Between semiotics and pragmatics: Opening language studies to textual agency

8/10/2019 Between semiotics and pragmatics: Opening language studies to textual agency

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Between semiotics and pragmatics: Opening languagestudies to textual agency

Francois Cooren *

Universitede Montreal, Departement de Communication, CP 6127, Succursale Centre-Ville,

Montreal, Que. H3C 3J7, Canada

Received 26 September 2005; received in revised form 6 April 2006; accepted 26 November 2006

Abstract

This paper examines how pragmatics and semiotics intersect by unveiling what I claim to be a blind spot

in language studies, i.e. objects textual agency. By textual agency I mean the capacity to produce speech

acts or, more broadly, discursive acts, a capacity that has traditionally been ascribed solely to human actors.

As shown in this paper, a semiotic approach to communication allows us to open up the traditional speaker

hearer schema by showing how textual entities can also be said to be doing something discursively. In

keeping with the semiotic openness to non-linguistic objects, while acknowledging the incarnateddimension of communication, as highlighted by pragmaticians, I show that pragmatics could therefore

benefit from opening its perspective to textual agency. Building on Sbisas work on speech act theory and

what Descombes identifies as tetravalent structures, I show to what extent a given speech act can be

attributed not only to the person who produced it, but also to the textual entity he or she produced. It is

precisely this logic of imbrication and representation that allows us to open up the traditional speaker/hearer

schema by highlighting the chain of agencies that pervade any interactional situation.

# 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Speech act theory; Diathesis; Marina Sbisa; Valences; Lucien Tesniere; Agency

1. Introduction

This paper investigates the intersection between pragmatics and semiotics by highlighting what

could be called a blind spot in language studies, i.e. objects textual agency. While pragmatic

studies tend to be focused on language use between two or more interlocutors in a given situation,

semiotics does not hesitate to analyze the functioning of various objects paintings, architectural

www.elsevier.com/locate/pragmaJournal of Pragmatics 40 (2008) 116

* Tel.: +1 514 343 6111x2759; fax: +1 514 343 2298.

E-mail address: [email protected].

0378-2166/$ see front matter # 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2006.11.018
mailto:[email protected]://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2006.11.018http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2006.11.018mailto:[email protected]


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elements, pictures, signs without having recourse to the classical speakerhearer schema. In

keeping with the semiotic openness to non-linguistic objects, while acknowledging the incarnated

dimension of communication, as highlighted by pragmaticians, I will show that pragmatics

could benefit from opening its perspective to non-human agency (Cooren, 2000, 2005a). If, as

Sbisa(1987, 2002)rightly shows, speech acts can be more generally considered social actions(see also Geis, 1995), it should be worth exploring how various artifacts can be said to do

something in given situations, especially when this doing implies actions like stating

(assertive), guaranteeing, (commissive), suggesting (directive), sanctioning (declaration)

or rewarding (expressive).

FollowingGreimas (1983)andTesniere (1959), I contend that any utterance can be analyzed

as a little drama, in which different characters called actants are involved on a scene that

represents the actional circumstances. Of interest for pragmaticians are, of course, trivalent verbs,

since they involve an agent (or prime actant), an object (or second actant) and a recipient (or third

actant), and include what Tesniere calls verbs of saying and verbs of giving. But the most

interesting case comes from what Descombes (2004)identifies as tetravalent structures, whichinvolve four actants. Although no verb in any language seems to correspond to this type of

structure, it actually refers to the phenomenon of factitiveness (Greimas and Courtes, 1982), i.e.

causing to do, when applied to trivalent verbs, as in X makes Y tell W to Z. In this sentence,

what appears tobe Ys action (telling) can now be attributed to X, that is, Y is the agent, while X

is the principal.1 It is precisely this logic of imbrication (Taylor and Van Every, 2000) and

representation that allows us to open up the traditional speaker/hearer schema by highlighting the

chain of agencies that pervade any interactional situation.

2. Semiotics and pragmatics

Although pragmatics and semiotics can be said to represent two different theoretical

traditions the first being mostly focused on the functioning of signs, while the second highlights

the practical effects of language use there is a very interesting body of research that currently

explores the intersection of these two approaches. Arguably, this intersection finds its source in

the work of a scholar who has been identified as the founder of these two theoretical movements,

namely Charles Sanders Peirce. Indeed, even if semiotics can be broadly defined as the study of

meaning (Greimas, 1983), some semioticians likeCarontini (1984)have pointed out, following

Peirce, that such a study actually consists in analyzing the signs action, i.e. what Peirce calls

semiosis. As will be shown, such a definition immediately parallels the pragmatic project ofstudying language from an actional perspective.

For instance, Morris (1938) notes that pragmatics, which he defines as one of the three

branches of semiosis, can be defined as the study of the relation between signs and their

interpreters, i.e. that branch of semiotic which studies the origin, the uses and the effects of

signs (Morris, 1938:365). However, many differences can also be highlighted between the two

disciplines. In terms of object, semioticians do not hesitate to study images, traces or narratives,

while pragmaticians tend to focus primarily on utterances and their meanings in given face to

face contexts. In other words, everything happens as though pragmaticians had co-opted the

F. Cooren / Journal of Pragmatics 40 (2008) 1162

1 Note that the distinction between principal and agent parallels Greimass (1987) distinction between destinateur

(sender) and sujet (subject). In both cases we speak about someone or something (subjectagent) who/that acts in the

name of someone or something else (senderprincipal).


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study of language use as it takes place between two or more interlocutors, while semioticians had

decided to focus primarily on the functioning of relatively inert objects like tales, paintings, or

pictures, outside any specific communicational situation.

In terms of approach, one could also note that semioticians tend to hold an immanentist

perspective, i.e. the idea that the semiotic functioning of an object is to be found in the objectitself (paralleling the Saussurian project as taken up and elaborated by Hjemslev), whereas

pragmaticians will, on the contrary, insist on the importance of resorting to extra-linguistic

factors to account for utterances meanings and their effects on interpreters (Levinson, 1983; Mey,

1993, 1998). Paradoxically, semioticians can therefore be said to be closer in their approach to

traditional linguistics (see for instanceGreimas, 1983, 1987, 1988; Greimas and Courtes, 1982;

Greimas and Fontanille, 1993), while pragmaticians work usually implicitly questions the

immanentist doctrine (see for instance Mey, 1988, 1993).

Having highlighted these differences, we can claim that, far from being incompatible,

semiotics and pragmatics have much to say to each other, as evidenced by the work of renowned

scholars such asEnrico Carontini (1984),Hermann Parret (1983), and especiallyMarina Sbisa(1994, 2001, 2002), as well as some events organized in order to prompt dialogue between these

two traditions (for instance, seeDeledalle, 1989). FollowingSbisa(2002), we can contend, for

instance, that the systematic study of speech act sequences could especially benefit from

Greimass (1983, 1987, 1988) narrative theory to the extent that his focus on action and

sequentiality allows us to explain how interaction is temporally organized in specific schematic

forms (see alsoCooren, 2000; Cooren and Fairhurst, 2004).

Although such parallels will be mobilized in what follows, this paper will especially highlight

one specific aspect of language use that seems somewhat neglected by pragmatic studies, but can

however benefit from a semiotic approach, i.e. what could be called objects textual agency.

By textual agency I mean the capacity to produce speech acts or, more broadly, discursive acts;

a capacity that has traditionally been ascribed solely to human actors. As I will show, a semiotic

approach to communication allows us to open up the traditional speakerhearer schema by

showing how many different non-humans can also be said to be doing something discursively.

But first, we need to start by reconceptualizing the traditional interactional situation. This

reconceptualization is offered bySbisa (1983).

3. Speech acts as social action

Marina Sbisa`

has systematically explored the contribution of Greimassian semiotics topragmatics for the past 25 years. A specialist ofAustins (1975) work (she is co-editor, with

J.O. Urmson, of the second edition of How to do Things with Words published in 1975),

her perspective consists, among other things, in offering an alternative to the intentionalist

approach proposed by John Searle and his followers, which she associates with what she calls the

one-place model of speech acts (Sbisaand Fabbri, 1980). To this model, mainly focused on

the speakers intention and its recognition by the interlocutor, she opposes what she terms the

two-place model, which amounts to positioning the recipient as an active participant who

(i) select[s] an acceptable interpretation of the speech act, and (ii). . .either accept[s] the

speech act, under such an interpretation, as a successful act, or . . . completely or partly

reject[s] it as more or less inappropriate and unhappy. (p. 305)

According to this perspective, parallel to the one defended by other pragmaticians likeArundale

(1999, 2005) and Levinson (1981, 1983) or conversation analysts like Schegloff (1988), one

F. Cooren / Journal of Pragmatics 40 (2008) 116 3


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should rather analyze speech acts as interactional moves (Sbisa and Fabbri, 1980:312)

by focusing on what people are not only doing but also becoming when interacting with each

other.

This approach therefore consists in highlighting how the hearer/reader appears to interpret

what the speaker/writer did in saying or writing something, an interpretation that can be revealedby the way the hearer/reader displays her understanding in the next turns, a move that can lead, of

course, to repair sequences (cf. Heritage, 1984; Schegloff, 1988). By focusing on discursive

action, this model also enables us to analyze what kinds of change are brought about in the

relation between the participants, as it tends to highlight the fact that speech acts are social

actions that consist in transforming the interactants identity2 (cf. alsoGeis, 1995). ForSbisa

(1994), this perspective is actually close to the one that was, at least implicitly, promoted by

Austin (1975).

As she reminds us repeatedly (Sbisa, 1984, 1987, 1989, 2001, 2002), Austin points out that the

effect that an illocutionary act brings about should not be reduced, asSearle(1969, 1979)claims,

to the securing of uptake (or illocutionary effect in Searles terminology3), but must also takeinto account two other effects: the production of conventional effects as well as the effect of

prompting a response or sequel (see Austin, 1975:116117). She writes:

In this perspective, the hearers understanding of the force is viewed as necessary to the

successful performance of the speakers act, and therefore to the production of its

conventional effects. The addressee has to take the speech act as a promise, an order, a

statement. . ., if it is to count as a promise (and create an obligation), an order (and assign an

obligation), a statement (and formulate a verifiable/falsifiable piece of knowledge). The

interlocutors role is no longer passive, confined to mirroring the speakers intention, but

involves participation in determining the successfulness of the speakers illocutionary act.(Sbisa, 1994:162)

In other words, Sbisas model consists of highlighting the production of changes in conventional

states of affairs, a production that leads to the transformation of the addressees identity in terms

of rights and obligations if this latter deems the speech act to be felicitous.

To illustrate this position, one could, for instance, take up this excerpt from Schegloff

(1988):


2 By this, I mean that each speech act brings about some change in the way the interlocutors are defined and identified.For instance, when a sergeant orders a private to clean the latrines, the privates identity and sergeants identity are

changed to the extent that the private is now ordered to clean the latrines and the sergeant has now given an order to the

private. A priori, this does not add much to our comprehension of what is happening, but such changes can, of course,

have very important consequences. In our case, should the private decline to follow this order that he just received, he

could be recriminated and punished for insubordination. Such insubordination only makes sense if we acknowledge that

the privates identity has changed upon receiving this order (for more details, see Cooren, 2000). As we will see later, such

conceptions of identity are perfectly congruent withPeirces (1898/1992)doctrine of internal relations.3 Speaking of illocutionary effect,Searle (1979)writes, In the case of illocutionary acts, we succeed in doing what we

are trying to do by getting our audience to recognize what we are trying to do. But the effect on the hearer is not a belief or

response, it consists simply in the hearer understanding the utterance of the speaker. It is this effect that I have been calling

the illocutionary effect (p. 47). Illocutionary effects thus have to be distinguished from perlocutionary effects to the

extent that perlocutions involve the persons reaction to what she understood, which ultimately involves her freedom. For

instance, if I ask someone to pass me the salt, the uptake (or illocutionary effect) for Searle consists of my interlocutor

understanding that I am asking her to pass me the salt. If she decides to pass me the salt and does pass it to me, this

qualifies as a perlocutionary effect. This is ultimately based on the fact that comprehension is not a voluntary act.


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(1)

Mother: Do you know whos going to that meeting? T1

Russ: Who. T2

Mother: I dont kno:w T3

Russ: Oh::. Probly Missiz McOwen (n detsa) en T4Probly Missiz Cadry and some of the teachers.

(0.4) and the counselors (pp. 5758)

As we see in this example, Russ initially understood his mothers question at T1 as a request for

information about his state of knowledge, a request that ultimately functions, for him, as a

pre-announcement. His understanding is displayed at T2 when he responds, Who, which

implicitly means that he does not know who would be worth an announcement on his mothers

part. In other words, for Russ, his mothers question at T1 counts as a pre-announcement, that is a

move by which his mother is checking if what she is about to announce at T3 is already known by

her son (Cooren, 2005a).What is interesting in this excerpt is that his mother actually meant her question at T1 as a

request for information, and not as a pre-announcement. As we understand at T3, she does not

know who is going to that meeting (I dont kno:w), which means that she wonders if her son Russ

would happen to know this information. The confusion comes from the fact that a

pre-announcement and a request for information can be conventionally performed by using

the same type of utterance: Do you know + question. For instance, one could imagine that the

interaction could have evolved as follows:

(2)

Mother: Do you know whos going to that meeting? T1Russ: Who. T2

Mother: Missiz McOwen (n detsa) en probly T3

Missiz Cadry and some of the teachers.

Russ Oh great! T4

As we see in this invented sequence, no repair takes place, since Russ and his mother seem to

implicitly agree on what T1 counts as, i.e. a pre-announcement. What Mother is doing at T1 in (2)

is checking if her son already knows who is going to the meeting, an action she performs by

asking a question about his state of knowledge. Upon hearing her son asking, Who at T2, sheunderstands that he does not know who is going to be at the meeting and then makes her

announcement at T3.

As shown in excerpts (1) and (2), and as pointed out by Sbisa (1987, 2002), agreement

(even implicit) is necessary between the interlocutors in order for a speech act to be considered

performed. Because of the conventional dimension of any speech act (including the

non-institutional ones), interlocutors ultimately have to implicitly or explicitly agree on what

was actually done, otherwise misunderstanding and/or sequences of repair take place. As

illustrated in excerpt (1), it is only when Russ realizes that he misunderstood his mothers initial

question that an agreement on what T1 counts as can implicitly take place between the two

participants. It is therefore Russ who ultimately determines the successfulness of his mothersrequest for information. As we see, intention is something that is reconstructed a posteriori by the

participants and not something that defines a priori what a given speech act will count as (see also

Arundale, 1999, 2005).



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Furthermore, by identifying illocutionary acts as social actions yielding results, Sbisa

also allows us to extend the analysis of speech acts to cases that, by definition, would have

gone unnoticed in Searles (1969, 1979) intentionalist perspective. One such case is, for

instance, what happens when the addressee orients to what was said or written by ascribing

agency to entities that are supra- or infra-individual. Speaking of an interactional situationinvolving two participants (P1 being the agent and P2 the patient or recipient), Sbisa (1987)

writes:

Our P1 can be a human individual, an infra-individual instance (e.g., the Unconscious), a

super-individual construction (class, party, society, church, and the like), and even a

personified natural agent. (p. 259)

While ascribing agency to these entities would be unthinkable from an intentionalist perspective,

Sbisas two-place model shows that while P2 must be a human being (or at least a being capable

of identifying and interpreting actions, whether discursive or physical), P1 does NOT have to be

human (see alsoCooren, 2000).4

In keeping with the semiotic openness to non-human agency (Greimas, 1983; Greimas and

Courtes, 1982), Sbisas conventional perspective thus paves the way to an extended version of

speech act theory in which beings other than humans can be said to do things with words. What

remains crucial in this acknowledgement is how the addressee orients to what is done, that is,

what kind of entity she selects as being the agent. However, before going further into this

controversial question, we need to go back to Greimas (1983)and to one linguist whose work was

decisive in the development of his narrative theory: LucienTesniere (1959).

4. Dramatism and multivalence

As we know, Sbisas reconceptualization of speech act theory stems fromGreimass (1987)

semiotic model, which among other things consists in identifying the sequential aspects

of action, especially in narratives, but also in other forms of discourse (for instance, see his

analyses of a recipe (Greimas, 1987) or of legal discourse (Greimas, 1990)). For Greimas,

semiotics should first be considered a theory of how texts produce meaning, i.e. what he

calls a theory of signification, and not strictly a theory of signs. In other words, his goal is

to identify the conditions under which meaning emerges in the sequentiality of action,

which can be identified in narratives and other forms of discourse. Interestingly enough,

Greimass own model partly stems from the work of the French linguist LucienTesnie`

re (1959),whose main idea consisted in comparing each sentence he was analyzing to a spectacle or

mini-drama.


4 Regarding the question of non-human agency, we could establish a parallel with the figure of metonymy, as analyzed,

for instance, by cognitive linguists like Lakoff and Johnson (1980). As we know, metonymy consists of speaking of an

entity to refer to another entity that is considered to be associated with it. These entities can be individual or collective,

human or non-human. For instance, we will say, Washington decided that. . . to speak about the decision made by the

president of the United States and/or his associates. Here, Washington representsor stands forthe president and/or his

associates. Even if the question of non-human agency can be associated with this specific trope, it cannot bereducedto it.

For instance, when I say This book moved me, I may mean that it is, in fact, the person who wrote this article who

moved me,but I may also just mean what I said, that it is this specific book that moved me, and not its author, even if I

know who wrote the book. In other words, recognizing non-human agency goes beyond the recognition of a trope, since

sometimes there is no metonymic trope associated with this recognition.


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For Tesniere (1959), each sentence that we hear or read involves an action from which

different characters, called actants, can be identified, as well as circumstantial indicators. As he

writes,

The verbal node found in most European languages. . . expresses a small drama in itself.

Like a drama, it indeed necessarily includes a process, and most often actors and

circumstances. Transposed from the plane of dramatic reality to that of structural syntax,

the process, the actors and the circumstances respectively become the verb, the actants, and

the circumstantial indicators. (p. 102, my translation)

Starting from this intuition, Tesniere then shows how verbs of action can be differentiated

according to their valence, that is, the number of actants that appear to be attached to them. This

leads him to identify four types of verbs, which he calls avalent, monovalent (or intransitive),

divalent (or transitive), and trivalent (or ditransitive) verbs (see also Cooren, 2000; Fillmore,

1988; Goldberg, 1995; Lakoff, 1987; Taylor and Van Every, 2000).

According to this analysis, raining is an avalent verb, since it describes a process whichtakes place by itself (p. 106, my translation), as we can see in It rains or Il pleut.

Concerning monovalent verbs, such as falling down, they describe a process in which only

one person or thing participates (p. 106, my translation), as in Bob fell down or

Bob tomba, where Bob is called a prime actant (or agent), i.e. the one who (or that) is

represented as carrying out the action. As for divalent verbs (e.g. eating), they describe a process

involving two actants, as in Bob ate the apple or Bob mangea la pomme, where Bob and the

apple are, respectively, identified as the prime and second actants, the second actant (or object)

being the one that is represented as supporting the action (cf. also pp. 242255). Finally, trivalent

verbs (like giving) describe a process in which three persons or things participate (p. 107,

my translation), as in Bob gave an apple to George or Bob donna une pomme a George,

where Bob, the apple and George, respectively, are the prime, second, and third actants, the third

actant (or recipient) being the one to whose advantage or detriment the action is performed

(cf. also pp. 255259).

Since this typology claims to apply to any verb of action, it seems reasonable to think that

speech acts may be analyzed according to this perspective. As Cooren (2000)andDescombes

(1996, 2001, 2004)note,Tesniere (1959)indeed points out that the category of trivalent verbs

correspond with what he calls verbes de dire (verbs of saying) and verbes de don (verbs of

giving), which themselves include verbs that Austin (1975) and Searle (1979) identify as

performative. The list of verbs of saying includes:Say, pronounce, express, describe, report, recount, present, explain, teach, demonstrate,

prove, specify, mark, declare, proclaim, confirm, assert, deny, maintain, assure, certify,

guarantee, swear, mean, order, command, assign, recommend, indicate, mention, insinuate,

suggest, whisper, put forward, concede, confide, allow, ask, . . . answer, hush up, hide,

confess, uncover, reveal, denounce, disclose, announce, communicate, tell, repeat, brood

over, recite, churn out, cite (p. 256, my translation, see also Cooren, 2000:89).

As we see in this list, performative verbs like asking or guaranteeing are considered

trivalent because they describe a process involving three actants: an agent, an object and a

recipient, as in George asked Bob to come here or Martha guaranteed Nancy that this car wasbrand new. In both cases, we see that these sentences consist in describing a process (or action)

involving an agent (respectively, George and Martha), an object (respectively, the request to

come here and the guarantee that this car was new) and a recipient (respectively, Bob and Nancy).



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Utterances like Come here addressed by George to Bob or This car is brand new! addressed

by Martha to Nancy in specific contexts can thus be analyzed as speech acts that consist in asking

and guaranteeing something.

The list of verbs of giving is also informative:

Give, supply, get, allocate, distribute, relegate, confer, concede, delegate, award, lavish,

administer, grant, design, promise, assign, refuse, yield, sacrifice, leave, abandon, lend

entrust, return, pay, reimburse, bring, pass hand in, deliver, send, mail, remove, take off,

take away, steal (Tesniere, 1959:256, cf. alsoCooren, 2000:89).

As we see, this list includes trivalent verbs like promising, removing, or awarding, which

correspond with speech acts, as, respectively, expressed in the following utterances: I will

come, You are not sergeant anymore or I hereby award you the Nobel Prize. These three

utterances in given contexts, respectively, function as an agent giving a recipient her word that

she will come, an agent removing the title of sergeant from a recipient (what is also called a

discharge) and an agent awarding the Nobel Prize to a recipient.FollowingSbisas (1987, 2002)semiotic approach, it thus appears that if we analyze speech

acts as social actions that bring about context changes, we realize that what ultimately matters is

how a given interpreter translates any situation involving the production of a speech act as a

transformation of state. This transformation involves, as pointed out byGreimas (1987) and

Tesniere (1959), an agent giving an object to a recipient or an agent taking an object from

someone. For instance, at T1 in excerpt (1), the utterance Do you know whos going to that

meeting? addressed by the Mother to Russ can be translated into the Mother (agent) making a

request for information (object) to Russ (recipient). As we have seen, a misunderstanding took

place because Russ initially thought that his mothers request for information was about his state

of knowledge (concerning whether or not he knew who was going to be at the meeting), while he

realized in T3 that she actually meant it as a request for information about who was coming to the

meeting.

Had Mother meant it as a request for information about her sons state of knowledge

(as imagined in sequence (2)), she could have also been said to be checking if her son already

knew the information she was about to announce. Upon hearing Who at T2, which

consists of her son (agent) making a request for information (object) to her mother (recipient)

about who is coming, it could have been said that she checked to see if her son indeed

did not know the information. In terms of transformation of states, this would mean that the

fact that Russ did not know the information (recipient) had been checked (object) by her(agent),5 prompting her (agent), at T3, to make her announcement (object) to her son

(recipient). As we see in this analysis, if we analyze what happens in terms of actions, we


5 Here, I mean that, semiotically speaking, once a piece of information is said to be checked by X, everything happens

as though this information has received a new property or trait from X. This is a relational propertyto the extent that it is

the information-checked-by-X, but as Descombes (1996) reminds us, language allows us to produce un-relativized

terms (p. 206, my translation of derelativise), like checked, loved or married, which are relative or relational

terms artificially presented as absolute. These terms are supposed to refer to traits or properties that are both relational

(e.g. if a piece of information has been checked, this implies, by definition, that it was checked by someone) and internal

(checked is a new property of the piece of information). Incidentally, this analysis corresponds withPeirces (1898/

1992)doctrine of internal relations, which contradictsRussells (1911/1992)doctrine of external relations. According to

Peirce, relations can both be internal and real (for more details on this debate, seeCooren, 2005b;Grillo, 2000; Jacques,

1991).


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realize how each move consists of transforming the situation, a transformation that, of course,

always depends on an agreement about what was actually accomplished (as illustrated in

sequence 1).

As we see, the problem of the speakers intentions does not disappear. It is rather one part of

the picture, as pointed out by the two-place model proposed by Sbisaand Fabbri (1980)andArundales (1999, 2005) co-constituted model of communication. By focusing on how

interlocutors interpret what is happening and agree or disagree on what is accomplished, we end

up adopting an actional and conventional perspective, mainly focused on what people appear to

be doing according to the conventional effects of language use. For instance, if we are to

announce something to someone, it is conventionally implied that what is about to be announced

should be newsworthy to the interlocutor, otherwise the announcement could be considered

performed but infelicitous. By definition, an announcement is what it is because the interlocutor

does not a priori know its content.

This is precisely how Russ initially understands what is happening, in excerpt (1), upon

hearing his mother ask him a question about his state of knowledge. For him, the way to makesense of his mothers question is to insert this action into the larger project of checking his state of

knowledge, which is itself inserted into the larger project of announcing something. This is how

he implicitly reconstructs what is happening, which certainly leads him to attribute specific

intentions to his mother (she is about to announce something to me). But as we see, intention is

something that is reconstructed by the interlocutors rather than determining a priori how speech

acts are to be understood. Sure, since they have to agree on what was accomplished, one could say

that the mothers intention plays a role in the ultimate determination of what she did, but it is just

one part of the interpretive puzzle.

The semiotic approach advocated by Cooren (2000) and Sbisa (2002) thus allows us to

analyze speech acts as transformations of state operated through the giving or taking of an

object between an agent and a recipient. Interestingly, this approach also enables us to see how

these social actions articulate with one another, how the identification of a given speech act

participates in the definition of larger sequences (also called schemas byGreimas and Courtes

(1982)), as illustrated in the Mother-Russ interaction. Although these phenomena have already

been addressed through the study of indirectness (Cooren, 1997, 2000; Cooren and Sanders,

2002) and sequentiality (Cooren, 2000; Cooren and Fairhurst, 2004; Sbisa, 2002), there

remains to be shown how this approach to language use allows to address what has been

identified, in the previous section, as non-humans textual agency. This is what I propose to do

in the next section.

5. Tetravalence and agency

So far, we have seen how it is possible to reinterpret speech acts as actions involving

three actants, what Tesniere (1959) and others likeCooren (2000) and Goldberg (1995)identify

as the prime actant (also called agent), the second actant (or object) and the third actant

(or recipient). At first sight, one could therefore think that speech act theory is circumscribable

through the identification of trivalent verbs. After all, doing things with words can consist of (1)

an agent giving a directive (object) to a recipient (what Searle (1979)calls directives), (2) an

agent giving her word (object) to a recipient (what Searle calls commissives), (3) an agentgiving permission (object) to a recipient (what Cooren (2000) calls accreditives), (4) an agent

giving information (object) to a recipient (what Cooren calls informatives), (5) an agent

giving (or removing) a status or identity to (or from) a recipient (what Searle calls



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declarations), and (6) an agent giving (or removing) value to (or from) a recipient (what

Searle calls expressives).

As nicely pointed out by Descombes (2004), Tesniere (1959)notes, however, that it is possible

to construct sentences involving more than three actants, what he identifies as tetravalent

constructions (cf. p. 258). What is a tetravalent construction? In order to answer this question, wefirst have to introduce what Descombes calls a scale of actional degrees (echelle des degres de

lagir (p. 87)), which involves the application of causative auxiliary verbs like causing to, or

making to other verbs. As noticed by Tesniere, actional verbs constitute semantic systems

(p. 299), which means that they can convert into one another. For instance, Tesniere notes that it is

possible to convert a transitive (or divalent) verb into a ditranstive verb by applying a causative

auxiliary verb like making or causing to. Teaching something to someone consists, for

example, in making someone learn something. In other words, teaching (a trivalent verb) is

causing to learn, learning being a divalent verb.

The same operation applies to monovalent (or intransitive) verbs, which can be converted

into divalent (or transitive) ones by applying a causative auxiliary verb. For instance,knocking over something (a divalent verb) is causing something to fall, and falling is

a monovalent verb. As we see, each verb can thus be located in a scale of actional degrees,

which is made of a causative series of verbal forms (Descombes, 2004, p. 87, my

translation). What is even more interesting is that this operation, called causative diathesis,

can also be applied to convert a trivalent verb into a tetravalent construction. As noted by

Tesniere,

The growing complexity of the actantial system of the verb is likely to be a function of the

progress of the human mind, which gives birth to more and more complex actantial

structures. One is therefore led to wonder if there is not also, after trivalent verbs,tetravalent verbs. If we put aside the periphrastic forms with tetravalent values. . ., it seems

that there does not exist in any language simple verbal forms that comprise more than three

valences. (p. 258, my translation)

So even if there are no simple verbal forms that correspond to this construction, Tesniere notes

that trivalent verbs, by becoming causative, are converted into tetravalent forms. As an example,

Charles gave the book to Alfred can be converted into Daniel made Charles give the book to

Alfred. (cf. p. 266).6

As we see in this case, making somebody give something can be called a tetravalent

construction to the extent that it involves four actants: the principal, the agent, the object, and therecipient, where the principal is positioned as the instigator of the process (cf. Tesniere, 1959:260).

WhileinthesentenceCharlesgavethebooktoAlfredCharleswaspositionedastheinstigatorofthe

process, the causative diathesis converts him into an immediate agent, and Daniel becomes the

principal (or mediate) agent. As noted byDescombes (2004), the transition to causative allows

us to describe what A (the immediate agent) is doing in terms of what B (the principal agent) is

doing (p. 94, my translation). This does not mean that the immediate agent is not doing things

anymore;itsimplymeansthatsomethingorsomeoneisnowpositionedasmakingherorcausingherto

do something.


6 As noted by one of the anonymous reviewers, the trivalent description could be true both of a situation in which

Charles decides himself to give Alfred the book and of one in which he is urged to do so by Daniel. This means that the

tetravalent construction is more specific in terms of content.


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What are the implications of this analysis for a reflection on (social) action in general and

speech act theory in particular? They are, we think, crucial. Interestingly enough, one could first

note that whatTesniere (1959)andDescombes (2004)highlight parallels in many respects what

other scholars likeCallon (1986, 1991; Callon and Latour, 1981)andLatour (1996, 1999)have

been saying for more than 20 years about socio-technical action, i.e. that to do is causing to do. AsLatour (1996)notes,

to act is to be perpetually overtaken by what one does. Faire cest faire [faire]. To do is to

make happen. . . .We are exceeded by what we create. To act is to mediate anothers

action. . .Thus it is not the case that there are actors on the one side and fields of forces on

the other. There are only actors actants any one of which can only proceed to action by

association with others who may surprise or exceed him/her/it. (p. 178, my underlining)

Not surprisingly,Callon and Latour (1981) explicitly acknowledge having been influenced by

Greimas (1987, Greimas and Courtes, 1982), an influence that can be felt up to the latest essayswritten byLatour (2004).

Indeed, if we follow what Callon, Descombes, Latour, and Tesniere are saying, we end up

realizing that action is something that, analytically speaking, can always be either broken down

into smaller units of action (by a conversion thatTesniere (1959)would call recessive diathesis)

or, on the contrary, included into larger units of action (by a conversion that Tesnie re would call

causative diathesis). For instance, your informing someone of something (where informing is a

trivalent verb) can be broken down into your making somebody know something (where knowing

is a divalent verb). Reversely, your informing someone of something can actually be included

into a larger episode where somebody or something actually made you inform someone of

something. For instance, X asked you to inform Yof something, which is the tetravalent structurethat positions X as the principal, you as the agent, Y as the recipient, and the information as the

object.

Using another illustration, we could note that mailing a letter to a friend ultimately consists in

making the post office bring this letter to this person. Pushing this exercise further down the

recessive diathesis, we realize that saying that the post office brings this letter to the friend

consists in an agent acting in the name of the post office (it could be a machine or a human) that

makes a mailman bring the letter to the person. If we again further this analysis, we see a mailman

putting a letter in the friends mailbox and the friend ultimately getting the letter from this box.

As this analysis shows, everything happens as though the recognition of tetravalent structures

enables us to open up the traditional speaker/hearer schema by highlighting not only what makes

people do what they do, but also what these people are using as intermediary to perform their

actions (whether discursive or physical).

As illustrated by Cooren (2004), we can therefore point out that people tend to have no

problem ascribing some form of agency to textual or discursive entities when they use ordinary

language. For instance, one can easily say This article claims that global warming is a fact

(assertive); This signature commits you to payment (commissive); This recipe suggests

that we use this kind of flour (directive); This new law revokes the governments decision

(declaration); or even The review compliments the actor on his performance in the film

(expressive). Intentionalists would argue that claims are statements people make, thatsignatures are flourishes that people produce to make documents official, that recipes are texts

that chefs write, that laws are documents that representatives vote, or that reviews are articles

journalists write. I am not, of course, challenging this point. On the contrary, it is precisely



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because human beings produce such texts that people can then orient to these by ascribing

them agency.

In keeping with the externalist thesis7 advocated by Peirce (1931), Ryle (1949) and

Wittgenstein (1953), I therefore contend that intentions and agency are not dispositions that

should just be ascribed to humans, but can also be extended to the things humans produce,whether these things are texts or artifacts, or to the entities they represent or act on behalf,

whether these entities are individual or collective. AsDescombes (1996, 2001)and Robichaud

(2006)remind us, agency and intention can be ultimately located neither in the human beings nor

in the things they produce because these phenomena are inherently relational, and not substantial.

For instance, when we say, This recipe suggests that we use this kind of flour, we indeed

attribute some form of agency to a recipe, but doing so does not consist in completely severing the

recipe from the person who wrote and conceived of it. On the contrary, it is only because we know

that recipes are texts that people write that we can attribute agency to these texts by singularizing

their contribution. In other words, it is because we are able to recognize institutional practices,

whatSbisa(1987, 2002)recognizes as conventions, like the writing of recipes, the signature ofdocuments, or the voting of laws, that the attribution of agency to texts and other technical

artifacts is possible.

6. Conclusion

What are the consequences of this analysis? Simply that analysts should not hesitate to take

into account that we live in a world full of various agencies and that the structuring of this world is

only possible through the active contribution of the discursive and physical artifacts that humans

produce. By focusing mainly on what humans do when they speak to each other, everything

happens as though pragmaticians were, in fact, neglecting something that semioticians havealready pointed out for some time, that is, that we live in a plenum of agencies where many

different things can be said to be doing things: companies, technologies, societies, machines,

texts, paintings, architectural elements, artifacts, etc. What Tesniere and others are pointing to is

that people continually and unknowingly perform causative and recessive diatheses; they

singularize, for various reasons (argumentative, aesthetic, educational, etc.), agents in a chain of

potential agencies when they come to identify actions. As pointed out byTaylor and Van Every

(2000), we just need to open our daily newspapers to see that companies decide to invest in

various products, new laws enforce specific behaviors, or treaties seal international agreements.

What this means is that not only humans produce things (e.g. treaties) that are going to literally

act on their behalf, in their name, but they also act on behalf of other entities whom or which they

are supposed to represent (e.g. companies, laws).

What or who is acting is not something the analyst can decide by arbitrarily looking at a

given situation, since ascribing agency is a judgment that people (consciously or

unconsciously) make when they evaluate and speak of a situation. It is this act of judgment

that we witness when we, as analysts, study texts and interactions. Adopting a relational

approach to agency thus consist in recognizing that agency is not a disposition that should be


7 According to the externalist thesis, intentionality is arelational phenomenon, that is, there is as much intentionality in

a document, a machine or an instrument as there is in the human brain. This position can be contrasted with the internalist

thesis, as defended for instance bySearle (1980a,b, 1984). According to this philosophical position, intentionality is a

characteristic that should be restricted to human beings (and other animals) and not to the artifacts they produce or design

in order to fulfill specific objectives (see Castor and Cooren, 2006, as well asRobichaud, 2006).


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reduced to humans and only humans, but that it should be extended to the (physical and

discursive) entities they mobilize in their action, whether by representing them (speaking,

writing or, more generally, acting in their name) or by making them do things. As analysts, we

therefore have to realize, followingLatour (1996), that there is no origin to action. Yes, indeed

people do things (physically or discursively), but we must always wonder, as analysts, whatmake them do things and what they mobilize in their action. In other words, action is always

caught in a chain of agencies.

As an illustration, we can again go back to the RussMother interaction.

(1)

Mother: Do you know whos going to that meeting? T1

Russ: Who. T2

Mother: I dont kno:w T3

Russ: Oh::. Probly Missiz McOwen (n detsa) en T4

Probly Missiz Cadry and some of the teachers.(0.4) and the counselors (pp. 5758)

As we saw previously, it is his mothers question that made Russ believe that she was checking

whether or not he knew who was going to that meeting. In other words, he initially oriented to her

questionas a way to check his state of knowledge so that she could make an announcement about

what he presumably did not know, which explains why he answered Who as a way to prompt

her to make her announcement. As we see in this analysis, his mothers question initially

functions for him as a request for information about his state of knowledge. Using Descombes

point, it could also be noted that a transition to causative is possible to the extent that what this

question (the immediate agent) is doing then becomes what his mother (the principal) is doing.

Upon hearing T1, he understands that she is making a request for information about his state of

knowledge because she is checking if she can make an announcement.

Interestingly, we know that this causative diathesis proved to be wrong. Upon hearing T3,

Russ then realized that his mother actually did not know who was coming to the meeting and

that she meant her request for information about his state of knowledge as a request for

information about the content of his knowledge. In other words, this example perfectly

illustrates my point, to the extent that we see that the utterances people produce make them

do things that they do not always control. To communicate verbally, interactants produce

utterances that will literally act on their behalf, in their name. These utterances (agents) canof course translate more or less correctly what their instigators (principals) mean, but they

can also, as we saw in this example, betray them. Traduttore, traditore! as the Italians

nicely say. A pragmatic approach to language is indeed about the role contexts play in the

meanings of utterances and their effects on interpreters, but these effects must then be

recognized as a form of agency. Again, this does not mean that human beings and their

intentions disappear. On the contrary, these effects are only possible because we know that

utterances (and texts in general) are things people tend to produce in order to express

themselves and communicate.

Recognizing textual or discursive agency, as semiotics indirectly invites us to do, is therefore a

way to strengthen the ultimate pragmatic project, which in my view consists in accounting forhow communication works. For instance, explaining how misunderstanding functions is another

way to account for how the utterances interactants produce make them say things that they did not

necessarily mean(although Freud, of course, has showed us that we do not always control this



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aspect either!). Most of the time, interactants manage to find out what was actually meant (as

illustrated in the RussMother interaction), but it must yet be explained how misunderstanding

was still possible from the outset. It is possible, according to Descombes, Peirce, Sbisa and

others, precisely because we live in a world of conventions (what Descombes also calls

Institutions of meaning or Institutions du sens) where the utterances (and signs in general)we produce acquire, to a certain extent, a life of their own. This aspect is, of course, more obvious

in situations where written texts are produced (laws, invitations, contracts, books, articles), but

we have just seen how the analysis proposed can also account for how oral communication

works.8

Instead of separating the paradigm of representation from the paradigm of action, as some

pragmatists likeRorty (1979)advocate, I contend that we need to bring them back together.

Recognizing the phenomenon of representation precisely consists in showing how agents are

always caught in a chain of agencies and how their very action can always be attributed to other

agents, whether upstream (the entities of whom or which they are positioned as acting on behalf

or incarnating) or downstream (the entity they are mobilizing to interact). Effects ofrepresentation are always potentially at stake in interaction, since they are the very effects by

which interlocutors and interpreters end up attributing agency, whether it is to things as

diverse as the unconscious, passion, madness, racism, a company, an individual or anything that

is deemed being acting at that specific moment. Recognizing the link between the two paradigms

thus is another way to go back to the etymological root of the term representation, i.e. the

action that consists in making an entity present through the mediation of another entity

(which incidentally is the very definition of a sign).

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Sbisa, Marina, 1985. Manipulation et sanction dans la dynamique des actes de langage. In: Parret, H., Ruprecht, H.-G.(Eds.), Exigences et Perspectives de la Semiotique. Recueil dhommages pour Algirdas Julien Greimas. John Benjamins,

Amsterdam, pp. 529538.


Between semiotics and pragmatics: Opening language studies to textual agency

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