Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-03T23:06:11.109Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Can Travis' “Generative Theory of Illocutions” be Generative?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2010

James A. McGilvray
James A. McGilvray
Affiliation:
McGill University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Travis' Saying and Understanding offers the foundations for what he hopes will be a generative theory of illocutions. I want to criticize the “generative” character of the theory.

Note first that I am not going to criticize the theory because — as is true of Saying and Understanding — there are no rules for its generation, nothing to let us see how it will work. The book is only a discussion of the foundations of such a theory. My criticism is that I do not see how it can be generative, given what Travis expects it to do. So in this critique I shall outline what I think he expects it to do, how he expects it to work, and why I think it cannot.

Type
Études Critiques—Critical Notices
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , December 1977 , pp. 733 - 742
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)