Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language

214 Pages·1970·10.41 MB·English

by  John R. Searle

SPEECH ACTS
AN ESSAY IN THE
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

SPEECH ACTS
AN ESSAY IN
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
LANGUAGE
JOHN R. SEARLE
"Professor of "Philosophy
University of California, Berkeley
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Cambridge University Press 1969
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First published 1969
34th printing 2011
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isbn 978-0-521-09626-3 Paperback
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CONTENTS
PART ONE: A THEORY OF SPEECH ACTS
1 Methods and scope page 3
1 The philosophy of language 3
2 linguistic characterisations 4
3 The ' verification' of linguistic characterisations iz
4 Why study speech acts? 16
/ The principle of expressibility 19
2 Expressions, meaning and speech acts 22
1 Expressions and kinds of speech acts zz
2 Predication 26
3 Reference as a speech act 26
4 Propositions 29
/ Rules 3 3
6 Meaning 4Z
7 The distinction between brute and institutional facts 50
3 The structure of illocutionary acts 5 4
/ How to promise: a complicated way 5 7
2 Insincere promises 62
3 Rules for the use of the illocutionary force indicating device 62
4 Extending the analysis 64
4 Reference as a speech act 72
/ Use and mention 73
2 Axioms of reference 77
3 Kinds of definite referring expressions 81
4 Necessary conditions for referring 81
/ The principle of identification 8 5
6 Qualifications to the principle of identification 88
7 Some consequences of the principle of identification 91
8 Rules of reference 94
Contents
5 Predication page 97
/ Frege on concept and object 97
2 Nominalism and the existence of universals 103
$ Ontological commitments 106
4 The term theory of propositions 113
/ Predicates and universals 119
6 Is predication a speech act? 121
7 Rules of predication 123
PART TWO: SOME APPLICATIONS OF THE THEORY
6 Three fallacies in contemporary philosophy 131
1 The naturalistic fallacy fallacy 132
2 The speech act fallacy 136
3 The assertion fallacy 141
4 The origin of the fallacies: meaning as use 146
/ Alternative explanations 149
7 Problems of reference 15 7
1 The theory of descriptions 15 7
2 Proper names 162
8 Deriving " ought" from " is" 175
1 How to do it 177
2 The nature of the issues involved 182
) Objections and replies 188
Index 199
VI
FOR DAGMAR

PREFACE
In addition to its obvious debts to two of my teachers, J. L.
Austin and P. F. Strawson, this book owes much to helpful advice
and criticism from the many people who read and commented on
portions of the manuscript: I am especially grateful to Julian
Boyd, Noam Chomsky, R. M. Harnish, Benson Mates and Hans
Sluga.
The nucleus of this work was my D.Phil, thesis on Sense and
Reference submitted in Oxford in 1959. Several of the ideas pre-
sented here have appeared in articles by me, and I wish to thank
the editors and publishers of Mind, The Philosophical Review, The
Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Messrs Routledge & Kegan Paul and
Allen & Unwin for permission to use some of this material again.
Thanks are also due to the American Council of Learned
Societies for a grant which enabled me to work on these and
related matters in 1963-4, Miss Ruth Anderson for supervising
the typing, R. M. Harnish and M. Shapira for work on the index,
D. Parfit for help with the proofs and R. B. Kitaj for designing
the cover. Most of all I wish to thank my wife for continuing help
and advice.
J. R. S.