Speech Acts Theory

(Informative Speech)
In partial fulfillment for the requirement in Speech and Oral
Communication.

Mrs. Margie O. Agawa

Instructor

Cathleene Mae M. Gutierrez

BSA - III
 Speech Acts Expressive
(Informative Speech)
In partial fulfillment for the requirement in Speech and Oral
Communication.

Mrs. Margie O. Agawa

Instructor

Sharmaine G. Gomez
BSA - III
Five Articles that discussed about Speech Acts
Speech Acts

Speech acts are verbal actions that accomplish something: we greet, insult,
compliment, plead, flirt, supply information, and get work done.

Types of Speech Acts

o Representatives: assertions, statements, claims, hypotheses,
descriptions, suggestions.
o Commissives: promises, oaths, pledges, threats, vows.
o Directives: commands, requests, challenges, invitations, orders,
summons, entreaties, dares.
o Declarations: blessings, firings, baptisms, arrests, marrying, juridial
speech acts such as sentencings, declaring a mistrial, declaring s.o.out of
order, etc.
o Expressives: Speech acts that make assessments of psychological states
or attitudes: greetings, apologies, congratulations, condolences,
thanksgivings...
o Verdictives: rankings, assessments, appraising, condoning (combinations
such as representational declarations: You're out!)

Locutions and Illocutions

o Locutions: the utterance act. Sentences have a grammatical structure

and a literal linguistic meaning; the bald, literal force of the act: what did
the person say? (Not, what did the person mean?)
o Illocution: the speaker's intention of what is to be accomplished by the
speech act.

Compare: How'd you like to hand me that wrench? (locution: a question) has
the illocutionary force of a command: Hand me the wrench!

Can I get you to open the window? has a structure (locutionary force) and a
linguistic meaning (`will I be able to be successful in getting your cooperation in
opening the window?') but its illocutionary force is different: it has the force of
a polite imperative : Please open the window!

Every sentence has both a locutionary force and an illocutionary force .

 Distinguishing among speech acts

How do we know what the force of a speech act is? By the context or
the setting and by using their judgement and background knowledge of the
language and the culture. If the Queen of Hearts (in Alice in Wonderland ) says
`Off with their Heads!' it has a different force than if someone else says it in
another setting.

Appropriateness conditions and Successful Declarations

There are conventions that tell us that a particular locution probably has a
particular force. People don't use language inappropriately, or they get into
trouble, or the act may be interpreted as invalid.

o utterance must be conventionally associated with the speech act: The

preacher or officiating judge says:

I now pronounce you husband and wife instead of Heybobareebob, you is

hitched!

o Context must be conventionally recognized. The above declaration must

be in a setting that is appropriate, like in a church or place of religious
worship, etc. with people gathered for that purpose, perhaps even
dressed for the part. Weddings (e.g.) don't happen spontaneously
during, e.g., a baptism or a bar mitzvah.
o Speaker must be sincere: Person pronouncing the words
must believe what s/he is saying
o Involved parties intend to create a marriage bond;
the essential condition
o Successful Promises: (commissive): must be recognized as a promise,
must be sincere, essential; speaker must state the intention of helping.
Preparatory condition: speaker and hearer are sane and responsible,
speakers wishes to help, hearer wishes to be helped, etc. (Speaker
cannot have fingers crossed behind her back...)
Speech-act theory
by Richard Nordquist

Updated August 07, 2017

Speech-act theory is a subfield of pragmatics concerned with the ways in which wordscan be
used not only to present information but also to carry out actions. See speech act.

As introduced by Oxford philosopher J.L. Austin (How to Do Things With Words, 1962) and
further developed by American philosopher J.R. Searle, speech-act theory considers the levels of
action at which utterances are said to perform:

Locutionary Acts
Illocutionary Acts
Perlocutionary Acts

EXAMPLES AND OBSERVATIONS

"Part of the joy of doing speech act theory, from my strictly first person point of view, is
becoming more and more remindful of how many surprisingly different things we do when we
talk to each other." (Andreas Kemmerling, "Expressing an Intentional State." Speech Acts, Mind,
and Social Reality: Discussions with John R. Searle, ed. by Gnther Grewendorf and Georg
Meggle. Kluwer, 2002)

SEARLE'S FIVE ILLOCUTIONARY POINTS

"In the past three decades, speech act theory has become an important branch of the
contemporary theory of language thanks mainly to the influence of [J.R.] Searle (1969, 1979) and
[H.P.] Grice (1975) whose ideas on meaning and communication have stimulated research in
philosophy and in human and cognitive sciences. . . . From Searle's view, there are only five
illocutionary points that speakers can achieve on propositions in an utterance, namely:
the assertive, commissive, directive, declaratory and expressive illocutionary points.

Speakers achieve the assertive point when they represent how things are in the world,
the commissive point when they commit themselves to doing something, the directive
point when they make an attempt to get hearers to do something, the declaratory point when
they do things in the world at the moment of the utterance solely by virtue of saying that they
do and the expressive point when they express their attitudes about objects and facts of the
world.
"This typology of possible illocutionary points enabled Searle to improve Austin's classification
of performative verbs and to proceed to a reasoned classification of illocutionary forces of
utterances which is not as language-dependent as that of Austin." (Daniel Vanderkeven and
Susumu Kubo, "Introduction." Essays in Speech Act Theory. John Benjamins, 2002)

SPEECH-ACT THEORY AND LITERARY CRITICISM

"Since 1970 speech-act theory has influenced in conspicuous and varied ways the practice of
literary criticism. When applied to the analysis of direct discourse by a character within a literary
work, it provides a systematic but sometimes cumbersome framework for identifying the
unspoken presuppositions, implications, and effects of speech acts which competent readers
and critics have always taken into account, subtly though unsystematically. (See discourse
analysis.) Speech-act theory has also been used in a more radical way, however, as a model on
which to recast the theory of literature in general, and especially the theory of prose narratives.
What the author of a fictional work--or else what the author's invented narratornarrates is
held to constitute a 'pretended' set of assertions, which are intended by the author, and
understood by the competent reader, to be free from a speaker's ordinary commitment to the
truth of what he or she asserts.

Within the frame of the fictional world that the narrative thus sets up, however, the utterances
of the fictional characters--whether these are assertions or promises or marital vows--are held to
be responsible to ordinary illocutionary commitments." (M.H. Abrams and Geoffrey Galt
Harpham, A Glossary of Literary Terms, 8th ed. Wadsworth, 2005)
https://www.thoughtco.com/speech-act-theory-1691986

Understanding Expressive Speech Acts: The Role of Prosody and

Situational Context in French-Speaking 5- to 9-Year-Olds

Purpose: This study was aimed at determining the role of prosody and situational context in
childrens understanding of expressive utterances. Which one of these 2 cues will help children grasp
the speakers intention? Do children exhibit a contextual bias whereby they ignore prosody, such
as the lexical bias found in other studies (M. Friend & J. Bryant, 2000)?

Method: In the first experiment, a group of 5- to 9-year-old children and a group of adults performed
a computerized judgment task. They had to determine the speakers intention on the basis of an
utterance produced with a particular prosody (positive or negative) in a particular situational context
(positive or negative). In the second experiment, the same prosodic utterances were presented to 5-
to 9-year-old children without a situational context.

Results: The 5- and 7-year-old children relied primarily on situational context, in contrast to adults,
who relied on prosody. The 9-year-olds relied on both cues (Experiment 1). When prosody was the
sole cue (Experiment 2), all children relied on this cue to infer the speakers intention.
 Conclusions: The results are discussed and integrated into a larger conceptual framework that
includes research on lexical bias and sarcasm.

http://jslhr.pubs.asha.org/article.aspx?articleid=1781866

Speech Act Theory 101: From Greetings to Threats

Matthew Kushinka January 20, 2017 Linguistics 2 Comments

Speech Act Theory

Speech act theory is a theory of language that says that our utterances (the things we say) arent
just about words and their dictionary definitions. Our utterances can accomplish things and bring
about various actions.

Whats a Speech Act?

Speech acts are nothing more than the actions that occur thanks to language. For example, we
use language to compliment and persuade, to beg or scold, and to ask for and give information.
In other words, we do things with language, even though those things may not be physical
actions like swimming, smiling, or taking an elevator.
Commands, greetings, and assessments are all speech acts. A promise is a speech act. So is an
insult. In each case, the speaker is trying to achieve something and is using language to do it.

Types of Speech Act

Theres disagreement over how many types of speech act there are and how to label them. In
researching this article, Ive seen as few as four types of speech act and as many as six. The
names for those acts change, too, based on which source youre reading.

Still, there are a few types that come up repeatedly in the literature:

1. Representatives (aka constatives) involve (or represent) a state of things. These are assertions,
announcements, statements, claims, denials, disclosures, etc. An example sentence is I like cheese.
2. Commissives, as the name suggests, commit a speaker to do something. These are promises, pledges,
vows, guarantees, and so on. The utterance Ill pick you up at 8 pm is a commissive.
3. Directives are designed to get the listener to act in some way. These are admonishments, questions,
dismissals, excuses, instructions, orders, requests, warnings, etc. An example is I dare you to eat that
entire bowl of wasabi!
4. Expressives (aka acknowledgments) let speakers convey their attitude or psychological state. These are
apologies, condolences, congratulations, greetings, thanks, and so on. Im sorry to hear about your moms
illness is an expressive.
Locution vs. Illocution
A locution is the phrase or sentence that has meaning (vocabulary) and structure (grammar). For
example, the sentence Pass the salt involves 1) the physical action of conveying from one person
to another and 2) a crystalline compound used to flavor food. Thats the meaning.
But it also has a structure, some of which, like word order, is obvious. We have to say Pass the
salt. We cant say Pass salt the, Salt the pass, or any other variation. (Unless youre Yoda.)
Other parts of grammatical structure are less obvious (at least in English), such as verb
forms. Pass (not passes) is the imperative form.
Speech act theory maintains that every act has three main parts: the locution, the illocution, and
the perlocution.
The illocution is the intention of the speaker. The person saying Pass the salt says so because
wait for itshe wants the salt. Her intent, in other words, is to end up with the salt shaker in her
hand so she can use it.
Theres a third part of speech acts called the perlocution, but I wont get into it here other than
to say that it involves the listener. Its the effect on the hearer of the utterance, what is also
called uptake.

Speakers Roles
I should point out here that a performative speech act only works if the right person does it.

Pretend youre watching a ballgame on TV and a baserunner on the opposing team tries to steal
second. You might yell, Hes out! even before the umpire makes his call.

You can yell all you want, but your utterance has no bearing on reality. And not just because
youre not physically at the game. You dont have the authority to make the call, so as a
performative speech act goes, its a dud. It is, however, a representative speech act.

Ditto for the actor whos playing the part of a judge in a movie. She can recite a line such as Case
dismissed, but of course it has no legal validity.

https://www.redlinels.com/speech-act-theory-locution-illocution/
Informative Speech
Speech act is defined as action performed by producing an utterance on any occasion.
These verbal actions that accomplish something: we greet, insult, compliment, plead, flirt, supply
information, and get work done. This action is consisting of two related acts: Locutionary act,
Illocutionary act.

The locutionary act is the basic act of utterance and produces a meaningful linguistic
expression. It might fail to produce this in case you are tongue tied or the language you speak is
foreign. In a word, if you have difficulties in uttering some words or expressions and if you are
misunderstood, you mispronounce the locutionary act. While the illocutionary it indicates the
use of performative verbs and the speaker's intention of what is to be accomplished by the
speech act.

There are actually types of speech acts: first, Representatives are those kinds of speech
acts that state what the speaker believes to be the case or not: statements of fact, assertions
,conclusions and description. Second, in declaration the speaker has to have a special
institutional role for performing a declaration appropriately. Third, Directive occur when the
speaker expects the listener to do something. It expresses what the speaker wants. They can be
command, orders, request and suggestions and they can be negative or positive. Fourth,
Commissives are performed when speakers commit themselves to some future action. These are
promises, threats or refusals. This action will not occur under the circumstances beyond the
speakers control ae ordinary statements not speech acts.

Lastly, Expressive that occurs when the speaker shows his or her feelings and
physiological state to listener. They can be statement of pleasure, pain, likes, dislikes, joy or
sorrow. The sincerity condition of expressive is that the speaker has the psychological states that
he or she experience when he or she performs an expressive act. Wherever there is a
psychological state in the sincerity condition, the performance of the act counts as an expression
of that psychological state.

However, lets give more focus on the expressive speech acts. In doing an expressive
speech acts there are certain ingredients in order to have a flavorful speech: the feelings and
emotions. According to Dr. Maurice Elias, emotions are human beings warning system as to
what is really going on around them. Emotions are our most reliable indicators of how things are
going in our lives. Feeling is a sensation that provokes physical response. These are bodys
normal reactions to events outside of us as well as to events that occur inside of our minds. The
combination of these to aspects will lead to an effective expressive speech acts. With the use of
expressive verbs to imply what the speaker really feels. Aside from expressing feelings and
emotions through words and performance, we can also show our emotions by the help of
gestures.
 With those expressive speech acts we came across some words which help us to guess
the mood of characters, their attitude or certain character in any kind of situation. There is a
need to identify emotions and feelings to find appropriate usage of speech. In case of expressive
act, this will denote the emotions and feelings. To conclude, this may help you express your
emotions and feelings appropriately and you can understand others.