General Outline of an Empirical Pragmatic Theory of Communicative Action

This article develops Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action (TCA) as an explanatory theory of action. While the program of >empirical pragmatics< embedded in the TCA is suitable in principle, it was not sufficiently worked out by Habermas and has since been neglected in sociological discussion. Empirical pragmatics shifts the focus of analysis from universal structures of language to the risky coordination of action through communication. The theory is developed by proposing solutions to two problems: first, how communicative actions can have a binding effect on listeners and, second, how such effects translate into the communicative coordination of actions.