Geoffrey N.

Leech

Language and Tact

Series A: General & Theoretical Papers

ISSN 1435-6473
Essen: LAUD 1977 (2nd ed. with divergent page numbering 2013)
Paper No. 46

Universität Duisburg-Essen
  

Geoffrey N. Leech

University of Lancaster

Language and Tact

Copyright by the author Reproduced by LAUD

1977 (2nd ed. with divergent page numbering 2013) Linguistic Agency
Series A University of Duisburg-Essen
General and Theoretical FB Geisteswissenschaften
Paper No. 46 Universitätsstr. 12
D- 45117 Essen

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ii
Geoffrey N. Leech

Language and Tact

1. Introduction
As its broader aim, this paper will try to advance a particular view (or, more grandly, a
particular theory) of the relation between semantics and pragmatics; more narrowly it will
be concerned with the way a certain type of tactful behaviour operates in the conveying and
interpreting of 'coercive' utterances. I shall begin with the broad aim, and work towards the
narrower one: this is because it will be necessary first of all to establish my own position as
a tenable rival to other prevailing views of the relation between semantics and pragmatics.
Firstly, then, what is the distinction between semantics and pragmatics? Without
reverting to the original Morris definitions,1 we can agree (those of us who believe that the
distinction exists!) that semantics is the study of what a piece of language means; while
pragmatics studies what a piece of language means to a given person - to the speaker or
addressee in a given speech situation. In other words, the semantic structure of a sentence
specifies what that sentence means as a structure in a given language, in abstraction from
speaker and addressee; whereas pragmatics deals with that meaning as it is interpreted
interactively in a given speech situation.
Already, in putting matters in this apparently commonsense way, I am imposing a
particular view of the relation of semantics to pragmatics: namely that semantics is logically
prior to pragmatics; that it is easier to work from the abstract logical sense of a sentence to
its pragmatic force (to insist on a terminological distinction between the two meanings of
'meaning') than to work from the pragmatic force to the abstract sense. An illustration will
show how this is:
(1) I will be here at 9.15 tomorrow.
(2) You will be here at 9.15 tomorrow.
(3) He will be here by 9.15 tomorrow.
(4) They will be here by 9.15 tomorrow.

(1a) Can' t I borrow the money?

(2a) Can't you borrow the money?
(3a) Can't he borrow the money?
(4a) Can't they borrow the money?

1 Morris (1938), p. 6.
1
As far as abstract, logical meaning is concerned, sentences (1) - (4) can all be understood in
the same way, apart from the change of personal pronoun. The intentional or predictive
meaning of will is present in all cases. Similarly, the meanings of permission and possibility
are equally present in the can of sentences (1a) - (4a)? Pragmatics enters into the picture,
however, when we ask how would such sentences be likely to be practically interpreted in a
conversational context. These sentences referring to the speaker and hearer (i.e. containing
1st person and 2nd person forms) would acquire a special pragmatic force, in distinction from
the sentences with third person subjects. Thus (1) is likely to have the force of a promise;
(2) can have the force of a curt command; (1a) conveys the force of a request for
permission; (2a) probably carries the force of a rather impatient suggestion. These examples
show how (a) one can make generalisations about meaning at the level of logical sense; and
how (b) these generalisations cut across other generalisations that one can make at the
pragmatic level [e.g. the broad generalisation (spelt out by Gordon and Lakoff)2 that one can
request something by asking about the hearer's ability or willingness to do it; or else by
saying that you (the speaker) want it to happen]. But a more important point is that the
interrelations between the semantic and pragmatic generalisations are not arbitrary, but that
indeed the pragmatic interpretation is made available through the logical sense. For
example, it is because (2a) is a question about the possibility of the adressee's doing
something for the speaker that (2a) acquires (or has acquired) a coercive force. Although
this is intuitively fairly obvious, it is the job of pragmatics, I suggest, to explain the because
above: i.e. the reason why such - and- such logical senses manage to convey such and-such
pragmatic forces.

2. ‘Direct and Indirect Illocutions' versus 'Sense and Force'

The picture of the relation between semantics and pragmatics I have presented, which might
be crudely depicted as follows,

(I) A B
logico-pragmatic
Logical Pragmatic
mapping rules
sense force

takes for granted a further theoretical standpoint with which others would disagree. This is
the assumption that A and B are different types of phenomenon: that B is a semantic
representation (which we may think of as a formula of formal logic, or, perhaps, a phrase
marker representing the 'deep structure' of a sentence); while B is what I shall provisionally
describe as a set of coordinates in 'pragmatic space' (a description to be elucidated later) . In
contrast to this position, the type of linguistic phenomenon illustrated by (1) - (4) and (1a) -

2 Gordon and Lakoff (1971). See pp. 5-6 below.

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(4a) above is often discussed (e.g. by Searle 1975, Gordon and Lakoff, 1972, and Sadock,
1974) in the terminology of DIRECT and INDIRECT ILLOCUTIONS. The implication of
this terminology is that A and B in the diagram are the same sort of thing: viz. They are
both illocutions or speech-acts. For example,
(5) Can you play the piano?
interpreted as a question about the addressee's ability to play the piano, is termed a direct
illocution; as a request (roughly equivalent to Please play the piano) it is termed an indirect
illocution. In Searle's words (1975), indirect speech acts are "cases in which one
illocutionary act is performed indirectly by way of performing another" (p. 150). Thus,
Searle is happy to say that in cases like (5) "the speaker issues a directive by way of asking
a question" (p.70):
(II)

Direct Indirect
Illocution by means Illocution
of

3. Searle’s Approach Compared With the Present One

Although much of what I have to say here is derivative from, or inspired by, Searle’s
approach to ‘indirect illocutions’, it is precisely this assumption, that A and B are both
speech acts, that I want to question. For Searle, a speech act is something defined by a set of
felicity conditions; thus for a ‘directive’ speech act, such as Sit down, the basic conditions
are as follows (1975:71):
Preparatory condition: a is able to perform X
Sincerity condition: s wants a to do X
Propositional content condition: s predicates a future act X of a
Essential condition: Counts as an attempt by s to get a to do X
Abbreviations: s = speaker, a = addressee, X = propositional content. (These are my
abbreviations, not Searle’s; I shall continue to use them throughout this paper).
Within Searle’s speech act theory, certain general classes of speech act may be
categorized into sub-classes, each speech act type being distinct, by at least one condition,
from every other. Within the ‘directive’ category, for example, a command is distinct from a
request, in that s is in a position of authority over a; a piece of advice differs from a request
in that it does not count as an attempt by s to get a to do X (a piece of advice, that is, is
simply offered for a to accept or disregard as he wishes)3. What reinforces the Searlesque

3 The dependence, in Searle, of illocutionary categories on the identification of illocutionary verbs is

revealed in the following quotation (1969: my italics): "... it is important to realise that one and the same
3
categorisation into discrete speech act types is the assumption, which he appears to foster, of
a correspondence between verbs in the English language and speech acts. There is a strong
assumption, that is, that because there is a verb promise in English, there is a discrete speech
act type of ‘promising’ in English. And the justification of this assumption probably relies a
great deal on the possibility of using such verbs performatively:
(1) I will be here at 9.15 tomorrow.
(6) I promise that I will be here at 9.15 tomorrow.
It is easy to persuade oneself that (6) represents a particular speech act (promising) in its
explicit ‘Canonical’ form, and that to the extent that (1) can act in a '"ay equivalent to (I) l,
(1) is also an instance of that speech act.
I wish to take issue with this position on two grounds, one observational and one
theoretical. First, it seems to me that the yes- or- no conditions imposed by a Searlesque
speech- act typology do not justly represent the shifting, continuously variable nature of
pragmatic illocutionary force. Is it, for example, always possible to decide whether we are
dealing with a request (where s has no authority over a) and a command (where he does)?
Where does one draw the line between:
(7) Sit down.
(8) Will you sit down!
(9) Please sit down.
(10) Why don’t you sit down?
(11) Would you kindly sit down? etc.
Clearly no line can be drawn because authority (whether regarded -as social or
psychological) is a relative rather than absolute matter. Another example of this speech- act
indeterminacy is the uncertain boundary between a directive and a piece of advice:
(12) Why don't you take your sleeping pill?
Or consider (13), poised between invitation and suggestion:
(13) How would you like to come outside and lock at my marrows?
or (14), poised between request and invitation:
(14) Would you like to type this letter for me?
Surely an essential point about such indirect utterances is that they are not meant to be
determinate4. 'On the record', (14) assumes that typing a letter is a pleasant, self-fulfilling

utterance may constitute the performance of several different illocutionary acts. There may be several
non-synonymous illocutionary verbs that correctly characterize the utterance."
4 Corroboration for this indeterminacy is found in Brown and Levinson (1974:13): " ... if an actor goes
'off- record' in doing A, then there is more than one unambiguously attributable intention so that the
actor cannot be held to have committed himself to a particular intent. So, for instance, if I say ‘Damn,
I'm out of cash, I forgot to go to the bank today', I may be intending to get you to loan me some cash,
4
thing for a to do. 'Off the record', (14) May or may not amount to something very close to a
command. (Suppose, for example, that it is spoken not to the new office secretary, but to
one's 9-year - old daughter who is dying to use her new toy typewriter). But whatever the
context may be, it would be totally unsubtle and misleading to say that (14) is a directive
performed by means of a question.
My second objection, a more theoretical one, is that to assume that corresponding to
every performative verb there is an illocution in social reality is to adhere to a position of
naive realism from which on e might similarly argue that because the English language has
the nouns wood and forest, or the nouns hill and mountain, there must be clear-cut natural
geographical categories corresponding to these terms. From this parallel let us learn that a
language, in the area of speech-act verbs, as elsewhere, is capable of imposing discrete
boundaries on continuous phenomena. Two scales in particular which have a defining role
in pragmatic force are:
(1) Cost/benefit scale, i.e. the scale which specifies how much the act
referred to in the propositional content (X) of the speech act is judged
to cost or benefit s or a5, and requesting (This scale for example,
defines a difference between 'advising', where X is judged to benefit a,
and requesting, where X is judged to benefit s.
(2) Optionality scale, i.e. the sca1e which specifies how far the
performance of X is at the choice of s or a. (For examp1e, a 'command’
commits a to undertake some action in the way that a 'request' does not.
Similarly, 'promising' commits s unconditionally to undertake an
action, in contrast to 'offering').
A third scale, the scale of politeness, is c1ear1y in part a function of
scales (1) and (2). If we hold the cost/benefit factor constant, and
increase the optiona1ity factor, the degree of politeness is increased:
(15) Peel these potatoes! LESS POLITE
Will you peel these potatoes?
Would you mind peeling these potatoes?
I wonder if you would be good enough ----? etc. MORE POLITE

but I cannot be held to have committed myself to that intent (as you would discover were you to
challenge me with 'This is the seventeenth time you've asked me to lend you money'). Linguistic
realizations of off-record strategies include metaphor and irony, rhetorical questions, understatement,
tautologies, all kinds of 'hints' as to what a speaker wants or means to communicate, without doing so
directly, so that meaning is, to some degree, negotiable."
5 The 'cost/benefit' factor corresponds to the sociolinguistic variable 'R' in Brown and Levinson (1974:
19): "the absolute ranking ... of the impositions in the particular culture".
5
The imperative mood is the zero point for our scale of optiona1ity, for s, in using an
imperative, allows a no right of refusal. If now we hold the optionality factor constant (by
sticking to the imperative), and move along the cost/benefit scale, an increase in politeness
results:
(16) Peel these potatoes! Cost to a Impolite
Come here!
Sit down!
Look at this!
Have some more cake!
Enjoy your holiday! Benefit to a Polite
From ‘commands’ at the top of the scale we move towards ‘invitations’ and ‘good wishes’.
However, the question of how to draw a precise line between commands, requests,
invitations, etc. becomes meaningless when we are confronted by variation such as is
illustrated in (15) and (16).

4. Gordon and Lakoff’s Conversational Postulates

If we reject the clear-cut boundaries of Searle’s indirect speech acts, we must equally reject
the approach of Gordon and Lakoff (1972), for whom the A and B in diagrams (I) and (II)
are deep structures (or logical structures), expressed in symbolic logical notation. Such
structures, following the performative hypothesis of generative semantics, have
illocutionary verbs as their highest predicates, as shown in the following rules:
(17) (a.) SAY (a, b, want (a, Q))*à request (a, b, Q)
(b.) ASK (a, b, can (b, Q))*à request (a, b, Q)
These rules, called conversational postulates by Gordon and Lakoff, are informally and
more generally expressed in the statement:
(18) One can convey a request by (a) asserting a speaker-based
sincerity condition or (b) questioning a hearer-based sincerity
condition. (p. 86).
The asterisk in the formula indicates that “the conversationally implied meaning... can be
conveyed only if the literal meaning... is not intended to be conveyed and if the hearer
assumes that it is not”. (p. 87). In other words, Gordon and Lakoff differ from Searle in
seeing the ‘direct’ (‘literal’) and ‘indirect’ meanings as mutually exclusive, such that a
sentence like
(19) Will you take out the garbage?
is ambigious. For Searle, (19) is a request expressed by way of a question; for Gordon and
Lakoff, it is either the one thing or the other. I find this consequence of their approach
untenable, in that it conflicts with what I have already said about the strategic indeterminacy
of such illocutions.
6
For Gordon and Lakoff, therefore, the diagram corresponding to diagrams (I) and (II) above
will appear like this:
(III) A B

conversational
Logical postulate Logical
structure structure

5. Sadock's 'Extended Performative Hypothesis

Within the generative semantics model, Gordon and Lakoff's conversationa1-postulate
hypothesis has been challenged by what may be called the 'extended performative
hypothesis', associated with Sadock (1969, 1974) and others. If adopting the performative
hypothesis, we suppose that every sentence has in its deep or 1ogical structure a
performative verb representing its illocutionary force, and a subject representing s, (so that
X in deep structure appears as I state/promise etc. to you that X), then it is only one stage
further than that to suppose that an INDIRECT i11ocution may be represented, in the form
of a performative c1ause, in the deepest or 1ogical structure of the sentence which conveys
it. In this account, the re1ation between direct and indirect illocution A and B) is shown by
their both having a common surface structure derivation:

A B

(transformational
logical derivations) logical
structure structure

surface
structure

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To make sense of this diagram, imagine that sentences beginning Why don't you are
ambiguous between a question and a suggestion sense, and that A, B, and C are as follows:
(20) A: 'I request of you that you tel1 me what is the reason why you
do not sell your car.’
B: I suggest to you that you ought to se11 your car.'
C: Why don 't you sell your car?
Sadock's attempts to re1ate direct and in direct i11ocutions transformationally are more
persuasive in cases of syntactic 'hybridization', where the overt (surface structure) form of a
sentence contains traces of both a direct and an indirect speech- act.6
For example,
(21) Sell your car, why don't you?
displays characteristics both of an imperative and of a question. But on the question of
ambiguity versus indeterminacy, Sadock is in the same position as Gordon and Lakoff.

6. Relation between Sense and Force

Having given some attention to the nature of A and B in diagrams (I) - (IV) , and contrasted
the sense/force Opposition with the perhaps more orthodox distinction between direct and
indirect illocutions,7 I now turn to the question of how A (logical sense) and B (pragmatic
force) are related. The logico-syntactic approaches of Gordon and Lakoff and Sadock are on
the whole unilluminating.8 Sadock and others interested in a transformational account of
indirect illocutions have not gone beyond a sketchy account of how the deep structures
might look, and an even sketchier account of how the transformations might work.
Moreover, this approach fails to explain why a sentence which overtly looks like an instance
of one kind of speech act actually comes to be interpreted as an instance of another. Gordon
and Lakoff deserve credit for providing one or two general though fallible rules [i.e.
conversational postulates such as (18)] for mapping direct on to indirect illocutions. But
even these postulates are unexplanatory, in that, for example, as far as Gordon and Lakoff
are concerned, a rule like (18) is purely an arbitrary fact about language. They do not
explain why, for instance, (18) is roughly correct, in contrast to an incorrect postulate such
as (18a):

6 Sadock (1974) in fact restricts his treatment to cases of what I term 'hybridization', e.g. cases where an
'indirect directive' in the form of a question has syntactic reflexes of imperativeness. Thus Can you close
the door? has imperative characteristics in accepting medial please (can you please close the door?) and
in being capable of 'fracture' (Close the door, can you?).
7 Orthodox, that is, in terms of recent work in the U.S.A. In German linguistics, on the other hand it is
common to make the Separation between 'sense' and 'force' (semantics vs. pragmatics) assumed here.
See Habermas (1972: 210), Wunderlich (1971: 178).
8 See Leech (forthcoming: review of Sadock (1974) and Cole and Morgan (1975) in Journal of
Linguistics.
8
(18a) *0ne can convey a request by (a) asserting a hearer-based sincerity condition or (b)
questioning a speaker- based sincerity condition:
According to (18a), (22) - (24) are pragmatically well-formed requests:
(22) Do I want to wear your best shoes?
(23) Your are willing to fetch the newspaper.
The fact that they could never be interpreted as such is something worthy of explanation, by
some more general means than that of an arbitrary 'postulate'.

7. Explanation of 'Indirectness' by Conversational Principles

It is in seeking a deeper explanation for such facts of usage, that Searle goes significantly
beyond Sadock, Gordon and Lakoff. His approach is based on his own theory of speech
acts, together with Grice's 'Logic and Conversation' (1975).
For Grice, the relation between (semantic) sense and (pragmatic) force (or in his own
terms) between 'what is said' and 'what is implicated') is to be traced in terms of certain
general principles of human rational cooperative behaviour. The derivation of a given
implicature from a given sense can be 'worked out', with the help of contextual background
information and the maxims of rational conversational behaviour which Grice brings
together under the heading of the ‘Cooperative Principle’.
His chief maxims are:
(24) 1. Maxim of Quantity: Make your contribution just as
informative as required.
2. Maxim of Quality: Make your contribution one that is true.
3. Maxim of Relation: Be relevant.
4. Maxim of Manner: Avoid obscurity, ambiguity, prolixity. Be
orderly.
If we assume (as we normally do) that an interlocutor observes these principles of
cooperative behaviour, we shall be able to infer, from (25), that (26):
(25) Bill: Where are my car-keys?
Lisa: They're either on your desk or on the window-sill.
(26) Lisa doesn't know whether the keys are on the desktop on the
window- sill. [If she did, she would have told Bill: ( Maxi of
quantity)]
Searle (1975) employs a similar inferential strategy to explain why an addressee
understands Can you pass the salt? as a request (pp. 73-74):
(Note: Again, I standardise abbreviations: s = speaker, a = addressee, X =
propositional content).

9
 STEP 1: S has asked me a question as to whether I have the ability to pass
the salt [fact about t he conversation].
STEP 2: I assume that he is cooperating in the conversation and therefore
his utterance has some aim or point [Principles of conversational
cooperation].
STEP 3: The conversational setting is not such as to indicate a theoretical
interest in my salt- passing ability [factual background
information].
STEP 4: Furthermore, he probably already knows that the answer to the
question is 'yes' [factual background information]; [This step
facilitates the move to Step 5, -but is not essential].
STEP 5: Therefore, his utterance is probably not just a question. It
probably has some illocutionary point [inference from Steps 1, 2,
3 and 4]. What can it be?
STEP 6: A preparatory condition for any directive illocutionary act is the
ability of a to perform the act predicated in the propositional
content condition [theory of speech acts].
STEP 7: Therefore, s has asked me a question the affirmative answer to
which would entail that the preparatory condition for requesting
me to pass the salt is satisfied [inference from Steps 1 and 6].
STEP 8: We are now at dinner and people normally use salt at dinner,
they pass it back and forth, try to get others to pass it back and
forth, etc. [background information].
STEP 9: He has therefore alluded to the satisfaction of a preparatory
condition for a request whose obedience conditions it is quite
likely he wants me to bring about [inference from Steps 7 and 8].
STEP 10: Therefore, in the absence of any other plausible illocutionary
point, he is probably requesting me to pass him the salt
[inference from Steps 5 and 9].
Although Searle modestly calls this a 'bare-bones reconstruction' of the inductive reasoning
by which Can you pass the salt? gets interpreted as a request, it is possible to condense this,
and similar interpretative strategies, into the three main stages:
(A) The rejection of the primary (face-value) force of the sentence (Steps 1-
4) on grounds of its conflict with the Cooperative Principle.
(B) The exploration of a secondary (indirect) force (Steps 5-9).

10
 (C) The acceptance of the secondary force (Step 10) on grounds of its
consistency with the Cooperative Principle, and the absence of a likely
alternative.
This strategy is very similar to that employed in the interpretation of a new metaphor (cf.
Grice, 1975: 53; Sadock, 1974: 97), and just as a metaphor may become diachronically
idiomatised into a 'dead ' or 'sleeping' metaphor, so may an indirect pragmatic force become
institutionalised to the degree that its primary meaning is virtually lost. (An extreme
example of this is the derivation of the politeness marker please from a clause containing
the verb to please.) However, the explanation of how a given sentence comes to have a
given indirect pragmatic force is of more than historical interest: the principle of
systematically conveying either more or less than one 'says' is continually and dynamically
in operation in human communication, just as is the metaphorical principle.9 - As Searle
points out, Can you pass the salt?, however institutionalised as a request it may be, gives
the addressee to some extent a genuine choice of refusal.
Searle's attempt to explain indirect illocutions in terms of general principles of human
communication (including Gricean implicatures) is therefore a welcome advance. But what
is missing from Searle's interpretation above is a systematic account of the role of
politeness.
Searle himself acknowledges that "the chief motivation ... for using these indirect
forms is politeness".
As his account stands, however, Can you pass me the salt? (='Please pass the salt')
patently breaches the Cooperative Principle, both in being periphrastic, and in saying what
is not perspicuous (Maxim of Manner). Furthermore, if spoken in circumstances where it is
manifest that a is capable of passing the salt, this utterance incidentally breaks the Maxim of
Quality, in misleading a by making it appear that s does not know whether a can p ass the
salt or not.
In brief, then, an indirect utterance like Can you pass the salt is highly uncooperative
in terms of Grice's maxims. It can only be made to appear cooperative if we add to Grice's
Maxims an equally or perhaps more powerful maxim enjoining the overriding need for
politeness in certain circumstances. I shall call this maxim the Tact Maxim, and will discuss
its formulation later. For the present, however, we may think of the Tact Maxim as
augmenting Grice's Cooperative Principle to include not only the general canons of
purposive rational behaviour as they apply to cooperative conversation, but also the general
principle of maintaining a social equilibrium whereby such cooperative relations are
facilitated in circumstances where they might otherwise fail. (To put it crudely, Pass the salt

9 Grice (1975: 53) includes metaphorical transfer among his conversational implicatures. Similarly,
Sadock (1974: 97-90) points out the parallelism, in historical evolution, between indirect illocutions and
metaphors.
11
may fail to produce the desired effect, even though a understands what s means; Whereas
Can you pass the salt may, in the same context, succeed).
The apparatus necessary for explaining the relation between logical sense and
pragmatic force therefore includes those elements mentioned by Searle, (Theory of Speech
Acts, Cooperative Principle, contextual information, factual background information,
powers of reasoning), and in addition what I call the 'Tact Maxim'. There are also,
presumably, other interpretive principles of a higher order, of which the Irony Principle is
one:
(27) Do you have to make that noise when you're eating?
The speaker here is not so much observing but exploiting the principle of politeness. That is,
wishing to convey to a that his behaviour is offensive, s makes 'on the record' the polite
assumption that a may be unable to prevent himself from making the noise. This conflicts,
however, with the common social belief that people can avoid such behaviour. Thus by
paying lip-service to politeness, s manages to convey disapproval in a stronger form than
could otherwise be achieved without breach of politeness. The logic of the interpretive
process for this sarcastic remark runs very roughly as follows:
(A) S has asked a whether a is obliged to do X (where X is unpleasant).
(B) Therefore s purports to believe that a may be incapable of avoiding X.
(C) By this means s implicates that a may be blameless of X.
(D) Hence s is being polite.
(E) But everybody knows that people can avoid X, i.e. that the
presumption in (B) is false.
(F) Therefore s has violated the Maxim of Quantity, presumably in order to
uphold the Tact Maxim.
(G) Therefore s really thinks that a CAN avoid doing X.
(H) Therefore by (27) s conveys that
(i) a is doing something unpleasant, viz. X
(ii) a is capable of ceasing to do X.
(I) Therefore s conveys indirectly his wish that a should cease X, and his
blame of a for not so doing.
We can characterise irony, or rather that type of irony known as sarcasm, as a flagrant
breach of the Maxim of Quality in the interest of paying lip-service to the Tact Maxim. By
this exploitation of the Cooperative Principle, the speaker is able to convey a message
which could not normally be conveyed without overt impoliteness.

12
8. Recapitulation
Up to this point, I have tried to argue that the (semantic) sense of a sentence and its
(pragmatic) force are two different kinds of phenomenon, the former being determinately
describable as a logical/semantic structure of the familiar kind, the latter requiring
continuous scales for its description. I have also argued that the mapping from one to the
other is only fully explanatory if accomplished by means of the kind of informal logic
discussed by Grice in "Logic and Conversation" incorporating Grice’s Cooperative
Principle and, in addition, a Tact Maxim. The chief advantage of explaining the mapping in
such terms, rather than (for example), in terms of arbitrary conversational postulates, is that
derivation of force from sense is accomplished by appeal to extremely general principles of
human behaviour, which are not specific to language. Just as Grice’s maxims can be
illustrated in non-linguistic cooperative behaviour (Grice, pp. 47-48) so politeness can be
illustrated in non- linguistic actions such as standing up to allow someone else to sit down,
or opening a door to allow someone pass through a doorway. In this way, the pragmatics of
indirect illocutionary force is seen to be a sub-theory of a more general theory of the
principles underlying human interactive behaviour.
In the remainder of t his paper, I shall sketch a few of the details of this sub-theory, by
saying something, in turn, about the form of (a) the sense of a sentence; (b) the force of a
sentence; (c) the Tact Maxim, and its role in aiding the derivation of (b) from (a).

9. The Logical Form (Sense) of a Sentence

For the present limited purpose, I shall represent the sense of a sentence (or if you preferred,
its deep structure) as a Propositional Content (X) and a Modal Value. One can thus
symbolise, in a manner similar to Searle’s (1969: 31) declaratives, interrogatives, etc. as
follows:
I- (X) for declarative sentences
? (X) for yes/no interrogative sentences
! (X) for imperative sentences
Where this account differs from Searle’s is in regarding the modal value as part of the
locutionary force (=sense) of the utterance, rather than as its illocutionary (or pragmatic)
force. In pragmatic force, a declarative sentence may be an assertion; but it may also be a
promise, warning, request, etc. Such differences are normally not part of the ‘said’
meaning: when I represent
(28) Your husband will return tomorrow.
as –(X) , I simply specify its meaning as ‘It is the case that X’, leaving to pragmatics
whether this is to be construed as a prediction, promise, threat, warning, declaration, etc.
The negative operator can apply either to the propositional content (internal negation,
~(X)) or to the declarative as a whole (external negation, ~[-(X)]); it is also possible for the

13
question operator to include within its scope the Operators ~ and -. Hence the following
distinctions are possible:

Negation:
(29) ~(X) The team hasn’t arrived yet.
(30) ~[-(X)]) The team hasn’t already arrived.
(‘It is not the case that the team has already arrived’)

Interrogation:
(31) ?(X) Has any of the players arrived yet?
(32) ?[-(X)] Have some of the players already arrived?
('Is it the case that some ...?')
(33) ? [~(X)] Haven't any of the players arrived yet?
(Is it the case that none of the players ...?')
(34) ?{~[-(X)}; Haven't some of the players already arrived?
('Isn't it the case that some of the ...?')
These analyses are justified partially by the overt grammatical properties of the sentences
(29) - (34) (for example, - requires the use of assertive forms like some, already), and partly
by their pragmatic implicatures. Thus, in Gricean terms, a negative sentence ~(X) is
normally less informative than its affirmative counterpart (e.g. to say that a book is not blue
is unhelpful if one could equally say it is green). Negation, that is, violates the Maxim of
Quantity unless there is some reason to believe that the equivalent positive statement X is
true. Hence the force of (29) is roughly:
(29a) S reports to a~(X) (the non- arrival of the team),
thereby cancelling the expectation [of s or a] that X.
The force of (30) is slightly more categorical, in that a declarative statement is negated.
Hence it is a positive proposition entertained by s or a, not merely a belief or expectation,
that is being denied. A typical force for (30) would be:
(30a) S denies s’s or a’s [earlier] assumption that X (i.e. that the team
had arrived.)
Of the question types, (31) is the most neutral and straight-forward, having as its most likely
force (31a):
(31a) S asks a to inform s whether or not X (='Some of the players have
already arrived')
In contrast, (32) is a question about a positive proposition rather than about a propositional
content; therefore the most likely force is:
(32a) S asks a whether s’s assumption/expectation/belief is correct. (i.e.
s asks a for confirmation of his belief that X.

14
The negative questions (33) and (34) are more complicated still, in that they are questions
about negative propositions, and therefore carry implications of a further cancelled
assumption;
(33a) S asks whether s’s assumption/expectation/belief that ~(X) is correct; which in
turn means that s wonders whether s has been right in rejecting an [earlier] assumption [by a
or s] that X.
(33) differs from (34) in the same way as (29) differs from (30); i.e. the assertive forms
some and already indicate that someone has actually asserted, not merely believed or
expected X. A fuller account of these relations would bring in politeness, too: a final stage
in the interpretation of, say, (34) is to acknowledge the force of a negative question as a
tactful way of expressing disagreement, disbelief, impatience.
These examples have been presented, however incompletely and inadequately, to show how
the modal value -, ?, etc . can be meaningful at the logical level, and their meanings can be
fairly directly related to pragmatic values (e.g. the logical concept of negation is directly
related to the pragmatic concept of denial).
Within this framework, performative sentences such as (35) - (36) are a special
category of declarative sentences (for this 'constativist' position, see Davidson 1972, Stampe
1975, Leech forthcoming):
(35) I (hereby) promise that you will receive a pension.
(36) I command you to open that door.
(37) I beg you not to disclose my name.
A performative sentence, that is, is one which describes its own speech situation, and
specifies itself as having a particular force.10
So, for example, (I recommand you to! (Y)) has a force approximating to !(Y), and – (I ask
you whether ? (Y)) has a force approximating to !(Y).
Since performative sentences are exceptional in actually describing their own
pragmatic force, the rest of this paper will concentrate on non-performatives. The view that
a performative sentence (either in speech- act theory, or in syntactic theory) is somehow the
standard explicit form in terms of which non-performatives are assigned implicit pragmatic
force is to be firmly rejected, on the grounds that force is not compartmentalisable into
discrete categories corresponding to performative or other speech-act verbs.

10. The Pragmatic Force of a Sentence

How do we provide a system for analysing pragmatic force? Having rejected Searle's speech
act categories as an artificial compartmentalisation of pragmatic force, I may appear
perverse in taking a semantic analysis of speech-act verbs, heavily indebted to Searle, as my

10 See Leech (1976) for a pragmatic explanation of the quasi-equivalence of performative utterances and
parallel utterances with the performative 'prelude' deleted.
15
starting point. However, it is one thing to reject the realist position of 'Because there is a
speech-act (performative) verb X in the language, there must be a distinct speech act
specific to X’; it is quite another thing to go to the other, nominalist, extreme, and to argue
that the meaning of speech-act verbs has no bearing on social reality. In fact, the semantic
analysis of speech-act verbs, although it establishes artificial boundaries such as between
'hills' and 'mountains', is the best guide we have to the factors which enter into the pragmatic
evaluation of utterances. For this reason, it is worthwhile asking what differences of sense
are involved in such sentence sets as:
(38) Bill DECLARED (to Meg) that the coffee was black.
(39) Bill ASKED (Meg) whether the coffee was made.
(40) Bill ORDERED Meg to make the coffee.
(41) Bill REQUESTED Meg to make the coffee.
(42) Bill OFFERED to make the coffee for Meg.
(43) Bill THANKED Meg for making the coffee.
I assume that the choice of different verbs here is similar to the sort of choice a speaker
makes in describing a particular object as blue, mauve, green, etc.: the social-pragmatic
reality, like the perceptual reality of colour, is continuously variable in at least three
dimensions. But the speaker, in making his encoding, has to decide which term is the most
appropriate. That makes the choice of speech-act verb more complex, however, is that the
speaker has to interpret what is in the secondary speaker's (Bill's) mind, and how Bill, in
turn, interprets what is in the secondary hearer's (Meg's) mind. Thus, I suggest, the
difference between (40) and (41) (ordered and requested) is not primarily a question of
whether s is in authority over a, but of whether s allows a a choice in whether to perform X.
With ordered, we understand Bill to deny Meg the option of non-compliance: not in any
absolute sense (since she can disobey the order if she likes), but in the sense that the success
of fulfilment of the speech act Bill has performed commits Meg to carrying out the order.
(Disobedience counts as opting out of the transaction altogether).
With this proviso, viz. that in the semantic analysis we are interpreting s’s and a’s
interpretations of what is going on, I propose the following six as among the component
factors in the meaning of locutive verbs. (Note that I use the same abbreviations as earlier: s
= speaker; a = addressee; X = propositional content of speech act. Also, notice that I follow
(roughly) the terminology of Sinclair and Coulthard in using the term Transaction for a
series of events of which a speech act is part; and Move for each event in the series.11)

11 Actually, Sinclair and Coulthard (1975: 24) postulate an intermediate unit 'exchange' between 'move'
and 'transaction'. Their highest and lowest units of discourse ('lesson' and 'tact') are not relevant to the
present discussion.
16
 (a) In order to be successful (in s’s eyes), must the speech act (SA)
function as part of a larger transaction? (Thus when Bill asks a
question in (39), he conceives of his question as part of a
sequence or transaction, which includes a reply).
(b) Does the other event in the transaction precede or follow the SA?
(In (39), the putative making of coffee follows the asking, while
in (43) it precedes the thanking).
(c) Does the other event have to be another speech act? 'Yes' in the
case of the question (e.g. (39)), ' No' in the case of an order (e.g.
(40). However, an order can require a verbal response: Recite the
Gettysburg address!).
(d) Is the speaker (s) or the addressee (a) involved in the
performance of the other event (E)? (E.g. in the fulfilment of an
offer (42) s has to do something; in the fulfilment of a request
(41) a has to do something.
(e) If the other event (E) follows SA, is it conditional on an
acceptance move by a? ('Yes' for a request or offer, 'no' for an
order or promise. We can put this a different way by saying that
an order commits a to do X; a promise commits s to do X.)
(f) Is the other event (E), in the speaker's estimation,
(i) pro-s (to the benefit of the speaker)
(ii) pro-a (to the benefit of the addressee)
(iii) anti- s (at a cost to the speaker)
(iv) anti-a (at a cost to the addressee)
Although some of these variables, as descriptive of pragmatic reality, are continuous rather
than dichotomous (see below), it is appropriate to a semantic analysis (as opposed to a
pragmatic analysis) to reduce these to dichotomies, and so provide a kind of componential
analysis of a sub-set of speech act verbs. In the following analysis, variables (a) and (c) will
be held constant, and we shall look at the way variables (b), (d), (e), and (f) can be used to
define the contrasts between verbs referring to speech acts which involve transactions
including a non-speech event.
Transaction

Speech Act Condition Event Cost/benefit

17
 tells
S Commands a to X (None) A does X At a cost to a
Orders

asks If a complies A does X At a cost to a

S requests a to X
Begs

advises If a accepts the A does X To the benefit of a

S Recommends that a advice,
Suggests X

S instructs a to X (none) A does X To the benefit of a

S invites a to X If a accepts A does X At a cost to s
S offers a X If a accepts s does X To the benefit of a
At a cost to s
undertakes To the benefit of a
S Promises to X
Vows (none) s does X At a cost to s
Swears

Transaction
Event Speech Act Cost/benefit

X happens to a A congratulates a on X To the benefit of a

A does X

A does X S thanks a for X At a cost to a

To the benefit of s

18
S does X A apologizes to a for X At a cost to a
A does X S pardons a for X At a cost to a
X happens to a A condoles/commiserates At a cost to a
with a over X

Not all factors, of meaning are included in the table. For example the relatively minor
differences between 'undertaking', 'promising', and 'swearing', or 'vowing' are ignored. More
importantly, the accompanying mental state of which Searle calls a 'sincerity condition' is
not included (for example, in requesting some X of a, you must want a to do X; in
pardoning a for X, you must forgive a for X; apologising for X, you must feel sorry about
X). Allowing for these commissions, which are perhaps largely deducible from the form of
the transaction itself, I now present the information tabulated above in the form of a
componential analysis:

(b) Does E (d) (e) (f)

precede or Is s or a If E is post-SA, Is E pro-s, anti-s
follow SA? involved in X? is it conditional etc.? (the
(-a indicates a or commissive cost/benefit
passive (unconditional) factor)
participant)
Tell Anti-a
Command Post-SA A Unconditional
Order

Ask
Request Post-SA A Conditional Anti-a
Beg

Advise
Recommend Post-SA A Conditional Pro-a
Suggest

Instruct Post-SA A unconditional Pro-a

Invite Post-SA A conditional Pro-a

Anti-s
Offer Post-SA A conditional
Pro-a
Anti-s
19
 Undertake
Promise Post-SA S unconditional Anti-s
Vow
Swear

Congratulate Pre-SA (-)a - Pro-a

Thank Pre-SA A - Pro-a

Anti-s

Apologise Pre-SA A - Anti-a

Pardon Pre-SA A - Anti-s

Condole with Pre-SA -a - Anti-a

Commiserate
with

I reiterate that these features, particularly the cost-benefit factors, reflect what is assumed to
be in s’s mind. Thus
(44) Fred thanked Bill for stealing his favourite girl-friend.
is a well-formed sentence; the only difficulty of interpreting it is accepting that s (Fred) has
some abnormal views on that is beneficial to himself. In cases where a’s interests are in
question, the situation may be more complicated than this, in that the cost /benefit is
measured according to what s supposes a supposes is beneficial or costly to himself.
For example:
(45) Benedict ordered Russell to accept the E 1,000,000 prize.
(46) Jack invited Jill to spend a week cleaning up his flat.
(47) Harry congratulated Maggie on getting divorced for the 6th time.
it seems that the use of order in (45) implies that Benedict thinks that Russell does not want
to accept the prize; that in (46) Jack assumes that Jill enjoys cleaning his flat up; that in (47)
Harry thinks that Maggie is happy to be getting divorced. S's own estimation of the value of
E doesn't matter; thus Jack, in (46) may regard cleaning his flat a highly undesirable
activity, but he can still sincerely invite Jill to do the job, so long as he thinks Jill would like
to do it.

20
What these examples indicate is true for pragmatics of speech acts, as well as the semantics
of speech act verbs; since pragmatics is the study of how s communicates with a, it is
concerned with what is in s's mind, and what s assumes to be in a’s mind.
Lacking in detail though it is, the componential analysis is useful in pointing out
'minimal pairs', or pairs of speech- act verbs which differ in terms of only one feature: e.g.
(a) command and request differ only in that request allows a optional
compliance.
(h) instruct and advise differ in the same way as (a).
(c) condole and congratulate differ only in the cost/benefit factor for a.
(d) invite and offer differ only if terms of whether a or s is involved in
E.
The analysis also brings to light 'accidental gaps', which are, however, only accidental as far
as the semantic analysis is concerned. When we look at the pragmatic realities underlying
these verbs, the reasons for such gaps are evident. The existence of a kind of speech-act
seems to be recognized lexically only when the speech-act has a pragmatic motivation. Such
motivations are either cooperative (where the transaction involves one person doing
something for the benefit of another) or diplomatic (where the transaction has the
maintenance of good human relations as its end). There is therefore a significant
correspondence between speech-act motivation and the principles (the Cooperative
Principle and the Tact Maxim) involved in the interpretation of indirect force. An obvious
'accidental gap' is that of a speech act verb for which s is involved in X and s benefits from
X. Such a speech act would serve neither a cooperative end nor the end of politeness. The
expressions which come closest to describing it are self-congratulation or self- promising.
But these are not independent speech-acts, but special cases of congratulation and promising
in which s=a.
Although the speech act verbs we have examined seem to provide clear-cut boundaries
between different communicative transactions, in fact, as I have already indicated in § 3, the
underlying pragmatic values are scalar to the extent that components (e) and (f) above (the
optionality factor and the cost/benefit factor) are scalar.

11. Negative Politeness

Having given some attention both to the description of both sense and force, I turn finally to
the mapping of the sense on to the force, and to the role which politeness plays in increasing
the indirectness of this mapping. I shall confine myself, in this account of politeness, to
what Searle calls DIRECTIVE speech acts; that is, in my terms, those encompassed by the
following features:
SA functions as part of a larger transaction.

21
 The other event (E) follows the SA.
E does not have to be another speech act.
The addressee a is involved in the performance of E.
E is at cost to a.
Because of the cost to a, directives threaten good social relations, and frequently give rise
to-what Brown and Levinson call 'negative politeness’12. This may be described in terms of
the saving of an abstract personal asset called FACE (see Brown and Levinson), but I shall
prefer to describe negative politeness in negative terms, as the avoidance of conflict, or of
Situations which might lead to conflict.13
Directives are basically linguistic attempts by someone (k) to get someone else (1) to
do what k wants, against 1's own wants or interests. For this to be accomplished, k has to
rely on either the Power factor or the Solidarity factor. (These terms are borrowed from
Brown and Gilman, 1960, and are identical with the factors which determine the use of
'familiar' 2nd person pronouns in languages like French and German).14
The Power Factor is the strength of mutual recognition by k and 1 that k is in a
position of superiority over l. (In this connection, I shall refer to k as the Authoritor, and 1
as the Authoritee).
We may characterise the relation of authoritor and (well-behaved) authoritee as one in
which if k wants 1 to do X, 1 does do X; and if k does not want 1 to do X, 1 does not do X.
Thus complete harmony between the wishes of k and the behaviour of 1 is assured.
The Solidarity factor is the strength of the mutual bond of intimacy between k and 1.
These two factors can be said to represent, respectively, vertical social distance (which is
asymmetric), and horizontal social distance (which is symmetric).
The stronger the power factor, the less the conflict is likely to arise from a directive
given by the authoritor to the authoritee. The greater the solidarity force, the less a conflict
situation is likely to matter. For example: Peel these potatoes, said by a Catering Officer to
a new recruit in the army, is not likely to lead to conflict: the power factor is so great that 1
will readily do what k wants. Peel these potatoes, said (in the right tone of voice!) by wife
to hushand is less likely to have severe results, because although the husband may fail to

12 Brown and Levinson (1974: 14-15) distinguish ‘negative politeness’ (‘oriented mainly towards partially
satisfying (redressing) H’s Negative Face’) from ‘positive politeness’ (‘oriented towards the Positive
Face of H, the positive self-image that he claims for himself’).
13 Brown and Levinson's theory of politeness postulates a 'Model Person' possessing the properties of 'face'
and 'rationality'. 'Face' has both a negative and positive aspect: they want to be unimpeded and the want
to be approved of in certain respects. The present account dispenses with the abstractions of ‘Model
Person' and 'Face', although a fuller account of politeness would probably require recourse to them.
14 Brown and Gilman's power and solidarity dimensions are also applied to politeness by Brown and
Levinson (1974: 19).
22
comply, his noncompliance will have far less grave results than if he were in the recruit-to-
catering- officer-situation.
A third factor entering into the need for politeness is the degree of conflict at risk.15 A
scale of severity can be roughly indicated by distinguishing:
1. Physical conflict: (strongest)
k (tries to) make 1 do X, 1 (tries to) not do X.
2. Disobedience:
k orders 1 to do X, 1 does not do X·
3. Will-flouting
k communicates that k wants 1 to do X, but 1 does not do X.
4. Will-Incompatibility: (weakest)
k communicates that k wants 1 to do X, but 1 communicates that
1 does not want to do X.
(Note: for each of 1- 4 there is a corresponding negative situation; e.g. for 1. l (tries to) do
X, but k (tries to) stop 1 doing X).
Unless the power factor or the solidarity factor is sufficiently strong, it is necessary to
employ tact in order to reduce or eliminate the conflict factor.

12. The Tact Maxim

I have so far failed to distinguish between negative 'politeness' and 'tact'; but it will be
convenient, at this point to make a systematic separation between these terms. Tact is
strategic conflict avoidance, and can be measured in terms of the degree of effort put into
the avoidance of a conflict situation. Thus, in general, the more tactful a directive is, the
more indirect and circumlocutionary it is. Negative Politeness is the degree to which the
individual behaviour of a particular person (whether verbal or otherwise) exceeds the
normal degree of tact required in a given situation. For example, if we say that Joshua is
always polite to his wife, we are measuring his behaviour to his wife against the behaviour
which is regarded as usual between husbands and wives. It is quite possible, therefore, for a
person to be impolite (i.e. to fall short of the normal degree of tact in a given situation), and
yet to employ tact in some degree. For example, Would you mind leaving the room? can he
extremely impolite on certain occasions, although it exemplifies a fairly tactful use of a
hypothetical question to accomplish a directive.
Tact is closely correlated with indirectness, where indirectness is to be defined not
primarily in terms of periphrasis (although periphrasis is a concomitant of indirectness), but

15 The degree of conflict at risk is coded by Brown and Levinson (1974: 19) in their formula for the
'seriousness' of Face Threatening Acts.
23
in terms of the complexity of the inductive strategy required in order to 'work out' the force,
given the sense. Notice that indirectness, in this conception of pragmatics, is itself a scalar
phenomenon. There is no longer an opposition between direct and indirect illocutions, but
only different degrees of indirectness. There is no sentence, that is, whose force is identical
to its sense. There are, however, types of sentence (e.g. straight-forward Statements and
questions) whose force is directly derivable from their sense, or (to put things more
pedantically and accurately) whose force is derivable with a minimum of indirectness. We
may take it, for example, that the least indirect form of directive is the imperative sentence.
Crucial to the operation of such inferential strategies is the Tact Maxim, which I am
now, at last, going to state as follows:
(48) Assume that you are the authoritee and that your interlocutor is the
authoritor!
Given the earlier definition of a (well-behaved) authoritee, the effect of the tact maxim
should be to prevent conflict arising. So long as both s and a are observing the tact maxim,
no will-incompatibility can arise, let alone any of the more severe forms of conflict, since
each interlocutor will defer to the other's will. This is 'on the record'; ' off the record',
however, an utterance will be recognized by custom as having a directive force, in spite of
s’s observance of the Tact Maxim. Hence a law of diminishing returns is continually in
operation: (48) tends to become an empty formality, and the implicated directive force of
the utterance tends to be taken as its face-value meaning. Thus the Tact Maxim has to be
applied iteratively, leading to more and more indirect forms of directive. This is how the
scale of tactfulness arises.
In illustrating the grading of utterances in terms of tact, I shall assume that the
imperative sentence is the most direct, and least tactful, form of directive, since it openly
risks one of the graver conflict situations, viz. disobedience:
(49) s: Give me some money. a: No.
One step more tactful than (49) is (50):
(50) I want you to give me some money.
S in (50) is observing the Tact Maxim by uttering a statement, rather than a direct
command. This is because a statement does not require an action as its response, so that a is
left a choice as to whether carry out s's wishes or not. However, if a is also observing the
Tact Maxim, then a will carry out s’s wishes. Thus, in so far as s ‘banks on’, a’s observing
the Tact Maxim, (50) assumes the force of a directive.
However, (50) violates the Tact Maxim at one remove. If a is observing the Tact
Maxim, he has no choice but to do what s wants. Thus by uttering (50), s forces a either to
give him the money, or to break the Tact Maxim. In either case, a violation takes place,
since by constraining a to do what s wants, on pain of breaking the Tact Maxim, s is himself

24
breaking the Tact Maxim, and putting himself in the position of an Authoritor rather than an
Authoritee. Thus to the Tact Maxim (48) we have to add the following 'meta-maxim':
(51) Don’t put your interlocutor in a position where either you or he
have/has to break the tact maxim.
As a slightly more indirect form of directive, we may now consider the request forms:
(52) Will you/Are you willing to give me some money?
(53) Can you/Are you able to give me some money?
The question form (52) is felt to be more tactful, as a directive, than the statement form (50),
because a Yes-No question overtly gives a freedom of response, i.e. the freedom to say Yes
or No. Moreover, by asking a about his wishes, s is clearly putting himself in the position of
authoritee. The implementation of the Tact Maxim is here even more oblique than in (50):
(a) By avoiding a direct imperative, s observes the Tact Maxim
(b) In so far as (52) is intended as a directive , s must be assuming that
a is observing the Tact Maxim. (Otherwise a wouldn't do what s wants)
(c) In assuming that a will interpret (52) as a directive, s assumes that a
assumes that s is observing the Tact Maxim. (Otherwise, a wouldn't be
able to construe what is overtly a question about a’s wishes as an
expression of s’s wishes).
Going one stage further, we notice that the question about a’s ability (53) is more tactful, as
a directive , than (52). This is because (52), construed via its implicated meaning as a
directive, resembles (50) in allowing a no freedom to refuse. If a answers No, I won't to
(52), he is in effect asserting his own will at the expense of what he assumes to be s’s will.
Hence a is violating the Tact Maxim, and (52) falls foul of the supplementary Maxim (51).
A question about ability, on the other hand, avoids this problem: one can answer No to (53)
without implying will-incompatibility, in that one may be willing, but unable, to give the
money. Therefore Can you ...? is a convenient ploy for offering a what appears to be a
genuinely unconstrained choice of doing what s wants or not. This in its turn, however, is so
strongly associated with a directive force that other more oblique and tactful substitutes are
frequently used. It is unnecessary to take further examples in detail: my aim has been to
show that degrees of tact can be explained by the complexity of the conflict-avoidance
strategy of s and the corresponding inductive strategy of a. The principle can be easily
enough extended to other types of oblique directive: for example, Could you ... ? is more
tactful than Can you ... ? because it places a’s potential refusal in the context of a
hypothetical situation, rather than the here- and-now situation of s’s request Can't you ...?
on the other hand is less tactful than Can you ...? because (see § 9 above) the negative
question implies disbelief in the possibility of a negative answer (and so virtually obliges a
to respond positively).

25
13. The Hinting Principle
More must be said, however, about the nature of the inferential strategy that enables us to
derive the 'directive force' from the 'sense' in these examples. A missing link in the
explanation is the means by which a is led to adopt a directive interpretation, the link
handled in a rather ad hoc way by Searle in his Steps 7-9 for Can you Pass the salt? (see § 6
above) .
The questions about necessary prerequisites for the performance of a directive speech act
(see Gordon and Lakoff's formulation, (18)): X  will  not get performed unless a is capable of
doing X.   and unless a   is willing to do X.   In this sense, these questions are exploratory
preliminaries to a request that a should perform X. But there is apparently no reason why
Will you X? or Can you X? should in practice mean more than they say, viz. why they
should be interpreted as having a directive force.
Here, it seems, a further conversational principle needs to be invoked: a ‘Hinting
Principle'. According to this principle, a speech   act A which has, as its fulfilment, a
circumstance which is a preliminary condition to the performance of a second speech act B,  
may be interpreted, by custom, (and 'off the record' as equivalent to B.  It is 'off the record',
because the force of B   is merely hinted at, not actually communicated. This principle
applies not only to such oblique questions as:
(54) Have you seen the radio?
(55) Do you know where my car keys are?
In practice, (54) and (55) are interpreted as equivalent to:
(54a) If you have seen the radio, please tell me where it is.
(55a) If you know where the car keys are, please tell me where.
Something like a hinting principle is found not only in human non-verbal behaviour, but in
animal behaviour, especially in the 'intention movements' of aggressive, threatening
behaviour. For example, in preparing to attack other members of their species, many
animals undergo physiological changes (hair standing on end, inflamed skin, staring eyes
etc.) which render them more ferocious in appearance. The threatening posture may itself
result   in the desired result - the submission of the foe - without physical conflict. Thus, the
preparation, the condition for, combat may have the same effect as combat itself. In human
behaviour, a parallel example is the shaking of the fist. Another example, more ritualised, is
the military salute, which is in origin a substitute for the removal of the head-gear as a mark
of respect: the preparatory lift of the arm substitutes the whole action. Thus the Hinting
Principle, like the Cooperative Principle and the Tact Maxim, has an application to
behaviour which goes well beyond the field of pragmatics and speech act theory.
We can now therefore make a further attempt to explain how Can you X? and Will you
X? get their directive force, by attributing to a an inductive train of thought such as the
following:  
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 (a) S has asked me whether I am willing/able to perform X.
(b) This question, interpreted most directly as a request for information,
is irrelevant to context (Maxim of Relation).
(c) Therefore there must be some relevant less direct interpretation of
this question. (Maxim of Relation).
(r.) This question is relevant if s wants me to do X. (Hinting Principle)
(e) Moreover, if s is observing the Tact Maxim to the required degree
and is assuming that I am observing the Tact Maxim, this is the most
concise and perspicuous way he can use of getting me to do X. (Tact
Maxim, Maxim of Quantity, Maxim of Manner).
(f) Therefore, the obvious assumption is that s has uttered Can/Will you
X? in order to get me to do X.
Obviously we need not think of such laborious thought process going through the mind of a
speaker of English whenever that spearer responds to an indirect request. The associations,
through convention, become automatic, and yet at the same time to show that they are not
arbitrary, we must, following Grice, explain how they 'can be worked out'.

14. Pragmatic Space

Finally, let us entertain the possibility of constructing a predictive account of the pragmatics
of directives, such that if we knew the value given to certain variables (e.g. the cost/benefit
factor, we can predict the degree of tact required by the situation (tact being measured in
terms of the use of conflict-avoiding strategies.
t= the tact variable (varying from 0 - 1)
p=the power variable (varying from -1 [s has ideal authoritor status] to +1 [s has ideal
authoritee status]).
d=the social distance variable, varying from 0 – 1. (This variable is the inverse of solidarity,
i.e. refers to horizontal social distance, or lack of familiarity).
c = the cost/benefit factor (varying from -1 (maximum benefit to a] to +1 (maximum cost to
a]).
There is room for disagreement as to whether the scales associated with t, p, d and c,
should be considered to have maxima and minimal and whether they should have both
positive and negative values. We may assume, however, that these values are in principle
quantifiable, and that quantitative experimental data could be obtained by getting informants
to assign values to particular social relationships, etc. The maxima and minima for these
scales are to be considered psychological rather than (for example) socio-economic.
The important point, however, is that t is a positive function of d, c 1 and p. We may
represent the relation of these scales in the form of 2 cubes as follows:

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This diagram is most easily interpreted in terms of a's status vis-à-vis s:
(i) The more  power a holds over s, and
(ii) the more  socially distant a  is from s,  and
(iii) the more costly E is to a,  
the more tact is required by the situation.
The minimum tact required exists in the theoretical situation (M on the diagram)
where s has maximum power over and minimum social distance (horizontal) from a, and
where a gets maximum benefit from the transaction. An approximation to this theoretical
endpoint is:

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 (56) Parent to Small Child:
Help  yourself to absolutely anything you'd  like, Freddy.
At the other end of the scale, the maximum tact requirement arises in such a situation as:
(57) Insignificant Subject to Autocratic Sovereign:  
I was wondering if you could possibly be so kind as to offer me your
beautiful daughter's hand in marriage, your majesty?
If the speaker of (57) escaped instant execution, we would probably have his linguistic
indirectness to thank for it.

15. Conclusion
This paper is a first attempt at exploring and, in part, formalising, a pragmatics in which
sense and force are distinguished as belonging to distinct levels of linguistic statement (the
semantic and the pragmatic) and in which the mapping from sense to force is accomplished
by an extension of the Gricean Cooperative Principle. The results of this exploration are, so
far, crude: much more work has to be done in the relevant areas of (a) sense, (b) force, and
(c) sense-force mapping. However, this paper develops the specific function of a rule known
as the Tact Maxim. The Tact Maxim, in socially perilous situations, overrides the
Cooperative Principle, since the maintenance of friendly, peaceful human relations is a
prerequisite for cooperative behaviour. This is reflected in the phenomenon of indirect
directives, which are, by their very nature, periphrastic and obscure (thereby violating the
Maxim of Manner). However, these violations of the Cooperative Principle can be justified
by their function in preserving the Tact Maxim. Thus a study of the relation between the
Tact Maxim and the Cooperative Principle provides a general explanation of indirectness.

29
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