Page 24 - Oswald Ducrot, Slovenian Lectures, Digitalna knjižnica/Digital Library, Dissertationes 6
P. 24
Slovenian Lectures
child? For a child the word dirty characterizes something to be stood away
from, to move away from. He has learned that word dirty because he has
been told “That dog’s dirty, don’t touch it!”, “That food is dirty, don’t touch
it!”, “That shirt’s dirty, change it!”, “Your face is dirty, go and wash it!”, and
so on. So, as far as the child is concerned, the word dirty is nothing but
an argument to stand away from the thing characterized as dirty. When
someone says a dog is dirty, he is not describing the dog. Besides, the par-
ents themselves, I think, would be put in a real spot if the child was philo-
sophically-minded enough to ask them “Well, what exactly do you mean by
dirty?” If the child asked that, the parents would have to say something like
“Something which is dirty is something you mustn’t touch”, which means
that strictly speaking, their utterance is a tautology: “The dog is something
you mustn’t touch, don’t touch it”. So, I think that you cannot give an infor-
mational value to the word dirty: in its meaning, there is rather the indica-
tion of a certain number of conclusions that you can draw from the ascrip-
tion of dirtiness to an object.
I take a last example. Suppose someone suggests walking back home to
my hotel. And I answer simply “It’s far away”. You can easily imagine the di-
alogue: “Would you like us to walk back to your hotel?” Answer: “It’s far
away”. You all agree that answer “It’s far away” counts as a refusal of the sug-
gestion to walk back to the hotel. If I had wanted to accept the suggestion –
suppose it were a suggestion from someone whom I really wanted to go for a
walk with – I would not have said “It’s far away”, I would have said “Oh yes,
it’s nearby”. Notice the sentences It’s far and It’s nearby are true or false un-
der exactly the same conditions: there are no truth-conditions which make
the expression far accurate and the expression near(by) false. Simply, It’s far
away works as an argument, at least in that situation, to refuse a certain sug-
gestion. Up until now I have been content with describing far in the partic-
ular context I have imagined but if I were looking for a general description
of far as opposed to near, I would say that the word is used to represent the
distance in question as an obstacle. When I say “It’s far away”, I represent
the distance which separates me from a certain place as an obstacle to my
going there. In my example, it is a question of going to that place by foot, so
my utterance “It’s far away” indicates an obstacle to the suggestion which
was made to me to go to that place by foot. If I had been advised to go to
a certain place by car, and I had answered “It’s far away”, I would perhaps
have been saying either that I did not want to go to that place or else that
one should not go to that place by car, but rather for example by train or by
plane. However, there again, the function of “It’s far away” would have been
child? For a child the word dirty characterizes something to be stood away
from, to move away from. He has learned that word dirty because he has
been told “That dog’s dirty, don’t touch it!”, “That food is dirty, don’t touch
it!”, “That shirt’s dirty, change it!”, “Your face is dirty, go and wash it!”, and
so on. So, as far as the child is concerned, the word dirty is nothing but
an argument to stand away from the thing characterized as dirty. When
someone says a dog is dirty, he is not describing the dog. Besides, the par-
ents themselves, I think, would be put in a real spot if the child was philo-
sophically-minded enough to ask them “Well, what exactly do you mean by
dirty?” If the child asked that, the parents would have to say something like
“Something which is dirty is something you mustn’t touch”, which means
that strictly speaking, their utterance is a tautology: “The dog is something
you mustn’t touch, don’t touch it”. So, I think that you cannot give an infor-
mational value to the word dirty: in its meaning, there is rather the indica-
tion of a certain number of conclusions that you can draw from the ascrip-
tion of dirtiness to an object.
I take a last example. Suppose someone suggests walking back home to
my hotel. And I answer simply “It’s far away”. You can easily imagine the di-
alogue: “Would you like us to walk back to your hotel?” Answer: “It’s far
away”. You all agree that answer “It’s far away” counts as a refusal of the sug-
gestion to walk back to the hotel. If I had wanted to accept the suggestion –
suppose it were a suggestion from someone whom I really wanted to go for a
walk with – I would not have said “It’s far away”, I would have said “Oh yes,
it’s nearby”. Notice the sentences It’s far and It’s nearby are true or false un-
der exactly the same conditions: there are no truth-conditions which make
the expression far accurate and the expression near(by) false. Simply, It’s far
away works as an argument, at least in that situation, to refuse a certain sug-
gestion. Up until now I have been content with describing far in the partic-
ular context I have imagined but if I were looking for a general description
of far as opposed to near, I would say that the word is used to represent the
distance in question as an obstacle. When I say “It’s far away”, I represent
the distance which separates me from a certain place as an obstacle to my
going there. In my example, it is a question of going to that place by foot, so
my utterance “It’s far away” indicates an obstacle to the suggestion which
was made to me to go to that place by foot. If I had been advised to go to
a certain place by car, and I had answered “It’s far away”, I would perhaps
have been saying either that I did not want to go to that place or else that
one should not go to that place by car, but rather for example by train or by
plane. However, there again, the function of “It’s far away” would have been
