Language Philosophy and Language Teaching
by Mark Lowe
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Let us turn, finally, to John Searle. Like Paul Grice a generation ago, he is a professor of philosophy at Berkeley, University of California. An American, he studied with J.L.Austin at Oxford, and then returned to America, where he helped to disseminate his teacher’s ideas. He has made many important contributions to the field of language philosophy, starting with his brilliant Speech Acts of 1969. Other key texts include: The Rediscovery of the Mind (1994) and Consciousness and Language (2003). He is still active today.

Three aspects of Searle’s work are of particular importance to language teaching: (1) his seminal book Speech Acts, and especially its analysis of functional language and its critique of the doctrine ‘the meaning of a word is its use’ (2) his analysis of ethical propositions, and (3) his theory of mind, which provides a coherent and comprehensive framework for his theories of language. Let us consider these in turn.

(1) Speech Acts and Functional Language. Suppose I say: ‘your house is on fire’. Is it sufficient to say that the meaning of this utterance is something like ‘danger – call the fire brigade’? Searle thinks not. Although this is its use, there is a reference to facts too. Searle holds that performative utterances possess both an illocutionary force (eg a warning, as here), and a propositional reference (eg your house and the fire). This reinterpretation of performative utterances solves various philosophical puzzles by integrating language function into a broader language context. It provides a more coherent framework for teaching functional language than the somewhat limited Wittgensteinian aphorism ‘the meaning of a word is its use’. On a broader canvas, this move played a part in reintegrating scientific description and descriptive language into philosophy, a development that has been particularly influential in the USA with the work of Quine and his followers. Searle’s interpretation of how functional language works has clear implications for language teaching: the teaching of functions is best done within a clear context.

(2) Ethical propositions. In traditional philosophy, it was thought to be impossible to derive ought from is, because the worlds of fact and value are different. Searle famously demonstrated not only that ought can be derived from is, but that in practice we do it all the time. Consider the statement: ‘I promise to refund you this money’. This entails the proposition: ‘there is an obligation on me to refund you this money.’ This entails the further proposition: ‘I ought to refund you this money’. In other words, ought can be derived from is. Searle’s explanation for what looks at first like sleight of hand – just a trivial trick – is that ethical judgements relate to human affairs – to human inventions and human institutions and organizations: to money and its obligations, to marriage, to government, to sport and to clubs and societies, for instance. The world of ethics is the world of people, not things or animals. The problem of is and ought derives from a confusion between the language proper to human affairs and the language proper to things. If this view is accepted, many philosophical problems are resolved.

For instance, this theory explains why many apparent statements of fact have the illocutionary force of commands. Consider the following example, for ever etched on my memory. When I was engaged to my future wife some years ago, we visited her Italian family, who lived in a small town near Verona. On Sunday morning, my fiancée, who was very advanced and liberal in her thinking, announced that she was not going to church. Her outraged father stood up and declared: ‘domenica, la donna va in chiesa’. (On Sunday, women go to church). My fiancée went to church. A philosopher might have been puzzled by her action: no command was given, and my father-in-law had only made a statement. However, my fiancée understood very well that her father’s words had the force of a command, and, as a properly brought up Italian girl, she obeyed her father.

Searle explains all this by saying that the full meaning of her father’s words can only be rightly interpreted in the context of the society in which he and his daughter lived. In that society, at that time, women went to church and obeyed their fathers, whatever may or may not have happened in Britain, America or other societies. In that society, her father’s statement had the illocutionary force of a command: his is had the effect of an ought, or rather a must. And the same principle is true, claims Searle, of all ethical statements. Ethical propositions have the force of commands within the system where they belong, whether they are formulated as statements or orders. They are also as true in their own way as scientific descriptions are in their different way: they are true within the context of the society to which they belong. This analysis offers a coherent and satisfying treatment of ethical expressions, unlike that of the Logical Positivists, who declared all ethical statements to be merely expressions of feelings and devoid of scientific validity. Searle’s treatment of this topic has deeply influenced language teaching practice: we happily teach statements as commands, and logical inference as moral imperative. We teach language as it actually used in society, not according to some preconceived theory that does not fit the facts.

(3) Searle’s Theory of Mind. Searle provides an account of how the brain works that gives principled theoretical support for communicative language teaching methods. The subject is too vast and too complex to be summarized adequately in this article. I explore the topic in detail in other articles I have written for Modern English Teacher. Interested readers are referred to ‘Is Grammar Innate?’ and ‘The Shibboleths of TEFL’ - and to Searle’s books. Let two references suffice to give an introduction to the topic here.

Here is a quote from The Rediscovery of the Mind: ‘In our skulls there is just the brain with all its intricacy, and consciousness with all its colour and variety. The brain produces the conscious states that are occurring in you and me right now, and it has the capacity to produce many others that are not now according. But that is it. Where the mind is concerned, that is the end of the story. There are brute, blind neurophysiological processes and there is consciousness, but there is nothing else. If we are looking for phenomena that are intrinsically intentional but inaccessible in principle to consciousness, there is nothing there: no rules, no rule following, no mental information processing, no unconscious inferences, no mental models… no language of thought, no LAD, and no universal or innate grammar’. To sum up, Searle paints a rigorously scientific picture of the mind, with no reliance on metaphysical entities.

Searle’s view of language and the mind is incompatible with the picture that Chomsky paints. Language philosophy has many criticisms of Chomsky’s theory of mind, with its innate and universal grammar, deep structures and so on. In 2002, Searle published The End of the Revolution, a review of Chomsky’s most recent book New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind. The review is sympathetic but critical. Many of the arguments used by Searle are similar to those which Wittgenstein employed to criticize his own Tractatus in the 1930s. ‘There is no logical structure underlying language’, ‘there is no ghost in the machine’, ‘grammar was made by man, not by God’ (Wittgenstein). ‘There is no universal grammar common to all languages; there is no Language Acquisition Device in the brain; grammar is not innate but mastered through experience of language and life; there are no deep structures in the brain; language has many functions other than describing things’ (Searle). This review provides insight into Searle’s scientific theory of mind, and is also a valuable contribution to clear thinking about Chomsky’s theories. (Searle is not the only philosopher to have doubts about Chomsky’s theories. Professor Norman Malcolm, a protégé of Wittgenstein, once wrote: Chomsky and his followers are a new tribe of philosophical savages….’)

Searle’s theory of mind is important for language teachers because it provides a coherent and verifiable explanation for how language really works. Together with his analysis of speech acts and functional language, and his account of ethical statements, Searle’s theory of mind provides a scientific foundation for our work in teaching languages.

Let us conclude. What does the philosophy of language offer to language teachers? It offers many things, including: a broad vision of the place of language in human affairs; new perspectives on old ideas; principled support for the fundamentals of communicative language teaching and learning; fresh insights into language games, language rules, meaning, functions and how language really works; deeper understanding of the language of conversation and professional meetings; the stimulus of scintillating minds - and a deeper understanding of language itself.

Suggested further reading

J.L.Austin: How to Do Things with Words (OUP, 1962)

A.J.Ayer: Language, Truth and Logic (OUP, 1936)

Isaiah Berlin: Personal Impressions (Pimlico, 1998)

Paul Grice: Studies in the Way of Words (Harvard University Press, 1989)

P.M.S Hacker: Wittgenstein’s Place in 20 th century Analytical Philosophy (Blackwell, 1996)

Ray Monk: Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (Cape, 1990)

Gilbert Ryle: The Concept of Mind (OUP, 1949)

John Searle: Speech Acts (CUP, 1969)

The Rediscovery of the Mind (MIT Press, 1994)

Consciousness and Language (CUP, 2003)

The End of the Revolution (Harvard Review of Books, 2002)

Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (RKP, 1922)

Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell, 1953).

(NB. An earlier version of this article was published in Modern English Teacher in July 2003)

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