Учебно-методический комплекс дисциплины сд. 7 Теоретическая грамматика

To put it in other words, they are different speech acts. That is, speech acts are simply things people do through language – for example, apologizing, instructing, menacing, explaining something, etc. The term ‘speech act’ was coined by the philosopher John Austin and developed by another philosopher John Searle.

John Austin is the person who is usually credited with generating interest in what has since come to be known as pragmatics and speech act theory. His ideas of language were set out in a series of lectures which he gave at Oxford University. These lectures were later published under the title “How to do things with words”. His first step was to show that some utterances are not statements or questions but actions. He reached this conclusion through an analysis of what he termed ‘performative verbs’. Let us consider the following sentences:

I pronounce you man and wife

I declare war on France

I name this ship The Albatros

I bet you 5 dollars it will rain

I apologize

The peculiar thing about these sentences, according to J.Austin, is that they are not used to say or describe things, but rather actively to do things. After you have declared war on France or pronounced somebody husband and wife the situation has changed. That is why J.Austin termed them as performatives and contrasted them to statements (he called them constatives). Thus by pronouncing a performative utterance the speaker is performing an action. The performative utterance, however, can really change things only under certain circumstances. J.Austin specified the circumstances required for their success as felicity (happiness) conditions. In order to declare war you must be someone who has the right to do it. Only a priest (or a person with corresponding power) can make a couple a husband ad wife. Besides, it must be done before witnesses and the couple getting married must sign the register. To realise the speech act of request the following conditions are necessary:

1. 
   The action or situation, describes in the propositional component of the sentence, is not supposed to exist in the moment of locution ( it is strange to ask somebody to open the window, if it is already open)
   
2. 
   The addressee is supposed to be capable of fulfilling the request ( it is strange to ask an invalid in a wheelchair to open the window
   
3. 
   The addressee is supposed to have more possibilities to realize the request than the addresser ( it is strange to ask somebody in the far end of the room to open the window if you are already near the window and are quite capable of performing the action)
   
4. 
   The Speaker is supposed to be fully aware of the fact that the addressee has no weighty reasons to refuse to perform the request ( it is strange to request a person who has been complaining since morning about people who open window on a cold winter day and has been demonstratively coughing and sneezing )
   

Performatives may be explicit and implicit. Let us compare the sentences:

I promise I will come tomorrow – I will come tomorrow;

I swear I love you – I love you.

On any occasion the action performed by producing an utterance will consist of three related acts (a three-fold distinction):

1. 
   locutionary act – producing a meaningful linguistic expression, uttering a sentence. If you have difficulty with actually forming the sounds and words to create a meaningful utterance (because you are a foreigner or tongue-tied) then you might fail to produce a locutionary act: it often happens when we learn a foreign language.
   
2. 
   illocutionary act – we form an utterance with some kind of function on mind, with a definite communicative intention or illocutionary force. The notion of illocutionary force is basic for pragmatics.
   
3. 
   perlocutionary act – the effect the utterance has on the hearer. Perlocutionary effect may be verbal or non-verbal. E.g. I’ve bought a car – Great! It’s cold here – and you close the window.
   

a detailed classification of speech acts. His speech act classification has had a great impact on linguistics. It includes five major classes of speech acts: declarations, representatives, expressives, directives and commissives:

J.Searle can also be merited for introducing a theory of indirect speech acts. Indirect speech acts are cases in which one speech act is performed indirectly, by way of performing another: Can you pass me the salt? Though the sentence is interrogative, it is conventionally used to mark a request – we cannot just answer “yes” or “no”. According to modern point of view such utterances contain two illocutionary forces, with one of them dominating.

Another classification of speech acts was introduced by G.Potcheptsov. It is based on purely linguistic principles. The main criterion for pragmatic classification of utterances is the way of expressing communicative intention. This classification includes six basic speech acts:

constatives, promissives, menacives, performatives, directives and questions. More details can be found in the book by И.П.Иванова, В.В.Бурлакова, Г.Г.Почепцов “Теоретическая грамматика современного английского языка”, С.267-281.

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РАЗДЕЛ 7. Учебные занятия по дисциплине ведут: