Uncertainty of Uptake in Speech Acts

Tomoyuki Yamada [PDF]

Abstract

When something is said by an agent, addressees and other agents in the audience may sometimes be uncertain what specific illocutionary act the agent intends to perform even if what is said and the context in which it is said are perfectly clear. Yet which illocutionary act is performed can make a great difference in what the addressees should do in response to the utterance. The well-known method for analyzing how the different (un)certainties different agents have about what has been done affect the outcome is the method of the product update by action models. This method is used in developing various systems in DEL (Dynamic Epistemic Logic) that deal with acts that affect epistemic states of agents. Illocutionary acts, however, usually affect deontic aspects of the situations in which they are performed. We will define a deontic version of the method of product update by importing ideas from dynamic deontic logics that deal with acts of commanding and acts of requesting. We then show (1) that the deontic version of product update works when uptake (the understanding of the force and the content of an illocutionary act) is secured, but (2) that it doesn’t work when uptake is not secured, and (3) that a twist is needed to represent what is going on in such a case.

Keywords

Uptake, Uncertainty, Action model, Product update, Dynamic deontic logic, Deontic product update, Illocutionary act

References

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