- Email: [email protected]
On the meanings of basic speech acts
253
M”‘. For another, H might come to hold that the: assertion means the opposite of Xc, Viz. that S ~MLSnot believe that p. Supp~: that l-i is quest~iG-~g S ;~nd that H is convinced that S is going to lie. So, when S answers witch ‘1 have never been to Jamaica’, for H this SA might mean that !; believes that he or he has been to Jamaica. Saying that p and not believing that ,n is .lot the same thing as,lying. A situation of S not believing that p can bc described in
While (i) through (iii) describe cognitive z,tates different from that of believing that (iv) depicts a total absence of cognitive states with regard to beliefs on p. Both (ii) and (iii) could be called situations of S re!‘raining from both believing and dnsbc!Wng. but in (iii) S also refrains from doubting. In both (iii I and (iv) the potential believer does not care about the beiicf. Yet, there at-l:two types of indifference. (iii) contains a belief about the non-inv&edness. In othkar word:, the mental system implies the tack of ir:itirest. In (iv) the mental system is ItOt involved. Each of these situations is compatible with the assertion that p. Sinrlt attributing an Me implies excluding these situations, let rle further characteiizc the circumstances in which the assertion that p can cooccur with ;he absence of the belief that ~0.Tt1er.zare four such circumstances. Firs of all, there is the case OC the 1::~. Lying I:: 4tter of S wanting H to .ittribirte the Me and of S assuming that hQwould agrz, .. 1ih S abo’lt what this M’ iooks like. The second feature is perhaps .&s obvious. When S says that Arice loves dais ~aci S is lymg, then S clearly wants fl to believe that S believes that Uce loves ::a%. S expects H to consider the Me to bt! one of S believing that Alice loves cats 2nd not (say) of S believing that Ali:e loves bats [2]. A :econd type of cooccurrence of an assertion that p and an absence of the belief that p is the case of irony, m :taphor, hyperbole, and the like. Here S believes that the context is clear enough for HI to figure out, first, that that S does net believe what he or she is asserting, and, secondly, whal S really believes. Both lying and stylistic devices such 7s irony illus:rate a situation of :3 wantmg to assert something that he or :;he does not believe. S may also be per!ectly hones! and ztraightforwarrl and y’:+ not believe what he asserts. Suppose that S believes that ‘cat’ is the English wo;.d for what S, H, and most other ~zop11~know to be a bat and thst S also believes thdi every speaker of English shares his or :i. r opinion ;bout the name of a bat. S is also con!vint;ed that Allice does not love real cats, but
p,
[a] The expectation
may not be MfUled. I will deal with this Me?.
or her assertion. S would not want to consider it as an actiurr, blat cnly as 2:Lcrp,-:r~ :hat happer-4. to him 01 her. ThZ above Should be sulficrent as ir partial description of the compatibility oj asserthg that p and yet not believing that p T.is compatibility is a prolrlcm fw thi: attribution of Me. The obvious remedy is to assume that S is in fact honest. straightforwehrd, lirlguistically competent, and responsible. These assumptions are very general, to the extent even that they are ofte I taken for granted. Hence hP is a very normaal type of meaning. Still, it can impugrled. As 1 have argued before, in certain contexts the very act of asserting that p may well mean that S does not believe that 0. .%rthermore, an assertion may lack a mc:ning at the epistemic level. This does rl’lt hlp!y that il is %eaningkss. 1~ kt, for alI the cases irk which S says t hdf Alice loves cat:,, whether S believes i.1:or not) ihe speech event mlzans that S speaks L-IS [fS lidkm
t/m* A r’id2 :i. PCS cats
speaks a5 if S beli that ;U is a I’Qflld’$lKmmzrling (M’t of ai ilSS~~tiO~1. the term ‘meanii3g’ Is found 013jectionable. B can answer IhiS obiec Con by remal king t%e following. -First of ah, there is nothing wrong ;lbout employing a term in a way that is different from ordinary parlance, as long as one mething ,hat one would not, at %t eight, be inclined to consider a meauing. Third, there rlAly is a point in calling S’s 29eaking as i.r S belleves th;~t p a meaning. This becc:ltnes apparent when one consAers a fl~reign language. I’+ tl:ase who d.o not !cnow Th~;i. tho SA presented b:~ pEr,Tlnnru~ckaj,u~itw~~~~?~~~l (‘1 dim roof Eike the Thai L.nil!n1 ‘) is probably impossible to interprelt. According (9 my cfaim, it is not ~o::i-~’ .:r ustW to sny that it is a very inqm-~~nt iu~ee~p~~~a~u’wspep, 3 discovery cst’.V.W._V,,,~‘, shot~1d c;:le conclude C beheves that S does not Iike from an arbitrary acoustic event that S speaks as if L Thai, Confronted \vith a langu,~ge thLC one knows, the decision thst a IzertGn configuration of sounds is to be t;sten as 2 speaking-as-if S believes that p is a matter of course Most often, there is w conscious decision. This makes it understaarda~~k why it is relatrvely hard and :urpris~g to t nk of Vne idea that S qeaks 83 if S believes that p iis a rcsuit of a starch for meaning. Syl:nking as ii’ one believes scnme%rarg is a procedure of pronouncing the r@t words in the apyrupktc way, Qnd iblh~ NS a g~~irntsrr. It IS,3ndeniaGle, however, that speakers oft’tztr neglect 1iragW8ic convetItit3ns earl that their acts are still A corhsion Of the 1’1t’4Gngful. R$? ;tlready en6:cluntered a RBoc il~USt~,lBi~Il. an interpretation This is a type of IrrmlErlgs of ‘c..?“~ dfd %:~t‘ &.~es not p~echde n&take that (3~s IW SOW up tin the surf~e. Other mistakes do, like ir ‘Mice That S
1 dxqx
my usage 4
the case of the wqyammaticaS statement, there is the extra cowplica~ion what tlge idea that ‘blats’ stands for ‘bats’ and rlot, for instawe, for ‘brats’ and ‘blasts’, is sheer guesswork. If pressed for an irrefutable interpretation, I+ might then conclude that both assertions mean, ilf nothing else, that S spcraksus ifs imerrds JKIspeak 0s if S b&eves that Alice loves bats Because of the similarity to ‘speaking a~ if one believes”, it could also be called a !inmisric- mealhg @I”). While M’ is clue to srricl adherence to the gram]-nar, M” is a matter of SD$CZor loose adherence. There is no grammar for loose acccrdance. it domesnot belong to the linguistic competence of H that H can connect every ungrammatical assertron to its grakTm~atica1blueprint. So we have to deny irrefutability to anythiq: that does not inherit this property fr0.m the level of ‘speaking as if one believes’. T.l-JS ‘Alice loves bats’, but not ‘Alice loves blats’, irrefutably means that S .qecaks r s if S intends to speak a:, if S believ,cs that Alice loves bats. For a “Mats type asseitLJn, the irrcfut.lbL sen2.e is restricted to S’s speaking as if S intends to speak a: 1:‘S beiieves that p’ whiie p may be partially or compietely undetermined. ‘T‘hismeMng is, of course, shared by the grammatical statement. It is, therefore, the lrrefuieble meaning of an assertion. 2 Basis rpexh ucbs wdl be (i) assertions as well 3”.b
i. v.d. . luwera
/ On
the cnearutrgs
of basic speech acts
251
The first description had beliefs as its point of rGxc:n~e. K wanting shoul3 be takzn as a second basic IWegov, then the non-assertive SAs majr be approached in terms of wanting, ho. TIN results are reasonable. First. of all, an optative-iml)erative SA seems to be a way r:lf speaki -1gas ii’ one wants somet.hing. In s:iying ‘Stop!’ or ‘If only he wcluld stop”, S q-pears ro want somebody to stop. Second&~, the. interrogative seems to be a t?l2t’ler of speaking as if one ~143ntssomething a!; well. Notice that what is wanted, is a f&$ ‘Tshe stopping now?’ is a vcay of talking as if S wants to know whether sotne!~lod:~is stoppmg, in other words, a speaking-ax-it S wants to hoZd a specific: belief with rr:spect to somebody’s stopping [4], We also have a vocabulary to account for the secondav difference between UI imperative and an optative. WC need wantings and hearers. Jr! the imperative F, speaks as if S wants som&Gng from J-i. For the optative, on the othtar kand, these is no appeal for any one person. to respond to the wanting. ic annrnqrh Th -&a*” Yyya”U”LI
JP~VPC tin rln-lh+ Ia” “VSVL
aYaL.YLI
l ~hn~a+ UUUUL
oha c+.~)~rne nF L&Lb JLQbcnJ VI
ma++arnm.-am Ul.L~lQll~G3
r\#’ *ha ur IllG
+-r-s typ’c
61 . ..n m+ L WQlll
to know whether John went home’, and ‘I wish John went home’. ‘irhese SAs show the lexicalization of what is directly expressed in interrogative ana optative-imperative SAs. They :ue ;,urel:y assertive. Giving them this label, +hough. does not m,ean that they cannIt firlfti the same function as related interrogatives md optativeirnpcratives. Ler me illu itrate thic +‘Lrsome SAs that involve a wis!~ ‘I wish John went home’ and ‘If only jai, went Rome’ can be used for the samI: purpose. Three remarks need to be made, however. First, ‘I wish John wer!t home’ can be used in other contexts, too. It cou;d be a statement a:~out an habitual Hish, as “Every evening I wish Johm werrt home’. So the optativc’s typical meaning is not QZWJ~ pwent . Within the irrefutable meaning perspective, 11: i i a szcorrtl reason why ‘1 wish John went home c;lnnor be called an optatiie 2: y ia follows -- and this is my second point - that one rbeeds a different. type 01”analysis frcm what is neaded ft?r simple assertives, imerrogatives, or optative-imperatives, if one wants 10 accouilt for the SA meaning of wishing that is often present in ‘I wish John went home’ [7]. Third, these arguments are not invalidatecI by the potentially higher frequency of basically assertive wishes, i.e. assertions tl- at S wishes something. The analysis does not imply that an optative SA is S‘s most i nportaat means of expressing a wish. Optative-iPnperatilres, interrogatives, ar.\ ::yc:i;ives are basic in a very special sense. As the foregoing remarks have already she #wn, the classification of a cert ati SA as basic disclose:; a part of its medng, but it might xt bt LLJIc most impw tant part. If one ma:mtains that ‘If wish that John would go home’ is an assertion one misses thb? vita! point that it is also o;ten a wish. Yet it is a wish in virtue of being very peculiar type of assertion, I&. 21itatement about a wish of the speaker. [6] The formulation cc,ntainbg the verb ‘kn NJ sounds better. Here the problem of klrokvledge curdbelief i;lppeilrs. [ 71 For some suggestiouo,ser:Van der Au wega(1878).
becauseit &WS me to acccuat tjr 5’s Werarm.
IIt
rnesnir~g something ~ltetz S produces ,m is Ckice”s t20WzaQ:rCP! M-lever’s tr262,miFig. Let us havr: a closer IQ& at
M’. 1 WOLldlike to equate the expression ‘S means that p’ with - restricting myself
in what follows xo assertions - 3 intends to speak as if S believes that p’. What S intends tc dc ~a lo produce whr t S thinks is the sppsopriate conventional behavior for expressing the belief that p. Of course, S’s opinion on wh:ct constitutes the appropriate conl~entilxutl behavior fc,r the b&f 2. question :ney be mist&en, which generally maker, it hardi r for M to grasp what S means. Somethirng more needs to be said about eonventimuzh@. h xction 1, the conventionality I needed was grammaticality. It appears, however, that this concept is too narrow. T’hwe al1.e other hnguistic conventions thm the properly grammatical ones. There is a host. I:jf stylistic rules one may employ to mean sanlething. So when S ironicahy s;lyz tha( Alice was ;! i.;enius, S may well mean th:lt .jJice was a fool. This shows that there are two noticjns of speaking-as-if. ‘The first is (hat oi grammar,,.-I rl., nd.n---l nn1rnw3*r2 LSI%n*r:r.r /n~rant:rrn ~U~~"l"~U U~lIQYIUl ~*pmuu,l&pif, dlhu LIIC JC;LUIIU dkiiS i0 Gditriior that is ruied by linguistic conventions in general (speakin&-as-if). Note that it i; only speaking,as-if that can possibly appear as the irrefutable meaning on the la!’level. ‘Alice was a genius’ still irrefutably means that S speaks, as if S believes tha: Alice was a genius. It may ref;ttably mean rhat S speaks, as if S believes that Alice was a fmi. n-rother vords., S st!Jl always asserts that Alice was a genius, thoqh S may not dways mean it. Wheu S means that p, S intends ts speak, as it’s believes that p. Accrrding to this analysis, when H makes a p~~onounce~~nt on whar S means, H does nr,t commit him- or herself on RI’. Me o. W_ That is, rn clajrrkrg that S means that ~1 H doe: IG say whether in fact S exceed; III spslaking,-as-if, whether S believes or whether 17. Furthermore, since the conte~ i 1’1 ol’ the belief is characterized in tcrras of H’s criteria. it is perfectly al! right ; H to say thar S means tkt (say) Ake Io~es cats, while, in fact, S says that Ah~e love:; bats, where ‘bats’, be,cause of a slip of the tongue or because sf a lexical mix-up, reti y stands for ‘cats’. So much for the analysis of utterer’s meamng. It is differen; from what Grice (1957) believe:; S to intend whl:n he means something. Let me end this paper with a short comparison. According to G-ice’s earliest work on ut”;erer’s meaning (G-ice 195i), 5 in tends thy utterance to lsraduce :x~rneeffect in an auCi~:rrceby means ‘of he recognition of this intentilorl. Firsi of 41, i believe (~~8 :lh Searle 1969: 47) that this effrxt is the understmdirlg or” the utterance. This can be tlzxribed as a belief of H i:bOtIt the meaning of the utterance. At Beast with .respel:t to assertions, Grice (I 97 1: 5% comes falirly clax EQthis position. For him thl: rtffect is that I-l should think xhat S believes something. Here, his view differs ii-cm mine in that 1 put the u:terer‘s belief t.hwojr tile refutability examination. But the similarity is more i:nportant. Under both accclt~nts, it is H’s task to acquire h tieliaefconcerning a belid of 5. SO we at least pazti;.fUy agree as to whak is the effect of the utterarxe, bui not whether it is a cotnpclnent of the utterer’s meming or not _ The main dlifference is precisely
ckilx, G-ix,
H.?. 3957. Meaning. 1 re Philosophical Review 6t.. 377- .a88. f1.P. 1971 . ‘Utt:rer’s mcanicg, sentence-meiin!nf:, and lord-me,
ning’. In: J.R. Scarle, cd., ‘Kae phdosophy of ianglage. London: Oxforri ‘.lniversit Y Press. pi. 54-70. Se;,:le, J.K. 1969. Sper :h acts. Carubridge: Cambridge Universi :, Press. ’ Va~r der kuwera, J. 19”8. Indirect qwech acts revisited. AntWe+: I!niveil.ity of Antwelp (I.JIA) (= AnXeP# Papers irr Linguistics 16) (Reprinted try thz lndiana University Linguistic8s Club.)
M”‘. For another, H might come to hold that the: assertion means the opposite of Xc, Viz. that S ~MLSnot believe that p. Supp~: that l-i is quest~iG-~g S ;~nd that H is convinced that S is going to lie. So, when S answers witch ‘1 have never been to Jamaica’, for H this SA might mean that !; believes that he or he has been to Jamaica. Saying that p and not believing that ,n is .lot the same thing as,lying. A situation of S not believing that p can bc described in
While (i) through (iii) describe cognitive z,tates different from that of believing that (iv) depicts a total absence of cognitive states with regard to beliefs on p. Both (ii) and (iii) could be called situations of S re!‘raining from both believing and dnsbc!Wng. but in (iii) S also refrains from doubting. In both (iii I and (iv) the potential believer does not care about the beiicf. Yet, there at-l:two types of indifference. (iii) contains a belief about the non-inv&edness. In othkar word:, the mental system implies the tack of ir:itirest. In (iv) the mental system is ItOt involved. Each of these situations is compatible with the assertion that p. Sinrlt attributing an Me implies excluding these situations, let rle further characteiizc the circumstances in which the assertion that p can cooccur with ;he absence of the belief that ~0.Tt1er.zare four such circumstances. Firs of all, there is the case OC the 1::~. Lying I:: 4tter of S wanting H to .ittribirte the Me and of S assuming that hQwould agrz, .. 1ih S abo’lt what this M’ iooks like. The second feature is perhaps .&s obvious. When S says that Arice loves dais ~aci S is lymg, then S clearly wants fl to believe that S believes that Uce loves ::a%. S expects H to consider the Me to bt! one of S believing that Alice loves cats 2nd not (say) of S believing that Ali:e loves bats [2]. A :econd type of cooccurrence of an assertion that p and an absence of the belief that p is the case of irony, m :taphor, hyperbole, and the like. Here S believes that the context is clear enough for HI to figure out, first, that that S does net believe what he or she is asserting, and, secondly, whal S really believes. Both lying and stylistic devices such 7s irony illus:rate a situation of :3 wantmg to assert something that he or :;he does not believe. S may also be per!ectly hones! and ztraightforwarrl and y’:+ not believe what he asserts. Suppose that S believes that ‘cat’ is the English wo;.d for what S, H, and most other ~zop11~know to be a bat and thst S also believes thdi every speaker of English shares his or :i. r opinion ;bout the name of a bat. S is also con!vint;ed that Allice does not love real cats, but
p,
[a] The expectation
may not be MfUled. I will deal with this Me?.
or her assertion. S would not want to consider it as an actiurr, blat cnly as 2:Lcrp,-:r~ :hat happer-4. to him 01 her. ThZ above Should be sulficrent as ir partial description of the compatibility oj asserthg that p and yet not believing that p T.is compatibility is a prolrlcm fw thi: attribution of Me. The obvious remedy is to assume that S is in fact honest. straightforwehrd, lirlguistically competent, and responsible. These assumptions are very general, to the extent even that they are ofte I taken for granted. Hence hP is a very normaal type of meaning. Still, it can impugrled. As 1 have argued before, in certain contexts the very act of asserting that p may well mean that S does not believe that 0. .%rthermore, an assertion may lack a mc:ning at the epistemic level. This does rl’lt hlp!y that il is %eaningkss. 1~ kt, for alI the cases irk which S says t hdf Alice loves cat:,, whether S believes i.1:or not) ihe speech event mlzans that S speaks L-IS [fS lidkm
t/m* A r’id2 :i. PCS cats
speaks a5 if S beli that ;U is a I’Qflld’$lKmmzrling (M’t of ai ilSS~~tiO~1. the term ‘meanii3g’ Is found 013jectionable. B can answer IhiS obiec Con by remal king t%e following. -First of ah, there is nothing wrong ;lbout employing a term in a way that is different from ordinary parlance, as long as one mething ,hat one would not, at %t eight, be inclined to consider a meauing. Third, there rlAly is a point in calling S’s 29eaking as i.r S belleves th;~t p a meaning. This becc:ltnes apparent when one consAers a fl~reign language. I’+ tl:ase who d.o not !cnow Th~;i. tho SA presented b:~ pEr,Tlnnru~ckaj,u~itw~~~~?~~~l (‘1 dim roof Eike the Thai L.nil!n1 ‘) is probably impossible to interprelt. According (9 my cfaim, it is not ~o::i-~’ .:r ustW to sny that it is a very inqm-~~nt iu~ee~p~~~a~u’wspep, 3 discovery cst’.V.W._V,,,~‘, shot~1d c;:le conclude C beheves that S does not Iike from an arbitrary acoustic event that S speaks as if L Thai, Confronted \vith a langu,~ge thLC one knows, the decision thst a IzertGn configuration of sounds is to be t;sten as 2 speaking-as-if S believes that p is a matter of course Most often, there is w conscious decision. This makes it understaarda~~k why it is relatrvely hard and :urpris~g to t nk of Vne idea that S qeaks 83 if S believes that p iis a rcsuit of a starch for meaning. Syl:nking as ii’ one believes scnme%rarg is a procedure of pronouncing the r@t words in the apyrupktc way, Qnd iblh~ NS a g~~irntsrr. It IS,3ndeniaGle, however, that speakers oft’tztr neglect 1iragW8ic convetItit3ns earl that their acts are still A corhsion Of the 1’1t’4Gngful. R$? ;tlready en6:cluntered a RBoc il~USt~,lBi~Il. an interpretation This is a type of IrrmlErlgs of ‘c..?“~ dfd %:~t‘ &.~es not p~echde n&take that (3~s IW SOW up tin the surf~e. Other mistakes do, like ir ‘Mice That S
1 dxqx
my usage 4
the case of the wqyammaticaS statement, there is the extra cowplica~ion what tlge idea that ‘blats’ stands for ‘bats’ and rlot, for instawe, for ‘brats’ and ‘blasts’, is sheer guesswork. If pressed for an irrefutable interpretation, I+ might then conclude that both assertions mean, ilf nothing else, that S spcraksus ifs imerrds JKIspeak 0s if S b&eves that Alice loves bats Because of the similarity to ‘speaking a~ if one believes”, it could also be called a !inmisric- mealhg @I”). While M’ is clue to srricl adherence to the gram]-nar, M” is a matter of SD$CZor loose adherence. There is no grammar for loose acccrdance. it domesnot belong to the linguistic competence of H that H can connect every ungrammatical assertron to its grakTm~atica1blueprint. So we have to deny irrefutability to anythiq: that does not inherit this property fr0.m the level of ‘speaking as if one believes’. T.l-JS ‘Alice loves bats’, but not ‘Alice loves blats’, irrefutably means that S .qecaks r s if S intends to speak a:, if S believ,cs that Alice loves bats. For a “Mats type asseitLJn, the irrcfut.lbL sen2.e is restricted to S’s speaking as if S intends to speak a: 1:‘S beiieves that p’ whiie p may be partially or compietely undetermined. ‘T‘hismeMng is, of course, shared by the grammatical statement. It is, therefore, the lrrefuieble meaning of an assertion. 2 Basis rpexh ucbs wdl be (i) assertions as well 3”.b
i. v.d. . luwera
/ On
the cnearutrgs
of basic speech acts
251
The first description had beliefs as its point of rGxc:n~e. K wanting shoul3 be takzn as a second basic IWegov, then the non-assertive SAs majr be approached in terms of wanting, ho. TIN results are reasonable. First. of all, an optative-iml)erative SA seems to be a way r:lf speaki -1gas ii’ one wants somet.hing. In s:iying ‘Stop!’ or ‘If only he wcluld stop”, S q-pears ro want somebody to stop. Second&~, the. interrogative seems to be a t?l2t’ler of speaking as if one ~143ntssomething a!; well. Notice that what is wanted, is a f&$ ‘Tshe stopping now?’ is a vcay of talking as if S wants to know whether sotne!~lod:~is stoppmg, in other words, a speaking-ax-it S wants to hoZd a specific: belief with rr:spect to somebody’s stopping [4], We also have a vocabulary to account for the secondav difference between UI imperative and an optative. WC need wantings and hearers. Jr! the imperative F, speaks as if S wants som&Gng from J-i. For the optative, on the othtar kand, these is no appeal for any one person. to respond to the wanting. ic annrnqrh Th -&a*” Yyya”U”LI
JP~VPC tin rln-lh+ Ia” “VSVL
aYaL.YLI
l ~hn~a+ UUUUL
oha c+.~)~rne nF L&Lb JLQbcnJ VI
ma++arnm.-am Ul.L~lQll~G3
r\#’ *ha ur IllG
+-r-s typ’c
61 . ..n m+ L WQlll
to know whether John went home’, and ‘I wish John went home’. ‘irhese SAs show the lexicalization of what is directly expressed in interrogative ana optative-imperative SAs. They :ue ;,urel:y assertive. Giving them this label, +hough. does not m,ean that they cannIt firlfti the same function as related interrogatives md optativeirnpcratives. Ler me illu itrate thic +‘Lrsome SAs that involve a wis!~ ‘I wish John went home’ and ‘If only jai, went Rome’ can be used for the samI: purpose. Three remarks need to be made, however. First, ‘I wish John wer!t home’ can be used in other contexts, too. It cou;d be a statement a:~out an habitual Hish, as “Every evening I wish Johm werrt home’. So the optativc’s typical meaning is not QZWJ~ pwent . Within the irrefutable meaning perspective, 11: i i a szcorrtl reason why ‘1 wish John went home c;lnnor be called an optatiie 2: y ia follows -- and this is my second point - that one rbeeds a different. type 01”analysis frcm what is neaded ft?r simple assertives, imerrogatives, or optative-imperatives, if one wants 10 accouilt for the SA meaning of wishing that is often present in ‘I wish John went home’ [7]. Third, these arguments are not invalidatecI by the potentially higher frequency of basically assertive wishes, i.e. assertions tl- at S wishes something. The analysis does not imply that an optative SA is S‘s most i nportaat means of expressing a wish. Optative-iPnperatilres, interrogatives, ar.\ ::yc:i;ives are basic in a very special sense. As the foregoing remarks have already she #wn, the classification of a cert ati SA as basic disclose:; a part of its medng, but it might xt bt LLJIc most impw tant part. If one ma:mtains that ‘If wish that John would go home’ is an assertion one misses thb? vita! point that it is also o;ten a wish. Yet it is a wish in virtue of being very peculiar type of assertion, I&. 21itatement about a wish of the speaker. [6] The formulation cc,ntainbg the verb ‘kn NJ sounds better. Here the problem of klrokvledge curdbelief i;lppeilrs. [ 71 For some suggestiouo,ser:Van der Au wega(1878).
becauseit &WS me to acccuat tjr 5’s Werarm.
IIt
rnesnir~g something ~ltetz S produces ,m is Ckice”s t20WzaQ:rCP! M-lever’s tr262,miFig. Let us havr: a closer IQ& at
M’. 1 WOLldlike to equate the expression ‘S means that p’ with - restricting myself
in what follows xo assertions - 3 intends to speak as if S believes that p’. What S intends tc dc ~a lo produce whr t S thinks is the sppsopriate conventional behavior for expressing the belief that p. Of course, S’s opinion on wh:ct constitutes the appropriate conl~entilxutl behavior fc,r the b&f 2. question :ney be mist&en, which generally maker, it hardi r for M to grasp what S means. Somethirng more needs to be said about eonventimuzh@. h xction 1, the conventionality I needed was grammaticality. It appears, however, that this concept is too narrow. T’hwe al1.e other hnguistic conventions thm the properly grammatical ones. There is a host. I:jf stylistic rules one may employ to mean sanlething. So when S ironicahy s;lyz tha( Alice was ;! i.;enius, S may well mean th:lt .jJice was a fool. This shows that there are two noticjns of speaking-as-if. ‘The first is (hat oi grammar,,.-I rl., nd.n---l nn1rnw3*r2 LSI%n*r:r.r /n~rant:rrn ~U~~"l"~U U~lIQYIUl ~*pmuu,l&pif, dlhu LIIC JC;LUIIU dkiiS i0 Gditriior that is ruied by linguistic conventions in general (speakin&-as-if). Note that it i; only speaking,as-if that can possibly appear as the irrefutable meaning on the la!’level. ‘Alice was a genius’ still irrefutably means that S speaks, as if S believes tha: Alice was a genius. It may ref;ttably mean rhat S speaks, as if S believes that Alice was a fmi. n-rother vords., S st!Jl always asserts that Alice was a genius, thoqh S may not dways mean it. Wheu S means that p, S intends ts speak, as it’s believes that p. Accrrding to this analysis, when H makes a p~~onounce~~nt on whar S means, H does nr,t commit him- or herself on RI’. Me o. W_ That is, rn clajrrkrg that S means that ~1 H doe: IG say whether in fact S exceed; III spslaking,-as-if, whether S believes or whether 17. Furthermore, since the conte~ i 1’1 ol’ the belief is characterized in tcrras of H’s criteria. it is perfectly al! right ; H to say thar S means tkt (say) Ake Io~es cats, while, in fact, S says that Ah~e love:; bats, where ‘bats’, be,cause of a slip of the tongue or because sf a lexical mix-up, reti y stands for ‘cats’. So much for the analysis of utterer’s meamng. It is differen; from what Grice (1957) believe:; S to intend whl:n he means something. Let me end this paper with a short comparison. According to G-ice’s earliest work on ut”;erer’s meaning (G-ice 195i), 5 in tends thy utterance to lsraduce :x~rneeffect in an auCi~:rrceby means ‘of he recognition of this intentilorl. Firsi of 41, i believe (~~8 :lh Searle 1969: 47) that this effrxt is the understmdirlg or” the utterance. This can be tlzxribed as a belief of H i:bOtIt the meaning of the utterance. At Beast with .respel:t to assertions, Grice (I 97 1: 5% comes falirly clax EQthis position. For him thl: rtffect is that I-l should think xhat S believes something. Here, his view differs ii-cm mine in that 1 put the u:terer‘s belief t.hwojr tile refutability examination. But the similarity is more i:nportant. Under both accclt~nts, it is H’s task to acquire h tieliaefconcerning a belid of 5. SO we at least pazti;.fUy agree as to whak is the effect of the utterarxe, bui not whether it is a cotnpclnent of the utterer’s meming or not _ The main dlifference is precisely
ckilx, G-ix,
H.?. 3957. Meaning. 1 re Philosophical Review 6t.. 377- .a88. f1.P. 1971 . ‘Utt:rer’s mcanicg, sentence-meiin!nf:, and lord-me,
ning’. In: J.R. Scarle, cd., ‘Kae phdosophy of ianglage. London: Oxforri ‘.lniversit Y Press. pi. 54-70. Se;,:le, J.K. 1969. Sper :h acts. Carubridge: Cambridge Universi :, Press. ’ Va~r der kuwera, J. 19”8. Indirect qwech acts revisited. AntWe+: I!niveil.ity of Antwelp (I.JIA) (= AnXeP# Papers irr Linguistics 16) (Reprinted try thz lndiana University Linguistic8s Club.)