Advanced Spoken English
Speech Act Theory
What are Speech Acts?
Speaking is performative
Utterances are functional
-Giving orders, instructions
-Making requests, suggestions
-Offering advice, opinions
-Taking orders, taking advice
--> These are “Speech Acts”
Propositional Content/ Illocutionary
Force
Literal meaning of Aim, intention of
utterance
utterance
“It’s cold in here” •Offering
•Promising
“There’s food in
•Enquiring
the fridge”
•Requesting
“Thank you for not •Exclaiming in pain
smoking”
•Ordering
Three Kinds of Act
Locutionary
Illocutionary
Perlocutionary
 Actual, literal
meaning
 Speaker’s
intentions in
uttering
 Effect on receiver’s
thought or action
Illocutionary Acts
Depend on …
 Form
 Content
 Context
 E.g. Possible
illocutionary force of
‘Oh’, ‘Yes’ or ‘Hello’
… Can be spread over several
sentences
…Two or more can coexist in one
utterance
Sentence Structure and Language
Function
Interrogative
Declarative
Imperative
Elicits
information
Conveys
information
Issues an order
Direct/ Indirect Speech Acts
We don’t always
mean what we say
We don’t always
intend what is
expressed by the
literal meaning
(implicature,
irony)
Modality e.g. ‘can’
Indirect Speech Acts:
“There’s beer in the
fridge”
“Can I help you?”
“I’ll take six lemons”
“Nice haircut!”
Direct/ Indirect Requests
Brainstorm with a partner how many
ways you can think of to request
someone to take the rubbish out.
(3 mins!)
Direct/ Indirect Requests
Please take out
the rubbish
I request you to
take out the
trash
Trash out now!
The garbage isn’t out
yet
Could you take out
the garbage?
Who’s doing the
trash this week?
Are you in charge of
the waste?
The wastepaper
needs emptying
Politeness and Indirectness
“I was wondering if you’d like to go to a
movie”
“Would you mind closing the door?”
“Would I be able to borrow some
paper?”
“What was your name again?”
Performative Verbs
I guess you’re from China
I bet Roddick’s gonna win
I now pronounce you man and wife
Promise!
Felicity Conditions
-“Right person, place and time”
-Successful performative Speech
acts need ...
 a social construct (Priest,
Queen, Judge, police)
 appropriate circumstances
 A speaker with authority
 Correct procedure and
response
 Speakers with sincere
thoughts/ intentions
Cross Cultural Pragmatics and
Pragmalinguistics/ Sociopragmatics
Across cultures, meaning behind a
speech act can vary, e.g. status of
the ‘apology’, force of the
‘complaint’, cultural content of
‘requests, questioning styles,
ways of giving advice
Utterances have local,
sociopragmatic conditions
There are culturally distinct ways of
showing and understanding
speech acts (Wierzbicka, 1991)
Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Failure
Due to:
-L2 speaker assessing situational factors on the
basis of sociopragmatic norms of L1, e.g. Japanese
over-apologizing, students misunderstanding the
role of the teacher
-L2 speaker transferring procedure and linguistic
way of realising a speech act from L1 to L2, e.g.
complaining, bartering
 Difference between meaning and saying
Think ….
Have you ever
experienced
Cross-Cultural
Pragmatic Failure?
Describe it and
analyse it in terms
of ‘saying’ and
‘meaning’
Reference
Slides adapted from
Brian Paltridge
(2002).
Making Sense of
Discourse
Analysis, AEE: Gold
Coast. ‘Speech Act
Theory’, pp. 13-36