Analysis of Interrogative Sentence as Indirect Speech Act in Mandarin and Thai

Abstract

Speech acts are acts of doing something through speaking. They can be classified into direct and indirect speech acts. The phenomena known as indirect speech acts was first observed and pointed out by Searle. In indirect speech acts, the speech act is performed indirectly by the way of performing another speech act. In this case, Searle attempted to explain that it is possible that a speaker says something and means it, yet also means something else. Though an interrogative sentence can directly express a “question,” but it can also indirectly perform other functions. For instance, “Can you pass the pepper?”, the act performed by the speaker is a request although it appears as a question. Based on Searle’s theory of indirect speech acts, this paper is to observe how interrogative sentences in Mandarin and Thai can indirectly perform further speech acts other than questions.