Shadowing-Übung: SEM141 - Speech Acts - An Overview - Englisch Sprechen Lernen mit Video

Any semantic theory must give an account of word and sentence meaning, explaining their nature and the relations between them.

Yet, such a semantic theory has little to say about any structures other than standard declarative sentences

or about semantic aspects involved in conversation.

Look at the following anomalies.

there please.

Well, here the adverb there is illegal in this context.

Rather it should be come here please, that is, from an external position to the position of the interlocutor.

Or take this one.

I hereby run to the station.

Well, here the adverbial hereby requires a so-called performative verb,

that is, a verb that performs a certain action such as promise, declare but run is not such a verb.

What do you think about this one here?

I promise I'll come to your party.

That's not really me, is it?

Anyway, the term promise normally involves that the addressee wants the promise to be realized.

Is that the case here?

Do you really want me to turn up at your party?

I don't know.

Well, here is my final example.

The table is under the ashtray.

Here we have a problem of perspective.

Small objects are mentioned first if they are related to larger objects.

Thus, the table is under the ashtray is only acceptable in this situation.

If the ashtray is at least as big as the table, maybe in a fairy tale world.

The goal of pragmatics is to define these and other non-truth functional aspects of meaning, hence a more general approach to meaning.

The modern use of the term pragmatics goes back to the American philosopher Charles William Morris,

who defined pragmatics as the study of the relation of signs to interpreters.

Thus, we need to make a distinction between the usual meaning of a word

or a sentence and the meaning it has in specific circumstances.

That is, we need to differentiate between meaning and use.

Here is an example.

Imagine someone says, it's fairly hot in here, which is the case because there are all the lamps around me.

Now, what does this utterance mean?

Well, it probably means that you could say some unknown person notices

that the temperature at the location of the speaker is currently above average.

That's the plain meaning.

And what about the use?

Well, the use could be something like this.

Someone is intended to open the window.

Now this dichotomy between semantics, the meaning on the one hand, and pragmatics, the use, is controversial among linguists.

Perhaps the most useful distinction is made in terms of sentence meaning versus utterance meaning,

where the latter includes all secondary aspects of meaning.

Two fields constitute the core of linguistic pragmatics,

the analysis of utterances and the analysis of conversation.

We will focus on utterances in this e-lecture.

In a now famous little book entitled How to do things with words,

with words, which was posthumously published in 1962,

John Langshaw Austin pointed out that a large number of utterances are part of an action, that is, they are performative.

For example, I hereby name this ship HMS Titanic.

This utterance is clearly in action.

As soon As it is uttered by the person who is entitled to utter it, the ship will have been named accordingly.

Thus uttering this sentence is an action of baptism.

Oh, here's another one.

There's a dog in the field.

Well, this utterance is likely to be understood as a warning.

Well, and how do you understand this?

Don't do that.

Well, maybe as an order or a request.

The peculiar thing about these sentences is that they are not used to state things.

That is, they are not just conceptive, but rather actively do things.

Furthermore, such utterances cannot be assessed as true or false, but only as appropriate or inappropriate.

How this is done has been manifested in speech act theory.

Now besides the insight that utterances are used to perform actions,

speech act theory assumes that speakers are simultaneously involved in three different speech acts when uttering a sentence.

Let us analyze these acts using our utterance don't do that.

The first of these acts is the so-called locutionary act.

This is the act of uttering a sentence with its meaning comprising phonetic and syntactic aspects corresponding to any meaningful utterance.

What does don't do that mean?

Well, it first of all addresses an unknown person,

you, the covered subject, the addressee of the speech act.

Then don't, well that's the opposite of allowance, this is the symbol for negation in logic.

So someone is not allowed to perform something.

So you're not allowed to perform something.

What is it that you're not allowed to perform?

Well, it's the overt object, probably this object here, this socket,

the object of the sentence meaning an unknown entity.

Well, as I said in this case, the socket.

So, the locutionary act is related to the basic linguistic analysis of an utterance.

Central to speech act theory is the illocutionary act.

It describes what the speaker does by uttering a sentence, that is, in performing the locutionary act.

For example, commanding, promising, threatening, warning, and so on and so forth.

The intended effect of an utterance used to perform a certain elocutionary act is known as elocutionary force.

Most elocutionary acts are implicit.

That is, they lack a particular performative verb signaling the act.

So, don't do that is an implicit order.

However, we can easily make an implicit act explicit.

An elocutionary act is explicit if the utterance contains a performative verb, that is a verb that denotes the act.

The optional adverb hereby can be inserted into such a performative utterance to stress its performative nature.

Well, here is the explicit elocutionary act.

Now, such an explicit elocutionary act or performative utterance follows a specific linguistic formula.

It always has a subject which must occur in the first person singular.

Then we have the optional adverbial hereby and a verb.

And the verb, quite interestingly, must be used in the simple present tense.

Now compare the following.

If I said, I am hereby ordering, this would not be in order at all.

It would be an explanation of what I'm doing at a particular time.

So it must occur in the simple present tense.

And then of course we have an optional object which,

if we use it, must occur in the second person, singular or plural.

100

There are some cases where the object could occur in the third person, for example, in the act of baptizing,

101

I hereby name this ship, for example.

102

Even if you use performative utterances, the interpretation might not necessarily be clear.

103

My father, and I remember this very well, often said to me, My dear son, I promise if you do that again, I will.

104

It was a warning, wasn't it?

105

Shall I tell you the whole story?

106

Well, I'd better not.

107

Let's finally look at the perlocutionary act.

108

The perlocutionary act denotes the effects on the listener by means of performing the illocutionary act.

109

The effects are special to the situation and may or may not be what the speaker intended.

110

Don't do that.

111

Well, what is the intention?

112

Well, either the speaker succeeds in preventing the listener from touching the dangerous object or not.

113

All speech acts have to follow certain felicity conditions.

114

I love that word.

115

An alternative would be appropriacy conditions.

116

Now, these conditions have to be satisfied for the performance of a speech act to be recognized as intended.

117

There are cases where the performance of a speech act will be infelicitous or, if you prefer, inappropriate, if the speaker is not a specific person in a specific context.

118

Here are some examples of declarations.

119

I declare open the Olympic Games.

120

Well, can I do it?

121

Certainly not.

122

I'm not the person who is entitled to do so.

123

So I have just violated one felicity condition.

124

I sentence you to six months in prison.

125

Again, I can't do that.

126

Or could you say something like, I hereby finish my oral exam?

127

You'd love to, but you can't because it's your examiner who is entitled to do that.

128

So you see declarations just like the other illocutionary acts such as promising or threatening, they have to follow certain conditions.

129

Austin's approach identifies several such conditions ranging from preparatory conditions,

130

that is the necessary condition for a speech act such as the correct person who performs it,

131

to propositional conditions where an act needs to say certain things about the world which are in line with the speech act.

132

These conditions will be discussed in a separate e-lecture about speech acts.

133

Now many efforts have aimed at categorizations of the types of speech acts possible in language.

134

In fact, some acts are so universal and fundamental that they are grammaticalized into the same basic sentence types in most languages.

135

So, for example, into statements, into questions, to orders.

136

However, this typology only associates sentence types with their most literal, unmarked elocutionary force.

137

Generally, the set of speech acts recognized by the speakers of a language is much more diverse and more finely grained.

138

A more sophisticated scheme was proposed by John Searle who was born in 1932.

139

He suggested that all speech acts fall into five main categories.

140

Representatives, things such as boasting or bragging, I'm an excellent footballer, would be such an act.

141

Directives or commands.

142

Commissives such as promising, well we've heard about some examples here here, expressive emotional responses, something like,

143

oh please forgive me, and of course, declarations.

144

With this e-lecture, you should now have some basic understanding of the fact that you can actually do something with language,

145

and that you can achieve particular effects.

146

So pragmatics is more than mere analysis of language.

147

It is the examination of language and its effects you can achieve with it.

148

This e-lecture concentrated on the effects you can achieve with utterances.

149

A follow-up e-lecture will add the central principles of conversation. So see you then.

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Wortschatz und Sprechhinweise zu dieser Lektion

Diese Sprechübung auf Niveau C1 basiert auf dem Video „SEM141 - Speech Acts - An Overview“. Diese Wörter kommen am häufigsten vor: utterance, speech, sentence, meaning, condition. Dieses Video enthält 149 Sätze und 1683 Wörter zum Nachsprechen. Der gesprochene Teil dauert 14:18. Der Sprecher spricht gleichmäßig mit etwa 118 Wörtern pro Minute – ein angenehmes Tempo fürs Shadowing. Nur 81 % der Wörter gehören zu den 3.000 häufigsten im Englischen, der Wortschatz ist also anspruchsvoll.

Wichtiger Wortschatz in diesem Video

Die 15 anspruchsvollsten Wörter aus dem Video, mit Aussprache und Bedeutung:

Wort	Aussprache	Bedeutung
utterance Substantiv	/ˈʌtəɹəns/	Äußerung
hereby Adverb	/hɪɹˈbaɪ/	hiermit, hierdurch
verb Substantiv	/vɝb/	Verb, Verbum
pragmatic Adjektiv	/pɹæɡˈmætɪk/	pragmatisch
utter Verb	/ˈʌtəɹ/	äußern, ausstoßen
explicit Adjektiv	/ɪkˈsplɪs.ɪt/	eindeutig, ausdrücklich
intend Verb	/ɪnˈtɛnd/	beabsichtigen, vorhaben
ashtray Substantiv	/ˈæʃ.tɹeɪ/	Aschenbecher
illocutionary Adjektiv		illokutionär
implicit Adjektiv	/ɪmˈplɪsɪt/	implizit, stillschweigend
locutionary Adjektiv		lokutionär
semantic Adjektiv	/sɪˈmæntɪk/	semantisch
linguistic Adjektiv	/lɪŋˈɡwɪstɪk/	sprachlich, linguistisch
optional Adjektiv	/ˈɑp.ʃə.nəl/	freiwillig, optional
addressee Substantiv	/ˌædɹɛˈsiː/	Adressat, Adressatin

Phrasal Verbs, die du hören wirst

Wort	Bedeutung
point out Verb	hinweisen

Sätze zum Wiederholen

Kurze, vollständige Sätze aus dem Video, die du im Alltag wiederverwenden kannst:

What do you think about this one here?
I promise I'll come to your party.
That's not really me, is it?
What is it that you're not allowed to perform?
Shall I tell you the whole story?

Grammatik in diesem Video

Die Strukturen, die der Sprecher am häufigsten verwendet, mit den genauen Worten aus dem Video:

Struktur	Im Video
Bedingungssätze if + Satz, will/would + Verb – eine Bedingung und ihre Folge	if you do that again, I will
„Used to“ used to + Verb – eine frühere Gewohnheit oder ein Zustand, der nicht mehr gilt	used to state · used to perform
Passiv be + Partizip Perfekt – wichtig ist, was geschieht, nicht wer es tut	be realized · are mentioned · is intended
Relativsätze who / which + Satz – eine Zusatzinformation über eine Person oder Sache	here, which is · words, which was · person who is

Aussprache, auf die du achten solltest

Der Sprecher verwendet 19 Kurzformen und abgeschwächte Formen, zum Beispiel don't, I'm, can't. Sprich sie in der kurzen Form, so wie du sie hörst.

Die Laute „sh“ und „zh“: ashtray /ˈæʃ.tɹeɪ/, optional /ˈɑp.ʃə.nəl/, categorization /ˌkæt.ə.ɡə.ɹaɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, negation /nɪˈɡeɪʃn̩/, differentiate /dɪf.əˈɹɛn.ʃi.eɪt/
Lange Wörter – auf die Betonung achten: adverbial /ædˈvɝbi.əl/, felicity /fəˈlɪsəti/, inappropriate /ˌɪnəˈpɹoʊpɹi.ət/, anomaly /əˈnɑ.mə.li/, categorization /ˌkæt.ə.ɡə.ɹaɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/

So übst du mit diesem Video

Höre dir das ganze Video einmal an, ohne zu sprechen, und notiere die Wörter, die du nicht kennst.
Sprich Satz für Satz in normaler Geschwindigkeit nach und wiederhole jeden, bis dein Rhythmus zum Sprecher passt.
Nimm dich auf und vergleiche mit dem Original; achte dabei auf Wörter wie utterance, hereby, verb.

Was ist die Shadowing-Technik?

Shadowing ist eine wissenschaftlich fundierte Sprachlerntechnik, die ursprünglich für die professionelle Dolmetscherausbildung entwickelt und durch den Polyglotten Dr. Alexander Arguelles populär gemacht wurde. Die Methode ist einfach aber wirkungsvoll: Du hörst englisches Audio von Muttersprachlern und wiederholst es sofort laut — wie ein Schatten, der dem Sprecher mit nur 1–2 Sekunden Verzögerung folgt. Anders als passives Hören oder Grammatikübungen zwingt Shadowing dein Gehirn und deine Mundmuskulatur, gleichzeitig echte Sprachmuster zu verarbeiten und zu reproduzieren. Studien zeigen, dass es Aussprachegenauigkeit, Intonation, Rhythmus, verbundene Sprache, Hörverständnis und Sprechflüssigkeit signifikant verbessert — was es zu einer der effektivsten Methoden für die IELTS Speaking-Vorbereitung und reale englische Kommunikation macht.

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