This document provides an overview of speech act theory and pragmatics. It discusses how speech act theory attempts to explain how speakers use language to accomplish intended actions and how hearers infer intended meaning. It also explores how speech acts are used in social interactions and how they vary across cultures. The document defines key concepts like speech acts, illocutionary forces, performatives, and pragmatics. It examines how speech acts are classified and embedded in daily conversation through discourse routines and speech events like genres.

1. Pragmatics
Frame
Unused s
Speech Act
Section Speec
Theory h
Space 1 events
and
Genres
Speech Speech Acts
and Social
Interactions
acts and
Pragmatics References
discourse Intention
routines

2. Speech act theory
• Attempts to explain how speakers use
language to accomplish intended actions
and how hearers infer intended meaning
from what is said.
• Has prompted researchers to investigate
the ways people use the language to
manage social interactions.

3. What is an speech act?
• A speech act is a minimal functional unit
in human communication. Just as a
word is the smallest free form found in
language and a morpheme is the smallest
unit of language that carries information
about meaning, the basic unit of
communication is a speech act.

4. In other words
Speech acts are:
• Any meaningful utterance
• Utterance that serves a function in
communication
• What piece of language is doing or how
the listener/reader is supposed to react

5. Speech act
It may contain:
• Just one word
– Sorry
• Several words or sentences
– I m sorry I forgot your bithday

6. Speech Act Theory
Classification on Speech Acts
Based on Austin's (1962), and Searle's (1969) theory,
Cohen ( 1996) identifies five categories of speech
acts based on the functions assigned to them.
Representative Directives Expressives Comissives Declaratives
Assertions Suggestions Apologies Promises Decrees
Claims Requests Complaint Theats Declarations
Reports Commands Thanks Offers

7. Welcome to the restaurant…
Greeting
I don t eat lobster, it s not kosher…
Assertion
What is the soup of the day?
Question
Thank you
Expressive
I will be right back with your desert
Promise
Can you give me a glass of wine please?
Directive

8. Pragmatics
• Is the study of the aspects of meaning and
language use that are dependent on the
speaker, the addressee and other features
of the context of utterance.

9. Doing things with words
• Linguistics were primarily concerned trying
to elucidate the rules of grammar and the
meaning of words in order to explain
language.
• But philosophers point out the obvious.
Much of what we say means things quite
different from words and grammar used.

10. Austin (1962)
• Stressed the function of speech as a way of
DOING THINGS WITH WORDS.
• ILLOCUTIONARY FORCE: implicitly or
explicitly, tells how a preposition is to be
taken
• Eample: describe , assert, apologize,
censure, demand and others .

11. Verbs like
bet, promise, garantee, order, and request
are known as PERFORMATIVES.
We can determine that a verb is
performative by putting hereby before them
Example: I hereby request request that you
leave this property

12. Perlocutionary Act
• When ones utterance actually makes
another person do something , like carry
out a command take defensive action .
• Such as persuading, convincing, scaring,
enlightening, inspiring, or otherwise getting
someone to do or realize something.
• Example : Pass me the salt

13. Speech Acts and the Law
The bill of rights protects freedom of speech
as long as the speech is about personal
opinion or statement of fact.
But
It does not protect all speech acts.

14. Example
Like to crying FIRE in a crowded building.
Also
Conspiring to bribe a jury.
Perjury
Libel
Slander

15. Speech acts and social
interaction
• Threatening complimenting, commanding
and questioning can be manipulative.
• Another person behavior may be affected
from one may expect from the actual
words used.

16. “See the belt?”
• This may be enough to restrain a child
from misbehaving.
• This is an example given by Chaika (1990)
that demonstrates how meaning is
achieved regardless of what words are
actually used.

17. Or…
Speaker 1: Would you like to have this
ticket to the concert?
Speaker 2: Is the Pope Catholic?
___________________________________
Speaker A: Is that what you re wearing to
the party?

18. Pragmatics
• The study of speech acts in daily
interaction is called pragmatics.
• Speech acts carry social implications.
• The responses to this social implications
are conventional.

19. Therefore
• We speak though discourse
routines, such as questions and answers.
• Every day talk consist of discourse
routines and cultures vary considerably in
the modes of routines they prefer.

20. All of these are embedded in our
daily conversation.
• The degree to which one request or order
directly.
• The occasions on which one compliments
and one s response.
• How one invites others to do something.
• Asking questions causes others to answer;
therefore questions are speech acts. So
are apologies and excuses.

21. Why should ESL Students Learn
to Perform Speech Acts?
• Since cultures vary in how they carry out
discourse routines, learning them is an
important task if one is to become socialized.
• The mayor issue en ESL classrooms is that
we are teach in how to speak directly, how to
say what we mean. However, much
interaction has to be effected by not speaking
directly, but not saying what one means.

22. More important
• ESL learners also have to learn to make
the proper responses in one s culture in
discourse routines.
• This can also cause cross cultural
difficulties.

23. Frames
• Frames, they are also known as scripts,
schemata and structures of expectation.
(Tannen 1979b; Gumperz 1982, p.12)
• We ESL use frames to make sense of the
myriad expressions that assail us daily.

24. According to Chaika
• We use these to decide what is important.
• What inferences we can and should be
getting from an interaction.
• Why someone is speaking the way he or
she is.
• And, what our reaction should be.

25. • An obstacle in using frames to interpret is
that they are based upon an individual s
personal experiences.
• Another is that cultures differ in frames.

26. Speech events
• A speech event is :
• The situation calling forth particular ways
of speaking (Gordon and Lakoff 1975).

27. Genre
Refers to the form of speaking .
1. Joke
2. Narrative
3. Promise
4. Riddle
5. Prayer
6. Greeting

28. • Members of a community recognize
genres.
• Beginnings, Middles and ends.
1. Did you hear the one about….. = joke.
2. Once upon a time = child s story.
3. And they lived happily ever after = ending.

29. • Sometimes the genre is the entire speech
event.
• Church services are speech events for
instance Sermons are a genre belonging
to the church.
• Sermons do not cover the entire speech
event.
• Prayers, readings, hymn singing also
constitute the speech events of church
services.

30. Intention
• In all interaction each person speaks with
a purpose.
• Hearers get meaning partially by what they
think the speaker s purpose is.

31. • One important aspect of interpretation
intention is presequence.
• Are recognized opening sentences which
signal that a particular kind of speech act
will follow.
• Commands, demands or threats.

32. • A child who hears an adult s “who spilled
this milk?”
• Perceive the question as command.
• “wipe it up”
Often intentions are not perceived correctly,
causing misunderstanding

33. • Harmless as hearing an honest question.
• Innocent comment as an insult.
• Example: A man who, in front of his
slightly plump wife, looks admiringly at a
model. “Wow! What a body on that one”.
The wife immediately bridles or dissolves in
tears, depending the personal style. She
assumes that is a complaining about her fat.

34. References
• Andrews, L. (2006). Discourse routines and social conventions. In
Language exploration and awareness. A resource book for teachers.
(pp. 167-192). New jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc.
Publishers.
• Chaika, E. (1994). Pragmatics. En Language the Social Mirror (pp.
152-158). Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.
• Jaworowska, J. (6 de June de 2004). Speech Act Theory. Retrieved
on October 6th, 2011, from Speech Act Theory :
http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/lkamhis/tesl565_sp04/troy/spchac
t.htm