Searle’s Speech Act Theory

This article is part 6 of the collection of articles on discursive cultural psychology. Go to the collection table of contents to read other articles. -- Previous -- Next --

Winch (1958) conducted his discussion from Wittgenstein’s analysis of rule-governed word use and applied the framework to analyze Weber’s meaningful behavior in general. Here we shall take a route back from action that has been discussed above to language use in general. The unit of analysis we shall use however is not words; instead sentential speech and sequence of utterance will be analyzed as a form of action.

Speech as Action

Searle (1969) has pointed out that a theory of language is part of a theory of action since just like action in general, speaking a language is a form of intentional, rule-governed behavior. As action should be distinguished from mere movements or behaviors, so should speaking a language be differentiate from mere utterance or sound.

In supporting his hypothesis, Searle (1971) pointed out the fact that when one takes a noise or a mark on paper to be an instance of communication, as a message, one of the things that is involved in his so taking that noise or mark is that he should regard it as having been produced by a being with certain intentions. He cannot just regard it as a natural phenomenon like a stone or water fall.

The natural feature of a noise or a mark that is produced does not constitute its meaning. Rather, the intentions that are expressed in accord with certain rules constitute the noise or the mark as a message. This argument makes it quite clear that speech is a kind of intentional, rule-governed action.

Any speech such as commanding, criticizing, requesting, etc. have at least three distinct kinds of acts that must be performed simultaneously: performing utterance acts as in uttering words; performing propositional acts as in referring and predicating; and performing illocutionary acts as in commanding, promising, questioning etc.

In performing speech, for example, (1) ”Sam smokes habitually.” and (2) ”Does Sam smoke habitually?” one, first of all, utters words by producing sounds through his mouth (utterance act). Secondly, he refers to the fact that Sam smokes habitually (propositional act). Thirdly, the illocutionary acts in these two sentences are different. In the first sentence, one is asserting that; whereas in the second one is questioning whether Sam smoke habitually.

According to Searle’s (1979) taxonomy, there are five basic categories of illocutionary act: assertives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations. These categories can be classified based on twelve dimensions, the three most important of which are (1) the point or the purpose of the act; (2) the ”direction of fit” between words and the world; and (3) the expressed psychological state.

 

Table 6.1 Searle’s (1979, p.12-20) Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts

	Purpose	Direction of fit	Psychological state	Paradigm case
Assertives	To commit the speakers to the truth of the expressed propositions (p)	Word-to-worlds	Belief that p	Suggesting that p; Insisting that p; Hypothesizing that p
Directives	To attempt to get the addressee to do something (p)	World-to-words	Want/ wish/ desire	Ask (question); order; request; invite to p
Commissives	To commit the speaker to some future course of action (p)	World-to-words	Intention	Promise to p
Expressives	To express the psychological state of the speaker	No direction of fit	Specified in propositional content	Thank; congratulate; apologize; condole
Declarations	To bring a state of affairs (specified in p) into existence	word to world and world to word	0	‘You are fired’; ‘I appoint you chairman’

Source: Searle (1979, p.12-20)

The first and the most important dimension based on which illocutionary acts are classified is the purpose or the point of illocutionary force. Illocutionary point becomes the main element of illocutionary acts. The second dimension is direction of fit. This is taken to mean the part of an illocutionary point that consists of the attempts to get either words to match world or world to match words.

Thus, assertives are an attempt to match the word to the world. If an assertive does not match the case which it asserts, it is wrong. In directives and commissives, the direction of fit is the reverse. They are attempts to get the world to match the word. Thus, if one says ‘close the door’ (directive) and his interlocutor does not follow the order, the speech act cannot be wrong, but unsatisfied, since the world does not match the words. The third dimension is the corresponding psychological state that is represented by illocutionary acts.

Meaning

The meaning of speech act resembles very much to Wittgenstein’s word meaning and Weber’s meaningful behavior. It is rule-governed. Here we shall describe what is involved when a speech act has meaning. First of all, as has been pointed out in Searle’s taxonomy, the most important element of an illocutionary act is the illocutionary point. When a speaker says, ‘Close the window, please!’, what he means is to get his addressee to close the window (directive). This indicates, what a speech act means refers to its intention or purpose.

An illocutionary act is said successful only if the addressee recognizes the speaker’s intention by uttering the words. This account of meaning as intention corresponds to Grice’s (1957). To say that A meant something by x is to say that ”A intended the utterance of x to produce some effect in an audience by means of the recognition of this intention.” This account is useful for our purpose here since it relates meaning and intention. In speaking a language, one attempts to communicate things to the hearer, by means of getting them to recognize his intention to communicate just those things.

This account, however, fails to give an account of the relation between the utterance of speech act and its intention. In accord with Grice’s definition of meaning, the intention of the speaker is the only condition that constitutes the meaning of speech act. Searle (1969) has criticized this account. Using the example above, say, the speaker says ‘Close the window, please!’ This must mean that he gets his addressee, but cannot mean that he commits himself  to close the window. The relation between the utterance act, and speaker’s intention cannot be just arbitrary. He cannot say ‘Close the window!’ and mean to commit himself to close the window, however consistent he does this.

This would lead us back again to the notion of constitutive rule, and thus the second element of speech act meaning. The relation between speech act and speaker’s intention is governed through constitutive rules. Why the utterance ‘Close the window’ is taken to mean to get the hearer to close the window, is because it is constituted by rules or conventions that are socially constructed. Applying the constitutive rule formula above, the rule would say: the utterance of ‘Close the window’ counts as ‘to get the hearer to close the window’ in the context C.

Pitfalls of Searle’s Speech Act Theory

The significance of Searle’s speech act theory lies in its assertion that speech is a kind of action. Thus in principle we may describe conversation as sequence of action or interaction and as negotiation of constitutive rules that constitute their meaning, instead of just information exchange. This theory may even also give new insights when applied to conceptualize action in general. It however is still inadequate for explicating how conversation as sequence of action can be meaningful. Consider now an example from a German work-group conversation in Transcript 6.1 below.

Transcript 6.1 Speech acts sequence in work-group discussion

Utt	Spk	Original utterances	English Translation
6.1.1	B	Ich habe da noch so eine generelle Frage.	I still have one general question
6.1.2		Geht’s nur um Produktion fürs Inland, oder geht’s auch um Export?	Is it about production only for local market, or also for export?
6.1.3	L	Im Moment geht das nur um Inlandprodukte..	Right now, only for local market
6.1.4		Aber das reicht	But that would be enough
6.1.5	C	Ja, genau.	Yes, exactly
6.1.6		Wir müssen uns erst mal hochbringen.	We must first of all bring ourselves higher

B’s utterance (1.2) is a question addressed to L. In term of Searle’s taxonomy this utterance would be classified as directives, that is, to get L (the addressee) to perform an assertion concerning the propositional content of the question. To this question L responds properly (in accord with speech act theory) by performing an assertion (1.3) that may be specified as an answer.

The problem is how are we to conceive utterance 1.4-1.6 as meaningful? According to Grice’s (1991) principles of cooperative conversation, one of which is relevance, any utterance in a conversation must be meaningful in a sense that an utterance must be relevant to other utterances in the sequence. L’s utterance in 1.4 must be a relevant respond to B’s utterance. This however cannot be conceived in question-answer framework. Utterance 1.4 is not an answer to B’s question (1.2).

Searle (1979) might propose that L’s utterance (1.4) responds not to the literal meaning of B’s question, but to its illiteral meaning. That is, B’s question may be conceived as an indirect speech. To explicate this, he provides an example as follows:

Student X: Let’s go to the movies tonight

Student Y: I have to study for an exam

In this example, X’s utterance constitutes a proposal in virtue of its literal meaning, to which a conventional response would be either to accept or to reject the proposal. Y’s utterance, in virtue of its literal meaning, is neither an acceptance nor a rejection. It is a statement about Y. The question is how are we to conceive Y’s utterance as a relevant or meaningful response to X’s proposal.

To answer this, Searle proposes that Y performs two illocutionary acts: primary and secondary. The primary illocutionary act, that is, to reject X’s proposal, is undertaken by way of uttering the secondary illocutionary act, which is simply a statement about Y. In other words, secondary illocutionary act is direct, the meaning of which is literal; and the primary is indirect, the meaning of which is not literal.

One may apply this indirect speech act framework to the conversation in Transcript 1 above. B, by uttering question in 1.2, may be said to perform both primary and secondary illocutionary acts. L’s and C’s utterances then may be said responding to B’s primary illocutionary act. The secondary one is easy to be specified as a question. The problem, again, is how are we to specify B’s primary illocutionary act, such that L’s and C’s utterances may be relevant responses to it.

Moreover it is more likely that B’s utterance is not meant to be an indirect speech act since, unlike student Y’s assertion in Searle’s example, B’s question is meant as a question not indirectly. It is more likely the case that, instead of B performing an indirect speech act, C and L interpret B’s question more than just ‘to get L to perform an assertion.’ Thus on the side of the hearer, one may speak of primary and secondary interpretation of a speech act.

In order to give a more coherent account of a conversation, one would need a framework. The problem of how a series of actions or speech acts may form meaningful sequence, cannot be dealt with by the theoretical accounts so far discussed. Boesch (1991) and Leontiev (1981) may speak of chains of action and goal. However, they do not, so far, provide an account of how meaningful chains may be formed and distinguished from any meaningless, random chains. This is the reason why we need to discuss on discourse. 

 -- Previous -- Next --