Speech act theory

Speech act theory

James Murphy

University of Manchester

james.murphy@manchester.ac.uk

Postgridiots!

26 September 2013

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Speech act theory

Introduction

All utterances not only serve to express propositions but they

also do something.

The level at which someone who is producing an utterance which

is carrying out an action is called the SPEECH ACT.

While a speech act can be performed effectively using many

means, there is usually a conventional way of doing so, such that:

I (hereby) V (you) (that) (S’)

Subscribers to the literal force hypothesis believe that surface

representations of a particular speech act are merely different

realisations of this underlying form.

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Speech act theory

SA as a reaction to logical positivism

Logical positivism stated that only something which is verifiable

(i.e. can be shown to be true or false) is meaningful.

Everything else (emotional, religious, ethical, aesthetical

utterances) are unverifiable and therefore MEANINGLESS.

A philosophical view borne out of the rise of Naziism and the

desire for a universal language.

Criticised heavily by Popper (viewed verifiability as

unreasonable, replace with falsifiability) amongst many others.

Can be thought to be ‘dead’.

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Speech act theory

Felicity vs. truth

Austin’s objection to LP was that language isn’t all about what

is true and false, language is used to do things.

Austin’s work ‘Ordinary language philosophy’ was developed in

the 1930s and 40s but first appeared in 1955: How to do things

with words.

Utterances such as the following cannot be spoken about in terms

of truth and falsity:

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Speech act theory

Felicity vs. truth

(1) I now pronounce you man and wife (Priest to couple)

(2) I promise to get this finished by Wednesday (Student to

supervisor)

(3) I sentence you to 17 years in prison (Judge to guilty)

(4) I order you to castrate yourself (Pope to wannabe eunuch)

In no situtation does it make sense to respond: “That’s not true”. So

felicity is what we are speaking of here.

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Speech act theory

Performativity

Examples 1–4 can be described as performatives: they perform an

action and (attempt to) change social reality as well as simply

describing it (cf. constatives).

There are conditions on whether performatives are felicitous or not:

Procedure must be followed

Utterer must be appropriate

(Other) circumstances must be right

(Usually) the person must have the requisite feelings and

intentions.

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Speech act theory

Properties of performatives

Existence of a performative verb

+ hereby

1st pers sg. subj.

simple present, indicative, active voice

Exceptions:

(5) First TransPennine Express apologises for the late running of

this train due to drunken behaviour of a stag party at York

(6) A: How do you get me to come to Postgridiots every week

George?

George: I promise scenes containing partial nudity.

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Speech act theory

Getting it wrong

Where performatives are not done correctly, we can speak of misfires:

(7) (Me standing before the Cutty Sark, champagne bottle in

hand) I name this ship the Death Star.

(8) (Humanist man to his wife) I divorce you, I divorce you, I

divorce you.

(9) A: I dare you to attend the Postcolonial reading group

JWRB: No thanks (lack of uptake)

Or abuses:

(10) (In the knowledge that you won’t) I promise to buy the next

round.

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Speech act theory

Utterances as actions

All utterances are used to do something (whether or not they are

performative):

Requests are attempts to get someone to do some action

Questions are attempts to get someone to perform a verbal action

Statements are commitments to the veracity of an SoA

&c.

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Speech act theory

Three levels of act

1 Locutionary act – the act of producing the utterance, U.

(11) I’m sorry I ate your lunch.

2 Illocutionary act – the act that was intended by the speaker/the

conventional force of the utterance. Here: an apology.

3 Perlocutionary act – the actual effect the utterance has. These

are non-conventional and not (entirely) predictable. Here:

forgiveness? annoyance? (We can also talk about intended

perlocutionary effects: restoring good relations).

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Speech act theory

Felicity conditions

Searle argued/(argues) that felicity is not merely important for

describing when speech acts go wrong, but they are part of the

make-up of a speech act. Felicity conditions can be separated into

four types:

PROPOSITIONAL CONTENT: The proposition that must be

expressed in the speech act

PREPARATORY CONDITION: A state of affairs which is

necessary for the illocutionary force to be expressed

SINCERITY CONDITION: Psychological state of the speaker

towards the propositional content

ESSENTIAL CONDITION: “Counts as” desired illocution

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Speech act theory

A couple more points on felicity

Speech acts rely on intention recognition – much debate

surrounds whether an utterance counts as a particular speech act

if the interlocutor fails to recognise what the utterance is trying

to do (i.e. if the essential condition fails)

Differences in the sincerity conditions (levels of psychological

commitment) give us different speech acts - e.g. request vs.

implore.

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Speech act theory

Categorising speech acts

So far we have looked at a variety of things which can be classed as

speech acts (indeed, we have encountered the view that everything is

a speech act). This begs the question: AND WHAT?! One of the

criticisms often levelled at speech act theory is that the theory is

circular and it is entirely descriptive in nature. A classification of

types of speech acts may help to bring a bit of order.

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Speech act theory

Searle (1976) SA types

1 Representatives (also called declaratives in the literature) –

commit the speaker to the truth – words fit the SoA in the world

– statements, assertions, etc.

2 Directives – attempts to get addressee to do something – attempt

to get the addressee to change world to fit the words – requests,

questions, etc.

3 Commissives – commit the speaker to a future act – speaker

commits to change world to fit their words – promises, threats,

etc.

4 Expressives – express a psychological state – have no direction –

thanks, apologies, congratulations, etc.

5 Declaration – by saying, doing – world ⇔ words – (Austin’s

performatives) – christenings, firings, declarations of war.14 / 27

Speech act theory

Indirect speech acts

Some utterances have the surface structure of one speech act, but are

performing another. Consider a simple request to shut the door (from

Levinson 1983: 264-5, his ex. 88):

(12) I want you to close the

door

(13) I’d be much obliged if

you’d close the door

(14) Can you close the door?

(15) Are you able by any chance

to close the door?

(16) Would you close the door?

(17) Won’t you close the door

(18) You ought to close the door

(19) It might help to close the

door

(20) Do us a favour with the

door, love.

(21) How about a bit less

breeze?15 / 27

Speech act theory

Calculating ISAs

Two main ways have been proposed to cope with ISA, namely:

1 Idiom theory

2 Inference theory

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Speech act theory

Idiom theory

Idiom theory suggests that ISA surface forms are idioms for their

direct SA semantic equivalent and are stored with them – in the same

way that idioms like ‘kick the bucket’ are (putatively) stored with

semantic equivalents (in this case: ‘die’). Idiom folk like Sadock

(1974) suggest that ISA cannot be read compositionally but this

seems shaky to say the least:

(22) James: Can you pass the salt?

James’ dad: Yes. ((no salt passing))

vs. Normal person: ((salt is passed))

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Speech act theory

Inference theory

Gordon & Lakoff (1971) suggest that the literal illocutionary force

and the indirect illocutionary force are present and that the indirect

IF is calculated (via Grice’s maxims or something similar) by the

incompatibility between the literal illocutionary force and the context.

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Speech act theory

Problems with SA Theory

Assertions have sincerity conditon that speaker believes P.

(23) It was JWRB who offended the classicists

S.C.: I believe it was the case that JWRB did offend.

(24) I guess it was JWRB who offended the classicists

S.C.: I believe less strongly that JWRB did it.

(25) Apparently/Supposedly/Allegedly, it was JWRB. . .

S.C.: ??

If Searle was right, and there are only 5 categories of speech acts,

what do we do with these?? (See Faller 2002 for extensive treatment

of this kind of problem)

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Speech act theory

Studies which use SA Theory

I’ve outlined what speech act theory is and some criticisms of it. In

the next couple of slides, I’ll discuss how SA theory has been used in

a variety of areas, incl. cross-cultural pragmatics, historical linguistics

and, most importantly, political discourse analysis ;-)

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Speech act theory

Cross-cultural pragmatics

Wierzbicka (1991):

Polish invitations often match English commands (‘Mrs. Vanessa!

Please! Sit! Sit!’)

English offers would be viewed as genuine questions in Polish

(‘How about a beer?’ vs. Miatbys ochote na piwo? which would

be treated as a genuine question – would you (hyp.) like a beer?)

Cribbed from MBMH lecture slides:

Can you/Could you do X? vs. Danish GiderPres du gøre X?

English person speaking Danish: Kunne du lukke vinduet? (lit.

were you able to close the window?)

GadPast du lukke vinduet? (>I ask you again, could you close

the window?)21 / 27

Speech act theory

Historical linguistics

Many studies have looked into speech acts diachronically (see Jucker

& Taavitsainen 2008, an edited volume which contains a number of

studies into different speech acts in the history of English). Let us

look here at flyting and sounding, acts of competitive insults.

The Battle of Maldon:

http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/oecoursepack/maldon/

Labov (1972) on AAVE sounding – e.g. I fucked your mother on top

of the piano // When she came out she was singin’ the Star Spangled

Banner. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8Mosa2piq4

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Speech act theory

Speech acts (can) come and go

Nothing really recorded between OE period and PDE which matches

the speech act of flyting (Arnovick 2000). Different social groups have

different speech act resources open to them, too.

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Speech act theory

WARNING

Shameless self-promotion follows on

next slide

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Speech act theory

Political discourse analysis

In my own work I have looked at the speech act of apology and tried

to identify what the felicity conditions are for the act. This is in an

attempt to separate non-apologies from apologies. From Murphy (in

press):

PROPOSITIONAL CONTENT: An act (A) done, or to be done

in the future, by a speaker (S) or someone for whom S is

responsible

PREPARATORY CONDITION: S believes that the hearer (H)

believes that A was an offence against H or a contextually

relevant third party

SINCERITY CONDITION: S regrets A or one of its

consequences

ESSENTIAL CONDITION: Counts as an apology for A.25 / 27

Speech act theory

Thank you

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Speech act theory

Bibliography

Aronovick, Leslie. 2000. Diachronic pragmatics: Seven case studies in English

illocutionary development. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Austin, John. 1969. How to do things with words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.

Faller, Martina. 2002. Semantics and pragmatics of evidentials in Cuzco Quechua.

PhD Thesis: Stanford University.

Gordon, D & George Lakoff. 1971 Conversational postulates. Papers from the

Seventh Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. 63-84.

Jucker, Andreas & Irma Taavitsainen. 2008. Speech acts in the history of English.

Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Labov, William. 1972. Language in the inner city: Studies in the Black English

Vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Murphy, James. in press. Revisiting the apology as a speech act: The case of

parliamentary apologies. Journal of Language and Politics.

Searle, John. 1976. The classification of illocutionary acts. Language in Society 5.

1-24.

Wierzbicka, Anna. 1991. Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human

interaction. Mouton: The Hague.

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