CMN 457, Spring 2003

Lecture #1: Introduction - the interactive moment

The view of language as not being primarily for the representation of things in the world, not primarily for the communication of information, or for the expression of thoughts (mental states), but for the forming of relationships (a relational view of language).

1. Classical idea: people 'put' their 'ideas' 'into' words

Words are 'container' - they have a 'content'
Listeners must 'get out' what speakers 'put into' words

Give it up - this 'picture' of speaking is no use to you here.

We don't understand each other yet - not fully.

2. Another classical 'idea': our knowledge of everything is like our knowledge of objects

We 'see' what something is like.
If we know 'it' we can 'picture' it.
In this `view' we can know something completely and accurately.

This view of the nature of knowledge (epistemology) is of no use to us here.

The idea that knowing - or getting to know -people is like getting to know objects, is no use to us here.
Getting to know people is special - something on its own - sui generis.
Its possible - but it is slow - takes time - it develops.
 

3. If not 'putting ideas into words' what are we doing?

Two things:

i) Responding to each other:
Feeling attracted or repulsed; agreeing or disagreeing; imaging examples or scenes; being totally confused and anxious; frightened; wanting to voice one's reply; to elaborate; to test, and so on; obeying; being 'instructed'.

ii) Relating to each other:
In doing all these things, we are coordinating our activities with each other.

At least, proposing the possibility of it.
When I say something, you write it down.
When I set an exam, ask questions, you give answers.
When I suggest a problem, you think about it.
And so on: this is a type of relationship - teacher-student.

This is what is going on now:

You are responding to what I am saying from within the developing and changing relationship between us.

4. Central to this view: the 'speech situation'

the 'interactive moment'
'words in their speaking'
not 'patterns of already spoken words'

The 'interactive moment:' the moment of uncertainty, anxiety, or indeterminacy, when one person is waiting to hear how an Other responds - it is both the moment when something uniquely new is created, and also, when interpersonal politics is at its most intense.
 

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Joint Action
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Major point of course: We do no act as isolated, self-contained individuals. When interacting with other people, we do so from within a very special moment of 'responsive contact' with each other - joint action.

5. What happens from within a relationship?

Example: not a negative but a positive relationship.

Two people `going out' for some time
One says to the other 'I love you':

• -a) Not a simple statement of fact, but the utterance works to reconstitute the whole character of the relationship. Indeed, the utterance `acts back', so to speak, to change the nature of the speaker too.
• -b) Speaker takes on new duties (ethical) - in exchange for new rights regarding the person of the other.
• -c) Both will change in their sensibility: what they notice in the other person; the way that they care.
• -d) The utterance 'I love you' will, in one sense, come `out of the blue.'

 As a result of these words, the relationship will be transformed - a discontinuity in the interactive flow - a new, novel, relationship will be created.

If said at the right moment - occasion - it will draw its power from what has been going on in the relationship so far - the relation's history.The words function to make a crucial difference at a crucial moment.

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the interactive moment
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Thus to use these powerful words properly takes judgment - hence your feelings of risk, apprehension, anxiety, etc., - for your whole being is at stake.

These are not questions of epistemology - to do with simply with getting or giving new information - but with orientation or social ontology, to do with changing the being of the people concerned.

Indeed, as I said earlier, the utterance once `acts back' to change the nature of the speaker, to change the speaker's rights and duties, and, to change the other person's rights and duties too - if they, that is, accept the declaration.

It is the speaker's sense of their `being' in the relationship - `who' they are in it (the kind of person: free, joyful, creative, or, trapped, miserable, mechanical). How they are `positioned' in it (`close' or `distant' from the other person) - it is that provides them with a `basis' or `grounds' for their declaration. So, in that sense - that they feel they have reasons for their declaration, it doesn't come `out of the blue'.

e) So: you have made your declaration, and they accept it: 'I love you too' - and a whole new relationship with the other begins to be fashioned.

From within it, a whole new world begins to open up

People `in love' are:

i) In control of themselves (or not) in ways different from people who are just friends;
ii) They expect and notice different things in, and have different motives regarding each other;
iii) They use different ways (methods and criteria) of judging each other's worth;
iv) They think of themselves as `in' something belonging to both of them; they are a `we' not merely a `you' and `I';
v) Clearly, intense urges, impulses, and desires are being channeled and shaped in the relationship - don't forget this.
vi) The relationship does not just `happen' `naturally' - those within it must `cultivate' it.

f) Let me amplify this last point:

What happens when `the relationship' begins to run into trouble:

• 'Look, I've been meaning to say something to you for some time: we're just not getting along like we used to'
• 'Oh, really, everything seems fine to me'

Or 'Yes, you're right - I've begun to feel that too'

• 'Well, the trouble `is'..........................'

At that point, one person begins to account for the activity in the relationship; they want to:

- describe it
- explain it
- justify it

- clarify what would otherwise seem a disorganized flow of activity
- put different episodes into a context, and so on,

- assign responsibilities
- blame
- issue commands
- instructions
- (less extreme) make suggestions
- wonder if
- invite discussion

The `cultivating' of the relationship, that at first was done spontaneous, in response to the context - people's feelings of their `position' in it - becomes reflective and analytic; the `care' becomes deliberative.

g) A `love' relationship, then, involves matter of ethics:

commitments
responsibilities (being answerable)
being shamed for not honoring expectations

While not perhaps so emotionally intense, not so exclusive of others - but exclusive none the less - many of our activities in everyday life take place within the context of such conversationally developed relationships.

7. Some are fleeting, some are more long term

Historically developed `ways of going on' in:

offices
bureaucracies
educational establishments
etc.

8. Certain `official' ways of talking, or 'basic' ways of talking:

Taken-for-granted
Sacrosanct
shocking to speak against them
'God is Dead': Nietzsche.

9 Shocking talk undermines the boundaries between our categories - how we make sense of the world (see it) - it undermines us.

Our `official' way of talking about ourselves.

1) We: understand = having a picture in our heads.
2) Dinka: 'have no such interior entity [as a mind] to appear, on reflection, to stand between the experiencing self at any given moment and what is (or has been) an exterior influence upon the self' (Lienhardt, 1961, p 149)

How we understand ourselves from within our reality is very different from how they understand themselves from within theirs.

10. But could we find ways to get along with them?

11. What this course is about: getting inside our conversational realities.

Resources from within a Conversational Reality for use by members in relating themselves:

- to each other
- to older and younger generations
- to yet others: strangers, foreigners, others
- to the past (history)
- to the future (and one's own death)
- to the earth
- to the extraordinary
- to the absolute: freedom; truth; human dignity