Functions of Language

Functions of Language

1. Learning to communicate in a language involves more than acquiring the pronunciation and grammar.

   • Communicating functions involves the speaker in a coordinated activity with other language users.

2. Austin's work is in any respects a reaction to some traditional and influential attitudes to language

   • Logical Positivists- a term originally applied to the mathematicians and philosophers of the Vienna Circle.
     • Austin's name for the enabling conditions for a performative is felicity conditions.

3. Austin's original position was that performative which are speech acts subject to felicity conditions, are to be contrasted with declarative sentences, which are potentially true or false descriptions of situations.

   • J.r. Searle while allowing that there is a myriad of language particular speech acts, proposed that all acts fall into five main types. (Representatives, Directives, Commissives, Declarations, Expressives)

4. The conventionally expected function is known as the direct speech act and the extra actual function is termed the indirect speech act.

5. Content relates to restrictions placed on speech acts by what they are about, their propositional content.

   • The criterion of psychological state relates to the speaker's state of mind thus statements like It's raining reflects belief, while expresives like apologies and congratulations reveal the speaker's attitude to events.