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La pragmàtica lingüística. El estudio del uso del lenguaje
704
Book reviews
References Bloomfield, Leonard, 1926. A set of postulates for linguistic analysis. Language 2: 153-164. Repr. in C. Hackett, ed., 1970, A Leonard Bloomfield anthology, 128-138. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Bloomfield, Leonard, 1927. On recent word in general linguistics. Modern Philology 25: 21 I-230. Repr. in C. Hackett, ed., 1970, A Leonard Bloomfield anthology, 173-190. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Chomsky, Noam, 1986. Knowledge of language: Its nature, origin, and use. New York: Praeger. Joseph, John E., 1990. Ideologizing Saussure: Bloomfield’s and Chomsky’s readings of the Cours de linguistique gtntrale. In: John E. Joseph and Talbot J. Taylor eds., Ideologies of language, 51-78. Routledge: London. Mey, Jacob L., 1993. Review of Frans Gregersen, Sociolingvistikkens (u)mulighed. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 16: 71-79.
SSDI
0378-2
166(93)E0080-J
Graciela Reyes, La pragmatica linguistica. El estudio de1 uso de1 lenguaje (= Biblioteca de Divulgacion Tematica, 54). Montesinos, Barcelona, 1990. 152 pp. $10.00. Reviewed
by Reinhard
Meyer-Hermann
*
I. To anticipate: Graciela Reyes, professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, producer of literary studies (see Polifonia textual. La citation en el relato literario, Madrid 1985; Teorias literarias en la actualidad, Madrid 1989, etc.), but also of linguistic works on Spanish tense and mood in particular, has written a little book of remarkable qualities. Graciela Reyes is competent; she structures well; she argues to the point, and is evidently unimpressed by the exigency not only found in the USA of producing quantity in place of quality. She hits just the right style to allow the non-specialist access to the complex material (it is after all a publication which is addressed to a wider public, scil. ‘divulgacion’); on the other hand, the book requires considerable knowledge of pragmatic linguistics, so that the linguist, too, can find stimulating material for discussion in this introduction. For this reason Graciela Reyes’ book is thus, without doubt, an excellent complementary basic text for introductory university seminars. A further advantage is that Graciela Reyes wrote the book in Spanish. She demonstrates admirably
* Correspondence to: R. Meyer-Hermann, Department of Linguistics of Bielefeld, P.O. Box 100131, D-33501 Bielefeld, Germany.
and Literature,
University
Book reviews
105
that every linguist should nowadays be in a position to move beyond Anglocentrism and cope with scholarly publications in French, Spanish, German, Italian, as well as in English. A further quality of Graciela Reyes’ book lies in the fact that her argument is consistently undogmatic, not due to inability to establish independent positions, but because of her awareness of the fundamental relativity of knowledge, now generally accepted since the naivety of positivism has been recognized. If, in the following, the reviewer diverges fundamentally from some of Reyes’ concepts and theories, he does so, of course, in the hope of demonstrating the correctness of his own position, while at the same time realizing the relativity of that correctness. By no means, however, is it intended to call the relevance of Graciela Reyes’ book into question. L.
The book is divided into five chapters. The dominant theme of chapter 1 (‘El estudio de1 significado lingiiistico’, pp. 1742, i.e. ‘The study of linguistic meaning’) is a definition of the concept of pragmatics - as abbreviation for ‘pragmatic linguistics’. Chapter 2 (‘De&, querer de& y decir sin querer’, pp. 4361, i.e. ‘Saying something, the intention of saying something, and saying something without intending to’) deals with indirect speech acts based on Austin’s concept of performatives. Chapter 3 (‘Acuerdos y Transgresiones’, pp. 62-88, i.e. ‘Agreement and disagreement’) centers around the discussion of Grice’s cooperation principle. In chapter 4 (‘El hablante en la gramatica’, pp. 89119, i.e. ‘The speaker in the grammar’) Graciela Reyes deals with ‘la presencia de1 hablante en la gramatica’ (“the presence of the speaker in the grammar”) (p. 92f.), illustrated by what Grice calls “la subjectivizacion de 10s significados en algunas formas verbales” (p. 93) (i.e. “the subjectivication of the meanings in some verbal forms”), especially the (pragmatic) functions of the Spanish tempora imperfecto, preterito simple and perfect0 (compuesto). In chapter 5 finally (‘Las VOW de1 texto’, pp. 120-144, i.e. ‘The voices of the text’) Graciela Reyes takes up Bakhtin’s problem of the ‘polyphony’ of texts. This chapter brings the book to a close with a section on ‘irony’ connected with that on polyphony. 3. This brief outline of the contents shows that Graciela Reyes’ monograph by no means includes all the areas which could, or indeed possibly should be covered in an introduction to pragmatic linguistics. One area that could be considered indispensable is what can be subsumed under the heading ‘information structures’, that is everything connected with topic+omment-structure, ‘topicalization’, ‘focussing’, etc. The incompleteness or rather selectivity of the basic pragmalinguistic questions discussed does not detract from the fact that Graciela Reyes succeeds in clarifying the type of problem charac-
706
Book reviews
terizing a linguistics which has left Searle far behind. This becomes clear in the introductory sentence of her first chapter: “La pragmatica es la disciplina lingiiistica que estudia coma 10s seres hablantes interpretamos [my emphasis, RMH] enunciados en contexto. La pragmatica estudia el lenguage en funcion de la comunicacion, lo que equivale a decir que se ocupa de la relation entre el lenguaje y el hablante” (p. 17) (“Pragmatics is the linguistic discipline which studies how we as speaking beings interpret the enunciations in their context. Pragmatics studies the language in its communicative function, which is equivalent to saying that it is occupied with the relation between the language and the speaker”). Reyes is critical of the pragmatics all too often equated with speech act theory a la Searle which seeks to examine “corn0 decimos lo que queremos decir” (p. 19) (“how we say what we want to say”). Reyes argues that pragmatics should be developed along the lines “corn0 10s hablantes, mas que hablantes y oyentes, son participantes [Reyes’ italics], es decir, participan en una actividad que consiste en producir significados mediante el lenguaje” (p. 19) (“how the speakers more than speakers and hearers are participants, i.e. they participate in an activity which consists in producing meanings through language”). This basic credo corresponds in nuce to an ethnomethodological pragmatics which analyzes the interactive constitution of communication, respectively conversation analysis. Reyes points out that linguistics is developing in this direction (see p. 21) - I would rather say it has already got there (see the works of Schegloff, Jefferson, Giilich, Kallmeyer, etc.). She herself however, has so far only taken this step programmatically and has not adopted it as her own methodological approach in those chapters in which she embarks on concrete analysis (for instance of the Spanish past tenses). Because Reyes considers this a ‘new’ form of linguistics, designed “a incluir al hablante - y a toda su circunstancia, nada menos - en el hablar, y en hater el hablar mismo [my emphasis, RMH] objet0 de investigation” (p. 21) (“to include the speaker - and all his circumstance, nothing less - in the speaking and to make the speaking itself the object of investigation”), an impulse “que podria dejar atras a la pragmatica y dar coma resultado una linguistica completamente nueva” (p. 21) (“which could leave behind pragmatics and result in a completely new linguistics”). As far as the results are concerned, Reyes is right. But, in contrast to Reyes, I believe that one can only then literally speak of linguistic pragmatics in linguistics when it reconstructs the constituting conditions of natural dialogue communication. Perhaps Reyes’ reserve or reticence towards this completely new linguistics stems from its being linked, as she says, with a “vuelta al estudio de 10s textos, mas parecido a la antigua filologia” (p. 21) (“turn to the study of the texts, more like the ancient philology”). If pragmatics is ‘the study of the use of the language’ (‘el estudio de1 uso de1 lenguaje’), is it then on the contrary not obvious, logical, and by no means anomalous that it entails the analysis of ‘texts’ as realizations of natural
Book reviews
IO?
communication? Graciela Reyes surprisingly here brings up the problem of the ‘scientific quality’ of linguistics in general and of pragmatics in particular: studies of language may not be undertaken, she claims, independently of the conditions of communication; language must be studied within its ‘environment’, ‘paying attention to the particularities of each emission” (“atendiendo a lo particular de cada emision’, see p. 20). Apart from the undoubted methodological difficulties, this proposal, in the opinion of Graciela Reyes, “raises a serious theoretical objection: studying the particular is not scientific” (cf. p. 21). Linguistics, she claims, became a scholarly discipline in transcending the typical philological analysis of the individual phenomena of texts in their contexts (p. 21). In so far then as pragmatics is unquestionably performance analysis (p. 33), the “scientific legitimacy of pragmatics” (“la legitimidad cientifica de la pragmatica”, p. 23) within linguistics is questioned. In the structuralist tradition since de Saussure, it was the analysis “of the systematic, the abstract and the general” (cf. p. 23). The question of the ‘scientific’ nature of pragmatics clearly plays a major role in the first chapter of Reyes’ book, for Reyes once again underlines that “the scientific linguistics only considers as valid the study of the systematic and the invariable (. ..) From this point of view the discourse - which is the only outside linguistic ‘reality’ which is given to experience - is a theoretically secondary product of the mental mechanisms which make language possible, and not the place where language is studied” (“la linguistica cientifica solo considera valid0 el estudio de lo sistematico y lo invariable (.. .) Desde este punto de vista, el discurso - que es la Gnica ‘realidad’ linguistica exerior, dada a la experiencia es un product0 teoricamente secundario de 10s mecanismos mentales que hacen posible el lenguaje, y no el lugar donde se estudia el lenguagje”) (p. 39). The specific features of the subject of pragmatic analysis, ‘the usage of language’ deprive it of scientific nature (see p. 21, lines 9 to 10). Every discipline creates its own object of study, Reyes states, with reference to Saussure (see p. 23). She uses the verb ‘creates’ (‘crea’) and gives an example “syntax creates the ‘well-formed sentence’ in purpose to study the rules which make it possible” (“la sintaxis crea [Reyes’ italics] la ‘oration bien formada’ para estudiar las reglas que la hacen posible’, p. 23). What Reyes expresses with the dictum “the study of the particular is not scientific” (cf. p. 21) refers to the theoretical concepts of generative grammar. There is no doubt: ‘the study of the particular’ as object of the study of pragmatics is not the objective, but the empirical prerequisite, for, as Reyes rightly emphasizes, pragmatics “busca la generalization” (p. 21). Pragmatics creates its construct, just as in syntax the ‘sentence’ is a theoretical construct which represents the elements constituting the nature of sentence, and this construct is created by the syntax qua abstraction as a result of empirical analysis. Reyes has rightly dropped the speech-act ‘theory’ and the ‘speech act’ which is occasionally propagated as a basic unit (cf. p. 23). Reyes proposes that the essential subject
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Book reviews
of pragmatics is ‘text’: “Pragmatics as a theory of interpretation has to be a theory of text” (“La pragmatica, coma teoria de la interpretation, debe ser una teoria de1 texto”, p. 30). One agrees, though not for the reasons Reyes gives : not because in pragmatics ‘texts’ are ‘interpreted’ - whereby she is probably thinking primarily of literary texts. Pragmatics has already been defined by Schmidt as ‘text-theory’ (1973) because ‘text’ is the natural form of communication (which has not been elicited for test purposes) and because it is the object of pragmatics to define the abstract construct ‘text,’ (in a natural language L) on the basis of the analysis of the empirical entities ‘text,’ (see also Meyer-Hermann, 1993). 4. The second chapter, ‘Decir, querer decir y decir sin querer’, is, as the title indicates, a further chapter on the apparently endless confusion concerning ‘indirect’ speech acts. Not without cause does Reyes point out that the distinction between locution and illocution, and also that between meaning and illocutionary force/function belongs to the “elemental vocabulary of pragmatics” (“vocabulario elemental de la pragmatica”, p. 51). It is also meaningful to distinguish between what “the words say” (“las palabras dicen”) and what “words do” (“palabras hacen”, p. 51). Reyes, then, associates ‘querer decir’ with the concept of ‘illocutionary function’. Following on this clear terminological distinction between two analytical levels determining different types of linguistic features, it constitutes a regression falling behind this insight to make use of the widespread usage encouraged by Searle (1975) according to which, “if somebody says something, generally he wants to say more than he literally says, or he wants to say something different” (“cuando uno dice algo, por lo general quieredecir mLis [my emphasis, RMH] de lo que literalmente dice, o que quiere decir otra cosa” (p. 52). What is inadequately described here is standard communication, where communicative acts ‘mean’ something (somebody ‘says’ something) and have an ‘illocutionary function’ (in ‘saying’ something, somebody ‘does’ something). It is logically impossible to equate these two analytical levels through the use of the term ‘literally’ (which characterizes a relationship), for it is a question for descriptions on incommensurable levels. In other words ‘literalness’ can, for example, only be said to exist between locutions, but not between locution and illocution (cf. Meyer-Hermann, 1976). In contrast to Searle (1975) who launches the statement (which may make sense on a colloquial level) that the simplest cases are those in which somebody ‘literally means what he says’, it is becoming increasingly accepted that what has been called ‘indirect’ and therefore considered as requiring further explanation, is indeed statistically the most common case. The case normally described as having ‘literal correspondence’ of ‘meaning’ and ‘illocution’ is in fact a
Book reviews
709
construct of description if the same descriptive terms are used for ‘meaning’ (= ‘saying’) and for ‘illocutionary function’ (= ‘doing’); this case, as the statistical rarity, is indeed a difficult one. This is not the place, however, to discuss that question in detail. It is decisive that Reyes for the sake of a pun sustains the confusion by not distinguishing in her title between (a) ‘decir’ and (b) ‘hater’ (using instead (c) ‘querer decir’). She should have made it clear that ‘decir’ equals ‘decir,’ and ‘querer decir’ equals ‘decir,‘.
As mentioned above, the third chapter is dedicated mainly to the presentation and a discussion of Grice’s principle of co-operation. Here Reyes strikingly documents her ability to present things in a fascinating and original way. In brief but complete form, concentrating on the most important aspects, Reyes also gives a survey of ‘relevance’ (Sperber and Wilson, 1986) and in particular their implicit and explicit criticism of Grice. Reyes’ reference to Pratt (1986) is of interest, according to whom there are three areas not dealt with in Grice’s theory: “affective relations, relations of power, and the problem of shared goals” (“relaciones afectivas, relaciones de poder, y el problema de las metas compartidas”, p. 87). Reyes seems to have adopted Pratt’s view “that the most intimate language is that which seems to be the furthest from the principles of Grice” (“que el lenguaje mas intimo es el que mas alejado parece de 10s principios de Grice”, p. 87). Reyes gives us an example: “The language of love doesn’t at all obey the principle of quantity (how often is the well-known information repeated that one loves each other?)” (“el lenguaje de1 amor (. ..) no cumple nada bien con el principio de cantidad (jcuantas veces se repite la conocidisima information de que uno quiere al otro?“, p. 87). But despite Reyes’ claim, the example of the language of love clearly demonstrates the viability of the Gricean maxim, which of course is only empirically adequate because and when it is considered in connection with the factor ‘situation or context’. The declaration’ of love repeated for the nth time is anything but ‘archi’ known (‘conocidisima’). In other words, the situation, the partner constellation is decisive as to whether the sentence ‘I love you’ is registered as more or less ‘informative’, and thus whether its repeated use is in breach of the quantity maxim. It is not a specific feature of this situation that communication in asymmetrical situations (‘situaciones de1 poder’) does not have to proceed in accordance with the Gricean cooperation principle. But it is the result of a misapprehension that both Reyes and Pratt (1986) should use the existence of communicative situations which do not function in accordance with Grice as an argument against him. That people lie does not take from the legitimacy of the demand that people should not lie. And the character-
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Book reviews
istics of asymmetrical communication are only identifiable as such against the background of the characteristics of symmetrically constituted communication (cf. Reyes, pp. 87-88). 6. Before in chapter 4 Reyes examines “the presence of the speaker in the grammar” using the example of the Spanish imperfect, she begins with some preliminary reflexions on the fundamental relationship or grammar and pragmatics (see pp. 9&93). On the one hand there are those, she says, “who consider that grammar is to be analyzed as an a priori in relation to the pragmatic functions” (“que consideran que la gramatica debe analizarse coma un a priori respect0 de las funciones pragmaticas”, p. 90); on the other hand, those “who try to design a grammar emerged a posteriori from the texts” (“que intentan disefiar una gramatica surgida a posteriori de 10s textos”, (ibid.). Quite apart from the fact that the position which Reyes describes as being an ‘a posterior? view is not essentially opposed to the ‘a priori’ concept, the characterization of the first as ‘more solid and of greater influence’ (‘mas solida e influyente’) is incorrect, at least with regard to the first predicate. Reyes claims that “grammar a priori” means “grammar preceding a text” (cf. p. 90); that speakers have at their disposal a system of rules and lexical entities “which allow them to produce texts” (“que le permiten producir textos”, p. 90). If grammar is understood to mean merely syntax, exclusive of pragmatics or pragmatic functions, then it is simply wrong to claim that somebody who knows the grammar is in a position to produce texts. Without the knowledge of ‘pragmatic rules’ no speaker can produce a ‘text,’ (see above). Therefore the essential question is not that of whether a grammer in relation to text is an a priori or an a posteriori one - understood as a theory of the rules underlying text production and text processing; the essential question is rather that of the position of the ‘pragmatic component’ in the communicative knowledge which the participants in communication must of course master before they enter into a communicative situation. With regard to what has been called an a posteriori grammar it is in the last analysis a question of the empirical basis of grammar theory. For there can be no doubt: the texts are certainly a priori to the grammar theory of linguistics (see Schiffrin, 1990). 7. Finally, with regard to Reyes’ discussion of the past tenses, in which a section on the correlation of past and irreality or modality of the imperfect is convincing, the question remains whether and in how far it is intended to be an example of ‘linguistic pragmatics’. In Reyes’ explanation of the ‘modal uses
Book reviews
711
of the past tense’ (‘uses modales de1 imperfecto’) the key-term is ‘distancing” (“distanciamiento”) which she calls a “grammatical notion” (“notion gramatical” (sic), p. 111). What is the point of calling the ‘modal values’ of the ‘imperfect0 ‘secondary’, and ‘subjective’? What is ‘process of subjectivication’ (‘proceso de subjetivizacion’) supposed to mean, used to describe the ‘modalization of the past tense’? In terms of an intended ‘pragmatic analysis’ it would have been more adequate to proceed - in accordance with the locutionillocution dichotomy - from a basic distinction between the semantics (or grammar) of a verb form on the one side and its pragmatic functions on the other. (On the imperfect of the modal verbs in Spanish see also MeyerHermann, 1984.) 8. Those studying the consequences of the fact that ‘I’ is not equal to ‘I’, that speaker does not have to be identical with the ‘I’, that speakers make use of other speakers who, in turn, may be speakers of speakers, those moreover seeking to elucidate the connection between ‘polyphony’ and literary forms will find exceedingly stimulating pages in Reyes’ book. 9. The reviewer belying what reserve that interested in pragmatics.
is confident that his few critical remarks cannot be interpreted as was said at the beginning. All in all, it can be said without Reyes’ book is highly recommendable for all those who are a text which stimulates discussion of fundamental questions of
References Meyer-Hermann, Reinhard, 1976. Direkter und indirekter Sprechakt. Deutsche Sprache 1: 1-19. Meyer-Hermann, Reinhard, 1984. Zum imperfect0 der spanischen Modalverben. Romanistisches Jahrbuch 35: 213-239. Meyer-Hermann, Reinhard, 1993. Textlinguistik. In: G. Holtus, M. Metxeltin and C. Schmitt, eds., Lexikon der Romanistischen Linguistik, Vol. 1. Tiibingen: Niemeyer. (in press) Pratt, Marie Louise, 1986. Ideology and speech act theory. Poetics Today 7: 59-72. Schiffrin, Deborah, 1990. The principle of intersubjectivity in communication and conversation. Semiotica 80: 121-150. Schmidt, Siegfried J., 1973. Texttheorie. Milnchen: Fink. Searle, John R., 1975. Indirect speech act. In: P. Cole and J.L. Morgan, eds., Syntax and semantics, Vol. 3: Speech acts, 59-82. New York: Academic Press. Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson, 1986. Relevance: Communication and cognition. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press.
Book reviews
References Bloomfield, Leonard, 1926. A set of postulates for linguistic analysis. Language 2: 153-164. Repr. in C. Hackett, ed., 1970, A Leonard Bloomfield anthology, 128-138. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Bloomfield, Leonard, 1927. On recent word in general linguistics. Modern Philology 25: 21 I-230. Repr. in C. Hackett, ed., 1970, A Leonard Bloomfield anthology, 173-190. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Chomsky, Noam, 1986. Knowledge of language: Its nature, origin, and use. New York: Praeger. Joseph, John E., 1990. Ideologizing Saussure: Bloomfield’s and Chomsky’s readings of the Cours de linguistique gtntrale. In: John E. Joseph and Talbot J. Taylor eds., Ideologies of language, 51-78. Routledge: London. Mey, Jacob L., 1993. Review of Frans Gregersen, Sociolingvistikkens (u)mulighed. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 16: 71-79.
SSDI
0378-2
166(93)E0080-J
Graciela Reyes, La pragmatica linguistica. El estudio de1 uso de1 lenguaje (= Biblioteca de Divulgacion Tematica, 54). Montesinos, Barcelona, 1990. 152 pp. $10.00. Reviewed
by Reinhard
Meyer-Hermann
*
I. To anticipate: Graciela Reyes, professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, producer of literary studies (see Polifonia textual. La citation en el relato literario, Madrid 1985; Teorias literarias en la actualidad, Madrid 1989, etc.), but also of linguistic works on Spanish tense and mood in particular, has written a little book of remarkable qualities. Graciela Reyes is competent; she structures well; she argues to the point, and is evidently unimpressed by the exigency not only found in the USA of producing quantity in place of quality. She hits just the right style to allow the non-specialist access to the complex material (it is after all a publication which is addressed to a wider public, scil. ‘divulgacion’); on the other hand, the book requires considerable knowledge of pragmatic linguistics, so that the linguist, too, can find stimulating material for discussion in this introduction. For this reason Graciela Reyes’ book is thus, without doubt, an excellent complementary basic text for introductory university seminars. A further advantage is that Graciela Reyes wrote the book in Spanish. She demonstrates admirably
* Correspondence to: R. Meyer-Hermann, Department of Linguistics of Bielefeld, P.O. Box 100131, D-33501 Bielefeld, Germany.
and Literature,
University
Book reviews
105
that every linguist should nowadays be in a position to move beyond Anglocentrism and cope with scholarly publications in French, Spanish, German, Italian, as well as in English. A further quality of Graciela Reyes’ book lies in the fact that her argument is consistently undogmatic, not due to inability to establish independent positions, but because of her awareness of the fundamental relativity of knowledge, now generally accepted since the naivety of positivism has been recognized. If, in the following, the reviewer diverges fundamentally from some of Reyes’ concepts and theories, he does so, of course, in the hope of demonstrating the correctness of his own position, while at the same time realizing the relativity of that correctness. By no means, however, is it intended to call the relevance of Graciela Reyes’ book into question. L.
The book is divided into five chapters. The dominant theme of chapter 1 (‘El estudio de1 significado lingiiistico’, pp. 1742, i.e. ‘The study of linguistic meaning’) is a definition of the concept of pragmatics - as abbreviation for ‘pragmatic linguistics’. Chapter 2 (‘De&, querer de& y decir sin querer’, pp. 4361, i.e. ‘Saying something, the intention of saying something, and saying something without intending to’) deals with indirect speech acts based on Austin’s concept of performatives. Chapter 3 (‘Acuerdos y Transgresiones’, pp. 62-88, i.e. ‘Agreement and disagreement’) centers around the discussion of Grice’s cooperation principle. In chapter 4 (‘El hablante en la gramatica’, pp. 89119, i.e. ‘The speaker in the grammar’) Graciela Reyes deals with ‘la presencia de1 hablante en la gramatica’ (“the presence of the speaker in the grammar”) (p. 92f.), illustrated by what Grice calls “la subjectivizacion de 10s significados en algunas formas verbales” (p. 93) (i.e. “the subjectivication of the meanings in some verbal forms”), especially the (pragmatic) functions of the Spanish tempora imperfecto, preterito simple and perfect0 (compuesto). In chapter 5 finally (‘Las VOW de1 texto’, pp. 120-144, i.e. ‘The voices of the text’) Graciela Reyes takes up Bakhtin’s problem of the ‘polyphony’ of texts. This chapter brings the book to a close with a section on ‘irony’ connected with that on polyphony. 3. This brief outline of the contents shows that Graciela Reyes’ monograph by no means includes all the areas which could, or indeed possibly should be covered in an introduction to pragmatic linguistics. One area that could be considered indispensable is what can be subsumed under the heading ‘information structures’, that is everything connected with topic+omment-structure, ‘topicalization’, ‘focussing’, etc. The incompleteness or rather selectivity of the basic pragmalinguistic questions discussed does not detract from the fact that Graciela Reyes succeeds in clarifying the type of problem charac-
706
Book reviews
terizing a linguistics which has left Searle far behind. This becomes clear in the introductory sentence of her first chapter: “La pragmatica es la disciplina lingiiistica que estudia coma 10s seres hablantes interpretamos [my emphasis, RMH] enunciados en contexto. La pragmatica estudia el lenguage en funcion de la comunicacion, lo que equivale a decir que se ocupa de la relation entre el lenguaje y el hablante” (p. 17) (“Pragmatics is the linguistic discipline which studies how we as speaking beings interpret the enunciations in their context. Pragmatics studies the language in its communicative function, which is equivalent to saying that it is occupied with the relation between the language and the speaker”). Reyes is critical of the pragmatics all too often equated with speech act theory a la Searle which seeks to examine “corn0 decimos lo que queremos decir” (p. 19) (“how we say what we want to say”). Reyes argues that pragmatics should be developed along the lines “corn0 10s hablantes, mas que hablantes y oyentes, son participantes [Reyes’ italics], es decir, participan en una actividad que consiste en producir significados mediante el lenguaje” (p. 19) (“how the speakers more than speakers and hearers are participants, i.e. they participate in an activity which consists in producing meanings through language”). This basic credo corresponds in nuce to an ethnomethodological pragmatics which analyzes the interactive constitution of communication, respectively conversation analysis. Reyes points out that linguistics is developing in this direction (see p. 21) - I would rather say it has already got there (see the works of Schegloff, Jefferson, Giilich, Kallmeyer, etc.). She herself however, has so far only taken this step programmatically and has not adopted it as her own methodological approach in those chapters in which she embarks on concrete analysis (for instance of the Spanish past tenses). Because Reyes considers this a ‘new’ form of linguistics, designed “a incluir al hablante - y a toda su circunstancia, nada menos - en el hablar, y en hater el hablar mismo [my emphasis, RMH] objet0 de investigation” (p. 21) (“to include the speaker - and all his circumstance, nothing less - in the speaking and to make the speaking itself the object of investigation”), an impulse “que podria dejar atras a la pragmatica y dar coma resultado una linguistica completamente nueva” (p. 21) (“which could leave behind pragmatics and result in a completely new linguistics”). As far as the results are concerned, Reyes is right. But, in contrast to Reyes, I believe that one can only then literally speak of linguistic pragmatics in linguistics when it reconstructs the constituting conditions of natural dialogue communication. Perhaps Reyes’ reserve or reticence towards this completely new linguistics stems from its being linked, as she says, with a “vuelta al estudio de 10s textos, mas parecido a la antigua filologia” (p. 21) (“turn to the study of the texts, more like the ancient philology”). If pragmatics is ‘the study of the use of the language’ (‘el estudio de1 uso de1 lenguaje’), is it then on the contrary not obvious, logical, and by no means anomalous that it entails the analysis of ‘texts’ as realizations of natural
Book reviews
IO?
communication? Graciela Reyes surprisingly here brings up the problem of the ‘scientific quality’ of linguistics in general and of pragmatics in particular: studies of language may not be undertaken, she claims, independently of the conditions of communication; language must be studied within its ‘environment’, ‘paying attention to the particularities of each emission” (“atendiendo a lo particular de cada emision’, see p. 20). Apart from the undoubted methodological difficulties, this proposal, in the opinion of Graciela Reyes, “raises a serious theoretical objection: studying the particular is not scientific” (cf. p. 21). Linguistics, she claims, became a scholarly discipline in transcending the typical philological analysis of the individual phenomena of texts in their contexts (p. 21). In so far then as pragmatics is unquestionably performance analysis (p. 33), the “scientific legitimacy of pragmatics” (“la legitimidad cientifica de la pragmatica”, p. 23) within linguistics is questioned. In the structuralist tradition since de Saussure, it was the analysis “of the systematic, the abstract and the general” (cf. p. 23). The question of the ‘scientific’ nature of pragmatics clearly plays a major role in the first chapter of Reyes’ book, for Reyes once again underlines that “the scientific linguistics only considers as valid the study of the systematic and the invariable (. ..) From this point of view the discourse - which is the only outside linguistic ‘reality’ which is given to experience - is a theoretically secondary product of the mental mechanisms which make language possible, and not the place where language is studied” (“la linguistica cientifica solo considera valid0 el estudio de lo sistematico y lo invariable (.. .) Desde este punto de vista, el discurso - que es la Gnica ‘realidad’ linguistica exerior, dada a la experiencia es un product0 teoricamente secundario de 10s mecanismos mentales que hacen posible el lenguaje, y no el lugar donde se estudia el lenguagje”) (p. 39). The specific features of the subject of pragmatic analysis, ‘the usage of language’ deprive it of scientific nature (see p. 21, lines 9 to 10). Every discipline creates its own object of study, Reyes states, with reference to Saussure (see p. 23). She uses the verb ‘creates’ (‘crea’) and gives an example “syntax creates the ‘well-formed sentence’ in purpose to study the rules which make it possible” (“la sintaxis crea [Reyes’ italics] la ‘oration bien formada’ para estudiar las reglas que la hacen posible’, p. 23). What Reyes expresses with the dictum “the study of the particular is not scientific” (cf. p. 21) refers to the theoretical concepts of generative grammar. There is no doubt: ‘the study of the particular’ as object of the study of pragmatics is not the objective, but the empirical prerequisite, for, as Reyes rightly emphasizes, pragmatics “busca la generalization” (p. 21). Pragmatics creates its construct, just as in syntax the ‘sentence’ is a theoretical construct which represents the elements constituting the nature of sentence, and this construct is created by the syntax qua abstraction as a result of empirical analysis. Reyes has rightly dropped the speech-act ‘theory’ and the ‘speech act’ which is occasionally propagated as a basic unit (cf. p. 23). Reyes proposes that the essential subject
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of pragmatics is ‘text’: “Pragmatics as a theory of interpretation has to be a theory of text” (“La pragmatica, coma teoria de la interpretation, debe ser una teoria de1 texto”, p. 30). One agrees, though not for the reasons Reyes gives : not because in pragmatics ‘texts’ are ‘interpreted’ - whereby she is probably thinking primarily of literary texts. Pragmatics has already been defined by Schmidt as ‘text-theory’ (1973) because ‘text’ is the natural form of communication (which has not been elicited for test purposes) and because it is the object of pragmatics to define the abstract construct ‘text,’ (in a natural language L) on the basis of the analysis of the empirical entities ‘text,’ (see also Meyer-Hermann, 1993). 4. The second chapter, ‘Decir, querer decir y decir sin querer’, is, as the title indicates, a further chapter on the apparently endless confusion concerning ‘indirect’ speech acts. Not without cause does Reyes point out that the distinction between locution and illocution, and also that between meaning and illocutionary force/function belongs to the “elemental vocabulary of pragmatics” (“vocabulario elemental de la pragmatica”, p. 51). It is also meaningful to distinguish between what “the words say” (“las palabras dicen”) and what “words do” (“palabras hacen”, p. 51). Reyes, then, associates ‘querer decir’ with the concept of ‘illocutionary function’. Following on this clear terminological distinction between two analytical levels determining different types of linguistic features, it constitutes a regression falling behind this insight to make use of the widespread usage encouraged by Searle (1975) according to which, “if somebody says something, generally he wants to say more than he literally says, or he wants to say something different” (“cuando uno dice algo, por lo general quieredecir mLis [my emphasis, RMH] de lo que literalmente dice, o que quiere decir otra cosa” (p. 52). What is inadequately described here is standard communication, where communicative acts ‘mean’ something (somebody ‘says’ something) and have an ‘illocutionary function’ (in ‘saying’ something, somebody ‘does’ something). It is logically impossible to equate these two analytical levels through the use of the term ‘literally’ (which characterizes a relationship), for it is a question for descriptions on incommensurable levels. In other words ‘literalness’ can, for example, only be said to exist between locutions, but not between locution and illocution (cf. Meyer-Hermann, 1976). In contrast to Searle (1975) who launches the statement (which may make sense on a colloquial level) that the simplest cases are those in which somebody ‘literally means what he says’, it is becoming increasingly accepted that what has been called ‘indirect’ and therefore considered as requiring further explanation, is indeed statistically the most common case. The case normally described as having ‘literal correspondence’ of ‘meaning’ and ‘illocution’ is in fact a
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construct of description if the same descriptive terms are used for ‘meaning’ (= ‘saying’) and for ‘illocutionary function’ (= ‘doing’); this case, as the statistical rarity, is indeed a difficult one. This is not the place, however, to discuss that question in detail. It is decisive that Reyes for the sake of a pun sustains the confusion by not distinguishing in her title between (a) ‘decir’ and (b) ‘hater’ (using instead (c) ‘querer decir’). She should have made it clear that ‘decir’ equals ‘decir,’ and ‘querer decir’ equals ‘decir,‘.
As mentioned above, the third chapter is dedicated mainly to the presentation and a discussion of Grice’s principle of co-operation. Here Reyes strikingly documents her ability to present things in a fascinating and original way. In brief but complete form, concentrating on the most important aspects, Reyes also gives a survey of ‘relevance’ (Sperber and Wilson, 1986) and in particular their implicit and explicit criticism of Grice. Reyes’ reference to Pratt (1986) is of interest, according to whom there are three areas not dealt with in Grice’s theory: “affective relations, relations of power, and the problem of shared goals” (“relaciones afectivas, relaciones de poder, y el problema de las metas compartidas”, p. 87). Reyes seems to have adopted Pratt’s view “that the most intimate language is that which seems to be the furthest from the principles of Grice” (“que el lenguaje mas intimo es el que mas alejado parece de 10s principios de Grice”, p. 87). Reyes gives us an example: “The language of love doesn’t at all obey the principle of quantity (how often is the well-known information repeated that one loves each other?)” (“el lenguaje de1 amor (. ..) no cumple nada bien con el principio de cantidad (jcuantas veces se repite la conocidisima information de que uno quiere al otro?“, p. 87). But despite Reyes’ claim, the example of the language of love clearly demonstrates the viability of the Gricean maxim, which of course is only empirically adequate because and when it is considered in connection with the factor ‘situation or context’. The declaration’ of love repeated for the nth time is anything but ‘archi’ known (‘conocidisima’). In other words, the situation, the partner constellation is decisive as to whether the sentence ‘I love you’ is registered as more or less ‘informative’, and thus whether its repeated use is in breach of the quantity maxim. It is not a specific feature of this situation that communication in asymmetrical situations (‘situaciones de1 poder’) does not have to proceed in accordance with the Gricean cooperation principle. But it is the result of a misapprehension that both Reyes and Pratt (1986) should use the existence of communicative situations which do not function in accordance with Grice as an argument against him. That people lie does not take from the legitimacy of the demand that people should not lie. And the character-
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istics of asymmetrical communication are only identifiable as such against the background of the characteristics of symmetrically constituted communication (cf. Reyes, pp. 87-88). 6. Before in chapter 4 Reyes examines “the presence of the speaker in the grammar” using the example of the Spanish imperfect, she begins with some preliminary reflexions on the fundamental relationship or grammar and pragmatics (see pp. 9&93). On the one hand there are those, she says, “who consider that grammar is to be analyzed as an a priori in relation to the pragmatic functions” (“que consideran que la gramatica debe analizarse coma un a priori respect0 de las funciones pragmaticas”, p. 90); on the other hand, those “who try to design a grammar emerged a posteriori from the texts” (“que intentan disefiar una gramatica surgida a posteriori de 10s textos”, (ibid.). Quite apart from the fact that the position which Reyes describes as being an ‘a posterior? view is not essentially opposed to the ‘a priori’ concept, the characterization of the first as ‘more solid and of greater influence’ (‘mas solida e influyente’) is incorrect, at least with regard to the first predicate. Reyes claims that “grammar a priori” means “grammar preceding a text” (cf. p. 90); that speakers have at their disposal a system of rules and lexical entities “which allow them to produce texts” (“que le permiten producir textos”, p. 90). If grammar is understood to mean merely syntax, exclusive of pragmatics or pragmatic functions, then it is simply wrong to claim that somebody who knows the grammar is in a position to produce texts. Without the knowledge of ‘pragmatic rules’ no speaker can produce a ‘text,’ (see above). Therefore the essential question is not that of whether a grammer in relation to text is an a priori or an a posteriori one - understood as a theory of the rules underlying text production and text processing; the essential question is rather that of the position of the ‘pragmatic component’ in the communicative knowledge which the participants in communication must of course master before they enter into a communicative situation. With regard to what has been called an a posteriori grammar it is in the last analysis a question of the empirical basis of grammar theory. For there can be no doubt: the texts are certainly a priori to the grammar theory of linguistics (see Schiffrin, 1990). 7. Finally, with regard to Reyes’ discussion of the past tenses, in which a section on the correlation of past and irreality or modality of the imperfect is convincing, the question remains whether and in how far it is intended to be an example of ‘linguistic pragmatics’. In Reyes’ explanation of the ‘modal uses
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of the past tense’ (‘uses modales de1 imperfecto’) the key-term is ‘distancing” (“distanciamiento”) which she calls a “grammatical notion” (“notion gramatical” (sic), p. 111). What is the point of calling the ‘modal values’ of the ‘imperfect0 ‘secondary’, and ‘subjective’? What is ‘process of subjectivication’ (‘proceso de subjetivizacion’) supposed to mean, used to describe the ‘modalization of the past tense’? In terms of an intended ‘pragmatic analysis’ it would have been more adequate to proceed - in accordance with the locutionillocution dichotomy - from a basic distinction between the semantics (or grammar) of a verb form on the one side and its pragmatic functions on the other. (On the imperfect of the modal verbs in Spanish see also MeyerHermann, 1984.) 8. Those studying the consequences of the fact that ‘I’ is not equal to ‘I’, that speaker does not have to be identical with the ‘I’, that speakers make use of other speakers who, in turn, may be speakers of speakers, those moreover seeking to elucidate the connection between ‘polyphony’ and literary forms will find exceedingly stimulating pages in Reyes’ book. 9. The reviewer belying what reserve that interested in pragmatics.
is confident that his few critical remarks cannot be interpreted as was said at the beginning. All in all, it can be said without Reyes’ book is highly recommendable for all those who are a text which stimulates discussion of fundamental questions of
References Meyer-Hermann, Reinhard, 1976. Direkter und indirekter Sprechakt. Deutsche Sprache 1: 1-19. Meyer-Hermann, Reinhard, 1984. Zum imperfect0 der spanischen Modalverben. Romanistisches Jahrbuch 35: 213-239. Meyer-Hermann, Reinhard, 1993. Textlinguistik. In: G. Holtus, M. Metxeltin and C. Schmitt, eds., Lexikon der Romanistischen Linguistik, Vol. 1. Tiibingen: Niemeyer. (in press) Pratt, Marie Louise, 1986. Ideology and speech act theory. Poetics Today 7: 59-72. Schiffrin, Deborah, 1990. The principle of intersubjectivity in communication and conversation. Semiotica 80: 121-150. Schmidt, Siegfried J., 1973. Texttheorie. Milnchen: Fink. Searle, John R., 1975. Indirect speech act. In: P. Cole and J.L. Morgan, eds., Syntax and semantics, Vol. 3: Speech acts, 59-82. New York: Academic Press. Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson, 1986. Relevance: Communication and cognition. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press.