Page 425 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

the room thus implyings/he would prefer cooler, more airy, conditions. This will be Sc's reason for asking whether or not Hc can open the window, either right now or in the immediate future. Hc will conclude that Sc reflexively-intends (8) to be taken as a reason for Hc to open the window.
In (8) S uses a formula which questions the possi- bility for H to open the window—thus expressly giving H the option to refuse—rather than coercing H by using an imperative, which offers no such option. For H to do A it is necessary that H can do A—which is why polite refusals state or imply the inability to comply. Asking if H can do A is more tentative than asking if H will do A because a will request solicits the cooperative answer / will, in which H commits her/himself to complying. The mitigation of a face threat was the reason scholars once gave for the use of indirectness; there appears to have been some con- fusion between the notion of indirect speech acts, as they have been described here, and the notion of on- record versus off-record speech acts, such as are described by Brown and Levinson (1987). For some- one who is not very close to you to respond to the invitation Do you want to come to a movie tonight? with the bald-on-record refusal No is outright offens- ive; to avoid giving offence interlocutors hedge, apo- logize, prevaricate, and speak off-record, giving reasons for not accepting the invitation or complying with the request. Thus to refuse the invitation politely one says things like (9):
I have to wash my hair. (9) I'd love to, but my mother's coming to dinner tonight.
Like most speech acts, the illocutionary point of the utterances in (9) is indirect; but more significantly, these are off-record refusals.
Because all entailments and implicatures of a prop- osition within U are communicated, they give rise to indirect illocutions that are often, though not necess- arily, intended to be communicated. For example,
Woody likes his newjob informs H that 'S believes Woody has a new job,' and S may have made the utterance partly to inform H of this fact. Whophoned? informs H that'S believes that someone phoned.' My sister's husband—'S has a married sister.' Max hasone son and two daughters—'S believes Max has no more than one son and two daughters.' Challenges such as (10) directly seek an explanation for or cessation of the offending act; and indirectly S informs H of S's belief that 'the music (hifi) is loud.'
loud and would not have asked (10) but said some- thingsupportive(Greatsound!Let'sturnupthe hifi!). Therefore, either S believes that H does not like loud music and is seeking an explanation for this uncharac- teristic behavior, or—and much more likely—S does not like loud music and is making plain the opinion that 'the music is too loud.' A public condemnation like that of the woman at a party who cries out Mrs Trumpington, will you please ask your husband to keep his hands off me?! broadcasts (a) what Mr T is doing, (b) a request that he be stopped, (c) S's entailed belief that he will not stop of his own volition. Those are on-record indirect illocutions. Off-record, S indirectly intends not only that Mrs T condemn her husband for sexual harassment of S, but that everyone in earshot should do so too.
The illocutionary point of any utterance is dis- covered by an inferential process that attends to S's tone of voice and the context of utterance, knowledge of the language itself and of conversational conven- tions, and perhaps general knowledge. S knows this and speaks accordingly, aware that H—as a com- petent social being and language user—will recognize the implications of what s/he says. It is not enough to know a language, one must also know how to use it. Having recognized the existence of the utterance, the inferential process must start with the form; and the primary illocution is read off the clause-type used. The binary distinction 'direct' versus 'indirect' is not fine enough for a proper analysis of speech acts. Because the primary illocution is only occasionally the illo- cutionary point of the utterance, most illocutions are inferred as 'secondary,' or 'tertiary' illocutions. The last illocution that can be inferred is the (presumed) illocutionary point of the utterance.
See also: Speech Act Theory: Overview; Speech Acts and Grammar.
Bibliography
Allan K 1986 Linguistic Meaning, vol. 2. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London
Bach K, Harnish R M 1979 Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Brown P, Levinson S 1987 Politeness: Some Universal in Language Usage. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Cohen L J 1964 Do illocutionary forces exist? Philosophical
Quarterly 55:118-37
Gazdar G 1981 Speech act assignment. In: Joshi A et al.
(eds.) Elements of Discourse Understanding. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge
Lewis D 1970 General semantics. Synthese 22:18-67
Searle J R 1975 Indirect speech acts. In: Cole P, Morgan J
(eds.) Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts. Academic Press, New York
< _ , I r p l aJy t h e h i f i s o l o u d ? [Must you]
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If S likes loud music, and knows or assumes that H does too, s/he would know why the hifi was playing
Indirect Speech Acts
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