As mentioned in the introduction of this chapter, the contrast between the contextual setup in (Vis-à-vis) and (Experts) is structurally similar to the contrast observed in C. Barker2002 between descriptive and metalinguistic uses of dimensional adjectives (repeated here).
uptake is a useful simplification both in the case of statements of fact as well as attributions of value (see Goldberg 2016).
(6.6) a. (The threshold for tallness is common ground; Feynman’s height is not):
Feynman is tall. ≈descriptive
b. (Feynman’s height is common ground, the threshold for tallness is not):
Feynman is tall. ≈metalinguistic
It is therefore tempting to assimilate what we have been callingevaluative uses of evaluative adjectives to metalinguistic or interpretational uses of language, and this has been the object of recent proposals in the literature about some evaluative expressions, such as PPTs or aesthetic adjectives.18
As Barker notes, while dimensional adjectives are most commonly used to impart information about the world, they can also be used to impartmetalinguisticinformation, that is, information about the discourse. To wit: (6.6a) conveys information about Feynman’s height, namely, that his height is at least equal to the accepted threshold. It is therefore aDESCRIPTIVEuse oftall;
(6.6a) is the kind of answer that we would give to a question about John; for example, what does John look like? By contrast, (6.6b) conveys information about the threshold for tallness (namely that it lies somewhere not above Feynman’s height). It is therefore aMETALINGUISTIC
use oftall. This utterance would be appropriate as an answer to a question not about John but rather about word usage, e.g.,what is considered ‘tall’ around here?
The hypothesis, then, would be to treat the EVALUATIVE use of better—cases like (Vis-à-vis)—in the same way that Barker treats metalinguistic uses oftall: as utterance types that aim at offering information, not about the cars, but about the accepted standard for goodness in cars.
An immediate disparity between Barker’s contrast and ours is that (6.7) involves a comparative.
Note that the comparativetaller, does not admit of metalinguistic uses, as shown by the fact that it cannot be the object of a question about the discourse nor be an answer to such a question:
(6.12) a. What is considered tall /#taller around here?
b. # Skłodowska is taller than Feynman.
In contrast with (6.6), this sentence cannot be used to convey information about the accepted threshold fortall; it simply compares the heights of the two individuals. Interestingly, adjectives likegoodseem to allow for such uses in the comparative form.
(6.13) a. What is considered good/better around here?
b. The Mercedes is better than the Audi.
This might give initial support to the hypothesis that what we have been calling an evaluative use of better (cf. contexts like (Vis-à-vis)) is a metalinguistic use. An immediate obstacle with this approach, however, is that it is not appropriate to describe Amir’s utterance in (Vis-à-vis) as an answer to a question aboutactualword usage, a question likewhat is considered
‘good/better’ around here?. This is simply because, in order to use that sentence (6.7) evalua-tively, Amir need not be prompted by any question about language use. He is merely stating a spontaneous opinion about the cars.
Nonetheless, Amir’s utterance could well be taken to be an answer to a different metalinguistic question; not a descriptive metalinguistic question about how words are actually used, but a
18 See C. Barker2013; Plunkett and Sundell2013; Sundell2016; Umbach2016a.o.; see Karczewska2016;
Marques2017for criticism.
normativemetalinguistic question about how wordsshouldbe used. In other words, Amir’s ut-terance in (Vis-à-vis) could be treated as a move in a kind ofMETALINGUISTIC NEGOTIATION
(Plunkett and Sundell2013; Sundell2016).
Let us illustrate what a metalinguistic negotiation is with the following example (Ludlow2008;
Plunkett and Sundell2013): speakers discussing whether Secretariat, the famous racehorse, is an athlete, would most likely be taken to be negotiating the appropriate concept of athlete rather than the merits of Secretariat. And most importantly, speakers engaging in such discussions could have what looks like a disagreement even when perfectly aware that the sentences that they use express different and therefore compatible propositions, relative to different concepts of athlete. To see this, suppose that Bill and Mary have different concepts of athlete, and they know that they do; and let ATHLETE- stand for Bill’s horse-exclusive concept of athlete and
ATHLETE+ stand for Mary’s horse-inclusive concept. They might have the following exchange:
(6.14) a. Mary: Secretariat is anATHLETE+.
b. Bill: What? Of course he is not anATHLETE-!
The fact that Mary and Bill have different concepts of athlete does not prevent them from having a dispute, even if their sentences express compatible propositions. But it would be a metalinguistic dispute about how to use the wordathlete, rather than a disagreement about the properties of Secretariat.
In the case of (Vis-à-vis), the situation could be similarly characterized. Amir might be using the sentence in (Vis-à-vis) not, or not only, with the intention of informing Mora about the cars, but with the intention of getting Mora to adopt his standard for cars. Conversely, if Mora rejects Amir’s claim, she need not be denying that Amir’s standard is as he describes it; she might be refusing to adopt Amir’s standard.
This suggests a different interpretation of the disagreement continuation of (Vis-à-vis) (repeated below): in that context, Amir and Mora would not be exchanging information about the cars.
Rather, they would be negotiating the meaning ofbetter.
(6.7b) (Vis-à-vis): Amir and Mora have never talked to each other and have absolutely no idea about each other’s taste in cars; they are standing in front of a set of cars from the auto-show, whose specs they have carefully studied.
Amir: The Mercedes is better than the Audi.
Mora: I disagree.
If we interpret Amir’s utterance in (Vis-à-vis) in this way, we come a long way to accounting for the contrast between (Vis-à-vis) and (Experts): first, we have an available account for why a disagreement would seem SUBJECTIVE in à-vis) but not in (Experts) (§6.2.3): in (Vis-à-vis), Amir and Mora would be negotiating the standard to be adopted, and there is noa priori way of determining whose scale is the right one (as Barker 2013, p. 242 says, ‘no individual has privileged access to or authority over linguistic convention’). In (Experts) however, a disagreement would not seem subjective because speakers, having settled on a given standard, would be discussing the objective merits of the cars, relative to that common standard.
Secondly, the lack ofEPISTEMIC STATUS (§6.2.1) andDECEIT POTENTIAL(§6.2.2) of Amir’s utterance in (Vis-à-vis) would be similarly accounted for by noting that, if Amir is using that sentence to try to get Mora to adopt his standard, then it does not make sense for Mora to ask
for further evidence about Amir’s claim, or to accuse him of lying or being misleading, even if she thinks that the Mercedes is not better than the Audi relative toher standard. In (Experts) by contrast, it does make sense for Mora to ask for further evidence. And given the assumption that she and Amir share a standard, if she sees that her own assessment of the cars (relative to their common standard) differs from Amir’s, she can question Amir in order to get to the bottom of their conflict. If she figures out that Amir was wrong about the properties of the cars or about their presumably common standard, it makes sense for Mora to accuse him of lying or being misleading.
Unfortunately, the metalinguistic approach has difficulties to accommodate the difference in
ACTION-GUIDANCEbetween (Vis-à-vis) and (Experts) (§6.2.4). To see this, consider the con-trast between a regular, descriptive use of Mary’s sentence in (6.14) and a metalinguistic use thereof. In its former use, Mary is simply informing her audience that Secretariat falls under her concept of athlete, ATHLETE+. In the latter case, Mary is trying to get her audience to adoptATHLETE+ as their concept of athlete. But under none of those interpretations does her sentence alter the practical commitments adopted by speakers. Adopting a new concept of ath-lete does not affect the practical attitudes of speakers towards the individuals that fall under (or outside of) it. At most, adopting such a new concept alters the linguistic commitments of speakers—after Mary’s utterance, her audience will be committed to calling any horse as good as Secretariat anathleteas well. This is true of metalinguistic uses of language in gen-eral: any change in the conventions governing language use affect the linguistic commitments adopted by agents. But over and above linguistic commitments, evaluative language—or more specifically, the evaluativeuseof evaluative language—can alter the practical commitments of speakers, that is, the commitments that orient the interlocutors’ actions. Metalinguistic uses of terms do not have this feature, which makes it hard for them to account for all the points of contrast between (Vis-à-vis) and (Experts).
To put it in dynamic terms, where judgments of fact are assertions that aim at reducing our uncertainty about the world, judgments of value would be assertions that aim at reducing our uncertainty about the discourse (C. Barker 2013, p. 243). Now, our observations about the action-guiding properties of value judgments are meant to highlight that the kind of uncertainty and indeterminacy that value judgments target is of a different kind from worldly as well as discursive uncertainty: it is uncertainty and indeterminacy about what to do. That is, it is practical uncertainty. Reducing practical uncertainty to discursive uncertainty loses sight of the action-guiding force of evaluative language, and for this reason, we find the metalinguistic view to lack the resources to accommodate our contrast.
Moreover, proponents of the metalinguistic negotiation approach to evaluative and normative disagreement have been aware from the start that there is a contrast between descriptive and normative metalinguistic negotiations, and that standard uses of evaluative/normative vocabu-lary, if they can be treated as metalinguistic negotiations, belong to the normative kind. We saw this with (Vis-à-vis): in that context, it is clearly wrong to conceive of Amir’s utterance as an answer to a question about the currently accepted standard for cars; if anything, it is an answer to a question about what standard for carsoughtto be accepted. But once that such a normative dimension is allowed into the picture, we seem to be going in a circle: in virtue of what might a standard for cars be the standard thatoughtto be accepted as the meaning of better car for Amir, other than the fact that it picks out the better cars according to him?
Nonetheless, the metalinguistic approach goes a long way towards an account, as we have seen.
Moreover, we have not attempted to distinguish metalinguistic and evaluative uses of evaluative
adjectives, and we shall acknowledge that the task is not easy. Let us be clear about the merits and limits of this proposal, so that our proposal inherits the former and overcomes the latter.
Crucially, we want to retain the idea that in (Vis-à-vis) Amir is trying to get Mora to adopt his standard. And if Mora accepts Amir’s utterance, she will have thereby adopted Amir’s standard.
In other words, the conversational import of accepting Amir’s utterance in (Vis-à-vis) is the adoption of a new standard. All this is already captured by the metalinguistic approach. But in order to account for the observation that accepting Amir’s utterance in (Vis-à-vis) changes the practical commitments of speakers, we must treat the negotiation of evaluative standards as aiming to reduce, not factual nor discursive uncertainty, but the practical uncertainty of interlocutors. This task is taken up in the following section.19