As
we have seen, successful communication takes place when speakers share
knowledge, beliefs, and assumption and when they adhere to similar rules of
cooperative interaction. Language, however is not only a vehicle to exchange
thoughts and ideas: we often use utterance in order to perform social action
or functions. If a teacher in a traditional classroom tells a student. “I will
have to inform your parents about your behaviour,” it usually is not only
statement that imparts information since it may also have the power of the
threat with dire consequences. By making this statement, the teacher may also
have performed a threatening act.
Similarly,
when one friend tells another, “You look great today,” this utterance serves
not only as a description but function mainly as a “compliment” and as such
fulfills a social function. Social action performed via utterance are generally
called speech acts. All cultures use speech act in order to perform social
functions and in most languages there are some performative verb that directly
represent the speech act (1975) such as : apologize, complain, complement,
modes, promise, and so forth. Although these performative verb carry the lexical
meaning of the speech act they convey, they are not always the most common realization
of the speech act in normal conversation. Thus when apologizing in a spoken
situation. English speakers tend to use the expression “I am sorry” much more
often then the more formal “I apologize”
A
speech act is usually performed within a situation that provides contextual
elements that help interpret the speaker’s intention. Thus if a person says
“It’s really cold in here” in a room where there is a open window and the
addressee is near the window, this utterance can easily be interpreted as a request
for the interlocutor to close the window. Contextual and social information
make it possible for interactants to interpret each other’s intention even when
these intentions are not explicitly stated.
When
a speech act is uttered. The utterance carnes locutionary meaning based on the
meaning of the linguistic expression. Thus, our earlier example “I am hungry”
is a basic description of the speaker’s state. However it taken on
illucutionary force when it action a requested and the illocutionary force has
the intended meaning of “please give me some food” Furthermore, since a speech
act is directed toward an addressee who “suffers the consequences” of the act,
it also has perlocutionary force, which is the effect the act has on the
addressee. Every realization of the speech act has therefore three dimensions:
locutionary meaning, illocutionary force, and prelocutionary effect.
Speech
act can be classified according to how they affect the social interaction
between speakers and hearer. The most basic categirization (Searle, 1969)
consist of five different types of speech acts : declarative s, representatives,
expressives, directives, and commisives.
Declarative s
(also called performatives) are speech act that “change the world” as a result
of having been performed. Some good example of such declarative speech acts are
when the jury foreman announces, “We find the defendant not guitly!” and when
the justice of the peace says, “I now pronounce you man and wife.”
Representatives
are speech acts that enable the speaker to express feelings, beliefs,
assertions, illustration, and the like. An example of such representative
speech act would be statement made by a speaker at an argicultural convention
such as “Today, tomatoes can be grown in the desert.
Expressives
are among the most important speech acts for learners of a second or a foreign
language. These speech acts express physiological states of the speaker or the
hearer. Apologizing, complaining, complimenting, and congratulating are
examples of expressives.
Directives
are speech acts that enable speakers to impose some action on their hearer.
Through directives the speakers can express what s/he wants and then expect the
hearer to comply, Inherently, these are face-threatening acts toward the hearer
since they usually impose the hearer. Commands, order, and requests are example
of directives.
Commisive
are speech acts that enable speakers to commit themselves to future actions.
Promises and refusals are commisives. By definition these are speech acts
whereby the speaker takes on or refuses some responsibility or task and are,
therefore, face-threatening to the speaker, or imposing on the speaker. The use
of reformative verbs makes such speech acts more explicit. In the case of a
promise, the choice of the verb “promise” makes the statement a strong
commitment, which is more costly to the speaker but advantageous to the hearer.
In the case of refusals, on the other hand, the use of the verb “refuse”
strengthens the denial of compliance and can lead to conflict or to a clash
between the interlocutors.
Although
it seems that all languages share a similar inventory of speech acts, the
realizations and the circumstances that are appropriate for each speech act may
be quite different in different cultures, and a learner needs to acuire speech
act knowledge as apart of language acquisition. This is what Celce-Murica,
Dornyei, and Thurrell (1995) refer to as actional competence in their model of
communication competence, which – among other things – extends the model of
Canale and Swain (1980) and Cvanale (1983) to include speech acts. Chapter 9,
which deals with the speaking skill, makes suggestions for the teaching of
speech acts.
