Assertion

An assertion is a speech act in which something is claimed to hold, for instance that there are infinitely many prime numbers, or, with respect to some time t, that there is a traffic congestion on Brooklyn Bridge at t, or, of some person x with respect to some time t, that x has a tooth ache at t. The concept of assertion has occupied a central place in the philosophy of language, since it is often thought that making assertions is the use of language most crucial to linguistic meaning. In recent years, by contrast, most of the interest in assertion has come from epistemology.
The nature of assertion and its relation to other categories and phenomena have been subject to much controversy. Some of the ideas of assertion will be presented below. The article will situate assertion within speech act theory and pragmatics more generally, and then go on to present the current main accounts of assertion.[1]
By an account of assertion is here meant a theory of what it consists in to make an assertion. According to such accounts, there are deep properties of assertion: specifying those properties is specifying what a speaker essentially does in making an assertion (e.g., express a belief). There must also be surface properties, which are the properties by which we can tell whether an utterance is an assertion, for instance that it is made by means of uttering a sentence in the indicative mood. Some accounts specify deep properties only, while others relate deep properties to surface properties, as we shall see.

[size=30]1. Speech acts

Gottlob Frege characterized the assertoric quality of an utterance as an assertoric force(“behauptende Kraft”; Frege 1918b: 22) of the utterance. This idea was later taken over by J.L. Austin (1962: 99–100), the founding father of the general theory of speech acts. Austin distinguished between several levels of speech act, including these: the locutionary act, the illocutionary act and the perlocutionary act. The locutionary act is the act of “‘saying something’in the full normal sense” (1962: 94), which is the utterance of certain words with certain meanings in a certain grammatical construction, such as uttering ‘I like ice’ as a sentence of English.
The notion of an illocutionary act was introduced by Austin by means of examples (1962: 98–102), and that is the normal procedure. Illocutionary acts are such acts as asserting, asking a question, warning, threatening, announcing a verdict or intention, making an appointment, giving an order, expressing a wish, making a request. An utterance of a sentence, i.e., a locutionary act, by means of which a question is asked is thus an utterance with interrogative force, and when an assertion is made the utterance has assertoric force (sometimes ‘assertive’ is used instead). Each type of illocutionary act is a type of utterance with the corresponding illocutionary force.
The perlocutionary act is made by means of an illocutionary act, and depends entirely on the hearer's reaction. For instance, by means of arguing the speaker may convince the hearer, and by means of warning the speaker may frighten the hearer. In these examples, convincing and frightening are perlocutionary acts.
The illocutionary act does not depend on the hearer's reaction to the utterance. Still, according to Austin (1962: 116–7) it does depend on the hearer's being aware of the utterance and understanding it in a certain way: I haven't warned someone unless he heard what I said. In this sense, the performance of an illocutionary act depends on the “securing of uptake” (Austin 1962: 117). However, although Austin's view is intuitively plausible for speech acts verbs with speaker-hearer argument structure (like x congratulates y) or speaker-hearer-content argument structure (x requests of y that p), it is less plausible when the structure is speaker-content (x asks whetherp). The verb ‘assert’ is of the latter kind, as opposed to, for example, ‘tell’. It may be said that I failed to tell him that the station was closed, since he had already left the room when I said so, but that I still asserted that it was closed, since I believed he was still there. As we shall see, several theories of assertion focus on hearer-directed beliefs and intentions of the speaker, without requiring that those beliefs are true or the intentions fulfilled.
Austin had earlier (1956) initiated the development of speech act taxonomy by means of the distinction between constative and performative utterances. Roughly, whereas in a constative utterance you report an already obtaining state of affairs—you say something—in a performative utterance you create something new: you do something (Austin 1956: 235). Paradigm examples of performatives were utterances by means of which actions such as baptizing, congratulating and greeting are performed. Assertion, by contrast, is the paradigm of a constative utterance. However, when developing his general theory of speech acts, Austin abandoned the constative/performative distinction, the reason being that it is not so clear in what sense something is done, for instance by means of an optative utterance, whereas nothing is done by means of an assertoric one. Austin noted, for example, that assertions are subject both to infelicities and to various kinds of appraisal, just like performatives (Austin 1962: 13–66). For instance, an assertion is insincere in case of lying as a promise is insincere when the appropriate intention is lacking (Austin 1962: 40). This is an infelicity of the abuse kind. Also, an assertion is, according to Austin, void in case of a failed referential presupposition, such as in Russell's
[/size]

(1)The present King of France is bald. (Austin 1962: 20)

[size]
This is then an infelicity of the same kind—flaw-type misexecutions—as the use of the wrong formula in a legal procedure (Austin 1962: 36), or of the same kind—misinvocations—as when the requirements of a naming procedure aren't met (Austin 1962: 51), or again when I try to sell you something that isn't mine (Austin 1962: 137).
Further, Austin noted that when it comes to appraisals, there is not a sharp difference between acts that are simply true and false, and acts that are assessed in other respects (Austin 1962: 140–7). On the one hand, a warning can be objectively proper or improper, depending on the facts. On the other hand, assertions (statements) can be assessed as suitable in some contexts and not in others, and are not simply true or false. An example is
[/size]

(2)France is hexagonal.[2]

[size]
As an alternative, Austin suggested five classes of illocutionary types (or illocutionary verbs):verdictives, exercitives, commissives, behabitives and expositives (Austin 1962: 151–64). You exemplify a verdictive, for example, when as a judge you pronounce a verdict; an exercitive by appointing, voting or advising; a commissive by promising, undertaking or declaring that you will do something; a behabitive by apologizing, criticizing, cursing or congratulating; an expositive by acts appropriately prefixed by phrases like ‘I reply’, ‘I argue’, ‘I concede’ etc., of a general expository nature.
In this classification, assertion would best be placed under expositives, since the prefix ‘I assert’ is or may be of an expository nature. However, an assertion need not in itself be expository. As a classification of illocutionary types Austin's taxonomy is thus not completely adequate.
Other taxonomies have been proposed, for instance by Stephen Schiffer (1972), John Searle (1975b), Kent Bach and Robert M. Harnish (1979), and Francois Recanati (1987). In Bach and Harnish's scheme, similar to Searle's, there are four top categories: constatives, directives(including questions and prohibitives), commissives (promises, offers) and acknowledgments (apologize, condole, congratulate) (1979: 41). The category of constatives includes the subtypes, in Bach and Harnish's terms, of assertives, predictives, retrodictives, descriptives, ascriptives,informatives, confirmatives, concessives, retractives, assentives, dissentives, disputatives,responsives, suggestives and suppositives (1979: 41).
In this list, predictives are distinguished by concerning the future and retrodictives by concerning the past, dissentives by the fact that the speaker is disagreeing with what was earlier said by the hearer, and so on. Assertives, according to this taxonomy, is not distinguished from other constatives by any such feature. As Bach and Harnish point out (1979: 46), most of the specialized types of constatives satisfy the definition of assertives (see section 3.1). This type then stands out as a higher category, including most but not all of the constatives; not for instance suggestives (suggesting, conjecturing) and suppositives (assuming, stipulating).
A leading idea in the taxonomies of Searle (1975a) and Recanati (1987) is to distinguish between between types according to direction of fit. Constative utterances have a word-world direction of fit (what is said is supposed to conform to what the world is like), while performative utterances have world-word direction of fit (the world is supposed to be changed to fit what is said). Again, assertion is the paradigmatic constative type, if not the constative type itself.[/size]

Assertion

[size=30]1. Speech acts

Assertion :: تعاليق

Assertion