Speech Acts

People seldom make sentences just to show off grammatical competence. We talk to accomplish goals. Pragmatic knowledge allows us to understand the in­tentions of others and to make our own intentions clear. The goal a speaker in­tends to accomplish through speech is called a speech act. Successful commu­nication involves understanding the relationship between words and sentences and the speech acts they represent. To do this, we have to go beyond grammati­cal knowledge and draw on social knowledge.

Earlier we saw that a single utterance can have two syntactic structures. A single utterance can also have more than one pragmatic structure. Let's look at an example that has at least two interpretations and identify the speech act in each case. Consider the words "Do you have a watch?" The most likely interpre­tation of this sentence, if it is uttered by a stranger in the street, is that the speaker wants to know the time. Your knowledge of social behavior tells you that in our culture people often phrase a request for the time in this roundabout way. If you believe the speech act being performed is a request for the time, then the appropriate response is “Yes, it’s 12:05.”

Of course, the speaker might have other speech acts in mind. If he or she is carrying a clipboard and seems to be interviewing every passerby, the ques­tion might be part of a marketing survey. Then the proper response is yes or no or, perhaps, “I’m not interested in being in a survey.” If the speaker is your teacher and you have just walked into class ten minutes late, the speech act is probably a criticism rather than a request for information, and the expected re­sponse is an excuse or an apology. Finally, if the speaker is a six-year-old who has been asking you a series of silly questions, the question may be part of a game, and you may decide to respond by asking silly questions of your own. To understand what is really meant by a speech act, you have to make inferences about the speaker's intentions