16 April, 2009  Speech Acts and Events  Speech Acts In
linguistic communication, people do not merely exchange
information. They actually do something through talking or
writing in various circumstances. Actions performed via speaking
are called speech acts. " In English, specific labels are
commonly given, such as apology, complaint, compliment,
invitation, promise, or request." (Yule, 1996:47). These
descriptive terms for different kinds of speech acts are
directly related to the speaker's intention in producing an
utterance, since he/she normally expects that the hearer will
recognize his/her communicative intention. Concerning this, both
speaker and hearer are usually helped in this process by the
context/circumstances (speech events), which surround the
utterance. Changing the context, the same utterance can be
interpreted as two or more kinds of speech acts.  Types of
speech acts    1. Locutionary speech act – the action of making
the sentence   2. Illocutionary speech act – the intentions   3.
Perlocut