ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Speech Act Theory which has played a key role in linguistics and philosophy, and has enjoyed applications in a range of other disciplines, such as in the modelling of speech acts for computational linguistics, and the study of pragmatic competence in inter- and intra-linguistic contexts. Speech Act Theory provides a taxonomy of the different functions that utterances might perform, and it also offers an approach to understanding the apparent discrepancy between what we say and what we mean. The chapter examines the link between linguistic forms in the shape of speech acts and their function in context. It provide an overview of Speech Act Theory and discuss the main arguments and underlying assumptions on which this theory is based. This includes a discussion of direct and indirect speech acts, performatives and constatives, and the broad taxonomy of different speech act categories such as directives or commissives. The chapter also looks at the way in which context and co-text impact on the analysis of speech acts in a discourse framework. Throughout this chapter, ways of using corpus pragmatics in the form-to-function analysis of speech acts is explored. The chapter includes optional and an annotated further reading list.
