Functional Perspective On Speech Act Theory

Following the trend of a major focus shift in language research: from objective meaning research to subjective meaning research on language, we can see the tendencies and potential mutual benefits of moving from the separation between linguistics and philosophy of language to their mergence. This thesis, accordingly, focuses on the research on illocutionary act in speech acts from the perspective of the speaker's subjective meaning in discourse.From the review and reflection on speech act theory and functional language research (such as functional language perspectives of Saussure and the Prague School, and also Halliday's systemic functional perspective), we draw the following conclusions: language is a special"beings"– in other words, language functions as a separate and distinct entity. The implication, therefore, is that we should conduct research on language in the framework of language ontology; and we should perform our language research from a multi-dimensional perspective due to language's multiple function feature.However, all our attention should not be only paid to Halliday's systemic functional linguistics as there are other schools of functional language research which can help us widen the scope of our language research and which may also be beneficial and of great use.Based on the above conclusions, this thesis, in the light of Western Philosophy, reflects on speech act theory from the following two perspectives: structural linguistics and anthropology; philosophy of language and phenomenology.Widened horizons and deeper understanding about language research can be attained through serious reflection upon these two perspectives. On this basis, the thesis develops a new research framework of speech act theory in which language ontology and polyadic realism theory form the basis, and function as the core, with the hearer as the main object of the research. In such a framework of speech act theory research, the key segments are: the speaker, purpose-intention, intersubjectivity, interlanguage, and the widening of the scope of research. We thus achieve two research findings (results):First, both linguistics and philosophy of language take language as their common research object, which is quite important for us to understand. The only difference lies in the fact that through language analysis and interpretation the former focuses on the research of language itself, namely, language nature and working mechanism of language within the use of language, while the latter focuses on human beings and their world through the means of language analysis and interpretation, rather than upon language itself.Second, the large accumulation of research which linguistics has gained from linguistic phenomen and law analysis provides a solid foundation for the research work of philosophy of language. Meanwhile ,the research findings on human beings and their world by philosophy of language can enhance and deepen the research in the field of linguistics by providing new perspectives. Thus, the science of linguistics is not opposed to philosophy of language and vice versa, but, in fact adds synergistically to the huge aggregation of potential research data available to it—to their mutual benefit in future research and the opportunities for pooling their data and their research.