LinguisticsLesson 1 of 1 in the course Semantics and pragmatics

Speech Acts: Force, Performance, Indirectness, and Applications

5 flashcards · 5 quiz questions · 5 match pairs · 5 fill-in sentences · English

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Summary

This lesson introduces speech acts and explains how language can do more than convey information. It also traces key ideas that helped speech act theory develop.

A speech act is an utterance that both communicates something and performs an action. Saying “I resign” can communicate a decision while enacting the act of resigning. Other common speech acts include apologizing, promising, ordering, requesting, warning, refusing, and congratulating.

All flashcards

Speech act
An utterance that communicates content while performing an action.
Wittgenstein’s language games
Rule-governed social practices that help explain how language is used.
Performative utterance
An utterance that performs the action it names or indicates.
Metalocutionary act
A discourse function that signals organization or shapes how discourse is delivered.
Austin and Searle on illocution
Austin emphasized conventions; Searle gave greater attention to beliefs and intentions.

Quiz questions

  1. In speech act theory, what does the perlocutionary act describe?Answer: An effect an utterance has on a listener.
  2. What can make the performative “I now pronounce you husband and wife” infelicitous?Answer: The speaker lacks the required authority or circumstances.
  3. When someone asks “Can you close the window?” as a request, what is the indirect act?Answer: Requesting that the listener close the window.
  4. How do constitutive rules differ from regulative rules?Answer: Constitutive rules help create an activity; regulative rules guide an existing one.
  5. In speech-act-labeled messaging, what does a message tagged “query(content)” generally do?Answer: It asks whether the receiver has the specified content.

Based on the Wikipedia article Speech act, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Adapted into a summary, flashcards and quizzes.

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