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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