An investigation into assertion

Abstract

The speech act of assertion is a fundamental part of our linguistic practices and consequently of our social lives. At a pre-theoretical level the act is usually associated with the simple utterance of a sentence in the declarative mood. The point of this dissertation is to show that there is much more to it. The underlying question that drives this dissertation then, is simply ‘What is an assertion?’. In order to try to provide a plausible explanation to this question, I enmesh myself in the literature and take an evaluative stance towards different theories of assertion. After assessing the theories, I conclude that the most plausible theory available is a theory that defines the speech act of assertion on terms of being the speech act that is governed by a certain rule (much like a move in a game). This conclusion leads to a second question, ’What is the rule that governs assertion?’. Again, after looking at the literature I attempt to argue in favor of the idea that it is a knowledge rule that governs the speech act of assertion. This leads to the final conclusion that the speech act of assertion is the speech act that is governed by the knowledge rule.