utterance

An utterance is a unit of communication produced by a speaker or writer to convey meaning within a particular context. In linguistics, it refers to the actual realized speech or writing, as opposed to an abstract sentence or proposition that may underlie it. An utterance can be a single word, a clause, or a longer stretch of discourse, and its form is shaped by context, mood, and pragmatic intent.

Utterance versus sentence: A sentence is a grammatical structure, whereas an utterance is the concrete performance of language. An utterance may be complete or incomplete, fluent or fragmented, especially in informal speech or rapid dialogue. Written utterances follow punctuation cues, but spoken utterances are guided by intonation and timing.

Pragmatics and speech acts: Utterances carry illocutionary force, performing acts such as requesting, promising, or ordering. The same utterance can have different communicative effects depending on context, speaker intention, and listener interpretation.

Discourse and conversation analysis: Utterances are the basic units of talk in conversation. They are analyzed in terms of turn-taking, sequence, and adjacency pairs (for example, question and answer), revealing how meaning unfolds in interaction.

Computational linguistics and natural language processing: In NLP and speech technologies, utterances serve as input units for recognition, parsing, and dialogue management. Segmentation into utterances aids annotation of intents and dialogue acts, and can affect the handling of multi-turn interactions in chatbots and virtual assistants.

Terminology and cross-modality: The concept extends beyond spoken language to sign languages and other communicative modalities, where an utterance denotes a discrete, communicative act.