Musical statement as a speech act

The purpose of this article is research of the specifics of musical art as language, comparison of musical performance with speech on the basis of the speech act theory of J. Austin and J. Searle. The author solves the following tasks: - outlining the main theses of the speech act theory of J. Austin, defining the speech act itself and determining its characteristics, drawing parallels between a speech act and musical performance, revealing similarities and distinctions of the speech act and the musical statement on the basis of the carried-out comparative analysis; considering J. Searle's additions to development of the theory of speech acts and his research of metaphor as art discourse, comparing Searle's concepts of speech act and metaphor with the phenomenon of musical performance, revealing similarities and specifics of musical performance as a statement on the basis of the carried-out comparison. The author specifies that the theory of speech acts was constructed only for statements of the so-called natural or verbal language. In this article, music is understood as a language having certain rules, grammar, and musical performance is referred to as a musical statement or musical speech. Austin defines pronouncing a statement as a speech act, there necessarily have to be certain rules, a language code, grammar. The sounds made in the process of the musical statement are necessarely subject to certain rules, therefore, the musical statement can be defined as the speech act. Unlike the verbal speech act of Austin, musical speech does not need the addressee. As well as in the speech act of Austin, a musical speech act has the so-called discussed part of reality, but it is impossible to define the subject of the statement with an accuracy. Searle, in turn, pays attention to the role of intentional conditions of the subject. In his opinion, a speech act is the operating expression of a mental condition of the subject in the outside world. In his research of the use of metaphors as speech acts, Searle allocates two types of meanings of the statement - literal and implied. If literal and implied meanings coincide, we call such a statement literal. If they differ, a statement is figurative or a metaphor. The role of the perceiving subject is most important for the understanding of a metaphor. In musical language, mental conditions of the subject play a key role, as well as in all languages of art, expression of internal state in the outside world happens by implementation of a statement or a speech act. As for the correlation of literal and implied meanings, it is possible to say that musical language, from the point of view of Searle's theory, has an exclusively metaphorical character.

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