Speech Act and Event

Paper

Lecturer

Prof. Abbas A. Badib, M.A., M.A., Ph.D.

Khoirul Hasyim NIM: 09745036

Maria Ulfah Hoesny NIM: 09745022

Post Graduate Program

Language and Literature Study

Universitas Negeri Surabaya

2010

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SPEECH ACTS AND EVENTS

Khoirul Hasyim

Mariana Ulfah Hoesny

INTRODUCTION

Communication is an activity happens in human life. It is a process of

transferring information that can be done verbally and non verbally. Human

communicate using some means like auditory, which is in the form of speech and

tone of voice, and non verbal means such as body language, sign language,

paralanguage and so on (en.wikipedia.org). Verbal communication happens

through language. Human language is distinct from the language of other

creatures since it is a complex set of system that not only consists of sounds and

meaning. It is indeed a unique form of communication and one of the superiorities

of human compared to other creatures. Language is a universal human trait that is

acquired by human since they were child. It is unique since human language is

said to be stimulus independent. It means that what you say is not necessarily tied

to what happens to you. It is different from animal language that is tied to

stimulus, for example a feeling of pain, the sight of a predator, a desire to mate,

and so on (Bob Hirshon in www.sciencenetlinks.com).

Language is defined simply as a combination of sound and meaning.

Otherwise it is defined as a set of correct sentences by many linguistic theories

(Mey, 2001:93). However, language is an innate ability and unique to the human

species, as claimed by Chomsky (tetikfirawati.wordpress.com). It is not only a set

of combination of sound and meanings but a more complex system that also

contain an activity that later produces speech acts (Mey, 2001:93). Speech acts are

known as actions performed via utterances, and in English it is given specific

labels as apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise or request. Speech

acts are accompanied by circumstances that surround the utterances. The

surrounding is expected to help the hearer to recognize the communicative

intention of the speaker. The circumstances is called speech event. Speech event

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helps to determine the interpretation of an utterance as performing a particular

speech act (Yule, 2002:47).

According to Hymes and Jakobson (www.utexas.edu) there are seven

components of speech act. The seven components are sender, topic, message

form, message channel, receiver, code and context. The six components stated are

all within another component, that is context, and associated function of the

speech act as a whole could be called contextual.

DISCUSSION

We perform speech acts when we offer an apology, greeting, request,

complaint, invitation, compliment, or refusal. A speech act is an utterance that

serves a function in communication. A speech act might contain just one word, as

in "Sorry!" to perform an apology, or several words or sentences: "I’m sorry I

forgot your birthday. I just let it slip my mind." Speech acts include real-life

interactions and require not only knowledge of the language but also appropriate

use of that language within a given culture.

A theory of speech, simply put, is a theory about what people set out when

they choose to speak. A convenient way to think about such accomplishments is

to think about the acts people perform when they utter a sentence. This paper will

describe briefly the speech act is. Yule states speech act as “Actions performed

via utterances are generally called speech acts… (2002:47). Using Austin’s

framework, points out that there are many ways of describing or “carving up” the

same speech act (physical act, act of reference, perlocutionary act, and

illocutionary act), Searle (1969:377) describes speech act as:

“The speaker will characteristically have moved his jaw and tongue and

made noises. He will have performed acts within the class which includes

making statements, asking questions, issuing commands, giving reports,

greeting and warning. The members of this last class are what Austin

called illocutionary acts and it is with this class that I shall be concerned in

this paper.”

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In producing an utterance, speaker always performed an action. Similar to Austin,

Yule says that there are three acts when speaker producing the utterance. “There is

first, locutionary acts which is the utterance, or producing a meaningful linguistics

expression”(2002:48). Locutionary act is an act of uttering a sentence with a

certain sense and reference, which is roughly equivalent to ‘meaning’ in the

traditional sense. Below the example of it’s;

(1) The final exam will be difficult.

The locutionary act performed in uttering a declarative sentence can be thought of

as the act of stating, placing the proposition in question in the common ground of

some discourse. Locutionary acts, are acts of speaking, acts involved in the

construction of speech, such as uttering certain sounds or making certain marks,

using particular words and using them in conformity with the grammatical rules of

a particular language and with certain senses and certain references as determined

by the rules of the language from which they are drawn.

An utterance which is produced by speaker mostly has purpose. The

purpose which comes with utterance is the second dimension of speech acts. As

stated in Yule (2002:48) “We form an utterance with some kind of function in

mind.” From this definition can be said that Illocutionary act is an act of

performing some action in saying something. By uttering (1), the speaker may be

performing the act of informing, claiming, guessing, reminding, warning,

threatening, or requesting. We also say that utterances are associated with

illocutionary forces.

In some cases, speakers can make what illocutionary act they intend to

perform explicit.

(2) a. The final exam will be difficult. That is a threat.

b. The final exam will be difficult. I guess.

c. The final exam will be difficult. I am warning you.

d. The final exam will be difficult. Let me remind you.

The third dimension of speech acts is perlocutionary acts. It is what

speakers bring about or achieve by saying something, such as convincing,

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persuading. As in Yule (2002:49) “ on the assumption that hearer will recognize

the effect you intended”. By uttering (1), I may have achieved in convincing you

to study harder for the final exam.

The most significant act in the hierarchy of speaking is the illocutionary

act. Austin 1962 alerted us to the fact that Speaker DOES something in uttering

utterance to hearer in context, e.g. states a fact or an opinion (Semantics can be

difficult), confirms or denies something (It's not true that Marilyn Monroe

committed suicide), makes a prediction (It'll rain tonight), a promise (I'll be with

you in five minutes), a request (What's the time?), offers thanks or an invitation

(Can you come to dinner next Saturday?), issues an order or an umpire's decision

(Out!), gives advice or permission (Yes, of course you can leave early today),

names a child or a ship (I name this ship "ELY"), swears an oath (I swear

allegiance to the King).

In utterance, Speaker performs an Illocutionary Act in using a particular

locution to refer, such that utterance has the Illocutionary Force of a statement, a

confirmation, a denial, a prediction, a promise, a request, and so forth. We shall

see later that an utterance has more than one illocutionary force; but many

utterances have only one message to convey, and this particular illocutionary

force is the Illocutionary Point.

The person who utters utterance and the context of utterance will

determine the reference. One illocutionary force is that of a statement about a

future act. In a given utterance of “I’ll make the tea”, it may be used with a second

illocutionary force: to make a promise. If this is the recognized intention of

speaker, then that promise is the illocutionary point of the utterance. The

illocutionary point of a sentence as an example: “I bet you a dollar you can jump

that puddle” would typically be to have hearer recognize that Speaker is offering a

bet; the acceptance or refusal of the challenge is the Perlocutionary Effect of the

utterance.

So, speaker's Perlocutionary Act is act of achieving a particular

perlocutionary effect on Hearer as a result of Hearer recognizing (what s/he takes

to be) the locution and illocutionary forces in utterance. Perlocution is hearer's

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behavioural response to the meaning of utterance not necessarily a physical or

verbal response, perhaps merely a mental or emotional response of some kind.

Other perlocutions are such things as: alerting hearer by warning hearer of danger;

persuading hearer to an opinion by stating supporting facts; intimidating hearer by

threatening; getting hearer to do something by means of a suggestion, a hint, a

request, or a command; and so forth. An effect of utterance which does not result

from hearer recognizing the locution and illocutionary point of utterance is not a

perlocutionary effect, but some kind of gestural effect (e.g. responding to a raised

voice or an angry look).

Perlocutions are extremely significant within a theory of communication

because the normal reason for speaking is to cause an effect in hearer, and

Speaker typically strives to achieve this by any means s/he can. However,

perlocutionary effects fall beyond the boundary of linguistics because they are not

part of language but behavioural and/or cognitive and/or emotional responses to

the illocutions in utterances. What linguists can properly look at, however, are the

intentions of speakers to bring about certain perlocutionary effects.

As stated before that speech act is related to illocutionary forces. Yule

(2002:49) states that “the illocutionary force of an utterance is what it ‘count as’”.

The problem is that the same utterance can potentially have quite different

illocutionary forces, e.g: promise versus warning. To get the hearer recognize the

intended illocutionary force, Yule consider two things. They are “Illocutionary

force indicating device and felicity conditions”(2002:49)

Searle and Vanderveken (1985) often speak about what they call

'illocutionary force indicating devices' (IFIDs). These are supposed to be

elements, or aspects of linguistic devices which indicate either (dependent on

which conceptions of "illocutionary force" and "illocutionary act" are adopted)

that the utterance is made with certain illocutionary force, or else that it

constitutes the performance of a certain illocutionary act. In English, for example,

the interrogative mood is supposed to indicate that the utterance is (intended as) a

question; the directive mood indicates that the utterance is (intended as) a

directive illocutionary act (an order, a request, etc.); the words "I promise" are

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supposed to indicate that the utterance is (intended as) a promise. Possible IFIDs

in English include: word order, stress, intonation contour, punctuation, the mood

of the verb, and performative verbs.

Performative verb according to Yule (2002:49) is “a verb that explicitly

names the illocutionary being performed.” Hence, he brings promise and warn as

the example of IFIDs , if it is stated. It doesn’t make sense to say that performative

utterances are true or false. What is special about them is that the utterance itself

is what makes the circumstances fit the words. That is, the utterance of sentence S

brings into existence the very facts that S describes. While performative

utterances cannot be said to be true or false, they can be said to be felicitous or

infelicitous. Austin notes that certain conventions called felicity conditions

regulate the use of performative utterances. If felicity conditions governing the

use of a certain form fail to be satisfied, then the use of the form may misfire. For

instance, one of the felicity conditions for uttering We find the defendant guilty as

charged is that the speaker has the authority to issue a verdict.

Austin (1975:14f) argued for four kinds of felicity conditions:

1. A Preparatory Condition to establish whether or not the circumstances of

the speech act and the participants in it are appropriate to its being

performed successfully.

2. An Executive Condition to determine whether or not the speech act has

been properly executed.

3. A Sincerity Condition -- which has a similar function to the cooperative

maxim of quality.

4. A Fulfillment Condition determined by the perlocutionary effect of the

speech act.

If all the relevant felicity conditions were satisfied for a given illocutionary act,

Austin described it as 'happy' or 'felicitous'. Moreover, Yule (2002:50-1) defines

the pre conditions on speech acts in everyday contexts among ordinary people.

They are (a) “general conditions on participants, e.g that they can understand the

language being used and that they are not play-acting or being non sensical.”, (b)

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Content conditions, e.g. promise and warning.”The content of the utterance must

be about future events”. In addition he states “a further content condition for a

promise requires that the future event will be a future act of the speaker.”, (c)

preparatory conditions, it is the future effects of the speaker. In promising there

are two preparatory conditions: the event will not happen by itself, and the event

will have a beneficial effect. While in the ‘warning’ it is unclear that the hearer

knows the events will occur and the speaker does think that the event will occur

and will not have a beneficial effect, (d) sincerity conditions, as in ‘promise’ the

speaker genuinely intends to carry out the future action, and for ‘warning’ the

speaker believe that the future events will not have a beneficial effects,(e)

essential conditions, as he defines “there is the essential condition, which covers

the fact that by the act of uttering a promise, I thereby intend to create an

obligation to carry out the action as promised. In order to be appropriately

performed those specific speech act must be in utterance context and the speaker’s

intentions.

Searle made a classification system to list the types of utterance performed

by speech acts. The five types are declarations, representatives, expressive,

directives and commisives.

1. Declarations

According to Yule declarations are those kinds of speech acts

that change the world via their utterance. The speaker has to have a

special institutional role, in a specific context to perform a declaration

appropriately (Yule, 2002: 53). In line with this, Searle (in Mey,

2001:122) says that declarations bring about alternation in the status or

condition of the referred to object or objects solely by virtue of the fact

that the declaration has been successfully performed. Levinson

(1995:240) says that declarations have an immediate effect to change

the institutional state of affairs and which tend to rely on elaborate

extra linguistic institutions.

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From the statement above it can be concluded that declarations

are kinds of utterances that are performed by an authorized person and

the utterances impact a certain state. For example, the utterance ‘I now

pronounce you husband and wife’ will have an effect if it is said by a

priest. However, if it is said by a person who does not have the

authority, it will not have any effect. Another example is the utterance

‘I sentence you to six months in prison’ will have an effect if it is said

by a judge in the courtroom. In other words, declarations change the

state of the world in an immediate way.

2. Representatives

Representatives are utterances that commit the speaker to the truth of

the expressed proposition (Levinson, 1995:240). Statements of fact,

assertion, conclusions and descriptions are examples of the speaker

representing the world as she or he believes it (Yule, 2002: 53).

Representatives’ type of speech act carry the values of being true or

false ( Mey, 2001:120). Thus, representatives bring the notion that a

case is true or false. A speaker who uses a representative believes that

the world match with their opinion by expressing it through his or her

words. For example, the utterance ‘No one makes a better cake than

me’, this utterance implies that speaker believes the fact that she or he

is the best baker.

3. Expressives

Yule states that expressive are kinds of speech acts that state what the

speaker feels. They express psychological states and can be statement

of pleasure, pain, likes, dislikes, joy and sorrow (2001:53). In line with

Yule, Levinson (1995: 240) states that expressives type of speech act

express a psychological state. Expressives speech act can be shown

through apologizing, welcoming and congratulating. They express how

the speaker feels about a situation. For example the utterance ‘I am

sorry that I lied to you’ shows that a speaker wants to apologize for the

mistake he or she has done.

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4. Directives

Directives are those kinds of speech acts that the speakers use to get

someone else to do something. They express what the speaker wants.

Directives can be in the forms of commands, orders, requests,

suggestions and they can either be negative or positive (Yule,

2001:54). It can be said that directives are aimed at making addressee

to perform an action. The example can be seen through the following

utterance, ‘Could you close the window?’. The previous utterance does

not tend to address a question to the hearer, instead it is a request that

the hearer needs to perform an action, in this case opening the window.

5. Commisives

Commisives are the types of speech acts that commit the speaker to

some future action (Levinson, 1995:240). Another definition of

commisives is that stated by Yule that says commisives as kinds of

speech acts that speakers use to commit themselves to some future

action. They express what the speaker intends. They are promises,

threats, refusals and pledges (2001:54). Besides, commisives can be in

the form of planning, vowing, betting and opposing. In conclusion,

commisives can be said as the commitment of a speaker an action in

the future. An example of commisive is shown through the following

utterance ‘I am going to Paris tomorrow’. The utterance states a

planning or future action that will be performed by the speaker.

In English there are three structural forms namely declarative,

interrogative and imperative, and three general communicative functions, they are

statement, question and command or request (Yule, 2001:54). See the examples

below:

a. You do your homework (declarative)

b. Do you do your homework? (interrogative)

c. Do your homework! (imperative)

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The direct and indirect speech acts refer to whether there is a relationship

between the structure and the communicative functions or not. Therefore, if there

is a direct relationship between a structure and a function, a direct speech act

occurs. On the other hand, if there is indirect relationship between a structure and

a function, it means that indirect speech act presents in the utterance (Yule,

2001:54-55). The examples below will describe when a structure and a function

have direct and indirect relationship.

a. Move out the way!

b. Do you have to stand in front of the TV?

c. You’re standing in front of the TV.

d. You’d make a better door than a window.

The basic functions of all the utterances are to make a command or

request. However, the imperative structure is only applied in utterance a.

therefore, it can be said that in utterance’ a’ occurs direct speech act. Meanwhile,

utterances ‘b’, ‘c’ and‘d’ have different structures and functions. Utterance ‘b’ is

an interrogative, ‘c’ and‘d’ are declaratives. The relationship shown in the three

utterances are called indirect speech acts. Indirect speech acts are usually

associated with politeness in English rather than direct speech acts (Yule,

2001:56). To address to someone in a more polite way, indirect speech acts can be

an alternative way.

Speech event is an activity in which participants interact via language in

some conventional way to arrive at some outcome (Yule, 2001:57). Speech event

is the circumstance that surrounds speech acts. See example below.

Him : Oh, Mary, I’m glad you’re here.

Her : What’s up?

Him : I can’t get my computer to work.

Her : Is it broken?

Him : I don’t think so.

Her : What’s it doing?

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Him : I don’t know. I’m useless with computers.

Her : What kind is it?

Him : it’s a Mac. Do you use them?

Her :Yeah.

Him : Do you have a minute?

Her : Sure.

Him : Oh, great.

The interaction between the man and woman in the example above may be

called a ‘requesting’ speech event without a central speech act of request. there is

no request from the man to the man, but we know that it is a request from the

question ‘ Do you have a minute?’ which means that the man requests the woman

to help him fix the computer. It can be said that the analysis of speech event is

another way of studying how more gets communicated than is said (Yule,

20010:58).

CONCLUSION Speech act is act done in the process of speaking. The theory of speech act

is especially concerned with those acts that are not completely covered under one

or more of the major division of grammar-phonetics, phonology, morphology,

syntax, semantics-or under some general theory of actions. Austin substituted a

three way contrasts among the kinds of acts that are performed when language is

put to use, namely the distinction between locutionary, illocutionary, and

perlocutionary acts, all of which are characteristic of most utterances.

To improve the theory of Austin Searle proposes types of speech acts.

They are; declarations, representatives, expressive, directive and comisives. There

is a certain circumstances in with a speaker expect the hearer recognize his/her

intention. The ciecumtances surround the speech act is called speech event.

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REFERENCES

Austin, John L. (1975). How To Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-281205-X

Hirshon. Bob.(…..). Human Language.in www.sciencenetlinks.com retrieved on 18 May 2010

Mey. L. Jacob. (2000). Pragmatics: An Introduction, Second Edition.Black Well. Massachusetts, USA. Oxford. UK

Searle, John R. and Daniel Vanderveken.( 1985). Foundations of Illocutionary Logic. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-26324-7

Yule, George. (2002). Pragmatics.Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-437207-3

www.utexas.edu retieved on 17 May 2010

en.wikipedia.org retieved on 17 May 2010

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