From Context to Field: Reconceptualizing Speech Act Analysis

This essay proposes the field of speech acts as a framework for analyzing how utterances with the same locutionary content can realize different illocutionary functions across distinct communicative fields. The argument develops in three parts. The first section introduces the concept through a contemporary classroom example, demonstrating how a single utterance can realize multiple illocutionary acts across overlapping fields. The second section analyzes nineteenth-century legal utterances, first showing how the same utterance performs different acts as it circulates through settings such as diplomacy, religious authority, and imperial administration, then showing how different utterances articulated within a shared legal field may be strategically oriented toward shaping external fields. The final section positions the framework in relation to existing methodologies, including J. G. A. Pocock’s theory of linguistic paradigms, Quentin Skinner’s linguistic contextualism, and Reinhart Koselleck’s conceptual history. While drawing on these traditions, the essay argues that the field of speech acts provides a finer-grained unit of analysis that captures the dynamic interplay of utterances across coexisting communicative fields defined by local roles, norms, and orientations.