06 speech act and event for students

Speech Situation: at the bus stop
Speech event (asking the time)
Speaker A: What is the time? (speech act 1)
Speaker B: It’s 1 o’clock (speech act 2)
Speaker A: Thanks (speech act 3)
•

: contexts of language use.
e.g: ceremonies, fights, hunts,
classrooms, conferences
•
•
•
•
•

: a unified set of components through out:
same purpose of communication
same topic
same participants
same language variety (generally).
E.g: exchanging greetings, telling jokes, giving speeches.

•

: group of utterances with a single
interactional function.
E.g: a request, a command, a greeting, a promise, an
apology.

•

.
[1] “You’re fired.”
The boss’s utterance in [1]can perform the
act of ending your employment.  unpleasant
[2] You’re so delicious  compliment
[3] You’re welcome  acknowledgment of thanks
[4] You’re crazy.  expression of surprised

“This tea is really cold!”
• On a wintry day  complaint
• On a hot summer day  praise

• speech acts: actions performed via utterances

A speech act has 3 aspects:
o
: physical utterance by the speaker
o
: the intended meaning of the utterance by
the speaker (performative)
o
: the action that results from the locution

•

(1983): 3 basic components with the help of which a
speech act is formed:
o locutionary act: performing an act of saying something
o illocutionary act: performing an act in saying something
o perlocutionary act: performing an act by saying something.

•

:communicative force of an utterance that
forms a locutionary act

•

: effect the speaker wants to exercise over the
hearer.

e.g: “I’ve just made some coffee”
o illocutionary force: to make statement, an offer, an
explanation, or for some other communicative purposes
o perlocutionary effect: to account for a wonderful smell, or to get
the hearer to drink some coffee

e.g: “ I’ll see you later “
a. [I predict that] I’ll see you later a prediction
b. [I promise you that] I’ll see you later a promise
c. [I warn you that] I’ll see you later  a warning

Different
illocutionary
forces

Speakers can assume that the intended illocutionarry force will
be recognized by the hearer by considering:
1.IFIDs
2.Felicity conditions

Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices
• IFIDs: are supposed to be elements, or aspects of linguistic
devices which indicate either that the utterance is made with a
certain illocutionary force, or else that it constitutes the
performance of a certain illocutionary act.
• In English, for example,
o the interrogative mood: question
A man trying to contact Mary
Mary’s friend
A man trying to contact Mary
Mary’s friend

: Can I talk to Mary?
: No, she’s not here
: I’m asking you- can I talk to her?
: and I’m telling you-SHE’S NOT
HERE!

o the directive mood: a directive illocutionary act (an order, a
request, etc.)
e.g You’re going! (I tell you to go)
You’re going? (I request confirmantion about you to go)
Are you going? (I ask you if you go)

o the words “promise”: a promise.
e.g I promise you that I’ll see you later
• Possible IFIDs in English include:
word order, stress, intonation contour, punctuation, the mood of
the verb, and performative verbs.
Verb v.s

Verb

• Performative utterances: utterances that perform a speech act
and explicitly describe the intended speech act
• Contative utterances: utterances that perform a speech act
without explicitly describe the intended speech act

• E.g

Performative
I promise I’ll be there
I admit I was foolish
I warn you, this gun is loaded
I apologize
I thank you
I order you to sit down

Constantive
I’ll be there
I was foolish
this gun is loaded
I’m sorry
I’m very grateful
You must sit down

• Performative verbs: the underlined words
• a performative, unlike a constative, cannot be true or false
constative (it can only be felicitous or infelicitous)
• from the grammatical point of view, a performative:
- first person
- active sentence in the simple present tense
- a hereby test since performative verbs only can collocate with
this adverb.

While the first sentence would make sense under specific
conditions,
uttering of the second would be rather strange.
From this it follows that (1a) is a performative, (1b) is not.

• Felicity conditions: expected or appropriate circumstances for the
performance of a speech act to be recognized as intended.
• The performance will be infelicitous (inappropriate)
if the speaker is not a specific person in a special
context (in this case, a judge in a courtroom).

• Yule (1996:50) proposes further classification of felicity conditions
into five classes:
o general conditions: presuppose the participants’ knowledge of
the language being used and his non- playacting
o content conditions: the appropriate content of an utterance
o preparatory conditions: differences of various illocutionary acts
o sincerity conditions: speaker’s intention to carry out a certain act
o essential conditions.: combine with a specification of what must
be in the utterance content, the context, and the speaker’s
intentions, in order for a specific act to be appropriately
(felicitously) performed
• E.g promise and warning
o General conditions: they understand the language
o Content conditions: the content of utterance about future events

• E.g promise and warning
o General conditions: they understand the language
o Content conditions: the content of utterance about future events
o Preparatory conditions:
Promise: 1. the event’ll not happen by itself
2. It’ll have beneficial effect
Warning: 1.the hearer know the event’ll happen
2.The speaker think the event’ll happen
3. No beneficial effect
o Sincerity conditions:
Promise: the speaker’ll do the future action
Warning: the future event won,t have beneficial effect
o Essential conditions:
Promise: change the state from non-obligation to obligation
Warning: change the state from non-informing of a bad future event
to informing

• Performative hypothesis: speech act that is peformed via uttrance
is to assume that underlying every utterance (U) there is a clause,
containing a performative verb (Vp which makes the illocutionary
force explicit)

Explicit and Implicit Performative
• Having defined performatives, Austin draws a basic distinction
between them.
• He distinguishes two general groups - explicit and implicit
performatives
• E.g:
• X

• X
• The effect of performative hypothesisExplicit performative has serious impact than the implicit one
• It’s not sure the number of performative verbs

• Declaration: speech acts that change the world via utterance
• E.g

• Representative: speech acts that state what the speaker believe
to be the case or not
• E.g
• Expressive: speech acts that state what the speaker feel
• E.g
• Directives: speech acts that speakers use to get someone to do
something
• E.g
• Commisive: speech acts that speakers commit themselves to
some future actions
• E.g

• Types of speech acts that can be made on the basis of structure:
• Declarative : You wear a seat belt.
• Interrogative: Do you wear a seat belt?
• Imperative: Wear a seat belt!
• Direct speech act:
Direct relationship between a structure and a function

• Indirect speech act:
indirect relationship between a structure and a function
• E.g
I hereby tell you about the weather (direct speech act)
I hereby request of you that you close the door (indirect speech act)
• Indirect speech acts are associated with politeness

• Speech events: an activity in which participants interact via
language in some conventional way to arrive at some outcome

A “requesting”
speech event

• The analysis of speech events is clearly another way of studying
how more gets than communicated than is said

06 speech act and event for students

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