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John Langshaw Austin OBE FBA (26 March 1911 – 8 February 1960) was an English philosopher of language and leading proponent of ordinary language philosophy, best known for developing the theory of speech acts. [5] Austin pointed out that we use language to do things as well as to assert things, and that the utterance of a statement like "I ...
Speech act theory hails from Wittgenstein's philosophical theories. Wittgenstein believed meaning derives from pragmatic tradition, demonstrating the importance of how language is used to accomplish objectives within specific situations. By following rules to accomplish a goal, communication becomes a set of language games.
Due to the possibility of repetition, the intentions of an individual actor can never be fully present in a speech act. [5]: 18 The core of a performative utterance is therefore not constituted by animating intentions, as Austin and Searle would have it, but by the structure of language.
Performativity is the concept that language can function as a form of social action and have the effect of change. [1] The concept has multiple applications in diverse fields such as anthropology, social and cultural geography, economics, gender studies (social construction of gender), law, linguistics, performance studies, history, management studies and philosophy.
The notion of an illocutionary act is closely connected with Austin's doctrine of the so-called 'performative' and 'constative utterances': an utterance is "performative" if, and only if it is issued in the course of the "doing of an action" (1975, 5), by which, again, Austin means the performance of an illocutionary act (Austin 1975, 6 n2, 133).
The descriptive fallacy refers to reasoning which treats a speech act as a logical proposition, which would be mistaken when the meaning of the statement is not based on its truth condition. [1] It was suggested by the British philosopher of language J. L. Austin in 1955 in the lectures now known as How to Do Things With Words.
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Appropriate participants and circumstances: the participants are able to perform a felicitous speech act under the circumstances (e.g. a judge can sentence a criminal in court, but not on the street) Complete execution: the speaker completes the speech act without errors or interruptions