Given the number of irregular verbs in the English language, it’s nice to know that one commonly used phrase is at least well-behaved:
Some might argue that the modern meaning of the phrase “accept responsibility” is irksome in that it has only illocutionary significance; without the announcement that X has “accepted responsibility”, one would have the very devil of a job working out that it had happened. Might I suggest that what we ought to do is to coin a generalised version of Douglas Adams’ useful neologism “dogdyke” from his excellent book, “The Meaning of Liff”:
DOGDYKE (vb.)
Of dog-owners, to adopt the absurd pretence that the animal shitting in the gutter is nothing to do with them.
Onward to hell we all go …
{ 15 comments }
Buce 07.14.04 at 5:35 pm
This would be a good time to raise a a beef about “refute,” as in “The Vice-President refuted his critics.” He may have “offered a reuttal,” or “told them to go — themselves.” But the question of refutation is more difficult. It isn’t illocutationary to the Vice-President, as in “I refute you, sir.” But surely some assertions are refutations, even if others are not. Is this simply a matter for the anonymous reviewers at the publishing house?
Dan Hardie 07.14.04 at 5:58 pm
As for locutionary significance, the following definition will appear in the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary:
‘To accept responsibility, vtr:
1. To deny any causal relationship with a regrettable act or event in which one has participated, and to announce one’s refusal to be in any way sanctioned or inconvenienced as a result of said act or event, whilst simultaneously establishing the morally admirable nature of one’s character.
‘Example: The court was told that Sid Smith, 19, robbed Mrs Lewis, 83, of her pension outside the Post Office. ‘I fully *accept responsibility* for this incident’, shouted Smith, before running off to blow the money on drugs.’
abnu 07.14.04 at 6:01 pm
responsibabble (noun)
Of politicians, who don’t want the shit to stick to them when they make formal announcements to “accept responsibility” for something.
“I am responsibabble.”
Tom Ball 07.14.04 at 6:31 pm
Sorry to troll CT’s comments but this is for the good of the world!
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Matt Weiner 07.14.04 at 6:33 pm
The way philosophers and chess players (and I assume buce) uses it, “refute” means “show to be wrong.”
[I am now going to start speaking very sloppily on stuff I should know better.)
That’s not illocutionary because it’s not a question merely of the intentions behind the speech act–I can intend to refute you as hard as I want without necessarily succeeding. In this way it’s like “offend” as opposed to “insult”; whether I insult you is arguably a question of whether I say something nasty about you with the intention of doing so; whether I offend you depends on whether you are in fact offended. But “refute” doesn’t quite seem perlocutionary to me, because showing someone to be wrong isn’t an effect of stating correctly that they’re wrong; it’s more of a success verb like “prove.”
Lots of people use “refute” to mean “rebut,” which I think is illocutionary; you rebut me if you say something that is intended to show me wrong, whether or not you actually do show me wrong.
Tom Ball 07.14.04 at 6:33 pm
Sorry to troll CT’s comments but it is for the good of the world!
Hey Friends,
We’re looking for 2 to 3 new bloggers at our site PoliticalStrategy.org.
It’s time to take our site to the next level and we would like to make the site a powerful presence in the progressive Blogsphere.
If you’re interested, then please check out the site…browse around a bit and then drop us a line at tball@politicalstrategy.org
Please be sure to tell us:
· How active you would like to be (e.g. posting every day, three times per week, etc.)
· About your background in politics, policy, writing. (Of course no professional experience is required)
· About your interest in being part of a blog and in particular a group blog.
· Where we can find a sample of your writing (e.g. perhaps at your own site, in a Dkos diary, etc.)
From there we will contact you with further details.
Thank you very much.
mc 07.14.04 at 6:34 pm
It doesn’t happen just in the English language. It seems to be a universal shift in meaning. Maybe a brief has been sent out to all the countries in the war-on-terror alliance. Actually, I have a feeling this new meaning of “accepting responsibilities” has been around far longer. It is rumoured that even Caligula once declared he had “accepted his responsibilities”.
I’m trying to highlight the cultural value of this practice, you know. There has to be a grand history behind it that we’re not aware of but that gives it a secret dignity we, uneducated mobs, cannot appreciate.
bza 07.14.04 at 9:15 pm
Matt W.: You certainly can uninentionally insult someone. Data-point: There’s an old, only somewhat flip definition of a gentleman as one who never unintetionally insults someone.
Jim 07.14.04 at 10:03 pm
Seems like it started with that ultimate Reagan-era martyr, Oliver North.
John Quiggin 07.15.04 at 12:53 am
I caught an NYT headline using “refute” for “deny” earlier this year. But they fixed it, and my link now points to the generic Iraq story of the day anyway.
conrad 07.15.04 at 1:25 am
I’m not quite sure that it is completely regular and productive. This might depend on what type of English you speak.
So,
There were ten dogs. I will accept a dog.
?There were ten responsibilities. ?I will accept a responsibility.
?There were ten grasses. *I will accept a grass.
Matt Weiner 07.15.04 at 2:10 am
bza, that’s true. I wasn’t picking the best example of illocutionary effects, even though “offend” is a good example of a perlocutionary effect. Maybe I should go with “argue [that]” vs. “convince”–arguing is just a matter of your intentions, perhaps, but convincing requires bringing the hearer to belief. And then “prove” is like “refute” (not surprising, since a refutation is a proof that not-p)–you can’t prove something just be intending to, but it doesn’t seem (to me) like an effect of your argument either.
This is probably well discussed in the literature somewhere.
Matthew 07.15.04 at 8:55 am
Here the passive voice is fundamental; note the difference:
-“A misleading report was published. No one is to blame.”
-“X and Y published a misleading report. No one is to blame.”
The second is a bit harder to get by.
Nice reference to the great Meaning of Liff by the way. All essential words…
bad Jim 07.15.04 at 9:58 am
Going on stage and “taking responsibility” requires the sort of theatrical suspension of disbelief that allows one to accept Bush as a Texan rancher, who is, oddly, shy of horses.
Ken Lay, George Bush, Tony Blair are “responsible” to exactly the extent that their culpability falls short of the prison door. Lay at least may have lost a little bit of money because of his misfeasance. May Bush and Blair profit by his example.
sidereal 07.15.04 at 6:48 pm
Lookithat. Speech Acts rear their crazy heads. To answer Chris’ implicit question from the linked-to thread (which I sadly missed), yes Speech Acts are still taught in Linguistics under the rubric of Pragmatics (at least at the University of Washington), and I fondly remember the thesis I wrote exploring a grand unified theory of deception as false assertions — a consequent of Searle’s theory that all speech acts are a bundle of assertions and Grice’s Converstaional Maxims which become implied assertions in the model. Ah, those were the days.
For what it’s worth, the canonical speech act is promise.
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