On Thursday, December 8, 2022, the Department of English Language held an international workshop entitled “Speech Act Theory” with Amman Arab University in Jordan. It was about speech act theory which undergoes under the umbrella of both semantic and pragmatic. In particular, it confirms what to say and what to mean, i.e explicators and implicatures, since communication is based in the first place on the intention of the speakers.
The workshop’s first session was presented by associate professor Dr. May Al-Shaikhli in department of English language and translation in college of arts and sciences in Amman Arab University. Dr May concentrated on John Asutin who was a philosopher of speech act theory in Oxford university, UK. Austin’s theory of speech act is very influential which emphasizes the role of language in communicating social acts such as: promising, warning, threatening, offering, inviting, requesting, advising, suggesting, as well as more institutional verbal acts like pronouncing sentence in court, performing ceremonies of baptizing, marrying, etc.
In the second session, Prof. Dr. Misbah M. Al-Sulaimaan in department of English language in college of education and languages in Lebanese French University focused on John Searle Austin’s student. Now he is a professor in Berkley university, New York, California, USA. As for Searle’s speech act theory, it developed a highly original and influential approach to the study of language. But behind his work there is the assumption that the philosophy of language is in the end a branch of the philosophy of the mind. Speech acts are forms of human action and represent just one example of the mind’s capacity to relate the human organism to the real world. Searle’s intentionality is concerned with these biologically fundamental capacities,
Workshop Outcome
- Understanding the importance of speech act theory which holds that the meaning of linguistic expressions can be explained in terms of the rules governing their use in performing various speech acts.
- Speech act theory suggests that the meaning of what we say is influenced by the type of speech it is, the structure of the utterance, and the context in which it is used. It also explains how speech can create an action or outcome.
Presenters’ Information
- Assoc. Prof. Dr. May Al-Shaikhli holds PHD in Mousl university /Mousl /Iraq.
She is currently an associate professor in department of English language and translation in college of arts and sciences in Amman Arab University.
- Prof. Dr. Misbah M. Al-Sulaimaan holds PHD in Mousl University /Mosul/ Iraq.
He is currently a professor in the department of English language in college of education and languages in Lebanese French University.
