John Cainoy

Reporters are expected to report the following in detail.

• Core definitions of speech acts and the theory’s foundations in Austin (1962) and Searle (1969).
• Distinction between locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts.
• Searle’s classification of speech acts: assertives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations.
• Direct vs. indirect speech acts and their pragmatic effects.
• Speech acts in institutional discourse (e.g., courts, classrooms, politics).
• Cross-cultural variation in speech act realization.
• Applications in digital and AI-mediated communication.
• Research potential: Using speech act theory to analyze social interaction, intercultural communication, or computational dialogue systems.

• Define what speech acts are and explain their significance in pragmatics.
• Discuss how utterances are actions, not merely carriers of information.
• Show how speech act theory applies across everyday, institutional, and digital contexts.

• Austin, J. L. (1975). How To Do Things With Words (2nd ed.). Harvard University Press.
• Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge University Press.
• Sadock, J. M. (2006). Speech Acts. In The Handbook of Pragmatics. Blackwell.
• Jucker, A. H., & Taavitsainen, I. (2008). Speech Acts in the History of English. John Benjamins.

• Speech act; Performative
• Locutionary, Illocutionary, Perlocutionary acts
• Direct vs. Indirect speech acts
• Felicity conditions
• Assertives, Directives, Commissives, Expressives, Declarations
• Institutional speech acts

• Austin’s tripartite framework (locution, illocution, perlocution).
• Searle’s classification system.
• Felicity condition analysis (when speech acts succeed/fail).
• Discourse coding for identifying speech act functions in data.

• Directive: “Close the window!” vs. “It’s cold in here” (indirect directive).
• Commissive: “I promise to call you tomorrow.”
• Expressive: “I’m sorry for your loss.”
• Institutional: “I now pronounce you husband and wife.”
• Digital: “Unfriending” someone online as a performative act.

• How do indirect speech acts challenge the principle of compositionality?
• Are felicity conditions universal, or culturally specific?
• Can AI systems successfully perform or recognize speech acts?

• Comparative analysis of directives across cultures (e.g., requests in English vs. Japanese).
• Speech act functions in online communities (apologies, compliments, insults).
• Application of speech act theory in training conversational AI systems.