Page 89 - Oswald Ducrot, Slovenian Lectures, Digitalna knjižnica/Digital Library, Dissertationes 6
P. 89
Lecture V
are unjustified. There is therefore abuse it seems to me in maintaining a
common denoted component for prudent and timorous, because the risks
in question are not at all the same in the two cases.
One could say that in another way by saying that the connoted compo-
nent comes out on to the denoted component and transforms it: from the
fact that I approve Peter’s avoiding risks, those risks become unreasonable;
from the fact that I disapprove, they become reasonable risks. Now you un-
derstand that reasonable and unreasonable are not denotational notions. An
advocate of the theory I am criticizing could not say to me: “Well, I am go-
ing to improve my theory to answer your objection, and I will say that when
one uses the word prudent, the denotation is ‘He avoids unreasonable risks’
and when one uses the word timorous, the denotation is ‘He avoids taking
reasonable risks’”. An advocate of the connotation-denotation theory can-
not give me that answer, because reasonableness and unreasonableness have
nothing to do with denotation: for a risk to be reasonable or unreasonable
is not a fact (nor is it a fact for the risk to be real or apparent).
To try to give you a real example of that distinction between reason-
able risk and unreasonable risk, and so between prudence and timorous-
ness, here is a factual experience. Personally, when I drive my car, rightly
or wrongly, I have the impression of being prudent, that is to say of avoid-
ing risks which seem to me unreasonable. Now, when my children judge
the way I drive, they think I am timorous: that is to say, that I avoid tak-
ing even reasonable risks, or only apparent ones. Probably, if I were to judge
myself as I was thirty years ago, I would find myself not prudent but tim-
orous. That goes to show that there is nothing objective in that distinc-
tion between prudent and timorous, because the notion of risk present in
those two notions is completely subjective. That was what I wanted to say
on the group of four adjectives and, generally, on the use of topoi and topi-
cal forms to describe lexical words.
***
Now, I am going to take an example from a completely different area:
grammar. My first example will be the word almost. And there again, I am
going to try and show that to describe that word, which is a constituent of
sentences from the language-system, it can be very interesting to bring in ar-
gumentative notions. We are going to study structures of the almost X type,
in which X is a numerical or more generally quantitative expression. For ex-
ample, “It’s almost eight o’clock”, “it’s going to last almost ten minutes”, “It
are unjustified. There is therefore abuse it seems to me in maintaining a
common denoted component for prudent and timorous, because the risks
in question are not at all the same in the two cases.
One could say that in another way by saying that the connoted compo-
nent comes out on to the denoted component and transforms it: from the
fact that I approve Peter’s avoiding risks, those risks become unreasonable;
from the fact that I disapprove, they become reasonable risks. Now you un-
derstand that reasonable and unreasonable are not denotational notions. An
advocate of the theory I am criticizing could not say to me: “Well, I am go-
ing to improve my theory to answer your objection, and I will say that when
one uses the word prudent, the denotation is ‘He avoids unreasonable risks’
and when one uses the word timorous, the denotation is ‘He avoids taking
reasonable risks’”. An advocate of the connotation-denotation theory can-
not give me that answer, because reasonableness and unreasonableness have
nothing to do with denotation: for a risk to be reasonable or unreasonable
is not a fact (nor is it a fact for the risk to be real or apparent).
To try to give you a real example of that distinction between reason-
able risk and unreasonable risk, and so between prudence and timorous-
ness, here is a factual experience. Personally, when I drive my car, rightly
or wrongly, I have the impression of being prudent, that is to say of avoid-
ing risks which seem to me unreasonable. Now, when my children judge
the way I drive, they think I am timorous: that is to say, that I avoid tak-
ing even reasonable risks, or only apparent ones. Probably, if I were to judge
myself as I was thirty years ago, I would find myself not prudent but tim-
orous. That goes to show that there is nothing objective in that distinc-
tion between prudent and timorous, because the notion of risk present in
those two notions is completely subjective. That was what I wanted to say
on the group of four adjectives and, generally, on the use of topoi and topi-
cal forms to describe lexical words.
***
Now, I am going to take an example from a completely different area:
grammar. My first example will be the word almost. And there again, I am
going to try and show that to describe that word, which is a constituent of
sentences from the language-system, it can be very interesting to bring in ar-
gumentative notions. We are going to study structures of the almost X type,
in which X is a numerical or more generally quantitative expression. For ex-
ample, “It’s almost eight o’clock”, “it’s going to last almost ten minutes”, “It
