scholarly journals Speech Acts of Request in O.Wilde’s The Happy Prince

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (38) ◽  
pp. 14
Author(s):  
Hussain Hameed Mayuuf ◽  
Ahmed Mukheef Hussein ◽  
Rasha T. Awad

Abstract         The theory of speech act contributed by Austin in 1962 has received much consideration in linguistic study. The main objective of this paper is to account for  the ways whereby speakers express various actions via language. Accordingly, the current study tries to find answers to the following questions: (1) what is speech act theory? (2) what are the main classifications of speech act theory? (3) what is speech act of request , why it is made, and how it is achieved? The current study aims at: (1) presenting an illustration of speech acts (2) exploring the main classifications of speech acts (3) investigating the essence of speech act of request , the ways whereby it is achieved, and the reasons behind that. The study hypothesizes that (1) speech act denotes the verbal behaviour or the action which is done by the utterance or sentence uttered by a speaker in a certain occasion (2) Austin classifies speech acts into performative and constativeExpositions, whereas Searle states that there are three main acts performed in speech act including ;utterance act , propositional act and illocutionary act (3) speech act of request is an act asked by the speaker and accomplished by the hearer for the benefit of the speaker . There are three basic types of sentences by which speech act of request is made ; declaratives , imperatives, interrogatives. To achieve politeness interrogative sentences are the most recurrent ones so as to mitigate the impact of the action.         The Procedures followed are: (1) presenting a theoretical background of speech acts. (2) highlighting the primary classifications of speech acts (3) elucidating speech act of request, the ways by which it is fulfilled and the grounds that explicate its use. The study is limited to speech act of request in the short story "The Happy Prince " written by Oscar Wilde. Section one exhibits the problem of the study exposing its aims, hypotheses, procedures and limits. Section two represents a theoretical framework including Austin’s Classification of speech acts, the speech act of request, schemes of requesting, sentence kinds denoting request. Section three depicts the data and its analysis. The study ends with a section for its conclusions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
John Demuyakor

Speech acts as an important element during communication, because it explains the thoughts of the speaker(s). A speech act is more about what is performed when uttering words and not about individual words or sentences that are known to form the basic elements of human communication. An attempt to do something through speaking is what is known as a speech act and a lot of things can be done through speaking. A speech act is studied under speech act theory and is found in the domain of pragmatics. Using a qualitative research design, the key objective of this study is to analyze the types of speech acts adopted in the inaugural address of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo- Addo as the President of the Republic of Ghana for his second term on the 7th January 2021. This study analyzed the Inaugural Address using Searle’s theory of speech act as a theoretical framework with emphasis on Searle’s five categories of speech act. The study showed that out of a total of 74 locutionary / Statements in the inaugural address,assertive acts are 40.5% of the utterances, commissive acts are 25.6%, while directive, expressive and declarative have small portions, of 13.5%, 12.2%, and 8.2% respectively.



Author(s):  
Lewis Hassell

Since the early 1980s there has been an interest in linguistics in general and speech act theory in particular in CSCW, HCI, MIS, and IS modeling in general. The reason for this is simple—computer and information scientists discovered that most work is group work and most group work occurs via language. Winograd and Flores (1986) popularized the use of speech act theory, especially the Searlian variety, for modeling electronic communication and collaboration. However, what one finds if one looks closely is that we have taken the easy road when dealing with language. There are a large variety of speech acts that we ignore when analyzing language, particularly when using speech act theory. Why this is so, the impact on tool-creation, and possible remediation of this problem will be discussed. The importance for such areas as e-collaboration, as well as text mining, computer security, and computing in general will be emphasized.



لارك ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (38) ◽  
pp. 592-572
Author(s):  
Ahmed Hasan Fleih

Abstract           This study investigates the impact of  the congregational sermons of the Grand Ayatollah Al:Sistani on Iraqi society 2014-2016 , by using a pragmatic analysis. It aims to investigate how these sermons are influential and affective in the society reformation . In order to achieve this study, there are certain hypotheses that have been hypothesized  to get a clear  idea about the study  presented. One of these hypotheses is that congregational sermons have a great impact on societies in all aspects of life , particularly the Islamic societies .This study is  carried out by using Searle’s contributions to speech act theory  presented by felicity conditions (1969) and the classification of speech act types (1975).



2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (40) ◽  
pp. 589-604
Author(s):  
Ahmed Fleih Hassan ◽  
Ali M. Gharab Al-Mejdawy

          This study investigates the speech acts of  the congregational sermons of the Grand Ayatollah Al:Sistani  2014-2016 , by using a pragmatic analysis. It aims to investigate how these sermons are influential and affective in the society reformation . In order to achieve this study, there are certain hypotheses that have been hypothesized  to get a clear  idea about the study  presented. One of these hypotheses is that congregational sermons have a great impact on societies in all aspects of life , particularly the Islamic societies .This study is  carried out by using Searle’s contributions to speech act theory presented by felicity conditions (1969) and the classification of speech act types (1975).



2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (63) ◽  
pp. 357-374
Author(s):  
Paolo Labinaz

This paper investigates whether, and if so, in what way, argumentation can be profitably described in speech-act theoretical terms. I suggest that the two theories of argumentation that are supposed to provide the most elaborate analysis of it in speech-act theoretical terms (namely van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst’s Pragma-Dialectics and Lilian Bermejo-Luque’s linguistic normative model of argumentation) both suffer from the same two flaws: firstly, their “illocutionary act pluralism” assumption and secondly, a lack of interest in where arguing belongs in the classification of illocutionary acts. I argue that these flaws derive from the authors’ reliance on an intention-based speech-theoretical framework. Finally, I adopt a deontic framework for speech acts in order to propose an alternative way of accounting for argumentation which seems to overcome the two limitations outlined above. According to this framework, argumentation may be conceived as a speech act sequence, characterized by the conventional effects brought about by the communicative moves (as illocutionary acts) of which it is composed.



Algorithms ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nader Hanna ◽  
Deborah Richards

Effective communication in task-oriented situations requires high-level interactions. For human–agent collaboration, tasks need to be coordinated in a way that ensures mutual understanding. Speech Act Theory (SAT) aims to understand how utterances can be used to achieve actions. SAT consists of three components: locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act. This paper evaluates the agent’s verbal communication while collaborating with humans. SAT was used to anatomize the structure of the agent’s speech acts (locutionary acts), the agent’s intention behind the speech acts (illocutionary acts), and the effects on the human’s mental state (perlocutionary acts). Moreover, this paper studies the impact of human perceptions of the agent’s speech acts on the perception of collaborative performance with the agent.



The essays collected in this book represent recent advances in our understanding of speech acts-actions like asserting, asking, and commanding that speakers perform when producing an utterance. The study of speech acts spans disciplines, and embraces both the theoretical and scientific concerns proper to linguistics and philosophy as well as the normative questions that speech acts raise for our politics, our societies, and our ethical lives generally. It is the goal of this book to reflect the diversity of current thinking on speech acts as well as to bring these conversations together, so that they may better inform one another. Topics explored in this book include the relationship between sentence grammar and speech act potential; the fate of traditional frameworks in speech act theory, such as the content-force distinction and the taxonomy of speech acts; and the ways in which speech act theory can illuminate the dynamics of hostile and harmful speech. The book takes stock of well over a half century of thinking about speech acts, bringing this classicwork in linewith recent developments in semantics and pragmatics, and pointing the way forward to further debate and research.



Author(s):  
Erin Debenport

This chapter draws on data from U.S. higher education to analyze the ways that the language used to describe sexual harassment secures its continued power. Focusing on two features viewed as definitional to sexual harassment, frequency and severity, the discussion analyzes three sets of online conversations about the disclosure of abuse in academia (a series of tweets, survey responses, and posts on a philosophy blog) from grammatical, pragmatic, and semiotic perspectives. Unlike most prior research, this chapter focuses on the language of victims rather than the intentions of harassers. The results suggest that speech act theory is unable to account fully for sexual harassment without accepting the relevance of perlocutionary effects. Using Gal and Irvine’s (2019) model of axes of differentiation, the chapter demonstrates how opposing discursive representations (of professors, sexual harassers, victims, and accusers) create a discursive space in which it becomes difficult for victims to report their harassers.



2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (6) ◽  
pp. 1124-1140
Author(s):  
Miles Ogborn

The geographies of speech has become stuck in a form of interpretation which considers the potentially infinite detail of spoken performances understood within their equally infinitely complex contexts. This paper offers a way forward by considering the uses, critiques and reworkings of J.L. Austin’s speech act theory by those who study everyday talk, by deconstructionists and critical theorists, and by Bruno Latour in his AIME (‘An Inquiry into Modes of Existence’) project. This offers a rethinking of speech acts in terms of power and space, and a series of ontological differentiations between forms of utterances and enunciations beyond human speech.



Author(s):  
Mutiara Shasqia ◽  
Aulia Anggraini

Teachers and lecturers alike understand that they must consciously use a variety of speech acts to force students to follow their instructions and be motivated to learn on their own. This paper reports the findings of a study designed to investigate the notion of the perlocutionary effect of university students in the classroom resulted from lecturers’ illocutionary acts. The acts were then analyzed the illocutionary act of the lecturers’ talk or speech during specific time using Austin’s speech act theory. This present study built its investigation from data collection on both lecturers and university students through interview and field notes. This study manage to reveals that lecturers freely use speech acts of persuading, angering, and commanding. This study believes that illocutionary acts will still have happened in our interaction's life or communication in many-many context including classroom interaction between lecturer-students communication context.



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