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  • How often do you actually think about the things you say?

  • Like, what you're literally saying?

  • That's a seriously overused word, by the way -- “literally.”

  • A lot of the time, people use it for emphasis in ways that I consider pretty incorrect.

  • Like, people will say “I'm literally dying of hunger!” because it's been a few hours since lunch.

  • But obviously they are not literally dying of hunger.

  • They're just like hungry.

  • Unless you're our old friend Ludwig Wittgenstein, who believed that language had no intrinsic meaning,

  • literal meaning usually refers to the specific, accepted meaning of a word.

  • It's the intended thing that a word is supposed to stand for.

  • So, unless you're in the advanced stages of malnutrition and are at Death's Freaking Door, then, no, you're not literally dying of hunger.

  • But we all say stuff that like that all the time!

  • I mean, have you ever thought about how many of the things you say that are figures of speech, things that aren't literally true?

  • Those figures of speech have other meanings, and most of the time, they mean stuff that we'd rather not put in literal terms.

  • Like, we all know what we're not saying when we say that someonehas a nice personality.”

  • Or if a lady announces she's going topowder her nose.”

  • And of course there's “Netflix and chill,”

  • which it turns out has very little to do with, like, actually watching Netflix.

  • We've already talked about how slippery the idea of meaning can be, as it changes depending on the time, or region, or linguistic community you're in.

  • But that's not even considering the fact that people don't usually mean what they say, because we also speak in idioms, fragments, slang, and metaphors.

  • Which leads me to the question: how do we manage to understand each other at all?

  • [Theme Music]

  • When it comes to how we know that something described asbadis actually good, or how we know that a reference to Netflix is really about sex,

  • we can thank 20th century British philosopher Paul Grice.

  • He wanted to explain exactly how we can know what is meant, rather than what is said.

  • And he described our ability to do this, through a theory he called conversational implicature.

  • Grice said, to really understand what goes on when we process meaning, we need to sort out the difference between what is said, and what is implied.

  • What is said is the actual linguistic content, the words that come out of the speaker's mouth.

  • What is implied contains a whole lot more than just the words that are spoken.

  • Implicature combines the actual words we utter, with the context in which we say them.

  • And that context can include anything from past shared experiences, to social conventions, to things like facial expressions, tone of voice, and gestures.

  • Now, in order for anyone to have a successful conversation, Grice observed that a few conditions had to be in place.

  • First, you have to be actually trying to communicate with someone, and have a successful conversation.

  • If that's the case, then Grice said that you're adhering to what's known as the cooperative principle.

  • This means that, whenever there's ambiguity in what a speaker is saying, the audience should look for the most likely intended meaning of what's being said, given the context.

  • So, even if the literal words don't fit into the conversation you're having, you should try to interpret whatever your interlocutor is saying, so that it makes sense.

  • Like, if you're in your sister's room having an argument, and she says, “there's the door,” you can assume she's not just randomly naming house parts.

  • She's recommending that you walk through that door and out of her space.

  • But the burden of understanding doesn't all fall on the audience.

  • Grice also laid out certain maxims, or communicative rules of thumb, which help speakers keep to the cooperative principle.

  • These maxims fall under four main typesquantity, quality, relation, and manner.

  • There are two rules relating to quantity.

  • First, you should be adequately informative.

  • When your parents call you up at school, and they ask you how you've been, you probably say something along the lines of: “fine.”

  • Now, this might be technically accurate, but you're not giving them the quantity of information they're looking for.

  • What they really want to know is, are you going to pass math, and are you remembering to wash your sheets?

  • Stuff like that.

  • Second, we shouldn't be more informative than is required.

  • We've all met these people.

  • When you're explaining to your teacher that you missed class because you were sick,

  • you do not need to provide all of the gruesome details about the nature of your diarrhea.

  • I mean, there really is such a thing as too much information, people.

  • There are also two quality rules of communication.

  • First, we shouldn't say things that we think are false.

  • This includes people who are running for elected office!

  • No one should just tell lies!

  • The second quality rule cautions us to refrain from making claims for which we we have insufficient evidence.

  • So if you see your significant other talking to someone else in the hallway,

  • don't go around telling everyone that they're a cheating scumbag without first checking your facts.

  • Now, this isn't to say people don't break these rules all the time; some people lie more than they tell the truth.

  • But Grice's point was, violating these rules hinders successful communication.

  • Now, the next maxim is the rule of relation, which tells us to say relevant things.

  • It's what keeps us from going on a tear in the middle of the Super Bowl about the home worlds of our favorite members of the Legion of Substitute Heroes.

  • I'm look at you, Chlorophyll Kid.

  • And finally, there are four rules about the manner in which we speak.

  • First, we should avoid obscure turns of phrase.

  • After all, this could come off as supercilious and pedantic,

  • and might cause your interlocutor to be fractious.

  • The whole point of a conversation is successful communication, not showing off how big your vocabulary is.

  • Second, ambiguity should be avoided.

  • Keep your audience in mind when you use figures of speech and slang.

  • The reason you don't talk to your grandmother about your bae is because she's not going to have any idea what you're talking about.

  • Third, be brief.

  • Don't give a ten minute explanation when a one minute one will do.

  • And finally, be orderly.

  • Remember that time your mom recounted the recipe for her famous meatloaf from memory?

  • And then when you tried to make it, you ended up with whole onions and raw meat?

  • Mom assumed you were going to know that you needed to chop the onions and bake the loaf, but she didn't say that.

  • So, the rule of orderliness reminds us not to miss steps when we're communicating information.

  • Now, this might sound like a lot of rules,

  • but Grice believed that we already follow these maxims when we engage in conversation.

  • Because, generally, when we communicate, we want to be understood.

  • Andhere's the cool partsince everyone understands these unspoken rules, we can violate them from time to time, knowing that other people will get that we're breaking the rules on purpose.

  • Why would we do that?

  • Well, because deliberately violating a maxim is a good way to make a communicative point.

  • This is called flouting a maxim.

  • We flout the maxim of quality, for example, when we use sarcasm.

  • Like, I'm sure that you've never experienced sarcasm before!

  • And we flout the maxim of manner when we deliberately use $10 words to confuse or embarrass our interlocutor.

  • So, now that we know how to say what we mean without saying what we mean, it's time to do things!

  • Let's go to the Thought Bubble for some Flash Philosophy.

  • In the 1950s, British philosopher J. L. Austin wrote a charming little book called How to Do Things with Words.

  • And in it, Austin observed that sometimes, words actually have the ability to change the world.

  • I don't mean in the way that, like, Martin Luther King's words changed the world,

  • but in the sense that, in an instant, an act of speech can change a particular fact about the world.

  • When a wedding officiant says, “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” orhusband and husband,” orwife and wife,”

  • that speech-act has the power to actually transform two single individuals into a married couple.

  • In that same way, parents have the power to determine their child's name, simply by announcing it.

  • A president or head of state can create a state of war, just by declaring it.

  • And by saying, “I promise,” we create moral obligations.

  • We're verbal animals, and we've allowed our reality to be shaped, in a very deep way, by words, and the value that we give them.

  • This isn't something we think about a lot, but when you stop to reflect on it, it's kind of incredible that words can actually create a bond, or dissolve it,

  • or that a speech-act can cause nations to go to war.

  • But some of these examples require certain conditions to be met, in order for the utterance to work, or, in Austin's words, to be felicitous.

  • Like, if one of the spouses-to-be at a wedding is underage, or already married, or is a dog, then pronouncing them married won't make it true.

  • You also need a legally recognized officiant to do the pronouncing, which is also true of declarations of war and in conferring academic degrees.

  • But in other cases, like making a promise, or joining a society, or naming a child,

  • anyone can change the world in this way, simply with their words.

  • Performative utterances are interesting, because we normally think of sentences as simply conveyors of information.

  • Thanks, Thought Bubble!

  • It turns out, sometimes, these types of sentences actually do things.

  • Today we talked about conversational implicature, the cooperative principle,

  • and the four main maxims of successful communication, as laid out by Paul Grice.

  • We also learned about performative utterances.

  • And I would like to remind you that bananas are chom choms.

  • Next time we'll look at an area where the philosophy of language and ethics meet,

  • by talking about the ways in which the power of words can cause harm.

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  • This episode of Crash Course was filmed in the Doctor Cheryl C. Kinney Crash Course Studio

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