Page 470 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

Pragmatics and Speech Act Theory
A speech act is created when speaker/writer S makes an utterance U to hearer/reader H in context C. The illocutionary force of U is what S does in U, for exam- ple, states or requests something, thanks someone, makes a promise, declares an umpiring decision, etc. Every speech act conveys at least one illocutionary force; most convey more than one. This article exam- ines criteria for classifying illocutionary forces (loosely called speech acts) and for defining illocutions.
1. TwoApproachestoClassification
There have been two approaches to classifying speech acts: one, following Austin (1962), is principally a lexical classification of so-called illocutionary verbs; the other, following Searle (1975), is principally a classification of acts.
1.1 Lexical Classification
Austin (1962), the founding father of speech act theory, identified five classes of illocutionary verbs, which were refined and extended to seven by Vendler (1972) as follows (glosses from Austin 1962:151-61; N=noun phrase, V= verb, p= proposition (sen- tence), nom=gerund or other nominalization): (a) expositives 'expounding of views, the conducting of arguments and the clarifying of usages and of ref- erences' (Nj V that p), for example, state, contend, insist, deny, remind, guess; (b) verdictives 'the giving of a verdict' (Nf V Nj (as) N or Adj), for example, rank, grade,call, define, analyze; (c) commissives 'com- mit the speaker' (Nf V to V), for example, promise, guarantee, refuse, decline; (d) exercitives 'exercising of powers, rights, or influences' (Nt V Nj to V), for exam- ple, order, request, beg, dare; (e) behabitives 'reaction to other people's behavior and fortunes' (N; V Nj P nom (past (V))), for example, thank, congratulate, criticize; and V endler's two extra classes (f) operatives (N; V Nj to be/become Nk), for example, appoint, ordain, condemn; (g) interrogatives (Ns V wh-nom (p)), for example, ask,question.
Katz (1977:50-57) critically examines Vendler's analysis. A more extensive lexical classification is Ballmer and Brennenstuhl (1981): they present a thesauruslikelexiconwhereverbsaregrouped accord- ing to an illocutionary property such as 'make a hid- den appeal,' which includes bitch at, carp about, grumble, murmur, mutiny, nag, pout, rumble, sulk, whine, and wrangle (p. 73); and there is 'put someone to flight,' which includes chase away, chase off, discharge, dismiss, drive away, drive back, force out,
frightenaway,kickout,oust,puttoflight,scareoff, see off, send packing, squeeze out, and throw out (p. 100).
Ballmer and Brennenstuhl identified speech act verbs using the formula N V ((addressee) by saying)p as in Jo whined ''Why me?""; Jay chased him off with 'Don't let me see you here again!' Their classification of 4,800 verbs into 600 categories comprising 24 types in 8 groups was made (as it is by other scholars) on an intuitive basis in terms of semantic similarity. Wierz- bicka (1987) makes a much more explicit semantic analysis of 270 speech act verbs, grouping them into 37 classes. Her 'promise' class contains promise,
pledge, vow,swear, vouchfor, andguarantee.
1.2 Classification of Acts
Searle (1975) lists 12 differences between speech acts that can serve as bases for classification:
(a) The point of the illocution: for example, a request attempts to get H to do something, a descriptive is a representation of how some- thing is, a promise is the undertaking of an obligation that S do something.
(b) Direction of fit between the words uttered and the world they relate to: for example, state- ments have a words-to-world fit because truth value is assigned on the basis of whether or not the words describe things as they are in the world spoken of; requests have a world-to- words fit because the world must be changed to fulfill S's request.
(c) Expressed psychological states: for example, a statement that p expresses S's belief that p, a promise expresses S's intention to do some- thing, a request expresses S's desire that H should do something.
(d) The strength with which the illocutionary point is presented: for example, / insist that... is stronger than / suggest that —
(e) Relevance of the relative status of S and H: some illocutions, like commanding, are sen- sitive to participant status; others, like stating, are not.
(f) Orientation: for example, boasts and laments are S-oriented, congratulations and con- dolences are H-oriented.
(g) Questions and answers are adjacency pair parts; commands are not.
(h) Propositional content: for example, H to do A (i.e., perform some act) for a request, S to do A for a promise.
(i) Promising can only be performed as a speech act; classifying can be performed in other ways. (j) Baptizing and excommunicating require insti- tutional conditions to be satisfied; but stating
does not.
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Speech Act Classification K. Allan