Speech act theory: are the five basic types of illocutionary act exhaustive, and does the seriousness/citation distinction survive Derrida's challenge?

John Searle, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

A speech act is the minimal unit of linguistic communication and the unit at which the philosophy of language ought to begin. The illocutionary act — the act performed in uttering — has structural features that generate a five-fold taxonomy of basic types: assertives (committing the speaker to the truth of a proposition), directives (attempting to get the hearer to do something), commissives (committing the speaker to a future course of action), expressives (expressing a psychological state about a state of affairs), and declarations (bringing about a state of affairs by the utterance itself, as in declaring war or pronouncing two people married).123

Each type is individuated by its illocutionary point, its direction of fit, its expressed psychological state, and its propositional content. The seriousness/citation distinction — between an utterance issued in its standard performative form and one quoted, mentioned, or performed on stage — is real, defensible, and foundational for any theory of language.45

Sources

  1. So now we have narrowed the question down to "How many types of F are there?" It might seem that we could begin to answer it by looking at the different verbs that name illocutionary acts in English, verbs like state, warn, command, promise, plead, pray, contract, guarantee, apologize, and complain.
    Mind, Language and Society, pp. 160–161
  2. That is the question I discuss in this chapter. Speech Acts: Illocutionary Acts and Perlocutionary Acts Whenever I emit one of these acoustic blasts in a normal speech situation, I can be said to have performed a speech act. Speech acts come in a variety of types.
    Mind, Language and Society, pp. 149–150
  3. Differences in expressed psychological states. A man who states, explains, asserts or claims that p expresses the belief that p; aman who promises, vows, threatens or pledges to do a expresses an intention to do a; a man who orders, commands, requests H to do A expresses a desire (want, wish) that Hdo A;a man who apologizes for doing A expresses regret at having done A; etc.
    Expression and Meaning, pp. 17–18
  4. EXPRESSION AND MEANING Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts JOHN R.SEARLE Professor of Philosophy University of California, Berkeley INTRODUCTION These essays represent a continuation of a line of research begun in Speech Acts (Searle, 1969).
    Expression and Meaning, pp. 2–7
  5. Speech act theory has two features which would have enormously pleased its founder, J. L. Austin, because he regarded them as essential to fruitful intellectual work: First, it is possible for different people to work on the theory. It is not the property of one person or even of one ideological group. And second, agreement is possible.
    John Searle and His Critics, p. 81

Where the argument is made

  • Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (1969)
  • Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts (1979), especially "A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts" and "Indirect Speech Acts"
  • "Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida" (Glyph 1, 1977)
  • the entries on speech acts in Consciousness and Language (2002)
  • the relevant essays in Philosophy in a New Century (2008)

How the argument was received

Held since Speech Acts (1969) and refined in Expression and Meaning (1979). Vanderveken's collaborative work has extended illocutionary logic without overturning the core taxonomy. The Derrida exchange — Derrida's challenge in "Signature Event Context" and Limited Inc, my reply in "Reiterating the Differences" — is one of the rare cases in contemporary philosophy where the parties spoke past each other so completely that the exchange has become a case study in disciplinary incommensurability rather than a productive controversy. I stand by the reply.