Presumptions in Speech Acts

In everyday conversational argumentation, it can be said that the burden of proof, i.e. the obligation to justify what has been asserted by providing evidence or reasons, falls on the proponent who makes an assertion, provided that the respondent requires him or her to do so. The germane concept of burden of rebuttal is attributed to the respondent who challenges a previous assertion made by another party (cf. e.g. Walton 2010). However, the idea that the participants in a dialogue can incur justificatory duties and responsibilities cannot be constrained to argumentation dialogues. In general, the performance of speech acts is connected to certain responsibilities and duties undertaken by the participants, and some of these may be justificatory as well. This is the view to be further developed here.

In Austin’s (1962), the category of verdictives comprises such speech acts as find (as a matter of fact), hold (as a matter of law), take it, describe, assess, diagnose, estimate, etc. Usually, Searle (1969)’s category of assertives is considered to approximately overlap with the former.

As is well known, Austin listed a group of “things that are necessary”, of “necessary conditions” for a speech act to be correctly, successfully performed, which he worked out as a set of procedimental rules. These comprised, (A.1) that there must exist a conventional procedure having a certain conventional effect, this procedure including the uttering of certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances, and (A.2) that the particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure at issue; (B.1) that the procedure must be carried out by all participants correctly and (B.2) completely, and (C.1) that when the procedure is designed for use by persons having certain thoughts and feelings, or (C.2) for the initiation of certain consequential conduct on the part of any participant, then the participants must in fact satisfy these conditions as well. (Cf. 1962: 14–15).

In previous works, I have presented and further developed this approach (Corredor 2011, 2014).

Remember that, following Austin’s insight, theoreticians working in speech act theory agree that language is not required for an action to count as a speech act. What is required is that the action be performed in accordance to the conditions that determine the felicity of the illocution.

This condition could be considered a strong requirement, for it would make an utterance of "I presume that the Holocaust never happened; correct me if I’m wrong", as said by a cynical fascist in an attempt to unduly shift the burden of proof, a failed illocution and not a possibly felicitous illocution (possibly correctly performed), even if incorrect for other reasons. The example is put forward and discussed by Freeman (1996: 289). See Bermejo-Luque (2016: 6) for a discussion and a different position on the matter. Yet I think my approach is faithful to Austin’s original view. More on that is said below.

A prominent model within the theory of argumentation, pragma-dialectics, declares argumentation to be rational or reasonable if the arguer “performs only speech acts which accord with a system of rules acceptable to all the discussants which furthers the creation of a dialectic which can lead to a resolution of the dispute at the center of the discussion” (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984). This notion of reasonableness, which presupposes the pragma-dialectics theoretical framework, has been criticized by Biegel and Siro (2010: 458–459).

For a systematic review of the different sources and groundings that can be in correspondence to presumptions, see Godden and Walton (2007).

Remember procedimental rules (A.1) and (A.2) in footnote 3, which (a) and (b) appropriately reformulate here.

This case is thus different from the case considered in note 5, where I would rather say that the fascist is not recognized by his addressee to have authority or authoritativeness to shift the burden of proof. In the case of Example 2, the recognition of such a role to the speaker is a precondition for the issuing of a reason not to endorse his utterance as a reasonable endorsement.—The present account helps to explain this distinction.

In line with this, an insincere promise can be said to be a promise, though it is typified as an abuse. An order issued by a speaker who lacks the required authority can be typified as a misfire and thus as an infelicitous, defective order. (Cf. Austin 1962, pp. 15–19).