Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning

by Alston, William P.

• ISBN13: 9780801436697
• ISBN10: 0801436699
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-04-01
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr

Summary

What is it for a sentence to have a certain meaning? This is the question that William P. Alston, one of America's most distinguished and prolific analytic philosophers, addresses in this major contribution to the philosophy of language. His answer focuses on the given sentence's potential to play the role that its speaker had in mind -- what he terms the usability of the sentence to perform the illocutionary act intended by its speaker.

Alston defines an illocutionary act as an act of saying something with a certain "content". He develops his account of what it is to perform such acts in terms of taking responsibility, in uttering a sentence, for the existence of certain conditions. In requesting someone to open a window, for example, the speaker takes responsibility for its being the case that the window is closed and that the speaker has an interest in its being opened.

In Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning, Alston expands upon this concept, creating a framework of five categories of illocutionary act and going on to argue that sentence meaning is f

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Introduction	1	(10)
PART I THE NATURE OF ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS
The Stratification of Linguistic Behavior	11	(22)
Types of Speech Acts	11	(2)
Illocutionary Acts	13	(4)
Austin's Classification of Speech Acts	17	(3)
Austin on the Rhetic-Illocutionary Distinction	20	(3)
Austin on the Illocutionary-Perlocutionary Distinction	23	(1)
Austin's Characterization of Illocutionary Acts	24	(2)
Interrelations of Sentential and Illocutionary Acts	26	(4)
Perlocutionary Acts and Other Speech Acts	30	(3)
Perlocutionary Intention Theories of Illocutionary Acts	33	(18)
Explicating Illocutionary Act Concepts	33	(4)
Grice on Speaker Meaning	37	(3)
Schiffer's Account of Illocutionary Acts	40	(2)
Criticism of Schiffer's Account	42	(3)
Counterexamples to Schiffer's Account	45	(6)
The Nature of Illocutionary Acts	51	(30)
Searle's ``Non-Defective'' Promising	51	(3)
Taking Responsibility	54	(2)
Epistemological Complexities	56	(1)
Blameworthiness and Incorrectness	57	(1)
The Crucial Role of Rules	58	(6)
Further Modifications of Searle's Analysis	64	(5)
A New Analysis of Promising	69	(2)
Extension to Other Illocutionary Acts	71	(2)
De Re and De Dicto	73	(4)
How to Identify Conditions for Illocutionary Acts	77	(1)
Illocutionary Rules	78	(3)
Types of Illocutionary Acts: Commissives, Exercitives, Directives, and Expressives	81	(33)
Prelude: Conventional and Normative Facts	81	(4)
Commissives, Exercitives, and Verdictives: Preliminary	85	(4)
The Final Model for Exercitives	89	(6)
The Final Model for Commissives	95	(2)
Directives	97	(6)
Expressives	103	(11)
Assertion and Other Assertives: Completing the Account	114	(33)
The Problem of Assertion	114	(2)
Assertion as Explicitly Presenting a Proposition	116	(4)
How This Account Deals with Problems	120	(1)
Assertive-Nonassertive Overlaps	121	(4)
Kinds of Assertives	125	(5)
Analysis Patterns for Illocutionary Act Types	130	(4)
Restrictions on Sentential Vehicles	134	(3)
Unintentional Illocutionary Acts	137	(5)
Comparison with Perlocutionary Intention Accounts	142	(5)
PART II AN ACCOUNT OF THE MEANING OF SENTENCES
The Problem of Linguistic Meaning	147	(44)
Meaning: Preliminary	147	(1)
The Concept of Meaning	147	(5)
What I'm Looking for in a Theory of Meaning	152	(2)
Use as the Key to Meaning	154	(3)
Sentence Meaning as Primary	157	(3)
Sentence Meaning as Illocutionary Act Potential	160	(2)
Sentence Meaning and Perlocutionary Intentions	162	(11)
Two Difficulties in the Illocutionary Act Potential Theory	173	(2)
Intensifying the Difficulty	175	(3)
Matching Illocutionary Act Types	178	(12)
Illocutionary Rules	190	(1)
Illocutionary Act Potential and Illocutionary Rules	191	(60)
IA Potential as Subjection to Illocutionary Rules	191	(1)
Linguistic Meaning as Rule Governance	192	(3)
Some Versions of Semantic Rules	195	(6)
Progressive Complication of Illocutionary Rules	201	(6)
How to Handle Ellipticity and Singular Reference	207	(10)
Reference, Ellipticity, and R'ing as Rule Subjection	217	(5)
IA Analysis in Terms of Rule Subjection and in Terms of R'ing	222	(7)
Some Additional Problems for IA Analysis	229	(5)
IA's, I-Rules, IA Potential, and Sentence Meaning	234	(4)
Sample I-Rules and IA Analyses	238	(10)
How I-Rules Make Communication Possible	248	(1)
Speaker Meaning	249	(2)
The Status of Illocutionary Rules	251	(24)
Summary of the Foregoing	251	(1)
Regulative and Constitutive Rules	252	(4)
Unformulated Rules	256	(6)
Rules and Conventions	262	(3)
Do I-Rules Exist?	265	(3)
Drawing Boundaries around I-Act and I-Rule	268	(4)
The Meaning of Subsentential Units	272	(3)
The IA Potential Theory of Meaning and Its Alternatives	275	(36)
Preview	275	(1)
Initial Plausibility of the Theory	275	(7)
Efficacy of the Theory in Application	282	(1)
Replies to Objections	283	(1)
Mapping Alternative Theories	284	(2)
Words or Sentences as Fundamental	286	(2)
Naive Referential Theories	288	(2)
More Sophisticated Referential Theories	290	(6)
Truth Conditional Approaches	296	(4)
Attempts to Get Beyond Assertion I	300	(7)
Attempts to Get Beyond Assertion II	307	(2)
Conclusion	309	(2)
Appendix	311	(4)
Bibliography	315	(4)
Index	319