Chung, Myung-chong
ABSTRACT
The aim of this paper was to analyze and formalize the assertive speech act and the directive speech act in Situation Semantics.
As to the F(p) generally considered as components of a speech act utterance, I replaced the propositional content with the content, which is what the speaker exclaims about, asserts, orders, promises, or declares in uttering a sentence, and added the informations given by the resource situation, let alone IFID(illocutionary force indicating devices), to the devices which we could use to recognize the illocutionary force of a utterance.
I used the categories and terms Searle(1979) had given, but didn't take up his definitions. According to four properties of the result of impact of a utterance, whether it is intended by the speaker, whether it is identical with the content of the utterance whose impact gives rise to that result, when it occurs with respect to the utterance time, and who in fact carries it out, I compared five categories of speech acts one another and defined the assertive and the directive speech act.
Devlin(1990) had suggested that a described situation be just the situation described by the linguistic expression or the propositional content of a utterance and the result of impact of a utterance be governed by the hearer's intention. But I distinguished the situation described by the linguistic expressions of the whole utterance from the situation described by those of the embedded clause of it and suggested that the speaker's intention connect a utterance with the result of the impact of it.
Besides, he had suggested that the abstract meaning of a assertive utterance be the abstract linkage between the utterance situation and the described situation, and that of a directive one be the linkage between the utterance situation and the result of the impact of that utterance. But his analyses were not of uniformity, for there was no reason to treat the former and the latter differently. I suggested that we analyze the abstract meaning of a utterance as the abstract linkage among the utterance situation, the situation described by the whole utterance, the situation by the embedded clause of it, and the speaker's intention which connects the utterance with the result of the impact of it without regard of whether it is assertive or dierctive.
Key words: Situation Semantics, assertive speech act, directive speech act, described situation, result of the impact of a utterance, speaker's intention.