J. Austin was the first philosopher and linguist who elaborated the performative function of language, which developed into speech act theory, one of the most important theories of early pragmatics. His elaboration of the performative function begins with the distinction of constative and performative sentences. This article reviews how J. Austin’s distinction of constative and performative was formed. It also shows the significance of the distinction for the 20th century philosophy and linguistics.
References
[1]
Austin, J. L. (2002). How to Do Things with Words. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.
[2]
Caton, C. (1963). Philosophy and Ordinary Language. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
[3]
Gale, R. M. (1970). Do Performative Utterances Have Any Constative Function. The Journal of Philosophy, 67, 117-121.
[4]
Hu, Z. (2001). Linguistics. A Course Book (2nd ed.). Beijing: Peking University Press.
[5]
Jacobsen, K. H. (1971). How to Make the Distinction Between Constative and Performative Utterance. The Philosophical Quarterly, 21, 357-360.
[6]
Jiang, W. (2000). Pragmatics: Theories and Applications. Beijing: Peking University Press.
[7]
Jiang, W. (2003). Contemporary Pragmatics. Beijing: Peking University Press.
[8]
Stegmüller, W. (1980). Neue Wege der Wissenschaftsphilosophie (German Edition). Berlin: Springer.
