SPEECH ACT THEORY

Sometimes people use language to perform an action. Thus, the expression, “I’m
sorry I said mean things to you,” is more than a reference to one’s state of mind. It
is the performance of an action called an apology.

Speech Act Theory was developed by the Oxford philosopher [Link] in the
1930s It was expounded in a series of lectures which Austin gave at Harvard
University in 1955. The lectures, twelve in all, were subsequently published in
1962 under the title How To Do Things With Words.

Conventionally speaking, a declarative sentence is always used to describe

some state of affairs, some fact, which it must describe truly or falsely. According
to Austin, this is the descriptive fallacy, a mistaken vision on language largely due
to logical positivism, which sees language primarily as a means of describing the
world and sentences as statements. Consequently, the primary task of linguists and
philosophers was that of evaluating the truth or falsity of those statements, with the
sad effect of eliding the complex relationship between language and reality.;
Austin said that there are many declarative sentences which do not describe,
report, or state anything, but are, or are part of, the doing of some action:
I do, as uttered as part of a marriage ceremony;
I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth, as uttered by the appropriate person while
smashing a bottle against the stem of the ship in question;
I give and bequeath my watch to my brother, as written in a will;
To utter such sentences in the appropriate circumstances is not to describe
what you are doing: it is doing it, or part of doing it, and Austin calls such
utterances performatives or performative utterances, distinguishing them from
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constatives or constative utterances which are used to state a fact or describe a
state of affairs.
Only constatives can be true or false; performatives are happy or unhappy.

The criterion for a happy, or felicitous, performative is that the circumstances in

which it is uttered should be appropriate: (certain felicity conditions are needed).
If a performative is unhappy, or infelicitous, something has gone wrong in the
connection between the utterance and the circumstances in which it is uttered.
FELICITY CONDITIONS:
 The context and roles of the participants must be recognized by all parties.
 The action must be carried aut completely.
 The person must have the right intentions.
Austen begins to doubt the distinction true/false constatives - happy/unhappy
performatives It seems that not only performatives are subject to unhappiness: a
sentence such as All John’s children are bald as uttered when John has no children
is just as unhappy as I give and bequeath my watch to my brother as written in the
will of a person who does not possess a watch.
Instead of concentrating on the truth/falsity-happiness/ unhappiness distinction
which is beginning to look unsound, perhaps we can decide whether something is
or is not a performative by testing whether ‘saying so makes it so’.
If I say I promise, I thereby promise, whereas if I say I walk, I do not thereby walk.
A possible test for performatives is therefore the hereby-test. In the case of
performatives it is always possible to insert hereby: I bequeath—I hereby
bequeath; passengers are warned—passengers are hereby warned. In a constative,
it is not appropriate to insert hereby: I walk—*I hereby walk; I am being watched
—*I am hereby being watched.

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BUT, according to some linguists, this is also a flawed distinction.

Why? Because there are many performatives which do not contain these so-
called speech-act verbs or performative verbs, and which are not even
declarative sentences; in many cases, uttering words such as dog, bull, or fire
constitutes an action of warning just as much as uttering I warn you that there is a
dog/bull/fire, so we would want to say that these utterances, too, are performatives.

Any utterance is part of, or all of, the doing of some action, and the only distinction
that now remains is between performative and non-performative verbs.
- performative verbs name actions that are performed, wholly or partly, by
saying something (state, promise);
- non-performative verbs name other types of action, types of action which are
independent of speech (walk, sleep).

Explicit performatives: I pronounce you husband and wife

Implicit perfomatives: I will be back ( I promise that…., I warn you that)

There are too many performative verbs, therefore we need broad classes of speech
act under which large numbers of more delicately distinguished speech acts might
fall.

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EVERY TIME WE DIRECT LANGUAGE AT SOME AUDIENCE, WE
PERFORM THREE SIMULTANEOUS ACTS:
- a locutionary act,
- an illocutionary act, and
- a perlocutionary act.

A. the locution (what is said): ”I think I might go and have another bun.”
The act of saying something is known as the locutionary act.
To perform a locutionary act is to say something in what Austin calls ‘the full
normal sense’. That means that the speaker composes a sentence in a specific
context. The locution thereby is the grammatical structure of the utterance.
It includes:
1 The phonic act: uttering noises, phones.
2 The phatic act: uttering noises as belonging to a certain vocabulary and
conforming to a certain grammar, that is, as being part of a certain language.
3 The rhetic act: using these noises with a certain sense and reference
The following examples show the different grammatical forms that an utterance
can have:
(1) Declarative: “You are generous.”
(2) Closed- interrogative: “Are you generous?”
(3) Open- interrogative: “Who is generous?”
(4) Imperative: “Be generous!”
(5) Exclamative: “How generous you are!”

B. the illocution (what is done in uttering words):

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When making an utterance the speaker always has an intention behind it. The
speaker makes an utterance to make either a statement about the world, to
apologize or to explain something. This intended meaning behind the utterance is
called illocutionary force and is internal to the locutionary act. The same locution
can have different possible meanings depending on the context.
By looking at the example “It is cold in here.” the declarative can be stated either
to make a statement about the current temperature but also to make the hearer do
an action such as closing the window. This makes it obvious that in conversation it
is not always clear what the intended meaning behind an utterance is. That shows
that the same utterance can be ambiguous and can only be understood by looking
at the context in which it is uttered.

In the dialogue above, we can identify at least two illocutionary acts:

Expressing intention:” I think I might go and have another bun.”
Requesting action: ”Could you get me a tuna and sandwich one, please?”

!!! So please, remember: each time one performs a locutionary act, one is also
thereby performing some illocutionary act, such as: stating, promising, warning,
betting, inviting, apologising, ordering, etc.
If a hearer, through his or her knowledge of the conventions of the language,
grasps what one is doing, there is uptake on his or her part of the illocutionary
force of the utterance.

C. The Perlocution is the intended or unintended effect that the utterance can have
on the hearer and is external to the locutionary act as the speaker cannot control the
effect the utterance will have on the hearer.
The effect the illocutionary act has on the hearer is called the perlocutionary act,
such as persuading, deterring, surprising, misleading, or convincing.

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DIRECT AND INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS
As the example “It is cold in here” has shown, utterances can be used to make
other people do something. The speaker can chose to make his intended meaning
explicit or to state it indirectly.
 Direct speech acts
An utterance is seen as a direct speech act when there is a direct relationship
between the structure and the communicative function of the utterance. The
following examples show that the form correspondences with the function:
- A declarative is used to make a statement: “You wear a seat belt.”
- An interrogative is used to ask a question: “Do you wear a seat belt?”
- An imperative is used to make a command: “Wear a seat belt!”

!!!!! Direct speech acts therefore explicitly illustrate the intended meaning the
speaker has behind making that utterance.

 Indirect speech acts

Searle stated that an indirect speech is one that is “performed by means of
another”. That means that there is an indirect relationship between the form and the
function of the utterance. The following examples show that the form does not
correspondence with the function:
- An interrogative is used to make a request: “Could you pass the salt?”
- A declarative is used to make a request: “You’re standing in front of the TV.”
The speaker does not explicitly state the intended meaning behind the utterance. It
is the hearer’s task to analyse the utterance to understand its meaning.

According to Austen, there are five broad classes of speech acts

1. Verdictives typified by the giving of a verdict, estimate, reckoning or appraisal;
2. Excersitives: the exercising of powers, rights or influence, exemplified by
voting, ordering, urging, advising, warning, etc.
3. Commissives, speech acts that the speakers use to commit themselves to some
future action: promises, threats, refusals, pledges, declarations or announcements
of intention.
4. Behavitives, which have to do with social behaviour and attitudes, for example
apologizing, congratulating, commending, condoling, cursing, and challenging.

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5. Expositives, which make it clear how our utterances fit into the course of an
argument or conversation—how we are using words. In a way, these might be
classed as metalinguistic, as part of the language we are using about language.
Examples are I reply; I argue; I concede; I illustrate; I assume; I postulate.

John Searle’s classification of speech acts

[Link]: words and expressions that change the world by their very
utterance: I bet, I declare, I resign, I baptize this boy John Smith, This court
sentences you to ten years imprisonment., etc.

2. Representatives:acts in which the speaker states what the speaker believes to be

the case: describing, claiming, hypothesising, insisting, predicting

3. Commissives: acts in which the words commit the speaker to future action:
promising, offering, threatening, refusing, vowing, volunteering

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4. Directives: acts in which the words are aimed at making the hearer do
something such as: commanding, requesting, inviting, forbidding, suggesting, etc.

5. Expressives: acts in which the words state what the speaker feels: apologising,
praising, congratulating, deploring, regretting