Communicative Actions

Communicative actions in the broad sense of communicationattempts ­ are special cases of instrumental actions, i.e. actions by means of which one tries to achieve some ends, their differentia specifica being that in the case of communicative actions the speaker expects to achieve her primary (communicative) aim iff this aim is recognized by her addressee. In short, from the speaker's viewpoint communication coincides with understanding, where understanding is to be identified with recognition of the relevant speaker's intentions. This idea is, using some elementary formal machinery from intentional logic, expounded in more detail, related to proposals of Paul Grice's (speaker's meaning), and compared to the alternative approach of classical speech act theory.