What is the main idea of ​​speech act theory? John Austin and John Searle: speech act theory. Richard Hare: Universal Prescriptivism

The transition from intentional states to linguistic acts was actively discussed in linguistic philosophy in connection with the use of the expression “I know.” As is known, representatives of this trend, the origins of which are connected with the philosophy of “common sense” of J. Moore and the views of the late Wittgenstein, saw the main task of philosophy in the “therapeutic” analysis of spoken language, the purpose of which is to clarify the details and nuances of its use. However, Oxford philosophy - primarily John Austin - shows an interest in language as such, which is completely alien to Wittgenstein. As a result, his research contains some positive results on the analysis of the structure of everyday language and its individual expressions.
Thus, J. Austin suggests distinguishing at least two main models of using the expression “I know.” The first model describes situations with external objects (“I know that this is a blackbird”), the second describes the characteristics of “alien” consciousness (“I know that this person is irritated”). The main problem that has been discussed within linguistic philosophy for several decades is related to the second model of using the expression “I know.” The questions discussed here are: How can I know that Tom is angry if I cannot understand his feelings? Is it possible to consider it correct to use “I know” in relation to empirical statements like “I know that this is a tree”?
Following J. Austin, the validity of using the expression “I know” to describe the sensations and emotions of another person cannot be directly identified with his ability to experience the same sensations and feelings. Rather, the validity of this usage comes from our ability, in principle, to experience similar sensations and to infer what another person is feeling based on external symptoms and manifestations.
Austin never believed - contrary to a fairly common opinion about him - that "ordinary language" is the supreme authority in all philosophical matters. In his view, our ordinary vocabulary embodies all the distinctions that people have seen fit to make and all the connections that they have seen fit to make over the course of generations. In other words, the point is not that language is of extraordinary importance, but that for practical everyday affairs the distinctions contained in ordinary language are more robust than the purely speculative distinctions that we can invent. Distinctions and preferences of everyday language represent, in Austin’s opinion, if not the crown, then certainly the “beginning of everything” in philosophy.
But he readily admits that although, as a necessary precondition, the philosopher must enter into the details of ordinary word usage, he will have ultimately to correct it, to subject it to some conditioned correction. This authority for an ordinary person, further, has force only in practical matters. Since the interests of a philosopher are often (if not usually) of a different nature than the interests of an ordinary person, he is faced with the need to make new distinctions and invent new terminology.
Austin demonstrates both the subtlety of the grammatical distinctions he commonly made and the two very different views he held regarding the meaning of such distinctions. As an example, he challenges Moore's analysis of "might have" in Ethics. According to Austin, Moore mistakenly believes, first, that "could have" simply means "could have, if I chose," and second, that the sentence "could have, if I chose" can (correctly) replace with the clause “would have if I had chosen,” and thirdly (implicitly rather than explicitly) that the if parts of sentences in this case indicate a cause condition.
In contrast to Moore, Austin tries to show that to think that "(would)" can be substituted for "could(would)" is mistaken; what if in sentences like “I can if I choose” there are not if conditions, but some other if - perhaps if clauses; and that the assumption that "could have" means "could have had if he had chosen" is based on the false premise that "could have" is always a past tense verb in the conditional or subjective mood, whereas it is perhaps the verb "could" "in the past tense and indicative mood (in many cases this is indeed the case; it is noteworthy that for proof of this thought Austin turns not only to English, but also to other languages ​​- at least to Latin.) Based on the arguments he gives, he concludes , that Moore was wrong to think that determinism is compatible with what we usually say and perhaps think. But Austin simply states that this general philosophical conclusion follows from his arguments, rather than showing how and why it happens.
Austin explains the significance of his reflections partly by the fact that the words “if” and “may” are words that constantly remind themselves of themselves, especially, perhaps, in those moments when the philosopher naively imagines that his problems are solved, and therefore it is vitally important clarify their use. By analyzing such linguistic distinctions, we understand more clearly the phenomena for which they are used to distinguish. “Philosophy of ordinary language,” he suggests, would be better called “linguistic phenomenology.”
But then he moves on to another position. Philosophy is considered to be the founder of the sciences. Perhaps, argues Austin, it is preparing to give birth to a new science of language, just as it recently gave birth to mathematical logic. Following James and Russell, Austen even thinks that the problem is philosophical precisely because it is complicated; Once people achieve clarity about a problem, it ceases to be philosophical and becomes scientific. Therefore, he argues that oversimplification is not so much a professional affliction of philosophers as their professional duty, and therefore, while condemning the mistakes of philosophers, he characterizes them as generic rather than individual.
Austin's polemics with Ayer and his followers were, by his own admission, due precisely to their merits, and not to their shortcomings. However, Austin's goal was not to explicate these virtues, but rather to reveal verbal errors and a variety of hidden motives.
Austin hoped to refute two theses:
first, that what we directly perceive are sense data, and,
secondly, that propositions about sense data serve as unconditional grounds of knowledge.
His efforts in the first direction are limited mainly to criticism of the classical argument from illusion. He considers this argument untenable because it does not presuppose a distinction between illusion and deception, as if in a situation of illusion, as in a situation of deception, we “saw something,” in this case a sense datum. But in fact, when we look at a straight stick immersed in water, we see the stick, not the sense datum; if under some very special circumstances it sometimes seems bent, then this should not bother us.
Regarding unconditionality, Austin argues that there are no propositions that by their nature must be the “ground of knowledge,” i.e. propositions, by their nature unconditional, directly verifiable and demonstrative due to obviousness. Moreover, “sentences about a material object” do not necessarily have to be “based on obvious evidence.” In most cases, the fact that a book is on the table does not require proof; however, we can, by changing our perspective, doubt whether we are right in saying that this book appears light purple.
Such arguments from the Pyrrhonian arsenal cannot serve as a basis for epistemological revisions in linguistic philosophy, and Austin does not specifically consider the general question of why the theory of the sense datum in one or another of its many versions has, as he himself emphasizes, traveled such a long and venerable philosophical path . In particular, Austin does not talk at all about the argument from physics - the discrepancy between things as we usually think of them and things as the physicist describes them - an argument that many epistemologists consider the strongest argument for sense data. He focuses rather on issues such as the precise use of the word “real,” which, in expressions like “real color,” has played a very important role in sense-datum theories. “Real,” he argues, is not a normal word at all, that is, a word that has a single meaning, a word that can be explained in detail. It is also unambiguous. According to Austin, it is “substantive-hungry”: unlike the word “pink”, it cannot serve as a description, but (like the word “good”) has meaning only in context (“real so-and-so”); it is a “volume word” - in the sense that (again like the word “good”) it is the most general of a collection of words, each of which performs the same function - words such as “ought”, “genuine” , “authentic”; it is a “regulator word” that allows us to cope with new and unexpected situations without inventing a special new term. Such distinctions are entirely appropriate to the problems that Austin directly discusses, but in Austin they take on a life of their own, moving beyond the boundaries of propaedeutics to critique theories of sense data and becoming something more than an instrument of such critique.
Finally, Austin's important contribution to philosophy is his clarification of the analogy between "knowledge" and "promise", usually expressed by the statement that "knowledge" is a performative word. It was widely believed that knowledge is the name of a special mental state. In this case, to say “I know that S is P” is to assert that in this mental state I stand in relation to “S is P.” This theory, Austin argues, is based on the “fallacy of description,” the assumption that words are used only to describe. In asserting that I know something, I am not describing my state, but I am taking the decisive step of giving others my word, taking responsibility for the assertion that S is P, just as to promise is to give others my word that I will do something. In other words, sentences beginning with the words “I promise” are not true or false, but are a kind of magic formula, a linguistic means by which the speaker makes some commitment.
However, when P. F. Strawson, criticizing Tarski, proposed a performative analysis of the word “true” (to say that p is true is to confirm p or admit that p, and not to communicate something about p), Austin objected as follows: surely “p is true” has a performative aspect, but it does not follow that it is a performative utterance.
According to Austin, to assert that p is true is to assert (in a sense that needs further clarification) that “p corresponds to the facts,” i.e. in the still unsolved problem of determining correspondence. However, it is clearly a part of standard English, which as such can hardly be mistaken, and Austin tried to explain the meaning of "correspondence" in terms of descriptive conventions relating words to types of situations and demonstrative conventions relating sentences to actual situations found in the world . To say that “S is P” is to say, he thinks, that a situation such as the one to which this statement refers is customary to be described as it is now described. For example, the statement “the cat is on the rug” is true if it is a correct description of the situation before our eyes.
The doctrine of performative utterances, according to Austin, does not involve either experimentation or “field work”, but should include a joint discussion of specific examples drawn from various literary sources and personal experience. These examples must be studied in an intellectual atmosphere completely free from all theory, and in doing so completely forget all problems except the problem of description.
Here the contrast between Austin and Popper (and, on the other hand, Wittgenstein) is obvious. From Popper's point of view, description free of any theory is impossible, and every valuable contribution to science begins with the formulation of a problem. While Austin is suspicious of talk of "importance" and believes that the only thing of which he is sure is "important" is "truth", Popper argues that he was always striving to find interesting truths - truths of interest to point of view of solving important problems.
As a result, Austin reformulates the distinction between “performative” and “statative” statements, giving it a concise and clear form. Performative utterances, in his opinion, can be “successful” or “unsuccessful”, but not true or false; “statemental” (“descriptive”) statements are true or false. Thus, although the statement “I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth” may be true or false, it is “unsuccessful” if I do not have the right to name ships, or if this is not the time to do so, or if I am using the wrong formula. In contrast, the statement “He named the ship Queen Elizabeth” is true or false, not lucky or unlucky.
But doubts are possible here - primarily regarding performative statements. If we take a closer look at the word "luck," Austin emphasizes, we will see that it always presupposes something to be true - for example, that the formula in question is actually correct, that the person using it really has the right to use it, that the circumstances in which it is used are really are appropriate circumstances. This difficulty, it would seem, can be easily overcome by saying that although the “luck” of a given performative utterance presupposes the truth of certain statements, the performative utterance itself is neither true nor false. But the same connection between truth and luck applies to statements, such as the statement “John's children are bald” when it refers to John and John has no children. This means that it is not false, but “unsuccessful”, incorrectly expressed. And at the same time, the performative utterance “I am warning you that the bull is about to attack” is certainly vulnerable to criticism, since it may be false that the bull is about to attack. Therefore, to distinguish between performative utterances and ascertaining utterances by contrasting true or false with successful or unsuccessful is not as simple as it might at first seem.
In this case, is it not possible to distinguish between performative and ascertaining utterances on some other grounds - grammatical grounds, for example? We might hope that this is possible, since performative utterances are often expressed in a special kind of first person indicative: “I warn you,” “I call you.” However, Austin notes that they do not always have this grammatical form, since “You have been warned” is just as performative as “I warn you.” In addition, “I state that...” is also characterized by the grammatical form of the first person, and this is undoubtedly a stating statement.
Therefore Austin feels for another way of distinguishing utterances, in terms of the type of act they perform. He distinguishes three types of act of using a sentence: the “locutionary” act of using a sentence to convey some meaning, when, for example, someone tells us that George is walking; the "illocutionary" act of using an utterance with a certain "force" when, for example, someone warns us that George is coming; and the “perlocutionary” act, aimed at producing some effect through the use of a sentence, when, for example, someone does not directly tell us that George is coming, but manages to warn us that he is approaching. Every concrete utterance, Austin now believes, performs both locutionary and illocutionary functions.
At first glance, it seems that locutionary acts correspond to assertive statements, and illocutionary acts correspond to performative ones. But Austin denies that a particular utterance can be classified as purely performative or purely assertive. In his opinion, to ascertain - just like to warn - means to do something, and my act of ascertaining is subject to various kinds of “bad luck”; statements can be not only true or false, but also fair, accurate, approximately true, correctly or erroneously stated, etc. However, considerations of truth and falsity are directly applicable to such performative acts, as, for example, when a judge finds a person guilty or a traveler Without a watch, he estimates that it’s half past three. Therefore, the distinction between performative and ascertaining statements must be abandoned, retained only as a first approximation to the problem.
Do these and similar distinctions that Austin makes and analyzes in Word as Action and other writings on speech acts have any significance? Do they contribute to the resolution of traditional philosophical problems, as opposed to problems in the science of language? If Austin is right, then their significance is very great. He believes that the speech act as a whole is always clarified, and therefore (contrary to the opinion of supporters of “logical analysis”) the question of analyzing “meaning” as something different from the “force” of a statement does not exist. Statement and description are simply two types of illocutionary act, and they do not have the special significance that philosophy has usually given them. Apart from an artificial abstraction which may be desirable for certain special purposes, “truth” and “falsehood,” contrary to popular opinion among philosophers, are not names of relations or qualities; they indicate an "evaluative dimension" of the "satisfactoriness" of the words used in a sentence in relation to the facts to which the words refer. (“True,” on this view, means “very well said.”) It follows that the stock philosophical distinction between “factual” and “normative” must give way to other philosophical dichotomies.
These are the main issues raised by Austin about speech acts, and for all the ambivalence of his interpretation of their role in philosophical analysis, his most famous and most indisputable saying applies to all their variants:
"A word never - or almost never - shakes off its etymology."

Another important branch of linguistic pragmatics is the theory of speech acts.

Previously, it was believed that language serves solely to describe reality, that speech can only indirectly influence reality. John Austin, the founder of the theory of speech acts, noted that there are utterances that not only describe an action, but perform it themselves, that is, they are acts (speech). A speech act is a purposeful speech action performed in accordance with the principles and rules of speech behavior accepted in a given society. Thus, intentionality and conventionality are the main properties of a speech act.

Let's consider the statement “I offer my condolences” from the point of view of these features. This utterance will be a speech act if, by uttering a phrase, the speaker performs an action that, firstly, meets the norms of speech behavior accepted in a given society (i.e. is conventional), and, secondly, is arbitrary in nature (i.e. . e. is intentional). It is worth noting that the same utterance can change the class of speech acts (that is, cease to express its direct meaning and cease to serve the purpose intended by this speech formula) if the speaker utters this utterance, for example, starting to make a toast at his boss's birthday . In this case, the speaker, having mixed up speech formulas out of excitement, performs not the (speech) action that was originally intended by him, i.e., does not congratulate him on his birthday, and not the one that is usually performed with the help of this statement, i.e. . does not express condolences.

John Austin identified three components of a speech act - locution, illocution and perlocution.

Locution- this is the actual act of speaking, the utterance of a statement; at this level, the speaker’s intentions and the success of the action taken are not taken into account. Illocution- this is a statement uttered with the aim of influencing the addressee; At this stage, the speaker’s communicative intention is realized. Perlocution- this is the effect achieved as a result of a speech act, i.e., the only level of utterance, the implementation of which depends on the addressee. In the most detail, J. Austin (and after him the majority of researchers of the phenomenon of performativity) examines the illocutionary aspect of the utterance and introduces the concept of illocutionary force, or the effectiveness of the utterance. Not all illocutionary verbs can be used performatively. For example, verbs insult,

boast and others are not performative because we cannot insult a person by uttering the phrase “I insult you,” but a number of other utterances would be required to carry out the act of insult.

Speech acts can be direct or indirect. Direct speech act(PRA) directly names the illocutionary purpose of the utterance (“I ask you to come tomorrow at five”).

Indirect speech act(KRA) call an illocutionary act carried out “indirectly, through the implementation of another [illocutionary act]” 1. An example of such a speech act, which has become a classic: Can you pass me the salt? (“Could you pass me the salt?”). Formally, this phrase is a question about the addressee's ability to pass salt to the speaker; in most contexts, it is obviously perceived differently - as a request. J. Searle distinguishes between primary and secondary illocutionary acts, the first of which in the example with salt will be a request (i.e., the implied), the second is a question (directly perceived, the literal meaning of the statement). Thus, a direct speech act is a speech act whose primary and secondary illocutionary acts coincide, an indirect speech act is a speech act whose primary and secondary illocutionary acts do not coincide. A review of the literature devoted to the problem of how the listener correctly interprets the primary illocutionary act is presented in the work of T. Holtgraves.

John Austin also introduced the concept performative. This is a special class of speech acgs whose meaning coincides with the action they perform. These include statements such as “I congratulate you on your birthday,” “I apologize,” etc., through the utterance of which the speaker simultaneously performs the action that they denote. These statements, unlike constative or descriptive statements (such as “Yesterday I wished my cat a happy birthday” or “I have been asking you for a petition for three hours now”), cannot be true or false: it is impossible to lie when uttering the phrase “ I congratulate you...”, but the message that the speaker congratulated his cat yesterday may well be either true or false. As a special class of speech acts, performatives have a number of features:

• 1) a performative utterance performs an action, but does not describe it;
• 2) the semantic verb of a performative statement is usually in the first person singular, the present tense of the indicative mood in the active voice (but exceptions are possible here);
• 3) a performative statement cannot be true or false, it is qualified as sincere or insincere;
• 4) a performative utterance can be successful or unsuccessful; in order to be successful, it must satisfy the criteria of success (felicity conditions, according to Austin);
• 5) a performative utterance is, to one degree or another, based on linguistic and social conventions and therefore has normative consequences for a given society.

Within the framework of the theory of speech acts, a “performative hypothesis” arose (its author is J. Ross), according to which the deep structure of any sentence contains the performative “I affirm,” “I say,” and therefore every utterance is performative. For example, the standard non-performative utterance “It is raining” is, according to this hypothesis, performative because it is equated with the utterance “I assert that it is raining.” However, if all statements are performative, that is, they have all the properties of performatives listed above, then all of them can be neither true nor false - that is, it is impossible to either lie or tell the truth.

Austin called the functions of a speech act illocutionary forces. The concept of illocutionary force is complex and includes 7 components, the most important of which is the illocutionary goal. Verbs that directly name the illocutionary purpose of the utterance were defined by J. Austin as illocutionary or performative (“command,” “ask,” “prohibit,” “congratulate,” etc.).

None of the typologies of performatives is generally accepted. Classifications of performatives are usually considered typologies of speech acts. We will consider two classifications: the first of them was proposed by J. Austin, the second by J. Searle (the latter, as far as we know, is used most often by researchers).

Types of speech acts (according to J. Austin):

• 1. Verdicts. With their help, we make a verdict (decision), and this verdict does not have to be final: it can be an opinion, assessment or approval. Examples: convict (condemn), find (believe), rate (estimate), estimate (estimate).
• 2. Exercitives - orders, advice, coercion, warnings. They "are the embodiment of power, right or influence." Examples: name (name, name), fine (fine), advise (advise), press (insist), order (order).
• 3. Commissives - oblige the speaker to do something; they also include announcements of intention to do something. Making a commitment or expressing intentions. They oblige the speaker to a certain line of behavior. Examples: promise, contract, bind oneself, declare one’s intention, agree.
• 4. Behabitives (from English, behave- to act). "An extremely mixed group that deals with attitudes and social behavior." Praise, expression of condolences, curse, challenge. Examples: apologize, thank
• (to thank), deplore (to regret), congratulate (to congratulate), condole (to condole).
• 5. Expositives (from English, expose- make visible, put on display) - “used in actions of explanation (exposition), including presenting a point of view, presenting arguments,” clarifying reasons, evidence and messages. Examples: affirm (affirm), deny (deny), state (affirm), swear (swear), report (report).

Types of speech acts (according to J. Searle):

• 1. Assertive or representative. “The point, or purpose, of members of the class of representatives is to fix (to varying degrees) the responsibility of the speaker for reporting some state of affairs, for the truth of the expressed judgment.” Examples: assert, affirm, deny, state.
• 2. Commissives - this type coincides with the RA class of the same name in J. Austin’s typology.
• 3. Directives. “Their illocutionary orientation is that they represent attempts<...>on the part of the speaker to ensure that the listener does something.” Examples: advise (advise), order (order), recommend (recommend).
• 4. Declaratives - “the implementation of any act from this class establishes a correspondence between propositional content and reality; the successful implementation of the act guarantees the actual correspondence of the propositional content to reality: if I successfully carry out the act of appointing you as chairman, then you become chairman.” Examples: declare, disclaim, abdicate, confirm, sanction.
• 5. Expressives are illocutionary forces whose purpose is to express the mental state of the speaker. The illocutionary purpose of this class is to express the psychological state given by the condition of sincerity about a state of affairs defined in terms of propositional content. Examples: thank, congratulate, apologize, condole, deplore, welcome.

Some societies encourage the use of direct speech acts - for example, in America; in other societies it is preferable to resort to indirect speech acts (for example, it is almost impossible to get a Japanese person to refuse someone outright). In addition, often an indirect speech act of a certain type corresponds to one or another specific form of expression in a certain language, its national and social variants. For successful communication, these features must be taken into account. Grice's maxims, despite the fact that they have been and are being criticized a lot, are universal in nature, and the principle of cooperation can be applied to almost any communication.

Exercise

Watch a fragment of the film “Office Romance” (1977, dir.

E. Ryazanov). In this scene, a conversation between Novoseltsev and Kalugina takes place at a party with their colleague Samokhvalov. Analyze their communication according to the following parameters:

• 1) identify those maxims of effective communication that Novoseltsev violates;
• 2) characterize the explicature and implicature of his speech;
• 3) highlight different types of speech acts in his speech, give example(s) for each type.

The answer text should contain from 200 to 350 words and consist of two parts corresponding to the two components of the task.

Self-test questions

• 1. What does linguistic pragmatics study?
• 2. In the work “How to do things with words” J. Austin described the conditions for the success of a speech act (see the book “Favorites” by J. Austin, p. 26; the book’s output can be found in the list of references). How do they relate to the principle of cooperation and Grice's maxims? What do you think is more convenient to use in analyzing the situation of intercultural communication - the conditions of success or Grice's maxims? Can they be used independently of each other?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptiO3emsK0E

SPEECH ACT, the minimum unit of speech activity, identified and studied in the theory of speech acts - a doctrine that is the most important component of linguistic pragmatics.

Since a speech act is a type of action, when analyzing it, essentially the same categories are used that are necessary to characterize and evaluate any action: subject, goal, method, instrument, means, result, conditions, success, etc.

Speech act theory - one of the areas of analytical philosophy, created in the late 1940s. Oxford analyst J. Austin. T.r. A. teaches how to act with words, “how to manipulate things with words.”

First of all, Austin noticed that there are verbs in the language that, if you put them in the 1st person singular position. numbers, cancel the truth value of the entire sentence (that is, the sentence ceases to be true or false), and instead perform the action themselves.

For example, the chairman says:

(1) I declare the meeting open;

or the priest says to the bride and groom:

(2) I pronounce you husband and wife;

or I meet an elderly professor on the street and say:

(3) Greetings, Mr. Professor;

or a guilty student says to the teacher:

(4) I promise that this will never happen again.

In all these sentences there is no description of reality, but there is reality itself, life itself. By declaring the meeting open, the chairman, by these very words, declares the meeting open. And I, uttering sentence (3), by the very fact of uttering it, greet the professor.

Austin called such verbs performative(from English performance - action, deed, execution). Sentences with such verbs have been called performative, or simply speech acts, to distinguish them from ordinary sentences describing reality:

(5) The boy went to school.

It turned out that there are quite a lot of performative verbs in the language: I swear, I believe, I beg, I doubt, I emphasize, I insist, I believe, I evaluate, I assign, I forgive, I cancel, I recommend, I intend, I deny, I mean.

The discovery of speech acts overturned the classical positivist picture of the relationship between language and reality, according to which language was instructed to describe reality, to state the state of affairs with the help of sentences such as (5).

T.r. A. but it teaches that language is connected with reality not projectively, but tangentially, that at least one of its points comes into contact with reality and is thereby part of it.

This picture did not cause a shock, since by that time Wittgenstein’s doctrine of language games was already known (see), and speech acts are part of language games.

The concept of truth and falsity for speech acts is replaced by the concepts of success and failure. So, if as a result of a speech act (1) the meeting opened, as a result of a speech act (2) a marriage took place in the church, the professor answered my greeting (3) and the student actually stopped being naughty at least for a while (4), then these speech the acts can be called successful.

But if I say: “I greet you, Mr. Professor!” - and the professor, instead of answering the greeting, crosses to the other side of the street, if the boy, having promised that he “will not do it again,” immediately starts again, if the priest was deprived of his priesthood by the time of the wedding and if the meeting booed the chairman - these speech acts are unsuccessful.

A speech act can be either direct or indirect. Amusing examples of indirect speech acts are given by the American analyst J. Searle:

(6) Should you continue drumming like this?

Here, under the guise of a question, the speaker performs the speech act of asking not to drum.

(7) If you left now, it wouldn’t offend anyone.

Here the speaker softens the speech act, which in the direct version would sound like “Leave immediately!” (8) If you remain silent, it can only be beneficial.

It would be better if you gave me the money now.

We would all be better off if you would tone it down immediately.

In the 1960s it has been suggested - the so-called performative hypothesis, - according to which all verbs are potentially performative and all sentences are potential speech acts.

According to this hypothesis, the “innocent” sentence (5) has a silent underlying “beginning”, implied but unspoken words (presupposition):

(5a) I see a boy going to school, and, knowing that you are interested, I inform you: “The boy has gone to school.”

If the performative hypothesis is correct, then this is tantamount to the fact that all reality is absorbed by language and the division into a sentence and the state of affairs described by it has no meaning at all (cf. philosophy of fiction). This corresponds to the ideas about possible worlds and virtual realities, according to which the actual world is only one of the possible ones, and reality is one of the virtual realities.

Speech act theory highlights three levels or aspects of speech act analysis . First, a speech act can be considered as the actual saying of something. Considered in this aspect, the speech act acts as locutionary Act(from Latin locutio "speaking").

A speech act, considered from the point of view of its extra-linguistic purpose, acts as illocutionary Act. A speech act, considered in terms of its real consequences, acts as perlocutionary Act.

Illocutionary acts differ from each other not only in their purpose, but also in a number of other characteristics.

The most famous universal classification of illocutionary acts was constructed by the American logician and philosopher J. Searle (b. 1932).

1) purpose (for example, for a message - to reflect the state of affairs in the world, for an order - to induce the addressee to action, for a promise - to assume an obligation, for congratulations - to express a certain emotion of the speaker);

2) the direction of correspondence between the statement and reality (for example, in the case of a message, the statement is brought into line with reality, in the case of an order, on the contrary, reality must be brought in line with the statement);

3) the internal state of the speaker (for example, when making a statement - he has a corresponding opinion, when making a promise - intentions, when asking - a desire, when giving thanks - a feeling of gratitude);

4) features of the propositional content of a speech act (for example, in a prediction, the content of the proposition refers to the future tense, and in a report - to the present or past; in a promise, the subject of the proposition is the speaker, and in a request, the listener);

5) the connection of the speech act with extralinguistic institutions or institutions (for example, the speech act of appointing someone as his deputy, usually drawn up in the form of a document, presupposes the existence of some organization within which the speaker must be endowed with the appropriate powers, of which he is a part with the help of this speech the act empowers another member of this organization; compare with similar goals, but not institutionally regulated, when we ask someone to replace us - to act as our “deputy” - in some unofficial role: to visit our relative in the hospital instead of us. , go to parent-teacher meetings at school instead of us, etc.)

Linguopragmatics (God knows which of the 4 questions on linguopragmatics)

Pragmalinguistics(linguistic pragmatics) stands out as an area of ​​linguistic research whose object is the relationship between linguistic units and the conditions of their use in a certain communicative-pragmatic space in which the speaker/writer and listener/reader interact, and for the characteristics of which specific indications of the place and time of their speech interaction are important, goals and expectations associated with the act of communication.

Pragmalinguistics introduced an actional (activity) aspect into the description of language.

The concept of pragmatics appears in pioneering works on semiotics, which aimed to study the structure of a sign situation (semiosis) in a dynamic, processual aspect, including the participants in this situation (Charles Sanders Peirce, 1839-1914; Charles William Morris, b. 1901).

Rudolf Carnap made a major contribution to the development of the ideas of formal pragmatics. Linguistic pragmatics is closely related to sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics (especially in American science, where pragmatics is often dissolved in them), with the philosophy of natural language, the theory of speech acts, functional syntax, text linguistics, discourse analysis, text theory (the identification of pragmatics and text theory is observed in works of Siegfried J. Schmidt), conversation analysis, ethnography of speech, and more recently with cognitive science, research in the field of artificial intelligence, general activity theory, communication theory.

In pragmatics there are two currents:

a) focused on the systematic study of the pragmatic potential of linguistic units (texts, sentences, words, as well as phenomena of the phonetic-phonological sphere) and

b) aimed at studying the interaction of communicants in the process of linguistic communication and building predominantly communicator-centric (autocentric) communicative models.

Efforts of representatives first stream aimed at solving the issue of establishing boundaries between semantics and pragmatics, which equally deal with linguistic meanings (Hans-Heinrich Lieb, Roland Posner, J.R. Searle, Peter Sgall, N.P. Anisimova).

There are attempts to include context-independent meanings of linguistic units (and the context-independent side of the truth condition of propositions/statements) under the purview of semantics, and the speech functions of linguistic utterances and the situationally determined side of the propositions expressed in them under the purview of pragmatics.

There are debates about the relationship between semantic and pragmatic aspects when interpreting the meaning of deictic signs (indicating the relative position of communicants in the coordinate system “I - Now - Here”), problems of topicalization (placing a component that does not carry the function of the subject at the beginning of the utterance), presuppositions (the premises of these statements are self-evident and do not need to be expressed), etc. Here we have an author-centric approach to the analysis of statements. It can have a pragmatic frame and a propositional part.

Second current linguistic pragmatics in the early 70s. closes with the theory of speech acts.

There is a growing interest in empirical research in the field of conversion analysis, in the conversion maxims of Paul G. Grice. New attempts are being made to explore the relationship between semantics and pragmatics (based on deixis, presuppositions, etc.).

Particular attention is paid to the rules and conventions of linguistic communication, organizing the alternation of speech moves of communicants, structuring and ordering in the semantic and formal aspects of linearly unfolding discourse, dictating the selection of linguistic means and construction of statements (in accordance with the requirements of the quantity, quality and relevance of the transmitted information, the appropriate method transmission, maintaining politeness to the interlocutor, allowing irony in certain cases, taking into account the status roles of communicants, foreseeing the knowledge of the interlocutor and his information needs).

THEORY OF SPEECH ACTS

THEORY OF SPEECH ACTS

One of the areas of analytical philosophy, created in the late 1940s. Oxford analyst J. Austin. T.r. A. teaches how to act with the help of words, “how to manipulate things with the help of words” (this is a literal translation of Austin’s seminal book “How to do things with words” - in the Soviet translation “Word as Action”). First of all, Austin noticed that there are verbs in the language that, if you put them in the 1st person singular position. numbers, cancel the truth value of the entire sentence (that is, the sentence ceases to be true or false), and instead perform the action themselves. For example, the chairman says: (1) I declare the meeting open; or the priest says to the bride and groom: (2) I pronounce you husband and wife; or I meet an elderly professor on the street and say: (3) Greetings, Mr. Professor; or a guilty student tells the teacher: (4) I promise that this will never happen again. In all these sentences there is no description of reality, but there is reality itself, life itself. By declaring the meeting open, the chairman, by these very words, declares the meeting open. And I, uttering sentence (3), by the very fact of uttering it, greet the professor. Austin called such verbs performative (from English performance - action, deed, performance). Sentences with such verbs were called performative, or simply speech acts, to distinguish them from ordinary sentences describing reality: (5) The boy went to school. It turned out that there are quite a lot of performative verbs in the language: I swear, I believe, I beg, I doubt, I emphasize, I insist, I believe, I evaluate, I assign, I forgive, I cancel, I recommend, I intend, I deny, I mean. The discovery of speech acts overturned the classical positivist picture of the relationship between language and reality, according to which language was prescribed to describe reality, to state the state of affairs with the help of sentences such as (5). T.r. A. but it teaches that language is connected with reality not projectively, but tangentially, that at least one of its points comes into contact with reality and is thereby part of it. This picture did not cause a shock, since by that time Wittgenstein’s doctrine of language games was already known ( cm. LANGUAGE GAME), and speech acts are part of language games. The concept of truth and falsity for speech acts is replaced by the concepts of success and failure. So, if as a result of a speech act (1) the meeting opened, as a result of a speech act (2) a marriage took place in the church, the professor answered my greeting (3) and the student actually stopped being naughty at least for a while (4), then these speech the acts can be called successful. But if I say: “I greet you, Mr. Professor!” - and the professor, instead of answering the greeting, crosses to the other side of the street, if the boy, having promised that he “won’t do it again,” immediately starts again, if the priest was deprived of his priesthood by the time of the wedding and if the meeting booed the chairman - these speech acts are unsuccessful. A speech act can be either direct or indirect. Amusing examples of indirect speech acts are given by the American analyst J. Searle: (6) Should you continue to drum like that? Here, under the guise of a question, the speaker performs the speech act of asking not to drum. (7) If you left now, it wouldn’t offend anyone. Here the speaker softens the speech act, which in the direct version would sound like “Leave immediately!” (8) If you remain silent, it can only be beneficial. It would be better if you gave me the money now. We would all be better off if you would tone it down immediately. In the 1960s It has been proposed - the so-called performative hypothesis - that all verbs are potentially performative and all sentences are potential speech acts. According to this hypothesis, the “innocent” sentence (5) has a silent underlying “beginning”, implied but unspoken words (presupposition): (5a) I see a boy going to school, and, knowing that you are interested, I tell you: "The boy went to school." If the performative hypothesis is correct, then this is tantamount to the fact that all reality is absorbed by language and the division into a sentence and the state of affairs it describes makes no sense at all ( cm. PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION). This corresponds to the ideas about possible worlds and virtual realities, according to which the actual world is only one of the possible ones, and reality is one of the virtual realities.

Dictionary of 20th century culture. V.P.Rudnev.

See what "THEORY OF SPEECH ACTS" is in other dictionaries:

THEORY OF SPEECH ACTS- THEORY OF SPEECH ACTS. A direction in communication theory and linguistics that studies speech acts as utterances generated for a specific purpose and with a specific motive for performing a practical or mental action with the help of... ...

Speech act theory- arose in line with linguistic philosophy, goes back to the famous work of J. Austin “How to Do Actions with Words” (Oxford, 1962), in which the author comes to the opinion that the utterance of certain statements under certain conditions (i.e. ... ... Pedagogical speech science

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Stylistic functions of speech varieties- In the process of its functioning, language as the most important means of human communication performs various functions: it regulates interpersonal, industrial and social relations of people, participates in the formation of their worldview and cultural... ... Stylistic encyclopedic dictionary of the Russian language

REFLECTOR THEORY OF PSYCHE- REFLECTOR THEORY OF THE PSYCHE. A psychological theory based on the fact that the psyche is based on a reflection of the external world. The foundations of R. t.p. were laid by I. M. Sechenov, who argued that “... all acts of conscious and unconscious life according to ... ... New dictionary of methodological terms and concepts (theory and practice of language teaching)

- (Habermas) Jurgen (b. 1929) German social philosopher and sociologist, whose concept is the turning point of non-classical philosophy from modernism to postmodernism (see Modernism, Postmodernism). Assistant to Adorno at the Institute... ...

HABERMAS Jurgen- (b. 1929) German social philosopher and sociologist, whose concept is the turning point of non-classical philosophy from modernism to postmodernism (Modernism). Assistant to Adorno at the Institute for Social Research (Frankfurt on... ... Sociology: Encyclopedia

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• Winnie the Pooh and the philosophy of ordinary language, V. Rudnev. The book was first published in 1994 and immediately became an intellectual bestseller (2nd ed. - 1996). The book is the first complete translation of A. Milne's two stories about Winnie the Pooh. Translator and...

John Austin's theory of speech acts

At the beginning of the 20th century, issues related to the formation of speech, that is, the reproduction of linguistic units in the process of communication, were studied mainly by comparing it with language as a potential system of signs intended for storing and transmitting information. Speech was considered as a purely individual word creation, having a certain communicative and stylistic orientation, determined by various spheres of human activity (scientific-theoretical, everyday, poetic). In the mid-50s, the English philosopher J. Austin developed the theory of speech acts, according to which the unit of communication is no longer a sentence or statement, but a speech act associated with the expression of a statement, question, explanation, description, gratitude, regret, etc. . and carried out in accordance with generally accepted principles and rules of conduct.
The theory of speech acts, the formation of which dates back to the 30s of the twentieth century, was preceded by the observation that not all phrases generally accepted in natural language can be verified, from a logical point of view, as true or false. A whole series of statements - such as, for example, I give this ship the name “Freedom”, I apologize, I salute you, I advise you to do this, etc. - do not contain any statement, but only indicate the commission of a certain action or a promise (advice) to perform this action. Such phrases, representing generally accepted acts in the process of communication (official acts of naming, assigning titles, ritual formulas, formulas of speech etiquette, directives, etc.), were called by J. Austin performatives ("performatives") - in contrast to the affirmative ones considered in logic expressions designated by the author as "constatives". The identified type of statements was called illocutionary acts, and the meanings expressed using performative verbs (to wish, ask, prohibit, threaten, advise, name, etc.) were designated as illocutionary forces.
Illocutionary acts are performed by the subject of speech, taking into account the norms of behavior developed in the process of communication and, along with the description of the facts of reality, include a mandatory goal setting (illocutionary force) and a number of components associated with preliminary thinking and selection of lexical and syntactic means corresponding to the conversational situation and the speaker's communicative intentions. There are a huge number of points that must be separately considered and weighed in this regard: facts; the situation related to the sender of the speech and his goals; situation related to the listener; accuracy of information transfer. “If we intend to limit ourselves to idiotic or ideal simplicity, we will never be able to separate the truth from what is not it, but has grounds, legal, worthy, carefully selected, weighty, etc., we will not be able to separate the general from private, completeness from taciturnity, etc.” .
A significant number of linguistic expressions, including affirmative ones, were classified as illocutionary acts, on the basis that any affirmative saying is intended to convey certain information to the addressee, to convince him that things are so and so, those. has an intentional orientation. “The English verbs and verb phrases associated with illocutionary acts are: affirm, describe, warn, remark, comment, command, order, request, criticize, apologize, reprove, approve, greet, promise, I express approval ("express approval") and express regret ("express regret"). Austin said that there are more than a thousand similar expressions in the English language."
Illocutionary acts are associated with the speaker; the position of the addressee of speech, according to J. Austin, is represented in perlocutionary acts, which reflect the effect produced as a result of illocutionary influence. Conviction, denial, surprise, fear that arise in the listener in the process of perception belong to perlocutionary forces. The meanings of illocutionary and perlocutionary acts do not always coincide, since the illocutionary forces inherent in a speech act do not always lead to the desired result. Success in achieving a perlocutionary effect depends on a number of factors: linguistic means of expression, the environment in which communication takes place, the personality of the subject of perception, etc.
The merit of J. Austin was that the speaking process was considered not as a combination of generally accepted symbols, built according to certain phonetic, semantic and syntactic rules and reflecting the state of affairs in the surrounding reality, but as a product of individual word creation, determined by the personal qualities of the speaker and those facing him goals and objectives, that is, placed in direct dependence on its producer - the subject of speech. The personalities of the sender and addressee of the speech tied together all the numerous disparate aspects of the sentence, which were focused not on the transmission of factual information, but on its interpretation. On the basis and under the influence of the theory of speech acts, the formation of pragmatics began as an independent direction of linguistic research, responsible for the subjective factor in the process of formation and functioning of linguistic units in speech.