Searle
(1979) suggests that speech acts consist of five general classifications to
classify the functions or illocutionary of speech acts; these are declarations,
representatives, expressives, directives, and commissive.
Declaration
speech act is the act that makes the propositional content corresponds with the
reality. This type of speech act is the same as Austin’s performative sentence.
In order to perform a declarations effectively, the speaker must have a special
contextual privileges that allow him/her to perform an also contextual
declaration. For example, when a priest says “I pronounce you husband and
wife”, the priest (in the context of marriage) has the privilege to pronounce
marriage and when this utterance is performed, the man and woman is then
changed from singles into married people from the moment on. On the contrary,
if the speaker is not a priest or has the privilege to marry people, the
utterance will not be effective.
The
next type of speech act is commisive. Commissives speech acts are the act of commiting to
future actions. This type of speech act shows the intention of the speaker in
the future which will be made to happen in later moment. One example of
commissive is “I will come to your home tonight”. This example shows that the
speaker intends to come to the hearer’s home at the night time of the day the
utterance is said. Therefore the speaker commits that he/she will come to the
speaker’s home at night. In simple English, the term of this speech act is
commonly called promise.
Expressives
are the type of speech act that shows the expression of the speaker via
utterance. For example, “I’m sorry”, “I like it”, “Thank you”. These examples
show how the speaker feels about a situation. In time when the speaker spoils
coffee over someone else’s shirt he/she will say “I’m sorry”, when in time the
speaker is given a slice of cheese and likes it then he/she will say “I like
it” or “Thank you”, and so on.
Other
type of speech act is directives. This type of speech act aims to make someone
else to do something that the speaker desires. For instance, “could you lend me
a pen?” this utterance shows that the speaker requests a pen from someone else,
he/she indirectly order the other person to lend him a pen this gesture is also
available in a more direct way as “Lend me a pen!” The intention of these
utterances is to make the hearer to perform the action conveyed in the
utterance itself. Directives are also known as asking,
ordering, requesting, inviting, advising, and
begging.
The last type of speech act is representative. In
representative speech act, the speaker’s intention is to assert the speaker’s
belief. One example is “I’m a good guy”, the intention of this utterance is to
show that the speaker is to make believe the hearer that the speaker is a good
guy.
