The (In)felicitous

Streetlight

J. L. Austin is best remembered for his work on performatives in language: those words and phrases by which we do things by means of our utterances. Saying "I do" in a marriage ceremony, for instance, doesn't so much as describe or communicate anything in particular, so much as it creates or inaugurates a new reality: it brings about a change in the world (two people are now married). Performativity thus attests to the materiality of language: language is as much a hammer as it is drill-bit: you can do things with it (and not just 'communicate' things).

Of interest here though, is what Austin dubbed the felicitious ('happy') or infelicitious ('unhappy') nature of speech-acts: those instances in which speech-acts fail, or otherwise do not work as required. If the best man at the wedding were to pipe up "yes, I do!", well, his speech-act would not be very effective, because he uttered it in the wrong context: he was in the wrong 'position' (what is sometimes called the 'site' or 'place of enunciation') to make his utterance count. At best, wedding guests might simply look at him queerly; he almost certainly would not be married to the bride.

Felicity, then, is an index of linguistic appropriateness: of what counts, of what is significant (of what can be 'appropriated to' a certain context). Now, one important feature of speech-acts is that they cannot be true or false - they are not 'truth-apt'. The best man is not uttering a false proposition. He is uttering an infelicitous one. The dichotomy felicitous/infelicitous thus takes the place of the dichotomy of the true and the false with respect to speech-acts: speech acts are either more or less effective, not more or less true.

Now, while a great deal of ink has been split on the question of truth, a great deal less has accompanied the question of felicity. This, I think, is unfortunate. For one thing, felicity can be understood (in some ways against Austin) to have a far broader - and thus far more interesting - plane of application than truth: speech-acts are felicitous or infelicitous 'before' (logically) they are true or not; to say: "It's three meters long" when asked "how are you going?" betrays a misunderstanding not of truth, but of context: the very effectivity of speech has failed, and not just it's 'content', as it were.

The reason, I think, why felicity gets such short shrift, is that we often- in most cases rightly - simply take it for granted. People are usually educated well enough to not respond in the manner above, and the best man at the wedding does not, in most circumstances, say "I do" instead of the groom. Felicity thus is a background condition that, because it is so ubiquitous, is under-examined. Any approach to language would benefit, however, from a deeper and more explicit attention to its (in)felicities.

fdrake

Felicity and infelicity would serve as an interesting topic for epistemology. Instead of analysing how propositions connect to truths through justifications, we could analyse what makes certain speech acts good or bad in accordance with their function. This, roughly, is what I see as the big picture behind Ray Brassier's 'Concepts and Objects' (after the critical component), what he imagines as a renewed purpose of epistemology:

Unless reason itself carries out the de-mystification of rationality, irrationalism triumphs by adopting the mantle of a scepticism that allows it to denounce reason as a kind of faith. The result is the post-modern scenario, in which the rationalist imperative to explain phenomena by penetrating to the reality beyond appearances is diagnosed as the symptom of an implicitly theological metaphysical reductionism. The metaphysical injunction to know the noumenal is relinquished by a post-modern ‘irreductionism’ which abjures the epistemological distinction between appearance and reality the better to salvage the reality of every appearance, from sunsets to Santa Claus

To refuse correlationism’s collapsing of epistemology into ontology, and of ontology into politics, is not to retreat into reactionary quietism but to acknowledge the need to forge new conditions of articulation between politics, epistemology, and metaphysics. The politicization of ontology marks a regression to anthropomorphic myopia; the ontologization of politics falters the moment it tries to infer political prescriptions from metaphysical description. Philosophy and politics cannot be metaphysically conjoined; philosophy intersects with politics at the point where critical epistemology transects ideology critique. An emancipatory politics oblivious to epistemology quickly degenerates into metaphysical fantasy, which is to say, a religious
substitute. The failure to change the world may not be unrelated to the failure to understand
it

The distinction between the object’s conceptual reality and its metaphysical
reality has an analogue in the scholastic distinction between objective and formal reality.
Yet it is not a dogmatic or pre-critical residue; rather, it follows from the epistemological
constraint that prohibits the transcendentalization of meaning. The corollary of this critical constraint is the acknowledgement of the transcendental difference between meaning and being, or concept and object. Contrary to what correlationists proclaim, the presupposition of this difference is not a dogmatic prejudice in need of critical legitimation. Quite the reverse: it is the assumption that the difference between concept and object is always internal to the concept—that every difference is ultimately conceptual—that needs to be defended.

Reading the distinction between noumena and phenomena as part of the speech act (not merely 'confined to language' or correlation), by which the objective features of (philosophical?) speech acts could be analysed on their merits of noumenal exhibition, would regardless be an interesting project.

Streetlight

Felicity and infelicity would serve as an interesting topic for epistemology. Instead of analysing how propositions connect to truths through justifications, we could analyse what makes certain speech acts good or bad in accordance with their function.

It would be a curious epistemology though - a kind of para-epistemology, in the sense that this kind of analysis would not be a search for 'adequation' (between 'knowledge and thing') but a search for conditions of possibility (of felicity): thus a transcendental epistemology. The really cool thing about such a seach is that such a transcendental would not be a fixed one, but rather, a variable one: for a while there, two men would have been unable to pronounce a felicitous affirmation of "I do" at the altar; and now, in some places, this has changed. Which means that the question of felicity is directly connected to the questions of politics: of power, authority, recognition, and rebellion - Who holds the power? Who confers the authority? What institutions uphold it? What history undergirds it? (where 'it' is that which enables the felicitious/efficacious enunciation of a speech-act).

Transcendental analysis of this kind would thus not have to merely be 'reflective' of the real: it could even, in some cases, be productive of it; a particular kind of discourse could be self-authorizing ("we are married!"), or at least bring the new into circulation by the stubborn insistence of its own self-affirmation (a bit like Badiou's fidelity to the Event, which, perhaps ironically, is what he says inaugurates Truth itself). This halo of thoughts is why I think that issues around felicity are (Badiou's 'truth' aside), far more interesting than questions of truth.

Snakes Alive

a great deal less has accompanied the question of felicity. — StreetlightX

This is just not true.

Ciceronianus

I dunno. I think performative utterances as described by Austin are parts of an act, in combination with non-verbal conduct and recognized customs, in some cases the law, or rules. An utterance would be infelicitous if the words are such that the act does not take place. The "I do" in a marriage ceremony doesn't create anything in itself, but in combination with the rest of the ceremony (including the presence of a priest or minister or official with the requisite legal authority officiating and signing the necessary documents, witnesses, etc.) will result in two people being married. Words by which a bet is made must be accepted by another participating in the bet. One can't name a ship without the necessary authority to do so, and by smashing a champagne bottle against the ship's bow. (There are examples used by Austin, I think).

The words themselves do nothing; they're part of what is done. I don't think words in themselves create anything. Nor do I think Austin intended to make any epistemological points in How to do Things with Words..

Streetlight

I think performative utterances as described by Austin are parts of an act, in combination with non-verbal conduct and recognized customs, in some cases the law, or rules. — Ciceronianus the White

This seems to me a verbal dispute rather than a substantial one, but the point is well taken. In fact, the 'insufficiency' of the speech-act unto itself, the fact that it relies on a whole nexus of institutions, powers, histories, and habits which enable (or disable) it, is what makes it so interesting to me. Specifically my interest is in the way felicity provides an alternative criterion for linguistic 'success' than truth: a criterion of 'efficacy' rather than adequation, a material rather than cognitive criterion of success.

Moreover, in/felicity seems to me to be far more broadly applicable to language than truth: truth has always struck me as a 'regional' language-game, important in its own right and in the proper circumstances, but largely uninteresting outside of those contexts. Questions of felicity though, seem to me to saturate basically all our utterances.

Ciceronianus

Moreover, in/felicity seems to me to be far more broadly applicable to language than truth: truth has always struck me as a 'regional' language-game, important in its own right and in the proper circumstances, but largely uninteresting outside of those contexts. Questions of felicity though, seem to me to saturate basically all our utterances. — StreetlightX

I'm surprised, and in a way pleased, to say I agree with you entirely. I think you put it quite well. I think it saturates all our utterances because language is fundamentally part of or related to what we humans do as social creatures living in the world, together with (creating and following or using) institutions, powers, history, rules, customs, etc.

The (In)felicitous

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