Illocutionary acts : Austin's account and what Searle made out of it

282 Pages·2006·1.83 MB·English

ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS

Austin's account and what Searle made out of it

Inaugural-Dissertation

zur Erlangung des Grades eines
Doktors der Philosophie

der Fakultät für Philosophie und Geschichte
der Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen

vorgelegt von

Friedrich Christoph Dörge

aus Tübingen

im Februar 2004
Hauptberichterstatter: Prof. Dr. Manfred Frank

Mitberichterstatter: Prof. Dr. Georg Meggle

Dekan: Prof. Dr. Manfred Frank

Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 17. Mai 2004

Gedruckt mit Genehmigung der
Fakultät für Philosophie und Geschichte
Der Universität Tübingen
Contents
Introduction........................................................................................................6
PART I: Austin's account................................................................................14
1 Austin's performative sentences.......................................................................16
§ 1.1 First approach to performatives: two criteria..........................................16
§ 1.1.1 Introduction of the performative sentence...............................................16
§ 1.1.2 Two criteria of performative sentences...................................................19
§ 1.1.3 Two criteria of performativity: refinements............................................21
§ 1.2 What are "AUSTIN-acts"?......................................................................23
§ 1.2.1 "AUSTIN-act": a first outline..................................................................23
§ 1.2.2 "Conventional act"...................................................................................24
§ 1.2.3 The "securing of uptake".........................................................................33
§ 1.2.4 Summary: Two criteria of "AUSTIN-acts".............................................34
§ 1.3 Further criteria of AUSTIN-acts?............................................................35
§ 1.3.1 Inexplicit performance of AUSTIN-acts.................................................35
§ 1.3.2 Non-verbal performance of AUSTIN-acts..............................................39
§ 1.4 Austin's tests for (explicit) performatives...............................................41
§ 1.5 Summary: Conditions of performatives..................................................46
2 Austin's "illocutionary act".............................................................................48
§ 2.1 The "illocutionary act" and other acts.....................................................48
§ 2.1.1 Austin's "fresh start on the problem".......................................................48
§ 2.1.2 Locutionary and illocutionary acts..........................................................49
§ 2.1.3 Perlocutionary and illocutionary acts......................................................54
§ 2.2 Illocutionary act and AUSTIN-act: identical...........................................56
§ 2.3 Illocutionary acts and linguistic conventions..........................................60
§ 2.4 Summary of Part I....................................................................................67
PART II: Searle's account of illocutionary acts.............................................69
3 Searle's analysis of promising I.......................................................................72
§ 3.1 What is a speech act?...............................................................................72
§ 3.2 Scope and analysandum of the analysis of promising.............................75
§ 3.2.1 Restrictions of the scope..........................................................................76
§ 3.2.2 Qualifications of the analysandum..........................................................84
§ 3.3 The analysans, original version...............................................................88
§ 3.4 "Searle-S-meaning" and condition (8).....................................................89
§ 3.4.1 Searle's conception of speaker meaning..................................................89
§ 3.4.2 "Searle-S-meaning": restrictions of the scope.........................................91
§ 3.4.3 "Searle-S-meaning": the analysans..........................................................93
§ 3.4.4 How to refer to the content of meaning?.................................................95
§ 3.4.5 Condition (8).........................................................................................101
§ 3.5 Condition (1*) and understanding.........................................................102
§ 3.6 Explicit performance and conditions (9), (2), and (3)...........................104
§ 3.7 Rules of IFIDs and condition (9)...........................................................107
§ 3.7.1 Alston's account of linguistic rules (in LA)...........................................108
§ 3.7.2 Searle's general account of the rules of IFIDs.......................................115
§ 3.7.3 Condition (9).........................................................................................118
§ 3.7.4 Preliminary reconstruction: the rules of IFIDs of promising................119
4 Searle's analysis of promising II....................................................................126
§ 4.1 The rules of IFIDs of promising: final reconstruction...........................126
§ 4.1.1 A third "purpose" of the rules of IFIDs.................................................126
§ 4.1.2 Searle's conception of "constitutive rules"............................................127
§ 4.1.3 Rules of IFIDs of promising: final reconstruction................................132
§ 4.2 Final reconstruction of condition (9).....................................................135
§ 4.3 Conditions 7, 4, 5, and 6........................................................................137
§ 4.4 Summary of the analysis of promising..................................................139
§ 4.5 Excursus: Searle's "little" illocutionary act conception.........................141
5 Searle's attempts to generalise.......................................................................144
§ 5.1 Searle's programme................................................................................144
§ 5.2 Further illocutionary act types...............................................................147
§ 5.3 Indirect illocutionary acts......................................................................149
§ 5.4 Metaphor and illocutionary act performance........................................155
§ 5.5 The problem of fictional discourse........................................................156
§ 5.6 Summary................................................................................................160
6 Searle's underlying assumptions....................................................................161
§ 6.1 The "incompleteness AXIOM".............................................................161
§ 6.2 The "minimal unit AXIOM"..................................................................162
§ 6.3 The "IA-intention AXIOM"..................................................................164
§ 6.4 The axiom that all sentences contain IFIDs..........................................166
§ 6.5 Searle's MAIN THESIS.........................................................................168
§ 6.5.1 Examples and observations...................................................................169
§ 6.5.2 Three questions......................................................................................172
§ 6.5.3 The MAIN THESIS: refinements..........................................................174
§ 6.6 The illocutionary act: a function of the sentence issued.......................177
PART III: Problems of Searle's account and the question of adequacy.....184
7 Excursus..........................................................................................................185
§ 7.1 Is "illocutionary act" defined in Foundations?......................................185
§ 7.1.1 "Illocutionary act" in Foundations: no proper definition......................185
§ 7.1.2 "Illocutionary force": a distinguishing feature?....................................189
§ 7.1.3 "Illocutionary point": a distinguishing feature?....................................195
§ 7.2 Alterations in Searle's conception of "illocutionary act"......................203
§ 7.2.1 The role of preparatory conditions........................................................204
§ 7.2.2 The role of communication...................................................................205
§ 7.2.3 The role of conventional consequences.................................................207
§ 7.2.4 Summary................................................................................................210
8 Problems of Searle's account of illocutionary acts.......................................212
§ 8.1 Searle's account: only fragments of a theory of illocutionary acts........212
§ 8.1.1 The analysis of promising: far from being general...............................213
§ 8.1.2 The analysis of promising: ad-hoc modifications.................................216
§ 8.2 Circularity in step 1 of Searle's programme..........................................221
§ 8.3 Searle's programme is circular...............................................................223
§ 8.4 Summary (Problems of Searle's account of illocutionary acts).............226
9 Problems of Searle's basic assumptions........................................................227
§ 9.1 A critique of the incompleteness AXIOM.............................................227
§ 9.2 A critique of the minimal unit AXIOM.................................................229
§ 9.3 A critique of the FUNCTION claim......................................................231
§ 9.3 1 The axiom that all sentences contain IFIDs does not hold.................232
§ 9.3.2 The IA-intention AXIOM does not hold...............................................233
§ 9.4 A critique of Searle's MAIN THESIS...................................................234
§ 9.5 Four modifications of the MAIN THESIS............................................240
§ 9.5.1 Exception of "some very simple sorts of" acts......................................240
§ 9.5.2 Restriction to certain types....................................................................243
§ 9.5.3 Restriction to linguistic performances...................................................245
§ 9.5.4 Restriction to "intertranslatable" cases..................................................246
§ 9.6 A critique of Searle's "sets of constitutive rules"..................................249
§ 9.6.1 Do the rules exemplify the form after all?.............................................249
§ 9.6.2 Constitutive sets of rules.......................................................................251
§ 9.7 Excursus: MT does include the positive answer to Q2.........................253
§ 9.8 Searle's "principle of expressibility".....................................................256
§ 9.8.1 The principle of expressibility...............................................................257
§ 9.8.2 PoE and Searle's analysis of meaning....................................................261
§ 9.8.3 PoE and Searle's MAIN THESIS..........................................................263
§ 9.9 Searle's account is inadequate...............................................................265
§ 9.10 Summary................................................................................................269
References.......................................................................................................276

Introduction 6
Introduction
Since the issue considered in this text is the "illocutionary act", it might be expected that I
say what illocutionary acts are: according to my view they are acts that entail the produc-
tion of certain, say, non-material states of affairs, like rights and obligations, and for the
success of which it is necessary that the speaker let an audience know that the act is per-
formed. But as we shall at once see, there are quite different opinions about the question
what an illocutionary act is. It might further be expected that I give some examples: ac-
cording to my view, promising, making a bet, buying something and giving an order are
clear examples. However, again there are some rather different acts which are taken to be
illocutionary acts, and some of my examples would be rejected by others.
In the middle of the last century, John L. Austin introduced the new term of an "illo-
cutionary act", which soon became the centre of a very broad movement, called "speech
act theory". In the light of the apparent success of the notion it might strike one as rather
ironical that Austin hit upon illocutionary acts more or less incidentally. Originally, he
was concerned with certain declarative sentences which, he felt, despite their form are not
true or false. Some of the examples of the sentences Austin had in mind are "I bet you
sixpence it will rain tomorrow", "I do" (as issued in the course of a marriage ceremony),
or "I hereby promise to make the beds". Let us consider the latter example: it will, Austin
assumes, not be used in order to state that one promises, nor to state anything else; rather,
he assumes, it will be used in order to make a promise. Since it is not issued in order to
state something, Austin concludes, it will not be true if one promises, nor will it be false
if the promise fails, or if the speaker does not keep it. To say this would be inadequate;
thus, what went wrong has, according to Austin, to be captured in some different way,
without any reference to truth and falsity.
What, then, would be a more adequate judgement, suitable to replace the true/false di-
chotomy? Austin's suggestion is that if the promise is broken, or if it fails to succeed, the
issuance of the sentence can be called "infelicitous", rather than false. Vice versa, if the
promise succeeds, and if it is kept, and if everything else is "in order", Austin suggests
saying that the issuance of the sentence has been "felicitous", rather than that the sentence
is true. This alternative assessment can, he suggests, also be applied to cases like "I bet
you sixpence it will rain tomorrow", used in betting, or "I do", as issued in order to be
married, and in a great number of further cases. Since the judgement of those sentences is
closely connected with the performance of certain acts Austin suggests calling those sen-
tences "performatives"; their antagonists, since they seem to be used in stating something,
he dubs "constatives".
Up to this point, Austin's primary concern has been sentences: but the illocutionary act
is an action, not a sentence. What is the connection? – Having introduced the new per-
formative/constative dichotomy, Austin turns in more detail to the different ways in
Introduction 7
which issuances of performative sentences can be infelicitous. Notice that "infelicity", as
he conceives of it, derives from the different ways in which those actions, in the perform-
ance of which the sentences in question are issued, can fail to succeed, or in which they
can, even if successful, still be not entirely in order. It follows that in turning to those
different kinds of "infelicity" he happens to get involved in the study of certain acts. The
acts with which he now gets concerned are nothing other than what he dubs "illocution-
ary" acts.
As Austin recognises, these "illocutionary acts" are often, or usually, performed in the
issuance of a sentence, and thus in saying something; but Austin emphasises that they are
themselves not just acts of saying something. In order to work out both the differences
and the relations, he makes an analysis of the mere act of saying, giving it the technical
name "locutionary act". Moreover, Austin recognises certain acts which, like "illocution-
ary acts", are often performed when people say something, are, like illocutionary acts, not
just acts of saying something, but are to be distinguished from the "illocutionary act".
Austin calls them "perlocutionary acts". Thus he ends up with the famous trichotomy of
what is nowadays called "speech acts", of the "locutionary", the "illocutionary", and the
"perlocutionary act".
From the very beginning, there was considerable interest in Austin's new doctrine.
Among other things, this had the consequence that he got the opportunity to expound it in
the course of the William James Lectures at Harvard in 1955. The interest still increased
when, after his early death, these lectures were made available to the public in 1962. By
linking the study of sentences to certain actions Austin's doctrine appeared to some as the
possible basis of an account of sentence meaning, being able to capture at least those
special cases in which reference to truth appears inappropriate, or even being able to
capture all sentences whatsoever. At this time the performative/constative dichotomy was
at the centre of the interest.
But then it was the doctrine of "illocutionary acts" which positively exploded when a
follower of Austin, John R. Searle, published an "Essay in the philosophy of language"
with the title Speech Acts in 1969, a work which received the broadest attention. A second
book Searle delivered on the issue ten years later, Expression and Meaning, met a similar
amount of interest. One of the effects of Speech Acts was that within a few years the no-
tion of the "illocutionary act" became more closely tied to the name of Searle than to
Austin's. Many adopted, more or less truly, Searle's account of these acts, and it became a
common practice, when dealing with "speech acts", to primarily deal with Searle's ac-
count. Finally, it became also increasingly common to deal with Austin's original texts
only in a rather superficial fashion: obviously, it was taken for granted that Searle's ac-
count truly represented, and adequately developed, Austin's account.
I said that in the following of Searle's Speech Acts the study of "illocutionary acts" ex-
ploded: it did so not only inside the philosophy of language, where it was originally lo-
cated, but also outside philosophy, in a great many of other fields. Thus nowadays the
notion of an "illocutionary act" is made use of in studies such diverse as linguistics, the-
Introduction 8
ology,1 and literary theory.2 By crossing the borderline from philosophy to those special
disciplines the doctrine of illocutionary acts reached a new phase, that of application.
One of the questions, however, from which the present text starts is whether this step
is not somewhat over-rash: does the present state of the doctrine of illocutionary acts
actually justify its application? – In view of the great number of studies which have been
in terms of "illocutionary acts", put forward by such prominent authors as, for example,
Searle, Stephen Schiffer, R. M. Hare, Francois Récanati, and William P. Alston, one
might be tempted to jump to the conclusion that it is. And in fact there are many who
have assessed the study of illocutionary acts as sufficiently elaborated. Searle, Kiefer and
Bierwisch, for instance, contrast the notion of a "speech act" with the notion of "prag-
matics" precisely by the supposed fact that the former is "fairly well understood",
whereas the latter is rather unclear.3 And Dieter Wunderlich considers "the notion of
'speech act' as one of the most fruitful notions of contemporary linguistic theorizing"4.
There are, however, voices to the contrary as well. Wolfgang Motsch, for example, in
a 1980 article says about the study of speech acts: "[W]e can hardly maintain that this
field of research has already led to a sufficient degree of clarity. Neither the empirical
facts nor the theoretical basis needed to describe and explain facts are at an advanced
level of explication."5 Armin Burkhardt, ten years later, heads a critical stock-taking with
the title "Speech act theory – The decline of a paradigm"6, and complains about a great
number of difficulties and uncertainties. Georg Meggle, in another heading, even wishes
speech act theory bluntly "to hell"; among other things he criticises that the contributions
of Austin and Searle to a theory of meaning, in their general outline, are circular even in
their general outline.7
My assessment of the present state of "speech act theory" is at least as critical as those
of Motsch and Burkhardt and nearly as negative as that of Meggle. Although I am con-
vinced that the notion of an "illocutionary act" captures an important phenomenon of
social life, I claim that the present state of the doctrine of "illocutionary acts", for reasons
which are likewise simple and fundamental, renders any application of the notion highly
problematical. Let me return to the question with which this introduction started, a ques-
tion which, even after more than 30 years of study of "illocutionary acts", might be sup-
posed as very easy to answer: What, actually, is an illocutionary act?
We may perhaps start with an etymological argument: the adjective "illocutionary"
alludes to Latin, presents itself as composed of the words "in" and "locutio", and can be
translated in English as (performed) "in speaking". This suggests that illocutionary acts
are (essentially) acts which are performed in speaking. This result is confirmed by the
Oxford English Dictionary which, indeed, the notion has already entered: "illocution" is
1 See, e.g., Asiedu (2001), Bartholomew/Green/Möller (2001) passim, especially MacDonald (2001), Collins (1998)
passim, especially Hellholm (1998), Moore (2003), Wolterstorff (1987), (1995).
2 See, e.g., Sirridge (1987), Currie (1985), Currie (1986). Alessandro Ferrara mentions further disciplines on which the
study of speech acts "gained an increasing influence", as sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, text theory, rhetoric, and
others; see Ferrara (1980), 3.
3 See Searle/Kiefer/Bierwisch (1980), vii f.
4 Wunderlich (1980), 291.
5 Motsch (1980), 155.
6 Burkhardt (1990a).
7 Meggle (1985), 208 f. At least in what regards Searle's account I think that Meggle is right, noticing a crucial problem:
see § 8.2.