Abstract
This chapter introduces the concept of “language as dialogue” which rests on the insight that language use is always dialogically oriented. A distinction has to be made between initiative and reactive speech acts, which are functionally different speech act types. In this way, the equation of action and illocution can be overcome. The relation between action and reaction is described by the dialogic principle proper as conventional interdependence at the level of interaction. A dialogic speech act taxonomy can be derived from the superordinate purpose of coming to an understanding in dialogue. Speech acts are defined by pragmatic claims to truth and to volition which correspond to the basic mental states of belief and desire. In this way, the issue of connecting cognition and action can be settled.
This chapter has been published earlier: in 1991 with Max Niemeyer and in 2009 with John Benjamins Publishing Company
1991. Dialoganalyse III. Referate der 3. Arbeitstagung Bologna 1990, ed. by Sorin Stati, Edda Weigand and Franz Hundsnurscher, vol. 1, 75–104. Tübingen.2009. Edda Weigand: Language as Dialogue. From rules to principles of probability, ed. by Sebastian Feller, 21–44. Amsterdam/Philadelphia.
I would like to thank these publishing houses for granting me to republish the chapter.
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Notes
- 1.
A survey of the different uses of the term dialogue can be found in Stati (1982).
- 2.
In addition, we have the communicative use of language for the expression of thought (cf. Alston 1964, p. 22 f.).
- 3.
Regarding the discussion of the notion of action cf. von Wright (1971). The inner and outer aspect of action in the sense used by von Wright (p. 86), intentionality and changing the world, are included in my use of the notion of purpose.
- 4.
In principle, Jakobson (1971, p. 704) has already answered this question: “…the two fundamental factors which operate on any level of language. The first of these factors, selection, ‘is produced on the base of equivalence, similarity and dissimilarity, synonymity and antonymity’, while the second, combination, the buildup of any chain, ‘is based on contiguity’”. The factor selection determines the appropriateness of the individual utterance in a certain context; the factor combination is based on the coherence of the subsequent speech acts.
- 5.
In contrast to my approach, which understands action as the relation of purposes and means, Hundsnurscher (e.g. 1989) starts from the assumption that speech acts are based on a tripartite constellation of purposes, utterance forms, and conditions (cf. for a discussion of both approaches, Weigand 1993). Also in Kasher’s view, purposes and means are essential components of the notion of a speech act but, in addition, he assumes roles played by whoever is involved in its performance and a product (cf. Kasher 1979). While these approaches have a common basis in the communicative purpose of the action, Motsch and Pasch (1987) are oriented towards, among others, Bierwisch (1980) and Grice (1975) and support a view of action which, because of different basic assumptions, contains a completely different conception of action. According to them, actions are based not on social purposes, but on aims, i.e. “cognitive representations of states of the world”, and on intentions of speakers, i.e. “cognitive representations of an attitude of volition towards a state of affairs in the mind” (p. 33) and are thus essentially mental concepts. Motsch and Pasch take no account of the peculiarity of social, purposeful action with regard to the mental domain as well as with regard to sign-theoretical relations.Viehweger (1989) also shifts his description of illocutionary acts into the mental domain of our systems of knowledge and takes as his starting point Motsch’s suggested characterisation of illocutionary acts. However, he then elucidates the component of the success conditions for an illocutionary act, COND knowledge, in such a way as to include—similar to my concept of action—both action aims and action conditions (p. 43).
- 6.
Therefore, understanding/“Verstehen” cannot be as in Motsch and Pasch (1987, p. 33) action aim. Action theories which, following Grice (1975), include conditions of understanding as an element of the analysis of action, do not take account of the fact that understanding only becomes an object of enquiry when it becomes problematical (besides Motsch and Pasch (also p. 22 and p. 27) e.g. Meggle 1981; Fritz 1989).
- 7.
Therefore, in a more detailed description, not only for minimal sequences but also for longer dialogues, it must be taken into account that, secondarily, reactive speech acts can have an additional initiative function.
- 8.
The assumption of conversational analysis, which is also supported by Motsch (1989, p. 54), that there are only “a few illocutionary types” “which determine a linguistic reaction as the expected reaction”, results from a descriptive model which gives priority to empirical structure of the sequence of utterances. This approach therefore fails to take account of basic functional principles of conversation. In contrast to this approach, Viehweger (1989, p. 45 f.) assumes, as I do, that illocutionary knowledge also contains knowledge of the dialogic embedding of a turn and that therefore “the construction of conversations is based to a quite decisive extent on classes of illocutionary actions, that illocutionary knowledge is an extremely important domain of knowledge for constituting conversation”. However, he believes that the general validity of this assumption “cannot yet be postulated with certainty at the present stage of research”.
- 9.
The consequence of the insight that the smallest autonomous unit of communication is the sequence of action and reaction is that there can be no independent “speakers’ texts” of the type that Motsch (1989, p. 48 f.) assumes. While Motsch leaves the question open as to “whether—and if so in what sense—independent speakers’ texts can be understood as a special case of dialogue texts”, Brinker and Sager (1989) put forward two independent domains, the domain of monologic texts and the domain of conversations. Since they understand the concept of the communicative function as a monologic concept (p. 12) and consider the unity of conversation as being only thematically determined (p. 11), the aspect of turn taking remains a situational, formal feature which can add nothing as far as meaning is concerned to an analysis of the matter of conversation being investigated. Such a model of conversation analysis—to overstate it slightly—amounts therefore to an extension of the monologic view of texts to all texts and to a description even of conversations as monologic. However, a model of this type cannot be applied consistently, as the concrete analyses in the book itself show; for a dialogic principle creeps in (p. 69), which is not dissimilar to our dialogic principle. This contradiction between the general theoretical–methodological basis and individual cases of concrete analysis makes the limits of a monologic, topic-oriented view of texts clear. These limits can only be overcome in a dialogic model which bases dialogicity for all texts on the interdependence of initiative and reactive purposes.
- 10.
This claim to volition is not restricted to a certain interlocutor. It can be, as is usual, directed at an action of the hearer but, in the same way, it can be directed at an action of the speaker(s): Let’s start now.
- 11.
This must be distinguished from models for the description of conversation which, as for example in Techtmeier (1984), are exclusively aim oriented. Since Techtmeier’s concept of aim is expressed in general social and psychological terms, there are problems in applying the same concept of aim, differentiated according to fundamental and partial aims, to longer units of conversation as well as to individual steps in the conversation and conversational acts. In addition, a sociological–psychological concept of aim does not do justice to the language-specific rules of the action game; this becomes clear with the many problems which occur in Techtmeier’s model in the description of the microstructure of conversation (p. 110 ff.). Regarding this, Techtmeier notes that the relation between her concept of aim and general aims in speech act theory is still largely unknown.
- 12.
I think that I agree with the assumptions of Viehweger (1989, p. 45 f.), but also of Motsch (1989, p. 56), who thinks it is certainly possible that “dialogue structures can also be determined by means of the principles of illocutionary knowledge”. However, it seems to me that this assumption, to a certain extent, contradicts the thoughts he had previously just expressed regarding conversation analysis. Cf. note 6 above. Brinker and Sager (1989, p. 112) also consider that “the social function, the social purpose of conversations” could be the “basic criterion” for a typology of conversations. An assumption of this nature is surprising in view of the definition of the notion of conversation on which their book is based. Cf. note 7 above.
- 13.
In my opinion, even job interviews follow this pattern. It might appear as if the interlocutors went into the conversation not only with different aims but also with different purposes (explorative purpose “Who is the suitable candidate?” for the one who is carrying out the interview, versus representational purpose “I am the suitable candidate” for the applicant); however, an analysis of this type does not do justice to the character of a job interview as a conversation involving a number of people. The purpose of the conversation involving a number of people is to find out who the suitable candidate is. The purpose of the individual job interview is to test the representational claim of the applicant to be the suitable candidate.
- 14.
While in my approach the linking of sentence types and action functions is emphasised as a clear correlation which shows the right direction but which is in no way unambiguous, in Motsch and Pasch’s system (1987), the unambiguous correlation of “sentence moods” and “functions” plays a central role. However, with Motsch and Pasch, in some cases, the same terms are used to describe other phenomena and relations, so that it is difficult—especially in a footnote—to compare both approaches. The main difference to my approach is that Motsch and Pasch give a dominating role to grammatical classification. Although sentence moods are described with regard to their meaning as expressions of the attitude of the speaker, ultimately these speaker attitudes are assigned on a 1:1 basis to the sentence moods/sentence types (p. 45 f.). The sentence moods or the speaker attitudes expressed by sentence moods have, in their turn assigned to them on a 1:1 basis “a grammatically determined basic illocutionary function” (p. 53). In this way, the grammatical classification merges into the functional classification. The basic illocutionary functions are then further divided up using Searle’s speech act classes (p. 54). Instead of separating the functional phenomena (Searle’s speech act classes and their subdivisions such as assertion, reporting, promising, consenting, etc.) from the means (sentence moods etc.), defining the functional phenomena separately, i.e. functionally and analysing the means in connection with lexical means and then investigating the complicated correlation of functions and means, they take as their starting point the grammatical classification according to sentence moods and transfer these on a categoric 1:1 basis to speaker attitudes and basic illocutionary functions. In a number of different respects, problems result from this subordination of action functions to the dominating role of the grammatical means, for instance:
• Explicitly performative expressions are, in my opinion, treated counterintuitively as indirect speech acts since the distinction between and interaction between lexical and grammatical means has not been sufficiently reflected upon.
• It has not been recognised that declarative speech acts—both with regard to function (claim to volition with reference to existence/validity) and with regard to realisation (combination of lexical and grammatical means)—are a separate and distinct class and must under no circumstances be confused with representational speech acts (claim to truth, realisation is also possible by grammatical means only).
• No account is taken of the distinction between initiative and reactive speech acts regarding their function.
• The role of speaker attitudes has not, in my opinion, been made sufficiently clear.
The result is thus a classification of illocutionary actions (p. 54) which, in my view, confuses heterogenous elements and levels of means and function and correlates them with each other in a system which, in the final analysis, is grammatically determined and is therefore not appropriate for the subject “illocutionary action”.
- 15.
If I consider the mental states of “belief” and “desire” to be basic, then I leave the question open as to the relation that affective states have to these areas of cognition and volition. In my opinion, this question addresses a separate area of experience. Searle’s analysis of affective states (1983, p. 29 ff.) also makes clear that they can only very inadequately be described as a conjunction of belief and desire (cf. also Kenny 1963, p. 100). Fodor does not discuss this problem explicitly, but connects belief and desire to the areas of thought and (1987, p. xii), to which, in my opinion, affective states do not belong.In the literature concerning action theory, assumptions are made which at first glance seem to correspond to what I have here described as the mental basis of our linguistic actions. Goldman (1970, p. 72 ff.), for example, views acts as caused by wants and beliefs. But what he understands by wants as causes corresponds to intentionality in my notion of action and cannot be equated with the mental domain of desires which can be assigned to this notion of action on another level; i.e. similar terms are used to express quite different facts—a causal versus an intentional notion of action (cf. von Wright 1971; Anscombe 1957).
- 16.
I should like to refer to an interesting counter-view. Obviously, Winograd and Flores (1986, p. 146) have also followed the basic assumptions of Dreyfus (1979) and the phenomenology of Heidegger’s when they maintain that our actions could not be adequately described in terms of rationality. “We do not act as a result of consideration but as a way of being”.
- 17.
As opposed to this view, Searle (1983, p. x and 1) considers human behaviour determined by intentionality defined as the feature of directedness. Since, however, intentional mental states are common to both human beings and animals, the specifically human quality is not delimited by intentionality in Searle’s sense, but only by the ability of self-reflection which at least partially makes free will possible in the case of human beings.If we assume mental states of belief for animals too, then we concede that they can think, at least in a rudimentary form (cf. also Griffin 1990). To think means, I believe, making connections. The cat makes connections between given empirical conditions and its needs. The computer makes connections according to data and rules that human beings have fed into it. Accordingly, not only human beings have the ability to think but also animals and computers. But while human beings can control their thinking themselves, can determine the rules of their thinking themselves, the thinking operations of animals, like computers, are controlled externally, are dependent on the one hand on empirical circumstances, and on the other on human beings. Even if the idea of a self-programming computer does not remain Utopian, a human being will be at the starting point of the operations of a neuronal computer of this type. Human beings alone can both initiate their thinking themselves and question it again and again, justify and substantiate it anew and put it in new contexts, even if the end or the starting point of their thinking remains an open question. For what, in the final analysis, is our consciousness other than a material, biological phenomenon? (cf. also Armstrong 1981, p. 15)
- 18.
In almost all so-called action-oriented approaches to the description of language, the concept of action is apparently without any problem connected with the concept of sign, thus, for example, with Motsch and Pasch (1987, p. 26): “…for communicative actions, for actions with (strings of) signs”, and even with Wittgenstein (1968, p. I: 496), obviously without seeing the great question behind it: whether an action-theory approach is in any way compatible with sign-theory considerations. In my view, not only theory of use but also action theory and sign theory are mutually exclusive (cf. also Halliday 1991).
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Weigand, E. (2016). The Dialogic Principle Revisited: Speech Acts and Mental States. In: Capone, A., Mey, J. (eds) Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12616-6_7
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