Speech Acts In Pragmatics

Abstract

This article investigates speech acts as the core explanatory construct of pragmatics, examining how illocutionary force, conventional form, contextual inference, and social normativity interact to produce action through language. Building on the foundations of Austin’s performative-constative distinction and Searle’s taxonomy, the study synthesizes contemporary developments across interactional linguistics, experimental pragmatics, corpus-based analyses, and computational modeling. The aim is to show that speech acts are neither reducible to sentence types nor free-floating intentions, but coordinated practices anchored in grammar, inference, embodiment, and institutional settings. Methodologically, the paper conducts a theory-driven review that operationalizes key variables such as force-indicating devices, felicity conditions, uptake mechanisms, commitment dynamics, and politeness management, and relates them to empirical findings on indirectness, scalar enrichment, reference, and dialog structure. The results indicate that speech acts emerge from the alignment of conventional cues and rational expectations, that they are processed incrementally and probabilistically by interlocutors, and that their social effects depend on accountability structures encoded by culture, role, and activity type. The discussion integrates these strands into a unified perspective in which speech acts function as interface phenomena linking syntax and semantics to cognition, interactional organization, and broader socio-institutional orders. The conclusion outlines priorities for future research: multimodal corpora with force annotation, cross-linguistic comparative work on honorifics and evidentials, experimental designs that manipulate stakes and authority, and computational implementations modeling commitment and plan recognition.