Speech acts used in conversations are understood much more widely and can be divided
into three basic categories, meta-interactive, turn-taking and interactive. The first
concerns the organization of the conversation itself, i.e. the marking of beginnings and
endings (e.g. now, right), the opening or closing of a conversation (e.g. hello, bye) or
the structuring of the conversation in some way (Sorry, I’m afraid I must go now). Turn-
taking speech acts are used to pass on, hold or obtain the floor in public speaking (what
do you think?; if I may just finish this; could I come in on this?). Interactive acts are of
four types: eliciting acts require some linguistic response, such as asking for information,
a decision, agreement or the clarification or repetition of an utterance; informing acts
offer information or respond in other ways to eliciting acts, such as agreeing, confirming,
qualifying or rejecting; acknowledging acts provide positive or negative follow-up or
feedback; and directing acts ask for an immediate or future action.
If all utterances do something, the question arises what it is that they do. Three aspects
have been distinguished. First, utterances perform a locutionary act, whose interpreta-
tion is concerned with meaning, for which both knowledge of the language system as
well as extra-textual knowledge of the world is necessary. Second, by making an utter-
ance Ss perform an illocutionary act. This is a linguistic act whose interpretation
is concerned with the force of the utterance, e.g. advising, ordering, urging or warning
somebody. Third, utterances can have an effect on people, for instance persuading or
dissuading them. This non-linguistic act is called the perlocutionary act, and the effect
is referred to as perlocutionary force. Illocutions are (potentially) under the control of
Ss; perlocutions never are: ‘I may warn you hoping to deter you but in fact succeed only
in encouraging or even inciting you’ (Coulthard 1985: 19). Two effects have therefore
been distinguished according to whether they are intended by the S (perlocutionary
object) or not (perlocutionary sequel).
There are various difficulties about these distinctions, the most important of which
relates to the illocutionary force of utterances. Indirect ways of getting things done by
language, called indirect speech acts, are particularly difficult to process, though they
are more frequent in everyday talk than direct and unambiguous statements. If I am sitting
at the only fast computer in the department at 9.50 a.m. and a colleague comes in and
asks ‘Are you teaching at ten?’, the question is what does he want? When I answer ‘No,
I am not’ and he goes away without saying anything else, it is likely that he wanted to
get on the computer to deal with his e-mail (his own machine being much slower) but
did not want to ask me directly. Another indirect way to ask would be ‘Are you going
to be long?’, which also avoids the direct question ‘Can I get on the machine?’
Indirect speech acts often show a discrepancy between grammatical form and com-
municative function in that the declarative, interrogative and imperative moods do not
consistently realize statements, questions and orders. In particular, in situations where the
role relationships between participants are not clear, an S may well choose indeterminate
expressions like Is that the phone?, which the H can interpret as a genuine question or
as a veiled order. Ss can thus get around imposing their will on others too openly and
directly, and an unpleasant confrontation is avoided (for an example of how to distin-
guish genuine questions from veiled orders in classroom interaction see Coulthard 1985:
130–1).
Statements and exclamations can also present problems. Consider a husband who
writes to his wife, ‘I’ll be back next Thursday’: this may be no more than a piece of infor-
mation, but he may well be asking her to meet him at the station, cook them a nice dinner
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SPOKEN DISCOURSE 171