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THATspeakingor writing
in perin a languageconsists
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320
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OF FICTIONAL
DISCOURSE
321
II
Let us begin by comparingtwo passages chosen at random to illustrate the distinctionbetween fictionand nonfiction.The first,nonfiction,is fromthe New York Times ( 15 December 1972), writtenby
Eileen Shanahan:
Washington,Dec. I4-A group of federal,state,and local government
officials
rejectedtodayPresidentNixon'sidea thatthe federalgovernment
to reduce
providethe financialaid thatwould permitlocal governments
taxes.
property
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3 Iris Murdoch, The Red and the Green (New York, 1965), p. 3. This and other
examples of fictionused in this article were deliberatelychosen at random, in the
belief that theoriesof language should be able to deal with any text at all and not
just with speciallyselected examples.
4 For a more thorough exposition of these and similar rules, see Searle, ibid.,
Ch. 3-
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OF FICTIONAL
DISCOURSE
323
propositionthat on a sunny Sunday afternoonin April of nineteensixteena recentlycommissionedlieutenantof an outfitcalled the King
Edwards Horse named Andrew Chase-Whitepotteredin his garden
and thoughtthat he was going to have ten more gloriousdays without
horses. Such a propositionmay or may not be true,but Miss Murdoch
has no commitment
whateveras regardsitstruth. Furthermore,
as she
is not committedto its truth,she is not committedto being able to
provide evidence for its truth. Again, there may or may not be evidence forthe truthof such a proposition,and she may or may not have
evidence. But all of that is quite irrelevantto her speech act, which
does not commither to the possessionof evidence. Again, since there
is no commitmentto the truthof the propositionthereis no quesion
as to whetherwe are or are not already apprisedof its truth,and she
is not held to be insincereifin factshe does not believeforone moment
that there actually was such a characterthinkingabout horses that
day in Dublin.
Now we come to the crux of our problem: Miss Shanahan is makrulesof
ing an assertion,and assertionsare definedby the constitutive
the activityof asserting;but what kind of illocutionaryact can Miss
Murdoch be performing?In particular,how can it be an assertion
since it complieswith none of the rulespeculiar to assertions?If, as I
have claimed, the meaning of the sentenceutteredby Miss Murdoch
is determinedby the linguisticrulesthat attach to the elementsof the
sentence,and if those rules determinethat the literalutteranceof the
sentenceis an assertion,and if, as I have been insisting,she is making
a literalutteranceof the sentence,thensurelyit must be an assertion;
but it can't be an assertionsince it does not complywith those rules
thatare specificto and constitutive
of assertions.
Let us begin by consideringone wrong answer to our question,an
answer which some authorshave in fact proposed. Accordingto this
answer,Miss Murdoch or any otherwriterof novelsis not performing
the illocutionaryact of making an assertionbut the illocutionaryact
of tellinga storyor writinga novel. On this theory,newspaper accounts contain one class of illocutionaryacts (statements,assertions,
descriptions,explanations) and fictionalliteraturecontains another
class of illocutionaryacts (writingstories,novels,poems, plays,etc.).
The writeror speakerof fictionhas his own repertoireof illocutionary
acts whichare on all fourswith,but in additionto, the standardillocutionaryacts of asking questions,making requests,making promises,
and so on. I believe that thisanalysisis incorrect;
givingdescriptions,
I shall not devote a great deal of space to demonstrating
that it is incorrectbecause I preferto spend the space on presentingan alternative
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324
I want to mention
its incorrectness
account,but by way of illustrating
a serious difficulty
which anyone who wished to presentsuch an account would face. In generalthe illocutionaryact (or acts) performed
in the utteranceof the sentenceis a functionof the meaning of the
sentence. We know, for example, that an utteranceof the sentence
"John can run the mile" is a performanceof one kind of illocutionary
act, and thatan utteranceof the sentence"Can Johnrun the mile?" is
a performanceof anotherkind of illocutionaryact, because we know
that the indicativesentenceformmeans somethingdifferent
fromthe
form.
sentence
But
now
the
in
a
if
sentences
work of
interrogative
fictionwere used to performsome completelydifferent
acts
from
speech
those determinedby their literal meaning,they would have to have
some othermeaning. Anyonetherefore
who wishesto claim thatfiction
contains differentillocutionaryacts from nonfictionis committedto
the view that words do not have theirnormal meaningsin worksof
fiction. That view is at least prima facie an impossibleview since if
it were trueit would be impossibleforanyoneto understanda workof
fictionwithoutlearninga new set of meaningsfor all the words and
otherelementscontainedin the workof fiction,and since any sentence
whatevercan occur in a work of fiction,in order to have the ability
to read any workof fiction,a speakerof the language would have to
learn the language all over again, since everysentencein the language
would have both a fictionaland a nonfictionalmeaning. I can think
of variousways that a defenderof the view under considerationmight
meet theseobjections,but as theyare all as unplausibleas the original
thesisthat fictioncontainssome whollynew categoryof illocutionary
acts,I shallnotpursuethemhere.
Back to Miss Murdoch. If she is not performingthe illocutionary
act of writinga novel because thereis no such illocutionaryact, what
exactlyis she doing in the quoted passage? The answerseems to me
one could
obvious,thoughnoteasyto stateprecisely.She is pretending,
to
make
an
or
as
if
she
were
an
assertion, acting
say,
making assertion,
or going throughthe motionsof makingan assertion,or imitatingthe
making of an assertion. I place no great store by any of these verb
phrases,but let us go to work on "pretend," as it is as good as any.
When I say that Miss Murdoch is pretendingto make an assertion,it is
crucial to distinguishtwo quite different
sensesof "pretend." In one
sense of "pretend,"to pretendto be or to do somethingthatone is not
doing is to engage in a formof deception,but in the second sense of
"pretend," to pretendto do or be somethingis to engage in a performancewhich is as if one were doing or being the thingand is without any intentto deceive. If I pretendto be Nixon in orderto fool the
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OF FICTIONAL
DISCOURSE
325
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326
NEWLITERARY
HISTORY
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OF FICTIONAL
DISCOURSE
327
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328
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OF FICTIONAL
DISCOURSE
329
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NEWLITERARY
HISTORY
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OF FICTIONAL
DISCOURSE
331
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IV
The preceding analysis leaves one crucial question unanswered:
whybother? That is, whydo we attachsuch importanceand effortto
texts which contain largelypretendedspeech acts? The reader who
has followedmy argumentthis far will not be surprisedto hear that
I do not thinkthereis any simpleor even singleanswerto that question. Part of the answer would have to do with the crucial role,
that imaginationplays in human life,and the
usuallyunderestimated,
crucial
role
that
shared productsof the imaginationplay in
equally
human social life. And one aspect of the role that such productsplay
derivesfromthe fact that serious (i.e., nonfictional)speech acts can
be conveyedby fictionaltexts,even though the conveyedspeech act
is not representedin the text. Almost any importantwork of fiction
conveysa "message" or "messages" which are conveyedby the text
but are not in the text. Only in such children'sstoriesas contain the
didactic
concluding"and the moral of the storyis ..." or in tiresomely
authorssuch as Tolstoy do we get an explicit representation
of the
acts
seriousspeech
which it is the point (or the main point) of the
fictionaltextto convey. Literarycriticshave explained on an ad hoc
and particularisticbasis how the author conveysa seriousspeech act
throughthe performanceof the pretendedspeech acts whichconstitute
the workof fiction,but thereis as yetno generaltheoryof the mechanisms by which such serious illocutionaryintentionsare conveyedby
pretendedillocutions.
UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA,
BERKELEY
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