Pragmatics and the Speech Act Theory

The Speech Act Theory distinguishes 3 aspects of an integral act of communication: locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary, relating respectively:

1) to the language structure employed in a speech act to form prepositional content;

2) to the aim of communication;

3) to the result of it.

J.L. Austin, one of the founders of the Speech Act Theory says the same in other words:

a locutionary act is the act of saying something;

an illocutionary act is performing an act in saying something;

a perlocutionary act is performing an act by saying something: asserting, requesting, promising, ect. and convincing the addressee by saying something.

The category of illocution is the most important of the three. Perlocution cannot be achieved without the illocutionary force.

Different kinds of illocutionary force underlie the classification of illocutionary acts. J. Searle’s classification comprises:

­ representatives – acts of stating concluding, etc.;

­ directives – acts of ordering, questioning, requesting, etc.;

­ commissives – acts of offering, promising, threatening, etc.;

­ expressives – acts of thanking, apologizing, congratulating, etc.;

­ declarations – acts of christening, firing from employment, declaring war, etc.

Illocutionary force may be expressed with the help of various language means, both explicitly and implicitly. Traditionally it is assumed that illocutionary force is rendered by means of the so-called speech-act verbs, such as “request, suggest, warn, order, promise, thank”, etc. But illocutionary force may be expressed not only by speech reporting, but also by thought reporting. G. Leech alongside classical illocutionary verbs (illocutionary predicates) lists so-called psychological predicates, which closely correspond to respective illocutionary predicates:

I. Illocutionary

report

announce

urge

command

offer

promise

ask

inquire

excuse

thank II. Psychological

believe

assume

wish

be (willing)

intend

(be) determined

wonder

doubt

forgive

(be) grateful

Verbs in category II seem to be no less capable of expressing the ultimate goal of the utterance, than those in category I.

In terms of the addresser, the illocutionary act is the stage at which a sentence is transformed into an utterance. E.g.: the sentence “He’ll succeed anyway” is grammatically correct sentence. If you are asked what the sentence means, you say: somebody is likely

(1) to gain a purpose or (2) to do well, especially, in gaining position of popularity in life (Longman), no matter what happens.

At the same time we see, there are quite a number of “unknown quantities” in the sentence. We know nothing about the subject: who is he? Succeed – meaning (1) or (2)? If it is meaning (1), what is the aim like? We can be sure only of the grammatical meaning of futurity. The sentence carries no information about the speaker, his motives and purpose in saying this. So, the communicative value of this statement is very insignificant.

The true sense of a sentence is revealed only in a concrete act of communication (a speech act), in which all factors – the position of the addresser as to the speech act itself and to what is being said, the relation between the addresser and the addressee – are operative.

One supplementary detail added to the sentence “He’ll succeed anyway” may transform it into an utterance. E. g.: “He’ll succeed anyway”, she warned.

The illocutionary verb “warn” suggests an unfavourable attitude of “she” to “his succeeding” and her aim of imposing this attitude on the addressee.

The perlocutionary act embodies the affect on the addressee. Perlocution presupposes a calculated, concrete material effect. E. g.: what the sign “No smoking” is intended for? It performs a directive function and is expected to be obeyed. Such directions need to be phrased carefully and precisely to avoid discrepancy between the prepositional content and the intended pragmatic effect.

Important as the Speech Act Theory is for pragmatics, it doesn’t cover the wide range of problems studied in this field. The field of pragmatics presupposes a great variety of specific research problems apart from semantic content. This entails some linguistic problems proper, such as deixis, word meaning and connotation, linguistic imagery, stylistic markedness, implications and presuppositions. The essence of pragmatics is viewed by different scholars in different ways which manifests itself in a great variety of definitions of pragmatics.