J. L. Austin
Saying "I do" is not a report about a marriage — it is the marrying itself. Reading How to Do Things with Words (1962), assembled from lecture notes two years after Austin's death — from the discovery of the performative through the felicity conditions to the general theory of locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts.
Reading Austin's How to Do Things with Words (1962) — Saying Is Doing
A philosopher who died in 1960 left behind a set of Harvard lecture notes, out of which a book was assembled after his death. Against a philosophy that had judged every sentence by whether it is true or false, Austin points to sentences that simply do things — vowing at a wedding, naming a ship, placing a bet. From the discovery of the performative to the felicity conditions and the general theory of illocutionary acts, here is the book's full shape.
How to Do Things with Words, in Plain Words
Saying 'I do' at a wedding is not a report about a marriage. It is the marrying itself. A plain-language walk through the odd little family of sentences Austin's book discovered.
How to Do Things with Words: Six Ideas, One at a Time
From 'I do' to the illocutionary act. The argument of How to Do Things with Words, taken one item at a time, with short examples.
Performative and Constative — Where Exactly Is the Line Between Saying and Doing?
Why did Austin coin a new word, 'performative,' rather than reach for the lawyer's term 'operative'? If a marriage or a bet can be made without a single word, how can saying still be doing? Reading Lectures II, IV, and VI of How to Do Things with Words.
Felicity Conditions — How a Performative Misfires, and How It Is Abused
Vow at a wedding with no standing to marry, and no marriage happens. Say 'I promise' with no intention of keeping it, and the promise rings hollow. Reading Austin's six rules — A, B, and Γ — in his own words.
Locutionary, Illocutionary, Perlocutionary — Three Layers Inside 'Saying'
You can say 'I argue' but not 'I convince' — that small difference in grammar turns out to mark a real line between two kinds of act. With a detour through Walt Whitman, reading the general theory of Lectures VIII–X of How to Do Things with Words.
Verdictives, Exercitives, Commissives, Behabitives, Expositives — the Last Attempt at Classification
'More-or-less rebarbative names,' Austin admits — the five families he proposes for the illocutionary act. Reading the final lecture of How to Do Things with Words, doubts and all, in his own voice.