340 The subjectivity of utterance

that are made available to it by the language it uses for self-expression. It is generally accepted nowadays by linguists of all theoretical persuasions that there is, in reality, no such thing as a homogeneous, stylistically and socio-expressively undifferen-tiated, language-system. It follows that, for the linguist, philo­sophical and psychological arguments about the nature of the self and personal identity are of secondary importance. Subjectivity in so far as it is manifest in language - locutionary subjectivity - is situationally and stylistically differentiated. So too, demonstrably, is the degree of subjectivity that is expressed in different styles and in different situations.

We now come to another point. Earlier in this section, I defined locutionary subjectivity as self-expression in the use of language. I have now been talking about locutionary subjectiv­ity as the subjectivity of utterance (and as combining the subjec­tivity of consciousness and the subjectivity of agency). I have also said that locutionary subjectivity is manifest, or expressed, in language. It is quite possible, of course, for the use of language - the activity of utterance - to be imbued or invested with subjectivity, and yet for this subjectivity not to be manifest in language: i.e., in the utterance-inscriptions (or utterance-signals) that are the products of the activity of utterance. It is also possible for locutionary subjectivity to be manifest in language in one sense, but not the other, of the ambiguous (and syntactically ambivalent) English word 'language': that is to say, it is possible for it to be expressed (for example, proso-dically or paralinguistically in speech) without being encoded in the grammatical or lexical structure of the language-system.

For example, as we saw in section 10.5, it is arguable (though some might deny this) that a sentence such as

(23) 'He may not come'

is wholly devoid of subjectivity. In speech, however, it can be uttered with various kinds of prosodic and paralinguistic modu­lation by means of which the speaker - the locutionary agent - can, and normally will, invest the product of the act of utterance with various kinds, and different degrees, of subjectiv­ity. In particular, it can be uttered as a more or less qualified

10.6 Subjectivity and locutionary agency 341

assertion either of the fact that there is, objectively, a possibility that the referent of 'he' will come or of the fact that permission has been granted (by some deontic source external to the locu­tionary agent) for the referent of 'he' to come. In speech, the pro­sodic contour will usually make clear to the addressee that the utterance is to be interpreted as a subjectively qualified asser­tion; and, coupled with associated vocal and non-vocal para-linguistic information, it may also reveal something of the locutionary agent's attitude to what is being asserted as a fact or the nature or degree of the locutionary agent's epistemic war­rant for asserting it as a fact. The distinction that we have drawn, in this book, between sentence-meaning and utterance-meaning enables us to make the point that has just been made in the way that it has been made. The point itself, however, holds independently of whether the theoretical distinction between sentences and utterances is drawn in the same terms, or at the same point, as it has been drawn here.

As I said at the beginning of this section, the subjectivity of utterance has not been much discussed, until recently, in the terms in which I have explained it here, in work on linguistic semantics written in English. More attention has been devoted to it by French and German scholars, possibly because the notion of subjectivity itself plays a more important part in the Continental philosophical tradition. However that may be, as I have been arguing in several sections of this book, there is much in the structure of English and perhaps all natural languages that cannot be explained without appealing to it. It is also argu­able - though this is more debatable and I will not argue the point here - that, for historical and ultimately social reasons, some languages, including English, are less deeply imbued with subjectivity than others. It suffices to note that, as was men­tioned in section 6.6 and again in section 10.5, there are many natural languages in which there are no indicative declarative sentences: i.e., no sentences with which it is possible to make sub­jectively unqualified (or unmodulated) assertions.

At the end of Chapter 7, I mentioned the notion of accessibil­ity between possible worlds. I said that speakers must necessarily refer to the world that they are describing from the viewpoint of