Chapter I

INTRODUCTION

In a typical speech situation involving a speaker, a hearer, and an utterance by the

speaker, there are many kinds of acts associated with the speakers utterance. The speaker
will characteristically have moved his jaw and tongue and made noises. In addition, he will
characteristically have performed some acts within the class which includes informing or
irritating or boring his hearers. further characteristically have performed acts within the class
which includes making statements, asking questions, issuing commands, giving reports,
greeting, and warning.
When we speak we can do all sorts of things, from aspirating a consonant, to
constructing a relative clause, to insulting a guest, to starting a war. These are all, pretheoretically, speech actsacts done in the process of speaking. The theory of speech acts,
however, is especially concerned with those acts that are not completely covered under one or
more of the major divisions of grammarphonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax,
semanticsor under some general theory of actions.
Real-life acts of speech usually involve interpersonal relations of some kind: A
speaker does something with respect to an audience by saying certain words to that audience.

Chapter II
DISCUSSION

A. DEFINITION OF SPEECH ACT

In general, speech acts are acts of communication. To communicate is to express a
certain attitude, and the type of speech act being performed corresponds to the type of attitude
being expressed. For example, a statement expresses a belief, a request expresses a desire,
and an apology expresses a regret. As an act of communication, a speech act succeeds if the
audience identifies, in accordance with the speaker's intention, the attitude being expressed.

Some speech acts, however, are not primarily acts of communication and have the
function of affecting institutional states of affairs. They can do so in either of two ways. Some
officially judge something to be the case, and others actually make something the case.
Those of the first kind include judges' rulings, referees' decisions etc, and the latter include
firing, appointing etc. Acts of both kinds can be performed only in certain ways under certain
circumstances by those in certain institutional or social positions.
The theory of speech acts aims to do justice to the fact that even though words
(phrases, sentences) encode information, people do more things with words than convey
information, and that when people do convey information, they often convey more than their
words encode.
Although the focus of Speech Act Theory has been on utterances, especially those made in
conversational and other face-to-face situations, the phrase 'speech act' should be taken as a
generic term for any sort of language use, oral or otherwise.

Speech acts, whatever the medium of their performance, fall under the broad category
of intentional action, with which they share certain general features.
A speech act in linguistics and the philosophy of language is an utterance that has
performative function in language and communication. A speech act is a minimal functional
unit in human communication. Just as a word is the smallest free form found in language and
a morpheme is the smallest unit of language that carries information about meaning , the
basic unit of communication is a speech act (the speech act of refusal).
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Speech acts are commonly taken to include such acts as promising, ordering,
greeting, warning, inviting and congratulating. Locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary
acts.
Speech acts can be analysed on three levels:
1. A locutionary act , the performance of an utterance: the actual utterance and its ostensible
meaning, comprising phonetic, phatic and rhetic acts corresponding to the verbal, syntactic
and semantic
aspects of any meaningful utterance;
2. an illocutionary act : the pragmatic 'illocutionary force' of the utterance, thus its intended
significance as a socially valid verbal action (see below);
3. and in certain cases a further perlocutionary act : its actual effect, such as persuading,
convincing, scaring, enlightening, inspiring, or otherwise getting someone to do or realize
something, whether
intended or not (Austin 19).
B. KINDS OF ACTS
Austin substituted a three-way contrast among the kinds of acts that are performed
when language is put to use, namely the distinction between locutionary, illocutionary, and
perlocutionary acts.
Locutionary Act, are acts of speaking, acts involved in the construction of speech,
such as uttering certain sounds or making certain marks, using particular words and using
them in conformity with the grammatical rules of a particular language and with certain
senses and certain references as determined by the rules of the language from which they are
drawn.
Example:
He said to me Shoot her! meaning by shoot shoot and referring by her to her.
Illocutionary Acts, are acts done in speaking. The minimal units of human
communication are speech acts of a type called illocutionary acts. Some examples of these
are statements, questions,
commands, promises, and apologies. Whenever a speaker utters a sentence in an appropriate
context with certain intentions, he performs one or more illocutionary acts.
For example, the two utterances

You will leave the room and

3

Leave the room!

Have the same propositional content, namely that you will leave the room; but

characteristically the first of these has the illocutionary force of a prediction and the second
has the illocutionary force of an order. Similarly, the two utterances

Are you going to the movies? and

When will you see John?

both characteristically have the illocutionary force of questions but have different
propositional contents logical theory of illocutionary acts.
The concept of an illocutionary act is central to the concept of a speech act. Although
there are numerous opinions regarding how to define 'illocutionary acts', there are some kinds
of acts which are widely accepted as illocutionary, as for example promising, ordering
someone, and bequeathing.
Classifying Illocutionary Speech Acts
Searle (1975) [3] has set up the following classification of illocutionary speech acts:
1. assertives = speech acts that commit a speaker to the truth of the expressed
proposition , e.g. reciting a creed
2. directives = speech acts that are to cause the hearer to take a particular action, e.g.
requests, commands and advice
examples:
In which room is our final exam? (The speaker requests the hearer to answer
the
question)
Leave town immediately! (The speaker demands that the hearer carry out
the action desired by the speaker
3. commissives = speech acts that commit a speaker to some future action, e.g. promises
and oaths
For example
I plan to do surgery on this patient tomorrow or
I will post the test results when I get them later today.
4. expressives = speech acts that express the speaker's attitudes and emotions towards
the proposition, e.g. congratulations, excuses and thanks
example:
Hi everyone!
I really appreciate the suggestions.

5. declarations = speech acts that change the reality in accord with the proposition of the
declaration, e.g. baptisms, pronouncing someone guilty or pronouncing someone
husband and wife
Perlocutionary Act, which is a consequence or by-product of speaking, whether
intended or not. As the name is designed to suggest, perlocutions are acts performed by
speaking. According to Austin, perlocutionary acts consist in the production of effects upon
the thoughts, feelings, or actions of the addressee(s), speaker, or other parties, such as causing
people to refer to a certain ship as the Joseph Stalin, producing the belief that Sam and Mary
should be considered man and wife, convincing an addressee of the truth of a statement,
causing an addressee to feel a requirement to do something, and so on.
Example:
He persuaded me to shoot her.
C. TYPES OF SPEECH ACTS
Statements, requests, promises and apologies are examples of the four major
categories of communicative illocutionary acts by john austin(1962):

constatives,

directives,

commissives and acknowledgments.

Constatives: Statements that (potentially) are true orfalse. (affirming, alleging,

announcing,

answering,

attributing,

claiming,

classifying,

concurring,

confirming,

conjecturing, denying, disagreeing, disclosing, disputing, identifying, informing, insisting,

predicting, ranking, reporting, stating.)
It is raining outside right now. [present]
Columbus discovered America in 1492. [past]
There will be a major earthquake on April 15, 2015. [future]
Directives: is a speech act that is to cause the hearer to take a particular action (advising,
admonishing, asking, begging, dismissing, excusing, forbidding, instructing, ordering,
permitting, requesting, requiring, suggesting, urging, warning.)
Example:
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I need/ want that car.

Give me your pen.
Could you give me your pen, please?
May I have some soda? Is there any milk left?
This has to be done over. What about the renovation?

Commissives: is a speech act that commits a speaker to some future action (agreeing,
guaranteeing, inviting, offering, promising, swearing, volunteering)
Example:
Maybe I can do that tomorrow.
Dont worry, Ill be there.
Acknowledgments: apologizing, condoling, congratulating, greeting, thanking, accepting.
The categories proposed by John Searle, instead, are:

Representatives (asserting, concluding, describing)

Directives (requesting, questioning, ordering)

Commissives (promising, offering)

Expressives (thanking, apologizing)

Declarations (excommunicating, declaring war)

D. SPEECH ACT FUNCTIONS

1) Exchange factual information
The plain departs at 7:10.
2) Exchange intellectual information
These arguments are correct.
3) Exchange emotional attitudes
Im worried about my term papers
4) Exchange moral attitudes

I appreciate your help.

5) Persuasion

Hand in your assignments.

6) Socializing

Hi, Larry, how are you?

Chapter III
CONCLUSION

A speech act in linguistics and the philosophy of language is an utterance that has
performative function in language and communication. Speech acts can be analysed on three
levels:

A locutionary act
an illocutionary act
perlocutionary act
The concept of an illocutionary act is central to the concept of a speech act. Although

there are numerous opinions regarding how to define 'illocutionary acts', there are some
kinds of acts which are widely accepted as illocutionary. Classification of illocutionary
speech acts:
assertives
directives
commissives
expressives
declarations

REFERENCESS

www.meetup.com/history-of-philosophy/
grammar.about.com/speech-acts-theory.html
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/john_searle
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/speech_act
www-01.sil.org/linguistics/glosarryoflinguisticsterms/whatisaspeechacts.html
amin-limpo.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-speech-acts-and-communication.html