speech act

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speech act

or

illocutionary act

any social act which is accomplished by virtue of an utterance (e.g. promising, cursing). Associated especially with the philosophers J. Austin and J. Searle, the analysis of such illocutionary acts (and perlocutionary acts - the effects of an illocutionary act), is a central part of the subject matter of ORDINARY LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY.

The analytical study of speech acts has affinities with a number of approaches in sociology, including the FORMAL SOCIOLOGY of SIMMEL, the work of GOFFMAN, and CONVERSATION ANALYSIS. The latter in particular is directly influenced by ordinary language philosophy (see also DEGRADATION CEREMONY). A further example of an approach influenced by the concept of speech act is the ‘ethogenic’ social psychology of Rom Harré (Social Being, 1979), which advances the idea of a possible ‘grammar’ of social encounters, one however, that would be far more complex than implied in philosophical conceptions of speech acts.

Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2000
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All of this work is related to his study of speech-act theory in the 1960s, but from the 1970s is clearly directed by his baptist vision and, from the 1980s, by his marriage to the Christian philosopher Nancey Murphy, with whom he joined the Church of the Brethren.
The Collected Works of James Wm. McClendon, Jr
Dividing the development of "speech-act theory" into two waves, Joseph A.
James Hogg, "Basil Lee" and the pragmatics of Highland masculinity
Speech-act theory reformulates this duplicity in a suggestive new way.
Terry Eagleton, The Event of Literature
"Ideology and Speech-Act Theory." Poetics Today 7.1 (1986): 59-72.
"The absence of her voice from that concord": the value of the implied author
"Searle hopes to illuminate the notion of Intentional content by appeal to speech-act theory. To specify which speech act a person has performed one must, in paradigmatic cases at any rate, specify two things: what Searle calls its 'illocutionary force' and its 'propositional content.' Illocutionary force varies with the kind of speech act performed: asserting, promising, ordering, etc.
Language as a social entity
Through the methods of performance criticism and speech-act theory, I look systematically at the narrative world of Mark and its use of words and how the story assumes and demonstrates a context in which words have power.
The power of words in Mark: their potential and their limits
See, e.g., David Gorman, The Use and Abuse of Speech-Act Theory in Criticism, 20 POETICS TODAY 93, 108-09 (1999).
Of Christmas trees and Corpus Christi: ceremonial deism and change in meaning over time
Speech-act theory puts greater emphasis than Saussure on those social and cultural conventions that make up the context of any discourse; and, for Austin, the performativity of language is made up of three factors: locution, illocution and perlocution.
The performativity of literature
of Sternberg's article, on speech-act theory. This is not surprising, as Sternberg takes as his point of departure basically the works of Austin and Searle, and the question is asked whether narrative can be called an extended speech act.
Pier, John and Jose Angel Garcia Landa, eds. 2008: Theorizing Narrativity
The reason this is important is that a rich pragmatic analysis of the norms and practices that make informed consent possible will have to attend to all of these material, nondiscursive conditions and negotiations; speech-act theory will not be enough.
Communicating consent
As Mary Louise Pratt points out in "The Ideology of Speech-Act Theory":
'Yo se quien soy': how don Quijote does things with words (Part 1, chaps. 1-5)

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