ORAL COMMUNICATION

A speech act is an utterance that a speaker makes to achieve an intended effect. Examples
are locutionary acts, illocutionary acts, and perlocutionary acts. Locutionary act is the actual act
of uttering; illocutionary act is the social function of what is said; and lastly, perlocutionary act is
the result of the reasoning act of what is said; this effect is based on the particular context in
which the speech is mentioned.

In the statement, there are two different people with different nationalities. One is a
native English speaker, while the other is a Chinese speaker. In their conversation, the native
English speaker, or John, said, "He couldn't agree more." Then the Chinese guy misunderstood
and thought that John didn't agree with his idea. The possible reason for this misinterpretation is
because of their nationalities. The native English speaker uses some words that are far from their
understanding, or only native English speakers understand what he means by that. John meant
that he agreed to Chen's idea, but he expressed it in a different way, meaning that it was the
opposite of what he said. That's why he said "He couldn't agree more". On the other hand, the
Chinese speaker, or Chen, misinterpreted what John said in his statement; the reason for this
might've been his nationality. In my own perspective, Chinese speakers aren't that fluent in
English, but I'm not saying all, so they cannot understand what he said.

To sum up everything that has been stated so far, the illocutionary act was that John
agreed to what Chen said, but he said it in a different way of expressing it. In the perlocutionary
act, Chen thought that his idea wasn't agreed to because of what John said. Chen was not fluent
or a native speaker of English, which is why he misinterpreted the way he expressed his
agreement to Chen.

CLARK ABRETIL ABM 11 - HONESTY