Blackwell Reference Online

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Searle (1969) defines reference as a ‘speech act’ (see speech acts ) used to isolate or identify an ‘object’ or an entity or a ‘particular’ to the exclusion of other objects about which the speaker is able to say something, ask a question etc. This referential function is particularly badly damaged in psychotic or psychosomatic pathology or in behavioural deviance. In these situations, the only reference initially (and sometimes finally) offered by the family system has, as its family actant , the index patient, as its predicate the set of his/her activities, and as its circumstances the contexts in which these activities occur. One may hypothesize that this polarization on the index patient is connected with a disturbance of family self-referentiality. (See also deixis ; reality; shifters.) j. m. ... log in or subscribe to read full text