Page 64 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

4X What Is Universal Pragmatics?

I have not explained the embedding of communicative action
(“oriented to reaching understanding’’) in other types of action.
It seems to me that strategzc action (‘‘oriented to the actor’s suc-
cess’’—in general, modes of action that correspond to the utili-
tarian model of purposive-rational action) as well as (the still-
insufficiently-analyzed) symbolic action (e.g., a concert, a dance
—in general, modes of action that are bound to nonpropositional
systems of symbolic expression) differ from communicative action
in that individual validity claims are suspended (in strategic
action, truthfulness, in symbolic action, truth).** My previous
analyses of ‘‘labor’’ and “interaction” have not yet adequately
captured the most general differentiating characteristics of instru-
mental and social (or communicative) action. I cannot pursue
this desideratum here.

On the Double Structure of Speech

I would like to come back now to the characteristic double
structure that can be read off the standard form of speech actions.
Obviously the two components, the illocutionary and the proposi-
tional, can vary independently of one another. We can hold a
propositional content invariant vis-a-vis the different types of
speech acts in which it appears. In this abstraction of proposi-
tional content from the asserted proposition, a fundamental ac-
complishment of our language is expressed. Propositionally
differentiated speech distinguishes itself therein from the sym-
bolically mediated interaction we can already observe among
primates.** Any number of examples of the speech-act-invariance
of propositional content can be provided—for instance, for the
propositional content “Peter’s smoking a pipe’’ the following:
“T assert that Peter smokes a pipe.”’

“T beg of you (Peter) that you smoke a pipe.”
“Task you (Peter), do you smoke a pipe?”’
“I warn you (Peter), smoke a pipe.”

In a genetic perspective, the speech-act-invariance of proposi-
tional contents appears as an uncoupling of illocutionary and