"I would like to thank ..."

That thoroughly ordinary staple of awards ceremonies demonstrates something curious about English -- and probably many other languages too. Namely: 

If you'd like to thank someone, why don't you? 

Um, I just did.

In "I would like to thank...," "would like to" means "I'm doing it even as I speak." But you won't find that meaning of in dictionaries -- at least, not anywhere you can find it, in any recognizable form. I believe this is called an "implicit performative utterance" -- "performative" because the statement actually does what it refers to, and "implicit" because it doesn't do it literally and directly, the way, for instance, "I hereby thank ..." would.

Comments

The question is, do we consider this an inferior use of the language? It seems so common in the awards context that perhaps it is acceptable. I'm not sure where I come down on this issue.

Posted by Jerry Weaver | February 23, 2009 11:19 AM

Sort of like that tic you hear a lot in discussions in academia, "I would argue that..." In the academic context it seems like a rhetorical gesture that puts some distance between the speaker and the argument, with the implicit goal of keeping the argument from getting too heated or personal - nobody actually IS arguing, they're just relating what they would say if they WERE to make the argument.

I'm having a hard time parsing out the reasoning behind the "I would like to thank" utterance, though.

Posted by Chris | February 23, 2009 11:25 AM

Same in German:

Ich möchte mich ... bedanken.

Posted by IreneH | February 23, 2009 4:23 PM