Modalities of language performance action
Note: The following discussion can optionally be enhanced with optional background on Jakobson's theory of language function.
What does LP do?
Three modalities of LP action can be distinguished, any one of them simultaneously acting one any number of systems (psychic, social, cosmic), namely:
The communicative mode. In the communicative mode, LP is used to convey cognitive information from addresser to addressee. [It corresponds primarily to Jakobson’s referential function, combined with his conative function.] While imperatives (petitions or exhortations) are not assertions admitting a truth value, they are acts of communication with definite cognitive content, by which we get someone to understand what it is that we want, and perhaps to act so as to fulfill our wishes. Thus the communicative mode creates a cognitive effect in the addressee’s subjectivity, whether by providing new information, confirming that which is already known, or making a request which may lead to subsequent action. This effect is created by the referents of language, the “signifieds”. Because I wish to consider communication as a human phenomenon, I do not class LP directed toward metaphysical entities in the communicative mode, but rather in the ritual mode (below).
The affective mode. The "affective" is a catch-all to cover transformations to consciousness itself, from subtle changes in emotional state to changes in the very structure of the self (as in possession trance). [This corresponds roughly to Jakobson’s emotive function.] I distinguish three subtypes. Affect through expression, by which the addresser communicates his own (real or feigned) emotional state via paralinguistic features (vocal tone, pause, stress) is closest to Jakobson’s emotive function. Affect may also result from language itself: the connotations of reference [the “context” in Jakobson’s terms] which the listener will not necessarily relate to the speaker’s state, or the sounds and signs of the message (Jakobson’s poetic function). Finally, affect may result from the perception of the structure of the sonic component of LP as I have defined it (e.g. a fast tempo); here the role of “musical emotion” comes to the fore, and the role of language itself may be slight. In any case, LP in the affective mode creates an emotional effect in the addressee’s subjectivity. This affective effect is not directly contained in the message itself, but rather is associated with its sonic carrier (perceptual affect), signifiers (paralinguistic affect) or signifieds (affect resulting from connotations).
The ritual mode. All the LP I examine occurs in contexts which may be considered ritual, broadly speaking. However, by the ritual mode I mean something particular: the socially agreed-upon objective effect produced via the performance of language independent of its linguistic meaning or perceptual effects for any of the human participants involved. Sometimes these effects take place in the addresser (as an objective transformation of his physical or spiritual condition), and sometimes they take place elsewhere in the world. Since there is no scientific basis for such effects, they can only exist relative to a particular belief system. Thus prayer, while its full effectiveness may depend upon understanding, intention, and sincerity, may be held to be effective in creating objective effects (in the addresser: self-healing or purifying from sin; outside the addresser: bringing rain, bringing peace) without any understanding of meaning in the conventional sense. The ritual mode reaches its extreme in magical incantations, often in an unintelligible language, whose significance is merely as a performative act (and perhaps for this reason such acts, lacking any connection to intention or sincerity, are often rejected by religion). Here the effect stems strictly and automatically from the signifiers of the message. In this case, scrupulous attention to performance is often the norm, since a single mistake may suffice to negate the desired effect, or even to bring unintended and unfortunate consequences. In the case of supplications and certain spells the ritual mode resembles the conative function, but in which the addressee is unspecified, perhaps assumed to be supernatural. Thus Jakobson gives examples of magical incantations and classes them as conative (Jakobson 1987:68). While some of the ritual-mode LP I will consider is no doubt conative in this sense, other examples are not.
It is important to note that since the communicative and affective modes create subjective effects, LP in these modes can be a powerful tool for creating social effects as well, particularly when LP takes place in a group. Ritual LP, by contrast, tends not to affect social reality as much, since its primary significance is to produce objective effects in the spiritual world, certified by a system of belief. But as with Jakobson’s functions, no LPS exhibits only one mode, and even LP in which the ritual mode dominates may have emotional and communicative consequences at some level. (I have not considered Jakobson’s phatic and metalingual functions. The phatic function is no doubt present in the LP I will discuss, but I am not primarily concerned with the technical means by which contact is established, modified, or broken; rather, I am interested in what LP does for participants given that contact has been established. Besides, in the ritual contexts with which I am concerned, contact tends to be a nearly automatic concomitant of the act of participation. Likewise, the metalingual function is more important in casual speech than in ritual, since ritual participation generally presumes familiarity with a code, and it is often a characteristic of ritual that there is no opportunity to insert communications of a metalingual sort; one is supposed to learn the codes merely by participating or through informal conversation outside of the ritual. I also have not treated the poetic function separately as an object of interest. The poetic function is present in nearly all LP I consider; its lesser prominence is one of the primary features differentiating the “speech” genres of LP which I take up later on. However, I am mainly interested in the effects of LP, and the poet function’s effects on listeners can be classed as essentially affective.)
