Continuing on How to Do Things with Words (lectures from 1955), covering lectures 5–9. Austin tries and fails to come up with a way to grammatically distinguish performatives from other utterances, and so turns to his more complicated system of aspects of a single act: locutionary, illocutionary, perlocutionary. In doing so, he perlocutionarily blows our minds. Buy the Continue Reading …
Ep. 186: J.L. Austin on Doing Things with Words (Part One)
On How to Do Things with Words, a lecture series delivered in 1955. What's the relationship between language and the world? According to Austin, philosophers have generally taken language as providing descriptions: A sentence is true if it correctly describes some state of affairs. But what about sentences like "I promise…"? Austin says that when you say that, you're not Continue Reading …
Ep. 186: J.L. Austin on Doing Things with Words (Citizen Edition)
On How to Do Things with Words, a lecture series delivered in 1955. What's the relationship between language and the world? According to Austin, philosophers have generally taken language as providing descriptions: A sentence is true if it correctly describes some state of affairs. But what about sentences like "I promise…"? Austin says that when you say that, you're not Continue Reading …