Speech Acts (general knowledge)

SPEECH ACTS

Speech Acts is Actions performed via utterances. There are three related acts:

1.       There is first locutionary act, which is the bassist act of utterance, or producing a meaningful linguistic expression.

2.       Mostly we don’t just produce well-formed utterances with no purpose. We form an utterance with some kind in function in mind. This is the second dimension, or the illocutionary act. It is performed via the communicative force of an utterance.

3.       Perlocutionary act will utter on the assumption that the hearer will recognize the effect you intended. For example, to account for a wonderful smell, or to get the hearer to drink some coffee.

IFIDs (the Illocutionary Force Indicating Device)

It is an expression or a slot for a verb that explicitly names the illocutionary act being performed. Such a verb can be called a performative verb (Vp).

Felicity Conditions

There are certain expected or appropriate circumstances for the performance of a speech act to be recognized as intended. There are pre-conditions on speech acts

·         General Conditions

·         Content Conditions

·         Preparatory Conditions

·         Sincerity Conditions

·         Essential Conditions

The Performative Hypothesis

Is one way to think about the speech acts being performed via utterances is to assume that underlying every utterance (U) there is a clause, containing a performative verb (Vp) which makes the illocutionary for explicit.

Speech Act Classification

·         Declarations

·         Representatives

·         Expressives

·         Directives

·         Commissives

Direct and Indirect Speech Acts

The five general functions of Speech Acts

                Speech Act type                                               Direction of fit                                   S = Speaker, X = Situation

·         Declarations                                       words change the world                               S causes X          

·         Representatives                                               make words fit the world             S believes X

·         Expressives                                        make words fit the world             S feels X

·         Directives                                            make the world fit words             S wants X

·         Commissives                                      make the world fit words             S intends X

Whenever there is a direct relationship between a structure and a function, we have a direct speech act. Whenever we have an indirect relationship between a structure and function, we have an indirect speech act. Thus, a declarative used to make a statement is a direct speech acts, but a declarative used to make a request is an indirect speech act. Indirect acts are generally associated with greater politeness in English than direct speech acts.