نظريه افعال گفتاري و برخي پيامدهاي آن

Speech Acts Theory and Some of its important consequences

How language represents the world? This is a question has long been a major concern of philosophers of language. Many philosophers, such as, Frege, Russell and the early wittgenstein, thought that understanding the structure of language could illuminate the nature of actual world. They believe that the main business of a declarative sentence, contrary to a performative one, beside expressing an epistemic - semantic entity, which is called "proposition", is to describe, or repor, some state of affairs, which it must do either truly or falsely. But in Austin view there is no substantial distinction between declarative and performative utterances. Since in uttering the sentence we are doing some actions, as well, such as, making statements, descriptions, applications and promises, giving orders, offering apologies, and so on. These actions, which are called speech acts, are of many types. Any utterance has a performative aspect, or illocutionary force, that determines the kind of action which is performed. Moreover, any utterance has some effects on the hearer, which are called perlocutionary acts. According to speech Acts Theory, speech acts, including illocutionary and perloctionary acts, are not only subjected to semanticand epistemic rules governing what is being said by a speaker, but further they are a matter of governing rules and presumptions of speech Acts Theory, such as the speaker and hearer intentions, their attitudes and the mutual contextual beliefs between them. Speech Acts Theory has some important consequeces and effects on Semantics and Religious Epistemology, which will he discussed shortly in this article.