Abstract

My purpose in the dissertation is to critique the Linguistic Model of social life. On this model, the interpersonal interactions that comprise social existence are modeled on one particular kind of social encounter--viz., conversation. The assumption is that social interactions are all essentially instances of communication. The model maintains that all forms of human interaction can be understood using the same categories, distinctions, and strategies that we use to understand speech and conversation. ;The specific object of my critique is the variant of the Linguistic Model which claims that non-verbal actions and artifacts are like words and sentences in virtue of possessing the same kind of meaning. I argue that non-verbal social objects do not, to any significant degree or in any significant respect, possess the same kind of meaning as do words and sentences. The Linguistic Model is not just incorrect, however, but also insidious. It overlooks the peculiar features of non-verbal social meaning and thereby obscures what is distinctive about non-verbal social life. ;To develop my argument against the Linguistic Model, I construct an account of meaning that derives from Umberto Eco's theory of the sign and H. P. Grice's distinction between natural and non-natural meaning. ;My argument against the Linguistic Model is deployed in two steps. First, I argue that by-and-large social agents do not, except in marginal and uncontroversial cases, have semantic intuitions about non-verbal social objects. Second, I show that given this absence of semantic intuitions about non-verbal social objects, explanations of social behavior which attribute to agents the production and recognition of non-verbal linguistic-like meaning can be justified under only very limited circumstances. ;My argument is not meant to show that non-verbal communication is impossible, nor that it cannot have any role in social life. I intend, rather, to point out the many difficulties attendant to the Linguistic Model of social life, to make plausible the idea that social actions and artifacts possess meanings of a kind distinct from the kind of meaning possessed by words and sentences, and to develop some conceptual tools suitable for analyzing the non-verbal aspects of social life