Criteria for Speech Act Classifications
There exist different criteria for speech act classification. In the first place, speech acts can be classified according to their origin into primary (or natural) and secondary (or institutional) speech acts. Primary (or natural) speech acts are necessary for any kind of human interaction. Secondary (or institutional) speech acts are specific for a certain institution, for example, for school instruction, courtroom investigation, political debate, commercial advertising, etc.
Institutions can bring into life new types of speech acts, for example, the giving of a verdict, the opening of a meeting, etc. On the other hand, institutions can modify primary speech acts. Thus, an examination question is different from a question in everyday communication. The latter asks for information, for new information. As for the examiner, he naturally knows the answer to the question. His aim consists in testing the knowledge of the person taking the exam.
In the second place, speech acts can be classified according to their function or, to put it differently, according to their position within--speech-act patterns. In this case, a distinction is drawn between initiating and reacting speech acts [L.P. Chakhoyan; W. Edmondson]. Some speech acts, in particular questions or requests, have a tendency to function as initiating moves. On the other hand, confirmations or answers are typical reacting moves.
The differentiation of initiating and reacting speech acts is not an easy task because most speech acts perform both functions in the process of communication, e.g.:
We 're lucky. — Why? - Because there aren 't any clouds (English Course).
Here the speech act JFfty? is reacting in regard to the preceding speech act We 're lucky, but it is an initiating speech act in regard to the following speech act Because there aren't any clouds.
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In the third place, speech acts can be classified according to their linguistic characteristics: lexical, morphological, and syntactic. The authors of the lexical classification of speech acts take as a starting point the lexical character of the verb [J.L. Austin; Th. Ballmer, V. Brennenstuhl; M.K. Kreckel]. The meaning of the verb does help classify speech acts. However, the lexical criterion is applicable only to speech acts comprising a notional verb. Speech acts based on 'sentence representatives' and most sentencoids stand outside the lexical classification.
The authors of the morphological classification of speech acts are guided by the mood of the verb. Thus, D. Wunderlich singles out four types of speech acts:
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1) speech acts of the question type that have a verb in the
interrogative mood,
2) speech acts of the directive type that have a verb in the
imperative mood,
3) speech acts of the representative type that have a verb in the
declarative mood,
4) speech acts of the declaration type that have specific
performative formulas.
The morphological classification of speech acts, like the lexical classification, does not take into consideration the existence of verbless speech acts. What is more, there is often no one-to-one correspondence between the mood of the verb used in the speech act and the intention of the speaker. Cf.:
Someone's at the door. - Is everything ready? ~ Yes, dear, everything's fine. Answer the_door (English Course).
The verb in the speech act Someone's at the door is in the so-called 'declarative mood'. However, the speech act was intended not as a representative, but as a directive. Since the addressee failed to understand the implied directive, the speaker accompanied the implied directive Someone's at the door by a 'bald' (or imperative) directive Answer the door.
The authors of the syntactic classification of speech acts take word order as a starting point, namely the order of subject and predicate. The absence of one-to-one correspondence between the type of syntactic structure and the pragmatic function of the corresponding speech act exposes the vulnerability of the syntactic classification. Thus, if we were guided by the syntactic criterion of
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Linguists generally regard a speech act as a basic minimal unit of pragmatic analysis [J.R. Searle]. A speech act is the production of a sentence, 'sentence representative', or sentencoid under certain conditions.
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