Speech Act

This article gives an overview of the research related to speech acts and its importance to the field of second language learning. Speech Act Theory is a pragmatic theory that classifies the functions of language into five major categories. The most minimal unit of discourse within these categories is the speech act. Although speech acts can be realized in a variety of ways, they are often characterized by semantic and syntactical formulas that can be taught to second language learners. However, in order to use the speech act correctly, learners must not only understand how to form the utterance, but also when, where and how to use it. Thus, speech act research frequently focuses on how different cultures understand and use speech acts in context. Speech act research has been criticized for being ethnocentrically biased toward western cultures and for using inconsistent language to describe language use.

RESEARCH STARTERS

ACADEMIC TOPIC OVERVIEWS

English as a Second Language > Speech Act

Overview

The old adage to "say what you mean and mean what you say" encourages speakers to speak plainly and be true to their word. This may seem like sage advice, especially for those who want to win friends and get ahead in the world. But speaking plainly and saying what you mean is not always as simple or as desirable as one might expect.

In the field of pragmatics, the study of speech acts--minimal units of discourse that have a particular function--has shown that people are often ambiguous and indirect when making their point. They hint when making a request, or they complain to open a conversation. Because individuals often adjust their utterances in order to be polite, they frequently make statements that are anything but plain. Instead, they rely on the audience to infer the real meaning of their words from the social situation in which the statement is made.

Study of Speech Acts

Linguists who study speech acts try to decipher these seemingly confusing uses of language as one of several areas of research. Other goals of the speech act researcher are to identify when, where, why, and how speech acts are realized. For instance, researchers often examine the settings where communication occurs to identify the kinds of speech acts people use within the setting. Or given the realization of a particular speech act, they may identify and categorize the utterances and grammatical patterns that are common to that speech act. This kind of research can be useful to individuals who work in fields related to communication and education. It is particularly useful for teachers and students of foreign languages, as research in cross-cultural pragmatics based on speech act theory has shown that there are differences in the ways that individuals from different cultures attempting to achieve similar goals use language. By studying the speech acts that are common to a culture, a second language learner can improve his or her ability to communicate in that culture.

The Speech Act Theory

The formation of speech act theory is generally accredited to Austin (1962), who introduced, and Searle (1969, 1976), who further developed, a philosophy of language that classifies the communicative functions of an utterance. In the first set of classifications, Austin (1962) identified the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts of language. The locutionary act generally refers to the literal meaning of an utterance; the illocutionary act refers to the intention of the speaker in performing the act such as requesting, warning, etc. Finally, the perlocutionary act refers to the consequence for the hearer that is brought about by the performance of an act such as convincing, surprising, or deterring.

Searle (1976) further classified the illocutionary act into five categories of communicative functions. These provide the framework for the study of speech acts today. These are:

* Representatives: The speaker commits him or herself to the belief that the propositional content of the utterance is true.

* Directives: The speaker tries to get the hearer to commit to do something in the future (e.g., requests, warnings).

* Commissives: The speaker commits him or herself to do something in the future (e.g., promises, offers).

* Expressives: The speaker expresses his or her state of mind about something that happened in the past (e.g., thanking, complaining).

* Declarations: The speaker, who has institutional recognition (e.g., judge or priest), declares something to be true and in making the declaration makes it true (e.g., priest christens a baby).

Applications

Frequently studied speech acts include: requests, apologies, compliments, complaints, refusals, and expressions of gratitude. Information that is gained that is pertinent to teachers of second languages includes the nature of the speech act, the ways the speech act can be realized, and the effect of culture on its realization.

Although an extensive inventory of speech acts and their realizations would be too much for this paper, included here is an illustration of the kinds of information known about speech acts using the often-studied speech act of requesting. Requests are defined as utterances in which the speaker tries to get the hearer to perform an action that is in the speaker's benefit (Trosberg, 1995). In making a request, a speaker has a choice to use a direct or indirect utterance. Trosberg describes eight major levels of directness (See Table 1). The most direct requests are formed using an imperative verb as in "Give me your pen." At the opposite end of the spectrum are indirect requests that merely hint that the hearer should do something for the speaker. For example, a speaker who says, "It's cold in here" could imply that the hearer should do something about the cold such as close the door or turn on the heat. Indirect requests are ambiguous because the utterance itself does not have to be a request. A speaker stating that "It's cold in here" could merely be describing the physical conditions of a room without expecting a hearer to take action.

Table 1: Request Strategies (Presented at Levels of Increasing Directness) Situation: Speaker Requests to Borrow Hearer's Car

Category 1 Indirect request I have to be at the airport in half an hour. Str. 1 Hints (mild) My car has broken down. (strong) Will you be using your car tonight? Category 2 Conventionally indirect (hearer-oriented conditions) Str. 2 Ability Could you lend me your car? Willingness Would you lend me your car? Permission May I borrow your car? Str. 3 Suggestory formulae How about lending me your car? Category 3 Conventionally indirect (Speaker-based conditions) Str. 4 Wishes I would like to borrow your car. Str. 5 Desires/needs I want/need to borrow your car. Category 4 Direct requests Str. 6 Obligation You must/have to lend me your car. Str. 7 Performatives (hedged) I would like to ask you to lend me your car. (unhedged) I ask/require you to lend me your car. Str. 8 Imperatives Lend me your car. Elliptical phrases Your car (please) (Trosberg, 1995, p. 205)

What perhaps seem like obvious questions to arise from this discussion and that are major questions for pragmatic researchers are the following: If hints are ambiguous, why would a speaker use one instead of making a direct request? And How does a hearer know that a request has been made via a hint?"

The answer to the first question is often given with reference to Brown and Levinson's (1987) theory of politeness. In their widely-influential work, Brown and Levinson posit that individuals make decisions about what to say based on their need to protect face, or to maintain a positive image in front of others. There are two types of face that they deem important: negative face and positive face. Negative face is defined as an individual's desire to be unimpeded in his or her actions. Positive face is an individual's wish to have his or her wants to be desirable to others. When engaging in a speech act such as a request, speakers estimate the amount of risk to face the act will pose. Some speech acts are more face-threatening than others. When an act is face-threatening, a speaker may choose strategies to mitigate the threat. For instance, in the case of a request, a speaker making a request threatens the negative face of the hearer because the request imposes on the hearer's want to be unimpeded in his or her actions. In order to minimize this threat, the speaker may choose to speak indirectly--to hint. The indirectness allows the hearer more freedom to reject a request or to choose to comply without losing face. Thus is given one possible answer as to why speakers make requests indirectly.

The second question posed above was how hearers can infer that a request has been made from a hint. The simplest answer is that the hearer, like the speaker, is aware of the context of the situation. He or she may know the speaker well, and may have intimate knowledge of how the speaker usually communicates. Another answer is that hints are derived from a predictable set of utterances related to reasonableness, availability, and obviousness. Reasonableness refers to a hint that is a statement of a reason why someone might make a request. A direct request to close the door for instance, could be made as follows: Close the door please. It's cold in here. The hint It's cold in here drops the direct statement and allows the hearer to infer the request. Hints related to availability are made when the speaker questions a condition that could pose an obstacle to the hearer's ability to reply to a request. A question often asked on the phone such as Is Joe home? is usually assumed to be a request to speak to Joe. If Joe is not home and is therefore unavailable, the request cannot be fulfilled. Finally, hints related to the obviousness of conditions are made when speakers question whether something has or has not been done. Have the dishes already been done? allows the speaker to find out if the request has already been fulfilled and if it has, allows the speaker to avoid having to conduct an act that carries a greater risk of threat to face. The hearer's familiarity with the set of predictable situations when direct requests might be made allows the hearer to infer the meaning of the hint (Trosberg, 1995).

The fact that many speech acts are predictable or formulaic is one of the reasons that their study is important in the field of second language learning. Speech acts that are characterized by routine expressions and syntactical formulas can easily be taught to second language learners. One case in point is the speech act of compliment. Wolfson and Manes (1981) collected 686 American English compliments and found that 85% of those compliments fell into three syntactic patterns:

1. NP (noun phrase) is/looks (optional intensifier) adjective: Your dress is nice.
2. I (really) like/love NP: I love your dress!
3. Pronoun is (really) (a) adj. NP: That is a pretty dress.

Furthermore, Americans tended to most frequently compliment personal appearance and ability. Thus, an English as a second language (ESL) teacher, in teaching students about compliments, would most likely begin by teaching the three most common patterns, thereby allowing students to quickly become competent in this speech act.

Another reason the study of speech acts is important to second language learning is that it helps teachers and students mitigate the sometimes negative effects that cultural differences can have on communication. While research indicates that speech acts are universal, their use is context-sensitive. That is, perceptions of context influence the choice of strategies speakers use to make their point. Since individuals from different cultures may perceive the context in which a speech act occurs differently, speakers familiar with the sociolinguistic rules of a given culture may be better able to choose appropriate utterances for a situation.

For instance, Cohen (1996) points out that in the speech act of apology, speakers can choose to use one of five semantic formulas alone or to produce a combination of these formulas. The formulas include:

* Expressing apology (I'm sorry);

* Acknowledging responsibility (It was my fault);

* Offering repair (I'll make it up to you);

* Giving an explanation or excuse (I was so busy I forgot); and

* Promising nonrecurrence (It won't happen again).

In order to choose a correct formula or combination of formulas, speakers may need to consider the culture involved as well as the speaker and hearer's age and gender, social class/occupation, and individual role and status in the interaction. Cohen illustrates this point with an example of an employee who must apologize to a boss for missing a meeting when the employee did so through his or her own fault. In some cultures, it would be appropriate to express an apology, acknowledge responsibility, and offer a repair such as suggesting a time when the meeting could be rescheduled. In other cultures, offering a repair could be considered inappropriate or rude because the boss would expect to be in the position to schedule the next meeting. Through the study of speech acts, teachers and students of second languages learn more about these cultural differences and can thereby improve communicative competence.

Some of the most fruitful, and perhaps most interesting, speech act research considers how specific speech acts are used within a larger discourse and what happens when speakers make the wrong choices in semantic formulas or use the wrong speech act in the wrong situation. Boxer (1996) conducted an extensive ethnographic study in which she examined the use of and response to 533 "troubles-telling" exchanges, also known as indirect complaints. In this type of complaint, the speaker does not blame the addressee for an offense (e.g., Bad weather today, huh?). She discovered that one of the major goals people give for using this speech act is to build solidarity with an addressee. That is, when a speaker and hearer find agreement through the complaint, they create a positive bond with one another. A second goal is to open a conversation. To understand how the indirect complaint serves as a conversation opener, Boxer examined the typical responses to a complaint and identified six common response types. These are response/topic switch, questions, contradiction, joke/teasing, advice/lecture, and agreement/commiseration. These findings shed light on an earlier study in which Boxer (1993) compared conversations between Japanese ESL students and native English speaking (NS) students in which the NS speakers made indirect complaints. When the Japanese speakers gave nonsubstantive utterances such as Uh huh, the conversation often came to a quick close, perhaps because the second language learners chose an uncommon or inappropriate response for the speech act.

Another example of how using the wrong speech act in a given situation can have negative consequences is discussed by Murphy and Neu (1996), who compared Korean ESL speakers to American native English speakers in an academic setting. In their study, each group of speakers was faced with having to confront a professor about a grade they felt was unfair. While the Americans typically produced a complaint in this situation such as "I think, uh, it's my opinion maybe the grade was a little low" (p. 200), the Koreans typically produced a criticism. "But you just only look at your point of view and uh you just didn't recognize my point" (p. 200). When judged by native speakers the Korean responses were perceived to be more aggressive, less respectful, less credible, and less appropriate than the American responses. This led the researchers to posit that in this situation, the inappropriate choice of speech act would lead the Korean students to be less successful in achieving their goals.

Viewpoints

One criticism of speech act theory research is that it has often had an ethnocentric bias toward Western cultures and language. This point has been made particularly with studies related to politeness, in which Western preferences for indirectness have been associated with politeness and then comparisons with other cultures have been made on the assumption that a correlation between indirectness and politeness should occur in all cultures (Trosberg, 1995). In response to such criticism, new studies in cross-cultural pragmatics have given more importance to identifying the cultural norms and cultural assumptions of the languages being studied. For instance, Wierzbicka (as cited in Trosberg, 1995) studied how cultural values affected expressions and behaviors of Polish speakers and English speakers. Language that reflected important values of Polish culture could have appeared to be inconsiderate or bossy from an English-speaking perspective. On the other hand, English ways of speaking could have been considered cold and insincere from a Polish-speaker's perspective.

A second criticism of the research is of the inconsistency in the language used to describe aspects of speech act communication. Wierzbicka (as cited in Trosberg, 1995) points out that terms like "direct," "indirect," and "intimacy" are used to describe different behaviors in different studies. For example, in comparative studies of Japanese culture and English culture, the Japanese way of speaking is frequently said to be "indirect" in contrast to "direct" English. But in studies comparing African American English and "mainstream" English, the mainstream English is said to be "indirect" and the African American English "direct." The problems in description make it difficult to identify which aspects of pragmatic communication are universal and which aspects vary by culture.

Terms & Concepts

Communicative Competence: Communicative competence refers to an individual's ability to communicate within a given social, cultural, or language context.

Illocutionary Act: Illocutionary act refers to a speaker's intentions in producing an utterance. The concept of the illocutionary act provides the basis for speech act theory.

Locutionary Act: Locutionary act refers to the literal meaning of an utterance.

Negative Face: Negative face is a concept used within theories of politeness to describe an individual's desire to be unimpeded in his or her actions.

Perlocutionary Act: The perlocutionary act refers to the consequences for the hearer of having heard a speaker's utterance. For instance, a hearer may be surprised or convinced by a speaker's words.

Positive Face: Positive face is a concept used within theories of politeness to describe an individual's wish to have his or her wants to be desirable to others.

Pragmatics: Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics that studies how language is used within context.

Speech Act: A speech act is defined as a minimal unit of discourse. Common speech acts include thanking, requesting, complimenting, complaining, etc.

Speech Act Theory: Speech act theory is a theory of communicative functions that divides illocutionary acts into five major categories.

Bibliography

Austin, J. (1962). How to do things with words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Boxer, D. (1993). Complaints as positive strategies: What the learner needs to know. TESOL Quarterly, 27 , 277-299.

Boxer, D. (1996). Ethnographic interviewing as a research tool in speech act analysis: The case of complaints. In Susan M. Gass & Joyce Neu (Eds.), Speech acts across cultures: Challenges to communication in a second language (pp. 217-239). New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cohen, A. (1996). Developing the ability to perform speech acts. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 253-267.

Deguchi, M. (2012). Marking of speech act distinctions in Japanese and English. Journal of Language Teaching & Research, 3 , 593-598. Retrieved December 9, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/ login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=90356124&site=ehost-live

Langer, B. D. (2013). Teaching requests to L2 learners of Spanish. Journal of Language Teaching & Research, 4 , 1147-1159. Retrieved December 9, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http:// search.ebscohost.com/ login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=91888408&site=ehost-live

Murphy, B., & Neu, J. (1996). My grades too low: The speech act of complaining. In Susan M. Gass & Joyce Neu (Eds.), Speech acts across cultures: Challenges to communication in a second language (pp. 191-216). New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Searle, J. (1969). Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Searle, J. (1975). The classification of illocutionary acts. Language in Society, 5, 1-24.

Shams, R., & Afghari, A. (2011). Effects of culture and gender in comprehension of speech acts of indirect request. English Language Teaching, 4 , 279-287. Retrieved December 9, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/ login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=69686411&site=ehost-live

Trosberg, A. (1995). Interlanguage pragmatics: Requests, complaints and apologies. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Wolfson, N., & Manes, J. (1981). The compliment formula. In Florian Coulmas (Ed.), Conversational routine: Explorations in standardized communication situations and prepatterned speech. (pp. 115-132). New York: Mouton Publishers.

Suggested Reading

Eisenstein, M., & Bodman, J. (1993). Expressing gratitude in American English. In G. Kasper & S. Blum-Kulka (Eds.), Interlanguage pragmatics (pp. 64-81). New York: Oxford University Press.

Grewendorf, G., & Meggle, G. (2002). (Eds.), Speech acts, mind, and social reality: Discussions with John R. Searle. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Kumar Singh, A., & Mishra, N. (2012). Sense & meaning: A second order analysis of language. English Language Teaching, 5 , 14-22. Retrieved December 9, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/ login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=84380260&site=ehost-live

Liao, B. (2013). On appropriacy of thanking: Dynamic compensation and adaptation. English Language Teaching, 6 , 71-80. Retrieved December 9, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http:// search.ebscohost.com/ login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=87664239&site=ehost-live

University of Minnesota. (2007) Speech act bibliography. Retrieved May 18, 2007, from Center for Advanced Research on Second Language Acquisition http:// www.carla.umn.edu