Is There More to Speech Acts Than Illocutionary Force and Propositional Content?

Abstract

When one starts thinking about speech acts in terms of their illocutionary forces and propositional contents (in terms of neustic and phrastic parts of what has been said') one readily agrees that in order to understand what someone has said it is necessary to understand both its illocutionary force (its neustic part) and its propositional content (its phrastic part), where understanding the latter amounts to knowing its conditions of satisfaction. The only exceptions to that seem to be speech acts that do not have propositional content, like greetings. It is tempting to think that understanding these two elements is also sufficient for understanding what has been said in all its aspects except those that constitute what Frege has termed 'tone', i.e. those that strictly speaking do not belong to the meaning of what has been said. In other words, it is tempting to think that, leaving the 'tone' aside, an analysis of a speech act in terms of its illocutionary force and its propositional content is always an exhaustive one. This paper argues that the temptation should be resisted. Suppose that we know that, on a certain occasion, a promise was made. We thereby know the illocutionary force of the speech act that was performed on that occasion: we know that it was a promise and not something else. Suppose we also know that the propositional content of that promise was: that Peter and Paula do not have an affair. We know that the promise would be broken just in case Peter and Paula have an affair. If this is all we know, do we know the meaning of what was said on that occasion?