1.4 Communicative Speech Act

    Language’s relation to gender was at the center of discussion from the beginning of feminism’s second wave.

 Jennifer Hornsby wrote in Feminism and Philosophy of language: Women’s Communicative Speech Acts that ‘Austin is famous for drawing attention to what he called performatives. When a perfomative is spoken in appropriate circumstances, a person manifestly does something using words. One of Austin’s own examples was ‘ I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth’, in using which, in an appropriate setting and with an appropriate bottle to hand, a person manifestly name a ship. The idea of perfomative has been picked up in many areas, including in feminism field theory. It is a fact that this example bring to prominence-the fact that speech is action.’‘ And speech act comes to notice if one thinks about general connections between what sentence mean and what speakers do.’

    Here, we can draw a conclusion that communicative speech act means that someone says something which has the function of communication. 

    In A Change in the Lighting, Amy witting arranged a number of conversations for the main female character while in Red Rose and White Rose the main female role rarely speaks, Meanwhile, even the main female character change her style of communicative speech act with the developing of the plots in the same novel. Therefore, strong comparisons comes into being and the carious plots of conversation in two novels provide enough materials to analyze.