3 Utterance Acts and Austin’s Theory of Pragmatics

In this post we shall analyse the three major Utterance Acts described in Austin’s Theory of Pragmatics. Austin (1962) postulates that when an individual makes an utterance, he performs: 

(i) the locutionary act, which is the act that utters a sentence with a certain meaning using the grammar, phonology and semantics of the language 

(ii) the Illocutionary act which is the intention of an utterance to constitute either an act of promise, command, criticism, agreement, greeting, pronouncement etc. 

(iii) the Perlocutionary act which is the effect or the response it achieves on the hearer like embarrassment, fear, confusion, enjoyment, or amusement. 

Remember that one utterance or sentence can perform all of the above functions. The illocutionary act is where speakers actually “do things with words”. According to Austin, illocutionary act is performed by “performative sentences”, because by virtue of its structure, a performative sentence has a “conversational force” like pronouncing a man and a woman husband and wife or sentencing a defendant in court. 

The illocutionary act carried out by the use of some sentence is to invest the utterance of that sentence with a particular illocutionary force. For example “I pronounce Tayo and Bayo husband and wife” or “I christen this child Anthony.” According to Austin, the sentence (that actually performs the act of joining a man and a woman as husband and wife) is called a performative sentence.

Performatives and Constatives

In order to distinguish between the three acts, i.e. locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionaryacts, all which take place when utterances are made, Austin argues that sentences that do something (rather than say something) are performatives and, the performative (doing) sentences as we noted in 3.1 above are associated with the illocutionary act – the act especially done in speaking like the ones that christen or marry. Descriptive sentences (i.e. sentences that say something) are called constatives. Austin however argues that every normal utterance has both the descriptive (saying) and effective (doing) properties and that saying something is also doing something.

That act of stating or asserting something (that appears like illocutionary acts) are referred to as “canonical constatives” and such sentences are by assumption not performatives. So, a sentence like “star is a brighter life” is not performative. The acts of ordering or requesting (accomplished by imperative sentences) and the acts of asking (accomplished by interrogative sentences) are “dubious examples of performative sentences”constative. Hence a sentence like “leave my office immediately” is not performative. Austin concludes that locutionary aspect of speaking (locutionary act) is primarily in the domain of constatives, while the performative sentences are in the domain of illocution (performing illocutionary acts).

The perlocutionary act, also performed by speaking is the effect of the illocutionary act on the addressee’s feeling, thought or action. Using the above example, it is producing the belief that Bayo and Tayo are now husband and wife or causing people to believe that a child is christened Anthony.

Now the question scholars ask is, what really is the difference between illocutionary act and perlocutionary act because both of them has almost the same force on the hearer?

Austin agreed that there’s a difficulty in distinguishing illocution and perlocution. But he suggests that illocution is conventional in the sense that at least it could be made explicit by the performative formula; but the latter could not. This formula test however, merely tells us what illocutionary act is not but fails to tell us what illocution is. Searle (1975, Allan 1998) agrees that a potential expression by means of performative sentence is a sufficient criterion for recognising an illocution. 

Sadock (1977) does not agree. Austin himself says that to be an illocutionary act the means of accomplishing it should be conventional. Most scholars adopt Austin’s explicit performative in the treatment of illocution. But the treatment of threat (threatening) has remained problematic (Sadock 2006). If I tell you: “if you don’t leave my office now, I call the police” I’m certainly threatening you without using a conventional performative like: “I threaten you…” We shall look at the performative formula below to understand better what Austin means by “conventional” or “explicit performative.”

The Performative Formula and Utterance Acts

Austin’s performative formula attempts to define performative utterances in terms of a grammatical formula for performatives. The purpose is to make explicit the illocutionary act that the speaker intends to carry out in uttering the sentence. The formula is as follows:

(i) “I (hereby) verb-present-active X

The formula begins with a first person singular subject (often a pronoun) and an active verb in the simple present tense that makes explicit the illocutionary act. In addition, the formula may contain the self- referential adverb hereby (Sadock 2006). Such forms Austin calls explicit performatives as opposed to primary performatives.

Therefore the following sentences follow the performative formula and are explicit performatives, performing illocutionary acts:

(a)               I (hereby) christen this child Anthony

(b)              I pronounce you, husband and wife

(c)               I sentence you to 2 years imprisonment, etc.

This formula according to Austin, however is not a sufficient criterion (without the adverb hereby) for determining performatives because there are descriptive (or constative) sentences that fit into the formula. For instance a sentence like: “I pronounce it that it is well,” fits into the formula although it not performative sentence. It also clear that there are other forms that differ from the formula that may be considered as performatives. Look at the following sentences:

(d)              You are sentenced    to 2 years     imprisonment

(e)               The court sentences   you   to  2   years  imprisonment

(f)                You are fired

(g)              Come here

All the above utterances may serve as substantial performative without the formula. Austin therefore concluded that the performative formula was neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for recognising those sentences we may call performatives (Sadock 2006).

Infelicities

When does speech act work? When does it fail? Austin uses the doctrine of infelicities to explain when performatives fail. If you see a man and a woman in the street and tell them: “I pronounce you husband and wife,” of course, you may not be lying but whoever takes you serious and begin to say: one student pronounces this couple husband and wife will certainly be blamed for uttering something false. Because you are not in position to pronounce a man husband and wife, although you may have uttered a correct performative sentence, you are not aptly described as false but as “improper,” “unsuccessful,” or “infelicitous.” Austin distinguishes between three categories of infelicities namely:

(a)              Misinvocation,which disallow a purported act (i.e. a pretended act – something done hard to believe). For example an individual who is not traditionally vested with the power to marry a couple, or christen a child is disallowed from performing it. Similarly, no purported act of banishment is allowed in Zambia (as in some societies of the world). So anyone that attempts to perform the act of banishment Zambia will be considered infelicitous.

(b)              Misexecution,– when the act is vitiated (weakened or destroyed) by errors or omission occurring while performing the act by the right authority. For example if a priest/pastor fails to use the right names or fails to complete the ceremony of marriage, the purported act does not take place.

(c)              Abuses – were the act succeeds, but the participants do not exhibit the right attitude or thought associated with the happy performance of such act – through insincere promises, mendacity (false statement) or unfelt congratulations etc. (Sadock 2006).

Searle’s Contribution

Searle (1969:22) argues that “speaking a language is engaging in a rule-governed form of behaviour.” Therefore speech act is the basic unit of communication in language through which acts are performed according to rules. He believes that speech acts are intentional behaviours and like Austin, he distinguishes between the “illocutionary act” which he considers as “complete” speech act and “perlocutionary act” which is the effect or consequence of the illocutionary act on the hearer. 

He also distinguishes “utterance act” (the act of uttering words) which Austin calls “phatic acts” from “propositional acts” (act of referring/predicating). In his rule-based acts, Searle identifies two kinds of rules (i) regulative rules (ii) constitutive rules. Regulative rules regulate antecedently or independently existing forms of behaviour. Constitutive rules create or define new rules of behaviour. They constitute and regulate an activity whose existence is logically dependent on the rules. The rules of football for instance not only regulate the game but create the very possibility of playing such a game.

Searle borrows and revises Grice’s (1957) notion of meaning which proposes the view that if speaker (x) means something by z (x) intended the utterance of z to produce some effect on hearer (y) by means of y recognition of x’s intention. Searle argues that this notion of meaning based on intended effects fails to take into account the extent to which meaning can be a matter of rules or convention and confuses illocutionary acts with perlocutionary acts. 

He emphasizes the need to capture the intentional and conventional aspects of the relationships between them in our account of illocutionary acts (Adegbija, 1999:201). Searle’s theory of pragmatics tends to combine some important aspects of Grice’s intentional theory of meaning with Austin’s conventional theory of speech acts and therefore appears richer than Austin’s.

CONCLUSION

We must conclude that John Austin’s theory of speech acts is a major contribution to the study of pragmatics. And we must also admit that it has been one theory that has generated a lot of reactions and criticisms from scholars. For instance Strawson (1971) views Austin’s speech acts as a wrong explanation of how language works. Christening and marrying for example take place at highly ritualistic and ceremonial settings/situations with rules that define their performance. 

What one says in such situations is part of formalized proceedings rather than example of common communicative behaviour. Therefore it will be wrong to use them as typical of how language works in real life, everyday situations. Strawson rather argues in favour of Gricean intention theory because some commonplace speech acts – such accomplished by declarative sentences succeed by arousing in the addressee the awareness of the speaker’s intention to achieve a particular goal.

One can also say that Austin’s speech acts have been successful not just by its intrinsic contribution but also by the number of researches and contributions which the theory has generated over the years.