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Speech Acts Theory
The distinction between GF and CF originates in the philosophical theory of Speech Acts^1 , which was first propounded by Austin^2 , and developed by Austin himself (1962) and Searle (1969). Austin theory was a reaction against the restrictive view of meaning held by logical positivists: in the positivist view, an ideal language would directly reflect the structure of reality; sentences stood for facts, for states-of-affairs. They were thus descriptions or propositions^3 which could be verified for their true/false value.
Entailments
HOW DO WE VERIFY IF A SENTENCE IS TRUE OR FALSE?
Entailment is the relation which holds between the propositions listed under P and the corresponding propositions under Q in the following: P Q Fido is a dog Fido is an animal John killed the wasp The wasp died All dogs are purple My dog is purple To say that proposition P entails^4 proposition Q means that the truth of Q follows logically and inescapably from the truth of P, and the falsity of P follows likewise from the falsity of Q. → Entailment is a relation between meaning. Two other properties of Entailment must be emphasized:
- That relation is not determined by context: it is context-independent , since it depends entirely on the meaning of constituents of the sentence. EX: My uncle Tom is arriving from Canada. a) Someone was in Canada (or passing through) b) Someone is arriving where I am c) I have an uncle d) My uncle's name is Tom e) He is a man This utterance entails a)-e) in isolation from any context. (^1) Teoria degli atti linguistici. (^2) John Austin (1911 – 1960), still regarded as one of the founding fathers of modern pragmatics, rejected the positivists' definition of communication and embraced a more modern view. According to Austin (1962 published after his dead by John Searle), when we say something we PERFORM ACTIONS, that he terms SPEECH ACTS ( How to do things with words (1962)) From here Modern Pragmatics was born. (^3) → Propositional Meaning. (^4) Include
→ They are those propositions that can be logically deduced from the sentence in isolation from any context.
- The truth of the entailed proposition must follow inescapably from the truth of the entailing proposition: it has to be unthinkable that it might be false. EX: JFK was assassinated. → Entailment: JFK is dead.
Presuppositions
A Presupposition^5 may be defined as an entailment of a given sentence or utterance:
- It is employed as “shared meaning” or “background assumption”: EX: Prince charming (to Pinocchio): You... You can't lie. So, tell me puppet, where is Shrek? [from Shrek III] → Presupposition: If Pinocchio lies, everyone will know at once.
- exists in some way a “prior to” the production of that given sentence or utterance: EX: The president king of France is bald. → Presupposition: There is a king of France. N.B: Entailments ≠ presuppositions Entailment is a consequence of a sentence, logically follows, while a presupposition comes before a sentence is produced. There are crucial differences between presuppositions and entailments:
- negation: EX: Entailment VS Presupposition JFK was assassinated. The present king of France is bald. Entails:
- JFK is dead. JFK was NOT assassinated. Presuppose:
- There is a king of France.
- The present king of France is NOT bald. DOES NOT entail: JFK is dead STILL presupposes: There is a king of France → If you negate the sentence the entailment of this sentence no longer exists → If you negate the sentence the presupposition still exists → Presuppositions are NOT affected by ordinary sentence negation, entailments are. (^5) Una Presupposizione non è qualcosa deducibile dalle conseguenze, quindi non riguarda il dopo ma è qualcosa presumibilmente successo prima.
PRESUPPOSITIONs OF B: a) both A and B know who John is; b) there exists a police station; c) the man's name is John; etc. (INTENDED) MEANING OF B: No, you can't see him because he's not here at the moment. EX 2: A: Are you and John going out? B: John is at the police station now. ENTAILMENTS OF B: a) someone is at the police station; b) a man is at the police station; etc. PRESUPPOSITIONS OF B: a) both A and B know who John is; b) there exists a police station; c) the man's name is John; etc. (INTENDED) MEANING OF B: No, we're not going out because he's not here at the moment. In both cases the ASSUMPTION can be “John is a policeman” or “John got into trouble”. In EX 1 and EX 2 Entailments and Presuppositions are the same because they are based on propositional meaning. When an utterance is produced, it can be analysed on 3 different levels which interact and work together:
- Locutionary^7 Act : The Act of saying something: the uttering of a sentence with determinate sense and reference. It corresponds to: Sentence Meaning, Propositional Meaning, Literal Meaning, Sense, GF. It isn’t defined as LE because LE is about the form while the Locutionary Act is related to the content so to the GF.
- Perlocutionary Act: the Act performed by means of Language, using Language as a tool; the elements which define the act are external to the Locutionary Act. A Perlocutionary Act is the Act of bringing about effects on the beliefs, attitudes and behaviour if the addressee by means of uttering the sentence, such as persuading someone to do something, obtaining a promise from someone, consoling someone etc. → Perlocutionary Effect (or Goal): what is done by uttering the words; is it the effect on the Hearer, the Hearer’s reaction.
- Illocutionary Act: the Act performed in uttering a sentence. A Illocutionary Act is the Force or Intention behind the utterance: stating, asking for information, ordering, accusing, denying, inviting, persuading. → Illocutionary Force: CF, non-literal Meaning, Communicative Meaning. (^7) Locution: what is said
Illocutionary acts are internal to the Locutionary Act, in the sense that, if contextual conditions are appropriate, once the Locutionary Act has been performed, so has the Illocutionary Act. It can or cannot overlap the Locutionary Act. An important distinction must be made between intended and actual perlocutionary effect since a LE might be uttered with the intention of bringing about state-of-affairs X while actually causing effect Y. To encompass this distinction, Austin introduced the concept of Illocutionary uptake to refer to the Hearer understanding of the Speaker’s (locutionary and) illocutionary act, which can result in a shift between intended and actual perlocutionary effect. Sometimes Illocutionary uptake doesn’t overlap with the Perlocutionary effect, either because the hearer chooses to refuse the implicit/explicit request or because he really doesn’t understand.
Implicit and Explicit Illocutionary Force
The illocutionary act aimed at producing an utterance is known as the illocutionary force of the utterance. There is no communication without illocutionary force. How does a Speaker convey, or a Hearer understand, the illocutionary force of an utterance? We can first of all distinguish between explicit and implicit illocutionary force. We have two ways to use explicitness. We have to use performativity, of which there are two types:
- Explicit Performativity/Performative Verbs: make the illocutionary force of utterances EXPLICIT. Those verbs help us carry out actions. EX: I command you to surrender. I promise to pay you next week. → My intention is literally translated into words. The locutionary act overlaps with my illocutionary force. Performative verbs used performatively and not descriptively need to have certain characteristics: They can occur normally with hereby^8 which signals the intention I have now. This use of hereby is not possible with non-performative verbs of speaking: EX: I hereby declare open the bridge. VS I hereby tell the truth. They must have an adverb that is linked to the very moment of the utterance. → They must be in the simple present tense. They may be active or passive, if active they must also be in the first person to make explicit my intentions as a speaker. EX: I hereby promise to pay you next week. You are (hereby) warned to leave immediately. They are often held to be non-truth conditional. EX: (^8) “con la presente”
using. Is John Brave? (Yes/No question) a) I don’t know if he is brave b) I want to know c) “Say Yes if the proposition ‘John is brave’ is true and No if it is false” → It can’t be verified for its true or false value. They can’t be constative. Imperatives^11 : Be brave, John! The illocutionary force is explicit thanks to the very selection of the syntactic form. It is linked to contextual elements:
- authority of the speaker: Shut the door!
- the interest of the speaker: Come in! (whether the action is more likely to benefit the hearer is politeness) → It can’t be verified for its true or false value. They can’t be constative. Exclamatives: How brave John is! Curiously, exclamations cannot be performed by any performative verbs, although there are verbs with meanings describing such actions as exclaim , which does not encode an illocutionary act (it is too loaded with manner meaning). An exclamation expresses a psychological attitude to a fact: A: What a lovely day it is! VS A: Tell me about your day. B: Is it hell! B: What a lovely day I’ve had! An exclamation is truth- conditional and can be contradicted. It is not the primary purpose of an exclamation to inform, but here the incapsulated information seems to be presupposed. → intuitively, it is not performativizable. The illocutionary force of an utterance is not always fully specified linguistically: what is not specified is IMPLICIT. (^11) The prototypical use of an imperative is to direct or urge the addressee to do something. EX: Shut the door!
Classifying Speech Acts: Searle’s Macro-classes In 1976, Searle expanded the 2 macro classes of Austin, adding further details. They were grouped in the following 5:
- Declarations : change the world by their very utterance. The world is in some way no longer the same after they have been said.
- They cause a change in the world over and above the fact that they have been carried out.
- They standardly encode such changes. resign, dismiss, divorce (in Islam), christen, name, open (e.g. an exhibition), excommunicate, sentence (in court), consecrate, bid (at auction), declare (at cricket) N.B: declarations are distinct from the declarative sentence form.
- Representatives/Assertive : state what the Speaker believes to be the case; they commit the Speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition. What the speaker considers true. state, suggest, boast, complain, claim, report, warn (that) Notice that boast and complain also express an attitude to the proposition expressed other than a belief in its truth.
- Commissive : commit the Speaker to future action. promise, vow, offer, undertake, contract, threaten
- Directives : aimed at making the Hearer do something. order, command, request, beg, beseech, advise (to), warn (to), recommend, ask, ask (to)
- Expressive : state what the Speaker feels; they make know the Speaker’s psychological attitude to a presupposed state of affair. thank, congratulate, condole, praise, blame, forgive, pardon N.B: Here the attitude is more towards the person involved. These do form an intuitively satisfying set, and boast and complain do not belong here. These five classes fall under the umbrella of explicit performativity. The Performative Hypothesis Performative speech acts are speech acts which allow us to perform acts through words. We use them in conventional procedures (baptism, wedding, etc). Our experience is full of them (baptism for example). They translate the communicative intention into words. We cannot have a doubt that the priest wants to baptise the baby. But they are not the only ones. We use performative verbs, direct speech acts, also in everyday communication when we want to make sure that our hearer understands what we want. The best way is to be direct, to be as direct as possible. Not only in conventional ceremonies then.
INDIRECT SPEECH ACT = the locutionary act and illocutionary force DO NOT overlap → GF ≠ CF NO 1:1 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FORM AND FUNCTION. Indirect speech act → IMPLICIT illocutionary force (starkly dependant on context)
- An utterance belonging to a macro-function is used in place of an utterance belonging to another macro-function.
- A sentence which has an illocutionary force as part of its propositional meaning can be used to perform an act with a different illocutionary force, e.g. a(m) assertive/representative is used with the intention of conveying the speech act ‘request’, which is a directive: EX: It’s hot in here. → Can you please open the window? [assertive/representative] [Directive] NB: Utterances may belong – and, often, DO belong – to more than one macro-class! DIRECT SPEECH ACT vs INDIRECT SPEECH ACT What time is it? CONTEXT: At the bus stop. CONTEXT: Interview for a job = Interviewer to expected interviewed. → “I have been waiting for a while, the bus hasn’t arrived, I don’t have a watch, can you please tell me the time, so that I can possibly catch a cab or start walking?” →“You were supposed to be here at 9:30, it’s 10:20 – which doesn’t make you appear accountable.” Interrogative used in place of an expressive → ‘blaming’
- Locutionary act: asking the time;
- Illocutionary force: asking the time, a piece of information necessary to one’s needs ‘shall I wait or not’?;
- Perlocutionary effect: the hearer replies to my question and tells me what I want to know.
- Locutionary act = asking for the time;
- Illocutionary force = blaming → making the hearer aware the interviewer’s ill-disposed because the interviewer is late;
- Perlocutionary effect = making the interviewer realised he won’t get the job. It’s hot in here. CONTEXT: 3rd^ year English Lesson, University of Genoa, (supposing we had a room with a window). The lecturer: “There are 100 people in here, it is difficult to breathe, we all need air, can someone open the window, please?” CONTEXT: 3rd^ year English Lesson, University of Genoa, (supposing we had a room with a window). The lecturer: “There are 100 people in here, it is difficult to breathe, we all need air, can someone open the window, please?” → “Open the window, please.” → “Frankly, it’s quite hot in here” assertive used in place of a directive → ‘request/order’
- Locutionary Act = making a statement;
- Illocutionary force = asking/ ordering someone to open the
- Locutionary act = (asking)/ordering someone to open the window???
- Illocutionary force = (asking)/ordering someone to open
window; -Perlocutionary effect = lead someone to open the window the window;
- Perlocutionary effect = bring someone to open the window Conditions for successful performance of Speech Acts There are normally contextual conditions which must be fulfilled before a speech act can be said to have been properly performed. These conditions were theorised to answer to the question “How is it possible that indirectness is used and people understand the intended meaning?” If they are satisfied then I can use indirectness and people will be perfectly able to understand what I mean, what I imply, what I convey, what I intend, and not only what I say. → the intended/implied meaning, the intended illocutionary force (CF) will be understand and decoded and, possibly if the Hearer chooses it, the intended perlocutionary effect will overlap with the illocutionary uptake. 1. Felicity/Happiness conditions: For Austin, are that the context and roles of participants must be recognised by all parties, the action must be carried out completely, and the persons must have the right intentions. Levinson (1983) lists them as follows: A. 1) There must be a conventional procedure^13 having a conventional effect;
- The circumstances and persons must be appropriate as specified in the procedure^14 ; B. The procedure must be executed 1) correctly and 2) completely^15 ; C. Often:
- The persons must have the requisite thoughts, feelings and intentions^16 , as specified in the procedure, and
- if subsequent/consequent conduct^17 is specified, then the relevant parties must do so.
- Violation of A and B conditions produce MISFIRES: the act is null and void; misfires are inconsequential^18
- Violation of C conditions give rise to ABUSES, because it is about intention and subsequent conduct. Abuses is much more problematic, because they do bare (^13) conventional procedure :every single moment in our life. If we think about it everything we do is conventional (go buy bread, a ticket bus) (^14) EX: our class can’t take place in a garden, or on Monday (because we have 1 hour on Tuesday and 2 hours on Thursday) and we need to be teacher and students. (^15) Certain conventional aspects must be followed. EX: we have 3 hours a week and we must do those hours, so completely; correctly means that we are here to do English, or pragmatics more specific, and we must do it, the lecturer can’t come and start talking about history. (^16) Say something and mean something it’s not the same. You need to do things in a certain way to allow it to be true. (^17) subsequent conduct is fundamental because not every communicative exchange is over when it is over. Sometimes there are consequences, sometimes people agree with something during the communicative exchange which needs to be done once the communicative exchange is over; so once the communicative exchange is over the parties who agreed with something need to do it. If they don’t do it there will be consequences. (^18) EX: it’s like the lecturer come at class and she baptises someone Samantha. This because this is not a conventional procedure, the circumstances and people are not appropriate because she is not an infant and the lecturer is not a priest and the room where class take place is not a church and it’s not completely and correctly. So, the act is null and void, the act misfires, there’s no consequence.
In a successful/felicitous communicative exchange: 1) Speakers will be able to employ/use indirect speech acts and hearer will understand the INTENDED illocutionary force of utterances, even if it is implied, so that they can perform the INTENDED perlocutionary effect^19 : EX:
- CONTEXT: English 3rd year theorical module, Tuesday, 1st semester a. y. 17/18): EZ : Good afternoon, let's start. Locutionary act = suggestion (like grammatical function say about the verb “let”) Illocutionary force = order/command (“fall silent and start paying attention”) Perlocutionary effect = students fall silent and start paying attention.
- CONTEXT: English 3rd year theorical module, Tuesday, 1st semester a. y. 17/ Prof. Prandi : Good morning, let's start. 2) Only those utterances which have a right to be performed (= the speaker believes it is possible for the hearer to carry out the action and/or the act is the hearer's best interest) will see their intended perlocutionary effect fulfilled: EX: CONTEXT: English 3rd year theorical module, Tuesday, 1st semester a. y. 17/18; still supposing we had a window.
- EZ: Can you please be quiet? VS
- EZ : Jump out of the window! BUT: CONTEXT: during a wildfire Fire-fighter : Jump out of the window! Therefore, felicity/preparatory conditions represent one of the answers, together with presuppositions , that modern pragmatics gives to the question: how do communicate if we say Z and mean Y? Both felicity/preparatory/essential/sincerity conditions and presuppositions have non-linguistic and communicative significance and constitute part of the background knowledge which can be relied on to grasp the intended meaning of an utterance. EX: A (to B ): Have you stopped robbing banks? [presupposition: B used to rob banks] Furthermore, they create EXPECTATIONS, which we constantly rely on when communicating (or living, in general) Violation of expectations is what, more than many other communicative devices, creates a (^19) Meaning-making consists in part in the intention to produce understanding in the hearer, by getting the hearer to recognise his/her intention (=his/her illocutionary force)!
“stiking” effect (e.g. humour, fear, terror). EX: A: Can you do me a favour? B: Sure. A: Go to hell. And stay there. Never come back. Expectation is based on background knowledge.
Macro-functions
Furthermore, it should be noticed that, over and above speech acts, Brown and Yule (1983) classify two main macro-functions of talk:
- TRANSACTIONAL functions : which language serves in the expression of content and transmission of factual information At the extreme end is giving instructions to somebody in the street.
- INTERACTIONAL functions : which language serves in the expression of social relations and personal attitudes, meant to show solidarity and maintain social cohesion. At the extreme end is the notion of PHATIC COMMUNION^20 , language with no information content used purely to establish/keep channels of communication open. EX: At the bus stop: “My goodness, it's cold” Most talk has a mixture of the two functions, although everyday human interaction is primarily interactional rather than transactional. Utterances at the extreme pole of both macro-functions might be difficult to classify as speech acts. “To be more specific, the apparatus necessary to explain the indirect part of indirect speech acts includes 1) a theory of speech acts, 2) certain general principles of cooperative conversation (conversation in which peoples work together) [some of which have been discussed by Grice], and
- mutually, shared (so by both) factual (so that exist in practice) background information of the speaker and the hearer” (Searle 1975: 61) **Speech Acts and Society
- Social dimension** The use of speech acts varies according to social factors: INDIRECTNESS:
- is a sign of politeness in many languages/cultures (but not in all the countries): directives are more often expressed as interrogatives than imperatives. (^20) Using language and communication to get in touch with others. Communication with no other intent than get in touch with other people.
- mutually shared factual background information of the speaker and the hearer FELICITY CONDITION 1. ii) the circumstances and persons must be appropriate as specified in the procedure. BUT What is appropriate and what no? Who established what is appropriate? Another scholar defines the theory APPROPRIACY TO CONTEXT
- Can you open the window, please? Here we don't have direct speech because with the word “please” we understand that it's not a question for ability but it is a question to a favour. Il PLEASE è una forma di cortesia. Politeness. Illocutionary force: asking for a favour.
- Can you play the guitar? Here is a direct speech and it is a question for ability. We can say this because CAN is one of those modal verbs …….. grammatic function and communicative function are the same. Here the illocutionary force and the locutionary act overlap.
- Can I open the window? DIRECT (but still polite) Locutionary act: ask for ability Illocutionary force: asking for permission Grammatical function and communicative Function: it's a question of permission.
- Could I open the window? INDIRECT (polite) The impact starts shifting so it becomes a polite request for permission.
- Do you mind if I open the window? VERY INDIRECT (very polite) Locutionary act: asking for opinion. Illocutionary force: asking for permission. They differ in terms of politeness for the formal forms. But in pragmatics formality is another thing. Politeness based on who you’re talking to. Question = How many LEs? And how many Cfs? 3 Different Les and 1 CF.
- A (to A's mother, 2017): I beg your pardon, Ma'am. I was wondering whether you could be so kind as to allow me to open the window. Irrealistic because we are in the 2017. Contextual element. Setting and time. Diachronically inappropriate. (see diachronic and synchronic). (based on personal relationship and not on social convention)
- A(to A's lecturer): Yo, sis, see the window open now! Irrealistic. (social relationship so social inappropriate). Utterances are made up with different
parts. In this case the vocative is a slang. It’s an imperative used performatively. The big different between the first and the second examples is based on the relation between person.
- A (to A's sweetheart): Can you open the window, please, honey? Realistic. Appropriate: Indirect, polite request, person relationship, use the term of endearment “Honey”. Terms of endearment = nomignoli che usi con le persone a cui tieni per esprimere l’affetto nei loro confronti. How do we know what is more and what is less polite? Appropriacy to context Austin had the time only to say Appropriate but he had not the time to specify what is appropriate and what is not. Prescriptive grammar and communicative use of language may differ (Can → Ability/Permission = GF VS Can → request [for a favour]/command = CF ). Different linguistic selections are to be used in different contexts (Can → 75% formal VS Could → 90% formal), so that speakers do not run the risk of being too formal or too informal (polite/impolite, straightforward/vague, etc.). Expectation have an important impact on communication, so if someone is too polite is also weird. But the point is the same: how do the speakers know? Indeed, we acquire knowledge of a perceive sentences not only as grammatically correct, but also as APPROPRIATE or inappropriate. Speakers of a modern language are developed two different sense of competence. Dell Hymes pointed out in 1971 that the ability to distinguish between what is appropriate and what is not constitutes part of the COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE of speakers, which is to be distinguished from their LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE. The LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE a speaker has of a language is the knowledge of the: one set of rules: Rules of grammar (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics) Knowledge of the language as a formal system (e.g. the knowledge of Latin studied in Italian high schools) The COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE is the knowledge of:
