Page 57 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

34 Communication and Evolution of Society

For a theory of communicative action, the third aspect of utter-
ances, namely the establishment of interpersonal relations, is
central. I shall therefore take the theory of speech acts as my point
of departure.

The Standard Form of the Speech Act—
Searle’s Principle of Expressibility
The principal task of speech-act theory is to clarify the performa-
tive status of linguistic utterances. Austin analyzed the sense in
which I can utter sentences in speech acts as the zllocutionary force
of speech actions. In uttering a promise, an assertion, or a warn-
ing, together with the corresponding sentences I execute an ac-
tion—I try to make a promise, to put forward an assertion, to
issue a warning—I do things by saying something. Although
there are other modes of employing language—Austin mentions,
among others, writing poems and telling jokes—the illocutionary
use seems to be the foundation on which even these other kinds
of employment rest. To be understood in a given situation, every
utterance must, at least implicitly, establish and bring to expres-
sion a certain relation between the speaker and his counterpart.
We can also say that the illuocutionary force of a speech action
consists in fixing the communicative function of the content
uttered.
The current distinction between the content and the relational
aspects of an utterance has, to begin, a trivial meaning.® It says
that in being uttered the sentence is embedded in specific inter-
personal relations. In a certain way, every explicitly performative
utterance both establishes and represents an interpersonal relation,
This circumstance is trivial so long as under the relational aspect
we merely contrast the utterance character of speech with its
semantic content. If nothing more were meant by the illocutionary
force of a speech act, the concept “‘illocutionary” could serve at
best to elucidate the fact that linguistic utterances have the char-
acter of actions, that is, are speech actions. The point of the con-
cept cannot lie therein; J find it rather in the peculiarly generative
power of speech acts.