Inferences and illocutions

Abstract

In several papers Budzynska and Reed have argued that inferences should be ‘anchored’ to relations between utterances rather than to utterances themselves; then, by appeal to what they call ‘dialogue glue', these relations are somehow reified as ‘implicit’ speech-acts. In this paper I will argue that this is a mistake caused by confusion over different ways an illocution can be relational and that there can be no such thing as implicit speech-acts as they describe them, and so the speech-act that they claim is performed implicitly between utterances is actually performed explicitly, if indirectly, at the time of the original utterance. It is here that the inference should be anchored. They also argue that when an arguer's credibility is attacked it is the illocution that is undermined rather than the inference, credibility being linked to the illocution as one of its conditions of satisfaction. When understood in a certain way that I will briefly explain in the paper, I will argue that this is true, that the illocution is undermined, and that this reveals something very interesting about the nature of many of the ad fallacies, but speech-act theory on its own does not support this since credibility is not required for the illocution to be successful. Lastly, Budzynska claims that a speaker cannot testify to his own credibility and that this, rather than being an argumentative circularity, is circularity in the assertion itself, since it mentions one of its own conditions of satisfaction. She calls this ‘circular assertion'. While I accept the claim that there is this kind of non-argumentative circularity, I do not find it to be as problematic as Budzynska seems to.

Keywords:

• argument diagramming
• inference
• illocution
• speech-act theory
• dialogue glue

Conflict of interest disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In Reed's (2011, pp. 2–3) words, the model shows how the various moves in dialogue navigate the inferential structure and how the inferential structure constrains the dialogue.

2. See Reed (2011, pp. 7–8). Budzysnka and Reed (2011, p. 5) say this: ‘We can associate different parts of the dialogue with those implicit speech-acts and thereby the rule applications.' Since they do not mention inferences here, this is probably less objectionable, but it still contains what I consider to be a mistaken notion of implicit speech-acts, and these are elsewhere linked to inferences.

3. My view (2013) was that, when you took a criticism as attacking ethotic elements of the conditions of satisfaction, this amounted to deciding to use the Principle of Charity in a certain way; we could accuse a speaker of insincerity even when she was not.

4. Note that not all illocutionary schemes (the IF's) are connected to transition applications. All rule applications – that is to say, inferences – do seem to be connected to a transition application, through a particular illocutionary scheme. It would not really matter, though, if it were only some and not all inferences.

5. It might be argued that there could still be a relation to the propositional report that Wilma said ‘Why?', but since in this case the propositional report is false I doubt that Budzynska and Reed would like to take this course. I think we are meant to assume that the propositional reports are all true and report real and not imagined locutions.

6. If someone asks me ‘Is p the case?' and I reply ‘Yes' or ‘p' I am not providing an argument that p, except possibly the trivial circular one.

7. It is worth noting that I can indirectly perform a speech-act without saying anything. If somebody asks me the time I can direct their attention to the clock on the wall, and if someone asks me the current whereabouts of Harry I can answer by pointing to Harry. In asking a question I can ‘point' or direct a third party's attention to the speech-act that is a response to it. This is essentially what happens here. The questioner elicits the evidence and points to it. When summing up a case for a jury, a barrister or judge will remind them of this evidence by giving a propositional report of the locution, e.g. ‘Witness X testified under oath that p.'

8. This is a sense of ‘implies' given by Moore sentences. It makes no sense to say ‘p, but I do not believe that p'; hence, my saying ‘p' ‘implies' that I believe that p.

9. I say ‘ambivalent' rather than ‘ignorant’. I think that Reed and Budzynska are aware that more than one illocutionary act can be instantiated at once, and they are certainly aware of indirect speech-acts, but for some reason are reluctant to formulate their diagrams this way.

10. The exception might be where the communicative intentions associated with the different illocutionary forces actually conflict.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia grants [SFRH/BPD/77687/2011] and [PTDC/FIL-FIL/110117/2009].