acts
1 the theory of speech acts
2 the cooperative principle (see Chapter 4)
3 mutually shared background information
4 an ability to make inferences (1979, p. 32).
This is particularly significant because often the last two components are ignored.
Searle thus explains indirect speech acts by arguing that S performs one speech act at the sentence level, but using the principle of cooperation produces an inferential path whereby H can reconstruct another speech act, relying of course also on the mutually shared background of knowledge that S and H share, thus performing another speech act at the utterance level. Searle notes that the conclusion (i.e., the indirect speech act performance) is always “probabilistic” (1979, p. 35). This is due to the fact that all inferences based on the cooperative principle (implicatures) are probabilistic, as we will see.
Searle identifies some general classes of indirect speech acts. Thus, for example, one can perform an indirect request by asking whether a preparatory condition (see Section 2.1) for the speech act obtains. This is the case of passing the salt, if you cannot pass the salt, say because the salt shaker is out of your reach on the other side of the table, then I cannot properly request you to pass it. Conversely, if the salt is within your reach, and no other impediments exist, then by asking whether you can perform the action I indirectly ask you to perform the action. Another example is performing a directive by stating or asking whether the propositional content holds, for example,
(17) Will you stop making that noise?
where literally, at the sentence level S is merely asking whether H will or will not continue to make the noise in question, but at the utterance level, S is telling (i.e., directing) H to stop.
Indirect speech acts tend to conventionalize, which is why different languages have different ways of asking indirectly, for example. Once the forms have become idiomatic, they are preferred by the requirement to speak idiomatically (Searle, 1979, p. 50). Finally, Searle observes that the driving force for indirectness is the desire to be polite (p. 48).
Some recent research on indirect speech acts has gone in the general direction of the field (see Chapters 7–8 and 10–11), that is, toward more attention to the context of the performance of the speech acts. For example, in Mey’s (2001) idea of the pragmeme, that is, a speech act in context, in which the “interpretation” of the situation is based not just on the speech acts performed and the social negotiation of meaning but also on the situation and its affordances, that is, the interpretations/readings it favors. The idea has attracted some attention (e.g., Allan et al., 2016).
3.1.6 Public Commitment for Speech Acts
We have seen that a mutually shared background is necessary for indirect speech acts. There is also another way in which speech acts build on a complex (and generally tacitly assumed) background of social convention. Consider the earlier example of promising. Let’s say that I promised ice cream to the children if they behave. Recall that one of the felicity conditions is to “incur into the obligation to perform the act promised.” In what sense am I obliged to provide the ice cream? The children are probably too little and weak to physically coerce me into doing so and barring special circumstances cannot retaliate effectively. One may argue that I am morally bound to do so, because a righteous person would not falsely (or infelicitously) promise something. Another argument would be that hurting the feelings of the children is again morally or ethically reprehensible. However, these and other appeals to ethics, morality, or kindness do not constitute an obligation.
The obligation is a social one: we live in a culture that values commitment, so much so that it has been institutionalized in the idea of contractual obligation. Entering into a contract means assuming an obligation that is enforceable legally by society. Even if you cannot go to jail for infelicitously promising ice cream to your children, your social status (a.k.a., face, see Chapter 5) will be diminished. Note that this is a different case than the one in which we rescind a promise, that is, we notify the recipient of the promise that we are no longer in a position to fulfill the promise.
Likewise, just as a promise is a commitment made in front of a social group, speech acts “involve intentional undertaking of a publicly accessible commitment” (Green, 2017): it is not enough to have the intention of buying the ice cream, one has to publicly state so (albeit, not necessarily linguistically; recall the bidding by raising a paddle example). This is because a promise is a commitment in front of the speaker’s social group.
There are other approaches to commitments, of course. One approach is to say that one enters in a commitment by voluntarily assuming an obligation. In other words, I am committed to doing something because I want to be committed to it. It is my choice. This approach is rather weak, as it does not distinguish commitments from intentions, except perhaps in terms of length of the commitment. The other approach is to say that one is committed to an action if one’s moral values, goals in life, and so on make it necessary to follow a course of action. So we might say that a Mennonite refuses to serve in the military and becomes a conscientious objector because he is committed to certain religious beliefs. However, speech acts, as we saw, require a public commitment, in order to establish their force as such. Note in passing that internal commitment (what one thinks) and external commitment (what one makes explicit) may differ, for example, in the case of lies or hypocrisy.
Recent work on speech acts has focused on debating the nature of the constitutive rules of speech acts. In other words, are speech acts linguistic or social conventions, much like the rest of linguistic signs (recall the arbitrariness of the connection between signifier and signified), or are they based on the speakers’ intentions (if the speaker intends to perform an act and their intentions match a set of felicity conditions, then they have made a promise, e.g.), or on the functions for which they are used in conversation, or are they expressions of a state of mind of the speakers, or are they constituted by social norms? Norms are more stringent social requirements than conventions: for example, it is a convention that people should line up at check out registers, but it is a norm that one cannot drive on the left, in the United States. Violating the former will get you nasty looks, violating the latter will result in a hefty fine.
Another interesting approach is based on the idea of “conversational score” or the “common ground” shared by the speakers (see Section 8.3). When someone utters a sentence, the audience updates the conversational score with the content of the proposition of the utterance, but also of its presuppositions, and implicatures. So, for example, Attardo uttering My favorite painting by Vermeer is “View of Delft.” both updates the conversational score with the fact that Attardo’s favorite painting by Vermeer is View of Delft and that Vermeer is a painter. In other words, both facts are now publicly accessible, as well as the fact that Attardo uttered the sentence and so he is committed to its truth, under normal circumstances (e.g., he is not being ironical). The idea of a common ground or a conversational score that is accessible to all participants turns out to be an important one that will recur in the discussion of context (Section 8.3), of the definition of what is old and new information in a sentence (Section 6), and of course of Grice’s definition of nonnatural meaning (see a short discussion in Section 4.1.6). An excellent summary of the discussion can be found in Harris et al. (2018).
3.2 Conclusion
