A Comparative Research On Speech Acts In Standard Marine Communication Phrases (SMCP) And New Horizon College English Viewing, Listening And Speaking: A Multimedia Approach (NHCE)

Speech act theory is one of the most important theories in the field of pragmatics. This theory was established by British language philosopher Austin in 1950s and it was supplemented by his student, American language philosopher Searle. Subsequently, the theory obtains a great development. Based on Searle's four conditions of taxonomy of illocutionary acts, illocutionary acts can be divided into assertives, directives, commissives, expressives and declarations. This research divides all the illocutionary acts in Standard Marine Communication Phrases (SMCP) and New Horizon College English Viewing, Listening and Speaking:A Multimedia Approach (NHCE) into five categories and analyzes these illocutionary acts in detail with some examples. The research summarizes the differences and similarities of illocutionary acts in the two samples and analyzes some indirect speech acts simply. This research also doses a quantitative analysis with application of AntConc and SPSS. The results of the research imply that the illocutionary acts which have the highest frequency in SMCP are directives; while the illocutionary acts which have the highest frequency in NHCE are assertives. There is no significant difference of frequencies of all the illocutionary acts on the whole between the two samples. Moreover, there are no significant differences of frequencies of assertives, commissives and declarations in SMCP and NHCE. The frequency of directives in SMCP is much greater than that in NHCE; while the frequency of expressives in NHCE is much greater than that in SMCP. The author provides some probable reasons for the research results. Simultaneously, according to the results, the author provides some implications for the teaching of SMCP and NHCE and the compiling of maritime English teaching materials.