## 1. Introduction




Bertrand Russell's Theory of Descriptions 
was a paradigm for many philosophers in the twentieth century. One
reason for this is that it suggested a way to respond to longstanding
philosophical problems by showing them to be specious. Russell argued
that such sentences as 'The present King of Singapore is
bald,' and, 'The round square is impossible,'
possess superficial grammatical forms that are misleading as to their
underlying logical structure. In so doing he showed how such sentences
can be meaningful without this fact obliging us to posit current
Singaporean monarchs or round squares. Many philosophers in what came
to be known as the Ordinary Language movement were inspired by this
achievement to argue that classic philosophical problems (e.g., of
free will, the relation of mind to body, truth, the nature of
knowledge, and of right and wrong) likewise rested on a
misunderstanding of the language in which these problem are
couched. In *How to Do Things with Words*,
 J.L. Austin for instance writes,



> 
> ...in recent years, many things which would once have been
> accepted without question as 'statements' by both
> philosophers and grammarians have been scrutinized with new
> care... It has come to be commonly held that many utterances
> which look like statements are either not intended at all, or only
> intended in part, to record or impart straightforward information
> about the facts...Along these lines it has by now been shown
> piecemeal, or at least made to look likely, that many traditional
> philosophical perplexities have arisen through a mistake-the mistake
> of taking as straightforward statements of fact utterances which are
> ***either*** (in interesting non-grammatical ways)
> nonsensical or else intended as something quite different. Whatever we
> may think of any particular one of these views and
> suggestions...it cannot be doubted that they are producing a
> revolution in philosophy. (Austin 1962, pp. 1-2)
> 



The Ordinary Language movement, with its broad claim that the meaning
of an expression should be equated with its use, and its desire to
transcend traditional philosophical perplexities, did not achieve the
revolution of which Austin speaks. Nonetheless one of its enduring
legacies is the notion of a speech act.



One way of appreciating the distinctive features of speech acts is in
contrast with other well-established phenomena within the philosophy
of language and linguistics. Accordingly in this entry we will
consider the relations among speech acts and: semantic content,
grammatical mood, speaker-meaning, logically perfect languages,
perlocutions,
performatives, presuppositions,
and implicature. This will enable us to
situate speech acts within their ecological niche.


## 2. Content, Force, and How Saying Can Make It So




Whereas an act of speech is any act of
uttering[3]
meaningful words, 'speech act' is a term of
art. As a first approximation, speech acts are those acts that can (though need
not) be performed by saying that one is doing so. On this conception,
resigning, promising, asserting and asking are all speech acts, while
convincing, insulting and growing six inches are not. One can, for
instance, resign by saying, "I resign...", although one
can also resign from a position without describing oneself as doing
so. However, this conception is too inclusive, since it also
counts whispering as a speech act even though one can whisper a string
of nonsense words without meaning anything. Instead a more accurate
characterization of speech acts builds on Grice's notion of
speaker meaning. This notion is discussed further in Section 5 below,
but for now it is enough to note that in looking at my watch, I might
be trying to tell the time; or I might be trying to indicate to you
that it's time for us to leave. The latter (but not the former)
is a case of speaker meaning.



Accordingly, a *speech act* is a type of act that can be
performed by speaker meaning that one is doing so. This conception
still counts resigning, promising, asserting and asking as speech
acts, while ruling out convincing, insulting and whispering. This
definition leaves open the possibility of speech acts being performed
wordlessly, as well as speech acts being performed without saying that
you are doing so. Our characterization of speech acts captures this
fact in emphasizing speaker meaning rather than the uttering of any
words.



Speech acts are thus also to be distinguished from
performatives. 'Performative' is another technical term,
and as used here it refers in the first instance to a kind of
sentence. A *performative sentence* is in the first person,
present tense, indicative mood, active voice, that describes its
speaker as performing a speech act. 'I assert that George is the
culprit,' is a performative sentence by this test. As we have
seen, one can perform a speech act without uttering a
performative. Further, since it is merely a type of sentence, one can
utter a performative without performing a speech act. For instance,
while talking in my sleep I might say, "I hereby promise to
climb the Eiffel Tower," without thereby making any promise. We
may also define a *performative utterance* as an utterance of
a performative sentence that is also a speech
act.[4]



More nomenclature: 'Speech act' and
'illocution' will here be used synonymously. The latter
term is due to Austin, who used 'illocutionary force' to
refer to a dimension of communicative acts. (It is nowadays common
also to use 'illocute' as a verb meaning 'to perform
a speech act.') Austin's reason for using
'force' begins with the observation that, construed as a
bit of observable behavior, the communicative significance of an act
may be underdetermined by what has been said or observably done. I bow
deeply before you. So far you may not know whether I am paying
obeisance, responding to indigestion, or looking for a wayward contact
lens. So too, an utterance of a meaningful sentence (which Austin
calls a *locutionary act*) such as 'You'll be more
punctual in the future,' may leave you wondering whether I am
making a prediction or issuing a command or even a threat. The
colloquial question, "What is the force of those words?"
is often used to elicit an answer. In asking such a question we
acknowledge a grasp of those words' meaning but seek to know how
that meaning is to be taken-as a threat, as a prediction, or as
a command.



Or so it seems. In an early challenge to Austin, Cohen (1964) argues
that the notion of illocutionary force is otiose provided we already
have in place the notion of a sentence's meaning (Austin's locutionary
meaning). Cohen contends that for a performative sentence such as
'I promise to read that novel,' its meaning already
guarantees that it is a promise. On the other hand, for a sentence
that is not a performative, such as 'I will read that
novel,' if it is understood as being used to make a promise, the
promise is still implicit in the sentence's meaning. In either case,
Cohen concludes, meaning already guarantees force and so we do not
require an extra-semantic notion to do so.



Cohen's reasoning assumes that any utterance of 'I promise
to read that novel' is a promise. But as we have seen with the
case of the somniloquist, neither a sentence, nor even the utterance
of a sentence, is sufficient on its own for the performance of a
speech act, be it a promise or some other. In a similar spirit to that
of Cohen, Searle (1968, p. 407) observes that a serious and literal
utterance of 'I promise to read that novel,' made under
what he terms "conditions of successful utterance", also
counts as a promise. Searle concludes from this that some locutionary
acts are also illocutionary acts, and infers from this in turn that
for some sentences, their locutionary meaning determines their
illocutionary force. This last inference is, however, a *non
sequitur*. As we have seen, the aforementioned sentence's
meaning does not determine the illocutionary force with which it is
uttered. 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 serious and other contextual conditions being met.



We may thus agree with Searle that some locutionary acts are also
illocutionary acts, without losing sight of our earlier observation
that locutionary meaning underdetermines illocutionary force. This
fact about underdetermination is implied by Davidson's Thesis of the
Autonomy of Linguistic Meaning, according to which once a bit of
language has acquired a conventional meaning, it can be used for any
of a variety of extra-linguistic purposes (Davidson, 1979). Green 1997
argues for a qualification of Davidson's Autonomy Thesis to recognize
sentences having the feature that if they are used in a speech act
all, then there is at least one other illocutionary force that their
utterance must have. Even in light of this qualified version of the
Autonomy Thesis, the most that can be said of, 'I promise to
climb the Eiffel Tower,' is that it is designed to be used to
make promises, just as common nouns are designed to be used to refer
to things and predicates are designed to characterize things referred
to. Below (Section 6.3) we shall consider the view that force is a
component of meaning, albeit not of a sentence's
meaning.[5]


### 2.1 The Independence of Force and Content



Let us return, then, to an elucidation of our distinction between what
a speaker says and the force of her utterance. A grammatical sentence
composed of meaningful words is commonly thought to express a
"content," which is determined by what that sentence
literally means together with features of the context of
utterance. Suppose I say to someone in a crowded subway, "You're
standing on my foot." I am most likely trying to convey the
message that he should move. However, what I literally say is only
that the addressee in question is standing on my foot. This is the
content of my utterance. Many if not most utterances of grammatical
sentences composed of meaningful words express more than those
sentences' contents. Pragmaticians, however, commonly distinguish
content from other aspects of meaning conveyed by an utterance. On
this way of thinking, two intertranslatable sentences of different
languages will express the same content, and certain transformations
of a sentence within a language are commonly thought to express the
same content. Thus, 'Mary saw John,' and 'John was
seen by Mary,' will express the same content even if a speaker's
use of one rather than another of these will carry a distinctive
suggestion. For indicative sentences, such contents are typically
called *Propositions*. (In what follows I will capitalize this
term to signify that it is in part technical.) Propositions, then, are
the contents of indicative sentences, are what such sentences express,
and, further, are often thought to be the primary bearers of truth
value.



Illocutionary force and semantic content are often taken to be
distinct from one another, not just in the way that your left and
right hand are distinct, but rather by virtue of falling into
different categories. Stenius 1967 elucidates this distinction, noting
that in chemical parlance a *radical* is a group of atoms
normally incapable of independent existence, whereas a *functional
group* is the grouping of those atoms in a compound that is
responsible for certain of that compound's properties. Analogously, a
Proposition is itself communicatively inert. For instance, merely
expressing the Proposition that it is snowing is not to make a move in
a "language game". Rather, such a move is only made by
putting forth a Proposition with an illocutionary force such as
assertion, conjecture, command, etc. The chemical analogy gains
further support from the fact that just as a chemist might isolate
radicals held in common among various compounds, the student of
language may isolate a common element held among 'Is the door
shut?', 'Shut the door!', and 'The door is
shut'. This common element is the Proposition that the door is
shut, queried in the first sentence, commanded to be made true in the
second, and asserted in the third. According to the chemical analogy,
then:



> 
> Illocutionary force : Propositional content :: functional group :
> radical
> 


In light of this analogy we may see, following Stenius, that just
as the grouping of a set of atoms is not itself another atom or set of
atoms, so too the forwarding of a Proposition with a particular
illocutionary force is not itself a further component of Propositional
content.



Encouraged by the chemical analogy, a central tenet in the study of
speech acts is that content may remain fixed while force
varies. The force of
an utterance also underdetermines its content: Just from the fact that
a speaker has made a promise, we cannot deduce what she has promised
to do. For these reasons, students of speech acts contend that a given
communicative act may be analyzed into two components: force and
content. While semantics studies the contents of communicative acts,
pragmatics studies their force.



The force/content distinction also finds parallels in our
understanding of mentality. Speech acts are not only moves in a
"language game." They also often purport to express of
states of mind with analogous structural properties. An assertion that
it is snowing purports to express the speaker's belief that it is
snowing. A promise to read *Middlemarch* purports to express
the speaker's intention to read *Middlemarch*. We find evidence
for these relationships in the fact that it is in some sense absurd to
say, 'It's snowing, but I don't believe that it is,' and
'I promise to read *Middlemarch*, but I have no intention
of doing 
so.'[6] 
Further, just as we may distinguish between
an assert*ing* and what is assert*ed* (the so-called
"ing/ed ambiguity" for verbs such as
'assert'), and a promis*ing* from what is
promis*ed*, we may also distinguish between a state of
believing and what is believed, and a state or act of intending and
what is intended. Searle 1983 delineates structural analogies between
speech acts and the mental states they express. Pendlebury 1986
succinctly explains the merits of this approach.



In spite of these structural analogies, we may still wonder why an
elucidation of the notion of force is important for a theory of
communication. That *A* is an important component of
communication, and that *A* underdetermines *B*, do not
justify the conclusion that *B* is an important component of
communication. Content also underdetermines the decibel level at which
we speak but this fact does not justify adding decibel level to our
repertoire of core concepts for pragmatics or the philosophy of
language. Why should force be thought any more worthy of admission to
this set of core concepts than decibel level? One reason for an
asymmetry in our treatment of force and decibel level is that the
former, but not the latter, seems to be a component of speaker
meaning: Force is a feature not of what is said but of how what
is said is meant; decibel level, by contrast, is a feature at most of
the way in which something is said. This point is developed in Section
5 below.



We have spoken thus far as if the contents of speech acts must be
Propositions, and indeed Searle routinely analyzes speech acts as
having the form *F*(*p*) (e.g., 1975, p. 344), where
'*F*' is the force component and
'*p*' the Propositional content component. However,
in the last two decades linguistic semantics has developed formal
representations of contents for the two other major grammatical moods
besides the indicative, namely the interrogative and the
imperative. On the strength of the analyses of Hamblin (1958), Bell
(1975), Pendlebury (1986) and others, one strategy for the semantics
of interrogatives is to construe them as expressing sets of
propositions rather than a single proposition, where each element of
the putative set is a complete answer to the question at issue. Thus
the content expressed by 'How many doors are shut?' will
be {<No doors are shut>, <One door is shut>, ...}
where the ellipsis will be filled by as many other Propositions as it
is reasonable to interpret the questioner as asking after. Call such a
set an *Interrogative*. A complete answer to an Interrogative
is an element of the set by which it is defined; a partial answer is a
subset of that set containing two or more members, as would naturally
be expressed by the sentence 'Between two and four doors are
shut.' On the present conceptualization, just as we may
distinguish between expressing and asserting a Propositional content,
we may also distinguish between expressing an Interrogative and asking
a question. One merely expresses an Interrogative in such an utterance
as, 'John wonders how many doors are shut.' In fact, a
single utterance may express two Interrogatives while asking neither,
as in 'How many doors are shut will depend on how many customers
are trying on clothes.' Asking a question is no less substantial
a conversational move than is making an assertion.



Similarly, work by Hamblin (1987), Belnap (1990), Portner (2004) and
others suggests semantic analyses for sentences in the imperative
mood: on one approach an imperative expresses a property, and when one
speaker issues an imperative that her addressee accepts, that property
is added to her "to do list", itself a parameter of what
we will later describe as conversational score (Section 7).



In light of the above liberalization of the notion of sentential
content to accommodate the contents of non-indicative sentences, we
may rephrase Stenius's chemical analogy as follows:



> 
>  Illocutionary force : sentential content :: functional group :
>  radical
> 



with the understanding that different types of sentential content will
correspond to the different grammatical moods. This refined analogy
would in turn require there to be different types of
radical.[7]


### 2.2 Can Saying Make it So?



In some cases we can make something the case by saying that it
is. Alas, I cannot lose ten pounds by saying that I am doing so, nor
can I persuade you of a claim by saying that I am doing so. On the
other hand I can promise to meet you tomorrow by uttering the words,
"I promise to meet you tomorrow," and if I have the
authority to do so, I can even appoint you to an office by saying,
"I hereby appoint you." (I can also appoint you without
making the force of my act explicit: I might just say, "You are
now Treasurer of the Corporation.") Only an appropriate
authority, speaking at the appropriate time and place, can: christen a
ship, pronounce a couple married, appoint someone to an administrative
post, declare the proceedings open, or rescind an offer. Austin,
in *How To Do Things With Words,* details the conditions that
must be met for a given speech act to be
performed *felicitously*.



Failures of felicity fall into two classes: *misfires*
and *abuses*. The former are cases in which the putative speech
act fails to be performed at all. If I utter, before the QEII,
"I declare this ship the Noam Chomsky," I have not
succeeded in naming anything because I lack the authority to do
so. My act thus misfires in that I've performed an act of speech but
no speech act. Other attempts at speech acts might misfire because
their addressee fails to respond with an appropriate *uptake*:
I cannot bet you $100 on who will win the election unless you accept
that bet. If you do not accept that bet, then I have tried to bet but
have not succeeded in betting. As we will see in Section 9, a
systematic unwillingness on the part of a speaker's interlocutors to
respond with the requisite uptake may compromise that speaker's
freedom of speech.



Some speech acts can be performed-that is, not
misfire--while still being less than felicitous. I promise to
meet you for lunch tomorrow, but haven't the least intention of making
good. Here I have promised all right, but the act is not felicitous
because it is not sincere. My act is, more precisely,
an *abuse* because although it is a speech act, it fails to
live up to a standard appropriate for speech acts of its
kind. Sincerity is a paradigm condition for the felicity of speech
acts. Austin foresaw a program of research in which thousands of types
of speech act would be studied in detail, with felicity conditions
elucidated for each.[8]



As observed by Sbisa 2007, not only can I perform a speech act
by speaker meaning that I am doing so, I can also
subsequently *rescind* that act. I cannot, it would seem,
change the past, and so nothing I can do on Wednesday can change the
fact that I made a promise or assertion on Monday. However, on
Wednesday I may be able to *retract* a claim I made on
Monday. I can't take back a punch or a burp; the most I can do is
apologize for one of these infractions, and perhaps make amends. By
contrast, not only can I apologize or make amends for a claim I now
regret; I can also withdraw it. Likewise, you may allow me on
Wednesday to retract the promise I made to you on Monday. In both
these cases of assertion and promise, I am now no longer beholden to
the commitments that the speech acts engender in spite of the fact
that the past is fixed. Just as one can, under appropriate conditions,
perform a speech act by speaker meaning that one is doing so, so too
one can, under the right conditions, retract that very speech act.


### 2.3 Theories of Performativity




Austin famously denied that performatives are statements (1962,
p. 6). This may be taken either as the denial that performative
sentences, even those in the indicative grammatical mood, have truth
value; or instead as the denial that utterances of performative
sentences, even when such sentences have truth value, are
assertions. One can consistently hold that an indicative sentence has
truth value, and even that it may be uttered in such a way as to say
something true, while denying that its utterance is an
assertion. (Testing a microphone in a windowless room, I utter,
"It's raining," and it happens to be raining outside. Here
I have said something true but have made no assertion.)



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
performatives have truth value, but not that they are assertions. It
also leaves unanswered the question why some verb phrases such as
'I promise' may be used performatively while others cannot
be so used. 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 argues that while performatives
have truth values, they are not also assertions. Adopting a similar
strategy, Jary 2007 aims to explain how utterances of such sentences
as "I order you to clean the kitchen," can succeed in
being orders. In so doing he draws on Green's 2007 analysis of
showing to argue that such utterances show (rather than merely
describe) the force of the speaker's utterance. Because
'show' is factive, if such an utterance shows its force,
then it must have that force.



Most challenges to Austin, however, construe performatives as
assertions and attempt to explain their properties in that
light. Ginet 1979 argues that performative verbs
('promise,' 'appoint', etc.) name the kinds of
acts that one can perform by asserting that one is doing so, and
elaborates on why this is so. In this way he offers an account of how
performatives work that depends on the assumption that performative
utterances are assertions. Starting from that same assumption, Bach
1975 contends that 'I order you to clean the kitchen' is
an assertion, and proceeds to explain on this basis how the speaker is
indirectly also issuing an order. This explanation depends on the
speaker's being able to count on the addressee's ability
to discern the speaker's communicative intention. In later work,
such as Bach and Harnish 1978, and 1992, this view is refined with a
notion of standardization, so that 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 Bach and Harnish on the ground that hearers do not seem to
impute assertoric force to the indicative sentences speakers utter
with performative effect; her criticism would evidently carry over to
Ginet's proposal. Instead Reimer contends that
performative utterances rest on systems of what she terms
illocutionary conventions to achieve their performative effects.




Searle 1969, p. 62-4, had argued that a performative formula such as
"I promise to..." is an "illocutionary force
indicator" in the sense that it is a device whose role is to
make explicit the force of the speaker's utterance. Making something
explicit, however, would seem to involve characterizing an independent
event or state of affairs, and as a result Searle's account
presupposes that speakers can imbue their utterances with the force of
demotions and excommunications; yet this is what was to be
explained. Realizing this, Searle and Vanderveken (1985) characterize
performatives as speech acts having the force of
declarations. Uncontroversial examples of this speech act are
declaring war or adjourning a meeting. Searle 1989 then acknowledges
that this account pushes us back to the question how certain
expressions come to have the power to make declarations. In that same
work he offers an answer that depends on the view that in uttering a
sentence with a performative prefix, a speaker manifests an intention
to perform an act of a certain kind: in uttering the words, 'I
order you to close the door', I manifest an intention to order
you 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.


## 3. Aspects of Illocutionary Force




Austin distinguishes illocutionary acts into five categories:
verdictives (in which a speaker gives a verdict, e.g. acquitting and
diagnosing), exercitives (in which speakers exercise powers, rights or
influence, e.g. excommunicating and resigning), commissives (in which
speakers commit themselves to causes or courses of action,
e.g. promising and betting), behabitives (concerning attitudes and
social behavior, e.g. apologizing and toasting), and expositives (in
which speakers clarify how their utterances fit into lines of
reasoning, e.g., postulating and defining).



Searle (1975) criticizes Austin's taxonomy on two central
grounds. First, Austin's methodology is unduly lexicographic,
assuming that we can learn about the range and limits of illocutionary
acts by studying illocutionary verbs in English or other natural
languages. However, Searle observes, nothing rules out the possibility
of there being illocutionary acts that are not named by a verb either
in a particular language such as Swahili or Bengali, or indeed in any
language at all; similarly, two non-synonymous illocutionary verbs may
yet name one and the same illocutionary act.



Second, Searle argues that the principles of distinction among
Austin's categories are unclear. For instance, behavitives seem
to be a heterogeneous group with little unifying principle. Similarly,
'describe' appears both as a verdictive and as an
expositive whereas one would expect taxonomic categories to be
mutually exclusive. More generally, Austin's brief account of
each category gives no direction as to why this way of delineating
them does so along their most fundamental features. Searle offers a
new categorization of speech acts based on relatively clear principles
of distinction. To appreciate this it will help to explain some of the
basic concepts he uses for this purpose.


### 3.1 Direction of Fit




Consider an example derived from Anscombe (1963): a woman sends her
husband to the grocery store with a list of things to procure;
unbeknownst to him he is also being trailed by a detective concerned
to make a list of what the man buys. By the time the husband and
detective are in the checkout line, their two lists contain exactly
the same items. The contents of the two lists differ, however, along
another dimension. For the contents of the husband's list guide what
he puts in his shopping cart. Insofar, his list exhibits
*world-to-word direction of fit*: It is, so to speak, the job
of the items in his cart to conform to what is on his list. By
contrast, it is the job of the detective's list to conform with the
world, in particular to what is in the husband's cart. As such, the
detective's list has *word-to-world direction of fit*: The onus
is on those words to conform to how things are. Speech acts such as
assertions and predictions have word-to-world direction of fit, while
speech acts such as commands have world-to-word direction of fit.




Not all speech acts appear to have direction of fit. I can thank you
by saying "Thank you," and it is widely agreed that
thanking is a speech act. However, thanking seems to have neither of
the directions of fit we have discussed thus far. Similarly, asking
who is at the door is a speech act, but it does not seem to have
either of the directions of fit we have thus far mentioned. Some would
respond by construing questions as a form of imperative (e.g.,
"Tell me who is at the door!"), and then ascribing the
direction of fit characteristic of imperatives to questions. This
leaves untouched, however, banal cases such as thanking or even,
"Hooray for Arsenal!" Some authors, such as Searle and
Vanderveken 1985, describe such cases as having "null"
direction of fit. That characterization is evidently distinct from
saying such speech acts have no direction of fit at
all.[9]




Direction of fit is also not so fine-grained as to enable us to
distinguish speech acts meriting different treatment. Consider
asserting that the center of the Milky Way is inhabited by a black
hole, as opposed to conjecturing that the center of the Milky Way is
so inhabited. These two acts are subject to different norms: The
former purports to be a manifestation of knowledge, while the latter
does not. This is suggested by the fact that it is appropriate to
reply to the assertion with, "How do you know?"
(Williamson 1996), while that is not an appropriate response to the
conjecture (Green 2017). Nevertheless, both the assertion and
conjecture have word-to-world direction of fit. Might there be other
notions enabling us to mark differences between speech acts with the
same direction of fit?


### 3.2 Conditions of Satisfaction




One suggestion might come from the related notion of *conditions of
satisfaction*. This notion generalizes that of truth. As we saw in
2.3, it is internal to the activity of assertion that it aims to
capture how things are. When an assertion does so, not only is it
true, it has hit its target; the aim of the assertion has been met. A
similar point may be made of imperatives: it is internal to the
activity of issuing an imperative that the world is enjoined to
conform to it. The imperative is satisfied just in case it is
fulfilled. Assertions and imperatives both have conditions of
satisfaction--truth in the first place, and conformity in the
second. In addition, it might be held that questions have answerhood
as their conditions of satisfaction: A question hits its target just
in case it finds an answer, often in a speech act, such as an
assertion, that answers the question posed. Like the notion of
direction of fit, however, the notion of conditions of satisfaction is
too coarse-grained to enable us to make some valuable distinctions
among speech acts. Just to use our earlier case again: an assertion
and a conjecture that *P* have identical conditions of
satisfaction, namely that *P* be the case. May we discern
features distinguishing these two speech acts, in a way enabling us to
make finer-grained distinctions among other speech acts as well? I
shall return to this question in Sections 6-7.


### 3.3 Seven Components of Illocutionary Force




In an attempt to systematize and deepen Austin's approach, Searle and
Vanderveken 1985 distinguish between those illocutionary forces
employed by speakers within a given linguistic community, and the set
of all possible illocutionary forces. While a certain linguistic
community may make no use of forces such as conjecturing or
appointing, these two are among the set of all possible forces. (These
authors appear to assume that while the set of possible forces may be
infinite, it has a definite cardinality.) Searle and Vanderveken go on
to define illocutionary force in terms of seven features, namely:


1. *Illocutionary point*: This is the characteristic aim of
each type of speech act. For instance, the characteristic aim of an
assertion is to describe how things are, and perhaps also to bring
about belief in an addressee; the characteristic aim of a promise is
to commit oneself to a future course of action.
2. *Degree of strength of the illocutionary point*: Two
illocutions can have the same point but differ along the dimension of
strength. For instance, requesting and insisting that the addressee do
something both have the point of attempting to get the addressee to do
that thing; however, the latter is stronger than the former.
3. *Mode of achievement*: This is the special way, if any, in
which the illocutionary point of a speech act must be
achieved. Testifying and asserting both have the point of describing
how things are; however, the former also involves invoking one's
authority as a witness while the latter does not. To testify is to
assert *in one's capacity* as a witness. Commanding and
requesting both aim to get the addressee to do something; yet only
someone issuing a command does so in her capacity as a person
in a position of authority.
4. *Content conditions*: Some illocutions can only be achieved
with an appropriate propositional content. For instance, I can only
promise what is in the future and under my control; or, at least, I
cannot promise to do anything that it is obvious to myself and my
promissee that I cannot do. So too, I can only apologize for what is
in some sense under my control and already the case. (In light of our
discussion above of semantics for non-indicative contents, this
condition could be recast in terms of imperatival, interrogative, and
propositional content conditions.)
5. *Preparatory conditions*: These are all other conditions
that must be met for the speech act not to misfire. Such conditions
often concern the social status of interlocutors. For instance, a
person cannot bequeath an object unless she already owns it or has
power of attorney; a person cannot marry a couple unless she is
legally invested with the authority to do so.
6. *Sincerity conditions*: Many speech acts involve the
expression of a psychological state. Assertion expresses belief;
apology expresses regret, a promise expresses an intention, and so
on. A speech act is sincere only if the speaker is in the
psychological state that her speech act expresses.
7. *Degree of strength of the sincerity conditions*: Two
speech acts might be the same along other dimensions, but express
psychological states that differ from one another in the dimension of
strength. Requesting and imploring both express desires, and are
identical along the other six dimensions above; however, the latter
expresses a stronger desire than the former.




Searle and Vanderveken (1985) suggest, in light of these seven
characteristics, that each illocutionary force may be defined as a
septuple of values, each of which is a "setting" of a
value within one of the seven characteristics. It follows, according
to this suggestion, that two illocutionary forces
*F*1 and *F*2 are identical just
in case they correspond to the same septuple.


### 3.4 Direct and Indirect Force




I cannot slow the expansion of the universe or convince you of the
truth of a claim by saying that I am doing so. However, these two
cases differ in that the latter, but not the former, is a
characteristic aim of a speech act. One characteristic aim of
assertion is the production of belief in an addressee, whereas there
is no speech act one of whose characteristic aims is the slowing of
the universe's expansion. A type of speech act can have a
characteristic aim without each speech act of that type being issued
with that aim: Speakers sometimes make assertions without aiming to
produce belief in anyone, even themselves. Instead, the view that a
speech act-type has a characteristic aim is akin to the view that a
biological trait has a function. The characteristic role of wings is
to aid in flight even though some flightless creatures are winged.




Austin called these characteristic aims of speech
acts *perlocutions* (1962, p. 101). I can both urge and
persuade you to shut the door, yet the former is an illocution while
the latter is a perlocution. How can we tell the difference? We can do
so by noting that under the right conditions, one can urge just by
saying and speaker meaning, "I hereby urge you to shut the door," while there
are no circumstances in which I can persuade you just by saying,
"I hereby persuade you to shut the door." A characteristic
aim of urging is, nevertheless, the production of a resolution to act
(1962, p. 107). Cohen (1973) develops the idea of perlocutions as
characteristic aims of speech acts.




Perlocutions are characteristic aims of one or more illocution, but
are not themselves illocutions. Nevertheless, one speech act can be
performed by means of the performance of another. For instance, my
remark that you are standing on my foot is normally taken as, in
addition, a demand that you move; my question whether you can pass the
salt is normally taken as a request that you do so. These are examples
of so-called *indirect speech acts* (Searle 1979). Phrases that
are commonly used in service of indirect speech acts are, 'Would
you mind terribly if I...,' 'Might I
suggest...,' and 'It seems to me that...',
or simply 'please', as in 'Can you pass the salt,
please?' Observe that this last sentence, with its appended
tag-question, cannot be interpreted as a request for information
(about the addressee's salt-passing abilities), but can only be
understood as a request. Asher and Lascarides (2001) provide a formal
model of indirect speech acts on which some are conventionalized while
others require Gricean reasoning for their interpretation.






While indirect communication is ubiquitous, indirect speech acts are
less common than might first appear. In asking whether you intend to
quit smoking, I might be taken as well to be suggesting that you
quit. However, while the embattled smoker might jump to this
interpretation, we do well to consider what evidence would mandate
it. After all, while I probably would not have asked whether you
intended to quit smoking unless I hoped you would quit, I can evince
such a hope without performing the speech act of suggesting. Evincing
a psychological state, even if done intentionally, arguably does not
constitute a speech act. Instead, intentionally evincing a
psychological state may be understood as simply expressing that
state (See Green 2020, ch. 2). 




Whether, in addition to a given speech act, I am also performing an
indirect speech act would seem to depend on my intentions. My question
whether you can pass the salt is also a request that you do so only if
I intend to be so understood. What is more, this intention must be
feasibly discernible on the part of one's audience. Even if, in
remarking on the fine weather, I intend as well to request that you
pass the salt, I will not have issued a request unless I have made
that intention manifest in some way.




How might I do this? One way is by making an inference to the best
explanation. Perhaps the best explanation of my asking whether you can
pass the salt is that I mean to be requesting that you do so, and
perhaps the best explanation of my remarking that you are standing on
my foot, particularly if I use a stentorian tone of voice, is that I
mean to be demanding that you desist. By contrast, it is doubtful that
the best explanation of my asking whether you intend to quit smoking
is that I intend to suggest that you do so. Another explanation at
least as plausible is my hope, or expression of hope, that you do
so. Bertolet 1994 develops a more skeptical position than that
suggested here, arguing that any alleged case of an indirect speech
act can be construed just as an indication, by means of contextual
clues, of the speaker's intentional state--hope, desire, etc., as
the case may be. Postulation of a further speech act beyond what has
been (relatively) explicitly performed is, he contends, explanatorily
unmotivated. McGowan *et al*. (2009) reply by offering three
conditions they take to be sufficient for a case of what they term
linguistic communication. They would also argue that in, for instance,
the smoking case, the speaker meets those three conditions, and thus
counts as suggesting that the addressee quit smoking. Bertolet (2017)
replies that these three conditions are not sufficient for an instance
of speaker meaning, and given that (as we have seen) speaker meaning
is a necessary condition for (non-conventional) speech acts, concludes
that McGowan *et al*. have not established that the cases that
concern them are indirect speech acts.




These considerations suggest that indirect speech acts, if they do
occur at all, can be explained within the framework of conversational
implicature-that process by which we mean more (and on some
occasions less) than we say, but in a way not due exclusively to the
conventional meanings of our words. Conversational implicature, too,
depends both upon communicative intentions and the availability of
inference to the best explanation (Grice, 1989). In fact,
Searle's 1979 influential account of indirect speech acts is
couched in terms of conversational implicature (although he does not
use this phrase). The study of speech acts is in this respect
intertwined with the study of conversations; we return to this theme
in Section 
6.[10]


## 4. Mood, Force and Convention




Not only does content underdetermine force; content together with
grammatical mood does so as well. 'You'll be more punctual in
the future' is in the indicative grammatical mood, but as we
have seen, that fact does not determine its force. The same may be
said of other grammatical moods. Although I overhear you utter the
words, 'shut the door', I cannot infer yet that you are
issuing a command. Perhaps instead you are simply describing your own
intention, in the course of saying, "I intend to shut the
door." If so, you've used the imperative mood without issuing a
command. So too with the interrogative mood: I overhear your words,
'who is on the phone.' Thus far I don't know whether
you've asked a question, since you may have so spoken in the course of
stating, "John wonders who is on the phone." Might either
or both of initial capitalization or final punctuation settle the
issue? Apparently not: What puzzles Meredith is the following
question: Who is on the phone?




Mood together with content underdetermine force. On the other hand it
is a plausible hypothesis that grammatical mood is one of the devices
we use (together with contextual clues, intonation, and the like) to
indicate the force with which we are expressing a content. Understood
in this weak way, it is unexceptionable to construe the interrogative
mood as used for asking questions, the imperatival mood as used for
issuing commands, and so on. So understood, we might go on to ask how
speakers indicate the force of their speech acts given that
grammatical mood and content cannot be relied on alone to do so.


### 4.1 Force Conventionalism




One well known answer we may term *force
conventionalism*. According to a strong version of this view, for
every speech act that is performed, there is some convention that will
have been invoked in order to make that speech act occur. This
convention transcends those imbuing words with their literal
meaning. Thus, force conventionalism implies that in order for use of
'I promise to meet you tomorrow at noon,' to constitute a
promise, not only must the words used possess their standard
conventional meanings, there must also exist a convention to the
effect that the use, under the right conditions, of some such words as
these constitutes a promise. Austin seems to have held this
view. For instance in his characterization of "felicity
conditions" for speech acts, Austin holds that for each speech
act



> 
> There must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a certain
> conventional effect, that procedure to include the uttering of certain
> words by certain persons in certain circumstances... (1962,
> p. 14).
> 


Austin's student Searle follows him in this, writing



> 
> ...utterance acts stand to propositional and illocutionary acts
> in the way in which, e.g., making an *X* on a ballot paper
> stands to voting. (1969, p. 24)
> 


Searle goes on to clarify this commitment in averring,



> 
> ...the semantic structure of a language may be regarded as a
> conventional realization of a series of sets of underlying
> constitutive rules, and ...speech acts are acts
> characteristically performed by uttering sentences in accordance with
> these sets of constitutive rules. (1969, p. 37)
> 


Searle espouses a weaker form of force conventionalism than does
Austin in leaving open the possibility that some speech acts can be
performed without constitutive rules; Searle considers the case of a
dog requesting to be let outside (1969, p. 39). Nevertheless Searle
does contend that speech acts are characteristically performed by
invoking constitutive rules.


### 4.2 A Biosemantic Species of Force Conventionalism




Millikan (1998) espouses a parsimonious conception of conventions that
she terms 'natural conventions,' and on the assumption
that natural conventions are a type of convention, one would expect
this strategy to make it easier to defend the view that speech acts
are inherently conventional. For Millikan, a *natural
convention* is constituted by patterns that are reproduced by
virtue of the weight of 
precedent.[11] 
A pattern is *reproduced* just in
case it has a form that derives from a previous entity having, in
certain respects, the same form, and in such a way that had the
previous form been different in those respects, the current form would
be different in those respects as well (1998, p. 163). Photocopying
is one form of reproduction meeting these criteria; the retinotopic
mapping from patterns of stimulation on the retina to patterns of
stimulation in the visual cortex is evidently another. Millikan would
not treat retinotopic mapping as a type of convention, however, since
it would not seem to be perpetuated by virtue of the weight of
precedent. The point is difficult to discern, however, since in her
discussion of the matter Millikan discusses the conditions under which
a pattern is *taken* to be conventional, rather than for it to
be conventional, writing



> 
> To be thought of as conventional, a reproduced pattern must be
> perceived as proliferated due, in important part, to weight of
> precedent, not to its intrinsically superior capacity to produce a
> desired result, or due, say, to ignorance of alternatives (ibid,
> p. 166).
> 


Millikan thus seems to characterize what it is for a pattern to
have weight of precedent in terms of that pattern's being perceived to
have such weight. This notion is not itself elucidated, and as a
result the notion of weight of precedent is left obscure in her
account. Nonetheless, she tells us that just as the conventions of
chess dictate that when one's king is in check, one does what one can
to get him out of check; so too the conventions of language dictate
that when *A* tells *B* that *p*, *B* responds by
believing that *p*. Millikan describes the hearer's response as a
hidden, inner act that is not under *B*'s voluntary control. Millikan
also describes this response as being learned in the way that we learn
what she calls "natural sign patterns," such as our
learning that the sound of crashing waves is an indication of a nearby
coastline.




On Millikan's view, then, *A*'s assertion of *p* being
followed by *B*'s belief that *p* is a process that is not
intrinsically superior to others that might have been followed. This
may be doubted, however. What, after, all would be viable alternative
responses? *Dis*believing *p*? Remaining neutral on the question
of *p*? Scratching one's left earlobe? Any of these responses
would tend to undermine the use of language as a means for transmission of
information. What is more, if belief formation is not under the
voluntary control of addressees, it is obscure how this aspect of
communication could be conventional, any more than the pattern of
stimulation of our visual cortex is conventional when that pattern
results from an isomorphic pattern on the retina.


### 4.3. An Intentionalist Alternative to Force Conventionalism




Force-conventionalism as espoused by Austin and later Searle has been
challenged by Strawson, who writes,



> 
> I do not want to deny that there may be conventional postures or
> procedures for entreating: one can, for example, kneel down, raise
> one's arms, and say, "I entreat you." But I do want to
> deny that an act of entreaty can be performed only as conforming to
> such conventions....[T]o suppose that there is always and necessarily
> a convention conformed to would be like supposing that there could be
> no love affairs which did not proceed on lines laid down in
> the *Roman de la Rose* or that every dispute between men must
> follow the pattern specified in Touchstone's speech about the
> countercheck quarrelsome and the lie direct. (1964, p. 444)
> 


Strawson contends that rather than appealing to a series of
extra-semantic conventions to account for the possibility of speech
acts, we explain that possibility in terms of our ability to discern
one another's communicative intentions. What makes an utterance
of a sentence in the indicative mood a prediction rather than a
command, for instance, is that it manifests an intention to be so
taken; likewise for promises rather than predictions. This position is
compatible with holding that in special cases linguistic communities
have instituted conventions for particular speech acts such as
appointing and excommunicating. So too, as Skinner (1970) observes,
understanding the utterances of an historical figure crucially depends
on sensitivity to conventions of the society in which they are
made.




Intending to make an assertion, promise, or request, however, is not
enough to perform one of these acts. Those intentions must be
efficacious. The same point applies to cases of trying to perform a
speech act, even when what one is trying to do is clear to
others. This fact emerges from reflecting on an oft-quoted passage
from Searle:



> 
> Human communication has some extraordinary properties, not shared by
> most other kinds of human behavior. One of the most extraordinary is
> this: If I am trying to tell someone something, then (assuming certain
> conditions are satisfied) as soon as he recognizes that I am trying to
> tell him something and exactly what it is I am trying to tell him, I
> have succeeded in telling it to him. (1969, p. 47.)
> 


As Green 2013 observes, the point may be doubted. Suppose I am
trying to work up the courage to ask Sidney's hand in
marriage. Sidney recognizes this fact on the basis of background
knowledge, my visible embarrassment, and my fumbling in my pocket for
an engagement ring. Here we cannot infer that I have succeeded in
asking Sidney anything. Nothing short of coming out and saying it will
do. Similarly, it might be common knowledge that my moribund uncle is
trying, as he breathes his last, to bequeath me his fortune; still, I
won't inherit a penny if he expires before saying what he was trying
to.[12] Closer
to Searle's example, even if you were to find, on the basis of
fMRI analysis of my neural activity, that I was trying to tell you
that it's going to rain tomorrow, I still have not asserted
anything about tomorrow's weather. (If I were completely
paralyzed as a result of Locked-In Syndrome, then making such a neural
effort might be the most I can hope to do; in that case, your fMRI
information might be enough to justify you in taking me to have
performed a speech act.)




The gist of these examples is not the requirement that words be
uttered in every speech act--we have already observed that speech
acts can be performed silently. Rather, their gist is that speech acts
involve intentional undertaking of a publicly accessible commitment;
further, that commitment is not undertaken simply by virtue of my
intending to undertake it, even when it is common knowledge that this
is what I am trying to do. Can we, however, give a more illuminating
characterization of the relevant intentions than merely saying that,
for instance, to assert *P* one must intentionally put
forth *P* as an assertion? Strawson (1964) proposes that we can
do so with aid of the notion of speaker meaning--to which we now
turn.


## 5. Speaker-Meaning and Force




As we have seen, that *A* is an important component of
communication, and that *A* underdetermines *B*, do not
justify the conclusion that *B* is an important component of
communication. One reason for an asymmetry in our treatment of force
and decibel level is that the former, but not the latter, seems
crucial to how I mean what I say. I intend to speak at a certain
volume, and sometimes succeed, but in most cases it is no part of how
I mean what I say that I happen to be speaking at that volume. On the
other hand, the force of my utterance is an aspect of what I mean. It
is not, as we have seen, any aspect of what I say--that notion
being closely associated with content. However, whether I mean what I
say as an assertion, a conjecture, a promise or something else will be
crucial to *how* I mean what I do.


### 5.1 Grice's Account of Speaker Meaning




In his influential 1957 article, Grice
distinguished between two uses of 'mean'. One use is
exemplified by remarks such as 'Those clouds mean rain,'
and 'Those spots mean measles.' The notion of meaning in
play in such cases Grice dubs 'natural meaning'. Grice
suggests that we may distinguish this use of 'mean' from
another use of the word more relevant to communication, exemplified
in such utterances as



> 
> In saying "You make a better door than a window", George
> meant that you should move,
> 


and



> 
> In gesticulating that way, Salvatore means that there's quicksand over
> there,
> 


Grice used the term 'non-natural meaning' for this
use of 'mean', and in more recent literature this jargon
has been replaced with the term 'speaker
meaning'.[13]
 After distinguishing between natural and
(what we shall hereafter call) speaker meaning, Grice attempts to
characterize the latter. It is not enough that I do something that
influences the beliefs of an observer: In putting on a coat I might
lead an observer to conclude that I am going for a walk. Yet in such a
case it is not plausible that I mean that I am going for a walk in the
sense germane to speaker meaning. Might performing an action with an
intention of influencing someone's beliefs be sufficient for speaker
meaning? No: I might secretly leave Smith's handkerchief at the crime scene to
make the police think that Smith is the culprit. However, whether or
not I am successful in getting the authorities to think that Smith is
the culprit, in this case it is not plausible that I mean that Smith
is the culprit.




What is missing in the handkerchief example is the element of
overtness. This suggests another criterion: Performing an action with
the, or an, intention of influencing someone's beliefs, while
intending that this very intention be recognized. Grice contends that
even here we do not have enough for speaker meaning. Herod presents
Salome with St. John's severed head on a charger, intending that she
discern that St. John is dead and intending that this very intention
of his be recognized. Grice observes that in so doing Herod is
not *telling* Salome anything, but is instead deliberately and
openly letting her know something. Grice concludes that Herod's action
is not a case of speaker meaning either. The problem is not that Herod
is not using words; we have already considered communicators who mean things
wordlessly. The problem seems to be that to infer what Herod intends
her to, Salome does not have to take his word for anything. She can
see the severed head for herself if she can bring herself to look. By
contrast, in its central uses, telling requires a speaker to intend to
convey information (or alleged information) in a way that relies
crucially upon taking her at her word. Grice appears to assume that at
least for the case in which what is meant is a proposition (rather
than a question or an imperative), speaker meaning requires a telling
in this central sense. What is more, this last example is a case of
performing an action with an intention of influencing someone's
beliefs, even while intending that this very intention be recognized;
yet it is not a case of telling. Grice infers that it is not a case of
speaker meaning either.




Grice holds that for speaker meaning to occur, not only must one (a)
intend to produce an effect on an audience, and (b) intend that this
very intention be recognized by that audience, but *also* (c) intend this effect on the audience to be produced at least in
part by their recognition of the speaker's intention. The intention to
produce a belief or other attitude by means (at least in part) of
recognition of this very intention, has come to be called
a *reflexive communicative intention*.


### 5.2 Objections to Grice's Account




It may be doubted that speaker meaning requires reflexive communicative intentions. After all, a mathematics teacher who proves a theorem T for her class likely wants her pupils to believe T on the strength of her proof rather than their recognition of her intention that they come to believe T. (Vlach 1981) It may even be doubted that speaker meaning requires intentions to produce cognitive effects on addressees at all: Davis (1992) provides a range of cases such as speaking to pre-linguistic infants, uncooperative photocopy machines, and photos of deceased loved ones.[14],[15] Instead of intentions to produce psychological effects in an addressee, some authors have advocated a construal of speaker meaning as overtly manifesting an aspect of one's commitments or state of mind (Green 2019). Compare my going to the closet to take out my overcoat (not a
case of speaker meaning), with the following case: After heatedly
arguing about the weather, I march to the closet while beadily meeting
your stare, then storm out the front door while ostentatiously donning
the coat. Here it is more plausible that I mean that it is raining
outside, and the reason seems to be that I am making some attitude of
mine overt: I am not only showing it, I am making clear my intention
to do just that.



### 5.3 Force as an Aspect of Speaker Meaning




How does this detour through speaker meaning help to elucidate the
notion of force? One way of asserting that *P*, it seems, is
overtly to manifest my commitment to *P*, and indeed commitment
of a particular kind: commitment to defend *P* in response to
challenges of the form, "How do you know that?" I must
also overtly manifest my liability to be either right or wrong on the
issue of *P* depending on whether *P* is the case. By
contrast, I conjecture *P* by overtly manifesting my commitment
to *P* in this same "liability to error" way, but I
am not committed to responding to challenges demanding full
justification. I must, however, give some reason for
believing *P*; this much cannot, however, be said of a
guess.




We perform a speech act, then, when we overtly commit ourselves in a
certain way to a content--where that way is an aspect of how we
speaker-mean that content. One way to do that is to invoke a
convention for undertaking commitment; another way is overtly to
manifest one's intention to be so committed. We may elucidate the
relevant forms of commitment by spelling out the norms underlying
them. We have already adumbrated such an approach in our discussion of
the differences among asserting and conjecturing. Developing that
discussion a bit further, compare



* asserting
* conjecturing
* guessing




All three of these acts have word-to-world direction of fit, and all
three have conditions of satisfaction mandating that they are
satisfied just in case the world is as their content says it
is. Further, one who asserts, conjectures, or guesses that *P*
is *right or wrong on the issue of P* depending on
whether *P* is in fact so. However, as we move down the list we
find a decreasing order of stringency in commitment. One who
asserts *P* lays herself open to the challenge, "How do
you know that?", and she is obliged to retract *P* if she
is unable to respond to that challenge adequately. By contrast, this
challenge is inappropriate for either a conjecture or a guess. On the
other hand, we may justifiably demand of the conjecturer that she give
some reason for her conjecture; yet not even this much may be said of
one who makes a guess. (The "educated guess" is
intermediate between these two cases.)




This illocutionary dimension of speaker meaning
characterizes not what is meant, but rather how it is meant. Just as
we may consider your remark, directed toward me, "You're
tired," and my remark, "I'm tired," as having said
the same thing but in different ways; so too we may consider my
assertion of *P*, followed by a retraction and then followed by
a conjecture of *P*, as two consecutive cases in which I
speaker-mean that *P* but do so in different ways. This idea
will be developed further in Section 8 under the rubric of
"mode" of illocutionary
commitment.[16]





Speaker meaning, then, encompasses not just content but also force,
and we may elucidate this in light of the normative structure
characteristic of each speech act: When you overtly display a
commitment characteristic of that speech act, you have performed that
speech act. Is this a necessary condition as well? That depends on
whether I can perform a speech act without intending to do so--a
topic for Section 9 below. For now, however, compare the view at which
we have arrived with Searle's view that one performs a speech act when
others become aware of one's intention to perform that act. What is
missing from Searle's characterization is the notion of overtness: The
agent in question must not only make her intention to undertake a
certain commitment manifest; she must also intend that that very
intention be manifest. There is more to overtness than wearing one's
heart (or mind) on one's sleeve.


## 6. Force, Norms, and Conversation



In elucidating this normative dimension of force, we have sought to
characterize speech acts in terms of their conversational roles. That
is not to say that speech acts can only be performed in the setting of
a conversation: I can approach you, point out that your vehicle is
blocking mine, and storm off. Here I have made an assertion but have
not engaged in a conversation. Perhaps I can ask myself a question in
the privacy of my study and leave it at that-not continuing into
a conversation with myself. However, a speech act's "ecological
niche" may nevertheless be the conversation. In that spirit,
while we may be able to remove a speech act type from its environment
and scrutinize it in isolated captivity, doing so may blind us to some
of its distinctive features.


### 6.1 Speech Acts and Conversations



This ecological analogy sheds light on a dispute over the question
whether speech acts can profitably be studied in isolation from the
conversations in which they occur. An empiricist framework,
exemplified in John Stuart Mill's *A System
of Logic*, suggests attempting to discern the meaning of a word,
for instance a proper name, in isolation. By
contrast, Gottlob Frege (1884) enjoins us to
understand a word's meaning in terms of the contribution it makes to
an entire sentence. Such a method is indispensable for a proper
treatment of such expressions as quantifiers, and represents a major
advance over empiricist approaches. Yet students of speech acts have
espoused going even further, insisting that the unit of significance
is not the proposition but the speech act. Vanderveken writes,



> 
> Illocutionary acts are important for the purpose of philosophical
> semantics because they are the primary units of meaning in the use and
> comprehension of natural language. (Vanderveken, 1990, p. 1.)
> 


Why not go even further, since speech acts characteristically occur
in conversations? Is the unit of significance really the debate, the
colloquy, the interrogation?



Students of conversation analysis have contended precisely
this, remarking that many speech acts fall naturally into
pairs.[17] For
instance, questions pair naturally with assertions when the latter
purport to be answers to those questions. Likewise, offers pair
naturally with acceptances or rejections, and it is easy to multiply
examples. Searle, who favors studying speech acts in isolation, has
replied to these considerations (Searle 1992). There he issues a
challenge to students of conversation to provide an account of
conversations parallel to that of speech acts, arguing as well that
the prospects for such an account are dim. One of his reasons is that
unlike speech acts conversations do not as such have a point or
purpose. Green 1999 rejoins that many conversations may indeed be
construed in teleological terms. For instance, many conversations may
be construed as aimed at answering a question, even when that question
concerns something as banal as the afternoon's weather or the
location of the nearest subway station. Asher and Lascardes (2003)
develop a systematic treatment of speech acts in their conversational
setting that also responds to Searle's challenge. Additionally,
Roberts (2004, 2012) develops a model of conversational kinematics
according to which conversations are invariably aimed at answering
what she terms a *question under discussion* (QUD). This view
is best appreciated within the framework of the "scorekeeping
model" of conversation, to which we now turn.


### 6.2 Speech Acts and Scorekeeping



Much literature concerned with speech acts is curiously disconnected
from research in the semantics of natural language emphasizing
pragmatic factors. For instance, Stalnaker (1972, 1973, 1974), Lewis
(1979, 1980), Thomason (1990) and others have developed models of the
kinematics of conversations aimed at understanding the role of
quantification, presupposition (both semantic and pragmatic),
anaphora, deixis, and vagueness in discourse. Such models typically
construe conversations as involving an ever-developing set of
Propositions that can be presupposed by interlocutors. This set of
Propositions is the conversational *common ground*, defined as
that set of Propositions that all interlocutors take to be true, while
also taking it that all other interlocutors take them to be true. If a
Proposition p is in a conversation's common ground, then a speaker may
felicitously presuppose p's truth. Suppose then that the
Proposition *that Singapore has a unique King* is in a
conversation's common ground at given point; then a speaker may
felicitously utter a sentence such as 'The present King of
Singapore is wise,' or 'Singapore's king is
sleeping'. Other parameters characterizing a conversation at a
given point include the domain of discourse, a set of salient
perceptible objects, standards of precision, time, world or situation,
speaker, and addressee. The set of all values for these items at a
given conversational moment is often referred to as
"conversational score".



"Scorekeeping" approaches to language use typically
construe a contribution to a conversation as a Proposition: If that
"assertion" is accepted, then the score is updated by
having the Proposition entered into common ground. In this spirit,
MacFarlane (2011) considers an account of the speech act of assertion
in terms an utterance's capacity to update conversational score. Such
an approach will, however, face a difficulty in explaining how two
speech acts with the same content, such as an assertion that the Milky
Way contains a black hole, and a conjecture that it does, will make
different conversational contributions. An enrichment of the
scorekeeping model would include sensitivity to differences such as
these.



Another development in the scorekeeping model refines the teleological
picture adumbrated above to incorporate Questions, construed (along
the lines of Section 2.1) as sets of Propositions. When an
interlocutor proffers an assertion that is not met with objections by
others in the conversation, the Propositional content of that
illocution will enter into common ground. When an interlocutor poses a
question that is accepted by others, we may represent the change as an
addition to Common Ground of the set of propositions that is the
Interrogative content of that illocution. The presence of that
Interrogative obliges interlocutors to work to rule all but one
Proposition that is a complete answer to the Interrogative. Because
Interrogatives stand in inferential relations to one another (Q1
entails Q2 just in case any answer to Q1 is an answer to Q2), one
strategy for answering a question is to divide it into tractable
questions that it entails: 'How many covered bridges are there
in Japan?' can be answered by answering that question for each
of that country's 47 prefectures. Roberts (2004, 2012) develops
the Question Under Discussion model of conversational dynamics
according to which common ground contains a partially ordered set of
Interrogatives in addition to a set of Propositions. This teleological
approach to conversation bids fair to enrich our understanding of the
relations of speech acts to other central topics within pragmatics
such as presupposition and 
implicature.[18]


## 7. Force-Indicators and the Logically Perfect Language



Frege's *Begriffsschrift* (1879) constitutes history's first
thoroughgoing attempt to formulate a rigorous formal system in which
to carry out deductive reasoning. However, Frege did not see his
Begriffsschrift as merely a tool for assessing the validity of
arguments. Rather, he appears to have seen it as an organon for the
acquisition of knowledge from unquestionable first principles; in
addition he wanted to use it in order to help make clear the epistemic
foundations on which our knowledge rests. To this end his formal
system contains not only symbols indicating the content of
propositions (including logical constants), but also symbols
indicating the force with which they are put forth. In particular,
Frege insists that when using his formal system to acquire new
knowledge from propositions already known, we use an assertion sign to
indicate our acknowledgment of the truth of the proposition used as
axioms or inferred therefrom. Frege thus employs what would now be
called a *force indicator*: an expression whose use indicates
the force with which an associated proposition is being put forth
(Green 2002).



Reichenbach expands upon Frege's idea in his 1947. In addition to
using an assertion sign, Reichenbach also uses indicators of
interrogative and imperatival force. Hare similarly introduces force
indicators to lay bare the way in which ethical and cognate utterances
are made (Hare 1970). Davidson (1979), however, challenges the value
of this entire enterprise of introducing force-indicating devices into
languages, formal or otherwise. Davidson's reason is that since
natural language already contains many devices for indicating the
force of one's speech act, the only interest a force indicator could
have would be if it could guarantee the force of one's speech act. But
nothing could do this: Any device purporting to be, say, an infallible
indicator of assertoric force is liable to being used by a joker or
actor to heighten the realism of their performance. Referring to the
putative force-indicating device as a 'strengthened mood,'
he writes,



> 
> It is apparent that merely speaking the sentence in the strengthened
> mood cannot be counted on to result in an assertion: every joker,
> storyteller, and actor will immediately take advantage of the
> strengthened mood to simulate assertion. There is no point, then, in
> the strengthened mood; the available indicative does as well as
> language can do in the service of assertion (Davidson 1979, p. 311).
> 


 Hare 1989 replies that there could be a society with a convention that utterance
of a certain expression constituted performance of a certain
illocutionary act, even those utterances that occur on stage or as
used by jokers or storytellers. Green 1997 questions the relevance of this observation to asserting, which as we have seen, which as we have
seen, seem to require intentions for their performance. Just as no
convention could make it the case that I believe that *P*, so
too no convention could make it the case that I intend to put forth a
certain sentence as an assertion.



On the other hand, Green 1997 and Green 2000 also observe that even if
there can be no force indicator in the sense Davidson criticizes,
nothing prevents natural language from containing devices that
indicate force conditional upon one's performing a speech act: such a
force indicator would not show *whether* one is performing a
speech act, but, given that one is doing so, it would
show *which* speech act one is performing. For instance,
parenthetical expressions such as, 'as is the case' can
occur in the antecedent of conditionals, as in: 'If, as is the
case, the globe is warming, then Antarctica will melt.' Use of
the parenthetical cannot guarantee that the sentence or any part of it
is being asserted, but if the entire sentence is being asserted, then,
Green claims, use of the parenthetical guarantees that the speaker is
also committed to the content of the antecedent. If this claim is
correct, natural language already contains force indicators in this
qualified sense. Whether it is worth introducing such force indicators
into a logical notation remains an open question.


Subsequent to Austin's introduction of the notion of a
performative, it has also been suggested that what we might call
performative sentential frames behave like force indicators: 'I
claim that it is sunny,' seems to be a prolix way of saying that
it is sunny, where the 'I claim' seems only to indicate
how what follows is to be taken. On the approach of Urmson (1952), for
instance, such a sentence should be understood on the model of
'It is sunny, I claim.' Support for such an analysis may
be found in the fact that a potential reply to that
utterance is 'No it isn't; it's pouring
outside!', while 'No you don't' is not. Again, if the speaker does not believe it is sunny outside, she cannot dodge, she cannot dodge
the accusation of lying by remarking that what she had asserted was
that she claimed that it is sunny, and not anything about the
weather.




Nonetheless, drawing on Cohen 1964, Lycan 2018 objects to the view
that such performative frames make no contribution to sentence or
utterance meaning. If Marissa felicitously utters, 'I claim that
it is sunny,' while Abdul felicitously utters, 'I
conjecture that it is sunny,' the view implies that their
utterances mean the same. The two speakers have clearly said different
things, however. On the other hand, if we hold that the performative
frame does contribute to the content of what Marissa and Abdul said,
then, Lycan points out, it will be difficult to explain how their
utterances commit either of them to any position about the weather. It
evidently won't do to posit inference rules such as 'I state
that *p*,' *ergo*, '*p*'. We will
consider a solution to what Lycan terms "Cohen's Problem"
after developing a notion of illocutionary inference in the next
section.


## 8. Do Speech Acts Have a Logic?



Students of speech acts contend, as we have seen, that the unit of
communicative significance is the Illocution rather than the
Proposition. This attitude prompts the question whether logic itself
might be enriched by incorporating inferential relations among speech
acts rather than just inferential relations among Propositions.
Just as two event-types *E*1 and *E*2 (such as running
quickly and running) could be logically related to one another in that
it is not possible for one to occur without the other; so too speech
act types *S*1 and *S*2 could be
inferentially related to one another if it is not possible to perform
one without performing the other. A warning that the bull is about to
charge is also an assertion that the bull is about to charge but the
converse is not true. This is in spite of the fact that these two
speech acts have the same propositional content: That the bull is
about to charge. If, therefore, warning implies asserting but not vice
versa, then that inferential relation is not to be caught within the
net of inferential relations among propositions.



In their *Foundations of Illocutionary Logic* (1985), Searle
and Vanderveken attempt a general treatment of logical relations among
speech acts. They describe their central question in terms of
commitment:



> 
> A theory of illocutionary logic of the sort we are describing is
> essentially a theory of illocutionary commitment as determined by
> illocutionary force. The single most important question it must answer
> is this: Given that a speaker in a certain context of utterance
> performs a successful illocutionary act of a certain form, what other
> illocutions does the performance of that act commit him to? (1985,
> p. 6)
> 


To explicate their notion of illocutionary commitment, these
authors invoke their definition of illocutionary force in terms of the
seven values mentioned in Section 2.3 above. On the basis of this
definition, they define two notions pertinent to entailment relations
among speech acts, namely *strong illocutionary commitment*
and *weak illocutionary commitment*. According to the former
definition, an illocutionary act *S*1 commits a
speaker to another illocutionary act *S*2 iff it is
not possible to perform *S*1 without
performing *S*2. Whether that relation holds between
a pair of illocutionary acts depends on the particular septuples with
which they are identified. Thus suppose that *S*1 is
identical with <IP1, Str1, Mode1,
Cont1, Prep 1, Sinc1,
Stresinc1> (corresponding to illocutionary point,
strength, mode of achievement, propositional content, preparatory
condition, sincerity condition, and strength of sincerity condition,
respectively); and suppose that *S*2 is identical
with <IP1, Str2, Mode1,
Cont1, Prep1, Sinc1,
Stresinc1>. Suppose further that Str1 and
Str2 differ only in that 1 is stronger than 2. Then it will
not be possible to perform *S*1 without
performing *S*2; whence the former strongly
illocutionarily implies the latter. (This definition of strong
illocutionary commitment generalizes in a straightforward way to the
case in which a set of speech acts *S*1,
..., *Sn*[?]1 implies a speech
act *Sn*.)



Searle and Vanderveken also define a notion of weak illocutionary
commitment such that *S*1 weakly illocutionarily
implies *S*2 iff every performance
of *S*1 commits an agent to meeting the conditions
laid down in the septuple identical to *S*2 (1985,
p. 24). Searle and Vanderveken infer that this implies that
if *P* logically entails *Q*, and an agent
asserts *P*, then she is committed to believing
that *Q*. These authors stress, however, that this does not
mean that the agent who asserts *P* is committed
to *cultivating* the belief *Q* when *P*
implies *Q*. In lieu of that explication, however, it is
unclear just what notion of commitment is at issue. It is unclear, for
instance, what it could mean to be committed to believing *Q*
(rather than just being committed to *Q*) if this is not to be
explicated as being committed to cultivating the belief
that *Q*.



Other approaches attempt to circumvent such problems by reductively
defining the notion of commitment in terms of obligations to action
and liability to error and/or vindication. Performance of a speech act
or set of speech acts can commit an agent to a distinct content, and
do so relative to some force. If *P* and *Q* jointly
imply *R*, then my asserting both *P* and *Q*
commits me to *R*. That is not to say that I have also
asserted *R*: if assertion were closed under deductive
consequence I would assert infinitely many things just by virtue of
asserting one. By contrast, if I conjecture *P* and *Q*,
then I am once again committed to *R* but not in the way that I
would have been had I asserted *P* and *Q*. For
instance, in the assertion case, once my further commitment to *R* is
made clear, it is within the rights of my addressee to ask how I know
that *R* holds; this would not have been an acceptable reply to my
merely conjecturing *P* and *Q*. Developing this theme,
let *S* be an arbitrary speaker,
<D*l**A**l*,
..., D*n**A**n*,
D*B*> a sequence of force/content pairs; then:



> 
> <D*lAl*, ...,
> D*nAn*, D*B*>
> is *illocutionarily valid* iff if speaker *S* is
> committed to each *Ai* under mode
> D*i*, then *S* is committed
> to *B* under mode
>  D.[19]
> 


Because it concerns what force/content pairs commit an agent to
what others, illocutionary validity is an essentially deontic notion:
It will be cashed out in terms either of obligation to use a content
in a certain way conversationally, or liability to error or
vindication depending upon how the world is.



Our discussion of the possibility of an illocutionary logic answers
one question posed at the end of Section 6.3, namely whether it is
possible to perform a speech act without intending to do so. This
seems likely given Searle and Vanderveken's definition of strong
illocutionary commitment: We need only imagine an agent performing
some large number of speech acts, *S*1,
..., *Sn*[?]1, which, unbeknownst to
her, jointly guarantee that she fulfills the seven conditions defining
another speech act *Sn*. Even in such a case she
performs *Sn* only by virtue of intentionally
performing some other set of speech acts *S*1,
..., *Sn*[?]1; it is difficult to see
how one can perform *Sn* while having no intention
of performing a speech act at all.



We are also in a position to make headway on Cohen's Problem as
formulated by Lycan. As argued in Green 2000, in an assertion of
'I (hereby) assert that *p*', a speaker commits
herself to *p* even though her words do not logically entail that
Proposition; nor do they presuppose, or either conversationally or
conventionally imply it. They do, however, illocutionarily entail it:
anyone committed to 'I assert that *p*'
assertorically is thereby committed to *p* assertorically. By
contrast, one committed to 'I assert that *p*' as a
supposition for the sake of argument is not thereby committed
to *p*. Accordingly, such a phrase as 'I assert that'
is semantically opaque (making a non-trivial contribution to the truth
conditions of the sentences in which it occurs) but pragmatically
transparent in the sense that a speaker who undertakes assertoric
commitment to a sentence in which it has widest scope is also
assertorically committed to its complement. Analogous remarks apply to
'I conjecture that' and the like.


## 9. Speech Acts and Social Issues



In a paradigmatic illocutionary event, a speaker has a choice of which
if any speech act to perform and her addressee will do her charitable
best to discern that speaker's intentions and, where necessary, which
conventions she may be invoking. Pratt (1986) observes that this
paradigm is not true to the facts of many areas of communicative
life, writing



> 
> An account of linguistic interaction based on the idea of exchange
> glosses over the very basic facts that, to put it crudely, some people
> get to do more talking than others, some are supposed to do more
> listening, and not everybody's words are worth the same. (1986, p. 68)
> 


 Although Pratt intends this remark as a critique of speech act
theory, it also suggests a way in which this theory might shed light
on subtle forms of oppression. We saw in Section 2.2 that a putative
bet can misfire if it is not accepted. In such a case the speaker
attempts to bet but fails in that effort due to a lack of audience
uptake. So too, a person may not be in the correct social position to, say, excommunicate or appoint, and her attempts to perform such illocutions will misfire. More momentously, a pattern of abuses
of speech act institutions might deprive a person of an ability to
perform speech acts: the inveterate promise-breaker will, in time, lead others
in his community to be unwilling to accept any promises he tries to
make. He can perform countless locutionary acts but will be unable to
perform the illocutionary act of promising, at least in this
community.



A pattern of culpable behavior could make a speaker unable to perform one speech act type. Could a pattern of culpable
behavior-intentional or inadvertent--on the part of others
in a speaker's community achieve the same effect? This could happen if enough such speakers decide never
to accept one person's bets, warnings, or promises. Beyond such
hypothetical cases, it has been argued that patterns of social
inequality can prevent members of certain groups from performing the speech acts they would choose to. Building on and refining
McKinnon's (1993) claim that pornography silences women, Langton
(1993), and Hornsby and Langton (1998) argue that the industry and
consumption of pornography deprive women of the ability to perform the
speech act of refusing sexual advances. Refusing is a speech act, but
if large enough numbers of men deny uptake (with such thoughts as,
"By 'no' she really means 'yes',"
etc.) then, these authors argue, women's attempts to refuse sexual
advances will be characteristically inert with respect to the speech
act of refusal. Women will still be able to attempt to refuse sexual
advances, and can still try to prevent them by physical means, but a
crucial illocutionary form of protection will be closed to them. So
too, apartheid, Jim Crow, and even patterns of discrimination of which
the perpetrators are not consciously aware, can deprive racial,
religious, and ethnic minority groups of the ability to perform
speech-act types requiring uptake. These phenomena are generally
referred to as *illocutionary silencing*.



Bird (2002) denies that the speech act of refusal requires
uptake. Such an illocution is, he contends, like inviting and
surrendering, which can occur whether or not their intended audiences
grasp or accept the proffered illocutions. Similarly denying that the
"silencing" argument should be cast in terms of speech
acts, Maitra 2009 argues that the institution of pornography prevents
speaker-meant instances of refusal from being understood. One can
speaker-mean that she refuses, for instance, but patterns of cognitive
and affective response will systematically prevent that refusal from
being grasped. Broadening the scope of investigations of the
interaction of injustice and illocutionary phenomena, McGowan 2009
argues that some speech acts can not only cause but also constitute
instances of oppression. Anderson, Haslanger and Langton (2012) provide overviews of research on racial, gender
and related forms of oppression as they relate to speech acts. 




Although not inherently culpable, the practice of dogwhistling has
also recently gained the interest of theorists of speech acts. As
suggested by the metaphor, an agent dogwhistles just in case one or
more dimensions of a speech act she performs is readily intelligible
only to a proper subset of her addressees. Saul 2018 notes that in
contemporary American politics, stating one's opposition to the
Supreme Court case of Dred Scott seems to be a way of signaling one's
anti-abortion sympathies. For those not in the know, however, a
speaker's opposition to the Dred Scott appears to be an
uncontroversial act of rejecting racism. The phenomenon of
dogwhistling provides an apparent challenge to conceptions of speaker
meaning in terms of overtness, since the dogwhistler would seem to
speaker mean a content that is cryptic to all but her insider
audience: is her utterance both overt and covert? Instead of adopting
such a view, one who construes speech acts in terms of overtness could
refine the notion of manifestness occuring in her account. What is
manifest to one addressee may not be manifest to another, and a
speaker may exploit this fact. Accordingly, someone who avows, "I'm
against Dred Scott," may speaker-mean that she is both against Dred
Scott and pro-life to one part of her audience, but only that she is
against Dred Scott to another part.