Page 70 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

47 What Is Universal Pragmatics?

with the meaning of the illocutionary force of an utterance (and
the intention of a speaker). No doubt this circumstance motivated
Austin to draw his distinction between meaning and force. To
my mind, it would be better to differentiate the linguistic mean-
ings of expressions according to their possible contribution to
forming different types of speech acts (and different components
of speech acts). Let us consider two examples:

3) “I’m notifying you that father’s new car is yellow.”
4) “I’m asking you, is father’s new car yellow?”

Understanding the two (different) illocutionary acts is ued to
other presuppositions than understanding their (concordant)
propositional content. The difference becomes perceptible as soon
as I go back to the conditions that must be fulfilled by situations
in which someone who does not know English might learn (1.e.,
originally understand) the meanings. A hearer can understand
the meaning of the sentence with the propositional content. “the
being yellow of father’s new car’ under the condition that he
has learned to use the propositional sentence correctly in the
assertion:

5) “I’m telling you, father’s new car is yellow,”

in order, for example, to report the observation that father’s new
car is yellow. The ability to have this or a similar experience must
be presupposed. A proper use of the propositional sentence in
(5) demands (at least) the following of the speaker:
a) The existence presupposition—there is one and only one object
to which the characteristic ‘father’s new car’’ applies.
b) The presupposition of identifiability—the (denotatively em-
ployed) propositional content contained in the characterization
“father’s new car’’ is a sufficient indication, in a given context, for
a hearer to select the (and only the) object to which the characteristic
applies.
c) The act of predication—the predicate “yellow” can be attributed
to the object that is denoted.

Correspondingly, understanding the meaning of the proposi-
tional sentence contained in (5) demands of the hearer that he