Page 84 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

61 What Is Universal Pragmatics?

a repertory from which the acting subject, with the help of a
finite number of types, can put together any number of norm-
conformative actions.
The peculiar force of the illocutionary—which in the case of
institutionally unbound speech actions is not borrowed directly
from the validity of established norms of action—cannot be ex-
plained by means of the speech-act-typical context restrictions.
This is possible only with the help of the specific presuppositions
that Searle introduces under the title “‘essential rules.”’ In doing
so, he appears, it is true, to succeed only in paraphrasing the
meaning of the corresponding performative verbs (for example,
requests: “count as an attempt to get H to do A”; or questions:
“count as an attempt to elicit information from H’’). It is inter-
esting, however, that these circumscriptions include the common
determination, “‘count as an attempt...’ The essential presup-
position for the success of an illocutionary act consists in the
speaker's entering into a specific engagement, so that the hearer
can rely on him. An utterance can count as a promise, assertion,
request, question, or avowal, if and only if the speaker makes an
offer that he is ready to make good insofar as it is accepted by the
hearer. The speaker must engage himself, that is, indicate that in
certain situations he will draw certain consequences for action.
The content of the engagement** is to be distinguished from the
sincerity of the engagement. This condition, introduced by Searle
as the “‘sincerity rule,” must always be fulfilled in the case of
communicative action that is oriented to reaching understanding.
Thus in what follows I shall, in speaking of the speaker's en-
gagement, presuppose both a certain content of engagement and
the sincerity with which the speaker is willing to enter into his
engagement. So far as I can see, previous analyses of speech acts
have been unsatisfactory, as they have not clarified the engage-
ment of the speaker, on which the acceptability of his utterance
specifically depends.
The discernible and sincere readiness of the speaker to enter
into a specific kind of interpersonal bond has, compared with
the general context conditions, a peculiar status. The restricted
contexts that specific types of speech actions presuppose must (a)
be given, and (b) be supposed to exist by the participants. Thus