Understanding Speech Acts: Austin and Searle

Posted on Feb 23, 2025 in History and Music Sciences

Speech Acts

The theory of Speech Acts was originated by John Austin (1911-1960) and continued by John Searle (1932-), who was a student of Austin.

When you do something, you are performing an action, and when you ask for something, you are also performing an action: the act of asking. This perspective provides insight into the utility of human communication: that humans use communication as a tool to achieve their goals.

Speech act theory views utterances as acts. An utterance has a linguistic structure which may or may not correspond to a complete sentence. Generally speaking, an act is something that we “do.” In speech act theory, the production of words or sentences is considered the performance of speech acts, and the speech act is proposed as the unit of linguistic communication.

Austin: “How to Do Things with Words”

Conventional speech acts: sentence types have conventional relationships to certain types of speech acts, such as:

  • Declarative: assertions/statements
  • Interrogative: questions
  • Imperative: orders
  • Optative: wishes

There is another type of act called a performative utterance, which are acts made by certain people who have the authority to perform them. For example, a priest marrying a couple.

Searle’s Classification

  • Directives: A directive is a speech act that causes the hearer to take a particular action.
    • Example: “I need/want that car.”
  • Commissives: A commissive is a speech act that shows the speaker’s commitment to some future action.
    • Example: “Maybe I can do that tomorrow.”
  • Representatives: A representative is a speech act that commits a speaker to the truth of what he/she is saying.
    • Example: “I went to the exhibition. Some paintings are very classic and extraordinarily awesome.”
  • Declaratives: A declarative is a speech act that changes the reality in accordance with the content of the utterance.
    • Example: “Class dismissed” (students get up and leave).
  • Expressives: An expressive is a speech act that expresses the speaker’s feelings, attitudes, and emotions towards what he/she is saying.
    • Example: “What a great day!”

Three Parts of a Speech Act (Austin)

  1. Locutionary act (part): The act of saying something, without further interpreting the underlying intentions.
  2. Illocutionary act: The speaker’s intention upon saying the utterance. The speaker can make a statement, an offer, a promise, etc., in uttering a sentence.
  3. Perlocutionary act: The effect that the speech act has on the participants.

Example: “Phone her!”

  • Locutionary: He has said to me, “Phone her.”
  • Illocutionary: He has urged me to phone her.
  • Perlocutionary: He has persuaded me to phone her.

Indirect Speech Acts

In indirect speech acts, an illocutionary act is performed by way of performing another act. For example, we can make a request or give permission by way of making a statement, or we can give an order by way of asking a question.

Sentence types and direct/indirect speech acts:

  • “I wonder when the train leaves.” (declarative used as a question)
  • “Have a good journey.” (imperative used as an assertion (I hope that…))

Declarative Sentences Used as Indirect Speech Acts

  • “There’s a spider in your hair”: WARNING
  • “Someone’s eaten all the ice-cream”: ACCUSING