How to do Things with Austin and Searle: Speech Act Theory and Literary Criticism

Author(s): Stanley E. Fish

Source: MLN, Vol. 91, No. 5, Centennial Issue: Responsibilities of the Critic (Oct., 1976), pp.
983-1025
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2907112
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 H 1 OW TO DO THINGS WITH AUS-
TIN AND SEARLE: SPEECH ACT THEORY
AND LITERARY CRITICISM* ` BY STAN-
LEY E. FISH e
I. I Banish You!

In the second scene of the second act of Coriolanus, the tribunes

Brutus and Sicinius decide that in order to bring about the hero's
downfalltheyneed onlyleave him to his own (verbal)devices. They
know that he cannot be named consul until he asks the citizensfor
theirvotes and they are sure that faced withthis situationhe will
performbadly. "He will,"saysSicinius,"require them,/As ifhe did
contemnwhat he requested should be in them to give" (157-9).'
This is not only an accurate predictionof what Coriolanus does in
fact do (and not do); it is also an astonishinganticipationof the
formulationin Speech Act theoryof the preparatoryconditionson
requesting. Here is John Searle's analysis of that act (where
S= Speaker, H = Hearer, and A=Act):

Request
Types Propositional Future actA ofH
Content
of
Preparatory 1. H is able to do A. S believesH
Rule is able to do A.
2. It is not obvious to bothS and H
thatH willdoA in the normal
course of eventsof his own accord.
Sincerity S wantsH to do A
Essential Counts as an attemptto getH to do A.
(SpeechActs,Cambridge, 1969, p. 66)
*1 gratefullyacknowledge the advice and criticismof Rob Cummins,Frank Hub-
bard, Walter Michaels, and David Sachs who will find here not only some of their
ideas but some of their sentences.
'Throughout I have used the edition edited for Signet by Reuben Brower (New
York, 1966).
laAlthoughI deploy the vocabularyof Searle's versionof Speech Act theory,I am
not committedto its precise formulations.

MLN 91 (1976) 983-1025

Copyright0 1976 byTheJohnsHopkinsUniversity
Press
Allrights inanyform
ofreproduction reserved.
984 STANLEY E. FISH

According to Searle, the rules governing the making of a request

(and of any other illocutionaryact) are not regulativebut constitu-
tive:thatis, theydo not regulatean antecedentlyexistingbehavior,
but define the conditionsunder which thatbehavior can be said to
occur; if those conditions are unfulfilled,that behavior is either
defectiveor void (some conditions are more centrallyconstitutive
than others); the speaker will have done something (one cannot
help but do thingswithwords),but he willnot have performedthe
act in question. This would be true even ifthe name of the act were
part of the utterance. "I promise to flunk you," is not in normal
circumstancesa promise because "a promise is defectiveifthe thing
promised is somethingthe promisee does not want done" (Searle,
p. 58). What Sicinius predicts(correctly)is thatCoriolanus willvoid
his requestby makingit in such a wayas to indicatethathe does not
accept the conditionson its successfulperformance.He does not,
forexample, believe thatH (the hearer or requestee) is able to do A
(renderajudgment by voting).Indeed, in his veryfirstappearance
on the stage,he attacksthe citizenson just thispoint."You!" he tells
them,"are no surer,no, /Than is the coal of fireupon the ice." Not
only are you fickle("With every minute you do change a mind,/
And call him noble that was now your hate"), but yourjudgments
are true readings of value only if they are reversed:
Who deservesgreatness
Deserves your hate; and your affectionsare
A sick man's appetite, who desires most that
Which would increase his evil. He that depends
Upon your favor swimswith finsof lead.
(Ii,177-81)

Thus Coriolanusjudges those to whosejudgment he is supposed to

submit,findingthem incapable of playing their part in the cere-
monyenjoined by custom. In so finding,however,he setsaside the
conditionsgoverningthatceremonyand substitutesfor them con-
ditionsof quite another kind. The abilityof the citizensto bestow
theirvotes cannot legitimatelybe an issue because it is stipulatedby
the rules of the game, that is, by the conventionsthat define (or
constitute)the workingsof the state. In the contextof those rules
the citizensare the onlyones who "are able to do A"; and theyhave
that abilityby virtue of their position, and not because they have
been certifiedby some test outside the systemof rules. One can
complain about theirperformance,but one cannot challenge their
 M L N 985

rightto performwithoutchallengingthe institutionthatgivesthem

theirrole. (Similarlyone can argue withan umpire,but one cannot
ignore or set aside his decisions and stillbe said to be playingthe
game.) This is in factwhatCoriolanus does when he at firstdisdains
to ask for their votes because he considers them incompetentto
bestow them. He rejects the public (conventional) stipulation of
competence,and substitutesfor it his own privateassessment.He
declares himselfoutside (or, more properly,above) the systemof
rules by which societyfixes its values by refusingto submitto the
(speech-act)conditionsunder which its business is conducted.
The citizens,on the other hand, do submit to those conditions
even though theyknow as well as he does thatin one sense theyare
free to disregard them. They discuss the point in Act II, scene iii,
immediatelyafter Sicinius makes his prediction.The firstcitizen
states the general rule: "Once if he do require our voices, we
ought not to deny him." The "ought" here is not moral, but
procedural; they incur the obligation because they have bound
themselvesahead of time to the systemof conventions.The for-
mula is, if he does x, then we are obliged, because he has correctly
invoked the procedure, to do y. Immediately,the second citizen
reminds them that the obligation may be repudiated at any time:
"We may, sir, if we will." The word "will" has particular force,
because it indicates how fragile are the bonds that hold a civil
societytogether:in factmen break those bonds whenevertheylike.
The third citizen acknowledges as much, but then goes on to ex-
plain what restrainsthem from exercising this freedom. (Were it
not forthe dialogue and the dramaticsituation,thismightwell be a
textbookdiscussionof the forceand necessityof constitutiverules.)
We have powerin ourselvesto do it,but it is a powerthatwe have no
powertodo; forifhe showus hiswoundsand tellus hisdeeds,weare to
putour tonguesintothesewoundsand speakforthem;so ifhe tellus
hisnobledeeds,we mustalso tellhimour nobleacceptanceof them.
The reasoning is admirably clear and the distinctionsprecise:
true, we may do anythingwe like, but if we consider ourselves
membersof a state ratherthan as discreteindividuals,then we are
bound to the mechanismby which the state determinesvalue, and
mustcomportourselves accordingly,even when the determination
does not sort with our privatejudgments. The "nobility",both of
Coriolanus' deeds and the citizen's acceptance of them, is pro
forma. It is not that they personally regard his deeds as noble
986 STANLEY E. FISH

(although some of them may), but that theyare noble by virtueof

their position in the procedure. Similarly,we are not to imagine
that they really feel gratitude; rather they engage in a form of
behavior whichcounts as an expression of it.
"Counts as" is the importantphrase in thislast sentencebecause
it gets at the heart of the Speech Act positionon intention.Inten-
tion, in the view of that theory,is a matterof what one takes re-
sponsibilityfor by performingcertain conventional (speech) acts.
The question of what is going on inside,the question of the "inward
performance"is simplybypassed; Speech Act theorydoes not rule
on it. This means that intentionsare available to anyone who in-
vokes the proper (publiclyknown and agreed upon) procedures,
and italso means thatanyone who invokesthose procedures (know-
ing that they will be recognized as such) takes responsibilityfor
having that intention.Were it otherwise,then the consequences
would be disastrous. Were intentionsolely a matterof disposition
in relationto whichwords were merelya report,then formulaslike
"I'm sorry"and "thank you" would not be accepted as expressions
of regretand gratitudeunless it could be proven, by some inde-
pendent test,thatthe speaker was actuallyso disposed. (The things
one does with words would never get done.) And were we not
responsiblefor the conventionalacts we perform,then one would
foreverbe at the mercyof those who make promises,give permis-
sions,render verdicts,etc.,and then tellus thattheydidn't mean it.
(The thingsone does withwords would have no statusin law.) J. L.
Austin's elaboration of this point is classic:
We are apt to have a feelingthattheir[the words] being serious consists
in theirbeing utteredas (merely)the outward and visiblesign, forcon-
venience or other record or for information,of an inward and spiritual
act: from which it is but a short step to go on to believe or to assume
withoutrealizing that for many purposes the outward utterance is a
description,trueorfalse, of the occurrence of the inward performance.
The classicexpression of thisidea is to be found in theHippolytus (1.612)
where Hippolytus says. .. "my tongue swore to, but my heart (or mind
or other backstage artiste) did not." Thus "I promise to...." obliges
me-puts on record my spiritualassumption of a spiritualshackle.
It is gratifyingto observe in thisveryexample how excess of profun-
dity,or rathersolemnity,at once paves the way forimmorality.For one
who says "promisingis not merelya matterof utteringwords! It is an
inwardand spiritualact!" is apt to appear as a solid moraliststandingout
against a generation of superficial theorizers: we see him as he sees
himself,surveyingthe invisibledepths of ethical space, withall the dis-
 M L N 987

tinctionof a specialistin thesui generis.Yet he provides Hippolytuswith

a let out, the bigamistwithan excuse for his "I do" and the welsherwith
a defence for his "I bet." Accuracyand moralityalike are on the side of
the plain saying thatour wordis our bond.
(How toDo ThingsWithWords,Oxford, 1962, pp. 9-10)
It is a question finallyof what is considered real and thereforeof
what we are to be faithfulto. Austin is suggestingthat,at least in
termsof legal and moral obligation,realityis a matterof its public
specification.In the alternativeview, realityis essential and sub-
stantial; it exists independently of any identifyingprocedures
which can only relate to it as theyare more or less accurate. (The
implicitanalogy is alwaysto a mirrorwhichis eitherclear or distort-
ing.) It is this latter view (scorned by Austin) that Coriolanus es-
pouses when he refusesto accept the procedures by whichthe state
identifiesmeritbecause theydo not suspend themselvesin recogni-
tionof his inherent,thatis,obvious,superiority.It is on thisopposi-
tionthatthe action (such as it is) of the play turns:on the one hand,
the State demands adherence to the values its conventionsdefine
and create; on the other,Coriolanus invokesvalues that(he claims)
exist independentlyof any conventionalformula.When he stands
before the citizens and is asked "what hath brought you to't,"
(II,iii,67) he answers "mine own desert." The correctanswer is "to
ask for your votes, to gain your approval," but his point is that he
doesn't need it; his desert validates itselfand theyshould acknowl-
edge itwithouteven being asked, as one acknowledgesany natural
phenomenon. (He is claimingthata request is unnecessarybecause
the non-obviouscondition-"it is not obvious to both S and H that
H will do A in the normal course of events of his own accord"-
doesn't or shouldn't obtain.) The second citizenis puzzled. Things
are not going as they were supposed to. He queries, "Your own
desert?"The replyis devastating:"Ay, not mine own desire." With
thisstatementCoriolanus explicitlyviolatesthe sinceritycondition
on requests-S wantsH to do A-and he indicatesthat he will de-
fault on the essential condition by not utteringa sentence that
"counts as an attemptto get H to do A." (As we have seen, he has
been denyingthe principal preparatoryconditions believesH is
able to do-from the verybeginning.) Coriolanus knows as well as
Austindoes thathaving an intentionis "merelya matterof uttering
words,"and he is determinedto avoid invokingthe proper formu-
la. The citizens,however, are no less tenacious than he. (Sicinius
has already declared that they will not "bate / One jot of cere-
988 STANLEY E. FISH

mony.") "If we give you anything,"theyremind him, "we hope to

gain byyou." Or, in otherwords,you're not going to get something
(our votes) for nothing. "Well then," replies Coriolanus, "I pray,
your price o'th' consulship?" This is at once tauntingand daring.
Coriolanus gives themtheformof a request,but he uses it simplyto
ask a question (the forceof "pray" is diminishedso thatit is merely
a politenessmarker). The citizens,however, are through playing:
"The price is, to ask it kindly.""Kindly" is ambiguous, but in a
single direction: it means both properly and in accordance with
nature, with kind. He is to ask it according to the conventional
rules,thatis, in such a way as to acknowledge his kinshipwithother
men. This is preciselywhathe finallydoes by adopting the citizens'
"kindly"and by repeating the formula"I pray,"but thistime with
the full force of a genuine (that is, properly executed) request:
"Kindly,sir, I pray let me ha't."
The wire-tightdialecticof thisscene underscores the reason for
Coriolanus' reluctance. By dischargingthe custom of request (the
phrase is Sicinius'-IIiii,148) he submitshimselfto thejudgment
of others,admitting,in effect,that his meritdoes not have its own
self-validatingexistence,but requires a public findingto certifyit.
In a word, he acknowledges (or at least seems to; the felicityof his
act willlaterbe challenged) his dependence on the communityand its
evaluativeprocesses. It is exactlythe positionhe least likes to be in,
for as Brutus observes to him, "You speak o' th' people /As if you
were a god, to punish, not /A man of theirinfirmity" (IIIi,80-82).
Later thisstatementis confirmedby no less an authoritythan Cor-
iolanus himself,"I'll stand," he declares, "As if a man were author
of himself/And knew no otherkin" (V,iii,34-37). This is alwayshis
desire, to stand alone, without visible or invisible supports, as a
natural force. He wants to be independent of societyand of the
language withwhich it constitutesitselfand its values, seeking in-
stead a language that is the servantof essences he alone can recog-
nize because he alone embodies them. As Menenius says, "His
heart's his mouth / What his breast forges,that his tongue must
vent" (IIIi,256-257). In Searle's terms,this defines the "direction
of fit":his language is (or triesto be) true not to publiclyacknowl-
edged realities,but to the absolute values he bears in his breast. ("I
will not do't; / Lest I surcease to honor mine own truth.")"Would
you have me / False to my nature?" (III,ii,14-15), he asks his
mother."Must I / With mybase tongue give to my noble heart /A
 M L N 989

lie?" (99-101). It is the choice of the world,he complains "ratherto

have my hat than myheart" (II,ii, 103), thatis, to have myrecogni-
tion of its meanings ratherthan my loyaltyto my own. His choice,
as Volumnia notes, is to be always speaking by his own instruction
and to the "matter"which his "heart prompts" (III,ii,53-54). Un-
fortunately, language is whollyand intractablyconventional;it is a
space already occupied by the public, "everywherepermeated," as
Searle says,"withthe factsof commitmentsundertaken,obligations
assumed" (SpeechActs,p. 197), and Coriolanus spends much of the
play tryingdesperatelyto hold himselfclear of those commitments
and obligations.This is whyhe cannot for a time bring himselfto
utterthe illocutionaryformula: "What, must I say 'I pray,sir'. . . I
cannot bring my tongue to such a pace!" (II,iii,53-55).
Coriolanus reveals himselfnot only in the criticalscene, where
the stakes are high and obvious, but in every aspect of what we
mightcall his illocutionarybehavior. It is not simplythathe cannot
bear to request something of his avowed enemies and social in-
feriors;he cannot bear to request somethingof anyone. As Com-
inius' nominal underling he must twiceask him for favors,and on
both occasions he has great difficulty.On the firstoccasion he
begins conventionallyenough: "I do beseech you" (I,vi,55), but in
the space between this illocutionary-force-indicating phrase and
the propositional content (Future act A of H), Coriolanus inter-
poses a seriesof reasons forCominius to grantthe not yetspecified
request: "By all the battleswherein we have fought,/ By th' blood
we have shed together,by th' vows / We have made to endure
friends."The effectof this is to limit Cominius' supposedly free
power to do or not to do what Coriolanus willask. The forceof the
utterancechanges from"willyou please do this?"to somethinglike
"you reallyare obliged to do this,"and when the request is finally
made it is clear thatCominius has no choice: "thatyou directly/Set
me againstAufidius." It is the formof a request,but it has the force
of a command, as Cominius well knows. "Dare I never /Deny your
asking."
On a second occasion, Cominius grants Coriolanus' request be-
fore it is made, therebytaking away its sting as an admission of
dependence. "Tak't; 'tis yours. What is't?" he declares, saying in
effect,"you don't have to ask" (I,ix,81). Even so, Coriolanus does
have to ask, and he resentsit: "I that now /Refused most princely
gifts,am bound to beg / Of my lord general." The word "bound"
990 STANLEY E. FISH

preciselylocates his discomfort;bonds of any kind are intolerable

to the free-standingman. Yet for once Coriolanus chooses to put
them on:
I sometimeslayherein Corioles
At a poor man'shouse; he used me kindly.
He criedto me; I saw himprisoner:
But thenAufidiuswas withinmyview,
And wratho'erwhelmedmypity.I requestyou
To givemypoor hostfreedom.
(I,ix,82-87)

"He used me kindly."That of course is just the trouble. By using

him kindly,this "poor man" makes Coriolanus his debtor (and
implies that he is his equal). This is why Coriolanus is willingto
execute a proper request, withoutin any way qualifyingit: he will
put himselfunder an obligation(to a man who has already assured
him thatitwillnot be considered so) in order to get out fromunder
a more burdensome one; he asks a favor only to be relieved of
owing one. Any doubt that this rather than gratitudeor compas-
sion is his motive is removed by the exchange that follows:
Cominius:DeliverhimTitus.
Lartius:Marcius,his name?
Coriolanus:ByJupiter,forgot!
(I,ix,89-90)

The man himselfis not important;he is less someone to be remem-

bered than a shackle to be thrownoff.
If Coriolanus has difficultywith requests he is literallybeside
himselfin the face of praise. He cannot bear to hear it, and he is
unable to accept it, fromanyone. Lartius merelysuggeststhatit is
too soon for Coriolanus to reenter the battle,and he is told (does
the gentleman protest too much?) "Sir praise me not" (I,v,16).
Later Coriolanus spends an entirescene turningaway praises,and
he is careful to explain that his is no army-camp gesture: "My
mother,/ Who has a charterto extol her blood, / When she does
praise me grieves me" (Iix,13-15). Why grieves?Surely that is an
excessivereaction.The reason foritbecomes clear when we allow a
speech act analysisto tellus whatis involvedboth in praisingand in
accepting praise:
 M L N 991

Praise Accepting
Praise
Propositional Someact,property, quality, PastactAdonebyH
content etc.,E relatedtoH
Preparatory E reflects onH and
creditably A benefits
S andS believes
S believesthatitdoes. A benefits
S.
Sincerity S valuesE positively. S feelsgrateful
or
appreciativeforA
Essential Countsas a positivevaluation Countsas an expression
ofE. ofgratitudeor appreci-
ation.

The analysisof praisingis myown; the analysisof acceptingpraise

is Searle's analysis of thanking for, because that is what the ac-
ceptanceof praise is. Together theyshow thatifCoriolanus were to
thank his praisers he would be admittingtheir right to evaluate
him, to determinewhat in his actions was creditable; he would be
acknowledgingthathe received addition fromthe praise. In short,
he would be receiving from others what he thinks can only be
bestowed by himselfon himself.That is what grieves him, the ig-
nominy (even if its form is benign) of submittinghimselfto the
judgment of anyone. Cominius says as much when he proteststhe
protesting."You shall not be /The grave of your deserving;Rome
mustknow/The value of her own" (Iix, 19-21). That is, you must
not be so jealous of your meritsas to allow no one but yourselfto
confirmthem. He urges Coriolanus (still Marcius) to accept one
tenth of the horses and treasure "In sign of what you are" (26).
Such a sign,however,would be a public recognitionofjust the kind
Coriolanus wishes to avoid, lest it appear that because his desert
was forhire,it required externalverification.I cannot,he declares,
"make my heart consent to take /A bribe to pay my sword. I do
refuseit" (37-38). He wantsno thirdpartiesinterfering(claiminga
part) in the transactionsbetween himselfand himself.It is hard,
however,to keep the public out (shortof settingup a stateof one,
somethinghe will later come to); the soldiers make of his disavow-
ing of praise and treasure an occasion for new praise, drawing
fromthe hero stillanother refusal: "No more, I say ... /You shout
me forth/ in acclamations hyperbolical; / As if I loved my little
should be dieted /In praises and sauced withlies" (47, 50-53). This
is naked. To accept these praises would be to admit thathe courted
them,wanted them,needed them; even worse it would be to imply
992 STANLEY E. FISH

that he was fed by them instead of by the approval he bestows on

himselfand would reserve to himself.This is too much for Com-
inius who comes close to tellingCoriolanus what his modestyreally
signifies:
Too modestare you;
Morecruelto yourgood reportthangrateful
To us thatgiveyoutruly.
(53-55)

This may be gracefullyturned,but it is unmistakablya complaint,

borderingon a criticism.In your concern to protectyour modesty,
to hold yourselfaloof from "good report,"you neglect the recip-
rocal courtesies that make a societycivil; you withhold gratitude
and therebyimplythatwe are unable to performan act thatwould
draw it. Cominius triesonce again, offeringMarcius a new name,
"Caius Marcius Coriolanus" (65). This too is a sign,but because it is
a sign of himself(of his action), the power to bestow it is severely
limited.In a sense, then,he bestowsit on himself.The acceptance is
curt and graceless-"Howbeit, I thank you"-but it is made. The
contestis over.
In thisscene Coriolanus parries withhis friends;in Act II, scene
iii,he faces his enemies; but the structureof both scenes is exactly
the same: a determinedeffortby the hero to keep himselfclear of
all obligationsand bonds, except forthose he himselfnominates,is
resistedby those who perceive, however dimly,what his illocutio-
nary behavior means. His reluctance to make a request and his
inabilityto accept praise have a single source in a desire for total
independence.
There are speech acts he is good at. He is fine at refusingand
even betterat promising.Both make sense. Refusing is saying "I
can do (in the fullestsense of agency) withoutit"; and while promis-
ing involvesundertakingan obligation,it is an obligationthe prom-
iser both creates and discharges; when he keeps his promise,he is
being true to his own word,not to the word of another. It is Cor-
iolanus' favoritespeech act, the one by which he defines himself.
When news of war reaches Rome, he is urged to "attend upon
Cominius," who reminds him, "It is your former promise"
(Ii,239). "Sir, it is," he says, "and I am constant." Later he meets
Aufidius on the battlefield,and, reaching for the worst thing he
can think of, declares, "I do hate thee / Worse than a promise-
 M L N 993

breaker" (Iviii, 1-2). When he is asked to take back his word to the
tribunes("Repent, what you have spoke"), he cries,"I cannot do it
to the Gods, / Must I then do't to them?" (III,ii,38-39). When the
citizenstake back theirs,he asks in contempt,"Have I had chil-
dren's voices?" (III,i,30). The tribunesbase theirentirestrategyon
a pledge theyhave heard him make:
I heardhimswear,
Werehe to standforconsul,neverwouldhe
Appeari' th'marketplace, noron himput
The naplessvestureof humility;
Nor,showing,as themanneris, hiswounds
breaths.
To th' people,beg theirstinking
(IIi,238-42)
"It was his word," says Brutus and Sicinius wishes"no better/Than
to have him hold that purpose and to put it / In execution." They
know theirman (Brutus replies "'Tis most like he will") and as he
goes off to "discharge the custom of request" they predict his be-
havior in the passage withwhich this paper began:
Brutus: You see howhe intendsto use thepeople.
Sicinius:Maytheyperceive'sintent.He willrequirethem,
As if he did contemnwhathe requested
Shouldbe in themto give.
It might seem from this that they are counting on him to be
insincere, to say one thing and mean another; but in fact it is
exactlythe reverse; theyare countingon him to mean exactlywhat
he says and theycount on him to do it by makingvoid the speech
act he purportsto be performing.The surestway to avoid a speech
act is to violate the essentialcondition,to say in the case of promis-
es, "I promise to do x, but I don't intend to" or in the case of
requests, "I am asking you to do this, but I don't want you to."
When Sicinius says, "May theyperceive's intent,"he doesn't mean
"maytheysee throughhis language to the motionof his heart,"but
"may they correctly(by attending to the performance or non-
performanceof stipulatedprocedures) read his language." (In fact,
it is hard to see what it would mean to make an insincererequest if
the specificationwere other than conventional. If I execute the
proper procedures and ask you to do something,and later, after
you've done it, I tell you that I didn't want you to, you have a
perfectresponse in "well,you shouldn't have said that."Notice that
994 STANLEY E. FISH

you will not say, "You shouldn't have intended that" because it is
assumed that intentionis a functionof what is said. Part of Cor-
iolanus' tragedy is that he is forever seeking a level of intention
deeper-more essential or more real-than that stipulatedby the
public conventionsof language.)
The tribunes'laissez-fairestrategyalmost doesn't work,precisely
because for a time the citizens do not "perceive's intent,"even
though,as we have seen, he systematically violateseveryone of the
conditionson the request he is supposedly making.2It is only later
that theyopen their copy of SpeechActs and begin to analyze the
infelicitiesof his performance:
Second Citizen: ... To my poor unworthynotice,
He mockedus whenhe beggedour voices.
ThirdCitizen: Certainly,
He floutedus downright.
FirstCitizen: No, 'tishiskindof speech-he did
notmockus.
SecondCitizen:Not one amongstus, save yourself,
butsays
He used us scornfully.
(II,iii, 163-168)

The tribunes need only guide the discussion which ends in the
determinationthat he "did not ask, but mock" (II,iii,213). Again,
the findingis a procedural, not a moral one. It is not that Cor-
iolanus did not keep his word, but ratherthathe did, and in a way
altogethertypical,by botchinga procedure which,if properlyexe-
cuted, would have tied him to the word of another.
It becomes possible to writea Speech Act historyof Coriolanus,
the play and the man: he cannot make requests or receive praise;
he is mosthimselfwhen he is eitherputtingthingsby or promising.
In slightlydifferentways requesting and accepting praise are acts
whichplace theirperformerin a positionof dependence (hence the
force of "I wouldn't ask you for the time of day" as a way of
assertingthat you don't want or need my help); promising and
rejecting,on the other hand, are transactionsthat leave the self
inviolate. Coriolanus' every illocutionarygesture is one that de-
clares his disinclinationto implicatehimselfin the reciprocalweb of
obligationsthatis the contentof the systemof conventionalspeech

2Whytheydon't see this is a question beyond the scope of the present analysis,
although two explanations suggest themselves:eithertheyare stupid,or theydon't
want to see. These are Sicinius' explanations (II, iii, 180-182).
 M L N 995

acts. To put it simply, Coriolanus is always doing things (with

words) to set himselfapart.
He finallysucceeds. The most spectacular illocutionaryact per-
formedin Coriolanus is the double banishingof III,iii. In any prod-
uction,the scene is the centerpiece,the climax to whicheverything
beforeit has been building; but in a way thatSpeech Act theorycan
explicate,it is anti-climactic.It is anti-climacticbecause the explicit
act merelyconfirmsor ratifieswhat Coriolanus has been doing all
the while, settinghimselfapart from the community.He cuts the
last tie before he is banished, when in response to the pleas of
Cominius and Menenius ("Is this the promise you made to your
mother"),he declares, "I would not buy /Their mercyat the price
of one fairword, / Nor check mycourage forwhat theycan give,/
To have't withsaying'Good morrow"' (IIIiii,90-93). It is no acci-
dent that "greeting"is cited as the smallest price he mightbe ex-
pected to pay. Here is Searle's analysisof it:

Greet
content
Propositional None
Preparatory S hasjustencountered (orbeen
introduced to,etc.)H.
Sincerity None
Essential Countsas courteousrecognition of
H byS.

What strikesus immediatelyis how little,relativeto other speech

acts, greeting commits us to. One who greets commits himself
neitherto a proposition,nor to a desire, nor to a positionin a line
of authorityand dependence, but simplyto being a memberof the
(speech act) communitywhose conventional means of expressing
courtesyhe is now invoking.Greetingis the bottomline of civility;
it has no content except the disposition to be civil; it is an act we
performeven in the company of our enemies, signifyingthat the
differencesdividingus finallydepend on somethingwe share. We
can say of someone "I'll never ask him for anythingagain," or "I'll
never rely on his promises,"and stillbe understood to have com-
merce with him; but if we say "I will not even say 'hello' to that
man," it is understood thatwe will have nothingto do withhim at
all. Coriolanus says that to the Roman citizens,and when, in the
verynextinstant,theybanish him,theymerelysay itback: "Let him
away! / He's banished" (IIIiii,106-107).
996 STANLEY E. FISH

What happens next, however, does not take place within the
precinctsof speech act conventions; rather,it subvertsthem and
along withthem the institutionswithwhichtheyexistin reciprocal
support. Coriolanus turns around and says, "I banish you":
You common cry of curs, whose breath I hate
As reek o' the rottenfens,whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you.
(III,iii,120-23)

The disruptiveforce of thisis a functionof the kind of act banish-

ing is. FollowingSearle's taxonomy,we would label it a declarative,
a class that has two definingcharacteristics:
(1) The successfulperformanceof one of its membersbringsabout the
correspondence between the propositional content and reality....
Declarations bring about some alterationin the statusor condition
of the referredto object or objectssolelyin virtueof the factthatthe
declaration has been successfullyperformed.
(2) The masteryof those rules which constitutelinguisticcompetence
by the speaker and hearer is not in general sufficientfor the per-
formanceof a declaration. In addition there must existan extralin-
guisticinstitutionand the speaker and hearer must occupy special
places withinthisinstitution.It is only given such institutionsas the
church,the law, privateproperty,the stateand a special positionof
the speaker and hearer withinthese institutionsthat one can ex-
communicate,appoint, give and bequeath one's possessions or de-
clare war.
(A Classification
ofIllocutionaryActs,ms. pp. 23-24)

The firstpoint can be captured,in the phrase "sayingmakes it so."

Other speech acts are attemptseither to get the words to match a
stateof affairsin the world (reports,assertions,explanations) or to
get the world to match the words (promises,requests): but, witha
declarative,the directionof fitgoes both ways,for the words are
made to fitthe world at the same instantas the world is madeto fit
thewords.This is because declarativescreatethe conditionsto which
theyrefer.More obviouslythan any other class of speech acts,they
testifyto the power of language to constitute
reality.Searle's second
point is thatthispower depends on the speaker's occupyinga posi-
tion of authorityin an extralinguisticinstitution;in the absence of
thatinstitutionand the speaker's position in it,a so-called declara-
 M L N 997

tive utterance would have no force (as when a fan yells "strike
three").
What Coriolanus' counter-banishingsuggests is that this can be
turnedon its head. It is not thatwords are in forceonly so long as
the institutionsare, but thatinstitutionsare in forceonly so long as
the words are, so long as when theyare utteredhearers performin
the stipulated way (the batter returns to the dugout, the armed
forcesmobilize,the defendant is released fromcustody).If, on the
other hand, hearers simplydisregard a declarativeutterance,it is
not thattheyhave ceased to pay attentionto the words (which still
bear the perfectlyordinary and understood meanings of com-
mands that are not being obeyed), but that they have ceased to
recognize-and assist in the constitutionof-the institution.The
moral of this is chastening, even disturbing: institutionsare no
more than the (temporary)effectsof speech act agreements,and
theyare thereforeas fragileas the decision,alwayscapable of being
revoked, to abide by them. This becomes obvious if one reflectsa
biton the ontological statusof declaratives(a reflectionnot usually
encouraged because so much hangs on the implicitclaim of author-
ityto be eternal): if declarative utterances,when they have their
intended force,alter statesof affairs,what bringsabout the stateof
affairsin which a declarative utterance is endowed with its in-
tended force?The answer is, another declarativeutteranceand it
is an answer one would have to give no matterhow far back the
inquirywas pushed. The conclusionis inescapable: declarative(and
other)utterancesdo not merelymirroror reflectthe state; theyare
the state,which increases and wanes as they are or are not taken
seriously.
It mightbe objected thatto reason in thiswayis to implythatone
can constitutea state simplyby declaring it to exist.That of course
is exactly what happens: a single man plants a flag on a barren
shore and claims everythinghis eye can see in the name of a distant
monarch or for himself;another man, hunted by police and sol-
diers,seeks refugein a cave, where,alone or in the companyof one
or two fellows,he proclaims the birth of a revolutionarygovern-
ment.In the case of Coriolanus, the declarationof independence is
more public,but it has the same content.We can see thisby imagin-
ing him doing somethingelse: had he said, "you can't banish me
because I herebyrenounce my citizenship"(on the model of "you
can't fireme; I resign"),his act would be a recognitionof the state
and of his position in it; but by saying "I banish you," he reduces
998 STANLEY E. FISH

the stateto a counter-declarationand bringsabout the verycondi-

tion he had warned against earlier:
mysoul aches
To know,whentwoauthorities are up,
Neithersupreme,howsoon confusion
Mayenter'twixtthegap of bothand take
The one byth'other.
(IIIi,108-1 12)
The case is worse even than that: if two authorities,whynot three
or four or four hundred? What Coriolanus does opens the way for
anyone who feels constrainedby the bonds of a societyto declare a
societyof his own, to nominatehis own conventions,to stipulatehis
own obligations; suddenly there is a possibilityof a succession of
splinter coalitions, each inaugurated by the phrase Coriolanus
hurls at those whom he has cast behind him: "There is a world
elsewhere."
It would be a mistakehoweverto thinkof Coriolanus simplyas a
revolutionary.He would not agree withmyanalysisof what he does
because in his mind banishing is not a politicalact (and therefore
finallydependent on the vagaries of circumstance),but an act
which derives (or should derive) its authorityfrom the natural
meritof itsperformer.The world elsewherehe seeks is not another
state (for then he would simply be trading one systemof con-
ventional ties for another), but a world where essences are im-
mediatelyrecognized and do not require for their validation the
mediation of public procedures. For a time, the Volsci seem to
offerhim such a world. He is givencommand withouthavingto ask
for it. Aufidius hands over his prerogatives as if they were his
natural right("no questions asked him by any of the senators but
theystand bald before him."); soldiers obey him and even preface
theirprayerswithhis name; townsfall to him even before theyare
besieged ("All places yieldto him ere he sitsdown"). And all of this
seems to transpire,as Aufidius says, "by sovereigntyof nature"
(IV,vii,35). He is in short exactlywhat he always wanted to be, a
natural force whose movementthrough the world is independent
of all supports except those provided by his own virtue. He is
complete and sufficientunto himself.He is a God.
It is as a God (and as a machine) that Menenius reports him:
When he walks,he moves like an engine and the ground shrinksbefore
his treading.He is able to pierce a corseletwithhis eye, talkslike a knell,
 M L N 999

He sitsin hisstateas a thingmadeforAlexan-

and hishumis a battery.
der.Whathe bidsbe doneis finishedwithhisbidding.He wantsnothing
and a heavento thronein.
of a god buteternity
(V,iv,18-25)
"Whathe bids be done is finishedwithhis bidding." A more concise
account of declarativescould not be imagined. Coriolanus is in that
happy state where his word is law, and not because he is the
spokesman for an institutionalauthority,but because he is the
source of law itself.His is the declarative of divine fiat,thelogos,
the all-creatingword.
This, however,is an illusion,mounted by Aufidiuswiththe inad-
vertentcomplicityof the Volsci,and believed in onlyby Coriolanus.
The truthis thatthereis no worldelsewhere,at leastnot in the sense
Coriolanus intends, a world where it is possible to stand freely,
unencumbered by obligations and dependencies. There are only
otherspeech act communities,and everyone of them exacts as the
price of membershipacceptance of its values and meanings. Cor-
iolanus is paying that price, even as he is supposedly moving to-
ward independence and Godhead. He no sooner enters Antium
before he performsthe veryacts he disdained in Rome. He greets
("Save you, sir"); he requests, and with full acknowledgementof
the positionit puts him in ("Direct me, ifit be your will,""Which is
his house, beseech you?"), and he thanks ("Thank you, sir:
farewell").3A greater ignominyfollows:when he gains admission
to Aufidius' house, no one knows him; in a gestureintended to be
revelatory,he unmuffles,expecting, Satan-like,to be announced
simplyby the transcendantbrightnessof his visage. Nothing hap-
pens, and Aufidiuskeeps asking"What is thyname?" as Coriolanus
feeds him more and more clues. Finallyhe is reduced to tellinghis
name: "My name is Caius Marcius" (IV,4,69). The man who would
stripdown to essences and be recognized simplyby "sovereigntyof
nature" is forced to cover himselfwithpublic identification(name,
rank, and serial number) before he has enough substance even to
be addressed.
In a footnoteto SpeechActs,Searle makes a point thatis relevant
here:
one can tinkerwithconstitut-
Standingon thedeckof someinstitutions
iverulesand eventhrowsomeotherinstitutionsoverboard.But could

3IV,iv,6-11.
1000 STANLEY E. FISH

one throwall institutions

overboard?... One couldnotand stillengage
in thoseformsof behaviorwe considercharacteristically
human.
(186 n.)
Coriolanus triesto throwover all institutionsat the same timethat
he is engaging in activitiesthatare characteristically human. It is a
contradictionthat he tries to mediate by acting as if his contacts
withhuman beings were accidental,as if he were a meteoror comet
whose unconstrainedwayjust happened to take it through places
where men lived togetherin mutual interdependence.That is why
he answers to no name: "Coriolanus / He would not answer to;
forbadeall names; /He was a kind of nothing,titleless"(V,i,11-13).
He wants to be a nothingin the sense of a substance not made, a
substancethat mightfor a moment take up communityspace, but
would abide long after the communityand its names had passed
away. But his abilityeven to strikesuch a pose is a functionof the
power a community,the Volscian community,has given him. He
maystand "As ifa man were author of himself/And knewno other
kin,"but the "as if" preciselylocates the weaknessof his stance; it is
rooted in a fiction,in the illusionthat a man can be a man and still
be totallyalone.
It is,however,his fiction,no less real in itsconsequences than the
fictionsof society;and even ifhe is the onlyone who livesbyit,he is
still subject to its rules and penalties. There is, finally,only one
rule: the word is fromCoriolanus and it is the law; it acknowledges
no otherauthority;itrecognizesno obligationsthatit does not itself
stipulate("Away ... Wife,mother,child"); it hears no appeals; it is
inexorable, or, to use a word several times applied to Coriolanus,
"absolute." Once set in motion,it is like tie machine he is said to
have become: nothingcan stand against it.
It follows,then, that when Coriolanus stands against it, he is
destroyed. It is his own word that convicts him and it is able to
convicthim because he has pledged his loyaltyto it and to nothing
else. Had he not made a religion of keeping to his word, then his
breaking of it could not have been cited by Aufidius as a capital
crime: "perfidiously/He has betrayedyour business ... /Breaking
his oath and resolution,like /A twistof rottensilk" (V.vi,95-96).
What he stands accused of is being human; he has listened to his
mother,wife, and child; but since it has been his claim and his
desire to stand apart fromhuman ties,he cannot now acknowledge
them withoutpaying the penalty demanded by the abstraction-
 M L N 1001

the totallyautonomous self-he has set up in theirplace. Yet at the

very moment that he pays the penalty, Coriolanus exposes that
abstractionas a fiction.The speech act communityreclaimshim as
inescapably its own when he provides the strongestpossible evi-
dence that he is neithera God nor a machine. He dies.
It is evidence the significanceof which always escapes him. Un-
like some of Shakespeare's heroes, Coriolanus never learns any-
thing:even as his "world elsewhere" reveals itselfto be baseless, he
defiantlyreassertsits constitutivefirstprinciple: "Alone I did it."
The final comment on this and on his every other claim of inde-
pendence is made by the play's closing words:
He shallhave a noblememory.
The ironyis unrelenting.The man who scorned the word of the
community("You common cryof curs whose breath I hate"), even
to the extent of disdaining its names, now depends on that word
(and on those breaths) for the only life he has.

II. What Not To Do with Speech Act Theory

I want to make it clear what it is that I am and am not claiming

forthisanalysisof Coriolanus.I am not claimingthatitis exhaustive.
Nor am I claiming that what it says is wholly new. What I am
claimingis thatit doesn't cheat; bythatI mean thatthe stagesin the
argumentfollowone another withoutever going outside the defin-
itionsand descriptionsof Speech Act theory.Thus simplyby pay-
ing attentionto the hero's illocutionarybehavior and then refer-
ringto the fulldress accounts of the acts he performs,it is possible
to produce a speech act "reading" of the play:
1. In his reluctance to make a request or accept praise, he de-
clares his independence of conventional(that is, public) pro-
cedures for confirmingmeritor desert.
2. When he goes so far as to refuse to greet,his settinghimself
apart fromthe communityis complete, and he stands alone.
3. By banishinghim,the citizenssimplyratifyand confirmwhat
he has already done; by banishingthem,he makes explicithis
rejectionof the communityand his intentionto stand alone,
as a societyof one, as a statecomplete in himself,independent
of all external supports and answerable only to the laws he
himselfpromulgates. In short,he decides to be a God.
1002 STANLEY E. FISH

4. As a God, he demands absolute obedience to his word (the

sacred text),establishinghis promises and pledges as the law
against which no other considerationsor loyaltiescan stand
("Thou shalt have no other Gods before me").
5. By going back on his pledge, he stands againstit and is struck
down accordingly.Dying, he acknowledges involuntarilyhis
necessary involvementin the communityfrom whose con-
ventionshe sought to be free. In the end, the fiercelyprivate
man exists only by virtue of the words of others ("He shall
have a noble memory").

To the extent that this reading is satisfying,it is because Cor-

iolanusis a Speech Act play. That is to say,itis aboutwhatthe theory
is "about," the conditionsforthe successfulperformanceof certain
conventionalacts and the commitmentsone entersintoor avoids by
performingor refusingto performthose acts; indeed, as we have
seen these conditions and commitmentsare what the characters
discuss,so thatat timesitis almostas iftheywere earlypractitioners
of Oxford or "ordinarylanguage" philosophy.That is whywe seem
to have gottensomewhere by puttingscenes fromthe play side by
side withthe analyses of the theory:the questions it is able to ask
and answer-what is involvedin a request? whatis one doing when
one greets?what enables one to banish?-are the questions about
which the action revolves.
There are of course questions the theorydoes not even touch,
and it is when its termsare stretchedto include such questions that
cheating occurs. Like Transformational Grammar before it,
Speech Act theoryhas been sacrificedto the desire of the literary
criticfora systemmore firmlygrounded than any affordedhim by
his own discipline. The career of this desire always unfolds in two
stages: (1) the systemor theoryis emptied of itscontentso thatthe
distinctionsit is able to make are lost or blurred, and (2) what
remains, a terminologyand an empty framework,is made into a
metaphor. A spectacular instanceof this process has recentlybeen
provided by Wolfgang Iser ("The Reality of Fiction,"NLH, vol.
VII, No. I, Autumn, 1975, 7-38) who beginsbyallegorizingtheterm
"performative,"taking it to mean that part of an utterancewhich
produces something as opposed to that (constative) part which
asserts something; illocutionaryforce, in his account, refersto a
"qualityof productiveness"(1 1). But the only thingthat performa-
tive or illocutionaryacts produce is recognitionon the part of a
 M L N 1003

hearerthatthe procedures constitutiveof a particularact have been

invoked; illocutionaryforce is not something an illocutionaryact
exerts,but somethingit has (by virtue of its proper execution); it
refersto the way an utterance is taken (as a promise, command,
request, etc.) by someone who knows the constitutingprocedures
and theirvalue. It is simplywrongto thinkof an illocutionaryact as
producingmeaning in the sense of creatingit. Indeed the meaning
theact produces (a betterword would be presents,as in he presents
a compliment)necessarilypre-existsit; or, to put it another way,in
Speech Act theory,meaning is prior to utterance.
Iser's confusion is such that one mistake not only leads to but
makes inevitableanother. The notion of productiveness,once hav-
ing been produced (out of thin air as it were) proceeds to rule his
argument. Literature, he says, "imitatesthe illocutionaryspeech
act,but whatis said does not produce whatis meant"(12). What Iser
wantsto say,I suppose, is thatin literatureillocutionaryacts do not
have theirusual consequences (a position that Austin does in fact
hold), but thisis quite differentfromsayingthatillocutionaryacts
in literaturedon't produce what they produce in serious or every-
day discourse,because in both contextswhat illocutionaryacts pro-
duce is recognitionthat theyhave been produced. If Iser wants a
basis for distinguishingliteraryfrom ordinarylanguage he won't
find it here. Nor will he find it where he seeks it next, in con-
ventionsand the possibilityof "reorganizing" them: "For Austin,
literary'speech' is void because it cannot invoke conventionsand
accepted procedures" (13). But Austin's point is preciselythat the
conventionsand procedures have been invoked, but that there is
nothingforthem to hook up to (no one to receive the command or
hear the question). Indeed, if the conventional procedures were
not invoked what we would have is not "void" speech, but no
speech. If there is a distinctionbetween literaryand non-literary
speech, it is not one between illocutionaryacts and some other
kind, but between illocutionaryacts put to differinguses. By the
same argument, the conventions(or rules) that define those acts
cannot be said to be presentin one kind of discourse and absent (or
uninvoked)in another; fortheyare the procedures whichmake all
discourse possible, and any distinctionone might want to draw
must be drawn at a level of generalitybelow that at which they
operate. Iser avoids thisrealizationbecause he equivocatesbetween
twosenses of "convention":the strictersense by whichillocutionary
acts are constitutiverather than regulative,and the looser sense
1004 STANLEY E. FISH

(roughly equivalent to "accepted practice") employed by literary

criticswhen theytalk,forexample, of the conventionsof narrative.
The equivocation is importantto Iser (I am not ascribingan inten-
tionto him) because he wantsto asserta parallel betweena violation
of speech act conventions and a violation of the conventions of
literatureor society.But the parallel will not hold because in one
case a violation amounts to non-performance,while in the other
theconvention(whichratherthan constitutingthe activityis merely
a variationon it) is eitherreplaced or modified.
Iser, then,is able to conduct his argumentonly because there is
so much shiftand slippage in itsprincipalterms.The shiftand slip-
page is in one direction, away from the strictnessof definition
required by the theory,and towardthe metaphoricallooseness that
makes it possible for him to say anythinghe likes. In the end, the
words he is using have no relationshipto the theoryat all. It is this,
paradoxically,thatmakes Iser's performanceless distressingthan it
otherwisemight have been. The connection between what he is
sayingand the concernsof the theoryis finallyso slightthatthereis
no possibilityof anyone's followinghim. This is not the case, how-
ever, with Richard Ohmann, who is a responsible and informed
studentof the subject and a respecterof theories.With respect to
this particulartheory,however, I believe that he is confused. His
confusioncan be located at his use of a single word: felicity.Here
for example, is what he has to say about King Lear:
King Lear ceremonially measuresout his lands in geometriccorre-
spondencetohisdaughters' oflove.The terrible
professions of
infelicity
hisactscorresponds to thedepthofhiserroraboutwhatsortof human
realityan old kinginhabits.
("Literatureas Act," in ApproachestoPoetics,
ed. SeymourChatman,NewYork,1973,p. 90.)
Apparently,Ohmann thinksthat he is making a Speech Actjudg-
ment here, but he isn't. The criterionof felicityhas to do withthe
execution of conventionalprocedures; an act is felicitousif certain
specifiedconditions are met: it must be performedby the proper
person (a private cannot give an order to a general); it miustbe
possible (one cannot promise to have done somethingyesterday);
and so on. These conditionswill differwithdifferentacts, but my
point is that in the case of Lear's act (we might call it the act of
apportioning)theyare all met,and the act is,in termsof the theory,
perfectlyfelicitous.That is, there is a procedure, he invokesit,and
 M L N 1005

he is the proper person to have done so. In fact, he is the only

person who could have done so. What then does Ohmann mean
when he calls this act infelicitous?Obviously, that it turned out
badly (and indeed it has), but thishas nothingto do withits having
been properly executed. As Austin says (his example is of advice
thatwould have been betternot followed),"That an act is happy or
felicitousin all our waysdoes not exempt it fromall criticism"(How
To Do ThingsWithWords,p. 42).
The case is even clearer withanother of Ohmann's examples. He
is discussing the scene in Major Barbara in which Lord Saxmund-
ham (Bodger the distiller) is reported to have promised to con-
tribute five thousand pounds to the Salvation Army if five other
"gentlemen" will give a thousand each. Undershaft promises to
help, much to Mrs. Baines' delight and Barbara's consternation.
Ohmann comments:
The promiser'smoral characterand intentionsbear on the felicityof his
promise,
and in factdetermineswhethershe [Barbara] would be partyto
it-agrees to accept the giftand so bring the promise to completion.As
clearly,for Mrs. Baines this is irrelevant.... The dramatic irony here
rests precisely in the ambivalence of Undershaft's act-felicitous for
Mrs. Baines and seemingly,but not really,for him; infelicitousfor Bar-
bara. (p. 87)

Again, this blurs the distinction (which gives the theory whatever
force it has) between two different kinds of felicity. Undershaft's
promise is complete as soon as his intentionto make it is recog-
nized. That is what distinguishes conventional acts from others;
they are performed by invoking procedures that are agreed on in
advance to count as their proper execution. Barbara does not need
to accept the giftin order to complete the promise; it is complete as
soon as it is understood to be one. The word forthisunderstanding
is "uptake" ("ah, so that's what he's doing"); what Ohmann is talk-
ing about is reaction and it is a reaction to an act already, and
felicitously, performed. Were it otherwise, then the reaction would
be impossible. The strongest evidence for the completeness of Un-
dershaft's promise is Barbara's recoiling from it. (Similarly, a
breach of promise suit is possible only if a promise has been suc-
cessfully made; if the promise could be shown to be infelicitous the
suit would fail.)
In both instances Ohmann is doing the same thing: he is sliding
over from illocutionary acts to perlocutionary effects and trying to
1006 STANLEY E. FISH

include the latterin the felicityconditionsof the former.Moreover,

this confusion is a matter of principle as he himselfdeclares in
another article:
social.A felicitous
is itselfdistinctly
The notionof felicity actis one that
"takes,"one whoselegitimacy is acknowledgedby all the participants
and all those affected,and whose performancechanges,however
thesocialconnectedness
slightly, amongpeople.
("InstrumentalStyle,"in CurrentTrendsin Stylistics,ed. B. Kachru,p.
129)

But in Speech Act theory the notion of felicityisn't social, but

conventional;the scope of "takes"as Ohmann uses itis much larger
than the theoryof illocutionaryacts allows; for by his criterionan
act would not be considered felicitousuntil a series of follow-up
interviewshad been conducted and the behaviorof the participants
had been monitored; it might even be necessary for the speaker
and his hearers to undergo therapyso that their"true" intentions
or responses could be determined. But we have recourse to con-
ventionspreciselyin order to get the world's verbal business done
withoutgoing throughthe time and effort(both endless) of check-
ing everythingout. The notion of felicityis social only in the nar-
row sense thatit is tied to conditionsspecifiedby a society,and not
in the larger sense that we must wait for social circumstancesto
emergebefore it can be affirmed.
Again, when Ohmann declares, "I won't felicitouslysay to you,
'that'sa phoebe' unless I have greaterexpertisethan you in classify-
ing birds" (130), his condition refersto the confidence one might
have in the act (of reference)and not to the question of whetheror
not it has been performed.(Actuallythere are all kinds of circum-
stances in which I can say that to you irrespectiveof myexpertise:
e.g., I have been asked by you to be on the lookout for phoebes.)
Once an illocutionaryact has been performedthereare all kindsof
questions or objections you can put to it-what gives you the right
to say that?do you reallywant me to? you didn't have to order,you
could have asked; you should never make a promiseyou mightnot
be able to keep-but you willbe able to framethose objectionsonly
because the proper procedures have been invoked and uptake has
been secured. According to Ohmann, "If six monthdelays are my
standardoperating procedure, I can't felicitouslyapologize forone
of them" (131). But one apologizes when one produces an utter-
ance that in the circumstancescounts as an expression of regret.
 M L N 1007

You may not accept myapology and you maybe waryof regarding
it as a guarantee of my futurebehavior, but you will be able to do
these and other thingsonly because I have in fact made it. (You
don't say, I failed to apologize because he didn't accept it, but,
rather,I apologized, and he didn't accept it.)
What is importantabout Ohmann's errorsis thattheyare always
honorable and attractive;that is, they are made in an effortto
stretchthe theoryso thatitwilldo thingswe would like it to do: talk
about the trainsof events that illocutionary(and other) acts set in
motion,distinguishin dramatic situationsthe differenteffectsthe
performanceof a particularact will have, speculate as to the rea-
sons whya request or an order or a warning hasn't done what the
speaker had hoped it would. Speech Act theorycan point to these
matters-they are perlocutionaryeffects-but it cannot explicate
thembecause theylie outside the area of its declared competence.
Elocutionaryeffectsare conventional; theyoccur simplyby virtue
of speakers and hearers being members of the same community
and thereforepartiesto the same agreementsabout what finiteand
ordered procedures "count as" the performanceof what acts. Per-
locutionaryeffects,on the other hand, are contingent;theycannot
be predictedbecause thereis no way of knowingwhatwillcertainly
bringthemoff.This is not to say thatone can't calculate themwith
probability;but that probabilitywill be natural, not conventional.
Austin puts it this way: "for clearlyany or almost any perlocutio-
nary act is liable to be brought off,in sufficiently special circum-
stances, by the issuing, withor without calculation,of any utterance
whatsoever"(How To Do ThingsWithWords,p. 109).
Obviously this doesn't mean that perlocutionaryeffectsdon't
occur or thatwe shouldn't be interestedin them when doing liter-
ary criticism,but that Speech Act theory can offerus no special
help in dealing withthem,apart fromtellingus thattheyare what
itcannot handle. And if we insiston askingthe theoryto do what it
cannot,we willend up bytakingfromitthe abilityto do whatitcan.
What it can do is tell us what is conventionaland what is not and
provide analyses of conventional performances.But if we ignore
the distinctionbetween the conventional and the contingentand
call everythingwe meet an illocutionaryact or its consequences,
then the termswe are using will have no cuttingforce; they will
tellus nothing,or, whatis the same thing,theywilltellus anything.
Ohmann courts this danger when he assumes that almost any
verb thatappears in a sentence is the name of an illocutionaryact.
1008 STANLEY E. FISH

(This is an inevitableconsequence of his thinkingthat a classifica-

tionof illocutionaryacts is a classificationof verbs; fora persuasive
refutationof thisview,see Searle,A Classification ofIllocutionary
Acts,
forthcoming.)Among his listsof illocutionaryverbs we find, "la-
ment, "rejoice," "assume" and "wish" (as in "May you have a long
life"). None of these are names of illocutionaryacts although they
can all be used in sentencesthathave an illocutionaryforce.If I say
"I rejoice in your happiness," I don't performsome act of rejoicing;
I express my feelings. If I say, "I wish you a long life," I am not
makinga wish,but expressinggood will. If I say,"I assume thatit's
raining,"I am not making an assumption,but expressingone. In
each of these cases (and in the case of "lament") the verb is not a
performativeone because the act it refers to is a motion of the
mind or heart and does not require the invoking of previously
specified procedures for its occurrence. Here is another instance
wherethe abuse of Speech Act theoryis also a commenton itslimi-
tations:just as it stops short of claiming knowledge of what hap-
pens afterthe performanceof an illocutionaryact, so is it silenton
the question of what (if anything;the whole world may be conven-
tional) preceded it. No one would deny thatthese are mattersfora
literarycriticto inquire into,but theyare the provinceof rhetoric
(the art of persuasion, a perlocutionary art) and psychology.
Speech Act theorycan tell us nothing about them.
Neithercan it tellus whatis involvedin tellinga story.In another
instanceof stretchingthe theoryout of its proper shape and use-
fulness,Ohmann invents"the general speech act of tellinga story"
("Speech, Action, And Style,"in LiteraryStyle:A Symposium, ed. S.
Chatman,New York, 1971, p. 251) and goes on to talkabout narra-
tiveconventionswhichinclude the condition"thatthe tellerknows,
havinginvented,all the factsand all the sentencescontained in that
story,"and the rule that"thetelleralwaysendorses the fictiveworld
of the storyfor its duration, and again, by convention,does not
acknowledge that it is a fiction"(251, 247). But if these are rules
theyare regulative; that is, they are imposed on an antecedently
existingformof behavior. One can varyand even ignore themand
stillbe engaging in that behavior. Speech Act rules, on the other
hand, are constitutive;theydo not regulate behavior but enumer-
ate the procedures which define it. If you practice creative story-
telling,you are likelyto end up in an anthology. If you practice
creativepromisingyou will not be understood as having promised
at all. This is not to deny thatthere are conventionsof storytelling
 M L N 1009

(many of which are mutually exclusive and yet indiscriminately

felicitous),but that theyare not on all fourswiththe illocutionary
acts for which Speech Act theoryhas provided descriptions.
What is perhaps Ohmann's most troubling distortion of the
theoryconcernsthe vexed question of style.He believesthatin "the
distinctionbetween the activated meaning and the fullylaunched
illocutionaryact we have the kind of split required for style to
exist"("InstrumentalStyle,"118). Of course stylecan onlyexistin a
binaryopposition withcontentor meaning. In Ohmann's account
meaning is identifiedwith the locutionary act, that is the act of
saying somethingwith a particular sense and reference. To this
basic meaning one adds illocutionaryforce,much as one mightadd
an intensifierto a sentence or flavoringto a piece of meat: "The
indicatoror indicatorsof illocutionaryforce implant the meaning
in the streamof social interaction;theyare what makes speech take
hold." This suggests that "the meaning" exists independentlyof,
and priorto, the applicationof illocutionaryforce,and thatthe full
speech act is built up froma kernel of pure semanticvalue. But as
Searle pointsout, propositionalacts do not occur alone (SpeechActs,
p. 25); that is, you don't build up fromthe propositionto the act,
but down fromthe act to the propositionwhich could not even be
picked out were the act not fully launched. Ohmann says, "a
speaker mayassign differentillocutionaryforcesto the same mean-
ing" (18), but in fact what a speaker may do is performdifferent
illocutionaryacts with the same sentence. The mistakeis to think
that the sentence without illocutionaryforce is "an unactivated
meaning"; rather it is just a series of noises, a dead letterwithno
more "content"than a listof words. If thisseems counterintuitive,
just tryto uttera sentencewithoutitsbeing an assertion,a question,
a command, etc., and just tryto thinkof a meaning thatis available
independentlyof one or other speech act in which it is already
imbedded.
To be sure, illocutionaryacts which share a sentence also share
somethingelse, predication.Thus the sentence "I will leave" may,
in differentcircumstances,be a promise, a threat,a warning,or a
prediction,and in each of those illocutionarylives the question of
my leaving will have been raised or put on the table. It would be
wrong, however, to conclude that this raising or putting on the
table of the question is the basic meaning of these acts and thatthe
illocutionaryforce indicators represent "stylisticchoices that a
speaker of English can make in issuing his meanings" (119); for,as
1010 STANLEY E. FISH

Searle explains "one cannotjust raise the question withoutraisingit

in some form or another, interrogative,assertive, promissory,
etc.... And... this mirrorsthe fact that predicationis not an act
which can occur alone" (SpeechActs, 124). Another way of putting
this is to say that predication and the utteringof propositionsare
not separate acts; theyare slicesfromthe illocutionaryact,and as in
the servingof a pie, they cannot be sliced, or even be said to be
available forslicing,untilthe illocutionaryact has been baked. If I
were to say to you, "As to myleaving... ," you could not even think
in an anticipatoryway about the predication withoutcasting it in
some or otherillocutionarymode. Indeed, to be consistentOhmann
would have to turn his terminologyaround and identifymeaning
with illocutionaryforce and style with propositional or predica-
tional content,since the distinctionbetween meaning and styleis
always a distinctionbetween the essential and the not-so-essential
(and in hard line formulationsthe dispensable). In short,the no-
tion of illocutionarystylemakes no sense except as the result of
mistakingan analyticaccount of the speech act for a genetic one.
Whateverstyleis (an issue I willnot engage), itvariesindependent-
ly of illocutionaryforce.
But forthe sake of argument,let us suppose thatone could talk
of "illocutionarystyle"as Ohmann wants to. How would we pro-
ceed? It would seem fromOhmann's analyses that we would first
calculate the incidence of various illocutionaryacts in a stretchof
textand then on the basis of thisevidence draw conclusions about
an author and/orhis characters.The troubleis thatthisevidence is
not interpretable,or to put the case more sharply,itis interpretable
in any directionone likes. Suppose that someone in a novel were
constantlyasking questions. What would this mean? Well, it de-
pends: it mightmean that he is disorientedand doesn't know how
to move about in the situation;it mightmean thathe was constantly
testingthose he met; it mightmean thathe wanted to make people
feel nervous and defensive; or it might simply mean that there
were thingshe didn't know. Of course, a considerationof the con-
text would in a particularcase pin the significancedown, but the
more contextis brought in, the less the significanceis attributable
to the incidence of questions or of any other illocutionaryact. That
is to say, there will be no regular relationshipbetween a particular
illocutionaryact and the determinedsignificance,whichin another
context,would not need that act to emerge. There is simplyno
principled way to complete a sentence of the type, the man who
 M L N 1011

characteristicallyperformsact x will indicate thereby.... On the

other hand, if a characteror an author is continuallytalkingabout
the acts he does or does not perform,and debating the conditions
fortheirsuccessfulperformanceand the commitmentstheyentail
(ifquestioningas an act became a subjectof discussionin the novel),
then speech act analysis will help us understand what he is doing
because he is doing what it is doing. Illocutionary styleis a notion
unattached to anythingand will always remain merely statistical
(unless itis given an arbitrarysignificance),but illocutionarybehavior
is a notionone can workwithbecause it is whatSpeech Act theoryis
all about.
I have been belaboring this point because I believe that by mis-
construingit Ohmann turns the major insightof the Speech Act
philosopherson itshead, preciselyundoing whattheyhave so care-
fullydone. In How To Do ThingsWithWords,Austinbegins by mak-
ing a distinctionbetween "constatives"-utteranceswhose business
"can onlybe to 'describe' some stateof affairs,or to 'statesome fact'
which it must do either trulyor falsely"(1), and "performatives,"
utterancesthe issuing of which constitutes"the performingof an
action"(6). This distinctiondoes not surviveAustin'sexplorationof
it, for the conclusion of his book (which is in many ways a self-
consuming artifact)is the discoverythat constativesare also "do-
ings," and that "what we have to study is not the sentence" in its
pure unattached form,but "the issuing of an utterancein a situa-
tion"by a human being (138). The class of exceptionsthus swallows
the supposedly normativeclass, and as a result the objectivelyde-
scriptivelanguage unattached to situationsand purposes that was
traditionallyat the center of linguisticphilosophyis shown to be a
fiction.By reifyingthe locutionaryact and making it an indepen-
dentlyspecifiable meaning to which human purposes and inten-
tions are added (in the form of illocutionaryforces) Ohmann
reinstatesthat fictionin its old position of ontological privilege.4

III. Fact and Fiction

Ontological privilege,however,is one position philosophyis re-

luctantto leave empty,and it is not surprisingthat a theorythat

41tis curious that Ohmann himselfdoes what he repeatedly accuses traditional

ofdoing:slidingofffromillocutionary
stylistics or perlocutio-
to eitherlocutionary
naryacts.
1012 STANLEY E. FISH

substitutesfor the principle of verificationthe notion of appro-

priatenessconditions would attemptto put those conditionsin its
place. This is the most popular thingthat literarypeople tryto do
withAustin and Searle, and theydo it by using Speech Act theory
to arrive at definitionsof literatureand/orfiction.Such an enter-
prise necessarilybegins withan attemptto specifywhatis notlitera-
ture and fiction,or, in a word, what is normative.According to
mostof those who have worked on thisproblem,whatis normative
is language thatintendsto be or is held to be responsibleto the real
world. Here are three representativestatements:
The aestheticdistance of the hearer or reader is an essentialingredient
in the aestheticexperience he has in hearing or reading a fictionalstory
as a fictionalstory.But he can have aesthetic distance only if there is
somethinghe is distantfrom,thatbeing the practicalresponses thatare
typicallyor appropriatelybrought about by nonfictiveuses of the sen-
tencescomprisingthe story.It is only because language has the practical
role of helping us come to gripswiththe real, workadayworld thatthere
can be an aestheticallypleasurable "holiday" use of it.
(Richard Gale, "The FictiveUse of Language," Philosophy, vol. 46, 1971,
339.)

Writing(or speaking) a literarywork is evidentlyan illocutionaryper-

formanceof a special type,logicallydifferentfromthe seemingacts that
make it up. The contractbetween poet and reader or hearer does not
put the poet behind the various statements,rejoinders,laments,promis-
es, or whatever,that he seeminglyvoices. His word is not his bond, in
just thisway. Perhaps the onlyserious conditionof good faiththatholds
forliteraryworksand theirauthorsis thatthe author not give out as fact
what is fiction... Literaryworksare discourses withthe usual illocutio-
naryrules suspended. If you like,theyare acts withoutconsequences of
the usual sort, sayings liberated from the usual burden of social bond
and responsibility.
(Ohmann, "Speech, Literature And The Space Between," NLH, IV,
1972, 53.)

Now what makes fictionpossible, I suggest, is a set of extralinguistic,

nonsemanticconventionsthatbreak the connectionbetween words and
the world establishedby the rules mentioned earlier. Think of the con-
ventions of fictionaldiscourse as a set of horizontal conventionsthat
break the connections established by the verticalrules. They suspend
the normal requirements established by these rules. Such horizontal
conventionsare not meaning rules; they are not part of the speaker's
 M L N 1013

competence. Accordingly,theydo not alter or change the meanings of

any of the words or otherelementsof the language. What theydo rather
is enable the speaker to use words with their literal meanings without
undertaking the commitmentsthat are normally required by those
meanings.
(Searle, "The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse," NLH, VI, 1975,
326)

These statementsare not on all fours with one another. While

Searle and Gale oppose workaday or normal discourse to fiction,
Ohmann opposes it to literature,a point Searle takes up when he
assertsthatbecause literature,unlike fiction,"is the name of a set of
attitudeswe take toward a stretchof discourse, not a name of an
internalpropertyof the stretchof discourse" ("Logical Status," p.
320), one cannot make a clean break between the literaryand the
nonliterary.(I have argued for this position elsewhere.)5Ohmann
also implies that the speech acts found in literatureand ordinary
discoursedifferin kind,where forSearle and Gale the differenceis
one of degree: the acts are the same (else one would have to learn a
whole new set of meaning rules in order to read fiction),but they
entail fewer commitments.These, however, are familyquarrels
and theyleave a large and central area of agreement. For Searle,
Ohmann and Gale (and many others) there are two kinds of dis-
course: one that in various ways (or modes) hooks up withthe real
world,and another thatoperates withdiminishedresponsibilityto
that world; the firstis basic and prior, the other derivativeand
dependent. Again, the classic formulationis Austin's:6
A performative
utterance
will,forexample,be ina peculiar
wayhollowor
void if said by an actor on the stage, or if introduced in a poem...
Languagein such circumstances is in specialways-intelligibly-used
notseriously,
butin waysparasitic
upon itsnormaluse-ways whichfall
under the doctrineof the etiolations
of language. All thiswe are excluding
fromconsideration.Our performativeutterances,felicitousor not, are
to be understoodas issuedin ordinarycircumstances.
(How To Do ThingsWithWords,p. 22)

5"How Ordinary Is Ordinary Language?" NLH, V (1973), 41-54.

6Jakobson'sfamous "poetic function" or "set toward the message" is another
version,as is Richard's distinctionbetween "scientific"and "emotive"language. See
also John M. Ellis,The Theory ofLiterary A LogicalAnalysis(Berkeleyand Los
Criticism:
Angeles, 1974), pp. 42-44, and Barbara Smith, "On the Margins of Discourse,"
CriticalInquiry,vol. I (June, 1975) 769-798.
1014 STANLEY E. FISH

That there are differentkinds of discourse and that theyare dis-

tinguished(in part) by the commitmentone assumes by engaging
in them seems to me to be obvious. I am not convinced however
that one of them is ontologicallyprior to the others,and it is this
assumptionI would like to challenge by inquiringinto the statusof
phrases like "normal use" and "ordinarycircumstances."My argu-
ment will engage Searle's, because it seems to me to be fullerand
more rigorous than any I have seen.
EverythingSearle says devolves from his juxtaposition of two
passages, one an excerpt from an article in the New YorkTimes,
writtenby Eileen Shanahan, and the other from a novel by Iris
Murdoch:
Washington,Dec. 14-A group of federal, state, and local govern-
ment officialsrejected today President Nixon's idea that the federal
government provide the financial aid that would permit local gov-
ernmentsto reduce propertytaxes.
Ten more glorious days withouthorses! So thoughtSecond Lieuten-
ant Andrew Chase-White recentlycommissioned in the distinguished
regimentof King Edwards Horse, as he potteredcontentedlyin a gar-
den on the outskirtsof Dublin on a sunny Sunday afternoonin April
nineteen-sixteen.
("Logical Status," pp. 332-323)
The firstpassage Searle labels "serious,"the second "fictional,"and
he insiststhat he intends nothing disparaging by this distinction:
"thisjargon is not meant to implythat writinga fictionalnovel or
poem is not a serious activity,but rather that for example if the
author of a novel tells us thatit is raining outside he isn't seriously
committedto the view that it is actually at the time of writing
raining outside. It is in that sense that fiction is nonserious" (320-
321). This gets to the heart of Searle's centralpoint: in a "normal"
assertion,such as Miss Shanahan's, the speaker is held responsible
for the way his (or her) utterancerelates or does not relate to the
world: he commitshimselfto the truthof the expressed proposi-
tion; he mustbe ready withevidence or reasons if the truthof the
expressed proposition is challenged; he will not assert something
that is obviously true to both himself and his hearer; and so on.
Moreover, these rules or felicityconditions establish what counts as
a mistake, and, in law, what is actionable. If Miss Shanahan's asser-
tion is shown to be without substance or proof she is likely to be
thought (at least on this occasion) a bad reporter (the title fits per-
fectlywith the illocutionary act involved) and she is vulnerable to a
 M L N 1015

suit forlibel. The case, insistsSearle, is exactlythe reversefor Miss

Murdoch. "Her utteranceis not a commitmentto the truthof the
proposition that on a sunny Sunday afternoon in April of
nineteen-sixteena recentlycommissioned lieutenant.... Further-
more, as she is not committedto its truthshe is not committedto
being able to provide evidence foritstruth"(321-323). The testfor
what is "serious" and what is fictionalis the "internal canons of
criticism"peculiar to each mode of discourse. The question in
everycase is, what counts as a mistake?
If thereneverdid exista Nixon,MissShanahan(and therestof us) are
mistaken.But if thereneverdid existan AndrewChase-White, Miss
Murdochis not mistaken.Again,if SherlockHolmesand Watsongo
fromBakerStreetto PaddingtonStationbya routewhichis geograph-
icallyimpossible,
wewillknowthatConanDoyleblunderedeventhough
he has notblunderedifthereneverwas a veteranof theAfghancam-
paignansweringto thedescription ofJohnWatson,M.D. (331).

It is typicalof Searle to be scrupulous even at the expense of the

distinction(between serious discourse and a work of fiction)he
would maintain.It would seem fromthisexample thatwhat counts
as a mistakein "real life"can also count as a mistakein a novel,and
it is not hard to thinkof novels in which the assertionand descrip-
tionsare held responsibleto all the rules thatapply to articlesin the
New YorkTimes. In certain historical novels, for example, every
detail would be subject to the scrutinyof readers and criticswho
would at everyopportunitybe looking for the chance to say, "but
that'snot the way it was (or is)." One mightreply that when that
happens, we are no longer dealing with fiction,but with history,
but thiswould simplyembroil us in a new argumentabout what is
and is not history.Are those passages in Herodotus and Sallust
where historicalpersonages deliver speeches of which there could
not possibly be a record historyor fiction?Are Herodotus and
Sallust "bad" historians because they indulge in such practices?
Even to ask such questions is to cast doubt on the utilityof the
distinctionwhichforcesthem. One who is committedto the distinc-
tioncan hold on to it by admittingthe existenceof "mixed modes,"
a course Searle takes when he acknowledges that "not all of the
referencesin a work of fictionwill be pretended acts of referring;
some will be real referencesas in the passage fromMiss Murdoch
where she refersto Dublin" (330). But, once thisdoor is opened, it
cannot be closed: an author is free to importwhateverreal world
1016 STANLEY E. FISH

referenceshe likes,and there willbe no rules regardingthe prop-

ortions. It is precisely this freedom of mix and proportion that
makes a taxonomyof genres both possible and uninteresting."Fic-
tional genres," Searle declares, are in part "defined by the nonfic-
tional commitmentsinvolved in the work of fiction.This differ-
ence, say, between the naturalisticnovel, fairytales, works of sci-
ence fiction,surrealisticstories,is in part defined by the extentof
the author's commitmentto represent facts" (331). The trouble
withthisis that the differencescan be endlesslyrefined.As Searle
admits,"As far as thepossibility of the ontologyis concerned, any-
thing goes." He tries to put the brake on by invokinga criterion
that can be applied withinany of the worlds that novelistscreate:
"As faras theacceptabilityof the ontologyis concerned,coherence is
a crucial consideration"(331). By coherence he means consistency,
the degree to which an author honors the contractmade withhis
reader "about how far the horizontalconventionsof fictionbreak
the verticalconnectionsof serious speech." But the contractcan be
broken at will without any loss of acceptability;the reader will
simply(or not so simply)adjust and enterintoa new contractwhose
lifemaybe no longer than the first.7In otherwords,coherence is a
possibility,but not an absolute value and as a notionit doesn't help
us to define or circumscribeanything.
The truthis that Searle protectshis distinctionbetween fictional
and serious utterancesat the expense of itsliterary interest.That is,
the category"workof fiction"finallyhas no content;one can say of
it what Searle says of literature: there is no trait or set of traits
which all works of fictionhave in common and which could con-
stitutethe necessaryand sufficientconditions for being a work of
fiction.Searle himselfsays as much when at the end of the article
he feels "compelled" to make a "final distinction:that between a
workof fictionand fictionaldiscourse. A work of fictionneed not
consistentirelyof, and in general will not consist entirelyof, fic-
tionaldiscourse." At thispoint the hope of isolatingfictionis aban-
doned: "real world" or serious discourse can be found in novels,
and fictionaldiscourse is oftenengaged in by persons operatingin
the "real world," by philosophers who say, "Let us suppose that a
man hammers a nail," and by sales managers who say, "Men, let's

70f course one could argue thatthisis coherence of a kind,but thatwould merely
show that,like unity,coherence is an emptyterm,an attributewe alwaysmanage to
"discover"in any work we happen to like.
 M L N 1017

assume you run into someone who has never seen an encyc-
lopedia...." In short,fictionaldiscourseand workof fictionare not
co-extensivecategoriesbecause fictionaldiscourse is a rigorous no-
tion in a way that work of fictionis not. Therefore one can make
and hold on to a distinctionbetween fictionaldiscourse and serious
discourse withoutin any way helping us to answer questions like
whatis a novel or a storyand how do we tellit froma laundrylist?8
Yet, even if the distinctionisn'tmuch help to the literarycritic,it
stillstands.There is, I thinkwe would all be willingto say,a kind of
discourse that is characterized by the suspension of the rules to
whichspeech acts are normallyheld accountable. The real question
is the statusof those rules when theyare not suspended. What do
they enforce? The answer implicit in Searle's work is that they
enforcea responsibilityto the facts.As far as it goes, thisis unex-
ceptionable and true,but it stillleaves room for another question:
responsibility to what facts?Insofar as he is committedto the prior-
ityof "serious" discourse Searle would have to say to the factsas
theyreally are, but I would say to the factsas the conventionsof
serious discourse stipulatethem to be. I am not claimingthatthere
are no facts,I am merelyraising a question as to their status: do
theyexistoutside conventionsof discourse (whichare then more or
less faithfulto them) or do they follow from the assumptions
embodied in those same conventions? "If there never did exist
a Nixon," says Searle, "Miss Shanahan (and the rest of us) are
mistaken."But suppose someone witha philosophicalturnof mind
were to declare that Nixon as a free and independent agent whose
actionscan be reported and assessed did not exist; that"in fact"the
notionof his agency was a bourgeois myth(one mightsay a fiction)
by means of which a repressivesocietyevaded responsibilityforits
own crimes and tyrannies.It would follow from such a view that
any sentence in which the name Nixon were attached to a finite
preteritetransitiveverb (Nixon said, Nixon rejected, Nixon con-
demned) would be false to the way things really are, would be
mistaken; and any evidence brought forward to substantiateNi-
xon's existence (birthcertificate,photographs,witnessesto his ac-

8Searlehas anotheranswerto thisquestion:"It is theperformance of theutter-

ance actwiththeintention of invokingthehorizontal conventions thatconstitutes
the pretendedperformance of the illocutionary
act" (327). In short,it is fiction
whenan authorintendsittobe so taken;butbySearle'sownaccount,thatintention
wouldbe identifyingof fictionaldiscourseand notof workof fiction.
1018 STANLEY E. FISH

tions) would be inadmissible because the rules of evidence (the

procedures for its stipulation)were derived from (or constituted
by) the same myth.In the face of such a challenge, the New York
Timesand Miss Shanahan could replythatin normal circumstances
persons are assumed to existas independent agents and thatit is in
the contextof thisassumptionthatreportersfunctionand are held
accountable fortheirmistakes.This would be a proper and power-
ful reply,one thatcould be answered only by a wholesale rejection
of "normal circumstances"along with all the "facts"that its asser-
tion entails. No doubt such a rejection would fail, but the failure
would only confirmthe persuasivenessand coherence of the "nor-
mal picture";it would say nothingabout the claim of thatpictureto
be objective.Of course the press is oftencriticizedpreciselybecause
it is not objective; it reads, some complain, as if it were fiction;but
the greaterfictionis indulged in when it is read as if it were objec-
tive fact,as if the standard of fact to which it stroveto be faithful
were naturaland not somethingmade. Searle makes a greatdeal of
the "internalcanons of criticism"governingan utterance.I am only
insistingthat these canons are indeed internal, and that what
countsas a mistakeis a functionof the universeof discoursewithin
whichone speaks, and does not at all touch on the question of what
is ultimately-thatis, outside of and independent of, any universe
of discourse-real. In short, the rules and conventions under
whichspeakers and hearers "normally"operate don't demand that
language be faithfulto the facts;rather,theyspecifythe shape of
thatfidelity(what Gale calls the "real workadayworld"),creatingit,
ratherthan enforcingit.
At this point it mightbe helpful to recall P. I. Strawson'snotion
of "story relative" identification.Consider, says Strawson, "the
followingcase:"

A speaker tells a storywhich he claims to be factual. It begins: "A man

and a boy were standingby a fountain,"and itcontinues:"The man had
a drink."Shall we say thatthe hearer knows which or what particularis
being referredto be the subject expression in the second sentence? We
mightsay so. For, of a certain range of two particulars,the words "the
man" serve to distinguishthe one referredto, by means of a description
which applies only to him.... I shall call it.. . a story-relative,
or, for
short,a relativeidentification.For it is identificationonly relative to a
range of particulars(a range of two members) which is itselfidentified
only as the range of particularsbeing talked about by the speaker....
 M L N 1019

The identification
is withina certainstorytoldbya certainspeaker.It is
identification
withinhisstory;butnotidentification withinhistory.
(Individuals,
New York,1963,p. 5)
What I have been suggestingis thatidentification(or specification
of facts)is always withina story.Some stories,however,are more
prestigiousthan others; and one storyis always the standard one,
the one that presents itselfas uniquely true and is, in general, so
accepted. Other, non-standard,storieswillof course continueto be
told, but theywill be regarded as non-factual,when, in fact,they
will only be non-authorized.
Searle is right,then,to distinguishbetween serious and fictional
discourseon the basis of internalcanons of criticism,but it does not
follow I think that this is a distinctionbetween the real and the
not-so-real;rather,it is one between two systemsof discourse con-
ventions(two stories)whichcertainlycan be differentiated, but not
on a scale of reality.Of course the conventionsof "serious" dis-
course include a claim to be in touch withthe real (thatis whatbeing
the standard storymeans), and thereforeit comes equipped with
evidentiaryprocedures (routinesfor checkingthingsout) to which
membersof itsclass mustbe ready to submit.But these procedures
(whichfictionaldiscourse lacks,makingit different,not less "true")
inhere in the genre and thereforetheycannot be broughtforward
to prove its fidelityto some supraconventionalreality.The point
may be obscured by the fact (I do not shrinkfromthe word) that
the fictionof thisgenre's statusas somethingnatural (not made) is
one to which we "normally"subscribe; but this only means that of
the realitiesconstitutedby a varietyof discourse conventionsit is
the most popular. That is why we give it the names we do-"real
workaday world," "normal circumstances," "ordinary usage,"
etc.-and whySearle's argumentsare so persuasive: he speaks to us
fromwithinit. But these names are attemptsto fix(or reify)some-
thing,not proof thatitis fixed,and indeed the notionof normal or
ordinarycircumstancesis continuallybeing challenged by anyone
(Freud, Marx, Levi-Strauss)who says,to us, "Now the real factsof
the matterare...." Even in the real-workaday(as opposed to the
philosopher's) world, where the operative assumption is that the
factsare stable and once-and-for-allspecifiable,we veryoftensub-
scribeto differentversionsof what those factsare. "Ordinarily"we
hold a man responsibleforwhat he does, "does" being defined bya
rathercrude standard of "eyeballing,"but in the law, whichis dedi-
1020 STANLEY E. FISH

cated to the finding(what a wonderfullyambiguous word) of facts,

responsibilityis attenuated in two directions.A man who partici-
pates in a felonymay be found guiltyof a murder even though he
did not wield or even see the weapon, and conspiracycan be proven
even in the absence of any overt action. On the other hand acts
that,according to our "usual" ways of thinking,have indisputably
been performedby a single individual,are excused by "mitigating
circumstances"or even denied because the agent is said not to have
been responsible. Lawyers have had a limitedsuccess arguing that
the crime of which their client stands accused has "in fact" been
committedby society. To be sure, that argument has not been
generally accepted, but it could happen, although if it did, the
judicial systemwould have to softenthe claims usuallymade forits
processes.
A judge in Massachusettsrules that under the law only women
can be prosecuted forprostitution;a woman in Californiaprompt-
ly opens a male bordello, at once upholding and challenging the
realitythe law has created. For Searle thiswould be an instanceof
the way in which institutionsbring facts into being. Institutional
facts,by his definition,are distinguished from brute or natural
factsbecause there is "no simple set of statementsabout physicalor
psychologicalpropertiesof statesof affairsto whichthe statements
of factssuch as these are reducible" (51). "They are indeed facts;
but theirexistence,unlike the existenceof brute facts,presupposes
the existence of certain human institutions.It is only given the
institutionof marriage that certain forms of behavior constitute
Mr. Smith's marryingMiss Jones." What I am saying is that the
facts Searle would cite as "brute," the facts stipulated by the
standardstory,are also institutional,and thatthe power of the Law
to declare a man and woman husband and wifeis on a par withthe
(institutional)power of the standard storyto declare that Richard
Nixon exists. Moreover, nothing in the theory of Speech Acts
directs us to distinguishthese declarations from one another or
from the declaration by Miss Murdoch of the existence of Lieu-
tenantAndrew Chase-White.Of course thereare distinctionsto be
made, and we do, in fact,make them,and thatis whySearle's argu-
mentseems at firstso obviouslyright.But itsrightnessis a function
stipulationof the standard storyas uniquely
of the extra-theoretical
true. That is, I am not denying that what will and will not be
accepted as true is determined by the standard story.I am only
pointingout thatitsbeing (or telling;it amounts to the same thing)
 M L N 1021

the truthis not a matterof a special relationshipit bears to the

world (the world does not impose it on us), but of a special rela-
tionshipit bears to its users.
In large part, my argument follows from Wittgenstein'snotion
of a "language game" in which words are responsible not to what
is real, but to what has been laid down as real (as pickoutable)by a
set of constitutiverules; the players of the game are able to agree
thattheymean the same thingsby theirwords not because theysee
the same things,in some absolute phenomenal sense, but because
they are predisposed by the fact of being in the game (of being
parties to the standard story) to "see them," to pick them out.
Interestinglyenough, there is more than a littlesupport for this
view in Searle's own writings,and especiallyin his theoryof refer-
ence. In SpeechActsSearle inquires into "the necessaryconditions
for the performanceof the speech act of definitereference." By
one account,a successfulreferenceis "a kind of disguised assertion
of a true uniquely existentialproposition,i.e., a propositionassert-
ing the existenceof one and onlyone object satisfying a certaindes-
cription"(83). But this,Searle argues, is to confuse referringwith
describing.The aim of a descriptionis to characterizean object so
thatit can be distinguishedfromall other objects in the world; the
aim of a referenceis to characterizean object in such a way as to
identifyit to a person (or persons) withwhom you share a situation.
Thus in a referringexpression the definitearticle"the" is a "con-
ventional device indicating the speaker's intentionto refer to a
single object,not an indicationthat the descriptorwhich followsis
true of only one object" (84). In other words the descriptordoes
not look to the object as it mightexist neutrallyin space, but to the
object as it existsin a context;the "factswhichone must possess in
order to refer"are contextspecific;theyare not facts"about some
independentlyidentifiedobject."
This account of referencecould be cited in support of my posi-
tionwere it not firmlyattached by Searle to the axiom of existence:
"There must exist an object to be referredto." What thismeans is
that the identifyingcapacity of a referringexpression ultimately
depends on (even if it is not in the business of asserting)the exis-
tence of one and only one object satisfyinga certaindescription.In
other words, the "context"in Searle's theoryis ultimatelythe real
world (all referringexpressions have to link up to it sooner or
later), although it seems to me that littleis lost if the context is
thoughtof as a storythat has been told aboutthe real world. The
1022 STANLEY E. FISH

emended account would then be indistinguishablefrom Searle's

theoryoffictionalreference:
But how is it possible foran author to "create" fictionalcharactersout of
thin air, as it were? To answer this let us go back to the passage from
Miss Murdoch. The second sentence begins, "So thought Second
LieutenantAndrew Chase-White."Now in thispassage Murdoch uses a
proper name, a paradigm-referringexpression.... One of the con-
ditionson the successfulperformanceof the speech act of referenceis
thatthere must exist an object to be referredto. To the extentthat we
share in the pretense, we will also pretend that there is a lieutenant
named Andrew Chase-White living in Dublin in 1916. It is the pre-
tended referencewhich creates the fictionalcharacter and the shared
pretensewhich enables us to talk about the character.(329-330)

This seems to me to be exactly right not only for fictionbut for

discourse in general. "Shared pretense" is what enables us to talk
about anythingat all. When we communicate it is because we are
parties to a set of discourse agreements which are in effectdeci-
sions as to what can be stipulatedas a fact.It is those decisions and
the agreement to abide by them, rather than the availabilityof
substance, that make it possible for us to refer,whether we are
novelistsor reportersforTheNew YorkTimes.One mightobject that
this has the consequence of making all discourse fictional;but it
would be just as accurate to say that it makes all discourse serious,
and it would be betterstillto say thatit puts all discourse on a par.
One cannot term the standard storya pretense withoutimplying
that there is another storythat is not. The verywords "pretense,"
"serious" and "fictional"have built into them the absolute opposi-
tion I have been at pains to deny, between language thatis true to
some extra-institutional realityand language thatis not. This is not,
however,to deny thata standard of truthexistsand thatby invok-
ing it we can distinguishbetween differentkinds of discourse: it is
just thatthe standard is not brute,but institutional, not natural,but
made. What is remarkable is how littlethis changes: facts,conse-
quences, responsibilities,theydo not fallaway,theyproliferateand
make the world-every world-alive with the significancesour
stories(standard and otherwise)create.
In all of this I take Searle several steps furtherthan he would
want to go. Characteristicallyhis argumentsrest on a basic opposi-
tion: brute factsvs. institutionalfacts,regulativerules vs. constitut-
ive rules,serious discoursevs. fictionaldiscourse,the naturalvs. the
 M L N 1023

conventional.In each case, the lefthand termstandsforsomething

thatis available outside of language, somethingwithwhichsystems
of discourse of whateverkind must touch base-Reality, the Real
World,Objective Fact. What I am suggestingis thatthese lefthand
termsare merely disguised formsof the termson the right,that
theircontentis not natural but made, thatwhatwe know is not the
world,but storiesabout the world,thatno use of language matches
reality,but that all uses of language are interpretationsof reality.
It followsnecessarilythat Speech Act theoryis one of those in-
terpretations(or stories), and that it is a description not of the
truth,but of one attemptto make it manageable, or, more proper-
ly,to make it. As an interpretation,however,it has a special status,
since its contentsare the rules that make all other interpretations
possible.That is, the fictionit embodies and thereforepresupposes
(it is removed fromexamination) is intelligibility
itself.Speech Act
rules do not regulate meaning, but constituteit. To put it another
way,the ideology of Speech Act theoryis meaning,the assumption
of sense and of the possibilityof its transmission.Of course that
assumptionis correct(I am now depending on it), but it is correct
because as members of speech act communitieswe are parties to
rules that enforce it, rules that make sense rather than merely
conformingto it. Once sense is made it becomes possible to forget
its origins,and when that happens the mythof ordinarylanguage
has established itself,and established too the inferiorand sub-
sidiarystatusof whateverdeparts fromit.

IV. Conclusion

If Speech Act theoryis itselfan interpretation,then it cannot

possiblyserve as an all purpose interpretivekey. And indeed the
emphasisof thispaper seems to have shiftedfromthe abuses of the
theoryto an enumerationof all the thingsitcan't do (theyof course
implyone another): it can't tell us anythingabout what happens
afteran illocutionaryact has been performed(itis not a rhetoric);it
can't tellus anythingabout the inner lifeof the performer(it is not
a psychology);it can't serve as the basis of a stylistics;it can't be
elaborated into a poetics of narrative; it can't help us to tell the
differencebetween literatureand non-literature;it can't distin-
guish between serious discourse and a work of fiction,and it can-
not, without cheating, separate fiction from fact. The question
forcesitself:what can it do? Well, one thingit can do is allow us to
1024 STANLEY E. FISH

talk with some precision about what is happening in Coriolanus,

althoughafterthe argumentsof the past few pages, one may won-
der how thatis possible. The explanation is simple: Coriolanus,as I
have said before,is a Speech Act play. By thisI don't mean thatit is
fullof speech acts (by definitionthisis true of any play,or poem or
essay, or novel) but that it is about speech acts, the rules of their
performance,the price one pays for obeying those rules, the im-
possibilityof ignoring or refusing them and still remaining a
memberof the community.It is also about whatthe theoryis about,
language and its power: the power to make the world ratherthan
mirrorit,to bringabout statesof affairsratherthan reportthem,to
constituteinstitutionsratherthan (or as well as) servethem. We see
this everywhere,but most powerfullyin III,iii when in frenzied
unison the citizens cry again and again "It shall be so." Finally
Coriolanusis a Speech Act play in its narrowness.The course of its
action turnson the execution or misexecutionof illocutionaryacts;
the consequences thatbefallthe charactersare the consequences of
those acts; they follow necessarilyand predictably;they are not
contingentand thereforethey are not surprising.(Indeed it is a
feature of the play that everyone knows what will happen in ad-
vance.) So rigorous is the play's movement,so lackingin accident,
coincidence,and contingency,thatitis questionable whetheror not
it is a true tragedy,or even in the usual sense, a drama.
One mightsay then thatthe power of the play is a functionof its
limitations,and these are point by point the limitationsof Speech
Act theory: the stopping short of perlocutionary effects (the
banishingis not a response to what Coriolanus does, but another
name for it), the silence on the question of the inner life (a space
Coriolanus findsalready occupied by a public language), the exclu-
sive focuson acts thatcan be performedsimply(and only)byinvok-
ing a conventional(thatis, specifiedin advance) procedure. This fit
betweenthe play and the theoryaccounts forwhateverillumination
the presentanalysishas been able to provide, and it is also the rea-
son whywe should be waryof concluding fromthe analysisthatwe
are in possession of a new interpretivekey. Speech Act theoryis an
account of the conditionsof intelligibility,
of whatit means to mean
in a community,of the procedures whichmustbe institutedbefore
one can even be said to be understood. In a great manytextsthose
conditionsand procedures are presupposed; theyare not put be-
fore us for consideration,and the emphasis fallson what happens
 M L N 1025

or can happen after they have been met and invoked. It follows
thatwhilea Speech Act analysisof such textswillalwaysbe possible,
itwillalso be trivial,(a mere listof the occurrenceor distributionof
kindsof acts),because while it is the conditionsof intelligibility
that
make all texts possible, not all texts are about those conditions.
Coriolanusis about those conditions, and it goes the theory one
betterby also being about their fragility.It does not hide fromus
the factthat its own intelligibility rests on nothingfirmerthan an
agreement (foreverbeing renewed) to say "Good Morrow."9
TheJohnsHopkinsUniversity

9An earlierand shorterversionof thispaper was givenat the 1974 meetingof the
Midwest Modern Language Association in Chicago. The occasion was a panel de-
voted to the subject SpeechAct Theoryand LiteraryCriticism,headed by Michael
Hancher. The proceedings, including a discussion between the panelists and the
audience, will be published in a forthcomingissue of Centrum,edited by Michael
Hancher, English Department,Universityof Minnesota.