ASSIGNMENT

Assignment

Assignment

Speech act is a technical term in linguistics and the philosophy of language. The contemporary use of the term goes back to John L. Austin's doctrine of locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. Many scholars[who?] identify 'speech acts' with illocutionary acts, rather than locutionary or perlocutionary acts. As with the notion of illocutionary acts, there are different opinions on the nature of speech acts. The extension of speech acts is commonly taken to include such acts as promising, ordering, greeting, warning, inviting someone and congratulating.

The concept of an illocutionary act is central to the concept of a speech act. Although there are numerous opinions as to what 'illocutionary acts' actually are, there are some kinds of acts which are widely accepted as illocutionary, as for example promising, ordering someone, and bequeathing.

Following the usage of, for example, John R. Searle, "speech act" is often meant to refer just to the same thing as the term illocutionary act, which John L. Austin had originally introduced in How to Do Things with Words (published posthumously in 1962).

According to Austin's preliminary informal description, the idea of an "illocutionary act" can be captured by emphasising that "by saying something, we do something", as when someone orders someone else to go by saying "Go!", or when a minister joins two people in marriage saying, "I now pronounce you husband and wife." (Austin would eventually define the "illocutionary act" in a more exact manner.)

An interesting type of illocutionary speech act is that performed in the utterance of what Austin calls performatives, typical instances of which are "I nominate John to be President", "I sentence you to ten years' imprisonment", or "I promise to pay you back." In these typical, rather explicit cases of performative sentences, the action that the sentence describes (nominating, sentencing, promising) is performed by the utterance of the sentence itself.

Greeting (in saying, "Hi John!", for instance), apologizing ("Sorry for that!"), describing something ("It is snowing"), asking a question ("Is it snowing?"), making a request and giving an order ("Could you pass the salt?" and "Drop your weapon or I'll shoot you!"), or making a promise ("I promise I'll give it back") are typical examples of "speech acts" or "illocutionary acts".

In saying, "Watch out, the ground is slippery", Mary performs the speech act of warning Peter to be careful.

In saying, "I will try my best to be at home for dinner", Peter performs the speech act of promising to be at home in time.

In saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, please give me your attention", Mary requests the audience to be quiet.

In saying, "Race with me to that building over there!", Peter challenges Mary.

Searle (1975)[1] has set up the following classification of illocutionary speech acts:

Representative = speech acts that commit a speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition, e.g. reciting a creed

directives = speech acts that are to cause the hearer to take a particular action, e.g. requests, commands and advice

commissives = speech acts that commit a speaker to some future action, ...