Speech-acts conditional in everyday communication

As may be well known by now, pragmatics is the third component in a triad, of which syntax and semantics are the other two, much better known components. Together these constitute a linguistic, or stated more generally semiotic, theory of language. Since formal languages abstract from the pragmatic context, and because "utterances" of a logical language only function as assertions, we may say that pragmatics essentially deals with natural language. In order to clearly mark the different tasks of syntax, semantics and pragmatics we may use the highly simplified slogan according to which syntax is the study of what and how (it) is said or expressed, semantics the study of what is (thereby) meant, and pragmatics the study of what (thereby) is done. In other words, pragmatics is that part of language which focuses on action.

The key term, developed mainly by philosophers such as Austin and Searle in the sixties, is that of a speech act. A speech act is the act accomplished when the speaker produces an utterance of a natural language in a specific kind of communicative situation. Such a situation is called a context. This means that a speech act is not just an act of "talking" or "meaning" but, in addition, and crucially, an act, by which members of a speech community interact with each other.

INTRODUCTION
1 Implicature and speech act theory 5
2 Speech-acts conditional in everyday life 9
2.1 Conditionality in Three Domains 10
2.2 Theoretical overview of speech-acts conditionals 11
2.3 Speech act conditionals categorization 21
2.4 Conditionality and speech acts 25
2.4.1 Promises and Threats 32
CONCLUSION 36
REFERENCES 36