thesis on speech act theory

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Introduction: Assertion among the Speech Acts

• Published: November 2018
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Consider the sorts of act one performs when one makes a statement or report, gives one’s testimony, or tells another person something. There are various ways we might try to characterize the nature of acts like these. They (typically) involve the utterance of a declarative sentence in an ordinary conversational context; they are acts in which the speaker makes as if to express a belief of hers, or in which she commits herself to the truth of the relevant propositional content, or in which she (characteristically) aims to induce a belief with that content in her audience. However we characterize acts of these sorts, to have this class of speech act in mind is a good initial way to approach what philosophers and linguists have in mind when they speak of assertions . Work in this area typically proceeds on the assumptions, first, that there is an interesting and unified type of speech act here, and second, that acts of this type have features that are of some theoretical interest—not only in linguistics and in philosophy of language, but also in psychology, law, sociology, political science, education theory, computer science, and elsewhere.

It turns out to be a difficult matter to fix the contours of the class of acts precisely. Indeed, one might even doubt that this can be done in a theory-neutral way. 1 Even so, many philosophers and linguists have thought that this sort of taxonomic project is worth pursuing. The simplest explanation for this project is this: a speech act with something like the profile described earlier appears to be related to various other phenomena of theoretical interest, and we might hope to appeal to our understanding of the act itself to shed light on these other phenomena. If we give the label “assertion” to the (alleged) type of speech act in question, we might pursue the hypothesis that assertion is a type of speech act that

is apt for the expression of judgment and belief; 2

is apt for the transmission of knowledge; 3

commits one to the truth of a proposition; 4

makes possible lies and acts of incompetence, and so renders one prone to a distinctive type of ethical assessment bound up with issues of trust and trustworthiness. 5

And we might appeal to the nature of this act in an attempt to spell out such things as

how language can be used to represent a worldly state of affairs; 6

what it is for an expression to have a meaning, or to have the distinct meaning that it has; 7

what is involved in being trustworthy; 8

how we should think about communication itself; 9

how language use is bound up with many of the ways in which we hold one another accountable; 10

how bias and relations of oppression might distort this sort of accountability. 11

The prospect of a route to illuminating these and other matters is part of what leads many philosophers to attend to the nature of assertion itself.

It is no wonder, then, that as a speech act, assertion has loomed large in the philosophical imagination. Arguably, the category of assertion itself, as a distinctive way in which one presents a proposition as true, was not clearly framed until the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. 12 Even so, topics in the vicinity have been on the philosophical agenda for centuries. Ancient and medieval logicians were very interested in the act of judgement itself, thereby manifesting an interest in what many contemporaries regard as the mental analogue of assertion. So, too, in early modern Europe the English philosopher Thomas Reid was very interested in the use of speech to express belief and spread knowledge. In the more recent history of philosophy, in the late nineteenth century the German philosopher Gottlob Frege felt the need to represent (something like) the act of assertion in his attempted formalization of logic ( Begriffschrift ). In the early twentieth century the English philosopher G. E. Moore saw in the nature of assertion one way to diagnose the paradoxicality of sentences such as “It’s raining but I don’t believe that it is raining”—sentences whose sincere use appears to be self-undermining, even as the state of affairs they describe is a possible one. More recently still, the mid-century English philosopher J. L. Austin, taking a stand against the long tradition in philosophy that focused most of its attention on the statement (a category of speech act arguably coextensive with assertion), railed against the central role philosophers ascribed to this act. A bit later, the English philosopher Paul Grice argued that so-called nonnatural meaning —the sort of meaning involved in acts of communication—could be understood in terms of an act very much like, if not the same as, the act of assertion. (Grice somewhat misleadingly called this act the act of saying .)

Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that assertion has received the attention it has. Somewhat more surprising is the extent to which there has been a resurgence of interest among philosophers for this type of act. According to Google Scholar, in the one hundred years between 1895 and 1995, there were just under seventy-five published papers that use or mention “the nature of assertion,” whereas in the approximately twenty-five years since then there have been over four hundred. No doubt some of this discrepancy is owed to a greater number of publishing venues in the last several decades as well as the professionalization of philosophy itself (putting pressure on people to publish). But part of it is owed to a renewed interest in the act itself.

This handbook aims to explore various dimensions of the act of assertion: its nature; its place in a theory of speech acts, and in semantics and meta-semantics; its role in epistemology; and the various social, political, and ethical dimensions of the act. While it does not aim at exhaustiveness, the handbook presents some of the best work done on the core issues pertaining to assertion. These issues should be of interest not only to philosophers but also linguists, psychologists, anthropologists, lawyers, computer scientists, and theorists from communication studies. Although it is broken up into parts, all of the papers can be read in isolation by those interested only in a single topic. The entries themselves, written by leading theorists, offer opinionated introductions to the topics.

Part 1 explores the nature of assertion. What distinguishes assertion as a speech act? A traditional way to approach this question is in terms of the familiar distinction between (illocutionary) force and content. While this distinction is not entirely uncontroversial, 13 it provides the standard way to address the distinctiveness of speech act types, namely, by treating each distinct type as individuated by the distinctive force of acts of that type. On this approach, assertions are those speech acts with a distinctive (assertoric) force, and our question becomes: under what conditions does an utterance have a force of that kind? But however we frame the question, our topic is the individuation of assertion as a speech act. The seven papers in Part 1 explore the seven leading accounts. A rather loose but informative taxonomy of these accounts is in terms of four main ways one might try to capture the nature of the act itself. (Where accounts might be placed under more than one category, I place it under the category that is most characteristic of the account.)

The first category includes those accounts that characterize assertion in terms of the contextual effects of performing speech acts of this type. This handbook has chapters devoted to two distinct varieties of this sort of account. Lenny Clapp presents an account, owed to Robert Stalnaker and often developed as part of “discourse dynamics,” according to which the “essential effect” of an assertion is to update the context of conversation by adding the proposition asserted to the set of propositions that have been mutually presupposed in the conversation. An alternative account within this same general category, deriving from the work of Robert Brandom and presented in the chapter by Lionel Shapiro, holds that to assert a proposition is to perform a speech act in which the speaker undertakes a commitment to defend that proposition (if called upon to do so) and authorizes others to believe the proposition in question.

A second category includes those accounts that see the nature of the act as closely linked with the declarative (grammatical) mood. Once again, this handbook has chapters devoted to two distinct varieties of this sort of account. In his chapter, Mark Jary defends a view on which to assert a proposition is to undertake a commitment to defend the proposition by way of uttering a sentence in the declarative mood. Peter Pagin develops a view on which assertion is the type of speech act that is prima facie informative, where prima facie informativeness is linked in an indirect way with the declarative mood.

A third category includes those accounts that construe assertions in terms of the rule (or norm) that governs acts of this type. This type of account, which is described in the chapter by Mona Simion and Chris Kelp, might be seen as deriving from the work of John Searle. In any case it has become significantly more popular, owing to a recent defense of a version of this sort of account by Tim Williamson, according to which assertion is the unique speech act governed by a knowledge norm, to the effect that one must assert only what one knows.

A fourth category includes those broadly Gricean accounts that approach the nature of assertion in terms of the communicative intentions that inform acts of that type. If we think of communicative intentions as the sort of intentions to achieve an effect on an audience by way of the audience’s recognition of this intention, then the Gricean approach to assertion holds that assertions are those acts performed with the communicative intention to get the audience to believe that the speaker believes the proposition in question. This sort of view is developed in the chapter by Mark Siebel.

The last of the chapters in this first part, by Herman Cappelen, does not fall into any of these categories, as it challenges the theoretical utility of the speech act category assertion itself. On Cappelen’s view, this category is “defective” and does not pick out any interesting kind of speech act.

Part 2 collects three essays which, broadly speaking, address the place of assertion within speech act theory more generally. In her contribution, Marina Sbisà addresses whether the speech act is to be granted any special place within speech act theory, and she considers how this question might be answered from the perspective of various types of account of the speech acts themselves (Austinian, Gricean, normative-pragmatic, Alstonian). Mark van Roojen asks about the role assertion might play in an account of promising, with special attention to the commitment one incurs in the act of promising. And in her contribution Hallie Liberto argues that contrary to the view deriving from John Searle’s taxonomy of speech acts, threats and warnings are themselves illocutionary acts, and she uses assertion in her analysis of those acts.

Part 3 addresses variations within the category of assertion itself. Several such variations are explored in the papers in this part. One variation involves assertions that in some sense or other are qualified, as in the contribution by Matthew Benton and Peter van Elswyk focusing on what they call “hedged assertion.” In addition, it includes assertions that are made in nonstandard ways. This topic is explored in Marga Reimer’s contribution, where she focuses on the category of indirect assertion—for example, the sort of speech act that is made when one asks a rhetorical question. It includes as well assertions that are “marked” in some way. Thus, in his contribution, Ben Kotzee is keen to see how bullshit (in Harry Frankfurt’s sense) might be seen as a distinctive type of perversion of the speech act of assertion, using this analysis in turn to shed light on the nature of assertion itself. And Christopher Hom explores those assertions that constitute slurring speech, offering an account on which a slur and its neutral counterpart differ in their Fregean senses. Finally, it includes an exploration of cases involving what we might call nonstandard agents of the act of assertion itself. Thus, Kirk Ludwig is interested in cases in which assertions are made by proxy, and Deborah Tollefsen explores what is involved when a group (rather than an individual) is said to make an assertion.

The four papers of Part 4 address what we might call methodological issues in the study of assertion. Mitch Green’s contribution addresses the issue of the conventionality of assertion, arguing that the act of assertion does not require the existence of a conventional means of expression (even as making an assertion is something that can be aided by such conventions). In his paper, Martin Montminy argues that there is no theory-neutral way to identify assertions, and he uses the freedom that this indeterminacy provides to defend a belief-based account of assertion. Sid Horton’s contribution explores the roles that mindreading plays in the production and comprehension of assertions, suggesting that these will be significant if speech acts are intended to obey the maxim of relevance. In their contribution, Boaz Miller and Ori Freiman ask whether devices or machines can be said to make assertions, and they conclude with a qualified affirmative answer (describing the outputs of devices as “quasi-assertions”).

Part 5 takes up issues pertaining to the content of assertions. Manuel García-Carpintero argues that there can be genuine assertions about matters of fiction and that fiction itself can be seen as making assertions, and that both of these claims are compatible with the fictional status of the content of such assertions. In her contribution, Isidora Stojanovic explores how various theses in the philosophy of mind (concerning the distinctively first-person nature of de se attitudes) might relate to the assertions in which such attitudes are expressed. Corine Besson and Anandi Hattiangati discuss whether the conception of the future as open causes difficulty for the thesis that some assertions about future contingents are true, arguing that those who see these claims as incompatible face some unmet challenges. Fabrizio Cariani explores how the contents of assertions of epistemic modals might be rendered within a Stalnakerian framework. Tim McCarthy discusses the role of assertibility in the generation of various paradoxes.

In recent years, the speech act of assertion has been connected to a host of topics in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of action, and Part 6 explores these topics. Ted Hinchman’s contribution explores the relationship between assertion and testimony, arguing that the latter category is the more explanatorily fundamental one, and that this highlights the important interpersonal dimension of assertion itself. Patrick Rysiew focuses on assertions involving ascriptions of knowledge, exploring the role such assertions play as evidence for theories of knowledge, the social roles they play, and the pragmatics and psychology of such ascriptions. In his paper, Rik Peels addresses the extent to which one’s own ignorance is assertable, arguing that of the many types of ignorance, only two can be properly ascribed to oneself in an assertion. Jennifer Lackey criticizes familiar approaches to the standard for proper assertion by developing her notion of the (epistemic) quality of assertion, something she distinguishes from more familiar “quantitative” epistemic properties such as reliability or likelihood on one’s evidence. Robert Fiengo develops Austin’s view of assertion, exploring how our common assertive practices are linked to the knowledge that informs speech acts of this type. Erik Olsson’s paper develops various formal models of an assertion—Bayesian models, game-theoretic models, social network models, logical models, public announcement models—in an attempt to explore the variety of ways in which the speech act can be of interest to epistemologists. Mikkel Gerken and Esben Petersen survey the work on epistemic norms of action, practical deliberation, and assertion, in an attempt to characterize how these norms are interrelated. And Clayton Littlejohn’s paper discusses the role of assertion in Moore’s Paradox, and he explores the prospects for appealing to an account of assertion in order to illuminate the paradoxicality of the phenomenon itself (whether in speech or in thought).

Recent years have also seen a dramatic increase in recognition of and interest in the more social dimensions of assertion; the six papers in Part 7 explore some of these. Peter Graham’s paper borrows Ruth Millikan’s notion of a proper function, arguing that assertion has the proper function of inducing true hearer belief, and that this is so in part because of our social norms for truth-telling. Alessandra Tanesini discusses how individuals from disadvantaged or oppressed groups can be “silenced” when they attempt to make assertions, and she explores the recent literature on these and related topics. In her contribution, Casey Johnson examines how one’s social identity makes a difference to one’s ability to use assertions, indicating in this way how recent work on the speech act is connected to work on such things as race, gender, and sexual orientation. Terence Cuneo argues that ethics is of central importance to the very existence of the illocutionary act of assertion, claiming that it is the possibility of lying that explains the possibility of performing the act of assertion. Jessica Brown addresses a recent defense of the knowledge norm of assertion, according to which norm conformity and blamelessness come apart, and finds this response wanting. And Jessica Pepp defends the traditional thought that there is an ethically significant difference between lying and deliberately misleading (through implication).

Beyond aiming to capture the state of the art on the topic at issue, one of the hopes often associated with a handbook of this sort is to indicate potentially fruitful future lines of research. I want to close this introduction with a brief plea for one such line.

Whether in speech act theory or in philosophy of language and epistemology more generally, theorizing about the act of assertion has tended to focus on face-to-face speech exchanges. To be sure, those with an interest in knowledge transmission have broadened the scope of their interests to include written language as well. But it seems that neither paradigm is entirely happy when we explore the nature of the communicative language-involving acts performed online. This point itself has been made by others. I can only encourage continued reflection on those sorts of acts. In this regard the various accounts of assertion contained herein may prove helpful—if only to make clear a range of questions we might ask as we characterize our online exchanges, and to enable us to understand the full contrast of these exchanges with ordinary face-to-face conversations.

See the contributions in this handbook by Cappelen (chapter 7 ), Sbisà (chapter 8 ), and Montminy (chapter 18 ).

See Siebel (chapter 5 ) and Horton (chapter 19 ), this volume.

See Simion and Kelp (chapter 3 ), Hinchman (chapter 26 ), Rysiew (chapter 27 ), Lackey (chapter 29 ), and Fiengo (chapter 30 ), this volume.

See Shapiro (chapter 4 ) and McCarthy (chapter 25 ), this volume.

See Hinchman (chapter 26 ), Liberto (chapter 10 ), Cuneo (chapter 37 ), and Pepp (chapter 39 ), this volume.

See Pagin (chapter 6), this volume.

See García-Carpintero (chapter 21), Stojanovic (chapter 22), Besson and Hattiangati (chapter 23), and Cariani (chapter 24), this volume.

See Hinchman (chapter 26) and Pepp (chapter 39), this volume.

See Graham (chapter 34) and Olsson (chapter 31), this volume.

See Shapiro (chapter 4), Gerken and Pedersen (chapter 32), Cuneo (chapter 37), and Brown (chapter 38), this volume.

See Hom (chapter 14), Tanesini (chapter 35), and Johnson (chapter 36), this volume.

I thank Rob Stainton for suggesting this (private communication).

Some recent work in speech act theory has called this distinction into question. For discussion, see, e.g., New Work on Speech Acts , eds. Fogal, Harris, and Moss (Oxford University Press, 2018).

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Essays in Speech Act Theory

• Chapter 1. Introduction Daniel Vanderveken and  Susumu Kubo |  pp. 1–21
• Part I. General Theory
• Chapter 2. Universal Grammar and Speech Act Theory Daniel Vanderveken |  pp. 25–62
• Chapter 3. Verbal Mood and Sentence Moods in the Tradition of Universal Grammar André Leclerc |  pp. 63–84
• Chapter 4. How Performatives Work John R. Searle |  pp. 85–107
• Chapter 5. Possible Directions of Fit between Mind, Language and the World Candida J. de Sousa Melo |  pp. 109–117
• Part II. Discourse and Interlocution
• Chapter 6. Speech Acts and the logic of mutual understanding Alain Trognon |  pp. 121–133
• Chapter 7. Utterance acts and speech acts Steven Davis |  pp. 135–150
• Chapter 8. An Ascription-Based Theory of Illocutionary Acts Tomoyuki Yamada |  pp. 151–174
• Chapter 9. An approach for modelling and simulating conversations Bernard Moulin and  Daniel Rousseau |  pp. 175–205
• Part III. Speech Acts in Linguistics
• Chapter 10. Illocutionary Morphology and Speech Acts Susumu Kubo |  pp. 209–224
• Chapter 11. Speech-Act Constructions, Illocutionary Forces, and Conventionality Masa-aki Yamanashi |  pp. 225–238
• Chapter 12. Speech act theory and the analysis of conversation Jacques Moeschler |  pp. 239–261
• Chapter 13. Speech Acts and Relevance Theory Marc Dominicy and  Nathalie Franken |  pp. 263–283
• Notes |  pp. 285–301
• Notes on Contributors |  pp. 321–324
• Subject Index |  pp. 325–341
• Name Index |  pp. 343–345

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