SPEECH ACT
CHAPTER IX SPEECH ACT
Speech is produced by people with many different purposes. In this resume, it will be discussed types of speech act base on the purpose.
A. The Form of Sentences and the Purpose of Utterances Based on its form, sentences are classified into three thing. They are declarative if they tell something, interrogative if they ask, or imperative if they request action. An utterance can have various function such as seeking information, (called rhetorical question), make a statement that is intended asa request or produce command, and produce an utterance that is just the opposite of the message he wants to convey (humor or irony). There are many things which can make us able to identify a question, they are : rising intonation; inverted word order; a question word: who, what, which, where, when, how, why, or the word or. The different types of questions are distinguished on the basis of the marker(s) present.
1. The question has the word order of a statement but is spoken with a rising tune instead of a falling one.
2. A more common sort of question is made with inversion —putting an operator in first place. An operator (a form of be or have or one of the modal verbs), which follows the subject in a statement, precedes the statement in a question.
3. Make a statement and attach a tag question
4. The next type of question has inverted word order but it cannot be answered simply “Yes” or “No.” The marker is the word or.
5. The next questions have a question word (or „WH-word‟) but are also marked by rising intonation.
6. Questions that have a question word and do not have a rising intonation (at least not on the question word) ask for new information, not for repetition or confirmation.
B. Analysis of speech act
The principal use of language is to state facts, to describe how things are in the world, to present informationwhich, generally, is either true or false. According to Austin (1962), in every speech act we can distinguish three things. They are locution (what is said), illocution (What the speaker intends to communicate to the addressee), and perlocution (The message that the addressee gets, his interpretation of what the speaker says). Grice (1975, 1978) said that Such communication is guided by four factors, which called maxims: the maxims of quantity, relevance, manner, and quality.
1. The maxim of quantity requires the speaker to give as much information as the addressee needs but no more.
2. The maxim of relevance requires us, as speakers, to make our utterances relative to the discourse going on and the contexts in which they occur.
3. The maxim of manner is to be orderly and clear and to avoidambiguity
4. The maxim of quality is to say only what one believes to be true. Every utterance always has purpose. To reach this purpose there are several
necessary condition such : the lexical content of the utterance must be appropriate, the social situation in which it occurs must be appropriate, the speaker must be sincere in what he says, and the hearer(s) accept the utterance as having that purpose.
C. Seven Kind of Speech Act
1. Assertive utterances In the assertive function speakers and writers use language to tell what they know or believe; assertive language is concerned with facts. The purpose is to inform. So assertive utterances are either true or false, and generallythey can be verified or falsified —not necessarily at the time of theutterance or by those who hear them, but in a general sense they aresubject to empirical investigation. Assertive verbs are, in English, followed by a full clause. In assertive utterance, there are class of verb which introduce information such as :
a. Focus on information
b. Focus on truth-value of utterance
c. Focus on speaker‟s commitment or involvement in what is reported c. Focus on speaker‟s commitment or involvement in what is reported
e. Focus on the nature of the message
f. Focus on aspect
2. Performative utterances Performative utterance is Speech acts that bring about the state of affairs such as bids, blessings, firings, baptisms, arrests, marrying, declaring a mistrial. It will be valid if spoken by someone whose right to make them is accepted and in circumstances which are accepted as appropriate. The verbs include bet, declare, baptize, name, nominate, pronounce. Naturally there are strong limitations on what can be a performative utterance.
a. The subject of the sentence must be I or we; “He declares this meeting adjourned” is not a performative utterance, as the term is used here. We still need to to distinguish between explicit and implicit performatives.
b. The verb must be in the present tense. And, perhaps most important, the speaker must be recognized as having the authority to make the statement and the circumstances must be appropriate.
A performative is neither true nor false but its purpose is to make a part of the world conform to what is said.
3. Verdictive utterances Verdictives are speech acts in which the speaker makes an assessment or judgement about the acts of another, usually the addressee. These include ranking, assessing, appraising, condoning. Verdictive verbs include accuse, charge, excuse, thank in the explicit frame I ____ you of/for _____-ing. Felicity conditions for verdictive utterances are: the possibility of the act, the ability of the addressee to perform it, the sincerity of the speaker in making the utterance, and the addressee‟s belief that the speaker is sincere.
4. Expressive utterances Expressive utterances are thus retrospective and speaker-involved. The most common expressive verbs (in this sense of „expressive‟) are: acknowledge, admit, confess 4. Expressive utterances Expressive utterances are thus retrospective and speaker-involved. The most common expressive verbs (in this sense of „expressive‟) are: acknowledge, admit, confess
5. Directive utterances Directive utterances are those in which the speaker tries to get the addressee to perform some act or refrain from performing an act. It has the pronoun you as actor, whether that word is actually present in the utterance or not. A directive utterance presupposes certain conditions in the addressee and in the context of situation. There are three kind of directive utterance, they are :
a. Command
A command is effective only if the speaker has some degree of control over the actions of the addressee. Commands can be produced with various degrees of explicitness. The general meaning of a command, then, is: Speaker, in authority, expresses a wish that Addressee should <not> act as Speaker wants Addressee <not> to act.
b. Request
A request is an expression of what the speaker wants the addressee to do or refrain from doing. General meaning: Speaker, not in authority, expresses wish that Addressee <not> act as Speaker wants Addressee <not> to act.
c. Suggestion Suggestions are the utterances we make to other persons to give our opinions as to what they should or should not do. General meaning: Speaker expresses an opinion about Addressee‟s choice of performance.
6. Commissive utterances Commissive utterances are Speech acts that commit a speaker to a course of action. These include promises, pledges, threats and vows. Commissive verbs are illustrated by agree, ask, offer, refuse, swear, all with following 6. Commissive utterances Commissive utterances are Speech acts that commit a speaker to a course of action. These include promises, pledges, threats and vows. Commissive verbs are illustrated by agree, ask, offer, refuse, swear, all with following
a. Response to directive
b. Self-motivated (not response to directive)
c. Focus on speech act
7. Phatic utterance The example of this utterance is : “How are you?,” “How‟re you doing?”. The purpose of phatic utterance is to establish rapport between members of the same society. Felicity conditions are met when speaker and addressee share the same social customs and recognize phatic utterances for what they are.
Four speech acts compared They differ from one another as to whether the act has purportedly already taken place (retrospective) or is yet to occur (prospective), and whether the speaker or the addressee is the agent of the act. Verdictive
addressee- involved Expressive
retrospective
speaker- involved directive
retrospective
addressee- involved commissive