John Locke and John Austin on Language
Abstract: I offer a basic rendition and comparison of John Locke and John Austin’s ideas of language and analyze their political import.
Locke employs language to define political belonging in terms of limited government. For Locke, the nature of our language sets an epistemological limit to the nature of our knowledge, thus narrowing the scope of legitimate political activity. In chapter II of book I of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, under a section titled “No innate Principles in the Mind,” Locke outlines the theory of language he will subsequently develop throughout his work: “The senses at first let in particular ideas, and furnish the yet empty cabinet: and the mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the memory, and names got to them. Afterwards the mind proceeding farther, abstracts them, and by degrees learns the use of general names. In this manner the mind comes to be furnished with leads and language.” (Ess. 55) Locke grounds his theory of language in the primacy of sensory experience; data gathered by the senses is then arbitrarily assigned a signifier, which in turn comes to stand as a general concept for all particular instances of a given phenomenon.[i] This general concept is further labeled an “idea.” The movement from particularity to generality as a process of abstraction that produces ideas is vital for Locke: “The far greatest part of words, that make all languages, are general terms: which has not been the effect of neglect, or chance, but of reason, and necessity.” (Ess. 409)
The abstraction from particular to general enables sensory experience to become definable,[ii] and it is the definability of an idea that promotes interpersonal communication.[iii] As Locke notes, “Men making abstract ideas, and settling them in their minds, with names annexed to them, do thereby enable themselves to consider things, and discourse on them, as it were in bundles, for the easier and readier improvement, and communication of their knowledge…” (Ess. 420) In short, our sensory perceptions are made communicatively salient to the extent that they are subsumed under the definability of general ideas; the “chief end of language” is, then, the capacity to mark and verify phenomena in the natural world, and refer to these phenomena through words viz. the ideas in the minds of interlocutors.[iv]
Given the framework of sensory perception that conditions the possibility of our linguistic signification, Locke narrows the realm of legitimate argumentative discourse to include only those things he defines as knowable. Locke’s critique of innate ideas is simultaneously an assault on the traditional Platonic philosophy of the forms as well as a response to the religious conflicts of his own era. By substituting his new doctrine of sensory abstraction for the traditional notion of innate ideas, Locke is able to limit political discourse along the lines of what actually constitutes “knowledge.” In this regard, Locke’s treatment of arguments surrounding the idea of the soul is illuminating. Because these arguments draw from conceptualizations well beyond the pale of our sensory experience, the conceptions themselves hold no reference to the actual world. To this end, they are fundamentally unknowable, do not constitute ideas, and erase the possibility of deliberation. Since “We can have knowledge no farther than we have ideas,” (Ess. 538) the example of the soul “serves, not only to shew the weakness and scantiness of our knowledge, but the insignificant triumph of such sort of arguments, which, drawn from our own views, may satisfy us that we can find no certainty on one side of the question…” (Ess. 542-543)
This lack of certainty means that some questions and arguments—especially theological concerns—can never be adjudicated through the use of reason or argument. Certain problems thus become, politically speaking, “off the table,” and the philosophical grounds for political toleration are established. The nature of our knowledge, given the nature of our language, limits the things that we may effectively argue about and do viz. the autonomy of one another. Locke is thus able to establish his theory of natural rights and limited government on these philosophical grounds, limiting the scope of discourse—and extending the scope of political belonging—to only those concerns which are verifiable. The nature of government, and the basis of its legitimate limitation, is thus determined by the nature of man’s language viz. his knowledge: “all the power of civil government relates only to men’s civil interests, is confined to the care of the things of this world, and hath nothing to do with the world to come.”[v] This is in part the case because civic government, by definition, has nothing to verifiably say about the “world to come.”
Locke’s treatment of language is indicative of the general pre-20th century approach to communication. We might term this approach, broadly, the correspondence theory of speech: there are things in the world we assign marks to, and, in that this assignment of marks permits logically consistent inferences, statements are verifiable along a “truth/false” registrar.[vi] Post-WWII Anglo-American philosophy witnessed a powerful challenge to this dominant view: Wittgenstein’s ordinary language philosophy and Austin’s speech-act theory sought rather to explore and define the performative dimensions of speech. The assumption, briefly stated by Wittgenstein, is that language is not the site where knowledge and action come to meet, but that rather language is a type of activity unto itself: “Worte sind Taten.”[vii] By framing language in performative terms, ordinary language theorists like Wittgenstein and Austin believed that the traditional problems of the correspondence theory of language—and the metaphysical commitments this theory assumes—would dissolve in this new theoretical solvent.
But what does it mean to consider a word a deed, and how does this differ from previous treatments of language? Austin’s analysis of performatives is particularly insightful on this front. For Austin, performatives stand in contrast to what he calls the “constative” dimension of words, or their potential to be distinguished as true or false. (HTD. 3) Rather than looking to the semantic qualities of words themselves, or taxonomizing words along guidelines of grammatical differentiation, Austin is instead concerned with evaluating the context within which utterances are used.[viii] Whereas for Locke language is designed to communicate ideas among users who share the same classification of mental marks, for Austin language performs an act.[ix]
Initially, Austin attempts to isolate the performative utterance as a class of utterances unto themselves and in direct contrast to constatives. His main concern here is with a particular type of performative utterance, one that is deployed primarily in highly structured ceremonial gatherings. In these contexts, “There must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a certain conventional effect, that procedure to include the uttering of certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances…” (HTD. 14) Austin uses the example of a ship’s christening: that I may walk up to a “vessel on the stocks,” “smash a bottle hung at the stem,” and declare the ship’s name “Mr. Stalin” does not mean that this speech-act has been successfully deployed, but that it rather stands for what Austin calls a “misfire.” (HTD. 23) Nothing happens beyond my own foolery; the boat is named something else; and the act is void. The problem, of course, is that I was “not a proper person,” authorized viz. preexisting conventions, to effect something like this. Austin would then say that my utterance was not strictly “false,” but rather “infelicitous.” The deployment of a performative in contexts of highly-structured ritual must conform, then, to preexisting standards and roles that structure conventional behavior. It is in this manner that I must be the designated “right person” performing the “right act” at the “right time” for my utterance to be “happy” or “felicitous.”
It is in this way that performatives are thoroughly conventional in nature. What complicates this assessment is the nature of performatives outside of these regulated contexts. Ultimately, Austin finds his initial approach wanting, and turns in the latter half of the book toward an analysis of the performative conditions inherently latent in all types of utterances. He distinguishes three types of acts: locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary. Austin defines the locutionary as the “act of saying something in a full normal sense,” (HTD. 94) which amounts to the fact that something of “meaning” has been uttered. As we perform locutionary acts, so too do we perform illocutionary acts: the illocutionary refers to the “spirit” of the utterance, its felt reception as a mode of communication. To this end, I may be warning, promising, and so forth. (HTD. 98-99) Finally, Austin defines the perlocutionary as the actual impact the utterance has in the world, especially in terms of (re)directing the activities of others.[x] While the illocutionary act is conventionally regulated, the perlocutionary act is instead dependent on the actual dynamic of attitudes and opinions within a given context.
The division between the illocutionary and perlocutionary, or utterances that ascribe to preexisting conventions and utterances that are dependent on contextual reception, is precisely where the political import of Austin’s theory emerges. Under Austin’s taxonomy of misfires and abuses, there is a particular category (A. I) that deserves special attention. For Austin, the question at stake is the nature of a perlocutionary utterance unmoored from conventional expectations, and it is clear that this problem stands as a persistent question mark in his theory. (HTD. 18) The less ritualistic the interaction—that is, the less structured and conventionally regulated—then the more this ambiguity at the heart of perlocutions necessitates the question: what happens when one who is not conventionally authorized commits a perlocutionary act? Or, better: how do users of utterances authorize themselves, where conventions are either silent, unknowable or otherwise exclusionary?
By erasing the traditional distinction between knowing and doing viz. the perlocutionary and performative aspects of all utterances, Austin’s theory lends itself to the problem of political belonging. If there remains an intrinsic liminality between the elements of convention, authority and felicitous performatives, then the question as to how conventions are to change or how authority is to be established remains an open one. This is particularly relevant in terms of groups or persons excluded from preexisting conventional authorization. And, while Austin himself is silent on the political program derivable from his speech-act theory, his legacy in the 20th century has been taken up by theorists concerned primarily with the “part that has no part,” or with groups attempting to self-authorize in the face of oppression, denial or exclusion. It is here that the legacy of Austin is made full: Ranciere, as one example of the way Austin has been appropriated, rejects the Aristotelian notion of speech that began this paper in favor of addressing speech’s inherent power to alter structures of domination and expand the frame of political belonging. Concerned with the problem of what it means to “give oneself a name,” Ranciere represents one treatment of speech in 21st century political thought. (Dis. 25) It is Ranciere, then, that will have the final statement as to the political relevance of speech-acts in post-Austinian thought: “Politics, Ranciere begins, “does not exist because men, through the privilege of speech, place their interests in common. Politics exist because those who have no right to be counted as speaking beings make themselves of some account…” (Dis. 27) It is in this “making themselves of some account” that Austin is made most relevant, and the traditional analyses of language found in Aristotle and Locke that privileged knowledge and communication recede in favor of studying language primarily in terms of power and contentious political belongings.[xi]
[i] Locke is keen to note that the arbitrary nature of the mark’s assignment does not mean that the generalization is arbitrary. As Locke argues, “the sorting of them [things] under names, is the workmanship of the understanding, taking occasion from the similitude it observes amongst them, to make abstract general ideas, and set them up in the mind with names annexed to them.” See John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, p. 415
[ii] Locke defines “definability” as such: “For definition being nothing but making another understand by words, what idea, the term defined stands for, a definition is best made by enumerating those simple ideas that are combined in the signification of the term defined…” See John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, p. 413
[iii] Though, Locke is careful to note, miscommunication and misunderstanding are always possible. See John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. III Ch. X: “Of the Abuse of Words,” pp. 490-508
[iv] Locke explicitly states the “chief end of language”: “Men learn names, and use them in talk with others, only that they may be understood: which is then only done, hen by use or consent, the sound I make by the organs of speech, excites in another man’s mind, who hears it, the idea I apply it to in mine, when I speak it.” See John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, p. 409
[v] John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, p. 220; Locke further elaborates on this, making it the foundation of limited government: “the whole jurisdiction of the magistrate reaches only to these civic concernments; and that all civil power, right, and dominion, is bounded and confined to the only care of promoting these things; and that it neither can nor ought in any manner to be extended to the salvation of souls…” John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, p. 218
[vi] Locke says this on truth: “Truth then seems to me, in the proper import of the word, to signify nothing but the joining or separating of signs, as the things signified by them, do agree or disagree with one another.” John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, p. 574
[vii] Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 46
[viii] As Austin argues, “We must consider the total situation in which the utterance is issued—the total speech-act…” Austin, How to Do Things With Words, p. 52
[ix] As Austin defines it, performatives “do not ‘describe’ or ‘report’ or constate anything at all, are not ‘true or false’; and the uttering of the sentence is, or is a part of, the doing of an action…” Austin, How to Do Things With Words, p. 5
[x] Austin, How to Do Things With Words, p. 101: “Saying something will often, or even normally, produce certain consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts or action of the audience…”
[xi] For another appropriation of Austin, see Jason Frank’s Constituent Moments