2026-10-19
Agenda
Agenda
You are entitled not to know what the word ‘performative’ means. It is a new word and an ugly word, and perhaps it does not mean anything very much.
I do.
I apologize.
I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth.
I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow.
I give and bequeath my watch to my brother.
In all these cases it would be absurd to regard the thing that I say as a report of the performance of the action which is undoubtedly done—the action of betting, or christening, or apologizing. We should say rather that, in saying what I do, I actually perform that action. When I say ‘I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth’ 1 do not describe the christening ceremony, I actually perform the christening; and when I say ‘I do’, I am not reporting on a marriage, I am indulging in it.
One might protest that I seem to be suggesting that marrying is simply saying a few words, that just saying a few words is marrying. Well, that certainly is not the case. The words have to be said in the appropriate circumstances, and this is a matter that will come up again later.
But the one thing we must not suppose is that what is needed in addition to the saying of the words in such cases is the performance of some internal spiritual act, of which the words then are to be the report.
I promise to be there tomorrow.
If we slip into thinking that such utterances are reports, true or false, of the performance of inward and spiritual acts, we open a loophole to perjurers and welshers and bigamists and so on, so that there are disadvantages in being excessively solemn in this way.
Performative utterances are not true or false. But they do suffer from certain disabilities of their own. They can fail to come off in special ways. The various ways in which a performative utterance may be unsatisfactory we call the infelicities.
A misfire is when the attempt to perform the act fails to come off.
Suppose that, living in a country like our own, we wish to divorce our wife. We may try standing her in front of us squarely in the room and saying, in a voice loud enough for all to hear, ‘I divorce you’. Now this procedure is not accepted, We shall not thereby have succeeded in divorcing our wife, at least in this country and others like it.
Suppose that, picking sides at a children’s party, I say ‘I pick George’. But George turns red in the face and says ‘Not playing’. In that case I plainly, for some reason or another, have not picked George—whether because there is no convention that you can pick people who aren’t playing, or because George in the circumstances is an inappropriate object for the procedure of picking.
I say ‘I appoint you Consul’, and it turns out that you have been appointed already — or perhaps it may even transpire that you are a horse.
An abuse is when you succeed at performing the act, but do so in bad faith.
If you use one of these formulae when you do not have the requisite thoughts or feelings or intentions then there is an abuse of the procedure.
I say ‘I congratulate you’ when I’m not pleased or when I don’t believe that the credit was yours.
I say I promise to do something, without having the least intention of doing it or without believing it feasible.
In these cases there is something wrong certainly, but it is not like a misfire. We should not say that I didn’t in fact promise, but rather that I did promise but promised insincerely; I did congratulate you but the congratulations were hollow.
I say ‘I welcome you’, bidding you welcome to my home, but then I proceed to treat you as though you were exceedingly unwelcome. In this case the procedure of saying ‘I welcome you’ has been abused in a way rather different from that of simple insincerity.
Performatives are neither true nor false. But they do have felicity conditions:
When (1) or (2) fail, we have a misfire. When (3) fails, we have an abuse.
How can we be sure, how can we tell, whether any utterance is to be classed as a performative or not? Surely, we feel, we ought to be able to do that. And we should obviously very much like to be able to say that there is a grammatical criterion for this, some grammatical means of deciding whether an utterance is performative.
Performatives begin with a performative verb in the first-person singular present indicative active:
I promise that…
I warn you …
I congratulate you …
This is brought out by the typical incident of little Willie whose uncle says he’ll give him half-a-crown if he promises never to smoke till he’s 55. Little Willie’s anxious parent will say ‘Of course he promises, don’t you, Willie?’ giving him a nudge. The point here is that he must do the promising himself by saying ‘I promise’, and his parent is going too fast in saying he promises.
I watch TV. He watches TV. I watched TV.
Passengers are warned to cross the line by the bridge only.
You are hereby authorized to …
I order you to shut the door.
Shut the door.
You are hereby warned that this bull is dangerous.
This bull is dangerous.
Dangerous bull.
Bull.
A performative utterance can be rewritten in either of the two explicit forms.
Fire!
Stop talking.
I will keep my word.
Sold!
You are an ass.
*I insult you…
I am sorry.
I feel perfectly awful about what happened.
Out! (as said by an umpire)
Guilty! (as said by a juror)
Grass is green.
I state that grass is green.
The cat is on the mat but I don’t believe it is.
This is an outrageous thing to say, but it is not self-contradictory. There is no reason why the cat shouldn’t be on the mat without my believing that it is.
The cat is on the mat but I don’t believe it is.
How are we to classify what’s wrong with this peculiar statement? If we remember now the doctrine of infelicity we shall see that the person who makes this remark about the cat is in much the same position as somebody who says something like this: ‘I promise that I shall be there, but I haven’t the least intention of being there’.
All John’s children are bald. (when John has no children)
We see, if we look back at our list of infelicities, that what is going wrong here is much the same as what goes wrong in, say, the case of a contract for the sale of a piece of land when the piece of land referred to does not exist. Now what we say in the case of this sale of land, which of course would be effected by a performative utterance, is that the sale is void—void for lack of reference or ambiguity of reference; and so we can see that the statement about all John’s children is likewise void for lack of reference.
Of course philosophers have been wont to talk as though you or I or anybody could just go round stating anything about anything and that would be perfectly in order, only there’s just a little question: is it true or false? But there is surely the question: is it in order? Can you go round just making statements about anything?
You say to me ‘I’m feeling pretty mouldy this morning’. Well, I say to you ‘You’re not’; and you say ‘What the devil do you mean, I’m not?’ I say, ‘Oh nothing—I’m just stating you’re not, is it true or false?’ And you say, ‘Wait a bit about whether it’s true or false, the question is what did you mean by making statements about somebody else’s feelings? I told you I’m feeling pretty mouldy. You’re just not in a position to say, to state that I’m not’. This brings out that you can’t just make statements about other people’s feelings (though you can make guesses if you like); and there are very many things which, having no knowledge of, not being in a position to pronounce about, you just can’t state.
I warn you not to push that button.
Shoot her!
You can’t do that!
Since our acts are acts, we must always remember the distinction between producing effects or consequences which are intended or unintended; and (i) when the speaker intends to produce an effect it may nevertheless not occur, and (ii) when he does not intend to produce it or intends not to produce it it may nevertheless occur. To cope with complication (i) we invoke as before the distinction between attempt and achievement; to cope with complication (ii) we invoke the normal linguistic devices of disclaiming (adverbs like ‘unintentionally’ and ‘so on’) which we hold ready for personal use in all cases of doing actions.