Language Game, Asserting and Speech Acts A New View on Uptake in Speech Acts

Abstract

Hornsby and Langton argued the viewpoint of “illocutionary disablement” in pornography based on Austin’s Speech Act theory. They called this silencing and regarded it as a violation of free speech. Sharma has presented a profound criticism of the former study and issued her own opinions based mainly on the intentionalist point of view, which is inaccurate and not satisfactory enough. To further the discussion, this paper argues that the reason for her defects locates in the intentional fundament. This paper creatively puts speech acts into the framework of Wittgenstein’s Language Game Theory and Brandom’s Asserting Theory, namely, the social view. This paper finally reaches a conclusion that the basic essence of speech acts is conventionality based on language game and the social web created by asserting. The intention is the secondary essence, which is highly related to securing uptake when it comes to further taxonomy. On this new framework, this paper also put forward the questions of the relationships between speech act verbs and speech acts, the further taxonomy of non-conventional speech acts for future discussions.