By Mariángeles Salazar

Speech Act is a functional unit in communication. (Austin’s theory 1962)

Furthermore, to communicate is to express a certain attitude, and the type of speech act being performed corresponds to the type of attitude being expressed. (Bach 1994)

As an act of communication, a speech act succeeds if the audience identifies, in accordance with the speaker’s intention, the attitude being expressed.

Some speech acts, are not primarily acts of communication but of affecting institutional states of affairs. (Bach 1994)

1. Locutionary: Meaning, namely, the literal meaning of the utterance.

2. Illocutionary: Is related to the social function that the utterance or the written text has.

3. Perlocutionary: Is the result or effect that is produced by the utterance in the given context.

Suppose that a bartender utters the words: “The bar will be

closed in 5 min”. › 1. Locutionary: Saying that the bar

will be closed in 5 min.

› 2. Illocutionary: The act of informing the customers of the bar’s imminent closing and perhaps also the act of urging them to order a last drink.

› 3. Perlocutionary: The bartender intends to be performing this act by causing the customers to believe the bar is about to close, and of getting them to want and to order one last drink.

Final orders!

Act of saying

Effect

Function: Info-persuasion

Speech

Act

According to Olshtain and Cohen (1983), speech act sets are set of strategies used by native speakers of the target language uttered in the appropriate context.

It is also paramount to notice that as stated by SLA researchers, the lack or even partial mastery of speech act sets may hinder breakdowns in communication.

Skills at selecting speech act strategies which are appropriate given…

SocioculturalAbilities

Sociolinguistic

Ability

Research Methods to investigate speech acts

Naturally occurring data Role Play

Discourse Completion

Verbal Report Interviews

1. Data are spontaneous

2. Reflects what speaker’s say

3. Realia4. Rich pragmatic

structures

1. Allow to test hypothesis.

2. Effective task for gathering

data.3. Positive:

Refusals & semantic formulas

1. Artificial.2. If recorded,

allow to have a

retrospective self-

observation of speech

1. Relative new.

2. Must be recorded.

3. Structured questions.

Apologies

1. By Holmes (1989)2. Natural occurring.3. Gender differences

Refusals

1. By Beebe and Cumming (1985)

2. Discourse completion task.

3. Gather lots of information but did not elicit actual wording (strategies- length of responses-etc)

Rejections

1. By Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford (1992)2. Natural occurring and discourse

completion3. EFL learners use more semantic

formulas (explanations, alternatives, etc)

To date, few studies were conducted among nonnative speakers.

Ellis (1992) conducted two studies in the area. One with elementary

school children and, the second with college students.

› Ellis (1992) looked at the extent to which communication in an ESL

classroom in London resulted in the acquisition of requests by a 10-

yaer-old Portuguese speaker and an 11-year-old Punjabi speaker.

› Results:

Both learners failed to develop a full range of request types and

also lacked a broad linguistic repertoire for performing the types

of requests that they were able to acquire.

According to Cohen-Olshtain and Rosenstein (1986) speech acts reflect, for most part, routinized language behavior helps learning in the sense that much of what is said is predictable. However, depending on the sociocultural context, there are a variety of possible language forms to achieve certain semantic formulas such as: apologies, refusals, etc.

The role of the teacher-researcher can be to obtain some information on how native speakers perform certain important speech acts, such as requesting, complaining, etc.

Diagnostic assessments may help teachers to determine the student’s level of awareness of speech acts in general.

Model dialogues are useful for students in order to practice real situation regardless the topic.

The evaluation of a situation is a useful technique to

further reinforce the learner’s awareness of the

factors affecting the choice of semantic formula.

Role play activities are suitable for practice as well.

Feedback and discussion are useful so as to

understand the perception and expectations of the

students.