Explicit Performatives as Metapragmatic Verbs

Silverstein observes that it appears to be a universal that in all language communities some set of words and expressions used to symbolically refer and predicate about speech acts (i.e., metapragmatic verbs and nouns) can also be used to indexically accomplish speech acts. English verbs like bequeath or command and noun phrases like warmest regards and salutations can be used to refer to speech acts as well as to accomplish them. We can see this here in examples 1 and 2:Footnote ²

1. 1. Jesse commanded^{En ≠ Es} Paul to leave.

2. 2. I command^{En = Es} you to leave.

In How to Do Things with Words, Austin notes this double aspect of performative verbs. However, before he adopts the locution-illocution-perlocution distinction in lecture 8, he assumes that “constative” and “performative” uses form disjoint sets. He argues that though the EP “serves to inform” interlocuters of the character of the act, it doesn’t describe it (Reference AustinAustin 1962, 6). Silverstein (Reference Silverstein1979) avers from this characterization. The grammatical particularities of “explicit” constructions (i.e., 1st person subject, 2nd person [indirect] object, present tense), characterized by the “reflexive calibration” of denotational indexicals onto the event of signaling, is every bit as motivated to serve as an act of referring and predicating as any other referential mapping of semantic roles onto persons present or absent or of verbal inflections of tense and aspect with respect to the event of speaking. It is true that the metapragmatic verb functions (where felicitous) as a command (promise, bequeathal, etc.) and not as a modalized description of such activity. But that doesn’t mean that the explicit form lacks propositional content supplementary to that indexical accomplishment (cf. Reference AghaAgha 2007, 41, on modalization of propositional content).

Because the signal form employed in giving a metapragmatic description and the signal that accomplishes the pragmatic act are one and the same, it may be difficult to grasp this universal of the metapragmatic lexicon; to repeat: in all languages some entries of the metapragmatic lexicon can both be employed (in some set-1 of contexts) in metapragmatic discourse that characterizes some conventional pragmatic act without accomplishing the act described, and (in some other set-2 of contexts) to accomplish that same act. It may be heuristic to consider this double functionality by means of a nonlinguistic example: It is difficult to imagine that the act of shaking someone’s hand could, in one set of situations, count as an emblem of solidarity between two individuals but, in another set of situations, count as a description of that solidary act.Footnote ³ It is hard to imagine that honking the car horn could sometimes be to warn, rebuke, alert, and so on, other motorists, but in some other “naturally occurring” set of cases be used to refer to acts of warning, rebuking, alerting, and so on. The EP describe/do duality is a particularly linguistic duplicity, while performativity—as car horns and hand shakes attest—is a phenomenon by no means circumscribed by the linguistic.

The peculiar and unique property of language that serves as the affordance for EPs is the reflexive capacity of language to re-present that discursive event in this one. This is accomplished by creating a linguistic icon of the earlier event and surrounding that icon with framing material (e.g., a modalized verb of saying) that referentially indexes the nonequivalence of the narrated event (Eⁿ) and the here and now event of signaling (E^s) (e.g., “He said,^{En < Es} ‘I promise you …’”). What Émile Benveniste (Reference Benveniste1966) called delocutive words illustrate how, where canalized, this re-presentation of performative signals while signaling the nonequivalence of the performative event and the here-and-now event of signaling may be generative of new metapragmatic lexemes. Benveniste noted that there are a series of verbs denoting speech acts that appear to be derived from what Austin called “primary” or “primitive” performative locutions. In such delocutive derivation there is a maximal tightness of linkage between reporting and reported event. Here, instead of a verb like say (or dire) framing the speech act as quoted material, the quoted material itself serves as the verb of speaking. To illustrate this process, we use the example of the (primitive performative) phonation—“shhhhh”—employed to silence people. Compare:

1. 3. Shhhhh!

2. 4. The librarian said “Shhhhh!” to me.

3. 5. The librarian shushed me.

The delocutive verb to shush is derived by “rank-shifting” (Reference SilversteinSilverstein 1979, 240) the sonic substance that functions in a primitively performative manner to silence interlocuters in E^s into a metapragmatic descriptor characterizing some Eⁿ. To accomplish this, an epenthetic vowel is inserted (sh-ə-sh) rendering the sequence in accordance with the phonotactic rules of English—that is, transforming it into an acceptable lexical form (or symbolic type) in English. Once rank-shifted, the signal (shush) can be used to report acts of censure not (represented as) accomplished by means of the shhh sound sequence. (“They shushed me when I tried to bring up the topic of trash removal at the municipal council meeting” needn’t describe an event where shhh is purported to have been employed.) This shows that shush describes a kind of social action—silencing others in some respect and accomplishable by diverse means—not necessarily (even if protypically) linked to the production of the phonetic sequence [ʃʃ:]. There is a many to one relationship between pragmatic object-signs and the metapragmatic description or classification of those acts.Footnote ⁴

Benveniste’s delocutive verbs offer a diachronic account for why pragmatic form and metapragmatic form are often icons of one another. For verbs like tutoyer and vouvoyer, this is a one-way street. The pragmatic forms are rank-shifted into descriptors that cannot again be employed to accomplish the act they describe. (“Je te tutoie” is performative because of the pronominal clitic, not because of the verb stem.) For others, however, this is a “productive” dualism, even synchronically. Note that shush, the lexicalized form of [ʃʃ:] can be used to, well, shush people. This is still more primitive than a would-be explicit (*“I hereby shush you.”). Still, in other cases the delocutive form may be integrated into the explicit frame (e.g., “I salute you”; cf. “Salutations!”).

If the delocutive pathway described by Benveniste involves the movement from pragmatic function₂ to metapragmatic function₁, in the case of explicit performatives (EPs) we can observe that this iconic identity between signal that accomplishes and signal that reports the accomplishment is not merely the artifact of a historical sequence but a synchronically productive dualism.Footnote ⁵ There are three dimensions of this duality that Silverstein emphasizes in discussing this particular and special case of pragmatic-metapragmatic relations:

1. i. The pragmatic signal is an iconic indexical where, in its iconic dimension, it is an icon of the metapragmatic symbol:

   How does [the explicit performative] work? It seems clear that the performative verb itself, as one of a set of metapragmatic descriptors that designates a type of speech event as an enactable, accomplishable relationship between a speaker and an addressee, specifically classifies the type of contextual creativity, or entailed consequences, that the instantiated event, as so predicated/designated, is understood to effect. In short, it specifies the conventional functional₁ type of which this specific speech event—anchored to a specific speaker and addressee—is understood to instantiate as a token. Predicating the type with a token of the type … makes the instance a special “iconic indexical,” or replica-in-actuality.

   (Reference SilversteinSilverstein 1987b, 34)

   In the uttering of a felicitous EP (e.g., “I hereby promise you”) the indexical act (a promise) is an icon of the metapragmatic symbol (to promise) whose tokens mediate the accomplishment of the act.Footnote ⁶

2. ii. The iconic identity between metapragmatic symbol and performative index is maintained (supported, sustained, underwritten, etc.) by the referential biasing of folk metalinguistic consciousness (see in particular Reference SilversteinSilverstein 1979, Reference Silverstein1981). That is, as symbol users, humans have a tendency to identify the act with their characterization of it (or, in “referentialist ideologies,” to equate the characterizing characteristics of language with language itself). This is a connection that is diachronically reflected in nonexplicitly performative linguistic types as well. So, for instance, honorifics are most often instantiated through distinct formal means of referring to the targets of honorification (e.g., First Name versus Title + Last Name), though this is by no means the only possible or attested way to enact deference through language (Reference AghaAgha 2007, 315–22). Referentialist biasing tends to conflate or aggregate sociopragmatic and semantico-referential functions, and thus acts as a strong bias in the diachronic development of metapragmatic ideologies and pragmatic repertoires. EPs are an exemplary case in point.

3. iii. In the case of EPs, pragmatic functioning is relatively “transparent” to metapragmatic ideology (Reference SilversteinSilverstein 1979, 210). That is to say, ideology approximates the linguistic facts that it seeks to rationalize. Metapragmatic transparency is a term used elsewhere by Silverstein (Reference Silverstein1987a, 160–62) in describing the character of “true” (i.e., 1st and 2nd person) pronouns (Reference BenvenisteBenveniste 1966). Person deictics, as form types, specify metapragmatic rules of use that determine the reference of their tokens. The 1st and 2nd person pronouns have inherent metapragmatic content; 1st person pronouns specify that their tokens should be interpreted as referring to the (represented) Speaker of that token; 2nd person forms specify that the (represented) Addressee of the token is included in its denotation; 1st person exclusive forms that the (represented) Addressee is not. The relationship of code-level metapragmatics to discourse-level pragmatics is “transparent” for the case of pronouns in the sense that all that a speech recipient must know is the inherent metapragmatic content of the type (= “pragmatic rule of use”) in order to identify the referent of its token.Footnote ⁷

   There is thus an intriguing affinity between person deictics and metapragmatic verbs. Indeed, in his touchstone 1976 paper (“Shifters, Linguistic Categories, and Cultural Description”), Silverstein characterizes explicit performatives as “metapragmatic shifters.” It is instructive to think through the similarities, but also the differences, between pronouns and explicit performative verbs. The similarity between shifters and EPs lies in the fact that in both cases, linguistic types provide an exhaustive metapragmatic characterization of their token-level pragmatics (i.e., they have this as their inherent “metapragmatic content” Reference Silverstein[Silverstein 1987a] that provide “pragmatic rules of use” Reference Silverstein[Silverstein 1976] for interpreting their tokens). The difference is that pronouns offer that characterization for the act of reference. Explicit performatives offer it for the particular act specified in the type-level semantics of the verb (e.g., promising, bequeathing, betting, etc.). Pronouns specify the referent of a token, performatives specify the act. The cross-functional dimension—from semantic to purely pragmatic—is unique to explicit performatives.

To review: EPs are unique in that they characterize and accomplish the same social acts. But (and this is a point I have yet to demonstrate) they can only do this because of a complementarity between events of accomplishing and events of characterizing. The events of characterizing cite—quite literally in the cases of delocutive verbs—the acts that they characterize. Performative uses, meanwhile, cite their metapragmatic descriptors; the pragmatic act cites the semantic meaning (Reference NakassisNakassis 2013). If what I say is accurate, there is something of a necessary tradeoff between the specificity (“explicitness”) of illocutionary acts and their “force,” where we understand the force of some pragmatic function to be equivalent to its resistance to decontextualization. EPs accomplish highly specific acts, but their performativity evaporates upon decontextualization, as when the act is reported:

1. 6. She said: “I promise you” to him.

or simply

1. 7. She promised him.

In these reportive collocations, the performative force of the linguistic signal /pɹɑmis/ is defeased. And of course this makes sense given the analysis we have just given of the iconically mediated cross-functional transformation of symbolic referring and predicating into indexical doing. The trompe-l’œil of the explicit performative is only effective where Speaker refers and predicates Speaker as subject and Addressee as (indirect) object, and where no deictic operator with more global scope intervenes to make E^s ≠ Eⁿ (e.g., a verb of speaking, or nonlinguistic contextualization cues like a playbill at the theater). Explicit performatives are effete—the moment that E^s ≠ Eⁿ, their force evaporates. But this indexical frailty is their symbolic strength. It is precisely because the symbolic function can stand apart from its corresponding nonreferential indexical function—that is, is prescinded (to use Peirce’s preferred term) in naturally occurring discourse—that it can be used to refer and predicate about social acts in a flexible and open-ended manner. Its symbolic function is not tied down by its indexical function. As I will argue, prescinding in practice is critical for the reality of symbolism to be realized in communication.

*I Hereby Insult You!

We are, at this point, prepared to set up the structural contrast between explicit performatives (EPs) and verbal taboos that I promised at the outset. We might begin with a little bit of gardening, weeding around what linguistic species we wish to discuss. In this section I will be concerned to give a semiotic functional characterization of verbal taboos of a particular sort. In particular, I will be concerned with words and expressions that correspond to a particular semiotic-functional description. Thus our units of analysis are roughly comparable to the EPs—lexical units with a phonological form. I will not be discussing what are sometimes in political discourse referred to as taboo topics (e.g., homosexual conversion therapy, third trimester partial-birth abortions, etc.). As with our discussion of EPs, we are interested in the intersection between language-structured symbols and performative indexicality.

We should also right away discard a kind of preconception that sometimes affects thinking about verbal taboos whereby taboo expressions are seen as reducible to the affective social categorization of their real-world denotata. The sociocultural construction of euphemism and dysphemism is, certainly, an important empirical dimension of verbal taboos (Reference LeachLeach 1964; Allan and Reference AllanBurridge 1991). But we should remember that though the semantic sense and reference of taboo expressions may be a first step in the diachronic development of their pragmatics, it is far from being the last. Indeed, what will be of interest to us here is how differently the relationship between semantic “explicitness” and pragmatic “force” develops in this case, and this difference relies precisely on the tenuous relationship of verbal taboos to the dimension of semantic signification.

The problem with a narrow euphemism treatment of taboo language can be illustrated with a witticism from S3E5 of The Last Man on Earth, where instead of saying that so-and-so was “pissed off,” Carol euphemistically says “urinated off.” The joke consists in forcing a recognition of how far the substitute (or target) expression misses the mark in terms of achieving the pragmatic force of the avoided (or source) expression. The way in which it misses that mark is by literalizing the etymological (or first-order) semantics of piss ‘to urinate’. A semantic solution is offered for a pragmatic problem. Of course, the expression to (be) piss(ed) off has nothing to do with urine or urinating. The verb to piss off might be glossed as ‘to cause someone to be very upset’. Crucially, its etymological connection to piss, of the liquid variety, is built on a pragmatic, rather than a semantic, analogy. With pissed off we encounter a kind of second-order semantics that seems often to emerge in the taboo lexicon and its surround, suggesting a motivated diachronic pathway (see fig. 1). The relationship between first- and second-order semantics here can be contrasted to the relationship between primary performatives and delocutive metapragmatic lexemes that we discussed above.

Figure 1.

Second-order semantics of English and French curse words. The Quebecois French data draw on Vincent (Reference Vincent1982).

In his discussion of EPs, Austin notes that not all descriptions of speech acts can themselves function as speech acts. He chooses as an example the infelicity of “I insult you,” which, uncharming though it may be, rather fails to pack the desired verbal punch (Reference AustinAustin 1962, 31; cf. Reference SilversteinSilverstein 1987b; Reference AghaAgha 2007, 61). He uses this observation to make the important point that a convention must exist—that the descriptive backing of the (as we would call it) metapragmatic lexeme is not enough to ensure performative “felicity” of its E^s-co(n)textualized tokens. He is certainly correct that a convention does not exist and that “I insult you” could theoretically be insulting should such a convention exist. However, in reflecting on the empirical absence of such a convention in English, as opposed to its theoretical possibility, it may be more productive to think the question from bottom-up rather than from the top-down (where “up” stands for “higher”-order metapragmatics and “down” for the “lower”-order pragmatics they regiment). Perhaps it is not so much that the metapragmatic term cannot be employed in performative enactment as that the performative act cannot easily be cast as a delocutive citation, which impedes the development of the kind of metapragmatic-pragmatic duality characteristic of EPs for the case of insulting. Certainly there do seem to be a whole distinct set of, one might say, register concerns that appear to enter into the fray when it comes to describing actions with verbal taboos as opposed to with canonical EPs like promise and bequeath. Take the following well-formed metapragmatic characterization of interactions:

1. 8. He was really pissed off at me.

2. 9. I totally fucked up the exam.

3. 10. They shat on my idea.

Note that though these are metapragmatic descriptions, they are not delocutives in Benveniste’s sense. The events that these taboo-employing expressions characterize are not performative acts accomplishable by the terms in question. (It is true that our use of “metapragmatic” is no longer linked specifically to the metapragmatic characterization of some performative “illocutionary” act. These are nevertheless still metapragmatic descriptions. When one says, “He was really pissed off,” one is giving a metapragmatic characterization of some set of interactional signs framed as indexing the affective state of being upset.) Functionally interwoven with their second-order semantics, utterances like 8, 9, and 10 also have “expressive” or “intensifying” functions (see, for instance, Potts’s [Reference Potts2005] work on referent-focal expressives like jerk). But how does the intensification work here? Some pragmatic function of the taboo expression is channeled in such a way as to “intensify” the metapragmatic characterization of some Eⁿ. The connotation—if connotation were to denote a performative effect—of piss is channeled toward the referent (“He was [soooo] pissed”), characterizing by pragmatic signification just how upset the individual was. With Derrida (Reference Derrida1971), we might say that this is not so much a polysemy of piss as a dissemination of its pragmatic force across elements of the code.

That this channeling of pragmatic force draws upon (Animator-focal) register distinctions means that it is an expressive relationship whose appropriateness does not depend only upon a certain stance that Speaker (E^s) enacts with respect to the Referent (Eⁿ) but also upon the speech Animator’s relationship to speech Recipients in the here-and-now event of signaling (E^s). Terms that are less often normatively “appropriate to context” (cf. fuck > screw > mess in fig. 2) express stronger or more intensified affective stances with respect to the narrated event.

Figure 2.

Cursing “speech levels” keyed to semantic functions, above, keyed to purely expressive functions, below.

In expressions like fuck up/around/with, a pragmatic “force” centered in the interactional here and now is brought into juxtaposition with modalized reference to other events. This perduring “force” of fuck in the here-and-now event of signaling can be expressed in a technical language; it is a function of the indefeasible performativity of tokens of this lexical type—that is, fuck is a rigid performative (Reference FlemingFleming 2011). Here we import an anthropological understanding of taboo as a categorical rule of iconic-indexical causation into the domain of language. Taboos are categorical proscriptions that in this sense break with context in resisting contingent co(n)textualizations of the local function. Globally, recontextualization is always possible, as in ritual inversions of taboos where the normative estimation of the taboo act is reversed even if its (local) force is not defeased. Nevertheless, the rigid performative (henceforth, RP) has a perlocutionary “violence” by virtue of the way in which the occurrence of a taboo token ruptures or bifurcates context into a qualitatively distinct frame before and after the occurrence. This is what makes taboos so productive of moral, political, ethical frames (cf. Reference ButlerButler 1997 on the “sovereign performative”).Footnote ⁸ Mike Pence’s rule that he not have a meal alone with a woman other than his wife is a case in point (Reference BlakeBlake 2017); the proscription has the perlocutionary effect of sexualizing contexts of isolated cross-gender co-presence, forcing one particular contextualization of gender difference over an infinitude of other possible contingent contextualizations of co-presence.

To return to the second-order semantics of curse words, a purely nonreferential, and indefeasible, indexicality at work in the “interactional text” is placed side by side with a particular swatch of “denotational text” (Reference SilversteinSilverstein 1993). Diachronically this juxtaposition of pragmatic force and denotation generates the second-order semantics of curse words. Evidence for this can be found in the fact that the symbolic content of these second-order forms emerges in the characterization of negatively evaluated denotata (whether they be disreputable, stigmatized, immoral, unpleasant, etc.). Here there appears to be a diachronic transference between pragmatic force and pejorative semantics. Take the adjective shitty. One might be tempted to interpret it as merely an expressive. But it should be observed that it contributes a sense (roughly equivalent to bad) that changes the truth-conditional semantics (“They have a TV” doesn’t have the same propositional content as “They have a shitty TV”). This is not, of course, to say that curse words never have purely nonreferential effects—of course they do, as in infixation of fucking (compare “Unbelievable” and “Unfuckingbelievable”). Rather, the conjoining of that expressive function in the here-and-now E^s with a denotational co-text concerning some Eⁿ can drive the development of “dysphemic” semantics (Allan and Reference AllanBurridge 1991). The channeling of the expressive function toward (rather than its placement in) Eⁿ necessarily involves an iconic indexical projection from E^s into Eⁿ, which is the functional converse of the explicit performative. Here the exhibited effect is interpreted as an iconic indexical of that co(n)textually foregrounded or juxtaposed figure (e.g., the individual referred to by fucker is iconic with the normative evaluation of the act of saying “fuck”).

Metapragmatic Blocking

At this point we are in a position to understand why it is Austin’s “A”-class infelicities (the existence of “an accepted conventional procedure …” [Reference Austin1962, 14]) that impede “*I hereby insult you” from actually being insulting: the terms and expressions that are conventionally employed to insult cannot be bracketed within a narrated event in the way that EPs can. They cannot be cited, mentioned, iterated, exhibited, or en-token-ed without triggering an efferent performative effect in E^s. This is another way of saying that they cannot function as purely symbolic metapragmatic descriptors—their delocutive path is blocked by the perdurance of their performativity. I will call this metapragmatic blocking.

As the second-order semantics of curse-words (e.g. to piss off, to fuck up, shitty, etc.) illustrate, the indexical functions₂ of verbal taboos are incorporated into their functional₁ symbolic characterizations of narrated events. Unlike the isomorphic lamination of functions “1” and “2” in EPs, however, this incorporation is always partial and crucially dependent upon a logic of what we might call interactional sacrifice—their metapragmatic function is accomplished only by means of exhibiting the performative effects of the pragmatic types whose bodies these second-order forms haunt.Footnote ⁹ It is this iconic-indexical juxtaposition that accounts for the interesting correlation that we have noted between stereotypes of register use (the normative negative estimation of cursing as an emblem of speech Animator character) and the normative negative estimation of the actions, events, and persons described in employing the second-order semantics of curse words. Here, just as with the explicit metapragmatic lexicon, we have an ideologically guided historical process. In that case, the pragmatic and metapragmatic functions superimposed upon the same signal (e.g., promise) were iconic with each other in terms of the particular conventional illocutionary act they described/accomplished. In the case of curse words such a rhematic alignment is impossible. Here the derived metapragmatic function₁ is enabled by exhibiting the pragmatic function₂ of the signal. What the sign describes and what it accomplishes are not aligned in terms of an iconic sketch of the conventional “illocutionary” act—the act of being fucked up (i.e., inebriated) is not an icon of the act of using the word fuck (i.e., cursing). Rather, they are aligned in terms of an iconic sketch of the “perlocutionary” effect of the act. Cursing and being drunk are socially disapproved of; indeed, that normative evaluation is part of the perlocutionary effect of these acts. A similar logic governs the pragmatically driven polysemy of other curse words; saying shit is, as it were, shitty, and so on.

Primitive Performativity

In the discussion so far we have used the duality of explicit performativity and metapragmatic description as a model for thinking about verbal taboos. We have concentrated, in particular, on the difficulties of employing verbal taboos in metapragmatic function. Now we turn to uses of curse words as employed in their most interactionally ritualized and formulaic mode—that is, in the acts of cursing that most closely approximate explicit performative speech acts. Formulaic, conventionalized acts of cursing at someone, at least in American English, are more akin to Austin’s primitive performatives than to his EPs. Take, for example, the highly conventionalized form for insulting addressee: “Fuck you!” Now if the second-order semantics of, for example, fuck around and fuck up most closely approximate EPs in (exclusively) metapragmatic reportive function, “Fuck you!” most closely parallels the EPs in performative function. Here, at least, the addressee is explicitated. It is true that the speaker makes no grammatical appearance. Indeed, were the speaker to occur in the expected EP-subject position it would be rather infelicitous (“*I [hereby?] fuck you”), perhaps read as awkwardly bringing the expression back to some first-order semantic (i.e., sexual intercourse) reading. “Fuck you!” is certainly more of a primitive performative than an explicit one. That which is done—to insult—is not that which is described (if our argument concerning metapragmatic blocking is correct, in some real sense it can’t be). The problem is more profound than this in fact, since the lexeme fuck employed here is senseless. The echo of the explicit consists in the 2nd person singular pronoun that “explicitates” the target of the verbal attack. But fuck has no semantic entailments in this utterance, something readily seen by its ungrammaticality. (The alternative, “Go fuck yourself,” may be an attempt to bring “Fuck you” back into the domain of the sensible by imposing on it an imperative reading that would require a reflexive pronoun.)Footnote ¹⁰ In other conventional expressions like “Fuck off!,” there is only the slightest trace of the constative function—in some sense the Speaker is ordering the Addressee to go away (cf. metapragmatic “He fucked off” as roughly synonymous with “He went away”). Fuck off (cf. register “up”-grade, (to) piss off), evidences the complex balancing act between semanticity and pragmaticity in this domain. Here the subjectless infinitive is clearly analyzed on analogy to the imperative. Saying “Fuck off!” is an illocutionary act roughly analogous to saying “Go away!” These E^s-centered conventional cursing formulae can themselves give rise to what I have called in figure 2, delocutifs manqués (e.g., he fucked/pissed off or décalisser/décrisser for Quebecois French). The interested reader should compare the dissemination of indexical effects here with the polysemy of krama andhap ‘predicates of dispossession’ as described in Reference ErringtonErrington 1988.

More purely expressive is the use of the bare taboo form in what Reference GoffmanGoffman 1978 called “response cries”—the Shit! of a spilled coffee, the Fuuuuuck! of a jaw-dropping revelation (cf. Reference SeizerSeizer 2011). Here taboo expressions are wholly senseless—there is no recoverable propositional content, even if there are quite highly socially structured indexical entailments of usage linked to context (Reference KockelmanKockelman 2003). Referent-focal uses of fucking infixing (as in “Los fucking Angeles”) or fucking as an adjective (as in “a fucking problem”) are similarly senseless. Notably, it is when, and only when, fuck is senseless (or purely “expressive”) that phonologically derived substitutes can serve as paradigmatic alternants (see bottom of fig. 2). For me at least, “He was {fucking / frigging / flipping} stabbed” are all utterances that fit within some register classification, whereas only fucked is felicitous in “They were {fucking / *frigging / *flipping} in the bedroom.” Diane Vincent (Reference Vincent1982) reported the same finding in her study of blasphemy in Quebecois French.Footnote ¹¹

There is a profound connection here between the functional instantiation of taboo terms in a purely indexical (nonsymbolic) mode that has no semantic sense construal associated with it and the use (or avoidance) of phonologically iconic variants of taboo terms. The phonological form of the signifiant is no longer an absolute and final limit condition on performative function when it is wholly decoupled from its semantic signifié. In these verbal taboos, untethered from even the most virtual “constativity,” performative function may become essentialized as inherent in a phonetic substance devoid of semanticity. I will return to this connection in Section 3.

Summary of Section 1

At this point I think that we are prepared to give the broader framing of the structural opposition between explicit performativity and rigid performativity (or verbal taboo) promised at the outset. This is profitably conceptualized in terms of a distinction between symbolic-descriptive and indexical-performative functions of signal types. Remember, in both kinds of phenomena we are concerned with a doubling of “the same” signal (e.g., fuck as purely expressive or fuck as a sense-bearing lexeme; promise as purely descriptive or promise as public commitment to a course of action). Our question then will be how symbolic and indexical functions are distributed over these doublets.

EPs and RPs represent different relationships of domination between symbolico-semantic and indexical-performative functions. In the case of EPs, the symbolico-semantic richness of metapragmatic function envelopes the performative function. The explicit performative occurrences account for just a small subset of the tokens of the signal type. And even in these cases, a semantic (constative) function co-occurs with the pragmatic (performative) one. The signal /pɹɑmis/ always has a semantico-referential function of denoting events of public and declared commitment to do some thing (see the left side of fig. 3). In the case of RPs, the orders of regimentation are reversed. Here the indefeasibility of the signal type means that all tokens have performative effects. All tokens have an expressive function, and indeed many are purely expressive (= purely pragmatic). That is, they contribute no semantic-symbolic content to the proposition (cf. “what a [fucking] terrible book,” “what she did is totally un[fucking]acceptable,” etc.). The -fucking- infix in “Unfuckingbelievable” is purely indexical-performative. Of course, some subset of tokens of fuck do make a contribution of propositional content whether that be a literal first-order semantics (“They fucked in the Lincoln bedroom.”) or a second-order semantics (“When I got to the bar, they were already fucked up.”). But that semanticity always co-occurs with a pragmatic residue—these utterances still count as instances of the social act of cursing. Here the indexical-performative function englobes the symbolic-semantic one (see the right side of fig. 3). Indeed, as we have seen, the second-order semantics of these expressions are diachronically guided by a pragmatic-to-semantic analogy where stance-effects (Speaker’s performed orientation toward Eⁿ) are synchronically subtended by speech register considerations proper to the local, here-and-now interaction.

Figure 3.

Inverted relations of encompassment of symbolic-descriptive and indexical-performative functions for EPs (left) and RPs (right). Area enclosed by a dotted line indicates a domain of denotational function, whereas areas enclosed by a solid line indicate a domain of performative function.

The orders of regimentation between meta-sign and object-sign are reversed. For

where the “>” sign should be read as the item on the left dominates, regiments, conditions, metapragmatically determines, and so on, the item on the right. In the final analysis it will be this relationship between interaction and denotation (or “interactional-text” and “denotational-text” in the terminology of Reference SilversteinSilverstein 1993) that will be of most interest to us.

Our discussion has thus exposed a kind of complementarity between EPs and RPs: with EPs, we have a highly precise and rich characterization of the act accomplishable by use of the signal, but that signal is relatively lacking in “force,” in the sense that tokens are highly defeasible, subject to performative unhappinesses of one kind or the other. These are linked propositions; it is precisely because a semantically rich denotational text englobes and fully regiments interactional text that explicit acts have their nuance and specificity (compare promise with bequeath with swear an oath with commit, etc.). In the case of RPs there is a high “force” of the performative signal; it is impossible to defease the pragmatic function of tokens (an issue logically distinct from normative acceptability).Footnote ¹² The social act accomplished by the act rests, however, ambiguous (i.e., it is not metapragmatically regimented by the signal itself). As we have seen, this complementarity is mediated by metapragmatic blocking.Footnote ¹³ But even where normative proscriptions do not impede the integration of RPs into metapragmatic discourse, the efferent pragmatic function will contour the semantics of the signal qua metapragmatic lexeme (cf. fuck up/around/with). The point is that the descriptive function cannot, in the case of RPs, occur in a fashion prescinded from the pragmatic function.

The Speaker-Addressee Dyad as a Whorfian Universal

So the crystallization of Speaker and Addressee as distinct from Animator and Recipient emerges in “the relationship between the quoted ‘I’ [or ‘you’–LF] of discourse and the indexical referential ‘I’ [or ‘you’] of the language code” (Reference UrbanUrban 1993, 29). But then what motivates the strongly dyadic character of the Speaker-Hearer folk construct? “Traditional analysis of saying and what gets said seems tacitly committed to the following paradigm: Two and only two individuals are engaged together in it. During any moment in time, one will be speaking his own thoughts on a matter and expressing his own feelings, however circumspectly; the other listening. … The two-person arrangement here described … informs the underlying imagery we have about face-to-face interaction” (Reference GoffmanGoffman 1981, 129). In the spirit of Silverstein’s (Reference Silverstein1979) Whorfian analysis of Austin, one might fashion a Whorfian reading of, for instance, Saussure’s dyadic Sender-Receiver model, or of Buhler’s “I-thou-it.” Indeed, it may be that the dyadic Speaker-Hearer model of the speech event approaches what we might call a Whorfian universal.Footnote ¹⁶

The grammatical category of person is canonically defined in a tripartite manner. As we have already established, person categories can be defined in terms of the participant roles that the individuals differentially referred to by tokens of each person value occupy in the discursive event of which that signal is a part. That is, persons can be defined in relation to the speech-act participant roles of Speaker and Addressee, where the 3rd person is a residual, or unmarked, category with respect to the 1st and 2nd persons.

The grammatical category of person mediates successful reference by using the structure of role inhabitance in the ongoing interaction as a matrix that offers coordinates for the act of reference. Participation in discursive interaction, then, serves as the self-evidence not only of role occupancy (i.e. Speaker versus Addressee versus Referent) but also of personhood, a performative category ratified by languaging rather than a natural kind. (I think this is the gist of Benveniste’s argument about subjectivity.)

I will now argue that it is the particular way in which the “true” person categories are anchored to participant roles that accounts for the dyadic character of folk models of participation. It was, again, Benveniste (Reference Benveniste1966, 233, discussed in Reference SilversteinSilverstein 1976, 38; Reference CysouwCysouw 2003, 70) who observed that 1st and 2nd nonsingular forms have as their default interpretation an associative plural reading. The denotation of the English plural noun chairs can be represented iconically as a set with a structure something like this: {chair + chair + chair …}. That is, it can be represented as a set that contains more than one entity of identical type or kind. The denotation of the English pronoun we has a rather different structure; its default interpretation is not something along the lines of: {I + I + I …}. It does not denote a set of many speakers. It denotes the Speaker plus some other or others. Similarly with 2nd person plural forms—y’all does not pick out a set {you + you + you …}. In fact, no language ever described distinguishes a 2nd person plural limited only to true addressees from a 2nd plural that has a default associative reading (Reference CysouwCysouw 2003, 296; Reference WechslerWechsler 2010, 335).Footnote ¹⁷ The important point for our purposes is the following: Speaker and Addressee are point-like nodes that anchor referential indexical functions; Speaker indexing and Addressee indexing are monadic functions. We can see this by comparing three typologically robust paradigmatic structures of person marking (modeled after Reference CysouwCysouw 2003).

In figure 5 we compare three types of person marking. Relatively underspecified systems, like that of French (see paradigm 1 in fig. 5), exhibit a basic distinction between singular and nonsingular. In such languages, the 1st nonsingular form does not specify whether Addressee is a referent or not (for this reason it is unmarked in the table). Similarly, the 2nd nonsingular form is underspecified in terms of whether the plural set consists exclusively of co-present individuals or of some co-present individual(s) + some nonparticipant(s) (this is also the case with 2.augment forms). The 3rd plural is the only plural in this paradigm that specifically indicates that more than one member of a given role participant category (S, A, or R) is included in the referential set. This follows from the character of the 3rd person as a category negatively specified for either S or A reference. In more elaborated paradigms (for instance, Tamil) a distinction is made between 1st exclusive and 1st inclusive nonsingulars (see #2). The exclusive (as well as the 1st minimal augment) includes Speaker and excludes Addressee from the referential set. The inclusive includes Speaker and Addressee in the referential set, though possibly others as well. Paradigm 3 schematizes so-called minimal-augment systems. A 1|2.minimal form (for instance, Ilocano) specifies just the Speaker-Addressee dyad, and in this sense has the equivalent denotation as a 1st person inclusive dual (setting aside important differences in paradigmatic patterning).

Figure 5.

Three cross-linguistically common pronominal paradigms.

In summary, and as illustrated in figure 5, despite differences in the paradigmatic structure of person marking, person marking in language always treats Speaker and Addressee as monadic values. This may reflect the semiotic architecture of indexical reference. Just as the event of speaking has a point-like characterization in temporal deixis, Speaker and Addressee indexing has a point-like structure. But this interpretation should not be assumed (the curious reader is referred to Wechsler [Reference Wechsler2010] and Harbour [Reference Harbour2017] for important alternative interpretations of this universal).

The folk intuition that speech is, at its heart, instantiated in a dyadic relationship between a unitary speaker and a unitary addressee is likely motivated by this monadic character of referential participant indexicality. Note that, as with other Whorfian distinctions seen as conditioning forms of habitual thought, the associative plural character of person deixis is covert, revealed only in the formal syncretisms between two distinct readings of the 1st and 2nd person nonsingulars (i.e., as sets of individuals who are exclusively co-present or not). The Speaker-Hearer-Referent folk model of participant roles seems to be motivated by the monadic indexical structure of participant deixis revealed in closely attending to the possible extensions of 1st and 2nd person nonsingulars as compared with 3rd person nonsingulars. This intuitive tripartite division of participants, into Speaker and Addressee roles in the signaling event (E^s) plus the Referent of the narrated event (Eⁿ), draws upon the logic not simply of person categories as such but also upon the point-like semiotic architecture of referential person indexicality.

Speaker-Addressee-Referent Social Indexicality

For many social indexicals, indexical focus can be neatly and exhaustively specified in terms of this cross-linguistically convergent tripartite set of emic participant roles of Speaker, Addressee, and Referent that correspond with person categories. For instance, in typological study of the phenomenon, mappings of sex-based gender features onto each of the roles of S, A, and R and their combinations are attested (see fig. 6). Where only the gender of referent is specified, we are safely on the solid ground of (sex-based semantic) “gender” as a canonical category of classical grammar (Reference CorbettCorbett 1991). Semantic gender assignment for human nouns often varies depending upon the presupposed social gender of the discourse Referent (see Wechsler’s [Reference Wechsler2009] treatment of French or so-called hybrid nouns in Reference CorbettCorbett 1991). But other languages index the same social information nonreferentially. As examples of one-place or “absolute” (Reference LevinsonLevinson 1983) nonreferential gender indexicals, take Basque and Karajá. In Basque (isolate), verb-final particles presuppose the social gender of Addressee regardless the gender of Speaker or Referent—thus diagok ‘he/she/it stays’ (addressed to a man) versus diagon ‘he/she/it stays’ (addressed to a woman) (Reference AlberdiAlberdi 1995). In Karajá (Macro-Gê), morphophonological variants—in particular, [k] versus [Ø]—presuppose Speaker gender independently from the gender of the Addressee or the Referent (Fortune and Reference FortuneFortune 1975).

Figure 6.

S, A, and R roles in the indexical focus of categorical gender indexicals.

Occasionally languages specify relational gender features for nonsingular referents. So, for instance, in Muhiang-Arapesh, subject cross-referencing prefixes on the verb in m- mark masculine plural, in w- the feminine plural, and in s- a mixed gender or unknown gender plural (Alungum, Conrad, and Reference AlungumLukas 1978; cf. the Icelandic neuter). Sex-based gender in Muhiang-Arapesh is a semantic category; it exclusively characterizes the social gender of discourse Referents. Functionally parallel relational or two-place nonreferential gender indexing is also attested. In the well-known case of Yana, a number of morphophonological variants distinguish the speech of men addressing men—that is, of masculine Speaker-Addressee dyads—from all other Speaker-Addressee gender pairings. One such variant is the addition of a semantically empty word-final suffix, -na, to “noun forms which do not end in a short vowel in the theme, all monosyllabic noun themes, demonstratives, and a large number of verb forms” (Reference SapirSapir 1963, 209). Finally, in a number of languages 3rd person anaphors exhibit a nonreferential gender distinction. One example is Aoheng, an Austronesian language of Borneo (Reference SellatoSellato 1981, cited in Reference BlustBlust 2009; cf. Reference RoseRose 2013). In Aoheng, the 3rd singular anaphor hɔ does not encode semantic gender. There is, however, an additional form, ana, employed by male Speakers in referring to masculine Referents, which thus functions as a nonreferential Speaker-Referent gender indexical.

As these examples illustrate, categorical gender indexicality fits tongue-in-groove with the Speaker-Addressee-Referent triad of speech participant roles. We know that this is an accurate description of participant roles for these cases because of the way in which these gender indexicals function in reported speech constructions. In such contexts gender indexicals correspond with represented Speakers^En and Addressees^En rather than to those in the here-and-now event of signaling (compare to logographic pronouns for referential person indexicals).Footnote ¹⁸ Categorical gender indexicals are highly defeasible indexes in the sense that their default values are easily recentered so as to characterize the social gender of the represented Speaker or Addressee of some Eⁿ in quotative contexts without any residual signification of Animator or Recipient gender in E^s. They parallel explicit performatives in the sense that they offer highly specific characterizations of social gender, but are effete in terms of their force.

Indexical Focus, Participant Role Denaturing, and Rigid Performativity

We can compare such highly “presupposing” nonreferential indexicals of social gender to social indexicals that can be given a functional characterization as rigid performatives. As we have seen, the performative effects of curse words in E^s are not defeased even when reportively calibrated into some Eⁿ. This problem of pragmatic perdurance is reflected in the specialized repertoire of citational forms used to report upon—without replicating the effects of—English curses and blasphemes (e.g., “the F-word,” “four-letter word,” etc.). Take, for instance, the following exact reproduction of a passage from an article posted on the ESPN website about Rutgers coach Mike Rice’s treatment of his players captured on videotape: “In addition to Rice’s physical actions seen in the practices, Rice calls Rutgers players ‘f----ts,’ ‘m----- f-----s,’ ‘p-----s,’ ‘sissy b-----s,’ and ‘c---s,’ among other epithets” (van Reference van NattaNatta 2013). Hyphens here operate as orthographic noise—each hyphen standing for each orthographic character that has been redacted. Specialized citational forms like these avoid replicating the taboo effects of the very performative formulae whose occurrence they serve to report. In cases like these, the entailments of social indexicals in E^s are not defeased by reportive calibration. It is not just Speaker (here, Mike Rice) who is “responsible” for the obscenities; speech Animators (here, ESPN) are also indexically soiled by the dirty language they report.

In quotations like this one there is always the risk of a double indexicality—a violent speech act is attributed to the emic role of represented Speaker, but where it is not hedged by linguistic avoidances it also returns to the etic role of speech Animator. Such dynamics are not, of course, limited to English curse words, slurs, and obscenities. To illustrate this double indexicality (analogous to the Speaker/Animator duplicity that we have just seen) for the targeting of the role of Addressee and Referent, I draw on linguistic registers geared not toward the indexing of social gender but rather to the management of in-law (affinal) relations. Here again, the double indexicality of rigid performatives targets both an emic role (Addressee and Referent) and its etic ground (Recipient and Nonparticipant, respectively). Those with a passing familiarity of the ethnological literature will have read descriptions of affinal avoidance relationships that are commonly hedged around with taboos material, interactional and linguistic. Drawing on materials from Korowai (Papuan), Stasch (Reference Stasch2003) observes that these multimodal practices effectuate motivated icons. Not saying mother-in-law’s name is like not seeing her, which is like not touching her, and so on.

Let’s focus on the specifically linguistic dimension of these affinal taboos. In many linguistic communities name avoidance is enregistered as an emblem of respect toward Referent. The same is true in Korowai mother-in-law avoidance. Only here, just as with the senseless or purely expressive use of English curse words discussed above, the pragmatics of personal names is not determined/defeased by their semantico-referential properties: “Between a man and his affines … there is a formal prohibition on name utterance, and mother-in-law and son-in-law pairs are the most careful observers of this prohibition. Since many people’s names are high-frequency words with independent meaning, avoidance of a son-in-law or mother-in-law’s name often involves artful work of circumlocution” (Reference StaschStasch 2003, 323). Homophones of the name as well as the name itself are avoided. In such homophone avoidance we find that classic character of taboos to spread iconically; here “we find prohibitions on the use of … names … which ‘contaminate’ any words with a phonetic resemblance to these names” (Lévi-Reference Lévi-StraussStrauss 1966, 176–77). Semantic sense or discourse reference does not succeed in defeasing the pragmatics of these expressions encircling the mother-in-law’s name. Once again there is a double indexicality. Respect toward mother-in-law is accomplished in acts of reference that avoid the use of her proper name; this is a canonical Referent-focal honorification of the kind studied by Brown and Ford (Reference Brown1961) for English. But respect is also enacted through the avoidance of lexical items with the same phonemic shape as the name but that do not refer to her person, possessions, or actions. Since mother-in-law here need neither be a discourse Referent nor an Addressee nor a Bystander, she occupies a maximally unmarked participant role; a homophone of the name of the mother-in-law is a nonparticipant index (cf. Irvine’s [Reference Irvine2009] “remote focus”). Here Referent-focal indexicality falls back into the etic space of Nonparticipant indexicality; that is, it falls back into the etic space that serves as the condition of possibility for indexing persons (whether referentially or nonreferentially) in the first place.

For Nuaulu (West Ceram), the relationship between sau monne ‘sacred relations’ (genealogically cross-sex sibling’s spouse and spouse’s same-sex sibling and their reciprocals) involves name taboos of this kind: “These people cannot say each other’s names or even words that are partial or complete homonyms of their names. There are also behavioral restrictions that include not eating from a plate that the other has used, not eating the other’s leftover food or chewing their leftover areca nut, and not talking loudly, joking, or cursing in their presence. Two people who are sau monne to each other are permitted to talk as long as they are not near each other. They should be across the room from each other but talk softly” (Florey and Reference FloreyBolton 1997). In Nuaulu namesake and name-homonym avoidance, the taboo words whose use risks performatively rupturing affinal relationality have the appearance of being submerged in the phonetic surround of the phonemic form that serves as the rigidly indexical designator (i.e., name) of the sau monne.Footnote ¹⁹

In figure 7, the dotted line encloses the form type (i.e., Tukanesi) employed to refer to the indexical target (i.e., the in-law), while the solid line encloses forms whose tokens performatively insult the indexical target (cf. fig. 3). The use, by Tukanesi’s sau monne, of words like tuka ‘make’ and nesie ‘left’ can be performatively rupturing of the affinal relationship even though Tukanesi is not a topic of discourse. The taboo words and their enregistered substitutes are nonparticipant indexicals.

Figure 7.

Nuaulu words tabooed in the idiolect of Tukanesi’s sau monne. Area enclosed by a dotted line indicates a domain of denotational function, whereas areas enclosed by a solid line indicate a domain of performative function.

Aboriginal Australian mother-in-law registers represent yet another functional organization of verbal taboo and avoidance. Formally, mother-in-law vocabularies consist of large lexical repertoires. Functionally, they have a quite complex discursive instantiation. This can be seen in figure 8 for the Wik language of the Cape York Peninsula (pattern reconstructed from Sutton [Reference Sutton1978] and Thomson [Reference Thomson1935]).

Figure 8.

Gradient avoidance of everyday speech, and corresponding usage of mother-in-law language, by kin relationship of indexical origo to indexical target in Wik. An x indicates the normative obligation to use mother-in-law language, and an asterisk (*) indicates a taboo on use of all speech (i.e., the avoidance of address toward the kin relation). The kin propositus is here equivalent to indexical origo and kin referent to indexical target. Diagram is from the perspective of a male ego and speaker.

In mother-in-law languages the range of indexical focus types across which speakers employ the avoidance vocabulary is an iconic index of how heightened the avoidance relationship is between origo_{(=Speaker or Animator)} and target_{(=Referent, Addressee, or Recipient)}. For the most tabooed social relationships, like the one between mother-in-law and son-in-law, the mother-in-law language was supposed to be employed whenever individuals in this relation found themselves in each other’s co-presence. The mother-in-law language functioned here as a recipient-focal index. For other less ritually sensitive avoidance relationships—like the relationship between an elder brother and a younger sister—the avoidance register was employed in address but not in all co-present linguistic communication. For still other respect relationships, like the adjacent (disharmonic) generation consanguineal relationship between father and daughter, mother-in-law vocabulary would be employed in reference to the actions of the relative, while elsewhere everyday vocabulary would be employed.

I call honorific or avoidance registers of this kind fluid focus systems (Reference FlemingFleming 2016), since tokens of the same honorific types have different indexical focus characteristics depending upon the identity of the indexical target. The potential for conflicting interpretations of honorific values are reduced by the following de facto pragmatic hierarchy of indexical focus types:

This hierarchy reflects the fact that recipient-focal usage functionally suspends addressee-focal usage, and both recipient-focal and addressee-focal usages suspend referent-focal usage. If one addresses an adult cross-sex sibling, then all referent-focal indexing of social relationship (e.g., use of everyday speech in referring to the actions of a joking relation) must be suspended if one wishes to respect one’s cross-sex sibling. If one is in the co-presence of a mother-in-law, then all addressee-focal indexing of social relationship (e.g., addressing an alternate [harmonic] generation same-sex consanguine) should be suspended if one is to respect one’s mother-in-law. Observe that in addressee- and recipient-focal uses, social indexicality is again mediated exclusively by interactional text without any appeal to the content of the denotational text. Further, in the most taboo relations even the emic interactional role of Addressee is denatured into the would-be etic substance of recipienthood. Mere co-presence (regardless who is the Addressee) demands that the mother-in-law vocabulary be employed. Indeed, in this recipient targeting there is a suspension of all register shifting, giving such speech a monologic quality about which Merlan has written with piercing insight: “The mother-in-law avoidance taboo, in which the highly prescribed and institutionalised forms—aversion of gaze, relative taciturnity, special proxemics, and so on—tend to give one aspect of the relationship between people overriding determination of their conduct in each other’s presence. Thus, a man in his mother-in-law’s presence finds it difficult to behave towards her in any way other than as her son-in-law; and further, his conduct towards everyone else on the scene is very strongly shaped by their co-presence, and the social emphasis placed on it” (Reference Merlan1997, 108, cited in Reference StaschStasch 2003).

In all of these cases (i.e., in ESPN reporting, Korowai name taboo, and Wik mother-in-law avoidance), rigid performativity spills out over the tripartite interactional role framework of {Speaker-Addressee-Referent} that so exhaustively mediates explicit performativity. We have already shown that English curse words illustrate the Animator > Speaker suspension, but it should be observed that instances of the Recipient > Addressee and Nonparticipant > Referent suspensions can also be observed in anglophone contexts. For instance, the interdiction against cursing in the co-presence of young children involves a categorical rule conditioned by recipienthood. We have already seen that lexemes phonologically iconic with curse-words though semantically unrelated to them may condition analogous pragmatic effects (e.g., fuck, fudge, fooey). But homophones of curses, slurs, and epithets may also be subject to avoidance or, inversely, linguistic play of various sorts. The adjective niggardly is now so rare and so tightly associated with the N-word that one must imagine that those who employ it (like the last users of the epicene he) are reactionaries, trolls, racists, or some combination of the above. For cases of titillation, think of jokes like “What do you get when you breed a bulldog with a shitzu?” or the entire branding concept of F.C.U.K. (French Connection United Kindom).

Name and Homophone Tabooing as Naturalization Runaway

Before answering this question, I would like to reframe this problem in a semiotic metalanguage. As I have shown elsewhere, name and homophone tabooing is a widespread pattern cross-linguistically (Reference FlemingFleming 2011, Reference Fleming2014a; see also Simons [Reference Simons1982] for a survey of Austronesian cases). This suggests a motivated, ideologically mediated diachronic pathway from name avoidance to lexical taboo (Reference FlemingFleming 2014c). It is this historical pathway, taken as a whole, that I am characterizing as a process of “naturalization runaway.” In order to understand why names—and not other lexical categories—are so often subject to this sociopragmatic reanalysis, we must note that the particular semiotic dissemination characteristic of names involves a tightly circumscribed semiotic-functional polysemy not unlike that of metapragmatic verbs. By the “semiotic-functional polysemy” of EPs, I refer to their capacity to function either as (metapragmatic) symbols or as (performative) indices. Names, like Benveniste’s pronouns, are empty signifiers, given referential anchoring only when an individual is made to occupy the place of indexical object. In the case of pronouns this is accomplished by speech participant role inhabitance. In the case of names it is accomplished by ritual events of baptism and speech chaining. Names can either be underspecified—as in conversations about baby names (e.g., “I like the name Sarah”)—or referentially bound (e.g., “Sarah lives in New Orleans”).Footnote ²⁰ Schlücker and Ackermann (Reference Schlücker2017) propose the terms proper noun and proper name, respectively, for these distinct linguistic entities. The social pragmatics of names slips and slides over this semiotic architecture. Two distinct, but cross-linguistically common, phenomena illustrate these slippages.

Double Articulation as a Block on Naturalization Runaway

As we have just observed, for rigid performatives, the equating of local signifying function with sound (whether in sound symbolism or in expressive morphology) is always limited in its scope and complex in its functional articulation—a mediate more than immediate connection. The reason for this has to with the strange character of the atoms, subatomic particles, and chemical bonds that compose the Saussurean signifiant. As Hjelmslev observed, these elements of the “plane of expression” do not directly correspond to elements of the “plane of content.” Rather, phonemes and distinctive features have the disjunct properties of being denotationally diacritic (as illustrated by minimal pairs) but void of semantic sense in and of themselves. This characteristic of language structure—Hjelmslev called such elements figurae—is typically understood in functionalist terms, where this particular organization of the phonology-semantics interface offers flexibility in the manipulation and elaboration of the lexicon; “duality of patterning,” as Charles Hockett called it, allows for the endless development and modification of morphemes. Hockett (Reference Hockett1960), Hjelmslev (Reference Hjelmslev1961), and Martinet (Reference Martinet1960) all figure figurae in a functional logic of the economy of signifying “expression,” as having a value elsewhere in the linguistic system. And indeed, it may be that duality of patterning is in some sense selected for to provision a large lexicon and in this sense offer a cultural “fitness” to the group of individuals using such a language (Reference FlemingFleming 2017). But regardless those effects, figurae have another function—a semiotic function not toward symbolism (in the sense of provisioning symbols) but in resisting (ideologically transparent) semiotic naturalization; they have an antirhematization function.

The duality of patterning is a stopgap measure that prevents the naturalizing reanalysis of signifying form as signifiying qualia. As we have seen with name and homonym avoidance, the identification of the plane of expression with performative (iconic-indexical) function takes place at the level of the phonotactic gestalts making up words and expressions and not directly in terms of the basic components of that plane of expression. Hjelmslev characterizes semiotic systems where minimal units of the plane of expression are mapped onto units of the plane of content as monoplanar systems. In such monoplanar systems, the naturalization of iconic-indexical functions could potentially affect the basic elements of the signifying inventory of the language in question. (Think here of red as a signifying expression in road signs. Red always has an iconic-indexical expressive “connotation” of danger whose perlocutionary effect is to put the indexically centered motorist in a state of alert. And this immediacy of signifying is likely adaptive for real-time signaling on autoroutes where the specificity of road signs is not as important as their perlocutionary efficacy. Evidently, phonemes in English [e.g., /s/, /t/, /n/] have no such connotations.)

In dually patterned languages, phonemes do not preserve their properties of signification as they are recycled iteratively to fashion diverse entries in the lexicon. Phonemes do not preserve their semantic significations when they are decontextualized from the morphemic units that encode them. Putting this in the same terms we employed to discuss rigid performatives, phonemic “decontextualization” (which is to say the recycling of phonemes across elements of the linguistic code) defeases the signifying properties of the units of the “expression plane.” Here, duality of patterning serves as a semiotic assemblage that produces this defeasance, a defeasance central to the essence of linguistic symbolism in its delocutive entelechy. The defeasance of signifying functions effected by the double articulation of language stops the runaway naturalization processes whereby symbolic functions become reanalyzed as rigid performatives from percolating all the way down into the minimal units of the “expression-plane” of the linguistic code. The Saussurean “arbitrariness” of the linguistic sign is not only a negative statement—that the signifiant is “unmotivated” with respect to its signifié. It is an effect iconically figurated by this configuration that hypertrophically emblematizes arbitrariness by frustrating any one-to-one association between figurae and symbolic signifying functions, rendering linguistic form just effete enough for symbolism to flourish.

We can situate this intuition with respect to what we might call “Parmentier’s paradox”: Following Peirce’s hierarchical classification of sign types it appears that only semiotic “naturalization” and not semiotic “conventionalization” should be a realizable sociosemiotic process. And yet clearly conventionalization, from artifice to aesthetics, is often realized as a diachronic pathway of semiotic-ideology/-practice dialectics (Parmentier [Reference Parmentier1994], cited and discussed in Ball [Reference Ball2014]). For Parmentier, semiotic naturalization is defined as a situation where the interpretant models the relationship between the sign and the object to be of a more elementary type than it really is (e.g., an index is represented as an icon). The best studied cases are those of rhematization (Irvine and Gal [Reference Irvine2000]; but see Ball [Reference Ball2014] on dicentization). Often rhematization involves a kind of semiotic “essentialization” since sign (e.g., a dialect) and object (e.g., identity group) come to be understood to share properties, an essence, in common. In terms of semiotic practice, naturalization diagrams the relationship between index and object to be maximally motivated. In Judith Irvine’s magisterial descriptions (e.g., Reference Irvine1990, Reference Irvine1993, Reference Irvine1996) of caste-based speech registers, we see that speech differences between Nobles and Griots are not only interpreted as signs of maximally differentiated groups, they manifest as maximally distinguished object signs (e.g., the tempo [slow/fast], the volume [quiet/loud], the richness of noun class marking [rich/impoverished], etc.). Diachronically, in good Hegelian fashion, ideology is rendered partially transparent as enregistered object signs of caste become diagrammatic with the metapragmatic model that interprets them. Semiotic naturalization is here making the register repertoire an indexical icon of the “natural” and “essential” relationship between the indexical sign (speech register employed by Speaker) and its object (caste identity of Speaker).Footnote ²²

Semiotic conventionalization would theoretically involve an opposing movement—an index would be represented by its interpretant as a symbol. The problem is that such a semiotic configuration isn’t permitted by virture of the way the Peircean triads combine. An Argument must incorporate a Symbolic Legisign—an *Argumentative Indexical Legisign is an impossible Peircean sign type. So how is “conventionalization” semiotically instantiated? Through mechanisms that impede semiotic naturalization—through anti-naturalization. The phoneme has just such an anti-naturalizing function. To say that such and such a consonant is phonemic or that such and such a phonological feature is distinctive in a given language is to say that it has a “psychological reality” as a type, or legisign, for speakers of that language. As a “denotationally diacritic” type (Reference AghaAgha 2007, 108), the phoneme or distinctive feature distinguishes the morphemes of which it is a component part from other morphemes in the system. Figurae (qua figurae) function as indexical legisigns. But though these minimal units of “expression” are diacritic or indexical of symbolic types, as we have seen, there are quite severe impediments frustrating the rhematization of this indexical relationship. This is because each unit of form is diacritic of indefinitely many semantically unrelated morphemes. This organization of the formal inventory of a language serves to defer the performative naturalization or essentialization of those elements precisely because it brackets and relays the relationship between signifier and signified. Language structure not only produces symbolism, it is architecturally designed to shelter symbolism from the iconic-indexical semiosis in which it is always already entangled and interlaced.