Unwarranted questions and conversation
Journal of Pragmatics 39 (10):1689-1701 (2007)
| Abstract | This paper deals with two distinct topics; unwarranted questions and admittures. The traditional speech act analysis of questions needs revision, since among the felicity conditions of asking a question is believing that the question is warranted. Some questions are unwarranted according to my analysis. A question is unwarranted if the questioner is not standing in the right relation to the addressee, such that he can demand or expect a sincere answer. I use the idea of unwarranted questions to show how conversational admittures can be generated. A conversational admitture is a non-intended admittance by the speaker of some state of affairs being believed by the speaker to be true. Under the assumption that the speaker is rational, the non-intended admittance is something that it is reasonable to credit the speaker with believing as an explanation of the speaker's unwillingness to be cooperative in a given conversation. In the last section I introduce what I call the Principle of Privacy, which tells us that we have a prima facie right to guard some of our thoughts, feelings, personal history, etc. I argue that the Principle of Privacy together with the ideas that there are unwarranted questions and conversational admittures, and the way unwarranted questions can be exploited to generate the latter, endows us with the right to lie in certain contexts. ; ; | |||||||||
| Keywords | Questions Speech act analysis Unwarranted questions Admitture Implicature Conversation The Principle of Privacy The right to lie | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,672 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesSteffen Borge (2012). Communication, Cooperation and Conflict. ProtoSociology 29.
Steffen Borge (2012). Communication, Conflict and Cooperation. ProtoSociology 29.
David Braun (2011). Implicating Questions. Mind and Language 26 (5):574-595.
Maribel Romero & Chung-Hye Han (2004). On Negative Yes/No Questions. Linguistics and Philosophy 27 (5):609-658.
George Psathas (1995). “Talk and Social Structure” and “Studies of Work”. Human Studies 18 (2-3):139 - 155.
Antti Koura (1988). An Approach to Why-Questions. Synthese 74 (2):191 - 206.
Robert Stalnaker (1998). On the Representation of Context. Journal of Logic, Language and Information 7 (1):3-19.
Mitchell S. Green (1995). Quantity, Volubility, and Some Varieties of Discourse. Linguistics and Philosophy 18 (1):83 - 112.
Roberta Colonna Dahlman (forthcoming). Conversational Implicatures Are Still Cancellable. Acta Analytica.
Edward S. Reed & Rebecca K. Jones (1978). Gibson's Theory of Perception: A Case of Hasty Epistemologizing? Philosophy of Science 45 (4):519-530.
Andrzej Wiśniewski (1996). The Logic of Questions as a Theory of Erotetic Arguments. Synthese 109 (1):1 - 25.
Seizi Iwata (2003). Echo Questions Are Interrogatives? Another Version of a Metarepresentational Analysis. Linguistics and Philosophy 26 (2):185 - 254.
Leah M. McClimans (2011). The Art of Asking Questions. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 19 (4):521 - 538.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2011-08-24Total downloads18 ( #67,529 of 549,061 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,185 of 549,061 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
