HABERMAS' IDEAL SPEECH SITUATION

[kenneth.mackendrick@utoronto.ca]

On Mon, 23 Oct 2000 13:00:19 +0300 Dimos Dimitriou <addfield@ath.forthnet.gr> 
wrote:

> hi kenneth.mackendrick,
> 
> could be possible to expand a bit more the argument about Maeve Cooke
> position on Habermas instrumental / communicative use of language?
> or even any net based referense / link?

Maeve Cooke, Language and Reason: A Study of Habermas's Pragmatics (MIT Press, 
1994).

"Even if his [Habermas's, KM] thesis that the use of langauge oriented toward 
understanding is the primary mode of language use is successful, the most 
Habermas can show is its conceptual priority. He cannot use this to assert the 
functional primacy of communicative action over strategic action in the 
integrative and reproductive processes of the lifeworld. Since hte primacy for 
which he argues in the acse of communicative action is a functional one, he 
would have to show that the communicative use of language is not just 
conceptually prior to the strategic use but that it also has a functional 
primacy. The functional primary of a certain mode of langauge does not follow 
from its conceptual priority. We can see this quite easily if we recognize that 
the claim to conceptual priority of a given mode of langauge use is in the 
first instance a claim about how we learn language; it does not refer to how we 
use langauge. Habermas uses his analyses of everday communication to show that 
we can understand langauge when it is used strategically only because we 
already understand language when it is used communicatively. This is similar to 
arguing that we can understand the nonliteral use of language only because we 
already know what it is to use language literally. Just as the nonliteral use 
of language is conceptually dependent on the literal use, the strategic use of 
language may be conceptually dependent on the communicative use. However, the 
conceptual priority of the literal use of langauge does not say anything about 
its functional primacy...." Pg. 25.

Cooke is also the editor of On the Pragmatics of Communication which is an 
anthology of Habermas's most significant essays on language, communication and 
formal pragmatics.

ken