A Theory of Speech Acts

Place on List:

IV. Special Area: Literary Social Criticism

4. Secondary Readings

John R. Searle. Part One “A Theory of Speech Acts” in Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language.

Supporting References:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_act#John_Searle.27s_theory_of_.22indirect_speech_acts.22
2. 
   
3. Blackburn, Simon. "speech acts." The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. : Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference. 2008. Date Accessed 3 Sep. 2013 .

speech acts. Acts performed when words are uttered. In his How to Do Things with Words (1962), J. L. Austin classified these acts as follows: there is the phonetic act, of making noises, the phatic act of making a grammatical sentence, and the rhetic act of saying something meaningful. These together make up the locutionary act. There is then what is done in saying something, such as threatening or praying or promising: this is the illocutionary act. Finally, sayings may produce effects on hearers, such as frightening them: these are perlocutionary acts. Austin believed that careful attention to such distinctions would illuminate or eliminate many problems of philosophy, but whilst his classification has proven useful in some circumstances, it has not had this revolutionary effect. An earlier and lucid recognition of the different illocutionary functions of language is Hobbes, Human Nature, xiii. 6.

4. Chandler, Daniel, and Rod Munday. "speech act." A Dictionary of Media and Communication. : Oxford University Press, 2011. Oxford Reference. 2011. Date Accessed 3 Sep. 2013 .

speech act. (pragmatics) Any goal-directed action performed with words in interpersonal communication, defined primarily with reference to the speaker's intentions and the effects on the listener(s). The term was introduced by Austin and is also associated with Searle in an analytical approach called speech act theory. Some regard speech acts as the basic units of discourse. The term is frequently used synonymously with illocutionary act. See also discourse analysis; locutionary act; performatives; perlocutionary act; compare conversation analysis.

5. Green, Mitchell, "Speech Acts", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

Speech Acts. First published Tue Jul 3, 2007. Speech acts are a staple of everyday communicative life, but only became a topic of sustained investigation, at least in the English-speaking world, in the middle of the Twentieth Century.^[1] Since that time “speech act theory” has been influential not only within philosophy, but also in linguistics, psychology, legal theory, artificial intelligence, literary theory and many other scholarly disciplines.^[2] Recognition of the importance of speech acts has illuminated the ability of language to do other things than describe reality. In the process the boundaries among the philosophy of language, the philosophy of action, the philosophy of mind and even ethics have become less sharp. In addition, an appreciation of speech acts has helped lay bare an implicit normative structure within linguistic practice, including even that part of this practice concerned with describing reality. Much recent research aims at an accurate characterization of this normative structure underlying linguistic practice.

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Content, Force, and How Saying Can Make It So
  • 2.1 The Independence of Force and Content
  • 2.2 Can Saying Make it So?
  • 2.3 Seven Components of Illocutionary Force
• 3. Illocutions and Perlocutions, and Indirect Speech Acts
• 4. Force, Fit and Satisfaction
• 5. Mood, Force and Convention
  • 5.1 Force Conventionalism
  • 5.2. An Objection to Force Conventionalism
• 6. Speaker-Meaning and Force
  • 6.1 Grice's Account of Speaker Meaning
  • 6.2 Objections to Grice's Account
  • 6.3 Force as an Aspect of Speaker Meaning
• 7. Force, Norms, and Conversation
  • 7.1 Speech Acts and Conversation Analysis
  • 7.2 Speech Acts and Scorekeeping
• 8. Force-Indicators and the Logically Perfect Language
• 9. Do Speech Acts Have a Logic?
• Bibliography
  • Further Reading
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries
  

6. Buchanan, Ian. "Searle, John Rogers." A Dictionary of Critical Theory. : Oxford University Press, 2010. Oxford Reference. 2010. Date Accessed 22 Aug. 2013 .

The following focuses on the author and not the text.

“Searle, John Rogers (1932–) Americananalytic philosopher, best known for his work on speech act theory, but also well known for his work on the philosophy of mind. Born in Colorado, Searle completed his undergraduate degree in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin. He then went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar to complete his DPhil. He worked briefly as a tutor at Oxford before returning to the US to take a position at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has been ever since. Searle's reputation is based on his extension of J. L. *Austin's idea in How to Do Things with Words (1962) that sentences can perform actions as well as state facts and express truths. In Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (1969), Searle develops the idea of an indirect, or illocutionary speech act, listing five different varieties: assertives (true or false), directives (obliging an action), commissives (promise of action), expressives (revealing of speaker's psychological state), and declaratives (which cause something to happen). This work has proved useful in the development of artificial intelligence. Searle became widely known outside of the closed ranks of analytic philosophy when he got involved in a very public debate with French philosopher Jacques *Derrida, over a short critique the latter wrote of Austin's theory in Marges de la philosophie (1962), translated as Margins of Philosophy (1982). Searle wrote a sharp defence of Austin, which prompted a book-length rebuke from Derrida.”

7. 
   
8. a
9. a
10. a