My definition of the term “conjuration” in the context of extending logico-linguistic analysis to the social is the phenomenon of using descriptive phrasing in order to prescribe. That is, descriptive phrasing used descriptively informs the interlocutor that X is true, but descriptive phrasing used prescriptively directs the interlocutor to make X true. For example, imagine that your boss says to you about your upcoming trip to Japan: “You’ll land in Osaka on the 15th, and then you’ll take the train to Kyoto on the 20th.” Is that a description of what you’ll do, a prediction? Before I answer that question, imagine instead that your boss says (again to you): “John will land in Osaka on the 15th, and then he’ll take the train to Kyoto on the 20th.”
The key insight: The former utterance is such that the utterance itself is what makes the utterance true. It’s only in your boss saying to you that you’ll do X that you’ll do X. By contrast, the latter utterance isn’t like that—well as long as John isn’t there to hear it.
So yes, the former utterance is a description of what you’ll do, a prediction, but only under the assumption that your boss has the right kind of power. That is, the former utterance, which uses descriptive phrasing prescriptively, is an incantation, a conjuration. The words conjure up what they describe.
It’s important to stress that the same linguistics forms (e.g., “X will Y”) are used both descriptively and descriptively-prescriptively. The linguistic forms are the same between the typical usage of “John will go to Kyoto on the 15th” (which is informative) and the typical usage of “you will go to Kyoto on the 15th” (which is directive), but the substances are different. It’s also important to stress the linguistic universality: That descriptive-prescriptive ambiguity, which I’ll give more examples of below, is shot through English, Japanese, and every other natural language.
Examples:
- Uttered from father to son when the son is crying: “Boys don’t cry!” (Stop crying!)
- Uttered from mother to daughter: “Men are the breadwinners, and women are the homemakers.” (Become a homemaker.)