Andy Isaacson
Communication and the Evolution of Society
Jürgen Habermas
Habermas’s why-question: Why must people meet the individual validity claims of
communicative action in order to express strategic action and symbolic action?
Habermas’s motivational mechanism: Humans are motivated to communicate in
comprehensive manner, and make 3 validity claims:
 propositional truth (correspondence between statements and facts)
 normative rightness (appropriate interpersonal relations given the context)
 truthfulness of the speaker (claim of sincerity of the speaker)
Given that these claims are met, people can then engage in strategic and symbolic actions
Key concepts:
 Communicative Action: “Oriented toward reaching understanding” (p.41).
 Individual validity claims are suspended for (p.41):
o Strategic Action: “Oriented to the actor’s success” (i.e., utilitarian, purposive-rational
action)
o Symbolic Action: “Modes of action that are bound to nonpropositional (doesn’t have a
truth value) systems of symbolic expression” (i.e., concerts, dances, a style)
 Double structure of speech actions = two independent parts of every speech-act (p. 41)
o Illocutionary acts: fixes the sense in which the propositional content is employed
o Propositional acts: correspondence between statements and facts; has a “truth-value”
claim
 Universal Validity Claim: truth, which is reflected in the double structure of speech (p. 52)
 Success of a Speech Act: “only when the hearer not only understands the meaning of the
sentence uttered but also actually enters into the relationship intended by speaker” (p. 59).
 Hearer: Must learn to”…assume both the role of the (acting) speaker as well as that of the
(cooperating) hearer.”
 Institutionally bound speech acts: use the binding force of existing norms for discourse
 Institutionally unbound speech acts: must use the sincerity as binding force for discourse
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Model of Communication
External Nature
“the objectivated segment of reality that the adult subject is able
to perceive and manipulate” (p. 66)
Hearer
(learned through the objectivating attitude of observers
who correctly reports their experiences in propositions,
p. 48)
linguistic system and interpretive discourse
Noticability of
Communication
Claims of
normative
background,
p. 64
Society
Legitimacy of interpersonal relations based upon institutions,
traditions, cultural values, etc (p. 66).
(learned through the performative attitude of
participants in speech action, p. 48)
Claims of
truth and
truthfulness,
p. 64
Misfires: violating norms
Regulative Speech Acts: Affirming or contesting the speaker’s
appropriateness within the normative context (p. 54)
Internal Nature
“The disclosure of the speaker’s wishes, feelings, intentions, etc.
in first-person sentences” (p. 49). “Public self-representation”
(p. 58).
(learned via checking the consistency between the
speakers statements and actions, p. 64)
Engagement: “The speaker must indicate that in certain
situations he will draw certain consequences for action” (p. 60).
Acceptability: “only if the speaker not merely feigns but
sincerely make a serious offer” (p. 59)
Language
“The medium through which speakers and hearers realize
certain fundamental demarcations” (p. 66).
Foundation of
Communication
(learned via interpretive discourse)
Comprehensibility: Via correct use of the relevant linguistic
system and interpretive discourse
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Speaker