Speech act is a tool in engaging to a conversation. speech act is an utterance that a speaker makes to achieve an intended effect.
It is how you express yourself to communicate your wants and needs, to achieve a desired goal. We are attuned in everyday conversation not primarily to the sentences we utter to one another, but to the speech acts that those utterances are used to perform such function.
speech acts are giving opinion, offering an apology, greeting, request, complaint, invitation, compliment, or refusal.
Engaging in a conversation is not just a simple process of talking and listening. Cohen (1990) states that it is bound by implicit rules that requires strategies to be able to start and maintain conversation.
Nomination is usually employed at the beginning of interaction to set the purpose of conversation.
avoid questions that are too personal : asking about how much money the person or his parents are earning, politics and religion should also be avoided