What is a speech act. speech act

The merit of J. Austin is not only that he was the first to formulate the theory of speech acts, but also that he proposed a classification of speech acts, which later served as a starting point for other linguists in identifying types of speech acts. Exists a large number of classifications. Let's consider some of them.

So, John Austin proposed to distinguish five classes of performative (illocative) acts:

  • 1) verdictives, with the help of which the speaker expresses his assessment of something or someone;
  • 2) exercitives that serve to exercise the power of the speaker (orders, orders, etc.);
  • 3) commissions - an expression of promises and obligations;
  • 4) behaviors regulate social behavior, relationships between communicants, etc. (e.g. congratulations, apologies, etc.)
  • 5) expositives determine the place of the statement during the conversation (I admit, deny, etc.) [J. Austin, 1986: 101].

Unlike J. Austin, Searle points out the illegality of mixing illocutionary acts, and he builds his classification as a classification of acts, not verbs, on the basis of distinguishing the nature of illocutionary actions [J. Searle, 1978: 250].

J. Searle considers the following five basic types of illocutionary acts: representative (or assertive), which represent the real state of affairs to the addressee; directives that cause (or in a certain way affect the activity of the addressee); commissives - acts imposing certain obligations on the speaker, and declarations that introduce certain changes into the real state of things [J. Searle, 1978: 252].

The classifications of J. Austin and J. Searle are the main, generally accepted ones. In the future, they only expanded and were supplemented by certain types of speech acts.

For example, E. Weigand supplements the existing classes of illocutionary with another one, called exploratives, which include interrogative speech acts [N.A. Booth, 2004:59].

A. Vezhbitskaya's classification contains eight illocutionaries: messages, requests/orders, questions/prohibitions/permissions, demands/objections, warnings/threats, advice/instructions, actions indicated by verbs of etiquette behavior, expositives [A. Vezhbitskaya, 1985: 251-273].

In his dissertation work, N.A. Booth also considers the classifications of W. Wunderlich and L.L. Fedorova. The first classified speech acts on the basis of their five functions. He distinguished eight classes: directives (requests, orders, instructions, normative acts), commissives (promises, announcements, threats), erotic speech acts (questions), representatives (statements, statements, reports, descriptions, explanations), satisfactories (apologies, gratitude, justification), retractives (impossibility to fulfill the promise), declarations (names, definitions, sentences, openings, meetings) vocatives (appeals, challenges).

L.L. Fedorova distinguishes the following types of speech influences: social influences (greetings, farewells, performances, thanks, apologies, forgiveness, condolences, obligations, appeals, legislative acts, prayers, spells); expression of will (order, question, wish); clarification and information (message, warning, confession) and, finally, evaluative and emotional speech impacts. She refers to evaluative influences such moral assessments as censure, condemnation, praise, approval, accusation, defense.

Emotional speech influences differ from evaluative ones mainly in that they are not associated with public, objectively established moral and emotional relations. These include, according to L.L. Fedorova, speech acts expressing insult, scolding, threats, mockery, affection, approval, consolation [Quoted by N.A. Booth, 2004:60-62].

In turn, M.M. Bakhtin proposed a classification of speech genres, organized according to the principle of field structure. Among them, he singled out, firstly, imperative speech genres, including a request, an order, a prayer and a demand, and secondly, genres aimed at influencing emotions, these include a complaint, consolation, threat, insult and joke [Cit. according to N.A. But, 2004: 64].

In practice, the terms "speech act" and "speech genre" are not clearly distinguished by researchers, but, nevertheless, I.V. Trufanova in her article "On the distinction between concepts: speech act, speech genre, speech strategy, speech tactics" says that it is impossible to identify the concepts of "speech act" and "speech genre". She treats them separately. According to I.V. Trufanova, a speech genre is a larger unit than a speech act, therefore, the term "speech act" is used for elementary speech utterances consisting of one sentence, and the term "speech genre" is used for complex speech works consisting of several statements. It is advisable to associate the concept of speech genre not with speech actions that can be implemented in one elementary utterance, but with texts [I.T. Trufanova, 2001:57-58].

The point of view of I.V. Trufanova on the distinction between "act" and "genre" is closer to me, since the very definitions of these two concepts in the dictionary confirm the validity of this point of view: an act is an act, an action [L.S. Shaumyan, 1964:30], that is, a language unit that can be represented as a single sentence, and a genre is a variety artwork[L.S. Shaumyan, 1964:233]. Here we see correlation with a larger unit of language, with the text. When determining the genre of a particular text, we take into account not one, but several. Thus, the term "act" is most often considered at the level of the statement, and the term "genre" - at the level of the text.

V.G. Gak distinguishes acts of speech according to their general intention. First of all, he divides them into informative and non-informative. The first are related to the transfer or request for information. These include a statement, promises, motivations, a question with various subdivisions of each of the main types. Non-informative include various "social" acts: greetings, congratulations, etc. [V.G. Gak, 1998: 628-630].

Using the generally accepted classifications of J. Austin and J. Searle as a starting point, researchers in linguistic science distinguish the following speech acts: G.K. Khamzina focuses on the act of argumentation and the act of objection. In her opinion, they are characteristic of many life situations that require language communication of people: in everyday colloquial speech, in fiction, journalistic and, to a certain extent, in popular science texts [G.K. Khamzina, 1996: 78-79].

speech act the offer of services or some substance is traditionally considered as a variant of one of the directive speech acts of the suggestive. However, according to L.V. Tsurikova, along with the communicative roles characteristic of directive speech acts (Performer, Beneficiary, Responsible for making decisions on the execution of the predicted action), in the speech act of offering services or substances, there are commissive communicative roles of the Receiver of the service or substance and the Provider, which guarantees receipt by the addressee proposed service or substance". Thus, the presence, along with directives, of communicative features in the speech act of offering services or substances indicates the hybrid nature of this speech act, which raises doubts about the validity of referring it to "pure" directives [L.V. Tsurikova , 1996:79].

T.M. Lomova, V.V. Yumashev single out an expressive speech act of regret, the illocutionary purpose of which is to express the psychological state of the speaker. "Unlike other types of speech acts, an expressive speech act, including the speech act of regret, does not have any direction of adaptation, neither reality to words, nor words to reality, and are characterized by self-direction" [G.M. Lomova, V.V. Yumasheva, 1996:51].

In modern linguistics, the speech act of a compliment is also studied. In the article by G.S. Dvinyaninova "Compliment: communicative status or strategy in discourse?" it is considered as a social and emotional speech impact, and social speech impact, in her opinion, is a special situation of communication in which information is not transmitted as such, but certain social acts are carried out. According to G.S. Dvinyaninova, "when we compliment the interlocutor, we, as a rule, do not aim to inform him, tell him about his merits, etc., but try to win him over, force him to take some action to agree to something, while the main motive-goal of the recipients of compliments is emotional state their addressees" [G.S. Dvinyaninova, 2001:103-105].

ON THE. Trofimova shares the point of view of J. Searle and considers an apology as a standard example of expressive speech acts, the illocutionary purpose of which is to "cause a state named in terms of sincerity, associated with a state of affairs indicated in the propositional content" [Cit. according to N.A. Trofimova, 2006:56-60]. However, R. Rathmair objects to J. Searle. He argues that the apology has its own illocutionary purpose, which is to bring the world into line with the language (as a result of the damage caused by the speaker, the extralinguistic world has changed, and the addressee feels offended, through the apology the speaker seeks to change the current situation), and considers apologies by directive speech acts [Cit. according to N.A. Trofimova, 2006:56-57]. But the point of view of N.A. Trofimova does not coincide with the opinion of R. Reitmar, since she believes that the directives are aimed at the extralinguistic world of events and actions in order to change it, and the apology is about assessing the actions of the speaker, so she came to the conclusion that that apologies should be considered as polyintentional speech acts, as requests for forgiveness sent to the addressee, complicated by the expression of such emotions as regret about what happened, remorse [N.A. Trofimova, 2006: 59-60].

In my opinion, an apology includes elements of expressive and directive speech acts, that is, on the one hand, the speaker, apologizing, affects the emotional sphere of the listener and seeks to make amends, on the other hand, he encourages the addressee to change the existing state of affairs into a positive one. or negative side: accept or reject an apology. Since directives are not always categorical in nature, that is, priority belongs to the speaker, and the listener's reaction can be expressed not only by performing a physical action, but also verbally, an apology in this case is considered as a type of directive speech act, in which the addressee occupies a priority position, and his answer is regarded as an indicator of the success or failure of the implementation of the speech act of apology on the part of the speaker

A.G. Gurochkina in her work explores communicative act default. In her opinion, it takes place when, for certain reasons, the actualization of a detailed speech action is interrupted, but its illocutionary force is fully preserved. Studying this problem, A.G. Gurochkina writes that "silence as a way of deliberately implicating meaning is characterized by the speaker's desire to influence the recipient as much as possible. On the one hand, the author of the statement uses silence to attract the attention of the interlocutor, to focus his attention on his thought. mental activity of the addressee, encourages him to search, directs the course of thought [AG Gurochkina, 1998: 14-15].

Analyzing existing points views on the place of congratulatory statements in the system of speech acts, which differ significantly from each other depending on the conceptual setting, L.M. Mudrik came to the conclusion that congratulation is an etiquette performative, since it is both a unit of speech etiquette and the implementation of a speech act. The main communicative intention (illocutionary force) of congratulatory speech acts is the speaker's desire to evoke certain positive emotions in the addressee, i.e. affect his emotional sphere. The perlocutionary effect of congratulations consists in the positive reaction of the addressee to the speaker's congratulations [L.V. Mudrik, 2002:134].

I.B. Lazebnaya highlights the speech act of aggression. According to I.B. Lazebnaya, “in everyday language, the word “aggression” means a variety of actions that violate the physical or psychological integrity of another person, inflict material damage on him, hinder the implementation of his intentions, oppose his interests, or lead to his destruction” [I.B. Lazebnaya, 2006: 395-397].

N.B. Ershova singles out the speech act, “justificator”, which belongs to the categories of counterargument. This type includes a refutation of the listener's understood delusion, that is, it is a speech act of self-justification of the speaker, as well as a speech act "counterdictive", which serves to denote a speech action that expresses a strong protest against the asserted fact [I.B. Ershova, 2000:234-244].

Thus, we can say that at present speech acts are of great interest, are in the center of attention and are studied by many researchers. Classifications of speech acts are expanding and supplemented by new types, that is, the scope of the study of speech acts is stretched.

speech act

speech act - it is an utterance or a speech act, or a set of statements made by one speaker in view of another.

The theory of speech acts is the central object of pragmalinguistics.

The creator of the theory of speech acts (TRA) are J. Austin and J. Searl. This issue was dealt with by W. Humboldt, S. Bally, E. Benvenista, Halliday.

In accordance with this theory, the minimum unit of communication is the implementation of a certain type of act, such as a statement, a question, an order, a description, an explanation, an apology, gratitude, congratulations, etc.

Each act is directly related to the intention or, in other words, the intention of the speaker. Intentions are classified according to:

- the degree of priority of the implemented communicative intention - direct and indirect;

- degrees of representation in the statement - explicit and implicit;

- the nature of the generated actions - practical and mental;

- degree of emotional impact - favorable and unfavorable;

- the nature of the produced speech work - replica-forming and discourse-text-forming.

According to Austin's theory, the speech act consists of three stages:

illocutions is the intention of the speaker. This act indicates not only the meaning of the expressed proposition, but also correlates with the communicative intention of the speaker. It has a certain power, which consists of an ordered sequence of certain elements: the illocutionary goal is to communicate or request information, the way to achieve this goal is the modes of statements, the attitude of the addressee, for example, doubt, denial, ignorance, certainty.

location- generating a statement: pronouncing sounds is a phonetic act, constructing a grammatically and lexically correct statement is a phatic act, filling the statement with meaning is a rhetic act. This act is associated with meaning and reference. The locutionary force of an utterance is its cognitive content.

perlocutions- influence on the addressee, his thinking and actions in order to achieve the result of the statement or create a new situation. Often goals are reflected in the grammatical structure of the sentence: declarative, imperative, interrogative. The illocutionary force of a sentence is the communicative orientation of the statement; it is not conventional. In this case, it is not the understanding of the meaning of what was said that is important, but the changes as a result of such understanding.

J. Searle supplemented the above classification by expanding the types of illocutionary speech acts, contrasting the concept of proposition (general content) and illocution:

representatives/assertiveness used to describe the world. May be true or false. Adapt words to reality. The psychological state is belief. Used in messages, announcements, predictions.

directives serve to do/perform something by the addressee. Adapt reality to words. The psychological state is desire. Used in questions, orders, requests, advice, prayers.

commissions serve to impose obligations on the speaker or impose certain behavior. They fit reality to words. The psychological state is intention. Used in promises, obligations, guarantees, oaths.

expressives serve to express the emotional state regarding the situation of communication. As a rule, they do not have a direction of adaptation. various psychological states. Used in congratulations, thanks, apologies, greetings, farewells.

declarations serve to establish a correspondence between the content of the statement and reality. They do not express any psychological state. Used for appointment, titles and names, sentencing, resignation, dismissal.

Austin, John Langshaw. Word as action // New in foreign linguistics. Issue. 17: Theory of speech acts. M., 1986. S. 22-130.

Searle, John R. Classification of illocutionary acts // New in foreign linguistics. Issue. 17: Theory of speech acts. M., 1986. S. 170-194.

Searle, John R. What is a speech act? // New in foreign linguistics. Issue. 17: Theory of speech acts. M., 1986. S. 151-169.

Anna Leontieva (postgraduate student)

Language and man [On the problem of motivation of the language system] Shelyakin Mikhail Alekseevich

10.2. Classification of speech acts according to their illocutionary powers

The first classification of speech acts according to their illocutionary powers belongs to J. Austin, who defined them by the presence of their corresponding performative verbs (see below about them). This approach was criticized by J. Searle, who insisted on distinguishing between the classification of performative verbs and illocutionary acts. He proposed his own classification of illocutionary forces, which is independent of any particular language and has become the most accepted (see J.R. Searle 1986: 170-195). It is based on taking into account three main features of illocutionary acts: the illocutionary goal, the direction of their adaptation to the world, and the pronounced psychological state of the speaker.

The illocutionary purpose is the main part of the illocutionary force, but it does not exhaust it completely. For example, the illocutionary purpose of requests and orders is the same: they express an urge to do something, but their illocutionary powers are different, since requests are different from orders.

The direction of adaptation of speech acts to the world can be twofold - from the world to the word (for example, these are statements about the state of affairs), from the word to the world (for example, these are orders, requests) and zero (for example, these are thanks, apologies), i.e. . some illocutionary forces have the desire to make words (more precisely, the propositional content of speech) correspond to the world, while others, on the contrary, are associated with the goal of making the world correspond to words. This difference in the direction of accommodation can be illustrated by the following two lists of words: one list contains the names of the products that the buyer is going to buy in the store, which shows the direction "from the word to the world", the other list contains the names of the products that the buyer bought, which shows the direction "from peace to words.

During a speech act, the psychological state of the speaker is expressed, that is, his attitude, state, etc., regarding the content of the speech act (desire, conviction, regret, etc.). The expression of this or that psychological state is a condition for the sincerity of a speech act and can cover various illocutionary acts: for example, persuasion combines statements, declarations, statements, explanations, etc., intention - promises, oaths, threats, desire - requests, orders, commands, etc. .

Based on the listed features, J. Searle identifies the following five basic types of speech acts:

1) Representatives(informative acts, assertives) fix the responsibility of the speaker for the message (information) about some real or mental state of affairs, i.e. for the truth of the expressed judgment and can be assessed on the “true-false” scale. Direction of adaptation - "words< мир», выражаемое психологическое состояние – убеждение (что...). Иллокутивными предикатами являются глаголы ascertain, affirm, consider, inform, believe, report that, answer etc. Representative acts include informative messages (Exams scheduled for July 2nd) predictions (He won't pass the exam), assertions, statements (Volga flows south, not north) descriptions (The house is built of brick, has two floors, is located near the forest), forecasting (All this can lead to conflict), judgments ( You did wrong) recognition (I love, respect you) answers to questions, qualifications (This is the wrong decision) characteristics (He's a fine man), reports, assurances of something, explanations.

The propositional content of representatives is not limited by anything. These include all declarative sentences with predicates in the form of the indicative and subjunctive mood, with the exception of sentences in which the direction of the adaptation is “words > world”.

2) directives(acts of motivation, prescriptives) have the goal of inducing the listener to take / perform an action. The direction of adaptation is the word > world, the condition of sincerity is desire, wish, need. Directive verbs: induce, indicate, dispose, instruct, ask, call, order, command, request, ask, pray, implore, conjure, invite, allow, allow, advise, offer, persuade, challenge, challenge to a duel. Directives also include regulations.

3) commissions have the goal of connecting the speaker with the performance of some future action or behavior, thereby being directives in relation to oneself. Direction of adaptation, as in directives, "words > world", psychological state - intention. These include promises, oaths, guarantees, vows, intentions, planning, agreements, consent, announcements, threats, etc. Illocutionary verbs are to promise, to swear, to swear, to guarantee, to make a vow, to enter into an agreement, a deal, an agreement, give a word, bet, give consent, agree, accept faith, teaching, obey, swear and etc.

4) Declarations(acts of establishing, verdicts) have the goal of declaring some state of affairs in the world, corresponding to the propositional content of the speech act. The direction of the device is simultaneously two-way - "words > world" and "world< слова». Психологическое состояние не выражено. Результатом декларативных актов является установление ими нечто существующего в мире. Примерами деклараций являются назначение на должность, отлучение от церкви, посвящение в рыцари, прием в партию, присвоение имени человеку или названия, объявление войны, объявление об отставке, об открытии заседания, увольнении, приговоры, установление повестки дня и др. Иллокутивными глаголами являются следующие перформативные глаголы: declare, proclaim, confirm, bequeath, name, name, sentence, consecrate, excommunicate, appoint, dismiss, surrender, resign, abdicate, affirm, certify document and etc.

The condition for the success of declarative acts is that the speaker has the appropriate social position, powers.

5) Expressives have the goal of expressing a certain psychological state (reaction) of the speaker, caused by the state of affairs, defined within the framework of the propositional content. They follow actions and do not have a direction of adaptation, since the state of affairs that serves as a pretext for expressives is not their main content, but a presupposition (premise). The propositional content of expressives consists in attributing some predicate to the subject, which may be the speaker or listener: for example, in Sorry for being late the subject of the proposition is the speaker who is late, and in thanks for the help- the hearer who helped. The psychological state can be different (feelings of gratitude, regret, guilt, justification, etc.) Expressives are characterized by performative etiquette verbs and expressions that reflect the rituals of communication between people, especially phraseologized clichés specific to each language: sorry sorry thank you(etymologically from God save), thank you, congratulations, sympathy, sorry, greetings, good luck etc. Otherwise, they are called non-informative acts of speech, since they serve to establish speech contact or indicate that there are certain social relations: cf. Hello! How are you? How is your health? Hello!

The above classification of speech acts cannot be considered logically flawless, since, firstly, they can represent intersecting (mixed) types, when some of them have signs of different illocutionary forces, and, secondly, in some cases it does not take into account the specifics of illocutionary goals, different from those accepted in this classification. Thus, it has already been noted that an invitation is both a directive and a commissive, since it imposes on the speaker an obligation to ensure that the invitee is properly received. Similarly, a complaint is both representative, reflecting the state of affairs complained of, directive, since it aims to induce appropriate action, and expressive, since it expresses the speaker's dissatisfaction with the state of affairs.

There are quite good reasons to exclude questions from directive speech acts, which A. Wierzbicka drew attention to, who rightly noted that questions do not express requests, but a “desire to know”, which is confirmed by questions addressed to oneself such as I wonder what happened there?[Wierzbicka 1985.: 261J. Therefore, we can assume that there are special

6) interrogative acts (interrogatives), which, by the way, along with repre- sentative (declarative sentences) and incentive speech acts, are the main universal types of speech.

The above classification of speech acts can also be supplemented with two more types.

7) A special place among speech acts is occupied by performative utterances, performatives(lat. performo - act, perform) the concept of which was introduced by the English logician J. Austin c. 1962 [Austin 1986]. But even earlier, performatives were noticed by E. Koschmieder, who called them "co-incident" - "coincidence of word and action ... in the sense that the word that is pronounced is precisely the action itself designated" [Koschmieder 1962: 163], and E. Benveniste, who turned. attention to the manifestation of the "subjectivity" of the speaker in them [Benveniste 1974]. After these works, numerous publications appeared devoted to the problem of performatives, including in Russian, see [Apresyan 1986, Ryabtseva 1992, Krekich 1993], etc., as well as a generalizing article by N.D. Arutyunova "Performative" in "Linguistic encyclopedic dictionary» (1990), here is the main bibliography. In this presentation, the named works of Russian and foreign researchers are used with a number of clarifications and additions.

The essence of performative utterances in all works is defined as the coincidence of the pronunciation of certain verbs mainly in the form of the 1st person singular. the present tense of the indicative mood of the active voice with the speaker performing the actions indicated by them: the spoken word is the action itself indicated, in this sense, performative verbs are self-referential (self-referential), i.e. they indicate the actions to be performed. For example, in statements I swear, I challenge you to a duel, I declare you husband and wife verbs are not messages about the actions of the speaker (they cannot be questioned: What are you doing?), but by the actions themselves, life events at the time of their utterance. But cf. statements I read, I write, I go to the store, which report on the actions performed before and after the speech message about them and are not the actions themselves performed at the time of their pronunciation (J. Austin calls them constatives). In other words, the performance of the action of a performative verb is reduced to the moment of pronouncing the verb - to one act of the speaker, and the performance of the action of a non-performative verb is not connected with its pronunciation: performing an action and reporting it are two different acts of the speaker.

Thus, performatives connect the speaker's speech acts with reality, being the actual actions themselves at the moment of their utterance, and not messages about them. Therefore, they do not accept true/false evaluations (they cannot be confirmed or disproved), like any other real actions, but they may have signs of success/failure, appropriateness/inappropriateness, depending on social status speaker, endowed with the appropriate powers, or on the conditions under which they are used. For example, the statement of the controller Please show tickets expresses an official request, calculated on the response of the obligatory presentation of tickets by the addressees; statement I declare the meeting closed - official announcement of the termination of the meeting by its elected chairman; statement Thank you for your help - a worthy assessment by the speakers of the assistance provided; statement Happy New Year- greeting, good wishes of the speaker in connection with the New Year. Creating life situations, performative utterances entail certain consequences: in the examples given, this is the obligatory presentation of tickets, the termination of the meeting, the manifestation of a sense of gratitude of the speaker, the relationship of personal friendliness, acquaintance.

Most performative verbs have the property of introducing some kind of proposition (message of an event) that brings to the attention of the listener that there is, has been or will be some situation that causes their use. Wed I confess that I was wrong / was wrong. Please calm down. I am appointing you as the principal of the school. I beg, stop!

Under certain speech conditions, the modal characteristic of performative verbs does not affect the performance of their functions: for example, the question May I invite you to the waltz? is equivalent to an invitation and is called a softened or indirect performative. Wed Also I would ask you not to do this - I ask you not to do this. I dare to report - I report ... I dare to assure you - I assure you.

The grammatical forms indicated above, in which the performative function of verbs appears, are canonical for them, but not the only ones. Instead of the form of the 1st person, in some cases, the form of the 3rd person that replaces it can be used to eliminate the indication of a specific speaker ( Passengers are asked to board. Please don't smoke) some nouns denoting states of affairs determined by the speaker at the moment of speaking (cf. Shah! Mat! = I declare checkmate) phraseologized performative constructions (cf. I have a big request to you = I ask you, Happy Holidays to you = I congratulate you); instead of the active voice, the passive voice can be used to focus the object (cf. You are hereby approved in the position of Minister. Passengers are invited to board. All sins are forgiven you. Entire groups can be represented as speakers: The department recommends him for the position of professor. The Academic Council decides.

There are two insufficiently clarified aspects in the problem of performatives: 1) whether performative verbs are separate lexemes, i.e. whether their meanings contain a sign of performativity, or this sign, as E. Benveniste believed, appears only with the “subjectivity of speech” [Benveniste 1974: 299]; 2) what is the semantic zone and semantic typology of performative verbs?

1) If we take into account that in the forms of the 2nd, 3rd person, past and future tenses, as well as the imperative mood, the implicit “subjectivity” of the action is presented by the speaker or assumed in its implementation, then performative verbs should be recognized as separate lexemes and qualified them in these forms as implicit performatives acting as constatives. Wed He thanked him for his hospitality, those. He said: Thank you for your hospitality. Announce the meeting closed those. Tell: I declare the meeting closed. I ask him to leave those. I ask you to leave. Thus, we can assume that performative verbs in each language represent an independent lexical group, determined in its varieties by the norms and conventions existing in a given society that regulate the creation of real situations through speech utterances. So, for example, situations of a binding order, guarantee, oath (I command you... I guarantee... I swear...) are possible in a society in which there is social subordination, the institution of guarantee and military service. Therefore, verbs denoting reprehensible intentions cannot be performatives: lie, deceive, insult, slander, stipulate.

2) All performatives have two semantic features: firstly, they reflect acts of consciousness, and not the subject area of ​​objective reality,

and, secondly, they are aimed at establishing their consequences in objective and subjective reality. From this point of view, performatives, as shown in [Ryabtseva 1992], are divided into two groups: sociologized, establishing interpersonal relationships, and mental, expressing the performance of mental operations by the speaker in the course of reasoning. Sociologized performatives are represented, for example, by the following types of verbs:

a) declarative, establishing the state of affairs in objective reality as a result of the speaker's announcement about it ( I announce, proclaim, proclaim, proclaim, sentence, call, dedicate, I excommunicate, I appoint, I dismiss, I surrender, I resign, I abdicate, I approve, I certify a document);

b) commission (literally, "binding"), establishing the obligations of the speaker ( I swear, I promise, I guarantee, trouble obligation, obedience, obedience, I undertake, I make a vow, I swear, I swear);

c) incentive, expressing the act of influence of the speaker on the addressee of the statement; these include request verbs (please, I beg, I swear, I promise, intercede) advice ( advise, I recommend), offers (suggest, invite, invite, challenge to a duel) warnings (I warn, I warn), requirements and instructions ( I demand, order, insist, order) prohibitions/permissions (prohibit, veto, give the right, allow, authorize, allow);

d) verbs of recognition, expressing the state of guilt or revelation of the speaker (I confess, I'm sorry, I confess confess);

e) verbs of agreement / objection / refusal of the speaker (I agree, I admit, I object, I protest, I protest, I reject, I deny, I refuse, I take my word back, I give a challenge, I withdraw my offer);

f) verbs of approval / trust / condemnation / forgiveness of the speaker ( I approve, I praise, I bless, I trust, I condemn, I accuse, I condemn, I curse, I forgive, I forgive sins)

g) notification verbs ( report, notify, notify, I inform you that...);

h) verbs expressing established rituals of communication between people (sorry, thank you, wish you success, welcome, sorry).

Mental performatives include, for example, verbs that reflect:

a) the speaker's current verbal and cogitative actions, his logical steps in structuring the text ( emphasize, repeat, add, list, remind, I draw attention to ..., here I digress, summarize, come to a conclusion, move on to another problem, I introduce a concept, I’ll start with that ..., I finish, we will consider, we will notice, we will note, we will demonstrate, we will show);

b) the current mental "world generation" (let's assume, suppose, imagine, we will consider, imagine).

8) Vocative speech acts (vocatives) have the goal of attracting the attention of the addressee, these include appeals and appeals.

Thus, speech acts require further study from the point of view of all their types and varieties, taking into account the illocutionary forces expressed by them.

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The problem of speech genres65

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X. Rules of Custom: Definition and Classification Examples were given at the beginning of the first chapter. modern approaches attributing primitive man automatic obedience to the law. This assumption is connected with some conclusions of a more particular order, widely

I. INTRODUCTION

In a typical speech situation, including the speaker, the listener, and the speaker's utterance, the utterance is associated with a variety of different types acts. When speaking, the speaker sets in motion speech apparatus, makes sounds. At the same time, he performs other acts: informing listeners or causing them irritation or boredom. He also performs acts consisting in mentioning certain persons, places, etc. In addition, he expresses a statement or asks a question, gives a command or reports, congratulates or warns, that is, performs an act from among those that Austin (see . Austin 1962) called illocutionary. It is this kind of act that is considered in this work, and it could be called “What is an illocutionary act?”. I am not attempting to define the term "illocutionary act," but if I can give a correct analysis of a particular illocutionary act, that analysis may form the basis of such a definition. Examples English verbs and verb phrases associated with illocutionary acts are: state “state, state, assert, assert” assert, declare, describe “describe”, warn “warn”, remark “notice”, comment “comment”, command “command” , order, request, criticize, apologize, censure, approve, welcome, promise, express approval, and express regret "express regret" Austin claimed that English language there are more than a thousand such expressions.

By way of introduction, it would probably make sense to explain why I think the study of speech acts (or, as they are sometimes called, linguistic or linguistic acts) is of interest and important to the philosophy of language. I think that the essential feature of any kind of linguistic communication is that it involves a linguistic act. Contrary to popular belief, the basic unit of linguistic communication is not a symbol, not a word, not a sentence, and not even a specific instance of a symbol, word or sentence, but the production of this specific instance in the course of a speech act. More precisely, the production of a particular sentence under certain conditions is an illocutionary act, and an illocutionary act is the smallest unit of linguistic communication.

I do not know how to prove that acts are the essence of linguistic communication, but I can give arguments by which one can try to convince those who are skeptical. As a first argument, the skeptic's attention should be drawn to the fact that if he perceives a certain sound or icon on paper as a manifestation of linguistic communication (as a message), then one of the factors that determine such a perception of it is that he should consider this a sound or icon as a result of the activity of a being with certain intentions. He cannot regard it simply as a natural phenomenon, like a rock, a waterfall, or a tree. To consider it as a manifestation of linguistic communication, we must assume that its production is what I call a speech act. So, for example, the logical premise of the current attempts to decipher the Maya hieroglyphs is the hypothesis that the signs that we see on the stones were produced by creatures more or less like us, and produced with certain ones. intentions. If we were sure that these icons appeared due to erosion, then no one would think to decipher them or even call them hieroglyphs. Bringing them under the category of linguistic communication necessarily entails an understanding of their production as the performance of speech acts.

The performance of an illocutionary act is one of those forms of behavior that are regulated by rules. I will try to show that actions such as asking questions or making statements are governed by rules in the same way that a basic stroke in baseball or a knight in chess are governed by rules. I want, therefore, to explicate the notion of an illocutionary act by giving a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the performance of some particular kind of illocutionary act, and by extracting from it a set of semantic rules for the use of that expression (or syntactic device) which marks the utterance as an illocutionary act of that kind. If I can formulate such conditions and the rules corresponding to them for at least one kind of illocutionary act, then we will have at our disposal a model for the analysis of other kinds of acts and, consequently, for the explication of this concept in general. But in order to prepare the ground for formulating such conditions and deriving from them rules for the performance of an illocutionary act, I must discuss three more initial concepts: rules, judgments, and meaning. I will limit my discussion of these concepts to those aspects that are essential for the purposes of this study, and yet, in order to give any complete account of everything that I would like to say about each of these concepts, it would take three individual works. However, sometimes it is worth sacrificing depth for breadth, and therefore I will be very brief.

II. RULES

IN last years in the philosophy of language, the concept of rules for the use of expressions has been repeatedly discussed. Some philosophers have even said that knowing the meaning of a word is simply knowing the rules for its use or usage. What is alarming about such discussions is that no philosopher, to my knowledge, has ever proposed anything that comes close to an adequate formulation of the rules for the use of even one expression. If meaning is reduced to rules of use, then we must be able to formulate rules for the use of expressions in such a way that the meaning of these expressions is explicated. Other philosophers, perhaps horrified by the inability of their colleagues to propose any rules, have rejected the fashionable view that meaning is reduced to rules, and have declared that there are no such semantic rules at all. I am inclined to think that their skepticism is premature and that its source lies in the inability to distinguish between different types of rules. I'll try to explain what I mean.

I make a distinction between two kinds of rules. Some rules regulate forms of behavior that existed before them; for example, the rules of etiquette govern interpersonal relationships, but these relationships exist independently of the rules of etiquette. Other rules do not just regulate, but create or define new forms of behavior. Football rules, for example, do not just govern the game of football, but, so to speak, create the very possibility of such activity or determine it. The activity called playing football consists in carrying out actions in accordance with these rules; football outside these rules does not exist. Let us call the rules of the second type constitutive, and the first type regulative. Regulatory rules regulate activities that existed before them - activities whose existence is logically independent of the existence of rules. Constitutive rules create (and also regulate) activities whose existence is logically dependent on these rules.

Regulatory rules are usually in the form of an imperative or have an imperative paraphrase, for example, “When using a knife while eating, keep it in right hand” or “Officers must wear ties at dinner.” Some constitutive rules take quite a different form, for example, the king is checkmated if he is attacked in such a way that no move can get him out of the attack; A goal in rugby is scored when a player crosses the opponent's goal line while holding the ball. If the model of rules for us is imperative regulative rules, then non-mandatory constitutive rules of this kind will probably seem extremely strange and even bear little resemblance to rules in general. Note that they are almost tautological in nature, for such a "rule" already seems to provide a partial definition of "checkmate" or "goal." But, of course, the quasi-tautological character is an inevitable consequence of them as constitutive rules: the rules concerning goals must define the concept of "goal" in the same way that the rules concerning football define "football". That, for example, in rugby a goal can be counted under such and such conditions and is worth six points, may appear as a rule in some cases, as an analytical truth in others; and this possibility of interpreting a rule as a tautology is a sign by which a given rule can be classified as constitutive. Regulatory rules are usually in the form "Do X" or "If Y then do X". Some representatives of the class of constitutive rules have the same form, but along with this there are those that have the form “X is considered Y-th”.

Failure to understand this has important implications for philosophy. So, for example, some philosophers ask the question: “How can a promise give rise to an obligation?” A similar question would be: “How can a goal generate six points?” Both of these questions can be answered only by formulating a rule of the form "X is considered Y-th."

I am inclined to think that the failure of some philosophers to formulate rules for the use of expressions, and the skepticism of other philosophers about the very possibility of such rules, stems at least in part from a failure to distinguish between constitutive and regulative rules. The model, or model, of a rule for most philosophers is the regulative rule, but if we look in semantics for purely regulative rules, we are unlikely to find anything interesting from the point of view of logical analysis. Undoubtedly, there are rules of communication (social rules) of the form “One should not speak obscenities at official meetings”, but such rules hardly play a decisive role in the explication of the semantics of the language. The hypothesis on which this work, is that the semantics of language can be seen as a set of systems of constitutive rules, and that illocutionary acts are acts performed in accordance with these sets of constitutive rules. One of the goals of this work is to formulate a set of constitutive rules for one kind of speech act. And if what I have said about constitutive rules is true, we should not be surprised that not all of these rules will take the form of an imperative. Indeed, we shall see that these rules fall into several different categories, none of which are entirely identical with the rules of etiquette. An attempt to formulate rules for an illocutionary act can also be seen as a kind of test of the hypothesis that speech acts are based on constitutive rules. If we fail to give satisfactory formulations of the rules, our failure may be interpreted as evidence against the hypothesis, a partial refutation of it.

SPEECH ACT, the minimum unit of speech activity, singled out and studied in the theory of speech acts - a doctrine that is the most important integral part linguistic pragmatics.

Since a speech act is a type of action, its analysis uses essentially the same categories that are necessary to characterize and evaluate any action: subject, goal, method, tool, means, result, conditions, success, etc.

P. The subject of the speech act - the speaker makes an utterance, as a rule, calculated on the perception of it by the addressee - the listener. The utterance acts both as a product of a speech act and as a tool for achieving a specific goal. Depending on the circumstances or conditions in which a speech act takes place, it can either achieve its goal and thus be successful, or not achieve it. To be successful, a speech act must at least be appropriate. Otherwise, the speaker will face a communicative failure, or a communicative failure.

The conditions that must be met in order for a speech act to be recognized as appropriate are called the conditions for the success of a speech act.

In a speech act, J. Austin distinguishes three levels, also called acts: locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts.

A locutionary act (locution, from the English locution ‘turn of speech, speech’) is the pronunciation of a statement that has phonetic, lexico-grammatical and semantic structures. It has meaning. The realization of the sound structure falls to the share of the phonetic act, the lexico-grammatical structure is realized in the phatic act, and the semantic structure in the rhetic act.

The illocutionary act (illocution, lat. il-) The perlocutionary act (perlocution, lat. per- ‘through’) serves to deliberately influence the addressee, to achieve some result. This act is not conventional.

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