Assertion

A (partly) social speech act

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3394445
AutoresNeri Marsili (0000-0001-7853-7359, Universitat de Barcelona, autor correspondente), Mitchell Green (0000-0001-9113-3455, University of Connecticut)
Ano2021
Volume181
Páginas17-28
Data de publicação2021-08-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Pragmatics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0378-2166 • E-ISSN: 1879-1387
EditoraElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.pragma.2021.03.016
OpenAlexW3169488276
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas12
Referências citadas43

In a series of articles (Pagin 2004, 2009), Peter Pagin has argued that assertion is not a social speech act, introducing a method (which we baptize 'the P-test') designed to refute any account that defines assertion in terms of its social effects. This paper contends that Pagin's method fails to rebut the thesis that assertion is social. We show that the P-test is both unreliable (because it overgenerates counterexamples) and counterproductive (because it ultimately provides evidence in favor of some social accounts). Nonetheless, we contend that assertion is not fully social. We defend an intermediate view, according to which assertion is only a partly social speech act: assertions both commit the speaker to a proposition (a social component) and present their propositional content as true (a non-social component). The upshot is that assertion is in some important respect social, although it cannot be defined solely in terms of its social effects

Assertion · Commit · Component (thermodynamics · Counterexample · Linguistics · Political science · Proposition · Social change · Social heuristics · Speech act · Utterance · Computer Science · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology