Page 473 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

interests of H. In making a claim, S commits S to believing what is entailed by the content of that claim.
Edmondson leaves the Description) to be inferred; his (c), which is a comment, is omitted here.
assertion (Levinson 1983:277, following Gazdar 1981) Description) An assertion that p <illocutionary intention) is a function from a context where S is not committed to p (and perhaps, on a strong theory for assertion, where H does not know that p), into a context in which S is committed to preparatory condition) the
justified true belief <illocutionary intention continued) that p (and, on the strong version, into one in which H does know that p).
asserfives (update on Allan 1986: 193)
ositional content) component in favor of a (descrip- tion) which will include it.
Both Searle's second preparatory condition, 'It is not obvious to both S and H that H knows (does not need to be reminded of, etc.) p' and Wierzbicka's 'I imagine some people would say this is not true' offer reasons for S making the assertion rather than keeping quiet. These scholars believe that such felicity con- ditions are part of the fine detail of a semantic defi- nition, but others would include them within a general set of cooperative presumptions applicable to many, perhaps all, speech acts. In this instance, Wierzbicka identifies a class of people who disagree with S's belief and whom S hopes to persuade that p is true; this point is applicable to the semantics of assert but not of state.
Searle and Wierzbicka identify a sincerity con- dition; this is not a necessary component of the defi- nition, because sincerity can be subsumed to the cooperative maxim of quality applicable to every speech act in a form such as 'S knows or believes (or believes that s/he knows) that all clauses of the preparatory condition hold.'
The illocutionary intentions for assertions fall into two parts: the first identifies S's commitment to belief that p; the second, S's presumed intention towards H. Arguably, the latter can be inferred from general cooperative presumptions about S's purpose in utter- ing the assertion to H, and so does not need to be stated in the definition.
It has been seen from the review of sixdefinitions of assertives that the obligatory components of the definitions of speech acts are the preparatory condition and S's illocutionary intention.The same holds true for all other classes of speech act; for definitions of these, the reader should turn to the works cited.
See also: Felicity Conditions; Indirect Speech Acts; Speech Act Theory: Overview; Speech Acts and Grammar.
Bibliography
Allan K 1986 Linguistic Meaning, vol. 2. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London
Austin J L 1962 How to Do Things with Words. Clarendon Press, Oxford
Bach K, Harnish R M 1979 Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Ballmer T, Brennenstuhl W 1981 Speech Act Classification. Springer-Verlag, Berlin
Edmondson W 1981 Spoken Discourse. Longman, London Gazdar G 1981 Speech act assignment. In: Joshi A, Webber B, Sag I (eds.) Elements of Discourse Understanding. Cam-
bridge University Press, Cambridge
Katz J J 1977 Propositional Structure and Illocutionary Force.
Thomas Crowell, New York
Levinson S C 1983 Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge
Searle J R 1969 Speech Acts. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge
Description) (preparatory condition)
<illocutionary intention)
S asserts that p.
There is reason for S to believe that p.
S reflexively-intends that U be recognized as a reason for H to believe that (S believes that) p.
assert (Wierzbicka 1987:321)
(description) (preparatory condition)
(illocutionary intention)
(sincerity condition)
I say: p.
I imagine some people would say this is not true. I can say that this is true,
I assume that people will have to think that it is true,
I say this because I want to say what I know is true.
These definitions are an extension of the semantics of the key verb (e.g., assert) naming the illocution. However, most utterances do not contain such a verb, and H must recognize the illocution without its help. Nearly all scholars refer to utterance content (the com- ponents identified here as (description) and (prep- ositional content)), though Edmondson leaves it to be inferred. Searle's definition refers to the content of the proposition that is asserted (p) and, unlike most other scholars, does not include a description of utter- ance content as a whole. He (correctly) believes that the same proposition (phrastic) may be used to express different illocutionary forces which are indicated out- side p by what he calls 'illocutionary force indicating devices' captured in his 'essential condition.' This causes a problem, for instance, in his definition of 'thank (for)': (propositional content) 'past act A done by H' (Searle 1969:67). Compare this with other sch- olars' (description) of 'thank': 'In uttering U, S thanks H for D if S expresses . . . ' (Bach and Harnish
1979:52); 'S expresses thanks to H for D' (Allan 1986); 'I say: I feel something good towards you because of that' (Wierzbicka 1987:214). Searle's (propositional content) is seen to have nothing in particular to do with thanking. Moreover, it is inaccurate for utter- ances such as Thank youfor joining me or Thanks. The reader is left to decide whether it is preferable simply to rectify Searle's definition, or to abandon his (prop-
Speech Act Classification
451