Abstract: An overview of Austin's speech act theory; This paper discusses Austin's speech act theory: expressing meaning with words, replacing law with words, and replacing law with words; Philosophical significance, development and influence of speech act theory research. Speech act theory has great influence on language research, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics and language acquisition research.
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Paper Keywords: Austin; The act of expressing meaning in words; The act of acting with words; The act of taking effect through language.
British philosopher Austin (JohnI_allshawAustin, 19l 1? 1960) is a general philosophy of language in contemporary western philosophy of language. Austin is a professor of philosophy at Cambridge University in England. He believes that the object of linguistic research should not be words and sentences, but behaviors completed through words and sentences. Language theory should actually be a part of behavior theory.
1 An Overview of Austin's Speech Act Theory
Austin first raised the issue of language use and made a serious study of it. In his view, the object of language learning should not be words and sentences, but behaviors completed through words and sentences. In his book How to Do Things with Language, he not only discussed the use of language at the beginning, but also systematically and concretely studied one of the problems, that is, why speaking itself is an act. His speech act theory holds that when people say something, they do it. When they say anything, they must complete three kinds of behaviors at the same time: the behavior of expressing meaning with words, the behavior of acting with words, and the behavior of taking effect with words. Austin believes that the act of expressing meaning in words expresses literal meaning; Speech act expresses the speaker's intention, which is also called illocutionary force; The effective act of words refers to the influence or effect on the addressee once the intention of the act is understood. Austin put forward his unique views on the behavior of words and the behavior of words taking effect. In his view, speech act is the meaning unit that expresses meaning by words, and the words that complete the behavior pattern are the main forms of speech act. Austin believes that speech acts are conventional, and the illocutionary force is usually conventional. For speech acts, the speaker must abide by certain agreements before completing them. On the other hand, post-action depends on the context, not necessarily obtained through the discourse itself, so it is uncertain. Because language is a relational functional structure. Its various elements can only be understood within this unified framework? . Because discourse takes place in a certain situation and contains a certain number of personal, social and cultural factors related to both sides of communication, we must intervene in the research fields of sociolinguistics, ethnology, pragmatics and cross-cultural communication in order to understand the meaning of discourse more comprehensively. Since any speech, thought and text are the result of the function of a certain language structure, the traditional subject has been dissolved and replaced by the context of a certain text structure or the semantic field constructed by the interlocutor. Therefore, he put forward his substitution method by words: substitution method by words is realized through certain discourse forms, agreed steps and agreed power, so substitution method by words is agreed (convention onona1). From this perspective, Austin's speech act theory shifts the focus of language research from the structure of the sentence itself to the meaning, intention and social function of the sentence, thus highlighting the social function of doing things with language or words.