barnyard, the content of its utterance is not fully determined by
its linguistic meaning - in particular, the meaning of the word
“this” does not determine which area is being referred to.
How do we manage to define the illocution of an utterance
if we cannot do that by its syntactic form? There are several
theories trying to answer this question.
The inference theory
The basic steps in the inference of an indirect speech act
are as follows [37, 286-340]:
I. The literal meaning and force of the utterance are computed
by, and available to, the participants. The key to
understanding of the literal meaning is the syntactical
form of the utterance.
II. There is some indication that the literal meaning is
inadequate (“a trigger” of an indirect speech act).
According to Searle, in indirect speech acts the speaker
performs one illocutionary act but intends the hearer to infer
another illocution by relying on their mutually shared background
information, both linguistic and nonlinguistic, as well as on
general powers of rationality and inference, that is on
illocutionary force indicating devices [43, 73]. The
illocutionary point of an utterance can be discovered by an
inferential process that attends to the speaker's prosody, the
context of utterance, the form of the sentence, the tense and
mood of verbs, knowledge of the language itself and of
conversational conventions, and general encyclopaedic knowledge.
The speaker knows this and speaks accordingly, aware that the
hearer - as a competent social being and language user - will
recognize the implications [32, 41]. So, indirectness relies on
conversational implicature: there is overwhelming evidence that
speakers expect hearers to draw inferences from everything that
is uttered. It follows that the hearer will begin the
inferential process immediately on being presented with the
locution. Under the cooperative principle, there is a convention
that the speaker has some purpose for choosing this very
utterance in this particular context instead of maintaining
silence or generating another utterance. The hearer tries to
guess this purpose, and in doing so, considers the context,
beliefs about normal behaviour in this context, beliefs about the
speaker, and the presumed common ground.
The fact that divergence between the form and the contents
of an utterance can vary within certain limits helps to discover
indirect speech acts: an order can be disguised as a request, a
piece of advice or a question, but it is much less probable as a
compliment.
III. There are principles that allow us to derive the
relevant indirect force from the literal meaning and the context.
Searle suggests that these principles can be stated within
his theory of felicity conditions for speech acts [44, 38].
For example, according to Searle’s theory, a command or a
request has the following felicity conditions:
1. Asking or stating the preparatory condition:
Can you pass the salt? The hearer's ability to perform an
action is being asked.
Literally it is a question; non-literally it is a request.
2. Asking or stating the propositional content:
You're standing on my foot. Would you kindly get off my
foot?
Literally it is a statement or a question; non-literally it
is a request.
3. Stating the sincerity condition:
I'd like you to do this for me.
Literally it is a statement; non-literally it is a request.
4. Stating or asking the good/overriding reasons for doing
an action:
You had better go now. Hadn't you better go now? Why not go
now?
Literally it is a statement or a question; non-literally it
is a request.
5. Asking if a person wants/wishes to perform an action:
Would you mind helping me with this? Would you mind if I
asked you if you could write me a reference?
Literally it is a question; non-literally it is a request
(in the last example an explicit directive verb is embedded).
All these indirect acts have several common features:
1. Imperative force is not part of the literal meaning of these
sentences.
2. These sentences are not ambiguous.
3. These sentences are conventionally used to make requests. They
often have "please" at end or preceding the verb.
4. These sentences are not idioms, but are idiomatically
used as requests.
5. These sentences can have literal interpretations.
6. The literal meanings are maintained when they question
the physical ability: Can you pass the salt? - No, it’s too far
from me. I can’t reach it.
7. Both the literal and the non-literal illocutionary acts
are made when making a report on the utterance:
The speaker: Can you come to my party tonight?
The hearer: I have to get up early tomorrow.
Report: He said he couldn't come. OR: He said he had to get
up early next morning.
A problem of the inference theory is that syntactic forms
with a similar meaning often show differences in the ease in
which they trigger indirect speech acts:
a) Can you reach the salt?
b) Are you able to reach the salt?
c) Is it the case that you at present have the ability to
reach the salt?
While (a) is most likely to be used as a request, (b) is
less likely, and (c) is highly unlikely, although they seem to
express the same proposition.
Another drawback of the inference theory is the complexity
of the algorithm it offers for recognizing and deciphering the
true meaning of indirect speech acts. If the hearer had to pass
all the three stages every time he faced an indirect speech act,
identifying the intended meaning would be time-consuming whereas
normally we recognize each other’s communicative intentions
quickly and easily.
3.2. Indirect speech acts as idioms?
Another line of explanation of indirect speech acts was
brought forward by Jerrold Sadock [42, 197]. According to his
theory, indirect speech acts are expressions based on an
idiomatic meaning added to their literal meaning (just like the
expression “to push up daisies” has two meanings: “to increase
the distance of specimens of Bellis perennis from the center of
the earth by employing force” and “to be dead”). Of course, we
do not have specific idioms here, but rather general idiom
schemes. For example, the scheme “Can you + verb?” is idiomatic
for commands and requests.
However, the idiomatic hypothesis is questionable as a
general strategy. One problem is that a reaction to an indirect
speech act can be composite to both the direct and the indirect
speech act, e.g.
The speaker: Can you tell me the time?
The hearer: Yes, it’s three o’clock.
We never find this type of reaction to the literal and the
idiomatic intepretation of an idiom:
The speaker: Is he pushing the daisies by now?
Hearer 1: Yes/no (the idiomatic meaning is taken into
account).
Hearer 2: Depends what you mean. As a gardener, yes (the
literal meaning is taken into account).
Another problem is that there is a multitude of different
(and seemingly semantically related) forms that behave in a
similar way:
a) Can you pass me the salt?
b) Could you pass me the salt?
c) May I have the salt?
d) May I ask you to pass the salt?
e) Would you be so kind to pass the salt?
f) Would you mind passing the salt?
Some of these expressions are obviously semantically
related (e.g. can/could, would you be so kind/would you mind),
and it seems that it is this semantic relation that makes them
express the same indirect speech act. This is different for
classical idioms, where the phrasing itself matters:
a) to push the daisies “to be dead” vs. to push the roses
b) to kick the bucket “to die” vs. to kick the barrel.
Hence, a defender of the idiom hypothesis must assume a
multitude of idiom schemes, some of which are obviously closely
semantically related.
Summarizing, we can say that there are certain cases of
indirect speech acts that have to be seen as idiomatized
syntactic constructions (for example, English why not-questions.)
But typically, instances of indirect speech acts should not be
analyzed as simple idioms.
3. Other approaches to the problem
The difference of the idiomatic and inference approaches
can be explained by different understanding of the role of
convention in communication. The former theory overestimates it
while the latter underestimates it, and both reject the
qualitative diversity of conventionality. Correcting this
shortcoming, Jerry Morgan writes about two types of convention in
indirect speech acts [39, 261]: conventions of language and
conventions of usage. The utterance “Can you pass the salt?”
cannot be considered as a regular idiom (conventions of
language), but its use for an indirect request is undoubtedly
conventional, i.e. habitual for everyday speech that is always
characterized by a certain degree of ritualization.
In accordance with this approach the function of an
indirect speech act is conventionally fixed, and an inference
process is not needed. Conventions of usage express what
