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Searle, John R. (1975) - The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse PDF
Searle, John R. (1975) - The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse PDF
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The Logical Statusof FictionalDiscourse
JohnR. Searle
I
BELIEVE THATspeakingor writing in per-
in a languageconsists
formingspeech acts of a quite specifickind called "illocutionary
acts." These include makingstatements,askingquestions,giving
orders, making promises,apologizing, thanking,and so on. I also
believethatthereis a systematicset of relationships
betweenthe mean-
ings of the words and sentenceswe utterand the illocutionaryacts we
performin the utteranceof thosewords and sentences.'
Now foranybodywho holds such a view the existenceof fictional
discourseposes a difficult
problem. We mightput the problemin the
formof a paradox: how can it be both the case that words and other
elementsin a fictionalstoryhave theirordinarymeaningsand yet the
rulesthatattachto thosewordsand otherelementsand determinetheir
meanings are not complied with: how can it be the case in "Little
Red Riding Hood" both that "red" means red and yet that the rules
correlating"red" withred are not in force? This is onlya preliminary
formulationof our questionand we shall have to attack the question
more vigorouslybeforewe can even get a careful formulationof it.
Beforedoing that, however,it is necessaryto make a few elementary
distinctions.
The DistinctionBetween Fiction and Literature: Some worksof fic-
tion are literaryworks,some are not. Nowadays most worksof litera-
ture are fictional,but by no means all worksof literatureare fictional.
Most comic books and jokes are examplesof fictionbut not literature:
In Cold Blood and Armiesof theNightqualifyas literaturebut are not
fictional.Because mostliteraryworksare fictionalit is possibleto con-
fuse a definitionof fictionwith a definitionof literature,but the
existenceof examplesof fictionwhichare notliteratureand of examples
II
3 Iris Murdoch, The Red and the Green (New York, 1965), p. 3. This and other
examples of fictionused in this article were deliberatelychosen at random, in the
belief that theoriesof language should be able to deal with any text at all and not
just with speciallyselected examples.
4 For a more thorough exposition of these and similar rules, see Searle, ibid.,
Ch. 3-
THE LOGICAL STATUS OF FICTIONAL DISCOURSE 323
7 A. Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Garden City, N. Y., 1932),
II, 596.
328 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
III
IV
The preceding analysis leaves one crucial question unanswered:
whybother? That is, whydo we attachsuch importanceand effortto
texts which contain largelypretendedspeech acts? The reader who
has followedmy argumentthis far will not be surprisedto hear that
I do not thinkthereis any simpleor even singleanswerto that ques-
tion. Part of the answer would have to do with the crucial role,
usuallyunderestimated, that imaginationplays in human life,and the
equally crucial role that shared productsof the imaginationplay in
human social life. And one aspect of the role that such productsplay
derivesfromthe fact that serious (i.e., nonfictional)speech acts can
be conveyedby fictionaltexts,even though the conveyedspeech act
is not representedin the text. Almost any importantwork of fiction
conveysa "message" or "messages" which are conveyedby the text
but are not in the text. Only in such children'sstoriesas contain the
concluding"and the moral of the storyis ..." or in tiresomelydidactic
authorssuch as Tolstoy do we get an explicit representation of the
seriousspeech acts which it is the point (or the main point) of the
fictionaltextto convey. Literarycriticshave explained on an ad hoc
and particularisticbasis how the author conveysa seriousspeech act
throughthe performanceof the pretendedspeech acts whichconstitute
the workof fiction,but thereis as yetno generaltheoryof the mechan-
isms by which such serious illocutionaryintentionsare conveyedby
pretendedillocutions.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,
BERKELEY