ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines agreements, acts of consent, oaths and pledges as speech acts, variously assertive, directive and commissive, and as strategic moves taking advantage of the added force of declarations. To the best of his spotty knowledge, no one else had then or has since subjected strategic interaction, or rational choice more generally, to this sort of disassembly. Of course, rational choice theory gains its power by radically simplifying the world–by populating it with mechanical calculators of the costs and benefits, complications and uncertainties, of any available course of action. Renee Marlin-Bennett quotes from and then analyzes a major address of President Obama’s to make her case. There are no expressive speech acts. Indeed most expressives are truncated speech acts of some other class so conventionalized as to empty them of emotional content or motivational force. John Searle’s scheme offers five ‘classes’ of speech acts –assertive, directive, commissive, expressive and declarative.
