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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Distinctive Features

Introduction, foundational works.

  • Surveys and Histories
  • Edited Collections
  • Reference Resources
  • Theoretical
  • Cognition, Psychology, and Psycholinguistics
  • Voicing and Laryngeal Features
  • Major Class and Manner Features
  • Place Features
  • Tonal Features
  • Other Features
  • Feature Systems for Signed Languages
  • Particles, Components, and Elements
  • Feature Organization
  • Feature Valency
  • From Errors
  • From Acoustics
  • From Production
  • From Learning
  • From Brain Imaging
  • Origins of Features
  • Contrast, Redundancy, and Underspecification
  • Economy and Related Principles

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Distinctive Features by Daniel Currie Hall , Jeff Mielke LAST REVIEWED: 18 August 2022 LAST MODIFIED: 23 August 2017 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0012

In phonological theory the building blocks of speech sounds are often argued to be what are called “distinctive features.” They typically have phonetic definitions and phonetically inspired names (e.g., [voice], [nasal], [labial]). While various algorithms for feature specification exist, segments and natural classes of segments are typically interpreted as bundles of the phonetically defined feature values that match their phonetic descriptions. Throughout the history of distinctive feature theory, a major goal has been to identify a set of features that is adequate for describing the segmental contrasts and phonologically important segment groups observed in the world’s languages.

The central idea behind distinctive feature theory is the notion that contrasts between phonemes can be most elegantly and insightfully described in terms of properties of segments rather than by treating segments as alphabetic atoms. For example, if one identifies voicing as a distinctive feature, then it is possible to say not only that a language contrasts the phonemes /p/, /b/, /t/, and /d/ but also that the contrast between /p/ and /b/ is in some sense the same as, or at least parallel to, the contrast between /t/ and /d/. The early history of distinctive feature theory is thus bound up with related issues, such as the definition of the phoneme, and, because many features are defined in articulatory or auditory terms, the relation between phonology and phonetics. Although many of the properties encoded by features had already been discussed in earlier work in phonetics, it was Ferdinand de Saussure ( Saussure 1959 ) who crucially saw them as the basic elements of systems of phonological oppositions. Saussure’s insights were elaborated on by the Prague Circle during the 1930s. Many of the basic ideas of modern distinctive feature theory were laid out in Trubetzkoy 1969 , originally published in 1939, a year after his death. This includes motivating the distinction between phonetics and phonology and identifying the different types of oppositions involved in segment inventories and some of the phonetic dimensions that are used by these oppositions. Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetzkoy emphasized that phonological oppositions can be studied only as part of a system of oppositions. Jakobson 1942 continued this work. The Prague school system of oppositions was given explicit phonetic underpinnings in Jakobson, et al. 1952 , which exploited the invention of the spectrograph to give precise acoustic definitions of oppositions observed in segment inventories. The developing concept was also influenced by information theory, for instance, in the effort to reduce contrasts to a set of binary oppositions. Jakobson and Halle 1956 developed some of the theoretical points suggested in the earlier work, and Halle 1959 used this feature system in an analysis of the phonological alternations of Russian. The preliminaries feature system was very similar to the later sound pattern of the English (SPE, Chomsky and Halle 1968 ) system but did not claim that the features were innate and did not use them to formulate phonological rules. In SPE the number of distinctive features was doubled, and the acoustically defined features found in earlier work were recast as articulatorily defined features. Changing the names to articulatory names gave the impression that this was a more radical departure, but [grave] survived as [−coronal] and so on. Changes to some parts of the SPE system were proposed almost immediately (including the authors’ replacement of [vocalic] with [syllabic] before the book was finished), so what is often thought of as “the SPE system” is actually a modification of the original proposal (see Proposals for Specific Features ).

Chomsky, Noam, and Morris Halle. 1968. The sound pattern of English . New York: Harper & Row.

This book, conventionally abbreviated SPE, is probably the most influential work in phonological theory. It is written much like Halle 1959 but for English and with more effort to integrate the Jakobsonian feature system into generative grammar. Claims about innateness are more prominent here. Prepublication manuscripts used acoustically defined features like those of Jakobson, et al. 1952 , but most of these were replaced by articulatory features in the published version.

Halle, Morris. 1959. The sound pattern of Russian . The Hague: Mouton.

Uses the preliminaries system of features to work out the phonological patterns of Russian. Much of the modern use of features in phonological rules can be traced to this work, though it is not as widely read as Chomsky and Halle 1968 .

Jakobson, Roman. 1942. The concept of phoneme. In On language . Edited by Linda R. Waugh and Monique Moville-Burston, 218–241. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.

Develops the concepts of phoneme and opposition, emphasizing the importance of discriminative function, and argues for minimizing the number of independent phonological oppositions (and thus the number of features), which Jakobson considers to strain perception and memory.

Jakobson, Roman, C. Gunnar M. Fant, and Morris Halle. 1952. Preliminaries to speech analysis: The distinctive features and their correlates . Cambridge, MA: MIT.

Proposes a set of twelve acoustically defined features, most of which survive in some form in more recent feature theories.

Jakobson, Roman, and Morris Halle. 1956. Fundamentals of language . The Hague: Mouton.

Some overlap with Jakobson, et al. 1952 . More emphasis on the universality of the set of twelve oppositions and how the dichotomous scale is an inherent property of language.

Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1959. Course in general linguistics . Translated by Wade Baskin. New York: Philosophical Library.

The foundational text of structuralist linguistics. Introduced features (or éléments ) as a basic mechanism for classifying phonemes. A source of inspiration for the Prague school in general and, in particular, for Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetzkoy’s investigations into the typology and representation of oppositions in phonology. French original published in 1916 as Cours de linguistique générale .

Trubetzkoy, Nikolai Sergeevich. 1969. Principles of phonology . Translated by Christiane A. M. Baltaxe. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.

Established the idea of features as basic oppositions between (sets of) phonemes and categorized oppositions as privative, equipollent, or gradual. This typology of oppositions forms the basis for subsequent theories of privative, binary, and multivalent features. Originally published in German as Grundzüge der phonologie in 1939.

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Original research article, the third dimension. on the dichotomy between speech and writing.

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  • Faculté des Lettres, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

This paper introduces a more complex and refined articulated view than the classic and simple dichotomy of linguistic production. According to the traditional doxa, what is linguistically articulated is either spoken or written. Forms of written language have previously been considered a secondary representation of spoken forms and, at least in the alphabetic system, the only properly linguistic form. I argue that there exists a third dimension of language, which is internal. This internal form is lexically, phonetically and grammatically articulated, without being spoken in a proper sense, but which can be seen as the pre-condition for both spoken and written production. In other words, linguistic production does not necessarily imply the presence of two interacting speakers (or writers/readers). Production can be seen as the simple effect of an internal activity, and can be described without reduction to spoken or written forms. A consideration of this third dimension in a systematic way could enrich and strengthen approaches to many types of texts and help to productively integrate the traditional schemes adopted in Sociolinguistics, Historical Linguistics, Philology, Literary Criticism, and Pragmatics.

Introduction

Speech in classical linguistic doctrine: saussure.

According to Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale (from here on CLG , 27 Saussure, 1967 ), the act of parole is an individual one, but is realized as the minimum requirement of two “people who are speaking”:

“Pour trouver dans l’ensemble du langage la sphère qui correspond à la langue, il faut se placer devant l’acte individuel qui permet de reconstituer le circuit de la parole. Cet acte suppose au moins deux individus; c’est le minimum exigible pour que le circuit soit complet. Soient donc deux personnes, A et B, qui s’entretiennent”: Figure 1 .

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FIGURE 1 . “Le circuit du langage” (from Saussure 1967 : CLG 60).

Thus, ideographic systems of writing directly represent the idea of words, and phonetic systems represent their sound ( CLG 47 ss.). Consequently (alphabetic) writing is the representation of the sounds of words, which is manifested in the act of a closed circuit shown above, which assumes two interlocutors. According to Saussure, there exists a connection from a concept to an acoustic image, then to phonation, and finally in inverse order, from a reassociation of the sound to an acoustic image, and then back to the concept Figure 2 .

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FIGURE 2 . Phases of saussurean Circuit ( Saussure 1967 : CLG 60).

The written dimension is subordinated, both ontogenetically and phylogenetically, with respect to speech (the latter is identified with language tout court , with an almost imperceptible but crucial deviation). One reads in the CLG 45:

‘Langue et écriture sont deux systèmes de signes distincts; l’unique raison d’être du second est de représenter le premier; l’objet linguistique n’est pas défini par la combinaison du mot écrit et du mot parlé; ce dernier constitue à lui seul cet objet. Mais le mot écrit se mêle si intimement au mot parlé dont il est l’image, qu’il finit par usurper le rôle principal; on en vient à donner autant et plus d’importance à la représentation du signe vocal qu’à ce signe lui-même. C’est comme si l’on croyait que, pour connaître quelqu’un, il vaut mieux regarder sa photographie que son visage ( CLG 45).’

Typical of pre-nineteenth century linguistics was the centrality of writing and written language. Twentieth-century linguistics, then, pushed writing to one side, focusing on the only other perceived dimension, speech. Bloomfield’s famous statement (1935, p. 21) “Writing is not language” became necessarily integrated, in the American structuralist’s perspective, with the notion that the spoken dimension is the only one which duly qualifies as language .

From CLG 45 one can read an entire history of twentieth-century linguistics, which appears to have always taken for granted the dependence of written language on spoken language. This perspective is succinctly highlighted by Martinet, (1972) , p. 70): “a graphic code exists, writing, but apart from this there is no other code: there is language”, obviously referring to speech. There exists almost no twentieth-century treatize which does not define spoken and written language in terms of a dichotomy, and as being the primary (originally, only) and secondary (derived from the first) dimensions of linguistic activity respectively. And there is no work, even among the most recent and attentive studies to questions of the relationship between writing and speech, which does not tend to consider speech simply as the motor of innovation of writing, excluding interference or the role of any other dimension.

Ultimately, according to the model hypothesized by Saussure, spoken language is crucially super-individual. It presupposes at least two individuals, as discussed above. Alphabetic written language is simply a secondary (and often distorted) representation of spoken language, which constitutes the only object of linguistics properly understood (that is, the linguistics of langue , as per the explanation in CLG 38–39).

Twentieth-Century Criticism of the Dichotomy Between Speech and Writing

The dichotomy between speech and writing is discussed at several points during the 20th century. Strictly speaking, this dichotomy is not one of the greatest Saussurian dichotomies, given that Saussure does not theorize it with the same articulation with which he outlines other oppositions, such as those between Langue and Parole, or even Diachrony and Synchrony etc. One reason may be due to the fact that, from his point of view, the written dimension is simply external to the field of linguistics. Already from a structuralist perspective à la Hjelmslev (1966, pp. 131–32), in fact, we see how written and spoken language are not derived from each other, but are simply two manifestations of the same form. In this account, the priority for speech over writing had already been questioned—not from a historical point of view, but from an axiological and epistemological one.

Among the most important discussions, there has been some attempt to refine the sharpness of the boundary between the two fields, highlighting the elements of continuity and, in part, intersection. This is the case of the Koch-Österreicher (1990) model: to the simple distinction between written language vs. spoken language, the two German Romanists oppose a model based on the concepts of distance vs. closeness. These concepts allow, on the one hand, a further realization of the sociolinguistic aspect of situations devoid of writing, and on the other hand, allow us to frame those phenomena which are clearly mixed or hybrid.

The Koch-Österreicher model proposes a scale of distance (and of the quantity of interlocutors included by the single linguistic act) whose minimum value is in fact 1. The conditions of communication are identified, in the first instance, in the Grad der Öffentlichkeit («für den die Zahl der Rezipienten—vom Zweiengespräch bis zum hin zur Massenkommunikation», Koch-Österreicher 2011, p. 7, Italics mine). In short, as in the Saussurian model, there does not appear to be an inferior degree with respect to communication when two are present.

Linguistics in the late 20th century elaborated the concept of diamesic variation (a term invented by Mioni 1983 , extending a series of analogous categories from Coseriu). But it struggled to demonstrate that there exist various “intermediate” positions between these two poles. Apparently, the poles are not united (as instead occurs for similar polarities, such as the classic dimensions of sociolinguistic variation).

A further contribution to overcoming the exclusive and rigid dichotomy between writing and speech was provided by the twentieth-century development of studies on sign language (SL). It is thanks to this line of research and the continued appreciation of SL as an alternative channel to spoken and written language, that traditional expressions such as “spoken or written language” are often substituted with other ones. In recent studies, a trinomial “spoken, signed or written language” (for example, as recently as in Haspelmath 2020 , p. 2) has entered the literature. In short, one finds an all-encompassing category of verbal language in addition to the traditional dichotomy of spoken/written language. This category synthesizes, rather than supersedes, the old contraposition (notwithstanding the distinct nature of signed languages, which can be acquired spontaneously, with respect to writing, and which are the fruit of cultural transmission and learning).

In sum, twentieth-century linguistics approaches the polarities of written vs. spoken language both in a theoretical perspective as well as in a specifically sociolinguistic perspective. Linguistics aimed to overcome this conception as an exclusive dichotomy, placing greater emphasis on those elements of continuity which overlap. This approach was favored also by the emergence of new methodologies of communication. A further contribution to superseding the written/spoken duality was provided by research on sign language: dealing, as it does, with phenomena that cannot be reduced to either category, nor to either one of the polarities.

The Internal Text of G. R. Cardona

Among the few contributions which properly highlighted the linguistic question posed by an internal text, and taking inspiration from both literary and non-literary texts, is the work of Giorgio Raimondo Cardona, (1986 , reprinted Cardona, 1990 ). Published 2 years before his unexpected and premature death, the article deals with “mental text” as an indispensable premise for the production of any oral, but especially written, text.

Let us consider in particular one of the crucial passages of Cardona’s essay: “There is no analytic thread (whatever its itinerary may be) that can be exempt from choosing internal discourse as a point of departure: apart from some cases of automatic writing or trance or similar, no external communicative activity can be disregarded from endophasic, mental and communicative discourse”.

Cardona, (1986) begins from an examination of the literary manifestations of internal speech, bringing to light suggestions from the field of semiotics (and particularly from Lotman et al., 1975 ). He focuses on criticism from genetics and on twentieth-century variationist linguistics, before moving to what he considers a particular type of text, understood as a preparatory and evolving phase that precedes the development in written form, but also its spoken realization. In this way, “the various genres, written and spoken, open up into a natural typology, widening to become waves from the nucleus of internal discourse”.

Another fundamental passage from Cardona consists in recognizing internal discourse (or “interior text”) as the essential absence of a pragmatic dimension, beyond an extreme simplification of syntax (“in one’s thought for oneself, the combination can be reduced to its minimum, the mental nuclei find their minimal linguistic expression. It can, at times, be substituted or integrated by images, as per the manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci”). Cardona’s examples usefully extend to textual and typological instances that are quite varied.

Cardona’s gifted intuition has been recognized by Italian studies of general linguistics, by history of the Italian language, and literary criticism, which occasionally quote him (among the most important studies, see D’Achille 1990 : 18, who dedicates a note to him). But it has never been explored in full and, in fact, it has not led to any substantial new analysis in the general study of written and spoken language. Significant, for example, is the absence of any reference to him in the best work of German Romance studies in the new century, from Kabatek (2000) to the second edition of Koch-Österreicher (2011) . Furthermore, Cardona’s work does not appear to have been recognized even by contemporary French linguistics, which has, on several occasions, returned to the notions of langage and parole intérieur(e). This includes within the traditional studies of psychology, which we will take up below (exemplary in this regard is Bergounioux 2001 ). In terms of Italian linguistics, which has always been attentive to the social dimension of language and its recent evolution, historians of the Italian language have concentrated mainly on the opposition between spoken and written speech (see, for example, the studies following the work of Giovanni Nencioni, later published in Nencioni 1983 ). Up until now, Cardona’s work has mainly influenced the realm of literature (for example, Bologna 1993 ).

The Perspective From Generative Linguistics

Linguistics in the past few decades has opened up a debate with particular vigor, especially in the field of studies on the origin of language and its biological foundations, which can be summarily characterized by the following two extremes: 1) language is studied primarily as an instrument of communication; 2) language is studied primarily as a form of organization of thought.

Generative grammar resolutely derives from 2) within a theory of externalization. This theory identifies the human specificity of language in its internal, computational (syntactic) capacity (that is, in what Chomsky calls internal language, I-language) and not in the interaction between it and the materiality of phonation. As for the executive function of neurons, the human species shares this aspect with various other animals (hence the computational-syntactic capacity is exclusive of homo, cf. for example Berwick, 2013 ). Generally speaking, only syntactic characteristics are assigned to I-language, dealing as it does with a computational system, that is, with the product of a mental apparatus.

In a partially complementary position, a recent string of neurolinguistic studies (for example, the various works by A. Moro and others, cf. Magrassi et al., 2015a ) has made it possible to observe the cerebral traces of the mental representation of words with the tools from clinical observation. These observations occur not just during the listening phase, but also in the phase of production. In particular, they are visible in those areas of the encephalon that are crucially non acoustic, such as the Broca area. This has highlighted the many affinities between spoken language and “thought language”: the latter showing a great number of elements in common with the former, and thus comprising something similar to what Saussure had already called the acoustic image of words. In short, to summarize with an efficient phrase from Moro, (2016) , p. 89: “when we think without speaking, we are putting the sounds of words in our thoughts”.

One consequence of the theories and of the hypotheses (even though partially divergent) of what we have just said, is that recent linguistics has made it possible to ascertain a certain finding of linguistic dimension preceding phonation, but still within the domain of linguistics. This is due to the fact that we are dealing not only with syntactic structure, which must be considered the specific nucleus of the very faculty of language, but also of a phonetic and phonic consistency at the level of the neural networks. It is, therefore, a recognition in terms of the language(s) involved. In other words, we do not only think linguistically but (at least in certain situations), rather in a very well defined language .

Therefore, not only does language have a foremost interior dimension, if it is understood as the disposition of a computational system with a mainly syntactic nature. It also has a further dimension, still internal, but to which we can add the application of universal syntactic parameters as well as characteristics that are already fully recognizable as single languages. There exists, that is, a form of thought which is already proprerly articulated (and is even formed with features of a single language). At the same time, it is independent from an external, phonic expression in the same language, with which it also maintains strong relations even at the level of activation of neural networks linked to hearing.

The Perspective From Textual Criticism and Philology

The existence of forms of linguistic production that are independent both from acts of phonation, and from writing, has always been known in an intuitive sense. Nevertheless, the received wisdom has tendentially merged or even confused the mental articulation of language with the dimensions of speech or writing. This appears to be the case with metaphors of daily language such as “I said to myself” (in order to introduce the content of a thought that is not truly “said”, but simply “thought”), or “I made a mental note”. Therefore, mental content exists that is linguistically articulated but which is neither “said” nor “written” in the true sense of these two words.

Even literary production has always considered the purely internal dimension of language, and not in a written or spoken sense. Literary works have given conventional representations which, once again, are mainly anchored in the traditional forms of dialogic speech: the form of an (interior) monologue assumes, in an earlier literary tradition, elements such as allocution to oneself (such as those of epic or tragic heroes, as well as lyricists of Antiquity). These elements represent the endophasic dimension as a variation of speech in which two interlocutors coincide.

More recent forms of literary representation (for example, the twentieth-century stream of consciousness) have allowed an attempt to give an autonomous and more “realistic” representation of such phenomena to emerge. In recent years, French stylistique has deepened the literary reflexes of the late nineteenth-century psychological debate (especially in France, as detailed below) on langage intérieur (for example, Rabatel 2001 , Martin-Achard 2016, Dujardin 1931 , Pettenati 1961 ). The in-depth analyses of literary criticism are numerous in these fields (for example, Philippe 2001 ; see above for G. R. Cardona’s particular linguistic view on variationist linguistics).

In fact, the (at least) partially autonomous nature of the articulation of internal language appears to have slipped away attention from its spoken form. This does not mean they are completely separated from it. Little attention has been given to the fact that the same act of writing (autonomous or as a form of copying) assumes a formalized pre-elaboration of content which is not spoken at all, but only thought.

In recent times, before the neurolinguistic studies discussed above, even a particular phenomenon such as transference— via copying—of a written text to another written text has been studied within philology. Indeed, philology has considered phenomena such as the so-called internal dictation in a profound way during the course of the 20th century (see the fundamental studies by Alphonse Dain (1975) ; on “internal pronunciation”, and cf. also Avalle’s considerations 1972, p. 34). Philology has identified a great number of indices which refer us back to a form of “listening” and internal “repetition” (in an acoustic sense) of a graphic sequence that is looked at during the first act of copying, and then transcribed in the second. Most copying errors that are ascribable to defects of internal dictation can be traced, in fact, to the acoustic nature of such repetitions. These errors, nevertheless, do not assume any sound if only that “of thought”, to return to Moro’s expression.

The Perspective From Psychology

The category of internal language was investigated in the fields of psychology and medicine before linguistics. The research conducted by Victor Egger (1881) , Egger (1904) and by Georges Saint-Paul (1892) , Saint-Paul (1904) , Saint-Paul (1912) during the last twenty years of the 19th century, has a seminal value. Partly adopting contrasting perspectives, they proposed establishing a typological classification of the forms of endophasy, bringing attention to the faculty of hearing, as well as visual and verbal-kinetic aspects of the internal representation of language. Until then, these aspects were not able to be investigated simply through introspection (Egger) or interrogation of witnesses (Saint-Paul). The latter originally used a questionnaire which was also distributed among writers; for a historiographical overview of this debate, see Carroy 2001 .

As is general for other aspects of linguistics, the approach that is based on the study of child language acquisition has allowed us to untangle that which appears difficult to ascertain in adults. According to Lev Vygotsky (1966) , whose theory on the formation of internal language is widely accepted, language in the child has a function for social interaction with people in immediate surrounding. Then an egocentric phase from which socialized and internal language derive.

In this particular area, Vygotsky’s model is accepted in substance by Jean Piaget, while reinterpreting the Vygotskian theory. Despite some cases of divergence on specific points, even the theoretician of genetic psychology agrees with the hypothesis that egocentric child language is the point of departure for the development of internal language. This phase is found during a successive stage of development, and is parallel to the formation of “socialized” language (it does not follow it, therefore, and is not derived from it either).

To the general category of internal language can be traced, in the adult, both endophasy (which does not assume any phonation), as well as solitary speech, which represents a sort of medial point between the proper dimension of internal language and the typical dimension of speech in the presence of an interlocutor.

Despite the debates outlined above in the field of psychology, a conspicuous part of general linguistics has continued (more or less) to explicitly reduce internal language to a simplified form of dialogue, in which two interlocutors coincide, through a sort of duplication of the subject into two interlocutors. In fact, this is the point of view, for example, that Benveniste, (1974) , p. 85 adopts in considering monologues: “le monologue procède bien de l’énonciation. Il doit être posé, malgré l’apparence, comme une variété du dialogue, structure fondamentale”. The example is valid also in showing a much broader tendency as well.

Writing, Speech, Thought

In reality, it is obvious that most linguistic production however it is understood occurs outside the domains of speech and writing. Most content that is articulated in a linguistic way (and, as we have said, this includes also mental content, in every sense) happens in thought, and precedes—literally—any form of external expression, spoken or written.

The way in which language is articulated internally is still largely unattainable. This explains the reason why its perception has always turned out to be fleeting, and its nature confused with other forms. If this is the case, the same relationship between spoken language and written language has been read in a completely different way from other graphical cultures (for example, Chinese, on which see the recent paper by Banfi 2020 ). This relationship has been consistently characterized by a tradition that adopts graphemes of a phonetic nature, and in a modern way.

The fact that “thought” language is attainable only in a difficult way, and describable only in specific forms, does not mean that it does not exist, however. The recent findings from neurolinguistics (which have created the possibility of tracing the recognition of syntactic structures independent from sound in the brain, as Moro et al., (2020) have recently done) open up interesting perspectives on the concrete attainability of the thought dimension of language. But even other elements may be involved, in the same sense.

On the other hand, even the spoken dimension of language (obviously much more relevant than written language) has long been neglected, since it is more difficult to obtain with respect to written language. Today, speech can be observed in various forms–that is, one can not only transcribe, but also record. This means that it has been considered as an autonomous subject.

Describing the study of the thought dimension, even in linguistic studies, could have further consequences for the way in which the two tangible dimensions of writing and speech are evaluated. We know that these dimensions influence each other. Koch and Österreicher have produced the most refined model, perhaps, to describe such reciprocal influence. But we do not know exactly what the relationship between them and the third dimension is.

The representation of the relationship that has traditionally been conceived between speech and writing can therefore be summarized in a simple dependency of one on the other:

SPEECH(language proper).↓Writing.(conventional representation of speech, «non language»)

The model proposed by Koch-Österreicher energizes and complicates such a representation, while maintaining an eminently communicative vision of language, shifting the focus toward the notions of Distance and Conception: Figure 3 .

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FIGURE 3 . Spoken vs Written Language according to Koch-Österreicher 1990 : 13.

Cardona (1986) adopts an even broader and more articulated perspective, producing a model that is formally similar to those that were being elaborated contemporaneously in various subdisciplines of sociolinguistics (e.x., the well-known Berruto, 1987 model for contemporary Italian): Figure 4 .

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FIGURE 4 . Spoken vs Written Language (and Internal Language) according to Cardona (1986) .

The direction which Cardona had already invited us to consider, and which the combined perspectives of twentieth-century psychology and recent neurolinguistics appear to endorse, is that of an even more decisive integration of the internal dimension in the study of language and languages. The consideration of thought language appears to be inevitably presupposed to the study of every manifestation—spoken and written—of language itself. One can attempt to supersede, in this way, the traditional, hierarchical vision which subordinates speech to writing on both of the traditionally identified dimensions. Both appear to be subjected, and equally so, to the overriding internal elaboration of language.

In this sense, the persistent idea loses some force that speech should take on a priority role in both the description and the realization of language. Speech is, certainly, the most direct and immediate projection of thought, but perhaps not the necessary cause of every manifestation of writing. Rather, in many cases it continues from thought in a much more plausible way. Naturally, this does not prevent the idea that the conception (in the sense intended by Koch-Österreicher) of text can bring the dimensions of speech and writing into communication. In the views which we have summarized here, they do not necessarily seem to be in a relationship of direct derivation: Figure 5 .

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FIGURE 5 . Thought, Speech, Writing according our hypothesis.

In this model, the different length of the sides of the triangle refer to the diverse nature of spoken forms, as is natural, with respect to written forms, which are cultural and obviously negotiated. A possible representation of what is signed in this model would lead to a further derivation from thought which, in turn, would be independent from speech.

Possible Prospects: Outside Literature

Among the consequences of a possible autonomous recognition of the thought dimension of language, distinct from both speech and writing, is the question of overcoming an automatic act which appears to be reasonably widespread. This act derives from the consideration of written language as a simple reflection of speech. If what Saussure had already observed concerning alphabetic writing is irrefutable (that is, that writing reproduces more or less efficiently the phonic substance of words), then it is also true that a certain tendency can be observed to attribute the least characteristic or marginal facts of written language to a pure and simple influence of speech. In the elaboration of writing, thought generally appears much more decisive than speech proper.

In reality, there are various forms of written production that are difficult to interpret as representations of corresponding forms of speech. At the most simple level, what is obvious in forms of elementary text (the oldest attested forms in the development of writing) such as lists, notes, or annotations written down from memory, the writer does not address others but rather him or herself. Nor does the author intend to be comprehended by people other than themselves. It will be useful to recall that among the earliest manifestations of writing throughout history, we find functional texts that are not intended for interpersonal communication, nor for the reproduction of spoken discourse, but rather computational ones. In other words, numbers are born well before letters and “the code of abstract ideas, in particular the numerical code, seems to have performed an essential role from the first stages in the appearance of writing, and perhaps in the very idea that concepts can be written down” ( Deahaene 2009 , p. 211).

In general, a large part of so-called “semi learned” texts, which have been the object of linguistic enquiry for just a short time, present a linguistic phenomenology that is perhaps inappropriately described as being influenced by speech. A much more persuasive explanation of its various phenomena is provided by referring to the dimensions of thought, rather than to speech.

Cardona (1986 , p. 80) has also investigated this aspect of language. With respect to the category of ‘semi learned’ persons, he alludes to the modality of “writing down in real time one’s own mental discourse which is first and foremost—due to a lack of other models—an oral discourse”. But the priority of oral discourse appears dominant here too, when it appears necessary to shift toward a description of the syntax of thought in an analogous way that, for the syntax of speech, has allowed us to re-read and re-interpret such phenomena of written production coherently (as well as programmatic, in this sense, see Sabatini 1990 ).

Therefore, it can be useful to reconsider in a systematic way the elements which in non-literary writing (and particularly in less attentive writing) have traditionally been considered as reflexes of spoken language. One may ask whether these elements should not be removed from that dimension, and restored to the proper category of internal language. To quote one of the clearest and most recent formulations, it is a common opinion that “semi learned writing is characterized by an integral and large adoption of spoken structures” ( Testa 2014 , p. 107). But semi learned writing also includes the modality that Trifone 1986 has aptly described as being “writing for oneself”. Whether this type of writing simply integrates elements and styles of spoken language is a partially equivocal notion. It is created by a lack of features, made up of traits that are external to spoken language, and includes elements both of speech proper and elements of thought. Diaries, notes, jottings made out of necessity or from memory: those who write for themselves (and more so if the writer is semi learned) do not necessarily rely on speech, but more likely draw on the most immediate form of their linguistic production: thought.

Possible Prospects: Literary Production

Some elements of thought language have been highlighted by criticism and literary theory. But in terms of linguistic studies applied to literary texts, there seems to remain a certain reluctance to consider the relationship between internal language and literary language.

We have often borne witness to an appreciation of the literary reproduction of speech. In other words, the mimetic capacity of some literary production (especially in prose) reproduces phenomena in written form that are (or would be) unique to orality. This is one line of research that has been very productive, and which has the merit of clearly distinguishing between that which pertains to the written dimension (studied longer and in a deeper way) from that which does not pertain to it. In a certain sense, it is as if the term “speech” has long indicated simply “that which is not written”, or whatever is different from writing.

Among literary texts that best lend themselves to an indirect investigation of the typical characteristics of thought language, we find also poetic texts (especially lyrical ones), in which the subject, at the center of the discourse, does not seem to have any interlocutor. These texts can be placed alongside prose, discussed above on the flow of conscious and internal monologue.

Economy of syntax, omissions of references to context, advances of the text free from association of ideas without explanations, and a centering of the ego: these are just some of the elements which distinguish a part of poetic production—particularly modern poetry—from more traditional forms of poetic discourse, founded above all on the adoption of canonical verse and metrics. A conspicuous part of modern poetry seems to distinguish itself from prose above all for its privileged link, even if implicit, with the internal dimension of language, that is with thought language.

In this way, some stylistic traits unique to poetry—especially recent poetry—can be explained in an even more persuasive way if one attempts to describe them as outcomes just in terms of thought language. These forms have been typically characterized as an implausible reproduction of speech. This is a parallel, but distinct, step with respect to what we have said above in terms of non-literary writing. In both cases, it is a question of overcoming the almost seamless, and unwarranted, process of assigning phenomena that occur in certain forms of written language only in a marginal and peculiar way to an implausible flow of speech.

In conclusion, the intersection between literary writing and thought language deserves to be explored more attentively, with tools appropriate to linguistics. The noteworthy study of tracing reproducible elements, more or less consciously, of speech in literary texts could also be applied in identifying elements of thought language in literary writing proper. In modern poetry, the ongoing relaxation of the canonical, formal requirements seem to be compensated by an ever stronger relationship between poetry and thought language, whose syntactic, textual, and pragmatic points deserve further definition and articulation.

Data Availability Statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary Material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Author Contributions

The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords: language, spoken (and written language), written, psycholinguistic, linguistic variation

Citation: Tomasin L (2021) The Third Dimension. On the Dichotomy Between Speech and Writing. Front. Commun. 6:695917. doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2021.695917

Received: 15 April 2021; Accepted: 06 May 2021; Published: 07 June 2021.

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Copyright © 2021 Tomasin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Lorenzo Tomasin, [email protected]

This typology seem very rational, but in fact it is misleading, as rational taxonomies often are. All documented writing systems are a mixture of two or (usually) more of the these categories, and all include a significant phonological aspect. This critique has been most fully develop by John DeFrancis in his book Visible Speech , from which most of the examples below have been taken.

Given the definitions of writing we've given so far, pictographic and ideographic systems would not be included, since they are not ways of "recording language," but rather ways of directly picturing things, events and their relationships. Interestingly, as a matter of empirical fact, it seems that pictographic and ideographic systems have never really developed fully as such. This is not to say that people have never conveyed information with pictures, nor that sets of conventional icons standing for language-independent ideas have never been developed and used. In fact, pictographic and ideographic signs played a central role in the (various) inventions of writing.

However, pictographic or ideographic systems as such have never developed into a form fully capable of conveying unlimited messages from one person to another. Instead, they either remain as limited systems operating within a highly restricted application -- say to keep warehouse records -- or else they develop into a genuine writing system, capable of conveying any linguistic message. In the second case, the process of development into a genuine writing system always involves adding some phonological aspects, in ways we'll describe shortly.

Origins of writing

When they appear in the archeological record about 5,500 years ago, the Sumerians had developed a system of icons inscribed on clay tablets for keeping temple records. A typical example includes icons for "two", "sheep", "temple/house", and the gods "An" and "Inanna". The meaning might be "two sheep received from the temple of An and Inanna", or "two sheep delivered to the temple of An and Inanna", or perhaps something else entirely.

distinct features of speech and writing

These marks constituted a limited notation system, which in the beginning may only have served to remind the writer of what he had once already known. However, as long as agreed-on standards were obeyed, another person could also read the record in the same way. In this, these were similar to systems for record-keeping, based on symbolic tokens of many sorts, developed over and over again in many cultures over the millennia -- marks on stone or bone, clay figurines, even knots in cords. As civilizations become more complex, record-keeping of this kind becomes increasingly important in order to keep commercial transactions straight. The ability of trained third parties to read such records in a consistent way became increasingly important as systems for mediating or adjudicating disputes in non-violent ways come into use. However, most such systems remained limited in their expressive capacity.

In the case of the Sumerian record-keeping system, two crucial innovations led (over a few hundred years) to a full writing system, capable of expressing anything that could be expressed in the (written) words of the Sumerian language.

The first innovation was the Rebus Principle : if you can't make a picture of something, use a picture of something with the same sound. The first clear example of this is in a tablet from Jemdet Nasr, dated to around 2900 BC, in which a pictograph of a reed ( GI in Sumerian) is used to mean "reimburse" (also pronounced GI ).

The second innovation was what we might call the Charades Principle : if you combine an ambigous or vague picture of the meaning of a word, with a little information about what the word sounds like, you can get a more effective communication of the identity of the word than if you tried to use only imperfect information about meaning, or imperfect information about sound. To give an example from Sumerian, a particular symbol having a meaning something like "leg" might be combined with a symbol pronounced "ba" to give the word GUB "to stand"; the same "leg" symbol, combined with a symbol pronounced "na", gave the word GIN "to go"; and combined with a symbol pronounced "ma", it gave the word TUM "to bring." Thus a Sumerian reader was in effect being asked to play a sort of game of charades : what word has something to do with "leg" and ends in the initial sound of "ba"? -- why of course, that's GUB, "to stand", what else! These combinations became conventionalized, resulting in a system that was presumably somewhat easier to learn to read than to learn to write, but was not very efficient in either direction.

Still, the result was a complete writing system, in which the Sumerians wrote down not just warehouse records, but poems, diplomatic treaties, letters, contracts and judicial decisions, dictionaries, and epic myths.

We can see a modern version of a similar system in Chinese characters. Most characters can be analyzed as containing two elements, one of which provides semantic information, while the other provides phonological information. The following small table (from DeFrancis) illustrates this with a set of four semantic elements crossed with a set of four phonological (or as DeFrancis calls it "phonetic") elements. The numbering of the semantic elements is taken from a standard set of 214 that have been recognized at least since the Kang Xi dictionary of the 18th century, while the numbering of the phonetic elements is taken from a list of 895 compiled by Soothill.

It is clearly inappropriate to call the Chinese system "ideographic", as is sometimes done. Chinese characters refer to morphemes, not ideas. However, to the extent that the pattern in the table above is taken as typical (and DeFrancis claims that about 75% of all Chinese characters work like these examples), Chinese characters are simultaneously a kind of syllabic writing. DeFrancis suggests the term "morpho-syllabic" to describe it.

It can be argued that the degree of phonological information found in the Chinese writing system is not radically different from what is found in English. English spelling usually tells us what the morphemes are, but unless we know in advance, it gives us only imperfect information about pronunciation. We can be sure that "tough" will not be pronounced "congressional" or "halter", but only knowledge of the word itself tells us that it rhymes with "rough" and not with "dough" or "through" or "plough".

Egyptian hieroglyphics also combined pictographic and phonological aspects, often in complicated ways, as the example below suggests. This is the word hememu "humanity". It starts with four symbols denoting the four consonants in the word (the symbol glossed with /u/ is actually /w/). It ends with three semantic determinatives: a seated man, a seated woman, and a set of three lines indicating that multiple entities are referenced.

This approach to writing produced a small number of symbols with simple phonetic values -- Egyptian had 24 simple consonant symbols, shown below -- and led naturally to the development of alphabetic writing systems.

Why pictographic/ideographic writing is not practical

No one has ever developed a full communications system based on pictographic or ideographic principles, although people have often surmised that this would be useful, because it would (or at least could) be universal. The problem is that universality means only that it is equally hard for everyone to develop and learn such a system. If it is feasible to design such a system at all, it is at least very, very difficult. Since everyone already knows at least one ordinary spoken language, practical people will always tend to give up on the ideographic system and start using a written form of their speech, as soon as they can figure out how to do this.

For an amusing myth about this process, check out the story of How the first letter was written , from Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories .

Why phonological writing is (eventually) practical

It is rather difficult to get enough conscious access to the phonological structure of speech to design an alphabetic writing system, and very few languages have small enough inventories of syllables for a syllabic system to be an easy place to start. More important, the idea of constructing a full writing system (on any basis, phonological or otherwise) is not at all an obvious one.

So writing seems to have started with pictograms for mnemonic aids in record keeping, or as vehicles of insight in divination. As the inventory of signs increases, the possibility arises to begin using some of the signs as rebuses or as phonological/semantic combinations. This is much more efficient than trying to design a new symbol for every word or morpheme. Once this meaning-plus-sound process begins, it can develop into a full (if complex and inefficient) writing system, able to encode any passage in the language. This development seems to have occurred independently at least three times: in the middle east; in China; and in Mexico.

Various other developments are then logically possible. The Chinese (and other cultures influenced by them, including Japan) developed a meaning-plus-sound system based on the syllabic unit. The Mayans did the same. A logical next step is to increase efficiency by doing away with some or all of the meaning-related units, in favor of a consistent syllabary of some sort. Such syllabaries were developed throughout the far east, but in most cases they did not displace the mean-plus-sound elements. Instead they supplemented them for certain uses (such as the encoding of grammatical particles in Japanese) or for certain populations (such as women in some places and periods in China).

By contrast, the Egyptians (and other semitic languages) developed a meaning-plus-sound system based on primarily or solely on consonants. This naturally led to purely consonantal writing systems for some of the semitic languages (such as Phonecian), which shared with Egyptian the property of changing vowels extensively for morphological purposes. To give an example from Hebrew, the root /ktb/ can have among many other forms katav "I wrote", kotav "I write", katoov "written", kitav "letters", katban "scribe". In a language that works this way, it's natural to factor words into consonants and vowels, and to start with a sort of acronym-like use of pictographs to denote their initital consonant, in a meaning-plus-sound system based on consonants only. In the case of most if not all Semitic languages, it has turned out to be usually possible to figure out the vowels from context, even without adding semantic determinatives. This made it possible to abandon the semantic determinatives without giving up general writing.

Alphabetic systems seem to be rather unnatural, and have arguably been developed only once, by the Greeks when they adapted the Semitic consonant-only system to their language, which couldn't so easily be written without vowels. It is possible that this invention would not have happened at all without this particular historical sequence.

Part of the reason for the success of meaning-plus-sound systems is that two kinds of evidence are always better than one: two fairly lousy systems can be combined into one decent one. But there is another reason as well. Sound systems are made up of quite limited materials. In many lanugages, the number of distinct syllables is not terribly great; and the number is much reduced if natural equivalence classes (such as "starts with" or "rhymes with") are used. Once one gets started down the sound-system road, it is tempting to go all the way, since it makes the practical training of scribes more efficient only to have to learn a few dozen symbols, rather than several thousand. Of course, the Scribe's Guild may think it's just fine to limit the number of literate people, and to leave large barriers in place, blocking entry to skill in their profession.

Why is reading hard to learn?

For the same reasons that writing was hard to invent, reading is hard to learn. Neither reading nor writing is a biologically natural process. Alphabetic writing systems are in principle the most efficient, since they require learning the smallest number of symbols. No one would design a writing system today on any other basis. However, alphabetic systems seem to impose a special burden on learners, because they require understanding a level of analyses -- phonemic analysis -- that is relatively inaccessible to introspective scrutiny. The orthographic system of English also has many morpheme-related idiosyncrasies, which eventually make it easier to recognize words (just as the Chinese morphosyllabic system does), but which also may obscure the alphabetic principle for early learners.

A number of ongoing long-term longitudinal studies show that about 60% of American children find it difficult to learn to read, and that 20-30% fall seriously behind or fail entirely. The reasons for these problems, and the best ways to deal with them, are a matter of great controversy. A great deal depends on the answers.

The opening salvo in one of the this war's battles was fired more than 50 years ago by Rudolf Flesch in his 1955 book Why Johnny Can't Read .

In an attempt to present an authoritative consensus on this important topic, I'll start with quotes from congressional testimony given in 1998 and 1999 by Dr. G. Reid Lyon, Chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which in turn is part of the National Institututes of Health (NIH).

First, the diagnosis:

[C]hildren who have difficulties learning to read can be readily observed. The signs of such difficulty are a labored approach to decoding or "sounding" unknown or unfamiliar words and repeated misidentification of known words. Reading is hesitant and characterized by frequent starts and stops and multiple mispronunciations. If asked about the meaning of what has been read, the child frequently has little to say. Not because he or she is not smart enough; in fact, many youngsters who have difficulty learning to read are bright and motivated to learn to read, at least initially. Their poor comprehension occurs because they take far too long to read the words, leaving little energy for remembering and understanding what they have read. Unfortunately, there is no way to bypass this decoding and word recognition stage of reading. Using context to figure out the pronunciation of unknown words cannot appreciably offset a deficiency in these skills. In essence, while one learns to read for the fundamental purpose of deriving meaning from print, the key to comprehension starts with the immediate and accurate reading of words. In fact, difficulties in decoding and word recognition are at the core of most reading difficulties... To be sure, there are some children who can read words accurately and quickly yet do have difficulties comprehending, but they constitute a small portion of those with reading problems. If the ability to gain meaning from print is dependent upon fast, accurate, and automatic decoding and word recognition, what factors hinder the acquisition of these basic reading skills? As mentioned above, young children who have a limited exposure to both oral language and print before they enter school are at-risk for reading failure. However, many children with robust oral language experience, average to above intelligence and frequent interactions with books since infancy may also show surprising difficulties learning to read. Why? In contrast to good readers who understand that segmented units of speech can be linked to letters and letter patterns, poor readers have substantial difficulty in developing this "alphabetic principle." The culprit appears to be a deficit in phoneme awareness--the understanding that words are made up of sound segments called phonemes. Difficulties in developing phoneme awareness can have genetic and neurobiological origins or can be attributable to a lack of exposure to language patterns and usage during the preschool years. The end result is the same, however. Children who lack phoneme awareness have difficulties linking speech sounds to letters, leading to limitations in the development of decoding and word recognition skills, resulting in extremely slow reading. As mentioned, this inaccurate and labored access to print renders comprehension very difficult.
It is clear from research on emerging literacy that learning to read is a relatively lengthy process that begins very early in development and clearly before children enter formal schooling. Children who receive stimulating literacy experiences from birth onward appear to have an edge when it comes to vocabulary development, an understanding of the goals of reading, and an awareness of print and literacy concepts. Children who are read to frequently at very young ages become exposed in interesting and exciting ways to the sounds of our language, to the concept of rhyming, and to other word and language play that serves to provide the foundation for the development of phoneme awareness. As children are exposed to literacy activities at young ages, they begin to recognize and discriminate letters. Without a doubt, children who have learned to recognize and print most letters as preschoolers will have less to learn upon school entry. The learning of letter names is also important because the names of many letters contained the sounds they most often represent, thus orienting youngsters early to the alphabetic principle or how letters and sounds connect. Ultimately, children's ability to understand what they are reading is inextricably linked to their background knowledge. Very young children who are provided opportunities to learn, think, and talk about new areas of knowledge will gain much from the reading process. With understanding comes the clear desire to read more and to read frequently, ensuring that reading practice takes place.
In studying approximately 34,501 thousand children over the past 33 years, we have learned the following with respect to the role that phonemic awareness plays in the development of phonics skills and fluent and automatic word reading: Phonemic awareness skills assessed in kindergarten and first grade serve as potent predictors of difficulties learning to read. We have learned how to measure phonemic awareness skills as early as the first semester in kindergarten with tasks that take only 15 minutes to administer - and over the past decade we have refined these tasks so that we can predict with approximately 80% to 90% accuracy who become good readers and who will have difficulties learning to read. We have learned that the development of phonemic awareness is a necessary but not sufficient condition for learning to read. A child must integrate phonemic skills into the learning of phonics principles, must practice reading so that word recognition becomes rapid and accurate, and must learn how to actively use comprehension strategies to enhance meaning. We have begun to understand how genetics are involved in learning to read, and this knowledge may ultimately contribute to our prevention efforts through the assessment of family reading histories. We are entering very exciting frontiers in understanding how early brain development can provide a window on how reading develops. Likewise, we are conducting studies to help us understand how specific teaching methods change reading behavior and how the brain changes as reading develops. We have learned that just as many girls as boys have difficulties learning to read. Until five years ago, the conventional wisdom was that many more boys than girls had such difficulties. Now females should have equal access to screening and intervention programs. We have learned that for 90% to 95% of poor readers, prevention and early intervention programs that combine instruction in phoneme awareness, phonics, fluency development, and reading comprehension strategies, provided by well trained teachers, can increase reading skills to average reading levels. However, we have also learned that if we delay intervention until nine-years-of-age, (the time that most children with reading difficulties receive services), approximately 75% of the children will continue to have difficulties learning to read throughout high school. To be clear, while older children and adults can be taught to read, the time and expense of doing so is enormous.

For a more recent summary of the same issues, see Mark Seidenberg , " The Science of Reading and its Educational Implications ", 2013:

Research in cognitive science and neuroscience has made enormous progress toward understanding skilled reading, the acquisition of reading skill, the brain bases of reading, the causes of developmental reading impairments and how such impairments can be treated. My question is: if the science is so good, why do so many people read so poorly? I mainly focus on the United States, which fares poorly on cross-national comparisons of literacy, with about 25-30% of the population exhibiting literacy skills that are low by standard metrics. I consider three possible contributing factors, all of which turn on issues concerning the relationships between written and spoken language. They are: the fact that English has a deep alphabetic orthography; how reading is taught; and the impact of linguistic variability as manifested in the Black-White “achievement gap”. I conclude that there are opportunities to increase literacy levels by making better use of what we have learned about reading and language, but also institutional obstacles and understudied issues for which more evidence is badly needed.

This may sound like a case where common sense is confirmed by the results of scientific study. However, the implications cannot be taken for granted. The " Whole Language " approach, which at times has dominated American educational practice, is still strongly represented among teachers and educational administrators. This approach emphasizes a direct between seeing written words and understanding their meaning, featuring written words as visual patterns, and avoiding any focus on the systematic relationship between letters and sounds. Despite the evident good intentions of its adherents, the Whole Language movement has been a deeply destructive force.

See this 2018 Forbes Magazine article " Why Johnny Still Can't Read -- And What To Do About It ", and this review of Mark Seidenberg's 2017 book Language at the Speed of Sight for a recent evaluation of the situation, which seems to be that most American teachers are taught little or nothing about the science of reading and how to teach reading effectively.

The result is that many American children are still not learning to read well. Thus according to " Reading Scores on National Exam Decline in Half the States ", NYT 10/30/2019:

Only 35 percent of fourth graders were proficient in reading in 2019, down from 37 percent in 2017; 34 percent of eighth graders were proficient in reading, down from 36 percent.

This debate about how to teach children to read is one of the most important public policy issues in the country today.

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Speech Acts

We are attuned in everyday conversation not primarily to the sentences we utter to one another, but to the speech acts that those utterances are used to perform: requests, warnings, invitations, promises, apologies, predictions, and the like. Such acts are staples of communicative life, but only became a topic of sustained investigation, at least in the English-speaking world, in the middle of the twentieth century. [ 1 ] Since that time “speech act theory” has become influential not only within philosophy, but also in linguistics, psychology, legal theory, artificial intelligence, literary theory, and feminist thought among other scholarly disciplines. [ 2 ] Recognition of the significance of speech acts has illuminated the ability of language to do other things than describe reality. In the process the boundaries among the philosophy of language, the philosophy of action, aesthetics, the philosophy of mind, political philosophy, and ethics have become less sharp. In addition, an appreciation of speech acts has helped lay bare a normative structure implicit in linguistic practice, including even that part of this practice concerned with describing reality. Much recent research aims at an accurate characterization of this normative structure underlying linguistic practice.

1. Introduction

2.1 the independence of force and content, 2.2 can saying make it so, 2.3 theories of performativity, 3.1 direction of fit, 3.2 conditions of satisfaction, 3.3 seven components of illocutionary force, 3.4 direct and indirect force, 4.1 force conventionalism, 4.2 a biosemantic species of force conventionalism.

  • 4.3 An Intentionalist Alternative to Force Conventionalism

5.1 Grice’s Account of Speaker Meaning

5.2 objections to grice’s account, 5.3 force as an aspect of speaker meaning, 6.1 speech acts and conversations, 6.2 speech acts and scorekeeping, 7. force-indicators and the logically perfect language, 8. do speech acts have a logic, 9. speech acts and social issues, further reading, other internet resources, related entries.

Bertrand Russell’s Theory of Descriptions was a paradigm for many philosophers in the twentieth century. One reason for this is that it suggested a way to respond to longstanding philosophical problems by showing them to be specious. Russell argued that such sentences as ‘The present King of Singapore is bald,’ and, ‘The round square is impossible,’ possess superficial grammatical forms that are misleading as to their underlying logical structure. In so doing he showed how such sentences can be meaningful without this fact obliging us to posit current Singaporean monarchs or round squares. Many philosophers in what came to be known as the Ordinary Language movement were inspired by this achievement to argue that classic philosophical problems (e.g., of free will, the relation of mind to body, truth, the nature of knowledge, and of right and wrong) likewise rested on a misunderstanding of the language in which these problem are couched. In How to Do Things with Words , J.L. Austin for instance writes,

…in recent years, many things which would once have been accepted without question as ‘statements’ by both philosophers and grammarians have been scrutinized with new care… It has come to be commonly held that many utterances which look like statements are either not intended at all, or only intended in part, to record or impart straightforward information about the facts…Along these lines it has by now been shown piecemeal, or at least made to look likely, that many traditional philosophical perplexities have arisen through a mistake-the mistake of taking as straightforward statements of fact utterances which are either (in interesting non-grammatical ways) nonsensical or else intended as something quite different. Whatever we may think of any particular one of these views and suggestions…it cannot be doubted that they are producing a revolution in philosophy. (Austin 1962, pp. 1–2)

The Ordinary Language movement, with its broad claim that the meaning of an expression should be equated with its use, and its desire to transcend traditional philosophical perplexities, did not achieve the revolution of which Austin speaks. Nonetheless one of its enduring legacies is the notion of a speech act.

One way of appreciating the distinctive features of speech acts is in contrast with other well-established phenomena within the philosophy of language and linguistics. Accordingly in this entry we will consider the relations among speech acts and: semantic content, grammatical mood, speaker-meaning, logically perfect languages, perlocutions, performatives, presuppositions , and implicature . This will enable us to situate speech acts within their ecological niche.

2. Content, Force, and How Saying Can Make It So

Whereas an act of speech is any act of uttering [ 3 ] meaningful words, ‘speech act’ is a term of art. As a first approximation, speech acts are those acts that can (though need not) be performed by saying that one is doing so. On this conception, resigning, promising, asserting and asking are all speech acts, while convincing, insulting and growing six inches are not. One can, for instance, resign by saying, “I resign…”, although one can also resign from a position without describing oneself as doing so. However, this conception is too inclusive, since it also counts whispering as a speech act even though one can whisper a string of nonsense words without meaning anything. Instead a more accurate characterization of speech acts builds on Grice’s notion of speaker meaning. This notion is discussed further in Section 5 below, but for now it is enough to note that in looking at my watch, I might be trying to tell the time; or I might be trying to indicate to you that it’s time for us to leave. The latter (but not the former) is a case of speaker meaning.

Accordingly, a speech act is a type of act that can be performed by speaker meaning that one is doing so. This conception still counts resigning, promising, asserting and asking as speech acts, while ruling out convincing, insulting and whispering. This definition leaves open the possibility of speech acts being performed wordlessly, as well as speech acts being performed without saying that you are doing so. Our characterization of speech acts captures this fact in emphasizing speaker meaning rather than the uttering of any words.

Speech acts are thus also to be distinguished from performatives. ‘Performative’ is another technical term, and as used here it refers in the first instance to a kind of sentence. A performative sentence is in the first person, present tense, indicative mood, active voice, that describes its speaker as performing a speech act. ‘I assert that George is the culprit,’ is a performative sentence by this test. As we have seen, one can perform a speech act without uttering a performative. Further, since it is merely a type of sentence, one can utter a performative without performing a speech act. For instance, while talking in my sleep I might say, “I hereby promise to climb the Eiffel Tower,” without thereby making any promise. We may also define a performative utterance as an utterance of a performative sentence that is also a speech act. [ 4 ]

More nomenclature: ‘Speech act’ and ‘illocution’ will here be used synonymously. The latter term is due to Austin, who used ‘illocutionary force’ to refer to a dimension of communicative acts. (It is nowadays common also to use ‘illocute’ as a verb meaning ‘to perform a speech act.’) Austin’s reason for using ‘force’ begins with the observation that, construed as a bit of observable behavior, the communicative significance of an act may be underdetermined by what has been said or observably done. I bow deeply before you. So far you may not know whether I am paying obeisance, responding to indigestion, or looking for a wayward contact lens. So too, an utterance of a meaningful sentence (which Austin calls a locutionary act ) such as ‘You’ll be more punctual in the future,’ may leave you wondering whether I am making a prediction or issuing a command or even a threat. The colloquial question, “What is the force of those words?” is often used to elicit an answer. In asking such a question we acknowledge a grasp of those words’ meaning but seek to know how that meaning is to be taken–as a threat, as a prediction, or as a command.

Or so it seems. In an early challenge to Austin, Cohen (1964) argues that the notion of illocutionary force is otiose provided we already have in place the notion of a sentence’s meaning (Austin’s locutionary meaning). Cohen contends that for a performative sentence such as ‘I promise to read that novel,’ its meaning already guarantees that it is a promise. On the other hand, for a sentence that is not a performative, such as ‘I will read that novel,’ if it is understood as being used to make a promise, the promise is still implicit in the sentence’s meaning. In either case, Cohen concludes, meaning already guarantees force and so we do not require an extra-semantic notion to do so.

Cohen’s reasoning assumes that any utterance of ‘I promise to read that novel’ is a promise. But as we have seen with the case of the somniloquist, neither a sentence, nor even the utterance of a sentence, is sufficient on its own for the performance of a speech act, be it a promise or some other. In a similar spirit to that of Cohen, Searle (1968, p. 407) observes that a serious and literal utterance of ‘I promise to read that novel,’ made under what he terms “conditions of successful utterance”, also counts as a promise. Searle concludes from this that some locutionary acts are also illocutionary acts, and infers from this in turn that for some sentences, their locutionary meaning determines their illocutionary force. This last inference is, however, a non sequitur . As we have seen, the aforementioned sentence’s meaning does not determine the illocutionary force with which it is uttered. Rather, when that sentence is uttered in such a way as to constitute a promise, what determines that force is the meaning of the sentence together with such factors as the speaker’s being serious and other contextual conditions being met.

We may thus agree with Searle that some locutionary acts are also illocutionary acts, without losing sight of our earlier observation that locutionary meaning underdetermines illocutionary force. This fact about underdetermination is implied by Davidson’s Thesis of the Autonomy of Linguistic Meaning, according to which once a bit of language has acquired a conventional meaning, it can be used for any of a variety of extra-linguistic purposes (Davidson, 1979). Green 1997 argues for a qualification of Davidson’s Autonomy Thesis to recognize sentences having the feature that if they are used in a speech act all, then there is at least one other illocutionary force that their utterance must have. Even in light of this qualified version of the Autonomy Thesis, the most that can be said of, ‘I promise to climb the Eiffel Tower,’ is that it is designed to be used to make promises, just as common nouns are designed to be used to refer to things and predicates are designed to characterize things referred to. Below (Section 6.3) we shall consider the view that force is a component of meaning, albeit not of a sentence’s meaning. [ 5 ]

Let us return, then, to an elucidation of our distinction between what a speaker says and the force of her utterance. A grammatical sentence composed of meaningful words is commonly thought to express a “content,” which is determined by what that sentence literally means together with features of the context of utterance. Suppose I say to someone in a crowded subway, “You’re standing on my foot.” I am most likely trying to convey the message that he should move. However, what I literally say is only that the addressee in question is standing on my foot. This is the content of my utterance. Many if not most utterances of grammatical sentences composed of meaningful words express more than those sentences’ contents. Pragmaticians, however, commonly distinguish content from other aspects of meaning conveyed by an utterance. On this way of thinking, two intertranslatable sentences of different languages will express the same content, and certain transformations of a sentence within a language are commonly thought to express the same content. Thus, ‘Mary saw John,’ and ‘John was seen by Mary,’ will express the same content even if a speaker’s use of one rather than another of these will carry a distinctive suggestion. For indicative sentences, such contents are typically called Propositions . (In what follows I will capitalize this term to signify that it is in part technical.) Propositions, then, are the contents of indicative sentences, are what such sentences express, and, further, are often thought to be the primary bearers of truth value.

Illocutionary force and semantic content are often taken to be distinct from one another, not just in the way that your left and right hand are distinct, but rather by virtue of falling into different categories. Stenius 1967 elucidates this distinction, noting that in chemical parlance a radical is a group of atoms normally incapable of independent existence, whereas a functional group is the grouping of those atoms in a compound that is responsible for certain of that compound’s properties. Analogously, a Proposition is itself communicatively inert. For instance, merely expressing the Proposition that it is snowing is not to make a move in a “language game”. Rather, such a move is only made by putting forth a Proposition with an illocutionary force such as assertion, conjecture, command, etc. The chemical analogy gains further support from the fact that just as a chemist might isolate radicals held in common among various compounds, the student of language may isolate a common element held among ‘Is the door shut?’, ‘Shut the door!’, and ‘The door is shut’. This common element is the Proposition that the door is shut, queried in the first sentence, commanded to be made true in the second, and asserted in the third. According to the chemical analogy, then:

Illocutionary force : Propositional content :: functional group : radical

In light of this analogy we may see, following Stenius, that just as the grouping of a set of atoms is not itself another atom or set of atoms, so too the forwarding of a Proposition with a particular illocutionary force is not itself a further component of Propositional content.

Encouraged by the chemical analogy, a central tenet in the study of speech acts is that content may remain fixed while force varies. The force of an utterance also underdetermines its content: Just from the fact that a speaker has made a promise, we cannot deduce what she has promised to do. For these reasons, students of speech acts contend that a given communicative act may be analyzed into two components: force and content. While semantics studies the contents of communicative acts, pragmatics studies their force.

The force/content distinction also finds parallels in our understanding of mentality. Speech acts are not only moves in a “language game.” They also often purport to express of states of mind with analogous structural properties. An assertion that it is snowing purports to express the speaker’s belief that it is snowing. A promise to read Middlemarch purports to express the speaker’s intention to read Middlemarch . We find evidence for these relationships in the fact that it is in some sense absurd to say, ‘It’s snowing, but I don’t believe that it is,’ and ‘I promise to read Middlemarch , but I have no intention of doing so.’ [ 6 ] Further, just as we may distinguish between an assert ing and what is assert ed (the so-called “ing/ed ambiguity” for verbs such as ‘assert’), and a promis ing from what is promis ed , we may also distinguish between a state of believing and what is believed, and a state or act of intending and what is intended. Searle 1983 delineates structural analogies between speech acts and the mental states they express. Pendlebury 1986 succinctly explains the merits of this approach.

In spite of these structural analogies, we may still wonder why an elucidation of the notion of force is important for a theory of communication. That A is an important component of communication, and that A underdetermines B , do not justify the conclusion that B is an important component of communication. Content also underdetermines the decibel level at which we speak but this fact does not justify adding decibel level to our repertoire of core concepts for pragmatics or the philosophy of language. Why should force be thought any more worthy of admission to this set of core concepts than decibel level? One reason for an asymmetry in our treatment of force and decibel level is that the former, but not the latter, seems to be a component of speaker meaning: Force is a feature not of what is said but of how what is said is meant; decibel level, by contrast, is a feature at most of the way in which something is said. This point is developed in Section 5 below.

We have spoken thus far as if the contents of speech acts must be Propositions, and indeed Searle routinely analyzes speech acts as having the form F ( p ) (e.g., 1975, p. 344), where ‘ F ’ is the force component and ‘ p ’ the Propositional content component. However, in the last two decades linguistic semantics has developed formal representations of contents for the two other major grammatical moods besides the indicative, namely the interrogative and the imperative. On the strength of the analyses of Hamblin (1958), Bell (1975), Pendlebury (1986) and others, one strategy for the semantics of interrogatives is to construe them as expressing sets of propositions rather than a single proposition, where each element of the putative set is a complete answer to the question at issue. Thus the content expressed by ‘How many doors are shut?’ will be {<No doors are shut>, <One door is shut>, …} where the ellipsis will be filled by as many other Propositions as it is reasonable to interpret the questioner as asking after. Call such a set an Interrogative . A complete answer to an Interrogative is an element of the set by which it is defined; a partial answer is a subset of that set containing two or more members, as would naturally be expressed by the sentence ‘Between two and four doors are shut.’ On the present conceptualization, just as we may distinguish between expressing and asserting a Propositional content, we may also distinguish between expressing an Interrogative and asking a question. One merely expresses an Interrogative in such an utterance as, ‘John wonders how many doors are shut.’ In fact, a single utterance may express two Interrogatives while asking neither, as in ‘How many doors are shut will depend on how many customers are trying on clothes.’ Asking a question is no less substantial a conversational move than is making an assertion.

Similarly, work by Hamblin (1987), Belnap (1990), Portner (2004) and others suggests semantic analyses for sentences in the imperative mood: on one approach an imperative expresses a property, and when one speaker issues an imperative that her addressee accepts, that property is added to her “to do list”, itself a parameter of what we will later describe as conversational score (Section 7).

In light of the above liberalization of the notion of sentential content to accommodate the contents of non-indicative sentences, we may rephrase Stenius’s chemical analogy as follows:

Illocutionary force : sentential content :: functional group : radical

with the understanding that different types of sentential content will correspond to the different grammatical moods. This refined analogy would in turn require there to be different types of radical. [ 7 ]

In some cases we can make something the case by saying that it is. Alas, I cannot lose ten pounds by saying that I am doing so, nor can I persuade you of a claim by saying that I am doing so. On the other hand I can promise to meet you tomorrow by uttering the words, “I promise to meet you tomorrow,” and if I have the authority to do so, I can even appoint you to an office by saying, “I hereby appoint you.” (I can also appoint you without making the force of my act explicit: I might just say, “You are now Treasurer of the Corporation.”) Only an appropriate authority, speaking at the appropriate time and place, can: christen a ship, pronounce a couple married, appoint someone to an administrative post, declare the proceedings open, or rescind an offer. Austin, in How To Do Things With Words, details the conditions that must be met for a given speech act to be performed felicitously .

Failures of felicity fall into two classes: misfires and abuses . The former are cases in which the putative speech act fails to be performed at all. If I utter, before the QEII, “I declare this ship the Noam Chomsky,” I have not succeeded in naming anything because I lack the authority to do so. My act thus misfires in that I’ve performed an act of speech but no speech act. Other attempts at speech acts might misfire because their addressee fails to respond with an appropriate uptake : I cannot bet you $100 on who will win the election unless you accept that bet. If you do not accept that bet, then I have tried to bet but have not succeeded in betting. As we will see in Section 9, a systematic unwillingness on the part of a speaker’s interlocutors to respond with the requisite uptake may compromise that speaker’s freedom of speech.

Some speech acts can be performed–that is, not misfire—while still being less than felicitous. I promise to meet you for lunch tomorrow, but haven’t the least intention of making good. Here I have promised all right, but the act is not felicitous because it is not sincere. My act is, more precisely, an abuse because although it is a speech act, it fails to live up to a standard appropriate for speech acts of its kind. Sincerity is a paradigm condition for the felicity of speech acts. Austin foresaw a program of research in which thousands of types of speech act would be studied in detail, with felicity conditions elucidated for each. [ 8 ]

As observed by Sbisà 2007, not only can I perform a speech act by speaker meaning that I am doing so, I can also subsequently rescind that act. I cannot, it would seem, change the past, and so nothing I can do on Wednesday can change the fact that I made a promise or assertion on Monday. However, on Wednesday I may be able to retract a claim I made on Monday. I can’t take back a punch or a burp; the most I can do is apologize for one of these infractions, and perhaps make amends. By contrast, not only can I apologize or make amends for a claim I now regret; I can also withdraw it. Likewise, you may allow me on Wednesday to retract the promise I made to you on Monday. In both these cases of assertion and promise, I am now no longer beholden to the commitments that the speech acts engender in spite of the fact that the past is fixed. Just as one can, under appropriate conditions, perform a speech act by speaker meaning that one is doing so, so too one can, under the right conditions, retract that very speech act.

Austin famously denied that performatives are statements (1962, p. 6). This may be taken either as the denial that performative sentences, even those in the indicative grammatical mood, have truth value; or instead as the denial that utterances of performative sentences, even when such sentences have truth value, are assertions. One can consistently hold that an indicative sentence has truth value, and even that it may be uttered in such a way as to say something true, while denying that its utterance is an assertion. (Testing a microphone in a windowless room, I utter, “It’s raining,” and it happens to be raining outside. Here I have said something true but have made no assertion.)

Lemmon 1962 argues that performative utterances are true on the ground that they are instances of a wider class of sentences whose utterance guarantees their truth. If sound, this argument would show that performatives have truth value, but not that they are assertions. It also leaves unanswered the question why some verb phrases such as ‘I promise’ may be used performatively while others cannot be so used. Sinnott-Armstrong 1994 also argues that performatives can have truth value without addressing the question whether they are also used to make assertions. Reimer 1995 argues that while performatives have truth values, they are not also assertions. Adopting a similar strategy, Jary 2007 aims to explain how utterances of such sentences as “I order you to clean the kitchen,” can succeed in being orders. In so doing he draws on Green’s 2007 analysis of showing to argue that such utterances show (rather than merely describe) the force of the speaker’s utterance. Because ‘show’ is factive, if such an utterance shows its force, then it must have that force.

Most challenges to Austin, however, construe performatives as assertions and attempt to explain their properties in that light. Ginet 1979 argues that performative verbs (‘promise,’ ‘appoint’, etc.) name the kinds of acts that one can perform by asserting that one is doing so, and elaborates on why this is so. In this way he offers an account of how performatives work that depends on the assumption that performative utterances are assertions. Starting from that same assumption, Bach 1975 contends that ‘I order you to clean the kitchen’ is an assertion, and proceeds to explain on this basis how the speaker is indirectly also issuing an order. This explanation depends on the speaker’s being able to count on the addressee’s ability to discern the speaker’s communicative intention. In later work, such as Bach and Harnish 1978, and 1992, this view is refined with a notion of standardization, so that a sufficiently common practice of issuing assertions with performative effect enables speakers and hearers to bypass complex inferential reasoning and jump by default to a conclusion about the illocution being performed. Reimer 1995 challenges Bach and Harnish on the ground that hearers do not seem to impute assertoric force to the indicative sentences speakers utter with performative effect; her criticism would evidently carry over to Ginet’s proposal. Instead Reimer contends that performative utterances rest on systems of what she terms illocutionary conventions to achieve their performative effects.

Searle 1969, p. 62–4, had argued that a performative formula such as “I promise to…” is an “illocutionary force indicator” in the sense that it is a device whose role is to make explicit the force of the speaker’s utterance. Making something explicit, however, would seem to involve characterizing an independent event or state of affairs, and as a result Searle’s account presupposes that speakers can imbue their utterances with the force of demotions and excommunications; yet this is what was to be explained. Realizing this, Searle and Vanderveken (1985) characterize performatives as speech acts having the force of declarations. Uncontroversial examples of this speech act are declaring war or adjourning a meeting. Searle 1989 then acknowledges that this account pushes us back to the question how certain expressions come to have the power to make declarations. In that same work he offers an answer that depends on the view that in uttering a sentence with a performative prefix, a speaker manifests an intention to perform an act of a certain kind: in uttering the words, ‘I order you to close the door’, I manifest an intention to order you to close the door, etc. Searle also takes it that manifesting an intention to perform a speech act is sufficient for the performance of that act. On this basis, Searle goes on to attempt to derive the assertoric nature of performatives, holding that when uttered in such a way as to say something true, they are also assertions.

3. Aspects of Illocutionary Force

Austin distinguishes illocutionary acts into five categories: verdictives (in which a speaker gives a verdict, e.g. acquitting and diagnosing), exercitives (in which speakers exercise powers, rights or influence, e.g. excommunicating and resigning), commissives (in which speakers commit themselves to causes or courses of action, e.g. promising and betting), behabitives (concerning attitudes and social behavior, e.g. apologizing and toasting), and expositives (in which speakers clarify how their utterances fit into lines of reasoning, e.g., postulating and defining).

Searle (1975) criticizes Austin’s taxonomy on two central grounds. First, Austin’s methodology is unduly lexicographic, assuming that we can learn about the range and limits of illocutionary acts by studying illocutionary verbs in English or other natural languages. However, Searle observes, nothing rules out the possibility of there being illocutionary acts that are not named by a verb either in a particular language such as Swahili or Bengali, or indeed in any language at all; similarly, two non-synonymous illocutionary verbs may yet name one and the same illocutionary act.

Second, Searle argues that the principles of distinction among Austin’s categories are unclear. For instance, behavitives seem to be a heterogeneous group with little unifying principle. Similarly, ‘describe’ appears both as a verdictive and as an expositive whereas one would expect taxonomic categories to be mutually exclusive. More generally, Austin’s brief account of each category gives no direction as to why this way of delineating them does so along their most fundamental features. Searle offers a new categorization of speech acts based on relatively clear principles of distinction. To appreciate this it will help to explain some of the basic concepts he uses for this purpose.

Consider an example derived from Anscombe (1963): a woman sends her husband to the grocery store with a list of things to procure; unbeknownst to him he is also being trailed by a detective concerned to make a list of what the man buys. By the time the husband and detective are in the checkout line, their two lists contain exactly the same items. The contents of the two lists differ, however, along another dimension. For the contents of the husband’s list guide what he puts in his shopping cart. Insofar, his list exhibits world-to-word direction of fit : It is, so to speak, the job of the items in his cart to conform to what is on his list. By contrast, it is the job of the detective’s list to conform with the world, in particular to what is in the husband’s cart. As such, the detective’s list has word-to-world direction of fit : The onus is on those words to conform to how things are. Speech acts such as assertions and predictions have word-to-world direction of fit, while speech acts such as commands have world-to-word direction of fit.

Not all speech acts appear to have direction of fit. I can thank you by saying “Thank you,” and it is widely agreed that thanking is a speech act. However, thanking seems to have neither of the directions of fit we have discussed thus far. Similarly, asking who is at the door is a speech act, but it does not seem to have either of the directions of fit we have thus far mentioned. Some would respond by construing questions as a form of imperative (e.g., “Tell me who is at the door!”), and then ascribing the direction of fit characteristic of imperatives to questions. This leaves untouched, however, banal cases such as thanking or even, “Hooray for Arsenal!” Some authors, such as Searle and Vanderveken 1985, describe such cases as having “null” direction of fit. That characterization is evidently distinct from saying such speech acts have no direction of fit at all. [ 9 ]

Direction of fit is also not so fine-grained as to enable us to distinguish speech acts meriting different treatment. Consider asserting that the center of the Milky Way is inhabited by a black hole, as opposed to conjecturing that the center of the Milky Way is so inhabited. These two acts are subject to different norms: The former purports to be a manifestation of knowledge, while the latter does not. This is suggested by the fact that it is appropriate to reply to the assertion with, “How do you know?” (Williamson 1996), while that is not an appropriate response to the conjecture (Green 2017). Nevertheless, both the assertion and conjecture have word-to-world direction of fit. Might there be other notions enabling us to mark differences between speech acts with the same direction of fit?

One suggestion might come from the related notion of conditions of satisfaction . This notion generalizes that of truth. As we saw in 2.3, it is internal to the activity of assertion that it aims to capture how things are. When an assertion does so, not only is it true, it has hit its target; the aim of the assertion has been met. A similar point may be made of imperatives: it is internal to the activity of issuing an imperative that the world is enjoined to conform to it. The imperative is satisfied just in case it is fulfilled. Assertions and imperatives both have conditions of satisfaction—truth in the first place, and conformity in the second. In addition, it might be held that questions have answerhood as their conditions of satisfaction: A question hits its target just in case it finds an answer, often in a speech act, such as an assertion, that answers the question posed. Like the notion of direction of fit, however, the notion of conditions of satisfaction is too coarse-grained to enable us to make some valuable distinctions among speech acts. Just to use our earlier case again: an assertion and a conjecture that P have identical conditions of satisfaction, namely that P be the case. May we discern features distinguishing these two speech acts, in a way enabling us to make finer-grained distinctions among other speech acts as well? I shall return to this question in Sections 6–7.

In an attempt to systematize and deepen Austin’s approach, Searle and Vanderveken 1985 distinguish between those illocutionary forces employed by speakers within a given linguistic community, and the set of all possible illocutionary forces. While a certain linguistic community may make no use of forces such as conjecturing or appointing, these two are among the set of all possible forces. (These authors appear to assume that while the set of possible forces may be infinite, it has a definite cardinality.) Searle and Vanderveken go on to define illocutionary force in terms of seven features, namely:

  • Illocutionary point : This is the characteristic aim of each type of speech act. For instance, the characteristic aim of an assertion is to describe how things are, and perhaps also to bring about belief in an addressee; the characteristic aim of a promise is to commit oneself to a future course of action.
  • Degree of strength of the illocutionary point : Two illocutions can have the same point but differ along the dimension of strength. For instance, requesting and insisting that the addressee do something both have the point of attempting to get the addressee to do that thing; however, the latter is stronger than the former.
  • Mode of achievement : This is the special way, if any, in which the illocutionary point of a speech act must be achieved. Testifying and asserting both have the point of describing how things are; however, the former also involves invoking one’s authority as a witness while the latter does not. To testify is to assert in one’s capacity as a witness. Commanding and requesting both aim to get the addressee to do something; yet only someone issuing a command does so in her capacity as a person in a position of authority.
  • Content conditions : Some illocutions can only be achieved with an appropriate propositional content. For instance, I can only promise what is in the future and under my control; or, at least, I cannot promise to do anything that it is obvious to myself and my promissee that I cannot do. So too, I can only apologize for what is in some sense under my control and already the case. (In light of our discussion above of semantics for non-indicative contents, this condition could be recast in terms of imperatival, interrogative, and propositional content conditions.)
  • Preparatory conditions : These are all other conditions that must be met for the speech act not to misfire. Such conditions often concern the social status of interlocutors. For instance, a person cannot bequeath an object unless she already owns it or has power of attorney; a person cannot marry a couple unless she is legally invested with the authority to do so.
  • Sincerity conditions : Many speech acts involve the expression of a psychological state. Assertion expresses belief; apology expresses regret, a promise expresses an intention, and so on. A speech act is sincere only if the speaker is in the psychological state that her speech act expresses.
  • Degree of strength of the sincerity conditions : Two speech acts might be the same along other dimensions, but express psychological states that differ from one another in the dimension of strength. Requesting and imploring both express desires, and are identical along the other six dimensions above; however, the latter expresses a stronger desire than the former.

Searle and Vanderveken (1985) suggest, in light of these seven characteristics, that each illocutionary force may be defined as a septuple of values, each of which is a “setting” of a value within one of the seven characteristics. It follows, according to this suggestion, that two illocutionary forces F 1 and F 2 are identical just in case they correspond to the same septuple.

I cannot slow the expansion of the universe or convince you of the truth of a claim by saying that I am doing so. However, these two cases differ in that the latter, but not the former, is a characteristic aim of a speech act. One characteristic aim of assertion is the production of belief in an addressee, whereas there is no speech act one of whose characteristic aims is the slowing of the universe’s expansion. A type of speech act can have a characteristic aim without each speech act of that type being issued with that aim: Speakers sometimes make assertions without aiming to produce belief in anyone, even themselves. Instead, the view that a speech act-type has a characteristic aim is akin to the view that a biological trait has a function. The characteristic role of wings is to aid in flight even though some flightless creatures are winged.

Austin called these characteristic aims of speech acts perlocutions (1962, p. 101). I can both urge and persuade you to shut the door, yet the former is an illocution while the latter is a perlocution. How can we tell the difference? We can do so by noting that under the right conditions, one can urge just by saying and speaker meaning, “I hereby urge you to shut the door,” while there are no circumstances in which I can persuade you just by saying, “I hereby persuade you to shut the door.” A characteristic aim of urging is, nevertheless, the production of a resolution to act (1962, p. 107). Cohen (1973) develops the idea of perlocutions as characteristic aims of speech acts.

Perlocutions are characteristic aims of one or more illocution, but are not themselves illocutions. Nevertheless, one speech act can be performed by means of the performance of another. For instance, my remark that you are standing on my foot is normally taken as, in addition, a demand that you move; my question whether you can pass the salt is normally taken as a request that you do so. These are examples of so-called indirect speech acts (Searle 1979). Phrases that are commonly used in service of indirect speech acts are, ‘Would you mind terribly if I…,’ ‘Might I suggest…,’ and ‘It seems to me that…’, or simply ‘please’, as in ‘Can you pass the salt, please?’ Observe that this last sentence, with its appended tag-question, cannot be interpreted as a request for information (about the addressee’s salt-passing abilities), but can only be understood as a request. Asher and Lascarides (2001) provide a formal model of indirect speech acts on which some are conventionalized while others require Gricean reasoning for their interpretation.

While indirect communication is ubiquitous, indirect speech acts are less common than might first appear. In asking whether you intend to quit smoking, I might be taken as well to be suggesting that you quit. However, while the embattled smoker might jump to this interpretation, we do well to consider what evidence would mandate it. After all, while I probably would not have asked whether you intended to quit smoking unless I hoped you would quit, I can evince such a hope without performing the speech act of suggesting. Evincing a psychological state, even if done intentionally, arguably does not constitute a speech act. Instead, intentionally evincing a psychological state may be understood as simply expressing that state (See Green 2020, ch. 2).

Whether, in addition to a given speech act, I am also performing an indirect speech act would seem to depend on my intentions. My question whether you can pass the salt is also a request that you do so only if I intend to be so understood. What is more, this intention must be feasibly discernible on the part of one’s audience. Even if, in remarking on the fine weather, I intend as well to request that you pass the salt, I will not have issued a request unless I have made that intention manifest in some way.

How might I do this? One way is by making an inference to the best explanation. Perhaps the best explanation of my asking whether you can pass the salt is that I mean to be requesting that you do so, and perhaps the best explanation of my remarking that you are standing on my foot, particularly if I use a stentorian tone of voice, is that I mean to be demanding that you desist. By contrast, it is doubtful that the best explanation of my asking whether you intend to quit smoking is that I intend to suggest that you do so. Another explanation at least as plausible is my hope, or expression of hope, that you do so. Bertolet 1994 develops a more skeptical position than that suggested here, arguing that any alleged case of an indirect speech act can be construed just as an indication, by means of contextual clues, of the speaker’s intentional state—hope, desire, etc., as the case may be. Postulation of a further speech act beyond what has been (relatively) explicitly performed is, he contends, explanatorily unmotivated. McGowan et al . (2009) reply by offering three conditions they take to be sufficient for a case of what they term linguistic communication. They would also argue that in, for instance, the smoking case, the speaker meets those three conditions, and thus counts as suggesting that the addressee quit smoking. Bertolet (2017) replies that these three conditions are not sufficient for an instance of speaker meaning, and given that (as we have seen) speaker meaning is a necessary condition for (non-conventional) speech acts, concludes that McGowan et al . have not established that the cases that concern them are indirect speech acts.

These considerations suggest that indirect speech acts, if they do occur at all, can be explained within the framework of conversational implicature–that process by which we mean more (and on some occasions less) than we say, but in a way not due exclusively to the conventional meanings of our words. Conversational implicature, too, depends both upon communicative intentions and the availability of inference to the best explanation (Grice, 1989). In fact, Searle’s 1979 influential account of indirect speech acts is couched in terms of conversational implicature (although he does not use this phrase). The study of speech acts is in this respect intertwined with the study of conversations; we return to this theme in Section 6. [ 10 ]

4. Mood, Force and Convention

Not only does content underdetermine force; content together with grammatical mood does so as well. ‘You’ll be more punctual in the future’ is in the indicative grammatical mood, but as we have seen, that fact does not determine its force. The same may be said of other grammatical moods. Although I overhear you utter the words, ‘shut the door’, I cannot infer yet that you are issuing a command. Perhaps instead you are simply describing your own intention, in the course of saying, “I intend to shut the door.” If so, you’ve used the imperative mood without issuing a command. So too with the interrogative mood: I overhear your words, ‘who is on the phone.’ Thus far I don’t know whether you’ve asked a question, since you may have so spoken in the course of stating, “John wonders who is on the phone.” Might either or both of initial capitalization or final punctuation settle the issue? Apparently not: What puzzles Meredith is the following question: Who is on the phone?

Mood together with content underdetermine force. On the other hand it is a plausible hypothesis that grammatical mood is one of the devices we use (together with contextual clues, intonation, and the like) to indicate the force with which we are expressing a content. Understood in this weak way, it is unexceptionable to construe the interrogative mood as used for asking questions, the imperatival mood as used for issuing commands, and so on. So understood, we might go on to ask how speakers indicate the force of their speech acts given that grammatical mood and content cannot be relied on alone to do so.

One well known answer we may term force conventionalism . According to a strong version of this view, for every speech act that is performed, there is some convention that will have been invoked in order to make that speech act occur. This convention transcends those imbuing words with their literal meaning. Thus, force conventionalism implies that in order for use of ‘I promise to meet you tomorrow at noon,’ to constitute a promise, not only must the words used possess their standard conventional meanings, there must also exist a convention to the effect that the use, under the right conditions, of some such words as these constitutes a promise. Austin seems to have held this view. For instance in his characterization of “felicity conditions” for speech acts, Austin holds that for each speech act

There must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a certain conventional effect, that procedure to include the uttering of certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances… (1962, p. 14).

Austin’s student Searle follows him in this, writing

…utterance acts stand to propositional and illocutionary acts in the way in which, e.g., making an X on a ballot paper stands to voting. (1969, p. 24)

Searle goes on to clarify this commitment in averring,

…the semantic structure of a language may be regarded as a conventional realization of a series of sets of underlying constitutive rules, and …speech acts are acts characteristically performed by uttering sentences in accordance with these sets of constitutive rules. (1969, p. 37)

Searle espouses a weaker form of force conventionalism than does Austin in leaving open the possibility that some speech acts can be performed without constitutive rules; Searle considers the case of a dog requesting to be let outside (1969, p. 39). Nevertheless Searle does contend that speech acts are characteristically performed by invoking constitutive rules.

Millikan (1998) espouses a parsimonious conception of conventions that she terms ‘natural conventions,’ and on the assumption that natural conventions are a type of convention, one would expect this strategy to make it easier to defend the view that speech acts are inherently conventional. For Millikan, a natural convention is constituted by patterns that are reproduced by virtue of the weight of precedent. [ 11 ] A pattern is reproduced just in case it has a form that derives from a previous entity having, in certain respects, the same form, and in such a way that had the previous form been different in those respects, the current form would be different in those respects as well (1998, p. 163). Photocopying is one form of reproduction meeting these criteria; the retinotopic mapping from patterns of stimulation on the retina to patterns of stimulation in the visual cortex is evidently another. Millikan would not treat retinotopic mapping as a type of convention, however, since it would not seem to be perpetuated by virtue of the weight of precedent. The point is difficult to discern, however, since in her discussion of the matter Millikan discusses the conditions under which a pattern is taken to be conventional, rather than for it to be conventional, writing

To be thought of as conventional, a reproduced pattern must be perceived as proliferated due, in important part, to weight of precedent, not to its intrinsically superior capacity to produce a desired result, or due, say, to ignorance of alternatives (ibid, p. 166).

Millikan thus seems to characterize what it is for a pattern to have weight of precedent in terms of that pattern’s being perceived to have such weight. This notion is not itself elucidated, and as a result the notion of weight of precedent is left obscure in her account. Nonetheless, she tells us that just as the conventions of chess dictate that when one’s king is in check, one does what one can to get him out of check; so too the conventions of language dictate that when A tells B that p , B responds by believing that p . Millikan describes the hearer’s response as a hidden, inner act that is not under B ’s voluntary control. Millikan also describes this response as being learned in the way that we learn what she calls “natural sign patterns,” such as our learning that the sound of crashing waves is an indication of a nearby coastline.

On Millikan’s view, then, A ’s assertion of p being followed by B ’s belief that p is a process that is not intrinsically superior to others that might have been followed. This may be doubted, however. What, after, all would be viable alternative responses? Dis believing p ? Remaining neutral on the question of p ? Scratching one’s left earlobe? Any of these responses would tend to undermine the use of language as a means for transmission of information. What is more, if belief formation is not under the voluntary control of addressees, it is obscure how this aspect of communication could be conventional, any more than the pattern of stimulation of our visual cortex is conventional when that pattern results from an isomorphic pattern on the retina.

4.3. An Intentionalist Alternative to Force Conventionalism

Force-conventionalism as espoused by Austin and later Searle has been challenged by Strawson , who writes,

I do not want to deny that there may be conventional postures or procedures for entreating: one can, for example, kneel down, raise one’s arms, and say, “I entreat you.” But I do want to deny that an act of entreaty can be performed only as conforming to such conventions….[T]o suppose that there is always and necessarily a convention conformed to would be like supposing that there could be no love affairs which did not proceed on lines laid down in the Roman de la Rose or that every dispute between men must follow the pattern specified in Touchstone’s speech about the countercheck quarrelsome and the lie direct. (1964, p. 444)

Strawson contends that rather than appealing to a series of extra-semantic conventions to account for the possibility of speech acts, we explain that possibility in terms of our ability to discern one another’s communicative intentions. What makes an utterance of a sentence in the indicative mood a prediction rather than a command, for instance, is that it manifests an intention to be so taken; likewise for promises rather than predictions. This position is compatible with holding that in special cases linguistic communities have instituted conventions for particular speech acts such as appointing and excommunicating. So too, as Skinner (1970) observes, understanding the utterances of an historical figure crucially depends on sensitivity to conventions of the society in which they are made.

Intending to make an assertion, promise, or request, however, is not enough to perform one of these acts. Those intentions must be efficacious. The same point applies to cases of trying to perform a speech act, even when what one is trying to do is clear to others. This fact emerges from reflecting on an oft-quoted passage from Searle:

Human communication has some extraordinary properties, not shared by most other kinds of human behavior. One of the most extraordinary is this: If I am trying to tell someone something, then (assuming certain conditions are satisfied) as soon as he recognizes that I am trying to tell him something and exactly what it is I am trying to tell him, I have succeeded in telling it to him. (1969, p. 47.)

As Green 2013 observes, the point may be doubted. Suppose I am trying to work up the courage to ask Sidney’s hand in marriage. Sidney recognizes this fact on the basis of background knowledge, my visible embarrassment, and my fumbling in my pocket for an engagement ring. Here we cannot infer that I have succeeded in asking Sidney anything. Nothing short of coming out and saying it will do. Similarly, it might be common knowledge that my moribund uncle is trying, as he breathes his last, to bequeath me his fortune; still, I won’t inherit a penny if he expires before saying what he was trying to. [ 12 ] Closer to Searle’s example, even if you were to find, on the basis of fMRI analysis of my neural activity, that I was trying to tell you that it’s going to rain tomorrow, I still have not asserted anything about tomorrow’s weather. (If I were completely paralyzed as a result of Locked-In Syndrome, then making such a neural effort might be the most I can hope to do; in that case, your fMRI information might be enough to justify you in taking me to have performed a speech act.)

The gist of these examples is not the requirement that words be uttered in every speech act—we have already observed that speech acts can be performed silently. Rather, their gist is that speech acts involve intentional undertaking of a publicly accessible commitment; further, that commitment is not undertaken simply by virtue of my intending to undertake it, even when it is common knowledge that this is what I am trying to do. Can we, however, give a more illuminating characterization of the relevant intentions than merely saying that, for instance, to assert P one must intentionally put forth P as an assertion? Strawson (1964) proposes that we can do so with aid of the notion of speaker meaning—to which we now turn.

5. Speaker-Meaning and Force

As we have seen, that A is an important component of communication, and that A underdetermines B , do not justify the conclusion that B is an important component of communication. One reason for an asymmetry in our treatment of force and decibel level is that the former, but not the latter, seems crucial to how I mean what I say. I intend to speak at a certain volume, and sometimes succeed, but in most cases it is no part of how I mean what I say that I happen to be speaking at that volume. On the other hand, the force of my utterance is an aspect of what I mean. It is not, as we have seen, any aspect of what I say—that notion being closely associated with content. However, whether I mean what I say as an assertion, a conjecture, a promise or something else will be crucial to how I mean what I do.

In his influential 1957 article, Grice distinguished between two uses of ‘mean’. One use is exemplified by remarks such as ‘Those clouds mean rain,’ and ‘Those spots mean measles.’ The notion of meaning in play in such cases Grice dubs ‘natural meaning’. Grice suggests that we may distinguish this use of ‘mean’ from another use of the word more relevant to communication, exemplified in such utterances as

In saying “You make a better door than a window”, George meant that you should move,
In gesticulating that way, Salvatore means that there’s quicksand over there,

Grice used the term ‘non-natural meaning’ for this use of ‘mean’, and in more recent literature this jargon has been replaced with the term ‘speaker meaning’. [ 13 ] After distinguishing between natural and (what we shall hereafter call) speaker meaning, Grice attempts to characterize the latter. It is not enough that I do something that influences the beliefs of an observer: In putting on a coat I might lead an observer to conclude that I am going for a walk. Yet in such a case it is not plausible that I mean that I am going for a walk in the sense germane to speaker meaning. Might performing an action with an intention of influencing someone’s beliefs be sufficient for speaker meaning? No: I might secretly leave Smith’s handkerchief at the crime scene to make the police think that Smith is the culprit. However, whether or not I am successful in getting the authorities to think that Smith is the culprit, in this case it is not plausible that I mean that Smith is the culprit.

What is missing in the handkerchief example is the element of overtness. This suggests another criterion: Performing an action with the, or an, intention of influencing someone’s beliefs, while intending that this very intention be recognized. Grice contends that even here we do not have enough for speaker meaning. Herod presents Salome with St. John’s severed head on a charger, intending that she discern that St. John is dead and intending that this very intention of his be recognized. Grice observes that in so doing Herod is not telling Salome anything, but is instead deliberately and openly letting her know something. Grice concludes that Herod’s action is not a case of speaker meaning either. The problem is not that Herod is not using words; we have already considered communicators who mean things wordlessly. The problem seems to be that to infer what Herod intends her to, Salome does not have to take his word for anything. She can see the severed head for herself if she can bring herself to look. By contrast, in its central uses, telling requires a speaker to intend to convey information (or alleged information) in a way that relies crucially upon taking her at her word. Grice appears to assume that at least for the case in which what is meant is a proposition (rather than a question or an imperative), speaker meaning requires a telling in this central sense. What is more, this last example is a case of performing an action with an intention of influencing someone’s beliefs, even while intending that this very intention be recognized; yet it is not a case of telling. Grice infers that it is not a case of speaker meaning either.

Grice holds that for speaker meaning to occur, not only must one (a) intend to produce an effect on an audience, and (b) intend that this very intention be recognized by that audience, but also (c) intend this effect on the audience to be produced at least in part by their recognition of the speaker’s intention. The intention to produce a belief or other attitude by means (at least in part) of recognition of this very intention, has come to be called a reflexive communicative intention .

It may be doubted that speaker meaning requires reflexive communicative intentions. After all, a mathematics teacher who proves a theorem T for her class likely wants her pupils to believe T on the strength of her proof rather than their recognition of her intention that they come to believe T. (Vlach 1981) It may even be doubted that speaker meaning requires intentions to produce cognitive effects on addressees at all: Davis (1992) provides a range of cases such as speaking to pre-linguistic infants, uncooperative photocopy machines, and photos of deceased loved ones. [ 14 ] , [ 15 ] Instead of intentions to produce psychological effects in an addressee, some authors have advocated a construal of speaker meaning as overtly manifesting an aspect of one’s commitments or state of mind (Green 2019). Compare my going to the closet to take out my overcoat (not a case of speaker meaning), with the following case: After heatedly arguing about the weather, I march to the closet while beadily meeting your stare, then storm out the front door while ostentatiously donning the coat. Here it is more plausible that I mean that it is raining outside, and the reason seems to be that I am making some attitude of mine overt: I am not only showing it, I am making clear my intention to do just that.

How does this detour through speaker meaning help to elucidate the notion of force? One way of asserting that P , it seems, is overtly to manifest my commitment to P , and indeed commitment of a particular kind: commitment to defend P in response to challenges of the form, “How do you know that?” I must also overtly manifest my liability to be either right or wrong on the issue of P depending on whether P is the case. By contrast, I conjecture P by overtly manifesting my commitment to P in this same “liability to error” way, but I am not committed to responding to challenges demanding full justification. I must, however, give some reason for believing P ; this much cannot, however, be said of a guess.

We perform a speech act, then, when we overtly commit ourselves in a certain way to a content—where that way is an aspect of how we speaker-mean that content. One way to do that is to invoke a convention for undertaking commitment; another way is overtly to manifest one’s intention to be so committed. We may elucidate the relevant forms of commitment by spelling out the norms underlying them. We have already adumbrated such an approach in our discussion of the differences among asserting and conjecturing. Developing that discussion a bit further, compare

  • conjecturing

All three of these acts have word-to-world direction of fit, and all three have conditions of satisfaction mandating that they are satisfied just in case the world is as their content says it is. Further, one who asserts, conjectures, or guesses that P is right or wrong on the issue of P depending on whether P is in fact so. However, as we move down the list we find a decreasing order of stringency in commitment. One who asserts P lays herself open to the challenge, “How do you know that?”, and she is obliged to retract P if she is unable to respond to that challenge adequately. By contrast, this challenge is inappropriate for either a conjecture or a guess. On the other hand, we may justifiably demand of the conjecturer that she give some reason for her conjecture; yet not even this much may be said of one who makes a guess. (The “educated guess” is intermediate between these two cases.)

This illocutionary dimension of speaker meaning characterizes not what is meant, but rather how it is meant. Just as we may consider your remark, directed toward me, “You’re tired,” and my remark, “I’m tired,” as having said the same thing but in different ways; so too we may consider my assertion of P , followed by a retraction and then followed by a conjecture of P , as two consecutive cases in which I speaker-mean that P but do so in different ways. This idea will be developed further in Section 8 under the rubric of “mode” of illocutionary commitment. [ 16 ]

Speaker meaning, then, encompasses not just content but also force, and we may elucidate this in light of the normative structure characteristic of each speech act: When you overtly display a commitment characteristic of that speech act, you have performed that speech act. Is this a necessary condition as well? That depends on whether I can perform a speech act without intending to do so—a topic for Section 9 below. For now, however, compare the view at which we have arrived with Searle’s view that one performs a speech act when others become aware of one’s intention to perform that act. What is missing from Searle’s characterization is the notion of overtness: The agent in question must not only make her intention to undertake a certain commitment manifest; she must also intend that that very intention be manifest. There is more to overtness than wearing one’s heart (or mind) on one’s sleeve.

6. Force, Norms, and Conversation

In elucidating this normative dimension of force, we have sought to characterize speech acts in terms of their conversational roles. That is not to say that speech acts can only be performed in the setting of a conversation: I can approach you, point out that your vehicle is blocking mine, and storm off. Here I have made an assertion but have not engaged in a conversation. Perhaps I can ask myself a question in the privacy of my study and leave it at that–not continuing into a conversation with myself. However, a speech act’s “ecological niche” may nevertheless be the conversation. In that spirit, while we may be able to remove a speech act type from its environment and scrutinize it in isolated captivity, doing so may blind us to some of its distinctive features.

This ecological analogy sheds light on a dispute over the question whether speech acts can profitably be studied in isolation from the conversations in which they occur. An empiricist framework, exemplified in John Stuart Mill’s A System of Logic , suggests attempting to discern the meaning of a word, for instance a proper name, in isolation. By contrast, Gottlob Frege (1884) enjoins us to understand a word’s meaning in terms of the contribution it makes to an entire sentence. Such a method is indispensable for a proper treatment of such expressions as quantifiers, and represents a major advance over empiricist approaches. Yet students of speech acts have espoused going even further, insisting that the unit of significance is not the proposition but the speech act. Vanderveken writes,

Illocutionary acts are important for the purpose of philosophical semantics because they are the primary units of meaning in the use and comprehension of natural language. (Vanderveken, 1990, p. 1.)

Why not go even further, since speech acts characteristically occur in conversations? Is the unit of significance really the debate, the colloquy, the interrogation?

Students of conversation analysis have contended precisely this, remarking that many speech acts fall naturally into pairs. [ 17 ] For instance, questions pair naturally with assertions when the latter purport to be answers to those questions. Likewise, offers pair naturally with acceptances or rejections, and it is easy to multiply examples. Searle, who favors studying speech acts in isolation, has replied to these considerations (Searle 1992). There he issues a challenge to students of conversation to provide an account of conversations parallel to that of speech acts, arguing as well that the prospects for such an account are dim. One of his reasons is that unlike speech acts conversations do not as such have a point or purpose. Green 1999 rejoins that many conversations may indeed be construed in teleological terms. For instance, many conversations may be construed as aimed at answering a question, even when that question concerns something as banal as the afternoon’s weather or the location of the nearest subway station. Asher and Lascardes (2003) develop a systematic treatment of speech acts in their conversational setting that also responds to Searle’s challenge. Additionally, Roberts (2004, 2012) develops a model of conversational kinematics according to which conversations are invariably aimed at answering what she terms a question under discussion (QUD). This view is best appreciated within the framework of the “scorekeeping model” of conversation, to which we now turn.

Much literature concerned with speech acts is curiously disconnected from research in the semantics of natural language emphasizing pragmatic factors. For instance, Stalnaker (1972, 1973, 1974), Lewis (1979, 1980), Thomason (1990) and others have developed models of the kinematics of conversations aimed at understanding the role of quantification, presupposition (both semantic and pragmatic), anaphora, deixis, and vagueness in discourse. Such models typically construe conversations as involving an ever-developing set of Propositions that can be presupposed by interlocutors. This set of Propositions is the conversational common ground , defined as that set of Propositions that all interlocutors take to be true, while also taking it that all other interlocutors take them to be true. If a Proposition p is in a conversation’s common ground, then a speaker may felicitously presuppose p’s truth. Suppose then that the Proposition that Singapore has a unique King is in a conversation’s common ground at given point; then a speaker may felicitously utter a sentence such as ‘The present King of Singapore is wise,’ or ‘Singapore’s king is sleeping’. Other parameters characterizing a conversation at a given point include the domain of discourse, a set of salient perceptible objects, standards of precision, time, world or situation, speaker, and addressee. The set of all values for these items at a given conversational moment is often referred to as “conversational score”.

“Scorekeeping” approaches to language use typically construe a contribution to a conversation as a Proposition: If that “assertion” is accepted, then the score is updated by having the Proposition entered into common ground. In this spirit, MacFarlane (2011) considers an account of the speech act of assertion in terms an utterance’s capacity to update conversational score. Such an approach will, however, face a difficulty in explaining how two speech acts with the same content, such as an assertion that the Milky Way contains a black hole, and a conjecture that it does, will make different conversational contributions. An enrichment of the scorekeeping model would include sensitivity to differences such as these.

Another development in the scorekeeping model refines the teleological picture adumbrated above to incorporate Questions, construed (along the lines of Section 2.1) as sets of Propositions. When an interlocutor proffers an assertion that is not met with objections by others in the conversation, the Propositional content of that illocution will enter into common ground. When an interlocutor poses a question that is accepted by others, we may represent the change as an addition to Common Ground of the set of propositions that is the Interrogative content of that illocution. The presence of that Interrogative obliges interlocutors to work to rule all but one Proposition that is a complete answer to the Interrogative. Because Interrogatives stand in inferential relations to one another (Q1 entails Q2 just in case any answer to Q1 is an answer to Q2), one strategy for answering a question is to divide it into tractable questions that it entails: ‘How many covered bridges are there in Japan?’ can be answered by answering that question for each of that country’s 47 prefectures. Roberts (2004, 2012) develops the Question Under Discussion model of conversational dynamics according to which common ground contains a partially ordered set of Interrogatives in addition to a set of Propositions. This teleological approach to conversation bids fair to enrich our understanding of the relations of speech acts to other central topics within pragmatics such as presupposition and implicature. [ 18 ]

Frege’s Begriffsschrift (1879) constitutes history’s first thoroughgoing attempt to formulate a rigorous formal system in which to carry out deductive reasoning. However, Frege did not see his Begriffsschrift as merely a tool for assessing the validity of arguments. Rather, he appears to have seen it as an organon for the acquisition of knowledge from unquestionable first principles; in addition he wanted to use it in order to help make clear the epistemic foundations on which our knowledge rests. To this end his formal system contains not only symbols indicating the content of propositions (including logical constants), but also symbols indicating the force with which they are put forth. In particular, Frege insists that when using his formal system to acquire new knowledge from propositions already known, we use an assertion sign to indicate our acknowledgment of the truth of the proposition used as axioms or inferred therefrom. Frege thus employs what would now be called a force indicator : an expression whose use indicates the force with which an associated proposition is being put forth (Green 2002).

Reichenbach expands upon Frege’s idea in his 1947. In addition to using an assertion sign, Reichenbach also uses indicators of interrogative and imperatival force. Hare similarly introduces force indicators to lay bare the way in which ethical and cognate utterances are made (Hare 1970). Davidson (1979), however, challenges the value of this entire enterprise of introducing force-indicating devices into languages, formal or otherwise. Davidson’s reason is that since natural language already contains many devices for indicating the force of one’s speech act, the only interest a force indicator could have would be if it could guarantee the force of one’s speech act. But nothing could do this: Any device purporting to be, say, an infallible indicator of assertoric force is liable to being used by a joker or actor to heighten the realism of their performance. Referring to the putative force-indicating device as a ‘strengthened mood,’ he writes,

It is apparent that merely speaking the sentence in the strengthened mood cannot be counted on to result in an assertion: every joker, storyteller, and actor will immediately take advantage of the strengthened mood to simulate assertion. There is no point, then, in the strengthened mood; the available indicative does as well as language can do in the service of assertion (Davidson 1979, p. 311).

Hare 1989 replies that there could be a society with a convention that utterance of a certain expression constituted performance of a certain illocutionary act, even those utterances that occur on stage or as used by jokers or storytellers. Green 1997 questions the relevance of this observation to asserting, which as we have seen, which as we have seen, seem to require intentions for their performance. Just as no convention could make it the case that I believe that P , so too no convention could make it the case that I intend to put forth a certain sentence as an assertion.

On the other hand, Green 1997 and Green 2000 also observe that even if there can be no force indicator in the sense Davidson criticizes, nothing prevents natural language from containing devices that indicate force conditional upon one’s performing a speech act: such a force indicator would not show whether one is performing a speech act, but, given that one is doing so, it would show which speech act one is performing. For instance, parenthetical expressions such as, ‘as is the case’ can occur in the antecedent of conditionals, as in: ‘If, as is the case, the globe is warming, then Antarctica will melt.’ Use of the parenthetical cannot guarantee that the sentence or any part of it is being asserted, but if the entire sentence is being asserted, then, Green claims, use of the parenthetical guarantees that the speaker is also committed to the content of the antecedent. If this claim is correct, natural language already contains force indicators in this qualified sense. Whether it is worth introducing such force indicators into a logical notation remains an open question.

Subsequent to Austin’s introduction of the notion of a performative, it has also been suggested that what we might call performative sentential frames behave like force indicators: ‘I claim that it is sunny,’ seems to be a prolix way of saying that it is sunny, where the ‘I claim’ seems only to indicate how what follows is to be taken. On the approach of Urmson (1952), for instance, such a sentence should be understood on the model of ‘It is sunny, I claim.’ Support for such an analysis may be found in the fact that a potential reply to that utterance is ‘No it isn’t; it’s pouring outside!’, while ‘No you don’t’ is not. Again, if the speaker does not believe it is sunny outside, she cannot dodge, she cannot dodge the accusation of lying by remarking that what she had asserted was that she claimed that it is sunny, and not anything about the weather.

Nonetheless, drawing on Cohen 1964, Lycan 2018 objects to the view that such performative frames make no contribution to sentence or utterance meaning. If Marissa felicitously utters, ‘I claim that it is sunny,’ while Abdul felicitously utters, ‘I conjecture that it is sunny,’ the view implies that their utterances mean the same. The two speakers have clearly said different things, however. On the other hand, if we hold that the performative frame does contribute to the content of what Marissa and Abdul said, then, Lycan points out, it will be difficult to explain how their utterances commit either of them to any position about the weather. It evidently won’t do to posit inference rules such as ‘I state that p ,‘ ergo , ‘ p ’. We will consider a solution to what Lycan terms “Cohen’s Problem” after developing a notion of illocutionary inference in the next section.

Students of speech acts contend, as we have seen, that the unit of communicative significance is the Illocution rather than the Proposition. This attitude prompts the question whether logic itself might be enriched by incorporating inferential relations among speech acts rather than just inferential relations among Propositions. Just as two event-types E 1 and E 2 (such as running quickly and running) could be logically related to one another in that it is not possible for one to occur without the other; so too speech act types S 1 and S 2 could be inferentially related to one another if it is not possible to perform one without performing the other. A warning that the bull is about to charge is also an assertion that the bull is about to charge but the converse is not true. This is in spite of the fact that these two speech acts have the same propositional content: That the bull is about to charge. If, therefore, warning implies asserting but not vice versa, then that inferential relation is not to be caught within the net of inferential relations among propositions.

In their Foundations of Illocutionary Logic (1985), Searle and Vanderveken attempt a general treatment of logical relations among speech acts. They describe their central question in terms of commitment:

A theory of illocutionary logic of the sort we are describing is essentially a theory of illocutionary commitment as determined by illocutionary force. The single most important question it must answer is this: Given that a speaker in a certain context of utterance performs a successful illocutionary act of a certain form, what other illocutions does the performance of that act commit him to? (1985, p. 6)

To explicate their notion of illocutionary commitment, these authors invoke their definition of illocutionary force in terms of the seven values mentioned in Section 2.3 above. On the basis of this definition, they define two notions pertinent to entailment relations among speech acts, namely strong illocutionary commitment and weak illocutionary commitment . According to the former definition, an illocutionary act S 1 commits a speaker to another illocutionary act S 2 iff it is not possible to perform S 1 without performing S 2 . Whether that relation holds between a pair of illocutionary acts depends on the particular septuples with which they are identified. Thus suppose that S 1 is identical with <IP 1 , Str 1 , Mode 1 , Cont 1 , Prep 1 , Sinc 1 , Stresinc 1 > (corresponding to illocutionary point, strength, mode of achievement, propositional content, preparatory condition, sincerity condition, and strength of sincerity condition, respectively); and suppose that S 2 is identical with <IP 1 , Str 2 , Mode 1 , Cont 1 , Prep 1 , Sinc 1 , Stresinc 1 >. Suppose further that Str 1 and Str 2 differ only in that 1 is stronger than 2. Then it will not be possible to perform S 1 without performing S 2 ; whence the former strongly illocutionarily implies the latter. (This definition of strong illocutionary commitment generalizes in a straightforward way to the case in which a set of speech acts S 1 , …, S n −1 implies a speech act S n .)

Searle and Vanderveken also define a notion of weak illocutionary commitment such that S 1 weakly illocutionarily implies S 2 iff every performance of S 1 commits an agent to meeting the conditions laid down in the septuple identical to S 2 (1985, p. 24). Searle and Vanderveken infer that this implies that if P logically entails Q , and an agent asserts P , then she is committed to believing that Q . These authors stress, however, that this does not mean that the agent who asserts P is committed to cultivating the belief Q when P implies Q . In lieu of that explication, however, it is unclear just what notion of commitment is at issue. It is unclear, for instance, what it could mean to be committed to believing Q (rather than just being committed to Q ) if this is not to be explicated as being committed to cultivating the belief that Q .

Other approaches attempt to circumvent such problems by reductively defining the notion of commitment in terms of obligations to action and liability to error and/or vindication. Performance of a speech act or set of speech acts can commit an agent to a distinct content, and do so relative to some force. If P and Q jointly imply R , then my asserting both P and Q commits me to R . That is not to say that I have also asserted R : if assertion were closed under deductive consequence I would assert infinitely many things just by virtue of asserting one. By contrast, if I conjecture P and Q , then I am once again committed to R but not in the way that I would have been had I asserted P and Q . For instance, in the assertion case, once my further commitment to R is made clear, it is within the rights of my addressee to ask how I know that R holds; this would not have been an acceptable reply to my merely conjecturing P and Q . Developing this theme, let S be an arbitrary speaker, <Δ l A l , …, Δ n A n , Δ B > a sequence of force/content pairs; then:

<Δ l A l , …, Δ n A n , Δ B > is illocutionarily valid iff if speaker S is committed to each A i under mode Δ i , then S is committed to B under mode Δ. [ 19 ]

Because it concerns what force/content pairs commit an agent to what others, illocutionary validity is an essentially deontic notion: It will be cashed out in terms either of obligation to use a content in a certain way conversationally, or liability to error or vindication depending upon how the world is.

Our discussion of the possibility of an illocutionary logic answers one question posed at the end of Section 6.3, namely whether it is possible to perform a speech act without intending to do so. This seems likely given Searle and Vanderveken’s definition of strong illocutionary commitment: We need only imagine an agent performing some large number of speech acts, S 1 , …, S n −1 , which, unbeknownst to her, jointly guarantee that she fulfills the seven conditions defining another speech act S n . Even in such a case she performs S n only by virtue of intentionally performing some other set of speech acts S 1 , …, S n −1 ; it is difficult to see how one can perform S n while having no intention of performing a speech act at all.

We are also in a position to make headway on Cohen’s Problem as formulated by Lycan. As argued in Green 2000, in an assertion of ‘I (hereby) assert that p ’, a speaker commits herself to p even though her words do not logically entail that Proposition; nor do they presuppose, or either conversationally or conventionally imply it. They do, however, illocutionarily entail it: anyone committed to ‘I assert that p ’ assertorically is thereby committed to p assertorically. By contrast, one committed to ‘I assert that p ’ as a supposition for the sake of argument is not thereby committed to p . Accordingly, such a phrase as ‘I assert that’ is semantically opaque (making a non-trivial contribution to the truth conditions of the sentences in which it occurs) but pragmatically transparent in the sense that a speaker who undertakes assertoric commitment to a sentence in which it has widest scope is also assertorically committed to its complement. Analogous remarks apply to ‘I conjecture that’ and the like.

In a paradigmatic illocutionary event, a speaker has a choice of which if any speech act to perform and her addressee will do her charitable best to discern that speaker’s intentions and, where necessary, which conventions she may be invoking. Pratt (1986) observes that this paradigm is not true to the facts of many areas of communicative life, writing

An account of linguistic interaction based on the idea of exchange glosses over the very basic facts that, to put it crudely, some people get to do more talking than others, some are supposed to do more listening, and not everybody’s words are worth the same. (1986, p. 68)

Although Pratt intends this remark as a critique of speech act theory, it also suggests a way in which this theory might shed light on subtle forms of oppression. We saw in Section 2.2 that a putative bet can misfire if it is not accepted. In such a case the speaker attempts to bet but fails in that effort due to a lack of audience uptake. So too, a person may not be in the correct social position to, say, excommunicate or appoint, and her attempts to perform such illocutions will misfire. More momentously, a pattern of abuses of speech act institutions might deprive a person of an ability to perform speech acts: the inveterate promise-breaker will, in time, lead others in his community to be unwilling to accept any promises he tries to make. He can perform countless locutionary acts but will be unable to perform the illocutionary act of promising, at least in this community.

A pattern of culpable behavior could make a speaker unable to perform one speech act type. Could a pattern of culpable behavior–intentional or inadvertent—on the part of others in a speaker’s community achieve the same effect? This could happen if enough such speakers decide never to accept one person’s bets, warnings, or promises. Beyond such hypothetical cases, it has been argued that patterns of social inequality can prevent members of certain groups from performing the speech acts they would choose to. Building on and refining McKinnon’s (1993) claim that pornography silences women, Langton (1993), and Hornsby and Langton (1998) argue that the industry and consumption of pornography deprive women of the ability to perform the speech act of refusing sexual advances. Refusing is a speech act, but if large enough numbers of men deny uptake (with such thoughts as, “By ‘no’ she really means ‘yes’,” etc.) then, these authors argue, women’s attempts to refuse sexual advances will be characteristically inert with respect to the speech act of refusal. Women will still be able to attempt to refuse sexual advances, and can still try to prevent them by physical means, but a crucial illocutionary form of protection will be closed to them. So too, apartheid, Jim Crow, and even patterns of discrimination of which the perpetrators are not consciously aware, can deprive racial, religious, and ethnic minority groups of the ability to perform speech-act types requiring uptake. These phenomena are generally referred to as illocutionary silencing .

Bird (2002) denies that the speech act of refusal requires uptake. Such an illocution is, he contends, like inviting and surrendering, which can occur whether or not their intended audiences grasp or accept the proffered illocutions. Similarly denying that the “silencing” argument should be cast in terms of speech acts, Maitra 2009 argues that the institution of pornography prevents speaker-meant instances of refusal from being understood. One can speaker-mean that she refuses, for instance, but patterns of cognitive and affective response will systematically prevent that refusal from being grasped. Broadening the scope of investigations of the interaction of injustice and illocutionary phenomena, McGowan 2009 argues that some speech acts can not only cause but also constitute instances of oppression. Anderson, Haslanger and Langton (2012) provide overviews of research on racial, gender and related forms of oppression as they relate to speech acts.

Although not inherently culpable, the practice of dogwhistling has also recently gained the interest of theorists of speech acts. As suggested by the metaphor, an agent dogwhistles just in case one or more dimensions of a speech act she performs is readily intelligible only to a proper subset of her addressees. Saul 2018 notes that in contemporary American politics, stating one’s opposition to the Supreme Court case of Dred Scott seems to be a way of signaling one’s anti-abortion sympathies. For those not in the know, however, a speaker’s opposition to the Dred Scott appears to be an uncontroversial act of rejecting racism. The phenomenon of dogwhistling provides an apparent challenge to conceptions of speaker meaning in terms of overtness, since the dogwhistler would seem to speaker mean a content that is cryptic to all but her insider audience: is her utterance both overt and covert? Instead of adopting such a view, one who construes speech acts in terms of overtness could refine the notion of manifestness occuring in her account. What is manifest to one addressee may not be manifest to another, and a speaker may exploit this fact. Accordingly, someone who avows, “I’m against Dred Scott,” may speaker-mean that she is both against Dred Scott and pro-life to one part of her audience, but only that she is against Dred Scott to another part.

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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.
  • Research project in the philosophy of language , maintained at the University of Berne, Switzerland. This site is devoted to some main themes of research stemming from Grices’ work on speaker meaning and implicature.
  • Working Papers in Linguistics , University College London.
  • Question Under Discussion , collecting research germane to this approach to conversational kinematics. .
  • ‘ Toward a history of speech act theory ,’ a paper by Barry Smith (SUNY/Buffalo).
  • ‘ J.L. Austin ,’ an annotated bibliography by Guy Longworth, Oxford Bibliographies Online .
  • ‘ Pragmatics ,’ an annotated bibliography by Mitchell S. Green, Oxford Bibliographies Online .

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10 Characteristics Of Speech Act, Its Development And Examples

We explain what speech is, how it develops and what its characteristics are. Also, what is the speech act and its problems.

What is speech act?

By speech we understand  the communicative act  through which a person materializes his thoughts in a series of ordered and articulated sounds (words).

Speech is, in this sense, and according to traditional linguistics,  the representation and transmission of thought through sounds  , meanings and normative principles contained in a given language ( language ).

The scholar and founder of structural linguistics Ferdinand de Saussure proposed in his Course on General Linguistics (1916) that  language and speech are distinct but complementary  .

The first is social, immaterial and durable, that is, a social code of organization of meanings associated with the mental imprint of certain sounds, while speech  is individual, material, ephemeral and mutable  .

Speech Characteristics  :

Unlike language, which  belongs to all its speakers equally  , speech is a matter of an individual or a group of them, since it is a specific realization.

Thus,  each individual has his way of speaking  , depending on where he comes from, since each community also has its way of speaking.

But it also  depends on their anatomy  and their individual sociolinguistic characteristics.

Material

Since it consists of  meanings encoded in sound waves  traveling from sender to receiver, speech disappears once those waves cease to be emitted.

It has  a limited duration time  , since each word lasts a specific time. Each syllable and each sentence , once finished, ceases to exist, lasting only in the memory of those who perceived it.

Linear

In fact, speech  is pure mutation, pure variety  . Who speaks the same way all the time, using the same words, the same terms or the same intonations?

Speech is  a communicative event  , so it adapts to the most diverse contexts: the receiving public, the context in which it is spoken, the sender's state of mind, the subject being discussed, and a long etcetera.

language, on the other hand, since it operates as a set of rules ,  tends to be immutable at a given moment  : no one can change the language at will and decide that a word changes its meaning, for example.

On the other hand,  prolonged use over time does alter the language  , and to that extent speech gradually imposes itself on the language, modifying it.

What is a speech act?

What is a speech act?

Speech and dialects

speech and dialects

This is how dialects and sociolects are born,  recognizable and significant variations of the language  , but which do not constitute a language in itself.

If an individual does not belong to that community, even if they speak the same language in some cases, they must learn these additional uses in order to fully understand what is being said to them.

However, they are considered internal variations of the language, because  at a deeper level they still respect the general framework of the language  and remain more or less recognizable by all its speakers as such.

Speech and accents

How does it develop.

How does it develop?

Speech is an innate human capacity, which is fully developed through the acquisition of language, during early childhood.

However, it is a gradual process that comprises several stages:

  • From birth to 5 months.  The infant makes noises when spoken to (recognizes voice), coos, and usually vocally expresses pleasure (laughter) or discomfort (crying).
  • From 6 to 11 months.  Babbling and nonsense pronunciation of repeated basic syllables (“ma-ma”, “pa-pa”) begins. Towards the end of the period he tries to communicate with gestures, tries to repeat sounds and eventually pronounces his first words with a referential meaning.
  • From 12 to 17 months.  Already the infant responds to simple questions without words, and has a vocabulary of four to six words, with unclear or doubtful pronunciation.
  • From 18 to 23 months.   His vocabulary expands through repetition and reaches about 50 words, being able to imitate animal sounds , ask for food by name and combine simple words. Towards the end of the period can pronounce simple sentences.
  • From 2 to 3 years.   Begins to handle some spatial concepts, learns the first pronouns and descriptive terms (“big”, “good”, etc.). His sentences consist of three or four words and he begins to use inflections for sentences (interrogations, exclamations, etc.).
  • From 3 to 4 years.   The infant recognizes colors, associates objects and expresses very basic ideas or feelings, repeats entire sentences and can use language in a playful way, in games , poems , songs, etc. His pronunciation is now much clearer.
  • From 4 to 5 years.   He already understands complex questions, can use irregular verbs and difficult forms of language , but with difficulty. Often confuses long words or words with many syllables.
  • From 5 to 6 years.   The infant masters language and speech well enough to participate in conversation, using compound and complex sentences, describing objects, and using their imagination to create stories. His grip on language is full, and he can use it to learn the very things he doesn't know.

Speech problems

speech problems

  • Total or partial deafness, which affects the ability to repeat sounds.
  • Dysphonia or aphonia, or mechanical complications due to malformations.
  • Stuttering and other psychological symptoms that affect speech.
  • Learning problems.
  • Brain damage from accidents or stroke.
  • Clinical disorders: specific language disorder, expressive language disorder or autism spectrum disorder.

There are specialists dedicated to the study of speech and communication, especially the ideal techniques for its recovery or reinforcement. They are known as speech therapists.

The above content published at  Collaborative Research Group  is for informational and educational purposes only  and has been developed by referring  reliable sources and recommendations from technology experts. We do not have any contact with official entities nor do we intend to replace the information that they emit.

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Introduction to Phonology, Part 3: Phonetic Features

Published: Apr 26, 2018 at 01:35am

Categories: phonology • linguistics • phonetics

In the previous post , I covered most of the basics of phonetics concerning how we can describe speech sounds, or “phones”. Specifically, I talked about two sets of aspects (one for vowels and one for consonants), and how some of these can be subdivided. Next, I’ll talk a little more about these subdivisions (and some more than I left out last time).

It’s a little messy to deal with separate features for vowels and consonants, so instead we consider that all features can apply to any sound, and that each feature has a specification of either positive or negative . For the purposes of this post, we will assume that all sounds have specifications for all features.

The full feature list can be divided into four broad groups: major class features , manner features , place features , and laryngeal features . I will discuss the groups in broad terms, and then I will go into a bit more depth with each feature. For each feature, I will provide a listing of the phones that are considered to have a positive specification for that feature. These listings are images taken from this document about the phonological features (PDF), which was provided to students in my phonology class taught by Dr. Aaron Kaplan at the University of Utah, though I do not know if he wrote it himself.

How to discuss features

I mentioned above that phones can be specified in terms of positive and negative values for all features. When we write about a sound’s features (or about how a feature relates to a sound), we write the feature in brackets with a + or - to indicate its value. For example, the voiced velar stop [g] is [+voiced], [+dorsal], [+high], among other things.

When a phone has multiple feature specifications that we are interested in talking about, we produce a feature matrix . [g] could be [+voiced, +dorsal, +high]. (Often, in literature, these are written in a vertical fashion with the brackets extending the length of the stack, but for brevity’s sake I will stick to in-line matrices.)

Additionally, all features have a shorthand name. [g] is [+voi, +dor, +hi]. This is done simply to save space. I will provide the shorthand names for all features in this post, though I will stick to the full names for my discussion.

Major class features

There are four major class features:

  • approximant

(The document I linked above lists 8, but I have separated the manner features from these.)

These four features don’t have much in common physically, but they guide the overall “type” of a phone.

[syllabic] / [syl]

Syllabic Phones

[+syllabic] sounds are those which may function as the nucleus of a syllable. I will avoid an in-depth discussion of prosody (syllables ‘n’ stuff) for now, but the basic gist is that these sounds can be the “center” of a syllable. By default, only vowels are [+syllabic], and all consonants are [-syllabic].

However, sometimes certain consonants can become [+syllabic]. In English, we sometimes find [ɹ] (the “r” sound in “her” and “red”) becomes syllabic. For example, consider the word “fire”. Some people pronounce this as a single syllable, but I pronounce it as two: [‘faɪ.ɹ] (where the . in the middle denotes the separation of two syllables, and the leading single-quote ‘ precedes the stressed syllable). However, when dealing with some languages (such as English) this is often instead transcribed into IPA as [‘faɪ.əɹ].

[vocalic] / [voc]

Vocalic Phones

The vowels and glides (or “semi-vowels”) are considered [+vocalic], and all other sounds are [-vocalic]. This feature exists primarily to distinguish the glides from other consonants due to their similarity to vowels. (Glides are essentially just vowels that want to be consonants.)

[approximant] / [approx]

Approximant Phones

[+approximant] phones are a superset of the [+vocalic] phones. [+approximant] applies to all of the approximants , which includes vowels, liquids (e.g. [l], [r], [ɹ]), and glides (e.g. [w], [j]). All other sounds are [-approximant].

[sonorant] / [son]

Sonorant Phones

[+sonorant] are another superset, this time of the [+approximant] phones. [+sonorant] additionally includes nasal consonants. (Specifically, “sonorant” refers to any speech sound which produces a non-turbulent airflow.)

Manner features

There are also four manner features:

These features are used to describe how the articulators are used to modify the airflow as it comes out from the lungs. The combination of these four binary manner features produces the seven manners of articulation that I detailed in the previous post.

[continuant] / [cont]

Continuant Phones

The phones which are [+continuant] involve a partial occlusion of the airway, meaning your mouth might be mostly closed or your tongue may be blocking the airflow, or a few other things. Air must flow over a period of time; that is, the airflow is continuous . All vowels, glides, liquids, and fricatives are [+continuant]. Stops, affricates, and nasals are [-continuant]. Data are inconclusive for laterals, taps/flaps, or trills.

[lateral] / [lat]

Lateral Phones

The [+lateral] sounds are those which involve air flowing around the sides of the tongue (instead of over the top of it). The lateral approximants and fricatives are [+lateral], and other sounds are [-lateral]. (There are also lateral clicks which appear only in African languages, but these are not detailed in the charts on this page because I am only discussing sounds with a pulmonic egressive airflow .)

[nasal] / [nas]

Nasal Phones

[+nasal] sounds allow air to escape through the nasal cavity (nose). Most sounds are [-nasal], but the stops indicated above are all [+nasal].

[strident] / [stri]

Strident Phones

Sounds which are [+strident] are characterized by high-frequency noise. All affricates are [+strident], and fricatives at the following places of articulation are also [+strident]: labiodental, alveolar, palato-alveolar, retroflex, and uvular. All other sounds are [-strident].

Place features

There are eleven total place features (including the dependent features). Place features describe where in the mouth the primary articular is positioned to produce a particular sound. The place features are:

  • distributed

The indentation of certain features indicates dependent features . A dependent feature, such as round , can only be given a specification if its parent feature has a positive specification. So a sound which has a [-labial] specification cannot be [+round] or [-round]. “Well that seems weirdly selective,” you might say — and you’d be right! But that’s the way it goes. There is more theory to this which will be talked about in a later blog post.

I will list dependent features as subheadings of their parent features.

[labial] / [lab]

Labial Phones

The [+labial] phones are those which require use of the lips to produce, which corresponds to the labial and labiodental places of articulation detailed in the previous post. Additionally, glides and vowels are considered to be [+labial] since they can have a [round] specification.

[labial] has one dependent feature: [round].

[round] / [rnd]

Labial/Round Phones

To be [round], a phone must first be [+labial] — which is why you only see a subset of the IPA chart given for these sounds. [+round] sounds require the lips to be made into the shape of an O (which, incidentally, is what happens when you make the sound [o]). [+labial] sounds produced without this rounding are [-round].

[coronal] / [cor]

Coronal Phones

[+coronal] sounds require articulation of the front part of the tongue. Interdental, alveolar, palato-alveolar, retroflex, and palatal consonants (sans glides) are all [+coronal], and other phones are [-coronal].

[coronal] has two dependent features: [anterior] and [distributed].

[anterior] / [ant]

Coronal/Anterior Phones

[+anterior] phones are those made by using the tip of the tongue at the front of the mouth. Interdentals and alveolars are [+anterior], whereas the other [+coronal] phones are [-anterior].

[distributed] / [dist]

Coronal/Distributed Phones

To distinguish how the front of the tongue is used, we use the feature [distributed]. [+distributed] phones are those where the tongue is sort of spread wide (the articulation is made with the blade of the tongue), and phones which are [-distributed] use only the tip of the tongue in articulation. Interdentals, palato-alveolars, and palatals are [+distributed] while other [+coronal] phones are [-distributed].

[dorsal] / [dor]

Dorsal Phones

In contrast to [coronal], the [+dorsal] sounds are those made by articulating the back half of the tongue. Palato-alveolar, palatal, velar, uvular, and pharyngeal consonants and all vowels (and glides) are [+dorsal].

[dorsal] has three dependent features: [high], [low], and [back], each referring to the physical positioning of the tongue in the mouth.

[high] / [hi]

Dorsal/High Phones

The [high] feature specifies the height of the tongue body in the mouth, where [+high] indicates that the tongue body is raised (and [-high] merely indicates that it is not). Alveo-palatal, palatal, and velar consonants and glides and close/high vowels are [+high], and other [+dorsal] sounds are [-high].

Note that a sound cannot be both [+high] and [+low], but it can be [-high] and [-low].

[low] / [lo]

Dorsal/Low Phones

Similar to [high], the [low] feature specifies the height of the tongue body in the mouth, where [+low] indicates the tongue is depressed. Pharyngeal consonants and low vowels are [+low], and other [+dorsal] sounds are [-low].

Note that a sound cannot be both [+low] and [+high], but it can be [-low] and [-high].

[back] / [bk]

Dorsal/Back Phones

In contrast to [high] and [low], the [back] specification details the horizontal position of the tongue body in the mouth during sound production. The velar, uvular, and pharyngeal consonants and central and back glides and vowels are [+back], and other [+dorsal] sounds are [-back].

[pharyngeal] / [phar]

Pharyngeal Phones

The pharyngeal consonants are (of course) [+pharyngeal], and vowels can have a [pharyngeal] specification in languages where there is a tenseness contrast of vowels.

[pharyngeal] has one dependent feature: [ATR].

Pharyngeal/ATR Phones

ATR stands for “advanced tongue root”. This feature indicates whether the root of the tongue has been moved forward, but what it really provides is a contrast between tensed and un-tensed vowels. [+ATR] vowels are tense, and [-ATR] sounds are lax.

Laryngeal features

Last, we come to the laryngeal features. “Laryngeal” means these features have to do with how the larynx is utilized during sound production. There are three laryngeal features:

  • glottalized

[voiced] / [voi]

Voiced Phones

The [+voiced] phones are those which involve the vibration of the vocal folds, whereas [-voiced] phones do not induce vibration.

[aspirated] / [asp]

Aspirated Phones

Phones which are [+aspirated] have a stronger outward airflow. All voiceless fricatives (plus the voiced glottal fricative) are [+aspirated], and other sounds are [-aspirated] by default.

[+aspirated] is often specified for other phones, though. Stops can become [+aspirated] (this occurs in English when a voiceless stop is in the onset of a stressed syllable), and vowels can become [+aspirated] when spoken with “breathy voice” (which I will maybe talk about another time).

[glottalized] / [glot]

Glottalized Phones

By default, the implosive consonants (third row in this IPA chart) and the glottal stop are [+glottalized], and all other sounds are [-glottalized]. (The implosive consonants are produced using both pulmonic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airflows at the same time.)

Each unique combination of these features corresponds to exactly one speech sound. (Take note, however, that not all possible combinations are deemed physically producible.) This means that instead of writing out the names of phones and hoping that we remember all of the facts about that phone, we can instead give a feature matrix consisting of the necessary specifications to identify the sound in question.

The feature matrices can be quite useful for comparing and contrasting multiple phones, as I will show you in a future post.

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February 13, 2024

How the brain produces speech

At a glance.

  • Researchers identified how neurons in the human brain encode various elements of speech.
  • The findings might be used to help develop treatments for speech and language disorders.

Side view portrait of a woman talking with alphabet letters in her head and coming out of her open mouth.

Speech and language depend on our ability to produce a wide variety of sounds in a specific order. How the neurons in the human brain work together to plan and produce speech remains poorly understood.

To begin to address this question, an NIH-funded team of researchers, led by Drs. Ziv Williams and Sydney Cash at Massachusetts General Hospital, recorded neuron activity during natural speech in five native English speakers. The experiments were done while participants were having electrodes implanted for deep brain stimulation. The researchers recorded neurons in a prefrontal brain region known to be involved in word planning and sentence construction. They used high-density arrays of tiny electrodes that could record signals from many individual neurons at once. Their results appeared in Nature on January 31, 2024.

The scientists found that the activity of almost half the neurons depended on the particular sounds, or phonemes, in the word about to be said. Some neurons, for instance, became more active ahead of speaking the sounds for “p” or “b”, which involve stopping airflow at the lips. Others did so ahead of speaking “k” or “g” sounds, which are formed by the tongue against the soft palate. Moreover, certain neurons seemed to reflect the specific combination of phonemes in the upcoming word. The team found that they could predict the phonemes that made up the word about to be spoken based on the activity of these neurons.

For about a quarter of the neurons, activity further reflected specific syllables, or ordered sequences of phonemes that may be all or part of a word. The team could predict the syllables in the upcoming word using the activity from these neurons. These neurons did not respond to the phonemes in the syllable by themselves. Nor did they respond to the phonemes out of order or split across different syllables.

A minority of neurons responded to the presence of prefixes or suffixes. These are examples of morphemes, or groups of sounds that carry specific meanings. The presence of morphemes in the upcoming word could be predicted from these neurons’ activities.

The team also found that different sets of neurons activated in a specific order. The morpheme neurons activated first, around 400 milliseconds (ms) before the utterance. Phoneme neurons activated next, around 200 ms before the utterance. Syllable neurons activated last, around 70 ms before utterance. Most neurons responded to the same feature (phoneme, syllable, or morpheme) both before and during the utterance. But the activity patterns during the utterance differed from those before it. Finally, the team found that neurons that responded to speech sounds during speaking differed from those that responded to those same speech sounds during listening.

In an accompanying paper in the same issue of Nature , another research team used the same technique to examine how neurons in another area of the brain respond while listening to speech. They similarly found that single neurons encoded different speech sound cues.

The findings suggest how various elements of speech are encoded in the brain, and how the brain combines these elements to form spoken words. This information might aid in developing brain-machine interfaces that can synthesize speech. Such devices could help a range of patients with conditions that impair speech.

“Disruptions in the speech and language networks are observed in a wide variety of neurological disorders—including stroke, traumatic brain injury, tumors, neurodegenerative disorders, neurodevelopmental disorders, and more,” says co-author Dr. Arjun Khanna. “Our hope is that a better understanding of the basic neural circuitry that enables speech and language will pave the way for the development of treatments for these disorders.”

—by Brian Doctrow, Ph.D.

Related Links

  • Scientists Translate Brain Activity into Music
  • Brain Decoder Turns a Person’s Brain Activity into Words
  • Understanding How the Brain Tracks Social Status and Competition
  • Study Reveals Brain Networks Critical for Conversation
  • Device Allows Paralyzed Man to Communicate with Words
  • How the Human Brain Tracks Location
  • Memories Involve Replay of Neural Firing Patterns
  • Scientists Create Speech Using Brain Signals
  • How The Brain Keeps Track of Time
  • Brain Basics: Know Your Brain

References:  Single-neuronal elements of speech production in humans. Khanna AR, Muñoz W, Kim YJ, Kfir Y, Paulk AC, Jamali M, Cai J, Mustroph ML, Caprara I, Hardstone R, Mejdell M, Meszéna D, Zuckerman A, Schweitzer J, Cash S, Williams ZM. Nature . 2024 Jan 31. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06982-w. Online ahead of print. PMID: 38297120.

Funding:  NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD); Canadian Institutes of Health Research; Foundations of Human Behavior Initiative; Tiny Blue Dot Foundation; American Association of University Women.

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proposed research area meaning

Research-Methodology

Selecting Research Area

Selecting a research area is the very first step in writing your dissertation. It is important for you to choose a research area that is interesting to you professionally, as well as, personally. Experienced researchers note that “a topic in which you are only vaguely interested at the start is likely to become a topic in which you have no interest and with which you will fail to produce your best work” [1] . Ideally, your research area should relate to your future career path and have a potential to contribute to the achievement of your career objectives.

Selecting Research Area

The importance of selecting a relevant research area that is appropriate for dissertation is often underestimated by many students. This decision cannot be made in haste. Ideally, you should start considering different options at the beginning of the term. However, even when there are only few weeks left before the deadline and you have not chosen a particular topic yet, there is no need to panic.

There are few areas in business studies that can offer interesting topics due to their relevance to business and dynamic nature. The following is the list of research areas and topics that can prove to be insightful in terms of assisting you to choose your own dissertation topic.

Globalization can be a relevant topic for many business and economics dissertations. Forces of globalization are nowadays greater than ever before and dissertations can address the implications of these forces on various aspects of business.

Following are few examples of research areas in globalization:

  • A study of implications of COVID-19 pandemic on economic globalization
  • Impacts of globalization on marketing strategies of beverage manufacturing companies: a case study of The Coca-Cola Company
  • Effects of labour migration within EU on the formation of multicultural teams in UK organizations
  • A study into advantages and disadvantages of various entry strategies to Chinese market
  • A critical analysis of the effects of globalization on US-based businesses

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is also one of the most popular topics at present and it is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. CSR refers to additional responsibilities of business organizations towards society apart from profit maximization. There is a high level of controversy involved in CSR. This is because businesses can be socially responsible only at the expense of their primary objective of profit maximization.

Perspective researches in the area of CSR may include the following:

  • The impacts of CSR programs and initiatives on brand image: a case study of McDonald’s India
  • A critical analysis of argument of mandatory CSR for private sector organizations in Australia
  • A study into contradictions between CSR programs and initiatives and business practices: a case study of Philip Morris Philippines
  • A critical analysis into the role of CSR as an effective marketing tool
  • A study into the role of workplace ethics for improving brand image

Social Media and viral marketing relate to increasing numbers of various social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube etc. Increasing levels of popularity of social media among various age groups create tremendous potential for businesses in terms of attracting new customers.

The following can be listed as potential studies in the area of social media:

  • A critical analysis of the use of social media as a marketing strategy: a case study of Burger King Malaysia
  • An assessment of the role of Instagram as an effective platform for viral marketing campaigns
  • A study into the sustainability of TikTok as a marketing tool in the future
  • An investigation into the new ways of customer relationship management in mobile marketing environment: a case study of catering industry in South Africa
  • A study into integration of Twitter social networking website within integrated marketing communication strategy: a case study of Microsoft Corporation

Culture and cultural differences in organizations offer many research opportunities as well. Increasing importance of culture is directly related to intensifying forces of globalization in a way that globalization forces are fuelling the formation of cross-cultural teams in organizations.

Perspective researches in the area of culture and cultural differences in organizations may include the following:

  • The impact of cross-cultural differences on organizational communication: a case study of BP plc
  • A study into skills and competencies needed to manage multicultural teams in Singapore
  • The role of cross-cultural differences on perception of marketing communication messages in the global marketplace: a case study of Apple Inc.
  • Effects of organizational culture on achieving its aims and objectives: a case study of Virgin Atlantic
  • A critical analysis into the emergence of global culture and its implications in local automobile manufacturers in Germany

Leadership and leadership in organizations has been a popular topic among researchers for many decades by now. However, the importance of this topic may be greater now than ever before. This is because rapid technological developments, forces of globalization and a set of other factors have caused markets to become highly competitive. Accordingly, leadership is important in order to enhance competitive advantages of organizations in many ways.

The following studies can be conducted in the area of leadership:

  • Born or bred: revisiting The Great Man theory of leadership in the 21 st century
  • A study of effectiveness of servant leadership style in public sector organizations in Hong Kong
  • Creativity as the main trait for modern leaders: a critical analysis
  • A study into the importance of role models in contributing to long-term growth of private sector organizations: a case study of Tata Group, India
  • A critical analysis of leadership skills and competencies for E-Commerce organizations

COVID-19 pandemic and its macro and micro-economic implications can also make for a good dissertation topic. Pandemic-related crisis has been like nothing the world has seen before and it is changing international business immensely and perhaps, irreversibly as well.

The following are few examples for pandemic crisis-related topics:

  • A study into potential implications of COVID-19 pandemic into foreign direct investment in China
  • A critical assessment of effects of COVID-19 pandemic into sharing economy: a case study of AirBnb.
  • The role of COVID-19 pandemic in causing shifts in working patterns: a critical analysis

Moreover, dissertations can be written in a wide range of additional areas such as customer services, supply-chain management, consumer behaviour, human resources management, catering and hospitality, strategic management etc. depending on your professional and personal interests.

[1] Saunders, M., Lewis, P. & Thornhill, A. (2012) “Research Methods for Business Students” 6th edition, Pearson Education Limited.

Selecting Research Area

John Dudovskiy

Grad Coach

What (Exactly) Is A Research Proposal?

A simple explainer with examples + free template.

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) | Reviewed By: Dr Eunice Rautenbach | June 2020 (Updated April 2023)

Whether you’re nearing the end of your degree and your dissertation is on the horizon, or you’re planning to apply for a PhD program, chances are you’ll need to craft a convincing research proposal . If you’re on this page, you’re probably unsure exactly what the research proposal is all about. Well, you’ve come to the right place.

Overview: Research Proposal Basics

  • What a research proposal is
  • What a research proposal needs to cover
  • How to structure your research proposal
  • Example /sample proposals
  • Proposal writing FAQs
  • Key takeaways & additional resources

What is a research proposal?

Simply put, a research proposal is a structured, formal document that explains what you plan to research (your research topic), why it’s worth researching (your justification), and how  you plan to investigate it (your methodology). 

The purpose of the research proposal (its job, so to speak) is to convince  your research supervisor, committee or university that your research is  suitable  (for the requirements of the degree program) and  manageable  (given the time and resource constraints you will face). 

The most important word here is “ convince ” – in other words, your research proposal needs to  sell  your research idea (to whoever is going to approve it). If it doesn’t convince them (of its suitability and manageability), you’ll need to revise and resubmit . This will cost you valuable time, which will either delay the start of your research or eat into its time allowance (which is bad news). 

A research proposal is a  formal document that explains what you plan to research , why it's worth researching and how you'll do it.

What goes into a research proposal?

A good dissertation or thesis proposal needs to cover the “ what “, “ why ” and” how ” of the proposed study. Let’s look at each of these attributes in a little more detail:

Your proposal needs to clearly articulate your research topic . This needs to be specific and unambiguous . Your research topic should make it clear exactly what you plan to research and in what context. Here’s an example of a well-articulated research topic:

An investigation into the factors which impact female Generation Y consumer’s likelihood to promote a specific makeup brand to their peers: a British context

As you can see, this topic is extremely clear. From this one line we can see exactly:

  • What’s being investigated – factors that make people promote or advocate for a brand of a specific makeup brand
  • Who it involves – female Gen-Y consumers
  • In what context – the United Kingdom

So, make sure that your research proposal provides a detailed explanation of your research topic . If possible, also briefly outline your research aims and objectives , and perhaps even your research questions (although in some cases you’ll only develop these at a later stage). Needless to say, don’t start writing your proposal until you have a clear topic in mind , or you’ll end up waffling and your research proposal will suffer as a result of this.

Need a helping hand?

proposed research area meaning

As we touched on earlier, it’s not good enough to simply propose a research topic – you need to justify why your topic is original . In other words, what makes it  unique ? What gap in the current literature does it fill? If it’s simply a rehash of the existing research, it’s probably not going to get approval – it needs to be fresh.

But,  originality  alone is not enough. Once you’ve ticked that box, you also need to justify why your proposed topic is  important . In other words, what value will it add to the world if you achieve your research aims?

As an example, let’s look at the sample research topic we mentioned earlier (factors impacting brand advocacy). In this case, if the research could uncover relevant factors, these findings would be very useful to marketers in the cosmetics industry, and would, therefore, have commercial value . That is a clear justification for the research.

So, when you’re crafting your research proposal, remember that it’s not enough for a topic to simply be unique. It needs to be useful and value-creating – and you need to convey that value in your proposal. If you’re struggling to find a research topic that makes the cut, watch  our video covering how to find a research topic .

Webinar - How to write a research proposal for a dissertation or thesis

It’s all good and well to have a great topic that’s original and valuable, but you’re not going to convince anyone to approve it without discussing the practicalities – in other words:

  • How will you actually undertake your research (i.e., your methodology)?
  • Is your research methodology appropriate given your research aims?
  • Is your approach manageable given your constraints (time, money, etc.)?

While it’s generally not expected that you’ll have a fully fleshed-out methodology at the proposal stage, you’ll likely still need to provide a high-level overview of your research methodology . Here are some important questions you’ll need to address in your research proposal:

  • Will you take a qualitative , quantitative or mixed -method approach?
  • What sampling strategy will you adopt?
  • How will you collect your data (e.g., interviews, surveys, etc)?
  • How will you analyse your data (e.g., descriptive and inferential statistics , content analysis, discourse analysis, etc, .)?
  • What potential limitations will your methodology carry?

So, be sure to give some thought to the practicalities of your research and have at least a basic methodological plan before you start writing up your proposal. If this all sounds rather intimidating, the video below provides a good introduction to research methodology and the key choices you’ll need to make.

How To Structure A Research Proposal

Now that we’ve covered the key points that need to be addressed in a proposal, you may be wondering, “ But how is a research proposal structured? “.

While the exact structure and format required for a research proposal differs from university to university, there are four “essential ingredients” that commonly make up the structure of a research proposal:

  • A rich introduction and background to the proposed research
  • An initial literature review covering the existing research
  • An overview of the proposed research methodology
  • A discussion regarding the practicalities (project plans, timelines, etc.)

In the video below, we unpack each of these four sections, step by step.

Research Proposal Examples/Samples

In the video below, we provide a detailed walkthrough of two successful research proposals (Master’s and PhD-level), as well as our popular free proposal template.

Proposal Writing FAQs

How long should a research proposal be.

This varies tremendously, depending on the university, the field of study (e.g., social sciences vs natural sciences), and the level of the degree (e.g. undergraduate, Masters or PhD) – so it’s always best to check with your university what their specific requirements are before you start planning your proposal.

As a rough guide, a formal research proposal at Masters-level often ranges between 2000-3000 words, while a PhD-level proposal can be far more detailed, ranging from 5000-8000 words. In some cases, a rough outline of the topic is all that’s needed, while in other cases, universities expect a very detailed proposal that essentially forms the first three chapters of the dissertation or thesis.

The takeaway – be sure to check with your institution before you start writing.

How do I choose a topic for my research proposal?

Finding a good research topic is a process that involves multiple steps. We cover the topic ideation process in this video post.

How do I write a literature review for my proposal?

While you typically won’t need a comprehensive literature review at the proposal stage, you still need to demonstrate that you’re familiar with the key literature and are able to synthesise it. We explain the literature review process here.

How do I create a timeline and budget for my proposal?

We explain how to craft a project plan/timeline and budget in Research Proposal Bootcamp .

Which referencing format should I use in my research proposal?

The expectations and requirements regarding formatting and referencing vary from institution to institution. Therefore, you’ll need to check this information with your university.

What common proposal writing mistakes do I need to look out for?

We’ve create a video post about some of the most common mistakes students make when writing a proposal – you can access that here . If you’re short on time, here’s a quick summary:

  • The research topic is too broad (or just poorly articulated).
  • The research aims, objectives and questions don’t align.
  • The research topic is not well justified.
  • The study has a weak theoretical foundation.
  • The research design is not well articulated well enough.
  • Poor writing and sloppy presentation.
  • Poor project planning and risk management.
  • Not following the university’s specific criteria.

Key Takeaways & Additional Resources

As you write up your research proposal, remember the all-important core purpose:  to convince . Your research proposal needs to sell your study in terms of suitability and viability. So, focus on crafting a convincing narrative to ensure a strong proposal.

At the same time, pay close attention to your university’s requirements. While we’ve covered the essentials here, every institution has its own set of expectations and it’s essential that you follow these to maximise your chances of approval.

By the way, we’ve got plenty more resources to help you fast-track your research proposal. Here are some of our most popular resources to get you started:

  • Proposal Writing 101 : A Introductory Webinar
  • Research Proposal Bootcamp : The Ultimate Online Course
  • Template : A basic template to help you craft your proposal

If you’re looking for 1-on-1 support with your research proposal, be sure to check out our private coaching service , where we hold your hand through the proposal development process (and the entire research journey), step by step.

Literature Review Course

Psst… there’s more!

This post is an extract from our bestselling Udemy Course, Research Proposal Bootcamp . If you want to work smart, you don't want to miss this .

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Research proposal mistakes

50 Comments

Myrna Pereira

I truly enjoyed this video, as it was eye-opening to what I have to do in the preparation of preparing a Research proposal.

I would be interested in getting some coaching.

BARAKAELI TEREVAELI

I real appreciate on your elaboration on how to develop research proposal,the video explains each steps clearly.

masebo joseph

Thank you for the video. It really assisted me and my niece. I am a PhD candidate and she is an undergraduate student. It is at times, very difficult to guide a family member but with this video, my job is done.

In view of the above, I welcome more coaching.

Zakia Ghafoor

Wonderful guidelines, thanks

Annie Malupande

This is very helpful. Would love to continue even as I prepare for starting my masters next year.

KYARIKUNDA MOREEN

Thanks for the work done, the text was helpful to me

Ahsanullah Mangal

Bundle of thanks to you for the research proposal guide it was really good and useful if it is possible please send me the sample of research proposal

Derek Jansen

You’re most welcome. We don’t have any research proposals that we can share (the students own the intellectual property), but you might find our research proposal template useful: https://gradcoach.com/research-proposal-template/

Cheruiyot Moses Kipyegon

Cheruiyot Moses Kipyegon

Thanks alot. It was an eye opener that came timely enough before my imminent proposal defense. Thanks, again

agnelius

thank you very much your lesson is very interested may God be with you

Abubakar

I am an undergraduate student (First Degree) preparing to write my project,this video and explanation had shed more light to me thanks for your efforts keep it up.

Synthia Atieno

Very useful. I am grateful.

belina nambeya

this is a very a good guidance on research proposal, for sure i have learnt something

Wonderful guidelines for writing a research proposal, I am a student of m.phil( education), this guideline is suitable for me. Thanks

You’re welcome 🙂

Marjorie

Thank you, this was so helpful.

Amitash Degan

A really great and insightful video. It opened my eyes as to how to write a research paper. I would like to receive more guidance for writing my research paper from your esteemed faculty.

Glaudia Njuguna

Thank you, great insights

Thank you, great insights, thank you so much, feeling edified

Yebirgual

Wow thank you, great insights, thanks a lot

Roseline Soetan

Thank you. This is a great insight. I am a student preparing for a PhD program. I am requested to write my Research Proposal as part of what I am required to submit before my unconditional admission. I am grateful having listened to this video which will go a long way in helping me to actually choose a topic of interest and not just any topic as well as to narrow down the topic and be specific about it. I indeed need more of this especially as am trying to choose a topic suitable for a DBA am about embarking on. Thank you once more. The video is indeed helpful.

Rebecca

Have learnt a lot just at the right time. Thank you so much.

laramato ikayo

thank you very much ,because have learn a lot things concerning research proposal and be blessed u for your time that you providing to help us

Cheruiyot M Kipyegon

Hi. For my MSc medical education research, please evaluate this topic for me: Training Needs Assessment of Faculty in Medical Training Institutions in Kericho and Bomet Counties

Rebecca

I have really learnt a lot based on research proposal and it’s formulation

Arega Berlie

Thank you. I learn much from the proposal since it is applied

Siyanda

Your effort is much appreciated – you have good articulation.

You have good articulation.

Douglas Eliaba

I do applaud your simplified method of explaining the subject matter, which indeed has broaden my understanding of the subject matter. Definitely this would enable me writing a sellable research proposal.

Weluzani

This really helping

Roswitta

Great! I liked your tutoring on how to find a research topic and how to write a research proposal. Precise and concise. Thank you very much. Will certainly share this with my students. Research made simple indeed.

Alice Kuyayama

Thank you very much. I an now assist my students effectively.

Thank you very much. I can now assist my students effectively.

Abdurahman Bayoh

I need any research proposal

Silverline

Thank you for these videos. I will need chapter by chapter assistance in writing my MSc dissertation

Nosi

Very helpfull

faith wugah

the videos are very good and straight forward

Imam

thanks so much for this wonderful presentations, i really enjoyed it to the fullest wish to learn more from you

Bernie E. Balmeo

Thank you very much. I learned a lot from your lecture.

Ishmael kwame Appiah

I really enjoy the in-depth knowledge on research proposal you have given. me. You have indeed broaden my understanding and skills. Thank you

David Mweemba

interesting session this has equipped me with knowledge as i head for exams in an hour’s time, am sure i get A++

Andrea Eccleston

This article was most informative and easy to understand. I now have a good idea of how to write my research proposal.

Thank you very much.

Georgina Ngufan

Wow, this literature is very resourceful and interesting to read. I enjoyed it and I intend reading it every now then.

Charity

Thank you for the clarity

Mondika Solomon

Thank you. Very helpful.

BLY

Thank you very much for this essential piece. I need 1o1 coaching, unfortunately, your service is not available in my country. Anyways, a very important eye-opener. I really enjoyed it. A thumb up to Gradcoach

Md Moneruszzaman Kayes

What is JAM? Please explain.

Gentiana

Thank you so much for these videos. They are extremely helpful! God bless!

azeem kakar

very very wonderful…

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How to choose a research area

by Sushama Sivakumar and Christina Szalinski

Meetings help us connect with our peers and have insightful discussions. ASCB Photo.

Meetings help us connect with our peers and have insightful discussions. ASCB Photo.

Often in our scientific careers we are faced with the question of how to choose an area of research to pursue. As a graduate student picking a laboratory in which to do a PhD, a postdoctoral researcher wanting to pursue a career in science, or even as a principal investigator running a laboratory, we are sometimes required to focus or change direction to a new area of biological research. These decisions may be daunting as we have to devote a significant number of years in our chosen research field and it is important to be confident about the field before diving in with a lot of time and money.

Below are a few tips to help with picking a research area!

  • Read scientific literature: Published scientific literature gives a good idea about the research field and the big unanswered questions that are left to be studied. Scientific reviews on the topic are often useful to understand the big discoveries in the field and the anticipated future studies that will provide more information. It is also important to know if the research area has sufficient unanswered questions that will be interesting to funding agencies. Try to understand if the field has long-term potential. Scientists often work on certain research areas for decades and so thinking ahead about hypothetical questions and probable answers is one key to success.
  • Attend conferences/seminars: Attending both large and small meetings help us connect with our peers and have insightful discussions. Meetings also have poster sessions on various topics that may be useful to learn about the different research areas out there. Such meetings are also a good place to learn about technical details or new experimental strategies, which are often important when forging into a different field.
  • Brainstorm ideas with peers: When looking for a research laboratory it is important to find something that interests you. Working on an interesting question will help you go the extra mile and aid in making significant discoveries. Talk to your peers about their experiences and the pros/cons in their research field. Peers can also help review research grants and their experience and perspectives may provide useful feedback.
  • Define focused questions in the research area: Research areas can be very broad. It is easy to digress into multiple directions without focus. Before diving into the research, decide on a few hypotheses and preliminary experiments. Having more than one hypothesis will be important in case the primary hypothesis does not hold. Once experiments work and the project progresses, remember to stay focused. As part of your scientific growth, learn to think of tangential experiments that may be useful projects for other members of the laboratory.
  • Ensure the research is fundable: To continue doing research it is essential to have funding. Before delving into the research define the significance of the proposed research. It is always useful if discoveries can, in the future, cure or treat diseases. Significance also helps us explain our research to non­scientists and family, so that they can relate to the research and understand what we study. Public outreach will help get more funding and aid in conducting more research.

Ultimately research has to pique your interest and stimulate answers to tough questions. Good luck choosing a research laboratory or changing scientific directions!

Comment below if you have additional suggestions!

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Chapter 14: The Research Proposal

14.3 Components of a Research Proposal

Krathwohl (2005) suggests and describes a variety of components to include in a research proposal. The following sections – Introductions, Background and significance, Literature Review; Research design and methods, Preliminary suppositions and implications; and Conclusion present these components in a suggested template for you to follow in the preparation of your research proposal.

Introduction

The introduction sets the tone for what follows in your research proposal – treat it as the initial pitch of your idea. After reading the introduction your reader should:

  • understand what it is you want to do;
  • have a sense of your passion for the topic; and
  • be excited about the study’s possible outcomes.

As you begin writing your research proposal, it is helpful to think of the introduction as a narrative of what it is you want to do, written in one to three paragraphs. Within those one to three paragraphs, it is important to briefly answer the following questions:

  • What is the central research problem?
  • How is the topic of your research proposal related to the problem?
  • What methods will you utilize to analyze the research problem?
  • Why is it important to undertake this research? What is the significance of your proposed research? Why are the outcomes of your proposed research important? Whom are they important?

Note : You may be asked by your instructor to include an abstract with your research proposal. In such cases, an abstract should provide an overview of what it is you plan to study, your main research question, a brief explanation of your methods to answer the research question, and your expected findings. All of this information must be carefully crafted in 150 to 250 words. A word of advice is to save the writing of your abstract until the very end of your research proposal preparation. If you are asked to provide an abstract, you should include 5 to 7 key words that are of most relevance to your study. List these in order of relevance.

Background and significance

The purpose of this section is to explain the context of your proposal and to describe, in detail, why it is important to undertake this research. Assume that the person or people who will read your research proposal know nothing or very little about the research problem. While you do not need to include all knowledge you have learned about your topic in this section, it is important to ensure that you include the most relevant material that will help to explain the goals of your research.

While there are no hard and fast rules, you should attempt to address some or all of the following key points:

  • State the research problem and provide a more thorough explanation about the purpose of the study than what you stated in the introduction.
  • Present the rationale for the proposed research study. Clearly indicate why this research is worth doing. Answer the “so what?” question.
  • Describe the major issues or problems to be addressed by your research. Do not forget to explain how and in what ways your proposed research builds upon previous related research.
  • Explain how you plan to go about conducting your research.
  • Clearly identify the key or most relevant sources of research you intend to use and explain how they will contribute to your analysis of the topic.
  • Set the boundaries of your proposed research, in order to provide a clear focus. Where appropriate, state not only what you will study, but what will be excluded from your study.
  • Provide clear definitions of key concepts and terms. Since key concepts and terms often have numerous definitions, make sure you state which definition you will be utilizing in your research.

Literature review

This key component of the research proposal is the most time-consuming aspect in the preparation of your research proposal. As described in Chapter 5 , the literature review provides the background to your study and demonstrates the significance of the proposed research. Specifically, it is a review and synthesis of prior research that is related to the problem you are setting forth to investigate. Essentially, your goal in the literature review is to place your research study within the larger whole of what has been studied in the past, while demonstrating to your reader that your work is original, innovative, and adds to the larger whole.

As the literature review is information dense, it is essential that this section be intelligently structured to enable your reader to grasp the key arguments underpinning your study. However, this can be easier to state and harder to do, simply due to the fact there is usually a plethora of related research to sift through. Consequently, a good strategy for writing the literature review is to break the literature into conceptual categories or themes, rather than attempting to describe various groups of literature you reviewed. Chapter 5   describes a variety of methods to help you organize the themes.

Here are some suggestions on how to approach the writing of your literature review:

  • Think about what questions other researchers have asked, what methods they used, what they found, and what they recommended based upon their findings.
  • Do not be afraid to challenge previous related research findings and/or conclusions.
  • Assess what you believe to be missing from previous research and explain how your research fills in this gap and/or extends previous research.

It is important to note that a significant challenge related to undertaking a literature review is knowing when to stop. As such, it is important to know when you have uncovered the key conceptual categories underlying your research topic. Generally, when you start to see repetition in the conclusions or recommendations, you can have confidence that you have covered all of the significant conceptual categories in your literature review. However, it is also important to acknowledge that researchers often find themselves returning to the literature as they collect and analyze their data. For example, an unexpected finding may develop as you collect and/or analyze the data; in this case, it is important to take the time to step back and review the literature again, to ensure that no other researchers have found a similar finding. This may include looking to research outside your field.

This situation occurred with one of this textbook’s authors’ research related to community resilience. During the interviews, the researchers heard many participants discuss individual resilience factors and how they believed these individual factors helped make the community more resilient, overall. Sheppard and Williams (2016) had not discovered these individual factors in their original literature review on community and environmental resilience. However, when they returned to the literature to search for individual resilience factors, they discovered a small body of literature in the child and youth psychology field. Consequently, Sheppard and Williams had to go back and add a new section to their literature review on individual resilience factors. Interestingly, their research appeared to be the first research to link individual resilience factors with community resilience factors.

Research design and methods

The objective of this section of the research proposal is to convince the reader that your overall research design and methods of analysis will enable you to solve the research problem you have identified and also enable you to accurately and effectively interpret the results of your research. Consequently, it is critical that the research design and methods section is well-written, clear, and logically organized. This demonstrates to your reader that you know what you are going to do and how you are going to do it. Overall, you want to leave your reader feeling confident that you have what it takes to get this research study completed in a timely fashion.

Essentially, this section of the research proposal should be clearly tied to the specific objectives of your study; however, it is also important to draw upon and include examples from the literature review that relate to your design and intended methods. In other words, you must clearly demonstrate how your study utilizes and builds upon past studies, as it relates to the research design and intended methods. For example, what methods have been used by other researchers in similar studies?

While it is important to consider the methods that other researchers have employed, it is equally, if not more, important to consider what methods have not been but could be employed. Remember, the methods section is not simply a list of tasks to be undertaken. It is also an argument as to why and how the tasks you have outlined will help you investigate the research problem and answer your research question(s).

Tips for writing the research design and methods section:

Specify the methodological approaches you intend to employ to obtain information and the techniques you will use to analyze the data.

Specify the research operations you will undertake and the way you will interpret the results of those operations in relation to the research problem.

Go beyond stating what you hope to achieve through the methods you have chosen. State how you will actually implement the methods (i.e., coding interview text, running regression analysis, etc.).

Anticipate and acknowledge any potential barriers you may encounter when undertaking your research, and describe how you will address these barriers.

Explain where you believe you will find challenges related to data collection, including access to participants and information.

Preliminary suppositions and implications

The purpose of this section is to argue how you anticipate that your research will refine, revise, or extend existing knowledge in the area of your study. Depending upon the aims and objectives of your study, you should also discuss how your anticipated findings may impact future research. For example, is it possible that your research may lead to a new policy, theoretical understanding, or method for analyzing data? How might your study influence future studies? What might your study mean for future practitioners working in the field? Who or what might benefit from your study? How might your study contribute to social, economic or environmental issues? While it is important to think about and discuss possibilities such as these, it is equally important to be realistic in stating your anticipated findings. In other words, you do not want to delve into idle speculation. Rather, the purpose here is to reflect upon gaps in the current body of literature and to describe how you anticipate your research will begin to fill in some or all of those gaps.

The conclusion reiterates the importance and significance of your research proposal, and provides a brief summary of the entire proposed study. Essentially, this section should only be one or two paragraphs in length. Here is a potential outline for your conclusion:

Discuss why the study should be done. Specifically discuss how you expect your study will advance existing knowledge and how your study is unique.

Explain the specific purpose of the study and the research questions that the study will answer.

Explain why the research design and methods chosen for this study are appropriate, and why other designs and methods were not chosen.

State the potential implications you expect to emerge from your proposed study,

Provide a sense of how your study fits within the broader scholarship currently in existence, related to the research problem.

Citations and references

As with any scholarly research paper, you must cite the sources you used in composing your research proposal. In a research proposal, this can take two forms: a reference list or a bibliography. A reference list lists the literature you referenced in the body of your research proposal. All references in the reference list must appear in the body of the research proposal. Remember, it is not acceptable to say “as cited in …” As a researcher you must always go to the original source and check it for yourself. Many errors are made in referencing, even by top researchers, and so it is important not to perpetuate an error made by someone else. While this can be time consuming, it is the proper way to undertake a literature review.

In contrast, a bibliography , is a list of everything you used or cited in your research proposal, with additional citations to any key sources relevant to understanding the research problem. In other words, sources cited in your bibliography may not necessarily appear in the body of your research proposal. Make sure you check with your instructor to see which of the two you are expected to produce.

Overall, your list of citations should be a testament to the fact that you have done a sufficient level of preliminary research to ensure that your project will complement, but not duplicate, previous research efforts. For social sciences, the reference list or bibliography should be prepared in American Psychological Association (APA) referencing format. Usually, the reference list (or bibliography) is not included in the word count of the research proposal. Again, make sure you check with your instructor to confirm.

Research Methods for the Social Sciences: An Introduction by Valerie Sheppard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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  • What is a Research Proposal?
  • Qualitative Research
  • Quantitative Research
  • General Research Methods
  • IRB's and Research Ethics
  • Data Management and Analysis

Information on Writing a Research Proposal

From the Sage Encyclopedia of Educational Research, Measurement and Evaluation:

Research proposals are written to propose a research project and oftentimes request funding, or sponsorship, for that research. The research proposal is used to assess the originality and quality of ideas and the feasibility of a proposed project. The goal of the research proposal is to convince others that the investigator has (a) an important idea; (b) the skills, knowledge, and resources to carry out the project; and (c) a plan to implement the project on time and within budget. This entry discusses the process of developing a research proposal and the elements of an effective proposal.

For a graduate student, a research proposal may be required to begin the dissertation process. This serves to communicate the research focus to others, such as members of the student’s dissertation committee. It also indicates the investigator’s plan of action, including a level of thoroughness and sufficient detail to replicate the study. The research proposal could also be considered as a contract, once members of the committee agree to the execution of the project.

Requirements may include:  an abstract, introduction, literature review, method section, and conclusion.  A research proposal has to clearly and concisely identify the proposed research and its importance. The background literature should support the need for the research and the potential impact of the findings.

The method section proposes a comprehensive explanation of the research design, including subjects, timeline, and data analysis. Research questions should be identified as well as measurement instruments and methods to answer the research questions. Proposals for research involving human subjects identify how the investigators will protect participants throughout their research project. 

Proposals often require engaging in an external review either by an external evaluator or advisory  board consisting of expert consultants in the field. References are included to provide documentation about the supporting literature identified in the proposal. Appendixes and supplemental materials may also be included, following the sponsoring organization’s guidelines. As a general rule, educational research proposals follow the American Psychological Association formatting guidelines and publishing standards. If funding is being requested, it is important for the proposal to identify how the research will benefit the sponsoring organization and its constituents.

The success of a research proposal depends on both the quality of the project and its presentation. A proposal may have specific goals, but if they are neither realistic nor desirable, the probability of obtaining funding is reduced. Similar to manuscripts being considered for journal articles, reviewers evaluate each research proposal to identify strengths and criticisms based on a general framework and scoring rubric determined by the sponsoring organization. Research proposals that meet the scoring criteria are considered for funding opportunities. If a proposal does not meet the scoring criteria, revisions may be necessary before resubmitting the proposal to the same or a different sponsoring organization.

Common mistakes and pitfalls can often be avoided in research proposal writing through awareness and careful planning. In an effective research proposal, the research idea is clearly stated as a problem and there is an explanation of how the proposed research addresses a demonstrable gap in the current literature. In addition, an effective proposal is well structured, frames the research question(s) within sufficient context supported by the literature, and has a timeline that is appropriate to address the focus and scope of the research project. All requirements of the sponsoring organization, including required project elements and document formatting, need to be met within the research proposal. Finally, an effective proposal is engaging and demonstrates the researcher’s passion and commitment to the research addressed.

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  • What Is a Research Design | Types, Guide & Examples

What Is a Research Design | Types, Guide & Examples

Published on June 7, 2021 by Shona McCombes . Revised on November 20, 2023 by Pritha Bhandari.

A research design is a strategy for answering your   research question  using empirical data. Creating a research design means making decisions about:

  • Your overall research objectives and approach
  • Whether you’ll rely on primary research or secondary research
  • Your sampling methods or criteria for selecting subjects
  • Your data collection methods
  • The procedures you’ll follow to collect data
  • Your data analysis methods

A well-planned research design helps ensure that your methods match your research objectives and that you use the right kind of analysis for your data.

Table of contents

Step 1: consider your aims and approach, step 2: choose a type of research design, step 3: identify your population and sampling method, step 4: choose your data collection methods, step 5: plan your data collection procedures, step 6: decide on your data analysis strategies, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about research design.

Before you can start designing your research, you should already have a clear idea of the research question you want to investigate.

There are many different ways you could go about answering this question. Your research design choices should be driven by your aims and priorities—start by thinking carefully about what you want to achieve.

The first choice you need to make is whether you’ll take a qualitative or quantitative approach.

Qualitative research designs tend to be more flexible and inductive , allowing you to adjust your approach based on what you find throughout the research process.

Quantitative research designs tend to be more fixed and deductive , with variables and hypotheses clearly defined in advance of data collection.

It’s also possible to use a mixed-methods design that integrates aspects of both approaches. By combining qualitative and quantitative insights, you can gain a more complete picture of the problem you’re studying and strengthen the credibility of your conclusions.

Practical and ethical considerations when designing research

As well as scientific considerations, you need to think practically when designing your research. If your research involves people or animals, you also need to consider research ethics .

  • How much time do you have to collect data and write up the research?
  • Will you be able to gain access to the data you need (e.g., by travelling to a specific location or contacting specific people)?
  • Do you have the necessary research skills (e.g., statistical analysis or interview techniques)?
  • Will you need ethical approval ?

At each stage of the research design process, make sure that your choices are practically feasible.

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Within both qualitative and quantitative approaches, there are several types of research design to choose from. Each type provides a framework for the overall shape of your research.

Types of quantitative research designs

Quantitative designs can be split into four main types.

  • Experimental and   quasi-experimental designs allow you to test cause-and-effect relationships
  • Descriptive and correlational designs allow you to measure variables and describe relationships between them.

With descriptive and correlational designs, you can get a clear picture of characteristics, trends and relationships as they exist in the real world. However, you can’t draw conclusions about cause and effect (because correlation doesn’t imply causation ).

Experiments are the strongest way to test cause-and-effect relationships without the risk of other variables influencing the results. However, their controlled conditions may not always reflect how things work in the real world. They’re often also more difficult and expensive to implement.

Types of qualitative research designs

Qualitative designs are less strictly defined. This approach is about gaining a rich, detailed understanding of a specific context or phenomenon, and you can often be more creative and flexible in designing your research.

The table below shows some common types of qualitative design. They often have similar approaches in terms of data collection, but focus on different aspects when analyzing the data.

Your research design should clearly define who or what your research will focus on, and how you’ll go about choosing your participants or subjects.

In research, a population is the entire group that you want to draw conclusions about, while a sample is the smaller group of individuals you’ll actually collect data from.

Defining the population

A population can be made up of anything you want to study—plants, animals, organizations, texts, countries, etc. In the social sciences, it most often refers to a group of people.

For example, will you focus on people from a specific demographic, region or background? Are you interested in people with a certain job or medical condition, or users of a particular product?

The more precisely you define your population, the easier it will be to gather a representative sample.

  • Sampling methods

Even with a narrowly defined population, it’s rarely possible to collect data from every individual. Instead, you’ll collect data from a sample.

To select a sample, there are two main approaches: probability sampling and non-probability sampling . The sampling method you use affects how confidently you can generalize your results to the population as a whole.

Probability sampling is the most statistically valid option, but it’s often difficult to achieve unless you’re dealing with a very small and accessible population.

For practical reasons, many studies use non-probability sampling, but it’s important to be aware of the limitations and carefully consider potential biases. You should always make an effort to gather a sample that’s as representative as possible of the population.

Case selection in qualitative research

In some types of qualitative designs, sampling may not be relevant.

For example, in an ethnography or a case study , your aim is to deeply understand a specific context, not to generalize to a population. Instead of sampling, you may simply aim to collect as much data as possible about the context you are studying.

In these types of design, you still have to carefully consider your choice of case or community. You should have a clear rationale for why this particular case is suitable for answering your research question .

For example, you might choose a case study that reveals an unusual or neglected aspect of your research problem, or you might choose several very similar or very different cases in order to compare them.

Data collection methods are ways of directly measuring variables and gathering information. They allow you to gain first-hand knowledge and original insights into your research problem.

You can choose just one data collection method, or use several methods in the same study.

Survey methods

Surveys allow you to collect data about opinions, behaviors, experiences, and characteristics by asking people directly. There are two main survey methods to choose from: questionnaires and interviews .

Observation methods

Observational studies allow you to collect data unobtrusively, observing characteristics, behaviors or social interactions without relying on self-reporting.

Observations may be conducted in real time, taking notes as you observe, or you might make audiovisual recordings for later analysis. They can be qualitative or quantitative.

Other methods of data collection

There are many other ways you might collect data depending on your field and topic.

If you’re not sure which methods will work best for your research design, try reading some papers in your field to see what kinds of data collection methods they used.

Secondary data

If you don’t have the time or resources to collect data from the population you’re interested in, you can also choose to use secondary data that other researchers already collected—for example, datasets from government surveys or previous studies on your topic.

With this raw data, you can do your own analysis to answer new research questions that weren’t addressed by the original study.

Using secondary data can expand the scope of your research, as you may be able to access much larger and more varied samples than you could collect yourself.

However, it also means you don’t have any control over which variables to measure or how to measure them, so the conclusions you can draw may be limited.

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As well as deciding on your methods, you need to plan exactly how you’ll use these methods to collect data that’s consistent, accurate, and unbiased.

Planning systematic procedures is especially important in quantitative research, where you need to precisely define your variables and ensure your measurements are high in reliability and validity.

Operationalization

Some variables, like height or age, are easily measured. But often you’ll be dealing with more abstract concepts, like satisfaction, anxiety, or competence. Operationalization means turning these fuzzy ideas into measurable indicators.

If you’re using observations , which events or actions will you count?

If you’re using surveys , which questions will you ask and what range of responses will be offered?

You may also choose to use or adapt existing materials designed to measure the concept you’re interested in—for example, questionnaires or inventories whose reliability and validity has already been established.

Reliability and validity

Reliability means your results can be consistently reproduced, while validity means that you’re actually measuring the concept you’re interested in.

For valid and reliable results, your measurement materials should be thoroughly researched and carefully designed. Plan your procedures to make sure you carry out the same steps in the same way for each participant.

If you’re developing a new questionnaire or other instrument to measure a specific concept, running a pilot study allows you to check its validity and reliability in advance.

Sampling procedures

As well as choosing an appropriate sampling method , you need a concrete plan for how you’ll actually contact and recruit your selected sample.

That means making decisions about things like:

  • How many participants do you need for an adequate sample size?
  • What inclusion and exclusion criteria will you use to identify eligible participants?
  • How will you contact your sample—by mail, online, by phone, or in person?

If you’re using a probability sampling method , it’s important that everyone who is randomly selected actually participates in the study. How will you ensure a high response rate?

If you’re using a non-probability method , how will you avoid research bias and ensure a representative sample?

Data management

It’s also important to create a data management plan for organizing and storing your data.

Will you need to transcribe interviews or perform data entry for observations? You should anonymize and safeguard any sensitive data, and make sure it’s backed up regularly.

Keeping your data well-organized will save time when it comes to analyzing it. It can also help other researchers validate and add to your findings (high replicability ).

On its own, raw data can’t answer your research question. The last step of designing your research is planning how you’ll analyze the data.

Quantitative data analysis

In quantitative research, you’ll most likely use some form of statistical analysis . With statistics, you can summarize your sample data, make estimates, and test hypotheses.

Using descriptive statistics , you can summarize your sample data in terms of:

  • The distribution of the data (e.g., the frequency of each score on a test)
  • The central tendency of the data (e.g., the mean to describe the average score)
  • The variability of the data (e.g., the standard deviation to describe how spread out the scores are)

The specific calculations you can do depend on the level of measurement of your variables.

Using inferential statistics , you can:

  • Make estimates about the population based on your sample data.
  • Test hypotheses about a relationship between variables.

Regression and correlation tests look for associations between two or more variables, while comparison tests (such as t tests and ANOVAs ) look for differences in the outcomes of different groups.

Your choice of statistical test depends on various aspects of your research design, including the types of variables you’re dealing with and the distribution of your data.

Qualitative data analysis

In qualitative research, your data will usually be very dense with information and ideas. Instead of summing it up in numbers, you’ll need to comb through the data in detail, interpret its meanings, identify patterns, and extract the parts that are most relevant to your research question.

Two of the most common approaches to doing this are thematic analysis and discourse analysis .

There are many other ways of analyzing qualitative data depending on the aims of your research. To get a sense of potential approaches, try reading some qualitative research papers in your field.

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

  • Simple random sampling
  • Stratified sampling
  • Cluster sampling
  • Likert scales
  • Reproducibility

 Statistics

  • Null hypothesis
  • Statistical power
  • Probability distribution
  • Effect size
  • Poisson distribution

Research bias

  • Optimism bias
  • Cognitive bias
  • Implicit bias
  • Hawthorne effect
  • Anchoring bias
  • Explicit bias

A research design is a strategy for answering your   research question . It defines your overall approach and determines how you will collect and analyze data.

A well-planned research design helps ensure that your methods match your research aims, that you collect high-quality data, and that you use the right kind of analysis to answer your questions, utilizing credible sources . This allows you to draw valid , trustworthy conclusions.

Quantitative research designs can be divided into two main categories:

  • Correlational and descriptive designs are used to investigate characteristics, averages, trends, and associations between variables.
  • Experimental and quasi-experimental designs are used to test causal relationships .

Qualitative research designs tend to be more flexible. Common types of qualitative design include case study , ethnography , and grounded theory designs.

The priorities of a research design can vary depending on the field, but you usually have to specify:

  • Your research questions and/or hypotheses
  • Your overall approach (e.g., qualitative or quantitative )
  • The type of design you’re using (e.g., a survey , experiment , or case study )
  • Your data collection methods (e.g., questionnaires , observations)
  • Your data collection procedures (e.g., operationalization , timing and data management)
  • Your data analysis methods (e.g., statistical tests  or thematic analysis )

A sample is a subset of individuals from a larger population . Sampling means selecting the group that you will actually collect data from in your research. For example, if you are researching the opinions of students in your university, you could survey a sample of 100 students.

In statistics, sampling allows you to test a hypothesis about the characteristics of a population.

Operationalization means turning abstract conceptual ideas into measurable observations.

For example, the concept of social anxiety isn’t directly observable, but it can be operationally defined in terms of self-rating scores, behavioral avoidance of crowded places, or physical anxiety symptoms in social situations.

Before collecting data , it’s important to consider how you will operationalize the variables that you want to measure.

A research project is an academic, scientific, or professional undertaking to answer a research question . Research projects can take many forms, such as qualitative or quantitative , descriptive , longitudinal , experimental , or correlational . What kind of research approach you choose will depend on your topic.

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  • Generative AI and Writing
  • Acknowledgments

The goal of a research proposal is twofold: to present and justify the need to study a research problem and to present the practical ways in which the proposed study should be conducted. The design elements and procedures for conducting research are governed by standards of the predominant discipline in which the problem resides, therefore, the guidelines for research proposals are more exacting and less formal than a general project proposal. Research proposals contain extensive literature reviews. They must provide persuasive evidence that a need exists for the proposed study. In addition to providing a rationale, a proposal describes detailed methodology for conducting the research consistent with requirements of the professional or academic field and a statement on anticipated outcomes and benefits derived from the study's completion.

Krathwohl, David R. How to Prepare a Dissertation Proposal: Suggestions for Students in Education and the Social and Behavioral Sciences . Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005.

How to Approach Writing a Research Proposal

Your professor may assign the task of writing a research proposal for the following reasons:

  • Develop your skills in thinking about and designing a comprehensive research study;
  • Learn how to conduct a comprehensive review of the literature to determine that the research problem has not been adequately addressed or has been answered ineffectively and, in so doing, become better at locating pertinent scholarship related to your topic;
  • Improve your general research and writing skills;
  • Practice identifying the logical steps that must be taken to accomplish one's research goals;
  • Critically review, examine, and consider the use of different methods for gathering and analyzing data related to the research problem; and,
  • Nurture a sense of inquisitiveness within yourself and to help see yourself as an active participant in the process of conducting scholarly research.

A proposal should contain all the key elements involved in designing a completed research study, with sufficient information that allows readers to assess the validity and usefulness of your proposed study. The only elements missing from a research proposal are the findings of the study and your analysis of those findings. Finally, an effective proposal is judged on the quality of your writing and, therefore, it is important that your proposal is coherent, clear, and compelling.

Regardless of the research problem you are investigating and the methodology you choose, all research proposals must address the following questions:

  • What do you plan to accomplish? Be clear and succinct in defining the research problem and what it is you are proposing to investigate.
  • Why do you want to do the research? In addition to detailing your research design, you also must conduct a thorough review of the literature and provide convincing evidence that it is a topic worthy of in-depth study. A successful research proposal must answer the "So What?" question.
  • How are you going to conduct the research? Be sure that what you propose is doable. If you're having difficulty formulating a research problem to propose investigating, go here for strategies in developing a problem to study.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

  • Failure to be concise . A research proposal must be focused and not be "all over the map" or diverge into unrelated tangents without a clear sense of purpose.
  • Failure to cite landmark works in your literature review . Proposals should be grounded in foundational research that lays a foundation for understanding the development and scope of the the topic and its relevance.
  • Failure to delimit the contextual scope of your research [e.g., time, place, people, etc.]. As with any research paper, your proposed study must inform the reader how and in what ways the study will frame the problem.
  • Failure to develop a coherent and persuasive argument for the proposed research . This is critical. In many workplace settings, the research proposal is a formal document intended to argue for why a study should be funded.
  • Sloppy or imprecise writing, or poor grammar . Although a research proposal does not represent a completed research study, there is still an expectation that it is well-written and follows the style and rules of good academic writing.
  • Too much detail on minor issues, but not enough detail on major issues . Your proposal should focus on only a few key research questions in order to support the argument that the research needs to be conducted. Minor issues, even if valid, can be mentioned but they should not dominate the overall narrative.

Procter, Margaret. The Academic Proposal.  The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Sanford, Keith. Information for Students: Writing a Research Proposal. Baylor University; Wong, Paul T. P. How to Write a Research Proposal. International Network on Personal Meaning. Trinity Western University; Writing Academic Proposals: Conferences, Articles, and Books. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Writing a Research Proposal. University Library. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Structure and Writing Style

Beginning the Proposal Process

As with writing most college-level academic papers, research proposals are generally organized the same way throughout most social science disciplines. The text of proposals generally vary in length between ten and thirty-five pages, followed by the list of references. However, before you begin, read the assignment carefully and, if anything seems unclear, ask your professor whether there are any specific requirements for organizing and writing the proposal.

A good place to begin is to ask yourself a series of questions:

  • What do I want to study?
  • Why is the topic important?
  • How is it significant within the subject areas covered in my class?
  • What problems will it help solve?
  • How does it build upon [and hopefully go beyond] research already conducted on the topic?
  • What exactly should I plan to do, and can I get it done in the time available?

In general, a compelling research proposal should document your knowledge of the topic and demonstrate your enthusiasm for conducting the study. Approach it with the intention of leaving your readers feeling like, "Wow, that's an exciting idea and I can’t wait to see how it turns out!"

Most proposals should include the following sections:

I.  Introduction

In the real world of higher education, a research proposal is most often written by scholars seeking grant funding for a research project or it's the first step in getting approval to write a doctoral dissertation. Even if this is just a course assignment, treat your introduction as the initial pitch of an idea based on a thorough examination of the significance of a research problem. After reading the introduction, your readers should not only have an understanding of what you want to do, but they should also be able to gain a sense of your passion for the topic and to be excited about the study's possible outcomes. Note that most proposals do not include an abstract [summary] before the introduction.

Think about your introduction as a narrative written in two to four paragraphs that succinctly answers the following four questions :

  • What is the topic of study related to that research problem?
  • What methods should be used to analyze the research problem?
  • Answer the "So What?" question by explaining why this is important research, what is its significance, and why should someone reading the proposal care about the outcomes of the proposed study?

II.  Background and Significance

This is where you explain the scope and context of your proposal and describe in detail why it's important. It can be melded into your introduction or you can create a separate section to help with the organization and narrative flow of your proposal. Approach writing this section with the thought that you can’t assume your readers will know as much about the research problem as you do. Note that this section is not an essay going over everything you have learned about the topic; instead, you must choose what is most relevant in explaining the aims of your research.

To that end, while there are no prescribed rules for establishing the significance of your proposed study, you should attempt to address some or all of the following:

  • State the research problem and give a more detailed explanation about the purpose of the study than what you stated in the introduction. This is particularly important if the problem is complex or multifaceted .
  • Present the rationale of your proposed study and clearly indicate why it is worth doing; be sure to answer the "So What? question [i.e., why should anyone care?].
  • Describe the major issues or problems examined by your research. This can be in the form of questions to be addressed. Be sure to note how your proposed study builds on previous assumptions about the research problem.
  • Explain the methods you plan to use for conducting your research. Clearly identify the key sources you intend to use and explain how they will contribute to your analysis of the topic.
  • Describe the boundaries of your proposed research in order to provide a clear focus. Where appropriate, state not only what you plan to study, but what aspects of the research problem will be excluded from the study.
  • If necessary, provide definitions of key concepts, theories, or terms.

III.  Literature Review

Connected to the background and significance of your study is a section of your proposal devoted to a more deliberate review and synthesis of prior studies related to the research problem under investigation . The purpose here is to place your project within the larger whole of what is currently being explored, while at the same time, demonstrating to your readers that your work is original and innovative. Think about what questions other researchers have asked, what methodological approaches they have used, and what is your understanding of their findings and, when stated, their recommendations. Also pay attention to any suggestions for further research.

Since a literature review is information dense, it is crucial that this section is intelligently structured to enable a reader to grasp the key arguments underpinning your proposed study in relation to the arguments put forth by other researchers. A good strategy is to break the literature into "conceptual categories" [themes] rather than systematically or chronologically describing groups of materials one at a time. Note that conceptual categories generally reveal themselves after you have read most of the pertinent literature on your topic so adding new categories is an on-going process of discovery as you review more studies. How do you know you've covered the key conceptual categories underlying the research literature? Generally, you can have confidence that all of the significant conceptual categories have been identified if you start to see repetition in the conclusions or recommendations that are being made.

NOTE: Do not shy away from challenging the conclusions made in prior research as a basis for supporting the need for your proposal. Assess what you believe is missing and state how previous research has failed to adequately examine the issue that your study addresses. Highlighting the problematic conclusions strengthens your proposal. For more information on writing literature reviews, GO HERE .

To help frame your proposal's review of prior research, consider the "five C’s" of writing a literature review:

  • Cite , so as to keep the primary focus on the literature pertinent to your research problem.
  • Compare the various arguments, theories, methodologies, and findings expressed in the literature: what do the authors agree on? Who applies similar approaches to analyzing the research problem?
  • Contrast the various arguments, themes, methodologies, approaches, and controversies expressed in the literature: describe what are the major areas of disagreement, controversy, or debate among scholars?
  • Critique the literature: Which arguments are more persuasive, and why? Which approaches, findings, and methodologies seem most reliable, valid, or appropriate, and why? Pay attention to the verbs you use to describe what an author says/does [e.g., asserts, demonstrates, argues, etc.].
  • Connect the literature to your own area of research and investigation: how does your own work draw upon, depart from, synthesize, or add a new perspective to what has been said in the literature?

IV.  Research Design and Methods

This section must be well-written and logically organized because you are not actually doing the research, yet, your reader must have confidence that you have a plan worth pursuing . The reader will never have a study outcome from which to evaluate whether your methodological choices were the correct ones. Thus, the objective here is to convince the reader that your overall research design and proposed methods of analysis will correctly address the problem and that the methods will provide the means to effectively interpret the potential results. Your design and methods should be unmistakably tied to the specific aims of your study.

Describe the overall research design by building upon and drawing examples from your review of the literature. Consider not only methods that other researchers have used, but methods of data gathering that have not been used but perhaps could be. Be specific about the methodological approaches you plan to undertake to obtain information, the techniques you would use to analyze the data, and the tests of external validity to which you commit yourself [i.e., the trustworthiness by which you can generalize from your study to other people, places, events, and/or periods of time].

When describing the methods you will use, be sure to cover the following:

  • Specify the research process you will undertake and the way you will interpret the results obtained in relation to the research problem. Don't just describe what you intend to achieve from applying the methods you choose, but state how you will spend your time while applying these methods [e.g., coding text from interviews to find statements about the need to change school curriculum; running a regression to determine if there is a relationship between campaign advertising on social media sites and election outcomes in Europe ].
  • Keep in mind that the methodology is not just a list of tasks; it is a deliberate argument as to why techniques for gathering information add up to the best way to investigate the research problem. This is an important point because the mere listing of tasks to be performed does not demonstrate that, collectively, they effectively address the research problem. Be sure you clearly explain this.
  • Anticipate and acknowledge any potential barriers and pitfalls in carrying out your research design and explain how you plan to address them. No method applied to research in the social and behavioral sciences is perfect, so you need to describe where you believe challenges may exist in obtaining data or accessing information. It's always better to acknowledge this than to have it brought up by your professor!

V.  Preliminary Suppositions and Implications

Just because you don't have to actually conduct the study and analyze the results, doesn't mean you can skip talking about the analytical process and potential implications . The purpose of this section is to argue how and in what ways you believe your research will refine, revise, or extend existing knowledge in the subject area under investigation. Depending on the aims and objectives of your study, describe how the anticipated results will impact future scholarly research, theory, practice, forms of interventions, or policy making. Note that such discussions may have either substantive [a potential new policy], theoretical [a potential new understanding], or methodological [a potential new way of analyzing] significance.   When thinking about the potential implications of your study, ask the following questions:

  • What might the results mean in regards to challenging the theoretical framework and underlying assumptions that support the study?
  • What suggestions for subsequent research could arise from the potential outcomes of the study?
  • What will the results mean to practitioners in the natural settings of their workplace, organization, or community?
  • Will the results influence programs, methods, and/or forms of intervention?
  • How might the results contribute to the solution of social, economic, or other types of problems?
  • Will the results influence policy decisions?
  • In what way do individuals or groups benefit should your study be pursued?
  • What will be improved or changed as a result of the proposed research?
  • How will the results of the study be implemented and what innovations or transformative insights could emerge from the process of implementation?

NOTE:   This section should not delve into idle speculation, opinion, or be formulated on the basis of unclear evidence . The purpose is to reflect upon gaps or understudied areas of the current literature and describe how your proposed research contributes to a new understanding of the research problem should the study be implemented as designed.

ANOTHER NOTE : This section is also where you describe any potential limitations to your proposed study. While it is impossible to highlight all potential limitations because the study has yet to be conducted, you still must tell the reader where and in what form impediments may arise and how you plan to address them.

VI.  Conclusion

The conclusion reiterates the importance or significance of your proposal and provides a brief summary of the entire study . This section should be only one or two paragraphs long, emphasizing why the research problem is worth investigating, why your research study is unique, and how it should advance existing knowledge.

Someone reading this section should come away with an understanding of:

  • Why the study should be done;
  • The specific purpose of the study and the research questions it attempts to answer;
  • The decision for why the research design and methods used where chosen over other options;
  • The potential implications emerging from your proposed study of the research problem; and
  • A sense of how your study fits within the broader scholarship about the research problem.

VII.  Citations

As with any scholarly research paper, you must cite the sources you used . In a standard research proposal, this section can take two forms, so consult with your professor about which one is preferred.

  • References -- a list of only the sources you actually used in creating your proposal.
  • Bibliography -- a list of everything you used in creating your proposal, along with additional citations to any key sources relevant to understanding the research problem.

In either case, this section should testify to the fact that you did enough preparatory work to ensure the project will complement and not just duplicate the efforts of other researchers. It demonstrates to the reader that you have a thorough understanding of prior research on the topic.

Most proposal formats have you start a new page and use the heading "References" or "Bibliography" centered at the top of the page. Cited works should always use a standard format that follows the writing style advised by the discipline of your course [e.g., education=APA; history=Chicago] or that is preferred by your professor. This section normally does not count towards the total page length of your research proposal.

Develop a Research Proposal: Writing the Proposal. Office of Library Information Services. Baltimore County Public Schools; Heath, M. Teresa Pereira and Caroline Tynan. “Crafting a Research Proposal.” The Marketing Review 10 (Summer 2010): 147-168; Jones, Mark. “Writing a Research Proposal.” In MasterClass in Geography Education: Transforming Teaching and Learning . Graham Butt, editor. (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), pp. 113-127; Juni, Muhamad Hanafiah. “Writing a Research Proposal.” International Journal of Public Health and Clinical Sciences 1 (September/October 2014): 229-240; Krathwohl, David R. How to Prepare a Dissertation Proposal: Suggestions for Students in Education and the Social and Behavioral Sciences . Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005; Procter, Margaret. The Academic Proposal. The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Punch, Keith and Wayne McGowan. "Developing and Writing a Research Proposal." In From Postgraduate to Social Scientist: A Guide to Key Skills . Nigel Gilbert, ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006), 59-81; Wong, Paul T. P. How to Write a Research Proposal. International Network on Personal Meaning. Trinity Western University; Writing Academic Proposals: Conferences , Articles, and Books. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Writing a Research Proposal. University Library. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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/images/cornell/logo35pt_cornell_white.svg" alt="proposed research area meaning"> Cornell University --> Graduate School

Research statement, what is a research statement.

The research statement (or statement of research interests) is a common component of academic job applications. It is a summary of your research accomplishments, current work, and future direction and potential of your work.

The statement can discuss specific issues such as:

  • funding history and potential
  • requirements for laboratory equipment and space and other resources
  • potential research and industrial collaborations
  • how your research contributes to your field
  • future direction of your research

The research statement should be technical, but should be intelligible to all members of the department, including those outside your subdiscipline. So keep the “big picture” in mind. The strongest research statements present a readable, compelling, and realistic research agenda that fits well with the needs, facilities, and goals of the department.

Research statements can be weakened by:

  • overly ambitious proposals
  • lack of clear direction
  • lack of big-picture focus
  • inadequate attention to the needs and facilities of the department or position

Why a Research Statement?

  • It conveys to search committees the pieces of your professional identity and charts the course of your scholarly journey.
  • It communicates a sense that your research will follow logically from what you have done and that it will be different, important, and innovative.
  • It gives a context for your research interests—Why does your research matter? The so what?
  • It combines your achievements and current work with the proposal for upcoming research.
  • areas of specialty and expertise
  • potential to get funding
  • academic strengths and abilities
  • compatibility with the department or school
  • ability to think and communicate like a serious scholar and/or scientist

Formatting of Research Statements

The goal of the research statement is to introduce yourself to a search committee, which will probably contain scientists both in and outside your field, and get them excited about your research. To encourage people to read it:

  • make it one or two pages, three at most
  • use informative section headings and subheadings
  • use bullets
  • use an easily readable font size
  • make the margins a reasonable size

Organization of Research Statements

Think of the overarching theme guiding your main research subject area. Write an essay that lays out:

  • The main theme(s) and why it is important and what specific skills you use to attack the problem.
  • A few specific examples of problems you have already solved with success to build credibility and inform people outside your field about what you do.
  • A discussion of the future direction of your research. This section should be really exciting to people both in and outside your field. Don’t sell yourself short; if you think your research could lead to answers for big important questions, say so!
  • A final paragraph that gives a good overall impression of your research.

Writing Research Statements

  • Avoid jargon. Make sure that you describe your research in language that many people outside your specific subject area can understand. Ask people both in and outside your field to read it before you send your application. A search committee won’t get excited about something they can’t understand.
  • Write as clearly, concisely, and concretely as you can.
  • Keep it at a summary level; give more detail in the job talk.
  • Ask others to proofread it. Be sure there are no spelling errors.
  • Convince the search committee not only that you are knowledgeable, but that you are the right person to carry out the research.
  • Include information that sets you apart (e.g., publication in  Science, Nature,  or a prestigious journal in your field).
  • What excites you about your research? Sound fresh.
  • Include preliminary results and how to build on results.
  • Point out how current faculty may become future partners.
  • Acknowledge the work of others.
  • Use language that shows you are an independent researcher.
  • BUT focus on your research work, not yourself.
  • Include potential funding partners and industrial collaborations. Be creative!
  • Provide a summary of your research.
  • Put in background material to give the context/relevance/significance of your research.
  • List major findings, outcomes, and implications.
  • Describe both current and planned (future) research.
  • Communicate a sense that your research will follow logically from what you have done and that it will be unique, significant, and innovative (and easy to fund).

Describe Your Future Goals or Research Plans

  • Major problem(s) you want to focus on in your research.
  • The problem’s relevance and significance to the field.
  • Your specific goals for the next three to five years, including potential impact and outcomes.
  • If you know what a particular agency funds, you can name the agency and briefly outline a proposal.
  • Give broad enough goals so that if one area doesn’t get funded, you can pursue other research goals and funding.

Identify Potential Funding Sources

  • Almost every institution wants to know whether you’ll be able to get external funding for research.
  • Try to provide some possible sources of funding for the research, such as NIH, NSF, foundations, private agencies.
  • Mention past funding, if appropriate.

Be Realistic

There is a delicate balance between a realistic research statement where you promise to work on problems you really think you can solve and over-reaching or dabbling in too many subject areas. Select an over-arching theme for your research statement and leave miscellaneous ideas or projects out. Everyone knows that you will work on more than what you mention in this statement.

Consider Also Preparing a Longer Version

  • A longer version (five–15 pages) can be brought to your interview. (Check with your advisor to see if this is necessary.)
  • You may be asked to describe research plans and budget in detail at the campus interview. Be prepared.
  • Include laboratory needs (how much budget you need for equipment, how many grad assistants, etc.) to start up the research.

Samples of Research Statements

To find sample research statements with content specific to your discipline, search on the internet for your discipline + “Research Statement.”

  • University of Pennsylvania Sample Research Statement
  • Advice on writing a Research Statement (Plan) from the journal  Science

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A research proposal is a concise and coherent summary of your proposed research.

Your research proposal should set out the central issues or questions that you intend to address. It should outline the general area of study within which your research falls, referring to the current state of knowledge and any recent debates on the topic, as well as demonstrate the originality of your proposed research.

The proposal also gives you an opportunity to show that you have the aptitude for postgraduate level research by demonstrating that you have the ability to communicate complex ideas clearly, concisely and critically.

In addition, the proposal also helps us to match your research interest with an appropriate supervisor. The proposal is a key part of your application, on which potential supervisors will decide if your research is something they can support. 

Read our advice on research proposal preparation

Additional guidance for applicants from the USA

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  • Indian J Anaesth
  • v.60(9); 2016 Sep

How to write a research proposal?

Department of Anaesthesiology, Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Devika Rani Duggappa

Writing the proposal of a research work in the present era is a challenging task due to the constantly evolving trends in the qualitative research design and the need to incorporate medical advances into the methodology. The proposal is a detailed plan or ‘blueprint’ for the intended study, and once it is completed, the research project should flow smoothly. Even today, many of the proposals at post-graduate evaluation committees and application proposals for funding are substandard. A search was conducted with keywords such as research proposal, writing proposal and qualitative using search engines, namely, PubMed and Google Scholar, and an attempt has been made to provide broad guidelines for writing a scientifically appropriate research proposal.

INTRODUCTION

A clean, well-thought-out proposal forms the backbone for the research itself and hence becomes the most important step in the process of conduct of research.[ 1 ] The objective of preparing a research proposal would be to obtain approvals from various committees including ethics committee [details under ‘Research methodology II’ section [ Table 1 ] in this issue of IJA) and to request for grants. However, there are very few universally accepted guidelines for preparation of a good quality research proposal. A search was performed with keywords such as research proposal, funding, qualitative and writing proposals using search engines, namely, PubMed, Google Scholar and Scopus.

Five ‘C’s while writing a literature review

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Object name is IJA-60-631-g001.jpg

BASIC REQUIREMENTS OF A RESEARCH PROPOSAL

A proposal needs to show how your work fits into what is already known about the topic and what new paradigm will it add to the literature, while specifying the question that the research will answer, establishing its significance, and the implications of the answer.[ 2 ] The proposal must be capable of convincing the evaluation committee about the credibility, achievability, practicality and reproducibility (repeatability) of the research design.[ 3 ] Four categories of audience with different expectations may be present in the evaluation committees, namely academic colleagues, policy-makers, practitioners and lay audiences who evaluate the research proposal. Tips for preparation of a good research proposal include; ‘be practical, be persuasive, make broader links, aim for crystal clarity and plan before you write’. A researcher must be balanced, with a realistic understanding of what can be achieved. Being persuasive implies that researcher must be able to convince other researchers, research funding agencies, educational institutions and supervisors that the research is worth getting approval. The aim of the researcher should be clearly stated in simple language that describes the research in a way that non-specialists can comprehend, without use of jargons. The proposal must not only demonstrate that it is based on an intelligent understanding of the existing literature but also show that the writer has thought about the time needed to conduct each stage of the research.[ 4 , 5 ]

CONTENTS OF A RESEARCH PROPOSAL

The contents or formats of a research proposal vary depending on the requirements of evaluation committee and are generally provided by the evaluation committee or the institution.

In general, a cover page should contain the (i) title of the proposal, (ii) name and affiliation of the researcher (principal investigator) and co-investigators, (iii) institutional affiliation (degree of the investigator and the name of institution where the study will be performed), details of contact such as phone numbers, E-mail id's and lines for signatures of investigators.

The main contents of the proposal may be presented under the following headings: (i) introduction, (ii) review of literature, (iii) aims and objectives, (iv) research design and methods, (v) ethical considerations, (vi) budget, (vii) appendices and (viii) citations.[ 4 ]

It is also sometimes termed as ‘need for study’ or ‘abstract’. Introduction is an initial pitch of an idea; it sets the scene and puts the research in context.[ 6 ] The introduction should be designed to create interest in the reader about the topic and proposal. It should convey to the reader, what you want to do, what necessitates the study and your passion for the topic.[ 7 ] Some questions that can be used to assess the significance of the study are: (i) Who has an interest in the domain of inquiry? (ii) What do we already know about the topic? (iii) What has not been answered adequately in previous research and practice? (iv) How will this research add to knowledge, practice and policy in this area? Some of the evaluation committees, expect the last two questions, elaborated under a separate heading of ‘background and significance’.[ 8 ] Introduction should also contain the hypothesis behind the research design. If hypothesis cannot be constructed, the line of inquiry to be used in the research must be indicated.

Review of literature

It refers to all sources of scientific evidence pertaining to the topic in interest. In the present era of digitalisation and easy accessibility, there is an enormous amount of relevant data available, making it a challenge for the researcher to include all of it in his/her review.[ 9 ] It is crucial to structure this section intelligently so that the reader can grasp the argument related to your study in relation to that of other researchers, while still demonstrating to your readers that your work is original and innovative. It is preferable to summarise each article in a paragraph, highlighting the details pertinent to the topic of interest. The progression of review can move from the more general to the more focused studies, or a historical progression can be used to develop the story, without making it exhaustive.[ 1 ] Literature should include supporting data, disagreements and controversies. Five ‘C's may be kept in mind while writing a literature review[ 10 ] [ Table 1 ].

Aims and objectives

The research purpose (or goal or aim) gives a broad indication of what the researcher wishes to achieve in the research. The hypothesis to be tested can be the aim of the study. The objectives related to parameters or tools used to achieve the aim are generally categorised as primary and secondary objectives.

Research design and method

The objective here is to convince the reader that the overall research design and methods of analysis will correctly address the research problem and to impress upon the reader that the methodology/sources chosen are appropriate for the specific topic. It should be unmistakably tied to the specific aims of your study.

In this section, the methods and sources used to conduct the research must be discussed, including specific references to sites, databases, key texts or authors that will be indispensable to the project. There should be specific mention about the methodological approaches to be undertaken to gather information, about the techniques to be used to analyse it and about the tests of external validity to which researcher is committed.[ 10 , 11 ]

The components of this section include the following:[ 4 ]

Population and sample

Population refers to all the elements (individuals, objects or substances) that meet certain criteria for inclusion in a given universe,[ 12 ] and sample refers to subset of population which meets the inclusion criteria for enrolment into the study. The inclusion and exclusion criteria should be clearly defined. The details pertaining to sample size are discussed in the article “Sample size calculation: Basic priniciples” published in this issue of IJA.

Data collection

The researcher is expected to give a detailed account of the methodology adopted for collection of data, which include the time frame required for the research. The methodology should be tested for its validity and ensure that, in pursuit of achieving the results, the participant's life is not jeopardised. The author should anticipate and acknowledge any potential barrier and pitfall in carrying out the research design and explain plans to address them, thereby avoiding lacunae due to incomplete data collection. If the researcher is planning to acquire data through interviews or questionnaires, copy of the questions used for the same should be attached as an annexure with the proposal.

Rigor (soundness of the research)

This addresses the strength of the research with respect to its neutrality, consistency and applicability. Rigor must be reflected throughout the proposal.

It refers to the robustness of a research method against bias. The author should convey the measures taken to avoid bias, viz. blinding and randomisation, in an elaborate way, thus ensuring that the result obtained from the adopted method is purely as chance and not influenced by other confounding variables.

Consistency

Consistency considers whether the findings will be consistent if the inquiry was replicated with the same participants and in a similar context. This can be achieved by adopting standard and universally accepted methods and scales.

Applicability

Applicability refers to the degree to which the findings can be applied to different contexts and groups.[ 13 ]

Data analysis

This section deals with the reduction and reconstruction of data and its analysis including sample size calculation. The researcher is expected to explain the steps adopted for coding and sorting the data obtained. Various tests to be used to analyse the data for its robustness, significance should be clearly stated. Author should also mention the names of statistician and suitable software which will be used in due course of data analysis and their contribution to data analysis and sample calculation.[ 9 ]

Ethical considerations

Medical research introduces special moral and ethical problems that are not usually encountered by other researchers during data collection, and hence, the researcher should take special care in ensuring that ethical standards are met. Ethical considerations refer to the protection of the participants' rights (right to self-determination, right to privacy, right to autonomy and confidentiality, right to fair treatment and right to protection from discomfort and harm), obtaining informed consent and the institutional review process (ethical approval). The researcher needs to provide adequate information on each of these aspects.

Informed consent needs to be obtained from the participants (details discussed in further chapters), as well as the research site and the relevant authorities.

When the researcher prepares a research budget, he/she should predict and cost all aspects of the research and then add an additional allowance for unpredictable disasters, delays and rising costs. All items in the budget should be justified.

Appendices are documents that support the proposal and application. The appendices will be specific for each proposal but documents that are usually required include informed consent form, supporting documents, questionnaires, measurement tools and patient information of the study in layman's language.

As with any scholarly research paper, you must cite the sources you used in composing your proposal. Although the words ‘references and bibliography’ are different, they are used interchangeably. It refers to all references cited in the research proposal.

Successful, qualitative research proposals should communicate the researcher's knowledge of the field and method and convey the emergent nature of the qualitative design. The proposal should follow a discernible logic from the introduction to presentation of the appendices.

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Conflicts of interest.

There are no conflicts of interest.

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Research Techniques pp 35–54 Cite as

Developing a Research Plan

  • Habeeb Adewale Ajimotokan 2  
  • First Online: 20 September 2022

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The objectives of this chapter are to

Describe the terms research proposal and research protocol;

Specify and discuss the elements of research proposal;

Specify the goals of research protocol;

Outline preferable sequence for the different section headings of a research protocol and discuss their contents; and

Discuss the basic engineering research tools and techniques.

  • Research proposal
  • Research project timeline
  • Research project budget
  • Research protocol
  • Research tools and techniques

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5StarEssays. (2020). Writing a research proposal—Outline, format and examples. In Complete guide to writing a research paper . Retrieved from https://www.5staressays.com/blog/writing-research-proposal

Walliman, N. (2011). Research methods: The basics . Routledge—Taylor and Francis Group.

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Thiel, D. V. (2014). Research methods for engineers . University Printing House, University of Cambridge.

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Mouton, J. (2001). How to succeed in your master’s and doctoral studies. Van Schaik.

Lues, L., & Lategan, L. O. K. (2006). RE: Search ABC (1st ed.). Sun Press.

Bak, N. (2004). Completing your thesis: A practical guide . Van Schaik.

Sadiku, M. N. O. (2000). Numerical techniques in electromagnetics . CRC Press.

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A research proposal is a type of text which maps out a proposed central research problem or question and a suggested approach to its investigation.

In many universities, including RMIT, the research proposal is a formal requirement. It is central to achieving your first milestone: your Confirmation of Candidature. The research proposal is useful for both you and the University: it gives you the opportunity to get valuable feedback about your intended research aims, objectives and design. It also confirms that your proposed research is worth doing, which puts you on track for a successful candidature supported by your School and the University. 

Although there may be specific School or disciplinary requirements that you need to be aware of, all research proposals address the following central themes:

  • what   you propose to research
  • why   the topic needs to be researched
  • how  you plan to research it.

Purpose and audience

Before venturing into writing a research purposal, it is important to think about the  purpose  and  audience of this type of text.  Spend a moment or two to reflect on what these might be.

What do you think is the purpose of your research proposal and who is your audience?

The purpose of your research proposal is:

1. To allow experienced researchers (your supervisors and their peers) to assess whether

  • the research question or problem is viable (that is, answers or solutions are possible)
  • the research is worth doing in terms of its contribution to the field of study and benefits to stakeholders
  • the scope is appropriate to the degree (Masters or PhD)
  • you’ve understood the relevant key literature and identified the gap for your research
  • you’ve chosen an appropriate methodological approach.

2. To help you clarify and focus on what you want to do, why you want to do it, and how you’ll do it. The research proposal helps you position yourself as a researcher in your field. It will also allow you to:

  • systematically think through your proposed research, argue for its significance and identify the scope
  • show a critical understanding of the scholarly field around your proposed research
  • show the gap in the literature that your research will address
  • justify your proposed research design
  • identify all tasks that need to be done through a realistic timetable
  • anticipate potential problems
  • hone organisational skills that you will need for your research
  • become familiar with relevant search engines and databases
  • develop skills in research writing.

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The main audience for your research proposal is your reviewers. Universities usually assign a panel of reviewers to which you need to submit your research proposal. Often this is within the first year of study for PhD candidates, and within the first six months for Masters by Research candidates.

Your reviewers may have a strong disciplinary understanding of the area of your proposed research, but depending on your specialisation, they may not. It is therefore important to create a clear context, rationale and framework for your proposed research. Limit jargon and specialist terminology so that non-specialists can comprehend it. You need to convince the reviewers that your proposed research is worth doing and that you will be able to effectively ‘interrogate’ your research questions or address the research problems through your chosen research design.

Your review panel will expect you to demonstrate:

  • a clearly defined and feasible research project
  • a clearly explained rationale for your research
  • evidence that your research will make an original contribution through a critical review of the literature
  • written skills appropriate to graduate research study.

Research and Writing Skills for Academic and Graduate Researchers Copyright © 2022 by RMIT University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The structure and content of a research proposal can vary depending upon the discipline, purpose, and target audience. For example, a graduate thesis proposal and a Tri-Council grant proposal will have different guidelines for length and required sections.

Before you begin writing, be sure to talk with your supervisor to gain a clear understanding of their specific expectations, and continually check in with them throughout the writing process.

  • Organizing your Research Proposal - Template This 6-page fillable pdf handout provides writers with a template to begin outlining sections of their own research proposal.

This template can be used in conjunction with the sections below.

What are some keywords for your research?

  • Should give a clear indication of your proposed research approach or key question
  • Should be concise and descriptive

Writing Tip: When constructing your title, think about the search terms you would use to find this research online.

Important: Write this section last, after you have completed drafting the proposal. Or if you are required to draft a preliminary abstract, then remember to rewrite the abstract after you have completed drafting the entire proposal because some information may need to be revised.

The abstract should provide a brief overview of the entire proposal. Briefly state the research question (or hypothesis, thesis statement, aim), the problem and rationale, the proposed methods, and the proposed analyses or expected results.

The purpose of the introduction is to communicate the information that is essential for the reader to understand the overall area of concern. Be explicit. Outline why this research must be conducted and try to do so without unnecessary jargon or overwhelming detail.

Start with a short statement that establishes the overall area of concern. Avoid too much detail. Get to the point. Communicate only information essential for the reader’s comprehension. Avoid unnecessary technical language and jargon. Answer the question, "What is this study about?"

Questions to consider:

  • What is your topic area, and what is the problem within that topic?
  • What does the relevant literature say about the problem? – Be selective and focused.
  • What are the critical, theoretical, or methodological issues directly related to the problem to be investigated?
  • What are the reasons for undertaking the research? – This is the answer to the "so what?" question.

The following sections - listed as part of the introduction - are intended as a guide for drafting a research proposal. Most introductions include these following components. However, be sure to clarify with your advisor or carefully review the grant guidelines to be sure to comply with the proposal genre expectations of your specific discipline.

Broad topic and focus of study

  • Briefly describe the broad topic of your research area, and then clearly explain the narrowed focus of your specific study.

Importance of topic/field of study

  • Position your project in a current important research area.
  • Address the “So what?” question directly, and as soon as possible.
  • Provide context for the reader to understand the problem you are about to pose or research question you are asking.

Problem within field of study

  • Identify the problem that you are investigating in your study.

Gap(s) in knowledge

  • Identify something missing from the literature.
  • What is unknown in this specific research area? This is what your study will explore and where you will attempt to provide new insights.
  • Is there a reason this gap exists? Where does the current literature agree and where does it disagree? How you fill this gap (at least partially) with your research?
  • Convince your reader that the problem has been appropriately defined and that the study is worth doing. Be explicit and detailed.
  • Develop your argument logically and provide evidence.
  • Explain why you are the person to do this project. Summarize any previous work or studies you may have undertaken in this field or research area.

Research question or hypothesis

  • Foreshadow outcomes of your research. What is the question you are hoping to answer? What are the specific hypotheses to be tested and/or issues to be explored?
  • Use questions when research is exploratory.
  • Use declarative statements when existing knowledge enables predictions.
  • List any secondary or subsidiary questions if applicable.

Purpose statement

  • State the purpose of your research. Be succinct and simple.
  • Why do you want to do this study?
  • What is your research trying to find out?

Goals for proposed research

  • Write a brief, broad statement of what you hope to accomplish and why (e.g., Improve something… Understand something… ). Are there specific measurable outcomes that you will accomplish in your study? 
  • You will have a chance to go into greater detail in the research question and methodology sections.

Background or context (or literature review)

  • What does the existing research on this topic say?
  • Briefly state what you already know and introduce literature most relevant to your research.
  • Indicate main research findings, methodologies, and interpretations from previous related studies.
  • Discuss how your question or hypothesis relates to what is already known.
  • Position your research within the field’s developing body of knowledge.
  • Explain and support your choice of methodology or theoretical framework.

The research question is the question you are hoping to answer in your research project. It is important to know how you should write your research question into your proposal. Some proposals include

  • a research question, written as a question
  • or, a hypothesis as a potential response to the research question
  • or, a thesis statement as an argument that answers the research question
  • or, aims and objects as accomplishment or operational statements

Foreshadow the outcomes of your research. Are you trying to improve something? Understand something? Advocate for a social responsibility?

Research question

What is the question you are hoping to answer?

Subsidiary questions (if applicable)

  • Does your major research question hinge on a few smaller questions? Which will you address first?

Your hypothesis should provide one (of many) possible answers to your research question.

  • What are the specific hypotheses to be tested and/or issues to be explored?
  • What results do you anticipate for this experiment?

Usually a hypothesis is written to show the relationship between the independent and dependent variables. Your hypothesis must be

  • An expected relationship between variables
  • Falsifiable
  • Consistent with the existing body of knowledge

Thesis statement

Your thesis statement is a clear, concise statement of what you are arguing and why it is important. For more support on writing thesis statements, check out these following resources:

  • 5 Types of Thesis Statements - Learn about five different types of thesis statements to help you choose the best type for your research.
  • Templates for Writing Thesis Statements - This template provides a two-step guide for writing thesis statements.
  • 5 Questions to Strengthen Your Thesis Statement - Follow these five steps to strengthen your thesis statements.

Aims are typically broader statements of what you are trying to accomplish and may or may not be measurable. Objectives are operational statements indicating specifically how you will accomplish the aims of your project.

  • What are you trying to accomplish?
  • How are you going to address the research question?

Be specific and make sure your aims or objectives are realistic. You want to convey that it is feasible to answer this question with the objectives you have proposed.

Make it clear that you know what you are going to do, how you are going to do it, and why it will work by relating your methodology to previous research. If there isn’t much literature on the topic, you can relate your methodology to your own preliminary research or point out how your methodology tackles something that may have been overlooked in previous studies.

Explain how you will conduct this research. Specify scope and parameters (e.g., geographic locations, demographics). Limit your inclusion of literature to only essential articles and studies.

  • How will these methods produce an answer to your research question?
  • How do the methods relate to the introduction and literature review?
  • Have you done any previous work (or read any literature) that would inform your choices about methodology?
  • Are your methods feasible and adequate? How do you know?
  • What obstacles might you encounter in conducting the research, and how will you overcome them?

This section should include the following components that are relevant to your study and research methodologies:

Object(s) of study / participants / population

Provide detail about your objects of study (e.g., literary texts, swine, government policies, children, health care systems).

  • Who/what are they?
  • How will you find, select, or collect them?
  • How feasible is it to find/select them?
  • Are there any limitations to sample/data collection?
  • Do you need to travel to collect samples or visit archives, etc.?
  • Do you need to obtain Research Ethics Board (REB) approval to include human participants?

Theoretical frame or critical methodology

  • Explain the theories or disciplinary methodologies that your research draws from or builds upon.

Materials and apparatus

  • What are your survey or interview methods? (You may include a copy of questionnaires, etc.)
  • Do you require any special equipment?
  • How do you plan to purchase or construct or obtain this equipment?

Procedure and design

What exactly will you do? Include variables selected or manipulated, randomization, controls, the definition of coding categories, etc.

  • Is it a questionnaire? Laboratory experiment? Series of interviews? Systematic review? Interpretative analysis?
  • How will subjects be assigned to experimental conditions?
  • What precautions will be used to control possible confounding variables?
  • How long do you expect to spend on each step, and do you have a backup plan?

Data analysis and statistical procedures

  • How do you plan to statistically analyze your data?
  • What analyses will you conduct?
  • How will the analyses contribute to the objectives?

What are the expected outcomes from your methods? Describe your expected results in relation to your hypothesis. Support these results using existing literature.

  • What results would prove or disprove your hypotheses and validate your methodology, and why?
  • What obstacles might you encounter in obtaining your results, and how will you deal with those obstacles?
  • How will you analyze and interpret your results?

This section may be the most important part of your proposal. Make sure to emphasize how this research is significant to the related field, and how it will impact the broader community, now and in the future.

Convince your reader why this project should be funded above the other potential projects. Why is this research useful and relevant? Why is it useful to others? Answer the question “so what?”

Specific contributions

  • How will your anticipated results specifically contribute to fulfilling the aims, objectives, or goals of your research?
  • Will these be direct or indirect contributions? – theoretical or applied?
  • How will your research contribute to the larger topic area or research discipline?

Impact and significance

  • How will your research contribute to the research field of study?
  • How will your research contribute to the larger topic addressed in your introduction?
  • How will this research extend other work that you have done?
  • How will this contribution/significance convince the reader that this research will be useful and relevant?
  • Who else might find your research useful and relevant? (e.g., other research streams, policy makers, professional fields, etc.)

Provide a list of some of the most important sources that you will need to use for the introduction and background sections, plus your literature review and theoretical framework. 

What are some of the most important sources that you will need to use for the intro/background/lit review/theoretical framework? 

  • Find out what style guide you are required to follow (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago).
  • Follow the guidelines in our Cite Your Sources  Libguide to format citations and create a reference list or bibliography.

Attach this list to your proposal as a separate page unless otherwise specified.

This section should include only visuals that help illustrate the preliminary results, methods, or expected results.

  • What visuals will you use to help illustrate the methods or expected results?
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HOW TO WRITE DESCRIPTION OF STUDY AREA IN RESEARCH

description of study area

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DESCRIPTION OF THE STUDY AREA

Description of the study area is the act of describing the characteristics, qualities and physical features of an area, location, neighbourhood, city or community that is being studied or investigated for research purposes. Describing a study area is an important part of research, not just to the researcher, but to all concerned both now and in the future.

The study area is sometimes referred to as a study site in research, some higher institutions refer to the description of the study area as the “ profile of the study area “. In order to properly give a detailed description of an area, the researcher should have an in-depth knowledge of the study area in the project , and this can only be possible by reviewing other related materials in the form of published Journals, textbooks, etc., by academicians within a particular field of study or when the researcher is familiar with the neighbourhood or area in question.

In a dissertation, the description of a study area usually comes under Chapter Three (in most cases) with the exception of some institutions with special formats for presenting research papers. But the key point is that the captions on whichever chapter this subject is mentioned are usually written as “A Brief Description of Study Area” . This is not to limit the information provided but to apply some sort of concision in that it should be skillfully couched to enable a good flow in the presentation without creating confusion.

In summary, there are three aspects to the description of study area – (brief) (description) (study area)

The fact that it is termed brief does not necessarily mean it shouldn’t be detailed.

Your description should cover a broad spectrum of information; this would include location, geography, climatic condition, social infrastructure, vegetation, density, humidity, temperature, topography, terrain and so on.

The study area should be your area of coverage that is, your case study. Introducing information from other areas or regions will have no significance on the subject matter, hence your primary focus would be on the area your research is covering. At this point, you are expected to include maps of the study area (in colour).

What you’re expected to write is a detailed description of your study area to give your reader an idea of what your study area looks like. Get Samples 

Depending on the research topic, the pattern of describing the study area could vary;

If a project topic is focused on investigating issues or problems that concern a state or province the description will bother around everything that makes up the location. For example “ Evaluation of the Issues Affecting Girl-Child Education in FCT Abuja ” is a broad topic that focuses on FCT-Abuja as a case study, hence to describe the study area which in this case is FCT-Abuja, adequate data on everything that makes up or best describes Abuja as a Federal Capital Territory has to be brought in and properly described. The description should include the vegetation in Abuja, the population of Abuja, Abuja’s topography, its climatic condition, the culture of people living in Abuja, the terrain (that is, the flatness or sloppiness of Roads in Abuja), the nature of business, market data, rainfall, electricity, common food, the number of ethnic group in the territory, religion of residents among others.

The essence of the description of the study area is to enable an outsider to have an idea of the area or neighbourhood that is being researched, this knowledge will also help the readers to understand the body of your work and try to envision what your study is trying to pass across. It will also influence people’s judgment of the topic being researched.

description of study area

If the project topic is centred on a particular catchment or neighbourhood for example “ A Critical Examination of Facilities Management Strategy on Public Properties – A Case Study of Central Bank of Nigeria Staff Quarters ” the description will take a different shape. In this case, it should include a brief summary of the neighborhood where the CBN staff quarters are located followed by a broad description of the CBN staff quarters environment and premises. Let’s look at the following example;

“ The CBN staff quarters is a large purpose-built residential estate for senior, intermediate and junior CBN staff members. It is properly fenced around its perimeter solid block walls with a giant double two-way gate at the main entrance and another small pedestrian gate by the side. The estate comprises of the following; 16 Blocks of 8 units of 2bedroom flats each totalling 128 flats, 12 Block of 8 units of 3bedroom flats each totalling another 97 flats, and 6 Blocks of 6 units of 3bedroom flats each totalling 36 flats with additional buildings at the rear for intermediate and junior staff. The senior staff also have a large garage for parking vehicles .”

In addition, a detailed description of the site and construction details of the buildings will beef up your work. For example:

“ The site is rectangular in shape, it has a flat or table surface and properly drains off water during heavy downpours. The site measures approximately 22.32 hectares .”

The construction details should encompass; the type of floor, wall, doors, windows, ceiling, fittings, roof and the materials used in constructing them. For example, a brief description of the floor can be written like this “ The floor is made of mass concrete on hardcore filling well rammed over consolidated laterite and finished with terrazzo material ” The other building components (windows, doors, ceiling, wall, fitting and roof) should have their description proper done like the “floor”.

The facilities in the CBN staff estate should also come in the description. A short write-up can be done to explain to the reader or supervisor the available facilities installed and used in the CBN staff quarters, for example, “ The facilities provided in the CBN staff quarters are; water treatment plant, cameras, sewage treatment plant, generator house, heavy duty generator set to illuminate the premises, pumping machine (Sumo) to circulate water to all apartments, borehole, external lighting points and lawn tennis court for exercise .”

Sometimes an institution could be a case study of a project. Let’s use this project topic as an example “ An Analysis of the Maintenance and Management Problem of the University of Lagos Hostel Buildings ”.

To describe this study area the following sub-headings should be developed and expanded:

This involves the description of the University’s location, including the city and local government area where it is situated.

The History, Origin and Growth of the Study Area:

Tracing the historical background of the University of Lagos, its various campuses, colleges (college of medicine), the total size of the school premises, total number of staff and students (undergraduates and postgraduate students), annual enrollment of students, the various faculties and departments and other facilities attached to the universities and subsidiary campuses or learning institutions within and outside the state, or country is paramount.

Important : Make sure to include a colour map in your description to guide your readers and supervisor further.

description of study area

SAMPLE OF DESCRIPTION OF STUDY AREA

Frequently asked questions about the description of study area., what is the general description of the study area.

There is no such thing as a general description of the study area, the pattern of describing a particular area might differ from the way other areas are described. This is dependent on the type and nature of the area that is going to be described. No two locations have exactly the same features, hence you cannot give a written account of locations A and B the same way, which is why the researcher will need to either visit the area of the study or source materials with comprehensive and recent information on a particular area to be described in the research paper.

Examples of areas of study?

The determination of a study area is dependent on the type or nature of the researchable problem that the researcher wants to solve. For example, an ideal study area for “Impact of indiscriminate dumps on children’s health” would be a neighbourhood that experiences a high volume of indiscriminate dumps such as ghettos, slum neighbourhoods, high-density or populated neighbourhoods etc.

Also, if a project topic is   “Impact of social media on junior secondary school subjects” the area of study will comprise a certain number of junior secondary schools in a particular area not necessarily the entire State, Region or Province. The area of study must be connected with the project topic, this is because the research problem is first identified before developing a topic around the problem. So, the research has to identify a problem, search for areas affected by the identified problem and then develop a topic that captures the problem and the area of study.

The following can represent an area of study; Primary and Secondary Schools, Communities, Organizations, Provinces, Streets, Local Government Areas, hospitals, Banks, TV and Radio Stations, Government Agencies, Military Barracks, Police Stations, Specialized Buildings, Events, Shrines, Layouts etc.

Some people may want to carry out simple research about their home or certain areas or components in their home, this could be academic or personal research about an identified problem in the home. Hence, examples of study areas at home would include, the premises, building structures, the environment, farmland or plantation farm, auxiliary facilities, recreational areas in the home, pool sites, cooking or baking area etc. depending on the project topic.

What is a study area in research?

Study areas are locations where a researcher plans to carry out an in-depth study about a topic or existing problem. This is usually indicated in the research proposal for the supervisor to vet and approve. If approved, the researcher or student is expected to visit the study area to observe and gather information related to the existing problem in that neighbourhood. A study area is also referred to as a study site or research site.

What is the importance of the study area in research?

The importance of the study area cannot be over-emphasized. I have taken time to explain this question in the article “ Reasons for Choosing a Study Area in Research ”.

Must a description of the study area in a project be broad?

No.  I mentioned earlier in this article that most research papers or projects require a brief description of your study area, so you could write a brief account of your study area in about one to three pages depending on how vast the area is. You don’t need to write more than is required, just provide the relevant information needed and you’re good.

Get complete samples of the Description of Study Areas here  

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Thank you Zelalem, you can send a message if you need further guide. I wish you success!

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What if I choose a Senior high school in Enugu state? Am I going to write about the school or the State itself?

If your project topic is about a particular high school then the description should focus on the School itself not the State.

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very good concept. Really I appreciate it.

Awesome, thanks Ray.

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Helpful information .Thanks

Thank you Peres Bett.

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proposed research area meaning

Selecting Research Area. Selecting a research area is the very first step in writing your dissertation. It is important for you to choose a research area that is interesting to you professionally, as well as, personally. Experienced researchers note that "a topic in which you are only vaguely interested at the start is likely to become a ...

A research area is what a research topic is placed into, but is much broader than the scope of the topic. For example a research area can be human physiology, computer science (as you mentioned) or even relate to a specific field within these broader terms such as cardiac electrophysiology or machine learning respectively.

What is a research proposal? Simply put, a research proposal is a structured, formal document that explains what you plan to research (your research topic), why it's worth researching (your justification), and how you plan to investigate it (your methodology).

A research proposal describes what you will investigate, why it's important, and how you will conduct your research. The format of a research proposal varies between fields, but most proposals will contain at least these elements: Title page Introduction Literature review Research design Reference list

Most students and beginning researchers do not fully understand what a research proposal means, nor do they understand its importance. 1 A research proposal is a detailed description of a proposed study designed to investigate a given problem. 2 A research proposal is intended to convince others that you have a worthwhile research project and that you have the competence and the work-plan to ...

A research proposal is a formal document expressing the details of a research project, which is usually for science or academic purposes, and it's typically four to seven pages long. Research proposals often include a title page, an abstract, an introduction, background information, research questions, a literature review and a bibliography.

Define focused questions in the research area: Research areas can be very broad. It is easy to digress into multiple directions without focus. Before diving into the research, decide on a few hypotheses and preliminary experiments. ... Before delving into the research define the significance of the proposed research. It is always useful if ...

What is a research proposal? What should you include in the proposal? How long should the proposal be? Can the School comment on my draft proposal? Learn more about Birmingham's doctoral research programmes in Law:

A research proposal is a detailed plan which clearly outlines a suggested (or proposed) research project, its purpose, how the findings will add to the field of existing knowledge, and how the research will be carried out.

Literature review. This key component of the research proposal is the most time-consuming aspect in the preparation of your research proposal. As described in Chapter 5, the literature review provides the background to your study and demonstrates the significance of the proposed research.Specifically, it is a review and synthesis of prior research that is related to the problem you are setting ...

The goal of the research proposal is to convince others that the investigator has (a) an important idea; (b) the skills, knowledge, and resources to carry out the project; and (c) a plan to implement the project on time and within budget. This entry discusses the process of developing a research proposal and the elements of an effective proposal.

A research proposal is a roadmap that brings the researcher closer to the objectives, takes the research topic from a purely subjective mind, and manifests an objective plan. It shows us what steps we need to take to reach the objective, what questions we should answer, and how much time we need.

A research design is a strategy for answering your research question using empirical data. Creating a research design means making decisions about: Your overall research objectives and approach. Whether you'll rely on primary research or secondary research. Your sampling methods or criteria for selecting subjects. Your data collection methods.

T Tinx 2 post Hi All, I'm currently filling in an online engineering PhD application and am asked to write ~500 words on the proposed area of research. As I understand it this is not a research proposal but I'm having difficulty writing it.

Definition The goal of a research proposal is twofold: to present and justify the need to study a research problem and to present the practical ways in which the proposed study should be conducted.

The research statement (or statement of research interests) is a common component of academic job applications. It is a summary of your research accomplishments, current work, and future direction and potential of your work. The statement can discuss specific issues such as: funding history and potential. requirements for laboratory equipment ...

A research proposal is a concise and coherent summary of your proposed research. Writing a research proposal. Watch on. Your research proposal should set out the central issues or questions that you intend to address. It should outline the general area of study within which your research falls, referring to the current state of knowledge and ...

BASIC REQUIREMENTS OF A RESEARCH PROPOSAL A proposal needs to show how your work fits into what is already known about the topic and what new paradigm will it add to the literature, while specifying the question that the research will answer, establishing its significance, and the implications of the answer. [ 2]

A research proposal is a written document, concerned with a comprehensive description of a proposed research plan or programme on a specific subject matter or topic to substantiate the need and relevance of carrying out the research [].Research proposals should draw attention to the proposed study's benefits and possible research outcomes, backed by informative and convincing evidence.

A research proposal is a type of text which maps out a proposed central research problem or question and a suggested approach to its investigation. In many universities, including RMIT, the research proposal is a formal requirement. It is central to achieving your first milestone: your Confirmation of Candidature.

A research proposal is commonly written by scholars seeking grant funding for a research project when enrolling for a research-based postgraduate degree. ... controversies, methodologies, and arguments underscored in the literature. Explain the main areas where these authors disagree and debate. Critique the literature. Identify the engaging ...

Some proposals include. a research question, written as a question. or, a hypothesis as a potential response to the research question. or, a thesis statement as an argument that answers the research question. or, aims and objects as accomplishment or operational statements. Foreshadow the outcomes of your research.

Description of the study area is the act of describing the characteristics, qualities and physical features of an area, location, neighbourhood, city or community that is being studied or investigated for research purposes.

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What are the 10 Principles or Characteristics of Speech Writing with Examples?

Back to: Pedagogy of English- Unit 5

Definition of Speech

According to Oxford Dictionary , “ A speech is a formal talk that a person gives to an audience.”

Speech is one of the major medium of oral communication. We find different speeches in different situations but good speeches are not always found. A good speech is really enjoyable and informative. But it is very tough to deliver a speech that can entertain the audience. A good speech has many characteristics.

Speech is an oral presentation of information or delivery of messages through the use of words of spoken words delivered in front of or to an audience who have gathered in a seminar, meeting, conference, or some other event. It is a form of oral communication which is the oldest method and also the most effective method of communication. Speech is considered to be one of the most effective ways of delivering a message in any event. A speaker can present his thoughts and opinions on various matters to a large group of audience through his or her speech. Due to its efficacy, it is widely used around the world. Be it for social purposes or religious purposes, a speech can come in handy for several kinds of events. 

Characteristics of Speech Writing

The 10 principles and characteristics of speech writing are as follows: 

(1) Clarity

The voice of the speaker should be clear, tone should vary and pitch should be pleasant. The ideas, emotions and arguments should come straight from the heart so that audience can grasp it easily. It should register with the listeners and vibrate with their feelings and thoughts. A speech is considered to be effective when it is clear and concise. The information presented in the speech should be comprehensible to the present audience and the speech should be delivered by the speaker in a fluent and eloquent manner. 

(2) Informal, personal and conversational

A good speech should be like a conversation between two good friends – personal, informal and sincere. There should be a rapport between the speaker and the audience.

(3) Concrete, vivid and imagery

A speech should help build a picture that is easy to visualize and easier to comprehend. It should be furbished by concrete examples that grasp the imagination of the listeners.

(4) Time period 

It is very difficult to hold the attention of the listeners for more than 15 to 20 minutes. A good speaker should be able to convey his complete message in that period. He should come straight to the point and say what he wants by bringing three or four points to their attention.

(5) Interesting, jovial and humorous:

A speaker wins or loses the battle in the first two or three minutes. If the speaker has impressed the audience with his opening remarks, he is well on your way to winning a space in their heart. And that is the target. It has to be a heart to heart dialogue. Lace it with short humorous anecdotes – laughter lubricates learning!

Anecdotes should be short, appropriate and in good taste. Quotations, proverbs and idioms should be like arrows piercing directly in to the heart of the audience. Experienced speakers learn to master the art of reciting these statements, giving a long pause after it has been stated to let it sink in with the audience.

(6) Listener-oriented:

Audience is your customer. It is your business to know their needs and wants, their desires and their expectations. Speaker has to be very sensitive to the body language of their audience and modify the speech to fine tune with them. If the message has to gel well with the audience, speakers‟ antenna should pick up the cues from the body language of the listeners.

(7) Dynamic

Dynamism is an important quality of a good speech. There must e variation in style, tone, voice, approach depending on the situation and timing otherwise audience will lose their attention and will suffer form monotonous presentation.

(8) Free From Error  

A good speech is always free from error. Error in speech can make the audience confused and loose the personality of the speaker.

(9) Authentic

The facts and figure presented in a speech must be authentic and true. False statement or information misleads the audience and hamper the acceptability of speech.

( 10) Well Organized

A good speech is always well organised and well arranged. The pats or points of a speech should be organized in logical sequence to attract and retain h attention of the audience.

(11)  Use rhetorical questions

Rhetorical questions are a great way to engage your audience and make them think. By asking a question that does not require an answer, you can encourage your audience to reflect on your message and consider its implications.

(12) Use inclusive language

Inclusive language is a language that avoids stereotypes or discriminatory terms and includes everyone. Inclusive language is essential when delivering a speech, as it shows respect for your audience and makes them feel valued.

(13) Practice, practice, practice

Finally, one of the most important characteristics of speech writing is practice. Practice delivering your speech in front of a mirror or with friends or family. This will help you refine your delivery and ensure you are comfortable and confident when delivering your speech.

(14) Conciseness

Along with being clear, the message presented through the speech should also be concise so that the speech does not get tedious and does not get boring. 

(15) Definiteness

The subject matter presented through the speech should be relevant and definite to the present audience. 

(16) Interesting

Apart from being clear and concise, there is also a need for the speech to have an element of interest. This interest should not be limited to the subject matter but rather, the speech itself should be delivered in an engaging and interesting manner. 

(17) Audience-centered

The message of the speech should be centered more around the audience rather than the speaker himself or herself. 

(18) Speak Slowly

If the speaker speaks too fast, the listeners may lose track of the information being presented and hence, one must speak slowly but not too slowly so asn to put the listeners to sleep. 

(19) Unbiased

The information presented in the speech should not be biased and it should be presented from a neutral point of view. 

(20) Body Gestures

One should also maintain a proper posture and use appropriate body gestures to deliver the speech. 

(21) Ensure Participation Of Audience

Asking questions to the listeners or the audience and involving them is necessary. 

(22) Free From Emotions

The speaker should not dwell too much on his or her emotions to ensure that the speech can be delivered in an effective manner. 

These are the various characteristics and principles of effective speech writing. Speech writing is a complex but rewarding skill that requires careful consideration of your purpose, audience, language, and delivery. Following these ten characteristics, you can write a powerful and effective speech that will engage your audience and leave a lasting impression. Remember, practice makes perfect, so don’t be afraid to rehearse your speech until you are confident and comfortable with your delivery.

What are the 10 Principles or Characteristics of Speech Writing with

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1.What is speech?

2.What are the characteristics of good speech?

3.According to Author what is defination of speech?

4.Why practice is important in speech?

5.How to write good speech?

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As Biden’s memory issues draw attention, neurologists weigh in

Since a report released on Thursday by special counsel Robert Hur described President Joe Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory,” there have been significant misperceptions about the cognitive changes associated with aging, neurologists say.

The report on Biden’s handling of classified documents noted that the president hadn’t remembered the exact time frame that he served as vice president and was struggling to recall the period when his late son, Beau Biden, had passed away. Biden defiantly rejected the changes in a press conference late Thursday , saying “my memory’s fine.”

There’s also been scrutiny of other recent events when the 81-year-old president mixed up names of foreign leaders .

However, neurologists say blanking on the names of acquaintances or having difficulty remembering dates from the past, especially when under stress, can simply be part of normal aging.

“If you asked me when my mother passed away, I couldn’t necessarily tell you the exact year because it was many years ago,” Dr. Paul Newhouse, clinical core leader for the Vanderbilt Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, said.

Almost every older patient has trouble remembering people’s names, Newhouse said. 

“I think it’s by far the most universal complaint of every person as they age,” Newhouse said.

In Newhouse's experience, this type of forgetfulness doesn’t actually predict who ends up having memory disorders. Only a person’s doctor or neurologist can make that diagnosis, not outside observers, brain experts say.

Dr. Dennis Selkoe, co-director of the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, agreed that forgetting names doesn’t actually provide much insight into potential memory problems. In fact, stress and a lack of sleep, can interfere with memory, no matter how old someone is.

“Naming proper nouns is not an adequate basis to make a conclusion about whether an individual has a more consistent and more concerning substantive progressive memory disorder,” Selkoe said.

What are normal memory changes?

It’s normal for older brains to have more difficulty retaining new information and then retrieving the information, but mental processes like decision-making and judgment can actually improve with age, said Dr. Thomas Wisniewski, director of NYU Langone Health’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and its Center for Cognitive Neurology.

“Although the raw power of memory has some degree of decline, perhaps wisdom can increase because the individual has a greater backlog of experiences and different situations as to what is the best thing to do,” Wisniewski said.

The problem isn’t having trouble remembering names or calling someone by the wrong name, but when someone’s memory is fuzzy about recent or past experiences, said Newhouse. Issues with episodic memory — memory for events in time or if a person doesn’t remember going shopping, for example — can be a sign of a progressive disorder, but not always.

Wisniewski said he becomes concerned when people don’t even recognize that they are forgetting things.

“They forgot that they went shopping and they’re unaware that they’ve forgotten,” he said.

Overall, neurologists tend to worry less about a patient’s ability to remember remote memories from many years ago and more troubled by an inability to recall more recent events. That’s because dementia first affects the part of the brain that’s responsible for short-term memories, as opposed to long-term memories, said Newhouse.

“What I’m more concerned about is, can you remember what happened yesterday? Or an hour ago?” Newhouse said.

While the conversation surrounding aging is often framed around a person’s diminishing memory or executive functioning, there are cognitive benefits that come with growing older, Selkoe said.

“There is a type of emotional intelligence and ability to handle many different kinds of experiences in life that come with greater longevity,” he said. “People can make decisions more carefully and more rationally.”

distinct features of speech and writing

Akshay Syal, M.D., is a medical fellow with the NBC News Health and Medical Unit. 

distinct features of speech and writing

Ghael Fobes is an Associate White House Producer with the NBC News White House Unit in Washington, D.C.

IMAGES

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  2. SPEECH WRITING- Features by Surviving and Thriving

    distinct features of speech and writing

  3. 25 Important Figures of Speech with Easy Examples • 7ESL

    distinct features of speech and writing

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  6. Speech Writing

    distinct features of speech and writing

VIDEO

  1. Speech Writing Meaning and Process #youtubeshorts #ytshorts #shorts

  2. Speech Writing on an important Topic- Mental Health #youtubeshorts #ytshorts #shorts

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  6. Speech writing (format+example)

COMMENTS

  1. What's the Difference between Speech and Writing?

    Of course, speech is spoken and heard, while writing is written and read. But there are many other differences: Age. Speech goes back to human beginnings, perhaps a million years ago. Writing is relatively recent, however; it was first invented by the Sumerians, in Mesopotamia, around 3200 B.C. Since then, the idea of writing has spread around ...

  2. Distinctive Features

    In phonological theory the building blocks of speech sounds are often argued to be what are called "distinctive features.". They typically have phonetic definitions and phonetically inspired names (e.g., [voice], [nasal], [labial]). While various algorithms for feature specification exist, segments and natural classes of segments are ...

  3. PDF David Crystal

    Unique features of speech include most of the prosody. The many nuances Of intonation, loudness, tempo, rhythm, and other tones of voice cannot be written down with much efficiency. Unique features of writing include pages, lines, capitalisation, spatial organisation and several aspects of punctuation. Only a few graphic conventions relate to

  4. Introduction to Part One: Defining 'Speech' and 'Writing'

    In short, the physical and sensory modalities of speech and writing are as distinctly different as the physical processes of speaking and writing. And here too we have an intriguing borderline example: sign language is a kind of "speaking" that is visual-and-spatial, yet also temporal. Speech and writing as different linguistic products ...

  5. Relationship And Difference Between Speech And Writing In Linguistics

    Writing is used to communicate across time and space for as long as the medium exists and that particular language is understood whereas speech is more immediate. Use of Slang. Written and spoken communication uses different types of language. For instance, slang and tags are more often used when speaking rather than writing. Skills

  6. The Third Dimension. On the Dichotomy Between Speech and Writing

    Generally speaking, only syntactic characteristics are assigned to I-language, dealing as it does with a computational system, that is, with the product of a mental apparatus. ... Among the consequences of a possible autonomous recognition of the thought dimension of language, distinct from both speech and writing, is the question of overcoming ...

  7. Distinctive feature

    In linguistics, a distinctive feature is the most basic unit of phonological structure that distinguishes one sound from another within a language. For example, the feature [voice] distinguishes the two bilabial plosives: [p] and [b].There are many different ways of defining and arranging features into feature systems: some deal with only one language while others are developed to apply to all ...

  8. Linguistics 001 -- Lecture 22 -- Reading and Writing

    Aspects of speech that writing leaves out include emphasis, intonation, tone of voice, accent or dialect, and individual characteristics. Some caveats are in order. In the first place, writing is usually not used for "recording language" in the sense of transcribing speech. Writing may substitute for speech, as in a letter, or may deploy the ...

  9. PDF Distinctive Features

    The Prague Linguistic Circle provided the first detailed expression of the ideas behind feature theory, and relevant ideas occur in American Structuralist work. Jakobson, seen as the father of distinctive feature theory, developed these ideas to propose what became, through further reworking by Chomsky & Halle, the standard model.

  10. Speech Acts

    One way of appreciating the distinctive features of speech acts is in contrast with other well-established phenomena within the philosophy of language and linguistics. Accordingly in this entry we will consider the relations among speech acts and: semantic content, grammatical mood, speaker-meaning, logically perfect languages, perlocutions ...

  11. Distinctive Features in Speech Pathology: Phonology or Phonemics

    Distinctive feature is not a unique concept within linguistic theory. It has two distinct theoretical bases: phonemic theory and generative theory. Phonemic theory assumes a direct correspondence between distinctive features (the elements of phonemes) and the speech signal.

  12. PDF Distinctive Features-1 (vowels)

    string of speech sounds (phonemes); two items distinct if they differ in length or position. each phoneme is composed of a matrix of feature specifications. features are typically binary: [±Feature] features have articulatory and acoustic correlates representing the grammatically controlled aspects of the sound implemented in the phonetic ...

  13. What You Need to Know about Writing Systems

    A writing system that can capture the entire range of expression possible with speech has yet to emerge. What is meant by "full" is rather a reader's ability to reproduce words in a hypothetical speech act expected to reflect that envisioned by the writer. In the evolution from "proto-" to "full," the level of similarity between ...

  14. What are the Components and Features of Speech Writing?

    Features of speech writing. The various features of speech writing are as follows: Clarity. A speech is considered to be effective when it is clear and concise. The information presented in the speech should be comprehensible to the present audience and the speech should be delivered by the speaker in a fluent and eloquent manner. Conciseness

  15. 10 Characteristics of Speech Writing That You Need to Know

    10. Practice, practice, practice. Finally, one of the most important characteristics of speech writing is practice. Practice delivering your speech in front of a mirror or with friends or family. This will help you refine your delivery and ensure you are comfortable and confident when delivering your speech.

  16. 10 Characteristics Of Speech Act, Its Development And Examples

    Stuttering and other psychological symptoms that affect speech. Learning problems. Brain damage from accidents or stroke. Clinical disorders: specific language disorder, expressive language disorder or autism spectrum disorder. There are specialists dedicated to the study of speech and communication, especially the ideal techniques for its ...

  17. Introduction to Phonology, Part 3: Phonetic Features

    Each unique combination of these features corresponds to exactly one speech sound. (Take note, however, that not all possible combinations are deemed physically producible.) This means that instead of writing out the names of phones and hoping that we remember all of the facts about that phone, we can instead give a feature matrix consisting of ...

  18. Featural writing system

    Other articles where featural writing system is discussed: writing: Types of writing systems: Featural writing systems exploit the fact that even phonemes are not the most fundamental units of analysis of speech. Rather, phonemes may be analyzed into sets of distinctive features. The phonemes represented by the letters n and d share the feature of the tongue touching…

  19. What are the features of speech writing?

    A key feature of speech writing is objection handling. As a speech is a monologue there isn't room to take questions, or objections. A strong speech will be able to address any objections that might arise in the speech itself, that way you're answering questions as they come to the audience.

  20. How the brain produces speech

    The morpheme neurons activated first, around 400 milliseconds (ms) before the utterance. Phoneme neurons activated next, around 200 ms before the utterance. Syllable neurons activated last, around 70 ms before utterance. Most neurons responded to the same feature (phoneme, syllable, or morpheme) both before and during the utterance.

  21. distinct features of speech and writing

    Constructed scripts; Multilingual Pages; Differences between writing and speech. Written and spoken language differ in many ways. However some forms of writing are closer to speec

  22. Consonants and Distinctive Features Lookup

    We have three tools: 1) Check one or more Distinctive Features to see what Consonant it makes. 2) Submit a Distinctive Feature, and we will generate all the Consonants that have that feature. 3) Submit a Consonant, and we will generate all of its Distinctive Features. Please choose the tool below that applies to your study. Find Consonant based ...

  23. 20 Types of Figures of Speech, With Definitions and Examples

    Some figures of speech, like metaphor, simile, and metonymy, are found in everyday language. Others, like antithesis, circumlocution, and puns take more practice to implement in writing. Below are some common figures of speech with examples, so you can recognize them and use them in your writing. Give your writing extra polish.

  24. What are the 10 Principles or Characteristics of Speech Writing with

    Characteristics of Speech Writing. The 10 principles and characteristics of speech writing are as follows: (1) Clarity. The voice of the speaker should be clear, tone should vary and pitch should be pleasant. The ideas, emotions and arguments should come straight from the heart so that audience can grasp it easily.

  25. OpenAI introduces AI model that turns text into video

    Microsoft-backed OpenAI is working on a software that can generate minute-long videos based on text prompts, the company said on Thursday.

  26. As Biden's memory issues draw attention, neurologists weigh in

    By Akshay Syal, M.D. and Ghael Fobes. Since a report released on Thursday by special counsel Robert Hur described President Joe Biden as an "elderly man with a poor memory," there have been ...

  27. Paul on Instagram: "Positioned as the twenty-third letter and proudly

    3 likes, 0 comments - paulzn_consult on August 3, 2023: "Positioned as the twenty-third letter and proudly standing as the fourth-to-last gem, W boasts un..."