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ralowe's review against another edition
4.0
this book is really funny. i'm unfamiliar with the kind of philosophy where you're allowed to not seem to be saying anything definitive and final. austin's style floats around and is super open-ended. so what exactly are speech acts? what are the defining characteristics of an utterance that appears to have an autonomous agency which proliferates effects and behaviors? austin spends most of the book creating multiple categories for different kinds of speech acts over the course of trying to describe why it appears that when we say things our words themselves appear to have a life of their own. several times he appears to be backing away for assertions in order to let his ideas breathe and evolve. i honestly got lost a couple of times but i really appreciate this contribution to how our words seem to do work by themselves.
libbykerns's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
3.0
“Thus we distinguished the locutionary act (and within it the phonetic, the phatic, and the rhetoric acts) which has a meaning; the illocutionary act which has a certain force in saying something; the perlocutionary act which is the achieving of certain effects by saying something” (121).
there! you got the most important takeaways! you can move on now. :)
no, but seriously. there were a few points of real interest. otherwise—many, many weeds amongst which to get lost. the absolute highlights of this edition were Austin’s little asides. he can be funny, and i’m glad his little jokes were preserved.
otherwise, though? this could have been an article. also, and even worse, i don’t have a good sense of what’s at stake here, which is really my biggest problem with this text. while i’ve certainly developed an understanding of how we use language and what language doing something can/might mean, i’m not sure what this text has really done… besides create some theoretical categories to play with. perhaps my seminar tomorrow will show me how this isn’t more masturbatory theory, but i’m unconvinced of its real value right now, though i don’t doubt its significance.
there! you got the most important takeaways! you can move on now. :)
no, but seriously. there were a few points of real interest. otherwise—many, many weeds amongst which to get lost. the absolute highlights of this edition were Austin’s little asides. he can be funny, and i’m glad his little jokes were preserved.
otherwise, though? this could have been an article. also, and even worse, i don’t have a good sense of what’s at stake here, which is really my biggest problem with this text. while i’ve certainly developed an understanding of how we use language and what language doing something can/might mean, i’m not sure what this text has really done… besides create some theoretical categories to play with. perhaps my seminar tomorrow will show me how this isn’t more masturbatory theory, but i’m unconvinced of its real value right now, though i don’t doubt its significance.
franchenstein's review against another edition
3.0
Fascinating and boring
It was important for me to go to this source and see the original formulation of speech-act theory, which is undeniably necessary to discuss philosophy of language and social metaphysics. Austin's method is very interesting, he is thorough and tries to cover all possible terrains by splitting the problems in many ways, creating useful categories along the way: performatives, illocutionary acts, verdictives, behabitives, etc. He is careful to not generalize and I really appreciate how he tries to understand something by testing it where it breaks.
Having said all that, he is so incredibly boring. I understand these are actually lectures and maybe having them translated to text is not the ideal way to consume them. Still, in trying to be so precise and not leaving any stone unturned, his language becomes hard to follow, long miltonian sentences with so many cases inside it that you forget how it started. It's such an infelicity.
It was important for me to go to this source and see the original formulation of speech-act theory, which is undeniably necessary to discuss philosophy of language and social metaphysics. Austin's method is very interesting, he is thorough and tries to cover all possible terrains by splitting the problems in many ways, creating useful categories along the way: performatives, illocutionary acts, verdictives, behabitives, etc. He is careful to not generalize and I really appreciate how he tries to understand something by testing it where it breaks.
Having said all that, he is so incredibly boring. I understand these are actually lectures and maybe having them translated to text is not the ideal way to consume them. Still, in trying to be so precise and not leaving any stone unturned, his language becomes hard to follow, long miltonian sentences with so many cases inside it that you forget how it started. It's such an infelicity.
vincentkonrad's review against another edition
3.0
Completely misinterpreted the title as being about writing when it is about actions performed through speaking.
Takes a long and sometimes a little hard to follow route around to a few categorisations that are interesting if not particularly useful beyond their discussion.
Takes a long and sometimes a little hard to follow route around to a few categorisations that are interesting if not particularly useful beyond their discussion.
cryo_guy's review against another edition
5.0
A delightful read. Based on a series of lectures at Harvard, Austin makes good on his chance to elucidate the dichotomy of constative (descriptive) vs. performative utterances. And boy does he ever. Out of the 12, some lectures spend good time delineating categories, others waste time expanding those categories to their limits, but by the end Austin is ready to tell you something worthwhile--that the original dichotomy ought to be cast out. For it is only then that we can make an earnest stride toward dispelling many philosophical "problems" that are merely the result of misunderstandings.
A quick, easy read (I'd say) and especially appealing to those continental-leaning, Ordinary Language Philosophy-loving brigands.
A quote I liked:
“But consider also for a moment whether the question of truth or falsity is so very objective. We ask: “Is it a fair statement?” and are the good reasons and good evidence for stating and saying so very different from the good reasons and evidence for performative acts like arguing, warning, and judging? Is the constative, then, always true or false? When a constative is confront with the facts, we in fact appraise it in ways involving the employment of a vast array of terms which overlap with those that we use in the appraisal of performatives. In real life, as opposed to the simple situations envisaged in logical theory, one cannot always answer in a simple manner whether it is true or false.”
Morals he suggests:
“The total speech act in the total speech situation is the only actual phenomenon which, in the last resort, we are engaged in elucidating.”
“Stating, describing, etc., are just two names among a very great many others for illocutionary acts; they have no unique position.”
“In particular, they have no unique position over the matter of being related to facts in a unique way called being true of false, because truth and falsity are (except by an artificial abstraction which is always possible and legitimate for certain purposes) not names for relations, qualities, or what not, but for a dimension of assessment—how the words stand in respect of satisfactoriness to the facts, events situations, etc., to which they refer.”
“By the same token, the familiar contrast of “normative or evaluative” as opposed to the factual is in need, like so many dichotomies, of elimination.”
“We may well suspect that the theory of “meaning” as equivalent to “sense and reference” will certainly require some weeding-out and reformulating in terms of the distinction between locutionary and illocutionary acts (if this distinction is sound: it is only adumbrated here). I admit that not enough has been done here: I have taken the old “sense and reference” on the strength of current views; I would also stress that I have omitted any direct consideration of the illocutionary force of statements."
A quick, easy read (I'd say) and especially appealing to those continental-leaning, Ordinary Language Philosophy-loving brigands.
A quote I liked:
“But consider also for a moment whether the question of truth or falsity is so very objective. We ask: “Is it a fair statement?” and are the good reasons and good evidence for stating and saying so very different from the good reasons and evidence for performative acts like arguing, warning, and judging? Is the constative, then, always true or false? When a constative is confront with the facts, we in fact appraise it in ways involving the employment of a vast array of terms which overlap with those that we use in the appraisal of performatives. In real life, as opposed to the simple situations envisaged in logical theory, one cannot always answer in a simple manner whether it is true or false.”
Morals he suggests:
“The total speech act in the total speech situation is the only actual phenomenon which, in the last resort, we are engaged in elucidating.”
“Stating, describing, etc., are just two names among a very great many others for illocutionary acts; they have no unique position.”
“In particular, they have no unique position over the matter of being related to facts in a unique way called being true of false, because truth and falsity are (except by an artificial abstraction which is always possible and legitimate for certain purposes) not names for relations, qualities, or what not, but for a dimension of assessment—how the words stand in respect of satisfactoriness to the facts, events situations, etc., to which they refer.”
“By the same token, the familiar contrast of “normative or evaluative” as opposed to the factual is in need, like so many dichotomies, of elimination.”
“We may well suspect that the theory of “meaning” as equivalent to “sense and reference” will certainly require some weeding-out and reformulating in terms of the distinction between locutionary and illocutionary acts (if this distinction is sound: it is only adumbrated here). I admit that not enough has been done here: I have taken the old “sense and reference” on the strength of current views; I would also stress that I have omitted any direct consideration of the illocutionary force of statements."
omnivorousabstraction's review against another edition
4.0
Impossible to see the relationship of word and deed as a simple one ever again after reading this book....
novaazalea's review against another edition
4.0
I den här sammanställningen av J.L. Austins föreläsningar på Harvard får vi följa hans resonemang om vad vi faktiskt gör när vi säger saker. De första kapitlen var svåra att hänga med i och det märks att han försöker lägga en bred grund på liten yta. Men allteftersom det tekniska reds ut och kan börja fylla sin funktion, så öppnas en hel värld av nya ingångar i ämnet. Hela föreläsningen genomsyras av uppmuntran till att spinna vidare på de teorier som presenteras, precis så som Austin själv verkar ha avsett:
"Of course, this is bound to be a little boring and dry to listen to and digest; not nearly so much so as to think and write. Moreover I leave to my readers the real fun of applying it in philosophy."
"Of course, this is bound to be a little boring and dry to listen to and digest; not nearly so much so as to think and write. Moreover I leave to my readers the real fun of applying it in philosophy."