Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1998

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Philosophy

Major Professor

Kathleen E. Bohstedt

Abstract

This dissertation is a study of speech act theory, specifically the work of John Searle, but including the work of J. L. Austin and H. P. Grice. The project divides into three major areas of inquiry', namely, Etiquette, Grammar, and Power, and each of the areas is intended to be a phenomenological investigation of speech and communication. The Etiquette chapter is designed to give some reasons to think that Searle's apparent characterization of the rules of etiquette as regulative rules, and so, as being semantically uninteresting, is unsatisfactory. I distinguish "etiquette" from "protocol". The importance of the identity of the persons is discussed, and the concept of "place" is developed. The Grammar chapter is designed to note the absence of body in speech act theory. Part of the project of this chapter is to draw out relations between speech acts and body acts, and how assumptions of likeness have much to do with noting body likeness. Such relations have been neglected by speech act theory. The Power chapter is designed to discuss two different experiences of speech and communication, and to give two views of power which are related to those two experiences. The project of the chapter is to note a reductive approach employed in speech act theory, one which tends towards a collapse of the two kinds of experience under one model. Together the last three chapters represent a beginnings of understanding a split between what is ceremonial and official, and what is personal and perhaps placeless about speech and communication. This is also a beginning of understanding how their split reiterates itself in speech and communication, that is, how the split is enhanced by discourse and by speech acts, and also how the identified prongs of the split work together as one tongue.

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