One particular approach to the functional classification of speech certainly ought to be

mentioned, however, as it has been extremely influential. This is the approach based on
SPEECH-ACTS, wich has been developed in the main by philosophers and linguist following
the British philosopher J.L. Austin (see Austin 1962, and excellent reviews in Lyons 1977: ch.
16, Kempson 1977: ch. 4, 5). Austin arguet that the study of meaning should not
concentrate on bald statement such as Snow is white, taken out of context, since language
is typically used, in speech, for many other functions – when we speak we make
suggestions, promises, invitations, requests, prohibitions and so on. Indeed, in some cases
we use speech to perform an action (as Malinowski had arguet), in the extreme sense that
the speech is itself the action which it reports – for instance, I name this ship ‘Saucy Sue’
has to be said if the naming is to be accomplished. Such bits of speech are calied
PERFORMATIVE UTTERANCES. It can be seen that an account of all these different functions
of speech must be formulated in terms of a general theory of social activity, and this is what
Austin and his followers have tried to provide.
A speech – act is a bit of speech produced as part of a bit of social interation – as
opposed to the linguist’s and philosophers decon – textualised examples. Our culture
includes a rich set of concepts for classifying bits of social interaction, reflecting the
importance of social interaction in socicty. For instance, we distinguish between ’work’ and,
’play’ or ’leisure’, between ’playing’ and ’fighting’, and between ’visiting, ’living with’ and
’dropping in on’ people. Similarly, as we might expect, there are many cultural concepts,
with linguistic labels, for types of speech – acts, and the study of such acts seems to be
largely concerned with the meanings of these terms – for instance, what precisely is meant
by the term promise? ( For an answer, see Searle 1965).

One of the important distinctions which Austin introduced was between what he
called the ILLOCUTIONARY FORCE of a speech – act and its PERLOCUTIONARY FORCE. The
former is not easy to define precisely, but it is in some sence the ’inherent’ function of the
speech – act, which might be established examply looking at the act itself in relation to
existing bellieved. For instance, one could classify He’ll soon be leaving as a promise if one
bellieved that the addressee would be pleased at the news, that the actually would be
leaving soon, and so on. Perlocutionary force concepts the effects of the act, whether
intended or actual-for instance, the intended perlocutionary force of He’ll soon be leaving
might be to please the addressee.

The distinction is especially interesting since it would seem to reflect a general

tendency to categorise bits of social interaction in two different ways raccording to (i) their
inherent properties and (ii) their effects. For instance, we distinguish between ’figthing’ and
’winning’, and between ’playing’ and ’enjoying oneself’ or ’passing the time’. This parallel
between the functional classifition of speech and of other types of social behaviour is
exactly what we might expect, given the view that speech is just one kind of social
behaviour. We might also expect that concepts used classifying speech – acts will be typical
of cultural concepts, in being defined in terms of prototypes (see 3.1.2); indeed, in defining
the conditions for something to count, say,as a promise, this is just what we do find. A
prototypical promise is sincere, but it is quite normal to report that someone promised
insincerely to do something.

If speech – act categories are cultural concepts, we might expect them to vary from
one socicty to another, and that is again what we find. One of the standard examples of a
type of speech – act which has a distinctive illocutionary force is the babtising of a person
into the Cristian faith, for which there is a specific verb (babtise) which can be used in
performative ulterances ( I babtise you….). This particular illocutionary force is clearly
restricted to socictics in which babtims takes places, and there are many other similar
examples of culture-specific illocutionary force (for other see Lyons 1977: 737). It is
interesting to compare the concepts reflected by English with those of an exotic community,
such as those of the Tzeltal Indians ( a branch of the Maya, of Mexico ) reported by Brian
Sterss (1874). The Tzeltal have an extremely rich terminology for classi-fying speech – acts,
such as ’talk in which thing are offered for sale’ ar talk in which the speaker has spread the
blame for something, so that he alone is not blamed’. These concepts seem to be instances
of illocutionary force categories, but the terminology goes well beyond such categories, to
include concepts such as ’speech occurring at night or late evening’ or ’speech by somcone
who comes to another’s house and spend timepresed in Tzeltal by the same kind of
linguistic item, consisting of a single word followed by the word k’op, meaning ’speech’. It
seems fair to assume that a Tzeltal has the concepts concerned stored in his memory
(where the reader will have had to construct them as new, internally complex, concepts),
just as we have the complex concepts ’promise’, ’babtise’, ’suggest’ stored in ours, but there
is little overlap between the two systems of concepts, even if we concentrate on the Tzeltal
terms which seem to refer to illocutionary force.
How does the classification of speech – acts fit into that of speech – fonctions,
discussed at the start of this section in terms of ’phaticcommunion’, ’speech for obtaining
information’, etc..?. One possible answer is that the two sets of concepts are appropriate for
classifying bits of speech of different lengths, wits speech – acts as the smallest bits,
classified by illocutionary and perlocutinary force and loanger stretches classified as ’phatic
communio’ and so on. This answer presupposes the existence of some kind of hierarchical
organization to speech, a possibility considered iv 4.3.2 below, but we connot take it for
granted that speech is organized hierarchically. An alternative is to think of speakers as
having a variety of intentions at any given moment in speech, varying in scope from
relatively long-term intentions like maintaining good relations with the addressee, through
shorter-term intentions such as pleasing the addressee, to other types of intentions such as
producing a promise. This view differs from the hierarchical model in that it allows for
changes in the speaker’s intentions. Ilowever, the functional analysis of any given bits of
speech connot be satisfactorily made in term of a single set of mutually exclusive categories,
since different purposes cancocxist. Once again we find the speaker locating his speech in in
a multidimensional space, just as he did with reference to other people (see 1.3.1 and 2.1.4)
and other kinds of situation (see 2.4.1).