Page 419 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

A speech act is created when speaker/writer S makes an utterance U to hearer/reader H in context C. When S says 'I promise to take you to a movie tomorrow' s/he might mean it, in which case the illocutionary point of the utterance would be felicitous, or s/he might secretly intend not to carry out the promise, in which case the illocutionary point would be infel- icitous. The question of S's sincerity is not the only felicity condition on an illocutionary act. In addition to (1) the sincerity condition, Austin argued for three additional kinds of felicity conditions: (2) a pre- paratory condition to establish whether or not the circumstances of the speech act and the participants in it are appropriate to its being performed suc- cessfully; (3) an executive condition to determine whether or not the speech act has been properly executed; and (4) a fulfillment condition determined by the perlocutionary effect of the speech act. If all the relevant felicity conditions were satisfied for a given illocutionary act, Austin described it as 'happy' or 'felicitous.'
Austin's felicity conditions were expressed as fol- lows:
(A.I) There must exist an accepted conventional pro- cedure having a certain conventional effect, that procedure to include the uttering of certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances, and further,
(A.2) the particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure invoked.
(B.I) The procedure must be executed by all par- ticipants both correctly and
(B.2) completely.
(F.1) Where, as often, the procedure is designed for use
by persons having certain thoughts or feelings, or for the inauguration of certain consequential conduct on the part of any participant, then a person participating in and so invoking the pro- cedure must in fact have those thoughts or feel- ings, and the participants must intend so to conduct themselves, and further
(F.2) must actually so conduct themselves subsequently.
Now if we sin against one (or more) of these six rules, our performative utterance will be (in one way or another) unhappy.
(Austin 1975:14f)
(A.1-2) describe preparatory conditions, (B.l-2) executive conditions, (F.l) a sincerity condition, and (r.2) a fulfillment condition. Each felicity condition will be examined in turn.
(A.I) "There must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a certain conventional effect, that
procedure to include the uttering of certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances.' These are preparatory conditions on the felicity of speech acts like:
I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. (1)
I pronounce you man and wife. (2) I dub thee 'Sir Caspar.' (3) I declare the ball out. (4) Out! [In the sense of (4)] (5)
Typically, there are only certain ceremonial conditions under which baptism, the effecting of a marriage rite, knighting someone, and umpiring, can legitimately take place; and the speech acts in (1-5) only come off under these conditions. Thus, although anyone at all can utter (1-5) under any circumstances whatever, the illocutionary act will be invalid unless certain con- ventional circumstances prevail. For instance, in most Anglophone communities the preparatory conditions on (2) are: (a) only certain legally defined members of the community can function as marriage celebrants; (b) only such marriage celebrants may felicitously effect a marriage rite uttering (2); (c) they can only do so under circumstances conventionally recognized as constituting a marriage ceremony; (d) the people to be married must be a man and a woman and both over the age of 16 or thereabouts; (e) only if neither is concurrently married. If we ignore a few local legal variations, the uttering of (2) under different cir- cumstances will not effect a marriage, and the per- formative will be infelicitous. It is notable that in, say, a film or a play, a pretend marriage can be effected by the uttering of (2) under a proper model of the appropriate circumstances; but whereas the personae in the drama can subsequently be held to be married, the actors playing man and wife cannot. Comparable circumstances controlling the success of the illo- cutionary acts represented in the other sentences can readily be imagined. It is clear in all such cases that the speech act enacts the law (rules of society) or the rules of the game. (A.I) is very legalistic.
(A.2) The particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure invoked.' This condition seems to be largely included in (A. 1), but concentrates on the participants rather than the circumstances in which the speech act takes place. For instance, a fel- icitous order can be performed by a colonel saying to a private soldier 'I order you to clean the latrines at
Felicity Conditions K. Allan
Felicity Conditions
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