speech act theory

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Speech act theory explicitly conceptualizes linguistic meaning as use ;what we mean with an utterance is the use to which the utterance is put .People do things with their words . they order , promise . apologize and criticize and so on . In other words , to use language is to perform an action . An action view of language has had a relatively short history , as language was almost always viewed from the dimension of factual assertion , otherwise a sentence becomes meaningless . As a reaction to this view of language a strain of thought concerned with the analysis of the ordinary language was developed primarily at oxford university beginning in the 1930. The first step is made by J.l Austin in his book How to do things with words 1962, he develops the term speech act theory and puts the basis upon which Searle set up the theory as whole . Searle is the one who elaborates Austin’s theory of speech acts. Beginning with his dissention , Searle systematizes and extends speech act theory in several dimensions His most important contribution his specification of illocutionary force , felicity Conditions , his taxonomy of speech acts and the introduction of the notion of speech act. It is clear that Austin 's speech act theory together with the latter Wittgenstein successfully situates the argument on "meaning" into use perspective. Strangely influenced by the tradition of logos in western philosophy ,the argument concerning meaning had been founded on the referential theory of meaning. It is Austin that went beyond the referential theory and that considered the context in which language was actually used . Austin’s theory of speech acts emerges from his consideration, and rejection, of a distinction which he sees as central to philosophy of language up to his own work. This is the distinction between utterances which are meaningful, which are all thought to be
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