Page 87 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

64 Communication and Evolution of Society

necessary to the experiential source from which the speaker draws
the certainty that his statement is true. If this immediate ground-
ing does not dispel an ad hoc doubt, the persistingly problematic
truth claim can become the subject of a theoretical discourse. In
the interactive use of language, the speaker proffers a speech-act-
immanent obligation to provide justification |Rechtfertigungs-
ver pflichtung|. Of course, regulative speech acts contain only the
offer to indicate, if necessary, the normative context that gives
the speaker the conviction that his utterance is right. Again, if
this immediate justification does not dispel an ad hoc doubt, we
can pass over to the level of discourse, in this case of practical
discourse. In such a discourse, however, the subject of discursive
examination is not the rightness claim directly connected with the
speech act, but the validity claim of the underlying norm. Finally,
in the expressive use of language the speaker also enters into a
speech-act-immanent obligation, namely the oblzgatzon to prove
trustworthy {Bewdahrungsverpflichtung}, to show in the conse-
quences of his action that he has expressed just that intention
which actually guides his behavior. In case the immediate assur-
ance expressing what is evident to the speaker himself cannot
dispel ad hoc doubts, the truthfulness of the utterance can only
be checked against the consistency of his subsequent behavior.
Every speech-act-immanent obligation can be made good at
two levels, namely immediately, in the context of utterance—
whether through recourse to an experiential base, through indi-
cating a corresponding normative context, or through affirmation
of what is evident to oneself—and mediately, in discourse or in
subsequent actions. But only in the case of the obligations to
ground and to prove trustworthy, into which we enter with
constative and with expressive speech acts, do we refer to the
same truth or truthfulness claim. The obligation to justify, into
which we enter with regulative speech acts, refers immediately
to the claim that the speech action performed fits an existing
normative background; whereas with the entrance into practical
discourse the topic of discussion is the validity of the very norm
from which the rightness claim of the speaker is merely bor-
rowed.
Our reflections have led to the following provisional results: