Sincerity in bulk

Abstract

This paper is concerned with situations in which a speaker issues many speech acts at the same time. A common example is the publication of a large text such as a book containing many distinct assertions. It is argued that these cases present a challenge for speech act theory related to how we are to understand sincerity. With reference to the well known paradox of the preface, it is argued that sincerity of such bulk speech cannot be understood as a simple conjunction of the sincerity of the encoded acts. A proposal is given according to which sincere bulk speech requires the speaker explicitly and as precisely as possible mark any subsets of her communication about which she has doubts.