speech act meaning

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any of the acts that may be performed by a speaker in making an utterance, as stating, asking, requesting, advising, warning, or persuading, considered in terms of the content of the message, the intention of the speaker, and the effect on the listener.
an utterance that constitutes some act in addition to the mere act of uttering
an act or type of act capable of being so performed

[ ak -s uh -lot-l ]

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(pragmatics) Goal-directed actions performed with words in interpersonal communication, defined primarily with reference to the speaker's intentions and the effects on the listener(s). The term was introduced by Austin and is also associated with Searle in an analytical approach called speech act theory . Some regard speech acts as the basic units of discourse. The term is frequently used synonymously with illocutionary act. See also discourse analysis; locutionary act; performatives; perlocutionary act; compare conversation analysis.

From: speech act in A Dictionary of Media and Communication »

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Speech Act Theory

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on October 11, 2020 • ( 0 )

Speech act theory accounts for an act that a speaker performs when pronouncing an utterance, which thus serves a function in communication. Since speech acts are the tools that allow us to interact in real-life situations, uttering a speech act requires knowledge not only of the language but also of its appropriate use within a given culture.

Speech act theory was first developed by J. L. Austin whose seminal Oxford Lectures in 1952–4 marked an important development in the philosophy of language and linguistics. Austin’s proposal can be viewed as a reaction to the extreme claims of logical positivists, who argued that the meaning of a sentence is reducible to its verifiability, that is to an analysis which verifies if utterances are true or false. Austin contended that most of our utterances do more than simply making statements: questions and orders are not used to state something, and many declarative sentences do not lend themselves to being analysed in terms of their falsifiability. Instead, they are instruments that allow speakers to change the state of affairs. This is tantamount to saying that we use language mainly as a tool to do things, and we do so by means of performing hundreds of ordinary verbal actions of different types in daily life, such as make telephone calls, baptise children, or fire an employee.

The fact that not all sentences are a matter of truth verifiability was first advanced by Aristotle who, in his De Interpretatione , argued that:

there are in the mind thoughts which do not involve truth or falsity, and also those which must be either true or false, so it is in speech. [. . .] A sentence is a significant portion of speech [. . .] Yet every sentence is not a proposition; only such are propositions as have in them either truth or falsity. [. . .] Let us therefore dismiss all other types of sentence but the proposition, for this last concerns our present inquiry, whereas the investigation of the others belongs rather to the study of rhetoric or of poetry. (1–4)

Although he explicitly deems the nature of sentences to be uninteresting in his inquiry on apophantic logos, Aristotle represents the first account of language as action.

J. L. Austin/The Times Literary Supplement

Aristotle’s standpoint influenced the study of language for centuries and paved the way for a tradition of research on verifiability, but several German and British philosophers anticipated a view of language as a tool to change a state of affairs. The issues of language and conversation were addressed by Immanuel Kant who anticipated some concepts like ‘context’ and ‘subjective idealisation’, the rules that articulate conversation, and the para-linguistic gestures used in the accomplishment of speech acts. But it was only at the end of the nineteenth century that a more elaborate treatment of language as action was initiated.

The first, although non-systematic, study of the action-like character of language was conducted by Thomas Reid, who described different acts that can be performed through language, and grouped them into two categories: ‘solitary acts’ like judgements, intentions, deliberations and desiring, which can go unexpressed; and ‘social operations’ like commanding, promising or warning, which, by their very social nature, must be expressed. Reid’s contribution to the inception of a speech act theory can be fully understood if viewed from the wider perspective of the philosophical developments of his time.

Franz Brentano’s distinction between physical and psychological phenomena is particularly relevant in this respect because it reintroduced to philosophy the scholastic concept of‘intentionality’, which allows for a distinction between mental acts and the external world. As far as speech act theory is concerned, suffice it here to say that Brentano argued that every mental, psychological act has a content and is directed at an object (the intentional object), which means that mental phenomena contain an object intentionally within themselves and are thus definable as objectifying acts. The Brentanian approach to intentionality* allows for a distinction between linguistic expressions describing psychological phenomena and linguistic expressions describing non-psychological phenomena. Furthermore, Brentano claimed that speaking is itself an activity through which we can initiate psychic phenomena. Edmund Husserl picked up the importance of what Brentano’s psychological investigation could bring to logic*, in particular the contrast between emotional acts and objectifying acts. Husserl tackled the issue of human mental activities (‘acts’) and how they constitute the ‘object’ of knowledge through experience. In his Logical Investigations (1900/1) he developed a theory of meaning based on ‘intentionality’ which, for him, meant that consciousness entails ‘directedness’ towards an object. It is on the notion of ‘objectifying acts’, that is acts of representation, that Husserl shaped his theory of linguistic meaning, thus emphasising the referential use of language. Collaterally he treated the non-representational uses of language, that is acts like asking questions, commanding or requesting.

Following Brentano and moving within the field of psychology, Anton Marty offered the first account of uses of language meant to direct others’ behaviour, like giving an order, requesting, or giving encouragement. Marty stated that sentences may hint at the speaker’s psychic processes and argued that ‘deliberate speaking is a special kind of acting, whose proper goal is to call forth certain psychic phenomena in other beings’ (1908: 284). Stemming from Brentano’s tripartite subdivision of mental phenomena into presentation, judgements, and phenomena of love and hate, Marty discriminated linguistic forms into names, statements and emotives (utterances arousing an interest), which is a model that closely resembles Karl Bühler’s Sprachtheorie. It is precisely to Bühler that we owe the coinage of the label ‘speech act theory’. He offered the first thorough study of the functions of language – Darstellung (representation), Kindgabe (intimation or expression), and Auslösung (arousal or appeal) – thus endowing non-representational sentences with their own status.

A more complete treatment we find in the work of Adolf Reinach, who offered the first systematic theory of speech acts. Reinach received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Munich; his dissertation was on the concept of cause in penal law. It was within the context of legal language that Reinach argued in favour of the relevance of speech acts which he referred to, presumably independently of Reid’s work, as ‘social acts, that is acts of the mind that are performed in the very act of speaking’. Reinach (1913) provided a detailed taxonomy of social acts as performative* utterances and their modification, and stated very clearly that the utterance ( Äusserung ) of a social act is different from the inner experience of emotions like anger or shame and from statements ( Konstatierungen ) about experiences. It is precisely the recourse to the physical medium, the Äusserung , that transforms the philosophical category of action into a social act. Drawing on previous literature, Reinach separated actions from internal experiences. Then he discriminated between external actions like kissing or killing and linguistic actions, and within this class he distinguished between social acts, which are performed in every act of speaking, and actions, where signs are used but no speech act is performed such as in ‘solitary asserting’ and emotive uses of language. The final distinction refers to the linguistic actions performed in uttering performative formulae and the linguistic and nonlinguistic actions whose performance has an effect on the state of affairs and even changes it.

While Reinach’s ideas were spreading through the Munich scholars, at Oxford A. J. Ayer, considered the philosophical successor of Bertrand Russell, deemed philosophically interesting only those sentences that can be subject to the truth-condition analysis. In line with the logical positivism* of the Vienna Circle, Ayer developed the verification principle in Language, Truth and Logic (1936) where he stated that a sentence is meaningful only if it has verifiable import. Sentences expressing judgements, evaluation and the like were not to be objects of scientific inquiry. This stance, which is now known as the ‘descriptive fallacy’, led him into conflict with Oxford linguist philosophers like Gilbert Ryle and J. L. Austin, who instead were greatly influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein. He claimed that a language consists of a wide multiplicity of structures and usages that logical positivists had neglected to analyse but which encompass the majority of what human beings say in their construction of meaning.

Following Wittgenstein’s insights into language and putting himself against the positivist background, Gilbert Ryle rejected the Cartesian mind-body dualism in The Concept of Mind ( 1949), and revived the centrality of the standard uses of language, thus contributing to the development of ‘ordinary language philosophy’* in Oxford.

Taking the same veil and influenced by Husserl, Austin rejected the account that only sentences that are meant to describe a state of affairs are worth studying, and he observed that verifiable sentences are only a small part of the large amount of utterances produced by language users. Not all utterances express propositions: many perform actions as, for example, greetings or orders, which resist a truth-conditional analysis. Indeed, most of the sentences uttered by speakers are used in such a way as to perform more fundamental things in verbal interactions, such as naming a ship, marrying a couple, or making a request. In daily life we perform many ordinary verbal actions, and utterances are used in speech events to accomplish all that is achieved through language. Austin’s speech act theory was first delineated in the notes he prepared for some lectures interestingly entitled Words and Deeds which he delivered at Oxford University from 1952 to 1954. Such notes constituted the basis on which he developed his Harvard lectures in 1955, posthumously published in 1962. In the first phase of development of his theory, Austin retained the Aristotelian distinction between apophantic and non-apophantic logos, and introduced the terms of constative utterances and performative utterances, where the former describe or constate a state of affairs and the latter perform actions. Austin later realised that a clear distinction between the two types of utterances is unsustainable. If, for example, we say ‘There is a rat under your chair’, we do more than assert a state of affairs: we warn someone about a possible danger. Assertions can thus be used to perform such acts as to warn, to apologise, and many more. Austin then abandoned the dichotomy and contended that to say something equals to perform something.

According to Austin, when we say something, we perform three acts simultaneously: a locutionary act, an illocutionary act, and a perlocutionary act. At the locutionary level, a speaker produces sounds (phonetic act) which are well ordered with respect to the phonological system and grammar of a particular language (phatic act), and carry some sense with respect to the semantic and pragmatic rules of that language (rhetic act). At the illocutionary level, he is expressing his intention by virtue of conventions shared in his speech community. At the perlocutionary level, he performs a third act which includes the consequences of his speaking, and he has only limited control over them. In order for the speechact to be successful, it must fulfil some appropriateness conditions, or ‘felicity’ conditions: locution is successful if words and sounds are correctly produced; illocution is appropriate if it meets the conditions for its realisation; perlocution may be effective when it produces consequences desired by the producer. The notion of illocutionary force embodies the philosophical notion of intentionality, which can be expressed by performing a speech act through three modalities: (1) directly or indirectly through the performance of another speech act (‘Pass me the salt’ versus ‘Can you pass me the salt?’); literally or non-literally depending on the way words are used (‘Stick it in your head’); (3) explicitly or inexplicitly when meaning is spelled out fully or incompletely (‘I’ll be back later, Mary’s ready’). Indirectness and nonliterality are disambiguated by way of a conversational implicature*, whereas explicitation is achieved through expansion or completion of what one says.

John Searle, one of Austin’s students, contributed widely to developing speech act theory, which he addressed from the viewpoint of intentionality. Specifically he conceived of linguistic intentionality as derived from mental intentionality. In his Speech Acts (1969) Searle claimed that Austin’s ‘felicity conditions’ are constitutive rules of speech acts to the extent that to perform a speech act means to meet the conventional rules which constitute a specific speech act. Moving from this approach and analysing the act of promising, Searle proposed a classification of speech acts into four categories: (1) propositional content (what the speech act isabout); (2) preparatory condition, which states the prerequisites for the speech act; (3) sincerity condition (the speaker has to sincerely intend to keep a promise); and (4) essential condition (the speaker’s intention that the utterance counts as an act and as such is to be recognised by the hearer). One of Searle’s major contributions to the theory refers to indirectness, that is the mismatch between an utterance and an illocutionary force.

The interpretation of indirect speech acts has drawn a great deal of attention. Drawing on H. P. Grice’s pragmatics, most scholars assume that some inferential work on the part of the hearer is required in order to identify the speaker’s communicative intention and the core question is how such inference can be computed. Searle (1975) assumes that the hearer recognises both a direct-literal force, which he understands as the secondary force, and an indirect-nonliteral force, which is the primary force. Similarly Dan Gordon and George Lakoff (1975) argue that inference rules that they label ‘conversational postulates’ reduce the amount of inferential computing necessary to disambiguate an indirect speech act. Jerrold Sadock (1974) departs from the inferential hypothesis and proposes ‘the idiom model’ by claiming that a speech act like ‘Can you pass me the salt?’ is promptly interpreted as a request and needs no inference.

Speech act theory received great attention and valid theoretical proposals from cognitive linguists. Klaus Panther and Linda Thornburg (1998) claim that our knowledge of illocutionary meaning may be systematically organised in the form of what they call ‘illocutionary scenarios’. They are formed by a before, a core, and an after component. If a person wants someone to bring him his pen, he can utter a direct speech act like ‘Bring me my pen’, which exploits the core component, or he can make his request indirectly exploiting either the before component (‘Can you bring me my pen?’) where the modal verb ‘can’ points to the hearer’s ability to perform the action, or the after component (‘You will bring me my pen, won’t you?’) where the auxiliary ‘will’ instantiates the after component of the request scenario. Panther (2005) makes the point that metonymies provide natural ‘inference schemas’ which are constantly used by speakers in meaning construction and interpretation. Scenarios may be accessed metonymically by invoking relevant parts of them. Indirect requests like ‘Can you open the door?’, ‘Will you close the window?’, ‘Do you have hot chocolate?’ exploit all pre-conditions for the performance of a request, that is, the ability and willingness of the hearer, and his possession of the required object. Such pre-conditions are used to stand for the whole speech act category. By means of the explicit mention of one of the components of the scenario, it is possible for the speaker to afford access to the hearer to the whole illocutionary category of ‘requesting’ in such a way that the utterance is effortlessly interpreted as a request. With a view to improving Panther’s proposal, Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza (2007) contends that illocutionary meaning is directly tied to the notion of Idealised Cognitive Models (ICMs), which are principle-governed cognitive structures. Illocutionary scenarios represent the way in which language users construct interactional meaning representations abstracted away from a number of stereotypical illocutionary situations. In an indirect request like ‘I fancy going out for dinner’ the hearer understands the implicated meaning by relying on high-level situational ICMs – that is, on the generic knowledge that expressing a wish indirectly corresponds to asking for its fulfillment. Thus, it is exactly the quick and easy retrieval from our long-term memory of a stored illocutionary scenario that allows us to identify the nature of indirectness.

Speech act theory is a thought-provoking issue which has attracted the interest of philosophers of language and linguists from diverse theoretical persuasions. Manifold aspects of the theory are being debated such as the classification of speech acts, the relationship between speech acts and culture, and the acquisition of speech acts by children, which proves how this area of language research still provides room for developments and new insights.

Primary sources Aristotle (1941). De Interpretatione. New York: Random House. 38–61. Austin, J. L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gordon D. and G. Lakoff (1975). ‘Conversational postulates’. In P. Cole and J. L. Morgan (eds), Syntax and Semantics, Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press. 83–106. Husserl, E. (1900/1). Logische Untersuchungen. Halle: Nyemeier.Panther, K. U. and L. Thornburg (1998). ‘A cognitive approach to inferencing in conversation’. Journal of Pragmatics 30: 755–69. Panther K. U. (2005). ‘The role of conceptual metonymy in meaning construction’. In F. Ruiz de Mendoza and S.Peña (eds), Cognitive Linguistics. Internal Dynamics and Interdisciplinary Interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 353–86. Reinach, A. (1913). ‘Die apriorischen Grundlagen des bürgerlichen Rechtes’. In Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung 1: 685–847. Ruiz de Mendoza, F. (2007). ‘High level cognitive models: in search of a unified framework for inferential and grammatical behavior’. In Krzysztof Kosecki (ed.), Perspectives on Metonymy. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. 1130. Ryle G. (1949). The Concept of Mind. London: Hutchinson. Sadock J. (1974). Toward a Linguistic Theory of Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press. Searle J. R. (1969). Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle J. R. (1975). ‘Indirect speech acts’. In P. Cole and J. L. Morgan (eds), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press. 59–82. Wittgenstein L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.

Further reading Ayer, A. J. (1936). Language, Truth and Logic. London: Gollancz. Brentano, F. (1874). Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt. Leipzig: Duncke and Humbolt. Marty, A. (1908). Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Grammatik und Sprachphilosophie. Halle: Nyemeier. Reid, T. (1894). The Works of Thomas Reid. Edinburgh: Maclachlan and Stewart.

Source: Key Ideas in Linguistics and the. Philosophy of Language. Edited by Siobhan Chapman and Christopher Routledge. Edinburgh University Press. 2009.

Article contents

Speech acts.

Mitchell Green Mitchell Green Philosophy, University of Connecticut
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.200
Published online: 29 March 2017

Speech acts are acts that can, but need not, be carried out by saying and meaning that one is doing so. Many view speech acts as the central units of communication, with phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties of an utterance serving as ways of identifying whether the speaker is making a promise, a prediction, a statement, or a threat. Some speech acts are momentous, since an appropriate authority can, for instance, declare war or sentence a defendant to prison, by saying that he or she is doing so. Speech acts are typically analyzed into two distinct components: a content dimension (corresponding to what is being said), and a force dimension (corresponding to how what is being said is being expressed). The grammatical mood of the sentence used in a speech act signals, but does not uniquely determine, the force of the speech act being performed. A special type of speech act is the performative, which makes explicit the force of the utterance. Although it has been famously claimed that performatives such as “I promise to be there on time” are neither true nor false, current scholarly consensus rejects this view. The study of so-called infelicities concerns the ways in which speech acts might either be defective (say by being insincere) or fail completely.

Recent theorizing about speech acts tends to fall either into conventionalist or intentionalist traditions: the former sees speech acts as analogous to moves in a game, with such acts being governed by rules of the form “doing A counts as doing B”; the latter eschews game-like rules and instead sees speech acts as governed by communicative intentions only. Debate also arises over the extent to which speakers can perform one speech act indirectly by performing another. Skeptics about the frequency of such events contend that many alleged indirect speech acts should be seen instead as expressions of attitudes. New developments in speech act theory also situate them in larger conversational frameworks, such as inquiries, debates, or deliberations made in the course of planning. In addition, recent scholarship has identified a type of oppression against under-represented groups as occurring through “silencing”: a speaker attempts to use a speech act to protect her autonomy, but the putative act fails due to her unjust milieu.

performative
illocutionary force
communicative intentions
perlocution
felicity condition
speaker meaning
presupposition
indirect speech act
illocutionary silencing

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Media Studies
Communication
Linguistics

Speech Act Theory | How Words Shape Meaning & Interactions

June 27, 2023 March 31, 2024

In the captivating world of media and communications, one theory that holds immense importance is the Speech Act Theory. Developed by philosophers J.L. Austin and John Searle, this theory helps us comprehend how our words possess the power to shape meaning. Also, how it influences our interactions with others. Let’s delve into this theory and explore its key concepts to unlock the secrets of effective communication.

The Power of Words

Words are not merely sounds or symbols; they carry profound power. Thus, they possess the ability to convey thoughts, express emotions, and influence others. Speech Act Theory enables us to comprehend that when we speak, we are not solely stating facts, but also performing actions through our words.

Understanding the power of words allows us to recognise the impact our speech has on others. It helps us become conscious of the choices we make in our language use. Thus, making us aware of the potential consequences they may have. By harnessing the power of words, we can express ourselves effectively and create meaningful connections with those around us.

Locution, Illocution & Perlocution

Speech acts can be understood through three levels: locution, illocution, and perlocution. Locution refers to the actual words and phrases we use. Illocution focuses on the intentions behind our words, such as making a request or giving an order. Perlocution refers to the impact our words have on others, like persuading or motivating them to take action.

By recognising these levels of speech acts, we gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of communication. We become aware that our words carry not only literal meanings but also implied intentions. We then need to consider the potential effects on the receiver. This awareness enables us to be more mindful of our speech and adapt it according to our communicative goals.

Types of Speech Acts

Speech Act Theory categorises speech acts into three main types: assertive, directive, and expressive. Assertive speech acts aim to convey information, such as stating facts or making claims. Directive speech acts involve issuing commands or requests. Expressive speech acts express emotions, attitudes, or feelings.

Understanding the different types of speech acts helps us navigate various communicative situations effectively. We learn to recognise when we need to provide information, give instructions, or express ourselves emotionally. This knowledge allows us to choose the appropriate speech acts to achieve our communication goals. Therefore, allowing us to convey our intended meanings accurately.

Felicity Conditions

For a speech act to be successful, certain conditions known as felicity conditions must be met. These conditions ensure that the act is performed appropriately and is understood by the intended audience. Felicity conditions may include factors such as sincerity, relevance, and the social context in which the speech act takes place. Understanding and adhering to these conditions contribute to effective communication.

Recognising felicity conditions helps us gauge the appropriateness and effectiveness of our speech acts. Therefore, we become more conscious of the importance of sincerity in our words. Furthermore, the relevance of our statements to the context, and finally the impact of social norms on communication. By considering these conditions, we enhance our ability to convey our messages successfully and build stronger connections with others.

Speech Act Theory & Performativity

Speech Act Theory emphasises the concept of performativity. This suggests that by uttering specific words, we bring about a change in the world. For example, saying “I now pronounce you husband and wife” during a wedding ceremony establishes a new marital status for the couple. Our words have the power to create realities and shape social structures. This aspect of speech acts highlights their transformative nature.

Understanding performativity allows us to appreciate the significant influence of our words on social and cultural contexts. As a result, we become aware of the role our speech plays in shaping perceptions, reinforcing norms, and constructing shared meanings. Also, by harnessing the power of performativity, we can contribute to positive social change and inspire others through our words.

Contextual Factors of Speech Act Theory

Context plays a vital role in comprehending speech acts. The same words can have different meanings depending on the context in which they are used. For instance, cultural norms, social relationships, and shared knowledge influence the interpretation of speech acts. Being aware of these contextual factors is essential for effective communication. Therefore, understanding the situational context helps to avoid miscommunication and ensures that the intended meaning is conveyed.

Considering contextual factors enhances our ability to adapt our communication to specific situations. We become sensitive to cultural nuances and adapt our language to different social relationships. Also, it allows us to utilise shared knowledge to convey our ideas effectively. By understanding context, we navigate diverse communication settings with ease and promote mutual understanding.

Pragmatics & Politeness

Speech Act Theory is closely intertwined with Pragmatics , the study of how language is used in real-life situations. Politeness is a significant aspect of pragmatics. Sociolinguists Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson argue that Politeness Strategies , such as using indirect language or employing polite expressions, help maintain social harmony and prevent potential conflicts. Being aware of cultural and social norms of politeness aids in building positive interpersonal relationships.

Understanding pragmatics and politeness allows us to engage in effective and harmonious communication. Thus, we learn to adapt our speech to different social contexts, respect cultural norms, and demonstrate consideration for others. Therefore, by employing politeness strategies, we cultivate empathy, show respect, and foster healthy relationships with those around us.

Criticisms of Speech Act Theory

Despite its significant contributions to understanding communication, Speech Act Theory is not without its criticisms. Some scholars argue that the theory places excessive focus on the speaker’s intentions. Therefore, it neglects the role of the listener in interpreting speech acts. They suggest that meaning is a collaborative effort between the speaker and the listener. This is influenced by shared knowledge and social context.

Others criticise Speech Act Theory for its limited scope in accounting for non-verbal communication. Also, the impact of non-linguistic elements such as body language and facial expressions. They argue that meaning is not solely derived from words but also from non-verbal cues that accompany speech acts.

Additionally, critics point out that Speech Act Theory tends to overlook the role of power dynamics and social inequalities in communication. They argue that the ability to perform certain speech acts may be constrained by societal structures. Thus, not all individuals have equal opportunities to exercise their speech acts freely.

Speech Act Theory offers us a valuable framework for comprehending the power of words and the intricacies of human communication. By recognising the various levels of speech acts, the significance of felicity conditions, the transformative nature of performativity, the impact of context, and the importance of pragmatics and politeness, we can become more effective communicators. However, it is important to acknowledge the criticisms of the theory and consider alternative perspectives. This helps us to then develop a more comprehensive understanding of communication.

Austin, J.L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words . Oxford University Press.

Searle, J.R. (1969). Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language . Cambridge University Press.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage . Cambridge University Press.

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Introduction: Assertion among the Speech Acts

Published: November 2018
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Consider the sorts of act one performs when one makes a statement or report, gives one’s testimony, or tells another person something. There are various ways we might try to characterize the nature of acts like these. They (typically) involve the utterance of a declarative sentence in an ordinary conversational context; they are acts in which the speaker makes as if to express a belief of hers, or in which she commits herself to the truth of the relevant propositional content, or in which she (characteristically) aims to induce a belief with that content in her audience. However we characterize acts of these sorts, to have this class of speech act in mind is a good initial way to approach what philosophers and linguists have in mind when they speak of assertions . Work in this area typically proceeds on the assumptions, first, that there is an interesting and unified type of speech act here, and second, that acts of this type have features that are of some theoretical interest—not only in linguistics and in philosophy of language, but also in psychology, law, sociology, political science, education theory, computer science, and elsewhere.

It turns out to be a difficult matter to fix the contours of the class of acts precisely. Indeed, one might even doubt that this can be done in a theory-neutral way. 1 Even so, many philosophers and linguists have thought that this sort of taxonomic project is worth pursuing. The simplest explanation for this project is this: a speech act with something like the profile described earlier appears to be related to various other phenomena of theoretical interest, and we might hope to appeal to our understanding of the act itself to shed light on these other phenomena. If we give the label “assertion” to the (alleged) type of speech act in question, we might pursue the hypothesis that assertion is a type of speech act that

is apt for the expression of judgment and belief; 2

is apt for the transmission of knowledge; 3

commits one to the truth of a proposition; 4

makes possible lies and acts of incompetence, and so renders one prone to a distinctive type of ethical assessment bound up with issues of trust and trustworthiness. 5

And we might appeal to the nature of this act in an attempt to spell out such things as

how language can be used to represent a worldly state of affairs; 6

what it is for an expression to have a meaning, or to have the distinct meaning that it has; 7

what is involved in being trustworthy; 8

how we should think about communication itself; 9

how language use is bound up with many of the ways in which we hold one another accountable; 10

how bias and relations of oppression might distort this sort of accountability. 11

The prospect of a route to illuminating these and other matters is part of what leads many philosophers to attend to the nature of assertion itself.

It is no wonder, then, that as a speech act, assertion has loomed large in the philosophical imagination. Arguably, the category of assertion itself, as a distinctive way in which one presents a proposition as true, was not clearly framed until the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. 12 Even so, topics in the vicinity have been on the philosophical agenda for centuries. Ancient and medieval logicians were very interested in the act of judgement itself, thereby manifesting an interest in what many contemporaries regard as the mental analogue of assertion. So, too, in early modern Europe the English philosopher Thomas Reid was very interested in the use of speech to express belief and spread knowledge. In the more recent history of philosophy, in the late nineteenth century the German philosopher Gottlob Frege felt the need to represent (something like) the act of assertion in his attempted formalization of logic ( Begriffschrift ). In the early twentieth century the English philosopher G. E. Moore saw in the nature of assertion one way to diagnose the paradoxicality of sentences such as “It’s raining but I don’t believe that it is raining”—sentences whose sincere use appears to be self-undermining, even as the state of affairs they describe is a possible one. More recently still, the mid-century English philosopher J. L. Austin, taking a stand against the long tradition in philosophy that focused most of its attention on the statement (a category of speech act arguably coextensive with assertion), railed against the central role philosophers ascribed to this act. A bit later, the English philosopher Paul Grice argued that so-called nonnatural meaning —the sort of meaning involved in acts of communication—could be understood in terms of an act very much like, if not the same as, the act of assertion. (Grice somewhat misleadingly called this act the act of saying .)

Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that assertion has received the attention it has. Somewhat more surprising is the extent to which there has been a resurgence of interest among philosophers for this type of act. According to Google Scholar, in the one hundred years between 1895 and 1995, there were just under seventy-five published papers that use or mention “the nature of assertion,” whereas in the approximately twenty-five years since then there have been over four hundred. No doubt some of this discrepancy is owed to a greater number of publishing venues in the last several decades as well as the professionalization of philosophy itself (putting pressure on people to publish). But part of it is owed to a renewed interest in the act itself.

This handbook aims to explore various dimensions of the act of assertion: its nature; its place in a theory of speech acts, and in semantics and meta-semantics; its role in epistemology; and the various social, political, and ethical dimensions of the act. While it does not aim at exhaustiveness, the handbook presents some of the best work done on the core issues pertaining to assertion. These issues should be of interest not only to philosophers but also linguists, psychologists, anthropologists, lawyers, computer scientists, and theorists from communication studies. Although it is broken up into parts, all of the papers can be read in isolation by those interested only in a single topic. The entries themselves, written by leading theorists, offer opinionated introductions to the topics.

Part 1 explores the nature of assertion. What distinguishes assertion as a speech act? A traditional way to approach this question is in terms of the familiar distinction between (illocutionary) force and content. While this distinction is not entirely uncontroversial, 13 it provides the standard way to address the distinctiveness of speech act types, namely, by treating each distinct type as individuated by the distinctive force of acts of that type. On this approach, assertions are those speech acts with a distinctive (assertoric) force, and our question becomes: under what conditions does an utterance have a force of that kind? But however we frame the question, our topic is the individuation of assertion as a speech act. The seven papers in Part 1 explore the seven leading accounts. A rather loose but informative taxonomy of these accounts is in terms of four main ways one might try to capture the nature of the act itself. (Where accounts might be placed under more than one category, I place it under the category that is most characteristic of the account.)

The first category includes those accounts that characterize assertion in terms of the contextual effects of performing speech acts of this type. This handbook has chapters devoted to two distinct varieties of this sort of account. Lenny Clapp presents an account, owed to Robert Stalnaker and often developed as part of “discourse dynamics,” according to which the “essential effect” of an assertion is to update the context of conversation by adding the proposition asserted to the set of propositions that have been mutually presupposed in the conversation. An alternative account within this same general category, deriving from the work of Robert Brandom and presented in the chapter by Lionel Shapiro, holds that to assert a proposition is to perform a speech act in which the speaker undertakes a commitment to defend that proposition (if called upon to do so) and authorizes others to believe the proposition in question.

A second category includes those accounts that see the nature of the act as closely linked with the declarative (grammatical) mood. Once again, this handbook has chapters devoted to two distinct varieties of this sort of account. In his chapter, Mark Jary defends a view on which to assert a proposition is to undertake a commitment to defend the proposition by way of uttering a sentence in the declarative mood. Peter Pagin develops a view on which assertion is the type of speech act that is prima facie informative, where prima facie informativeness is linked in an indirect way with the declarative mood.

A third category includes those accounts that construe assertions in terms of the rule (or norm) that governs acts of this type. This type of account, which is described in the chapter by Mona Simion and Chris Kelp, might be seen as deriving from the work of John Searle. In any case it has become significantly more popular, owing to a recent defense of a version of this sort of account by Tim Williamson, according to which assertion is the unique speech act governed by a knowledge norm, to the effect that one must assert only what one knows.

A fourth category includes those broadly Gricean accounts that approach the nature of assertion in terms of the communicative intentions that inform acts of that type. If we think of communicative intentions as the sort of intentions to achieve an effect on an audience by way of the audience’s recognition of this intention, then the Gricean approach to assertion holds that assertions are those acts performed with the communicative intention to get the audience to believe that the speaker believes the proposition in question. This sort of view is developed in the chapter by Mark Siebel.

The last of the chapters in this first part, by Herman Cappelen, does not fall into any of these categories, as it challenges the theoretical utility of the speech act category assertion itself. On Cappelen’s view, this category is “defective” and does not pick out any interesting kind of speech act.

Part 2 collects three essays which, broadly speaking, address the place of assertion within speech act theory more generally. In her contribution, Marina Sbisà addresses whether the speech act is to be granted any special place within speech act theory, and she considers how this question might be answered from the perspective of various types of account of the speech acts themselves (Austinian, Gricean, normative-pragmatic, Alstonian). Mark van Roojen asks about the role assertion might play in an account of promising, with special attention to the commitment one incurs in the act of promising. And in her contribution Hallie Liberto argues that contrary to the view deriving from John Searle’s taxonomy of speech acts, threats and warnings are themselves illocutionary acts, and she uses assertion in her analysis of those acts.

Part 3 addresses variations within the category of assertion itself. Several such variations are explored in the papers in this part. One variation involves assertions that in some sense or other are qualified, as in the contribution by Matthew Benton and Peter van Elswyk focusing on what they call “hedged assertion.” In addition, it includes assertions that are made in nonstandard ways. This topic is explored in Marga Reimer’s contribution, where she focuses on the category of indirect assertion—for example, the sort of speech act that is made when one asks a rhetorical question. It includes as well assertions that are “marked” in some way. Thus, in his contribution, Ben Kotzee is keen to see how bullshit (in Harry Frankfurt’s sense) might be seen as a distinctive type of perversion of the speech act of assertion, using this analysis in turn to shed light on the nature of assertion itself. And Christopher Hom explores those assertions that constitute slurring speech, offering an account on which a slur and its neutral counterpart differ in their Fregean senses. Finally, it includes an exploration of cases involving what we might call nonstandard agents of the act of assertion itself. Thus, Kirk Ludwig is interested in cases in which assertions are made by proxy, and Deborah Tollefsen explores what is involved when a group (rather than an individual) is said to make an assertion.

The four papers of Part 4 address what we might call methodological issues in the study of assertion. Mitch Green’s contribution addresses the issue of the conventionality of assertion, arguing that the act of assertion does not require the existence of a conventional means of expression (even as making an assertion is something that can be aided by such conventions). In his paper, Martin Montminy argues that there is no theory-neutral way to identify assertions, and he uses the freedom that this indeterminacy provides to defend a belief-based account of assertion. Sid Horton’s contribution explores the roles that mindreading plays in the production and comprehension of assertions, suggesting that these will be significant if speech acts are intended to obey the maxim of relevance. In their contribution, Boaz Miller and Ori Freiman ask whether devices or machines can be said to make assertions, and they conclude with a qualified affirmative answer (describing the outputs of devices as “quasi-assertions”).

Part 5 takes up issues pertaining to the content of assertions. Manuel García-Carpintero argues that there can be genuine assertions about matters of fiction and that fiction itself can be seen as making assertions, and that both of these claims are compatible with the fictional status of the content of such assertions. In her contribution, Isidora Stojanovic explores how various theses in the philosophy of mind (concerning the distinctively first-person nature of de se attitudes) might relate to the assertions in which such attitudes are expressed. Corine Besson and Anandi Hattiangati discuss whether the conception of the future as open causes difficulty for the thesis that some assertions about future contingents are true, arguing that those who see these claims as incompatible face some unmet challenges. Fabrizio Cariani explores how the contents of assertions of epistemic modals might be rendered within a Stalnakerian framework. Tim McCarthy discusses the role of assertibility in the generation of various paradoxes.

In recent years, the speech act of assertion has been connected to a host of topics in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of action, and Part 6 explores these topics. Ted Hinchman’s contribution explores the relationship between assertion and testimony, arguing that the latter category is the more explanatorily fundamental one, and that this highlights the important interpersonal dimension of assertion itself. Patrick Rysiew focuses on assertions involving ascriptions of knowledge, exploring the role such assertions play as evidence for theories of knowledge, the social roles they play, and the pragmatics and psychology of such ascriptions. In his paper, Rik Peels addresses the extent to which one’s own ignorance is assertable, arguing that of the many types of ignorance, only two can be properly ascribed to oneself in an assertion. Jennifer Lackey criticizes familiar approaches to the standard for proper assertion by developing her notion of the (epistemic) quality of assertion, something she distinguishes from more familiar “quantitative” epistemic properties such as reliability or likelihood on one’s evidence. Robert Fiengo develops Austin’s view of assertion, exploring how our common assertive practices are linked to the knowledge that informs speech acts of this type. Erik Olsson’s paper develops various formal models of an assertion—Bayesian models, game-theoretic models, social network models, logical models, public announcement models—in an attempt to explore the variety of ways in which the speech act can be of interest to epistemologists. Mikkel Gerken and Esben Petersen survey the work on epistemic norms of action, practical deliberation, and assertion, in an attempt to characterize how these norms are interrelated. And Clayton Littlejohn’s paper discusses the role of assertion in Moore’s Paradox, and he explores the prospects for appealing to an account of assertion in order to illuminate the paradoxicality of the phenomenon itself (whether in speech or in thought).

Recent years have also seen a dramatic increase in recognition of and interest in the more social dimensions of assertion; the six papers in Part 7 explore some of these. Peter Graham’s paper borrows Ruth Millikan’s notion of a proper function, arguing that assertion has the proper function of inducing true hearer belief, and that this is so in part because of our social norms for truth-telling. Alessandra Tanesini discusses how individuals from disadvantaged or oppressed groups can be “silenced” when they attempt to make assertions, and she explores the recent literature on these and related topics. In her contribution, Casey Johnson examines how one’s social identity makes a difference to one’s ability to use assertions, indicating in this way how recent work on the speech act is connected to work on such things as race, gender, and sexual orientation. Terence Cuneo argues that ethics is of central importance to the very existence of the illocutionary act of assertion, claiming that it is the possibility of lying that explains the possibility of performing the act of assertion. Jessica Brown addresses a recent defense of the knowledge norm of assertion, according to which norm conformity and blamelessness come apart, and finds this response wanting. And Jessica Pepp defends the traditional thought that there is an ethically significant difference between lying and deliberately misleading (through implication).

Beyond aiming to capture the state of the art on the topic at issue, one of the hopes often associated with a handbook of this sort is to indicate potentially fruitful future lines of research. I want to close this introduction with a brief plea for one such line.

Whether in speech act theory or in philosophy of language and epistemology more generally, theorizing about the act of assertion has tended to focus on face-to-face speech exchanges. To be sure, those with an interest in knowledge transmission have broadened the scope of their interests to include written language as well. But it seems that neither paradigm is entirely happy when we explore the nature of the communicative language-involving acts performed online. This point itself has been made by others. I can only encourage continued reflection on those sorts of acts. In this regard the various accounts of assertion contained herein may prove helpful—if only to make clear a range of questions we might ask as we characterize our online exchanges, and to enable us to understand the full contrast of these exchanges with ordinary face-to-face conversations.

See the contributions in this handbook by Cappelen (chapter 7 ), Sbisà (chapter 8 ), and Montminy (chapter 18 ).

See Siebel (chapter 5 ) and Horton (chapter 19 ), this volume.

See Simion and Kelp (chapter 3 ), Hinchman (chapter 26 ), Rysiew (chapter 27 ), Lackey (chapter 29 ), and Fiengo (chapter 30 ), this volume.

See Shapiro (chapter 4 ) and McCarthy (chapter 25 ), this volume.

See Hinchman (chapter 26 ), Liberto (chapter 10 ), Cuneo (chapter 37 ), and Pepp (chapter 39 ), this volume.

See Pagin (chapter 6), this volume.

See García-Carpintero (chapter 21), Stojanovic (chapter 22), Besson and Hattiangati (chapter 23), and Cariani (chapter 24), this volume.

See Hinchman (chapter 26) and Pepp (chapter 39), this volume.

See Graham (chapter 34) and Olsson (chapter 31), this volume.

See Shapiro (chapter 4), Gerken and Pedersen (chapter 32), Cuneo (chapter 37), and Brown (chapter 38), this volume.

See Hom (chapter 14), Tanesini (chapter 35), and Johnson (chapter 36), this volume.

I thank Rob Stainton for suggesting this (private communication).

Some recent work in speech act theory has called this distinction into question. For discussion, see, e.g., New Work on Speech Acts , eds. Fogal, Harris, and Moss (Oxford University Press, 2018).

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Backgrounder: Solving the housing crisis: Canada’s Housing Plan

From: Infrastructure Canada

Backgrounder

Today, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland, and the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, Sean Fraser, unveiled Canada’s Housing Plan, which responds to the significant housing challenges faced by Canadian communities. With Canada’s Housing Plan, the federal government is taking a leadership role and making investments that drive the change needed to help solve Canada's national housing crisis.

In the years since the pandemic, Canada’s housing sector has faced increasingly difficult challenges, compounded by high interest rates that slowed the economy and home construction. Today, the national housing crisis presents one of Canada’s greatest social and economic challenges. Canada needs to build more homes, faster, to meet the demand of our growing communities.

Today, the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister Fraser announced Canada’s vision and plan to solve Canada's national housing crisis. Through Canada’s Housing Plan, the government is committing to building more homes, faster; increasing housing affordability; growing the community housing sector; and, making it easier to rent or buy a home.

Canada is rising to this challenge by:

Building more homes by bringing down the costs of homebuilding, helping cities make it easier to build homes at a faster pace, changing the way Canadian homebuilders manufacture homes, and growing the workforce to ensure we get the job done.
Making it easier to rent or own a home by ensuring that every renter or homeowner has a home that suits their needs, and the stability to retain it.
Helping Canadians who can’t afford a home by building more affordable housing for students, seniors, persons with disabilities, and equity-deserving communities, and eliminating chronic homelessness in Canada.

Building more homes

Making the math work for homebuilders.

Eliminating GST from new rental apartment construction projects, co-ops, and new student residences built by non-profit universities, and public colleges and school authorities.
Reforming the Apartment Construction Loan Program (ACLP), and providing a further $15 billion in loans to build a minimum of 30,000 new rental apartments. This brings the program’s total loan funding to over $55 billion with more than 131,000 new rental homes by 2031-32, including $500 million in low-cost financing to support rental housing projects using innovative techniques. This is in addition to the $15 billion announced in the 2023 Fall Economic Statement.
Launching Canada Builds to leverage funding from the Apartment Construction Loan Program (ACLP) to partner with provinces and territories that launch their own ambitious housing plans, increasing the impact of federal, provincial and territorial investments.
Launching a Public Lands for Homes plan that will unlock underused public land to build more housing, accelerate the process of making public land available for housing, lease public land instead of selling it off, and create a new mapping tool to keep track of federal lands that can be used for housing.
Announcing $20 million, through Budget 2024, for Statistics Canada and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) for modernizing and enhancing the collection and dissemination of housing data, including municipal-level data on housing starts and completions.
Introducing the Canada Secondary Suite Loan Program, delivered by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to provide homeowners up to $40,000 in low-interest loans to add a secondary suite to their existing homes.
Launching a $4.3 billion Urban, Rural and Northern Indigenous Housing Strategy in 2024 to establish a ‘for Indigenous, by Indigenous’ National Housing Centre, and provide additional distinctions-based investments for culturally appropriate Indigenous housing to be delivered by Indigenous governments, organizations, and housing and service providers.

Working with communities to build more housing, faster

Providing an additional $400 million dollars to the $4 billion Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF) to incentivize an additional 12,000 new homes in the next three years so more municipalities can cut red tape, fast-track home construction, and invest in affordable housing.
Eliminating mandatory minimum parking requirements within 800 metres of a high-frequency transit line;
Allowing high-density housing within 800 metres of a high-frequency transit line;
Allowing high-density housing within 800 metres of post-secondary institutions; and,
Completing Housing Needs Assessments for communities with a population over 30,000.
$1 billion available to municipalities to support urgent infrastructure needs to enable more housing; and
Legalizing more housing options by adopting zoning that allows four units as-of-right and that permits more “missing middle” homes, including duplexes, triplexes, townhouses, and small multi-unit apartments;
Implementing a three-year freeze on increasing development charges from April 2, 2024 levels for municipalities with a population greater than 300,000;
Adopting forthcoming changes to the National Building Code to support more accessible, affordable, and climate-friendly housing options;
Providing pre-approval for construction of designs included in the government’s upcoming Housing Design Catalogue; and,
Implementing measures from the forthcoming Home Buyers’ Bill of Rights and Renters’ Bill of Rights.
Provinces will have until January 1, 2025 to secure an agreement, and territories will have until April 1, 2025. If a province or territory does not secure an agreement by their respective deadline, their funding allocation will be transferred to the municipal stream.

Changing the way we build homes

Allocating $11.6 million to the development of a Housing Design Catalogue, which will provide builders and municipalities with a set of standardized designs that will streamline planning, development, and approval processes of new home build.
Launching the new Homebuilding Technology and Innovation Fund. This Fund will provide $50 million delivered through Next Generation Manufacturing Canada (NGen) to help scale-up, commercialize, and promote adoption of innovative housing technologies and materials in Canada’s homebuilding industry, including for modular and prefabricated homes.
Investing $50 million over two years for Canada’s regional development agencies to support innovative housing projects, including those in modular housing, automation, and robotics.
Simplifying the way that Canada builds homes by making specific changes to the National Building Code to support factory build-housing and changes to allow more multi-bedroom apartments in existing neighbourhoods.
Providing $500 million in low-cost financing for new apartments that use innovative prefabricated homebuilding techniques through the Apartment Construction Loan Program (ACLP).

Growing and training the workforce

Providing an additional $50 million in the Foreign Credential Recognition Program, building on the federal government’s previous $115 million investment, with a focus on residential construction to help skilled trades workers get more homes built.
Providing $10 million for the Skilled Trades Awareness and Readiness program to encourage high school students to enter the skilled trades, with an additional $90 million for the Apprenticeship Service, creating apprenticeship opportunities to train and recruit the next generation of skilled trades workers.

Making it easier to rent or own a home

Protecting renters.

Launching the new $15 million Tenant Protection Fund, through Budget 2024, to provide funding to provincial legal services and tenants’ rights advocacy organizations to better protect tenant rights and ensure that renting a home is fair, open, and transparent.
Creating the Canadian Renters’ Bill of Rights, in partnership with provinces and territories, to require landlords to disclose a clear history of apartment pricing, significantly reduce renovictions, and create a nationwide standard lease agreement to give renters more agency.
Strengthening the Canadian Mortgage Charter, and working with fintech companies, credit bureaus, and lenders to prioritize tools so that renters can report and record their rent payment history, strengthening their credit scores, ensuring they get credit for on-time rent payments, and unlocking pathways to become homeowners.

Getting you into your first home

Extending the limit on insured mortgage amortizations for first-time buyers acquiring new builds by five years to increase access to mortgages for younger Canadians.
Strengthening the Canadian Mortgage Charter to support access to fair, reasonable, and timely mortgage relief measures from their federally regulated financial institutions.
Leveraging the tax-free First Home Savings Account to help Canadians meet their saving goals and purchase of their first home, faster. The tax-free First Home Savings Account is already helping over 750,000 Canadians save faster for their first downpayment.

Supporting current homeowners

Extending the grace period for when homeowners are not required to repay their Home Buyers’ Plan withdrawals to their RRSP, from two to five years, for all those who withdraw between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2025.
Launching the Canada Green Buildings Strategy to focus on lowering home energy bills and reducing building emissions by supporting energy efficient retrofits. $903.5 million will go toward the Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program, renewing and improving existing energy efficiency programs, and continuing to develop national approaches to home energy labelling.

Protecting Canada’s existing housing stock

Creating a short-term rental enforcement fund which will provide $50 million for municipal enforcement of restrictions on short-term rentals, and increase long-term rental units.
Extending the ban on purchasing residential property by foreign investors, legislated through the Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act , until January 1, 2027.

Helping Canadians who can’t afford a home

Increasing the supply of affordable housing in canada.

Providing $1 billion to the Affordable Housing Fund (AHF) in addition to the $1 billion top-up announced in the 2023 Fall Economic Statement, bringing the total funding to over $14 billion, to reform and strengthen the program.
Launching a $1.5 billion Canada Rental Protection Fund to help community housing providers acquire affordable rental units at risk of being sold to investors and repriced in order to preserve their affordability over the long term.
Launching the $1.5 billion Co-operative Housing Development Program to support new co-operative housing developments across the country.

Providing funding to communities to help end homelessness

Providing additional investments of $1 billion over four years to stabilize Reaching Home: Canada's Homelessness Strategy.
Investing $250 million to address the urgent issue of encampments and unsheltered homelessness in communities across Canada, supporting the most vulnerable and ending encampments as vulnerable Canadians transition into dignified housing solutions.

Page details

Politics latest: Rwanda bill delayed after government suffers surprise defeats - as Tory peer calls for election 'sooner rather than later'

Peers continue the parliamentary ping pong over the Rwanda bill by passing two new amendments - as a Tory peer calls for an election "sooner rather than latter" and laments the impact of Brexit.

Wednesday 17 April 2024 21:30, UK

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Rwanda bill shambles continues as government suffers two more defeats in the Lords
Home secretary: 'Labour desperate to delay or disrupt Rwanda bill'
'What on earth are we waiting for?' - Tory peer calls for election 'sooner rather than later'
Tory MP who complained about Rayner to police declines to say what he thinks she's done wrong
Almost one million private renters in England given no-fault evictions since Tories promised to scrap them
Live reporting by Ben Bloch and (earlier) Faith Ridler

By Adele Robinson , business correspondent

The government has agreed to have an independent expert review of a Post Office IT system predating Horizon, amid claims dozens more sub-postmasters may have been wrongly convicted.

The Capture software was rolled out across branches in the 1990s, years before the notorious Horizon system was introduced.

Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake has met with a former sub-postmaster and a lawyer representing 35 people who believe they were wrongly accused of stealing.

It was agreed between MPs and the Post Office minister that an independent IT expert would assess evidence claiming to "prove" Capture software was prone to glitches.

Read the full story here:

Over a year ago, Rishi Sunak made five pledges for voters to judge him on.

The prime minister met his promise to halve inflation by the end of 2023.

But with the general election approaching, how is Mr Sunak doing on delivering his other promises?

You can see the progress for yourself below:

By Jennifer Scott , political reporter

Almost one million private renters in England have been handed no-fault evictions since the Conservative government promised to abolish them, new data has shown.

Research carried out by YouGov on behalf of homelessness charity Shelter - and shared exclusively with Sky News - showed that since April 2019 a total of 943,000 people had been given Section 21 notices, which is the equivalent of more than 500 renters every day.

The figures also showed unwanted moves were costing private renters in England £550m a year, with 830,000 people having to move in the last 12 months alone due to either their fixed tenancies coming to an end, being priced out by rent increases or being served with a Section 21.

Add in the soaring upfront costs for rents and deposits and unwanted moves are costing more than £1bn a year - or an average of £1,245 per person.

Polly Neate, Shelter's chief executive, said tenants were "bearing the cost of the government's inaction" and warned any further delays to banning no-fault evictions would see more people "tipped into homelessness".

But Levelling Up minister Jacob Young defended the government. He said abolishing Section 21s was "the biggest change to the private rented sector in more than 30 years" so it "takes time to make sure we get it right".

We heard a short while ago from government minister Steve Baker after the Lords passed two more amendments to the Rwanda bill, sending it back to the Commons once again.

He told Sky's chief political correspondent Jon Craig that "of course" the government is cross that the Lords has amended the bill once again.

"They're just delaying this policy. They seem to be terrified that it will work, and they're doing everything to delay it.

"So, of course, I'm extremely disappointed."

Jon put to Mr Baker that the government has slammed the door on interpreters who worked for us in Afghanistan, and others who the government promised they'd look after, and now face being deported to Rwanda.

He said it's "not quite the case", saying the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Home Office are "running a scheme to resettle Afghans, which I understand has resettled over 16,000 people who supported us".

The minister insisted the government will stand by those who helped our forces abroad, but added: "There's a proper route through the MoD and the Home Office.

"They shouldn't be travelling with people smugglers illegally across the Channel. And that's what we've got to break."

We've just had a response from the home secretary to the votes in the House of Lords tonight, passing two amendments to the Rwanda bill and sending it back to the Commons yet again.

James Cleverly said in a statement: "Terrified that the Rwanda scheme will work, and desperate to delay or disrupt over a hundred votes about stopping the boats, Labour have acted again to block the passage of the Rwanda Bill.

"It's been another politically cynical effort by them, who have no alternative deterrent and no plan to tackle illegal migration, to frustrate the only solution on offer."

He added that Labour is "uncomfortable with tackling immigration" which is why the party will "clearly stop at nothing to stop the planes".

We heard from Tory MP Rehman Chishti shortly after the House of Lords passed amendments to the Rwanda bill once again, sending it back to the Commons.

Our political editor Beth Rigby put to him that the government could have forced MPs to stay in the Commons and vote down the Lords' amendments tonight or tomorrow, but has chosen not to do so.

He replied: "I want to get Rwanda done. And I think Conservative MPs across the board want to see this done."

He went on: "I think the programme motion could easily have ensured that we had a vote tomorrow because, at the end of the day, the public want us to get on and get it done."

Beth put to Mr Chishti that Rishi Sunak said back in November that the Rwanda legislation was an "emergency", and so pushed him on why the government is not recalling MPs.

He replied that it may be because the PM is allowing peers the time to consider it, rather than be seen to be rushing it.

He added: "If you'd asked me, I would have put it in tomorrow, and I would have had a vote on it, and therefore we get those planes off."

On the heels of the government's latest defeats in the House of Lords over the Rwanda bill, we heard from our political editor Beth Rigby about what it all means.

She says: "It's quite a surprise because the government, I think, was quite confident. There was an expectation this bill would get passed this week."

She explains that Labour peers had indicated they would not push through more amendments today, but that is not what has happened.

"The nub of means that it is now going back to the Commons for the fifth time," she says.

"It was going to be a significant moment, but it has been kicked into next week."

Watch Beth's full analysis here:

Another vote in the Lords, another defeat for the government.

Peers have voted in favour of a second amendment tonight to the government's Rwanda scheme.

This one would mandate that those who worked with the UK military or government overseas, such as Afghan interpreters, be exempted from removal to Rwanda.

The result is:

247 in favour;
195 against.

That means it passes with a majority of 52 votes.

Peers are now voting on another amendment to the government's flagship Rwanda bill.

They have already passed one amendment this evening, meaning the bill will have to go back to the House of Commons either way.

We are expecting the result in the next few minutes, and we'll bring you that as soon as we have it.

Lord Stuart Rose, Tory peer and Asda chairman, tells Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge that both Labour and the Tories "need to set out very clearly what is in the plan" for after the next election.

"The Labour Party haven't done yet," he says. "I understand why they haven't done it, but they haven't told us what the detail is

"And that's what Rachel Reeves will get grilled on. That is what Keir Starmer will get grilled on, and quite rightly.

Asked about Labour's plans to expand employment rights, Lord Rose says: "I would say be very, very careful.

"We have one huge benefit in this country in fairly flexible labour laws. They give a significant protection to employees, but they give flexibility to employers.

"And we must make sure that what we do isn't retrograde because business needs help."

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Speech Acts 1
Speech Act Theory| Speech Act Theory in Discourse Studies| Speech Acts
Speech Act Theory| Speech Act Theory in Discourse Studies| Speech Acts
Speech act
Speech act theory Austin and Searle Austin
Speech act theory

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Teoryang Speech Act
TYPES OF SPEECH ACT
Indirect speech act presentation (2018) language in use
Discourse Analysis
SPEECH ACT THEORY
speech act theory ,lokusi,ilokusi dan perlokusi

COMMENTS

Speech act
The contemporary use of the term "speech act" goes back to J. L. Austin 's development of performative utterances and his theory of locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts. Speech acts serve their function once they are said or communicated. These are commonly taken to include acts such as apologizing, promising, ordering, answering ...
Speech Acts
The latter (but not the former) is a case of speaker meaning. Accordingly, a speech act is a type of act that can be performed by speaker meaning that one is doing so. This conception still counts resigning, promising, asserting and asking as speech acts, while ruling out convincing, insulting and whispering.
Speech Act Theory: Definition and Examples
Speech act theory is a subfield of pragmatics that studies how words are used not only to present information but also to carry out actions. It was introduced by J.L. Austin and developed by J.R. Searle, who classified speech acts into three categories: illocutionary, perlocutionary, and locutionary. Learn more about speech act theory, its applications in literary criticism, and its criticisms.
What is a Speech Act?
A speech act is an utterance that serves a function in communication. We perform speech acts when we offer an apology, greeting, request, complaint, invitation, compliment, or refusal. A speech act might contain just one word, as in "Sorry!" to perform an apology, or several words or sentences: "I'm sorry I forgot your birthday.
Speech Acts in Linguistics
A speech act is an utterance with a speaker's intention and effect on a listener. Learn about the three levels of speech acts (locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary), the five common families of speech acts (verdictives, exercitives, commissives, behabitives, and expositives), and how they are used in linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and other fields.
Speech act theory
speech act theory, Theory of meaning that holds that the meaning of linguistic expressions can be explained in terms of the rules governing their use in performing various speech acts (e.g., admonishing, asserting, commanding, exclaiming, promising, questioning, requesting, warning). In contrast to theories that maintain that linguistic ...
SPEECH ACT Definition & Meaning
Speech act definition: any of the acts that may be performed by a speaker in making an utterance, as stating, asking, requesting, advising, warning, or persuading, considered in terms of the content of the message, the intention of the speaker, and the effect on the listener. See examples of SPEECH ACT used in a sentence.
Speech Acts
Speech acts represent a key concept in the field of pragmatics which can be broadly defined as language use in context taking into account the speaker's and the addressee's verbal and non-verbal contributions to the negotiation of meaning in interaction. Although speech act theory (Austin 1962; Searle 1969) was not designed to examine ...
J.L. Austin and John Searle on Speech Act Theory
We can now define speech acts as, precisely, the act of uttering performative sentences. Later in his lectures, Austin realized that everything we say is, to various extents, performative, so he abandoned the distinction to develop a general theory of speech acts (Huang, 2014, p. 126).
Speech act
Speech act is a term for goal-directed actions performed with words in interpersonal communication, based on the speaker's intentions and the effects on the listener. It is also associated with Searle's speech act theory and the basic units of discourse. See related references and topics in Oxford Reference.
Speech Act Theory
Speech act theory can be defined as the idea that language contains meaning beyond just the definition of the words that are used. Language is a tool to perform various functions, also called ...
Speech Act Theory
Speech act theory was first developed by J. L. Austin whose seminal Oxford Lectures in 1952-4 marked an important development in the philosophy of language and linguistics. Austin's proposal can be viewed as a reaction to the extreme claims of logical positivists, who argued that the meaning of a sentence is reducible to its verifiability ...
Speech Acts
Subscribe. Speech acts are acts that can, but need not, be carried out by saying and meaning that one is doing so. Many view speech acts as the central units of communication, with phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties of an utterance serving as ways of identifying whether the speaker is making a promise, a prediction ...
Speech Acts
10.1 Introduction. The concept of speech act is one of the most important notions in pragmatics. The term denotes the sense in which utterances are not mere meaning-bearers, but rather in a very real sense do things, that is, perform actions. This is clear from a number of simple observations:
Speech Acts
Just as one can, under appropriate conditions, perform a speech act by speaker meaning that one is doing so, so too one can, under the right conditions, retract that very speech act. 2.3 Theories of Performativity. Austin famously claimed that performatives are not statements (1962, p. 6). This may be taken either as the claim that performative ...
Illocutionary Acts in Speech-Act Theory
In speech-act theory, the term illocutionary act refers to the use of a sentence to express an attitude with a certain function or "force," called an illocutionary force, which differs from locutionary acts in that they carry a certain urgency and appeal to the meaning and direction of the speaker. Although illocutionary acts are commonly made ...
Speech Acts
Speech acts are a staple of everyday communicative life, but only became a topic of sustained investigation, at least in the English-speaking world, in the middle of the Twentieth Century. [] Since that time "speech act theory" has been influential not only within philosophy, but also in linguistics, psychology, legal theory, artificial intelligence, literary theory and many other ...
18
The study of speech acts began with Austin and was prefigured by Wittgenstein. 1 While Frege and Russell focused primarily on the semantics of the expressions of the artificial, formal languages used in logic and mathematics (to articulate truth-apt statements and theories), 2 Wittgenstein (in his later work) drew our attention to the variety of uses to which the expressions of ordinary ...
Speech Act Theory
How Words Shape Meaning & Interactions. In the captivating world of media and communications, one theory that holds immense importance is the Speech Act Theory. Developed by philosophers J.L. Austin and John Searle, this theory helps us comprehend how our words possess the power to shape meaning. Also, how it influences our interactions with ...
SPEECH ACT THEORY
The speech act theory considers language as a sort of action rather than a medium to convey and express. The contemporary Speech act theory developed by J. L. Austin a British philosopher of languages, he introduced this theory in 1975 in his well-known book of 'How do things with words'. Later John Searle brought the aspects of theory into ...
Introduction: Assertion among the Speech Acts
If we give the label "assertion" to the (alleged) type of speech act in question, we might pursue the hypothesis that assertion is a type of speech act that. •. is apt for the expression of judgment and belief; 2. •. is apt for the transmission of knowledge; 3. •. commits one to the truth of a proposition; 4. •.
Speech Acts > Notes (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
5. In that same article, Searle notes Austin's definition of 'rhetic act' as an utterance of words with a definite sense and reference. He then points out that Austin's examples of indirect reports of rhetic acts generally contain illocutionary verbs, such as we find in 'He told me to get out,' and 'He asked whether it was in Oxford or Cambridge.'
10.3: Indirect speech acts
We might define an indirect speech act (following Searle 1975) as an utterance in which one illocutionary act (the primary act) is intentionally performed by means of the performance of another act (the literal act). In other words, it is an utterance whose form does not reflect the intended illocutionary force.
Two Years to Save the World: Simon Stiell at Chatham House
The following is the transcript of a speech delivered by UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell on 10 April 2024 at Chatham House in London, England. The speech can also be watched on YouTube. Two years to save the world… Good afternoon, Some of you may think the title of today's event is overly dramatic. Melodramatic, even.
Backgrounder: Solving the housing crisis: Canada's Housing Plan
Today, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland, and the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, Sean Fraser, unveiled Canada's Housing Plan, which responds to the significant housing challenges faced by Canadian communities. With Canada's Housing Plan, the federal government is taking a leadership role and making ...
Politics latest: UK needs Iron Dome to protect London, MP argues
Rishi Sunak's smoking ban passes convincingly on second reading, despite high-profile Tory MPs voting against it - while his Rwanda bill is defeated again. Meanwhile, the PM holds a telephone call ...