JL Austin famously distinguished between “performative” and “constative” utterances, the former of which perform the action to which they refer and the latter of which make assertions that can be judged as true or false. Modern philosophy has treated the constative as the norm, and performatives, if considered at all, as bastards.
Austin suggests inverting the hierarchy. It is possible to make a performative utterance without explicitly stating the action you are doing: “I promise to pay you” is no different from “I will pay you.” Both have the same illocutionary force. That being the case, it is possible to conceive the constative “The bench is wet” as a performative “I affirm that the bench is wet.” The supplement of the performative, the extra sort of speech that is a performative, is seen as the true original; the hierarchy of constative and performative is disturbed and overturned. JL Austin a deconstructionist: Who knew?
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Moral Certitude and the Iran War
The current military engagement with Iran calls renewed attention to just war theory in the Catholic tradition.…
The Slow Death of England: New and Notable Books
The fate of England is much in the news as popular resistance to mass immigration grows, limits…
Ethics of Rhetoric in Times of War
What we say matters. And the way we say it matters. This is especially true in times…
