Repository logo
 

Your word against mine: the power of uptake

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Loading...
Thumbnail Image

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Abstract

jats:titleAbstract</jats:title>jats:pUptake is typically understood as the hearer’s recognition of the speaker’s communicative intention. According to one theory of uptake, the hearer’s role is merely as a ratifier. The speaker, by expressing a particular communicative intention, predetermines what kind of illocutionary act she might perform. Her hearer can then render this act a success or a failure. Thus the hearer has no power over which act could be performed, but she does have some power over whether it is performed. Call this the ratification theory of uptake. Several philosophers have recently endorsed an alternative theory of uptake, according to which the hearer can determine the nature of the act the speaker performs. According to this theory, if the hearer regards an utterance as illocutionary act y, then it is act y, even if the speaker intended to perform act x. Call this the constitution theory of uptake. The purported advantage of this theory is that it identifies a common but underanalysed way in which speakers can be silenced. I argue that despite its initial intuitive pull, the constitution theory of uptake should be rejected. It is incompatible with ordinary intuitions about speech, it entails a conceptual impossibility (the unintentional exercise of normative powers), and it has unsavoury political implications, entailing that marginalised speakers barely qualify as agents.</jats:p>

Description

Funder: University of Cambridge

Keywords

5003 Philosophy, 50 Philosophy and Religious Studies

Journal Title

Synthese

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0039-7857
1573-0964

Volume Title

199

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC