Speech act research in Spanish

This chapter provides an overview of research on speech acts in Spanish in the past 15 years. It starts with a brief presentation of the key tenets of Speech Act Theory as conceived by Austin and Searle, followed by a consideration of the limitations of the theory from a pragmatics perspective. In the second part, an indicative overview of speech act research in Spanish is offered, with a focus on sociopragmatics, pragmalinguistics, cross-linguistic/cultural, and variational pragmatics studies. General trends are first outlined along various classificatory dimensions, followed by a consideration of studies according to Searle’s illocutionary acts taxonomy. The chapter concludes with reflections on future research prospects in this vibrant area.