Sincerity Conditions

Conditions for Execution

Conditions for execution can assume an exaggerated importance. We are so used to a ritual or ceremonial action accompanying the speech act that we believe the act is invalidated, if the action is lacking – but there are few real examples of this.

Take refereeing of association football. When a referee cautions a player, he (or she) should take the player’s name, number and note the team for which he plays. The referee may also display a yellow card, but this is not necessary to the giving of the caution because the mandatory use of the cards is merely a simple aid for better communication.

In knighting their subjects, English monarchs traditionally touch the recipient of the honor on both shoulders with the flat side of a sword blade. But this, too, is not necessary to the performance of the act.

A story is told in Oxford of a young man, taking his final exams, who demanded a pint of beer from the invigilators. He pointed out that he was wearing his sword, as required by the mediaeval statute that made provision for the drink. The invigilator (exam supervisor), believing the young man’s version of events brought the beer, but checked the statutes. Later the young man received a fine – he had not, as the statute also required, been wearing his spurs. The story may well be an urban myth, but illustrates neatly a condition of execution.

At a simple level these show that the speaker must really intend what he or she says. In the case of apologizing or promising, it may be impossible for others to know how sincere the speaker is. Moreover sincerity, as a genuine intention (now) is no assurance that the apologetic attitude will last, or that the promise will be kept. There are some speech acts – such as plighting one’s troth or taking an oath – where this sincerity is determined by the presence of witnesses. The one making the promise will not be able later to argue that he or she didn’t really mean it.

A more complex example comes in the classroom where the teacher asks a question, but the pupil supposes that the teacher knows the answer and is, therefore, not sincere in asking it. In this case “Can you, please, tell me X?” may be more acceptable to the child than “What is X?”

We can also use our understanding of sincerity conditions humorously, where we ask others, or promise ourselves, to do things which we think the others know to be impossible: “Please can you make it sunny tomorrow?”

In J. L. Austin's formulation of speech act theory, a performative utterance is neither true nor false, but can instead be deemed "felicitous" or "infelicitous" according to a set of conditions whose interpretation differs depending on whether the utterance in question is a declaration ("I sentence you to death"), a request ("I ask that you stop doing that") or a warning ("I warn you not to jump off the roof").

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23