Hearers and speech acts

HEARERS AND SPEECH ACTS Herbert H. Clark and Thomas B. Carlson Stanford University In conversations involving more than two people, most utterances are intended to be understood not only by the people being addressed, but also by the others. These utterances cannot be accounted for in current theories of speech acts unless several basic changes are made. In our proposal, the speaker performs two types of illocutionary act with each utterance. One is the traditional kind, such as an assertion, promise, or apology; this is directed at the addressees. The other, called an informative, is directed at all the participants in the conversation—the addressees and third parties alike. It is intended to inform all of themjointly of the assertion, promise, or apology being directed at the addressees. We present evidence that every traditional illocutionary act is performed by means of an informative.* Although hearers play an essential role in speech acts, that role has never been fully examined. Consider requests, such as this one from 'Othello': (1) Othello, to Desdemona, in front of lago and Roderigo: Come, Desdemona. In Searle's 1969 theory and its descendants—the standard theories as we will call them—Othello's request 'counts as an attempt to get H to do A'. It is an attempt by Othello to get the 'hearer' H to go with him. This, of course, is incorrect: by 'hearer', Searle really means 'addressee'.1 Although Othello has an audience of three 'hearers'—Desdemona, lago, and Roderigo—he isn't trying to get all three of them to go with him. His request is for Desdemona alone. She is an addressee, notjust a hearer. The standard theories are theories about illocutionary acts directed at addressees. Are there illocutionary acts directed at hearers such as lago and Roderigo? The standard theories, by their silence on the question, appear to assume the answer is no.2 This too seems incorrect. Although Othello isn't addressing lago and Roderigo, he intends them to understand what he is saying. Indeed, he intends them to understand in the same way that he intends Desdemona to understand—by means of their recognition of his intentions, just as theories * The work reported here was supported in part by Grant MH-20021 from the National Institute of Mental Health. For advice and suggestions, we are indebted to many colleagues, especially Kent Bach, Keith Brown, Eve V. Clark, Helen B. Clark, David Evans, Charles Fillmore, James Fox, Gerald Gazdar, Jerry Hobbs, Paul Kay, George Lakoff, A. P. Martinich, Jerry Morgan, Geoffrey Nunberg, Mary Louise Pratt, Ivan Sag, and Robert Stalnaker. A version of this paper was presented at the Stanford Pragmatics Workshop, Asilomar, California, June 1980. 1 Searle is in good company. Austin 1962, Bach & Harnish 1979, Bennett 1973, Chomsky 1975, Davison 1975, Fraser 1975, Garner 1975, Gordon & Lakoff 1971, Kempson 1975, 1977, Lewis 1969, and Morgan 1977 all use 'hearer' for 'addressee'. Donnellan 1968 and Grice 1968 refer to an undifferentiated 'audience'. Others, including Fillmore 1972, Green 1975, and Katz 1977, have used 'addressee'—though still others, such as R. Lakoff 1972 and Ervin-Tripp 1976, have used this interchangeably with 'hearer'. 2 Allusions have been made to the effect of a third party on the significance of a speaker's utterance to an addressee (Bird 1975, Rubin 1978, Verschueren 1978), but no discussion of illocutionary acts toward these third parties has taken place (see also fns. 9 and 10, below). 332 HEARERS AND SPEECH ACTS333 of illocutionary acts require. The difference is that what lago and Roderigo are to understand is not that they are to go with Othello, but that he is requesting Desdemona to go with him. As a first conjecture, then, Othello is performing illocutionary acts directed at all three hearers. However, the ones he is directing at lago and Roderigo aren't the same as the ones he is directing at Desdemona. In this paper, we argue that this conjecture is correct: Speakers perform illocutionary acts not only toward addressees, but also toward certain other hearers. We define a type of hearer we call a participant, whose role as hearer is distinct from the roles of both addressee and overhearer. In ex. 1...