Halyna D. Malyk Speech Acts and Events

Examples of Speech Events

Request

• 
  Oh, Pete, I'm glad you're here.
  

• 
  What's up?
  

• 
  I can't get my printer to work.
  

• 
  Is it broken?
  

• 
  I don't think so.
  

• 
  What's it doing?
  

• 
  I don't know. I'm useless with machines.
  

• 
  What kind is it?
  

• 
  It's a ……. Do you use them?
  

• 
  Yeah.
  

• 
  Do you have a minute?
  

• 
  Sure.
  

• 
  Oh, great.
  

This extended interaction may be called a 'requesting' speech event without a central speech act of request. There is no actual request to do anything. We might characterize the question 'Do you have a minute?' as a 'pre-request', allowing the receiver to say that she's busy or that she has to be somewhere else. In this context, the response 'Sure' is taken to be an acknowledgement not only of having time available, but a willingness to perform the unstated action.