J. L. Austin – How to Do Things with Words (X, XI, & XII)

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This is the last post on Austin’s How to Do Things with Words. It has been a long and rather sinuous journey, most of the time with cautious, almost stealth, advancements, with mistakes and returns and, at times, impressive summersaults. Before I review the grand finale, which was admittedly neither grand nor final, let us do some backtracking.

The first current against which Austin set himself, was the idea that the language is used (only) to represent the world; traditional philosophies, with their emphasis on declarative (mind you, testable) sentences, were prone to this kind of “descriptivist fallacy”. Intuitively at first, Austin set a barrier between constatives and performatives: the former being the ones that are true or false, the latter the ones that are happy and unhappy. Then for the next four lectures, the distinction was pursued with tenacity, becoming more and more sophisticated – and eventually more and more unlikely. Hence, Austin went back to considering in what ways precisely one could “do things with words”: what were the acts involved in using a language. The locutionary act of saying something, the illocutionary act performed in saying something, and the perlocutionary act achieved by saying something – these were the ways in which, more basically, to say is to do. We talk about the locutionary act as having a meaning (sense and reference, Austin says), and about the illocutionary act as having a force. The perlocution is the achieved effect.

Lecture X deals with possible equivocations that can arise from the use of the formulas “In saying x I was doing y” (normally used to identify the illocution) and “By saying x I was doing y” (for perlocution). Neither of these tests is watertight, but eventually, coped with our linguistic intuitions, we can identify and separate the illocution from the perlocution. I will not go into the entire set of explorations, but consider that if we pick out a perlocutionary verb, say to convince, we cannot say “In saying so-and-so I was convincing you” except for reports – i.e. we cannot turn it into “I (hereby) convince you that…” We can then, in principle, isolate some illocutionary verbs (known from the previous lectures as “performative verbs”) like I warn you that, I order you to etc., from some perlocutionary verbs like convincing or intimidating.

Lecture XI constitutes the final nail in the coffin of constative-performative distinction. For what are constative utterances after all? By now it should be rather clear that the saying-doing contrast is in fact a contrast between two types of acts, the locutionary and the illocutionary. This was particularly tricky in the case of what one normally sees as ‘statements’, which – although at the very beginning was thought otherwise – can be happy and unhappy in pretty much the same way as the more “classic” non-statements: “Stating,” Austin decides, “seems to meet all the criteria we had for distinguishing the illocutionary act”.

So there is no necessary conflict between some locutionary act being true or false, and some illocutionary act being the doing of something (hence, happy or unhappy). If one says “He did not do it” – we can appraise and asses both the true/false dimension (he did it or not) and the happy/unhappy dimension (he managed to perform the act of stating or not). Take for instance insincerity – what we termed in the previous lectures Γ- infelicities. As language users, we somehow feel that saying “The cat is on the mat but I don’t believe it” is in all relevant respects similar to “I promise something but I don’t intend to keep it”. Austin underlines this point sharply: “Once we realize that what we have to study is not the sentence but the issuing of an utterance in a speech situation, there can hardly be any longer a possibility of not seeing that stating is performing an act” (p. 138).

But then, if we look closer into this situatedness of statements, the truth values themselves, i.e. the idea that we can objectively judge a statement as “true” or “false”, this becomes open to doubt. The famous example here is “France is hexagonal”, to which Austin notes:

Suppose that we confront ‘France is hexagonal’ with the facts, in this case, I suppose, with France, is it true or false? Well, if you like, up to a point; of course I can see what you mean by saying that it is true for certain intents and purposes. It is good enough for a top-ranking general, perhaps, but not for a geographer. ‘Naturally it is pretty rough’, we should say, ‘and pretty good as a pretty rough statement’. But then someone says: ‘But is it true or is it false?’ I don’t mind whether it is rough or not; of course it’s rough, but it has to be true or false – it’s a statement, isn’t it? (p. 142)

Then, not only we leave aside the illocutionary and perlocutionary aspects of the speech act if we like to evaluate something as true or false, but the evaluation itself is, as it were, act-dependent, and in order to produce a decision in this sense, what we use is a “over-simplified notion of correspondence with facts” (p. 145). Nonetheless, any genuine speech act consists of both the locutionary and illocutionary – which might point to the fact that the notions of true and false are here for didactic (e.g. geometrical) reasons only. Besides the true/false fetish, the fact/value fetish is itself in danger of being thrown away by the same situatedness.

In the last lecture, XII, Austin sets about offering a classification of speech acts according to their illocutionary force[1].

	Types of act	Examples*
1.	Verdictives	acquit, convict, rule, place, grade, diagnose, analyse, find, reckon, rate etc.
2.	Exercitives	appoint, degrade, demote, dismiss, name, order, command, direct, grant, nominate, choose, claim, beg, announce, recommend, repeal, veto, etc.
3.	Commissives	promise, undertake, give my word, contract, plan, purpose, etc.
4.	Behavitives	apologize, thank, deplore, commiserate, criticize, overlook, welcome, bid, bless, curse, defy, dare, etc.
5.	Expositives	affirm, deny, state, describe, class, identify, conjecture, report, inform, appraise, tell, recognize etc.

*These can be understood as either with or without the formula “I [hereby] …”

This, one can sense, is entirely tentative. Almost the same is left for Austin to say about the outcome of all the lectures: “I have been doing to things which I do not altogether like doing. These are: (1) producing a programme, that is, saying what ought to be done rather than doing something, (2) lecturing”. I guess the programme mentioned in (1) is our programme here under the heading of “Pragmatics”.

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[1] Some other more recent attempts proposed by Searle can be seen here.

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J. L. Austin – How to Do Things with Words (VIII & IX)

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What happened thus far was this: in trying to search for a list of performative verbs, Austin stumbled over great many problems which gradually turned him away from the idea itself of a principled performative/constative distinction based on grammatical criterion (or even criteria). This eventually led him to distinguish the locutionary act, which was divided into the phonetic, phatic and rhetic act. When we perform a locutionary act, the ‘locution’ is (a) the phonetic act of making of certain noises, (b) the phatic act of uttering of certain words in linguistic constructions, (c) the rhetic act of the producing of meaning. In this lecture, Austin starts by making some further refinements, which prepare the introduction of the illocutionary and perlocutionary act. I believe it’s fair to say that this is the most important lecture so far.

If they’re still blurred, a good test for distinguishing the phatic act (b) from the rhetic act (c) is this: If one says ‘He said “The cat is on the mat”’, then one reports a phatic act – the uttering of certain words. If one says ‘He said that the cat is on the mat’, then one reports a rhetic act – the producing of meaning (of “sense and reference”, in a Fregean twist of phrase). Note that we can always report the phatic act by using quotation marks and the verb ‘said’, but we would want to report a, e.g., command or an exclamation, we would have to change the verb to “he told me to” or “he bade me welcome”. This stems from a deeper difference between the two acts, a difference which Austin spells out like this: “The pheme is a unit of language: its typical fault is to be nonsense – meaningless. But the rheme is a unit of speech: its typical fault is to be vague or void or obscure &c” (p. 98).

As clear as the distinction between the pheme and the rheme may be, it is not in itself the main point; Austin is interested in a rather different sense in which to say something is to do something – the performative. So, we may have fully elucidated the locutionary act in ‘It is going to charge’ and still not be aware, as language users, if the speaker was performing the act of warning or not. To say something about that, we must distinguish the locutionary act from the illocutionary act: the illocutionary act is “in what way we are using the locution” (p. 98). Some examples of illocutionary acts are: ‘asking a question’, ‘announcing a verdict’, ‘making a criticism’, ‘giving a description or a definition’ etc. These different uses are called the forces with which the locutionary acts are used and this is the basis for the separation of force from meaning[1]: We perform an act of saying something with a certain meaning, but we perform an act in saying something with a certain force. The noun ‘use’ here, Austin observes, is “hopelessly ambiguous” and can stand for both acts.

Before going any further, there is another way in which to say something is to do something: To say something is often (and, Austin notes, “even normally”), the producing of certain consequential effects, which can, but need not, be achieved intentionally. This is the perlocutionary act or simply perlocution. So, if the locution is the saying of ‘You can’t do that!’ and the illocution is the act of denying, or protesting against, or interdicting or whatever, then the perlocution is the act of persuading, or bringing to senses or stopping etc. Note that all three can be reported:

(A) Locution: He said to me, ‘You can’t do that!’
(B) Illocution: He protested against my doing that
(C) Perlocution: He brought me to my senses.

Austin makes a remark (p. 103) which is very important in the economy of these lectures: he says that, even if we can describe both B and C, that is, both the illocution and the perlocution, as ‘uses’ of language, the former may be said to be conventional, “in the sense that at least it could be made explicit by the performative formula”, while the latter cannot. The force is conventional, just as meaning partly is. So we can say ‘I (hereby) protest against you doing that’ but we cannot say ‘I (hereby) convince you that …’ Austin concludes: “the illocutionary act is a conventional one: an act done as conforming to a convention”.

The fact that we can talk about the use language in so many ways, that we can attribute so many senses to the word “act”, is not at all dubious, for action in general is subject to many different descriptions: one man shooting another can be reported as ‘He shot him’, ‘He fired a gun’, ‘He pulled the trigger’, ‘He moved his finger’ – or further – ‘He did justice’, ‘He revenged his friend’ etc.

While what has been said so far is, to a certain extent, quite clear and straightforward, the more Austin talks about it in the beginning of this lecture, the more one comes to see the intricate relationships between locution, illocution and perlocution. For instance, we said that the perlocution is a (or the) consequential effect, but, one might wonder, the consequential effect of what? and how far can we co to extend the consequences? Deeper: what do we mean by consequence? We would certainly like to leave out the idea that the illocution is the consequence of the locution, but then we would equally like to say that there is a certain “regular point” at which the perlocution “breaks” from the illocution – the former being the consequence of the latter (p. 111).

The fact that we have names (i.e. verbs) for illocution should point to the idea that what we name when we name linguistic activity is the convention, not the consequence: “the conventions of certain illocutionary force as bearing on the special circumstances of the occasion of the issuing of the utterance” (p. 114). Still, one cannot simply overlook the fact that the illocution without a certain type of effect is infelicitous (‘unhappy’, ‘unsuccessful’). So, how to distinguish the consequence of persuading from the ‘certain type of effect’ of understanding an utterance? Even semantically, one could find oneself at pains distinguishing the two: what words to we use?

Since understanding (as opposed to any perlocutionary act) could be restated as ‘to take what has been said in a certain sense’ Austin settles this ‘certain type of effect’ as the uptake. We say that an illocutionary act, in order to be felicitous, must “secure an uptake” (p. 116). As a matter of fact, there are two more ways in which the illocution is ‘bound up’ with the effects – all of which can be separated from the perlocution itself.

Now, as regards perlocution, the genuine sense of ‘effect’ we were first interested in, Austin makes a distinction between perlocutionary object and perlocutionary sequel: we can say I tried to surprise him but only managed to upset him. It is characteristic of perlocutionary acts that the response achieved, or the sequel, can also be achieved non-linguistically. This remark may be more misleading than helpful: for there are non-linguistic ways of performing what looks as an illocutionary act (I could warn someone by waving a stick, and my waving a stick would be a conventional way of doing that). Austin ends the lecture firmly: “But the fact remains that many illocutionary acts cannot be performed except by saying something” (p. 119).

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[1] One should not be mislead by the fact that, in colloquial speech, we can use the verb ‘to mean’ in order to talk about the force of an utterance, as in “He meant it as a threat!”

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Ordinary language philosohpy, linguistic philosophy, philosophy of language… Austin performs ‘em.

But why? This passage might point towards an answer.

Before I deal with this, though, let me make one general observation or confession. Many of you will be getting impatient at this approach – and to some extent quite justifiably. You will say ‘Why not cut to the cackle? Why go on about lists available in ordinary talk of names for things we do that have relations to saying, and about formulas like the “in” and “by” formulas? Why not get to discussing the thing bang off in terms of linguistics and psychology in a straightforward fashion? Why be so devious?’ Well, of course, I agree that this will have to be done – only I say after, not before, seeing what we can screw out of ordinary language even if in what comes out there is a strong element of the undeniable. Otherwise we shall overlook things and go to fast. (Austin, 1962, p. 122)

Do I agree? Not that it matters, but partly yes. In spirit, the idea that – in what concerns language at least – we should first be aware of the ‘language game’ before theorizing about the rules comes out clean and rather hard to refuse. In practice, when it comes to speech acts, taking too keen an interest in the way we name the acts (e.g. arguing, saying, warning, declaring etc.) might be a constraining, instead of a liberating, road.

Now, while we’re at it, let us stop for a moment and take a quick look at argumentation theory from this perspective. The idea is discussed at length in Jacobs (1989) “Speech acts and arguments”. The question: how useful is our pedestrian nomenclature of so-called performative verbs in dealing with instances of argumentation? Informal logicians’ answer: ‘Why bother? Gimme reasoning in any way shape or form’. Jacobs’s answer adds moderation but walks along the same lines: “the notion of argument as a stable, homogeneous class of utterances definable by a common force and a common set of felicity conditions does not fare well when tested against actual language uses.” (p. 230). So the classificatory powers of the nomenclature are cute and offer a starting point, but we are way too move on with just that. Interestingly, pragma-dialecticians seem to be the only ones enjoying it; not the list of verbs itself (and, to be precise, not the Austinian view of convention) but the composed stability of describing speech acts from felicity conditions and analyzing language use with that as a model.

J. L. Austin - How to Do Things with Words (VII)

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Things get even more complicated. For not only does one need to distinguish the behavitives and mere polite, conventional (even formal) exposure of feelings, that is, between “I approve”, “I approve of”, and “I feel approval of”, but Austin introduces a certain class of expositive (or expositional) performatives. “Here, the main body of the utterance[1] has generally or often the straightforward form of a statement, but there is an explicit performative verb at its head which shows how the ‘statement’ is to be fitted into the context of conversation” (p. 85). Some examples are “I argue that there is no backside of the moon”, “I concede that there is no backside of the moon”, “I prophesy (or predict) that there is no backside of the moon” etc. Austin finds it downright “irritating” that the clause following the performative verb “will normally look just like a statement” and that with behavitives, just as with expositives, and what he later considers as verdictives (“I declare that…”), “the whole utterance seems essentially meant to be true or false despite its performative characteristics” (p. 89). Moreover, to not observe that these strange performative in question is, as Austin describes it, “the sort of Alice in Wonderland over-sharpness of taking ‘I think that p’ as a statement about yourself” (p. 90). Is it that unhappiness is a flaw both of performatives and constatives?


We see now where the failure of the grammatical criterion and the “capable of being rendered as explicit performaitves” criterion had led Austin: statements (constatives) too are capable of being rendered as explicit performatives, e.g. “I assert/state that…”, “I argue that…”, “I know that…” etc. As obvious as the performative-constative (doing-stating) distinction was at the very beginning, isn’t saying also the doing of something? As a matter of fact, Austin adds in the end of the lecture, in saying something, we do quite a lot of things, which could be distinguished as:


(A.a) a phonetic act: to perform the act of making certain noises


(A.b) a phatic act: to pronounce not just noises, but ‘lexical items’, words that are in the vocabulary


(A.c) a rhetic act: to utter not just words, but words with meaning, with reference and predication and a ‘sense’.


[1] Notice here a distinction between the ‘propositional content’ and the ‘force’ indicated by the expositive.

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Semantics is EZ

scissors & pasta from Bach’s Informal Lectures… (1989, p. 10)

J. L. Austin – How to Do Things with Words (VI)

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In search for a criterion, or a list of criteria, which would isolate the performative, as the doing an action, from the constative, as the reporting of a state of affairs, Austin systematically disconfirmed our expectations that such a criterion can be solely grammatical, or solely pertaining to vocabulary, or even both. What he did notice however is a kind of asymmetry between a class of verbs, which he named performative verbs, and other regular verbs: “I promise” vs. “I run”, “I warn you” vs. “I see you” etc. Since not all performatives come in this neat shape (e.g. “Go!” or “Guilty”), Austin settled for the test all performatives should be interpretable, or ‘capable of being brought’ in some way or another, in the neat explicit shape.

There were some difficulties to this too, to mention only the most salient: (a) some performed actions did not have an explicit performative correspondent, like “I insult you”, (b) some verbs could function as both to introduce a constative and a performative, like “I call”, and (c) “I state that…” would, by our test, be considered a performative while we would like to keep it as introducing (or indicating) a constative. The question, then, is what is an explicit performative.
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If the ‘primary performative’ (i.e. one would be inclined to call it the “implicit performative”) is “I shall be there”, then the ‘explicit performative’ is, or can be, “I promise that I shall be there” or “I warn you that I shall be there” etc. Now Austin is very anxious to point out that the performative verb does not describe or state the action being performed[1]. In short, when I say “I promise that…”, I’m not describing my act but performing it; nothing analyzable as ‘true’ or ‘false’ is in place. To utter a performative verb is to make explicit which ceremonial act you are performing, while performing it, i.e. “is to make plain how the action is to be taken or understood, what action it is.” (p. 70)[2]

In the remainder of the lecture, Austin struggles with the multifarious uses of ceremonial acts and their explicit ‘appearance’ in language. First, Austin lists some more ‘primitive’ ways of making the act being performed more or less clear to the hearer (e.g. mood, tone of voice, adverbial phrases etc.). Second, even if what seems as a performative verb is being made explicit, there seem to be many cases where some sort of description of internal states of mind could be depicted (e.g. in saying “I am sorry”), or the label of performative even seems out of place “I am shocked by…”. Austin devises four tests which might help one make a clearer distinction between the former cases, which he finally dubs behavitives, and the latter cases, which are merely a conventional display of inner emotions.

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[1] Precisely why this is so important will become apparent in the next lectures.

[2] It is when discussing these issues that Austin speaks (p. 72-73) for the first time of the force of an utterance, and the ambiguity of forces in ‘primary performatives’ left inexplicit (as our “I shall be there”).

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J. L. Austin - How to Do Things with Words (V)

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The new quest, then, is to try to restate the relation between the performative and the constative, between utterances which are – as has been repeatedly pointed out in previous lectures – happy or unhappy and statements of various kinds which are (thought of as) true or false. In the last lecture, this distinction was starting to appear almost suspect in view of the close relations between the performance of various utterances and what philosophers and logicians have called presupposition or implication.

At this point, Austin is in the very heart of speech act theoretical questions, for he is (explicitly) asking: What is the difference between doing and saying? Since “John is running”, i.e. saying, is closely connected with “I am stating that John is running”, i.e. doing, and if “I warn you that the bull is about to charge”, i.e. doing, is closely connected with “The bull is about to charge”, i.e. saying – how can we still isolate the performative? Is there any grammatical or lexicographical criterion one could still cling to?

A first answer suggested itself from the examples Austin had used, namely, the verb in the first person singular present indicative active: ‘I do’, ‘I bet’, ‘I give’ etc. While there seems to be something essential about using this verb phrase, Austin presents several cases as objections. One can find performative utterances that (1) lack the first person, e.g. ‘You are hereby authorized to pay…’, (2) lack the active voice, e.g. ‘Passengers are warned to fasten their seatbelt’, (3) lack the indicative mood, e.g. ‘Go!’, (4) lack the present tense, e.g. ‘You were offside!’[1]. The possibility of inserting ‘hereby’ within any performative utterance, e.g. ‘I (hereby) give’, ‘I (hereby) warn you …’, is recognized as a useful, albeit rather elegant and not thoroughly conclusive, criterion.

Facing these examples, Austin returns to the definition of the performative in search for another (not necessarily grammatical) criterion. A performative utterance was conceived in the beginning as, quite literally, the performance of an action. Now, in language, actions are purposively performed by individuals and in the case of speech acts, the utterer must be the performer. As Austin puts it, “there is something which is at the moment of uttering being done by the person uttering” (p. 60); hence, the temptation to propose that “any utterance which is in fact a performative should be reducible, expandable, or analyzable in a form with a verb in the first person singular present indicative active” (p. 62, my italics). One might object that this is simply going back to the I do’s and I bet’s in the previous lectures, and this is partly true; but the italics in the quoted text are more relevant than they seem, for they stress on the analyst’s job to make explicit the performative verb if he or she is to recognize the performative.

Now that the focus is on the verbs, the first thing to notice is the asymmetry between the behavior of performative verbs (in the first person present indicative active form) and other verbs in other moods and tenses. Consider the difference between the performative ‘I bet you six pence’ and the statements ‘I betted (or ‘he bets’) six pence’, and that between the performative ‘I promise’ and the statement ‘I run’. This can be used to show that there is indeed such a class of verbs one can isolate as being (capable of being used as) performatives[2].

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[1] At this point, Austin has no intention to take into account any sort of indirectness or implicitness for his self-imposed purpose is to find a grammatical criterion, that is, one that is in language and may isolate the performative.

[2] Austin notices right away (p. 65) that some performatives do not have a corresponding performative verb, e.g. to insult (and the awkwardness of ‘I insult you!’).

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Hitchcock defends the W

This is a review of David Hitchcock’s paper “Toulmin’s Warrants” (Hitchcock, 2003). If you are completely new to Stephen E. Toulmin’s (1958) The Uses of Arguments a quick look over part two of this review should be enough for now.
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1. Toulmin’s conception

The chapter “The Layout of Arguments” from Toulmin (1958) starts by putting to practice the previously advocated view of argument as procedure (what Toulmin called the “jurisprudential metaphor”). Hitchcock briefly follows this procedural view: If we ask how arguments start, we come up with the CLAIM, then if the claim is doubted, one brings forward the DATA (or ‘grounds’), if the relationship between data and claim is itself question, one must make explicit his justification from passing from the former to the latter, thus arriving at the WARRANT. Toulmin’s characterization of warrants is: “general, hypothetical statements, which can act as bridges, and authorize the sort of step to which our arguments commit us” (1958, p. 98). The justification of the justification is called the BACKING.

Warrants, then, are rules which permit one to jump from the data to the conclusion. Using “Harry was born in Bermuda”, we can support the claim that “Harry is a British person” if a warrant of the sort “A man born in Bermuda is generally a British subject” is, as it were, in function. The warrant is then a principle, describable by a general sentence that does not make reference to any particular case at hand, in accordance with which we argue and/or reason. This is, in its essentials, Toulmin’s conception. Hitchcock continues first by explaining three common misconceptions about warrants, and then offering a response to five well-known criticisms adduced by several argumentation theorists to Toulmin’s concept. I will follow these lines.

2. Misconceptions

(a) A warrant is a kind of premise

In fact, one of the reasons for introducing all this terminology was precisely that of getting over the “minor premise-major premise” issue in talking about what stands behind conclusions. A premise is something from which the conclusion follows; a warrant is something in accordance with which the conclusion follows. “A warrant is an inference-licensing rule, not a premise” (p. 71)

(b) A warrant is a kind of implicit premise

Although, due to pragmatic reasons, it happens quite often that in conversation warrants are left implicit; it is not their implicitness which isolates them theoretically. Hitchcock throws some darts at what he calls “implicit-premiss approaches” while he’s at the business of refuting (b): there are some theorists who try to preserve the “intuitive respectability” of some arguments by way of repairing their formal deficiencies in the reconstruction. This “fiction of an implicit premiss” is nothing else than the job of “discovering something that is not there” (p. 72). Toulmin’s warrant, if we see and define it correctly, is self-explanatory in the sense that its function differentiates it immediately from other any premise, so that one need not use “ad hoc devices” such as the pragma-dialectical “pragmatic optimum”[1]. As a rule the warrant is more general in that it applies not only to the argument at hand. What does this mean? Well, to begin with, it means that every one trying to search for one premise, or one statement, which is left unexpressed is disregarding this law-like behavior of warrants. Hitchcock puts it quite instructively:

“… consider a common argument that marijuana should be legalized because it is no more dangerous than alcohol, which is legal. Among the general rules which would license the step in this argument from the grounds [data] to the claim are the following: given that something is no more dangerous than alcohol and that alcohol is legal, then you may take it that that thing should be legalized; given that something is no more dangerous than something else that is legal, then you may take it that the first thing should be legalized; given that marijuana is no more dangerous than something that is legal, then you may take it that marijuana should be legalized; given that one thing is no more dangerous than another which has a certain social status, then the first thing should be given the same social status; and so forth.” (p. 73)

We see then how one can get from the data to the conclusion in very different ways, according to which part is he ready to generalize or abstract from. There is no one implicit premise one should start searching for.

(c) A warrant is an ungeneralized conditional statement.

Once again, this misses the generality of warrants. So if one tries to formulate the warrant, one should end up not with something like ‘If [Data], therefore you may take it that [Claim]’, but with something more general like “From data of this kind, you may take it that a corresponding claim of this sort is true” (p. 73)[2].

3. Objections

(a) Difficulty of practical application

Hitchcock cites van Eemeren, Grootendorst & Kruiger (1984), according to whom it is “often difficult” in practice to tell the warrant from the data (or maybe the other way around). Hitchcock’s reply is not particularly useful: “I did this for a sample of 50 arguments extracted by random sampling methods from several hundred…” (p. 74). However, considering (1) the fact that there are several criteria which one can make use of, i.e. general vs. particular, sentence vs. inference-rule, explicit vs. implicit, and (2) the fact that more often than not examples seem to render themselves to this analysis, I would say the burden of proof is on the pragma-dialectical side.

(b) Occurrence of general statements as grounds and of particular statements as warrants

The same authors, van Eemeren, Grootendorst & Kruiger (1984), also raise the issue of the reversibility of the datum and the warrant, since Toulmin allows for universal statements to function as data. Hitchcock’s answer to this is, to my mind, quite strange. He points to the fact that particular statements too, that is, any statement of the form P(a) in first-order predicate logic, could be restated as a second-order generalization: “For any property Q, if everything with property P has property Q, then a has property Q”. I do not see this neither as a “corresponding” statement (I take that to mean a translation of the same statement in a logical language), nor as a generalization: notice that a is still present, and it should be, if the translation is to be correct in both cases. Nor do I see it as a statement at all. Indeed the same proposition would be expressible in higher-order logics as “The property P has the higher-order property of being true of a” – this is a statement; a quite particular one. Hitchcock’s translation is the stating of an inference, an instance of reasoning from the second clause to the third.

(c) Misconstrual of the function of generalized conditionals in premissory position

I could have just skipped this one, since I don’t make much of it, but it’s interesting to note that Hitchcock makes use of some concepts I have never met before (which also seem to be quite important both for (c) and for the possible response to it): “general categorical”, “generalized conditionals”, “open-ended generalizations”, “premissory position”.

(d) Absence of warrants from arguments as products and from our conscious reasoning

Freeman (1991) argued that the concept of warrant should be replaced (if not rejected) since warrants are not part of the product, part of the argument, so including them in a diagram, or in the model as the tradition often does, is at least in one way wrong. This is a strong criticism, Hitchcock adds, since as analysts we want to be careful not to distort the actual practice with our own prejudices. So, if by writing it as part of the argument one is in any way implying that ‘it is there’ – this should be avoided. A warrant is identified only when we try to evaluate the argument: “Without the opportunity to ask the arguer, ‘How do you get there?’, we must ask, ‘How could you get there?’, and consider whether any of the possible rules of inference which would license the step from premisses to conclusion is in fact justified” (p. 79).

(e) Difficulty of assigning some warrants to fields

Johnson (1996), among others, has pointed out that field-dependency should be taken with a grain of salt, unless understood ideally simply as an analytical tool. As Hitchcock concedes, our knowledge is not neatly “parceled out into fields”, each with its backed warrants. Not to mention the unfathomable common-sense knowledge – by definition outside the fields. Hitchcock’s response is that “we would do well to give up Toulmin’s strong field-dependency thesis” (p. 80). Be that as it may, the grounds are no less distinguishable from the warrants.

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[1] As much as I agree with Hitchcock, in both regards, I think the concept of pragmatic-optimum – as developed in pragma-dialectics – is anything but ad hoc. Behind it there is a quite principled pragmatic conception of what it means to put forward an argument, and what it means to see something, not as “not there”, but as “unexpressed”. Not that one must or even should accept the concept. It’s just that its being propounded ad hoc is not, I believe, the way to criticize it.

[2] The reader will have noticed the closeness between Hitchcock’s insistence on generality and Dahl claim that generics do not express a mere “accidental generalization” (see here). The possible translation of general statements in to “if-then” conditionals is also in the same area.

The extended code of conduct in pragma-dialectics

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This is a review of chapter 6 from van Eemeren & Grootendorst (2004, pp. 123-158). For a general view of the pragma-dialectical approach to fallacies, see this post. The gargantuan table below should not frighten one. It will be used more as a source when I’ll mention or refer to the rules in the future. 
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Van Eemeren & Grootendorst start by delineating a the “critical-rationalist view of reasonableness”. Naturally, this means starting with what reasonable means. The main difference between “rational” and “reasonable” is generally that between “the use of the faculty of reasoning” and “the sound use of the faculty of reasoning.” (p. 124) Rationality, in this sense, is a necessary but not sufficient condition for reasonableness. To the question what, then, is reasonableness? the authors respond: “It is therefore natural to begin to answer our question by examining how philosophers of science who have given much thought to it define reasonableness.” (p. 125). Toulmin distinguishes the geometrical conception of reasonableness (that of formal logicians) from the anthropological conception of reasonableness (that according to which “the validity criterion is determined on purely empirical grounds”, p. 128). The critical conception of reasonableness regards argumentation as part of a procedure of critical (therefore, intersubjective) testing. As such, reasonableness is not tied to any variant of justificationism – they don’t assume the task of argumentation is to “legitimize standpoints definitively” (p. 131) – so argumentation escapes Albert’s trilemma (ad infinitum vs. circularity vs. arbitrarity). The conception of fundamental fallibility of human thought gives rise to the need of a dialectical procedure for testing.

The reasonableness is thus replaced: from the means of justification, to the means of testing. Testing, thus, the procedure is reasonable according to its: problem validity (it must resolve differences of opinion) and conventional validity (parties must agree upon the acceptability of the procedure). In Barth & Krabbe (1982) the process of testing is basically that of detecting inconsistencies (the standpoint and its concessions must not be contradictory), but the formal set-up of the discussion is rather rigid and artificial for mirroring ordinary argumentative exchanges. The pragma-dialectical approach then reformulates this in order to fit the more pedestrian set-up of protagonist-antagonist relationships: “In a critical discussion that proceeds in accordance with pragma-dialectical rules, the protagonist and the antagonist try to find out whether the protagonist’s standpoint is capable of withstanding the antagonist’s criticism.” (p. 133). In this view, regulations do not regard inferences, but speech acts.

The pragma-dialectical discussion procedure

The rules are concerned with speech acts (this follows also from the externalization principle): they say when is a party entitled and/or obliged to perform certain speech acts. The authors proceed to formulate the “dialectically regulated discussion” they think is ideal in this respect.

PURPOSE	RULES
1. Confrontation stage
- “[…] the fundamental ability to put forward and call into question any standpoint” (136) - No special conditions apply to (a) the propositional content [of assertive & commissive] or (b) preparatory conditions - cooperation in the externalization of the DoO	Rule 1. a. Special conditions apply neither to the propositional content of the assertives by which a standpoint is expressed, nor to the propositional content of the negation of the commissive by means of which a standpoint is called into question. b. In the performance of these assertives and negative commissives, no special preparatory conditions apply to the position or status of the speaker or writer and listener or reader.
2. Opening stage
- the right to challenge - “grant the right to challenge a discussant to defend his standpoint” (137)	Rule 2 The discussant who has called the standpoint of the other discussant into question [A] in the confrontation stage is always entitled to challenge this discussant to defend his standpoint.
- the obligation to defend - “It follows from the preparatory conditions of the assertive with which a discussant has expressed a standpoint that he is obliged to put forward proof or argumentation in defense of this standpoint when asked to do so” (138) - as long as the discussant has not yet successfully defended his standpoint, the obligation to defend holds fully => preparedness to discuss -the allocation of burden of proof - “whoever puts forward a standpoint bears the onus of proof” (140)	Rule 3 The discussant who is challenged by the other discussant to defend the standpoint that he has put forward in the confrontation stage is always obliged to accept this challenge, unless the other discussant is not prepared to accept any shared premises and discussion rules; the discussant remains obliged to defend the standpoint as long as he does not retract it and as long as he has not successfully defended it against the other discussant on the basis of the agreed premises and discussion rules. (139)
- the allocation of roles - we need to know who’s who in the argumentation stage	Rule 4 The discussant who in the opening stage has accepted the other discussant’s challenge to defend his standpoint will fulfill the role of protagonist in the argumentation stage, and the other discussant will fulfill the role of antagonist, unless they agree otherwise; the distribution of roles is maintained until the end of the discussion.
3. Argumentation stage
- agreement concerning the discussion rules - “discussants in question have declared their readiness to conduct the discussion in accordance with shared rules.” (142) - agreement regarding both the force and the application of the rules - meta-discussions need to be possible – in the course of a meta-d., the rule becomes a standpoint	Rule 5 The discussants who will fulfill the roles of protagonist and antagonist in the argumentation stage agree before the start of the argumentation stage on the rules for the following: [1] how the protagonist is to defend the initial standpoint and how the antagonist is to attack it, and [2] in which case the protagonist has successfully defended the standpoint and in which case the antagonist has successfully attacked it. These rules apply throughout the duration of the discussion, and may not be called into question during the discussion itself by either of the parties.
- attacking and defending standpoint - the only accepted ways of attacking & defending a standpoint: (a) assertives [argumentation], (b) commissives [acceptance/decline], (c) request [for (new) argumentaiton] - antagonist can question: A. propositional content & B. justificatory force	Rule 6 a. The protagonist may always defend the standpoint that he adopts in the initial difference of opinion or in a sub-difference of opinion by performing a complex speech act of argumentation, which then counts as a provisional defense of this standpoint. b. The antagonist may always attack a standpoint by calling into question the propositional content or the justificatory or refutatory force of the argumentation. c. The protagonist and the antagonist may not defend or attack standpoints in any other way.

1. Intersubjective identification procedure (A)

- when the propositional content of an argument is called into question (A above), a sub-dispute about the sub-standpoint (the former argument in the initial dispute) arises;

- these sub-disputes end when the sub-standpoint (former argument): either (a) is on the list of accepted propositions (shared premises), (b) is inserted, by mutual decision, on this list;

- the procedure by which the protagonists tries to show that the sub-standpoint (former argument) is identical with one of the propositions on the list of shared premises is called intersubjective identification procedure

- if intersubjective identification procedure = OK, antagonist retracts doubt -if intersubjective identification procedure = not OK, protagonist retracts argumentation - protagonist must be able to insert new propositions in the list but only as as a result of a sub-discussion

Rule 7 a. The protagonist has successfully defended the propositional content of a complex speech act of argumentation against an attack by the antagonist if the application of the intersubjective identification procedure yields a positive result or if the propositional content is in the second instance accepted by both parties as a result of a sub-discussion in which the protagonist has successfully defended a positive sub-standpoint with regard to this propositional content. b. The antagonist has successfully attacked the propositional content of the complex speech act of argumentation if the application of the intersubjective identification procedure yields a negative result and the protagonist has not successfully defended a positive sub-standpoint with regard to this propositional content in a sub-discussion.

2. Intersubjective inference procedure (B)
- if antagonist challenges justificatory force (B, above), then “[Arg.] therefore [Cl.]” is called into question
- the validity of “[Arg.] therefore [Cl.]” is judged on the basis of logical rules

3. Intersubjective explicitization procedure
- if the intersubjective inference procedure is restrained by lack of full explicitness (i.e. an unexpressed premise)
- making the unexpressed premise explicit reveals the argument scheme

4. Intersubjective testing procedure
- the parties must determine whether the argumentation scheme is (a) admissible and (b) correctly applied

If procedures (2-4) = OK, then justificatory force = OK If procedures (2-4) = not OK, then j.f. = not OK	Rule 8 a. The protagonist has successfully defended a complex speech act of argumentation against an attack by the antagonist with regard to its force of justification or refutation if the application of the intersubjective inference procedure or (after application of the intersubjective explicitization procedure) the application of the intersubjective testing procedure yields a positive result. b. The antagonist has successfully attacked the force of justification or refutation of the argumentation if the application of the intersubjective inference procedure or (after application of the intersubjective explicitization procedure) the application of the intersubjective testing procedure yields a negative result.
- conclusive defense - the protagonist must have defended both the propositional content of the argumentation (as prescribed in rule 7) and its force of justification or refutation with regard to the proposition on which the standpoint bears (as prescribed in rule 8)	Rule 9 a. The protagonist has conclusively defended an initial standpoint or substandpoint by means of a complex speech act of argumentation if he has successfully defended both the propositional content called into question by the antagonist and its force of justification or refutation called into question by the antagonist. b. The antagonist has conclusively attacked the standpoint of the protagonist if he has successfully attacked either the propositional content or the force of justification or refutation of the complex speech act of argumentation.
- optimal use of right to attack - upon reflection, the antagonist might reconsider the acceptability of the propositional content and/or the justificatory force; - he must have the right to do so	Rule 10 The antagonist retains throughout the entire discussion the right to call into question both the propositional content and the force of justification or refutation of every complex speech act of argumentation of the protagonist that the latter has not yet successfully defended.
- optimal use of right to defend - allowing the protagonist to defend every argumentation that is attacked throughout the whole discussion against the attacks of the antagonist.	Rule 11 The protagonist retains throughout the entire discussion the right to defend both the propositional content and the force of justification or refutation of every complex speech act of argumentation that he has performed and not yet successfully defended against every attack by the antagonist.
- optimal use of right to defend - the protagonist is allowed to retract & replace argumentation	Rule 12 The protagonist retains throughout the entire discussion the right to retract any complex speech act of argumentation that he has performed, and thereby to remove the obligation to defend it.
- orderly conduct of the discussion - parties do not attack what has been already conclusively defended and defend what has been already attacked - parties take turns etc.	Rule 13 a. The protagonist and the antagonist may perform the same speech act or the same complex speech act with the same role in the discussion only once. b. The protagonist and the antagonist must in turn make a move of (complex) speech acts with a particular role in the discussion. c. The protagonist and the antagonist may not perform more than one move of (complex) speech acts at one time.
4. Concluding stage
- obligation to retract standpoints & doubts - the outcome of the critical discussion must be determined (“no outcome” is outcome)	Rule 14 a. The protagonist is obliged to retract the initial standpoint if the antagonist has conclusively attacked it (in the manner prescribed in rule 9) in the argumentation stage (and has also observed the other discussion rules). b. The antagonist is obliged to retract the calling into question of the initial standpoint if the protagonist has conclusively defended it (in the manner prescribed in rule 9) in the argumentation stage (and has also observed the other discussion rules). c. In all other cases, the protagonist is not obliged to retract the initial standpoint, nor is the antagonist obliged to withdraw his calling into question the initial standpoint.

Usage declaratives
If a discussant is unclear in formulating his standpoint or in calling a standpoint into question, or if the other discussant misinterprets the formulations, there is a high probability that they will speak at cross-purposes. To be on the safe side, discussants who doubt the clarity of their formulation would do well to replace it by a formulation they consider to be clearer, and discussants who doubt their interpretation would do well, to be on the safe side, to put it to the other discussant and ask for an amplification, specification, or other usage declarative. The purpose of usage declaratives, such as definitions, specifications, amplifications, and explanations, is to enlarge or facilitate the listener’s or reader’s understanding of other speech acts.

Usage declaratives - must always be allowed - must create de obligation to “act accordingly”

Rule 15 a. The discussants have the right at every stage of the discussion to request the other discussant to perform a usage declarative and to perform one themselves. b. The discussant who is requested to perform a usage declarative by the other discussant is obliged to act accordingly.

J. L. Austin – How to Do Things with Words (IV)

Read the previous part here |

Last to be examined, Γ-infelicities (“gamma infelicities”), are those that occur not when the act is void due to a, or some, procedural flaw(s), but when there is a case of insincerity or other infractions of this sort. We remember, Γ-rules were, in an abbreviated form:

(Γ. 1) Where the procedure is designed for persons having certain thoughts or intentions, the persons in question must indeed have those thoughts.
(Γ. 2) Where a subsequent conduct is part of the procedure, the persons must conduct themselves accordingly.

Austin makes a tentative distinction between not having the requisite feelings (e.g. ‘I congratulate you’ when you feel annoyed by the other’s performance), not having the requisite thoughts (e.g. ‘I advise you to’ when you do not believe the future act will benefit the hearer), and not having the requisite intentions (e.g. ‘I promise to’ when you don’t have in plan to perform the future act). There are many interrelations and connections one can establish among these rather feebly defined categories. Austin scrutinizes some meticulously and even isolates a certain class of performative utterances he calls verdictives (‘Guilty!’ said by the judge, or ‘Out’ said by the referee), for which both the problem of adequate thoughts and of subsequent conduct is slightly trickier. In any normal case, when Γ-rules are broken, the act is merely purported or professed.

Now that A-, B-, and Γ-types of have been looked at, Austin reformulates one of the starting points thus: “certain conditions have to be satisfied if the utterance is to be happy – certain things have to be so. And this, it seems clear, commits us to saying that for a certain performative utterance to be happy, certain statements have to be true.” (p. 45) This is not to say that the truth of these statements makes up the truth of the performative – the first lecture has rejected this kind of correspondence – but that the happiness of ‘I apologize’ makes it the fact that I am apologizing. Therefore, when I perform the utterance ‘I promise’ successfully, I imply the truth of sentences like (a) it is true that A-rules obtain, or (b) it is true that rules Γ-obtain, (c) it is true that I am committed to doing something subsequently etc. What is then the relation between these implications and the “regular” ones, known through verbs like to entail, to imply, to presuppose?

In the remainder of this lecture, Austin undertakes to spell out the relations of entailment, implication and presupposition for constative utterances (or statements). Entailment is in fact defined by way of pointing out to its opposite, i.e. contradiction, when Austin says that “All men blush” entails “Some men blush” because we cannot say “All men blush but not any men blush”. Implication is represented via G. E. Moore paradox in relation to which it is said that the uttering of “The cat is on the mat” implies that the speaker believes that the cat is on the mat. Presupposition takes the form of Jack having children when “All Jack’s children are bald” is true[1]. Both presupposition and implication are unlike entailment since the relation ‘if p entails q, then non-q entails non-p’ cannot be applied with ‘if p implies q…’ The way in which the falsity of the Moorean-implication says nothing about the statement which implies it, and the way in which presupposition “holds under negation” are mentioned as evidence. A more important observation (which will influence the next lectures) is the closeness between uttering “The cat is on the mat” and not believing it, and performing “I promise to …” and not intending to. 

Both are, in some way, cases of insincerity which allows Austin to note that promising and not intending “is parallel” (p. 50) to stating and not believing it. Same with presupposition; Austin restates Strawson’s answer, i.e. that if the presupposition is false “the question [of the statement’s truth-value] does not arise”, in the form of “the utterance is void”.

The sharp distinction between performatives and constatives seems threatened by the tight connections between these two classes, and Austin mysteriously ends: “Perhaps indeed there is no great distinction between statements and performative utterances”.

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[1] Austin here ignores the fact that the expression “Jack’s children” is vague, since it can stand for “the children Jack fathered”, “the children Jack takes care of”, “the children’s Jack is supposed to remember” etc. So technically speaking “All Jack’s children are bald” does not presuppose that Jack has children unless the context is such that the expression “Jack’s children” refers to the children of Jack and his spouse. So, when Austin says “We cannot say ‘All Jack’s children are bald but Jack has no children’, or ‘Jack has no children and all his children are bald’.” one can retort that if we’re in a kindergarten and we try to make a table with all the teachers, their classes and their personal life, one can say about jack that “All Jack’s children are Irish…” (as regards his classes) “… but Jack has no children” (as regards his personal life).

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J. L. Austin – How to Do Things with Words (III)

Read the previous part here |

This lecture starts by tackling more thoroughly the concept of Misfire. In the previous lectures, A. 1 infelicities were described as those acts for which the rule that “there must exist an accepted procedure” does not obtain. But what does accepted mean? Austin gives the example of “I divorce you” said to a Christian spouse, thereby producing no effect; he shows that depending on how we define the procedure we could classify the A. 1 cases both as A. 2 or even B cases. Whatever we decide, the procedure and its acceptance should always be seen as more than merely an inductive existence: the complete performance “involves more than for it merely to be the case that it is in fact generally used” (p. 29). Often, whether a procedure does not exist or a procedure does exists but it is not accepted in the circumstances in question, it is a matter of precedent.

At this point, Austin mentions the distinction between implicit and explicit performatives. In a nutshell, ‘I bet…’ or ‘I promise...’ and all the ones we have considered so far are said to be explicit and rather unambiguous. If a speaker says ‘Go’, this is an implicit performative (to be disambiguated by context, if at all), which can be a command, an advice, a request etc. Austin considers explicit constatives like ‘There is a bull in the field’ along the same lines: they are implicit performatives since the utterance may or may not be a warning; as he puts it, “the procedure in question was not sufficiently invoked” (p. 33), which makes implicit performatives B.1 (or maybe B.2) cases.

Turning now to A. 2 cases, the infelicities called misapplications, virtually any instance where the speaker is not appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure can serve as an example; for instance, trying to name a ship which you were not appointed to name. The possible distinctions between ‘circumstances’ and ‘persons’ and those between ‘incapacity’ and ‘wrong person’ (in the case of the performer) are shown to be a slippery matter.

Next type of infelicities, flaws, are those that infringe B. 1 (“the procedure must be executed by all participants correctly”). Austin offers the rather debatable examples of vague formulas or uncertain reference (“if I say ‘my house’ when I have two”, p. 36), along with the above mentioned cases of implicitness performatives. Simpler examples such as “I bet you will win this bet”.

Hitches (B. 2), are cases where the procedure does not end well. For instance saying “I do” when the spouse says “I don’t”, or decreeing “I hereby open this library” but breaking the key in the lock etc. Austin warmly add: “Here again, in ordinary life, a certain laxness in procedure is permitted – otherwise no university business would ever get done!”.

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J. L. Austin – How to Do Things with Words (II)

Read the previous part here |

After a brief summary of how one can do things by or in saying something, that is, after reviewing what has been said in the first lecture, Austin proposes to take a closer look at the ways in which those “appropriate circumstances” could be studied and organized. As has been shown, when something goes wrong we do not speak of falsehood (as in the case of constatives) but rather of a sort of unhappiness or infelicity.

His first attempt renders this scheme:

(A. 1) There must exist an accepted conventional procedure of uttering certain words in certain circumstances.
(A. 2) The persons uttering those words must be the accepted ones.
(B. 1) The procedure must be executed by all participants both correctly and…
(B. 2) … completely
(Γ. 1) Where the procedure is designed for persons having certain thoughts or intentions, the persons in question must indeed have those thoughts.
(Γ. 2) Where a subsequent conduct is part of the procedure, the persons must conduct themselves accordingly.

Every difference in the labels shown in brackets stands for something. For instance, the difference between the infelicities caused by lack of any of the conditions A and B and those pertaining to conditions Γ is this: when e.g. you’re not the right man trying to christen a ship (A.2) or you’re not doing the necessary procedure completely (B. 2), then the act is not achieved, does not come off. Austin terms these Misfires. In the case of Γ-infelicities, the act is achieved, but you are being e.g. insincere (Γ. 1), so the act is void or without effect. Austin names these Abuses.

The difference between A- and B-infelicities is also significant. A cases are called Misinvocations because there is either a lack of procedure or a inability to apply the procedure in question. Austin further terms the latter category Misapplications. Instances of B-infelicity are called Misexecutions: Flaws, when the procedure is not executed correctly, Hitches – when it is not executed completely. So, for now, the doctrine of infelicities looks something like this:

Three questions seem to be in place. First, what sort of ‘act’ is prone to infelicity? We have so far discussed the acts of uttering words[1] but there are arguably other types of acts that can “go wrong” in similar ways. Austin writes: “infelicity is an ill to which all acts are heir which have the general character of ritual or ceremonial, all conventional acts” (p. 19). Second, one might ask whether the classification above is a complete one. As has been established, the uttering of words in those circumstances is a case of performing an action and qua actions they are subject to a whole array of unsatisfactoriness.

Also, as utterances, they might be uttered in a particular language activity which is, in some way or another, parasitic; for instance poetry, acting, soliloquy are some such instances. Austin also mentions misunderstanding but does not pay much attention as to how is this type of infelicity is to be connected to the already mentioned ones. A third, simple, question ends this lecture: are they mutually exclusive. Not only that the presence of one impediment does not exclude the presence of another, but more often than not the types of going wrong “shade into one another” to the effect that an analytical decision would be, in various ways, arbitrary.

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[1] The notion of “act of speech” appears for the first time in this context at page 20.

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J. L. Austin – How to Do Things with Words (I)

This is the first part of a review of J. L. Austin’s “William James” lectures delivered at Harvard in 1955. Each lecture will be reviewed individually; for a more broad introduction take a quick look at Wikipedia’s unusually good (and still short) section here.

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Austin begins by listing some of the prevailing, though latent, features of a traditional problem: the (false) impression that language is here mainly, or even solely, to describe the world. In history, those unfortunate pseudo-statements that managed to evade the world-reporting principle, ethical statements among others, were usually thought of as (“strictly speaking”, one often heard) nonsensical. Austin begins by separating the two classes, the constative and the performative.

When uttering a performative, the speaker: (a) does not describe, report or constate anything, but (b) is (partly) doing something. When saying (1) I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow, the speaker is not describing himself as doing, or having done, something: but doing it. Same with (2) I name this ship Queen Victoria and others. Before jumping to the conclusion that sometimes saying is doing, one must allow for two further qualifications (p. 7-8). First, the action might be performed in other, not necessarily verbal, ways. Second, the observation that even if, in these instances, the uttering of the words is an important part of the act, some other things must be in place; some circumstances, that is, must be in some way or another appropriate. I cannot name the ship by uttering (2) if I am a nobody throwing a bottle of champagne at it. One might, mistakenly, invoke some other inward acts or “spiritual shackle” one describes when uttering a performative, but these “fictitious acts” (p. 10) need not trouble one’s analysis.

At the end of the lecture, Austin notes briefly another aspect which supports a performative-constative distinction: when some of the “concomitants” (i.e. needed conditions) is not in place, we do not describe the act as false. We say it was “void, in bad faith, or not implemented” (p. 11). Even when we speak of a false promise, we do not use the adjective “false” to characterize a misreport, a incorrect representation, but rather as when we speak of a false move: a misleading act.

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Aristotle and his sophisms

Here’s a list with all the places in which Aristotle discusses each fallacy (better yet, each sophism, I will post some notes on Aristle’s approach sometime this month). It is taken from the introduction to Hansen & Pinto (1995, p. 9). Click on the image to enlarge. And, as always, don’t sue us.

Semantics/Pragmatics in 2011

Oh, you are thinking I have been a layabout all this time, aren’t you? You are. You do actually believe that no great masterplan of masterblogging is right around the corner waiting for… for fulmination, don’t you? Well sink comfortably in your chair (fauteuil, bar stool, bucket seat, whatever it is that supports you at this moment) and watch me unveil my secret diabolic plans for 2011.

Okay, enough with the silly bombastic talk. Let me explain.

As you can see, there’s a new section above called “Semantics/Pragmatics”. You can click, but there’s nothing in it, so don’t. My plan is to fill up that section. With porn. Juuust kidding. What I intend to post there will be a rather different type of “reviews”. Closer to the actual notes I take when I plod through, they will be more thoroughgoing, more out-to-out and hopefully easier to follow. Lengthier, inevitably, but not weirdly meticulous. I will start from scratch wit both Semantics and Pragmatics. I will be less critical not because of some fit of magnanimity but because most of the subjects will be just as new to me as they will to my imaginary reader interested in this section. This imagined reader will be able to start with book 1, part 1 and follow me until book n, part n and understand things as I understand them.

A few questions from the public, yes. Please.

Will these posts appear on the main page? Yes. Just as regular posts. The page “Semantics/Pragmatics” will only contain two tables with the progress, where one can return.

What about argumentation theory? Not to worry, dear imaginary enquirer! Yes, I might become more focused on this at some point, but it is only to provide a basis for the main affair. Posts strictly concerning topics of argumentation theory will continue as usual.

Do you already have a list? Yes, but I’m not yet perfectly certain as to the actual titles. Most probably, I will never be in a definite form; I’ll post a list, but I’ll change it and re-change it. My priority, for now, is keeping to the chronological order.

So do you already have a list? No.

Can we do something? I will be boundlessly, immeasurably glad if you feel like contributing. There are in fact several ways. You can either (a) suggest a title of a book or an article, (b) submit your notes, (c) comment on the reviews, (d) send me an email with whatever crosses your mind when reading the reviews, (e) send me a Brobdingnagian amount of pure gold, or sandwiches.

Happy New Year, you… visitors!