John Searle's Search in Pragmatics

John Searle's search in pragmatics

1 Five basic classes of speech acts can be distinguished in accordance with the taxonomic criteria proposed by Searle (Campbell 1996:107-16, Mey 1993:131, Levinson 1992:240).

1.1 Assertives: The illocutionary goal (force) of assertive speech acts can be defined in terms of the speaker's intention of getting the hearer to accept the propositional content of the utterance as the expression of a true state of affairs. (Sixty-three sub-classes?)

1.2 Directives 1.2.1 Impositive speech acts are defined as speech acts which are performed by the speaker to influence the intentional behaviour of the hearer in order to get the latter to perform, primarily for the benefit of the speaker, the action directly specified or indirectly suggested by the proposition. (requests, orders, pleas)

1.2.2 Non-impositive speech acts are performed in order to get the hearer to carry out the action primarily for his own benefit. (advice, warnings, instructions)

1.3 Commissives: The illocutionary goal (force) of commissive speech acts is the speaker's undertaking of the obligation to perform the action described by the propositional content of the utterance. Commissives are diametrically opposed to impositives, since they are centred upon an action to be performed by the speaker, not by the hearer; moreover, it is the hearer, not the speaker, who is supposed to primarily benefit from the result of the action. (promises, offers)

1.4 Expressives: The illocutionary goal (force) of expressive speech acts can be defined as the expression of a psychological state of the speaker which is brought about by the state of affairs indicated by the propositional content. ('to thank', 'to congratulate', 'to condole')

1.5 Declaratives: The illocutionary goal (force) of declarative speech acts can be defined as the immediate change in the institutional state of affairs; it relies on elaborate extra-linguistic institutions. (excommunicating, declaring war, christening, firing from employment)

2 Searle's conditions/rules for speech acts

2.1 Where Grice put forward a series of maxims and principles to explain how a speech act functions, Searle tried to establish a set of rules.

2.2 Here are Searle's rules for promising:

2.2.1 Propositional act: Speaker predicates a future act of Speaker.

2.2.2 Preparatory condition: Speaker believes that doing act A is in Hearer's best interest and that Speaker can do A.

2.2.3 Sincerity condition: Speaker intends to do act A.

2.2.4 Essential condition: Speaker undertakes an obligation to do act A.

2.3 Exx. I'll cook you a curry for dinner tonight. I promise I'll come over there and hit you if you don't shut up!

1 3 Sets of problems that arise from Searle's hypothesis

3.1.1 It is not always possible to distinguish fully between one speech act from another. 3.1.2 If we attempt to plug all the gaps in Searle's rules we end up with a hopelessly complex collection of ad hoc conditions. 3.1.3 The conditions specified by Searle may exclude perfectly normal instances of a speech act but permit anomalous uses. 3.1.4 The same speech act verb may cover a range of slightly different phenomena and some speech acts 'overlap'; Searle's rules take no account of this.

4 Rules vs. principles

4.1 Searle believed that it was possible to describe speech acts in terms of rules, "… the hypothesis of this book [Searle 1969:38*] is that speaking a language is a matter of performing speech acts according to systems of constitutive rules."

4.2 Searle was attempting to handle pragmatics in a manner appropriate to grammar. Pragmatics seeks different sorts of generalisations from those made within grammar. Grammar is governed by rules, pragmatics is constrained by maxims/principles.

4.3 Five basic differences between rules and principles

4.3.1 Rules are all or nothing, principles are more or less Rules are yes/no in their application. Interpersonal principles can be observed to different degrees—you can be extremely polite or moderately polite.

4.3.2 Rules are exclusive, principles can co-occur Rules are exclusive in the sense that invoking one rule precludes invoking another (e. g. pronominal system). It is difficult to be both polite and truthful (to observe both the politeness principle and the quality maxim); it is nevertheless possible to do so by employing indirectness. (E. g. A: Did you enjoy the lamb, Sir? B: It was very interesting.)

4.3.3 Rules are constitutive, principles are regulative Descriprive grammars provide constitutive rules telling us what are/aren't grammatically well-formed sentences in a given language; a pragmatic description of that same language will include principles showing how people make choices from within the grammatical system in order to achieve their goals, behave appropriately etc.

4.3.4 Rules are definite, principles are probabilistic In grammar, the aim is to devise rules which have no counter-examples. In pragmatics, we cannot say with absolute certainty what effect an utterance will have. The best we can do is to state with more or less certainty what is probably the case. (E. g. Kate and Peter come across his mother in the supermarket. She greets her encouragingly.)

4.3.5 Rules are conventional, principles are motivated Rules are arbitrary. (E. g. I'm right, aren't I.) Pragmatic principles are motivated. If people find that they are more likely to achieve their aims if they speak politely they will do so. Conversely, if they find that their goals are best served by being rude, then they will be just that.

* Searle, J. R. Speech acts : an essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1969.

2 Sources:

Campbell, Olga. A collection of speech acts in English. Compiled by Olga Campbell. Debrecen : KLTE, Institute of English and American Studies, 1996. 189 p.

Mey, Jacob L. Pragmatics : an introduction. Oxford (UK) ; Cambridge (Mass.) : Blackwell, 1993. xii, 357 p. ISBN 0-631-18691-3 x