Speech Act

A speech act is an action performed by means of language, such as describing something ("It is snowing."), asking a question ("Is it snowing?"), making a request or order ("Could you pass the salt?", "Drop your weapon or I'll shoot you!"), or making a promise ("I promise I'll give it back.")

An interesting type of speech acts are performatives, which are expressions such as "I nominate John to be President.", "I sentence you to ten years imprisonment." or "I promise to pay you back.". In these expressions, the action that the sentence describes (nominating, sentencing, promising) is performed by the sentence itself.

For much of the history of linguistics and the philosophy of language, language was viewed primarily as a way of making factual assertions, and the other uses of language tended to be ignored. The work of J. L. Austin led philosophers to pay more attention to the way in which language is used in everyday activities. His student John Searle further developed this approach.

The study of speech acts forms part of the discipline of pragmatics, which forms part of linguistics.

External links

Speech Acts entry from Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Kent Bach http://online.sfsu.edu/~kbach/spchacts.html
Towards a History of Speech Act Theory Barry Smith http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith//articles/speechact.html

Commercial Usage: Speech Act

Domain	Title
Books	Complaining and Commiserating: A Speech Act View of Solidarity in Spoken American English (History and Language, Vol 2) (reference) English Speech Act Verbs: A Semantic Dictionary (reference) Essays in Speech Act Theory (Pragmatics and Beyond. New Series, 77) (reference) Speech act phenomenology (reference) Speech Act Taxonomy As a Tool for Ethnographic Description (Pragmatics & Beyond, Vi:7) (reference) (more book examples)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Modern Translation: Speech Act

Language		Translations for "speech act"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
French		acte de parole. (various references)

German		Sprechakt. (various references)

Pig Latin		eechspay actay

Spanish		acto de habla. (various references)

Swedish		talhandling, talakt. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

Anagrams: Speech Act

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "a-c-c-e-e-h-p-s-t"
	-1 letter: cheapest, seecatch.
	-2 letters: accepts, cachets, catches, escheat, hepcats, patches, peaches, pectase, teaches.
	-3 letters: accept, aspect, caches, cachet, chapes, chaste, cheaps, cheats, cheeps, epacts, escape, etapes, etches, hepcat, peaces, peseta, sachet, scathe, spahee, spathe, speech, taches, thecae.
	-4 letters: aches, cache, capes, caphs, caste, catch, cates, cease, cepes, cesta, cetes, chape, chaps, chapt, chase, chats, cheap.
	Words containing the letters "a-c-c-e-e-h-p-s-t"
	+5 letters: ecocatastrophe, petrochemicals.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.

Speech Act

Definition: Speech Act

Speech Act

Noun

Crosswords: Speech Act

Specialty Definition: Speech act

External links

Commercial Usage: Speech Act

Books

Modern Translation: Speech Act

French

German

Pig Latin

Spanish

Swedish

Anagrams: Speech Act

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams

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