The Sociology of Philosophies

(Wang) #1

Language itself is the product of a pervasive natural ritual. The rudimentary
act of speaking involves the ingredients listed at the outset of this chapter:
group assembly, mutual focus, common sentiment; as a result, words are
collective representations, loaded with moral significance. Durkheim stressed
that we recognize sacred objects by the feeling of constraint and externality in
dealing with them, and the outrage which automatically wells up when they
are violated. This is the way we behave when someone misuses a word, com-
mits a mispronunciation, or violates the grammar conventional in the group.
Words, like any other feature of cultural capital, have a history across IR
chains. They are generated (or introduced to new individuals) in some inter-
actional situation, and are loaded with the emotional significance correspond-
ing to the degree of solidarity in that particular encounter. Once acquired as
part of one’s repertoire, they become means for negotiating further situations.
A word smoothly accepted or awkwardly taken is a way of testing whether
someone else will participate in further solidarity ritual with oneself; and words
are attractors or repulsers which move one toward or away from particular
encounters.
The same applies to other aspects of language besides vocabulary and pro-
nunciation. The coordination of language acts between conversationalists, their
deepening rhythmic entrainment in a particular occasion of talk, shapes the
ongoing meaning of verbal gestures from one encounter to the next. Micro-si-
tuational coordination occurs on several levels: in the mutual anticipation and
enactment of a grammatical structure, in the speech acts in which this grammar
is socially embedded, in the emotional flows of personal relations, in the
cognitive dimension of what is being talked about, in Goffmanian reframings.
All these constitute the social action which gives meaning to talk. Language is
not a closed social universe; it can be used to refer to things and to coordinate
practical actions. Whether it does this or not, language works only because it
conveys Durkheimian solidarity. This gives a sociological interpretation to the
philosophical distinction between sense and reference (Dummett, 1978: 441–
454). The reference of words is their pointing to something outside that
segment of conversation; the sense of words (and of sentences, of talk in
general) is their symbolic connection to social solidarity, that is, to their past
histories and present usage in interaction ritual chains. Particular acts of
discourse may not always have reference; but discourse cannot occur at all if
it does not have an interaction ritual sense.


The Predictability of Conversations


It is because language has social sense (as well as sometimes an external
reference) that conversations are in principle predictable. I say this even though
Chomsky stressed the infinite varieties of sentences that can be spoken and


Coalitions in the Mind • 47
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