Shovak O. I. Fundamentals of the Theory of Speech Communication

The essence of communicative act

Language as a system of rules (including phonology, morphology, syntax, grammar, semantics, pragmatics and focusing on rules describing competence rather than performance) limits our ability to look at communication system more generally and to see important characteristics of speech forms that are used within speech communities and between them. Basic limitations of theoretical linguistics of the past to the sentence as the unit of analysis and to referential meaning as the only relevant sort of meaning, of interest for analysis primarily in terms of "same or different" can be overcome in part by taking a more inclusive view on speech as a form of communication; by starting with an analysis of the "communicative act" (or simply the "speech act") in terms of the components of which it is composed and the functions that can be served through it (see the scheme below).
TOPIC
eferential
poetic
expressive MESSAGE FORM
SENDER MESSAGE CHANNEL
identificational contact
metalinguistic
CODE
Communicative Act (or Speech Act) Components (according to Hymes and Jakobson).
The components and functions above are all within (or "enclosed by") another component, the CONTEXT, and an associated function of the communicative act as a whole could be called contextual. Different societies will make differential use of and definitions of these speech act components. The ethnographer (one who wants to describe a culture) would like to list all the possible named speech acts, all the possible senders, all the possible receivers, all the kinds of codes, all the named kinds of message form, all the message channels possible, all the named topics, etc.

2. 
   TheJunctions of communicative act
   

1. 
   connected with the sender (speaker)
   

1. 
   Identificational function of the communicative act is most closely associated with the sender - such things as voice set, accent, intonation, etc. tell the receiver about sender's age, sex, etc.; i. e. they identify him, and they are generally involuntary.
   
2. 
   Expressive function (the choice of words, intonation, etc), expresses emotions and attitudes toward the receiver or other component of speech act.; generally under voluntary control.
   

2. 
   message channel could be represented by gestures, whistling, drumming, speech and is realized through the contacts — physical - (sound hits the ears) and psychological -phatic communion (i.e. social contact).
   
3. 
   message form is closely connected with poetic function. It is not limited to poetry, this function is expressed as manipulations of and restrictions on a 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.
   
4.