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.