SPEECH ACTS

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SPEECH ACTS
Some history
Much philosophical discussion of language between
the wars emphasized the importance of truth and
truth conditions for an account of meaning. This
idea was particularly important for so-called
logical positivists such as British philosopher,
A.J. Ayer (1910-1989), who argued that sentences
are meaningful only if there is some way to
determine whether or not they are true.
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The emphasis on truth and truth conditions was
questioned by various philosophers, who argued
that it is more important to consider how
sentences are used.
These included Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951),
an Austrian philosopher based in Cambridge, and
J.L. Austin (1911-1960), a British philosopher
based in Oxford.
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Austin pointed out in Austin (1962) that there
are various kinds of utterances where it is not
normal to ask whether or not they are true. This
is particularly clear in the case of what he
called performative utterances.
1) a. I promise to be here next week. b. I order
you to leave the room. c. I name this ship the
HMS Wivenhoe.
Austin called such utterances performative
because they perform an action. The speaker of
(1a) is is actually making a promise, the speaker
of (1b) actually giving an order, and so on.
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Performative utterances contrast with utterances
like the following
2) a. I go to Wivenhoe every Saturday. b. I like
red wine. c. I admire Prof Bradley.
These state a fact about the speaker. Austin
called utterances that do this constatives.
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Austin suggested that while it is appropriate to
talk about truth and truth conditions in the case
of constatives, one can only talk about felicity
and felicity conditions in the case of
performatives.
Performative utterances are typically first
person singular present tense and contain one of
a number of performative verbs and they can be
modified by the word hereby.
3) a. I hereby promise to be here next week.
b. I hereby order you to leave the room. c. I
hereby name this ship the HMS Wivenhoe.
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But they are not necessarily like this.
4) a. You are hereby warned to stay in your
homes. b. Passengers on flight 69 are
requested to proceed to gate 19. c. We thank
you for your attention.
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Austin went on to question the importance of the
performative-constative distinction.
There are some utterances which dont look like
performatives they still perform an action. These
might be regarded as implicit performatives.
5) a. I order you to go home. (Explicit
performative) b. Go home! (Implicit
performative)
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Austin noted that to state a fact is to do
something and suggested that all utterances do
something.
He concluded that all utterances perform some
illocutionary act or illocution.
This position was developed further by the
American philosopher J.R. Searle (b. 1932) in
Searle (1968) and elsewhere and by many others.
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Illocutions
An illocutionary act or illocution is the act of
making a statement, offer, promise, etc. in
uttering a sentence, by virtue of the
conventional force associated with it.
Illocutions contrast with two other sorts of act.
A locutionary act is the utterance of a sentence
with a determinate sense and reference.
A perlocutionary act is the bringing about of
certain effects on the audience by means of
uttering a sentence.
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Some illocutions
accusing, admitting, apologizing, challenging,
complaining, congratulating, deploring, giving
permission, greeting, mocking, naming, offering,
praising, promising, protesting, recommending,
thanking, etc.
Some perlocutions
amazing, annoying, deceiving, frightening,
impressing, persuading, pleasing, scaring
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Illocutionary acts are under the control of the
speaker, but perlocutionary acts are not.
6) Kim threatened Lee but didnt frighten him.
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Different illocutionary have different felicity
conditions.
If a speaker promises to perform some action, she
must among other things
(a) intend to do it,
(b) believe she can do it,
(c) think that she would not do it in the normal
course of events,
(d) think that the addressee wants her to do it.
(See Levinson 1983 239.)
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If a speaker requests an addressee to perform
some action, she must
(a) believe the addresses can perform the action,
(b) believe the addressee would not perform the
action without being asked,
(c) want the addressee to perform the action.
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If a speaker warns an addressee against some
future event, she must
(a) believe the event will occur and is not in
the addressees interest,
(b) think it is not obvious to the addressee that
the event will occur.
(See Levinson 1983 240.)
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One type of felicity condition is a sincerity
condition, a condition which must be met if the
act is to be performed sincerely.
With a request the speaker must want the
addressee to perform the action in question
With a warning the speaker must believe that the
future event is not in the addressees best
interest.
With an assertion the speaker must believe that
the asserted proposition is true.
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Illocutionary force and core meaning
Most utterances have an illocutionary force and a
core meaning, which is a proposition or
propositions.
Two utterances may have different illocutionary
forces but the same core meaning. The following
may be asserting and questioning the same
proposition.
7) a. It is raining. b. Is it raining?
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How similar or different are illocutionary force
and a core meaning?
For Austin and Searle they are quite different.
Some have suggested that they are not
fundamentally different.
It has sometimes been argued that performative
utterances in fact have truth conditions like
other utterances. They are just unusual in that
they are true by virtue of being uttered (under
appropriate conditions).
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It was argued, e.g. in Ross (1970) and Sadock
(1974), that all utterances involve a
performative structure expressing their
illocutionary force but that this is commonly
invisible. This is known as the performative
hypothesis.
On the performative hypothesis the s in (7) has
essentially the same structure as the following
8) a. I say that it is raining. b. I ask whether
it is raining.
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Syntactic evidence for the performative hypothesis

• Reflexives

It was suggested that (9a) is grammatical unlike
(9b) because it has essentially the same
structure as (9c). It is rather like (9d)
(although this will have its own invisible
performative structure).
9) a. The paper was written by Lee and
myself. b. The paper was written by Lee and
herself. c. I say that the paper was written by
Lee and myself. d. She says that the paper
was written by Lee and herself.
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• Adverbs

It was suggested that (10a) is grammatical
because it has essentially the same structure as
(10b), in which the adverb frankly modifies the
verb say.
10) a. Frankly, I cant stand Sandy. b. I say
frankly that I cant stand Sandy.
It was suggested that (11a) is grammatical
because it has essentially the same structure as
(11b), in which the adverbial because clause can
modify the verb ask.
11) a. Is Kim here because I cant see him? b. I
ask whether Kim is here because I cant see him.
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It seems that the performative hypothesis does
not allow illocutionary force to be assimilated
to core meaning.
If (12a) has essentially the same structure as
(12b) and (12b) is true by virtue of being
uttered, then (12a) should be true by virtue of
being uttered by virtue of being uttered, but
this seems wrong.
12) a. The world is flat. b. I state that the
world is flat.
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The performative hypothesis faces a variety of
problems.
It is not clear that frankly in (10a) (Frankly, I
cant stand Sandy.) really modifies an invisible
verb of saying. Rather it seems to warn the
addressee that a criticism is coming.
If it is possible to have an adverb which
modifies an invisible performative verb, it is
not clear why (13a) is not possible.
13) a. I hereby state that the world is
flat. b. Hereby the world is flat.
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Some because clauses do not explain why the
speaker is speaking but how she knows what she is
saying.
14) Kim is at home, because his lights are on.
Briefly may indicate how the speaker wants the
addressee to speak and not how the speaker is
speaking.
15) Briefly, what do you think will happen next?
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Proponents of the performative hypothesis
generally assumed that the highest verb in a
sentence is a performative verb either visible or
invisible.
However, when a sentence contains an overt
performative verb it is not always the highest
verb.
16) I am afraid I must ask you to go to the
library.
17) I regret to say that I dont know the answer.
18) I would like to suggest that you join a
monastery.
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Proponents of the performative hypothesis have
generally assumed the following simple relation
between sentence form and illocutionary force.
Declarative (e.g. Kim went to London) Assertion
Interrogative (e.g. Did Kim go to
London?) Question
Imperative (e.g. Go to London!) Order
But declaratives are not necessarily used to make
assertion (16-18).
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Interrogatives are not necessarily used to ask a
question.
19) Have you ever seen such an awful film?
Imperatives are not necessarily used to give an
order.
20) responding to a question about how to get
somewhere Take the first turning on the left,
and the second in the right.
It seems that the illocutionary force of an
utterance is different from the core meaning and
is not embodied in a possibly invisible a
performative structure but is inferred from
utterances on the basis of their formal
properties and contextual information.
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Indirect speech acts
Particularly important for an understanding of
illocutions are so-called indirect speech acts,
where an utterance has a different illocutionary
force from that which a simple view of the
relation between sentence form and illocutionary
force would suggest. See (16)-(20) and the
following
21) a. Could you feed the cat? b. Would you
mind feeding the cat? c. Do you think that you
could feed the cat? d. Could I ask you to feed
the cat? (all probably a request)
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22) a. Could I suggest that you go to
library? b. Why dont you go to the
library? (both probably a suggestion)
23) Why not go to the library? (a suggestion)
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One approach to such examples, developed e.g. in
Sadock (1974), sees them as speech act idioms,
having the illocutionary forces indicated in the
same way as (24) has the meaning Kim died.
24) Kim kicked the bucket.
Evidence against this view comes from the fact
that other languages have similar indirect speech
acts. We do not expect the same idiom to appear
in different languages.
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A second approach assumes that such examples have
the illocutionary forces indicated through
processes of inference. On this view they have a
basic questioning illocutionary force but hearers
infer a request or suggestion force.
This approach is implausible for (23) (Why not go
to the library?) given that it can never be a
question. It is implausible for the following
(the examples in (21) with please added) for the
same reason.
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25) a. Could you please feed the
cat? b. Would you mind please feeding the
cat? c. Do you think please that you could feed
the cat? d. Could I please ask you to feed the
cat? (all a request)
It also seems that these examples do require any
special inferences unlike (26) if it is an
attempt to get the hearer to feed the cat.
26) The cat is looking hungry.
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A third approach, advanced in Morgan (1978),
analyses indirect speech acts in terms of
short-circuited implicature.
Indirect speech acts have meanings which could be
arrived at through processes of inference from a
question meaning but speakers know that these
forms can have request and suggestion meanings
and so do not need to derive the meaanings in
this way.
This approach seems preferable to the idiom and
inference approaches.
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REFERENCES
Austin, J. L. (1962), How to Do Things With
Words, Oxford Oxford University Press. Morgan,
J. (1978), Two types of convention in indirect
speech acts, in P. Cole (ed.), Syntax and
Semantics 9 Pragmatics, New York Academic
Press. Ross, J. R. (1970), On declarative
sentences in R. A. Jacobs and P. S. Rosenbaum
(eds.), Readings in English Transformational
Grammar,Waltham, Mass. Ginn. Sadock, J. M.
(1974), Towards a Linguistic Theory of Speech
Acts, New York Academic Press. Searle, J.R.
(1968), Speech Acts, Cambridge Cambridge
University Press.