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The cultural evolution of speech act norms

  • Mitchell Green

    Mitchell Green is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut, as well as Editor-in-Chief of Philosophia: A Global Journal of Philosophy. His research is in pragmatics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and aesthetic. His textbook, The Philosophy of Language, was published by Oxford U.P. in 2020, and he is co-editor (with J. Michel) of William Lycan on Mind, Meaning, and Method, published by Palgrave in 2025. Recent articles include, ‘Affective Expression in the Visual Arts,’ in V. Brassey and D. Matravers (eds.) Expression of Emotion in the Visual Arts (Routledge, 2025); ‘Varieties of Future-Contingency,’ in Analytic Philosophy, 2024; ‘Verbal Signaling,’ in E. Lepore & D. Sosa (eds.) Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Language, vol. III (2023), pp. 67–98; ‘On the Genealogy and Potential Abuse of Assertoric Norms,’ in Topoi, 42 (2023), pp. 357–368; ‘Should Speech Act Theory Eschew Propositions?’ in L. Cepollaro and P. Labinaz (eds.) Sbisà on Speech as Action (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), pp. 27–48; and ‘Fiction and Epistemic Value,’ British Journal of Aesthetics 62 (2022), pp. 273–89.

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Published/Copyright: April 9, 2025
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Abstract

After characterizing the notions of information, signal, and verbal signal, we note that since its inception in the mid-twentieth century, speech act theory has been carried on with little attention to how speech acts might have come about in the evolution of communication. We then explain some of the central ideas of cultural evolutionary theory. In that light we sketch a cultural-evolutionary account of the modern practice of assertions, and offer a similar though more compact reconstruction for the evolution of imperatives. If these reconstructions are plausible, they suggest that assertoric and directive practices are adaptive in the communities in which they occur. They are therefore not arbitrary, contrary to one commitment incurred by conventionalist approaches to speech acts.


Corresponding author: Mitchell Green, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA, E-mail:

About the author

Mitchell Green

Mitchell Green is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut, as well as Editor-in-Chief of Philosophia: A Global Journal of Philosophy. His research is in pragmatics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and aesthetic. His textbook, The Philosophy of Language, was published by Oxford U.P. in 2020, and he is co-editor (with J. Michel) of William Lycan on Mind, Meaning, and Method, published by Palgrave in 2025. Recent articles include, ‘Affective Expression in the Visual Arts,’ in V. Brassey and D. Matravers (eds.) Expression of Emotion in the Visual Arts (Routledge, 2025); ‘Varieties of Future-Contingency,’ in Analytic Philosophy, 2024; ‘Verbal Signaling,’ in E. Lepore & D. Sosa (eds.) Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Language, vol. III (2023), pp. 67–98; ‘On the Genealogy and Potential Abuse of Assertoric Norms,’ in Topoi, 42 (2023), pp. 357–368; ‘Should Speech Act Theory Eschew Propositions?’ in L. Cepollaro and P. Labinaz (eds.) Sbisà on Speech as Action (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), pp. 27–48; and ‘Fiction and Epistemic Value,’ British Journal of Aesthetics 62 (2022), pp. 273–89.

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Published Online: 2025-04-09
Published in Print: 2025-03-26

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