Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1993. [Vol. 1.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 21)

STUDIES - Csaba Czeglédi: On Constative and Performative Utterances

in the speech situation following the performance of the speech act. To be more or less familiar with the rules of verbal communication is to be more or less familiar with the typical consequences of particular kinds of speech acts with respect to the speech situation as a whole. Regulative or normative rules, e.g. the rules of etiquette, are contrasted with constitutive rules

1, e.g. the rules of several kinds of games, in that the former regulate actions whose existence is logically independent of the rules. Constitutive rules, on the other hand, have the special property that the existence of the actions governed by constitutive rules is logically dependent on the existence of the rules. A game of chess, e.g., deserves the name only if the pieces are moved in accordance with the constitutive rules of the game. If you take away the rules, you will have taken away the game. 1.2 Explicit and implicit speech acts Speech acts are characterized by the manner in which the communicative intention of the speaker is expressed in them. Accordingly, we will distinguish between explicit and implicit speech acts. Typically, a speaker will perform the act of opening a meeting and making a promise, respectively, in saying the following utterances. (1) I declare the meeting open. (2) I promise I won't tell anybody. Both examples contain an (explicit) performative verb, which refers to the kind of speech act performed: declare open in (1) and promise in (2). Utterances like (1—2), which contain an (explicit) performative verb, are called explicit performative utterances (or explicit performatives, for short). Consider now the following utterance: (3) I won't tell anybody. (3) may be said under conditions similar to those of (2), and then it will have essentially the same kind of consequences with respect to the speech situation. In other words, in saying (3) the speaker may perform a speech act which is identical to that performed by saying (2): both (2) and (3) can 1 For a detailed discussion of regulative and constitutive rules see Searle (1969: 33—35 and 1971:41—42). 10