How to Do Things with Words¶

Austin, J. L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955. Clarendon Press.

Type: Book
Intellectual base: Review or monograph
Year: 1962
Link: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674411524
Cited from: linguistics_semiotics, philosophy, speech_language_pathology

Cited by¶

6 citations across 6 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes¶

Outcome-Defined Adequacy
- In speech-act theory, communicative success is felicity — illocutionary uptake and perlocutionary effect, not lexical form.
  This sourceFelicity conditions, illocutionary uptake, and perlocutionary effect as the criteria of communicative success, independent of lexical form.
Performativity
- Performativity is the structural pattern in which an utterance or act does not describe a pre-existing state of affairs but brings that state into being by virtue of being performed under the right conditions, a distinction Austin (1962) drew in separating the constative from the performative in his lectures on how to do things with words.
Speech Act Theory (Illocution, Perlocution)
- Speech Act Theory holds that when someone utters a sentence, three distinct acts are performed simultaneously: (1) the locutionary act — the production of meaningful words in a grammatical structure ("I hereby resign");

Mechanisms¶

Language Review
- A form field, in Austin's terms, is a performative: checking a box does not describe a pre-existing fact, it enacts a classification.
  This sourceNamed because a form field enacts the classification it appears to record.
Pragmatic Force Walkthrough
- Walking content through that context and those conventions, the force resolves as a veiled threat, not a compliment — an illocutionary act the literal parse never contained.
  This sourceDistinguishes illocutionary force from literal locution and treats context and conventions as necessary to identify the act performed in speaking.
Witnessing And Public Recognition
- A contribution, a transition, a loss, an obligation, or a belonging is publicly acknowledged by specific, named witnesses, and the acknowledgment itself is the act
  This sourceExplains that, in appropriate conventional circumstances, issuing a performative utterance is itself doing the act rather than merely reporting it.

Verification¶

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