Analysis Of The Perlocutionay Act In Daily Conversations

Speech act theory plays a significant part in the field of pragmatics.Proposed by the British philosopher Austin in his famous literature How to do things with words in 1950 s,speech act theory presents the opinion that language can not only be used to describe things,but also to do things.Since established,speech act theory has attracted many scholars' interests.However,according to the study of perlocutionary act abroad and at home,the study of perlocutionary act in daily conversations has been largely neglected.Therefore,it is necessary to do some research about perlocutionary act in this thesis.Austin's definition of perlocutionary act that “Saying something will often,or even normally,produce certain consequential effects upon the feelings,thoughts,or actions of the audience,or of the speaker,or of other person”(1980: 101)reflects that the production of perlocutionary act is a process in which the speaker and the hearer interact with each other.In regard to whether perlocutionary act succeeds or not,it can be divided into two categories: successful perlocutionary act and unsuccessful perlocutionary act.Based on the theoretical framework of speech act theory and cooperative principle,the linguistic data that are collected from the popular American TV serial Modern Family will be analyzed in this thesis.In this thesis,the qualitative analysis is adopted to find out the answers to the following two research questions:(1)What are the reasons for the failure of perlocutionary act?(2)What remedial strategies are adopted after the failure of perlocutionary act?The findings from the qualitative analysis of the linguistic data include the following:(1)The reasons for the failure of perlocutionary act can be analyzed from two sides:the speaker's side and the hearer's side.The main reasons for the failure of perlocutionary act include the ambiguities of the speaker's speech that are caused by the speaker's deliberate violation of the cooperative principle,the hearer's misunderstanding of the speech at the locutionary level and the illocutionary level,and the hearer's deliberate non-cooperation at the perlocutionary level.(2)After the failure of perlocutionary act,some remedial strategies can be adopted by the participants of the conversation.The strategies that the speaker can adopt include explaining the illocutionary meaning directly or indirectly.Explaining the illocutionary meaning indirectly includes explaining the illocutionary meaning by using hints,explaining the illocutionary meaning by expressing the illocutionary meaning repeatedly,and explaining the illocutionary meaning by using non-verbal action.The remedial strategies utilized by the hearer can be divided into two categories,namely,asking for the illocutionary meaning directly,and asking for help from the third party.It is necessary for the third party to adopt the strategies explaining the speaker's illocutionary meaning directly,expressing the necessity of perlocutionary act and asking whether the hearer understands the illocutionary meaning or not.Although there are some limitations,it is still expected that the study of perlocutionary act can enrich the readers' knowledge about perlocutionary act.Through analyzing the reasons for the failure of perlocutionary act and remedial strategies that can be adopted,this thesis provides some suggestions for the readers to know how to achieve the communication goal successfully.