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45INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL VOLUME 1 ISSUE 8 UIF-2022: 8.2 | ISSN: 2181-3337
THEORY OF SPEECH ACTS IN MODERN LINGUISTICS Xolmuxammedova Sevara Xotam Qizi
First-year-student of master's degree at Andijan state foreign languages institute https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7444995
Abstract. This article discusses the theory of speech acts in Modern linguistics which gives information about specific features of speech acts in linguistics. In addition, it covers the classification of speech acts which was presented by J. L. Austin who is a British philosopher of languages.
Keywords: speech act, grammar, phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, discourse, constative utterance.
ТЕОРИЯ РЕЧЕВЫХ АКТОВ В СОВРЕМЕННОЙ ЛИНГВИСТИКЕ
Аннотация. В данной статье рассматривается теория речевых актов в современной лингвистике, которая дает информацию об особенностях речевых актов в лингвистике. Кроме того, он охватывает классификацию речевых актов, представленную Дж. Л. Остином, британским философом языков.
Ключевые слова: речевой акт, грамматика, фонетика, фонология, морфология, синтаксис, семантика, дискурс, констатирующее высказывание.
INTRODUCTION
When we speak, we can do all sorts of things, from aspirating a consonant, to construct a relative clause, to insult a guest, to start a war. These are all, pre-theoretically, speech acts - acts done in the process of speaking. The theory of speech acts, however, is especially concerned with those acts that are not completely covered under one or more of the major divisions of grammar, phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics - or under some general theory of actions.
Even in cases in which a particular speech act is not completely described in grammar, formal features of the utterance used in carrying out the act might be quite directly tied to its accomplishment, as when we request something by uttering an imperative sentence or greet someone by saying "Hi!" Thus, there is clearly a conventional aspect to the study of speech acts. Sometimes, however, the achievement cannot be so directly tied to convention, as when we thank a guest by saying, "Oh, I love chocolates." There is no convention of English to the effect that stating that one loves chocolates counts as an act of thanking. In this case, the speaker's intention in making the utterance and a recognition by the addressee of that intention under the conditions of utterance clearly plays an important role. Note that whether convention or intention seems paramount, success is not guaranteed. The person to whom the conventionalized greeting "Hi!" is addressed might not speak English, but some other language in which the uttered syllable means "Go away!," or the guest may not have brought chocolates at all, but candied fruit, in which cases these attempts to extend a greeting and give a compliment are likely to fail.
REVIEW
On the other hand, failure, even in the face of contextual adversity, is also not guaranteed. Thus, one may succeed in greeting a foreigner who understands nothing of what is being said by making it clear through gesture and tone of voice that that is the intent. Much of speech act theory is therefore devoted to striking the proper balance between convention and intention.
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Real-life acts of speech usually involve interpersonal relations of some kind: A speaker does something with respect to an audience by saying certain words to that audience. Thus, it would seem that ethnographic studies of such relationships and the study of discourse should be central to speech act theory, but in fact, they are not. Such studies have been carried out rather independently of the concerns of those philosophers and linguists who have devoted their attention to speech acts. This is perhaps not a good thing, as Croft (1994) has argued, but since it is the case, anthropological and discourse-based approaches to speech acts will not be covered in this handbook entry.
DISCUSSION
The speech act theory considers language as a sort of action rather than a medium to convey and express. The contemporary Speech act theory developed by J. L. Austin a British philosopher of languages; he introduced this theory in 1975 in his well-known book of 'How do things with words'. Later John Searle brought the aspects of theory into much higher dimensions. This theory is often used in the field of philosophy of languages. Austin is the one who came up with the findings that people not only uses that language to assert things but also to do things. And people who followed him went to greater depths based on this point.
All sort of linguist communication is comprised of linguistic actions. Previously it was conceived that the very basic unit of communication is words, Symbols, sentences or some kind of token of all of these, but it was speech act theory which suggested that production or issuances if words, symbols are the basic units of communication. This issuance happens during the process of performance of speech act. The meaning of these basic units was considered as the building blocks of mutual understanding between the people intend to communicate.
"A theory of language is a theory of action"- Greig E. Henderson and Christopher Brown. The theory emphasis that the utterances have a different or specific meaning to its user and listener other than its meaning according to the language. The theory further identifies that there are two kinds of utterances, they are called constative and performative utterances. In his book of 'How do things with words' Austin clearly talks about the disparities between the constative and performative utterances.
A constative utterance is something which describes or denotes the situation, in relation with the fact of true or false.
Example: The teacher asked Olivia whether she had stolen the candy. Olivia replies "mmmmmm". Here the utterances of Olivia describes the event in pact of answering her teacher whether the situation was true or false.
The performative utterances is something which do not describes anything at all. The utterances in the sentences or in the part of sentences are normally considered as having a meaning of its own. The feelings, attitudes, emotions and thoughts of the person performing linguistic act are much of a principal unit here.
Example: Bane and Sarah have been dating for the past four years. One fine evening Bane took Sarah to the most expensive restaurant in town. And he ordered the most expensive wine available in the restaurant. Then he moved closer to her and asked her that "will you marry me?". Sarah burst with contentment and replied "I will". Here the "I will" of Sarah express her feelings, attitudes and emotional towards the context. This utterance have its specific meaning only in relation to it specific context.
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At the beginning of the twentieth century, close attention was paid to the study of the study of issues related to the formation of speech, which implies the reproduction of language units for the purpose of communication. Thus, speech was considered as an individual word creation with a certain communicative and stylistic orientation, which is associated with various areas of human activity (scientific, business, every day, poetic, etc.).
The speech act is the minimum unit of speech activity. At present, linguists cannot give one definition that can be called a single one. So, for example, in the Dictionary of Linguistic Terms Akhmanova O.S. from several definitions, two main ones can be distinguished that a speech act is the same as speech (speaking) - 1) The activity of a speaker who uses language to interact with other members of a given language community; the use of various means of language to convey complex content, including, in addition to the actual information, an appeal (call, appeal) to the listener, prompting him to act; 2) One or another type of communication with the help of language, determined in its properties by the circumstances and purpose of communication
According to V.B. Gudkova "a speech act is a unity of the social (objective) and individual (subjective) and contains a whole complex of facts of a linguistic and extralinguistic nature".
In turn, in the dictionary-reference book of linguistic terms D.E. Rosenthal M. A. Telenkova who is noted that a speech act is a purposeful speech action performed in accordance with the principles and rules of speech behavior adopted in a given society; An alternative definition sounds like: a unit of normative socio-speech behavior, considered within the framework of a pragmatic situation. The main features of a speech act are: intentionality (intentionality), purposefulness and conventionality.
N.D. Arutyunova gives the following definition of a speech act: "a speech act is an elementary (minimum) link of linguistic communication, which is the product of the actualization of a sentence in a specific situation of communication and aimed at achieving a certain illocutionary goal".
L.S. Gurevich in his work "Speech act within the framework of the theory of speech activity" considers this concept as "a complex formation in linguistic, psychological terms, in which interlocutive forces are involved, where the cue-stimulus and cue-reaction actualize the meaningful, constructive and situational community, and where the pragmatic component is a dialogic unity".
O.I. Moskalskaya uses an illocutionary act in the meaning of an act that is part of an extralinguistic context and has the goal of a certain impact on the addressee of speech.
RESULTS
We find a different interpretation of the speech act in R.I. Karchevsky. He understands a speech act as "the minimum communicative unit of the text level, performed in accordance with the principles and rules of speech behavior adopted in a given society, acting as a purposeful action of the speaker to achieve mutual understanding between the participants in communication". While, Zherebilo T.V. considers RA a physical process, a connection between the speaker and the listener, that is, the addresser and the addressee, which includes three components: speaking (writing), speech perception, understanding. RA, as a dialogue, in turn, involves the establishment of a connection between the interlocutors.
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Thus, we see that the point of view on the definition of the speech act of each of the above linguists is objective and correct. The researchers, giving an explanation of this concept, took into account the linguistic and extralinguistic factors of constructing a speech act. The difference in views is due to the fact that linguists analyze the speech act from different positions, focusing their attention to a greater extent either on the formal side of the speech act or on the content. Investigating a speech act from the point of view of its structure, one can give the following definition of this concept: the speaker's statement, formulated with the help of various types of sentences (impelling, declarative, interrogative), the lexical content and syntactic structure of which depends on the speaker's intentions, the communicative context and the sphere of communication. From the content side, a speech act is an action of the addresser in relation to the addressee, carried out in a certain situation of communication and aimed at realizing a certain intention of the speaker. The phrase "theory of speech acts" is used in a broad and narrow sense. In the first case, it denotes any set of ideas aimed at explaining speech activity, and is synonymous with the "theory of speech activity." In the second case, it acts as the name of one specific theory (the English term is speech act theory, theory of speech acts), which, as the system of publications indicates, has become widespread abroad and attracted the attention of Soviet scientists who develop the problems of speech communication both in theoretical , as well as in the applied aspect.
The core of the theory of speech acts are the ideas presented by the English logician J. Austin in a course of lectures given at Harvard University in 1955 and published in 1962 under the title "Word as Action". Subsequently, these ideas were developed by the American logician J. Searle in the monograph "Speech Acts" and a number of articles. The well-known English logician P. F. Strawson also took part in the discussion of Austin's ideas. The works of Austin, Strawson and Ser-la, included in this collection, fully reflect the range of problems and methods for their solution, which can be called the standard theory of speech acts, in contrast to its various modifications that have appeared recently.
The next important concept of the theory of speech acts is the concept of intention (intention) of the speaker. So, P. Grice defined in the term of intention the concept of the subjective meaning of the statement, or "the meaning of the speaker". According to P. Grice, "the subjective meaning of a statement is the intention of the speaker to obtain a certain result with its help, thanks to the awareness of the listener of this intention".
L.M. Mikhailova under the intention understands the communicative orientation of the statement. She believes that the concept of "intention" includes both functionally clearly expressed illocutions of a question, order, request, command, suggestion, wish, and communication of information, as well as the transmission of an emotional state.
According to N.A.Booth, in relation to speech actions, we can talk about language conventions that operate at the level of a locutionary act and determine the locutionary or linguistic meaning of an utterance.
The theory of speech acts is characterized by the concept of "attitude". THOSE. Dobrova writes that in the works of Sidorkov and Babenko, the terms "attitude" and "speech attitude" are used as synonyms for an illocutionary act. Comenius understands this term more broadly, as the motivation of the statement, determined by the purpose of the impact and obtaining the desired result from it. G.F. Musaeva considers this term within the framework of text theory, where it
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acquires the meaning of the direction of the text, its role in communication from the point of view of the addressee.
But T.E. Dobrova uses this term in the understanding of V.V. Bogdanov, who by "installation" means what is in the center of the speaker's attention.
For the successful implementation of a communicative attitude, it is important to know such a concept as a "communicative environment", which, according to O.Yu. Tsvetkov, is characterized by a sequence of functional types of statements, each of which has its own intention, thereby contributing to the implementation of the communicative attitude.
They convincingly prove that, consciously refraining from solving the main questions of philosophy, declaring the classical problems of philosophy "metaphysics", neopositivism in general and linguistic philosophy in particular did not and could not give a solution to the urgent philosophical and methodological problems of modern science. Indeed, in the context of philosophical and methodological problems, J. Austin's article "Three Ways to Spill Ink", dedicated to distinguishing between the meanings of the words intentionally, deliberately, and on purpose, looks unfinished. However, one has only to imagine that the author of this article is a lexicologist, as the problem solved in it immediately acquires scientific significance. Therefore, when evaluating studies carried out in line with linguistic philosophy, Marxist philosophers make a clear distinction between their philosophical-ideological content or philosophical implications and their specifically linguistic content. If the first is recognized as unconditionally theoretically untenable and ideologically harmful, then the second is seen as positive aspects associated with the solution of a number of linguistic problems proper. "Linguistic philosophy contains some positive results in the analysis of the logical structure of ordinary language and the study of its semantic possibilities." TRA refers to that part of linguistic philosophy that is "an explicit entry into the realm of linguistics as such." To give an objective assessment of the results of this output, to evaluate the working possibilities of TPA in the light of the problems of theoretical and applied linguistics is one of the urgent tasks of linguistics, the solution of which is greatly facilitated by the publication of works on TPA in this collection.
Further Austin divides his linguistic act into three different categories. They are,
1. Locutionary act - This is the act of saying something. It has a meaning and it creates an understandable utterly to convey or express
2. Illocutionary act - It is performed as an act of saying something or as an act of opposed to saying something. The illocutionary utterance has a certain force of it. It well wellversed with certain tones, attitudes, feelings, or emotions. There will be an intention of the speaker or others in illocutionary utterance. It is often used as a tone of warning in day today life.
3. Perlocutionary act - It normally creates a sense of consequential effects on the audiences. The effects may be in the form of thoughts, imaginations, feelings or emotions. The effect upon the addressee is the main charactership of perlocutionary utterances
CONCLUSION
The locutionary act describes a dangerous situation, the illocutionary act acts as a force of the warning and perlocutionary acts frighten the addressee. Austin himself admits that these three components of utterances are not altogether separable. "We must consider the total situation in which the utterance is issued- the total speech act - if we are to see the parallel between statements and performative utterance, and how each can go wrong. Perhaps indeed there is no great distinction between statements and performative utterances." Austin Searle
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suggested that the basic unit of linguistic communication is speech act. It can be a word, a phrase, a sentence or a sound, it should fulfil the task of expressing the intention of the user. Understanding the user's intention can lead to complete understanding of the speech act.
The context of speech act is in the context of situation than explanation. The speech act borrows it ideas from structuralism. The indirect speech act of John Searle was developed based on Austin's speech act.
REFERENCES
1. Austin, J.L. "How to Do Things With Words." 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975.
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9. П. Грайс, 1989:217
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