Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-rdgjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-07T03:05:07.756Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hearers and Speech Acts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Herbert H. Clark  and
Thomas B. Carlson
Herbert H. Clark
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Thomas B. Carlson
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In conversations involving more than two people, most utterances are intended to be understood not only by the people being addressed, but also by the others. These utterances cannot be accounted for in current theories of speech acts unless several basic changes are made. In our proposal, the speaker performs two types of illocutionary act with each utterance. One is the traditional kind, such as an assertion, promise, or apology; this is directed at the addressees. The other, called an informative, is directed at all the participants in the conversation—the addressees and third parties alike. It is intended to inform all of them jointly of the assertion, promise, or apology being directed at the addressees. We present evidence that every traditional illocutionary act is performed by means of an informative.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 58 , Issue 2 , June 1982 , pp. 332 - 373
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 by Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Aaquist, Lennart. 1972. Performatives and verifiability by the use of language. Uppsala: Filosofiska Foereningen och Filosofiska Institutionen vid Uppsala Universitet.Google Scholar
Austin, John L. 1962. How to do things with words. Oxford: University Press.Google Scholar
Bach, Kent. 1975. Performatives are statements, too. Philosophical Studies 18.229–36.Google Scholar
Bach, Kent, and Harnish, Robert M. 1979. Linguistic communication and speech acts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bennett, Jonathan. 1973. The meaning-nominalist strategy. Foundations of Language 10.141–68.Google Scholar
Bird, Graham H. 1975. Confusing the audience. Analysis 35.135–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1975. Reflections on language. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H. 1979. Responding to indirect speech acts. Cognitive Psychology 11.430–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Herbert H., and Carlson, Thomas B. 1981. Context for comprehension. Attention and performance IX, ed. by Long, John & Baddeley, Alan D., 313–30. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Baddeley, Alan D. 1982. Speech acts and hearers' beliefs. To appear in Mutual knowledge. ed. by Smith, N. V. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Cole, Peter and Morgan, Jerry L. 1975 (eds.) Syntax and semantics, 3: Speech acts. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Linguistic politeness axes: Speaker–addressee, speaker-referent, speaker–bystander. Pragmatics Microfiche 1:7.Google Scholar
Davison, Alice. 1975. Indirect speech acts and what to do with them. In Cole & Morgan, 143–85.Google Scholar
Dixon, Robert M. W. 1972. The Dyirbal language of North Queensland. Cambridge: University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donnellan, Keith. 1966. Reference and definite description. Philosophical Review 75.281–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donnellan, Keith. 1968. Putting Humpty Dumpty together again. Philosophical Review 77.203–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ervin-Tripp, Susan M. 1976. Is Sybil there? The structure of some American English directives. Language in Society 5.25–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J. 1972. Subjects, speakers, and roles. Semantics of natural language, ed. by Davidson, Donald & Harman, Gilbert, 1–24. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Fraser, Bruce. 1975. Hedged performatives. In Cole & Morgan, 187–210.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Garner, Richard. 1975. Meaning. In Cole & Morgan, 305–61.Google Scholar
Gazdar, Gerald. 1979. Pragmatics: Implicature, presupposition, and logical form. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1963. Behavior in public places: Notes on the social organization of gatherings. New York: Free Press of Glencoe.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1971. Relations in public: Microstudies of the public order. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1975. Replies and responses. Language in Society 5.257–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1978. Response cries. Lg. 54.787–815.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1979. Footing. Semiotica 25.1–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldman, Alvin I. 1970. A theory of human action. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Gordon, David, and Lakoff, George. 1971. Conversational postulates. CLS 7.63–84.Google Scholar
Green, Georgia M. 1975. How to get people to do things with words: The whimperative question. In Cole & Morgan, 107–41.Google Scholar
Greenburg, Dan. 1964. How to be a Jewish mother: A very lovely training manual. Los Angeles: Price/Stern/Sloan.Google Scholar
Grice, H. Paul. 1957. Meaning. Philosophical Review 66.377–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grice, H. Paul. 1968. Utterer's meaning, sentence-meaning, and word-meaning. Foundations of Language 4.225–42.Google Scholar
Grice, H. Paul. 1969. Utterer's meaning and intentions. Philosophical Review 78.147–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grice, H. Paul. 1975. Logic and conversation. In Cole & Morgan, 41–58.Google Scholar
Harder, Peter. 1978. Language in action: Some arguments against the concept illocutionary'. Papers from the 4th Scandinavian Conference on Linguistics, ed. by Gregersen, Kirsten et al., 193–7. Odense: University Press.Google Scholar
Gregersen, Kirsten, and Kock, Christian. 1976. The theory of presupposition failure. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag.Google Scholar
Heal, Jane. 1974. Explicit performative utterances and statements. Philosophical Quarterly 24.106–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jone, Rev. Heribert. 1959. Moral theology (tr. Urban Adelman). Westminister, MD: Newman Press.Google Scholar
Kahn, David. 1967. The codebreakers: The story of secret writing. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Karttunen, Lauri, and Peters, Stanley. 1975. Conventional implicature of Montague Grammar. BLS 1.266–78.Google Scholar
Katz, Jerrold J. 1977. Propositional structure and illocutionary force. New York: Crowell.Google Scholar
Kempson, Ruth. 1975. Presupposition and the delimitation of semantics. Cambridge: University Press.Google Scholar
Kempson, Ruth. 1977. Semantic theory. Cambridge: University Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1975. Pragmatics in natural logic. Formal semantics of natural language, ed. by Keenan, Edward L., 253–86. Cambridge: University Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, Robin T. 1972. Language in context. Lg. 48.907–27.Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. 1979. Pragmatics and social deixis: Reclaiming the notion of conventional implicature. BLS 5.206–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, David K. 1969. Convention. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, David K. 1970. General semantics. Synthese 22.18–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martinich, A. P. 1975. Sacraments and speech acts. Heythrop Journal 16.289–303, 405–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millar, Martin, and Brown, Keith. 1979. Tag questions in Edinburgh speech. Linguistische Berichte 60.24–45.Google Scholar
Morgan, Jerry L. 1977. Conversational postulates revisited. Lg. 53.277–84.Google Scholar
Morgan, Jerry L. 1978. Two types of convention in indirect speech acts. Syntax and semantics, 9: Pragmatics, ed. by Cole, Peter, 261–80. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Psathas, George. 1979 (ed.) Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Randolph, Vance. 1928. Verbal modesty in the Ozarks. Dialect Notes 6.57–64.Google Scholar
Rescher, Nicholas. 1966. The logic of commands. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Ross, John R. 1970. On declarative sentences. Readings in English transformational grammar, ed. by Jacobs, Roderick A. & Rosenbaum, Peter S., 222–72. Waltham, MA: Ginn.Google Scholar
Rubin, Andee. 1978. A framework for comparing language experiences. TINLAP-2: Theoretical issues in natural language processing—2, ed. by Waltz, David, 133–40. New York: Association for Computing Machinery.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, Schegloff, Emanuel A.; and Jefferson, Gail. 1974. A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Lg. 50.696–735.Google Scholar
Sadock, Jerrold M. 1974. Toward a linguistic theory of speech acts. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Schiffer, Stephen R. 1972. Meaning. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Searle, John R. 1969. Speech acts. Cambridge: University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle, John R. 1975. Indirect speech acts. In Cole & Morgan, 59–82.Google Scholar
Stalnaker, Robert C. 1978. Assertion. Syntax and semantics, 9: Pragmatics, ed. by Cole, Peter, 315–32. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Strawson, Peter F. 1964. Intention and convention in speech acts. Philosophical Review 73.439–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sudnow, David N. 1972 (ed.) Studies in social interaction. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Sully, James. 1896. Studies of childhood. New York: Appleton.Google Scholar
Thomson, Donald F. 1935. The joking relation and organized obscenity in North Queensland. American Anthropologist 37.460–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verschueren, Jef. 1978. Reflections on presupposition failure: A contribution to an integrated theory of pragmatics. Journal of Pragmatics 2.107–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warnock, Geoffrey J. 1973. Some types of performative utterances. Essays on J. L. Austin, ed. by Berlin, Sir Isaiah et al., 69–89. Oxford: University Press.Google Scholar
Wiggins, David. 1971. On word-sense, sentence-sense, and difference of word-sense: Towards a philosophical theory of dictionaries. Semantics, ed. by Steinberg, Danny & Jakobovits, Leon, 14–34. Cambridge: University Press.Google Scholar