The Language of Argument

2 7

S p e e c h A c t s

Still, the same speech act can also be accomplished without any perfor-

mative verb. I can deny my opponent’s claim by saying either “I deny that”

or simply “No way!” Both utterances perform the speech act of denying,

even though only the former is a performative. The latter is not a perfor-

mative and does not contain any performative verb, but it still performs a

speech act.

Nonetheless, speech acts depend on context in much the same way as

performatives. If a baseball umpire during a game shouts, “You’re out!” to

a batter then the batter is out. By way of contrast, if someone in the stands

shouts, “You’re out!” or “He’s out!” the batter is not thereby out, although the

person who shouts this may be encouraging the umpire to call the batter out

or complaining because he didn’t. And even an umpire cannot call a player

out if the player is not at bat, but is pitching or in the dugout. The identity of

the speaker and the audience as well as the circumstances thus determines

whether the speech act is accomplished. Similarly, in a less formal setting, I

cannot invite someone to your party (unless you gave me permission to do

so), and I cannot congratulate you for losing your job (at least not sincerely).

This example shows that a speech act will fail to come off or will be void unless

certain rules or conventions are satisfied. These rules or conventions that

must be satisfied for a speech act to come off and not be void can be called

speech act rules.

Which of the following verbs names a speech act?

1. capture the suspect


2. assert that the suspect is guilty


3. stare accusingly at the suspect


4. find the defendant guilty


5. punish the defendant


6. take the defendant away


7. revoke the defendant’s driver’s license


8. welcome the prisoner to prison


9. order the prisoner to be silent


10. lock the cell door

Exercise III

Using a dictionary, find ten verbs that can be used to construct explicit

performatives that have not yet been mentioned in this chapter.

Exercise IV

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