How to do Things with Words
A good deal of philosophy is about drawing distinctions and giving definitions. Austin’s book is full of distinctions, both in coming up with them and then trying to defend them.
Austin’s aim in the book is to make a distinction between a constative utterance and a performative utterance. He ultimately fails to do so, and so he moves to a wider theory, where he talks of Locutions, Illocutions, and Perlocutions. Why does Austin want to do all this?
Austin thinks that philosophers have suffered from what is called the “descriptive fallacy.” They think that all sentences of language are descriptions of how the world is. He wants to show that there are many other kinds of things we do with language apart from describing.
He is able to show that there is no general distinction between performative and constative statements and therefore, truth and falsity can be applied to performatives as well. This shows that truth and falsity are not just applicable to descriptions of the world. We have a too straightforward and naïve account of truth. Truth is relative to interests and purposes (though this does not mean that truth is relative, per se).
Austin also wishes to show that merely looking at a statement and nothing else is very misleading for philosophers. They must look at the whole speech situation, who is speaking, who are in the audience, what are their interests and purposes, what is being talked about, what people want to do with what they say, what is the context of utterance.
So, let’s see what the distinction between constative and performative statements amounts to.
Examples of constative statements are:
1. The earth is round. 2. India won independence in 1947. 3. Frogs are amphibians. 4. India Gate is in New Delhi.
They are fact stating. When I say them, I report a fact. I speak truly or falsely. Also constatives have entailments, implications and presuppositions. A constative is neither true nor false if its presupposition fails. So if you say, “The present king of France is bald” then, since there is no present king of France, your statement is neither true nor false. Examples of performatives are:
1. I name this ship Queen Elizabeth 2. I do (take her as my wife, said when marrying) 3. I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow. 4. I promise to pay you five bucks tomorrow. In saying these, we are doing things. They are like actions, except that we perform these actions by using words. Performatives are essentially conventional. Austin never says what he means by conventional. For a performative to succeed, the following is necessary.
A.1 There must be a convention regarding the utterance of the performative. A. 2 The persons uttering the statement must be appropriate to do so, and the circumstances should be appropriate too. B.1 The procedure must be carried out by the participants correctly and B.2 Completely T.1 The procedure must reflect the thoughts and feelings of the persons and T.2 Such thoughts and feelings must be seen in future effects. (14, 15)
Failure of A and B are called Mis-firings (18). The act is purported but void. Failure of T1 is called an insincerity (if you promise but do not intend to carry it out). Failure of A is called a Mis-invocation.
Failure of A2 is called Misapplication. Failure of B is called Mis-execution, and Failure of B1 is called a Flaw and failure of B2 is called a Hitch.
Success in terms of meeting the above conditions is called being Happy and failure is called being Unhappy.
Before we move on we need to notice a few things. When we say something, we need to see that the following are distinct from each other:
1. The sense of the statement/word 2. The reference of the statement/word 3. The mood of the statement. (Imperative, declarative, optative...) 4. The force of the utterance. (How you meant it as, for instance, as an order, a request, a warning, a statement, as information, etc.) 5. The effect of the utterance on the hearer.
When you say something with a sense and a reference, you have uttered a Locution. The locution has a force. This is called an Illocution. The effect on the hearer is called Perlocution.
Now let’s go ahead keeping all of the above in mind. We want to distinguish between the Constative and the Performative.
Constative-
1) True/False
2) Maybe the distinction can be drawn in terms of Mood or Tense. Constatives are in declarative mood and can have many tenses (past tense, future tense etc.)
3) We can reduce all performatives to explicit form and then ask four questions of the explicit form. This will tell us whether it is a performative or not. These tests do not apply to constatives.
Performative-
1)Not True/False These are more like Happy/Unhappy
2) Performatives are usually in the first person singular present indicative active.
3) The four questions that tell you something is a performative are: a) Could he do the action without uttering the performative? b) Could he do it deliberately; could he be willing to do it? c) Can we ask “But was he really Xing”, where X is the action performed? d) Could it be literally false that I X when I said I was Xing, where X is a performative? (page 86)
Are the reasons for the distinction right?
1) Austin challenges this. The following are his arguments. 1) Austin says that if X says “I state that John is running” then this is a performative for in stating you are doing something. Yet, the truth of the statement depends on the happiness of John is running.(pg. 55) 2) In the utterance, “I warn you that the bull is about to charge”, the statement would be false if the bull were not about to charge. But a warning is a performative!! Yet it can be true or false. (pg. 55) 3) When we say “In saying that it was raining I was not betting, arguing or warning: I was simply stating a
fact”, we clearly let stating have the same status as arguing, warning and betting. (page 133) 4) The following sentences are parallel: (a) I state that he did not do it (b) I argue that he did not do it (c) I suggest that he did not do it (d) I bet that he did not do it. The point of this remark is that stating, which is what we do in utterances related to constatives is nothing different than typical performative verbs. 5) Constatives can be happy or unhappy. If one says, “the cat is on the mat”
but he says, “I don’t believe it” then this is essentially insincere. Just like when you say “I promise” but also say “I don’t intend to carry out my promise.” Plus, we are committed to the future consequences of what we say. Hence, statements are liable to failures of T1 and T2. 6) Statements and Performatives have got presuppositions and entailments and implications.
Performatives have the presupposition that A1 and A2 are met. Promising entails that you are under an obligation. Ordering someone implies that I want something done. 7) Verdictive performatives can be assessed for truth and falsity. Like, one can say, “I estimate that Urvi is five feet tall” or “I find that Urvi is five feet tall.” Or “I pronounce that “Urvi is five feet tall.”(page 140) 8) When we say “France is Hexagonal” this is vague for a geographer but may be true for a general. The sentence, “Lord Raglan won the battle of Alma” is true for a school student but scandalous to a historian. When we say, “All snow geese migrate to Labrador”, would we say this was false, because one of them failed to do so? (page 143)
Austin concludes that “It is essential to realize that ‘true’ and ‘false’, like ‘free’ and ‘unfree’, do not stand for anything simple at all; but only 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.” (pg. 144). And, “The truth or falsity of a statement depends not merely on the meaning of words but on what act you were performing in what circumstances.” (Ibid.)
2) Mood and Tense also won’t do. 1) Mood won’t do because instead of saying “I order you to turn right” I can say “Turn right” 2) Tense won’t do because we can say, instead of “You’re out”, “Out” as we do in cricket. Or instead of saying “I find you guilty” we can say “You did it.” (See page 58)
3) The answer to a) should be No, the answer to b) should be Yes, the answer to c) should be No, and the answer to d) should ideally be No. If these answers emerge then we get a Performative. When you make a performative explicit, it means that when an umpire says „Out” an explicit form would be “I declare you out.” So, you put it into explicit terms, so to speak. There are problems though. Austin claims that these tests work for “I postulate” but not “I was assuming that…” (Page 87). He says that we can say the latter without assuming anything or being conscious of assuming anything. To say. “I assume…” need not be a report or a performance of an assumption. (page 87) Also, statements with Behabitive verbs like “I am sorry...”, “I blame…”,”I approve of…” and “I welcome you…” are half descriptive and half performative. So making X explicit does not make it a performative all the time. It might draw in some descriptive content. Also sometimes it is hard to make things explicit, so we don’t say things like “I insinuate that…” or “I insult you that…” even though insulting and insinuating are very much performances of actions. (page 88)
So much for the performative/constative difference. Austin claims that he cannot draw the line between them, even though it initially looks like the distinction is promising.
