Groups speaking for themselves: Articulating first-person plural authority

This paper examines the ways in which group speech acts involve speakers. Against the view that groups need spokespeople speak for (or on behalf of, or in the name of) them, I argue that groups can speak for themselves. Group speech acts are a special type of joint intentional action. Groups speak when they express their illocutionary intention. Group illocutionary intentions are collective intentions of their members, and they are collective in virtue of the members' plural pre-reflective self-knowledge of what it is they - together - want to say. It is only in virtue of the groups' ability to speak for themselves that they can authorize individual spokespeople to speak for them.(1) (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd.