[Xmca-l] Re: Don't do it

[Rein Raud]

These differences have been discussed quite some time ago in J.L.Austin's "How to Do Things with Words" (1962), from which speech act theory originated. Austin distinguishes between locutionary (primary semantical) meaning, illocutionary meaning (what is being meant) and perlocutionary meaning (any event is being produced by the utterance). Thus when you say "Do you have some time?" you might mean "Can you spare some time for me?" and the perlocutionary result of this is that you will actually help me (because you are in a position where you cannot say "no" to me, f.ex. because I am your boss). A lot of speech act theory has evolved from this, notably in the work of Searle. Best to all, Rein Raud
  
On Mar 11, 2017, at 21:18 , David Kellogg wrote:

> Ulvi, Mike...
> 
> We started this thread with Ulvi's important remark that there is a
> difference between:
> 
> "Don't do it."
> 
> and
> 
> "it is not necessary."
> 
> Ulvi said that the difference does not lie in their polarity--they are both
> negative. Nor does it lie in their representational (referential, or
> "ideational" meaning). They both refer to "it" and to the advisability of
> "it".  Ulvi said that the first was imperative, and the second was not (the
> technical term for the non-imperative form of the second is
> "indicative-declarative", as opposed to "indicative-interrogative" which
> would be a question).
> 
> I shall call this form of meaning--for meaning it is--"interpersonal"
> meaning, in order to distinguish it from "ideational" meaning. I think that
> interpersonal meaning is meaning, but it is meaning which is directed
> towards organizing an interaction as the giving or getting of information
> or goods and services. Ideational meaning is meaning too, but it is
> directed towards the representation (hence, "indication") of human
> experience and logic. They're equally meaningful, but they are filled with
> different kinds of meanings.
> 
> The difference is qualitative, and that is another way of saying that it is
> "revolutionary" (because revolution originally meant turning around axis;
> the first political "revolution" was the rather pathetic "turning" of
> Latin-speaking civilization from a republican to an imperial form under
> Augustus). The difference is between making a proposal and offering a
> proposition--i.e. between realizing a potential state and simply discussing
> an actual one.
> 
> One of the interesting aspects of Professor Jang's paper is that it is
> about adolescents who are in the process of forming concepts, but who are
> not there yet. And one way in which an adolescent forms a concept about the
> difficult concept of a social contract, of citizenship, of nationality is
> pseudoconceptual: it is based on discussing "actual" perceptual differences
> between races. This might seem irrelevant to current political discourse.
> Unfortunately, it isn't.
> 
> What does a teacher say to kids who are thinking this way? Do we say "Don't
> do it"? Or is it better to show them that it is not necessary?
> 
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
> 
> 
> On Sat, Mar 11, 2017 at 7:58 PM, Ulvi İçil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Mike, please corrct me if i wrongly take this meaning that revolutions
>> causes big numbers of death, death in masses, so we would not prefer them.
>> 
>> But, what if we sum up all the deaths because of occupatinal murders in
>> workplaces, deaths from drugs, murders of women and early death because of
>> lack of sufficient health care and all the deaths due to the bad
>> orgsanisation of society under capitalism  and what is more turning of tens
>> of millions of children into ignorant and fanatic human beings who are
>> brought up able to kill anyone on the street etc
>> 
>> Is it not more rational to put en end to this state of human society rather
>> than to perpetruate it, allow it to exist.
>> 
>> Unemployment itself 20 % in Turkey.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 11 Mar 2017 03:14 tarihinde "mike cole" <mcole@ucsd.edu> yazdı:
>> 
>>>> From my personal web page, Ulvi:
>>> 
>>> *Apropos Thoughts on Revolutions and Their Causes*
>>> 
>>> (From C. Dickens, *A Tale of Two Cities*, Ch 15)
>>> 
>>> Along the Paris streets, the death carts rumble, hollow and harsh.
>>> 
>>> Six tumbrels carry the day's wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and
>>> insatiate monsters imagined since imagination could record itself, are
>>> fused in the one realization, Guillotine. And yet there is not in France,
>>> with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a
>>> sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more
>>> certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush human humanity
>> out
>>> of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into
>>> the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and
>>> oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit, according
>>> to its kind.
>>> 
>>> It is the nature of the fruits sewn by the French Revolution that give
>>> pause for thought. And perhaps accounts for the lack of reply to your
>>> articulately formulated note.
>>> 
>>> mike
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 1:32 PM, Ulvi İçil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> If I say
>>>> 
>>>> don't do it, it is imperative.
>>>> 
>>>> But if I say,
>>>> 
>>>> It is not realistic and you do not need it.
>>>> 
>>>> It is affirmative and even  though negative, it is again affirmative,
>> to
>>>> demobilize you.
>>>> 
>>>> What I mean is Revolution.
>>>> 
>>>> Addressed to a married couple with two children.
>>>> 
>>>> With 3 thousand Turkish liras in Istanbul in a  rented home of at least
>>>> 1000 tl for rent.
>>>> 
>>>> 1 usd = 4 Turkish liras
>>>> 
>>>> Survival economics.
>>>> 
>>>> Any prospect?
>>>> 
>>>> No.
>>>> 
>>>> That simple.
>>>> 
>>>> What is socialist revolution?
>>>> 
>>>> It is neither an intention nor a wish.
>>>> 
>>>> It is simple necessity.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>