an introduction to speech act theory, from various sources

Speech act is a technical term in linguistics and the philosophy of language. The contemporary use of the term goes back to John L. Austin's doctrine of locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. Many scholars identify 'speech acts' with illocutionary acts, rather than locutionary or perlocutionary acts. Like with the notion of illocutionary acts, there are different opinions concerning the question what being a speech act amounts to. The extension of speech acts is commonly taken to include such acts as promising, ordering, greeting, warning, inviting someone and congratulating.

Speech act as an illocutionary act
The concept of an illocutionary act is central to, if not identical with, the concept of a speech act. Although there are numerous opinions as to what 'illocutionary acts' actually are, there are some kinds of acts which are widely accepted as illocutionary, as for example promising, ordering someone, and bequeathing.
Following the usage of, for example, John R. Searle, "speech act" is often meant to refer just to the same thing as the term illocutionary act, which John L. Austin had originally introduced in 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 emphasising that "by saying something, we do something", as when someone orders someone else 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.)
Austin distinguishes between illocutionary and perlocutionary speech acts. An interesting type of illocutionary speech act is that performed in the utterance of what Austin calls performatives, 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.




Examples
• Greeting (in saying, "Hi John!", for instance), apologizing ("Sorry for that!"), describing something ("It is snowing"), asking a question ("Is it snowing?"), making a request and giving an order ("Could you pass the salt?" and "Drop your weapon or I'll shoot you!"), or making a promise ("I promise I'll give it back") are typical examples of "speech acts" or "illocutionary acts".
• In saying, "Watch out Peter, the ground is slippery", Mary performs the speech act of warning Peter to be careful.
• In saying, "I will try my best to be at home for dinner", Peter performs the speech act of promising to be at home in time.
• In saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, please give me your attention", Mary requests the audience to be quiet.
• In saying, "Race with me to that building over there!", Peter challenges Mary.



Searle (1975)[1] has set up the following classification of illocutionary speech acts:
• assertives = speech acts that commit a speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition, e.g. reciting a creed
• directives = speech acts that are to cause the hearer to take a particular action, e.g. requests, commands and advice
• commissives = speech acts that commit a speaker to some future action, e.g. promises and oaths
• expressives = speech acts that express the speaker's attitudes and emotions towards the proposition, e.g. congratulations, excuses and thanks
• declarations = speech acts that change the reality in accord with the proposition of the declaration, e.g. baptisms, pronouncing someone guilty or pronouncing someone husband and wife





Indirect speech acts
In the course of performing speech acts we ordinarily 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 (if ever there are linguistic means, for at least some so-called "speech acts" can be performed non-verbally) 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 open the window?", thereby asking Peter whether he will be able to open the window, but also requesting that he do so. Since the request is performed indirectly, by means of (directly) performing a question, it counts as an indirect speech act.
Indirect speech acts are commonly used to reject proposals and to make requests. For example, a speaker asks, "Would you like to meet me for coffee?" and another replies, "I have class." The second speaker used an indirect speech act to reject the proposal. This is indirect because the literal meaning of "I have class" does not entail any sort of rejection.
This poses a problem for linguists because it is confusing (on a rather simple approach) to see how the person who made the proposal can understand that his proposal was rejected. Following substantially an account of H. P. Grice, Searle suggests that we are able to derive meaning out of indirect speech acts by means of a cooperative process out of which we are able to derive multiple illocutions; however, the process he proposes does not seem to accurately solve the problem. Sociolinguistics has studied the social dimensions of conversations. This discipline considers the various contexts in which speech acts occur.
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John Searle's theory of "indirect speech acts"
Searle has introduced the notion of an 'indirect speech act', which in his account is meant to be, more particularly, an indirect 'illocutionary' act. Applying a conception of such illocutionary acts according to which they are (roughly) acts of saying something with the intention of communicating with an audience, he describes indirect speech acts as follows: "In indirect speech acts the speaker communicates to the hearer more than he actually says by way of relying on their mutually shared background information, both linguistic and nonlinguistic, together with the general powers of rationality and inference on the part of the hearer." An account of such act, it follows, will require such things as an analysis of mutually shared background information about the conversation, as well as of rationality and linguistic conventions.
In connection with indirect speech acts, Searle introduces the notions of 'primary' and 'secondary' illocutionary acts. The primary illocutionary act is the indirect one, which is not literally performed. The secondary illocutionary act is the direct one, performed in the literal utterance of the sentence (Searle 178). In the example:
(1) Speaker X: "We should leave for the show or else we’ll be late."
(2) Speaker Y: "I am not ready yet."
Here the primary illocutionary act is Y's rejection of X's suggestion, and the secondary illocutionary act is Y's statement that she is not ready to leave. By dividing the illocutionary act into two subparts, Searle is able to explain that we can understand two meanings from the same utterance all the while knowing which is the correct meaning to respond to.
With his doctrine of indirect speech acts Searle attempts to explain how it is possible that a speaker can say something and mean it, but additionally mean something else. This would be impossible, or at least it would be an improbable case, if in such a case the hearer had no chance of figuring out what the speaker means (over and above what she says and means). Searle's solution is that the hearer can figure out what the indirect speech act is meant to be, and he gives several hints as to how this might happen. For the previous example a condensed process might look like this:
Step 1: A proposal is made by X, and Y responded by means of an illocutionary act (2).
Step 2: X assumes that Y is cooperating in the conversation, being sincere, and that she has made a statement that is relevant.
Step 3: The literal meaning of (2) is not relevant to the conversation.
Step 4: Since X assumes that Y is cooperating; there must be another meaning to (2).
Step 5: Based on mutually shared background information, X knows that they cannot leave until Y is ready. Therefore, Y has rejected X's proposition.
Step 6: X knows that Y has said something in something other than the literal meaning, and the primary illocutionary act must have been the rejection of X's proposal.
Searle argues that a similar process can be applied to any indirect speech act as a model to find the primary illocutionary act (178). His proof for this argument is made by means of a series of supposed "observations" (ibid., 180-182).
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Analysis using Searle's theory
In order to generalize this sketch of an indirect request, Searle proposes a program for the analysis of indirect speech act performances, whatever they are. He makes the following suggestion:
Step 1: Understand the facts of the conversation.
Step 2: Assume cooperation and relevance on behalf of the participants.
Step 3: Establish factual background information pertinent to the conversation.
Step 4: Make assumptions about the conversation based on steps 1–3.
Step 5: If steps 1–4 do not yield a consequential meaning, then infer that there are two illocutionary forces at work.
Step 6: Assume the hearer has the ability to perform the act the speaker suggests. The act that the speaker is asking be performed must be something that would make sense for one to ask. For example, the hearer might have the ability to pass the salt when asked to do so by a speaker who is at the same table, but not have the ability to pass the salt to a speaker who is asking the hearer to pass the salt during a telephone conversation.
Step 7: Make inferences from steps 1–6 regarding possible primary illocutions.
Step 8: Use background information to establish the primary illocution (Searle 184).
With this process, Searle concludes that he has found a method that will satisfactorily reconstruct what happens when an indirect speech act is performed.