Practical Class 4

“Speech acts”

Plan:

- the essense of speech acts;

- history of speech act theory;

- indirect speech acts;

- illocutionary acts;

- speech acts in computer science.

Key words:

Speech act, illocutionary act, agent language, perlocutionary act, indirect speech act.

Objectives:

The main objective is to discover the main three types of speech acts, their characteristics as well as an insight into speech act theory history. It will be important to understand the difficulties connected with indirect speech acts and their analysis. This lecture will also look at the use of speech act theory in the creation of artificial computer languages.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Speech acts”

The essence of speech acts

The speech act is a concept in linguistics and the philosophy of language. It can be described as " in saying something, we do something", such as when a minister says, " I now pronounce you husband and wife", or an action performed by means of language, such as describing something (" It is snowing"), asking a question (" Is it snowing? "), making a request or giving an order (" Could you pass the salt? ", " Drop your weapon or I'll shoot you! "), or making a promise (" I promise I'll give it back"). Other common examples of speech acts include greeting, apologizing or insulting.

Examples:

" watch out, the ground is slippery" → warning

" I will try my best to be at home for dinner" → promising

" Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? " → requesting

" Can you race with me to that building over there? " → challenging

TASK: can describing something be considered an action as well as a speech act?

History of speech act theory

For much of the history of linguistics and the philosophy of language, language was viewed primarily as a way of making factual assertions, and the other uses of language tended to be ignored. The acclaimed work of J. L. Austin led philosophers to pay more attention to the way in which language is used in everyday activities. His student John Searle further developed this approach. Some earlier treatments may be found in the works of some church fathers and scholastic philosophers, in the context of sacramental theology, as well as Thomas Reid, and C. S. Peirce. Adolf Reinach has been credited with a fairly comprehensive account of social acts as performative utterances dating to 1913, long before Austin and Searle. His work had little influence, however, perhaps due to his untimely death.

Austin distinguishes between illocutionary and perlocutionary speech acts. An interesting type of illocutionary speech act is that of performatives, which are expressions such as " I nominate John to be President", " I sentence you to ten years imprisonment", or " I promise to pay you back." In these expressions, the action that the sentence describes (nominating, sentencing, promising) is performed by the sentence itself; the speech is the act it effects (unlike in so-called 'constantives' that only carry a piece of information). In contrast, perlocutionary speech acts cause actions that are not the same as the speech.

The study of speech acts forms part of pragmatics, an area of linguistics.

In philosophy, especially in ethics and philosophy of law, speech act theory is related to the study of norms.

TASK:

1. What was the primary view of language considered by linguists?

2. What was the purpose of introduction of ‘constantives’?

Indirect speech acts

Speech acts are commonly accepted as being useful methods of accomplishing certain tasks. When one wants to commit to something he uses speech; likewise, when one wants to commemorate an event he uses speech. Among other things, speech acts are also used to ask others to accomplish certain tasks and to respond to proposals. Indirect speech acts are commonly used to reject proposals and to make requests. For example a speaker asks, " Would you like to meet me for coffee? " and another replies, " I have class." The second speaker used an indirect speech act to reject the proposal. This is indirect because the literal meaning of " I have class" does not entail any sort of rejection. This poses a problem for linguists because it is confusing to see (using a strict approach) how the person who made the proposal is able to understand that his proposal was rejected. Searle suggests that we are able to derive meaning out of indirect speech acts by means of a cooperative process out of which we are able to derive multiple illocutions; however, the process he proposes does not seem to accurately solve the problem. Sociolinguistics has studied the social dimensions of conversations. This discipline considers the various contexts in which speech acts occur.

TASK:

1. What are indirect speech acts commonly used for?

2. Why do indirect speech acts cause a problem sometimes?

Illocutionary acts

The concept of an illocutionary act is central to Searle's understanding of speech acts. An illocutionary act is the expression of a proposition with the purpose of doing something else. This is a bit more complex than a simple locutionary act (such as " It is raining") because an illocutionary force is attached to the utterance that indicates how the expression should be taken. Examples of illocutionary acts are: " I will return this book to you next week" and " Please hand me that pencil." In the first example the illocutionary act has the force of a promise to return a book. The second example is an illocutionary act with a force of the form I request that in which the speaker is soliciting a reaction.

In most instances of language, the speaker's meaning and the literal meaning of an utterance are identical. For example if a speaker says: " I will return this book to you next week" or " When will you need this book returned? " the speaker's intention and the literal meaning are the same. In either example, a third person that happens to overhear this portion of a conversation and has no prior experience in the conversation would be able to understand the correct meaning of the utterances. However, there are some cases in which the speaker’s meaning of an utterance is different from the literal meaning of an utterance. Consider this situation:

Speaker (S) asks hearer (H), " Would you mind turning down the volume on your radio? " and H responds by lowering the volume.

Both S and H spoke and behaved in a way that we would expect, S performed the perlocutionary act of getting H to turn down the volume. However, this case is problematic for linguists because the speakers meaning differs from the literal meaning. The literal meaning of the question is that S is soliciting a verbal response of yes or no from H (and perhaps followed by an explanation). However, S intended H to understand the question as a command to turn down the volume and H understood the question as S intended it. This exchange, while not uncommon, is troubling because one questions how it is possible for a speaker to say something and mean something different from the meaning of the utterance and for the hearer to understand both meanings. Utterances of this nature are troubling for linguists and the problems caused by such statements are the concern of Searle in his article Indirect Speech Acts. Further examples of indirect speech acts include:

• " Can you hand me that pencil? "
• " I hope you will arrive on time."
• " Would you remove your hat? "
• " Do you want me to drop that off for you? "
• " It might help if you turn on the lights."
• " I might ask you to observe silence in the library."

Although many indirect speech acts are softened or polite commands, indirect speech acts can also include apologies, assertions, congratulations, promises, and thanks.

TASK:

1. Why do linguists find such examples as the one about the music volume problematic?

Speech acts in computer science

Speech act theory has been influential in computer science since the early 1980s, particularly in the design of artificial languages for communication between software entities (" agents" or " softbots"). The theory was used, for example, to give a semantics to Agent Communication Language (ACL), an agent language developed by the standards body Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA). This semantics built on the work of Phil Cohen, Hector Levesque and David Sadek, among others. The FIPA ACL speech act semantics, expressed semi-formally using epistemic modal logic, defines utterances in ACL in terms of the certain beliefs, uncertain beliefs, desires and intentions of the speaker. In principle, therefore, it enables agents using FIPA ACL to be sure that other agents will understand the meaning of utterances in the same way as the speaker. However, the FIPA ACL language syntax and semantics, although now widely used in agent systems, have been heavily criticized on theoretical and practical grounds.

TASK:

1. How is speech act theory used in the creation of software?
2. What aspect of semantics is paid special attention to in computer science?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Self-check questions:

1. What is the speech act theory related to in ethics and philosophy of law?

2. How are listeners able to derive meaning from indirect speech acts?

3. Are congratulations considered to be speech acts? Prove why.

Inferences:

The lecture has introduced three types of speech acts with numerous examples. As we have observed the speech theory has become of interest for the IT specialists who find it useful in constructing the artificial language of communication between computers.

“Illocutionary acts”

Plan:

- various approaches to illocutionary acts;

- illocutionary force;

- illocutionary force indicators;

- illocutionary negations.

Key words:

Illocutionary acts, locutionary acts, perlocutionary acts, force, propositional negation.

Objectives:

The main objective of this lecture is to find out the elementary type of speech acts are – illocutionary acts. The lecture describes various approaches to interpreting what the essence of illocutionary acts is. You are going to learn the differences between illocutionary, locutionary and perlocutionary acts. At the end of the lecture I will mention how negations can change the type of an act a particular utterance is.

Recommendations:

In looking at other interpretations of what an illocutionary act is, it is preferable to accept the definition and explanation given by J.L. Austin.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Various approaches to illocutionary acts