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Are Performative Utterances Declarations?

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Speech Acts, Mind, and Social Reality

Part of the book series: Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy ((SLAP,volume 79))

Abstract

Performatives are of particular interest to the philosophy of language and linguistics because of the special tension that they reveal between semantics and pragmatics: any theory of them must explain their ‘performative force’, the (often nonconstative2) force marked by the performative element of the sentence, within the framework of a compositional semantics. An account of performatives would be easy were we to give up one or the other. For instance, if performative utterances were always just constative in their force, then the grammatical form of performative sentences could be straightforwardly declarative (or truth-valuable). On the other hand, if we ignore compositionality, then their performative force could be given by special conventions of force that attach to the performative element in (just) the performative sentence. But neither option is very attractive. Sentences (1a – c) really do seem to be used nonconstatively (not truth-valuable) — in fact they seem to be used to perform the act named by the performative verb (or noun etc.) that they contain:3

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Authors
  1. Robert M. Harnish
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main, Germany

    Günther Grewendorf

  2. University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

    Georg Meggle

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© 2002 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Harnish, R.M. (2002). Are Performative Utterances Declarations?. In: Grewendorf, G., Meggle, G. (eds) Speech Acts, Mind, and Social Reality. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 79. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0589-0_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0589-0_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-0861-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-010-0589-0

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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