Assertion and Command

Assertion and Command

There is such a thing as speech act theory, but ought there to be? Philosophers and linguists usually distinguish assertion, command, and question: these are the three main types of speech act. Questions are often assimilated to commands (requests) because they can be construed as requests for information (“Please tell me whether it’s raining”). I will follow this practice for simplicity, though my points go through even if we keep questions as a separate category. The idea is that these categories of speech act are exclusive and exhaustive—so that what is an assertion is not a command and what is a command is not an assertion (and these categories exhaust the territory). The question, then, is whether this is true.

It is important to distinguish types of speech act from types of sentence. We certainly have three distinct grammatical categories of sentence: indicatives, imperatives, and interrogatives. An indicative sentence is not an imperative sentence, and so for the others. But types of speech act are another thing altogether: they relate to intentions, context, and consequences. Thus, theorists speak of illocutionary force: the illocutionary force of an assertion is not the same as the illocutionary force of a command and vice versa. The act of assertion is not the act of request and the act of request is not the act of assertion. The act of assertion, it may be said, is intended to impart information, while the act of request is intended to produce behavior. These are acts of different types, so the utterances have different illocutionary force. A single speech act does not have bothsorts of force. But is this true? Suppose I utter the sentence “It’s raining”, directing my remark at a particular person, intending to convey the information that it is raining. Don’t I also intend to get my interlocutor’s attention and bring about a certain action? I want the hearer to act in a certain way—attentively and prudently (e.g., to take an umbrella). I could equally have said, “Listen, it’s raining, so take an umbrella”. This is a request, or even a command if I have the requisite authority; I don’t just want to convey information. We sometimes say, “Look at me” when we want to secure the full attention of our interlocutor, which is clearly a request or command. The speech act of assertion is also a speech act of command; indeed, it is the former in virtue of the latter. I am not just asserting a proposition into the void with no action in mind on the part of the hearer. We might also say that I am requesting that my hearer take me seriously and believe what I am telling him (“Believe me, John, it’s raining buckets!”). Assertion and request are bundled together, inseparably joined. The same is true in the other direction: commands build in assertion (though imperatives don’t build in indicatives). If I say to you, “Please shut the door”, I am requesting an action, but I am also conveying the information that the door is open and that I’d like it closed. If the hearer questioned these propositions, I would assert that the door is open and that I would like it closed (I am freezing). I convey information in making the request—I am tacitly asserting certain things (actually, not so tacitly). I could just as well say, “The door is wide open and letting in a draught, so please close it”. I am not only commanding but also asserting—intentionally conveying information. The two types of speech act are not mutually exclusive; on the contrary, they are woven together. So, the central idea of speech act theory is mistaken: assertion and command are not separate categories of speech act; they are aspects of the same speech act. They are different ways of describing a single act—an act of intentional utterance.

There is a deep point here: speech is governed by a multitude of intentions (and desires and beliefs); it is not possible to read the speaker’s intentions off the grammatical form of the sentences he utters. What he meansis not deducible from what he says (literally). This is essentially what speech act theory tries to do—infer intention from grammar. I have many intentions when I utter even a simple sentence like “It’s raining”; I don’t have just one that lines up with the grammatical category of the sentence. Pragmatics is not semantics (still less syntax). So-called speech act theory is really a mishmash of grammar and psychology; and the psychology is a lot more complex than the semantics. It is really quite misleading to speak of “assertoric utterances” and “imperatival utterances”, as if referring to separate categories of speech act. All acts of speech are both, inextricably. It is not that there are a great many more types of speech act than assertion and command (also question), as Wittgenstein insisted; there are actually less—because each speech act incorporates several aspects (intentional descriptions). There is really just the act of utterance, which falls under many descriptions—or two if we boil them all down to these basic categories. There is no assertive speech act that excludes other speech acts; there is just utterance backed by various intentions, all mingling together. There is no neat system here, no firm taxonomy of acts of speech. The idea of the illocutionary force of an utterance is a myth. There is no such thing as speech act theory as commonly conceived.[1]

[1] We use sentences to achieve certain ends, motivated by assorted intentions. These ends are multiple; each corresponds to a description of the act. When I assert something, I have a variety of intentions, some concerning actions on the part of the hearer. When I make a request, I also have a variety of intentions, some pertaining to information I need to convey. There is overlap of illocutionary force in both cases. It might be said that one of these illocutionary forces is primary and the others secondary, but still there is more than one involved. All speech acts can be variously described in respect of illocutionary force, depending on what we choose to focus on. In other words, communication is complex.