Page 76 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

53 What Is Universal Pragmatics?

After he recognized that constative speech acts represent only
one of several types of speech action, Austin gave up the afore-
mentioned contrast in favor of a set of unordered families of
speech actions. I am of the opinion, however, that what he in-
tended with the contrast constative versus performative can be
adequately reconstructed.
We have seen that communication in language can take place
only when the participants, in communicating with one another
about something, simultaneously enter upon two levels of com-
munication—the level of intersubjectivity on which they take up
interpersonal relations and the level of propositional contents.
However, in speaking we can make either the interpersonal rela-
tion or the propositional content more centrally thematic; cor-
respondingly we make a more interactive or a more cognitive use
of our language. In the énteractive use of language, we thematize
the relations into which speaker and hearer enter—as a warning,
promise, request—while we only mention the propositional con-
tent of the utterances. In the cognitive use of language, by con-
trast, we thematize the content of the utterance as a proposition
about something that is happening in the world (or that could
be the case), while we only indirectly express the interpersonal
relation. This incidental character can be seen, for example, in
the fact that in English the explicit form of assertion (“I am
asserting (to you) that...”), although grammatically correct,
is rare in comparison to the short form that disregards the inter-
personal relation.
As the content is thematized in the cognitive use of language,
only speech acts in which propositional contents assume the ex-
plicit form of propositions are permitted here. With these
constative speech acts, we raise a truth claim for the proposition
asserted. In the interactive use of language, in which the inter-
personal relation is thematically stressed, we refer in various ways
to the validity of the normative context of the speech action.
For this latter use the (authorized) command has a paradig-
matic significance similar to that of the assertion for the cognitive
use of language. Truth is merely the most conspicuous—not the
only—validity claim reflected in the formal structures of speech.
The illocutionary force of the speech act, which produces a legi-