Declarations and Status Functions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirk Ludwig
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Institutional Facts ◽  
Collective Acceptance ◽  
Recent Claim

Chapter 12 evaluates, in the light of the analysis of status functions in previous chapters, a recent claim by Searle that all institutional facts, and so all status functions, are created by declarative speech acts. An example of a declaration is an employer saying “You’re fired” to an employee and thereby making it the case that he is fired. The chapter argues that while declarations are often used, given background conventions in a community, to impose status functions on objects, they are not necessary, and that more generally the idea that status functions are imposed by representing that object as having them is mistaken, in the light of the earlier analysis of collective acceptance as a matter of members of a community having appropriate we-intentions or conditional we-intentions directed at the relevant things.

A Critique of Searle’s Linguistic Exceptionalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 004839312199558
Author(s):  
Gregory J. Lobo
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Social Ontology ◽  
Infinite Regress ◽  
Institutional Facts

John Searle’s social ontology distinguishes between linguistic and non-linguistic institutional facts. He argues that every instance of the latter is created by declarative speech acts, while the former are exceptions to this far-reaching claim: linguistic phenomena are autonomous, their meaning is “built in,” and this is necessary, Searle argues, to avoid “infinite regress.” In this essay I analyze Searle’s arguments for this linguistic exceptionalism and reveal its flaws. My method is to follow Searle’s argument closely and comprehensively so as to avoid, insofar as is possible, a selective reading of his argument in my favor. Against Searle’s position, I argue that linguistic phenomena are not exceptions to his general theory of institutional facts, for they too always require supplementary representations in order to exist. Language itself is analogous to all other institutions and infinite regress turns out to be unavoidable.

scholarly journals A Truth-minimalist Reading of Foucault

Le foucaldien ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Filip Buekens
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Institutional Facts ◽  
Social Facts ◽  
Concept Of Truth ◽  
Minimalist Conception ◽  
Contingent Existence ◽  
The Way

That we have culturally acquired certain concepts and beliefs, that many concepts that refer to or impose social or cultural classifications have their origin in intended or unintended declarative speech acts, that the institutional facts they intentionally and unintentionally create have a contingent existence and that it is not always fully transparent to us that the facts so created are institutional facts, were Foucault's key insights in his early work. I argue that these insights can be fully articulated, explored and discussed with a minimalist conception of truth in mind. His observations anticipate current "rediscoveries" of those insights by analytic philosophers. A minimalist about truth holds that these insights do not require a revision of our ordinary concept of truth. The flip side of my argument is that Foucault and his followers should not have grounded his views in a substantial revision of the concept of truth. Truth is and has always been "a thing of this world"; his idiosyncratic reconceptualizations of truth are not needed to explore social dimensions of belief systems, the way social facts emerge and the relevance of genealogies.

The Production of Institutional Facts in Economic Discourse

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teppo Eskelinen ◽  
Ville-Pekka Sorsa
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Institutional Entrepreneurship ◽  
Economic Discourse ◽  
Institutional Facts ◽  
Institutional Economic ◽  
Limited Scope

AbstractEconomic discourses are dominated by stylized facts and other statements of fact concerning the institutional economic order. Yet, there is still very little knowledge on how exactly facts are formed in economic discourse, how they serve as a means for rendering issues “economic”, and how they legitimize, renew and change institutions. This article introduces a theoretical model for studying the relationships between the presentation of institutional facts, institutional change and processes of economization. The model is based on John R. Searle’s theory of speech acts, on the so-called discursive institutionalism in political science and the study of institutional entrepreneurship as a political activity. The model is then applied on a limited scope to study the construction of institutional facts concerning public sector economies in three Finnish government and consultant reports. The key empirical findings conclude that the most common institutional facts are produced either by generalizing individual facts for various institutionalized activities or by combining one fact into various meanings. These facts are used to legitimize various policies, including cuts in public spending, strengthening the power of experts, increasing budgetary stability, lengthening working careers and the increase in public sector productivity.

"Let's do lunch sometime": An analysis of ostensible speech acts

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen E. Link ◽  
Roger J. Kreuz ◽  
Jackie Soto
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts

What Is an Institution?

2007 ◽  
pp. 5-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Searle
Keyword(s):  
Physical Structure ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Collective Intentionality ◽  
Institutional Facts ◽  
Institutional Fact ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Creation ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Typical Point

The author claims that an institution is any collectively accepted system of rules (procedures, practices) that enable us to create institutional facts. These rules typically have the form of X counts as Y in C, where an object, person, or state of affairs X is assigned a special status, the Y status, such that the new status enables the person or object to perform functions that it could not perform solely in virtue of its physical structure, but requires as a necessary condition the assignment of the status. The creation of an institutional fact is, thus, the collective assignment of a status function. The typical point of the creation of institutional facts by assigning status functions is to create deontic powers. So typically when we assign a status function Y to some object or person X we have created a situation in which we accept that a person S who stands in the appropriate relation to X is such that (S has power (S does A)). The whole analysis then gives us a systematic set of relationships between collective intentionality, the assignment of function, the assignment of status functions, constitutive rules, institutional facts, and deontic powers.

Orientalist Speech-acts and Israeli Middle East Studies: Cautions and Criticisms of Edward Said Beyond the Battle of Ideas

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-237
Author(s):  
Eyal Clyne
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Edward Said ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Academic World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Theories ◽  
Middle East Studies

Drawing on speech acts theory, this article discusses the illocutionary and perlocutionary forces of discursive practices with which certain academic circles seek to discredit the Saidian ‘Orientalism’ framework. Identifying the unusual value attached to Said as object of attachment or detachment, desirability and exceptionality, this analysis turns away from deliberations about ‘orientalism’ as a party in a battle of ideas, and studies common cautionary statements and other responses by peers as actions in the social (academic) world, that enculture and police expectations. Cautioning subjects about this framework, or conditioning its employment to preceding extensive pre-emptive complicating mitigations, in effect constructs this framework as undesirable and ‘risky’. While strong discursive reactions are not uncommon in academia, comparing them to treatments of less-controversial social theories reveals formulations, meanings and attentions which are arguably reserved for this ‘theory’. Conclusively, common dismissals, warnings and criticisms of Said and ‘Orientalism’ often exemplify Saidian claims, as they deploy the powerful advantage of enforcing hegemonic, and indeed Orientalist, views.

Pragmatic instruction in L2-Russian

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-95
Author(s):  
Daniele Artoni ◽  
Valentina Benigni ◽  
Elena Nuzzo
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Written Discourse ◽  
Instructional Treatment ◽  
Completion Task ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
Experimental Group ◽  
National Corpus ◽  
Pragmatic Instruction

Over the last three decades, a growing number of studies have investigated the effects of instruction on the acquisition of pragmatic features in L2. The bulk of this research has focused mainly on the teaching of English as a second/foreign language. However, instructional pragmatic studies in L2-Russian are lacking. The main purpose of our study is to contribute towards filling this gap by analysing the effects of pragmatic instruction on the acquisition of two speech acts by Italian learners of Russian. Furthermore, we aim to explore whether the Multimodal Russian Corpus (MURCO), a multimedia subcorpus of the Russian National Corpus, can be an effective tool for teaching speech acts in L2-Russian. Our research was composed of one experimental group (n = 18) and one control group (n = 11); each was composed of two intact classes of Italian university students at an intermediate level of L2-Russian, who were pre- and post-tested using a written discourse completion task. The experimental group was subjected to a programme of pragmatic instruction – eight thirty-minute MURCO-based lessons devoted to requests and advice, while the control group was taught according to the standard syllabus, that is, with no pragmatic instruction. The results revealed that the use of the target pragmatic features varied significantly in the experimental group, but not in the control group, thus showing a general positive effect of the instructional treatment based on the MURCO corpus. However, some limitations were identified with regard to the usability of this tool by teachers and learners.

Speech Acts by the Governor Candidates of North Sumatera in Political Debates

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vidya Dwi Amalia Zati ◽  
Sumarsih Sumarsih ◽  
Lince Sihombing
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Direct Speech ◽  
Dominant Type ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
The Way ◽  
Descriptive Qualitative

The objectives of the research were to describe the types of speech acts used in televised political debates of governor candidates of North Sumatera, to derive the dominant type of speech acts used in televised political debates of governor candidates of North Sumatera and to elaborate the way of five governor candidates of North Sumatera use speech acts in televised political debates. This research was conducted by applying descriptive qualitative research. The findings show that there were only four types of speech acts used in televised political debates, Debat Pemilukada Sumatera Utara and Uji Publik Cagub dan Cawagub Sumatera Utara, they were assertives, directives, commissives and expressives. The dominant type of speech acts used in both televised political debates was assertives, with 82 utterances or 51.6% in Debat Pemilukada Sumatera Utara and 36 utterances or 41.37% in Uji Publik Cagub dan Cawagub Sumatera Utara. The way of governor candidates of North Sumatera used speech acts in televised political debates is in direct speech acts, they spoke straight to the point and clearly in order to make the other candidates and audiences understand their utterances.   Keywords: Governor Candidate; Political Debate; Speech Acts

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document