Literature Review

In this paper, we will discuss the importance of literal and non-literal meaning in
declarative clause types in direct and indirect speech acts for English as a second language(ESL)
speakers, with a focus on Russian and Romanian speakers. On a more general topic of speech
acts, Austin (1962) and Searle (1969), developed the Speech Act Theory, which acts as a starting
point for our paper, making their studies the core elements of the communication system.
First J.L. Austin, the Oxford philosopher, developed during his lectures at Harvard
University, the Speech Act Theory, which was later published in his book How to Do Things
with Words in 1962. The main focus of this theory is to try to explain with the help of the
language, how speakers tend to accomplish intended actions and how hearers understand the
intended meaning. The theory of speech acts aims to do justice to the fact that even though words
(phrases, sentences) encode information, people do more things with words than convey
information, and that when people do convey it, they often convey more than their words encode
Austin (1962) defines the performance of uttering words with a consequential purpose as the
performance of a locutionary act, and the study of utterances thus far and in these respects the
study of locutions, or of the full units of speech (p. 69). According to his theory, he
distinguished three types of acts: propositional or locutionary act (the literal meaning of the
utterance), illocutionary act (the social function of the utterance) and perlocutionary act (the
effect produced by the utterance in a given context).

Speech acts seem to vary across cultures and languages, therefore this paper will be
focusing on the perception and the production of literal and non-literal meanings in declarative

clause types of ESL at varying stages of language proficiency and in different social interactions.
Scarcella (1990) found in his study Communication difficulties in second language production,
development, and instruction, that difficulties may arise in the production of speech acts, due to
different levels of language understanding for ESL speakers when they engage in conversations
with native speakers. These communication difficulties may occur when the ESLspeakers do not
share the same astute rules as the native speakers when it comes to analyzing a conversational
situation in a language foreign to them. One explanation for these difficulties may be according
to Scarcella, that nonnative speakers, when conversing, often transfer the conversational rules
of their first language into the second (p. 338). Therefore, in the following pages we will discuss
about a small study that we have conducted in order to shed some light on these differences
between Russian and Romanian speakers of English as a second language, focusing particularly
on the way our speakers differentiate between the literal and non-literal meaning for direct and
indirect speech acts.