Performative utterance
A performative utterance is a type of linguistic expression in which the act of uttering the words constitutes the performance of the denoted action, such as declaring "I do" during a marriage ceremony to effect the union or stating "I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth" to christen the vessel..pdf)[1] The concept originated with British philosopher J. L. Austin, who introduced it in his 1961 paper "Performative Utterances" and elaborated it in the 1962 posthumous publication How to Do Things with Words, based on 1955 Harvard lectures challenging the traditional view of language as primarily descriptive or constative statements evaluable for truth or falsity..pdf)[2] Austin contrasted performatives with constatives but later critiqued this binary, arguing that all utterances involve performative dimensions through locutionary acts (the literal meaning), illocutionary acts (the force or intended action, like promising or warning), and perlocutionary acts (the effects on the audience, such as persuasion or alarming).[1] Central to performative success are felicity conditions, sets of prerequisites ensuring the utterance "comes off" as intended, including the speaker's authority, adherence to conventional procedures, sincerity of intent, and essential commitment to the act's obligations.[3][4] Violations, such as a layperson attempting to pronounce a verdict or insincere vows, render the utterance infelicitous or void, highlighting language's dependence on social context and conventions rather than isolated semantics.[5] Austin's framework laid the groundwork for speech act theory, influencing fields from linguistics to legal theory by revealing how words enact social realities, though it faced refinement for overlooking indirect performatives (e.g., "Can you pass the salt?" as a request) and cultural variations in conventions.[6] John Searle extended Austin's ideas in his 1969 book Speech Acts, classifying illocutionary acts into categories like assertives (committing to truth, e.g., stating), directives (attempting to get action, e.g., ordering), commissives (committing the speaker, e.g., vowing), expressives (expressing attitudes, e.g., thanking), and declarations (bringing states of affairs into existence, e.g., declaring war), while formalizing felicity conditions into propositional content, preparatory assumptions, sincerity, and essential rules.[3][6] This taxonomy emphasized rules governing force over mere conventions, enabling analysis of utterance meaning through intentionality and context, though debates persist on whether all performatives reduce to declarations or if perlocutionary effects inherently involve causation beyond words alone.[4]Historical Origins
J.L. Austin's Introduction and Definition
J.L. Austin introduced the concept of performative utterances during his William James Lectures at Harvard University from November to December 1955, with the ideas originating from his earlier Oxford lectures in the 1940s and 1950s critiquing ideal-language philosophy's focus on verifiable propositions.[7] These Harvard lectures were edited posthumously—following Austin's death on February 8, 1960—and published as How to Do Things with Words by the Clarendon Press in 1962, establishing the framework for speech act theory within ordinary language philosophy.[8] Austin's analysis stemmed from observations that traditional philosophy overemphasized descriptive statements while neglecting the active, conventional roles of language in everyday use, such as legal, ritualistic, or social contexts.[7] Austin defined a performative utterance as one in which the act of uttering the sentence, under appropriate circumstances, constitutes the performance of the specified action, rather than merely describing or reporting it.[7] Unlike constative utterances, which assert facts and are assessable for truth or falsity (e.g., "France is hexagonal"), performatives achieve their effect through the utterance itself, invoking social conventions or institutions to bring about changes like commitments or statuses.[8] He emphasized that performatives are not pseudo-statements or disguised descriptions but genuine linguistic actions, often verifiable not by truth-value but by their success in execution, which depends on contextual felicity rather than empirical correspondence.[7] Key characteristics include the presence of explicit performative verbs (e.g., "declare," "promise," "bet") that signal the act, though Austin noted many performatives operate implicitly without such verbs.[8] Original examples illustrate this: the marriage formula "I do" (as in "I do take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife"), the ship-naming "I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth," bequeathing "I give and bequeath my watch to my brother," or betting "I bet you five pounds it will rain this afternoon."[8] These utterances perform verdictive, exercitive, or commitment-creating acts, reliant on authority, sincerity, and conventional procedures for efficacy, distinguishing them from mere exclamations or questions.[7]Context in Ordinary Language Philosophy
Ordinary language philosophy, emerging prominently at Oxford University during the mid-20th century, advanced a method of philosophical inquiry that prioritized the careful analysis of everyday linguistic usage to dissolve conceptual confusions, eschewing abstract theorizing or artificial formal languages in favor of the nuances embedded in ordinary speech.[9] J.L. Austin, who held the position of White's Professor of Moral Philosophy from 1952 until his death in 1960, exemplified this approach by developing the notion of performative utterances, which illustrated language's capacity not merely to describe but to enact actions within social conventions.[10] This concept countered the dominant philosophical tendency to classify all sentences as constative—descriptive assertions evaluable as true or false—exposing what Austin termed the "descriptive fallacy," wherein the performative force of utterances is overlooked.[9] Austin introduced performative utterances in his 1956 essay "Performative Utterances," positing that expressions such as "I promise to repay the loan" or "I name this ship Queen Elizabeth" constitute the very action they denote, succeeding or failing based on adherence to contextual procedures rather than propositional truth.[10] He expanded this framework in the William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955 and published posthumously as How to Do Things with Words in 1962, where he analyzed speech acts into locutionary (the literal meaning), illocutionary (the intended force, such as warning or asserting), and perlocutionary (the consequential effects) components.[6] In the ordinary language tradition, these distinctions arose from scrutinizing commonplace examples, revealing that philosophical clarity demands sensitivity to felicity conditions—criteria like the speaker's authority, sincerity, and situational appropriateness—that govern performative efficacy in routine practices.[9] This emphasis on performatives reinforced ordinary language philosophy's commitment to linguistic phenomenology, as articulated in Austin's earlier "A Plea for Excuses" (1956), by demonstrating how excuses and qualifications in everyday discourse uncover hidden distinctions in meaning and action.[10] Unlike idealist or positivist views that abstracted language from use, Austin's analysis grounded performatives in empirical observation of social rituals, such as officiating a marriage or placing a bet, where infelicity (e.g., misfiring due to unauthorized utterance) parallels breakdowns in ordinary conduct.[6] Ultimately, performative utterances served as a tool within Oxford's collaborative linguistic scrutiny—often conducted in informal "Saturday morning" sessions—to affirm that philosophy progresses by refining ordinary terms against their practical deployments, thereby illuminating the causal interplay between words and institutional realities.[9]Core Theoretical Framework
Distinction from Constative Utterances
J.L. Austin delineated performative utterances from constative ones in his 1962 work How to Do Things with Words, based on lectures delivered in 1955.[9] Constative utterances function to describe or report states of affairs, rendering them amenable to evaluation as true or false based on their correspondence to empirical facts.[11] For instance, the assertion "The moon revolves around the Earth" qualifies as constative, since its validity hinges on verifiable astronomical data rather than the act of stating it.[11] Performative utterances, by contrast, enact the very action they denote through their issuance, eschewing truth-conditional assessment in favor of success or failure under specified contextual conditions.[9] Examples include "I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth," where the utterance performs the naming if conditions like the speaker's authority and ritual setting obtain, or "I promise to repay the loan," which constitutes the promising act itself.[9] Austin identified performatives via operational tests: they resist truth/falsity predicates (e.g., one cannot sensibly ask if "I bet you sixpence" is true), often employ explicit verbs like "declare" or "undertake," and permit insertion of "hereby" to signal the performative force (e.g., "Hereby, I bet").[11] This binary initially served to highlight language's non-descriptive dimensions, challenging the philosophical preoccupation with propositional content.[9] Constatives presuppose a passive reporting role for language, whereas performatives underscore its active, world-altering potential, contingent on felicity conditions such as sincerity, procedural propriety, and shared conventions.[11] Austin noted that performatives could "misfire" (e.g., a layperson attempting to baptize) or be "abused" (e.g., insincere vows), paralleling but distinct from constative errors like factual inaccuracy.[9] Though Austin later critiqued the distinction's sharpness—observing that constatives embed performative elements (e.g., asserting implies claiming authority)—it remains foundational for isolating utterances where saying equals doing.[9] Empirical scrutiny, such as experimental probes into utterance classification, has tested this divide, revealing context-dependent gradations rather than strict categorization, yet affirming Austin's core insight into illocutionary variance.[12]Felicity Conditions and Infelicities
Felicity conditions constitute the necessary prerequisites for a performative utterance to succeed in effecting its intended illocutionary act, as delineated by J.L. Austin in his 1962 work How to Do Things with Words.[13] Unlike constative statements judged by truth-value, performative utterances are evaluated by whether they "go through" or "miscarry," depending on adherence to these conditions, which encompass procedural conventions, contextual appropriateness, and speaker sincerity.[13] Austin emphasized that violations render the utterance infelicitous, highlighting the causal dependence of performative efficacy on social and psychological realities rather than mere descriptive accuracy.[14] Austin grouped the conditions into three primary classes, often elaborated as follows:- Procedural existence and appropriateness (Class A): An accepted conventional procedure must exist, specifying certain words uttered by qualified persons under suitable circumstances; the actual participants and context must align with those required for invoking the procedure.[13] For instance, a marriage ceremony demands legally recognized officiants and unmarried parties in a proper setting.[14]
- Correct and complete execution (Class B): All participants must perform the procedure accurately, without deviations or omissions that undermine its form.[13] This includes precise recitation of formulas and adherence to ritual steps, as in a valid bet requiring mutual acceptance of terms.[14]
- Sincerity and commitment (Class Γ): Participants must hold the requisite beliefs, feelings, or intentions (e.g., genuine intent to fulfill a promise), and subsequently act in accordance with them; uptake by the audience, recognizing the act's invocation, is also implicit for full effect.[13][14]
Illocutionary Force and Speech Acts
J.L. Austin characterized the illocutionary force of an utterance as the specific act performed in saying something, such as warning, promising, or asserting, which conveys the speaker's intention beyond the mere phonetic and semantic content of the words.[15] This force distinguishes performative utterances, where the saying enacts the action described, from descriptive statements lacking such performative efficacy.[4] For instance, the utterance "I promise to repay the loan" does not merely describe a promise but performs the act of promising, provided contextual conditions are met.[16] Within Austin's framework, speech acts encompass a triad of dimensions: the locutionary act, involving the production of an utterance with sense and reference; the illocutionary act, which imparts the force enabling the utterance to function as a command, question, or declaration; and the perlocutionary act, concerned with the consequential effects on the listener, such as persuasion or intimidation.[17] The illocutionary force is central to performative utterances because it determines whether the speech act succeeds in altering social or institutional realities, as in a judge's verdict or a referee's call.[15] Austin emphasized that this force operates through conventional procedures, rendering the utterance binding only if executed by an authorized speaker in the appropriate circumstances.[16] Austin's analysis revealed that illocutionary force is not confined to explicit performatives prefixed with verbs like "declare" or "betray," but inheres in ordinary language use, challenging the initial dichotomy between performative and constative utterances.[4] He classified illocutionary acts into categories such as exercitives (exercising powers, e.g., ordering), verdictives (delivering judgments, e.g., estimating), commissives (committing the speaker, e.g., promising), behabitives (adopting attitudes, e.g., apologizing), and expositives (clarifying reasons, e.g., arguing), each with distinct forces tied to social conventions.[17] Misapplications of force, such as insincere promises or unauthorized declarations, result in infelicities, underscoring the dependence of successful speech acts on felicity conditions like sincerity and procedural correctness.[15]Key Developments by Major Thinkers
John Searle's Refinements and Taxonomy
John Searle, in his 1969 book Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, advanced J.L. Austin's theory by arguing that the distinction between performative and constative utterances is untenable, as all utterances possess an illocutionary force that can be analyzed through constitutive rules rather than merely success conditions.[13] He posited that speech acts are rule-governed actions, where the illocutionary act consists of propositional content combined with force-indicating elements, such as performative verbs or syntactic indicators like interrogatives for questions.[13] This refinement emphasized that performatives succeed not by describing actions but by constituting them via shared linguistic conventions, addressing Austin's examples like "I promise" by formalizing them as rule-following rather than exceptions to truth-conditional semantics. Searle restructured Austin's felicity conditions into a more systematic set of rules for illocutionary acts: (1) propositional content conditions, specifying the type of proposition fitting the act (e.g., future-oriented for promises); (2) preparatory conditions, presupposing facts like the speaker's authority or the hearer's ability; (3) sincerity conditions, requiring the speaker to have the corresponding psychological state (e.g., belief for assertions, desire for requests); and (4) essential conditions, defining the act's success as the speaker undertaking the commitment or obligation.[13] These rules apply uniformly to all illocutionary acts, enabling analysis of infelicities as violations (e.g., insincerity or misuse of authority), and distinguished the essential rule from Austin's broader felicity framework by tying it directly to the act's constitutive purpose.[18] Unlike Austin's ad hoc conditions, Searle's approach allowed for indirect speech acts, where literal meaning conveys non-literal force (e.g., "Can you pass the salt?" as a request), grounded in conversational maxims and mutual knowledge.[13] In developing a taxonomy of illocutionary acts, Searle classified them into five basic categories based on their illocutionary point—the primary purpose or direction of fit between words and world: assertives (or representatives), which commit the speaker to the proposition's truth and fit the world to words (e.g., stating, describing); directives, which attempt to get the hearer to act, fitting words to the world (e.g., requesting, ordering); commissives, binding the speaker to future action with world-to-words fit (e.g., promising, vowing); expressives, presupposing the proposition's truth while expressing a psychological state (e.g., thanking, apologizing); and declarations, effecting a change in institutional reality simultaneous with the utterance, with bidirectional fit (e.g., declaring war, pronouncing married).[19] This classification, elaborated in his 1976 paper and 1979 collection Expression and Meaning, prioritized the essential condition and sincerity condition for differentiation, contrasting Austin's looser five expository categories (e.g., verdictives, exercitives) by deriving types from shared rule structures rather than etymological or functional overlaps.[20] Searle noted that declarations require extra-linguistic institutions for efficacy, distinguishing them from other acts reliant primarily on linguistic rules.[19]| Category | Illocutionary Point | Direction of Fit | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assertives | Represent facts | Words to world | State, describe, report |
| Directives | Get hearer to act | World to words | Request, command, suggest |
| Commissives | Commit speaker to act | World to words | Promise, vow, pledge |
| Expressives | Express psychological state | Presupposition of truth | Thank, apologize, congratulate |
| Declarations | Change reality by utterance | Bidirectional | Declare, appoint, resign |