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Your word against mine: the power of uptake

cam.issuedOnline2020-11-23
dc.contributor.authorMcDonald, Lucy
dc.contributor.orcidMcDonald, Lucy [0000-0002-5064-0810]
dc.date.accessioned2021-11-22T14:45:27Z
dc.date.available2021-11-22T14:45:27Z
dc.date.issued2021-12
dc.date.submitted2020-05-01
dc.date.updated2021-11-22T14:45:26Z
dc.descriptionFunder: University of Cambridge
dc.description.abstract<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Uptake 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>
dc.identifier.doi10.17863/CAM.78329
dc.identifier.eissn1573-0964
dc.identifier.issn0039-7857
dc.identifier.others11229-020-02944-1
dc.identifier.other2944
dc.identifier.urihttps://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/330886
dc.languageen
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC
dc.publisher.urlhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02944-1
dc.subject5003 Philosophy
dc.subject50 Philosophy and Religious Studies
dc.titleYour word against mine: the power of uptake
dc.typeArticle
dcterms.dateAccepted2020-10-31
prism.endingPage3526
prism.issueIdentifier1-2
prism.publicationNameSynthese
prism.startingPage3505
prism.volume199
rioxxterms.licenseref.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
rioxxterms.versionVoR
rioxxterms.versionofrecord10.1007/s11229-020-02944-1

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