LING - S+P Speech Acts

What is Information Transmission?

Classic answer for how we encode messages

Language is used to make statements about the world

• Express propositions that are either true or false

Have to decode the message to identify what proposition is expressed;

• Phonology, morphosyntax, morphemes, semantic components

J.L Austin Performativity

Utterances are Performative; consider felicity conditions

• By saying certain things under right conditions, you perform the action described

• Social act as opposed to true/false statement

“I do” = utterance indulges in the marriage

“I name this ship…” = action of naming the ship

Test for performativity → “I hereby…”

Social Actions

Can be achieved by utterances that don’t have any proposition associated with them

Hello = Doesn’t have truth conditions

• Specialised to perform speech acts → action of greeting (mostly)

Goodbye = “I hereby take my leave”

• Doesn’t really work; specialisation

Speech Act Theory

Locutionary

• What was said / Semantic meaning

Illocutionary

• What Social Action was performed

  • Hello = greeting/surprise/disbelief/attention check

  • I do = radically different in different contexts

Perlocutionary

• What goal was achieved

  • Persuasion = perlocutionary effect of an illocutionary act

  • Hello = Politeness, Getting someone’s attention

• How choice to perform speech act plays into goals

Sentence Types / Syntactic Categories

Declarative

• Declaration of a statement

  • “The window is open”

1. Questions → “I’d like to know when the train leaves”

• Implicitly asks for info politely

  • Correlated to indirectness, espec when imposing on someone

1. Requests → “I wonder if you could tell me the time”

• grammatical statement, inferentially a polite request

Interrogatives

• Questions

  • “Is the Window open?”

1. Statements → “Didn’t you hear Mary’s away?”

2. Requests → “Could you close the window?”

• Grammatically a question to maintain politeness

Imperatives

• Commands

1. Statements → “Let me assure you…”

• Not actually a request for permission

1. Offers → “Help yourself…”

• Maintains politeness

Indirectness

Speech Act identification relies on context ; potential goals decipherable

1. Assertion + Implication it will be used ; Indirect answer

2. Politely + Indirectly declines offer

3. Indirect Offer

Based on assumptions that speakers are Cooperative → Both people making relevant and helpful responses to each other ; a lot of background info is needed to fill in gaps + answer a follow up question they think would be reasonable to ask