Speech Acts: An Annotated Bibliography (from Oxford Bibliographies Online) (original) (raw)
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Inquiry, 2020
In this article I argue that the distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts needs examination, not just in its details but in its philosophical standing. We need to consider whether the distinction is motivated by (sometimes unwittingly) assumed problematic philosophical assumptions concerning the nature of our dependence on the words of others and the rationality of speech reception. Working with an example of the act of telling, I argue against the idea that the distinction is self-evident or easy to draw. By developing an analogy with perception, I argue further that defending the distinction requires one to engage in an argumentative dialectic with powerful alternative positions. I end by suggesting that taking the challenge further would require us to look more closely at how passivity and rationality might be reconciled in the reception of speech.
Philosophy, 2020
The prevailing view among contemporary analytic philosophers seems to be that, as philosophers, we primarily issue assertions. Following certain suggestions from the work of Rudolf Carnap and Sally Haslanger, I argue that the non-assertoric speech act of stipulation plays a key role in philosophical inquiry. I give a detailed account of the pragmatic structure of stipulations and argue that they are best analyzed as generating a shared inferential entitlement for speaker and audience, a license to censure those who give uptake to the stipulation but do not abide by this entitlement, and as justified on the basis of the speaker and audience's shared ends. In presenting this account, I develop a novel taxonomy for making sense of criticisms of speech act performances generally and clarify the notions of successful speech act performance and uptake. To demonstrate the fruitfulness of this view of stipulation for recasting and advancing philosophical disputes, I apply my account to ...
Speech Act Theory: From Austin to Searle
Augustinian: A Journal for Humanities, Social Sciences, Business, and Education., Vol. 19, Issue #1, pp. 35-45, 2018
The speech act theory is one of the rigorous attempts to systematically explain the workings of language. It is not only widely influential in the philosophy of language, but in the areas of linguistics and communication as well. This essay traces the development of this theory from J. L. Austin's first formulation of the theory to John Searle's further systematization and grounding of it. The essay first situates the theory in the general approaches to the philosophy of language. After which, it explicates the main features of the theory as initially articulated by Austin and further improved by Searle. Among the innovations introduced by Searle, the essay highlights the following: the distinction between the utterance and propositional acts, the distinction between the effects of illocutionary acts and those of perlocutionary acts, a consistent set of criteria for classifying speech acts, and the grounding of speech acts in terms of rules and facts.
This essay is in three parts; each subsequent part shorter than the previous. In the first I discuss the Principle of Pragmatic Emotionalization, and the role of emotion in argumentation. The specific issue concerns the role of emotional messages in argument. This is used as a foundation for the second part where I will describe the role of expressive speech acts, or, as I will call them, emotional message acts, in everyday argumentation. Finally, I say a very few words regarding the question as to whether or not we are doing Argumentation Theory or Psychology in studying emotional argumentation.
Austin's Speech Act Theory and the Speech Situation
The talk starts with a question, why do we discuss Austin now? While answering the question, I will (I) present an interpretation of Austin's speech act theory, (II) discuss speech act theory after Austin, and (III) extend Austin's speech act theory by developing the concept of the speech situation. And in the following section, three aspects of the speech situation, that is, (I) conventionality, (II) actuality, and (II) intentionality, will be explained. Then a short conclusion follows.
The many faces of speech act theory — editorial to special issue on speech actions
Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, 2009
Over the past decades speech act theory has evolved in many directions and, as a result, it may be more reasonable to talk about speech act theories than one received model. Most of the contemporary developments explicitly refer to John L. Austin and John Searle as their mentors. However, the (still growing) heritage has been used in a selective way and some of the newer approaches are not mutually compatible. What remains constant through all of them is the focus on language as a type (and means) of action and the underlying belief that communication is composed of linguistic acts. It is also important that these acts are not performed in isolation, but typically, in natural communication, form complex structures. It is, at least partly, the evasive nature of the interplay between the linguistic form used and the context in which it appears that constitutes the puzzle of performativity and illocutionary force.
Speech Act Theory The Force of an Utterance
Ichkalat, 2022
One of the most important theories in early Pragmatics is that of Austin's Speech Act Theory. In How to do things with words (1962), which was published posthumously, Austin uncovers the power of language in getting things done. Calling this power the FORCE of a speech act, Austin situates language within a larger enterprise of human actions. Speech Act Theory is the level of analysis that goes beyond naming entities or judging linguistic structures. By focusing on the nonliteral meaning that arises in language in use, Speech Act Theory fosters a third level of analysis to language in use. This article attempts to trace the main claims of Austin' Speech Act Theory, with much focus on the difference between constatives and performatives. A major distinction states that while the former are either true or false, the latter are either happy or unhappy.
Toward a Realistic Typology of Speech Acts
Sadock, Jerrold. 1994. Toward a Realistic Typology of Speech Acts. in S. L. Tsohatzidis, ed. Foundations of Speech Act Theory: Philosophical and Linguistic Perspectives, 393-406. London: Routledge, In contrast to the largely unmotivated, highly redundant , and partially incoherent, classificatory systems that are found in the influential works of Austin and Searle, I suggest that a more reasonable typology of speech acts should be based on three independent aspects of what kinds of information are encoded when we speak. 1) First, there an informational, representational aspect in which conversational negotiations are conducted in terms of propositions that can be judged for accuracy against real or possible conditions. This dimension corresponds in a way to Grice's notion of what is said; 2) then there is an effective, social aspect by means of which conventional effects on societally determined features of the world are portrayed and often achieved that corresponds to Austin's notion of illocutions 3) and last an affective, emotive aspect that is used to give vent to and/or to display real or apparent feelings of the speaker . Here some of what Searle intends to capture in his sincerity conditions is encoded. I will suggest that some of the most ordinary speech act types are characterized by very basic values in each of these motivated dimensions.