FELICITY CONDITIONS
In pragmatics and speech-act theory, the term felicity conditions refers to the conditions
that must be in place and the criteria that must be satisfied for a speech act to achieve its purpose.
The term felicity conditions was introduced by Oxford philosopher J. L. Austin in How to Do
Things With Words (1962) and further developed by American philosopher J.R. Searle.
For a speech act to work, according to Austin, there are a number of felicity conditions that
must be met.
1. There must be a generally accepted procedure for successfully carrying out the speech act.
Also, the circumstances must be appropriate for the use of the speech act and the person
who uses the speech act must be the appropriate person to use it in the particular context.
For example:
In a wedding ceremony a priest might say I now declare you husband and wife.
In a launching of a ship the person who has been invited to launch the ship might say I
hereby name this ship the Titanic.
2. The procedure must be carried out correctly and completely.
Thus, the bride and groom should reply I do (rather than Okay, I suppose so) and the
marriage license must be signed.
3. The person must (in most circumstances) have the required thoughts, feelings and
intentions for the speech act to be felicitous. That is, the communication must be carried
out by the right person, in the right place, at the right time and, normally, with a certain
intention, or it will not work.
If the first two of these conditions are not satisfied, the act will not be achieved and will misfire.
If the third of these conditions does not hold, then the procedure will be abused.
Meanwhile, According to Searle, the felicity conditions of an utterance are constitutive
rules, because they are not just something that can go right (or wrong) or be abused but
something which make up and define the act itself. That is, they are rules that need to be
followed for the utterance to work. Thus, they constitute the particular speech act. For some
cases, such as example below, the performance will be infelicitous (inappropriate) if the speaker
is not a specific person in a special context (in this case, a judge in a courtroom)
Example : I sentence you to six months in prison.
In everyday context among ordinary people, there are also pre-conditions on speech acts.
There are general conditions on the participants, for example, that they can understand the
language being used and that they are not play-acting or being nonsensical. Then there are
content conditions. For example, for both a promise and a warning, the content of the utterance
must be about a future event. A further content condition for a promise requires that the future
event will be a future act of the speaker.
The preparatory conditions for a promise are significantly different from those for a
warning. When I promise to do something, there are two preparatory conditions: first, the event
will not happen by itself, and second, the event will have a beneficial effect. When I utter a
warning, there are the following preparatory conditions: it is not clear that the hearer knows the
event will occur, the speaker does think the event will occur, and the event will not have a
beneficial effect. Related to this conditions is the sincerity condition that, for a promise, the
speaker genuinely intends to carry out the future action, and , for a warning, the speaker
genuinely believe that the future event will not have a beneficial effect.
Finally, there is the essential condition, which covers the fact that by the act of uttering a
promise., I thereby intend to create an obligation to carry out the action as promised. In other
words, the utterance changes my state from non-obligation to obligation. Similarly, with a
warning, under the essential condition, the utterance changes my state from non-informing of a
bad future event to informing. This essential condition thus combines with a specification of
what must be in the utterance content, the context, and the speakers intentions, in order for a
specific speech act to be appropriately (felicitously) performed.
Some of the felicity conditions on questions and requests as speech acts can be described
as follows, where "S" = speaker; "H" = hearer; "P" = some state of affairs; and "A" = some
action.
A. S questions H about P.
1. S does not know the truth about P.
2. S wants to know the truth about P.
3. S believes that H may be able to supply the information about P that S wants.
B. S requests H to do A.
1. S believes A has not yet been done.
2. S believes that H is able to do A.
3. S believes that H is willing to do A-type things for S.
4. S wants A to be done.
REFERENCES
Yule, George. 1996. Pragmatics. Oxford University Press
Astin, J.L. 1962. How to do things with words. Oxford University Press
Nordquist, Richard. 2003. Felicity conditions (speech). Glossary of Grammatical and
Rhetorical Terms. Web. [Link]
