Concept Formation

Language Acts

According to the classic conception of language, concepts are our basic units of thought. According to a pragmatic understanding of language, concepts are our basic units of (linguistic) action. In this perspective, concepts are not interior images that correspond to external realities but practical tools that allow us to do many things, many more than just putting vivid labels on inanimate objects. They allow us to threaten and promise, to bless [Page 371]and condemn, to give orders and to request favors, to express tenderness and anger, to know and believe, to contract marriage and christen ships, and so on. Designating objects “out there” in the external world (reference) is just one linguistic function among innumerable others.

As practitioners of social science, too, we do more than offer aseptic statements about the world. In our texts and speeches, we do more than describe and explain, more than refer to facts and associations between facts. We laud and criticize colleagues, highlight and downplay themes, support and refute arguments, persuade and dissuade readers, and so forth. However, while reference is not everything, it does play a leading role in the social sciences. All types of “speech acts” (John Searle) characteristically contain referential elements. They refer to something, be it in the physical world of objects, the social world of norms and interaction, or the subjective world of emotion and cognition. Arguably, articulating empirical and theoretical propositions constitutes the nucleus of our linguistic activities. It is what we are supposed to do with social science concepts: developing descriptive and explanatory inferences, making and breaking claims about the social word. In these linguistic performances—our primary speech acts in the social sciences—reference is key. We need our concepts to perform referential roles. We need them to grasp concrete realities in abstract terms. Classical philosophy was centrally concerned with one specific purpose of language: its referential role. We should not be surprised to see that conceptual discussions in contemporary social sciences, too, privilege traditional reference over other linguistic roles.

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