Communication and speech act theory : a contextual study of language

Abstract EN

The role of communication in general is to send and provide information to a receiver, convey meanings, messages in an attempt to create shared understanding among participants.

In order to investigate the basic principles of communication, it seems necessary to examine its nature and the different communicative models introduced by eminent linguists such as De-Saussure, and Jakobson.

This examination serves to give an explanation to the concept of interaction among participants in their everyday life in different social situations and how to avoid the breakdowns of communication that may bring about misunderstanding between participants.

Pragmatics is basically indispensable to understand what happens among interactors through the concept of speech acts, a fascinating discipline introduced in the 1960‟s by two famous linguists Austin and Searl who made up a theory on how language serves to perform action.

Speech act belongs to the domain of pragmatics, and its study, called speech act theory, is a prominent part of that discipline.

At this level, speech act theory and utterances are essential functional units that are interwoven with the context within which communication is undertaken.