Austin’s Speech Act Theory

What is speech act: Brainstorming

Every word belonged to human language represents to the actual world, which means, there must be things, actions, or even characteristics in the actual world that can be seen, done, or felt when you say the words. Just say the word ‘table’, it represents a thing made of wood usually has square shape and four legs which function as the pair of chair. You can see the thing in the actual world, and of course in your mind there is an image about how the ‘table’ looks like. Or the word ‘walk’, you move from one place to another place by foot. The action is there, and it can be seen and done. Or the word hot, cool, beautiful, etc, they all have the same case since all of them can be felt directly in the actual world.

However, have you ever heard the word promise, command, suggest, advise, congratulate  etc? Can you see the particular action done by someone to refer to those? How is the form movement of the body? Can you imagine how the action represented by those words look like? Those words are called speech acts, that is language as action, which means by uttering the word you do the action, you are not just saying something but are actually doing something. If you say “get out of here!” actually you do command action, or “you should do this instead of that.” By uttering that sentence you perform an action that is suggesting, or etc.
It is important to note that the utterance sentence category that can be used to refer to speech act must be performative utterence/sentence.

You can perform at least three different kinds of act when you speak. There are locutionary act (as Searly called it utterance act) refers to the fact that you must use words and sentences if you are saying anything (the act of saying something), it functions merely to inform something, illocutionary act refers to the intent of the speaker, it functions not only to inform something but also to do something , (the act of doing something), and perlocutionary act refers to utterance that is uttered to affect the reader (the act of affecting someone), an act will be done by the hearer as the response to what the speaker says.

"I go to school every day"
That utterance is uttered merely to inform that I go to school every day.

"It's so hot inside here"
That utterance is categorized as illocotionary act since it has intent not merely to inform the situation of the room, but also to ask someone who stand near the window to open it, or etc.

"Yesterday I was little unwell"
That utterance is spoken by someone who did not attend to wedding party of his friend. therefore, the illocution of this utterance is apologizing and the perlocotion is asking his friend to understand his situation.

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See also:

• Austin's Speech Act Theory
• Performative vs. Constative Sentence
• Austin’s five categories of performative

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Love is pain

People who had never suffered for love, never actually knew love. If it never hurt, it was not love.
Love opens the closed, revives the unrealized, brightens the invisible, and glorifies the unappreciated.
Love catapults the hopes into the sky .
But, if it is disappointed, love  Heartbreaks to its deepest.



Orang yang tak pernah menderita karena cinta, sesungguhnya tak pernah mengenal cinta. Jika rasa itu tak pernah melukai, pasti itu bukan cinta.
Cinta membuka yang selama ini tertutup, menyadarkan yang belum pernah disadari, mencemerlangkan yang tak terlihat, dan memuliakan yang tak terhargai.
Cinta melambungkan harapan ke langit.
Tapi, jika ia dikecewakan, cinta menyayat hati sampai ke dasarnya.

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Deep Structure vs. Surface Structure

One of the most important concepts proposed by Chomsky is the concept of surface and deep structure. The Generativism paradigm claims that the concept of structural analysis proposed by Structuralism paradigm is too swallow, it only reaches the level of surface structure. Surface structure can be defined as the syntactic form they take as actual sentences. In the other words, it is forms of sentences resulted from  modification/ transformation. Consider these sentences:

(1)   You close the door.

(2)   The door is closed by you.

(3)   Close the door!

The first sentence is active, second is passive, and the last is imperative. However, if you take a look those closely, you will find that those three are very closely related, even identical.  They seem to be identical, since they have the same underlying abstract representation that is called deep structure. It is defined as an abstract level of structural organization in which all the elements determining structural interpretation are represented. If you want to analyze the relation of those three sentences, the first you have to know about the deep structure of them, since deep structure is the input of transformation rules. You cannot apply transformation rules if you don’t  have deep structure. transformation rules are sets of rules which will change or move constituents in the structures derive from the phrase structure rules.

e.g.

The DS (deep structure)

(2)	SD (structure description)  :  SC (Structural change)        : SS (Surface structure)         :	1 2 3 4 3 4 + be 2+en 1 The door is closed by you
Note: the SC is passive transformation rules
(3)	SD: SC: SS:	1 2 3 4 0 2 3 4 Close the door!
Note: 0 is deletion

From the above example, it can be concluded that deep structure then is a pure representation of thematic relations. Anything which is interpreted as the subject or object of a given predicate will be in the subject or object position of that predicate at Deep structure no matter where it is found at Surface structure.

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See also:

Chomsky's Generative Linguistics: An Introduction

Linguistic Competence and Linguistic Performance

Deep Structure vs. Surface Structure

5 Definitions of Deep Structure

Phrase Structure Rules

Transformation Rules

Tree Diagram

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Grice's Cooperative Principle

The Gricean cooperative principle refers to the concept of the philosopher Grice about the cooperation between speakers in using the maxims. The cooperative principle makes our contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which we are engaged. Levinson (1985) states that the Gricean cooperative principle is construed as a theory of communication; it has the interesting consequence that it gives an account of how communication might be achieved in the absence of any conventional means for expressing the intended message. A corollary is that it provides an account of how more can be communicated, in his rather strict sense of non-naturally meant, than what is actually said.

In sorting out the different conversations can be very complex. There are, however, four maxims that can be regarded as general principles in all conversations, those are:

(1) The Maxim of Quantity, try to make your contribution as informative as is required, in the other words, do not make your contribution more or less informative than is required;
Example of violation:
A: What time is it?
B: It's two a'clock, in fact it's four pass two, and now it's Sunday.

(2) The Maxim of Quality, try to make your contribution one that is true. At this point, to make your utterances understandable, you have to avoid saying something that you believe to be false or lack adequate evidence; 
Example of violation:
A: What is the Capital City of Indonesia?
B: I believe it's Bogor, or maybe Jakarta, Indonesia has wide territory. 

(3) The Maxim of Relevance, try to make your contributions relevant. It means you have to say some information which is related to the topic; 
Example of violation:
Mom: Have you done your homework?
Son: My bicycle is broken mom. 

(4)The Maxim of Manner, try to make your utterance as clear, as brief, and as orderly as one can in what one says, and avoid obscurity and ambiguity. 
Example of violation:
" It’s the taste" (ads of Coca cola) 

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See also:
Grice's cooperative principle 
Cooperative Principle: Implicature
Cooperative Principle: Flouting Maxims
The Hedging of Maxims 

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Basic Versification of Poetry (Part 2)

Rhyme

Rhyme in poetry refers to the identity of sound at the ends of lines.

l  Perfect rhyme vs. half-rhyme

Perfect rhyme occurs when the stressed vowels following differing consonants sounds are identical.

Half-rhyme occurs when the final consonant sounds are identical

e.g.

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,

Thou foster- child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly then our rhyme:

Note:   The green italic words are the examples of half-rhyme

             The red italic words are the examples of perfect rhyme

 l  Masculine vs. feminine

Masculine: when the final syllables are stressed.

e.g. inquired-desired

Feminine: when the final syllables are unstressed

e.g. flowers – bowers

Internal rhyme: the rhyming words found within the line.

e.g.

the splendor falls on the castle walls

The long light shakes across the lakes

Rhyme scheme: the pattern of rhyme in a poem or stanza

e.g. 

a-b-a-b, b-a-b-a, etc.

At daybreak on the hill they stood
That overlooked the moor,
And thence they saw the bridge of wood,
A furlong from their door.

Alliteration (initial rhyme): The same sound starts several words.

e.g.

Far winter’s rains and ruins are over,

And all day the season of snows and sins;

The day dividing lover and lover,

The light and loses, the night that wins.

l  Assonance vs. consonance

Assonance: the use of identical vowel sounds surrounded by different kinds of consonant sounds

e.g. bird - thirst

Consonance: the use of different vowel sounds surrounded by same kinds of consonant sounds.

e.g. wood-weed

Blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter

e.g.

. . . and when I have required
Some heavenly music (which even now I do)
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff
Bury it certain fathoms in the sea,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my book.

(William Shakespeare, The Tempest, 1611)

Free verse: Rhymed or unrhymed poetry composed without attention to conventional rules of meter.

e.g.

I love the way I feel today

But how I know the sun will fade

Darker days seem to be

What will always live in me

But still I run

It's hard to walk this path alone

Hard to know which way to go

Will I ever save this day

Will it ever change

Stanzaic Forms

q  Couplet: Two successive lines of verse that form a single unit because they rhyme

q  Triplet/ tercet: stanza composed three lines.

q  Quatrain: stanza composed four lines.

q  Sestet: stanza composed six lines.

q  Rhyme royal: stanza composed seven lines.

q  Octave: stanza composed eight lines.

q  Sonnet: stanza composed fourteen lines.

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See also:

• The Nature of Poetry
• Basic Versification of Poetry (Part 1)
• Basic Versification of Poetry (Part 2) 
• The Nature of Literature

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Basic Versification of Poetry (Part 1)

Rhythm in poetry refers to the patterns of repeated sounds.

e.g.

Born to a throne, stronger than Rome

But Violent prone, poor people zone

Note: The italic words are the examples of rhythm

Feet: In accentual-syllabic versification the basic unit of measurement is known as the foot. The foot consists of one accented syllable accompanied by one or two unaccented syllables.

How to determine the feet in a line?

1. Determine how many syllables are there in the line;
2. Read naturally the sentence (in reading there must be stressed and unstressed syllables, these will be used to determine the kind of feet possesed by the line).

e.g.

 

Kinds of Feet

•    Iambic: 1 unaccented followed by 1 accented

e.g.

•  Trochaic: 1 accented followed by 1 unaccented

e.g.

• Dactylic: 1 accented followed by 2 unaccented

e.g.

• Anapestic: 2 unaccented followed by 1 accented

e.g. 

• Spondaic: 2 unaccented

e.g.

     

Metrical lines

l  Metric: the art or study of using meter/ syllabic pattern in poetry;

l  After discovering the pattern of the feet, the next step is to determine the meter;

l  To know the meter, just count how many patterns are in the line and put one of the name of line below after the name of the pattern.

e.g.

• The sentence is called iambic, since it has pattern one unstressed followed by one stressed;
• It has four feet, so that the meter is tetrameter;
• So the name of the above line is iambic tetrameter.

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See also:

• The Nature of Poetry
• Basic Versification of Poetry (Part 1)
• Basic Versification of Poetry (Part 2) 
• The Nature of Literature

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