Concept
Performative utterance
Overview
In the philosophy of language and speech acts theory, performative utterances are sentences which not only describe a given reality, but also change the social reality they are describing.
In a 1955 lecture series, later published as How to Do Things with Words, J. L. Austin argued against a positivist philosophical claim that the utterances always "describe" or "constate" something and are thus always true or false. After mentioning several examples of sentences which are not so used, and not truth-evaluable (among them nonsensical sentences, interrogatives, directives and "ethical" propositions), he introduces "performative" sentences or illocutionary act as another instance.
In 1971, it was referred to by Johnathan Miller in his discussion on UK immigration with Enoch Powell on the Dick Cavett show.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
It is not difficult, therefore, to distinguish between this kind of speaking and the eloquence which we are now treating of. For the address of philosophers is gentle, and fond of retirement, and not furnished with popular ideas or popular expressions, not fettered by any particular rhythm, but allowed a good deal of liberty. It has in it nothing angry, nothing envious, nothing energetic, nothing marvellous, nothing…
Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4
States what Performative utterance is.
Further, let it be remarked that in brevity--the other requisite of forcible expression which theory points out, and emotion spontaneously fulfils--poetical phraseology similarly differs from ordinary phraseology. Imperfect periods are frequent; elisions are perpetual; and many of the minor words, which would be deemed essential in prose, are dispensed with.
Herbert Spencer, The Philosophy of Style
States what Performative utterance is.
Ants appear to be able to communicate a certain amount of information by means of their antennae. Probably writing itself, which we now regard as merely a way of representing speech, was originally an independent language, as it has remained to this day in China. Writing seems to have consisted originally of pictures, which gradually became conventionalized, coming in time to represent syllables, and finally letters…
Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind
States what Performative utterance is.
Related ideas
- Gilles Deleuze
- Word
- John Searle
- Judith Butler
- Truth value
- Performance
- Postmodernism
- J. L. Austin
- Text (literary theory)
- Social science
- Positivism
- Truth
- Speech act
- Discourse
- Michel Foucault
- Humanities
- Jacques Derrida
- Philosophy of language
- Agency (philosophy)
- Quentin Skinner
- Illocutionary act
- Performativity
- How to Do Things with Words
- Kent Bach
Place in the tradition
Part of Analytic philosophy.