Speech Acts

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitchell Green
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Speech Act Theory ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Indirect Speech ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Indirect Speech Acts ◽  
Grammatical Mood ◽  
Semantic Properties ◽  
Made In

Speech acts are acts that can, but need not, be carried out by saying and meaning that one is doing so. Many view speech acts as the central units of communication, with phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties of an utterance serving as ways of identifying whether the speaker is making a promise, a prediction, a statement, or a threat. Some speech acts are momentous, since an appropriate authority can, for instance, declare war or sentence a defendant to prison, by saying that he or she is doing so. Speech acts are typically analyzed into two distinct components: a content dimension (corresponding to what is being said), and a force dimension (corresponding to how what is being said is being expressed). The grammatical mood of the sentence used in a speech act signals, but does not uniquely determine, the force of the speech act being performed. A special type of speech act is the performative, which makes explicit the force of the utterance. Although it has been famously claimed that performatives such as “I promise to be there on time” are neither true nor false, current scholarly consensus rejects this view. The study of so-called infelicities concerns the ways in which speech acts might either be defective (say by being insincere) or fail completely. Recent theorizing about speech acts tends to fall either into conventionalist or intentionalist traditions: the former sees speech acts as analogous to moves in a game, with such acts being governed by rules of the form “doing A counts as doing B”; the latter eschews game-like rules and instead sees speech acts as governed by communicative intentions only. Debate also arises over the extent to which speakers can perform one speech act indirectly by performing another. Skeptics about the frequency of such events contend that many alleged indirect speech acts should be seen instead as expressions of attitudes. New developments in speech act theory also situate them in larger conversational frameworks, such as inquiries, debates, or deliberations made in the course of planning. In addition, recent scholarship has identified a type of oppression against under-represented groups as occurring through “silencing”: a speaker attempts to use a speech act to protect her autonomy, but the putative act fails due to her unjust milieu.

What is an indirect speech act?

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-84
Author(s):  
Jörg Meibauer
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Speech Act Theory ◽  
Illocutionary Force ◽  
Indirect Speech ◽  
Indirect Speech Acts ◽  
Getting Lost ◽  
Indirect Speech Act

Abstract The notion of an indirect speech act is at the very heart of cognitive pragmatics, yet, after nearly 50 years of orthodox (Searlean) speech act theory, it remains largely unclear how this notion can be explicated in a proper way. In recent years, two debates about indirect speech acts have stood out. First, a debate about the Searlean idea that indirect speech acts constitute a simultaneous realization of a secondary and a primary act. Second, a debate about the reasons for the use of indirect speech acts, in particular about whether this reason is to be seen in strategic advantages and/or observation of politeness demands. In these debates, the original pragmatic conception of sentence types as indicators of illocutionary force seems to have been getting lost. Here, I go back to the seemingly outdated “literal force hypothesis” (see Levinson 1983: 263–264) and point out how it is still relevant for cognitive pragmatics.

scholarly journals Speech Acts and Hegemony in Discourse

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 215-235
Author(s):  
Thouraya Zheni
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Speech Act Theory ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Expressive Speech ◽  
Indirect Speech ◽  
Indirect Speech Acts ◽  
The Us ◽  
Nuclear Crisis ◽  
Research Show

Language users may use the standardized forms of speech acts as a strategy to achieve their own purposes, like political agendas. This is the objective of the present study, which focuses on the manipulation of speech acts in Donald Trump’s tweets on the US-Iranian crisis. More specifically, the current research paper sheds light on hegemony in political discourse and how it is embedded in assertive, commissive, directive, declarative and expressive speech acts. The tweets of Donald Trump, delivered between January 2017 and December 2019 and related to the US-Iranian crisis, will be analyzed within the framework of Speech Act Theory. The results of the current research show that Trump’s use of speech acts demystifies his hegemonic tone towards Iranian leaders. His power is mediated explicitly via directives and commissives, while it is exerted implicitly via expressives and assertives. His use of direct and indirect speech acts reveals Trump’s ambivalence and willingness to solve the US-Iranian nuclear crisis via both hegemony and diplomacy.  

scholarly journals A Speech Act Analysis of the First Speech of Imran Khan as Prime Minister

2020 ◽  
Vol V (II) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Tanveer Hussain ◽  
Deeba Shahwar ◽  
Abdul Basit
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Speech Act Theory ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Indirect Speech ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Indirect Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act Analysis

This paper aims to highlight the speech acts which have been working behind the first speech that has delivered by Imran Khan as Prime Minister of Pakistan at 26, July 2018. It is a political discourse that attracts the researcher's interest. The objective of this paper is to answer what type of speech acts have been used by Imran Khan, the overlapping of what speech acts occur in Imran Khan's speech and what direct and indirect speech acts have been used by Imran Khan. The findings revealed that his speech includes representative acts (27.083%), expressive acts (1.041%), declarative acts (7.291%), directive acts (25%), commissive acts (39.583%) out of the total 100% of data. This paper-based on both qualitative and quantitative analysis of discourse. The framework employed in this study is the Speech Act theory that has introduced by J.L Austin in 1962 and further developed by J.R Searle (1969).

scholarly journals Dempster-Shafer Theoretic Learning of Indirect Speech Act Comprehension Norms

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (06) ◽  
pp. 10410-10417
Author(s):  
Ruchen Wen ◽  
Mohammed Aun Siddiqui ◽  
Tom Williams
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Rule Learning ◽  
Indirect Speech ◽  
Robot Teams ◽  
Indirect Speech Acts ◽  
Indirect Speech Act

For robots to successfully operate as members of human-robot teams, it is crucial for robots to correctly understand the intentions of their human teammates. This task is particularly difficult due to human sociocultural norms: for reasons of social courtesy (e.g., politeness), people rarely express their intentions directly, instead typically employing polite utterance forms such as Indirect Speech Acts (ISAs). It is thus critical for robots to be capable of inferring the intentions behind their teammates' utterances based on both their interaction context (including, e.g., social roles) and their knowledge of the sociocultural norms that are applicable within that context. This work builds off of previous research on understanding and generation of ISAs using Dempster-Shafer Theoretic Uncertain Logic, by showing how other recent work in Dempster-Shafer Theoretic rule learning can be used to learn appropriate uncertainty intervals for robots' representations of sociocultural politeness norms.

scholarly journals Indirect Speech Act of Spongebob Squarepants the Movie

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 203-206
Author(s):  
Ima Frafika Sari
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Domain Analysis ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Indirect Speech ◽  
Know How ◽  
Indirect Speech Acts ◽  
Indirect Speech Act ◽  
Descriptive Qualitative

Direct and indirect speech acts are the two types of speech acts. This study aims to know how indirect speech acts are employed in the movie "SpongeBob SquarePants." It employs descriptive qualitative research to explain the main character's speech act types. There is currently a scarcity of studies examining speech act types in cartoon or animation films; yet, it is necessary. According to this study, the result of this article is: first, there are seventy-four discussions of indirect speech acts obtained from all characters in the movie SpongeBob SquarePants. Each dialogue in the film SpongeBob SquarePants can be deduced to reveal the meaning of indirect speech acts. Second, The reader can use the domain analysis indirect speech acts summary to help them understand each dialogue in this movie that has a different meaning. This stage permitted the main characters to say literal things to the listener. The main character did not make a difficult-to-understand statement to the listener. This research looks at Yule's theory's utterances of indirect speech activities. As a result, the outcome differed from the prior study, despite the same issue.

scholarly journals Indirect Speech Act in Judy Christenberry's Novel the Cowboy's Secret Son: A Pragmatic Analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Ratna Muntiningsih
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Literal Meaning ◽  
Indirect Speech ◽  
English Novel ◽  
The Core ◽  
Indirect Speech Acts ◽  
Pragmatic Analysis ◽  
Descriptive Theory ◽  
Indirect Speech Act

This paper presents the core of a descriptive theory of Indirect Speech acts, i.e. utterances used by the speaker to the hearer based on the three types of felicity conditions such as content condition, preparatory condition, and sincerity condition. The data examples takes from the English novel "The Cowboy's Secret Son" contains some of indirect speech act utterances that are included to the pragmatic study. The researcher explains and analyzes every utterance based on the theory of Yule (1996), Searle (1976, 1975), Austin (1962), Mey (1993), Bach and Harmish (1979), and Levinson (1983). The result of the research is founded that the speaker uses indirect speech act is to convey the request to the hearer to do something in the future. Moreover they use indirect speech act which has two meanings such as literal meaning and non-literal meaning or indirect meaning. In other words, they use indirect speech act to avoid the hearer to get upset, feel bad, angry and for politeness. And, generally they use indirect speech act because they have recognized the matters they are uttering.

THE ANALYSIS OF SPEECH ACT IN “BARBIE AS RAPUNZEL” MOVIE

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 388
Author(s):  
Siti Hunsawati ◽  
Rohmana Rohamana ◽  
Siam Siam
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Direct Speech ◽  
Indirect Speech ◽  
Indirect Speech Acts ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Movie Script ◽  
Indirect Speech Act

This thesis is about the analysis of speech act in Barbie as Rapunzel movie. The research questions of this thesis were (1) what are the direct and indirect speech acts used by the main character in Barbie as Rapunzel movie? And (2) What are the perlocutionary acts of the main character’s utterances in Barbie as Rapunzel movie?. The objectives of this research were (1) To decribe the direct and indirect speech acts used by the main character in Barbie as Rapunzel  movie  and  (2)  To  describe  the perlocutionary acts   of   the   main   character’s   utterances   in   Barbie  as Rapunzel movie. This research used a qualitative method to describe and analyze  the  utterance.  The  technique  of  data  collection were (1) The researcher download Barbie as Rapunzel movie on youtube. (2) The researcher watched the movie of Barbie as Rapunzel  repetedly. (3) Reading and checking dialogue which related with research from the movie script “Barbie as Rapunzel” movie. (4) The researcher classified the dirrect, indirect speech, and perlocutionary acts. The technique   of   data   analysis   were  (1)   The   researcher identified the direct, indirect speech act and perlocutionary acts from Barbie as Rapunzel movie. (2) Described and analized the utterances which include direct, indirect, and perlocutionary acts. (3) Concluding the data analysis. The result of this thesis show that direct speech acts is the dominant types of speech acts. Where, there are 58 direct speech acts, 2 indirect speech acts, and 41 perlocutionary acts. Keywords: Speech Act, Movie

Assertion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitchell S. Green
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Linguistic Community ◽  
Evolutionary Perspective ◽  
Conversational Implicature ◽  
Communicative Practices ◽  
Indirect Speech ◽  
Indirect Speech Acts

Assertion is here approached as a social practice developed through cultural evolution. This perspective will facilitate inquiry into questions concerning what role assertion plays in communicative life, what norms it is subject to, and whether every viable linguistic community must have a practice of assertion. The author’s evolutionary perspective will further enable us to ask how assertion relates to other communicative practices such as conversational implicature, indirect speech acts, presupposition, and, more broadly, the kinematics of conversation. It will also motivate a resolution of debates between conventionalist and intentionalist approaches to this speech act by explaining how those who make assertions can embody their intentions to perform an act of a certain kind. The chapter closes with a discussion of how assertoric practice can be compromised by patterns of malfeasance on the part of a speaker and by injustice within her milieu.

scholarly journals INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS IN TOBA DREAM MOVIE

LINGUISTICA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 220
Author(s):  
Taufan Fadilah ◽  
Isli Iriani Indiah Pane
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Indirect Speech ◽  
Indirect Speech Acts ◽  
Indirect Speech Act ◽  
Descriptive Qualitative

This study focused on indirect speech act used by the main characters in Toba Dream movie. The objectives of the study were to: (1) find out the types of indirect speech acts used in Toba Dream movie, and (2) describe how types of indirect speech acts used in Toba Dream movie. This research was conducted by using descriptive qualitative method. The data of the study were all utterances uttered by the main character in Toba Dream movie and collected by watching the movie.  The result of the study showed that there were four types of indirect speech acts found in Toba Dream movie, they were: representative, directive, commisive, expressive containing indirect speech acts in Toba dream Movie. Representative (25,71%) were realized by interrogative sentences and imperative sentences. Directive (21,43%) were realized by declarative sentences and interrogative sentences. Commisive (14,28%) were realized by declarative sentences. The main characters in Toba dream movie dominated the use of indirect speech act to express statement, command and warning. It showed that they could produce the language more politely and keep the hearer’s face while getting instruction or information indirectly.Keywords: indirect speech act, movie pragmatic, Toba Dream

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