Chapter 25 Exercises: Language, Narrative, and the Stories We Live By

Thought Experiment 1: The Untranslatable Word

Consider these words from other languages for which English has no precise equivalent:

Amae (Japanese): The feeling of pleasurable dependence on someone who you know will indulge you — the emotional security of presuming on another's benevolence. Not quite reliance, not quite need, not quite love; something specific to relationships of deep trust where one can be vulnerable without fear.

Saudade (Portuguese): A deep, bittersweet longing for something loved and lost — or loved and perhaps never had. The melancholic pleasure of remembering something beautiful that is absent. Not quite nostalgia, not quite grief; a whole emotional register with no English name.

Weltschmerz (German): "World-pain" — the ache that arises from the gap between the world as it is and the world as you feel it should be. The particular sadness of someone who sees too clearly what is wrong and feels too keenly that it need not be this way.

Mamihlapinatapai (Yaghan): The silent, charged look shared between two people who both want something from each other but neither is willing to initiate.

Questions for reflection:

  1. Did you recognize any of these experiences before you had the word for them? Was there something like amae in your relationships — a specific quality of trust-based vulnerability — that you had experienced but not named?

  2. What happens, phenomenologically, when you acquire a word for an experience you've had but couldn't name? Does the experience change? Do you relate to it differently? Can you communicate it to others in ways you couldn't before?

  3. Does the word create the experience, or does it merely label something that was already fully present? Or is that a false dichotomy?

  4. The Whorfian hypothesis (linguistic relativity) suggests that the language you speak shapes what you can perceive and think. Do these untranslatable words give any evidence for this thesis?

  5. Extending the thought experiment: What experiences do you have that you lack adequate words for? If you could coin a new word, what experience would you name? Try to describe it without using the word — and notice how much harder this is.

Thought Experiment 2: The Broken Promise

Two friends, Mira and Noor, have the following exchange:

Mira: "I promise to be at your presentation on Friday. I know how much it matters to you."
Noor: "Thank you. That really means a lot."

Friday arrives. Mira does not come. When Noor asks her about it later, Mira says: "I didn't really mean it as a promise — it was more like an expression of intent. I was saying that I wanted to be there. I never made a binding commitment."

Noor feels genuinely wronged. Mira believes she did nothing wrong.

Using Austin's speech act theory, analyze this situation:

  1. What was the illocutionary act Mira performed when she said "I promise to be at your presentation"? Did she perform the act of promising, or the act of expressing intent?

  2. Austin holds that for a performative to succeed, felicity conditions must be met. What are the relevant felicity conditions for a promise? Were they met here?

  3. Mira claims she can retroactively redefine what she was doing when she spoke. Can she? Does the illocutionary force of an utterance depend on the speaker's private intention, or on the social context in which it is understood?

  4. The private language argument (Wittgenstein) holds that meaning requires social practice. How does this apply to Mira's attempt to privately redefine what her words meant?

  5. There is a broader question here about exit clauses: can you opt out of the social force of certain kinds of language? What would it mean for the practice of promising if speakers could routinely disclaim the illocutionary force of their speech acts after the fact?

  6. Take a position: Was Mira bound by her promise? Defend your answer using at least one framework from this chapter.

Journaling Exercise: Rewriting a Chapter

This exercise asks you to engage, concretely, with Ricoeur's narrative identity thesis.

Part 1: Write the story of one chapter of your life — a period of one to five years that felt coherent, that had its own arc. It could be a period of school, a relationship, a job, a phase of transition. Write it in approximately 300–400 words, in the past tense, with some attention to its structure: what were its opening conditions? What happened in the middle? How did it end or transform into the next chapter?

Part 2: Now write it again — same period, same events — but with a different emphasis. Choose a different beginning point or ending point. Make a different character (perhaps not you) the protagonist. Identify a theme you had not noticed in your first telling. Write 200–300 words.

Part 3: Reflect:

  1. How different are the two accounts? Were you surprised by how different the same period could feel depending on the narrative frame?

  2. Is either narrative more "true"? In what sense?

  3. Ricoeur says ipse identity is narrative identity — who you are is constituted by the story you tell about your life. Does this seem right to you? Does the exercise support or complicate that claim?

  4. Are there things in your history that seem to you to have a fixed, narrative-independent meaning — something that is what it is regardless of how you tell it? What distinguishes those things from events whose meaning is more available for reinterpretation?

  5. What does it mean, practically, to "revise" the story of your life? Is this something you should do? Can you do it too freely — in a way that becomes self-serving rather than genuinely illuminating?

Framework Comparison Exercise: Which Account of Language is Yours?

Three people are preparing to give a significant speech — a eulogy for a close friend.

A picture theory Wittgensteinian says: "The speech should accurately describe who this person was and what their life meant. Choose words that correspond to facts. Be precise and honest."

A late Wittgenstein/language games thinker says: "A eulogy isn't primarily a description — it's a practice with its own rules and purposes. It exists to bring a community together in grief and celebration, to help people make the transition, to honor a life. 'True' is the wrong standard; 'does this do what eulogies are for?' is the right one."

A speech act theorist says: "Focus on what you're doing with your words — comforting the grieving, performing tribute, holding space for shared memory. Think about the illocutionary acts you want to achieve, the conditions under which they'll succeed, and the perlocutionary effects you hope to produce."

A narrative identity theorist says: "The eulogy gives the person's life its final narrative form — at least the version the community will carry forward. The choices you make about theme, structure, beginning and ending will shape how this life is remembered and what it means. Think about what story you're telling."

Questions for reflection and discussion:

  1. Which of these four approaches most closely matches how you would think about a eulogy (or another high-stakes use of language)?

  2. Are any of these approaches in tension with each other? Or do they complement each other?

  3. Identify a context in your own life where the speech act theory perspective — attention to what you're doing with words rather than what you're saying — would have been or would be most useful.

  4. Where does the narrative identity perspective apply most powerfully in your own experience of language?

Dialogue Exercise: Gadamer and the Speech Act Theorist

A literature professor (call her Elana) is teaching Shakespeare's Othello to undergraduates. She holds a Gadamerian hermeneutics approach: "The text has a horizon; you have a horizon; the goal of reading is a fusion of horizons that neither you nor the text achieved alone."

A colleague (call him David) has become convinced by speech act theory: "A play is a series of speech acts performed in a specific social context. Understanding it means analyzing what characters are doing with their words — what promises, threats, deceptions, and declarations are being performed."

Task 1: Write Elana's response to the question "What does Othello mean?" — using Gadamerian vocabulary of horizon, effective history, prejudice (Vorurteil), and fusion of horizons. (150–200 words)

Task 2: Write David's response to the same question — focusing on the speech acts performed by Iago in manipulating Othello, and what it takes for his deceptions to "succeed" as speech acts. What felicity conditions does he exploit? (150–200 words)

Task 3: Is there a genuine conflict between these two approaches, or are they describing different aspects of the same phenomenon? Write a short (100-word) synthesis.

The Dinner Party

You are hosting a dinner party, and three guests are arguing:

Late Wittgenstein has just said: "All the problems of philosophy about language — what is truth, what is meaning, how do words refer — these are pseudo-problems created by language going on holiday. Philosophy's job is to dissolve these puzzles by returning words to their ordinary use."

J.L. Austin has responded: "I quite agree that philosophy has been led astray by a naive picture theory. But the solution isn't just therapy — it's serious, careful, systematic attention to what language actually does. We need a taxonomy of speech acts, a theory of performatives, a precise account of the conditions under which utterances succeed. This is genuine philosophy, not just dissolution."

Paul Ricoeur has raised his hand: "Both of you are focused on the small units — the sentence, the utterance. But the most important things about language happen at the level of narrative. Stories are where life finds meaning. The patient analysis of individual speech acts cannot reach what matters most: how we constitute ourselves through the stories we tell."

Your task:

  1. Continue the conversation through at least two more rounds of dialogue. Keep each philosopher's voice distinct and true to their actual positions.

  2. Where does Austin's speech act theory fit — and where does it fall short — as an account of what happens in therapy (the opening example of the chapter)?

  3. Does Ricoeur's narrative theory depend on the insights of Austin and Wittgenstein, or could it stand independently?

  4. Which philosopher, if you had to choose one as a framework for thinking about language in your own life, would you choose? Why?

Progressive Project Checkpoint

Add a Language and Narrative section to your Personal Philosophy document.

Address the following questions as genuine reflection, not academic analysis:

  1. The story of your life: Sketch the main chapters of your life as you currently tell it to yourself. What is the arc? What themes recur? Who are the major characters besides yourself?

  2. Fixed and open: Which parts of your story feel settled — facts about the past whose meaning seems determinate? Which feel open — periods or events whose meaning seems available for reinterpretation?

  3. The story you tell about yourself: Is there a narrative about yourself — about your capacities, your relationships, your place in the world — that you repeat to yourself? Is it serving you? Is it accurate?

  4. Language and perception: Has this chapter made you notice any ways in which the language you habitually use shapes what you can perceive, understand, or do? Are there concepts (like the untranslatable words in the first thought experiment) that you wish you had better language for?

  5. The speech act dimension: Think about a significant speech act in your life — a promise, a commitment, an apology, a declaration. What made it work or fail? What were its effects? How has your understanding of speech acts, after reading this chapter, changed how you think about it?

Aim for at least 350 words, written in your own voice.