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5. These sentences can have literal interpretations.

6. The literal meanings are maintained when they question the physical ability: Can you pass the salt? - No, it’s too far from me. I can’t reach it.

7. Both the literal and the non-literal illocutionary acts are made when making a report on the utterance:

The speaker: Can you come to my party tonight?

The hearer: I have to get up early tomorrow.

Report: He said he couldn't come. OR: He said he had to get up early next morning.

A problem of the inference theory is that syntactic forms with a similar meaning often show differences in the ease in which they trigger indirect speech acts: a) Can you reach the salt? b) Are you able to reach the salt? c) Is it the case that you at present have the ability to reach the salt?

While (a) is most likely to be used as a request, (b) is less likely, and (c) is highly unlikely, although they seem to express the same proposition.

Another drawback of the inference theory is the complexity of the algorithm it offers for recognizing and deciphering the true meaning of indirect speech acts. If the hearer had to pass all the three stages every time he faced an indirect speech act, identifying the intended meaning would be time-consuming whereas normally we recognize each other’s communicative intentions quickly and easily.

3.2. Indirect speech acts as idioms?

Another line of explanation of indirect speech acts was brought forward by Jerrold Sadock [42, 197]. According to his theory, indirect speech acts are expressions based on an idiomatic meaning added to their literal meaning (just like the expression “to push up daisies” has two meanings: “to increase the distance of specimens of Bellis perennis from the center of the earth by employing force” and “to be dead”). Of course, we do not have specific idioms here, but rather general idiom schemes. For example, the scheme “Can you + verb?” is idiomatic for commands and requests.

However, the idiomatic hypothesis is questionable as a general strategy. One problem is that a reaction to an indirect speech act can be composite to both the direct and the indirect speech act, e.g.

The speaker: Can you tell me the time?

The hearer: Yes, it’s three o’clock.

We never find this type of reaction to the literal and the idiomatic intepretation of an idiom:

The speaker: Is he pushing the daisies by now?

Hearer 1: Yes/no (the idiomatic meaning is taken into account).

Hearer 2: Depends what you mean. As a gardener, yes (the literal meaning is taken into account).

Another problem is that there is a multitude of different
(and seemingly semantically related) forms that behave in a similar way: a) Can you pass me the salt? b) Could you pass me the salt? c) May I have the salt? d) May I ask you to pass the salt? e) Would you be so kind to pass the salt? f) Would you mind passing the salt?

Some of these expressions are obviously semantically related (e.g. can/could, would you be so kind/would you mind), and it seems that it is this semantic relation that makes them express the same indirect speech act. This is different for classical idioms, where the phrasing itself matters: a) to push the daisies “to be dead” vs. to push the roses b) to kick the bucket “to die” vs. to kick the barrel.

Hence, a defender of the idiom hypothesis must assume a multitude of idiom schemes, some of which are obviously closely semantically related.

Summarizing, we can say that there are certain cases of indirect speech acts that have to be seen as idiomatized syntactic constructions (for example, English why not-questions.)
But typically, instances of indirect speech acts should not be analyzed as simple idioms.

3. Other approaches to the problem

The difference of the idiomatic and inference approaches can be explained by different understanding of the role of convention in communication. The former theory overestimates it while the latter underestimates it, and both reject the qualitative diversity of conventionality. Correcting this shortcoming, Jerry Morgan writes about two types of convention in indirect speech acts [39, 261]: conventions of language and conventions of usage. The utterance “Can you pass the salt?” cannot be considered as a regular idiom (conventions of language), but its use for an indirect request is undoubtedly conventional, i.e. habitual for everyday speech that is always characterized by a certain degree of ritualization.

In accordance with this approach the function of an indirect speech act is conventionally fixed, and an inference process is not needed. Conventions of usage express what
Morgan calls “short-circuited implicatures”: implicatures that once were motivated by explicit reasoning but which now do not have to be calculated explicitly anymore.

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