السبت، 18 فبراير 2012

Levels of Speech Acts

a.      Locutionary Acts
     "A locutionary act is an act of saying something, and to perform an act of saying something …involves uttering noises … of certain types belonging to and as belonging to a certain vocabulary," (Schiffer 88). The locutionary act intended by some person is usually interpreted by the words he uses in a certain utterance. In other words, it is the performative words said by the interlocutors to direct the other party to perform an action for him. It is "the production of a meaningful linguistic expression" (Huang 102). In that case, the interlocutor should have the authority to make the listener perform that action. The illocutionary act, which would be illustrated later in that research, is seen as a reaction to the locutionary act. Yet, Austin says that the locutionary act could be an illocutionary act by including one of the performative verbs as in promising, warning or ordering. For example," I (hereby) promise to ….," has become an illocutionary act by including a performative verb which is "promise" (Schiffer 89). The locutionary act could be further classified according to their manner of production into the phonic act, the phatic act, and the rhetic act:
I.                   Phonic act; the process of producing the sounds which is used in that locutionary act. This subdivision is not adequate to the locutionary act for it might be produced by writing, or even by the body language.
II.                Phatic act; the structural and syntactic arrangement of the sounds produced by the speaker. This subdivision has to do with the intention of the interlocutor.
III.             Rhetic act; the sorting of the utterance by the speaker to deliver a certain message to the hearer. The rheme of the locutionary act lies behind that rhetic act. (Hallion par. 70&72&76)

b.     Illocutionary acts
     The illocutionary act "is a conventional act: an act done as confirming to a convention" (Ibid qtd in Schiffer 90). It is a reaction to the locutionary act which does not include "joking, showing off, and insinuating" (Schiffer 89). In other words, it is what is meant by the interlocutors to be performed by the other party. Understanding the intention of the interlocutor, the listener would start reacting to his utterance, and this is what is known as the illocutionary act. It can be seen also as "the type of function the speaker intends to fulfill" (Huang 102).  However, the intention of the speaker is not the only thing on which the illocutionary act depends. It depends also on the convention and the force of the interlocutor. An "illocutionary act will not be successful brought off unless the speaker brings about in his audience the understanding of the meaning and of the force of the locution" (Ibid qtd in Schiffer 89). Searle agrees with Austin on the fact that illocutionary acts are controlled by meaningfulness. He says:
 The speaker intends to produce a certain illocutionary effect by means of getting the hearer to recognize his intention to produce that effect, and he also intends the recognition to be achieved in virtue of the fact that the meaning of the item he utters conventionally associates it with producing that effect (Searle qtd in Lyons 735).
Here, Searle emphasizes the fact that the illocutionary act should be determined by both the intention of the interlocutor and the conventions of their own community. Those illocutionary acts are like accusing, apologizing, blaming, congratulating, giving permission, joking, nagging…etc (Huang 102).

     The illocutionary acts are countless in English, but they can be further classified into 3 groups:
I. Utterances with performative verbs: This category would include a list of performative verbs such as 'promise', 'swear', and 'threaten'.
             II. Utterances without performative verbs: This occurs when the intention of the speaker is performing an action without including a performative verb in his utterance. When a speaker says I will pay the bill, this is considered a promise from that speaker to pay the bill, and so the other party expects him to take that action.
            III. Through a relationship between warning and advising, or promising and threatening: This occurs when the speaker, for example, warns his hearer saying: do not try to cross that gate. In fact, this warning includes an illocutionary act which is that the hearer should not approach the said gate. (Lyons 736&737)

          On the other side, Austin classifies those speech acts in English into five types:
I. Verdictives: These" consist in the delivering of a finding, official or unofficial, upon evidence or reasons as to value a fact" (Austin qtd in Parkinson 178). They are used to produce a certain verdict upon a certain fact, be it official or non-official. Grading or ranking an utterance under the category of verdictives of the illocutionary acts would be unclear without a full illustration (Parkinson 178).
 
II.    Exercitives: They are" the giving of a decision in favor of a decision of or against a certain course of action, or advocacy of it. It is a decision that is to be so, as distinct from a judgement that it is so," (Austin qtd in Parkinson 180). They are like 'appointing', 'degrading', 'demanding', 'demoting', 'dismissing',….etc. It comes from exercising powers, or rights. Unlike the verdictives, exercitives can be identified without any illustration (Parkinson 180).

III.  Commissives: They "are typically actions that commit one to a course of action" (Parkinson 180). In other words, they are certain utterances that direct the addressee to take the responsibility of performing an action. This is like 'promising', 'contracting' and 'undertaking'. Like the exercitives, commissives can be fully identified also without an illustration (Parkinson 180).

 
IV.Expositives: They "are used in acts of exposition involving the expounding of views, the concluding of arguments, and the clarifying of usage and reference," (Austin qtd in Parkinson 178). This is like 'stating', 'affirming', 'denying', 'answering', and 'illustration'. Expositives can not be graded or ranked without a full illustration (Parkinson 178).

V.   Behabitives: Those "Behabitives include the notion of reaction to other people's behaviour and fortunes and of attitudes and expressions of attitudes to someone else's past conduct or imminent conduct," (Austin qtd in Parkinson 179). This includes 'apologizing', 'thanking', 'deploring', 'congratulating', and 'welcoming'. Behabitives like congratulating may be used without a full illustration. Other behabitives need more elaboration to be ranked (Parkinson 179).

c.     Perlocutionary Acts
     Those perlocutionary acts are the "effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audience, or of the speaker, or of other persons," (Ibid qtd in Schiffer 90). The perlocutionary act is related to the reflection of the locutionary act on the hearer. When a husband, for example, says to his wife:" I promise you a diamond ring", the perlocutionary act is to bring happiness and satisfaction on the wife. However, this does not occur in all cases. Out of here, we can deduce a relation between the perlocutionary act, the locutionary act, and the illocutionary act. The perlocutionary effect, on the one side, is a mix between the locutionary act and the 'non-conventional' act (Halion: par. 83). Halion says also that the locutionary act might result in perlocutionary or illocutionary effect, or both of them (par. 91). Unlike the illocutionary act, the perlocutionary act is not decided by the convention of a certain community, but by the intention of the speaker. Convention cannot decide how the effect on the hearer would be. This could be decided only by the intention of the interlocutor and how the listener would receive the message (Schiffer 91). This was the last division of Austin's levels of speech acts. For Searle, this was not the end of the levels of speech acts, as he adds another category which is the propositional acts.

d.     Propositional Acts
     As said before, Searle was not completely against the theory of Austin. He accepts the dichotomy of Austin as it is. However, he adds to that dichotomy another class which is the propositional acts. A propositional act is a speech act that a speaker performs when referring or predicating something in an utterance. As the definition proposes, this branch can be divided into a reference act and a prediction act (Halion: par. 106).

I. Reference act: Searle says that the reference act is
Any expression which serves to identify any thing, process, event, action, or any other kind of ‘individual’ or ‘particular’ I shall call a referring expression. ...It is by their function, not always by their surface grammatical form or their manner of performing their function, that referring expressions are to be known (Halion: par. 125).
The reference act is complete as we may mean something without uttering a word about it. For example, the word 'doctor' in 'a doctor came', refers to some thing. However, when it comes as a predicate in ' George is a doctor', it does not refer to anything rather than describing George (Halion: par. 126)

I.                                           Predicate Act: it is the act of prediction. As the above mentioned, it does not refer to anything but rather, predicting the quality of something or someone. The act of prediction is incomplete as it depends on another reference act. It “is not a separate speech act at all” (Halion: par. 126).

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