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Speech Acts
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Summary
Keywords
1. What is a speech act?
2. Felicity conditions
3. Force and mood.
4. Performatives, meaning and truth.
5. Convention versus intention.
6. Indirection and implicature
7. Speech acts and conversations
8. Illocutionary oppression
9. Critical analysis of the scholarship
10. Further reading
11. References
Summary
Speech acts are acts that can, but need not be, carried out by saying and meaning that one
is doing so. They have been taken by many to be the central units of communication, with
phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic properties of an utterance serving as ways
of identifying whether the speaker is making a promise, a prediction, a statement or a threat.
Some speech acts are momentous, since an appropriate authority can, say, declare war or
sentence a defendant to prison by saying that she is doing so. Speech acts are typically analyzed
into two distinct components: a force dimension (corresponding to how what is being said is
being expressed), and a content dimension (corresponding to what is being said). The
grammatical mood of the sentence used in a speech act signals but does not uniquely determine
the force of the speech act being performed. A special type of speech act is the performative,
which makes explicit the force of the utterance. Although it has been famously claimed that
performatives such as “I promise to be there on time” are neither true nor false, current scholarly
consensus rejects this view. The study of so-called infelicities concerns the ways in which speech
acts might be either defective (say by being insincere) or fail completely.
Recent theorizing about speech acts tends to fall either into conventionalist or
intentionalist traditions: the former sees speech acts as analogous to moves in a game, with such
acts being governed by rules of the form “doing A counts as doing B”; the latter eschews game-
like rules and instead sees speech acts as governed by communicative intentions only. Debate
also arises over the extent to which speakers can perform one speech act indirectly by
performing another. Skeptics about the frequency of such events contend that many alleged
indirect speech acts should instead be seen as expressions of attitudes. New developments in
speech act theory also situate them in larger conversational frameworks such as inquiries,
debates, or deliberations made in the course of planning. In addition, recent scholarship has
identified a type of oppression against under-represented groups as occurring through
“silencing”: a speaker attempts to use a speech act to protect her autonomy, but the putative act
fails due to her unjust milieu.
1
Keywords
illocution, mood, performative, illocutionary force, communicative intentions, perlocution,
felicity condition, speaker meaning, presupposition, indirect speech act, illocutionary silencing.
1. In saying, “George is a little behind,” Lakshmi meant that George is slightly late.
Or
2. In raising his hand, the auctioneer meant that bidding is closed.
As case (2) shows, speaker meaning does not require speaking, or even using language, but it
does require that an agent behave with the intention of getting across a message, or, barring that,
the intention of making her state of mind manifest. Some winks, for instance, are done with the
intention of expressing interest in another person or acknowledging a mutual understanding;
others result from a tic or errant dust particle. A person winked at may well wonder which of
these descriptions applies, and he might express his question with the words, “What—if
anything--did she mean by that?” In so doing he is using the notion of speaker meaning.
What unites the cases of speaker meaning mentioned thus far is that they are all overt:
one not only does something manifesting one’s state of mind, one does something with the
intention that one’s intention so to act is clear. Compare the three following cases. In a restaurant
Dakota and Sawyer are vigorously arguing about morphology, and food has just been served for
Dakota but not for Sawyer.
(A) Dakota tucks in, quite oblivious to the fact that it’s a bit rude to do so.
(B) Instead of eating, Dakota wafts in the aroma of his dish, making pleased sounds in
anticipation of his meal.
(C) Unlike in the previous two cases, Dakota tucks in lustily to the food he has just been
served in full knowledge of his rudeness, returning Sawyer’s outraged look with a glare.
In (A) Dakota does not mean anything; he is just satisfying his hunger, while also betraying his
lack of manners. In (B), Dakota likely does not mean that he is about to eat, or that the food is
going to taste good, but is instead expressing pleasure over the impending meal. Meaning of a
kind presupposed in the present account of speech acts only emerges in case (C), where not only
does Dakota manifest his desire to eat, he also manifests his intention to manifest that desire. Put
differently, his behavior is overt in (C) while it is not overt in either (A) or (B). In what follows it
will be assumed that speakers engage in speaker meaning when, and only when they overtly
manifest their state of mind.i
Part of what generated excitement about speech acts when J.L. Austin (1962) first
popularized them in the middle of the Twentieth Century is their ability not just to describe the
world but to effect changes in it. Generally, when a speaker describes a situation, her doing so
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does not appear to create any new states of affairs beyond her having used a few words.
However, in some cases, words can do more than this. In saying, under the right conditions, “I
declare these proceedings open,” one can make it the case that the proceedings are open, and if
she is in a position of judicial authority, then in saying, “I sentence you to life imprisonment,”
she can make it the case that a defendant is to be imprisoned for life. However, one can perform
a speech without describing oneself as doing so. Just as one can throw a ball without saying that
one is doing so, one can assert that it is snowing without describing herself as asserting: all she
need do is say, with the right intentions and further contextual conditions, “It is snowing.”
With these notions of speaker meaning, and of how some utterances can constitute states
of affairs, one may explain a speech act as a case of speaker meaning that can, but need not, be
carried out by saying that one is doing so. Though, as noted above, one need not be so pedantic,
one can assert that it is snowing by saying, “I assert that it is snowing,” and one can promise to
be more punctual in the future by saying, “I promise to be more punctual in the future.” This is
why asserting and promising are speech acts. By contrast, in light of the present construal of
speech acts, convincing is not a speech act. For even if speaker A can convince B of the truth of
proposition P by using words, A cannot convince B that P by saying, “I hereby convince you that
P.” Likewise for impressing, offending, and intimidating.
Austin distinguished among three elements of a communicative act. The first is the
locutionary act, in which a sentence or phrase is formulated in sign language, writing, speech,
semaphore, etc. If, as is the typical case, that sentence contains context-sensitive material such as
pronouns or demonstratives, then context, and possibly also speaker intentions, will be required
for the determination of what has been said. But even in so saying, a speaker may be performing
one of a range of speech acts: predicting, warning, excommunicating, etc. Which act this is will
determine which speech act, or in Austin’s terminology, illocutionary act, has been performed.
Finally, by performing a particular illocutionary act, a speaker may achieve one or more of its
characteristic effects. For instance, by warning a driver of danger ahead, a speaker might
dissuade him from proceeding in that direction. Characteristic effects of illocutions are
perlocutionary acts. It will not be assumed here that locutionary, illocutionary, and
perlocutionary acts occur in any particular temporal sequence.
In what follows, ‘speech act’, ‘illocution’, and ‘illocutionary act’ will be used
synonymously.‘Illocute’ will be used as a verb denoting the performance of a speech act, and
‘illocutionary force’ will refer to a certain aspect of a speech act as described below. Also, this
delineation should make clearsee that speech acts are not to be confused with acts of speech, or
even with utterances more generally (where ‘utterance’ is a capacious enough notion to include
uses of sign language). For one can produce an utterance, even of an indicative sentence, without
performing a speech act. (“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio,” says the actor as she
practices for her part in the play, but she is not asserting or otherwise illocuting that she ever
knew any person named ‘Yorick.’) Accordingly, just as something that is big, and an elephant, is
not necessarily a big elephant, so too, an act that is also a case of speech is not thereby a speech
act.
Because speech acts are forms of speaker meaning and thus demand complex intentions
on the part of those producing them, one should expect to find many communicatively
significant behaviors that are not speech acts. A millenial’s use of upspeak in her vocal register
(“Hello my name is Edison and I’ll be your server this evening?”), is most likely unintentional,
and although his use of that intonation contour may well manifest a desire to affiliate, or at least
not to come off as aggressive, it is unlikely that he speaker-means anything in his use of upspeak.
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Similarly, a smile forming on a person’s lips as he opens the letter from a long-lost friend, may
well express his pleasure, but it is not likely that in smiling, he speaker-means that he is happy.
That is one reason why a smile is not normally thought of as speech act, though in some cases it
may be the vehicle of one. The same goes for many gestures, so-called body language, and much
of the behavior falling within the scope of animal communication. (This entry does not take a
stand on the question whether any non-human animals can perform speech acts; see Green
(forthcoming a) for further discussion.)
Speech acts are thus only a portion of the broader category of communicative acts and
behaviors. That category will also include expressive behavior, which is designed to convey
information about an agent’s psychological state. The notion of design at issue here is broad
enough to include behaviors resulting from natural selection, from cultural evolution, as well as
from conscious intention. An unintentional scowl will thus express anger because scowls are
designed (presumably by natural selection) to telegraph information about their owners’ affective
states. A’s saying, “Brrr!” in response to the cold gust of air entering through the window, might
be designed to manifest her discomfort. If so, A is expressing that discomfort without thereby
illocuting. Likewise, although Searle (1969) describes an utterance of ‘Hooray for Tottenham!’
as a speech act, this does not seem mandatory. We could instead take it to be a conventionalized
expression of Tottenham-support. One consideration in favor of this treatment is that such an
utterance would not typically be produced with the reflexive communicative intentions
characteristic of speaker meaning.
In speech acts, with their comparatively sophisticated communicative intentions, we may
also distinguish what is communicated from how it is communicated. A and B have been arguing
about today’s impending weather, and A asserts,
Here one may distinguish between what A says, namely that it is going to rain, and how A says
it, namely as an assertion. A could instead have put forth this content (the proposition that it is
going to rain) with no force at all, or as a conjecture or even a sheer guess. Each of these would
be importantly different acts: in response to an assertion, a speaker is normally entitled to ask,
“How do you know that?” By contrast, it would belie a misunderstanding to respond with such a
question to either a guess or a conjecture. In his influential Speech Acts (1969), Searle proposes
that speech acts may generally be represented along these two dimensions of force and content.
He also contends that for all speech acts having content, all such contents must be propositional,
and offers
4. F(p)
as a general form in which speech acts may be represented, where ‘F’ represents the act’s force
and ‘p’ its propositional content. However, this is unduly restrictive. As will emerge in Section 3
below, it is also feasible to allow for illocutionary contents corresponding to imperative and
interrogative grammatical forms. Until then, it will be expedient to draw a distinction between
illocutionary force and semantic content while leaving open the question precisely what form
that content may take.
2. Felicity Conditions
4
Speech acts, as discussed above, exhibit a saying-makes-it-so property, yet for a given
speech act to achieve this feat appropriate background conditions must obtain. Only an
appropriate authority can sentence someone to prison in the U.S. legal system, and only an
occupant of an appropriate institutional role can declare proceedings open. Likewise, even if a
toddler utters the sentence, “I promise to pay you $100,” she likely will not have made a
promise: it is not likely that she understands what promising is, and it may be obvious to her
addressee that she has no $100 to give. Austin considered these cases under the rubric of felicity
conditions, and he distinguished them into two kinds, misfires and abuses.
Misfires: here a speech act of a certain kind is attempted, but no such act occurs. The
toddler may attempt to promise to pay $100, but does not succeed in performing that illocution.
So too, A may utter, in front of the Eiffel Tower, “I bequeath this monument to my
grandchildren,” but because the monument is not his to give, A has bequeathed nothing. Here
again one observes a locutionary but no illocutionary act. Equivalently, one may say that in a
misfire, an act of speech but no speech act occurs. Misfires also can occur in speech acts that
require uptake. It is only possible to bet with someone if that person accepts the proffered bet.
(Machines act as proxies for the people who own or design them.) As a result, “I bet you my
umbrella that it will rain today,” only amounts to a bet if the addressee accepts the wager;
otherwise the speaker has tried but failed to bet.
Abuses: here a speech act of the attempted kind occurs, but is still defective in some
significant way. If A answers the creditor’s question with, “Yes, the check is in the mail,” when
he knows that he has not sent the check, A has still asserted that he has paid the outstanding bill.
An utterance of, “I promise to do soandso” may still be a promise even if the speaker has no
intention of keeping it. One central area of potential abuse, then, is failure of sincerity. Many
speech acts mandate of their users that they be in a certain psychological state (believing that a
certain proposition is true, intending to carry out a course of action, etc.), and they are abused
when performed by speakers who are not in such states. Although Austin did not discuss such
cases under the rubric of abuses, in may also be illuminating to consider speech acts made in
inadequate evidential conditions. If A confidently and sincerely assures B that this mushroom is
edible when A is no mycological authority, B would have cause to blame A for abusing the
practice of assertion if B falls ill after ingesting it.
The line between misfires and abuses would not seem to be a sharp one. A speaker might
lose her ability to be taken seriously either because of a pattern of abuses on her part (she is a
chronic liar or exaggerator, for instance), or because of bias, oppression, or some other form of
marginalization (the men in her company discount her views, or put those views up to an
unreasonably demanding standard, say). If either of these first- or second-person types of abuse
persists for long enough, the speaker may be unable to have her utterances count as statements;
she might instead be taken as just pretending to make statements, or to make at most guesses or
suggestions. However, it is not clear when abuse has crossed over into misfire; instead there may
be cases in which there is no fact of the matter whether one has made a defective statement, or
instead no statement at all but only an act of speech.
Similarly, the vast literature on presupposition leaves open the possibility that some
presupposition-failures produce misfires, and others abuses. Russell held that
is true if and only if there is at least one, and at most one, present Queen of Lesotho, and
whoever is a Queen of Lesotho is an actress (Russell 1919). He also held that these truth
conditions are sufficient to capture the meaning of (5). However, Strawson (1950) responds that
if a speaker utters (5) in a situation in which Lesotho is no monarchy, the question whether what
she says is true, “does not arise.” (Ibid, p. 330) This is naturally interpreted to mean that the
utterance will misfire. By contrast, a person who rushes in late to a meeting with the words,
may simply be saying something untrue if he was trying to impress, and what did not start was
merely a Lancia. If so, his utterance of (6) will be an abuse rather than a misfire.
Ill-considered speech acts (such as assertions made insincerely or on inadequate grounds)
can damage speakers’ reputations or, as in the case of a rash bet, incur more tangible costs. A
distinctive feature of speech acts, however, is that they can often be retracted once made. By
Wednesday, A cannot change the fact that on Tuesday A had made a statement. However, as
Sbisà 2007 observes, on Wednesday A might retract Tuesday’s statement, perhaps after realizing
it was made on insufficient evidence. So too, for those illocutions requiring uptake, so long as
those whose uptake A secured agree to release him from the relevant commitments, A can retract
those illocutions as well.
is evidence that she is demanding or requesting that someone shut the door, and why her
utterance of
is evidence that she is asking how many apples are in the bowl. It would seem that the indicative
mood is a tool speakers use to signal their intention to say how things are, that the imperatival
mood is a tool for signaling their intention to have something done, and the interrogative a tool
for signaling their desire to gather information. Further, some languages encode into grammatical
mood what in others is part of locutionary meaning. Hidatsa, for instance, exhibits different
forms of indicative mood, one for when the information is common knowledge, one for when it
is known first hand, another for when it is passed on from another person’s authority, and yet
another for when the speaker refrains from commitment to the truth of the information (Sadock
and Zwicky 1985).
Even when it is not as refined as in the case of Hidatsa, mood provides evidence not only
of the “how”, but also of the “what” of a speech act. As suggested in Bell 1975, an interrogative
sentence may reasonably be assigned as its semantic content not a proposition, but a set of
propositions, where each member of that set corresponds to one complete answer to the question
posed. (The semantic content expressed by (8) contains such members as “There is one apple in
the bowl,” “There are eleven apples in the bowl,” etc.) On one semantics for imperatives,
developed in Portner 2004, such sentences are assigned properties, where the notion of a
property is understood in the metaphysician’s sense of any feature that a thing might have. Thus,
redness, triangularity, and being larger than St. Louis, are all properties in this capacious sense.
Accordingly, on Portner’s view, (7) semantically expresses the property of shutting a certain
door. The foreoing are not the only approaches to the semantics of interrogative and imperative
sentences, and it need not be here decided which are the most promising among them. Instead it
need only be noted that rather than assume that speech acts always have propositional content, a
more inclusive approach allows a general representation of their structure as F(C), where ‘F’
refers as before to illocutionary force, while ‘C’ refers to content, be it propositional,
interrogative, or imperatival. (Green (forthcoming b) further explains a notion of sentential
content that includes distinctive contents for imperatival and interrogative sentences as well as
the more standard propositional contents associated with indicative sentences.)
These are sentences that can readily be imagined used in the service of a speech act. When for
instance (9) is so used, the speaker is not only promising, but is also making explicit that she is
doing so. On the present conception of a performative, then, her utterance counts as one. It is
also possible to define a performative sentence as one whose main verb names a speech act, and
is in the first person, present, indicative active voice. One may then contemplate how (10) and
(11) fall outside this definition while doing so in ways suggesting a widened account.
Another reason for widespread interest in performatives is their seeming ability to bridge
a gap between semantics and pragmatics. Searle for instance argues that any utterance of (9)
made under what he terms “conditions of successful utterance,” is a promise (1968, p. 407). He
rightly concludes from this that some locutionary acts are also illocutionary acts, but infers in
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turn that for some sentences, their locutionary meaning determines their illocutionary force. This
last inference is, however, a non sequitur. Rather, when that sentence is uttered in such a way as
to constitute a promise, what determines that force is the meaning of the sentence together with
such factors as the speaker’s being sincere and other contextual conditions being met.
In one of his most striking claims about performatives, Austin held that performative
utterances are neither true nor false. His reason is that when a sentence such as (9) is used to
perform a speech act, the speaker is engaging in a promise and not describing himself as doing
so. After giving some examples of performative sentences, Austin writes,
In these examples it seems clear that to utter the sentences (in, of course, the appropriate
circumstances) is not to describe my doing of what I should be said in so uttering to be
doing or to state that I am doing it: it is to do it. None of the utterances cited is either true
or false…When I say, before the registrar or altar, &c., ‘I do’, I am not reporting on a
marriage: I am indulging in it. (1962, p. 6)
Many authors have observed in response that engaging in an act and describing oneself as so
doing need not be incompatible. Lemmon 1962 argues that performative utterances are true on
the ground that they are instances of a wider class of sentences whose utterance guarantees their
truth. If sound, this argument would show that performative sentences may have truth value
when used in performative utterances, but not that those utterances are assertions. Sinnott-
Armstrong 1994 also argues that performatives can have truth value without addressing the
question whether they are also used to make assertions. Reimer 1995 contends that while
performatives have truth value, they are not also assertions. Adopting a similar strategy, Jary
2007 aims to explain how utterances of such sentences as (9) can succeed in being promises. In
so doing he draws on Green’s 2007 account of showing to argue that such utterances show
(rather than describe) the force of the speaker’s act. Because ‘show’ is factive (if A shows that P,
then if A occurs, then P must true), if such an utterance shows its force, then it must have that
force.
Challenges to Austin more typically construe performatives as assertions and explain
their properties in that light. According to Ginet 1979, performative verbs (‘promote,’ ‘rescind’,
etc.) name the kinds of acts that one can perform by asserting that one is doing so, and he
elaborates on why this is so. Ginet thereby provides an account of how performatives work that
depends on the assumption that performative utterances are assertions. Bach 1975 likewise
contends that ‘I order you to clean the latrine’ is an assertion, and explains on this basis how the
speaker is indirectly also issuing an order. This account depends on the speaker’s being able to
rely on the addressee’s competence to discern the speaker’s communicative intention. It is later
refined in Bach and Harnish 1978, and 1992, with a notion of standardization, on which a
sufficiently common practice of issuing assertions with performative effect enables speakers and
hearers to bypass complex inferential reasoning and jump by default to a conclusion about the
illocution being performed. Reimer 1995 challenges this approach on the ground that hearers do
not seem to impute assertoric force to the indicative sentences speakers utter with performative
effect; her criticism would seem to carry over to Ginet’s proposal as well. Reimer contends by
contrast that performative utterances rest on systems of what she terms illocutionary conventions
to achieve their performative effects.
Searle 1969 had argued that a performative formula such as “I promise to…” is an
“illocutionary force indicator”, meaning that it is a device whose role is to make explicit the
8
force of the speaker’s utterance. Making something explicit, however, would seem to involve
characterizing a state of affairs that obtains independently of one’s utterance. As a result,
Searle’s account presupposes that speakers can imbue their utterances with the force of, say,
promotions or excommunications; yet this is what was to be explained. Acknowledging this,
Searle 1989 offers an account that depends on the view that in uttering a sentence with a
performative formula, a speaker manifests an intention to perform an act of a certain kind: in
uttering the words, ‘I order you to close the door’, A manifests an intention to order his
addressee to close the door, etc. Searle also takes it that manifesting an intention to perform a
speech act is sufficient for the performance of that act. On this basis, Searle goes on to attempt to
derive the assertoric nature of performatives, holding that when uttered in such a way as to say
something true, they are also assertions.
content as a conjecture with a rising intonation contour and upward glance. Green 2013 explores
this notion of publicizing one’s intentions for illocutionary purposes in further detail.
Suppose further that she is making an assertion, and thus illocuting. Then as with “Brrr!”, she is
also providing a designed indication of her discomfort. On our account of that notion, she is thus
expressing discomfort. That may well be enough to suggest to her host to turn up the thermostat,
without requiring a further speech act beyond her assertion of (12).
In this abstemious spirit, Bertolet (1994) observes that just because x serves as a y, it does
not follow that x is a y. (A might contort her body so as to play the role of an umbrella to keep a
10
baby out of the sun; this does not imply that A is an umbrella, even for a moment.) So too, even
if A’s remark that Selim is standing on his foot serves as a request, this does not imply that it is a
request. In fact it would seem incorrect to report what A has done with the following words:
As with (12), in remarking that Selim is standing on my foot A might also express a desire that
he move, without also performing a second illocutionary act beyond that of remarking.
Parsimony, then, suggests that in many cases what much pragmatics literature terms indirect
speech acts, are better described as expressions of attitudes that tend to elicit appropriate
responses in cooperative addressees.
A similar strategy for type-1 cases of indirection is also appealing. In pretending to
compliment B’s sartorial choice A might, with the appropriate complex of intentions, also be
asserting that B’s clothing is unattractive; yet a more modest approach suggests that in so doing
A may merely be expressing a derogatory attitude toward it. In light of the gloss offered above
of expression as a designed manifestation of a psychological state, we need only conjecture that
A’s choice of words is designed to make light of B’s fashion sense. Making an evidently
implausible comment on B’s clothing choice would be a good way to do that.
common grounds, each corresponding to a different force with which contents have been
proffered and accepted. So too, a group of interlocutors’ common ground might contain a
question they are all committed to answering. With questions represented as sets of propositions,
it may be possible to represent the way in which many conversations aim at resolution by ruling
out all but one element of a question-set.
Attention to illocutionary force also makes it possible to discern different proprieties for
conversational challenges. This is due to the fact that members of the assertive family (assertion,
conjecture, sheer guess, educated guess, and the like) differ from one another in respect of the
norms governing their conversational role. In response to A’s assertion that P, it is appropriate
for B to offer the challenge, “How do you know that?”, normally obliging A to provide strong
reason in support of P even if that involves deferring to a distinct authority (“I read it in today’s
paper,” “Susan told me,” etc.). Had A put forth P as an educated guess, however, such a
challenge would be inappropriate. A challenge to an educated guess would be evidence against
the claim, while an appropriate challenge to a sheer guess would instead demand strong counter-
evidence.
8. Illocutionary oppression
Research on speech acts has traditionally assumed that all interlocutors are equally able
to contribute their illocutions to an ongoing conversation. However, recent scholarship has
challenged this assumption by noting that in a variety of situations one speaker’s ability so to
contribute may be compromised. This may be the result of a pattern of illocutionary abuses: a
speaker’s long history of making claims not justified by the evidence, or that he doesnot believe
to be true, will deter others from taking his utterances at face value. An extreme case is one in
which his stating that P provides others with no evidence at all either for that proposition’s truth
or for his belief in its truth. Likewise, a pattern of not paying off one’s lost bets may make it
impossible to bet with others simply because of their refusal of uptake.
Another possible source of illocutionary disablement lies in social conditions that are no
fault of the speaker’s. Widespread bias concerning race, gender, disability, or sexual orientation
may result in a speaker’s being treated as if she has a record of reneging on her bets. Langton
(1993) argues that in a milieu in which women’s refusals of sexual advances are not taken
seriously by men (who might tell themselves that such coy behavior is all part of courtship), an
attempt to reject such an advance with the words, “No, thanks,” or even, “Get lost!” might
misfire in the sense delineated above: in so speaking she performs a locutionary but no
illocutionary act. Bird (2002) challenges this claim by observing that we need, and thus far lack,
an argument that refusing and rejecting are like betting (which requires uptake) rather than
warning (which does not: a homeowner can warn potential intruders by posting a Beware of Dog
sign in her yard, and has still warned all such intruderseven if no one takes heed). So too, it is not
clear that refusing and rejecting require uptake. Nevertheless, even if bias does not cause putative
speech acts to misfire, it may still weaken their perlocutionary effect. The source of the romantic
overtures may continue his unwanted advances in the face of one’s ignored (if genuine) refusals.
In light of the last section’s discussion of the overlap of speech act theory and
conversational kinematics, it emerges as well that since assertions and their kin are typically
proffered for entry into CG, bias may result in a speaker’s being put to a higher standard than are
others before her contributions are accepted for use in CG. Her male counterparts may demand
that a female employee provide proof, rather than solid evidence, that her policies will help their
corporation gain market share. A jury may find a non-white defendant guilty-until-proven-
12
otherwise even if they are not conscious of this bias. As such, that defendant’s testimony, even
under oath, may be discounted even if it contains no misfires.
Scholars of ethics, social and political philosophy have turned in the last decade to speech
acts as an area for investigating the oppression of marginalized groups; Hornsby (2000), and
Anderson, Haslanger and Langton (2012) provide overviews, while Maitra and McGowan
(2012) features work from a number of prominent contributors to the topic.
Smith 1990 is a history of speech act theory. Green 2014 is an overview of the topic more
detailed than space constraints permit here.
Further reading
Alston, W. (2000). Illocutionary acts and sentence meaning. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press.
Anderson, L, Haslanger, S., & Langton R. (2012). Language and race. In D. Fara & G. Russell
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i
Grice’s original term ‘non-natural meaning’ has in recent years been replaced by ‘speaker meaning.’ Also, certain
kinds of anonymous communication may be cases of speaker meaning as well. If A finds a stick of antiperspirant
prominently displayed on his desk at work, he will likely infer that a colleague means he should attend better to my
hygiene, without knowing who is the source of the message.
ii
This generic claim is compatible with the existence of exceptions, such as when one asserts what is already part of
CG to make sure that all interlocutors are paying attention to it, or when one makes an assertion in full knowledge
that others will not accept what she says. For a fuller account of conversational common ground see Stalnaker 2014.