arguing speech act

Arguments and Information

Learning Objectives

• Define what an argument is
• Introduce ethos, pathos, and logos
• Identify the argument structure of claim, evidence, and warrant
• Explore effective language

You may be wondering, “What exactly is an argument? Haven’t I already decided on my main argument and topic?”

An argument is a series of statements in support of a claim, assertion, or proposition. So far, we’ve discussed thesis statements as the main argumentative through-line for a speech—it’s what you want to inform, persuade, or entertain the audience about.

Your thesis statement, however, is just one component of an argument, i.e. “here’s what I want to inform you about / persuade you to consider.” It is the main claim of your speech. Your task is to prove the reliability of that claim (with evidence) and demonstrate, through the body of the speech, how or why that information should matter to the audience. In this chapter, we will fill in the other structural components of an argument to make sure that your thesis statement has adequate support and proof. We’ll also outline the importance of language and tips to guarantee that your language increases the effective presentation of your argument.

An Overview of Arguments

It may be tempting to view arguments as only relevant to persuasion or persuasive speeches. After all, we commonly think of arguments as occurring between different perspectives or viewpoints with the goal of changing someone’s mind. Arguments are important when persuading (and we will re-visit persuasive arguments in Chapter 13), but you should have clear evidence and explanations for any type of information sharing.

All speech types require proof to demonstrate the reliability of their claims. Remember, when you speak, you are being an advocate and selecting information that you find relevant to your audience, so arguments are necessary to, at a bare minimum, build in details about the topic’s importance.

With speeches that primarily inform, a sound argument demonstrates the relevance and significance of the topic for your audience. In other words, “this is important information because…” or “here’s why you should care about this.” If you are giving a ceremonial speech, you should provide examples of your insights. In a speech of introduction, for example, you may claim that the speaker has expertise, but you should also provide evidence of their previous accomplishments and demonstrate why those accomplishments are significant.

For each speech type, a well-crafted speech will have multiple arguments throughout. Yes, your thesis statement is central to speech, and your content should be crafted around that idea – you will use your entire speech to prove the reliability of that statement. You will also have internal arguments, i.e. your speech’s main points or the “meat” of your speech.

All speech types require arguments, and all arguments use the rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos to elicit a particular feeling or response from your audience.

Ethos , or establishing your credibility as a speaker, is necessary for any speech. If you’re informing the audience about a key topic, they need to know that you’re a trustworthy and reliable speaker. A key way to prove that credibility is through crafting arguments that are equally credible. Using reliable and well-tested evidence is one way to establish ethos.

Using reason or logic, otherwise known as logos , is also a key rhetorical appeal. By using logos, you can select logical evidence that is well-reasoned, particularly when you’re informing or persuading. We’ll talk more about logic and fallacies (to avoid) in Chapter 13.

Pathos , or emotional appeals, allows you to embed evidence or explanations that pull on your audience’s heartstrings or other feelings and values. Pathos is common in ceremonial speeches, particularly speeches that eulogize or celebrate a special occasion.

All three rhetorical appeals are important mechanisms to motivate your audience to listen or act. All three should be done ethically (see Chapter 1) and with the speech context and audience in mind.

Regardless of which rhetorical proof you use, your arguments should be well-researched and well-structured. Below, we explore the structure of an argument in more detail.

The Structur e : Claim, Evidence, Warrant

Arguments have the following basic structure (see Figure 5.1):

• Claim: the main proposition crafted as a declarative statement.
• Evidence: the support or proof for the claim.
• Warrant: the connection between the evidence and the claim.

Each component of the structure is necessary to formulate a compelling argument.

The Toulmin Model

British Philosopher, Stephen Toulmin, created the “Toulmin Model” – a model that describes the structure of an argument or method of reasoning. Claim, evidence, and warrant are, if done well, necessary to create a good argument (O’Connor, 1958).

Evidence and warrants are the specifics that make your ideas, arguments, assertions, points, or concepts real and concrete by relating the information to your audience. Not all audiences are compelled by the same evidence, for example, so creating a well-structured argument also means being responsive to audiences.

Consider going to lunch with a friend. Your friend suggests a restaurant that you have not heard of, so you request some additional information, proof, or evidence of their choice. We could map the argument like this:

• Claim: “Let’s go to Jack’s Shack for lunch.”
• Evidence: “I have been there a few times and they have good servers.”

So far, your friend is highlighting service as the evidence to support their claim that Jack’s Shack is a good choice for lunch. However, the warrant is still missing. For a warrant, they need to demonstrate why good service is sufficient proof to support their claim. Remember that the warrant is the connection. For example:

• Warrant: “You were a server, so I know that you really appreciate good service. I have never had a bad experience at Jack’s Shack, so I am confident that it’s a good lunch choice for both of us.”

In this case, they do a good job of both connecting the evidence to the claim and connecting the argument to their audience – you! They have selected evidence based on your previous experience as a server (likely in hopes to win you over to their claim!).

Using “claim, evidence, and warrant” can assist you in verifying that all parts of the argumentative structure are present. Below, we dive deeper into each category.

A claim is a declarative statement or assertion—it is something that you want your audience to accept or know. Like we’ve mentioned, your thesis statement is a key claim in your speech because it’s the main argument that you’re asking the audience to consider.

Different claims serve different purposes. Depending on the purpose of the argument, claims can be factual, opinionated, or informative. Some claims, for example, may be overtly persuading the audience to change their mind about a controversial issue, i.e. “you should support this local policy initiative.”

Alternatively, a claim may develop the significance of a topic (i.e. “this is why you should care about this information”) or highlight a key informative component about a person, place, or thing (“Hillary Clinton had an intriguing upbringing”). You might, for example, write a speech that informs the audience about college textbook affordability. Your working thesis might read, “Universities are developing textbook affordability initiatives.” Your next step would be to develop main points and locate evidence that supports your claim.

It’s important to develop confidence around writing and identifying your claims. Identifying your main ideas will allow you to then identify evidence in support of those declarative statements. If you aren’t confident about what claims you’re making, it will be difficult to identify the evidence in support of that idea, and your argument won’t be structurally complete. Remember that your thesis statement your main claim, but you likely have claims throughout your speech (like your main points).

Evidence is the proof or support for your claim. It answers the question, “how do I know this is true?” With any type of evidence, there are three overarching considerations.

First, is this the most timely and relevant type of support for my claim? If your evidence isn’t timely (or has been disproven), it may drastically influence the credibility of your claim.

Second, is this evidence relatable and clear for my audience? Your audience should be able to understand the evidence, including any references or ideas within your information. Have you ever heard a joke or insight about a television show that you’ve never seen? If so, understanding the joke can be difficult. The same is true for your audience, so stay focused on their knowledge base and level of understanding.

Third, did I cherry-pick? Avoid cherry-picking evidence to support your claims. While we’ve discussed claims first, it’s important to arrive at a claim after seeing all the evidence (i.e. doing the research). Rather than finding evidence to fit your idea (cherry-picking), the evidence should help you arrive at the appropriate claim. Cherry-picking evidence can reduce your ethos and weakened your argument.

With these insights in mind, we will introduce you to five evidence types : examples, narratives, facts, statistics, and testimony. Each provides a different type of support, and it’s suggested that you integrate a variety of different evidence types. Understanding the different types of evidence will assist as you work to structure arguments and select support that best fits the goal of your speech.

Examples are specific instances that illuminate a concept. They are designed to give audiences a reference point. An example must be quickly understandable—something the audience can pull out of their memory or experience quickly.

Evidence by example would look like this:

Claim: Textbook affordability initiatives are assisting universities in implementing reputable, affordable textbooks.

Evidence : Ohio has implemented a textbook affordability initiative, the Open Ed Collaborative, to alleviate the financial strain for students (Jaggers, Rivera, Akani, 2019).

Ohio’s affordability initiative functions as evidence by example. This example assists in demonstrating that such initiatives have been successfully implemented. Without providing an example, your audience may be skeptical about the feasibility of your claim.

Examples can be drawn directly from experience, i.e. this is a real example, or an example can be hypothetical where audiences are asked to consider potential scenarios.

Narratives are stories that clarify, dramatize, and emphasize ideas. They have, if done well, strong emotional power (or pathos). While there is no universal type of narrative, a good story often draws the audience in by identifying characters and resolving a plot issue. Narratives can be personal or historical.

Person narratives are powerful tools to relate to your audience and embed a story about your experience with the topic. As evidence, they allow you to say, “I experienced or saw this thing first hand.” As the speaker, using your own experience as evidence can draw the audience in and help them understand why you’re invested in the topic. Of course, personal narratives must be true. Telling an untrue personal narrative may negatively influence your ethos for an audience.

Historical narratives (sometimes called documented narratives) are stories about a past person, place, or thing. They have power because they can prove and clarify an idea by using a common form— the story. By “historical” we do not mean that the story refers to something that happened many years ago, only that it has happened in the past and there were witnesses to validate the happening. Historical narratives are common in informative speeches.

Facts are observations, verified by multiple credible sources, that are true or false. The National Center for Science Education (2008) defines fact as:

an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed an . . . is accepted as ‘true.’ Truth in science, however, is never final and what is accepted as a fact today may be modified or even discarded tomorrow.

“The sun is a star” is an example of a fact. It’s been observed and verified based on current scientific understanding and categorization; however, future technology may update or disprove that fact.

In our modern information age, we recommend “fact-checking a fact” because misinformation can be presented as truth. This means verifying all facts through credible research (check back to Chapter 4 on research). Avoid taking factual information for granted and make sure that the evidence comes from reputable sources that are up-to-date.

S tatistics are the collection, analysis, comparison, and interpretation of numerical data. As evidence, they are useful in summarizing complex information, quantifying, or making comparisons. Statistics are powerful pieces of evidence because numbers appear straightforward. Numbers provide evidence that quantifies, and statistics can be helpful to clarify a concept or highlighting the depth of a problem.

You may be wondering, “What does this actually mean ?” (excuse our statistical humor). We often know a statistic when we find one, but it can be tricky to understand how a statistic was derived.

Averages and percentages are two common deployments of statistical evidence.

An “ a verage ” can be statistically misleading, but it often refers to the mean of a data set. You can determine the mean (or average) by adding up the figures and dividing by the number of figures present. If you’re giving a speech on climate change, you might note that, in 2015, the average summer temperature was 97 degrees while, in 1985, it was just 92 degrees.

When using statistics, comparisons can help translate the statistic for an audience. In the example above, 97 degrees may seem hot, but the audience has nothing to compare that statistic to. The 30-year comparison assists in demonstrating a change in temperature.

A percentag e expresses a proportion of out 100. For example, you might argue that “textbook costs have risen more than 1000% since 1977” (Popken, 2015). By using a statistical percentage, 1000% sounds pretty substantial. It may be important, however, to accompany your percentage with a comparison to assist the audience in understanding that “This is 3 times higher than the normal rate of inflation” (UTA Libraries). You might also clarify that “college textbooks have risen more than any other college-related cost” (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2016).

You are responsible for the statistical information that you deploy. It’s all too common for us as information consumers to grab a quick statistic that sounds appealing, but that information may not be reliable.

Be aware of three major statistical issues: small samples, unrepresentative samples, and correlation as causation. In a small sample, an argument is being made from too few examples. In unrepresentative sample, a conclusion is based on surveys of people who do not represent, or resemble, the ones to whom the conclusion is being applied. Finally, it’s common to conflate correlation as causation. In statistics, a correlation refers to the relationship between two variables while causation means that one variable resulted from the other. Be careful not to assume that a correlation means that something has caused the second.

A few other statistical tips:

• Use statistics as support, not as a main point. The audience may cringe or tune you out for saying, “Now I’d like to give you some statistics about the problem of gangs in our part of the state.” That sounds as exciting as reading the telephone book! Use the statistics to support an argument.
• In regard to sources, depend on the reliable ones. Use Chapter 4 as a guide to criticizing and evaluating credible sources.
• Do not overuse statistics. While there is no hard and fast rule on how many to use, there are other good supporting materials and you would not want to depend on statistics alone. You want to choose the statistics and numerical data that will strengthen your argument the most and drive your point home. Statistics can have emotional power as well as probative value if used sparingly.
• Explain your statistics as needed, but do not make your speech a statistics lesson. If you say, “My blog has 500 subscribers” to a group of people who know little about blogs, that might sound impressive, but is it? You can also provide a story of an individual, and then tie the individual into the statistic. After telling a story of the daily struggles of a young mother with multiple sclerosis, you could follow up with “This is just one story in the 400,000 people who suffer from MS in the United States today, according to National MS Society.”

Testimony is the words of others. As evidence, testimony can be valuable to gain insight into an expert or a peer’s opinion, experience, or expertise about a topic. Testimony can provide an audience with a relevant perspective that the speaker isn’t able to provide. We’ll discuss two types of testimony: expert and non-expert.

Expert Testimony

What is an expert? An expert is someone with recognized credentials, knowledge, education, and/or experience in a subject. To quote an expert on expertise, “To be an expert, someone needs to have considerable knowledge on a topic or considerable skill in accomplishing something” (Weinstein, 1993).

A campus bookstore manager could provide necessary testimony on the changing affordability of textbooks over time, for example. As someone working with instructors, students, and publishers, the manager would likely have an insight and a perspective that would be difficult to capture otherwise. They would provide unique and credible evidence.

In using expert testimony, you should follow these guidelines:

• Use the expert’s testimony in their relevant field. A person may have a Nobel Prize in economics, but that does not make them an expert in biology.
• Provide at least some of the expert’s relevant credentials.
• If you interviewed the expert yourself, make that clear in the speech also. “When I spoke with Dr. Mary Thompson, principal of Park Lake High School, on October 12, she informed me that . . .”

Expert testimony is one of your strongest supporting materials to prove your arguments. When integrating their testimony as evidence, make sure their testimony clearly supports your claim (rather than an interesting idea on the topic that is tangential to your assertions).

Non-Expert/Peer Testimony

Any quotation from a friend, family member, or classmate about an incident or topic would be peer testimony. It is useful in helping the audience understand a topic from a personal point of view. For example, you may draw on testimony from a campus student who was unable to afford their campus textbooks. While they may lack formalized expertise in textbook affordability, their testimony might demonstrate how the high cost limited their engagement with the class. Their perspective and insight would be valuable for an audience to hear.

The third component of any argument is the warrant. Warrants connect the evidence and the claim. They often answer the question, “what does this mean?” Warrants are an important component of a complete argument because they:

• Highlight the significance of the evidence;
• Detail how the evidence supports the claims;
• Outline the relevance of the claim and evidence to the audience.

For example, consider the claim that “communication studies provide necessary skills to land you a job.” To support that claim, you might locate a statistic and argue that, “The New York Times had a recent article stating that 80% of jobs want good critical thinking and interpersonal skills.” It’s unclear, however, how a communication studies major would prepare someone to fulfill those needs. To complete the argument, you could include a warrant that explains, “communication studies classes facilitate interpersonal skills and work to embed critical thinking activities throughout the curriculum.” You are connecting the job skills (critical thinking) from the evidence to the discipline (communication studies) from your claim.

Despite their importance, warrants are often excluded from arguments. As speechwriters and researchers, we spend lots of time with our information and evidence, and we take for granted what we know. If you are familiar with communication studies, the connection between the New York Times statistic referenced above and the assertion that communication studies provides necessary job skills may seem obvious. For an unfamiliar audience, the warrant provides more explanation and legitimacy to the evidence.

We know what you’re thinking: “Really? Do I always need an explicit warrant?”

It’s true that some warrants are inferred , meaning that we often recognize the underlying warrant without it being explicitly stated. For example, I might say, “The baking time for my cookies was too hot. The cookies burned.” In this statement, I’m claiming that the temperature is too hot and using burnt cookies as the evidence. We could reasonably infer the warrant, i.e. “burnt cookies are a sign that they were in the oven for too long.”

Inferred warrants are common in everyday arguments and conversations; however, in a formal speech, having a clear warrant will increase the clarity of your argument. If you decide that no explicit warrant is needed, it’s still necessary to ask, “what does this argument mean for my thesis? What does it mean for my audience?” Your goal is to keep as many audience members listening as possible, and warrants allow you to think critically about the information that you’re presenting to that audience.

When writing warrants, keep the following insights in mind:

• Avoid exaggerating your evidence, and make sure your warrant honors what the evidence is capable of supporting;
• Center your thesis statement. Remember that your thesis statement, as your main argument, should be the primary focus when you’re explaining and warranting your evidence.
• A good warrant should be crafted with your content and context in mind. As you work on warrants, ask, “why is this claim/evidence important here? For this argument? Now? For this audience?”
• Say it with us: ethos, pathos, and logos! Warrants can help clarify the goal of your argument. What appeal are you using? Can the warrant amplify that appeal?

Now that you have a better understanding of each component of an argument, let’s conclude this section with a few complete examples.

Claim : The Iowa Wildcats will win the championship. Evidence: In 2019, the National Sporting Association found that the Wildcats had the most consistent and well-rounded coaching staff. Referees of the game agreed, and also praised the players ability for high scoring. Warrant: Good coaching and high scoring are probable indicators of past champions and, given this year’s findings, the Wildcat’s are on mark to win it all.

Here’s an example with a more general approach to track the potential avenues for evidence:

Claim: Sally Smith will win the presidential election. Evidence: [select evidence that highlights their probable win, including: they’ve won the most primaries; they won the Iowa caucus; they’re doing well in swing states; they have raised all the money; they have the most organized campaign.” Warrant: [based on your evidence select, you can warrant why that evidence supports a presidential win].

Using Language Effectively

Claim, evidence, and warrant are useful categories when constructing or identifying a well-reasoned argument. However, a speech is much more than this simple structure over and over (how boring, huh?).

When we craft arguments, it’s tempting to view our audience as logic-seekers who rely solely on rationality, but that’s not true. Instead, Walter Fisher (1984) argues that humans are storytellers, and we make sense of the world through good stories. A good speech integrates argumentative components while telling a compelling story about your argument to the audience. A key piece of that story is how you craft the language—language aids in telling an effective story.

We’ll talk more about language in Chapter 7 (verbal delivery), but there are a few key categories to keep in mind as you construct your argument and story.

Language: What Do We Mean?

Language is any formal system of gestures, signs, sounds, and symbols used or conceived as a means of communicating thought, either through written, enacted, or spoken means. Linguists believe there are far more than 6,900 languages and distinct dialects spoken in the world today (Anderson, 2012). Despite being a formal system, language results in different interpretations and meanings for different audiences.

It is helpful for public speakers to keep this mind, especially regarding denotative and connotative meaning. Wrench, Goding, Johnson, and Attias (2011) use this example to explain the difference:

When we hear or use the word “blue,” we may be referring to a portion of the visual spectrum dominated by energy with a wave-length of roughly 440–490 nanometers. You could also say that the color in question is an equal mixture of both red and green light. While both of these are technically correct ways to interpret the word “blue,” we’re pretty sure that neither of these definitions is how you thought about the word. When hearing the word “blue,” you may have thought of your favorite color, the color of the sky on a spring day, or the color of a really ugly car you saw in the parking lot. When people think about language, there are two different types of meanings that people must be aware of: denotative and connotative. (p. 407)

Denotative meaning is the specific meaning associated with a word. We sometimes refer to denotative meanings as dictionary definitions. The scientific definitions provided above for the word “blue” are examples of definitions that might be found in a dictionary. Connotative meaning is the idea suggested by or associated with a word at a cultural or personal level. In addition to the examples above, the word “blue” can evoke many other ideas:

• State of depression (feeling blue)
• Indication of winning (a blue ribbon)
• Side during the Civil War (blues vs. grays)
• Sudden event (out of the blue)
• States that lean toward the Democratic Party in their voting
• A slang expression for obscenity (blue comedy)

Given these differences, the language you select may have different interpretations and lead to different perspectives. As a speechwriter (and communicator), being aware of different interpretations can allow you select language that is the most effective for your speaking context and audience.

Using Language to Craft Your Argument

Have you ever called someone a “wordsmith?” If so, you’re likely complimenting their masterful application of language. Language is not just something we use; it is part of who we are and how we think. As such, language can assist in clarifying your content and creating an effective message.

Achieve Clarity

Clear language is powerful language. If you are not clear, specific, precise, detailed, and sensory with your language, you won’t have to worry about being emotional or persuasive, because you won’t be understood. The goal of clarity is to reduce abstraction; clarity will allow your audience to more effectively track your argument and insight, especially because they only have one chance to listen.

Concreteness aids clarity. We usually think of concreteness as the opposite of abstraction. Language that evokes many different visual images in the minds of your audience is abstract language. Unfortunately, when abstract language is used, the images evoked might not be the ones you really want to evoke. Instead, work to be concrete, detailed, and specific. “Pity,” for example, is a bit abstract. How might you describe pity by using more concrete words?

Clear descriptions or definitions can aid in concreteness and clarity.

To define means to set limits on something; defining a word is setting limits on what it means, how the audience should think about the word, and/or how you will use it. We know there are denotative and connotative definitions or meanings for words, which we usually think of as objective and subjective responses to words. You only need to define words that would be unfamiliar to the audience or words that you want to use in a specialized way.

Describing is also helpful in clarifying abstraction. The key to description is to think in terms of the five senses: sight (visual:  how does the thing look in terms of color, size, shape); hearing (auditory: volume, musical qualities); taste (gustatory: sweet, bitter, salty, sour, gritty, smooth, chewy); smell (olfactory: sweet, rancid, fragrant, aromatic, musky); and feel (tactile: rough, silky, nubby, scratchy).

If you were, for example, talking about your dog, concrete and detailed language could assist in “bring your dog to life,” so to speak, in the moment.

• Boring and abstract: My dog is pretty great. He is well behaved, cute, and is friendly to all of our neighbors. I get a lot of compliments about him, and I really enjoy hanging out with him outside in the summer.
• Concrete and descriptive: Buckley, my golden-brown Sharpei mix, is a one-of-a-kind hound. Through positive treat reinforcement, he learned to sit, shake, and lay down within one month. He will also give kisses with his large and wrinkly snout. He greats passing neighbors with a smile and enjoys Midwest sunbathing on our back deck in the 70-degree heat.

 Doesn’t the second description do Image 5.2 more justice ? Being concrete and descriptive paints a picture for the audience and can increase your warrant’s efficacy. Being descriptive, however, doesn’t mean adding more words. In fact, you should aim to “reduce language clutter.” Your descriptions should still be purposeful and important.

Be Effective

Language achieves effectiveness by communicating the right message to the audience. Clarity contributes to effectiveness, but effectiveness also includes using familiar and interesting language.

Familiar language is language that your audience is accustomed to hearing and experiencing. Different communities and audience use language differently. If you are part of an organization, team, or volunteer group, there may be language that is specific and commonly used in those circles. We call that language jargon, or specific, technical language that is used in a given community. If you were speaking to that community, drawing on those references would be appropriate because they would be familiar to that audience. For other audiences, drawing on jargon would be ineffective and either fail to communicate an idea to the audience or implicitly community that you haven’t translated your message well (reducing your ethos).

In addition to using familiar language, draw on language that’s accurate and interesting. This is difficult, we’ll admit it! But in a speech, your words are a key component of keeping the audience motivated to listen, so interesting language can peak and maintain audience interest.

Active language is interesting language. Active voice , when the subject in a sentence performs the action, can assist in having active and engaging word choices. An active sentence would read, “humans caused climate change” as opposed to a passive approach of, “climate change was caused by humans.” Place subjects at the forefront. A helpful resource on active voice can be found here.

You must, however, be reflexive in the language process.

Practicing Reflexivity

Language reflects our beliefs, attitudes, and values – words are the mechanism we use to communicate our ideas or insights. As we learned in Chapter 1, communication both creates and is created by culture. When we select language, we are also representing and creating ideas and cultures – language has a lot of power.

To that end, language should be a means of inclusion and identification, rather than exclusion.

You might be thinking, “Well I am always inclusive in my language,” or “I’d never intentionally use language that’s not inclusive.” We understand, but intention is less important than effect.

Consider the term “millennial”— a categorization that refers to a particular age group. It can be useful to categorize different generations, particularly from a historical and contemporary perspective. However, people often argue that “millennials are the laziest generation” or “millennials don’t know hard work!” In these examples, the intention may be descriptive, but they are selecting language that perpetuates unfair and biased assumptions about millions of people. The language is disempowering (and the evidence, when present, is weak).

Language assists us in categorizing or understanding different cultures, ideas, or people; we rely on language to sort information and differentiate ourselves. In turn, language influences our perceptions, even in unconscious and biased ways.

The key is to practice reflexivity about language choices. Language isn’t perfect, so thinking reflexively about language will take time and practice.

For example, if you were crafting a hypothetical example about an experience in health care, you might open with a hypothetical example: “Imagine sitting for hours in the waiting room with no relief. Fidgeting and in pain, you feel hopeless and forgotten within the system. Finally, you’re greeted by the doctor and he escorts you to a procedure room.” It’s a great story and there is vivid and clear language. But are there any changes that you’d make to the language used?

Remember that this is a hypothetical example. Using reflexive thinking, we might question the use of “he” to describe the doctor. Are there doctors that are a “he”? Certainly. Are all doctors a “he”? Certainly not. It’s important to question how “he” gets generalized to stand-in for doctors or how we may assume that all credible doctors are men.

Practicing reflexivity means questioning the assumptions present in our language choices (like police men rather than police officers). Continue to be conscious of what language you draw on to describe certain people, places, or ideas. If you aren’t sure what language choices are best to describe a group, ask; listen; and don’t assume.

In this chapter, we discussed crafting complete, well-reasoned arguments. Claim, evidence, and warrant are helpful structural components when crafting arguments. Use Chapter 4 to aid in research that will enable you to locate the best evidence for each claim within your speech.

Remember, too, that language plays a central role in telling a compelling story. Up next: organizing and outlining.

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Speak Out, Call In: Public Speaking as Advocacy Copyright © 2019 by Meggie Mapes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Asserting is the act of claiming that something is the case—for instance, that oranges are citruses , or that there is a traffic congestion on Brooklyn Bridge (at some time). We make assertions to share information, coordinate our actions, defend arguments, and communicate our beliefs and desires. Because of its central role in communication, assertion has been investigated in several disciplines. Linguists, philosophers of language, and logicians rely heavily on the notion of assertion in theorizing about meaning, truth and inference.

The nature of assertion and its relation to other speech acts and linguistic phenomena (implicatures, presuppositions, etc.) have been subject to much controversy. This entry will situate assertion within speech act theory and pragmatics more generally, and then go on to present the current main accounts of assertion. [ 1 ]

By an account of assertion is here meant a theory of what a speaker does (e.g., expresses a belief ) in making an assertion. According to such accounts, there are deep properties of assertion: specifying those properties is specifying what asserting consists in . There must also be surface properties, which are the properties by which a competent speaker can tell whether an utterance is an assertion, for instance that it is made by means of uttering a sentence in the indicative mood.

We shall classify accounts according two parameters. Firstly, we distinguish between normative and descriptive accounts. Normative accounts rely on the existence of norms or normative relations that are essential to assertoric practice. Descriptive accounts don’t. Secondly, we distinguish between content-directed and hearer-directed accounts. Content-directed accounts focus on the relation between the speaker and the content of the proposition asserted, while hearer-directed accounts focus on the relations between speaker and hearer. Some theories have both normative and descriptive components. The entry is structured as follows

1. Speech Acts

2.1 presupposition, 2.2 implicature, 2.3 indirect assertions, 2.4 explicitness, 3.1 relation to truth, 3.2 cognitive models of communication, 4.1 self-representation, 4.2 communicative intentions, 5.1.1 modern approaches: correctness and warranted assertability, 5.1.2 contemporary approaches: the norm of assertion, 5.1.3 what kind of norm, 5.1.4 which norm of assertion.

• Supplementary Document: Which Kind of Norm?

5.2 Conventions

6.1 commitment, other internet resources, related entries.

Consider typical utterances made by means of the following sentences

Sentence (1a) would typically be used to make an assertion. The speaker would tell or inform a hearer that there is a beer in the fridge. Such an utterance of is called assertoric , or assertive . By contrast, (1b) would be used to ask a question (and the utterance would then be interrogative ), (1c) to express a wish ( optative ), and (1d) to make a command, or a request ( imperative ). This entry is about utterances of the first kind, and about the speech acts performed by means of them.

Gottlob Frege emphasized the distinction between judging a thought content (what Frege called a Thought ) to be true, and merely thinking/entertaining that content. Both are distinct from the content itself. Analogously, he distinguished between utterances with assertoric quality, or force (see below), and utterances without assertoric force. For instance, an assertoric utterance of

as a whole, by which the conditional proposition is asserted, contains as a proper part an utterance or the antecedent ‘it is raining’. But the utterance of “it is raining” is not itself assertoric. The conditional can be true whether the antecedent is true or false, and hence the speaker’s belief about rain is left open by the assertion

Like Frege, C.S. Peirce stressed the importance of distinguishing “between a proposition and what one does with it”. He also adopted, albeit implicitly, a distinction between force and content :

one and the same proposition may be affirmed, denied, judged, doubted, inwardly inquired into, put as a question, wished, asked for, effectively commanded, taught, or merely expressed, and does not thereby become a different proposition (Peirce [NEM]: 248). [ 2 ]

Frege characterized the assertoric quality of an utterance as an assertoric force (“ behauptende Kraft ”; Frege 1918a [TFR: 330]) of the utterance. This idea was later taken over by J. L. Austin (1962 [1975: 99–100]), the founding father of the general theory of speech acts. Austin distinguished between several levels of speech act, including these: the locutionary act, the illocutionary act and the perlocutionary act. The locutionary act is the act of “ ‘saying something’ in the full normal sense” (1962 [1975: 94]), which is the utterance of certain words with certain meanings in a certain grammatical construction, such as uttering ‘I like ice’ as a sentence of English.

The notion of an illocutionary act was introduced by Austin by means of examples (1962 [1975: 98–102]), and that is the normal procedure. Illocutionary acts are such acts as asserting, asking a question, warning, threatening, announcing a verdict or intention, making an appointment, giving an order, expressing a wish, making a request. An utterance of a sentence, i.e., a locutionary act, by means of which a question is asked is thus an utterance with interrogative force , an if an assertion is made, it has assertoric force .

The perlocutionary act is made by means of an illocutionary act, and depends entirely on the hearer’s reaction. For instance, by means of arguing the speaker may convince the hearer, and by means of warning the speaker may frighten the hearer. In these examples, convincing and frightening are perlocutionary acts.

The illocutionary act does not depend on the hearer’s reaction to the utterance. Still, according to Austin (1962 [1975: 116–7]) it does depend on the hearer’s being aware of the utterance and understanding it in a certain way: I haven’t warned someone unless he heard what I said. In this sense, the performance of an illocutionary act depends on the “securing of uptake” (Austin 1962 [1975: 117]). However, although Austin’s view is intuitively plausible for speech acts verbs with speaker-hearer argument structure (like x congratulates y ) or speaker-hearer-content argument structure ( x tells y that p ), it is less plausible when the structure is speaker-content (“Bill asserted that p ”). It may be said that Bill failed to tell Lisa that the station was closed, since she had already left the room when he said so, but that Bill still asserted that it was closed, since Bill believed she was still there. [ 3 ]

Austin had earlier (1956) initiated the development of speech act taxonomy by means of the distinction between constative and performative utterances. Roughly, whereas in a constative utterance you report an already obtaining state of affairs—you say something—in a performative utterance you create something new: you do something (Austin 1956 [1979: 235]). Assertion is the paradigm of a constative utterance. Paradigm examples of performatives are utterances by means of which actions such as baptizing, congratulating and greeting are performed. However, when developing his general theory of speech acts, Austin abandoned the constative/performative distinction, the reason being that it is not so clear in what sense something is done for instance by means of an optative utterance, whereas nothing is done by means of an assertoric one.

Austin noted, e.g., that assertions are subject both to infelicities and to various kinds of appraisal, just like performatives (Austin 1962 [1975: 13–66]). For instance, an assertion is insincere in case of lying as a promise is insincere when the appropriate intention is lacking (Austin 1962 [1975: 40]). This is an infelicity of the abuse kind. Also, an assertion is, according to Austin, void in case of a failed referential presupposition, such as in Russell’s

(Austin 1962 [1975: 20]). This is then an infelicity of the same kind— flaw-type misexecutions —as the use of the wrong formula in a legal procedure (Austin 1962 [1975: 36]), or of the same kind— misinvocations —as when the requirements of a naming procedure aren’t met (Austin 1962 [1975: 51]).

Further, Austin noted that when it comes to appraisals, there is not a sharp difference between acts that are simply true and false, and acts that are assessed in other respects (Austin 1962 [1975: 140–7]). On the one hand, a warning can be objectively proper or improper, depending on the facts. On the other hand, assertions (statements) can be assessed as suitable in some contexts and not in others, and are not simply true or false. [ 4 ]

As an alternative to the constative/performative distinction, Austin suggested five classes of illocutionary types (or illocutionary verbs): verdictives , exercitives , commissives , behabitives and expositives (Austin 1962 [1975: 151–64]). You exemplify a verdictive, e.g., when as a judge you pronounce a verdict; an exercitive by appointing, voting or advising; a commissive by promising, undertaking or declaring that you will do something; a behabitive by apologizing, criticizing, cursing or congratulating; an expositive by acts appropriately prefixed by phrases like ‘I reply’, ‘I argue’, ‘I concede’ etc., of a general expository nature.

In this classification, assertion would best be placed under expositives, since the prefix “I assert” is or may be of an expository nature. Austin explicitly includes the verbs “affirm”, “deny”, and “state”, in his first group of expositives (1962 [1975: 162]). Marina Sbisà (2020) argues that assertion belongs to both expositives and to verdictives, insofar as assertion expresses a judgment/verdict.

Other taxonomies have been proposed, for instance by Stephen Schiffer (1972), John Searle (1975b), Kent Bach and Robert M. Harnish (1979), Francois Recanati (1987), and William P. Alston (2000). [ 5 ]

2. Pragmatics

Assertion is generally thought of being open, explicit and direct, as opposed for instance to implying something without explicitly saying it. In this respect, assertion is contrasted with presupposition and implicature . The contrast is, however, not altogether sharp, partly because of the idea of indirect speech acts, including indirect assertions.

A sentence such as

is not true unless the singular term ‘Kepler’ has reference. Still, Frege argued that a speaker asserting that Kepler died in misery, by means of (4) does not also assert that ‘Kepler’ has reference (Frege 1892 [TPW: 69]). That Kepler has reference is not part of the sense of the sentence. Frege’s reason was that if it had been, the sense of its negation

would have been that Kepler did not die in misery or ‘Kepler’ does not have reference , which is absurd. According to Frege, that ‘Kepler’ has reference is rather presupposed , both in an assertion of (4) and in an assertion of its negation.

The modern treatment of presupposition has followed Frege in treating survival under negation as the most important test for presupposition. That is, if it is implied that p , both in an assertion of a sentence s and in an assertion of the negation of s , then it is presupposed that p in those assertions (unless that p is entailed by all sentences). Other typical examples of presupposition (Levinson 1983: 178–181) include

implying that John tried to stop in time, and

implying that Martha drank John’s home brew.

In the case of (4) , the presupposition is clearly of a semantic nature, since the sentence “Someone is identical with Kepler”, which is true just if ‘Kepler’ has reference, is a logical consequence of (4) and (under a standard interpretation) of (5). By contrast, in the negated forms of (6) and (7) , the presupposition can be canceled by context, e.g., as in

This indicates that in this case the presupposition is rather a pragmatic phenomenon; it is the speaker or speech act rather than the sentence or the proposition expressed that presupposes something.

However, the issue of separating semantic from pragmatic aspects of presupposition is complex, and regarded differently in different approaches to presupposition (for an overview, see Simons 2006). [ 6 ]

Frege noted (1879: [TPW:10]) that there is no difference in truth conditional content between sentences such as

“and” and “but” contribute the same way to truth and falsity. However, when using (9b) , but not when using (9a) , the speaker indicates that there is a contrast of some kind between working with real estate and liking fishing. The speaker is not asserting that there is a contrast. We can test this, for instance, by forming a conditional with (9b) . The antecedent of (10) preserves the contrast rather than make it hypothetical, showing that the contrast is not asserted, forming a conditional with (9b) in the antecedent preserves the contrast rather than make it hypothetical:

It is usually said that the speaker in cases like (9b) and (10) implicates that there is a contrast. These are examples of implicature . H. Paul Grice (1975, 1989) developed a general theory of implicature. Grice called implicatures of the kind exemplified conventional , since it is a standing feature of the word “but” to give rise to them.

Most of Grice’s theory is concerned with the complementing kind, the conversational implicatures. These are subdivided into the particularized ones, which depend on features of the conversational context, and the generalized ones, which don’t (Grice 1975: 37–8). The particularized conversational implicature rely on general conversational maxims, not on features of expressions. These maxims are thought to be in force in ordinary conversation. For instance, the maxim Be orderly ! requires of the speaker to recount events in the order they took place. This is meant to account for the intuitive difference in content between

According to Grice’s account, the speaker doesn’t assert, only implicates that the events took place in the order recounted. What is asserted is just that both events did take place.

Real or apparent violations of the maxims generate implicatures, on the assumption that the participants obey the over-arching Cooperative Principle . For instance, in the conversation

B implicates that he doesn’t know where in Canada John spends the summer. The reasoning is as follows: B violates the Maxim of Quantity to be as informative as required. Since B is assumed to be cooperative, we can infer that he cannot satisfy the Maxim of Quantity without violating some other maxim. The best candidate is the sub-maxim of the Maxim of Quality, which requires you not to say anything for which you lack sufficient evidence. Hence, one can infer that B doesn’t know. Again, B has not asserted that he doesn’t know, but still managed to convey it in an indirect manner. [ 7 ]

The distinction between assertion and implicature is to some extent undermined by acknowledging indirect assertion as a kind of assertion proper. A standard example of an indirect speech act is given by

By means of uttering an interrogative sentence the speaker requests the addressee to pass the salt. The request is indirect. The question, literally concerning the addressee’s ability to pass the salt, is direct. As defined by John Searle (1975b: 59–60), and also by Bach and Harnish (1979: 70), an indirect illocutionary act is subordinate to another, more primary act and depends on the success of the first. An alternative definition, given by Sadock (1974: 73), is that an act is indirect just if it has a different illocutionary force from the one standardly correlated with the sentence-type used.

Examples of indirect assertions by means of questions and commands/requests are given by

(Levinson 1983: 266). Rhetorical questions also have the force of assertions:

Another candidate type is irony:

assuming the speaker does mean the negation of what is literally said. However, although in a sense the act is indirect, since the speaker asserts something different from what she would do on a normal, direct use of the sentence, and relies on the hearer to realize this, it is not an indirect assertion by either definition. It isn’t on the first, since the primary act (the literal assertion) isn’t even made, and it isn’t on the second, since there is no discrepancy between force and sentence type. [ 8 ]

The very idea of indirect speech acts is, however, controversial. It is not universally agreed that an ordinary utterance of (13) is indirect, since it has been denied, e.g., by Levinson (1983: 273–6) that a question has really been asked, over and above the request. Similarly, Levinson have questioned the idea of a standard correlation between force and sentence form, by which a request would count as indirect on Sadock’s criterion.

Common to all conceptions of indirect assertions is that they are not explicit: what is expressed, or literally said, is not the same as what is asserted. One question is whether an utterance is an assertion proper that p if that content is not exactly what is expressed, or whether it is an act of a related kind, perhaps an implicature. [ 9 ]

A related question is how far an utterance may deviate from explicitness and yet be counted as an assertion, proper or indirect. According to one intuition, as soon as it is not fully determinate to the hearer what the intended content of an utterance is, or what force it is made with, the utterance fails to be assertoric. Underdetermination is the crucial issue. This has been argued by Elizabeth Fricker (2012). But the issue is controversial, and objections of several kinds have been made, for instance by John Hawthorne (2012), Andrew Peet (2015, forthcoming) and Manuel García-Carpintero (2016, 2019b). [ 10 ]

3. Descriptive Accounts, Content-Directed

Descriptive accounts characterize assertion in terms of its psychological, social, and linguistic features, without appeal to normative notions. The content-directed accounts focus on the relations between the speaker and content and between hearer and content.

Frege (1918a [TFR: 329]) held that an assertion is an outward sign of a judgment ( Urteil ). A judgment in turn, in Frege’s view, is a step from entertaining a Thought to acknowledging its truth (Frege 1892 [TPW: 64]). [ 11 ] The subject first merely thinks the Thought that p , and then, at the judgment stage, moves on to acknowledge it as true. Since for Frege, the truth value is the reference ( Bedeutung ) of a sentence, a judgment is an advance from the sense of a sentence to its reference. In case the subject makes a mistake, it is not the actual reference, but the reference the subject takes it to have.

For Frege, truth is not relative. There is exactly one point of evaluation of a Thought, the world itself. If instead we accept more than one point of evaluation, such as different possible worlds, truth simpliciter is equated with truth at the actual world. We can then adapt Frege’s view to say that judging that p is advancing to reference at the actual world , or again, evaluating as true in the actual world.

On this picture, what holds for judgment carries over to assertion. It is in the force of an utterance that the step is taken from the content to the actual point of evaluation. This view has been stated by Recanati with respect to the actual world :

[…] a content is not enough; we need to connect that content with the actual world, via the assertive force of the utterance, in virtue of which the content is presented as characterizing that world. (Recanati 2007: 37)

In Pagin (2016a: 276–278), this idea is generalized. If contents are possible-worlds propositions, the points of evaluation are possible worlds. All actual judgments are then applications of propositions to the actual world . If contents are temporal propositions, true or false with respect to world-time pairs, then all actual judgments are applications to the ordered pair of the actual world and a relevant time, usually the time at which the judgment is made. This is the point with respect to which a sentence, used in a context of utterance, has its truth value (cf. Kaplan 1989: 522). Again, the relation is general: if the content of a judgment is a function from indices of some type to truth values, then a judgment is the very step of taking the content to be true at the actual/current index, or again applying the content to that index. The force of an assertion, on this view, connects the content of the assertion with the relevant index. The assertion indicates that the content is true at the index.

On the more social side, it is often said that in asserting a proposition the speaker “presents the proposition as true” (cf. Wright 1992: 34). Prima facie , this characterizes assertion well. However, there are problems with the idea. One is that it should generalize to other speech act types, but does not seem to do so. For instance, does a question present a proposition as one the speaker would like to know the truth value of? If so, it does not seem that this way of presenting the proposition distinguishes between the interrogative force in (17a) , the optative force in (17b) , and the imperative force in (17c) .

If other speech act types could be characterized in ways analogous to assertion, that would strengthen the proposal. If not, it appears to be a weakness.

Another problem is that it remains unclear what “presenting” amounts to. It must be a sense of the word different from that in which the proposition is presented as true in the sentence

even if the sentence is not uttered assertorically. That is, “present as true” must not refer to a feature simply of content . Since there is a sense of “present as such-and-such” that does refer to representational content, there is a need to specify, in a non-question-begging way, the other sense of “present” that is relevant.

In addition, there is a question of distinguishing the assertoric way of presenting something as true from weaker illocutionary alternatives, such as guesses and conjectures, which also in some sense present their contents as being true.

There are therefore weaker senses of “present as true”, which do not require that the presentation itself is made with assertoric force (like an obsolete label on a bottle), and these senses are too weak. There is clearly also a stronger sense that does require assertoric force (for cases when the label is taken to apply), but that is just what we want to have (non-circularly) explained. Simply using the phrase “present as true” does not by itself help.

Another idea for characterizing assertion in terms of truth-related attitudes is that assertion aims at truth. This is stated for instance both by Bernard Williams (1966), by Michael Dummett (1973 [1981]), and more recently by Marsili (2018). The notion of “aiming at truth” can be understood in rather different ways (for some ways of understanding what it could be for belief to aim at truth, see Engel 2004 and Glüer & Wikforss 2013). [ 12 ]

Williams (1966) characterizes assertion’s aim in different terms. For him, the property of aiming at truth is what characterizes fact-stating discourse, as opposed to, e.g., evaluative or directive discourse. It is natural to think of

as stating a fact, and of

as expressing an evaluation, not corresponding to any fact of the matter. On Williams’s view, to regard a sincere utterance of

as a moral assertion , is to take a realistic attitude to moral discourse: there are moral facts, making moral statements objectively true or false. This view again comes in two versions. On the first alternative, the existence of moral facts renders the discourse fact-stating, whether the speaker thinks so or not, and the non-existence renders it evaluative, again whether the speaker thinks so or not. On the second alternative, an utterance of (21) is an assertion if the speaker has a realistic attitude towards moral discourse and otherwise not.

On these views, it is assumed that truth is a substantial property (Williams 1966: 202), not a concept that can be characterized in some deflationary way. As a consequence, the sentence

is to be regarded as false, since (22) is objectively neither true nor false; there is no fact of the matter. [ 13 ]

Perhaps the best way of capturing the cognitive nature of assertion is to give a theory of the cognitive features of normal communication by means of assertion. A classic theory is Stalnaker’s (1974, 1978). Stalnaker provides a model of a conversation in which assertion and presupposition dynamically interact. On Stalnaker’s model, propositions are presupposed in a conversation if they are on record as belonging to the common ground between the speakers. When an assertion is made and accepted in the conversation, its content is added to the common ground, and the truth of the proposition in question will be presupposed in later stages. What is presupposed at a given stage has an effect on the interpretation of new utterances made at that stage. For Stalnaker, the common ground is a set of propositions. He models this with the set of worlds in which all common ground propositions are true, the context set .

In this framework Stalnaker (1978: 88–89) proposes three rules for assertion:

Stalnaker comments on the first rule:

To assert something incompatible with what is presupposed is self-defeating […] And to assert something which already presupposed is to attempt to do something that is already done.

On such an approach, the satisfaction of a presupposition is an admittance condition of an assertion (cf. Karttunen 1974; Heim 1988). This idea connects with Austin’s more general idea of felicity conditions of speech acts. [ 14 ] Does Stalnaker offer an account of assertion itself? The answer is no, for the role of assertion is shared by other speech acts such as assuming and conjecturing (Stalnaker 1978: 153). What is added to the common ground is only for the purpose of conversation, and need not be actually believed by the participants. It is only required that it be accepted (cf. Stalnaker 2002: 716).

Stalnaker has not (as far as we are aware) attempted to add a distinguishing feature of assertion to the model. This has, however, been attempted by Schaffer (2008), Kölbel (2011: 68–70), and Stokke (2013). [ 15 ]

Another cognitive account is offered by Pagin (2011, 2020). The account is summarized by the phrase: “an assertion is an utterance that is prima facie informative”. For an utterance to be informative is for it to be made in part “because it is true”. What this amounts to is different, but complementary, for speaker and hearer. For the speaker, part of the reason for using a particular sentence is that it is true (in context); that is, the speaker believes, with a sufficient strength, that the sentence expresses a true proposition, and utters it partly because of that. For the hearer, taking the utterance as informative, means, by default, to update their credence in the proposition as a response to the utterance, both in the upwards direction and to a level above 0.5.

The prima facie element of the account means that the typical properties on the speaker and hearer side are only default properties associated with surface features of the utterance: the declarative sentence type, a typical intonation pattern, etc. There are many possible reasons why a speaker may utter such a sentence without believing the proposition, and why a hearer may not adjust their credence in the typical manner. For example, the speaker may be lying, the hearer may distrust the speaker, or may already have given the proposition a very high credence before the utterance. On Pagin’s picture, it is the cognitive patterns associated with surface features, on the production and comprehension sides, that characterize assertion. This way of dividing the account between speaker and hearer is somewhat controversial.

Yet another cognitive account is elaborated in Jary (2010). Jary’s account is situated within Relevance Theory , a more general account of cognition and communication. As a typical ingredient of this general framework, when an assertion is made, the proposition expressed by the utterance is presented as “relevant to the hearer” (2010: 163), where ‘relevant’ is a technical term (Sperber & Wilson 1986 [1995: 265]).

What distinguishes assertion from other speech act types is something different:

Assertion cannot be defined thus, though. In order for an utterance to have assertoric force, it must also be subject to the cognitive and social safeguards that distinguish assertion. […] It is the applicability of these safeguards that distinguishes assertion both from other illocutionary acts and from other forms of information transfer. (Jary 2010: 163–164)

Social safeguards consist in sanctions against misleading assertions, while cognitive safeguards consist in the ability of the hearer to not simply accept what is said but meta-represent the speaker as expressing certain beliefs and intentions (2010: 160). It is part of a full account of assertion, according to Jary, that assertions are subject to these safeguards. This also distinguishes assertions from promises and commands, where the proposition is not presented as subject to the hearer’s safeguards; “rejection is not presented as an option for the hearer” (2010: 73).

4. Descriptive Accounts, Hearer-Directed

Hearer-directed accounts of assertion are primarily concerned with the speaker’s thoughts and intentions about their audience.

According to Frege (1918a [TFR: 329]), as noted, an assertion is an outward sign of a judgment ( Urteil ). The term “judgment” has been used in several ways. If it is used to mean either belief , or act by which a belief is formed or reinforced , then Frege’s view is pretty close to the view that assertion is the expression of belief .

This idea, that assertion is the expression of belief, has a longer history, going back to at least Kant. How should one understand the idea of expressing here? It is natural to think of a belief state, that is, a mental state of the speaker, as causally co-responsible for the making of the assertion. The speaker has a belief and wants to communicate it, which motivates an assertoric utterance. But what about the cases when the speaker does not believe what he asserts? Can we still say, even of insincere assertions, that they express belief? If so, in what sense?

Within the communicative intentions tradition, Bach and Harnish have emphasized that an assertion gives the hearer evidence for the corresponding belief, and that what is common to the sincere and insincere case is the intention of providing such evidence:

For S to express an attitude is for S to R -intend the hearer to take S ’s utterance as reason to think S has that attitude. (Bach & Harnish 1979: 15, italics in the original)

(‘R-intend’ is, as above, short for “reflexively intend”). On this view, expressing is wholly a matter of hearer-directed intentions.

This proposal has the advantage of covering both the sincere and the insincere case, but has the drawback of requiring a high level of sophistication. By contrast, Bernard Williams (2002: 74) has claimed that a sincere assertion is simply the direct expression of belief, in a more primitive and unsophisticated way. Insincere assertions are different. According to Williams (2002: 74), in an assertion, the speaker either gives a direct expression of belief, or he intends the addressee to “take it” that he has the belief (cf. Owens 2006).

Presumably, the intention mentioned is an intention about what the hearer is to believe about the speaker. In this case the objection that too much sophistication is required is less pressing, since it only concerns insincere assertions. However, Williams’s idea (as in Grice 1969) has the opposite defect of not taking more sophistication into account. The idea, that the alternative to sincerity is the intention to make the hearer believe that the speaker believes what he asserts, is not general enough. For instance, there is double bluffing, where the speaker asserts what is true in order to deceive the hearer, whom the speaker believes will expect the speaker to lie. Again, an insincere speaker S who asserts that p may know that the hearer A knows that S does not believe that p , but may still intend to make A believe that S does not know about A ’s knowledge, precisely by making the assertion that p . There is no definitive upper limit to the sophistication of the deceiving speaker’s calculations. In addition, the speaker may simply be stonewalling, reiterating an assertion without any hope of convincing the addressee of anything.

A more neutral way of trying to capture the relation between assertion and believing was suggested both by Max Black (1952) and by Davidson (1984: 268): in asserting that p the speaker represents herself as believing that p . This suggestion appears to avoid the difficulties with the appeal to hearer-directed intentions.

A somewhat related approach is taken by Mitchell S. Green (2007), who appeals to “expressive conventions”. Grammatical moods can have such conventions (2007: 150). According to Green (2007: 160), an assertion that p invokes a set of conventions according to which the speaker “can be represented as bearing the belief-relation to p ”.

As one can represent oneself as believing, one can also represent oneself as knowing. Inspired by Davidson’s proposal, Peter Unger (1975: 253–270) and Michael Slote (1979: 185) made the stronger claim that in asserting that p the speaker represents herself as knowing that p . To a small extent this idea had been anticipated by G. E. Moore when claiming that the speaker implies that she knows that p (1912 [1966: 63]).

However, it is not so clear what representing oneself amounts to. It must be a sense different from that in which one represents the world as having certain features. The speaker who asserts

does not also claim that she believes that there are black swans. It must apparently be some weaker sense of “represent”, since it is not just a matter of being, as opposed to not being, fully explicit. If I am asked what I believe and I answer by uttering (23) , I do represent myself as believing that there are black swans, just as I would have done by explicitly saying that I believe that there are black swans. I do represent myself as believing that there are black swans, equivalently with asserting that I do. What I assert then is false if I don’t have the belief, despite the existence of black swans.

On the other hand, it must also be stronger than the sense of “represent” by which an actor can be said to represent himself as believing something on stage. The actor says

thereby representing himself as asserting that he is in the biology department, since he represents himself as being a man who honestly asserts that he is in the biology department. By means of that, he in one sense represents himself as believing that he is in the biology department. But the audience not invited to believe that the speaker, that is, the actor, has that belief.

Apparently, the relevant sense of “represent” is not easy to specify. That it nevertheless tracks a real phenomenon is often claimed to be shown by Moore’s Paradox. This is the paradox that assertoric utterances of sentences such as

(the omissive type of Moorean sentences) are distinctly odd, and even prima facie self-defeating, despite the fact that they may well be true. Among the different types of account of Moore’s Paradox, Moore’s own emphasizes the connection between asserting and believing. Moore’s idea (1944: 175–176; 1912 [1966: 63]) was that the speaker in some sense implies that she believes what she asserts. So by asserting (25) the speaker induces a contradiction between what she asserts and what she implies. This contradiction is then supposed to explain the oddity. [ 16 ]

Typically, the speaker who makes an assertion has hearer-directed intentions in performing a speech act. The speaker may intend the hearer to come to believe something or other about the speaker, or about something else, or intend the hearer to come to desire or intend to do something. Such intentions can concern institutional changes, but need not. Intentions that are immediately concerned with communication itself, as opposed to ulterior goals, are called communicative intentions .

The idea of communicative intentions derives from Grice’s (1957) article ‘Meaning’, where Grice defined what it is for a speaker to non-naturally mean something. Although Grice did not explicitly attempt to define assertion, his ideas can be straightforwardly transposed to provide a definition:

In the early to mid 1960s Austin’s speech act theory and Grice’s account of communicative intentions began to merge. The connection is discussed in Strawson 1964. Strawson inquired whether illocutionary force could be made overt by means of communicative intentions. He concluded that when it comes to highly conventionalized utterances, communicative intentions are largely irrelevant, but that on the other hand, convention does not play much role for ordinary illocutionary types. Strawson also pointed out a difficulty with Grice’s analysis: it may be the case that all three conditions (i-iii) are fulfilled, but that the speaker intends the hearer to believe that they aren’t (for instance, if the speaker wants the hearer to believe that p for reasons altogether independent from his making the statement).

Such intentions to mislead came to be called sneaky intentions (Grice 1969), and they constituted a problem for speech act analyses based on communicative intentions. The idea was that genuine communication is essentially open: the speaker’s communicative intentions are meant to be fully accessible to the hearer. Sneaky intentions violate this requirement of openness, and therefore apparently they must be ruled out one way or another. Strawson’s own solution was to add a fourth clause about the speaker’s intention that the hearer recognize the third intention. However, that solution only invited a sneaky intention one level up (cf. Schiffer 1972: 17–42; Vlach 1981; Davis 1999).

Another solution was to make the intention reflexive . This was proposed by Searle (1969), in the first full-blown analysis of illocutionary types made by appeal to communicative intentions. Searle combined this with an appeal to social institutions as created by rules. We return to these in section 5.1 .

Searle criticized Grice for requiring the speaker to intend perlocutionary effects, such as what the speaker shall come to do or believe, pointing out that such intentions aren’t essential (1969: 46–7). Instead, according to Searle, the speaker intends to be understood , and also intends to achieve this by means of the hearer’s recognition of this very intention itself. Moreover, if the intention is recognized, it is also fulfilled: “we achieve what we try to do by getting our audience to recognize what we try to do” (Searle 1969: 47). This reflexive intention is formally spelled out as follows:

The illocutionary effect IE is the effect of generating the state specified in the constitutive rule. In the case of assertion, the speaker intends that her utterance counts as an undertaking that p represents an actual state of affairs, depending on the constitutive rule (cf. section 5.1 ).

Bach and Harnish follow Searle in appealing to reflexive communicative intentions. On their analysis (1979: 42), assuming a speaker S and a hearer H ,

According to Bach and Harnish’s understanding, a speaker S expresses an attitude just in case S R -intends (reflexively intends) the hearer to take S ’s utterance as reason to think S has that attitude. They understand the reflexive nature of the intention pretty much like Searle. They say (1979: 15) that the intended effect of an act of communication is not just any effect produced by means of recognition of the intention to produce a certain effect, it is the recognition of that intention .

These appeals to reflexive intentions were later criticized, in particular by Sperber and Wilson (1986 [1995:256–257]). Their point is that if an intention I has as sub-intentions both the intention J and the intention that the hearer recognize I , this will yield an infinitely long sequence: the intention that: J and the hearer recognize the intention that: J and the hearer recognize the intention that: J and …). If this is an intention content at all, it is not humanly graspable. [ 17 ]

Apart from the communicative intentions accounts of assertion, there are more general questions about what intentions are required of a speaker in order for his utterance to qualify as an assertion. For instance, must he intend it to be an assertion? Must it be made voluntarily?

5. Normative Accounts, Content-Directed

5.1 norms of assertion.

Most of the discussion on assertion during the past twenty years has concerned norms of assertability. Simply put, philosophers aim to determine under which conditions it is epistemically permissible (or proper, warranted, correct, appropriate) to make an assertion.

Philosophers have long been interested in analyzing what we mean when we characterize an assertion as “correct”, “justified”, “proper”, “warranted”, “assertible”, or “warrantedly assertible”. The latter notion was taken on board in pragmatism, and in later forms of anti-realism. Dewey (1938) seems to have been the first to characterize truth in terms of assertoric correctness, with his notion of warranted assertibility , even though this idea had a clear affinity with the verifiability principle of Moritz Schlick (1936). Dewey, following Peirce, regarded truth as the ideal limit of scientific inquiry (1938: 345), and a proposition warrantedly asserted only when known in virtue of such an inquiry. Warranted assertibility is the property of a proposition for which such knowledge potentially exists (1938: 9). Dewey was later followed by, notably, Dummett (1976) and Putnam (1981). Common to them is the position that there cannot be anything more to truth than being supported by the best available evidence. In these early discussions, the strategy was that of getting a handle on truth by means of an appeal to the notion of the correctness of an assertion, which was taken as more fundamental. On Dummett’s view, we do get a notion of truth distinct from the notion of a correct assertion only because of the semantics of compound sentences (1976: 50–52). The question of what the correctness of an assertion consists in was not itself much discussed in earlier work, but became subject of discussion already in the 1980s, with the work of Boghossian and others.

The contemporary wave of discussion about assertoric normativity is almost exclusively content-directed; the norms concern the epistemic relation between the speaker and the content of their assertion. [ 18 ] Williamson (1996, 2000) initiated this debate by proposing that assertion is governed by a single norm , of the format:

According to this hypothesis, you are entitled to assert a proposition only if that proposition has a certain unspecified property C . The (N)-schema formalizes the key philosophical question about assertability: which epistemic property C that makes a proposition assertable?

Williamson’s answer is that property C must be knowledge , i.e., being known by the speaker. If this is right, you can properly assert only what you know: assertion is governed by the knowledge-norm (KNA) :

(Williamson 2000: 243). (KNA) is proposed as part of an account of assertion . Other norms have been proposed: the most prominent alternatives are the truth norm (TNA), the justification norm (JNA) and the belief norm (BNA):

Determining which of these norms governs assertion depends (at least in part) on what we mean by hypothesizing that assertion is governed by a simple norm by N . In the next section ( 5.1.3 ), we clarify what philosophers typically mean when they say that N governs assertions. In the subsequent section ( 5.1.4 ), we review the various accounts of which specific norm governs assertion (i.e., the different views as to which property C makes a proposition assertable).

Williamson’s initial framing of the debate on the norm of assertion takes for granted a number of assumptions: for instance, that there is a single norm, that it is constitutive of assertion, that all and only assertions are subject to it. In subsequent work, some of these assumptions have been questioned. Here we limit ourselves to list each assumption (ignoring the numerous objections that affect them). The interested reader will find a discussion of the case for and against each assumption in the supplementary document Which Kind of Norm? .

By Specificity , N is a norm that regulates only one species of action: asserting. In this sense, it is specific to assertion. It governs the making of assertions in general, and nothing else. Directness is closely connected to Specificity . It clarifies that assertions are subject to N only in virtue of the fact that they are assertions.

The “uniqueness assumption” holds that assertion is subject to a single norm. Indirectness specifies that Uniqueness is compatible with recognizing that there are other norms that apply to assertion, albeit only indirectly (Williamson 1996: 489). For instance, an assertion can follow N (e.g., satisfy the Justification Norm JNA) and violate standard of politeness, morality, legality, etc. Unlike N , these other normative standards are not specific to assertion, since they apply also to other actions (questions, orders, as well as non-linguistic actions).

An important corollary of Indirectness is that whether an assertion is all-things-considered permissible or not may depend on factors that are independent of N . When you say something offensive, or reveal a secret that you agreed to keep, you may follow N and yet make an (all-things-considered) impermissible assertion. And when you lie to save a life, you may violate N and make an assertion that is (all-things-considered) permissible.

According to the Individuation assumption, the norm of assertion is individuating: assertion can be defined as the unique speech act who is subject to this unique norm (Williamson 2000: 241; Goldberg 2015: 25; Montminy 2013a). It should be emphasized here that it is being subject to the norm that characterizes assertion, not conforming to the norm. An assertion that violates the norm is still an assertion. A definition of assertion in terms of its norm would read as:

If (A3) holds, an important motivation for identifying N is that it will provide us with a definition of assertion. Once we determine what N is (say, JNA), we can disambiguate the content of this definition (say, “the only speech act who is only subject to JNA”).

The Essentiality assumption goes beyond Individuation : Individuation allows that assertion is only actually individuated by N , and that it could have been governed by some other norm. By contrast, (A4) holds that assertions could not exist and be governed by a different norm: if assertion were subject to a different norm, it would be a different speech act. Nothing but an assertion could violate the norm, if the (A3) and (A4) properties hold.

By (A5) , an assertion is permissible (appropriate, epistemically proper, warranted, correct—depending on one’s favorite terminology) only if it meets condition C , and impermissible if it does not meet C . Permission is related to the negative evaluation of assertions: assertions who violate N are prima facie faulty, and criticizable (qua violations of N ). Permissibility only establishes what is necessary for permissible assertion, not what is sufficient . [ 19 ]

Most theorists take for granted that N is the “constitutive” norm of assertion, and some explicitly advocate (A6) . [ 20 ]

However, there is substantial (and often unacknowledged) disagreement about what constitutivity amounts to (for more the debate surrounding each of these assumptions, see the supplementary document Which Kind of Norm? ).

For the most part, the literature on norms of assertion has concerned the question of which specific norm governs assertion, and what are the reasons for favoring one candidate norm over another. Below, we briefly go through the main candidates from the literature.

The knowledge norm

Over and above Williamson, (KNA) has been favored by DeRose (2002), Reynolds (2002), Adler (2002: 275), Hawthorne (2004), Stanley (2005), Engel (2008), Schaffer (2008), and Turri (2010), among others.

In addition to direct intuitions about the appropriateness of specific sentences, proponents of the knowledge norm have adduced indirect evidence in the form of intuitions about conversational patterns, claiming that these patterns are best explained by the acceptance of the knowledge norm. Williamson himself appeals to such patterns, such as those arising from Moorean Assertions (26) , Lottery Assertions (27) , and Challenges (28) :

Concerning the first, Williamson (2000: 253) claims that an utterance of (26) is just as odd as any ordinary Moorean sentence involving belief, such as (25) above. The oddity of (26) can be explained by appeal to the knowledge norm, and this is taken by supporters of (KNA) to be a datum in its favor. By (KNA) , (26) is proper only if the speaker knows that the proposition expressed by (26) is true. Since knowledge distributes over conjunction, this means that the speaker should know that it is raining and also that she does not know that it is raining. Since knowledge is factive, this generates a contradiction: it follows that an assertion of (26) cannot be proper, and this explains its oddity.

Similarly, (KNA) seems well positioned to explain the oddity of asserting (27) merely on probabilistic grounds. Suppose that a (fair) lottery with a large number of tickets has been held; only one ticket has won. B has a ticket, but neither A nor B knows the result. A asserts (27) on merely probabilistic grounds. Although the probability that the ticket has won is very low (and one can get it arbitrarily low, short of zero, by increasing the number of tickets in the lottery), it is intuitively incorrect for A to tell (27) to B (Williamson 2000: 246–249). No probability short of 1 seems to authorize A ’s utterance of (27) . Since A does not know that (27) is true, (KNA) explains the unacceptability of A’s utterance.

Finally, in standard contexts, it is perfectly appropriate to challenge an assertion with questions like (28) , but (28) presupposes that the speaker knows that what she says is true. (KNA) is well positioned to explain why this presupposition is appropriate: if speakers are only entitled to assert what they know, then it is within the hearer’s conversational rights to assume (and presuppose) that the speaker knows that what they say is true. Further conversational patterns supporting (KNA) have been proposed, e.g., by Benton (2011).

The claim that (KNA) is supported by these conversational patterns has been extensively criticized. The most common line is that the available data can be explained equally well (if not better) by competing accounts. For instance, several authors argue that the oddity of Moorean Assertions and Lottery Assertions can be explained by appeal to a justification norm. [ 21 ] Others have noted that these conversational patterns may be explained by appealing to more general principles, rather than assertoric norms specifically. For instance, it has been argued that Lottery Assertions and Moorean Assertions are improper because they violate more general (Gricean) conversational principles. [ 22 ]

A different criticism comes from Sosa (2009), who notes that (KNA) ’s explanation of Moorean assertions fails to generalize as it should, because (KNA) is unable to explain “dubious assertions”: cases in which the speaker asserts p while admitting that he doesn’t know whether he knows that p (but see Benton 2013, Montminy 2013a). Finally, several authors have questioned the assumption that it is always improper to assert that one’s ticket is a loser on purely probabilistic grounds. [ 23 ]

The argument from challenges like (28) is surely the least compelling. First, to meet the challenge raised by (28) , it would be sufficient for the speaker to show that she has good reasons to believe that what she said is true (Lackey 2007: 610; Kvanvig 2009: 143; McKinnon & Turri 2013). It does not seem, by contrast, that the speaker has to prove that she knows (rather than merely believe) that what she said is true. Second, taking the argument seriously proves too much. Consider (29) :

Since (29) and (30) are also natural ways to challenge an assertion, by the same logic, we should conclude that assertion is also governed by a certainty rule. We could extend this to other challenges (Is that true?). So the challenge argument doesn’t seem to show a primacy of knowledge over alternative rules.

A general problem with the appeal to conversational patterns is that they don’t seem to favor specifically normative views over corresponding non-normative views. For instance, it appears that any linguistic phenomenon that can be explained by appeal to a knowledge norm can be equally well explained by appeal to the view that asserters represent themselves as knowing what they say, although there is no norm (cf. Pagin 2016b; D. Black 2018). Combine this with extraneous, non-assertion-specific norms. That A’s lottery assertion (27) is bad can then be explained by appeal to self-representation of knowledge, together with the general moral norm that it is wrong to mislead hearers.

Many objections against (KNA) are based on the idea that its requirements are too strong. First, Gettiered assertions. Suppose that you have a justified true belief that falls short of knowledge. For instance, you walk into a café, look at the clock, and conclude that it’s 4.35; but your belief is only accidentally true because (unbeknownst to you) the clock has been stuck at 4.35 for several days. If someone asks you the time, it seems perfectly appropriate for you to respond “4.35 pm”. However, by making such an assertion, you would be violating (KNA) , which intuitively speaks against it (Lackey 2007: 596; Kvanvig 2009: 146–7; Coffman 2014: 36).

Similar objections arise in relation to the intuitive permissibility of unlucky assertions: assertions that you have excellent reasons to believe to be true, but that happen to be false. Since the problem with unlucky assertions is that (KNA) entails (TNA) (it only allows true assertions), we will discuss it below, as we consider objections to (TNA) .

Lackey objects that (KNA) fails to accommodate selfless assertions. She presents several examples: one involves a teacher, Stella, who firmly believes in creationism, but is aware that the scientific consensus is that humans evolved from apes. Stella recognizes that Darwinism is supported by stronger empirical evidence, but this is not enough to shake her firm belief in creationism. Suppose that she tells her students:

Intuitively, it would be appropriate for Stella, as a teacher, to assert (31) . However, (KNA) predicts that (31) is incorrect, because Stella does not believe, and therefore does not know, that (31) is true. Selfless assertion have generated a lively debate, mostly involving attempts to explain their propriety within a (KNA) -framework (see Montminy 2013a, Turri 2015, Milić 2017).

Further objections concern so-called unsafe assertions, where the speaker does know what is asserted, but would easily have made the assertion in a similar situation without knowledge. [ 24 ]

A few authors who sympathize with (KNA) have emphasized the role of the hearer. Their proposals are similar to (KNA) , but set the condition in relation to the transmission of knowledge to the hearer . An example is García-Carpintero (2004: 156):

Similar norms have also been proposed by Pelling (2013a) and by Hinchman (2013). García-Carpintero suggests that his version is preferable to Williamson’s because it brings out the social, communicative function of language (but see Willard-Kyle forthcoming for objections to KNA-T). [ 25 ]

The truth norm

Most alternatives to the knowledge norm that are weaker than (KNA) : they require less than knowledge for proper assertion. Weiner (2005) and Whiting (2013, 2015) propose a truth norm (cf. also Alston 2000):

Just like the knowledge norm, the truth norm is factive: both entail that you can assert a proposition only if it is true. This generates a problem concerning the intuitive appropriateness of unlucky assertions . To illustrate, imagine that you have had a cat for several years. During a conversation, a friend asks you if you have any pets at home, and you reply:

Unbeknownst to you, however, some thieves broke into your house and stole everything you have, including your cat. Since you could not possibly have foreseen the eventuality of such an absurd theft, it seems that your assertion is appropriate: in response to your friend’s question, (32) is simply the right thing to say. However, (KNA) and (TNA) give a different verdict: they predict that (32) is an inappropriate response. What’s more, (TNA) (but not (KNA) ) predicts that the appropriate reply would have been to assert the negation of (32) , namely that you don’t have a cat at home. But again, such a “lucky assertion” would be intuitively inappropriate: since you have no reason to believe that your cat was stolen, in saying that you don’t have a pet you would be lying. [ 26 ]

Proponents of (KNA) and (TNA) tend to concede that unlucky assertions (and Gettiered assertions) are intuitively appropriate, and that lucky assertions are intuitively inappropriate. Their standard defense strategy is to invoke some distinctions that explain away their incorrect predictions. Williamson (2000: 256–257) suggests that making unlucky and Gettiered assertions is reasonable, and this is why assertions like (32) usually don’t warrant criticism. However, here the prediction that uttering (32) is reasonable is made by general observations about rationality, and not by (KNA) itself. If (KNA) ’s job is to tell us which assertions are appropriate and which are not, it is not clear how these observations really help its case, since there are other norms (such as (JNA) ) that are able to make this prediction without appeal to independent epistemic standards.

A parallel solution has been delineated by DeRose, who draws a distinction between primary and secondary propriety . Primary propriety is just what a rule says: when a rule prescribes to f only if C , it is primarily proper to f if C , and primarily improper to f if not C . Secondary propriety is dictated by whether you have reasons to think you are following the rule. If you f because you reasonably believe that C , but C is accidentally false, your action is primarily improper but secondarily proper, and doesn’t deserve blame. If you f although you reasonably believe that C is false, but C is accidentally true, your assertion is primarily proper but secondarily improper, and doesn’t deserve praise. This strategy helps defend (TNA) and (KNA) against the devised counterexamples. Unlucky and Gettiered assertions are primarily improper but secondarily proper, and that’s why they don’t deserve blame. Lucky assertions are primarily proper but secondarily improper, and that’s why they don’t deserve praise.

Several authors reject this distinction between primary and secondary propriety. [ 27 ] Most of them think that this distinction is spurious. If the job of an epistemic norm is to identify the one epistemic standard C from which it is appropriate to assert, then it is not clear that appealing to secondary propriety, epistemic excuses or reasonableness is a legitimate move, given that more economic alternatives are available. Reasonably thinking that you are in C (secondarily following the rule) is itself an epistemic state; if being in such a state epistemically entitles you to assert, such permissibility should be built into the norm. [ 28 ]

Accepting the distinction between primary and secondary propriety induces a problem for the intuitive support for the various theories. A large part of the intuitions that serve to support one or the other norm theory relies on raw intuitions about what one should or shouldn’t assert in some situation, or what is proper or improper to assert there. If there are several ways an assertion can be proper or improper, then it is not easy to see which concept of propriety is being tracked by these intuitions. The idea is that a particular intuition that seems to disconfirm a particular normative theory can be explained away by saying that it does not in fact track the primary propriety, but instead only some secondary propriety. Since intuitions don’t come labeled as “primary” and “secondary”, there is a risk of a substantial underdetermination of theory by data (stressed by Pagin 2016b): two theorists need not agree about whether or not an intuition about a particular case supports a certain theory.

A problem persists even if we reject the primary/secondary distinction. As noted, everyone agrees that assertions are governed by various norms: moral, prudential, conversational, rules of etiquette. When does an intuition track the intended notion of a proper assertion, and when something else altogether? Kvanvig (2011: 235) and Engel (2008: 52–54) have drawn attention to this. According to Kvanvig, intuitions typically concern whether assertions are all-things-considered appropriate. But an assertion may be “all-things-considered appropriate” without being “epistemic appropriate” (or the other way around). Since we do not have a reliable method for telling apart intuitions about “overall appropriateness” from intuitions about “epistemic appropriateness”, it is often unclear to which extent a given set of intuitions supports or undermines a given theory (cf. Hawthorne & Stanley 2008: 585–6). To address this problem, Greenberg (forthcoming) proposes to reframe the debate in terms of epistemic norms constraining action, rather than assertion.

Complex refinements of (TNA) have been proposed, too. MacFarlane (2014: 103) adopts a truth norm, but requires it to be qualified as being reflective . This means, in the context of MacFarlane’s relativism , that the proposition should be true in the context of utterance, as assessed from the same context of utterance. [ 29 ] According to MacFarlane, the truth norm needs to be complemented by a retraction rule that enjoins the speaker to retract the assertion if it turns out not be true (cf. Dummett 1991: 165), in a context of assessment:

This rule is also stated in the context of MacFarlane’s relativism, with respect to a context of use and a context of assessment. According to the resulting view, assertion is governed jointly by the (reflective) truth norm and the retraction rule. Rescorla (2009a), who defends a commitment account of assertion (see section 6.1 ), argues there is no norm at all for proper making of assertions. There are only norms that govern later reactions. He proposes three alternatives to (RNA) , which share the idea that when a speaker is challenged with respect to an assertion he has made, he must either defend the assertion or else retract it (Rescorla 2009a: 103–105; cf. Rescorla 2009b).

The justification norms

Several authors have argued that assertability requires justification, rather than belief or knowledge. A standard formulation would be:

What “justification” is taken to refer to varies between authors. Douven (2006, 2009) and Lackey (2007, 2008) argue for a norm of rational belief. Note that (JNA) does not require that you believe what you say: all that it requires is that it is (or would be) rational for you to believe it. As such, (JNA) classifies selfless assertions (which are disbelieved, but rational to believe) as appropriate, a prediction that Lackey (2007) takes to be a crucial advantage of (JNA) .

Different conversational contexts may require different degrees of justification. For instance, suppose that you are serving your friend a curry that you just defrosted. You remember that you prepared it for a vegan dinner over a month ago, but you’re not absolutely sure. If your friend has a mild dislike for cheese, (33) may be an appropriate thing to say; not so much if your friend has a deadly allergy to lactose:

To accommodate this sort of intuitions, some authors have proposed context-sensitive versions of (JNA) . Gerken (2012, 2014, 2017) says that an assertion must be based “on a degree of discursive justification for believing that p that is adequate” relative to the conversational context. He also argues that the notion of justification is best understood in internalist terms: a speaker asserting p is justified only if they would be able to consciously articulate their reasons in support of p . McKinnon (2013, 2015) also defends a version of (JNA) that is context-sensitive. She argues that one may assert that p only if (i) the speaker has supportive reasons for p , and (ii) the relevant conventional and pragmatic elements of the context of assertion are present. On this view, the pragmatic features of the context have an effect on which epistemic support is needed. Pragmatic features can regard the stakes involved (how much depends practically on the truth of what is asserted) or pedagogical requirements (in case the speaker is a teacher who is required to teach what is rational to believe; McKinnon 2015: Section 4.4).

If justification comes in degrees, perhaps some propositions are more assertable than others. According to an influential view (Jackson 1974, 565, cf. Lewis 1976, 297), the degree to which a proposition is assertable is a function of its probability. But Sam Carter (forthcoming) shows that this view makes systematically incorrect predictions. He suggests that assertability is a matter of normality instead: “asserting p is more appropriate than asserting q , for a speaker in evidential state E, iff amongst the worlds compatible with E, p is more normal than q ” (in turn, normality has to do with what is compatible with our evidence-based expectations; cf. Carter forthcoming: §5 for a formal definition).

(JNA) does not explicitly forbid insincere assertions (assertions that are believed to be false). Some find this feature unattractive, and prefer to amend (JNA) so as to introduce a belief-requirement, as in (JBNA) :

Since (JBNA) requires both justification and belief, it entails that both (JNA) and (BNA) are true. But how should we characterize justification for the purpose of this more demanding norm? For Kvanvig (2009, 2011), the relevant notion is knowledge-level justification: “the kind [of justification] that is sufficient for knowledge in the presence of ungettiered true belief” (2009: 156); a stronger version of this requirement (would-be-knowledge) is defended by Coffman (2014).

A datum that justification rules may have trouble explaining is the wrongness of false assertions. There seems to be something inherently defective about false assertions, and there is clearly a sense in which true, justified assertions are more valuable than false, equally justified ones. But (JNA) and (JBNA) have no resources to explain what is defective about falsity. In response, Marsili (2018) notes that proponents of non-factive accounts can avail themselves of the notion of an assertion’s aim: when we make an assertion, we purport to describe the world as it is; our assertion’s purported goal is met only if the assertion is true. On this view, false assertions are not impermissible, but are still defective, because they fail to meet their purported aim.

There are views that come very close to justification rules. Maitra and Weatherson (2010: 112) propose what they call The Evidence Responsiveness Rule : that one assert that p only if one’s attitude towards p is properly responsive to the evidence (they also propose to complement it with an action rule , that it is proper to assert that p only if acting as if p is “the thing for you to do”). Smithies (2012) defends the view that p is assertable only if you have a justification to believe that you are in a position to know that p (cf. Koethe 2009, Rosenkranz forthcoming). This version of (JNA) restores a guiding normative role for knowledge, while accommodating many of the intuitions that motivate a preference for (JNA) or (KNA) (for a critique, see M. Smith 2012).

Other proposals

Belief norms are the weakest norms on the market:

The belief norm is explicitly stated by Hindriks (2007) and Bach (2008: 77). If one substitutes ‘say’ for ‘assert’, this is close to a reformulations of Grice’s second submaxim of Quality (“Do not say what you believe to be false” (Grice 1989: 27).

Intuitively, (BNA) is too permissive: it allows us to assert whatever we believe, even if we have no evidence but a hunch to support our claim. To explain away this prediction, advocates of (BNA) typically add that while (BNA) is the only norm that is specific to assertion (and regulates assertion directly, cf. (A1) and (A2) ), it is not the only norm that regulates it. Since assertions necessarily express a belief, and appropriate belief (and/or practical action) is allegedly governed by a knowledge-norm, (KNA) ultimately determines which assertions all-things-considered appropriate (Hindriks 2007; Bach 2008; Montminy 2013a).

All the alternatives to the knowledge norm considered so far require less than knowledge for proper assertion. A stronger requirement has been suggested by Stanley (2008):

Here one is epistemically certain of a proposition p

if and only if one knows that p (or is in a position to know that p ) on the basis of evidence that gives one the highest degree of justification for one’s belief that p . (2008: 35)

According to Stanley, since the certainty norm requires more than just knowledge, everything that can be explained by appeal to the knowledge norm can also be explained by appeal to the certainty norm. [ 30 ]

Goldberg (2015) argues that the norm of assertion hypothesis can explain why we have a (pro tanto) epistemic entitlement believe what we are told. He identifies some requirements that are needed to meet this desideratum. One is that the norm of assertion is robustly epistemic, and strong enough to warrant testimonial belief (2015: 96). Another is that it must be common knowledge between speaker and hearer that the speaker’s assertion is subject to this norm. A further requirement (2015: 8) is that the speaker authorizes the hearer to defer back to the speaker the responsibility of meeting challenges to the assertion. Together, these assumptions should be able to explain why beliefs based on testimony are pro tanto justified.

Experimental evidence

Most authors who write about the norm of assertion appeal to their own intuitions. However, this is an area where experimental data is highly relevant. If the aim is to describe a real-word communicative act, rather than a purely idealized philosopher’s construct, it follows a good theory of assertion should make predictions that are consistent with our actual practice: it should deem appropriate the assertions that ordinary speakers deem appropriate, and inappropriate the ones that they criticize as inappropriate. If this is right, competing accounts can be tested empirically against the intuitions of competent speakers of the language.

Empirical research on the norm of assertion was initiated by Turri. His (2013) study aims to determine whether people’s assertability judgments are better predicted by a factive norm, like (KNA) or (TNA) , or a non-factive one, like (JNA) or (BNA) . Turri reports the results of six experiments, primarily investigating judgments about unlucky assertions (false assertions that the speaker reasonably believes to be true). In the first experiment, Maria incorrectly thinks that she has a 1990 Rolex in her watch collection, because this is what her inventory says. When a friend asks Maria if she has that particular Rolex, participants are asked: “Should Maria tell her guest that she has a 1990 Rolex in her collection?” [Yes/No]. Participants overwhelmingly selected the negative option (No), even when different factors were manipulated (the control questions, what is at stake, the response options, etc.), apparently providing robust evidential support for factive accounts. Turri has since conducted several more studies, accumulating an impressive body of evidence supporting factive accounts of assertion in general and the knowledge-norm in particular (for a review, see Turri 2017), including studies on other potential counterexamples to (KNA) , like selfless assertions (2015a), and Gettiered assertions (2016).

It seemed that the debate was settled in favor of the knowledge rule, until new studies came out that pointed in the opposite direction. Reuter and Brössel (2019) argue that two factors likely skewed the results in favor of factive accounts in Turri’s (2013) seminal study. First, the protagonist (Maria) has a defeater against her belief: she is aware that her inventory is occasionally mistaken. Second, participants were asked what Maria should say, but it would seem more appropriate to ask whether her assertion was permissible . Manipulating these factors reverted the results: a majority of participants gave responses aligning with non-factive accounts. The authors then conducted new experiments involving both lucky assertions (true, but not justified) and unlucky assertions (false, but justified), finding that (JNA) was reliably a better predictor of assertability than any of its factive rivals ( TNA , KNA ).

Kneer (2017) also found solid evidence that (JNA) is a better predictor of assertability judgments than (KNA) , TNA , and (BNA) . In a first experiment, he tested Gettiered assertions and unlucky assertions, measuring assertability with different prompts: he asked whether the protagonist “should say p ”, whether she “is permitted to say p ”, and if saying p is “appropriate”. In both the Gettiered condition and the unlucky condition, the overwhelming majority of participants considered p assertable, but not known. Kneer concludes that “knowledge quite clearly doesn’t constitute the norm of assertion”. The other experiments were therefore designed to verify whether (JNA) makes more reliable predictions. Experiments 2 and 3 found robust evidence that (JNA) is a better predictor of assertability judgments than (KNA) , both in Gettier assertions and unlucky assertions, even when different factors (like the response options or the kind of epistemic support) are manipulated. Experiment 4 shows that (JNA) is a better predictor of assertability judgments than (BNA) : people judge that “having a hunch” that p is true is not good enough ground to assert p . Like Reuter and Brössel, Kneer concludes that (JNA) , rather than (KNA) , is better supported by the empirical evidence. In a subsequent study, Kneer (2021) found that these results are stable across different cultures.

These results are at odds with the initial findings by Turri and colleagues. Given the contrasting data available, how can we determine which account is best supported by empirical evidence? To answer this question, Marsili and Wiegmann (2021) note that, in all their differences, Turri’s studies share a central methodological aspect: they explore laypeople intuitions by asking a sample of subjects to judge what a particular agent should do in a given scenario, before the protagonist makes the assertion; Kneer, Reuter and Brössel adopt instead different prompts and tense structures. Marsili and Wiegmann argue that the divergent results are the predictable bi-product of a flaw in the questioning method employed in the former set of studies. They note that “should” can be interpreted in two ways: teleologically (or instrumentally), when it indicates what you should do to achieve your aims, and deontologically , when it indicates what you should do to live up to some norms or obligations. The authors found experimental evidence that participants in Turri’s studies interpreted the test questions teleologically, which undermines a factive interpretation of the results. Furthermore, they identify measures that can be introduced to prompt the intended (deontological) reading of the test question, finding that when these measures are implemented into Turri’s vignettes, participants’ judgments overwhelmingly align with non-factive views like (JNA) .

It would therefore seem that the latest studies have tipped the scale in favor of non-factive views like (JNA) . However, further research will be needed to settle the disagreement on empirical grounds.

Austin held that illocutionary acts as opposed to perlocutionary acts are conventional , in the sense that they can be made explicit by the so-called performative formula (Austin 1962: 103). According to Austin, one can say “I argue that” or “I warn you that” but not “I convince you that” or “I alarm you that”. Presumably, the idea was that a speech act type is conventional just if there exists a convention by which an utterance of a sentence of a certain kind ensures (if uptake is secured) that a speech act of that type is performed. Austin probably thought that in virtue of the performative formulas this condition is met by illocutionary but not by perlocutionary act types.

The more general claim that illocutionary force is correlated by convention with sentence type has been advocated by Dummett (1973 [1981: 302, 311]). On this view, it is a convention that declarative sentences are used for assertion, interrogative for questions and imperative for commands and requests. Similar views have been put forward by Searle (1969) and Kot’átko (1998), and the idea has been more recently defended by Kölbel (2010). According to Searle (1969: 38, 40), illocutionary acts are conventional, and the conventions in question govern the use of so-called force-indicating devices (Searle 1969: 64) specific to each language. [ 31 ]

However, the view that illocutionary acts types are conventional in this sense has met with much opposition. Strawson (1964: 153–154) objected early on that ordinary illocutionary acts can be performed without relying on any convention to identify the force, for instance when using a declarative sentence like “The ice over there is very thin” for a warning. This kind of criticism, directed against Dummett, has later been reinforced by Robert J. Stainton (1996, 2006), stressing that in appropriate contexts, sub-sentential phrases like “John’s father” (pointing at a man) or “very fast” (looking at a car) can be used to make assertions, and gives linguistic arguments why not all such uses can be treated as cases of ellipsis (that is, as cases of leaving out parts of a well-formed sentence that speaker and hearer tacitly aware of). If Strawson and Stainton are right, convention isn’t necessary for making assertions.

Moreover, Davidson (1979, 1984) stressed that no conventional sign could work as a force indicator in this sense, since any conventional sign could be used (and would be used) in insincere utterances, where the corresponding force was missing, including cases of deception, jokes, impersonation and other theatrical performances. Basically the same point is made by Bach and Harnish (1979: 122–127). If Davidson, and Bach and Harnish are right, then conventions are also not sufficient (but see Kölbel 2010 for an argument against this view).

Williamson (1996, 239) has argued that that speech acts defined by constitutive rules (like assertion, in his own view) cannot be conventional. However, García-Carpintero (2019) has shown that this position is controversial. The situation is complicated by the fact that the general question of when a convention, or rule of any kind, is in force for a speaker, is substantial and complex (for more on the relation of assertion to convention, Green 2020a).

6. Normative Accounts, Hearer-Directed

Making an assertion has normative consequences. To characterize the social dimension of assertion, some authors focus on the distinctive responsibilities (“commitments” [ 32 ] ) that a communicator takes on when they claim that something is the case. We shall begin by reviewing two main ways to understand what assertoric commitment is.

A first view, that we may call “commitment as accountability”, focuses on the sanctions that speakers accept to face if what they claimed turns out to be false. This characterization of assertion was first developed by Peirce:

an act of assertion […] renders [the speaker] liable to the penalties of the social law (or, at any rate, those of the moral law) in case [the asserted proposition] should not be true, unless he has a definite and sufficient excuse. ([CP]: 2.315)

William P. Alston (2000: 55) presents the idea as follows: a speaker accepts responsibility for a content p being true iff the speaker

knowingly [takes] on the liability to ([lay] herself open to) blame (censure, reproach, being taken to task, being called to account), in case of not- p . [ 33 ]

The notion of liability at play here is normative: when you assert that p , your audience acquires a (defeasible) right to criticize you if what you say is false. On this view, to assert is akin to signing a contract by means of which you take responsibility for something (what you said) being true, and accept to pay the consequences otherwise. [ 34 ]

To emphasize this, some authors write that assertions guarantee (Peirce [CP]: 5.543; Watson 2004: 66), assure (Moran 2005, Hinchman 2013) or warrant (Carson 2006) that their content is true. However, it is not obvious that what assertions guarantee is that their content is true . It may be that an assertor instead accepts the responsibility for being justified in believing that one knows that the proposition is true (Green 2009), or that they know that the proposition is true.

An alternative way to characterize the responsibilities generated by assertions is to focus on what the speaker is expected to do , in virtue of making an assertion. Assertoric responsibility can be understood as a commitment to act in a certain way . When you make an assertion, you generate an expectation that you will behave in certain ways and not in others, especially in relation to what you will say next. [ 35 ] To take a simple example, once you assert that p , it becomes inappropriate for you to make statements that blatantly contradict p (Hamblin 1970b), or to behave in ways that are sharply at odds with accepting p as true (Geurts 2019). [ 36 ]

Furthermore, making an assertion commits you to respond to people’s questions and challenges in certain ways, as the conversation evolves. Brandom (1994: 173–175) emphasizes this, and argues that asserting achieves two different social results at the same time: (i) it commits the speaker to defend her claim in response to legitimate challenges ; and relatedly (ii) authorizes the hearer to claim anything that follows from what the speaker asserted. MacFarlane (2003: 14 [ Other Internet References ]) summarizes (and revises) the underlying idea as follows:

To assert a sentence S (at a context U ) is ( inter alia ) to commit oneself to providing adequate grounds for the truth of S (relative to U ), in response to any appropriate challenge, or (when appropriate) to defer this responsibility to another asserter on whose testimony one is relying. One can escape this commitment only by withdrawing the assertion.

Several technical notions are at play here. One is the notion of challenge . To challenge an assertion is to question its veracity (or, at least, the speaker’s entitlement to make the assertion). An interlocutor can challenge an assertion by means of questions, such as (Q), or explicit denials, like (D):

Challenges like (Q) and (D) are usually appropriate, but not always. For instance, they may be inappropriate if in the conversaation it is already settled that what the speaker said is true. [ 37 ] Asserting only commits you to respond to appropriate challenges – or else retract your assertion (on norms of retraction, see section 5.1.4 .)

It is often argued that there is a whole family of speech acts (“assertives” or “representatives”) that “commit the speaker (to varying degrees) to something’s being the case” (Searle 1979: 12): illocutionary acts such as warning, denying, reminding, arguing, deducing , and so forth. These speech acts differ in the strength of the commitments they generate (e.g., swearing that p involves a stronger commitment than plain assertion), and in the conditions required for their felicitous performance (e.g., warning about p is only appropriate if p involves a risk or danger for the interlocutor). If a speech act involves a stronger commitment than assertion and/or extra felicity conditions, we can say that it is “stronger” than assertion. Searle and Vanderveken (1985) note that whenever you perform the stronger speech act, you have also made an assertion. For example, it would not be incorrect to report (34) or (35) by saying that the speaker has claimed , asserted , or affirmed that she is a certified forklift operator:

If this is right, the term “assertion” does not designate a single illocutionary act, but rather a class of them: it denotes every speech act that is normatively stronger than (or equal to) assertion. This seems to lose track of a narrower meaning of the term “assertion”, one that sets plain assertions apart from stronger assertives. A strategy to rescue this narrow meaning while acknowledging assertion’s close ties with other assertives is found in Green (2013, 2017, 2020b: 8). Green, (like Brandom) understands commitment as a responsibility to defend your claim, and argues that an assertion commits you to a greater justificatory burden than weaker assertives, and lesser than stronger assertives (for an alternative, like-minded solution, Marsili 2015: 123–127). Labinaz (2018) outlines some difficulties for extending the Brandomian framework to assertive speech acts, and proposes to adopt an alternative approach to degrees of commitment that rather owes to the work of Austin (cf. also Labinaz & Sbisà 2014: §3).

We have seen that assertions differ from other speech acts in terms of the commitments that they engender. It has also been noted that assertions themselves can differ in terms of the commitments that they generate: not all assertions generate commitment of the same strength.

Using expressions like “I think that A is B ”, “Probably/Perhaps A is B ”, or “ A is quite B ”, a speaker can mitigate their assertion that A is B . And using intensifiers like “I know that A is B ”, “Surely A is B ”, or “ A is absolutely B ”, the speaker can strengthen or boost their assertion that A is B . These expressions modulate the degree of the commitment engendered by the assertions in which they occur: they can be used to undertake more or less responsibility towards the content of the assertion, and more generally to modulate the force and of the resulting speech act. [ 38 ]

The commitments generated by assertions have often been compared to those generated by promises. For instance, by saying (36) to a friend, a speaker will typically commit herself to calling the repair shop at 8.

In a standard context, as a result of uttering (36) , both the speaker and the addressee will regard the speaker as having incurred an obligation to the addressee.

In the literature, the standard view is that assertions and promises generate commitments of different kinds, so that they belong to different families (e.g., Searle 1969, 1979). The relation between asserting and promising is discussed in detail in Watson (2004), who introduces a distinction between primary and secondary commitments. Assertions and promises differ in the primary commitments that they generate. When you promise to φ , your primary commitment is to (intend to) act so as to make φ happen. By contrast, when you assert that p , your primary commitment is to facts that are independent of your actions: namely, for Watson, the defensibility of p (Watson 2004: 68). Furthermore, both assertions and promises also involve a secondary commitment to act in certain ways “if one is queried or if things go wrong” (2004: 67). The speaker’s commitment to defend the assertion if challenged is on this view a secondary commitment, that follows from the primary one (2004: 70).

Some authors maintain a stronger connection between promising and asserting. Marsili (2016) argues that promising that you will φ “illocutionary entails” asserting that you will φ . The idea is that promises behave like the “strong assertives” discussed above (swearing, confessing, guaranteeing, etc.), whose performance commits the speaker to having made an assertion. For instance, if Pepa utters (36) , it would be appropriate to say that Pepa has asserted, affirmed or claimed that she will call the repair shop. And if Pepa does not believe that she will call the repair shop, it would be appropriate to say that Pepa has lied. In this sense, promising that you will do something entails asserting that you will do it. [ 39 ]

Hawley (2019) also draws a strong connection between asserting and promises, but in the opposite direction: she analyses assertion in terms of promising (cf. also Carson 2006). Hawley suggests that whenever you make an assertion about p , you also promise to speak truthfully as to whether p . This means that whenever you assert, your promise to speak truthfully is simultaneously made and either fulfilled or broken (depending on whether you are speaking truthfully or not). However, this view has trouble explaining an important difference between asserting and promising: assertions can be mitigated (“Maybe I will do it” is perfectly fine) but promises cannot (“I promise that maybe I will do it” is not a genuine promise).

Commitment-making is central to some “mixed” accounts of assertion—that is, accounts that incorporate insights from different theories of assertion. For Peirce, commitment is central to assertion, but not alone in characterizing it. In his view, asserting also involves belief-expression: it “consists in the furnishing of evidence by the speaker to the hearer that the speaker believes something” (Peirce [CP]: 2.335). Furthermore, for Peirce assertion is necessarily accompanied by an intention to convince the hearer: “every assertion involves an effort to make the intended interpreter believe what is asserted” (Peirce [CP]: 5.547). In short, Peirce’s view is that in asserting that p , you attempt to convince your audience that p is true by providing them with evidence that you believe that p , thereby becoming committed to (i.e., accountable for) the truth of p . [ 40 ]

Another mixed account is defended by Searle (1969) (cf. also Searle 1975b: 322 and Searle & Vanderveken 1985). Searle’s characterization of assertion varies slightly throughout his writings, but the central idea is that assertion can be identified on the basis of its distinctive rules—the rules for uttering an assertion “successfully” and “non-defectively” (i.e., felicitously). They are presented as rules for the use of force-indicating devices (Searle 1969: 62–4). The rules can be summarized as follows. Here S is the speaker and H the hearer:

The fifth rule is the crucial one, and is held to be constitutive of assertion. Searle contrasts constitutive rules with regulative rules. [ 41 ] Constitutive rules, according to Searle, are like definitions: they define what it is to engage in a certain activity: for instance, “attacking the king in such a way that no move will leave it unattacked counts as checkmate” (Searle 1969: 33).

Searle seems to adopt a notion of “commitment” that involves both a responsibility to respond to challenges (à la Brandom) and a liability to sanctions (à la Peirce): the assertor is expected to “be able to provide reasons for the original statement […] and can be held publicly responsible if it turns out to be false” (Searle 2010: 82). Like Peirce, also Searle (1969: 65) integrates commitment with belief-expression: the speaker expresses the state required by the sincerity rule, i.e., in the case of assertion, whose sincerity rule is (4), the speaker expresses a belief. Finally, the speaker implies that the preparatory conditions are met—so that Searle’s view has the odd consequence that in asserting p , you imply that p is not obviously true.

A third “mixed” account is defended by Green (1999, 2000, 2007, 2013, 2017, 2020a). Green distinguishes three different normative notions in terms of which assertions (and other assertive speech acts) can be characterized:

The first component, fidelity , tracks commitment: one’s responsibility to respond to legitimate challenges. More specifically, for Green, being assertorically committed to p means being responsible to provide “strong justification if challenged” (2017). Here “strong” is used in contrast to weaker assertives, like conjectures, for performing which is sufficient to be able to provide some (non-conclusive) justification if challenged.

The second component is liability to error:

one who asserts that P is liable to be right or wrong on the issue of P ’s truth exactly as P turns out to be true or false. (2020a: 350)

This is a feature that assertion has in common with weaker assertives: also in guessing or hypothesizing that p , you may be right or wrong depending on whether p is actually true. This relates to Dummett’s idea that “an assertion is a kind of gamble that the speaker will not be proved wrong” (1976: 84).

The third component, frankness , has to do with sincerity: “assertion is sincere just in case the speaker believes the content she has asserted” (Green 2020a: 350). This requirement sets assertion aside from other assertives (such as educated guesses and conjectures) that do not require belief for sincere performance (but rather, e.g., some reasons to think the content true).

A full account of assertion has to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for asserting. But is commitment to what you say sufficient for asserting? That is, if you say that p and thereby also commit to the truth of p , does it follow that you have asserted that p ? Pagin (2004) offers a negative response. The reason is that one can construct an utterance type that isn’t assertoric, but that would be assertoric according to envisaged sufficiency view. A simple example is given by

Whoever utters (37) felicitously incurs a commitment to the truth of the proposition that there are black swans. However, intuitively (37) would not be an assertion that there are black swans; at most, it is a declaration of the speaker’s intent to be committed to that proposition. What is said here does not entail that there are black swans (it may be accurate even if there are no black swans). If this is right, then incurring a commitment is not sufficient for asserting. This objection puts pressure on any “hearer-directed” account, including all the ones discussed in section 4, because parallel constructions can be derived from any hearer-directed view; for instance (against belief-expression views) by letting the speaker declare that she is representing herself as believing a given proposition.

Some authors have questioned whether this test really undermines commitment accounts of assertion (and social accounts more generally). Pegan (2009) argues that the counterexamples can be blocked by carefully amending the theory; see Pagin (2009) for a response. MacFarlane (2011) and García-Carpintero (2013) suggest that if we distinguish between what is said and what is asserted , we can regard (37) as an assertion that all swans are black. Marsili & Green (2021) argue that this sort of test is unreliable, questioning some key assumptions needed for (37) to work as a counterexample. They acknowledge, nonetheless, that assertions are not fully reducible to their social effects.

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• MacFarlane, John, 2003, “ Epistemic Modalities and Relative Truth ”, unpublished manuscript.
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• NDPR review of Jary’s book Assertion , by Peter Pagin.
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Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

Croatian Journal of Philosophy

Volume 21, issue 3, 2021.

Argumentation as a Speech Act A (Provisional) Balance

This paper investigates whether, and if so, in what way, argumentation can be profitably described in speech-act theoretical terms. I suggest that the two theories of argumentation that are supposed to provide the most elaborate analysis of it in speech-act theoretical terms (namely van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst’s Pragma-Dialectics and Lilian Bermejo-Luque’s linguistic normative model of argumentation) both suffer from the same two flaws: firstly, their “illocutionary act pluralism” assumption and secondly, a lack of interest in where arguing belongs in the classification of illocutionary acts. I argue that these flaws derive from the authors’ reliance on an intention-based speech-theoretical framework. Finally, I adopt a deontic framework for speech acts in order to propose an alternative way of accounting for argumentation which seems to overcome the two limitations outlined above. According to this framework, argumentation may be conceived as a speech act sequence, characterized by the conventional effects brought about by the communicative moves (as illocutionary acts) of which it is composed.

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Arguing for Different Types of Speech Acts

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• DOI: 10.1080/10570318109374035
• Corpus ID: 152155775

Argument as a Natural Category: The Routine Grounds for Arguing in Conversation.

• S. Jacobs , S. Jackson
• Published 1981
• Linguistics
• Western Journal of Speech Communication

79 Citations

Speech acts and arguments, the significance of informal logic for philosophy, speech act pluralism in argumentative polylogues, framing fracking, speech act theory and the study of argumentation, study on conflict dialogue from the perspective of dialogic syntax, the passover haggadah as argument, or why is this text different from other texts, on the relationship of the descriptive, normative and pedagogical in argumentativeness research., discourse markers as the classificatory factors of speech acts, constructing disagreement space, 20 references, structure of conversational argument: pragmatic bases for the enthymeme, “you fruithead”: a sociolinguistic approach to children's dispute settlement, speech acts: an essay in the philosophy of language, chapter 6 – some sequential negotiations in conversation: unexpanded and expanded versions of projected action sequences*, some sequential negotiations in conversation: unexpanded and expanded versions of projected action sequences, expression and meaning: indirect speech acts, the preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation, requests and responses in children's speech, recent advances in discourse analysis, cognition and categorization, related papers.

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Speech acts and arguments

• Published: November 1989
• Volume 3 , pages 345–365, ( 1989 )

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• Scott Jacobs 1  

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38 Citations

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Speech act theory seems to provide a promising avenue for the analysis of the functional organization of argument. The theory, however, might be taken to suggest that arguments are a homogenous class of speech act with a specifiable illocutionary force and a single set of felicity conditions. This suggestion confuses the analysis of the meaning of speech act verbs with the analysis of the pragmatic structure of actual language use. Suggesting that arguments are conveyed through a homogeneous class of linguistic action overlooks the way in which the context of activity and the form of expression organize the argumentative functions performed in using language. An alternative speech act analysis would treat folk terminology as a heuristic entry point into the development of a technical analysis of the myriad argumentative functions and structures to be found in natural language use. This would lead to a thorough-going pragmatic analysis of the rational and functional design of speech acts in argumentation.

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COST Action CA17132 - APPLY European Network for Argumentation and Public Policy Analysis

Reserved Area

Norms of Public Argument: A Speech Act Perspective

Workshop at the NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal

June 27-29, 2022

Special issue of TOPOI: An International Review of Philosophy

Summer school (June 23-25, 2022)

Confirmed invited speakers:

Rae Langton, University of Cambridge, UK

Rae Helen Langton is currently the Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. She has published widely on Immanuel Kant’s philosophy, moral philosophy, political philosophy, metaphysics, and feminist philosophy. She is also well known for her work on pornography and objectification. She has a long-standing interest in speech acts and social justice. Her research focuses on how certain forms of speech (including hate speech and pornography) can subordinate people, altering social norms and authority patterns and legitimating inequality. Moreover, she argues that some speech can also silence by making certain speech acts difficult or impossible.

Mary Kate McGo wan , Wellesley College, USA

Jennifer Saul , University of Waterloo, CA

Jennifer Saul is a professor of philosophy at the University of Sheffield and the University of Waterloo. Her primary interests are in Philosophy of Language, Feminism, Philosophy of Race, and Philosophy of Psychology. Much of her work has been on deception and racism in political speech in recent years. As said in her research webpage , in her most recent book Lying, Misleading and What is Said: An Exploration in Philosophy of Language and in Ethics (Oxford University Press 2012), she argues that considering the distinction between lying and misleading can help to shed new light on methodological disputes in philosophy of language over notions like what is said, semantic content, implicature, and the semantic/pragmatic distinction more generally.

Marina Sbisà, University of Trieste, IT

Marina Sbisà is an Eminent Scholar who was formerly Full Professor of Philosophy and Theories of Languages at the University of Trieste. She has done research in the philosophy of language (especially pragmatics), ordinary language philosophy (Austin, Grice, Wittgenstein), semiotics and discourse analysis and gender studies. Her research interests include speech acts and implicit meaning. While doing research in pragmatics and discourse analysis, her main current engagement is with the reconstruction and reassessment of the philosophy of John L. Austin.

Mitchell Green , University of Connecticut, USA

Mitchell Green is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut. His research interests are in Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind, and Aesthetics. He is also interested in Metaphysics, Decision Theory, the Theory of Action, and the history of analytic philosophy. Since 2009 he has directed Project High-Phi, which works to incorporate philosophy into American high schools. His current research includes the evolutionary biology of communication, speech acts and their role in conversation, empathy, self-knowledge, self-expression, attitude ascription, and the epistemic value of fiction.

● Marie Guillot, Essex, UK ● Grace Paterson, Vienna, AT ● Marcin Lewiński, Lisbon, PT ● Chris Cousens, La Trobe, AU ● Cristina Corredor, Madrid, ES ● Giles Howdle, Edinburgh, UK ● Tasneem Ahmad, Waterloo, CA ● Neri Marsili, Barcelona, ES ● Álvaro Domínguez-Armas, Lisbon, PT ● Andrés Soria-Ruiz, Lisbon, PT ● Amalia Haro Marchal, Granada, ES ● Frank Zenker, Istanbul, TR ● Felix Bräuer, Mannheim, DE ● Kyle Adams, Waterloo, CA ● Andrei Moldovan, Salamanca, ES ● Grzegorz Gaszczyk, Groningen, NL

The aim of the workshop and the special issue is to use the framework of speech act theory to understand the broadly construed normativity of disputes (“argument” in one sense) and reasoning (“argument” in another sense) in the public sphere. We preserve the ambiguity of the natural-language “argument” to capture the broad range of communicative phenomena where normative aspects of discourse are particularly at stake. Indeed, disputes as breakdowns of communication reveal the norms and sanctions governing our linguistic exchanges. We believe that speech act theory, which is enjoying nothing short of a revival today, provides a promising framework for combining insights from philosophy, pragmatics, argumentation theory, legal theory, and other disciplines studying the normative aspect of public argument.

Our focus is on the variety and dynamics of norms governing argumentative practices. In other words, we want to examine and catalogue the mechanisms that underlie their enactment, persistence, and evolution as well as the various ways in which they shape our discursive practices. In particular, we are interested in communicative phenomena— e.g., back-door speech acts, authoritative illocutions, counter speech, insinuation, demonstrations and other forms of social protest, and the like—to be found in the domain of public argument which result from following, negotiating, exploiting, or accommodating discursive norms.

Questions and topics:

• Which tools does today’s speech act theory give us to better capture the uses and abuses of public argument?
• What are the norms invoked, created, enacted, violated, challenged and restored in public communication, constituted via speech act exchanges?
• Various levels of speech act norms: constitutive, regulative, optimal, objective, etc.
• Explicit normativity of directive / imperative / deontic / prescriptive and commissive speech acts vs. implicit normativity of other speech acts. An Austinian question: Does the distinction hold in the first place?
• The enactment of discursive norms or deontic states of affairs through the mechanism of accommodation
• Complex relations between authoritativeness and normativity of various speech acts (from friendly advice to institutional hate speech)
• The exploitation (i.e., purposeful violation) of some norms (e.g. the norms of politeness) in order to restore or negotiate more fundamental norms
• The host-parasite metaphor: manipulative speech acts understood as parasitic abuses of the default norms and conditions of communicative exchanges;
• The relationship between norms of public argument being strategically exploited and deceptive or manipulative uses of language
• The fallacious potential of norm (mis)management with respect to public deliberation ideals: do linguistic and pragmatic tricks of these kinds translate into fallacious argumentative moves?

Dates: June 27-29, 2022

Colégio Almada Negreiros, Room CAN 219 , NOVA Institute of Philosophy, Campus de Campolide, NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal

PROGRAMME AND ABSTRACTS AVAIABLE HERE

Monday, June 27

10:00-10:45 Registration / Coffee 10:45-11:00 Opening: João Constâncio, Director of the NOVA Institute of Philosophy 11:00-11:45 Presentation 1: Marie Guillot, “Bullshit as a source of illocutionary disablement in public argument” 11:45-12:30 Presentation 2: Grace Paterson, “Denial, Retraction, Disavowal” 12:30-14:00 Lunch 14:00-14:45 Presentation 3: Marcin Lewiński, “Authority in multi-party conversations: The case of advising” 14:45-15:30 Presentation 4: Chris Cousens, “Solving the Authority Problem: Why we won’t debate you, bro” 15:30-16:15 Presentation 5: Cristina Corredor, “Can we conclude norms by arguing?” 16:15-16:45 Coffee Break 16:45-17:30 Presentation 6: Felix Bräuer, “Statistics as Figleaves”

Tuesday, June 28

9:30-10:30 Keynote 1: Mary Kate McGowan, “Public speech actions: on extending the scorekeeping analysis” 10:30-11:00 Coffee Break 11:00-11:45 Presentation 7: Giles Howdle, “Microtargeting, dog whistles, and deliberative democracy” 11:45-12:30 Presentation 8: Tasneem Alsayyed Ahmad, “The 3rd party Hermeneutical Impasse” 12:30-14:00 Lunch 14:00-14:45 Presentation 9: Neri Marsili, “Illocutionary norms and rational expectations” 14:45-15:30 Presentation 10: Álvaro Domínguez-Armas, Andrés Soria-Ruiz & Marcin Lewiński, “Provocative insinuations as argumentative inferences” 15:30-16:00 Coffee Break 16:00-16:45 Presentation 11: Amalia Haro Marchal, “Two subtypes of illocutionary acts of arguing” 16:45-17:30 Presentation 12: Shiyang Yu & Frank Zenker, “A scheme and critical questions for the argumentum ad baculum” 17:30-18:30 Keynote 2 Marina Sbisà, “Public argument in nonideal conditions” 20:00-22:00 Conference dinner

Wednesday, June 29

10:00-11:00 Keynote 3: Jennifer Saul & Ray Drainville, “Visual and Linguistic Dogwhistles”  11:00-11:15 Coffee Break 11:15-12:15 Keynote 4 Rae Langton, “Norms and back-door speech acts” 12:15-13:00 Presentation 13: Kyle K. J. Adams, “For Whom the Dog Whistles: Demystifying the Double Speak of White Supremacy” 13:00-14:30 Lunch 14:30-15:15 Presentation 14: Andrei Moldovan, “The limits of autonomous critical thinking” 15:15-16:00 Presentation 15: Grzegorz Gaszczyk, “Helping others to understand. A normative account of the speech act of explanation” 16:00-16:30 Coffee Break 16:30-17:30 Keynote 5: Mitchell Green, “Dimensions of Commitment and the Abuse of Illocutionary Norms in Public Discourse” 17:30-17:45 Closing

Immediately before the Workshop (June 23-25), Lisbon summer school on speech acts in public discourse: Normative questions will be held. This event will be dedicated to early career investigators (ECIs: PhD students, post-doc researchers) interested in the topic of abusive or manipulative speech acts. Bursaries will be available. More details soon.

Workshop June 27-29

Full papers submitted by July 15, 2022, 2 weeks after the workshop

The workshop, the special issue, and the summer school form part of research activities within the broader EU-funded COST Action project European Network for Argumentation and Public Policy Analysis ( APPLY, CA17132) ( https://publicpolicyargument. eu/ ) and are supported by the Horizon Europe Framework Programme. No registration fees are required and some travel bursaries will be available to the authors of the best selected papers / ECIs invited to the summer school.

Organisation:

Bianca Cepollaro , Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, IT

Marcin Lewiński , NOVA University Lisbon, PT – Chair

Steve Oswald , University of Fribourg, CH

Maciej Witek , University of Szczecin, PL

Álvaro Domínguez Armas , NOVA University Lisbon, PT

Andrés Soria-Ruiz , NOVA University Lisbon, PT

Intro.9.2.22 Gonzalez v. Trevino : Free Speech, Retaliation, First Amendment

The Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment prevents the government from unduly abridging the freedom of speech. 1 Footnote U.S. Const. amend. I ( Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech . . . . ). The Supreme Court has held that some restrictions on speech are permissible. See Amdt1.7.5.1 Overview of Categorical Approach to Restricting Speech ; see also Amdt1.7.3.1 Overview of Content-Based and Content-Neutral Regulation of Speech . Though the Clause refers to Congress and making law, its prohibition extends beyond legislative acts to all branches and offices of government. 2 Footnote See Miami Herald Pub’g Co. v. Tornillo , 418 U.S. 241 (1974) (observing that the Free Speech Clause applies to any government agency—local, state, or federal ) (quoting Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pittsburgh Comm’n on Hum. Rels. , 413 U.S. 376, 400 (1973) (Stewart, J., dissenting)). In particular, individuals may initiate legal proceedings against federal or state officials for violating their right to free speech. 3 Footnote An action brought against a federal official for violating constitutional rights is known as a Bivens action, after the Supreme Court case that established the right to file such an action. Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents , 403 U.S 388 (1971) . An individual may bring an action against a state official for violating constitutional rights under a federal civil rights statute known as Section 1983. 42 United States Code, Section 1983. For more information on these actions, see ArtIII.S2.C1.13.4 Suits Against the United States and Sovereign Immunity . One basis for such a claim may be that an official took adverse action against the individual in response to the individual engaging in protected speech.

The Supreme Court has held that a plaintiff claiming to have suffered retaliation in violation of the Free Speech Clause must first demonstrate that the plaintiff engaged in constitutionally protected speech and such speech was a motivating factor behind the official’s adverse action. 4 Footnote Mt. Healthy City Sch. Dist. Bd. Of Educ. v. Doyle , 429 U.S. 274, 287 (1977) . If the plaintiff demonstrates this, the official must show that it would have taken the same action absent the protected speech. 5 Footnote Id. The Supreme Court has held that a plaintiff alleging retaliatory prosecution—that is, being charged with a crime in retaliation for speech—must also prove that their prosecution was not supported by probable cause, as required by the Fourth Amendment . 6 Footnote Hartman v. Moore , 547 U.S. 250, 265–66 (2006) ; U.S. Const. amend. IV ( The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause . . . . ). In Nieves v. Bartlett , the Court recognized an exception to the probable cause rule, holding that a plaintiff alleging retaliatory arrest need not show a lack of probable cause if the plaintiff presents objective evidence that he was arrested when otherwise similarly situated individuals not engaged in the same sort of protected speech had not been. 7 Footnote Nieves v. Bartlett , 587 U.S. 391, 406 (2019) .

In Gonzalez v. Trevino , the Court was asked to weigh in on the scope and application of the probable cause exception articulated in Nieves . Sylvia Gonzalez, a former city council member, organized a petition while in office to oust the city manager. 8 Footnote Gonzalez v. City of Castle Hills , No. 5:20-CV-1151-DAE, 2021 WL 4046758, at *1 (W.D. Tex. Mar. 12, 2021) , rev’d sub nom. Gonzalez v. Trevino , 42 F.4th 487 (5th Cir. 2022) , cert. granted , 144 S. Ct. 325 (2023) ; see Joint App. at JA-2, Gonzalez v. Trevino , No. 22-1025 (U.S. Dec. 11, 2023) . Later, Gonzalez was arrested on charges that she violated a government records law after placing the petition in her personal binder at the conclusion of a city council meeting. 9 Footnote See Petition for a Writ of Certiorari at 6–7, Gonzalez v. Trevino , No. 22-1025 (U.S. Apr. 20, 2023) ; Brief in Opposition at 2–3, Gonzalez v. Trevino , No. 22-1025 (U.S. June 8, 2023) . The charges against Gonzalez were later dismissed by the district attorney. 10 Footnote Gonzalez , 2021 WL 4046758,at *2 . Gonzalez brought a federal civil action against three city officials alleging that her arrest was retaliatory in violation of the First Amendment . 11 Footnote Id. Gonzalez provided data taken from county records indicating that, of the past indictments, prosecutors did not apply the law to situations resembling her circumstances. 12 Footnote Id. at *6 .

A federal district court held that Gonzalez’s evidence of general charging data was sufficient to invoke the Nieves exception and she therefore did not need to demonstrate a lack of probable cause for her arrest. 13 Footnote Id. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed. 14 Footnote Gonzalez , 42 F.4th 487 . The Fifth Circuit observed that the language of Nieves speaks of comparative evidence . . . of otherwise similarly situated individuals who engage in the same conduct. 15 Footnote Id. at 492 (quoting Nieves v. Bartlett , 587 U.S. 391, 406 (2019) ). The court concluded that general data that the charge had never been used in similar circumstances did not meet this standard. 16 Footnote Id. Gonzalez appealed to the Supreme Court. In addition to arguing that objective evidence, including charging data, may satisfy the Nieves exception, Gonzalez argued more broadly that the lack of probable cause requirement applicable in retaliatory arrest cases should not apply to her case, because the requirement applies only when the claims are based on split-second decisions to arrest. 17 Footnote Petition for a Writ of Certiorari, supra note 9, at 25–26.

On June 20, 2024, the Supreme Court reversed in a per curiam opinion, holding that the Fifth Circuit misapplied the principles of Nieves . 18 Footnote Gonzalez v. Trevino , No. 22-1025, slip op. (U.S. June 20, 2024) . The Court explained that the Nieves exception does not require evidence of virtually identical and identifiable comparators. 19 Footnote Id . at 4 . Instead, the Court recognized that evidence that no one has ever been arrested for engaging in a certain kind of conduct—especially when the criminal prohibition is longstanding and the conduct at issue is not novel, — is sufficient to invoke Nieves . 20 Footnote Id . at 5. The Court declined to address Gonzalez’s second argument that Nieves did not apply to her case, having resolved the case on the basis of Gonzalez’s first argument. 21 Footnote Id .

Whether the Nieves probable cause exception can be satisfied by objective evidence other than specific examples of arrests that never happened.

Whether the Nieves probable cause rule is limited to individual claims against arresting officers for split-second arrests. 22 Footnote Supreme Court of the United States Granted & Noted List , October Term 2023 Cases for Argument, No. 22-1025 , https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/qp/22-01025qp.pdf .

CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISION IMPLICATED: First Amendment , Free Speech Clause

CONSTITUTIONAL TOPIC: Freedom of Speech

SUPREME COURT DOCKET NUMBERS: 22-1025 23 Footnote Docket for 22-1025 , U.S. Supreme Court , https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/22-1025.html .

APPEAL FROM: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit

LOWER COURT CASE NUMBER: 21-50276

DECISION BELOW: 42 F.4th 487

ORAL ARGUMENT: March 20, 2024 24 Footnote Oral Argument Transcript, Gonzalez v. Trevino , No. 22-1025 (U.S. Mar. 20, 2024) , https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2023/22-1025_8m58.pdf .

FINAL DECISION: June 20, 2024

Justice Alito concurring

Justice Kavanaugh concurring

Justice Jackson (joined by Justice Sotomayor) concurring

Justice Thomas dissenting

•   Jump to essay-1 U.S. Const. amend. I ( Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech . . . . ). The Supreme Court has held that some restrictions on speech are permissible. See Amdt1.7.5.1 Overview of Categorical Approach to Restricting Speech ; see also Amdt1.7.3.1 Overview of Content-Based and Content-Neutral Regulation of Speech .
•   Jump to essay-2 See Miami Herald Pub’g Co. v. Tornillo , 418 U.S. 241 (1974) (observing that the Free Speech Clause applies to any government agency—local, state, or federal ) (quoting Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pittsburgh Comm’n on Hum. Rels. , 413 U.S. 376, 400 (1973) (Stewart, J., dissenting)).
•   Jump to essay-3 An action brought against a federal official for violating constitutional rights is known as a Bivens action, after the Supreme Court case that established the right to file such an action. Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents , 403 U.S 388 (1971) . An individual may bring an action against a state official for violating constitutional rights under a federal civil rights statute known as Section 1983. 42 United States Code, Section 1983. For more information on these actions, see ArtIII.S2.C1.13.4 Suits Against the United States and Sovereign Immunity .
•   Jump to essay-4 Mt. Healthy City Sch. Dist. Bd. Of Educ. v. Doyle , 429 U.S. 274, 287 (1977) .
•   Jump to essay-5 Id.
•   Jump to essay-6 Hartman v. Moore , 547 U.S. 250, 265–66 (2006) ; U.S. Const. amend. IV ( The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause . . . . ).
•   Jump to essay-7 Nieves v. Bartlett , 587 U.S. 391, 406 (2019) .
•   Jump to essay-8 Gonzalez v. City of Castle Hills , No. 5:20-CV-1151-DAE, 2021 WL 4046758, at *1 (W.D. Tex. Mar. 12, 2021) , rev’d sub nom. Gonzalez v. Trevino , 42 F.4th 487 (5th Cir. 2022) , cert. granted , 144 S. Ct. 325 (2023) ; see Joint App. at JA-2, Gonzalez v. Trevino , No. 22-1025 (U.S. Dec. 11, 2023) .
•   Jump to essay-9 See Petition for a Writ of Certiorari at 6–7, Gonzalez v. Trevino , No. 22-1025 (U.S. Apr. 20, 2023) ; Brief in Opposition at 2–3, Gonzalez v. Trevino , No. 22-1025 (U.S. June 8, 2023) .
•   Jump to essay-10 Gonzalez , 2021 WL 4046758,at *2 .
•   Jump to essay-11 Id.
•   Jump to essay-12 Id. at *6 .
•   Jump to essay-13 Id.
•   Jump to essay-14 Gonzalez , 42 F.4th 487 .
•   Jump to essay-15 Id. at 492 (quoting Nieves v. Bartlett , 587 U.S. 391, 406 (2019) ).
•   Jump to essay-16 Id.
•   Jump to essay-17 Petition for a Writ of Certiorari, supra note 9, at 25–26.
•   Jump to essay-18 Gonzalez v. Trevino , No. 22-1025, slip op. (U.S. June 20, 2024) .
•   Jump to essay-19 Id . at 4 .
•   Jump to essay-20 Id . at 5.
•   Jump to essay-21 Id .
•   Jump to essay-22 Supreme Court of the United States Granted & Noted List , October Term 2023 Cases for Argument, No. 22-1025 , https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/qp/22-01025qp.pdf .
•   Jump to essay-23 Docket for 22-1025 , U.S. Supreme Court , https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/22-1025.html .
•   Jump to essay-24 Oral Argument Transcript, Gonzalez v. Trevino , No. 22-1025 (U.S. Mar. 20, 2024) , https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2023/22-1025_8m58.pdf .

Book Bans and Gun Control: 3 Minutes From Kamala Harris’ Speech to Teachers

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Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the American Federation of Teachers at the union’s convention in Houston on July 25. She contrasted her party’s desire to ban assault weapons with book bans that have proliferated around the country at the urging of conservative community members.

“Book bans in this year of our Lord 2024. Just think about it,” she told the crowd of about 3,500. “So we want to ban assault weapons and they want to ban books. Can you imagine?”

Here’s an excerpt from her message to educators.

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Speech Act Theory and the Study of Argumentation

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International Brotherhood of Teamsters

Press releases, teamsters-backed free speech legislation becomes law in illinois.

SB 3649 Bans Employer Intimidation, Infringement Upon Workers’ Personal Beliefs

Press Contact: Matt McQuaid  Phone: (202) 624-6877 Email: [email protected]

(SPRINGFIELD, Ill.) – Teamsters are celebrating after the union-backed SB 3649, Illinois Worker Freedom of Speech Act, passed into law today. The legislation bans mandatory attendance at captive audience meetings, which are employer-sponsored presentations filled with anti-union propaganda designed to discourage organizing efforts.

“This victory happened because of a grassroots lobbying campaign by and for rank-and-file union members in our state, and the Teamsters were the frontline of that battle,” said Thomas W. Stiede, President of Teamsters Joint Council 25. “Illinois workers will no longer be forced to choose between jeopardizing their livelihoods or sitting through the toxic intimidation and outright lies that employers subject them to during captive audience meetings. Our success here demonstrates that even in the face of corporate interests who want to crush the middle class, working families can triumph by standing together in solidarity. We’d like to thank the elected officials in state government who stood with us in this fight.”

SB 3649 was authored by State Senator Robert Peters (D – Chicago) and sponsored by Majority Leader Marcus C. Evans, Jr. in the Illinois House of Representatives. Nationwide, Teamsters are pushing for state legislatures to ban mandatory captive audience meetings. Connecticut, Oregon,  Maine ,  Minnesota , and  New York  have already adopted legislation banning them.

Teamsters Joint Council 25 represents more than 100,000 workers at 25 local union affiliates in Chicago, Illinois, and Northwest Indiana. For more information, visit teamstersjc25.com .

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Senate Passes Child Online Safety Bill, Sending It to an Uncertain House Fate

The legislation would impose stricter privacy rules and safeguards for children on the internet and social media, but concerns about free speech and fierce industry lobbying pose challenges.

By Maya C. Miller

Reporting from Capitol Hill

The Senate on Tuesday passed bipartisan legislation to impose sweeping safety and privacy requirements for children and teens on social media and other technology platforms, voting overwhelmingly to send the measure to the House, where its fate was uncertain.

Passage of the measure, which has been the subject of a dogged advocacy campaign by parents who say their children lost their lives because of something they found or saw on social media, marked a rare bipartisan achievement at a time of deep polarization in Congress.

Despite the lopsided support among Republicans and Democrats, the package faces a fierce lobbying effort by technology companies that are resisting new regulation, and deep skepticism among free speech advocates who argue that it would chill individual expression and potentially harm some of those whom the bill aims to protect.

The vote was 91 to 3 to approve the measure, sending it to the House, which is in a summer recess until September. The legislation is the product of years of work by lawmakers and parents to overhaul digital privacy and safety laws as social networking sites, digital gaming and other online platforms increasingly dominate children’s and teens’ lives.

“I used to run marathons, and I feel like I used to feel halfway through: ‘Wow, I got this far, and I’m feeling good,’” Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut and one of the chief sponsors of the legislation, said in an interview on Tuesday. “The second half can be the toughest in some ways, but also the easiest psychologically because you see the end in sight.”

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The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington, DC 20500

Remarks by Vice President Harris at a Campaign Event Atlanta,   GA

Georgia State Convocation Center

Atlanta, Georgia

7:07 P.M. EDT

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Good evening.  (Applause.)  Good evening, Georgia.  (Applause.) Good evening.  (Applause.)

AUDIENCE:  Kamala!  Kamala!  Kamala! THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Thank you all.  Thank you.  (Laughs.)  Thank you.  Thank you.  (Laughs.)  (Applause.)

My goodness.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  (Laughs.)  Thank you, everyone.  Thank you.  Thank you.  (Laughs.)  (Applause.)

My goodness.  Thank you all.  Thank you very much.  Thank you, everybody.

Oh, it’s good to be back in Georgia.  (Laughs.)  (Applause.)  Thank you. 

Everyone, can we please hear it for Tyler?  (Applause.)  I want to thank Tyler for that incredible introduction.  I invited him and several other young entrepreneurs to come and visit with me at the White House, and we had a, really, very long and important conversation about the future of America.  And, Tyler, you represent the best of our future.  Thank you for that.  (Applause.)  Thank you.  Thank you.

And please give it up for Quavo — (applause) — and Megan.  (Applause.) 

So, it is so good to see everyone.  And let me — let me also thank our incredible members of Congress who are with us this evening: Senator Jon Ossoff — (applause); Senator Raphael Warnock — (applause); and Representative Nikema Williams — (applause).  To Mayor Andre Dickens, thank you for welcoming me back — (applause) — to Atlanta.  And thank you to the great Stacey Abrams — (applause) — for your extraordinary leadership.

So, Georgia, it is so good to be back.  And I am very clear, the path to the White House runs right through this state.  (Applause.)  And you all helped us win in 2020, and we going to do it again in 2024.  (Applause.)  Yes, we will.  Yes, we will.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  (Inaudible.)  (Applause.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  So, let’s get right down — (laughs) — so — (applause) — so, I’m going to get i- — I’m — I’m going to get into some business now.  Okay?  (Laughter.)  I’m going to get into some business now.  All right.

So, Georgia, as many of you know, before — and have a seat, if you have a chair.  (Laughter.) 

As many of you know, before I was elected vice president and before I was elected a United States senator, I was an elected attorney general and an elected district attorney.  (Applause.)  And before that, I was a courtroom prosecutor.  (Applause.) 

So, in those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds — (applause): predators who abused women — (applause); fraudsters who ripped off consumers — (applause); cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain — (applause).   So, hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type.  (Applause.)  I know the type.  And I have been dealing with people like him my entire career. 

For example, as attorney general of California, I took on one of our country’s largest for-profit colleges that was scamming students.  Well, Donald Trump ran a for-profit college that scammed students.

AUDIENCE:  Booo —

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  As a prosecutor, I specialized in child sexual abuse cases and sexual abuse cases.  Well, Trump was found liable for committing sexual abuse.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  And as an attorney general, I held the big Wall Street banks accountable for fraud.  Donald Trump was just found guilty of fraud — (applause) — 34 counts. 

So, in this — AUDIENCE:  Lock him up! THE VICE PRESIDENT:  So, in this campaign —

AUDIENCE:  Lock him up!  Lock him up!  Lock him up!

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  (Inaudible.)  (Inaudible.)  So, in this campaign, I will proudly put my record against his any day of the week — (applause) — any day of the week, including, for example, on the issue of immigration. 

So, I was the attorney general of a border state.  In that job, I walked underground tunnels between the United States and Mexico on that border with law enforcement officers.  I went after transnational gangs, drug cartels, and human traffickers that came into our country illegally.  I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won. 

Donald Trump — (applause) — Donald Trump, on the other hand, has been talking a big game about securing our border, but he does not walk the walk — (applause) — or as my friend Quavo would say, he does not walk it like he talks it.  (Applause.)

Where’s Quavo?  (Laughs.) 

So, look, our administration worked on the most significant border security bill in decades.  Some of the most conservative Republicans in Washington, D.C., supported the bill.  Even the Border Patrol endorsed it.  It was all set to pass.  But at the last minute, Trump directed his allies in the Senate to vote it down.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Right.   He tanked — tanked the bipartisan deal because he thought it would help him win an election — AUDIENCE:  Booo —      THE VICE PRESIDENT:  — which goes to show Donald Trump does not care about border security; he only cares about himself.  (Applause.)

And when I am president, I will work to actually solve the problem.  (Applause.)

So, here is my pledge to you.  As president, I will bring back the border security bill that Donald Trump killed, and I will sign it into law — (applause) — and show Donald Trump what real leadership looks like.  (Applause.)

But make no mistake, this campaign is not just about us versus Donald Trump.  Truly, this campaign is about two very different visions for our nation — (applause): one focused on the future, the other focused on the past.  (Applause.)

We believe in a future where every person has the opportunity to build a business — (applause) — to own a home, to build intergenerational wealth — (applause); a future with affordable health care — (applause) — affordable childcare, paid leave.  (Applause.)

And all of this is to say: Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency.  (Applause.)  Because we here all know, when our middle class is strong, America is strong.  (Applause.)

And to keep our middle class strong, families need relief from the high cost of living so that they have a chance not just to get by but to get ahead.  (Applause.)

And, yes, it is true that by many indicators, our economy is the strongest in the world — (applause) — but while inflation is down and wages are up, prices are still too high. (Applause.)  You know it, and I know it.  (Applause.)

And when we win this election, here’s what we’re going to do about it.  On day one, I will take on price gouging and bring down costs.  (Applause.) 

We will ban more of those hidden fees and surprise late charges that banks and other companies use to pad their profits.  (Applause.) 

We will take on corporate landlords and cap unfair rent increases.  (Applause.) 

And we will take on Big Pharma to cap prescription drug costs for all Americans.  (Applause.)

Our plan will lower costs and save many middle-class families thousands of dollars a year.  But Donald Trump has a different plan in mind, one that would raise prices on middle-class families.  Just look at his Project 2025 agenda.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  I take it you’ve seen it.  (Laughter.)

Project 2025 is a plan to weaken the middle class, be clear.  And Donald Trump intends to cut Social Security and Medicare.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  He intends to give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations. 

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  He intends to gut our investments in clean energy jobs.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  He intends to end the Affordable Care Act —

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  — to take us back to a time when insurance companies had the power to deny people with preexisting conditions.  Do you guys remember what that was?  Children with asthma.  Breast cancer survivors.  Grandparents with diabetes.

Georgia, America has tried these failed policies before, and we are not —

AUDIENCE:  Going back!

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  — going back.  (Applause.)  We’re not going back.  We’re not going back.

AUDIENCE:  We’re not going back!  We’re not going back!  We’re not going back!

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  That’s right.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  And we are not going back because ours is a fight for the future and it is a fight for freedom.  (Applause.) 

Across our nation, we are witnessing a full-on assault on hard-fought, hard-won freedoms and rights: the freedom to vote — (applause); the freedom to be safe from gun violence — (applause); the freedom to live without fear of bigotry and hate — (applause); the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride — (applause); the freedom to learn and acknowledge our true and full history — (applause); and the freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body — (applause) — and not have her government tell her what to do.  (Applause.)

Ours is a fight for the future and for freedom.  And I don’t have to tell folks in Atlanta that generations of Americans before us led the fight for freedom.  And now the baton is in our hands — (applause) — each and every one of us.

And we love our country.  We love our country.  And I believe it is the highest form of patriotism to fight for the ideals of our country.  (Applause.)

And so, we, who believe in the sacred freedom to vote, will finally pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.  (Applause.)

We, who believe in the freedom to live safe from gun violence, will finally pass universal background checks — (applause), red flag laws — (applause), and an assault weapons ban — (applause).

We, who believe in reproductive freedom — (applause) — will stop Donald Trump’s extreme abortion bans.  And when Congress passes a law to restore reproductive freedoms — (applause) — as president of the United States, I will sign it into law.  (Applause.)

So, November 5th — November 5th is in 98 days.  (Applause.)

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  (Inaudible.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  An- — (Laughs.)  (Applause.) 

So, in 98 days — and let’s level set.  Friends, let’s level set.  We have a fight in front of us.  (Applause.)  We have a fight in front of us, and we are the underdogs in this race.  We are. 

But you see, this is a people-powered campaign.  (Applause.)  Ours is a people-powered campaign. 

In fact, after I announced my candidacy, we saw the best week of grassroots fundraising in presidential campaign history.  (Applause.)  And if you go to KamalaHarris.com, you can help us build on that success.  (Applause.)

So, the momentum in this race is shifting.  And there are signs that Donald Trump is feeling it.  (Laughter and applause.)  You may have noticed.

So, last week, you may have seen, he pulled out of the debate in September he had previously agreed to.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  So — so, here’s the thing.  Here- — here’s the funny thing about that.  Here’s the funny thing about that.  So, he won’t debate, but he and his running mate sure seem to have a lot to say about me.  (Applause.)

And, by the way, don’t you find some of their stuff to just be plain weird?  (Applause.)

Well, Donald — (applause) — I do hope you’ll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage — (applause) — because, as the saying goes, if you’ve got something to say, say it to my face.  (Laughs.)  (Applause.) 

AUDIENCE:  Kamala!  Kamala!  Kamala!

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you. 

So, Georgia, in the next 98 days, we have our work cut out for us.  And this is not going to be easy.  This is hard work, but we like hard work.  Hard work is good work.  (Applause.)

So, Georgia, today I ask you: Are you ready to get to work? 

AUDIENCE:  Yes!  (Applause.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Do we believe in freedom?

AUDIENCE:  Yes!  (Applause.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Do we believe in opportunity?

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Do we believe in the promise of America?

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  And are we ready to fight for it?

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  And when we fight —

AUDIENCE:  We win!

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  — we win!

God bless you.  God bless the United States of America.  (Applause.)

END                 7:27 P.M. EDT

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