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Conclusion

Derek Hirst and Steven N. Zwicker

in Andrew Marvell, Orphan of the Hurricane

This brief conclusion examines the meaning of words and texts both withheld from and issued to the world — the puzzling condition of Marvell's texts.

The Interpersonal Level

Kees Hengeveld and J. Lachlan Mackenzie

in Functional Discourse Grammar: A Typologically-Based Theory of Language Structure

The chapter presents the Interpersonal Level of FDG, which is modelled as a layered structure indicating the part-whole relations among units of discourse. The chapter shows how Discourse Acts group ... More

The chapter presents the Interpersonal Level of FDG, which is modelled as a layered structure indicating the part-whole relations among units of discourse. The chapter shows how Discourse Acts group into Moves and are themselves built up from component elements, including the Communicated Content, which contains Subacts of Reference and Ascription.Less

Beyond Belief: Pragmatics in Hate Speech and Pornography1

Langton Rae

in Speech and Harm: Controversies Over Free Speech

Pragmatics can shed light on racial hate speech and pornography, but only if we bring it down to earth. Five models for hate speech and pornography are distinguished: a conditioning model, an ... More

Pragmatics can shed light on racial hate speech and pornography, but only if we bring it down to earth. Five models for hate speech and pornography are distinguished: a conditioning model, an imitation model, an argument model, a speech act model, and its descendant, the pragmatic model. A speech act model distinguishes illocutionary and perlocutionary dimensions of speech: e.g. hate speech can incite, and cause, hatred and violence. The pragmatic model tries to capture these dimensions via an account of accommodation. It can indeed illuminate racial hate speech and pornography, but only with amendments that go ‘beyond belief’. Lewis and Stalnaker showed how ‘score’ or ‘common ground’ of conversation accommodates to moves speakers make, and the hearer’s belief adjusts accordingly. This picture needs extending to make sense of hate speech and pornography: we need to allow for the accommodation of other attitudes, such as desire and hate.Less

Illocution and Expectations of Being Heard

Maura Tumulty and Colgate University

in Out from the Shadows: Analytical Feminist Contributions to Traditional Philosophy

Jennifer Hornsby and Rae Langton have argued that in some cultural contexts, women are not able to perform the illocutionary act of refusing sex by saying “No.” They argue that this illocutionary ... More

Jennifer Hornsby and Rae Langton have argued that in some cultural contexts, women are not able to perform the illocutionary act of refusing sex by saying “No.” They argue that this illocutionary disablement is a kind of silencing. The silencing happens because men sometimes do not hear “No” as a refusal of sex, and hence sometimes a woman who utters “No” cannot achieve uptake of her intended illocution. Hornsby and Langton follow J. L. Austin in taking uptake to be necessary to illocution. But this view of Austin's is controversial and has recently been criticized by Alexander Bird. I argue that while uptake isn’t necessary to every illocutionary act, a speaker's beliefs about the possibility of uptake play a key role in some kinds of illocutionary acts. Because refusal is an illocutionary act of such a kind, women can be silenced in contexts where they believe their refusals won’t be heard as refusals. We are therefore still able to acknowledge loss of expressive power as a harm women sometimes suffer.Less

Freedom of Illocution? Response to Daniel Jacobson

Rae Langton

in Sexual Solipsism: Philosophical Essays on Pornography and Objectification

Jacobson argues that free speech does not include freedom of illocution, that pornography does not in any case silence women. Just as well, or rape would not count as rape, since a silenced woman ... More

Jacobson argues that free speech does not include freedom of illocution, that pornography does not in any case silence women. Just as well, or rape would not count as rape, since a silenced woman would not have refused sex. Jacobson is mistaken. Free speech includes more than freedom to say meaningful words, as Mill saw. It includes freedom to perform communicative illocutions, enabled by reciprocity, a mutual capacity for uptake. A woman who has her refusal silenced is still raped, since she does not consent. And women do encounter the silence of illocutionary disablement, on an Austinian understanding of speech. His allegation of ‘confusion’ is no more than a rejection of the Austinian starting point.Less

Language

Lawrence Kramer

in Interpreting Music

This chapter describes a hermeneutically robust musicology that has never denied the existence of past interest in the contexts of music or in what were formerly called “extramusical” relations. Nor ... More

This chapter describes a hermeneutically robust musicology that has never denied the existence of past interest in the contexts of music or in what were formerly called “extramusical” relations. Nor has it shown any lack of interest in, indeed fascination with, the internal dynamics of musical works or genres. But it breaks with earlier approaches, including the ethnomusicological approaches to which it is sometimes compared, by regarding music as a form of human agency that shapes and intervenes in such conditions, and does so, not exceptionally, but as an ordinary consequence of musical practice. Ludwig Wittgenstein's thinking about aesthetics returned continually to the question of expression, especially in music. The chapter offers a rationale for this way of thinking; a summary of its perspectives on music, signs, meaning, and subjectivity; and a transition to hermeneutic practice via an element of language not traditionally reckoned with in discussions of words and music: the performative speech act. It also discusses hermeneutic activity in language, with special emphasis on the speech act and illocution.Less

The General Phenomenon: Covert Exercitives

Mary Kate McGowan

in Just Words: On Speech and Hidden Harm

This chapter argues that the phenomenon of conversational exercitives generalizes. It is not just verbal contributions to conversations that enact norms; verbal contributions to other norm-governed ... More

This chapter argues that the phenomenon of conversational exercitives generalizes. It is not just verbal contributions to conversations that enact norms; verbal contributions to other norm-governed activities also do so. Such covert exercitives are developed and the complex role of intention is clarified and explored. It is also argued that the covert enacting of a permissibility fact (by a covert or conversational exercitive) does not depend on the communication of the intention to enact that permissibility fact. As a result, such exercitives are not a communicative (illocutionary) phenomenon. Rather, they constitute what is here called a parallel act.Less

God’s liturgical activity

Nicholas Wolterstorff

in Acting Liturgically: Philosophical Reflections on Religious Practice

It is typical of Christian liturgical enactments for the people to pray and take for granted that God will act in the course of the enactment. This chapter first identifies and analyzes a number of ... More

It is typical of Christian liturgical enactments for the people to pray and take for granted that God will act in the course of the enactment. This chapter first identifies and analyzes a number of ways in which God might act liturgically and then discusses at some length what might be meant when the people say, in response to the reading of Scripture, “This is the word of the Lord.” After suggesting that what might be meant is either that the reading presented what God said in ancient times or that, by way of the reading, God speaks anew here and now, the chapter suggests a third possibility by going beyond speech-act theory to introduce the idea of a continuant illocution in distinction from an occurrent illocution. Perhaps the reference is to one of God’s continuant illocutions.Less

Veiled commands: anthropological perspectives on directives

Rosita Henry

in Commands: A Cross-Linguistic Typology

The great diversity of command strategies that can be found cross-linguistically provides rich comparative material for consideration by speech act theorists and other linguistic philosophers. Speech ... More

The great diversity of command strategies that can be found cross-linguistically provides rich comparative material for consideration by speech act theorists and other linguistic philosophers. Speech act theory has generated productive debates on how illocutionary acts such as commands are situated in context, and the relationship between speech action, power relations, politics, and diplomacy. This chapter concerns the way culturally specific strategies for authority, politeness, and diplomacy are encoded in how people deliver directives to others. The focus is on veiled commands, especially in the context of public speeches in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG), as they relate to egalitarian values and concepts of autonomy. While veiled commands are not able to be universally correlated with an egalitarian ethos, in any context the veiling of words is related to the human awareness of others and that the world we inhabit is always a social world.Less

What Are Meanings, That We Might Share Them?

Mark Richard

in Meanings as Species

The goal of this chapter is to sketch an account of meaning as the anchor of linguistic competence—that with which one must be in cognitive contact to qualify as a competent speaker. Meanings ... More

The goal of this chapter is to sketch an account of meaning as the anchor of linguistic competence—that with which one must be in cognitive contact to qualify as a competent speaker. Meanings supervene on mutual presuppositions among speakers about how people understand one another. When someone uses a word, they can expect others to have these assumptions for making sense of the sentence in which the word is used. The core of this chapter lays out this picture of meaning, discusses how it is related to linguistic competence, and relates meaning in this sense to meaning in the sense of that which a use of a sentence conventionally says. The chapter is bookended with a discussion of philosophical analysis, because a motivation for thinking about meaning in this way is that it makes a case for the importance of something much like philosophical analysis traditionally conceived.Less

Illocution and Interlocution

Richard Moran

in The Exchange of Words: Speech, Testimony, and Intersubjectivity

This chapter discusses the idea of a “second-personal stance” as developed by Darwall and others, and notes some differences with the notion of “addressing” developed here, particularly with respect ... More

This chapter discusses the idea of a “second-personal stance” as developed by Darwall and others, and notes some differences with the notion of “addressing” developed here, particularly with respect to the difference between theoretical and practical reasons. Austin’s distinction between the “illocutionary” and the “perlocutionary” is discussed in connection with Joseph Raz’s idea of the exercise of a normative power. The particular sense of “act” that applies to the perlocutionary status of utterances is illuminated by Jennifer Hornsby’s development of the idea of “reciprocity” as the distinguishing mark of the illocutionary (and hence of acts like telling). The chapter ends with further comparison and contrast between acts of telling and promising.Less

The Social Act and Its Self-Consciousness

Richard Moran

in The Exchange of Words: Speech, Testimony, and Intersubjectivity

The chapter returns to the idea of two forms of agential knowledge, as that applies to “social acts of mind,” and act-descriptions which only apply to what is done intentionally (Anscombe). This ... More

The chapter returns to the idea of two forms of agential knowledge, as that applies to “social acts of mind,” and act-descriptions which only apply to what is done intentionally (Anscombe). This leads to a discussion of the first person in illocution and the meaning of “hereby,” and Tugendhat’s idea of the “relativization of the distinction between speaker and hearer.” It is argued that the focus of much epistemological work on testimony is exclusively on the “consumer’s” perspective on testimony, which favors the “Indicative” model, but this misses the complementarity of the speaker’s and interlocutor’s perspectives. The meaning of mutuality in communication is examined in connection with the “third clause” of Grice’s formulation, recent criticisms of the need for that clause, and Strawson’s notion of communication that is “essentially avowable.”Less

How do Slurs Mean?

Mark Richard

in Bad Words: Philosophical Perspectives on Slurs

It seems “part of the meaning” of a slur that it is a device for displaying contempt. And this seems part of the explanation of differences between slurs and their “neutral counterparts.” But some ... More

It seems “part of the meaning” of a slur that it is a device for displaying contempt. And this seems part of the explanation of differences between slurs and their “neutral counterparts.” But some people, making no linguistic mistake, use slurs in a jocular way, or without animus as interchangeable with their counterparts. And even if the illocutionary “fact” were in some sense “part of meaning,” one might doubt that it is relevant to what is said by an utterance. But information about illocution can be part of “what is said.” This chapter sketches an account of meaning in the sense of what needs to be grasped in order to be a competent speaker; and meaning in this sense is intimately connected with what determines what is “literally said” by an utterance. This provides a natural explanation of why the use of slurs gives rise to a distinctive sort of offense.Less