Felicity conditions
are conditions necessary to the success of a speech act.
They are conditions needed for success or achievement of a performative. Loosely
speaking, felicity conditions are of three kinds: preparatory conditions, conditions
for execution and sincerity conditions.
Preparatory conditions
include the status or authority of the speaker to
perform the speech act, the situation of other parties and so on. Only certain people
are qualified to declare war, baptize people or sentence convicted felons.
The situation of the utterance is important. If the US President jokingly
“declares” war on another country in a private conversation, then the USA is not
really at war. This, of course, happened (on 11 August 1984), when Ronald
Reagan made some remarks off-air, as he thought, but which have been recorded
for posterity: “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed
legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”
One hopes that this utterance also failed in terms of sincerity conditions.
Достарыңызбен бөлісу: |
