In my opinion, the speech act begins with the intention of the speaker to communicate something to someone. This intention is part of the communicative context and plays an extremely important role in cognition-oriented theories of Pragmatics, which seek to specify and describe the biological or cognitive foundations underlying communicative behavior. This means  the formulation of principles with predictive power. Generally speaking, cognitive pragmatics is largely based on the relevance-theoretic approach of Sperber and Wilson (1986), which envisions pragmatics as a kind of information-processing system for interpreting human communicative behavior. Thus, I would say that the speech act begins before the actual articulation of an utterance.

I don't think so. By speech act we mean performing an action with the use of language and planning at best can be a preliminary part of the locutionary act and not the speech act itself (For more information consult Austin's speech act theory)

In my opinion, the speech act begins with the intention of the speaker to communicate something to someone. This intention is part of the communicative context and plays an extremely important role in cognition-oriented theories of Pragmatics, which seek to specify and describe the biological or cognitive foundations underlying communicative behavior. This means  the formulation of principles with predictive power. Generally speaking, cognitive pragmatics is largely based on the relevance-theoretic approach of Sperber and Wilson (1986), which envisions pragmatics as a kind of information-processing system for interpreting human communicative behavior. Thus, I would say that the speech act begins before the actual articulation of an utterance.

Speech act begins before birth: "In the beginning was the word."

I agree to Ali Gholizadeh - There is no speech act before its actual performance. Planning a speech act is different act. It is not linguistic, it is ultimately pre-linguistic. The definition of a speech act does not make reference to the preparation of the illocution. The preparatory process plays an important role, perhaps as important as the sppech act itself, but is not part of it according to any existing definition.

Best, Anca

 Acts don't belong to linguistics. If they are speech acts (wide) parts of them can be researched by linguistics, bot not all.

I think a speech-act starts after (the beginning of) a situation (somebody says something or something else happens) which initiates something what we undergo: we have something in mind, it is intensive (because we want to speak), but unclear, and becomes clearer step by step when we start and go on speaking.

I am not sure if what we undergo in all cases can be called an intention, slowly becoming clear.

So the beginning oft he act, the first scene, plays in our mind, maybe a very short or a longer time.

Well, this is an answer that might (inadvertently) help bring pragmatics full-cirlce, back to the little-envied (and rather unhelpful) wastebasket era. A speech act for a linguist cannot begin with thought. A speech act for a linguist, again, may only begin as early as, say, prenasalazation of a vowel. As for speech acts not being studies by linguists, this is a rather refreshing view --but it is excatly the view that leads to the wastebaste. so thanks, but no thanks.  

Dear all, i believe that a speech act is the bridge between sociolinuistics and pragmatics, for it depends both on the situation and context and the speaker's goal and purpose. To believe that the speech act begins before 'speech' takes place in the mouth of the speaker is to miss the main principle of speech act theory/

I agree with Pamela. Speech acts start with the intentions of the speaker and also the cooperative principle in the mind of the interpreter( after all we do not pay the same attention to people: Kids, mentally handicapped persons, aliens who can't speak our language etc..)

Studying speech acts after their realization is no doubt easy to explore using appropriate scientific tools but going deeper, to the real origins, may lead us to discovering the mysterious link between thought and language ( which comes first? are they both the same?). Of course, such an endeavor may put us face to face with the chaos from which we tend to be afraid. But ,very simply, we should always remember that Chaos is order un-deciphered.

I would still like to remind that, according to the existing speech act theory, a speech act is all of these and nothing more / else: 1. an UTTERANCE; 2. what is being said (predicated) and done / performed / achieved (a promise, a request, a prediction) by means of that utterance; 3. what is being achieved in terms of effect upon the addressee's behaviour by means of that utterance, such as threatening, encouraging, making him/her confident.  Of course if we want to change the theory and the definitions / concepts it relies upon, this can be attempted, but I see no reason in modifying concepts and definitions which have been widely used and highly useful for  more than half a century to study  something (intentions, pre-linguistic behaviour) which cannot be studied with the tools of linguistics, pragmatics, socio-linguistics. Keeping this track is in no way fruitful and does not serve the goals of linguistics and philosophy of language. Both  have to do with language. For language to exist there has to be at least one utterance  to discuss about. The utterance is the object of study of speech act theory and of linguistics. By the way, you may wish to reconsider the definitions of SPEECH ACT generously provided on the Internet.

Best again, Anca

Dear Bachir and Anca,

The thing is that you (as well as I and many others here) have been apparently trained in linguistics. People in, say, anthropology and other branches of the social sciences, eager as they are to do more with language (as what they do has become completeley logocentric other the last 3 decades or so) have good reasons to say what they are saying.

Of course, linguists do not have to listen to them --and both of you are doing them a favor to remind them that speech act theory has a 40+ year old history which cannot be rewritten overnight just because someone thought it is more suitable to his or her needs that speech act theory be grounded on the (patently unhelpful) notion of  "thought" --i.e., the very notion linguistics has efficiently helped scholars do away with vis-a-vis language study ever since it redefined the notion of the "sentence".

Therefore, dear colleagues --the ones of you who so crave a speech act theory based on "thought", rereading some of the work produced in the field will do you and your students a load of good. On the contrary, half-baked ideas about "thoughts" are bound to remain just that --I mean they have remained just that in the 25 or so years of queer theoretic ramblings on speech acts. My question is: why don't you give it a rest? Isn't it obvious there is no enviable future (i.e. no future that makes good use of what we know and have thoroughly tested for years and in pretty much all known languages) for this particular kind of inquiry? Is the craving for saying something "innovative" so strong that saying something patently inaccurate (indeed, leaking from every possible angle) does not counterbalance that craving? We all undestand that pressure for papers is great. But this kind of approach is (by now) a (well-documented) dead end. 

Dear Costas,

I understand your concern and I believe it is real. Most researchers are after papers and not after knowledge in the epistemological sense. But this concern, should not , by any means, forget the tiny minority that add each day to their disciplines. The thing is that there is no clear cut boundary between sciences-it is against the very law of gnosis. The compartmentalization of science is a modern phenomenon by the way. Yet, you cannot be a good economist for example, if you are not good at politics, psychology, sociology and mathematics. The point is, even with these artificial boundaries we create for our minds, we have at some moment of our academic career to bypass them in order to survive-intellectually of course.

Moreover, science expands and does not shrink. If all members ( the tiny creative members I mean) in each discipline, let us  say here linguistics, decide to stick to their disciplinary boundary, linguistics will disappear in 20 years-the ruthless law of evolution.

It seems to me that this thread deviated significantly from the question.  First, speech acts are a central feature of linguistic pragmatics.  Second, John Searle (a philosopher, not a linguist) as argued rather convincingly that all speech acts begin with Intentionality and intention.  Third, the assertion that speech acts are not grounded in "thought" would require not only dismissing the entire field of psycholinguistics but also ignoring years of research examining neural functioning during language acts.

I think that the original question is misguided. An interpretation of an event as a speech act, or any sort of act of agency, will be by an observer within some theory, employed to explain or describe in some context.

Discourse ranges from ritual response to command and from mutual musing to carefully constructed response to a question.A linguistic might interpret a sentence as a speech act, a psycho- biologist might interpret a speech act  as starting whenever the speaker pauses for thought or resumes after interruption.

In the question the word "when" is ambiguous between time and sequence. Conscious time can differ from neural processing time. Can we be sure that a heard sequence of sounds matches the sequence rehearsed before utterance or that either match the sequence of  neural events that realize what we call thought?

James Williams, "intention": as meant by Searle has nothing to do with neural functioning (of course people in that field are as welcome to that interpretation as anybody is to any other). Moreover, a philosopher though he may have been. His work on speech acts is almost entirely founded on linguistics bibliography --for he was a primarily philosopher of language, as I am sure you know. To jump from intention-in-saying X to pre-locutionary matters is probably OK for psychologists but not for the people who have so far been most interested and demonstrably contributed significantly to this field of inquiry: and these people are linguists (as is Searle --to the extent that he has contributed as he has to this matter). Pre-locutionary issues are de facto out of the question for obvious reasons. If they are to considered in the future, the people who propose that they be should offer convincing arguments (other than that intention must precede locution --which we sort of knew already). Cheers, Costas

Costas, I'm not sure what framework you are coming from based on your post.  The fact that much of Searle's work (but certainly not all) concerns the philosophy of language does not make him a linguist.  Arguably, his interest in language, as a philosopher, is congruent with a long tradition in which philosophy, language/linguistics, and psychology have been interconnected.  As for his discussion of "intention," recall that he argued that "intention" is linked to "Intentionality," which he described as "a mental state."  But to the point:  Zhang started this discussion by stating that "a speech act begins when a speaker utters the words."  This assertion seems false on at least three grounds.  First, if one accepts the popular notion that language is an expression of thought, it seems reasonable to conclude that a direct speech act such as "Would you please pass the salt?" followed neural functioning associated with that speech act.  Second, and more compelling, is that  imaging studies have reported synchrony in various brain locations correlating with conscious perception, motor control, speech, working memory, and word recognition (e.g., Melloni, et al., 2007; Lu et al., 2010; Moser, et al., 2009; Guenther, 2006). Stated simply, we are able to record neural activity so accurately that we can produce maps of activation patterns for a specific pre-production phonetic states.  Third, persons who suffer from damage to BA44 experience expressive aphasia owing to what appears to be an inability of this area to support the neural synchrony necessary for speech production.  Finally, I  found your dismissal of psychologists puzzling.  Some of the most important work in language has been produced by researchers in psychology and neuroscience, and their influence on linguistics has been significant, as illustrated in the emergence of cognitive linguistics, facilitated by linguists such as Langacker and Lakoff.

I agree with James Williams. I have done a few neuroimaging studies. Even though the research question was not directly related to speech acts but rather on specialized  knowledge processing and understanding. We did obtain interesting data which indicated that there were consistent patterns of brain activation for knowledge access, which could regarded as preparation for speech acts.(before words are ever uttered).

Usually a speech act precedes another; if not, a speech act is preceded by a gesture, especially a movement approach towards someone. I think it is not a question of borders but continuum of communication.

You will find patterns of brain activation, which could be regarded, as one pleases, as preparation for a speech act (uttering of words) or as the first step of a speech act in a broader sense. But the speech act in its semantic and pragmatic content is not ready as a plan but only in the course of speaking becomes filled with concrete content: When you start with the first word you don’t know where the speech act will end.