Speech Act Analysis

Speech act analysis is the empirical, qualitative method of examining real utterances for the actions they perform — promising, requesting, apologizing, warning, declaring — rather than merely for what they describe. Building on J. L. Austin's insight that saying is doing and on John Searle's systematic taxonomy of illocutionary acts, the analyst segments discourse into utterances, identifies the illocutionary force of each, classifies it (as a representative, directive, commissive, expressive, or declaration), and notes whether the act is performed directly or indirectly. It turns the philosophy of language into a coding procedure that can be applied to conversations, written texts, and elicited data.