Page 130 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

107 The Development of Normative Structures

requesting the person in question to clarify his own identity. As
long as he denies the identity propositionally ascribed to him,
we cannot be certain whether he is simply disavowing his identity
of is not in a position to sustain his identity (whether he has
perhaps a split personality), or whether he is not at all the person
we suspect he is on the basis of external characteristics. There may
be world-shaking evidence for the bodily identity of a person;
but to attain certainty regarding the sdentity of the person, we
must give up our propositional attitude and, in a performative
attitude, ask the one involved about his identity, ask him to
identify Azmself. In doubtful cases we have to identify other per-
sons according to the characteristics through which they identify
themselves.
No one can construct an identity independently of the iden-
tifications that others make of him.'” These are, naturally, identi-
fications that others make not in the propositional attitude of
observers, but in the performative attitude of participants in inter-
action. Indeed the ego does not accomplish its self-identifica-
tions in a propositional attitude. It presents itself to itself as a
practical ego in the performance of communicative actions; and
in communicative action the participants must reciprocally sup-
pose that the distinguishing-oneself-from-others is recognized by
those others. Thus the basis for the assertion of one’s own identity
is not really self-identification, but intersubjectively recognized
self-identification.
The expressions I and thoz do not—as the personal pronouns
in the third person do—have the referential meaning of denota-
tive expressions employed propositionally. Rather they borrow
their referential meaning from the illocutionary roles of linguistic
performance; they have primarily the meaning of personal self-
representation on the basis of the intersubjective recognition of
reciprocal self-representations. The expressions we and you have
the same relation to personal pronouns of the third-person plural
as do I and thow to those of the third-person singular. But there
is nonetheless an interesting asymmetry. The expression “‘we’’ is
used not only in collective speech actions vis-a-vis an addressee
who assumes the communicative role of you, under the reciprocity
condition that we in turn are you for them. In individual speech