Editing Speech act (section)

===Indirect speech acts===
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In the course of performing speech acts people communicate with each other. The content of communication may be identical, or almost identical, with the content intended to be communicated, as when a stranger asks, "What is your name?" However, the meaning of the linguistic means used may also be different from the content intended to be communicated. One may, in appropriate circumstances, request Peter to do the dishes by just saying, "Peter ...!", or one can promise to do the dishes by saying, "Me!"{{citation needed|date=January 2022}}

One common way of performing speech acts is to use an expression, which indicates one speech act, and indeed performs this act, but also performs a further speech act, which is indirect. One may, for instance, say, "Peter, can you close the window?", thereby asking Peter whether he will be able to close the window, but also requesting that he does so. Since the request is performed indirectly, by means of (directly) performing a question, it counts as an [[indirect speech act]].{{cn|date=June 2024}}

An even more indirect way of making such a request would be to say, in Peter's presence in the room with the open window, "I'm cold." The speaker of this request must rely upon Peter's understanding of several items of information that is not explicit: that the window is open and is the cause of them being cold, that being cold is an uncomfortable sensation and they wish it to be taken care of, and that Peter cares to rectify this situation by closing the window. This, of course, depends much on the relationship between the requester and Peter—he might understand the request differently if they were his boss at work than if they were his girlfriend or boyfriend at home. The more presumed information pertaining to the request, the more indirect the speech act may be considered to be.{{citation needed|date=January 2022}}

Indirect speech acts are commonly used to reject proposals and to make requests. For example, if a speaker asks, "Would you like to meet me for coffee?" and the other replies, "I have class", the second speaker has used an indirect speech act to reject the proposal. This is indirect because the literal meaning of "I have class" does not entail any sort of rejection.{{citation needed|date=January 2022}}

This poses a problem for [[linguists]], as it is confusing to see how the person who made the proposal can understand that his proposal was rejected. In 1975 John Searle suggested that the illocutionary force of indirect speech acts can be derived by means of a [[H. P. Grice|Gricean]] reasoning process;<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |last=Searle |first= John R. |title=Indirect Speech Acts |encyclopedia=Speech Acts |series=Syntax and Semantics |volume=3 |year=1975 |publisher=Academic Press |location=New York |pages=59–82 |isbn=0-12-785423-1 }}</ref> however, the process he proposes does not seem to accurately solve the problem {{citation needed |date=February 2020 |reason=Who makes this claim?}}.

In other words, this means that one does not need to say the words apologize, pledge, or praise in order to show they are doing the action. All the examples above show how the actions and indirect words make something happen rather than coming out straightforward with specific words and saying it.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Linguistics 001 -- Lecture 13 -- Pragmatics |url=https://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_2019/ling001/pragmatics.html |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20240416051206/https://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_2019/ling001/pragmatics.html |archive-date=2024-04-16 |access-date=2025-01-01 |website=www.ling.upenn.edu}}</ref>