The inference
CASE-021 is the proposed factorial study of wording, attributed speaker and judgement order. Its speaker factor manipulates “attributed speaker identity”. If act classifications change with it, the act would seem to depend on its relation to the speaker. That is CLAIM-151: which act an utterance performs “is partly constituted by its relations to participant roles, norms and expected uptake”. A214 §9 proposes the same kind of manipulation for “speaker authority, interpersonal history, or the norms governing the exchange”, and reads it as “intervening on the communicative situation”, which “may change the performed act”.
Critical questions
- Would the evidence be expected if the hypothesis were false? Yes, and this is the question that fails. A191 §6: “If we merely tell participants that an utterance is a reprimand, and they subsequently classify it as a reprimand, we have learned something about interpretation under instruction. We have not necessarily demonstrated that the underlying speech act changed.” Readers who are told a speaker is a friend can classify the act differently whether or not the relation is constitutive.
- Does it tell the hypothesis apart from its rivals? No. The rival is that interpretation responds to what the interpreter is told. Telling is do(I = a); changing the situation is do(S = s). In Pearl’s calculus the two act on different variables, and nothing makes their effects on the classification equal (CLAIM-130).
- Does the measure measure what it is said to? It measures interpretation, not the act. CLAIM-130: “They measure interpretation, which is what CLAIM-115’s thesis is about.” In a vignette or rating study “every manipulation is a change in what the reader is told”.
Verdict
Rejected. CLAIM-130 undercuts it: the difference between do(I) and do(S) is a claim about the subject matter, and it defeats this inference while leaving CASE-021 and CLAIM-151 standing. The repair is a different premise, not a better reading of this one. A203 §16: “A stronger test would manipulate actual speaker authority, conversational commitments, or the circumstances under which the utterance is performed.” That needs an interactive or field design, or an interpreter that is a model whose context is the situation itself.
CLAIM-130 names no single study as its target. CASE-021 is the one it cites, so the argument is stated from it.