"Speech Act" in Interaction

Abstract

Actually, the interaction between speaker and hearers does not always run well. There are some factors which influence how well the interaction is and one of them is by developing speech act understanding. In short, my thesis statement is that speech acts will establish a smooth and meaningful interaction. To deepen this discussion, it will be followed by explaining the Speech Acts in detailed-perspective, the reasons why we choose Speech Acts, some considerations in developing Speech Acts and the conclusion. The basic function of all the utterances is a command or request but only the imperative structure represents a direct speech act. The interrogative structure is not being used only as a question. Hence, it is an indirect speech act. The declarative structures are also indirect requests. The usefulness of Speech Act analysis is in illustrating the kinds of things we can do with words and identifying some of the conventional utterance form we use to perform specific actions. Through Speech Acts, we can see how speakers can mean considerably more than their words say. However, we do need to look at more extended interaction to understand how those actions are carried out and interpreted within speech events.