CMN 457, Spring 2003

Lect #2: C.W.. Mills (1940):

In the moral approach to everyday activity has the following features:

• -i) People live in a moral environment; there is a normal, or normative, way of acting;
• -ii) people normally understand each other directly and immediately; they do not have to have evidence for their avowals - "I'm sorry, I don't understand," "What, how do you know you don't understand?";
• -iii) people only have to account for their actions if they are untoward in some way;
• -iv) their account is honored, i.e., accepted, if they succeed in showing that their action is a) intelligible, and b) legitimate, i.e., that it 'fits' within an acceptable scheme of things, within a 'way of life".

Language as coordinating diverse action:

This leads to view of language as not being primarily for the representation of things in the world, not primarily for the communication of information, but for the forming of relationships (a relational view of language). To quote Mills, it entails:

"... the overthrow of the Wundtian notion that language has as its function the 'expression' of prior elements within the individual... [W]e must approach linguistic behavior, not by referring it to private states within the individual, but by observing its social function of coordinating diverse action. Rather than expressing something which is prior and in the person, language is taken by other persons as an indication of future actions."

Sometimes, this is expressed by saying that language has a 'promissory' character, or, that one is committed in the future by what one says in the present - morality is embedded in its very use.

Motives, 'anticipated situational consequences of questioned conduct:

• -Traditionally, in science and philosophy, it has been thought that people's behavior is completely determined. "Motives" are the hidden springs of action for all our behavior.
• -But, in everyday life, we only usually engage in motive-talk, in the imputation or avowal of motives, as "answers to questions interrupting acts or programs" (p.113), i.e., on those special occasions when routine activities 'break down'..

The project of our analysis:

We want to know: i) the general conditions under which the imputation and avowal of motive occurs; ii) why certain motives are verbalized rather than others; and iii) the devices, etc., by which such talk is 'linked' to action. In other words, as Mills says:

"The differing reasons men give for their actions are not themselves without reasons" (p.113).

What we want is:

"An analysis of the integrating, controlling, and specifying functions a certain type of speech fulfills in socially situated actions" (p.113).

"Motives are imputed or avowed as answers to questions interrupting acts or programs. Motives are words ['accounts']. Generically, to what do they refer? They do not denote any elements 'in' individuals. They stand for anticipated situational consequences of questioned conduct [i.e., the linguistically formulated, anticipated consequences, in the current intralinguistic 'reality']" (p.113).

Being 'in' a 'situation' with others:

It is 'being in a situation with others' which makes it possible to share with them a great deal of 'taken-for-granted', unquestioned and unquestionable, background knowledge (and practices, i.e., routine, everyday ways of doing things). It is in this sense that a situation can be characterized by "the vocabulary of motives" that it allows. For, as Mills says:

"As a word [as an account], a motive tends to be one which is to the actor and the other members of a situation an unquestioned [and unquestionable] answer to questions concerning social and lingual conduct. A stable motive is an ultimate in justificatory conversation" (p.114).

Thus later in the article, Mills suggests that individualistic, sexual, hedonistic,and monetary motives are now, unquestionably, dominant in many sectors of modern life in a way in which they were not earlier. Thus, now:

i) We are skeptical of a Rockefeller's claimed religious motives for his business conduct (and we impute pecuniary greed); ii) we would find a medieval monk's claim - that he gave a poor, but pretty woman food "for the glory of God and the eternal salvation of his own soul" - suspicious (and we impute sex); iii) we find 'radicals' thinking engineers 'reactionary', and 'engineers' find 'radicals' to be 'trouble-makers', and so on.

In our modern, pluralistic society, varying and competing vocabularies of motive operate all mixed up together.

Folk and modern, pluralistic societies:

In folk societies, with everyone in their proper places, in their own fixed station in life, people's motives would rarely need to be questioned, and people would not live in continuous personal or social conflict.

In modern, pluralistic societies, people are 'variously situated' - they occupy many different social roles, and have many different statuses with their associated rights and duties. Hence, accounting for their motivation is not easy. The old style vocabulary of the virtues - talk of duty, love, kindness, charity, etc., - has been infected with other motives - power, gain, advantage, money, rights (rather than duties) and so on.

As Mills points out, motive-talk varies in content and character with both social situations and historical epochs. Thus:

1) The Freudian vocabulary of motives (he claims), "are those of an upper class, bourgeois patriarchal group with a strong sexual and individualistic orientation" (p.116). To all those converted to it, all others seem self-deceptive. To those not convinced by it, it seems to require explanation as one of western society's great delusions.

2) In like manner, believers in Marx's terminology of power, struggle, and economic motive for everything, find all others hypocritical.

3) Hedonistic motive, Mills claims, currently dominate the western world - we have, we feel, a right to happiness (its in the Constitution). "I want to do it because it will make me happy" is an ultimate appeal for many.

The controlling and integrating function of speech:

What avowing of imputing a motive does:

i) The avowing of a motive can 'link' a person's action to a situation; it can integrate one person's actions with another's - the 'fitting' of an action into a scheme of things, a way of life.

ii) Not trying to describe experienced social action; not trying to simply state reasons - people are influencing other people's conduct and their own. Talk of motives provides enabling-constraints, or, constraints and inducements. Such motive-talk

"often function as directives and incentives by virtue of it being the judgments of others as anticipated by the actor. In this sense [motives are 'social instruments', by use of which the agent] will be able to influence [himself or others]" (p.115).

iii) Hence, the control of others is not usually direct, but through our talk about the situation they are in: by the making of imputations and attributions:

""'Do not do that, it is greedy'. Not only does the child learn what to do, what not to do, but he is given standardized motives which promote prescribed actions and dissuade those proscribed" (p.115).

"Genetically, motives are imputed by others before they are avowed by self" (p.115).

Goffman (1959, p.15) "This control is achieved largely by influencing the definition of the situation which the others come to formulate..."

One's 'real' motive: checking out motive claims:

In the quest for 'real' motives as opposed to 'mere rationalizations' is often informed by the metaphysical view that a person's 'real' motive is in some way biological. That at best we can only infer from what a person says what their motive 'really' is. But, of what precisely is one's talk symptomatic? What might it 'represent'?

"All we can infer and empirically check is another verbalization of the agent's which we believe was orienting and controlling behavior at the time the act was performed. The only social items that can 'lie deeper' are other lingual forms. The 'Real Attitude or Motive' is not something different in kind from the verbalization of the 'opinion'. They turn out to be only relatively and temporally different" (p.115).