24.1.2 Language as Action: Speech Acts

The previous section showed that conversation consists of a sequence of turns, each of which consists of one or more utterance. A key insight into conversation due to Wittgenstein (1953) but worked out more fully by Austin (1962) is that an utterance in a dialogue is a kind of action being performed by the speaker.

The idea that an utterance is a kind of action is particularly clear in performative sentences like the following:

(24.3) I name this ship the Titanic.

(24.4) I second that motion.

(24.5) I bet you five dollars it will snow tomorrow.

When uttered by the proper authority, for example, (24.3) has the effect of changing the state of the world (causing the ship to have the name Titanic) just as any action can change the state of the world. Verbs like name or second which perform this kind of action are called performative verbs, and Austin called these kinds of actions speech

acts. What makes Austin's work so far-reaching is that speech acts are not confined to this small class of performative verbs. Austin's claim is that the utterance of any sentence in a real speech situation constitutes three kinds of acts:

locutionary act: the utterance of a sentence with a particular meaning.

• illocutionary act: the act of asking, answering, promising, etc., in uttering a sentence.

• perlocutionary act: the (often intentional) production of certain effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the addressee in uttering a sentence.

(24.6) You can't do that.

For example, Austin explains that the utterance of example (24.6) might have the illocutionary force of protesting and the perlocutionary effect of stopping the addressee from doing something, or annoying the addressee.

The term speech act is generally used to describe illocutionary acts rather than either of the other two types of acts. Searle (1975b), in modifying a taxonomy of Austin's, suggests that all speech acts can be classified into one of five major classes:

Assertives: committing the speaker to something's being the case (suggesting, putting forward, swearing, boasting, concluding).

• Directives: attempts by the speaker to get the addressee to do something (asking, ordering, requesting, inviting, advising, begging).

• Commissives: committing the speaker to some future course of action (promising, planning, vowing, betting, opposing).

Expressives: expressing the psychological state of the speaker about a state of affairs thanking, apologizing, welcoming, deploring.

• Declarations: bringing about a different state of the world via the utterance (including many of the performative examples above; I resign, You're fired.)