Speech Act Theory arose as a tool to
interpret the meaning and function of words in different speech situations.
Simply put, it is a theory about what people set out to accomplish when they
choose to speak.
Speech Act Theory
according to Brown and Yule (1985;23) originated in Austin’s (1962) observation
that while sentences can often be used to report states of affair, the utterance
of some sentences must in specified circumstances, be treated as the
performance of an act.
The term speech act was used by Austin (1962) to refer
to an utterance and the total situation
in which the utterance is issued. That is to say that speech act is the ability
of language users to perform some acts in the form of utterances they make. Speech
act theory can be defined as the ability of language users to perform social
acts in the form of utterances they make. Speech act theory therefore, arose as
a tool to interpret the meaning and function of words in different speech
situations. Ndimele (2007 : 33) observes that the essence of speech
act theory is that utterances are acts in themselves capable of producing
enormous and far reaching results or consequences. Speech act theory according
to Brown and Yule (1985:23) originated from Austin’s (1962) observation that speech acts
are used systematically to accomplish particular communication purposes. Austin had prepared a series of lectures to be delivered
at Oxford and Harvard
before his death. A post-humus reworking of those notes is the seminar book
entitled, “How to Do Things with Words”.
In
his work, Austin
commenced by enunciating a reasonable clear cut distinction between constantives
and performative utterances. He stated that while constative utterance
serves to state a fact, report that something is the case or utterances/
statements that can be either true or false, performatives on the other hand,
do not “describe or report, have no truth value”. The uttering of the sentence
is part of doing an action a speech act. In other words; performative utterance
performs some act and simultaneously describes that act. The uttering of the
sentence is part of doing an action, a speech act. Austin (1962) observes that
in every utterance a person performs an act such as stating an opinion,
confirming or denying something, making a request, asking a question, issuing
an order, giving a piece of advice, making a promise, making on offer,
condoling somebody, thanking someone, solemnizing a relationship, convicting a criminal,
naming a person or thing, betting, bequeathing, knighting, and affirming. All
these are speech acts used in performing actions which can be felicitous or infelicitous
(Vershueren 1999:22). Austin
urges that the nature of these utterances is to be identified with the
performance of actions. These actions take place with the use of performative
verbs. Performatives are in possession of their own declarative form. In
addition they generally have well – recognized syntactic characteristics, such
as a verb in the present tense, a first person subject and the possibility of
adding the adverb hereby.
Austin’s
investigation of performatives led to the conclusion that all utterances
partake of the nature of actions. The major premise of this is that language is
as much a mode of action as it is a conduit through which information is
conveyed.
Adedun and Atolagbe (2011) noted that speech act, “concerns itself
with the symbolism of words, the difference between a meaningful string of words
and meaningless ones, the truth value or falsity of utterance, and the function
to which language can be put”. Austin
(1962) dealt extensively on this issue by providing linguistic explanations to
this concept. This was expounded by Searle (1969). These works laid the
foundation for meaning to be explained in terms of the process of communication
rather than referential meaning equation.
Cooper
(1973:190) in Hurford and Heasley (1983:235) captured Austin’s view, noting that he displayed
variety of acts that can be performed in a given utterances. He still
distinguished between “constative” and “performative” utterances. With the
example below:
I
bequeath you with the property.
This utterance is more than mere words but one
that is expected to be accompanied by simultaneous action. In this case, the
person actually does what the utterance describes.
( Hurford
and Heasley 1983:235).
On the types of Speech
Acts, three main types have been identified as common to them. These acts are;
the locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act.
Austin (1962) stated that
an utterance could fall into the following acts:
Locutionary Act: Theses are simple speech acts that have taken place. It is the
particular sense and reference of an utterance. It is the
basic act of speaking, made up of three sub acts;
·
Phonic:
Utterance inscription, noises.
Phone
/s/
·
Phatic: Acts
comprising linguistic expression, that is, intentionally produced words in a
syntactic order.
·
Rhetic: Act
of contextualizing the utterance inscription, that is, syntactic arrangement of
words with certain intentions, in certain contexts and in certain messages.
Illocutionary Act: these are the real
actions which are performed by the utterance. That is the intention behind the
statement, the force (illocutionary) which propels actions. For instance, by
making a specific kind of utterance, a speaker can be stating, warning,
requesting, commanding, representing, threatening etc in fact the illocutionary
force of an utterance is “the impact which an utterance is intended to have in
the hearer” (Tovey 1997:71). Searle (1979) modified Austin’s taxonomy of the illocutionary speech
act and indicated that they are five types of illocution (see Pratt 1977:80-81).
The third level is the result or effect of the
words, known as;
Perlocutionary effect: This is the desired response or
reaction or effect of the speech or utterance on the hearer, listener or
audience. According to Austin
(1962: 101) “saying something will often or even normally produce certain
consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts or action of an audience or
the speaker, or of the people”.
Perlocutionary act, therefore, results from language users’ utterance
and a product of hearer’s interpretation.
The term perlocution traces its
provenance to Austin’s
(1962) desire to prove the limitations in the perception of language by the
dominant logical positivists. Coulthard (1977:19) sees perlocution as a non-
linguistic act performed as a consequence of performing the locutionary and
illocutionary act.
Perlocution is the third aspect of Austin’s trichotomic
constituent of a speech act; others are, locution and illocution. A speech act
simply put, is the act performed in an utterance (Akmajian 2001:376). Perlocution
involves intending to have since effects on the hearer because of what was said
and because of the force of the utterance (Austin 1962:119).
In the perlocutionary instance, an act
is performed by saying something. For instance, if one shouts “fire” in a three
storey building, that act will cause people to exit that building. In another
example, if a jury foreperson declares, “guilty” in a court room, in which an
accused person sits, the illocutionary act of declaring a person guilty of a
crime has been undertaken. The perlocutionary act related to that illocution is
that in reasonable circumstance, the accused person would be convinced that
they are to be led from the court room into the jail cell.
Austin
(1962:119) coined the term “perlocutionary acts/effects”, in trying to argue
that saying something will often, or even normally produce certain
consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts or actions of the audience,
of the speaker, or of other persons.
Perlocutionary objects refer to the intended result of the illocutionary act;
and perlocutionary sequel is an unintended or secondary result of an utterance.
Various scholars including Austin (1962)
and Searle (1969) have classified speech act into three parts. The locutionary
and illocutionary acts have enjoyed much patronage by scholars right from the
inception of speech Act theory. Perlocution has been given little attention.
Apart from Cohen (1973), Davis
(1979) Gu (1993), Marcu (2000) and Akhimien (2010)
This disinterest has varying reasons.
Some linguists argue that perlocutionary acts are outside linguistics and do
not have close relationship with linguistic structures like locution are
illocution (See Allan (1998), Akmajian et al 2001; 379). Others like Adegbija (1982)
and Allan (1986) opine that the concept of perlocution, should be left for
philosophers and linguists interested in the effects of language. Adegbija
(1982:88) says that; “Perlocutionary
effect is so difficult to recognize sometime (in whatever way defined) and so
complex and intriguing a phenomenon to characterize that it will most likely
remain enigmatic for a very long time to come”.
He suggested an inter discipline
approach for tackling this issue. Lending voice to Adegbija’s, Gu (1993) after
about eleven years still made a call for scholarly attention in the field of
perlocution. He noted that compared to thousands of articles in locution and
illocution, that perlocution, as at the true of his writing (1993) has only
four articles. This same call was re-echoed by Marcu (2000:2) after twenty two
years. Marcu noted that there is a significant gap between empirical data that
was derived by research in other communication areas when compared with the
study of perlocutions.
One interesting and common thing identified about the
illocutionary act and the perlocutionary act, Osisanwo (2003:59) notes, is that
locutionary act “is the act of saying, producing meaningful sounds, words with
certain reference. Illocutionary act on the hand “is a non-linguistic act
performed through a linguistic or locutionary act. Perlocutionary act” is the
effect of a particular utterance on the hearer on a particular occasion. This
results from language users utterance and a product of hearers interpretation”.
Osisanwo added that it could be “the intended and unintended or unintended
consequences of a reaction to what is said.” Summing up the concepts
Kempson(1975:51) puts a vivid distinction among the three speech acts types
thus “…speaker utters sentences with a
particular meaning (locutionary
act) and with a particular force (illocutionary act) in order to achieve a
certain effect (perlocutionary act) on the hearer”.
The
little interest about perlocutionary act notwithstanding, the researcher
insists that this act ia a necessary complement of the whole speech act. The
locutionary act is the raw linguistic form which is usually designed to
generate some intention while the perlocutionary act is the actual reaction of
the hearer. Without this reaction, the whole process of speech act is
unfulfilled. The varying opinions about the perlocutionary act is simply in
line with the usual intellectual controversy that goes with scholarly
projections. In fact, scholarship will apparently die anytime such healthy
intellectual debates die. In other words, it is this kind of controversy that
sustains intellectual debate.
The
locution belongs strictly to the traditional territory of truth based
semantics. The perlocution belongs strictly beyond the investigation of
language and meaning since it deals with results and effects of an utterance.
According to Verschuren (1999:22, 23) locutions are acts of saying something;
illocutions are what is done in saying something and perlocutions are
what is done by sayings something”. The illocution occupies the middle
ground between them. This ground is now considered the dormain of pragmatics of
meaning in context.
According
to Osisanwo (2003:58) locutionary act “….. is the act of saying, producing
meaningful sounds words with certain reference”. Osisanwo further states that,
illocutionary act, “…. is a non-linguistic act performed through a linguistic
or locutionary act”. Agbedo (2008) therefore suggests by implication that each
utterance has a different kind of what Austin
(1962) calls illocutionary force. Iloene (2008) observes that recent literature
on speech acts seem to have petered away the distinction between illocutionary
and perlocutionary acts. He claims that the two concepts are now usually
telescoped into a single concept the illocutionary force; which may involve the
following;
a. the
illocutionary force conceived by the speaker.
b. the
illocutionary force conceived by the hearer.
Talib (2007:2) points out that, “ the fact that
the illocutionary force conceived by the hearer is a reality, indicates that Austin’s perlocutionary
act is still applicable …..”. However every speech act falls into one of the
five categories of Austin’s
taxonomy: verdictives, behabitives
expositive, exercitive and commissive.
·
Verdictive:
typified by a grading, passing judgment, appraising, estimating a goal.
·
Exercitive:
typified by exercising power, rights or influence in appointment, or doing
advising.
·
Commissives:
typified by promising, committing or understanding for one to do something.
·
Expositives: These are acts that expand views,make
illustrations and give responses. They exhibit verbs such as affirm, deny,
illustrate, describe, concede etc.
·
Behabitives:
These are acts typified by the manner by which one introduced his utterance,
adjust or say the right thing at the right time.
Though Searle (1969) criticizes Austin’s
taxonomy of illocutionary acts for having overlaps (an act falls into more than
one type), he also observes that Austin
considers language use from the angle of social convention only without
focusing on human action. Korta & Perry (2006). While Searle adopted the
three fold distinction of speech act by Austin
(1962), he focused more on the illocutionary acts classification. He then
postulated his own taxonomy of illocutionary acts;
·
Assertives: these are used to
express beliefs. They are statement
of facts, conclusions etc.
·
Directives: these are used by speakers
to get someone else to do something. They are commands orders, requests etc.
·
Commissives: They are used to
commit the speaker to some future actions. They are promises, pledges, threats
etc.
·
Expressives: feeling of
speakers psychological states of speakers. They can be statements of
displeasure, joy, sadness etc.
·
Declarative: they reflect the
institutional role of a speaker. They change the world via their utterances.
(
cf Verschueren 2003:23).
Speech
acts are generally divided into “direct” and “indirect”. A direct speech act shows a class relationship
between the form and the meaning while an indirect speech act does not. Searle
(1979) quoted in Cutting (2007:18, 19) distinguishes between direct and
indirect speech act thus;
A speaker using a direct speech act wants to
communicate
Literal meaning that the words conventionally
express……
Someone using an indirect speech act
wants to communicate
different meaning from the apparent
surface meaning,
the form and functions are not directly related.
It
is note worthy that in spite of these contributions by Searle, Austin’s Speech
Act Theory is a classic which scholars like Searle (1969,1979), Allan (1986), Grice (1975), Bach and Harnish
(1979), Leech (1980: 1983) Brown and Yule (1983) Yule (1996) have taken a leap
from.