THEORIES OF LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
2ND Semester, AY 2020-2021
Unit: _____Lesson:_____
Score:______________
Name: COLEEN A. CADIGAL Year and Section: AB ELS 1 A Date: April 8, 2021
Task Title/s: A Theory I Like
This/These task/s was/were : easy just right challenging
Speech Act
Speech act theory is an area of study of pragmatics that studies and focuses on how
the utterance is delivered and how words are utilized to convey the message that does not
just limit to speaking or stating a statement that but rather performing the said speech act
that executes certain actions. Speech acts involve actual interactions that require sufficient
knowledge about the language and also on how to properly execute and perform such
actions. A speech act is used to define actions like “greeting,” “requesting,”
“complementing,” “commanding,” “questioning” or “informing.” Examples of speech act that
can be usually heard in a conversation or what we hear daily are: “Have a nice and
wonderful day ahead!”, “I would love to order a glass of water, please?”, “You’re so
beautiful!”, “Shut the front door when you leave!”, “Aren’t you running late for work?” and
“I’ll bring the pizza to your house.” This said theory of speech act intends to show that even
though phrases and words are used to transmit and deliver the message, speakers carry
out and perform more actions with words and phrases rather than just transmitting
messages.
Direct and Indirect Speech Acts
The difference between direct speech to indirect speech is that direct speech has a
direct relation between a function (question, command, statement) and a structure
(interrogative, imperative, declarative,) or when the speaker is implying specifically the
