Non-repudiation and the Metaphysics of Presence (Extended Abstract)

摘要

J. L. Austin's theory of speech acts [1] identifies two classes of utterance: 1. Constative statements, which can be either true or false. 2. Performatives, which are neither true nor false but instead do something. Performatives can misfire (fail to have their conventional effect) if they are invoked by an inappropriate person or in inappropriate circumstances (e.g. a ship's purser cannot validly marry two people; a priest cannot validly baptize a penguin). A revised version of his theory recogised that some utterances can belong to both classes simultaneously. In this revised theory, locutions can have a illocutory aspect (doing something) and a perlocutory aspect (changing the recipients' emotions or state of mind, e.g. by persuading them). If we regard the messages in a computer communications protocol as speech acts, what kind of speech acts are they?