Meaning and Speech acts

Abstract

The article deals with meaning and speech acts. Meaning is meant to express the linguistic as well as the nonlinguistic correlate, reference, or denotation of a linguistic form and expression. Speech acts are known to be the acts which refer to the action performed by utterances. A man may perform any action by pronouncing (or saying) something. Through speech acts, the speaker can convey physical action merely through words and phrases. The conveyed utterances are paramount to the actions performed. A word and a sentence are considered to be the main components of a speech act. Both of them are known to have crucial roles in perceiving any communication. The word (or the sentence) may have more meanings than one. It is necessary to catch their true meanings in the right context. Prosodic features turn out to play a great role in conveying the information through any of the speech acts as well. The issue under discussion has been investigated by many of foreign and local scientists such as J. Austin, J. Searle, W. Alston, W. Croft as well as F.Y. Veysalli, A.A. Abdullayev, A.Y. Mammadov, L.M. Khanbutayeva, etc. The theory of speech acts which was originated by J. Austin and J. Searle has been investigated in the article. It states that the language introduces itself as a form of the action in the speech acts. The divisions of the speech acts that have been put under discussion are widely touched upon in the article as well. Key words: sentence, meaning, speech acts, information, convey, word