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Are speech acts conventional?
Journal of Pragmatics 8 (1984) 65-69 North-Holland
ARE SPEECH
ACTS
Asa RASHER
*
65
CONVENTIONAL?
The purpose of the present note is to show that under a common conception of speech acts in natural language and an interesting analysis of conventionality, speech acts are never conventional.
It is commonly taken for granted that natural language is conventional. Thus, language is “a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings” - tells us one dictionary [l] - “by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or A certain Dictionary of Philosophy marks having understood meanings”. provides an explanation of the term ‘conventionalism’ according to which “. . . Conventions govern not only the use of words in a given language, but also the formulation of any coherent system in logic, mathematics, and mechanics” [2]. And when a famous art historian (Gombrich 1982) recently argued that perceptual images are not what nature brings to us but what we bring to nature, he accompanied his claim that manifestations of visual expression are conventional with the rhetorical question: “Indeed, what else could they be, if they are to serve communication between human beings?” [3]. On reflection, it is not at all clear whether that seeming truism expresses any significant insight into the nature of language. We all sympathize with Shakespeare’s Juliet who says: “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose / by any other name would smell as sweet; / So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, / retain that dear perfection which he owes / without that title . . . ” [11.2.43], and probably none of us follows the early nineteeth-century French mystic, Antoine Fabre d’olivet, who tried to show that each letter of * Author’s address: A. Kasher, Tel-Aviv University, Department of Philosophy, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel. [l] I quote from the 1975 edition of Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, but many other dictionaries will do. [2] Again, I quote from Anthony Flew’s Dicronary of Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1979). but I have seen it elsewhere too. Notice. that the conventional nature of language is not claimed to exist, but is actually taken for granted. [3] Quoted from Rudolf Amheim’s review of Gombrich (1982). Times Literal Supplement, October 29, 1982: 1180. 0378-2166/84/$3.00
0 1984, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland)
66
A. Kasher / Are speech acts conuentmzal?
the Hebrew alphabet has an inherent meaning which is part of the meaning of every word whose root includes that letter [4]. Granted that Juliet’s touching words express a self-evident truth and that Fabre d’olivet’s peculiar theory is a self-evident falsefood, the question still remains whether any important observation on natural language lurks between trivial conventionality and ludicrous inherence. It is the purpose of the present note to show that such an observation does not await us in some central parts of Pragmatics. One of the most interesting theories of convention has been formulated by David Lewis in his book (1969) on convention and his paper (1975) on languages and language. For our present purposes, it would be best to consider the first, rough analysis of convention offered by Lewis, rather than one of the more refined definitions he has put forward. Nothing in the sequel will hinge on the difference between the first, and later, better approximations to a complete understanding of the concept. Thus, “A regularity R in the behavior of members of a population P when they are agents in a recurrent situation S is a convention if and only if, in any instance of S among members of P, (1) everyone conforms to R; (2) everyone expects everyone else to conform to R; (3) everyone prefers to conform to R on condition that the others do, since S is a coordination problem and uniform conformity to R is a coordination equilibrium in S.” (1969 : 42) What is a coordination problem? Sometimes, the outcome a person wants to produce by an action is independent of some other person’s action: he will enjoy watching the play whatever book she will choose to read the same night. However, in many interesting cases, several persons must each choose one of several alternative actions and the outcome does depend on the actions of all of them: if two people are rowing a boat together, it will advance smoothly if they row in rhythm, but will go irregularly if they don’t. In such cases, the action a person chooses to perform is determined in accordance to her or his belief about what the others are going to do. Some combinations of actions chosen by the involved persons are better than others, from each of these persons’ point of view. For each of the two people on the boat, rowing in rhythm is better than rowing otherwise. Given what the other person does, none of them should regret their chosen action. In a coordination equilibrium, none of the involved persons could have been better off, unless some other person involved in the same situation had chosen to act differently. Hence, people face a coordination problem when they encounter “situations of interest predominates of interdependent decision . . . in which coincidence
[4] See Whorf (1956: 74ff.) and John B. Carroll’s introduction.
A. Kasher / Are speech acts conventional?
61
. . . ” (Lewis 1969 : 24). Notice, however, that if there is just one, generally recognized coordination equilibrium, it would be reasonable for each of the participants to conform to it. A coordination problem arises if there are several coordination equilibria [5]. According to such a theory of convention, a regularity in the behavior of members of some group is a convention, only if it is a solution to a given coordination problem. In the life of any convention it is, then, the case that, in the beginning, there was a problem and then came the regularity. Put differently, a convention logically follows an independently given problem of coordinating behavior. Now, the analysis of convention in terms of regularity has raised objection. It is Chomsky’s view that “regularities in action and belief are quite restricted, at least if we insist that ‘regularities’ have detectable probabilities; there is little reason to suppose that aspects of language that are commonly called ‘conventional’ involve detectable regularities” (1980 : 81, 83f.). Searching for conventional aspects of natural language, if there are any, we assume it is advisable to couch an analysis of convention in terms of rules that people follow, rather than in terms of regularities people conform to. Lewis himself calls many conventions ‘rules’ and suggests that “rules of language we encounter in the works of philosophers of language” should be understood “as tacit conventions” (1969: 106). I am not sure that by taking rules of language to be tacit regularities one does not blur the important distinction between factual generalizations and norms, but be this as it may, it is clear that according to Lewis’ theory of convention the possibility is not precluded of rules serving as solutions to independently given coordination problems. Here, indeed, is the crux of the matter: the rules of language which govern speech acts such as assertion, question, or command are constitutive. Such rules define spheres of human activity which otherwise would not exist. What characterizes such systems of rules is that they serve no antecedently given, ‘external’ goal. If any ends are essentially involved in the performance of a speech act of any type, the former are rather defined as such by the rules that define and govern the latter. Constitutive systems of rules may define ‘internal’ ends of activity, whereas regulative ones are attempts at attaining ‘external’ ones [6].
[S] Compare this observation with Ziffs “principle of conventionality”, according to which a relevant in the analysis of a corpus is that necessary condition of a regularity “being semantically the speakers of the language associated with the corpus can deviate from the regularity at will” (1960: 57). [6] For a general distinction between constitutive and regulative systems of rules, see Searle (1969). For an analysis of that distinction in terms of ‘external’ and ‘internal’ ends, see N. Kasher (1978).
68
A. Kasher / Are speech acts conventional?
Consequently, a constitutive system of rules cannot serve as a solution to a coordination problem [7]. If according to one’s theory of convention, a convention is a solution of an independently given coordination problem, and if according to one’s theory of speech acts, the latter are governed by constitutive systems of rules, then one has to admit that these rules of language are not conventional. Put differently, according to that pair of theories, speech acts, when performed literally and sincerely, are not conventional. Could another analysis of conventionality fare differently? On Lewis’ refined analysis, convention does not necessarily involve a coordination problem. However, an independently given problem is always involved and, therefore, the incompatibility of conventionality with constitutivity still remains. It is doubtful whether any other analysis of convention will be compatible with a theory of speech acts which takes them to be governed by constitutive rules. An essential feature of conventionality seems to be the existence of alternatives which are significantly different as well as essentially equivalent. For example, the convention of driving in the right lane of a two-lane road has the alternative of driving in the left lane [8]. Does promising have an alternative which is both significantly different and essentially equivalent? Could we do whatever is done by following the rules of promising, by following another system of rules which will be significantly different but essentially equivalent? The answer seems to be in the negative and, if so, one may conclude that the incompatibility of conventionality in general with constitutivity of speech acts is irremovable. References Chomsky, Noam, 1980. Rules and representations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Gombrich, E.H., 1982. The image and the eye: further studies in the psychology of pictorial representation. Oxford: Phaidon. Kasher, Naomi, 1978. Deontology and Kant. Revue Internationale de Philosophie 32 : 551-558. Lewis, David K., 1969. Convention: a philosophical study. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Lewis, David K., 1975. ‘Language and languages’. In: Keith Gunderson, ed., Language, mind, and knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 3-35. Searle, John R., 1969. Speech acts: an essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whorf, Benjamin Lee, 1956. Language, thought, and reality: selected writings. Edited and with an introduction by John B. Carroll. Cambridge: MIT Press. Ziff, Paul, 1960. Semantic analysis. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. [7] The very fact that several persons share a certain natural language might be described as involving a solution of a coordination problem, but in this case the langage and its alternatives play a major role in the presentation of the coordination problem and are not offered just as possible solutions of the problem. (81 This feature of conventionality is probably what is behind the air of arbitrariness commonly accompanying conventions.
A. Kasher / Are speech acts conuentional?
69
Asa Kosher (b. 1940 in Jerusalem) earned his degrees in mathematics and philosophy at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Professor of Philosophy at Tel-Aviv University and editor of Philosophia (Philosophical Quarterly of Israel) at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Research associate at Austin, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Ghent, visiting fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. Research domains include philosophy of language, with special attention to pragmatics, both philosophical and linguistic, and to norms, but also philosophy of religion and law and history of certain ideas. Books and papers in various areas of philosophy, including ‘What is a theory of use? in Journal of Pragmatics 1 (1977).
ARE SPEECH
ACTS
Asa RASHER
*
65
CONVENTIONAL?
The purpose of the present note is to show that under a common conception of speech acts in natural language and an interesting analysis of conventionality, speech acts are never conventional.
It is commonly taken for granted that natural language is conventional. Thus, language is “a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings” - tells us one dictionary [l] - “by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or A certain Dictionary of Philosophy marks having understood meanings”. provides an explanation of the term ‘conventionalism’ according to which “. . . Conventions govern not only the use of words in a given language, but also the formulation of any coherent system in logic, mathematics, and mechanics” [2]. And when a famous art historian (Gombrich 1982) recently argued that perceptual images are not what nature brings to us but what we bring to nature, he accompanied his claim that manifestations of visual expression are conventional with the rhetorical question: “Indeed, what else could they be, if they are to serve communication between human beings?” [3]. On reflection, it is not at all clear whether that seeming truism expresses any significant insight into the nature of language. We all sympathize with Shakespeare’s Juliet who says: “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose / by any other name would smell as sweet; / So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, / retain that dear perfection which he owes / without that title . . . ” [11.2.43], and probably none of us follows the early nineteeth-century French mystic, Antoine Fabre d’olivet, who tried to show that each letter of * Author’s address: A. Kasher, Tel-Aviv University, Department of Philosophy, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel. [l] I quote from the 1975 edition of Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, but many other dictionaries will do. [2] Again, I quote from Anthony Flew’s Dicronary of Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1979). but I have seen it elsewhere too. Notice. that the conventional nature of language is not claimed to exist, but is actually taken for granted. [3] Quoted from Rudolf Amheim’s review of Gombrich (1982). Times Literal Supplement, October 29, 1982: 1180. 0378-2166/84/$3.00
0 1984, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland)
66
A. Kasher / Are speech acts conuentmzal?
the Hebrew alphabet has an inherent meaning which is part of the meaning of every word whose root includes that letter [4]. Granted that Juliet’s touching words express a self-evident truth and that Fabre d’olivet’s peculiar theory is a self-evident falsefood, the question still remains whether any important observation on natural language lurks between trivial conventionality and ludicrous inherence. It is the purpose of the present note to show that such an observation does not await us in some central parts of Pragmatics. One of the most interesting theories of convention has been formulated by David Lewis in his book (1969) on convention and his paper (1975) on languages and language. For our present purposes, it would be best to consider the first, rough analysis of convention offered by Lewis, rather than one of the more refined definitions he has put forward. Nothing in the sequel will hinge on the difference between the first, and later, better approximations to a complete understanding of the concept. Thus, “A regularity R in the behavior of members of a population P when they are agents in a recurrent situation S is a convention if and only if, in any instance of S among members of P, (1) everyone conforms to R; (2) everyone expects everyone else to conform to R; (3) everyone prefers to conform to R on condition that the others do, since S is a coordination problem and uniform conformity to R is a coordination equilibrium in S.” (1969 : 42) What is a coordination problem? Sometimes, the outcome a person wants to produce by an action is independent of some other person’s action: he will enjoy watching the play whatever book she will choose to read the same night. However, in many interesting cases, several persons must each choose one of several alternative actions and the outcome does depend on the actions of all of them: if two people are rowing a boat together, it will advance smoothly if they row in rhythm, but will go irregularly if they don’t. In such cases, the action a person chooses to perform is determined in accordance to her or his belief about what the others are going to do. Some combinations of actions chosen by the involved persons are better than others, from each of these persons’ point of view. For each of the two people on the boat, rowing in rhythm is better than rowing otherwise. Given what the other person does, none of them should regret their chosen action. In a coordination equilibrium, none of the involved persons could have been better off, unless some other person involved in the same situation had chosen to act differently. Hence, people face a coordination problem when they encounter “situations of interest predominates of interdependent decision . . . in which coincidence
[4] See Whorf (1956: 74ff.) and John B. Carroll’s introduction.
A. Kasher / Are speech acts conventional?
61
. . . ” (Lewis 1969 : 24). Notice, however, that if there is just one, generally recognized coordination equilibrium, it would be reasonable for each of the participants to conform to it. A coordination problem arises if there are several coordination equilibria [5]. According to such a theory of convention, a regularity in the behavior of members of some group is a convention, only if it is a solution to a given coordination problem. In the life of any convention it is, then, the case that, in the beginning, there was a problem and then came the regularity. Put differently, a convention logically follows an independently given problem of coordinating behavior. Now, the analysis of convention in terms of regularity has raised objection. It is Chomsky’s view that “regularities in action and belief are quite restricted, at least if we insist that ‘regularities’ have detectable probabilities; there is little reason to suppose that aspects of language that are commonly called ‘conventional’ involve detectable regularities” (1980 : 81, 83f.). Searching for conventional aspects of natural language, if there are any, we assume it is advisable to couch an analysis of convention in terms of rules that people follow, rather than in terms of regularities people conform to. Lewis himself calls many conventions ‘rules’ and suggests that “rules of language we encounter in the works of philosophers of language” should be understood “as tacit conventions” (1969: 106). I am not sure that by taking rules of language to be tacit regularities one does not blur the important distinction between factual generalizations and norms, but be this as it may, it is clear that according to Lewis’ theory of convention the possibility is not precluded of rules serving as solutions to independently given coordination problems. Here, indeed, is the crux of the matter: the rules of language which govern speech acts such as assertion, question, or command are constitutive. Such rules define spheres of human activity which otherwise would not exist. What characterizes such systems of rules is that they serve no antecedently given, ‘external’ goal. If any ends are essentially involved in the performance of a speech act of any type, the former are rather defined as such by the rules that define and govern the latter. Constitutive systems of rules may define ‘internal’ ends of activity, whereas regulative ones are attempts at attaining ‘external’ ones [6].
[S] Compare this observation with Ziffs “principle of conventionality”, according to which a relevant in the analysis of a corpus is that necessary condition of a regularity “being semantically the speakers of the language associated with the corpus can deviate from the regularity at will” (1960: 57). [6] For a general distinction between constitutive and regulative systems of rules, see Searle (1969). For an analysis of that distinction in terms of ‘external’ and ‘internal’ ends, see N. Kasher (1978).
68
A. Kasher / Are speech acts conventional?
Consequently, a constitutive system of rules cannot serve as a solution to a coordination problem [7]. If according to one’s theory of convention, a convention is a solution of an independently given coordination problem, and if according to one’s theory of speech acts, the latter are governed by constitutive systems of rules, then one has to admit that these rules of language are not conventional. Put differently, according to that pair of theories, speech acts, when performed literally and sincerely, are not conventional. Could another analysis of conventionality fare differently? On Lewis’ refined analysis, convention does not necessarily involve a coordination problem. However, an independently given problem is always involved and, therefore, the incompatibility of conventionality with constitutivity still remains. It is doubtful whether any other analysis of convention will be compatible with a theory of speech acts which takes them to be governed by constitutive rules. An essential feature of conventionality seems to be the existence of alternatives which are significantly different as well as essentially equivalent. For example, the convention of driving in the right lane of a two-lane road has the alternative of driving in the left lane [8]. Does promising have an alternative which is both significantly different and essentially equivalent? Could we do whatever is done by following the rules of promising, by following another system of rules which will be significantly different but essentially equivalent? The answer seems to be in the negative and, if so, one may conclude that the incompatibility of conventionality in general with constitutivity of speech acts is irremovable. References Chomsky, Noam, 1980. Rules and representations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Gombrich, E.H., 1982. The image and the eye: further studies in the psychology of pictorial representation. Oxford: Phaidon. Kasher, Naomi, 1978. Deontology and Kant. Revue Internationale de Philosophie 32 : 551-558. Lewis, David K., 1969. Convention: a philosophical study. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Lewis, David K., 1975. ‘Language and languages’. In: Keith Gunderson, ed., Language, mind, and knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 3-35. Searle, John R., 1969. Speech acts: an essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whorf, Benjamin Lee, 1956. Language, thought, and reality: selected writings. Edited and with an introduction by John B. Carroll. Cambridge: MIT Press. Ziff, Paul, 1960. Semantic analysis. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. [7] The very fact that several persons share a certain natural language might be described as involving a solution of a coordination problem, but in this case the langage and its alternatives play a major role in the presentation of the coordination problem and are not offered just as possible solutions of the problem. (81 This feature of conventionality is probably what is behind the air of arbitrariness commonly accompanying conventions.
A. Kasher / Are speech acts conuentional?
69
Asa Kosher (b. 1940 in Jerusalem) earned his degrees in mathematics and philosophy at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Professor of Philosophy at Tel-Aviv University and editor of Philosophia (Philosophical Quarterly of Israel) at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Research associate at Austin, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Ghent, visiting fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. Research domains include philosophy of language, with special attention to pragmatics, both philosophical and linguistic, and to norms, but also philosophy of religion and law and history of certain ideas. Books and papers in various areas of philosophy, including ‘What is a theory of use? in Journal of Pragmatics 1 (1977).