Felicity Conditions

From the very beginning, Austin realized that context was an essential factor in the valid performance of an illocutionary act. He noted that the circumstances and the participants must be appropriate; the act must be executed completely and correctly by all participants; the participants must have the appropriate intentions. Austin called these certain expected or appropriate circumstances felicity conditions for the performance of a speech act to be recognized as intended.

For some clear cases, such utterances I declare the ceremony open or I name this ship Alexander the performance will be infelicitous (inappropriate) if the speaker is not a specific person in a special context (in these cases, a person authorized to open the ceremony or name the ship). In everyday contexts among ordinary people, there are also preconditions on speech acts.

Expanding on Austin’s basic idea, Searle categorized felicity conditions.

Loosely speaking, there are:

• general conditions on the participants, for example, that they can understand the language being used and that they are not play-acting or being nonsensical and

• content conditions.

More technically, Searle distinguished four types: preparatory conditions, sincerity conditions, essential conditions, and propositional content conditions.

1. Preparatory conditions

Preparatory conditions are those existing antecedent to the utterance, including the speaker’s beliefs about the hearer’s capabilities and state of mind. The preparatory conditions for a promise are significantly different from those for a warning or an apology. When we promise to do something, there are two preparatory conditions: first, the event will not happen by itself, and second, the event will have a beneficial effect. When we utter a warning, there are the following preparatory conditions: it isn't clear that the hearer knows the event will occur, the speaker does think the event will occur, and the event will not have a beneficial effect. An apology requires that the speaker believe that some act has occurred that is harmful to the hearer.

2. Sincerity conditions

Sincerity conditions relate to the speaker’s state of mind. For a promise, the speaker must genuinely intend to carry out the future action, and, for a warning, the speaker genuinely believes that the future event will not have a beneficial effect. A valid apology requires that the speaker feel remorse for his act.

3. Essential condition

The essential condition requires that the utterance be recognizable as an instance of the illocutionary act in question. For example, by the act of uttering a promise, we thereby intend to create an obligation to carry out the action as promised. In other words, the utterance changes my state from non-obligation to obligation. Similarly, with a warning, under the essential condition, the utterance changes our state from non-informing of a bad future event to informing. This essential condition thus combines with a specification of what must be in the utterance content, the context, and the speaker's intentions, in order for a specific speech act to be appropriately (felicitously) performed.