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AUSTIN J. L How To Do Things With Words

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AUSTIN J. L How To Do Things With Words

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Jacques Derrida has often remarked that his own philosophy of language can be regarded as a sort of pragmatics, which he calls pragrammatology (pragmatics + grammatology). In a way, this program serves as a rebuttal to the critics of deconstruction who have maintained that Derrida is committed to the view that there is no such thing as meaning, thus allowing a text to be interpreted in any way that suits the whims of the reader. I have tried to prove Derrida’s assertion that his work overlaps and is consistent with pragmatics is correct. In order to accomplish this task, I first delve into the study of pragmatics and chart its development out of ordinary language philosophy. Figures such as Austin, Searle, Grice, and Habermas are discussed so that the underlying themes of pragmatics can be made explicit. I isolate four elements of pragmatics that distinguishes it from formal semantics: convention, intention, context, and conversational maxims (or, in Habermasian terminology, pragmatic presuppositions). Derrida explicitly deals with the themes of intention (in his readings of Husserl and Austin) and context (again in his essay on Austin) while tackling the other two implicitly. I argue that the problem of convention is covered in his discourse on Saussure while the problematizing of the conversational maxims is a consequence of Derrida’s overall theory of meaning and communication. However, Derrida does not simply endorse without reservation these pragmatic ingredients of meaning but submits them to deconstruction while simultaneously acknowledging their necessity. Conventions, intentions, contexts, and conversational maxims cannot determine the meaning of an utterance and, consequently, the success of communication absolutely. Moreover, this is so for necessary reasons given the iterable structure of language, i.e., that an utterance, to be intelligible, must be able to be repeated in circumstances different from those of its production. None of the pragmatic features can arrest iteration because it is a necessary possibility of language. Therefore, there is always a non-present remainder that cannot be reduced to any given context or intention, a belief Derrida shares with the position of semantic minimalism. So, while pragmatics is necessary for the relative stability of meaning and relative success of communication, it cannot exhaust all that is required for meaning. Pragrammatology is a pragmatic semantic minimalism.

J. L. Austin
Austin (1951) by Ramsey & Muspratt
Born	26 March 1911 Lancaster, UK
Died	8 February 1960 (aged 48) Oxford, UK
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic Ordinary language philosophy/linguistic philosophy Correspondence theory of truth[1]
Main interests	Philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, ethics, philosophy of perception
Notable ideas	Speech acts, performative utterance, descriptive fallacy, linguistic phenomenology[2]
Influences Plato, Aristotle, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Immanuel Kant,[3] Gilbert Ryle, Ludwig Wittgenstein, G. E. Moore, Harold Arthur Prichard,[4] John Cook Wilson[3]
Influenced Judith Butler, Stanley Cavell, Jacques Derrida, Jürgen Habermas, Rom Harré, John Searle, Rae Langton, Nancy Bauer, Alice Crary, Kevin Vanhoozer

John Langshaw Austin (26 March 1911 – 8 February 1960) was a British 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 promise to do so-and-so» is best understood as doing something—making a promise—rather than making an assertion about anything. Hence the name of one of his best-known works How to Do Things with Words. Austin, in providing his theory of speech acts, makes a significant challenge to the philosophy of language, far beyond merely elucidating a class of morphological sentence forms that function to do what they name. Austin’s work ultimately suggests that all speech and all utterance is the doing of something with words and signs, challenging a metaphysics of language that would posit denotative, propositional assertion as the essence of language and meaning.

Life[edit]

Austin was born in Lancaster, England, the second son of Geoffrey Langshaw Austin (1884–1971), an architect, and Mary Hutton Bowes-Wilson (1883–1948; née Wilson). In 1921 the family moved to Scotland, where Austin’s father became the secretary of St Leonards School, St Andrews. Austin was educated at Shrewsbury School in 1924, earning a scholarship in Classics, and went on to study Classics at Balliol College, Oxford, in 1929.

In 1930 he received a First in Classical Moderations (Greek and Latin) and in the following year won the Gaisford Prize for Greek prose. In finals in 1933 he received a first in Literae Humaniores (Philosophy and Ancient History).^[6] Literae Humaniores introduced him to serious philosophy and gave him a lifelong interest in Aristotle.^[7] He undertook his first teaching position in 1935, as fellow and tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford.

Austin’s early interests included Aristotle, Kant, Leibniz, and Plato (especially the Theaetetus). His more contemporary influences included especially G. E. Moore, John Cook Wilson and H. A. Prichard. The contemporary influences shaped their views about general philosophical questions on the basis of careful attention to the more specific judgements we make. They took our specific judgements to be more secure than more general judgements. According to Guy Longworth writing in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: «It’s plausible that some aspects of Austin’s distinctive approach to philosophical questions derived from his engagement with the last three [i.e., Moore, Wilson, and Prichard].»^[8]

During World War II Austin served in the British Intelligence Corps. It has been said of him that, «he more than anybody was responsible for the life-saving accuracy of the D-Day intelligence» (reported in Warnock 1963: 9). Austin left the army with the rank of lieutenant colonel and was honored for his intelligence work with an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire), the French Croix de Guerre, and the U.S. Officer of the Legion of Merit.^[7][9][10]

After the war Austin became White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, as a Professorial Fellow of Corpus Christi College. Publishing little, his influence would largely make itself felt through his teaching in lectures and tutorials and, especially, his famous ‘Saturday morning meetings’.^[7]

Austin visited Harvard and Berkeley in the mid-fifties, in 1955 delivering the William James Lectures at Harvard that would become How to Do Things With Words, and offering a seminar on excuses whose material would find its way into «A Plea for Excuses».^[11] It was at this time that he met and befriended Noam Chomsky.^[12] He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1956 to 1957.

Austin died, shortly after being diagnosed with lung cancer, at the age of 48.^[13] At the time of his death, he was developing a semantic theory based on sound symbolism, using the English gl-words as data.^{[citation needed]}

Work[edit]

How to Do Things with Words[edit]

How to Do Things with Words (1955/1962) is perhaps Austin’s most influential work. In contrast to the positivist view, he argues, sentences with truth-values form only a small part of the range of utterances.

After introducing several kinds of sentences which he asserts are neither true nor false, he turns in particular to one of these kinds of sentences, which he calls performative utterances or just «performatives». These he characterises by two features:

• Again, though they may take the form of a typical indicative sentence, performative sentences are not used to describe (or «constate») and are thus not true or false; they have no truth-value.
• Second, to utter one of these sentences in appropriate circumstances is not just to «say» something, but rather to perform a certain kind of action.^[14]

He goes on to say that when something goes wrong in connection with a performative utterance it is, as he puts it, «infelicitous», or «unhappy» rather than false.^[15][16]

The action which is performed when a ‘performative utterance’ is issued belongs to what Austin later calls a speech-act^[17] (more particularly, the kind of action Austin has in mind is what he subsequently terms the illocutionary act). For example, if you say «I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth,» and the circumstances are appropriate in certain ways, then you will have done something special, namely, you will have performed the act of naming the ship. Other examples include: «I take this man as my lawfully wedded husband,» used in the course of a marriage ceremony, or «I bequeath this watch to my brother,» as occurring in a will. In all three cases the sentence is not being used to describe or state what one is ‘doing’, but being used to actually ‘do’ it.

After numerous attempts to find more characteristics of performatives, and after having met with many difficulties, Austin makes what he calls a «fresh start», in which he considers «more generally the senses in which to say something may be to do something, or in saying something we do something».

For example: John Smith turns to Sue Snub and says ‘Is Jeff’s shirt red?’, to which Sue replies ‘Yes’. John has produced a series of bodily movements which result in the production of a certain sound. Austin called such a performance a phonetic act, and called the act a phone. John’s utterance also conforms to the lexical and grammatical conventions of English—that is, John has produced an English sentence. Austin called this a phatic act, and labels such utterances phemes. John also referred to Jeff’s shirt, and to the colour red. To use a pheme with a more or less definite sense and reference is to utter a rheme, and to perform a rhetic act. Note that rhemes are a sub-class of phemes, which in turn are a sub-class of phones. One cannot perform a rheme without also performing a pheme and a phone. The performance of these three acts is the performance of a locution—it is the act of saying something.

John has therefore performed a locutionary act. He has also done at least two other things. He has asked a question, and he has elicited an answer from Sue.

Asking a question is an example of what Austin called an illocutionary act. Other examples would be making an assertion, giving an order, and promising to do something. To perform an illocutionary act is to use a locution with a certain force. It is an act performed in saying something, in contrast with a locution, the act of saying something.

Eliciting an answer is an example of what Austin calls a perlocutionary act, an act performed by saying something. Notice that if one successfully performs a perlocution, one also succeeds in performing both an illocution and a locution.

In the theory of speech acts, attention has especially focused on the illocutionary act, much less on the locutionary and perlocutionary act, and only rarely on the subdivision of the locution into phone, pheme and rheme.

How to Do Things With Words is based on lectures given at Oxford between 1951 and 1954, and then at Harvard in 1955.^[18]

Performative utterance[edit]

According to J. L. Austin, «performative utterance» refers to a not truth-valuable action of «performing», or «doing» a certain action. For example, when people say «I promise to do so and so», they are generating the action of making a promise. In this case, without any flaw (the promise is flawlessly fulfilled), the «performative utterance» is «happy», or to use J. L. Austin’s word, «felicitous»; if on the other hand, one fails to do what he or she promised, it can be «unhappy», or «infelicitous». Notice that performative utterance is not truth-valuable, which means nothing said can be judged based on truth or falsity.

There are four types of performatives according to Austin: explicit, implicit, primitive, and inexplicit. «How to Do Things With Words», edited by J. O. Urmson and Marina Bissau, records Austin’s lectures on this topic. In this book, Austin offers examples for each type of performative mentioned above. For explicit performative, he mentioned «I apologize», «I criticize» (Page 83), which are so explicit to receivers that it would not make sense for someone to ask «Does he really mean that?». Inexplicit performatives are the opposite, where the receiver will have understandable doubts. For a primary performative, the example Austin gave is «I shall be there». Compared with explicit performatives, there is uncertainty in implicit performatives. People might ask if he or she is promising to be there with primary performatives, however, this uncertainty is not strong enough as in explicit performatives. Most examples given are explicit because they are easy to identify and observe, and identifying other performatives requires comparison and contrast with explicit performatives.^[19]

Sense and Sensibilia[edit]

In the posthumously published Sense and Sensibilia (the title is Austin’s own, and wittily echoes the title of Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen’s first book, just as his name echoes hers),^[20] Austin criticizes the claims put forward by A. J. Ayer’s The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge (1940), and to a lesser extent, H. H. Price’s Perception (1932) and G. J. Warnock’s Berkeley (1953), concerning the sense-data theory. He states that perceptual variation, which can be attributed to physical causes, does not involve a figurative disconnection between sense and reference, due to an unreasonable separation of parts from the perceived object. Central to his argument, he shows that «there is no one kind of thing that we ‘perceive’ but many different kinds, the number being reducible if at all by scientific investigation and not by philosophy» (Austin 1962a, 4).

Austin argues that Ayer fails to understand the proper function of such words as «illusion», «delusion», «hallucination», «looks», «appears» and «seems», and uses them instead in a «special way…invented by philosophers.»^[21] According to Austin, normally these words allow us to express reservations about our commitment to the truth of what we are saying, and that the introduction of sense-data adds nothing to our understanding of or ability to talk about what we see.

As an example, Austin examines the word ‘real’ and contrasts the ordinary meanings of that word based on everyday language and the ways it is used by sense-data theorists. In order to determine the meaning of ‘real’ we have to consider, case by case, the ways and contexts in which it is used. By observing that it is (i) a substantive-hungry word that is sometimes (ii) an adjuster-word,^[22] as well as (iii) a dimension-word^[23] and (iv) a word whose negative use «wears the trousers,»^[24] Austin highlights its complexities. Only by doing so, according to Austin, can we avoid introducing false dichotomies.

Philosophical Papers[edit]

Austin’s papers were collected and published posthumously as Philosophical Papers by J. O. Urmson and Geoffrey Warnock. The book originally contained ten papers, two more being added in the second edition and one in the third. His paper Excuses has had a massive impact on criminal law theory.

Chapters 1 and 3 study how a word may have different, but related, senses. Chapters 2 and 4 discuss the nature of knowledge, focusing on performative utterance. Chapters 5 and 6 study the correspondence theory, where a statement is true when it corresponds to a fact. Chapters 6 and 10 concern the doctrine of speech acts. Chapters 8, 9, and 12 reflect on the problems that language encounters in discussing actions and considering the cases of excuses, accusations, and freedom.

«Are there A Priori Concepts?»[edit]

This early paper contains a broad criticism of Idealism. The question set dealing with the existence of a priori concepts is treated only indirectly, by dismissing the concept of concept that underpins it.

The first part of this paper takes the form of a reply to an argument for the existence of Universals: from observing that we do use words such as «grey» or «circular» and that we use a single term in each case, it follows that there must be a something that is named by such terms—a universal. Furthermore, since each case of «grey» or «circular» is different, it follows that universals themselves cannot be sensed.

Austin carefully dismantles this argument, and in the process other transcendental arguments. He points out first that universals are not «something we stumble across», and that they are defined by their relation to particulars. He continues by pointing out that, from the observation that we use «grey» and «circular» as if they were the names of things, it simply does not follow that there is something that is named. In the process he dismisses the notion that «words are essentially proper names», asking «…why, if ‘one identical’ word is used, must there be ‘one identical object’ present which it denotes».

In the second part of the article, he generalizes this argument against universals to address concepts as a whole. He points out that it is «facile» to treat concepts as if they were «an article of property». Such questions as «Do we possess such-and-such a concept» and «how do we come to possess such-and-such a concept» are meaningless, because concepts are not the sort of thing that one possesses.

In the final part of the paper, Austin further extends the discussion to relations, presenting a series of arguments to reject the idea that there is some thing that is a relation. His argument likely follows from the conjecture of his colleague, S. V. Tezlaf, who questioned what makes «this» «that».

«The Meaning of a Word»[edit]

The Meaning of a Word is a polemic against doing philosophy by attempting to pin down the meaning of the words used, arguing that ‘there is no simple and handy appendage of a word called «the meaning of the word (x)»‘.

Austin warns us to take care when removing words from their ordinary usage, giving numerous examples of how this can lead to error.

«Other Minds»[edit]

In Other Minds, one of his most highly acclaimed pieces,^[25] Austin criticizes the method that philosophers have used since Descartes to analyze and verify statements of the form «That person S feels X.» This method works from the following three assumptions:

• (1) We can know only if we intuit and directly feel what he feels.
• (2) It is impossible to do so.
• (3) It may be possible to find strong evidence for belief in our impressions.

Although Austin agrees with (2), quipping that «we should be in a pretty predicament if I did», he found (1) to be false and (3) to be therefore unnecessary. The background assumption to (1), Austin claims, is that if I say that I know X and later find out that X is false, I did not know it. Austin believes that this is not consistent with the way we actually use language. He claims that if I was in a position where I would normally say that I know X, if X should turn out to be false, I would be speechless rather than self-corrective. He gives an argument that this is so by suggesting that believing is to knowing as intending is to promising— knowing and promising are the speech-act versions of believing and intending respectively.

«A Plea for Excuses»[edit]

A Plea for Excuses is both a demonstration by example, and a defense of the methods of ordinary language philosophy, which proceeds on the conviction that:
«…our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connections they have found worth marking, in the lifetime of many generations: these surely are likely to be more numerous, more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all ordinary and reasonable practical matters, than any that you or I are likely to think up in our armchair of an afternoon—the most favourite alternative method.»^[26]

An example of such a distinction Austin describes in a footnote is that between the phrases «by mistake» and «by accident». Although their uses are similar, Austin argues that with the right examples we can see that a distinction exists in when one or the other phrase is appropriate.

Austin proposes some curious philosophical tools. For instance, he uses a sort of word game for developing an understanding of a key concept. This involves taking up a dictionary and finding a selection of terms relating to the key concept, then looking up each of the words in the explanation of their meaning. This process is iterated until the list of words begins to repeat, closing in a «family circle» of words relating to the key concept.

Austin, Wittgenstein and Ryle[edit]

Austin occupies a place in philosophy of language alongside the Cantabrigian Wittgenstein and Austin’s fellow Oxonian Gilbert Ryle in staunchly advocating the examination of the way words are ordinarily used in order to elucidate meaning and by this means avoid philosophical confusion. Unlike many ordinary language philosophers, however, Austin disavowed any overt indebtedness to Wittgenstein’s later philosophy.^[7]

Quotes[edit]

• «The theory of truth is a series of truisms» — Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. xxiv (1950). Philosophical Papers, p. 121, Oxford University Press, second edition (1970)
• «Sentences are not as such either true or false» — Sense and Sensibilia (1962), p. 111
• “It is, of course, not really correct that a sentence ever is a statement: rather, it is used in making a statement, and the statement itself is a ‘logical construction’ out of the makings of statements.” — How to Do Things with Words (1955) Lecture 1, page 1 footnote 1 The William James Lectures at Harvard University. Oxford at the Clarendon press.
• «Going back into the history of a word, very often into Latin, we come back pretty commonly to pictures or models of how things happen or are done. These models may be fairly sophisticated and recent, as is perhaps the case with ‘motive’ or ‘impulse’, but one of the commonest and most primitive types of model is one which is apt to baffle us through its very naturalness and simplicity.» — A Plea for Excuses (1956) Published in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1956-7. Transcribed into hypertext by Andrew Chrucky, 23 August 2004.
• «A sentence is made up of words, a statement is made in words…. Statements are made, words or sentences are used.» Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. xxiv (1950) — Philosophical Papers, p. 120, Oxford University Press, second edition (1970)
• «We walk along the cliff, and I feel a sudden impulse to push you over, which I promptly do: I acted on impulse, yet I certainly intended to push you over, and may even have devised a little ruse to achieve it; yet even then I did not act deliberately, for I did not (stop to) ask myself whether to do it or not.» — Philosophical Papers, «The Meaning of a Word,» p. 195, Oxford University Press, second edition (1970).
• «You are more than entitled not to know what the word ‘performative’ means. It is a new word and an ugly word, and perhaps it does not mean anything very much. But at any rate there is one thing in its favor, it is not a profound word.» — «Performative Utterances.» Philosophical Papers, p. 233, Oxford University Press, second edition (1970).
• «Let us distinguish between acting intentionally and acting deliberately or on purpose, as far as this can be done by attending to what language can teach us.» — Philosophical Papers, «Three Ways of Spilling Ink,» p. 273, Oxford University Press, second edition (1970).
• «Usually it is uses of words, not words in themselves, that are properly called ‘vague.'» — Sense and Sensibilia, p. 126, Oxford University Press (1962).
• «But then we have to ask, of course, what this class comprises. We are given, as examples, ‘familiar objects’—chairs, tables, pictures, books, flowers, pens, cigarettes; the expression ‘material thing’ is not here (or anywhere else in Ayer’s text) further defined. But does the ordinary man believe that what he perceives is (always) something like furniture, or like these other ‘familiar objects’—moderate-sized specimens of dry goods?» — Sense and Sensibilia, p. 8, Oxford University Press (1962).
• During a lecture at Columbia University attended by American philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser, Austin made the claim that although a double negative in English implies a positive meaning, there is no language in which a double positive implies a negative. To which Morgenbesser responded in a dismissive tone, «Yeah, yeah.»^[27][28] (Some have quoted it as «Yeah, right.»)

Publications[edit]

Books[edit]

[edit]

• Philosophical Papers, 1961, 1970, 1979, (eds. J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock), Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-824627-7 (= Austin 1979)
• How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955, 1962 (eds. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà), Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-674-41152-8
• Sense and Sensibilia, 1962 (ed. G. J. Warnock), Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-824579-3

Translated[edit]

• The Foundations of Arithmetic. A logico-mathematical enquiry into the concept of number (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1950) by Gottlob Frege, Translation J. L. Austin. UIN: BLL01001320611.

Papers and articles[edit]

• 1930s–1940s, «The Line and the Cave in Plato’s Republic,» reconstructed from notes by J. O. Urmson, in Austin 1979.
• 1938ms, extracts in: Price, A. (2018) «J. L. Austin’s Lecture Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics: Making Sense of Aristotle on Akrasia.» In Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, V. 55.
• 1939ms/1967, «Agathon and Eudaimonia in the Ethics of Aristotle,» in J. M. E. Moravcsik (ed.), Aristotle, New York: Doubleday. Reprinted in Austin 1979.
• 1939, «Are There A Priori Concepts?» Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 18: 83–105. Reprinted in Austin 1979.
• 1940ms, «The Meaning of Words,» in Austin 1979.
• 1946, «Other Minds,» Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 20: 148–187. Reprinted in Austin 1979.
• 1950, «Truth,» Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 24: 111–128. Reprinted in Austin 1979.
• 1953, «How to Talk—some simple ways» Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 53: 227–246. Reprinted in Austin 1979.
• 1954ms, «Unfair to Facts,» in Austin 1979.
• 1956a, «Ifs and Cans,» Proceedings of the British Academy. Reprinted in Austin 1979.
• 1956b, «Performative Utterances,» corrected transcript of an unscripted radio talk delivered in the Third Programme of the BBC. In Austin 1979.
• 1957, «A Plea for Excuses: The Presidential Address», Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 57: 1–30. Reprinted in Austin 1979.
• 1958, «Pretending» Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 32: 261–278. Reprinted in Austin 1979.
• 1962, «Performatif-Constatif,» in Cahiers de Royaumont, Philosophie No. IV, La Philosophie Analytique, Les Editions de Minuit. Translated in 1963 as»Performative-Constative» by G. J. Warnock, in C. E. Caton ed., Philosophy and Ordinary Language, University of Illinois Press.^[29]
• 1966, «Three Ways of Spilling Ink», L. W. Forguson (ed.), The Philosophical Review, 75 (4): 427–440. Reprinted in Austin 1979.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• Berlin, I. et al., (ed.) (1973) Essays on J.L. Austin, Oxford: The Clarendon Press.
• Cavell, S. (1990), The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy, New York: Oxford University Press. (The major work by one of Austin’s most prominent heirs. Takes ordinary language approaches to issues of skepticism, but also makes those approaches a subject of scrutiny).
• Fann, K.T., ed. (1969), Symposium on J.L. Austin, New York: Humanities Press.
• Friggieri, Joe (1993), » Linguaggio e azione. Saggio su J. L. Austin», Milano: Vita e Pensiero
• Friggieri, Joe (1991), «Actions and Speech Actions: In the Philosophy of J. L. Austin», Msida: Mireva Publications
• Garvey, Brian, ed. (2004), J. L. Austin on Language, Palgrave, Houndmills (UK). (Includes Remembering J. L. Austin by Austin’s younger sister, Ann Lendrum, and Recollections of J. L. Austin by John Searle).
• Gustafsson, M. and Sørli, R. (2011), The Philosophy of J. L. Austin. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (anthology of philosophical essays on Austin’s work).
• Kirkham, R. (1992, reprinted 1995), Theories of Truth: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-61108-2. (Chapter 4 contains a detailed discussion of Austin’s theory of truth).
• Passmore, J. (1966), A Hundred Years of Philosophy, rev. ed. New York: Basic Books. (Chapter 18 includes a perceptive exposition of Austin’s philosophical project).
• Pitcher, G. (1973), «Austin: a personal memoir» in Essays on J.L. Austin, ed. Berlin, I. et al. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.
• Putnam, H. (1999), «The Importance of Being Austin: The Need of a ‘Second Näivetē'» Lecture Two in The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World New York: Columbia University Press. (In arguing for «naive realism», Putnam invokes Austin’s handling of sense-data theories and their reliance on arguments from perceptual illusion in Sense and Sensibilia, which Putnam calls «one of the most unjustly neglected classics of analytics philosophy»).
• Searle, J. (1969), Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Searle’s has been the most notable of attempts to extend and adjust Austin’s conception of speech acts).
• Searle, J. (1979), Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
• Soames, S. (2005), Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century: Volume II: The Age of Meaning. Princeton: Princeton UP. (Contains a large section on ordinary language philosophy, and a chapter on Austin’s treatment of skepticism and perception in Sense and Sensibilia).
• Warnock, G. J. (1969) «John Langshaw Austin, a biographical sketch», in Symposium on J. L. Austin, K.T. Fann (ed), New York: Humanities Press.
• Warnock, G. J. (1979), Philosophical Papers, Oxford: OUP (Clarendon Paperbacks), ISBN 019283021X
• Warnock, G. J. (1973), «Saturday Mornings» in Essays on J.L. Austin I. Berlin et al. (ed) Oxford: The Clarendon Press.
• Warnock, G. J. (1992), J. L. Austin, London: Routledge.

External links[edit]

• J. L. Austin The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• «John Langshaw Austin». Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• «J. L. Austin: A return to common sense» TLS Online ‘Footnotes to Plato’ article by Guy Longworth (on ‘Austin’s view that philosophers fail to understand everyday speech’).
• «Guy Longworth on J.L. Austin and Ordinary Language» Philosophy Bites (audio) interview.
• Lecture and Q&A session by J. L. Austin in Sweden (October 1959), uploaded by Harvard Philosophy Department to YouTube

John Langshaw Austin (26 March 1911 – 8 February 1960) was a British philosopher of language and leading proponent of ordinary language philosophy, best known for developing the theory of speech acts.^[5]

J. L. Austin
Austin (1951) by Ramsey & Muspratt
Born	26 March 1911 Lancaster, UK
Died	8 February 1960 (aged 48) Oxford, UK
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic Ordinary language philosophy/linguistic philosophy Correspondence theory of truth[1]
Main interests	Philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, ethics, philosophy of perception
Notable ideas	Speech acts, performative utterance, descriptive fallacy, linguistic phenomenology[2]
Influences Plato, Aristotle, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Immanuel Kant,[3] Gilbert Ryle, Ludwig Wittgenstein, G. E. Moore, Harold Arthur Prichard,[4] John Cook Wilson[3]
Influenced Judith Butler, Stanley Cavell, Jacques Derrida, Jürgen Habermas, Rom Harré, John Searle, Rae Langton, Nancy Bauer, Alice Crary, Kevin Vanhoozer

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 promise to do so-and-so» is best understood as doing something—making a promise—rather than making an assertion about anything. Hence the name of one of his best-known works How to Do Things with Words. Austin, in providing his theory of speech acts, makes a significant challenge to the philosophy of language, far beyond merely elucidating a class of morphological sentence forms that function to do what they name. Austin’s work ultimately suggests that all speech and all utterance is the doing of something with words and signs, challenging a metaphysics of language that would posit denotative, propositional assertion as the essence of language and meaning.

LifeEdit

Austin was born in Lancaster, England, the second son of Geoffrey Langshaw Austin (1884–1971), an architect, and Mary Hutton Bowes-Wilson (1883–1948; née Wilson). In 1921 the family moved to Scotland, where Austin’s father became the secretary of St Leonards School, St Andrews. Austin was educated at Shrewsbury School in 1924, earning a scholarship in Classics, and went on to study Classics at Balliol College, Oxford, in 1929.

In 1930 he received a First in Classical Moderations (Greek and Latin) and in the following year won the Gaisford Prize for Greek prose. In finals in 1933 he received a first in Literae Humaniores (Philosophy and Ancient History).^[6] Literae Humaniores introduced him to serious philosophy and gave him a lifelong interest in Aristotle.^[7] He undertook his first teaching position in 1935, as fellow and tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford.

Austin’s early interests included Aristotle, Kant, Leibniz, and Plato (especially the Theaetetus). His more contemporary influences included especially G. E. Moore, John Cook Wilson and H. A. Prichard. The contemporary influences shaped their views about general philosophical questions on the basis of careful attention to the more specific judgements we make. They took our specific judgements to be more secure than more general judgements. According to Guy Longworth writing in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: «It’s plausible that some aspects of Austin’s distinctive approach to philosophical questions derived from his engagement with the last three [i.e., Moore, Wilson, and Prichard].»^[8]

During World War II Austin served in the British Intelligence Corps. It has been said of him that, «he more than anybody was responsible for the life-saving accuracy of the D-Day intelligence» (reported in Warnock 1963: 9). Austin left the army with the rank of lieutenant colonel and was honored for his intelligence work with an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire), the French Croix de Guerre, and the U.S. Officer of the Legion of Merit.^[7][9][10]

After the war Austin became White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, as a Professorial Fellow of Corpus Christi College. Publishing little, his influence would largely make itself felt through his teaching in lectures and tutorials and, especially, his famous ‘Saturday morning meetings’.^[7]

Austin visited Harvard and Berkeley in the mid-fifties, in 1955 delivering the William James Lectures at Harvard that would become How to Do Things With Words, and offering a seminar on excuses whose material would find its way into «A Plea for Excuses».^[11] It was at this time that he met and befriended Noam Chomsky.^[12] He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1956 to 1957.

Austin died, shortly after being diagnosed with lung cancer, at the age of 48.^[13] At the time of his death, he was developing a semantic theory based on sound symbolism, using the English gl-words as data.^{[citation needed]}

WorkEdit

How to Do Things with WordsEdit

How to Do Things with Words (1955/1962) is perhaps Austin’s most influential work. In contrast to the positivist view, he argues, sentences with truth-values form only a small part of the range of utterances.

After introducing several kinds of sentences which he asserts are neither true nor false, he turns in particular to one of these kinds of sentences, which he calls performative utterances or just «performatives». These he characterises by two features:

• Again, though they may take the form of a typical indicative sentence, performative sentences are not used to describe (or «constate») and are thus not true or false; they have no truth-value.
• Second, to utter one of these sentences in appropriate circumstances is not just to «say» something, but rather to perform a certain kind of action.^[14]

He goes on to say that when something goes wrong in connection with a performative utterance it is, as he puts it, «infelicitous», or «unhappy» rather than false.^[15][16]

The action which is performed when a ‘performative utterance’ is issued belongs to what Austin later calls a speech-act^[17] (more particularly, the kind of action Austin has in mind is what he subsequently terms the illocutionary act). For example, if you say «I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth,» and the circumstances are appropriate in certain ways, then you will have done something special, namely, you will have performed the act of naming the ship. Other examples include: «I take this man as my lawfully wedded husband,» used in the course of a marriage ceremony, or «I bequeath this watch to my brother,» as occurring in a will. In all three cases the sentence is not being used to describe or state what one is ‘doing’, but being used to actually ‘do’ it.

After numerous attempts to find more characteristics of performatives, and after having met with many difficulties, Austin makes what he calls a «fresh start», in which he considers «more generally the senses in which to say something may be to do something, or in saying something we do something».

For example: John Smith turns to Sue Snub and says ‘Is Jeff’s shirt red?’, to which Sue replies ‘Yes’. John has produced a series of bodily movements which result in the production of a certain sound. Austin called such a performance a phonetic act, and called the act a phone. John’s utterance also conforms to the lexical and grammatical conventions of English—that is, John has produced an English sentence. Austin called this a phatic act, and labels such utterances phemes. John also referred to Jeff’s shirt, and to the colour red. To use a pheme with a more or less definite sense and reference is to utter a rheme, and to perform a rhetic act. Note that rhemes are a sub-class of phemes, which in turn are a sub-class of phones. One cannot perform a rheme without also performing a pheme and a phone. The performance of these three acts is the performance of a locution—it is the act of saying something.

John has therefore performed a locutionary act. He has also done at least two other things. He has asked a question, and he has elicited an answer from Sue.

Asking a question is an example of what Austin called an illocutionary act. Other examples would be making an assertion, giving an order, and promising to do something. To perform an illocutionary act is to use a locution with a certain force. It is an act performed in saying something, in contrast with a locution, the act of saying something.

Eliciting an answer is an example of what Austin calls a perlocutionary act, an act performed by saying something. Notice that if one successfully performs a perlocution, one also succeeds in performing both an illocution and a locution.

In the theory of speech acts, attention has especially focused on the illocutionary act, much less on the locutionary and perlocutionary act, and only rarely on the subdivision of the locution into phone, pheme and rheme.

How to Do Things With Words is based on lectures given at Oxford between 1951 and 1954, and then at Harvard in 1955.^[18]

Performative utteranceEdit

According to J. L. Austin, «performative utterance» refers to a not truth-valuable action of «performing», or «doing» a certain action. For example, when people say «I promise to do so and so», they are generating the action of making a promise. In this case, without any flaw (the promise is flawlessly fulfilled), the «performative utterance» is «happy», or to use J. L. Austin’s word, «felicitous»; if on the other hand, one fails to do what he or she promised, it can be «unhappy», or «infelicitous». Notice that performative utterance is not truth-valuable, which means nothing said can be judged based on truth or falsity.

There are four types of performatives according to Austin: explicit, implicit, primitive, and inexplicit. «How to Do Things With Words», edited by J. O. Urmson and Marina Bissau, records Austin’s lectures on this topic. In this book, Austin offers examples for each type of performative mentioned above. For explicit performative, he mentioned «I apologize», «I criticize» (Page 83), which are so explicit to receivers that it would not make sense for someone to ask «Does he really mean that?». Inexplicit performatives are the opposite, where the receiver will have understandable doubts. For a primary performative, the example Austin gave is «I shall be there». Compared with explicit performatives, there is uncertainty in implicit performatives. People might ask if he or she is promising to be there with primary performatives, however, this uncertainty is not strong enough as in explicit performatives. Most examples given are explicit because they are easy to identify and observe, and identifying other performatives requires comparison and contrast with explicit performatives.^[19]

Sense and SensibiliaEdit

In the posthumously published Sense and Sensibilia (the title is Austin’s own, and wittily echoes the title of Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen’s first book, just as his name echoes hers),^[20] Austin criticizes the claims put forward by A. J. Ayer’s The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge (1940), and to a lesser extent, H. H. Price’s Perception (1932) and G. J. Warnock’s Berkeley (1953), concerning the sense-data theory. He states that perceptual variation, which can be attributed to physical causes, does not involve a figurative disconnection between sense and reference, due to an unreasonable separation of parts from the perceived object. Central to his argument, he shows that «there is no one kind of thing that we ‘perceive’ but many different kinds, the number being reducible if at all by scientific investigation and not by philosophy» (Austin 1962a, 4).

Austin argues that Ayer fails to understand the proper function of such words as «illusion», «delusion», «hallucination», «looks», «appears» and «seems», and uses them instead in a «special way…invented by philosophers.»^[21] According to Austin, normally these words allow us to express reservations about our commitment to the truth of what we are saying, and that the introduction of sense-data adds nothing to our understanding of or ability to talk about what we see.

As an example, Austin examines the word ‘real’ and contrasts the ordinary meanings of that word based on everyday language and the ways it is used by sense-data theorists. In order to determine the meaning of ‘real’ we have to consider, case by case, the ways and contexts in which it is used. By observing that it is (i) a substantive-hungry word that is sometimes (ii) an adjuster-word,^[22] as well as (iii) a dimension-word^[23] and (iv) a word whose negative use «wears the trousers,»^[24] Austin highlights its complexities. Only by doing so, according to Austin, can we avoid introducing false dichotomies.

Philosophical PapersEdit

Austin’s papers were collected and published posthumously as Philosophical Papers by J. O. Urmson and Geoffrey Warnock. The book originally contained ten papers, two more being added in the second edition and one in the third. His paper Excuses has had a massive impact on criminal law theory.

Chapters 1 and 3 study how a word may have different, but related, senses. Chapters 2 and 4 discuss the nature of knowledge, focusing on performative utterance. Chapters 5 and 6 study the correspondence theory, where a statement is true when it corresponds to a fact. Chapters 6 and 10 concern the doctrine of speech acts. Chapters 8, 9, and 12 reflect on the problems that language encounters in discussing actions and considering the cases of excuses, accusations, and freedom.

«Are there A Priori Concepts?»Edit

This early paper contains a broad criticism of Idealism. The question set dealing with the existence of a priori concepts is treated only indirectly, by dismissing the concept of concept that underpins it.

The first part of this paper takes the form of a reply to an argument for the existence of Universals: from observing that we do use words such as «grey» or «circular» and that we use a single term in each case, it follows that there must be a something that is named by such terms—a universal. Furthermore, since each case of «grey» or «circular» is different, it follows that universals themselves cannot be sensed.

Austin carefully dismantles this argument, and in the process other transcendental arguments. He points out first that universals are not «something we stumble across», and that they are defined by their relation to particulars. He continues by pointing out that, from the observation that we use «grey» and «circular» as if they were the names of things, it simply does not follow that there is something that is named. In the process he dismisses the notion that «words are essentially proper names», asking «…why, if ‘one identical’ word is used, must there be ‘one identical object’ present which it denotes».

In the second part of the article, he generalizes this argument against universals to address concepts as a whole. He points out that it is «facile» to treat concepts as if they were «an article of property». Such questions as «Do we possess such-and-such a concept» and «how do we come to possess such-and-such a concept» are meaningless, because concepts are not the sort of thing that one possesses.

In the final part of the paper, Austin further extends the discussion to relations, presenting a series of arguments to reject the idea that there is some thing that is a relation. His argument likely follows from the conjecture of his colleague, S. V. Tezlaf, who questioned what makes «this» «that».

«The Meaning of a Word»Edit

The Meaning of a Word is a polemic against doing philosophy by attempting to pin down the meaning of the words used, arguing that ‘there is no simple and handy appendage of a word called «the meaning of the word (x)»‘.

Austin warns us to take care when removing words from their ordinary usage, giving numerous examples of how this can lead to error.

«Other Minds»Edit

In Other Minds, one of his most highly acclaimed pieces,^[25] Austin criticizes the method that philosophers have used since Descartes to analyze and verify statements of the form «That person S feels X.» This method works from the following three assumptions:

• (1) We can know only if we intuit and directly feel what he feels.
• (2) It is impossible to do so.
• (3) It may be possible to find strong evidence for belief in our impressions.

Although Austin agrees with (2), quipping that «we should be in a pretty predicament if I did», he found (1) to be false and (3) to be therefore unnecessary. The background assumption to (1), Austin claims, is that if I say that I know X and later find out that X is false, I did not know it. Austin believes that this is not consistent with the way we actually use language. He claims that if I was in a position where I would normally say that I know X, if X should turn out to be false, I would be speechless rather than self-corrective. He gives an argument that this is so by suggesting that believing is to knowing as intending is to promising— knowing and promising are the speech-act versions of believing and intending respectively.

«A Plea for Excuses»Edit

A Plea for Excuses is both a demonstration by example, and a defense of the methods of ordinary language philosophy, which proceeds on the conviction that:
«…our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connections they have found worth marking, in the lifetime of many generations: these surely are likely to be more numerous, more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all ordinary and reasonable practical matters, than any that you or I are likely to think up in our armchair of an afternoon—the most favourite alternative method.»^[26]

An example of such a distinction Austin describes in a footnote is that between the phrases «by mistake» and «by accident». Although their uses are similar, Austin argues that with the right examples we can see that a distinction exists in when one or the other phrase is appropriate.

Austin proposes some curious philosophical tools. For instance, he uses a sort of word game for developing an understanding of a key concept. This involves taking up a dictionary and finding a selection of terms relating to the key concept, then looking up each of the words in the explanation of their meaning. This process is iterated until the list of words begins to repeat, closing in a «family circle» of words relating to the key concept.

Austin, Wittgenstein and RyleEdit

Austin occupies a place in philosophy of language alongside the Cantabrigian Wittgenstein and Austin’s fellow Oxonian Gilbert Ryle in staunchly advocating the examination of the way words are ordinarily used in order to elucidate meaning and by this means avoid philosophical confusion. Unlike many ordinary language philosophers, however, Austin disavowed any overt indebtedness to Wittgenstein’s later philosophy.^[7]

QuotesEdit

• «The theory of truth is a series of truisms» — Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. xxiv (1950). Philosophical Papers, p. 121, Oxford University Press, second edition (1970)
• «Sentences are not as such either true or false» — Sense and Sensibilia (1962), p. 111
• “It is, of course, not really correct that a sentence ever is a statement: rather, it is used in making a statement, and the statement itself is a ‘logical construction’ out of the makings of statements.” — How to Do Things with Words (1955) Lecture 1, page 1 footnote 1 The William James Lectures at Harvard University. Oxford at the Clarendon press.
• «Going back into the history of a word, very often into Latin, we come back pretty commonly to pictures or models of how things happen or are done. These models may be fairly sophisticated and recent, as is perhaps the case with ‘motive’ or ‘impulse’, but one of the commonest and most primitive types of model is one which is apt to baffle us through its very naturalness and simplicity.» — A Plea for Excuses (1956) Published in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1956-7. Transcribed into hypertext by Andrew Chrucky, 23 August 2004.
• «A sentence is made up of words, a statement is made in words…. Statements are made, words or sentences are used.» Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. xxiv (1950) — Philosophical Papers, p. 120, Oxford University Press, second edition (1970)
• «We walk along the cliff, and I feel a sudden impulse to push you over, which I promptly do: I acted on impulse, yet I certainly intended to push you over, and may even have devised a little ruse to achieve it; yet even then I did not act deliberately, for I did not (stop to) ask myself whether to do it or not.» — Philosophical Papers, «The Meaning of a Word,» p. 195, Oxford University Press, second edition (1970).
• «You are more than entitled not to know what the word ‘performative’ means. It is a new word and an ugly word, and perhaps it does not mean anything very much. But at any rate there is one thing in its favor, it is not a profound word.» — «Performative Utterances.» Philosophical Papers, p. 233, Oxford University Press, second edition (1970).
• «Let us distinguish between acting intentionally and acting deliberately or on purpose, as far as this can be done by attending to what language can teach us.» — Philosophical Papers, «Three Ways of Spilling Ink,» p. 273, Oxford University Press, second edition (1970).
• «Usually it is uses of words, not words in themselves, that are properly called ‘vague.'» — Sense and Sensibilia, p. 126, Oxford University Press (1962).
• «But then we have to ask, of course, what this class comprises. We are given, as examples, ‘familiar objects’—chairs, tables, pictures, books, flowers, pens, cigarettes; the expression ‘material thing’ is not here (or anywhere else in Ayer’s text) further defined. But does the ordinary man believe that what he perceives is (always) something like furniture, or like these other ‘familiar objects’—moderate-sized specimens of dry goods?» — Sense and Sensibilia, p. 8, Oxford University Press (1962).
• During a lecture at Columbia University attended by American philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser, Austin made the claim that although a double negative in English implies a positive meaning, there is no language in which a double positive implies a negative. To which Morgenbesser responded in a dismissive tone, «Yeah, yeah.»^[27][28] (Some have quoted it as «Yeah, right.»)

PublicationsEdit

BooksEdit

Edit

• Philosophical Papers, 1961, 1970, 1979, (eds. J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock), Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-824627-7 (= Austin 1979)
• How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955, 1962 (eds. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà), Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-674-41152-8
• Sense and Sensibilia, 1962 (ed. G. J. Warnock), Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-824579-3

TranslatedEdit

• The Foundations of Arithmetic. A logico-mathematical enquiry into the concept of number (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1950) by Gottlob Frege, Translation J. L. Austin. UIN: BLL01001320611.

Papers and articlesEdit

• 1930s–1940s, «The Line and the Cave in Plato’s Republic,» reconstructed from notes by J. O. Urmson, in Austin 1979.
• 1938ms, extracts in: Price, A. (2018) «J. L. Austin’s Lecture Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics: Making Sense of Aristotle on Akrasia.» In Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, V. 55.
• 1939ms/1967, «Agathon and Eudaimonia in the Ethics of Aristotle,» in J. M. E. Moravcsik (ed.), Aristotle, New York: Doubleday. Reprinted in Austin 1979.
• 1939, «Are There A Priori Concepts?» Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 18: 83–105. Reprinted in Austin 1979.
• 1940ms, «The Meaning of Words,» in Austin 1979.
• 1946, «Other Minds,» Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 20: 148–187. Reprinted in Austin 1979.
• 1950, «Truth,» Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 24: 111–128. Reprinted in Austin 1979.
• 1953, «How to Talk—some simple ways» Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 53: 227–246. Reprinted in Austin 1979.
• 1954ms, «Unfair to Facts,» in Austin 1979.
• 1956a, «Ifs and Cans,» Proceedings of the British Academy. Reprinted in Austin 1979.
• 1956b, «Performative Utterances,» corrected transcript of an unscripted radio talk delivered in the Third Programme of the BBC. In Austin 1979.
• 1957, «A Plea for Excuses: The Presidential Address», Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 57: 1–30. Reprinted in Austin 1979.
• 1958, «Pretending» Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 32: 261–278. Reprinted in Austin 1979.
• 1962, «Performatif-Constatif,» in Cahiers de Royaumont, Philosophie No. IV, La Philosophie Analytique, Les Editions de Minuit. Translated in 1963 as»Performative-Constative» by G. J. Warnock, in C. E. Caton ed., Philosophy and Ordinary Language, University of Illinois Press.^[29]
• 1966, «Three Ways of Spilling Ink», L. W. Forguson (ed.), The Philosophical Review, 75 (4): 427–440. Reprinted in Austin 1979.

See alsoEdit

ReferencesEdit

Further readingEdit

• Berlin, I. et al., (ed.) (1973) Essays on J.L. Austin, Oxford: The Clarendon Press.
• Cavell, S. (1990), The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy, New York: Oxford University Press. (The major work by one of Austin’s most prominent heirs. Takes ordinary language approaches to issues of skepticism, but also makes those approaches a subject of scrutiny).
• Fann, K.T., ed. (1969), Symposium on J.L. Austin, New York: Humanities Press.
• Friggieri, Joe (1993), » Linguaggio e azione. Saggio su J. L. Austin», Milano: Vita e Pensiero
• Friggieri, Joe (1991), «Actions and Speech Actions: In the Philosophy of J. L. Austin», Msida: Mireva Publications
• Garvey, Brian, ed. (2004), J. L. Austin on Language, Palgrave, Houndmills (UK). (Includes Remembering J. L. Austin by Austin’s younger sister, Ann Lendrum, and Recollections of J. L. Austin by John Searle).
• Gustafsson, M. and Sørli, R. (2011), The Philosophy of J. L. Austin. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (anthology of philosophical essays on Austin’s work).
• Kirkham, R. (1992, reprinted 1995), Theories of Truth: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-61108-2. (Chapter 4 contains a detailed discussion of Austin’s theory of truth).
• Passmore, J. (1966), A Hundred Years of Philosophy, rev. ed. New York: Basic Books. (Chapter 18 includes a perceptive exposition of Austin’s philosophical project).
• Pitcher, G. (1973), «Austin: a personal memoir» in Essays on J.L. Austin, ed. Berlin, I. et al. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.
• Putnam, H. (1999), «The Importance of Being Austin: The Need of a ‘Second Näivetē'» Lecture Two in The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World New York: Columbia University Press. (In arguing for «naive realism», Putnam invokes Austin’s handling of sense-data theories and their reliance on arguments from perceptual illusion in Sense and Sensibilia, which Putnam calls «one of the most unjustly neglected classics of analytics philosophy»).
• Searle, J. (1969), Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Searle’s has been the most notable of attempts to extend and adjust Austin’s conception of speech acts).
• Searle, J. (1979), Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
• Soames, S. (2005), Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century: Volume II: The Age of Meaning. Princeton: Princeton UP. (Contains a large section on ordinary language philosophy, and a chapter on Austin’s treatment of skepticism and perception in Sense and Sensibilia).
• Warnock, G. J. (1969) «John Langshaw Austin, a biographical sketch», in Symposium on J. L. Austin, K.T. Fann (ed), New York: Humanities Press.
• Warnock, G. J. (1979), Philosophical Papers, Oxford: OUP (Clarendon Paperbacks), ISBN 019283021X
• Warnock, G. J. (1973), «Saturday Mornings» in Essays on J.L. Austin I. Berlin et al. (ed) Oxford: The Clarendon Press.
• Warnock, G. J. (1992), J. L. Austin, London: Routledge.

External linksEdit

• J. L. Austin The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• «John Langshaw Austin». Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• «J. L. Austin: A return to common sense» TLS Online ‘Footnotes to Plato’ article by Guy Longworth (on ‘Austin’s view that philosophers fail to understand everyday speech’).
• «Guy Longworth on J.L. Austin and Ordinary Language» Philosophy Bites (audio) interview.
• Lecture and Q&A session by J. L. Austin in Sweden (October 1959), uploaded by Harvard Philosophy Department to YouTube

• J. L. AUSTIN

  HOW TO DO THINGS WITH WORDS

  The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University

  OXFORD A T THE CLARENDON PRESS

  1962

• Oxford University Press, Amen House, London, E .C .q GLASGOW NEW
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  BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI W O R E DACCA CAPE TOWN SALISBURY
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  0 Oxford University Press 1962

  P R I N T E D I N G R E A T B R I T A I N

• EDITOR’S PREFACE

  T H E lectures here printed were delivered by Austin as the
  William James Lectures at Harvard Univer- sity in 1955. In a short
  note, Austin says of the views which underlie these lectures that
  they ‘were formed in 1939. I made use of them in an article on
  «Other Minds» published in the Proceedings ofthe Aristo- telian
  Society, Supplementary Volume XX ( I g46), pages 173 K , and I
  surfaced rather more of this iceberg shortly afterwards to several
  societies. . ‘ In each of the years 1952-4 Austin delivered
  lectures at Oxford under the title ‘Words and Deeds’, each year
  from a partially re- written set of notes, each of which covers
  approximately the same ground as the William James Lectures. For
  the William James Lectures a new set of notes was again prepared,
  though sheets of older notes were incorporated here and there;
  these remain the most recent notes by Austin on the topics covered,
  though he continued to lecture on ‘Words and Deeds’ at Oxford from
  these notes, and while doing so made minor corrections and a number
  of marginal additions.

  The content of these lectures is here reproduced in print as
  exactly as possible and with the lightest editing. If Austin had
  published them himself he would certainly have recast them in a
  form more appropriate to print; he would surely have reduced the
  recapitulations of previous

• Editor’s Preface lectures which occur at the beginning of the
  second and subsequent lectures; it is equally certain that Austin
  as a matter of course elaborated on the bare text of his notes when
  lecturing. But most readers will prefer to have a close
  approximation to what he is known to have written down rather than
  what it might be judged that he would have printed or thought that
  he probably said in lectures; they will not therefore begrudge the
  price to be paid in minor imperfections of furm and style and
  incon- sistencies of vocabulary.

  But these lectures as printed do not exactly reproduce Austin’s
  written notes. The reason for this is that while for the most part,
  and particularly in the earlier part of each lecture, the notes
  were very full and written as sentences, with only minor omissions
  such as particles and articles, often at the end of the lecture
  they became much more fragmentary, while the marginal additions
  were often very abbreviated. At these points the notes were
  interpreted and supplemented in the light of re- maining portions
  of the 1952-4 notes already mentioned. A further check was then
  possible by comparison with notes taken both in America and in
  England by those who attended the lectures, with the B.B.C. lecture
  on ‘Performative Utterances’ and a tape-recording of a lecture
  entitled ‘Performatives’ delivered at Gothenberg in October 1959.
  More thorough indications of the use of these aids are given in an
  appendix. While it seems possible that in this process of
  interpretation an occasional sentence may have crept into the text
  which Austin

• Editor’s Preface vii would have repudiated, it seems very
  unlikely that at any point the main lines of Austin’s thought have
  been misrepresented.

  The editor is grateful to all those who gave assistance by the
  loan of their notes, and for the gift of the tape- recording. He is
  especially indebted to Mr. G. J.Warnock, who went through the whole
  text most thoroughly and saved the editor from numerous mistakes;
  as a result of this aid the reader has a much improved text.

  J. 0. URMSON

• L E C T U R E I

  w H A T I shall have to say here is neither diffi- cult nor
  contentious; the only merit I should like to claim for it is that
  of being true, at least in parts. The phenomenon to be discussed is
  very widespread and obvious, and it cannot fail to have been
  already noticed, at least here and there, by others. Yet I have not
  found attention paid to it specifically.

  It was for too long the assumption of philosophers that the
  business of a ‘statement’ can only be to ‘describe’ some state of
  affairs, or to ‘state some fact’, which it must do either truly or
  falsely. Grammarians, indeed, have regularly pointed out that not
  all ‘sentences’ are (used in making) statements : I there are,
  traditionally, besides (grammarians’) statements, also questions
  and exclama- tions, and sentences expressing commands or wishes or
  concessions. And doubtless philosophers have not in- tended to deny
  this, despite some loose use of ‘sentence’ for ‘statement’.
  Doubtless, too, both grammarians and philosophers have been aware
  that it is by no means easy to distinguish even questions,
  commands, and so on from statements by means of the few and jejune
  grammatical marks available, such as word order, mood, and the like
  :

  It is, of course, not reaw correct that a sentence ever is a
  statement: rather, it is used in making a s m m t , and the
  statement itself’ is a ‘logical construction’ out of the d i n g s
  of satements.

• How t o do things with Words though perhaps it has not been
  usual to dwell on the difficulties which this fact obviously
  raises. For how do we decide which is which? What are the limits
  and definitions of each ?

  But now in recent years, many things which would once have been
  accepted without question as ‘statements’ by both philosophers and
  grammarians have been scruti- nized with new care. This scrutiny
  arose somewhat in- directly-at least in philosophy. First came the
  view, not always formulated without unfortunate dogmatism, that a
  statement (of fact) ought to be ‘verifiable’, and this led to the
  view that many ‘statements’ are only what may be called
  pseudo-statements. First and most obviously, many ‘statements’ were
  shown to be, as KANT perhaps first argued systematically, strictly
  nonsense, despite an unexceptionable grammatical form : and the
  continual discovery of fresh types of nonsense, unsystematic though
  their classification and mysterious though their explana- tion is
  too often allowed to remain, has done on the whole nothing but
  good. Yet we, that is, even philosophers, set some limits to the
  amount of nonsense that we are pre- pared to admit we talk: so that
  it was natural to go on to ask, as a second stage, whether many
  apparent pseudo- statements really set out to be ‘statements’ at
  all. It has come to be commonly held that many utterances which
  look like statements are either not intended at all, or only
  intended in part, to record or impart straigl~tforward information
  about the facts: for example, ‘ethical pro- positions’ are perhaps
  intended, solely or partly, to evince

• How to do things with Words 3 emotion or to prescribe conduct or
  to influence it in special ways. Here too KANT was among the
  pioneers. We very often also use utterances in ways beyond the
  scope at least of traditional grammar. It has come to be seen that
  many specially perplexing words embedded in apparently descriptive
  statements do not serve to indi- cate some specially odd additional
  feature in the reality reported, but to indicate (not to report)
  the circumstances in which the statement is made or reservations to
  which it is subject or the way in which it is to be taken and the
  like. T o overlook these possibilities in the way once common is
  called the ‘descriptive’ fallacy; but perhaps this is not a good
  name, as ‘descriptive’ itself is special. Not all true or false
  statements are descriptions, and for this reason I prefer to use
  the word ‘Constative’. Along these lines it has by now been shown
  piecemeal, or at least made to look likely, that many traditional
  philoso- phical perplexities have arisen through a mistake-the
  mistake of taking as straightforward statements of fact utterances
  which are either (in interesting non-grammati- cal ways)
  nonsensical or else intended as something quite different.

  Whatever we may think of any particular one of these views and
  suggestions, and however much we may deplore the initial confusion
  into which philosophical doctrine and method have been plunged, it
  cannot be doubted that they are producing a revolution in
  philosophy. If anyone wishes to call it the greatest and most
  salutary in its history, this is not, if you come to think of it,
  a

• 4 How t o do things with Words large claim, It is not surprising
  that beginnings have been piecemeal, with parti pris, and for
  extraneous aims; this is common with revolutions.

  PRELIMINARY ISOLATION OF THE PERFORMATIVE’

  The type of utterance we are to consider here is not, of course,
  in general a type of nonsense; though misuse of it can, as we shall
  see, engender rather special varieties of ‘nonsense’. Rather, it is
  one of our second class-the masqueraders. But it does not by any
  means necessarily masquerade as a statement of fact, descrip- tive
  or constative. Yet it does quite commonly do so, and that, oddly
  enough, when it assumes its most explicit form. Grammarians have
  not, I believe, seen through this ‘disguise’, and philosophers only
  at best incidentally.= It will be convenient, therefore, to study
  it first in this misleading form, in order to bring out its
  characteristics by contrasting them with those of the statement of
  fact which it apes.

  We shall take, then, for our first examples some utter- ances
  which can fall into no hitherto recognized gram- matical category
  save that of ‘statement’, which are not nonsense, and which contain
  none of those verbal danger- signals which philosophers have by now
  detected or think

  I Everything said in these sections is provisional, and subject
  to revi- sion in the light of later sections.

  Of all people, jurists should be best aware of the m e state of
  affairs. Perhaps some now are. Yet they will succumb to their own
  timorous fiction, that a statement of ‘the law’ is a statemknt of
  fact.

• How to do things with Words they have detected (curious words
  like ‘good’ or ‘all’, suspect auxiliaries like ‘ought’ or ‘can’,
  and dubious constructions like the hypothetical): all will have, as
  it happens, humdrum verbs in the first person singular present
  indicative active.’ Utterances can be found, satis- fying these
  conditions, yet such that

  A. they do not ‘describe’ or ‘report’ or constate any- thing at
  all, are not ‘true or false’; and

  B. the uttering of the sentence is, or is a part of, the doing
  of an action, which again would not normally be described as saying
  something.

  This is far from being as paradoxical as it may sound or as I
  have meanly been trying to make it sound: in- deed, the examples
  now to be given will be disappointing. Examples :

  (E. a) ‘I do (sc. take this woman to be my lawful wedded
  wife)’-as uttered in the course of the marriage cerem~ny.~

  (E* b) ‘I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth’—as uttered when
  smashing the bottle against the stem.

  (E. c) ‘I give and bequeath my watch to my brother’ a s
  occurring in a will.

  (E. d) ‘I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow.’ Not without
  design: they are all ‘explicit’ performatives, and of that

  prepotent class later called ‘exercit ives’. » [Austin realized
  that the expression ‘I do’ is not used in the marriage

  ceremony too late to correct his mistake. We have let it remain
  in the text as it is philosophically unimportant that it is a
  mistake. J. 0. U.]

• How t o do things with Words In these examples it seems clear
  that to utter the sen-

  tence (in, of course, the appropriate circumstances) is not to
  describe my doing of what I should be said in so uttering to be
  doing1 or to state that I am doing it: it is to do it. None of the
  utterances cited is either true or false: I assert this as obvious
  and do not argue it. It needs argument no more than that ‘damn’ is
  not true or false: it may be that the utterance ‘serves to inform
  you’-but that is quite different. T o name the ship i s to say (in
  the appropriate circumstances) the words ‘I name, &c.’. When I
  say, before the registrar or altar, &c., ‘I do’, I am not
  reporting on a marriage: I am indulging in it.

  What are we to call a sentence or an utterance of this type?2 I
  propose to call it a perfornative sentence or a performative
  utterance, or, for short, ‘a performative’. The term ‘performative’
  will be used in a variety of cog- nate ways and constructions, much
  as the term ‘impera- tive’ i s3 The name is derived, of course,
  from ‘perform’, the usual verb with the noun ‘action’: it indicates
  that the issuing of the utterance is the performing of an
  action

  Still less anything that I have already done or have yet to do.
  ‘Sentences’ form a class of ‘utterances’, which class is to be
  defined,

  so far as I am concerned, grammatically, though I doubt if the
  definition has yet been given satisfactorily. With performative
  utterances are con- trasted, for example and essentially,
  ‘constative’ utterances : to issue a constative utterance (Leo to
  utter it with a historical reference) is to make a statement. To
  issue a performative utterance is, for example, to make a bet. See
  f d e r below on ‘illocutions’.

  Formerly I used ‘performatory’ : but ‘performative’ is to be
  preferred as shorter, less ugly, more tractable, and more
  traditional in fmmation.

• How t o do things with Words 7 -it is not normally thought of as
  just saying some- thing.

  A number of other terms may suggest themselves, each of which
  would suitably cover this or that wider or narrower class of
  performatives: for example, many per- formatives are contractual
  (‘I bet’) or declaratory (‘I declare war’) utterances. But no term
  in current use that I know of is nearly wide enough to cover them
  all. One technical term that comes nearest to what we need is
  perhaps ‘operative’, as it is used strictly by lawyers in referring
  to that part, i.e. those clauses, of an instrument which serves to
  effect the transaction (conveyance or what not) which is its main
  object, whereas the rest of the document merely ‘recites’ the
  circumstances in which the transaction is to be effected.’ But
  ‘operative’ has other meanings, and indeed is often used nowadays
  to mean little more than ‘important’. I have preferred a new word,
  to which, though its etymology is not irrelevant, we shall perhaps
  not be so ready to attach some pre- conceived meaning.

  CAN SAYING MAKE I T S O ?

  Are we then to say things like this: ‘To marry is to say a few
  words’, or ‘Betting is simply saying something’ ?

  Such a doctrine sounds odd or even flippant at first, but with
  sufficient safeguards it may become not odd at all.

  I owe this observation to Professor H. L. A. Hart,

• How to do things with Words A sound initial objection to them
  may be this; and it

  is not without some importance. In very many cases it is
  possible to perform an act of exactly the same kind not by uttering
  words, whether written or spoken, but in some other way. For
  example, I may in some places effect marriage by cohabiting, or I
  may bet with a totalisator machine by putting a coin in a slot. We
  should then, perhaps, convert the propositions above, and put it
  that t to say a few certain words is to many’ or ‘to marry is, in
  some cases, simply to say a few words’ or ‘simply to say a certain
  something is to bet’.

  But probably the real reason why such remarks sound dangerous
  lies in another obvious fact, to which we shall have to revert in
  detail later, which is this. The uttering of the words is, indeed,
  usually a, or even the, leading incident in the performance of the
  act (of betting or what not), the performance of which is also the
  object of the utterance, but it is far from being usually, even if
  it is ever, the sole thing necessary if the act is to be deemed to
  have been performed. Speaking generally, it is always necessary
  that the tircumstantes in which the words are uttered should be in
  some way, or ways, appropriate, and it is very commonly necessary
  that either the speaker himself or other persons should also
  perform certain other actions, whether ‘physical’ or ‘mental’
  actions or even acts of uttering further words. Thus, for naming
  the ship, it is essential that I should be the person appointed to
  name her, for (Christian) marrying, it is essential that I should
  not be already married with a wife

• How to do things with Words living, sane and undivorced, and so
  on: for a bet to have been made, it is generally necessary for the
  offer of the bet to have been accepted by a taker (who must have
  done something, such as to say ‘Done’), and it is hardly a gift if
  I say ‘I give it you’ but never hand it over.

  So far, well and good. The action may be performed in ways other
  than by a performative utterance, and in any case the
  circumstances, including other actions, must be appropriate. But we
  may, in objecting, have something totally different, and this time
  quite mistaken, in mind, especially when we think of some of the
  more awe-

  3 ‘ inspiring performatives such as ‘I promise to . . . . Surely
  the words must be spoken ‘seriously’ and so as to be taken
  ‘seriously’ ? This is, though vague, true enough in general-it is
  an important commonplace in discussing the purport of any utterance
  whatsoever. I must not be joking, for example, nor writing a poem.
  But we are apt to have a feeling that their being serious consists
  in their being uttered as (merely) the outward and visible sign,
  for convenience or other record or for information, of an inward
  and spiritual act: from which it is but a short step to go on to
  believe or to assume without realizing that for many purposes the
  outward utterance is a description, true or false, of the
  occurrence of the inward performance. The classic expression of
  this idea is to be found in the Hippolytus (1. 612), where
  Hippolytus says

  i.e. ‘my tongue swore to, but my heart (or mind or other

• How t o do things with Words backstage artiste) did not’.’ Thus
  ‘I promise to . . . 9 obliges me-puts on record my spiritual
  assumption of a spiritual shackle.

  It is gratifying to observe in this very example how excess of
  profundity, or rather solemnity, at once paves the way for
  immodality. For one who says ‘promising is not merely a matter of
  uttering words! It is an inward and spiritual act!’ is apt to
  appear as a solid moralist standing out against a generation of
  superficial theorizers : we see him as he sees himself, surveying
  the invisible depths of ethical space, with all the distinction of
  a specialist in the s2ti generis. Yet he provides Hippolytus with a
  let-out, the bigamist with an excuse for his ‘I do’ and the welsher
  with a defence for his ‘I bet’. Accuracy and morality alike are on
  the side of the plain saying that our word is our bond.

  If we exclude such fictitious inward acts as this, can we
  suppose that any of the other things which certainly are normally
  required to accompany an utterance such as ‘I promise that . . . ‘
  or ‘I do (take this woman . . .)’ are in fact described by it, and
  consequently do by their pre- sence make it true or by their
  absence make it false?

  Well, taking the latter first, we shall next consider what we
  actually do say about the utterance concerned when one or another
  of its normal concomitants is absent. In no case do we say that the
  utterance was false but rather

  I But I do not mean to rule out all the offstage perfomers-the
  lights men, the stage manager, even the prompter; I am objecting
  only to areain officious understudies.

• How to do things with Words that the utterance-or rather the
  act,’ e.g. the promise- was void, or given in bad faith, or not
  implemented, or the like. In the particular case of promising, as
  with many other performatives, it is appropriate that the person
  uttering the promise should have a certain intention, viz. here to
  keep his word : and perhaps of all concomitants this looks the most
  suitable to be that which ‘I promise’ does describe or record. Do
  we not actually, when such intention is absent, speak of a ‘false’
  promise? Yet so to speak is not to say that the utterance ‘I
  promise that . . . I is false, in the sense that though he states
  that he does, he doesn’t, or that though he describes he
  misdescribes- misreports. For he does promise: the promise here is
  not even void, though it is given in bad faith. His utterance is
  perhaps misleading, probably deceitful and doubtless wrong, but it
  is not a lie or a misstatement. At most we might make out a case
  for saying that it implies or insinuates a falsehood or a
  misstatement (to the effect that he does intend to do something):
  but that is a very different matter. Moreover, we do not speak of a
  false bet or a false christening; and that we do speak of a false
  promise need commit us no more than the fact that we speak of a
  false move. ‘False’ is not necessarily used of statements only.

  I We shall avoid distinguishing these precisely bemuse the
  distinction is not in point.

• L E C T U R E I 1

  w E were to consider, you will remember, some cases and senses
  (only some, Heaven help us!) in which to say something is to do
  some- thing; or in which by saying or in saying something we are
  doing something. This topic is one development- there are many
  others-in the recent movement towards questioning an age-old
  assumption in philosophy-the assumption that to say something, at
  least in all cases worth considering, i.e. all cases considered, is
  always and simply to state something. This assumption is no doubt
  unconscious, no doubt is wrong, but it is wholly natural in
  philosophy apparently. We must learn to run before we can walk. If
  we never made mistakes how should we correct them ?

  I began by drawing your attention, by way of example, to a few
  simple utterances of the kind known as per- formatories or
  performatives. These have on the face of them the look-r at least
  the grammatical make-up- of ‘statements’; but nevertheless they are
  seen, when more closely inspected, to be, quite plainly, not
  utterances which could be ‘true’ or ‘false’. Yet to be ‘true’ or
  ‘false’ is traditionally the characteristic mark of a statement.
  One of our examples was, for instance, the utterance ‘I do’ (take
  this woman to be my lawful wedded wife), as

• How to do things with Words 13 uttered in the course of a
  marriage ceremony. Here we should say that in saying-these words we
  are doing some- thing-namely, marrying, rat her than reporting
  some- thing, namely that we are marrying. And the act of marrying,
  like, say, the act of betting, is at least preferably (though still
  not accurately) to be described as saying certain words, rather
  than as performing a different, in- ward and spiritual, action of
  which these words are merely the outward and audible sign. That
  this is SO can perhaps hardly be proved, but it is, I should claim,
  a fact.

  It is worthy of note that, as I am told, in the American law of
  evidence, a report of what someone else said is admitted as
  evidence if what he said is an utterance of our performative kind:
  because this is regarded as a report not so much of something he
  said, as which it would be hear-say and not admissible as evidence,
  but rather as something he did, an action of his. This coincides
  very well with our initial feelings about per formatives.

  So far then we have merely felt the firm ground of prejudice
  slide away beneath our feet. But now how, as philosophers, are we
  to proceed ? One thing we might go on to do, of course, is to take
  it all back: another would be to bog, by logical stages, down. But
  all this must take time. Let us first at least concentrate
  attention on the little matter already mentioned in passing-this
  matter of ‘the appropriate circumstances’. T o bet is not, as I
  pointed out in passing, merely to utter the words ‘I bet, &c.’
  : someone might do that all right, and yet we might still not agree
  that he had in fact, or at least entirely,

• 14 Hotrto do things with Words succeeded in betting. To satisf)
  ourselves of this, we have only, for example, to announce our bet
  after the race is over. Besides the uttering of the words of the
  so- called performative, a good many other things have as a general
  rule to be right and to go right if we are to be said to have
  happily brought off our action. What these are we may hope to
  discover by looking at and classifying types of case in which
  something goes wrong and the act -marrying, betting, bequeathing,
  christening, or what not-is therefore at least to some extent a
  failure: the utterance is then, we may say, not indeed false but in
  general unhappy. And for this reason we call the doctrine of % the
  things that can be and go wrong on the occasion of such utterances,
  the doctrine of the Infelicities.

  Suppose we try first to state schematically-and I do not wish to
  claim any sort of finality for this scheme- some at least of the
  things which are necessary for the smooth or ‘happy’ functioning of
  a performative (or at least of a highly developed explicit
  performative, such as we have hitherto been alone concerned with),
  and then give examples of infelicities and their effects. I fear,
  but at the same time of course hope, that these necessary
  conditions to be satisfied will strike you as obvious.

  (A. I) There must exist an accepted conventional pro- cedure
  having a certain conventional effect, that procedure to include the
  uttering of certain words by certain persons in certain
  circumstances, and further,

• How t o do things S t h Words ‘5 (A. 2) the particular persons
  and circumstances in a

  given case must be appr~priate for the invocation of the
  particular procedure invoked.

  (B. I) The procedure must be executed by all partici- pants both
  correctly and

  (B. 2) completely. ( r = I) Where, as often, the procedure is
  designed for use

  by persons having certain thoughts or feelings, or for the
  inauguration of certain consequential con- duct on the part of any
  participant, then a person participating in and so invoking the
  procedure must in fact have those thoughts or feelings, and the
  participants must intend so to conduct them- selves,= and further
  (r. 2) must actually so conduct themselves subsequently.

  Now if we sin against any one (or more) of these six rules, our
  performative utterance will be (in one way or another) unhappy.
  But, of course, there are considerable differences between these
  ‘ways’ of being unhappy- ways which are intended to be brought out
  by the letter- numerals selected for each heading.

  The first big distinction is between all the four rules A and B
  taken together, as opposed to the two rules r (hence the use of
  Roman as opposed to Greek letters). If we offend against any of the
  former rules (A’s or B’s) -that is if we, say, utter the formula
  incorrectly, or if,

  It will be explained later why the having of these thoughts,
  feelings, and intentions is not included as just one among the
  other %irmmstances’ already dealt with in (A).

• 16 HOD t o do things ~ i t h Words say, we are not in a position
  to do the act because we are, say, married already, or it is the
  purser and not the captain who is conducting the ceremony, then the
  act in question, e.g. marrying, is not successfully performed at
  all, does not come off, is not achieved. Whereas in the two r cases
  the act is achieved, although to achieve it in such circumstances,
  as when we are, say, insincere, is an abuse of the procedure. Thus,
  when I say ‘I promise’ and have no intention of keeping it, I have
  promised but. . . . We need names for referring to this general
  distinction, so we shall call in general those infelicities A. I-B.
  z which are such that the act for the performing of which, and in
  the performing of which, the verbal formula in question is
  designed, is not achieved, by the name MISFIRES : and on the other
  hand we may christen those infelicities where the act is achieved
  A~USES (do not stress the normal connotations of these names!) When
  the utterance is a misfire, the procedure which we purport to
  invoke is disallowed or is botched: and our act (marry- ing,
  &c.) is void or without effect, &c. We speak of our act as
  a purported act, or perhaps an attempt-or we use such an expression
  as ‘went through a form of marriage’ by contrast with ‘married’. On
  the other hand, in the r cases, we speak of our infelicitous act as
  ‘professed’ or ‘hollow’ rather than ‘purported’ or ’empty’, and as
  not implemented, or not consummated, rather than as void or without
  effect. But let me hasten to add that these distinctions are not
  hard and fast, and more especially that such words as ‘purported’
  and ‘professed’ will not

• How t o do things mith Words I 7 bear very much stressing. Two
  final words about being void or without effect. This does not mean,
  of course, to say that we won’t have done anything: lots of things
  will have been done-we shall most interestingly have com- mitted
  the act of bigamy-but we shall not have done the purported act,
  viz. marrying. Because despite the name, you do not when
  biganrummarry twice. (In short, the algebra of marriage is
  BOOLEAN.) Further, ‘without effect’ does not here mean ‘without
  consequences, results, effects’.

  Next, we must try to make clear the general distinction between
  the A cases and the B cases, among the mis- fires. In both of the
  cases labelled A there is misinvo~ation of a procedure-either
  because there is, speaking vaguely, no such procedure, or because
  the procedure in question cannot be made to apply in the way
  attempted. Hence infelicities of this kind A may be called
  Misinvocations. Among them, we may reasonably christen the second
  sort-where the procedure does exist all right but can’t be applied
  as purported-Misapplications. But I have not succeeded in finding a
  good name for the other, former, class. By contrast with the A
  cases, the notion of the B cases is rather that the procedure is
  all right, and it does apply all right, but we muff the execution
  of the ritual with more or less dire consequences: so B cases as
  opposed to A cases will be called Misexecutions as opposed to
  Misinvocations: the purported act is vitiated by a flaw or hitch in
  the conduct of the ceremony. The Class B. I is that of Flaws, the
  Class B. 2 that of Hitches.

• HOW to do things with Words We get then the following
  scheme:’

  Infecitr’es AB r

  lMisfires Abuses Act purported but void Act professed but hollow
  /’ /’ A ‘ B r. I r. 2

  Misinvocations Misexecutions Insincerities 7 Act disallowed Act
  vitiated

  ? Misapplica- Flaws Hitches tions

  I expect some doubts will be entertained about A. I and r. 2;
  but we will postpone them for detailed considera- tion shortly.

  But before p i n g on to details, let me make some general
  remarks about these infelicities. We may ask:

  (I) To what variety of ‘act’ does the notion of infeli- city
  apply ?

  (2) How complete is this classification of infelicity? (3) Are
  these classes of infelicity mutually exclusive?

  Let us take these questions in (that) order. (I) How widespread
  is infelicity?

  Well, it seems clear in the first place that, although it has
  excited us (or failed to excite us) in connexion with certain acts
  which are or are in part acts of uttering words, infelicity is an
  ill to which all acts are heir which have

  [Austin from time to time used other names for the different
  infeli- cities. For interest some are here given: A. r, Non-plays;
  A. 2, Misplays; B, Miscarriages; B. I, Misexmtions; B. 2,
  Non-exemtions; r, Dis- respects ; r. I, Dissimulations ; r. 2,
  Non-fulfilments, Disloyalties, Infrac- tions, Indisciplines,
  Breaches. J. 0. U.]

• How t o do things with Words 19 the general character of ritual
  or ceremonial, ail con- ventional acts: ,not indeed that every
  ritual is liable to every form of infelicity (but then nor is every
  performa- tive utterance). This is clear if only from the mere fact
  that many conventional acts, such as betting or convey- ance of
  property, can be performed in non-verbal ways. The same sorts of
  rule must be observed in all such con- ventional procedures-we have
  only to omit the special reference to verbal utterance in our A.
  This much is obvious.

  . . But, furthermore, it is worth pointing out-reminding you-how
  many of the ‘acts’ which concern the jurist are or include the
  utterance of performatives, or at any rate are or include the
  performance of some conven- tional procedures. And of course you
  will appreciate that in this way and that writers on jurisprudence
  have constantly shown themselves aware of the varieties of
  infelicity and even at times of the peculiarities of the
  performative utterance. Only the still widespread obses- sion that
  the utterances of the law, and utterances used in, say, ‘acts in
  the law’, must somehow be statements true or false, has prevented
  many lawyers from getting this whole matter much straighter than we
  are likely to- and I would not even claim to know whether some of
  them have not already done so. Of more direct concern to us,
  however, is to realize that, by the same token, a great many of the
  acts which fall within the province of Ethics are not, as
  philosophers are too prone to assume,

  —

  simply in the last resort physical movements: very many

• Horn t o do things ~ i l h Words of them have the general
  character, in whole or part, of conventional or ritual acts, and
  are therefore, among other things, exposed to infelicity.

  Lastly we may ask-and here I must let some of my cats on the
  table-does the nation of infelicity apply to utterances which are
  statements ? So far we have produced the infelicity as
  characteristic of the performative utter- ance, which was ‘defined’
  (if we can call it so much) mainly by contrast with the supposedly
  familiar ‘state- ment’. Yet I will content myself here with
  pointing out that one of the things that has been happening lately
  in philosophy is that close attention has been given even to
  ‘statements’ which, though not false exactly nor yet i
  contradictory’, are yet outrageous. For instance, state- ments
  which refer to something which does not exist as, for example, ‘The
  present King of France is bald’. There might be a temptation to
  assimilate this to purporting to bequeath something which you do
  not own. Is there not a presupposition of existence in each ? Is
  not a statement which refers to something which does not exist not
  so much false as void ? And the more we consider a statement not as
  a sentence (or proposition) but as an act of speech (out of which
  the others are logical constructions) the more we are studying the
  whole thing as an act. Or again, there are obvious similarities
  between a lie and a false promise. We shall have to return to this
  matter later.’ (2) Our second question was: How complete is
  this

  classification ? [See pp. 47 ff. J. 0. U.]

• Hoa, to do things &th Words (i) Well, the first thing to
  remember is that, since

  in uttering our performatives we are undoubtedly in a sound
  enough sense ‘performing actions’, then, as actions, these will be
  subject to certain whole dimensions of unsatisfactoriness to which
  all actions are subject but which are distinct-or
  distinguishable-from what we have chosen to discuss as
  infelicities. I mean that actions in general (not all) are liable,
  for example, to be done under duress, or by accident, or owing to
  this or that variety of mistake, say, or otherwise unintentionally.
  In many such cases we are certainly unwilling to say of some such
  act simply that it was done or that he did it. I am not going into
  the general doctrine here: in many such cases we may even say the
  act was ‘void’ (or void- able for duress or undue influence) and so
  forth. Now I suppose some very general high-level doctrine might
  embrace both what we have called infelicities and these other
  ‘unhappy’ features of the doing of actions-in our

  . .

  case actions contamng a performative utterance-in a single
  doctrine: but we are not including this kind of unhappiness-we must
  just remember, though, that features of this sort can and do
  constantly obtrude into any case we are discussing. Features of
  this sort would normally mme under the heading of ‘extenuating cir-
  cumstances’ or of ‘factors reducing or abrogating the agent’s
  responsibility’, and so on.

  (ii) Secondly, as utterances our performatives are also — —

  heir to Grtain other-kinds of ill which infect all utter- ances.
  And these likewise, though again they might be

  I

• How to do things with Words brought into a more general account,
  we are deliberately at present excluding. I mean, for example, the
  following: a performative utterance will, for example, be in a
  peculiar way hollow or void if said by an actor on the stage, or if
  introduced in a poem, or spoken in soliloquy. This applies in a
  similar manner to any and every utter- a n c e a sea-change in
  special circumstances. Language in such circumstances is in special
  ways-intelligibly- used not seriously, but in ways parasitic upon
  its normal use-ways which fall under the doctrine of the
  etiolations of language. All this we are excluding from
  consideration. Our performative utterances, felicitous or not, are
  to be understood as issued in ordinary circumstances.

  (iii) It is partly in order to keep this sort of considera- tion
  at least for the present out of it, that I have not here introduced
  a sort of ‘infelicity’-it might really be called such-arising out
  of ‘misunderstanding’. It is obviously necessary that to have
  promised I must nor- mally

  (A) have been heard by someone, perhaps the pro- misee ;

  (B) have been understood by him as promising. If one or another
  of these conditions is not satisfied, doubts arise as to whether I
  have really promised, and it might be held that my act was only
  attempted or was void. Special precautions are taken in law to
  avoid this and other infelicities, e.g. in the serving of writs or
  summonses. This particular very important considera-

• How t o do things with Words 23 tion we shall have to return to
  later in another con- nexion.

  (3) Are these cases of infelicity mutually exclusive? The answer
  to this is obvious. .

  (a) No, in the sense that we can go wrong in two ways at once
  (we can insincerely promise a donkey to give it a carrot).

  (b) No, more importantly, in the sense that the ways of going
  wrong ‘shade into one another’ and ‘overlap’, and the decision
  between them is ‘arbitrary’ in various ways.

  Suppose, for example, I see a vessel on the stocks, walk up and
  smash the bottle hung at the stem, proclaim ‘I name this ship the
  Mr. Stalin’ and for good measure kick away the chocks: but the
  trouble is, I was not the person chosen to name it (whether or
  not-an additional complication-Mr. Stalin was the destined name ;
  per- haps in a way it is even more of a shame if it was). We can
  all agree

  (I) that the ship was not thereby named;= (2) that it is an
  infernal shame.

  One could say that I ‘went through a form of’ naming the vessel
  but that my ‘action’ was ‘void’ or ‘without effect’, because I was
  not a proper person, had not the ‘capacity’, to perform it: but one
  might also and

  I Naming babies is even more d&cult; we might have the wrong
  name and the wrong cleric-that is, someone entided to name babies
  but not intended to name this one.

• How t o do things with Words alternatively say that, where there
  is not even a pretence of capacity or a colourable claim to it,
  then there is no accepted conventional procedure; it is a- mockery,
  like a marriage with a monkey. Or again one could say that part of
  the procedure is getting oneself appointed. When the saint baptized
  the penguins, was this void because the procedure of baptizing is
  inappropriate to be applied to penguins, or because there is no
  accepted procedure of baptizing anything except humans ? Z do not
  think that these uncertainties matter in theory, though it is
  pleasant to investigate them and in practice convenient to be
  ready, as jurists are, with a terminology to cope with them.

• L E C T U R E I 1 1

  I N our first lecture we isolated in a preliminary way the
  performative utterance as not, or not merely, saying something but
  doing something, as not a true or false report of something. In the
  second, we pointed out that though it was not ever true or false it
  still was subject to criticism—could be unhappy, and we listed six
  of these types of infelicity. Of these, four were such as to make
  the utterance Misfire, and the act purported to be done null and
  void, so that it does not take effect; while two, on the contrary,
  only made the professed act an abuse of the procedure. So then we
  may seem to have armed ourselves with two shiny new concepts with
  which to crack the crib of Reality, or as it may be, of Confusion
  -two new keys in our hands, and of course, simul- taneously two new
  skids under our feet. In philosophy, forearmed should be
  forewarned. I then stalled around for some time by discussing some
  general questions about the concept of the Infelicity, and set it
  in its general place in a new map of the field. I claimed (I) that
  it applied to all ceremonial acts, not merely verbal ones, and that
  these are more common than is appreciated; I admitted (2) that our
  list was not complete, and that there are indeed other whole
  dimensions of what might be reasonably called ‘unhappiness’
  affecting ceremonial

• How t o do things with Words performances in general and
  utterances in general, dimen- sions which are certainly the concern
  of philosophers; and (3) that, of course, different infelicities
  can be combined or can overlap and that it can be more or less an
  optional matter how we classify some given particular example.

  We were next to take some examples of infelicities- of the
  inftingement of our six rules. Let me first remind you of rule A.
  I, that there must exist an accepted con- ventionaI procedure
  having a certain conventional effect, that procedure to include the
  uttering of certain words by certain persons in certain
  circumstances; and rule A. 2 of course, completing it, was that the
  particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be
  appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure
  invoked.

  There must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a
  certain conventional efect, the procedure to in- clude the uttering
  of certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances.

  The latter part, of course, is simply designed to restrict the
  rule to cases of utterances, and is not important in

  Our formulation of this rule contains the two words ‘exist’ and
  ‘accepted’ but we may reasonably ask whether there can be any sense
  to ‘exist’ except ‘to be accepted’, and whether ‘be in (general)
  use’ should not be preferred to both. Hence we must not say ‘(I)
  exist, (2) be accepted’

• Horn to do things with Words 27 at any rate. Well, in deference
  to this reasonable query, let us take just ‘accepted’jrst.

  If somebody issues a performative utterance, and the utterance
  is classed as a misfire because the procedure invoked is not
  accepted, it is presumably persons other than the speaker who do
  not accept it (at least if the speaker is speaking seriously). What
  would be an ex- ample? Consider ‘I divorce you’, said to a wife by
  her husband in a Christian country, and both being Chris- tians
  rather than Mohammedans. In this case it might be said,
  ‘nevertheless he has not (successfully) divorced her: we admit only
  some other verbal or nowverbal pro- cedure’; or even possibly ‘we
  (we) do not admit any procedure at all for effecting
  divorce-marriage is indis- soluble’. This may be carried so far
  that we reject what may be called a whole code of procedure, e.g.
  the code of honour involving duelling : for example, a challenge
  may be issued by ‘my seconds will call on you’, which is equivalent
  to ‘I challenge you’, and we merely shrug it off. The general
  position is exploited in the unhappy story of Don Quixote.

  Of course, it will be evident that it is comparatively simple if
  we never admit any ‘such’ procedure at all- that is, any procedure
  at all for doing that sort of thing, or that procedure anyway for
  doing that particular thing. But equally possible are the cases
  where we do sometimes -in certain circumstances or at certain
  hands-accept a procedure, but not in any other circumstances or at
  other hands. And here we may often be in doubt (as in

• How t o do things with Words the naming example above) whether
  an infelicity should be brought into our present class A. I or
  rather into A. 2 (or even B. I or B. 2). For example, at a party,
  you say, when picking sides, ‘I pick George’: George grunts ‘I’m
  not playing.’ Has George been picked? Un- doubtedly, the situation
  is an unhappy one. Well, we may say, you have not picked George,
  whether because there is no convention that you can pick people who
  aren’t playing or because George in the circumstances is an
  inappropriate object for the procedure of picking. Or on a desert
  island you may say to me ‘Go and pick up wood’; and I may say ‘I
  don’t take orders from you’ or ‘you’re not entitled to give me
  orders9-I do not take orders from you when you try to ‘assert your
  authority’ (which I might fall in with but may not) on a desert
  island, as opposed to the case when you are the captain on a ship
  and therefore genuinely have authority.

  Now we could say, bringing the case under A. 2 (Misapplication)
  : the procedure-uttering certain words, &c.-was O.K. and
  accepted, but the circumstances in which it was invoked or the
  persons who invoked it were wrong: ‘I pick’ is only in order when
  the object of the verb is ‘a player’, and a command is in order
  only when the subject of the verb is ‘a commander’ or ‘an
  authority’.

  Or again we could say, bringing the case under rule B. 2 (and
  perhaps we should reduce the former suggestion to this): the
  procedure has not been completely executed; because it is a
  necessary part of it that, say, the person to be the object of the
  verb ‘I order to . . .’ must, by

• HOW t o do things with Words 29 some previous procedure, tacit
  or verbal, have first con- stituted the person who is to do the
  ordering an authority, e.g. by saying ‘I promise to do what you
  order me to do.’ This is, of course, one of the uncertainties-and a
  purely general one really-which underlie the debate when we discuss
  in political theory whether there is or is not or should be a
  social contract.

  It appears to me that it does not matter in principle at all how
  we decide in particular cases-though we may agree, either on the
  facts or by introducing further defini- tions, to prefer one
  solution rather than another-but that it is important in principle
  to be clear:

  (I) asagainst B. 2 that however much we take into the prw cedure
  it would still be possible for someone to reject it all;

  (2) that for a procedure to be accepted involves more than for
  it merely to be the case that it is infact generally ztsed, even
  actually by the persons now concerned; and that it must remain in
  principle open for anyone to reject any procedure-or code of
  procedures-even one that he has already hitherto accepted-as may
  happen with, for example, the code of honour. One who does so is,
  of course, liable to sanctions; others refuse to play with him or
  say that he is not a man of honour. Above all all must not be put
  into flat factual circumstances; for this is subject to the old
  objection to deriving an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. (Being accepted is
  not a circumstance in the right sense.) With many procedures, for
  example play- ing games, however appropriate the circumstances may
  be I may still not be playing, and, further, we should

• 30 How to do things with Words contend that in the last resort
  it is doubtful if ‘being accepted’ is definable as being ‘usual1y’
  employed. But this is a more difficult matter.

  Now secondly, what could be meant by the suggestion that
  sometimes a procedure may not even exist-as dis- tinct from the
  question whether it is accepted, and by this or that group, or not
  ?I

  (i) We have the case of procedures which ‘no longer exist’
  merely in the sense that though once generally accepted, they are
  no longer generally accepted, or even accepted by anybody; for
  example the case of challenging; and

  (ii) we have even the case of procedures which some- one is
  initiating. Sometimes he may ‘get away with it’ like, in football,
  the man who first picked up the ball and ran. Getting away with
  things is essential, despite the suspicious terminology. Consider a
  possible case: to say ‘you were cowardly’ may be to reprimand you
  or to insult you: and I can make my performance explicit by saying
  ‘I reprimand you’, but I cannot do so by saying ‘I insult you’-the
  reasons for this do not matter here.=

  If we object here to saying that there is doubt whether it
  ‘existsp- as well we may, for the word gives us currently
  fashionable creeps which are in general undoubtedly legitimate, we
  might say that the doubt is rather as to the precise nature or
  dehition or comprehension of the procedure which undoubtedly does
  exist and i s accepted.

  a Many such possible procedures and formulas would be disadvan-
  tageous if mgnized; for example, perhaps we ought not to allow the
  formula ‘I promise you that I’ll t h h you’. But I am told that in
  the heyday of student duelling in Germany it was the custom for
  members of one club to march past members of a rival club, each
  drawn up m file, and then for each to say to his chosen opponent as
  he passed, quite politely, ‘Bcleidigung’, which means ‘I insult
  you’.

• How t o do things mith W o r d s 31 All that does matter is that
  a special variety of non-play1 can arise if someone does say ‘I
  insult you’: for while insulting is a conventional procedure, and
  indeed pri- marily a verbal one, so that in a way we cannot help
  understanding the procedure that someone who says ‘I insult you’ is
  purporting to invoke, yet we are bound to non-play him, not merely
  because the convention is not accepted, but because we vaguely feel
  the presence of some bar, the nature of which is not immediately
  clear, against its ever being accepted.

  Much more common, however, will be cases where it is uncertain
  how far a procedure extends-which cases it covers or which
  varieties it could be made to cover. It is inherent in the nature
  of any procedure that the limits of its applicability, and
  therewith, of course, the ‘precise’ definition of the procedure,
  will remain vague. There will always occur difficult or marginal
  cases where nothing in the previous history of a conventional
  procedure will decide conclusively whether such a procedure is or
  is not correctly applied to such a case. Can I baptize a dog, if it
  is admittedly rational? Or should I be non- played? The law abounds
  in such difficult decisions- in which, of course, it becomes more
  or less arbitrary whether we regard ourselves as deciding (A. I)
  that a convention does not exist or as deciding (A. 2) that the
  circumstances are not appropriate for the invocation of

  [‘Non-play’ was at one time Austin’s name for the category A. I
  of infelicities. He later rejected it but it remains in his notes
  at this point. J. 0. U.]

• How t o do things with Words a convention which undoubtedly does
  exist: either way, we shall tend to be bound by the ‘precedent’ we
  set. Lawyers usually prefer the latter course, as being to apply
  rather than to make law.

  There is, however, a further type of case which may arise, which
  might be classified in many ways, but which deserves a special
  mention.

  The performative utterances I have taken as examples are all of
  them highly developed affairs, of the kind that we shall later call
  explicit performatives, by contrast with merely implicit
  performatives. That is to say, they (all) begin with or include
  some highly significant and un- ambiguous expression such as ‘I
  bet’, ‘I promise’, ‘I bequeath’-an expression very commonly also
  used in naming the act which, in making such an utterance, I am
  performing-for example betting, promising, bequeath- ing, &c.
  But, of course, it is both obvious and important that we can on
  occasion use the utterance ‘go’ to achieve practically the same as
  we achieve by the utterance ‘I order you to go’ : and we should say
  cheerfully in either case, describing subsequently what someone
  did, that he ordered me to go. It may, however, be uncertain in
  fact, and, so far as the mere utterance is concerned, is always
  left uncertain when we use so inexplicit a formula as the mere
  imperative ‘go’, whether the utterer is ordering (or is purporting
  to order) me to go or merely advising, entreating, or what not me
  to go. Similarly ‘There is a bull in the field’ may or may not be a
  warning, for I

• How t o do things with Words might just be describing the
  scenery and ‘I shall be there’ may or may not be a promise. Here we
  have primitive as distinct from explicit performatives; and there
  may be nothing in the circumstances by which we can decide whether
  or not the utterance is performative at all. Any- way, in a given
  situation it can be open to me to take it as either one or the
  other. It was a performative formula- perhaps-but the procedure in
  question was not suffi- ciently explicitly invoked. Perhaps I did
  not take it as an order or was not anyway bound to take it as an
  order. The person did not take it as a promise: i.e. in the
  particular circumstance he did not accept the procedure, on the
  ground that the ritual was incompletely carried out by the original
  speaker.

  We could assimilate this to a faulty or incomplete per- formance
  (B. I or B. 2) : except that it is complete really, though not
  unambiguous. (In the law, of course, this kind of inexplicit
  performative will normally be brought under B. I or B. 2-it is made
  a rule that to bequeath inexplicitly, for instance, is either an
  incorrect or an incomplete performance; but in ordinary life there
  is no such rigidity.) We could also assimilate it to Misunder-
  standings (which we are not yet considering): but it would be a
  special kind, concerning the force of the utterance as opposed to
  its meaning. And the point is not here just that the audience did
  not understand but that it did not have to understand, e.g. to take
  it as an order.

  We might indeed even assimilate it to A. 2 by saying 824181
  D

• 34 HOW to do thilzgs with Words that the procedure is not
  designed for use where it is not clear that it is being used-which
  use makes it altogether void. We might claim that it is only to be
  used in circumstances which make it unambiguously clear that it is
  being used. But this is a counsel of per- fection.

  A. 2. The particular persons and circumstances in a given case
  must be appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure
  invoked.

  We turn next to infringements of A. 2, the type of infelicity
  which we have called Misapplications. Examples here are legion. ‘I
  appoint you’, said when you have already been appointed, or when
  someone else has been appointed, or when I am not entitled to
  appoint, or when you are a horse: ‘I do’, said when you are in the
  prohibited degrees of relationship, or before a ship’s captain not
  at sea: ‘I give’, said when it is not mine to give or when it is a
  pound of my living and non-detached flesh. We have various special
  terms for use in different

  c types of case-‘ultra vires’, incapacity’, ‘not a fit or Y ‘
  proper object (or person, &c.) , not entitled’, and so on,

  The boundary between ‘inappropriate persons’ and ‘inappropriate
  circumstances’ will necessarily not be a very hard and fast one.
  Indeed ‘circumstances’ can clearly be extended to cover in general
  ‘the natures’ of all persons participating. But we must distinguish
  between cases where the inappropriateness of persons, objects,
  names, &c., is a matter of ‘incapacity’ and simpler cases

• How to do things with Words where the object or ‘performer’ is
  of the wrong kind or type. This again is a roughish and vanishing
  distinction, yet not without importance (in, say, the law). Thus we
  must distinguish the cases of a clergyman baptizing the wrong baby
  with the right name or baptizing a baby ‘Albert’ instead of
  ‘Alfred’, from those of saying ‘I baptize this infant 2704’ or ‘I
  promise I will bash your face in’ or appointing a horse as Consul.
  In the latter cases there is something of the wrong kind or type
  included, whereas in the others the inappropriateness is only a
  matter of incapacity.

  Some overlaps of A. 2 with A. I and B. I have already been
  mentioned: perhaps we are more likely to call it a misinvocation
  (A. I) if the person as such is inappropriate than if it is just
  because it is not the duly appointed one- if nothing— antecedent
  procedure or appointment, &c. -could have put the matter in
  order. On the other hand, if we take the question of appointment
  literally (position as opposed to status) we might class the
  infelicity as a matter of wrongly executed rather than as
  misapplied procedure-for example, if we vote for a candidate before
  he has been nominated. The question here is how far we are to go
  back in the ‘procedure’.

  Next we have examples of B (already, of course, trenched upon)
  called Misexecutions. B. I . The procedure must be executed by all
  participants

  correctly. These are flaws. They consist in the use of, for
  example,

• How to do thifigs pith Words wrong formulas-there is a procedure
  which is appro- priate to the persons and the circumstances, but it
  is not gone through correctly. Examples are more easily seen in the
  law; they are naturally not so definite in ordinary life, where
  allowances are made. The use of inexplicit formulas might be put
  under this heading. Also under this heading falls the use of vague
  formulas and uncertain references, for example if I say ‘my house’
  when I have two, or if I say ‘I bet you the race won’t be run
  today’ when more than one race was arranged.

  This is a different question from that of misunder- standing or
  slow up-take by the audience; a flaw in the ritual is involved,
  however the audience took it. One of the things that cause
  particular difficulty is the question whether when two parties are
  involved ‘consensus ad idem’ is necessary. Is it essential for me
  to secure correct understanding as well as everything else? In any
  case this is clearly a matter falling under the B rules and not
  under the I’ rules.

  B. 2 . The procedure must be executed by all participants
  completely.

  These are hitches; we attempt to carry out the pro- cedure but
  the act is abortive. For example : my attempt to make a bet by
  saying ‘I bet you sixpence’ is abortive unless you say ‘I take you
  on’ or words to that effect; my attempt to marry by saying ‘I will’
  is abortive if the woman says ‘I will not’; my attempt to challenge
  you is abortive if I say ‘I challenge you’ but I fail to send

• How to do things with Words round my seconds; my attempt
  ceremonially to open a library is abortive if I say ‘I open this
  library’ but the key snaps in the lock; conversely the christening
  of a ship is abortive if I kick away the chocks before I have said
  ‘I launch this ship’. Here again, in ordinary life, a certain
  laxness in procedure is permitted-therwise no university business
  would ever get done!

  Naturally sometimes uncertainties about whether any- thing
  further is required or not will arise. For example, are you
  required to accept the gift if I am to give you something?
  Certainly in formal business acceptance is required, but is this
  ordinarily so ? Similar uncertainty arises if an appointment is
  made without the consent of the person appointed. The question here
  is how far can acts be unilateral ? Similarly the question arises
  as to when the act is at an end, what counts as its
  ~ompletion?~

  In all this I would remind you that we were not invok- ing such
  further dimensions of unhappiness as may arise from, say, the
  performer making a simple mistake of fact or from disagreements
  over matters of fact, let alone disagreements of opinion; for
  example, there is no con- vention that I can promise you to do
  something to your detriment, thus putting myself under an
  obligation to you to do it; but suppose I say ‘I promise to send
  you to a nunnery’-when I think, but you do not, that this will be
  for your good, or again when you think it will but I do not, or
  even when we both think it will, but in

  I It might thus be doubted whether failure to hand a gift over
  is a failure to complete the gift or an infelicity of rype r.

• Horn to do things tpith Words fact, as may transpire, it will
  not ? Have I invoked a non-existent convention in inappropriate
  circumstances ? Needless to say, and as a matter of general
  principle, there can be no satisfactory choice between these alter-
  natives, which are too unsubtle to fit subtle cases. There is no
  short cut to expounding simply the full complexity of the situation
  which does not exactlv fit anv common

  It may appear in all this that we have merely been taking back
  our rules. But this is not the case. Clearly there are these six
  possibilities of infelicity even if it is sometimes uncertain which
  is involved in a particular case : and we might define them, a t
  least for given cases, if we wished. And we must at all costs avoid
  over-simplifica- tion, which one might be tempted to call the
  occupational disease of philosophers if it were not their
  occupation.

• L E C T U R E I V

  T AS T time we were considering cases of Infelicities: L and we
  dealt with cases where there was no pro- cedure or no accepted
  procedure: where the pro- cedure was invoked in inappropriate
  circumstances; and where the procedure was faultily executed or
  incompletely executed. And we pointed out that in particular cases
  these can be made to overlap; and that they generally overlap with
  Misunderstandings, a type of infelicity to which all utterances are
  probably liable, and Mistakes.

  The last type of case is that of r. I and r. 2, insinceri- ties
  and infractions or breaches.’ Here, we say, the per- formance is
  not void, although it is still unhappy.

  Let me repeat the definitions : r. I : where, as often, the
  procedure is designed for

  use by persons having certain thoughts, feelings, or in-
  tentions, or for the inauguration of certain consequential conduct
  on the part of any participant, then a person participating in and
  so invoking the procedure must in fact have those thoughts,
  feelings, or intentions, and the participants must intend so to
  conduct themselves; r. 2 : and the participants must so conduct
  themselves

  subsequently . See p. 18 and footnote.

• Hop to do things ~ i t h Words I . Feelings

  Examples of not having the requisite feelings are: ‘I
  congratulate you’, said when I did not feel at all

  pleased, perhaps even was annoyed. ‘I condole with you’, said
  when I did not really

  sympathize with you. The circumstances here are in order and the
  act is per- formed, not void, but it is actually insincere; I had
  no business to congratulate you or to condole with you, feeling as
  I did.

  Examples of not having the requisite thoughts are: ‘I advise you
  to’, said when I do not think it would be

  the course most expedient for you. ‘I find him not quilty-I
  acquit’, said when I do

  believe that he was guilty. These acts are not void. I do advise
  and bring a verdict, though insincerely. Here there is an obvious
  parallel with one element in lying, in performing a speech-act of
  an assertive kind.

  3. Intentions Examples of not having the requisite intentions
  are: ‘I promise’, said when I do not intend to do what I

  promise. ‘I bet’, said when I do not intend to pay. ‘I declare
  war’, said when I do not intend to fight.

• HOW t o do things with Words 41 I am not using the terms
  ‘feelings’, ‘thoughts’, and ‘intentions’ in a technical as opposed
  to a loose way. But some comments are necessary:

  (I) The distinctions are so loose that the cases are not
  necessarily easily distinguishable: and anyway, of course, the
  cases can be combined and usually are combined. For example, if I
  say ‘I congratulate you’, must we really have a feeling or rather a
  thought that you have done or deserved well? Have I a thought or a
  feeling that it was highly creditable ? Or again in the case of
  promising I must certainly intend: but I must also think what I
  promise feasible and think perhaps that the promisee thinks it to
  be to his advantage, or think that it is to his advantage.

  (2) We must distinguish really thinking it to be so- for example
  that he was guilty, that the deed was done by him, or that the
  credit was his, the feat was performed by him-from what we think to
  be so really being so, the thought being correct as opposed to
  mistaken. (Simi- larly, we can distinguish really feeling so from
  what we feel being justified, and really intending to from what we
  intend being feasible.) But thoughts are a most interest- ing, i.e.
  a confusing, case: there is insincerity here which is an essential
  element in lying as distinct from merely saying what is in fact
  false. Examples are thinking when I say ‘not guilty’ that the deed
  was done by him, or thinking when I say ‘I congratulate’ that the
  feat was not performed by him. But I may in fact be mistaken in so
  thinking.

• Hotp t o do things pith Words If some at least of our thoughts
  are incorrect (as

  opposed to insincere), this may result in an infelicity of
  course of a different kind:

  (a) I may give something which is not in fact (though I think it
  is) mine to give. We might say that this is ‘Misapplication’, that
  the circumstances, objects, per- sons, &c., are not appropriate
  for the procedure of giving. But we must remember that we said that
  we would rule out the whole dimension of what might well be called
  Infelicity but which arose from mistake and misunder- standing. It
  should be noted that mistake will not in general make an act void,
  though it may make it exc~sable.

  (b) ‘I advise you to do X’ is a performative utterance; consider
  the case of my advising you to do something which is not in fact at
  all in your interest, though I think it is. This case is quite
  different from (1)’ in that here there is no temptation at all to
  think that the act of advising might be perhaps void or voidable,
  and like- wise there is no temptation to think it insincere.
  Rather

  . . 4

  we here introduce an entirely new dimension of c r ~ t ~ a s m
  again; we would criticize this as bad advice. That an act is happy
  or felicitous in all our ways does not exempt it from all
  criticism. We shall come back to this.

  (3) More difficult than either of these cases is one to which we
  shall also return later. There is a class of per- formatives which
  I call verdictives: for example, when we say ‘I find the accused
  guilty’ or merely ‘wilty’, or

  [This presumably refers to the examples at the top of p. 4 4 not
  on p. 41. The manuscript gives no guidance. J. 0. U.]

• Horn t o do things toith Wwds 43 when the umpire says ‘out’.
  When we say ‘guilty’, this is happy in a way if we sincerely think
  on the evidence that he did it. But, of course, the whole point of
  the procedure in a way is to be correct; it may even be scarcely a
  matter of opinion, as above. Thus when the umpire says ‘over’, this
  terminates the over. But again we may have a ‘bad’ verdict: it may
  either be unjustifed (jury) or even incorrect (umpire). So here we
  have a very unhappy situation. But still it is not infelicitous in
  any of our senses: it is not void (if the umpire says ‘out’, the
  batsman is out; the umpire’s decision is final) and not insincere.
  However, we are not concerned now with these impending troubles but
  only to distinguish insincerity.

  (4) In the case of intention too there are certain special
  awkwardnesses :

  (a) We have already noticed the dubiety about what constitutes a
  subsequent action and what is merely the completion or consummation
  of the one, single, total action: for example, it is hard to
  determine the relation between

  ‘I give’ and surrendering possession, ‘I do’ (take this woman
  &c.) and consummation. ‘I sell’ and completion of sale :

  though the distinction is easy in the case of promising. So
  there are similar possibilities of drawing distinctions in
  different ways over what is the requisite intention of performing a
  subsequent action and what is the requisite intention to complete
  the present action. This does not

• How to do things tpith Words raise any trouble in principle,
  however, about the con- cept of insincerity.

  (b) We have distinguished roughly cases where you must have
  certain intentions from more particular cases where you must intend
  to carry out a certain further course of action, where use of the
  given procedure was precisely designed to inaugurate it (whether
  making it obligatory or permissive). Instances of this more
  specialized procedure are undertaking to perform an action, of
  course, and probably also christening. The whole point of having
  such a procedure is precisely to make certain subsequent conduct in
  order and other con- duct out of order: and of course for many
  purposes, with, for example, legal formulas, this goal is more and
  more nearly approached. But other cases are not so easy: I may, for
  example, express my intention simply by saying ‘I shall. . .’. I
  must, of course, have the intention, if I am not to be insincere,
  at the time of my utterance: but what exactly is the degree or mode
  of the infelicity if I do not afterwards do it ? Or again, in ‘I
  bid you welcome’, to say which is to welcome, intentions of a kind
  are presumably vaguely necessary : but what if one then be- haves
  churlishly ? Or again, I give you advice and you accept it, but
  then I round on you: how far is it obligatory on me not to do so ?
  Or am I just ‘not expected’ to do so ? : or is part of
  asking-and-taking advice definitely to make such subsequent conduct
  out of order ? Or similarly, I entreat you to do something, you
  accede, and then I protest-am I out of order? Probably yes. But
  there is a

• How to do thiflgs with Words constant tendency to make this sort
  of thing clearer, as for example, when we move from ‘I forgive’ to
  ‘I pardon’ or from ‘I will’ either to ‘I intend’ or to ‘I
  promise’.

  So much then for ways in which performative utter- ances can be
  unhappy, with the result that the ‘act’ con- cerned is merely
  purported or professed, &c. Now in general this amounted to
  saying, if you prefer jargon, that certain conditions have to be
  satisfied if the utter- ance is to be happy—certain things have to
  be so. And this, it seems clear, commits us to saying that for a
  certain performative utterance to be happy, certain state- ments
  have to be true. This in itself is no doubt a very trivial result
  of our investigations. Well, to avoid at least the infelicities
  that we have considered,

  (I) what are these statements that have to be true ? and (2) can
  we say anything exciting about the relation of

  the performative utterance to them?

  Remember that we said in the first Lecture that we might in some
  sense or way impdy lots of things to be so when we say ‘I promise’,
  but this is completely different from saying that the utterance, ‘I
  promise’, is a statement, true or false, that these things are so.
  I shall take some impor- tant things which must be true if the
  performance is to be happy (not all-but even these will now seem
  boring and trivial enough: I hope so, for that will mean ‘obvious’
  by now).

  Now if when, for example, I say ‘I apologize’ 1- do

• 46 How to do things with Words apologize, so that we can now
  say, I or he did definitely apologize, then

  (I) it is true and not false that I am doing (have done)
  something-actually numerous things, but in par- ticular that I am
  apologizing (have apologized);

  (2 ) it is true and not false that certain conditions do obtain,
  in particular those of the kind specified in our Rules A. I and A.
  2;

  (3) it is true and not false that certain other conditions
  obtain of our kind r, in particular that I am think- ing something;
  and

  (4) it is true and not false that I am committed to doing
  something subsequently.

  Now strictly speaking and importantly, the sense in which ‘I
  apologize’ implies the truth of each one of these has already been
  explained-we have been explain- ing this very thing. But what is of
  interest is to compare these ‘implications’ of p erformative
  utterances with cer- tain discoveries made comparatively recently
  about the ‘implications’ of the contrasted and preferred type of
  utterance, the statement or constative utterance, which itself,
  unlike the performative, is true or false.

  First to take (I): what is the relation between the utterance,
  ‘I apologize’, and the fact that I am apologiz- ing? It is
  important to see that this is different from the relation between
  ‘I am running’ and the fact that I am running (or in case that is
  not a genuine ‘mere’ report- between ‘he is running’ and the fact
  that he is running).

• How t o do things with Words This difference is marked in
  English by the use of the non-continuous present in performative
  formulas : it is not, however, necessarily marked in all
  languages-which may lack a continuous present-or even always in
  English.

  We might say: in ordinary cases, for example running, it is the
  fact that he is running which makes the state- ment that he is
  running true; or again, that the truth of the constative utterance
  ‘he is running’ depends on his being running. Whereas in our case
  it is the happiness of the performative ‘I apologize’ which makes
  it the fact that I am apologizing: and my success in apologizing
  depends on the happiness of the performative utterance ‘I
  apologize’. This is one way in which we might justifl the ‘per
  formative-constative’ distinction-the distinc- tion between doing
  and saying.

  We shall next consider three of the many ways in which a
  statement implies the truth of certain other statements. One of
  those that I shall mention has been long known. The others have
  been discovered quite recently. We shall not put the matter too
  technically, though this can be done. I refer to the discovery that
  the ways we can do wrong, speak outrageously, in uttering
  conjunctions of ‘factual’ statements, are more numer- ous than
  merely by contradiction (which anyway is a complicated relation
  which requires both definition and explanation). I . Entails

  ‘All men blush’ entails ‘some men blush’. We cannot

• 48 How t o do things with Words say ‘All men blush but not any
  men blush’, or ‘the cat is under the mat and the cat is on top of
  the mat’ or ‘the cat is on the mat and the cat is not on the mat’,
  since in each case the first clause entails the contra- dictory of
  the second.

  My saying ‘the cat is on the mat’ implies that I believe it is,
  in a sense of ‘implies’ just noticed by G. E. Moore. We cannot say
  ‘the cat is on the mat but I do not believe it is’. (This is
  actually not the ordinary use of ‘implies’: ‘implies’ is really
  weaker: as when we say ‘He implied that I did not know it’ or ‘You
  implied you knew it (as distinct from believing it)’.) 3.
  Presupposes

  ‘All Jack’s children are bald’ presupposes that Jack has some
  children. We cannot say ‘All Jack’s children are bald but Jack has
  no children’, or ‘Jack has no children and all his children are
  bald’.

  There is a common feeling of outrage in all these cases. But we
  must not use some blanket term, ‘implies’ or ‘contradiction’,
  because there are very great differ- ences. There are more ways of
  killing a cat than drown- ing it in butter; but this is the sort of
  thing (as the proverb indicates) we overlook: there are more ways
  of outraging speech than contradiction merely. The major questions
  are: how many ways, and why they outrage speech, and wherein the
  outrage lies ?

• How to do things with Words Let us contrast the three cases in
  familiar ways:

  I . Entails If p entails q then -4 entails -p : if ‘the cat is
  on

  the mat’ entails ‘the mat is under the cat’ then ‘the mat is not
  under the cat’ entails ‘the cat is not on the mat’. Here the truth
  of a proposition entails the truth of a further proposition or the
  truth of one is inconsistent with the truth of another.

  2. Implies This is different: if my saying that the cat is on
  the

  mat implies that I believe it to be so, it is not the case that
  my not believing that the cat is on the mat implies that the cat is
  not on the mat (in ordinary English). And again, we are not
  concerned here with the inconsistency of propositions: they are
  perfectly compatible: it may be the case at once that the cat is on
  the mat but I do not believe that it is. But we cannot in the other
  case say ‘it may be the case at once that the cat is on the mat but
  the mat is not under the cat’. Or again, here it is saying that
  ‘the cat is on the mat’, which is not possible along with saying ‘I
  do not believe that it is’; the asser- tion implies a belief.

  3. Presupposes This again is unlike entailment: if ‘John’s
  children are

  bald’ presupposes that John has children, it is not true that
  John’s having no children presupposes that John’s

• 50 How to do things with Words children are not bald. Moreover
  again, both ‘John’s children are bald’ and ‘John’s children are not
  bald’ alike presuppose that John has children: but it is not the
  case that both ‘the cat is on the mat’ and ‘the cat is not on the
  mat’ alike entail that the cat is below the mat.

  Let us consider first ‘implies’ and then ‘presupposes’ over
  again : Implies

  Suppose I did say ‘the cat is on the mat’ when it is not the
  case that I believe that the cat is on the mat, what should we say
  ? Clearly it is a case of insincerity. In other words: the
  unhappiness here is, though affecting a statement, exactly the same
  as the unhappiness infecting ‘I promise . . .’ when I do not
  intend, do not believe, &c. The insincerity of an assertion is
  the same as the in- sincerity of a promise. ‘I promise but do not
  intend’ is parallel to ‘it is the case but I do not believe it’; to
  say ‘I promise’, without intending, is parallel to saying ‘it is
  the case’ without believing.

  Presupposition Next let us consider presupposition: what is to
  be

  said of the statement that ‘John’s children are all bald’ if
  made when John has no children? It is usual now to say that it is
  not false because it is devoid of reference; reference is necessary
  for either truth or falsehood. (Is it then meaningless? It is not
  so in every sense: it is not, like a ‘meaningless sentence’,
  ungrammatical, incom-

• How t o do things with Words 51 plete, mumbo-jumbo, &c.)
  People say ‘the question does not arise’. Here I shall say ‘the
  utterance is void’.

  Compare this with our infelicity when we say ‘I name . . . ‘ ,
  but some of the conditions (A. I) and (A. 2) are not satisfied
  (specially A. 2 perhaps, but really equally-a parallel
  presupposition to A. I exists with statements also!). Here we might
  have used the ‘pre- suppose’ formula: we might say that the formula
  ‘I do’ presupposes lots of things : if these are not satisfied the
  formula is unhappy, void: it does not succeed in being a contract
  when the reference fails (or even when it is ambiguous) any more
  than the other succeeds in being a statement. Similarly the
  question of goodness or badness of advice does not arise if you are
  not in a position to advise me about that matter.

  Lastly, it might be that the way in which in entail- ment one
  proposition entails another is not unlike the way ‘I promise’
  entails ‘I ought’: it is not the same, but it is parallel: ‘I
  promise but I ought not’ is parallel to ‘it is and it is not’; to
  say ‘I promise’ but not to perform the act is parallel to saying
  both ‘it is’ and ‘it is not’. Just as the purpose of assertion is
  defeated by an internal contradiction (in which we assimilate and
  contrast at once and so stultify the whole procedure), the purpose
  of a contract is defeated if we say ‘I promise and I ought not’.
  This commits you to it and refuses to commit you to it. It is a
  self-stultifying procedure. One assertion commits us to another
  assertion, one performance to another performance. Moreover, just
  as if p entails q

• 52 How to do things with Words then -4 entails -p, SO ‘I ought
  not’ entails ‘I do not promise’.

  In conclusion, we see that in order to explain what can go wrong
  with statements we cannot just concentrate on the proposition
  involved (whatever that is) as has been done traditionally. We must
  consider the total situation in which the utterance is issued-the
  total speech-act- if we are to see the parallel between statements
  and performative utterances, and how each can go wrong. Perhaps
  indeed there is no great distinction between statements and
  performative utterances.

• L E C T U R E V

  T the end of the previous lecture we were recon- A sidering the
  question of the relations between the performative utterance and
  statements of various kinds which certainly are true or false. We
  men- tioned as specially notable four such connexions:

  (I) If the performative utterance ‘I apologize’ is happy, then
  the statement that I am apologizing is true.

  (2) If the performative utterance ‘I apologize’ is to be happy,
  then the statement that certain conditions obtain -those notably in
  Rules A. r and A. 2-must be true.

  (3) If the performative utterance ‘I apologize’ is to be happy,
  then the statement that certain other conditions obtain-those
  notably in our rule r. I-must be true.

  (4) If performative utterances of at least some kinds are happy,
  for example contractual ones, then statements of the form that I
  ought or ought not subsequently to do some particular thing are
  true.

  I was saying that there seemed to be some similarity, and
  perhaps even an identity, between the second of these connexions
  and the phenomenon which has been called, in the case of statements
  as opposed to performatives, ‘presupposition’ : and likewise
  between the third of these connexions and the phenomenon called
  (sometimes and not, to my mind, correctly) in the case of
  statements,

• 54 How t o do things with Words ‘ implication’; these,
  presupposition and implication, being two ways in which the ~ u t h
  of a statement may be connected importantly with the truth of
  another without it being the case that the one entails the other in
  the sole sort of sense preferred by obsessional logicians. Only the
  fourth and last of the above connexions could be made out-I do not
  say how satisfactorily-to resemble entail- ment between statements.
  ‘I promise to do X but I am under no obligation to do it’ may
  certainly look more like a sel f-contradiction-whatever that
  is-than ‘I promise to do X but I do not intend to do it’: also ‘I
  am under no obligation to do p’ might be held to entail ‘I did not
  promise to do p’, and one might think that the way in which a
  certain p commits me to a certain q is not unlike the way in which
  promising to do X commits me to doing X. But I do not want to say
  that there is or is not any parallel here; only that at least there
  is a very close parallel in the other two cases; which suggest that
  at least in some ways there is danger of our initial and tentative
  distinction between constative and performative utterances breaking
  down.

  We may, however, fortify ourselves in the conviction that the
  distinction is a final one by reverting to the old idea that the
  constative utterance is true or false and the performative is happy
  or unhappy. Contrast the fact that I am apologizing, which depends
  on the performative ‘I apologize’ being happy, with the case of the
  statement ‘John is running’, which depends for its truth on its
  being the fact or case that John is running. But perhaps

• How to do things with Words this contrast is not so sound
  either: for, to take statements first, connected with the utterance
  (constative) ‘John is running’ is the statement ‘I am stating that
  John is running’: and this may depend for its truth on the
  happiness of ‘John is running’, just as the truth of ‘I am
  apologizing’ depends on the happiness of ‘I apologize’. And, to
  take performatives second : connected with the performative ( I
  presume it is one) ‘I warn you that the bull is about to charge’ is
  the fact, if it is one, that the bull is about to charge: if the
  bull is not, then indeed the utterance ‘I warn you that the bull is
  about to charge’ is open to criticism-but not in any of the ways we
  have hitherto characterized as varieties of unhappiness. We should
  not in this case say the warning was void-i.e. that he did not warn
  but only went through a form of warning-nor that it was insincere:
  we should feel much more inclined to say the warning was false or
  (better) mistaken, as with a statement. So that considerations of
  the happiness and unhappiness type may infect state- ments (or some
  statements) and considerations of the type of truth and falsity may
  infect performatives (or some performatives).

  We have then to take a further step out into the desert of
  comparative precision. We must ask: is there some precise way in
  which we can definitely distinguish the performative from the
  constative utterance? And in particular we should naturally ask
  first whether there is some grammatical (or lexicographical)
  criterion for dis- tinguishing the performative utterance.

• How t o do things with Words So far we have considered only a
  small number of

  classic examples of performatives, all with verbs in the first
  person singular present indicative active. We shall see very
  shortly that there were good reasons for this

  9 4 piece of slyness. Examples are ‘I name’, ‘I do , I bet’, ‘I
  give’. There are fairly obvious reasons, with which I shall
  nevertheless shortly deal, why this is the commonest type of
  explicit performative. Note that ‘present’ and ‘indicative’ are, of
  course, both misnomers (not to mention the misleading implications
  of ‘active3)-I am only using them in the well-known grammatical
  way. For example the ‘present’, as distinct from ‘continous
  present’, is normally nothing to do with describing (or even
  indicat- ing) what I am doing at present. ‘I drink beer’, as
  distinct from ‘I am drinking beer’, is not analogous to a future
  and a past tense describing what I shall do in the future or have
  done in the past. It is really more commonly the habitual
  indicative, when it is ‘indicative’ at all. And where it is not
  habitual but in a way ‘present’ genuinely, as in a way it is in
  performatives, if you like, such as ‘I name’, then it is certainly
  not ‘indicative’ in the sense grammarians intend, that is
  reporting, describing, or informing about an actual state of
  affairs or occurrent event: because, as we have seen, it does not
  describe or inform at all, but is used for, or in, the doing of
  something. So we use ‘present indicative’ merely to mean the
  English grammatical form ‘I name’, ‘I run’, &c. (This mistake
  in terminology is due to assimilating, for example, ‘I run’ to the
  Latin curro, which should really generally be

• HOD t o do things with Words translated ‘I am running’; Latin
  does not have two tenses where we do.)

  Well, is the use of the first person singular and of the present
  indicative active, so called, essential to a per- formative
  utterance ? We need not waste our time on the obvious exception of
  the first person plural, ‘toe promise . . .’, ‘we consent’, &c.
  There are more important and obvious exceptions all over the place
  (some of which have already been alluded to in passing).

  A very common and important type of, one would think,
  indubitable performative has the verb in the second or third person
  (singular or plural) and the verb in the passive voice: so person
  and voice anyway are not essential. Some examples of this type are
  :

  (I) You are hereby authorized to pay . . . . (2) Passengers are
  warned to cross the track by the

  bridge only. Indeed the verb may be ‘impersonal’ in such cases
  with the passive, for example:

  (3) Notice is hereby given that trespasser