Making statements are the way we communicate to each others and many kinds of statements that we can make to build a comunication with some people. We can make apologize, offerings, asking, permission and so on. All of them is included as a speech act. We use the speech act to get one’s respond
According to Levinson (1983) pragmatics is study of just those aspects of the relationship between language and context that are relevant to the writing and the grammars. In study of pragmatics, speech act is the most interisting study and seems relevant in language learning and teaching. Speech act is the action or intent that a speaker accomplishes when using language in context. Yule (1996) states that Pragmatic concerned with the study of meaning communicated by the speaker and interpreted by the listener. It has consequently, more to do with the analysis what people mean by their utterances than what the words or phrases in those utterance might mean by themselves.
Speech acts generally are acts of communication. To communicate is to express a certain attitude, and the type of speech act being performed corresponds to the type of attitude being expressed. For example, a statement expresses belief, a request expresses a desire, and an apology expresses a regret. Some speech act, however, are not primarily acts of communication and have the function not of communication but of affecting institutional states of affairs. They can do so in either of two ways. Some officially judge something to be the case, and others actually make something the case.
Austin (1975) divides the linguistic act into three components. First, there is the locutionary act, "the act of 'saying' something." Second, there is the illocutionary act, "the performance of an act in saying something as opposed to the performance of an act of saying something." Third, there is the perlocutionary act, for "saying something will often, or even normally, produce certain consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audience, of the speaker, or of other persons." In other words, a locutionary act has meaning; it produces an understandable utterance. An illocutionary act has force; it is informed with a certain tone, attitude, feeling, motive, or intention. A perlocutionary act has consequence; it has an effect upon the addressee. By describing an imminently dangerous situation (locutionary component) in a tone that is designed to have the force of a warning (illocutionary component), the addresser may actually frighten the addressee into moving (perlocutionary component). These three components, then, are not altogether separable, for as Austin points out, "we must consider the total situation in which the utterance is issued -- the total speech act -- if we are to see the parallel between statements and performative utterances, and how each can go wrong. Perhaps indeed there is no great distinction between statements and performative utterances." In contradistinction to structuralism, then, speech act theory privileges parole over langue, arguing that external context -- the context of situation -- is more important in the order of explanation than internal context -- the interrelationships among terms within the system of signs.
Searle (1969) undertook to develop the theory to render it more systematic. He chooses to drop the separation of an utterance into locutionary and illoculionary acts and adopt a distinction between a proposition or propositional act and illocutionary force indicating devices (IFID), which mark the illocutionary force.
Searle (1969) identified five illocutionary/perlocutionary points. They are: Representatives is statements may be judged true or false because they aim to describe a state of affairs in the world. Directives is statements attempt to make the other person's actions fit the propositional content. Commissives statements which commit the speaker to a course of action as described by the propositional content. Expressives is statements that express the “sincerity condition of the speech act”. Declaratives is statements that attempt to change the world by “representing it as having been changed”. (to be continued...)
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