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Speech acts and the autonomy of linguistic pragmatics

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DOI: 10.2478/v10016-009-0008-8

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 Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 5.1 (2009) / Special Issue on Speech Actions: 85-106
10.2478/v10016-009-0008-8

Iwona Witczak-Plisiecka∗
University of Łódź

SPEECH ACTS AND THE AUTONOMY OF

LINGUISTIC PRAGMATICS

Abstract
This paper comments on selected problems of the definition of linguistic
pragmatics with a focus on notions associated with speech act theory in the
tradition of John Langshaw Austin. In more detail it concentrates on the
(ir)relevance of the use of the Austinian categorisation into locution,
illocution, and perlocution in locating a divide in between pragmatics and
semantics, and especially the distinction between the locutionary act and the
illocutionary act and its implications for the definition of pragmatics and its
separation from the semantic theory.
The relation between form and meaning is further briefly reviewed against
dichotomies including the Gricean and neo-Gricean ‘what is said’ versus
‘what is implicated’ or meant, between what can be ‘locuted’, but not said,
and what can be said, but not asserted. These dichotomies are related to the
theoretical commitments as to the accepted operative forces in speech acts,
primarily convention and intention. It is suggested that, roughly, the
development of the speech act theory can be viewed as a process by which
the theory moves away from its originally sociolinguistic orientation
towards a more psychologistic account, which in turn leads towards
diminishing the role of (traditional) semantics and the subsequent
juxtaposition of pragmatics and syntax rather than pragmatics and
semantics.

Keywords
speech act, pragmatics, semantics, illocution, locution, John L. Austin

∗ Department of Pragmatics,
University of Łódź,
Al. Kościuszki 65
90-514 Łódź, Poland
e-mail: wipiw@uni.lodz.pl

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1. Introduction – formulations of pragmatics

Since the time Morris (1938) identified pragmatics as a research area
complementary to syntax and semantics its scope has been explicitly disputed
among linguists and philosophers of language. Within this debate speech acts have
been in the centre of interest, while speech act theory in the Austinian tradition and
its further elaborations have been typically recognised as the most salient,
uncontroversially pragmatic research area.

1.1. Morris’s division – the classical view

Charles Morris was the first to use the term pragmatics in a rather systematic
technical way, but the problems which must have motivated him were not new. As
is well known, in his attempt to structure the field of semiotics, Morris identified
three main branches:
1) syntactics (today’s ‘syntax’) – the study of the structural “formal relation of
signs to one another”;
2) semantics – the study of “the relations of signs to the objects to which the
signs are applicable”;
3) pragmatics – the study of the contextual “relation of signs to interpreters” (cf.
Morris 1938: 6f.).
Although Morris’s ambitious agenda to integrate all sciences of signs, whether
linguistic or not, was never to be accomplished, his work evidently paved the path
for pragmatic research, however modified and limited in comparison to what he
had envisaged1.
Functional as they are, the categories suggested by Morris are not absolutely
complementary and even in today’s perspective the three areas are still
underspecified bones of contention to the effect that, as can be seen in subsequent
discussion, there have been suggestions to dispose with either pragmatics or
semantics on grounds that the co-existence of the two introduces confusion
detrimental to clarity of linguistic research.

1
It was Morris’s plan and ambition to create a thorough account of signs – the theory of
“semiotic” – and their uses, viz. “semiosis”. His interests lay not just in language, but in art
and other sciences such as logic, mathematics, rhetoric, elements of aesthetics. Under his
interpretation any object can function as a sign if only its presence enables people to take
account of an object or objects which are not present. Thus objects may function as signs by
inviting meaning or rather meaningfulness, while Morris’s pragmatics is the study of the
relation between (any type of) signs and their interpreters/users.

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1.2. Further formulations

Since Morris many new formulations of pragmatics have been suggested, most
of which have concentrated on the issue of truth-conditions. This focus on
linguistics as a field whose main interest transcends the traditional (at least until
the mid-20th century) interest in language as a means of describing the world
provides a linking thread through many otherwise diverse definitions of pragmatics
and integrates varied speech act theoretic research.
Most definitions of pragmatics use the notion of a speech act or a linguistic act,
even if this reference is not directly associated with the theory of speech acts. To
mention just a few, Stalnaker (1972) defines pragmatics as the study of linguistic
acts and the contexts in which they appear, limiting semantics to the study of
propositions; Katz (1977: 14) also decides to limit semantics to the study of
information available in e.g. an anonymous letter situation, maximally free of
particularised context. Gazdar (1979: 2) in his much quoted formula claims that
“Pragmatics = Meaning minus truth conditions” and Levinson subsumed
methodological attempts at defining pragmatics by claiming that

the most promising are the definitions that equate pragmatics with ‘meaning minus
semantics’, or with a theory of language understanding that takes context into
account, in order to complement the contribution that semantics makes to meaning.
(Levinson, 1983: 32)

In other words, sentences should provide (semantic) input, which is further

analysed in contextualised pragmatic studies, which in speech act-theoretic
research may be related to the juxtaposition of form and function, and
consequently, roughly, to the concept of locution vis-à-vis illocution. It should
suggest that the concept of illocution is in the centre of pragmatic research, being
focused on what people do and (attempt to) achieve in what they say. Extending
this view leads to the understanding of pragmatics in, among others, Verschueren’s
sense, i.e. as a perspective on language use, an interest in the relation between form
and its effective use (e.g. Verschueren 1999). This in turn leads to pragmatics
controlling all aspects of meaning which focus on functional communicative use
(from phonetics to discourse and beyond).
Speech act theoretic-oriented researchers (e.g. Barker 2004, 2007), as in fact
many others2, understand semantics as the study of propositional content, while
pragmatics as the study of speech acts in broad communicative structures. It is also

2
Semantic minimalists, e.g. Cappelen and Lepore (2005) advocate the (however
contentious) view that there is space for autonomous semantics, whose data provides input
for pragmatics in that semantically describable forms can be used in a “galaxy” of speech
acts, cf. also Borg 2005.

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often acknowledged that a semantic input of “what is said” forms the basis for a
pragmatic analysis, which focuses on what is done beyond and by saying.

1.3. Criticism of the relevance of SAT in the pragmatic program

It is worth noting though that the reign of the theory of speech acts in
pragmatics is not absolute. For instance, Deirdre Wilson and Dan Sperber,
relevance theorists, have questioned the value of the theory of speech acts in the
pragmatic program (cf. Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995: 243 ff.), claiming that
although the speech act approach to utterances is

perhaps the most uncontroversial assumption of modern pragmatics […] the vast
range of data that speech act theorists have been concerned with is of no special
interest to pragmatics (Sperber & Wilson 1986/1995: 243).

Sperber and Wilson claim that the assignment of a speech act type is not crucial
in comprehension or interpretation of utterances, both on the level of explicature
and implicature and argue that classification in terms of speech acts plays a minor
(if any) role in such comprehension and interpretation3. As inferential processes
and ostensive communication4 are central issues in the neo-Gricean relevance
theory, the theory of speech acts is seen as practical only on the level of mood
analysis and possibly universal abstract categories, such as “saying”, “telling”, and
“asking”, which can be described with the use of the speech act theoretic apparatus
and for which “type” recognition is an essential part of the comprehension process.
Critical remarks of this kind bring to the foreground the most contentious issues
in the speech act theory itself, which are many, e.g. the status and architecture of
speech act taxonomies, the definition of the speech act and its components or
aspects, the status of uptake, the nature of convention and its status vis-à-vis
intention5, the salience of the institutional aspect, the divide between the
institutional and the non-institutional, the source of the illocutionary force. The

3
One of the examples evoked is an analogy of tennis, which can be played/performed (sic!)
without players knowing theoretical terms (Sperber & Wilson 1986/1995: 243).
4
Types which, according to Sperber & Wilson, need to be ostensively communicated and
recognized include e.g. promising, ordering, thanking, bidding, but others, such as
predicting, denying, claiming, or even warning, do not require any special pragmatic tools to
be interpreted and successfully performed; they do not need to be ostensively
communicated.
5
The evolution of the theory of speech act can in fact be seen as a struggle between the
convention-based and the intention-based approaches; the tension originating from the time
of Peter Strawson’s (1964) article “Intention and convention in speech acts”

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tripartite approach to the speech acts through its three (allegedly) distinct aspects,
viz. locution, illocution, and perlocution, rejected in the relevance-theoretic
framework and discussed in this paper, is one of the focal contentious issues.

2. Locution, illocution, and perlocution – the Austinian

perspective

The assumption lying at the core of speech act theory is that any utterance has
two basic aspects: it involves sense and force. The distinction is easily traced back
to Frege, who was the first to comment on it with reference to grammatical mood.
This distinction also evokes Austin’s (1962/1975; 1960) reflection on the nature of
language as a means to perform action. Austin also found it relevant to differentiate
between three aspects of an utterance, corresponding roughly to its form, function,
and effect/result.
Although notoriously underspecified, Austin’s tripartite division of a speech act
into locution, illocution and perlocution has been widely accepted in linguistics and
served as a guideline for demarcating semantics and pragmatics. Evidently, both
the function and the effect of an utterance are explicitly pragmatic in nature, but for
locating the borders of pragmatics, the divide between locution and illocution is
especially important.
In his attempt to thoroughly account for the nature of the speech act Austin
(19621975: 92f.) defines locution as composed of three elements, viz.:
1. Phonetic act (uttering certain noises) → a phone
2. Phatic act (uttering certain words in a certain construction, i.e. noises of
certain type) → a pheme
3. Rhetic act (performance of a pheme with a more or less definite sense and
a more or less definite reference, where sense + reference are equivalent
to “meaning”) → a rheme
The description, typically of Austin, is ambiguous and only indicates that the
overall locution should be (roughly) understood as ‘literal’, semantic, a maximally
decontextualised vehicle of meaning. In Austin’s words it amounts to “saying
something”, which in turn is:

the utterance of certain noises, the utterance of certain words in a certain

construction, and the utterance of them with a certain ‘meaning’ in the favourite
philosophical sense of that word, i.e. with a certain sense and with a certain
reference (Austin 1962/1975: 94).

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In contrast, illocution corresponds to the function (or force) of an utterance.

Austin also explicitly admits that one locution may be used to perform many
different illocutions (possibly at a time), whose force comes from (again a
notoriously underspecified) convention (Austin 1962/1975: 108)6.
The basic difference between illocution and perlocution is that the illocutionary
act is performed in uttering words, while the perlocutionary by the utterance. It
suggests that there should be a conventional bond between the expression and its
illocution, which is stronger than the bond between the locution and the
corresponding perlocution.
The definition of perlocution is a broad one and focuses on the results that the
act produces. In Austin’s words, it is defined as follows:

Saying something will often, or even normally, produce certain consequential

effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audience, or of the speaker, or
of other persons: and it may be done with the design, intention, or purpose of
producing them […] We shall call the performance of an act of this kind the
performance of a ‘perlocutionary’ act. (Austin 1962/1975: 101)

In short, Austin identified locution, illocution, and perlocution within the

speech act as acts done “of saying”, “in saying”, and “by saying”, respectively. He
illustrated the three aspects of the speech act with the following examples cited
after Austin (1962/1975: 101-102) as (1) below:

(1)
(E. I)
Act (A) or Locution
He said to me ‘Shoot her!’ meaning by ‘shoot’ shoot and referring by ‘her’ to her
Act (B) or Illocution
He urged (or advised, ordered, &c.) me to shoot her.
Act (C. a) or Perlocution
He persuaded me to shoot her.
Act (C. b)
He got me to (or made me, &c.) shoot her.

(E. 2)
Act (A) or Locution
He said to me ‘You can’t do that’.
Act (B) or Illocution
He protested against my doing it.
Act (C. a) or Perlocution

6
For a critical discussion of the notion of convention and the role of uptake in Austin and
the theory of speech acts, see e.g. Sbisá 2001, 2002, 2007 and 2009 (this volume) and
Harnish 2009 (this volume).

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He pulled me up, checked me.

Act (C. b)
He stopped me, brought me to my senses, &c.
He annoyed me.

Evidently, having accepted Morris’s premise that pragmatics focuses on the

relation between linguistic signs and their users, it should hold that locution is
associated with abstract, (maximally) decontextualised meaning which can be
accessed out of context. In other words, locution should be accessible without
information on the context of use with its meaning (at least relatively) stable across
different contexts.
Illocution in turn stands for the (intended) function of an utterance, i.e. in
uttering/producing locution, the speaker performs an act of a certain kind and this
act is done “in” saying; the produced effects, whether envisaged by the speaker or
not, belong to perlocution and are performed “by” saying certain words.
For Austin, the illocutionary force arises beyond words and has its roots in
convention. Once more, Austin’s lecture notes leave little theory on the nature of
such a convention, but it seems reasonable to believe that he referred to a kind of
shared knowledge with regard to the relation of form and meaning of the
expression in question (possibly together with contextual clues). Further theorizing
on speech acts resulted in the introduction of the notion of an illocutionary force
indicating device (IFID), whose many forms7 are indicative of the special and
diverse nature of communicative conventions.
It follows that locution should belong in semantics as it is closely bound to the
form and invites a search for explicitness in that form. As illocution is mainly a
level of assigning categorial belonging, where performative verbs are often used as
labels for functional classes, it should be perceived as “pragmatic”; it is associated
with meaning “beyond words”, beyond the rhetic act, a meaning derived from
varied conventions. Perlocution, focused on envisaged effects, should be purely
pragmatic in nature.
However, this categorisation is by no means simple and reveals numerous
problems. First of all, it is evident that locution “invites” illocution and its
interpretation requires inferential processes which are inherently pragmatic in
nature. What differentiated performative utterances from purely descriptive ones,
according to Austin (at least when he started the theory) was their “misleading”
form, their being “masqueraders”, whose outward appearance often dramatically
departed from the canonical8 form suggested later, but also their being

7
IFID can be realized as a performative verb, but can also be incorporated in the manner in
which an expression is uttered, e.g. in the intonation pattern employed (cf. Searle 1969), or
can reside in lexical items such as the adverbs please (cf. Sadock 1974) or hereby.
8
The canonical form refers to an explicit direct performative utterance characterized by the

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performative in disguise of descriptivity. In other words, the “literal meaning” of

an expression is not its “real meaning” in many, in fact most cases in linguistic
communication. If the locutionary aspect of a speech act is to be discussed
(semantically) in isolation, it is at the expense of its true meaning. This does not
translate into that the form is not important in communication, but it is clear that
understanding the “literal” is only part of the comprehension process and is simply
not enough for communication.
Illocution, a “theoretical tier” devoted to analysis in terms of metalinguistic
categories cannot be separated from the other two aspects either. Austin indicated
that illocutionary acts invite by convention a response or sequel; for example an
order invites obedience, while a promise invites fulfillment. This description to
some extent resembles his account of perlocutionary acts, which involve either
some kind of achievement of a perlocutionary object (e.g. convincing someone or
persuading) or a “perlocutionary sequel”, e.g. a warning may result in alerting
someone. The “in saying”/”by saying” distinction, as introduced by Austin in his
first lectures, is thus rather unclear, e.g. the consequential effects of “promise” are
under illocution, while those for “persuade” and “protest” are under perlocution.
Evidently, there is a good reason to acknowledge the difference, and the nature of
promising is in a way “more internal” than that of e.g. persuading, but the
theoretical apparatus employed does not seem efficient enough to clearly
categorise performative aspects of utterances. It is as if Austin was able to locate
many important phenomena associated with performativity, but left them at the
stage of early theoretical development, for further refinement in the future.
Already in 1977, Allwood pointed to the fact that also the nature of convention
that Austin might have had in mind varies with the verbs used in particular
utterances. For example, for (2) below:

(2) It is snowing

it is relatively easy to conclude that the locutionary aspect “says something about
the weather”, while the illocutionary involves the utterance force as a statement9.
However, the picture gets more complex and complicated in the case of explicit
performatives as (3) below:

(3) I promise to buy you a drink.

use of the pronoun I, presence of a performative verb, presence (or possibility of inclusion)
of the adverb hereby, present tense, simple aspect, and non-negative form.
9
Although this statement may also, of course, be used to perform different illocutionary
acts, e.g. it may be used as a warning, an invitation to go out, an invitation to stay indoors,
an expression of surprise or satisfaction, and indeed in many other ways.

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The illocutionary force in such utterances seems to arise at least partly from the
meaning of the verb, thus its nature (however conventional) is profoundly different
from the force associated with (2). For (3) both the fact that the verb “promise” is
used and the form of the utterance as a statement are important. Although the
meaning of (3) can vary across contexts, at least part of this meaning, in the sense
of function, is construed thanks to the convention associated with the verb
“promise”, i.e. input on the locutionary level. This varying degree of “lexical
meaning” intervention is a good indication that the illocutionary level dependence
on the locutionary, together with other elements of context, is much varied and
does not allow for a clear description of illocution (or locution) as a consistent
category. In many contexts the lexical (locutionary) content of utterances functions
as a trigger for understanding the illocutionary force, cf. (4) and (5) below:

(4) “I do”
(5) “Two no trumps”

In such cases the locutionary element is important but its reading crucially
depends on extralinguistic context. In other cases, elaborate locution secures the
“proper” reception of the force, as e.g. in the case of legal documents exercising a
real performative force in a relevant legal culture.
Legal language itself provides many interesting examples for analysis in the
speech act-theoretic framework, highlighting many of its problems, including the
problem of reliance on form. First of all, it opens a whole realm of contexts, from
formulaic expressions of the courtroom through carefully designed verbose
language of legal documents to fairly informal client-lawyer consultations, but
even if only the most explicit language of legal documents is taken into
consideration, the nature of the illocutionary force remains an evasive one. Among
others, it shows that the difference between the institutional and non-institutional,
or institutionally conventional and just linguistically conventional is not an easy
one. For example, should the text of the Decree on Martial Law passed in Poland
in 198110 as performed by the Polish Piwnica pod Baranami cabaret group be
excluded altogether from analysis? Being a kind of (artistic) performance, it must
be defined as a non-communicative type of linguistic action. However, its use may
serve (and did indeed serve in the past) many different purposes, some of which
seem communicative, e.g. communicating judgement on the party in power,
building rapport among people, communicating reassurance, ridiculing the hostile.
One may argue that these “functions” are of perlocutionary nature, but their status
clearly depends on theoretical commitments. If what makes a speech act
communicative is the speaker’s intention to convey some content (as many

10
Cited as (Dekret … ), cf. also Witczak-Plisiecka 2001.

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researchers argue should be the case, e.g. Bach and Harnish 1979), it should follow
that whether an artistic performance, reciting of a poem, or uttering the christening
formula, is a communicative act or not depends on the speaker’s state of mind.
Much like a secret code, the act may carry different illocutionary forces (if any at
all) for different audiences, according to the speaker’s plan; it also may result in
different perlocutionary effects just because it may activate different contextual
traits for different people. As it is clearly not possible to build an all-inclusive
theory of speech acts which should explain all communicative phenomena, the
architecture of the theory must depend on the researcher’s commitment. Bach and
Harnish (1979) decided to exclude conventional speech acts from their analysis
and concentrated on building a theory of unambiguously communicative ones.
Other theorists, typically more sociology-oriented, such as Butler (e.g. 1993, 2997)
and Hornsby (e.g. 2000), decided to concentrate on a very general nature of
linguistic action, viz. its performative character, the ability to modify, maintain,
and create extralinguistic reality. Millikan (e.g. 2005), although much different in
her scientific commitments, is a further example of focus on performativity without
minute bottom-up investigations and clear-cut taxonomies. Such analyses, although
dramatically diverse, all explicitly subscribe to the Austinian heritage with
simultaneous disregard of at least some aspects of the tripartite distinction and tacit
promotion of the holistic “illocutionary” perspective.
In the context of the role of pragmatics, an interesting side effect of such
approaches can be seen in Hornsby’s (2000) claim that “semantics” (and traditional
philosophy of language) as a research area defined over the past is typically male-
governed and anti-feministic even in its approach to research. The main point in
this criticism is relevant in the speech act-theoretic discussion as it is claimed that
the feminine view is more holistic, while it is a natural male tendency to dissect
and classify. Incidentally, Borg (2004: 12f.) expresses a related view (although
with no feminist implications) with regard to the semantics-pragmatics divide. She
separates the two disciplines along the lines of reasoning where semantics is seen
as “modular” and “formal”, while pragmatics, focused on processes of
communication, necessarily “global” and as “informationally unencapsulated” as
possible (Borg 2004: 90). Leaving the basis for the gender differences aside, this
view of the distinction still seems a rather important trait for navigation among
diverse speech act theories and perception of a certain downplay of the role of
locution in many approaches. It also sounds as a comeback to Austin’s original
reflection, being an explicit acknowledgement of the variety of situations where
speaking is doing under many disguises.
Returning to perlocution alone, the category merges with the “illocutionary”
not only through metalinguistic illocutionary labels, but also in e.g. the analysis of
“perlocutionary verbs”, i.e. verbs describing (potential or actual) effects of
linguistic action (cf. e.g. apologise, welcome, thank, entice, congratulate). Some

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such verbs, especially expressives are as if a link between illocution and

perlocution in that although they are typically used in direct performatives (I thank
…, Let me apologise …), they at the same time “describe” (intended)
perlocutionary effects. Thus, it may often be practical to use a perlocutionary
perspective on the whole of the speech act. For example, Kalisz (1993: 33)
suggested that politeness principles formulated by Robin Lakoff and Leech should
be integrated in research on perlocutionary acts, as being intended, target- and
addressee-oriented, they are more relevant on the level of perlocution than
illocution.
In many cases there is a distinction which could approximately be identified
with reference to conventional consequences on the one hand, and real, often not
directly foreseeable effects on the other. This distinction, however, does not map
systematically onto the illocutionary and perlocutionary aspects either.
Austin himself realized that his categorization may produce problems and
mentioned the possibility of a terminological confusion, which we could dub
metalinguistic. For example, he explicitly admitted that:

The expression ‘meaning’ & ‘use of sentence’ can blur the distinction between the
locutionary and illocutionary acts […;] to speak of the ‘use’ of language can […]
blur the distinction between the illocutionary and perlocutionary acts
(Austin 1962/1975: 103)

He further referred to the concept of “the use” of language (Austin 1962/1975:

104) to show that while “arguing” and “warning” are roughly conventional and
could be successfully used in explicit performative formulae (in the “in doing x”
mode), concepts (and verbs corresponding to them) such as “persuading”,
“alarming”, and “insinuating” are different in that they are not used in explicit
performatives and describe effects rather than acts (in the “by doing x” mode). This
remark is consistent with the discussion above, which indicates the need for
analysis of “perlocutionary verbs”, an analysis which, in turn, is naturally very
“semantic” in nature.
Austin’s acknowledgement of the methodological difficulty is a good
indication, a reaffirmation indeed, that he was skeptical with regard to the
construction of a thorough theory of speech acts (or linguistic meaning). It is
evident that his theory is better seen as a construct which points to (partly)
systematic communicative (rather than only linguistic) phenomena, which had
been neglected prior to his formulation of the theory11. In this light the division into

11
Cf. “We must learn to run before we can walk. If we never made mistakes how should we
correct them?” (Austin 1962/1975: 12) and the very first words of William James lectures
published as How to Do Things with Words: “What I shall have to say here is neither
difficult nor contentious; the only merit I should like to claim for it is that of being true, at

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locution, illocution, and perlocution, just like the division into semantics and
pragmatics, is better seen as reflective of emphasis on specific aspects in linguistic
communication, and not an attempt at dissecting analysis of speech acts into
mutually exclusive areas.

3. Alternative accounts of the internal structure of the speech act

and their implications for a definition of pragmatics
Dissatisfaction with (often distorted) Austin’s model resulted in alternative
proposals as to the internal structure of the speech act and the status of its
component parts or aspects. The most salient characteristics of selected competing
accounts are briefly sketched below.

3.1. Searle’s theory of speech acts

In his elaboration of the theory of speech act, Searle (1969, 1979) rejected
Austin’s category of locution altogether. His main criticism of the category was
based on the fact that locutionary acts could not be sufficiently differentiated from
illocutionary acts of saying. Slightly disregarding the fact that Austin meant all
three categories, i.e. locution, illocution, and perlocution, to be aspects of one act
rather than distinct acts, Searle’s suggestion may clearly be perceived as yet
another attempt to put forward a more precise description of the nature of the
speech act.
Among constituents of speech acts Searle mentions “performing utterance
acts”, i.e. uttering words, “performing propositional acts”, i.e. referring and
predicating, “performing illocutionary acts”, e.g. stating, commanding, and finally
performing perlocutionary acts, i.e. consequences or effects (Searle 1969: 24-5). It
seems that in suggesting his architecture, Searle renamed Austin’s phonetic and
phatic acts as “utterance”, and turned the rhetic act into the “propositional” one,
possibly blurring some aspects of the Austinian phatic act into both new categories.
In Searle’s version of speech act theory, the act is primarily accounted for in
terms of the propositional content conditions and the illocutionary point. Searle
also reintroduces Austin’s classification of speech acts with some amendments and
discusses the types in terms of abstract categories.

least in parts. The phenomenon to be discussed is very widespread and obvious, and it
cannot fail to have been already noticed, at least here and there, but I have not found
attention paid to it specifically” (Austin 1962/1975: 1).

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Being a philosopher of language, Searle is not directly interested in the scope of

pragmatic research, but his theory treated as data may be important for a
demarcation of pragmatics.
First of all, the conditions set for successful accomplishment of an act,
conditions which are an integral part of his theory, are a mixture of (traditionally)
semantic and pragmatic notions. They make use of both lexical meaning of the
performative verb in question (if present), or a label accepted for the category, and
elements of context important for successfulness of the act. In Speech Acts (1969),
Searle just sketches conditions for the types of act and gives only one full account
of an act, viz. description of the act of promising constituting Chapter 3. The
conditions envisaged for an act to be a promise include, among others, expressing a
proposition, both the speaker’s and hearer’s attitudes, the speaker’s sincere
intention to act, as well as the speaker’s intention to accept the obligation to act. In
summary, it is not possible to divide semantic and pragmatic aspects in Searle’s
theory. The distinctions within the internal structure of the act may be used, but
separation of the “utterance act” plus the “propositional act” from the illocutionary
and the perlocutionary act produces similar difficulties as the Austinian distinction
into locution, illocution, and perlocution. In Searle, these difficulties are even
reinforced by the presence of conditions which mix lexical knowledge with world
knowledge, linguistic considerations with context intervention.
It is also noteworthy in the context that Searle (1969) explicitly states that the
theory of speech acts is a theory of linguistic competence and not performance, i.e.
in deSaussurean terms it is langue that is the object of research of the theory of
speech act, not parole. Searle’s claim shows his belief that the theory of speech
acts is “possible” as a (probably) universal theory of linguistic action; it also shows
that pragmatics, insofar as Searle can be seen as a pragmatician, can be “formal”.

3.2. What is said vs. what is meant

One of the most widespread views on the semantics–pragmatics divide is

associated with Paul H. Grice and his notions of “what is said” as opposed to “what
is implicated”. Despite some bias towards literality, Searle explicitly subscribes to
the Gricean school (e.g. Searle 1969: 43f.) and in many respects, although not a
speech act theorist, Grice can be seen as development on Austinian ideas in that he
tried to systematise the mechanisms of successful communication and his research
has exerted strong influence on the developments in the speech act theory,
strengthening especially its inferential, intention-based (as opposed to convention-
based) mainstream.
It may appear that the Gricean distinction between “what is said” and “what is
meant” should correspond to the Austinian notions of locution and illocution

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(possibly enriched with perlocution), thus lending a reliable criterion for the
semantics-pragmatics borderline. For Grice the meaning of an utterance, i.e. what
is implicated and meant, arises not so much from the form, i.e. “what is said”
(which seems to correspond to Austin’s locutionary acts performed “in saying”),
but is brought about “by the saying of what is said” and “putting it that way” (cf.
Grice 1989: 39f.), which in turn seem close to the Austinian illocution12.
However, a closer look at processes involved at the level of “what is said” or
(here) locution proves that it also involves typically pragmatic phenomena. Even
apparently explicit utterances, such as Austin’s examples quoted above and (6)
below,

(6) I name this ship the Queen Elisabeth

require typically pragmatic processes. For example, an interpretation of (6) and the
expressions “Shoot her” and “You can’t do that”, quoted in (1) all require
processes of assigning reference to deictic expressions, and disambiguation of
superficially explicit forms. Forms such as (7) below, although superficially
explicit, can only be interpreted in context.

(7) Coffee would keep me awake

Whether (7) is to be taken as “yes” or “no” in response to an offer of a cup of

coffee does not depend on the “semantic” meaning of its component parts or even
whether it can be understood as a sentence, but has roots in extralinguistic context.
Other much quoted examples which show context sensitivity of meaning and the
non-independence of truth-theoretic semantics include e.g.:

(8) It is raining
(9) He is too old.

Even within maximally (minimalist) semantic approaches, the assignment of the

truth value to the sentences above requires not only assigning reference, but
extralinguistic knowledge (e.g. information on the place of reference for (8); type
of activity for (9)).
Literature from the areas of pragmatics, semantics, and philosophy of language
provides many examples and ample evidence for the fact that “semantic” content
always underdetermines speaker meaning (cf. e.g. Bach 2001, Carston 2002,
2008). Although using different categories and names (e.g. “semantic enrichment”,

12
Cf. also Kissine (2009) for an inferential account of speech acts and the discussion of
levels of meaning and the notion of illocution vis-à-vis “what is said”.

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Gricean particularised and generalised implicature, “non-literal” readings, e.g.

related to humour, irony and sarcasm, “polite” indirectness, “default” meaning,
etc.), the accounts of phenomena associated with underdeterminacy of linguistic
expressions share interest in the nature of meaning and the mysterious ways in
which meaning can be conveyed in context.
It follows that the locution–illocution/perlocution divide does not provide
means for posing the semantics–pragmatics distinction; the distinction cannot be
systematically mapped onto the relation between “what is said” and “what is
implicated” either. The problem seems to invite conclusion that there is no clear
semantics–pragmatics distinction at all, which in turn may be an invitation to
dispose of either of the concepts.

3.3. What is locuted vs. what is said

There are theorists who tried to refine both the Austinian distinctions and the
problems invited by the locution-illocution-perlocution issue. For example, Korta
and Perry (2007) suggest that locution is a practical notion, but needs further sub-
categorisation or amendment as it is easy to show the difference between “what is
locuted” and “what is said”. In their account, it seems, locution corresponds to
dictionary, semantic, explicit meaning, while the notion of “what is said” (contrary
to Grice) to what can be identified roughly with hearer meaning.
Korta and Perry argue that locution can be, and in fact often is, identified with
“what is said” or the propositional content in the sense of Searle, but only in cases
of successful communication. The cases of ‘non-successful’ (or less successful)
communication in which the difference between “what is locuted” and “what is
said” is clearly visible include e.g. undetected (but also conveyed) irony, instances
of embedded propositions, unexpected interpretation on the part of the audience
with a subsequent clash between speaker meaning and hearer meaning.
It seems that Korta and Perry’s main argument translates into that “what is
said” bears kinship relationship to illocution, and is especially closely related to
assertion; that it is “a forensic concept” in that speaker can be taken responsible for
“what was said” (rather than intended), and that it is also characterised by
sensitivity to information speaker wants to convey. In short, the argument seems to
be that “what is said” can (dramatically) transcend referential meaning. For
example,

(7) Aristotle enjoyed philosophy

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can be “locuted” about Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, while “said” (i.e.
interpreted as referring to) e.g. Aristotle Onassis in certain contexts (cf. Korta and
Perry 2007: 176 f.). In a similar manner in (somewhat obsolete already) (8) below,

(8) If Hillary is elected, Bill will enjoy his return to the White House.

neither of the propositions ‘Hillary being elected’ and ‘Bill enjoying his return to
the White House’ is “said” or “asserted”; they are merely “locuted”. In (9),

(9) John is turning red

the speaker’s intention may be “literal”, i.e. to suggest that e.g. John’s face is
turning red in colour, but the audience’s interpretation may be that John is
becoming a Communist, for which judgement the speaker may be believed
“responsible”.
In all these examples there is a clash between “what is locuted” and “what is
said” in the sense of communicated, and sometimes “what is locuted” may be
understood in a way that the speaker neither envisaged, nor intended.
Applying Perry’s (2001) reflexive-referential theory (RRT), Korta and Perry
(2007) do defend the notion of a “locutionary act” with the provision that it should
be broken down into further aspects, especially into “intended” reflexive
locutionary content and the actual locutionary content, i.e. its reception in context.
A side effect of their account is attention drawn to a kind of “uptake”, a notion
considered by Austin and corresponding to recognition (whether “correct” or false)
of the speaker’s communicative intention on the part of the audience13, which,
however, was originally introduced as a proof for an illocutionary act. As Korta
and Perry (2007: 175) claim about natural communication:

our ordinary concept of what is said is to some extent responsive to uptake on the
part of the audience […] What is said seems to have both illocutionary and
perlocutionary aspects

It is evident that Korta and Perry’s concept of “what is said” is by no means

“semantic” in that it refers directly to typically pragmatic aspects of highly

13
The problem of uptake and its status in the theory of speech acts is also relevant for
defining the scope of pragmatics and the semantics-pragmatics distinction. In the (more)
convention-based theories, an uptake is usually seen as a necessary element for there being
an illocutionary act at all. In theories focused on intention, uptake, if important, can be
found in considerations on the “intended” nature of the act, i.e. what the speaker intends to
perform or her envisaged effects on the hearer and the world (cf. also Sbisà 2009, this
volume).

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contextualised meaning. For them, locution seems to be a kind of (possibly

semantic) template for meaning derived in context. In this way they combine in
“what is said” all aspects of contextualised reading of a linguistic expression,
elements which others dub as “semantic enrichment”, implicature, default
meaning, etc., notions troublesome for the distinction between “what is said” and
“what is meant” as discussed above. A direct consequence of allowing such
phenomena into the Austinian locution is that the concept can by no means be
identified as purely semantic. Thus, on Korta and Perry’s account locution not only
invites but also incorporates “pragmatic” meaning, which further does not allow
for a simple use of the concept in identification of the semantics-pragmatics divide.
It seems that if such a divide were to be suggested at all, it should be hidden
somewhere not even between “what is locuted” and “what is said”, but rather in
between the intended reflexive locutionary content (possibly inside the speaker’s
mind) and the actual locutionary content, which seems to be open to largely
unrestricted enrichments.
It is noteworthy that often language researchers use the concept of “what is
said” with the meaning which Korta and Perry render as “what is locuted”. It is
“what is said” (mainly of course in Gricean, neo-Gricean and post-Gricean theories
and approaches) that corresponds to “general”, “literal” meaning, while Korta and
Perry’s “what is locuted” is normally rendered as “what is communicated”,
implied, etc14.
There are more contrasts related to “what is locuted” and “what is said”, e.g.
the distinction between “what is said” and “what is asserted”, which concentrates
on the potential or actual difference between “what is said”, i.e. literal meaning of
the expression uttered, and the assertion (a kind of truthful commitment) which is
associated with it15.
Although typically speech act accounts make use of the label “Assertion”,
“Assertoric”, or “Assertive”16, as a cover term for a (more descriptive) speech act
type, it seems that the category of assertion is of a special kind in that it permeates
all discourse and in that sense can be at least an element or aspect of all other
(illocutionary) acts.

14
Similar examples of non-literal meaning with elements of conscious deception (silent
disclaimers) on the part of the speaker are discussed with reference to “what is said”
(equivalent to “locuted” as used in Korta and Perry) and “what is communicated”
(equivalent to Korta and Perry’s “what is said”) in Horn 2006.
15
But see Searle (1969 141f.) for a discussion of the assertion fallacy, which exposes (and
criticises) the widespread view that the content of an assertion can be derived from the
semantic value of the words which compose the utterance in question.
16
Cf. e.g. Stalnaker 1978, Searle’s (1979) collection.

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4. Conclusions
Although the theory of speech acts paved a way for pragmatic research building
it on the basis of prior semantic interests, its categories and principles are not
sufficient for demarcating the borderline for pragmatics, especially if it is to be
found vis-à-vis semantics. The pragmatic perspective manifests itself as a heavy-
handed one, to use Stephen Neale’s (2007) phrase, which permeates all levels of
linguistic analysis. This should not be surprising as linguistic activity is necessarily
a purposeful one and easily lends itself to functional research. There is a temptation
thus to conceive of pragmatics as a perspective on language in use, a perspective
which tends towards hegemony over other approaches to language, growing in
dominance over not only semantics, but also e.g. phonetics and phonology,
morphology, etc. It seems that the strongest relative to pragmatic research can be
seen in the mediating syntax (cf. Barker 2004, Carston 2008, and incidentally
newer approaches within generative grammar)17, which is not surprising either as
the relationship between these two areas has direct resemblance to the well-
established relation between form and meaning. This approach leaves the
contentious problem of where semantics ends and pragmatics begins (and vice
versa) outside (or on the outskirts of) the linguistic theory.
In a much philosophical manner, Austin was rather sceptical as to the
possibility of constructing a clear theory of linguistic communication. It seems he
was more concerned with pointing to the contemporary theoretical inadequacies
and negligence with respect to non-truth evaluable expressions. Bringing to light
ordinary language and its nature was the revolution that he had envisaged and, as
can be seen in his lectures, was evidently proud to introduce. Although he did not
use the term pragmatics, his work has evidently proved seminal in the development
of the field.
Speech act theory (or rather contemporary theories) shows that there are no
clear cut borders related to meaning, no absolute categories; that we need to be
satisfied with non-completion and openness, and eventually with what can be seen
as “the magic of pragmatics” (Neale 2007). This “magic” evidently is a linking
thread through all speech act theoretic research and in fact all research
concentrated on linguistic meaning. Whether it is concluded that the force of an

17
But cf. Kearns (2006), focusing on illocutionary logic and assertive conditionals, who
claims that a sharp distinction can be seen between syntax and semantics, which in turn is
blurred with pragmatics. It is evident that what he means correlates with authors such as
Barker (2004) or (less decisively) Carston (2008), who give prominence to the notion of
pragmatics17. By the author’s own admission, illocutionary force is in this account part of
the semantic structure with syntax providing “clues” for semantic interpretation. Even in this
approach one form can be used to perform many different acts, i.e. acts with different
semantic structures, depending on the context.

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utterance comes from convention, or intention, or possibly some other element, it

is always the evasive relation between form and meaning, and especially the
(“real”) contextualised meaning which escapes formalisation – the “shared”,
“default” aspect whose presence can be felt, but not readily formalised in theory.
Irrespective of the theoretical school, linguists acknowledge the (natural)
presence of a mereology (Barker 2004), galaxy (Cappelen & Lepore 2005) of
speech acts18 and of the fact that communication presupposes their existence
(Searle e.g. 1969: 16, 47).
It seems that the war over speech acts is more a war about the status of
semantics with e.g. “insensitive” semantic minimalists (e.g. Cappelen & Lepore
2005, Borg 2004) fighting for granting it a position of power and independence,
and contextualists (e.g. Recanati 2001, 2002, 2004, relevance theorists) fighting for
the view that sentences are only meaningful in the context of speech acts in which
they appear. The semantics–pragmatics divide can only be seen as a functional (not
to say a “pragmatic”) approximation, descriptive of research focus (and as such
should indeed be maintained). However, even in cases maximally free of
contextual variation, there will always be elements of pragmatic destabilising
intrusion at play, aggravated in theoretical divagations by the Wittgensteinian-style
underdeterminacy of linguistic metalanguage.
In conclusion, it is evident that Austin’s tripartite division of the speech act into
its most salient aspects, although valuable for research purposes, does not allow for
defining pragmatics vis-à-vis semantics. All aspects of the speech act, even the
most “semantic” locutionary aspect, involve inferential processes and contextual
intervention which are pragmatic in nature and are reflective of the Morris-style
form/sign–user interrelations.

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Austin claimed that the number of performative verbs alone reaches “the order of the third
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About the Author

Iwona Witczak-Plisiecka received her MPhil in Linguistics (1993) from
Trinity College, Dublin University, Ireland and her MA (1992) in English
studies and PhD (2001) in English linguistics from the University of Łódź,
Poland, where she is currently affiliated. Her research interests are primarily
in the nature of meaning in natural language, the area of the semantics-
pragmatics interface and the philosophy of language with focus on
performativity. A freelance legal translator, she is also interested in the
relation between language and the law, problems of linguistic and regional
identity, minority language rights, and the theory of (legal) translation.
She is editor of Lodz Papers of Pragmatics, member of advisory board of
JoSTrans, the journal of specialised translation, and of editorial board of
Comparative Legilinguistics and International Review of Pragmatics.
She is (co)editor of nine collections and author of Language, Law and
Speech Acts: Pragmatic meaning in English legal texts (Łódź 2007).

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