Identity display: another motive for metalinguistic disagreement

ABSTRACT

It has become standard to conceive of metalinguistic disagreement as motivated by a form of negotiation, aimed at reaching consensus because of the practical consequences of using a word with one content rather than another. This paper presents an alternative motive for expressing and pursuing metalinguistic disagreement. In using words with given criteria, we betray our location amongst social categories or groups. Because of this, metalinguistic disagreement can be used as a stage upon which to perform a social identity. The ways in which metalinguistic disagreements motivated in this way diverge in character from metalinguistic negotiations are described, as are several consequences of the existence of metalinguistic disagreements motivated in this way.

KEYWORDS:

• Context-sensitivity
• disagreement
• identity
• metalinguistic disagreement

Acknowledgements

Previous versions of this paper were presented at the Disagreements in Semantics conference organized by Dan Zeman at the University of Vienna in 2018, and at an event organized by Neftalí Villanueva at the Department of Philosophy, University of Granada in 2019. I want to thank the audiences at both events for very helpful comments and criticism that greatly helped the development of the paper—special thanks are due in this regard to Katharina Sodoma, who was my respondent at the Vienna conference. I also want to thank the reviewer of this paper for Inquiry whose objections and suggestions have led to a much improved version of the paper. The work of this paper owes a debt of influence to Kathryn McFarland's so-far neglected PhD dissertation Feigning Objectivity: An Overlooked Conversational Strategy in Everyday Disputes.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 There are passages wherein Sundell shows a willingness to classify a broader range of circumstances under the label ‘metalinguistic negotiation’. See especially Sundell (2016, 805) and Sundell (2017). Nonetheless despite such passages, Sundell’s focus on metalinguistic negotiation as described above is explicit, persistent and has clearly affected how his work is received. When he sets to work trying to convince his readers that language users can have intense motivations to argue the toss over how a bit of language is to be used, he repeatedly does so by belabouring differences in practical consequences that depend upon with which content that bit of language is used. Indeed, the choice of the word “negotiation” to describe what could motivate interlocutors to pursue a metalinguistic dispute focuses our attention squarely upon processes that are aimed at achieving consensus.

Additional information

Funding

The writing of this paper was supported by the Estonian Research Council through grant IUT20-5 and by the European Union's Regional Development Fund through the Centre of Excellence in Estonian Studies. The paper is related to grant MOBTT45.