Page 81 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

58 Communication and Evolution of Society

In the expressive use of language the interpersonal relation carry-
ing the function of public self-representation is not thematic and
thus need be mentioned only in situations in which the presup-
position of the speaker’s truthfulness is not taken for granted;
for this, avowals are the paradigm:
5) “I must confess to you that...”
6) “I don’t want to conceal from you that...”

For this reason, expressive speech acts such as disclosing, con-
cealing, revealing, and the like, cannot be correlated with the
expressive use of language (which can, in a way, dispense with
illocutionary acts) in the same manner as constative speech acts
are correlated with the cognitive use of language and regulative
speech acts with the interactive. Nevertheless, truthfulness too is
a universal impliction of speech, as long as the presuppositions
of communicative action are not altogether suspended. In the
cognitive use of language the speaker must, in a trival sense,
truthfully express his thoughts, opinions, assumptions, and so
forth; since he asserts a proposition, however, what matters is
not the truthfulness of his intentions, but the truth of the propo-
sition. Similarly, in the interactive use of language the speaker
expresses the intention of promising, reprimanding, refusing,
and so forth; but since he brings about an interpersonal relation
with a hearer, the truthfulness of his intention is only a necessary
condition, whereas what is important is that the action fit a recog-
nized normative context.
Thus we have the following correlations:
Mode of Type of Thematic
Communication Speech Action Theme Validity Claim

Cognitive Constatives Propositional Truth
content
Interactive Regulatives Interpersonal Rightness,
relation appropriateness
Expressive Avowals Speaker’s Truthfulness
intention
(P.S.: The modes of language use can be demarcated from one
another only paradigmatically. I am not claiming that every se-