by J. L. Speranza
--- for the Grice Club.
I redacted this as a reply in the thread "Kramer and Solum on Grice", but the system disallowed me to post it there. Hence I'm posting it here.
It basically concerns Grice's emphasis on the intended 'response' or 'effect' on the addressee that a meaningful utterance seems to carry --. The immediate provocation being Kramer's genial synopsis and feedback loop thing regarding the perlocutionary fighting words...
I like it. I like the orderliness Kramer brings to it.
Kramer:
"1. Speech is protected.
1.a. Unless its perlocutionary effect can be prohibited.
1.a.i. Unless prohibiting its perlocutionary effect imposes an undue burden on non-perlocutionary speech."
-- And I love a feedback loop. One little bit concerns your formulation of 1a and 1ai. 1a features 'perlocutionary effect', which I swallow. But 1ai featurs, 'non-perlocutionary speech' which I may not!
----
Recall Austin's distinctions:
There's
Locution. This is the act itself. The locutionary act. You cannot DO perlocution, or illocution. You can only DO locution.
Then there's ILLOCUTION. Here it's merely the locution plus the affix, in-, which becomes il-locution as it assimilates with the 'locution'. It's best to apply 'illocutionary', as we see, to force. So we have an agent engaged in an act, doing it, which we call the 'locution' and we have the agent engaged in this act, doing this ('louction') with a certain or specific intention, which we call 'illocutionary force'.
FINALLY, there's the 'per-locution'. Here Austin is playing with the 'in' versus 'by', distintion, which Grice ignored. I don't, but Grice did. Grice formulates his analysans as either "by uttering x, U means that p", or "In uttering x, U means that p". I systematically use "BY uttering x, U means that p", because I am a perlocutionary at heart, or a closet perlocutionarist, if you must.
So the perlocution is what we apply as you do in 1a, to 'effect' -- "perlocutionary effect". How does this connect with the 'in' of the illocutionary force, and why? And what IS the perlocutionary effect?
Here Austin trembles. He does speak for example of "uptake", i.e. understanding. That the addressee will understand! Is this perlocutionary or illocutionary? I think Austin says it's perlocutionary, but essentially so. It is the 'securing of uptake'. I know the details because my PhD thesis advisor, E. A. Rabossi, had translated the whole thing by Austin, with the help of J. O. Urmson himself (he was a Brit Council scholarship boy at Oxford back in the day).
(And he was a lawyer!).
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So we have the 'securing of uptake' which is a bit of a red herring for Austin. It's the mere understanding, which Strawson (in "Intention and Convention in Speech Acts") analyses alla Grice ("to understand is to get to know what U means", plain and simple!).
I would think the law was a great appeal to Austin, and an overt appeal to Rabossi who translated the thing! For this is the boundary between morals and political theory, in a way. Consider moral or meta-ethical theory of the type that Austin and Grice criticised: emotivism.
For an emotivism like Stevenson (that Grice quotes, "Ethics and Language", Yale UP, 1944), it's the perlocution that matters.
The fighting word. A word is a fighting word if its perlocutionary effect is a bad-fighting one. Etc. This is NOT content-based, for that would be circular. It is a mere effect that we attach, by conditioning, with a word, or utterance. "Rabbit" can become a fighting word. (Indeed, in Belgium, the king, who could not speak Vlaams, is said to have said, "I am your rabbit", meaning thereby that he was the people's king -- so 'rabbit' became a fighting royalist word.)
---
But Austin was obsessed with perlocutionary effects.
By uttering,
"You are a God-damned racketting fascist", U scared A.
This IS perlocutionary. The way to go is via reported speech. One of our presidents, Alfonsin, was criticised in the media for failing to distinguish the illocution from the perlocution.
He would say, "I am persuaded that p" ("I am persuaded that will overcome the present crisis"). He meant to say, "I am CONVINCED that we shall overcome the present crisis"). To be persuaded is NOT an illocution. It is a perlocutionary effect. Persuasion is no illocutionary force; it is an illocutionary effect. Convincing? I'm not sure. "He convinced me that it was raining". "He persuaded me that it was raining."
Basically what he did was to utter "It is raining". So what gives?
Austin is careful to analyse the locution along THREE axes:
the phemic act. This is the physical device that you love. In the case of how to do things with words, it is the string of phonemes. (But careful because 'phoneme' is already a psychological notion).
Then there's the phatic act, which I forget.
And then there's the 'rhemic' act, which is a charmer. "He stated that it was raining".
But no! Because to state is an illocutionary force. Grice draws from Austin here and speaks (in WoW:vi) of 'central speech acts'. Speech act, however, is the Wrong Austinian term. Grice should have stuck with the illocution!
---- My reading which has been illuminating here has been David Holdcroft. He is a genius who taught at Leeds, and while he seldom visited Oxford I love him more than a hundred Oxonian philosophers I know!
--- (Holdcroft's book is "Words and deeds: problems in the theory of speech acts" and it's a Griceian rewrite of Austinian doctrine).
---
So, by saying
"You are a god-damned racketing fascist",
U stated that his addressee was a god-damned racketing fascist. Duh!
He also provoked a fight?
Not really. Who cares if he did? What matters is if he INTENDED to provoke it. Apparently, he did (I'm referring to the case that originated the 'fighting word' idiom that is inexistent in Canada).
----
But surely we can go further than that.
For Grice wants to analyse, 'to state'. To state (or to assert) is to utter x with the intention that A will believe that U believes that p.
Unless there is the content of a belief there, you cannot say something has been stated, or asserted. So I'm not sure one can theorise on this with independence of 'content'.
If we do, we are just heading for the perlocutionary effect, which may not exist.
If the intention of U is to INSULT the A (by calling A, 'a goddamned racketing fascist') is that perlocutionary effect? Surely not. It's part of what U meant. It is illocutionary force. Perhaps not central. That's where Grice's 'evangelist' example comes in. For Grice is trying to focus on what makes a central speech act central. He says it's central because it's groundfloor. I.e. it is an assertion or a statement. If it's an insult, that's INFORMAL, and nondictive.
"Insult" -- is it an illocutionary or a perlocutonary category. Consider euphemism and dysphemism more generally. What makes an expression a dysphemism, a word that wounds? God knows. I mean, I know. But how do we generalise? Do we need a THEORY here, or a case by case analysis?
----
I was amused by the wiki entry on 'fighting words' by the reference of the many instances that were overlooked because fighting words uttered to cops were ultimately disregarded as such. Cfr.
"F*ck the draft".
Who is insulted by that? It is precisely because it contains no personal epithet (unlike, "You are a goddamned racketing fascist") that it did not count as a bunch of 'fighting words'.
-----
In any case, I'm wondering how the Brits cope with all this, since it's all common law there, mainly?
----
The intrusion of the negotiating principle that will rule (or judge) over whether this particular instance counts or fails to count as a 'fighting word', if deemed pertinent, would prove an exception to the ideal of the wilful willing voluntary cooperation between individuals.
The wiki essay, I think -- under fighting word, or also under "St. Paul" states that the issue is particularly relevant in 'diverse societies'. The idea being that if people share the weltanschauung, they would not be insulting each other. But surely I am with Kramer that an addressee-based approach of the type that Kagan promotes seems too moot, if that's the word. We NEED 'trivial', even unworthy utterances (I think the term is) to have the device working. It is, as Kramer notes, the risk one HAS to run. And what gives more support to liberalism than to anarchism, then, it seems, for in any case, it seems a lesser risk the liberal is ready to accept tha the many risks the anarchist is bringing about. Or not!
("A reconciliation of Austin and Grice" is the title of a PhD I once ordered via UMI! -- it should have been entitled, "Strawson," since that is all that it was, alas, about!).
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I have to apologize for a brain-fart that I seem to commit frequently. I often confuse "perlocutionary" with "performative." Indeed, it's the negative perlocutionary effect of speech that is constitutionally protected. My "rule" should be stated in terms of performative speech and not perlocutionary effects. (And "undue" demands its own step):
ReplyDelete1. Speech is protected.
1.a. Unless its performative effect can be prohibited.
1.a.i. Unless prohibiting its performative effect imposes a burden on speech lacking a performative effect that can be prohibited.
1.a.i.A Unless the burden is outweighed by importance of prohibiting the performative effect of the regulated speech.
I will edit the post to correct this.
Having disowned "perlocutionary," I want to deal with "performative." I have in mind two types of performative effect, which I don't have the background to connect to their academic counterparts.
ReplyDeleteI will call my two types de jure and de facto performatives. "De jure" performative refers to such things as christenings, namings, contractual moves, oaths, etc., where a legal consequence flows from the words themselves and the legal power of the speaker to do the act that the speech act does. By De facto performative, I mean an utterance that is the physical implementation of a logically non-speech act, such as defaming someone or provoking a fight or inciting armed revolution.
In many First Amendment cases, the question before the court is whether the government is seeking to prohibit speech because of its obnoxious perlocutionary effect (not allowed) or its harmful performative nature (allowed).
Butler/McKinnon, i think, are on the wrong side of this line as to pornography generally, but not, I think, as to certain live-action porn where non-speech crimes are committed in the production process. Merely depicting the subjugation of women does not seem to me qualititavely different from depicting any other crime in terms of whether its perlocutionary effect rises to the leevl of de facto performative speech.
Excellent. For the record, I should point that apparently J. L. Austin took 'performative' to reflect what he mentions is 'operative' in, I think, Scots law.
ReplyDeleteSince this applies to law's language, it's the performative's full cycle.
Some say that implicature belongs elsewhere than philosophy. I disagree. But I'm less sure if performative/operational does NOT belong elsewhere than law!
I enjoy the ref. to Butler/McKinnon. I will have to elaborate on the point you make about 'perlocutionary', or rather about, 'performative' (or 'operational', as I may seem to prefer) vs. 'perlocutionary'. Words, words, words (I hear someone say!).
ReplyDelete----
Anyway, I liked your de jure-de facto distinction. Less sure how indeed to deal with it in Griceian terms. But I'll think of something!
Kramer writes:
ReplyDelete"I will call my two types de jure and de facto performatives. "De jure" performative refers to such things as christenings, namings, contractual moves, oaths, etc., where a legal consequence flows from the words themselves and the legal power of the speaker to do the act that the speech act does. By De facto performative, I mean an utterance that is the physical implementation of a logically non-speech act, such as defaming someone or provoking a fight or inciting armed revolution."
I wonder if these two types should thus not be referred to explicitly in your "1aiA" model (I don't mean the 1aiA subclause specifically but any of the four subclauses?). In order to avoid chaining brief comments like this, I may deal with this in a proper post.
I wonder if these two types should thus not be referred to explicitly in your "1aiA" model (I don't mean the 1aiA subclause specifically but any of the four subclauses?).
ReplyDeleteI would need persuading on that score. I think my rule as stated covers both types of performative. The difference lies, I think, in how hard it is for the judge to decide whether a de facto performative act has occurred. But the logic is the same.
As a practical matter, I cannot think of a controversial First Amendment case involving a de jure performative. But I don't see that a special rule is necessary just because only de facto performatives prove troublesome.
"I cannot think of a controversial First Amendment case involving a de jure performative."
ReplyDeleteThanks. I have now posted something on the blog about this (or that), and would have other questions. Plus, as I say, this Friday is going to prove pretty busy so I may not be able to reply with sense! -- today.
In any case, I was pointing, elsewhere, in that post, to the idea of the 'operative' and the fact that Austin DID find his theory of the 'explicit' performative (and thus perhaps the 'performative' itself as somewhat, shall we say, 'otiose'.
In my laxer reading of what Austin is ultimately after (as Grice follows suit), in the stating or directing (that "p", where "p" is the content of a belief or a desire), it seems that there is a de jure element more or less always -- and the sort of independent or casuistic question (or rather answer that the judge has to deliberate about and decide) is about the obnoxious (criminal or not, allowed or not) consequences of 'utterings' generally?!
It's back to Grice's
"You racist money-grubber". "He is an evangelist". "racist money grubber" may count as fighting word. "You sanctimonious hypocritical god-damned fascist" seems to. "Evangelist" does not. But one means the other, in context, for Grice. So why is it that the uttering (explicitly) of what is merely 'implicated' is only criminal? Or something. Or not!