26. Discuss speech act theory.

Speech act theory → by saying something we do something.

In saying :

• “Hi”, you greet. You do greeting.

• “Watch out!”, you warn. You perform the speech act of warning.

• “I'm sorry”, you apologize. You perform the speech act of apologizing.

• "I will try my best to be at home for dinner", you perform the speech act of promising to be at home in time.

• “Could you pass the bread” you perform the speech act of requesting

• “Drop that!” you perform the perform the speech act of ordering.

And so on. But those are direct speech acts, when the meaning and aim is obvious.

There are also indirect speech acts. They are commonly used to reject proposals and to make requests. For example, a speaker asks, "Would you like to meet me for coffee?" and another replies, "I have class." The second speaker used an indirect speech act to reject the proposal. This is indirect because the literal meaning of "I have class" does not entail any sort of rejection.

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