People can do many things with speech. They can make promises, lay bets, warnings, offer congratulations, or swear on oath. When you say, “Be careful! Mr. Potter is in his office.” you not only say something, but you also warn someone.
The study of how we do things with sentences is the study of speech acts. In studying speech acts, we are dealing with the context of the utterance. “Mr. Potter is in his office.” may be a warning, but in some cases, the same sentence may be a promise, or merely information, depending on circumstances.
Speech act theory aims to tell us when we appear to ask questions but actually we are giving orders, or when we say something with special intonation and mean the opposite. Thus, when your friend says, “Excuse me, but you sit on my book,” he actually means “Don’t sit on my book!” It is not merely information, and you will not say “Thank you for informing,” without doing anything.
Normally, the speech act is a sentence, but it can be a word or a word or phrase as long as it follows the rules necessary to accomplish the intention. When one speaks, one performs an act. Speech act stresses the intent of the act as a whole. According to Searle, understanding the speaker’s intention is essential to capture the meaning. Without the speaker’s intention, it is impossible to understand the words as a speech act.
John R. Searle (1983) says that there are three types of speech act:
Locutionary acts
Illocutionary acts
Perlocutionary acts
Locutionary act is an act of saying something with the utterance’s exact meaning. Sometimes, locutionary act is merely called the act of saying something. In locutionary act, the speaker’s intention is not important. Thus, “I’m thirsty” is mere information to the hearer that the speaker is thirsty.
Illocutionary act is an act of doing something with a certain intention and function. Illocutionary act is sometimes called the act of doing something. When someone says “I’m thirsty.” he actually requests the hearer to take him a drink.
Perlocutionary act is an act to give an influence to the hearer. Sometimes, it is called the act of affecting someone.
Searle classifies illocutionary acts into five categories:
Assertives
An act in which the speaker commits to the truth of the corresponding proposition (i.e. He asserts the proposition), such as: stating, suggesting, complaining, claiming, and boasting.
Directives
Any illocutionary act which essentially involves the speaker trying to get the hearer to behave in some required way, example: ordering, commanding, requesting, advising, recommending, etc.
Expressives
Any illocutionary act to express the speaker’s psychological expression towards something, such as: thanking, congratulating, pardoning, blaming, condoling, etc.
Commisives
Any illocutionary act which essentially involves the committing to behave in some required way
Declarations
An act which relates the utterance with some state of affairs, for example: resigning, dismissing, naming, appointing, etc.
Actually, every utterance is some kind of speech act, even when there is no explicit performative verb. In “It is raining,” we recognize an implicit performance of stating. On the other hand, “Is it raining?” is a performance of questioning, just as “Leave!” is a performance of ordering.
References:
Fromkin, V, et al. 1990. An Introduction to Language. Australia: Hancourt Jovanovich Group
Hurford, James. R. 1983. Semantics: A Coursebook. England: Cambridge University Press.
Leech, Geofrey. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. Edinburgh: Longman Group Limited.
