By J. L. Austin
Speech act theory foundational lectures
Subject
Themes
Philosophers had long assumed that every meaningful sentence either describes a state of affairs truly or falsely. A revolutionary challenge to this assumption begins with a simple observation: some utterances that look like statements are not statements at all. When someone says "I do" at a marriage ceremony, "I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth," or "I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow," they are not describing anything. They are performing an action. These "performative" utterances are neither true nor false; they are happy or unhappy, depending on whether certain conditions are met.
Philosophers had long assumed that every meaningful sentence either describes a state of affairs truly or falsely. A revolutionary challenge to this assumption begins with a simple observation: some utterances that look like statements are not statements at all. When someone says "I do" at a…
Published posthumously in 1962, two years after J. L. Austin's death, these William James Lectures delivered at Harvard in 1955 became one of the most influential works in twentieth-century philosophy of language. The lectures were reconstructed from Austin's notes by J. O. Urmson, with the…
The most fundamental insight is that speaking is not merely a means of conveying information but a form of action. When someone says "I promise to be there" or "I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth," they are not describing a pre-existing state of affairs; they are bringing something into being. The…
One of the most productive innovations is the recognition that performative utterances fail not by being false but by being "unhappy." A failed promise is not a lie; it is an infelicity. This framework, the "doctrine of the Infelicities," provides a systematic taxonomy of the ways conventional acts…
One of the most consequential theoretical innovations is the separation of illocutionary force from locutionary meaning. Meaning, understood as sense and reference, tells us what was said; force tells us how it was meant to be taken. The same locutionary content ("It is going to charge") can carry…
Running through the entire analysis is a profound insight about the role of convention in human communication. Speech acts do not succeed or fail in isolation; they depend on shared social practices, accepted procedures, recognised authorities, and mutual understanding. The conditions for felicitous…
One of the most radical conclusions is the reconceptualisation of truth. Rather than treating truth and falsity as simple, objective properties that statements either possess or lack, the analysis reveals them to be a dimension of assessment: "a general dimension of being a right or proper thing to…
For centuries, philosophers assumed that the primary business of any meaningful sentence was to describe a state of affairs, either truly or falsely. Grammarians had long recognised that not all sentences function as statements (questions, commands, and exclamations being obvious exceptions), but…
With the six conditions for felicitous performatives established, concrete examples put the framework to the test. Rule A.1 requires that an accepted conventional procedure exist. But what does "accepted" mean? Saying "I divorce you" in a Christian country where no such divorce procedure is…
The performative/constative distinction faces growing pressure from multiple directions. A warning that the bull is about to charge, if the bull is not charging, seems mistaken or false rather than merely unhappy. Meanwhile, the statement "John is running" connects to "I am stating that John is…
The boundary between performative and descriptive utterances proves impossible to maintain across two critical classes of verbs. Behabitives, concerned with reactions to behaviour and attitudes, yield mixed results under the proposed tests. Pure explicit performatives like "I criticise" and "I bid…
The distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts needs to be made precise. The perlocutionary sense of "doing an action" must be ruled out as irrelevant to what makes an utterance performative, because any perlocutionary effect can be brought about by any utterance whatsoever, including…
The performative/constative distinction, already under sustained pressure, now collapses entirely. Stating is every bit as much an illocutionary act as warning, promising, or pronouncing. "I state that he did not do it" stands on exactly the same level as "I argue that he did not do it" or "I bet…
By J. L. Austin
Subject
Themes
Philosophers had long assumed that every meaningful sentence either describes a state of affairs truly or falsely. A revolutionary challenge to this assumption begins with a simple observation: some utterances that look like statements are not statements at all. When someone says "I do" at a marriage ceremony, "I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth," or "I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow," they are not describing anything. They are performing an action. These "performative" utterances are neither true nor false; they are happy or unhappy, depending on whether certain conditions are met.