Speech act and speech event

1. Definition of speech acts
• A speech act is a functional unit in communication
(Cohen, A.D.)
• It’s an act that a speaker performs when making an
utterance
According to Austin’s theory of speech acts (1962), utterances have
three kinds of meaning.
1. Propositional/locutionary: literal meaning of an utterance
2. Illocutionary meaning: particular intention in making the utterance
3. Perlocutionary force: production of a particular effect in the addressee

2. Speech acts categories:
• Representatives: speakers assert a proposition to be true,
using such verbs as: affirm, believe, conclude, deny, report.
• Directives: speaker try to make the hearer do something, with
such words as: ask, beg, challenge, command, dare, invite,
insist, request.
• Commissives: the speaker commits himself (or herself) to a
(future) course of action, with verbs such as: guarantee,
pledge, promise, swear, vow, undertake, warrant.
• Expressives: the speaker expresses an attitude to or about a
state of affairs, using such verbs as: apologize, appreciate,
congratulate, deplore, detest, regret, thank, welcome.
• Declarations speakers alter the external status or condition of
an object or situation, solely by making the utterance: I now
pronounce you man and wife, I sentence you to be hanged by
the neck until you be dead, I name this ship...

3. SPEECH ACT FUNCTIONS and SUBFUNCTIONS by Van Ek
1. Imparting/seeking factual information such as
identify, ask, report and say
2. Express/discover intellectual attitudes: state
whether you/ ask if others. Such as agree or
disagree, know or don’t know remember or
forgot, etc.
3. Express/inquire about emotional attitudes:
express your own question others’. Such as
interest or lack of interest, surprise, hope, fears
or worry, etc.

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4. express/question moral attitudes: express or
request. Such as apology or forgiveness,
appreciation, regret, etc.
5. Suasion is an advice or warn someone to or
not do something. Such as suggest, request,
invite and instruct.
6. Socializing refers to daily social activity or the
relation of the people. Example greet, introduce,
congratulate, etc.

5. Speech act functions by Halliday
1. Instrumental, the function that serves our
wants or needs. Example, “I want”, “I need”.
2. Regulatory, the function that lets us control
actions. Example, “do this”.
3. Interactional. The vocatives and other signals
that get attention and allow us to interact
with others.

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4. Personal. The ways we express our individual
personalities through language.
5. Heuristic. The “teach me” or “tell me why”
function that helps us build our own worlds.
6. Imaginative. The “let’s pretend” function that
helps us build our own worlds.
7. informative. The function that lets us share
information with others.

7. Speech act analysis
Provided researches with a valuable way to
look at language function and connection
between function and grammar forms.
A number of problems remain in applying
it to language analysis. First, it is difficult to
impute the function speakers intend for
utterances (especially if one has recource only to
an utterance out of context)

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Second, it is not clear how the subcategories
relate to one another.
Third, like the second, has to do with system. If
the analysis is at the utterance level, how can it
help us to understand the structure of discourse.

9. • Speech events: an activity in which participants interact via
language in some conventional way to arrive at some outcome
A “requesting”
speech event

10. Compliments
Compliments as speech acts are classified as
expressive-expressions of like or dislike. The speech
event of compliment, on the other hand includes not
just the speech act but also the entire compliment
interaction

11. Complaints
Strategies
combination Remarks
Indirect
complaint
•It’s ok. Don’t worry about it.
•It’s ok. Accidents happen.
•It’s ok. It’s not like you meant
to do it.
Request for
repair
•Do/ Don’t do X
•Can (Could) I/you X…
•I’d like to X…
•I was wondering if I/you can (could)
X…

12. Advice
An analysis of advice speech events shows that a
template or script is easily discernible. For
example, a set of components for seeking and
giving advice.

13. SPEECH EVENTS ANALYSIS
 are concerned with how speech act
functional realized in large text units.
 the structure of the event forms a
template similar to those of script
( however , the script is directed toward
an indentified speech function)

14.  script theory
attempts to build an abstract representation
to memory. Work in artificial intelligence on
natural languages is based on this analysis.
 speech event analysis
attempts to build an abstract representation
by identifying components, but it is
sociolinguistic in nature.
( in sociolinguistic, speech event analysis
would include a description of the speech
setting, the participants, and the structure of
the event set in a template sequence.)