Signification, Sherman style

Reading J.L. Austin's speech-act theory got me thinking about Locke again, but ironically, not because of the theory itself. Before reading Austin, I had never encountered the words locutionary, illocutionary, or perlocutionary. After some research, I found that these are "terms Austin made up" (Martin 326). Moreover, I actually had difficulty focusing on the reading because these terms so forcefully brought into my head the song "Substitutiary Locomotion," a Sherman Brothers song from the 1971 Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

Last week I happened to watch the documentary The Boys, which is about aforementioned songwriting duo Robert and Richard Sherman. They are best known for composing notoriously catchy songs and music for Disney films or other musical features, mostly between the early 1960's and late 70's. Often in their songs the Shermans created words to suit the purpose of best conveying their meaning, much as Austin has done in Constatives and Performatives.

Locke insists that "commons use regulates the meaning of words pretty well for common conversation; but nobody having an authority to establish the precise signification of words, nor determined to what ideas any one shall annex them, common use is not sufficient to adjust them to Philosophical Discourses" (Locke 819). Complex ideas require complex words.

Sherman Brothers songs are most famous and memorable for doing precisely this. "Substitutiary," for instance, is not a word as propriety would recognize it, but then Locke would have us agree that "propriety is not a sufficient remedy" for uncertain signification. Creativity may be.

Probably the most famous of all Sherman Brothers songs are those from Mary Poppins. For that film, the Shermans invented a word to be used when signification is especially challenging, when a certain idea is difficult to articulate: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is "something to say when you don't know what to say." It's even in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Sherman words - combination of half-words and suffixes, or something entirely new - or even Austin's terms in speech-act theory, approach Locke's concept of signification in an unconventional way. Rather than trying to find existing words to describe an idea, allow your idea to serve words.

Martin, Robert M. Philosophical Conversations. Broadview Press, 2005.