They stood in a steady and sometimes heavy rain as speakers, singers, writers, comedians and activists charged them with channeling their common rejection of God into a force for political change.
The statement "It is raining" expresses the speaker's belief that it is raining; the order "Get me some raisins" expresses the speaker's desire that the hearer get him some raisins; and the promise "I'll be there" expresses the speaker's intention to be there.
Most contemporary theorists would acknowledge that in such cases one might describe 'what is said' in terms of the unarticulated content: John said that it was raining at Stanford; the speaker said that Mary got married and then had children, and so forth.
And there was a 70-foot-tall video monolith that went completely purple when, during a costume change, Beyonce paid tribute to Prince by piping "Purple Rain" through the speakers.
"We have been out here for 4 hours and 20 minutes," a leader of the protest said into a speaker as the rain and wind grew stronger.
The expressed psychological state of a speech act is distinct from its propositional content; in the examples above, the propositional contents of the acts are, respectively, that it is raining, that the hearer gets the speaker some raisins, and that the speaker will be there.
People danced to internet anthems "Never Gonna Give You Up" and "Chocolate Rain", which were blaring from a nearby speaker.
For example, the fact that a conversation is about Palo Alto may determine, perhaps together with speaker intentions, that the statement "It is raining," has the content that it is raining in Palo Alto.
A few days later, Mr. G was at it again, serenading grim-faced travellers on my pre-dawn flight out of Beijing, his saxophone as cloying and unchanging as ever, raining down from overhead speakers like a vengeful, smooth-Jazz God.
Less than a hundred pages long, the tale has the advantage of a relatively clear, if extravagant, story line and a distinct satiric point — i.e., that the Irish Republic's official cherishing of the nearly extinct Gaelic language ignores the miserable poverty of its surviving speakers, the rain-battered peasantry of the countryside.
The crowd had reassembled in the driving rain and wind at Speakers' Corner, that hallowed site reserved for nutters to go nuts in so that we can all assure ourselves that we still live in a democracy.
