The inference theory

3.1.          The inference theory

The basic steps in the inference of an indirect speech act are as follows [37, 286-340]:

I.   The literal meaning and force of the utterance are computed by, and available to, the participants. The key to understanding of the literal meaning is the syntactical form of the utterance.

II. There is some indication that the literal meaning is inadequate (“a trigger” of an indirect speech act).

According to Searle, in indirect speech acts the speaker performs one illocutionary act but intends the hearer to infer another illocution by relying on their mutually shared background information, both linguistic and nonlinguistic, as well as on general powers of rationality and inference, that is on illocutionary force indicating devices [43, 73]. The illocutionary point of an utterance can be discovered by an inferential process that attends to the speaker's prosody, the context of utterance, the form of the sentence, the tense and mood of verbs, knowledge of the language itself and of conversational conventions, and general encyclopaedic knowledge. The speaker knows this and speaks accordingly, aware that the hearer - as a competent social being and language user - will recognize the implications [32, 41].  So, indirectness relies on conversational implicature: there is overwhelming evidence that speakers expect hearers to draw inferences from everything that is uttered.  It follows that the hearer will begin the inferential process immediately on being presented with the locution. Under the cooperative principle, there is a convention that the speaker has some purpose for choosing this very utterance in this particular context instead of maintaining silence or generating another utterance. The hearer tries to guess this purpose, and in doing so, considers the context, beliefs about normal behaviour in this context, beliefs about the speaker, and the presumed common ground.

 The fact that divergence between the form and the contents of an utterance can vary within certain limits helps to discover indirect speech acts: an order can be disguised as a request, a piece of advice or a question, but it is much less probable as a compliment.

III. There are principles that allow us to derive the relevant indirect force from the literal meaning and the context.

Searle suggests that these principles can be stated within his theory of felicity conditions for speech acts [44, 38].

For example, according to Searle’s theory, a command or a request has the following felicity conditions:

1. Asking or stating the preparatory condition:

Can you pass the salt? The hearer's ability to perform an action is being asked.

Literally it is a question; non-literally it is a request.

2. Asking or stating the propositional content:

You're standing on my foot. Would you kindly get off my foot?

Literally it is a statement or a question; non-literally it is a request.

3. Stating the sincerity condition:

I'd like you to do this for me.  

Literally it is a statement; non-literally it is a request.

4. Stating or asking the good/overriding reasons for doing an action:

You had better go now. Hadn't you better go now? Why not go now?

Literally it is a statement or a question; non-literally it is a request.

5. Asking if a person wants/wishes to perform an action:

 Would you mind helping me with this? Would you mind if I asked you if you could write me a reference?

Literally it is a question; non-literally it is a request (in the last example an explicit directive verb is embedded).

All these indirect acts have several common features:

1.  Imperative force is not part of the literal meaning of these sentences.

2.  These sentences are not ambiguous.

3.  These sentences are conventionally used to make requests. They often have "please" at end or preceding the verb.

4. These sentences are not idioms, but are idiomatically used as requests.

5. These sentences can have literal interpretations.

6. The literal meanings are maintained when they question the physical ability: Can you pass the salt? - No, it’s too far from me. I can’t reach it.

7. Both the literal and the non-literal illocutionary acts are made when making a report on the utterance:

The speaker: Can you come to my party tonight?

The hearer: I have to get up early tomorrow.

Report: He said he couldn't come. OR: He said he had to get up early next morning.

A problem of the inference theory is that syntactic forms with a similar meaning often show differences in the ease in which they trigger indirect speech acts:

a) Can you reach the salt?

b) Are you able to reach the salt?

c) Is it the case that you at present have the ability to reach the salt?

While (a) is most likely to be used as a request, (b) is less likely, and (c) is highly unlikely, although they seem to express the same proposition.

Another drawback of the inference theory is the complexity of the algorithm it offers for recognizing and deciphering the true meaning of indirect speech acts. If the hearer had to pass all the three stages every time he faced an indirect speech act, identifying the intended meaning would be time-consuming whereas normally we recognize each other’s communicative intentions quickly and easily.

3.2. Indirect speech acts as idioms?

Another line of explanation of indirect speech acts was brought forward by Jerrold Sadock [42, 197]. According to his theory, indirect speech acts are expressions based on an idiomatic meaning added to their literal meaning (just like the expression “to push up daisies” has two meanings: “to increase the distance of specimens of Bellis perennis from the center of the earth by employing force” and “to be dead”). Of course, we do not have specific idioms here, but rather general idiom schemes. For example, the scheme “Can you + verb?” is idiomatic for commands and requests.

However, the idiomatic hypothesis is questionable as a general strategy. One problem is that a reaction to an indirect speech act can be composite to both the direct and the indirect speech act, e.g.

The speaker: Can you tell me the time?

The hearer: Yes, it’s three o’clock.

We never find this type of reaction to the literal and the idiomatic intepretation of an idiom:

The speaker: Is he pushing the daisies by now?

Hearer 1: Yes/no (the idiomatic meaning is taken into account).

Hearer 2: Depends what you mean. As a gardener, yes (the literal meaning is taken into account).

Another problem is that there is a multitude of different (and seemingly semantically related) forms that behave in a similar way:

a) Can you pass me the salt?

b) Could you pass me the salt?

c) May I have the salt?

d) May I ask you to pass the salt?

e) Would you be so kind to pass the salt?

f) Would you mind passing the salt?

Some of these expressions are obviously semantically related (e.g. can/could, would you be so kind/would you mind), and it seems that it is this semantic relation that makes them express the same indirect speech act. This is different for classical idioms, where the phrasing itself matters:

 a) to push the daisies “to be dead” vs. to push the roses

b) to kick the bucket “to die” vs. to kick the barrel.

Hence, a defender of the idiom hypothesis must assume a multitude of idiom schemes, some of which are obviously closely semantically related.

 Summarizing, we can say that there are certain cases of indirect speech acts that have to be seen as idiomatized syntactic constructions (for example, English why not-questions.) But typically, instances of indirect speech acts should not be analyzed as simple idioms.