4. The theory of speech acts.

Another meaningful aspect of syntax is its pragmatical aspect. Initially the term “pragmatics” was introduced in the sphere of “semiotics” – the science about signs and sign systems considering their object in logico-phylosophical plan. Along with syntactics and semantics pragmatics is one of the key notions of semiotics, denoting the relations between the sign and the user of the sign, while syntactics means the relation between signs and semantics – between a sign and an object denoted by it. Pragmalinguistics study such questions as aims and tasks of the communicants during their speech interchange, discourse strategies of speech partners, communicative effects and so on – all in all it studies everything which concerns intentional potential of a speech utterance, of an act of speech as a special sort of activity. As the human activity is comprehended and performed under certain conditions, encouraged by the purpose to solve some tasks (so there is an aim), is realized in accord with possible consequences then speech activity should be studied with respect to all features.

In the basis of the theory of speech acts developing in the middle of 20^th century lies the idea about the possibility of dividing all utterances made in the form of a sentence into two main types – constatives and performatives. The founder of this theory, English philosopher Ostin noticed that along with utterances describing a certain fragment or events of non-lingual world or situation - in other words, declaring a certain state of affairs in the world, there exist other utterances which do not denote anything beyond language and are actions, acts, activities of purely lingual character. Such speech acts received the name of performatives and became the object of the theory of speech acts. The first feature of performative utterances is their ability to be language signs of themselves. Their second feature is in the presence in any performative utterance of performative verb in the first person singular in present tense, in active voice, indicative mood: I name the boy Jack; I promise to be loyal to you; I congratulate you on the occasion. If we change even one parameter of the utterance, it becomes a constative. You (they, he, she)name(s) the boy Jack. Is the sign of non-lingual situation naming a boy by someone. While performing a speech act in the form of I name the boy Jack a speaker performs the action of naming a boy Jack and he can’t do it anyhow as pronounce such sentence. That’s why performatives are not sign analogue of the fragment of the world: they are certain facts of reality by themselves.

Such approach is very important in analyzing functional side of language. Now we can’t consider speech activity only as semiotic signification and substitution of the world happening in parallel or additionally to the world. Consequently, we can apply the principles of activity approach to the language phenomenon (in wide sense) and consider such characteristics as motives, strategies, aims and so on.

In the theory of speech acts different typologies of performative utterance. The common feature of all sentences is that the name of every type of performative utterance is the same of performative verb which is the most prominent representative of this or that pragmatic intention of the utterance. There exist:

1. speech acts – requestives: I request that you help me.

2. Speech acts – prohibitives: I prohibit your going there alone.

3. Speech acts – promises: I promise not to be late.

4. Speech acts – directives: I order you to obey.

We speak about this forth type we should bear in mind that a language developed a special form of mood – imperative – for them. Come here! – I order [that you come here]. The theory of speech acts has also enriched linguistics by such terms as locution, illocutive power, perlocutive effect of the utterance. Under locution we understand the act of speech production, the speech act itself, performing a speaker as the author and creator of the utterance. Under illocutive power the communicative intention of the speaker; it’s the illocutive power which forms the basis for classification of speech acts: threats, promises, orders, requests, prohibition, congratulations and so on. The perlocutive effect of the utterance is the behavioristic reaction of the listener on which the speaker accounts. The perlocutive effect can be expressed in action or in collection of actions. In the theory of speech it was noticed that very often the illocutive power of the utterance and its form do not coincide. Communicants, leading by different purposes (tactfulness, shyness, delicacy) often apply indirect methods to express a certain illocutive power. For example, an idea of discussing can be expressed by such utterances as: You should have behaved differently. Couldn’t you have acted differently. Look, people don’t act like that.

Thus, indirect speech act is an act in which an illocutive power isn’t marked by any means fixed in language to express it. We can say in conclusion that firstly the theory of speech acts doesn’t limit its object only by performative utterances. It unites and simplifies the theory, extracting all indirect speech acts. The weak point of this theory is that it doesn’t take into account that wide social, extralingual context which serves as a natural background of the utterance.