"Speech acts" and "speech act theories"

 

"Speech act theory"

 

"Speech act theory" is a field of research commonly located within the philosophy of language, and in lingustic pragmatics. It is marked by the use of such terms as "illocutionary act", "illocutionary force", "locutionary act" and "perlocutionary act". The "locutionary act" is traditionally characterised as the "act of saying". The "illocutionary act" is commonly described as an act performed "in saying" something; while the "perlocutionary act" is commonly characterised as an act performed "by saying" something, and further specified, roughly, as the production of mental states through an utterance. What an "illocutionary force" is supposed to be is largely unclear. 

 

(For a brief outline of the history of "speech act theory" click here.)

 

 

"Illlocutionary acts"

 

Among these three terms, "locutionary act", "illocutionary act" and "perlocutionary act", "illocutionary act" stands out, because most "speech act theorists" focus on (whatever they associate with) this term. By contrast, "perlocutionary acts" and "locutionary acts", are less often considered in much detail. Many "speech act theorists" even use the term "speech act" for "illocutionary acts" in particular--JR Searle, for example, usually does. Moreover, outside the narrow circle of specialists, the term "speech act" is almost consistently understood as referring particularly to "illocutionary acts".

 

 

The leading "speech act theorists"

 

The most prominent "speech act theorists" include J.L. Austin (he introduced the central terms and counts as the founder of "speech act theory"), PF Strawson, WP Alston, JR Searle (he is widely held to have developed a 'standard theory' of "speech acts"), S Schiffer, K Bach & RM Harnish (they are taken to have developed another 'standard theory', rivaling with Searle's), as well as M Sbisá.

 

 

"Speech act theory": dispensable, detrimental

 

Above, the term "speech act theory" was defined, not as referring to a certain subject, but as applying certain peculiar technical terms. Although different "speech act theories" are united in using these terms, they refer by them to a number of rather disparate subjects. Mainly due to this disparity, "speech act theory" largely failes to advance the subject matters it refers to. Indeed, the state of knowledge in the different fields worked by so-called "speech act theories" would probably be higher if "speech act theories" (terms such as "illocutionary act", "perlocutionary act", locutionary act", etc.) were not used.

 

To be sure, it may be the case, or not, that some of the single "speech act theories" delivered some progress in their respective fields. We claim that even if they did, "speech act theory", as defined by the use of those characteristic terms, made no positive contribution to this. To the contrary, what the "speech act theoretical" vocabulary brought about, from the very beginning, is vagueness and ambiguity, misunderstanding and confusion.

 

 

Strange, but true

 

For a philosopher, or a student of philosophy, the most natural reaction to a skeptical assesssment like this will tend to be just disbelief. Accordingly, we presume that you will not trust our present representation of "speech act theory" at first. You will not believe, at first, that the term "illocutionary act" is extremely polysemic, as we claim it is, you will not believe that with scholarly terms, polysemy is a fatal flaw, as we argue below, and you will not believe that "speech act theory" is as useless and detrimental as we claim it is. Therefore, perhaps the most important thing to do is to deliver concrete, particular instances of academic failure, caused by the polysemy of "speech act theoretical" terms, such as "illocutionary act" and "speech act". We do this.

 

Below we give detailed analyses of such cases.

(1) We show that the most prominent "speech act theoretical" conflict hitherto led, fought out by K. Bach & R.M. Harnish on the one side, and J.R. Searle on the other, was perfectly hollow: because while Bach & Harnish thematize "illocutionary acts" in the sense of communicative intentions, Searle's arguments address the creation of (linguistic and extralinguistic) institutional facts. This confusion, in turn, is caused by the problem of polysemy (which, however, the fighting parties fail to perceive). (For the details click here.)

(2) We show how bewildering diverse the answers to the question, 'Is promising an illocutionary act?' are which are given by different "speech act theories".--In the early days of "speech act theory", promising was consistently presumed to be a prototype example of an "illocutionary act". Yet reviewing how the leading "speech act theories" actually answer this question, after all, we arrive at the most puzzling result that the answers given could not be more diverse: from "Yes, of course", through "Yes, or rather, no", and "Well, it depends", to "No, of course not". The reason is the essential diversity of the definitions, which those theories apply to "illocutionary acts". (For the details click here.)

(3) We show that the introduction to "speech act theory" in the SEP (which may be considered the most reputable academic philosophical dictionary presently available) completely ignores the whole corpus of definitions which the leading "speech act theories" apply, and it even increases the problem by introducing its own, perfectly unfounded definition of "speech acts"--apparently due to the author's inability to manage with the  terminological complexities at hand. (For the details click here.)

(4) [...]

 

 

An objection: different ways of capturing one and the same subject?

 

We say that the diversity of definitions of "illocutionary acts" given by different "speech act theories" leads to a corresponding diversity of subjects picked out by that term. When you present this view to academic philosophers, one objection is made almost consistently. It claims that the diversity of definitions of terms like "speech act" and "illocutionary act" represents, not confusion concerning extensions and subject matters, but just different ways of capturing, or "explaining" (as it is often ambiguously put), the "illocutionary act" or the "speech act"--which in this objection is presumed to be a unitary phenomenon.

 

This objections sounds natural and even insightful at first, but in fact it does not correspond to the facts. The objection concedes that the leading "speech act theories" define "illocutionary acts" differently; it denies, however, that the diversity of definitions leads to a diversity of extensions, and thus a diversity of subject matters.

 

To be sure, we do not say that diversity of definition leads necessarily lead to diversity of extension (we can, for example, define and uniquely identify Prince Charles either as 'the longest-serving Prince of Wales", or as 'the son of Elizabeth II., Queen of the UK'). Yet as a matter of contingent fact, it does. Thus, some authors use the term "illocutionary act" for communicative intentions, some apply it to (successful) communication, some refer by it to linguistic behaviour, some to the creation of institutional facts, some to different combinations of these entities, and some to still other kinds of things (click here for the evidence). Only a layman could seriously suggest that any two of these phenomena amount to the same kind of thing. Thus, the idea that the different definitions of "illocutionary act" capture, or explain, one and the same phenomenon in different ways does not stand scrutiny.