ABSTRACT
This chapter surveys how speech acts shape and create reality, fitting word to world and fitting world to word. Here, too, there is a need for obscurity: Speech acts are not always to be taken literally. H. Paul Grice’s famous “recommendation” letter (‘Mr. Smith’s handwriting is excellent and he attends class regularly’) is actually a warning (the implicature being ‘don’t expect much more from this candidate’). The chapter explains the ground rules (‘conversational maxims,’ pragmatics) by which speakers negotiate (or negate) literal and implied meanings. The meanings they co-create and share create realities that are transient (for the purposes of a conversation) or lasting (creating norms, laws, social constructs, etc.). Speech acts can bring together and rend apart.
