Following the Rules of Discourse

This review article discusses Rebecca Kukla and Mark Lance's (2009) book on normative speech act theory and Joseph Heath's (2008) book on rule following, putting them into the context of the general problem of normativity of human discursive practices (and human practices in general). The upshot of the discussion is that while Heath's book advances our understanding of the normative dimension of human life, prominently including human language, Kukla and Lance's one presents a deeply interesting attempt at a framework for the study of discourse taking normativity of language at face value.