Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 What is language: some preliminary remarks
- PART I FROM MIND TO MEANING
- PART II FROM MEANING TO FORCE
- 8 How to say things with words
- 9 Semantics without the distinction between sense and force
- 10 Dynamic discourse semantics for embedded speech acts
- 11 Yes–no questions and the myth of content invariance
- 12 How do speech acts express psychological states?
- References
- Index
11 - Yes–no questions and the myth of content invariance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 What is language: some preliminary remarks
- PART I FROM MIND TO MEANING
- PART II FROM MEANING TO FORCE
- 8 How to say things with words
- 9 Semantics without the distinction between sense and force
- 10 Dynamic discourse semantics for embedded speech acts
- 11 Yes–no questions and the myth of content invariance
- 12 How do speech acts express psychological states?
- References
- Index
Summary
TWO KINDS OF FORCE-CONTENT DISTINCTION
No theory of sentence meaning would be adequate if it failed to entail that a nondeclarative sentence like Is water odourless? and a declarative sentence like Water is odourless, though both meaningful, do not have the same meaning, and only theories of meaning that, like Searle's, aim to systematically relate differences in sentence meaning to differences in illocutionary act potential would have any chance of engendering such entailments. Still, not all ways of relating sentence meanings to illocutionary acts are adequate, and in this chapter I want to argue that a fundamental assumption that Searle uses in analyzing sentence meaning in terms of illocutionary acts is mistaken. The assumption (which is very widely shared among those who, along with Searle, duly acknowledge that no account of sentence meaning can dispense with an account of sentence mood) has to do with the particular way in which Searle interprets the distinction between the force and the content of illocutionary acts and applies it to the analysis of sentence meaning.
There is an innocuous way of interpreting the force-content distinction against which there can be no objection, and which I would be perfectly happy to accept.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- John Searle's Philosophy of LanguageForce, Meaning and Mind, pp. 244 - 266Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
- 1
- Cited by