Explicit performatives revisited

The paper defends a version of a traditional account of explicit performatives, according to which they are a kind of self-verifying indirect speech act, from recent arguments by Jary and Pagin. I rely on a distinction, made by Bach, between a locutionary and a stative sense of what is said. Although derivations of conversational implicatures and indirect speech acts in general need only depart from the locutionary sense of what is said, and do not require the stative sense (so the speaker does not need to be actually asserting the literal content), in response to Jary's and Pagin's arguments I argue that in the case of explicit performatives speakers do assert it, even if only on their way to making the speech act they primarily intend to perform.

► Defends a version of a traditional account of explicit performatives, on which they are a self-verifying indirect speech act. ► Replies to recent arguments by Jary based on the self-guaranteeing character of performatives. ► Replies to recent arguments by Pagin that assertion cannot be made by means of an explicit performative. ► Puts to use Bach's distinction between a locutionary and a stative sense of what is said.