How to Do Things with Fish and Macintyre: Speech Act Theory
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How To Do Things With Fish and MacIntyre: Speech Act Theory, Dramatic Narrative, And The Interpretation Of Moral Utterance By Jason Hannan, B. Sc. A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts School of Journalism and Communication Carleton University Ottawa, ON August 29, 2005 © 2005, Jason Hannan Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 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The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be includedBien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. i * i Canada Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT The present thesis concerns the interpretation of moral utterance by members of alien cultures. It is based on Alasdair MacIntyre’s theory of the narrative constitution of moral identity and J. L. Austin and John Searle’s theory of the speech-act. The methodology is based on an essay by the postmodern literary critic Stanley Fish, who applies speech-act theory to a literary text to unpack the social and cultural conventions that govern the use of language. The present thesis attempts a similar task by likewise applying speech-act theory to a literary text. However, whereas the object of Fish’s analysis is the speech-acts constitutive of a formal institution, I have examined the speech-acts constitutive of a particular social tradition. The question of illocutionary force is an ongoing preoccupation in my analysis. It is my contention that the illocutionary force of the non-institutional speech-act derives from the authority of socially embodied narratives. Whereas the procedural force of “ought” statements issued in institutional settings derives from the legitimating structure of the institution itself, I argue that the moral force of “ought” statements issued in non-institutional settings derives from the collective narratives of which a moral agent is a part. Speech-act theory is invaluable to the study of communication, for it concerns the social and cultural conditions of intelligibility in a given community of meaning, the price one must pay for membership in that community, and the price one pays for defying its conventions. More importantly, it concerns the communicative foundations of moral meaning. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Karim H. Karim. I am grateful to my second reader, Professor Michael Dorland, for his encouraging feedback concerning my initial thesis proposal. I am likewise grateful to Professor Barry Rutland of the Department of English Language and Literature at Carleton University for his constructive criticisms concerning the initial proposal. I would like to thank Professor Sheryl Hamilton, whose comments on the original draft of my thesis proposal and an earlier essay have influenced the writing of the present work considerably. Professor Paul Attallah was kind enough to comment on two versions of my thesis proposal. It was due in part to his insightful remarks that the first version eventually gave way to a second version. I am grateful to Carole Craswell for kindly helping me through a small, albeit agonizing, bureaucratic nightmare concerning summer registration, as well as for her patience while I harassed her with countless questions concerning administrative matters. Finally, I would like to thank my fellow graduate students at the Department of Communication at Carleton University. Our unofficial consolation club provided me with an essential outlet for sharing my anxieties over the process of thesis writing. Had it not been for their generous sympathies, that process would doubtless have generated a great deal more anxiety. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION........................................................................................3 I. B a ck ground .................................................................................................................................... 3 II. Statement of the Problematic ...........................................................................................10 III. Explication of R esearch Approach ................................................................................ 12 IV. J ustification a nd Application ...........................................................................................18 V. L iterature R e v ie w .................................................................................................................. 21 A. Intercultural Communication.............................................................................................. 21 B. On Language, Utterances and Meaning ...........................................................................22 C. Practical Rationality, Moral Interpretive Schemas and Moral Experience 22 D. Narrativity.................................................................................................................................23 VI. C hapter B r eakdow n ..............................................................................................................24 CHAPTER 2: THEORY AND METHODOLOGY....................................................... 26 I. Th e o r y.............................................................................................................................................26 A. On Moral Experience and Practical Rationality.............................................................26 B. A Narrative Conception of Culture................................................................................... 33 C. Moral Discourse Between Cultures................................................................................... 37 D. Background to Speech Act Theory: Austin, Searle, and Fish....................................41 II. M ethodology : How to do things with Stanley Fi s h .............................................. 51 CHAPTER THREE: A SPEECH-ACT READING OF BRICK LANE.....................56 I. Part On e ............................................................................................................................ 59 A. Nazneen & Chanu .................................................................................................................. 59 B. Mrs. Islam .................................................................................................................................. 65 C. R azia ............................................................................................................................................69 D. Shahana and Bibi .....................................................................................................................73 E. Fatalism .......................................................................................................................................79 II. Part T w o.......................................................................................................................................85 A. Crisis and Disruption..............................................................................................................85 B. Restoration of Order...............................................................................................................89 C. Discovery of alternative social roles.................................................................................91 D. Coercion and Control...........................................................................................................