What is a Speech Act? A brief introduction to Searle's theory on speech acts

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,5, , language: English, abstract: John R. Searle was born in 1932 in Denver, Colorado. In his article What is a Speech Act? Searle develops a "e;theory in the philosophy of a language, according to which speaking in a language is a matter of performing illocutionary acts with certain intentions, according to constitutive rules (Grewendorf / Meggle 2002: 4). The following paper will deal with the ideas on speech acts developed in Searle's article. First, a fundamental understanding of the assumptions Searle s theory is based on will be provided. There will be a brief introduction to the theories of J.L. Austin and H.P. Grice, whom Searle s article was mostly influenced by. Grice s Meaning and Austin s How to do things with words will constitute the reading mostly consulted. After providing a basis for Searle s theory, his article What is a Speech Act? will be looked at in detail. The examinations will include Searle s distinction between regulative rules and constitutive rules and his introduction of the notions proposition-indicating element and function-indicating device , as derived from illocutionary act and propositional content of an illocutionary act . The focus will then be on Searle s conditions for the illocutionary act of promising, and the rules for the use of the function-indicating device for promising, which he derives from these conditions. There will finally be a brief overview on revisions and amendments Searle developed on his theory after 1965. These include a more detailed classification of speech acts and a distinction between speaker meaning and sentence meaning.