Arrested Development and Philosophy_ They've Made a Huge Mistake - Kristopher G. Phillips [50]
Words may stab like a knife or feel like a punch in the gut (just ask Buster—after being shot down by Marta, he suggests, “So that’s what it’s like to be punched in the face.”), but they do not literally do these things. Unlike a good “Boyfights” video or a Saturday morning making cornballs, we’re often wounded by words with no physical cuts or bruises to signify that harm. So how exactly do words wound? This is an important question for philosophers. Figuring out how words harm, as well as the way and to the extent that they do, may very well show us how to interrupt that harm. Sadly, another adage meant to help us chin-up in the face of harmful speech is also less than always true: Fighting words with words is often helpful, and can be somewhat satisfying, but not entirely so.
In “My Mother, the Car,” Michael plans a surprise birthday dinner for Lucille on two separate occasions without success. Finally, as consolation for the second surprise being a dud, Michael allows Lucille to drive them home (in spite of the fact that she’s been voted the “World’s Worst Driver”). As they approach a guy on the road driving a Segway in the middle of the night, Lucille, thinking the scooter driver is Gob, decides to give him “a scare.” Lucille loses control of the car. The next scene opens to a chaotic mess with the car crashed, ambulance and police in attendance, and Michael in the driver’s seat barely conscious. The rest of the episode is about Lucille keeping Michael hostage at her apartment, “caring” for him while he recovers from “his” bad driving accident. At the end of the episode, her children confront Lucille about her lying and manipulating. Lucille, literally and figuratively backed into a corner, cowers as she utters, “I’m a horrible mother.”
Most philosophers of language and linguists alike would dub Lucille’s utterance a statement. It’s the sort of utterance that reports or describes the world (accurately, in this case). It can be true or false, and in this case, it’s obviously true. J. L. Austin called such an utterance a constative utterance and distinguished such utterances from performatives (the kind that do what they say). Austin acknowledged, however, that the constative–performative distinction breaks down. He came to think that “stating” or “asserting” were performative verbs.6 Stating, asserting, claiming, denying and so on are things done in language, and often accomplished simply in uttering the words, even if they don’t quite fit as paradigmatic examples of explicit performatives. In this instance, however, it is clear that Lucille does more than just state something or describe herself; she performs the act of turning the table on her children simply by uttering some words. She regains control; she shifts the power back to herself and away from her children (who have gained some power as a united front against her). She fishes for a compliment. The simple statement, “I’m a horrible mother,” uttered by this person to her children in this particular context, has the force of guilting her children into submission. In fact, the comedy in this scene arises when we see the result of her handiwork (the simple speech act, “I’m a horrible mother”). Success is written all over Lucille’s face as her children respond in the “appropriate” way to such a speech act; they tell her she’s a wonderful mother.
“Blueing” Oneself
Now consider another kind of misstep—one that revolves around the hearer, but isn’t the result of mistaking sentence meaning for speaker meaning, or vice versa. When Tobias utters, “I just blue myself!” he means that he just covered himself in blue paint to prepare for an 8 p.m. curtain call as a (hopeful) understudy for the Blue Man Group. What he seems to imply, however, is a certain impossible sexual act. The joke is that he’s oblivious to the risqué meaning of the double entendre. But the joke is possible only because meaning is often conveyed implicitly rather