Universal pragmatics

Universal pragmatics is a central term in the theory of Jürgen Habermas. It was developed by him since the early 1970s as part of his discourse ethics in dealing with the Karl-Otto Apel's transcendental pragmatics. In his later work, Habermas usually uses the term "formal pragmatics ". Habermas understands the universal pragmatics as a reconstructive science that aims to identify, in accordance with the empirical sciences pretheoretical our language and action knowledge. You "has the task of identifying universal conditions of possible understanding and nachzukonstruieren ".

Sprechakttheoretischer background

The basis of universal pragmatics is developed by John L. Austin and John R. Searle 's theory of speech acts dar. in the center of the theory is the recognition that speaking always action, meaning " a rule-governed form of behavior " is. The basic unit of linguistic communication is therefore not a symbol, word or sentence, " but the production of the symbol or word or sentence in the performance of the speech act ".

Austin explains that many of the traditional philosophical problems are caused by the view remarks were interpreted either as statements of fact ( constative utterances) or unworthy of analysis. This had led to neglect the fact that speaking always simultaneously also means action. Austin called this "fact fixation " of linguistic analysis as " descriptive fallacy ".

After an Austin speech act has the following part file:

• Lokutionärer act: the making of statements on the articulatory, syntactic and semantic level
• Illocutionary act: the execution of a statement in their communicative validity (eg, as a question, please, warning, recommendation, threat)
• Perlocutionary act: achieving the intended by the speaker and the listener actually occurring effect of the utterance ( eg, persuade, sway, annoy, confuse, offend, console ).

Habermas accepts in simplified form, the terminology of Austin and distinguishes between illocutionary and locutionary one or a content and relationship aspect of statements. The relationship aspect of statements is determined by the illocutionary component of a speech act and is therefore responsible for the generative force of speech acts. This generative force of the illocutionary part causes, according to Habermas, that a speech act ever bought or fail, since it is attempted by using it to build a relationship between speaker and listener. The failure of this attempt is the communication failed, however, the listener accepts the implicit illocutionary part in the form of the relationship, the attempt is successful.

The designated Austin as a perlocutionary act aspect of an utterance is treated by Habermas as a particular case of strategic action, and more generally of teleological action. This generally refers to an action that is aligned with a purpose or bringing forth a desired state. Teleological action is to strategic action, "if the expectation of decisions can undergo at least one further purposeful acting actuator in the success of the calculus of the actor ." A perlocutionary act is now as conceived by Habermas to the definition of the strategic action of deceit adds: A perlokutionäres objective can only pursue a spokesman, when he deceives the listener about the actual purpose of the speech act. The perlocutionary effect is for Habermas, therefore, a particular form of purposive action and thus can be from the illocutionary act, which is not to be counted for strategic action, distinguished. This counterpart to the strategic action referred to as Habermas communicative action:

Forms of action

Habermas distinguishes four universal forms of action, where appropriate speech acts and rationality types are assigned:

• The teleological action refers to the " objective world " of the " facts ". We choose a particular action alternative, which appears to us as the most promising means to achieve certain purposes. The success is indeed often depend on " other actors "; but they are " working at their own success -oriented" and behave " only to the extent cooperative [ ... ] as it corresponds to their egocentric benefit calculus ".
• In the normatively regulated action, however, the actuator occurs in relation to two worlds: the world of facts and the social world. " A social world consists of a normative context that determines which interactions belong to the totality legitimate interpersonal relations." Its members include all actuators to, " for the corresponding standards shall apply " and " of which they are accepted as valid ."
• The dramatic action is based on a self-representation of the actuators. They are " participants in interaction, the mutual form an audience, before whose eyes they present themselves ." This " self-representation " does not understand Habermas as a " spontaneous expressive behavior ," but as a " spectator -related stylization of the expression 's own experiences".
• In communicative action, finally, the linguistic dimension wins the decisive weight. It refers to the " interaction of at least two subjects capable of speech and action " seeking " an understanding about the action situation ", " to ensure that their actions to coordinate their action plans and amicably ". The communicative action is by no means the "normal communicative practice of everyday life " is what makes it hard to prove it as universally valid. In order to make this proof, Habermas tries a " reappraisal of sociological approaches to a theory of social rationalization " from Weber to Parsons in the theory of communicative action.

Methodological Status

Habermas understands the universal pragmatics as " reconstructive science". It depends on the implicit, " pre-theoretical " knowledge of the speaker, which she tries to systematically explicate. Your subject area belongs to " symbolically structured reality " of the social world and examines their " deep structure ". Your goal is the explicit knowledge of the rules and structures whose mastery is the basis for the competency of a subject to generate meaningful expressions.

Although the universal pragmatics works empirically as reconstructive science, but their approach differs in important respects from the natural sciences. " The relevant data for the formation and review of reconstructive hypotheses are primarily provided by the current full trains and introspective reports of competent subjects".

The implicit knowledge of the subject is not queried directly in the rule and must be discursively justified. It can be made by a " maieutic survey method" aware " by the choice of suitable examples and counter-examples, by contrast and similarity relations, through translations, paraphrases, etc. ".

Reconstructive theories thus differ from empirical theories in their relation to everyday knowledge. While these " everyday knowledge we have first pre-scientific about an object area, and replace it with a correct, provisionally as true respected knowledge" can, this is not possible in reconstructive theories. A reconstruction proposal can " explicitly and adequately represent the pre-theoretical knowledge more or less, but never falsify. At most playing the speaker intuition can be shown to be wrong, but not this intuition itself. "