Although he turns to pragmatics, Ricoeur maintains a transcendental standpoint: pragmatics is not an empirical description of communicative acts but an investigation into the conditions governing language use wherever reference depends on contextual knowledge, i.e., the situation of interlocution, thereby directly thematizing the reflexive 'I' and 'you' of speech.

By Paul Ricœur, from Oneself as Another

Key Arguments

  • He explicitly rejects a merely empirical conception of pragmatics: "This shift of approach should not, however, lead us to abandon the transcendental viewpoint: pragmat ics is intended to undertake not an empirical description of acts of com munication but an investigation into the conditions that govern language use".
  • He specifies the domain of these conditions as cases "in which the reference attached to certain expressions cannot be determined without knowledge of the context of their use, in other words, the situation of interlocution."
  • He emphasizes that this type of inquiry centers utterance and thereby reflexive designation of the speaker: "what it places at the center of the problem is not the statement but the utterance, the act of speaking itself, which designates the speaker reflexively."
  • He explicitly notes that pragmatics directly brings the interlocutors into focus: "Prag matics, therefore, puts directly on stage the "I" and the "you" of the speech situation."

Source Quotes

In doing this, we move from a semantics, in the referential sense of the term, to a pragmatics, that is, to a theory of language as it is used in specific contexts of interlocution. This shift of approach should not, however, lead us to abandon the transcendental viewpoint: pragmat ics is intended to undertake not an empirical description of acts of com munication but an investigation into the conditions that govern language use in all those cases in which the reference attached to certain expressions cannot be determined without knowledge of the context of their use, in other words, the situation of interlocution. This new type of investigation is all the more promising in that what it places at the center of the problem is not the statement but the utterance, the act of speaking itself, which designates the speaker reflexively.
This shift of approach should not, however, lead us to abandon the transcendental viewpoint: pragmat ics is intended to undertake not an empirical description of acts of com munication but an investigation into the conditions that govern language use in all those cases in which the reference attached to certain expressions cannot be determined without knowledge of the context of their use, in other words, the situation of interlocution. This new type of investigation is all the more promising in that what it places at the center of the problem is not the statement but the utterance, the act of speaking itself, which designates the speaker reflexively. Prag matics, therefore, puts directly on stage the "I" and the "you" of the speech situation.
This new type of investigation is all the more promising in that what it places at the center of the problem is not the statement but the utterance, the act of speaking itself, which designates the speaker reflexively. Prag matics, therefore, puts directly on stage the "I" and the "you" of the speech situation. At the end of this exploration of the ties between the act of utterance and the subject of this act, our problem will be to confront the respective contributions of our two series of inquiries, the referential inquiry and the reflexive inquiry, with an integrated theory of the self (at least on the lin guistic level).

Key Concepts

  • This shift of approach should not, however, lead us to abandon the transcendental viewpoint: pragmat ics is intended to undertake not an empirical description of acts of com munication but an investigation into the conditions that govern language use
  • in all those cases in which the reference attached to certain expressions cannot be determined without knowledge of the context of their use, in other words, the situation of interlocution.
  • the utterance, the act of speaking itself, which designates the speaker reflexively.
  • Prag matics, therefore, puts directly on stage the "I" and the "you" of the speech situation.

Context

Still in the introductory paragraphs of the Second Study, Ricoeur clarifies the methodological status of his turn to pragmatics and spells out how it directly concerns the first‑ and second‑person positions in discourse.