Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine

Kyiv National Linguistic University

Self-study work on Theoretical Grammar of the English language

“Speech Act Theory. Indirect Speech Acts”

Group 402

Germanic Philology Department

Anna Raichuk

Kyiv 2014
 The contemporary use of the term “speech act” goes back to J. L. Austin's
development of performative utterances and his theory of locutionary,
illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts. Speech acts are commonly taken to include
such acts as promising, ordering, greeting, warning, inviting and congratulating.
That is, speech acts are simply things people do through language – for
example, apologizing, instructing, menacing, explaining something, etc.

John Austin is the person who is usually credited with generating interest in
what has since come to be known as pragmatics and speech act theory. His first
step was to show that some utterances are not statements or questions but actions.
After introducing several kinds of sentences which he asserts are neither true nor
false, he turns in particular to one of these kinds of sentences, which he calls
performative utterances or just "performatives". These he characterises by two
features:

 Again, though they may take the form of a typical indicative sentence,
performative sentences are not used to describe (or "constate") and are thus not
true or false; they have no truth-value.
 Second, to utter one of these sentences in appropriate circumstances is
not just to "say" something, but rather to perform a certain kind of action.

He goes on to say that when something goes wrong in connection with a

performative utterance it is, as he puts it, "infelicitous", or "unhappy" rather than
false.

The action which is performed when a 'performative utterance' is issued

belongs to what Austin later calls a speech-act (more particularly, the kind of
action Austin has in mind is what he subsequently terms the illocutionary act). For
example, if you say "I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth," and the circumstances
are appropriate in certain ways, then you will have done something special,
namely, you will have performed the act of naming the ship. Other examples
include: "I take this man as my lawfully wedded husband," used in the course of a
marriage ceremony, or "I bequeath this watch to my brother," as occurring in a
will. In all three cases the sentence is not being used to describe or state what one
is 'doing', but being used to actually 'do' it.

Speech acts can be analysed on three levels:

 A locutionary act, the performance of an utterance: producing a

meaningful linguistic expression, uttering a sentence;
 an illocutionary act: the pragmatic 'illocutionary force' of the
utterance, thus its intended significance as a socially valid verbal action;
 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.

In the theory of speech acts, attention has especially focused on the

illocutionary act, much less on the locutionary and perlocutionary act, as 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.

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). Searle's work on speech acts is also commonly understood
to refine Austin's conception. However, some philosophers have pointed out a
significant difference between the two conceptions: whereas Austin emphasized
the conventional interpretation of speech acts, Searle emphasized a psychological
interpretation (based on beliefs, intentions, etc.).

According to Austin's preliminary informal description, the idea of an

"illocutionary act" can be captured by emphasizing that "by saying something, we
do something", as when someone issues an order to someone 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.)

John Searle, who studied under J.Austin at Oxford, proposed a detailed

classification of speech acts. His speech act classification has had a great impact on
linguistics. It includes five major classes of speech acts:

 assertives = 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, e.g. promises and oaths;
 expressives = speech acts that express the speaker's attitudes and
emotions towards the proposition, e.g. congratulations, excuses and thanks;
 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.

Another classification of speech acts was introduced by

G.Potcheptsov. It is based on purely linguistic principles. The main criterion for
pragmatic classification of utterances is the way of expressing communicative
intention. This classification includes six basic speech acts: constatives,
promissives, menacives, performatives, directives and questions.

J. Searle can also be merited for introducing a theory of indirect speech

acts. In the course of performing speech acts we ordinarily communicate with each
other. However, the meaning of the linguistic means used (if ever there are
linguistic means, for at least some so-called "speech acts" can be performed non-
verbally) may also be different from the content intended to be communicated.
Indirect speech acts are cases in which one speech act is performed indirectly, by
way of performing another: Can you pass me the salt? Though the sentence is
interrogative, it is conventionally used to mark a request – we cannot just answer
“yes” or “no”. One may, for instance, say, "Peter, can you open the window?",
thereby asking Peter whether he will be able to open the window, but also
requesting that he does so. Since the request is performed indirectly, by means of
(directly) performing a question, it counts as an indirect speech act. According to
modern point of view such utterances contain two illocutionary forces, with one of
them dominating.

Indirect speech acts are commonly used to reject proposals and to make
requests. For example, a speaker asks, "Would you like to meet me for coffee?"
and another replies, "I have class." The second speaker used an indirect speech act
to reject the proposal. This is indirect because the literal meaning of "I have class"
does not entail any sort of rejection.

This poses a problem for linguists because it is confusing (on a rather simple
approach) to see how the person who made the proposal can understand that his
proposal was rejected. Following substantially an account of H. P. Grice, Searle
suggests that we are able to derive meaning out of indirect speech acts by means of
a cooperative process out of which we are able to derive multiple illocutions;
however, the process he proposes does not seem to accurately solve the problem.

In other words this means that one does not need to say the words apologize,
pledge, or praise in order to show they are doing the action. All the examples
above show how the actions and indirect words make something happen rather
than coming out straightforward with specific words and saying it.