Speec acts

SPECH ACTS AND APLICATION THEORY
As teacher of English as foreign language we all have encountered students who are able to produce grammatically well-formed utterances which are not appropriate for the context in which they are used.
We perform speech acts when we offer an apology, greeting, request, complaint, invitation, compliment, or refusal. A speech act is an utterance that serves afunction in communication. Speech acts include real-life interactions and require not only knowledge of the language but also appropriate use of that language within a given culture.
Following Chomsky’s tradition, a native speaker’s knowledge of his mother’s tongue, technically known as grammatical competence, is the tacit knowledge which enables him to form and interpret words, phrases andsentences in his native language (Radford, 1997). Based on this knowledge he can produce an infinite number of sentences in his mother tongue. Besides he can tell the differences between grammatical and ungrammatical sentences which he comes across. However, Hymes (1972) criticized the Chomskyan notion of grammatical competence by arguing that it does not adequately reflect our knowledge of language.As a result, he used the term communicative competence to show a more colorful picture of our language ability. Thus, according to Hymes, communicative competence is the ability not only to apply the grammatical rules of language in order to form grammatically correct sentences but also to recognize where and when to use these sentences.
The first practical model of the communicativecompetence was presented by Canale and Swain (1980). This model was later revised and developed by Canale (1983). According to Canale, the communicative competence is made up of the following components: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence. The grammatical competence deals with mastery of the language code (rules of the language such asvocabulary, word formation, pronunciation, etc); sociolinguistic competence addresses the appropriacy issue, e.g. how utterances are produced and understood appropriately in different sociolinguistic contexts, this refers to the rules of speaking which depend on social, pragmatic and cultural elements. It means that certain pragmatic situations might call for the performance of certain speech acts(Canale, 1993). Discourse competence deals with how sentences are combined to form unified spoken or written texts (coherence and cohesion). And strategic competence deals with the mastery of using communication strategies to compensate for breakdowns in communication and to enhance the effectiveness of communication.
In this respect, speech acts play an important role in effective communication andhence are important components to be mastered. A speech act is usually defined as a functional unit in communication. Austin (1972) argued that utterances have three kinds of meanings. The first kind is locutionary meaning (the literal or propositional meaning of an utterance). The second kind is illocutionary which has to do with the social function of an utterance. And the third kind of meaningis the perlocutionary force which deals with the result or effect that is produced by an utterance.
Speech acts are difficult to perform in a second language because learners may not know the idiomatic expressions or cultural norms in the second language or they may transfer their first language rules and conventions into the second language, assuming that such rules are universal. Because thenatural tendency for language learners is to fall back on what they know to be appropriate in their first language, it is important that these learners understand exactly what they do in that first language in order to be able to recognize what is transferable to other languages.
Based on what was mentioned before, it is quite clear why speech acts have an important role in our daily use of...