Meaning, intention, and application: Speech act theory in the hermeneutics of Francis Watson and Kevin J. Vanhoozer

1. INTRODUCTION

In the 1960s, two men in different academic fields each produced a work with varying degrees of initial acceptance and influence in the area of biblical hermeneutics. E. D. Hirsch Jr., an English professor at the University of Virginia, stirred the world of literary criticism with the 1967 publication of Validity in Interpretation. Although his stated purpose was to provide a means of validating individual interpretations of literary texts, it is clear that his was an attempt to confront New Criticism by arguing for the necessity of the author's intention in any interpretive endeavor.1 Hirsch calls the notion that "a text means what its author meant" a "sensible belief."2 He further claims that when the author is banished from the interpretative process, subjectivity and relativism become prevalent and "no adequate principle [exists] for judging the validity of an interpretation."3 Again, to remove the author as the determinant of meaning is "to reject the only compelling normative principle that [can] lend validity to an interpretation."4 He therefore calls for the resurrection of the author's meaning "on the fact that it is the only kind of interpretation with a determinate object, and thus the only kind that can lay claim to validity in any straightforward and practical sense of the term."5

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Hirsch's early work is his insistence upon a sharp distinction between meaning and significance. He claims that the failure to understand the difference between them "has been the source of enormous confusion in hermeneutic theory."6 Meaning and significance are distinct items in the process of interpretation:

Meaning is that which is represented by a text; it is what the author meant by his use of a particular sign sequence; it is what the signs represent. Significance, on the other hand, names a relationship between that meaning and a person, or a conception, or a situation or indeed anything imaginable.7

Meaning and significance, therefore, represent a dichotomy between two distinct concepts, one static, the other dynamic: "Significance always implies a relationship and one constant, unchanging pole of that relationship is what the text means."8 In interpretation, there is an ethical duty on the interpreter to respect the difference between the two. Hirsch thus argues for a stricter definition of understanding referring to the author's meaning exclusive of significance:

When we construe the author's meaning we are not free agents. So long as the meaning of his utterance is our object, we are subservient to his will, because the meaning of his utterance is the meaning he wills to convey. . .Once we have construed his meaning, however, we are quite independent of his will .... We can relate his meaning to anything we want and value it as we please.9

While Hirsch's work drew immediate response from his adversaries and almost universal acceptance from evangelical interpreters, a lecture series given by philosopher J. L. Austin at Harvard in 1955 took many more years to be incorporated into the hermeneutical discussion. Austin's lectures were published in 1962 under the title How to Do Things With Words. In what Austin refers to as "a revolution in philosophy," he challenges the traditional belief that a statement is simply that which describes.10 There are some utterances, on the other hand, which are either nonsensical or intended to do something else quite different than describing. Austin takes an inductive approach in evaluating whether there is a definite demarcation between statements that merely describe (constative utterances) and those meant for action (performative utterances). He concludes that all statements are performative in some sense. They are part of a total speech act.

The most enduring aspect of Austin's work is his speech act terminology. In particular, speech act theory is built on his discussion of locution, illocution, and perlocution. Austin calls the "act of 'saying something' in this full normal sense" the locutionary act.11 The locutionary act consists of the phonetic act, the phatic act, and the rhetic act. The phonetic act is merely the utterance of certain noises, while the phatic act means to utter certain "vocables" or words which belong and conform to a certain vocabulary and grammar. The rhetic act is an act of using those vocables in a more definite sense and reference such as stating what someone else said.12 The illocutionary act builds upon locutions by having specific reasons for the use of speech: "the performance of an act in saying something as opposed to performance of an act of saying something."13 Illocutions have a certain "force" or use for language, termed the "illocutionary force." These uses include informing, ordering, and warning. A perlocutionary act goes beyond the illocutionary act based on the speaker's possible intention or design of eliciting "consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audience."14 These intentions include the acts of persuading, convincing, and deterring.