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79
PRAGMATIC ASPECTS OF COMMUNICATION

LECTURE SEVEN
SPEECH ACTS

Introduction
Public life and people’s private lives consist of an array of various situations and
events which, as the founder of systemic functional linguistics Michael Halliday [ha:lidei]
remarked, to a phenomenal extent “take a linguistic form” (Halliday 1978). Practically all
social gatherings, official ceremonies and rites are associated [ə′səυsieitid/ ə′səυ∫ieitid]
with speech situations / speech events / speech acts, speech acts being minimal elements
[′elimənt] in this sequence. Offers and demands, agreements and promises, greetings and
commands, warnings and refusals, curses and apologies are only a few examples of
speech acts we perform daily. “Life can be conceived as a gigantic [d ai′gænt k] network
of speech acts” (Wierzbicka 1987) bridged together into speech events. Negotiations,
introductions, invitations, complaints, etc. are typical complex speech events.
The British philosopher John Austin was the first to point out that in uttering a
sentence we can do things as well as say things. His fundamental insight was that an
utterance can be used to perform an act and accomplish a goal. Before Austin,
philosophers held that sentences were used simply to say things. (Could you close the
door, please? is not just saying but making a request.)

The Nature of Speech Acts
Each speech act has at least three facets to it: a locutionary [lə′kju:∫ənəri] act, an
illocutionary act, and a perlocutionary act.
 A locutionary act is the act of simply uttering a sentence from a language; it is a
description of what the speaker says. It contains the speaker’s verbalized message.
Typically, it is the act of using a referring expression and a predicating expression to
express a proposition. (You should stop smoking – the referring expression is you and
the predicating expression is stop smoking.
 An illocutionary act is what the speaker does in uttering a sentence. It indicates the
speaker’s purpose in saying smth, specifying in what way s/he is using the locution.
These acts include stating, requesting, questioning, promising, apologizing, appointing,
answering questions, announcing an intention, making a criticism, making an
identification, making predictions, issuing commands, warning, etc. The illocutionary act
is sometimes called the illocutionary force of the utterance.
 A perlocutionary act produces sequential effects on the feelings, thoughts, or actions of
hearers.
The following demonstrates the distinct nature of each type of act:
Locutionary act: He said to me, “You can’t go there.”
Illocutionary act: He protested against my going there.
He warned me against my going there.
Perlocutionary act: He stopped me.
He brought me to my senses.
He annoyed me.