Definitions of Speech Acts (Essay Sample)

Speech Act
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Introduction
In a communication or a speech, there is usually a speaker and the listener. In order for the speaker to communicate with the hearer, utterances are used. However, utterances alone are not sufficient to deliver a message to the audience. Speech act is the art that is employed in the deliverance of the speech to the audience. These include aspects like asking questions, warnings, statements, reports, greetings and the overall impact is either an effective communication or a boring one. Speech acts are the basic units of communication as they enables the listener to grasp the intended message. (Searle, n.d.). Speech act focuses on giving emphasis on the cultural differences and similarities between cultures. Studies have shown that understanding grammar alone is not sufficient for effective communication in second language.
Understanding the speech acts and as well making use of them in communication is the most challenging aspect in a second language competence. Absence of socio-cultural while communicating across various cultures can result to misunderstanding. Thus, in order to produce an appropriate speech and relay the intended meaning, one needs to understand the speech acts in their language and as well in the other language. Various studies have been carried out in order to underpin the importance of speech act in communicating in a second language.
Definitions of Speech Acts
Speech act is defined as "a system of signs that expresses ideas" (Saussure, 1959 p.16). This later came to be known as semiology. Speech act is the lowest unit of function in the human communication. Compared to morpheme in words, in communication speech acts. Speech act smoothens the conversation by enabling the listener to derive the meaning from a statement. In most cases for a language, the literal meaning of a sentence is not usually the intended message. For example, a statement like "I am hungry." There is the prepositional meaning which is the literal meaning. There are also the illocutionary meanings which is the social and the context meaning. The statement may be a request for food, or a statement to hasten a function and so on. Then there is also the elocutionary meaning which is the resulting act. Like someone bringing in food in response to the statement. In short, speech act is the function that is used by the speaker to deliver the intended message and the hearer uses it to infer the purposed meaning (Jaworowaska, 2001). The definition cannot be exhaustive as language covers various other aspects and not just the speech act. Austin in his work in 1975 first introduced the concept of speech act. He referred to them as performance utterances which he described as "issuing of the utterance in the performing of an action" (Austin, 1975 p. 6). The definition has evolved to capture the cultural aspect of speech act.
According to Searle (1969), speech act is the basic language unit used to express a certain meaning. Also, a speech act according to him is an utterance that expresses an intention. Therefore, a speech act can take any form, that is, a phrase, a sentence, or even a word as long as the intention is relayed to the listener through the utterance (Stefanowitsch, 2003). The main deduction from the description is that a speech act not only designates something but it is an action on its own right as is reveals and stresses the intention of the act (Kibble, 2006). Thus, this means that the essence of a speech act is to capture the intention in an effort to grasp the meaning. It is therefore the contention of Searle (1969) that for an audience to understand the meaning of a speech-act, the intention should relay to them (Harnish, 2005). Consequently, the deduction that for a speech-act to reveal its meaning, the intention must be very clear otherwise the speech act would not relay its intended information (Ward, 2002).
2.1.2. Types of Speech Acts
Currently, the most common inferences that speech acts drive to be those of greetings, inviting, ordering, and warning, congratulating, and promising. The speech acts according to Joanna are classified in to five categories as follow.
* Representativ...