Page 100 - Oswald Ducrot, Slovenian Lectures, Digitalna knjižnica/Digital Library, Dissertationes 6
P. 100
Slovenian Lectures
to describe the semantic value of sentences in those terms. What the com-
binative semantics I am proposing tries to explain is the way a word deter-
mines the argumentative orientation of the sentences in which it occurs
and thereby, the argumentative usage of the utterances of those sentences.
There is however a third possible, or even necessary, type of encounter
between linguistic research and the notion of truth, and this one does put
me in an awkward position: it consists in the fact that most linguists (in-
cluding myself, when I am not careful) make themselves out as formulat-
ing true propositions, or at least propositions susceptible of being true or
false about some particular language or another or about language in gen-
eral. Such a claim must seem an unreasonable one to make if one admits
that, as I have repeated over and over again, sentences of the language-sys-
tem, given their semantic structure, cannot run as candidates for truth or
falsehood. Indeed, until now, it is within natural languages, which accord-
ing to me are argumentative and not truth-functional, that linguistic think-
ing is carried out and its results formulated. In that situation, I can envis-
age only two possible positions to adopt. On the one hand, the linguist
can try to construct an artificial truth-conditional metalanguage. That is
what all the natural sciences do: even if they use material signs provided
by natural languages abundantly, they try to ascribe new values to them
making truth-conditional discourse possible: concepts with precise appli-
cation conditions are made to correspond to words. That goes on even for
the use of connectives like so or if which in mathematics, for example, have a
very different meaning from the one they have in ordinary language. Think
also of the value given in mathematics to words like necessary and sufficient,
which have only a remote bearing on their ordinary use. I would certainly
like to be able to do the same thing in linguistics. But I cannot, and do not
wish to, close my eyes to the fact that I am far from having achieved this.
Undoubtedly, in my lectures, I have tried to construct a few definitions but
I know full well that I have done no more than characterize the directions
for the use of the words I use. For example, I cannot formulate a definition
of the following kind: “Discourse is argumentative if and only if such and
such conditions obtain”. Perhaps I will be able to do so on another visit to
Ljubljana but, between you and me, I would like to come back before. It
is therefore the second possible position with which I must be content, at
least provisionally. It consists in consciously giving linguistic discourse itself
not a truth-functional but an argumentative and especially polemical end.
Its end is not to say what language is but simply to question certain sim-
plistic images that people entertain about it; and among those images, the
to describe the semantic value of sentences in those terms. What the com-
binative semantics I am proposing tries to explain is the way a word deter-
mines the argumentative orientation of the sentences in which it occurs
and thereby, the argumentative usage of the utterances of those sentences.
There is however a third possible, or even necessary, type of encounter
between linguistic research and the notion of truth, and this one does put
me in an awkward position: it consists in the fact that most linguists (in-
cluding myself, when I am not careful) make themselves out as formulat-
ing true propositions, or at least propositions susceptible of being true or
false about some particular language or another or about language in gen-
eral. Such a claim must seem an unreasonable one to make if one admits
that, as I have repeated over and over again, sentences of the language-sys-
tem, given their semantic structure, cannot run as candidates for truth or
falsehood. Indeed, until now, it is within natural languages, which accord-
ing to me are argumentative and not truth-functional, that linguistic think-
ing is carried out and its results formulated. In that situation, I can envis-
age only two possible positions to adopt. On the one hand, the linguist
can try to construct an artificial truth-conditional metalanguage. That is
what all the natural sciences do: even if they use material signs provided
by natural languages abundantly, they try to ascribe new values to them
making truth-conditional discourse possible: concepts with precise appli-
cation conditions are made to correspond to words. That goes on even for
the use of connectives like so or if which in mathematics, for example, have a
very different meaning from the one they have in ordinary language. Think
also of the value given in mathematics to words like necessary and sufficient,
which have only a remote bearing on their ordinary use. I would certainly
like to be able to do the same thing in linguistics. But I cannot, and do not
wish to, close my eyes to the fact that I am far from having achieved this.
Undoubtedly, in my lectures, I have tried to construct a few definitions but
I know full well that I have done no more than characterize the directions
for the use of the words I use. For example, I cannot formulate a definition
of the following kind: “Discourse is argumentative if and only if such and
such conditions obtain”. Perhaps I will be able to do so on another visit to
Ljubljana but, between you and me, I would like to come back before. It
is therefore the second possible position with which I must be content, at
least provisionally. It consists in consciously giving linguistic discourse itself
not a truth-functional but an argumentative and especially polemical end.
Its end is not to say what language is but simply to question certain sim-
plistic images that people entertain about it; and among those images, the
