National open university of nigeria school of arts and social sciences

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ENG223 Discourse Analysis

4.0 Conclusion

Each time we make an utterance, we are using them to perform certain acts. Such acts maybe directly stated by the speaker or indirectly stated. Certain verbs are used to explicitly signal that an utterance is meant to perform an act. They are referred to as performative verbs, while the utterance in which they occur are called performative utterance. For any utterance to be judged as sincere, it has to fulfill certain felicity conditions. The meaning of utterances is not always directly reflected in their surface forms. Some utterances have surface forms that differ from the intention of the speaker. These are called indirect speech acts.
5.0 Summary

In this Unit, we looked at the theory of speech act as proposed by J.L. Austin and R.
Searle. We examined performative verbs used in performative utterances, the types of speech act, and the felicity conditions that have to be met before a speech act can be successful. Lastly, we looked at direct and indirect speech acts. Indirect speech acts are particularly considered as being important because their meaning is arrived at through inference, since the surface form does not indicate the meaning.

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6.0 Tutor-marked Assignment

Record a casual conversation and discuss the speech acts used in it.
7.0 References/Further Reading
Austin, J. L. (1962) How to do things with words. Claredon press.
Searle, J. (1969) Speech Acts. Cambridge University Press.

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