Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language.

SEARLE, John.

$2,000.00

Item Number: 86359

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

First edition of “one of the most important contributions to the philosophy of language in recent decades” (The Philosophical Quarterly). Octavo, original cloth. Association copy, inscribed by the author to his brother and sister-in-law on the front free endpaper, “For Bill and Kathy from John with best wishes.” The recipient William Searle was Professor Emeritus of the English Department of the University of Pittsburgh. Both were heavily involved in Free Speech Movement in Berkeley in the 1960s. Near fine in a near fine price-clipped dust jacket. Jacket design by R.B. Kitaj.

This book has immediately, and justly, been accorded the status of a major contribution to the philosophy of language. The brilliant but programmatic insights of Austin's How to do things with words are systematically developed and integrated with the more recent work of philosophers such as Grice, Rawls and Searle himself to produce an apparently comprehensive and certainly illuminating general theory, summarized in what Searle terms the 'main hypothesis' of the book, speaking a language is engaging in a rule-governed form of behavior. "This small but tightly packed volume is easily the most substantial discussion of speech acts since John Austin's How to do things with words and one of the most important contributions to the philosophy of language in recent decades" (The Philosophical Quarterly).