A reading of 1984 articles by Silvana Borutti and Herman Parret
What is it about?
An escalation of Silvana Borutti's assault on the idealization of pragmatics out of the realm of actual language use, followed by an attempt to expand Gricean implicature into a series of increasingly complex levels (illocutionary, perlocutionary, and metalocutionary) as an example of how pragmatics might move past idealism, or what in Performative Linguistics (the monograph in which I work out the implications of this article more fully) I call "constative linguistics."
Why is it important?
The idealizing impulse in linguistics is relentless. Every time any influential thinker (Saussure, Austin, Grice) moves too close to actual language use, the idealizing impulse steps in to render that move powerless. This article, and Performative Linguistics (2003) as its monograph expansion, are attempts not only to track that impulse but to counteract its harmful effects on thinking about language.