THE ASSIGMENT OF PRAGMATIC SPEECH ACT

THE ASSIGMENT OF PRAGMATIC

By :

Hikmah Oky Pravitasari

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

LANGUAGES AND ARTS FACULTY

STATE UNIVERSITY OF SURABAYA

2008

Sharing tugas sewaktu kuliah dulu, semoga bermanfaat sebagai referensi... ^^) hiory

SPEECH ACTS

            This paper talks about speech acts, types of speech acts, IFID, felicity conditions, performative hypothesis, classification of speech act, direct and indirect speech act, and speech events.

1.   Speech act

When someone is uttering a sentence, he is not only saying words but also means something with those words. For example, a person could say, "Do you want some coffee?", or" Coffee or tea?" to offer a drink. Those words are not just a simple question that needs a specific answer; nevertheless, it is an action of offering. Another example is such a sentence like “Who hasn't got any dinner yet” could be interpreted as an action of offering the speaker's dinner, not only expecting an answer of the sentence uttered.

Actions performed via utterances are generally called speech acts and are commonly given more specific labels, such as apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise or request (Yule, 1996:47). Speech acts has more interpretation than those that are found in the utterance alone because there possibly will be different interpretation to one identical utterance. This condition can be explained with speech event, which is the circumstance surrounding the utterance that helps speaker and hearer in making the communication. F or instance, the sentence Your hair is long could be interpreted as a praise when it is spoken by a boyfriend toward his girlfriend, but this turns to complaint when the circumstance is altered to a teacher who tells the student to obey the school regulation, that is students' hair must be short. Furthermore, Yule (1996:57) said that a speech event is an activity in which participants interact via language in some conventional way to arrive at some outcome.

In the course of performing speech acts we ordinarily communicate with each other. The content of communication may be identical, or almost identical, with the content intended to be communicated, as when a speaker asks a family member to wash the dishes by asking, "Could you please do the dishes?." However, the meaning of the linguistic means used may also be different from the content intended to be communicated. I may, in appropriate circumstances, request Peter to do the dishes by just saying, "Peter ...!", or I can promise to do the dishes by saying, "Me!" One common way of performing speech acts is to use an expression which indicates one speech act, and indeed to perform this act, but additionally to perform a further speech act, which is not indicated by the expression uttered.

The theory of speech acts aims to do justice to the fact that even though words (phrases, sentences) encode information, people do more things with words than convey information and that when people do convey information, they often convey more than their words encode. Although the focus of speech act theory has been on utterances, especially those made in conversational and other face-to-face situations, the phrase 'speech act' should be taken as a generic term for any sort of language use, oral or otherwise. Speech acts, whatever the medium of their performance, fall under the broad category of intentional action, with which they share certain general features. An especially pertinent feature is that when one acts intentionally, generally one has a set of nested intentions. For instance, having arrived home without one's keys, one might push a button with the intention not just of pushing the button but of ringing a bell, arousing one's spouse and, ultimately, getting into one's house. The single bodily movement involved in pushing the button comprises a multiplicity of actions, each corresponding to a different one of the nested intentions. Similarly, speech acts are not just acts of producing certain sounds.

In general, speech acts are acts of communication. To communicate is to express a certain attitude, and the type of speech act being performed corresponds to the type of attitude being expressed. For example, a statement expresses a belief, a request expresses a desire, and an apology expresses regret. As an act of communication, a speech act succeeds if the audience identifies, in accordance with the speaker's intention, the attitude being expressed.

Some speech acts, however, are not primarily acts of communication and have the function not of communicating but of affecting institutional states of affairs. They can do so in either of two ways. Some officially judge something to be the case, and others actually make something the case. Those of the first kind include judges' rulings, referees' calls and assessors' appraisals, and the latter include sentencing, bequeathing and appointing. Acts of both kinds can be performed only in certain ways under certain circumstances by those in certain institutional or social positions.

2. Types of speech acts

Pre-theoretically, we think of an act of communication, linguistic or otherwise, as an act of expressing oneself. This rather vague idea can be made more precise if we get more specific about what is being expressed. Take the case of an apology. If you utter, '[I’m] sorry I didn't call back' and intend this as an apology, you are expressing regret for something, in this case for not returning a phone call. An apology just is the act of (verbally) expressing regret for, and thereby acknowledging, something one did that might have harmed or at least bothered the hearer. An apology is communicative because it is intended to be taken as expressing a certain attitude, in this case regret. It succeeds as such if it is so taken. In general, an act of communication succeeds if it is taken as intended. That is, it must be understood or, in Austin’s words, 'produce uptake'. With an apology, this is a matter of the addressee recognizing the speaker's intention to be expressing regret for some deed or omission. Using a special device such as the performative 'I apologize' may of course facilitate understanding (understanding is correlative with communicating), but in general this is unnecessary. Communicative success is achieved if the speaker chooses his words in such a way that the hearer will, under the circumstances of utterance, recognize his communicative intention. So, for example, if you spill some beer on someone and say 'oops' in the right way, your utterance will be taken as an apology for what you did.

In saying something one generally intends more than just to communicate--getting oneself understood is intended to produce some effect on the listener. However, our speech act vocabulary can obscure this fact. When one apologizes, for example, one may intend not merely to express regret but also to seek forgiveness. Seeking forgiveness is, strictly speaking, distinct from apologizing, even though one utterance is the performance of an act of both types. As an apology, the utterance succeeds if it is taken as expressing regret for the deed in question; as an act of seeking forgiveness, it succeeds if forgiveness is thereby obtained.

In this case, speech acts are divided into three types namely locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act.

a. Locutionary act

  Yule (1996:48) said that locutionary act is the basic act of utterance. It is the act of saying something. This locutionary act is free from any purpose that exists on common utterance, it is merely a meaningful linguistic expressions. An utterance as Wow, that car is luxurious! Produced by a speaker to himself when he is passing a car showroom has no intention at all. It is only a meaningful expression of experience. Therefore, this locutionary act does not concern any purpose and function of an utterance that is produced by a speaker. Austin (in Levinson, 1983:236) said that locutionary act is the utterance of a sentence with determinate sense and reference.

b. lllocutionary act

Edmorison (1981:30) defines illocutionary act as viewed utterances by means of which a speaker communicates his feelings, attitudes, belief, or intention with respect to some events or state of affairs. Illocutionary act is an utterance which is produced by the speaker to make the hearer do something as what the speaker expects, that have some effect to the hearer. Yule (1996:48) said that illocutionary act is performed via the communicative force of an utterance.  It is the act of doing something because it has force and function to make the hearer do what the speaker means in his utterance. Austin (in Levinson, 1983:236) also said that illocutionary act is the making of a statement, offer, promise, etc. in uttering a sentence, by virtue of the conventional force associated with it.

Types of Illocutionary Acts

Austin (in Leech 1983:281) classified illocutionary acts into five types according to their illocutionary force. They are verdictives., exercitives, commissives, behatitives, and expositives.

Searle classified illocutionary acts based on varied functions, they are assertives (or Representatives by Yule, 19.96:53), directives, commissives, expressives, declarations.

1. Assertives commit the speaker to the truth of expressed proposition: e.g. Stating, suggesting, boasting, complaining, claiming, reporting, describing, telling, insisting, hypothesizing, telling, asserting, and swearing. They are performed by the speaker to convey that his belief of the proposition is true.
2. Directives are intended to produce some effort through action by the hearer: e.g. ordering, commanding, requesting, advising, recommending, daring, defying, and challenging. This kind of illocutionary acts makes the hearer do as what the speaker uttered. In other word, the speaker uses directives as lie attempts to get the hearer to do something he wants.
3. Commissives commit the speaker (to a greater or lesser degree) to some future action, e.g. promising, threatening, intending, and vowing. When directives arc used, the speaker is committing himself to some future action. This type of illocutionary acts expresses what the speaker intends.
4. Expressives have the function of expressing or making known the speaker's psychological attitude toward a state of affairs that the illocution presupposes: e.g. congratulating, thanking., deploring, condoling, welcoming, apologizing., praising, pardoning, blaming, and accusing. They deal with what the speaker feels and are about the speaker's experience.
5. Declarations are illocutions whose "successful performance", which bring about the correspondence between the prepositional content and reality: e.g. blessing, firing, resigning, baptizing, christening, naming, excommunicating, appointing, and sentencing.

          Leech stated different classification about illocutionary acts. He classified illocutionary acts into types according to how they relate to the social goals of establishing and maintaining politeness. They are competitive, convivial, collaborative, and conflictive.

1.    Competitive

            The illocutionary goal competes with the social goal; e.g. ordering, asking, demanding, and begging.

2.    Convivial

The illocutionary goal coincides the social goal;-e.g.. offering, inviting, greeting, thanking, congratulating.

3.    Collaborative

The illocutionary goal is indifferent to the social goal; e.g. asserting, reporting, announcing, and instructing.

4.    Conflictive

The illocutionary goal conflicts with the social goal; e.g. threatening, accusing, cursing, and reprimanding.

c. Perlocutionary act

Perlocutionary act is the act of affecting someone. It is the effect of the utterance that said to the hearer. Perlocutionary act is the bringing about of effects on the audience by means of uttering the sentence, such effects being special to the circumstances of utterance (Austin in Levinson, 1983:236). For example: to account for a great smell, or to get the hearer to eat noodle.

One same utterance can have different illocutionary forces (for example, promise versus warning). In this case, the speaker’s intend illocutionary force could be recognized by the hearer by considering Illocutionary Force Indicating Device (IFID) and felicity conditions (Yule, 1996:49).

3. Illocutionary Force Indicating Device (IFID)

Illocutionary Force Indicating Device (IFID) is an expression of the type where there is slot for a verb that explicitly names the illocutionary act being performed. A verb can be called a performative verb (Vp). For example:

      I promise to give you money.

    (Vp)

      I warn you not to smoke in this room.

   (Vp)

‘Promise’ and ‘warn’ would be very clear IFID. It means that the speaker does not always perform his speech acts so explicitly, but he/she sometimes describes the speech act being performed. Another example: imagine the telephone conversation between a man who is trying to contact his friend (Agus) and a woman.

Man                        : Can I talk to Agus?

Woman       : No, he’s not here.

Man                        : I’m asking you—can I talk to him?

Woman       : And I’m telling you—HE IS NOT HERE!

The illocutionary force is ‘ask’ and ‘tell’ of their utterances. However, other IFID which can be identified are word order, stress, and intonation. It is shown in the different versions of the same basic elements [Y—F] ‘You’ and ‘Fired’.

      You’re fired!               [ I tell you Y—F]                   

      You’re happy.             [I request confirmation about Y—F]

      Are you fired?             [I ask you if Y—F]

4. Felicity Conditions

Felicity conditions are conditions necessary to the success of a speech act. They take their name from a Latin root - “felix” or “happy”. They are conditions needed for success or achievement of a performative.  Only certain people are qualified to declare war, baptize others or sentence convicted felons. In some cases, the speaker must be sincere (as in apologizing or vowing). And external circumstances must be suitable: “Will you shut the door?” requires that the door be open, that the speaker has a reason for the request, and that the hearer is able to comply with it. It may be that the utterance is meant as a joke or sarcasm, in which case a different interpretation is in order.

In order the speech acts to be appropriately and successfully performed, certain felicity conditions have to be met. Austin stated that felicity conditions are the context and roles of participants must be recognized by all parties; that action must be carried out completely, and the persons must have right intentions.

There are five kinds of felicity conditions on speech acts:

1.      General Conditions

General conditions must apply to all types of illocutions. The addresser must not be acting nonsensically or pretending to be someone else and the addressee must be capable of understanding the locution. In the example at hand, both the addresser and addressee are normal people. They are able to understand each other.

2.      Content Conditions

Content conditions: prepositional content conditions have to do with a proposed future act performed by the addressee. In the example at hand, the prepositional content is clearly “you should not smoke.” in the case of warning.

3.      Preparatory Conditions

The preparatory conditions for a promise are significantly different from those for warning. As example in sentence, "When I promise to do something", there are two preparatory conditions: first, the event will not happen by itself, and second, the event will have beneficial effect when I utter a warning, there are the following preparatory conditions: it is not clear that the hearer knows the event will occur, the speaker does think the event will occur; and the event will not have a beneficial effect. Related to those conditions are the sincerity conditions that, for a promise, the speaker intends to carry out future action, and for warning the speaker believes that the future event will not have a beneficial effect.

4.      Sincerity Conditions

At a simple level these show that the speaker must really intend what he or she says. In the case of apologizing or promising, it may be impossible for others to know how sincere the speaker is. Moreover sincerity, as a genuine intention (now) is no assurance that the apologetic attitude will last, or that the promise will be kept. There are some speech acts - such as plighting one's troth or taking an oath - where this sincerity is determined by the presence of witnesses. The one making the promise will not be able later to argue that he or she didn't really mean it.

A more complex example comes in the classroom where the teacher asks a question, but the pupil supposes that the teacher knows the answer and is, therefore, not sincere in asking it. In this case “Can you, please, tell me X?” may be more acceptable to the child than “What is X?”

We can also use our understanding of sincerity conditions humorously, where we ask others, or promise ourselves, to do things which we think the others know to be impossible: “Please can you make it sunny tomorrow?”

5.      Essential Conditions

Essential conditions cover the fact that by act of uttering a promise, it creates an obligation to carry out the action as promised. Similarly, with a warning, under the essential condition, the utterance changes its state from non-informing of bad future event to informing.

5.                The Performative Hypothesis

Performative hypothesis is a proposal that, underlying every utterance, there is a clause with a verb that identifies the speech act. One way to think about the speech acts being performed via utter­ances is to assume that underlying every utterance (U) there is a clause, containing a performative verb (Vp) which makes the illocutionary force explicit. This is known as the performative hypothesis

• I (hereby) Vp you (that) U

In this clause, the subject must be first person singular (I), followed by the adverb 'hereby', indicating that the utterance 'counts as' an action by being uttered. There is also a perform­ative verb (Vp) in the present tense and an indirect object in sec­ond person singular ('you'). For examples:

• Open the window!              In utterances, this is implicit.

§                                          I hereby order you that you open the window.          This underlying clause will always make explicit.

§                                The book is written by Arthur.     This is used by speaker as implicit performative.

§                                         I hereby tell that the book is written by Arthur.          This is used by speaker as explicit or primary performative.

The advantage of this type of analysis is that it makes clear just what elements are involved in the production and interpretation of utterances. Another advantage is to show that some adverbs such as 'honestly', or adverbial clauses such as 'because I may be late', for example:

• “Honestly, he's a clever student”.

It means that it is being done honestly.

• “What time is it, because I may be late?”

It means that is being justified by the ‘because I may be late?’ clause.

Naturally attach to the explicit performative clause rather than the implicit version.

There are some technical disadvantages to the performative hypothesis. For example, uttering the explicit performative ver­sion of a command, ’I hereby order you that you open the window’, has a much more serious impact than uttering the implicit version as an example, “Open the window!” The two versions are con­sequently not equivalent. It is also difficult to know exactly what the performative verb (or verbs) might be for some utterances. Although the speaker and hearer might recognize the utterance in “you’re clever than me” as an insult, it would be very strange to have “I hereby insult you that you’re clever than me” as an explicit version.

The really practical problem with any analysis based on identifying explicit performatives is that, in principle, we simply do not know how many performative verbs there are in any language instead of trying to list all the possible explicit performatives, and then distinguish among all of them, some more genera classifications of types of speech acts are usually used.

6.      Speech Act Classification

There are five classification of general function performed by speech act: declarations, representations, expressives, directives, and commissives.

1.      Declarations are those kinds of speech acts that change the world via their utterance. For example, in the wedding ceremony. The act of marriage is performing when the phrase “I now pronounce you husband and wife” is uttered.

In using declarative the speaker changes the world via words.

2.      Representatives are those kinds of speech that state what the speaker believes to be the case or not. Statement of act, assertion, conclusion, claim, report, and assertion.

 For example: the utterance:

·         The earth is flat, the earth is round                (The act of description),

·         It was a warm sunny day                                (act of description).

·         It is a Japan car                                               (act of claiming)

·         That is my book                                              (act of claiming)

In using a representative, the speaker makes world fit the world (of belief).

3.      Expressives are those kinds of speech act that state what the speaker feels. They express psychological states and can be statements of pleasure, pain, likes, dislikes, joy, thank or sorrow. These are about the speaker experiences.

For example:

·         I’m really sorry                                                            (dislike)          

·         Mmmhh the meal was delicious                                  (likes)

·         Congratulation                                                                        (thank)

·         I like this city very much                                            (likes)

·         Wow!! It’s great                                                         (joy)

·         Oh, yes, great, mmhh, etc.                                         

In using an expressive, the speaker makes words fit the world (of feeling).

4.      Directives are those kinds of speech acts that speaker use to get someone else to do something. They express what the speaker wants. They are commands, orders, requests, and suggestions. They can be positive and negative.

 For example:

·         Gimme a cup of coffee! Make it black          

·         Could you lend me some money, please?                  

·         Don’t touch that.

·         I beg your pardon

·         Slow down

·         Don’t Cheat

In using directives, the speaker attempts to make the world fit the words (via the hearer).

5.      Commisives are those kinds of speech act that speaker use to commit themselves to some future action. They express what the speaker intends. They are promises, threats, refusals, pledges. They can be performed by the speaker alone, or by the speaker as a member of a group.

For example:

·         I’ll be back

·         I’ll take my book tomorrow

·         I’ll pay you next week

·         I’ll give you some money

In using a commisive, the speaker undertakes to make the world fit the words (via the speaker)

The five general function of speech acts with the key features in this table        Yule, 1996: 55):

Speech Act Type	Direction of Fit	S= Speaker X= Situation
Declaration Representations Expressives Directives Commissives	Words change the world Make words fit the world Make words fit the world Make the world fit words Make the world fit words	S causes X S believes X S feels X S wants X S intends X

7.      Direct and Indirect Speech Acts

A different approach to distinguish types of speech act can be made on the basis of structure. There are simple distinction between three general types of speech act is provided. In English, there are three basic sentences types. There is a relationship between the three structural forms (declarative, interrogative, and imperative) and the three general communicative functions (statement, question, command/request).

a)      You sew my cloth.                              (declarative)

b)      Do you sew my cloth?                                    (interrogative)

c)      Sew my cloth!                                     (imperative)

By seeing a structure and communicative function, we have a direct speech act. A declarative used to make a statement is a direct speech act, but a declarative used to make a request is an indirect speech act.

For example:

1)      It’s a cold outside.                                                      (direct speech act)

2)      I hereby tell you about the weather.                           (direct speech act)

3)      I hereby request of you that you close the door.        (indirect speech act)

Different structure can be used to accomplish the same basic function.

For example:

1)      Move out of the way!                                                 (direct speech act)

2)      Do you have to stand in front of the TV?                  (indirect speech act)

3)      You’re standing in front of the TV.                           (indirect speech act)

4)      You’d make a better door than a window.                 (indirect speech act)

All the utterances above are command/request, but only the imperative structure in the first utterance in (1) represents a direct speech act.

Indirect speech act are generally associated with greater politeness in English than direct speech act. In order to understand why, we have to look at a bigger picture than just a single utterance performing a single speech act.

8.      Speech Events

Speech event is an activity in which participants interact via language in some conventional way to arrive at some outcome. It may include an obvious central speech act, such as “I don’t really like this”. It is a speech event of ‘complaining’. It will also include other utterances leading up and subsequently reacting to that central action. In some cases, a request is not made by means of a single speech act suddenly uttered. Requesting is typically a speech event, for example:

Mary      : Oh, Jane, I’m glad you’re here.

Jane        : What’s up?

Mary      : I can’t get my computer to work.

Jane        : Is it broken?

Mary      : I don’t think so.

Jane        : What’s it doing?

Mary      : I don’t know. I’m useless with computers.

Jane        : What kind is it?

Mary      : It is Mac. Do you use them?

Jane        : Yeah.

Mary      : Do you have a minute?

Jane        : Sure.

Mary      : Oh, Great.

This extended interaction may be called a ‘requesting’ speech event without a central speech act of request. There is no request from Mary to Jane to do anything. The question “Do you have a minute?” as a pre-request. The response “sure” is taken to be an acknowledgement not only of having time available, but a willingness to perform the unstated action. The analysis of them is clearly another way of studying how more gets communicated than is said. However looking at more extended interaction to understand how those actions are carried out and interpreted within speech events.

CONCLUSION

Speech acts has more interpretation that are found in the utterance alone because there will possibly be different interpretation to one identical utterance. This condition can be explained with speech event, which is the circumstance surrounding the utterance that helps speaker and hearer in making the communication. The utterances have to be produced under certain conventional conditions to count as having intended illocutionary force. Furthermore, there are certain expected or appropriate circumstances, technically known as felicity condition. The felicity conditions are conditions necessary to the success of a speech act. They are conditions needed for success or achievement of a performative.  There are five kinds of felicity conditions: general conditions, contents conditions, preparatory conditions, sincerity conditions, and essential conditions.

We simply do not know how many performative verbs there are in any language instead of trying to list all the possible explicit performatives, and then distinguish among all of them, some more genera classifications of types of speech acts are usually used. There are five general classifications of speech acts: declaration, representation, expressive, directives and commissives.

REFERENCES

Leech, Geoffrey. (1993). The Principle of Pragmatic. Jakarta: Indonesia University.

Levinson, Stephen C . (1983). Pragmatics. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Retrieved November thursday, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_act.

Yule, George. (1996). Pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press.