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DA Module 06 Positioning the Writer and Reader
DA Module 08 The Architecture of Conversation
Discourse Analysis Module 7: Doing Things With Words
# Speech acts, intentions, effects, and the contextual interpretation of utterances
Utterances do not merely describe the world; they perform actions within it. A speaker can promise, request, apologize, refuse, warn, invite, congratulate, or declare something by producing language in an appropriate context. Speech Act Theory provides a framework for separating the words uttered, the action intended, and the effects achieved. It also helps explain why grammatically similar sentences can perform different functions and why indirect forms are often central to politeness and social negotiation. This week you will analyze locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary dimensions, classify direct and indirect speech acts, and consider felicity conditions. The challenge is to avoid reading intention directly from form. Claims about what an utterance does must be supported by context, participant roles, sequential position, and the recipients’ responses.
Essential Understandings
- How does language function as social action?
- What evidence allows an analyst to infer an utterance’s illocutionary force and interactional effect?
Guiding Questions
- How do locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts differ?
- What makes a speech act direct or indirect?
- Which contextual conditions allow a promise, request, apology, or declaration to count as successful?
- How can speech-act awareness contribute to pragmatic competence in ELT?
Learning Outcomes
- Distinguish locutionary content, illocutionary force, and perlocutionary effect in short exchanges. - Identify and justify classifications of common speech acts. - Analyze direct and indirect relationships between grammatical form and communicative function. - Evaluate felicity conditions and contextual evidence for successful or unsuccessful speech acts. - Connect speech-act analysis to the teaching of pragmatic choices rather than fixed formulas.
Key Words
| Term | Working definition |
|---|---|
| Speech act | An action performed through an utterance in a socially recognizable context. |
| Locutionary act | The production of a meaningful linguistic expression. |
| Illocutionary act | The conventional or intended action performed in saying something. |
| Perlocutionary act | The effects an utterance has on feelings, beliefs, or subsequent actions. |
| Illocutionary force | The action value of an utterance, such as requesting, warning, or promising. |
| Direct speech act | A speech act in which grammatical form conventionally aligns with the communicative function. |
| Indirect speech act | A speech act in which the intended function differs from the literal or conventional sentence function. |
| Felicity conditions | Contextual conditions that must hold for a speech act to be appropriately and successfully performed. |
| Performative verb | A verb that can explicitly name the act being performed, such as promise, apologize, or declare. |
| Uptake | The recipient’s recognition or treatment of an utterance as performing a particular action. |
context - participant roles - sequential position - recipient response.
Three dimensions of an utterance
Speech Act Theory distinguishes several layers of action. The locutionary act concerns the meaningful words and their propositional content. The illocutionary act concerns what the speaker is doing in producing them: asserting, requesting, warning, offering, promising, and so forth. The perlocutionary act concerns what happens as a result, such as persuading, alarming, encouraging, or causing someone to act.
Consider “The assignment closes at midnight.” Locutionarily, it states a deadline. Illocutionarily, it may remind, warn, or indirectly urge the listener to submit. Perlocutionarily, it may cause the student to begin working, feel anxious, or ignore the reminder. The effect is not fully under the speaker’s control, so illocution and perlocution must not be collapsed. Analysts infer force from context and sequence. The same sentence uttered during course orientation differs from the same sentence produced after a student says, “I’ll upload it tomorrow.” The response also provides evidence: “Thanks for reminding me” treats it as a reminder, while “Are you threatening me?” displays a different uptake. Speech-act analysis is therefore grounded in interaction, not mind reading.
Families of speech acts
Speech acts can be grouped by the kind of social action they perform. Assertions commit the speaker to a representation of the world. Directives attempt to get someone to act. Commissives commit the speaker to a future action. Expressives display a psychological or social orientation, as in thanking or apologizing. Declarations change an institutional state when uttered by an authorized person under appropriate conditions.
Labels are useful, but real utterances may perform more than one action. “I’m sorry, but the office is closed” can express regret while refusing a request. “You left the window open” can assert a fact, criticize behavior, or request action. The analyst should identify the primary action in that sequential context and acknowledge secondary functions when supported.
Coding decisions require evidence. Note the grammatical form, lexical markers, participant relationship, prior turn, likely activity, and next response. If multiple interpretations remain plausible, state the ambiguity rather than forcing certainty. The ability to justify a classification is more important than producing a single label quickly.
Directness and indirectness
A direct speech act has a conventional match between form and function: an imperative used as a directive, an interrogative used to request information, or a declarative used to assert. An indirect speech act performs another action through that form. “Can you open the window?” is grammatically a question about ability but conventionally functions as a request in many contexts.
Indirectness is not synonymous with politeness. An indirect hint may burden the listener with inference, while a direct request can be appropriate and considerate when urgency or clarity matters. Politeness depends on relationship, entitlement, imposition, cultural norms, and prosody. “You might want to redo this” may sound tactful, passive-aggressive, or threatening depending on context.
Learners need repertoires rather than conversion rules. Teaching “Could you…?” as the polite form does not explain when it is suitable, how tone affects it, or how recipients respond. Comparing authentic requests across situations helps students notice degrees of directness, supportive explanations, softeners, address terms, and follow-up moves.
Felicity conditions and institutional authority
Speech acts work when relevant contextual conditions are satisfied. A promise presupposes a future action under the speaker’s control, an apparent benefit or relevance to the recipient, and a sincere commitment. An apology presupposes an offense or perceived responsibility. A declaration such as “You are suspended” requires institutional authority and an appropriate procedure; the same words spoken by an unauthorized classmate do not create that status.
Felicity conditions explain why grammatically correct performances may fail. “I promise that the sun will rise” is odd because the event is not controlled by the speaker. “I apologize that you were offended” may be treated as inadequate because it avoids responsibility. A teacher who says “I hereby graduate you” cannot confer a degree outside authorized institutional procedures.
The analyst should examine both conventional conditions and participant treatment. A speech act can be challenged, negotiated, or partially accepted. Recipients may reject the speaker’s entitlement, question sincerity, or request clarification. Such responses reveal that speech acts are social accomplishments, not meanings inserted into sentences by the speaker alone.
Speech acts in language teaching
Pragmatic competence includes recognizing possible actions, selecting contextually appropriate forms, interpreting indirectness, and responding in ways that sustain the interaction. Classroom tasks should therefore include situation variables and response consequences. Instead of asking students to transform “Open the door” into a polite sentence, provide roles, relationships, goals, urgency, and setting. Students can compare several possible requests and predict how each might be received.
Authentic clips and transcripts allow learners to observe speech acts in sequences. An apology may include acknowledgment, explanation, repair offer, and acceptance. A refusal may be delayed, mitigated, and accompanied by an alternative. These patterns are more informative than isolated phrases.
For this week’s coding, separate observation from interpretation. Record the utterance, identify the proposed act, and cite contextual or sequential evidence. Then consider alternative readings. This habit will prepare you for adjacency pairs, turn-taking, and the collaborative organization of conversation in the coming weeks.
Speech-act coding with alternative interpretations
Create a small data set of eight to ten utterances drawn from authentic or clearly contextualized exchanges. For each item, record the preceding turn, the focal utterance, and the following response. Code the likely speech-act family, directness, and relevant felicity conditions. Then add a column for an alternative interpretation.
The alternative column is important because many utterances are multifunctional. “You have not submitted the form” may be an assertion, reminder, criticism, or indirect directive. The next response helps discriminate among possibilities. If the recipient says, “I’ll do it now,” the utterance has been treated as action-relevant. If the recipient corrects the record, it has been treated as a claim.
Choose two cases in which the form–function relationship would be difficult for an English learner. Design a brief contextualized teaching prompt that gives learners several response options and asks them to explain likely consequences. Avoid presenting one answer as universally polite. The purpose is to practice inference from role, sequence, and context.
Evidence language for speech-act analysis
Use cautious analytical language when intention cannot be observed directly. Prefer formulations such as “The utterance functions as a request in this sequence,” “The recipient treats the turn as a warning,” or “The contextual evidence supports an interpretation of criticism.” These expressions connect the claim to observable interaction.
A complete analytical paragraph can follow four moves. First, locate the utterance and summarize the relevant context. Second, identify its grammatical form and propositional content. Third, propose the illocutionary force and cite sequential evidence, including uptake. Fourth, discuss an alternative reading or felicity condition. This organization makes the inference transparent.
When evidence is limited, preserve uncertainty. A transcript without prosody or participant background may not distinguish teasing from criticism. Naming that limitation strengthens the analysis because it shows which contextual resources are necessary for a firmer claim. Speech-act analysis is most credible when it acknowledges that actions are jointly recognized rather than privately stored in sentence forms.
Quote
The same linguistic form can have different pragmatic functions depending on who says it, to whom, and under what circumstances, while speech acts are interpreted partly through shared contextual and social knowledge (Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000).
What evidence supports your interpretation of what an utterance is doing?
On your own (OYO): Read main chapter content above.
OYO: Read Paltridge (2022): Ch. 3, §§3.1–3.3.2, pp. 44–47 and Celce-Murcia & Olshtain (2000): Ch. 2, pp. 19–25.
We’ll start with DA_Week_7_Tuesday_Integrated_Texts Only 1.docx.
For tomorrow: Bring two notes with you to class tomorrow: one idea from the reading that clarified speech acts and one example that still seems ambiguous.
Note: For any missed assignments, you will have an opportunity to make up up to three missed assignments throughout the semester. You decide which three assignments your updated grade will be applied to.
[!question]- What family does each utterance below likely belong to? What evidence (from context) supports that interpretation?
What evidence supports your interpretation of what an utterance is doing?
- “The assignment closes at midnight.”
- “Could you close the window?”
- “I promise I’ll send it tonight.”
- “You left the window open.”
- “I’ll bring the missing handouts tomorrow.”
- “You might want to check the citation on slide six.”
- “The quiz begins in five minutes.”
In pairs, answer the following:
- What is the locutionary content?
- What is the likely illocutionary force?
- What could be a perlocutionary effect?
Five families of speech acts
- Representative / assertion: Speaker is mainly representing something as true (e.g., stating, reporting, claiming)
- Directive: Speaker is mainly trying to get someone to act (e.g., requesting, ordering, suggesting)
- Commissive: Speaker is mainly committing to future action (e.g., promising, offering, refusing)
- Expressive: Speaker is mainly expressing a social/psychological stance (e.g., thanking, apologizing, congratulating)
- Declaration: Speaker is mainly changing an institution/social state (e.g., approving, declaring, appointing)
What family does each utterance below likely belong to? What evidence supports that interpretation?
- “I’ll bring the materials tomorrow.”
- “You need to move your bag.”
- “Thank you for staying late.”
- “The quiz begins at nine.”
- “I approve your revised topic.”
- “Would you mind opening the door?”
- “I’m sorry I interrupted.”
- “You might want to check that citation.”
- “Your answer is correct.”
- “I can help you after class.”
Direct vs. Indirect
A: Close the window.
B: Could you close the window?A: Give me the rubric.
B: Do you still have the rubric?A: Revise this paragraph.
B: You might want to revise this paragraph.With your partner, answer the following:
- What is the grammatical form?
- What is the communicative function?
- Do form and function align? (locutionary act (examples below) vs. illocutionary act (non-alignment of form and function))
- “Close the door.” - Imperative - Request or command
- “Did you submit the form?” - Interrogative - Request for information
- “The class starts at nine.” - Declarative - Assertion / information
- Which is more indirect?
- Does indirect automatically mean “more polite”?
Mini Analysis Challenge
Review handout.
Student: “I haven’t finished the report.”
Teacher: “The deadline is today.”
Student: “Okay, I’ll finish it during lunch.”
- Locution: What does the teacher literally say?
- Illocution: What action does the utterance perform?
- Perlocution: What happens afterward?
- Evidence: What in the sequence supports the interpretation?
- Likely analysis:
- locution: statement about the deadline;
- illocution: reminder / indirect directive / warning;
- perlocution: student commits to completing the work;
- evidence: the student’s response shows that the turn was treated as action-relevant.
What evidence supports your interpretation of what an utterance is doing?
- If anyone is interested in TOEFL support, join General | TOEFL Support.
- Download DA_Week_7_Speech_Acts_and_Uptake_Student_Handout.docx.
- Complete handout with a partner.
- Review handout.
What evidence supports your interpretation of what an utterance is doing?
Complete View assignment: “Turn in Handouts from September 25, 2026 Class” and submit to Teams by the end of today.