Abstract
According to a dominant understanding, the illocutionary domain is a bifurcated one, an amalgam containing both communicative speech acts (such as requesting and promising) and ceremonial speech acts (such as saying ‘I do’ in a marriage ceremony and naming a ship). Bifurcating the domain in this manner is commonly taken to be a primary lesson of Austin’s “How To Do Things With Words’, alongside that of according communicative speech acts a far greater prominence in terms of our core understanding of illocution. In contrast, we draw on the resources provided by Austin’s work to provide a more unified conception of the illocutionary domain, one in which differences between communicative and ceremonial acts are themselves understood to emerge from a broader understanding of the illocutionary character of speech.
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Notes
“Mauietic”—acting as a midwife—is used here as a term-of-art. Our use of the term is explained at the beginning of Sect. 3.
We concede that the example of betting does not fit neatly in this division, especially if—following Austin—it is thought of as a casual bet made between friends (as opposed to, say, made in an auction house or at a gambling table).
Paraphrase from Russell (1922, p. 190).
The act of betting again complicates matters here, as it is listed by Bach and Harnish among communicative acts (Bach & Harnish, 1979, p. 50).
See also Forguson’s description that Austin “develops [the] view…and then later come[s] to reject it” (Forguson, 1969, p. 412). Although Austin’s intentions are not our concern here, we note that Sbisà explicitly rejects such a claim, pointing out that “the earliest set of notes (1951) already contains the Locutionary-Illocutionary-Perlocutionary distinction and considers assertions as illocutionary acts” (2007, p. 462).
There have been, of course, notable departures from the standard view, and we would like to register our debt to some more recent of these—most notably Bauer (2015), Crary (2002), Moran (2018) and Sbisà (2001, 2007, 2009). Though we are less averse to theory than Bauer; focus more on convention than Crary; and highlight the difference between producing and administering speech that goes largely missing in Moran, their influence extends throughout the paper. For more discussion of the relation between our view and Sbisà’s, see footnote 10 and Sect. 4 below.
In some cases, the two sets of ideas are set out as exhausting the range of possible responses, such that the failure of one alone provides an argument in favor of the other. In other cases, it is the comparatively better explanatory reach of the second set of ideas over the first that provides an argumentative reason in its favor.
Our goal here is just to highlight two argumentative structures that we see as relevant to characterizing HTD. Other structures are available, though not our concern here.
The phrase “maieutic” is liable to mislead if it is understood as relating specifically to a Socratic mode of inquiry. This is not our intent: the goal of a maieutic reading in our sense need not be to bring out already latent ideas (and this is not the case in the maieutic reading of HTD). All we mean here by “maieutic” is captured by the characterization in the text.
Even Sbisà, who is one the staunchest critics of the standard reading of HTD and among the closest to our own, still construes the framework of HTD as having a knock-down structure that presents an argument for Austin’s “fresh start” in the form of a proof-by-contradiction (Sbisà, 2007). We raise concerns about the content of this proof in ‘How to Read How to Do Things with Words’ (manuscript in preparation), and we think the maieutic reading better captures the structure of HTD for reasons that emerge below.
Austin’s concerns here are not just about offering insights into language per se but part of a broader concern regarding a perennial temptation in philosophy, as implied here by talk of the ‘age-old assumption’. Indeed, the insights about language in HTD are part of a more extensive attempt to disrupt (“play Old Harry with” [HTD, 150]) the true-false fetish and the fact-value fetish, that will yield a “revolution” [HTD, 3] in philosophy. Our sketch of one theme in HTD is limited to tracing its implications for an understanding of speech in its own terms. For an especially insightful attempt to link this theme to a revolution in philosophy, see Crary (2002).
It is sometimes suggested that Austin overlooks ways of maintaining the sharp distinction between performatives and constatives. (See, for example, Black, 1969, pp. 406–408). This is less of a concern on the reading advanced here.
Contra Forster (2009, p. 67), Austin is thus not guilty of evincing what could be called a “Platonism about speech acts”, the contention that there are a limited and fixed set of such acts available.
See, for example, Austin’s early discussion of promising as a performative [HTD, 9–11].
We use “illocutionary practice” as an umbrella term that includes both illocutionary acts and various other acts and attitudes that are relevant to their performance. Importantly for our purposes, this includes the various performances that fall within the scope of what (in Sect. 5) we call “administration”, such as contests over the satisfaction of felicity conditions, attempts to make explicit what is being done, the giving of uptake, requests for clarification of illocutionary force, and so on. (Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting we clarify this.)
Compare HTD: 32 and 150.
Compare HTD: 22 and 126.
Compare HTD: 14–45 and 136–137.
Convention features straight after the introduction of the second set of canonical examples (“We must notice that the illocutionary act is a conventional act: an act done as conforming to a convention” [HTD, 105]), and the ensuing discussion continues to highlight the interplay between an accepted procedure and having a conventional effect already familiar from rule (A.1). (“The illocutionary act ‘takes effect’ in certain ways, as distinguished from producing consequences in the sense of bringing about states of affairs in the ‘normal’ way, i.e. changes in the natural course of events” [HTD, 116]).
Cf. Moran (2018, pp. 156–158)
The influence of the global perspective may explain a peculiar feature of the reception of Austin’s marriage case. Much recent discussion of marrying as speech act tends to follow Searle (e.g. his influential classification in his 1976) in focusing on the Minister’s pronouncement (“I declare you husband and wife”), rather than—as Austin does—that between the couple (“‘I do’ (sc. take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife)”, and thereby classifying marrying among Declarations (in the Searlean sense). For some trenchant criticism of this change of example and the concomitant classification of marrying as a declaration see, e.g., Hancher (1979, pp. 11–12). [Thanks to Laura Caponetto for bringing this feature of the reception of Austin to our attention.]
Sbisà (2007, 2009, 2013). Cf. Witek (2019). Note that talk of “norms” and “normative consequences” in the ensuing discussion is our Sbisà-inspired gloss on Austin’s characterization of conventional effects as making certain subsequent acts “out of order”. Austin himself does not talk of normative effects.
In favor of relegating the ceremonial, one could point to the absence of marrying in Austin’s “preliminary classification” of illocutionary acts in the final lecture. In favor of keeping the ceremonial as canonical, one could point out that Austin illustrates his idea that non-natural effects are a hallmark of illocution (in contrast to perlocution) with the ceremonial example of naming a ship. Neither of these considerations is conclusive.
We offer a fuller characterization of the process of administration and its role in speech activity in ‘On the Sociality of Speech’ [manuscript in preparation].
Note that advising can also, like complaining, take a highly institutional form, and hence fall into “detached” category (legal advice may be an example of this). Our discussion of advising above is concerned with the informal sort of advising suggested by Austin’s example.
Since the involved-detached distinction does not aid in distinguishing illocutionary types, it may be wondered what criteria we think can be used to classify performances into different illocutionary types. As suggested earlier (Sect. 4), we follow Sbisà—and others, such as Kukla and Lance (2009, 2013)—in taking a broadly normativist approach to this question: different illocutionary types can be distinguished on the basis of the distinctive normative changes they enact. Where our form of normativism is distinctive, perhaps, is in insisting that practices of illocutionary classification are best understood from within the local perspective. That is, illocutionary types are part and parcel of the normative negotiation and adjudication that we call “administration”. (We thank an anonymous reviewer for encouraging us to address this point; we hope to develop this idea more fully in further work)
In this manner, some speech act-kinds that feature in ordinary language are more clearly examples of either the detached or involved group, in that their usage only admits examples that fall within one group alone, whereas other kinds more easily allow for differing interpretations that may fall within either. In this sense, some kinds are more resolutely within a detached/involved group in comparison to others within that same group. Although we do not want to push this too hard, it is worth noting that Austin’s first set of canonical exemplars themselves seem to differ in terms of their resoluteness within the detached group, running in order from marriage, through naming and bequeathing to betting. As we have said, it is hard to think of cases of marrying which admit a non-detached variant, whereas we can imagine informal cases of betting (think of Austin’s example of betting sixpence it will rain tomorrow) which may do so under some interpretations. It is part of the notion of betting that it cannot be done unilaterally; explicit acceptance of the bet is a central felicity condition for betting. But that leaves open much room for possible divergence between the parties in terms of their understanding of just what act they have performed, including possible differences as to the appropriate administrative personae should the need for adjudication arise.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge helpful comments on earlier drafts from Danielle Bromwich, Avner Baz, Laura Caponetto, Rebecca Harrison, Dick Moran and Lynne Tirrell, as well as detailed suggestions made by three anonymous referees for this journal. We also benefitted from thoughtful feedback on an early version of this paper from participants at the ‘Words Workshop’ organized by Nikki Ernst at the University of Pittsburgh. Leo Townsend gratefully acknowledges funding from the British Academy Newton International Fellowship, Grant number NIF22\220695.
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Wanderer, J., Townsend, L. Illocution by example. Synthese 202, 7 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04229-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04229-9