famclus man who gave his paycheck to his mistress, and was said to be more ..... 'liberating' the users from their invisible, but very etfective 'linguistic chains', ...
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HOW TO DO GOOD THINGS WITH WORDS: A SOCIAL PRAGMATICS FOR SURVIVAL1 Adapted versionof a plenarylecturedelivered during the 4th InternationalPragmaticsConference (Kobe, Japan)on July 30, 1993 Jacob L. Mey
0. Introduction:Pragmatics in the nineties The British novelistMargaret Drabble describesin one of her books how the chief character, following her husband'sneed to spenda year away from home for reasons of work, decidesto pick up the family and move with him. The year spent in Hereford go through a number of turnsout to be a year'in between',in which the protagonists theatricalanticsand frantic affairs on and off stage,for in the end to find themselves wherethey started off: truly a 'Garrick Year' (Drabble 1966).2 In the samevein, 1993could be calleda'Garrick Year' for pragmatics,a year in betweenyears, in which the actors go about their usual, more or less trantic, without reflectingtoo much on the present,but with a great deal of concern business, for the past and the future. As to the past, we have seen some showsbeing put on the road; others are supposedto follow in the near or more distant future (mentioning a few buzz-words suchas'Handbook'and 'Encyclopedia'willprobablysufficefor most readers);it is still tooearlvto sayanythingabout the successof all theseventures,but they certainlyhave resulted(as in Drabble's book) in a number of heart-breakingscenesand heary frustrations on the part of the actorsand would-beactorsinvolvedin their production. As to the fitture, one could point to the fact that more and more workers in pragmatics are beginningto realizethat pragmaticsand humansurvivalhave something to do with each other; as example,compare the growing interest in problems of minorities(not only linguisticallvdetermined)and the dangersthat threaten many spokenby peopleon their way to extinction.The dangersthemselvesare of languages
I I want to thank an anonymous referee o[ Pragmatic.rfor his/hcr many useful hints, critical remarks,and corrections (even the present, new title was one of this referee'ssuggestions;the original 'Pragmatics in the Nineties: Topics, Trends, Perspectives"). title of the talk was 2 The title alludes to the actor and playwright David Garrick (I716-1779), founder of the famous Garrick Theatre in London and one of the sreat histrionic talcnts of all times.
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different kinds; among them, one might want to single out the phenomenon of 'linguicide',as definedby Phillipsonand Skutnabb-Kangas in a number of publications (most recently 1994);I will come back to theseissuesbelow,section3. But also in other respects,1993 is typicallyan 'in befween' year. If one is interestedin, and lendscredenceto, datesas representative of trendsand happenings, here are sometypicallandmarks(chosenratherarbitrarilyamongmany possibleones): The year before this, in 1992,it was 30 yearssincepragmaticswas born, so to say, out of the posthumousbrain of John L. Austin: How to Do Things With Words appearedon the scenein 1962. The year 1993itself celebratesthe tenth anniversaryof the publicationof two major treatises on pragmatics, Leech's Principlesof Pragmatics and Levinson's Both works have sincecome to be recognizedas classics,even if they are Pragmutic.s. notoriouslydifficult to use as texts;especiallythe latter is more of a comprehensive handbookthan a textbookin the usualmeaningof the term: a text to be used as the rrainstayof an introductr)rycoursein pragmatics.(Horn, writing about Levinsonin 1988,thinks otherwise;for a differentview,cf. my own (1986)reviewof both books).3 F-inally,next year, in 1994, we will be able to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversaryof Austin's 'secondcclming',one could say,at the hands of John Searle, whose SpeecltActs, thai other classicof pragmatics,first saw the light of day in 1969. One of the thingsthat happenin Drabble's'Garrick Year' is that Emma, the heroine,finds herself in a new situationwith which she has some ditficulty to cope. When I was asked,in early 1993,to deliver the plenary lecture (on which the present article is based)at that year'sInternationalPragmaticsConference,I felt a bit like an elderlyunclewho is supposedto tell the youngercrowdwhat lit-e'sall about:wherewe came from, where our roots are, and where we are going: typicallythe kind of speech you'd expectfrom an elder statesman(not to saya Dutch uncle)and not quite the kind of stageI normallyt-eelhappy on. Let me thereforementionanotherGarrickyhappening,this one on the personal level. In 1993,I submitteda book on pragmaticsto a seriouspublisherunder a title that I thought was extremely appropriate,but that the publisher adamantly and consistentlyrefusedto place on the cover:'Out of the waste-basket: An introduction to pragmatics'(someof my readersmay haveseena pre-publicationcopy).The book waseventuallyacceptedundera new title (Mey 1993),and I supposeone could call my presentproductiona Garrick-typestageshow,somethinglike: 'Out of the waste-basket, into the fire!', harking birck to my book's original inscriptionas well as to the great
3 H".e is Horn, in his own words: "lf thc coming of agc of an academic discipline is at least partly conclitioned on the emergence of a braod, comprehensivc,intellectually honcst, and pedagogicallysound introductory textbook, pragmatics is in pretty good shape. With the publication of lrvinson (1983), we have a text for pragmaties that is s u p e r i o r t o a n y e x t a n t a n a l o g f o r i t s ' m o t h e r d i s c i p l i n e ' s e m a n l i c sa,n d c o m p a r e sf a v o r a b l y w i t h s t a n d a r d r e x t s i n p h o n o l o g y a n d s y n t a x . . . (" 1 9 8 8 : 1 1 3 )
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actor'stalent of finding excruciatingly banal titles fur his own comedies"4 As we all know, titles are tricky - they may trick you into readinga book that you had no intentionof reading,into doing thingsthat you were not supposedto do, into wantingto say thingsthat you didn't mean or want to say.As an instance,take thetitle of the presentpiece.Originally,I had venturedforth for my Kobe 'talkwith an exuberant and grandiloquent'pragmatics in the third millennium'- whichwas supposed to furnishthe audiencewith a vista of pragmaticsafter the turn of the century.(One questionthat mrght have been discussed in this connectionrs, of course,the vexrng problemwhetherthere will be any pragmaticsleft at all at that point of trme). Realizingthat this was t'arbeyondthe reachesand capacitiesof my little crystal ball, I decidedto go for the less bold title (actuallythe one heading the present section):'Pragmaticsin the Nineties'.This title had at leastthe advantage introductory of coveringa period of which roughlyone third is pastalready,thus relievingthe strain on my gazingpowers by about the same tactor, since I wouldn't have to worry about what had alreadytakenplace(as Austinand Searlethemselves predicting admonishus in connectionwith that particularspeechact of 'predicting'). But even though somepressurethuswas taken off the title as far as predicting the futurers concerned,part of the 'ninetiesis still with us in the form of the past; so are, and will be, the things happeningright now and up to the magic vear 2000. Wantingto make my'ninetiespictureas completeas possible,I would haveto basemy gazings, for whateverthey'reworth, not only upon an analysisof what has happened sofar,but alsoon an interpretationof what is happeningright now, and on a tentative outlineof the developmentsthat I expectto take placein the comingyears. A major concernof pragmatics, in general,is how to help peoJllebecomebetter usersclfthe word, ncltjust users:pragmatics, in thisview,doesnot limit itselfto merely lookingat the usersand describewhat they do, but gclesactivelyout (sometimeseven out of its way) to discovermeansof helping the linguisticallyunderprivileged.This explainsthe title of my piece.One major developmentof pragmatics,rn my opinion. will centeritself around questionsof linguisticsurvival;hencemy subtitle, An earlier subtitleof my piececonsideredthesemattersunder the headingsof 'Topics, nds,Perspectives'; Tre sincethis still seemsa practicallyusefuldivision,I shall stickto it in what follows.
1.Topics once remarkedthat in his DwightBolinger,one of the nestorsof Americanlinguistics, opinion,there had been in our century"one - perhapsonly one - upsurgeof popular interestin how languageaff'ectsour lives"(Bolinger1980:vii). The remark is made in thePrefaceto a book that Bolingerpublishedafter his wife'sdeath;it is a labor of love.
*
Some samples: High lifc below the stats, The clondestrnentarnoge (this onc is actually performcd in Drabblc's story!), Mis.srn her teens, The lying +'alet.
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and dedicatedto the dear departedone. The book is also quite unlike the other things that Bolinger had producedin the courseof a long and fertile life as a linguist"In short, it is a book in the spirit (albeit not in the tradition) of pragmatics. The'upsurge'Bolingeris referringto, is that generatedby Alfred Korzybskiand 'General his so-called Semantics'- a word that soon came to be a bugaboofor young linguistsin the tifties like myself,who were warned explicitly againstKorzybski (and against his best known follower and popularizer,the late S.I. Hayakawa, of sixties notorietyand assortedother,senatorialfame).We were told that an interestin matters 'languageand people' had very such as 'languageand society'.'languageand mind', little to do with science.and certainlynothingwith linguistics. As a result of all this, I nevergot to read Korzybskior Hayakawa,and Bolinger's book, Languagetlte loaded weapon (1980), only rather late in life - to be exact, six months after I had talked to its author on the phone for the last time, a year before his death.Only then I decidedto tind out what that funny little book of his was all about. By the time I had tinished the book, and had taught a freshmanclassbasedon it as a text, Dwight Bolinger had passedaway,so I never had a chanceto tell him how much I liked this work, and how close I felt he was to many of the things that we, as pragrnaticists, stand for. One may safely assume that Bolinger would not have objected to being considered a pragmaticist(h" never called himself that explicitly).sThe term 'pragmatics' is not mentioned anywherein his book. Yet, the general tenor of it is pragmatic,as witnessedby the quote above.It is also clear that Bolinger,in unraveling the threads emanatingfrom Korzybski'swork, got as far back as to Sapir and Whorf gap, attestedalsoby the lack the rest is silence.Taking into accountthe transatlantic of knowledge of Bolinger'sbook among most ContinentalEuropeanso,as well as the fact that what Bcllingerpublishedin 1980had been written a number of yearsearlier (in tact, most of his examplesstem from the years 1970-74),it seemssafe to say that Bolinger (and probably most people on his side of the Atlantic) were unawareof a European developmentin the seventiesthat was to spur a new "upsurgeof interestin the way that languageatfecisour lives",a movementin linguisticsthat subsequently came to be known aspragmatics. As Bolinger'scasenicelyshows,ycludon't have to believein pragmaticsto be a pragmatician- althoughit certainlyhelps.Not all of us are Bolingers;most of us are and rarelylift our eyesto look across hideboundby our petty beliefsand predilections, the fence that we so laboriouslyhave erectedto protect ourselvesfrom alien int-luences and from disturbancesof our small circles. by In the spirit of the celebratedM. Jourdain (from Le bourgeois-gentilltomme
5 Jef Verschucren (pcrs. comm.) has drawn my attention to rhe fact that Bolinger actively served on thc IPrA Consultation Board from 1986 through 1990,when he had to step down becauseof his faihng health. 6 A f"* honorable exceplion, such as Jan-Ola Ostman and Jef Verschueren. deserve to be mcntioned; the latter actually reviewed Bolinger's book right after it came out (Verschueren 1981).
A socialpragnmtics for survival 243 Molidre),who came to look upon himself one day and discoveredthat for tbrty years, he had been speakingprose, for many of those who now regard themselvesas pragmaticists, the coming of the new disciplinewas a welcome event. But there is a difference:while Dwight Bolinger was a true, natural pragmaticist,l4lemust become worthyof that name by laboring(sometimesagainstthe trendsof our time), carvingout a nichefor what we think is the most importantelementin languagestudies:humans andtheir use of language. But noticethat what todayreadslike an invocation,or evenworse,a platitude, wasnot at all commonlyacceptedin Bolinger'stimes of writing. The spirits of the 'upsurge'he is referring to: not only the Korzybskisand Hayakawas,but even more so (but naturally sarr comparaison)the Whorfs and Sapirs, were still haunting the linguisticbackwoods,and woe unto him or her who venturedout there without the protective gear. Many would-be pragmaticistsof the early hours trying tct necessary enterthe LinguisticGarden were apt to suffer mutilation,or even untimelydeath,at thehandsof the syntactichenchmenand the semanticgatekeepers, who preventedthe non-initiated trom approachingthe garden'snlore remote parts,let alone communing with the ugly thingsin the pragmaticwoodshed. If you allow me to indulge a little more in personalreminiscences: the first (pragmatic' mentionof anything in my own writingsturns up as late as 1976,in a talk I gavein Finlandunderthe title of 'Qualification, emancipatory languageand pragmatic linguistics'(notice that I didn't dare to let'pragmatic'standalone!).In actualfact, I had alreadystartedthe publicationof what was to become,after a number of editorial mishapsand collapsingpublishinghouses,Lhe 7979volume entitled hagmalinguistics: Theoryanclhaclrce, which managedto come out in one of the fortunate, but erratic intersticeswhen the venerable publishing house of Mouton, The Hague (who had published Chomsky'sflrst book in 1957)wasnot eithergoingbankruptor beingbought up by the expandingfirm of Walter de Gruyter, Berlin. Incidentally,if I may continuemy reminiscing, that volumewasitselfan offspring froman earlierpaper I had givenat the XIth Congressof Linguistsin Bolognain 7912 - however,, that paper'stitle doesn'tmentionthe word 'pragmatic'at all, but usesthe safer,lessoftensive,lessprogrammaticterm 'practical':'Some practicalaspectsof a theoryof perfirrmance'(M.y 1974;notice how the title, judiciouslyand studiously, coversthe author's linguistictracks by appealingto the then-currentofficial lingo). Evenso, after the talk a representative of Mouton'swalked up to me and askedif I couldbe persuadedto do a collectionof articleson subjectsrelatedto pragmatics.To which,of course,I said Yes,and it wasthis collectionwhichfinallyappearedunder the 'pragmalinguistic' label (Mey 1979),a term that had become popular for a while in Germany,but had alreadyfallen into oblivion again by the end of the decade (see M a a sl 9 T 3 a n d e s p e c i a l l y H a g e r , H a b e r l a n d a n d P 1a 9 r7i3sb; y t h e w a y , i f o n e i s i n t o dates,we have yet another memorabletwentiethanniversaryhere). By and bye, people decidedthat it would be appropriateto start talking about 'pragmatics' also on the English-speaking linguisticscene,as it had happenedearlier in Denmark, in 197011977, where the pragmatictide was in, riding on top of the antiauthoritariancrestsurgingup from WesternGermany.Here, the "dominantdoctrine"
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(Maas 1973b)of Chomskyanismwas being dethronedand replacedby a 'societallyrelevant'linguistics,often understoodin terms of the 1968studentrevoltsand of the political commitmentthat many academicswere trying to make in thoseyears. Browsing through the writings on pragmaticsfrom that early period, one often stops up and wonders.A tormal definition of pragmatics,if given at all, usuallydefers summarily to Charles Morris' famous tripartition (1938): syntax, semantics,and pragmatics.When it comes to a content-oriented descriptionof the new trend, one notices that many linguistswho considerthemselvespragmaticists,rely mostly on Searle'stheory of speechacts,which had just seenthe light of day (thus Wunderlich in his famous'Mannheim Notes',printed 1972,but to be datedmuch earlier,probably into the late sixties;cf. also Wunderlich's(1970)often quoted essay'On the role of pragmaticsin linguistics', publishedin a journalfor teachersof German,but copiedand off-printed, nationallyand internationally,more than any single piece of pragmatic in those days). literatr.rre Others again,mainly from the Anglo-Americanlinguisticcomp, took their point of departurein Grice'sfamous(mostlynot- or half-published) lectures,in which he set forth the principles and maxims that became his claim to fame: the Cooperative Principleand the Maxims of Quantity,Quality,Relevance,and Manner (Grice I975, 1978).Even today.allegianceto Grice is a kind of shibbolethin linguisticpragmatics: some couldn'tdream of basingtheir thinkingon anythingbut Grice (philosophersand mainstreamlinguistsventuringout into pragmatics;thus Wilson, Green, Horn, and many more), while o_thers, mainly those whose researchoriginated in the 'Southern 'Conversation Californran'tradition/ of Analysis'originatingwith Sacks,Schegloff,and Jeff'erson(ct-.their seminalarticle in Language;Sackset al. 7974)take issuewith Grice on counts of the (real or alleged)claim to universalityof the maxims (thus, e.g.,Ochs Keenarn1916) or the restrictionof pragmaticquestionsto asking 'what does the language user intend to mean with his or her utterance?'(ur pointed out by Ve rsch uer en1994) . These researchersstressthe importanceof the concept of 'context' in all pragmaticthinking,and how this contextshouldn'tbe consideredstatic,but rather,be seenas a dynamicand continuallydeveloping'activity systems'(Goodwin & Goodwin 1992:149tf;more on this below).Interestingly, the nameof Grice doesnot occur in all of the volume from which the previousquotationis taken: none of the authors in Duranti & Goodwin's important collectionRethinkingcontext(1992) even mentions Grice: neither his principleor his maximsoccur in the Index of the book. For others,the points were set in differentways,one of them being the wellknown one of socio-linguistics (often still spelledwith a hyphen);such a choicewas berated by people like Wunderlich,who declaredthat "sociolinguistics is unable to explain anything at all" (Maas & Wunderlich 1972:281); for others again,pragmatics seerned to have become the all-encompassingumbrella uniting socio- and ' In contrast, the tradition inspired by Grice, and later by Searle and their followers, is often 'Northern called the Californian' one - which is a bit unfair. to say the least, to the 'Berkeley school' around people like John Gumperz. a
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psycholinguistics. as well as the sociologyand psychologyof language(thus Wille & HarmsLarsen l97A:6lff; cf. also the cautiousplus sign in the title of the groundbreakingwork of Hager, Haberland& Paris( 1973):Soziologie+ Lingvistik;one should recallthat the latter three were studentsof Wunderlich's,who were not going to have anytroublewith their masterand mentor). Commonto all thesetrendsis the desireto declarepragmaticsan autonomous this autonomyneedsto be established zonewithin (sometimesoutside)of linguistics: semantics. especially in relationto the closestcompetitc-rr, (More than a decadelater, GeoffreyLeechis still battlingwith the sameproblematicin hisPinciplesof Prugmatics, where he tries to divide the waters between semanticsand pragmaticswithout the one or the other, or throwingout some hiddenbabies;1983:6). shortchanging Interesting,too, is the fact that the developmentof the Morrisian tradition in approaches(Carnap,Lrwis, Montague)almostentirely morephilosophically-oriented the attentionof the linguiststryingto establishpragmaticsas a decentmember escaped of the linguisticsclub. EspeciallyCarnap is very clear in his statementsabout the of pragmatics,and useswords that deserveto be quoted even today,and placement perhapswith more right than the rather bland and programmatic,endlesslyquoted passages from Morris (i938). Here is Carnap,writing more than 50yearsago,in 7942: "Linguistics, in thc widest sense, is that branch of science which contains all empirical invcstigation conccrning languages.It is thc dcscriptivc, empirical part of scmiotic (of spoken or writtcn languages);hence it consists of pragmatics,scmantic.s,and descriptive syntax. But thesc three parts are not on the same level; ltragntatics is the basrs for all of lingtistrcs... s c m a n t i c sa n d s y n t a xa r c , s t r i c t l y s p e a k i n g ,p a r t s o f p r a g m a t i c s . (" 1 9 4 2 : 1 3 )
Carnap'sapproachto pragmaticscontinuedto fascinatethe philosophers,but didnot appealto too many of their linguisticor behavioralsciencecoevals.This is all themore astonishingbecauseCarnap,in his view of pragmatics, does not excludeany of thetraditionalhuman disciplinesthat haveto do with humanbehavior;he mentions in particular"the analysisof the relationsbetween speakingbehavior and other behavior;... ethnologicaland sociologicalstudiesof the speakinghabits and their in dittbrenttribes,differentagegroups,socialstrata;..."(ibid.) - all subjects ditferences thatearlierwould have been classifiedas sociolinguistic or ethnolinguistic, but which todayare consideredas truly pragmaticin nature. The only direct historicalcontinuationof that early use of the term 'pragmatic' withrelationto studiesof human (nowadayswe would say'user')behavioris tound in thework by Watzlawicket al. (1967);in their pioneeringstudy,theseauthorsdid the groundworktor a branch of pragmaticresearchthat would only come tcl fruition later,in work (e.g.by Lacoste(1981)or Frank & Treichel(1989))on language decades useby real people, here in a particulartype of situation:the medical or psychiatric interview.But the studies of Watzlawick and his colleaguesremained mainly by most of the linguisticcommunity.even by thosewho calledthemselves unobserved p ra g m at ic isin t s t he s e v e n ti e s . Another earlytopic,identitiableas earlyas the beginningof the seventies, is the as somethingwhich is not 'exact', settingasideof pragmaticsfrrlrnthe rest of linguistics
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not 'formalizable',and perhaps should not be formalized at all. This methodological 'iron curtain' - which, incidentally, goes back to the general aversion among pragmaticiansto the formalizingapparatusesimposedby the Chomskyiteson the study of language- and which now fiust like that other Iron Curtain) is a historicalcuriosum, remainsremarkable,if not for other reasons,then becausethe presentwriter, in a joint 'Editorial' to the first issueof the Joumal of hagmarics, explicitly distanced himself from such formalizing attempts (Haberland & Mey 7977:6). In those days, formalism was thought of as the enemy of societallyrelevant research;the implication being that formalismand formal procedureswere nothing but a way of idly spending one's intellectual capacitieson all sorts of inconsequential trifles. Curiously enough (and fittingly, one could say), the quasi-official public resurrectionof 'Formal Pragmatics'happenedin 1993at the very Conferencewhere my original plenary talk was delivered, in a panel discussionconvened by, among others,two of the sameauthorswho in 7977queriedthe useof formal approaches,and - though they did not explicitly excludethem from their Jounnl - at least showed a profound skepsistowardsthem, as witnessedby their eminentlydiplomatic (not to say pragmatic)remark: "We'll see"(Haberland& Mey 1977:5). Even more curiousis the fact that one of the first articleson formal pragmatics was written as early as 1973by a person, Werner Kummer, who a year before had published a full-sized book in which he defended a Marxian-basedtheory of texts (Kummer 1975, 1976).Clearly,in thosevery early days,the waters were not as neatly divided as they becamelater; one could perhapssaythat a little more murkinesswould have been to the advantageof some who, being forced to come out of the closet,had to show their 'true' colors as either formal playboysor as serious,society-oriented linguistsand pragmaticists- with the benefit of hindsight,surelya ridiculousdistinction, if ever there was any. Here, it behoovesus to remember (borrowing and adapting the words of a great linguist,in a book that becamewidely read and famous before ever breakinginto print 20 yearslater): 'There is alwaysa formal turtle under the pragmatic hedge'o(Ross 1964) Among the more hotly debatedtopics of early pragmaticswas the question of restrictionson co-occurrence" The generativeframework allowedonly for very specific rules that determinedwhat could be combinedwith what, if grammaticalitywas to be conservecl.In an early article,GeorgeLakoff (I97I) was one of the first to questionthe wisdom of such restrictions,and the validity of imposingthem acrossthe board. He pointed out that the rule accordingto which a non-humanor inanimatereferent should not co-occurwith the 'human' pronounslrclshelwho,was liable to be broken in many caseswhere we had what the ancientgrammarianscalled a constructioad sensum.(cf. Lakoft's (1971) example:'My cat,wlto believesI'm a fool, enjoystormenting me'; see also Mey 1993:26). Another of the early masters,Chuck Fillmore, directedhis attention as early as 1971to the problem of 'pragmaticreference'.The classicalexamples,by now common
B The last word for the occasion to be pronounced [haz].
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propertyof everyfirst coursein linguistics,need only to be mentionedto draw forth a smileof recognition:'Hello, this is ChuckFillmore.Couldyou sendover a box yea big?' (see,e.9.,Fillmore I976:90;there is a fbotnotereferenceto an earlierpaper,originally deliveredat the 1971GeorgetownRound Table; Fillmore 1972).The point of this and many other. similar examplesis to identify a referent under syntacticallycloudy ('opaque'). but pragmaticallyquite clear('transparent') conditions.The sameholdsfor LauriKarttunen'sand BarbaraPartee'sso-called'l:rzyproncluns';let me just quote the famclusman who gave his paycheckto his mistress,and was said to be more stupid thanthe one who gave it to his wife (Partee 1972).(As one sees,ours are not the only timeswhena real linguistis one who is able to constructa societallyrelevantexample)" AIso about the sametime, a numberof peoplein the linguisticcamp.fbllowing the philosophers, startedto worry about presuppositions (and some haven'tstopped worryingever since).The worrieshere were initiallyof the more philosophical,truthconditionally oriented kind: under what conditionscan a sentencestay true even if someof its implicit('presupposed') contentbecomesnegated?And then therewere the conditions for speechacts and their validity,where one couldn't always(or too well) speakof 'truth' - one of the first greatinsights(due mainlyto Austin and Searle)which helpedto break the strangleholdthat the syntacticians, and aboveall the semanticists, traditionallyhad had on the linguists.Truth conditionswere replaced by felicity conditions, but still within the environmentof the singlespeakerand his/herutterance of 'contextualization' had to wait another decadeor so (more on this in Questions Section2, below). All thesetopics,many of which havebecomeclassics in the linguistic-pragmatic repertoire,bear witnessto the incrediblebarriers that had to be overcome for a phenomenonto be recognizedas transcendingthe (syntacticor semantic)domains whereit originally had been discovered.Less charitably,some talked about such 'transcendental'phenomena ashavingthe'wastebasket' astheir properdestination(one of the first to do so was Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, in a very early paper, 191I)" A wastebasket is a placeyou put thingsthat you want to get rid of, or don't know what to do with: hence a categorywas establishedfor phenomena thar wouldn't iet themselves be neatlydescribedwith the utensilsthat were availablein classicalsyntax andsemantics. One could saythat the first characteristicof pragmaticsthus was a negativeone: pragmatics was alien to the 'regular'linguisticcategoriesand domains.In order to be respectable, a pragmaticdiscoveryhad to be placedwithin the well-knownconfinesof thelinguisticterritory,and exhibita propertythat was recognizedas legallyclassifying the phenomenon in question as either belonging to syntax or semantics.This 'reductionist' tendencvkept thingsin their places,and linguistshappy;the wastebasket is thusan expressionfor the typical linguist'slnnor vacui,a reluctanceto leave things out ln the open, undefinedspacesof reality. By contrast,the pragmaticiststhemselvesstartedout by insisting,positively,that somethings not only did not fit into, but had to stay outside of, the recognized categorizatrons in clrder to be 'saved as phenomena'(tu paraphrasea classical
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Otien, it took a non-linguistto saythesethings,and insiston them in the expression;.e proper fashion,much againstmany linguists'will. The casethat first comesto mind as an early instanceof this 'interference'by non-linguistsin linguisticmattersis, of course,the discoveryand propagationof the phenomenoncalled 'speechacts'by philosopherssuchas Austin and Searle,and the subsequent incorporationof their discoveries into classical linguisticthinking.But notice that it took yearsbefore the initial semanticcastin which speechact theory was clad, 'encodingism',to use Bickhard & finally could be dismantled(speechactsas a caseof Campbell'sterminology:1992).not to speakof the traditionalists' endeavorsto reduce speechacts and other phenomenato particularcasesof certainsyntacticor semantic propertiesof the language,e.g.by assumingsomekind of 'performative'deep (or at least 'deeper') structure, as in the early versionsof the so-called'performativity hypothesis',originally(and specifically) devisedto explainawaysome of the problems raised in the wake of the burgeclningtheory of speechacts.(For a discussionof this h yp o th e s iss.ee M ey 19 9 3 :1 1 8 ,1 4 8 ).
2. Trends For all the topics mentioned in the previous section, a common metaphorical 'eruption', denominatorcould be that of a 'disruption',respectively an to be controlled, respectivelycontained,by and within the given framework. The case of speech act theory is a clear exampleof this doubletendency.While speechacts,on the one hand, threaten to disrupt the framework of syntactictheory by not always or necessarily respectingthe 'grammaticality'criterion (i.e.,beingexpressed in grammaticallycorrect sentences),and thus have to be controlled (preferablyby rule-like statements),at the same time they transcendthe boundariesof syntaxand semantics:they are eruptions that have to be pushed down below the surface, preferably with the help of 'constraints',that is, conditionscontrollingoutput (on rules vs. constraints,see M.y lee1). A first approximationof this trend is alreadyvisible in syntaxin the late sixties in the form of what George Lakotf called 'global rules' - in reality a further developmentof Chomsky'searlier(1965)conceptof 'selectionalrestrictions':whereas the former were put in the form of rules and conditionson rules, the latter were formed as conditionsthat operatedon the output of severalrulesat one and the same ti me . In the same sense,one could say that the 'sincerity conditions' and 'felicity conditions'on speechacts,developedby Austin and perfectedand systematizedby Searle under the watchful eye of Grice, are diff'erentanimals:the former are derived from a rule, the sincerityrule (Searle1969:63),the secondare really conditionson output, constraintson 'where to put your act', or 'where to do thingswith words',as 9 Thc quote (vcrv popular among Medicvalscholars) goes back to the Neoplatonic philosopher P r o c l u s( 4 1 6 - 4 8 5A . D . ) ( 1 9 0 1 :5 . 1 0 ) .
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Rosspointedout in an early (1975)article.Ross'conclusion is typicalfor the trendsof the times:while seeingclearlythat it is impossibleto separatesyntaxand semantics trom pragmatics("it is not possibleto relegates1'ntacticand pragmatic processesto ditferentcomponentsof the grammar";1975:252),his solutionis to createyet another 'component', a 'pragmantax',in which all of the three can live happily togetherever after.In cltherwords, if one cannot put pragmaticsinto syntaxor semantics,the next bestthing is to put everythinginto everything("without abandoningthe distinction betweenpragmatic,semantic,and syntacticaspectsof linguisticstructure",as Ross wishfullyremarks a t'ew sentencesfurther down). The real problem here is perhapsnot the trend to haveconstraintsrather than rulesas one's explanatorymechanism,but the fact that one simply cannot operate pragmatically within a strictlygrammaticalframework.The reasonfor this is not to be soughtin a more or less theoreticalproblematic:whether or not the grammar has certatnparts('components'), or whetheror not thosepartsshouldbe kept separateor allowedto cctalesce, but in the fact that human useilf languageis characterizednot by isolated messages with separatestructuresand meanings, but by greaterunitsof context overarching the individualutteranceand assigning it its proper value,also in terms of the classical grammaticaidistinctions. As one of the 'Great Danes',Louis Hjelmslev,put it a long time (actuallymore than50 years)ago,the unit of linguisticresearchis not the sentenceor the word or the morpheme,but the text "in its undividedand absoluteintegrity"(Hjelmslev1943:73; Engl.transl.1954:7).What we are dealingwith here,is a trend awayfrom individual meaningsand interpretations,and toward an understanding of the utteranceand its partsin relationto a greaterwhole;however,thiswhole cannotbe detinedunrquelyin 'immanent'terms, as Hjelmslevand the structuraiiststhought.The term discoursethat hascrept into the linguisticterminologyin recentyears,tries to capturethis trend by pointingout that the meaning of a sentencecannot be formally deduced from its syntactic and semanticcomponents:there is alwaysa partnerto any utterance,and any utteranceis in essencepart of a greaterdialogue,a 'discourse'.10 This insightcame to linguisticsas part of what is often called 'the pragmatic turn', defined not so much in terms of the topics that I talked abclut earlier as disruptions(or eruptions) of (or on) the linguisticsurface,as in terms of trends that camein trom the heat, so to speak,or at any rate from without linguistics.Among thoseincomingoutsiders,two provedto be especiallysuccessful in gaininga foothold; theywere,first of all, conversation analysis(CA), and second,studiesof what we were wontto call in the seventies:'the societallyreievantaspectsof linguistics'" While CA originatedwithin ethnomethodology, it soon capturedthe linguists',
10'Dn.(rrrse'is
t a k c n h c r e i n t h e t r a d i t i o n e s t a b l i s h e db y M i c h e l F o u c a u l t ( s e e ,e . g . , 1 9 7 2 ) . Duranti& Goodwin rcmark, much to the point, that "Discourse, hcrc, should not be confusedwith its usagein other analytical traditions in which it means simply the flow of conversation,or a text longer than a sentence.Rather, for Foucault, a discoursc is a cultural complcx of signs and practices that regulates how we live socially." ( 1 9 9 2 :3 0 ) .
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particularlythe pragmaticists',interest(witneSS, €.9.rthe amount of spaceand coverage it is given in one of the standardreferenceworks on pragmatics,Lrvinson's 1983classic of that name, where almost one-tourth of the book is devoted to CA). Conversation analystswere among the first to establishthe principle that whateveris said, is said in a cotilext where it must have a meaning, independent of all sorts of grammatical considerations. In a way, the conversation analystsstickto Hjelmslev'stenet about the text as the "absoluteand undivided"unit of linguisticanalysis;but they don't buy into his demand tor 'immanence',understoodas the requirementthat the meaningof an utterance be arrived at by a deductiveprocess.Instead,they maintain that e.g. in a question-answersituation, whatever is given as the answer,ls the answer; what the analyst should worry about is how this answer came to be given in the actual surroundings,which 'traffic rules' were valid, observed,and/or broken. Recallingour earlier distinctionbetweenrules and constraints,one could say that in CA, rules and constraintsflow together:what is a rule for one speaker,becomes the next speaker'sconstraint,and so on, recursively.One speaker'sutterance setsthe scene and marks the turn for the next speakerin a continuousprocess,the result of which is not clear until one of the partiescallsan end to the interchange. What many conversationanalystsdid not worry about, at least not initially or explicitly (and this is where the other 'outsider'is coming in) are the background elementsof any conversation:CA dealsonly with visible(or audible) partners,with visible (or mostly audible) 'contextualizationcues' (to use Gumperz' term; 1992).By contrast,pragmaticistshave long been aware that usersof language,in their linguistic dealings,are faced with a hidden partner: society.If one can be permitted to call CA the 'overt' dark horseof linguistics, societyis its 'covert'match,an even darker horse to boot. Societyis the silent,but never sleeping,partner of all conversation;society determineswhat we can sayand how we sayit, and in what kind of situationor context. It is in this connectionthat the importantnotion of 'contextualization'was first developed. Earlier, linguists had distinguishedbetween what they called the (immediate) 'co-text' of an utterance,and its (broader) 'context'.However, it was still understoodthat this context baseditself primarily on what was 'known', or 'the case', and on the ways interactantswere able to use inferencingprocessesto get at those 'tacts': that which was called 'mutual' or 'backgroundknowledge'.Gumperz, on the other hand, made it clear that such a conceptwas far too static: context is a dynamic notion, and not only that: the context is built up, 'constructed',by the interactantsin their activity of interaction:'hors de I'interaction,point de contexte',one could paraphrasea well-knowntheologicalapophthegm.Here is Gumperz himself: "Although such background assumptionsbuild on extralinguistic 'knowledge of this world', in any onc conversation this knowledge is reinterpreted as part of theprocessof conversingsothat it is interactively, thus ultimately socially,constructed" (1992:230; my cmphasis).
Others(suchas Duranti) go evenfurther:for them,the languageusedin a social context does not only reflecl the world, it activelycreatesit, to the extent that the interlocutorsagree on their respectiveplacingsin that world and acceptthe 'coercing' force of language persuading them to take their proper stances,"an emergent
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pragmatrctbrce that constrainshuman behavior and makes recipientsdo what they night not otherwisedo." (1992:80). In other words, this use of languageis not Jusr but 'retlexive',as Duranti & Goodwin call it in the introductionto thelr tnteractive, recentreader(1992:7). One of the first in Europe to becomeawareof the importanceof socialfactors in situationsof languageuse (such as the classroom,official encounters,public speaking,etc.) was, again, not a linguist.but a teacher (an educationalist,if one prefers):BasilBernstein(see,e.g.,1971-1975,1990). And eventhoughhis theorieshave met with much well-tbunded criticism, Bernstein's basic insights are pretty uncontroversial: the societalcontexthas a decisiveinfluenceon the way we use,and are able to use' our linguisticinheritance:some of us are simply better at using language, becausewe havebeen better endowedotherwise(in all sensesof the word). The trend towards a societallyrelevant linguisticsbecame embodied in pragmatics as earlyas the late sixties,especially in WesternEurope.Much of this trend wasinf-luenced by the rise of neo-Marxiandoctrine,and much of it stayedcaptive ln an unfruitfullvexploitedtheoreticaltrameworkwhich later collapsedunder lts own weight.Yet, a numberof fertile approaches and hypotheses were generatedwithin thrs framework,some of which have survivedone way or another. in different guisesand shapes, even though they no longer can be called explicitlyMarxian. A centralnotion in this respectis that of power:Who has the right to define a linguistic situation,and what powergiveshim or her the right to do so?Beingconscious of the existenceof a (perhapsinvisible,but no lessreal) societalpower in situations whereone would not even begin to dream of such a possibility,can contribute to 'liberating' the usersfrom their invisible,but very etfective'linguisticchains',to usean expressiondue to the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. In this respect, pragmatics has been instrumentalin discoveringand unveilingthose hidden power structures: as instances, cf. the work by peoplelike Bourdieu,Fairclough.and the whole tradrtionof what used to be optimisticallycalled 'emancipatorylinguistics'in the seventies.
3. Perspectives Linguists have seenit as one of their most importanttasksto assistin, and to further, theconservation of the humanculturalheritagecalledlanguage. To this end, they have deployedimmense resources of time and personal effort, and elicited (often successfullv) uncounted (although, of course, never sufficient) contributions from variousinterestedand r-tot-so-interested agencies, suchas the variousnationalresearch fundinginstitutions.local enterprises, and eventheir own and others'private pockets. The philosophybehindthispolicyof conservation hasbeenthat languagereflects oneof the most interestingand encompassing manifestations of the human mind, and assuchdeservesto be respected,treatedwell, and kept alive,even againstgreat odds. The ongoing debates on 'endangeredlanguages'(e.g. at the XVth International Congressof Linguistsin Qu6bec, 7992,and the discussions in recent issuesof the
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journal Lartgttage) have been symptomatic in this respect (See Hale et al" 1992; Ladefoged 1993 Dorian 1993). The emphasis here has been on keeping what (still) is there, and delivering it to the next generzrtion;cortsen,ationis the name of the game. To do the conservationist 1ob properly. however! one has to be sure that one does not propagate an erroneous pictr.rreof reality; hence a great concern with the factual, descriptive aspects of the languages that are focused on, as well as (albeit to a lesser degree) with the classificatory aspects. both genetic and typological, such as have been in the focus of m u c h l i n g u i s t i ct h i n k i n g , b o t h i n e a r h e r p e r i o d s a n d r e c e n t l y . In prugmatics, thc need to distinguish itself from exclusively descriptive 'describee' approaches hus been accompanied by an emphasis on taking the into ilccount as ?ln essential part of the object (language) that one wanted to describe. The social and cultural cotiexts of languages.as well as the conditions these contexts impose on their users. have been of paramount interest for pragmaticists,as we have seen in the previous scctitln. All these activities, however. can be said to be basically retroactive,in that they attempt tu reproduce a state of attairs. or bring a more primitive state of affairs up to date. An exzrmpleof the latter is the emphasis on alphabetization, as embodied in the literacy campai_unsthat have been waged in recent decadesboth at the home front and 'natives', in the bush. The purpose of such campaigns was to give the whether they were residents of the inner city or of the Gran Chaco, a chance to come up to par, and participirte in modern lit'e on an equal footing with the rest of humanity. What 'grown happened with them after that was not our concern. Once they had up', lin_quistically. they were supposed to manage their own lives. The retroactive policies that were defined in this way had a necessarily static chnrzrcter.Moreover. they were usually determined with the needs of the campaigners (the linguists. subsidiarily,the teachers,the colonizers,or the evangelists)in mind. The 'language needs of the dontirtated population at large, of the carriers', were flltered through the dominarul needs of the peclple who were in charge, the gatekeepers of the ianguttge game. Thc people. rather than playing the game as subjects,were considered to be objects. pawns that could be moved across the board whenever the real players cleemed such a move neccssaryor useful. 'native At the same tirne that being speakers' of an endangered language gave Inanv clf these dorninated peoples a certain status and authurity (that of 'being always right', as we used to say). their real status remained that of a subordinate group; and 'Thank (apart from un occasiclnal You' in the preface of a doctoral dissertation) they didn't get much in return for their erssistance from the visiting linguist or anthropologist. The bartering was not on ii scale of mutual parity; there was no real interactiort. The inte raction that did take place, moreover, was often, if not always. prefaced 'How by the thought on the purt of the dominating visitors: can I use this for my projec:t.proposal, article, talk, firm, religion, etc.?' Real interaction, that is, interaction on equal terms, with actual needs and wants placed on the bargaining table, was impossible, Also because in addition, neither party mastered the other's language and culture well enough to engage in a discourse of parity. A truly interactive mode of
A socialpragnuilic,.s for sun'ival 253 language descripticln, maintenance. and cultivationwasthereforethe exceptlon,not the ru l e. And even in caseswhere there was a real will on the part of the linguistto interacton equal terms with the 'natives',he or she found him-/herselfoften in the impossible positionof beingdefined,not by the interactants, but by the interactionitself anditslinguisticwaysof expression. The Belgizrn ethnographer-linguist Rik Pinxtentells a movingstory of how he initiallycame to be definedas the 'enemy',only later to be calleda "medecine[sic] man" amongthe Navajos,as a token of respect:but even so, everyetfort at discussing'privilegedknowledge'(such as that regardingthe Navalo worldview)with membersof the tribe was barredby the fact of his being an outsider. whocouldnot partakeof intormationbelongingto the tribe and its elders.Only after oneof their'very wise old men', Curly Mustache,had died, Pinxtenand his wife were givenaccessto intormationwhich earlier had formed part of the old man's stock of kn o wledge. ( 1991:13 6 ). From another point of view, this lack of interactionis als
