peter krey’s web site

Philosophy of Language

In today’s editorial page of the New York Times (A18), it speaks of “a redundant background check” in “Citizenship, Thwarted.” “Redundant” has always been used for words and here it has spread to cover action, “an unnecessarily duplicated action.” Language has a way of becoming elastic as words become used in many diverse ways. Here the word was first used for other words and now it is being used for actions, specifying the meaning of the word further. For example, you pet a pet. I wonder if the word came from the action or the action from the word-name. Then we speak of a “teacher’s pet” as the word lives on.

     My favorite is the word, “thing.” My high school English teacher said, “Don’t use the word, “thing.” It doesn’t mean anything.” She showed how ubiquitous the word is in our language, because she used it right in her protest unconsciously.

     Meanwhile it is so deeply embedded in our language because it designated an old Icelandic or Scandinavian legislative assembly called the “Thing” or “Ding,” (like a Duma or Diet), which passed decrees called “things.” [The words “think” and “thank” seem to be related to the word “thing.” (Denk, Dank, and Ding in German.)]

     I wonder if “things” as matters gave the name “Thing” to the meeting or assembly, or if it was vice versa? If Emil Durkheim is right, the sociological sense abstracted into the epistemic sense of the word. (Words have a historical career from the time they are coined to all the senses and associations they accumulate, when remaining useful, or dying out of usage, when not.) But if words are primitive or pre-historic in their origin, then they could always have gone in the other direction.

This example of a directive corresponds with Luther’s sense of the law, because the obligation falls on the hearer. In the commissive we have the promise, and therefore, the gospel, and the Speaker takes the obligation to act, to carry out our salvation.

Now to be able to associate the symbols for these three classes of speech acts closely together we write them again:

In a paper, I am arguing that this performative declaration is a composite speech act made up of the first three. We find that it is like proclamation: a new reality is brought into existence by declaring it to exist. It is performative in the sense that declaring the state of affairs, brings it into existence. For example Psalm 33:9: “God spoke and it was done.” Or Isaiah 55:9-10.

In this class of speech acts, Searle also includes supernatural declarations, by which God creates the world. For example, “Let there be light.” While the declarations have a requirement for an extra-linguistic institution, that is, the constitutive rules from another institution also obtain, and those of language alone are not sufficient, the supernatural declarations are exempt from this requirement. In other words, God is creating extra-linguistic institutions, i.e., the world, by the word alone.

For John Searle language is a social institution and like all institutions it works by constitutive rules. His symbolic formula for constitutive rules is:

X counts as Y in C.

For example, pieces of paper X count a as money Y in a community C where the institution of money is used as a medium of exchange and an index of value.

The X term can be a brute fact, like paper, or a stone, but can also be an institution, a person, a speech act. When the bride and the groom make speech act promises X they count as becoming married Y in an authorized ceremony C. Like money, the marriage becomes objectively real, is brought into existence by a speech act, the performative declaration, and its continued existence depends on faith. The sincerity condition of speech acts, here, e.g., belief, wish, and intention, is involved.

Where ‘X counts as Y in C’ the X term, receives a new status function as the Y term, iterating, in our case, from the institution of speech acts, the promises, to the institution of marriage. By their promises, the X term, a man and woman count as married, in the Y term. They receive a new status of marriage which is objectively real because of collective acceptance and agreement. To revert to the example of money: when people lost their faith in money as recently happened with the Russian ruble, then rubles stopped being money. The people started using packages of cigarettes as a medium of exchange (even the non-smokers) until confidence in the ruble could once again be restored.

Thus Searle tells that the move from the X term to the Y term is a linguistic one, a symbolic one, in which language is the crucial factor. The X term is still itself, but it becomes the Y term because, again, it counts as having a new status function. A material item becomes an institution radiating values for the community. Or a lower institution iterates into a higher more complex one. Faith, acceptance, and the common agreement of the community is crucial for making it so, and its saying so, makes it so. Language is not only an institution, but all institutions have a language component. Language is part of their very structure.

In terms of justification by faith, in trying to understand the importance of the “imputation” of righteousness, Searle’s formula for the constitutive rule can provide one angle in trying to understand it. The sinner X counts as righteous Y in Christ C.[1] The old Adam or Eve X counts as a little christ Y by grace C. A person X counts as a child of God Y for the sake of Christ C. The imputation makes it so, makes it really so, even objectively in terms of social and institutional reality, and, beyond that, even in divine reality, because if you believe it you have it.[2]

What stands out here are the “Words of Institution” in Holy Communion. Some prescience seems to be involved in the naming of those words. Searle’s constitutive rule can help see what is happening from a different perspective. The elements, the bread and wine, receive a new status function as the body and blood of Christ, and the body and blood of Christ raises the people into a new status as the children of God. “Christ himself is present changing the worshiping congregation into his body.” A new contract, or here a covenant, is the Y term, which has been brought into existence by the performative declaration or proclamation of “This is my body” which is the X term. Think of 1 Peter 2:9-10: “A chosen race, a holy nation, a royal priesthood, God’s own people” called into existence in order to continue speech acts praising God. A non-people before the declaration, but God’s own people thereafter.

Thus the Words of Institution are divinely performative in the sense that communion, the body, the people of God, the church as an institution is brought into existence by them. (God speaks and it is done!) The church, defined as the place where the Word is proclaimed and the sacraments are duly administered, is the institution out of which all other institutions originate: the state, the court, the school, the university, the hospital, the bank, etc. (Durkheim)

And Searle understands “institutions” in a broad sense: thus logic, rationality, and law also have their genesis in the Word of God. Indeed, so does language itself. Here is a reflexivity that may have to do with God’s Name: “I am who I am” or “I am with you” or “I am the One who calls you into existence.”

Selected Bibliography

J.L. Austin, How to do things with Words, (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1962).

John R. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).

————–,Expression and Meaning, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

————–, Intentionality, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

————–, The Construction of Social Reality, (New York: The Free Press, 1995).

For Prof. Robert Goeser at PLTS

May 1, 1996

by Peter D. S. Krey

Performative Declarations

For Prof. John R. Searle

May 6, 1996

“The Word of God, whenever it comes, comes to change and renew the world.”^[1] Martin Luther, the Sixteenth Century reformer, who said this bon mot, had utter confidence in the power of the proclaimed Word. His Word of God Theology was very influential in the Early Modern Protestant revolution, which we call the Reformation. His dynamic sense of language, and his belief in the executive power of words, derives, of course, from the Scriptures. Psalm 33:9 expresses it very succinctly:

God spoke, and it was done.

And this passage does not only refer to God=s authority to command, but also to God=s creation by means of the word, ex nihilo. God’s speaking continues creation.^[2]

Furthermore, the Prologue of the Gospel of John begins:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made (John 1:1-3).

So great was the Christian respect for the logos, the word, that they sometimes represent the Trinity as the Father, Word, and Holy Spirit. A few verses later in John’s Prologue it reads:

AAnd the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.@^[3]

Thus God is not only active at the beginning of time and in the redemption brought in history by Jesus Christ, but is, continuously, involved in creation by means of divine words.

The prophet Isaiah understands the power of God’s

words. For example in a famous passage he writes:

As the rain and snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it spring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it (Isaiah 55:10-11).

When considering perfomative language in its various forms, the question arises whether it is related to this theological sense of continuous creation or if it is merely a technical description of the relationship of language and action. That some language itself constitutes action may have nothing to do with the theological sense that God’s speaking brings the world into existence, creating it from nothing. Perhaps it may have something to do with the claim of Luther and the prophets that speaking the Word of God changes and renews the world.

Performatives in the Philosophy of Language

When J. L. Austin discovered the performative dimension of language, he was concerned with the question: ACan saying make it so?@^[4] He saw something revolutionary for Philosophy in this discovery – despite some confusion logic might provisionally plunge into because of it. (Is a sentence true or false if saying it makes it so? What are actions in relation to speech?) But Austin then noted that there might be some disappointment over his simple examples.^[5] After his constative/performative distinction collapses, in the course of his Harvard lectures, he still feels affirmative about illocutionary force and the performative. He continues by projecting a general speech act theory beyond that collapsed distinction.

John R. Searle took Austin=s general theory of speech acts and basically rethought and reworked it. He revised Austin=s taxonomy of speech acts, which revolved around classifying the performative verbs, to his own taxonomy, in which he more systematically categorized the speech acts according to their illocutionary point.^[6] Here in Searle=s fifth category, which he calls >Declarations=, we find the speech act in which he locates the confusion concerning Austin=s discovery of the performative.^[7]

(Is the discovery of the perfomative speech act world-shaking or merely a proverbial tempest in a tea cup?)

Striking the same note as Austin in a recent lecture, Searle introduced the performative speech act as “the one, the successful performance of which, is sufficient to change the world.”^[8] The declaration brings about a fit between the world and the word by its very performance,^[9] i.e., the world is changed by the words. In 1969, when Searle published Speech Acts, he had not yet worked out the symbolic representation of all his different classes of speech acts.^[10] But in 1979, in his Expression and Meaning, in doing so, he gives a more technical introduction to this class of speech acts, which he calls Adeclarations@, with the words:

There is still left an important class of cases, where the state of affairs represented in the proposition expressed is realized or brought into existence by the illocutionary force indicating device,^[11] cases where one brings a state of affairs into existence by declaring it to exist, cases where, so to speak Asaying makes it so@. Examples of these cases are >I resign=, >You=re fired=, >I excommunicate you=, >I christen this ship the battleship Missouri=, AI appoint you chairman=, and >War is hereby declared=.^[12]

The reality changing aspect is here couched in the words: Athe proposition expressed is realized or brought into existence@ and Aone brings a state of affairs into existence by declaring it to exist@. This accomplishment of an illocutionary declaration is not a little astonishing and could relate to the theological sense of divine speech continuing creation. Thus God’s saying, “Let there be light” brought light into existence. Or the prophet shouts, “Thus saith the Lord!” and the society undergoes a renewal with language changing its realities.

But upon further investigation, it seems that this reality changing force does not characterize all the groups of this class of speech acts. One group of declarations is only self-referential to language: e.g., AI define@, AI abbreviate@, AI name@, etc.^[13] Other declarations, however, change reality by making it match their meaning. These performatives are worth tracing for their light on our subject.

In his later book, The Construction of Social Reality,^[14] Searle qualifies these declarations as Aperformative declarations@. Interestingly enough, here, in the context of discussing his constitutive rule:

AX counts as Y in C@

(where the Y term gives the X term a new status function), Searle writes about them under a heading with the term APerformative Utterances@. His designation here is noteworthy, because in his previous terminology, he merely named them declarations. Continuing his analysis of the constitutive rule in the latter book, he then uses the term, Aperformative declaration@:^[15]

          In general, where the X term is a speech act, the constitutive rule will enable the speech act to be performed as a performative declaration creating the state of affairs described by the Y term. (The italics are his.)^[16]

Here the performative declaration functions in close association with the constitutive rule, >X counts as Y in C=, to create another state of affairs. (APerformed as a performative…@ sounds redundant, but it could be reflexive, i.e., doubling back upon itself.) Furthermore, Searle here gives us the linguistic or symbolic move from the X term (a speech act) to the Y term (a newly created state of affairs) and the performative declaration brings the new status function. (A new status function for cigarettes, for example, could be their use as currency when ordinary money has lost its value.)

Searle=s article, AHow Performatives Work@ written in 1989, is truly magisterial, because in it he explains the secret complexities of the performative phenomemon.^[17] He states that the word, Ahereby@ is characteristic for the performative and whether it is explicit or not, it illustrates that the performative is an utterance about itself: it is self-referential.^[18] The Ahere@ part of this authoritative sounding word, “hereby,” is the self-referential part; and the Aby@ part, is the executive part of the declaration. And here the implication is not merely the description of an intention but the manifestation of the intention by its very utterance.^[19] Thus the speaker must intend that his or her utterance of an order or a promise, for example, make it the case that s/he is giving an order or making a promise:

And that intention can be encoded in the meaning of a sentence when the sentence encodes executive self-referentiality over an intentional verb.…the utterance of a performative sentence constitutes both a declaration and, by derivation, an assertion.^[20]

Given that other conditions are satisfied, a certain class of actions is here involved for which the manifestation of the intention is sufficient to perform the action.^[21] The tense of the performative has to be in what Searle calls the present present, or the dramatic present.^[22]

In the course of his very thorough study, Searle makes another distinction between two kinds of performatives: linguistic declarations and extra-linguistic declarations. In the latter category, the rules of Aextra-linguistic@ institutions are required, while in the former, they are not. He classifies promises and orders as commissives and directives, respectively, and places them in the former category.^[23] At times he calls these two different categories of declarations:

Alinguistic performatives@ and Aextra-linguistic performatives@;

Alinguistic declarations@ and Ainstitutional declarations@ or

Alinguistic performatives@ and Ainstitutional performatives@.

The utterance of a linguistic declaration or performative, in the first category, accomplishes a purely linguistic institutional fact, like a promise or an order. (Language, for Searle, is also defined as an institution.) For the extra-linguistic or institutional performatives in the second category, the constitutive rules for language alone do not suffice, but those of an extra-linguistic institution are also required. For example, AThe meeting will now come to order@ requires the extra-linguistic Robert’s Rules of Order. A better example yet, because it contains a performative: “I now pronounce you husband and wife” will not constitute a marriage unless the laws of the state are followed.

Supernatural Declarations

In tracing the performatives relevant to the theological sense God’s speaking, a third performative is promisingly called a supernatural declaration. Interestingly enough, Searle maintains that it does not requires an extra-linguistic institution. Institutional declarations or performatives are not excepted from this requirement, while the linguistic performatives and the supernatural performatives are.

In the case of the supernatural declaration, a performative verb is not necessary, because any act can be named by fiat, and it does not have to be in that small number of acts of that class of peculiar actions which are named by a verb and are capable of being carried out by the mere manifestation of an intention, (to reiterate a description of the performative again). For example, “I promise to give you an example about what I am writing about”. The previous performative sentence contains a performative verb, while “God said, ‘Let there be light and there was light’” does not, and is thus performative by fiat.

But immediately, two considerations come to mind. ABy fiat@ might undermine my position – that the performative and its dynamic could shed light on God’s speaking being creation. God did not need performatives if he spoke by fiat. God did not need to use performatives explicitly, like, AI decree@ or AI declare that there be light.@ It is also absurd to think that God would have to get his grammar right in order to create the world by means of speech. Secondly, Luther relegated all things under law as command and the gospel as promise, and all good things come to us from God=s promise. It could thus be argued that the good creation also comes by God=s promise. But usually creation is attributed to God=s Word, to supernatural declaration, to use Searle=s terminology.^[24]

The supernatural declaration, (although Searle sees it merely as a limiting case and would not at all agree to this theological sense), points rather explicitly to the case where the Word of God brings into existence that which it utters. The promises of God as the Word of God are performatives containing a reality changing force; their propositions do not correspond to reality, but have the power to bend realities to correspond to them. There is a self-fulfilling prophesy for truth conditions involved when Asaying makes it so,@ or Athinking makes it so,@ or Abelieving makes it so@.

If the self is not God, however, and it is not a divine performative, then someone could say, “I promise you will not die of your lung cancer!” (Say, that you are diagnosed with it.) “I command the lung cancer to leave your body.” But it will all be to no avail and the patient will die, because it would have to be a divine performative and could not be a human one. The human performative here would certainly violate the cancer victim’s truth conditions, while a divine performative would not. It would bring about the state of affairs that God was declaring.

Even after exploring performative declarations, the linguistic, institutional, and supernatural ones, Isaiah’s words come to mind: “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways over your ways and my thoughts over your thoughts.” We could add, my speech over our speech.

The performative for healing lung cancer was here addressed to biological conditions. It may well be more fruitful to investigate performatives addressed to sociological conditions. Luther’s citation about God’s Word coming to change and renew the world addresses sociological and personal realities.