Page 88 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

65 What Is Universal Pragmatics?

a. A speech act succeeds, that is, it brings about the interpersonal
relation that S intends with it, if it is
comprehensible and acceptable, and
accepted by the hearer.
b. The acceptability of a speech act depends on (among other
things) the fulfillment of two pragmatic presuppositions:
the existence of speech-act-typically restricted contexts (preparatory
rule); and
a recognizable engagement of the speaker to enter into certain
speech-act-typical obligations (essential rule, sincerity rule).
c. The illocutionary force of a speech act consists in its capacity to
move a hearer to act under the premise that the engagement signalled
by the speaker is seriously meant:
in the case of institutionally bound speech acts, the speaker can
borrow this force from the binding force of existing norms;
in the case of institutionally unbound speech acts, the speaker can de-
velop this force by inducing the recognition of validity claims.
d. Speaker and hearer can reciprocally motivate one another to recog-
nize validity claims because the content of the speaker’s engagement ts
determined by a specific reference to a thematically stressed validity
claim, whereby the speaker, in a cognitively testable way, assumes
with a truth claim, obligations to provide grounds,
with a rightness claim, obligations to provide justification, and
with a truthfulness claim, obligations to prove trustworthy.

A Model of Linguistic Communication

The analysis of what Austin called the illocutionary force of an
utterance has led us back to the validity basis of speech. Institu-
tionally unbound speech acts owe their illocutionary force to a
cluster of validity claims that speakers and hearers have to raise
and recognize as justified if grammatical (and thus comprehen-
sible) sentences are to be employed in such a way as to result in
successful communication. A participant in communication acts
with an orientation to reaching understanding only under the
condition that, in employing comprehensible sentences in his
speech acts, he raises three validity claims in an acceptable way.
He claims truth for a stated propositional content or for the
existential presuppositions of a mentioned propositional content.
He claims rightness (or appropriateness) for norms (or values),