speech acts

Felicity Conditions

thinkof felicity conditions as making up a definition of the speech act verb involved
e.g. What does to promise mean exactly? What does a nutterance make a promise? What conditions have to be fulfilledin order for an utterance to count as a promise?

Four types of felicity conditions:

1) Propositional content rule
2) Preparatory rule
3) Sincerity rule
4) Essential rule

Propositional content rule (for a promise)

Concerns the FUTURE act of the speaker

Preparatory rules (for a promise)

1 -- Act is in the interest of the hearer, i.e. it benefits the hearer
2 -- Act is not obvious for the speaker to do in a normal sequence of events (an infelicitous example of this would be breathing -- it's expected that the speaker would do it)

Sincerity rule (for a promise)

Speaker intends to do it

Essential rule (for a promise)

Speaker does do it!

Assertives

Sincerity condition: speaker BELIEVES p
Essential condition: speaker commits themself to the truth of p (must be either true or false)
Examples: i assert that it is raining; claim, hypothesize, insist, conclude

Declaratives

Essential condition: speaker makes p true, just by saying it
Examples: I declare you wife & wife, I fire you, I name you, I open the meeting

Expressives

Sincerity condition: speaker is in a certain PSYCHOLOGICAL state
Essential condition: speaker expresses their psychological state
Examples: Thank, congratulate, condole, welcome, thank

Commissives

Sincerity condition: Speaker INTENDS to
Essential condition: Speaker commits themself to realize p
Examples: Promise, swear, guarantee

Directives

Sincerity condition: Speaker WISHES that
Essential condition: speaker wants hearer to realize p
Examples: Request, beg, order, pray, ask, command

Speech Act

An utterance that performs an action just by saying it
i.e., performative act

Locutionary
e.g. "It's a bit cold in here"

literal (semantic) meaning of something
e.g. "The temperature of this room is low"

Illocutionary
e.g. "It's a bit cold in here"

what a speaker intends to have come about as a result of the utterance
e.g. "I want you to hand me my sweater"

Perlocutionary act
e.g. "It's a bit cold in here"

the actual effect of the utterance; how it was received by the hearer
e.g. the hearer hands the speaker her sweater

Q-principle (Hornian)

say as much as you can

is hearer-based, as you are saying as much as you can in order to save the hearer effort. from the hearer’s point of view, anything that is NOT said is NOT the case

e.g. Some students were absent+> not all students were absent

R-principle (Hornian)

say as little as you can

speaker based; the speaker is trying to save themselves the effort of speaking more. from the hearer’s POV, it means that what is the case is MORE than what is stated

e.g. I broke a fingernail +> I broke one of my own fingernails

Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson)

All about minimizing the ratio of effort to cognitive effects. The higher the ratio, the more relevant (and better) it is

Q-implicature

The speaker does not mean anything more specific than they said, on the basis of what the speaker could have said but did not say.

e.g. “Would you like coffee or tea?”, really asking whether you’d like EITHER coffee or tea, but not both.
e.g. “I have two sons”, you have 2 sons, no more & no less

R-implicature

The speaker means more/something different than they actually said, on the basis of what is normal, stereotypical, unmarked, self-evident, common sense (given context and culture)

e.g. The sign on the roads that says, “School has started up again!”. Sure, ok, yeah, whatever, but what it really means is that drivers ought to be careful since kids will be on the streets on the way to school

Marked meaning

Like, weirdly specific phrasing of things. Based on the Q-principle, i.e. what you could have said but did not say

e.g., “My father’s wife” — sort of implies that that woman is not your mother, or that you do not consider her to be your mother in any capacity

e.g. “Gordon caused the intruder to die” — implied that he didn’t personally assault and kill the intruder, but rather had a more indirect way of doing it (like a hitman or something idk)

Division of Pragmatic Labor

an unmarked utterance licenses an R-inference to the unmarked situation, whereas a marked utterance licenses a Q-inference to the effect that the unmarked situation does not hold.

Implicatures

non-truth conditional, primary speech act, locutionary effect

Utterance

Semantic, secondary speech act, the literal, what is said

indirect speech act

speech act that looks like one kind of speech act but really is another one
secondary speech act must be questioning or asserting a felicity condition of the primary speech act

e.g. “may i congratulate you on passing the exam?”
looks like (=secondary speech act): a question
really is (=primary speech act): an expressive

direct speech act

speech act that looks like a kind of speech act and is that act

there is a DIRECT relation between the form of the utterance and the intended speech act

e.g. “I congratulate you”

(direct) explicit performative

a kind of direct speech act wherein the act of saying something causes something to occur

e.g. “i promise”, “i request”, etc.

(direct) implicit performative

the second subcategory of direct speech acts. these are also called the “canonical form”, and they are performative utterances with performative verbs but they are not explicitly stated

e.g.