The DOI matches its Crossref record.
How To Do Things With Words
Open accessAbstract
This work sets out the author's conclusions in the field to which he directed his main efforts for at least the last ten years of his life. Starting from an examination of his already well-known distinction between performative utterances and statements, he finally abandons that distinction, replacing it with a more general theory of ‘illocutionary forces’ of utterances, which has important bearings on a wide variety of philosophical problems.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Bourdieu borrowed from Austin (1975: 16) in emphasizing ' misfires ' or blips, instances in which attempted speech acts (or by extension, attempted practices of any sort) fail because of some maladaption of practice to the situation (Austin's 'infelicities').”
From Bourdieu, Historicity, and Historical Sociology (2011) · cites this paper as Austin, 1975
In the citing paper
“Not knowing these intended meanings or illocutions, in Austin's (1975) words, interlocutors' misunderstanding is inevitable.”
From Teachers’ Classroom Interactional Competence: Scale Development and Validation (2023) · cites this paper as Austin's (1975)
Citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Items 1,701–1,800 of 21,466
Speaking sincerely: public reactions to the death of Diana
Montgomery, M. (1999) · Language and Literature International Journal of Stylistics · doi:10.1177/096394709900800101 · Cited by 61
Babrow, A. S. (1995) · Communication Monographs · doi:10.1080/03637759509376364 · Cited by 61
Children's meta-pragmatic abilities and the identification of polite and impolite requests
Baroni, M. R., & Axia, G. (1989) · First Language · doi:10.1177/014272378900902703 · Cited by 61
Communicating Influence Attempts in Dyads: Linguistic Sedatives and Palliatives
Drake, B. H., & Moberg, D. J. (1986) · Academy of Management Review · doi:10.5465/amr.1986.4306225 · Cited by 61
Formalizing the evolution of virtual communities
de Moor, A., & Weigand, H. (2005) · Information Systems · doi:10.1016/j.is.2005.09.002 · Cited by 61
The Emergence of Second Language Syntax: A Case Study of the Acquisition of Relative Clauses
Mellow, J. D. (2006) · Applied Linguistics · doi:10.1093/applin/aml031 · Cited by 61
Ramchurn, S. D., Carles Sierra, A., Godo, L., et al. (2006) · Adaptive Agents and Multi-Agents Systems · doi:10.1145/1160633.1160703 · Cited by 61
Verbalizing a Political Act: Toward a Politics of Speech
Pocock, J. G. A. (1973) · Political Theory · doi:10.1177/009059177300100103 · Cited by 61
Toward a semantics for an agent communications language based on speech0-acts
Smith, I., & Cohen, P. R. (1996) · Cited by 61
Chaos as coordination technology
Cindio, F. D., Michelis, G. D., Simoné, C., et al. (1986) · ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) · doi:10.1145/637069.637113 · Cited by 61
Logics for resource-bounded agents
Jago, M. T. (2006) · OpenGrey (Institut de l'Information Scientifique et Technique) · Cited by 61
Electronic Complaints: An Empirical Study On British English And German Complaints On Ebay
Meinl, M. E. (2013) · Cited by 62
Metaphorically Speaking: Ableist Metaphors in Feminist Writing
Schalk, S. (2013) · Disability Studies Quarterly · doi:10.18061/dsq.v33i4.3874 · Cited by 93
Predictions as Lies in Ceará, Brazil: The Intersection of Two Cultural Models
Pennesi, K. (2013) · Anthropological Quarterly · doi:10.1353/anq.2013.0038 · Cited by 60
“Rosaldo’s (1982) work with the Ilongot challenges the importance of intention in speech act theory (Austin 1962); she argues that a description of how people intentionally “do things with words” is more properly understood as an ethnography “of contemporary views of human personhood and action as…”
BackgroundVygotsky: The social negotiation of semiotic mediation
Shotter, J. (1993) · New Ideas in Psychology · doi:10.1016/0732-118x(93)90020-e · Cited by 60
Indirectness, inexplicitness and vagueness made clearer
Cheng, W., & Warren, M. (2015) · Pragmatics Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) · doi:10.1075/prag.13.3.02che · Cited by 60
The use of the simple present in the speech of two three-year-olds: Normativity not subjectivity
Gerhardt, J., & Savasir, I. (1986) · Language in Society · doi:10.1017/s0047404500011994 · Cited by 60
Mechanisms of illocutionary games
Witek, M. (2015) · Language & Communication · doi:10.1016/j.langcom.2015.01.007 · Cited by 60
Harrington, B., & Fine, G. A. (2006) · Small Group Research · doi:10.1177/1046496405284356 · Cited by 60
Factual Fissures: Claims and Contexts
Herzfeld, M. (1998) · The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science · doi:10.1177/0002716298560001006 · Cited by 60
Relevance Realization and the Emerging Framework in Cognitive Science
Vervaeke, J., Lillicrap, T., & Richards, B. A. (2009) · Journal of Logic and Computation · doi:10.1093/logcom/exp067 · Cited by 80
Ethics for Dummies: Ventriloquism and Responsibility
Cooren, F. (2016) · Atlantic Journal of Communication · doi:10.1080/15456870.2016.1113963 · Cited by 60
“With John Langshaw Austin (1962), we learned that understanding what people mean when they talk to each other amounts to realizing what they do or perform with words.”
BackgroundPindar's Poetics of Immortality
Sigelman, A. C. (2016) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/cbo9781316471326 · Cited by 60
An Incarnational Model of the Eucharist
Arcadi, J. M. (2018) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781108588560 · Cited by 60
Zimman, L. (2019) · International Journal of the Sociology of Language · doi:10.1515/ijsl-2018-2016 · Cited by 60
“All that is required is that an overt, verbal claim be made – a classic performative utterance (Austin 1962; Hall 2000).”
BackgroundBringing Context Inside Process Research with Digital Trace Data
Pentland, B. T., Recker, J., Wolf, J. R., & Wyner, G. M. (2020) · Journal of the Association for Information Systems · doi:10.17705/1jais.00635 · Cited by 60
NORMS, CONSTITUTIVE AND SOCIAL, AND ASSERTION
Fricker, E. (2017) · American Philosophical Quarterly · doi:10.2307/45128590 · Cited by 60
Récanati, F. (2016) · Synthese · doi:10.1007/s11229-016-1223-9 · Cited by 60
McConnell‐Ginet, S. (2020) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781108641302 · Cited by 61
The acquisition of ergative marking in Kaluli, Ku Waru and Duna (Trans New Guinea)
Rumsey, A., Roque, L. S., & Schieffelin, B. B. (2013) · Trends in language acquisition research · doi:10.1075/tilar.9.06rum · Cited by 60
“In other words, the nyikir in (41) exemplifies what Austin (1962) would have called a ‘performative’ use of nyi‘say/speak’, where the speaker frames what he is saying in the here and now with a verb which refers explicitly to the very speech act in which he is saying it.”
BackgroundHuh? What? – a first survey in twenty-one languages
Enfield, N. J., Dingemanse, M., Baranova, J., Blythe, J., Brown, P., Dirksmeyer, T., Drew, P., Floyd, S., Gipper, S., Gísladóttir, R. S., et al. (2013) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511757464.012 · Cited by 60
Whole Utterance Approaches in AAC
Todman, J., Alm, N. A., Higginbotham, D. J., & File, P. E. (2008) · Augmentative and Alternative Communication · doi:10.1080/08990220802388271 · Cited by 62
Operational research and critical systems thinking—an integrated perspective
Ulrich, W. (2011) · Journal of the Operational Research Society · doi:10.1057/jors.2011.141 · Cited by 64
Robinson, S., & Kerr, R. (2009) · Human Relations · doi:10.1177/0018726709104546 · Cited by 60
Discourse Analysis and the Study of Communication in LIS
Budd, J. M. (2006) · Library trends · doi:10.1353/lib.2006.0046 · Cited by 60
What is “organizational communication”? Communication as a dialogic of text and conversation
Taylor, J. R. (1999) · The Communication Review · doi:10.1080/10714429909368573 · Cited by 60
Understanding the Role of Emotion in Sense-making. A Semiotic Psychoanalytic Oriented Perspective
Salvatore, S., & Venuleo, C. (2007) · Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science · doi:10.1007/s12124-007-9039-2 · Cited by 60
Jeffery, L., & Candea, M. (2006) · History and Anthropology · doi:10.1080/02757200600914037 · Cited by 60
Goldkuhl, G. (2007) · Cited by 60
What is Behaviour? And (when) is Language Behaviour? A Metatheoretical Definition
Uher, J. (2016) · Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour · doi:10.1111/jtsb.12104 · Cited by 71
“Thus, the content—i.e., the what-isbeing-said in and of itself—can constitute social behaviour (see similarly the concepts of Sprechakt and Sprechhandlung [speech act and speech action], Bühler, 1934, and speech act theories, Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969).”
BackgroundJenkins, J., & Finneman, T. (2017) · Feminist Media Studies · doi:10.1080/14680777.2017.1308412 · Cited by 65
Toward a Geography of a World Without Maps: Lessons from Ptolemy and Postal Codes
Curry, M. (2005) · Annals of the Association of American Geographers · doi:10.1111/j.1467-8306.2005.00481.x · Cited by 60
A multi-resolution collaborative architecture for web-centric global manufacturing
Ulieru, M. (2000) · Information Sciences · doi:10.1016/s0020-0255(00)00026-8 · Cited by 60
Bilingualism and language contact
Ann, J. (2001) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511612824.005 · Cited by 59
Taylor, J. R. (1995) · Communication Theory · doi:10.1111/j.1468-2885.1995.tb00096.x · Cited by 60
A pragmatic study of selected pairs of Yoruba proverbs
Lawal, A., Ajayi, B., & Raji, W. (1997) · Journal of Pragmatics · doi:10.1016/s0378-2166(96)00056-2 · Cited by 61
On understandings of intention: A response to Wedgwood
Haugh, M. (2012) · Intercultural Pragmatics · doi:10.1515/ip-2012-0011 · Cited by 59
“…solely in terms of communicative intentions, this view is difficult to reconcile with decades of work demonstrating that meaning arises in the course of “delivering” actions (Austin 1962; Levinson forthcoming; cf. Wedgwood 2011: 540, fn.13), particularly in the case of communicative interaction.”
A Cognitive Grammar account of the semantics of the English present progressive
Wit, A. D., & Brisard, F. (2013) · Journal of Linguistics · doi:10.1017/s0022226713000169 · Cited by 59
“This is even more apparent in example (32), which involves a PERFORMATIVE verb (Austin 1962, Searle 1969).”
BackgroundSteensen, S. (2013) · New Media & Society · doi:10.1177/1461444813504263 · Cited by 59
GOTHENBURG PAPERS IN THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS
Allwood, J. S. (2007) · Cited by 59
Mayfield, J. R., & Mayfield, M. (2016) · International Journal of Business Communication · doi:10.1177/2329488416629093 · Cited by 63
A Metacognitive Model of Writing: An Update From a Developmental Perspective
Hacker, D. J. (2018) · Educational Psychologist · doi:10.1080/00461520.2018.1480373 · Cited by 59
“To maximize the conveyance of one’s thoughts with the greatest illocutionary force (Austin, 1962), the writer must have metacognitive knowledge of the person (e.”
BackgroundOther I’s, communication, and the second person
Eilan, N. (2020) · Inquiry · doi:10.1080/0020174x.2020.1788987 · Cited by 59
Project Narratives That Potentially Perform and Change the Future
Sergeeva, N., & Winch, G. (2021) · Project Management Journal · doi:10.1177/8756972821995340 · Cited by 59
Direct and indirect directives: What do young children understand?
Bernicot, J., & Legros, S. (1987) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/0022-0965(87)90012-9 · Cited by 59
Wada, M., Clarke, L. H., & Rozanova, J. (2015) · Journal of Aging Studies · doi:10.1016/j.jaging.2014.12.002 · Cited by 59
Organizing Participation in Interaction: Doing Participation Framework
Rae, J. P. (2001) · Research on Language and Social Interaction · doi:10.1207/s15327973rlsi34-2_4 · Cited by 59
Subcultures and the Emergence of the Estonian Nationalist Opposition 1945–1990
Johnston, H., & Snow, D. A. (1998) · Sociological Perspectives · doi:10.2307/1389560 · Cited by 59
Social Interactions in Multicultural Settings
César, M., & Kumpulainen, K. (2009) · BRILL eBooks · doi:10.1163/9789087907174 · Cited by 59
Green, S. P. (2007) · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199225804.001.0001 · Cited by 59
Norms and value based reasoning: justifying compliance and violation
Bench-Capon, T. J. M., & Modgil, S. (2017) · Artificial Intelligence and Law · doi:10.1007/s10506-017-9194-9 · Cited by 59
“Giving a legal verdict can be seen (Al-Abdulkarim et al. 2016) as making a performative utterance, in the sense of Austin (1975), that is performing an action, rather than making a classification.”
BackgroundComposite Social Actions: The Case of Factual Declaratives in Everyday Interaction
Rossi, G. (2018) · Research on Language and Social Interaction · doi:10.1080/08351813.2018.1524562 · Cited by 59
“A central goal of social and linguistic science is to explain how people use talk and other conduct to “do things” with one another (Austin, 1962), a process known in conversation analysis as action formation and ascription (Schegloff, 2007, p.”
BackgroundVisser, J., Konat, B., Duthie, R., et al. (2019) · Language Resources and Evaluation · doi:10.1007/s10579-019-09446-8 · Cited by 59
“Elaborating on traditional Speech Act Theory (Austin 1962; Searle 1969), illocutionary forces are reinterpreted as relations connecting locutions (and transitions) to propositional content (and propositional relations).”
BackgroundRethinking Security after the Cold War *
Buzan, B. G. (2018) · Routledge eBooks · doi:10.4324/9781315184517-19 · Cited by 59
The Bureaucracy of Beauty: Design in the Age of its Global Reproducibility
Dutta, A. (2006) · Cited by 59
Pragmatization of Information Systems - A Theoretical and Methodological Outline
Ågerfalk, P. J. (1999) · Cited by 59
Taylor, J. R. (1993) · Communication et organisation · doi:10.4000/communicationorganisation.1619 · Cited by 77
Crow, T. J. (2004) · Cognitive Neuropsychiatry · doi:10.1080/13546800344000192 · Cited by 59
Community nurses’ perceptions of patient ‘compliance’ in wound care: a discourse analysis
Hallett, C. E., Austin, L., Caress, A., & Luker, K. A. (2000) · Journal of Advanced Nursing · doi:10.1046/j.1365-2648.2000.01407.x · Cited by 59
“Just the Boys Playing on Computers”
Artemeva, N., & Freedman, A. (2001) · Journal of Business and Technical Communication · doi:10.1177/105065190101500202 · Cited by 58
Bois, J. W. D. (2015) · IPrA Papers in Pragmatics · doi:10.1075/iprapip.1.2.04boi · Cited by 59
Shmotkin, D. (1998) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-1-4899-0098-2_2 · Cited by 60
A case study of CSCW in a dispersed organization
Carasik, R. P., & Grantham, C. (1988) · ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) · doi:10.1145/57167.57177 · Cited by 59
Studies in dialogue and discourse; an exponential law of successive questioning
Mishler, E. G. (1975) · Language in Society · doi:10.1017/s0047404500004486 · Cited by 59
Reasoning under Uncertainty in Natural Language Dialogue using Bayesian Networks
Keizer, S. (2003) · University of Twente Research Information · Cited by 59
Deontic rights in interaction : A conversation analytic study on authority and cooperation
Stevanovic, M. (2013) · Työväentutkimus Vuosikirja · Cited by 59
Intelligent interfaces as agents
Chin, D. N. (1991) · Intelligent User Interfaces · doi:10.1145/107215.128698 · Cited by 59
Linguistic Relativity from Reference to Agency
Enfield, N. J. (2015) · Annual Review of Anthropology · doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-102214-014053 · Cited by 61
“But the referential function of language is just one among several (Austin 1962; Silverstein 1976, 1979, 1981, 2014; Zinken 2008; Kockelman 2010).”
BackgroundBronislaw Malinowski and Linguistic Pragmatics
Senft, G. (2007) · Lodz Papers in Pragmatics · doi:10.2478/v10016-007-0006-7 · Cited by 58
Pagin, P. (2004) · Journal of Pragmatics · doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2003.10.004 · Cited by 58
Intention Analysis for Sales, Marketing and Customer Service
Carlos, C. S., & Yalamanchi, M. (2012) · International Conference on Computational Linguistics · Cited by 58
Demopolis: Democracy before Liberalism in Theory and Practice
Ober, J. (2017) · Cited by 58
The Mill-Frege Theory of Proper Names
García‐Carpintero, M. (2017) · Mind · doi:10.1093/mind/fzx010 · Cited by 58
Thinking about Religion through Wittgenstein
Asad, T. (2020) · Critical Times · doi:10.1215/26410478-8662304 · Cited by 58
Lies are assertions and presuppositions are not
Stokke, A. (2024) · Inquiry · doi:10.1080/0020174x.2024.2389582 · Cited by 58
“Austin (1962), Searle (1969), and other pioneers provided us with the notion of an assertion (already present in Frege’s writings).”
Severi, C. (2014) · Hau Journal of Ethnographic Theory · doi:10.14318/hau4.2.003 · Cited by 58
Combining lexical, syntactic and prosodic cues for improved online dialog act tagging
Sridhar, V. K. R., Bangalore, S., & Narayanan, S. S. (2008) · Computer Speech & Language · doi:10.1016/j.csl.2008.12.001 · Cited by 57
Revisiting the issue of model validation in OR: An epistemological view
Déry, R., Landry, M., & Banville, C. (1993) · European Journal of Operational Research · doi:10.1016/0377-2217(93)90311-a · Cited by 58
Social constructionism and research in marketing and advertising
Hackley, C. (1998) · Qualitative Market Research An International Journal · doi:10.1108/13522759810235188 · Cited by 58
Crow, T. J. (2009) · Journal of Neurolinguistics · doi:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2009.08.005 · Cited by 58
Communicative aphasia treatment as a further development of pace therapy
Friedemann Pulvermüller, A., & Roth, V. M. (1991) · Aphasiology · doi:10.1080/02687039108248518 · Cited by 58
Dein, S. L., & Littlewood, R. (2007) · Anthropology and Medicine · doi:10.1080/13648470701381515 · Cited by 58
Why Do We Quote? The Culture and History of Quotation
Finnegan, R. H. (2011) · Open Book Publishers · doi:10.11647/obp.0012 · Cited by 58
The use and abuse of Aesculapian authority in veterinary medicine
Rollin, B. E. (2002) · Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association · doi:10.2460/javma.2002.220.1144 · Cited by 58
Irony comprehension: Social conceptual knowledge and emotional response
Akimoto, Y., Sugiura, M., Yomogida, Y., Miyauchi, C. M., Miyazawa, S., & Kawashima, R. (2013) · Human Brain Mapping · doi:10.1002/hbm.22242 · Cited by 60
the etymology of excuses: aspects of rhetorical performance in Greece
Herzfeld, M. (1982) · American Ethnologist · doi:10.1525/ae.1982.9.4.02a00020 · Cited by 58
New Foundations for Imperative Logic I: Logical Connectives, Consistency, and Quantifiers*
Vranas, P. B. M. (2008) · Noûs · doi:10.1111/j.1468-0068.2008.00684.x · Cited by 58
Harries, T., McEwen, L. J., & Wragg, A. (2018) · International Small Business Journal Researching Entrepreneurship · doi:10.1177/0266242618765231 · Cited by 64
Metadata
- Authors
- Austin, J. L.
- Corresponding author
- Austin, J.L.
- Venue
- Routledge eBooks
- Publisher
- Oxford University PressOxford
- Published
- 1975-09-18
- Pages
- 177-182
- OpenAlex
- W1576632330
- Cited by
- 21,496
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 432 · 2025: 587 · 2024: 705 · 2023: 823 · 2022: 768 · 2021: 996 · 2020: 1094 · 2019: 1291 · 2018: 1056 · 2017: 881 · 2016: 898 · 2015: 873 · 2014: 960 · 2013: 858 · 2012: 797
- FWCI
- 374.62
- Type
- book chapter
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- other-oa
- Locations
- Routledge eBooks (publishedVersion)
- DIAL (Catholic University of Leuven) (submittedVersion)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Wittgensteinian philosophy and applications
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
- Keywords
- performatives, illocutionary force, statements, speech acts, pragmatics, philosophy of language
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review