Page 58 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

35 What Is Universal Pragmatics?

It is to this generative power that J trace the fact that a speech
act can succeed (or fail). We can say that a speech act succeeds
if a relation between the speaker and the hearer comes to pass—
indeed the relation intended by the speaker—and if the hearer can
understand and accept the content uttered by the speaker in the
sense indicated (e.g., as a promise, assertion, suggestion, and so
forth). Thus the generative power consists in the fact that the
speaker, in performing a speech act, can influence the hearer in
such a way that the latter can take up an interpersonal relation
with him.®’ It can, of course, be said of every interaction, and
not only of speech actions, that it establishes an interpersonal
relation. Whether or not they have an explicitly linguistic form,
communicative actions are related to a context of action norms
and values. Without the normative background of routines, roles,
forms of life—in short, conventions—the individual action would
remain indeterminate. All communicative actions satisfy or violate
normative expectations or conventions. Satisfying a convention
in acting means that a subject capable of speaking and acting
takes up an interpersonal relation with at least one other such
subject. Thus the establishment of an interpersonal relation is a
criterion that is not selective enough for our purposes. I empha-
sized at the start that I am restricting my analysis to paradigmatic
cases Of linguistically explict action that is oriented to reaching
understanding. This restriction must now be drawn somewhat
more precisely. In doing so, we can begin with the standard ex-
amples from which speech-act theory was developed. The follow-
ing are typical speech-act forms:
2”?
“To... you that... .
}
{verb} {sentence
e.g., ‘I (hereby) promise you that I will come tomorrow.”
”?
“You are... Lee .
{verb} [p. part. {sentence}
]
e.g., “You are requested to stop smoking.”

“T... Lae you that... .
{auxiliary verb] {verb} {sentence }
e.g., “I can assure you that it wasn’t I.”