Speech act theory for language teaching

Richard S Pinner RPinner Discourse Analysis.docx

20/11/2008

Richard Pinner Originally submitted to King’s College London as part of an MA in Applied Linguistics and ELT

Speech Act Theory:

Benefits and Insights in English

Language Teaching

Table of Contents

Introduction 2

A Brief Description of Speech Act Theory 3

The Cross-Cultural Question 4

Putting Theory into Practice 6

Appropriateness 8

Possible Realisations and Applications within English Language Teaching 9

Teaching Materials & Strategies 9

Conclusion 11

Bibliography 12


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Introduction

We have learned a great deal about the way we use and acquire language, particularly

over the past fifty years or so. Much of this knowledge of language and the implications

for L2 learning has been advanced through research based on pragmatic theories. One

such example is speech act theory, which is of great importance and has developed a

strong bank of research and literature. The implications for English Language Teaching

have been debated over and looked into by experts from a variety of fields, from cultural

anthropologists to applied linguists and SLA researchers (Blum-Kulka, House and

Kasper 1989: 2). This essay will examine the classroom applications of the theory by first

exploring the key concepts and how they might facilitate English learning. I will look

closely at the benefits and limitations of speech act theory in relation to ELT pedagogy

and attempt to clarify speech acts as they are discussed in empirical research and how this

is connected with speech act theory.

First I will give a brief explanation and description of speech act theory, and in doing so

attempt to clarify what is by now rather a dispersed set of ideas. Speech acts have been

approached from many angles within the study of language and the terminology adapted

for various author’s purposes. Kasper and Blum-Kulka refer to “thanking, apologizing,

complaining, requesting and correcting” (1993: 59) as speech acts, but there are “There

are literally hundreds of speech acts” (Bardovi-Harlig et al 1989). For this reason it is

important to clearly explain what we mean by speech acts in reference to ELT. My

description will necessarily be brief as defining speech acts has been the topic of many

entire books (for example Searle’s Speech Acts 1969). During this description we will

see that speech acts are closely linked with sociolinguistics. We will examine this idea

further and the implications for ELT in the second part of the essay.

Following the brief description we will look at the empirical research into cross-cultural

speech acts and how instruction could aid learners to become more successful speakers of

English. At the same time we will briefly examine one of the major problems with this


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idea; the use of the term “appropriateness” when looking at student responses and

deciding how we define the term and against what existing models.

In the second part I will examine some recent EFL materials and strategies in relation to

the presentation of speech acts. Here we will examine again the connection with

sociolinguistics. We will also review the research mentioned in the first section and see if

the current trend in materials is in line with the research findings.

A Brief Description of Speech Act Theory

Speech act theory was developed from a notion first put forward by J.L Austin in his

posthumous paper How to Do Things with Words (1962). Austin was a language

philosopher and there were obvious connections between his work and the field of

linguistics. Later John Searle1 further expanded on the theory, most significantly with

Speech Acts: An Essay In The Philosophy Of Language (1969) and A Classification Of

Illocutionary Acts (1976). Subsequently speech act theory was eagerly taken up by

applied linguists because of the insights it provided into the way we use language for

every-day purposes. The implications for ELT have been developed further by

researchers and teachers such as Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford, Blum-Kulka & Kasper,

Olshtain & Cohen, Schmidt & Richards and Wolfson.

There are many areas to speech act theory, but a succinct explanation is provided by

Cohen. He approaches Speech act theory from the context of Second Language

Acquisition (SLA) and states that “[according to Austin] utterances have three kinds of

meaning” (Cohen 1996: 384) those being Locutionary, Illocutionary and Perlocutionary.

1 Searle’s contribution was to further define speech acts and to categorise them. His five classifications

were Representatives, Directives, Commisives, Expressives and Declaratives. (Searle, 1976 cited in

Schmidt, R. & Richards, C. (1980) Speech Acts and Second Language Learning in Journal of Applied

Linguistics 1980 I(2):129-157; doi:10.1093/applin/I.2.129). There have been additions to this list and many

other insights. The focus of this essay is on the way meaning is passed from speaker to hearer and how

speech acts are interpreted, so it is beyond the scope of this essay to further explain in detail such ideas as

“performative” verbs (Austin 1962:65) and I will not go into the classification of different types of speech

acts. For the purposes of this essay I will focus purely on the three types of meaning an utterance has.


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Very simply, locutionary meaning is the actual or literal meaning of the words uttered.

For example, in saying “It’s raining” I am commenting on the weather and stating that

water is falling from (clouds in) the sky. Illocutionary meaning is the “social function”

(Ibid) of the words or the way they are intended to be understood. For example “It’s

raining” may actually be a round-about way of saying “I don’t feel like going to the zoo

today.” or I may intend to invite you to consider changing your plans about going out. If

this is my intention I am performing an Indirect Speech Act (Austin 1962 & Searle 1975)

because what I mean and what I say are reliant on the hearer interpreting what I wish to

communicate. The Perlocutionary meaning or Perlocutionary Force (Austin 1962) is the

effect or the aim of the utterance. To continue the example above the Perlocutionary

force of the utterance would possibly be that we decide to stay in and drink hot chocolate

rather than going out in the rain. If doing so was my intended or desired outcome from

the words the perlocutionary force (result or aim) matches the illocutionary meaning

(intention). This may not always be the case, which has been termed as Perlocutionary

failure (Leech, 1983: 204–5)

The Cross-Cultural Question

Speech acts are a good example of a language theory with very practical applications for

language teaching, not to mention a large bank of empirical research examining this.

However, speech act theory and language teaching becomes more challenging when we

look at cross-cultural pragmatics. The Cross Cultural Speech Act Research Project

(CCSARP) (Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper 1989) was one of the first and best known

studies which focused on L1 and L2 speakers of seven languages and the disparity of

responses when performing the speech acts of requests and apologies (1989: 11). The

study looked at variables such as social distance and dominance (Wolfson, Marmor and

Jones, 1989: 191). The findings were conclusive that even advanced speakers of a

language can make sociolinguistic errors and that L2 speakers responses are often quite

different from those of L1 speakers. In addition to this there is general agreement that

“sociolinguistic errors are typically treated as breaches of etiquette” (Boxer & Pickering


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1993: 56). This is made more acute if the speaker has an advanced level of grammar or

vocabulary but not of, what Bachman (1990) terms, “sociolinguistic competence” as part

of “communicative competence.” These errors are potentially more serious than

grammatical errors (Crandall & Basturkmen 2004: 38)

From this it has been noted that the explicit teaching of pragmatics would be of great

benefit to language learners because they often do not simply acquire sociolinguistic

competence subliminally by being around the target language, or even being in the target

culture. (Schmidt, 1993: 25-6) This has particular implications for EFL where students

may be quite distant from the target culture. Schmidt (Ibid) notes that there is no

conclusive evidence for subliminal language learning. Cohen also argues the need for

explicit teaching and notes from his own research that learners can apply the knowledge

from speech act training very quickly. He makes the point that research should be

conducted in order to address what contribution to learners’ competence we are making

“by explicitly teaching [students] some of the finely tuned speech act behaviour that is

not simply acquired over time... [L]earners do not necessarily have an adequate

awareness of what is involved in complex speech behaviour.”

While the research findings of the CCSARP and other cross-cultural studies are very

interesting, the focus of this essay is specific to ELT and thus such differences serve only

to highlight the need for explicit sociolinguistic speech act instruction in English. Since

there is a disparity between the responses of L1 and L2 speakers of English the explicit

teaching of illocutionary meaning and the norms for conducting certain types of speech

acts has value for students. This is, of course, if we assume the learners wish to fit in and

to be accepted within the target culture. This does, however, bring us to a limitation with

the theory. Often cultural disparities exist between L1 speakers where the target culture is

not the same. An obvious example is British and American English. For example, a study

by Creese (1991) discovered disparities between American and British speakers of

English in dealing with compliments. In addition the work of Gumperz (1982) looked at

disparities between British-English and Indian-English speakers when performing speech

acts in institutional settings. This has huge implications not just for TESOL but also


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English as a Global Language and brings us again to the limitations of “appropriateness”

which we will discuss later in this essay.

In the next section I will look at the way speech act theory has been interpreted into

pedagogy and how materials writers and applied linguists view the usefulness of an

understanding of what they call speech acts.

Putting Theory into Practice

Wolfson (1989: 56-8) writes about “the philosophic tradition” in her book Perspectives

and discusses the implications of speech act theory for teaching sociolinguistics within

TESOL. Wolfson seems to dismiss the usefulness of such pragmatic theory. She quotes

Cicourel (1980) and lists his “four2 major limitations of speech act theory, apart from its

inability to account for data from other cultures” (Wolfson, 1989: 58). She attacks the

universality of the theory by listing two tightly contained languages with apparently very

different rules of speaking to English. She quotes Keenan, a linguistic anthropologist, on

Malagasy and “the Indians of the Warm Springs reservation in Oregon” (attributed to the

research of Hymes, 1975). These differences in cultural norms may reduce speech act

theory’s standing as a universally applicable theory to language, but in my view they

certainly strengthen the position for teaching them within EFL or ESOL. Wolfson fails to

point this out in this essay, however, her research into speech acts has certainly helped to

2 The limitations are that analysis is conducted from small fragments or exchanges, they are frequently out

of context, that more than one message might be present within any given speech act and that they “rely on

idealized conditions” (Cicourel 1980:9-10 in Wolfson, N (1989) Perspectives: Sociolinguistics and TESOL.

New York: Newbury House Publishers). I would argue that Even when a given speech act may fall into two

categories this is surely part of the illocutionary meaning of the act. For example if I say “It’s raining” and

wish to stay indoors I have not performed two speech acts. I have made a declarative about the weather

with the illocutionary meaning of expressing reluctance to go out or giving the hearer the chance to re-

adjust our plans.


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progress the field in ELT (see for example Rules of Speaking 19833). Wolfson clearly

wishes to make a distinction between speech act theory and the teaching of speech acts.

Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford point out that theories concerned with teaching and learning

are “of necessity culturally formed and hence unlikely to be shared when teacher and

students have different backgrounds” (1997: 129) Again, while this takes credibility away

from the universality of speech act theory it lends usefulness to the explicit teaching of

speech acts and illocutionary meaning within ELT.

If learners are to be successful in acquiring a language they must have a certain degree of

sociolinguistic competence (Bachman 1990) or they are unlikely to be able to use the

language (in this case English) to great effect as they will be unable to communicate their

real intentions (perlocutionary force) without involving a loss of face.

In support of overtly teaching illocutionary force and meaning Schmidt (1993: 25-26)

discusses the importance of making learners overtly aware of the meaning or of the

functions of certain speech acts. He talks of “consciousness perception” and later lists

examples from his own well documented acquisition of Portuguese in which he observed

or was told how to end a phone. After instruction he was able to directly utilise this

knowledge to help him in situations where he had previously felt inadequately equipped

to do so (Ibid: 29). Cohen (1996: 411) restates the conclusions of empirical research into

speech acts:

[F]ormal classroom instruction concerning the social rules of a language can assist learners in

communicating more appropriately with native speakers outside the classroom.

For these reasons I agree wholeheartedly with Widdowson (2003: 04) that theory and

pedagogic application in ELT should not be separated too much. Students may not need

to know details of the theory, but that does not mean the theory is to be separated from

the methodology. This is merely a very short overview of some of the well known

3 Wolfson, N. (1983) Rules of Speaking In Richards, J. & Schmidt, R. (eds.) (1983) Language and

Communication New York: Longman Publishing


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research and literature and there are many more detailed discussions on the topic. I agree

with Cohen and Schmidt that speech acts and especially the illocutionary meaning behind

them, can greatly assist language learners in becoming more adept as speakers and avoid

them losing face. Within ELT this will contribute to the students’ confidence which I

believe will enable them to further improve as speakers in English.

Appropriateness

In this essay I am looking at ELT pedagogy and thus a discussion around non-native

institutionalized varies (NNIVE) of English is important. In this context I agree that

“appropriate speech behaviour will rely heavily on those societies' own rules.” (Boxer &

Pickering 1993: 45) When we talk about fitting in or being accepted in a culture, to

whom are we giving the ultimate right to choose “appropriateness4” in English? Are we

assuming that teachers (or native speakers) are correct in their use of speech acts when

performing locutionary and illocutionary acts? Doing so is dangerous because

“[s]ociolinguistic research has repeatedly demonstrated the inadequacy of native speaker

intuitions.” (Wolfson, Marmor & Jones 1989: 181) While I am not denying the

limitations of speech act theory I would still point out that there needs to be a baseline

from which to approach the subject in the EFL or ESOL classroom. However, problems

occur in defining such a baseline and there is still a need for research into this area. While

it is important to be aware of this limitation we can sidestep the issue by alerting learners

to these issues and encouraging them to make their own observations. The idea of

“learner as researcher” (Ellis 1998) is very useful here.

Students may be asked to focus on specific speech acts by gathering examples themselves.

(Bardovi-Hartlig et al 1989: 13)

Thus we ask students to learn to make their own choices based on observations of what is

“appropriate.”

4 Canale presents a framework for communicative objectives which draws on the work of Munby (1978)

and Canale & Swain (1979) which was created for the Ontario Ministry of Education for French as a

Second Language at elementary and secondary schools. Twice under the heading of Sociolinguistic

competence the word “appropriate” is used with no further expansion.


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Possible Realisations and Applications within English Language

Teaching

As teachers we merely wish to facilitate in our learners the ability to be understood in

English and to use it to achieve their desired aims. We want them to be aware that there

are levels of meaning and to encourage and facilitate them to get a deeper knowledge of

the language. In teaching speech acts we are preparing our students for situations which

commonly occur and providing them with the functional language and sociolinguistic

skills to do so effectively and without a loss of face.

Teaching Materials & Strategies

McConachy (2007) has noted several major EFL course books and their limitations in the

presentation of dialogues which contain speech acts. For example, in New Interchange

(Richards, Hull & Proctor 1998) there is a dialogue between two friends which has no

contextual information and sociolinguistic analysis. (see appendix one for sample

dialogue) The dialogue presents the speech act of suggesting but without any contextual

information. McConachy presents ways that the teachers themselves might add to such

dialogues by simply asking questions about the speakers’ relation to each other and

asking students to guess at any illocutionary information. In doing so we invite the

students to come to their own conclusions and ignite in them an awareness of

illocutionary meaning.

Boxer and Pickering (1993) reviewed seven textbooks (four US English and three UK)

and concluded that “with few exceptions” (Ibid: 46) the books deal with direct speech

acts (in this case complaints) rather than indirect. From this we can deduce a lack of

focus on illocutionary meaning and with it a failure to incorporate sociolinguistic

competence within the texts.

For my own research I looked at New English File (Oxenden, C & Latham-Koenig, C

2008) because it has “real life” situations called Practical English and Social English.


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The situational context between characters is explicit and the characters are the same

throughout the level. Their relationship builds on each previous exchange, thus there is an

idea of development. Although these dialogues are not real or based on real data the

sociocultural development is a step forward in terms of speech acts and the representation

of sociolinguistic information. Furthermore, the exercises do make some attempt to take

advantage of this (see appendix two). There is also an accompanying website, however

here there is no contextual information to language presentation. The focus is on syntactic

relations between words and structures and when we look under a section such as

Colloquial English there is no organizing principle related to speech act presentation.

I did find some useful materials on onestopenglish.com which focus on speech acts and

appropriate responses (appendix three). Here students are asked to choose the most

appropriate response following a lesson on “Language Functions.” This worksheet is one

of the few I have come across that could be said to explicitly attempt to teach speech acts.

Following on from this, Boxer and Pickering (1993: 53-6) also prepared some of their

own materials (appendix four) which present speech acts within a sociolinguistic context.

There is contextual information followed by a dialogue and finally an explanation of the

illocutionary meaning or sometimes the intention or reason for the dialogue. However,

this level of details would not be suitable across all levels, particularly lower level

learners. On this front I agree with McConachy (2007: 9) when he suggests that teachers

will need to develop their own sociocultural awareness in order to facilitate learners.

From a review of the literature and classroom materials it seems that speech acts are

slowly finding their way into classroom materials, but much is still left in the hands of the

teachers to exploit the potential of presented speech acts and dialogues. Again the idea is

to encourage the “learner as researcher” (Bardovi-Harlig et al, 1989) approach and

facilitate students to make their own observations.


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Conclusion

The most practical implications of speech act theory are to be found in teaching the idea

that what we mean and what we say may not always be the same. A very common

example is the idea that an utterance such as “Could you pass the salt?5” is a request

rather than an interrogative about ability. (Fraser 1983: 29) In the same way, when we

say “Must you be so insensitive?” this is more likely to be seen as a rebuke rather than a

question regarding obligation as it would appear from a purely bottom-up, syntactic view.

Additionally, “Do you like hospital food?” is actually a threat rather than a question.

In Cohen’s (and my own) understanding of speech acts they boil down to communicative

intentions in a language that are proven to be of use to EFL or ESL learners because they

provide an easy to follow insight into pragmatics and also because they can be utilised

when learners are required to negotiate meaning in a certain context. Learners often

express difficulty when closing a conversation. (Schmidt 1993: 29) and it is often useful

for them to know how to wind-down or close a discussion by using devices such as

“well…” to indicate to the other participant that they wish to leave. Another useful device

would be using a phrase like “I’d better let you get back” for saving face of both parties.

In teaching an utterance like the aforementioned we are teaching speech acts. Speech act

theory needs to be broken down into simple terms again in order to be of use to language

learners and that has been the current trend, but this does not mean it is to be separated

from the theory.

Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford (1997: 114) note that the difference between speech acts and

language functions is “not always observed in language pedagogy” although the two have

a “distinct difference.” They do not however explicitly explain the difference. I would

disagree with that point because I cannot see a “distinct difference” between speech acts

and language functions. The study of speech acts originates from the idea that “minimal

5 This is also Searle’s famous example (1969)


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units of human communication ...[are the] performance of certain kinds of acts, such as

making statements, asking questions, giving directions, apologizing, thanking and so on.”

(Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper 1989: 2) In my understanding those are functions within a

language. So then, speech act theory has lead to the idea of teaching speech acts or

functional units of language to students with the background idea of an understanding of

possible indirect or illocutionary meaning ever present and requiring overt instruction.

While current materials do not always reflect this there is a growing trend towards

presenting speech acts with contextual information about social status or the relationship

between the participants of a dialogue. It is then for the teacher to explain or preferably

facilitate the noticing of speech acts and the sociolinguistic norms surrounding them. The

best way to teach speech acts in my view is to make our students more aware of such

pragmatic variables and to provide them with the information they need to make their

own observations. In doing so we can escape the limitations of “appropriateness” and

allow our learners to work out for themselves the best way to perform a speech act in any

given situation.

(3,456 Words)

Bibliography

Austin, J.L (1962) How To Do Things With Words in Jarworski, A. and Coupland, N.

(eds.) 1999 The Discourse Reader. London: Routledge

Bachman, Lyle F. Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing Oxford Applied

Linguistics Series: Oxford University Press

Bardovi-Harlig, K. & Hartford, B. (eds.) (1997) Beyond Methods: Components of Second

Language Teacher Education McGraw Hill


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Bardovi-Harlig, K. Hartford, B.A.S, Mahan-Taylor, R. Morgan, M.J. & Reynolds, D.W.

(1989) Developing Pragmatic Awareness: Closing the Conversation in ELT Journal 45/1

January 1991. Oxford University Press

Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper (eds.) (1989) Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and

Apologies. Norwood: Ablex Publishing Corp

Boxer, D. & Pickering, L. (1993) Problems in the Presentation of Speech Acts in ELT

Materials: The Case for Complaints in ELT Journal 49/1 January 1995. Oxford

University Press

Canale, M. (1983) From Communicative Competence to Communicative Language

Pedagogy in Richards, J. & Schmidt, R. (eds.) (1983) Language and Communication

New York: Longman Publishing

Cohen, A.D. (1996) Speech Acts in McKay S.L. and Hornberger (eds.) (1996)

Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching Cambridge University Press

Crandall, E. & Basturkmen, H. (2004) Evaluating Pragmatics-Focused Materials in ELT

Journal 58/1 Oxford University Press

Creese, A. (1991) Speech Act Variation in British and American English in Working

Papers in Educational Linguistics Vol. 7 No. 2 http://www.wpel.net/v7/v7n2Creese1.pdf

Fraser, B. (1983) The Domain of Pragmatics in Richards, J. & Schmidt, R. (eds.) (1983)

Language and Communication New York: Longman Publishing

Jupp, T., Roberts, C., & Cook-Gumperz, J. (1982) Language and Disadvantage: The

Hidden Process in Gumperz, J. Language and Social Identity. Cambridge University

Press


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Leech, G. (1983) Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.

McConachy, T. (2008) Raising Sociocultural Awareness Through Contextual Analysis:

Some Tools for Teachers in ELT Journal doi:10.1093/elt/ccn018 Oxford University Press

Schmidt, R. (1993) Consciousness, Learning and Interlanguage Pragmatics in Blum-

Kulka, S. & Kasper, G. (eds.) (1993) Interlanguage Pragmatics New York: Oxford

University Press

Schmidt, R. & Richards, C. (1980) Speech Acts and Second Language Learning in

Journal of Applied Linguistics 1980 I(2):129-157; doi:10.1093/applin/I.2.129

Searle, J. (1969) Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press

Taguchi, N. (2007) Task Difficulty in Oral Speech Act Production in Oxford Journal of

Applied Linguistics 28/1 113-135 Oxford University Publishing

Widdowson, H.G. (2003) Defining Issues In English Language Teaching. Oxford:

Oxford University Press

Wolfson, N (1989) Perspectives: Sociolinguistics and TESOL. New York: Newbury

House Publishers

Wolfson, N. Marmour, T. & Jones, S. Problems in the Comparison of Speech Acts Across

Cultures in Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper (eds.) (1989) Cross-Cultural Pragmatics:

Requests and Apologies. Norwood: Ablex Publishing Corp


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Appendix

One)

James This has got to stop! Another Friday night without a date! What

can I do?

Mike What about looking through the personal ads in the newspaper?

James Actually, I’ve tried that. But the people you meet are always

different from what you expect.

Mike Well,why don’t you join a dating service?Afriend ofminemet his

wife that way.

James That’s not a bad idea.

Mike Also, it might be a good idea to check out singles’ night at the

bookstore.

James Yeah. If I don’t find a date, at least I might find a good book!

(Taken from New Interchange (1998b), Student’s Book 3: 57)

Two)

New English File Elementary (Oxenden, C & Latham-Koenig, C (2008)


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Two)

New English File Elementary (Oxenden, C & Latham-Koenig, C (2008)

Three)

http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?docid=147351 (Staff Room Access required)

Teaching Functions

By Alex N Miho

© Macmillan Publisher 2005

http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?docid=147351


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Four)

b) Advice sometimes occurs as an IC response, but occasionally it serves

as encouragement to the speaker:

Two female strangers, status equals, are talking to each other at a

swimming-pool. The speaker is about to enter the water in which the

addressee has already been swimming:

A Ow it's cold! You're brave.

B Just take the plunge. It feels good once you get in.

Explanation: The advice served to encourage the speaker to start

swimming. This short exchange functioned as a conversational opener

that led to subsequent conversation between the two women. They

continued their talk in spurts while in the pool, discussing health-related

issues. The simple conversational opener here functioned to initiate a

sequence of further talk which led naturally to a series of self-disclosures.

Boxer, D. & Pickering, L. (1993) Problems in the Presentation of Speech Acts in ELT Materials: The Case for Complaints in ELT Journal 49/1 January 1995. Oxford University Press

Speech act theory for language teaching

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