When teaching and learning language for successful communication, we can not ignore the role of discourse analysis. Among the approaches to discourse, text and interaction, speech act theory is found to be an important approach to discourse analysis. Schiffrin (1994: 7) says that “Although speech act theory was not first developed as a means of analyzing discourse, particular issues in speech act theory (e.g. the problems of indirect speech acts, multifunctionality and context dependence) lead to discourse analysis.” It is also from my personal experience that speech acts are used widely in language teaching and learning. According to Paltridge (2000: 16), “A speech act is an utterance which has both a literal meaning and a particular illocutionary force.” Before demonstrating the relevance of speech act theory to language teaching and learning and comparing it with other approaches, this paper firstly discusses its strengths and weaknesses.

Cook (1989: 35) defines speech act theory as “an approach which tries to formulate how such knowledge is brought into play.” This is really true with three strong points of speech acts. The first strength is that “There are several typical ways of expressing certain speech acts from a linguistic point of view.”(Paltridge 2000: 18). We often use an interrogative form to find something out or elicit information, a declarative form to make a statement or convey information and an imperative form to tell someone to do something. For example, when students do not have any ideas about the new topic of pollution, the teacher can ask “Does dirty water affect our environment?” to elicit students about that topic. Another example is that teachers usually use imperatives to give instructions in activities (e.g. “Work in groups of four, answer the questions and then write your answers on the board.”). In group working, students also use imperatives. We can see that language learners can hear and use speech acts every day. So it is easy for them to create speech acts from a linguistic point of view. Moreover, the notion of speech acts helps us to understand unspoken aspects of what people say and mean. We know that there are direct and indirect speech acts. The speakers often perform speech acts indirectly. Schiffrin (1994: 59) claims that “Hearers are able to interpret indirect speech acts by relying upon their knowledge of speech acts.” This also means that we can understand the unspoken aspects of what people say and mean when we have notion of speech acts. For instance, when a boy says “I’m thirsty.”, we know that we bring him a glass of water though he does not say “Bring me a glass of water, please.” Furthermore, speech act theory helps us to know much about “what people might mean by what they say in both mono-language and multilanguage situations”. All languages have directives, commissives, and utterances that can be classified as having an expressive function. (Hatch 1992: 123-125). So we can know what people might mean by what they say in both mono-language and multilanguage. “A speaker transfers the procedure and linguistic means of realizing a speech act from their first language to the second _ such as the use of an imperative to give advice in Polish being used in exactly the same way in English.”(Paltridge 2000: 31). Like English people, Vietnamese people often use a question or an interrogative form to make a request or a permission (e.g. “Can you give me a hand?” or “Can I look at your photos?”).

Besides the speech acts’ strengths, we need to know their weaknesses. First, it is not always easy for the hearers to identify the illocutionary force of a speech act. The illocutionary act or force is the second act which occurs with any utterance or sentence. It is “the act performed “in saying” the locution” (Schiffrin 1994: 53) or it refers to “the speaker’s intention in uttering the words”(Paltridge 2000: 16). Because a speech act often has more than a single illocutionary force, when the hearers want to understand it, they have to pay attention to its form, content and the context in which it occurs. Flowerdew (1990) points out the utterance “It’s cold in here.” might be “both a statement of fact, a request for someone to close the window, and a warning to someone to put warmer clothing on or else they might catch a cold” ( Paltridge 2000:17). Here, it is not easy for the listeners to understand the illocutionary force. “A speaker intent and sentence meaning are not the same. Speaker intent may be more or less, or actually the opposite, of sentence meaning.” (Hatch 1991: 121). For example, when we say “There’s food in the fridge,” we mean that we want the hearers to help themselves something to eat. If the food is not eaten, we know that the hearers can not recognize the illocutionary force. Hatch (1992: 135) states that “Speech act functions may overlap or speaker may have several intentions in mind, thus, a single utterance can have more than one function.” To see this clearly, we can look at the following example. “If I’m looking through a file drawer and mutter, “I wonder where I put that paper,” the function may be an expressive (Oh no, I’ve lost it again!) or it may be a directive to another person (Help me find it!).” (Hatch 1992: 135). “The unstated assumption is that each locution has only one illocutionary force, but as Searle (1965) argued persuasively, primary performatives are not only potentially ambiguous but often deliberately.”(Coulthard 1985: 20). This means that an utterance often has more than one illocutionary acts. For instance, at the party the wife says “It’s really quite late.” “That utterance might be at one level a statement of fact; to her interlocutor, who has just remarked on how early it was, it may be an objection; to her husband, it may be a suggestion or even a request (‘Let’s go home.’) as well as a warning (‘You’ll feel rotten in the morning if we don’t.). (Coulthard 1985: 20). From the quotations and examples above, we find that understanding the illocutionary force is not easy.

The second weakness of speech acts is that “Indirect speech acts are often difficult for second language learners to recognize as they may not necessarily know that in English.” (Paltridge 2000: 21). An indirect speech act is an utterance which the speaker means something is different from the literal meaning of what he or she says. It often has more than one illocutionary force. So it is not easy for second language learners to understand indirect speech acts. For example, in the classroom the English teacher says “It’s hot today.” Vietnamese students may only think that sentence is a statement about Vietnam weather. They may not see that as a request (“Help me turn on the fan.” or “Open the window, please.”). Another example is that the utterance “Can you bring my bags?” is a request to the listener to bring the bag, not a question about the listener’s ability to bring the bag _ the literal meaning of the sentence. So second language learners can misunderstand indirect speech acts easily. For instance, “Would you mind …?” construction is further complicated. The learners usually misunderstand its answer because a “No” response means “Yes, I’ll do it.” and “Yes” means “No, you can not.”.

The final weakness of speech acts is that sometimes speech act analysis fail to help us understand the structure of discourse. For example, “if somebody directs us to wash the dishes, that directive does not stand alone in discourse. Our response may be nonverbal, but some response (e.g. “not my job,” “I don’t usually wash dishes until evening,” “they look pretty clean to me,” etc.) is required.” (Hatch 1992: 135). The speech act analysis in this form does not allow us to see “how speech act units combine to form a system”. In this case we can not understand discourse structure due to speech act analysis.

There is a close relationship between discourse analysis and language teaching. So speech acts also have a relevance to language teaching and learning. “A speech act is one of the instructional units to have students do discourse analysis as a part of the language learning process.” (Celce-Murcia & Olshtain 2000: 224). Teachers can use knowledge of speech acts to provide students with “discourse-based learning activities”. From that students can study language by analyzing speech acts. When teaching two directive forms _ the imperative and polite imperative, I often give my students an example of the imperative and ask them to tell me the situations in which they can use it. Then I ask them work in pairs. Each pair is required to give examples of imperatives and the other pairs are to do discourse analysis. I find that the activity helps learners make sense of and use language effectively. 

In addition, the function of speech acts helps language learners to have “an ability which is essential for the creation and reception of coherent discourse and thus for successful communication” (Cook 1989: 35). Schiffrin (1994: 57) quotes that “Speech act are central to linguistic communication: knowing which speech act to perform is a crucial part of how speakers use language to communicate; likewise, knowledge how to identify that act is critical to hearer understanding.” In Searle’s (1969,1976), there are five functions of speech acts (Hatch 1992: 121): directives (“attempt to get someone to do something”), commissives (“commit the speaker to a future course of action”), representatives (“commit the speaker to the truth of a particular proposition”), declaratives (“bring about an immediate change in a state of affairs”) and expressives (“express a particular psychological state “) (Paltridge 2000: 25,26). When language learners understand all five speech act functions, they can create speech acts exactly. So if language teachers teach their students these functions, their students can control their communication. Take, for example, teaching commissives. Teachers help language learners know that “commissives are statements that function as promises or refusals for action” and “the forms used for commissives vary according to social relationship” (Hatch 1992: 125). From that they can apply commissive speech acts easily in their communication such as giving suitable commissive response to their teacher’s invitation and their friend’s invitation.

Compared with other approaches to discourse analysis and their application in language teaching and learning, speech acts are used more widely than cooperative principle and politeness. Nunan (1993: 65) says “Speech acts are simply things people do through language _ for example, apologizing, complaining, instructing, agreeing and warning.” So we realize that speech acts are familiar with language teachers and learners. And we often make speech acts in our daily life. According to Grice (1975), cooperative principle consists of four maxims _ the maxim of quantity (be brief), quality (be true), relation (be relevant) and manner (be clear). (Celce-Murcia 2000: 23). The politeness principle has three maxims called “don’t impose”, “give options” and “make your receiver feel good” (Cook 1989: 33). These two principles ask learners to have basic knowledge of language before learning them. So it is difficult for language teachers to apply cooperative principle and politeness in teaching the beginning learners. But speech acts are used to teach learners who start to learn language. For example, teachers can teach them how to apologize and compliment, and give them many discourse-based activities to practice.

In conclusion, understanding speech acts’ strengths and weaknesses helps us to analyze discourse easily, use language effectively and control our communication well. Speech acts increase our awareness of the close relationship between discourse analysis and language teaching and learning. They make language learners familiar with discourse analysis. Therefore, speech act theory is an important approach to discourse analysis and it plays a dominant role in language teaching and learning./.

REFERENCES:
Celce-Murcia, Marianne and Elite Olshtain. 2000. Discourse and Context in Language Teaching. Cambridge: CUP.
Cook, G. 1989. Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Coulthard, M. 1985. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis. 2nd Edition London: Longman.
Hatch, E. 1992. Discourse and Language Education. Cambridge: CUP
Nunan, D. 1993. Introducing Discourse Analysis. London: Penguin English.
Paltridge, B. 2000. Making Sense of Discourse Analysis. Gold Coast: Antipodean Educational Enterprises.
Schiffrin, D. 1994. Approaches to Discourse. Oxford: Blackwell.

Ths. Nguyễn Lê Thiên Thư

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