231140 How to Do Things with Words – Investigating Speech Acts in English (BS) (WiSe 2026/2027)

In this seminar, we will take an in-depth look at speech acts as one central concept in the linguistic discipline called pragmatics. Speech act theory, originally introduced by John Austin, is a way to scientifically describe and analyze how we “do things with words”. Speech acts group together utterances such as “Sorry I missed the meeting.” by their communicative functions, in this case as a member of the category APOLOGIES. Speech act theory describes the characteristics and functions of different speech acts, while empirical research on speech acts explores the various ways they are realized in language and how specific formulations can alter their communicative effects.
After a (re-)introduction to speech act theory, including a critical look at some of its basic tenets, we will focus on how to gather empirical speech act data in English and how to systematically analyze such data. For this, we will exemplarily cover two speech acts, namely REQUESTS and APOLOGIES, learn how to design questionnaires with so-called Discourse Completion Tasks to elicit speech act data, and how to code the resulting data following the procedure introduced in the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project. We will look at scientific papers reporting on speech act studies for REQUESTS and APOLOGIES, discussing how to interpret and present findings in this line of research. Finally, we will also touch upon how speech act research is employed in different linguistic fields such as Variational Pragmatics and pragmatic competence assessment. Applying their newly acquired skills, groups of students will carry out small speech act study projects and present their method and findings to complete the course.
Please note that the seminar will take place in a distributed block format, with one intro session and a two-day session in December and another two-day session in January. Make sure you will be able to be present in the relevant time slots, two of which fall on a Saturday. Project presentations will take place outside the seminar blocks at a later date that will be announced at the start of the seminar.

Requirements for participation, required level

Having completed the other elements of the Basis3 module (i.e. "Introduction to English Linguistics" (Basis3.1) and "Introduction to Sociolinguistics" (Basis3.2)) before attending this seminar is highly recommended.