Paper Keywords: Speech Act Theory; Indirect speech act; Principle of cooperation; Politeness principle

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This paper discusses the origin, theoretical framework and development of Austin's speech act theory, and also expounds Searle's indirect speech act theory, trice's cooperative principle and Leech's politeness principle, and illustrates the author's understanding of speech act theory with examples.

1, speech act theory

? As early as the end of 19 and the beginning of the 20th century, the Swiss linguist Saussure divided human language into? Language? then what Words? (Parole). In 1950s, American linguist Chomsky further divided human language into? Language ability? (ability) and? Language use? (Performance). Although the two theories involve different contents, both Saussure and Chomsky actually believe that human language activities involve language system and language use. However, it is the philosopher J.L. Austin of Oxford University who really studies language use and raises it to the theoretical level and puts forward the speech act theory. His views on speech theory were put forward in a lecture at Harvard University from 65438 to 0955. After that, he published his masterpiece How to Do Things with Words in 1957. The book not only discusses the use of language, but also systematically and concretely discusses why speech itself is an act. The American philosopher Searle further developed this theory.

? Speech act theory holds that language is a means to convey information, people do things through words and deeds, and all language communication includes speech acts. Language is a means of human communication, but the basic unit of human communication is not only symbols, words and sentences or their patterns, but also the completion of certain behaviors, such as statements, requests, orders, questions, apologies and congratulations. Different behaviors can be expressed in the same language, and the same behavior can also be realized in different languages. Speech act theory emphasizes that the speaker expresses the meaning of words rather than the meaning of language itself; The study of structure is often the presupposition of meaning, language use and illocutionary function.