Speech Act Theory Implications For English Language English Language Essay

Speech Act Theory Implications For English row English Language EssaySpeech affect opening was introduced by J.L Austin in How to Do Things with Words. Later John Searle further expanded on the theory, mostly focusing on tongue acts in Speech Acts An Essay In The Philosophy Of Language (1969) and A Classification Of Illocutionary Acts (1976). Searle further defined vocabulary acts and categorised them. First of his five classifications were Representatives, where the speaker asserts a proposition to be true, using much(prenominal) verbs as affirm, believe, conclude, deny, and report. The second category is Directives, when the speaker tries to make the he arr do close tothing, with such words as ask, beg, challenge, command, d are, invite, insist, postulation. The thirdly is Commissives, where the speaker commits to an action, with verbs such as guarantee, pledge, promise, swear, vow, undertake, warrant. The next category is Expressives, where the speaker beares an attitude to or ab a representation a state of affairs, using such verbs as apologize, appreciate, congratulate, deplore, detest, regret, thank, welcome. And the last category is Declarations, where the speaker alter the external view or condition of an object or situation, by making the utterance, for exercising I now enjoin you man and wife, I sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you be dead, I name this ship.and so on. (Searle, 1976 ) There have been additions to this list, however, the focus of this essay is on how meaning is communicated from the speaker to the listener(s), how it is interpreted and how they are relate to TEFL. It will focus on the three types of meaning an utterance has, scarcely it will non rationalise the types of reference acts in detail.According to Austin (1962) speech act is a functional unit in communication. Its an act that a speaker performs when making an utterance. (LinguaLink website) Utterances have three kinds of meaning (ibid) which are Lo cutionary, Illocutionary and Perlocutionary. (Schmidt, R. Richards, C. 1980, Cohen, 1996)Locutionary act is proverb something with its literal meaning. (Searle, 1969) For example, in saying I am cold. the locutionary meaning is that I feel cold. Illocutionary meaning is the t destinationer function of the words or the way they are intended to be understood (Ibid). For example I am cold. may actually be a way of asking the former(a) person to slopped the window. If this is the intention an Indirect Speech Act (Austin 1962 Searle 1975) had been performed because the meaning is dependent on the hearers interpretation of what has been communicated. The Perlocutionary meaning (ibid) is the put to fither or the aim of the utterance on the feelings, thoughts or actions. The Perlocutionary force of the utterance I am cold. could be that the listener closes the window. If it was the intended outcome from the words the perlocutionary force (result or aim) matches the illocutionary meani ng (intention). This may not ceaselessly be the case, which is called Perlocutionary failure (Leech, 1983 204-5). A very common example is that Could you pass the salt? (Searle, 1969) is a request rather than asking about ability (Fraser 1983 29). Also the sentence Why are you so mad? is more desirely to be a criticism rather than a question. (Pinner, 2008).There are a bend of empirical research on practical applications of speech acts for wrangle teaching. Bardovi-Harlig capital of Connecticut, Blum-Kulka Kasper, Olshtain Cohen, Schmidt Richards and Wolfson researched and evolved the implications of speech acts for English linguistic process teaching. The teaching of speech acts becomes more intriguing regarding cross-cultural pragmatics. The findings from a cross-cultural study by Cohen, Olshtain, and Rosenstein (1986) showed that non-native speakers (NNS) were not aware to genuine sociolinguistic distinction that native speakers (NS) make, for example excuse me versus sorry or truly sorry versus very sorry. One of the first studies that focused on first talking to (L1) and second language (L2) speakers while performing speech acts was The Cross Cultural Speech Act Research Project (Blum-Kulka, nursing home and Kasper 1989). It was observing and analysing the differences of s heretofore languages in how they use the speech act of request and apology. (1989 11). The study looked at soci fit distance and dominance (Wolfson, Marmor and Jones, 1989 191). The findings revealed that the foreign speakers responses were quite different from native speakers answers and that not just low exactly advanced aim learners move make sociolinguistic errors. Furthermore according to Boxer Pickering (1993 56) sociolinguistic errors are gaps in etiquette or as Bachman terms in sociolinguistic competence(1990). He states that these errors are more solemn than grammatical errors (Crandall Basturkmen 2004 38) Hence apparent teaching of pragmatics would be bene ficial to language learners, (Rose Kasper, 2001) because acquisition of native like production by non-native speakers may take many years even if they are in the sign culture (Schmidt, 1993 25-6). There is a divergence between the responses of native and second language speakers of English, therefore the explicit teaching of illocutionary meaning and conducting certain types of speech acts has value for students (Blumka-Kulka, House, Kasper 1997, Schmidt ,1996, Bardovi-Harlig,1999). Cohen (1998 66-7) also advocates the necessity for explicit teaching and notes that it does not take a long time for students to put the knowledge from speech act training into use, if the learners fate to fit in and to be accepted in the target culture. Cultural secernate does not sole(prenominal) exist between speakers of different languages. There can be also a cultural contrast when the native language of the speaker is the same but the culture is different. For example, Creese (1991) discovere d differences between American and British speakers of English in dealing with compliments. Gumperz (1982) looked at variations between British-English and Indian-English speakers when performing speech acts in institutional settings. These studies have implications for TEFL and for English as a Global Language .They also introduce the limitations of appropriateness.A number of studies (e.g., Boxer Pickering, 1995 Bouton, 1994 Kasper 1997, Drnyei, 1997 Bardovi-Harlig, 2001) have sh accept that language learners with high grammatical proficiency are not eternally competent in pragmatic aspects of the foreign language (FL). As Boxer Pickering (1995) point out grammatically advanced learners may not know how to use appropriate language in different situations and swerve from pragmatic norms of the target-language. They susceptibility directly translate speech acts from their mother tongues into the target language when they are laborious to get the intended meaning crosswise. Tea chers often disregard pragmatic failures and they sometimes assign them to other causes, for example to disrespect. (p. 47)The contrast in cultural norms may reduce speech act theory being universally relevant to language, but there is a definite need for teaching them in the language classroom. Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford point out that theories related to teaching and learning are cultural and they are usually not shared when teacher and students have different backgrounds (1997 129). Boxer and Pickering (199345) states that the appropriate speech behaviour depends on the rules of the societies. On the side of overtly teaching illocutionary force and meaning Schmidt (1993 25-26) discusses the value of making learners conscious of the meanings or functions of dissimilar speech acts. He talks about consciousness perception and lists examples from his acquisition of Portuguese. He observed how to end a phone conversation. Before this observation he was not confident of what to say w hen finishing a phone conversation, but after he was equal to make use of this new knowledge (Ibid 29). From my own experience it was really useful when someone explained the different phrases to me that I should use in English, because I came across as being rude at many times without me intending to be rude or even knowing about it. It is important to make the students aware of expressions and phrases, such as Id better let you get back for saving face of both parties when closing a conversation as learners often express difficulty.(Schmidt 1993 29).Cohen (1996 411) also states that explicit teaching of speech acts helps learners in communicating with native speakers in real life.Widdowson (2003 04) points out that theory and practice in ELT should not be separated. Teachers should not go into explaining the theory in details, but this does not mean the two should be separated. If learners are to be effective in acquiring a language they need to have a certain amount of sociolin guistic competence (Bachman 1990) of the learnt language or they would fail using for example English language as they will not be able to communicate their real intentions without a loss of face (Brown and Levinson, 1978).I agree with the above mentioned theories of Cohen and Schmidt that speech acts and oddly the illocutionary meaning behind them can help language learners in becoming more skilled speakers and reduce them from losing face. I also think that it is important to give the student a chance to make some observations and come to their own conclusions, without telling them what is right or wrong. As Ellis (1998) states let the student be the researcher. This way the students learn to make their own decision based on their own observations of what is appropriate.McConachy (2007) analysed the dialogues which contain speech acts in several English language course books. For example, dialogues which present the speech act of suggestions, but without any contextual informati on. He suggests that the teacher need to add to these the dialogues by asking questions about the speakers relationship to one and other and asking students to guess any illocutionary information. This asks the students to make their own judgement on the situation and it makes them aware of illocutionary meaning.It seems that speech acts are finding their way into classroom materials (Bardovi-Harlig MayhanTaylor, 2003), but there is still a lot that teachers need to add to make them more comprehensible. At first teaching speech acts it is important to determine the students level of awareness in general by eliciting. Dialogues are useful to show student how speech acts are used, also the evaluation of a situation is a good technique to reinforce the awareness of the learners. Activities such as role plays are good for practicing speech acts. At the end feedback and discussion are useful so students can tell their understanding. Again the idea is to encourage the learner as research er (Ellis, Bardovi-Harlig et al, 1989) start and assist students to make their own observations.The most practical implication of speech act theory in teaching is the idea that the literal meaning of the words might not agree with the intended meaning.As I understand speech acts focus on communicative intentions in a language. It is useful for language learners to teach them, because they provide an insight into the study of language as it is used in a friendly context, and also because they can be applied when learners need to discuss different meanings in a certain context. Bardovi-Harlig Hartford (1997 114) report that the difference between speech acts and language functions is not always recognised in language teaching, and that the two have a distinct difference. This point might be argued because the study of speech acts comes from the idea that communication is a performance of certain acts, such as making statements, thanking, asking questions, apologizing, sound off an d so on (Blum-Kulka, House Kasper 1989 2). These are functions within a language, which means that speech act theory is about teaching functional units of language with the aim of an understanding of possible illocutionary meaning present. Materials do not always follow this, however there is a progression towards presenting speech acts with contextual information. Teachers need to change the speech acts and the sociolinguistic norms around them by breaking them down into easy terms, so the language learners can use them. Although this does not mean it should be separated from the theory. The best way to teach speech acts might be to make students more aware of pragmatic variables and to give them enough information to be able to make their own observations. This allows learners to work out themselves the best way to perform a speech act in any given situation.