Cadi Ayyad University Dr.

RACHID ED-DALI
Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences Semantics and Pragmatics
Marrakech
FELICITY CONDITIONS
Review: Answer the following questions:
(1) Name three performative verbs.
(2) Complete the following definition:
A performative utterance is one that ...................... some act and ...................... that act.
(3) Note down the sentence type and the main illocutionary act performed in the following utterances.
(a) Man in pet shop: ‘Is that parrot expensive?’
Sentence type: .................................... Act: .......................................
(b) Teacher to class: ‘I don’t want to hear noise at the back of the class’
Sentence type: .................................... Act: .......................................
(c) Man helping a blind man across a road: ‘Watch the step’
Sentence type: .................................... Act: .......................................
(d) Man in argument: ‘Do you take me for a fool?’
Sentence type: .................................... Act: .......................................
Feedback: (1) promise, beg, admit, etc. (2) A performative utterance is one that describes some act and
simultaneously performs that act. (3) (a) interrogative; enquiry (b) declarative; command (c) imperative; warning
(d) interrogative; assertion.
So far, we have outlined a way of looking at speech as action. Utterances can be seen as significant acts on a
social level, e.g. accusations, confessions, denials, greetings, etc. The question we now pose is: by what system
do speakers know when such social moves are appropriate? That is, in what circumstances are illocutions used?
A further technical notion, that of felicity condition, needs to be introduced in order to give a plausible answer to
this question.
Definition: The FELICITY CONDITIONS of an illocutionary act are conditions that must be fulfilled in the
situation in which the act is carried out if the act is to be said to be carried out properly, or felicitously.
Examples: One of the felicity conditions for the illocutionary act of ordering is that the speaker must be superior
to, or in authority over, the hearer. Thus, if a servant says to the Queen ‘Open the window’, there is a certain
incongruity, or anomalousness, or infelicity in the act (of ordering) carried out, but if the Queen says ‘Open the
window’ to the servant, there is no infelicity. A felicity condition for the illocutionary act of accusing is that the
deed or property attributed to the accused is wrong in some way. Thus one can felicitously accuse someone of
theft or murder, but normally only infelicitously of, say, being a nice guy, or of helping an old lady to cross the
road.
Practice: Given below are illocutionary acts, and for each act there are four suggested felicity conditions. In each
case only two of the felicity conditions are actually correct. Indicate the correct felicity conditions by circling
your choices.
(1) promising:

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Cadi Ayyad University Dr. RACHID ED-DALI
Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences Semantics and Pragmatics
Marrakech
(a) The speaker must intend to carry out the thing promised.
(b) The speaker must be inferior in status to the hearer.
(c) The thing promised must be something that the hearer wants to happen.
(d) The thing promised must be morally wrong.
(2) apologizing:
(a) The speaker must be responsible for the thing apologized for.
(b) The thing apologized for must be (or must have been) unavoidable.
(c) The thing apologized for must be morally wrong.
(d) The hearer must not want the thing apologized for to happen (or to have happened)
(3) greeting:
(a) The speaker and the hearer must be of different sex.
(b) The speaker and the hearer must not be in the middle of a conversation.
(c) The speaker must believe the hearer to have recently suffered a loss.
(d) The speaker feels some respect and/or sense of community (however slight) with the hearer.
(4) naming:
(a) The thing or person named must not already have a recognized name known to the speaker.
(b) The speaker must be recognized by his community as having authority to name.
(c) The thing or person named must belong to the speaker.
(d) The thing or person named must be held in considerable respect by the community.
(5) protesting:
(a) The speaker and the hearer must have recently been in conflict with each other.
(b) The speaker must disapprove of the state of affairs protested at.
(c) The state of affairs protested at must be disapproved of by the community generally.
(d) The hearer must be held to be responsible (by the speaker) for the state of affairs protested at.
Feedback: (1) (a), (c) (2) (a), (d) (3) (b),(d) (4) (a), (b) (5) (b), (d) (Some answers are debatable).
Truth conditions are conditions that must be satisfied by the world if an utterance (of a declarative sentence) is
true. For example, the utterance ‘There is a cat on the table’ is only true if in the world at the time of the utterance
there actually is a table with a cat on it. Correspondingly, felicity conditions are conditions that must be satisfied
by the world if an illocutionary act is felicitous (or ‘appropriate’).
Practice: Label the illocutionary acts in the following situations felicitous or infelicitous, applying normal
everyday criteria. In each case also name the illocutionary act concerned. We have done the first one for you.

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Cadi Ayyad University Dr. RACHID ED-DALI
Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences Semantics and Pragmatics
Marrakech

Feedback: (2) marrying; felicitous (3) reprimanding (telling off); infelicitous (4) promising; infelicitous (5)
dismissing, or giving permission; infelicitous.
These exercises bring out some similarities and differences between truth conditions and felicity conditions.
Another obvious difference between them is that felicity conditions are of wider application than truth conditions.

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Cadi Ayyad University Dr. RACHID ED-DALI
Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences Semantics and Pragmatics
Marrakech
Only declarative sentences may be true or false, but all types of sentence, declarative, interrogative, and
imperative, can be uttered to carry out illocutionary acts that may be felicitous or infelicitous.
Practice: Name the illocutionary acts carried out in the following examples, and state whether they are, as far as
you can see, felicitous or infelicitous. In each case state the sentence type involved.

Feedback: (1) imperative; offering; infelicitous (2) imperative; ordering; infelicitous (3) interrogative;
requesting; felicitous.
A good way of discovering the felicity conditions of an illocutionary act is to imagine a situation in which a
speaker carries out such an act, or attempts to, but something in the situation makes the act ‘misfire’, or not come
off appropriately. For example, in question (1) above, the speaker is definitely carrying out an act of offering a
cigarette, but there is something odd, or infelicitous, about the offer, as the hearer already has the cigarette. This
shows that one of the felicity conditions for the act of offering is that the hearer must not already have the thing
offered. Next, we will look at the case of a particular subtype of felicity condition, namely sincerity conditions.
Definition: A SINCERITY CONDITION on an illocutionary act is a condition that must be fulfilled if the act is
said to be carried out SINCERELY, but failure to meet such a condition does not prevent the carrying out of the
act altogether.
Example: A sincerity condition on apologizing is that the apologizer believes that the thing apologized for is
wrong in some way. Thus, if John enters a room at a certain time, believing that to do so is wrong in some way
(e.g. impolite, tactless, sacrilegious) and he says ‘I’m sorry to come in here at this moment’, then he has
apologized, and apologized sincerely. But if he says the same thing in the same circumstances, except that he
does not believe that what he has done is wrong in any way, then he has still apologized, but insincerely.

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Cadi Ayyad University Dr. RACHID ED-DALI
Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences Semantics and Pragmatics
Marrakech
Practice: (1) If Helen says to me ‘Congratulations on passing your driving test’, has she thereby congratulated
me? Yes / No
(2) If Helen, in the above scene, believes that I only got through my driving test by bribing the examiner, is her
congratulation sincere? Yes / No
(3) Is it a sincerity condition on congratulating that the speaker believe the thing on which he congratulates the
hearer to be praiseworthy in some way? Yes / No
(4) If I say ‘I bet you can’t beat my computer at chess’, have I thereby carried out an act of challenging? Yes /
No
(5) But if I know that my computer has actually been programmed to lose at chess, is my challenge sincere? Yes
/ No
(6) Is it a sincerity condition on challenging that the speaker believe that what he challenges the hearer to do is
difficult in some way? Yes / No
(7) Is it a sincerity condition on thanking that the speaker approve of the thing for which he thanks the hearer?
Yes / No
(8) Is it a sincerity condition on criticizing that the speaker approve of the thing he criticizes? Yes / No
Feedback: (1) Yes (2) No (3) Yes (4) Yes (5) No (6) Yes (7) Yes (8) No
Some of these sincerity conditions were mentioned earlier as examples of felicity conditions generally, i.e.
sincerity conditions are simply a special case of felicity conditions. We have emphasized the difference between
sentence meaning and utterance meaning, but of course there must be a linking relationship between them. The
link exists through the capacity of languages to describe anything, including acts (like speech acts) which make
use of language itself (i.e. language can be used as its own metalanguage). (A metalanguage is the language one
uses to talk about a particular subject.) Thus we find that almost any illocutionary act has a predicate word
describing it. For example, the act of accusing is described by the English predicate accuse. The parallel is
obvious. If an act is significant in a society (as illocutionary acts are), then it is not surprising that the society
should have coined a word to describe it. Just as illocutionary acts can be described with English words and
sentences, so can their felicity conditions. There is an essential circularity that we are involved in when doing
semantics.
We want to formulate precise statements about utterance meaning, including statements about the felicity
conditions on illocutionary acts, and we must do so in English (or some other language), using English words
and sentences. But another concern of semantics is to make precise statements about the meanings of English
words and sentences. Thus, for instance, formulating sincerity conditions helps us to form a precise picture of
how utterance meaning works, but simultaneously it sheds light on the meaning of the word sincere itself.