Speech Acts
Updated 2026-09-10
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
Speech act theory holds that uttering a sentence is not merely a description of the world but the performance of an act: requesting, warning, inviting, promising, apologizing, and predicting are all things done with words. It focuses on the acts an utterance actually accomplishes in communication and on its illocutionary force, which is fixed by convention and context together rather than by propositional content alone.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Act recognition: determine whether the utterance is a promise, a warning, or a request. - Condition checking: verify that the sincerity and satisfaction conditions are in place. - Force separation: distinguish what the speaker does from the effect produced in the hearer.
Anchor fast decisions
An utterance contains several layers: the phonetic, the propositional, the illocutionary, and the perlocutionary act. Illocutionary force is constituted by direction of fit, sincerity conditions, and satisfaction conditions; convention and context together determine whether the sentence is a promise or a warning, so the same sentence about the cold can serve as a remark or as a request to close the window.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- plato.stanford.eduhttps://plato.stanford.edu/entries/speech-acts/verified
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