J.L. Austin and the 'Performative'

"You are more than entitled not to know what the word ‘performative’ means. It is a new word and an ugly word, and perhaps it does not mean anything very much. But at any rate there is one thing in its favour, it is not a profound word." (Austin 1975:233) 

A term originally coined by ‘ordinary speech philosopher’ J.L Austin in critical response to what he termed ‘The Descriptive Fallacy’ of logical positivism. Contrary to the logical positivist assumption of language as constative, as essentially aimed at the production of true or false statements or descriptions, Austin turned his focus to analyse those peculiar utterances he labeled ‘performative’ that could not be so easily distinguished; those statements that do not simply ‘describe’ or ‘report’, but given the right conditions may ‘perform’ what they say. To say “I promise...”, whether sincere or not, is an act, an act of a particularly linguistic kind; it can be seen not simply to report on the internal world of a subject, but as an act that makes a world, even if only between a single addresser and addressee. A promise, unlike a constative statement in logical positivism, can not (necessarily) be judged true or false with reference to the empirical world at the moment of its utterance.

“In these examples it seems clear that to utter the sentence (in, of course, the appropriate circumstances) is not to describe my doing of what I should be said in so uttering to be doing or state that I am doing it: it is to do it.” (Austin 1975:6)

However this "preliminary isolation of the perfomative" from the constative utterance will not hold. Over the twelve lectures appearing in How to Do Things With Words, Austin abandons his original distinction between stating and doing, and turns his focus to the circumstances of issuing an utterance in general to develop his ‘speech act’ theory.

His speech act theory would be furthered and appropriated by various theorists for their own uses, famously starting a great debate between John Searle and Jacques Derrida, perhaps better known for the intensity of its rivalry rather than the quality of its revelations. However, it is reading speech act theory largely through Derrida’s engagement with Austin’s work that Judith Butler developed her essential contribution to performative theory.

Key Terms
Locution/Illocution/Perlocution, Felicity/Infelicities, Speech Act, The Descriptive Fallacy