Page 90 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

67 What Is Universal Pragmatics?

attitude with an objectivating attitude toward society; conversely,
we can switch to a conformative attitude in domains in which
(today) we normally behave objectivatingly—for example, in
relation to animals and plants. I class as zmternal nature all wishes,
feelings, intentions, etc., to which an “‘I’”’ has privileged access and
cam express as its own experiences before a public. It is “pre-
cisely in this expressive attitude that the “T’’ knows itself not only
as subjectivity but also as something that has always already
transcended the bounds of mere subjectivity, in cognition, lan-
guage, and interaction simultaneously. To be sure, if the subject
adopts an objectivating attitude toward himself, this alters the
sense in which intentions can be expressed.
Finally, I introduced the linguistic medium of our utterances
as a special region; precisely because language (including non-
propositional symbol systems) remains in a peculiar half-tran-
scendence in the performance of our communicative actions and
expressions, it presents itself to the speaker and the actor (pre-
consciously) as a segment of reality su7 generis. Again, this does
not preclude our being able to adopt, in regard to linguistic utter-
ances or systems of symbols, an objectivating attitude directed to
the sounds or signs.
The model intuitively introduced here is that of a communica-
tion in which grammatical sentences are embedded, by way of
universal validity claims, in three relations to reality, thereby as-
suming the corresponding pragmatic functions of representing
facts, establishing legitimate interpersonal relations, and express-
ing one’s own subjectivity. According to this model, language can
be conceived as the medium of interrelating three worlds; for
every successful communicative action there exists a threefold
relation between the utterance and (a) “the external world’’ as
the totality of existing states of affairs, (b) “our social world” as
the totality of all normatively regulated interpersonal relations
that count as legitimate in a given society, and (c) “a particular
inner world’ (of the speaker) as the totality of his intentional
experiences.
We can examine every utterance to see whether it is true or
untrue, justified or unjustified, truthful or untruthful, because
in speech, no matter what the emphasis, grammatical sentences