Speech Acts, Dialogues and the Common Ground

The formal semantics of speech acts, even in the classical framework of illocutionary logic, requires considerations that go beyond individual speech activity and beyond the interpretation of individual sentences. We show how the formal semantics of speech acts can be extended to take into account the social effects and interactive aspects of illocutionary activity. To illustrate our approach, we focus on the semantics of assertions and descriptive discourse, contrasting the individual aspect of speaker's meaning and the epistemic effects of assertion making. The approach presented in this paper generalizes to all other types of illocutionary acts, adding specific content to the conversational record that registers the common ground of speakers and hearers as a dialogue unfolds.