1 John Langshaw Austin (1911 – 1960)
How to do things with words
William James Lectures 1955 Harvard
(published 1962 Oxford, Clarendon)
against common view
- basic form of sentences is declarative
- basic use of language is to state things
- basic meaning of utterances is truth-conditional
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1 constatives versus performatives
initial idea in the book
constatives
I met John yesterday.
sentences for saying
something
descriptive
true/false
performatives
I christen this ship the
Unicorn.
sentences for doing
something
effective
felicitous/infelicitous
later in Austin’s book rejected: reasons for a general
conception of speech acts
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1 felicity and truth conditions
a I christen this ship the Unicorn.
b The passerby christened the ship.
suppose that a passerby, being drunk, picks up a bottle
and smashes it against a ship, saying a
- what is the status of a?
- what is the truth value of b?
there is an important parallelism between felicity
conditions and truth conditions
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1 infelicities with performatives
misinvocation
a I pronounce you man and wife. (by me)
b I banish you from the Netherlands. (by Wilders)
misexecution
c John and Mary, I pronounce you man and wife.
(to Jack and Jill)
abuse
insincere or unkept promises
unfelt congratulations
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1 but also infelicities with constatives
misinvocation (e.g. presupposition failure)
The king of France is bald.
misexecution (e.g. referential mistake)
He used to be the president.
abuse
The earth is flat.
conclusion: performatives and constatives are not so
different after all and we need a general theory of speech
acts
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2 three acts in one utterance
locutionary act: act of speaking, uttering a sentence
illocutionary act: act in speaking, asserting, demanding,
promising, …
perlocutionary act: act by speaking, production of effect
in hearer
speech act: typically used for illocutionary act
examples: Shoot her!
You can’t do that
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2 another example
The bar will be closed in five minutes.
locutionary act: saying that the bar will be closed in five
minutes
illocutionary act: informing the visitors of the bar's
imminent closing, perhaps also urging them to order a
last drink
perlocutionary act: causing the visitors to believe that
the bar is about to close and of getting them to want and
to order one last drink
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2 distinguishing locution and illocution
sentence types: imperatives, declaratives, interrogatives
(sometimes called mood)
illocutionary act potential: what speech acts can be
performed with those sentence types
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2 distinguishing illocution and perlocation
illocution
- conventional force associated
- determinate
- can be made explicit by a performative formula
I urge you to shoot her!
perlocution
- non-conventional effect accomplished
- specific to the circumstances, indeterminate
- cannot be made explicit by a performative formula
#I persuade/frighten you to shoot her.
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2 performative formula
Austin suggested that the illocutionary force of an
utterance can be made explicit through a performative
formula?
I (hereby) verb-present-active X …
Shoot her! > I hereby order you to shoot her.
what about The bull is about to charge?
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2 performative formula
You are wrong -> I assert that you are wrong.
I’ll do the dishes -> I promise to do the dishes.
but there is a problem with the idea that the illocutionary
force of an utterance can be made explicit in this way
I’ll kill you - #I threaten to kill you.
You’re fired - #I hereby fire you.
the explicit versions are not performative
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3 Austin’s and Searle’s acts
Austin
Searle
locutionary act
utterance act
propositional act
illocutionary act
illocutionary act
perlocationary act
perlocutionary act
Searle: propositional and illocutionary act can correspond
to different parts in an utterance
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3 Searle’s acts of speaking
general speech act:
F(p)
F is the illocutionary force indicating device (IFID)
p is the propositional act
for example: Promise(p), Assert(p)
the speech acts Promise(p) and Assert(p) are then
defined in terms of conventional felicity conditions that
create the speech act when they are followed
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3 Searle’s felicity conditions
propositional
content rules
preparatory rules
sincerity rules
essential rules
Promise(p)
p is about a future
act A of S
H prefers S doing
A and it is not
obvious that S will
do A
S intends to do A
counts as a way of
committing S to A
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Assert(p)
p could be
anything
S has evidence for
p
S believes p
counts as a way of
committing to the
fact that p is
actual
3 Searle’s taxonomy
term: illocutionary point (example)
direction of fit - psychological state
assertives: commit to something being the case
word-to-world - belief
directives: attempt to get H to act (requesting)
world-to-word - want
commissives: commit to doing (promising, warning)
world-to-word - intention
declarations: declare a change (declaring, christening)
double - none
expressives: express a state (thanking, welcoming)
no direction – several
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4 Thesis and Antithesis
Thesis (Austin, Searle)
- illocutionary force not reducible to truth-conditions
- truth-conditions unsuited for capturing illocutionary
aspects of meaning
(but: both assumed force conventionally associated to
sentences)
Anti-Thesis
- the phenomena that are captured under the rubric of
illocutionary force can be accounted for by standard
syntactic theories and truth-conditional semantics
e.g. I promise to come.
true just by saying it, action is inferred
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4 example of Antithesis: Bach and Harnish
I order you to leave.
1
2
3
4
5
6
He is saying “I order you to leave”.
He is stating that he is ordering me to leave.
If his statement is true, then he must be ordering
me to leave.
If he is ordering me to leave, it must be his
utterance that constitutes the order (what else could
it be?).
Presumably, he is speaking the truth.
Therefore, in stating that he is ordering me to leave,
he is ordering me to leave.
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4 performative hypothesis
every sentence has an illocutionary force
hypothesis: every sentence contains as its highest clause
a performative verb with a 1s subject
I ordered you to sit down.
I TELL YOU THAT I ordered you to sit down.
Ross (1970), Lakoff (1972), Sadock
(generative semantics, in deep structure)
syntactic arguments?
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4 arguments for the performative hypothesis
a Carter said that solar energy was invented by God and
himself.
b Solar energy was invented by God and
*himself/myself.
c I TELL YOU THAT Solar energy was invented by God
and myself.
d Frankly, I prefer the white meat.
e I TELL YOU frankly THAT I prefer the white meat.
f What’s for lunch, because I’m very hungry.
g I ASK YOU what’s for lunch, because …
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4 arguments for the performative hypothesis
a John says that he’ll be damned if he’ll vote republican.
b #John fears that he’ll be damned if he’ll vote
republican.
c #John says that I’ll be damned if I’ll vote republican.
What is the descriptive generalization here?
Given these data, construct example sentences that
support the performative hypothesis.
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4 problems for the PH
truth conditions are not identical
a I state to you that world is flat.
b The world is flat.
felicity conditions do not behave like truth conditions
c Please close the door.
if the-door-is-not-closed is a felicity condition of
requesting, then d would be a contradition
d John requested Bill to close the door, but it was
already closed.
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4 problems for the PH
uptake is sometimes necessary
a I bet you sixpence I’ll win the race.
b OK, you are on.
why is there a difference with the following
c I am betting you sixpence I’ll win the race.
multiple forces in one sentence
c Did Jasper, who is by the way my brother, talk to you?
d Wittgenstein was an Oxford philosopher, wasn’t he?
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4 problems for the PH
there are cases where expected adverbs don’t show up
a I hereby order you to eat.
b I ORDER YOU TO eat!
c *Hereby eat!
finally, the performative hypothesis would require all
sorts of syntactic deletion operations (or empty
structures) that are difficult to motivate
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5 literal force hypothesis
maybe a more general hypothesis is possible: literal force
hypothesis
illocutionary force is built into sentence form
- either by explicit performative verbs
- or at least by sentence type
generative semanticists: built into deep structure
speech act theorists: conventional relation between form
and force
problem: indirect speech acts
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5 direct and indirect speech acts
direct speech acts: explicitly marked by matching mood
or performative verb
a I state that the world is flat.
b The world is flat.
c Is the world flat?
d Help me!
indirect speech acts: cannot be related to conventional
encoding of illocutionary force
e Could you pass the salt?
f Isn’t it a bit cold in here?
g I want you to close the door.
h You ought to close the door.
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5 please
What does the distribution of please in the following
sentences tell about speech acts? Does please make a
distinction between direct and indirect speech acts?
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
Please close the door.
#John please came to my party.
#Did John please come to my party?
Can you please close the door?
Will you please close the door?
I want you to please close the door.
#Are you able to please close the door?
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5 how to deal with indirect speech acts
e.g. Isn’t it a bit cold in here?
Can you please close the door?
idiom theory: there are conventional idioms for
requesting e.g. Can you VP? Could you VP?
- ambiguity
- non-compositionality
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5 how to deal with indirect speech acts
inference theory
indirect speech acts are based on Gricean inferences
Can you pass the salt?
+> I request you to pass the salt.
problem: some conventionality has to be recognized,
because of Are you able to pass the salt.
- short-circuited implicatures
- conversational postulates
- division of pragmatic labor/M-implicatures
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5 final remark: not all speech acts are the same
some characterized by formal features and a
conventional relation, sometimes even idioms
- Close the window!
- Thank you.
some not linked by convention but by the recognition by
the hearer of the speaker’s intention
- It’s cold here.
- Oh, I love roses.
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