Today's lesson on speech act was rather perplexing because we were studying it without taking into account intonation.
We were first asked to complete a sample questionnaire that collates our responses to various compliments. I found this task difficult because I was responding to a visual representation of a compliment on a piece of paper. However, the possible real life re-enactions one can imagine are abound.
For example, one of the compliments in the questionnaire was: "What a nice sweater! You look great in it".
I was stunned when thinking about how I could possibly respond. The ideal situation would of course be if the person placed natural stresses on the words "nice" and "great". I would take that to be a well-meaning, sincere compliment.
But, what if it were said thus: What a ... [hesitation] nice sweater! You look... ... [even more hesitation] great in it!
Is that still a compliment? If it were said to me I'd be really doubtful!
Worse still, what if it were: What a ... [hesitation, and continuing in a noticeably higher pitched voice] nice sweater! You look... ... [even more hesitation, continuing with an even higher pitched with voice weakly fading away] great in it [ending the sentence with an upward bend in pitch as if asking a question].
That is simply dripping with sarcasm and certainly can't be regarded as a compliment, can it?
A speech act is defined as an act a speaker performs when making an utterance. The words "act" and "perform" clearly imply that the speaker's intention is being taken into consideration. However, as the above two examples clearly illustrate, the speaker's intention is portrayed more intensely in his or her intonation as compared to the words that are used. So, can we really accurately study speech acts without giving any thought to intonation?
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You're right that dct data may not be able to give us a reliable picture of how a speech act is actually performed. That's why we say that natural data are the most revealing. But it doesn't mean that dct data have no use at all. Recent studies that compare data collected with different methods tell us that these data can give us different yet complementary picture of the enactment of a speech act.
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