Marina Sbisà
Indicative Mood, Illocutionary Force, and Truth:
Some Points for Discussion
Series A: General & Theoretical Papers
ISSN 1435-6473
Essen: LAUD 1987 (2nd ed. with divergent page numbering 2013)
Paper No. 193
Universität Duisburg-Essen
Marina Sbisà
University of Trieste (Italy)
Indicative
Mood,
Some Points for Discussion
Illocutionary
Copyright by the author
1987 (2nd ed. with divergent page numbering 2013)
Series A
General and Theoretical
Paper No. 193
Force,
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and
Truth:
Marina Sbisà
Indicative Mood, Illocutionary Force, and Truth:
Some Points for Discussion
Paper read at the International Conference, Antwerp, August 1987
1.
Is the indicative mood – or better, the declarative sentence type – an illocutionary force
indicating device?
This question leads to either one of the two following questions:
Are declarative sentences “force neutral”?
What exactly does the declarative sentence type “indicate” (assertion or statement: a
force belonging to the class of assertive or of constatives; a force belonging to the class of
verdictives)?
1.1.
The standard answer to the first question is that all the moods are illocutionary force
indicating (ifids). Their function is to enable the listener to understand the illocutionary
point of his/her speech act. The indicative mood, as opposed to the imperative mood and to
the interrogative sentence type, has the function to indicate an assertive illocutionary point,
that is, the fact that the speaker intends to tell how things are (and to commit him/herself to
the truth of the proposition uttered). Therefore, the illocutionary force of a speech act
performed in uttering a declarative sentence has to be that of assertion, or, however, a force
belonging to a class of illocutionary forces, among whose members assertion has a central
place (such a class been named by Searle “Representatives” or “Assertives”, and by Bach
and Harnish “Constatives”. By the way, there was no such class in Austin’s classification).
1.2.
However, in actual discourse we find quite a lot of speech acts performed by uttering
declarative sentences (verb in the indicative mood, no auxiliaries or modal verbs added etc.)
which do not seem to have an assertive or constative illocutionary point. Consider:
(1)
I am coming.
(2)
The lady comes with us.
By uttering (1) the speaker does not tell how things are but commits him/herself to be
coming in a minute. By uttering (2) the speaker does not tell how things are, but proposes or
urges or decides what the lady should do.
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Other examples are evaluative speech acts (which are be said to tell “how things are”
only be stretching the meaning of this expression in an unusual way) and performative
utterances (if we accept the Austinian view that they are not assertions but performances of
the speech act they mention).
Moreover, it is doubtful whether a speaker uttering such speech acts are expressions of
opinion has the illocutionary point of saying how things are (and not, rather, of expressing
oneself with respect to certain beliefs, assumptions, inductive conclusions …).
Finally, in languages such as Italian – in which the interrogative sentence type may not
differ from the declarative but for intonational features – the distinction between an
interrogative sentence and a declarative one may be a matter of degree, and in many
intermediate cases utterance of the sentence may appear as neither a question nor an
assertive speech act, but as an expression of doubt or the advancing of a suggestion.
Such observations may suggest the hypothesis that, perhaps, the indicative mood is no
ifid at all: it is “neutral”, it leaves to other features of the utterance the task of indicating its
illocutionary force (cfr. Recanati 1981). However, it is not true that you can perform any
speech act whatsoever (according to the circumstances) by issuing a declarative sentence. It
seems that the declarative sentence type excludes certain kinds of questions, certain kinds of
expressive like wishes, just to mention some examples (we take it for granted that it can be
used, with the aid of the context and an appropriate inferential apparatus, with almost all
kinds of directive illocutionary point; but even this is not certain).
But if the indicative mood, and the connected declarative sentence type, have to be
considered as ifids, it should be examined in further detail whether they indicate that the
speech act they characterizer is an assertion or if they indicate the whole range of assertive
illocutionary forces, so that the actual literal illocutionary force of the utterance has to be
selected from it. The former hypothesis is counterfactual, at least if we have to assign only
one illocutionary force to each utterance; the latter leaves it undecided, how the precise
illocutionary force of the utterance is to be determined. Moreover – since it is undeniable
that most assertive speech acts say, in a sense, be calles “assertions” as well as (say)
remarks or confirmations or explanations or objections … - the problem arises of drawing a
distinction between two senses of “assertion”, the one more specific (according to which it
is uncorrect to say that a confirmation, an explanation, etc. are assertions), the other more
generic.
1.3.
The perspective I am willing to suggest is that we should consider the indicative mood as an
ifid, but we should reconsider attentively the role of the ifids in speech act theory. I should
like to argue that each individual speech act encompasses several ifids, and its illocutionary
force is the result of the composition of these in a “physiognomy”. Thus we would be able
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to account for the fact that the indicative mood contribute to the illocutionary force of an
utterance, but does not determine it.
Moreover, I am inclined to think that ifids are not a part of the illocutionary act (whose
structure includes perhaps a condition to the effect that there should be some ifids, in order
for the force to be recignizeable by listeners, not necessarily a finite list of actual ifids), but
belong to the locutionary act, namely, to the act of saying something according to the rules
of a language and with a certain sense and reference (cfr. Austin 1962). Thus, the ifids are
means for the performance of the illocutionary act, not the illocutionary act itself; and it
becomes easier to see that what plays the role of an ifid, the declarative sentence, may be
described as an “assertion” in a sense quite different from the illocutionary sense of this
word. So the two senses of “assertion” we have mentioned above could be characterized,
not as a specific vs. a generic one (a puzzling distinction, if it is to be drawn at the
illocutionary level), but as a locutionary one (a rhetic one, in Austin’s terminology) and an
illocutionary one (assertion as a particular kind of illocutionary force, with its own
conditions and effects). I would like to recall that, in his discussion of the locutionary act,
Austin noticed that reports of rhetic acts (the rhetic act is a component of the illocutionary
act – saying something with a sense and a reference) are sensitive to the distinction among
declarative, interrogative and imperative sentences.
2.
When a declarative sentence can be described by more than one illocutionary verb (assert or
state, but also inform, object, protest, warn, or what else …), should we say that the speech
act has got two or more illocutionary forces? What is the relationship between these?
Is one of them the literal illocutionary force, while the others are indirect or secondary
ones? Or do they simply correspond to different descriptions of the speech at (but to which
kinds of different descriptions?)
2.1.
The standard answer to these questions exploits the notion of an indirect speech act. The
direct illocutionary force – the force more directly indicated or suggested by the ifids, if
there is any – is often simply not relevant to the interlocutors; but an appropriate inferential
apparatus can conclude from it to one or more indirect illocutionary forces.
2.2.
It would take a long time to explain why I think that the standard answer is not satisfactory.
My main point could be summarized as follows. If we label “direct” illocutionary force
something which is hardly relevant to the real illocutionary point of the speaker (as well as
to the bearer’s uptake of the speech act), and we account for what is relevant as indirect
illocutionary force, derived by inference, are we not giving up the study of illocutionary acts
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as actions, and turning it into a study of how-it-is-that-we-conclude-that-someone-isperforming-a-certain-act (while it is still unclear in what such an act consists, what are its
effects, etc.)? the recent versions of speech act theory, that generalize an inferential scheme
to (the understanding of) all illocutionary forces, give us an analysis of how we come to
ascribe a certain act to a certain speaker, not an explanation (nor a description) of what it is
for such an act to be performed; the inferences and the uptake they lead to are, it seems, all
the illocutionary act itself is up to; in this context, to speak of the act, as opposed to the
inferential machinery, will soon sound like speaking of the traditional philosophical “ghost
in the machine”.
2.3.
I should like to distinguish several different ways for describing speech acts, which would
account for different kinds of cases in which we are willing to attach more than one label to
the same speech act. In particular, I should like to distinguish at least:
- a locutionary-rhetic level of descriptions vs. an illocutionary level;
- an illocutionary level of description taking into account the whole of the
relationship between speaker and listener vs. an illocutionary-explosive level
limited to the relationship between speaker and listener as actualized in the
present discourse and with reference to it.
Further complications can be added by considering the different roles that one and the same
speech act can play with respect to preceding and to subsequent moves belonging to the
same international sequence (cf. Sbisà 1986).
3.
Is the indicative mood always or at least regularly linked with truth/falsity? On the other
hand: is truth/falsity always or at least regularly relevant to the assignment of illocutionary
force (so that all the speech acts that we would call true/false belong to the same
illocutionary class)?
This question is linked to further (and possibly deeper) questions:
What is it that we call true/false (the whole speech act, or a locutionary or
propositional component of it)? Moreover, what is the role of the notion of an illocutionary
act in the pragmatic theory – what is the role of pragmatics itself?
3.1.
The standard answer to the main question above id that as far as the indicative mood can be
considered as an ifids (with the function of indicating assertive force), it is regularly linked
with truth/falsity. Indicative mood leads to assignment of assertive force, and assertive force
coincides with the speech acts being (on principle) a true/false one. True/false speech acts
are grouped all together in one class (that of assertive), thus perpetuating the division of
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language into the two great realms of the utterances which mirror the world and of the
utterance which purport to act in or upon it.
3.2.
It is easy to see that the view of language, that results from the choice of using truth/falsity
as a criterion for one of the classes of illocutionary force, can be in many respects
philosophically unsatisfactory. It is so, at least for those who believe that philosophy ought
to criticize oversimplification and dichotomies (such as the old and famous Theory/Practice
dichotomy).
But also from a point of view more internal to linguistic pragmatics, if we accept at
least some of the perplexities and the proposals sketchily expounded above (see in particular
1.2.), we should cast doubt upon the connection indicative mood – assertive forcetruth/falsity.
The main doubts are two:
- Why should being true/false count as a criterion of illocutionary classification?
(of course, an answer such as: because Searle included direction of fit among
the central features of illocutionary acts, cannot be but circular);
- Is there a sense of “true/false” in which it can be said that all declarative
sentences are (or at least can be) true/false?
3.3.
With respect to all this, I find it useful to distinguish at least two senses of “true/false”. If
we consider a declarative sentence and understand it, we certainly have some more or less
precise idea as to its truth conditions. This level of the notion of “truth/falsity” I would call
“semantic truth/falsity”, and I would locate it in speech act theory within the locutionary act
(this conclusion is similar to a thesis argued for by Holdcroft 1978). But if we consider a
speech act and examine whether it can be judged true/false, we see that not all utterances of
all declarative sentences can be so judged; rather, many qualifications have to be taken into
account. This further level of the notion of “truth/falsity” I would call “pragmatic
truth/falsity”, and I would follow Austin in considering it as a dimension of assessment of
the accomplished speech act.
It is easy to see that there is a connection between the proposal of considering mood
(and/or sentence type) as belonging to the locutionary-rhetic rather than the illocutionary
level of the speech act, and the present proposal of distinguishing semantic from pragmatic
truth/falsity. The two proposals together would help individuating a narrow group of
true/false assertive speech acts, endowed with their own pragmatic (and illocutionary
properties; at the same time, many speech acts which resemble assertions under one respect
or the other would receive richer descriptions in their own right.
As to the doubts about using truth/falsity as a criterion for illocutionary classification,
it is clear that semantic truth/falsity (a rather clear-cut phenomenon) cannot be so used, just
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because it does not belong to the illocutionary level. On the contrary, pragmatic truth/falsity
is not such clear-cut phenomenon. It can help individuating a group of assertive speech acts,
but this is not enough to define a whole class of illocutionary forces. In doing so one should
rather take into account a number of related phenomena (like being correct/uncorrect,
fair/unfair, etc.) that affect also speech acts which are not (strictly speaking) assertions.
Austin’s class of Verdictives could be an useful point of departure.
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REFERENCES
Austin, J. L. (1962), How to Do Things with Words. London, Oxford University Press, 2nd
ed. 1975.
Bach, K. and Harnish, R. M. (1979), Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts.
Cambridge, Mass. and London, M.I.T. Press.
Holdcroft, D. (1978), Words and Deeds. London, Oxford University Press.
Recanati, F. (1981), Les éncocés performatifs. Paris, Editions de Minuit.
Sbisà, M. (1984), “On illocutionary types”, Journal of Pragmatics 8, 93 – 112.
Sbisà, M. (1985), “Manipulation et sanction dans la dynamique des actes de langage”, in H.
Parret et H. G. Ruprech (eds.), Exiqences et perspectives de la sémiotique. Recueil
d’hommages pour Algirdas J. Greitmas. Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 1985, 529 –
538.
Searle, J. R. (1969), Speech Acts. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Searle, J. R. (1979), Expressions and Meaning. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
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