Page 55 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

32 Communication and Evolution of Society

a communicatively successful speech action requires, beyond the com-
prehensibility of the linguistic expression, that the participants in
communication be prepared to reach an understanding, that they raise
claims to truth, truthfuiness, and rightness and reciprocally impute
their satisfaction. Sentences are the object of linguistic analysis (b, c),
speech acts of pragmatic analysis (d, e).
b. Individual Languages versus Language in General. The task of
linguistics consists firstly in developing a grammar for each individual
language so that a structural description can be correlated with any
sentence of the language. On the other hand, general grammatical
theory is occupied with reconstructing the rule system that underlies
the ability of a subject to generate well-formed sentences in any lan-
guage whatever. Grammatical theory claims to reconstruct the universal
linguistic ability of adult speakers. (In a strong version, this linguistic
competence means the ability to develop hypotheses that guide lan-
guage acquisition on the basis of an innate disposition; in a weaker
version, linguistic competence represents the result of learning pro-
cesses interpreted constructivistically in Piaget’s sense.)
c. Aspects of Linguistic Analysis. Every linguistic utterance can be
examined from at least three analytic viewpoints. Phonetics investigates
linguistic expressions as inscriptions in an underlying medium (1.e., as
formations of sound). Syntactic theory investigates linguistic expres-
sions with regard to the formal connections of the smallest meaningful
units. Semantic theory investigates the meaning content of linguistic
expressions. Evidently only phonetic and syntactic theory are self-
sufficient linguistic theories, whereas semantic theory cannot be com-
pletely carried through in the attitude of the linguist, that is, in disre-
gard of pragmatic aspects.
d. Particular versus Universal Aspects of Speech Acts. The task of
empirical pragmatics consists, to begin with, in describing speech acts
typical of a certain milieu, which can in turn be analyzed from socio-
logical, ethnological, and psychological points of view. General prag-
matic theory, on the other hand, is occupied with reconstructing the
rule system that underlies the ability of a subject to utter sentences in
any relevant situation. Universal pragmatics thereby raises the claim to
reconstruct the ability of adult speakers to embed sentences in relations
to reality in such a way that they can take on the general pragmatic
functions of representation, expression, and establishing legitimate
interpersonal relations. This communicative competence is indicated by
those accomplishments that hermeneutics stylizes to an art, namely
paraphrasing utterances by means of context-similar utterances of the