Abstract:

Speech act theory has a strong explanatory power for official documents. This paper mainly uses Searle's speech act theory and combines the characteristics of official documents to establish a new analysis framework. The speech acts in official documents are divided into reprensentatives, evaluations, predictives, declarations and directives. Under the new analysis framework, this paper decomposes, classifies and codes the sentences of a directive notice case, analyzes the illocutionary force contained in detail, and summarizes the specific functions of each kind of speech act in management activities, as well as the linguistic features of several types of speech acts. Through the case study, we can have a more detailed and intuitive view of how official documents do things with words, understand the words of official documents more deeply, and write them more efficiently.

Key words: speech act theory, official documents, directive notices, doing things with words, management activities