This paper argues for a reorientation of speech act theory towards an Austin-inspired conception of speech acts as context-changing social actions. After an overview of the role assigned to context by Austin, Searle, and other authors in pragmatics, it is argued that the context of a speech act should be considered as constructed as opposed to merely given, limited as opposed to extensible in any direction, and objective as opposed to cognitive. The compatibility of such claims with (...) each other is discussed. Finally, the context-changing role of speech acts is analyzed differentiating between the illocutionary and the perlocutionary dimension. (shrink)

In the last twenty years, recorded messages and written notes have become a significant test and an intriguing puzzle for the semantics of indexical expressions (see Smith 1989, Predelli 1996, 1998a,1998b, 2002, Corazza et al. 2002, Romdenh-Romluc 2002). In particular, the intention-based approach proposed by Stefano Predelli has proven to bear interesting relations to several major questions in philosophy of language. In a recent paper (Saul 2006), Jennifer Saul draws on the literature on indexicals and recorded messages in order to (...) criticize Rae Langton's claim that works of pornography can be understood as illocutionary acts – in particular acts of subordinating women or acts of silencing women. Saul argues that it does not make sense to understand works of pornography as speech acts, because only utterances in contexts can be speech acts. More precisely, works of pornography such as a film may be seen as recordings that can be used in many different contexts – exactly like a written note or an answering machine message. According to Saul, bringing contexts into the picture undermines Langton's radical thesis – which must be reformulated in much weaker terms. In this paper, I accept Saul's claim that only utterances in contexts can be speech acts, and that therefore only works of pornography in contexts may be seen as illocutionary acts of silencing women. I will, nonetheless, show that Saul's reformulation doesn't undermine Langton's thesis. To this aim, I will use the distinction Predelli proposes in order to account for the semantic behaviour of indexical expressions in recorded messages – namely the distinction between context of utterance and context of interpretation. (shrink)

I challenge two key assumptions of speech act theory, as applied to argumentation: illocutionary monism, grounded in the idea each utterance has only one (primary) illocutionary force, and the dyadic reduction, which models interaction as a dyadic affair between only two agents (speaker-hearer, proponentopponent). I show how major contributions to speech act inspired study of argumentation adhere to these assumptions even as illocutionary pluralism in argumentative polylogues is a significant empirical fact in need of theoretical attention. I demonstrate (...) this with two examples where arguers interacting with multiple persons convey plural, argumentatively relevant illocutionary forces. Understanding illocutionary pluralism in argumentative polylogues also affords a better account of fallacious and manipulative discourse. (shrink)

This paper presents a speech act analysis of presumption, using the framework of a dialogue in which two parties reason together. In the speech act of presumption, as opposed to that of assertion, the burden of proof resides not on the proponent to prove, but on the respondent to rebut. Some connections of this account with nonmonotonic reasoning and informal fallacies in argumentation are explored.

In this paper a dialogue game for critical discussion is developed. The dialogue game is a formalisation of the ideal discussion model that is central to the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation. The formalisation is intended as a preparatory step to facilitate the development of computational tools to support the pragma-dialectical study of argumentation. An important dimension of the pragma-dialectical discussion model is the role played by speech acts. The central issue addressed in this paper is how the speech (...) act perspective can be accommodated in the formalisation as a dialogue game. The starting point is an existing ‘basic’ dialogue game for critical discussion, in which speech acts are not addressed. The speech act perspective is introduced into the dialogue game by changing the rules that govern the moves that can be made and the commitments that these result in, while the rules for the beginning, for the end, and for the structure of the dialogue game remain unchanged. The revision of the move rules is based on the distribution of speech acts in the pragma-dialectical discussion model. The revision of the commitment rules is based on the felicity conditions that are associated with those speech acts. (shrink)

What makes it the case that an utterance constitutes an illocutionary act of a given kind? This is the central question of speech-act theory. Answers to it—i.e., theories of speech acts—have proliferated. Our main goal in this chapter is to clarify the logical space into which these different theories fit. -/- We begin, in Section 1, by dividing theories of speech acts into five families, each distinguished from the others by its account of the key ingredients in (...) illocutionary acts. Are speech acts fundamentally a matter of convention or intention? Or should we instead think of them in terms of the psychological states they express, in terms of the effects that it is their function to produce, or in terms of the norms that govern them? In Section 2, we take up the highly influential idea that speech acts can be understood in terms of their effects on a conversation’s context or “score”. Part of why this idea has been so useful is that it allows speech-act theorists from the five families to engage at a level of abstraction that elides their foundational disagreements. In Section 3, we investigate some of the motivations for the traditional distinction between propositional content and illocutionary force, and some of the ways in which this distinction has been undermined by recent work. In Section 4, we survey some of the ways in which speech-act theory has been applied to issues outside semantics and pragmatics, narrowly construed. (shrink)

Written in an outstandingly clear and lively style, this 1969 book provokes its readers to rethink issues they may have regarded as long since settled.

Speech acts and the autonomy of linguistic pragmatics This paper comments on selected problems of the definition of linguistic pragmatics with a focus on notions associated with speech act theory in the tradition of John Langshaw Austin. In more detail it concentrates on the relevance of the use of the Austinian categorisation into locution, illocution, and perlocution in locating a divide in between pragmatics and semantics, and especially the distinction between the locutionary act and the illocutionary act and (...) its implications for the definition of pragmatics and its separation from the semantic theory.The relation between form and meaning is further briefly reviewed against dichotomies including the Gricean and neo-Gricean ‘what is said’ versus ‘what is implicated’ or meant, between what can be ‘locuted’, but not said, and what can be said, but not asserted. These dichotomies are related to the theoretical commitments as to the accepted operative forces in speech acts, primarily convention and intention. It is suggested that, roughly, the development of the speech act theory can be viewed as a process by which the theory moves away from its originally sociolinguistic orientation towards a more psychologistic account, which in turn leads towards diminishing the role of semantics and the subsequent juxtaposition of pragmatics and syntax rather than pragmatics and semantics. (shrink)

The Speech Act of Referring. According to the speech-act theory whenever we utter a sentence, we perform two acts: the act of referring and that of predicating. By referring, we set out an object that we speak of, and by predicating, we attribute a feature to the object. My paper is a short presentation of Gottlob Frege’s theory of meaning and Bertrand Russell's theory of description. I will try to outline the core concepts and thoughts/arguments that even today (...) define the debate about reference in the analytic tradition. (shrink)

There are certain illocutionary acts that, contrary to John Searle's speech act theory, cannot be correctly classified as assertives. Searle's sincerity and essential conditions on assertives require, plausibly, that we believe our assertions and that we are committed to their truth. Yet it is a commonly accepted scientific practice to propose and investigate an hypothesis without believing it or being at all committed to its truth. Searle's attempt to accommodate such conjectural acts by claiming that the degree of belief (...) and of commitment expressed by some assertives “may approach or even reach zero“ is unsuccessful, since it evacuates his thesis that these are substantive necessary conditions on assertives of any force. The illocutionary acts in question are central to scientific activity and so cannot be plausibly ignored by a theory of speech acts. The problem is not limited simply to Searle's theory, since even theories which depart markedly from Searle's in other respects are often committed to similar characterizations of assertion. (shrink)

This book demonstrates the presence of literature within speech act theory and the utility of speech act theory in reading literary works. Though the founding text of speech act theory, J. L. Austin's _How to Do Things with Words_, repeatedly expels literature from the domain of felicitous speech acts, literature is an indispensable presence within Austin's book. It contains many literary references but also uses as essential tools literary devices of its own: imaginary stories that serve (...) as examples and imaginary dialogues that forestall potential objections. _How to Do Things with Words_ is not the triumphant establishment of a fully elaborated theory of speech acts, but the story of a failure to do that, the story of what Austin calls a "bogging down." After an introductory chapter that explores Austin's book in detail, the two following chapters show how Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man in different ways challenge Austin's speech act theory generally and his expulsion of literature specifically. Derrida shows that literature cannot be expelled from speech acts—rather that what he calls "iterability" means that any speech act may be literature. De Man asserts that speech act theory involves a radical dissociation between the cognitive and positing dimensions of language, what Austin calls language's "constative" and "performative" aspects. Both Derrida and de Man elaborate new speech act theories that form the basis of new notions of responsible and effective politico-ethical decision and action. The fourth chapter explores the role of strong emotion in effective speech acts through a discussion of passages in Derrida, Wittgenstein, and Austin. The final chapter demonstrates, through close readings of three passages in Proust, the way speech act theory can be employed in an illuminating way in the accurate reading of literary works. (shrink)

:In this paper, the influence of speech act theory and Grice’s the- ory of conversational implicature on the study of argumentation is discussed. First, the role that pragmatic insights play in van Eemeren and Grootendorst’s pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation and Jackson and Jacobs’ conver- sational approach to argumentation is described. Next, a number of examples of recent work by argumentation scholars is presented in which insights from speech act theory play a prominent role.

a comprehensive, somewhat Gricean theory of speech acts, including an account of communicative intentions and inferences, a taxonomy of speech acts, and coverage of many topics in pragmatics -/- .

I draw upon speech act theory to understand the speech acts appropriate to the multiple aims of scientific practice and the role of nonepistemic values in evaluating speech acts made relative to those aims. First, I look at work that distinguishes explaining from describing within scientific practices. I then argue speech act theory provides a framework to make sense of how explaining, describing, and other acts have different felicity conditions. Finally, I argue that if explaining aims (...) to convey understanding to particular audiences rather than describe literally across all contexts, then evaluating explanatory acts directed to the public or policymakers involves asking nonepistemic questions. (shrink)

I defend the view that linguistic meaning is a relation borne by an expression to a type of speech act, and that this relation holds in virtue of our overlapping communicative dispositions, and not in virtue of linguistic conventions. I argue that this theory gives the right account of the semantics–pragmatics interface and the best-available semantics for non-declarative clauses, and show that it allows for the construction of a rigorous compositional semantic theory with greater explanatory power than both truth-conditional (...) and dynamic semantics. (shrink)

Speech act theory seems to provide a promising avenue for the analysis of the functional organization of argument. The theory, however, might be taken to suggest that arguments are a homogenous class of speech act with a specifiable illocutionary force and a single set of felicity conditions. This suggestion confuses the analysis of the meaning of speech act verbs with the analysis of the pragmatic structure of actual language use. Suggesting that arguments are conveyed through a homogeneous (...) class of linguistic action overlooks the way in which the context of activity and the form of expression organize the argumentative functions performed in using language. An alternative speech act analysis would treat folk terminology as a heuristic entry point into the development of a technical analysis of the myriad argumentative functions and structures to be found in natural language use. This would lead to a thorough-going pragmatic analysis of the rational and functional design of speech acts in argumentation. (shrink)

Phenomenology as practised by Adolf Reinach ( 1883-191 7) in his all too brief philosophical career exemplifies all the virtues of Husserl's Logical Investigations. It is sober, concerned to be clear and deals with specific problems. It is therefore understandable that, in a philosophical climate in which Husserl's masterpiece has come to be regarded as a mere stepping stone on the way to his later Phenomeno logy, or even to the writings of a Heidegger, Reinach's contributions to exact philo sophy (...) have been all but totally forgotten. The topics on which Reinach wrote most illuminatingly, speech acts (which he called 'social acts') and states of affairs (Sachverhalte ), as well as his realism about the external world, have come to be regarded as the preserve of other traditions of exact philosophy. Like my fellow contributors, I hope that the present volume will go some way towards correcting this unfortunate historical accident. Reinach's account of judgements and states of affairs, an account that precedes those of Russell and Wittgenstein, his 1913 treatment of speech acts, his reinter pretation of Hume and aspects of his legal philosophy are the main philosophical topics dealt with in what follows. But his analysis of deliberation as well as his work on movement and Zeno's paradoxes get only a passing mention. (shrink)

Abstract: One oft-cited feature of speech acts is their expressive character: Assertion expresses belief, apology regret, promise intention. Yet expression, or at least sincere expression, is as I argue a form of showing: A sincere expression shows whatever is the state that is the sincerity condition of the expressive act. How, then, can a speech act show a speaker's state of thought or feeling? To answer this question I consider three varieties of showing, and argue that only one (...) of them is suited to help us answer our question. I also argue that concepts from the evolutionary biology of communication provide one source of insight into how speech acts enable one to show, and thereby express, a psychological state. (shrink)

We give a brief overview of several recent strands of speech-act theory, and then survey some issues in social and political philosophy can be profitably understood in speech-act-theoretic terms. Our topics include the social contract, the law, the creation and reinforcement of social norms and practices, silencing, and freedom of speech.

This book develops an alternative approach to sentence- and word-meaning, which I dub the speech-act theoretic approach, or STA. Instead of employing the syntactic and semantic forms of modern logic–principally, quantification theory–to construct semantic theories, STA employs speech-act structures. The structures it employs are those postulated by a novel theory of speech-acts. STA develops a compositional semantics in which surface grammar is integrated with semantic interpretation in a way not allowed by standard quantification-based theories. It provides a (...) pragmatic theory of truth, a treatment of logically complex discourse as expressive cognitive states, and a background metaphysics in which the world is a totality of logically simple states of affairs. The book also puts forward an account of how intentional states provide the simple, representational foundation for a superstructure of speech-act structures–a system of thoughts–that far outruns the expressive power of the intentional foundation. In short, it provides an account of cognitive foundations of a language and a naturalistic reduction of semantics through an expressive theory of semantic norms. (shrink)

The importance of speech acts for analyzing and evaluating argumentation in cases where it is suspected that the ad baculum fallacy has been committed is demonstrated in this paper by using a typical textbook example of this fallacy. It is shown how the argument in the example can be analyzed and evaluated using the devices of Gricean implicature and indirect speech acts. It is shown how these two devices can be applied to extrapolate the evidence furnished by the (...) text and dialectical context of the example. (shrink)

It is shown that at least part of the terminology of the theory of speech acts can be methodically introduced within the constructive ortholanguage-programm. There is evidence that a methodical constraint leads the reconstruction of the basic speech-act-types from requests via statements to questions. Moreover there is evidence that requests and questions don't involve "propositional acts".

Speech acts are a staple of everyday communicative life, but only became a topic of sustained investigation, at least in the English-speaking world, in the middle of the Twentieth Century.[1] Since that time “speech act theory” has been influential not only within philosophy, but also in linguistics, psychology, legal theory, artificial intelligence, literary theory and many other scholarly disciplines.[2] Recognition of the importance of speech acts has illuminated the ability of language to do other things than describe (...) reality. In the process the boundaries among the philosophy of language, the philosophy of action, the philosophy of mind and even ethics have become less sharp. In addition, an appreciation of speech acts has helped lay bare an implicit normative structure within linguistic practice, including even that part of this practice concerned with describing reality. Much recent research aims at an accurate characterization of this normative structure underlying linguistic practice. (shrink)

According to the pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation, for analysing argumentative discourse, a normative reconstruction is required which encompasses four kinds of transformations. It is explained in this paper how speech act conditions can play a part in carrying out such a reconstruction. It is argued that integrating Searlean insights concerning speech acts with Gricean insights concerning conversational maxims can provide us with the necessary tools. For this, the standard theory of speech acts has to be amended in (...) several respects and the conversational maxims have to be translated into speech act conditions. Making use of the rules for communication thus arrived at, and starting from the distribution of speech acts in a critical discussion as specified in the pragma-dialectical model, it is then demonstrated how indirect speech acts are to be transformed when reconstructing argumentative discourse. (shrink)

Employs speech-act theory (a) to support the notion that biblical authors (not just their texts) are inspired and to (b) to make some points about how we ought to react to scripture—in a nutshell, scriptural passages vary in their illocutionary force, so appropriate responses will vary as well.

There are two views of the essences of speech acts: according to one view, they are natural kinds; according to the other, they are what I call normative kinds—kinds in the (possibly non-reductive) definition of which some normative term occurs. In this article I show that speech acts can be normative but also natural kinds by deriving Williamson's account of assertion, on which it is an act individuated, and constitutively governed, by a norm (the knowledge rule), from a (...) consideration of the natural characteristics of normal cases of its performance. (shrink)

Using speech act theory from the Philosophy of Language, this paper attempts to develop an ethical framework for the phenomenon of speech processing. We use the concepts of the illocutionary force and the illocutionary content of a speech act to explain the ethics of speech processing. By emphasizing the different stages involved in speech processing, we explore the distinct ethical issues that arise in relation to each stage. Input, processing, and output are the different ethically (...) relevant stages under which a spoken item or a speech navigates within the range of speech-processing modules. Employing the illocutionary force-content distinction, we specify and characterize the input-related ethical issues, the output-related ethical issues, and the processing-related ethical issues involved in speech processing. Together with illocutionary force-content distinction, we employ the data-information distinction to characterize the stage-wise ethical issues in the phenomenon of speech processing as the ethics of collecting (speech) data, the ethics of contextualizing (speech) data/information, and the ethics of releasing the con-textualized information (processed speech). Immediate ethical issues that arise from the range of speech processing modules are distinguished from distant ethical issues. We also indicate the nature of ethical issues that arise from Speaker Independent speech technologies. (shrink)

Not every speech act can be a lie. A good definition of lying should be able to draw the right distinctions between speech acts that can be lies and speech acts that under no circumstances are lies. This paper shows that no extant account of lying is able to draw the required distinctions. It argues that a definition of lying based on the notion of ‘assertoric commitment’ can succeed where other accounts have failed. Assertoric commitment is analysed (...) in terms of two normative components: ‘accountability’ and ‘discursive responsibility’. The resulting definition of lying draws all the desired distinctions, providing an intensionally adequate analysis of the concept of lying. (shrink)

Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) has grown considerably over the past three decades. One form of SRI, engagement-SRI, is today by far the most practiced form of SRI (in assets managed) and has the potential to mainstream SRI even further. However, lack of formalized engagement procedures and evaluation tools leave the engagement practice too opaque for such a mainstreaming. This article can be considered as a first step in the development of a standard for the engagement practice. By developing an engagement (...) heuristic, this article offers a more transparent engagement dialog. Drawing on Stevenson’s and Austin’s speech-act theories, this article develops a classification of management’s responses to the signaling of allegations and controversies on two dimensions: a factual dimension concerning (dis)agreements on factual claims and an attitudinal dimension concerning (dis)agreements on responsibilities, values, and norms. On the basis of the distinctions this article develops, the authors provide for a synoptic table and offer a next-step heuristic for the engagement process that started with signaling a concern to management. The article uses an engagement logic that, while keeping the exit option for the investor open, allows management to address signaled concerns without having to let down or to opt out at the first setback in the dialog process between investor and investee corporation. (shrink)

In this paper, I re-interpret Hart’s concept of the rule of recognition using the theoretical framework of J. L. Austin’s speech act theory, in particular by treating recognition, change and adjudi...

The category of expressive speech acts has traditionally proven elusive of definition in contrast to other types of speech acts. This might explain why this group of speech acts has been less researched. The present paper aims to redress this imbalance by analysing the expressive speech acts performed by two groups of university students in two educational chats, carried out in English or in Spanish, respectively. The main purpose of the study is to find out if (...) students express their emotions when interacting online and, if the use of their mother tongue or not affects their performance of expressive speech acts in terms of frequency and type. To this purpose, Weigand’s taxonomy of speech acts was followed, since it provides a more systematic delimitation of the traditional category of “expressive acts”. Her distinction between emotives and declaratives was thus applied to the dataset under scrutiny. Results show that students opt for performing declarative acts but refrain from expressing their own emotions in an educational setting. As for the use of English or Spanish, no significant differences were observed, which reveals that the use of their mother tongue does not seem to affect the kind of acts performed. (shrink)

Over the past decades, there has been an ongoing debate about whether education should aim at the cultivation of emotional wellbeing of self-esteeming personalities or whether it should prioritise literacy and the cognitive development of students. However, it might be the case that the two are not easily distinguished in educational contexts. In this paper I use J.L. Austin's original work on speech acts to emphasise the interconnection between the cognitive and emotional aspects of our utterances, and illustrate how (...) emotional force affects communication in the classroom. (shrink)

We begin by explaining why formulating the pragma-dialectical (henceforth PD) account of argumentation in terms of some central notions of speech act theory, as Frans van Eemeren and Ton van Haaften (Argumentation 37:341–376, 2023) propose, fails. We go on to suggest that this failure reveals a deeper problem with the theory, one that makes it impossible for it to meet what van Eemeren and van Haaften recognize as the most important requirement for it. They say “The crucial problem in (...) the study of argumentation therefore is how maintaining reasonableness in argumentative discourse can lead to effective convincingness.” (Argumentation 37:341–376, 2023, p. 3) But on a proper understanding of what it is for an argument to be reasonable, this circle cannot be squared, since reasonableness and convincingness vary independently. A reasonable argument does not always convince, nor is one that does always reasonable. If this is, indeed, the crucial problem for pragma-dialectics, we will argue that it cannot be solved in the way that PD proposes. (shrink)

Introduction The analytical way of thinking has been one of the most fruitful paradigms in this century in philosophy and in different sciences, ...

Language is nothing but human subjects in as much as they speak, say and know. Language is something coming from the inside of the speaking subject manifest in the intentional meaningful purpose of the individual speaker. A language, on the contrary, is something coming from the outside, from the speech community, something offered to the speaking subject from the tradition in the technique of speaking. The speech act is the performance of an intuition by the subject, both individual (...) and social. (shrink)

In this paper, I compile some reasons for resisting Stainton's analysis of sub-sentential speech. My resistance stems from considerations about the intentions and expectations of those who communicate using sub-sentential speech. I challenge Stainton's reasons for thinking that some sub-sentential utterances have the status of full-fledged speech acts and argue that they turn out to be degenerate speech acts. After offering my own analysis of sub-sentential speech, I recommend that by revisiting the divide and conquer (...) strategy Stainton dismisses for handling the alleged cases of genuine sub-sentential speech, we can resist radical forms of contextualism suggested by his analysis. En este texto recopilo algunas razones para oponerse al análisis del habla suboracional que plantea Stainton. Mi oposición surge de consideraciones en torno a las intenciones y expectativas de quienes se comunican usando el habla suboracional. Pongo en duda las razones que aduce Stainton para pensar que algunas proferencias suboracionales tienen el estatus de actos de habla en toda la extensión de la palabra y arguyo que resultan ser actos de habla degenerados. Después de ofrecer mi propio análisis del habla suboracional, recomiendo que, retomando la estrategia "divide y vencerás" que Stainton descarta para manejar los presuntos casos de habla suboracional genuina, podemos oponernos a las formas radicales de contextualismo que su análisis sugiere. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically examine the major philosophical standpoints regarding subsentential speech acts such as “Nice dress”, “Under the table”, or “Where?”. The opponents of this category argue either that apparent subsentential speech acts are ellipses or that they are not full-fledged speech acts. The defenders of subsentential speech acts argue that even though they are not sentences in the syntactic or the semantic sense, they can be used to perform a speech act. I (...) argue in defence of subsentential speech acts and propose to analyze them using Recanati’s moderate relativism. (shrink)

In this essay, I propose a novel hybrid metanormative theory. According to this theory, speakers making normative claims express both cognitive and motivational attitudes in virtue of the constitutive norms of the particular speech acts they perform. This view has four principal virtues: it is consistent with traditional semantic theories, it supports a form of motivational judgment internalism that does justice to externalist intuitions, it illuminates the connection between normative language and normative thought, and it explains how speakers can (...) express different conative states when speaking in different normative domains. In the first section, I discuss the theories of Stephen Finlay and David Copp. I show that they each come very close to having it both ways but ultimately fail. Understanding the shortcomings of these views is instrumental to a clear presentation of my own Hybrid Speech Act theory in section two. In the final section, I demonstrate how my view achieves its four advantages. (shrink)

Successful language use requires accurate intention recognition. However, sometimes this can be undermined because communication occurs within an interpersonal context. In this research, I used a relatively large set of speech acts (n = 32) and explored how variability in their inherent face‐threat influences the extent to which they are successfully recognized by a recipient, as well as the confidence of senders and receivers in their communicative success. Participants in two experiments either created text messages (senders) designed to perform (...) a specific speech act (e.g., agree) or interpreted those text messages (receivers) in terms of the specific speech act being performed. The speech acts were scaled in terms of their degree of face threat. In both experiments, speech acts that were more threatening were less likely to be correctly recognized than those that were less threatening. Additionally, the messages of the more threatening speech acts were longer and lower in clout than the less threatening speech acts. Senders displayed greater confidence in communicative success than receivers, but judgments of communicative success (for both senders and receivers) were unrelated to actual communicative success. The implications of these results for our understanding of actual communicative episodes are discussed. (shrink)

The essential insight of speech act theory was that when we use language, we perform actions—in a more modern parlance, core language use in interaction is a form of joint action. Over the last thirty years, speech acts have been relatively neglected in linguistic pragmatics, although important work has been done especially in conversation analysis. Here we review the core issues—the identifying characteristics, the degree of universality, the problem of multiple functions, and the puzzle of speech act (...) recognition. Special attention is drawn to the role of conversation structure, probabilistic linguistic cues, and plan or sequence inference in speech act recognition, and to the centrality of deep recursive structures in sequences of speech acts in conversation. (shrink)

According to the pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation, for analysing argumentative discourse, a normative reconstruction is required which encompasses four kinds of transformations. It is explained in this paper how speech act conditions can play a part in carrying out such a reconstruction. It is argued that integrating Searlean insights concerning speech acts with Gricean insights concerning conversational maxims can provide us with the necessary tools. For this, the standard theory of speech acts has to be amended in (...) several respects and the conversational maxims have to be translated into speech act conditions. Making use of the rules for communication thus arrived at, and starting from the distribution of speech acts in a critical discussion as specified in the pragma-dialectical model, it is then demonstrated how indirect speech acts are to be transformed when reconstructing argumentative discourse. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Performative Utterances Locutionary, Illocutionary, and Perlocutionary Acts Classifying Illocutionary Acts Communicative Speech Acts and Intentions Conversational Implicature and Impliciture Conventional Implicature The Semantic‐Pragmatic Distinction Applications of the Semantic‐Pragmatic Distinction.

This study on the Speech Act of Promising builds on an article by Egner which claims that in many African Societies a promise is most often made not to be committed to its content but to be polite and save one's own or the addressee's face. While Egner opts for a Speech Act Theory approach to explain the phenomenon and comes to the conclusion that the speech act of promising may occur minus commitment, thus refuting the standard (...) SAT claim, I have opted to treat the issue within Relevance Theory and claim that a true speech act of promising cannot be without commitment since it is a performative and institutional speech act which has to be committed by its very nature. I have rather explained that the concept PROMISE can be used as an ad hoc concept PROMISE* which conveys a speech act of "saying that" and which is a broadened version of the encoded concept to make commitment optional and include issues of politeness and face saving. While Egner claims that a committed speech act can be determined by linguistic indication most of the time I claim that the intended interpretation falls out naturally from the relevance theoretic comprehension procedure which is: "Follow the path of least effort in determining cognitive effects and stop when your expectation of relevance is fulfilled". Unlike Egner I claim that at the root of using non-committed promises as a face saving device are shame oriented cultures that need these kinds of mechanisms for politeness more than guilt oriented cultures. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the ‘social meanings’ associated with sociolinguistic variation put pressure on the standard philosophical conception of language, according to which the foremost thing we do with words is exchange information. Drawing on parallels with the explanatory challenge posed by slurs and pejoratives, I argue that the best way to understand social meanings is to think of them in speech act theoretic terms. I develop a distinctive form of pluralism about the performances realized by means (...) of sociolinguistic variants, and I claim that engagement with such performances is an utterly pervasive feature of our linguistic activity. (shrink)