Speech Acts:
Fiction or Reality?
Proceedings of the International Conference Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, November
15, 1990
Igor Ž. Žagar, editor
IPrA Distribution Centre for Yugoslavia
Institute for Social Sciences
Contents
Igor Ž. Žagar: Foreword
Marina Sbisa: At the Origns of Illocution
Jelica Sumič-Riha: The Concept of the Performative and Its Reality
Janez Justin: The Role of Speech Acts in the Social Construction of Knowledge
Jef Verschueren: A Pragmatie Model for the Dynamics of Communication
Olga Kunst Gnamuš: Politeness as an Effect of the Interaction Between the Form and Context of a
Request and the Context of Utterance
Carla Bazzanella, Claudia Caffi, Marina Sbisa: Scalar Dimension of Illocutionary Force
Igor Ž. Žagar: How to Do Things with Words - The Polyphonic Way
Anne Ellrup Nielsen, Henning Nolke: Persuasion Disguised as Description
Jelena Mežnarič: Fiction: Feature Structures
Foreword
At the third international pragmatic conference in Barcelona in July 1990 the idea came about to institute
the IPrA Distribution Centre in Yugoslavia as well as had already been done in some other countries of
the socialist block. Talking with some Yugoslav members of the Internation al Pragmatics Association that
participated in the conference, we carne to an agreement that for various reasons it would be most
appropriate if the centre operated in Ljubljana, more particularly at the Institute for Sociology (today the
Institute for Social Sciences at the Faculty for Sociology. Political Sciences and Journalism), which already had similar organizational experiences.
Immediately after the conference in Barcelona we undertook the preparations and inaugurated the IPrA
Distribution Centre for Yugoslavia by organizing the international conference, papers from which are
contained in these proceedings. We decided for the topic of speech acts because they represent probably
the most elaborated and analyzed field language Pragmatics in Yugoslavia, especially in Slovenia. The
purpose of the conference was both to present different approaches towards the treatment of speech acts,
as well as the treatment of different speech phenomena from the standpoint of the theory or theories of
speech acts. Arrangement of papers in the proceedings is befitting to this as well: from. study of Austin s
concept of illocution, through its later transformations and applications, all the way to transcending and
transcendence of the concept of illocutionary act.
The proceedings also bring forth some papers which were not presented at the conference in November
because of the absence of the authors, but it would be a pity, however, were they omitted.
At this point I would like to show gratitude once again to the Ministry
• Research and Technology of the Republic of Slovenia, and especially to its secretary Peter Tancig, who
financially supported the publishing
• these proceedings., and the secretary general of IPrA Jef Verschueren, who kindly responded to our
invitation for participation at the conference.
Igor Ž. Žagar
At the Origins of Illocution
Marina Sbisa', University of Trieste, Italy
J.L. Austin's book "How to Do Things with Words" has been often read as a self-defeating pursuit of
Performatives (cf. Fann (ed.) 1969: 351-468). According to these readings, the aim of the book is to
investigate the performative-constative distinction in order to discover the real nature of performative
utterances. So a neat distinction is proposed and discussed in detail, only to be blurred and dropped. It is
then substituted with another distinction, the Locution-Illocution-Perlocution distinction, which, however,
is unable to answer the initial question about performative utterances. In my opinion, this reading of "How
to Do Things with Words" is completely mistaken.
The development of pragmatics has gradually meant that attention has been shifted from the definition of
Performatives to Speech Act Theory. In fact, the second half of "How to Do Things with Words" gives a
first formulation to the notion of speech act, specifying a number of ways in which uttering words is, or
counts as, acting. In particular, we find the notion of "illocutionary act" there for the first time, which has
since then been discussed and applied so often in pragmatics. Readings of "How to Do Things with Words"
that focus on speech act theory can still share with those which focus on the pursuit of Performatives the
belief that Austin's reasons for affirming that uttering is acting lie in his failure to discover a criterion for
Performatives.
Certainly, Austin provides us with some arguments against the performative-constative distinction. In
particular, he argues that constatives (statements) are felicitous or infelicitous as much as other speech acts,
i.e. the so-called performative utterances: the various ways in which
they entail, imply, or presuppose other statements, are - according to Austin's analysis - parallel to the ways
in which performatives are connected with their felicity conditions. However, this argument does not seem
to be used by Austin as an objection to himself, an obstacle to his own theory: rather, it serves directly the
aim of showing that "in order to explain what can go wrong with statements we cannot just concentrate on
the proposition involved" and that therefore it is necessary to introduce the notion of speech act (1975: 52).
Unfortunately, it is not clear whether it was because of this argument or because of other,
independent reasons that Austin came to think that the performative/constative distinction had to be
rejected. Likewise, his search for a criterion of performativity (1975: 55-65) may be read as a real search
that misses its point, therefore suggesting that a change of conceptual framework is needed, or as an
argument in favour of rejecting a given conceptual framework (a kind of reductio ad absurdum). Thus, the
origin of the notion of Illocution, as. well as of the overall project of Austin's work on speech acts, remains
unclear.
While working on the Second Edition of "How to Do Things with Words", I obtained some illuminating
insights into this origin. Here, I shall briefly discuss these insights, hoping that they might be useful to new
(and perhaps also old) readers of "How to Do Things with Words".
From a historical point of view, it is clear from the Manuscript of "How to Do Things with Words" that
Austin had stopped believing in the performative-constative distinction long before giving the William
James Lectures at Harvard in 1955. It could even be doubted whether he ever maintained that distinction:
what is proposed in the earlier article "Other Minds" (cf. Austin 1970: 97-103) is not a distinction between
performatives and constatives in general, but a contrast between each (explicit) performative utterance and
the statement it seems to be. Incidentally, Austin never refuted his first analysis of such a contrast; he only
complicated it, by also taking into account uses of 1st person present indicative active formulas that do not
describe an act of the speaker's but are not performatives either (e.g.. "suiting the action to the word", 1975:
65, 81-82). The question that Austin raises by introducing the performative/constative distinction (1975: 35) is quite different, and much more general: is it correct to oppose a class of utterances that perform
actions and are felicitous or infelicitous, to a class of utterances that state something and are true or false?
There is no hint in the Manuscript to suggest that Austin ever gave a positive answer to such a question.
The Manuscript consists in a collection of notes used by Austin in his lectures from 1951 to 1956. Some
sheets coming from earlier sets of notes (but not all of them) seem to have been combined with the notes
written in 1955 for use in the Harvard lectures. In the notes belonging to the 1951-52 set, it is apparent
that at that time Austin was already concerned with investigating the relations between uttering and acting,
and sketching the Locution-Illocution-Perlocution distinction. The "sea-change" from the
performative/constative distinction to the theory of speech acts (Austin 1975:150) had already occurred.
And Austin seems to have been quite conscious of this, if we may trust some
fragments of introductory notes probably belonging to these same years (still unpublished because not
delivered at Harvard), where he expresses enthusiasm for some kind of philosophical insight related to the
debate on performatives, as well as caution about what he calls "the ramifications of the doctrine" (i.e. its
implications for other fields of philosophy).
This suggests rather strongly that the origins of Illocution do not lie in the argumentations against the
performative/constative distinction that are explicitly exposed in "How to Do Things with Words", but in
some other thought or project conceived by Austin before writing (in 195152) what seems to be the earliest
version of his book.
Such a hypothesis, of course, might simply have a historical or psychological relevance. But it also has a
heuristic value: reading Austin's Manuscript in its light, it is possible to identify a number of cues that,
taken together, suggest a wider reconstruction of the job that Illocution was intended to do in the context of
philosophical problems. And this is perhaps relevant to theory, at least indirectly. It amounts to asking
ourselves if, in Austin's opinion, it was important to decide whether the performative/constative distinction
was to he accepted or rejected, for which aims such a decision was important., and what the consequences
might be for other philosophical problems.
It should be kept in mind that Austin, who is now known mainly as a philosopher of language, was
primarily a philosopher, and in particular an ordinary language philosopher who tried to reformulate and
answer traditional philosophical questions through the analysis of ordinary linguistic usage. He was
involved in epistemological and ethical debates, as is shown by his articles "Other Minds", "Truth",' A Plea
for Excuses", "Ifs and Cans" (in Austin 1970) and by his book "Sense and Sensibilia (1962). Ii should not
be surprising if his notion of Illocution (and the overall project of speech act theory) turns to serve some
philosophical aim other (and wider) than replacing the performative/constative distinction in the analysis of
performative utterances.
Now, in some introductory notes not delivered at Harvard, Austin hints, in a rather critical way, at certain
philosophical uses that had been made of the notion of performative utterance. He says that, while he
himself had some such uses in mind, he approves of some and disapproves of others. In particular, he
maintains that the performative utterance has been used "fairly freely" (or even in "happy go-lucky ways)
in discussions of ethical and epistemological problems. He finds that these uses have revealed the
"inadequacies" or "deficiencies" of his own theory, as well as of the conceptual framework it shared with
much of the philosophical work contemporary to it, and argues the need for a reconsideration of this
framework.
The dissatisfaction with the philosophical uses of the notion of performative utterance must have played
some role in Austin's formulation. of the theoretical framework of speech acts: certainly, in his mind, a
notion the use of which had proved to lead to philosophical confusions was a badly formulated one, to be
rejected or reformulated. So what were then the philosophical uses of the performative that caused Austin's
dissatisfaction and stimulated his search for a new theoretical framework?
It seems we must look for them in the fields of ethics and of epistemology: but these are so wide as to make
our search nearly hopeless. However, in the Manuscript there are two notes of Austin's which mention
some examples of philosophical analyses, of an ethical and an epistemological character respectively, in
which the notion of performative utterance was actually used. A note that lists a number of topics to be
discussed, all more or less related to differences and similarities between so-called performatives and
statements, mentions (as targets for criticism) P.F. Strawson's analysis of true and the debate on the
analysis of good. Another note (which, by the way, seems to be one of the earliest in the Manuscript)
mentions the "performatory aspect" of some words such as know, good, and true, which however are said
not to be "wholly" performatory.
This may seem too little for the reconstruction of an entire philosophical scene. But know, good and true
are the key-words of three philosophical debates which it is not difficult to identify. Austin himself had
given a performative analysis of know (in "Other Minds", 1946; cf. 1970: 97-103), affirming that:
To suppose that "I know" is a descriptive phrase, is only one example of the descriptive fallacy, so
common in philosophy. (...) Utterance of obvious ritual phrases, in the appropriate circumstances, is
not describing the action we are doing, but doing it (...) (1970:103)
Later, P.F. Strawson (1949) proposed analyzing true as a performative word, which does not contribute to
the meaning of the utterance in which it appears, but is used to perform the act of confirming. As to the
analysis of "good", analytical philosophy had been discussing ethical emotivism, i.e. the proposal to define
good in terms of its use in expressing emotions, and was going to elaborate prescriptivism (cf.Hare 1952),
i.e. the analysis of good as recommending something.
Both in the case of emotivism and in the case of prescriptivism, the meaning of the word good was reduced
to the function it was said to play in linguistic activity.
Austin's opinions about emotivist and prescriptivist analyses of good can be easily' guessed from his few
polemical hints to the Value/Fact dichotomy (e.g. "the value/fact fetish", 1975:151; "value or fact, so far as
these are distinguishable", 1975: 153). Moreover, in the final pages of "How to Do Things with Words", he
proposes to apply the notion of Illocution to the analysis of good (1975: 163-64). Unfortunately, what is
said there is not enough to clarify which analysis of good he was willing to outline. It is, however, clear
enough that he did not take sides, either with emotivism or with prescriptivism.
More information is available, on the other hand, about Austin's opinions on the analysis of true. He
criticized Strawson's performative analysis in his article "Truth" (1950; cf. 1970: 117-33) and a long debate
followed (cf. at least: Strawson 1971: 190-213, 234-49; Austin 1970: 154-74; Davidson 1984: 37-54). In
this debate, Austin defended both the claim that true contributes to the meaning of the utterance in which it
occurs (namely, is not redundant) and his particular version of the "correspondence theory" of truth.
Finally, Austin's own analysis of 1 know was never explicitly refuted in his later writings (apart from the
criticism expressed in an unpublished note we already referred to). However, in the final list of
performative utterances included in the last lecture of "How to Do Things with Words", know is
accompanied by a question mark (1975:162). Moreover, the provisional definition of the performative
utterance in the first Lecture seems to incorporate the criticism we found expressed in the unpublished note,
stating that
the uttering of the sentence is, or is a part of, the doing of an action, which again would not normally
be described as, or as "just", saying something. (1975: 5)
Here the small, incidental addition "or as 'just"' introduces from the very beginning the idea that
performative utterances can both perform an action and say something: an idea which was quite extraneous
to Austin by the time he wrote "Other Minds".
What these three philosophical contexts have in common is the temptation to reduce the meaning of some
linguistic expression to the act performed by its use. The notion of performative utterance, as introduced in
"Other Minds", was itself a brilliant example of how a philosopher can get rid of the puzzling meaning of
some word or phrase.
The philosophical manoeuvre employed there, invoking performativity, could appear as innocent as far as it
presents itself as a merely local one, not affecting general philosophical assumptions (cf. Austin's own
restrictions on his analytical considerations in 1970: 98n). But the repeated use of such a manoeuvre cannot
but have general implications: it confirms the traditional dichotomic distinction between saying and acting
(i.e., between Theory and Practice!), and legitimates the idea of the cognitive use of language being
identified with the issuing of utterances that are not actions, excluding those which are actions from the
realm of meaning. This is exactly what Austin must have felt to be wrong. Hence the need for a more
general framework, giving to both saying and acting their appropriate places within the overall speech act.
In the discussion of Strawson's analysis of true, Austin's criticism to what we might call "performative
reductionism" is explicitly expounded, and takes the form of a proposal to distinguish two different levels
in the use of the same utterance:
I agree that to say that ST (it is true that the cat is on the mat) "is" very often, and according to the allimportant linguistic occasion, to confirm tstS (the statement that the cat is on the mat) or to grant it or
what not; but this cannot show that to say that ST is not also and at the same time to make an assertion
about tstS. (1970: 133)
What we find here is not yet the proposal of distinguishing the locutionary and the illocutionary act, but a
provisional answer to the same question that this distinction will answer later. The train of thought that will
lead Austin to formulate the Locution- Illocution-Perlocution distinction has already begun: he is already
seeking to draw distinctions among different actional levels within the same speech act. I therefore
hypothesize that the notion of Illocution was formulated by Austin in order to describe a certain
conventional actional level within the total speech act, without implying that by such a speech act nothing
is said, and thus avoiding performative reductionism.
Did the notion of Illocution succeed in performing the philosophical role for which it was formulated? It
has probably served as a tool against the fashion of proposing reductionist performative analyses. But it has
not been used to give new solutions to problems such as the analysis of true or of good. Austin himself
does not seem to have done enough work in this direction.
It appears from the various sets of notes in the Manuscript that Austin's theoretical effort concentrated more
and more on one of the consequences of the new theoretical framework of speech acts: the redescription of
assertions as illocutionary acts. His attempts at such a redescription muss have aroused many resistances,
open and covert, so that he was led to dedicate more and more attention to it. The "revolution in
philosophy" arising from the developments of the "descriptive fallacy", among which the discovery of
performative utterances, that Austin mentions in the first lecture of "How to Do Things with Words", is
perhaps to be understood as that bundle of potential philosophical consequences arising from assertion
being redescribed as an illocutionary act (and maybe from truth becoming a feature of the speech act).
Without taking account of Austin's corresponsibility for, and then resistance to, performative reductionism,
as well as the role played by this resistance in the origin of Illocution, it is perhaps impossible to make full
sense of the following passage:
It is not surprising that beginnings have been piecemeal, with parti pris, and for extraneous aims; this is
common with revolutions. (1975:4)
On the contrary, in the light of the interpretive hypotheses here expounded, the passage appears as
describing something that had occurred to Austin himself while making his own way towards the
formulation of the speech act theory.
It should be noted, however, that Austin did not refine the distinction between Locution and Illocution. The
way in which he deals with it is far from exhaustive, and even leaves some ambiguities unresolved (cf.
1975:149). The way he deals with reference and predication in the 1953 article "How to Talk - Some
Simple Ways" (1970: 134-53) is not very useful for a better understanding of his notion of the locutionary
act, since it is difficult to locate it within the theoretical framework proposed in "How to Do Things with
Words". It is not surprising that Searle's later theorizing about the "propositional act" (1969: 72-127; cf.
also 1973) took a wholly different direction, which turned out to be more. influential than the original
Austinian distinction between Locution and Illocution.
In conclusion, those who are interested in speech act verbs will be interested to know hat the Manuscript
includes a 33-page long "General list of performatives". Performative verbs are listed here in alphabetical
order, without internal classification (the classification that appears in Austin 1975: 153-63 can be found at
first in some notes belonging either to the '52 or to the '53 lectures); moreover, the column where
they are listed is accompanied by four others, collecting respectively: implicit performative verbs or
expressions, descriptive verbs, verbs used to suit the action to the word, "non-performatives" (i.e. verbs that
name acts which are or might be performed by using language but do not belong to the illocutionary level).
This list testifies to Austin's great interest in distinguishing among different speech acts and in focusing on
the differences between performative or force-showing formulas and 1st person expressions playing other
roles; moreover, it shows that such an interest survived the "sea- change" from the performative/constative
distinction to the Locution-Illocution-Perlocution framework, which had already appeared by the time
Austin wrote the List.
References
AUSTIN, John L. 1962. Sense and Sensibilia. London: Oxford University Press.
- - - 1970. Philosophical papers. London: Oxford University Press (1 ed.1961).
- - - 1975. How to Do Things with Words. London: Oxford University Press. (1 ed. 1962).
DAVIDSON, Donald. 1984. Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
--ANN, K. T. (ed.) 1969. Symposium on J.L. Austin. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
HARE, Richard M. 1952. The Language of Morals. London: Oxford University Press.
SEARLE, John R. 1969. Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- - - 1973. Austin on locutionary and illocutionary acts. In I. Berlin et al., Essays on J.L. Austin, 141-59.
London: Oxford University Press.
STRAWSON, Peter F. 1949. Truth. Analysis 9. Repr. in M. Macdonald (ed.). 1954. Philosophy and
Analysis, 260-77. Oxford: Blackwell.
- - - 1971. Logico-Linguistic Papers. London: Methuen.
The Concept of the Performative and Its Reality
Jelica Šumič-Riha, Institute of Philosophy, Centre for Scientific Research, Slovene
Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia, Yugoslavia
The title is deliberately ambiguous in a way, for it aims not only at the reality- the performative refers to
but also the reality of the performative itself. To explain this ambiguity, I shall proceed from the somewhat
provocative thesis that, within the framework of the theory that produced it, the performative was an
unthinkable concept. This impossibility proved in the further development of theory to be an almost
obsessive endeavour to define more and more precisely that very phenomenon in everyday communication
when the speaker does something in saying and not only by saying something. The theory of the
performative and its followers try to answer this demand for a more precise definition in three ways:
l. As Benveniste's theory of performative utterances which remains within the scope of Austin's original
basic performative-constative opposition and understood as a radicalization of this original conception. For
Benveniste, the distinction between performative and constative remains justified and necessary, and for
him there is no reason to abandon it. On the contrary, since he insists on formal and linguistic criteria, he
limits the concept of the performative strictly to successful or "happy" performatives and rejects the very
idea of failed performative on the one hand and consequently rejects Austin's theory of speech acts on the
other hand.
2. As a theory of speech acts which abandons the opposition between performative and constative, for it
turns out that the constative is only a subspecies of the performative since the constative itself also performs a certain act, let's say, the act of stating, declaring, etc. On the other hand, a more adequate concept
must be found for this general phenomenon of performing an act by saying something. And it is precisely
the concept of illocutionary force which explains the performance of an act in saying as opposed to
performance of an act of saying something.
3. As Ducrot's theory of polyphonic language, which can be understood as a radicalization of the
consequences of the second position because it proceeds from the basic ambiguity of language, i.e. from
impossibility of an unambiguous determination of the illocutionary force of the utterance by purely
linguistic or grammatical criteria. According to Ducrot, the illocutionary force of an utterance cannot be
determined because on the level of language, that is, on the level of de Saussure's "langue," there's no
marker that could unambiguously fix this force.
It is not our purpose to state whether any of the mentioned ways found the right solution to the problem of
the performative, but to present them firstly and mainly as a sign of embarrassment. In our opinion, the
very existence of different solutions indicates that the fundamental problem of the performative concerns
its very foundations.
Let us get to the problem by analyzing, for a start, the most established definition of the performative.
There is a commonly accepted convention, according to which an utterance is performative if:
a) it names the act the speaker is performing when issuing the utterance;
b) the function of issuing such an utterance is that the speaker performs the act he names;
c) to perform such an act means, according to Benveniste, to represent one's own words as something that
directly juridically transforms the situation: to represent them, let's say, as something that obligates the
addressee (order) or the speaker (promise).
According to this definition, an utterance must satisfy three conditions if it is to be performative:
l. the utterance must be issued;
2. between the uttering and the effect there must be a reciprocal connection: "to say" cannot be separated
from "to do";
3. the connection "to say - to do" has to follow precisely defined formulae, so that the same effect could not
be reached by using another formula, even if it is synonymous.
In our speech community it is therefore possible to promise, order, and perform a whole set of similar acts
merely by the speaker using the appropriate formula which names this act (I promise to..., I order you to...).
The reason it is possible to do this is that we have accepted a
convention according to which the performative has juridical power, i.e. the ability to establish certain
obligatory relations between the speaker and the addressee, as soon it has been uttered. Insofar as the
performative is a source of obligation which neither the speaker nor the addressee knew of before the
utterance has been issued, we may say that it has the ability to structure the intersubjective situation in
which it is uttered. The reality the performative refers to is therefore necessarily, as Benveniste puts it, a
reality constituted by the performative
itself.
I would like to tackle the problem of the performative by putting into question the relation between the
performative and the reality it refers to. At first sight it may seem that Benveniste successfully explains the
relation between the performative and reality in showing that the reality which the performative refers to is
precisely the reality constituted by the performative itself. According to Benveniste, this is particularly
evident in the case of declaratively obligatory performatives. Utterances of this type are for example: I
pronounce you guilty or I pronounce a general rnobiliation. According to this interpretation of the performative,
the accused is not guilty until the judge pronounces him to be. The utterance of the judge (I pronounce you
guilty) literally creates a new subject merely by pronouncing somebody guilty.
We cannot enter here and now into scholastic discussions on whether this juridical power is real or
fictional. Nevertheless, in our opinion we should take into consideration Ducrot's correction of Benveniste's
conception of the performative which in our opinion is of essential significance. According to Ducrot, the
performative utterance has no juridical power in itself but only claims, i.e. pretends, to have it. Yet we
should add that although this power is not real, the performative will not function as performative unless
we grant this power to it. It is not possible to order unless the reaction of the addressee is judged
exclusively from the viewpoint of his obedience or disobedience to the order. The claim of the performative
to possess a juridical power is therefore justified insofar as the addressee recognizes it. The pretension to
possess juridical power becomes real by the act of the addressee acknowledging it. It is thus not enough to
say that performative aims at juridical power; we should furthermore add that it aims at its recognition.
This claim for recognition is, of course, concealed, since in everyday communication this juridical power is
granted to a performative utterance quite spontaneously, as if it had it inherently. So we can say that what is
overlooked in this recognition is precisely the recognition itself.
The performative therefore produces reality only through the roundabout of the overlooked recognition.
Yet the status of this reality produced by the performative is in a certain sense paradoxical. Once this reality
is constituted, we no longer consider it as reality created merely by the word but as something that has
always already been here. In other words, although this reality is a product of a certain omission or illusion,
we necessarily take it as real.
The way in which the performative constitutes reality shall be examined on two types of performatives. The
first type, let's say, is the performative utterance I promise to.... What is actually the reality this promise
refers to? Is it the actual fulfillment of an obligation that has been forced upon the speaker by uttering such
a promise or is it merely the introduction of this obligation, the fact that an obligation has been created?
Considering our everyday experience, it is clear that this obligation is not necessarily realized. Nothing
prevents the speaker from making the promise and at the same time considering that his promise does not
commit him to anything; and precisely the same can be said regarding the addressee: there is nothing in the
issuing of the promise that can force him to take it seriously. He could say for example, The speaker did
utter a promise, but will he also keep it?
The fulfillment of promise is, by definition, strictly external to the promise as performative, yet our
everyday experience shows that it is not so: if the speaker does not fulfill his promise or even in the event
we merely doubt the seriousness of his promise, the promise is somehow retroactively annulled and
invalidated. How is it possible that the failure affects the promise when it should, by its definition, be
indifferent to its own realization?
We cannot be satisfied with the explanation that the spontaneous expectation of the fulfillment of a promise
is only an illegitimate crossover from the mere introduction of obligation to its realization. Even if we say
that the (ideological) perception of the participants of communication performs this illegitimate crossover,
we still have not thereby explained the spontaneous impulse which makes them do so. What has to be
explained is precisely the way in which the promise itself leads to this illusion.
The problem is that a promise refers to two realities: to an obligation which is purely symbolic, i.e.
discoursive, and through it to the external reality of the actual fulfillment of this obligation. Let's take for
example the utterance: I promise to come tomorrow. In the moment of uttering, the speaker performs an act
of promise, but his coming tomorrow is not yet thereby realized. This gap between the two realities
becomes
particularly evident in the case of an unfulfilled promise. The unfulfilled promise is, strictly taken, still a
promise that commits the one who uttered it. We might even say that only the unfulfilled promise is really a
promise as a pure symbolic act, a contract which refers to nothing outside itself. But reduced precisely to
this symbolic dimension, to a pure obligation, the performative is perceived as imperfect and deficient
because it hangs in the void and loses its support. The paradox of the promise is that it gets annulled
precisely at the moment when it shows itself in its purity. We could draw a conclusion: if the unfulfilled
promise is the pure performative and if in this purity it is perceived as something imperfect, it must
necessarily be completed by its external effect. In other words, the fulfillment of a promise is a way to
conceal the fact that a promise is annulled or becomes void precisely at the moment when it shows in its
purity.
Since a promise, as it has been shown, necessarily turns into its realization, ii is to a certain degree
misleading. Therefore, we shall examine the relation between the performative and the reality created by
the performative by taking into consideration a "purer" example of the performative, the legal or declarative
performative. Such a performative is, for example, the utterance issued by a judge: I pronounce
you guilty.
This judicial performative is usually not uttered in such a crude, direct form, but in a more subtle way such
as the Slovene variant: The Accused, you. are found guilty. In translating the "pronounced guilty" with the
ambiguous "found guilty," we come across another meaning which is not present in the first expression.
Strictly speaking, we could not say that a verdict is a pure performative, for the judge does not pronounce
but "finds" someone to be guilty. Neither is it a pure constative, for he does not say directly: You are guilty.
If this utterance is neither a performative nor a constative, it must therefore be something in between or
both at the same time, that is to say, a quasi-performative or quasi-constative. By saying The Accused, you
are found guilty, the judge implies that this state of guilt was something given, something chat must only be
found to be so. The utterance of the judge is at the same time necessary and yet somehow redundant. The
utterance of the judge functions as a performative which performs the institutional act precisely through its
seeming redundance: it is unnecessary to state something that is anyway already given. As it seems that the
judge is merely stating the "factual situation," "a state of affairs which already exists," we fail to see that
this factual situation is created by his utterance, by his stating it as such. Here we can see how the effect
turns into condition: the objective status of guilt which is, as we have seen, produced by the judge's
utterance is perceived - perceived, of course, only after the utterance has been issued and this status thus
constituted - as an anticipative condition for the utterance. This "already always given reality" which the
performative refers to is precisely the reality created by the performative itself.
The performative functions as performative, that is to say it functions according to its own definition, only
in the disguise of the constative and therefore behaves towards the reality it creates itself exactly in the way
the constative does - as if reality existed outside of it and independent of it. In short, if the performative is
to function at all, we must necessarily overlook its transformation into the constative. This curious
transformation was explained by Searle, though not in the case of the performative but of fictional
utterances. As well as fiction the performative also "pretends" to refer to a supposedly external reality. Both
in. the case of the performative and in the case of fiction it is necessary not to see that the reality they refer
to as an external "objective" reality not only gains such status but also is constituted as such precisely
through their behaving towards it in such a way.
Yet there's an important difference between fiction and the performative: in the case of fiction we are
nevertheless in a certain way "aware of" this specific effect of creativity of language. We might even say
that adequate comprehension of fiction presupposes our being aware of the fact that fictional reality is the
effect of this creativity - although we pretend to take seriously the contract with the author and willingly
submit to his rules of the game, according to which we are to acknowledge his fictional reality as the only
reality. But we are ready to recognize the creativity of language only in this limited field, and even here it is
only because its specificity and autonomy can be displayed against the background of the non- fictional
"real" reality. If, on one hand, in the case of fiction we can see in this limited field the way in which
language produces reality, then on the other hand, fiction, by pronouncing itself to be an unreal, false
reality, only all the more confirms our faith in the "real" reality which is presumed not created by language.
Performative mechanisms in language function if and only if we overlook or forget the fact that this reality
has been constituted by the performative itself.
We have shown that the performative is a constative in disguise, which means that, like the constative, it
denotes, designates, and describes the external, non-discoursive reality. This conclusion also has, of course,
certain consequences for the constative. The constative already is what the performative endeavours to be,
from which follows the inevitable conclusion that in the case of the constative, it is so much easier and so
much quicker to overlook the fact that it is discourse itself which creates the reality it speaks of and that we
could therefore say that the most effective performative is precisely the constative. In the case of the
constative, the creativity of language is on one hand the strongest and on the other hand the most
effectively suppressed. At first sight it may seem that we have said nothing new, since the theory of speech
acts willingly acknowledges that the constative is one of the forms of the performative. Yet the constative
is not performative for the reason that, like the performative, it performs a certain act, that is to say,
declares something, states something, etc. Quite the contrary: the constative proves to be performative
precisely in its original meaning - as opposition to the performative. The constative is performative because
like the performative it creates itself the reality it speaks of, that is to say the reality which was supposed to
exist independent of it and of which it should merely report.
But what is it in everyday communication that prevents us from seeing that it is the language itself which
creates the reality it speaks of? There exist two types of subjectal positions which prevent us from seeing
the creativity of language: the constative and the performative type. The constative type of subjectal
position represents a position wherein the subject seems excluded from the language, for it is reduced to a
mere outward observer. And it is precisely this exclusion of the subject which is the condition for our
failing to see that the constative itself creates the situation referred to by pretending the latter had (already)
been created.
In the case of the performative, the position of the subject is a little more complicated. Unlike the
constative, which is totally indifferent to the subject of uttering (since its validity depends on its
correspondence with what it refers to and it can be uttered by anybody), in the case of the performative the
utterer is of essential importance. It is not insignificant who and in what circumstances he/she issues a
performative utterance. We can prove this by drawing conclusions from the basic definition of the
performative which says:
"Utterance is an act; the one who utters it performs an act by naming this act." According to this definition,
every uttering of the performative formula is already the performance of the act this formula was appointed
to. But if every uttering of a performative also in reality performed the act - as by definition it has to do then it is clear that the performative as a publicly recognized, institutional act would be
annulled. This annullment of the performative can be prevented only if some utterings of the performative
are forbidden.
In short, issuing the utterance is a necessary but not also sufficient condition for performance of an act. The
performative is an act only if uttered by someone who is allowed to utter it and in circumstances in which
he is allowed to do so. For Benveniste, the speaker's authority represents a necessary condition for
performative:
Performative utterance can only be an act of authority. Such acts can firstly and mostly be uttered by
those who have the right to utter them.
A performative uttered by someone who is not authorized for uttering is not a performative at all according
to Benveniste:
Anyone can shout on the street "I pronounce general mobilization," yet this won't be an act, since it
lacks the necessary authority. It won't be an act, but childishness, joke, or madness. The performative
is therefore constituted through the double limitation of a speaker's freedom: a speaker can speak
only if he has the necessary- authority to appear as the subject of utterance, and he can utter only
what he is allowed to utter.
The problem is, however, in which way to justify this prohibition if unallowed performatives in no way
differ from allowed ones. The only answer to this question is that this distinction simply cannot be based on
anything. The paradox of this prohibition could be defined as follows: "The prohibition is arbitrary but
nevertheless necessary because if some performatives are not forbidden in advance, then the performative
would lose its function as an institutional act." In short, what is essential for the performative as such is
precisely this prohibition, although it is impossible to imagine either the place wherefrom it might be
uttered, or the utterer who would have the necessary authority to utter it. Even if this prohibition had never
been uttered, ordinary or standard performatives would not be possible unless they presuppose it.
If the foundation of the performative as a short circuit of "saying" and "doing" is a social convention or
institution, then as we have shown, this social convention has no basis. The fact that the performative is
constituted within a vicious circle (since in the final analysis, it is based only on its own act of uttering) is
concealed by the speaker's authority. In other words, the insupportableness of the performative is therefore
most obvious in performatives which are not serious and are thus forbidden as impossible. By non-serious
performatives we understand issuing a performative utterance in inappropriate circumstances or issuing by
a speaker without the required authority. Yet they are impossible not perhaps for the reason, as we have
seen, that they cannot be uttered, but precisely because they can be uttered, and they, in fact, are uttered.
What is perceived as scandalous is the fact that the mere possibility of their being uttered reveals the very
secret of the performative, namely the secret that social convention, i.e. institution, as the guarantee and
foundation of the performative is arbitrary and without support. In other words, if performatives are based
on commonly accepted convention, then this convention itself is based on nothing - nothing butt
prohibition. The very fact that such a prohibition must be assumed makes us believe that it has been uttered
by an authority which guarantees the convention the performatives are based on. In other words, although
this prohibition is completely fictional and illusory, its effects are nonetheless real.
Now we can more precisely define exactly' what is impossible and therefore also forbidden in the theory
which deals with the performative as well as in everyday communication where the performative functions:
what is impossible and therefore forbidden is precisely the performative itself, specifically the performative
as pure self-referring utterance. The performative only functions in everyday communication if its
performative basis remains concealed. This concealment is made possible precisely by the prohibition of
some utterings of performative formulae. But if in everyday communication we accept this prohibition
without question and at the same time violate it, then the theory finds itself in much bigger trouble when it
is used to justify why something should not be uttered and is yet uttered; that is, to justify unallowed or
non-serious performatives.
References
BENVENISTE, Emile. 1966. La philosophic analytique et le langage. In Problemes de linguistique
generale l. 267-277. Paris: Gallimard.
DUCROT, Oswald. 1980. Illocutoire et performatif. In Dire et ne pas dire. 279-311. Paris: Hermann.
SEARLE, John R.1975. The Logical Status of Fictional discourse. New Literary History V I.2. 319-332.
The Role of Speech Acts in the Social Construction of
Knowledge
Janet Justin, Institute for Educational Research at the University of Ljubljana,
Slovenia, Yugoslavia
The problem of how the social context influences the production and the transmission of knowledge
concernes sociology, cognitive and educational sciences. However, those disciplines seem to have failed in
giving a full account of the phenomenon. I assume that this is partly due to the fact that neither sociology
nor the cognitive and educational sciences have made any serious attempt of clarifying one of the most
important aspects of this problem, namely, the question of the role of communicative acts in the
construction of knowledge.
There are different types of transmission of knowledge; I shall mainly be concerned with the one that is
mentally and socially organized as the process of "learning". It should be noted that a major part of this
process is supported and guided by verbal communicative acts.
I think that one should not consent to a somewhat strange distinction between the cognitive and the
pragmatic aspect of communication. Namely, it is evident that whatever are the outcomes of the speaker's
affecting the hearer it is always a change in the "cognitive environment" of the latter that must be brought
about first.
I shall therefore defend the conception according to which the "cognitive condition" of linguistic
transmission of knowledge never dissociates completely from the "pragmatic condition".
Two theoretical positions derive from that claim: Position (A)
In the kind of learning process (or more generally- - process of "cognizing') that is mediated by verbal
communicative acts, the cognitive efficiency of the learners ("cognizants") partly depends upon the type of
social relation that is established by those acts. It is believed that the efficiency is high if the learning
process is based upon the democratic type of social relation. The idea of connection between the cognitive
and the pragmatic condition of transmission of knowledge is thereby quite restrained. Although a
favourable social context is sensed
to accelerate and improve the learner's comprehension of the conveyed cognitive objects it is not supposed
to have any impact on the structure of what is comprehended. In other words, the pragmatic condition is
considered as "external", i.e., as the condition determining how quickley, how thoroughly or to what extent
a cognitive subject (a "cognizant") assimilates the conveyed cognitive object without this object being
affected by the "social content" of the pragmatic condition.
Position (B)
If the learner's encounter with a cognitive object is mediated by one or more communicative acts it is not
only the learner's reception - its dynamics, thoroughness or extent - that is affected by those acts but also
the inner structure of the cognitive object(s) that the acts convey. In the cognitive object assimilated (and
perhaps also reproduced) by a learner one can always recognize some traces of the learner's attempt to
represent mentally the social base of communication.
[shall try to present some arguments in favour of position (B) without attempting to discredit position (A).
Let us have a look at a simple didactic utterance that can be considered as a paradigmatic one:
(1) Two plus two equals four.
Such apparently "objective" utterances are standard syntactic devices for didactic transmission of
knowledge. What is recognized at first glance is that they take form of a "bare" proposition. However, this
form is not characteristic only of linguistic utterances that serve the purposes of the instructional process
but also of mental units of knowledge. What is at stake here are two different descriptions of "cognitive
object": The first one is focused on the linguistic proposition and the second one on the so-called
"internalized propositon".
My own definiton of cognitive object relates to both of them. I consider a cognitive object as a unit of
knowledge established by and exposed to various functions of language, especially that of transmission of
knowledge and of bringing about changes in the cognitive environment of speakers and hearers.
The definition raises a question which is of crucial importance to the rest of this paper. Are there cognitive
objects - in the sense that was mentioned above - which would be constructed entirely on the basis of a
"bare" linguistic proposition? If not, what other basis for the construction of cognitive objects can we think
of without abandoning the standpoint of linguistic theory of communication?
Let me try first the approach developed by the founders of the speech act theory (SAT). One of the central
chapters of this theory deals with "illocutionary acts". According to Austin, a speech act is composed of a
"locutionary", "illocutionary" and "perlocutionary" act. Illocutionary act is the one that is accomplished "in
saying" (compare this with perlocutionary act which is done "by saying').
Widely known is Searle.'s formula of illocutionary act: F(P).
How should we interpret the brackets? Should F - illocutionary force - be interpreted as that constitutive
element of the act which fulfils the "external condition" for the proposition p to be transmitted or rather as
something that operates on this propositional structure from "inside"?
One of possible answers to this question comprises the idea that the difference between these two options
involves a gradation. As a component fulfiling the "external condition", thee illocutionary force (F) could
be held to operate on the cognitive content of the proposition - but only in the sense of what H. Parret (1983
: 86) calls "a weak operator. If it could be ascribed the role of an operator affecting the cognitive content
from "inside it should be called a "strong operator. Which of these two options correspond to the basic
assumptions of the SAT?
Let us start with the following conclusion: If an operator is external (weak) it is also suspendable. Actually,
we are looking for a speech event in which a "cognitive object-proposition" would be disposed of the
impact of any sort of illocutionary operator.
It seems that the adepts of SAT are not likely to consent to the idea that a proposition could he conveyed
linguistically without being exposed to the effects of the pragmatic condition of communication, i.e.,
without being affected by some contextual features. In the opposite, the role of the pragmatic condition
would be reduced to that of a pure mediation and the pragmatic theory could no longer maintain these two
basic principles
i. The production and the transmission of propositions is a "pragmatic affair" par excellence.
ii. One cannot consider a proposition as an isolated structure without abandoning the pragmatic point of
view.
The concept of illocutionary act seems to be firmly linked with those two principles. A brief examination of
different types of illocutionary acts would help us to discern different ways in which the pragmatic
"parameters" act upon propositions.
Searle's "representatives", for example, are sensed to "commit the speaker to something being the case., to
the truth of the expressed proposition" (Searle 1976: 10). When Searle writes that the "direction of fit" of
the representatives is "words to the world" he could be held to presume that the proposition contained in a
representative is put - by the speaker as well as by the hearer - into a relation to some extralinguistic entity.
When he mentions that a representative is assessable on the dimension of assessement which includes
"true" and "false" he introduces two basic gnoseological concepts.
This shows that a representative - or better, its propositional structure - is penetrated by the effects of
subject's taxonomic, gnoseological and social activity.
Within this class I see a single illocutionary- act which does not fit with the others; I claim that this single
representative can give us, if not a definite proof then at least a vague idea of a speech event in which a
"cognitive object-proposition" is marked as not being affected by the pragmatic condition of language
communication.
The illocutionary act I have in mind is the act of informing. Its most outstanding characteristic is a certain
disengagement of the speaker in regard to the content of the act, i.e., in regard to the "information". In
informing the hearer about something being the case the speaker does not realy commit himself in any way
to that content. Rather, he presents himself as an instance of neutral mediation. There is, in fact, something
impersonal about the act of informing: the information "speaks for itself', i.e., it produces the effect of
"objectivity".
It should be noticed, above all, that the speaker does not really commit himself to the truthfulness of the
expressed proposition. It might well be that the hearer does not believe the proposition to be true. He can
try to verify the information on his own. Nevertheless, nothing in the act of informing itself invites him to
do so.
In this respect the act of informing differs radically from other representatives. According to Habermas and
some others, the representatives convey implicitly the speaker's proposal or at least the speaker's
willingness to validate (publicly) the propositional content of the act.
There are numerous representatives in which this implicit offer is clearly felt: I argue, I assert, I put
forward a hypothesis etc. In some others - like 1 describe - it does not seem to have such an important
part. But in the act of informing there is no trace of such an offer or of speaker's willingness to do so.
If all this was true then we should also conclude that in the act of informing there would be no speaker's or
hearer's direct (social, gnoseological, taxonomic) involvement, no commitment, no willingness to start a
validation procedure. In other words, this act would count as a speech event in which a "cognitive objectproposition" undergoes no impact of the pragmatic condition of speech. What are the reasons for the act of
informing to represent an exception in the class of representatives?
The question is obviously connected with the topics of information society. I do not dispose of any
satisfactory answer. All I can do is to indicate the direction in which the answer should be looked for. I
shall do this by referring to the semantic structure of the verb "to inform" which is regulated by a strong
presupposition. Let me examine its nature. Consider the sentence:
(2) The information was false.
The sentence is syntactically correct but a lack of consistency at the semantic level would probably be
noticed. The sentence should be rejected on the basis of the following argument: If an "information" is not
true then it is not really an information. But let us take a closer look. I would like to suggest that what is
presupposed is not the truthfulness of the information itself but the fulfilment of the pragmatic condition for
this quality (namely the truthfulness) of information to be real. Let me clarify a little bit this claim.
According to the pragmatic conception of speech every presupposition is an act implying some sort of
exclusion. The hearer can not question what is presupposed in the speaker's utterance without turning out to
be agressive, insulting the speaker etc. (naturally, he can do it covertly).
Let us return to the act of informing. What the hearer cannot express his doubts about (at least not overtly
and without turning out to be aggressive) is the implicitly conveyed idea that the cognitive content of the
act of informing has already been validated - by the speaker, by someone else that is supposed to bee
competent, by a group of competent persons etc.
Since the validation procedure is supposed to have taken place "elsewhere" (previously to the act of
informing) the speaker appears to be a neutral, transparent figure, free of gnoseological and social engagements - an instance of pure mediation. In fact, the only quality that he claims for himself is that of being
competent for judging whether subjects involved in the validation procedure have been competent or not.
If the hearer starts a validation procedure on his own he can not do it without some effect of iterativeness.
He would be held to repeat what has already been done by others. Moreover, such an initiative would
manifest a certain distrust in the speaker's competence.
Not only that nothing in the act of informing invites the hearer to start a validation procedure, this act has a
limited effect of preventing the process of communication from functioning as a(n) (intersubjective)
validation procedure.
Namely, the local effect of the presupposition conveyed by the act of informing is the impression that the
act convey š a proposition which is transparent and detached from all kinds of contextual elements. The
effect of transparency is linked with the presumption that the proposition maintains a unequivocal relation
with some extralinguistic state of affairs.
Hence, we seem to be in a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, the act of informing was recognized as a
successful illocutionary act. On the other hand, we are held to believe that the pragmatic components of
that act have nothing to do with the "cognitive object-proposition" conveyed. The question arises: What are
then the function and the purpose of those components?
Here is a possible answer to that question. The pragmatic potential of the act of informing is activated while
protecting the proposition from being affected by various kinds of illocutionary forces - from those, for
example, that are syntactically represented in I question, 1 verify, 1 criticize, 1 doubt etc. The only
pragmatic effect of the act of informing would then be a neutralization or suspension of illocutionary
operators.
This is precisely the situation in which the didactic transmission of cognitive objects seems to occur most
frequently. Besides, thus picture corresponds - at least in some main traits - to the theoretical position (A)
described at the beginning of this paper.
On the basis of these conclusions one is likely to believe that various illocutionary operators brought about
by the flux of didactic discourse are not only extrinsic to the nuclear "cognitive objects-propositions" but
also play a secondary role in the didactic communication process. They are supposed to contribute to the
"social climate" facilitating the pupils' comprehension, raising their motivation etc. Let me name some of
the acts that could be ascribed such a role: "I advise.", "I propose", "I suggest", "I express my opinion" etc.
For example, a teacher's act of informing the pupils may be introduced by an act of proposing
(3) First, 1 would like to give you some information about...
After the proposal is accepted by the pupils the teacher can actually "give the information" without being
"authoritarian".
Here, in fact, the teacher does not propose that certain cognitive content be taken as true but proposes that
pupils hear "true content", i.e., an "information" which is - I stress it once again - a cognitive object
implicitly claimed to "have already been validated". In this way none of those illocutionary acts which have
something to do with a "subjective point of view or with intersubjectivity can infect the nuclear cognitive
structures. The teacher is enabled to prevent certain parts of the cognitive content of the syllabus from
becoming an object of an intersubjective validation procedure.
However, there is a point in this reasoning which makes the adoption of the theoretical position (A) a little
hit problematic. I maintained that the result of the act of informing is a suspension of all those illocutionary
operations on the invariable "cognitive object-proposition" which involve an (inter)subjective "point of
view". But what reason do we have for not seeing in this suspension of operations a specific operation of
suspension?
I presume, in fact, that no such reason can be found. If so, an additional operator within the structure of the
presumingly invariable "cognitive object-proposition" is to be conceptualized. While making all other
illocutionary operators extrinsic this operator is supposed to operate from the inside of the nuclear cognitive
structure.
Some vague idea of such an operator is given in the following example: (4) Two plus two equals four; 1
deduce that four minus two equals two.
Although the fragment "I deduce" seems to express some sort of illocutionary force I see no reason to
believe that what we meet here is an illocutionary act of deducing. Rather, the fragment should count as an
indication of the required logical operation which is a constitutive part of the mathematical (syntactical)
object presented above in a verbal form. This indication could at any moment be replaced by a symbol, for
example by "---".
I assume, however, that there is more to it. Here, "I deduce" cannot only be regarded as indicating an
operation which is a part of the mathematical cognitive object but also as a sign imposing a mode of
reasoning on the cognitive subject (on the learner). It is therefore to be considered as an element
determining the "cognizant's" cognitive activity in at least one quality - that of a "necessary conclusion". As
a sign of logical necessity, "I deduce" operates not only on the object but also on the subject, preserving in
both cases its nature of intrinsic operator.
The above mentioned "mode of reasoning' could also he described as the cognizant's "having to conclude"
or, at a more general level, as his"having to know". What is at stake here is a combination of two modals
referring to the structure of the cognitive object as well as to some essential quality of the process in which
the cognitive subject assimilates the cognitive object.
While the syntactical representation of illocutionary operators is impossible to be reconciled with the idea
of intrinsic operation on the propositional nucleus, the modal description of the relationship between the
cognitive subject and the cognitive object fits well with it. This sort of description has been, in fact,
developed and used by the adepts of narrative and discoursive semiotics.
Since the purpose of this paper is only to mark the way which leads from theoretical position (A) to
theoretical position (B) I shall not try to give a full account of the modal description.
However, I would like to add a final remark concerning the status of the "speaking subject" within the
semiotic theory of language and communication. In the pragmatics the concept of speaker relates to an
extratextual figure producing and conveying a text in order to achieve a certain effect on the hearer. In
contrast with this conception, the semiotics considers the subject as a "logical entity" - as an instance
presupposed by every utterance no matter how "objective" it be. The subjects of communication are held to
leave "traces" in the text of utterances; the implicit "speaking subject" inevitably splits into an "adressor
and an "adressee".
On the basis of these assumptions the utterance presented in the example (1) would he held to contain not
only a subject - object relation (characterized by a complete prevalence of the object over the subject) but
also an intersubjective relation. At the same time, a process is conceivable in which various modal
"investements" - of deontic, volitive or cognitive kind - contribute to "resocialization" of those
linguistic cognitive objects which appear to be detached from the pragmatic (social) condition of their
being produced and communicated in natural language.
REFERENCES
AUSTIN, John L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard University Press.
GREIMAS, A.J., and COURTES. J. 1979. Semiotique - dictionnaire raisonne de la theorie du langage.
Paris: Hachette.
PARRET, Herman 1983. L'enonciation en tans que modalisation et deictisation. Langages 70.
SEARLE, John 1976. A Classification of Illocutionary Acts. Language in Society
A Pragmatic Model for the Dynamics of Communication
Jef Verschueren, University of Antwerp and the Belgian National Fund for Scientific
Research, Belgium
1. Background
Ever since Ann Weiser (1974) wrote her article on "Deliberate ambiguity", speech act theory has been under
attack for being too static in its approach to be able to cope with the dynamics of conversation or
communication in general.2 This paper is not intended to settle that specific controversy, but it may contribute to
a solution by lifting the debate to a higher level of generality. It presents a few suggestions for the further
development of one aspect of a general framework for the discussion of linguistic pragmatics which defines
pragmatics as a theory of linguistic adaptation or adaptability. The aspect in question is extremely crucial in the
overall framework: it is the communicative dynamics which must inevitably be accounted for to justify a pro
cess(ing) notion such as 'adaptation'.
But before going into the substance of the discussion, let me first sketch the background.3 From a pragmatic
point of view, communicating - whether on a face-to-face basis or on a wider societal scale - consists essentially
in the making of communicative choices. The following three, hierarchically related, key notions are needed to
understand this 'making of choices':
Variability defines the range of possible choices.
Negotiability implies that the choices are not made mechanically or according to strict rules or fixed formfunction relationship, but on the basis of principles and strategies.4
Adaptability is the property of language which makes it possible for human beings to make choices which
satisfy basic human communicative needs.5
These three notions are basically inseparable. All three are subject to a series of fuzzy dichotomies: they underlie
(i) micro-processes (taking place in small-scale interaction contexts) which can be
- either 'acquired' (i.e. characteristic of fully developed linguistic and communicative
competence) - or developmental
(ii) macro-processes (taking place at a wider societal level) which can be
- either synchronic - or diachronic.
All three depend for their existence and functioning on the same medium of adaptation which can be briefly
characterized as 'mind in society'.6 And together they enable the linguist to approach pragmatic phenomena, the
functionality of language,' or simply the use of language, systematically from a variety of necessary angles:
Objects of adaptation: those ingredients of the communicative context to which the communicative
choice have to be adapted.
Levels of adaptation: levels of linguistic structure at which adaptation processes are taking place (i.e. in
principle any level of structure from phoneme to discourse and beyond).
Stages of adaptation: the development of adaptation processes over time.
Degrees of adaptation: mainly degrees of accessibility of the processes in question.
Functions of adaptation: the actual functioning and use of adaptive properties of language and adaptation
processes.
While 'objects' and 'levels' are relatively straightforward notions which can he conveniently used as a starting
point for specific descriptive tasks in pragmatics, and while 'levels' are useful as a point of reference to identify
types of variability, the more opaque notions of 'stages', 'degrees', and 'functions' are harder to grasp but they
clearly touch the essence of variability and especially of negotiability and adaptability.
The following pages will be an attempt to come to grips with stages of adaptation, i.e. with the temporal
dimension or the dynamics of communication. The discussion will make it clear that distinguishing objects,
levels, stages, degrees and functions of adaptation is mainly a heuristic device. Though my focus in this
paper will be on 'stages' (or whatever other word we might want to choose to refer to the temporal
dimension or the dynamics of communication), we will not be able to discuss the topic without constant
reference to the other four angles from which linguistic functionality needs to be approached.
2. The raw material of communicative dynamics
If there is one indisputable communicative universal, it is the bare fact that communication takes place over
time.$ Though space is a powerful object of adaptation (speech being incomprehensible at a large distance,
spatial distance being correlated with aspects of social relationships relevant for the nature of the
communication in question, etc.), and though spatial relations underlie significant chunks of linguistically
reflected conceptualization, time - as an object of adaptation - clearly imposes more universal constraints
on verbal interaction. What space is for meaning (a set of observable relations which can be metaphorically
transformed and extended to build a wide range of concepts), time may be for communicative action: time
or the temporal dimension provides the raw material for communicative dynamics.
The constraints imposed by this raw material are immediately apparent when we consider communicative
processing by the medium of adaptation, mind-in-society. On the micro-level, the interlocutors' 'memory'
imposes considerable time-related processing constraints; and communicative processing itself involves
(again time-related) 'planning'. On a macro-level, earlier stages of development of languages and linguistic
conventions are no longer readily accessible to the language user; conversely, communicative success visà-vis future generations cannot be taken for granted, not even with the medium of writing.
One general attempt at explaining communicative dynamics is Luisa Martin Rojo's (n.d.) description of
delinquent jargon in Spanish prisons.9 She proposes that the dynamics of conversational interaction can be
explained on the basis of the conflicting tendencies toward the preservation of privacy and the formation of
alliances. This would be an explanation completely in terms of social relationships - which form one type
of ingredient of the speech act event which I refer to as 'objects' of adaptation. I n the following pages twill
offer a systematic overview of various types of phenomena related to and various determinants of
communicative dynamics, in terms of the general view of pragmatics as a theory of linguistic adaptation.
This overview is at least partly intended as a testing ground for hypotheses such as Martin Rojo's; if such a
hypothesis cannot be upheld, it may serve as the basis of a more complete description and explanation; if it
can, the following may provide the necessary evidence.
3. Communicative dynamics: properties and determinants
As suggested above, properties and determinants of communicative dynamics - to be situated at the level of
'stages of adaptation' in the overall pragmatic framework proposed - cannot be defined without referring to
objects, levels, degrees and functions of adaptation, i.e. the other four angles from which verbal behavior
has to be approached in pragmatics. What follows is not intended as a'classification' based on the
framework of discussion; the distinctions mainly serve ease of presentation.
(i) Definable with reference to objects of adaptation
Since communication takes place between human beings, the most promising angle to look at this process
as a process is no doubt from the point of view of social relationships between speakers and hearers. It is at
this level that we must situate Martin Rojo's line of argumentation in terms of an interplay between the
conflicting demands of privacy and alliance. Such demands determine, amongst other things, the
establishment, and the crossing of borders between group identities, the pace at which 'information' is
exchanged, the types of information that are exchanged or held back, etc.
Adequately captured by the same contrast are notions such as positive vs. negative face or power vs.
solidarity and their influence on the progression of a conversation. A less direct correlation may be found
with two other forces underlying discourse dynamics, viz. involvement vs. detachment - less direct because
these may depend on highly personal characteristics not determined by the social relationship, or on
aspects of social, cultural or ethnical identity barely accessible to the language user's consciousness.
In addition, there are the speaker-hearer's personal states of mind. Wishes (e.g. the speaker's wish that the
hearer would do something) can be shown to 'develop' throughout the interaction. Similarly, some of the
most dynamic ingredients of a speech event are knowledge and belief. Basic analytical notions related to
knowledge and belief can even be defined in terms of differences related to the temporal dimension of
communication. E.g. whereas 'presuppositions' are typically aspects of knowledge which the speaker
assumes to be shared with the hearer (i.e. they belong to S&H's common knowledge prior to the utterance),
'conversational implicatures' belong to the speaker's world of knowledge before the utterance and become
part of the hearer's knowledge after a successful uptake of the utterance.
Whereas the foregoing examples are all to be situated on the level of the micro-processes of face-to-face
communication, there are also aspects of communicative dynamics definable with reference to 'objects of
adaptation' on a macro-level. Synchronically, there is the issue of the use of a switching between language
variants depending on a wider societal context and on the dynamics of group relations. The conflict
between the needs to preserve privacy and to establish alliances does not only play a role on a micro-level,
but it is an essential ingredient of group dynamics. There is even an interesting inverse correlation between
the two levels of application: alliance between members of one group often entails privacy (if not hostility)
vis-à-vis other groups.
Diachronically, communicative dynamics is involved in language change in relation to societal changes.
Again, some processes can be distinguished along a temporal dimension; thus, for instance, pidginization
and creolization are distinguished on the basis of the succession of generations of speakers (where a Creole
is established as soon as a pidgin is learned as a mother tongue).
(ii) Definable with reference to levels of adaptation
At the level of the sign system, language has a basic time.-related property: linearity. It is because of the
linearity of language that sequencing is so important for communication; and sequencing, which may vary
according to (lie charnel of communication, the chosen code, the speech event and discourse type (four
other levels of adaptation) is crucial for interpretation in relation to language- and culture-dependent
communication styles.
At the level of the communication channel, oral vs. written communication show an entirely different
relation to time or the temporal dimension, which mainly results in differences at the level of discourse
organization: constraints on coherence and cohesion, digression, etc. Taking conversation as an example of
a discourse type, the following phenomena are clearly involved: the sequencing of adjacency pairs; the
timing of backchannel cues: the switching between codes; the entire turntaking system; repairs; etc.
At the level of 'meaning' or propositional content, the everchanging interplay between implicitness and
explicitness, or between given vs. new information forms one of the most essential ingredients of communicative dynamics.
Related to the level of meaning, but with implications for choices at the levels of syntax and morphology,
there is a cluster of linguistic phenomena one might think of first when talking about a 'temporal
dimension': phenomena related to tense and time deixis.
Still at the level of syntax, word order is clearly time-related, not only because it is another manifestation of
linearity, but also because it is clearly subject to memory and planning constraints.
At the sound level of spoken discourse, we find features of prosody such as emphasis which are meaningful
only in relation to preceding and following elements.
Moving from micro- to macro-analysis, the dynamics of language contact - with implications on many
levels of adaptation - moves into focus.
(iii) Definable with reference to degrees of adaptation
Conversational inferencing is very much determined by and determines the flow of communication. It is a
process which varies considerably according to different degrees of accessibility which, in turn, have a
considerable influence on the speed with which the process takes place, with which its having taken place
can bee assessed by the interlocutor, and with which misguided inferences can be repaired.
(iv) Definable with reference to functions of adaptation
From the point of view of the actual functioning of linguistic choices, the strategic use of linguistic features
- as the word 'strategy' itself suggests - is a prime characteristic of communicative dynamics. To restrict this
paragraph to the example od presuppositions: if presuppositions are used strategically rather than in their
surface function (which is to signal common ground), the content of what they implicitly communicate
becomes less directly accessible so that a possible reaction may be delayed; if a reaction is not what the
speaker is trying to avoid or delay, the strategic use of a presupposition (i.e. when there is no reason to
believe that its content belongs to the common ground of the interlocutors) may even be a simple timesaving device, and hence obviously related to the temporal dimension or dynamics of communication.
4. Illustration
In order to make this brief overview of properties and determinants of communicative dynamics less
abstract, let us try to illustrate its
implications with an extremely brief encounter which turns out to be much more 'dynamic' - if we think
about it in the above terms - than a first look might suggest. The example is the following (where'*' marks
emphasis)
/Situation: coffeeshop in California in 1981/
Customer /just coming in/ to waitress:
"Is this non-smoking?
" Waitress: "You can *use it as non-smoking.
" Customer /sits down!: "Thanks."
There is no way to make sense of this conversation without taking into account historical time and the
dynamics of group relations at a macro level. By the time the exchange took place, non- smokers had
created a strong group identity for themselves in opposition to smokers, and they had been successful in
defining their rights and in enforcing them in some areas of social life. As one of the results, most
coffeeshops and restaurants had created non-smoking sections. By asking "Is this non-smoking?", the
customer (a woman in this example.) identifies herself as belonging to the group of non-smokers and
declares her intention to make use of the established privilege not to be bothered by smokers. Though it
would be possible for a smoker to ask the same question with the intention to find out what section he or
she had to avoid, this would clearly be a marked choice (in contrast to "Is this smoking?", which is what
one would expect the smoker to ask).10
Though "Is this non-smoking?" is basically a question asking for information (with the implications
sketched regarding group identity and awareness of group rights), it is not responded to as a question. The
illocutionary dynamics of the exchange consists in the following process: the customer's original question
is transformed into a request by the waitress's response which leads to the customer's thanking for the
granting of a request which was not really made to begin with. The following phenomena are characteristic
of the process sketched in these rudimetary terms.
With reference to the social interaction context (viewed in our framework as an 'object' of adaptation), we
observe a high degree of cooperativeness on the part of the waitress. She could simply have
answered negatively as in (1), a response which is now given implicitly.
(1) "No. it isn't."
But this response, which would have given the question the treatment it deserved in its capacity as a
question, would probably have been perceived by the customer as uncooperative or even rude, since the
question was obviously asked to check out the facts which would determine where she was going to sit
down. A somewhat higher degree of cooperativeness would have yielded a combination of the negative
response with an apology on behalf of the owners for not yet having institutionalized non- smokers' rights,
as in (2) or (3) - the latter being the more apologetic of the two.
(2) "I'm sorry; we don't have a non-smoking section bet."
(3) "I'm sorry; we have not et decided where to put the non-smoking section.
But the waitress goes further. She does not only accept the customer's self-identification as a non-smoker,
and she does not only signal recognition of the legitimacy of non-smokers' rights (which is also implicit in
(2) and (3)), but she demonstrates her willingness to take action immediately to correct earlier neglect.
Skipping all the intermediary steps, the waitress transforms the customer's question about the location of
the non-smoking section immediately into a request for the protection of non-smokers' rights. This
transformation is achieved by a violation of linguistic norms at the word level underscored by prosodic
means (two phenomena describable with reference to levels of adaptation). The violation consists in a
slightly aberrant use of the verb use. "Using x as y" normally involves 'action' of some sort, while in this
example non-action is involved. Literally, "You can *use it as non-smoking" gives the addressee the
permission not to smoke at the table where she wants to sit down. Obviously, this cannot be the intention.
The aberrant usage of the verb to use is underscored by the emphasis placed on 'use' in the sentence. It is
this aspect of the prosody of the turn which makes the sentence carry the implicit information that the
coffeeshop does not yet have an established distinction between a smoking and a non-smoking section
(which is the response to the question asked by the customer in the first turn).
The example clearly demonstrates the strategic uses of presupposition (cf. functions of adaptation).
Presupposition serves as a shortcut, a time-saving device; butt at the same time it signals the degree of
cooperativeness (i.e. (he waitress skips over the statement of the problem related to the customer's question
and immediately proposes a solution), while it may also avert criticism (which could he voiced against an
explicit statement of the fact that the coffeeshop does not yet have an institutionalized non-smoking
section).
The end result of the exchange signalled by Thanks" is the customer's acceptance of the waitress's utterance
as a commitment to keep smokers away from the customer. The section in which the customer is sitting
down has thus been declared to function as a non-smoking section for all immediate practical intents and
purposes. "Thanks", the customer's expression of gratitude for the granting of the request that was not made
originally, also signals that the customer has the expectation that the waitress will keep smokers at a
distance.
Much of what is involved in the making of these communicative choices can be assumed to take place at
best at a semi-conscious level the customer is consciously looking for the information she needs, she must
also be conscious of the inevitable self- identification which is implicit in her question, but probably she is
barely conscious of the fact that asking the question may be taken as an attempt to actively enforce the
rights of the group she belongs to; the waitress is consciously trying to accommodate the customer's needs
as well as she can, but in her eagerness to cooperate she takes some shortcuts which lead to - probably
unconscious or at least unintended - violations of linguistic norms. Once the waitress's turn is over,
however, all the implications become accessible.
We hope to have shown that even the briefest encounter may be highly dynamic from a communicative
point of view, and that such dynamics can be profitably investigated if the systematicity of a more or less
coherent pragmatic framework is handled. Whether it is possible to use any of the properties we pointed out
as a descriptive starting point in such a way that all others can be directly realted to it, remains a subject for
further scrutiny.
NOTES
1 This paper was written in the context of a research program supported by the Belgian National Fund for
Scientific Research, the Belgian National Lottery and a Belgian government grant (IUAP-11, contract number
27). It benefits from comments by Jan- Ola Ostman on a partial draft, and preceding discussion with Luisa
Martin Rojo.
2 The criticism has persisted most vigorously in the tradition of conversation analysis. A recent sampling of the
debating points is to he found in J. R. Searle et al. (1991).
3 A full-length discussion of this background is to be found in Verschueren (1987).
4 As suggested by Jan-Ola Ostman (personal communication), negotiability also implies the indeterminacy of
the choices made: making one choice does not always and not necessarily exclude the alternatives from the
world of interpretation; speakers simply operate under the constraint of having to make choice no matter
whether it corresponds exactly to one's needs.
5 The phrase 'basic human communicative needs' may lead to a number of misunderstandings. Hence the
following caveats (to which more should probably be added): 'basic' does not mean 'general' (i.e. the
communicative needs in question always arise in context and may therefore be quite specific); the positive
formulation concerning the 'satisfaction' of those communicative needs does not preclude the incidence of
serious communication failure, nor is it intended to deny the possibility of a need for non-communication or
even miscommunication.
6 This ad hoc term is a clumsy way of trying to avoid the suggestion that either the individual human mind or
society would be primary. We realize that we have been unsuccessful in trying to avoid a mechanical overtone which is unintentional and undesirable.
7 Here again the terminology may lead to serious misinterpretation. In the social sciences a functionalist
approach is usually contrasted to an interpretative approach, the former being associated with an emphasis on
mechanical processes, the latter with deeper 'meaning'. It should be clear that when pragmatics is defined as a
functional perspective on language and language use, it is more analogous to interpretivism than to
functionalism in the social sciences. In relation to language, it would be confusing to define a pragmatic
perspective as 'interpretive' because this would bias the attention towards only one pole of the interpretationproduction dichotomy - both of which are equally important in language use.
8 When a version of this paper was presented at the International Symposium on Institutions, Sociocultural Life
and Cultural Dynamics (Ghent, May 15 - 17 1991), Chris Sinha proposed an analogy between the traditional
distinction paradigm-syntagm and an approach based on the making of choices (from a range of 'paradigmatic'
options) over time (the 'syntagmatic' dimension).
9 There are numerous other contributions to the problem, see, e.g. Ivana Markova 8 Klaus Foppa's recent
collection The Dynamics of Dialogue.
10 One can also assume that ten years later, when smoking sections have become marked in the part of the
world in question as opposed to non-smoking sections (which were still the marked case in 1981), non smokers
would assume a place to be mainly non- smoking, so that the question would lose much of its relevance (while
"Is this smoking?" might be a more crucial question to ask).
REFERENCES
Markova, Ivana & Klaus Foppa (eds.). 1990. The Dynamics of Dialogue. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Martin Rojo. Luisa. The jargon of delinquents and the study of conversation. Manuscript.
Searle, John R. et al. 1991. (On) Searle on conversation. Compiled and introduced by Herman Parcel 8 Jef
Verschueren. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Verschueren, Jef. 1987. Pragmatics as a Theory of Linguistic Adaptation. (_ IPrA Working Document 1.)
Antwerp: International Pragmatics Association.
Weiser, Ann. 1974. Deliberate ambiguity. In Papers from the 10th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic
Society, pp. 723-731.
Politeness as an Effect of the Interaction Between the Form
and Content of a Request and the Context of Utterance
Olga Kunst-Gnamuš, Institute for Educational Research at the University of
Ljubljana, Slovenia
1. What are illocutionary acts of request?
When determining the types of illocutionary acts I apply the criteria developed by Searle in his study
"Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts" (Searle 1979, 1951: 1-29). These criteria describe the speaker's
intentional mental states and his relationship to the propositional content and to the hearer. The most
important among them is the world-to-word direction of fit which is of two basic types: the words describe
actual states or try to fit the latter to the content expressed ; intention i or illocutionary point; wish w (or
want); and beliefs B which concern either the reality or the speaker. These values can be expressed in the
formula:
In terms of the described criteria, requests can be defined as illocutionary acts whose intention (i) is to
make the hearer fulfill or not the wished act, because the speaker wants/does not want this act (+J- w), and
because he is convinced (B) that the hearer is capable of performing the wished act. The speaker wants to
fit the world to the words.
The described elements of intentional mental states can be expressed directly (D), i.e. by using
performative verbs in the present indicative (1 request/demand; 1 ask. I forbid), by means of grammar, the imperative of the verb that describes the content of the wished act (open, go, bring), with a modal verb
of wish or constraint (I want, you must); or indirectly (I), i.e. in the form of so-called conventional
indirectness, by asking a yes/no question that asks about capability or readiness (could/would you), or by
different ways of hinting which indirectly present the wished picture of reality (The dishes are not done.
The room has not been cleaned for weeks. Have you got any money on you, etc.). It can be stated that a
language has numerous selective means of expression available to express requests. From the point of view
of empirical research, a series of questions arise, e.g., what means of expression are available in a given
language; are strategies of making requests universal or culturally and linguistically determined; are the
forms to express requests idiomatic or do they presuppose a "generative" formation; which factors
influence the choice of expression; is the choice fully subjective or is it significantly determined by the
social context so that social groups differ in terms of frequency and use of a certain selective possibility.
Even supposing that the number of selective means of expression is either finite or very limited, it can be
doubtlessly presupposed that the choice is to a large extent left to the speaker and based on his judgement
of which strategy will be most effective in a given context.
If the criteria described can determine the type of illocutionary act, they definitely do not suffice for
determining the most effective or the most probable choice in a given context; they do not even allow a
decision whether a request be expressed directly or indirectly. The illocutionary acts expressed by 1 ask or
I demand presuppose common values for w, i, B., the difference between them (the first leaves the decision
about the act to the hearer whereas the second one is compulsory) defines the social relation between S and
H. A demand can be expressed only from a position of power and superiority. Furthermore, it can be
observed that people of the same age, e.g. schoolmates, communicate in a direct way (Lend me the pen;
Give me the pencil); on the other hand, in this way it is impossible to address somebody whom we do not
know and where there exists a large social distance between us and him. Thus the criteria that influence the
choice of the form of request must be complemented by new values: the social relationship between S and
H, power and status (P), and distance (D). In equal relationships the expression is direct. Some superior
positions require the use of polite fomulas; others, e.g. status in hierarchically-organized institutions such as
the army, however, require the use of directly expressed requests.
The relationship of the interests (I) of both participants toward the propositional content of the act is also
important. The relationship of interests can be either relatively equally balanced or in conflict. S may want
the act because it is to his advantage, whereas H wants to avoid ii as it is not in agreement with his wishes.
There are also situations in which the communication of interests is ambiguous.
This issue is also related to the influence of the rank of imposition (R) imposed on the hearer by the
request. If I say to the hearer Have a nice time during the holidays, the wished act is to his benefit; if I ask
him for a large or small amount of money, the act is to his cost. How to express the request depends on the
rank of imposition inflicted upon the hearer. A series of studies call attention to the fact that sex (S) also
influences the utterance of requests: women are more prone to using politer forms.
The criteria that determine the type of speech act as such must also be complemented by variable criteria
that depend on the context of utterance, i.e. the relationship between S and H (values P, D, S) and the
values related to the propositional content and its rank of imposition. These values do not influence the
determination of the type of illocutionary act; however, they influence the choice of form with which it is
expressed. These are values that are not polite to express, and can be evaluated on the basis of the context.
Criteria for the type of illocutionary act: i, w, B. Criteria which determine the choice: P,D,S,R,I.
A number of authors (e.g., S. Blum-Kulka) have studied the effect produced by differently expressed
requests. The effect can be described by the value: politeness (P). The relationship between the form of a
request and politeness as a rule is such that direct forms are considered less polite and indirect ones politer.
The following study will qualify the validity of this generalization.
2. Objective, hypotheses, and method
The objective of the study was to determine how the evaluation of politeness is influenced by the form in
which the request is expressed (F), the context of utterance (C), i.e. the relationship between the S and H (P
and D), rank of imposition which the speaker imposes upon the hearer (R).
The basic hypothesis is that the evaluation of politeness is influenced by the form of the request; direct
requests are evaluated as less polite than those expressed indirectly. However, evaluation of politeness is
not merely a function of form, but also a function of the context of utterance and the content of the request,
i.e. the rank of imposition imposed on H by S. The politeness effect is thus a function of three basic values:
form (F), context of utterance (C), and rank of imposition (R). Values F, C, R are not independent values; F
is dependent on values C and R. Its role is to balance the hierarchic relationships between S and H, and the
effect of this balance is value P. The functional relationship is as follows; if a speaker, who is in a superior
position and has power and status that allow him to express requests with binding power in direct form,
chooses an indirect form, it produces a greater politeness effect than in the case when an indirect form is
used by a speaker without the above-mentioned social values. The effect of politeness is not only a function
of form. The effect of politeness is also generated by a refusal to use forms that express superiority and
compulsion. In this case, politeness effects are cumulative: the politeness effect of the indirect form is
added to the politeness effect which is a result of refusing to use potentially possible forms of expressing
compulsion.
An inverse relationship can be detected between the form and rank of imposition which S imposes on H. In
the case when the request is in the hearer's interest, even directly expressed requests produce a polite effect.
The politeness effect of the form and rank of imposition on the hearer are in inverse ratio. Value F is also
balanced by the disagreement of interests on the cost-benefit scale. Indirect forms mitigate the rank of
imposition, therefore requests that are in the interest of the hearer can be expressed directly without being
impolite.
Research method
The hypotheses were empirically tested. The test population consisted of students from the third and fourth
grades (N = 219) at the following secondary schools: natural science (n = 80), teacher training (n = 67),
and electrotechnical (n = 72). The test population was 17-18 years of age.
The request was expressed in 12 variants:
D 1: The use of the imperative: Vrni/Vrnite mi moj kuli. Give me back my pen.
D 2: The use of the imperative together with the vocative: Mihec/Tovarišica. vrni/vrnite mi moj
kuli. Mike/Miss, give me back my pen.
D 3: The use of a performative verb of demand: Zahtevam da mi vrneš/vrnete moj kuli.
I demand that you give me back my pen.
D 4: Yes/no question on the hearer's will, readiness for the act: Ali bi mi hotel/hoteli vrniti moj kuli?
Would you give me back my pen?
It is presupposed that the hearer can perform the act if he wants to.
D 5: The conventional form of the yes/no question:
Ali bi mi lahko vrnil/vrnili moj kuli? Can you give me back my pen.?
The speaker does not presuppose the capability of the act, he only asks about it.
D 6: The negative form of the yes/no question: Ali mi ne bi mogel/mogli vrniti mojega
kulija? Could you not give me back my pen? This form encourages a positive answer.
D 7: Expressing the request with the verb of demand: Moj kuli mi boš/boste moral/morali
vrniti. You will have to give me back my pen.
D 8: A declarative prediction of the hearer's act: Vrnil/vrnili mi boš/boste moj kuli. You
will give me back my pen.
D 9: Expressing a need:
Kuli potrebujem.
I need my pen.
D10: A hint:
Kuli sem ti/vam posodil. I lent you a pen.
D11: Expressing a wish: Rad bi nazaj svoj kuli.
I would like my pen back.
D12: A request:
Prosim, vrni/vrnite mi moj kuli. Give me back m pen, please.
Apart from the form of the request, we also modified the context of utterance, so that while the list of 12
forms remained constant, the speaker, the hearer, and the social relationships between them were altered.
Five different contexts were considered: Ca, Cb, Cc, Cd, Ce.
Ca: The teacher has forgotten his textbook in the staff room and cannot assign homework. He addresses
the student with the following requests: (the list of 12 forms of request follows). The speaker is the
teacher, the hearer the student. There is an unequal/hierarchical and institutional relationship between
them.
Cb: The student has lent his pen to the teacher so that the teacher can correct homework. Now he would
like to get it back. He addresses the teacher with the following words: (the list of 12 forms of request
follows). The relationship is the same as in the Ca context, except that the speaker is the student and the
hearer is the teacher. There is also a difference in the object content of the request: the teacher asked the
student for the student's object whereas the student is asking to get his own object back.
Cc: A student has lent a notebook to his schoolmate; now he needs it and would like it back. He
addresses his schoolmate with the following words: (the list of 12 forms of request follows). And equal
relationship of social proximity exists between the speaker and the hearer.
Cd: The teacher finds the open window disturbing, and he addresses the student with the following
words: (the list of 12 forms of request follows). The relationship is institutionalized and hierarchical as
in the Ca context.
Ce: Mother addresses her son/daughter with the following words: (the list of 12 forms of request
follows).
The list of 12 requests was constant in form; the requests followed in the same sequence.
The students received the following instructions: Evaluate which request is expressed more and which less
politely. Use marks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Give mark 1 to the least polite request and mark 7 to the most
politely expressed one.
3. Presentation of results and explanation
The mean values of politeness for individual forms of requests Dl- D12 were calculated in the context Cce, and their statistical significance was evaluated with test t.
Table 1. Average score of politeness (x) for requests D1-12 in contexts Ca-e and ranking (R) of requests
according to politeness.
x
requests xa R
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
2.758 9
4,146 5
1,087 12
5,708 2
6,032 3
4.187 4
2,091 10
1,753 11
2,822 8
3,489 6
3,393 7
6,553 1
x 44,018
xh R
x
R
2,009 10 2,973 11 2,247 10 2,721 10 2,553
3,064 7 4,192 5 3,562 6 4,073 6 3,825
1,160 12 1,379 12 1,233 12 1,340 12 1,238
5,100 3 5,123 3 5,475 3 5,315 4 5,344
5,836 2 5,785 2 5,795 3 5,630 2 5,816
3,995 4 4,311 4 4,174 5 4,151 5 4,182
2,251 9 3,242 10 2,630 9 2,808 8 2,605
1,776 11 2,384 9 1,763 11 2,320 11 2,008
2,895 8 3,881 7 2,973 8 3,361 7 3,186
3,356 6 3,689 8 3,479 7 2,799 9 3,363
3,361 5 4,128 6 5,183 4 5,589 3 4,350
6,333 1 6,361 1 6,594 1 6,594 1 6,487
10
6
12
3
2
5
9
11
8
7
4
1
41,137
xc R
47,447
xd R
45,105
xe R
46,680
3.1. The politeness effect of the form
Statistically, the evaluation of politeness is significantly dependent on the form. In all contexts the highest
score for politeness was given to performatively expressed requests (D12, x = 6.487). The closest score
was given to the yes/no question about capability for the act (D5, x = 5.816). In terms of politeness, these
two are statistically significantly different in all the contexts. Closest to these two forms is the yes/no
question asking about the will (D4, x = 5.344), then expressing wish (rad bi/I would like, D 11, x = 4.350),
and the negative form of the yes/no question (D6, x = 4.182); the last reaches the lowest score of
politeness of the yes/no questions. The asking and the yes/no questions expressing capability and will
constitute the upper politeness group, where the question about capability is evaluated as politer than the
question about will; the latter, however, is politer than the form expressed in the negative (ali bi mi ne
mogel/couldn't you). This form appears to contain a greater degree of compulsion, as it directs one toward
an affirmative answer. The differences among these forms are statistically significant in all contexts, such
that they do not constitute a homogeneous group of requests in terms of politeness.
According to politeness the following forms of requests rank the lowest: last was the performatively
expressed request (D3, x = 1.238), followed by the declarative forecast of the hearer's act (D8, x = 2.008),
the imperative form (D1, x = 2.553), and the request expressed with the modal verb of compulsion (D7, x =
2.605). It can be said that directly expressed requests with either grammatical or lexical means were
evaluated as least polite, and that lexically expressed compulsion has a stronger effect (I demand) than
grammatically expressed directness (verbal imperative form). It is interesting to note that the second place
in terms of impoliteness is occupied by the request expressed as a declarative forecast of the hearer's act.
This is a very compulsory form as it expresses the speaker's power to foretell what the hearer is going to do
in the future. The requests that take the 6th, 7th, and 8th place, considering the context, belong to the
medium group in terms of politeness. They are the imperative request mitigated by the use of the vocative
(Sir, give me back ..., D2, x = 3.825), and both indirectly expressed requests in a form of a hint (D10 Učbenik sem pozabil v zbornici/l forgot my textbook in the teachers' room, x = 3.368; D9 - Učbenik
potrebujem/l need the textbook, x = 3.186). The results indicate that the use of the vocative strengthens the
politeness of the imperative form, and that indirect requests expressed in the form of a hint are evaluated as
politer than those directly expressed, and at the same time less polite than the askings and conventional
requests in the form of yes/no questions. Here the data, correspond with the findings of 1. Blum-Kulka
(1987) who states that these forms are evaluated as less polite because of pragmatic opaqueness. Thus it
can be said that in requests the highest politeness effect is contained in conventional indirectness in the
form of yes/no questions. It is known that they convey the speaker's politeness and that the intention of the
message is in fact a request. Requests in the form of a hint expect the hearer himself to utter the request,
judging from the conversation about the speaker's needs. An explicit reference to need is considered less
polite than stating other circumstances that allow conclusions about the speaker's needs. An explication of
need appears most impolite in hierarchical and unequal relationships between S and H.
Verification was carried out on whether the evaluations of politeness of these forms in individual contexts
appear to be statistically significant. The statistical significance of differences between the mean values of
politeness x within individual contexts Ca-e were tried with test t. The majority of differences are
statistically highly significant.
The number of statistically insignificant differences in individual contexts make possible the conclusion
that relative to politeness, the context of social equality in family Ce is least sensitive since five variations
in the evaluation of politeness were statistically insignificant, and in the remaining contexts only one, two,
or three variations were insignificant.
3.2. Politeness effect of the form and the context of utterance
is context a factor that influences evaluation of the politeness of a list of requests equal in form? Context is
the factor that - given the same form - statistically significantly influences the mean value of politeness in
the list of twelve utterances equal in form. First it can be stated that the list of 12 forms was evaluated as
most polite in the equal social relationship of schoolmate-schoolmate (Cc, x = 47.447) and in the
relationship of social/domestic familiarity of mother-son/daughter (Ce, x = 46.680). The difference between
these two evaluations of politeness is not statistically significant.
The list is least politely evaluated in the relationship of social inequality, in the case when a socially
subordinate person, the student, addresses a superior, the teacher (Cb, x = 41.137). This value is the lowest
and statistically differs significantly from evaluations of politeness in all other contexts
In the Ca (x = 44.018) and Cd (x = 45.105) contexts, the acquired mean values of the scores statistically
differ significantly from each other as well as from scores in all other contexts.
It can be concluded that the politeness effect is statistically significantly dependent on the form of the
request and the context in which it is uttered. The same list of 12 forms of a request was considered by a
test population as most polite in equal social relationships and relationships of social equality in family
(schoolmate-schoolmate, motherson/daughter), and as less polite in unequal relationships as when a teacher
addresses the students. The list was evaluated as least polite in unequal relationships when a subordinate
addresses a superior e.g. student-teacher. In equal relationships less politeness is expected than in unequal
ones; from the subordinate member of a social relationship more politeness is expected than from the
superior one. Therefore politeness can be considered the function of the form and context of the utterance.
3.3. Evaluation of politeness and rank of imposition
Leech (1983) called attention to the fact that the politeness effect depends on the rank of imposition
imposed on the hearer by a request. The hearer evaluates the request from the point of view of cost-benefit
involved in the required act. Addressed by the same form, he considers the request to his benefit a politer
one. This hypothesis was tested empirically. A list of requests expressed in the imperative was composed,
only the content on the cost-benefit scale was changed (Leech 1983: cost-benefit scale). The form of the
requests did not change, all were expressed by an imperative, only their content changed. Table 2 shows
their form, content, and the evaluation of politeness attributed to them by a secondary- school mixed male
and female population.
Table 2. Average score (x) of politeness of the imperative form and different grades on the cost-benefit
scale by gender
Utterances
x
M
F
1..
Olupi krompir.
Peel the potatoes.
2,183
2,031
2,299
to the
hearer's
2.
Daj ml časopis.
2,388
2,189
2,598
cost
2,804
2,591
3,034
4,397
4,181
4,609
5,753
5,598
5,920
Give me the newspaper.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Sedi.
Sit down.
Poglej tote.
Look at this.
Vzemi, še en sendvič.
to the
Take another sandwich.
hearer's
Uživaj na počitnicah,
benefit
Enjoy your holidays.
6,146
5,976
6,356
x2 = 28,177, p <0,001
The table of average values of politeness indicates that the evaluation of the politeness of a request
expressed in the imperative form depends on the evaluation on the cost and benefit scale stemming from
the required act either for the speaker or the hearer. The relationship can be expressed in the following
statement: the more the act is to the hearer's cost, the more impolite it is considered. The act expressed in
the imperative Olupi krompir/Peel the potatoes is more burdening for the hearer than the act of Sedi/Sit
down. The former is considered, irrespective of form, as more polite than the second. The medium position
is held by the request Daj mi časopis/Give me the newspaper. The more the act is benefical to the hearer,
the higher evaluation of politeness of the respective form it obtains. The test population considered the
request Uživaj na počitnicah/Enjoy your holidays as the most polite, the request Vzemi še en sendvič/Take
another sandwich followed, and the last place in this group went to the request Poglej tole/Look at this.
The study confirms the role played by evaluation on the cost-benefit scale in pragmatic perception and
politeness effect. This is the reason why speakers as a rule do not formulate requests to their own benefit,
i.e. to the hearer's cost, in a direct form but rather in a indirect one. Thus the rank of imposition is mitigated
by the apparently free decision for the act. Requests to the hearer's benefit are formulated directly: Popij še
kozarček/Drink another glass; Vzemi še en sendvič/Take another sandwich; Oglasi se kaj/Came by soon.
The study confirmed the hypothesis that the relationship of interest toward the required act determines the
politeness effect of the form to such an extent that requests to the hearer may be expressed directly in the
imperative form without being considered impolite.
4. Conclusion
The study hypothesized that the concept of politeness is connected with a positive evaluating attitude. The
value attributed to the concept and its poor definition in terms of content led us to the idea that this is an
ideological concept which defines speech acts according to a value scale and not according to content.
We started from the hypothesis that politeness is an interactive effect of interdependent values: the form in
which the request is expressed, the social relationships between the speaker and the hearer, primarily the
relationships of equality and inequality, closeness and distance, social power or helplessness, and rank of
imposition imposed on the hearer. The hypotheses were confirmed. Politeness is a function of all three
values (F, C, R); they are not independent but rather interact. The findings in this study correspond with
those of J.Blum-Kulka (1987). Indirectly expressed requests have a greater politeness effect than those
directly expressed. Conventional indirect expressions are considered politer than the unconventional hunts.
The study also confirms the hypothesis that politeness is not only a function of the form but also of the
context of an utterance. The same form produces a greater politeness effect in equal relationships than in
unequal ones. The list is considered least polite in a situation where the subordinate member of a social
relationship addresses his superior (student-teacher), and the most polite in the situation of social equality
(schoolmate-schoolmate) and closeness (mother-son/daughter). In hierarchical relationships a greater
degree of politeness is expected.
This means that on a symbolic level the indirect forms help balance social differences and distance. The
effect of such balancing is politeness.
That politeness cannot be explained as a mere function of form can also be seen in the relationship between
form and interest. Requests in the hearer's interest can be expressed directly and still have a polite effect.
Therefore, the concept of politeness cannot he explained without taking into account the interaction of the
relationships between values F, C, and R. An important function of indirectly expressed requests appears to
be the balancing of incongruities between S and H, the difference in power, social distance, and the
perspective of interest as regards the content of the request. In cases where there is no social hierarchy (e.g.
among schoolmates), where it is institutionalized (in the army), or where the relationship of interest is
exempt to the greatest possible extent (language of science), indirectness and politeness are relatively
unimportant pragmatic values.
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