A Study On Indirect Speech Act Of The Basic Types Of English Sentences

Indirect speech act often occurs in our daily life. We find that people usually use declarative sentences to give orders, use interrogative sentences to give some advice, use imperative sentences to express wish. But in fact we know that declarative sentences are used to state facts, interrogative sentences are used to raise questions, and imperative sentences covey order and request. Therefore, in order to achieve an adequate understanding of communicative intention, we should not only understand the surface meaning of the utterance, but also of the intended meaning. In some instances, the surface meaning and intended meaning match. It is easy for us to understand the utterance. However, in many cases, the intended meaning differs form surface meaning, the intended meaning is a case of indirect meaning. Searle defined this case as indirect speech act. This thesis explains indirect speech act through the disagreements between forms of basic types of English sentences and their basic illocutionary functions. We also interpret indirect speech act from pragmatic factors, such as politeness, context and cross-cultural awareness etc. All of them influence indirect speech act. The aim of the thesis is to let the learner communicate effectively and appropriately by using language, so teachers should pay attention to not only language form and linguistic knowledge but also language illocutionary function and learners' communicative competence.