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Friedrich Christoph Doerge: “Performative Utterances” – DRAFT 0 Contents

1 Austin’s notion of ‘performative utterances’ ...................................................................................... 2 The original issue: non-truth-conditional meaning ............................................................................. 2 Introduction of ‘performatives’ and ‘constatives’ ............................................................................... 3 ‘(In)felicity’ and ‘(un)happiness’ ........................................................................................................ 4 Performatives and ‘illocutionary acts’ ................................................................................................ 6

2 Inexplicit performatives and the search for a grammatical criterion ................................................... 8 Performative utterances: utterata, rather than utterationes ................................................................. 8 Inexplicit performative utterances....................................................................................................... 9 The search for a grammatical criterion................................................................................................ 9 Locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts .......................................................................... 10

3 Austin’s examination of the ‘performative’/‘constative’ dichotomy ................................................ 10 Austin’s final assessment of the ‘performative’/‘constative’ dichotomy .......................................... 11 Austin’s examination of the criteria of constatives ........................................................................... 12 Austin’s examination of the criteria of performatives....................................................................... 14

4 Summary of Austin’s account ........................................................................................................... 16 5 The notion of ‘performatives’ after Austin ....................................................................................... 18

Did Austin abandon the notion of ‘performatives’ (or had he better)? ............................................. 18 Reconstructions of Austin’s notion of ‘performatives’ ..................................................................... 19 Re-definitions of the term “performative” ........................................................................................ 20 ‘Performatives’: various different notions......................................................................................... 20 Recurring issues in definitions of ‘performatives’ ............................................................................ 22

(1) Are ‘performatives’ essentially explicit? ................................................................................. 22 (2) Are ‘performatives’ utterata, or are they utterationes? ........................................................... 23 (3) What is the ‘doing’ with which the ‘performative’ is essentially connected? ......................... 23

Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 24 6 Three debates which employ the term “performatives utterance”..................................................... 24

(1) How do Performatives Work? ..................................................................................................... 24 (2) Are explicit performative utterances (really not) truth-evaluable? .............................................. 26 (3) Are utterances of (explicit) ‘performatives’ statements? ............................................................. 28

7 Impact on Meaning Theory ............................................................................................................... 29 (1) ‘Illocutionary force’ versus (propositional) ‘content’.................................................................. 29 (2) Austin’s explanation of three semantic relations ......................................................................... 30 (3) Performative analysis .................................................................................................................. 31 (4) Meaning as conditions of happiness ............................................................................................ 32 (5) Rules of IFIDs constituting IAs................................................................................................... 32

8 References ......................................................................................................................................... 32

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1 Austin’s notion of ‘performative utterances’

The original issue: non-truth-conditional meaning The term “performative utterance” was established in philosophy1 by the Oxford philosopher John L. Austin,2 in the course of analyses concerning meaningful expressions and truth-conditions. The incentive he thereby followed was his skepticism about the assumption, then widespread in philosophy, that all declarative sentences are (intended to be, or susceptible of being) either true or false. To be sure, that not all sentences can be true or false is, and was at that time, old hat. Austin, for example, mentions, “besides (grammarians’) statements [sc., declarative sentences]”, “questions and exclamations [sc., interrogative and exclamative sentences], and sentences expressing commands or wishes or concessions”.3 So this is not new. But even if we ignore non-declarative sentences for the time being, and restrict our view to declarative sentences, according to Austin it turns out that even among these many are not true or false. To overlook this, he says, is to succumb to the “descriptive fallacy”,4 which Austin describes as “the mistake of taking as straightforward statements of fact utterances which are either […] nonsensical or else intended as something quite different” (1975, 3), and as “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” (1975, 12). To Austin’s mind, there are several kinds of declarative sentences which are inconsistent with this view, because they do take the declarative sentence form, but are not truth-evaluable. His exposition of the matter is influenced by Rudolf Carnap’s pamphlet against Heidegger’s and Bergson’s ‘metaphysical’ theories, “Überwindung der Metaphysik durch Logische Analyse der Sprache” (“The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language”) (1932).5 Carnap’s study is directed against the claims of certain ‘metaphysicians’; these, he complains, are “meaningless”, in the sense that they “do not serve for the description of states of affairs” (1959, 78). As Carnap and Austin observe, there are “sequence[s] of words” the constituents of which “are meaningful, yet [which] are put together in a counter-syntactical way” (Carnap 1959, 61). Examples of such cases are “Caesar is and” (Carnap 1959, 67) and “Cat thoroughly the if” (Austin 1975, 96).6 Next, there is the phenomenon which Carnap and Austin call a “pseudo-statement”. This is “a sequence of words [which] is meaningless [because] it does not, within a specified language, constitute a statement [although it] looks like a statement at first glance” (Carnap 1959, 61; cf. Austin 1975, 2.). There are (at least) two varieties of these “pseudo-statements”. Instances of the first variety “contain a word which is erroneously believed to have meaning” (Carnap 1959, 61). Among Carnap’s examples are “the metaphysical term ‘principle’” (1959, 65), the term “’God’ in its metaphysical use” (1959, 66), and the notions “being-in-itself” and “the being of being” (1959, 67).7 The second variety is represented by examples such as “Caesar is a prime number” (Carnap 1959, 67), which “looks like a statement yet is not a statement, does not assert anything, expresses neither a true nor a false proposition” (Carnap 1959, 68).8 As Austin (1975, 2) puts it, such pseudo-statements are “strictly non-sense, despite an unexceptionable grammatical form”. But according to Austin, language provides us with even more puzzling cases of non-statements. He (1975, 4) introduces them as “masqueraders”, as sentences which “masquerade as a statement of fact, descriptive or constative” while in fact they are “either not intended at all, or only intended in part, to record or impart straightforward information about the facts” (Austin 1975, 2), and therefore are not truth-evaluable. As a first

1 According to Hart (1948, 185); the earliest documented use Austin makes of the term is in “Other Minds” (1946); cf. also Austin (1950, 125). The term “performative” had earlier been used, for example, by J.R. Kantor (1922, 632), where it is applied to “memory acts” and defined as “constitut[ing] some actual work to be done”, contrasted by Kanton with “informational” memorial behaviour, which “merely adapts the person to some past event or action”. 2 Mainly in id. (1956, 1958, 1975). 3 Austin 1975, 1; cf. 1956, 233. 4 See Austin (1946, 174f.; 1950, 125; 1956, 234; 1975, 2f.). 5 In the following, quotations will be from the English translation, Carnap (1957). 6 Austin additionally advances a sequence of ‘words’ where not all of the component words are meaningless, “The slithy toves did gyre” (1975, 96). 7 Austin does not mention this class of “pseudo-statements” explicitly, and perhaps he would not assess them as critically as Carnap did; cf. Austin (1956, 233f. 8 Cf. Hare’s (1949, 29) ‘imperative’ example of “Sing me a rope of exuberant soap”.

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variety of them, Austin (1975, 2f.) cites “ethical propositions”,9 thus taking up the view of meaning advanced by the ‘non-descriptivists’ (or ‘non-cognitivists’), according to which ethical judgements do not describe how things are, but rather serve to express the moral feelings of the speaker, or to influence the feelings, intentions and actions of the audience.10 Additional examples of ‘masqueraders’, which Austin mentions in “Truth” (1950, 125), are formulae in a calculus, definitions, and expressions uttered as part of a work of fiction. “It is simply not the business of such utterances to ‘correspond to the facts’”, he argues. Sentences containing “specially perplexing words” (Austin 1975, 3), which do not describe or report, but rather indicate “the circumstances in which the statement is made” or the like,11 are yet another case.

Introduction of ‘performatives’ and ‘constatives’ Finally, Austin turns to the so-called (explicit) “performative utterance”, introducing it, as yet another variety of those ‘masqueraders’, in the following way.

The type of utterance we are to consider here is not, of course, in general a type 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, descriptive 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. (Austin 1975, 4)

Although Austin introduces ‘performative utterances’ in connection with those ‘masquerading’ declarative sentences, he unambiguously points out from the start that not all performative utterances are masqueraders; it is only in those cases where “it assumes its most explicit form” that the performative utterance masquerades as a statement, while in other cases it does not. Restricting, however, his view for the time being to these explicit cases,12 all of which have, as he (1975, 5) puts it, “humdrum verbs in the first person singular present indicative active”, Austin gives us the following preliminary definition of what he means when he speaks of ‘performative utterances’.

Utterances can be found, satisfying these conditions, yet such that A. they do not ‘describe’ or ‘report’ or constate anything 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, or as ‘just’, saying something. (Austin 1975, 5)

I said that this definition is preliminary: Austin explains and develops it subsequently in various ways, which we shall now look at in some detail. A first thing to notice is that condition (A) comprises two different things: first, that the performative does not describe or report,13 and second, that it is not truth-evaluable. Although they are not the same, these two conditions have a close connection; on Austin’s account of truth bearing, an utterance is truth-evaluable only if it is assertive; if it is not, then the utterance, even if it takes the declarative sentence form, is not to be assessed as either true or false. In this connection, there is an ambiguity (especially in the light of Austin’s idea of the voidness of speech acts, to be introduced right below): the condition might either be that in the utterance of the performative an assertion (statement) is successfully performed, or else that the performative is uttered with assertive intentions, or that the utterance is to be interpreted as an assertion, or the like. This issue will not be dealt with in the following (mainly because Austin himself appears to be quite unaware of it), and the simpler version, referring to accomplished assertions (statements) will be applied as a preliminary choice throughout. As to condition (B), it is split in two parts as well. Firstly, it says that the performative is uttered in the performance of an action; secondly, it requires that to perform the action is not ‘just to say’ something. Thus, the two conditions can more explicitly be represented as follows. 9 In “Truth” (1950, 125) he mentions “value judgements”. 10 See, e.g., Stevenson (1937, Chapter 3, 1944), Hare (1952). 11 I did not manage to find out what exactly he has in mind. Good candidates would seem to be words like “honestly”, “actually”, “unfortunately”, “indeed” and “really”; also, Austin may have in mind Frege’s (1956, 295) examples of “Alas” and “Thank God”. 12 See Austin 1975, 5, n1, 14. 13 Austin’s favourite examples of assertive acts are ‘stating’, ‘reporting’ and ‘describing’; I shall in the following often use ‘stating’ and/or ‘describing’ in a pars-pro-toto way.

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An utterance t is a performative utterance only if … (Performative-A.1) To utter t is not to state or describe something. (Performative-A.2) t is not truth-evaluable. (Performative-B.1) The utterance of t is part of the performance of an action, … (Performative-B.2) To utter t is not merely to say something.

As his initial examples of (explicit) performative utterances, Austin gives us descriptions like these.

(E.a) ‘I do (sc. take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife)’––as uttered in the course of the marriage ceremony. (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’––as occurring in a will. (E.d) ‘I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow.’ (Austin 1975, 5)

“I apologise” (Austin 1956, 235)

“I welcome you” [and] “I advise you to do it” (Austin 1958, 13)

When I christen a ship by uttering “I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth”, then I am not ‘just’ saying that I name the ship, but I am thereby performing the act; nor will, to Austin’s mind, the utterance be either true or false, because it is not intended to be so. Likewise, when I welcome you by saying “I welcome you”, then I am not ‘just saying’ that I welcome you, but I do welcome you; and again, to Austin’s mind the sentence will not be truth-evaluable, because it is not assertively uttered. Or, to take non-explicit performatives (we shall turn to these in detail below, in section 2), if I order you to go by saying “Go!”, then I do not just say something, but I perform the act of ordering, and the sentence is not truth-evaluable, if only because its utterance is part of an order, rather than an assertive act. As we saw, it is the very point of Austin’s considerations of performative utterances that although they are, in the explicit case at least, declarative sentences, they are not truth-evaluable. Now, to be sure, although he insists that not all kinds of declarative sentences are true or false, Austin does not deny that some are. Those which are he suggests calling “constative utterances”. Thus, the original idea of the “constative utterance” is the idea of an utterance that is truth-evaluable. However, on Austin’s account of truth-evaluability an utterance is true or false only if it is uttered with an assertive intention, or purpose. Therefore, the core of Austin’s notion of constatives can be characterised by the following two features.

An utterance t is a constative utterance only if (Constative-A.1) To utter t is to perform a statement (Constative-A.2) t is truth-evaluable.

In his subsequent analysis, Austin construes the relation between performative and constative utterances as an antagonistic dichotomy, and he spends considerable time on developing and scrutinising this dichotomy. He finally arrives at the conclusion, however, that the difference between performatives and constatives is less catholic than he originally supposed, as we shall see below.

‘(In)felicity’ and ‘(un)happiness’ Let us turn back to the notion of a ‘performative’, and in particular to condition (A), which says that (explicit) performatives are not subject to either truth or falsity. Although not true or false, however, “the performative is not exempt from all criticism”; “it may very well be criticised, but in a quite different dimension” (1958, 14). For example, when I say “I do” (sc., take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife) in the course of a marriage ceremony, while in fact being already married to someone else, or when I make a promise, saying “I promise you to come tomorrow”, while having no intention to keep it, then this is “at least to some extent a failure”, and the utterance is indeed “subject to criticism”; however, “the utterance is then, we may say, not indeed false”; rather, it is, as Austin suggests, in one or the other way “unhappy” (Austin 1975, 14, 25). Taking this into account, we can give a richer statement of condition (Performative-A):

An utterance t is a performative utterance only if … (Performative-A.1) To utter t is not to state or describe something. (Performative-A.2) t is not truth-evaluable. (Performative-A.3) t is happy or unhappy.

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It is obvious that the words “happy” and “unhappy” are here used in some technical way. So what exactly does Austin mean with these words? That ‘performatives’ are happy or unhappy has to do with the nature of those ‘doings’, in the performance of which performatives are uttered. These are ‘conventional acts’, acts which are constituted by a “convention” (constitutive rule,14 counts-as-rule). More particularly, for them to be performed (A) “there must exist an accepted conventional procedure” (determined by the convention, such that the execution of the procedure counts as the performance of the act),15 and (B) this procedure must be executed correctly and completely. Furthermore, in some cases the act “is designed for use by persons having certain thoughts or feelings, or for the inauguration of certain consequential conduct on the part of any participant”, and in such a case (Γ) the persons involved “must in fact have those thoughts or feelings”, and (intend to) act accordingly (Austin 1975, 14f.). Mirroring this trichotomy of conditions, (A), (B), and (Γ), Austin classifies the flaws to which conventional acts can be subject, calling them “infelicities”. It may be that the speaker attempts to, or purports to, invoke an inexistent procedure (type A infelicity), or the participants may fail to execute the ‘procedure’ correctly and completely (type B infelicity), or the thoughts and feelings, or the subsequent conduct, may be inappriopriate (type Γ infelicity). Mirroring this trichotomy of infelicities of conventional acts, again, Austin assumes different kinds of “unhappiness” of performative utterances. He derives these quite straightforwardly from the infelicities of conventional acts; thus, a performative is unhappy if and only if, and exactly insofar as, the conventional act it is uttered in is infelicitous. If, for example, the act is subject to a type-B infelicity, then the performative utterance is subject to an according type-B unhappiness, and if the act is infected by a type-Γ infelicity, then the performative will be type-Γ unhappy; while if the act is quite felicitous, then this means that the performative is quite happy, too.16 So there are different types of infelicity and unhappiness, corresponding to different varieties of requirements to which conventional acts are subject.17 The most central division is between flaws of the types (A) and (B) on the one hand, and flaws of the (Γ) type on the other. In the first case, infelicity of type (A) or (B), when either there is no convention, or the convention is not correctly and completely executed, Austin speaks of a “misfire” of the illocutionary act. When a ‘misfire’ occurs then the act is “purported but void” (Austin 1975, 18; cf. Austin 1958, 14). Thus, for example, when I say the words “I will” in the course of a marriage ceremony, but am already married, “then the act in question, e.g. marrying, is not successfully performed at all, does not come off, is not achieved” (Austin 1975, 16); in such a case, “the utterance is a misfire […] and our act (marrying, &c.) is void or without effect, &c., [and we shall] speak of our act as a purported act, or perhaps an attempt” (Austin 1975, 16). In general, when the convention constituting the act rules that p must be satisfied for the act to obtain, and an agent utters the relevant sentence while p is not the case, then the act will be infelicitous in the sense of a ‘misfire’, null and void, and the performative will accordingly be unhappy. Here are some of Austin’s examples of (A) and (B) flaws.

- The utterance of “I do” (sc. take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife), when the person uttering the words is already married, or when the person conducting the ceremony is not entitled to conclude a marriage (Austin 1975, 16).

- The attempt to marry a woman by saying “I do” (…), when she says “I will not” (Austin 1975, 37). - An attempt at divorcing, made in the utterance of “I divorce you”, “said to a wife by her husband in a

Christian country, and both being Christians rather than Mohammedans” (Austin 1975, 27). 14 In a somewhat misleading comment, Searle (1965, 224, n1) traces the idea of constitutive (as opposed to directive) rules back to Searle (1964), and Rawls (1955). In fact, Rawls deals with a quite different distinction, and Searle apparently adopts the idea from a talk given by Midgley at a meeting of the Aristotelian Society 1959 (id., 1959). For a description of constitutive rules see, e.g., Bach & Harnish (1979, 109); cf. also the Appendix of their book, where several cognate conceptions are introduced and explained. 15 In the passage under consideration it is required that the procedure involve an utterance; however, as Austin later emphasises himself, this “is simply designed to restrict the rule to cases of utterances”—which are the main issue of his study—, but is not a general requirement of conventional acts (1975, 26). 16 I am employing the notions of “(un)happiness” and “(in)felicity” as if they were properly distinguished, the first applying to performatives and the latter to illocutionary acts. Austin himself does not observe this distinction quite consistently. Thus, for example, he sometimes ascribes the predicate “(un)happy” to actions. Still, there is a strong tendency to the effect that the distinction between “(un)happiness” and “(in)felicity”, as I make it here, applies. After all, for the present purpose it is not crucial to decide which assessment is ascribed to which entities, but merely to notice that the “(un)happiness” of a performative derives directly from certain flaws of the illocutionary act performed in its utterance. 17 For more details and many shorter discussions see Austin 1975, 14-45.

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- “’I appoint you’, said when you have already been appointed, or when someone else has been appointed” (1975, 34)

- The attempt to give something (or purported attempt to give something) by saying “I give you x”, when I am not the owner of x (1975, 34).

- The attempt to challenge someone by saying “My seconds will call on you”, when the “code of honour involving duelling” is no longer in existence (1975, 27).

- The assertive statement (or attempt to make an assertive statement) that ‘the present King of France’ is bald, when there is no present King of France (Austin 1975, 20).

- A promise made (or the attempt to make a promise) by saying “I shall be there”, when the audience fails to interpret the utterance as a promise. (Austin 1975, 33)

In contrast to these (A) and (B) infelicities, which make the act aimed at null and void, type (Γ) flaws are less dramatic by far. Austin presents flaws of this type as an “abuse of the procedure” (1975, 16; cf. 1958, 14). In such a case, even though the act is performed, there is still something wrong with it. Thus, for example, “when I say ‘I promise’ and have no intention of keeping it, I have promised, but …” (Austin 1975, 16); the act is “professed”, or “hollow” (1975, 16, 18), “not implemented” or “not consummated” (1975, 16); and in such a case, the performative will correspondingly be unhappy. Here are some of Austin’s examples of type (Γ) flaws.

- A promise made by saying “I promise”, but insincerely, without the intention to keep the promise (1975, 16, 40).

- “’I bet’, said when I do not intend to pay.” (1975, 40) - “I congratulate you”, “said when I did not feel at all pleased, perhaps even was annoyed” (1975, 40). - “I find him not guilty—I acquit”, “said when I do believe that he was guilty” (1975, 40).

Performatives and ‘illocutionary acts’ Next, let us turn back to an aspect of condition (B) of an act’s being a performative, the “doing of an action”. It is important to see that what Austin means is not just any kind of action—after all, to utter a performative is to say something, and to say something is to perform an action, as Austin himself recognises later.18 What Austin has in mind is a certain particular kind of action, namely, the so-called “illocutionary act” (the speech act on which he concentrates his attention in the second part of How to Do Things with Words).19 So for an utterance to be a performative is for it to be uttered in the performance of an ‘illocutionary act’. Now what is an ‘illocutionary act’? Austin defines it by two features.20 The first feature is that the performance of an illocutionary act involves the achievement of the knowledge, in an audience, that the act is (being) performed—Austin famously speaks of the “securing of uptake”.21 The second feature was already mentioned in connection with “(un)happiness”. When a performative utterance is in one or the other way “(un)happy”, then this derives from one or the other “(in)felicity” of the illocutionary act performed in uttering it. Now ‘infelicity’, Austin says, is “an ill to which all acts are heir which have the general character of ritual or ceremonial, all conventional acts” (Austin 1975, 18f.). This suggests that illocutionary acts are a variety of these ‘conventional’ acts. This agrees with Austin’s remark that “many of the ‘acts’ which concern the jurist are or include the utterance of performatives” (1975, 19), and with his idea that “a judge should be able to decide, by hearing what was said”, 18 See, e.g., Austin 1975, 94. 19 Cf., in particular, Austin (1975, 6n2, 133). There are several additional indications; thus, Austin introduces the study of illocutionary acts as the study of a sense “in which […] in saying something we do something” (1975, 91), which apparently takes up the ‘doing’ mentioned in connection with performatives. Also, Austin consistently ascribes the two features we are just introducing, conventionality and the necessity of the “securing of uptake”, both to the ‘doing’ connected with performatives utterances and to the illocutionary act. 20 The most explicit statement is (1975, 116f.); but cf. also (1975, 121f.), where he reconfirms this statement of the criteria, and (1975, 139), where the criteria are implicitly, but unambiguously reconfirmed by their application in examining whether stating is an illcutionary act or not. Austin additionally mentions a third feature, the necessity of which, however, he (1975, 117) clearly denies: Many (but not all) “illocutionary acts invite by convention a response or sequel”; thus, for example, “an order invites the response of obedience and a promise that of fulfilment”. Austin (ibid.) points out that this effect “cannot be included under the initial stretch of action”, and he later (1975, 139) unambiguously repeats that it “is not essential to all illocutionary acts anyway”. 21 For details on 'uptake' see, e.g., Doerge (2006, 33f., 39f., 59f.), Sbisà (2009).

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which illocutionary act was performed (1975, 122). It is confirmed later when Austin (1975, 116f.) explicitly defines the illocutionary act as a “conventional”22 action, an action which “‘takes effect’ in certain ways”, and which involves ‘conventional consequences’, states of affairs which are constituted by a convention. Thus, the act of naming a ship the Queen Elizabeth triggers the conventional consequence that “certain subsequent acts such as referring to it as Generalissimo Stalin will be out of order” (1975, 117). And that one promises entails that one committs herself: the assumption that one is not committed entails that one did not promise (1975, 51f.). The nature of ‘illocutionary acts’ as conventional acts explains the famous reference to a ‘conventional procedure’ in the description of performatives. Clearly, this ‘conventional procedure’ is the course of action specified by the convention as required for the performance of such an act. Thus, a bet is concluded by agreeing about the content of the bet and then shaking hands, and a ship is christened by smashing a bottle against the stem of the ship after proclaiming the name, and that these are the ways of concluding a bet and christening a ship is determined by the conventions constituting these kinds of acts.23 Among Austin’s favourite examples of illocutionary acts are naming (christening) a ship, marrying, divorcing (by three times saying “I divorce you”), giving and bequeathing, concluding a bet, promising, warning, apologising, and bidding someone welcome (but subsequently treating her like an enemy or intruder). Taking into account that the acts which Austin aims at in condition (B.1) are illocutionary acts, we can enrich the statement of this condition:

(Performative-B.1’) To utter t is to (attempt to)24 perform an illocutionary act. And taking this into consideration, Austin’s notion of performatives can be summarised as follows.

An utterance t is a performative utterance if and only if … (Performative-A.1) To utter t is not to state or describe something. (Performative-A.2) t is not truth-evaluable. (Performative-A.3) t is happy or unhappy. (Performative-B.1’) To utter t is to (attempt to) perform an illocutionary act. (Performative-B.2) To utter t is not merely to say something.

According to the present state of our analysis, constatives are truth-evaluable, and to utter a constative is to make a statement; while performatives are not true or false, but rather happy or unhappy, and to utter one is to (attempt to) perform an illocutionary act, rather than to state or describe something, and rather than just to say something. The range of criteria which Austin finally uses to keep performatives and constatives separate from each other, however, is still a bit more comprehensive. The reason is that Austin views the two categories as strongly antagonistic, in the sense that if the presence of a certain feature characterises performatives, then constatives are characterised by its absence, and vice versa. Thus, performatives are supposed not to be uttered in the performance of a statement because to be so characterises constatives; and constatives are supposed not to be happiness-evaluable because this is a defining feature of performatives. Accordingly, Austin throughout assumes that constatives are not happy or unhappy (because being so characterises performatives),25 that to utter a constative is not to perform an illocutionary act (because being so is characteristic of performatives),26 and that to utter a constative is merely to say something (because to utter a performative is to do more than this). Taking all this into consideration, here is the final reconstruction of Austin’s notions of performatives on the one hand, and constatives on the other.

An utterance t is a performative utterance if and only if … (Performative-A.1) To utter t is not to state or describe something.

22 Cf. Austin (1975, 19f., 69f., 105, 107, 117, 121f., 139). 23 For more explanation of the illocutionary acts’s conventional nature see, e.g., Doerge (2006, 24–33). 24 Austin defines performatives by requiring (among other things) that they are issued in the performance of an illocutionary act, and that they are subject to unhappiness; as one important type of unhappiness, however, he counts the complete failure of the illocutionary act. If a performative is in this way unhappy, then it will (at least standardly) not be uttered in the performance of an illocutionary act—because the illocutionary act aimed at is not achieved. As far as I know, Austin never clearly takes a stand on this issue; however, I suppose that, if pressed, he would have downgraded the requirement under consideration to the attempted performance of such an act. 25 Cf, e.g., Austin (1975, 20). 26 Cf., e.g., Austin (1975, 65): the ‘reducibility’ mentioned there is supposed to indicate that the relevant act is an illocutionary act (see below, sec. 2).

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(Performative-A.2) t is not truth-evaluable. (Performative-A.3) t is happy or unhappy. (Performative-B.1’) To utter t is to (attempt to) perform an illocutionary act. (Performative-B.2) To utter t is not merely to say something.

An utterance t is a constative utterance if and only if … (Constative-A.1) To utter t is to make a statement (Constative-A.2) t is truth-evaluable (Constative-A-3) t is not happy or unhappy (Constative-B.1) To utter t is not to perform an illocutionary act (Constative-B.2) To utter t is merely to say something

2 Inexplicit performatives and the search for a grammatical criterion

Performative utterances: utterata, rather than utterationes Let us turn to the question of what the bearer of ‘performativity’ is. After Austin’s death, the notion of a ‘performative utterance’ was repeatedly, and by prominent authors, used as applying to the utterance of an expression (sentence, sequence of words), rather than to an expression (sentence, sequence of words). In the present introduction, however, both performatives and constatives were introduced as expressions (sentences, sequences of words)—as utterata, rather than utterationes, to use Austin’s (1975, 92n1) words. Now it must be admitted that Austin himself sometimes neglects the distinction between expressions and their utterances, that there are some places where Austin’s exposition allows for a different reading,27 and that there are ambiguities.28 Despite these facts, however, there are several reasons for the conclusion that Austin’s ‘performative utterance’ is after all to be conceived of as a linguistic expression, rather than as the act of uttering it. (1) In the beginning, Austin introduces (explicit) performatives and ‘constatives’ as one instance of the contrast between sentences which are true or false and sentences which are not, such as “sentences expressing commands or wishes or concessions”; this entails that both constatives and (explicit) performatives are a variety of sentences. (2) In the same context Austin treats performatives as being on a par with Carnap’s “pseudo-statements”; these, however, are not supposed to be acts of uttering, but rather sentences. (3) Quite unambiguously, Austin introduces as a variety of performatives the “operative clauses of a legal instrument” (1958, 14), that means, those “clauses […] in which the legal act is actually performed, as opposed to those—the ‘preamble’—which set out the circumstances of the transaction” (1958, 14 n4.). This, too, clearly, refers to sentences, rather than utterances thereof. (4) Austin (1975, 1, 2) identifies (explicit) ‘performative utterances’ with “grammarians’ statements”; and he (1975, 4) characterises performatives by saying that they “fall into [the] grammatical category […] of ‘statement’”: expressions, rather than utterances thereof, are commonly taken to fall into one or the other grammatical category. (5) Also, Austin (1975, 6) explicitly introduces performatives as a type of “sentences or utterances”,29 where “utterances” is unambiguously to be interpreted as referring to linguistic devices, rather than utterances thereof: “Sentences form a class of ‘utterances’”, Austin (1975, 6 n2) comments with reference to this passage, “which class is to be defined so far as I am concerned, grammatically”. (6) This is reconfirmed later, when Austin (1975, 55–66) at length searches for a grammatical feature of performatives (we shall come to this in a moment). 27 Thus he (1975, 6) says that “[t]he term ‘performative’ will be used in a variety of cognate ways and constructions”, and he later does, though only sporadically, speak of such things as, for example, of “performative uses” of words (1975, 59, 62, 160, contrasting non-assertive uses with assertive ones), and of “performative acts” (1975, 80, 142, referring to the illocutionary act). 28 Among the reasons for ambiguities is the employment of such terms as “statement” and “utterance”, which succumb to act/object ambiguities. Although in How to Do Things with Word, Austin says: “I use ‘utterance’ only as equivalent to utteratum: for utterantio I use ‘the issuing of an utterance’”, he does so rather late in the book (1975, 92 n1), after having finished his exposition of performatives and constatives, and even after having introduced this convention, Austin continues to neglect it sometimes. 29 'Sentences', he (1975, 6, n.2) comments on this passage, "form a class of utterances, which class is to be defined, so far as I am concerned, grammatically".

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Inexplicit performative utterances It was already mentioned above that Austin distinguishes between explicit performative utterances and inexplicit30 ones.31 In order for an utterance to be “explicit”, he (1975, 32) explains, it has to “begin with or include some highly significant and unambiguous expression such as ‘I bet’, ‘I promise’, ‘I bequeath’”. An explicit performative utterance “makes explicit both that the utterance is performative, and which act it is that is being performed” (1975, 62); in performing an illocutionary act by means of an explicit performative I “make my performance explicit” (1975, 39). There are, however, also “inexplicit” performatives. These are performative utterances which, though performative, are not explicit in the sense under consideration, do not make explicit the illocutionary act performed in making the utterance. Contrasting explicit and inexplicit utterances, Austin (1975, 69) refers to “I promise that I shall be there” (explicit) versus “I shall be there” (inexplicit), to “I state (suggest/bet) that he did not do it” (explicit) versus “I did not do it” (inexplicit) (1975, 134f.), to “You are hereby warned that this bull is dangerous” versus “Bull” (1956, 243), to “I order you to shut the door” versus “Shut the door!”, and to “Strangers are warned that there is a vicious dog” versus “Dog”. Further examples of inexplicit performatives which Austin introduces are “Go!” (used in ordering someone to go) (1975, 32), as well as (1975, 58) “Turn right!” (ordering someone to turn right), “Done” (accepting a bet) and “Out!” (giving someone out).

The search for a grammatical criterion As we saw, Austin introduces the performative utterances as another variety of non-truth-evaluable sentences, on par with, for example, interrogative sentences, syntactically ill-formed concatenations, and sentences containing certain specially perplexing words. This introduction may trigger the expectation that performative utterances constitute a syntactically discrete phenomenon, like a sentence type, or a mood of its own. And, indeed, Austin himself appears originally to have had such an expectation; at least, after introducing the performative/constative dichotomy he turns to an examination of whether there is a grammatical criterion of being a performative utterance. Scrutinising this idea, he rather soon (1975, 55-59; 1956, 241-243; 1958, 15f.) arrives at the insight that there is no grammatical peculiarity which all performatives have in common as they stand. The main reason is the existence of inexplicit performatives: for these can, apparently, take any form whatsoever. Thus, to say “Shut the door” is “every bit as much the performance of an act, as to say ‘I order you to shut the door’”; and even “the word ‘Dog’ by itself can sometimes […] stand in place of an explicit and formal performative; one performs, by this little word, the very same act as […] ‘Strangers are warned that here there is a vicious dog’” (1958, 16). However, Austin maintains that at least there is an asymmetry connected with what he calls “[explicit] performative verbs”. A ‘performative verb’ is a verb that refers to an illocutionary act. Now “with these verbs [there] is a typical asymmetry between the use of this person and tense of the verb and the use of the same verb in other persons and tenses, and this asymmetry is rather an important clue” (1956, 241f.). “Thus, ‘I promise’ is a formula which is used to perform the act of promising; ‘I promised’, on the other hand, or ‘he promises’, are expressions which serve simply to describe or report an act of promising, not to perform one” (1958, 15). This asymmetry, Austin (1975, 67f.) argues, “ is just the characteristic of a long list of performative-looking verbs”. And this leads us to another idea Austin has in connection with the grammatical criterion. He suggests that …

… we might (1) make a list of all verbs with this peculiarity; (2) suppose that all performative utterances which are not in fact in this preferred form—beginning ‘I x that’, ‘I x to’, or ‘I x’—could be ‘reduced’ to this form and so rendered what we may call explicit performatives. (1975, 68)

30 See Austin (1975, 32f., 36, 69); as alternatives to "inexplicit" he introduces "implicit" (1975, 32, 69, 71), primary" (1975, 69, 71, 72, 78., 83, 135, 150, 158), and "primitive" (1975, 33, 72f.). 31 See Austin (1975, 4, 69, 150); the passage on page 150 shows that Austin maintains the distinction between explicit and inexplicit even after introducing serious doubts about the contrast between 'performative' and 'constative'.

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Indeed, Austin argues that performatives, even if inexplicit, are always “reducible, or expandible, or analysable” (Austin 1975, 61; cf. 1956, 243) to such an explicit performative formula, like “I order …” or “I apologise …”. Thus if I apologise for the delay by saying “Sorry!” then this can be expanded to “I apologise for the delay”, and when I order you to go by saying “Go!”, this can be expanded to “I order you to go”.32 Although this condition appears to be valid, however, it should be noted that it does not appear to make the search for a grammatical criterion successful. Neither the asymmetry nor the ‘reducibility’ under consideration, although they do refer to certain grammatical features, are criteria concerning the grammatical form of the performative. Thus, after all, the hope to find a formal characteristic of performative utterances in general (as contrasted with explicit performatives) was, “alas, exaggerated, and, in large measure, vain” (1958, 15).33

Locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts In How to Do Things with Words, Austin turns, after presenting the unsuccessful search for a grammatical criterion, and several further problems (some of which we shall deal with in the next section), to what he calls a “fresh start on the problem” (1975, 92). “Forgetting for the time34 the initial distinction between performatives and constatives” (1975, 121), he introduces an outline and several details of a theory of speech acts, introducing the notions of “locutionary”, “illocutionary” and “perlocutionary acts”. The term “locutionary act” is intended to capture, rather simply, nothing other than what is ordinarily called the act of “saying” something in the “full normal sense” of ‘say’. Austin analyses ‘saying’ as involving the uttering of sequences of words, these words belonging to a certain vocabulary, being arranged according to a certain grammar (and being uttered as belonging to the vocabulary and as arranged according to the relevant grammar), where the sequences of words have a certain meaning (sense and reference, as Austin qualifies) (Austin 1975, 92f., 95). The ‘illocutionary act’, as we saw, involves the securing of uptake and is a conventional act. The term “perlocutionary act”, Austin explains, is intended to capture the production of “consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audience, or of the speaker, or of other persons” (Austin 1975, 101). Austin contrasts the illocutionary and the perlocutionary act by saying that the former is conventional, while the latter is not (e.g., 1975, 121f.). He also suggests, as a test for distinguishing the two kinds of act, that the illocutionary act is performed “in saying” what one says, while the perlocutionary act is performed “by saying” it—hence the names; as it turns out, however, the test does not work quite properly (Austin 1975, 122-132).

3 Austin’s examination of the ‘performative’/‘constative’ dichotomy After exposing the doctrine of performatives and constatives, Austin presents a theory of speech acts. This emerged from Austin’s analysis of the senses in which to say something is to do something, and in which in and by saying something we do something. What does this new approach mean for the original doctrine, of performative and constative utterances? Some say, the former doctrine is superseded by the latter: is this true? Let us recall Austin’s criteria of performatives and constatives. Taken together, they represent what we called a full-fledged antagonistic dichotomy—‘antagonistic’ in the sense that if the presence of a certain feature characterises performatives, then constatives are characterised by its absence, and vice versa. However, Austin’s investigation involves not merely the presentation and development of the dichotomy, but also a severe critical examination of these criteria. And this examination uncovers quite a number of difficulties and problems. Indeed, it subsequently became a common view that these problems eventually forced Austin to abandon the notions of ‘performative’ and ‘constative’ utterances completely—and in the end it became a kind of popular

32 See also Austin (1956, 243-245; 1958, 16). 33 Cf. Austin 1956, 243; 1975, 63. 34 Austin turns back to the dichotomy at length in Lecture XI.

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pastime to ‘save’ the ‘performative/constative distinction’, or the notion of a ‘performative’, by defining them anew in one or the other way, following Austin’s lines of thought more or less closely. The question is, however, whether all this is not a bit premature. For example, does the emergence of the new doctrine really suggest that the original distinction is to be abandoned? Is the one doctrine inconsistent with the other? Or do performatives and constatives, by closer inspection, turn out just to be mirages? Is it true that there are no such things, after all? It is argued that the distinction between performatives and constatives turns out to be less antagonistic than originally supposed; but even if so, does this make the notions objectionable, or insignificant? Let us start our analysis by considering how Austin himself conceived of the matter after scrutinising the performative/constative distinction.

Austin’s final assessment of the ‘performative’/‘constative’ dichotomy To Austin’s mind, the distinction between performatives and constatives “is not as clear as it might be” (1956, 246). After examining “the Performative—Constative antithesis”, we “feel ourselves driven to think again about” it, he says (1958, 22). In this connection, Austin hints at the possibility that the notions of performatives and constatives are, after all, ‘mere’ abstractions. Thus, he says, “the traditional ‘statement’ [sc., the ‘constative’ utterance] is an abstraction, an ideal” (1975, 148): “[w]ith the constative utterance we abstract from the illocutionary (let alone the perlocutionary) aspects of the speech act, and we concentrate on the locutionary”; while “[w]ith the performative utterance, we attend as much as possible to the illocutionary force of the utterance, and abstract from the dimension of correspondence with the facts” (Austin 1975, 145f.)35 It is not very probable, however, that this argument is meant to seriously devalue the notions of performatives and constatives. At least, Austin makes exactly the same point with reference to those speech act notions, which he eventually prefers over the performative/constative dichotomy: “in general the locutionary act as much as the illocutionary act is an abstraction only”, he (1975, 147) says. Additionally, although Austin introduced the doctrine of speech acts as a more elaborate approach to performatives and constatives, intended to clarify “the senses in which to say something may be to do something” and those in which “in saying something we do something” (Austin 1975, 91; cf. ibid., 94, 109),36 he later suggests that the theory of speech acts is more general than the doctrine of performatives and constatives, and he even hints at its therefore being somehow superior to the latter. “What we need, perhaps”, he (1958, 20) suggests, “is a more general theory of these speech-acts”; and he speculates that “in this theory our Constative—Performative antithesis will scarcely survive”. “The doctrine of the performative/constative distinction”, he says, “stands to the doctrine of locutionary and iIlocutionary acts in the total speech act as the special theory to the general theory” (Austin 1975, 148). Austin extends his doubts so far as to say that, at least “in its original form”, the performative/constative distinction “is considerably weakened, and indeed breaks down” (1956, 251; cf. 1956, 247f.). And he also says that “the notion of the purity of performatives […] will not survive, unless perhaps as a marginal limiting case” (1975, 150). Now all this may sound as if Austin suggested simply abandoning the performative/constative distinction. However, after all, a less destructive reading of these passages seems reasonable. Thus, when Austin says that the dichotomy breaks down “in its original form”, then what he means is perhaps simply that it turns out not to be an antagonistic dichotomy, as it was initially supposed to be. And when he says that the notion of the purity of performatives does not survive, then this does not seem to mean that the notion of a performative is to be abandoned, but merely that it is not as pure and simple as it was initially supposed to be. Furthermore, when Austin says that the notion of the purity of a performative (as distinguished from ‘the notion of a performative’) will not survive unless perhaps as a limiting marginal case, then this suggests, after all, that even the purity of the notion of a performative does survive—though as a marginal and limiting case. Although some of Austin’s own comments may sound skeptical, and although you can almost feel Austin’s dissatisfaction about the performative/constative dichotomy, Austin’s own judgement is by no means clearly in favour of abandoning the term ‘performative’. Additionally, some of the final conclusions he arrives at sound a 35 Austin continues by suggesting that “perhaps neither of these abstractions is so very expedient: perhaps we have here not really two poles, but rather a historical development” (1975, 146). This, however, vague and cursory as it is, cannot be valued as much more than a snapshot; cf. also, e.g., Austin (1975, 72). 36 As we remember, to utter a constative was supposed to be to say something, while to utter a performative was supposed to be to perform an illocutionary act (which is exactly what Austin means here with ‘doing something in saying something’).

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bit like snapshots. In particular, it is not obvious that Austin really came to terms with the question of exactly which of the single criteria which he had suggested fails, and which, if any, may be kept. Since this question has gained some significance subsequently,37 let us see how Austin’s examination of the single criteria turned out: do the notions of ‘performatives’ and ‘constatives’ survive Austin’s assault, or does it turn out that the criteria break down and the distinction between performatives and constatives melts away?

Austin’s examination of the criteria of constatives First of all, it should be noted that performatives and constatives, taken together, do not exhaust the range of utterances. As Austin (1975, 133, 148; 1956, 246) himself observes, there are utterances which are neither constative nor performative.38 Among the examples which he gives are expressing one’s feelings or evincing emotion,39 jokes,40 poetry,41 acting in a play,42 cheering43 and (other) exclamations,44 swearwords,45 and insinuating.46 Let us start with (Constative-B.1), that to utter a constative is not to perform an illocutionary act. There is “no necessary conflict between” “an utterance being true or false” (a constative) and the “issuing [of] the utterance being the doing of something”, as Austin (1975, 135) observes; “when we state something [then] we are doing something as well as and distinct from just saying something”. Indeed, “to state is every bit as much to perform an illocutionary act as, say, to warn or to pronounce” (1975, 133f);47 stating satisfies each of the criteria for being an illocutionary act which he had introduced (1975, 139). Now assuming, as Austin throughout strictly does, that in order for a sentence to be truth-evaluable it must be uttered in the performance of a statement, we can conclude that constatives are uttered in the performance of an illocutionary act. Thus, it turns out that (Constative-B.1) is to be abandoned. Secondly, let us turn to (Constative-A.3), that constatives are not happy or unhappy. This fails, too, which can be shown as follows. According to Austin, to utter a constative is to perform a statement. As we saw, he eventually assumes, too, that statements are illocutionary acts. Illocutionary acts, however, are conventional acts, and as Austin emphasises, infelicity is the defect characteristic of conventional acts. We can conclude that constative utterances are subject to (un)happiness, contrary to what (Constative-A.3) states. Now, to be sure, Austin himself does not give the reason I just construed. He pursues the question whether constatives are subject to happiness or unhappiness more directly, referring to examples. The result of his investigation is that “statements are liable to every kind of infelicity to which performatives are liable, such as infelicity, breach and voidness” (Austin 1975, 136; cf. ibid., 91, 136-9, as well as 1956, 248f.; 1958, 19f.). Assuming that constatives are uttered in the performance of a statement, it follows that they are to be assessed as happy or unhappy, accordingly. Thus, for instance, Austin argues that, contrary to common belief, one cannot state anything one likes. One cannot, for example, “state how many people there are in the next room”, when one (obviously) has no idea about it: in such a case, one is not “in a position to state” (1975, 138),48 and if one does, the utterance will be unhappy. Austin also argues that the relations of entailment, presupposition and what he calls ‘implication’,49 all of which appear to be connected to constatives, can be explained in a way which is supposed to be characteristic of performatives, namely, as varieties of unhappiness (Austin 1975, 136f.) Indeed, “some of the troubles that

37 The alleged fact that the notion of a ‘performative’ was never defined, or that Austin abandoned his definition in the end, was subsequently be taken as a reason to re-define the term “performative” many times, and in many different ways. 38 This hardly comes as a surprise: as we remember, before introducing the performative utterance Austin had already mentioned several other kinds of sentences, such as nonsensical sentences and ethical propositions, which are supposed to be not truth-evaluable, and hence no constatives (Austin 1975, 2-4; 1956, 233-235). 39 Austin (1975, 2f., 105, 122; 1956, 233; cf. 1975, 163). 40 Austin (1975, 9, 104f., 122; 1956, 241). 41 Austin (1956, 241; 1958, 15; 1975, 9, 92, 104f.). 42 Austin (1958, 15; 1956, 241; 1975, 92, 104). 43 Austin (1956, 246; 1975, 105, 122, 148). 44 Austin (1956, 233; 1975, 1, 133). 45 Austin (1956, 246; 1975, 6, 133). 46 Austin (1956, 246; 1975, 104f., 122, 133, 148). 47 Cf. Austin (1956, 249, 251; 1958, 20). 48 Cf. Austin (1956, 249; 1958, 19f.). 49 What he has in mind is the relation highlighted in Moore’s paradox; see below, sec. 7.

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have arisen in the study of statements recently can be shown to be simply troubles of infelicity”, he argues (1956, 248). (We shall turn back to this issue in more detail below.) Furthermore, criterion (Constative-B.2), that to utter a constative is merely to say something, is not valid either. Again, this can be concluded from Austin’s view that stating is an illocutionary act. For to perform an illocutionary act is to do more than merely to say something; indeed, Austin very much emphasises the distinction between a mere act of saying something ‘in the full normal sense’50 (the locutionary act) on the one hand, and the illocutionary act on the other. Now given that to utter a constative is to perform a statement, and given statements are illocutionary acts, it follows that to utter a constative is not merely to say something.51 Thus, (Constative-A.3), (Constative-B.1) and (Constative-B.2) are to be abandoned on Austin’s own account. Not enough with this, however, Austin even wields the axe on (Constative-A.2). In order to understand his reasons, it may be helpful to reconsider the original aims which Austin pursued with the doctrine of performatives. As we remember, the idea was that performatives are another variety of ‘masqueraders’, that is, of utterances which look like truth-evaluable statements, but which are not; and this was part of a broader movement opposing the ‘descriptive fallacy’, of taking utterances as truth-evaluable which in fact are not. Obviously, it is a pet idea of Austin that the notion that the significance of truth and falsity for the study of meaning is overestimated. It is in this context that Austin attacks the performative/constative dichotomy from yet another direction. He attacks the assessment of sentences as true or false, thus questioning the kernel of the notion of ‘constatives’. To his mind, for example, to say that “either the utterance corresponds to the facts or it doesn’t” is at least sometimes to oversimplify the matter (1958, 21; cf. 1975, 146). ‘True’ and ‘false’, Austin argues, “are just general labels for a whole dimension of different appraisals which have something or other to do with the relation between what we say and the facts” (1956, 250f.). And he suggests that they are the result of “an artificial abstraction” (1975, 149). Austin also hints at several particular problems connected with the truth and falsity of particular kinds of sentences. Thus he points out that “France is hexagonal” cannot be assessed as true or false as it stands; it “is a rough description; it is not a true or false one”, he says (1975, 143). Or consider “Lord Raglan won the battle of Alma”. The battle of Alma “was a soldier’s battle if ever there was one [and] Lord Raglan’s orders were never transmitted”: “it would be pointless to insist on [the sentence’s] truth or falsity” (1975, 143f.). “[T]he intents and purposes of the utterance and its context”, Austin argues, “are important” for its truth conditions: “what is judged true in a school book may not be so judged in a work of historical research” (1975, 143). He thereby seems to suggest that the truth conditions of certain utterances depend on the purpose for which they are issued.52 They also appear to depend on the intentions of the agent; Austin considers the case of “All swans are white”, as uttered before the discovery of Australia, when some of the Autralian swans are black. The speaker “could say ‘I wasn’t talking about swans absolutely everywhere’”, Austin (1975, 144) argues. “It is essential to realise”, he concludes, “that ‘true’ and ‘false’ […] do not stand for anything simple at all; [but for] a general dimension of being a right or proper thing to say as opposed to a wrong thing, in these circumstances, to this audience, for these purposes and with these intentions” (1975, 145).53 In spite of this profoundly critical assessment of the notions of truth and falsity, however, Austin does not appear to go so far as to abandon them, or say there are no such things after all. Thus though he says that truth and falsity are artificial abstractions, he also admits that such abstractions are certainly “possible and legitimate for certain purposes” (1975, 149). And concerning such issues as vagueness and context-sensitivity, he acknowledges that “the ideal of” truth-evaluability “perhaps […] is sometimes realised” (1975, 146). He maintains that statements “[o]f course […] are liable to be assessed in this matter of their correspondence or failure to correspond with the facts, that is, being true or false” (1956, 248). And it should also be kept in mind

50 Austin (1975, 94). 51 (Constative-B.2) may ultimately go back to a confusion of saying and stating. Austin does not always keep these two actions separate. Thus, for example, he represents the descriptive fallacy, which is supposed to be the mistake of viewing non-assertive utterances as statements, as the fallacy of “mistaking a problem of [illocutionary usage] for a problem of [locutionary usage]” (1975, 100); and he says that “[w]ith the constative utterance we […] concentrate on the locutionary [aspects of language]” (1975, 145f.); in either case he evidently confuses being said (locution) with being uttered assertively (constative). What might have furthered Austin’s mistake is that there is a sense of “saying that” in which this amounts to ‘stating that’; at least Austin does sometimes use this notion, as for example when he speaks of “saying, as equivalent to stating” (1975, 136). 52 Cf. Austin (1958, 21). 53 Cf. Austin (1958, 21; 1975, 146).

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that Austin himself does not refrain from applying ‘truth’ and ‘falsity’ in connection with performatives, as we saw. Thus, notwithstanding the doubts Austin has about truth-evaluability and truth-conditions, he does not seem to seriously deny the significance of the concepts of truth and falsity. And given this, there seems to be no reason to think that Austin abandons (Constative-A.2) after all. Neither does he seem to abandon (Constative-A.1), that to utter a constative is to make a statement. Therefore, in the end the following two criteria are kept as characterising the notion of a constative.

An utterance t is a constative utterance (if and)54 only if … (Constative-A.1) To utter t is to make a statement. (Constative-A.2) t is truth-evaluable.

Austin’s examination of the criteria of performatives Let us turn to Austin’s discussion of the criteria of performatives; here, too, Austin does not maintain all of them. First of all, in the face of Austin’s new view that stating is an illocutionary act, it seems that (Performative-A.1), that to utter t is not to state or describe something, cannot be held up. If to state something is to perform an illocutionary act, then this condition contradicts (Performative-B.1’); and doubtlessly, (Performative-B.1) is to be defended at all costs, for it is part of the very core of the idea of a performative. Furthermore, Austin expresses serious doubts about (Performative-A.2), the condition requiring that the utterance is not truth-evaluable. Austin’s doubts start with the observation that “the requirement of conforming or bearing some relation to the facts, different in different cases, seems to characterise [many, though perhaps not all55] performatives, in addition to the requirement that they should be happy” (1975, 91). Thus, “some things that are quite clearly classic performatives like ‘Over’ bear a very close relation to describing facts, even if some others like ‘Play’ do not” (1975, 90). Austin (1956, 248) also mentions “the case of the umpire when he says ‘Out’ or ‘Over’, or the jury’s utterance when they say that they find the prisoner guilty. […] They seem to have something like the duty to be true or false and seem not to be so very remote from statements”, he

56emphasises.

6, 250). Therefore, on the one hand, erformative-A.2) is not seriously threatened by these cases, after all.

] our issuing the utterance eing the doing of something, [and] our utterance being true or false” (1975, 135).

However, it does not escape our attention that to have some relation to the facts is not the same as (is not sufficient for) being true or false, and that it is the latter which is required by the criterion, while these remarks all merely state the presence of the former. After all, we would probably not say that “Out” or “Over” are true or false, despite the undeniable fact that they do bear some relation to the facts. And actually, Austin almost throughout refrains from outspokenly ascribing truth and falsity to performative utterances. And he finally arrives at less bold assessments, such as this: “we may still feel that [performatives] lack something which statements have, [namely, that they] are not essentially true or false as statements are” (1975, 140). Furthermore although he insists that “we do require to assess at least a great many performative utterances in a general dimension of correspondence with facts”, he admits that it “may still be said […] that this does not make them very like statements because still they are not true or false” (195(P But on the other hand, there are some passages in Austin’s work which could be read as suggesting that some performatives are straightforwardly true or false. Thus, Austin says about “I warn you that it [sc., the bull] is going to charge”, that “it is both a warning and true or false that it is going to charge” (1975, 136). And in connection with the illocutionary class of ‘verdictives’ he says that “the content of a verdict is true or false”, which “is shown, for example, in a dispute over an umpire’s calling ‘Out’, ‘Three strikes’, or ‘Four balls’” (1975, 153). And he also points out that “there is no necessary conflict between […b Eventually, Austin’s position appears to remain ambiguous; there are indications for both the views that (Performative-A.2) is to be abandoned, and the view that it is not. However, it would at least be a bit misleading

54 I use the parentheses to indicate an ambiguity: after the loss of the other three conditions it may (or may not) be doubted whether the remaining two conditions are to be interpreted as claiming sufficiency. 55 Cf. Austin (1958, 21). 56 Cf. also, e.g., Austin (1958, 20, 21, 1975, 145).

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to say that the criterion is abandoned by Austin, full stop. Remember what the original idea behind Austin’s investigation was: it was the notion of another ‘masquerader’, a declarative sentence looking like a statement of fact, true or false; it were utterances like “I christen this ship the Queen Elizabeth”, or “I give and bequeath my watch to my brother”, which appear to be true just in case the agent does perform the act indicated by the sentence (though to Austin’s mind they indeed are not); in short, Austin’s original idea was about explicit performatives: it was that explicit performatives are not made true by the agent’s performing the act indicated by the sentence. “[T]o utter the sentence […]”, Austin says, “is not to describe my doing of what I should be said in so uttering to be doing or to state that I am doing it: it is to do it” (Austin 1975, 6). Now on the one hand, Austin recognised the existence of inexplicit performatives, most of which do not actually masquerade as statements of fact, such as “Go” or “Done” (it is pointless, if not queer, to emphasise that they are not true or false: obviously they are not). On the other hand, he arrived at the conclusion that to state something is to perform an illocutionary act. Assuming, as Austin throughout does, that to utter a constative is to perform a statement, it follows that some performatives are truth-evaluable. Additionally, there is Austin’s analysis of sentences of the form “I state that …”. Such a sentence, uttered to make a statement, does appear to be a performative, he (1975, 65, 68, 91) argues, and even an explicit one. But it does appear to be a truth-evaluable statement, too: “utterances beginning ‘I state that …’ do have to be true or false, […] they are statements”, Austin argues (1956, 247; cf.

ustin 1975, 91).

r to be uth-evaluable performatives, but they do not seem to be true just in case the speaker performs the act.)

c.)” (1975, 90).58 According to this view, “I state that p” is not true f the speaker states that p, but rather iff p.

t indicated,

(Performative-A.2’) e, then t is not true iff the speaker executes the performance indicated by t.

erely to say something (Performative-B.1’/2). So in the end, the following conditions of performatives

An utterance t is a performative utterance if and only if …

A So it must indeed be said that, in its present form, (Performative-A.2) cannot be upheld by Austin. At least some truth-evaluable statements are performatives, and hence at least some performatives are true or false. Although this development constitutes a significant change in Austin’ s account, however, it still does not appear to contradict the original idea concerning “I christen this ship the Queen Elizabeth” and “I give and bequeath my watch to my brother”. It still makes sense to say that these are not true or false; for after all, they are not supposed to be statements. Furthermore, even in the case of “I state that …”, the original idea can be preserved, notwithstanding the fact that according to the new account such a sentence does have truth-conditions; for Austin may maintain that, still, such an utterance is not true just in case the speaker performs the statement. (Neither are cases like “Napoleon died at Elba”, uttered assertively, problematic for this account:57 such cases do appeatr Austin does not treat the issue in much detail, but it seems indeed that this is his account. As he puts it, an explicit performative of the form “I x that p” can be divided into the “performative opening part” (“I x …”) and the “bit in the that-clause” (“that p”). Now if someone utters a sentence of the form “I state that p”, then it is “the bit in the that-clause which is required to be true or false” (1975, 90); the whole utterance, in contrast, is not, because, as Austin insists, the performative prefix merely “makes clear how the utterance is to be taken, that it is a statement (as distinct from a prediction, &if Although it is possible to save the core of Austin’s intuition concerning ‘masqueraders’ according to these lines, this requires a thorough revision of (Performative-A.2). Austin seems to accept that some performatives are true or false, and this contradicts the condition as it stands. The intuition which led to its statement, however, that explicit performatives are ‘masqueraders’, can be maintained in an amended version of the condition. It now requires that the truth of explicit performatives does not depend on the agent’s performing the acwhile it no longer states the overly strong condition that performatives cannot be true or false at all.

If t is an explicit performativ

Let us see what remains of the conditions of performatives, after Austin’s critical examination. After thorough examinations, Austin came to believe that to state something is to perform an illocutionary act, which leads to abandoning (Performative-A.1). As a consequence, it turns out that (Performative-A.2) is doubtful, too. Turning back, however, to the original idea behind this criterion we found that this can be maintained, and the criterion was revised accordingly. Now, reconsidering the criteria which survive Austin’s examination, we see that these are numerous and substantial. No doubts have been issued about the criterion that performatives are happy or unhappy (Performative-A.3), or about the criteria according to which to utter a performative is to perform an illocutionary act, and not m

remain:

57 Austin does not analyse cases like these, where the act performed is a statement, and the sentence literally expresses the content. 58 Cf., e.g., (1975, 135; 1956, 245). In (1975, 90), Austin introduces two additional complications, or apparent complications, but in a deliberately cursory tone of voice, without analysing the issue in any detail.

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(Performative-A.2’) If t is an explicit performative, then t is not true iff the speaker executes the performance indicated by t.

(Performative-A.3) t is happy or unhappy. (Performative-B.1’) To utter t is to (attempt to) perform an illocutionary act. (Performative-B.2) To utter t is not merely to say something.

4 Summary of Austin’s account Although Austin’s own assessment of the performative/constative dichotomy was subject to serious doubts, the final result of our analysis of Austin’s discussions is that neither the notion of a performative nor that of a constative needs to be abandoned after all. Furthermore, it is not the case that the distinction between performatives and constatives is problematic, or even breaks down; it is an unobjectionable distinction, like, for example, the distinction between an apple and a stalk, or between a flower and a bouquet. It turned out, however, that performatives and constatives do not, as Austin originally believed, behave as we would expect from an antagonistic dichotomy, and neither do they appear to be “two poles” (Austin 1975, 146). Rather, the picture emerging from our analysis is the following. Performatives are uttered in the performance of an illocutionary act. Because the illocutionary act is a conventional act, and because these acts are either felicitously or infelicitously performed, performatives are happy or unhappy.59 Since to perform an illocutionary act is to do more than just to say something, to utter a performative is to do more than just to say something. The core of the notion of constatives is that they are truth-evaluable. On Austin’s view of truth and truth-evaluability, this entails that constatives are uttered in the course of the performance of a statement. Accordingly, there is the additional condition that to utter a constative is to state something. Austin’s final views suggest that the set of constatives is a subset of the set of performatives. Some performatives are constatives, and all constatives are performatives, because to utter a constative is to perform a statement, and to state something is to perform an illocutionary act. However, there may be some doubts as to whether or not this picture of the relation is somewhat too simple. Let me mention two problems which appear particularly obvious. Firstly, doubts may be raised about the assumption that to state something is always to perform an illocutionary act (in Austin’s sense). To be such an act, as we remember, means to be a conventional act and to involve the securing of uptake. Now such a view of the act of stating is certainly not absurd. Consider, for instance, Searle’s account in “A Classification of Illocutionary Acts”: “The point or purpose of the representative [sc., assertive] class is to commit the speaker […] to something’s being the case, to the truth of the expressed proposition” (Searle 1976, 10).60 If we ascribe to Searle the additional view that asserting involves the securing of uptake (an addition which is arguable), then we arrive at the view that asserting indeed is an ‘illocutionary act’ in the sense Austin has in mind. However, even forgetting about the condition concerning the securing of uptake, many authors do not think that statements are conventional acts. Even Searle himself later defends a different view. He (together with Vanderveken) says, for example, “The assertive point is to say how things are […]: in utterances with the assertive point the speaker presents a proposition as representing an actual state of affairs in the world of utterance“ (Searle & Vanderveken 1985, 37). No commitment is mentioned here; on this account, ‘stating’ is apparently not a conventional act, and hence not an ‘illocutionary act’ in Austin’s sense. Another analysis according to which asserting is not a conventional act is provided by Bach & Harnish (1979, 42): “In general”, they say, “a constative [sc., an act of asserting] is the expression of a belief, together with the expression of an intention that the hearer form (or continue to hold) a like belief”; they view the act as a ‘communicative

59 Here the problem remains that if a type (A) or (B) flaw occurs, the act is not performed, such that, strictly speaking, (Performative-B.1’) is not satisfied, although the case is obviously one which Austin would classify as a performative. Most probably, (Performative-B.1’) should be weakened, but it is not easy to say how exactly. 60 For another account of assertives involving the speaker’s being committed to the truth cf. Alston (2000, 114-130).

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illocutionary act’, which on their account means that it is not a conventional act. It follows that in their view, too, asserting is not a conventional act, and hence not an ‘illocutionary act’ in Austin’s sense. Without going any deeper into the issue we can say that it is by no means generally accepted that statements are conventional acts.61 It may also be argued that some subtypes of the rather general act of stating do involve conventions (such as a commitment to the truth of what is stated), while others do not; or perhaps in some contexts a statement involves conventions, while in others a statement does not. Furthermore, it may be argued that the terms “statement” and “assertion” are vague or ambiguous in a way which allows for both conventional and non-conventional ‘statements’ and ‘assertions’. In each case, it would turn out that not all statements are ‘illocutionary acts’ in Austin’s sense, implying that not all constatives are performatives: the relation between the two kinds of utterances would turn out to be a bit more complex than it was construed above. The second doubt which concerns the relation between performatives and constatives, as we finally construed it on Austin’s behalf, is whether it is really true, as Austin assumes, that in order to be truth-evaluable a sentence must be uttered with assertive aims. It is a common assumption, for example, that propositions which are provable in mathematics can be counted as true, while those which can be disproved are false; the question whether such a proposition was ever uttered, let alone uttered with assertive aims, is not normally considered as relevant in these cases. The fact that such propositions are provable may lead Austin to suggest that instead of being true or false they are “valid” or “invalid”;62 but apart from the question of whether this is really the case, even if they are valid or invalid, it would not follow that they are not also true or false. Additionally, it is by no means an unusual assumption that the sentence “Napoleon Buonaparte died at Elba” would be true or false even if its utterance was intended as a warning, rather than as a statement. In fact, Austin’s view, that assertive aims are necessary for truth-evaluability, is not very widespread, let alone commonly accepted. Jane Heal, for example, casts doubts on what was probably one of the main reasons of Austin to believe that truth-evaluability requires assertive aims. According to Heal,

[… t]he main argument against taking classic pure performatives as statements (the one which Austin probably had in mind when he claimed that it was too obvious to need arguing) is that it is odd to respond to utterances like ‘I promise to meet you on Thursday’ or ‘I order you to leave the room’ by saying such things as ‘How right you are’, ‘Very true’, or ‘I don’t believe it’. In other words, assessments of these utterances as true or false seem inappropriate. (Heal 1974, 115f.)

Heal suggests that if this was Austin’s reason, then his conclusion was the result of a mistake. For

[…] the deliberate irrelevance of a remark to what is, from the very meaning of his previous utterance, the hearer’s main concern, and the consequent unusual nature of the exchange, is not proof that the remark is false or embodies a category mistake. The “inappropriateness” of assessments of truth and falsity does not show that explicit performative utterances are not statements, since there is an alternative explanation, premissed on their being statements. (Heal 1974, 116)

The issue cannot be pursued any further here, but it should at least be noted that if a sentence can be true or false although it was not uttered with assertive aims, or not uttered at all, then this will force us to think again about the notion of a constative, and about the relation between performatives and constatives. Should we really define constatives in such a way that they must be uttered with assertive aims? And does the set of constatives really form a subset of the set of performatives? These are among the questions which may be asked in order to further clarify the notions of performatives and constatives. Another question closely connected with the notions of ‘illocutionary acts’ and ‘performative utterances’ is what exactly the ‘securing of uptake’ amounts to, or should be made to amount to. Strawson (1964, 449), suggests an identification of the securing of uptake with the understanding of what the speaker ‘means’ in the Gricean sense—in cases where the speaker does mean something in this sense. It is far from evident, however, that this is an appropriate way of interpreting Austin’s notion. For example, is it necessary for an ‘illocutionary act’ that the speaker ‘means’ something (in the Gricean sense) at all? It may, for example, be argued that one can perform an ‘illocutionary act’ in Austin’s sense by omitting something as opposed to ‘doing something’; but do agents, in cases like these, ‘mean’ anything in the Gricean sense? Or consider Bach & Harnish’s notion of ‘linguistic communication’, which they analyse as the expressing of an attitude. This notion is probably not quite the same as Grice’s notion of ‘meaning’. However, on Bach & Harnish’s account, the ‘securing of uptake’ consists in the

61 See, e.g., Holdcroft (1975, 10-13). 62 Cf., e.g., Austin 1975, 141f.; cf. also his (1950, 112f.) remark about ‘propositions’ as truth bearers.

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understanding of the attitude the speaker expressed. Is this adequate? And if so, does this not mean that, by closer inspection, Strawson was wrong with his equation? 63 What about Austin: it is obvious that his ‘illocutionary act’ is rather different from Bach & Harnish’s ‘expressing of an attitude’: did Austin have a mistaken conception of the ‘securing of uptake’, too? And what would this actually mean, given that Austin introduced the term first? Furthermore, although Austin maintains that the securing of uptake is essential to the performance of an illocutionary act, it is not quite clear whether he means that without uptake the act has not been performed; while it can be argued, and it has been argued, that in some cases of illocutionary acts the act can be performed without uptake being secured. So, after all, is the ‘securing of uptake’ really strictly necessary for the performance of an ‘illocutionary act’? Finally, in answering questions like these we should always be aware that there is a clear difference between the original speech-act theoretical terminology, the analysis of which is more or less a matter of understanding Austin’s writings, and the different terminological systems which were established later by Strawson, Alston, Bach & Harnish, Searle and several others, where such terms as “illocutionary act”, “performative utterance” and “securing of uptake” are used for a variety of quite different phenomena.

5 The notion of ‘performatives’ after Austin

Did Austin abandon the notion of ‘performatives’ (or had he better)? Before Austin was able to publish his doctrines of performatives and constatives, and of speech acts, he died. ‘Performative utterances’, however, continued to be investigated—or rather, the term “performative utterance” continued to be used. The first formulation may suggest that after Austin’s death there was one kind of thing which was studied when the term “performative utterance” was used, which was not the case; in fact the term started to be used for an increasing number of different phenomena. Let us take a glimpse at the history of its use during the past five decades. To start with, it was argued (and still often is) that Austin never defined the notion of a ‘performative utterance’.64 At the same time, there are authors such as Strawson, Reimer and Lauer, who take the notion to be quite clear and uncontroversial (see below). After all, both views appear to be a bit extreme; for although it can hardly be denied that Austin did define the notion,65 there is not, and perhaps never was, a general agreement about what exactly Austin’s notion (or the notion) of ‘performatives’ amounts to. Most authors agree, however, that Austin abandoned the ‘performative/constative’ distinction as well as the notions of ‘performatives’ and ‘constatives’, or that, anyway, the distinction in fact fails and the notions should be abandoned. Chisholm (1964, 9), for example, observes that Austin “seems to [emphasis mine] despair of being able to draw any clearcut distinction” between performatives and constatives, and he concludes that Austin abandoned the notion of a performative (he then suggests his very own construal of the notion of ‘performatives’). Duncan-Jones (1964, 107) agrees: “Austin’s notion of a Performative, or Performatory, utterance […] did not undergo any substantial evolution, but at last Austin discarded it altogether”. According to Searle (1968, 405), Austin even “shows in detail how attempts to make the distinction [between ‘performatives’ and ‘constatives’] precise along [Austin’s] lines only show that it collapses”. More in detail, Grewendorf (2002, 25) argues, “the distinction between constative and performative utterances cannot be sustained”, because Austin “shows that the criteria by which he had characterised the class of performatives equally apply to the class of constatives, and that the criteria by which he had characterised the class of constatives equally apply to performatives”. Harnish (2007, 4) tops this: “In the end, […] the attempt to isolate performatives from constatives failed dramatically”.

63 For a thorough discussion of the role of ‘uptake’ see Sbisà (2009). 64 Cf. e.g., Lemmon (1962, 86). 65 Lemmon probably did not know Austin’s How to Do Things with Words (1975), which was first published in 1962.

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Now, as we saw above, Austin raises serious doubts about the validity of the performative/constative dichotomy as an antagonistic dichotomy. Nevertheless, is is by no means clear that Austin would have claimed that there is no distinction between ‘performatives’ and ‘constatives’, or that the notions of ‘performatives’ and ‘constatives’ do not denote something worth investigation. Furthermore, even if Austin really despaired of the distinction, and abandoned the notions, it would still not follow that in doing so he was right (our analysis, for example, did not reveal any obvious reasons for abandoning the distinction between performatives and constatives). In particular it should be noted that the failure of the performative/constative dichotomy would not imply that either or both of these notions has to be abandoned.

Reconstructions of Austin’s notion of ‘performatives’ Anyway, notwithstanding a rather common agreement that Austin abandoned the performative/constative dichotomy, many authors agree that the notion of a ‘performative’ should be preserved, that we should “rescue Performatives from their inventor’s slights”, as Duncan-Jones (1964, 106) puts it.66 In order to achieve this, they either attempt to reconstruct Austin’s notion of ‘performatives’, or they re-define the term “performative” more or less arbitrarily. Let us first consider several attempts at reconstructing Austin’s notion. Ginet (1979, 245), for example, allegedly “following Austin”, suggests that “a verb phrase φ” is ‘performative’ “just in case a person can, in the right circumstances, φ just by uttering the sentence ‘I φ‘ or ‘I hereby φ‘”, while “the main verb in a performative verb phrase may be called a performative verb”.67 A reconstruction which fits Austin’s real notions better is given by Max Black (1963, 219). According to him, “Austin’s explanation of ‘performative’” suggests a definition of a ‘performativeA’ as an utterance whose use “counts as a case of the speaker’s doing something other than, or something more than, saying something true or false”. That the utterance ‘counts as’ doing something is meant to indicate, quite adequately, that the relevant ‘doing’ is a conventional act in the sense Austin had in mind. Black also adequately decides to “follow Austin in using [in his definition, the term “utterance”] to stand for the sentence or other expression used by the speaker”—rather than for an utterance of an expression as many others later mistakenly did (see below, section 5). Black does not, however, assign an appropriate role to the ‘securing of uptake’. Holdcroft appears to capture Austin’s notion rather well, too. According to him,

[…] the definition which Austin puts up for discussion is this:

D.1 A sentence type is a performative if and only if its literal and serious utterance can constitute the performance of an act which is done in accordance with a convention, which convention is not merely a grammatical or semantical one. (Holdcroft 1974, 2)

Still, Holdcroft takes ‘performatives’ to be sentence types, while Austin clearly deals with sentence tokens;68 furthermore, like Black, Holdcroft neglects the role which the ‘securing of uptake’ plays in Austin’s account. Searle’s (1968, 405) characterisation sounds similar to Black’s, but is less adequate. He suggests that Austin conceives of performatives simply as “utterances which are doings”, and of constatives as “utterances which are sayings”. Obviously, this statement both oversimplifies and distorts Austin’s position. For example, Searle fails to identify the relevant ‘doing’ (the ‘illocutionary’ act, that means) as a conventional act, and he fails to account for the essential connection of performatives with (un)happiness. He also overlooks the essential role of the ‘securing of uptake’. In short, it is easy to see why Searle (1968, 406) so easily arrives at the view that Austin’s attempt to distinguish ‘performatives’ from ‘constatives’ fails: Searle just overlooks those features which do the job.

66 One prominent exception is Warnock (1973, 89), who casts doubts on the usefulness of the term ‘performative’, because the term is too ambiguous (having been “given too many jobs to do”) to be really useful for scholarly use. 67 This statement is not, however, a very happy attempt to capture Austin’s terms. Among other things, Austin’s notion of a performative (utterance) is not the conception of a verb phrase—even though he does, like Ginet, additionally introduce the notion of a “performative verb”. Furthermore, according to Ginet’s statement there can be no inexplicit performatives, while according to Austin there are. Additional features Austin introduces are neglected, with the consequence that apparently, according to Ginet’s definition, “say something”, “utter English words” and “prevent silence” are performative utterances, while Austin would hardly have accepted them. 68 To say this is not to deny that Austin might have regarded the distinction more intensely.

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Re-definitions of the term “performative” As these few cases already show, over the years quite a number of definitions of ‘performatives’ were offered by different authors. This development was reinforced by the fact that the acceptance of Austin’s definitions of the relevant terms, which from the beginning was not absolute, decreased more and more, and that even the awareness that Austin’s ideas may be significant to an adequate understanding of the terms he had introduced, trickled away. Indeed, it became a popular pastime to give more or less arbitrary re-definitions of such terms as “performative utterance”, or “illocutionary act”. As a result, a vast number of different definitions of these terms is nowadays available.69 Let us take a look at a few of these re-definitions of the notion of ‘performatives’. One of the first authors to define the notion after Austin is E.J. Lemmon. Straightforwardly opposing the view that Austin was at pains to avoid, namely that explicit performatives are not true or false, he (1962, 89) suggests that “the property of sentences which we are tempted to call their being performative” is “a special case of a more general property, that of being verifiable by their use”. He defines performative sentences in terms of performative verbs. That a verb V is a performative verb, he suggests, means (roughly) that the insertion of V in the following schema delivers a truth: To say, in the appropriate circumstances, “I V that P”, is to V that P (cf. Lemmon 1962, 86). As typical instances of such verbs he views “promise”, “guarantee”, “concede”, and “swear”. That a sentence is a performative sentence, on his account, means (roughly) that to utter the sentence, in the appropriate circumstances, is to V that P, where V is a performative verb. As typical examples he views “I promise to go” (because to utter it, in the appropriate circumstances, is to promise to go), but also sentences of the form “I know that P” (because to utter such a sentence, in the appropriate circumstances, “if it is not to know, is at least to guarantee that P” (Lemmon 1962, 86)).70 After abandoning what he takes to be Austin’s notion, which in his view is too liberal, Sesonske (1965, 89) provides a “new definition of a performative”, too: “a performative is an utterance whose point is to alter formal relations”. In linking ‘performatives’ with the alteration of ‘formal relations’, and thus probably achieving an essential connection with (un)happiness, this definition is less different from Austin’s notion of ‘performatives’ than Sesonske’s exposition may suggest; at any rate, it resembles Austin’s notions much more than many other re-definitions. Still, there are important differences to Austin; for example, the significance of the ‘securing of uptake’ is not taken into account. According to Gould (1995, 24), the conception of ‘performatives’ “pre-dominate in literary-theoretical circles” conceives of them as “a kind of verbal performance or artifact, […] to be assessed by its effectiveness with an audience (whether real or implicit or constructed)”. This statement uses several words which remind us of Austin’s definition, and this may lead us to the expectation that the notion defined is similar to Austin’s; but this is not the case: Neither does Austin identify the bearer of ‘performativity’ as “verbal performance or artifact”; nor is the effectiveness mentioned in Austin’s account the “effectiveness with an audience” which Gould mentions. In fact, the notion of ‘performatives’ which Gould describes here is quite different from Austin’s.

‘Performatives’: various different notions During the 1960ies and early 1970ies, there was an intense inner-Skandinavian debate of ‘performatives’. In the course of this discussion, it was recognised that the term “performative” is used by different authors in different ways. This, again, lead to the view that what the term “performative” refers to is to a certain extent, if not completely, arbitrary. Thus Danielsson (1965, 22), introducing the definitions of Lemmon, Aqvist and Hedenius (which differ significantly from each other), emphasises that “there is no generally accepted use of the term [‘performative’]”, and concludes that “any of these alternatives might be acceptable”. Andersson assents and explains the matter in more detail. The term “performative”, he says, “is a technical term of the philosophical or linguistic meta-language”; therefore, “the philosopher’s problem is not to give a ‘correct’ or ‘adequate’ analysis of the term as it

69 As far as ‘illocutionary acts’ are concerned, cf. Doerge (2006, 97-99; 2009). 70 Lemmon himself finds the definition of performative sentences inacceptable and suggests maintaining only the notion of performative verbs (cf. Lemmon 1962, 86f.).

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is used in some extant discourse, but to suggest a suitable use for it” (1975, 2).71 “A useful definition”, he adds, “is such that it makes the term denote some linguistic phenomenon that has some peculiar and interesting features” (ibid.). Had this terminological awareness been preserved later on, then the progress of certain debates would have been increased, and several rather pointless debates might have been avoided (see below, section 6). Unfortunately, in the subsequent discussions of ‘performatives’ (of the many different phenomena to which the term was applied over the years, that means), the terminological sensitivity which had developed in the inner-Skandinavian debate was lost. As a consequence, the number of phenomena for which the term “performative (utterance)” is used continued to increase, while the awareness of this fact disappeared almost completely. Thus, Strawson (1964, 441) takes the notion of an (explicit) ‘performative’ to be “familiar and perspicuous”. Reimer, who defines “performative utterance” as “an utterance of a sentence whose main verb is both (i) performative, and (ii) in the first-person singular, simple present indicative active […] [p]roviding that the utterance is made for the purpose of performing an act of the kind named by the performative verb”,72 takes this to be just “what is standardly meant by that locution” (1995, 655). And Lauer (2000, 3) assumes a preliminary understanding of what a ‘performative utterance’ is, which he takes to be more or less uncontroversial, and according to which a ‘performative’ is an utterance which constitutes what it constates. In fact, there is no common notion of what the term “performative” means. Different authors give very different statements of what they think is a ‘performative utterance’. And, to be sure, it is not the case that all, or even most of these statements can be reduced to one and the same notion: they not only sound differently, but they define different phenomena. To see this, we need only to take into consideration that there are a number of authors who deliberately define the notion more than once, clearly assuming that the different statements will be capturing different phenomena. Black, for example, argues that Austin himself suggests, in different connections, two different definitions. According to the first, “performativeA”, an utterance is said to be performative “when used in specified circumstances, if and only if its being so used counts as a case of the speaker’s doing something other than, or something more than, saying something true or false” (1963, 219). According to the second, “performativeB”, an utterance of the form ‘I X [such-and-such]’ is said to be performative “when used in specified circumstances, if and only if its so being used counts as a case of the speaker’s thereby X-ing” (1963, 220). Another case of double definition is Warnock’s “Some Types of Performative Utterance”, where the author introduces, on the one hand, the so-called “Mark I” performative: “a class of utterances, linguistically quite heterogeneous, which have in common that, in virtue of non-linguistic conventions, to issue them (happily) counts as doing this or that” (1973, 74), and on the other hand “another sub-class of utterance, identifiable by the purely formal feature that, being in the first person present indicative active [which] have as main verb the word for what (one thing which) a speaker would be said to do in issuing them” (1973, 88). Chisholm, too, defines ‘performative’ twice. An utterance is ‘performative’ in the strict sense when to make it is to perform a certain kind of act explicitly; the kind of act is characterised as follows: “when circumstances are right, then to perform the act it is enough to make [such an explicit] utterance” (1964, 9). An utterance is ‘performative’ in an extended sense when “it is made in order to accomplish [an] act in virtue of which the utterance of some other expression (e.g., “I request”) can be performed in the strict sense defined” (Chisholm 1964, 9f.). Finally, in “Are Performative Utterances Declarations?”, Harnish defines ‘performatives’ in the wide sense as acts of uttering something which “are not merely sayings […] but also doings, where the utterance of certain words in certain socio-physical circumstances is sufficient to perform the act” (2002, 42), and he defines ‘performatives’ in the narrow sense as utterances which “name the act being performed in that utterance” (ibid.). Taking up earlier attempts at defining the term “performative”, Andersson suggests a profound number of different definitions for the notion of a ‘performative’. According to one, (D.1), for an utterance to be ‘performative’ amounts to its being ‘illocutionary’ (1975, 161); another (D.2) merely requires that the utterance be so intended (ibid.). Alternatively (D.5), Andersson defines being ‘performative’ as being “socially performatory or P-ceremonial” (1975, 163). He also suggests a definition (D.9) according to which an utterance is ‘performative’ iff it is “verifiable by its use”, and one (D.10) which renders it simply as being “self-referring or reflexive” (1975, 164). 71 Cf. also Andersson (1975, 25f., 160). 72 “By a ‘performative verb’” she means “a verb that names a kind of illocutionary act, the kind of illocutionary act that one would ordinarily be performing in uttering a sentence of the form just described” (ibid.).

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The ambiguity of the term “performative” turns out to be still greater when its use in other disciplines, such as literary criticism, is taken into consideration (these discourses are otherwise ignored in this text because of their insignificance to pragmatics). Bial, for example, describes the matter as follows: “Performativity is a term layered with multiple meanings”. He then speaks of different “levels” of the use of the term. “On one level”, he says, “it is a variation of theatricality: something which is ‘performative’ is similar—in form, in intent, in effect—to a theatrical performance”. “On another level”, he continues, “the term ‘performative’ refers to a specific philosophical concept concerning the nature and potential of language” (the reader familiar with the subject will be aware that there are some additional uses of the term in postmodern literary criticism). “Perhaps the most remarkable synthesis of these two meanings of performativity”, Bial continues explaining, “is expressed in Judith Butler’s 1988 essay ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution.’ Butler explains that gender is not a condition which one has, but is in fact ‘an identity tenuously constituted in time—that is, a social role which one performs’” (Bial 2004, 145).

Recurring issues in definitions of ‘performatives’ We saw that there are many definitions of ‘performatives’, and these differ, not merely with respect to their intension, but also with respect to their extension, thus defining different kinds of things. Let us consider some of the issues which come up consistently.

(1) Are ‘performatives’ essentially explicit? The first concerns the question of whether in order to count as a ‘performative’ an utterance must be explicit or not, that is, whether for example (utterances of) “Go!” or “Done!” can be ‘performatives’. Above it was argued that on Austin’s account there are both explicit and inexplicit ‘performatives’. And many authors subsequently accepted this subdivision’. Already in Hedenius’s (1963) paper “Performatives”, however, the notion is defined in a way which is inconsistent with the explicit/inexplicit distinction and suggests that ‘performatives’ are essentially explicit sentences:

“S” is a performative ≡ “S” is true if and only if the utterance of “S” causes the state of affairs which makes “S” true and “S”’s social function is to be uttered in those circumstances where the utterance of “S” causes “S”’s truth. (Hedenius 1963, 119)

Hedenius’s definition excludes inexplicit sentences like “Go!” and “Done!”, which cannot be true or false. Other authors who exclude inexplicit cases are Searle & Vanderveken (1985, 2f.), Reimer (1995, 655) and Lauer (2000). Chisholm (1964, 8) hints at a possible reason, arguing that “[t]he philosophically interesting sense of ‘performative utterance’, as Austin uses the expression, is that in which it applies to utterances in which the little word ‘hereby’ either actually occurs or might naturally be inserted”—that is, ’the’ sense of ‘performative’ (if there is one), in which ‘performatives’ are essentially explicit. However, Chisholm does not explain which conditions to his mind make definitions ‘philosophically (more) interesting (that others)’; and neither does he give any reason to believe that the restriction to explicit cases satisfies the relevant conditions. Bach (1975, 235n5)73 tries a different defence. He claims that there is a “general usage” in Austin’s work to employ the term “performative” “as meaning explicit rather than primary [sc., inexplicit] performatives [sic]”, and he defines “performatives” accordingly. The problem with Bach’s alleged followership is that there is no such general usage in Austin’s work. At the beginning of How to Do Things with Words (1975), Austin preliminarily concentrates on explicit performatives, but as we saw, this restriction is only provisional, and he introduces the distinction between explicit and inexplicit performatives later (cf., e.g., Austin 1975, 4, 69f., 150). Bach additionally argues that Austin introduced the distinction between explicit and inexplicit performatives “rather surreptitiously”, referring to a remark by Austin himself (Bach 1975, 235n5)74. However, although Austin does make this remark, he makes it just in order to emphasise the need of more explanation, which he then immediately provides. Indeed, near the

73 Cf. Bach & Harnish 1979, 304n2. 74 Cf. Austin 1975, 69, Bach & Harnish 1979, 304n2.

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end of the book, summarising his findings and casting doubts upon the performative/constative contrast, Austin points out that the distinction “between primary and explicit will survive the sea-change from the performative/constative distinction to the theory of speech-acts quite successfully”. So after all, it is not very plausible to name Austin as an adherent of the restriction of ‘performative’ to explicit cases.

(2) Are ‘performatives’ utterata, or are they utterationes? A second way in which definitions of ‘performatives’ differ from each other is that some take the term to apply to “utterances” in the sense of sentences, or expressions (utterata in Austin’s (1975, 92n1) sense), while others apply it to “utterances” in the sense of utterance actions (utterationes in Austin’s sense). As we saw (section 2), Austin introduced ‘performativity’ as a property of utterata. Authors who appear to follow him75 are, for example, Black (1963), Hedenius (1963), Duncan-Jones (1964), Hare (1971), Warnock (1973), Urmson (1977), Harnish (2002). But there are also many authors who apply the term ‘performative utterance’ to the act of uttering an expression, or to illocutionary acts, for example Hartnack (1963), Chisholm (1964), Searle (1968), Bach (1975), Bach & Harnish (1979, 204), Searle (1989) and Harnish (2002). Additionally, there are some texts which are ambiguous or which deliberately accept both utterata and utterationes as bearers of performativity, among them Grewendorf (1979a, 1979b, 2002) and Harnish (1988, 2002).

(3) What is the ‘doing’ with which the ‘performative’ is essentially connected? A third way in which notions of ‘performative utterances’ differ from each other is the question of what those ‘doings’ actually are (those ‘illocutionary acts’, as Austin calls them) in the course of which the ‘performative’ is uttered. For some years after Austin’s death, most scholars, many of whom had been personally acquainted with Austin, bore in mind and carried on Austin’s notion that ‘illocutionary acts’ are conventional acts, involving the securing of ‘uptake’. However, over the years several new and different conceptions of ‘illocutionary acts’ were introduced and more or less well established.76 As in the case of the term “performative utterance”, one reason for this development was the increasing disregard of Austin’s writings, and of his notion of ‘illocutionary acts’. Another reason was the strong impact of Strawson’s “Intention and Convention in Speech Acts” (1964), which suggests an association between the notion of an ‘illocutionary act’ and Grice’s (1957) notion of ‘speaker meaning’, which is analysed there as a sort of attempt at communication. Since it was still common to define the notion of a ‘performative utterance’ in terms of ‘illocutionary acts’, and since this term was now used to refer to such things as speaker meaning or attempts at communication, the notion of a ‘performative’ was changed accordingly. Thus in his Meaning, Schiffer conceives of the “explicit performative utterance” as “a sentence beginning with a verb in the first person singular present indicative active, this verb being the name of the kind of (illocutionary) act one would (ordinarily) be performing in uttering that sentence” (1972, 105). And he further assumes that “S performed an illocutionary act in uttering x if and only if S meant something by uttering x” (1972, 103), such that on his account, performatives appear to be characterised by their being uttered in the course of the ‘act’ of meaning something. Another example is Bach & Harnish’s Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts. The authors define the “(explicit) performative utterance” as “the utterance of a sentence with main verb in the first-person singular, simple present indicative active, this verb being the name of the kind of illocutionary act one would ordinarily be performing in uttering that sentence” (1979, 203f.) ‘Illocutionary acts’, in their terminology, are standardly mere attempts at communication.77 Thus Bach & Harnish view ‘performative utterances’ (in the standard case) as utterances connected with attempts at communication, and not, as Austin did, as utterances connected with conventional acts essentially involving the securing of ‘uptake’. As Bach literally puts it in a later text, “[o]rdinary performative utterances […] are not bound to particular institutional contexts [sc., and hence not to

75 In some cases the matter is not entirely clear. 76 E.g., Schiffer (1972, 103), Bach & Harnish (1979), Searle (1968, 1979). 77 They (1979, 108) additionally introduce “conventional illocutionary acts”, which are ‘conventional acts’ in Austin’s sense, but they treat them merely as a marginal and exceptional variety of ‘illocutionary acts’.

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conventional acts]. Like most speech acts, they are acts of communication and, as such, they succeed not by conformity to convention but by recognition of intention” (1995, 685).

Conclusion As a consequence of, firstly, those attempts to capture Austin’s ideas in different ways, and secondly, of re-defining the term “performative utterance” in ever new ways more or less arbitrarily, the notion of ‘performatives’ became more and more obscure and in several ways ambiguous. This obscurity and ambiguity concerns not merely the intension of the term “performative”, but indeed has decisive repercussions on the extension of the notion. For example, if there are inexplicit performatives, then “Done!” and “Go!”, or utterances of “Done!” and of “Go!”, may be ‘performative utterances’; while if performatives are essentially explicit, as many suggest by definition, then they are not. If performatives are utterata, rather than utterationes, then it may well be that the sentences “Done!” and “Go!” are ‘performative utterances’; otherwise, however, they are not. And if ‘illocutionary acts’ are conventional acts, then “I give and bequeath my watch to my brother” may well be an explicit performative; while if they are mere attempts at communication or acts of meaning something, then it is not. It is an obvious consequence of the ambiguity of the term “performative” that one should not use it without providing a clear definition in the first place.

6 Three debates which employ the term “performatives utterance” Triggered by Austin’s writings, the term “performative utterance” was used in a profound number of debates: let us consider three of the more intense ones.

(1) How do Performatives Work? One of the most prominent exchanges referring to the term “performative utterances” was the debate between Bach & Harnish on the one hand, and Searle on the other hand, about “how performatives (really) work”. It goes back to certain considerations by Bach & Harnish (1979, 203-208) about how it can be that a hearer is able to figure out what the speaker intends to communicate in cases where the speaker explicitly says what she intends to communicate.78 In their explanation, Bach & Harnish use Austin’s term “performative utterance”, and Searle, in his objection to their account, employs the same term. However, despite the use of one and the same term, Bach & Harnish are not dealing with what Austin was concerned with, and Searle does not speak about the phenomenon Bach & Harnish are trying to explain: In fact, the participants in this debate are talking at cross purposes. In order to see what exactly the problem is, and to identify the issues which the single participants are engaged with, let us analyse the debate in more detail. Bach & Harnish (1979) define the term “performative utterance” as follows.

An (explicit) performative [utterance] is the utterance of a sentence with main verb in the first-person singular, simple present indicative active, this verb being the name of the kind of illocutionary act one would ordinarily be performing in uttering that sentence […]. (Bach & Harnish 1979, 204)

Instances of “performative utterances” according to them (1979, 204) are, for example utterances of “I order you to leave”, “I promise you a job”, or “I apologise for the delay”. According to this description, Bach & Harnish restrict the range of ‘performatives’ to explicit cases, thus ignoring Austin’s inexplicit performatives, and they conceive of ‘performatives’ as utterationes (acts of uttering something), whereas Austin used the term for utterata (what is uttered).

78 Their explanation goes back, again, to an idea by Bach; see id. (1975). The debate was continued, e.g., in Bach & Harnish (1992), Grewendorf (2002), Harnish (1988, 2002, 2004, 2007) and Reimer (1995).

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The examples given, and the fact that they use the term “illocutionary act”, may at least suggest that Bach & Harnish identify those ‘doings’, which are performed in the utterance of a ‘performative’, in the same way as Austin does, namely, as conventional acts which involve the securing of ‘uptake’. However, this impression is illusory, too. To start with, they introduce two different notions of “illocutionary acts”:

(1) “Communicative illocutionary acts”: these are attempts at communication, which are again defined as involving “reflexive intentions in the sense of H.P. Grice”, intentions “whose fulfilment consists in nothing other than their recognition” (1979, vivf.), and the presence of which can be equated, according to Bach & Harnish, with the expressing of an attitude (1979, xv).

(2) “Conventional illocutionary acts”: these are acts of “satisfying a convention [sc., a counts-as-rule]”, acts which are performed in making an utterance by virtue of the existence of a counts-as rule, saying that the utterance counts as the performance of the act (1979, 108).

As Bach & Harnish (1979, 108) emphasise, no attempt at communication is involved in the “conventional illocutionary act”, and no conventions are involved in the “communicative illocutionary act”: the two subtypes are perfectly different from each other. Now the subtype referred to as “illocutionary act” in their definition of ‘performative utterances’ is the communicative illocutionary act, the attempt at communication, which amounts to the expressing of an attitude, and which is said to involve no conventions. In Bach & Harnish’s (1979) terminology, a “performative utterance” is the utterance of a sentence with the main verb in the first person singular simple present indicative active, this verb being the name of the kind of attempt at communication one would ordinarily be undertaking in uttering that sentence. Thus, as it turns out, the phenomena Bach & Harnish are dealing with are quite different from those Austin was concerned with.79 Let us for the moment assume that the acts of asking a question, making a statement and giving an order all amount to (mere) attempts at communication. Then the utterance of “I ask you who Albi is”, the utterance of “I state that he is Tullius Destructivus” and the utterance of “I order you to leave”, made with communicative intentions, are all ‘performative utterances’ in the sense applied by Bach & Harnish (1979). Now the question Bach & Harnish ask is, “why an utterance like ‘I order you to go’ is a performative”, which for them involves asking “what has to be the case for such an utterance to count as an order” (1979, 208). Since they conceive of ‘performative utterances’ as utterances which make the performance of an ‘illocutionary act’ explicit, and since according to their terminology ‘illocutionary acts’ are attempts at communication, this involves the hearer’s figuring out what the speaker intends to communicate (what attitude she expresses), in cases where the speaker explicitly says what she intends to communicate (explicitly indicates the attitude expressed). Bach & Harnish’s answer introduces a six-step inference schema, which is meant to represent “how the hearer could reason, and could be intended to reason” what the speaker intends to communicate. Using the example of “I order you to leave”, they suggest that the hearer normally could reason, and be intended to reason, as follows:

1. He [sc., the speaker] is saying “I order you to leave”. 2. He is stating that he is ordering me to leave. 3. If his statement is true, then he must be ordering me to leave. 4. If he is ordering me to leave, it must be his utterance that constitutes the order. (What else could it be?) 5. Presumably, he is speaking the truth. 6. Therefore, in stating that he is ordering me to leave he is ordering me to leave. (Bach & Harnish 1979, 208)

According to Searle, this explanation of ‘how performatives work’ does not work. Like Bach & Harnish, he subscribes (niceties aside) to the definition of performatives as utterances of a sentence that explicitly expresses the performance of the ‘illocutionary act’ performed in making it. Now the puzzle about performatives, according to Searle, “is simply this”: How can it be, in the case of performative utterances, that “we can perform the action named by the verb just by saying literally we are performing it?”—“How does the saying constitute the doing?” (1989, 538). To Searle’s mind, Bach & Harnish’s account of ‘how performatives work’ fails, because it does not satisfy certain “conditions of adequacy” which in his view should be met. These involve in particular the so-called “self-fulfilling character” of performative utterances, which consists in the (supposed) fact that “the speaker cannot be lying, insincere, or mistaken about the type of act being performed” (1989, 542).

79 The fact that Bach & Harnish use the examples of ordering, promising, and apologising, which are commonly associated with Austin’s notion of an ‘illocutionary act’, does not show that they are dealing with the same kind of phenomenon, but rather that they think that ordering, promising and apologising are mere attempts at communication, while Austin thought that they are acts involving conventional procedures and conventional effects.

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The account preferred by Searle is this. All ‘performative utterances’, he (1989, 547, 550) suggests, are acts of ‘declaring’ something, where what is declared is the performance of the illocutionary act indicated by the sentence (1989, 549). Thus, the utterance of “I hereby order you to go” is a declaration to the effect that the speaker orders the audience to go, and the utterance of “The meeting is adjourned” is a declaration to the effect that the speaker adjourns the relevant meeting. In either case, the declaration involves the manifestation of the intention to perform the act, and the manifestation of the intention, “in an appropriate context, is sufficient for the performance of the action” (1989, 551). Now it may be asked, how does this work? There are two different cases. Let us start with “I adjourn this meeting”. The declaration to adjourn a meeting, Searle explains, is an extra-linguistic declaration. Such a declaration “in general […] requires […] four features”: “An extra-linguistic institution […]. A special position by the speaker, and sometimes by the hearer, within the institution. […] A special convention that certain literal sentences […] count as the performance of certain declarations within the institution. […] The intention by the speaker [that the utterance be a declaration of the relevant kind]” (1989, 548). The declaration succeeds, according to this account, per conventionem, by means of the conventions of the institution, which require the manifestation of the intention (among other conditions) for the performance of the act. Now it may be objected, on behalf of Bach & Harnish, that they are speaking about communicative ‘illocutionary acts’, attempts at communication, like giving an order, promising and stating (assuming, with Bach & Harnish, that these acts are mere attempts at communication), while Searle’s explanation is evidently concerned with institutional acts (conventional ‘illocutionary acts’, as Bach & Harnish might say). Searle (1989, 549) first meets this objection at least halfway, for he does not insist that ordering, promising and stating are extra-linguistic institutional acts. He maintains, however, that they are performed according to and constituted by the conventions of an institution. In order to convince us, he suggests that these acts are constituted by certain conventions of language: “Language is itself an institution”, he asserts. Thus, to Searle’s mind, ‘performative utterances’ work by satisfying a convention (which requires, among other things, the manifestation of the intention to perform the act for the successful performance of the act). It follows that the ‘illocutionary acts’ he is dealing with are institutional acts, or conventional ‘illocutionary acts’ (in the sense of Bach & Harnish (1979)). Bach & Harnish suggest that ‘performatives’ work by an inference-schema, representing how the hearer understands what the speaker means; while Searle suggests that it works by satisfying a convention which constitutes the act: who is right? Well, the answer appears to be, both. In either case is the answer to the question dealt with quite plausible; only that the questions dealt with are different in each case. For although both define ‘performative utterances’ as utterances of an explicit device for the performance of an ‘illocutionary act’, the conceptions of ‘illocutionary act’ they are applying are different: attempts at communication in the case of Bach & Harnish, and institutional acts in the case of Searle. Consequently, when the parties are answering the question of how ‘performatives’—explicit performances of ‘illocutionary acts’—work, then they are giving different answers to different questions, Thus, the impression that there is any substantial controversy is due to an error.

(2) Are explicit performative utterances (really not) truth-evaluable? A second issue which was highly disputed is the question of whether ‘(explicit) performative utterances’ are truth-evaluable or not.80 As Austin’s own contribution to the question is concerned, with which we shall start our analysis, this is commonly a bit downplayed. What is often quoted is his initial remark when introducing the first examples of explicit performatives in How to Do Things with Words:81

In these examples it seems clear that to utter the sentence […] is not to describe my doing of what I should be said in so uttering to be doing, 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. (Austin 1975, 6)

80 Depending on which terminology is adopted, literally stated the question is sometimes whether “performatives” (“performative utterances”) are truth-evaluable (when the author uses or defines the term “performative” such that it refers only to explicit utterances anyway, as, e.g., in the papers we are just considering), and sometimes whether “explicit performatives” (explicit performative utterances”) are truth-evaluable (otherwise; e.g., in Heal (1974)). 81 Cf. Austin (1958, 13f.; 1956, 235.

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In spite of his announcement not to give any argument against the truth-evaluability of explicit performative utterances, however, Austin does give some hints at arguments, or rather explanations why he takes this view. To start with, in his introduction Austin argues that many apparent statements are “not intended at all, or only intended in part, to record or impart straightforward information about the facts” (Austin 1975, 2). He concludes that these are not statements, are not true or false. This shows that to his mind, being intended as a statement of fact is a precondition of an utterance’s being true or false. The fact that Austin introduces explicit performatives as an instance of those sentences, suggests an argument according to these lines: an utterance is truth-evaluable (a statement) only if intended to record or impart straightforward information; however, explicit performatives are not so intended; therefore, they are not truth-evaluable.82 Elsewhere, Austin quite explicitly gives reasons. He says that, for example, “I promise that …” could not be true because “it could not be false” (and therefore is not a description, he continues concluding) (Austin 1975, 70). Austin also emphasises that, when someone says “I bid you welcome”, in a sense, “we cannot ask ‘Did he really bid him welcome?’” (1975, 83f.). Black, for example, supports this line of argument later on Austin’s behalf, saying that there …

… is a manifest contrast between the first-person promise and the corresponding third-person remark about the episode (‘Austin promised [such-and-such]’). The latter might be attacked for failure to correspond with the facts, but not the former: we cannot retort to ‘I promise’ [such-and-such] with the objection ‘It isn’t so!’ (Black 1963, 217f.)

Austin (1975, 6) gives another hint at an argument just after announcing that he will not give one. He says that this does not need an argument any more “than that ‘damn’ is not true or false”. This idea may be employed for an argument, appealing to our intuition, according to these lines: Evidently, “Damn” is not truth-evaluable; confronting our intuition with explicit performatives we feel that these are similar to “damn” in this respect; hence our intuition gives us reason to think that explicit performative utterances are not truth-evaluable. Still another indication is given in this connection, when Austin (1975, 6) argues as follows: “to utter the sentence […] is not to describe my doing […] or to state that I am doing it […] it may be that the utterance ‘serves to inform you’—but that is quite different”. This hints at a reasoning directed against premature arguments to the effect that just because they take the declarative sentence form, explicit performatives must be truth-evaluable, which may be expressed like this: An utterance is truth-evaluable only if it is used to describe or state something; that an utterance ‘serves to inform someone’ does not imply that it is truth-evaluable; but (despite appearances) explicit performatives are not used to describe or state what the agent is doing, in fact they merely ‘serve to inform’ the audience what act is performed; hence (despite appearances) we do not need to assume that they are truth-evaluable. A similar line of thought, in terms of “making explicit” rather than in terms of “informing”, is indicated in “Performative—Constative”: “All we can say is that our explicit performative formula […] serves to make explicit […] what act it is that the speaker purports to perform in issuing his utterance. I say ‘to make explicit’, and that is not at all the same thing as to state” (1958, 16). Austin pursues this line of thought further using the example of doing obeisance.83 When I do obeisance by bowing deeply before you, or by saying “Salaam”, then no one would suggest that I am thereby stating that I am doing obeisance. Now when I utter an explicit performative, such as “I salute you”, then I am doing in principle the same thing. I am making clear what act I am performing, but not describing the act (1975, 69f.); I am showing what act I am performing, but not stating that I am performing it (1956, 245).84 After Austin, the question continued to be pursued. Among the first authors to claim clearly and decidedly that (explicit) performatives are truth-evaluable is Lemmon: “The property of sentences which we are tempted to call their being performative”, he argues, “turns out to be a special case of a more general property, that of being verifiable by their use” (1962, 89). Hedenius (1963, 117) agrees: It is “[a]nother feature […] common to performatives”, he argues, “that these sentences can be said to have truth values”; indeed, as we saw above (section 5), he even defines ‘performatives’ in terms of this feature. Actually, in spite of Austin’s persistent doubts, most authors believe that explicit performatives are truth-evaluable. There are, however, also some who agree with Austin. Hartnack, for example, says that “one thing is obvious”: “In the sense in which the answer ‘I am writing a letter’ must be either true or false it is logically impossible for the answer ‘I promise I shall come’ to be so” (1963, 138). Grewendorf confirms this view, 82 A similar argument is suggested earlier in “Truth” (1950, 125), where Austin argues that, for instance, a formula in a calculus is not true or false, because it “is simply not the business of such utterances to ‘correspond to the facts’”. 83 Austin (1975, 69f.; 1956, 245f.) 84 Cf., too, id. (1975, 6).

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treating the issue more in detail. After an examination of several arguments in favour of truth-evaluability of explicit performatives he arrives at the conclusion that none of them is plausible (1979a), and he additionally defends the position that there are plausible arguments against truth-evaluabilty of explicit performatives (1979b). A problem which apparently has not yet been recognised in the debate under consideration is that explicit performatives use to contain indexicals such as, for example, the personal pronoun “I”. Being indexicals, these do not determine a referent, and hence a sentence containing them does not express a determinate set of truth conditions. Thus, the thought expressed by “I promise to go” is semantically incomplete in such a way as to prevent the sentence from being either true or false, because “I” does not manage to determine a referent, and thus fails to determine whom the predicate ‘promises to go’ is ascribed to. It is easy to see what most opponents would object to this (sketch of an) argument: for it is nowadays a rather common view that the truth conditions of a sentence are determined, not by its linguistic meaning (its “character”, as Kaplan would say),85 but by its ‘semantic content’, which is determined by complementing, or modifying, the sentence’s linguistic meaning with reference to features of the context (the number and choice of which is a matter of debate). It is, however, not too obvious that we should take ‘semantic content’ to determine the truth-conditions of the sentence (as opposed to what the speaker uttering the sentence meant with it, or the like), and it is not very obvious that the satisfaction of these conditions would make the sentence true. Another defence may be built on the assumption that ‘performative utterances’ are not sentences, or expressions at all, but utterances of expressions, and that the meaning of these is determined by a function of both linguistic meaning and contextual factors. This, however, would not seem a promising way of defending the truth-evaluability of performative utterances, in a normal sense of ‘truth-evaluable’, anyway, because of (utterance) acts we generally do not say that they are true or false at all.

(3) Are utterances of (explicit) ‘performatives’ statements? Among the reasons for Austin’s opinion that (even explicit) performatives are not truth-evaluable is his view that an utterance is truth-evaluable only if its utterance is assertive. This premise, however, is far from evident. Schiffer (1972, 105, 107f.), for example, apparently does not accept it, but combines the view that performatives are truth-evaluable with the view that to utter them is not to make a statement. Over and above this, it always was a matter of debate whether to utter an explicit performative really is to make a statement or not. Hartnack rejects the idea that to utter an explicit perforative is to state something:: Saying “I promise I shall come” “is not stating what I am doing”, he says: “it is not an answer to the question: ‘What are you doing?’” (1963, 138). And as was just said, Schiffer, though he does seem to suppose that explicit performatives are truth-evaluable, rejects the view that to utter them is to state that one performs the act indicated: “I agree with Austin”, he says, “that in uttering an explicit performative one is not constating that one is performing an act of the kind named by the explicit performative verb” (Schiffer 1972, 107). Grewendorf rejects this view, too: “explicit performatives, under the appropriate circumstances, constitute the performance of the illocutionary act denoted by the performative verb”. If this verb refers to the act of making a statement, the illocutionary act performed is a statement; otherwise it is not, he (2002, 38) argues.86 But many are of the opposite opinion. Heal (1974, 114), for instance, apparently concludes from an utterance’s being truth-evaluable to its being assertively uttered: “at least some explicit performative utterances are statements”, she argues, for “if in an utterance the proposition that p is expressed and it is possible to assess the utterance as true or false or as a lie that p, then that utterance is a statement”. Indeed, she (1975, 106) emphasises, the grammar of explicit performatives indicates that they are statements, and she argues that “first appearances are not so misleading after all” as Austin took them to be. Hedenius endorses that utterances of explicit performatives are ‘statements’, too, however, he seems to be applying a sense of ‘statement’ which is different from Austin’s: “When a performative, an imperative or an informative sentence is uttered in accordance with its social function”, he (1963, 119) defines, “I shall say that it is ‘stated’”. Bach & Harnish (1979, 1992) and Searle (1989) both argue that utterances of explicit performative sentences are statements to the effect that the act indicated is performed. However, while Bach & Harnish claim that it is by

85 Cf. Kaplan (1989). 86 Cf. also Grewendorf (1979b).

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means of the statement that the agent performs the act indicated by the sentence, Searle accepts the performance of the statement rather as a kind of theoretical give-away—he ‘establishes’ this view with reference to the (alleged) fact that our intuition endorses it (1989, 539). There is a general problem which infects the debate throughout. The notions of a ‘statement’ and of an ‘assertion’, as applied in the debate, are exceedingly vague. Does ‘stating’ and ‘asserting’, in the relevant sense, imply the use of words? Does it imply that the speaker commits herself (albeit perhaps weakly) to the truth of the content? Does it imply that the audience understands the speaker’s intentions? Does it require that an audience is present and involved at all? There is no consensus concerning even one of these questions, and there are still other questions. Accordingly, what authors are dealing with when they argue that explicit performatives are (not) ‘statements’ is usually rather unclear, too. And unfortunately, it is very uncommon in the debate to give a sufficiently clear conception of the definitions one applies of such terms as “statement”, or “assertion”.

7 Impact on Meaning Theory The greatest significance of Austin’s considerations about performatives and constatives for linguistic study lies probably in the impact on meaning theory which it has, or at least which Austin suggested it should have, and which seems now, even more than fifty years after Austin’s exposition of his account, not yet exhausted. Although each of the following issues would deserve thorough investigation, the present exposition will be restricted to a short introduction.

(1) ‘Illocutionary force’ versus (propositional) ‘content’ The first issue is the distinction between ‘illocutionary force’ (in one sense of this ambiguous term) and ‘(propositional) content’. The origin of this is probably Frege’s (1956) distinction between the content of a statement, or the thought expressed by it,87 on the one hand, and the asserting “Kraft” (force) it involves, on the other. Taking up Frege’s dichotomy, Hare applies it to both declarative and directive sentences,88 and starts by comparing the parallels and differences between declarative and directive sentence types (1952, 5). Referring to the examples “Shut the door!” and “You are going to shut the door”, he argues that there is something which both of these sentences have in common: “Both are used for talking about a subject-matter”,89 namely, “about your shutting the door in the immediate future”. But they are also different in a certain way, for “what they say about it is quite different” in each case: “an indicative sentence is used for telling someone that something is the case; [while] an imperative […] is used for telling someone to make something the case” (1952, 5). Obviously, the distinction of these two components of sentence meaning can systematically be applied to both declarative and directive sentences. For the first component, referring to ‘your shutting the door in the immediate future’, Hare introduces the term “phrastic”; the latter element, which “is different in the case of commands and statements”, he suggests calling the “neustic” (1952, 18). Taking this distinction up from from Frege and Hare, Austin extends it to an even greater variety of sentences. Also, Austin uses his own terms. For the analogon to Frege’s ‘Kraft’ and Hare’s ‘neustic’ he uses the term “force”, and for the analogon to the object of the statement or command he uses the term “meaning”, which he explains elsewhere in terms of “sense and reference”, and which he treats as being subject to truth or falsity.90 In most cases, Austin uses the term “force” for marking the type of illocutionary act which the utterance of a given performative aims at.91

87 Both the content and the thought expressed can serve as counterpart to the Kraft, even though they are not the same thing; cf., e.g., Frege (1956, 296). 88 Frege (1956) already hints at a broader application of the dichotomy, without, however, elaborating on this. 89 … “something which might be the case”, he specifies (1949, 27). 90 Cf. e.g., Austin (1975, 33, 100, 117). 91 This interpretation fits with Austin (1975, 33, 72, 73, 100, 135, 146). There are exceptions; for example, Austin (1975, 72) confuses the force/meaning distinction with the non-assertive/assertive distinction.

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Triggered by Austin’s account, the notion of “force” is applied in a number of contexts—it is usually contrasted with ‘(propositional) content’, rather than, as in Austin’s terminology, with “meaning”. It is important to observe, however, that the term “force”, as contrasted with “content”, is used for several different things. Firstly, it is used to capture different aspects of sentence meaning,92 as in a comparison of “Will you take the money?”, “Please, take the money!”, and “You will take the money”. What distinguishes the meanings of these sentences can be called the meaning’s ‘force’ aspect, while what is alike in them can be called the ‘(propositional) content’ aspect of their meaning. Secondly, the distinction can be applied to the attempt, of an agent performing an illocutionary act, to secure uptake in the audience of what act is performed, or to the content of an act of communication or of an attempt at communication. When, for instance, a speaker tries to communicate the thought ‘that the speaker offers a bet that Manchester will win the cup final’, then we can distinguish between ‘offering a bet’ (as the ‘force’ aspect), and ‘that Manchester will win the cup final’ (as the ‘content’ aspect).93 Thirdly, when, for example, a speaker performs the illocutionary act of promising to do the dishes, then there is the distinction between the act type of promising and the content ‘that the speaker does the dishes’, a distinction which is sometimes expressed in terms of the ‘force’/‘content’ distinction, too.94 Additional distinctions can be found—unfortunately, it is often hard to say which distinction is aimed at.95

(2) Austin’s explanation of three semantic relations Although Austin’s doctrine of performatives was directed against an over-estimation of the role of truth conditions in the study of meaning, it also offers a contribution to the analysis of the meaning of truth-evaluable sentences. In Austin’s view, some of the troubles that were then new in the study of ‘statements’, “can be shown to be simply troubles of infelicity” (1956, 248). If we discuss these things merely “in terms of [truth-conditional] meaning”, Austin argues, then we shall “get confused about them”, although in fact “they are really easy to understand”—provided that we discuss them in terms of speech acts and the infelicities infecting them (Austin 1975, 20). In particular, Austin analyses three semantic (or apparently semantic) relations. The first is what he calls “implication”, aiming at the relation highlighted in ‘Moore’s paradox’. Consider “The cat is on the mat but I do not believe it is”, which involves an instance of this paradox. In terms of the traditional notions of implication, it is not easy, or even impossible, to explain why, as in fact one does, “one experiences a feeling of outrage” (Austin 1958, 17) when combining the claim that the cat is on the mat with the claim that I do not believe that it is. At any rate, the two statements are by no means inconsistent (1975, 49); it “is an outrageous thing to say, but it is not self-contradictory” (1956, 248). According to Austin, there are analogous complications in connection with explicit performatives. “‘I promise but do not intend’ is parallel to ‘it is the case but I do not believe it’” (1975, 50); “the person who [says ‘The cat is on the mat but I do not believe it is’] is much in the same position as somebody who says something like this: ‘I promise that I shall be there, but I haven’t the least intention of being there’” (1956, 248). Now Austin suggests that in both kinds of cases the phenomenon can be elucidated in terms of infelicity. When I utter “The cat is on the mat” without believing it is, then this “is a case of insincerity”. “[T]he 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” (1975, 50; cf. 1956, 248). The common feature Austin detects in both cases, and which he suggests as an explanation of the feeling of outrage, is that “both promising and asserting are procedures intended for use by persons having certain thoughts” (1975, 50):

The procedure of stating is designed for those who honestly believe what they say, exactly as the procedure of promising is designed for those who have a certain intention, namely, the intention to do whatever it may be that they promise. If we do not have the belief, or again don’t have the intention, appropriate to the content of our utterance, then in each case there is lack of sincerity and abuse of the procedure. If, at the same time as we make the statement or the promise, we announce in the same breath that we don’t believe it or we don’t intend to, then the utterance is ‘self-voiding’, as we might call it; and hence our feeling of outrage on hearing it. (Austin 1958, 19)

The second issue is presupposition. Austin proceeds from Strawson’s conception, which is defined as follows. That the statement that S “presupposes” the statement that S’ means that the truth of S’ is a necessary condition 92 See, e.g., Sadock (1974, 16), Searle & Vanderveken (1985, 8). 93 Cf. e.g., Strawson (1964, 439f.). 94 Cf. e.g., Bach and Harnish (1979, 6), Alston (2000, 15). 95 See, e.g., Searle (1969, 30f.), Searle & Vanderveken (1985, 7).

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of the truth or falsity of S (cf. Strawson 1954, 216).96 It is old hat that “[w]e cannot say ‘All Jack’s children are bald but Jack has no children’, or ‘Jack has no children and all his children are bald’” (Austin 1975, 48), and there is an outrage about “The present King of France is bald” if at present there is no King of France (1975, 20). Although Strawson’s definition already gives some explanatory indications, Austin suggests that the matter can be further elucidated in terms of the infelicities connected to performatives. According to Austin, the problem with the (missing) king of France can be equated with the utterance of a performative, such as “I name …” (1975, 51), if certain of the conditions essential to the act of naming are not satisfied (as when strolling around on the waterfront and seeing a ship ready to be named that evening, I spontaneously decide to say “I name this ship the ‘Little Albi’”). Or compare the case where someone says “All John’s children are bald” when John has no children: “what is going wrong here is much the same as what goes wrong in, say, the case of a contract for the sale of a piece of land when the piece of land referred to does not exist” (1956, 248f.). According to Austin, there is “some similarity, and perhaps even an identity” (1975, 53) between these kinds of cases. Consider also the case of the apparently performative utterance “I bequeath my watch to you”, given the speaker has no watch. To say “either ‘I bequeath my watch to you’ or ‘I don’t bequeath my watch to you’ presupposes equally that I have a watch” (Austin 1958, 18); thus, performatives are subject to presupposition quite as much as truth-evaluable statements are. Now “just as we can make use here of the notion of ‘presupposition’ as employed in the doctrine of the constative, equally we can take over for that doctrine the term ‘void’ as employed in the doctrine of the unhappinesses of the performative” (Austin 1958, 18). And indeed, Austin appears to eventually recommend explaining presupposition in terms of infelicity. Some suggest capturing the failure of presupposition by saying that “the question” whether the statement is true or false “does not arise”. According to Austin, however, it is better “to say that the putative statement is null and void, exactly as when I say that I sell you something but it is not mine or (having been burnt) is not any longer in existence”, thus treating the case analogously to contracts which are “void because the objects they are about do not exist, which involves a breakdown of reference”, too (Austin 1975, 137). Thus, on Austin’s account, the problem with failure of presupposition can be captured in terms of infelicity by saying that “the utterance is void” (1975, 51). Thirdly, Austin offers an explanation in terms of infelicty even for the entailment between truth-evaluable statements. If someone “says ‘All the guests are French, and some of them aren’t’: or perhaps he says ‘All the guests are French’; and then afterwards says ‘Some of the guests are not French’”, then we again “experience a feeling of outrage” (1958, 17); it is “a question here of the compatibility and incompatibility of propositions” (1958, 18). Again, Austin provides us with an analogy from the realm of performative utterances.97

[I]t might be that the way in which in entailment one proposition entails another is not unlike that 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’. (Austin 1975, 51)

In both cases we might say that we have a “self-contradiction”. But it is also possible to express the analogy in both cases in terms of infelicity: in both cases “the purpose” of the act is “defeated”. “Just as the purpose of assertion is defeated by an internal contradiction […], the purpose of a contract is defeated if we say ‘I promise and I ought not’” (1975, 51). We might also say, considering the matter in terms of commitment, “that the way in which asserting p commits me to asserting q is not unlike the way in which promising to do X commits me to doing X” (1975, 54); furthermore, in both cases we might speak of a “self-stultifying procedure” (1975, 51).

(3) Performative analysis Austin’s doctrine of ‘performative utterances’ also initiated the so-called “performative analysis” of sentence meaning. It says that the deep structure (semantic structure, or meaning) of all sentences takes the form of explicit performative formulas.98 The idea goes back to Austin’s (1975, 61f.) pseudo-grammatical criterion, that performative utterances are “reducible, or expandible, or analysable into a form, or reproducible in a form, with a verb in the first person singular present indicative active” (into the form of an explicit performative utterance, 96 For the original wording see Strawson (1952, 175). 97 Cf. also Austin (1958, 19). 98 See, e.g., Lewis (1972), Ross (1970); opposing this view, Fraser (1971).

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that is). It was taken up by Katz and Postal for interrogative and imperative sentences,99 and it was additionally introduced and defended for declarative sentences in Ross’s “On Declarative Sentences” (1970, 224).

(4) Meaning as conditions of happiness Another meaning-theoretical account which has its roots in Austin’s doctrine of performatives is the conception of meaning as being determined by, or consisting of, felicity (or happiness) conditions. Austin directs his doctrine of performatives against the ‘descriptive fallacy’, the view that all (declarative) sentences are true or false. Many are not, Austin argues; instead of being true or false, many (or all) are happy or unhappy. When we direct this view against a Davidsonian account of sentence meaning, according to which “to give truth conditions is a way of giving the meaning of a sentence” (1967, 310), then an alternative account along the lines of Austin’s theory suggests itself: To give the conditions under which a sentence would be uttered felicitously and those under which it would be uttered infelicitously is to make an essential contribution towards giving its meaning. Accounts taking up this idea have been suggested, for instance, in Alston’s “Linguistic Acts” (1964), in Searle’s Speech Acts (1969, chapter 3, where Searle copies Alston’s (1964) account of meaning and illocutionary acts rather accurately), and in Alston’s Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning (2000).

(5) Rules of IFIDs constituting IAs Finally, Austin’s conception of ‘performative utterances’, used for the performance of conventional acts, triggered the notion of linguistic rules or conventions constituting these conventional acts. Austin himself found it difficult to distinguish the conventions constituting conventional acts (which, as we can assume, are of the form ‘x counts as y’, where “y” refers to the relevant conventional act) from conventions of meaning (which supposedly have the form ‘x means y’, where “y” refers to a meaning). Probably, the problem was that performative utterances involve both the performance of a conventional act (as performative utterances) and the utterance of a linguistic device (as performative utterances). Anyway, adopting the idea of these conventional acts, and assuming that the conventions constituting them are identical with (certain) conventions of language, Searle presents in Speech Acts (1969) his account of the ‘rules of IFIDs’ (illocutionary act indicating devices); with this term, Searle means those features of a sentence by which it indicates a certain illocutionary act type (as contrasted with the act’s content). Thus, in “I hereby promise that I will come”, the IFID is (roughly) “I hereby promise”, while “that I will come” is the indicator of the content (“propositional indicator”, as Searle (1969, 30) calls it). According to Searle’s account, the rules governing the IFIDs of a given act type are supposed to be identical with the rules which constitute performances of acts of this type; thus, the rules of the IFIDs of promising are supposed to constitute acts of promising. In general, according to Searle’s account, an illocutionary act of type x is supposed to be constituted by the rules of the IFIDs of x.100

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99 Cf. e.g., eid. (1964, 85). 100 Cf. Searle (1969, § 2.5, chap. 3)

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