This document discusses speech act theory and politeness in speech acts. It begins with an introduction to speech acts and J.L. Austin's speech act theory. Direct and indirect speech acts are explained, along with how to categorize different types of speech acts such as representatives, directives, commissives, etc. Felicity conditions for speech acts are presented. The concept of politeness and how it relates to maintaining face is discussed. Indirect speech acts are explained as a way to be polite. Sentence types and identifying them is also covered. In the end, references used in the document are listed.

1. By: Aseel kadhum Mahmood
13th
, April, 2014
Speech acts theory in
semantics

2. Introduction11
Austin’s speech act theory22
Direct & indirect speech act33
Politeness in speech act44
Contents
Politeness in speech act55

3. Introduction
Learning to communicate in a language involves more than
acquiring the pronunciation and grammar.
We need to learn how to ask question, make suggestion, greet
and thank other speakers.
In other words we need to learn the uses to which utterances
are conventionally put in the new language community and how
these uses are signaled.
The terminology of such function of language is called speech
acts (J.L. Austin,1975).
Communication function rely on the knowledge of social
convention &specific knowledge of local context of utterance
( Saed, 2003:220).
0

4. Characteristics of speech acts
In discussing speech acts we are examining the union of linguistic and social
behavior.
There are two important characteristics of speech acts:

5. Characteristics of speech acts
 Whether there is a match between a grammar form of speech function we
can identify a sentence type. Saed sets differences between the two as
below:

6. Austin speech act theory
• Austin’s work in many respects a reaction to some traditional and influential
attitudes to language. The attitudes can be said to involve three related
assumptions as follows:

7. Austin speech act theory
• Although some of these assumptions are discernible in recent formal approaches
to semantics, they are associated with the philosophers known as logical
positivists, a term originally applied to the mathematicians and philosophers
of the Vienna Circle;
• in terms of how far the meaning of a sentence is reducible to its verifiability, i.e.
the extent to which, and by which, it can be shown to be true or false.
• Austin’s opposition to these views is:

8. Austin speech act theory
Performative utterances: are sentences that they were in themselves a kind of
action, they perform the action named by the first verb rather than describing it in the
sentence, and we can insert the adverb hereby to stress this function,
e.g. I hereby request that you leave my properly.
We can contrast performative and non-performative verbs by:
e.g. I cook this cake.
?hereby cook this cake.
A speaker would
not,
expect the uttering
a sentence to
constitute the
action
They describe
actions
independent of
the linguistic act.

9. Evaluating performative utterances
o It is not useful to ask if a perfromative utterance is true or false, just if they work or
not. They have to be felicitous, felicity requires satisfying social conventions.
Austin named these conditions as felicity conditions are either formal or informal.
o Austin (1975:25-38). Wrote a general schema:

10. Explicit & implicit performatives
• They tend to begin with a first person
verb in a form
This verb belongs to a special class
describing verbal activities
• Generally their performative nature
can be emphasized by in
asserting the adverb hereby.
• explicit performatives are
seen as merely a specialized subset of
performatives whose nature as speech
acts is more unambiguous than most.
• An utterance’s ability to be expanded
to an explicit performative that
identified it as a performative
utterance
• the mood of the verb, auxiliary verbs,
intonation, etc.
• It focuses attention on the task
of classifying the performative verbs of
a language
(Austin 1975: 53—93)
a. You are (hereby) charged with treason.
b. Passengers are requested to avoid
jumping out of the
c. Five pounds says he doesn’t make the
semi-final.
D. Come out, and see me sometime.
a. I (hereby) charge you with treason.
b. We request that passengers avoid
jumping out of the aircraft.
c. I bet you five pounds that he doesn’t
make the semi-final.
d. I invite you to come up and see me
sometime.

11. Statements as performatives
 Austin’s original position was that performatives (stating) subject to felicity
conditions, are to be contrasted with declarative sentences (constatives)
which are potentially true or false descriptions of situations
(Schiffrin,1994: 50—4).
 In simple terms, Austin argued that there is no theoretically sound way to
distinguish between performatives and constatives.
E.g. The king of France is bald.
 All utterances constitute speech acts of one kind or another. For some
the type of act is explicitly marked by their containing a verb labeling an
act.
 Some speech acts are so universal and fundamental that their
grammaticalization is the profound one of the distinction into sentence
types.Sentence is a basic marker of primary performative types.
This conclusion that all utterances have a speech act force has led to a
widespread view that there are two basic parts to meaning: the
conventional caning of the sentence (often described as a proposition)
and the speaker’s tended speech act.(Sadock and Zwicky , l985: 160).

12. Three facets of speech act
Kreidler (1998) concludes that what is said - the utterance, can be called the locution.
What the speaker intends to communicate to the addressee is the illocution. The
message that the addressee gets, his interpretation of what the speaker says, is the
perlocution. If communication is successful, the illocution and the perlocution are alike
or nearly alike.

13. Categorizing speech act
o J. R. Searle (1976: 10—16) proposed that all acts fall into five main
types:
1) REPRESENTATIVES, which commit the speaker to the truth of the
expressed proposition (paradigm cases: asserting, concluding);
2) DIRECTIVES, which are attempts by the speaker to get the address
see to do something (paradigm cases: requesting, questioning);
3) COMMISSIVES, which commit the speaker to some future course
of action (paradigm cases: promising, threatening, offering);
4) EXPRESSIVES, which express a psychological state (paradigm cases:
thanking, apologizing, welcoming, congratulating);
5) DECLARATIOIS, which effect immediate changes in the institutional state of
affairs and which tend to rely on elaborate extra linguistic institutions (paradigm
cases: excommunicating, declaring war, christening, marrying, firing from
employment).
o Searle uses a mix of criteria to establish these different typesincluding the
act’s illocutionary point;
the content of the act
the psychological state of
the speaker
‘fit’ with the world

14. Categorizing speech act
The first step was to point out that in some cases the same Kreidler (1998:183)
presents different categorization
1. Assertive utterence: states that in the assertive function speakers and
writers use language to tell what they know or believe; assertive language is
concerned with facts. The purpose is to inform. It’s devided into two, there are
direct and indirect assertive. Direct assertive utterance start with I or we and
an assertive verb. Indirect assertive utterances also include assertive verbs.
Assertive verb include allege, announce, agree, report, remind, predict,
protest.
2. Performative utterance: Speech acts that bring about the state of affairs
they name are called performative. Performative utterances are valid if spoken
by someone whose right to make them is accepted and in circumstances
which are accepted as appropriate. The verbs include bet, declare, baptize,
name, nominate, pronounce.
the subject
of the
sentence
the verb
must be in
the present
tense
Speaker
authority
and
circumstance
s

15. Categorizing speech act
3. Veridictive utterances: are speech acts in which the speaker makes an
assessment or judgment about the acts of another, usually the addressee.
These include ranking, assessing, appraising, condoning.
4. Expressive utterance: springs from the previous actions—or failure to act—of
the speaker, or perhaps the present result of those actions or failures.
Expressive utterances are thus retrospective and speaker-involved. The most
common expressive verbs (in this sense of ‘expressive’) are: acknowledge,
admit, confess, deny, apologize.
5. Directive Utterance:Directive utterances are those in which the speaker tries
to get the addressee to perform some act or refrain from performing an act.
Thus a directive utterance has the pronoun you as actor, whether that word is
actually present in the utterance or not.
one cannot tell other people to do something in the past. Like other kinds of
utterances, a directive utterance presupposes certain conditions in the
addressee and in the context of situation.
Three kinds of directive utterances can be recognized:
commands, requests and suggestions.

16. Categorizing speech act
6. Commisive Utterance: Speech acts that commit a speaker to a course of action are
called commissive utterances. These include promises, pledges, threats and
vows. Commissive verbs are illustrated by agree, ask, offer, refuse, swear, all with
following infinitives. They are prospective and concerned with the speaker’s
commitment to future action.
A commissive predicate is one that can be used to commit oneself (or refuse to
commit oneself) to some future action. The subject of the sentence is therefore most
likely to be I or we. Further, the verb must be in the present tense and there is some
addressee, whether the utterance shows it or not, since the speaker must be making
a commitment to somebody.
7. Phatic utterance: Phatic utterance is to establish rapport between members of the
same society. Phatic language has a less obvious function than the six types
discussed above but it is no less important. Phatic utterances include
greetings, farewells, polite formulas such as “Thankyou,” “You’re welcome,” “Excuse
me” when these are not really verdictive or expressive.

17. Felicity conditions
Searl developed felicity conditions for an act which are Preparatory, Propositional,
Sincerity& Essential:
Conditions for promising (Searle 1969: 62ff.)
[where S = speaker, H = hearer, A = the future action, P the
proposition expressed in the speech act, e = the linguistic
expression]
Conditions for questioning (Searle 1969: 66)
[where S = speaker, H hearer, P = the proposition expressed in
the speech act]
L = J
a. Preparatory 1: H would prefer S’s doing A to his not doing A
and S believes H would prefer S’s doing A to not doing A.
b. Preparatory 2: It is not obvious to both S and H that S will do
A in the normal course of events.
c. Propositional: In expressing that P, S predicates a future act A
of S.
d. Sincerity: S intends to do A.
e. Essential: the utterance e counts as an undertaking to do A.
•One normally does not promise what would happen.
•Proposition is something of the speaker that has already happened
can not be predicted.
a. Preparatory 1: S does not know the answer, i.e. for a yes/no
question, does not know whether P is true or false; for an elicit
ative or WH-question, does-not know the missing information.
b. Preparatory 2: It is not obvious to both S and H that H will
provide the information at that time without being asked.
c. Propositional: Any proposition or propositional function.
d. Sincerity: S wants this information.
e. Essential: The act counts as an attempt to elicit this information
from H.
•These questions only belong to prototypical, they cannot apply to
theoretical questions nor to the questions of a teacher.
•Propositional condition say that there are no semantic restrictions on
the content of question of speech act.
•There is linguistic marking supported by contextual information of
correlation between form and function.
•Still there are a couple of problems associated with recognizing a
sentence type and matching it:
1. how to cope with cases where what seems to be conventional
associated between a sentence form &illocutionary force is
overridden.
2. difficulties in identifying sentence type.

18. Indirect speech act
• The conventionally expected function is known as the direct speech act
(interrogative )and the extra actual function is termed the indirect speech act
(questioning).
• According to Searl (1975) whether the hearers are only conscious of indirect
or whether they have both available to choose the indirect as most
contextually apt. He answers by saying that speaker have access to both
literal (direct and nonliteral(non-direct)use of speech acts
E.g. can you pass the salt?
Please pass the salt.
• When one of these sentences is uttered with primary locutionary point of a
directive, the literal illocutionary act is also formed (1975:70)
• Searl relies on system of felicity conditions in working literal but not all non-
literal acts.
• Searl argues that other sentence can only work when they address the
conditions for request. Indirect speech act work because they are
systematically related to the structure of the associated direct act , they are
tied to one or another of the act’s felicity conditions.

19. Understanding indirect speech act
• Searl states that to understand indirect speech act we combine our
knowledge of three elements to support a chain of inference
• There is a certain degree of conventionality in using forms like can you, or
conversational postulates :shortcuts employed by speakers,
they are often used when the speaker is encouraged
to search for an indirect speech act.
• They reduce the amount of speech involved in tracing the
indirect act.
• The postulated can be seen as reflection of conventionally
of some indirect actsIndirect speech act involve postulation,
there is a view that they are idioms involving no inference.
• This view is cut by common-sense that hearers decide
to be uncooperative , there is also a psychological
evidence that hearers have access to direct act in indirect
requests which proves that direct speech acts are
understood more quickly and that hearers seem
to have access to the literal meaning of indirect
acts.
• They suggested that literal meaning of indirect act is important in politeness

20. The concept of politeness
 Searl since conversational requirements of politeness normally make it awkward to
issue flat impressive statement, we seek indirect act to illocutionary end. In
indirective, politeness is main motivation for indirectness
 Speaker conclude social power of politeness in framing speech acts . Indirect
interrogative requests are useful because they permit participants to explicitly state
some condition which make compliance impossible
 Politeness is often associated with the concept of face. Goffman(1967) face concept
is one’s social image an individual seek to projects. While brown &levin (1978:66)
claim that face is the public face image every member want to claim
 Positive face express individual desire to seem worthy and deserving for approval.
While negative face represent an individual’s desire to be autonomous , unimpeded
by others .
 Mutual interest requires participants maintain their face (in this view many verbal
interactions are potential threat to face).
 Searl since conversational requirements of politeness normally make it awkward to
issue flat impressive statement, we seek indirect act to illocutionary end. In
indirective, politeness is main motivation for indirectness
 Speaker conclude social power of politeness in framing speech acts . Indirect
interrogative requests are useful because they permit participants to explicitly state
some condition which make compliance impossible
 Politeness is often associated with the concept of face. Goffman(1967) face concept
is one’s social image an individual seek to projects. While brown &levin (1978:66)
claim that face is the public face image every member want to claim
 Positive face express individual desire to seem worthy and deserving for approval.
While negative face represent an individual’s desire to be autonomous , unimpeded
by others .
 Mutual interest requires participants maintain their face (in this view many verbal
interactions are potential threat to face).

21. The concept of politeness

22. Sentence type
 Sentence type is a conversational matching between grammatical form and
speech act, Some languages has a question contrast with declarative speech
act. Saed (2003:237) introduce the idea of classifiers that marks the
distinction between different verbal inflections for person etc.
 The problem with marking by special words can be used for a variety of
semantic distinctions. Sadock and Zwicky(1985:167) suggested some rule
thumb for identifying sentences:

23. References:
• Saeed, J. I. (2003). Semantics.2nd
ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers
• Kreidler, C. W. (1998). Introducing English semantics. London: Routledge
• Searle, J.R. (1969). Speech Acts: an essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge:
University Press.
• Austin, J.L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Brown, P. and Levinson, s.( 1978/1987) politeness. Some universal in language usage.
2nd edition. Cambridge university press.
• Schiffrin, D. (1994). Approaches to discourse. Oxford:Blackwell.
• Sadock, Jerrold M., & Zwicky, Arnold M. (1985). Speech Acts Distinctions in Syntax.
Cambridge University Press.
• D. Wagiman Adisutrisno. (2008). MULTIPLE CHOICE ENGLISH GRAMMAR TEST
ITEMS THAT AID ENGLISH GRAMMAR LEARNING FOR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH
AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE. Institute of Research and Community Outreach - Petra
Christian University.
• Searl,J, R(1976) the classification of illocutionary acts. Language in society 5:1-23
reprinted in J,R searl, ecpression and meaning:studies in the theory of speech acts,
1979.Cambridge: Cambridge university press, 1-29.
• Searl, J, R (1975): indirect speech acts: in peter cole and jerry morgan (eds) syntax and
semnatics, vol.3 speech acts, 59-82. Newyork: Academic press.
• Lyons, j (1995) Linguistic semantics: An introduction.Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge University Press.
• Lyons, I (1977) sematics. Cambridge and newyork: cambridge university press.

24. Questions?