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Skinner 'there is a sense in which we need to understand why a certain proposition has been put forward if we wish to understand the proposition itself'. He values agency over structure and stresses the importance of authorial intentions. Skinner therefore proposes to study historical sources in order to retrieve the convictions the author held, reflect on their coherence and investigate possible motives for the illocutionary act. This practical method seeks to deal with the blurred distinction between text and context and offer a meaningful way of interpreting historical reality.
386:. Additionally, according to Sedgwick, performative utterances can be 'transformative' performatives, which create an instant change of personal or environmental status, or 'promisory' performatives, which describe the world as it might be in the future. These categories are not exclusive, so an utterance may well have both qualities. As Sedgwick observes, performative utterances can be revoked, either by the person who uttered them ("I take back my promise"), or by some other party not immediately involved, like the state (for example,
334:
Performativity has a political aspect that consists in what
Derrida has described as the breaking force, by which an utterance changes its context. Butler assigns an important role to what Austin has called infelicities and parasitic uses of language. Quotations, parodies and other deviations from official discourse can become instruments of power that affect society.
284:, it states that neither the meaning, nor the context of a text can be defined in its entirety. Instead of emphasizing linguistic rules, scholars within this strand stress that the performative utterance is intertwined with structures of power. Because a text inevitably changes a situation or discourse, the distinction between text and context is blurred.
187:
conditions have to be met (e.g. a person who pronounces a marriage must be authorized to do so). Besides the context, the performative utterance itself is unambiguous as well. The words of an illocutionary act have to be expressed in earnest; if not, Austin discards them as a parasitic use of language.
302:
holds with Austin and Searle that by illocutionary force, language itself can transform and effect. However, he criticizes the notion of 'felicity conditions' and the idea that the success of a performative utterance is determined by conventions. Derrida values the distinctiveness of every individual
242:
to its broader context, that is to say everything outside the text itself. The question whether a performative is separable from the situation it emerged in is relevant when one addresses for example the status of individual intentions or speech as a resource of power. There are two main theoretical
481:
In 1972 Jacques
Derrida published the article 'Signature Événement Contexte', in which he criticises several aspects of Austin's theory on the performative utterance. The first English translation appeared in 1977 in the first volume of Glyph. In the second volume (1977) Searle published an article
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Skinner agrees with
Derrida that contexts in their entirety are irretrievable but nevertheless states that there is a relevant context outside the text that can be described in a plausible way. Extensive research is required to relate historical texts to their contemporary discourses. According to
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tried to develop his own account of speech acts, suggesting that these acts are a form of rule-governed behaviour. On the one hand, Searle discerns rules that merely regulate language, such as referring and predicating. These rules account for the "propositional content" of sentences. On the other
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Every performative utterance has its own procedure and risks of failure that Austin calls 'infelicities'. He sees a sharp distinction between the individual text and the 'total speech act situation' surrounding it. According to Austin, in order to successfully perform an illocutionary act, certain
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Besides the consequential effects, the dissolution of the text-context divide is also caused by iterability. Due to the possibility of repetition, the intentions of an individual actor can never be fully present in a speech act. The core of a performative utterance is therefore not constituted by
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that sees performance as a repeatable ritual. The focus here is largely on individual sentences in the active first person voice, rather than on politics or discourse. The syntactical analyses are firmly anchored in analytical epistemology, as the distinction between the research object and its
333:
Notwithstanding such social restraints, Butler underscores the possibility of agency. The boundaries of a discourse need continuous re-demarcation and this is where speech can escape its constriction. The emphasis on the limits of what is allowed to be said also frames that what is silenced.
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developed classical and postmodern theories on performative texts into a concrete research method. Using Austin's vocabulary, he seeks to recover what historical authors were doing in writing their texts, which corresponds with the performance of illocutionary acts. According to
Skinner,
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strands in research today. One emphasizes the predetermined conventions surrounding a performative utterance and the clear distinction between text and context. Another emphasizes the active construction of reality through spoken and written texts and is related to theories of
203:
This focus on effect implies a conscious actor and Searle assumes that language stems from an intrinsic intentionality of the mind. These intentions set the prerequisites for the performance of speech acts and Searle sets out to map their necessary and sufficient conditions.
168:. When, for instance, one uses the word "Go!" in order to command someone to leave the room then this utterance is part of the performance of a command; and the sentence, according to Austin, is neither true nor false; hence the sentence is a performative; – still, it is
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hand, he discerns rules that are constitutive in character and define behaviour (e.g. when making a promise). These rules are the conventions underlying performative utterances and they enable not only representation and expression, but also communication.
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According to
Derrida, the effects caused by a performative text are in a sense also part of it. In this way, the distinction between a text and that what is outside it dissolves. For this reason it is pointless to try to define the context of a speech act.
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Early theories acknowledge that performance and text are both embedded in a system of rules and that the effects they can produce depend on convention and recurrence. In this sense, text is an instance of 'restored behaviour', a term introduced by
219:, if "the successful performance of the speech act is sufficient to bring about the fit between words and world, to make the propositional content true." Searle believes that this double direction of fit contrasts the simple word-to-world fit of
307:, because it has a specific effect in the particular situation in which it is performed. It is because of this effect or 'breaking force' that Derrida calls the possibility of repeating a text 'iterability', a word derived from Latin
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philosophical claim that the utterances always "describe" or "constate" something and are thus always true or false. After mentioning several examples of sentences which are not so used, and not truth-evaluable (among them
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and Robert
Harnish claimed that performatives are successful only if recipients infer the intention behind the literal meaning, and that therefore the success of the performative act is determined by the receiving side.
414:). Such a writing form is claimed to be, in itself, a form of performance. It is said to more accurately reflect the fleeting and ephemeral nature of a performance, and the various tricks of memory and
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offers a political interpretation of the concept of the performative utterance. Power in the form of active censorship defines and regulates the domain of a certain discourse. Indebted to the work of
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philosophical ideas are intertwined with claims of power. Every text is an act of communication that positions itself in relation to the status quo it seeks to change.
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called: 'Reiterating the differences: a reply to
Derrida', in which he defended Austin's theories. Derrida responded with the essay 'Limited Inc a b c...', (1977).
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164:; to utter an "explicit" performative sentence is to make explicit what act one is performing. However, there are also "implicit", "primitive", or
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Austin and Searle thought in terms of demarcated contexts and transparent intentions, two issues that in the 1970s led Searle into polemics with
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The second set of theories on performance and text diverged from the tradition represented by Austin and Searle. Bearing the stamp of
122:), the performance of which, again, would not normally be described as simply "saying" or "describing" something (cf. Austin 1962, 5).
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The uttering of a performative is, or is part of, the doing of a certain kind of action (Austin later deals with them under the name
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As Austin observes, the acts purported to be performed by performative utterances may be socially contested. For instance,
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true or false; and he calls such sentences "constatives". In contrast to them, Austin defines "performatives" as follows:
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that performatives are true or false just like constatives. Searle further claimed that performatives are what he calls
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In order to define performatives, Austin refers to those sentences which conform to the old prejudice in that they
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Building on the notion of performative utterances, scholars have theorized on the relation of a spoken or written
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which not only describe a given reality, but also change the social reality they are describing.
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take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife)" – as uttered in the course of a marriage ceremony.
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Bach, Kent; Harnish, Robert (August 1981). "Linguistic
Communication and Speech".
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that happen in the mind of the viewer during and after the performance.
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and "ethical" propositions), he introduces "performative" sentences or
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183:, may be accepted to constitute a divorce by some, but not by others.
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150:"I give and bequeath my watch to my brother" – as occurring in a will
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251:. The ideas about performance and text have contributed to the
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153:"I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow" (Austin 1962, 5)
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argued that there are performative aspects to nearly all
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used to describe or constate something, and which thus
181:"I divorce you", said three times by a man to his wife
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Derrida, Jacques (1988). "Signature Event
Context".
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Speech Acts, an essay in the philosophy of language
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537:. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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703:'Performative' on Glottopedia
568:Schechner, Richard (2006).
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298:The postmodern philosopher
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166:"inexplicit" performatives
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640:Skinner, Quentin (2003).
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688:. Duke University Press.
553:Searle, John R. (1983).
533:Searle, John R. (1974).
390:vows pre-legalisation).
130:Austin gives are these:
126:The initial examples of
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612:Butler, Judith (1997).
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618:. New York: Routledge.
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209:How Performatives Work
143:"I name this ship the
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