Here are the points from the overview article, taken one at a time with short examples. Each stands on its own.
1. The performative — saying it just is doing it
“I do.” “I name this ship…” “I leave this watch to my brother.” “I bet you a dollar.” These sentences don’t describe anything — saying them is itself the act. Austin calls this a “performative.” Instead of asking whether it’s true or false, you ask whether it came off or not.
2. How it differs from the constative
An ordinary, truth-evaluable sentence like “it’s raining today” gets the companion name “constative.” Performatives and constatives can look alike on the surface, yet they’re judged by entirely different standards — happy/unhappy versus true/false. That contrast is the book’s starting point.
3. The “hereby” test
There’s a simple way to spot a performative: if you can insert “hereby” (“I hereby promise…”) without changing the meaning, it’s a performative. Push the idea further, and even an umpire’s “Out!” expands into “I hereby declare you out,” and a warning sign’s text expands into “I hereby warn you.”
4. When it works — the felicity conditions
A performative only succeeds when certain conditions line up: the right procedure, the right people, the right circumstances. Missing any of these means the act never comes off at all — a “misfire.” The procedure can also come off while lacking sincerity — an “abuse” (a “promise” made with no intention of keeping it). Austin gathers these into six rules.
5. The distinction starts to collapse — even “stating” turns out to be performative
Try the “hereby” test on an ordinary sentence. “The cat is on the mat” expands into “I hereby state that the cat is on the mat.” So is “state” secretly a member of the same family as “promise” and “vow”? Maybe every sentence hides a performative underneath. Here the clean two-way split between performative and constative starts to wobble.
6. Three layers — locutionary, illocutionary, perlocutionary acts
So Austin offers a bigger picture. Every utterance always carries three layers at once: ① saying something; ② doing something in saying it (promising, warning, requesting); ③ bringing about something by saying it (reassuring, persuading, startling the listener). The performative/constative distinction, in the end, had only ever captured the difference between ① and ② — and only for the special sentence type that expands with “hereby.” Austin also sketches a rough division of ②, the illocutionary act, into five broad families: verdictives, exercitives, commissives, behabitives, and expositives.