A study on the use of speech acts

A study on the use of speech acts

Matluba Parpikhodjaeva

October 10 . 2020.

First I would like to thank Professor Kim Jong -mi for having advised me to write this term paper.

Abstract

In this study I would like to comment on selected problems of definition of linguistic pragmatics with a focus on notions associated with speech act theory.Speech acts occur in everyday talk in every society, with various range of explicitness. For second language learners , it is important to know which speech acts are different in the first and target language, how they are different and what is not appropriate to say. In more detail I will discuss the definition of pragmatics and its separation from the semantic theory , especially the distinction between the locutionary act and illocutionary act and its implications.

1. 
   Introduction
   

The term ‘pragmatics’ was first introduced by Charles Morris, a philosopher. He contrasts pragmatics with semantics and syntax. He claims that syntax is the study of the grammatical relations of linguistic units to one another and the grammatical structures of phrases and sentences that result from these grammatical relation, semantics is the study of the relation of linguistic units to the objects they denote, and pragmatics is the study of the relation of linguistic units to people who communicate.

This view of pragmatics is too broad because according to it, pragmatics may have as its domain any human activity involving language, and this includes almost all human activities, from baseball to the stock market. We will proceed from the statement that linguistic pragmatics is the study of the ability of language users to pair sentences with the context in which they would be appropriate. What do we mean by ‘appropriate context’?

In our everyday life we as a rule perform or play quite a lot of different roles – a student, a friend, a daughter, a son, a client, etc. When playing different roles our language means are not the same – we choose different words and expressions suitable and appropriate for the situation. We use the language as an instrument for our purposes. For instance,

(a) What are you doing here? We’re talking

(b) What the hell are you doing here? We’re chewing the rag

have the same referential meaning but their pragmatic meaning is different, they are used in different contexts. Similarly, each utterance combines a propositional base (objective part) with the pragmatic component (subjective part). It follows that an utterance with the same propositional content may have different pragmatic components:

2. 
   Speech Act Theory
   

Speech acts take part outside the language dimension of communication. Actions performed via utterances are generally called speech acts.To put it in other words, they are different speech acts. That is, speech acts are simply things people do through language – for example, apologizing, instructing, menacing, explaining something, etc. The term ‘speech act’ was coined by the philosopher John Austin and developed by another philosopher John Searle.

John Austin is the person who is usually credited with generating interest in what has since come to be known as pragmatics and speech act theory. His ideas of language were set out in a series of lectures which he gave at Oxford University. These lectures were later published under the title “How to do things with words”. His first step was to show that some utterances are not statements or questions but actions. He reached this conclusion through an analysis of what he termed‘performative verbs’. Let us consider the following sentences:

I pronounce you man and wife
I declare war on France
I name this ship The Albatros
I bet you 5 dollars it will rain
I apologize

The peculiar thing about these sentences, according to J.Austin, is that they are not used to say or describe things, but rather actively to do things. After you have declared war on France or pronounced somebody husband and wife the situation has changed. That is why J .Austin termed them as  performatives and contrasted them to statements (he called them constatives). Thus by pronouncing a performative utterance the speaker is performing an action. The performative utterance, however, can really change things only under certain circumstances. J .Austin specified the circumstances required for their success as felicity conditions. In order to declare war you must be someone who has the right to do it. Only a priest (or a person with corresponding power) can make a couple a husband ad wife. Besides, it must be done before witnesses and the couple getting married must sign the register

Many philosophers and linguists study speech act theory as a way to better understand human communication. "Part of the joy of doing speech act theory, from my strictly first-person point of view, is becoming more and more remindful of how many surprisingly different things we do when we talk to each other," (Kemmerling 2002).

Searle's Five Illocutionary Points

"In the past three decades, speech act theory has become an important branch of the contemporary theory of language thanks mainly to the influence of [J.R.] Searle (1969, .

From Searle's view, there are only five illocutionary points that speakers can achieve on propositions in an utterance, namely: the assertive, commissive, directive, declaratory and expressive illocutionary points. Speakers achieve the assertive point when they represent how things are in the world, the commissive point when they commit themselves to doing something, the directive point when they make an attempt to get hearers to do something, the declaratory point when they do things in the world at the moment of the utterance solely by virtue of saying that they do and the expressive point when they express their attitudes about objects and facts of the world

Speech act theory has also been used in a more radical way, however, as a model on which to recast the theory of literature...and especially...prose narratives. What the author of a fictional work—or else what the author's invented narrator—narrates is held to constitute a 'pretended' set of assertions, which are intended by the author, and understood by the competent reader, to be free from a speaker's ordinary commitment to the truth of what he or she asserts.

Although Searle's theory of speech acts has had a tremendous influence on functional aspects of pragmatics, it has also received very strong criticism.

3. 
   The Function of Sentences
   

On any occasion, the action performed by producing an utterance will consist of three related acts. There is first locutionary act, which is the basic act of utterance , or producing a meaningful linguistic expression. If we have difficulty with actually forming the sounds and words to create a meaningful utterance in a language ( for example , because it’s foreign or you’re tongue –tied), then you might fail to produce a locutionary act .

I’ve just made coffee

Some argue that Austin and Searle based their work principally on their intuitions, focusing exclusively on sentences isolated from the context where they might be used. In this sense, one of the main contradictions to Searle's suggested typology is the fact that the illocutionary force of a concrete speech act cannot take the form of a sentence as Searle considered it.

We do not , of course, simply create an utterance with a function without intending it to have an effect. This is the third dimension , the perlocutionary act. Depending on the circumstances , you 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). This is also generally known as the perlocutionary effect.

Of these three dimensions , the most discussed is illocutionary force .

1. 
   I’ll see you later
   
2. 
   .[ I predict that] c.[ I promise you that]
   

d[ I warn you that]

"In speech act theory, the hearer is seen as playing a passive role. The illocutionary force of a particular utterance is determined with regard to the linguistic form of the utterance and also introspection as to whether the necessary felicity conditions—not least in relation to the speaker's beliefs and feelings—are fulfilled. Interactional aspects are, thus, neglected.

However, [a] conversation is not just a mere chain of independent illocutionary forces—rather, speech acts are related to other speech acts with a wider discourse context. Speech act theory, in that it does not consider the function played by utterances in driving conversation is, therefore, insufficient in accounting for what actually happens in conversation," ( Barron 2003)

4. 
   Conclusion.
   

To conclude Non native speakers or native speakers who want to develop good pragmatically appropriate speaking skills in a language also need to develop good pronunciation. Just as it is a great pity for learners to say exactly the right thing in a way nobody can understand so it is of dubious value to be able to say something intelligibly if it is not appropriate for the situation. In my mind (for example) as a teacher has amply illustrated that learners find both challenging and that there are very noticeable differences between individuals in the learning of both skills . For example while ultimate in pronunciation is not likely to be native-like there does not seem to be the same ceiling on the learning of pragmatics . So phonetic pronunciation is important people’s utterance of the expressions and also speech acts. Finally , it succinctly explicates how phonetic and pragmatic variations may become decontextualized and endowed with social –indexical forces and then recontextualized to create discursive texts.

References

J. Gumperz “ Language and Social Identaty (1982)

John Searle “ Speech Acts” (1969)

J.L Morgan: “ Two types of convention in indirect speech acts” in Peter Cole (ed) : Syntax and Semantics Volume 9: Pragmatics (1978)

“How to read Austin” Pragmatics” 17 (2007)

Nihat Bayat “Social and Behavioral Science “ 70 (2013).