Lecture 2: Speech acts

Study Questions 2

5. What are speech acts, speech act theory, and some of the problems in this theory?
6. What is the difference between illocutionary acts, perlocutionary acts and locutionary acts? Do you think that the distinction is justified? Why?
7. Give 5 examples of perlocutionary verbs in Swedish or another language. Are they different in meaning and contextual application than the corresponding English perlocutionary verbs?
8. Which are Austin's classes of illocutionary force? What are the criteria assisting the distinction between them? Give examples from Swedish or another language for each class and then try to give a suggestion of reorganizing (reducing or enlarging) Austin's classification (of the speech acts' illocutionary force) with a short motivation.

Please, send the answers to:
biljana@ling.gu.se