Abstract

My aim in this paper is to contribute to the debate on the foundations of semantics and pragmatics by developing an Austinian alternative to the Gricean programme. The Gricean approach has been criticised by Ernie Lepore and Matthew Stone who claim that most of the interpretive effects that are usually accounted for as inferentially recognized aspects of meaning are in fact determined by grammar. I argue, however, that it is the Austinian perspective rather than the extended-grammar outlook, that constitutes a genuine alternative to the Gricean programme. Viewed from the Austinian perspective, using language is a social practice that consists of performing conventional speech acts: acts done conforming to a convention. Unlike the Griceans and the proponents of the extended-grammar outlook, however, the Austinians assume that following a convention is not an algorithmic procedure, but a socially controlled process that involves interactional negotiation. They claim, namely, that each language convention — phatic, rhetic, illocutionary, rhetorical, procedural, etc. — is a lineage of reproduced precedents that put some constraints on what can be regarded as saying and doing the same, but underdetermine the exact properties of its new members.