Revisiting Speech Act Theory

International Journal of Trends in Humanities and Social Science Volume 4, Issue 9, 2015

ISSN- 0976-9721 © Patowari

Revisiting Speech Act Theory: An Evaluation of the Foundation of ‘Speech as Action’ Mr. Jyotirmoy Patowari, Centre for Linguistics, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi- 110067, India

Abstract Speech act recognizes its importance in doing things than only describing them and forms a normative structure in the linguistic practice. By making statements, it can do several tasks at once depending on the speaker’s intention like requesting, promising, asking questions, giving order, expressing gratitude, offering apologies, affecting the audience etc. The gap between words being used and the force of these words to succeed is often vague. The main insistence in this paper is to discuss in brief on the groundworks of Speech Act Theory analysed by the founding figures and how they contribute to the development of its formulation through different stages. Classifying different types of speech acts and accounting how they succeed or fail, this paper tries to sketch the hidden mechanism in determining the meaning of the utterance. Keywords: Speech, action, speaker’s meaning, intention, attitude, convention. Introduction “Whatever is referred to must exist. Let us call this the axiom of existence.” John Searle (1969) Language represents the world. But how? Philosophers and historians of language have long been trying to answer this question. Philosophers of the contemporary period in Britain and on the continent were trying to develop pragmatic theories of



language. They preferred more in discussing words or other signs in terms of their roles in forming ideas about reality. They no longer lingered on the linguistic signs which symbolize things or thoughts. Rather than pursuing the historical origin and development of language, they concentrated more on the immediate context, dialogue and relationship between speakers and hearers. Even the traditional „romantic ideology‟ suffered a terrible setback by the emergence of interpersonal or intersubjective experiences. Thomas Reid (2005), the prominent figure of the Scottish „Common Sense‟ School, raised voice for intersubjective pragmatics and believed in the power of „social acts‟ functioning on the occasions of promising, commanding, contracting or testifying. Jeremy Bentham (1839), the legal philosopher began to interpret laws as verbal utterances and called our attention on „linguistic functions‟ of obligations, rights, and privileges in constructing social reality. Wilhelm von Humboldt along with J. G. Herder, J.G. Hamann, A.F. Bernhardi, Novalis and Schlegel Brothers developed a theory of language in dealing with mental and social actions. In-between years of 1780 and 1830, philosophers were fertile with ideas related to what is now called as „speech act‟ or performative utterance. According to Searle, a speech act is “the minimal complete unit of human linguistic communication” just as a word which is the smallest free form found in language or a morpheme which is the smallest meaningful unit in a word or a sentence. It had always been a day-to-day practice in communicative life, but first came into serious investigative discussion and debate in the middle of 20th century not only in the philosophy of language but also in the other disciplines like linguistics, psychology, legal theory, artificial intelligence, literary theory and so on. Thinkers like Leibniz, Frege, Russell,

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Wittgenstein, Carnap assumed that the structure of language itself could reflect the nature of reality. Wittgenstein (1981) began with a new line of argument called „ordinary language philosophy‟. His proposition was that the meaning of language lies in its actual use in a „language game‟ which follows certain rules. Therefore, one has to follow these rules in order to do things by language. He also pondered upon the representative quality of language which acts as a medium of social activity. A. William Godwin (1756-1836) As compared to other ever-growing ideas of the 18th century, Godwin‟s (1798) reflection on language and its function was conservative in its essence. He was interested in the interpersonal function of language, its uses in literature and its quality of transmission of scientific knowledge. Like Reid and Humboldt, Godwin‟s theory of language corresponds with linguistic pragmatics. Reid identified social action as „primary and direct intention of language‟ and Humboldt also believed that constant interaction between speaker and hearer results in understanding of the system of language and socio-political reality. Likewise, for Godwin, language always maintains a secondary status in representing thought and external reality by its communication of truth like speech acts of promise, compact or covenant, the roots of which are embedded in the social contract tradition tracing back to Locke and Hobbes. B. John Langshaw Austin (1911-60) Austin (1962) in his famous work How to Do Things with Words meditated on this issue assuming that “the business of a „statement‟ can only be to „describe‟ some state of affairs, or to „state some fact‟, which it must do either truly or falsely”. © IJTIHSS

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Austin‟s systematic study made a distinction between meaning or reference of words and speech acts. Austin first thought that performatives are neither true nor false unlike constative. But later he modified his assumption in the general theory of speech acts by introducing the levels called „constative‟ (saying something) and „performative‟ (doing by saying something). Austin had done justice to the fact that speech acts are elements in the vast domain of intentional actions and share some general features with them. These are not only supposed to produce oral sounds in face-to-face interactions or conversations but also perform some actions in language use. A single speech act has a set of different coherent actions nested into one. By this, he meant that a single utterance has multi-layered meanings in itself. These distinct levels are „locutionary‟ (act of saying something), „illocutionary‟ (act in saying it) and „perlocutionary‟ (act by saying it). „Locutionary‟ act doesn‟t tell in its content the original information to be understood by the listener. „Illocutionary‟ act uttered in a particular context does not only inform but also makes one understand the desire of the speaker. And „perlocutionary‟ act elicits further response on the part of the listener. If the connection between the utterance and the act of urging is indirect, then the action is mostly inferential. The listener is expected to judge according to the intended utterance of the speaker and the relevance of the utterance in that context. Which sort of illocutionary act is to be performed is determined by speaker‟s intention e.g depending on the situation „shaking hands‟ may relate or specify „to introduce oneself‟, „to greet each other‟, „to seal a deal‟ or „to bid a farewell‟ etc. And even if we take the literal meaning of a metaphorical phrase or sentence as true, the meaning

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of the utterance is not fully determined by linguistic content alone, e.g. meaning of the pronoun „this‟ in a sentence. As Austin observed, ambiguous words or phrases need to be disambiguated and the references of indexical and other context-sensitive expressions need to be fixed in order for determining fully what is said. Thus, one can perform a speech act in the following several ways(1) directly or indirectly, by way of performing another speech act. For example, one can make a request by way of making a statement, 'I am getting thirsty' and we can give an order by way of asking a question, such as 'Can you clean up your room?' (2) literally or non-literally, depending on how we are using our words, e.g.- “My mind got derailed” or “You can stick that in your ear”. (3) explicitly or inexplicitly, depending on whether we can spell out fully what we mean by way of „expansion‟ or „completion‟. For example, the sentence „Jack is ready‟ does not express a complete proposition. There must be something for which Jack is being claimed to be ready. Non-literality and indirection are the two main ways in which the semantic content of a sentence can fail to determine the full force. Now it has been observed that Austin took a little attention on speaker‟s intention or hearer‟s inference. He insisted on the role of convention („force conventionalism‟) in establishing a meaning that the force is “made explicit by the performative formula”.

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C. Herbert Paul Grice (1913-88) Grice‟s ideas in his articles (1957, 1967) had an indirect influence on Austin‟s speech acts. Unlike Austin, he held the view that for a successful communication, convention is not important since the speaker‟s intention and recognition of intention is conveyed only through the means of hints encoded in the words of the speaker (i.e. „speaker‟s meaning‟). According to Grice‟s later programme discerning the „timeless meaning‟ also (i.e. „conventional meaning‟ in general), speaker‟s behaviour in a particular circumstance could be exploited to get the meaning of his/her intention. So Grice has the credit of presenting a distinction between what is said by an utterance which has truth value per se and what is communicated by his/her total cooperative behaviour which is termed as „implicature‟. When the speaker himself is cooperative, it is called „conversational implicature‟. Grice featured out that the „communicative intention‟ is a kind of specific reflex intention. In performing an illocutionary act, one needs to encode

certain

intention

in

one‟s

words

when

communicating

and

this

communication becomes successful only when the addressee recognizes (or „produce uptake‟) the given intention under certain circumstance. That speaker has an intention doesn‟t entail the fact that hearer could also successfully identify the conveyed intention. Rather, this happens at the illocutionary level with a further prospect of a condition that it will succeed as a perlocutionary act. D. Peter Frederick Strawson (1919-2006) Strawson (1971) declined Austin‟s view on the issue of typicality of speech acts like „christening‟

or

„marrying‟.

For

him,

these

are

conventionally

designated

circumstances and positions like jury foreman‟s pronouncement, legislator‟s vote,

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umpire‟s cry etc. Though conventional, these speech actions are more ceremonial or formal than commonplace speech acts. Strawson argued that Austin was overly emphasizing these special cases of intentional state of affairs as if this model could be acted out in general like ordinary speech act which has certain intention of arousing one to reach a specified goal e.g. by speaking a declarative sentence. Thus, Strawson contributed to classifying the different sorts of speech acts and also determining „felicity conditions‟ exemplifying various cases of „infelicities‟ like „flaws‟, „hitches‟ etc. Though later, Warnock (1973) and Urmson (1977) rejected many of Strawson‟s assumptions, his argumentation posed a new problem for the philosophers following Austinian tradition. Searle, for example, postulated „constitutive rules‟ (or conventions) in issuing out „force-indicating‟ devices like performative verbs or sentential moods. But the problem lies in the fact that illocutionary acts could be performed without the device of performatives like “I demand” in “I demand that you be quiet”. After all, negotiating all these problems, it could be said that communicative intention which is not to be confused with the intention to conform to a convention, actually works in performing any illocutionary act. E. John Searle (1932-) Searle‟s work (1969), second to that of Austin had the influence on the speech act theory so much so that a revolutionary Neo-Austinian view was projected as contrary to the convention-based theory of Austin. Searle identified the reasons for failure of Gricean account of intention by pointing out the fact that it fails to distinguish between illocutionary effect (speaker‟s recognition by means of his previous

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knowledge of governing rules of sentences) and perlocutionary effect (addressee‟s own understanding of speaker‟s intention). In fact, Searle first studied systematically and proposed an altogether different concept of the nature of propositional act which consists of a referential act (e.g. a noun phrase which stands for a particular object) and a prediction (an illocutionary force). In this way, Searle identified the bipartite structure of an utterance which combines the propositional part (symbolised as small p) and the illocutionary part (symbolised by F or IFID i.e. Illocutionary Force Indicating Device). A complete speech act can be then written as: F (p) At the abstract level of grammatical structure which Chomsky (1965) termed as deep structure, Searle argued that negation for this kind of utterance could be either internal or external. Thus if “I will come” is p and “I promise” is F, then the negation of these two sentences are “I promise not to come” and “I don‟t promise to come” respectively. The second negation expresses illocutionary act of refusing a promise. However, Searle‟s core assumption is that to know speaker‟s language we have to understand his intention first. As language is a kind of intentional behaviour, each statement is a form of intention. Thus, an utterance can be the means of expressing an intention. Words or phrases follow these rules not only for designating meaning but also performing some action. Searle postulated four types of speech acts in his exploratory analysis. These are as follows: a) utterance acts, b) propositional acts (such as referring), c) illocutionary acts (such as promises, questions or commands),

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d) perlocutionary acts (to evoke behavioural responses in the listener ). The ruling principle of Searle‟s idea is that like the rules of chess illocutionary acts have some rules to follow which the social convention approves for them. The rules form the basis for understanding different definitions of behaviour and also for probing into reasons of conversational misunderstandings. Searle suggested two kinds of rulesa) constitutive rules or definition rules, when defining some new forms of behaviour, b) regulative or behaviour rules, when controlling or governing existing behaviour. These „felicity conditions‟ should be successfully satisfied. As an example, for the act of promising following rules are to be maintained: 1. Propositional content rule: Pr (IFID for promising) should be uttered in the context of a sentence, 2. Preparatory rules: i) H ( Hearer) would prefer S‟s ( Speaker) doing of A ( Action) and S believes H would like this A, ii) S‟s doing A is not certain to both S and H before the normal course of events, 3. Sincerity rule: S should have an intention to do A, 4. Essential rule: Doing A should be taken as an obligation. Notably, violations of preparatory and sincerity conditions produce infelicities or flawed acts. A sufficient test for these illocutions is that they could be expressed by explicit performatives. Another point is that a single non-compound sentence could

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reveal a set of corollary of illocutionary acts. Having a perlocutionary effect in mind, such acts could also be accomplished. Seven Components of Illocutionary Force:

Searle and Vanderveken (1985)

distinguished between those illocutionary forces employed by speakers within a given linguistic community and the set of all possible illocutionary forces. While the set of possible forces may be infinite, it has definite cardinality. Every possible illocutionary force may be identified by the septuplet of such values. These features are: 1. Illocutionary point:

For instance, the characteristic aim of an assertion is to

describe how things are. 2. Degree of strength of the illocutionary point: Two illocutions can have the same point but differ along the dimension of strength. For instance, „insisting‟ is stronger than „requesting‟. 3. Mode of achievement: The illocutionary point of a speech act must be achieved. For example, „testifying‟ involves invoking one's authority as a witness while „asserting‟ does not. 4. Propositional content conditions: Some illocutions can only be achieved with an appropriate propositional content. 5. Preparatory conditions:

Such conditions often concern the social status of

interlocutors.

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6. Sincerity conditions: A speech act could be achieved only if the speaker is in the psychological state of sincerity that his/her speech act ultimately expresses. 7. Degree of strength of the sincerity conditions: For example, „requesting‟ expresses a stronger desire than „imploring‟. Searle and Vanderveken (1985) suggested that each illocutionary force is a „setting‟ of a value within any of these seven characteristics. It follows that two illocutionary forces F1 and F2 are identical just in case they correspond to the same septuplet. Later, Alston (1964, 1994) brought into our attention to the problem of determining different illocutionary acts which are expressed only by a single sentence. He later improved upon ideas of Austin and Searle. A declarative sentence like “this dog bites” depending on the possible circumstances could describe assertion, warning, admission etc. Even if we can make it explicit by adding „I assert‟, „I warn‟ or „I admit‟, different illocutionary forces emerge out of single ambiguous sentence in different situations. That‟s why, he referred it as „illocutionary act potential‟ which is conventionally ruled out in these expressions. F. Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) Derrida had always been hostile to Speech Act Theory of Austin and Searle. In the early 1970s, the brief exchange between Searle and Derrida became apparent as the former stated, “It would be a mistake to regard Derrida‟s discussion of Austin as a confrontation between two prominent philosophical traditions”, though sometimes that philosophical debate was considered by many critics as an encounter of

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analytical philosophy with continental one. As Derrida‟s resistance was reflected in his simple statement, “the only sentence of the „reply‟ to which I can subscribe”. First of all, Derrida wanted to point out Searle‟s drawbacks in his findings about the nature and function of illocutionary speech acts. In „Signature Event Context‟ (1972), he accepted Austin‟s reasonable departure from the denotational account of language to a concept of language concerned about the element of „force‟. But he pointed out Austin‟s ignorance about the unsaid structure of language („the structure of absence‟) on account of some contextual constraints. Austin missed the constraint by the said things in the past on what can be said. So, according to Derrida, there is no normativity in the intentionality of speech acts which is already set limited by established intentions. Austin‟s negligence about the „parasitic speech‟ (fictional, theatrical, comedic or metaphoric speech which needs normal language as its prerequisite) also elicited attention of Derrida who doubted about Austin‟s personal taste of these genres and questioned his careful circumvention of different structures of meaning. In this critique, Derrida defended his notion of the inseparability of normal uses of language from its parasitic use (e.g. the real life promises and fictional promises). For him, the distinction is never achievable, though this theoretical as well as axiological distinction could be seen as successfully established in Searle‟s work. Hence, Searle criticized Derrida for four different reasons: 1. Derrida mistakenly exaggerated „paracitism‟, „iterability‟ and „citationality‟, thereby questioning against Austin‟s implicit denial of „quotability‟ of the distinction.

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2. Derrida was confused about Austin‟s fiction/non-fiction language distinction in the context of speech/writing distinction. 3. He misconstrued Austin‟s exclusion of parasitic language. 4. He judged that as ethical.

G. Kent Bach (1943-) and Robert M. Harnish (1941-2011) Sometimes, speech act vocabulary could obscure the fact that an utterance may include the intended effect on the listener as well. Speech acts being both illocutionary and perlocutionary generally have some ulterior purpose in performance to make the listener form the same belief, express the same attitude or act in the same way. Thrusting on this point, Bach and Harnish (1979) suggested a different alternative of Strawson‟s intention-centred rules and also refused Searle‟s program of central constitutive rules. For him, the convention-based acts like the ceremonial utterances in „christening‟ or „marrying‟ are different from non-conventional acts or statement acts like „asking‟ or „stating‟ which are mostly communicative intentional acts. Bach and Harnish held the belief that speech acts are threefold in essence: a) They suggest a general Speech Act Schema(SAS), b) They suggest inferences based on Mutual Contextual Beliefs (MCBs), c) They follow Grice‟s Conversational Implicature Theory. Again, SAS is fleshed out of four stepsa. S is uttering e. b. S means...by e. c. S is saying so-and-so. © IJTIHSS

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d. S is doing such-and-such. The reasoning to the conclusion (d.), as Bach and Harnish suggested, is derived from the inference of previous conclusion, the MCBs and also the „communicative presumption‟ (the mutual belief in a linguistic community to recognize the speaker‟s intent). Hence, the sentences belong only to limited range of sentences with specific mood, feeling or belief. Bach and Harnish developed a detailed taxonomy which identifies the attitude-based illocutionary acts. In fact, the generally accepted terminologies exploited there are borrowed from Austin and Searle. Austin‟s „behabitive‟ and Searle‟s „expressive‟ are replaced by the term „acknowledgement‟ (occasional expression to satisfy social expectation). For Bach and Harnish, there are four major categories of illocutionary acts which are: a) Constatives (e.g. statements), b) Directives (e.g. requests), c) Commissives (e.g. promises), and d) Acknowledgements (e.g. apologies). It is important here to note that they always fall under specific social and conversational circumstances. Further effects like belief in the case of statement or desire in the case of request are not essential for its being expressed, because communication is only to show an attitude, but sincerity is actually to have that attitude. The listener may not get the sincerity while understanding the utterance. Despite these assumptions, Bach and Harnish‟s theory doesn‟t cover the entire set

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of speech acts as there are Non-literal Speech Acts (e.g.-sarcastic and metaphorical) as well as Indirect Speech Acts. H. Judith Butler (1956-) Butler (1997), the philosopher and feminist theorist, stated that like gesture, speech acts themselves don‟t only hold the interior identity, but also express this identity. Sometimes, it is assumed that identities are the source of gestures or speeches. Butler was more interested in studying gender development in the light of „performativity‟ which she called as “... that reiterative power of discourse to produce the phenomena that it regulates and constrains.” So whenever we utter certain performative during the declaration of ownership, baptism, inauguration or legal procedure, we usually exert power through them and repetition of such acts only strengthens the authoritative speech after the norms of the society. In this way, identity of a man or woman leads him or her to form a discourse. Butler actually theorised the notion of gender „performativity‟. By this, she meant to say that it is like a script which is to be rehearsed in order to be socially acceptable. Ultimately it turns out to be a mode of belief artificially constructed and cultured to suppress the one‟s own private identity in a hegemonic way. Therefore, individual‟s personal identity is always in the form of „making‟ rather than in the form of static neutrality. Conclusion The pragmatic understanding of Speech Act Theory so far articulated here showcases in brief detail how this concept had gone through several diachronic

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changes during the past few years and consequently been developed into a fullblown theory. As such, a sort of philosophical reform regarding this concept had been taken place by the necessary strong as well as weak theorisation of various philosophers in the past and present era. Needless to say, in this little discussion I‟ve selected only the prime figures so far as the history of the theory of speech act is concerned. Anyway, it could be summarised finally by saying that the Theory of Speech Act was originally built on solid basis by the works of philosophers like Austin (1962), Grice (1957), and Searle (1965, 1969, 1975) who offered thoughtful insights into this new theory of linguistic communication. Austin outlined this Theory and the concept of performative language in which to say something is to do something. Searle who modified and continued Austin‟s theory, claimed that illocutionary acts are performed with intentionality. Both of Austin and Searle were attacked subsequently by Derrida who had drawn a distinction between normal uses of language and uses that are said to be parasitic on them. Besides, Bach and Harnish (1979) who completely rejected Searle‟s program proposed that speaker‟s attitude is reflected in the speech acts used for communication. Speech acts are successful whenever the listener understands the speaker‟s intention and attitude. Apart from this, speech acts are also performed for affecting the institutional state of affairs instead of mere communication. Thus, the theory of speech acts basically underscores the importance of the distinction between linguistic meaning and language use, between knowledge of language itself and the capacities exercised in linguistic interaction. A parallel distinction could be drawn between the linguistic reference and the speaker‟s reference. But, to what extent linguistic expressions can be used to refer

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independently of speaker‟s use of them in different contexts is still a matter of great philosophical debate.

References Alston, William P. (1964). Philosophy of language. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall. Alston, William P. (1994). Illocutionary acts and linguistic meaning. In Tsohatzidis (Ed.), pp. 29-49. Austin, J. L. (1962). How To Do Things With Words. London: Oxford University Press. Bach, Kent & Harnish, Robert M. (1979). Linguistic communication and speech acts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bentham, Jeremy. (1839). Nomography in: The Works of Jeremy Bentham. In J. Bowring (Ed.). Edinburg: William Tait. Butler, Judith. (1997). Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge. Chomsky, Noam. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

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Derrida, Jacques. (1972). Signature Event Context (Signature Evénement Contexte). In Peggy Kamuf (Ed.), A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds (pp. 80–111). New York: Columbia University Press. Godwin. William. (1798). Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Morals and Happiness. In F. E. L. Priestley (Ed.), 3 vols. Toronto. Grice, H.P. (1957). Meaning. Philosophical Review, 66: 377-88. Grice, H.P. 1967. Logic and Conversation. In Cole and Morgan (Ed.), pp. 41-58. Reid, Thomas. (2005). Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing. Searle, John R. (1965). What is a Speech Act?. Philosophy in America, pp. 221-239. Searle, John R. (1969). Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, John R. (1975). Indirect Speech Acts. In Cole and Morgan (Ed.), pp. 59-82. Searle, J. R. & Vanderveken D. (1985). Foundations of illocutionary logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Strawson, P.F. (1971). Intention and convention in speech acts. In J. R. Searle (Ed.) The philosophy of language, pp. 23-38. London: Oxford University Press. Urmson, J.O. (1977). Performative utterances. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 2: 120-7.

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Warnock, G.J. (1973). Some types of performative utterance. In I. Berlin (Ed.) Essays on J. L. Austin. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (1981). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. London: Routledge.

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