Article published in:
Communicating Certainty and Uncertainty in Medical, Supportive and Scientific ContextsEdited by Andrzej Zuczkowski, Ramona Bongelli, Ilaria Riccioni and Carla Canestrari
[Dialogue Studies 25] 2014
► pp. 31–58
Certainty and uncertainty in assertive speech acts
Paolo Labinaz | University of Trieste, Italy
Marina Sbisà | University of Trieste, Italy
We begin by considering three main philosophical accounts of assertion, showing that each emphasizes specific aspects of it while leaving others aside, and then proceed to offering a more comprehensive speech-act theoretic account of assertion, which owes much to Austin’s approach to illocutionary acts. On the basis of this account, we investigate how assertion and other members of the assertive speech act family serve the aim of communicating, not merely pieces of information, but also the speaker’s attitude of certainty or uncertainty about them. In so doing, we make use of examples from a corpus of texts in Italian and English, drawn from newspapers, scientific journals and web sites, concerning the so-called Stamina case.
Published online: 26 November 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.25.02lab
https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.25.02lab
References
References
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Bach, Kent, and Robert M. Harnish
Bazzanella, Carla, Claudia Caffi, and Marina Sbisà
Grice, Herbert Paul
Pagin, Peter
2014 “Assertion.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (last version: Spring 2014 Edition), ed. by Edward N. Zalta, URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/assertion/.
Peirce, Charles S.
Searle, John R.