Pragmatics of language and literature

Journal of Pragmatics 2 (1978) 189-194 © North-Holland PublishingCompany

REVIEW

Teun A. van Dijk, ed., Pragmatics of language and literature. Amsterdam and New York: North.Holland, it976. 236 pp. Dfl. 45.00.

In his succinct preface to tiffs handsomely produced volume, ~the editor makes liaree claims: (1) that literary ~.cholarship, or poetics, has at last become a serious discipline because of the application of linguistic models to the description of literary texts; (2) that what appear to be inadequacies in these models for the descripti~on of either language or literature can be remedied by introducing a :pragmatic component into them; (3) that no serious theory of literature can afford to ignore the techniques of formalization used in contemporary logic, ph~osophy, and linguistics. These are the premises upen which most of the work that makes up the volume is based. And it is these premises - assumed and unex~mined amthey are that keep this work from being the contribution to our understand~.ng of the nature c,f literature and language intended b,y the authors. The authors set themselves to resolve, or at least to establish } framework for reso!ving, various crucial problems raised by the study of literature and maguage. Unfc~rtunately, they are handic~Lpped before they begin. For their shared premises keep them from considering certain kinds of possible solutiors to these problems. Vet unless such possibilities are direcfl) addressed- if tt~ey are i~nored ~vithout c o m m e n t - then such scholarship bec,~mes instead mere ~choiasticism. ~ t l e scholarship is the effort to ascertain what should be beheved~ scholasticism is the effort to prove what is believed ~tnyhow. The limitations imposed on these contributions by the firsl~igremise ~aloneclearly illustrate this. Van Dijk and the other contributors who troa~ literatt:re are (with orte :~xception) cor~,vinced that literary study can be a serious di:scipline ordy if it applies linguistic analysis to lit,~rature. Implicit in this conviction is the more general and crucial c~ne that literature must be a kind of language. But what :if there turn out to be no li~guistic features theft consisten0y distinguish literature from all other discourse? The authors are: not free: to ~ek the defining i:roperties of literature in other th.an its language, because this would be tantamo,~l~ncto admitting given their first premise. - that the study cf lit.~rature cannot be :~ serious discipline. Yet paradoxically this very volume t!~arnishes gored reaso:~ for doubting that literature is amenable to linguistic analysis. It does so by ,;ittu,~ of its second premise, according to which the entfs,=, volume is justified as tile attempt to ineor!,89

199

Re~,iew: T.A. van Diik / Pragmatics of lang~tage and literature

porate a pl'agr~,.atic component into the study of literature on the linguistic model. For *lie a,avocacy of pragmatics is itself an admission that linguistic models have not in fact succeeded in elucidating either ]anguag~, or literature. As vail Dijk says in his preface: "Both in linguistics and in poetics it now appears,., that many properties of se~ter~o-s a~d discourses, and afortlTori of verbal communication in general, cannot be ac,=~u~ted for in germz of gra.mm~tical theories of the usual kind" (p. vii). M.oreov?r, lie ~el~ us, "From the papers contributed it will appear . . . that many problems ~ poetics -~re alJo problems in the study of discourse and language in gene~ai..." epp. vii-viii). So it seems that not even language has yielded its secrets to the linguistic mod~:-i,~that have been in vogue for the past twenty years. Conse. que~dy, the insistence that only literary study mocteled on linguistics can be taken serioufly rin~ rather hollow alongside such admissions. To note this inconsistency is in no way to deny that pragmatics may contain solutions to l!terary and !inguistic problems. Whether it does or not all depends on whzt pr:~mtics is taken to be. In his own contribution, 'Pragmatics and poetics', van D,~i!,: acknowledges that "the domain of pragmatics has tradit~,onaUy and va~¢!y been characterized as the 'relations between signs and sign users' " ( p . 26). He prefers, however, to limit consideration to '":.aguistic pragmatics", which he defines as "a formal reconstruction of an assumed system of rules enabling a native speaker to relate one or more discourses of a natural language with one or more aper')p::iate contexts arid conversely" (p. 26). Given his third premise~ however, such a conception conf'mes him within the straitjacket of modern logico-linguistic formali ~m. Now, ~orrnalization is in it~[f no bad thing. Ind~.~ed,a degree of formahzation of analysis if it ~a~ be ea:~ty interpreted and replicated by other workers, provides some warrant for the so~,ldness of the theory on which it is based. However, the scholar who resists upon borrowing analytic tecl~:niques :rom another field runs risk~. Crucial disagreements over these techniques may exist in their original field of appI~cation. But to acknowledge such disagreements would be to undermine the value that the techniques are alleged to have. Hugo Verdaasdomk's contribution to th1~ volume, 'Concepts of acceptance and the basi~ of a theory of texts', is devoted to wyi~g to show "that pragraatics and the theory of texts would greatly benefit by trying to solve their problems within the general framework ofinduetive l o g i c . . . " (p. 216). This effort quite ignores the fact that ~ome workers in philosophy and formal ~ c , among whom the most eminent is Karl Popper, deem inductive logic a contradiction in terms. Popper flatly declares, "Nc 'hlductive logic' exists" (Schilpp i97~t: 118). Whether Popper is rig~at or not is of course not the point. The i~oint is that an analytic technique so proble..,na,~ic a',~ induc6ve logic cannot yet have ~wtbing to contribute to the solution of other problems. Constrained as ,.he~ authors so obviously are by their a prio,'i method,:>logical ,:.3mmi*.ments, all we can ask is how close do they come here to pro~:lg what they ~¢!~eve ~.nyhow. The an~wer unfortunately is for the most part - no, witl~n sight. 13esi)*:~. the fancy new fi~rrnalism, the old, centr~ problems remain.

Review: T.A. van Diff¢ /Pragmatics o f language and literate re

191

Three of the contributions touch not at all or only by-the-by on literature. Ingrid and Worrier Kummcr's 'Logic of action and the structure of practical arguments' aims at "showing that a logic of action is a fruitful tool for the analysis of some important types of arguments" (p. 85). To this end they provide a tentative list o f different forms of pract~cal arguments and attempt to show that these depend on a logic of action by using them to analyz~ a series of arguments by Robespierre and Lenin. Si~ce the Kummers themselves candidly admit that their formalization here is very rough and that they ~ ~, not even always agree with each other on the interpretation of particular arguments, an evaluation of this aspect of their paFer is vet really in order. The most interes'Iing aspect of it is not the formalization of the arguments but their juxtaposition. As the Kummers rightly conclude, "a comparison of the arguments of Robespierre) and Lenin shows the d~fferent assumptions underlying the French Revolution and the Russian Revolutior~." (pp. ~04-105). I must confess to Icing overwhelmed at this point by an atavistic humanistic desire that they should explore this very stimulating thesis. But alas[ their interest is mainly methodological. Lennart Aqvist makes a feeble .':ttempt to relate his 'Formal semantics for verb tenses as analyzed by Reichenbach" to the topic of literature. But there is nothing literary about it, and it too is, formally, only a sketch - albeit intriguing - of a fragment of the En~;lish tense system. In his 'Macrostructur,~s', Thomas Balhner too tries to relate his contribution to the topic of literature, mad here the failure to do so is significant. By literature he seems to mean virtually every form of discourse: "Since the linguistic and loff~cal analysis is very e l e m e n t a l , ignoring literary subtleties, I do ~,,ot differentiate between poetry and prose, ,3r between artistic, tf, vial-literary, scientific-language and colloqldal-language texts", he says. "The term 'literature' w ~ cover all these,: forms of la~.guage communication" (p. 2, n. 2). Unfortunately, his fl, eory, not to melltion his forn~alization, cannot possibly be applied t,~ all thes~ forms of language communicati~n:, even by "ignoring literary subtleties". For ac¢ordt~g to his theoq,,, macrostruc~',ures relate nondinear .factual structures to linear textuaJ structures. Thus the concept of 'macrostructure' presupposes an existing reality to which a text refers. However, in the case of most literatare, in the received and narrower ser~se of that term,, no such factual structures do Jr: fact exist. At best then Ballmer': formalization c,:~uldbe applied only to expository or argumentative dkcourse, where t,c~responde,lce between textual and factual structures could more p?,ausibly be presupposea. ;~ad as a matter of fact, all he does apply it to is an expande:l syllogism. '?his limitation of Eallmer's corttribufion, the first in the)volume, turns out indeed to be diagnostic for most of the r~maining ones. The insistence upon a logics.linguistic methodology proves by no means fortuitous, motivated simply by some inherent superiority or prior success. Logical formalism is after all even in itg indue'rive avatars, preoccupied with the question of truth. It is the attempt to create unequ,!vocal mear.s of transmitting the truth of premises to the conclusions drawn from them. Y¢ :~much of the discourse ordinarily labeled literature is not only not

192

Review: T.A. van D~/k / Pragmatics of language and literature

true but admittedly not intended to be taken as true, even for the nonce. It is fiction and can be perfectly understood as such, without' any obligation to belief. By choosing logical form~isrn as their methodology, most of these authors take their place in the tradition that rejects the fictional conce~,tion of literature and continually tries to prove that, even if it is n~ot true, ~iterature is urtderstood and accepted as true. This notio;~ of 'acceptance as true' is what lies behind the movement to pragmatics in literary sturdy based on lin~istie models. Such is avowedly the ease in Verdaasdonk's paper, "Concepts of accep,:ance and the basis of a theory of texts", where "acceptance" m~;ans 'aeceptane~ as ~.rue'. But it is Samuel R. Levin's paper, 'Concerning what kind of speech act a poera is', that makes clear the connection between this new fashion i,rt linguistics and the age-old attempt of students of literazure to raise their subject to the status of truth. Levha doubts that there can be any new ideas: about poetry but is convinced that J.l.,. Austin's theory of speech acts provides new support for one of the old ones. According to Levin, a poem is ~ speech act in which the poet, by means of deviant language, ind~ces l~s auditors to perceive as literally true a world for whose features and existence this language is the only evidence. This per)ocutionary effect of the speech act that is the poem marks it as "the kind of act attributed to someone inspired with unnatural powers" (p. 154) and comers upon the poet! th,~ rank of seer. Levin specifically denies that "the poet is bef.ng irresponsible" by performing such an act and obviously intends his theory to esfablish poetz3r as comparable in irqport to k~owledge. This is indeed a very old idea and no better now for being dressed up in speech act theory aa~d the ad hockey of higher implicit sentences than when first put forward in irony by that inveterate foe of the claims of the literati, Socrates. ~vial admits that ~t appears inadequate for several types of poetry, but this is by no means the worst criticism that can be made cf it. The worst feature of ~t conception of po~ try as compulsive illusior~ and the poet as someone who compels you to believe what you know to be f~dse is its absolute anti-intellectualism. Fc,r, ~ccording to Levin's lights, if the auditor does not have the "true poetic faith", then he cannot understand a poem or accept it for what it is. This also effectively puts Levin's theory beyond rational assessment. If you do not have the faith already, you car,~not know whether he is right, because you canno~ know poetry. Such theories are best reserved to the seminaries. kevix~'s gambit of offering new support for o1~1ideas underlin.es t~e scholastic character of the volume and is exemplified in three other contributions: David Harrah's 'Formal message theory and non.formal discourse', Nao~ai and Asa Kasher's 'Speech acts, contexts and valuable ambiguities', and van Dijk's own 'Pragrnatics and poetics'. Fo, the umpteenth time in the history of literat:y study we are told that literary language is lanffaage that deviates from the norm; ~at it does so to call attention to itself as an esth,etic object (whatever that may be); that a poem ~ the text of any utterance that is susceptible to various interpre~:ations; that the more interpretations a poem is susceptible to, the b~tter it is; and so on. The

Revie w: T.A. van Di/k /~,agmatics of lan~mage amt fiterature

193

new support is such ,as Harrah's Formal Message Theory, which is confessedly vague on ~the linguistic feat,ares o f this supposed literary language and furthermore claims no less than seven dilferent kinds o f truth-value that fiction can have, assumes that there must be others, and is not able ,~,ven to keep these seven distinct frora one i~other. The only ~mpport the Kashers really offer for -atae ambiguity value of l:,oems is that "this is fairly obvious" (p. 81). Van Dijk repeatedly raises the question of whether lite~rature is a particular speech act and if ,,o what kind but never C~:r~mmitshimself to an a~swer. Van Diik's reluctance is particularly notable in view o f ~±te fact that one of the two best contributions to the "¢olume, S.-Y. Kuroda's 'Reflections on the found~tio~s of narrative theory from a |inguist~c point of vie;" ', actu,-dly provides an ansv~er to this very question. And the ~nswer is quite sirr..ple. As Kuroda puts it: . . . There f~s no logical necessity that the materialization of sentenc~;s is uniquely combined with the communicative act. Whether such a neces:~ity is imposed on human l~nguage or not is an empirica~ question... It is onty a matter of presenting straightf.o~waz'd evidence that language can i:~ used without any real or imagined communication setting. Non-narrator narration is suc'n evidence. (p. 133) F r o m this Kuroda then concludes that not only is literatlare not a speech act but also that ~rrammar is not b o u r d up with the communicative or speech act function of langtta~e either. For file p~arpo:~es of grammatical analysis, assertions can be lveaningfulLly interpreted with:Jut any knowledge o f their ,.'ontext of utterance. 'With this II can only heartily ct,nc~ar, having demonstrated it differently elsewhere (Gray 196'i~). If pragmatics has airy ,significant part to play in l~e analysis of language, it c',m only be at a level b ~.yond that of individual assertions and only insofar as their ctmcatenation does itself provide the context necessary for interpretation (see Gray ~'977). Untbrt~nately, Kuroda does not leave it at that° He is also trying to develop a theory of narrative. Attempting to build on the work ~f K~te Hamburger, Kuroda claims that narration is characterizable as the c~eation ~I" a ficti tious reality and that this "is a characterization applicable to any kind of narration" (p. 128). This claim is demonstra~bly - empirically - false on two counts. (1) There aJre numerous narratives that, ,quite the contrary to creating a fictitious reality, depict a true one. (2) There are nt~merous discourses (called "unmediated events" in Gray 1975) that create a fictitious reality but are n e t narratives. Hamburger has been en~.irely mistaken i,n her a t t e m p t to identify a p~lrtic~ar kind of discourse - n~trralion~ - with a part,:cular kind o f meaning - fiction - and so is Kuroda in following her. "~'"t.~,l,.fiction is not a linguistic prc,perty of discourse is the very thesi~ ~ncisively demonstrated by Siegfried J. Sehmidt's q'owards a pragmatic interpre~.a'ion o f tictioaality'. Asse::tions with contradictory sorts of truth-value occur ride by side in literary texts, ' w h i c h proves", Sehr~udt 6onclodes, "that no spe4~ial class o f sentences alone can ch~raeteri~,~e literary texts as such and that poeticity cannot be

194

Reviews: Tall. van D~ik [ Pragmaties ojf language and literature

defined on the syntactic or semantic level alone" (p. 168). It must be the case, then, he argues, that ~qctionality ~s a pragmatic concept, based on a convention of acceptance. But this is not acceptance of a literm'y discourse as; true evea though it be obviously false but its acceptance as fiction even when it contains some true assertions. Literary pragmatics is thus to be the study c,f those norms or standards by which society agrees to accept certain discourses as fiction. If this is what pragmatics is taken to be, then pray~naties has indeed made a breakthrough in the serious study of literature. It has answered the most crueiaJ questi~m of all - that of what is to be the object of the study. The object is to be the di~overy, analysis, and description of the means by which literature is created as fic~:ion and understood as such. Without using the term 'pragmatics', I have myself already u adertaken such study (in Gray 1975). Whether or not the details of my approach prove adequate, I hope that together with Schrnidt's essay it will help persuade o~er literary scholars to retreat from the dead-end of competition with science and ~tudy [iterature for what it is - a man-made creation with its own logic and value. Bennison Gray Malpas Dam, Black Mountains NSW Australia

References Gray, Bennison. 1!)69. Style: the problem tald its solution. The Hague: Mouton. Gray, Bennison. 1975. The phenomenon of literature. The Ha["ae: Mou~ton. Gray, Bennison. 1977. From discourse to ct.'~log.Journal of praianatics 1:283-297 Schilpp, Paul A , ed. 1974. The pIKIosophy of Karl Popper. 2 vols. La Sallc, lUhaois: Open Court.

Bennison Gray Born 1937. ~as National Defense Educafiol~ Ac~ Fellow, University of Southern California, and taught thereafter al~ California S~ate Universky, Sacramento, and the University of Hawaii. Presently Affiqate Member of the Hawaii Gxaduate Faculty. The autho occupies a rather unorthodox segment of the scholm-ly spectr~,m that extends from the p~lagogieal problems created by ;~inguistic theory to the epistemolog~cal pxoblems of taxonomy. Work in progress includes philosophy ¢,f science and history of linguistics, and is being undertaken wlr-Aleliving with extreme ~rugality in the Australian Bush.