Indirect Speech Acts

An indirect speech act is one performed by way of performing another, as when 'Can you pass the salt?' is used to request rather than to ask about ability.

Definition

An indirect speech act is a speech act in which one illocutionary act is performed indirectly by way of performing another, so the intended force diverges from the literal force of the sentence used.

Scope

This topic covers cases where the illocutionary force intended differs from that conventionally associated with the sentence type used, such as requests issued via questions about ability or statements of desire. It treats Searle's inferential account, which derives the indirect force from the literal force together with the Cooperative Principle and mutual background, the role of conventionalization, and the close connection between indirectness and politeness.

Core questions

• How is one speech act performed by way of another?
• How do hearers recover the intended indirect force?
• Are indirect forms inferred afresh each time or conventionalized?
• Why is indirectness associated with politeness?

Key concepts

• literal vs. intended force
• inferential derivation
• conventionalization of indirect forms
• face and face-threatening acts
• politeness strategies

Key theories

Inferential account of indirectness (Searle)

The hearer recovers the intended indirect illocution by reasoning from the literal act, the felicity conditions of the target act, the Cooperative Principle, and shared background information.

Indirectness and politeness (Brown & Levinson)

Indirect speech acts are a major strategy for mitigating face-threatening acts, so the form of a request often reflects politeness considerations rather than only its literal content.

History

Searle's 1975 essay 'Indirect Speech Acts' gave the classic inferential analysis of how forms like 'Can you...?' convey requests. Brown and Levinson's politeness theory connected indirectness to the management of face, and subsequent work debated how far indirect forms are computed online versus stored as conventionalized form-function pairings.

Debates

Inference vs. convention in indirect speech acts

Whether indirect forces are worked out by inference each time, are short-circuited conventionalized implicatures, or are fully conventionalized so that some forms (e.g. 'Can you...?') directly encode requests.

Key figures

• John Searle
• Stephen Levinson
• Penelope Brown

Seminal works

• searle1979
• brownlevinson1987

Frequently asked questions

Why is 'Can you pass the salt?' a request rather than a question?

Literally it asks about the hearer's ability, but since that ability is obvious, the hearer infers via the Cooperative Principle that the speaker intends a request; such indirect forms are also favoured because they are more polite than bald imperatives.