A Critique of J.L. Austin’s Speech Act Theory

Abstract

This study is a critique of J.L. Austin’s (1962) speech act theory which attempts to explain how the total performance of speech acts is determined by the total speech situations. The theory does not ignore the fact that language structure facilitates the understanding of speech acts. According to J.L.Austin (ibid), uttering wrong expressions in certain contexts implies that locutionary acts are neither coherent nor cohesive. Diane Blakemore, cited in Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen and Heidi E. Hamilton (2001) avers that ‘coherence relations are structural relations which hold in virtue of formal properties of utterances.’ Pragmatic use of language is fosterd by linguistic competence on the part of discourse participants. Though a theory that is deely rooted in context-based use and interpretation of language, J.L. Austin’s speech act theory aligns with Fowler’s (1981) claim that ‘linguistic structure is not arbitrary. It is determined and motivated by the functions it performs.’ J.L. Austin holds the view that there are social institutions that language users invoke in the performance of illocutionary acts; this view captures the notion that J.L Austin calls ‘felicity condition’. The theory is in tandem with the goals of pragmatics. Hinging on Adegbija’s (1982), ‘pragmasociolinguistic’ approach, this study concludes that J.L. Austin’s (ibid) speech act theory explains at a foundational level, the action-potential of language in context. However, the theory does not completely elucidate what language users do with illocutionary acts, which, as acknowledged in the literature, are too intractable to categorize, even though they operate in the explanation of the pragmatic, social and linguistic underpinnings of textual message.