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The Fictive Use of Language
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
Extract
Fiction has been of concern to both the aesthetician and the ontologist. The former is concerned with the criteria or standards by which we judge the aesthetic worth of a fictional work, the latter with whether our ontology must be enlarged to include possible or imaginary worlds in which are housed the characters and incidents referred to and depicted in such works. This is a paper on the ontology of fiction. It will attempt to answer these ontological questions concerning truth and reference in fiction by clarifying the use of language. Our paradigm case of the fictive use of language will be one in which the story-teller orally relates the fictional story in the presence of his audience, rather than one in which he inscribes his story so that it may be read at a later date. The value of considering the use of language in a face-to-face situation is that it brings before us in their full explicitness all of the different facets of a speech act, many of which often lie dormant in non-face-to-face uses and therefore are hard to discover from a consideration of such uses.
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1971
References
1 In his insightful article, ‘Assertion’, Philosophical Review, LXXIV (1965), Geach calls this ‘Frege's point’ and skilfully defends it.
2 That they are exceptions is argued for in my article, ‘Do Performative Utterances Have Any Constative Content?’, forthcoming in the Journal of Philosophy.
3 Failure to distinguish between the locutionary and illocutionary senses of ‘say’ led Margolis to say, in his otherwise excellent article, ‘Insofar as we regard a story as a story, as a fiction, we dismiss the question of its truth or falsity about events and persons in the actual world as altogether ineligible. The reason is that, in order to constitute it as verifiable, we must decline to regard it as a story …’, ‘Truth and Reference in Fiction,’ in The Language of Art and Art Criticism (Detroit: 1965), p. 155. My italicsGoogle Scholar.
4 For a more complete account of these issues see pp. 142–4 of my book, The Language of Time (London: 1968)Google Scholar.
5 In his ‘The Causal Theory of Perception’, reprinted in Perceiving, Sensing, and Knowing, edited by Swartz, R. (New York: 1965), p. 450Google Scholar.
6 For a more detailed discussion and defence of this, see my article, ‘Strawson's Restricted Theory of Referring,’ The Philosophical Quarterly, April, 1970.
7 Here, as well as at other places, ‘statement’ is being used in a semi-technical way. It refers to a locutionary or propositional content without any commitment being made to the illocutionary manner in which it is said.
8 This point concerning the centrality of the speaker's intention should not be confused with the very different point concerning the fact that a referring expression containing an indexical sign can be used on different occasions to refer to different things.
9 This view of proper names is espoused by John Searle in ‘Proper Names’, Mind, LXVII (1958).
10 For a fuller account of names for and of individuals, see pp. 178–85 of my book, The Language of Time, op. cit.
11 This is defended in my article, ‘Indexical Signs, Egocentric Particulars, and Token- Reflexive Words,’ in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edwards, P. (New York: 1967)Google Scholar.
12 The closest thing to a counter-example is, ‘I hereby regret to inform you that I must ask you to leave,’ but this is just a polite way of asking the person to leave.
13 For a critical analysis of this paratactic analysis, see my article, ‘Propositions and Propositional Acts,’ forthcoming in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
14 In general what actions they only pretend to do or fake will depend upon the mores and standards of the time and place. What a troop of actors can get away with doing in a ‘show’ in Tiajuana they will have to fake doing in San Diego.
15 What exactly is involved in this checking or sublimating of immediate behaviour, and the manner in which it constitutes an aesthetic response, is too subtle and difficult a subject to be taken up here. For a good discussion of this subject, see Isenberg, Arnold, ‘The Esthetic Function of Language,’ Journal of Philosophy, XLVI (1949)Google Scholar.
16 The fictional work, it will be recalled, can ‘suggest’ general truths about reality; and the implanting of general beliefs in the audience certainly can modify their subsequent behaviour.
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