Pragmatic - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

Introduction

Object of the pragmatic one

The pragmatic one thus is interested, on a side, with the phenomena of contextual dependences specific to the terms indexicaux , i.e. those which, like I , here or now , have to them Référence determined by the Paramètre S of the context of stating (see in particular work of the philosopher and Californian logician David Kaplan), like with the Phénomène S of Présupposition .

On another side, it also aims at making a Théorie Inférence S which one draws from the linguistic statements on the basis of of our general knowledge on the world and Hypothèse S on the intentions of the speakers. It is based in particular on the distinction introduced by the American philosopher Paul Grice between the direction for the speaker and it properly linguistic direction of the statements. In France, about with the same time, Oswald Ducrot ( To say and not to say , 1972) developed comparable ideas. daN Sperber, philosopher and anthropologist French, and Deirdre Wilson, British linguist, developed starting from these ideas a general pragmatic theory, known under the name of Théorie of the relevance .

The principal work of Oswald Ducrot concerns on the one hand the presupposition, i.e. on the fact that certain linguistic expressions, to be used in an adapted way, require that the speakers share certain beliefs (for example, to be able to as say in a suitable way “Paul came”, it is necessary as the whole of the participants in the conversation divide the Croyance that someone else that Paul came). In addition, Ducrot was interested in the way in which certain statements convey, beyond their literal significance, certain implicit information. Always in France, the pragmatic one is considered by other theorists like a science of the communication (Jacques Moeschler and Anne Reboul, pragmatic today the , 1998).

From this widened point of view, she studies the use of the language in the communication and knowledge. Largely tributary of the Cognitivisme, the pragmatic one widened considers the mechanisms inférentiels in the Connaissance, the construction of the Concept S, the nonliteral use of the language, the Intentionnalité in the argumentation, etc It is for example the case of the pragmatic approach in psychology which is interested in the study of the cognitive and psychological processes concerned in the linguistic interactions on the basis of the principle that the conversation, as a natural place of expression of the behaviors, constitutes a privileged framework of observation of the Intrication of cognitive and the social one where one can hope to observe some Heuristique S cognitive specific of the management of the mechanisms of co-operation. In the same way, more and more of researchers consider henceforth that the conversational Analyze, such as it is carried out by the pragmatic approach in psychology, is determining as regards Psychopathologie scientific insofar as it contributes to the explanation of certain mental processes, partly infra-intentional, who are activated by the communicating subjects.

The pragmatic one can be under consideration from two points of view:

pragmatic which deals of the influence and the effects of the language on the context (extralinguistic) - optical near to that of Austin (how one modifies the world by saying something? /how one acts on the world by saying something?)
pragmatic which deals of the influence and the effects of the context on the language (up to what point what is known as depends on the circumstances in which it is known as?). This prospect also enables us to give an account of what one calls “nonverbal communication” (distinct from the nonverbal behaviors (cf Jean Corrase).

Context and cotexte

Two concepts are to be distinguished into pragmatic: The context and the cotexte .

The Contexte includes all that is external of the language and which, however, belonged to a situation of stating. Within the framework of the context, one includes all the elements as the space-time framework, the age, the sex des/du speaker (S), the moment of stating, the social status of Wholesale énonciateurs etc, all these contextual marks are registered in the speech and they form completely part of the Déixis. It is, as they are called, of the Déictique S. In all, we can enumerate five types of deictics

personal Deictics: they are tools of grammaticalisation of the marks of anybody in a situation of stating corresponding to the participants. We can place in this category the deictics “I”, “you”, “us”, “you” and “one”. For this last, it does not matter the fact that it nest covalent with a verb of the third nobody because it can as well include referents which in “definite” speech would take the marks of the first and second person plural and/or of the singular.
temporal Deictics: they are markers of times which locate the statement compared to the moment of the stating. (Examples: “today”, “there are three days”, “this autumn”.)
space Deictics: they are markers of place who locate the statement compared to the moment of the stating. (Examples: " ici" , " là".)
discursive Deictics:
social Deictics (in close relationship with the deictics of the person):

Literally, Cotexte means the text around statement. From a cognitive and conversational point of view, the cotexte can be defined like the interpretation of the immediately preceding statements, thus being used as premise with the production of a given statement. The phenomena cotextuels return for their part to the bonds between various statements between them (Cohésion, Anaphore,…).

History of pragmatic the

Method of the pragmatic one

The statute of the direction

The Linguistic , being an empirical science which deals with the facts provided by the experiment, is defined:

the part of the reality which she studies, namely the articulated language of the human beings;
knowledge which one has on this field; one can call them the `representations' which one is formed of the language. Of these Representation S, the ones are Intuitive S and Spontané be, they are those of everyone, because each human being has ideas on the language, in particular on his. The others, the only ones with being properly scientists, are the result of a more or less long and complex development. Thus one can consider that the `grammars' manufactured by the specialists in the language, that they call Grammairien S or Linguiste S, are the representations scientist of the language at the various times. It is the same of the `linguistic theories'. The epistemologist S agree however to think that no Domaine of reality is completely known nor recognizable by an human being, however erudite. The language does not escape this rule.
methods allowing to build the scientific representations, then to appreciate them, i.e. to detect their qualities and their insufficiencies. Here still, it is necessary to estimate that these methods themselves are not and will be never of a perfect effectiveness.

One can follow Saussure, and many other linguists, when they say that the language comprises two faces: one composed of its S or letter S, more rarely of gestures (case of the “language of the signs” practiced by the deaf people), and qualified the material one because it is perceived by the sensors which is hearing and the sight (touch for the Braille alphabet of the blind men); the other, the Semantic face , which sits in the spirit (or the brain) of the users and which is not materially communicable. Concretely, all the statements, which they oral, are written or gestural, concern the “material” face, and only it. When it is said that they `have' a direction, one uses the verb `to have' with an illustrated value. In fact, `the users allot a direction to them which they build each one for its part in his spirit'. Consequently, from one individual to another, the directions assigned to the same statement cannot coincide with all the blows, it happens that the speaker and the listener give him different directions. However, whereas the absence supplements Coïncidence would involve complete impossibility to communicate by the language, this communication, without being perfect, exists incontestably. It thus remains completely exact that the statements are made for the direction and aim to the unit of the direction, although they do not comprise it materially.

The direction belongs to the psychological phenomena, which implies that the field of linguistics is, at least for an essential part, common to this science and the psychological one. According to the options Metaphysical S which one adopts, the psychological phenomena are to be paid is with a “Substance” particular, different from the matter and that one can call Esprit (in a special direction and very extremely of the term), either with the operation of the nervous system cérébro-spinal, especially about the brain (some then speak about spirit-hoop), or to both at the same time; for our part, we are in favor of a “scientific materialism” which goes well with the second position, while noting that the other options are after very legitimate, and seldom in practice involve a behavior different from the researchers.

Difficulties of the Semantic

The trouble is that the psychological phenomena are not or not yet directly accessible to the scientific disciplines in their actual position. The techniques of which they lay out remain badly adapted to this object. This is why the major problem facing the linguists of the `direction well', left that the language covered by semantics. The insufficiencies that the American linguist Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949) and his disciples raised in this discipline some fifty years ago, were still not eliminated.

Let us reflect a little on the method. In semantics, one is tiny room to hold a speech on the direction, with this additional, specific difficulty to all the specialities of linguistics, that, by doing this, one makes use of the language to describe the language. In fact, about all the examples of the Acte of language still constitute `mental Expériences', known as `imaginary experiments'. That wants to say that we manufacture statements, that we lend interpretations to them, that we invent answers to them to confirm these interpretations. Scientifically it is a strange way of doing. In physics, where one does not have the right `to imagine' experiments, but where one `does them' using apparatuses, she would be condemned without call, like completely deprived of objectivity. But in linguistics, as in other social sciences, one can never avoid it completely: the semantic aspect of the facts being, for the moment, inaccessible to the processes of recording, one is well obliged to describe it verbally; or then it would be necessary not of it to take account, which would cut down, of one of its major parts, the studied field.

The only improvement which one can require would consist in seeking the statements and their answers in reality, instead of imagining them. It is remainder a current practice in certain sectors of linguistics, for example in Sociolinguistique, where one devotes oneself to investigations and recordings “on the ground”. But it does not exempt then subjective interpretations. In the present section, its benefit would be mean. The experiment shows that one needs an enormous work to collect sufficient data, with results which are not always with the measurement of the authorized efforts. Also the pragmaticians invent their examples, or they borrow them from their predecessors. The investigations of ground will come later, when one has the feeling which the purely mental experiments exhausted their fruitfulness.

On the whole, the specialist takes as support his own competence of user of the language, his aptitude to include/understand the statements which he studies. Only the other guarantee that it has, it is the approval of its readers, especially of the other specialists, on the analyzes which it proposes. But they also give it or according to their “linguistic feeling” users refuse it. At the bottom, one does not go beyond from a coincidence of Subjectivité. Such is to date the condition of the linguist.

The descriptive illusion

The term of semantics does not have more than one century, but from time immemorial one made semantics without the knowledge each time one almost always privileged, for reasons which it would be too long to enumerate here, one of the Aspect S of the direction: the direction called Descriptive (or Constatif), i.e. the direction given to a statement when the speaker with for goal to describe “a state of affairs”, part of reality. It was known well that for such a function of the language, often called Assertive, it was necessary to oppose the language known as `active', but it appeared completely secondary.

However it usually happens that the direction is not, or not completely, of the descriptive type. Let us suppose the statement: `Its talk with note 12'. If it is student which speaks about a comrade, it is indeed a description of the note allotted by a professor to the talk. But if the sentence is included in a novel, there are actually no talk and no note; the world that it `makes mine' describe is purely imaginary, and neither the author nor the readers are easily deceived. Finally if that which speaks thus is an inspector appreciating the talk in a jury, it `fixes the note' by the very fact that it pronounces the sentence. Nothing however in the letter statement indicates to us which feel it acts; it is with the user to guess it.

One sees which is the variety of the possible directions for the same sentence. The descriptive direction is very frequent, absolutely essential, but it does not profit from any exclusiveness. To believe that it is only, or the only important thing, it is to fall in what is called `descriptive illusion'. The language is not only, like one says, `Vériconditionnel', i.e. aiming at being `true' by describing reality such as it is or that it is believed that it is. It comprises other kinds of directions, which often can be qualified neither of truth nor forgery, it `is used' for another thing. Instead of restricting itself to reproduce reality, it makes it possible to act on it, and initially on the interlocutor (who forms part itself of reality!).

The leader of play in the language

Statement and stating

Among the French linguists, Emile Benveniste (1902-1976) is published to have been the first to be raised systematically in its articles of the facts similar to those which others have, at the same time or, arranged later under the pragmatic heading. One at least allots to him all and with reason, the merit to have clearly separated the statement and the stating and underlined the interest to study the latter.

Let us use a lighting Métaphore: in the manufacture of the objects, one should not confuse the production, the product, his use, without counting it (S) producing (S) and it (S) user (S). In the same way, in connection with language, it is appropriate to distinguish act by which one produces statement, statement itself (“material” since one can record it), the act by whom one includes/understands it, but also the enonciator who produces it, recipients which includes/understands it. The comparison with the manufacture of the material objects stops there, because the linguistic activity comprises the assignment of direction of which we spoke and to what nothing corresponds in the fields not Sémiotique S.

The Déixis

We now will gather a certain number of suggestions presented to various moments by various linguists, and of which it is not question of giving the history here. Saussure had already proposed a “circuit of the word” and Roman Jakobson, much more recently, a diagram of the linguistic communication. This last moreover had stressed the importance of elements which one practically finds in all the linguistic systems, that one can thus hold for `universals' of the language and from which semantic operation is inseparable from the situation of stating. It named them “embrayeurs” (in English `shifters'), term to which one prefers a name often today borrowed from Peirce, that of “deictics”. Thus the personal Pronouns, object of an often quoted study of Benveniste, are to be arranged among the deictics.

Deictic is the adjective corresponding to `déixis', whose explanation, in Greek, is “action to show”. It applies to a family of semantic operations inseparable from the situation where the statement is produced, therefore stating. Let us suppose that in answer to an invitation, I accept by pronouncing the very short statement: `I will go'. Two elements deictics there are found. Apparent is the personal pronoun `I' (begun again besides by the verbal Désinence `- have', owing to the fact that the verb agrees with its subject). To know which is indicated by `I', to identify this “first nobody”, it is necessary to know which pronounces the statement. However this information is normally provided by the situation of stating: the listener hears and generally (but not in the darkness nor on the telephone!) the person sees who speaks; she “is thus shown to him” by the situation, from where the term of `déixis'. The deictic `I' thus invite the listener to supplement the direction while referring to the situation. To include/understand, one indeed requires for a `indication' that the words of the statement do not give. As for the second deictic of the statement, it is quite simply the morpheme of future `- R'. By itself, he wants to say that the lawsuit meant by the verb will take place in the future. But the future is a relative concept. It supposes a moment given `after which' it is located. Which is this moment given? Again, it is specified by the situation of stating: it is about the moment `present', which is the moment when the enonciator is speaking. But let us be accustomed so much there we that we do not take of it any more conscience and that future as we appear concepts self-explanatory.

When the situation of stating is not known, it is necessary, if not to give up the deictics completely, at least to specify them by objective information, for example, in a writing, by providing the date and while signing, so as to make it possible to the reader to locate the present and to identify the person designated by `I'. Is the context used then as situation, which explains why certain deictics, like the conclusive ones (`this', etc), can be indifferently used to show what one under the eyes in reality (`Where led this road? ') or to return to words of the context (`I had a telephone call of Pierre'; `this old friend gave me good news'). In the second case, one speaks commonly about anaphoric `employment'.

Very schematically, one can say that any speaker, while speaking, establishes a whole of three coordinated (`ego-nunc-difficulty', says one with Latin words) related to the situation of stating and expressed by the deictics. It fixes as follows:

a subjective reference mark, the “first nobody”, the `I' (`ego' in Latin), by report/ratio to which are determined on the one hand the “second nobody”, i.e. the recipient of the statement, therefore `you' (or `you'), on the other hand the remainder, this or those who do not take part in the dialog, but about which one speaks, the “third nobody” (the person absent, say Arab grammars);
a temporal reference mark, the `now' (`nunc' in Latin), moment of the stating, is one present before and after which respectively the past and the future are;
a space reference mark the `here' (`difficulty' in Latin), i.e. the place where the enonciator is, which makes it possible to define the proximity and the distance.

The enonciator

Thus a kind of functional hierarchy is established, where the enonciator very profits on the recipient from a privilege Net. The enonciator has indeed, at least temporarily (as long as it with the word), the initiative; the Destinataire can only try to follow it. Besides an attentive analysis reveals the importance which in the language the “Subjectivité has”, i.e. the role which returns on the speaking subject (where writing): not only, as we have just seen it, it occupies a central role grammatically, but still it is him which inflects the course of the Dialog, chooses what is said and the way of saying it, can give its judgment, however personnel, like obviousnesses, tightens or slackens the atmosphere, etc This advantage even authorizes it, when it is with court of valid arguments, to call upon of them one which is at the absurd bottom, but which reveals a provisional predominance well: `Since I say it to you…' It is understood that the Interlocuteur may find it beneficial not to remain too a long time under the condition of Auditeur and to take itself in its turn word. That which remains too often dumb is quickly aware of its state of inferiority.

However, which is `I'? This question appears to comprise an obvious answer, but it is not the case. Let us see indeed that `I' can indicate apart from the speaking subject. One will pass quickly on certain cases often evoked like the `speech brought back' to the direct speech. Bringing back or making as if it brought back the words of others, the Locuteur can repeat the `I' this third person; there is then a `quotation' or `mention', that the use with the writing is to put between quotation marks (`It said to me: “I will come”', example where the two pronouns of first nobody `me' and `I' aim the same individual, but where `it' and `I' have even reference). Less known and yet usual is what we will call the `anticipated speech', where the speaker formulates by advance the words which its listener will have it to pronounce. Thus a president of court will invite in these terms each witness to lend oath: `Known as: “I swear it”. It can still happen that one addresses oneself to indiscreet by telling him `what I do mix? ', which is a kind of verbal aggression, where one seizes illegitimately, if not of ego of others, at least of the deictic indicating it.

In fact, `I' also return to the enonciator and, in spite of appearances, this term of enonciator, with whom the term of speaker (or Scripteur) to the air to make dual employment, always does not nominate the same person as him. The enonciator is the person in charge of the held speech, well rather than the speaking or writing subject. It is only insofar as generally the person in charge and the effective speaker are identified that this double reference of `I' does not make a problem. In addition, one will have to avoid confusion between the linguistic concept `' of speaking subject, or subjectivity, and the psychological concept `philosophical' or `' of subject, even if, at the time of the training of the language, the assimilation of the system deictic contributes without any doubt to the constitution of the psychological subject.

It is thus necessary to be conscious of the difficulties which the concept of stating raises. It arrives, more often than one could not believe, than the enonciator is dubious or even multiple. It is dubious, for example, when the speaker or the script writer is obviously only one spokesperson, but whom it is not specified of which. It is increasingly frequent in the contemporary world, where we are attacked imperative messages conveyed by machines, loudspeakers, posters without the responsible authority being named.

It is multiple, in which case one speaks about `Polyphonie' each time, in a statement, the responsibility for what is known as falls on several authorities. Thus the speaker who quotes a proverb in support of an appreciation takes it in his account, but at the same time he recalls that it is not him which invented it, so that the common opinion, the wisdom of the concepts like one also says, is in question: it is thus associated to the speaker in the responsibility for the stating.

We have just warned against abusive simplifications, which would lock up linguistic operation within the framework narrowly conceived deictic. The language is more subtle, it allows other effects. However, in fact indirect effects do not call into question what was known as on the basis of déixis. Examination of the deictics and observation of their frequency, one will be able to thus draw the conclusion which the languages are made before very functioning `in situation'. As the language is a play which is played two normally (or more), the conversation face to face, the dialog seems well most typical of its modes of use. It authorizes others of them, like the writing, the Monolog, the unilateral speech, but they are not also fundamental and they comprise, would be this only by the recourse to verbal times, themselves deictics as we saw, of the elements whose origin is certainly to seek in conversational employment. This is why the pragmaticians stress readily the “ordinary” language, that of the daily use.

Acts of language

Classification

Austin, after having studied the acts achieved thanks to the statements “performatifs”, which, in the language, appeared to him worthiest of interest, realized that the term even act was extremely extensible and he proposed a classification including. He proposes to call “locutoires” a first series of acts, those without which there would be no implementation of the language: for example to conceive sentences, to choose words, to order them in sentences, to allot direction to them, to pronounce them or write them, hear them or read them, them include/understand, etc They are here the multiple forms which the linguistic activity in the human organism takes (let us recall that we agreed to regard as organics what is of a psychological nature as well as what is of a muscular or sensory nature).

The second category is that of the acts “illocutoires”, i.e. acts contained in the language. With the language, one can indeed achieve a multitude of actions, if many that no one did not draw up a complete listing of it: , to question, answer, order, judge, promise, lend oath, certify, bet, excuse, forgive, condemn, congratulate, blame, thank, greet, invite, insult, threaten, argue, conclude, acknowledge, present an investigation, to name with a station, etc the acts illocutoires will describe thus well beyond the simple description of the reality in which one was interested classically. To describe is only one of the activities which the language allows.

The concept of act illocutoire is close to that of direction, but only provided that the latter is not narrowly designed. The direction must include not only what is called usually, of a coloured word, the “contents”, say the direction of the words, but as the “force illocutoire” of the statement, in other words the act or the acts illocutoires as in “a given stating”, it is used to achieve. Because “the same statement can have different forces illocutoires according to the statings”.

Also let us note that some of the acts evoked here imply the recourse to the language inevitably, they are thus always illocutoires. Thus it is difficult to promise differently than while making use of words. On the contrary, for others, there are the choice: one can greet by saying `Hello' or `Salut', therefore by achieving an act illocutoire, but just as easily by making a gesture (to embrace, tighten the hand, to take off its hat…) or while resorting at the same time to a formula and a gesture (to tighten the hand and to say `Hello'). This remark corroborates the legitimacy of the bringing together which the pragmaticians between language and action carried out.

The third and last category aim at the acts “perlocutoires”, all those, of unspecified number, which one seeks or which one can seek to achieve by means of the language: to render comprehensible, to persuade, comfort, inform, mislead, interest, impress, put in anger, to calm, make fear, reassure, reconcile themselves, influence, disturb, etc Here still, some of the acts can hardly be realized but by linguistic way, thus those to persuade or inform, whereas others can be better obtained as well or by other means, for example to make fear.

Between the acts illocutoires and the perlocutoires, the distinction is sometimes delicate. One would be tempted to define the first as the acts of language which cannot fail, precisely because they are inseparable from the language: if, according to a familiar formula with the pragmaticians, to say is to make, it is enough to have said to have made. Thus the promise is made up as soon as one emitted the suitable words (for example `I promise') and it should be distinguished from its execution: it will be held or not, it is indeed very an other question. In the same way an order is given as soon as one said `I order', even if then it is not carried out: to order, i.e. to require obedience, is illocutoire, while to obtain this obedience is not it; it is or it can be (because there exists to obtain it other means that the language) perlocutoire. The acts perlocutoires, on their side, thus know usually the failure, like the majority of the human activities.

Unfortunately this a little simplistic criterion always does not function. Many acts illocutoires can be validly accomplished only by qualified people placed in a well determined situation and not by no matter whom, nor in any circumstance. They - one says into pragmatic - are then subjected to conditions of success. (in English “felicity”). Here examples. To issue belonged to the acts illocutoires: a decree is appeared as a written document. But only are in a position to issue invested people of a particular authority, chair Republic or ministers. And still it is necessary that they are put under the necessary conditions of validity: thus certain orders in Council valid are only contresigned by the Prime Minister. In the same way a nomination (`Mr. Untel is named director of such service') can be made only by one person who has the capacity of it. Many acts illocutoires - but not all - thus depend on a suitable juridico-social framework.

Argumentation

One can undoubtedly arrange among the acts illocutoires “the argumentation”, that work of Oswald Ducrot and Jean-Claude Anscombre highlighted. According to them, it is, at least as much as description, one of the essential functions of the language. It consists in supporting a certain number of others which go in the same direction. The recipients, indeed, are not been willing to admit the contents of any statement, they often await justifications before granting their adhesion. In spite of the proverb “Silence gives consent”, the speakers know extremely well that the silence of the listeners can be heavy of skepticism. In other words, it is necessary them to persuade, act perlocutoire as we said. Its success is suspended on the effectiveness of the argumentation presented. For example, one will not accept a judgment such as Pierre is an honest boy , except if it is an opinion very generally received and thus included in the encyclopedic competence of people (except for the interested party!), that if the author of the judgment can quote facts where Pierre showed quality that one lends to him thus.

Ducrot and Anscombre established that one could with difficulty define certain linguistic elements without making enter in account their “orientations argumentative”. That is to say the statement Pierre is rich, but honest . Why but , since this conjunction seems to indicate an opposition (also calls commonly it one adversary “which is opposed”) whereas richness, de facto situation, and honesty, moral virtue, is not on the same plan? The explanation would be that but indicates an inversion of argumentative orientation. To be rich is, in the general opinion, a presumption in favor of the dishonesty: the origin of a fortune is suspectée a priori. Here, the supported conclusion, It is honest , does not rise, quite to the contrary, of the argument previously given, which will then seem a kind of concession made with reality. There will be thus undoubtedly need for other arguments, these positive, to make it acceptable.

Performativity

Austin had paid an special attention to a certain type of statement which it had described as “performatif” (of English `to perform' = to make, to achieve). The difference between the statements performatifs, as `Come here!' or `I promise to come' and the others, known as “constatifs”, as `One telephoned to me on this question', holds so that one called since the “direction of adjustment”. The purpose of the statements constatifs are to describe reality, therefore to adjust itself with him; the real remainder, after the emission of the statement, which it was before. On the contrary, the statements performatifs, acting on him, modify it: after a performatif statement, it is more completely only it was before; this time, it is thus the reality which is adjusted with the statement: in the examples which have just been proposed, it comprises from now on the promise or the order created by verbal way.

Paradoxically, Austin then gave up isolating the category of the statements performatifs. Indeed, with the reflection, its limits can appear dubious. Let us take a constatif statement, such as: `One calls you on the telephone'. Seemingly, it does nothing but describe one situation. But to look at there more closely, it modifies reality. Thanks to him, one passed from a world where the recipient was not warned a phone call with a world where it is it. On a point, the statement, aiming at representing reality, is adjusted with him; on another, it is the reverse, since it causes to enrich knowledge by the recipient. The statement, while remaining constatif, thus has a performatif aspect. The stating of only one and even sentence then makes stone two blows: it “describes” and it “informs”, acts which belong to different categories. It should be retained that very usually “a single stating has multiple effects thus”, its force illocutoire is complex.

In spite of the scruples of Austin, the pragmaticians however preserved the label of performatif. They apply to statements, statings, verbs, etc, though in a way which is not always of a perfect coherence. Sometimes performatif means “which carries out indeed such act by verbal way (it would be to better say “powerful”), sometimes he means “which is suitable for carry out the act by verbal way”. Because, as one sees it on examples, the same statement can carry out or not carry out the act. Consequently it is or it is not powerful, that depends on the stating. When `That goes' answers an interrogation on the health condition of the interlocutor, it is simple information, and one will not speak in this case about performatif statement; when he answers `I excuse himself', he constitutes requested forgiveness, one will thus classify it among the statements performatifs.

Let us analyze some examples of this category. One can invite somebody to go to the cinema while saying to him: `Come to the cinema with me'. It is a statement performatif (and even powerful), thanks to which one `made' (act!) the invitation. The use of the requirement, mode which expresses the order (Latin “impero” `I order') or more exactly the incentive, friendly (like here) or constraining, is then responsible for the performatif character covered by the stating. But the same effect can be obtained using a very different statement: `I invite you to go to the cinema'. The statement is performatif, like the precedent, and moreover it includes a “performatif verb” (likely of performer), the verb `to invite'.

Are classified in the category of the verbs performatifs all the verbs indicating a performatif act, but which at the same time can be used for achieving it, in the condition express of being with the first nobody if they have the form activates (`It invites you to go to the cinema' is not a performatif statement; at most can it be used to transmit the invitation of others) or to have the passive form (to say `It is promised' is a current way to promise). Curiously the verbs indicating a performatif act are not all of the verbs performatifs: one does not insult somebody by telling him `I insult you', but by employing insults.

When it uses a performatif verb in a statement such as `I invite you to go to the cinema', the enonciator describes his own action, since the mode used is the code, thus named because it is used to provide “indications” on what occurs. But this action precisely consists in saying `I invite you to go to the cinema'. One says what one does, but one does it by saying it. With reflecting well there, it is completely paradoxical. Logicians are wary of this type of formulas which describes their characteristic employs, which is - say-they - “reflexive”, because they show that they can lead to “paradoxes”, i.e. with internal contradictions. In spite of the risk, the natural languages do not hesitate to make use of it and go from there extremely well. They function effectively, but according to mechanisms which, like underlined it Wittgenstein, are not always those of logic. It thus does not belong to the logicians of the régenter.

To agree the invitation to go to the cinema, the user has at his disposal many manners of saying (the languages are very rich!). He can say `I accept', by making use of a performatif verb, but he can as well use the statement: `I will go'. With the first access, it with the air to describe a future action simply, and this interpretation would be sufficient if it were a question of answering the question: `Do you Intend to go tomorrow to the cinema?' Let us raise in the passing that `to describe' is not, not more than `to insult', a performatif verb, and, than usually, a descriptive statement does not announce only it describes. It is to the recipient to become aware of it; as we realized some, part of the direction allotted to the statements does not correspond to any word or any explicit expression. And in this case the, where it is a question of answering an invitation, listener will understand that the enonciator accepts without nothing saying it explicitly.

It is time to propose a classification of the statements performatifs (i.e., if not powerful, at the very least likely to be it). One will distinguish:

statements with “performativity lexicalement called”: thus those which include/understand a performatif verb (standard `I accept') or, but much more rarely, at least in French, a word of another class indicating the accomplished act (for example `Rectification!' to indicate that one modifies what one has just said);
statements with “performativity indicated differently”: this indication can consist of a grammatical process, thus the use of the imperative mode to encourage the listener to make such or such thing of interrogative turning louse to put a question; but there exist also specialized interjections: `chut' request silence, `halt!' constitute an injunction to have to stop, `(a)' invites to give a new execution of a piece of music or a spectacle, etc
the statements with “not expressed performativity”: they are very varied types, energy of the declaratory statements as `I will go' higher examined until done everything formulas (`Pardon', be sorry; `Fault!' with tennis to announce that it is judged that a fault was made, etc), while passing by the false interrogations as `Can you pass salt to me?' where it is actually about a request: the interlocutor is solicited to pass salt. `Here!' can indifferently be an answer to a question, therefore descriptive, an exclamation or an order of energetic patented - the intonation being able to mark the difference.

In the first of these three categories, one finds only statements which are not always powerful, even if they are it in general. All depends then on the stating, of the context verbal (“cotexte”) where it intervenes, of the concrete situation where the interlocutors are. Such statements are indeed of declaratory form, therefore apparently descriptive, and they can, in an adapted context, to cover only this function.

In the third, the performatif character should be fundamentally episodical, so that other interpretations remain possible. In fact, in certain turnings, it is so frequent that it becomes conventional about it. It is besides which, taken with the letter, would receive a reasonable direction with difficulty. Thus a simple verbal answer, by `yes' or `not', with the `question can you pass salt to me? ', any chance would have to appear absurd, apart from completely exceptional circumstances. That shows well that it is not a question of a true question. The force illocutoire is different.

Only the second category does not comprise in theory statements constantly powerful. It is however with it that the pragmatic one was interested, undoubtedly because this field presented for it less difficulty: the more traditional methods could apply to it.

The implicit direction

Components of the direction

We placed ourselves generally up to now from the point of view of the enonciator. Among the functions of its load, it has indeed the privilege to choose the statements which it will use and to determine the direction of them. But it has also to be rendered comprehensible. Under penalty of to violate rules of the game linguistic, which stipulates that the spot of the recipient does not consist in solving riddles randomly, it is allocated to the enonciator to make sure that its partner has the means of reconstituting the direction. We will have thus also to examine them. But before, it is necessary to return on the various components from what is the direction (conceived in a very broad direction).

One will exempt oneself to insist on the conventional direction of the words, described in the dictionaries. It concerns traditional semantics, just as the combinative one making it possible to allot to the phase a total direction from that of the words. The techniques of study were announced then. For the same reason, we will not speak here about the problems arising from the reference, in other words of the question of the relationship between the statements and their elements on the one hand, the components of reality on the other hand. Even if they are far from being completely cleared up, they appear about of the same order for all the statements, performatifs or not. Let us underline EC point of view however that the statements performatifs, insofar as they evoke not only reality or the representations that we have some, but still either of purely imaginary, or what one would like to see occurring, contribute to the difficulties of semantics.

However, a series of semantic distinctions had been and they preserve all their utility here. Initially for the direction posed, which is about the conventional direction, the contents of the words, it had been necessary to oppose the presupposed direction, the criterion being that in general, and contrary to the direction posed, presupposed are not modified when the statement takes a negative or interrogative form. To this pair, one had added the implicit one that here we call, of a term more coloured, the “unvoiced comment”. In this field, as in good of others, the terminology is hardly fixed: one also speaks, for example, of “insinuations” or “inférences”, and from one specialist to another, the definitions and the uses can vary appreciably. Moreover, as we will see, the force illocutoire is also to take into account, whereas it is not always, far from, meant there expressly by word or expression.

The direction

Generally, one realizes that the recipients draw from the statements more of the information that it does not appear about it explicitly in the words. If I read on the door of a grocer a sign `Ouvert Sunday', I would consider that it means `Ouvert' even the `Sunday', therefore Sunday, but also the other days. Contrary, on an administrative desk the inscription `Open of the Monday to Friday', apparently parallel with the preceding one, will give place to a different interpretation, as if there were `Ouvert' only `of the Monday to Friday', therefore not saturdays nor Sunday. Such examples look at the contents of the statement. But of others, already given, relate to in the stating the act of language carried out by using the statement, its force illocutoire. It seemed that the same statement `Its talk with note 12' could be included/understood differently, like a observation, an invention or a notation. In the same way, according to the circumstances, `That goes' is used to give news or to forgive. Another example: `It rains' can constitute information not involved over time that it makes, but just as easily also an argument not to leave, or a warning to have to provide itself with an umbrella.

One could ad infinitum multiply the facts of this kind. We of a last example contain. By noticing that `the dustbin is full', which, in the form, with the air to be a simple observation, one can achieve many additional acts: to solicit the listener to empty the dustbin, to reproach him for not having done it in time, to complain about a strike of the street sweepers and its annoying consequences, etc Nothing explicit announces these acts, and yet the recipient is aware well of it, as the diversity of its reactions will show it. If it takes the statement for a request to have to empty the dustbin, it will be able rétorquer: `It is not my tower to empty it'. If he regards it as a charge of delay, there will be an answer such as: `I forgot to empty it', to interpret like an excuse. Lastly, if it sees there an allusion to the strike of the street sweepers, this way of including/understanding will possibly appear by: `I intended to say that the strike will finish'. However, most of the time, such reactions will not surprise the author of the initial statement. That shows well that it envisaged the way in which its stating would be received.

It will have been noticed that here still our examples are presented first of all in the form of observations, but that the direction which they can cover largely overflows pure description. However what of it is description itself? She resorts, he was said, with the indicative mode. However, many linguistics, such Andre Martinet, noticed that, in the majority of the languages, there is no mark of code, whereas the not-codes modes, for example the subjunctive, comprise one in general of them: in French, the subjunctive can be characterized by a suffix `- I' (`sang'; this suffix is homonymous of one of the alternatives of the suffix of requirement), a characteristic radical (`makes' opposite with `make' or `made'), sometimes both (`let us make'). One can consider well that the code has a mark zero, but it is at least also trying to see there a not-mode, the fundamental form of the verb, without modal specification. According to this interpretation, the act of description itself would concern the unvoiced comment in the majority of the cases.

The interpretative calculation of the direction

How the recipients manage do to establish the direction of a stating when this direction is thus the result of a “derivation”, i.e. when it is not related to meaning by immediate report/ratio stored in the memory, but results from a kind of reasoning, generally automatic and unconscious? One considers that to make this reasoning, sometimes called “interpretative calculation”, they uses, in addition to the statement itself, various information sources and conforms to various rules.

According to what one thinks today, where a rather widespread tendency the spirit like a whole of systems called often, of a traditional term, faculties (“modular” design of the spirit-brain), any user of the language conceives has various competences being an organized whole of knowledge and psychological mechanisms. Thus one distinguishes:

the linguistic ability;
encyclopedic competence;
logical competence;
rhétorico-pragmatic competence;

By linguistic ability, one understands the control of a language, his pronunciation, his lexicon, his syntax, etc; by logical competence, the aptitude to make reasoning of a logical nature, to deduce, see holding them and the outcomes of an idea, to connect the ideas between them, etc; by encyclopedic competence, knowledge of a bearing nature varied on the infinite diversity of the subjects about which a language makes it possible to speak (since it is about impossible to include/understand a statement, also clearly is it, on a subject which one is unaware of about all); by rhetorico-pragmatic competence, the mechanisms of which it now will be question. One can arrange under the heading “competence of communication” the whole of these various competences, but it is necessary to be conscious that such a general name includes also average not linguistics of communication. Useless to add that from one individual to another, competences vary. One will suppose without sorrow which the logical competence of a mathematician is wider than that of the common run of people.

Let us take again the example of `the dustbin is full' and suppose that the speaker, by pronouncing the sentence, allots the force to him illocutoire of a request to empty the dustbin. How the recipient can understand that it is indeed a request, since it is not known as nowhere and that other interpretations would be a priori possible? It allots the first interpretation to the statement under the terms of its linguistic ability: it can hesitate over the descriptive character of the stating, but suppose that it admits it in the absence of index pushing to include/understand differently. It knows, by its encyclopedic competence, that the household refuse are usually put in the family dustbin, that the presence of refuse apart from the dustbin detrimental or is regarded as such, that there exists also for the refuse an external container, whose municipal street sweepers evacuate the contents regularly, that one has habit to empty the dustbin in this container, which itself can make it and already did it. Its logical competence enables him to establish a bond between this knowledge: one empties the dustbin in the external container in order to leave place for new refuse, and one can always make it since this container is in its regularly emptied turn. Remain to determine how, from this whole of knowledge and logical reports/ratios (or pseudo-logic), one passes to interpretation that it is to the recipient of the stating that it returns to empty the dustbin. The pragmaticians suggest that rhétorico-pragmatic competence comprises the following rule: to describe a detrimental situation with somebody who is in measurement to make it cease, it is to encourage this person to make it cease. Consequently, the desired direction is obtained easily.

All that can appear simplistic or dubious. It is however probable that the adequate direction can be reconstituted only by mechanisms of this kind, functioning starting from knowledge and of the rules which we pointed out. Little thing is enough to the remainder to support a different force illocutoire: for example the knowledge of a turn of role between the people of the family charged to empty the dustbin and of the day when one is. If it is not the day of the recipient, the direction `Vide is the dustbin' becomes much less probable, and it can be a question of a reflection of the type `One cannot never count on him' on the incurie of a third. But in its turn, the knowledge of the regard, high or poor, in which the speaker holds weakening it will support or disadvantage this last direction. One leaves the care to the reader to continue the mental experiment, by imagining alternatives with this situation and by deducing some the then emerging direction.

The rule which was suggested remains however rather restricted application and one will wonder whether rhétorico-pragmatic competence can be described like a simple conglomerate of such rules. It is desirable, to explain its effectiveness, to discover more general principles, preferably maintaining between them an organic connection. It is with them that we come from there now

Laws of the speech

Let us enumerate several, while inspiring to us by analyze of Oswald Ducrot, which gives them this name. They explain the choice of an expression or a subject rather than of another, but guide also the listener in his reconstitution of the direction, because the speaker, supposed to respect them, is not free to assign to a statement a direction which enfreindrait them. These laws are indeed kinds of conventions, similar to the rules of a play: who takes share with the play accepts the rules of them, if not it is made guilty of cheating. In the same way, which makes use of the language is subjected to its laws, under penalty of marginalizing itself.

The first is the law of “sincerity”. One is held to say only what one believes true and even as what one has of the reasons sufficient to hold for tel. Autrement one exposes to the charge of speaking with the light one. Without this convention, no species of communication, even the lie, would be possible, since the listener would not grant a priori any confidence to the speaker. Apparently, it goes from oneself. But it is worth only insofar as the language has descriptive function. When the function is different, for example in a novel, where descriptions are by convention illusory, it is without object. It is thus normal that certain indices reveal with the recipient so yes or not it applies. It is well why one often makes be reproduced the indications “Novel” or “News” on the cover of the books which belong to these kinds. But as the literature of imagination is dominant today, one often exempts itself to give them. There are thus possibilities of mistake, in particular with the oral examination where the indices, to suppose that they exist, are in any event more fugitive. The joke, whose salt consists in “making as if” what one said were true whereas it is not it, consists from this point of view a high-risk field: the listener can take the statement “with serious”, which involves annoying misunderstandings.

In the second place, the operation of the language is subjected to a law of interest, according to which one is in right to speak with somebody only of what is likely to interest him. Thus would be explained the difficulty in engaging the conversation with an unknown: one cannot which subject approach with him direction to violate the convention of interest. As there exist subjects pass keys, supposed to interest everyone and quite convenient to tie knowledge, time as it makes for example. Everyone is concerned with the heat, the cold, the rain, the sun… But he is privileged people who escape this existence. They are the agents of the authority, whose word is essential on all as if it were of oneself interesting. Thus the teachers, as accredited representatives of the company, are entitled to the word in front of their school audience. If, so that they say, this one does not take indeed interest, it has other resources only to think of another thing or to give a discharge system to its dissatisfaction in the form of uproar.

About all the principles which one can call upon know indeed of the exceptions, which one cannot explain (when it can) that while resorting to other principles, sometimes, as we will see it, frankly contradictory. Thus it precisely of the law of “informativeness is”. According to it, a statement must bring to its recipient information which he is unaware of. If not, the speaker exposes himself to responses of the type `I know it already' or `You do not teach me anything'. However, while speaking about the rain and the good weather, one generally teaches nothing with his interlocutor. All occurs like so in front of an urgent obligation to speak and in front of the need for satisfying the principles governing the word, one gave the priority to the convention of interest on the convention of informativeness.

In addition, a well formed statement, if it must contain new information, must also point out things already sweat. In the contrary case, it seems that too great information, exceeding the capacities of assimilation of the listener, gene comprehension. The linguists distinguished from this point of view in very stated the “topic” and the “rhème” (one also says, instead of rhème, “x-ray” or “matter”), the topic taking again the already known one and the rhème constituting the original contribution required by the principle of information. If one puts in parallel the énonciatif point of view and the grammatical point of view, one notes that, in the languages on subject like French, there is affinity between the subject part and the topic, the predicative part and the rhème.

In addition, the expression of information seems to obey a law known as of “exhaustiveness”, stipulating that the speaker is held to give, in a given field, maximum information compatible with the truth. Intending to say somebody that it has three children, it will be understood that it does not have four of them, which however is not explicit. However, there exists an exactly opposite law, that of the “understatement”. The understatement consists in saying less than one does not want to make it clear. Thus Chimène addresses to Rodrigue a `Va, I do not hate myself' who actually mean that she likes it, and that it includes/understands thus; such a statement would mean that it is indifferent for him, if it were the law of exhaustiveness which applied. But one is far from to have still indexed all the mechanisms explaining why of these laws it is sometimes one sometimes the other which applies. In the same way, to date, no one did not provide a complete listing of the laws of speech.

Conversational maxims

The linguist philosophizes American H. Paul Grice also released to him from the “conversational maxims” to which the interlocutors would be held to conform. They are four - quantity, quality, relevance and manner - and would depend very on a principle very general on co-operation, applicable to the whole of the human behavior and thus to the conversation. We will not enter in detail, more especially as they recover the laws of the speech partly described above. In the form that Grice gives them, they have remainder a restricted field of application, because they are worth only for the descriptive aspects (vériconditionnels) of the conversation.

But Grice endeavoured to show how the listener could take support on them to detect what did not appear in a statement. When the statement the enfreint, it must suppose that the infringement is only apparent, since differently the speaker would not have applied the principle of co-operation, on which the maxims themselves depend. It will thus be necessary to seek a semantic assumption according to which they are respected, although only as far as possible. So a question about the address of somebody, one answers `It lives some share in the South', the answer does not comprise all the precision which the maxims of quantity and relevance require; but the speaker did not say any more because of the maxim of quality, which obliges to advance only what one knows of assured source. In other words, he violated certain maxims to respect another of them. And the listener is founded to consider that the direction to be reconstituted includes in a certain way `I do not know any more'.

The explanation, of course, is only partial. Because the statement could have been just as easily `I do not know with the Juste', and its interpretation would not have raised a problem. Why does one choose to make complicated whereas one could have made simple? In the examined case, one can give an answer: the speaker benefits from the situation to briefly indicate what it knows, even if it is insufficient to satisfy the recipient. In other cases, the advantage is for the speaker to if required be able to refuse the responsibility for the direction unvoiced comment. More the variation is large between the conventional direction, therefore explicit and the indirect direction, therefore implicit, that one can lend to the statement, more the speaker with the possibility of affirming the good one or insincerely, that it did not consider the insinuation in question. The language offers multiple resources to suggest without saying. But one does not see always also clearly the reasons which push to include in the statement of the direction unvoiced comment, with the bond to be explicitly expressed. In any case, interpretation is done with the risks and dangers of the recipient. The need where it is put to reconstitute direction unvoiced comment obliges it with a more or less circumvented and more or less dubious step. Thus is reinforced the predominance announced higher of the enonciator on the recipient.

References

François Recanati, the 1981 statements performatifs, Paris: Midnight
Grice, H.P. (1979). Logic and conversation. Communication, 30,57-72
Levinson, S. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Close
J. Bernicot, A. Trognon, Mr. Musiol & Mr. Guidetti (Eds.) (2002). Pragmatic and Psychology. Nancy: Unviversitaires presses of Nancy
Ghiglione, R. and Core, A. (1999). Where the pragmatic one go? The pragmatic one with social psychology. Grenoble: University presses of Grenoble
Moeschler, J. and Reboul, A. (1994). Encyclopedic dictionary of pragmatic, Editions of the Threshold

External bonds

Site of daN Sperber
Course of MIT (in English)
Site of the pr. Michel Musiol
Site of the pr. Alain Trognon
Site of Josie Bernicot

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