Performative text

In the philosophy of language, the notion of performance conceptualizes what a spoken or written text can bring about in human interactions. In the philosophy of language, the notion of performance conceptualizes what a spoken or written text can bring about in human interactions. In the 1950s the philosopher of language J. L. Austin introduced the term 'performative utterance' to make clear that 'to say something is to do something'. Developing this idea, scholars have theorized on the relation of a spoken or written text to its broader context, that is to say everything outside the text itself. The question whether a performative is separable from the situation it emerged in is relevant when one addresses for example the status of individual intentions or speech as a resource of power. There are two main theoretical strands in research today. One emphasizes the predetermined conventions surrounding a performative utterance and the clear distinction between text and context. Another emphasizes the active construction of reality through spoken and written texts and is related to theories of human agency and discourse. The ideas about performance and text have contributed to the performative turn in the social sciences and humanities, proving their methodological use for example in the interpretation of historical texts. Early theories acknowledge that performance and text are both embedded in a system of rules and that the effects they can produce depend on convention and recurrence. In this sense, text is an instance of 'restored behaviour', a term introduced by Richard Schechner that sees performance as a repeatable ritual. The focus here is largely on individual sentences in the active first person voice, rather than on politics or discourse. The syntactical analyses are firmly anchored in analytical epistemology, as the distinction between the research object and its context is not conceived as problematic. J. L. Austin introduced the performative utterance as an additional category to 'constatives', statements that can be either true or false. Language not only represents, but also can make something happen. Austin distinguishes between two types of performative speech acts. The illocutionary act is concerned with what an actor is doing in saying something (e.g. when someone says 'hello', he is greeting another person). The perlocutionary act involves the unintended consequences of an utterance and refers to that what an actor is doing by saying something (e.g. when someone says 'hello' and the greeted person is scared by it). Every performative utterance has its own procedure and risks of failure that Austin calls 'infelicities'. He sees a sharp distinction between the individual text and the 'total speech act situation' surrounding it. According to Austin, in order to successfully perform an illocutionary act, certain conditions have to be met (e.g. a person who pronounces a marriage must be authorized to do so). Besides the context, the performative utterance itself is unambiguous as well. The words of an illocutionary act have to be expressed in earnest; if not, Austin discards them as a parasitic use of language. Building on Austin's thought, language philosopher John Searle tried to develop his own account of speech acts, suggesting that these acts are a form of rule-governed behaviour. On the one hand, Searle discerns rules that merely regulate language, such as referring and predicating. These rules account for the 'propositional content' of our sentences. On the other hand, he discerns rules that are constitutive in character and define behaviour (e.g. when we make a promise). These rules are the conventions underlying performative utterances and they enable us not only to represent and express ourselves, but also to communicate. This focus on effect implies a conscious actor and Searle assumes that language stems from an intrinsic intentionality of the mind. These intentions set the prerequisites for the performance of speech acts and Searle sets out to map their necessary and sufficient conditions. Like Austin, he thinks in terms of demarcated contexts and transparent intentions, two issues that in the 1970s led him into polemics with postmodern thinker Jacques Derrida. The second set of theories on performance and text diverged from the tradition represented by Austin and Searle. Bearing the stamp of postmodernism, it states that neither the meaning, nor the context of a text can be defined in its entirety. Instead of emphasizing linguistic rules, scholars within this strand stress that the performative utterance is intertwined with structures of power. Because a text inevitably changes a situation or discourse, the distinction between text and context is blurred. The postmodern philosopher Jacques Derrida holds with Austin and Searle that by illocutionary force, language itself can transform and effect. However, he criticizes the notion of 'felicity conditions' and the idea that the success of a performative utterance is determined by conventions. Derrida values the distinctiveness of every individual speech act, because it has a specific effect in the particular situation in which it is performed. It is because of this effect or 'breaking force' that Derrida calls the possibility of repeating a text 'iterability', a word derived from Latin iterare, to repeat.