Assertion and personal relations

Suppose we think, as some philosophers do, that assertion implies a commitment to the defensibility of the proposition asserted. If I assert that it is raining, then I am committed, upon challenge, to the defensibility of my claim. I become responsible for what I assert, and others can hold me to it.

Conflating asserting and saying gives rise to a very prevalent problem. My interest is its manifestation in personal relationships. Sometimes when we say or utter something, we don’t mean to be (or don’t want to be) asserting it. (Everything we assert, we say; however, not everything we say is an assertion.) In such cases, the commitment to defensibility is not in effect. Suppose I say, “N is a horrible person.” Some people (e.g., N’s friends) will demand an explanation, a defense; they will hold me responsible for what I say. I seem to be committed to offering a defense and engaging their incredulity. Suppose however that when I uttered ‘N is a horrible person’ I wasn’t asserting my belief about his vicious character, but rather just expressing my frustration at something he had done earlier in the day. ‘N is a horrible person’ functions, in that context, only to signal and emphasize the degree of my frustration. The aim of my utterance, then, is not really to talk about N’s character, but rather to engage someone in a discussion about my terrible day, part of which has to do with N.

The problem arises because my utterance is believed to be an assertion. I am wrongly held to a norm I don’t accept (as applying to this case). The tension can escalate if I try to explain myself. The friends can accuse me of being imprecise and illogical: “N is a terrible person,” they might say, does not mean “I’m having a terrible day; N is connected to it.” But what could be more pedantic and unhelpful than to accuse the extremely frustrated with being imprecise? And what could more easily lead to friction than to taunt an already agitated person? When the aim is to vent frustration or express one’s emotions or work through one’s thoughts out loud or to bullshit (to borrow from Harry Frankfurt), precision is neither an aim nor a priority nor, perhaps, even possible. Suppose the friends further accuse me of being irrational and of not being able to adequately express myself. I take personal affront to that. The tension escalates. And so on.

The root of the problem can manifest in almost all conversation, since we often do more (or less) with language than to transmit beliefs, i.e., make assertions. Some believe this is a gendered issue pertaining to the ‘linguistic relationship’ men and women have with one another. Men accuse women of not saying what they mean, and women accuse men of not being sensitive to the nuances of what they say. If there is a normative distinction between saying and asserting, then both can be correct. If the demand to defend what one says applies only to assertions, then one can say something, mean it (in some sense), yet not feel it necessary to defend. In those cases, any demand is out of place and inappropriate. On the other hand, one can confuse a legitimate demand for clarity with an attack on one’s person. Interpreting the demand as a retributive sentiment obfuscates one’s responsibilities, and some would say is an attempt to avoid them.

In any specific situation, it is a matter for subtle judgment to decide whether someone is asserting a claim or not. The upshot, then, is that dialogue shouldn’t be always construed as a battle over the truth of something said. Not all conversation is debate. When it’s unclear whether a person is prepared to defend something she says, the interlocutor should keep his mouth shut until the conversational intent is made sufficiently clear. Doing so would help abate friction and hurt feelings.