Page 22 - Oswald Ducrot, Slovenian Lectures, Digitalna knjižnica/Digital Library, Dissertationes 6
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Slovenian Lectures
it maintains an objective part, an informative part within meaning: a part
called the propositional content. To try to show that the maintaining of an ob-
jective propositional content is ultimately incompatible with linguistic real-
ity, I am going to take a number of examples, I am going to try to show that
those forms of analysis which I have just mentioned, ultimately, are not very
interesting; sometimes, they are even impossible.
Let us take a first example like “That film’s interesting”. (It is an abso-
lutely commonplace example.) Were I to analyse that utterance in Searle’s
way, I would say there is a propositional content, the film’s being interest-
ing, and then, an illocutionary force, an affirmation. One should ask: what
can that propositional content, the interest in a film, possibly be? Accord-
ing to Searle, the propositional content is something which has truth-con-
ditions, which can be true or false. But in your opinion, can the truth-con-
ditions of the idea the interest of a film be defined? Can that notion the in-
terest of a film be given a definition like the following: it is true that a film is
interesting, if such and such a set of conditions obtain? Personally, I do not
see how one could do that, I do not see how the notion the interest of a film
can be described in terms of true and false. For my part, I do not know an-
yone who has managed to do so. Should you see a possibility of doing so,
tell me: I would be very grateful. You can see why the philosophers of lan-
guage have constructed that notion of a propositional content. The utter-
ances that they use as examples are always, like the logicians’: “Peter will
come”, “Two and two make four”, “The snow is white”. There, you can speak
of truth-conditions and even then, I am not so sure. But if you think about
everyday utterances, like “That film’s interesting”, what can their truth-con-
ditions be? For my part, I can see only one solution for a semantic descrip-
tion of that utterance, – and I will develop that kind of solution in the fol-
lowing lectures, – which is to look for the conclusion in view of which one
can be brought to produce such an utterance. What is the purpose of utter-
ing “That film’s interesting”? To answer that question, you must, accord-
ing to me, ask yourself how you could go on. For example, you could say:
“That film’s interesting. Go and see it!” In other words, the utterance “That
film’s interesting” is not a possible argument for a conclusion like “Don’t go
and see it!” It is difficult to see how it would be possible to say that without
coming up with an extremely complex context. What you could do is say
“That film’s interesting but...” (the word but makes its first appearance here,
a word we will speak a lot about) ... “but don’t go and see it!”
Other examples of the same type are “That meeting was nice” or “That
evening was nice”. In Searlian terms, I should say that there is a proposition-
it maintains an objective part, an informative part within meaning: a part
called the propositional content. To try to show that the maintaining of an ob-
jective propositional content is ultimately incompatible with linguistic real-
ity, I am going to take a number of examples, I am going to try to show that
those forms of analysis which I have just mentioned, ultimately, are not very
interesting; sometimes, they are even impossible.
Let us take a first example like “That film’s interesting”. (It is an abso-
lutely commonplace example.) Were I to analyse that utterance in Searle’s
way, I would say there is a propositional content, the film’s being interest-
ing, and then, an illocutionary force, an affirmation. One should ask: what
can that propositional content, the interest in a film, possibly be? Accord-
ing to Searle, the propositional content is something which has truth-con-
ditions, which can be true or false. But in your opinion, can the truth-con-
ditions of the idea the interest of a film be defined? Can that notion the in-
terest of a film be given a definition like the following: it is true that a film is
interesting, if such and such a set of conditions obtain? Personally, I do not
see how one could do that, I do not see how the notion the interest of a film
can be described in terms of true and false. For my part, I do not know an-
yone who has managed to do so. Should you see a possibility of doing so,
tell me: I would be very grateful. You can see why the philosophers of lan-
guage have constructed that notion of a propositional content. The utter-
ances that they use as examples are always, like the logicians’: “Peter will
come”, “Two and two make four”, “The snow is white”. There, you can speak
of truth-conditions and even then, I am not so sure. But if you think about
everyday utterances, like “That film’s interesting”, what can their truth-con-
ditions be? For my part, I can see only one solution for a semantic descrip-
tion of that utterance, – and I will develop that kind of solution in the fol-
lowing lectures, – which is to look for the conclusion in view of which one
can be brought to produce such an utterance. What is the purpose of utter-
ing “That film’s interesting”? To answer that question, you must, accord-
ing to me, ask yourself how you could go on. For example, you could say:
“That film’s interesting. Go and see it!” In other words, the utterance “That
film’s interesting” is not a possible argument for a conclusion like “Don’t go
and see it!” It is difficult to see how it would be possible to say that without
coming up with an extremely complex context. What you could do is say
“That film’s interesting but...” (the word but makes its first appearance here,
a word we will speak a lot about) ... “but don’t go and see it!”
Other examples of the same type are “That meeting was nice” or “That
evening was nice”. In Searlian terms, I should say that there is a proposition-
