Contributions from the concepts of illocutionary and perlocutionary effect to the analysis of classroom interaction

Abstract

Even though the traditional theory of illocutionary acts (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969, 1975) has contributed to the acknowledgement of the actional dimension of language, some of the aspects related to the interconnection between language and action have not been explored (Sbisa, 2002). In that sense, the illocutionary and perlocutionary effects of language have only been developed marginally. The objective in this paper is to revise these two concepts in order to use them in the analysis of classroom interaction (classroom discourse). Our analysis, carried out from a pragmatic perspective (Mey, 1993; Verschueren, 1995, 1999), intends to contribute to the research on classroom interaction, a field that has been paralyzed as a result of limitations in research criteria and of the absence of a methodology capable of evincing semantic-functional aspects of discourse (Constantino, 1998, 1999). The present investigation is based on a communicative interaction which took place in the third cycle of the General Basic Education (in Argentina), selected from a larger sample of 30 classes.