S Theory Of Speech Acts

The pragmatic turn which occurs within the philosophy of language provides a new perspective to deal with all sorts of philosophical issues. John Searle’s theory of Speech Acts is one of the representatives of this linguistic turn. This dissertation investigates Searle’s Speech Acts theory:in line with Searle’s thought, we make an analysis on the structure of speech acts; take a probe into the Meaning in the framework of Speech Acts theory. Then the dissertation aims at making an examination to the possibilities of continuing Searle’s Speech Acts Theory, having a discussion on what Searle’s Speech Acts Theory could possibly contribute to the philosophical study of language, including the study of Chinese language, and taking the tentative attempt to bring Chinese language study into the study of Speech Acts.So far as the structure of speech acts is concerned, it is a propositional-performative dual structure. Therefore, we will discuss the illocutionary part and the propositional part respectively. What distinguishes the theory of Speech Acts from other philosophies of language is that the former exposes and explains systematically the illocutionary force that languages have. As it were, the exploration to the illocutionary force extends a new field for the study of philosophy of language. However, the history of philosophy of language is almost filled with the discussion on propositions. Searle begins his investigation into propositions with working on a simple form of proposition, which is constituted only by a subject and a predicate. Thus it is also necessary for us to make a probe into both the Reference and the Predicate, and for this purpose, we will pick some typical schemes for the theory of reference and the theory of predicate. Then we turn to the discussion on how Searle, by both absorbing and modifying these schemes, responses the issues in the philosophy of language with a pragmatic view.As for the examination into the Meaning in the Speech Acts theory, this dissertation mainly expounds Searle’s distinctive idea of meaning. Searle brings concepts of intentionality, contexts, and conservations into his discussion of meaning. It is commonly believed among philosophers that the intentionalist theory with intentionality as the keyword contradicts with the intersubjectivist theory which takes social conventions and contexts as its keywords. However, Searle takes all these concepts together into his discussion of the Meaning. We will discuss Searle’s view of Meaning which involves both the concepts of intentionality and contexts.Furthermore, Searle makes a distinction between literal meaning and speaker’s meaning, which is applied to deal with problems in the theory of Speech Acts, such as the issues of indirect speech acts, irony, fictional discourse, and metaphors. Hence, this dissertation also discusses how Searle uses the distinction to solve the problems in the theory of Speech Acts. Now an attempt to continue Searle’s theory of Speech Acts with the concept Speech Activity receives some attentions, and one approach to achieve this proceeds with a discussion on the fictional discourse. This dissertation also tries to work out a new way to continue Searle’s theory of Speech Acts, and focuses on another two approaches which start with indirect speech acts and metaphors.The other task for this dissertation is to examine the possibilities of bringing the study of Chinese language into Searle’s theory of Speech Acts. As being highly context-dependant and less formalized, Chinese language fits quite well into the study of indirect speech acts and metaphor. There are abundant materials in Chinese language for the study of these two topics. However, still some of the formalized studies in Searle’s theory do not apply to the study of Chinese language. Searle makes effort to construct a philosophy of language that is generally applicable, and if he succeeds, then his Speech Acts theory is supposed to be applicable to the study of Chinese language. Is it the case? Is Chinese language going to enrich the theory of Speech Acts or hit it on the head? That is a subtle question.