2.1.1　Philosophical Background of SAT

Speech Act Theory，as a major theory in pragmatics，was initially proposed in the 1950s and widely discussed in the 1960s and 1970s.As a result of the works of scholars such as G.Frege，B.Russel，G.Moore and L.Wittgenstein，there was a linguistic turn in western philosophy at the beginning of this century.Philosophers then formed the opinion that many philosophical problems were in fact problems of language and could be solved if we did a proper analysis of language.Consequently，this movement of philosophy was known as analytic philosophy，also as linguistic philosophy，of which ordinary language philosophy was a major development.Another major school of analytic philosophy was called logical positivism，or logical empiricism，represented by people like Moriz Schlick，Rudolf Carnap，Alfred Tarski and Alfred Ayer.

One major and obvious difference between ordinary language philosophy and logical positivism concerns the theory of meaning.Logical positivism holds the idea that unless a sentence can be verified，i.e.tested for its truth or falsity，it is meaningless.And they developed a theory of meaning on the basis of truth conditions.

But ordinary language philosophers hold a different view.Philosophers，such as Austin，Grice，Strawson，Searle，and Wittgenstein，focused on the way in which ordinary language is used.These philosophers insisted that there are at least two ways of conceiving meanings in language.One of them is in terms of the actual utterance，without either regard for the context in which they are uttered or for the objective of the utterer in addressing the discourse to another.The second approach considers the utterance not in a timeless sense but in relation to its occasion of use，and it cannot be judged in terms oftruth or falsity conditions or by well-formedness in the light of grammatical rules.