Jürgen Habermas, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
Communicative action is what happens when speakers orient themselves not toward causing an effect in another person but toward reaching a genuine agreement with them. The distinction matters because it cuts across the entire field of social interaction: in strategic action, one actor seeks to influence another through the threat of sanctions or the prospect of gratification, causing the interaction to continue as the first actor desires; in communicative action, one actor seeks rationally to motivate another by relying on the illocutionary binding effect of the offer contained in his speech act.1
That binding effect deserves precision. What coordinates speaker and hearer is not the validity of what is said but the speaker's guarantee that he will, if necessary, make efforts to redeem the claim the hearer has accepted.2 When the hearer accepts that guarantee, obligations arise that have consequences for the interaction — obligations contained in the meaning of what was said, not imposed from outside it.3
Now, every intelligible utterance raises not one validity claim but three simultaneously. A speaker claims truth for the propositional content, rightness in relation to a normative context, and truthfulness or sincerity for the expression of his subjective experience.4 These correspond to three worlds to which communicative actors relate at once: the objective world of existing states of affairs, the social world of legitimately ordered interpersonal relations, and the subjective world to which the speaker has privileged access.5
In practice, an utterance may thematically stress one of these — a factual report foregrounds the objective, a promise foregrounds the normative — but the reference system of all three worlds is always operative as the framework within which participants work out their common definition of the situation.6 Agreement in communicative action is measured by the yes or no position the hearer takes toward the validity claim raised.
Coming to an understanding means reaching intersubjective recognition of that claim; it cannot be imposed or manufactured, because something that owes its existence to external pressure is not an agreement at all.7 This is why communicative action is irreducible to strategic action: the moment a speaker manipulates rather than redeems, he has stepped outside the practice that gives his utterances their binding force.
All of this takes place against a background that is never itself fully thematized. Every process of reaching understanding is embedded in a culturally ingrained preunderstanding — a lifeworld that offers both the context for the action situation and the resources from which participants draw as they negotiate a shared definition of it.8 Only a segment of that background is put to the test at any moment; the rest remains unproblematic, a silent condition of the possibility of the exchange.
Agreement in the communicative practice of everyday life rests simultaneously on intersubjectively shared propositional knowledge, on normative accord, and on mutual trust.9
Whereas in strategic action one actor seeks to influence the behavior of another by means of the threat of sanctions or the prospect of gratification in order to cause the interaction to continue as the first actor desires, in communicative action one actor seeks rationally to motivate another by relying on the illocutionary binding/bonding effect (Bindungseffekt) of the offer contained in his speech act.Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, pp. 75–76
The fact that a speaker can rationally motivate a hearer to accept such an offer is due not to the validity of what he says but to the speaker's guarantee that he will, if necessary, make efforts to redeem the claim that the hearer has accepted.Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, pp. 75–76
As soon as the hearer accepts the guarantee offered by the speaker, obligations are assumed that have consequences for the interaction, obligations that are contained in the meaning of what was said.Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, pp. 75–76
the speaker claims truth for statements or existential presuppositions, rightness for legitimately regulated actions and their normative context, and truthfulness or sincerity for the manifestation of subjective experiences.The Theory of Communicative Action Vol 1 - Reason and the Rationalization of Society, pp. 145–146
Speech acts serve not only to represent (or presuppose) states and events—in which case the speaker makes reference to something in the objective world. They also serve to produce (or renew) interpersonal relationships—in which case the speaker makes reference to something in the social world of legitimately ordered interactions. And they serve to express lived experience, that is, they serve the process of self-representation—in which case the speaker makes reference to something in the subjective world to which he has privileged access.Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, pp. 156–157
Communicative action relies on a cooperative process of interpretation in which participants relate simultaneously to something in the objective, the social, and the subjective worlds, even when they thematically stress only one of the three components in their utterances.The Theory of Communicative Action Vol 2 - Lifeworld and System, p. 126
Coming to an understanding [Verständigung] means that participants in communication reach an agreement [Einigung] concerning the validity of an utterance; agreement [Einverständnis] is the intersubjective recognition of the validity claim the speaker raises for it.The Theory of Communicative Action Vol 2 - Lifeworld and System, p. 126
The lifeworld, then, offers both an intuitively preunderstood context for an action situation and resources for the interpretive process in which participants in communication engage as they strive to meet the need for agreement in the action situation.Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, pp. 156–157
agreement in the communicative practice of everyday life rests simultaneously on intersubjectively shared propositional knowledge, on normative accord, and on mutual trust.Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, pp. 156–157