ABSTRACT
Speech acts have been investigated and described from a variety of perspectives: philosophical, social, cultural, and linguistic. In the last 15 years or so, there has been an interest in collecting empirical data on the perception and production of speech acts by learners of a second or foreign language, at varying stages of language proficiency, and in different social interactions. This work has included efforts to establish both cross-language and language-specific norms of speech act behavior, norms without which it would be impossible to understand and evaluate interlanguage behavior.
