The Seventh Function of Language

“What do you know about the seventh function of language?” In a haze, Simon doesn’t realize at first that it’s not Bayard who asks this, but Eco. Bayard turns toward him. Simon notices that he is still holding hands with Bianca. Eco gazes at the girl with lightly lustful eyes. (Everything seems light.) Simon tries to pull himself together: “We have good reason to believe that Barthes and three other people were killed because of a document relating to the seventh function of language.” Simon hears his own voice but feels as if Bayard is speaking.

Eco listens with interest to the story of a lost manuscript for which people are being killed. He sees a man walk past holding a bouquet of roses. His mind wanders for a second, and a vision of a poisoned monk flashes through it.

In the middle of the crowd, Simon thinks he recognizes the man with the bag from the night before. The man sits in the waiting room and slides the bag under his seat. It looks full to bursting.

It is 10:00 a.m.

Simon does not want to insult Eco by reminding him that there are only six functions of language in Jakobson’s theory; Eco knows this perfectly well but, according to him, it is not entirely correct.

Simon concedes that there is a mention of a “magic or incantatory function,” but reminds Eco that it was not considered serious enough to be kept in Jakobson’s classification.

Eco does not claim that the “magic” function exists, strictly speaking, and yet one can probably find something inspired by it in works that followed Jakobson’s.

Austin, an English philosopher, did indeed theorize the existence of another function of language, which he called “performative,” and which could be summarized in the formula “When saying is doing.”

It consists in the capacity that certain pronouncements have to produce (Eco says “realize”) what they pronounce through the very fact of their pronouncement. For example, when the minister says, “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” or when the monarch declares, “Arise, Sir So-and-so,” or when the judge says, “I sentence you…,” or when the president of the National Assembly says, “I declare the assembly open,” or simply when you say to someone, “I promise…,” it is the very fact of pronouncing these phrases that makes what they pronounce come into being.

In one way, this is the principle of the magical formula, Jakobson’s “magic function.”

A clock on the wall shows 10:02.

Bayard lets Simon take charge of the conversation.

Simon knows Austin’s theories, but does not see anything in them worth killing people for.

Eco says that Austin’s theory is not limited to those few cases but is extended to more complex linguistic situations, when a pronouncement is not intended merely to affirm something but seeks to provoke an action—which is either produced or not by the simple fact that this pronouncement is made. For example, if someone says to you “it’s hot in here,” it can be a simple observation about the temperature, but generally you would understand that he’s counting on the effect of his remark being that you will open the window. Likewise, when someone asks, “Do you have the time?,” he expects not a simple yes/no answer but that you should tell him what time it is.

According to Austin, speaking is a locutionary act since it consists in saying something but can also be an illocutionary or perlocutionary act, which surpasses the purely verbal exchange because it does something, in the sense that it produces actions. The use of language enables us to remark something, but also to perform something.

Bayard has no idea where Eco is going with this, and Simon is not too sure either.

The man with the bag has left, but Simon thinks he can glimpse the bag under the seat. (But was it that big before?) Simon thinks the man must have forgotten it again; there are some pretty absentminded people around. He looks for him in the crowd but doesn’t see him.

The wall clock shows 10:05.

Eco continues: “Now, let us imagine that the performative function is not limited to these few cases. Let us imagine a function of language that enables someone, in a much more extensive fashion, to convince anyone else to do anything at all in any situation.”

10:06.

“Whoever had the knowledge and the mastery of such a function would be virtually the master of the world. His power would be limitless. He could win every election, whip up crowds, provoke revolutions, seduce any woman, sell any kind of product imaginable, build empires, swindle the entire world, obtain anything he wanted in any circumstances.”

10:07.

Bayard and Simon are beginning to understand.

Bianca says: “He could dethrone the Great Protagoras and take control of the Logos Club.”

Eco replies, with an easygoing smile: “Eh, penso di si.”

Simon says: “But since Jakobson didn’t talk about that function of language…”