How language describes, but also changes, the world
There鈥檚 great pleasure in reading stories and watching films about magic. In Rebecca F. Kuang鈥檚 bestselling novel 鈥淏abel: An Arcane History,鈥� magic originates in the subtle gaps in translation between languages, a captivating idea for language mavens. And who hasn鈥檛 wished that Hermione鈥檚 鈥淎ccio,鈥� or summoning spell, in the Harry Potter books could be used in real life to recover those AirPods that are missing again?! That kind of magic seems to be absent from our more mundane reality.
But there聽is聽magic in language. While language often merely describes the world, it can also change it.聽
The officiant at a wedding says, 鈥淚 hereby declare you married,鈥� and that utterance plays a crucial role in making it so. Or consider 鈥淚 hereby swear to tell the truth,鈥� which commits the speaker to being honest. The little word聽hereby聽is the giveaway that something magical is happening.
In my trade, such utterances聽are called 鈥減erformatives鈥� because they don鈥檛 just describe; they are used to perform a nonlinguistic action by the very act of uttering the sentence.聽
For the magic of performatives to happen, lots of things need to be just right; these are called 鈥渇elicity conditions鈥� by the philosopher J.L. Austin in his book, 鈥淗ow To Do Things With Words.鈥� To make a wedding ceremony valid, the officiant has to be authorized to conduct such ceremonies. And the right words need to be spoken. And the participants need to be sincere.
When such utterances are spoken in jest or in pretense, not all the felicity conditions are satisfied and the magic doesn鈥檛 happen.聽
The 1992 movie 鈥淒racula鈥� contains a scene in which the characters played by Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder are married. The director hired an actual priest to officiate, an actual wedding ritual was performed, and, when the actors were asked, 鈥淒o you take this man/woman ... ?鈥� each replied in the affirmative. Ms. Ryder in a later interview said that she thought that this meant they actually got married! I am a linguist, not a lawyer, but I disagree with her. The felicity conditions were not fulfilled, and so there was no marriage performed.
Felicity conditions were in the headlines recently: Could saying certain words or even thinking particular thoughts declassify confidential documents? Again, studying the felicity conditions is what is needed. Even though language can be magic, we can鈥檛 reliably get the world to be the way we wish it were by sprinkling聽hereby聽into our utterances.
Anyway, I hereby declare this column to be finished.
Guest columnist Kai von Fintel is a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
