𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗣𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀 - 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘀𝗶𝘀 - 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗔𝗰𝘁 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗼𝗿𝘆
Two influential works in the area of pragmatics relevant to the area of discourse analysis are Austin’s ( 1962 ) How to Do Things With Words and Searle’s ( 1969 ) Speech Acts. Austin and Searle argued that language is used to ‘do things’ other than just refer to the truth or falseness of particular statements. Their work appeared at a time when logical positivism was the prevailing view in the philosophy of language. The logical positivist view argued that language is always used to describe some fact or situation, and unless a statement can be tested for truth or falsity it is basically meaningless. Austin and Searle observed that there are many things that we say which cannot meet these kinds of truth conditions, but which are, nevertheless, valid and which do things that go beyond their literal meaning. They argued that in the same way that we perform physical acts, we also perform acts by using language. That is, we use language to give orders, to make requests, to give warnings, or to give advice; in other words, to do things that go beyond the literal meaning of what we say.
A central issue that underlies this is the relationship between the literal meaning, or propositional content, of what someone says and what the person intends by what he/she says. Thus, if someone says ‘It’s hot in here’ they are not only referring to the temperature, but they may also be requesting someone to do something such as turn on the air conditioning. What we say, then, often has both a literal meaning and an illocutionary meaning (or illocutionary force ); that is, a meaning which goes beyond what someone, in a literal sense, has said.
Austin argued that there are three kinds of acts that occur with everything we say. These are the locutionary act, the illocutionary act, and the perlocutionary act. The locutionary act refers to the literal meaning of the actual words (such as ‘It’s hot in here’ referring to the temperature). The illocutionary act refers to the speaker’s intention in uttering the words (such as a request for someone to turn on the air conditioning). The perlocutionary act refers to the effect this utterance has on the thoughts or actions of the other person (such as someone getting up and turning on the air conditioning).
A: Hello, welcome to Hungry Jack’s. Can I take your order, please?
B: Can I have a Whopper with egg and bacon . . .
A: Would you like cheese with that? B: Yes please . . . and a junior Whopper with cheese . . . and large fries please.
A: Would you like any drinks or dessert with that?
B: No thank you.
A: OK . . . that’s a Whopper with cheese, egg and bacon, a Whopper junior with cheese and large fries.
B: Yes. Thank you. A: OK . . . Please drive through.
speech acts in linguistics,speech acts theory,speech acts in semantics,speech acts locutionary illocutionary perlocutionary examples,locutionary illocutionary and perlocutionary acts examples,speech act theory in urdu,searle's speech act theory,speech act theory by jl,speech act theory by jl austin,speech act theory searle,speech act theory in discourse analysis,speech act theory in hindi,speech act theory examples,speech act theory in pragmatics in urdu
