Recognizing the speech act that a speaker performs with an utterance is fundamental of pragmatic competence. Theories about pragmatic language propose that speech comprehension involves speech act recognition which relies on the hearer’s inference of the speaker’s intention. Speech act recognition, which can be triggered by specific context, adjacency pair or performative verb, plays a crucial role in the comprehension of communicative acts and the success of conversation. The present study provides a detailed review of the researches on speech act recognition and pays attention to a possible aspect of further study on speech act recognition.
Keywords: : speech act theory, conversation comprehension, intention recognition
