“Performative Utterances” (1956)
J.L. Austin

A performative is a utterance which performs an action. In distinction to a statement, which describes something, a performative actually does something. The best way to understand this is through examples, and fortunately, Austin provides many. 

 

In a wedding ceremony, when the bride or groom says “I do,” they are changing their legal status; the sentence “I do” performs an action. Similarly, when someone says “I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow,” they have performed the action of betting. When a world leader says “We declare war,” through these words, a war has begun. When someone says “I promise to pay you tomorrow,” a promise has been entered into. In all of these examples, as Austin puts it: “in saying what I do, I actually perform the action.”

 

Austin makes a distinction between performatives and statements. Where a statement describes something and can be assessed as true or false, it makes no sense to think about performatives as true or false. For example, if someone makes the statement that “It is raining,” it would be possible to disagree and say “No, it’s not.” But if someone says “I promise to pay you tomorrow,” it would not be possible to say “No you don’t.” Even if the promise is not kept, there is no question that it has been made. So where a statement describes a state of affairs (either accurately or not), performatives bring a state of affairs about.

 

Since performative utterances are neither true nor false, a new way of examining their success must be developed. This is because not all performative utterances actually succeed in performing an action. Austin gives the example of a British man attempting to divorce his wife by saying to her: “I divorce you.” Clearly, this utterance will not alter the marital status of either partner; a new state of affairs will not be brought about. Austin explains that in order for a performative to succeed, the “conventional procedure” must exist. He means that there must be a social or legal convention which the performative conforms to.

 

Austin describes failed performatives as “infelicitous” and he gives further examples. If someone says “I pick George” for their team, but George has no intention of playing the game, then the utterance is infelicitous. Similarly, when the Roman Emperor Caligula says “I appoint you Consul” to his horse, the performative is infelicitous since there is no institutional setting in which horses can be Consuls.

 

In addition, for performatives to be felicitous, the circumstances must be correct. Actors playing characters in a wedding scene will not actually be married. Equally, utterances made under duress will be infelicitous. Through these considerations, Austin points out that language alone is not sufficient for a performative to succeed. He demonstrates that social conventions and contextual elements are an indispensable part of analyzing how and if performatives work. 

 

But Austin is keen to focus on language as well and examines the grammatical structures underlying performative utterances. He presents two structures which are associated with performatives. The first is a statement in the first person, for example: “I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth II.” The other form is the passive voice in the second or third person: “You are hereby warned not to lean over the railings.” These two forms, however, do not cover all possible performatives and it is here that Austin’s neat system begins to unravel.

 

Consider the following sentences:

• You are hereby warned that the bull is dangerous.

• This bull is dangerous.

• Dangerous bull.

• Bull.

The first example is clearly a performative utterance, but given the right context, all of the other versions seem to have a very similar meaning. Surely all of them perform the act of warning. If this is the case, then they are all performatives. Yet the second one looks very much like a statement – the sort of sentence that we would judge as being true or false – and the final two do not even have verbs. So although it is useful to identify the grammatical structures commonly associated with performatives, we need to be aware that performatives come in a variety of grammatical forms.

 

Having set up the neat distinction between performatives and statements, Austin uses the final section of his paper to problematize this division. We have seen ambiguity on a grammatical level and this is reflected in numerous examples. For instance, “I shall be there,” looks like a promise and would therefore be a performative utterance. But it could equally be an expression of intent or a forecast in which case it would be a statement. Furthermore, “I am sorry” seems to have a similar meaning to “I apologize.” Since the latter is a performative, shouldn’t we consider the former also to be one? Perhaps, but it also looks like a statement. In these cases, there is no clear way to distinguish between performatives and statements.

 

The distinction between statements and performatives is further questioned when Austin returns to his original point that statements are either true or false where performatives are either felicitous or infelicitous. There are, however, statements which are neither true nor false. If John does not have any children, then the statement: “All John’s children are bald,” cannot be judged as either true or false. In this case, Austin argues that the statement should be actually thought of as infelicitous. He claims that it is analogous to the infelicitous performative of a contract selling a piece of land that does not exist. In both cases, the sentence fails because the wider circumstances are not appropriate.

 

Austin goes on to note that very few statements are simply true or false and that a variety of other factors would go into evaluating them. One could ask whether a statement was fair, accurate or exaggerated. Similarly, performative utterances are subject to considerations beyond just felicity or infelicity. For example, we could ask of a performative whether it is sound advice or a justified warning. In this sense, performatives must be understood in relation to facts.

 

By the end of the paper, Austin has demonstrated that most statements have a performative element to them. Statements are not just true or false, but must be “in order,” that is, in accordance with circumstances and social institutions. Statements which do not comply can be said to be infelicitous just like failed performatives. We can give a final example of a statement concerning something that the speaker has no knowledge of. If someone makes a statement about how someone else is feeling, the statement is liable to be infelicitous. Since we have no access to the minds of others, we cannot know if the statement is true or false and for this reason, we would judge it to be infelicitous.

 

Eventually, the reader comes to understand that Austin is not simply presenting the idea of performative utterances, he is also pointing out how we should approach the study of language. We cannot consider simply what utterances mean, but we should also pay attention to the “force” of the utterance. Utterances are not made in a vacuum and if we are to properly understand them, we must pay attention to the social, cultural, political and legal contexts in which they arise, for it is these factors which determine if the utterance has any force at all. Focusing on the force of an utterance, in conjunction with the idea that words can do things will give us a greater sense of what is going on when language is used.

 

Finally, we should say a word about how this text fits into critical theory more generally. Austin is a philosopher of the Anglo-American tradition. Since theory tends to focus almost exclusively on the continental tradition, this text is something of an outlier. The essay, however, has become canonical since it is discussed in detail by Jacques Derrida in the essay “Signature, Event, Context” (1972). Derrida expands Austin’s account of performativity, specifically insisting that performativity is made possible by the fact that language goes hand in hand with repetition. For a performative utterance to be successful, it must be a kind of quotation of a previous event; the “I do” in a wedding is a quote of the “I do” in all previous weddings. For this reason, Derrida disagrees with Austin when he dismisses performative utterances made by actors for example. Later still, the gender theorist Judith Butler develops Derrida’s ideas of repetition and performativity to account for the production and propagation of gender.