Cultural Studies

Cultural Studies The Politics of Speech Act Theory CHRIS HEPPLE Since speech act theory has appeared on the theoretical scene, it has been widely used as a methodological tool by analytic philosophers of language. This trend neglects the element of sociological and historical analysis for which a careful reading of speech act theory seems to call. In fact, the Enlightenment philosophies of language to which speech act theory owes the largest conceptual debt render the relationship between language and socio-political context in far clearer terms. In this essay I try to reclaim this genealogy of political utterance, and, by doing so, suggest how modern speech act theory leads to understanding language as a properly social—rather than strictly logical—phenomenon. Speech Act Theory Some have recently argued that modern speech act theory originates in Enlightenment philosophies of language.1 Ludwig Wittgenstein’s turn from a logical analysis of the propositional content of language in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to “language games” and“meaningasuse”inhisPhilosophical Investigations is an important indication of the increased attention that twentieth century Anglo-American analytic and continental philosophers began to pay to how social context affects language. Emile Benveniste’s concept of “énonciation,” and H. P. Grice’s definition of the “Cooperative Principle”2 continued the trend; both indicate the importance of the social context governing communication. But the genesis of contemporary speech act theory is usually considered to be the lectures and essays that J. L. Austin delivered at Harvard in 1955, later published as the volume How to Do Things with Words. Analytic language philosophers—the philosophical school with which Austin was associated at Oxford—tended to investigate the propositional content of language. Austin calls this kind of strictly referential language “constative.” In HowtoDoThingswithWords, Austin argues that language is often used in ways that cannot be explained as simply constative. In some cases, language supersedes the action to which it refers, and in fact becomes that action. Austin defines “performative” language as language that does an action rather than simply makes a statement about an action. Austin explains that performative utterances, or “illocutionary acts,” “do not ‘describe’ or ‘report’ or constate anything at all, are not ‘true or false,’” and that “the uttering of the sentence is, or part of, the doing of an action, which again would not normally be described as, or as ‘just’, saying something” (Words 5). Among Austin’s most frequent examples of performative, illocutionary acts are NUCB JLCC, 5, 2 (2003), 1–10 2 Chris Hepple betting, promising, marrying, and naming. In his essay “Other Minds,” Austin explains the performative nature of the promise: ‘I promise’ is quite different from ‘he promises’: if I say ‘I promise’, I don’t say Ipromise,Ipromise, just as if he says he promises, he doesn’t say he says he promises, he promises: whereas if I say ‘he promises’, I do (only) say he says he promises—in the other ‘sense’ of ‘promise’, the ‘sense’ in which I say I promise, only he can say he promises. I describe his promising, but I do my own promising, and he must do his own. (99) For Austin, the difference between performative and constative language is represented by the difference between the act of the promise and the description of the promise. In the case of promising, language does not simply refer to a promise that occurs outside of language; the promise itself is an act performed by language. The original distinctions Austin makes between performatives and constatives become less tenable as his argument in How to Do Things with Words progresses. He notes at one point that there is a danger of the “distinction between constative and performative breaking down” (Words 54), at another that “the performative is not altogether so obviously distinct from the constative” (Words 67), and later that, despite the supposed contrast between performative and constative utterances, we found sufficient indications that unhappiness nevertheless seems to characterize both kinds of utterance; and that the requirement of conforming or bearing some relation to the facts, different in different cases, seems to characterize performatives, in addition to the requirement that they should be happy, similarly to the way which is characteristic of supposed constatives. (Words 90) Austin proposes that the utterances he originally defines as constative, such as statements, are actually performative, propositional acts as well, to the same extent that utterances such as promises are performative. Thus all speech and linguistic meaning can be considered as speech action. The Politics of Speech Act Theory Speech act theory implies a sociological complement to linguistic analysis. As Sandy Petrey notes, “It shifts attention from what language is to what it does and sees a social process where other linguistic philosophies see a formal structure” (3). Put rather differently, one could also say that the formal structure governing speech acts is, in fact, a social process. In the opening pages of Speech Acts, John Searle argues that “speaking a language is engaging in a rule-governed form of behaviour” (16). Searle seems to characterize communication as an abstract structure, but he actually suggests it is a conventional social practice. As Petrey explains: “Before there can be performative language, there must exist a social body that recognizes and accepts the conventional procedure in which the language functions. For the language to function successfully, a social body must apprehend it in the same way” (7). Searle and Petrey both note the necessity for an illocutionary act to secure what Austin calls “uptake” in order to succeed (Words 115–18). The addressor must utter a potentially meaningful phrase; however, the addressee must also take up the phrase and interpret it as meaningful. If, for example, I make a bet with someone who does not understand the language in which I phrase the utterance, then the performative act will not succeed; I cannot expect to claim my winnings. Such unsuccessful performatives are not only caused by linguistic, but The Politics of Speech Act Theory 3 also socio-cultural conventions. If I am not recognized as having the authority to do so, I cannot, for example, pronounce two people married, or declare a meeting called to order. Austin catalogues these various instances of performative failure as kinds of “infelicities.” He recognizes, however, that there are some cases in which the “procedure” for a performative act may not exist, or some in which an infelicitous act may be accepted as legitimate even though it contravenes established conventions. I could, for example, utter a command and, on the basis that the addressee considers it meaningful, not according to any pre-existing authority of my own, it could succeed. The conventions indicating my authority as a leader do not exist prior to the speech act, but I become a leader because the speech act succeeds. In such a case I would be, in Austin’s words, “getting away with it”: “we have […] the case of procedures which someone is initiating. Sometimes he may ‘get away with it’ like, in football, the man who first picked up the ball and ran. Getting away with things is essential, despite the suspicious terminology” (Words 30). By comparing linguistic innovation to a football game, Austin acknowledges the highly conventional structure by which both are defined. Language games, however, have no referee; the conventions that define speech situations are usually much less easily identifiable. Certain specialized speech situations are highly conventional, but generally there is a great deal of play between addressor and addressee; because all performatives are determined by ultimately arbitrary conventions, every successful illocutionary act is indeed to some extent “getting away with it.” If speech acts are rule- governed, then, to the same extent that Searle proposes that one should be able to infer the linguistic rules that make speech meaningful and illocutionary acts successful, one should also be able to infer the political conventions that structure the relation between addressor and addressee that make language meaningful and illocutionary acts successful. In other words, speech act theory provides an opportunity to understand the importance of social as well as linguistic conventions to the process of communication. Austin, Searle, and other speech act theorists acknowledge the social and political conventions of communication, but they tend to leave them largely undefined. As Mary Louise Pratt notes in “Ideology and Speech-Act Theory,” “Speech-act philosophers tend to be very skeptical […] about the theory’s potential for characterizing language as a political practice. While often acknowledging the theory’s dependence on undeveloped assumptions about social interaction, they argue that it is impossible to develop these assumptions in any satisfactory way” (60). Austin, for example, concedes that “It is difficult to say where conventions begin and end” (Words 118). Despite—perhaps because of—this difficulty, it is important to understand just how social and political conventions contribute to illocutionary success. Instances and documents of speech acts—historical, philosophical, and literary—all have particular political valences, and provide a treasure trove of possibilities for understanding some of the social conventions that underwrite performative success or failure. Politics and Pragmatism In his attempt to establish “felicity conditions”—general rules that determine the success of illocutionary acts—Austin recognizes the importance of a more context-dependent analysis of the speech situation: “We must consider the total situation in which the utterance is issued —the total speech-act—if we are to see the parallel between statements and performative 4 Chris Hepple utterances, and how each can go wrong. So the total speech act in the total speech situation is emerging from logic piecemeal as important in special cases” (Words 52).

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