Speech Acts

Speech Acts

Week 9 language in context

Objectives

• Definition• Reason for using speech acts• How it works in language use.• Application in drama activities. • Factors of promises in speech acts• Application in drama activities• Factors of verbs in speech acts• Application in drama activities.

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Orchestrate the role

1. Why speech acts?• There are limitations imposed on linguistic

thinking by a semantics based on truth conditions.

• Restrict themselves to propositions representing one particular class or sentences, the so called declaratives,,,

‘It’s cold outside.’

But what about ‘Good luck, congratulation, promise’

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• Wishes are not propositions: they are ‘words with which to do things’, they are speech acts (Austin, )


It’s cold. It’s dirty. It’s messy. There’s a vacuum cleaner.

A words with which to do things

Speech Acts

Happy Birthday! Dr. Kang

Happy Birthday! Dr. Kang

Hul. That age, happy?

Non-testable proposition

Testable proposition

Declaratives

How can you make the dialogue testable or non testable

proposition?• Listen, I cannot stand it anymore. • This is it. Get out now. I’ll never see you

again.


Random dialogueDo you trust me?It’s hot in here.I’ll show you.Stop it.Now, it’s your turn.Someone’s coming. I’ll do it. Help!!!

2. Language in use

• The basic flaw In such thinking is that it does not ‘the basic or minimal units of linguistic communication

• The unit of linguistic communication is not, as has generally been supposed, the symbol, word or sentence, but rather the production of the symbol or word or sentence in the performance of the speech act.’ (Searle 1969)

Speech acts are produced• NOT In the solitary philosopher’s think tank, but in

actual situations of language use, • by people having something ‘in MIND’.• -- the noise or mark was produced by a being or

beings more or less like myself and produced with certain kinds of intentions.

• This intentionality is not just a matter of intentions ascribable to a particular speaker, it is how to establish the conditions that make communication possible.

• They are entirely dependent on the context of the situation in which such acts are produced.

SocialPersonal

Individual intentions and cultural, societal context

• Ritual stamping of the staff in doctoral defense.

• Ritual stamping of a friend in a house play. • It is not primarily what I say, or intend to

say, that determines my speech act, but the way it fits into the entire pattern of acting as a social being that is typical for my culture.

Societal,Cultural intention

Individual

5.1.3 How speech acts function

• I perform an activity that brings about a change in the existing state of affairs.

• Baptism. ‘I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost’

• there will be one more Christian among the living.

Societal,Cultural intention

Locutionary aspectthe activity we engage in when we say something

‘it’s cold in here.’Illocutionary ‘force’ or ‘point’Intimately related to the very form the utterance may

have: stating, wishing, promising etc.

Perllocutionary effectThe person I’m addressing closes the door, or turns

on the radiator,Such further effects depend, of course, on the

particular circumstances of the utterance, and are by no means always predictable.

Intention of speech

Effect of speech = Response of listener

Need conditions• Felicity conditions.• Need a condition where a ‘speech act’ to

happen ‘felicitously’ or ‘happily’. .

Power or status of the person

I hereby pronounce this person dead

The circumstances

Misfiring condition


I’ll bet you ten dollars that the buses won’t run on Thanksgiving.

You’re on.

Needs Up take

When Is this sentence countable?

There is a policeman at the corner.

I will never leave you.

I will love you forever.

Bring locutionary aspects

A: Do you trust me?B: It’s hot in here.A: I’ll show you.B: Stop it.A: Now, it’s your turn.B: Someone’s coming. A: I’ll do it.B: Help!!!

5.2 promises• Is a word ‘promise’ countable?• Something counts as something only within a

specified set of rules (Searle)• It is the kind of activity in which people are

engaged that makes us count certain utterances as promises, warnings, requests and so on.

• As to promises, there are dozens of ways to make a promise in any particular language, and it is only the context which can determine whether a particular expression counts as a promise.

A speech act’s physiognomy: promising Introduction: the problem• How can we determine a speech act?• How many speech acts are there, and how

are they expressed in language?• What is the relationship between a speech

act and a pragmatic act?• Are there speech acts (or pragmatic acts)

that are found across languages, or even in all languages? (the problem of the so-called ‘universal speech acts’)

Promises: conditions and rules

Condition 1: Normal conditions must obtain for uttering and receiving a promise. (not a parasitic use: not a deaf, or joke)

Condition 2: must have a content.I promise I’ll be there tomorrow.

Condition 3: have to do with a future possible action of the speaker.

Preparatory conditions

Condition 4: A promise is a pledge to do something

for you, not to you. A threat is a pledge to do something to you, not for you.

If you don’t behave, I promise you there’s going to be trouble.

Condition 5: not be something which clearly is going to happen anyway.

The semantical rules of the language

Condition 6: this condition has to do with the sincerity of the promiser in carrying out the act of promising: without that intention, we have no sincere promise.

Condition 7: a promiser intends to put himself or herself under the obligation of carrying out the promised act.

It is determined by the pragmatic conditions

Governing the use of the language in the particular context of, say, a certain family.

It is society that determines the validity of.

IFID (Illocutionary force indicating device) and 5 rules

1. Which is to happen in the future.2. Actually wants to happen to him or her3. Not concern the occurrence of an already

scheduled, self-justifying or natural happening.

4. Sincerity rule, corresponding to the sincerity condition.

5. Creating an obligation from the promiser to the promisee.

Constitutive vs regulative

• Constitutive rules: some one made up

• Regulative rules: a rule regulating some one’s performance.

Task 1Application

• Select two pictures and make a dialogue using ‘I promise ----’

• Explain the situation using conditions for promise.

• Think about when and how you can use this method in your teaching.



Homework

• Make a lesson plan in which the drama activity you did in this lesson. Explain how speech act, conditions for promises are reflected

• Read speech act 5.3 and 5.4 and define, ‘speech act verbs, performativity, speech acts without SAV, direct and indirect speech acts.



Speech Acts

Documents

speech actsapplication

speech acts austin

speech acts functioni

speech actshow

grumpy guy speech acts

free template

linguistic thinking

societal contextritual