An analysis of Austin and Searle's speech act theory

An analysis of Austin and Searle's speech act theory

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This paper introduces the linguistic philosophy foundation of Austin and Searle's speech act theory, the classification of speech acts and Searle's indirect speech act theory. Austin and Searle are the main founders of speech act theory, and their presentation and development have had a great impact on the development of linguistics, especially pragmatics.

Keywords: Austin; Searle's speech act; Indirect speech act

SpeechActTheory)20 was put forward by the British philosopher Austin in the early 1960s, which attracted extensive attention in the linguistic field and exerted great influence in various fields of linguistic research. Speech act theory, as the core theory of pragmatics, has been firmly established, and any research that belongs to pragmatics is based on the philosophy of language of "keeping promises" without exception.

First, the philosophical basis of language

Western philosophy of language is the result of two turns of western philosophy. From ontology to epistemology to linguistic theory, it embodies the research purpose of philosophy of language, that is, to clarify the philosophical problems caused by language abuse through language research and to deduce human rational and philosophical thinking through the study of word meaning. Austin and Searle are both philosophers of language, and their research on language is on the track of philosophy. The speech act theory they founded was not originally used in pragmatics, but served the purpose of philosophical research. Speech act theory holds that language is a kind of behavior controlled by rules, and language research should belong to behavioral science. The basic or smallest unit of language communication is a complete speech act, not symbols, words or sentences. Said believes that there is no difference in principle between studying the meaning of words and studying speech acts, they are the same kind of research. Speech act theory holds that "speaking is doing things". When people say a word, they are performing certain speech acts, such as statements, orders, questions, etc. These speech acts follow certain rules, which make speech acts possible. Speech act theory aims to reveal the law of language use.