Adorno: Aesthetic Theory (NOTES)

Empirical = experience; the world of fact/actuality

Adorno wants to argue against the view that art has nothing to do with experience and that naive reflectionism (art reflects life). art is connected to life and experience but not completely--its in a critical sense. One is self-conscious about the structure of the thing one is looking at. 

Reflectionism: 

Marx: Modern art is subjective, day-dreamy, decadent and foolishness--we ought to be creating productiveness. (Philistinian: anti-art, be productive...machinery) in a feudal society, art will produce the feudal means of production (military force) Art reflects life.

Lukacs: Art doesn't naively reflect the modes of production but class relations at a given time.

Adorno: Art is neither art for art sake or capitalist decadency or a reflection in either a naive or a medicated way of class relations of modes of production but reflects upon experiences in a critical way and is articulated in form as well as content. Adorno is a great defender of high modernist art (Picasso, Schoenberg) the dissident broken forms of modernist art of reflections of the power relations that are out there. The form of the work is a challenge is not simple conventional realism. The breaking of a momentum illusion functions as a type of critique...Picasso breaking up a woman in his art = ways that society constructs women. 

Stalin & art: It showed realism in that there is straightforward story but its socialist because the superficial realism proves that the party is right--used to support the party line. All artist were forced to become members of committees. any art alien to this was viewed as decadent--if the art wasn't propaganda for a political party or if the art was experimental then they got into trouble with Stalin. If the art showed class struggle then it was not art.

High culture induces ideological conformity.

Pop culture reinforces a naive empiricism where we are invited to conform but in a licensed way. Get a girls attention...light 2 cigarettes and give her one ... because that's what they do in the movies. We think in the way that we see in the movies. Hollywood art and socialist realist art  would be for Adorno the same kind of crap as a opposed to high art (Jame Joyce’s “Ulysses”, Shostakovich). Socialist realism is ultimately politically progressive even if its not saying it in the party line. It is Leninist, Stalinist system ('don't think, feel happy' culture): if you get off that track they'll put you in the gulag.

Khrushchev of Soviet Union: Went after modernist poets and other artists (of abstract art) because he saw it a decadent, corrupt and anti-Socialist. instead of killing like stalin, he just silenced them. Had a public debate with good russian poet.

Adorno wants to combine Kant and Freud's views: Kant's notion of disinterestedness in aesthetic experience and Freud's notion of desire being mediated in aesthetics.

Soviet material reality had become so non-productive that they had to bring the cold war to an end

Praxis/practice: material activity in the real world (heavy industry, supply chains, getting coffee for work) Marx: Everything is organized in a society by a means of production.

Art induces a good practice, because material praxis is governed by the value of production, making things, consuming things--art suggests a mode of praxis liberated from a material necessity. 

A wants to argue against a certain vulgarity in the Marxist tradition of art...argue against the totalitarian thrust of Marxist thought. His big argument is that we think through concepts and concepts efface differences. We think in terms that create an identity between things that are not identical. wants to use conceptual theoretical thought against itself. Use the language that had reinforced identity in a way that will allow non-identity to reveal itself (Non-identitarianism).

The aesthetic where the non-identical is born home to humans. if theoretical discourse totalizes and makes us all the same then art at its best works against that. the revolutionary thrust of marxism should imitate the practices of imitate modernist art. not that Picasso was a member of communist party that makes him progressive but what he does in painting that makes him progressive.

Have to see what art is observing in order to see the distinctiveness of what art is doing. art has an internal dissidence--due to the tension between form and content. the tension has meaning in relation to things of the outside. through the alienation of modern form (concerned with its own form), art then pushes us toward non-conceptual conceptions, which reveals the non-identical. art processes its materials through form and through manipulating form. (Ex: fragments put together in ways that call attention to the fragmentariness of the fragmented parts) See how the form reflects an aspect of life but not in a way that says here's the way the world is and here's how art mirrors the form. Art is about the world outside of art but only by turning attention to the artfulness of art.

Art uses the material from life, reorganizes it in such a way that it reflects upon the use of things in the real world. The form shows us various sorts of alienation that relfect material forms of alienation in the world but only by calling our attention to the form itself in its own naïve representativeness. Kant is right in that there is a disinterestedness in art. Freud is correct in that art is a sublimation of images by which we manage or express our desires. Adorno combines Kant and Freud: Modern music (Schoenberg) is not very pretty on your first hearing…there is not an interest it it…to enjoy it we cant be interested in it, but that sort of art and its very dissidence articulates our desire to overcome mechanization, alienation, and fragmentation. It speaks to desire while at the same time it is disinterested. Art is adversarial to corrupt and dehumanizing human orders but not in a direct, political (“I protest!”) way.

In papers: Correlate Adorno’s passage with Kristeva…He wants us to see that there are commonalities in these discourses but distinctiveness to each discourse.

Aesthetic Theory - Adorno

Aesthetic Theory

Relentlessly tracing concentric circles, Aesthetic Theory carries out a dialectical double reconstruction. It reconstructs the modern art movement from the perspective of philosophical aesthetics. It simultaneously reconstructs philosophical aesthetics, especially that of Kant and Hegel, from the perspective of modern art. From both sides Adorno tries to elicit the sociohistorical significance of the art and philosophy discussed.Adorno's claims about art in general stem from his reconstruction of the modern art movement. So a summary of his philosophy of art sometimes needs to signal this by putting “modern” in parentheses. The book begins and ends with reflections on the social character of (modern) art. Two themes stand out in these reflections. One is an updated Hegelian question whether art can survive in a late capitalist world. The other is an updated Marxian question whether art can contribute to the transformation of this world. When addressing both questions, Adorno retains from Kant the notion that art proper (“fine art” or “beautiful art”—schöne Kunst—in Kant's vocabulary) is characterized by formal autonomy. But Adorno combines this Kantian emphasis on form with Hegel's emphasis on intellectual import (geistiger Gehalt) and Marx's emphasis on art's embeddedness in society as a whole. The result is a complex account of the simultaneous necessity and illusoriness of the artwork's autonomy. The artwork's necessary and illusory autonomy, in turn, is the key to (modern) art's social character, namely, to be “the social antithesis of society”.
Adorno regards authentic works of (modern) art as social monads. The unavoidable tensions within them express unavoidable conflicts within the larger sociohistorical process from which they arise and to which they belong. These tensions enter the artwork through the artist's struggle with sociohistorically laden materials, and they call forth conflicting interpretations, many of which misread either the work-internal tensions or their connection to conflicts in society as a whole. Adorno sees all of these tensions and conflicts as “contradictions” to be worked through and eventually to be resolved. Their complete resolution, however, would require a transformation in society as a whole, which, given his social theory, does not seem imminent.
As commentary and criticism, Adorno's aesthetic writings are unparalleled in the subtlety and sophistication with which they trace work-internal tensions and relate them to unavoidable sociohistorical conflicts. One gets frequent glimpses of this in Aesthetic Theory. For the most part, however, the book proceeds at the level of “third reflections”—reflections on categories employed in actual commentary and criticism, with a view to their suitability for what artworks express and to their societal implications. Typically he elaborates these categories as polarities or dialectical pairs.
One such polarity, and a central one in Adorno's theory of artworks as social monads, occurs between the categories of import (Gehalt) and function (Funktion). Adorno's account of these categories distinguishes his sociology of art from both hermeneutical and empirical approaches. A hermeneutical approach would emphasize the artwork's inherent meaning or its cultural significance and downplay the artwork's political or economic functions. An empirical approach would investigate causal connections between the artwork and various social factors without asking hermeneutical questions about its meaning or significance. Adorno, by contrast, argues that, both as categories and as phenomena, import and function need to be understood in terms of each other. On the one hand, an artwork's import and its functions in society can be diametrically opposed. On the other hand, one cannot give a proper account of an artwork's social functions if one does not raise import-related questions about their significance. So too, an artwork's import embodies the work's social functions and has potential relevance for various social contexts. In general, however, and in line with his critiques of positivism and instrumentalized reason, Adorno gives priority to import, understood as societally mediated and socially significant meaning. The social functions emphasized in his own commentaries and criticisms are primarily intellectual functions rather than straightforwardly political or economic functions. This is consistent with a hyperbolic version of the claim that (modern) art is society's social antithesis: “Insofar as a social function can be predicated for artworks, it is their functionlessness”
The priority of import also informs Adorno's stance on art and politics, which derives from debates with Lukács, Benjamin, and Bertolt Brecht in the 1930s (Lunn 1982; Zuidervaart 1991, 28–43). Because of the shift in capitalism's structure, and because of Adorno's own complex emphasis on (modern) art's autonomy, he doubts both the effectiveness and the legitimacy of tendentious, agitative, or deliberately consciousness-raising art. Yet he does see politically engaged art as a partial corrective to the bankrupt aestheticism of much mainstream art. Under the conditions of late capitalism, the best art, and politically the most effective, so thoroughly works out its own internal contradictions that the hidden contradictions in society can no longer be ignored. The plays of Samuel Beckett, to whom Adorno had intended to dedicateAesthetic Theory, are emblematic in that regard. Adorno finds them more true than many other artworks.
Arguably, the idea of “truth content” (Wahrheitsgehalt) is the pivotal center around which all the concentric circles of Adorno's aesthetics turn (Zuidervaart 1991; Wellmer 1991, 1–35 ; Jarvis 1998, 90–123). To gain access to this center, one must temporarily suspend standard theories about the nature of truth (whether as correspondence, coherence, or pragmatic success) and allow for artistic truth to be dialectical, disclosive, and nonpropositional. According to Adorno, each artwork has its own import (Gehalt) by virtue of an internal dialectic between content (Inhalt) and form (Form). This import invites critical judgments about its truth or falsity. To do justice to the artwork and its import, such critical judgments need to grasp both the artwork's complex internal dynamics and the dynamics of the sociohistorical totality to which the artwork belongs. The artwork has an internal truth content to the extent that the artwork's import can be found internally and externally either true or false. Such truth content is not a metaphysical idea or essence hovering outside the artwork. But neither is it a merely human construct. It is historical but not arbitrary; nonpropositional, yet calling for propositional claims to be made about it; utopian in its reach, yet firmly tied to specific societal conditions. Truth content is the way in which an artwork simultaneously challenges the way things are and suggests how things could be better, but leaves things practically unchanged: “Art has truth as the semblance of the illusionless”.

Aesthetic Theory - Adorno

Whilst Adorno's work focuses on art, literature and music as key areas of sensual, indirect critique of the established culture and modes of thought, there is also a strand of distinctly political utopianism evident in his reflections especially on history. The argument, which is complex and dialectic, dominates his Aesthetic Theory, Philosophy of New Music and many other works.

Adorno saw the culture industry as an arena in which critical tendencies or potentialities were eliminated. He argued that the culture industry, which produced and circulated cultural commodities through the mass media, manipulated the population. Popular culture was identified as a reason why people become passive; the easy pleasures available through consumption of popular culture made people docile and content, no matter how terrible their economic circumstances. The differences among cultural goods make them appear different, but they are in fact just variations on the same theme. He wrote that "the same thing is offered to everybody by the standardised production of consumption goods" but this is concealed under "the manipulation of taste and the official culture's pretense of individualism" Adorno conceptualised this phenomenon as pseudo-individualization and the always-the-same.

Adorno's analysis allowed for a critique of mass culture from the left which balanced the critique of popular culture from the right. From both perspectives – left and right – the nature of cultural production was felt to be at the root of social and moral problems resulting from the consumption of culture. However, while the critique from the right emphasized moral degeneracy ascribed to sexual and racial influences within popular culture, Adorno located the problem not with the content, but with the objective realities of the production of mass culture and its effects, e.g. as a form of reverse psychology

Aesthetic Theory - Adorno

In Aesthetic Theory, Adorno is concerned not only with such standard aesthetic preoccupations as the function of beauty and sublimity in art, but with the relations between art and society. He feels that modern art's freedom from such restrictions as cult and imperial functions that had plagued previous eras of art has led to art's expanded critical capacity and increased formal autonomy. With this expanded autonomy comes art's increased responsibility for societal commentary. However, Adorno does not feel that overtly politicized content is art's greatest critical strength: rather, he champions a more abstracted type of "truth-content" (Warheitsgehalt). Unlike Kantian or idealist aesthetics, Adorno's aesthetics locates truth-content within the art object, rather than in the perception of the subject. Such content is, however, affected by art's self-consciousness at the hands of its necessary distance from society, which is perceptible in such instances as the dissonances inherent in modern art. Throughout, Adorno praises the drama of Samuel Beckett, to whom the book was dedicated.

Searle - What is a Speech Act? (Wiki)

he provides an analysis of the allegedly prototypical illocutionary act of promising, and offers sets of semantical rules intended to represent the linguistic meaning of devices indicating further (supposed) illocutionary act types (1969, 57-71).

Among the concepts presented in the book is the distinction between the 'illocutionary force' and the 'propositional content' of an utterance. Searle does not precisely define the former as such, but rather introduces several possible illocutionary forces by example. According to Searle, the sentences:

1. Sam smokes habitually.
2. Does Sam smoke habitually?
3. Sam, smoke habitually!
4. Would that Sam smoked habitually!

each indicate the same propositional content (Sam smoking habitually) but differ in the illocutionary force indicated (a statement, a question, a command, and an expression of desire, respectively) (1969, 22).

Searle, What is a Speech Act?

https://files.nyu.edu/mjr318/public/language08/Language%209%20-%20Searle.pdf

What is a Speech Act - Searle [1965]

·         Searle practices linguistic analysis in the spirit of Austin, “careful elucidation of some of the concepts of ordinary language.”  Language is of interest not just because of its usefulness for solving philosophical puzzles but in and of itself.

·         Like Austin, Searle believes that we cannot account for meaning in the absence of the context of a speech act.  In Searle, sentences (types) do not express a proposition.  Instead, tokens or sentences in a context, express propositions.

·         Using Austin’s framework, points out that there are many ways of describing or “carving up” the same speech act (physical act, act of reference, perlocutionary act, and illocutionary act). In looking at a single act there are many ways of describing it:  “The speaker will characteristically have moved his jaw and tongue and made noises.  He will have performed acts within the class which includes making statements, asking questions, issuing commands, giving reports, greeting and warning.  The members of this last class are what Austin called illocutionary acts and it is with this class that I shall be concerned in this paper.”  (377)

·         For Searle the basic unit of language is the speech act or illocutionary act, the production of a token in the context of a speech act (not the word, the sentence type, or the theory).

·         For a token to be an instance of communication, the audience must take it as being produced by a being with certain intentions (relevance of speaker intention, in contrast to Russell or Frege or logical positivism).

·         Introduces and defines the notion of a proposition as the common content of various expressions such as (380)

1. Will John leave the room?
2. John will leave the room.
3. John, leave the room.

·         Distinguishes between the notion of a proposition and that of an assertion:  “An assertion is an illocutionary act, but a proposition is not an act at all, although the act of expressing a proposition is part of performing certain illocutionary acts.”  (381)

·         Argues for the main thesis that to perform an illocutionary act is to primarily to do (rather than to say) and to engage in rule-governed behavior.  (378)

·         Responds to Austin’s call for a general theory of speech acts, producing a theory of speech acts in which speech acts are analyzed in terms of schemas.  For example, a speaker S makes a promise (acts out a certain illocutionary act) if and only if

(1)   he utters an expression E where E is a device for promising and

(2)   the felicity conditions for promising obtain.

·         To explain the notion of meaning, introduces the notion of semantical rules that govern the use of expressions and distinguishes two types: regulative and constitutive. “The hypothesis that lies behind the present paper is that the semantics of a language an be regarded as a series of systems of constitutive rules and that illocutionary acts are performed in accordance with these sets of constitutive rules.”  (380)

·         Intends to explicate the notion of an illocutionary act by (1) stating a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the performance of a particular kind of illocutionary act, and (2) extracting from it a set of semantical rules of the use of the expression (378).

·         Describes a (Gricean) theory of meaning that takes into account speaker intention.  (382) To say that a speaker meant something by X is to say that the speaker intended the utterance of X to produce some effect in the audience by means of the recognition of this intention.

·         Evaluates Grice’s definition as beneficial in that it points of the role of speaker intention but as deficient in that it ignores the role of convention. 

“It fails to distinguish the different kinds of effects – perlocutionary versus illocutionary – that one may intend to produce in one’s hearers, and it further fails to show the way in which these different kinds of effects are related to the notion of meaning.”  (383)

An American soldier addresses the Italian captors with “Kennst du as Land, wo die Zitronen bluhen?

Gricean effect: persuading them I am a German soldier (perlocutionary) through the recognition of my intention to do so.

But it doesn’t follow that what I mean is that I am a German soldier when I say “Do you know the land where the lemon trees bloom?”

“what we can mean is a function of what we are saying, it is also a matter of convention.”  (384)

·         Amends Grice’s definition to take into account the role of convention, as well as intention.  (384)

To say that a speaker meant something by X in the performance of a certain illocutionary act is to say that the speaker intended the utterance of X to produce some effect in the audience by means of the recognition of this intention and furthermore, if he is using the words literally, he intends this recognition to be achieved in virtue of the fact that the rules for using the expressions he utters associate the expressions with the production of that effect.  (384)

·         Gives an analysis of promising, providing its rules or set of necessary and sufficient conditions.

(1)   Normal input and output conditions obtain (same language, conscious, not under duress.

(2)   S expresses that p in the utterance of T.

(3)   In expressing that p, S predicates a future act A of S.

(4)   H would prefer S’s doing A to his not doing A, and S believes H would prefer his doing A to his not doing A.

(5)   It is not obvious to both S and H that S will do A in the normal course of events.

(6)   S intends to do A.  (Ammended: S intends that the utterance of T will make him responsible for intending to do A.)

(7)   S intends that the utterance of T will place him under an obligation to do A.

(8)   S intends that the utterance of T will produce in H a belief that conditions (6) and (7) obtain by means of the recognition of the intention to produce that belief, and he intends this recognition to be achieved by means of the recognition of the sentence as one conventionally used to produce such beliefs.

(9)   The semantic rules of the dialect spoken by S and H are such that T is correctly and sincerely uttered if and only if conditions (1) – (8) obtain.

·         Derives rules to govern the use of the function-indicating device “promise”

(1)   Rule 1: P is to be uttered only in the context of a sentence (or large stretch of discourse) the utterance of which predicates some future act A of the speaker S.

(2)   Rule 2: P is to be uttered only if the hearer H would prefer S’s doing A to his not doing A, and S believes H would prefer S’s doing A to his not doing A. (a preparatory rule)

(3)   Rule 3: P is to be uttered only if it is not obvious to both S and H that S will do A in the normal course of events.  (a preparatory rule)

(4)   Rule 4: P is to be uttered only if S intends to do A. (the sincerity rule)

(5)   Rule 5: The utterance of P counts as the undertaking of an obligation to do A. (the essential rule)

What is a Speech Act - Searle [1965]

Searle has introduced the notion of an 'indirect speech act', which in his account is meant to be, more particularly, an indirect 'illocutionary' act. Applying a conception of such illocutionary acts according to which they are (roughly) acts of saying something with the intention of communicating with an audience, he describes indirect speech acts as follows: "In indirect speech acts the speaker communicates to the hearer more than he actually says by way of relying on their mutually shared background information, both linguistic and nonlinguistic, together with the general powers of rationality and inference on the part of the hearer." An account of such act, it follows, will require such things as an analysis of mutually shared background information about the conversation, as well as of rationality and linguistic conventions.

In connection with indirect speech acts, Searle introduces the notions of 'primary' and 'secondary' illocutionary acts. The primary illocutionary act is the indirect one, which is not literally performed. The secondary illocutionary act is the direct one, performed in the literal utterance of the sentence (Searle 178). In the example:

(1) Speaker X: "We should leave for the show or else we’ll be late."

(2) Speaker Y: "I am not ready yet."

Here the primary illocutionary act is Y's rejection of X's suggestion, and the secondary illocutionary act is Y's statement that she is not ready to leave. By dividing the illocutionary act into two subparts, Searle is able to explain that we can understand two meanings from the same utterance all the while knowing which is the correct meaning to respond to.

With his doctrine of indirect speech acts Searle attempts to explain how it is possible that a speaker can say something and mean it, but additionally mean something else. This would be impossible, or at least it would be an improbable case, if in such a case the hearer had no chance of figuring out what the speaker means (over and above what she says and means). Searle's solution is that the hearer can figure out what the indirect speech act is meant to be, and he gives several hints as to how this might happen. For the previous example a condensed process might look like this:

Step 1: A proposal is made by X, and Y responded by means of an illocutionary act (2).

Step 2: X assumes that Y is cooperating in the conversation, being sincere, and that she has made a statement that is relevant.

Step 3: The literal meaning of (2) is not relevant to the conversation.

Step 4: Since X assumes that Y is cooperating; there must be another meaning to (2).

Step 5: Based on mutually shared background information, X knows that they cannot leave until Y is ready. Therefore, Y has rejected X's proposition.

Step 6: X knows that Y has said something in something other than the literal meaning, and the primary illocutionary act must have been the rejection of X's proposal.

Searle argues that a similar process can be applied to any indirect speech act as a model to find the primary illocutionary act (178). His proof for this argument is made by means of a series of supposed "observations" (ibid., 180-182).

[edit]Analysis using Searle's theory

In order to generalize this sketch of an indirect request, Searle proposes a program for the analysis of indirect speech act performances, whatever they are. He makes the following suggestion:

Step 1: Understand the facts of the conversation.

Step 2: Assume cooperation and relevance on behalf of the participants.

Step 3: Establish factual background information pertinent to the conversation.

Step 4: Make assumptions about the conversation based on steps 1–3.

Step 5: If steps 1–4 do not yield a consequential meaning, then infer that there are two illocutionary forces at work.

Step 6: Assume the hearer has the ability to perform the act the speaker suggests. The act that the speaker is asking be performed must be something that would make sense for one to ask. For example, the hearer might have the ability to pass the salt when asked to do so by a speaker who is at the same table, but not have the ability to pass the salt to a speaker who is asking the hearer to pass the salt during a telephone conversation.

Step 7: Make inferences from steps 1–6 regarding possible primary illocutions.

Step 8: Use background information to establish the primary illocution (Searle 184).

With this process, Searle concludes that he has found a method that will satisfactorily reconstruct what happens when an indirect speech act is performed.

Austin – How to Do Things with Words [1955] (VIII & IX)

What happened thus far was this: in trying to search for a list of performative verbs, Austin stumbled over great many problems which gradually turned him away from the idea itself of a principled performative/constative distinction based on grammatical criterion (or even criteria). This eventually led him to distinguish the locutionary act, which was divided into the phonetic, phatic and rhetic act. When we perform a locutionary act, the ‘locution’ is (a) the phonetic act of making of certain noises, (b) the phatic act of uttering of certain words in linguistic constructions, (c) the rhetic act of the producing of meaning. In this lecture, Austin starts by making some further refinements, which prepare the introduction of the illocutionary and perlocutionary act. I believe it’s fair to say that this is the most important lecture so far.

If they’re still blurred, a good test for distinguishing the phatic act (b) from the rhetic act (c) is this: If one says ‘He said “The cat is on the mat”’, then one reports a phatic act – the uttering of certain words. If one says ‘He said that the cat is on the mat’, then one reports a rhetic act – the producing of meaning (of “sense and reference”, in a Fregean twist of phrase). Note that we can always report the phatic act by using quotation marks and the verb ‘said’, but we would want to report a, e.g., command or an exclamation, we would have to change the verb to “he told me to” or “he bade me welcome”. This stems from a deeper difference between the two acts, a difference which Austin spells out like this: “The pheme is a unit of language: its typical fault is to be nonsense – meaningless. But the rheme is a unit of speech: its typical fault is to be vague or void or obscure &c” (p. 98).
Phonetic Act (phone): series of bodily movements which result in the production of a certain sound.
Phatic Act (pheme): conforms to the lexical and grammatical conventions of English – that is, John has produced an English sentence. 
Rhetic Act (rheme): To use a pheme with meaning and reference.
Rhemes are a sub-class of phemes, which in turn are a sub-class of phones. One cannot perform a rheme without also performing a pheme and a phone. The performance of these three acts is the performance of a locution – it is the act of saying something.

As clear as the distinction between the pheme and the rheme may be, it is not in itself the main point; Austin is interested in a rather different sense in which to say something is to do something – the performative. So, we may have fully elucidated the locutionary act in ‘It is going to charge’ and still not be aware, as language users, if the speaker was performing the act of warning or not. To say something about that, we must distinguish the locutionary act from the illocutionary act: the illocutionary act is “in what way we are using the locution” (p. 98). Some examples of illocutionary acts are: ‘asking a question’, ‘announcing a verdict’, ‘making a criticism’, ‘giving a description or a definition’ etc. These different uses are called the forces with which the locutionary acts are used and this is the basis for the separation of force from meaning: We perform an act of saying something with a certain meaning, but we perform an act in saying something with a certain force. The noun ‘use’ here, Austin observes, is “hopelessly ambiguous” and can stand for both acts.

There is another way in which to say something is to do something: To say something is often (and, Austin notes, “even normally”), the producing of certain consequential effects, which can, but need not, be achieved intentionally. This is the perlocutionary act or simply perlocution. So, if the locution is the saying of ‘You can’t do that!’ and the illocution is the act of denying, or protesting against, or interdicting or whatever, then the perlocution is the act of persuading, or bringing to senses or stopping etc. Note that all three can be reported:

(A) Locution: He said to me, ‘You can’t do that!’

(B) Illocution: He protested against my doing that

(C) Perlocution: He brought me to my senses.

Austin makes a remark (p. 103) which is very important in the economy of these lectures: he says that, even if we can describe both B and C, that is, both the illocution and the perlocution, as ‘uses’ of language, the former may be said to be conventional, “in the sense that at least it could be made explicit by the performative formula”, while the latter cannot. The force is conventional, just as meaning partly is. So we can say ‘I (hereby) protest against you doing that’ but we cannot say ‘I (hereby) convince you that …’ Austin concludes: “the illocutionary act is a conventional one: an act done as conforming to a convention”.

The intricate relationships between locution, illocution and perlocution: For instance, perlocution is the consequential effect, but, one might wonder, the consequential effect of what? and how far can we co to extend the consequences? Deeper: what do we mean by consequence? We would certainly like to leave out the idea that the illocution is the consequence of the locution, but then we would equally like to say that there is a certain “regular point” at which the perlocution “breaks” from the illocution – the former being the consequence of the latter (p. 111).

The fact that we have names (i.e. verbs) for illocution should point to the idea that what we name when we name linguistic activity is the convention, not the consequence: “the conventions of certain illocutionary force as bearing on the special circumstances of the occasion of the issuing of the utterance” (p. 114). Still, one cannot simply overlook the fact that the illocution without a certain type of effect is infelicitous (‘unhappy’, ‘unsuccessful’). So, how to distinguish the consequence of persuading from the ‘certain type of effect’ of understanding an utterance? Even semantically, one could find oneself at pains distinguishing the two: what words to we use?

Since understanding (as opposed to any perlocutionary act) could be restated as ‘to take what has been said in a certain sense’ Austin settles this ‘certain type of effect’ as the uptake. We say that an illocutionary act, in order to be felicitous, must “secure an uptake” (p. 116). As a matter of fact, there are two more ways in which the illocution is ‘bound up’ with the effects – all of which can be separated from the perlocution itself.

How to Do Things With Words - Austin

For example: John Smith turns to Sue Snub and says ‘Is Jeff’s shirt red?’, to which Sue replies ‘Yes’. John has produced a series of bodily movements which result in the production of a certain sound. Austin called such a performance a phonetic act, and called the act a phone. John’s utterance also conforms to the lexical and grammatical conventions of English – that is, John has produced an English sentence. Austin called this a phatic act, and labels such utterances phemes. John also referred to Jeff’s shirt, and to the colour red. To use a pheme with a more or less definite sense and reference is to utter a rheme, and to perform a rhetic act. Note that rhemes are a sub-class of phemes, which in turn are a sub-class of phones. One cannot perform a rheme without also performing a pheme and a phone. The performance of these three acts is the performance of a locution – it is the act of saying something.

John has therefore performed a locutionary act. He has also done at least two other things. He has asked a question, and he has elicited an answer from Sue.

Illocutionary act: an assertion, giving an order, and promising to do something. To perform an illocutionary act is to use a locution with a certain force. It is an act performed in saying something, in contrast with a locution, the act of saying something.

Eliciting an answer is a perlocutionary act, an act performed by saying something. Notice that if one successfully performs a perlocution, one also succeeds in performing both an illocution and a locution.

Attention has especially focused on the illocutionary act, much less on the locutionary and perlocutionary act, and only rarely on the subdivision of the locution into phone, pheme and rheme.

"Camilla" - Summary

Camilla focuses on the story of the Tyrold family. Augustus ("Mr Tyrold") and Sir Hugh Tyrold are brothers who, after a period of estrangement lasting an unspecified number of years, are reunited after Sir Hugh sends Mr Tyrold a letter expressing his desire to move near his parsonage, requesting him to purchase an estate called Cleves and prepare it for the arrival of Sir Hugh, his niece Indiana Lynmere, and her governess Miss Margland (his other ward, Clermont Lynmere, is to be sent to "the Continent" to be educated). His primary motivation for the move is that after years of being an active bachelor and confirmed bachelor, he suddenly finds himself injured and too physically weak to partake of the active physical and social life he once enjoyed. Forced to find entertainment and solace in more sedentary ways, he finds himself woefully unprepared and further engages Mr Tyrold to engage a tutor. Mr Tyrold complies and hires Dr Orkborne, a man better suited to private academic pursuits than pedagogy. This plan proves to be untenable and Sir Hugh is left scrambling to find a permanent "scholar" to place under Orkborne's tutelage, not wanting to offend the academic by dismissing him so soon after dragging him all the way out to Cleves.

In the meantime, Sir Hugh becomes enchanted by his brother's middle daughter, Camilla, and decides to make her heiress to most of his fortune. He also requests the privilege of raising her, which makes Mr and Mrs Tyrold uneasy because as much as they value Sir Hugh's kindness and generosity, they both find him unsuitable as a guardian as he is too indulgent and desirous to please. Nevertheless, they allow Camilla to go to Cleves. It is there that Camilla's brother Lionel, elder sister, Lavinia, and younger sister, Eugenia, and her father's ward, Edgar Mandelbert, go to celebrate Camilla's tenth birthday.

Mrs Tyrold allowed Eugenia to join the festivities only on the promise that the party of young people are not leave the grounds of Cleves because the girl had not yet been inoculated against smallpox. Unfortunately, Lionel's mischievous and restless nature leads him to convince his uncle to allow the entire party of children to go to a fair. It is here that Eugenia is exposed to and contracts smallpox. Eugenia is disfigured but survives, only to suffer a tragic see-saw accident which leaves her further maimed and crippled. Naturally, this leads Sir Hugh to disown not only Camilla but all of his nieces and nephews in favor of making Eugenia his sole heiress. He justifies this sweeping action by arranging an eventual marriage between Eugenia and Clermont Lynmere. In the meantime, he consigns Eugenia's education to Dr Orkbourne so that if she will not be a beautiful bride, she will at least be a highly intelligent one able to entertain and engage her future husband in what he calls hic hæc hoc -- that is, is to receive the same sort of intensive, classical education that was at the time more generally given to boys and rarely (if ever) to girls. Though at first dismissive of the idea of educating girls in general and the teaching of Greek and Latin to females in particular, Dr Orkbourne discovers that Eugenia is not only an enthusiastic student but one who is also extremely intelligent and capable.

At first, Edgar Mandelbert finds himself drawn to Indiana's exquisite beauty. Sir Hugh decides that despite their young ages (13 and ten respectively), Edgar and Indiana are clearly destined for each other. This means that Sir Hugh spends much of the early part of the novel waiting and planning for the day when Edgar and Clermont leave off their educations and finishing tours of the Continent so that they may marry Indiana and Eugenia.

When Edgar does finish his education and reaches the age of majority, he leaves university to take over the running of his finances and estate, Beech Park, from his guardian, Mr Tyrold. In re-acquainting himself with the Tyrold sisters and Indiana, Edgar finds himself drawn to Camilla. She also finds herself drawn to Edgar. Unfortunately, the mortifying realization that he is considered to be Indiana's intended complicates his attempts at courtship until he can resolve the misunderstanding. Even so, the machinations of Miss Margland, the jealousy of Indiana, circumstances in general (including Camilla's misadventures in navigating country society and new acquaintances such as the dim-witted Mr Dubster, the rakish Sir Sedley Clarendel, and the beautiful, reputable, witty, but lamentably satirical widow Mrs Arlbery) and Edgar's judgmental nature in particular serve to make his wooing of Camilla extremely protracted. He finally wins Camilla's hand only to relinquish it almost immediately after catching Camilla's debasement at the lips of Sir Sedley Clarendel.

Clarendel, a frivolous and flirtatious baronet, in having been mortified to have fallen in love with Camilla, tried to save face by protesting that he had no serious designs on Camilla's affections or pretensions to marriage with her. Once done, he kisses the confused girl's hand. Edgar witnesses this with the same level of revulsion and astonishment usually reserved for catching one's grandparents in the act of sexual congress, which naturally offends Camilla. She frees him from their engagement and with her father's blessing and encouragement, removes to Southampton to visit her new friend, Mrs Berlington with Eugenia, Indiana, and Miss Margland following behind a few hours later to provide company and proper supervision. This is, of course, taken by Edgar as further sign that Camilla is capricious, weak, frivolous, and above all a debased flirt. Dr Marchmont, Edgar's tutor and mentor in matters of the heart, encourages these assumptions.

While Camilla suffers through one misadventure after the other, her sister Eugenia attracts the notice of fortune hunter Alphonso Bellamy. He appeals to Miss Margland's vanity by flattering her into pleading his case to Eugenia and Sir Hugh and eventually asks Sir Hugh for Eugenia's hand. He is refused, not being known to Sir Hugh nor particularly welcome as Eugenia is intended for Clermont.

Bellamy eventually kidnaps Eugenia and forces her into marriage, Edgar eventually stops listening to the misogynistic Dr Marchmont, Camilla falls into and gets out of debt, Lionel is forced to give up frivolity, Sir Hugh is nearly bankrupted by his nephews, and Mr Tyrold spends some time in debtor's prison. But all ends well as Bellamy accidentally kills himself, Mr Tyrold is freed, Camilla and Edgar are married, Lavinia marries Hal Westwyn, Indiana elopes with a penniless hotheaded military ensign called Macdersey, Clermont gets beaten by a servant he unfairly tried to whip, and Eugenia (it is hinted) eventually marries Mr Melmond, a man whose fine education and extremely emotional outbursts had won her heart early in the novel.

"Camilla" - Main Characters

Main characters

Camilla is the seventeen year old protagonist of the novel. She is in love with Edgar Mandlebert but frequent misunderstandings prevent their union.
Frances Burney decided on the name 'Camilla' for her heroine shortly before the novel's publication. At one time she was called Clarinda, but most frequently Ariella. As late as 15 July 1795, Frances Burney wrote to her brother Charles to say, 'The name of my heroine is ARIELLA.' Dr. Burney, however, objecting to the name Ariella, the novelist struck out the name Ariella and wrote in Camilla.
Camilla is very pretty, though not as exquisitely beautiful as Indiana. She is generous (caring about poor people and the singing bird that was "pinched"), cheerful spirited, sincere, and very emotional. She loves her family dearly. Her naive simplicity and admiration can sometimes lead her into danger, such as when she makes friends with the witty and eccentric Mrs. Arlbery, or the beautiful and romantic Mrs. Berlinton. Her brother Lionel calls her "the best girl in the world, when she did not mount the pulpit."
Edgar Mandlebert is a ward of Mr. Tyrold. He is in possession of a large inheritance and estate at Beech Park. He is handsome, chivalrous, and in love with Camilla but must first make sure that she is as virtuous and worthy of his esteem as he wants her to be, especially since some of her actions, though innocent, have the appearance of coquetting. At his best, he is an uncertain lover too easily led astray by the misogynistic Dr Marchmont. At his worst—and sadly, too frequent—he is judgmental and cold; too prudish for his generation and even that preceding him. He is nearly as superficial as Indiana, though his shallowness takes a different bent. Obsessed with being upright and several times described by other characters in the novel as "nice" and "peculiar" (that is, fastidious and particular), he cares more about the appearance of what is proper and is disinclined to probe for any deeper meaning or to ask for (much less accept) any explanation. He makes baseless assumption after baseless assumption. When he does not, Dr Marchmont does for him, always tending to whatever makes others, especially Camilla, appear in the worst possible light.
Eugenia is Camilla's fifteen year old sister. As a result of Sir Hugh's actions at the beginning of the novel she is crippled and bears smallpox pits: therefore, though she had originally been the prettiest of the Tyrold sisters, she is now the plainest. Because of this Sir Hugh leaves the entirety of his fortune to her after his death. Her mind, however, is intelligent while being very innocent; and her heart is extremely gentle, merciful, and humble. Sir Hugh Tyrold attempts to keep from her all knowledge of her own personal defects, and therefore she is the more shocked at some peasant women's coarse insults to her. Mr. Tyrold, however, teaches her that beauty is superficial, by showing her a beautiful but mad woman. Her generosity and freedom from selfish jealousy astonishes Melmond when she gives him up to Indiana, even trying to help their marriage financially.
Lavinia is Camilla's nineteen year old sister. The book describes her as:

Her polished complexion was fair, clear, and transparent; her features were of the extremest delicacy, her eyes of the softest blue, and her smile displayed internal serenity. The unruffled sweetness of her disposition bore the same character of modest excellence...the meekness of her composition degernated not into insensibility; it was open to all the feminine of pity, of sympathy, and of tenderness.

She later earns well-deserved happiness with Hal Westwyn, Sir Hugh Tyrold's close friend's son, an amiable and chivalrous young man. Her personality is very gentle, modest, and sympathizing, but a fine sense of morality points out to her the error of her brother Lionel's ways, which cost her many a remonstrating, but ineffectual, sigh.
Lionel is Camilla's older brother. He is very mischievous and enjoys practical jokes. Later on his violent spirits and lack of morals carry him too far. He is dearly loved by all his sisters, especially Camilla, but his shameless sefishness taxes her affection severely by making her sacrifice much happiness for his benefit.
Indiana Lynmere is Camilla's seventeen year old cousin under the care of Sir Hugh. She is exquisitely beautiful but shallow and selfish, and has a taste for flirting. She is very easily flattered by eloquent compliments, but her heart not being deep or passionate, she is not very constant.
Clermont Lynmere is Camilla's cousin under the care of Sir Hugh. He is at school for most of the novel and when he returns is found to be brutish and rude, and is one of the only people in the book who actually makes Sir Hugh Tyrold anything near angry. He is extremely aggravating towards servants, and is very violent. Mr. Westwyn heartily disapproves of him and is rather satisfied when Clermont's selfish brutality lands him in a fight.
Sir Hugh Tyrold is Camilla's uncle who lives at Cleves. He is uneducated but very good natured and sweet tempered, with good morals and an excellent heart. Camilla is his favourite niece, her sprightliness and lively sweetness endearing her to him. He is very generous and charitable. However, his naiveness sometimes entangles those whom he wishes best: for instance, he wants Edgar to marry Indiana, and Clermont to marry Eugenia; however, both hopes are unfulfilled - Edgar marries Camilla, which he rejoices in, and Eugenia marries Melmond. At the end of the book, his new matchmaking hopes have landed on Miss Margland and Dr. Orkbourne.
Mr. Tyrold is Camilla's father whom she lives with at Etherington. He is a pastor and is very well respected by his daughters. He has a kind, gentle temper, strengthened by steady sense.
Mrs. Tyrold is Camilla's mother. She is revered by her daughters, and she loves her husband. However, sometimes her perfectionism frightens Camilla: for instance, when Camilla has landed her father in prison because of her debts, she thinks she can muster up courage to beg her father and uncle's forgiveness, but at the thought of going near her mother, she is almost frightened out of her senses. Mrs. Tyrold has a truly good heart, however, and she kindly forgives Camilla in the end.
Miss Margland is the governess at Cleves. She is Indiana's almost constant companion and an annoyance to Sir Hugh and Dr. Orkbourne. Scornful and selfish, her greatest object is to go to London again, and when she is dismayed by Edgar's preference for Camilla, she has no scruples in treating her with indelicate cruelty herself, and egging Indiana to do the same.
Dr. Orkbourne is Eugenia's teacher at Cleves. He is interested almost solely in his studies. The servants think he is "cracked," but Sir Hugh insists they respect Dr. Orkbourne. Eugenia respects him.
Dr. Marchmont is an advisor and friend to Edgar. He is extremely skeptical of women based on his past experiences, and though honest and kind, he continually dissuades Edgar from proposing to Camilla, and cautions him.
Mrs. Arlbery is a friend of Camilla. Her status as a widow allows her to have much more freedom than generally allowed to women at the time. She enjoys bossing fashionable men around with ridiculous orders. Her sense of satire aside, she is the only one who sees Edgar Mandlebert for the emotional coward he really is, explaining perfectly his faults to a disbelieving Camilla.
Sir Sedley Clarendel is a friend of Mrs Arlberry. He is a baronet whose fortune of £15,000 per annum makes him wealthier than Mandlebert as well as his social superior. However, Sir Sedley's foppish manners prove initially repulsive to Camilla. Eventually, Camilla's sweet disposition, breeding, disinterestedness, and loveliness penetrate through Sir Sedley's foppish facade, leading to acts of generosity and a genuine admiration for her. Camilla is often too flustered to seriously withstand his attentions and her brother Lionel too often encourages Sir Sedley in the hopes that it will lead to many generous gifts of money once the baronet is married to Camilla. Upon finding that his attentions and hand are unwanted, he feigns a horror of any serious design on Camilla and flees to the Hebrides.

Melmond is a school acquaintance of Lionel's. He falls in love with Indiana before speaking to her, saying, "...she is all I ever read of! all I ever conceived! she is beauty in its very essence! she is elegance, delicacy, and sensibility personified!' To which even the thoughtless Lionel replies, 'All very true...but how should you know anything of her besides her beauty?'. Eugenia develops a crush on him because of his studious nature and fervent love of literature. Sometimes his romantic passions carry him away, as in the case of Indiana, but he has a good heart and principles underneath.
Mrs. Berlinton is a sixteen year old friend of Camilla's and Melmond's sister. Camila describes her to Edgar as "attractive, gentle, amiable." She was forced to marry a much older man by her aunt but continues a correspondence with a mystery male. She is very beautiful and her sweetness of manners are captivating, which makes Camilla enraptured with her. She is very romantic, just like Melmond, but without the firmness of his principles: thus she sinks into gambling, flirting, and immoral "friendships."
Jacob is a faithful old family servant, who adores his master, Sir Hugh Tyrold. He speaks affectionately of Camilla to Edgar, loves his master, and is plain-spoken to Clermont Lynmere.
Nicholas Gwigg (Alphonso Bellamy): the younger son of the master of a great gaming-house. In his first youth, he had been utterly neglected, and run wild; but his father afterwards becoming rich, had bestowed on him as good an education as the late business with which it had begun could possibly give (it was pity, perhaps, that the education did not include morals). He tried gaming, but spending as fast as he earned, he acquired nothing; and once, in a tide of disfavor, he had cheated, and been found out. His father dead, his elder brother passive, he went to London, hoping to elope with some heiress by relying on his handsome face and lots of compliments. In the process he changed his name to Alphonso Bellamy. He had first met with the beautiful Mrs. Berlinton, and though this would not make him any money, her romantic turn of mind and loveliness tempted him to a scheme yet darker. They had exchanged letters with each other after she left, and soon after he forced Eugenia to marry him by shocking her gentleness of disposition with a suicidal threat. He treated her cruelly, yelling at her and trying to force her to write to her uncle for money, and continuing his heinous correspondence, and even meeting with, Mrs. Berlinton. Several unpleasant debts of honor being claimed, he had tried to force Eugenia to write to her uncle for money by putting a gun to her head and saying he would kill himself immediately after she was dead. Terrified, she was beginning to agree, when the alarmed postillion shouted out, "Hold, villain! or you are a dead man!" His hand shook—the gun went off—and he dropped dead. His behavior to Eugenia throughout was selfish, unfeeling, and brutally cruel. At first, Eugenia really believed in his passion for her, and though refusing to accept it, she sincerely pitied him and would not suspect him. After the marriage, she found out what he was really like, but refused to persecute him in court ("Solemn has been my vow! sacred I must hold it!")
Mr. Westwyn: A good hearted old man and very close friend of Sir Hugh Tyrold. Though not so gentle or sweet tempered as his friend, he is affectionate and unassumingly plain spoken. He is very strict with his son, Hal, but clearly loves him dearly. He treats Clermont with well-deserved contempt, saying, "That person...is a fellow I have prodigious longing to give a good caning to." He takes a great liking to Camilla at first, but when he observes her seemingly coquettish behavior (in reality she was just making a naive mistake in the process of trying to repulse Hal's affection), his partiality for her soon cools. Later he grows delighted with Lavinia, who is "pretty near as pretty" as her sister, and whose gentle sweetness wins his blunt heart over.