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How to Do Things with Words
John L. Austin was one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century. The William James Lectures presented Austin's conclusions in the field to which he directed his main efforts on a wide variety of philosophical problems. These talks became the classic How to Do Things with Words.
For this second edition, the editors have returned to Austin's original lecture notes, amending the printed text where it seemed necessary. Students will find the new text clearer, and, at the same time, more faithful to the actual lectures. An appendix contains literal transcriptions of a number of marginal notes made by Austin but not included in the text. Comparison of the text with these annotations provides new dimensions to the study of Austin's work.
For this second edition, the editors have returned to Austin's original lecture notes, amending the printed text where it seemed necessary. Students will find the new text clearer, and, at the same time, more faithful to the actual lectures. An appendix contains literal transcriptions of a number of marginal notes made by Austin but not included in the text. Comparison of the text with these annotations provides new dimensions to the study of Austin's work.
168 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1955
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About the author
J.L. Austin
19 books90 followersJohn Langshaw Austin (March 26, 1911 – February 8, 1960) was a British philosopher of language, born in Lancaster and educated at Shrewsbury School and Balliol College, Oxford University. Austin is widely associated with the concept of the speech act and the idea that speech is itself a form of action. His work in the 1950s provided both a theoretical outline and the terminology for the modern study of speech acts developed subsequently, for example, by (the Oxford-educated American philosopher) John R. Searle, William P. Alston, François Récanati, Kent Bach, and Robert M. Harnish.
After serving in MI6 during World War II, Austin became White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford. He occupies a place in philosophy of language alongside Wittgenstein in staunchly advocating the examination of the way words are used in order to elucidate meaning. Unlike many ordinary language philosophers, however, Austin disavowed any overt indebtedness to Wittgenstein's later philosophy. His main influence, he said, was the exact and exacting common-sense philosophy of G. E. Moore.
He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1956 to 1957.
After serving in MI6 during World War II, Austin became White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford. He occupies a place in philosophy of language alongside Wittgenstein in staunchly advocating the examination of the way words are used in order to elucidate meaning. Unlike many ordinary language philosophers, however, Austin disavowed any overt indebtedness to Wittgenstein's later philosophy. His main influence, he said, was the exact and exacting common-sense philosophy of G. E. Moore.
He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1956 to 1957.
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April 8, 2011
I happened to run into Bill Bryson the other evening on a deserted street somewhere in Geneva. On impulse, as one does, I mugged him and stole his latest manuscript. It turned out to be a potted history of philosophy. Here's an extract for your delectation.
Once upon a time, there was a philosopher called Frege, who had the interesting idea that language and logic were really, you know, pretty much the same thing. He invented predicate calculus, which was the best shot to date at making sense out of that particular approach. For example (this always comes up, for some reason), in English you might say "John loves Mary", and in predicate calculus you would write it asSo, in three academic generations, linguistic philosophers had found their way back to logic again, just a different kind of logic. I wonder why this doesn't leave me feeling happier?love'(john', mary')You have two constants, john' representing John, and mary' representing Mary, and the predicate love' obtains between them.
Some people, Bertrand Russell being a notable example, liked Frege's insight. They picked it up and improved it. And then, in 1921, a young Austrian called Ludwig Wittgenstein published the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which was meant to finish the job. Language, explained Wittgenstein, consisted of "pictures", the predicate calculus expressions, which "connected to the world". I first came across the Tractatus when I was about 17, and I remember looking at it and trying to figure out how this connection was supposed to work. It didn't seem to be very clearly explained, and I wondered what I wasn't getting. But at the time, Wittgenstein thought he'd cracked the problems of philosophy. He retired, and did other things that were more fun.
After a while, Wittgenstein started to have misgivings. Maybe it wasn't all about logic: in fact, language often doesn't seem to be logical at all. (I know. You could have told him that, right? But Great Philosophers prefer to work it out by themselves). He started compiling a huge quantity of notes, which were meant to outline a new theory. These eventually saw the light as the Philosophical Investigations, an impressive mess. Wittgenstein apologised "for not writing a better book", but he managed to convince many of his colleagues that logic may not in fact be the right way to think about what language means.
And so we get up to Austin, one of Wittgenstein's brightest students, who wrote How To Do Things With Words. He probably wasn't as inspired as his master, but he was certainly much better organised. One key insight immediately found favour. There are some ways of using words that do indeed seem to be about describing the world; but there are others that are about interacting with it. As Austin pointed out, when the Mayor says "I now pronounce you man and wife", she isn't describing anything. She makes something happen by virtue of what she says. And, when you think a little more, you see that this is the top of a linguistic iceberg. "Performatives", as Austin called them, are very common. It's not just marrying people: it's a bunch of other things, like making promises, or issuing threats, or asking questions. Austin suggested some more useful terms, which were also enthusiastically adopted, and now everyone in linguistics talks about locutionary acts, perlocutionary acts and illocutionary force. The standard example is someone asking "Is there any salt?" The locutionary act is a question about the presence of salt, but the perlocutionary act is causing somebody to hand you the salt. The illocutionary force is a command to give you salt.
Austin had a bright student of his own, called Searle, and Searle took the ideas further. He wrote a book called Speech Acts, where he described different kinds of illocutionary acts. And then Searle had a student called Vanderveken, and together they developed a framework for writing down speech acts as formulas, in a new framework they called illocutionary logic.
March 30, 2025
A masterwork of Ordinary Language Philosophy. Austin’s argument is best understood against the backdrop of Logical Positivism, which held that an utterance was only meaningful if could be verified to be true or false by observation. "Now wait a second!" Austin replies, "We do a bunch of different stuff with language! We promise, threaten, command, request, congratulate, marry, and so on. Surely these are all meaningful too." So descriptive utterances, it turns out, represent just one kind of meaningful speech-act among many. And by the same token, their truth is just one kind of acceptability condition; it has no particular priority relative to others. How to Do Things With Words represents a crucial chapter in the history of analytic philosophy. It's also an uncharacteristically fun read. Austin's prose is light, breezy and humorous. Definitely worth the read.
November 22, 2011
Austin is seldom read, but his ideas of performative language and speech-act theory have been very influential. I had a writing professor that would drive me nuts as he would discuss whether something was felicitous or infelicitous. I now know where he got this terminology. Austin is the one who came up with the idea of felicitous and infelicitous argument. It would be nice to be able to view the world as either happy or sad. I am not sure that the binary of felicitous and infelicitous actually works in the world, but I like the way that he describes this binary as workings. This book includes lectures that he gave at Berkley. In my rhetoric class, we had a great discussion about how he would view Facebook and updating statuses. I love his references to cats (although I am not sure why I do).
August 2, 2024
En 1962, Juanele Austin salió a la cancha para poner fin a la ancestral dicotomía entre acciones y palabras. Austin venía de la filosofía, pero sería la lingüística (que recién terminaba de despertarse, gracias a Chomsky, del sueño estructuralista) la que recogiera sus enseñanzas. Las razones son obvias: a cualquiera que se dedique a estudiar las palabras, le viene bien la abolición del proverbial “largo trecho”.
John L. (la L era de Langshaw) hizo su descubrimiento un poco por accidente. Lo que le interesaba en principio era estudiar un tipo particular de enunciados, aquellos a los que es imposible asignarles un valor de verdad. Tradicionalmente, la filosofía no los había considerado de interés. Imperaba la idea de que la única condición filosóficamente relevante de un enunciado era su capacidad de referirse a un estado de cosas, y la especulación a lo sumo se extendía a ejemplos problemáticos, como "El rey de Francia es calvo", o "Mañana habrá una batalla naval". En todo caso, se trataba de decidir si tales enunciados tenían o no un valor de verdad, no de lo que ocurriría en caso de que no lo tuvieran.
¿Pero qué decir –razonaría Austin– de otros como “Hola”, o “Gracias”, o “Te prometo que mañana te pago”, o “¿Qué hora es?”, o “Los declaro marido y mujer”, o etcétera? Si algo es seguro es que de ninguno de ellos se puede decir que sea verdadero o falso; sin embargo, si lo pensamos bien, es probable que en nuestra vida cotidiana produzcamos muchos más enunciados de este tipo que enunciados filosóficamente interesantes.
Contra lo que dice la concepción popular, la función principal del lenguaje no es transmitir información, no –al menos– como se la suele concebir. Digamos que, si en un viaje en ascensor, nos cruzamos con un vecino y le decimos algo así como “Lindo día”, no estamos queriendo informarle que el día es lindo; suponemos, de hecho, que el vecino ya lo ha notado. Le queremos decir algo, en cambio, que debería traducirse como “el silencio me incomoda”, o “no quiero ser antipático”, o “quiero socializar con usted”, o “estoy apelando a este tema de interés prácticamente universal para construir un mundo de referencias compartidas”, etcétera. (Esto para los que dicen que hablar sobre el clima es una estupidez).
Austin, entonces, se dio cuenta de esto, y propuso que existen enunciados, a los que él en primer lugar llamó “performativos”, que más que decir algo sobre un estado de cosas, crean un estado de cosas que no existía antes. Esto se aprecia particularmente en los enunciados de carácter ritual. Cuando un sacerdote católico dice “los declaro marido y mujer”, establece una nueva relación entre dos personas; lo contrario ocurre cuando una mujer musulmana dice (tres veces) “me divorcio de ti”. Austin empezó por este tipo de enunciados y pronto se dio cuenta de que sus características podían extenderse a otros más mundanos: hay acciones que ejecutamos típicamente (aunque no siempre exclusivamente) con palabras, como saludar, agradecer, prometer, insultar…
Enseguida, como todo aquel que encuentra una veta inexplorada, Austin universalizó sus conclusiones. En los cursos de lingüística aún se habla de un “primer Austin” y un “segundo Austin”, pero en realidad Cómo hacer cosas con palabras es el despliegue de un mismo razonamiento, que el autor elaboró a lo largo de una serie de conferencias dictadas en 1955. Básicamente, da la impresión de que no sabía muy bien de qué se iban a tratar estas clases, y las fue improvisando, medio ladri, y se terminó encontrando con semejante mina de oro.
La conclusión, que un poco o mucho anticipó Wittgenstein (aunque Austin negaría su influencia), es que todos los enunciados suponen acciones; es decir, todos son actos de habla. Incluso aquellos que parecen limitarse a transmitir información, esos como “Sócrates es un hombre”, podrían reformularse de la siguiente manera “Yo digo que Sócrates es un hombre” (omitimos el "yo digo", en general, lo que no quiere decir que no esté ahí, presupuesto). De hecho, cada enunciado supone tres acciones según la formulación austiniana (y podríamos imaginar muchas más): lo que efectivamente decimos, lo que queremos decir, y lo que aquello que decimos genera en el interlocutor. Juanele los llamaría, respectivamente, acto locucionario, acto ilocucionario y acto perlocucionario: las tres capas de lo que constituye un acto de habla.
La obra de Austin ha sido, con justicia, una de las más influyentes en el posterior desarrollo de la pragmática.
John L. (la L era de Langshaw) hizo su descubrimiento un poco por accidente. Lo que le interesaba en principio era estudiar un tipo particular de enunciados, aquellos a los que es imposible asignarles un valor de verdad. Tradicionalmente, la filosofía no los había considerado de interés. Imperaba la idea de que la única condición filosóficamente relevante de un enunciado era su capacidad de referirse a un estado de cosas, y la especulación a lo sumo se extendía a ejemplos problemáticos, como "El rey de Francia es calvo", o "Mañana habrá una batalla naval". En todo caso, se trataba de decidir si tales enunciados tenían o no un valor de verdad, no de lo que ocurriría en caso de que no lo tuvieran.
¿Pero qué decir –razonaría Austin– de otros como “Hola”, o “Gracias”, o “Te prometo que mañana te pago”, o “¿Qué hora es?”, o “Los declaro marido y mujer”, o etcétera? Si algo es seguro es que de ninguno de ellos se puede decir que sea verdadero o falso; sin embargo, si lo pensamos bien, es probable que en nuestra vida cotidiana produzcamos muchos más enunciados de este tipo que enunciados filosóficamente interesantes.
Contra lo que dice la concepción popular, la función principal del lenguaje no es transmitir información, no –al menos– como se la suele concebir. Digamos que, si en un viaje en ascensor, nos cruzamos con un vecino y le decimos algo así como “Lindo día”, no estamos queriendo informarle que el día es lindo; suponemos, de hecho, que el vecino ya lo ha notado. Le queremos decir algo, en cambio, que debería traducirse como “el silencio me incomoda”, o “no quiero ser antipático”, o “quiero socializar con usted”, o “estoy apelando a este tema de interés prácticamente universal para construir un mundo de referencias compartidas”, etcétera. (Esto para los que dicen que hablar sobre el clima es una estupidez).
Austin, entonces, se dio cuenta de esto, y propuso que existen enunciados, a los que él en primer lugar llamó “performativos”, que más que decir algo sobre un estado de cosas, crean un estado de cosas que no existía antes. Esto se aprecia particularmente en los enunciados de carácter ritual. Cuando un sacerdote católico dice “los declaro marido y mujer”, establece una nueva relación entre dos personas; lo contrario ocurre cuando una mujer musulmana dice (tres veces) “me divorcio de ti”. Austin empezó por este tipo de enunciados y pronto se dio cuenta de que sus características podían extenderse a otros más mundanos: hay acciones que ejecutamos típicamente (aunque no siempre exclusivamente) con palabras, como saludar, agradecer, prometer, insultar…
Enseguida, como todo aquel que encuentra una veta inexplorada, Austin universalizó sus conclusiones. En los cursos de lingüística aún se habla de un “primer Austin” y un “segundo Austin”, pero en realidad Cómo hacer cosas con palabras es el despliegue de un mismo razonamiento, que el autor elaboró a lo largo de una serie de conferencias dictadas en 1955. Básicamente, da la impresión de que no sabía muy bien de qué se iban a tratar estas clases, y las fue improvisando, medio ladri, y se terminó encontrando con semejante mina de oro.
La conclusión, que un poco o mucho anticipó Wittgenstein (aunque Austin negaría su influencia), es que todos los enunciados suponen acciones; es decir, todos son actos de habla. Incluso aquellos que parecen limitarse a transmitir información, esos como “Sócrates es un hombre”, podrían reformularse de la siguiente manera “Yo digo que Sócrates es un hombre” (omitimos el "yo digo", en general, lo que no quiere decir que no esté ahí, presupuesto). De hecho, cada enunciado supone tres acciones según la formulación austiniana (y podríamos imaginar muchas más): lo que efectivamente decimos, lo que queremos decir, y lo que aquello que decimos genera en el interlocutor. Juanele los llamaría, respectivamente, acto locucionario, acto ilocucionario y acto perlocucionario: las tres capas de lo que constituye un acto de habla.
La obra de Austin ha sido, con justicia, una de las más influyentes en el posterior desarrollo de la pragmática.
March 2, 2020
Over this series of 12 lectures, Austin argues against the foundational assumption in analytic philosophy of language that the only forms of linguistic utterance that are worthwhile to study are assertive or descriptive in kind, and that the primary way by which to evaluate these is to determine their binary truth value. Instead, Austin proposes that the majority of our meaningful language use is non-assertive and performative; that is, we use linguistic utterances to make things happen, or get things done. Paradigmatic performatives involve "I do" at a marriage; "This baby shall be named X" in deciding the name of a new child, or "I bet X" in making a bet. In all these cases, we do not describe something that is already in existence, but we bring something into existence by virtue of our linguistic utterance. Austin dedicates Lecture 1 to introducing performatives and their significance in the background of the mainstream tradition of philosophy of language.
Performatives are not truth-evaluable, or at least not in the way that assertions have typically been taken to be. Rather, performatives can be more or less appropriate, or be more or less successful in enacting the intended outcome of the language use. For example, "I do" could be inappropriate if it is said sincerely but under circumstances other than those of an official marriage; or these circumstances could be present, but the person uttering the words could be in bad faith, not intending to keep the marriage. Austin takes Lectures 2-4 to generating a taxonomy of all the ways different kinds of performatives might succeed or fail.
Austin distinguishes between a number of kinds of performatives. There are five kinds he finds worthwhile to distinguish, and admits this is a tentative listing, for these kinds might overlap in ways or be non-exhaustive. All cases of language use, whether a performative or traditional assertion, might be examined for three primary aspects or dimensions: every utterance has (1) locutionary, (2) illocutionary, and (3) perlocutionary aspects.
The locutionary aspect refers to what we typically regard as the semantic meaning of an utterance. Austin examines this in terms of sense and reference. For example, the locutionary aspect of "I do" might include the personal identity of the speaker and the act of marrying, or whatever the speaker is doing. The illocutionary aspect refers to the action that the utterance of the linguistic expression in effect accomplishes. For example, officiating the marriage is an illocutionary effect of the aforementioned utterance. The perlocutionary aspect refers to the effects the speaker intends to have on the listener by uttering the expression. For example, the aforementioned expression, if uttered by an ecstatic soon-to-be wife, might have the perlocutionary role of making a commitment or sealing mutual joy. Austin takes the majority of the book, Lectures 5-12, to clarify these distinctions.
In the last lecture, Austin mentions that all linguistic expressions, assertions and statements included, are equally evaluable in terms of appropriateness. It is a modern myth that assertions and statements uniquely are truth-evaluable, in a logical, binary way. Austin points out that in principle truth conditions, or states of affairs or facts that would determine the truth or falsity of an assertion, require that we interpret or individuate them. This interpretative act always involves some degree of subjective decision. For example, someone might assert "His head is square-shaped." For a geometer, this is false, since for a shape to count as a square it must meet certain stringent conditions. But for laypeople, this is true, since we only expect the designation of ordinary objects as certain geometric forms to be generally approximate.
Austin thus shows that our interests, social position, and other pragmatic conditions will influence the precise states of affairs or facts that show up to us in a given situation. Different people might take up different facts as relevant to determining the truth or falsity of the same linguistic expression in the same situation.
Overall, this book was a joy to read. Austin is an extraordinarily clear writer, and his ideas are deep and against the mainstream. Particularly, I found two points in this book most fascinating. One is this pragmatist point made in the last lecture. It is lovely to acknowledge that truth values of seemingly purely factual statements depends on social conditions, as the appropriateness of uttering performatives (e.g., "I do) does. I think, however, that there are important differences between binary truth valuation and multi-dimensional appropriateness evaluation. Admittedly, it is not Austin's purpose to go into this; his work leaves me curious about it though, and I would like to read some other work that does cover it.
Here are some of my random thoughts on this matter. It seems that certain statements are just not appropriateness-evaluable in the way the examples Austin give are. For instance, the seemingly purely factual statement "My hair is 23 inches long" does not seem up to negotiation. No matter what a person's social background is, a numeric measure is the same numeric measure. However, there might be another way to take even this sort of statement as performative. By uttering it, I make it the case that it is appropriate to measure my hair according to quantitative magnitudes, and more specifically, the U.S metric system.
This fact is brought out by this counterfactual: if I instead uttered "My hair is long like the beams of moonlight" (lol) I would make it the case that it is appropriate to relate to my hair poetically, to see it as a part of the majestic realm of mother nature. I wonder whether this is the kind of way by which Austin conceives of assertions and statements to be appropriateness-evaluable, rather than truth-evaluable; Austin does not directly give such examples, and I'm not sure whether this kind of example can be accounted for by his view as presented.
If indeed Austin cannot account for this sort of example as a performative, his definition of performitivity does not go deep enough. All linguistic utterances "set the tone" of what kind of vocabulary to think in, or what kind of world shows up to us. We can enter poetic, mythic, or scientific worlds (among more fine-grained sorts of worlds, which Wittgenstein might triangulate by his term "language-game"), depending on the particular expressions we use. The constitutive parts of linguistic expressions typically belong to certain vocabularies, activities, social roles, or perspectives. By using them, we root ourselves in a certain perspective, and get our conversational partners to enter that perspective, too.
The second point I found most interesting is Austin's insight that the majority of language use is non-assertive, non-factual. We use language to get things done. He doesn't dwell on this point, however, and I'd like to do that a bit here. I think a lot of expressions that appear in the form of assertions or descriptions might actually be primarily performative. For example, our minds might easily wander into assertions like "That boy over there is very tall," "The sky is pure blue," or "I am hungry." All of these are descriptive, but their utterance is motivated by particular interests or needs. Their utterance also brings into view new features of the situation, making them phenomenologically salient. This would let our emotions, thoughts, and behaviors respond to these particular features. I mean to say all of this to elaborate on my point above: the performative or illocutionary nature of language might be deeper and more expansive than the way Austin puts it.
Performatives are not truth-evaluable, or at least not in the way that assertions have typically been taken to be. Rather, performatives can be more or less appropriate, or be more or less successful in enacting the intended outcome of the language use. For example, "I do" could be inappropriate if it is said sincerely but under circumstances other than those of an official marriage; or these circumstances could be present, but the person uttering the words could be in bad faith, not intending to keep the marriage. Austin takes Lectures 2-4 to generating a taxonomy of all the ways different kinds of performatives might succeed or fail.
Austin distinguishes between a number of kinds of performatives. There are five kinds he finds worthwhile to distinguish, and admits this is a tentative listing, for these kinds might overlap in ways or be non-exhaustive. All cases of language use, whether a performative or traditional assertion, might be examined for three primary aspects or dimensions: every utterance has (1) locutionary, (2) illocutionary, and (3) perlocutionary aspects.
The locutionary aspect refers to what we typically regard as the semantic meaning of an utterance. Austin examines this in terms of sense and reference. For example, the locutionary aspect of "I do" might include the personal identity of the speaker and the act of marrying, or whatever the speaker is doing. The illocutionary aspect refers to the action that the utterance of the linguistic expression in effect accomplishes. For example, officiating the marriage is an illocutionary effect of the aforementioned utterance. The perlocutionary aspect refers to the effects the speaker intends to have on the listener by uttering the expression. For example, the aforementioned expression, if uttered by an ecstatic soon-to-be wife, might have the perlocutionary role of making a commitment or sealing mutual joy. Austin takes the majority of the book, Lectures 5-12, to clarify these distinctions.
In the last lecture, Austin mentions that all linguistic expressions, assertions and statements included, are equally evaluable in terms of appropriateness. It is a modern myth that assertions and statements uniquely are truth-evaluable, in a logical, binary way. Austin points out that in principle truth conditions, or states of affairs or facts that would determine the truth or falsity of an assertion, require that we interpret or individuate them. This interpretative act always involves some degree of subjective decision. For example, someone might assert "His head is square-shaped." For a geometer, this is false, since for a shape to count as a square it must meet certain stringent conditions. But for laypeople, this is true, since we only expect the designation of ordinary objects as certain geometric forms to be generally approximate.
Austin thus shows that our interests, social position, and other pragmatic conditions will influence the precise states of affairs or facts that show up to us in a given situation. Different people might take up different facts as relevant to determining the truth or falsity of the same linguistic expression in the same situation.
Overall, this book was a joy to read. Austin is an extraordinarily clear writer, and his ideas are deep and against the mainstream. Particularly, I found two points in this book most fascinating. One is this pragmatist point made in the last lecture. It is lovely to acknowledge that truth values of seemingly purely factual statements depends on social conditions, as the appropriateness of uttering performatives (e.g., "I do) does. I think, however, that there are important differences between binary truth valuation and multi-dimensional appropriateness evaluation. Admittedly, it is not Austin's purpose to go into this; his work leaves me curious about it though, and I would like to read some other work that does cover it.
Here are some of my random thoughts on this matter. It seems that certain statements are just not appropriateness-evaluable in the way the examples Austin give are. For instance, the seemingly purely factual statement "My hair is 23 inches long" does not seem up to negotiation. No matter what a person's social background is, a numeric measure is the same numeric measure. However, there might be another way to take even this sort of statement as performative. By uttering it, I make it the case that it is appropriate to measure my hair according to quantitative magnitudes, and more specifically, the U.S metric system.
This fact is brought out by this counterfactual: if I instead uttered "My hair is long like the beams of moonlight" (lol) I would make it the case that it is appropriate to relate to my hair poetically, to see it as a part of the majestic realm of mother nature. I wonder whether this is the kind of way by which Austin conceives of assertions and statements to be appropriateness-evaluable, rather than truth-evaluable; Austin does not directly give such examples, and I'm not sure whether this kind of example can be accounted for by his view as presented.
If indeed Austin cannot account for this sort of example as a performative, his definition of performitivity does not go deep enough. All linguistic utterances "set the tone" of what kind of vocabulary to think in, or what kind of world shows up to us. We can enter poetic, mythic, or scientific worlds (among more fine-grained sorts of worlds, which Wittgenstein might triangulate by his term "language-game"), depending on the particular expressions we use. The constitutive parts of linguistic expressions typically belong to certain vocabularies, activities, social roles, or perspectives. By using them, we root ourselves in a certain perspective, and get our conversational partners to enter that perspective, too.
The second point I found most interesting is Austin's insight that the majority of language use is non-assertive, non-factual. We use language to get things done. He doesn't dwell on this point, however, and I'd like to do that a bit here. I think a lot of expressions that appear in the form of assertions or descriptions might actually be primarily performative. For example, our minds might easily wander into assertions like "That boy over there is very tall," "The sky is pure blue," or "I am hungry." All of these are descriptive, but their utterance is motivated by particular interests or needs. Their utterance also brings into view new features of the situation, making them phenomenologically salient. This would let our emotions, thoughts, and behaviors respond to these particular features. I mean to say all of this to elaborate on my point above: the performative or illocutionary nature of language might be deeper and more expansive than the way Austin puts it.
August 5, 2025
How to do things with words is a modern classic of philosophy and rhetoric. In an age obsessed with publicity and propaganda, it offers an opportunity to take a step back and introduce some clarity into communication. The speech-act's perspective consecrated J.L. Austin as a major figure who tried to change the way intellectuals see the world, to make them more grounded. I recommend the book to the reader interested in any major issue related to discourse and authority.
In these lectures from the 1950s, the British philosopher debated ideas of meaning, performance, or the different types of use in communication. How to do things with words with words contains the core of what was called the speech-act theory. J.L. Austin tried to push modern thinking away from its focus on truth and closer to a better understanding of rhetoric and practice. The Romanian edition contains a good introduction by Vlad Alexandrescu.
J.L. Austin distinguished between meaning and use, revealing new ambiguities. In How to do things with words, he established three classes of practice with speech: locution (the content), the illocution (what we do when we say something) and the perlocution (the effect). The second type relies on a force, and is related to social conventions and power. For example, to utter an order is an act in itself, analytically separate from the questions of semantics and consequences.
Thus, to use words is not a simple matter. J.L. Austin proposed further types and his approach to communication was open-ended. The lectures dwell into the varieties of illocutionary acts, like verdicts and promises. The criteria employed to judge them are success and failure, which overlap with the classical ones of truth and falsehood.
The speech-act theory was very influential. John Searle and Jürgen Habermas's philosophies are notable examples. How to do things with words is not very long, and it is closer to a sketch. The clarity of thought and attention to nuances are its major virtues.
In these lectures from the 1950s, the British philosopher debated ideas of meaning, performance, or the different types of use in communication. How to do things with words with words contains the core of what was called the speech-act theory. J.L. Austin tried to push modern thinking away from its focus on truth and closer to a better understanding of rhetoric and practice. The Romanian edition contains a good introduction by Vlad Alexandrescu.
J.L. Austin distinguished between meaning and use, revealing new ambiguities. In How to do things with words, he established three classes of practice with speech: locution (the content), the illocution (what we do when we say something) and the perlocution (the effect). The second type relies on a force, and is related to social conventions and power. For example, to utter an order is an act in itself, analytically separate from the questions of semantics and consequences.
Thus, to use words is not a simple matter. J.L. Austin proposed further types and his approach to communication was open-ended. The lectures dwell into the varieties of illocutionary acts, like verdicts and promises. The criteria employed to judge them are success and failure, which overlap with the classical ones of truth and falsehood.
The speech-act theory was very influential. John Searle and Jürgen Habermas's philosophies are notable examples. How to do things with words is not very long, and it is closer to a sketch. The clarity of thought and attention to nuances are its major virtues.
August 31, 2010
I do things with words. Dark, terrible things.
Okay, now that the joke's out of the way, may I say that I enjoyed this book of rather heady philosophy quite thoroughly? Which isn't to say that I skipped through it merrily like a prodigy--it took quite a bit of slow reading, and reading aloud, and flipping back to reread, and plenty of taking chapter endnotes, and marginalia to darken the edges, but you know what? I was surprised how often my notes were just smiley faces, or "hmm" or cheery acknowledgment of 1955 slang (actually, probably older than that,adjusting for how hip and with-it Austin probably was, "cock a snook" being my personal favorite expression.). Lots of Aristotelian classification, and a surprise twist for the last two chapters where he returns to his premises and (ugh, I hate the word) deconstructs them.
Brain hurts a little and I'll probably feel like a doofus writing some sort of intelligent response on it for my continentalist professor tomorrow, but I appreciate Austin's good humor and deep thinking.
Okay, now that the joke's out of the way, may I say that I enjoyed this book of rather heady philosophy quite thoroughly? Which isn't to say that I skipped through it merrily like a prodigy--it took quite a bit of slow reading, and reading aloud, and flipping back to reread, and plenty of taking chapter endnotes, and marginalia to darken the edges, but you know what? I was surprised how often my notes were just smiley faces, or "hmm" or cheery acknowledgment of 1955 slang (actually, probably older than that,adjusting for how hip and with-it Austin probably was, "cock a snook" being my personal favorite expression.). Lots of Aristotelian classification, and a surprise twist for the last two chapters where he returns to his premises and (ugh, I hate the word) deconstructs them.
Brain hurts a little and I'll probably feel like a doofus writing some sort of intelligent response on it for my continentalist professor tomorrow, but I appreciate Austin's good humor and deep thinking.
January 4, 2009
You can do a lot of things with words, but tragically you still can't get them to wash the dishes.
January 21, 2019
In saying "I'm finished," I both state a fact and perform an act - in this case announcing my accomplishment. In this book, Austin seeks to makes this distinction clear.
Read
October 2, 2017Just finished reading this again, for the nth time, for class tomorrow. I love this book, but it really could be 40 pages long.
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(September 3, 2010)
Rereading this, I was most struck by
(1) how absurdly funny and delightful Austin's prose is ("a specialist in the sui generis"; "we can insincerely promise to give a donkey a carrot", "we may seem to have armed ourselves with two shiny new concepts with which to crack the crib of Reality", etc. etc.), and yet
(2) how weirdly legalistic most of this book is.
And I'm left really wishing that Austin would have given an example illustrating how "the truth or falsity of a statement depends not merely on the meanings of words but on what act you were performing in what circumstances". Obviously the truth of a statement depends on the circumstances, but how does the truth of a statement depend on what act you were performing? Moreover, he says a statement IS a kind of (illocutionary) act, so how could the truth of an act depend on what act you were performing with it?
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(September 3, 2010)
Rereading this, I was most struck by
(1) how absurdly funny and delightful Austin's prose is ("a specialist in the sui generis"; "we can insincerely promise to give a donkey a carrot", "we may seem to have armed ourselves with two shiny new concepts with which to crack the crib of Reality", etc. etc.), and yet
(2) how weirdly legalistic most of this book is.
And I'm left really wishing that Austin would have given an example illustrating how "the truth or falsity of a statement depends not merely on the meanings of words but on what act you were performing in what circumstances". Obviously the truth of a statement depends on the circumstances, but how does the truth of a statement depend on what act you were performing? Moreover, he says a statement IS a kind of (illocutionary) act, so how could the truth of an act depend on what act you were performing with it?
July 6, 2010
Austin has been critisized by many philosophers for not being philosophical enough, and as much as I can see their point I have to defend Austin. At the point that Austin gave these lectures anglo-american philosophy was full of so much nonsense - largely due to Frege's bizarre vocabulary (or possibly bad translations) and Russell ridiculous mathematical approach to things that just don't fit into equations.
I don't think that this book is of a very high philosophical content, but I think that philosophy has benefited - with the help of Searle - from Austin's theoretically linguistic approach.
Also this is one of the more enjoyable reads in the world of modern philosophy if a bit pedantic.
May 11, 2010
attracted as I am to the charming circularity of sentences that "do" what they "say", austin loses me as early as p.9 with "I must not be joking, for example, nor writing a poem." will this theory of speech that cannot take jokes or poetry into account ever get beyond the most banal utterances of an honest-to-goodness man-of-his-word? then there is all the talk about war, sports, giving orders and shooting donkeys-- reading this book feels a lot like being bullied into accepting some rather dubious assumptions about causality in speech...
I declare a thumb war.
I declare a thumb war.
March 26, 2020
Three and a half stars. The key parts are of imperative importance (conferences I, II, XI). The rest often reads like a phone book.
February 9, 2021
I will take my ABSOLUTE HATRED of this book as a sign (one of many) that I should not pursue a PhD. NOOOOOOO thank you.
January 5, 2025
Un libro absolutamente sensacional.
Austin planta cara al positivismo lógico con un planteamiento rompedor que toma de Wittgenstein no sólo la primacía de la pragmática de las Untersuchungen, sino también la sana costumbre del Tractatus de propinar una buena patada a la escalera tras haber descubierto al subir que no hay nada que ver. Merece la pena, además, señalar su excelente humor.
Como sucede con Saussure y Coseriu, asistir a sus clases debió haber sido todo un espectáculo.
Austin planta cara al positivismo lógico con un planteamiento rompedor que toma de Wittgenstein no sólo la primacía de la pragmática de las Untersuchungen, sino también la sana costumbre del Tractatus de propinar una buena patada a la escalera tras haber descubierto al subir que no hay nada que ver. Merece la pena, además, señalar su excelente humor.
Como sucede con Saussure y Coseriu, asistir a sus clases debió haber sido todo un espectáculo.
April 10, 2021
Better don't
Read
March 20, 2024read this one for school and some parts were interesting, for the rest i just imagined i was sitting in an cute coffeshop and listened to the lectures
September 4, 2025
Se podría haber resumido en 10 carillas
March 24, 2023
Como un libro que indaga en el efecto que cada palabra tiene objetivamente, está obra es brillante. No sólo te presenta una teoría que tiene en sí misma una aplicación interesante para el uso del lenguaje, sino que al mismo tiempo se reafirma a sí misma. Para conocer más sobre el poder que tienen nuestras palabras, este libro es imperativo. Lo recomiendo ampliamente.
January 13, 2020
I have generally not been drawn to philosophers of language but I will make an exception here. This book is the second edition of a set of lectures that Austin presented at Harvard in 1955. The general topic of these lectures in the philosophy of ordinary language relates to what are called “performative utterances”. In other places they are called “speech acts”. The intuition is to consider situations when speech is more than just speech - when the speaker actually does things with words beyond expression. The example most people would be familiar with would be the utterance of “I do” - or something similar in the course of a marriage ceremony. It is an engaging idea and Austin provides lots of examples and then looks up and down at the details of each to see how to make comprehensive sense of performatives. It proves devilishly difficult to do so, but by the end of the lectures, you cannot fault Professor Austin for trying. There is even a set of categories for different sorts of these utterances: verdictives, exercitives, commissives, behabitives, and expositions. (I do not want to give away any spoilers on these.)
Why is this interesting? It is fascinating to examine what goes into the language we regularly use. In this book, I need to modify that to reflect Professor Austin’s elegant writing and word choices. For example, while Americans would see some examples of performatives in the umpiring of games - the baseball umpire defines the reality of the game by calling balls, strikes, and outs - Austin takes his examples from cricket (I think). There is more to it though. Many suspect that academia is a “wind-driven” occupation, and it is enchanting to read lectures showing how it is more than that. The idea of casting spells with words comes to mind. If you doubt the link, go to Google Scholar and search for permative utterances along with names from the Harry Potter series. The links of this philosophy to the academic dark arts has not gone unnoticed. It should not be surprising that the works of Lewis and Tolkien have such links to the British classroom.
There is a more serious side to this as well. Austin makes it clear that performatives are highly contextualized and involve multiple parties (in the wedding example, another party has to also agree), social conventions, laws, and even government policies. To do things with words, one must communicate in a richer and multidimensional environment than is present with just letters on a page. This is fraught with implications for how one can/should communicate in complex and specialized environment, especially in work or professional organizations. How one communicates with colleagues depends on a lot of contingencies and much managerial expertise is highly contextualized.
The importance of context for certain communications can also be seen when it is absent. Consider the well known litany of problems that people encounter when communicating on various social media (being a dinosaur I generally stick to email). On email and other social media, context and interpersonal nuance is precisely what is missing. It should not surprise anyone that attempting consequential communications in such context free settings can lead to trouble. This helps to explain the growing popularity of signals like “LTL” - “let’s talk live”.
I cannot sweeten the pill that this is a philosophy book and may prove to be rough sledding for some. I thought it was manageable, however, and well worth the trouble of working through.
Why is this interesting? It is fascinating to examine what goes into the language we regularly use. In this book, I need to modify that to reflect Professor Austin’s elegant writing and word choices. For example, while Americans would see some examples of performatives in the umpiring of games - the baseball umpire defines the reality of the game by calling balls, strikes, and outs - Austin takes his examples from cricket (I think). There is more to it though. Many suspect that academia is a “wind-driven” occupation, and it is enchanting to read lectures showing how it is more than that. The idea of casting spells with words comes to mind. If you doubt the link, go to Google Scholar and search for permative utterances along with names from the Harry Potter series. The links of this philosophy to the academic dark arts has not gone unnoticed. It should not be surprising that the works of Lewis and Tolkien have such links to the British classroom.
There is a more serious side to this as well. Austin makes it clear that performatives are highly contextualized and involve multiple parties (in the wedding example, another party has to also agree), social conventions, laws, and even government policies. To do things with words, one must communicate in a richer and multidimensional environment than is present with just letters on a page. This is fraught with implications for how one can/should communicate in complex and specialized environment, especially in work or professional organizations. How one communicates with colleagues depends on a lot of contingencies and much managerial expertise is highly contextualized.
The importance of context for certain communications can also be seen when it is absent. Consider the well known litany of problems that people encounter when communicating on various social media (being a dinosaur I generally stick to email). On email and other social media, context and interpersonal nuance is precisely what is missing. It should not surprise anyone that attempting consequential communications in such context free settings can lead to trouble. This helps to explain the growing popularity of signals like “LTL” - “let’s talk live”.
I cannot sweeten the pill that this is a philosophy book and may prove to be rough sledding for some. I thought it was manageable, however, and well worth the trouble of working through.
July 16, 2021
With some sentences, when you utter them, you are just saying something: "Your car has exploded." These sentences are called *constatives*. Depending on the context of their utterance, they will typically be either true or false.
With some other sentences, when you utter them, you make something happen: "I quit." And just like that, you don't work there any more. These are called performatives. Any particular utterance of a performative can be classified as happy or unhappy, according to whether it pulls of the job expected of it. For example, an unhappy use of "I quit" would be to whisper it to your dog, as that's no way to tender a resignation.
Sometimes you can identify a performative by the fact that it can have the word "hereby" inserted into it without changing the meaning: "I hereby quit." This is a neat linguistic test when it works. You might wonder if there are other tests that can identify other kinds of performatives. Much of the first ten lectures of Austin's *How to Do Things with Words* seems to be a search for linguistic tests of this kind.
But that's not all Austin is up to. After proposing and revising linguistic criteria to sort a surprising variety of performatives, he points out that the tests we have developed are so sensitive they even register traces of the performative in the supposedly do-nothing constatives. Is not every saying a doing? Kaboom, now it is your categories that have exploded.
This leads Austin to reexamine the claim that constatives are either true or false. He considers the sentence "France is hexagonal" and remarks that it is a rough description, fit for some purposes, but it is neither strictly true nor strictly false. More generally he says this about the truth and falsity:
"It is essential to realize that 'true' and 'false,' like 'free' and 'unfree,' do not stand for anything simple at all; but only for a general dimension of being a right or proper thing to say as opposed to a wrong thing, in these circumstances, to this audience, for these purposes and with these intentions." (p. 145)
I picked this book up out of historical curiosity, and because it is short and has a cute title. If you are looking for an introduction to a theory of speech acts, there are contemporary presentations clearer than this. (You can find some audio lectures by John Searle online, for example.) But I was very impressed with the performance Austin pulls off, the way the more technical lectures sensitize the reader to nuances of speech so that, by the end of the book, even categories like true and false strike our ears as too crude.
With some other sentences, when you utter them, you make something happen: "I quit." And just like that, you don't work there any more. These are called performatives. Any particular utterance of a performative can be classified as happy or unhappy, according to whether it pulls of the job expected of it. For example, an unhappy use of "I quit" would be to whisper it to your dog, as that's no way to tender a resignation.
Sometimes you can identify a performative by the fact that it can have the word "hereby" inserted into it without changing the meaning: "I hereby quit." This is a neat linguistic test when it works. You might wonder if there are other tests that can identify other kinds of performatives. Much of the first ten lectures of Austin's *How to Do Things with Words* seems to be a search for linguistic tests of this kind.
But that's not all Austin is up to. After proposing and revising linguistic criteria to sort a surprising variety of performatives, he points out that the tests we have developed are so sensitive they even register traces of the performative in the supposedly do-nothing constatives. Is not every saying a doing? Kaboom, now it is your categories that have exploded.
This leads Austin to reexamine the claim that constatives are either true or false. He considers the sentence "France is hexagonal" and remarks that it is a rough description, fit for some purposes, but it is neither strictly true nor strictly false. More generally he says this about the truth and falsity:
"It is essential to realize that 'true' and 'false,' like 'free' and 'unfree,' do not stand for anything simple at all; but only for a general dimension of being a right or proper thing to say as opposed to a wrong thing, in these circumstances, to this audience, for these purposes and with these intentions." (p. 145)
I picked this book up out of historical curiosity, and because it is short and has a cute title. If you are looking for an introduction to a theory of speech acts, there are contemporary presentations clearer than this. (You can find some audio lectures by John Searle online, for example.) But I was very impressed with the performance Austin pulls off, the way the more technical lectures sensitize the reader to nuances of speech so that, by the end of the book, even categories like true and false strike our ears as too crude.
July 7, 2012
This is an interesting book in that, it seems to me, you could read it as the beginning of something, the end of something, or the beginning of the end of something.
It certainly seems like a significant contribution to the "beginning" of speech-act theory, paving the way for Searle and others who have taken the looseness of Austin's proposed categories and self-deprecated "programme" as evidence of the need for more careful categorization and systemization (164).
It seems like the end of the road for a number of earlier philosophical and linguistic distinctions, as well as the pipe dream of a perfect referential language. Austin's foregrounding of the rhetorical (a term he doesn't make much use of), situational nature of language makes it plain that an abstract, philosophically prescriptive is destined to be inadequate for everyday use: "Once we realize that what we have to study is not the sentence but the issuing of an utterance in a speech situation, there can hardly be any longer a possibility of not seeing that stating is performing an act" (139).
And it's potentially the beginning of(/and?) the end of its own project, if you take the way Austin's categories constantly run together and deconstruct themselves not as evidence of insufficient theorizing, but as the performance of his explicit project's impossibility. As such, lines like these--"I must explain again that we are floundering here. To feel the firm ground of prejudice slipping away is exhilarating, but brings its revenges" (61), or "It is inherent in the nature of any procedure that the limits of its applicability ... will remain vague" (31)--are not nods to the intellectual difficulty of the projects that might follow Austin's, but to the naivete and arbitrariness that would underlie any rigorous approach to speech-act theory. Which makes Austin more significant as the progenitor of Derrida's "Limited Inc" rather than Searle's work.
The last possibility is what interests me the most, and so--though I did read it carefully and attempt to avoid skimming--I remain persuaded by a friend's advice: "It's not so important that you understand and remember his categories. What's important is the way they fall apart." So my primary interest in Austin's book is not as a philosophical tract, but as (appropriately) a performative act.
It certainly seems like a significant contribution to the "beginning" of speech-act theory, paving the way for Searle and others who have taken the looseness of Austin's proposed categories and self-deprecated "programme" as evidence of the need for more careful categorization and systemization (164).
It seems like the end of the road for a number of earlier philosophical and linguistic distinctions, as well as the pipe dream of a perfect referential language. Austin's foregrounding of the rhetorical (a term he doesn't make much use of), situational nature of language makes it plain that an abstract, philosophically prescriptive is destined to be inadequate for everyday use: "Once we realize that what we have to study is not the sentence but the issuing of an utterance in a speech situation, there can hardly be any longer a possibility of not seeing that stating is performing an act" (139).
And it's potentially the beginning of(/and?) the end of its own project, if you take the way Austin's categories constantly run together and deconstruct themselves not as evidence of insufficient theorizing, but as the performance of his explicit project's impossibility. As such, lines like these--"I must explain again that we are floundering here. To feel the firm ground of prejudice slipping away is exhilarating, but brings its revenges" (61), or "It is inherent in the nature of any procedure that the limits of its applicability ... will remain vague" (31)--are not nods to the intellectual difficulty of the projects that might follow Austin's, but to the naivete and arbitrariness that would underlie any rigorous approach to speech-act theory. Which makes Austin more significant as the progenitor of Derrida's "Limited Inc" rather than Searle's work.
The last possibility is what interests me the most, and so--though I did read it carefully and attempt to avoid skimming--I remain persuaded by a friend's advice: "It's not so important that you understand and remember his categories. What's important is the way they fall apart." So my primary interest in Austin's book is not as a philosophical tract, but as (appropriately) a performative act.
March 21, 2020
It is some crime against intellectual virtue that I was so late in getting to this in full. That was partly due to misunderstanding, as my personal mythology was that it was Wittgenstein that got me into analytic philosophy when in truth it was Austin and Grice. I attribute the misunderstanding to the strength of Austin’s analysis because what he offers here seems so absolutely obvious it’s easy to take for granted after forgetting how transformative it is. Unlike Wittgenstein, it is a sharp example of analytic philosophy. Austin points out the weaknesses of truth functionality to account for all language, which again is just obvious. Truth functionality is a neat way of handling declarative sentences (not all, as Austin will point out), but we do far more with language than just state facts. And yet Austin does not want to throw out at least the principle of having some kind of criterion for our uses of language, and thus provides an analysis of performative utterances which gives a rough (though not comprehensive) sketch to sort happy uses from unhappy uses. I’m simplifying of course, just for the sake of underlining that Austin is only after an apparent problem and offers an intuitive solution. The subsequent effect of realizing how much of our spoken language is a matter of performance is profound even if you have no interest in more technical matters. I harbor a lot of logician sympathies myself and can’t help but see Austin’s now as a tremendously radical position given his demotion of truth value and factive matters, going as far to say as there is no distinction between the factual and the normative. I’m not sure how far on Mr. Austin’s wild ride I travel but I can’t help but admire his clarity, the intuitiveness of his reasoning, the minutiae of his analysis, and how willing he is to accept the burdens of the strange new places his philosophy leads him to.
Some of you might read this and think oh, he’s nothing but a pedantic English linguist. To that I respond, yeah.
Some of you might read this and think oh, he’s nothing but a pedantic English linguist. To that I respond, yeah.
May 13, 2021
Cuatro estrellas a falta de una relectura pausada. Todo lo que os puedan decir de este clásico, básico como una camiseta negra lisa, sobre lo sugerente, rico en matices y lleno de humor que está, es verdad.
Read
March 20, 2021It started out fun, but I forgot how it started. Anyway, I think I tried to find the literary qualities in it too much, instead of following along with the argument Austin made, or rather, the exploration he undertook in these lectures. At several points I lost him and was thankful for the offered recaps at the opening of each following lecture.
This did offer a new way to look at the things we utter and how we do in fact really do something, perform an act, when we say things, for at least, we are uttering sounds. And then there are a lot of lists, and groups of kind of words, utterances, contexts, that Austin tries to group together and wants to say something with. But: 'I have as usual failed to leave enough time in which to say why what I have said is interesting.'
It is not uninteresting per se, I got lost a bit though, but this method of exploring language is interesting I do believe. Even important, and it is just nice, some extra information, some new dimensions to ordinary language. Nitpicking is what Austin does, and it seems necessary that he does so, he does so with humor, and he does so precise, so that now if wanted, I could nitpick myself, not myself as an object, but how I wrote it implies that is what I will go and do. So I might as well.
This did offer a new way to look at the things we utter and how we do in fact really do something, perform an act, when we say things, for at least, we are uttering sounds. And then there are a lot of lists, and groups of kind of words, utterances, contexts, that Austin tries to group together and wants to say something with. But: 'I have as usual failed to leave enough time in which to say why what I have said is interesting.'
It is not uninteresting per se, I got lost a bit though, but this method of exploring language is interesting I do believe. Even important, and it is just nice, some extra information, some new dimensions to ordinary language. Nitpicking is what Austin does, and it seems necessary that he does so, he does so with humor, and he does so precise, so that now if wanted, I could nitpick myself, not myself as an object, but how I wrote it implies that is what I will go and do. So I might as well.
July 19, 2011
This is a well composed look at a linguistic pseudo-system. I picked this up after reading the first chapter of "Truth in Painting," and wanted a bit more guidance than that found on Wikepedia concerning performatives. It looks like there are a number of pans below, and I can't really reason why. The book was compiled from lecture notes and was never fully edited or revised. What we get is the knotted thread of a philosophical investigation in which some knots have been loosened and some have been passed over altogether. There are some very insightful "verb tools," loads of examples, and not one hammered nail...nothing to really poo-poo. Not a polished work, but full of instruction, humor and idea. On to Derrida.
August 10, 2010
After I finished this book I was thinking "this is definitely a five-star for Goodreads!"
Okay, it's really frickin' good, but I think four is enough. I knew what this book was about before I read it, but it was a pleasure to hear it all in full. Not only is Austin's thesis really great, the origins of performative speech, but it's also very straightforward.
I declare this book excellent.
Okay, it's really frickin' good, but I think four is enough. I knew what this book was about before I read it, but it was a pleasure to hear it all in full. Not only is Austin's thesis really great, the origins of performative speech, but it's also very straightforward.
I declare this book excellent.
August 18, 2018
Easy to read and understand--he summarizes himself at the start of every lecture, so whenever I didn't understand something I skipped to the next chapter and, lo and behold, I figured it out! I'm not an analytic philosophy guy, but I have to say... Respect to Austin for somehow working in the phrase: "There are more ways of killing a cat than drowning it in butter".
January 19, 2022
Mr. Austin, con rispetto, la prego di parlare come mangia
August 1, 2021
I had a great time reading this book. The lectures are chunked in such a way that it’s easy to read one a day and then think on it. Austin also does a pretty good job of recapping the previous lecture at the beginning, which was a big help if I hadn’t picked it up for a bit. Oddly enough, I found my understanding of the subject matter was usually retroactive. I would read an argument, but not quite understand it until a subsequent lecture when Austin made a comment that clarified the previous thought.
The lectures deal with language and how we use language in our lives. Austin discusses what he calls “performatives”; speech acts that actual DO something, rather than just STATE something. For example, when a judge issued a verdict. The issuing of the verdict is a speech act that pronounces the suspect innocent or guilty. This falls right in line with Wittgenstein’s ideas about the use of language and ‘language games’ (although Austin ends up calling them ‘families’). A lot of the lectures are him either describing performatives in relation to other speech acts, or refining the sense we have of what performatives are and how they operate. Lots of stuff in the book is highly relevant to the practice of law.
My favorite part, though, is how much he talks about cats in the beginning lectures.
The lectures deal with language and how we use language in our lives. Austin discusses what he calls “performatives”; speech acts that actual DO something, rather than just STATE something. For example, when a judge issued a verdict. The issuing of the verdict is a speech act that pronounces the suspect innocent or guilty. This falls right in line with Wittgenstein’s ideas about the use of language and ‘language games’ (although Austin ends up calling them ‘families’). A lot of the lectures are him either describing performatives in relation to other speech acts, or refining the sense we have of what performatives are and how they operate. Lots of stuff in the book is highly relevant to the practice of law.
My favorite part, though, is how much he talks about cats in the beginning lectures.
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