Austin’s Speech Act Theory

What is speech act: Brainstorming


Every word belonged to human language represents to the actual world, which means, there must be things, actions, or even characteristics in the actual world that can be seen, done, or  felt when you say the words. Just say the word ‘table’, it represents a thing made of wood usually has square shape and four legs which function as the pair of chair. You can see the thing  in the actual world, and of course in your mind there is an image about how the ‘table’ looks like. Or the word ‘walk’, you move from one place to another place by foot. The action is there, and it can be seen and done. Or the word hot, cool, beautiful, etc, they all have the same case since all of them can be felt directly in the actual world.


However, have you ever heard the word promise, command, suggest, advise, conratulate, etc? Can you see the particular action done by someone to refer to those? How is the form movement of the body? Can you imagine how the action represented by those words look like? Those words are called speech acts, that is language as action, which means by uttering the word you do the action, you are not just saying something but are actually doing something. If you say “get out of here!” actually you do command action, or “you should do this instead of that.” By uttering that sentence you perfom an action that is sugesting, or etc.


It is important to note that the utterence/sentence category that can be used to refer to speech act must be performative utterence/sentence.


You can perform at least three different kinds of act when you speak. There are locutionary act (as Searly called it utterence act) refers to the fact that you must use words and sentences if you are saying anything, illocutionary act refers to the intent of the speaker, and perlocutionary act refers to an act will be done by the heare as the respon to the locution and illocution.


Therefore, the utterence “get out of here!” has locution act: get out of here!, in which the illocution is commanding, and the perlocution will be the hearer leaves the room.
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See also:

• Austin's Speech Act Theory
• Performative vs. Constative Sentence
• Austin’s five categories of performative