, 2010; Nguyen, 2007;
Wannaruk , 2008). Thus, this study aims to investigate the influence of gender, age and social
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distance as factors that affect the realization of the speech act of inviting in Palestinian Arabic
and American English.

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