A Study On Perlocution In English Political Oration

Austin's SAT divides a "total speech act" into locution, illocution and perlocution act. Without any of the three components, the speech act is not complete. However, for a long time SAT and pragmatics pay all their attention on the illocutionary act. When people mention SAT, illocutionary act is nearly the synonymous of the theory. Such incomplete study cannot give us a panoramic view of the theory. This paper wants to re-explore perlocution. The author believes that a speaker uses the speech act theory not only to express his/her meaning but also to influence the hearer in order to reach some extra-linguistic goals. Thus perlocution seems rather important. In this paper, we revisit the notion of perlocution at the speech act level. And we think that perlocution is not an act performed by the speaker alone, in fact, it is a transaction act between the speaker and the hearer. And we turn the perspective from speaker-based to hearer-based. We try to analyze hearers'different responses. More importantly, the author uses a special communication phenomenon-English public political oration to illustrate how hearers response at different levels. Speaker, in order to achieve the extra-linguistic goals, performs the locutionary and illocutionary act. However, the hearer, through the responses, helps to bringing about the actual perlocutionary effects. The author thinks that the hearer's place in the perlocutionary act is very important. The hearer's response and his cooperation determine the final achievement of perlocution intention. So, we say that the perlocutionary act is a hearer-based act. Therefore, we need to analyze how the hearers response at the mental, verbal and behavioral level. And the examples in this paper are mostly from the real-life settings. The value of this paper is that it can be used in the human interaction, so that we can better understand others'discourse, and we can communicate fluently.