# Magic Words and Performative Utterances

Usually we use words to communicate, sharing an idea from my head to yours or from yours to mine. There's a neat linguistics concept called "speech acts" and in particular "performative utterances" where words aren't just communication, they're actions in their own right.

There's a particular application of the performative utterance to meetup organizing, but I'm going to take a roundabout way of getting there.

I.
--

> "What's the magic word?" 
> 
> "Please."
> 
> \- Me and my mother, probably.

Some magic words are etiquette. Others are particular bids for attention. There's a lot of etiquette that can feel like it's just adding extra syllables onto what you were going to say anyway. Some people argue these extra syllables are wasted breath, leading them to adopt such things as Crocker's Rules. I generally think such magic words are useful.

The most common way I use them is making sure both me and the person I'm talking to are on the same page about what conversation we're having right now. "Please" is conversational. It's trying to keep things polite. Interestingly, [court cases have had to rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Please#:~:text=does%20not%20necessarily%20change%20the%20legal%20status%20of%20a%20phrase) on whether "Please" changes the meaning of a phrase. Whether it changes the strict interpretation or not (after a quick skim, the courts seem mixed) it changes how I interpret what the other person is trying to do. 

My own experience suggests our mothers were right. Inserting the right politeness and etiquette phrases is often oil in the machine of conversation, keeping things moving smoothly. One theory I have is that it's at least a little bit of evidence I am trying to help, to keep things friendly or at least professional. If that drops, then unpleasant conversation can become hostile very fast. Remove the oil at your social peril.

Other times the 'magic word' works because I'm on some kind of autopilot, and that particular phrase brought me out of it with a particular point. The most abrupt case is supervising a bunch of pre-teens, paying attention to one kid who's lagging behind a bit, daydreaming a little about what lunch is going to be like, and then from the group further ahead you hear the word "fire." Suddenly they have your attention!

Or you're doing a user interview, taking notes as you go along, mostly nodding and letting them talk, and you hear them say something's "confusing." That will get more attention that just "odd" or "unusual" and for good reason. You're talking to a service agent and say you "would like to make a complaint." Sometimes that gets you on a different conversation path than just complaining at them.

Not all examples of this are negative. I make regular use of "something I appreciate about you is ____." Appreciation is a bit of a magic word, if a less well known example than please and one with a clearer meaning. 

Sometimes this looks a bit like [Guessing the Teacher's Password](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NMoLJuDJEms7Ku9XS/guessing-the-teacher-s-password).

II.
---

In the philosophy of language, some things people say are classified as [performative utterances](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performative_utterance). The canonical example in the English language is marriage; consider the following sequence. 

> "Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?" 
> 
> "I do." 
> 
> "Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?"
> 
> "I do."
> 
> "I now pronounce you husband and wife."

The "I do"s and the "I now pronounce you" aren't normal statements of fact, and they're not questions. Those are actions in their own right. 

I can construct a situation where "I now pronounce you husband and wife" is false, like if a few five-year olds try and marry each other, or if everyone involved is a player in a LARP. Society does not recognize the result as a marriage in that situation. And in modern American society, the government is going to want some paperwork filled out no matter what the pastor said. 

But it's a perfectly reasonable way to use words to say that the marriage happened when the vows were spoken and the priest made the pronouncement at the altar. Most couples measure their wedding anniversary by the date of the vows, not the date they filed their paperwork.[^9z0sfnhte3o]

Marriage isn't the only example of a performative utterance. 

*   "I bet you five bucks the Patriots make it to the super bowl."
*   "I'm naming my car the Land Value Tax, because getting it was a good idea but I can't convince anyone else of that."
*   "You're under arrest."
*   "You're invited to the meetup next week."
*   "I resign from my position at this company."
*   "I hereby bequeath my estate to my nephew."
*   "I promise to bring your book back next week."

Saying these words won't, by themselves, cause the physical world to be different apart from some minor vibrations in the air. As the Terry Pratchett quote goes, show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. Likewise, you cannot put a promise under a microscope or show a resignation in a laboratory setting.[^bak3drsbv3] Sure there's paperwork and props associated with some of these, and maybe some haggling over odds before a bet is accepted. But if you ask a police officer "Am I under arrest right now?" then the next words they speak have more than just the ordinary weight of words. 

III.
----

Magic words can seem like low-power performative utterances. "I'd like to make a complaint" straddles the line between them. It is at once perfectly legible with a reasonable meaning outside special circumstances, where someone might have been trained to escalate to a different department when they hear it and also there are front line customer service representatives for whom it's a kind of performative utterance. Both have their uses.

Both make interesting case studies when looking at how humans use words and pursue truth. A customer can be complaining, and yet something special happens when they say "I have a complaint I would like to file." You ask the police officer if you're under arrest, and you weren't until they said yes. 

And it's sometimes a very useful property to have sentences that are true because they're spoken. 

"You're invited to the meetup next week" is, if I'm the one running the meetup, true because I said it. Likewise its antonym, "you are banned from the meetup I'm running next week."

One can argue why someone was invited or banned. It's possible to construct a confused circumstance, such as where there's two organizers and they're disagreeing with each other. It's possible for an invitation or ban to be false, such as if I tried to ban someone from a Taylor Swift concert despite not being in any way part of the organizing structure of the concert. But in the usual case, it's true because the organizer said so.

"You are banned from this event" is a complete sentence. It is not defamatory since it is true, and truth is (at least in the U.S.) a defense against both libel and slander. (I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, go read [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation#:~:text=Proving%20the%20truth%20of%20an%20allegedly%20defamatory%20statement%20is%20always%20a%20valid%20defence).) It might not be appreciated by the recipient, but delivered in a neutral tone of voice it contains zero vitriol or wasted words so it's at least not extra rude. Adding anything extra, such as anything following the word "because" in that sentence, runs at least a little risk of messing up that efficiency and opening a crack. 

(Which is not to say it is never correct to add a "because" on that sentence. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. I may write more on the pros and cons at a later date.)

[Well-kept gardens die by pacifism](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/well-kept-gardens-die-by-pacifism). I believe ACX meetup organizers should have that particular phrase in their toolbox.

[^9z0sfnhte3o]: Citation needed but come on. 

[^bak3drsbv3]: Given what they pay laboratory assistants I assume they've been trying, and it's proving more elusive than the Higgs Boson.