1. Speech Acts
Psycholinguistics
Submitted to: Mr. Raza e Mustafa
Submitted by: Zainab Amjad
Roll no: 11011502-027
Hafiz Hayat Campus, University of Gujrat, Gujrat.

2. Speech Act
The term speech act was coined by the philosopher John L.Austin (1911 – 1960 Great Britain).
Later it was developed by another philosopher John L. Searle (born 1932USA).
Definition:
• Speech act is an act that a speaker performs when making an utterance.
• Speech act is a meaningful utterance given in accordance with speech principles and
rules.
• Speech acts are rudimentary element of everyday communicative life.
In simple words, speech act is performed by a speaker. It is what people do through their
language. It is basically a process of utterance, the utterance of words, pharases or sentences etc.
we all perform speech act because it is the rudimentary element of everyday communicative life.
We perform speech acts when we offer an apology, greeting, request, complaint, invitation,
compliment or refusal.
A speech act might contain just one word, as in “sorry” to perform an apology or several words
or sentences .e.g., “I am sorry, I forgot your birthday.”These acts include real life actions under
some speaking rules and principles.
There are some examples of speech acts that we use or hear every day.
Greeting: Hi Sana, EID MUBARAK!
Request: Give me a cup of coffee please.
Complaint: I have already been waiting three weeks for the computer and you promised me that
it would be delivered within a weak.
Refusal: Oh, I would love to see that movie with you but on this Friday I have to attend a
marriage ceremony of my friend.

3. Invitation: We are having some people over Saturday evening and wanted to know if you would
like to join us.
SpeechAct components:
According to John L. Austin, there are three components of speech act.
1. Locutionary act.
2. Illocutionary act.
3. Perlocutionary act (effect).
Locutionary act:
John Austin defines it as;
“The act of ‘saying something’ in the full normal sense is called locutionary act”.
It is the basic act of utterance. In other words we can say that it is the literal meaning of what is
said.
For example:
 Good Morning!
 It is rain today.
 My father is a retired principal, etc.

4. Illocutionary act:
“It is a speech act, made in a typical utterance which consists of a particular force. This force is
called the illocutionary force”.
In other words these are the real actions which are performed with full expressions of words.
For example:
SHOOT HER! Here the expressions give some specific meanings, meanings of violence.
Perlocutionaryact(effect):
“Speech acts that have an effect on the feelings, thoughts or actions of the listener”.
Simply, it is the consequence of an illocutionary act or the effect of an utterance on the hearer.
The Perlocutionary act tells about receiver’s perception.
For example:
“Mr. Akram is a dishonest businessman”. It is an illocutionary act.
Now the hearer knows something about Mr. Akram so the hearer will try to avoid from him. It is
Perlocutionary act.
ClassificationofSpeechActs
John R. Searle has classified speech acts in to five categories.
1. Directives
2. Commissives
3. Representatives
4. Declaratives

5. 5. Expressives
Directives:
“Directive is a speech act that is to cause the hearer to take a particular action “.
Directives can be called demanding speech acts which demand an action from the hearer. They
expresse what the speaker wants and are concerned with commands,requests,suggestions ,orders,
etc. All these acts can be positive or negative.
For example:
 I need/ want that car.
 Give me your pen.
 Could you give me your pen, please?
Commissives:
“Commissive is a speech act that a speaker commits to some future action”.
It is about the future promises, refuses and other actions. They also express what we intend to do.
For example:
“I will be back in five minutes”. Here the speaker is making a commitment.
“I swear, to tell the truth”. In this example the speaker is making a commitment to be truthful.
Representatives:
“The speech act which states about something that is true”.
In this type of speech act the speaker is representing something about which he has strong belief
to be true. The speaker usually talks about the certain situations.
For example:
 Noam Chomsky did not write about peanuts.
 It was a warm sunny day.

6.  Yesterday, there was a debate competition in my university.
Declaratives:
“Declarative is a speech act that changes the reality in accord with the proposition of the
declaration”.
In simple words it is about the changing situations and circumstances. The speaker changes the
situation through his words.
For example:
“Class dismissed”! A teacher makes this statement. As the teacher says this, the students
understand what teacher means to say. So they get up and leave the class.
Expressives:
“Expressive is a speech act that expresses on the speaker's attitudes and emotions towards the
proposition.”
This speech act is about the speaker’s feelings and attitude towards a particular phenomenon. It
is mostly about the speaker’s experience. It expresses psychological statements of pleasure, pain,
joy, like or dislike, etc.
For example:
 I am very disappointed.
 What a great day!!!
 Oh my, that’s terrible.
Speechactfunctions
1) Exchange factual information
The plain departs at 7:10.

7. 2) Exchange intellectual information
These arguments are correct.
3) Exchange emotional attitudes
I’m worried about my term papers.
4) Exchange moral attitudes
I appreciate your help.
5) Socializing
Hi, Sana, how are you?

8. References
• Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (1989). Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests
and apologies. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex.
• Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1978). Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena.
In E. N. Goody (Ed.), Questions and politeness: Strategies in social interactions (pp. 56-
289). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• E. Hatch Discourse and language education – Los Angeles, 1992.
• J.R. Searle, F. Kieifer, M.Bierwisch Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics, 1-35, 1980 by
D. Reidel Publishing Company.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_act
• http://www.carla.umn.edu/speechacts/definition.html
• http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/speech-acts/
• Cohen, A. (1996) Speech Acts. In S.L. McKay, & N.H. Hornberger (Eds.),
Sociolinguistics and language teaching (pp. 383 – 420). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
• Grice, H.P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In A. Jaworski, & N. Coupland (Eds.), The
discourse reader (pp. 76-87). New York: Routledge.
• Gumperz, J. (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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