From recognition to acknowledgement: rethinking the perlocutionary

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I argue that a serious philosophical investigation of the domain of the perlocutionary is both possible and desirable, and I show that it possesses a distinctively moral dimension that has so far been overlooked. I start, in Section II, by offering an original characterisation of the distinction between the illocutionary and the perlocutionary derived from the degree of predictability and stability that differentiates their respective effects. In Section III, I argue that, in order to grasp the specificity of the perlocutionary, we must focus on the total speech situation, which I define as conversation. Then, in Section IV, I show that an investigation of the domain of the perlocutionary requires us to draw a conceptual distinction between recognition and acknowledgment. This distinction proves to be crucial, because the success of perlocutions normally depends on something more than what Austin calls the ‘securing of uptake’: the reciprocity condition for illocutions needs to be supplemented, in the case of perlocutions, with an analysis of what I call the ‘grammar of acknowledgment.’ Lastly, in Section V, I elaborate the notion of ‘perlocutionary responsibility,’ a specific form of moral responsibility for the consequences of utterances that are not (entirely) predictable.

KEYWORDS:

• Speech acts
• illocutionary
• perlocutionary
• acknowledgment
• responsibility

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the international conference Stanley Cavell: The Thought of Movies at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne in June 2019. For insightful comments and suggestions, I am indebted to Bruno Ambroise, Sandra Laugier, Sabina Vaccarino Bremner, and two anonymous reviewers. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Stanley Cavell.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Although I am sympathetic to Alice Crary’s appeal to the ‘ethical interest of Austin’s philosophy’ in the vein of what Cavell calls ‘moral perfectionism’ (Crary 2006, 42), I argue here that an analysis of the perlocutionary plays a crucial role not only with respect to ‘moral education’ (Cavell 2005, 182), but also with respect to the development of a specific form of moral responsibility.

2 Scholars have mistakenly tended to consider the constative-performative distinction as more or less analogous to the locutionary-illocutionary distinction, thus dismissing the perlocutionary as unessential to the theory of speech acts (see e.g. Searle 1968; Forguson 1973). For a strong and convincing defence of their difference, see Mulhall (2006).

3 On this point, see Laugier (2004, 286) and Kaufmann (2016, 44).

4 Indeed, it is normally possible to transform implicit illocutions into explicit ones by using the formula ‘I hereby … ’—warn you, promise you, congratulate you, etc. (Moran 2018, 134). See also Strawson (1964, 445). For discussion of certain exceptions, see Davis (1979, 236) and Tsui (1987, 368).

5 However, I do not go as far as Cohen (1973) in arguing that the perlocution is always ‘the rationale for the illocution,’ or that it is ‘in the nature of the illocution to effect the perlocution, and if it is obvious that this effect cannot occur, then the illocution is in some way and to some degree abortive’ (500). Not only there are many cases in which illocutions do not have a perlocutionary ‘rationale’ (for instance, baptising a baby or christening a ship), but it would also be a mistake to say that, if I promise you something in order to reassure you, but I fail to do so, my promise is ‘abortive.’

6 Cavell (2006) similarly characterises the distinction between ‘the illocutionary and the perlocutionary implications and conspiracies of speech’ in terms of ‘a struggle’ between ‘nature and convention, or natural law and common law,’ coming into play in any utterance (308).

7 This does not mean that illocutionary effects can never be modified. However, their modification takes a specific form: since they are ‘liable to turning out null and void under certain conditions,’ illocutionary effects are defeasible in ways that perlocutionary effects are not (Sbisà 2007, 465). For instance, a marriage can be annulled and my promise can be declared void, but this is not the result of an open-ended, more or less improvised, renegotiation. Certain well-defined conditions should be met (e.g. one of the spouses was already married to another person, I was threatened into promising, etc.) in order for the illocutionary act itself—and all its illocutionary consequences—to be declared null. By contrast, a perlocutionary act and its effects can never simply be ‘annulled’ as if they never happened: their modification can take many forms and its ‘final’ result (if there is such a thing) is not predetermined.

8 On this point, see Lorenzini (2015).

9 On this point, see also Tsui (1987, 373–5) and Kaufmann (2016, 56–7). My focus here is on oral speech acts taking place between a speaker and an audience that are co-present. Of course, it would be necessary to elaborate a different argument in order to address written speech acts, or oral speech acts ‘mediated’ by technology (e.g. a voice message sent via WhatsApp or a Skype recording). Since the latter do not require the immediate presence of an audience to be successful, their illocutionary dimension extends over a longer, and potentially indefinite, period of time. On this point, see Fraenkel (2006) and Ambroise (2015).

10 According to Cavell, mutual agreement does not constitute an essential aspect of moral conversation, because ‘we do not have to agree with one another in order to live in the same moral world, but we do have to know and respect one another’s differences’ (Cavell 1979, 269). On this point, see Laugier (2014, 200–1).

11 At the end of his essay on “Performative and Passionate Utterance,” Cavell does refer to a conversation—albeit not one from a movie, but one drawn from Jane Austen’s novel Emma (Cavell 2005, 189–91).

12 As will become clearer in what follows, this notion of conversation entails the creation of a shared form of (moral and political) life with others. This does not mean, however, that the perlocutionary in all of its dimensions always and necessarily creates a (positive or inclusive) ‘we.’ For instance, in hate speech (which Cavell considers a ‘region of perlocutionary effect’ distinct from the one he refers to when speaking of passionate utterance), the aim is not ‘to elicit a response in kind but to dictate or to stifle response, to make “we” impossible’—although one could argue that, precisely in order to do so, another ‘we’ is constituted in opposition to a ‘they’ (Cavell 2006, 273).

13 With the exception of ‘institutional’ speech acts, that is, of those acts that depend on ‘established conventions of procedure additional to the conventions governing the meanings of our utterances’ (Strawson 1964, 443). Indeed, in the case of utterances such as ‘I pronounce you husband and wife,’ ‘I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth,’ or ‘I declare the meeting open,’ simply being heard as attempting to do these things (marrying two people, christening a ship, opening a meeting) is not a sufficient condition for the felicitous performance of such acts. As Austin emphasises, other conditions apply: not only ‘the particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate for the invocation of the particular [conventional] procedure invoked,’ but the latter must also ‘be executed by all participants both correctly and completely’ (Austin 1975, 14–5). By contrast, both Hornsby (1994, 198) and Moran (2018, 137) argue that recognition is a necessary and sufficient condition for the illocutionary success of speech acts—but they deliberately focus only on ‘ordinary’ speech acts, leaving the more ritualised ones aside.

14 On this point, see also Warnock (1989, 99).

15 One could argue that the example discussed above is really about agreement. However, my friend can agree with me that this is a dangerous neighborhood but still decide to go for a walk (because she urgently needs some fresh air, because she is offended that I am treating her like a child, etc.), or she can disagree (‘This is not a dangerous neighborhood, I used to live here and go out every night, nothing ever happened to me!’) but still opt to stay home. Thus, what is at stake here is not agreement, but acknowledgment—or refusal thereof. Is my friend willing to acknowledge my concern and take it into account in the way she decides to conduct herself? The fact that, in this specific case, she does or does not, might have relevant (perlocutionary) consequences on the future of our relationship.

16 As Laugier (2017) rightly argues, ‘it is precisely the possibility of failure that defines the speech act as an act, and that places the theory of speech acts in the context of a theory of action’: not only does this possibility mark language ‘as a human activity, happy or unhappy,’ but it also allows us to characterise human actions ‘in terms of vulnerability, the possibility of transgression, and of failure’ (130–1). In A Pitch of Philosophy, Cavell similarly observes that ‘if utterances could not fail they would not be the human actions under consideration, indeed not the actions of humans at all’ (Cavell 1994, 85).

17 Indeed, as Cavell argues referring specifically to passionate utterance, the ‘feelings and actions I wish to provoke […] or bring off […] are ones I can acknowledge, or specifically refuse to acknowledge, as appropriate responses to my expressions of feeling’ (Cavell 2005, 17). On this point, see also Cavell (2004, 142).

18 But not impossible, since ‘I may say something or refer to something without meaning to, or commit myself unintentionally to a certain undertaking; for example, I may order someone to do something when I did not intend to order him to do so’ (Austin 1975, 106n1). I thus disagree with Moran’s more radical claim that ‘it is essential to an illocutionary act that it is performed intentionally’ (Moran 2018, 215).

19 On this point, see Sbisà (2007, 467), who convincingly criticises Bach and Harnish (1979)’s restriction of the perlocutionary to the intentional production of effects.

20 See Cavell (2002, 263–4): ‘The point […] is that the concept of acknowledgment is evidenced equally by its failure as by its success. It is not a description of a given response but a category in terms of which a given response is evaluated. […] A “failure to know” might just mean a piece of ignorance, an absence of something, a blank. A “failure to acknowledge” is the presence of something, a confusion, an indifference, a callousness, an exhaustion, a coldness.’

21 See Canguilhem (1991, 126–7): ‘[L]ife is not indifferent to the conditions in which it is possible, life is polarity and thereby an unconscious position of value; in short, life is in fact a normative activity. […] Normative, in the fullest sense of the word, is that which establishes norms. And it is in this sense that we suggest to talk about biological normativity’ (translation modified).

22 With the important exception of Bauer (2006), who clearly emphasises that responsibility plays a crucial role both in the domain of the illocutionary and in that of the perlocutionary, since we are always required ‘to make judgements about who is responsible for which effects,’ although in the case of perlocutions ‘we cannot rely on convention to sort out the question of responsibility’ (90).

23 On this point, see Ducrot (1985, 79) and Laugier (2004), who rightly argues that ‘there is nothing in language that forces me to keep my promise’ (300). Incidentally, that’s why excuses exist (Austin 1957).