From Five Chapters of Expression and Meaning

Notes from:

John Searle. Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts.  Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979. 1985.

Introduction - Illocutionary Acts - Indirect Speech Acts - The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse - Metaphor.

 

Introduction

vii Question: how many ways of using language are there? (but answer need not be 'five').  5 types.

viii Searle skips the poetic use of language, ignored;"perhaps the main theme of this collection: the relations between literal sentence meaning and speaker's utterance meaning".

ix "we must not confuse an analysis of illocutionary verbs with an analysis of illocutionary acts"

x On fiction (wrong approach: he ignores the hierarchy of embedded enunciations)

xi "I contend that the notion of literal meaning only has application against a background of assumptions and practices which are not themselves represented as part of literal meaning" —  Theory of reference a part of general theory of Intentionality.

xii "intended meaning may include the literal meaning of the expressions he utters but is not exhausted by that literal meaning".

1. A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts

 
1. Classification into "certain basic categories or types".
Different types of differences between different types of illocutionary acts. 

2. Illocutions as a part of language in general, not of specific languages (vs. illoc. verbs). Differences in point (or purpose) of the (type of) act provide the best basis for a taxonomy. 

3. "The point or purpose of a type of illocution I shall call its illocutionary point".  Another: "differences in the direction of fit between words and the world" (Searle ignores fiction here, but that would be word to world direction of fit, I guess).  

4. Differences in expressed psychological states. 

5. Differences in the force or strength with which the illocutionary point is presented (suggest vs. insist, etc.). Differences in the status or position of the speaker and hearer as these bear on the illocutionary force of the utterance. 

6. Differences in the way the utterance relates to the interests of the speaker and hearer. (Searle analiza mal "boast," no lo ve como un efecto de la interpretación y valoración del oyente).

Differences in relations to the rest of the discourse (replies, conclusions)... Differences in propositional content that are determined by illocutionary force indicating devices (report vs. prediction...). 

Differences between those acts that must always be speech acts and those that can be, but need not be performed as speech acts. 

7. Differences between those acts that require extra-linguistic institutions for their performance and those that do not. Differences between those acts where the corresponding illocutionary verb has a performative use and those where it does not. 

8. Differences in the style of performance of the illocutionary act (announcing vs. confiding) (Vague. 12 tipos en total). 

 9. Weaknesses in Austin's taxonomy. It is a taxonomy of verbs, not of acts. 

10. "There is no clear or consistent principle or set of principles on the basis of which the taxonomy [Austin's] is constructed." 

11. Overlaps, inconsistencies...

12. Pro basing classification on point, direction of fit and sincerity conditions.
ASSERTIVES. (usa simbolización lógica, etc.)

13. "The simplest test of an assertive is this: can you literally characterize it (inter alia) as true or false." DIRECTIVES

14. COMMISSIVES

15. EXPRESSIVES 

16. DECLARATIONS, where

17. "there is no surface sytactical distinction between propositional content and illocutionary force."

18. "Any utterance will consist in performing one or more illocutionary acts." "The performance of a declaration brings about a fit by its very successful performance" (& "I apologize?") No lie is possible in performing them (??? - not right).

20. Some syntactical aspects of the classification. (etc.). 

27. Conclusions: "Many of the verbs we call illocutionary verbs are not markers of illocutionary point but of some other feature of the illocutionary act." 

28. "Paradoxical as it may sound, such verbs are illocutionary verbs, but not names of kinds of illocutionary acts." etc. 

29. vs. illusion of the indefiniteness of language games., limited number of points (5 types).

2. Indirect Speech Acts

30 "The simplest cases of meaning are those in which the speaker utters a sentence and means exactly and literally what he says. In such cases the speaker intends to produce a certain illocutionary effect in the hearer, and he intends to produce this effect by getting the hearer to recognize his intention to produce it, and he intends to get the hearer to recognize this intention in virtue of the hearer's knowledge of the rules that govern the utterance of the sentence."  

But sometimes "a sentence that contains the illocutionary force indicators for one kind of illocutionary act can be uttered to perform, in addition, another type of illocutionary act." 

31. "indirect speech acts, cases in which one illocutionary act is performed indirectly by way of performing another. / The problem posed by indirect speech acts is the problem of how is it possible or the speaker to say one thing and mean that but also to mean something else."  

31-32. "In indirect speech acts the speaker communicates to the hearer more than he actually says by way of relying on their mutually shared background information, both linguistic and nonlinguistic, together with the general powers of rationality and inference on the part of the hearer." (Speech Act Theory + Grice + background + inferences). 

33 the primary act is performed by way of performing a secondary illocutionary act. 

34. (Implicitly uses the notion of Cooperative Principle).

36. Politeness as main motivation for indirectness in directives.

Some Sentences "Conventionally" Used in the Performance of Indirect Directives.  Can you ... etc.

39. Some Putative Facts.  "Fact 1: The sentences in question do not have an imperative force as part of their meaning."

40.  Fact 2. not ambiguous. Fact 3. Conventionally used to issue directives. Fact 4. Not idioms. 

41. Fact 5. But they are idiomatic. Fact 6. "The sentences in quiestion have literal utterances in which they are not also indirect requests." 

42. Fact 7. "In cases where these sentences are uttered as requests, they still have their literal meaning and are uttered with and as having that literal meaning." 

43. Fact 8. When used to perform an indirect, the literal act is also performed (question, etc.).

An Explanation in Terms of the Theory of Speech Acts. (With preparatory condition, sincerity condition, propositional content  condition and essential condition). Etc. 

48 Some problems—

Solved by appeal to the  conventional nature of this use, the maxim of (50) "Speak idiomatically unless there is some speacial reason not to".

54. Extending the analysis to other acts than directives. 

56. Searle's solution beyond the paradigms of both linguists (structural rules) and philosophers of language (logic conditions). Toward cognitivism, beyond assumption of explaining everything through axioms and syntactical rules. (knowledge of the world, inferences).

 

 

3. The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse

58. Distinction fiction/literature.

59. Here, logical status of fiction, not of literature (which is not possible):
"First, there is no trait or set of traits which all works of literature have in common and which could constitute the necessary and sufficient conditions for being a work of literature. Literature, to use Wittgenstein's terminology, is a family-resemblance notion".

Literature is a set of attitudes we take towards a stretch of discourse, not properties of that stretch (not arbitrary, though). "Roughly speaking, whether or not a work is literature is for the readers to decide, whether or not it is fiction is for the author to decide."

(Searle tiene una noción evaluativa-laudatoria de la literatura).

60. Distinction between fictional speech and figurative speech.  "let us say that metaporical uses of expressions are 'nonliteral' and that fictional utterances are 'nonserious'." 

62. Analysis: essential rules, preparatory rules, expressed proposition, sincerity rule... fiction does not fulfil any of the rules for assertions. Shanahan (report) vs. Iris Murdoch (novel):

63 "what kind of illocutionary act can Miss Murdoch be performing?" (La respuesta no es para Searle ni escribir una novela ni escribir ficción). Vs. saying that he is performing the illocutionary act of telling a story or writing a novel. "On this theory, newspaper accounts contain one class of illocutionary acts (statements, assertions, descriptions, explanations) and fictional literature contains another class of illocutionary acts (writing stories, novels, poems, plays, etc.)." (NO: no se sigue una cosa de la otra en absoluto. Inconsistencia lógica. Searle no aplica macro-actos al discurso ordinario, ni micro-actos a la estructura interna de la ficción). 

64. "In general the illocutionary act (or acts) performed in the utterance of the sentence is a function of the meaning of the sentence." (Ni siquiera entra en si la ficción es un acto ilocucionario definido, sólo rechaza que la ficción contenga actos distintos de la no ficción. Pero no es ése el problema).  Murdoch is not asserting:

65. "She is pretending, one could say, to make an assertion." —Etc."to engage in a performance which is as if one were doing or being the thing and is without any intent to deceive" (¿Y esto no es una ilocución? No está claro lo que piensa Searle:)  

65-66: "The identifying criterion for whether or not a text is a work of fiction must of necessity lie in the illocutionary intentions of the author. There is no textual property, syntactical or semantic, that will identify a text as a work of fiction. What makes it a work of fiction is, so to speak, the illocutionary stnace that the author takes toward it, and that stance is a matter of the complex illocutionary intentions that the author has when he writes or otherwise composes it." 

66. Vs. extremes of anti-intentionalism: "at the most basic level it is absurd to suppose a critic can completely ignore the intentions of the author, since even so much as to identify a text as a novel, a poem or even as a text is already to make a claim about the author's intentions." "What makes fiction possible, I suggest, is a set of extralinguistic, nonsemantic conventions that break the connection between words and the world established by the rules mentioned earlier" (Es decir, convenciones pragmáticas. Pero Searle no usa el término).

67. "In this sense, to use Wittgenstein's jargon, telling stories really is a separate language game; to be played it requires a separate set of conventions, though these conventions are not meaning rules; and the language game is not on all fours with illocutionary language games, but is parasitic on them." (Tiene que decir esto Searle porque concibe las ilocuciones como una sucesión de actos simples, no como una jerarquía. Ficción como language game, pero no es una ilocución para él - JAGL).

68. "The utterance acts in fiction are indistinguishable from the utterance acts of serious discourse, and it is for that reason that there is no textual property tht will identify a stretch of discourse as a work of fiction. It is the performance of the utterance act with the intention of invoking the horizontal conventions that constitutes the pretended performance of the illocutionary act." (Wrong. An institutionalized illocutionary act is performed, and not only through intention - JAGL).  "The pretended performance of illocutionary acts which constitute the writing of a work of fiction consists in actually performing utterance acts with the intention of invoking the horizontal conventions that suspend the normal illocutionary commitments of the utterances". (Pero cómo se reconoce esa intención?).  

69. "in first-person narratives, the author often pretends to be someone else making assertions" (por qué no "quotes somebody"?) 

Drama: It does not consist of assertions but of directions on how to perform the play.

III. 71. Murdoch "does not really refer to a fictional character because there was no such antecedently existing character; rather, by pretending torefer to a person (72) she creates a fictional person." (NO: Searle usa un sentido demasiado literalista de 'referencia'). Real reference exists, to existing places, etc.

73. "By pretending to refer to people and to recount events about them, the author creates fictional characters and events." 

74. "A work of fiction need not consist entirely of, and in general will not consist entirely of, fictional discourse." 

IV. Crucial role of imagination in life, source of importance we give to pretended speech acts. Messages conveyed by the text but not in the text. 

75."but there is as yet no general theory of the mechanisms by which such serious illocutionary intentions are conveyed by pretended illocutions." 

 

 

4. Metaphor

76. Metaphor is a special case of “how it is possible to say one thing and mean something else”.

77. Other cases: irony and indirect speech acts. Metaphorical meaning involves the speaker’s intentions. “Metaphorical meaning is always speaker’s utterance meaning.” 

78. Beyond a theory of semantic competence. Vs. assuming that we already know how literal utterances work, as metaph. theorists do.

80. “Thus, even in literal utterances, where speaker’s meaning coincides with sentence meaning, the speaker must contribute more to the literal utterance thatn just the semantic content of the sentence...” 

81. Need to distinguish metaphor not just from literal utterance, but from other forms “in which literal utterance is departed from or exceeded, in some way.”

84. “In the case of literal utterance, speaker’s meaning and sentence meaning are the same.”

85. Metaphor’s basic principle: “the utterance of an expression with its literal meaning and corresponding truth conditions can, in various ways that are specific to metaphor, call to mind another meaning and corresponding set of truth conditions.”

86. “the endemic vice of the comparison theories is that they fail to distinguish between the claim that the statement of the comparison is part of the meaning, and hence the truth conditions of the metaphorical statement, and the claim that the statement of the similarity is the principle of inference, or a step in the process of comprehending, on the basis of which speakers produce and hearers understand metaphor.” 

Semantic interaction theories: “Their endemic vice is the failure to appreciate the distinction between sentence or word meaning, which is never metaphorical, and speaker or utterance meaning, which can be metaphorical. They usually try to locate metaphorical meaning in the sentence or some set of associations with the sentence. 

87. No change in the meaning of the words: but “the speaker means something different by them” 

88. “the metaphorical assertion is not necessarily an assertion of similarity. Similarity .. . has to do with the production and understanding of metaphor, not with its meaning.” 

91. “One of the assumptions behind the view that metaphorical meaning is a result of an interaction between an expression used metaphorically and other expressions used literally is that all metaphorical uses of expressions must occur in sentences containing literal uses of expressions, and that assumption seems to me plainly false. It is, incidentally, the assumption behnd the terminology of many of the contemporary discussions of metaphor” (I. A. Richards, etc).

92. “It is not in general the case that the metaphorical speaker’s meaning is a result of any interaction among the elements of a sentence in any literal sense of ‘interaction’.” 

94. Vs. metaphor as a shortened version of the literal simile. 

102. “Similarity does not in general function as part of the truth conditions. . .; rather, when it functions, it functions as a strategy for interpretation.” Even then,

103. “the simile theory does not tell us how to compute the respects of similarity or which similarities are metaphorically intended by the speaker.”

Basic question: “HOw is it possible for the speaker to say metaphorically ‘S is P’ and mean “S is R’, when P  plainly does not mean R?” 104. “I believe that there is no single principle on which metaphor works.” Strategies:

105. “Where the utterance is defective if taken literally, look for an utterance meaning that differs from sentence meaning.”  And a series of additional principles.

110. Principle 8. “According to my account of metaphor, it becomes a matter of terminology whether we want to construe metonymy and synecdoche as special cases of metaphor or as independent tropes.” 

111. “Since the principles of metaphor are rather various anyway, I am inclined to treat metonymy and synecdoche as special cases of metaphor and add their principles to my list of metaphorical principles.” 

112. Shared strategies to recognize non-literalness, shared principles to associate possible values, and shared strategies to restrict the range of possible values to the actual one.

113. “irony, like metaphor, does not require any conventions, extralinguistic or otherwise. The principles of conversation and the general rules for performing speech acts are sufficient to provide the basic principles of irony.” “In the indirect speech act, the speaker means what he says. However, in addition, he means something more. Sentence meaning is a part of utterance meaning, but it does not exhaust utterance meaning.” 

114. ‘It follows trivially from the Principle of Expressibility . . . that any meaning whatever can be given an exact expression in the language.” 

 

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Other chapters:

 

5. Literal Meaning.
6. Referential and Attributive
7. Speech Acts and Recent Linguistics. 

 

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