Phil 148

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Phil 148

• Chapter 2B

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Speech Act Rules

• 1. Must the speaker use any special words or
  formulae to perform the speech act?
• 2. Must the (a) speaker or (b) audience hold any
  special position for the speaker to perform the
  speech act?
• 3. Are there any other special circumstances
  required for the speech act?
• 4. Is any response or uptake needed to complete
  the speech act?
• 5. What feelings/desires/beliefs is the speaker
  expected to have?
• 6. What general purpose or purposes are served by
  this kind of speech act?

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Conversational Acts

• When one uses a speech act to affect another, a
  conversational act has occurred.
• One can perform the speech act while failing to
  perform the intended conversational act.
• Conversational acts are largely governed by a set
  of assumptions we will refer to as
  conversational rules (though strictly speaking
  they are conventions)

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(Herbert) Paul Grice

• 1913-1988
• Educated at Oxford, taught there for several
  years, spent the last two decades of his life at
  the University of California at Berkeley
• Many of his most influential writings are
  reprinted in the book Studies in the Way of Words

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The Cooperative Principle

• Language is a cooperative enterprise. It doesnt
  work if one side doesnt cooperate.
• Grices Cooperative Principle contains 4 rules
• Quantity
• Quality
• Relevance
• Manner

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Quantity

• 1. Make your contribution as informative as is
  required for the current purposes of the exchange
• 2. Do not make your contribution more informative
  than is required.
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vUDPqB9i1ScY

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Quality

• 1. Do not say that which you believe to be false.
• 2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate
  evidence.

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Relevance

• Make your information germane to the purposes of
  the exchange. (anyone see a quantity problem with
  that?)
• Unfortunately, there is no set guideline for
  relevance. Either one can recognize it or one
  cannot.

• Make your information germane to the purposes of
  the exchange. (anyone see a quantity problem with
  that?)

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Manner

• 1. Avoid obscurity of expression
• 2. Avoid ambiguity
• Giant Police Exercise to Guard Bush
• exceptions when telling a joke for example.
• 3. Be brief
• 4. Be orderly
• --- in short, dont be goofy.
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vGnsYbajTkeQ

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Conversational Implication

• When we assume others are following
  conversational rules, and assume that they assume
  that we are also, we can convey a great deal of
  information without saying it.
• In a conversational exchange we expect more than
  to be taken literally.
• The purpose of language is not precision, but
  versatility. Consider the case of names for
  persons. There is a reason that theyre so brief
  even though this can sometimes lead to ambiguity.
  Apply that same reasoning to names for everything
  else and you begin to get the picture.

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Violating Conversational Rules

• Damning with faint praise
• Irony (sarcasm to us Americans)
• Figurative language
• Intentional Ambiguity