Page 38 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

15 What Is Universal Pragmatics?

Reconstructive versus Empiricist Linguistics

I hope I have characterized the reconstructive procedure of sci-
ences that transform a practically mastered pretheoretical knowl-
edge (know-how) of competent subjects into an objective and
explicit knowledge (know-that) to an extent sufficient to make
clear in what sense I am using the expression formal analysts.
Before mentioning some methodological difficulties with recon-
structive linguistics, I would like to contrast, in broad strokes,
two versions of the science of language, one empirical-analytic
and the other reconstructive. (Wunderlich speaks of empirical-
descriptive and empirical-explicative science of language.**)
Data. To the extent that the experiential basis is supposed to
be secured through observation alone, the data of linguistics con-
sist of measured variables of linguistic behavior. By contrast, to
the extent that reconstructive understanding is permitted, the
data are provided by the rule consciousness of competent speakers,
maeutically ascertained (i.e., through suitable questioning with
the aid of systematically ordered examples). Thus the data are
distinguished, if you will, by their ontological level: actual lin-
guistic behavior is part of perceptible reality, and rule-conscious-
ness points to the production of symbolic formations in which
something is uttered about reality.34 Furthermore, observations
always mean a knowledge of something particular, whereas rule
consciousness contains categorical knowledge. Finally, observa-
tional data are selected only from the analytic viewpoints of the
linguist, whereas, in the other case, competent speakers themselves
evaluate and preselect possible data from the point of view of
their grammatical well-formedness.
Theory and Object Domain. As long as natural languages count
as the object of linguistic description and not as the form of
representation of a reconstructible pretheoretical knowledge, lin-
guistic theory relates to its object domain as an empirical theory
that explains linguistic descriptions of linguistic reality with the
aid of nomological hypotheses. If, on the contrary, linguistic
theory is supposed to serve to reconstruct pretheoretical know]-
edge, theory relates to its object domain as an explication of
meaning to its explicandum. Whereas in the empiricist version
the relation of theory to the language to be explained is basically