Abstract

This study examines the place occupied by the concepts of "rules" and "rule-following" in contemporary theories of language use and social behavior. The central argument is that although these concepts are basic to the "game model" of human behavior, and therefore make possible the construction of formal models of practical activity, such explanatory models are systematically incapable of accounting for the actual details of language and behavior as they occur in concrete social settings. ;It is argued here that general theories of linguistic behavior must be able to account for actual linguistic performances: that the principal criterion for evaluating the power and scope of theories of natural language use is the extent to which they can account for the phenomena of language as those phenomena appear and are used in actual situations of language use. ;Habermas's theory of communicative action is reviewed, and its shortcomings are identified in line with this criterion. These shortcomings are then traced to Habermas's reliance upon Searle's theory of speech acts as the sine qua non of pragmatic analysis. ;Recent developments in conversation analysis are then reviewed as a possible alternative for filling out the pragmatic level of Habermas's program. It is argued that while conversation analysis is a more robust science than speech act theory, it is also incapable of supporting the theoretical edifice of Habermas's communicative ethics. ;In the final chapter I trace the difficulties of providing Habermas's program with an empirical warrant to his rather peculiar reading of Wittgenstein's remarks on "rules" and "rule-following." I conclude by re-examining those issues in a way that is compatible with a Wittgensteinian approach to the logic of social praxis