SPEECH ACT THEORY

In the philosophy of language and linguistics, speech act is something

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

According to Kent Bach, "almost any speech act is really the

performance of several acts at once, distinguished by different
aspects of the speaker's intention: there is the act of saying
something, what one does in saying it, such as requesting or
promising, and how one is trying to affect one's audience".

The contemporary use of the term "speech act" goes back to J. L.

Austin's development of performative utterances and his theory of
locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts. Speech acts serve
their function once they are said or communicated. These are
commonly taken to include acts such as apologizing, promising,
ordering, answering, requesting, complaining, warning, inviting,
refusing, and congratulating.

History

For much of the history of the positivist philosophy of language,

language was viewed primarily as a way of making factual assertions,
and the other uses of language tended to be ignored, as Austin states
at the beginning, "It was for too long the assumption of philosophers
that the business of a 'statement' can only be to 'describe' some state
of affairs, or to 'state some fact', which it must do either truly or
falsely. Wittgenstein came up with the idea of "don't ask for the
meaning, ask for the use," showing language as a new vehicle for
social activity. Speech act theory hails from Wittgenstein's
philosophical theories. Wittgenstein believed meaning derives from
pragmatic tradition, demonstrating the importance of how language is
used to accomplish objectives within specific situations. By following
rules to accomplish a goal, communication becomes a set of language
games. Thus, utterances do more than reflect a meaning, they are
words designed to get things done. The work of J. L. Austin,
particularly his How to Do Things with Words, led philosophers to pay
more attention to the non-declarative uses of language. The
terminology he introduced, especially the notions "locutionary act",
"illocutionary act", and "perlocutionary act", occupied an important
role in what was then to become the "study of speech acts". All of
these three acts, but especially the "illocutionary act", are nowadays
commonly classified as "speech acts".

Speech acts can be analysed on multiple levels:

1. A locutionary act: the performance of an utterance: the actual

utterance and its apparent meaning, comprising any and all of
its verbal, social, and rhetorical meanings, all of which
correspond to the verbal, syntactic and semantic aspects of any
meaningful utterance;
2. An illocutionary act: the active result of the implied request or
meaning presented by the locutionary act. For example, if the
locutionary act in an interaction is the question "Is there any
salt?" the implied illocutionary request is "Please pass the salt
to me." or at least "I wish to add salt to my meal.";
3. and under certain conditions a further perlocutionary act: the
actual effect of the locutionary and illocutionary acts, such as
persuading, convincing, scaring, enlightening, inspiring, or
otherwise getting someone to do or realize something, whether
intended or not.
4. Additionally, a metalocutionary act categorizes speech acts
that refer to the forms and functions of the discourse itself
rather than continuing the substantive development of the
discourse, or to the configurational functions of prosody and
punctuation.

Illocutionary acts

The concept of an illocutionary act is central to the concept of a

speech act. Although there are several scholarly opinions regarding
how to define 'illocutionary acts', there are some kinds of acts that
are widely accepted as illocutionary. Examples of these widely
accepted acts are commands or promises.

The first of these opinions is the one held by John L. Austin who
coined the term "speech act" in his book How to Do Things with Words
published posthumously in 1962. According to Austin's preliminary
informal description, the idea of an "illocutionary act" can be captured
by emphasizing that "by saying something, we do something", as
when someone issues an order to someone to go by saying "Go!", or
when a minister joins two people in marriage saying, "I now
pronounce you husband and wife." (Austin would eventually define
the "illocutionary act" in a more exact manner.)

John R. Searle gave an alternative to Austin's explanation of the

illocutionary act saying, a "speech act" is often meant to refer to
exactly the same thing as the term illocutionary act. Searle's work on
speech acts is understood to further refine Austin's conception.
However, some philosophers have pointed out a significant difference
between the two conceptions: whereas Austin emphasized the
conventional interpretation of speech acts, Searle emphasized a
psychological interpretation (based on beliefs, intentions, etc.)

Perlocutionary acts

While illocutionary acts relate more to the speaker, perlocutionary

acts are centered around the listener. Perlocutionary acts always have
a 'perlocutionary effect', which is the effect a speech act has on a
listener. This could affect the listener's thoughts, emotions or even
their physical actions. An example of this could be if someone uttered
the sentence "I'm hungry." The perlocutionary effect on the listener
could be the effect of being persuaded by the utterance. For example,
after hearing the utterance, the listener could be persuaded to make
a sandwich for the speaker.

Performative speech acts

An interesting type of illocutionary speech act is that performed in the

utterance of what Austin calls performative utterances, typical
instances of which are "I nominate John to be President", "I sentence
you to ten years' imprisonment", or "I promise to pay you back." In
these typical, rather explicit cases of performative sentences, the
action that the sentence describes (nominating, sentencing,
promising) is performed by the utterance of the sentence itself. J.L.
Austin claimed that performative sentences could be "happy or
unhappy". They were only happy if the speaker does the actions he or
she talks about. They were unhappy if this did not happen.
Performative speech acts also use explicit verbs instead of implicit
ones. For example, stating "I intend to go." does convey information,
but it does not really mean that you are [e.g.] promising to go; so it
does not count as "performing" an action ("such as" the action of
promising to go). Therefore, it [the word "intend"] is an implicit verb;
i.e., a verb that would not be suitable for use in performative speech
acts.
Indirect speech acts

In the course of performing speech acts people communicate with

each other. The content of communication may be identical, or almost
identical, with the content intended to be communicated, as when a
stranger asks, "What is your name?" However, the meaning of the
linguistic means used may also be different from the content intended
to be communicated. One may, in appropriate circumstances, request
Peter to do the dishes by just saying, "Peter ...!", or one can promise
to do the dishes by saying, "Me!"[citation needed]

One common way of performing speech acts is to use an expression,

which indicates one speech act, and indeed performs this act, but also
performs a further speech act, which is indirect. One may, for
instance, say, "Peter, can you close the window?", thereby asking
Peter whether he will be able to close the window, but also requesting
that he does so. Since the request is performed indirectly, by means
of (directly) performing a question, it counts as an indirect speech act.

An even more indirect way of making such a request would be to say,

in Peter's presence in the room with the open window, "I'm cold." The
speaker of this request must rely upon Peter's understanding of
several items of information that is not explicit: that the window is
open and is the cause of them being cold, that being cold is an
uncomfortable sensation and they wish it to be taken care of, and that
Peter cares to rectify this situation by closing the window. This, of
course, depends much on the relationship between the requester and
Peter—he might understand the request differently if they were his
boss at work than if they were his girlfriend or boyfriend at home. The
more presumed information pertaining to the request, the more
indirect the speech act may be considered to be.

Indirect speech acts are commonly used to reject proposals and to

make requests. For example, if a speaker asks, "Would you like to
meet me for coffee?" and the other replies, "I have class", the second
speaker has used an indirect speech act to reject the proposal. This is
indirect because the literal meaning of "I have class" does not entail
any sort of rejection.

In other words, this means that one does not need to say the words
apologize, pledge, or praise in order to show they are doing the
action. All the examples above show how the actions and indirect
words make something happen rather than coming out
straightforward with specific words and saying it.