Speech Acts
Crystal (2003, 427) states that “speech act” is a term taken from the work of the philosopher Austin in 1962 in his book How To Do Thing With Words and now it is used commonly in linguistics to refer to a theory which studies the function of the speech in relation to the conduct of the speaker and the hearer in interpersonal communication. Speech act is not an act of speech but an activity that performs a communication known through the meaning which the speakers intend to convey while speaking and the impact they fulfill on the listeners.
Paker and Riley (2005, 12-15) elaborate that Austin believes that we use the utterances to do an act. It means that we can perform an act as well as things. For instance, when we say to someone who is departing the office:
“Please close the door”
It is not just saying the words, but it may be a request, a suggestion, a warning or another speech act.
Levinsion (1997, 237-8) clarifies that there are two developments which are worth mentioning the first of which is by Searle which is systematization to the contribution of Austin. In this work, which is speech act theory, he had most of its effect on linguistics. The second one is by Grice, in his theory of meaning.
The Components of a Speech Act
Yule (2000, 48) states that the action which done by saying an utterance, consists of three connected acts which can be stated as follows:
1. The locutionary act which is creating a meaningful linguistic expression.
2. The illocutionary act which is the act that is done by the communicative force of an utterance.
3. The perlocutionary act is the effect which we intend to have it on the hearer when we produce an utterance.
Verschueren (2003, 22) explains that locutionary acts are the acts of speaking something (the utterance of sounds). The illocutionary acts are those which are done by saying something. The perlocutionary acts are those which represent what the hearer understands from what is said. To clarify what these acts mean consider the following example where a student says to another:
"The teacher is coming.”
This speech contains three components. The first one is the locutionary act which is done by the sound of the sentence and the meaning of the individual words. The second component is the illocutionary act which represents the intended meaning of the speaker (e. g. warning). The third one is the perlocutionary act which is related to how the hearer has understood the speech of the speaker. If the student has perceived it as a warning, so the speech act is successful. If, on the other hand, it is understood as a statement, threat, or suggestion… etc. the speech act will be not successful. Accordingly, the success of any speech act depends on a set of rules called the “felicity conditions” (See section 2. 4. 2. below).
The Indirectness of Speech Acts
Yule (2000, 54) believes that speech acts are either direct or indirect and the distinction is possible to be made on the basis of structures. The criterion is the match between the three basic sentence types declarative, interrogative and imperative and the three general communicative jobs: statement, question and command/ request respectively. For example:
a. You wear a seat belt. (Declarative)
b. Do you wear a seat belt? (Interrogative)
c. Wear a seat belt. (Imperative)
A direct speech act occurs when a there is a match between the construction of the sentence and the function it fulfills. An indirect speech act, on the contrary, occurs when there is no match between the construction and the function of the sentence so when the declarative sentence (It is cold outside.) is used to make a statement it is direct but when used to make a request it is indirect.
The widest type of indirect speech acts has the construction of an interrogative used to make a request as in the following example:
a. Could you pass the salt?