Performative Utterances

David Sanson

2026-10-21

Preliminaries

Agenda

  1. Preliminaries
  2. Review
  3. Locutionary, Illocutionary, Perlocutionary

Reminders

  • Next week is Langton, “Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts”

Review

Agenda

  1. Preliminaries
  2. Review
  3. Locutionary, Illocutionary, Perlocutionary

The Preliminary Distinction

  • Philosophers focus on statements—utterances that are used to state or report facts, and so are true or false, depending on whether they accurately report the facts or not.
  • But there are other uses of language.
  • Performative utterances are utterances, often with the same grammatical form as a statement, that are used to perform actions, not to make statements. They are neither true nor false.

Felicity Conditions

Statements have truth conditions. Performatives have felicity conditions:

  1. The conventional procedure which by our utterance we are purporting to use must exist and be accepted.
  2. The circumstances must be appropriate.
  3. The speaker must have the requisite thoughts or feelings or intentions.

When (1) or (2) fail, we have a misfire. When (3) fails, we have an abuse.

Explicit Performatives

There are two standard “explicit” forms a performative can take:

  • First-person singular performative verb: “I promise…”
  • Performative verb in the passive voice and in the second or third person: “You are warned…”

Also:

  • You can add ‘hereby’: “I hereby promise…”, “You are hereby warned…”

Proposal
A performative utterance can be rewritten (without loss of force) in either of the two explicit forms.

 

Sold!

I’ll be back.

Proposal
A performative utterance can be rewritten (without loss of force) in either of the two explicit forms.
Problem
We have no criterion for when a verb is a performative verb.

The basic idea is that a performative verb is a verb that expresses a performative action—an action that you can perform in or by saying something:

  • promising, warning, agreeing, commanding, acknowledging, gaslighting, insulting, demeaning…

Idea
A performative verb is a verb that expresses a performative action.
Problem
‘insult’ is a verb that expresses a performative action, but you cannot translate performative insults (“You are an ass”) into explicit peformatives (“I insult you for being an ass”).

In general, no reason to suppose that a language will contain performative verbs that can be used to express explicit performatives for every performative action.

Second Problem
There are examples that are hard to categorize with confidence.

I am sorry.

Out! (as said by an umpire)

Guilty! (as said by a juror)

Third Problem
Stating is an action, just as much as promising, warning, commanding, etc.

Revising the Preliminary Distinction

A statement is just one of many kinds of performative utterance:

  • All performative utterances have felicity conditions.
  • Some also have truth conditions (perhaps these are further felicity conditions).

Examples of Infelicitous Statements

The cat is on the mat but I don’t believe it is.

The present King of France is bald.

A: “I am feeling crappy today.” B: “No, you are not.”

Examples of Infelicitous Statements

I am not cheating on you.

(Said to you by your partner who is cheating on you.)


He is not cheating on you.

(Said to you by your friend who falsely believes your partner is not cheating on you.)

 

He is not cheating on you.

(Said to you by your friend who falsely believes your partner is cheating on you.)

Examples of Infelicitous Statements

A: “Have you stopped cheating on me?”

B: “No.”

(B has never cheated on A.)

Revised Felicity Conditions?

  1. The conventional procedure which by our utterance we are purporting to use must exist and be accepted.
  2. The circumstances must be appropriate.
  3. (Internal) The speaker must have the requisite thoughts or feelings or intentions.
  4. (External) What the speaker says must fit the facts.
  1. might not apply to all performatives. But it can help explain truth conditions for statements, and maybe also the umpire and juror cases.

Locutionary, Illocutionary, Perlocutionary

Agenda

  1. Preliminaries
  2. Review
  3. Locutionary, Illocutionary, Perlocutionary

On Performing Several Acts at Once

Elizbeth Anscombe, Intention (1957), 37–38

A man is pumping water into the cistern which supplies the drinking water of a house. Someone has found a way of systematically contaminating the source with a deadly cumulative poison whose effects are unnoticeable until they can no longer be cured. The house is regularly inhabited by a small group of party chiefs, with their immediate families, who are in control of a great state ; they are engaged in exterminating the Jews and perhaps plan a world war.—The man who contaminated the source has calculated that if these people are destroyed some good men will get into power who will govern well, or even institute the Kingdom of Heaven on earth and secure a good life for all the people ; and he has revealed the calculation, together with the fact about the poison, to the man who is pumping. The death of the inhabitants of the house will, of course, have all sorts of other effects; e.g., that a number of people unknown to these men will receive legacies, about which they know nothing.

This man’s arm is going up and down, up and down. Certain muscles, with Latin names which doctors know, are contracting and relaxing. Certain substances are getting generated in some nerve fibres-substances whose generation in the course of voluntary movement interests physiologists. The moving arm is casting a shadow on a rockery where at one place and from one position it produces a curious effect as if a face were looking out of the rockery. Further, the pump makes a series of clicking noises, which are in fact beating out a noticeable rhythm.

Three Kinds of Speech Act

Locutionary Act
The act of saying something.
Illocutionary Act
The act you perform in saying something.
Perlocutionary Act
The act you perform by saying something (effects on audience)

“Don’t push that button!”
Locutionary Act ?
Illocutionary Act ?
Perlocutionary Act ?

“Shoot her!”
Locutionary Act ?
Illocutionary Act ?
Perlocutionary Act ?

“You can’t do that!”
Locutionary Act ?
Illocutionary Act ?
Perlocutionary Act ?

“That milk has gone off.”
Locutionary Act ?
Illocutionary Act ?
Perlocutionary Act ?

Discussion

Let’s use the tools from Grice and Austin to analyze:

  • Gaslighting
  • Sealioning