HOW TO DO THINGS WITH WORDS.

YULE, CHAPTER 11:

SPEECH ACTS.

A brief summary of speech acts.

HOW to do things with words.

◦ Speech act theory is the central unit of analysis of Pragmatics.

◦ That is why speech act theory deserves the attention of a whole class.

◦ DO we actually do things with words?

◦ YES!!!
Remember:
◦ The tenet of this view of language as discourse is that there must be at least two protagonists, a
producer and a receiver of the message which is encoded in a particular language.

◦ The producer (speaker, for short) acts upon the receiver (hearer for short) by choosing a specific
expression in language X.
An example:
◦ Situation: a bussiness meeting. Peter, who is presenting the new project arrives late. All the other
members are already at the table waiting for him. The following exchange takes place.

◦ Manager: Good Morning Peter.

◦ Peter: Good morning Sir! I have my project here.
◦ Manager: Do you ever wear a watch?
◦ Peter: I’m sorry. I missed the bus.
◦ Is the manager in the last turn really asking about Peter’s belongings? Is he really interested in the fact of
knowing whether Peter commonly wears a watch or not?
An example
◦ Definitely, not.
◦ The real meaning of the interrogative sentence is to make a strong statement. It is an interrogative which
is not asking for information.

◦ This interrogative sentence is performing a speech act; the act of warning about his behavoir Peter that
he is always late.

◦ So, when we speak, we perform acts, but acts of speech, or speech acts.
HOW to do things with words.

◦ Thus, saying means doing. In other words, the speaker produces an act of speech or theoretically
called a speech act.

◦ A speech act can be: greeting, persuading, offering, accepting, rejecting, inviting, etc…i.e. all the
things we do with language. (what you call the functions of language in teaching practice)
HOW to do things with words.

◦ Speech Acts can be considered by analysing them in three levels or layers:

◦ LOCUTION: a message is encoded in X language.
◦ ILLOCUTION: the message is inflicted an intention by the speaker, for example the expression
HELLO! has the intention of greeting.
◦ PERLOCUTION: the effect the act has on the Hearer. The latter can be linguistic as when it is the
answer to a question, or
◦ it can be action as when it represents some activity as closing the door when a person has
requested that action.
HOW to do things with words.
◦ The three layers are referred to as:

◦ Locutionary Act : Do you ever wear a watch?

◦ Illocutionary Force: warning about wrong behavior/ scolding

◦ Perlocutionary Effect: accepting and apologising.

HOW to do things with words.
◦ Originally, philosophers of language focused their attention on acts or expressions such as “I name
this ship Mary”, by which the saying implies the doing , or in other words, the saying means
changing the current state of affairs.

◦ Those expressions could not be considered either TRUE or FALSE.

◦ That is to say, apart from units or sentences (T or F), there are Performative sentences, those that
perform speech acts.
HOW to do things with words.
◦ Felicity conditions are the necessary conditions for an act to be successful.
◦ To be able to do something with the expression: “You are fired”, you must be the boss talking to an
employee. That is a necessary or felicity condition. If this is not the case, the event is considered a
misfire. The speech act is not performed if the one saying : You are fired is a person talking to a
passer-by in the Street.
HOW to do things with words.
◦ However, after some reflection, philosophers of language extended the idea of speech act to
whatever we do with language every time we open our mouths to speak.
HOW to do things with words.
◦ Speech acts can be direct or indirect.
◦ FORM__________________________________FUNCTION
◦ A declarative sentence is meant to state something.
◦ An imperative sentence is meant to give a command.
◦ An interrogative sentence is meant to ask for information.
◦ An exclamatory sentence is meant to make an exclamation.
◦ In the 4 cases mentioned, the speech act would be direct.
◦ However, if I use an interrogative to make a strong statement as when producing a rhetorical
question, the speech act is indirect. I am producing a form but expressing the non expected
function. Form: interrogative, Function: statement.
Example of Direct vs Indirect SA
◦ In the living room of a house, one member of the family is standing in front of the TV. The
following exchange occurs.
◦ Mum: Move out of the way! Form: Imperative +Function: giving a command= Direct SA
Direct vs Indirect SA
◦ Other options:

◦ M: Do you have to stand in front of the TV? Form: Interrogative+Function: giving a

command= Indirect SA.

◦ M: You are standing in front of the TV. Form: Declarative + Function: giving a command
= Indirect SA.

◦ M: Are you transparent? Form: Interrogative + Function: giving a command= Indirect SA.
Direct vs Indirect SA

◦ All the options in the previous slide represent INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS.

◦ They have the form of interrogative or declarative but with the function of a command.

◦ As you can see, the intention of the speaker and what it causes as an effect on the hearer are part of what
we don’t say but definitely MEAN.
◦ Speaker meaning, pragmatic meaning, invisible meaning.
◦ What we mean without saying .
 Another example:
◦ The teacher says the following in a class: “Who wants to read?”
◦ This represents a clear example of an indirect SA. It has the form of an interrogative but it will
never expect an answer, but action. Although a student might say “me” and self select himself for
the task of reading aloud, most probably, the teacher expects X student directly reading the text.
So, it is an interrogtive with the function of an imperative: “Read please!”.
Rounding up:

◦ Implicit meaning is a great part of the message. What we produce explicitly is only a part of it.
◦ “Be careful!” is a an expression which has the implicit meaning of warning, that is to say the speech
act of warning remains implicit, it is a form of implicit meaning, a form of the unsaid information
which is part of messages most of the times we engage in conversation.
◦ We seldom say “I will warn you : Be careful”, we directly say: Be careful, the illocutionary force is
IMPLICIT.
◦ NOTE: the other topics in the chapter (face/ presupposition,etc) we will discuss from other sources,
not from Yule.