The Perlocutionary Force of Obama’s “Moment” Speech

(bumped – promoted by buhdydharma )

After reading various posts on Obama’s “Moment Speech,” for example the thread to Adam B’s diary (with video), it seems to me that a number of people are misunderstanding the speech itself.

In this diary I’m going to offer some stuff from contemporary philosophy of language that I think is directly relevant to this discussion.  I’m gonna use some technical terms, but remembering those isn’t important.  If nothing else, we can at least have better arguments (over Obama’s speech and other speeches) if we keep some general distinctions in mind that were made by some folks in that field.

Part One: The Dispute Over Obama’s Speech

Part Two: Speech Act Theory, or What is Perlocutionary Force?

Part Three: Obama’s Speech Again

Part One: The Dispute Over Obama’s Speech

People who liked the Moment Speech and people who didn’t like it are getting into quick arguments over its value and import.  Those who who didn’t like it say it was “only inspiring”: it lacked cognitive content, it lacked statements of policy or defintive statements as to what, exactly, Obama meant by “a better America,” if anything.  

Worse, the detractors say, the fact that fans are falling for Obama’s speech might be evidence that those fans are falling for a cult-of-personality candidate who persuades without argument, to ends that are at best murky and possibly dangerous.  

On the other hand, fans say that sometimes we need a good, inspiring or “elevating” speech — and that not every speech needs to be packed with policy or content.  Sometimes it is enough to celebrate, to lift up, to encourage . . . even if the celebrating, lifting up, and encouraging is emotional rather than substantive.  

This is all wrong, on both sides, and I am willing to bet both sides know it, but are lacking some conceptual tools to talk about what they mean.  So here I’d like to just pass along some stuff from Speech Act Theory, because I think it will help in future discussions.  There’s some technical terms, but remembering them isn’t important; remembering the distictions they make (and which you already know even if you didn’t know it) is.

As an example of liking Obama’s speech but not being able to say why, I offer Ezra Klein’s positive review.

Obama’s finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don’t even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I’ve heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.

In the days to come, just as in the days that have passed, I’ll talk much more about Obama’s policies. About his health care policy, and his foreign policy, and his social policy, and his economic policy. But so much as I like to speak of white papers and scored proposals, politics is not generally experienced in terms of policies. It’s more often experienced in terms of self-interest, and broken promises, and base fears, and half-truths. But, very rarely, it’s experienced as a call to create something better, bigger, grander, and more just than the world we have. When that happens, as it did with Robert F. Kennedy, the inspired remember those moments for the rest of their lives.

(Here, Klein even tries to avoid the word “inspire”, only to fall back into it in the next paragraph.)

As example of criticisms, well, that would just be the various comments in the various threads on DKos in which people lament the emptiness of Obama’s Moment speech.  I’m sure you’ve seen them.  Some folks are saying Obama’s just got empty rhetoric and is “merely inspiring”.

But all of that is wrong, on both sides.  Obama’s “Moment” Speech did have cognitive content with which to agree or disagree.  The fans liked it, the detractors didn’t.  The speech was not “merely inspiring,” or even merely “elevating”, whatever that distinction is supposed to mean, and I dare say that Obama’s fans are just finding it hard to say why they liked about it so much.  This is not in itself bad or unexpected: the point of the speech was hard to articulate.   Hard, but not impossible.  If we’re going to argue about it we should at least be arguing about the correct thing.

I want, in this diary, to offer some distinctions that can be of tremendous value when we argue over the import of political speeches in general, whether policy-based or not.  So though I am writing about Obama’s “Moment” speech, consider it also just an example.

Part Two: Speech Act Theory, or What is Perlocutionary Force?

In order to get at the correct object of dispute between Obama’s supporters and detractors —  that is, to get at the substance of Obama’s speech, the thing the fans like and the detractors dismiss — I’m going to have to make a distinction first articulated in the field of philosophy of language, specifically in something called“speech act theory”, in the middle of the 20th century by J. L. Austin and then later expanded by John Searle.  The distinction is between “locutionary force,” “illocutionary force,” and “perlocutionary force.”

Locutionary force: referential significance (meaning of words).

Illocutionary force: performed linguistic act (implication of words).

Perlocutionary force: intended effect of performed linguistic act (intended behavioral or psychological result of words).

All three are cognitive.  They often, though not always, have different targets.  That is, the target of the locutionary force of a speech act (that is, an “utterance”) can be different than the target of the illocutionary or perlocutionary force of that same speech act.  This will be important later.

Let me explain with a simple example.

Simple example: Jack is eating dinner with his family and says, “I need some salt.”

Now, one thing you don’t immediately notice, unless you’ve studied too much philosophy of language, is that Jack didn’t literally ask for anything at all.  He didn’t even say he wants salt — though if he had stated that he wants salt, he still would not literally have asked for anything.  The locutionary force of Jack’s utterance, the referential significance of the words, is just that there exists a need for salt, and that need is his.  

If language operated entirely on the locutionary level, Jack’s family would not react to his utterance.  

The illocutionary force, the linguistic act Jack actually performed, was to make a request.  The request could be translated as, “Could someone please pass me some salt?”  But notice that, unless Jack was looking directly at someone, the illocutionary force does not specify who the “someone” is.  If Jack was looking directly at his wife when he said, “I need some salt,” then the illocutionary force of the utterance was, “Wife, get me some salt.”  If Jack’s wife was the only person in the room, then Jack need not make any special gesture to her.

The perlocutionary force of the utterance is the intended effect on the listener.  So, say there’s a shaker of salt on the table next to Jack’s wife.  The perlocutionary force of Jack’s utterance is probably for his wife to understand that she should pass him that shaker.  That’s probably what Jack intended her to do.  But, having processed the illocutionary force of Jack’s utterance (“Wife, get me some salt.”) based on its locutionary force (“I am in need of salt.”)  Jack’s wife gets up from the table, drives to the grocery store, buys a 50-pound bag of salt, drive home, and plops it on his lap.

Jack’s utterance was unsuccessful; that’s not what he intended her to do.  The perlocutionary force failed.

Now — and I’m getting closer to the point of Obama’s speech — suppose Jack says to his wife with a smile, “Wow, some people are really hogging the salt!” . . . and suppose their kids have the bowl of salt. In this case the target of the perloctuionary force is the kids even though Jack was speaking to his wife.  His wife laughs and the kids pass the salt.

The target of the perlocutionary force of Obama’s speech was not the audience in the arena and not the folks at home watching on TV.  It was “the Washington establishment.”  And the intended effect is clear even if it isn’t in the locutionary force — the literal meaning, or referential value — of the words Obama used.  The perlocutionary force is just as cognitively contentful as the locutionary force.  This is crucial to all political speech, especially “inspiring” ones like Obama’s.

In this case the audience was like Jack’s wife and Washington is the kids.  And the content of the perlocutionary force was: “Those of you in Washington have been living in a story.  The ones who like the story have fed on it and the ones who don’t like it have struggled against it.  I am not struggling against the story.  I’m throwing it away.  I am changing the parameters of the debate in which policy is decided.  Look out.”

Part Three: Obama’s Speech Again

What is the story that Obama is saying he knows how to change?  The 9/11 story.  The Bush story.  This story:

MATTHEWS: What’s the importance of the president’s amazing display of leadership tonight?

[…]

MATTHEWS: What do you make of the actual visual that people will see on TV and probably, as you know, as well as I, will remember a lot longer than words spoken tonight? And that’s the president looking very much like a jet, you know, a high-flying jet star. A guy who is a jet pilot. Has been in the past when he was younger, obviously. What does that image mean to the American people, a guy who can actually get into a supersonic plane and actually fly in an unpressurized cabin like an actual jet pilot?

[…]

MATTHEWS: Do you think this role, and I want to talk politically […], the president deserves everything he’s doing tonight in terms of his leadership. He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics. Do you think he is defining the office of the presidency, at least for this time, as basically that of commander in chief? That […] if you’re going to run against him, you’d better be ready to take [that] away from him.

[…]

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, Bob Dornan, you were a congressman all those years. Here’s a president who’s really nonverbal. He’s like Eisenhower. He looks great in a military uniform. He looks great in that cowboy costume he wears when he goes West. I remember him standing at that fence with Colin Powell. Was [that] the best picture in the 2000 campaign?

[…]

MATTHEWS: Ann Coulter, you’re the first to speak tonight on the buzz. The president’s performance tonight, redolent of the best of Reagan — what do you think?

COULTER: It’s stunning. It’s amazing. I think it’s huge. I mean, he’s landing on a boat at 150 miles per hour. It’s tremendous. It’s hard to imagine any Democrat being able to do that. And it doesn’t matter if Democrats try to ridicule it. It’s stunning, and it speaks for itself.

(It’s helpful to think of Bush’s aircraft landing as having perlocutionary force, too, and then to compare that to Obama’s speech.)

The story in which policy is decided.  The story which sets the parameters of debate.  Obama was telling a new story to the audience in the arena and at home, but the perlocutionary force of the utterance, given when and how it was delivered, was directed at the makers of the old story, the fans of the perlocutionary force of Bush’s aircraft carrier landing.  Obama’s fans perceived this and approved.  

To put this differently, Obama was performing the act in front of the audience to show it to them, but it was directed at the target: Matthews, Coulter, Bush, and the rest . . .  and the target was also the other Democrats who have been struggling against Matthews, Coulter, and Bush so fruitlessly.

The content of Obama’s speech was cognitive, all right, but the content was, in an important sense, not in the referential value of the words.  And the target of this content wasn’t the audience, except in as much as they are like Jack’s wife.  This is the very first thing I have to stress: the target wasn’t the audience in the arena and it wasn’t the TV audience at home.  And the vehicle aimed at the target wasn’t the target in the surface-level meaning of the words.

Now, the problem, of course, is that you can’t just state, as a matter of locutionary force, “Dear Washington, I am hereby changing the story.”  The perlocutionary force of such a statement, whatever it might be, wouldn’t work.  It might get the target, Washington, to crack up in ridicule.  That would not be the desired effect.  The desired effect is to scare them or put them on notice, or to open a door.  To do that, you have to use words with different referential significance.  You have to show, not tell.

Far from being “merely inspired”, his fans are evaluating the practical value of the content of Obama’s action or demonstration, and deciding it is worthy.  This would be a good way to get the kids to pass the salt.  Obama’s detractors either think that this is not a good way to get the kids to pass the salt (the kids might drive to the store instead of pass the shaker), or the detractors don’t want the salt; they want something else on the table.  

The dispute over Obama’s speech ought to be in a part a dispute over the content of the perlocutionary force of his words.  What is that content?  Do we agree with it?  Do we think it can have the desired effect?  And so on.  This, of course, applies to the other candidates, too.  The perlocutionary force of Edwards’s and Clinton’s speeches are open to investigation as well.