on language, meaning, and validity: philosophy of education and the universal pragmatics of habermas

Interchange, Vol. 35/1, 1-29, 2004.

©Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

On Language, Meaning, and Validity:Philosophy of Education and the

Universal Pragmatics of Habermas

MARIANNA PAPASTEPHANOUUniversity of Cyprus

ABSTRACT: A theory of language may prove conducive to manyimportant and complex issues in philosophy of education. Aftergrouping these issues into four main categories, I explore thepossibility and need to back up the categories with acomprehensive theory of language or a cluster of theories ofcompatible assumptions. I argue that Habermas’s universalpragmatics can be presented as one such theory and explain whyby reference to its conceptions of meaning and validity, whileassociating them with specific educational concerns and dilemmas.I suggest that, by breaking with representationalism andexpressivism, universal pragmatics can help educational theorykeep distances from positivism, performativity, and relativism.

KEYWORDS: Communicative competence, transcendentalism,metaphysics, meta-language, illocutionary, intentionality, Apel,Habermas, Wittgenstein, Austin.

IntroductionAnalytic and post-analytic philosophies examine a plurality of complexand important issues about language such as the connection of mindand linguistic order, the relation of logic and grammar, the significanceof speech acts for the quest for truth and validity, and the conditions oflanguage acquisition. They further concentrate on the philosophicalimplications of language being a species-specific property, and thedisclosing force of language with regard to the objective world(constructing knowledge), the social world (unmasking ideologies), andthe subjective world (embodying authenticity and creativity).

It is evident that such interests add an interdisciplinary value tothose philosophies, since their theoretical constructions are informative

2 MARIANNA PAPASTEFANOU

to, or have consequences for, other fields of research, for example,philosophy of mind, epistemology, psychology, social anthropology, socialtheory, aesthetics, politics, and education. Therefore, philosophy oflanguage can prove relevant and conducive also to various educationalphilosophical explorations of learning, socialization, individuation,power, and pedagogical practice.

The relevance of a theory of language to education can be seen andexamined from many perspectives. I group them as follows: (a) themeta-theoretical, (b) the practical, (c) the political, and (d) the research-methodological perspectives.

A theory of language can be introduced in educational theory as theultimate justification of pleas for a change in focus or paradigm. In theeffort to displace or discard old ideals of knowledge regulatingeducational practices, one may invoke the deployment of new theoriesof language that justify meta-theoretically a set of principles orstrategies that differ from the existing ones. John Searle's analyticphilosophy of intentionality accomplishes precisely this meta-theoreticalgoal in Christopher Winch’s (1997) critique of representationalism andits repercussions for instruction and the teacher-pupil face-to-facerelation in particular. Similarly, Robert Brandom’s inferentialsemantics serves meta-theoretical purposes as cited in JamesMcKenzie’s (2001) dismissive response to Winch’s reliance on Searle.

Another possibility of relevance of philosophical positions onlanguage emerges when a theory of language is employed to re-orientteaching in general (and of natural languages in particular). In this casethe perspective is practical as it aims to exploit directly theopportunities a new theory offers for improving instruction to thebenefit of the students. Christine Doddington (2001) argues along suchlines when she draws from Charles Taylor, Hans-Georg Gadamer, andothers in order to show that talking and listening in the classroom ismore appropriate with regard to meeting practical concerns than asystematized view of language.

A philosophical theory of language may also serve as a theoreticaltool offering conceptual means and argumentation for tracing linguisticuses as power mechanisms in schools. Foucault’s discussion of suchanonymous forces operating in the constitution of subjectivity andLyotard’s study of performativity as the new governing principle ofeducation unveil the role of hegemonic discourses in the construction ofwhat counts as identity, truth, and knowledge. Coupled with Austin’sanalysis of speech acts, as James Marshall (1999) argues, these theories

ON LANGUAGE, MEANING, AND VALIDITY 3

can help us explain how the force of language plays its role in thereduction of education to production of “normalized and governableindividuals.” In this sense, the perspective from which a theory oflanguage is employed by educators can be considered political.

Finally, theorizing language may contribute to discussions ofresearch-methodological issues. An exploration of why and howlanguage relates to the objective, subjective, and social reality issignificant for several debates on educational research. For instance,educators who promote the overcoming of the dichotomy “quantitativevs qualitative” (Frowe, 2001) find in some contemporary philosophicalaccounts of language the means to transcend representationalism andinferentialism.

Preliminary RemarksIt would be beneficial to education if one theory of language couldoperate in all these different ways and serve all such purposes. Or, toavoid a throwback to holistic traditions, it would be beneficial toeducation if different accounts of language could converge or achieve alevel of compatibility so that, despite their differences, they would nothave undesirable consequences for any of the aforementionededucational concerns. Admittedly, educational theory has not reacheda full consensus on what answers these concerns in order to search forthe appropriate philosophical theory that justifies it. On the contrary,debates on practices continue relentlessly also proving in a circular waythe lack of a coherent theoretical ground that would provide some kindof provisional paradigmatic certainties.

To be sure, such grounds should not function as a prima philosophiaaiming to lead the debates to a conclusion and serve prescriptivism.Many theories in the past were miscast in the dogmatic role of thearbiter of ultimate truth. A claim for some new paradigmatic certaintiesmust be circumspect and modest. It must presuppose its own subjectionto revision and confine its purpose to regulating and guiding research.Its usefulness lies in safeguarding that in our effort to resolve a, let ussay, epistemological issue, we will not lose sight of the normativedimensions at stake. That is to say, a theory satisfying what I termed“meta-theoretical perspective” should not occlude the political study ofthe relevance of language by holding, for instance, that language isvalue- and power- free. Similarly, a theory of language that delivers thegoods with respect to the power issue but fails blatantly to accommodatecognitive concerns (or be compatible with a theory doing so), due to a


commitment to relativism perhaps, turns out to be pedagogicallyinsufficient.

Whether the production of such a comprehensive theory (orcompatible theories of language) is a futile task is difficult to say but itis definitely daunting and may even be dangerous. The danger lies inthe fact that the trap of system and master-narrative might be lurking.The solution of this problem resides, I believe, in the cautious receptionof the postmodernist commitment to a post-metaphysical and anti-foundationalist treatment of theory construction. Caution is imperativeif one is to avoid sacrificing theoretical cohesion and consistency on thealtar of the anti-rationalist trend within postmodernism. Hence, in whatfollows, I shall try to unfold a theory of language, that of Habermas,that can be made to address all the above perspectives in a fruitful waybut I shall also deliberately counter its exposition as a foundational all-encompassing system. I discuss language and meaning within thetheory of universal pragmatics without presenting it as a totality andconfine my approach to gleanings that relate to issues such as the aboveand converge paradigmatically in their basic ideas.

Before proceeding, however, I would like to conclude my preliminaryremarks with a disclaimer. I do not argue that there can be only a singletheory of language doing justice to the perspectives I discerned aboveand that universal pragmatics alone is such a theory. What I argue isthat among many competing theories of language deriving from variousphilosophical traditions there are some that can more coherentlyaccommodate all the above perspectives and have richer implications foreducation. One such theory is that of the pragmatics of Habermas andthis is why I believe that it deserves a closer attention than it has so farreceived in educational scholarship. Finally, we must keep in mind thatthe whole venture here relies on implicit assumptions about thelegitimacy of discourse on theory or the problematization of meaningthat reflect mainly the continental reception of analytic philosophy anddo not always meet the approval of the Anglo-American persuasion.Surely, assumptions such as those above may be contested or rejected byother standpoints but, as analytic philosophy from Wittgensteinonwards has shown, we cannot thematize all our paradigmaticcertainties at once. We always rely on some assumption or other thatcan itself become the subject of further scrutiny and questioning. Thus,here, despite our awareness of controversies surrounding basic conceptsand conceptions, we must engage with some issues letting other issuesbe the subject for another time.


The Theoretical Context and the Needfor a New Comprehensive Theory

Many old philosophical accounts of language suffered from expressivismsince they considered language a tool of communication and overlookedits world-disclosing dimension. Expressivism operated on the basis of amind vs. language polarity attributing to the latter a derivative andsecondary role. It presupposed and echoed other sterile binarisms thathave also been problematized today. It often fit in with arepresentationalism that saw language as depicting reality in a one-to-one correspondence to objects or states of affairs. Both of them, that is.expressivism and representationalism were frequently traced in formsof positivism and led to undesirable consequences regarding chiefontological and epistemological questions which often affected not justeducational theory but also pedagogical strategies and directions.Among other things, such old accounts of language solidifiedprioritizations of natural sciences over humanities and their expressionin curricula. They undermined the role language plays in individuationand socialization as they gave temporal and logical priority to thoughtover language. They further promoted a cultivation of the myth that theobjectivity of pedagogically transmitted knowledge enjoys a supra-individual status and is uncontaminated by value. And, perhaps worstof all, by being so deeply-seated in the Occidental culture, theycontributed to a conservative and complacent educational self-understanding as an initiation process. Such a heroic process introducesthe young to universal truths and values that are beyond interpretationand questioning and become available monologically throughintrospection or collectively through educational acculturation andindoctrination.1

However, criticisms of those accounts have not always led to betteralternatives. Some current reactions to linguistic transcendentalism,scientism, and objectivism move hastily towards subjectivism andrelativism. They often encourage a linguistic determinism that stiflesthe subject’s potential for a critical overcoming of its own embeddednessin its culture. An extreme version of constructivism in education(claiming that because knowledge is constructed no criteria areavailable for judging validity) involves negative implications – not onlywith regard to epistemological institutional and curricular concerns butalso with regard to the type of person we encourage in classrooms. It issmall wonder that performativity, compliance, and conformism have sofar confronted little challenge. Such new trends that emanate from some


poststructuralist readings of leading philosophers of the 20th centuryfrequently appear to perform mere reversals of the old priorities and, ifthought thoroughly, prove to be the flip side of idealist world-interpretations.

Given such a theoretical context, it becomes apparent that educationmust realize the significance of the philosophy of language itpresupposes and search for those accounts that avoid the pitfalls ofexpressivism and representationalism as well as the new dangers ofunmitigated linguistic determinism. It is also important to add thatthese new accounts must do justice in one way or another to theconcerns and purposes of the different perspectives from which therelevance of language to education can be approached. If the so-calledphilosophy of consciousness with its reliance on the subject-object modelof thought is responsible for an expressivist neglect of language’s world-disclosing force, we must rectify this by turning to a philosophy ofintersubjectivity. And if the so-called linguistic turn is responsible foran epistemological anything goes, we must remedy this by avoiding toestablish the philosophy of consciousness vs. philosophy ofintersubjectivity opposition as a new rigid polarity. We must find a wayto preserve the epistemological merits of the philosophy of consciousnessand transfer them to the model of intersubjectivity.

Universal PragmaticsThere is a need for a reformulated understanding of language whichwould ground a critical and cautious shift from the philosophy ofconsciousness to that of intersubjectivity and encourage a convergencebetween hermeneutics and the analytic tradition. Many post-analyticphilosophers of language cross the divide and so have done theorists ofthe continental persuasion. Such hybrid theories of language that bringtogether critically and constructively tenets of different philosophicalstrands are, in my view, more compatible with a discipline such aseducation, in which hybridity plays a significant part in many ways.

Meaning and validity are key issues of paradigmatic importance.This is so because the way one describes meaning theoretically mirrorshow one connects subjectivity with language and the way by which oneexplains validity reflects how one connects epistemic concerns withlanguage. Such connections are crucial because they are very tellingregarding the proximity (or distance) of notions of subjectivity andknowledge to the above mentioned undesirable accounts: for example,an exaggeration of intentionality may reassert expressivism and a


liquidation of subjectivity may lead to linguistic determinism. Here Ishall examine the theory of meaning and validity that Habermasdeploys in his universal/formal pragmatics, a theory that steers clearfrom both dangers. The term “pragmatics” denotes that this theorytakes into consideration the pragmatic-contingent aspects of ordinarylanguages, and the term “universal” denotes that it takes up the task ofidentifying and reconstructing “universal conditions of possibleunderstanding” (Habermas, 1984, p. 1).2

An immediate question that might arise is twofold: Why do we needpragmatics? And why does it have to be universal in order to offer anadequate account of language? In other words, why would one considerthe insights of Habermas, insights on language suitable to oureducational concerns?

The demand for a re-evaluation of the role of the pragmatic aspectsin order to improve our understanding of language was clearlydeveloped by the later Wittgenstein. To him, as one may interpret hisPhilosophical Investigations (1958), it is a vain task to attempt ananalysis of what literal, in the sense of non-pragmatic, meaning mightbe. All the more so when by employing the word “literal” we allude to aformal and always identical meaning. Meaning is use and that signifies,as Habermas following Wittgenstein and Searle has shown, that it“must be completed by the background of an implicit knowledge thatparticipants normally regard as trivial and obvious” (Habermas, 1991,p. 336). Without a reconstruction of the empirical-contingentparameters of meaning, we lose sight of the connection meaning haswith the validity claims raised by each speech act. That has implicationsfor the way we understand the world and for the maintenance of socialintegration (p. 305), because overlooking those parameters leaves noother choice for explaining people’s relation to reality and people’s actioncoordination but the metaphysical or quasi-metaphysical extra-linguistic ones.

The second part of the question has been addressed by Habermas inhis discussion of alternative approaches to pragmatics and I willreiterate his argument briefly. An alternative path to formal/universalpragmatics would be an empirical pragmatics. It would be a pragmaticsthat is not concerned with the competences or the structures behindcommunication but which focuses, for example, on the use of expressionsas indicators related to the temporal, the social, and the contentdimension of speech. Habermas responds to that by arguing that “theclasses of speech acts that are arrived at inductively and constructed inaccordance with pragmatic indicators do not consolidate into intuitive


types; they lack the theoretical power to illuminate our intuitions”(Habermas, 1991, pp. 322-323). That is, formal/universal pragmatics hasand fulfils other objectives apart from an explanation of how a languagefunctions: it aspires to reveal deceptions, confusions in relation tovalidity claims or to the different dimensions of reality, ideology, whatHabermas calls “excommunicated meanings” and various sorts ofcommunication distortions. Hence, one needs pragmatics to put forwardan explication of the role of language in social order and one employssome notion of universality when one aims at reconstructing species-specific competences and maintain a distinction between persuasion andforce.4

Therefore, a plausible account of language requires both apragmatics that accommodates the significance of linguisticeverydayness, situatedness, and contextualisation and a weakuniversalism that does not speak for ahistorical meanings but forpossibilities of commensurable speech. A mutual agreement betweenparticipants in a communicative action means that the linguisticmaterial involved in the discussion is intersubjectively shared. Both thesymbolic and the pragmatic conditions of the communicative content arein principle fulfilled. Thus, what the speaker means and what thehearer understands are determined not only by a fixed set of rules thatbelong to the field of formal semantics but also by a deployment ofutterances that is related to contextual and contingent parameters ofcommunication.

On the other hand, meaning is not irrelevant to validity: “the basicquestion of meaning theory, namely what it means to understand themeaning of a grammatical expression, cannot be isolated from thequestion in which context the utterance of the expression may beaccepted as valid” (Habermas, 1994, p. 57). Such a coupling of meaningand validity claims shows indirectly the extent to which early analyticaccounts of meaning (Frege, Russell, the early Wittgenstein) areincompatible with the turn contemporary philosophy of language hastaken. Transferred to education, this means that we need the couplingof meaning and validity because we are neither concerned solely withthe transmission of knowledge nor exclusively with the authentic andliberating (self)critique in classrooms. Education must take into accountand elaborate into an open-ended set of school practices a theory ofmeaning that takes seriously the dimension of use. For, understandinga linguistic expression means also that we know how to make use of itin order to reach an agreement with someone about something.5


I would like to draw some consequences from the above remarks ona first approach to the problem of meaning here: (a) One cannot limitoneself to a strict linguistic analysis of utterances, looking always forthe structures of correspondence between propositional logic andobjective states of affairs. Neither can one test the validity of allutterances only according to a correspondence theory of truth; (b) Theintentionality of the speaker is important for semantics as well as forvalidity, because soliloquy is not the only dimension of a naturallanguage since the I communicates something to an Other as well; and(c) People interact within life-worlds that provide participants incommunication with concrete world-interpretations and systems ofideas that cannot be ignored in a reconstruction of language. Their beinginformative in this way with regard to the background of language usersand the code they employ offers them a normative role in education.

Overall, the coupling of pragmatics with a weak universalism orformalism and the connection of meaning with use and claims ineveryday speech constitute important tools for examining thesignificance of language theoretically and empirically for the wholepedagogical venture. Regarding the perspective termed above as“practical,” one must take them seriously into consideration beforeassessing explicitly or tacitly the linguistic capacity of students todecipher the meaning of the taught material. Also, these tools(especially the rehabilitation of pragmatic aspects of everydaycommunication) can prove valuable to teachers who face daily in theirwork political problems such as how to deal with uneven humanlinguistic capital and concomitant cognitive inequalities. Education hassuffered from false dilemmas concerning its priorities therebyconfronting drastic choices. To give some examples, it is often a problemwhether one should teach foreign languages placing the emphasis onphonetics rather than grammar. The former is supposed to facilitatecommunication whereas the latter guarantees a more solid command ofthe language. I believe that universal pragmatics would undo thisbinarism and show the entanglement of both elements and the necessityof cultivating both in classrooms. Similarly, there are dilemmas thatconcern the conflict between formal languages and linguistic norms onthe one hand and idioms, dialects, and everyday speech on the other.And there are dilemmas that concern the nature of communication andthe extent to which this presupposes extra-linguistic aspects that areoperative only in oral rather than written communication. Answeringthis positively entails that online learning is inherently problematicwhile a negative answer, one that would take seriously the performative


dimension of language present in all its forms, could be used in favor ofcyberspace (Blake & Standish, 2000, pp. 202-205). Such dilemmas canbe overcome if we explore the possibilities opened by new accounts oflanguage. To say the least, they could be affected decisively by universalpragmatics and its ability to dismantle polarities.

MeaningWhen we speak we do not only describe or refer to facts; we also performactions, like promises or orders for instance. Linguistic expressions,then, differ from mere signs in that the former do not represent a staticsymbolic system and a reconstruction of their semantics cannot beexhausted by either logical atomism or Saussure's semiotics.6 Simplesentences that correspond to simple facts in the world are only onecomponent of language. (Holding the opposite would force us to limit theworld to the reality of facts and eventually to fall prey to a crudemetaphysics of presence). Consequently, Tarski’s “Convention T” 7

cannot apply to all sentences of a language because not all sentences arerelated to the world in a descriptive way. Later on we shall see how asentence can be valid without being true in the sense Tarski wouldargue for.

But formal logic was not the only possible basis for those linguistictheories that abstracted from contextual and action-theoretical groundsof meaning. Ferdinand de Saussure's theory merely treated language asa formal system without any relation to action theory. What defineswords is not an intrinsic meaning that can be deciphered positively, butrather, the differential element among them which places them in asingle position in the system. In structuralism, the dependence oflanguage on interacting subjects is effaced. This negative (i.e.,relational-differential and not positing) structuralist definition leaveslinguistics with many serious difficulties already pointed out by varioustheorists.8 By contrast, from the communicative point of view, a theoryof meaning must include subjective, formal, and historical aspects ofunderstanding or using language. I will attempt to make this pointclearer by a brief description of those semantic theories that favor onlyone of the above mentioned dimensions. Then I will proceed to anexplanation of the reasons why a limited account of meaning is nothelpful to the kind of theory that would free education from some of itstheoretical predicaments.

H.P. Grice emphasizes the relation between language andspeaking/hearing subjects. People in their meaningful interactions have


a cluster of communicative devices at their disposal, a part of which islanguage (Passmore, 1985, pp. 21-22). In his “Logic and Conversation”he is interested in the practice of conversation rather than in applyingformal logic to language. In his “Utterer’s Meaning, Sentence-Meaning,and Word-Meaning” he states his preference for a notion of meaningdependent on the subjective conditions of speech and the intentionalityof the speaker. He writes that his aim is “to throw light on theconnection between a notion of meaning” which he wants to regard asbasic, viz. that “notion which is involved in saying of someone that by(when) doing such-and-such he meant so-and-so” [Italics added], (Grice,1971, p. 54). According to Searle, “Grice analyses meaning as intendingto produce an effect in a hearer by getting him to recognize the intentionto produce that effect” (Searle, 1971, p. 8). Such a conception ofintentionality, though, ultimately reduces communication to strategicaction, an action that is considered by Habermas in principlemonological and inappropriate for grounding an account of humaninteraction. Grice’s contribution to a theory of meaning succeeds inrevealing the importance of purposive activity through linguistic means.But it is not fruitful for a theory that wants to take into account exactlythose cases that Grice’s research leaves unaccounted for, namely, therelations of meaning to the objective and the social world.

Whereas Grice connects meaning with the subjective dimension ofa speech act, Dummett considers meaning-theory an epistemologicaltask. It has to give an “account of what it is someone knows when oneknows the language” (Passmore, 1985, pp. 21-22). Dummett rightlyconnects truth with some epistemic notions like justification andassertibility and unveils how truth is always anchored in language. Buthe fails to see that even a non-objectivist notion of truth does not resolvesome crucial predicaments raised within a theory of meaning. Validityis too broad a concept to be fully explained by an account of truth alone,regardless of what reformulations the concept of truth might undergo.Such a theory of meaning risks regarding either the intentions of aspeaker or the normative background of speech as secondary.

Meaning was connected with use in the later Wittgenstein with hisshift to the philosophy of ordinary language. We understand speech actsdue to our sharing established interactive contexts. This is a theory ofmeaning that recognizes the significance of pragmatics, and in thissense, it is very beneficial to the theory we need regarding semantics.When it comes to validity claims, though, Wittgenstein’s decision toexclude “all validity claims which point beyond the provincial horizon


of particular language games,” as Habermas has put it (1994, p. 58),raises immediate problems for a theory that is more ambitious.

Such a theory would choose to stave off particularism and set out toprovide a more comprehensive account of how agreement is possiblethrough different cultural perspectives. It would question theprecedence of the normative over the objective and the subjectiveaspects of speech. In this way it would have a special significance forthose educationalists who see the redemptive potential of teaching asbeing located in the possibility of transcending the binding force ofparticular contexts. For instance, as a lot of educational discourserevolves around critical thinking, the theories of language that wouldbe more conducive to defining critique would be those, like Habermas’s,avoid particularism regarding meaning and validity. In the same vein,such theories would be helpful to those who treat schooling as a morecomprehensive operation than just imparting the basics to the youngand wish to enhance the students’ all-round capacities for meaningfuland thoughtful interaction in their lifeworld.

Different theories of meaning highlight different ways ofunderstanding an utterance. A theory of meaning turns out to be eithera theory of intended meaning, or of literal meaning, or, finally, ofutterance meaning (Habermas, 1992, p. 65). This is how it is shaping sofar in analytic and post-analytic philosophy of language. What I findinnovative and useful in Habermas and Apel’s theory of language istheir attempt to unite some of these approaches. As I interpret them,their move is not motivated by mere eclecticism. It reflects theirphenomenological background to the extent that the connections theymake express implicitly their reluctance to adopt a clear-cut stancetoward the old question (often dismissed as pseudo-problem) about thereality of the objective world. They do not take up this problem overtly9

but relating meaning to cognition, society, and subjectivity alreadyassumes a conception of the world broad enough to include what weexperience as objects and facts, interactions and contacts, interpersonalrelations, self-consciousness, and artistic experience. Human beings findthemselves in a world that is a constitutive, a conditioning, world forthem even when they observe or manipulate it. They are always alreadywithin societies and with an ego identity that has never its “idem”pinned down and settled. On the contrary, identity is always displacedby the subject’s communication with other egos or reshaped byauthentically expressing thoughts, feelings, and experiences of privatelife. As is well-known, realism and idealism have informed educationand led to conflicting pedagogical orientations some of which have been


detrimentally one-dimensional and partial. A cautious linguisticovercoming of an either/or, commitment to a world-ontology promises away out of old idealist prioritizations of humanities over objectiveknowledge or realist and positivist preferences for scientistic andobjectivist educational ideals.

The Habermasian symmetry of the ontological status of the differentspheres of experience guarantees that the tripartite account of themdoes not suggest or imply any evaluative judgments that wouldestablish a hierarchy of worlds, and consequently, that it does notpronounce any of them as primordial. Universal pragmatics does notsubscribe to the idealism of a logical, autonomous, internal worldmirrored in language nor to the crude materialist idea of an externalworld that exhausts its content in factual presence. Thus, educationally,that means that curricular prioritisations of one form of knowledge overanother on grounds of facticity are false and this applies to educationalresearch as such since its different modes, the qualitative and thequantitative, should no longer be presented as oppositional and value-asymmetrical. More often than not, hidden curricular interventionsestablish false hierarchies or priorities regarding subjects of teachingand discourage students from engaging with those secondary topics. Forinstance, even when curricula emphasize a balanced treatment ofmathematics and aesthetics as different teaching subjects, teacherssometimes set their own priorities in a way that reflects positivistprejudices against arts. Such prejudices can be overcome by areorientation of educational theory in a direction that treats differentfields of knowledge as symmetrical. For this, educational theory needsthe assistance of a theory of language that will justify semantically theequal emphasis on different subjects and not a theory that willconsolidate one-dimensional hierarchizations of our relation to theobjective, the subjective, and social-normative worlds.

Additionally, I see the Habermasian conception of meaning as animportant contribution to dismantling the oppositional pair of Bodyversus Mind. In this sense, I would consider the framework of universalpragmatics postmodern because I interpret it as a promotion andrefinement of the phenomenological and existentialist critique (minusits metaphysical underpinnings) of a technical interpretation of theworld. My argument runs as follows. Existentialism showed how thepriority of essence over existence grounded the subject-object relationby conceptualizing the object or by objectifying the concept, producinga world of Creator and creatures. Existentialism offered also the meansfor rejecting that priority. A further step would be to re-evaluate the


dimensions of the world that, due to their being incompatible with thedominant technical interpretation of the world, were excluded bytraditional metaphysics. Such an aim can only be served by a philosophythat is fully willing to break with a one-dimensional and scientisticdescriptive-cognitive conception of language and reason. Such adeparture from scientism rehabilitates people’s relation to their cultureand environment by demonstrating their context-dependence and theirineluctable situatedness in the world. And the demand for thisdeparture is a postmodern one. Pedagogically, new trends in scienceeducation promote changes in their practices along the lines of anawareness of context-dependence and situatedness either from aconstructivist or a postmodernist standpoint. To them also, aHabermasian theory of language would provide conceptual tools andmeta-theoretical material that would be compatible with their aims andconcerns.

However, on what grounds can one justify the preference forincluding pragmatics in a theory of meaning and for which problemssuch a shift would serve as a remedy? A related question, one that, if notclarified, may cause a misunderstanding, concerns what one means bylinguistic analysis. Let us begin with the latter issue. If we take as astandpoint the linguistic idea, generated by Saussure, that language isparole and langue, then we must define linguistic analysis either as ananalysis of parole or an analysis of langue or both at the same time. Todo the first, we must abstract from ordinary language by leaving notionslike performance or use unexplored. By doing the second, we putgrammaticality aside. To choose the latter, we have either toamalgamate langue and parole by assuming that both have the sameformal structure and they are accessible to a logical analysis and thatrenders the distinction itself redundant. Or, else, we have to keep thedistinction between langue and parole but differentiate between thecompetences that correspond to each one. If we had to assimilate thecompetence involved in constructing a grammatically correct sentenceand the competence involved in employing an utterance in ourcommunication we would need to explain how some sentences thoughgrammatically correct are meaningless. Our linguistic competence togenerate well-structured sentences must be supplemented with anadditional competence, the communicative one. This move is availablein the theory of Habermas and, in my view, this settles the issue aboutthe usefulness of pragmatics. As he writes, “by ‘communicativecompetence’ I understand the ability of a speaker oriented to mutualunderstanding to embed a well-formed sentence in relations to reality”


(Habermas, 1984, p. 29) and further, “sentences are the object oflinguistic analysis, speech acts of pragmatic analysis” (p. 32).

The above mentioned idea of a linguistic and a pragmatic analysisby no means leads to a clear-cut dualism. The two analyses presupposeand supplement each other. Instead of leaving us with two separate andperhaps antagonistic research domains, this distinction serves animportant methodological function: it helps us realize the differentvalidity claims that a sentence S of a language L raises. A non-situatedsentence (e.g., ‘the king of France is bald,’ a grammatically correctsentence) fulfils certain validity conditions related to grammar. But thevalidity claims of a situated sentence (that is, any sentence as part of aspeech act in a language game) have to be tested in relation to theobjective, the subjective, and the social world. To summarize, differentcompetences, that is, the linguistic and the communicative, producesentences and utterances respectively, which fulfil or fail to fulfildifferent universal presuppositions and to ground the generative powerof language. The latter is not the only peculiar property of language.Another is the self-reflexivity of language, to which I shall refer after Iexamine what might be the significance of a validity claim in universalpragmatics.

ValidityHabermas (1984, p. 52) argues that “a validity basis underlies all speechactions.” We owe this to the illocutionary element of language, to thefact that by performing a speech act we carry out an action (as Austinremarked) and we aim at an understanding.10 A problem that ariseshere is what one means by validity (Gültigkeit or Geltung) and how werespond to questions of validity applied to concrete sentences. Let usclarify a – mainly terminological11 – misunderstanding according towhich Habermas defends an, ostensibly, ubiquitous in language,Platonic sense of truth. Truth is only one dimension of validity. Not onlydoes it not exhaust the validity claims of all sentences or utterances ofa language, but also it does not frequently exhaust in itself even thevalidity claims of one sentence (p. 52). That is due to the doublecharacter of language, the cognitive and the interactive which can beseen in our relation to objects and our relation to society and self andputs us in the position of an observer or in the position of a participant.One can trace this dichotomy back to the hermeneutic tradition thatdistinguishes between sensory experience or observation (Erklären) andcommunicative experience (Verstehen). To reduce all linguistic analysis


to an analysis of our relation to the world of objects only would confineus to the subject-object scheme which is characteristic, mainly, ofmodern philosophies of consciousness. Apel and Habermas repeatedlydeclare that they want to break with a cognitivistic account of validity,what they call – following Austin – the “descriptive fallacy” (Habermas,1984, p. 47) or the “abstractive fallacy” (Apel, 1981, p. ix).

When people take part in communicative actions, they do not onlyrefer to facts. Even when they do refer only to facts they still imply morevalidity claims than are involved in propositional truth. Talking aboutfacts, describing something in the world, explaining scientific data,involves a clear-cut validity condition testable by representationalmeans. But it latently involves other validity conditions as well as awhole set of justifying grounds that could explicate and defend theimplicit validity claims. A trivial example suffices to illustrate this. Letus suppose that a speaker A talks with a speaker B in a classroom aboutthe weather outside. A says to B: “it is raining now.” The direct validityclaim is that of truth. The truth of the propositional content of ourexample can be tested, let us say, by a quick look out of the window. Ananswer ‘‘no it is not” shows that the propositional content is invalid.

The sentence above, though, raises some more claims. The speakerA assumes that her sincerity is indisputable when she utters thesentence. If she receives an answer like “You say so because you do notwant us to leave this room” then the intentions of the speaker, that is,her claim of sincerity or truthfulness, are questionable. If we takeanother example, where the truth claim is not the predominant one, wewill see that the truth claim is still there though in a tacit form. If aspeaker says “ promise you that I will find a teaching job for you in S”the speaker makes a commitment while forming an interpersonalrelation as she or he raises directly a claim to appropriateness/rightness. A rejection could be based on the grounds of this (principal)claim and it would be something like “you are not allowed to do so,because you are not in charge of S,” but this is not the only alternative.The sentence raises implicitly a truth claim that can be turned downwith an answer like “there are no teaching jobs left in S,” and atruthfulness claim that can be turned down with an answer like “no, youjust say so out of politeness,” and so on.

This explains what Habermas means when he writes: “every speechact in a natural context can be contested ... under more than one aspect”(1991, p. 306) and that the illocutionary element “determines the aspectof validity under which the speaker wants his utterance to beunderstood first and foremost” (p. 308). These remarks aim at showing


how deeply interlaced the three dimensions of the world are, and howclearly this is expressed with overlapping validity claims laid down vialinguistic means. In a negative way, these examples show how much islost in one-dimensional accounts of meaning and validity. To the threedimensions of the world correspond three modes of communication:cognitive, interactive, and expressive. The theme at stake in each caseis either the propositional content, or the interpersonal relation, or thespeaker's intention. And in each case, the main validity claim will beeither truth, or rightness-appropriateness, or truthfulness-sincerity(Habermas, 1984, p. 58).

Each one of the three dimensions – objective, subjective, and social– helps us understand the linguistic representation of different aspectsof reality.

The tripartite distinction of language and lifeworld spheres and thesymmetrical status of these spheres within universal pragmatics arephilosophically-ontologically significant. Reproaches concerning amarginal treatment of rhetoric and art (within classroom practices andcurricula) can be applied to a philosophy that grants only the objectiveor the social world a priority over everything else. That is, it applies toa philosophy with an explicitly or implicitly positivistic character or toa strictly socio-pragmatic-functionalistic philosophy. Universalpragmatics does not hierarchize the worlds in a manner that wouldrender one of them of lesser importance or parasitical on the others. Iwould like to justify this view with one more quotation from Habermas:“I have proposed that we differentiate the external world into anobjective and a social world, and that we introduce the internal world asa complementary concept to the external world” [Italics added](Habermas, 1991, p. 278). We must pinpoint12 the analogical status ofcognition, normativity, and art in universal pragmatics13 and exploit itspotential role in justifying suggestions of curricular change in thedirection of the rehabilitation of neglected fields of knowledge.

This becomes more significant if we realize that most theorists haveidentified the validity of speech acts with propositional truth. Eventhose who inaugurated speech act theory limited it to the cognitivesphere.14 As Habermas explains, Austin, trapped in a version of thedescriptive fallacy that he himself diagnosed in others, initially made adistinction between constative and performative speech acts (which hedropped later) and then between meaning and force. Habermas hassought to prove that the “proposed distinction is unsatisfactory”(Habermas, 1984, p. 44) because that would limit the use of meaning toits linguistic dimension only. “It does not make sense to explicate the


concepts meaning versus force with reference to the distinction betweenthe linguistic meaning of a sentence and the pragmatic meaning of anutterance” (p. 46). What Habermas objects to here is the dualism of twoclearly and separately defined contents of language, the locutionary andthe illocutionary. That does not contradict what has been done so far.On the contrary, it sheds additional light on it. The distinction betweenasserting and performing that helps to realize the different validityclaims that underlie speech will become a cumbersome dualism ifabsolutized. For universal pragmatics, all speech acts have alocutionary component (their propositional content) and an illocutionaryone (performative utterance). One can legitimately maintain such anidea after generalizing Dummett’s corroboration of the idea that evenin constative speech acts the meaning of an assertoric sentence is alsodependent on what makes the sentence acceptable.15 “In a language,each individual speech act is connected by way of logical-semanticstrands to many other potential speech acts that can take on thepragmatic role of reasons” (Habermas, 1992, p. 77).

Therefore, there are not some sentences that have only meaning andsome others that have only force.16 The illocutionary element is boundup with all sentences that constitute parts of speech acts irrelevant towhich is the main validity claim. “The illocutionary portion establishesthe sense in which the propositional content is being employed and thesort of action which the utterance should be understood as” (Habermas,1992, p. 64). Thus, it becomes apparent that any educational argumentor practice theoretically boiling down to a justification deriving from thedualism meaning versus force (e.g., the rigid segregation of forms ofknowledge) would lack credibility or, at best, could be shown to beproblematic and in need of extended defense.

Here, one may raise the objection that what justifies the dualismmeaning versus force is the rationality which is or can be interwovenwith a description of facts and which is or can be absent from aperformative utterance. The illocutionary component of a speech act isnon-rational since it cannot be reduced to the locutionary because it isnot linked with a truth claim. If we conceive validity as something wedecide upon by rational means, and if we want to avoid a narrowdefinition that limits validity to propositional truth, then we have toassume a kind of rationality behind other validity claims. Habermasresolves this problem by reformulating rationality through acommunicative twist of his Kantian and Weberian sources. With regardto this specific issue: “the illocutionary component thereby becomes thesite of a rationality which presents itself as the structural


interconnection between validity conditions, the validity claim relatedto these, and the potential reasons for their discursive redemption”(Habermas, 1994, p. 61).17 However, it is true that this dependence ofthe validity conditions on the illocutionary component is somewhatproblematic. Wellmer offers examples of cases where Habermas’sassertion does not hold and he concludes that “the differentiationaccording to modes and the differentiation according to validitydimensions should be understood as at least partially independent ofeach other” (Wellmer, 1992, p. 204).18 Yet, even if Habermas’s accountof the relation between the locutionary and the illocutionary elementsis inadequate and should be replaced with a better and moresophisticated one, it remains important that this relation should beclarified by bridging the gap between the locutionary and theillocutionary elements. For this is how the reconciliation of plurality andunity within reason and language could be guaranteed.

The need for taking such a direction in philosophy of educationbecomes evident when one recalls that existing alternatives confrontserious difficulties. As Goodrich remarks, the educational-analyticposition of the London School (Peters, Hirst) has been effectivelycriticized especially by post-analytic Quinean educationalists. Despitethe merits of their criticisms, however, Quinean proponents have failedto propound a plausible educational alternative without transferringalong the main faults of holism, that is, a behaviourist account of theself and a relativist epistemology (Goodrich, 1996, p. 39). Universalpragmatics transferred to educational theory would preserve the meritsof post-analytic philosophy, especially the one regarding the questioningof the rigid qualitative character of binarisms, minus the commitmentto extreme positions that end up in blurring all distinctions related tothe conceptual and the empirical realms.

A relevant dualism that is dismantled in universal pragmaticsconcerns logic and grammar. A dualist approach to the oppositionalcouple logic versus grammar generates a dualist distinction between arational and a non-rational element in language. Hence the idea thatthe supposedly misleading indeterminacy of natural languages can beeroded by means of formal, scientific, and therapeutic meta-languagesis one of the most hotly-debated themes of early analytic philosophy’sengagement with continental thought. What is held responsible byanalytic philosophers for the multiplication of entities within idealismas well as the non-scientific character of ordinary language, can beidentified and rejected through a methodology that makes good use ofmeta-language. Meta-language, as I use the term here, denotes the


statements of a higher level that have a special ontological andepistemological significance distinctively non-pertinent to everydaylanguage. Universal pragmatics does not employ such a formal meta-language and discards the dualism of logic vs grammar on which thatassumption rests. The inherent reflexivity of language offers theillocutionary content for explanation or argumentation (Habermas,1984, pp. 42-43). Linguistic reflexivity denotes that language isequipped with the means for rejection or justification of claims raisedwithin language itself. Language spheres are porous, they are notautonomous, static, systems. “To the grammar of a language gamebelongs not only the fact that it defines a form of life, but also that itdefines a life form in relation to other life forms as one's own in contrastto those that are foreign” (Habermas, 1990, p. 147). Habermas acceptsthe idea that the rules teach the condition of possible consensus but healso accepts the hermeneutic view that rules give the condition of thepossible interpretation of the rules themselves (pp. 147-150). It is onlyin this sense that we can speak of meta-language without erroneouslyattributing a qualitatively different status to formal logic from the oneattributed to grammar and without exaggerating the autonomy ofthought from language.

The qualitative asymmetry of thought and language that informedrepresentationalism and expressivism can be traced as the deep-seatedunderpinning of the whole idea of a subject constituted prior to itssocialization. Interpretations (biologistic, metaphysical, or other) of thesupposed primacy of thought over language lead to the exaggerated ideaof an autonomous self, always in control of, and responsible for, itsexistential choices. In turn, that is manifest in the individualisteducational ideal, the relevant liberalist principles of formal equalityand school meritocracy as ostensibly just treatments of difference inclassroom, and compatible educational practices such as streaming. Itis obvious then that a reconsideration of the relation between thoughtand language would cast doubt on many educational assumptions andsupport some others such as Bourdieu’s well-known rejection of schoolpractices that separate the “wheat from the chaff” on grounds ofsupposed mental excellence and talent. Bourdieu’s conception of culturalcapital as the significant factor that determines achievementpresupposes the rejection of the old priority cast on thought overlanguage and is thus compatible with universal pragmatics.


ConclusionTo develop a theory of meaning, that is, to attempt to explicate how andwhat we understand when we use a symbol and to connect meaningwith some formal and some pragmatic conditions of validity does notexhaust the tasks of a comprehensive theory of language. On thecontrary, a theory of meaning and validity may appear unjustified if itis not backed up at a deeper level with a sufficiently coherent accountof the nature of language. That is why I would like to conclude thisarticle with a more general elaboration on the Habermasian conceptionof language and its connection with the themes I discussed above.

The traditional conception of language as a formal system seeks afixed meaning that transcends reality. The extreme postmodernistcritique against it fails to account for anything but a free-floatingmeaning and paves the way to an unrelenting and dogmatic attack, andultimately rejection of any kind of hermeneutics. Universal pragmaticsdispenses with both extremes because it recognizes a peculiar, doublestructure in language. The synonymy of meaning is an important issuehere. The identity of meaning is not fixed once and for all – it is subjectto constant revision, due to an endless subjection to socio-culturalshaping. A satisfactory degree of sameness is there, however, where asatisfactory communication and understanding takes place. It is securedby the very nature of language: by the fact that we are competent tofollow rules when using symbols and competent to discern whether asymbol has been used according to the rules. Thus, we are not trappedin a conventionalism of rule applications since we have the ability toobjectify these rules in our discourses: “competent speakers draw onintuitively known meaning relations that obtain within the lexicon ofone language or between those of two languages” (Habermas, 1984, 12).On a second level, one has to go deeper, searching this time not forsemantic relations (and thus applying rules one knows), butreconstructing the rules one uses. Once again, such an account oflanguage can inform education in a way that avoids both the relativismof a notion of free-floating meaning and the sterile commitment to ametaphysics of presence manifest in the notion of identitarysignification.

The balanced treatment of meaning identity and the conception ofthe illocutionary element we examined above mirror a crucial aspect ofwhat universal pragmatics presupposes as the nature of language. Fora pragmatic philosopher of language, language has reflexivity and isquasi-transcendental. It owes this reflexivity to the fact that the acts


carried out in a natural language are always self-referential. They sayboth how what is said is to be employed and how it is to be understood(Habermas, 1992, p. 64). It is quasi-transcendental because the validityclaims that are automatically raised in a language have a doublecharacter. They seem transcendental to the extent that they transcendspace and time, but they are not transcendental because they have toappear always in the illocutionary here and now as being “carriers of acontext-bound everyday practice” (Habermas, 1987, 322).

This quasi-transcendentalism of linguistic self-reflexivity ties withanother aspect of the nature of language that is anthropological andcontributes to the refutation of the old representationalism in thefollowing way. The theorists of universal pragmatics avoid writingexplicitly on the anthropology that underlies their views but sometimesthe anthropological significance of their insights becomes apparent:“what begins as an explication of meaning aims at a reconstruction ofspecies competences” (Habermas, 1984, p. 14). These competences arenot private capabilities of individual groups; they are universal to theextent that they belong to the species and they ground general validityclaims; “the implicitly raised, general validity claims determine theuniversal modes of communication, modes inherent in speech ingeneral” (p. 57). Nevertheless, one has to further elaborate and explicatethese competences of language that constitute its double character. Themajor problem: what is language? The question itself would beunacceptable in an early Wittgesteinian context. The eye can observewhatever lies within its limits but it cannot see itself. A theory that seesin language only a depicting character (e.g. representationalist theoriesof language) cannot accommodate a self-reflexivity in language becausethat would transcend exactly that character. A non-metaphysical –metaphysical understood in this context as representational/scientistic– account of language must limit itself to the analysis of one to onerelations between facts in the world and sentences. In that sense, eventhe Tractatus theory (Wittgenstein, 1961) itself is metaphysical since itattempts to define that descriptive nature of language. The crucial pointis that this descriptive nature is mirrored in language, it cannot beexpressed in words. A theory that tries to put the inexpressible(unsagbar) into words is like the ladder one uses and then kicks away.The very fact, though, that such a language has been used byWittgenstein points precisely at the self-reflective dimension oflanguage.

Despite the irreducible multiplicity of ordinary languages(Habermas, 1990, pp. 121-123), in simple communicative actions we


employ language in a manner that raises implicit validity claims whichrescue us from an infinite regression to the question ‘‘what do you meanby ... ?” In cases where either comprehensibility or validity is at stake,we have recourse to a rational discourse, that is, to a rationalreconstruction of that specific belief, meaning, or idea that becameproblematic. Therefore, when we communicate in our everyday life, werely upon some latent, pre-given hermeneutic material within ourlifeworlds. The more this material is put under question the more weneed to encourage discussion, that is, the more we pursue arationalization process. That necessity occurs paradigmatically insocieties where a secularisation of worldviews is in process resulting inthe emergence of several critiques of ideologies. Whether the outcomeis a rational consensus (when most of the “excommunicated meanings”come back into play and become accepted as legitimate topics ofdiscussion) or a pseudo-consensus (when manipulation and controldistort communication) is another matter. However, it providesindirectly the means for developing a critical-political perspective totheorize the constellation language, power, and education.

What the above remarks suggest here is that language from acommunicative point of view offers the actors the opportunity toovercome the hermeneutic circle, that is, to step outside their particulartraditions and cultures – in other words to be able to think again. Aparticular lifeworld ceases to be static and closed and becomes porousand permeable since any part of it can be submitted to rationalargumentation. These assumptions, together with the enlarged accountof validity that goes beyond the narrow rationalist understanding ofvalidity via a correspondence theory of truth, can prove fruitful to all theperspectives through which language becomes educationally relevant.The following is a final example of this relevance. Blake, Smeyers,Smith, & Standish (1998) astutely emphasize the task of thinking againthe ends of education and rightly connect it with a critique of thedominant language of performativity and the conception of language itpresupposes.

Effectiveness is a function of what is made explicit (what else, afterall, could be observed and measured?), and language is most nearlyitself, it appears, in communication (and real communication, nodoubt in the real world of business-like dealings) when language isideally a neutral and transparent medium through which intentionpasses undistortedly. (p. 135)

I hope to have shown that universal pragmatics (and the communicativeaction theory of which it is often seen to be part) offers the conceptual


horizon for backing up the critique of such accounts of communication.It sides with those theories that question rather than affirm the existingdiscourse of performativity and the educational panopticism it imposesthrough the emphasis on accountability and inspection. Often Habermasis mistakenly thought to make common cause with this kind ofeffectiveness and meaning stability but this is a result of misreading orrather non-reading him. Some of his opponents (mainly from theLyotardian side) overlook the distinction between consensus andpseudo-consensus or misinterpret the Habermasian regulative ideal ofthe ideal speech situation.

Finally, the most important reason why universal pragmatics by nomeans sides with positivism, representationalism, and expressivism canbe inferred by the notion of linguistic self-reflexivity. The self-reflexivityof language, demonstrated by the fact that the illocutionary elementallows that linguistic utterances might be meta-linguistic acts as muchas they are speech acts or parts of speech acts, guarantees theconnection between grammar and life-form. It also facilitates the re-evaluation of meanings and patterns of a life form. (It makes possible,and facilitates then, the diachronic and the synchronic connections ofone lifeworld to another, thus having also a bearing on issues ofmulticultural education.) Apel, following Gadamer, has pointed out thatthe rules do not exhaust understanding of meaning, because theyconstitute only a form. “The understanding of forms (rules) and ofcontent both presuppose each other, so that the formation of humanforms of life in the course of history is effected through acts ofunderstanding” (Apel, 1967, p. 52). This reciprocal contribution deprivesthe systems of rules of the absolute and ahistorical character that hadbeen attributed to them by positivism, forms of representationalism andexpressivism, thus opening up the surprising to the familiar. Therefore,universal pragmatics is in accordance with the post-modernist, post-analytic, and deconstructive tendency to undo the assumption of atranstemporal order of speech without reducing language learning orunderstanding into a training process through application of rules. Inthis way, it can justify theoretically the concerns of the majorperspectives through which philosophy of language acquires significancefor education.


NOTES1. Consider for instance the following. “The language that every man usesis that of his fathers, the language of his tribe or of his clan, and his city orhis nation … he cannot use it to say” ‘This is my view’ unless … he can say‘This is our view.’” This quotation from Gentile, the Italian fascist, idealistphilosopher, and educator, which Nel Noddings (1996, p. 254) cites fordifferent purposes, could have very well been said, surely in a morepolitically correct phrasing, by some poststructuralist thinkers.2. His associate, Karl-Otto Apel, prefers the term “transcendentalsemiotics” or “transcendental pragmatics.” “Universal” in the terms ofHabermas means general and necessary. Apel finds this term inadequateand is willing to accept a weak transcendentalism. Here, I intend to putaside the differences (on them, see Papastephanou, 1997) between Apel andHabermas for methodological reasons: I will attempt to describe what Iconsider original in their ideas and what constitutes, in my opinion, acommon approach by both philosophers to the problem of language. Hencewhen I refer to a pragmatic philosophy of language, or the communicativeparadigm, I mean the common grounds of the theories of Apel, Habermas,Wellmer, and their associates.3. By these words, Habermas terms all the meanings that remain hiddenand repressed due to distorted communication and communicative barriersraised by power relations and social constraints (Habermas, 1987a).4. Although it seems plausible at first sight to have such a distinction inempirical pragmatics and indeed Richard Rorty does draw it and placeemphasis on it, I believe that due to Rorty’s suspicion of reason andmetalanguage, the distinction does not deliver the goods for which it wasinitially introduced. See (Papastephanou, 2000).5. I will return to these points later on to discuss why and how meaningand validity claims are connected.6. Poststructuralism fails to see this because of its adherence to Saussuriansemiotics. As Christopher Norris argues, “in particular, poststructuralism... [has] taken it as a gospel (following Saussure) that ‘the sign’ is theminimal distinctive unit of language, rather than the sentence (or theproposition) conceived as a bearer of articulate meanings and truth-claimswhich can then be analysed in terms of their logico-semantic and referentialstatus” (Norris, 1993, p. 87).7. Tarski holds that the way we test whether snow is white or not is anadequate one for testing every sentence of a language. “Snow is white” istrue if and only if snow is white. In an abstract form that means that anysentence S of a language L is true if and only if p.8. Poststructuralism represents one line of criticism that understands itselfas going beyond the problems of Saussure’s theory. For an illuminating


critique of structuralism and poststructuralism see (Norris, 1990 andFrank, 1989). 9. This could be interpreted either as a Husserlian bracketing or ananalytic dissolution of the problem of the existence of external reality. 10. Habermas (1994, p. 47) writes: “There is a reverse side to Austin’sinsight that one does something by saying something; by performing aspeech act one says what one is doing. This performative sense of a speechact can admittedly only be grasped by a potential hearer, who from thestance of a second person has abandoned the perspective of an observer infavour of that of a participant.” 11. J. Shapiro (KHI’s translator) translates in mot cases Geltung as truthin Knowledge and Human Interests (Habermas, 1987b). This may bemisleading, although, to do justice to Shapiro, he cites the German word inbrackets. Also, the word Gültigkeit corresponds to validity whereas Geltungmeans rather social currency or holding something as valid. From theperspective of a participant in a speech act Geltung is usually mostappropriate.12. We should do so in order to avoid some common poststructuralistmisunderstandings of universal pragmatics. As David Ingram writes:“Some of Foucault’s defenders seem to have misunderstood the thrust ofHabermas’s discourse ethic and its appeal to unconstrained consensus.Dreyfus and Rabinow, for example, argue that Habermas’s advocacy ofEnlightenment requires replacing phronesis, rhetoric, and art with rationalcommunication” (1994, p. 259).13. One must take into account that the underlying assumption of theanalogical status of the three spheres of the world is the reformulation ofthe Kantian idea of three modes of reason and the Weberian idea of threedifferentiated cultural spheres. With this reformulation, science, morality,and art are granted an analogous status.14. In his “Actions, Speech Acts, Linguistically Mediated Interactions andthe Lifeworld” (1994), Habermas disagrees with Searle on this mattersaying that speech act theory by defining validity as propositional truth,“remains bound to the cognitivism of truth semantics” (p. 59). 15. Habermas (1992, p. 68) interprets Dummett as follows. “Dummettreplaces the knowledge of truth conditions (or the knowledge of verificationrules in a game of identification tailored to observation situations) withindirect knowledge: the hearer must know the kind of reasons which in agiven case, the speaker could give to redeem his claim that particular truthconditions are satisfied. Briefly stated: one understands an assertoricsentence when one knows what kind of reasons a speaker would have tocite in order to convince a hearer that the speaker is entitled to raise atruth claim for a sentence.” 16. That would “resonate still the descriptivist prejudice – one that hasbeen out of date since Wittgenstein, at the latest, if not since Humboldt –


according to which the theory of the elementary sentence, which is to clarifysense and reference, can claim a monopoly on the theory of meaning”(Habermas, 1984, p. 218, fn. 80).17. See also Habermas (1984, p. 55), where he refers to the same problemin some critical remarks on Austin’s account of meaning. For cogentarguments against Habermas’s connection of validity claims and theillocutionary element, see Wellmer (1992, pp. 171-219). 18. In p. 207, Wellmer’s rationale becomes clearer: “Distinctions betweenspeech act types ... are distinctions between communicative functions thatutterances can have in situations, between the kinds of relationship aspeaker can take up or produce with a hearer, between different ways ofgenerating or asserting obligations, rights, or reasons for action throughvalid speech acts of a determinate type. However, that the distinctionbetween communicative functions has to be at least partly independent ofthe distinction between validity dimensions results from the fact that thevalidity claim a speaker raises with his utterance can be isolated from thespecial relationship he enters into with a hearer through his utterance,whether it is thematized as a validity claim or put into othercommunicative functions.” For this reason Wellmer believes that“Habermas’s short-cut from validity dimensions to illocutionary classesremains unconvincing” (1992, p. 204).19. Even theories that assume that it is not legitimate to speak of a“nature” of language do indeed imply tacitly an account of language. TheHeideggerian argument about metaphysics can be paraphrased here: evenif this account is the negation of the possibility to speak of a language itstill constitutes an attribute of the latter.20. For a questioning of synonymy of meaning in post-analytic philosophy,see Quine (1953). 21. The later Wittgenstein was the first to show that following or deviatinga rule is not a private experience. For more on this, and on conventionality,see Habermas (1989, pp. 16-22).

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on language, meaning, and validity: philosophy of education and the universal pragmatics of habermas

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