What We Say, Who We Are by English Parker;

Author:English, Parker;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2010-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

4. The Conventionalism/Intentionalism

Distinction Concerning Implicit Performatives

Given the discussions by Fingarette and by Bach and Harnish, the difference between conventionalistic success and intentionalistic success is somewhat subtle concerning implicit performatives. On the one hand, Bach and Harnish regard illocutionary success as defeasible whenever people communicate intentionalistically. On the other hand, Fingarette agrees with this at least for conventionalistically intended performatives that are implicit. In particular, Fingarette thinks an implicit performative is communicatively successful in virtue of its alluding to some convention, though it does so only tacitly. Fingarette thus thinks listeners who identify a specific convention regarding some implicit performative must do so defeasibly. This is significant in that many observers regard most of ordinary speech as composed of implicit performatives. “Whenever we say anything meaningful we are doing something: we are asking, explaining, ordering, describing, narrating, implying, warning, insisting, boasting, begging, and so on” (Magee, 1999: 120). Concerning most of it, then, Fingarette agrees with Bach and Harnish that identifying the illocutionary forces of ordinary speech is defeasible.

We have nonetheless observed a significant difference even concerning implicit performatives. Conventionalists think an utterance’s statemental success follows deductively from its performative success, even when the latter is defeasible.9 The truth of an implicit performative’s propositional content for conventionalists thus depends on the correlative fact created by that utterance as understood by listeners. Without such understanding, not even a speaker can regard the propositional content of her utterance as true. The truth of implicit performatives for conventionalists is thus inevitably a shared truth if it exists at all. In contrast, intentionalists think an utterance’s performative success depends on its statemental success. As a result, an intentionalistic speaker can regard the propositional content of her performative utterances as true even when listeners do not understand those utterances.10 An intentionalist can therefore feel relatively embodied in such speech-acts even when they do not successfully call attention to her illocutionary attitudes.

A sincere person who presents speech intentionalistically might therefore continue to develop its consequences more than he would if presenting the same speech conventionalistically. This explains why Tea Cake can persevere in addressing Janie as he does concerning the picnic despite his knowing, as observed in note 14 of chapter 3, she has reason to doubt his current intention. Tea Cake can persevere in such speech construed intentionalistically because he can then regard its propositional content as true somewhat independently of what Janie thinks. For Tea Cake, the sense of self embodied in speech seems relatively independent of what Janie thinks.

In contrast, suppose a conventionalistic construal of Tea Cake’s uttering “[D]is woman set dere and ast me if Ah want her tuh go!” Under such a construal, the truth of this utterance’s propositional content as an implicit declaration of indignation would depend on Janie’s thus recognizing it. Such recognition is not obviously forthcoming, however. Rather, Janie responds by suggesting that Tea Cake’s pose of indignation deliberately avoids a direct response to her previous query (about his being sure of his invitation): “Don’t git mad, Tea Cake. .

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.