Page 11 - 6689

10

SPEECH ACT VERBS

As Wierzbicka points out, our life consists "to a phenomenal extent of speech acts.
From morning to night, we ask, answer, quarrel, argue, promise, boast, scold, complain,
nag, praise, thank, confide, reproach, hint… Moreover, from morning to night, we seek to
interpret what other people are saying, i.e. what kind of speech acts they are performing.
Virtually every time someone opens his or her mouth in our presence, we seek to
categorize their utterance as this or that kind of speech act. Was this a threat? Or just a
warning? Was this a suggestion or rather a request? Was this a criticism or just a casual
remark? Was this a hint?" (Wierzbicka 1987:3).
Speech act words are really extremely important in the world of human action and
interaction. The set of speech act verbs reflects a certain interpretation of this world. To
understand an English-speaking society and to have access to its culture one has to
understand this interpretation. There are kinds of speech acts for which English has no
names. But the categories for which english does provide names are evidently particularly
important. They shape their perception of human attitudes and human relations. They
reflect their perceptions and they organize them. It is crucially important to understand
what these "names" mean.
The primary function of speech act verbs consists in interpreting people's speech
acts, not in performing speech acts. In normal interaction, we don't need speech act
verbs to make clear the nature of the speech acts which we wish to perform. When we
perform speech acts, we express, directly, first person attitudes. When we interpret other
people's speech acts, we attribute to them indirectly, certain first person attitudes. In
explicating speech act verbs in a first person format we are modelling the attitudes
conveyed in first person expressions (I/we warn you) or attributed to the speakers,
rightly or wrongly, in the third person reports.
All illocutionary verbs indispensibly possess two semes:
1. the seme of locution (speaking) which consists ofthe seme of the utterance act and
the seme of propositional act (Searle 1969:23)
2. the seme of illocution.
There are also delocutionary verbs characterizing peculiarity of speaking itself: to bawl
for smth., to whisper, to shout, etc.
Many speech act verbs can be used performatively, i.e. when used in the first
person, present tense, they indicate the nature (illocutionary force) of the utterance.

EXPLICIT AND NONEXPLICIT ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS.
IFID

One of Austin’s important insights was that the most obvious device for indicating
the illocutionary force (the Illocutionary Force Indicating Device, or IFID) is an
expression of the type
[I (Vp) you that...]
where a verb explicitly names the illocutionary act being performed.
Eg.:
1. I warn you to stop cheating.
2. May I inquire where you got those stolen goods?
3. Your presence is requested
4. Our order is hereby cancelled.