Speech Acts
Presented by Farangis Shahidzade
Under the Supervision of Dr. Allami
Designed by Andrew D. Cohen (2008)
When speakers perform utterances, they
accomplish two things: (1)
interactional acts and (2) speech acts.
Interactional acts impose structure on the
discourse by ensuring that one utterance leads
smoothly to another.
Speech acts constitute attempts by language
users to perform specific actions, in particular
interpersonal functions.
Half a century ago, John Austin gave a series of
lectures at Harvard published as How to Do
Things with Words. He presented a new picture of
analyzing meaning; meaning is described in a
relation among linguistic conventions correlated
with words/sentences. The idea is that in uttering
a sentence
utilizing linguistic conventions+
associated intention = linguistic act
Speech-act theory as a subfield of pragmatics is concerned
with the ways in which sentences can be used not only to
present information but also to carry out actions. Here are
some examples of common speech acts :
Greeting:"Hi, Eric. How are things going?"
Request:"Could you pass me the potatoes, please?"
Complaint:"I’ve already been waiting three weeks for the
computer, and I was told it would be delivered within a week."
Invitation:"We’re having some people over Saturday evening
and wanted to know if you’d like to join us."
Compliment: "Hey, I really like your tie!"
Refusal: "Oh, I’d love to see that movie with you but this
Friday I am really busy."
What Are the General Functions of Speech
Acts?
In general, speech acts are acts of
communication expressing a certain
attitude, and the type of speech act being
performed corresponds to the type of
attitude being expressed. For example, a
statement expresses a belief, a request
expresses a desire, and an apology
expresses a regret.
Some speech acts, however, are not primarily
acts of communication and have the function
of affecting institutional state of affairs. They
can do so in either of two ways. Some
officially judge something to be the case, and
others actually make something the case.
Those of the first kind include judges' rulings,
referees' decisions etc, and the latter include
firing and appointing.
What Is Performative/Non-Performative
Utterance?
Austin claimed that some sentences were in
themselves a kind of action; thus by uttering
I promise to take a taxi home
the speaker makes a promise rather than just
describing one. This kind of utterance he called
performative utterances; they perform the action
named by the first verb in the sentence such as
promising, inviting, apologizing and warning.
What Is the Term Felicity Conditions?
In speech-act theory, felicity conditions refer to
the conditions that must be in place and the
criteria that must be satisfied for a speech act to
achieve its purpose.
Several kinds of felicity conditions are:
(1) essential condition (whether a speaker intends
that an utterance be acted upon by the addressee).
2) sincerity condition (whether the speech act is
(
being performed seriously and sincerely);
(3) preparatory condition (whether the authority
of the speaker and the circumstances of the
speech act are appropriate to its being performed
successfully).
As an example, suppose I am joking with
some friends and say, 'I now pronounce
you husband and wife.' I have not, in fact,
married them. My speech act is
infelicitous. This speech act fails because,
among other things, I must have a certain
institutional authority for my words to have
the appropriate illocutionary force. Part of
the felicity conditions for marrying people
concerns the institutional position of the
speaker.
A good example is 'I order you to clean the
room,' or 'Clean your room,’. Such utterances
will only be orders if the following felicity
conditions are in operation by both the sender
and the receiver.
1. The sender believes the action should be
done.
2.The receiver has the ability to do the action.
3.The receiver has the obligation to do the
action.
4. The sender has the right to tell the receiver to
do the action.
By the concept of speech acts and the felicity
conditions , Austin showed that to utter a
performative sentence is to be evaluated in
terms of conventionality, actuality, and
intentionality of uttering the sentence.
Conventionality is associated conventions
which are valid (without which the purported
act is disallowed; a violation of the felicity
conditions). The speaker’s actual, accurate
utterance of the sentence to the hearer is
actuality. An associated intention of the
speaker is intentionality.
Explicit and Implicit Performative
Explicit performatives are characterized by
special features:
1. They begin with a first person verb in
simple present: I bet, I warn, etc.
2. Their verbs belong to a special class
describing verbal activities like promise,
warn, sentence, name, bet, pronounce.
Generally, their performative nature can be
emphasized by inserting the adverb hereby,
thus I hereby sentence you to....
Speech Acts and Illocutionary Meaning
According to speech act theory, the
performance of a speech act involves the
performance of three types of act:
1.Locutionary act (the conveyance of
propositional or literal meaning for example
"Where was I when that cell phone rudely
interrupted me?“ is uttered by a speaker who
was just distracted away from his talk). It is the
act of saying something that makes sense in a
language following the rules of pronunciation
and grammar.
Locutionary acts include phonetic acts, phatic
acts, and rhetic acts. Phonetic acts are acts of
pronouncing sounds, phatic acts are acts of
uttering words or sentences in accordance with
the phonological and syntactic rules of the
language to which they belong, and rhetic acts
are acts of uttering a sentence with sense and
more or less definite reference.
2. Illocutionary act:(the performance of a
particular language function or the action
intended by the speaker). According to Bach
and Harnish, people “don´t speak merely to
exercise their vocal cords.” Some reason
always exists, and this reason is called the
communicative presumption: the mutual
belief that whenever one person says
something to another, the speaker intends to
perform an illocutionary act.
3. Perlocutionary act (the achieving of
some kind of effect on the addressee, in the
cell phone instance serving as a complaint
with the remedy that the participant turn it
off so there will not be another similar
interruption).
Direct/Indirect Speech Acts
But the relationship between the surface form of an
utterance and underlying purpose isn’t always
straightforward, as Searle (1975) shows:
Can you pass the salt?
is an interrogative expressing a question to get an
answer. But this sentence has a different purpose:
it’s a request, where the speaker’s goal is for the
interpreter to pass the salt. This is an indirect
speech act.
According to Searle (1975) in a direct speech act,
there is a transparent relationship between from
and function as when an imperative is used to
perform a request (e.g., ‘Pass me the salt.’).
In an indirect speech act, the illocutionary force
of the act is not derivable from the surface
structure, as when an interrogative form serves as
a request (e.g., ‘Can you pass me the salt?’).
Categorizing Speech Acts
After Austin's original explorations of speech act
theory, J. R. Searle proposed that all acts fall into
five main types:
1. Representatives: speakers assert the
proposition to be true (like asserting, concluding
and believing)
2. Directives: which are attempts to get the
addressee to do something (like requesting,
questioning and asking).
3. Commisives: which commit the speaker to
some future course of action (like promising,
threatening, offering);
4. Expressives: which express a psychological
state (like thanking, apologizing, welcoming,
congratulating);
5. Declarations: which state immediate changes
in the institutional state of affairs like declaring
war, christening, marrying, firing from
employment and pronouncing.
Designed by Andrew D. Cohen (2008)
Speech Acts Quiz What kind is it?
Research Methods for Studying Speech
Acts
The study of learners’ production of
illocutionary acts had made use of
(1) discourse completion tasks,
(2) role play, and
(3) naturally occurring speech.
(4). survey
Discourse completion tasks (DCTs) have
been more extensively used.
Designed by Andrew D. Cohen (2008)
Limitation of Speech Acts Research
Despite the fact that theory of speech act
has been applied to a variety of research, it
suffers many major limitations. The theory
is restricted to the level of the utterance.
Furthermore, the authors applied their rules
and conventions to their own speech
conventions namely Anglo-Saxon speech
conventions.
Although they claim that speech acts
operate by universal features, later
research found that despite some universal
pragmatic features of speech acts, they are
also subject to culture-specific variations.
they should be based on the empirical
investigation of many more and diverse
languages.
Speech acts, indirectness and directness have
received a lot of attention in interlanguage
pragmatics research, especially request (Blum-
Kulka & Olshtain, House & Kasper, Færch &
Kasper, Takahashi & DuFon, Ellis, Hassall,
Rose), apology (Olshtain & Cohen, Trosborg,
Olshtain, Maeshiba, Yoshinaga, Kasper & Ross),
refusal (Takahashi & Beebe, Takahashi & Uliss-
Weltz), and complaint (Olshtain & Weinbach,
Trosborg).
Factors Affecting Speech Acts Performance
The sociocultural factors and individual differences (IDs) can play a significant role in producing or comprehending the given speech acts. Social context, social status, occupations, social distance, cultural norms, age, gender and proficiency level are influential in the speech act realization.
by Andrew D.
Cohen (2008)
Persian Speech Acts Studies
The results of the Persian speech act studies reviewed by the researcher are as follows: the study focusing on indirectness in the speech act of giving advice in Persian shows that the age, social distance, and status of the interlocutors can determine the linguistic choices of the
participants and accordingly their directness level of advising.
Gender and language proficiency are the two
significant factors affecting the production of
suggestion strategies based on the study
presented.
Regarding request strategies, the reaction and
comprehension of participants in different
situations are cultural-based. According to the
results related to Persian apologies, they have
formulaic structures.
Another study focusing on congratulation speech act
reveals that Persian speakers show more solidarity
with their interlocutors. Persian speakers use of divine
comments and God-related utterances to congratulate
can indicate that they are more traditional
pragmatically. For offer speech act, the Persian
speakers also tend to be indirect so as not to impose
themselves on their addressees. Replying to
compliments, the most frequently used strategy is
downgrade.
It is noteworthy that the results presented in
different studies reveal some contradictions.
They may be related to some social factors not
considered in the research. Furthermore, the
tools of eliciting data can lead to various results.
References
Aliakbari, M., Aghaee, R. & Azimi Amoli, F. (2015). Directness vs.
indirectness: A Study of the linguistic choices of Persian speakers when giving
advice.
Allami, H. (2012). A sociopragmatic study of the offer speech act in Persian.
Asher, N. (2006). Indirect Speech Acts.
Austin, J., L. (1975). How to Do Things With Words.
Cohen, A., D. (2008). Speech acts.
Ellis, R. (2005). The Study of Second Language Acquisition.
Farnia, M., Sohrabie , A. & Qusay Abdul Sattar, H. (2014). A pragmatic
analysis of speech act of suggestion among Iranian native speakers of
Farsi.
Oishi, E. (2006). Austin’s speech act theory and the speech situation.
Shams, R., & Afghari, A. (2011). Effects of culture and gender in
comprehension of speech acts of indirect requests.
Yazdanfar, S. & Bonyadi, A. (2016). Request strategies in everyday
Interactions of Persian and English speakers.
Thanks for Your Attention
