Speech Act Theory Locutionary act

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In linguistics and the philosophy of mind, a locutionary act is the performance of an utterance, and hence of a speech act. The term equally refers to the surface meaning of an utterance because, according to Austin's posthumous "How To Do Things With Words", a speech act should be analysed as a locutionary act (ie 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), as well as an illocutionary act (the semantic 'illocutionary force' of the utterance, thus its real, intended meaning), and in certain cases a further perlocutionary act (ie its actual effect, whether intended or not). For example, my saying to you "Don't go into the water" (a locutionary act with distinct phonetic, syntactic and semantic features) counts as warning you not to go into the water (an illocutionary act), and if you heed my warning I have thereby succeeded in persuading you not to go into the water (a perlocutionary act). This taxonomy of speech acts was inherited by John R. Searle, Austin's pupil at Oxford and subsequently an influential exponent of speech act theory.

Illocutionary act
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Illocutionary act is a technical term introduced by John L. Austin in investigations concerning what he calls 'performative' and 'constative utterances'. According to Austin's original exposition in How to Do Things With Words, an illocutionary act is an act (1) for the performance of which I must make it clear to some other person that the act is performed (Austin speaks of the 'securing of uptake'), and (2) the performance of which involves the production of what Austin calls 'conventional consequences' as, e.g., rights, commitments, or obligations. For example, in order to successfully perform a promise I must make clear to my audience that the promise occurs, and undertake an obligation to do the promised thing: hence promising is an illocutionary act in the present sense. However, for certain reasons, among them insufficient knowledge of Austin's original exposition, the term 'illocutionary act' is nowadays understood in a number of other ways.

Many define the term with reference to examples, saying such things as that any speech act like stating, asking, commanding, promising, and so on is an illocutionary act; they then often fail to give any sense of the expression illocutionary act capable of making clear what being an illocutionary act essentially consists in. It is also often emphasised that Austin introduced the illocutionary act by means of a contrast with other kinds of acts: the illocutionary act, he says, is an act performed in saying something, as contrasted with a locutionary act, the act of saying something, and also contrasted with a perlocutionary act, an act performed by saying something. But it may be misleading to distinguish between 'kinds' of acts, for these are not separate categories of speech, but instead describe different levels on which speech might work. Any one particular speech event may have any combination of locutionary, illocutionary or perlocutionary effects. Still another conception of an illocutionary act goes back to Schiffer's famous book 'Meaning' (1972, 103), in which the illocutionary act is represented as just the act of meaning something. According to the conception Bach and Harnish adopt in 'Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts' (1979), an illocutionary act is an attempt to communicate, which they again analyse as the expressing of an attitude. According to a widespread opinion, an adequate and useful account of "illocutionary acts" has been provided by John R. Searle (e.g., 1969, 1979). In recent years, however, it has repeatedly been doubted whether Searle's account is well-founded. A wide-ranging critique is in F C Doerge Illocutionary Acts[1]. Whole collections of articles examining Searle's account are: Burkhardt 1990 [2] and Lepore / van Gulick 1991[3].

Contents

1 Illocutionary force 2 Illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs) 3 Illocutionary negations 4 See also 5 References

Illocutionaryforce
Several speech act theorists, including Austin himself, make use of the notion of an

illocutionary force. In Austin's original account, the notion remains rather unclear. Some
followers of Austin, such as David Holdcroft, view illocutionary force as the property of an utterance to be made with the intention to perform a certain illocutionary act -- rather than as the successful performance of the act (which is supposed to further require the appropriateness of certain circumstances). According to this conception, the utterance of "I bet you five pounds that it will rain" may well have an illocutionary force even if the addressee doesn't hear it. However, Bach and Harnish assume illocutionary force just in case this or that illocutionary act is actually (successfully) performed. According to this conception, the addressee must have been heard and understood that the speaker intends to make a bet with them in order for the utterance to have 'illocutionary force'. If we adopt the notion of illocutionary force as an aspect of meaning, then it appears that the (intended) 'force' of certain sentences, or utterances, is not quite obvious. If someone says, "It sure is cold in here", there are several different illocutionary acts that might be aimed at by the utterance. The utterer might intend to describe the room, in which case the illocutionary force would be that of 'describing'. But she might also intend to criticise someone who should have kept the room warm. Or it might be meant as a request to someone to close the window. These forces may be interrelated: it may be by way of stating that the temperature is too cold that one criticises someone else. Such a performance of an illocutionary act by means of the performance of another is referred to as an indirect speech act.

Illocutionaryforceindicatingdevices

(IFIDs)
Searle and Vanderveken (1985) often speak about what they call 'illocutionary force indicating devices' (IFIDs). These are supposed to be elements, or aspects of linguistic devices which indicate either (dependent on which conceptions of "illocutionary force" and "illocutionary act" are adopted) that the utterance is made with a certain illocutionary force, or else that it constitutes the performance of a certain illocutionary act. In English, for example, the interrogative mood is supposed to indicate that the utterance is (intended as) a question; the directive mood indicates that the utterance is (intended as) a directive illocutionary act (an order, a request, etc.); the words "I promise" are supposed to indicate that the utterance is (intended as) a promise. Possible IFIDs in English include: word order, stress, intonation contour, punctuation, the mood of the verb, and performative verbs.

Illocutionarynegations
Another notion Searle and Vanderveken use is that of an 'illocutionary negation'. The difference of such an 'illocutionary negation' to a 'propositional negation' can be explained by reference to the difference between "I do not promise to come" and "I promise not to come". The first is an illocutionary negation - the 'not' negates the promise. The second is a propositional negation. In the view of Searle and Vanderveken, illocutionary negations change the type of illocutionary act.

Seealso

J. L. Austin linguistics performative utterance perlocutionary act pragmatics semantics Discussion of illocuationary acts in sec. 1 of Stanford Encycolopedia of Philosophy, "Assertion", http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/assertion/.

References
1. ^ Doerge (Friedrich Christoph), Illocutionary Acts - Austin's Account and What Searle Made Out of It Tuebingen University (2006) [1] 2. ^ Burkhardt, Armin (ed.), Speech Acts, Meaning and Intentions: Critical Approaches to the Philosophy of John R. Searle. Berlin / New York 1990. 3. ^ Lepore, Ernest / van Gulick, Robert (eds): John Searle and his Critics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1991.

Alston, William P.. Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning. Ithaka: Cornell University Press. 2000 Austin, John L.. How To Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1975 ISBN 0-19-281205-X Burkhardt, Armin (ed.). Speech Acts, Meaning and Intentions: Critical Approaches to the Philosophy of John R. Searle. Berlin / New York 1990 ISBN 0-89925-357-1 Doerge, Friedrich Christoph. Illocutionary Acts - Austin's Account and What Searle Made Out of It. Tuebingen 2006. [2] Lepore, Ernest / van Gulick, Robert (eds). John Searle and his Critics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1991. ISBN 0-631-15636-4 Searle, John R.. Speech Acts. Cambridge University Press. 1969 ISBN 0-521-07184-4 Searle, John R.. Expression and Meaning. Cambridge University Press. 1979 ISBN 0-521-22901-4 Searle, John R. and Daniel Vanderveken. Foundations of Illocutionary Logic. Cambridge University Press. 1985. ISBN 0-521-26324-7

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illocutionary_act"

Perlocutionary act
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A perlocutionary act (or perlocutionary effect) is a speech act, as viewed at the level of its psychological consequences, such as persuading, convincing, scaring, enlightening, inspiring, or otherwise getting someone to do or realize something. This is contrasted with locutionary and illocutionary acts (which are other levels of description, rather than different types of speech acts). The term was introduced by J. L. Austin in his work How to Do Things With Words. Unlike the notion of locutionary act, which describes the linguistic function of an utterance, a perlocutionary effect is in some sense external to the performance. It may be thought of, in a sense, as the effect of the illocutionary act. Therefore, when examining perlocutionary acts, the effect on the hearer or reader is emphasized. As an example, consider the following utterance: "By the way, I have a CD of Debussy; would you like to borrow it?" Its illocutionary function is an offer, while its intended perlocutionary effect might be to impress the listener, or to show a friendly attitude, or to encourage an interest in a particular type of music.

Performative utterance
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The notion of performative utterances was introduced by J. L. Austin. According to his original conception, it is a sentence which is not true or false but instead 'happy' or 'unhappy', and which is uttered in the performance of an illocutionary act, rather than used to state something (Austin originally assumed that stating something and performing an illocutionary act are mutually exclusive).[1] Other writers (Eve Sedgwick, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault) use the term, too, but in quite different ways.

Contents

1 Origin of the term 2 Austin's definition 3 Distinguishing performatives from other utterances 4 Are performatives truth-evaluable? 5 Sedgwick's account of performatives 6 Examples (mainly of explicit performative utterances) 7 Performative writing 8 References 9 See also

Originoftheterm
Although Austin had already used the term in his 1946 paper "Other minds", today's usage goes back to his later, remarkedly different exposition of the notion in the 1955 William James lecture series, subsequently published as How to Do Things with Words. The starting point of the lectures is Austin's doubt against a widespread philosophical prejudice, namely, the implicit presumption that utterances always "describe" or "constate" something and are thus always true or false. After mentioning several examples of sentences which are not so used, and not truth-evaluable (among them non-sensical sentences, interrogatives, directives and "ethical" propositions), he introduces "performative" sentences as another instance.

Austinsdefinition
In order to define performatives, Austin refers to those sentences which conform to the old prejudice in that they are used to describe or constate something, and which thus are true or false; and he calls such sentences "constatives". In contrast to them, Austin defines "performatives" as follows: (1) Performative utterances are not true or false, that is, not truth-evaluable; instead when something is wrong with them then they are "happy" or "unhappy". (2) The uttering of a

performative is, or is part of, the doing of a certain kind of action (Austin later deals with them under the name illocutionary acts), the performance of which, again, would not normally be described as just "saying" or "describing" something (cf. Austin 1962, 5). For example, when Peter says "I promise to do the dishes" in an appropriate context then he thereby does not just say something, and in particular he does not just describe what he is doing; rather, in making the utterance he performs the promise; since promising is an illocutionary act, the utterance is thus a performative utterance. If Peter utters the sentence without the intention to keep the promise, or if eventually he does not keep it, then although something is not in order with the utterance, the problem is not that the sentence is false: it is rather "unhappy", or "infelicitous", as Austin also says in his discussion of so-called felicity conditions. In the absence of any such flaw, on the other hand, the utterance is to be assessed as "happy" or "felicitous", rather than as "true". The initial examples of performative sentences Austin gives are these:

'I do (sc. take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife)' -- as uttered in the course of the marriage ceremony. 'I name this ship the "Queen Elizabeth"' 'I give and bequeath my watch to my brother' -- as occurring in a will 'I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow' (Austin 1962, 5)

As Austin later notices himself, these examples belong (more or less strikingly) to what Austin calls, explicit performatives; to utter an "explicit" performative sentence is to make explicit what act one is performing. However, there are also "implicit", "primitive", or "inexplicit" performatives. When, for instance, one uses the word "Go!" in order to command someone to leave the room then this utterance is part of the performance of a command; and the sentence, according to Austin, is neither true nor false; hence the sentence is a performative; -- still, it is not an explicit performative, for it does not make explicit that the act the speaker is performing is a command. As Austin observes, the acts purported to be performed by performative utterances may be socially contested. For instance, "I divorce you", said three times by a man to his wife, may be accepted to constitute a divorce by some, but not by others.

Distinguishingperformativesfrom

otherutterances
Austin found great difficulty in drawing a completely clear distinction between "performatives" and "constatives"; among other things he came to the conclusion that to state something is to perform an illocutionary act, which renders all constatives as performatives; for reasons like these, he eventually suggested abandoning the dichotomy, replacing it by a trichotomy of speech acts, namely, the so-called "locutionary", "illocutionary" and "perlocutionary acts". There is a most thorough and accurate study of how "performatives" might be defined following Austin by Jan S. Andersson, "How to define 'Performative'".[2] Furthermore, during the 1970s there was much dispute about questions such as whether performatives are truth-evaluable or not, whether there are non-explicit performatives at all, whether performatives can be reduced to truth-evaluable sentences (and vice versa), and several others;[3] however, nowadays many of these issues appear to have lost some of their attraction.[citation needed]

Areperformativestruthevaluable?
According to Austin's original account, it is an essential characteristic of performative sentences that they are neither true, nor false, that is, not truth-evaluable. However, in his 1989 article How Performatives Work John R. Searle argues that performatives are true/false just like constatives. Searle further claims that performatives are what he calls declarations; this is a technical notion of Searle's account: according to his conception, an utterance is a declaration, if "the successful performance of the speech act is sufficient to bring about the fit between words and world, to make the propostional content true." Searle believes that this double direction of fit contrasts the simple word-to-world fit of assertives. Bach and Harnish (1991) agree with Searle that performatives are true/false, but for different reasons. They hold that performatives are truth-evaluable because they are directly statements, but only indirectly promises, apologies etc. While Searle sees performatives as declarations, Bach and Harnish[citation needed] claim that only some performative utterances are declarations, such as, "I pronounce you man and wife." But Bach and Harnish attack Searle's account in a more fundamental way. They dispute Searles explanation of what the question concerning performatives is about. According

to Searle the question concerning performatives is that they are sentences that perform an explicit action specified by the verb, just by saying that the action is being performed. Bach and Harnish feel that this is the wrong approach to inquiries into the nature of performatives. They feel that an approach such as the one Searle posits, assumes incorrectly that performatives are conceptually distinct from other utterances. This type of assumption is unfavorable according to Bach and Harnish because it rules out the null hypothesis without foundation. They feel the null hypothesis in this case is that there may not be in fact, any need for a special justification for an utterances performative effect. According to Bach and Harnish, ordinary performatives do not need distinctive rationalization, because they are ordinary acts of communication that are successful only if an audience can infer your communicative intention to be expressing a distinct position. They feel that this description of performatives contrasts Searles view of performatives as declarations, because declarations are only incidentally communicative and are successful only if they fulfill the applicable conventions. Bach and Harnish also reject Searles view that the performative force of performatives is contained in its literal meaning. They feel that Searle incorrectly confounds performative force with its communicative accomplishment. Bach and Harnish argue that although the communicative success of performatives relies on the fact that they are statements, the performative force of performatives do not.

Sedgwicksaccountofperformatives
When performative utterances are explicit, then they are usually in the first person present tense. Those features are indexical, reflecting features of the immediate context. The particular verbs used in performative utterances tend to be verba dicendiverbs of speakingor "metapragmatic verbs," verbs that draw attention to a particular relation between the utterance or speech form and context. While some linguists and theorists might describe explicit performative utterances as rare occurrences, Eve Sedgwick argues that there are performative aspects to nearly all words, sentences, and phrases.[citation needed] According to Sedgwick, performative utterances can be 'transformative' performatives, which create an instant change of personal or environmental status, or 'promisory' performatives, which describe the world as it might be in the future. These categories are not exclusive, so an utterance may well have both qualities. As Sedgwick observes, performative utterances can be revoked, either by the person who uttered them ("I take

back my promise"), or by some other party not immediately involved, like the state (for example, gay marriage vows). Words on a list can be either descriptive or performative. 'Butter' on a shopping list implies that "I will buy butter" (a promise to yourself). But 'Butter' printed on your till receipt means "you have purchased butter" (simply a description).

Examples(mainlyofexplicit performativeutterances)

"I now pronounce you man and wife." - used in the course of a marriage ceremony "Go" - used in ordering someone to go "Yes" - answering the question "Do you promise to do the dishes?" "You are under arrest." - used in setting someone under arrest "I christen you" "I accept your apology" "I sentence you to death" "I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you" (Islamic: see: Talaq-i-Bid'ah or triple Talaq) "I do" wedding "I swear to do that", "I promise to be there" "I apologize" "I dedicate this..." (...book to my wife; ...next song to the striking Stella Doro workers, etc.) "This meeting is now adjourned", "The court is now in session" "This church is hereby de-sanctified" "War is declared"

In his book on Jean-Michel Basquiat and the SAMO Graffiti, Eric Fretz claims that the use of the copyright symbol is an act of performative utterance in writing.[4]

Performativewriting
The above ideas have influenced performative writing; they are used as a justification for an attempt to create a new form of critical writing about performance (often about performance art). Such a writing form is claimed to be, in itself, a form of performance. It is said to more accurately reflect the fleeting and ephemeral nature of a performance, and the various tricks of memory and referentiality that happen in the mind of the viewer during and after the performance.

References
1. ^ Austin, J.L. How to Do Things with Words Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. ISBN 0-19-824553-X 2. '^ Andersson, Jan S. How to define 'Performative. Stockholm: Libertryck, 1975. 3. ^ Jackobson K. How to make the distinction between constative and performative utterances, in The Philosophical Quarterly 21:85 (1985). 4. ^ Fretz, E. Jean-Michel Basquiat: A Biography Greenwood Press. 2009. ISBN 1844845613