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CommunicationTheoryNine:OneFebruary1999Pages:26-57

~CoreyAnton

Beyond the Constitutive-RepresentationalDichotomy: The PhenomenologicalNotion of Intentionality

This paper addresses the constitutive-representational dichotomy presented inJ ohn Stewarts two recent books. First,1review the logic of representation withinthe terms encoding and decoding, and, relying on the ideas of J ohn Dewey, Iexplicate its various theoretical inadequacies. Hence,1add Deweys support toStewarts claim that speech is not a tool-like system of representations, butrather, s primarily constitutive. Second, and more critically, I appeal to severalinterrelated concepts in Deweys writings to show that the representational viewis valid and legitimateif it is taken as a derivative possibility given to speechsconstitutive nature. Third, I unpack developments in the phenomenologicalnotion of intentionality to argue that humansarefundamentally suspended inanetwork of intentional relations. Thus, with the notion of intentionalityde-veloped mainly by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, argue that we can accom-modate for representational accounts while holding fast to speechs primaryconstitutive character. 1 conclude by suggesting that the different intentionalrelations (e.g., constitutive and representational)are nothing less than differentmodes by which we temporalize the temporality we are.

Current Communication ProblematicsIn recent years communication theorists have initiated a radical recon-sideration of the basic concepts of speech, language, and communica-tion. Of central relevance here are John Stewarts Language as Articu-late Contact(1995)and his editedBeyond the Symbol Model (1996). nthese and other works, Stewart argues that the Western tradition prob-lematically subscribestowhat hecalls the symbol model, which roughlyconsists in holding that language is a tool-like system comprisedof dis-crete bits (i.e., symbols) used by preexisting individuals to repre-Copyright 0 1999 International Communication A ssociation

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sent nonlinguistic meanings, thoughts, or things. The symbol modelremains employed in spiteof the fact that representing, according toStewart, cannot account for most everyday interpersonal conversation,the paradigmatic caseof speech.Tocounter this model, Stewart, draw-ing from thinkers such as Heidegger, Gadamer, Bakhtin, and Buber, ar-gues that language is fundamentally constitutive of the human worldand thus, is intricately linkedtowho and how we are.Muchof Stewarts project should be applauded. First, the epistemo-logical dualisms of subject-object and language-thought persist withinmuch contemporary communication theorizing, andso, Stewarts focuson ontology is an important complement. Second, his overall critiquesagainst the atomism present in linguistic and semiotic analysis are pro-vocative and theoretically compelling. That is, Stewart teaches us muchabout the many difficulties that arise when we treat language as a collec-tion of atomistic bits. Moreover, his project supplements the contempo-rary penchant for analysis by recognizing and acknowledging herme-neutical understanding. Finally, Stewarts discussions regarding the dia-logic eventfulnessof speech-that is, the centrality of responsivity-are insightful and provide worthy ground for further research. Mostgenerally, Stewarts postsemiotic philosophy of communication is a re-freshing and stimulating challenge to many traditional postulates.Granting these and many other positive accomplishments, I must ex-press a bitof reservation, specifically regarding the dichotomy issued inStewarts claim that speech reveals or constitutes world rather thanrepresenting it (1986, p. 55). This dichotomy is also printed on theback jacket of Stewarts(1995)work, where Bruce Hyde states, thequestion this book addresses-whether language should be consideredas symbolic or constitutive-is THE central question for communica-tion scholars (italics added). Even more strongly emphasizing this fun-damental dichotomy, Stewart contends that:the same phenomenon cannot be both constitutive and representational or instrumen-tal. Language cannot be coherently treated as simultaneously a world-constituting,characteristicallyhumanway of being, and as a system that is instrumentally employedby already-constitutedhumansto represent aspectsof their worlds and accomplish othergoals. (1995,p. 113; also cf. 1996, pp. 37-41)I wish to challenge this claim by invoking some of the contributions ofAmerican pragmatist John Dewey. Dewey explicitly addressed many ofthese issues over 75years ago, and yet, he does not appear in either ofStewarts recent two texts. Although one of Stewarts (1991)articlesinsightfully invokes Dewey and Bentleys notion of transaction, littleelseof Deweys writings has been broughttobear. As an additional war-rant, Deweys liberal useof the words representation and symbol,

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as well as his suggestion that language is the tool of tools (1925/1988,p. 146), somewhat enlists him-along with Burke, Kristeva, Langer,Cassirer, and Peirce-as a symbol model sympathizer.I do not defend Dewey against this indictment. Instead, I attempt toshow how his position accommodates both the constitutive and the rep-resentational naturesof speech. In fact, this dichotomy, if overly reified,can lead us to deny the critical resources indigenous to speechs office.Therefore, the representational resources within speech, those developedmainly in theoretical assertions, should not be denied nor underassessed.Sothe task at hand is to demonstrate the commensurability of the con-stitutive view and the representational-instrumental view and further, toshow how the latter is legitimate if it is understood as a derivative devel-opment out of the former. Tofortify my position, I draw upon the abun-dant resources in phenomenology, especially Merleau-Ponty andHeidegger, albeit not Rortys Heidegger, to arguethat we need not denyrepresentational views but need only show why and how they are de-rivative.Most generally, I wish to offer a ground upon which Stewarts claimcan be challenged and put into a phenomenological perspective. I firstreview the logic of representation in the terms encoding and decoding,and then, drawing upon Dewey, I elucidate the difficulties and inad-equacies of taking language as primarily a tool-like systemof represen-tations. That is, in basic agreement with Stewarts overall project, I main-tain that an adequate account of the nature of language must beginfrom the recognition that it is first and foremost articulate contact (1995,p. 32).Second, yet more critically, I appeal to several interrelated con-cepts in Deweys writings to show that the representational view is le-gitimateif i t is taken as a derivative possibility given to speechs consti-tutive nature. Third, I unpack the phenomenological notion of inten-tionality and demonstrate how we can accommodate representationalaccounts and yet can maintain that speech is fundamentally constitu-tive. That is, I argue that humans dwell ina network of intentional rela-tions, andsoany phenomenon, evenof reference, always must be under-stood as an object-as-meant. Finally, I conclude by arguing that thedifferent intentional comportments are different modes of temporal-i ty temporalizing itself. Temporality therefore provides the commonground upon which the numerous and various meaning-bearingcom-portments (i.e., intentional threads) can contact (i.e., constitute pro-files of) world.I believe that we must give serious consideration to these importantissues. The question regarding our capacity to speakabout the worldentails not simply an academic investigation into the nature and charac-ter of speech activities, but more primarily, it is an exploration into thevery meaning of world, existence, and the human condition.

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The Encoding-Decoding LogicIn the Western tradition, speech commonly is taken to play an incidentalor ancillary role to the lifeof thought. This assumption rides along inthe contemporary notion of representation and also is implicit in thecommonly used terms encoding and decoding. The logicof representa-tion informs a great numberof contemporary introductory communica-tion textbooks, even if only in their prevalent appropriation of encodingand decoding (cf. Smith, 1995;Weaver, 1996; Wilson, Hantz, &Hanna,1995).Moreover and more importantly, Stewart (1995)forcefully dem-onstrates that this logic pervades a great deal of Western scholarship onlanguage and communication. About the notions of encoding and de-coding, Stewart (1994)writes, these constructs are almost as pervasiveas the symbol model itself; they are consideredby most communicationtheoriststo be primary parts of the communication process (p. 147).Generally, then, contemporary descriptionsof thought and speakingimply that thought is a private psychic activity goingon in the head ofthe speaker, whereas speaking is an employment of arbitrary noises topackage thought into a social code for others consumption. The logicof representation within the symbol model seemsto suggest, first, thatthere is an individuals fundamentally private thought, and second, thatit becomes social only when said aloud (i.e., only when placed into acode that makes it accessible to others). In summary, individuals (1)arebelieved to have thought without actually engaging in speech, (2)aresaid to be in actsof speaking only when words are emitted, and, further-more, (3)are held to encode thought only when sharingit with otherpeople.Highly related to the encoding-decoding logic is the all-too-commonmessage-meaning split. Many introductory communication-theory text-books supporttheclaim that meaning is not in messages but is in people(DeVito,1996, pp. 111-1 14; Weaver, 1996, pp. 167-169; Wilson, Hantz,&Hanna, 1995, pp. 14-16). This trite claim stresses that messagesdonotphysically cause the outcomes often associated with them. Proponentsofthis view, however, do not simply deny message effects. They maintain thatpeople affect themselvesby their interpretationsof messages. Said other-wise, these scholars (exemplified in reader-response theories) suggest thatinterpretations, and not messages per se, ultimately produce any messagesconsequential impact. This position is clear enough, anditwould be foolishtodeny the insight here. There are, though, other communication theorists(exemplified n critical theory and cultural studies) who point to other cases,and sohold firmly to the idea of message effects. These scholars maintainthat messages have effects not independentof people, but rather, indepen-dent of individuals conscious intentions (cf. Hall, 1986).Said otherwise,these thinkers challenge the commonly assumed separation between mes-sages and meanings.

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Deweys Challenge to the Encoding-Decoding LogicI t is hard to deny that much current communication theory developswithin empirical social-scientific paradigms, which predominantly arebased upon individualistic psychological theories. Even those who at-tempt to overcome individualism may stil l assume that individuals inter-act rather than transact (cf. Stewart, 1991).The encoding-decoding logic,therefore, presupposes that thought is social (as opposed to private)only when it is encoded. This, in turn, rests on the presumption thatlanguage is simply an agreed-upon code through which ones privatethought can become accessible to others. Thus, the encoding-decodinglogic belies a prejudice toward a Cartesian view of life. As such, Deweyscritiques of Cartesian, and even Kantian, philosophical traditions (i.e.,of epistemological subjectivism) aptly apply to much current communi-cation theorizing.Dewey (1925/1988) argues that social interaction and institutions areunderstood toocommonly as products of a ready-madespecificphysi-cal or mental endowment by a self-sufficing individual, wherein lan-guage acts as a mechanical go-between to convey observations and ideasthat have prior and independent existence (p. 134).The counterpositionadvanced here isthat language is given as a possibility only toan organ-ism already deeply implicated within-the-world, which means alwaysalready having sociality as a constituent ground; all of our manners ofbeing-in-the-world are irreducibly being-in-the-world-with-others (cf.Heidegger, 1962,pp. 149-153; 1982,p. 278).Sociality, in other words,is a given of the human condition, not a product of human making(Stewart,1995, p. 137).This means that neither language nor even com-munication bestows sociality. Emphasizing his position, Dewey (192Y1988, p. 138) claims, There is a peculiar absurdity in the question ofhow individuals become social, if the question is taken literally. Hence,speech, as with all of the humans intentional powers, operates withinan already situated (i.e., ontological) sociality and from organic dealingswith others in mutual contexts and involvements. It is the failure toacknowledge that the world of inner experience is dependent upon anextension of language which isa social product and operation, Deweyargues, which originally led to the subjectivistic, solipsistic and egotis-tic strain in modern thought (p. 137).Also, it is in this manner thatspeechis thus regarded as a practical convenience but not of fundamental significance. I t con-sists of mere words, sounds, that happen to be associated with perceptions, senti-ments and thoughts which are complete prior to language. L anguage thus expressesthought as a pipe conducts water, and with even less transforming function than is ex-hibited when a wine press expresses thejuiceof grapes. The office of signs in creatingreflection, foresight, and recollection is passed-by. (Dewey, p. 134)

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Unfortunately, the fact that speech constitutes and enables thought andworld can remain uncritically passed over. For these reasons Deweysastute critiques of the traditional philosophical canon, and specificallythe Cartesian legacy, can be brought to bear on the representationallogic within the symbol model.Speech, as a whole, does not represent pregiven thought; it consti-tutes the very possibilitiesof types and modesof thought; it is essentialtothoughts instantiation.Forexample, speech hindersor limits thoughtwhen the failure to come up with the words is the failureto have thedesired thought, or as when something is poorly said, it is poorlythought (Schrag, 1969, p. 176).Even more globally, the syntactical,grammatical, and lexical structure of ones language arguably shapesand constrains the very possibilitiesof thought, andso,what is conceiv-able for a given language community is ineffable if not inexperienceablefor another (Mitchell, 1979;Whorf, 1956).Thus, speech enables as wellas constrains thought: Its constraining is the articulating of that which isconstituted by its very enablement. In practice this implies, as Kwant(1965)notes, that One who wants to exercise thought control mustcontrol its embodiment in speech (p.167).What is commonly referred to as private thought might be describedas oneof speechs contexts. Thought is a speaking that, for the timebeing, is within the context of only to myself. Said otherwise, some-thing one thought but did not say in actuality refers to what one saidonly to oneself, or just as equally, what one did not say to others. Wecould address this phenomenon from a different angle by recognizingMerleau-Pontys(1964)suggestive claim that Expressive operations takeplace between thinking language and speaking thought; not, as wethoughtlessly say, between thought and language (p. 18). Althoughlanguaging is a,vital human practice that always emerges from and issuspended in social transaction, we must be careful not to assume thatwe merely speak to share thought with others, nor, on the other side,that language bestows sociality. Speech is as much for individuals as forothers, and this interdependency was addressed quite well by DeweyscolleagueG.H. Mead, who wrote, A person who is saying somethingis sayingto himself what he saystoothers; otherwise he does not knowwhat he is talking about (1934,p. 147).This means that thought is noless social than speech is thoughtful. Why? Because persons make senseto themselves as they make senseto others: by speech. I speak to sharethought with myself.2Still, if thought is the context of talking only to oneself (i.e., not toothers), someone might critically ask, Why should such an event evenneed to take place? Indubitably, a critic might argue that self-talksuffers from a deep theoretical problem: The person sending the mes-sage and the person receiving the message are the same, so, isnt it un-

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necessary to send the message in the first place? That is, why would thesender-receiver need to go through with i t? These questions simplyreinscribe the representational logic: They overlook the fact that speechis a way of transacting, not simply interacting, with oneself (Stewart,1991). Because speaking does not simply codify pregiven personalthought, self-talk is necessary to thoughts living (i.e., temporal) exist-ence. Said otherwise, the representational logic seems to presuppose thattemporality is irrelevant to thought. I t misses the accomplishing ofthought, the fact that it is stretching itself along, an unfolding and devel-oping over ecstatical temporality. In sum, language does not simply re-present thought; speaking or listening-to myself or to others-accom-plishes thought.Speaking, I maintain, is not necessary simply for socially distributingan individuals preexisting ideas-that is,speech does not encode pregivenpersonal thought. I t enables the living emergence and formation, theconcrete accomplishment,of thought. We should proceed carefully, how-ever. Consider, for example, Stewarts(1996)claim that one approachto describing the unique power of human understanding is by tracinghow such categoriesor distinctions as temporality, spatiality. .. urn theblooming, buzzing confusion we would experience without languageinto something articulate(p. 46-47). I would not want to challengethese claims directly, for language does allow lifes flowof eventfulnessto be turned into the past and the future, that is, turned into ob-jects with meaning (Dewey, 19291988). Indeed, the future and thepast, as meaningful categoriesof human concern, are objects of consid-eration only given the human prowess of language. Yet, human exist-ence is temporality (i.e., finitude, projected and stretching itself along),and, therefore, aporias often abound when we attempt to talk aboutthat which constitutes the possibility of speech (e.g., embodiment ortemporality or spatiality). Why so?Because anyone can always and eas-ily say time or temporality or the body are all simply words, andthus, are only concepts made possible by speechs constitutive power.This isno doubt true. Still, we shouldnot distort phenomena in an at-tempt to save the coherence of our theories. Heidegger (1996),in dis-cussing the relations between discourse and temporality, explicitly voiceshis concern about these difficulties:Tenses, like the other temporal phenomena of language-kinds of action and tem-poral sta ges 4onot originate from the fact that discourse also speaks about tempo-ral processes, namely processes that are encountered in time. Nor does the reason forthis lie in the fact that speaking occurs in psychical time. Discourse is in itself tempo-ral, since all speaking about . . .of . . .or to . . . s grounded in the ecstatic unity oftemporality. (p.320)

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That temporality is a word, or that our inherited language possessestime tenses, these facts should by no means imply that speech consti-tutes that temporality in which it itself is grounded. Speech does consti-tute the possibility for objects to be in-time, while it itself is none-theless also constituted by a deeper, more primordial, temporality (i.e.,thrown and projected finitude). More generally stated, discursive speechisonly possible for an entity that i s a temporal clearing, is only possiblefor an entity that exists. Language is oneof the developed possibilitiesfor that organism who is its temporality in the mode of awaitinglyretaining. Anticipating later arguments, I can simply say that speech isa fundamental manner in which temporality (i.e., human existence)temporalizes itself.It is also here that we can raise some questions about Stewarts project.He continually and, perhaps correctly, emphasizes notions of livinglanguage andof languaging, and suggests that discourse is an eventrather than asystem. That is, he almost continually stresses the eventfuland processual nature of speech accomplishments. Yet, quite surpris-ingly, temporality is not given any extended thematization (1995,1996).Thus, Stewarts assertion that speech is an eventing ultimately remainswithout needed clarification. Questions immediately arise: Does notspeaking need to be rooted in a primordial temporality, if it is to beregarded as primarily an event? That is, dont we needtomake an onto-logical commitment to that which constitutes speech as primarily aneventing? I return to these questions in the final section.In summary so far, I strongly support Stewarts(1995)claim that lan-guage should be viewed first and foremost as constitutive articulate con-tact (p.30).Whereas the encoding-decoding logic assumes a self-suffi-cient independence of personal thought, we maintain that speech, al-though neglected for the sakeof thought, is nonetheless essential to theexistenceof that thought. Speaking from this perspective is an essentialand integral partof thought; it is that which is surpassedsothat thoughtcan come into being (Sartre,1991,pp. 27-31). I have tried, therefore, toshow that the encoding-decoding logic and its underpinning notion ofrepresentation are highly problematic and misleading. Nevertheless, it isstill the case, I now will try to show that discourse can be meaningfullysaid to be about something (cf. Stewart, 1995, p. 244). must demon-strate that representational or instrumental accounts are legitimate ifthey are taken as a way in which the constitutive or intentional natureof speech can develop itself.

Discourse and DeweyIn this section I argue that we accommodate for both the constitutiveand the representational natures of language (for a different account,

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also see Wilson, 1996). show, in Deweys words, that Discourse itselfisboth instrumental and consummatory (1925/1988, p. 144).To ac-complish these goals I first review Deweys distinction between havingor undergoing and knowing, and specifically argue that we mainlyhaveor endure our speaking before we know about it. Second, Isuggest that although speechisprimarily a prethematic and prereflectiveknowing-how, it is nonetheless also that which enables conscious the-matic knowing-about.Discourse, Dewey tell us, bridges the gap between existence and es-sence, and thus, it is language that makes the difference between bruteand [the hulman (1925/1988, p. 134).Human existence, as a whole, isbasically a flux of immediacies, an unhalting flowof eventfulness, andyet, through human logos, which always already assumes cooperativeconcerted actions, this eventfulness can be transcended toward a worldfilled with objects having meaning. Immediacy as such, Dewey writes,is transient to the point of evanescence, and its flux hasto be fixed bysome easily recoverable and recurrent act within control of the organ-ism, like gesture and spoken sounds, before things can be intentionallyutilized (p. 147).Within this stream of moment, discourse fixes theflow, rendering meaningful objects where before there were but bindingand eventful immediacies, and so, speech fundamentally modifies oursubmersive relationship to temporality. Through their communicativepractices, humans are able to transcend otherwise dumb and engross-ing having. Dewey therefore argues that whencommunication exists . ..quali tative immediacies ceaseto be dumbly rapturous, a pos-session that is obsessive and an incorporation that involves submergence: conditionsfound in sensations and passions. They become capable of survey, contemplation andideal or logical elaboration . . . a directly enjoyed thing adds to itself meaning, andenjoyment is thereby idealized. (p. 133)Oneof Deweys many examples, which makes quite obvious his com-mitment to speechs constitutive character, is: Fire burns and the burn-ing is of moment. It enters experience, it isfascinatingtowatch swirlingflames. ..when we name an event, callingit fire, wespeak proleptically;we do not name an immediate event, that i s impossible (italics added,p. 150). Dewey therefore argues that we overcome and deny the eventsby turning our attention toward objects (i.e., events-with-a-meaning).He states, When it is denied that we are consciousof eventsas such it isnot meant that we are not aware of objects.Objects are precisely whatwe are aware of. For objects are events with meaning (p. 240). Thisalso implies that things known can appear as either timeless or asnontemporal, when in fact they are the constituted outcome of life-world engagements.

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Speech, according to Dewey, enables us to know about the worldrather than simply endure its engrossing immediacies. Recall also, though,that Dewey claims, Things are objects to be treated, used, acted uponand with, enjoyed and endured, even more than things to be known.They are things had before they are things cognized (1925/1988,p. 28). This suggests that knowledge about things is only one typeofrelation humans maintain with their world, and it is a derivative oneat that. But how, someone might want to ask, can actsof speaking behad before they are known about? That is, how can speech, as thatwhich enables knowing about undergone experiences, be somethinghad and undergone in its own right?I further address these questions and explain the difference betweenhaving and knowing by turning to Deweys(1922) nsightful distinction

between knowing-how and knowing-about, respectfully:We walk and read aloud, we getoff and on street cars, we dress and undress, anddo athousand useful acts without thinkingof them. Weknow something, namely, howtodothem. . . f we choosetocall [this] knowledge. . .then other things also called knowl-edge, knowledge of and about things, knowledge that things are so, knowledge thatinvolves reflection and conscious appreciation, remainsof a different sott. (pp. 177-178)

This distinction roughly refers to the ability to use or do something, andthe ability to consciously (i.e., reflectively) consider it. In everyday prac-tice, knowing-how means the ability to carry something out, whereasknowing-about is the ability to say something about something. Forexample, someone may know how to juggle, easily managing four ballsin the air at once. Another person may be unable to juggle and yet mayknow a great deal about it (i.e., may be able to speak about it compe-tently). Deweys distinction is especially useful in these cases. Again,however, this ,useful distinction unfortunately offers its own difficulties,the most central of which is that when we consider the act of speakingper se, we might believe that it is merely a knowing-about. We mayforget that speech, even when operating as a knowing-about, is never-theless always already a knowing-how (cf. Thayer, 1997, pp. 67-88).I needto show that discourseis not merely that through which expe-riences endured can be known. It is, in its own right, suffered, enjoyed,and undergone. In Deweyean terms, speaking is had as meaning. Wecommonly do not knowthat we are talking, (i.e., we do not believe thatwe are; we do not attendto that fact). We routinely endure and undergoour speech events without giving them any explicitly reflective consider-ation. Indeed, that we are speaking may not-and often does not-comeinto explicit thematic awareness (cf. Merleau-Ponty,1973,pp. 115-129).Instead, we are simply absorbed in the flowof thought. Said quite other-

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wise, we can, at certain times, reflectively know that a message is dis-tinct from its meaning, and yet, while submersively engrossed inprereflective speech activities, we endureour meanings without know-ing-about our speaking. Dewey (1925/1988) suggests as much when hestates:M odern psychiatry as well as anthropology have demonstrated the enormous role ofsymbolism in human experience. The word symbolism however, is a product of reflec-tion upon direct phenomena, not a description of what happens when socalled symbolsare potent. For the feature which characterizes symbolism is precisely that the thingwhich later reflection calls a symbol is not a symbol, but a direct vehicle, a concreteembodiment, a vital incarnation. (p. 72)

How can we say that something is both a symbol and also not a symbol?His point is that the word symbolism... s a product of reflection. . .[Said otherwise] . .the thing which later reflection calls a symbol is nota symbol. Dewey maintains that in prereflective momentsof speaking,language and its meaning (or the message and its interpretations) areinseparable. That is, in undergoing speech, we do not have both mes-sages and meaning, but rather, the messages are experienced-endured-as meaning. This isdrawn out wonderfully in Madisons (1996) astuteappropriation of Sartre: a word is not what it is and is what it is not(i.e., it isnot what it is, a material thing, but is what it means) (pp.85-86). Thus, our speech and the thoughtsointended are intertwined to thepoint of annulling the duality of speech and sense. So it is that we, ha-bitually and perpetually, forget that we are speaking and instead simplyattend from our speech to what it makes manifest (Anton, 1997).This means, on the one hand, that for the most part speech is not aknowing-about; it is not a symbolizing, a representing, or a signifying.In obliviously looking past and beyond symbols, we exist our speechas thought. On the other hand, sometimes a symbol is a symbol. Acts ofreflection upon speech, acts of object-ifying it, can produce an appar-ent separation or even an independence between speech and its meaning(Anton, 1998b). Ultimately, as Merleau-Ponty suggests, assoonaswedistinguish thought from speaking absolutely we are already in the or-der of reflection (1968, p. 130). Reflection, therefore, issues a bifurca-tion by which both messages and meanings seemto come to presence(or, more accurately, already seem to have been present), the formerapparently representing or referringto the latter.I have triedtoaccount for both constitutive and representational viewsby arguing that the latter are a legitimate derivation outof the former(also see Deetz, 1973). Nevertheless, these issues may still seem inad-equately addressed. In fact, as Stewart (1 95) rightfully argues,

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For notions of reference to be coherent one needs to give some account of whatdoes the referring and what is referred to. W ithout a clarif ication of this transitiverelation between subject and object, the notion of referringitse1f becomes amor-phous. (p. 242)I must concretely account for how speech can be constitutive and yetcan also be said to be about something. To do so, I demonstrate, asK estenbaum (1 77) insightfully observes, that thebasic notion of phenomenological intentionality is at the very heart of Deweys conceptsof interaction, and thus at the very heart of his entire philosophy. . . .What Deweystruggled to make clear on somany occasions was that our conscious, reflective dialecticof self and world is founded upon a pre-reflective, pre-conscious dialectic of self andworld. (p. 50)Hence, to further accomplish this goal, I briefly review the phenomeno-logical literature on intentionality and unpack relevant advances to thephenomena of speech.

The Phenomenological Notionof IntentionalityOutsideof phenomenological inquiry the term i ntenti onal i ty commonlymeans conscious volition or purposive activity. In communication re-search, this term is used mainly to address whether acts of communica-tion, by definition, require an intent to communicate and also whenand to what extent we can know about those intentions (Watzlawick,Beavin,& ackson, 1967; Cappella, 1972; Scott, 1977, Andersen, 1986;Motely, 1986). Some scholars address the fact that speech practices of-ten include multiple intentions, many of which emerge within the un-folding of interaction (Motely, 1986; Stamp 8c K napp, 1990). Othersfocus on the degree to which we are mindful or mindless of suchcognitive activity (Langer, 1989). Others, still,address the complex andnettlesome questions regarding the extent to which, given a pluralisticworld, we can ever know another individuals ultimate intentions(Rommetveit, 1980).M ost broadly, this body of literature seeks answersto why people do or say what they do and at what level of consciousawareness are their intentions.The conception of intentionality within all of these different projectsremains mostly in individualistic or subjectivistic terms (L annamann,1991). This means that intentionality, even operating unconsciously,remains within the sphere of individual consciousness and so is withinthe frame of an individual acting (or not) upon an outside world (M otely,

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1986; Langer, 1989). Stamp and Knapp (1990), in their review of theintentionality literature, note this individualistic orientation in two oftheir three dominant perspectives:of encoder, of decoder, andof interac-tion. They argue that, whereas the first two have received most researchattention and have focused primarily on the individual . . . the thirdperspective, which . . . remains relatively unexplored, focuses on theinteraction perspective (p.282). Their overall support for more inter-active and larger systems of intentionality is unquestionably an im-portant step in the right direction. Goffman (1976),too, provides sug-gestive guidance in his brief discussion of displays. Within phenom-enology, intentionality broadly refers to numerous relations beneath andbelow any individuals thematically purposive activity or our abilitytoknow about it. It generally treats knowing about our individual purpo-sive activity as only an emergent and partial strandof the whole inten-tional network of human existence.The full significanceof intentionality is that thereisnever an indepen-dent world out there to which we might, occasionally, attempt to di-rect ourselves. We are intentional creatures. This means we are alwaysalready in various concrete social relations with the world; never are wein need of first making contact. Madison (1996)well stresses the enor-mous importance of this concept, stating, By means, therefore, of itsnotionof intentionality, phenomenology effectively overcomes the mostfundamental of modern dichotomies, that of mind versus world (p.79). Humans are always already outside themselves, co-caught-up invarious intentional relations and involvements. Said more precisely, thehuman, qua existing, is not a thing inside another thing called the world,but is the continuous eventing, the worlding of that world (cf.Heidegger, 1962, 1985).Thus, the very factof the world-that it is-ispart and parcel of our intentional activities. All of this is drawn out wellby Merleau-Ponty (1962) when he writes, We must not, therefore,wonder whether we really perceive a world, we must instead say: theworld is what we perceive (p. xvi). Humans are maintained in a nexusof numerous and differing intentional threads by which the constitutiverelatedness of being-in-the-world-with-others is experienced and man-aged. Whether we are acting on, or fearing about, or perceiving, or dream-ing about, or conversing about some feature of the world, we are in-tending it, regardless of the particular intentional comportments assumed.This is not an idealism, nor is it a relativism, and i t is not really arealism either. By the notionof intentionality, both idealism and realismare radically undercut. This general spirit is roughly hinted at in Burke,where he writes, If nature gives birth to an animal that can talk then. . .nature can circle back on itself (1961, p. 276),or, as Alan Watts(1966)has suggested playfully, the human is not an independent thing inthe world, but is a special kind of activity ofthe world (cf. pp. 78-97).

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Therefore, the phenomenological notionof intentionality posits the hu-man as a project of the world, meant for a world, which it neitherembraces nor possesses, but toward which it is perpetually directed(Merleau-Ponty, 1962,p. xvii). Given these preliminary statements, andin an attempt to address the diversityof our intentional comportmentsmore adequately, I now review some key developments in the notion ofintentionality.Intentional ComportmentsFor Martin Heidegger, Husserls most famous student, this central dis-covery of phenomenology was left too limited within Husserls work.In review: Husserl, following Brentano, suggested that all conscious-ness is consciousness of something, andsohe took intentionality to bethe fundamental characteristicof all consciousness. Husserlean phenom-enology, therefore, distinguishes between what is simply given and whatis intended-as-given. From this stance, Husserl examined diverse inten-tional acts and their correlative objects. He described this as inten-tional analysis, and maintained that it is an uncovering of . . whatis consciously meant (the object sense) and, correlatively, an explicationof the potential intentional processes themselves (Husserl,1993, p. 46).His main interest was intuiting the essence of given phenomena, and,therefore, through judgmentof both ends of an intentional arc, Husserlsought to explicate various noetic-noematic compositions. Most gener-ally, Husserl wanted to provide the possibilities for a rigorous science.Yet, according to Heidegger, Husserls focus on the individuals eideticlevel left the notion of intentionality to a rather limited confinement.For Heidegger, the intentional threads not only pervade all worldexperince (perceptual, practical, and theoretical), they also are sustainedby an ontologically social being, an entity whose being is always alreadya being-in-the-world-with-others.Although the actual term intentionality hardly occurs inBeing andTime, it received an abundance of thematic explication in Heideggers(recently released) immediately preceding lectures, The History of theConceptof Time(1985)as well as in those given immediately after, TheBasic Problems of Phenomenology(1982)and The Metaphysical F oun-dationsof Logic (1984).This stark difference might be accounted for bysuggesting that Heideggers many inventive neologisms (e.g., using hy-phens in the phrase being-in-the-world and employing the word Da-sein) were fashioned to maintain a strategic distance from Husserlsepistemological and eidetic notionsof intentionality and also toconsis-tently acknowledge the deeply intentional characterof human existence.Thus intentionality, for Heidegger, ismuch richer and more ubiquitousthan logical thinking or theoretical knowledge of essences. Intentional-ity is not simply the character of consciousness, but of all human com-portments. Emphasizing its central importance, Heidegger claims, The

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insight into intentionality does not go far enough to see that grasping thisstructure as the essential structureof Dasein must revolutionize the wholeconceptof the human being (1984, p. 133).Heidegger (1985) states that the term intentionality comes fromintentio, which most broadly means directing-itself-toward (cf. pp.29-1 31).By this definition Heidegger does not mean that an isolatedpresent-at-hand individual is directed to an outer world. Indeed, hispoint is exactly the opposite: There isno inner nonsocial person noran outer world. Rather, the world, in its various profiles, is always al-ready disclosed by and according to multiple and diverse intentionalrelations. For example, our moods, our skillful movements, our useoftools, and our perceptions, all of these display an intentional nature;they are intentional relations by which meaning is made manifest andmanaged (cf. Schrag, 1969).Humans are fundamentally outside them-selves, always already cocomporting toward the world with others, andso, the notion of intentionality is the key to dismantling various ancientand persistent dualisms.Regarding the differences between the various intentional threads,we find that each understands entities according to its own manner ofunderstanding. That is, each intentional vector accomplishes a specificcomprehension, a particular manner of making articulate contact. Thisintentional relatedness implies that any perceived, inso far as it is per-ceived, is an entity i n i ts perceivedness. Clarifying this fundamental point,Heidegger states:The expression the perceived as such now refers, (not to the perceived entity in itselfbut), to this entity in the way and manner of its being-perceived.. . .We thus have aninherent affinity between the way something is intended, the intentio,and the intenturn,whereby the intentum, the intended, is to be understood in the sense just developed, notthe perceived as anentity, but the entity in the how of its being-perceived, the intentumin the how of itsbeing-intended. (1985,pp. 40-45)For example, when we consider some object in the room, perhaps achair, we are not interested in the object i t~el f ,~ut in the object in thehow of its intendedness. Said otherwise, we are interested in how thechair discloses itself through and by the different ways we can meaning-fully make contact with it (eg., sittingon it, calculating aboutit, dream-ing about it, drawingit, etc.). That is, when Heidegger (1985)states thatthe perceived as such refers to the intentum in the how of its being-intended, he is basically elucidating the fact that to every intentionalcomportment belongs an understanding of the being of the beingtowhichthis comportment relates (1982, p. 158). Thus each of the variousmanners of intending-of relating to-a given object, discloses the ob-ject according to the understanding-of-being given to that manner of

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intending (e.g., in its being-acted-upon, or in its being-perceived, or inits being-feared, in its being-talked-about, or in its being-judged). Saidstill otherwise, each of these diverse intentional comportments has itsown way of remaining empty or coming to fruition. I shall return at theend of this section to discuss further the differences between, as well asthe intercommunication among, these various modesof understanding.By identifying and explicating numerous intentional fibers outsideofconsciousness, Heidegger (1982, 1985) maintained that intentionalityalways already is operative in everyday, practical comportments and inthe useof tools, as well as in perception (also cf. Leder, 1990) and ourmoods (also cf. Sartre, 1948).Stressing the overall ubiquity of intention-ality, Heidegger goesso far asto suggest that relations between com-portments, between lived experiences, are themselves not complexionsof things but in turn areof an intentional nature. We must thus come tosee that all the relations of life are intrinsically defined by this structure(1985,p. 36).Thus, for Heidegger, Husserls conception of intentional-ity was not a failure, but rather, it was limited to the individuals episte-mological actsof judgment and so inadequately assessed the modesof intentionality pervading everyday existence.Heideggers studies undoubtedly influenced Maurice Merleau-Ponty,who in turn concretely elucidated numerous intentional operations un-derlying motility, movement, and other sensorimotor powers (e.g., per-ception, sexuality, and speech). Yet Merleau-Ponty also was influencedby and sympatheticto Husserls insights regarding theoretical and cog-nitive intentionalities. Of central relevance here is Merleau-Pontys dis-tinction between operative intentionality (also prethetic intentional-ity)and intentionalityof act (also thetic intentionality). He(1962)states, We found beneath the intentionality of acts, or thetic intention-ality, another kind which is the condition of the formers possibility:namely an operative intentionality already at work before any positingor any judgment (p.429). Prethetic intentionality operates in our ev-eryday comportments (ways of moving, manipulating entities, gestur-ing, and speaking) and so produces the natural and antepredicativeunity of the world and of our life (1962,p. xviii). This modeof inten-tionality basically yields what Schrag(1986)has called expressive mean-ing, and generally refers to meaning underneath and prior to the sub-ject-object split, before any positing of an accompanying ego (that is,before message and meaning are torn asunder in reflective analysis).Absorption characterizes the modes and moments of prethetic inten-tionality, and hence, they are well described in Stewarts terms as mind-less everyday coping (1996,p. 33) or as events of play (1985, p.118).As an operative intentionality, speaking continuously hides itself,and disappears as our attention turns toward that which the speakingexpresses. Dewey (1931)suggests as much where he writes,

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Sounds, for example, and marks in printed books are themselves existential things. Butthey operate in thought only as they stand for something else; i f we become absorbed inthem as things, they lose their value for thinking. . . .The concern of thinking is withthings as they carry the mind beyond themselves; they are vehicles not terminal stations.(P. 205)The flesh of mental processes (e.g., an actual act of speaking) is perpetu-ally overlooked as it undergoes focal disappearance (Leder, 1990). na word, speech itself recedes from thematic awareness and becomestransparent as we become absorbed in that to which our attention istherefore directed (also cf. L anger, 1948, pp. 61-62; Polayni, 1962, p. 57).So, along with practical, perceptual, and emotive comportments to-ward the world (e.g., motility and other sensorimotor powers), speechtoo is characterized by operative intentionality. That is, speech is one ofthe bodys indigenous prereflective intentional structures; it is one of ourmain ways of articulating contact with various aspects of the world.Therefore, I have maintained, and in supportive agreement with Stewart(1995, 1996), that first and foremost, speech is constitutive of the hu-man world. Moreover, given these operative communicative practices, Iagree that we, in the large part mindlessly, accomplish this everydaycoping (Stewart, 1995, p. 109). Now, however, I focus on M erleau-Pontys notion of thetic intentionality, or acts of judgment. I want todemonstrate how our speech can be meaningfully about the world(e.g., about other speech practices, or other nonverbal or extraverbalphenomena).Talking About PhenomenaWe must not, as Dewey has already suggested, reduce speech to nothingmore than a practical comportment, to nothing more than a mindlesseveryday coping. It is more than an operative intentionality. As it can bedeveloped into an act of judgment, speech offers statements that displaya theoretical aboutness. Therefore, our prethetic intentional comport-ments, including many diverse modes of speaking, can be subject to ide-alizations and theoretical inquiry through the resources held in language.In fact, this aboutness is an important as well as an indigenous resourceto speech, even though it is fundamentally derivative.M uch like Deweys (1925/1988) observation that by means of com-munication qualitative immediacies cease to be dumbly rapturous. . . .They become capable of survey, contemplation and ideal or logical elabo-ration (p. 133), M erleau-Ponty stressed that humans require this ca-pacity if they are to avoid domination by their situatedness. H e statesboth thatour existence is too tightly held in the world to be able to know itself as such at themoment of its involvement, and that it requires the field of ideality in order to becomeacquainted with and to prevail over its facticity. (1962, p. xv)

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Thus, a Husserlean quest for essences, M erleau-Ponty maintains, canbe existentially pursued if those essences are radically refigured as hori-zons of idealized possibilities emerging from and returning to theantepredicative unity of prethetic intenti~nal i ti es.~To further unpack how speaking furnishes a knowing-about, I mustmore completely address the critical role reflection plays. Claims toknowledge about things (considered beliefs asserted) are based prima-rily upon a reflective relation between some state of affairs and a state-ment about that state of affairs (Heidegger, 1962,pp. 256-273). That is,assertions themselves become objects of reflection as they are comparedto the state of affairs, this explicit regard being maintained so that ve-racity can be assessed (Dewey, 1910/1991).Still, in these reflective mo-ments, what is being assessed is not the relation of a statement to anindependently existing reality. As Merleau-Ponty instructively states,Reflection does not withdraw from the worl d. . . t slackens the inten-tional threads which attach us to the world and thus brings them to ournotice (p. xii i). By a slackening of intentional threads he referstothemoment of reflection, not back toward oneself, but rather, toward theideality of various intentio-intentum correlates. This reflective momentisalso what is at issue in Schrags claim that expressive meaning quali-fied by reflection and distanciation slides into signitive meaning (1986,pp. 53-55). Therefore, actsof judgment do not furnish epistemologi-cal security regarding some independently existing reality. They, asmomentsof signitive meaning, reflectively and thematically appropriatewhat was manifest previously only in our prepredicative (i.e., prethetic)involvements.It is precisely here that we need to reconsider Stewarts claim that,the samephenomenon cannot beboth constitutive and representationalor instrumental (1995,p. 113).A lthough the early Heidegger clearlymaintained that speech is constitutive before, during, and under its rep-resentative capacities, he nevertheless still accounted for possible man-ners of representation. H e argues, in fact, thatan assertion can finally be true, be adequate in propositional content to that aboutwhich the statement is made, only because the being it speaks of is already in some waydisclosed. . The usual argument against adequatio pointsto thesuperfluity, the impos-sibility, of correspondence; but that argument rests on the presumption that the corre-spondence of a statement must have first produced the subject-object relation. (1984,p.127; also see his critical discussion of Rickert in 1985, pp. 32-36)Heideggers notion of ore-having takes an essential importance here(cf.1962,pp. 190-203). To further illustrate this, consider Heideggersdiscussionof making an assertion about a blackboard, such as the boardisblack. He writes,

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What takes place in our completing the performanceof a statement (about the board) snot that we first transport ourselves, as it were, into the soul of the individual whomakes the statements and then put ourselves somehow in relation to the external objectspokenof.We are rather always already comporting ourselves toward the beings aroundus. . . .A first consequence isthat making statements, as a stating about something, isnot at all a primordial relation to beings but is itself only possible on the basis of ouralready-being-among-beings, be this a perceptual or some kind of practical comport-ment. We can say that making statements about X is only possible on the basis of havingto do with X . (1984,p. 126)Assertions, or theoretical statements, do not make entities come intobeing, but rather, we can make assertions only regarding something al-ready disclosed. Heideggers observation here, which is strikingly simi-lar to Deweys claim that we have things before we know aboutthem, is stated elsewhere as, All knowing is only an appropriationand a formof realization of something which is already discovered byother primary comportments (1985,p. 165).Hence, Heidegger funda-mentally maintains a notion of referential intentionality (cf.1984, p.101)to stress that all talk of how some entity should be predicated (alltalk about a given entitys whatness) already rests upon a more pri-mary relation: the thatness of our-being-in-the-world. Said most sim-ply, we only make assertions about phenomena already fore-had in someway.Merleau-Ponty (1962)told us that in reflective acts of judgment wetake the intentional threads themselves as objects for analysis. That is,thetic intentionalities operate by meaningfully relating to thenowslack-ened speech threads. This relation can be clarified even further by con-sidering Heideggers claim that,in reflection. . . . am thematically focused upon the perception and not upon the per-ceived. I canof course make the perception itself the theme such that the perceived, whatthe perception perceives, its object, is itself co-apprehended, but in such a way that I donot li ve directly in the perception, say, of the chair, rather live thematically in the appre-hension of the perceptual act and of what is perceived in it. This way of considering theact and its object i s not a transcendent apprehension of the thing itself. (emphasis added,1985, p. 99)We have discovered that reflection, as the requisite moment for an actofrepresentation, is not a turning back to an independent subject nor anattempt to mirror an independently existing reality. It is an explicit andthematic presencingof the intentional activities themselves. Directly ap-plied to the intentional threads of discourse, this means that reflectiontransforms our prereflective undergoings and so produces themanifestnessof both messages and meanings,of both words and thought.

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That is, the experienceable split between speech and thought is indig-enous to the character of reflection. Said still otherwise, prereflectivelyendured speech events change their manifestness when they become ob-jects for thematic reflection (A nton, 1998b). This further explains why,in reflection, words can appear to represent something else. As M erleau-Ponty suggestively observes, Hence reflection. ..refers to the unreflec-tive fund of experience which it presupposes, upon which it draws, andwhich constitutes for it a kind of original past, a past which never hasbeen a present (1962, p. 242).Tosome extent, then, it is not surprisingthat somany people have taken a representational approach: They mayhave examined speech as it shows itself only in reflection.This brief discussion of talking about should not push the numer-ous and various nonassertive activities of speech from our view.Prereflective and spontaneous practices such as sharing narratives, sing-ing to ourselves, telling jokes, recounting events, and many other speechinvolvements, comprise the bulk of our everyday enco~nters.~t thesetimes, indeed most of the time, we are not engaged in making assertions.In fact, we routinely do not know that we are speaking (that is, we neveronce attend to the fact). Therefore, I again must stress that althoughAsserting isoneof the Daseins intentional comportments(Heidegger,1982, p. 207), most statements in language, even if they have the char-acter of assertion when taken literally, nevertheless also show a differentstructure (ibid., p. 210). In Deweys terms: Speech cannot be reducedto either a knowing-how or a knowing-about. A lthough not limited toacts of judgment, speaking is not without the capacity for judgment. Wecan accommodate both of these moments by recognizing speech as aperformative intentionality (A nton, 1998a). Speech, as a whole, is acomplex unity. I t is predominantly a prereflective social practice, andhence isprimarily undergone mindlessly, but it also maintains a kind oftheoretical sight, and so has a particular manner of developing itselfin reflection. Ultimately, without the practice there would be nothingsaid, and without the sight we would never know what we are talkingabout.The Intentional NexusThe human is suspended in a network of varying intentional threads byand through which being-in-the-world-with-others is maintained andmanaged. Intentionality, I argued, underlies our motility and our skillfulmanipulation of tools (Heidegger, 1962, 1982), our affects and emo-tions (Heidegger, 1995; Sartre, 1948), our sensorimotor powers of per-ceptions and speech (M erleau-Ponty, 1962; Leder, 1990), as well ourcognitive and theoretical activities (Heidegger, 1984; Husserl, 1993). Ofeach and every intentional comportment, we find, in Leders apt terms, akind of mutual incorporation by which our ontological sociality is al-ready in play. M utual incorporation thus refers to the intersubjectivity

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(i.e., the being-with) that is already operative in the various intentionalthreads and that facilitates our codisappearance into a common world.Leder (1990)writes,I come to see the forest not only through my own eyes but as the other sees it . . .wesupplement our embodiment through the Other. . n mutual incorporation, each personscapacities and interpretations find extension through the lived body of the other. . . .Our bodies stand in cotransparency, ecstatically involved with a shared world. The struc-ture of bodily disappearance is modified but fundamentally preserved in this being-with-another. (p. 95)The intersubjectivity of the lived bodys intentional powers thereforeenables us to thematize not only to others but also to thematize from(i.e., with) others. Others can extend or restrict my intentional powers,or both, and socan include aspects of the world to which I otherwisewould be unableto attend. Just as sight allows one to look not only toothers but the ability to look with them, so, too, speech provides othersnot only opportunities to thematizetomy speaking, but also opportuni-ties to attend from my speakingto a common world (Anton, 1997).When we compare seeing something with tastingit, or dreaming aboutit, or imaginingit, or acting on it, oreven speaking about it, we basicallyfind different manners of intendingit. Yet, as already suggested, each ofthese different manners has its own specific way of disclosing or articu-lating contact. That is, there are certain aspects of the world-certainprofiles or ways of experiencing-that are available to one intentionalthread and not to the others. For example, imagine effectively explain-ing the differences between sight and hearing and touch. We undeniablyexperience these differences (i.e., we undergo and endure them), yet wealso seem unable to explain (i.e., to capture in words) their differences.We should recall here Heideggers insight thattoevery intentional com-portment belongs an understanding of the being of the being to whichthis comportment relates (1982, p. 158).The manner and mode ofmaking contact via the different intentional threads can remain, in acertain sense, mysteriously dumb to the others. With regard to thedifferent sensorimotor powers, this means that one can no more hearcolor or see sound than one can touch or smell thought. Most likely, it isthese fundamental differences between the various intentional threadsand their correlates that have left speechs naturalness unrecognized(Anton, 1997).This also implies that there is, figuratively speaking, of course, a worldof sight, a world of sound, a world of dreams, etc., and perhaps, a worldof speech. That is, by using the notion of different worlds, someonemight attempt to address the fact that each intentional thread has itsown manner of understandingly making contact. We can speak, there-

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fore,ofsomething being nonverbal without necessarily making, as Stewart(1995, 1996) suggests, a commitment to two worlds. Undeniably,speech communication is our condition and not in any real way an in-vention occasionally employed (cf. Burke, 1966, p. 15). t is not a toolusedto represent a preexisting and independent world. As the speakinganimal, we naturally speak. Merleau-Ponty (1968) eloquently suggeststhis when he writes, If we were to make completely explicit the archi-tectonics of the human body, its ontological framework, and how it seesitself and hears itself, we would see that all the possibilities of languageare already given in it (p. 155).Thus, speech is just as indigenousto usand our world as are our other senses (i.e., sight, hearing, touch, smell,taste) or as are our emotions, dreams, and imaginations, or even as naturalas our motility and movement.

I should not overstate, however, the limited intercommunication be-tween the intentional threads, nor should I understate the fundamentalimportanceof languageto the human world. The different intentionalcomportments commonlydo interact with each other. In fact, they rou-tinely maintain an interactive harmony. Merleau-Ponty (1962)discussesthis harmony in perception where he states, The senses intercommuni-cate by opening onto the structureof the things. One sees the hardnessand brittlenessof glass, and when, with a tinkling sound, it breaks, thissound is conveyed by the visible glass (p.229; also see Leder, 1990).Consider another example: Holding a fine-tip black pen in my righthand, I begin to underline some sentences in a thick-papered text. I seethe line appear as a trail behind the tip whileI also feel the papers resis-tance resonate throughout the pen shaft. Simultaneously I catch a slightwhiff of fresh ink. Then, I close my eyes and gently pass my fingertipsover the now indented trail. A kind of harmonic agreement obtains acrossthese different manners of intending the line. Thus, to look at some-thing, to touch something, and to say something about it are three dif-ferent mannersof intending, of relatingto, that thing. I t is in this funda-mentally phenomenological sense that words do not denote things butrather intendthem; in other words, words are nothing other thanthingsthemselves as-they-are-meant Madison, 1996, p. 82).Having suggested that the different intentional structures display bothan inner inaccessibility as well as a harmonic intercommunicability, Ifinally must emphasize the primacy, the centrality, of speech. Speech isunquestionably a highly privileged intentional comportment. It is thisfundamental comportment that, as an ecstatic network, allowsusto livenot merely in an environment but in a world (Stewart, 1994, p. 136).Speech is more than a thread; it is a dense bundle of intentional strandsthat are intricately woven into, in-between, and beyond the human ca-pacities for movement, perception, emotion, and cognition. Stated moresimply, we cannot taste the mathematical object2/3, nor can we see the

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spoken word. One does not smell the emotion of anger. A child mayenjoy playing with a strawberry sundae, but no amount of touching itcan articulately contact its taste. A nd, I never go out to listen to a lunareclipse. Nevertheless, I can speak about any or all of these intentionalarcsor their correlates: I can tell of things seen, of foods tasted, of musicheard, of emotions felt, of dreams had, and of things already said. It isthis final fact-that we can speak of fore-had sayings-that most funda-mentally opens up history, and hence, our world. Speech, as a whole, isan intentional nexus whose sinewy tendrils ride along and within, andyet also beyond, the other intentional threads. Practices of speech notonly inform and are informed by the other intentional threads, they alsoecstatically traverse these other strands. In sum and in general, of eachand any intentional thread or its correlate, speech always can speak in alanguage it already understands.Speech: Temporality Temporalizing ItselfWell over 75 years ago, Dewey addressed how speech modifies ourrelationship to temporality. H e stated that, W hen communication oc-curs. . . .Events turn into objects, things with a meaning (1925/1988,p. 132). Stressing that speech not only transcends the eventfulness ofnatural ends, but is also a natural end in its own right, Dewey concludedthat communication:is uniquely instrumental and uniquely final. I t is instrumental as liberating us from theotherwise overwhelming pressure of events and enabling us to live in a world of thingsthat have meaning. I t is final as a sharing in the objects and arts precious to a cornmu-nity, a sharing whereby meanings are enhanced, deepened and solidified in the senseofcommunion. . . .Here, as in somany other things, the great evil lies in separating instru-mental and final functions. ( 19291988, p. 159)In this spirit, I maintained that speech, rather than placing preexistingpersonal thought into a code that makes it accessible to others, fun-damentally accomplishes thought and mental life. Thought, as intendedby speech, emerges from and is accomplished in a worldly context ofsocial interactions and involvements. In a word, speaking allows hu-mans to transcend otherwise engrossing experiences and enables themto accumulate theoretical knowledge. Speech, however, is also morethan the means by which endured experiences can be abstractly known.M ost of the time acts of speaking are simply experienced and under-gone; they are, as Dewey observed, routinely had or endured before,and even instead of, reflectively known-about (cf. Dewey, 1925/1988,

This point could be made in Heideggerian terminology: We must notcollapse the distinction nor the relation between the apophantical asand the hermeneutical as. The latter latently holds the former, and

pp. 365-392).

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thus the former isa derivative development out of the latter (cf. Heidegger,1962, pp.403415).What we talk about, refer to, or symbolize, is neverindependent of us, nor do our theoretical assertions first bring aboutour relations to beings. We always already have had something to dowith anything we make meaningful assertions about. This means thatspeech can represent, can be about, the world, in the senseof reflectivelytalking about what is already disclosed by other intentional threads.6Hence, although it is quite clear that speech is first and foremost consti-tutiveof the human world, this should not lead us to deny that, withinthis phenomenological sense, sometimes, in some situations, some wordsmay be used by some peopleto refer to some things (Stewart, 1983, p.180).Lastly, I address Stewarts suggestion that, When Heidegger claimslanguage is the paradigmatic siteof everyday coping and self-interpre-tation, he means that Dasein accomplishes these projects in events ofspeech communicating (1995, p. 110).We must be careful here. First, Ialready stressed that speech not only penetrates, but is penetrated by,various other intentional threads (e.g., motility, perception, affect). Sec-ond, and perhaps more importantly, although language is the house ofBeing, temporality is the foundation for that house (cf. Heidegger, 1977,pp. 217-265). Said otherwise, Heideggers notionsof understandingand logos are deeply misconstrued if we fail to address how they arerooted in and inseparable from temporality. Hence, we should not denyStewarts claim, but should address the specifically temporal characterof speechs constitutive power. Heidegger ( 1982)offers a suggestive leadwhen he claims,The complete constitution of the logos includes from the very beginning word, significa-tion, thinking, that which isthought, that which i s. . . . t could be that starting with thelogos as verbal sequence leads directly to the misinterpretation of the remaining con-stituents of logos. (p .206)

Language is being-in-the-world-with-others, andso, its differentmo-dalities and embodiments, as Dewey and Heidegger have maintained,are fundamentally modulations or temporalizations of our temporality(cf. Anton, 1998a). Language, like us, is; it exists.Speech, I suggested earlier, cannot constitute the temporality in whichit itself is grounded. This means that understanding is not simply, asDreyfus (1991) elucidates in his astute analysis of only Division I ofBeing and Time, a product of acculturation into a set of backgroundpractices (e.g., ones cultural language practices). Rather, we can learn(i.e., nonthematically take up) these practices and can fall into both lan-guage and history only because we are the already temporally clearedbeing. Heidegger states,

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Temporality is the condition of the possibilityof the constitution of the Daseins being.However, to this constitution there belongs understanding of being, for the Dasein, asexistent, comports itself toward beings which are not Daseins and beings which are.Accordingly, temporalitymust also be the condition of possibilityof the understandingof being that belongs to Dasein. (1982, p. 274)Said otherwise, we have the kinds of understanding that we do becausewe are our temporality, not simply because we speak language. Ourways of understanding depend upon our abil ity to project ourselves aheadof ourselves, to call back to ourselves f rom the future, and so, only be-ings who are their time would have meaningful use for discursively spo-ken language (cf. Heidegger, 1992). Heidegger (1982), n fact, suggeststhat:Dasein must be called originally and fitly the temporal entity as such. It now becomesclear why we do not call a being like a stone temporal, even though itmoves or is at restin time. Itsbeing isnot determined by temporality. T he Dasein, however, is not merelynor primarily intratemporal, occurring and extant in a world, but is intrinsicall y tempo-ral in an original, fundamental way. (p. 271)Thus, our speech activities do not so much constitute temporality asthey are the mode by which uniquely temporal entities (i.e., humans)can make sense of their projected and thrown finitude. We can say thismore precisely by suggesting that speech is a primary intentional threadby which the uniquely temporal entity (the human) temporalizes itself.To further explore the temporal gathering that operates in speaking,we first must observe that to speak is to speak a language, both of which,speech and language, temporalize with and by the other. Speech [and]language, as a lived-through ecstatical unity, gather time in an interpen-etrating way: A cts of speech are embodiments of our futuralness,whereas the sediments of language reveal us in our pastness. Saidsimply, language is livingly animated and brought to life only in ourconcrete projects of speech (Gusdorf , 1965).Because we are temporal beings, and specifically beings whosetemporalizations can come back to us from the future, we can say thatspeaking is a temporal project. I t is a project that leaps ahead of itself,seeks to fullfill itself, and so, accomplishes itself by coming back to itselffrom its forwardly projected and backwardly stretching leap. Care-fully consider the temporal way a spoken sentence accomplishes mean-ing. As it is actually spoken, a sentences meaning is not additively summedby the linear succession of words; it is not simply built up according tothe sequential progress of one word after the other. Rather, meaning isaccomplished by our ability to run ahead to a certain yet indeterminatepast, apast that will have been (cf . Heidegger, 1992).An act of speech

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is an ecstatical stretching-itself-along, meaning that as the speaking un-folds over lived-through time, its meaning is retroactively (i.e., ec-statically) specified in andby the speakings completion. Said otherwise,the specific meaningof what is earlier is articulated and concretized bywhat comes later, and all of this is lived-through in the ecstatical unityofan awaiting-that-retains. Speechis thus partof humans means for futuralprojection. Tospeak isto partake in a meaningful time gathering ges-ticulation that is funded by the institution of language and fundamen-tally accomplishes thought by awaitingly running aheadof itself.The wordsof asentence are, more often than not, already of the past,they are a kind of recollective return to it, a kind of repetition of it (cf.Schrag, 1994,pp. 49-60). They are a gathering that, within the stretch-ing itself along of our speech activities, gathers by wayof repeatability.The words and phrases that comprise a sentence (i.e., the reflectivelyand analytically assessed parts of i t) are born of their institutionallysedimented repeatability. Each part within a reflected-upon utterancedisplays a kindof synchronic intentionality to its previous employmentsand involvements. Again, the once-occurrent gatherings of speech al-ready are funded by the past, a past maintained through the repeatabil-ity we call language. We undeniably speak an ancient tongue evenwhen we fail to notice this. As Holquist points out, For most people,the oldest thing they will ever encounter in their lives is the languagethey speak everyday (1990,p. 147).Our projectsof speech are fundedby the institution of language; language is that past that, as alreadyspo-ken, can be open to present and future appropriations. Speech, as afuturally directed project, accomplishes thought by recollecting the in-stitution of language in an awaiting that retainingly stretches itself along.Second, Heidegger suggests that, If the being of Da-sein is completelygrounded in temporality, temporality must make possible being-in-the-world and thus the transcendence of Da-sein, which in turn supports thebeing together with innerworldy beings that takes care, whether theo-retical or practical (1996,p. 333).Therefore, I need to discuss, even ifonly briefly, the different temporalizations giventoprereflective or ex-pressive meaning andtothematically reflective or signitive meaning.The temporality of expressive speech is characterized by an alreadybegun forgetfulness; here speaking is mindlessly undergone as an im-plicit meaning horizon. I t is a gathering that gathers meaning in terms oflocalized and concrete participations and involvements; its temporalityis diffusely and tacitly spread throughout the unfolding event-horizontoward which we are directed. When we speak, as already outside our-selves and with others, we cocomport an understanding of that aboutwhich we speak. In these experiences the speaking itself isnot themati-cally and explicitly considered, but rather, it is holistically and implicitlyunderstood. As projecting an involvement understandingly, Daseins

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speech embodies a prereflective intentionality: I t is constituted in sucha manner, indeed, that the making-present which arises from this, makespossible the characteristic absorption of concern in its equipmentalworld7 Heidegger,1962,p. 405).Because this prereflective understand-ing is largely tacit, and because it implicitly holds its own not yet andalready begunness, it resists any completeor exhausted formalization(cf. Schrag, 1986).Signitive meaning, on the other hand, gathers in an ecstatically con-strictive manner. Here temporality is analytically punctuated into a cut-off and isolated moment of now and in which an assertion is madeand assessed. Reflectively assessed assertions (i.e., speech efforts at ana-lytical predication) exhibit speechs sense in a thematic and analyticallyexplicit manner (i.e., as language per se). This provides a repeatability ofmeaning that can dwell outside of the absolute once-occurrent contextof the present involvements. Moreover, as Dewey (1925/1988) pointsout with regard to the Greeks, this repeatability of sense may give theillusion that the disclosed aspects of an entity (i.e., reflectively predi-cated properties) are timeless essences rather than the eventual out-comesof concrete life-world engagements (pp.135-136). This is exactlythe point that Merleau-Ponty underscores when he suggests that reflec-tion transforms our prereflectively undergone experience, andsoconsti-tutes a kind of original past, a past which never has been a present(1962,p. 242).Third and finally,I must emphasize that the comingling of speech andlanguage is such that, regardless of what one says, it is, in Bakhtinsterms, always half someone elses. In fact, when Bakhtin writes thatthe word in language is always half someone elses(1981, p. 293),hemeans that intersubjectivity precedes subjectivity. Our utterances arealways already dialogic: We begin our communicative lives by respond-ing to others. That is, my language use develops out of and in responseto common contextual situations and others previous (i.e., past) utter-ances. My capacity to speak therefore emerged out of my responses toothers, thus my speech always began as dialogical. On the other side,my speech, as a mode of being directed toward the unfolding future,anticipates the others reaction; in speaking, I always anticipate somekind of response. This communicative or dialogic flow from the pasttoward the future is nicely summed by Holquist, citing Bakhtin: Thereis neither a first word nor a last word. . . . For nothing is absolutelydead: every meaning will someday have its homecoming festival(1990,p. 39).This additionally implies that speech, as funded by the repeat-ability of language, can be invoked by different conversation partici-pants. Others participate in the joint accomplishment of speechs leap-ing ahead toward meaning because they can be cocomported towardthat about which we speak (i.e., because communication is not a trans-

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mission from the mind of one person to the mindof another). AsHeidegger (1962)suggests,Communication is never anything likea conveyingof experiences, such as opinionsorwishes, from the interior of one subject into the interior of another. Dasein-with is al-ready essentially manifest in a co-state-of-mind and a co-understanding... n talkingDasein expresses itself not because it has, in the first instance, been encapsulated assomething internal over against something outside, but because as Being-in-the-worldit is already outside when it understands.(p.205)Thus, a rigid separation between outer and inner failstograsp the rela-tional and temporal character of human existence. One of the greatstrengths and contributionsof conversation analysis is its attentivenessto the way speaking projects can be stretched along, furthered, and con-tinued, by different participants(cf.Mandelbaum, 1989).Different peoplecan complete, or extend, or redirect the unfolding of our speaking ac-tivities. This is possible and actual because we are temporally directed:Speaking is not a transmission from one mindto another mind, but is aconcernful being-with-others-being-toward that world that is unfoldingthrough and around us.Speech reckons with temporality not only by speaking about it, but,more fundamentally, by way of anticipation and repetition. That is, tospeak is to speak a language discursively, thus, speech makes manifestby stretching itself along and upholding the temporal clearing (Heidegger,1982,pp. 265-268). As it leaps ahead and stretches itself along, speecharticulates the clearing in which the meaning of beings, either practicalor theoretical, is concernfully made manifest.Tospeak istoengage in anecstatical project that awaitingly retains. Ultimately, speech is insepa-rable from the futuralness that we are. We are beings who, in theirfuturalness, can move out toward the past, that past that is not yetand that nevertheless will have been (cf. Heidegger, 1992).Corey Anton (PhD, Purdue University) is an assistant professor at Grand Valley State University inM ichigan. H is areas of primary focus are interpersonal communication theory and phenomenol-ogy. He thanks Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Wil liam K. Rawlins, Bryan Crable, J ohn Stewart, andtwo anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments, criticism, and suggestions, although theauthor is answerable for all arguments offered.

Author

Consider the Chautauqua in Communication Monographs regarding the shortage of corn-munication theories. Responding to C. Bergers earlier response, B. Burleson (1992)astutely main-tains that Our principle problem is not the absence of theories posed by members of our field, butthe absenceof theories about human communication (p.79).Burleson contends that N ot enoughscholars in our field (and other fields) take human communication seriously. This well may be theheart of the difficulty. Even so,Burleson unfortunately denies philosophical thought equal partici-pation in this theory development because, as he says, it cant tell us anything about the empiricalcharacter of human communication (p. 83). Could it be that this denial, then, leads him to pro-

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pose both that scholars have not taken communication seriously and that theory is lacking? Addi-tionally, consider the fact that after suggesting that we need to develop a critical attitude towardcommuni cati on- probl emati zi ng it-and thereby rendering it something tobe accounted for ratherthan taken for granted (p. 81). Burleson simply takes for granted an individualistic (i.e., Carte-sian) point of departure. T his is evidenced in his suggested questions: How is it when I speakwords you understand me? . .How is interaction possible? How isit that humans are able to joinindividual behavior streams to create coordinated activity (p. 82).What needstobe demonstrated,this essay being only one slight example, is that the philosophies of scholars such as Dewey, Mead,Bateson, Bakhtin, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, K want, Thayer, Stewart, and many others, have takencommunication extremely seriously. Not only have these scholars produced a wealth of communi-cation theory, but their theorizing has sought both toaddress the basic character of human commu-nication and to challenge individualistic approaches to communication. In sum, the reason thereareso few communication theories may be just as equally because of our parochial forgetfulnessas our lack of earnestness with regard to the basic importance of human communication.Stewart (1995, p. 16)well argues that the paradigmatic site of language is everyday conversa-tion. I am quite sympathetic to this position, and yet, what of thought? Said otherwise, what ismore paradigmatic: that we talk to each other or that we talk to ourselves? We might ask: To theextent that we are always engaged in some mode of languaging activity, what is the ratio of timespent concretely conversing with others to time spent speaking only to oneself? (cf. Thayer, 1987;Watkins, 1986; and especially, Gass, 1985, On talking to oneself). Thus, although everydaydialogue is the central mode of discourse, and given that all thought is thoroughly dialogical,relationally transactional, there is still an important function of self-talk not to be overlooked.Whatever that would mean! Again, phenomenology studies only phenomena.This notion is further well-stated by Schrag (1986)where he writes: We have encountered therequirement to move beyond expressive meaning soas to provide a posture of critical understand-ing and reflective assessment of the facticity of our involvement. This move beyond expressivemeaning we have named the move to meaning in the mode of signification, attended by a newemphasis on the hermeneutical functioning of the sign as a mediator between the retentionalityand protentionality of historical experience. The mantle of idealities in signitive meaning allows forthe repeatability of meanings that issue from expressive discourse and action and in turn legiti-mates talk of their sameness within the history of communicative praxis (p. 67).Goffmans A lienation from interaction astutely addresses how the inability to become prere-flectively absorbed in certain social and specifically verbal interactions isexperienced as alienation1967, pp. 113-136). Also and more generally, he here explicates the ritual means by which sponta-neous prereflective involvement in conversations can be enabled, and how such failure can bemanaged.A lthough I formally addressed the issue of aboutness, 1 also would like to say something aboutthe ability to take instrumental stances toward speech. Fully addressing this issue would demand amuch larger treatment than space permits, but perhaps a brief phenomenological considerationcould offer some direction as to how instrumentality might be entered. Consider the relationsamong breathing and thought. 1may, in a moment of reflection, decide to attemptto stop the flowof that discourse we commonly call thinking. When I make the attempt, I almost always findmyself-without realizing it-taking recourse to holding my breath. Somehow and wi thout anydirected effort, my attempt to stop thinking first reverts to breath holding. This hints at the funda-mental interrelatedness of speech-thought-breath. M ight it be that we breathe meaning?Or betteryet: Thought is breath made meaningful by a choreographic articulation?In any case, let us further consider the humans relations to its breathing. Surely breathing is nota choice. In many respects breath is constitutive of our lives: We cannot exist without it. Neverthe-less, our breathing is also semiautonomous, meaning that we can occasionally take an instrumentalstance toward it; I find that my breathing, which is intricately related to my very life and possibili-ties for life, can be, somehow, at certain times, not me. Further, i f it can be not me, then 1can take an instrumental stance toward it. For example, if I decide to, I can willfully and con-sciously regulate my own breathing. I may even attempt to calm myself down, releasing physiologi-cal tension by consciously regulating this vital life process. This isnot to say that such control iswi thout limits. Our breathing is only semiautonomous! A nyone who has tried to consciously regu-late his or her breathing has noticed how quickly and persistently forgetfulness creeps in. Forexample, I decide to begin regulating my breathing, slowly counting to seven on the inhale and tonine on the exhale. Suddenly-and after an indeterminant amount of time-I come back to myselfand my previously planned project, realizing that I had been thinking about something else and, inthe process, had failed topersist in my breathing exercise. Said otherwise, soon enough I come back

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to myself, thus first realizing that I had lost myself and had forgotten the task at hand. Somehow Idrift into attending to something else and without any thought about it, my breathing com-menced on its own autonomous accord. Thus, we can instrumentally regulate our breathing, butthis is an accomplishment we could not do constantly. These attempts therefore give usgood phe-nomenological insight into speech, its fundamentally constitutive nature, and the derived and lim-ited ability to instrumentally drive it.We might, moreover, finally consider this: In suggesting that language is constitutive rather thanrepresentational, Stewart argues that, In this view, featuresof human worlds do not first exist andthen get spoken or written of; they come into being in talk. Of course, no individual initiates thispro

beyond constitutive representational

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