Final Exam February 2019 (final Version).docx

IPES FA –Profesorado de Inglés Introducción a la Lingüística Prof. Bray, Diego Alumna: Acosta, Malen Examen Final Febrero 2019

The Masquerade

Reading the novel Talking it Over (1991) by Julian Barnes caught me wondering: can we be something different to what we pretend to be? Barnes develops the story presenting the events from each of the character's point of view. For Nietzsche, facts are facts by virtue of what we perceive personally. Thus it is impossible to hold anything objective in our minds because we can never see the complete picture of things (1887). Oliver, for instance, explains that “you are whoever it is you’re pretending to be.” (Barnes. 1991: 21) With this idea in mind, can we become who we pretend to be? Or are we being ourselves even when we are trying to hide our true self? Only one thing is clear, Oliver is trying to hide something. And most of his disguise lies in his words. In connection to this idea, Austin in How to do Things with Words (1962) states that we have the ability to make things happen by using words. Austin concludes that every utterance (with a few limited exceptions) is really an act. Austin also asserts that some statements do not aim at stating facts but aim at arousing emotions or manipulating conduct. “A speaker utters a sentence with the intention of producing an utterance with certain truth-conditions, and thereby achieving further results, such as conveying information to a hearer, and perhaps thereby getting the hearer to do something.” (Austin. 1962) What he proposes is a theory that describes utterances that masquerade as statements. Every act regarding an utterance can be analysed in the following categories: the locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act. In the first place, the locutionary act, the statement itself: “He seemed to lose a little of his clumsiness when he was beside her” (Barnes. 1991: 40). In the second category, the illocutionary, being the intention that the speaker has. When speaking about Gillian, Oliver forces himself to disguise his true feelings towards her. He wants the audience not to focus on what he thinks about her -she makes people better; Stuart becomes a better person when he is around her. Oliver is trying to disguise his opinion on the fact that Gillian made everything better, happier, perfect, because he loves her, and he envies Stuart for meeting her first. Finally, the perlocutionary act or the result of the speech act, which in this case is infelicitous, later on evidenced in this utterance: “I met them because I’m in love with Gillian. All the rest was just an act (going to the airport to pick them up, and pretending to be happy to see them coming back from their honeymoon).” (Barnes. 1991:62) According to Austin’s theory “Unless a certain effect is achieved, the illocutionary act will not have been happily, successfully performed. This is to be distinguished from saying that the illocutionary act is the achieving of a certain effect. (Austin. 1962:116)

If we analyse Oliver’s flamboyant monologues, we can conclude that he intends to be noticed by people, and to be perceived as someone worthy of being remembered. He is pretending to be a more interesting person than he really is. Not only he uses extravagant lexicon, but also he is constantly making references upon plays, artists, and foreign countries. In this excerpt, the locutionary act is: “Help you? Help you? I find the girls, I introduce you, I get the evening on an upward parabola, and you just sit there glowering away like Hagen in Gotterdammerung, if you’ll excuse the cultural allusion.”(Barnes. 1991:26) Oliver tricks us to think that he did all the hard work (in getting the girls, and starting the conversation for Stuart to start acting). He managed to appear confident and someone interesting to talk to, to create the notion of Stuart being less educated than him, less attractive, less imaginative, and incapable of maintaining a conversation with women. Oliver makes himself look as a culturally rich man, aiding his friend, and deeply concerned with Stuart’s happiness. One even gets to think of Stu as a terribly shy man who only goes to dine “to pay the bill” Thus, one can infer that the result of this utterance is felicitous. And in Talking it over we have plenty of evidence which proves that Oliver is consistent in his speech acts: ”Once we realize that what we have to study is not the sentence but the issuing of an utterance in a speech situation, there can hardly be any longer a possibility of not seeing that stating is performing an act.” (Austin.1962:138) Oliver is constantly building and maintaining a façade. And he plays his role perfectly, and persuades his audience to believe he is something different from what he is. In this excerpt, Oliver’s complexity and incapacity to communicate are portrayed: So I believe in coddling my memory, just slipping it the finer morsels of experience. That lunch after the wedding, for instance. We had a perfectly frisky non-vintage champagne chosen by Stuart (brand? search me? mis en bouteille par Les Vins de l’Oubli), and ate saumon sauvage grillé avec son coulis de tomates maison. I wouldn’t have chosen it myself, but then I wasn’t consulted anyway. (Barnes.1991)

Illocutionary act -Oliver’s intention: he is describing a simple meal made of salmon and a tomato salad. But, he is saying it in a different language to be perceived as a globetrotter who has had the chance to order such a menu, and taste it, in a French speaking country. This monologue gives this idea of him and his need of not being understood easily. The more complex his speech is, the more interesting, or smart, he thinks he appears. No wonder he says that he went to a posher school than St. Edwards. Perlocutionary act -the result of that intention on the listener: In this utterance, Oliver’s use of extravagant lexicon allows him to successfully achieve his intention. For this reason, he carries out a felicitous performance. If one reads Stuart’s description, one gets to think that there is a possibility that Oliver had managed to become the disguise he was longing to be. “Oliver impresses people. He talks well, he’s travelled to distant lands, he speaks foreign languages, he’s conversant with the arts – more than conversant – and he dresses in clothes which don’t fit the contours of his body and are therefore declared to be fashionable by people in the know.” (Barnes. 1991: 22)

There is something true about the power of perception, because of what you say, and how you say it you can masquerade yourself as it pleases you. All in all, it can be said that Oliver’s utterances were in effect felicitous. However, he failed to disguise his feelings towards Gillian.

As soon as he met Gillian she disarmed him. His utterance goes: “Yes, I think that’s how she struck me.” He intends to ease the fact that from the very first moment she caught his attention. A man, who describes himself as one who only remembers those things that allow him to be proud of, is capable of producing such an utterance. If we go further into his speech: Let me try and reconstruct what she looked like, that day. I failed to deposit an accurate simulacrum of her visage and demeanour with the left-luggage clerk of memory; but I think she was in a shirt of a hue between sage and lovage, a top grey stone-washed 501s, green socks and a ridiculously unaesthetic pair of trainers. Marron hair pulled back and clipped over her ears, falling freely behind; lack of make-up bestowing a pallor which dramatised her generous brown eyes; petite mouth and jaunty nose, set rather low on the tapered oval of her face, thus emphasising the curved hauteur of her forehead. Ears with practically no lobes, I couldn’t help noticing, a genetic trait of increasing popularity which no doubt Darwin could explain. (Barnes.1991:30)

In Austin’s How to Do Things with Words he claims that every time we use words we do something, and our lexical choices sometimes can fail to build our disguise: “If I have stated something, then that commits me to other statements: other statements made by me will be in order or out of order. Also some statements or remarks made by you will be henceforward contradicting me or not contradicting me, rebutting me or not rebutting me, and so forth.” (Austin. 1962:138) Oliver evidently pretends not to remember every single detail of that moment. Stuart was his friend and he loved him, but, he loved Gillian more. Throughout Oliver’s speech, the choice of words helps us to uncover Oliver’s facade; then his mystery is revealed. Even though he was determined to hide, and to pretend to be different, he couldn’t. He had fallen in love with his friend’s wife. References: AUSTIN, J. (1955) How to do things with words. Oxford University Press. London. BARNES, J. (1991) Talking It Over. Vintage International.