Mark Lance

speaker

315 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Dec 2010 last heard Dec 2010

Mark Lance’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Elucidations · Episode 18: Mark Lance discusses language and power · 6 Dec 2010 podcast

Now, cases like that are sort of pure in that the performative function is existing more or less by itself.

Not really, but for present purposes, that'll do.

Rebecca and I are very interested in structures of language that are not purely performative nor purely reporting, but, as it were, mix these together in all sorts of ways.

One paper we work on, we look at the way that calls of various sorts can institute new relational contexts between us that have certain kinds of normative asymmetries in them, right?

So the hello is fundamentally symmetrical.

I recognize you, you recognize me, there's nothing...

in the structure of the hello that's different about that.

But if I give you an order, it's not like that at all.

To give you an order is to call upon you to recognize a kind of differential authority, a kind of authority that I have over you.

It's to accept an obligation to perform an action on the basis of my differential power to place that obligation on you.

To follow an order is more than merely to do the thing ordered.

My mom comes to the house and says,

You have to clean your house.

I might not recognize that she has a right to tell me how to clean my house anymore, but nonetheless, clean the house.

So to follow an order is to acknowledge the differential authority of the orderer to give you an obligation, right?

And we try to lay out in a lot of detail the difference between orders, requests, and treaties, various kinds of these structured speech acts that set up particular relations in a particular context.

But these things, you know, aren't just episodic in that way, because some kinds of calls structure us into longer term relations that are also asymmetrical.

So think of, you know, you walk into your classroom the first day and you say, OK, everybody come to order and you greet the class.

Part of what's going on there is that you're establishing yourself in the role of teacher and them in the role of student.

And these are different relations.

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