Page 482 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

Pragmatics and Speech Act Theory
or nonliteral or both. Suppose S asserts Ted's BMW is crook. This entails the on-record proposition that 'Ted has a BMW and it is indirect because S does not directly assert it (pace Russell). Presumably S literally means Ted has a BMW because s/he presupposes its truth (i.e., purports to do so). One concludes that illocutions which are on-record and apparently lit- erally meant are 'indirect' if they are entailed or impli- cated in U; also if they are off-record, or nonliteral, or both. The so-called 'conventionally indirect' illo- cutions are on-record, not S-dominant but H-ori- ented: this solves the problem that they do not necessarily translate into other languages (see Sect. 14).
See: Indirect Speech Acts; Speech Acts: Literal and Nonliteral.
10. More Than One Illocution in U
Coordinate, conjoined, and appositive clauses con- tribute more than one illocutionary point to U. With I resignfrom the board and promise not to speak to the press, S resigns and makes a promise. With Welcome totheshow;now,whatdoyoudofor aliving?,Swel- comes H and asks a question. With / met Celia—Did you know she was married, by the way?—at a party last night, and she told me the latest scandal at number 25, S performs an informative interrupted by a question and conjoins to the informative a report.
One serious weakness with speech act theory has been to pretend that each U has only one illocutionary point. As Labov and Fanshel (1977:29f.) pointed out, 'most utterances can be seen as performing several speech acts simultaneously — Conversation is not a chain of utterances, but rather a matrix of utterances and actions bound together by a web of under- standings and reactions In conversation, par- ticipants use language to interpret to each other the significance of the actual and potential events that surround them and to draw the consequences for their past and future actions.' Speech acts must be inter- preted with attention to their context and to their function as an integral part of social interactive behavior. Here is a common enough example:
S,: Would you like another drink? S2: Yes, I would, thank you.
S, asks a question and concomitantly makes the offer to bring S2 a drink, if that is what S2 wants. S2 responds positively both to the question and to the offer, and coordinates with these illocutions a statement of thanks. Some situations allow for quite a large number of illocutionary points to be scored. Consider 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?! S does several things simultaneously: (a) she makes a literal on-record request to Mrs T that she ask Mr T to stop harassing S; (b) she broadcasts on-record, literally, but indirectly,
what Mr T is doing; (c) she makes a literal on-record indirect request that he stop—despite the on-record indirect expression of her belief that he will not stop unless coerced; (d) off-record, S indirectly intends not only that Mrs T condemn her husband for sexual harassment of S, but (e) that everyone in earshot should do so too.
Another weakness of speech act theory is to pretend that S's illocutionary intentions can be precisely pinned down. Suppose that one morning as H is get- ting ready for work, S volunteers It's 7.45. This informs H of the time. One may or may not be overe- stimating S's intention if one assumes that s/he thereby implies that it is past the time when H should have already left for work, hence warning H that s/he is running late and furthermore counseling H to hurry. U may merely have been intended to draw H's atten- tion to the time, leaving H to draw whatever con- clusion s/he wished. H might be grateful for having the matter brought to his/her attention; get angry with S for interfering; respond by hurrying; respond by suing for divorce; there are innumerable possible responses. S discovers only through H's response the perlocutionary effect of U, and thence whether his/her intentions have been realized—always assuming S has any clear idea what these are!
11. The Inferential Analysis of Speech Acts
The inferential theory of speech acts developed out of proposals originally made by Searle (1975b), sub- sequently refined in the 'speech acts schema' described by Bach and Harnish (1979), and in Allan (1986: ch. 8). When S wishes to communicate with H, s/he will express him/herself in a way that s/he presumes will enable H to comprehend the intended message. The inferential theory of speech acts presents an abstract model of each step necessary in H's reasoning out of S's illocutionary point(s) in uttering U. There is an assumption that both S and H are normal human beings—that is, neither is a genius, a clairvoyant, nor a fool; both know the language L and how to use it; and they have the general knowledge that one can reasonably attribute to such persons in the particular context of utterance.
The stages in H's reasoning are taken to be as follows:
(a) Perception and recognition of U as linguistic. (b) Recognition of U as an expression e of language L spoken with prosody n, and of the sense or senses (intensions) of the locution. This is done on the bases of the cooperative principle (the term is used here to include the reason- ableness condition, the communicative pre- sumption, face concerns, and the like), and H's knowledge of lexiconic, syntactic, and prosodic contributions to meaning—all of which must be specified withina general theory of meaning,
though not within a theory of speech acts.
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