How can "congratulations" be a description /and/ a message?

May 4, 2008 6:34 AM

I'd never put only "question" here. I don't call my dog "Dog" or write out a check "for money Dollars". When I call 911 and request a firetruck, they don't call me back and speak the words "a firetruck" and hang up. Why is it normal to congratulate someone by saying "congratulations"?

It seems small and superficial to hand someone a description of what we want to do instead of actually doing it. I have a similar problem with the word "thanks" and even the unwieldy phrase "I thank you". It's like we push ourselves into a different reference frame, out of the immediacy of the instant, like wrapping everything in scare-quotes.

While my question is sincere, I know I'm thinking about a social convention too much, as they rarely make sense. Most of what I want to explore is the linguistic effects, antecedents, et c. Do other languages than English have this (as I style it) problem?

How does one congratulate or thank, or similar -- without handing them a noun and asking them to interpret it?

posted by cmiller to writing & language (23 comments total)

It's just shorthand for "I congratulate you" or "I give you my congratulations." Much like your "thank you/I thank you": it's a perfectly OK sentence, shortened. I don't see a problem. Although I'd love it if the 911 operator would actually say "a firetruck" and hang up. Good luck! Best wishes!
posted by goatdog at 6:51 AM on May 4 [5 favorites]

Personally I use 'Mazel tov!'. Sure, it's a callout to astrology, but it works.
Also, see, 'the gods favor you!'.

Then again, I DO call my dog 'dog!' at times, and I had to read your 'question' five times before getting the sense of it.

What's wrong with demanding someone interpret a noun, pray tell?
it's part of the old communication machine. Everything you utter is going to be inferred one way or another.

You sound like a person who doesn't ask someone casually 'how are you'.
I approve of that.
posted by Busithoth at 6:52 AM on May 4

These are called speech acts. The basic definition of a speech act is that it's an utterance that literally does something. Usually that something is abstract. We use them because, in most cases, there's not a particularly precise or clear way to convey these concepts without speech.

Other examples include: "You're under arrest", "I hereby swear to protect the Constitution of the...", "I object!".

Many, many (all?) languages have this concept. Lots of languages don't go the English route of a noun. Although even in English the nounal examples you have are really short for something along the lines of "I offer you my congratulations" or "I extend my thanks". Many languages, however, have conventional forms of these utterances that do not make a lot of sense grammatically--exactly like English.

I don't know how to solve your "problem". I don't know that it is solvable. The fully grammatical phrases for thanking or congratulating somebody come off as stilted and awkward, and so we tend to shorten them to the smallest piece that still conveys the meaning. Essentially, since the word itself accomplishes the act the speaker's intending, what you basically have to go on is "I congratulate you"... you can flower it up, but if you don't use that word, the sentiment won't necessarily be clear.
posted by Netzapper at 7:01 AM on May 4 [9 favorites]

Congratulations are subjective. Here, you might buy someone a drink to congratulate them. Not recommended in Saudi or similar.

cmiller, remind me never to ask you to call me a taxi.
posted by scruss at 7:03 AM on May 4

Yeah, Netzapper, I don't expect to expand the sentiment into a full sentence or anything. My sole complaint is with using any form of the word "congratulate" to actually congratulate someone. It seems like there's a big hole in my language, and I'm trying to plumb it and figure out why. Your "speech acts" link may help.
posted by cmiller at 7:05 AM on May 4

I know a family with a dog named "Dog" (Well, the dog's name translates as "Dog" in Dari, but it's the same idea)
posted by thewalrus at 7:08 AM on May 4

No one interprets your congratulations or thanks as handing them a noun and asking them to interpret it. They are grateful for it.

But, if you want to avoid the most common cliches, there are always alternatives:

Instead of "congratulations":
"I'm really happy for you that you got that promotion!"
"Good for you that you got your degree. That's quite an accomplishment!"
"You have a lot to be proud of in your recent success!"

Instead of "thanks":
"I really appreciate your help."
"It means a lot to me that you came to my party."
"Your gift was fantastic! I can't tell you how much I appreciate it."

Warning: in your efforts to not sound cliche, you could sound insincere instead.
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 7:11 AM on May 4

"Thank you."
posted by Brittanie at 7:13 AM on May 4

Wittgenstein (or arguably Hume) was the first philosopher to remind us that "words" don't mean anything; names are in fact, just place markers in meaning. They exist to show that there is meaning, they don't however, have meaning in of themselves. What meaning is it that they show? They show the meaning of there use; that is to say words mean or share the meaning of the use for which they are generally put to. To be honest it might have been put better here (paragraph 3.3)

Because of this it is very common for one name to mean several things, this happens when we use the same marker to identify different (but possibly related) things. Think of funny being both ‘Ha ha’ funny and funny peculiar.

Almost all acts in Language require some form of interpretation or another ( don't get me started on private languages now

To answer your question more specifically, what you have noticed about frames of reference and so forth is not unique to your experience ( and annoyance) of language not quite meeting up to your expectations of it. In fact you will discover the self same contradiction exists in every language and in every word there has ever been. This is a fundamental question in philosophy of language.
posted by munchbunch at 7:21 AM on May 4 [1 favorite]

Salud! Verdad?
posted by JJ86 at 7:41 AM on May 4

I'm not really sure that I understand this question, but I think you're confusing the NOUN 'congratulation' with the EXCLAMATION 'congratulations'. Here, the term EXCLAMATION refers to a sentence which is unique from a statement, request, or question (it is not "shorthand" as other readers suggest). Hope this helps!
posted by mateuslee at 7:48 AM on May 4

From the point of view of sociolinguistic speech act theory, all acts of speaking are technically "speech acts," actually - but Austin and Searle would call this particular kind of speech act a "performative" utterance. See wikipedia
posted by fourcheesemac at 8:21 AM on May 4 [1 favorite]

It seems small and superficial to hand someone a description of what we want to do instead of actually doing it.

The reference above by Netzapper to speech acts probably makes this plain enough, but the point is that according to widely accepted grammar, you ARE doing it. Just like if I said, "I will answer that question on AskMe," I am performing the act of committing myself to an answer.

From your opening examples, I think what rankles isn't really the category or function of this kind of speech, but its brevity . . . or maybe its vagueness. So "Congratulations on your new face" would help. But saying "I congratulate you on your new face" makes you sound like a tool.
posted by Clyde Mnestra at 8:32 AM on May 4

There are lots of English performatives that work this way. You can say "thanks" to give thanks, "greetings" as a greeting, "cheers" as a cheer, "curses!" as a curse, "[my] condolences" to give condolences, "salutations" as a salutation, and so on.

Some of these sound old-fashioned, or only show up in writing, but some of them are quite common.

As for other languages, I don't have many examples, but Spanish has gracias (what you say to thank someone / what you do when you thank someone) and felicitaciones (what you say to celebrate with someone / what you do when you celebrate with someone).
posted by nebulawindphone at 10:46 AM on May 4

No matter what you do or say in such a situation, what you're really trying to do is convey empathy. The person has accomplished something that is important to them, and you're letting them know that you understand that, even if it isn't necessarily important to you. Simply saying "congratulations" is actually one of the most honest ways to accomplish this, because it gets the sentiment across, and makes no attempt to do anything else.
posted by bingo at 11:07 AM on May 4

Piggyback: what's the origin/purpose of people saying "affirmative" and "negative" in sci-fi films, instead of "yes" and "no"? The first time I ever heard it was on the original "Star Trek." I guess it was supposed to show that Spock was more intelligent than regular people (multiple syllables = intelligence). It reminds me of this questions, because (as far as I know), "affirmative" is (or originally was) a category. "He answered in the affirmative" means he said "yes" or "uh-uh" or "yup"...
posted by grumblebee at 11:17 AM on May 4

IAAL, BNYL (I am a linguist, but not your linguist)

From a morphological standpoint, this is an example of derivation, and this is a specific case of deverbal nominalization. So, there are two types of morphology, inflectional and derivational. Inflectional morphology takes a word and adds a piece of information to it. For example, elephant vs. elephants, in this case +s = plural. The word still means the same thing, but the extra bit (and lack of extra bit) adds something extra to the base meaning.

On the other hand, derivational morphology changes the meaning of a word. That's what you're dealing with when you go from congratulate to congratulations. Now, both of those might look similar and be related, but they are not the same word anymore. Furthermore, -ation is not an entirely predictive suffix, so the derived word can be a bit of a free agent in meaning.

Lots and lots of languages have this kind of morphology. English is by no means unique in this respect.
posted by Alison at 11:23 AM on May 4 [3 favorites]

cmiller, would it be better to say "Permit me to offer my congratulations?"
posted by ikkyu2 at 11:45 AM on May 4

what's the origin/purpose of people saying "affirmative" and "negative" in sci-fi films, instead of "yes" and "no"?

It's military jargon, especially for radio communications, and has spilled over into other fields. Here, for example, the FAA endorses it as a closure for a line of information, although "roger" is probably far more common. A multi-syllable word is good because a simple "yes" or "no" can get buried in squawk or static.

To the original question, I'd say that "congratulations" may sound pro forma to you because it often is. You seem to want your giving them congratulations to have more meaning. The answer is to give them an answer that has some. Think of all those movies where the protagonist finally achieves something, and there's a scene where lots of people are shaking his hands and slapping him on the back, and then he turns to his mentor and the mentor says something that speaks directly to the journey they had together. "I always told you ..." See, there is a sliding scale of expectations. You can choose where you fit on that sliding scale and decide how much of a response you are expected to give.

If you really want your mind pushed out of its reference frame, try thinking about the meaning of "I love you." If love is just a biochemical response ....
posted by dhartung at 2:31 PM on May 4

I'm confused by your examples that serve as the basis for your question.

You've never indicated to someone that you wanted to ask a question by just saying "question"?

You've never called your dog "Dog"? I have called my cat "kitty" or "cat" on many occasions.

When you call a company or a friend, don't you sometimes say, "John, please" or ask for the salt by simply saying "salt, please"?

If you are riding in a car and the light suddenly changes, don't you simply say "red light" if you want to warn them? And so on.

It seems like solitary nouns are so fundamentally pervasive, I don't know how you could interpret it as a problem or even a strange thing. We also say "cheers", "peace", "warning", "attention", "danger", "alert", "surprise", "happy birthday", "merry Christmas"... it seems like it's really really common and not strange at all in English.

Am I just missing something?
posted by kosmonaut at 3:26 PM on May 4

"It is the distant future... We no longer say 'yes.' Instead, we say 'affirmative.'"

As for the original question: to congratulate is to offer praise for an accomplishment. It's not a physical thing, so doing it verbally makes perfect sense, and the conventional way to do it is to say "congratulations."

Your examples are all over the map:

I'd never put only "question" here.

That's because questions have to be more specific to serve any purpose.

I don't call my dog "Dog"

I do. He's the only dog, so it makes sense. If I had a son, I might call him "son". They both have real names too, but I don't have to use them every time.

or write out a check "for money Dollars".

That's because checks have to be more specific to serve any purpose.

When I call 911 and request a firetruck, they don't call me back and speak the words "a firetruck" and hang up.

That's because a fire truck isn't a purely verbal construct. If you called 911 and asked them for thanks, they could just say "thanks." If you asked them for congratulations, they could just say "congratulations." In either case, nothing is on fire and words are all that are required.

I think there is probably a distinction somewhere between words that are an action ("congratulations!") and words that represent an action ("you're under arrest.") But they're both part of the language.
posted by mmoncur at 10:37 PM on May 4

OP here:

Thanks all. I admit my examples are terrible. I should have waited to think of better ones. Sorry.

I was (and still am) perplexed by the fact that the word "thanks" is a thanking. "Greetings" is a greeting. "Congratulations" congratulates. "Curses!" is a curse.

I'm happy with self-reference and games with levels of meanings, but this weekend I was startled to discover that I lack the vocabulary to elucidate some of the most important sentiments I want to convey. When it came time for me to write what I wanted, it looked like an old comedy routine wherein the participants describe their line's role in lieu of saying the line. "Greeting!" "Reciprocal greeting!" "Idle question?" "Humorous response." "Chuckle. Related double entendre." "Hearty guffaw! Modest addendum." "Congratulation." "Thanks." "Wry comment."

Anyway, I'm happy to know some more, but having a name to ascribe to the phenomenon doesn't get me any closer to satisfaction with the state of it. It's probably just one of those weird things I have to shrug about and ignore.
posted by cmiller at 1:36 PM on May 5

You can thank somebody without saying "thanks", you can congratulate without saying "congratulations", and you can greet without saying "greetings" (in fact, we normally do).

However, every time you deviate from the common constructs, you run the risk of people not knowing what the hell you're talking about. For instance, I sometimes thank people by saying, "Much obliged." This works great in Dixie, but only okay here in Philly.

In English (and many languages), we've decided to adopt the common word for the action itself as the conventional form. This makes sense, since the term itself is probably fairly unambiguous. Keep in mind though that these are social conventions, expedient forms of making sure everybody knows what we're talking about, not inherent features of language.

I can imagine that your letter went something like, "Thank you so much for inviting me to your party. Again, my sincerest congratulations on your graduation." Clear, concise, and too the point. Most English speakers will understand precisely what you mean to convey.

You could also have written, "I enjoyed your party immensely. I can't imagine anyone pulling off a better one this season. I'm so glad to have been there. You should feel proud that you've completed school; a lot of hard work that's going to pay off." Here you express gratitude and sympathetic happiness without using "thanks" or "congratulations". However, I can guarantee that if you sent that same letter to twenty people, at least one of them would say, "How rude. cmiller didn't even thank me for the invitation."
posted by Netzapper at 9:21 AM on May 11