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Publication details [#941]

Austin, John Langshaw. 1962. How to do things with words. Oxford University Press. vii + 167 pp.
Publication type
Book – monograph
Publication language
English

Annotation

After a lengthy discussion of the distinction between constative utterances (in which something is 'said', and which can be said to be 'true' or 'false') and performative utterances (in which something is 'done' in or by saying something, and which canbe said to be 'happy' or 'unhappy'), A. concludes that it is useless since (i) constatives can also be said to be happy or unhappy, and (ii) performatives can, in a certain sense, also be described as true or false, and (iii) all utterances consist of saying something and doing something in or by saying it. Then A. proposes a framework in terms of which all 'speech acts' can be described (i.e. constatives as well as performatives). He distinguishes three components in every utterance: (i) the 'locutionary act', or the act 'of' saying something, which consists in the following three subcomponents: (a) a phonetic act, which is simply the act of uttering sounds; (b) a phatic act, which is the act of uttering words and constructions belonging to and as belonging to a grammar and a vocabulary; (c) a rhetic act, which is the act of pronouncing a certain pheme with a particular meaning, i.e. a sense and a reference. (ii) The 'illocutionary act', the act performed 'in' saying something, or the act of pronouncing a certain locution with a particular force. (iii) The 'perlocutionary act', the act performed 'by' saying something, i.e. the production of certain consequential effects.

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