Foundations of Illocutionary Logic

This is a formal and systematic study of the logical foundations of speech act theory.

John R. Searle (Author), Daniel Vanderveken (Author)

9780521108850, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 February 2009

240 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.3 cm, 0.31 kg

This is a formal and systematic study of the logical foundations of speech act theory. The study of speech acts has been a flourishing branch of the philosophy of language and linguistics over the last two decades, and John Searle has of course himself made some of the most notable contributions to that study in the sequence of books Speech Acts (1969), Expression and Meaning (1979) and Intentionality (1983). In collaboration with Daniel Vanderveken he now presents the first formalised logic of a general theory of speech acts, dealing with such things as the nature of an illocutionary force, the logical form of its components, and the conditions of success of elementary illocutionary acts. The central chapters present a systematic exposition of the axioms and general laws of illocutionary logic.

Preface
Acknowledgements
Part I. Introduction to the theory of speech acts
Part II. Basic notions of a calculus of speech acts
Part III. The logical structure of the set of illocutionary forces
Part IV. Conditions of success of illocutionary acts and illocutionary commitments
Part V. On the logical form of the various components of illocutionary force
Part VI. Axiomatic propositional illocutionary logic
Part VII. General laws of illocutionary logic
Part VIII. Laws for illocutionary forces
Part IX. Semantical analysis of English illocutionary verbs
Appendices
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Philosophy [HP]