What is an indirect speech act?

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-84
Author(s):  
Jörg Meibauer

Abstract The notion of an indirect speech act is at the very heart of cognitive pragmatics, yet, after nearly 50 years of orthodox (Searlean) speech act theory, it remains largely unclear how this notion can be explicated in a proper way. In recent years, two debates about indirect speech acts have stood out. First, a debate about the Searlean idea that indirect speech acts constitute a simultaneous realization of a secondary and a primary act. Second, a debate about the reasons for the use of indirect speech acts, in particular about whether this reason is to be seen in strategic advantages and/or observation of politeness demands. In these debates, the original pragmatic conception of sentence types as indicators of illocutionary force seems to have been getting lost. Here, I go back to the seemingly outdated “literal force hypothesis” (see Levinson 1983: 263–264) and point out how it is still relevant for cognitive pragmatics.

2007 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 213-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Kosecki

Indirect speech acts are frequently structured by more than a single metonymy. The metonymies are related not only to the illocutionary force of the utterances, but also function within the individual lexemes being their parts. An indirect speech act can thus involve not only multiple, but also multi-levelled operation of conceptual metonymy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (06) ◽  
pp. 10410-10417
Author(s):  
Ruchen Wen ◽  
Mohammed Aun Siddiqui ◽  
Tom Williams

For robots to successfully operate as members of human-robot teams, it is crucial for robots to correctly understand the intentions of their human teammates. This task is particularly difficult due to human sociocultural norms: for reasons of social courtesy (e.g., politeness), people rarely express their intentions directly, instead typically employing polite utterance forms such as Indirect Speech Acts (ISAs). It is thus critical for robots to be capable of inferring the intentions behind their teammates' utterances based on both their interaction context (including, e.g., social roles) and their knowledge of the sociocultural norms that are applicable within that context. This work builds off of previous research on understanding and generation of ISAs using Dempster-Shafer Theoretic Uncertain Logic, by showing how other recent work in Dempster-Shafer Theoretic rule learning can be used to learn appropriate uncertainty intervals for robots' representations of sociocultural politeness norms.


Author(s):  
Mitchell Green

Speech acts are acts that can, but need not, be carried out by saying and meaning that one is doing so. Many view speech acts as the central units of communication, with phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties of an utterance serving as ways of identifying whether the speaker is making a promise, a prediction, a statement, or a threat. Some speech acts are momentous, since an appropriate authority can, for instance, declare war or sentence a defendant to prison, by saying that he or she is doing so. Speech acts are typically analyzed into two distinct components: a content dimension (corresponding to what is being said), and a force dimension (corresponding to how what is being said is being expressed). The grammatical mood of the sentence used in a speech act signals, but does not uniquely determine, the force of the speech act being performed. A special type of speech act is the performative, which makes explicit the force of the utterance. Although it has been famously claimed that performatives such as “I promise to be there on time” are neither true nor false, current scholarly consensus rejects this view. The study of so-called infelicities concerns the ways in which speech acts might either be defective (say by being insincere) or fail completely. Recent theorizing about speech acts tends to fall either into conventionalist or intentionalist traditions: the former sees speech acts as analogous to moves in a game, with such acts being governed by rules of the form “doing A counts as doing B”; the latter eschews game-like rules and instead sees speech acts as governed by communicative intentions only. Debate also arises over the extent to which speakers can perform one speech act indirectly by performing another. Skeptics about the frequency of such events contend that many alleged indirect speech acts should be seen instead as expressions of attitudes. New developments in speech act theory also situate them in larger conversational frameworks, such as inquiries, debates, or deliberations made in the course of planning. In addition, recent scholarship has identified a type of oppression against under-represented groups as occurring through “silencing”: a speaker attempts to use a speech act to protect her autonomy, but the putative act fails due to her unjust milieu.


Author(s):  
Ima Frafika Sari

Direct and indirect speech acts are the two types of speech acts. This study aims to know how indirect speech acts are employed in the movie "SpongeBob SquarePants." It employs descriptive qualitative research to explain the main character's speech act types. There is currently a scarcity of studies examining speech act types in cartoon or animation films; yet, it is necessary. According to this study, the result of this article is: first, there are seventy-four discussions of indirect speech acts obtained from all characters in the movie SpongeBob SquarePants. Each dialogue in the film SpongeBob SquarePants can be deduced to reveal the meaning of indirect speech acts. Second, The reader can use the domain analysis indirect speech acts summary to help them understand each dialogue in this movie that has a different meaning. This stage permitted the main characters to say literal things to the listener. The main character did not make a difficult-to-understand statement to the listener. This research looks at Yule's theory's utterances of indirect speech activities. As a result, the outcome differed from the prior study, despite the same issue.


Author(s):  
Ratna Muntiningsih

This paper presents the core of a descriptive theory of Indirect Speech acts, i.e. utterances used by the speaker to the hearer based on the three types of felicity conditions such as content condition, preparatory condition, and sincerity condition. The data examples takes from the English novel "The Cowboy's Secret Son" contains some of indirect speech act utterances that are included to the pragmatic study. The researcher explains and analyzes every utterance based on the theory of Yule (1996), Searle (1976, 1975), Austin (1962), Mey (1993), Bach and Harmish (1979), and Levinson (1983). The result of the research is founded that the speaker uses indirect speech act is to convey the request to the hearer to do something in the future. Moreover they use indirect speech act which has two meanings such as literal meaning and non-literal meaning or indirect meaning. In other words, they use indirect speech act to avoid the hearer to get upset, feel bad, angry and for politeness. And, generally they use indirect speech act because they have recognized the matters they are uttering.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 215-235
Author(s):  
Thouraya Zheni

Language users may use the standardized forms of speech acts as a strategy to achieve their own purposes, like political agendas. This is the objective of the present study, which focuses on the manipulation of speech acts in Donald Trump’s tweets on the US-Iranian crisis. More specifically, the current research paper sheds light on hegemony in political discourse and how it is embedded in assertive, commissive, directive, declarative and expressive speech acts. The tweets of Donald Trump, delivered between January 2017 and December 2019 and related to the US-Iranian crisis, will be analyzed within the framework of Speech Act Theory. The results of the current research show that Trump’s use of speech acts demystifies his hegemonic tone towards Iranian leaders. His power is mediated explicitly via directives and commissives, while it is exerted implicitly via expressives and assertives. His use of direct and indirect speech acts reveals Trump’s ambivalence and willingness to solve the US-Iranian nuclear crisis via both hegemony and diplomacy.  


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 388
Author(s):  
Siti Hunsawati ◽  
Rohmana Rohamana ◽  
Siam Siam

This thesis is about the analysis of speech act in Barbie as Rapunzel movie. The research questions of this thesis were (1) what are the direct and indirect speech acts used by the main character in Barbie as Rapunzel movie? And (2) What are the perlocutionary acts of the main character’s utterances in Barbie as Rapunzel movie?. The objectives of this research were (1) To decribe the direct and indirect speech acts used by the main character in Barbie as Rapunzel  movie  and  (2)  To  describe  the perlocutionary acts   of   the   main   character’s   utterances   in   Barbie  as Rapunzel movie. This research used a qualitative method to describe and analyze  the  utterance.  The  technique  of  data  collection were (1) The researcher download Barbie as Rapunzel movie on youtube. (2) The researcher watched the movie of Barbie as Rapunzel  repetedly. (3) Reading and checking dialogue which related with research from the movie script “Barbie as Rapunzel” movie. (4) The researcher classified the dirrect, indirect speech, and perlocutionary acts. The technique   of   data   analysis   were  (1)   The   researcher identified the direct, indirect speech act and perlocutionary acts from Barbie as Rapunzel movie. (2) Described and analized the utterances which include direct, indirect, and perlocutionary acts. (3) Concluding the data analysis. The result of this thesis show that direct speech acts is the dominant types of speech acts. Where, there are 58 direct speech acts, 2 indirect speech acts, and 41 perlocutionary acts. Keywords: Speech Act, Movie


LINGUISTICA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 220
Author(s):  
Taufan Fadilah ◽  
Isli Iriani Indiah Pane

This study focused on indirect speech act used by the main characters in Toba Dream movie. The objectives of the study were to: (1) find out the types of indirect speech acts used in Toba Dream movie, and (2) describe how types of indirect speech acts used in Toba Dream movie. This research was conducted by using descriptive qualitative method. The data of the study were all utterances uttered by the main character in Toba Dream movie and collected by watching the movie.  The result of the study showed that there were four types of indirect speech acts found in Toba Dream movie, they were: representative, directive, commisive, expressive containing indirect speech acts in Toba dream Movie. Representative (25,71%) were realized by interrogative sentences and imperative sentences. Directive (21,43%) were realized by declarative sentences and interrogative sentences. Commisive (14,28%) were realized by declarative sentences. The main characters in Toba dream movie dominated the use of indirect speech act to express statement, command and warning. It showed that they could produce the language more politely and keep the hearer’s face while getting instruction or information indirectly.Keywords: indirect speech act, movie pragmatic, Toba Dream


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 69
Author(s):  
Ni Wayan Rosi Sumaniari ◽  
Dewa Putu Ramendra ◽  
Gede Mahendrayana

People rarely know the function of the language used in the film. This study analyzes speech acts in a dialogue film entitled Merry Riana: Dreams of a Million Dollars. This research is a qualitative descriptive study. Data were analyzed from the form of speech acts consisting of direct and indirect speech acts in the form of declarative, imperative, and interrogative. The type of speech act analysis uses Searle's theory of representative, directive, commissive, expressive, and declaration. The result of this research is that direct speech act in interrogative form is 43.63%. Direct speech acts in the declarative form are 95 (43.18%), direct speech acts in the imperative form are 24 (10.90%), indirect speech acts in the imperative form are 2 (0.9%), indirect speech acts in imperative form as much as 2 (0.9%). interrogative form is 2 (0.9%), and indirect speech act in declarative form is 1 (0.45%). Furthermore, 74 utterances are analyzed into five types of speech acts. The most dominant representative used 36 (48.6%). Then followed by directive 21 (28.3%), expressive 14 (18.9%), commissive 3 (4.0%), and declarative 0 (0.0%). This research implies that understanding speech acts plays an important role in communication.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-67
Author(s):  
Fyngky Oktadistio ◽  
Mazrul Aziz ◽  
Zahrida .

This Research Entitled “An Analysis Of Direct And Indirect Speech Acts Performed By Main Character In The Movie Revenant Script”. This research was a descriptive analysis that discusses direct and indirect speech acts in movie script entitled ‘The Revenant.’ In analyzing the script, there was used theory by Yule (1996).The data in this research based on main characters’ utterances. The purpose of this analysis was to find out the types, and functions of speech act whether it is direct speech act or indirect speech act in the movie script entitled ‘The Revenant.’ From the analysis, it was found that both direct speech acts and indirect speech acts are used by main characters in this movie. The most dominant type of speech act used in the movie script was direct speech act (13 utterances) and then followed by indirect speech act (9 utterances). The direct speech act was classified again into declarative type (2 utterances) imperative type (5 utterances) and interrogative type (6 utterances). Indirect speech acts were also classified again into declarative type (8 utterances) and Interrogative (1 utterance). For the functions, direct speech acts are classified into the statement (2 utterances), order/request (5 utterances), and the last function of the question (6 utterances). Indirect speech act also classified into question (9 utterances), and no functions of statement and order. Based on the result, the researcher found that Felicity Conditions and genre were the factors affected main characters in producing direct speech acts more than indirect speech acts.


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