Source: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society

22 Pages·2008·2.01 MB·English

Symposium: Use, Usage and Meaning
Author(s): Gilbert Ryle and J. N. Findlay
Source: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 35 (1961), pp.
223-242
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Aristotelian Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4106684
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USE, USAGE AND MEANING
By GILBERT RYLE AND J. N. FINDLAY
I-GILBERT RYLE
In 1932 Mr. (now Sir) Alan H. Gardinerp ublished The
Theory of Speech and Language (Clarendon Press). A central
theme of his book was what, with some acknowledgedv erbal
artificiality, he labelled the distinction between 'Language'
and ' Speech'. I shall draw, develop and apply this distinction
in my own way.
A Language,s uch as the Frenchl anguage,i s a stock, fund or
deposit of words, constructions,i ntonations,c lich"p hrasesa nd
so on. 'Speech', on the other hand, or 'discourse' can be
conscriptedt o denote the activityo r rathert he clan of activities
of sayingt hings,s ayingt hem in French,i t may be, or Englisho r
some other language. A stock of language-pieceiss not a lot of
activities, but the fairly lasting wherewithalt o conduct them;
somewhata s a stock of coins is not a momentaryt ransactiono r
set of momentaryt ransactionso f buying,l ending,i nvesting,e tc.,
but is the lasting wherewithalt o conduct such transactions.
Roughly, as Capital stands to Trade, so Language stands to
Speech.
A Languagei s somethingt o be known, and we get to know it
by learningi t. We learn it partlyb y being taughti t, and partly
by pickingi t up. For any given part of a language,a learner
may not yet havel earnedt hat part; or he may havel earnedi t and
not forgotteni t, or he may have learnedi t and forgotteni t, or he
may have half-learnedit ; or he may have half-forgottenit . A
Languagei s a corpuso f teachablet hings. It is not, of course,a
staticc orpusu ntili t is a dead language. Nor wouldt wo teachers
of it alwaysa greew hethers omethings hould be taught as a part
of that language. Is French literary style to be taught by
teachers of the French Language or by teachers of French
Literatur?e Justw hend oes an acceptablet urno f phraseb ecome
an idiom? How old can a neologism be? What about
slang?
Sayings omethinign a languagien volvesb ut doesn ot reduce
224 GILBERT RYLE
to knowingt he requisitep ieces of that language. The speakeri s
here and now employingw hat he had previouslya cquireda nd
still possesses. He is now in the act of operatingw ith things of
whichh e has, perhapsf or years,b een the possessor. The words,
constructionsi, ntonations,e tc., that he employsi n saying what
he says in these words, constructionse, tc., is not anotherp art of
that language. It is a momentaryo perationw ith parts of that
language,j ust as the buyingo r lendingt hat I do with part of my
capital is not itself a part of that capital, but a momentary
operationw ith a part of it. That, indeed, is what my capitali s
for, namely,t o enablem e to makep urchasesb, enefactionsl,o ans,
etc., with parts of it wheneverI wish to do so. It is a set of
moderatelyp ermanentp ossibilitieso f makingp articularm omen-
tary transactions.
If I say somethingi n French,t hen,e ven thoughw hat I say has
never been said before, I do not thereby enlarge the French
language,i .e., increaset he amountt o be learnedb y a studento f
the French language. The fact that he does not know what
I said does not entail that there is a bit of the Frenchl anguage
that he has still to learn. Dicta made in French are not parts
of the Frenchl anguage. They are things done with parts of the
French language. You might utilise the same parts in saying
somethingi dentical with or quite differentf rom what I said.
Your act of sayingi t is not mine,a nd neitheri s a part of the fund
on whichw e both draw. But dicta can notoriouslyf ossilisei nto
cliches. ' Je ne sais quoi ' can now be used as a noun; and ' Rest
and be Thankful' can be a proper name.
We are temptedt o treat the relationb etween sentencesa nd
words as akin to the relationb etweenf aggots and sticks. But
this is entirelyw rong. Words,c onstructionse, tc., are the atoms
of a Language; sentences are the units of Speech. Words,
constructions,e tc., are what we have to learn in masteringa
language; sentencesa re what we produce when we say things.
Wordsh ave histories; sentencesd o not, thought heira uthorsd o.
I must have learnedt he wordst hat I utterw hen I say something
with them. I need not, and, with reservations,c annot have
learnedt he sentencet hat I come out with when I say something.
It is somethingt hatI compose,n ot somethingt hatI havea cquired.
I am its author, not its employer. Sentencesa re not things of
USE, USAGE AND MEANING 225
whichI have a stock or fund. Nor are my buyingsa nd lendings
thingso f whichI havea hoardo r purseful.
In daily life we do not often mention as such the sentences
that people produce. We speak instead of their allegations,
complaints,p romises,v erdicts,r equests,w itticisms,c onfessions
and commands. It is, in the main, people like grammarians,
compositors,t ranslators,a manuensesa nd editors who need to
refert o the things that people say as ' sentences' , since they are
ex officioc oncernedw ith suchm attersa s page-spacep, unctuation,
syntax,p lagiarisationa, nd so on. None the less, what they are
interested in are instances of someone, actual or imagined,
alleging,c omplainingw, arning,j oking, etc., though their special
concern is with the punctuationo f them and not with their
humourousness;w itht heirl engtha nd not with their truth; with
their moods and tenses and not with their relevance or
rudeness.
When Caesar said ' Veni; vidi; vici', he said three things,
though he used only three Latin words. Then is ' Vici' a word
or a sentence? The queernesso f this disjunctiveq uestion is
revealing. What Caesar produced, orally or in writing, on a
certaind ay, was a laconic sentence,i f a sentencei s an instanceo f
someone saying something. In this instanceC aesars aid some-
thing whichw as true. But he said it using only one Latinw ord,
a word which had long been there for anyone to use anywhen
in sayinga ll sorts of considerablyd ifferentt hings. The word was
not true, or, of course,f alse either. Caesarb oasted' Vici' , but
the dictionary'se xplanationo f the verb ' Vici' need say nothing
about Caesar boasting. What it describes was, perhaps,a lso
used by, inter alios, some concussedg ladiatora sking anxiously
'
Vici?' The boast 'vici' was a different sentence from the
question ' vici?', though the authors of both used the same
Latinw ord, of whichn eitherw as the inventor. The word ' vici'
was there,i n theirc ommonf und,t o be employed,m isemployedo r
left unemployedb y anyone anywhen. The boast ' vici' and the
query' vici? ' were two momentarys peech-actsi n whicht his one
word was utilised for saying different things. Our question
" Is ' vici' a word or a sentence? " was queerb ecausei ts subject
was ambiguous. Was it about a speech-episodel,i ke a boast or
a query,o r was it about an inflectedL atin verb? It was queer
P
226 GILBERT RYLE
also because' . . . a word or a sentence?w' as a disjunction
betweenp redicateos f quited ifferenct ategorieso, n a par with
'..a bat or a stroke?'
Is the interrogatives entence 'vici?' a part of the Latin
language? Well, would a students till have some Latin to learn
who had never met it? Surely not. What he had learned is
enough to enable him to construei t if he should ever meet it.
Whath e construesa ree mploymentos f Latinw ords,c onstructions,
etc.; what he must know in order to construe or understand
thesee mploymentsa, ret he Latinw ords,i nflectionsc, onstructions,
etc. He must know the word in order to understandt he one-
word boast or question; but that knowing is not this under-
standing; what he had.l ong since knowni s not what he has just
understood or misunderstood. As we employ coins to make
loans, but do not employ lendings, so we employ words, etc.,
in order to say things, but we do not employ the sayings of
things-or misemployt hem or leave them unemployede ither.
Dictions and dicta belong to differentc ategories. So do roads
and journeys; so do gallows and executions.
Sometimesa person tries to say somethinga nd fails through
ignoranceo f the language. Perhapsh e stops short becauseh e
does not know or cannot think of the required words or
constructions. Perhapsh e does not stop, but producest he wrong
word or construction,t hinking it to be the right one, and so
commitsa solecism. Perhapsh is failurei s of lesser magnitude;
he says somethingu nidiomaticallyo r ungrammatically;o r he
gets the wrong intonationo r he mispronounces. Such failures
show that he has not completely mastered, say, the French
language. In the extended sense of 'rule' in which a rule is
anything against which faults are adjudged to be at fault,
solecisms, mispronunciationsm, alapropisms,a nd unidiomatic
and ungrammaticacl onstructionsa re breacheso f the rules of,
e.g., the French language. For our purposesw e do not need
to considert he sourceso r the status of rules of this kind, or the
authorities whose censures our French instructor dreads.
Solecisms are in general philosophicallyu ninteresting. Nor,
for obvious reasons, do we often commit solecisms, save
when young, ill-schooled, abroad or out of our intellectual
depth.
USE, USAGE AND MEANING 227
The reproof' You cannots ay that and speakg ood French' is
genericallyd ifferentf rom the reproof 'You cannot say that
withouta bsurdity'. The latteri s not a commento n the quality
of the speaker'sF rench,s incei t could be true thought he speaker
had spoken in flawless French, or had not been speaking in
Frencha t all, but in Englisho r Greeki nstead. The comment,i f
true, would be true of what was said whateverl anguagei t was
said in, and whether it was said in barbarouso r impeccable
French or English. A mis-pronunciationo r a wrong gender
may be a bit of faulty French,b ut a self-contradictionis not a
fault-in-French. Cicero's non sequitursw ere not lapses from
good Latin into bad Latin. His carelessnesso r incompetence
was not linguisticc arelessnesso r incompetencei,f we tether the
adjective' linguistic' to the noun 'Language' as this is here
being contrastedw ith ' Speech'.
There is an enormous variety of disparatek inds of faults
that we can find or claim to find with things that people say.
I can complain,j ustly or else unjustly,t hat what you said was
tactless, irrelevant,r epetitious,f alse, inaccurate,i nsubordinate,
trite, fallacious, ill-timed, blasphemous, malicious, vapid,
uninformative,o ver-informativep, rejudiced,p edantic, obscure,
prudish,p rovocative,s elf-contradictoryt,a utologous,c ircularo r
nonsensical and so on indefinitely. Some of these epithets
can be appropriatea lso to behaviour which is not speech-
behaviour; some of them cannot. Not one of them could be
assertedo r deniedo f any item in an Englisho r Frenchd ictionary
or Grammar. I can stigmatizew hat you said with any one of
these epithetsw ithoute ven hintingt hat what you said was faulty
in its Frencho r whatevero therl anguagey ou saidi t in. I grumble
at your dictumb ut not at your masteryo f the language that it
was made in. Therea re countlessh eterogeneousd isciplinesa nd
correctionsw hich are meant to train people not to committ hese
Speech-faults. Not one of them belongs to the relatively
homogeneousd isciplineo f teaching, say, the French language.
Speech-faults are not to be equated with Language-faults.
Nothing need be wrongw ith the paints,b rushesa nd canvasw ith
which a portraiti s bungled. Paintingb adly is not a pot of bad
paint.
Logicians and philosophersa re, ex officio, much concerned
P2
228 GILBERT RYLE
with kinds of things that people say or might be temptedt o say.
Only where there can be fallaciesc an there be valid inferences,
namely in arguments; and only where there can be absurdities
can thereb e non-absurditiesn, amelyi n dicta. We are presented
with aporiai not by the telescope or the trawling-netb, ut by
passagesi n books or by ripostes in debates. A fallacy or an
impossiblec onsequencem ay indeed have to be presentedt o us
in Frencho r English,e tc. But it does not follow from this that
what is wrongw ith it is anythingf aultyi n the Frencho r English
in which it is presented. It was no part of the businesso f our
Frencho r Englishi nstructorst o teach us that if most men wear
coats and most men wearw aistcoatsi t does not follow that most
men wearb oth. This is a differents ort of lesson and one which
we cannot begin until we have alreadyl earnedt o use without
solecism 'most', 'and', 'if', etc. There are no French
implicationso r non-implicationss, o though 'p' may be said in
French and 'q' may be said in French, it is nonsense to say
' q does not follow fromp in the best French'. Similarly,w hat
is impossiblei n 'The CheshireC at vanished,l eaving only her
grin behind her' is not any piece of intolerably barbarous
English. Carroll'sw ording of the impossible story could not
be improved, and the impossibility of his narrated incident
survives translationi nto any language into which it can be
translated. Somethingw as amusinglyw rongw ith what he said,
but not with what he said it in.
I have a special reason for harking on this point that what
someone says may be fallaciouso r absurdw ithout being in any
measures olecistic; i.e., that some Speech-faultsi,n cludings ome
of those which matter to logicians and philosophers,a re not
and do not carry with them any Language-faults. Some
philosophers,o bliviouso f the distinctionb etweenL anguagea nd
Speech, or between having words, etc., to say things with and
saying things with them, give to sentencest he kind of treatment
that they give to words, and, in particular, assimilate their
accountso f what a sentencem eans to their accounts of what a
word means. Equatingt he notion of the meaning of a word
with the notion of the use of that word, they go on without
apparent qualms to talking as if the meaning of a sentence
could equallyw ell be spokeno f as the use of that sentence. We
USE, USAGE AND MEANING 229
hear,f or example,t hat nonsensicaEl nglishs entencesa res entences
that have no use in English; as if sentencesc ould be solecisms.
Should we expect to hear that a certain argument is hence-
forth to contain an Undistributed Middle in B.B.C.
English?
My last sentenceb ut three, say, is not somethingw ith which
I once learnedh ow to say things. It is my saying something.
Nor is an execution something erected to hang people on.
It is the hangingo f somebody. Parto f whatw e learn,i n learning
the wordso f a language,i s indeedh ow to employt hem. But the
act of exercising this acquired competence, i.e., the saying
somethingw ith them is not in its turn an acquiredw herewithal
to say things. It neitherh as nor lacks a use, or, therefore,a use
in English.
The famous saying: "Don't ask for the meaning; ask for
the use ", might have been and I hope was a piece of advice to
philosophers, and not to lexicographerso r translators. It
advisedp hilosophers,I hope, when wrestlingw ith some aporia,
to switch their attentionf rom the trouble-givingw ords in their
dormancya s language-pieceos r dictionary-itemtso their utilisa-
tions in the actuals ayingso f things; from theirg eneralp romises
when on the shelf to theirp articularp erformancews hen at work;
from their permanentp urchasing-powewr hile in the bank to
the concretem arketingd one yesterdaym orningw ith them; in
short,f rom these wordsq udu nits of a Languaget o live sentences
in which they are being activelye mployed.
More than this; the famous saying, in associationw ith the
idea of Ruleso f Use, could and I thinks houldh ave beeni ntended
to advise philosophers,w hen surveyingt he kinds of live dicta
that are or might be made with these trouble-givingw ords, to
considere speciallys ome of the kinds of non-solecisticS peech-
faults againstw hicht he producero f such live dicta ought to take
precautions,e .g., what sorts of dicta could not be significantly
made with them, and why; what patternso f argumentp ivoting
on these live dicta would be fallacious,a nd why; what kinds
of verification-procedurews ould be impertinent, and why;
to whatk indso f questionss uchl ive dictaw ouldb e irrelevanta, nd
why; and so on. To be clear about the 'how' of the employ-
ment of somethingw e need to be clear also about its ' how not
to', and about the reasonsf or both.
230 GILBERT RYLE
Earlyi n this centuryH usserla nd later Wittgensteinu sed the
illuminatingm etaphorso f'logical syntax'a nd 'logical grammar'.
Somewhata s, say, indicativev erbs used instead of subjunctive
verbsr enders ome would-beL atins entencesb ad Latin,s o certain
category-skidas nd logical howlersr enderd icta, said in no matter
which tongue, nonsensical or absurd. A so-called Rule of
Logical Syntax is what a nonsensicald ictum is in breach of.
But the analogy must not be pressed very far. The rules of
Latin syntaxa re part of what we must learni f we are to be able
to produce or construe Latin dicta. They are parts of the
equipmentt o be employed by someone if he is to say either
sensible or silly things in decent Latin. The Rules of Logical
Syntax, on the other hand, belong not to a Language or to
Languages, but to Speech. A person who says something
senselesso r illogicalb etraysn ot ignoranceb ut silliness,m uddle-
headednesso r, in some of the interestingc ases, over-cleverness.
We find fault not with his schoolingi n years gone by but with
his thinking here and now. He has not forgotten or mis-
remembereda ny of his lessons; he has operatedu nwarilyo r
over-ingeniouslyin his execution of his momemtaryt ask. In
retrospecth e will reproachn ot his teachers,b ut himself; and
he will reproachh imself not for never having known some-
thing but for not having been thinking what he was saying
yesterday.
The vogue of using ' Language' and ' linguistic' ambivalently
both for dictions and for dicta, i.e., both for the words, etc.,
that we say thingsi n and for what we say in them, helps to blind
us to the wholesale inappropriatenesso f the epithets which
fit pieces of languaget o the sayingso f things with those pieces;
and to the wholesalea nd heterogeneousi nappropriatenesseos f
the variegatede pithetsw hichf it thingss aid to the language-pieces
and language-patterntsh at they are said in.
It remainst rue that philosophersa nd logicians do have to
talk about talk or, to put it in a more Victorianw ay, to discourse
about discourse. But it is not true that they are ex officio
concernedw ith what language-teacherasr e ex officioc oncerned
with.
II-J. N. FINDLAY.
I AMi n great agreementw ith what I regarda s the substantial
points in Professor Ryle's paper. His definition of language
I think rathera rbitrarilyn arrow:f or him it is a ' stock, fund or
deposit of words, constructions,c liche phrases and so on'.
I should have thought it would be wrong not to include in a
languaget he variouss yntacticaal nd otherr ulesw hichr estricto ur
employmento f the capitalo f expressionsm entionedb y Professor
Ryle, thoughp erhapsI am wrongi n thinkingh e meantt o exclude
them. That adjectives must agree with the gender of their
substantivesin certainc ases would certainlyb e held to be part of
the Frenchl anguage,a s it is not part of the English. There is
also, I think, a furthera rbitrarinesisn excludings entencesf rom
language,a nd in making them the units of speech which are
produced when we say things. I think we can and should
distinguishb etweent he sentenceJ e ne said quoi as a mere possi-
bility permittedb y the Frenchl anguage,a nd the same sentence
as used or producedb y someonet o say something. I can in fact
see no good reason why one should not have a narrowera nd a
widerc onceptiono f a language. On the narrowerc onception,a
languagei ncludesa vocabularya nd rules, whereaso n the wider
conceptioni t includesa lso all the possible sentencest hat could
be framed out of the vocabularyi n accordancew ith the rules.
In this sense Frencho r Englishw ould includea ll the permissible
sentencest hat could be framedi n it, whethera nyonee veru ttered
or wroteo r thoughtt hemo r not. If this conceptiono f a language
makesi t absurdlyw ide, the conceptiono f it as a vocabularyp lus
rules makes it unduly narrow. Certainly,h owever,I think we
wantt o distinguishb etweena sentencea s a gramaticallpy ermissible
word-combinationa, nd the utteranceo r writingd own or silent
thinkingo f that sentenceb y someoneo n some occasiont o make
an allegation,r aisea query,e xpressa doubt, etc., etc., and in the
latter case I find a languageo f use or employmenmt ore natural
than Professor Ryle's language of production. I think therefore
that Professor Ryle is legislating rather vexatiously in forbidding
us to speak of sentencesa s parts of language,o r to say that such
sentencesc an be usedb y speakers. I do not, however,t hinkt hat
this vexatiousp iece of legislationi s in the forefronto f Professor
Ryle'si ntentions.