Reasonable
In the fourth chapter of English: Meaning and Culture, Wierzbicka tackles reasonable:
Clearly, between Shakespeare's time and our own, a change has occurred in Anglo ways of thinking, and this change has found its reflection in the semantics of the English language. And it is not just a change in the prevailing conception of what is and what is not "reasonable." Rather, it is a change in the basic kit of conceptual tools used for making judgments and evaluating actions and events. The word reasonable with its modern family of interrelated senses is a new tool in the kit.
. . .
As it is used in contemporary English, the word reasonable appears to have several different meanings. Used in at least one of these meanings, reasonable has an opposite, unreasonable, whereas in some others, it has no such opposite. For example, a request can be described as either reasonable or unreasonable; similarly, one can speak of reasonable and unreasonable prices or charges, reasonable and unreasonable expectations, and so on. On the other hand, there is a reasonable guess but not an unreasonable guess. Similarly, the phrase beyond reasonable doubt has no negative counterpart (*beyond unreasonable doubt), and observations, explanations, or hypotheses can be readily described as reasonable but not unreasonable.
What if our reasonable turns out to be very different from the “false friend” in French, raisonnable? What explains the sense of pain that Wierzbicka, an English-speaking Pole, felt when her daughters accused her not being fair? (We will need to see why she found that word to be offensive in a family setting.)
Something like that cultural gap seems to me to drive the confusion and impotence of the nameless lawyer in Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” when the copyist says, as if he came from a different world, “At present I prefer not to be a little reasonable.” Can we be a little reasonable, or just reasonable? Also, is it a matter of preference? Wierzbicka’s discussion gives us some ways to understand why that sentence is baffling to the lawyer—what cultural imperatives it violates. Here’s Wierzbicka’s sense of how the word works:
Every society has certain evaluative words that provide a frame of orientation in daily life and guide people's judgment and behavior. Sometimes speakers are very conscious of some of these guiding words and regard them as a badge of belonging. Some members of other societies, too, may become aware of that society's guiding words and borrow them as tools for describing modes of behavior or thought. Sometimes, however, a guiding word is so ingrained in the thinking of a speech community that it is not perceived as distinctive but, rather, taken for granted like the air that people breathe. Presumably, words of this kind, which the speakers themselves are not conscious of as distinctive, are also less likely to be perceived as such by outsiders.
One striking example of a ubiquitous yet oddly invisible guiding word is the English reasonable.
What does it mean to be reasonable? Can one prefer not to be reasonable. What is the social action involved in not being “a little reasonable.”
Here are some everyday ways we use the word:
reasonably good
reasonably cheap
reasonable rate
reasonable attitude
reasonable caution
reasonable results
reasonable prospects of success
reasonable attendance levels
BUT ALSO these legal-political terms
a reasonable man
beyond a reasonable doubt
What are the meanings we would give it?
Here's Wierzbicka's take:
As it is used in contemporary English, the word reasonable appears to have several different meanings. Used in at least one of these meanings, reasonable has an opposite, unreasonable, whereas in some others, it has no such opposite. For example, a request can be described as either reasonable or unreasonable; similarly, one can speak of reasonable and unreasonable prices or charges, reasonable and unreasonable expectations, and so on. On the other hand, there is a reasonable guess but not an unreasonable guess. Similarly, the phrase beyond reasonable doubt has no negative counterpart ( *beyond unreasonable doubt), and observations, explanations, or hypotheses can be readily described as reasonable but not unreasonable. How can we generalize from these examples to a limited number of identifiable distinct meanings?
Reflecting on the use of the word unreasonable may provide us with a useful starting point: if someone is said to be unreasonable, this seems to imply, first, that this person is not thinking well and, second, that he or she "wants too much."
The phrase “a reasonable man” became enshrined as a benchmark for English legal practice. Legally accepted behavior had as its criterion what could be expected of a “reasonable” person. A juror was assumed to be “reasonable,” and should acquit if there was a “reasonable” doubt of the accused person’s guilt.
Being reasonable means being ordinary, decent, dependable, the rock on which Anglo-American society depended—”the man on the Clapham omnibus,” to quote the British jurist Lord Bowen. This way of being reasonable was to be a dependable person of common sense, who doesn’t put him or herself above others, who thinks about what others think, and who doesn’t “want too much.” One thinks of the sentimentalism of The Lord of the Rings, in which spectacularly lurid evil (i.e. Hitler?) is overcome by the calm decency of “reasonable” hobbits, who would certainly be on the Clapham bus if the route passed through Middle Earth. Being reasonable was at the center of a British mythos of co-operation, concern for others, and additionally, an acquiescence that is somewhat alien to the U.S. mythos. Here’s the implicit standard: “Pay attention to other people and don’t want too much for yourself.”
The concept of `a reasonable man' is democratic, as well as pragmatic: it is linked with the belief that most ordinary people are `reasonable people' and that their thinking is essentially good and trustworthy-not because these ordinary people will always know the truth in some absolute sense, but because in most situations they will be able to think well enough for practical purposes.
. . .
The sense, attributed to Locke, that our knowledge is only probable, not absolute, is fundamental here—people reason about their experience and do pretty well—reasonably well—with everyday life.
But the history before Locke is very interesting. Here’s Wierzbicka’s summary of her analysis rather like what we'd see in the OED entry:
Stage I
The word reasonable is used in the sense of, roughly, "endowed with reason," as in the phrase a reasonable creature.
Stage II
The word reasonable starts to be linked not only with the ability to think but also more specifically with the ability to think well. For example, the sentence cited by the OED (and dated 1636), "Reasonable and judicious readers will not dislike the same digression," appears to refer to readers who "can think well." Locutions like it is reasonable to conclude (as used by Locke 1690) also link the word reasonable with the ability to think well and, in particular, to think well about what happens to one and to draw inferences from this. At that time (seventeenth-eighteenth century), reasonable can be linked not only with thoughts that are hypothetical (assumptions, suppositions, and the like) but also with belief, conviction, certainty, and substantial doubt. Christianity is defended as "reasonable" by those who wholeheartedly embrace it. At the same time, reasonable is seen as "compatible with reason" rather than "required by reason." The claim is that someone who thinks well can think like this, not that they have to think like this. Thus, the ideal of "reason" is felt to be consistent with both conviction and "toleration" (tolerance for other people's convictions) and inconsistent with dogmatism, absolutism, and intolerance (this is the era of the British Enlightenment).
Stage III
The word reasonable continues to imply the ability to think well, but it becomes increasingly associated with an emphasis on the limitations of one's knowledge and on the lack of certainty. Conviction is no longer described as reasonable, and a reasonable doubt (with the emphasis on reasonable) becomes reinterpreted as any reasonable doubt (with the emphasis on any). The semantic component "I don't want to say more" becomes part of the semantic invariant: the ability to think well becomes associated with the concern about not saying more than one has evidence or justification for.
Stage IV
The self-limitation inherent in collocations like it is reasonable to suppose (where reasonable is no longer compatible with conviction) leads to the rise of reasonable as a more general tool of "moderation," as a device for avoiding an "excessive" (unjustified) use of words like much (a lot) and very. As a result, we witness the spread of collocations like a reasonable time and a reasonable amount-clearly distinct in meaning from a reasonable assumption or a reasonable hypothesis.
Stage V
Reasonable as an "anti-much," and "anti-very," device becomes linked, in a particular way, with avoiding "excessive praise": it becomes increasingly used as a device for not saying "very good." At the same time, however, it becomes associated with a willingness to say a qualified "good" even when one cannot say "very good," that is, to be satisfied with less, to be "realistic" and "pragmatic."
Stage VI
The willingness to accept things as "reasonably good" even if they are not "very good" becomes linked in a special way with interpersonal relations and, more specifically, with what one wants from other people. Collocations like a reasonable request and a reasonable deal spread, collocations like reasonable demands decline, and sentences like "Be reasonable!" start to be interpreted as a call for a "reasonable compromise."
Three themes are at work here—the “Lockeian” awareness of how limited our non-professional, everyday knowledge is, the related (she says “Protestant”) dislike of absolutism and intolerance, and a growing ethos of cooperative connection to other people.
Her history of the phrase reasonable doubt as used in jury trials is an interesting example. Does the term seem to put limits on the ability of juries to convict, or to acquit?
Before the jury system was broadened beyond the local gentry, whose judgments and consciences were to be trusted, the standard was to acquit on the basis of any doubt. Jurors were instructed to judge on their conscience, not on the evidence presented. As the conception of the jury broadened to include the less knowledgeable and less privileged, the idea of reasonable doubt was introduced to limit the instruction so that juries would not act on doubts based on ignorance of a situation that the earlier pool of local worthies would have been expected to understand.
Here’s the beginning of her account of this part of the transition.
Given how entrenched the concept has become in English—not only in the legal system and in philosophical discussions but also in popular thinking-it is important to recognize that the meaning of the phrase beyond reasonable doubt has changed by imperceptible stages in the course of the last two centuries.
At the time when the phrase beyond reasonable doubt entered the English language, the word reasonable did not mean exactly the same as it does today. As noted earlier, today reasonable readily combines with verbs and nouns implying an absence of conviction (e.g., it is reasonable to suppose / assume / wonder / fear / speculate / hypothesize, etc.), and older collocations like reasonable conviction sound odd today-precisely because they are not compatible with an absence of conviction, a noncommittal implied today by the word reasonable. But when at the end of the seventeenth century John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury, argued: "The laws of God are reasonable, that is, suitable to our nature and advantageous to our interest" (quoted in Porter 2000, 3), he was clearly indicating conviction, not a lack of conviction-and the sentence sounds odd today.
. . .
Jurors were expected to reason based on the “facts” (another one of our loaded words) and the principles of logic available to reasonable men. She says, “the meaning of the word reasonable has changed. As a result, the meaning of the phrase beyond reasonable doubt has also changed, roughly speaking, from a "belief consistent with reason and sincerely held," to a "supposition consistent with reason and put forward as a logical possibility," but because this phrase was continually used for over two centuries and became entrenched in Anglo/American law as well as in ordinary language, and because the older meaning of reasonable is no longer known to most speakers, the change has, generally speaking, gone unnoticed” .
fair
The word “fair” has a similar history, though it started from aesthetic appreciation and moved toward equity between roughly equal parties, as opposed to justice given from an authority.
The noun, chiefly a day set aside for markets and or celebrations, grows out of the same Indo-European root as the adjectival and adverbial words—dhers, of the gods, thus theology and so on. Consonantal changes led in Latin to festus, and our words feast, festival, and fair.
The three classes of adjectival meanings—beautiful, favorable, and free from blemish (including what we would call unfairness)—can be understood in the light of the Indo-European root. The use Wierzbicka sees as central to what she calls Anglo culture is one she found to be offensive when in her family life her children accused her of being unfair. Here's a rather extensive hint about why (the end of her chapter about the word):
Jeremy Paxman, the author of The English: A Portrait of a People (1999), states that "while the French Revolution invented the Citizen, the English creation is the Game" (p. 194) and "certainly, sport came to occupy a central role in English culture" (p. 196). He also quotes a characteristic comment by the writer Vita Sackville-West (1947) that links the English preoccupation with games and sport with the concept of `fairness':
The English man is seen at his best the moment that another man starts throwing a ball at him. He is then seen to be neither spiteful, nor vindictive, nor mean, nor querulous, nor desirous of taking unfair advantage; he is seen to be law-abiding, and to respect the regulations which he himself generally has made; he takes it for granted that his adversary will respect them likewise; he would be profoundly shocked by any attempt to cheat; his scorn would be as much aroused by any exultation displayed by the victor as by any ill-temper displayed by the loser ... It is all quite simple. One catches, kicks, or hits the ball, or else one misses it; and the same holds for the other chap. It is all taken in good part. (Paxman 1999, 196)
Paxman comments: "What she is talking about is something whose importance cannot be exaggerated. It is the significance to the English of the idea of the Game. The thing is loved for its own sake" (1999, 196).
In a way, sport- especially team sport-provides a perfect model for "fair" interaction because the emphasis is on rules and procedures, which are blind to the individual players' interests and which everyone voluntarily accepts. To quote Fletcher again:
In its pure form, a fair procedure is all that is needed to generate a just result. Systems of perfect procedural justice are illustrated by flipping a coin to resolve a dispute or the venerable method for fairly dividing a piece of cake, namely, letting one person cut and the other choose his preferred slice. These are procedures that do not admit of mistakes; no one can complain about the outcome as unjust. (Fletcher 1996, 81)
Here, the "fairness" of the procedure is that all the participants who want to do something together (share a cake) know in advance what they can do (either cut the cake or choose a slice) and what they can't do (both cut the cake and choose a slice), and they know that if someone both cut the cake and chose a slice, this could be bad for the other participant(s), and the other participant(s) could protest.
The cultural assumptions of "fairness" as outlined here reflect a specific, historically shaped, political and social philosophy. Once this is recognized, it should no longer be surprising that most languages of the world do not have words corresponding to the English words fair, fairness, and unfair (in the relevant, modern sense). The concept of `fairness' is an artifact of modern Anglo culture and one of the key concepts that speakers of Anglo English live with and see as the best basis for social life and interpersonal interaction. In his much-discussed book Trust, Francis Fukuvama (1995, 34) defines culture as "inherited ethical habit." Distinguishing "ideologies," which are conscious, from "cultural habit" and "unwritten moral rules," Fukuyama writes:
The most important habits that make up cultures have little to do with how one eats one's food or combs one's hair but with the ethical codes by which societies regulate behaviour-what the philosopher Nietzsche called a people's "language of good and evil." Ethical systems create moral communities because their shared languages of good and evil give their members a common moral life. (pp. 35-36)
Ethical codes binding large groups of people into "moral communities" are conveyed across generations through particular words-of course, not exclusively through words, but largely through words. The shared use of words like fair and unfair both reflects and transmits the "habit" of thinking in such terms.
Fukuyama links aspects of Anglo-American culture such as practices and principles of voluntary association, cooperativeness, combining for business purposes (p. 273), generalized social trust (p. 281), the primacy of rights, and adherence to democratic political institutions with the development of certain "ethical habits" entrenched in a shared ethical language. I would add that the English words that best epitomize the ethical code in question are the distinctively English and untranslatable words fair and unfair.
Here's her description of what bothered her:
Drawing on my own experience as a Polish immigrant in Australia, I can testify that this concept was often a source of tension in our cross-cultural and bilingual family. Thus, in the past, my daughters, growing up in Australia, used to say to me (in Polish), to nie fair ("that's not fair!"), and I used to reply, in exasperation, that I didn't think in such terms. These bilingual children, who were speaking both English and Polish every day and who were thinking in terms of the English word fair (a key concept of their dominant Anglo Australian culture), knew that there was no Polish word for fair, so they used the English word fair in their Polish sentence. And I, as a bilingual but culturally predominantly Polish person, knew that I found the concept of `fair' both alien and (in a family situation) offensive and hurtful. One of my daughters used to say, with some resentment, "You hate the word fair." (This is a good example of how cultures clash in cross-cultural and bilingual families.)
What, might we think, would make a child's accusation of unfairness offensive to a non-Anglo parent?