著者

田村 均 TAMURA Hitoshi

出版者

名古屋大学文学部

雑誌

名古屋大学文学部研究論集. 哲学 (ISSN:04694716)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.58, pp.1-29, 2012-03-31

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John Searle argues in his seminal paper of fictional discourse that the author of a work of fiction pretends to perform a series of illocutionary acts. He does not make it very clear, however, how one could make a pretended performance of an illocutionary act, e.g. an assertion: he does not tell us what else should be done in order to make a pretended assertion in addition to uttering an assertive sentence. The analysis of truth in fiction put forward by David Lewis may seem to give a plausible account of the meaning of fictional discourse; but his theory also contains the concept of pretence as a primitive notion of its explanatory components. Gregory Currie criticizes the Searlean pretence theory of fiction and advocates a communicative approach to the problem of fictional utterance. He introduces the idea of make-believe instead: the author of a fiction intends that the audience make believe her story. In his communicative approach it seems to be taken for granted that we know what it is to induce someone to make believe something and how it can be carried out by a speaker. Pretence or its equivalent, makebelieve, appears in these theories as a fundamental but unexplained frame of mind that constitutes the essence of fictional discourse. It is suggested that pretence or make-believe may be a primitive equipment of human mind like belief or truth inasmuch as storytelling and playacting can be seen everywhere in human life.