Flashcards on Speech Act Theory and Its Classifications
Speech Act Theory and Its Classifications: A Student Guide
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Speech Acts
18 cards
Card 1
Question: What is a speech act (definition)?
Answer: An action performed via utterances; people do things through language (e.g., apologizing, complaining, instructing) and expect their communicative int
Card 2
Question: What are the three related acts performed when producing an utterance?
Answer: Locutionary act (the basic act of producing a meaningful expression), illocutionary act (the speaker’s intended force, e.g., a request), and perlocuti
Card 3
Question: What is a locutionary act? Give an example.
Answer: The basic act of utterance or producing a meaningful linguistic expression. Example: “I am hungry.”
Card 4
Question: What is an illocutionary act? Give an example.
Answer: The act’s intended meaning or force (what the speaker does in saying something). Example: “Please give me some food” functions as a request.
Card 5
Question: What is a perlocutionary act? Give an example.
Answer: The effect the utterance has on the addressee; what the hearer does in response. Example: As a result of “Please give me some food,” the hearer prepar
Card 6
Question: How does context influence the meaning of an utterance?
Answer: Context (situation, cultural and social relationships, discourse unity) helps interpreters infer speakers’ intentions, making utterance meaning cleare
Card 7
Question: Provide an example showing how context changes utterance interpretation.
Answer: In a room with an open window, saying “It’s really cold in here” can be interpreted as a request for someone near the window to close it.
Card 8
Question: How do social and contextual factors help interpret unstated intentions?
Answer: Contextual and social information allow interactants to infer each other’s intentions even when they are not explicitly stated, by providing cues abou
Card 9
Question: Which verbs are examples of performative verbs that directly represent speech acts?
Answer: Apologize, complaint, request, promise (these verbs directly represent actions performed through language).
Card 10
Question: What are Austin’s five types (classifications) of speech acts?
Answer: Representatives, Directives, Expressives, Declarations, and (implicitly from the content) Perlocutionary/locutionary/illocutionary distinctions — but