Speech acts refer to any action involving the use of words, including statements, illocutionary acts that accomplish something, and perlocutionary acts that have an effect. They can be classified into utterances, illocutionary acts, and perlocutionary acts, and can be prepositional acts. Aristotle believed only factual statements mattered, but Thomas Reid recognized the importance of theoretical elements. However, performing speech acts in a foreign language can pose challenges due to idiomatic expressions and cultural differences.
A speech act is a linguistic and philosophical term that refers to any action that involves the utterance of words. There are no firm grammatical rules for a speech act; everything from complete sentences to single words is included. They can include statements, speeches that accomplish something, and words that have some kind of effect. A speech act can be divided into one of several categories: utterances, illocutionary acts, and perlocutionary acts. All three can be prepositional acts if they refer to the same subject.
An act of expression simply refers to uttering any word. An illocutionary act accomplishes something with the act of speaking, such as making a vow, threat, or command. This contrasts with a perlocutionary act, which achieves a voluntary or involuntary effect with the act of speaking, such as persuading or insulting. Verbal, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts could also be prepositional acts if they refer to the same theme or subject, e.g. “You are bringing flour”, “Bring me flour!” and “If you bring me flour, I’ll make a cake”.
In linguistics, researchers classify speech acts into these categories based on their effect on the environment. The terms illocutionary acts and perlocutionary acts were first used by John L. Austin, who published an influential book in linguistics, How to Do Things with Words, in the 1860s. John R. Searle later combined the ideas of Austin and of other researchers in the field into a larger theory. He also introduced the concept of a prepositional act.
Before these modern researchers, human interest in speech acts dates back to Aristotle. In his time, the Greek philosopher believed only in the importance of those statements that deal with truth or facts. He didn’t believe that other speech acts, such as a question or a command, mattered.
This changed in the 18th century with the Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid. He understood that language is composed not only of factual statements, but also of theoretical elements such as promises, commands or warnings. Reid also believed that some linguistic structures were common to all languages and actually arose from the universal way of thinking of human minds.
Despite Reid’s theory that all humans think alike, it has since been shown that problems can arise when individuals attempt to perform speech acts in a foreign language. Some speech acts may involve idiomatic expressions different from those of the native language. Different social conventions between different cultures may also require different speech acts in some situations.
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