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Please Pass the Salt

Version 0.002 2020-04-16

Author:

Richard Weyhrauch (IBUKI)

Note:

This is an original personal document of Richard Weyhrauch hosted by IBUKI at http://rww.ibuki.com . This document is not in the public domain. The copyright is held by him and anyone wanting to reprint it must get his permission in writing. This document was written while he was employed by IBUKI but on his own time at at his own expense.

This is a small note is about formalizing speech acts. In particukar we use the sentence "Please pass the salt." as an example of a speech act and discuss our observations.

1. recognizing the type of the speech act of an utterance is done in the head of the listener. It is not a property of the sentences but is the attribution of a property by the listener to something heard.

2. In our view, all speech acts are indirect and it is only by good luck that they can be imagined to be direct speech acts.

Most people would pass both the salt and the pepper (particulilry if they were in close proximity). This makes it clear that the listener considered it an indirect speech act as they simply ignored its literal meaning.