How to read how to do things with words: on Sbisà’s proof by contradiction
How to read how to do things with words: on Sbisà’s proof by contradiction
Midway through How to Do Things With Words, J.L. Austin’s announces a “fresh start” in his efforts to characterize the ways in which speech is action, and introduces a new conceptual framework from the one he has been using up to that point. Against a common reading that portrays this move as simply abandoning the framework so far developed, Marina Sbisà contends that the text takes the argumentative form of a proof by contradiction, such that the initial framework plays an instrumental role as part of a proof in favour of the subsequent one. Despite agreeing with Sbisà’s broad instrumentalist approach, we argue that her regimentation of Austin’s narrative into a proof by contradiction ultimately fails - both as a proof and as an interpretation of Austin. Instead, we suggest that a better way of interpreting the peculiar structure of How to Do Things With Words is as a pedagogical exercise whose point is to bring a concealed alternative into view in a manner that also explains its initial concealment, and that this approach provides richer resources for supporting Sbisà’s own conventionalist understanding of illocution than that afforded by reading the text as a proof by contradiction.
Illocution, J.L Austin, Marina Sbisà, Performative utterances
101-115
Wanderer, Jeremy
9fdbd4db-0065-492a-8180-2edbb15de124
Townsend, Leo
8f4f19b2-8d93-4ce5-a772-56a758369dc0
Wanderer, Jeremy
9fdbd4db-0065-492a-8180-2edbb15de124
Townsend, Leo
8f4f19b2-8d93-4ce5-a772-56a758369dc0
Wanderer, Jeremy and Townsend, Leo
(2024)
How to read how to do things with words: on Sbisà’s proof by contradiction.
Philosophia, 52 (1), .
(doi:10.1007/s11406-024-00714-8).
Abstract
Midway through How to Do Things With Words, J.L. Austin’s announces a “fresh start” in his efforts to characterize the ways in which speech is action, and introduces a new conceptual framework from the one he has been using up to that point. Against a common reading that portrays this move as simply abandoning the framework so far developed, Marina Sbisà contends that the text takes the argumentative form of a proof by contradiction, such that the initial framework plays an instrumental role as part of a proof in favour of the subsequent one. Despite agreeing with Sbisà’s broad instrumentalist approach, we argue that her regimentation of Austin’s narrative into a proof by contradiction ultimately fails - both as a proof and as an interpretation of Austin. Instead, we suggest that a better way of interpreting the peculiar structure of How to Do Things With Words is as a pedagogical exercise whose point is to bring a concealed alternative into view in a manner that also explains its initial concealment, and that this approach provides richer resources for supporting Sbisà’s own conventionalist understanding of illocution than that afforded by reading the text as a proof by contradiction.
Text
s11406-024-00714-8
- Version of Record
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Accepted/In Press date: 28 December 2023
e-pub ahead of print date: 23 January 2024
Keywords:
Illocution, J.L Austin, Marina Sbisà, Performative utterances
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 496042
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/496042
ISSN: 0048-3893
PURE UUID: 61c51ad5-4a62-485f-8b25-7698da72f930
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Date deposited: 02 Dec 2024 17:35
Last modified: 21 Aug 2025 02:52
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Author:
Jeremy Wanderer
Author:
Leo Townsend
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