Is the utterance "I speak" a performative?

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Number2018
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Re: Is the utterance "I speak" a performative?

Post by Number2018 »

Burning ghost wrote: August 26th, 2018, 10:10 am
Some linguists no doubt regard “I speak” as a performative only in some contexts and the disagreement between these linguists is set depending on how they choose to frame “performative speech” just like it is hard to define what an insult is if we consider sarcasm as a means to insult - for how can we tell a blunt or uninformed remark from a purposeful insult? In such circumstances, some may even argue that the speaker themselves are not always in a position to say what is uttered as an insult or not.
Probably, in most occasions, speakers themselves are not in a position to judge appropriately about what is uttered. So, it would be correct to broaden the context and to apply a variety of available resources – theoretical, analytical, etc. And, anyway, the final decision is a matter of choice. A similar situation can be found in the juridical field regarding crime and punishment.
Number2018
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Re: Is the utterance "I speak" a performative?

Post by Number2018 »

Hereandnow wrote: August 26th, 2018, 2:56 pm
all statements are in fact constative performatives,
Bringing a counterexample: 2+2 = 5 is possible. Is this statement a constative performative?
Number2018
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Re: Is the utterance "I speak" a performative?

Post by Number2018 »

Hereandnow wrote: August 26th, 2018, 2:56 pm
all statements are in fact constative performatives, and this is a far better analysis of what really goes on. All language, down to the very utterance of a single concept, is pragmatic, a.k.a. performative. All utterances
and their concepts are reducible to the hypothetical, "if X is the Y". An interesting notion if you're interested (see Dewey, Peirce, Rorty, others?).
I think this project can be realized just regarding wholly dead or artificial language. In a real language, it is impossible to divide it into groups of isolated utterances, taking them separately, without their contexts and state of things.
Number2018
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Re: Is the utterance "I speak" a performative?

Post by Number2018 »

Hereandnow wrote: August 26th, 2018, 2:56 pm
Prior to the promise, there is no promise in place and "S stands under a promise" is untrue. The performance produces a new fact and truth conditions of the world have changed. This is, one could say, what performativity does is language, or intends to do, since some performatives fail in their execution.
This is precisely from what Lazzaroto tries to differentiate his project. By saying “ I do” at the wedding ceremony, nothing new happened in the world. It is a just stereotypical reiteration, reproduction of a complex interplay of laws, customs, social pressure and tax law. This performative operation is possible only as being repeated unlimitedly.
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Hereandnow
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Re: Is the utterance "I speak" a performative?

Post by Hereandnow »

Number2018
Bringing a counterexample: 2+2 = 5 is possible. Is this statement a constative performative?
If all language is performative, then it is.

By performative we mean pragmatic, performed in time to solve a problem. Language and concepts are like this. (The particulars are accidents.) Consider (briefly): what is the number two and how did it come to be associated with an abstract number? Obviously, when you were a child, you heard the sound of the word paired with two things here and there, and it was when you were so young you were a bit like a tabula raza; at first, it was puzzling, this sound and that pair of things, but eventually that pairing became established, settled, and finally what we call reality: reified pragmatics. That is what reality is in the world: it is taking up the world AS those associations in the world between things "out there" and the symbols people around us use to talk about them and the problem solving process of associating one with the other. A child learns that that thing over there is a tree and starts using the word around others, is reinforced by the people around her, and this is what 'tree' means in the long run for that child.
That is pragmatics in a nutshell. We don't know a thing because our knowledge is evident IN the thing; we know it because of our experiences of learning language. The number two, therefore, is a familarity, not a recognition of some timeless reality; and reality is just reified familiarity.

If you accept this, then your question is answered, for every part of the mathematical statement 2+2=5 is a pragmatic dynamic, not a static observation. As such, it is inherently performative: spoken in or though time, when the symbol '2' is observed, and childhood education comes to meet it, and it is understood.

As to the negation, the contradiction of 2=2+5, there is something about analyticity, as in tautologies and contradictions, that define them as such. We acknowledge these in our observations and assign terms, like 'contradiction', to denote them, but as with all terms, these are pragmatic devices that designate them merely. We have no language for understanding their "nature" as Wittgenstein points out: language is not about what, it is about how. And the "how" of the matter is pragmatics as it lies in the "doing" of the pragmatic language agent when she sees there is an intuitive error. The "sense" that something is amiss in a contradiction rises out of the performatve pragmatic matrix of a conditioned mind to see such things thusly.

As to the constative: constatives are reified pragmatics; reified, that is, in familiarity, usage, habit and so on . They were once very dynamic and inchoate when we were children, but became fixed, settled and "descriptive" later on.

When I see a goat in the road, I am seeing in time and my recognition is in time; and in time I take what is established thought about goats and roads and everything else and refer to them NOW as descriptive conditions, merely. Constatives are reified performatives, you could say.
Number2018
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Re: Is the utterance "I speak" a performative?

Post by Number2018 »

Hereandnow wrote: August 26th, 2018, 8:41 pm
Obviously, when you were a child, you heard the sound of the word paired with two things here and there, and it was when you were so young you were a bit like a tabula raza; at first, it was puzzling, this sound and that pair of things, but eventually that pairing became established, settled, and finally what we call reality: reified pragmatics. That is what reality is in the world: it is taking up the world AS those associations in the world between things "out there" and the symbols people around us use to talk about them and the problem solving process of associating one with the other. A child learns that that thing over there is a tree and starts using the word around others, is reinforced by the people around her, and this is what 'tree' means in the long run for that child.
That is pragmatics in a nutshell. We don't know a thing because our knowledge is evident IN the thing; we know it because of our experiences of learning a language.
Thank you for such an excellent analysis! :) I would agree with you in all your points, except for one, which is the most important for me! You said that “a child is reinforced by people around her – to learn about what “tree means” or to make correct arithmetical judgments about “2+2=5”.
I assume that for you the nature of this reinforcement is universal and does not change, even if we consider a learning child in ancient Egypt, medieval kingdom of John Lackland, or a child of nowadays. For me, a child is actually reinforced by a whole complex of socio-political structures, institutions, and forces, so that “people around the child” are just parts of this assemblage. Since contexts in which the judgment about “2+2=5” is made have been changed over time so many times, how can we consider “2+2=5” as a constative performative?
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Re: Is the utterance "I speak" a performative?

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To add , small children when they see a horse for he first time will usualy point and say “big dog” then look to the parent for confirmation. They use what they know to describe as best they can what they see. It may sound cute but really it’s pure genius at work.

Google Piaget for how children use language and the basic developmental stages (theory of mind and such.) We’re born with some impressive non-learned and well established social prompts from the get go.

Then there is “motherese” ... Child development is an endlessly fascinating subject! Given recent advances (including video technology and the neurosciences) within he past few decades we’re still sifting through the data.

Note: It is easy to focus on neuroscience and ignore the fairly recent availability of something as simple as video recordings - something that helped child studies leap forward from the late 80’s to early 90’s (prior to that video cameras were relatively expensive to buy/hire and cumbersome to use too.)
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Hereandnow
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Re: Is the utterance "I speak" a performative?

Post by Hereandnow »

Number2018
Since contexts in which the judgment about “2+2=5” is made have been changed over time so many times, how can we consider “2+2=5” as a constative performative?
A constative is not a metaphysical constative, and truth and falsehood are not absolutes (in any
Absolute
way, that is. Contradictions and tautologies certainly do have a unique presence for which we have epistemological words like apodicticity and apriority, but these are just words, language that refers to something the nature of which is unseen( as is true for all things).
At any rate, while the social conditions present mathematics and logic to an impressionable mind in varying ways, the intuition that underlies these is certainly universal, and I say certainly simply because it is the nature of apriority that to deny a proposition the is apriori true constitutes a contradiction. Other descriptive propositions are not as rigorous. 'My cup is on the table' is justified not by pure logic but by observation and is, as they say, defeasably true only.
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Hereandnow
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Re: Is the utterance "I speak" a performative?

Post by Hereandnow »

that quote is pretty weird. Should be a quote in the context of my sentence.
Number2018
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Re: Is the utterance "I speak" a performative?

Post by Number2018 »

Burning ghost wrote: August 27th, 2018, 12:05 pm To add, small children when they see a horse for the first time will usually point and say “big dog” then look to the parent for confirmation. They use what they know to describe as best they can what they see. It may sound cute but really it’s pure genius at work.
It would be interesting to analyze what is going on when a child produces this utterance in the context of this thread. “Big dog!” while pointing to a horse, and looking to the parents for confirmation. One could find that this is an entirely social situation, where a child is actually forced to speak in the presence of The Other. Don’t usually parent force and solicit their kids talking (especially in the early stages of acquiring language)? Isn’t the child’s authentic desire and motivation just to deserve their approval and appreciation?
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Burning ghost
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Re: Is the utterance "I speak" a performative?

Post by Burning ghost »

Actually it is more child forces the adults to adapt to it’s needs. It’s not about approval given that very early on the theory of mind is relatively underdeveloped.

My friend’s daughter is just about to turn four. She speaks three languages and can fluidly adjust her speech to those around her as fits. My friend says when she’s playing alone she babbles in a mixture of all three languages. Language is a lot more than some spoken form, it is (in the common “speaking” sense) merely a means to appropriate the world and navigate.

Anyway should get some sleep now. This should pique your interest I think:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RE4ce4mexrU
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Re: Is the utterance "I speak" a performative?

Post by Fooloso4 »

Number2018:
One could find that this is an entirely social situation, where a child is actually forced to speak in the presence of The Other. Don’t usually parent force and solicit their kids talking (especially in the early stages of acquiring language)? Isn’t the child’s authentic desire and motivation just to deserve their approval and appreciation?
I don’t think so. Language is a part of our social biology. We are by nature social beings, and just as we cry and smile and move, we talk. It is neither the result of force or solicitation, although it is generally encouraged. It is part of our way of being in the world. It has been observed that young children left alone will make sounds with distinct patterns. Since no one is around I do not think the motivation is simply approval and appreciation. I am skeptical of the idea that it is a deliberate attempt to communicate. Is singing or humming communicating? But communication is part of our way of being in the world. We know that birds who do not hear the songs of their species do not develop them on their own, and that the songs can have a communicative function. I suspect that whatever is going on it is not a linear process, not a matter of external force or solicitation or a need to please.

I see that Burning ghost beat me to some of these points. I watched some of the video. It looks very interesting. I will have to watch the whole thing when I have time.
Number2018
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Re: Is the utterance "I speak" a performative?

Post by Number2018 »

Burning ghost wrote: August 27th, 2018, 3:27 pm Actually it is more child forces the adults to adapt to it’s needs. It’s not about approval given that very early on the theory of mind is relatively underdeveloped.

You are right that child's forces are important. Yet, could you imagine a situation when a child starts talking without social surrounding?
So, social context is more important.
Number2018
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Re: Is the utterance "I speak" a performative?

Post by Number2018 »

Fooloso4 wrote: August 27th, 2018, 3:53 pm
I don’t think so. Language is a part of our social biology. We are by nature social beings, and just as we cry and smile and move, we talk. It is neither the result of force or solicitation, although it is generally encouraged. It is part of our way of being in the world. It has been observed that young children left alone will make sounds with distinct patterns. Since no one is around I do not think the motivation is simply approval and appreciation.
There was a big discussion involving two approaches to understanding a child development and acquiring language: one of Piaget and another one
of Vygotsky. According to Piaget, there are laws and stages of a child's development, imprinted in our nature; whereas to Vygotsky social factors were more important. As far as I know, the science in this field has not come to the final answer yet.

" It has been observed that young children left alone will make sounds with distinct patterns."
How far are these patterns from meaningful utterances?
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Re: Is the utterance "I speak" a performative?

Post by Fooloso4 »

Number2018:
" It has been observed that young children left alone will make sounds with distinct patterns."
How far are these patterns from meaningful utterances?
That depends, at least in part, what you mean by a meaningful utterance. Must it be understood by another to be meaningful? Caregivers can often understand the sounds of infants and toddlers that to others are meaningless sounds. In the video Burning ghost linked to the heartbeat vocalization “gaga” over time becomes water. Was the child saying water all along? It is also interesting to note that the word was used with much greater frequency in the kitchen. This suggests that it is not so much a matter of social situation but something more basic.
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