Saying Things, Doing Things

Speech Act Theory and Homer

This post is a continuation of my substack on the Iliad. This post is part of my plan to share new scholarship on Homer. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis.

In his speech to Achilles in Iliad 9, Phoinix laments the idea that he may be separated from Achilles. Part of his sorrow, it seems, resides in the fact that he has work still to do (437-443):

“How could I be left here without you, dear child,
alone? The old man and horse-trainer Peleus assigned me to you
on that day when he sent you from Phthia with Agamemnon
still a child, not yet educated in the ways of crushing war
or assemblies where men become most prominent.
He sent me for this reason: to teach you all these things,
how to be a speaker of words and a doer of deeds.”

πῶς ἂν ἔπειτ’ ἀπὸ σεῖο φίλον τέκος αὖθι λιποίμην
οἶος; σοὶ δέ μ’ ἔπεμπε γέρων ἱππηλάτα Πηλεὺς
ἤματι τῷ ὅτε σ’ ἐκ Φθίης ᾿Αγαμέμνονι πέμπε
νήπιον οὔ πω εἰδόθ’ ὁμοιΐου πολέμοιο
οὐδ’ ἀγορέων, ἵνα τ’ ἄνδρες ἀριπρεπέες τελέθουσι.
τοὔνεκά με προέηκε διδασκέμεναι τάδε πάντα,
μύθων τε ῥητῆρ’ ἔμεναι πρηκτῆρά τε ἔργων.

A Scholiast (Schol. bT in Il. 9.443 ex 1-4) suggests that what Achilles needs to have learned is “rhetoric” (φαίνεται οὖν καὶ τὸ τῆς ῥητορικῆς ὄνομα εἰδώς) whereas another scholion (Schol. AT in Il. 9.443 c1) emphasizes the fact that the execution of both deeds and words requires “good counsel” (εὐβουλία: σημείωσαι ὅτι τὸ ὁμοιοτέλευτον ἔφυγε μεταβαλὼν τὴν φράσιν· οὐ γὰρ εἶπε ‘μύθων τε ῥητῆρα καὶ ἔργων πρακτῆρα’. καὶ ὅτι πάντων διδακτικὸν εὐβουλία). In the Pseudo-Plutarchean Life of Homer, these lines are used to assert (1) that virtue is teachable and (2) that Homer was the first philosopher (Ps-Plutarch Vita Homeri 1736-1739):

“For life is sustained by means of actions and words, and he says that he was made a teacher of the young man about both. From these lines he asserts clearly that every kind of virtue is teachable. Thus Homer was therefore first to philosophize concerning ethical and natural affairs.”

ἐπεὶ γὰρ ὁ βίος ἐκ πράξεων καὶ λόγων συνέστηκε, τούτων φησὶ διδά-
σκαλον ἑαυτὸν τοῦ νεανίσκου γεγονέναι. ἐκ δὲ τῶν εἰρημένων δῆλον
ὅτι πᾶσαν ἀρετὴν ἀποφαίνει διδακτήν. οὕτω μὲν οὖν πρῶτος ῞Ομηρος
ἔν τε ἠθικοῖς καὶ φυσικοῖς φιλοσοφεῖ.

But there’s another angle to all this as well: there are many Homeric words that are in fact actions themselves that change the relationships of the people who speak and hear them (rebukes, threats, oaths). Rather than seeing a polar opposition between being a speaker and a doer, we might want to consider whether we have a binary opposition here (“both…and” instead of “either/or”). Or, to be more salacious, a hendiadys: to be a Homeric hero, one is an Agent. Some of these actions are conducted through words.

At the end of his chapter, “ “Stronger”: Performative Speech and the Force of Achilles” (from his 2023 Homer’s Iliad and the Problem of Force), Charles Stocking rephrases his argument to assert, “to frame it another way, the Iliad not only demonstrates “how to do things with words” but also how to undo them”. While this sentence aims at a bit of a chapter-closing provocation, it also builds on a large body of philosophy, linguistics, and some important work on Homer. Stocking’s contribution is an important step, because it interweaves some often overlooked comments on “speech act theory”. It is also interesting to bring up now as we enter an election cycle where the importance and efficacy of words will be debated using the only medium for doing so: more words.

Stocking looks at the way that “performative speech” is used in book 1 of the Iliad to argue that while Homeric speakers do envision speech as an alternative to action–witness the oft-repeated goal of being a speaker of words and a doer of  deeds–utterances about hierarchy and force tend to rely on and strengthen notions of inequity on force relations to increase the authority of a given speech act. As such, a given ‘performative utterance’ relies in part on the material reality of its articulation (the context, the players, etc.) to advance the goal of the speech in question. For Stocking, this is an important adjustment to how others have approached speech acts in Homer because it departs from a simple approach to how speech functions as action and is “consistent with [Pierre] Bourdieu’s own insistence that performative speech must rely on external material conditions as the source for authoritative speech” (72).

(And to make another few important distinctions: we use performative loosely in English. Sometimes performative means having to do with a performance, therefore, not part of the everyday. In a related pejorative use, performative has come to mean “superficial” or in some way not real. For analytic philosophy and linguistic, a performative is in some way realer than other language.)

To follow the argument here, I think we should first establish what the stakes of the argument are, the tradition within which Stocking is working, and why these distinctions matter (in multiple questions. Let me start with the stakes in simplistic terms: the world we share together is one mediated if not created by language. Language can alter our perception of the world and what we do in it; it can inspire action, and it often does so regardless of whether said language conveys anything remotely resembling what we call ‘truth’. In a world described entirely by language–such as that of epic poetry–the basic reality I just described is perhaps more severe: all action in Homer is really speech. And, from something of a post-modern perspective, all speech is in a sense action insofar as once re-articulated (that is, read) it becomes again, if only in the imagination.

Don’t worry! I am not aiming for a metaphysical quandary of whether or not our reading of Homeric epic in some way makes it real, but instead to set up a different kind of distinction. Homeric poetry is also representative or mimetic speech. When talking about “performative speech” in Homer, it is crucial to note that we are not talking about the performance of Homer, but instead about the representation of performative speech in a very narrow sense in a poem that in itself, when performed, becomes and does something in the world.

(There is debate about the application of speech-act theory to literature (barred generally by Austin). Searle contends that the operation of cultural rules within the narrative world makes it valid (1979, p. 33-34 and 64). See also Pratt (1977) and Johnson (1980). For a broad critique of the application of speech-act theory, see Gorman (1999)

Again, I run the risk of sounding nonsensical, so I will step back just a moment: J. L. Austin was one of the first philosophers to qualify as a “performative speech act” an utterance that in some way changes reality by effecting or amounting to an action. His examples were fairly limited: utterances like “I bet” or “I thee wed” are those that need no accompanying action or other act to suffice to have changed the relationship between the speaker and others (or among those subject to the speech) based on the context. Austin added more vocabulary to this: a felicitous speech act is one that obtains its outcome (and infelicitous is one that does not). Austin also helpfully distinguished between different kinds of outcomes: he calls the intended effect of a speech-act the illocutionary effect of the speaker and the actual outcome the perlocutionary effect. If we take the example of making a bet, an infelicitous “betting” would be one where the process or formula were wrong or either the speaker or the recipient did not have the contextual (social) standing to execute the speech act.

I got interested in speech act theory while working on my dissertation, focusing in part on how Zeus’ language changes and effects reality (and there’s support here for a larger view of Zeus’ language and that of poets creating reality and their shared ability being reflected at the beginning of Hesiod’s Theogony, but who has time for that!) I was interested in part in the act of making a bet or an oath (as it shows up in Iliad 23) but also in trying to disentangle the intentions from the results in Agamemnon’s testing of the army (the so-called diapeira of Iliad 2). Richard Martin was one of the first to apply speech-act theory to Homer, insisting that the speeches in Homer are stylized versions of speech acts that would have been recognized by Homeric audiences. (Elizabeth Minchin builds on this too in her 2007 Homeric Voices; see Barker 2004 and 2009 for the use of speech act theory in political institutions and the creation of the Achaean assembly ).

By integrating Bourdieu’s work alongside the mainstays of Austin and Searle, Stocking reiterates the strong complementarity between speech and deed in Homer, insisting that “performative speech does not simply supplement force in the Iliad. Rather, Homeric characters actively attempt to construct the very relations of physical force upon which their speech acts rely” (28). In making this argument, Stocking of course needs the work of Pratt (who argues that literary speech does not constitute a world apart from regular speech for this kind of analysis, against Austin), Martin (who argues that Homeric speech reflects consistent type and genre to constitute as performative) and Minchin (whose argumentation supports Martin’s moves). Stocking’s contribution is to asseverate the how the material conditions make certain kinds of utterances possible, focusing on the genealogy of Achilles and the power of Agamemnon as expressed metonymically through his scepter. Stocking also cites Benveniste’s critique of Austinian theory as ignoring the importance of authority (39-42) and is reliant on a particular sense of subjectivity. It is through this connection that we get to one of the throughline’s of Stocking’s book, a different model for agency and action in Homer that combines both divine and human volition

I am not wholly convinced that Stocking needs speech act theory to get where he wants to with this book. Yet, in an overview of force in Homer, how can we not talk about language? Anyone who reads the Iliad is aware of how nearly evenly split it is between narrative scenes of overwhelming violence and direct speech by Homeric characters: speech and deed are certainly matched in Homer. And in an epic where people are motivated by stories, insults, cultural constructions of honor and heroism, it is all the more appropriate to ask what words themselves contribute to the carnage.

Short Bibliography

n.b. this is not exhaustive. please let me know if there are other articles to include.

Austin J. L., How to Do Things With Words, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1975.

Barker E. T. E. 2004. “Achilles’ Last Stand: Institutionalising Dissent in Homer’s Iliad.” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society: 92–120.

———. 2009. Entering the Agon: Dissent and Authority in Homer, Historiography and Tragedy. Oxford.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Harvard University Press

Brown, H. Paul, «Addressing Agamemnon: A Pilot Study of Politeness and Pragmatics in the Iliad», Transactions of the American Philological Association, nº 136, 2006, p. 1-46.

Christensen Joel P., «The End of Speeches and a Speech’s End: Nestor, Diomedes, and the telos muthôn», dans Reading Homer: Film and Text. Kostas Myrsiades (ed.), Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009, p.136-162.

Christensen Joel P., «First-Person Futures in Homer», American Journal of Philology nº 131, 2009, p. 543-571.

Clark Matthew, «Chryses’ Supplication: Speech Act and Mythological Allusion», Classical Antiquity, nº 17, 1997, p. 5-24.

Gorman David, «The Use and Abuse of Speech-Act Theory in Criticism», Poetics Today nº 20, 1999, p. 93-119.

Gottesman Alex, «The Pragmatics of Homeric Kertomia», Classical Quarterly, nº 58, 2008, 1-12.

Martin, Richard, The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1989.

Elizabeth Minchin, Homeric voices : discourse, memory, gender. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. 1 online resource (ix, 310 pages). 

Pratt M. L., Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse, Bloomington, University of Indiana Press, 1977

Roochnik David, «Homeric Speech Acts: Word and Deed in the Epics», Classical Journal, nº 85, 1990, p. 289-299.

Searle J. R., Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1969.

Searle J. R., « A Classification of Illocutionary Acts». Language in Society, nº 5, 1976, 1-22.

Searle J. R., Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theories of Speech Acts, Cambridge, 1979.

Wilson Donna F., Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002.