Speech Act

A. Basic Concept of Speech Act

A speech act is a minimal functional unit in human communication. Just as a word  (refusal) is the smallest free form found in language and a morpheme is the smallest unit of language that carries information about meaning (-al in refuse-al makes it a noun), the basic unit of communication is a speech act (the speech act of refusal).

Philosophers like Austin (1962), Grice (1957), and Searle (1965, 1969, 1975) offered basic insight into this new theory of linguistic communication based on the assumption that  “(…) the minimal units of human communication are not linguistic expressions, but rather the performance of certain kinds of acts, such as making statements, asking questions, giving directions, apologizing, thanking, and so on” (Blum-Kulka, House, & Kasper, 1989, p.2). Austin (1962) defines the performance of uttering words with a consequential purpose as “the performance of a locutionary act, and the study of utterances thus far and in these respects the study of locutions, or of the full units of speech” (p. 69). These units of speech are not tokens of the symbol or word or sentence but rather units of linguistic communication and it is “(…) the production of the token in the performance of the speech act that constitutes the basic unit of linguistic communication” (Searle, 1965, p.136). According to Austin’s theory, these functional units of communication have prepositional or locutionary meaning (the literal meaning of the utterance), illocutionary meaning (the social function of the utterance), and perlocutionary force (the effect produced by the utterance in a given context) (Cohen, 1996, p. 384).

B. The Functions of Speech Act

a.      sender (speaker)

Identificational function of the communicative act is most closely associated with the sender -- such things as voice set, accent, intonation, etc. tell receiver about sender's age, sex,  etc.; ie. they identify him or her, and they are generally involuntary.

Expressive choices of words, intonation, etc. express emotions and attitudes toward receiver or other component of speech act; generally under voluntary control.

b.      message channel   (could be gestures, whistling, drumming, speech)

Contact --  physical - sound hits ears. psychological - phatic communion  (i.e. social contact)

c.       message form

Poetic function.  Not limited to poetry, this function is expressed as manipulations of and restrictions on message form, and these can be of many different sorts.  Different amounts and varieties of aesthetic appreciation are derivable from various ways of formulating a message with any given referential content.

d.      topic  (what the message is about)

Referential  function :most directly associated with the topic closely tied to the dictionary meanings of messages.

e.      code   (Signaling units of which a message is  composed – based on a set of conventions for communicating meaning).

Metalinguistic function,  i.e. information about the code that is conveyed in a speech act.

f.        receiver – (hearer, audience)

Directive   function -  concerns subsequent activity of the receiver as directed by what the speaker says.(e.g. "Would you close the door, please?")

Rhetorical function - concerns the receiver's outlook as it is affected by what is said.  (e.g. "What a nice dress.")

g.      setting (context)-- (relevant features constituting a specific setting most often involve place and time, but may also include physical circumstances germane to the place and time of  the speech act).

Contextual function of the speech act associated with the setting component is reflected in messages saying something about the time, place, or persons in the interaction.  Many linguistic forms referring to these things cannot be interpreted without reference to the speech act itself, for their meanings are not fixed but relative (e.g. 'me', 'you',  'here', 'there', 'now', 'then') (e.g. "It happened yesterday"; "Oh, there you are").  In some cases, the primary function of the whole speech act is contextual.

C. Categories of Illocutionary

Here is Searle's classification for types of illocutions:

      Assertive: an illocutionary act that represents a state of affairs.
E.g. stating, claiming, hypothesizing, describing, telling, insisting, suggesting, asserting, or swearing that something is the case.

      Directive: an illocutionary act for getting the addressee to do something.
E.g. ordering, commanding, daring, defying, challenging.

      Commissive: an illocutionary act for getting the speaker (i.e. the one performing the speech act) to do something.
E.g. promising, threatening, intending, vowing to do or to refrain from doing something.

      Expressive: an illocutionary act that expresses the mental state of the speaker about an event presumed to be true.
E.g. congratulating, thanking, deploring, condoling, welcoming, apologizing.

      Declaration: an illocutionary act that brings into existence the state of affairs to which it refers.
E.g. blessing, firing, baptizing, bidding, passing sentence, excommunicating.