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Austin on Performatives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Max Black
Affiliation:
Cornell University

Extract

The late John Austin's William James Lectures1 might well have borne the subtitle ‘In Pursuit of a Vanishing Distinction’. Although the chase is remorseless, glimpses of the quarry become increasingly equivocal and the hunter is left empty-handed at last. It is hard to know what has gone awry. Has the wrong game been pursued—and in the wrong direction?

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1963

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References

page 217 note 1 Austin, J. L., How to do things with Words, edited by Urmson, J. O.. Oxford University Press, 1962, pp. vii, 166.Google Scholar

page 217 note 2 It is worth recalling Wittgenstein's remark about ‘the multiplicity of the tools I in language’: ‘But how many kinds of sentence are there? Say assertion, question and command ?—There are countless kinds: countless kinds of use of what we call “symbols”, “words”, “sentences”.’ (Philosophical Investigations, section 23.) The long list of examples of linguistic activities given in the same section should be consulted.Google Scholar

page 217 note 3 Originally part of a symposium in Aristotelian Society Proceedings, supp. vol. xx (1946),Google Scholar reprinted in Austin, J. L., Philosophical Papers (Oxford, 1961).Google Scholar

page 217 note 4 ‘To suppose that “I know” is a descriptive phrase, is only one example of the descriptive fallacy, so common in philosophy. Even if some language is now purely descriptive, language was not in origin so, and much of it is still not so’ (Other Minds, p. 174). See also the brief reference to the fallacy at p. 3 of the lectures, where the label ‘descriptive’ is now criticised and rejected.Google Scholar

page 218 note 1 By ‘utterance’ Austin usually means a sentence or, occasionally, an expression, together with the circumstances of some specified use of the words (cf. p. 5 for examples, so p. 6 and especially f.n. 2 on that page). Statements, i.e. sentences used to make a truth-claim, are a subclass of ‘utterances’.Google Scholar

page 218 note 2 Lemmon, E. J., ‘On Sentences Verifiable by their Use’, Analysis, vol. 22, no. 4 (03 1962), pp. 8689.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 218 note 3 Lemmon, , op. cit., p. 89.Google Scholar

page 218 note 4 Lemmon, , op. cit., p. 88.Google Scholar

page 218 note 5 The label is introduced at p. 6.

page 219 note 1 This is the closest that Austin comes to giving a formal definition. Cf. conditions A. and B. on p. 5, where almost exactly the same language is used.

page 219 note 2 ‘Constative’ is Austin's useful label for an utterance having truth-value (cf.p. 3).Google Scholar

page 222 note 1 See, for instance, pp. 19, 20, 25, 31, 36, 69, 80, 84, 102, 103, 104, 106, 108, 120, 121, 127.

page 223 note 1 Cf. Austin's interesting discussion of ‘implies’ at pp. 50-52.Google Scholar

page 223 note 2 ‘I shall refer to the doctrine of the different types of function of language here in question as the doctrine of “illocutionary forces” ’ (p. 99).Google Scholar