Using English Speech Act Verbs

4min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

i'm a big fan of julia galif, and i think that the contrast in the book we're talking about between lawyers and scientists is very much akin to the one that she's set up between scouts and soldiers. You know, somanticists, if you look at verb like admit, so one of my old professors, anovis biske wrote a book a called english speech act verbs. So it would be things like admit and say and tell and instruct and all all the words. And what's amazing is tat for every there's a couple of pages of deep, complex explication. If only people were more critical and precisely that way, i think we'd all

We describe the world using language — we can’t help it. And we all know that ordinary language is an imperfect way of communicating rigorous scientific statements, but sometimes it’s the best we can do. Linguist N.J. Enfield argues that the difficulties run more deeply than we might ordinarily suppose. We use language as a descriptive tool, but its origins are found in more social practices — communicating with others to express our feelings and persuade them to agree with us. As such, the very structure of language itself reflects these social purposes, and we have to be careful not to think it provides an unfiltered picture of reality.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

N.J. Enfield received his Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Melbourne. He is currently a professor of linguistics and Director of the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre at the University of Sydney. His recent book is Language vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.