Can Travis' “Generative Theory of Illocutions” be Generative?

Extract

Travis' Saying and Understanding offers the foundations for what he hopes will be a generative theory of illocutions. I want to criticize the “generative” character of the theory.

Note first that I am not going to criticize the theory because — as is true of Saying and Understanding — there are no rules for its generation, nothing to let us see how it will work. The book is only a discussion of the foundations of such a theory. My criticism is that I do not see how it can be generative, given what Travis expects it to do. So in this critique I shall outline what I think he expects it to do, how he expects it to work, and why I think it cannot.