Seminar 4 – Speech Acts Theory

The communication of people takes place within a communicative act, the constituents of which
are:
- the personalities of the participants (speaker and listener) as the bearers of social roles or
functions;
- the elements of verbal and non-verbal codes;
- constitutional elements of communication, which include communicative competence, a
fragment of actual reality;
- the message itself, which unites the speakers.
In the late 1950s, the Oxford philosopher John Austin gave some lectures on how speakers “do
things with words” and so invented “A THEORY OF SPEECH ACTS” which now occupies the central
place in Linguistic Pragmatics. A minimal unit of communication, the unit of movement of speaker’s
intentions, the simplest step in communication is called a speech act.
J. Austin pointed out that many utterances do not communicate information but are equivalent to
actions. He noticed the difference between the two kinds of utterances, like:
1. He announced them husband and wife.
2. I announce you husband and wife.
In the first case we have some kind of description of the act, i.e. we are dealing with constative –
a type of utterance, which states the fact of objective reality. In the second case we see the action of
naming; here the utterance itself equals the action, as it has concrete result – from this time they are
husband and wife. Here we are dealing with performative – the utterance which is an equivalent to the
action.

Felicity Conditions

There are certain expected or appropriate circumstances, technically known as felicity conditions,
for the performance of a speech act to be recognized as intended. The utterance “I sentence you to death”
performs the function of sentencing someone to death, and this function is only performed (within certain
legal system) by this utterance. However, the utterance only succeeds in having this function if certain
external conditions are fulfilled:

1) the words must be uttered by someone with the necessary authority;

2) in a country in which there is a death penalty;
3) to a person who has been convicted of a particular crime;
4) they must be spoken, not written,
5) at the right time (at the end of a trial) and
6) in the right place (in court).

All these conditions which must be fulfilled are known as felicity conditions. The appropriate
circumstances which must be fulfilled for the speech act to be performed successfully are called felicity
conditions.
In everyday contexts among ordinary people, there are also preconditions on speech acts. There
are general conditions on the participants, for example, that they can understand the language being used
and that they are not play-acting or being nonsensical. Then there are content conditions. For example, for
both a promise and a warning, the content of the utterance must be about a future event. A further content
condition for a promise requires that the future event will be a future act of the speaker.

SPEECH ACT VS SPEECH EVENT

Actions performed via utterances are generally called speech acts and, in English, are commonly
given more specific labels, such as apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise, request etc.
Speech acts don’t come separately, but in some peculiar situations, in the circumstances
surrounding the utterance. These circumstances, including other utterances, are called the speech event. In
many ways, it is the nature of speech event that determines the interpretation of an utterance as
performing a particular speech act.
A speech event is an activity in which participants interact by means of language in some
conventional way to arrive at some outcome. It may include an obvious central speech act, such as “I
don’t really like this”, as in a speech event of complaining, but it will also include other utterances
leading up to it and, consequently, reacting to that central action. Thus, a speech event is a social situation
involving participants who necessarily have a social relationship of some kind, and who, on a specific
occasion, may have particular goals.
Constituents of speech acts

Speech act is a purposeful speech action performed according to the principles and rules of
speech behaviour, accepted in a given community; a unit of normative social-speech behaviour viewed
within the framework of a pragmatic situation.
The basic features of a speech act are: intentionality, purposefulness and conventionality. A
speech act always correlates with a speaker. A sequence of speech acts makes up a discourse.
A speech act comprises a speech situation and the fragment of reality related with its content.
According to J. Austin to perform a speech act means:

- to utter distinctly sound, belonging to the code comprehensible to all;

- to construct an utterance out of words of the given language according to its grammar rules;
- to supply the utterance with sense and reference, that is to correlate with reality having
performed a locution;
- to add purposefulness to locution, converting it into an illocutionary act, that is the expression of
a communicative purpose in the course of some utterance delivery (Austin’s term);
- to cause consequences sought for (perlocution), that is to influence the consciousness or
behaviour of the addressee, to create a new situation (e.g. declaration of war).

In a speech act J. Searle singles out the following:

- an utterance act;
- a propositional act, performing reference and predication;
- illocutionary act realizing the purpose of the speaker.

Purposefulness adds an effectual intonation to a speech act.

E.g. I might say: “It’s hot in here” (locution), meaning I want some fresh air (illocution) and the
perlocutionary effect might be that someone opens the window.
Functions of speech acts Austin called illocutionary forces and verbs corresponding to them –
illocutionary (to ask, to beg, to forbid, etc). Of three dimensions of speech act – locutionary, illocutionary
and perlocutionary act – the most discussed is illocutionary force. Indeed, the term ‘speech act’ is
generally interpreted quite narrowly to mean only the illocutionary force of an utterance. As far as
perlocutionary acts are concerned they have to do with those effects which our utterances have on hearers
and which go beyond the hearer’s understanding of the utterance. Such acts as convincing, persuading,
annoying, amusing and frightening are all cases of perlocutionary acts.
Illocutionary acts are standardly contrasted not only with perlocutionary acts but also with
propositional acts.

Proposition
1) Will John leave the room?
2) John will leave the room.
3) John, leave the room!
4) I wish John would leave the room.
5) If John leaves the room, I will leave too.
 In the utterance of each the speaker refers to a particular person “John” and predicates the act of
leaving the room of that person. In no case it is all, he does, but in every case, it is a part of what he does.
In each of these cases, although the illocutionary acts are different, at least some of the non-illocutionary
acts of reference and prediction are the same. The reference to some person John and the predication of
the same thing of him incline us to say that there is a common content in each of them. Something
expressible by the clause that “John will leave the room” seems to be a common feature of all. This
common content is called a proposition, the term, introduced by John R. Searle. In performing an
illocutionary act, one characteristically performs propositional and utterance acts.
Notice also the difference between a proposition and assertion or statement of that proposition.
An assertion is an illocutionary act, but a proposition is a part of performing certain illocutionary acts.
From a semantic point of view, we can distinguish between the propositional indicator in the
sentence and the indicator of illocutionary force. For a large class of sentences which are used to perform
illocutionary acts, we can say, that the sentence has two parts:

1) the proposition-indicating element and

2) the function-indicating device.

It is the function-indicating device that shows what illocutionary force the utterance is to have,
that is, what illocutionary act the speaker is performing in uttering the sentence. Function-indicating
devices in English include word-order, stress, intonation, punctuation, the mood of the verb, and finally, a
set of so-called performative verbs: the verbs “to swear”, “to promise” which are used to perform the
corresponding speech acts of swearing or promise are called performative, as you are performing an
action while uttering the verb. Not all the illocutionary verbs are performatively used.

J. Austin’s Classification

J. Austin’s classification can hardly be called perfect. One of its drawbacks is that it combined
acts and genres. Austin singled out such genre types of speech acts:
- verdictive (blaming, justification) are singled out according to the verdict. Utterances by
assessing smb/smth, utterance by the jury while pronouncing the verdict, by the referee are considered
verdictives.
e.g. I consider him guilty.
You are out by the end of the match.
- exersitives (demands, orders) – mean taking the decision in favour of or against some action. By
these utterances the speaker’s rights and authority are realized, for example, the person is appointed to
some position, is forbidden or allowed smth.
e.g. I appoint you my assistant.
I advise you not to show your dissatisfaction so openly.
- commissives (promises, declarations) oblige the speaker to keep to some way of behaviour.
They express promises, undertake and assume obligations.
e.g. I swear by the name of God that what I say is true.
- behabitives (excuses, wishes, thanks) include the notion of the reaction to other people’s
behaviour and the relations among people in their everyday life.
e.g. I congratulate you on winning the grant.
My sympathies are with you.
- representatives (constatives, forecasts) are used in the acts of explanations and include point of
view, leading the discussion, explanation of reference and word usage. By these utterances the speakers
characterize their participation in the discussion.
e.g. I admit that your argument is substantial.
John Searle’s Classification
Austin’s ideas were further developed by another philosopher, John Searle, who added to them
and presented a more systematic classification. In his article “Speech act classification” he determined the
most important linguistic parameters which help to differentiate between speech acts:
 – purpose;
– the direction of the act (a statement is directed from words to reality; in promise and demand –
from reality to words);
– the expression of the speaker’s psychological state;
– the difference in social status of the speaker and listener;
– the expression of the speaker’s and listener’s interests;
– treating the speech context;
– the difference between the acts which can be expressed only verbally and those which have
verbal and non-verbal realization;
– the style of performing the speech act (application, declaration, confession etc).

J. Searle singles out 5 types of speech acts: declarations, representatives, expressives, directives,
and commissives.
Declarations are those kinds of speech acts that change the world via their utterance. As the
examples in [1] illustrate, the speaker must have a special institutional role, in a specific context, in order
to perform a declaration appropriately.
[1] a. Priest: I now pronounce you husband and wife.
Representatives (assertives) are those kinds of speech acts that state what the speaker believes to
be the case or not. Statements of fact, assertions, conclusions, and descriptions, are all examples of the
speaker representing the world as he or she believes it is.
[2] The earth is round.
Expressives are those kinds of speech acts that state what the speaker feels. They express
psychological states and can be statements of pleasure, pain, likes, dislikes, joy, or sorrow.
[3] a. I’m really sorry!
Directives are those kinds of speech acts that speakers use to get someone else to do something.
They express what the speaker wants. They can be positive or negative.
[4] a. Give me a cup of coffee. Make it black.
Commissives are those kinds of speech acts that speakers use to commit themselves to some
future action.
[5] a. I’ll be back.

Classification of Speech Acts by Heorhiy Pocheptsov

As for the Ukrainian linguistics, generally accepted is the taxonomy of speech acts presented by
George Pocheptsov (1926-2006).
The following pragmatic types of the sentences are singled out by Pocheptsov: constatives,
promisives, menasives, performatives, directives, quesitives. The author gives them such characteristics:

Th. Ballmer and W. Brennenstuhl’s Classification

The classification of speech acts by Th. Ballmer and W. Brennenstuhl is the most detailed. It
includes all the verbs of the speech activity, not only those which have their performative usage. The
classification is built according to the hierarchical principle. The highest knot of classification
corresponds to the universum of the speechactivity. Then this universum is subdivided into 4 main model
groups, namely: Expression, Appeal, Interaction (dialogical), Discourse (basically dialogical). Besides
these four basic model groups, there are 8 secondary, which concretize the four basic ones. For example,
within expression the model “emotion” is singled out; within appeals – one model of influence; within
interaction three models are singled out – the model of verbal struggle, the model of assessing, and
institutional model; within discourse – discourse itself, text model, and topical model. Thus, altogether
there are eight derivative groups of models. They are subdivided into 24 typifications. For example,
within the group of model of assessing such subgroups are singled out: assessing the action, assessing the
face, assessing the situations, self-assessing and so on. These 24 typifications are subdivided into 600
categories, which include verbs of speech acts, selected from the dictionnaries.
 PERFORMATIVES

The term performatives was first introduced, as you do remember, by J. Austin in his well-known
book “How to do things with words”.
According to Austin, performatives have some peculiarities:

– they usually have the verb in the first person sing. in the Present Simple;
– while pronouncing the performative the speaker does not describe but performs the action, and
it means that performative cannot get the assessment “true” or “false” If A says “I name this ship …” B
cannot say “That’s not true”;
– performative can be effective or ineffective – to be effective it must fulfil felicity conditions
(for example, to make an order the person must have certain authority);
– performatives must be based on the social conventions, that is, to have the right to formulate the
performative the person must have the certain conventionally determined rights;
– the verbs which indicate a negative communicative purpose cannot be used as performatives
(e.g. to lie, to offend).

Typology of Performatives by Yu. Apresyan

The problem of classification of performatives was also discussed by a Russian linguist

Apresyan. He took into consideration their morphological, syntactical, semantic and pragmatic
peculiarities and singled out the following types of:

1. Specialized reports and statements

2. Confessions
3. Promises
4. Requests
5. Offers and advice
6. Warnings and predictions
7. Demands and orders
8. Forbiddance and allowance
9. Agreement and objection
10. Approval
11. Blaming
12. Forgiveness
13. Speech rituals
14. The specialized acts of abolition, refusal
15. Appointing, nominating

In the process of interpersonal communication performatives play important discoursive functions

– they connect the communication to the situation, to the social roles, to the real states of affairs, to the
psychological states of speaker and addressee etc. So, the real people’s communication is performative in
its basis, and separate speech genres which are formed in them have implied performative character.

INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS

Indirect acts are the cases in which one illocutionary act is performed indirectly by means of
performing another.
In indirect speech acts, the speaker communicates to the listener more than he actually says by
means of relying on their mutually shared background information, both linguistic and non-linguistic.
The concept and the term indirect speech act was introduced be J. Searle who noted that in the
indirect speech act, the speaker communicates the non-literal as well as the literal meaning to the listener.
 J. Searle maintains that in saying “Can you pass the salt?” the speaker is performing a primary
illocutionary act of request by means of performing a primary illocutionary act of asking a question. An
act that is performed by way of another illocutionary act is considered an indirect speech act. The speaker
is therefore said to be performing an indirect request. Utterances like “Can you pass the salt?” and
“Would you mind passing the salt?” are directly recognizable as requests. The addressee doesn’t have to
go through the literal interpretation of the utterance and a series of inference steps to arrive at this
interpretation.
Indirect speech acts, like the request ‘Do you know the time?’, have both a literal meaning, here
‘I ask you whether you know the time’, and an indirect meaning ‘I request you to tell me the time’. Do
listeners understand such speech acts and plan responses to them? The main proposals are as follows: The
literal meaning of indirect speech act can be intended to be taken seriously (along with the indirect
meaning) or merely pro forma. In the first case, listeners are expected to respond to both meanings, as in
‘Yes, I do – it’s six’, but in the second case only to the indirect meaning, as in ‘It’s six’.

Six properties of indirect speech acts

(1) Multiplicity of meanings. Direct speech acts are intended to have just one meaning, or
illocutionary force. In uttering ‘It’s raining out’ as a direct speech act, A simply means “I assert to you
that it is raining out”. Indirect speech acts, according to Searle, always have more than one meaning, or
illocutionary force. In uttering ‘This soup needs salt’ in the right circumstances, A may mean both “I
assert to you that this soup needs salt” and “I request you to pass the salt”. Let us call these meanings M1
and M2. M1, which follows directly from the literal meaning of the sentence, is generally called the
speaker’s literal or direct meaning. M2 is generally called the indirect or conveyed meaning.
(2) Logical priority of meanings. The several meanings of an indirect speech act are not conveyed
in parallel. In uttering ‘This soup needs salt’ A requests B to pass the salt by virtue of her assertion to him
that the soup needs salt. So M1 and M2 form a chain of meanings in which M1 is “logically prior” to M2,
or M2 is “logically contingent” on M1.
Rationality. The logical contingency between any two meanings of an indirect speech act,
according to Gordon and Lakoff, Heringer, Searle, and others, has a rational basis. For A to utter ‘This
soup needs salt’ and intend both M1, and M2, she must first assume that she and B "mutually know"
certain background facts. They may have to share the knowledge, for example, that they are at dinner, that
she has just tasted the soup, that there is a saltcellar near him, and other such facts. She must also observe
certain principles of cooperative conversation.
(3) Conventionality. As part of this rationale, there are conventions about which sentences can be
used for which indirect speech acts. One convention of English is that A can indirectly request B to do a
particular act by questioning his ability to do that act. A can request the salt, therefore, with ‘Can you
reach the salt?’, ‘Are you able yet to pass the salt?’, and ‘Is it possible for you to pass me the salt?’ This
type of convention could be called a convention of means, since it specifies a semantic device by which
an indirect speech act can be performed. There are also conventions of form – conventions about the
wording of indirect speech acts. ‘Can you pass the salt?’ and ‘Could you pass the salt?’, for example, are
highly conventional, or idiomatic, forms in English for requesting the salt. ‘Is it possible for you to pass
the salt?’ and ‘Are you able to pass the salt?’ are less idiomatic, and ‘Is it the case that you at present have
the ability to pass the salt?’ is not at all idiomatic.
(4) Politeness. Why are there so many indirect speech acts? The main reason, perhaps, is
politeness. Direct requests, for example, presume a certain status of A over B. If he and she are peers, she
won’t have that status, and so it would be impolite of her to make a bald request like ‘Loan me $100’.
One solution for A is to give B options, or appear to give him options, with an indirect request like 'Can
you loan me $100?’
(5) Purposefulness. Speech acts are purposeful. They are intended to have a specific effect on the
addressee, such as to get him to believe that something is true (as with assertions) or to get him to do
something (as with requests).