Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning

What is it for a sentence to have a certain meaning? This is the question that William P. Alston, one of America's most distinguished and prolific analytic philosophers, addresses in this major contribution to the philosophy of language. His answer focuses on the given sentence's potential to play the role that its speaker had in mind -- what he terms the usability of the sentence to perform the illocutionary act intended by its speaker.

Alston defines an illocutionary act as an act of saying something with a certain "content". He develops his account of what it is to perform such acts in terms of taking responsibility, in uttering a sentence, for the existence of certain conditions. In requesting someone to open a window, for example, the speaker takes responsibility for its being the case that the window is closed and that the speaker has an interest in its being opened.

In Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning, Alston expands upon this concept, creating a framework of five categories of illocutionary act and going on to argue that sentence meaning is f

Preface

xi

Introduction

1

(10)

PART I THE NATURE OF ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS

The Stratification of Linguistic Behavior

11

(22)

Types of Speech Acts

11

(2)

Illocutionary Acts

13

(4)

Austin's Classification of Speech Acts

17

(3)

Austin on the Rhetic-Illocutionary Distinction

20

(3)

Austin on the Illocutionary-Perlocutionary Distinction

23

(1)

Austin's Characterization of Illocutionary Acts

24

(2)

Interrelations of Sentential and Illocutionary Acts

26

(4)

Perlocutionary Acts and Other Speech Acts

30

(3)

Perlocutionary Intention Theories of Illocutionary Acts

33

(18)

Explicating Illocutionary Act Concepts

33

(4)

Grice on Speaker Meaning

37

(3)

Schiffer's Account of Illocutionary Acts

40

(2)

Criticism of Schiffer's Account

42

(3)

Counterexamples to Schiffer's Account

45

(6)

The Nature of Illocutionary Acts

51

(30)

Searle's ``Non-Defective'' Promising

51

(3)

Taking Responsibility

54

(2)

Epistemological Complexities

56

(1)

Blameworthiness and Incorrectness

57

(1)

The Crucial Role of Rules

58

(6)

Further Modifications of Searle's Analysis

64

(5)

A New Analysis of Promising

69

(2)

Extension to Other Illocutionary Acts

71

(2)

De Re and De Dicto

73

(4)

How to Identify Conditions for Illocutionary Acts

77

(1)

Illocutionary Rules

78

(3)

Types of Illocutionary Acts: Commissives, Exercitives, Directives, and Expressives

81

(33)

Prelude: Conventional and Normative Facts

81

(4)

Commissives, Exercitives, and Verdictives: Preliminary

85

(4)

The Final Model for Exercitives

89

(6)

The Final Model for Commissives

95

(2)

Directives

97

(6)

Expressives

103

(11)

Assertion and Other Assertives: Completing the Account

114

(33)

The Problem of Assertion

114

(2)

Assertion as Explicitly Presenting a Proposition

116

(4)

How This Account Deals with Problems

120

(1)

Assertive-Nonassertive Overlaps

121

(4)

Kinds of Assertives

125

(5)

Analysis Patterns for Illocutionary Act Types

130

(4)

Restrictions on Sentential Vehicles

134

(3)

Unintentional Illocutionary Acts

137

(5)

Comparison with Perlocutionary Intention Accounts

142

(5)

PART II AN ACCOUNT OF THE MEANING OF SENTENCES

The Problem of Linguistic Meaning

147

(44)

Meaning: Preliminary

147

(1)

The Concept of Meaning

147

(5)

What I'm Looking for in a Theory of Meaning

152

(2)

Use as the Key to Meaning

154

(3)

Sentence Meaning as Primary

157

(3)

Sentence Meaning as Illocutionary Act Potential

160

(2)

Sentence Meaning and Perlocutionary Intentions

162

(11)

Two Difficulties in the Illocutionary Act Potential Theory

173

(2)

Intensifying the Difficulty

175

(3)

Matching Illocutionary Act Types

178

(12)

Illocutionary Rules

190

(1)

Illocutionary Act Potential and Illocutionary Rules

191

(60)

IA Potential as Subjection to Illocutionary Rules

191

(1)

Linguistic Meaning as Rule Governance

192

(3)

Some Versions of Semantic Rules

195

(6)

Progressive Complication of Illocutionary Rules

201

(6)

How to Handle Ellipticity and Singular Reference

207

(10)

Reference, Ellipticity, and R'ing as Rule Subjection

217

(5)

IA Analysis in Terms of Rule Subjection and in Terms of R'ing

222

(7)

Some Additional Problems for IA Analysis

229

(5)

IA's, I-Rules, IA Potential, and Sentence Meaning

234

(4)

Sample I-Rules and IA Analyses

238

(10)

How I-Rules Make Communication Possible

248

(1)

Speaker Meaning

249

(2)

The Status of Illocutionary Rules

251

(24)

Summary of the Foregoing

251

(1)

Regulative and Constitutive Rules

252

(4)

Unformulated Rules

256

(6)

Rules and Conventions

262

(3)

Do I-Rules Exist?

265

(3)

Drawing Boundaries around I-Act and I-Rule

268

(4)

The Meaning of Subsentential Units

272

(3)

The IA Potential Theory of Meaning and Its Alternatives

275

(36)

Preview

275

(1)

Initial Plausibility of the Theory

275

(7)

Efficacy of the Theory in Application

282

(1)

Replies to Objections

283

(1)

Mapping Alternative Theories

284

(2)

Words or Sentences as Fundamental

286

(2)

Naive Referential Theories

288

(2)

More Sophisticated Referential Theories

290

(6)

Truth Conditional Approaches

296

(4)

Attempts to Get Beyond Assertion I

300

(7)

Attempts to Get Beyond Assertion II

307

(2)

Conclusion

309

(2)

Appendix

311

(4)

Bibliography

315

(4)

Index

319

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Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning

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Table of Contents

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