Modes of Address

Addressivity is a concept developed by the Russian literary critic and philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), denoting the quality of being addressed to someone or something. According to Bakhtin, every utterance, text, or discourse has both an author (or addresser) and someone to whom it's addressed (an addressee).¹ Every speaker or writer is addressing someone and thus is engaged in dialogue with them. Only in this way can our lives have meaning, argues Bakhtin, when we're in dialogue with the world.² Every utterance, text, or discourse, however monological it may be, presupposes other utterances, texts, and discourses, and is therefore in some way a response to them. Every text is in dialogue with other texts, and is characterized by its relations with them (its intertextuality).

      Examining the addressivity of a text (along with its rhetoric, stylistics, semantics, pragmatics, discursive strategies, and other linguistic and literary aspects) may be a way of analyzing our responses to that text. We may ask such questions as: To whom is this text addressed? Is it addressed to us? Why is or isn't it addressed to us? How is it addressed to us? In what way does or doesn't it address other relevant texts?

      To address may be to deal with, confront, or direct one's attention to such things as problems, needs, interests, or concerns. It may also be to greet someone, speak directly to someone, call someone by name, or mark directions for delivery on something (such as a postcard, letter, or package).

      Various kinds of speech acts (such as greetings, thanks, promises, demands, requests, warnings, apologies, and congratulations) may be addressed to someone (although we may not always be sure who we're addressing). It may be difficult to say anything without addressing someone directly or indirectly. (Thus, as you read this, I'm addressing you as a reader, even though I may not know or have met you, and may not be able to address you personally.) However, expletives such as "Crap!" or "Damn!" may be an exception to the rule that speech acts must be addressed to someone (even if they're only addressed to oneself). Expletives may in fact not be addressed to anyone, and may often function merely to vent anger, annoyance, or frustration.

      We constantly engage in modes of address in our social interactions, e.g. when we say Hello, Good Morning, Good Night, or Goodbye to someone, when we have a conversation with someone, when we make or answer a call on our cellphones, when we send a text or email, when we begin a letter with Hi, Hello, Dear, or To Whom It May Concern, and when we end an email with Sincerely, Love, Yours Truly, or Best Wishes.

      We may also be (very much, only moderately, or not at all) aware of various norms of address, e.g. when we call someone Mr., Mrs., Ms., Dr., Rev., Rabbi, Sir, Ma'am, Your Honor, Your Highness, Your Grace, Your Holiness, Mr. President, Mr. Mayor, Madam Speaker, Mrs. Ambassador, Governor, Senator, Representative, Professor, Daddy, Mommy, Grandpa, Grandma, and so on.

      Norms of address may also determine the correct pronouns with which to address someone in accordance with their gender identity (he/him, she/her, they/their, ze/zir, etc.). The refusal to address someone by their preferred pronouns ("misgendering") may in some cases be primarily motivated by the addresser's refusal to conform to beliefs about gender identity that they don't accept, but in other cases it may also be motivated by their antagonism, hostility, or bigotry toward gender nonconforming people (although it may be a legally protected form of free speech³).

      Attorney and legal scholar Chan Tov McNamarah (2021) says that

"misgendering is simply the latest link in a concatenation of disparaging modes of reference and address. From addressing Black persons by only their first names, to the intentional omission of women's professional titles, and to the deliberate butchering of the ethnically-marked names of minorities, these verbal slights have long been used to symbolize the subordination of societally disfavored groups."⁴

      McNamarah also says that regulations prohibiting misgendering don't unconstitutionally restrict freedom of speech, because they narrowly target harassment in the workplace, and because the government has a compelling interest in protecting minorities from discrimination. Nor do they compel speech, because they don't force a speaker to express any particular message regarding gender identity.⁵

      Perhaps even more significantly, McNamarah shows how dishonorifics (expressions of social inferiority) have been used to deprive addressees of social standing. Dishonorifics have included renaming or un-naming of enslaved persons, legal restrictions on titles and naming practices for women, anglicization or westernization of ethnic names, replacement of ethnically marked names with names such as "Samurai Jack," "Bruce Lee," or "Jackie Chan," misgendering, mispronouning, and ungendering of people's names, as well as "deadnaming" (using the birth name of a person who has chosen another name to reflect their actual identity).

      Norms of formality and politeness in addressing people may vary according to the language in which discourse is conducted, the cultural setting, and the situational context. We may sometimes find it difficult to find the appropriate level of formality, as when we're sincerely unsure of whether to address someone by their first name or formal title. Addressing someone by their first name may be a sign of friendliness or unfriendliness, cordiality or antipathy, congeniality or condescension, affection or disrespect, depending on the social context.

      We may often address people we feel personally close to with various terms of endearment, such as Honey, Darling, Dear, Baby, or Sweetheart. (However, these terms may also be used disparagingly by strangers or social adversaries.)

      When someone speaks directly to us, we know that they recognize us as active or passive listeners, and that they may or may not expect us to respond or engage in dialogue with them. We also know when they aren't speaking to or addressing us at all, and when we're unseen, unrecognized, or ignored members of their audience.

      The philosopher Monique Roelofs (2020) explains,

"Address and nonaddress, then, go together. The one often stands out against the backdrop of the other. The thin character of an orator's comments becomes apparent in light of our awareness of an ambit of understandings to which he might have attested but that go unnoted--those riveting themes we had hoped to learn about but that were never so much as broached in his speech. Nonaddress, in this case, informs us of an aspect of address."⁶

      We also know when a text, word of admonition or advice, letter, or email has been sent to the wrong address. We know how reluctant we may be to reveal our own address to a stranger or to someone we don't have any reason to trust.

      When we click on the link to a tweet, news story, or article on the internet, we often do so because we feel it's in some way addressed to us. It's been sent or directed to us, even if only by cookies or search algorithms. It recognizes us as members of its intended audience, and as actual or potential recipients of its content.

      Roelofs (2020) also explains,

"In considering the scope of address, it is worth noting that objects can address us in ways that they were not necessarily designed to do. Just as my friend's yawn may address me in a way that she did not intend, the stool that was once meant for toddlers to sit on might now address older children and adults as a platform for reaching the cookies on the upper shelf or for making proclamations."⁷

      Some modes of address may express respect or disrespect for the addressee. Respect may be expressed by the use of honorifics, while disrespect may be expressed by their omission. Disrespect may also be expressed by the use of slurs, racist or sexist epithets, and other speech acts that express disdain, ridicule, contempt, or hatred.

      According to the linguist Roman Jakobson (1960), the six constitutive factors of any speech act or act of verbal communication are (1) the addresser, (2) the addressee, (3) the message, (4) the context, (5) the contact (or channel) between the addresser and addressee, and (6) the code (which must be at least partially shared by the addresser and addressee, and which allows the message to be encoded by the addresser and decoded by the addressee). Each constitutive factor determines a different function of language. The addresser determines the emotive (or expressive) function. The addressee determines the conative function (whose role is to produce action). The message determines the poetic function (whose role is focused on the message for its own sake). The context determines the referential (denotative or cognitive) function. The contact determines the phatic function (whose role is to start and maintain communication), and the code determines the metalingual function (whose role is to enable the addresser and addressee to share the same understanding of the meaning of words and messages). Each act of verbal communication may fulfill more than one of these functions, but its structure is determined by whichever function predominates.⁸

      Modes of address may be direct, indirect, personal, impersonal, proximate, remote, formal, or informal.

      Levels of address (psychological, moral, aesthetic, religious, social, or cultural) may correspond to levels of meaning. For example, if a text addresses its readers at a psychological level, then it may also have meaning for them at that level. A text that has multiple levels of addressivity (addressing its readers at multiple levels) may also have multiple levels of meaning.

      We may also interrogate our own modes of address for what they reveal about our own conscious or unconscious attitudes about the given addressees. We may discover that we have previously unrecognized biases, presuppositions, or prejudgments about our addressees that change, hinder, or distort our relations with them.

FOOTNOTES

¹Mikhail Bakhtin, The Bakhtin Reader, edited by Pam Morris (London: Arnold, 1994), p. 4.

²Ibid., p. 245.

³In July 2021, the Third District Court of Appeals of California ruled that regulations against intentional misgendering of transgender nursing home residents unconstitutionally restrict free speech. See https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/22/us/transgender-seniors-misgender-california-trnd/index.html.

⁴Chan Tov McNamarah, "Misgendering," in California Law Review, Vol. 109, No. 6, Dec 2021, online at https://www.californialawreview.org/print/misgendering/#clr-toc-heading-4.

⁵Ibid.

⁶Monique Roelofs, Arts of Address: Being Alive to Language and the World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020), p. 10).

⁷Ibid., p. 23.

⁸Roman Jakobson, "Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics," in Style in Language, edited by Thomas A. Sebeok (Cambridge: The M.I.T. Presss, 1960), pp. 353-357.

How To Pray

The following is a brief reflection I shared with my fellow parishioners at the 8 a.m. service of our church on Sunday, July 24, 2022.

In today's reading from the gospel (Luke 11:1-13), the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray, and he tells them, "When you pray, say: "Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread," and so on. So a question I've been asking myself is: Is Jesus teaching his disciples what to pray or is he teaching them how to pray? Is he saying, "Pray this," or is he saying, "Pray like this"? Is Jesus telling his disciples to repeat what he says, word for word, or is he saying, "Pray like I'm praying" or "This is the way you can pray"? In Luke's Gospel, Jesus seems to be saying, "Pray this," but in Matthew's Gospel, when Jesus delivers his prayer to the assembled crowd at The Sermon on the Mount, he seems to be saying, "Pray like this," and depending on which version of the Bible you read, this phrase may be translated as "Pray then like this" or "Pray in this manner" or "This, then, is how you should pray."

      So I think Jesus is teaching us how to pray, rather than what to pray. I don't think he wants us to mechanically repeat some words we've memorized. I think he wants us to pray from our hearts, and to say what's in our hearts. This is in keeping with the other instructions about how to pray that he gives in The Sermon on the Mount:

"And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this..." (Matthew 6:5-15)

      Of course, there are many kinds of prayer: prayers of adoration, prayers of praise, prayers of thanksgiving, prayers of penitence, prayers of oblation, prayers of petition, and prayers for intercession. But when Jesus gives the disciples his own prayer, "Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come...", I think he's saying, "When you pray, you should honor God, you should pray for the coming of God's kingdom, you should ask for God's forgiveness, and you should pray for God's grace."

      The Book of Common Prayer says, in response to the question "What is prayer?" that "Prayer is responding to God, by thought and by deeds, with or without words."¹ Thus, prayer involves speaking and listening to God. it's a dialogue with God. It can be done silently or aloud. When we pray, we can discern what God's purpose is for us, and we can ask for grace to do God's will, and we can feel the power of the Holy Spirit working within us. True prayer isn't merely a mechanical repetition of memorized phrases, although this kind of practice may be useful in preparing us to speak directly to God and in teaching us how to pray. Rather, true prayer involves praying with all our hearts and souls, as well as minds.

FOOTNOTES 

¹The Book of Common Prayer, According to the use of The Episcopal Church (Kingsport: Kingsport Press, 1977), p. 856.

Culpable Ignorance: A Consequentialist Perspective

What is culpable ignorance? What kind of responsibility do we have to avoid being culpably ignorant?

      Let's consider some possible definitions of culpable ignorance.

      (1) It's ignorance that's within our power to avoid, and that results from a failure to comply with our epistemic duty to become informed about something (when we have such a duty). Because we have some control over whether or not we're culpably ignorant, we can be held morally responsible for being so. A distinction can thus be made between ignorance for which we're responsible (culpable ignorance) and ignorance for which we're not responsible (non-culpable ignorance).

      (2) Culpable ignorance is ignorance for which there's no excuse, and for which there are harmful or undesirable consequences that could have been avoided or anticipated. It can be argued that simply being culpably ignorant is harmless if no negative consequences result from that ignorance. (It can also be argued that ignorance of any kind is intrinsically harmful, but this seems somewhat implausible.) From a consequentialist perspective, simply not knowing something we should have known may not make us culpably ignorant unless some harmful or undesirable consequences result from that ignorance. The extent of our culpability for our ignorance may depend on the wrongness or inappropriateness of the actions that result from that ignorance, as well as the gravity and extent of their negative consequences.

      (3) Culpable ignorance is ignorance in cases where we "should have known better" or "should have realized" that relevant facts or conditions needed to be considered.

      (4) It's also ignorance where we failed to take due regard of, or pay sufficient attention to, relevant facts or conditions.

      (5) It's also the spreading or promulgation of falsehoods and misinformation, without any regard for the veracity of that information or the consequences of spreading such falsehoods and misinformation.

      Ignorance alone isn't culpable, if there's some excuse for it. The ignorance must be inexcusable rather than excusable, deliberate rather than inadvertent, or intentional rather than unintentional, if it's rightly to be held as culpable. However, if an individual refuses to reexamine or reevaluate their beliefs despite evidence that those beliefs may be mistaken or in need of better justification, then they may be held blameworthy for their refusal to reexamine or reevaluate their beliefs. Similarly, if an individual takes an action for which some knowledge of relevant facts is necessary in order to determine the action's rightness or appropriateness, and they willfully refuse to inform themselves of those relevant facts, then they may rightly be held responsible for any negative consequences of that action.

      We may be culpably ignorant for not knowing something (such as the rightness or wrongness of a particular action) if (1) we should have known about that thing (or should have known that we didn't know about that thing), and (2) as a consequence of that ignorance, we (a) do what we shouldn't have done or cause others to do what they shouldn't have done, or (b) don't do what we should have done or cause others not to do what they should have done. If our actions or non-actions in such cases cause negative consequences for ourselves or others, then we may rightly be held blameworthy for those actions or non-actions.

      Holly Smith (1983) argues that the concept of culpable ignorance must be restricted to (1) cases in which an individual believed they were acting justifiably, and (2) cases in which they were not acting precipitously. Thus, culpable ignorance involves an initial "benighting act" for which the individual is culpable and in which the individual fails to improve (or positively impairs) their initial cognitive position, followed by an "unwitting wrongful act."¹

      Niels de Haan (2020) argues that culpable ignorance may in some cases be irreducibly collective (not attributable to a single individual). While it might not be fair in some cases to expect an individual to have avoided their ignorance of a particular fact, it might be fair to expect the group to which they belong to have collectively avoided its ignorance of that particular fact.² In such cases, the group, rather than the individual, is culpable (or at least the individual is culpable only insofar as they are a member of that group). de Haan notes that an individual's (or group's) culpability for not knowing something may also imply they could reasonably have been expected to take measures to remedy or avoid that ignorance.³

      Alexander F. Sarch (2014) explains that when someone is willfully ignorant of some fact (when they deliberately avoided learning whether the fact in question obtained), they may be held culpable for that ignorance. For example, in cases where a defendant is charged with a crime, and the defendant was willfully ignorant of some fact, they may, according to the "willful ignorance doctrine," be found to be culpable on the ground they were willfully ignorant of the relevant fact.⁴

       Culpable ignorance may include willful ignorance (the deliberate rejection of knowledge or the deliberate avoidance of measures to become informed about something), but not all culpable ignorance is willful, insofar as it may in some cases be due simply to a lack of diligence with regard to measures to become informed about something (in cases where there is a duty to become informed about that thing), rather than deliberate avoidance of those measures.

      Jason B. Freeman (2022) defines willful blindness as "an attempt to avoid liability for a wrongful act by intentionally failing to make reasonable inquiry when faced with the suspicion or awareness of the high likelihood of wrongdoing." He also says, "It is a deliberate attempt to keep one's "head in the sand" when faced with information or facts that create a suspicion or awareness that there is a likelihood of wrongdoing."⁵

      The Law Library of American Law and Legal Information at law.jrank.org defines culpable ignorance as "the lack of knowledge or understanding that results from the omission of ordinary care to acquire such knowledge or understanding."⁶

      What's the relation between willful ignorance and denialism? They may be closely related to or associated with each other, but they aren't the same. Willful ignorance may involve a failure to be acquainted with relevant facts, while denialism may involve an acquaintance with relevant facts, but a failure to recognize those facts as facts.  For example, denialism may involve denial of such facts as the link between HIV and AIDS, the link between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, and the efficacy of vaccines in preventing transmissible diseases such as polio, measles, and COVID-19.

      Charles W. Mills (2007) describes "white ignorance" as a group-based cognitive phenomenon that has epistemic, moral, social, and political implications. It's based on a system of white privilege in which white racism plays a significant causal role. It's also based on white normativity, i.e. on the centering of whiteness as a constitutive norm, while the experience of blacks and other people of color is marginalized. One of its functions has been to protect those who for racial reasons have needed not to see or know about the black or brown people in their midst.⁷

      Annette Martin (2021) presents three alternative accounts of "white ignorance," as (1) a willful ignorance about racial injustice (the "willful ignorance view"), (2) an ignorance resulting from social practices that distribute faulty cognitive resources, e.g. by accepting faulty norms of reasoning about race (the "cognitivist view"), and (3) an ignorance resulting from a social process that systemically gives rise to racial injustice (the "structuralist view").⁸

      Examples of white ignorance (sometimes guised as "color blindness") include blindness to acts of racial injustice, blindness to racially discriminatory laws or policies, and blindness to structures of racial inequality.

FOOTNOTES

¹Holly Smith, "Culpable Ignorance," in The Philosopher's Annual, Vol. VI, 1983, 243-271.

²Niels de Haan, "Collective Culpable Ignorance," in Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 10, Issue 2, 2021, p. 99.

³Ibid., p. 100.

⁴Alexander F. Sarch, "Willful ignorance, Culpability, and the Criminal Law," in St. John's Law Review, No. 4, Vol. 88, 2014, 1022-1101.

⁵Jason B. Freeman, "Willful Blindness and Corporate Liability," 2022, online at Freeman Law, https://freemanlaw.com/willful-blindness-and-corporate-liability/.

⁶Law Library of American Law and Legal Information, "Culpable," 2022, online at https://law.jrank.org/pages/5914/Culpable.html

⁷Charles W. Mills, "White Ignorance," in Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, edited by Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana (Albany, State University of New York Press, 2007, pp. 13-28.

⁸Annette Martin, "What is White Ignorance?" in The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 71, Issue 4, October 2021, 864-885.