[Edit] In language development

Dore (1975) stated that children's utterances were realizations of one of nine primitive speech acts:

1. labelling

2. repeating

3. answering

4. requesting (action)

5. requesting (answer)

6. calling

7. greeting

8. protesting

9. practicing

[Edit] In computer science

Speech act theory has been influential in computer science since the early 1980s, particularly in the design of artificial languages for communication between software entities ("agents" or "softbots"). The theory was used, for example, to give a semantics to Agent Communication Language (ACL), an agent language developed by the standards body Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA). This semantics built on the work of Phil Cohen, Hector Levesque and David Sadek, among others. The FIPA ACL speech act semantics, expressed semi-formally using epistemic modal logic, defines utterances in ACL in terms of the certain beliefs, uncertain beliefs, desires and intentions of the speaker. In principle, therefore, it enables agents using FIPA ACL to be sure that other agents will understand the meaning of utterances in the same way as the speaker. However, the FIPA ACL language syntax and semantics, although now widely used in agent systems, have been heavily criticized on theoretical and practical grounds.

"A man may see, and hear, and remember, and judge, and reason; he may deliberate and form purposes, and execute them, without the intervention of any other intelligent being. They are solitary acts. But when he asks a question for information, when he testifies a fact, when he gives a command to his servant, when he makes a promise, or enters into a contract, these are social acts of mind, and can have no existence without the interventionof some other intelligent being, who acts a part in them. Between the operations of the mind, which, for want of a more proper name, I have called solitary, and those I have called social, there is this very remarkable distinction, that, in the solitary, the expression of them by words, or any other sensible sign, is accidental. They may exist, and be complete, without being expressed, without being known to any other person. But, in the social operations, the expression is essential. They cannot exist without being expressed by words or signs, and known to the other party."

(Reid 1969, 437-438)

From Mulligan, K. Promisings and other social acts - their constituents and structure. in Mulligan, K., editor Speech Act and Sachverhalt: Reinach and the Foundations of Realist Phenomenology. Nijhoff, Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster 1987.

• Also see: Karl Schuhmann and Barry Smith "Elements of Speech Act Theory in the Work of Thomas Reid" in History of Philosophy Quarterly, 7 (1990), 47–66.

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Performative utterance From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Performative. (Discuss)

The notion of performative utterances was introduced by J. L. Austin. Although he had already used the term in his 1946 paper "Other minds", today's usage goes back to his later, remarkedly different exposition of the notion in the 1955 William James lecture series, subsequently published as How to Do Things with Words. The starting point of the lectures is Austin's doubt against a widespread philosophical prejudice, namely, the implicit presumption that utterances always "describe" or "constate" something and are thus always true or false. After mentioning several examples of sentences which are not so used, and not truth-evaluable (among them non-sensical sentences, interrogatives, directives and "ethical" propositions), he introduces "performative" sentences as another instance.

Contents [hide] 1 Austin's definition 2 Distinguishing performatives from other utterances 3 Are performatives truth-evaluable? 4 Sedgwick's account of performatives 5 Naming 6 Descriptives and promises 7 Examples 8 Performative writing 9 Sources 10 See also