Title: Utterances and Acts in the Philosophy of J. L. Austin
Abstract: In a review of the first book-length discussion of the works of J. L. Austin a commentator speaks of the clarity of Austin's style and the consequent happy lack of difficulties of interpretation and reconciliation of his various remarks.'' I too am impressed by Austin's style, but not by its clarity, and I have found it almost impossibly difficult to interpret his use of certain key terms in his most important work, How to do things with Words.2 In the first section of this paper I shall show that Austin uses the word 'utterance' in at least two, and possibly three, distinct ways. In the second part I shall propose some terminology which allows us to speak more clearly of the things I believe Austin did not adequately distinguish. The third section will draw upon the results of the first two, and there I shall attempt to explain Austin's abandonment of the performative-constative distinction and his conception of a statement.
Publication Year: 1968
Publication Date: 1968-08-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 7
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