Page 486 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

Pragmatics and Speech Act Theory
from the world spoken of, at the time spoken of; in other words, it requires that S should successfully refer with them. Satisfaction of the denotation condition guarantees the illocutionary success of an 'assertive' proposition and sets it up for truth-value assign- ment—its satisfaction condition.
The denotation condition is also a necessary, though not a sufficient, condition on the illocutionary success of performative propositions. It is, therefore, an essential part of the theory of propositional types. Yet it is incorrigibly pragmatic and can form no part of the sense of the proposition; it thus proves that Katz found it impossible to describe a theory of prop- ositional types within the boundaries that he had set himself.
In Katz's view, performative propositions must satisfy an additional four illocutionary success con- ditions, and it is this which sets them apart from 'assertives.' These four, the performative branch con- dition, the speaker as agent condition, the present tense condition, and the punctual act condition, all identify necessary features of an explicit performative clause (see Sect. 6 above).
The illocutionary success conditions determine what kind of illocutionary act S performs. Katz also describes what he calls 'converted conditions' which identify the validity of the illocution in terms of its perlocutionary success or failure as an illocution of a particular kind (note that this is not the same concept as a perlocution of a particular utterance). 'Assertives' are subject to a truth condition; 'questions' to an answerhood condition; 'requestives' (which include imperatives) to a compliance condition; 'advisives' to a heeding condition; 'permissives' to a license con- dition (= license to authorize); 'obligatives' are sub-
ject to a fulfillment condition; 'expressives' to a compensation condition; 'expositives' (the making of declarations and claims) to an acknowledgmentcon- dition; and 'stipulatives' to a nomenative condition. Converted conditions are necessarily pragmatic since they involve decisions about the matching of what is said to the way the world is, or comes to be, etc.— that is, they are satisfaction conditions. For example, Katz states (1977:234):
The nomenative condition for a stipulative proposition P is that (a) there is a designatum of the recipient reading, (b) people identify the recipient by the name in P [...], and (c) people do so in part as a consequence of the communicative act in which the recipient becomes the bearer of the name.
Katz's theory of illocutionary type pretends to be a theory of sense, and the sense of I'm sure the cat likes you pulling its tail is compatible with it being an assertive proposition. This tends to confirm that Katz's theory of propositional type is perhaps what he claims it is, and to criticize it for not being a thoroughgoing theory of speech acts is to mistake its
nature. Unfortunately, however, the objection must still be made that Katz does not keep within the limits which he sets on his theory, because he defines all propositional types on satisfaction of the denotation condition—which corresponds to recognizing S's act of referring within the inferential theory of speech acts. This is not part of the sense of locution; it is a function of its use in U. On this point alone, Katz's theory falls short of its aims; and there are many points in the exposition of his theory where Katz necessarily strays into pragmatics (see Allan 1986 for a detailed critique). Katz's theory of propositional types purports to be a theory of speech acts; a theory of speech acts cannot be anything other than prag- matic because speech acts are, by definition, pragmatic events.
Searle and Vanderveken (1985: 7) remark the sig- nificant inadequacy of existing semantic theories because they merely assign propositions or truth con- ditions to sentences and cannot assign illocutionary forces to each sentence for each possible context of utterance. Searle and Vanderveken (1985) and Van- derveken (1990-91) offer the foundations for a formal theory of illocutionary forces in terms intended to extend intensional logics such as that of Montague (1974). According to Searle and Vanderveken (1985:2):
Just as propositional logic studies the properties of all truth functions (e.g., conjunction, material implication, negation) without worrying about the various ways that these are realized in the syntax of English ('and', 'but1, and 'moreover', to mention just a few for conjunction), so illocutionary logic studies the properties of illocutionary forces (e.g., assertion, conjecture, promise) without worrying about the various ways that these are realized in the syntax of English ('assert', 'state', 'claim', and the indicative mood, to mention just a few for assertion) and without worrying whether these features translate into other languages. No matter whether and how an illo- cutionary act is performed, it has a certain logical form which determines its conditions of success and relates it to other speech acts.
Searle's five classes of illocutionary act (assertive, commissive, directive, declarative, expressive) are rep- resented by the formula iTlFP, to be read: S achieves illocutionary point F on a proposition P in context /. (By definition, TlF\s assertive for F= 1, commissive for F=2, etc.) For example, the definition of 'assertive' (1985: 60) is:
nK = n , ; mode(h) = n 1 ; degree(h)=»j(h)=0; Proph(0=Prop,Zh(i,P)=[{paitiP}] and
It is to be read: the illocutionary force of assertion is assertive. The mode of achievement of an assertion is via an assertive. The degree of strength of its illo- cutionary point is zero (though different assertives have different strengths; for example, / insist has a degree of + 1, / admit of 0, and / conjecture of —1).
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