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

[David Kellogg]

Here I'm talking about the difference between:

a) Don't do it.
b) You are doing it.
c) Are you doing it?

This is not a difference between locutionary, illocutionary, and
perlocutionary force--Austin would say that all of these are locutionary in
their force, because the pragmatic purpose and the resulting event, which
is the giving of linguistic examples and their reception, is the same. And
yet they are different. How so?

They are different in the nature of the commodity which is put at risk. In
a) that commodity is goods and services, while in b) and c) that commodity
is information. This means that in a) language is ancillary--we can often
perform the same "speech act" (to use the behavioristic terminology of
Austin, Searle, and their disciples in pragmatics) using gesticulation,
gesture, "eye language", or just intonation. But in b) and c) the use of
lexicogrammar is central--we cannot successfully exchange propositions
without encoding them lexicogrammatically.

This is not the same difference that Austin is discussing. Austin is not a
linguist, so he wants to transfer meaning from language to context: to
speech roles, to social recognition and to social outcomes. That's simply
not possible in this situation: the meaning of b) and c) lies in the
lexico-grammar and nowhere else. Speech act theory is to linguistics what
behaviorism is to psychology.

David Kellogg
Macquarie University


On Sun, Mar 12, 2017 at 6:33 AM, Rein Raud <rein.raud@tlu.ee> wrote:

> 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.
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>
>
>
>