Is Uptake Essential to Perlocution? A Defence of Illocutionary Silencing

Abstract

Hornsby and Langton (H&L), put forward the idea of silencing as an "illocutionary disablement". Appealing to Austin's speech act theory, they situate silencing as opposite to speech act and argue that when there is silencing, people's illocutionary act fails and their right to free speech is violated. This paper presents a defence of H&L's account of silencing, against objections raised by Ishani Maitra (2009). Maitra questions the model of illocutionary silencing by arguing that Austin's illocutionary model is inaccurate and vague hence, not useful for the discussions of silencing. In response, I argue that Maitra's understanding of the perlocutionary act is misguided and requires a critical examination. Maitra discusses the notion of the perlocutionary act as the goals that the speaker achieves by securing the uptake. I oppose such a view by arguing that securing the uptake does not ensure the performance of a perlocutionary act

Language Game, Asserting and Speech Acts A New View on Uptake in Speech Acts

“…It is hard to say what will happen next. However, one question is obvious-which of them is the natural effect in Sharma's view [9]? It seems that the natural effect can be defined only refers to the law or moral standard, but as mentioned above, the rules of a language game are not functioning in every case, so it cannot be a very satisfactory criterion.…”

“…Scholars such as Daniel Jacobson [5], Ishani Maitra [6], Alexander Bird [7], Mary-Kate McGowan [8] and Ritu Sharma [9] have criticized Hornsby/Langton's article and reconsidered the issue they uttered. This paper is mainly based on the work of Sharma, and it attempts to resolve three questions: 1) Does the successful performance of a speech act require the immediate audience's uptake?…”

“…In her reading of Austin [4], she argued that perlocutions are consequences that are achieved in the natural course of events. Moreover, the uptake is necessary if and only if on the occasion of it induces conventional illocutionary effects [9]. Furthermore, the perlocutionary acts are anyhow non-conventional, with no need securing of uptake.…”