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SPECIFIC FEATURES OF SPEECH ACTS IN TEACHING
Musaeva Z.M.
Musayeva Zeboxon Muzaffarovna - Teacher, DEPARTMENT OF METHODOLOGY OF TEACHING ENGLISH LANGUAGE, ENGLISH LANGUAGES FACULTY 2, UZBEKISTAN STATE WORLD LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY, TASHKENT, REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN
Abstract: language teaching is a combination of teaching syntax, content of language in use, and the social background of that language. As the study of the act in speech, speech acts naturally exist in social and interpersonal discourses. Thus it is of vital importance to let language learners to acquire its concept and principles. This article is a brief introduction to the theories and approaches on speech acts as well as its application for ELT pedagogy.
Keywords: teaching, types of speech acts, communicative competence.
Originated from Austin (1962), "Speech Act Theory said that the action performed when an utterance is produced can be analysed on three different levels" [2, p. 13]. These three levels, from Austin's [1, p. 108] description, are locutionary act, illocutionary force, and perlocutionary effect. Locutionary act is "roughly equivalent to 'meaning' in the traditional sense" [1, p. 108]. This definition does not seem very clear. From my personal interpretation, the locutionary act is the literary meaning or facial meaning of an utterance. Austin [1, p. 14] defines illocutionary force as the force of the speaker of certain utterance such as informing, ordering, warning, and undertaking.
Accordingly, the relationship between locutionary act and illocutionary force can be regarded: The former is the meaning of the utterance; the latter is about the force of the utterance. However, Searle argued that there is no real distinction between locutionary acts and illocutionary acts. He explains "Where a certain force is part of the meaning, where the meaning uniquely determines a particular force, there are not two different acts but two different labels for the same act" [3. p. 407]. Searle's critics on the relationship between locutionary and illocutionary seem not very convincing. This would be because the facial meaning and the action of the speaker through a certain utterance; from my personal understanding, there would sometimes be different labels for the same act, however, sometimes they would be two different things. The features of intercultural communication would be obvious in this dimension, especially in indirect speech acts, which would be discussed in the latter part of the paper.
Following Austin's [1, p. 108] definition on perlocutionary effect, Cutting [2, p. 14] uses a modern way to explain perlocutionary act as the effect on the hearer, or the hearer's reaction of a certain utterance. Austin's theory on illocutionary act as "illocutionary acts are connected to effects in three ways: securing uptake, taking effect, and inviting a response which distinguishes them from perlocutionary acts". Although he argued later in the paper that "these three features do not apply to all illocutionary acts and so cannot be used to mark off illocutionary from perlocutionary acts", as far as we are concerned, it is not complex to distinguish perlocutionary acts from illocutionary ones in certain utterances. Perlocutionary acts is the effect on the hearer's reaction while illocutionary is the speaker's motivation and they are in a causal relationship. An illocutionary act is "the speaker could be seen to have performed some act" and a perlocutionary act "can be described in terms of the effect which the illocutionary act, on the particular occasion of use, has on the hearer". Searle points out that "The basic unit of human linguistic communication is the illocutionary act" [4, p. 1]. Based on illocutionary point, direction of fit, and expressed psychological state, illocutionary acts can be divided into five kinds: representatives/assertives, directives,
commissives, expressive, and declarations. Searle [4, pp. 10-13] has given out clear definitions of the five kinds of illocutionary acts.
Representative is "the point or purpose of the members of the representative class is to commit the speaker to something's being the case, to the truth of the expressed proposition". Directives refer to "the illocutionary point of these consists in the fact that they are attempts by the speaker to get the hearer to do something" link with perlocutionary acts. The illocutionary point of expressive is "to express the psychological state specified in the sincerity condition about a state of affairs specified in the propositional content". Commissives acts are those illocutionary acts whose point is to commit the speaker to some future course of action. Another classification in speech act theory is direct speech acts and indirect speech acts. According to Cutting, "a speaker using a direct speech act wants to communicate the literal meaning that the words conventionally express; there is a direct relationship between the form and function" [2, p. 17]. On the contrary, an indirect speech act is to communicate "a different meaning from the apparent surface meaning; the form and function are not directly related". Two approaches of indirect speech would be shown here. Searle [4, pp. 6-61] gives out the issue to form a successful indirect speech: Speakers and hearers must have shared background information. To be specific, we list six major properties of indirect speech acts as multiplicity of meanings, logical priority of meanings, rationality, conventionality, politeness, and purposefulness. For this reason, politeness principle can be connected with speech acts from this perspective. To sum up, using indirect speech, as far as I am concerned, is connected with social relationships.
References
1. Austin J.L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
2. Cutting J. (2008). Pragmatics and discourse: A resource book for students (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
3. Searle J.R. (1975). Indirect speech acts. In P. Cole and J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics (Vol. 3): Speech acts (pp. 59-82). New York: Academic Press.
4. Searle J. R. (1976). A classification of illocutionary acts. Language in Society, 5(1), 123.
