In the philosophy of language and linguistics, a speech act is something expressed by an individual that not only presents information but performs an action as well. The phrase "I resign" is a classic example of a speech act, as the very act of saying the words enacts the resignation.
According to Kent Bach, "almost any speech act is really the performance of several acts at once, distinguished by different aspects of the speaker's intention: there is the act of saying something, what one does in saying it, such as requesting or promising, and how one is trying to affect one's audience".
The contemporary use of the term speech act goes back to J. L. Austin's development of performative utterances and his theory of locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts. Speech acts serve their function once they are said or communicated. These are commonly taken to include acts such as apologizing, promising, ordering, answering, requesting, complaining, warning, inviting, refusing, and congratulating.
History For much of the history of the positivist philosophy of language, language was viewed primarily as a way of making factual assertions, and the other uses of language tended to be ignored, as Austin states at the beginning of Lecture 1, "It was for too long the assumption of philosophers that the business of a 'statement' can only be to 'describe' some state of affairs, or to 'state some fact', which it must do either truly or falsely." Wittgenstein came up with the idea of "don't ask for the meaning, ask for the use," showing language as a new vehicle for social activity. Speech act theory hails from Wittgenstein's philosophical theories. Wittgenstein believed meaning derives from pragmatic tradition, demonstrating the importance of how language is used to accomplish objectives within specific situations. By following rules to accomplish a goal, communication becomes a set of language games. Thus, utterances do more than reflect a meaning, they are words designed to get things done. The work of J. L. Austin, particularly his How to Do Things with Words, led philosophers to pay more attention to the non-declarative uses of language. The terminology he introduced, especially the notions "locutionary act", "illocutionary act", and "perlocutionary act", occupied an important role in what was then to become the "study of speech acts". All of these three acts, but especially the "illocutionary act", are nowadays commonly classified as "speech acts".
Austin was by no means the first one to deal with what one could call "speech acts" in a wider sense. The term social act and some of the theory of this type of linguistic action are to be found in the fifth of Thomas Reid's Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind (1788, chapter VI, Of the Nature of a Contract)."A man may see, and hear, and remember, and judge, and reason; he may deliberate and form purposes, and execute them, without the intervention of any other intelligent being. They are solitary acts. But when he asks a question for information, when he testifies a fact, when he gives a command to his servant, when he makes a promise, or enters into a contract, these are social acts of mind, and can have no existence without the intervention of some other intelligent being, who acts a part in them. Between the operations of the mind, which, for want of a more proper name, I have called solitary, and those I have called social, there is this very remarkable distinction, that, in the solitary, the expression of them by words, or any other sensible sign, is accidental. They may exist, and be complete, without being expressed, without being known to any other person. But, in the social operations, the expression is essential. They cannot exist without being expressed by words or signs, and known to the other party." Cf. Mulligan, K. Promisings and other social acts – their constituents and structure. in Mulligan, K., editor Speech Act and Sachverhalt: Reinach and the Foundations of Realist Phenomenology. Nijhoff, Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster 1987. Quote from Reid 1969, 437–438).
Adolf Reinach (1883–1917)Mulligan, K. Promisings and other social acts – their constituents and structure. in Mulligan, K., editor Speech Act and Sachverhalt: Reinach and the Foundations of Realist Phenomenology. Nijhoff, Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster 1987. and Stanislav Škrabec (1844–1918)Matejka Grgic, Igor Z. Žagar, How to Do Things with Tense and Aspect: Performativity before Austin, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011. have been both independently credited with a fairly comprehensive account of social acts as performative utterances dating to 1913, long before Austin and Searle.
The term speech act had also been already used by Karl Bühler."Die Axiomatik der Sprachwissenschaften”, Kant-Studien 38 (1933), 43, where he discusses a Theorie der SprechhandlungenSprachtheorie (Jena: Fischer, 1934) where he uses "Sprechhandlung" and "Theorie der Sprechakte"
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) views speech as an act: ("" – "[…] speaking thus is not merely speaking, but acting, in that I turn to the imagination, which is the generator of an actuality, so I am the sustainer or destroyer [of this actuality]." (Lectures on the Philosophy of Right III, GW 26,3, p. 1467).
Overview
Speech acts can be analysed on multiple levels:
A locutionary act: the performance of an utterance: the actual utterance and its apparent meaning, comprising any and all of its verbal, social, and rhetorical meanings, all of which correspond to the verbal, syntactic and semantic aspects of any meaningful utterance; an illocutionary act: the active result of the implied request or meaning presented by the locutionary act. For example, if the locutionary act in an interaction is the question "Is there any salt?" the implied illocutionary request is "Please pass the salt to me." or at least "I wish to add salt to my meal."; and under certain conditions a further perlocutionary act: the actual effect of the locutionary and illocutionary acts, such as persuading, convincing, scaring, enlightening, inspiring, or otherwise getting someone to do or realize something, whether intended or not. Additionally, a metalocutionary act categorizes speech acts that refer to the forms and functions of the discourse itself rather than continuing the substantive development of the discourse, or to the configurational functions of prosody and punctuation.Gibbon, D., "A New Look at Intonation Syntax and Semantics", in A. R. James & P. Westney, eds., New Linguistic Impulses in Foreign Language Teaching (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1981), esp. pp. 88–93.
Illocutionary acts The concept of an illocutionary act is central to the concept of a speech act. Although there are several scholarly opinions regarding how to define illocutionary acts, there are some kinds of acts that are widely accepted as illocutionary. Examples of these widely accepted acts are commands or promises.
The first of these opinions is the one held by John L. Austin who coined the term speech act in his book How to Do Things with Words published posthumously in 1962. According to Austin's preliminary informal description, the idea of an illocutionary act can be captured by emphasizing that "by saying something, we do something", as when someone issues an order to someone to go by saying "Go!", or when a minister joins two people in marriage saying, "I now pronounce you husband and wife." (Austin would eventually define the "illocutionary act" in a more exact manner.)
John R. Searle gave an alternative to Austin's explanation of the illocutionary act, saying a speech act is often meant to refer to exactly the same thing as the term illocutionary act. Searle's work on speech acts is understood to further refine Austin's conception. However, some philosophers have pointed out a significant difference between the two conceptions: whereas Austin emphasized the conventional interpretation of speech acts, Searle emphasized a psychological interpretation (based on beliefs, intentions, etc.).
Perlocutionary acts While illocutionary acts relate more to the speaker, perlocutionary acts are centered around the listener. Perlocutionary acts always have a perlocutionary effect, which is the effect a speech act has on a listener. This could affect the listener's thoughts, emotions or even their physical actions. An example of this could be if someone uttered the sentence "I'm hungry." The perlocutionary effect on the listener could be the effect of being persuaded by the utterance. For example, after hearing the utterance, the listener could be persuaded to make a sandwich for the speaker.
Performative speech acts An interesting type of illocutionary speech act is that performed in the utterance of what Austin calls performative utterances, typical instances of which are "I nominate John to be President", "I sentence you to ten years' imprisonment", or "I promise to pay you back." In these typical, rather explicit cases of performative sentences, the action that the sentence describes (nominating, sentencing, promising) is performed by the utterance of the sentence itself. J.L. Austin claimed that performative sentences could be "happy or unhappy". They were only happy if the speaker does the actions he or she talks about. They were unhappy if this did not happen. Performative speech acts also use explicit verbs instead of implicit ones. For example, stating "I intend to go." does convey information, but it does not really mean that you are [e.g.] promising to go; so it does not count as "performing" an action ("such as" the action of promising to go). Therefore, it [the word "intend"] is an implicit verb; i.e., a verb that would not be suitable for use in performative speech acts.
Indirect speech acts
In the course of performing speech acts people communicate with each other. The content of communication may be identical, or almost identical, with the content intended to be communicated, as when a stranger asks, "What is your name?" However, the meaning of the linguistic means used may also be different from the content intended to be communicated. One may, in appropriate circumstances, request Peter to do the dishes by just saying, "Peter ...!", or one can promise to do the dishes by saying, "Me!"
One common way of performing speech acts is to use an expression, which indicates one speech act, and indeed performs this act, but also performs a further speech act, which is indirect. One may, for instance, say, "Peter, can you close the window?", thereby asking Peter whether he will be able to close the window, but also requesting that he does so. Since the request is performed indirectly, by means of (directly) performing a question, it counts as an indirect speech act.
An even more indirect way of making such a request would be to say, in Peter's presence in the room with the open window, "I'm cold." The speaker of this request must rely upon Peter's understanding of several items of information that is not explicit: that the window is open and is the cause of them being cold, that being cold is an uncomfortable sensation and they wish it to be taken care of, and that Peter cares to rectify this situation by closing the window. This, of course, depends much on the relationship between the requester and Peter—he might understand the request differently if they were his boss at work than if they were his girlfriend or boyfriend at home. The more presumed information pertaining to the request, the more indirect the speech act may be considered to be.