Abstract
After briefly laying out a cultural-evolutionary approach to speech acts (Sects. 1–2), I argue that the notion of commitment at play in assertion and related speech acts comprises multiple dimensions (Sect. 3). Distinguishing such dimensions enables us to hypothesize evolutionary precursors to the modern practice of assertion, and facilitates a new way of posing the question whether, and if so to what extent, speech acts are conventional (Sect. 4). Our perspective also equips us to consider how a modern speaker might employ an illocutionary analogue of A.N. Prior’s “runabout-inference ticket”, in which the pragmatic “introduction rules” for utterances correspond to evolutionary precursors of modern speech acts, but in which the “elimination rules” correspond to their modern descendants (Sect. 5). Such behavior would be abusive, though not in a way readily discernible without an evolutionary perspective on speech acts that attends to the dimensions of commitment that they encompass. Such behavior also raises the question how we may safeguard against it in public discourse, and I close (Sect. 6) with some suggestions for doing so.
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Notes
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Norms of Public Argument: A Speech Act Perspective Workshop in Lisbon, Portugal, June, 2022. At the Annual Meeting of the Polish Cognitive Linguistics Society, October, 2022; at the EVOPRAG group November, 2022; and at the SPAGAD group in December, 2022. My thanks to audience members for their insights on those occasions. My thanks also to two anonymous referees for this journal, as well as the Editors of the Special Issue on Norms of Public Argument, for their comments on an earlier draft.
I use the term ‘information’ and cognates in such a way as to not guarantee factivity: an object may convey the information that P, even though P is not the case. Bearing information is, following Skyrms (2010), a matter of raising probabilities. Conveying information to a type of organism O is, per Green (2023b), a matter of making that information discernible to organisms of type O.
CE is not restricted to explanation of human behaviors. It is known that non-human animals have cultures as that term is defined in the relevant literature (Whiten 2000). However, the bulk of research in CE has focused on the explanation of human behaviors and that will be our approach here as well. We also note that CE does not involve any commitment to memetics, which tries to explain a variety of phenomena in terms of the concept of memes as that notion was propounded by Dennett and Dawkins. For further discussion and references see Heyes (2018).
See Tennie et al. (2009) for further discussion.
The Gricean approach to meaning is commonly formulated in terms of the concept of intention. However, as Armstrong (1971) noted, the notion of objective is better suited for this purpose. (Green and Michel (2022) expand on the point.) Yet because ‘intention’ is more grammatically flexible than ‘objective’ (for instance only the former permits adverbial forms), in what follows we should be understood as referring to objectives even when we use ‘intention’. Also, in light of the tripartition of types of theories of speech acts offered by Witek (2019) into intentionalist, normative, and interactionist schools, the present approach has both intentionalist (or objectivist) and normative elements.
In light of challenges offered by Davis (2003) we may also doubt that speaker meaning requires intentions to produce cognitive effects in addressees. Instead, a speaker might intend to make her viewpoint, or some aspect of her situation discernible to others without the further intention that anyone in particular discern them.
I leave aside here issues raised by group illocutions, such as those discussed in Ludwig (2020). Such acts may require a different kind of treatment from that offered here. However, nothing in the present approach requires positing a notion of ‘hearer’s meaning’ over and above that of speaker’s meaning. Of course, an addressee or over-hearer might take a speaker to mean something different from what she intends. But such cases would appear to be instances of misunderstanding rather than new and irreducible forms of meaning.
This characterization leaves open the possibility that one can perform a speech act unwittingly. The practice of ‘triple talaq’ in some Muslim communities might be a case of this kind. As we will see in Sect. 4 below, such an act would also be an essentially conventional act.
A referee for a draft of this essay suggested that in claiming that one can perform an act of speech without performing a speech act, I am going against Austin’s position. Although not averse to disagreeing with Austin, I in fact do not see Austin anywhere committing himself to the claim that I here deny. Moreover, given his gloss of ‘locutionary act’ as, “…roughly equivalent to uttering a certain sentence with a certain sense and reference,” (Austin 1975, p. 109), it should be apparent that an agent can locute without illocuting.
As a referee for a draft of this paper points out, it is common in linguistics to distinguish between informative and communicative behavior. In this context it is also often assumed that the latter depends on communicative intentions while the former does not. This distinction is useful, but threatens to overlook the variety of forms that communication may take. Instead, the approach being developed here stresses behavior that may be communicative without being intended to be. This phenomenon is precisely what we find in the case of the brightly colored tree frog, whose coloration is designed but of course not intended to convey information about its toxicity. As we will see below, the phenomenon also sheds light on aspects of human communication.
Green (2021b) offers a definition of language mandating recursion.
According to Millikan (2005) the “proper function” of an indicative sentence P is to induce the belief that P in the minds of those who hear (or otherwise perceive) its tokening. By contrast, our approach has no need to distinguish between functions and proper functions. Further, we do not ascribe communicative functions to sentences. Rather, indicative sentences encode truth conditions, which may then be used by agents for communicative purposes.
The speaker’s utterance as described here is a case of verbal signaling in the sense of that term used in Green (2023b).
Many would hold that all inorganic artifacts lack beliefs, but we don’t need to take a stand on this issue. For discussion of the possibility of inorganic artifacts performing speech acts, see Green and Michel (2022).
(4) One is incorrect to assert that p if one does not believe that p; (5) One is incorrect to assert that p if, though one believes that p, one does not have adequate grounds for believing that p; (6) One is incorrect to assert that p if, in fact, it is not the case that p. (1998, p. 248).
See Shapiro (2021) for a careful discussion of Price’s work on the genealogy of assertion.
Johnson (2017) offers suggestive ideas for archeological investigation.
Speech-act types within the assertive family (which includes assertion, conjecture, and educated guesses, among others) are characterized by being typically carried out with an indicative sentence and have a word-to-world direction of fit. See Green (2016) for further discussion. Also, see Green (2020b) for an overview of debates concerning conventionalism about speech acts.
Semantic conventionalism may seem controversial in light of the phenomenon of onomatopoeia. Words such as ‘woof’ and ‘pow’ might at first blush seem to have the meanings they do by virtue of their sonic affinity to the things they represent. However, brief reflection should suffice to reveal that sonic affinity (or affinity across other sensory modalities) is not sufficient to imbue an expression with semantic properties. The point traces at least as far back as Plato’s Cratylus (1998). See Guerts (2018) for an account of the conventional nature of word meaning.
It might be thought that it is unnecessary to discuss force conventionalism in the course of determining whether speech acts are conventional. The reason is that the semantic properties of words may appear to suffice to account for the possibility of performing speech acts. Such a view is suggested by Austin’s remark that illocutionary acts are conventional, “…at least in the sense that they could be made explicit by means of the performative formula…” (Austin 1975, p. 103). However, we may see that this cannot be correct. While semantic conventions make a sentence such as (H) ‘I hereby promise to pay you $100,’ an excellent tool for promising to pay someone $100, such an act is not achieved by means of semantic conventions alone. For instance I just used H without making anyone a promise. At the very least the speaker of the sentence must intend to use it in a particular way. For further discussion see Green (2022).
A referee for this paper has suggested that I compare the view defended here with what they take to be a similar view on language conventions proffered by Millikan (1998). However, after extensive personal correspondence, Millikan and I have agreed that her view does not commit her to force conventionalism. Instead, in contending that speech acts are conventional, she appears to be claiming only that the words used in speech acts have the meanings they do conventionally. I have no quarrel with semantic conventionalism, but as we will see below, I differ from Millikan in offering a qualified denial of force-conventionalism.
It may best to further restrict what is involved in there being an alternative to the current practice. The reason is that one way W of doing things may have an equally feasible alternative W’ that would require generations of advanced research to discover. Before that discovery, it would seem incorrect to say that way W is arbitrary and so (assuming the other two conditions for conventionality are met), conventional. We will not need to formulate the needed restriction here, and so will not attempt to do so.
See Placani (2017) for further discussion of the distinction between constitutive and regulative rules.
Witek (2019) offers an account of illocutionary norms that in many respects is congenial to that offered here. He construes conventions in a more permissive way than is done here, and for this reason takes illocutionary norms to be conventional whereas we will defend a qualified denial of force-conventionalism. Also, Witek couches much of his approach in terms of Millikan’s framework for understanding communication, whereas I would abjure many of the details of her theory.
See Sbisà (2007) for further discussion.
As noted in Sect. 2, construing speaker meaning in terms of reflexive intentions to produce psychological effects in addressees is a controversial move, not least because it would appear that we can engage in speaker meaning without intentions to produce effects on others’ psychological states. However, Green (2007) offers a conception of speaker meaning that does not require such intentions, but which instead emphasizes overtly making manifest one’s state of mind or commitments.
Green (2000) also characterizes parenthetical expressions such as, ‘…, as I claim,’ as weak illocutionary force indicators, meaning that their occurrence in a sentence that is put forth with some illocutionary force entails that the speaker is undertaking commitment to the content of the clause filling the ellipsis. (Since, in this example, ‘claim’ is a verb indicating assertoric force, the speaker in the example would be undertaking assertoric commitment.) Parenthetical attitudinatives such as ‘…, as I claim,’ are the closest device English has to being indicators of specific illocutionary forces rather than of force-families. Also, Frege appears to have intended his assertion sign as a conventional indicator of something like assertoric force, but only for purposes of the formal system of the Begriffschrift. For further discussion see Green (2002).
Often assertions of the form ‘A and B’ carry a suggestion that the conjuncts are temporally or even causally related in a certain way, but this is likely due to well-documented patterns of interaction of semantic properties with conversational phenomena. See Green (2021b) for further discussion, and see Peregrin (2014) for an extensive discussion of inferentialism.
As Stalnaker (2014) defines the notion of acceptance as used in the concept of common ground, acceptance does not entail belief. Instead, one may accept a proposition merely for the sake of argument. However, for the cases of interest to us here, namely those that take place in public discourse, the most common acceptance state is belief. For further discussion see Green (2017).
My thanks to Maciej Witek for helping me to see that puffery is a case of misfire.
Silencing could be achieved through a form of puffery in which the puffer proffers into common ground a proposition concerning another speaker’s ability to perform speech acts. Thus if politician 1 semiserts that rival politician 2 will not live up to their promises, and that proposition becomes widely accepted, then it will become difficult for 2 to make campaign promises since she may know that no one will take her seriously. For more detailed discussion of illocutionary silencing, dogwhistles, and the like, see Lepore and Anderson (eds.) (2024).
For fuller discussion see treatment of the Intention/Belief Principle of Green (2021b, p. 156).
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Green, M. On the Genealogy and Potential Abuse of Assertoric Norms. Topoi 42, 357–368 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-023-09908-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-023-09908-3