Metaforces of power in traditional oratory* Michael Silverstein The University of Chicago If the Linguistic play in the cultural context of my title was success~ fal, it brought together for you two kinds of realizations: one, that there might be a pun on metaphors of power," which perhaps you would expect from a Kinguistic type. And indeed we will get to metaphors in the course of this discussion, Second, by way of the first realization, it would make you compare the basis of the pun, ‘metaphors, with the explicit signal, meta-hyphen-forces, and spark a whole chain of associated questions: Why not just forces? Why meta-forces? What is a meta-force as vpposed to a force? Do meta-hyphen-phors have meta-hyphen-forces? Are these meta-hyphen-forms of language? And just what does the suggested similar— ity have to do with the exercise of power in traditional oratory? If my title were successful in this respect, it was in fact an exercise of power, of what is called the power of suggestion, to draw you in to my frame of reference, Successful use of language has such power of suggestion, of persuasion, as it were, and it is then with a view to sug- gesting that the power of traditional (and, implicitly, of course, of all) oratory is achieved at a meta-level of language use, that I risked the pun. Within anthropology, there is, in a sense, something very traditional about the stady of situations of public, ritualized, sanctioned exercise of - power. Indeed, the study of so-called Mritual," of curing, of occasions of myth recital, of litigation, of contractual transaction, forms the heart of 2 good deal of anthropological work, certainly in the cluster of approaches called "symbolic! anthropology, and in many not so-styled. One can pick up any number of ethnographies nowadays. and find that the logical form of the presentation goes something like the following: Insofar as society has a culturai organi:ation, th’s is "symbolized" in some ritual performance(s) Thas, the analysis consists of Ulscussion of the situat-etensents in one or more analytic molds---structural (A: D); naturalistic meto- nym-glossing (red ‘is! blood 'is' patrilateral); ete. Such ordering consti- tutes, or provides the key to, significant aspects of the sociocultural order, Ja such approaches, ritual performances are sacrificed, as it were, dis- jmembered into elements which are used to build a schema that explicates the everyday order. That is, ritualized performance becomes a metaform by virtue of the fact that it is asserted to consist of metaphors and meto- nyms of social groups and categories; but while rituals are the fora for metaphors and metonyms, they are not, as it were, shown to be consti- tuted of them in any systematic and motivated way. Unfortunately, in the ritual anthropological process, the internal integrity of ritualized performance as itself a social form needing explica- tion---not just as a quarry for useful symbolic culture-building-blocks--~ has been lost, Similarly is tost to a great extent the comparatively-based accountability for explaining the efficacy of that internally-coberent form as a particular organization of means by which come particular society expresses particular aspects of its structural and/or symbolic order: Why is this ritual organization of these symbols" used in this society for these ostensive purposes? In short, I am suggesting that were thef study of such ritual forms more genuinely anthropological {in the more / traditional sense of comparative, empiricat science) it would not only seek to account for, to motivate, the specifics of the data from which theorizing begins, it would use the motivated, comparatively-grounded em~ pirical account as the basis for understanding the relationship of ritual to society. I propose that in this realm, analyzing the ritualized use of language is methodologically a good "how-to" lesson, as well as substan— tively a justifiable place to begin. As Maurice Bloch has characterized---perhaps caricatured---the problems of doing political anthropology in introducing the collection of papers entitled Political Language and Oratory in Traditional Society, here frequently one rapidly abandoas the reality of social intercourse, people saying things to each other, people coming into contact with each other, and instead... imagines" the political which is taking place in a hazy, artificially constructed area of hidden conflicts and alliances. By contrast what is observed is dismissed simply as a’ front for this "real" political activity. (p.2) Bloch goes on to recommend that one must do what seems to have been so often avoided,.., that is, to look closely at what is being said and what is being done and see in this material how control is exercised...since if we think about what it is that anthropologists have had in mind when they have been dis- cussing the political it is soon realised that it is almost exclus~ ively speech acts. (p.4) And more importantly, as Bloch suggests, there is a striking recurrence of very familiar patterns, of speech norms for politics in totally different cultures, [suggesting] that we are deal- ing with something of importance, something related to the social process and something which can therefore be exptained. (p.5) derstanding of the way language functions in politics and similar realms. For I want to show you the way in which two fundamental kinds of ‘metalinguistic" functions of language underly the commonalties: of how sanc~ tioned power is exercised in traditional society. I will use examples in systematic order to characterize the elements of these levels of meta- functional use of language. I-will move from meta-semantic functional force, especially as exemplified in definitional uses of language and meta. phorical transfers that depend on this, to meta-pragmatic functional force, especially as exemplified in the legal-contractual uses of language. I hope that the cumulative progression of the ethnographic examples is both clear and effective. a) Consider first the notion of definition. A true definition, as a use of language, states that the sense of some term or expression (found in the subject, and, by default, topic position in English sentences) is the same as the sense of some term or expression in the predicate position. ‘Thus, An ophthalmologist is an eye doctor. Roughly, the conceptual, cate- gorial meaning of all uses of the first term, ophthalmologist, is exactly the same as---or is, at least, indistinguishabie from---the meaning of £all uses of the second expression, eye doctor, at the level of effects on truth and falsity. The structure I have termed a true definition is dis- ct fron what we can call an occasional equation, a statemént that two objects of reference are the same in some way or ways. Sometimes We will accede to this likeness as described, and sometimes it will be flear that the equation is not founded, But true definition is different, under this definition, Those who have experience with analytic philosophical discourse will know that this is said to be am attempt at expressing an analytic propo- sition, a proposition true, as they say, by definition, true by virtue of the meaning or sense of the terms. Further, there have been advanced many arguments as to why the notion of true definitional use of language is impossible for actual, naturally-occurring discourse, fnvolving many issues I cannot go into here. Natural language can only approach, but never achieve, true definitional ‘precision; this is a limitation in principle. Perhaps we can still remember various schoolteacher admonitions, based on folk views of expository tanguage, to "define our terms" in an exposi- tory piece, the necessity to say that, for the remainder of the discourse, ~ the sense of particular expressions will be fixed in terms of the senses of other expressions. Let me engage in’ such: 1 will call the use of lane guage for definition its metasemantic use, since it is using language iteclt for describing the sernantics expressed by a certain surface stretch in the grammatical system, This is in keeping with the standard semiotic prac- fice, where a meta-tevel is a system that represents the things that make up a particalar levet in their relationships as objects of reference. Metasemantic uses of language are uses that are defintional in the par- ticular way Ihave described: they do not merely equate some particular (real-world, extralinguistic) object or objects with some other(s); they state categorical equivalence---in fact, the very categorical equivalences that underly and are the set of complementary relationships to tho: Fels oF Chomsky"s—sonses—of-g = 7 ‘Now if such true definitions, making up a trae metasemantic level of language, are rarer than hen's teeth, why bother with them? Because people do use languages with various degrees of metasemantic effect, ac- fually, every time they try explicitly to "define their terms." The trouble is that, for various reasons, we can never achieve a true definition in natural languages, but there are nevertheless degrees of metasemantic transparency of all equations, degrees of approaching detinitionat equiva jence of all statements of how particular objects are to be taken as "the same." Thus, metasemantic usage in natural languages is an ideal, an Gmreachable ideal in actual practice, which necessitates constructed lan- guages such as mathematical symbolism in the attempt to achieve ‘And we can now see that, from this point of view, though we attempt to engage in definition rather frequently (especially those of us who live around universities), we can only achieve varying degrece of metaseman- . tic transparency. Everything else in language is at least implicitly equational---taat is, it can at least be translated into equational form--- and everything else is thus metaphorical in a new, technical sens every non-definitional equation is metaphorical to the extent that it equates things that can be conceived of in at least two---and in fact in an infinite