Please post your response to the lecture for June 13th to this thread. The reading for this day was "Austin, J.L. How To Do Things With Words."
Thank you.
You do not have to respond to these questions in your paper, but think about:
As you write your essay, think about Austin's definition of the "performative" alongside his various categories for how speech works in daily life. Think also about Piper's piece, "Cornered," and how that work is or is not an example of a speech act. Has her speech act been successful? Has it failed? Consider the place of Austin in Performance Studies as you attend lectures this week.
After our discussion of Piper, I came across this article today in the NY Times. Check it out, if you get a chance.
Louis Jargow
ReplyDeleteIntroduction to Performance Studies
José Muñoz
Response to J.L. Austin’s "What To Do With Words" PAGE 1
6/13/2011
Austin, Law, Sovereignty and Power
Through "What To Do With Words," a series of lectures delivered in 1955 on William James at Harvard University, philosopher and linguist J.L. Austin empowers his listeners with a set of tools designed for analyzing meaning and agency in language. Austin’s ideas are rooted in legal theory, and help us understand how power operates through speech-acts. We can see both the successes of creating a structure that defines legitimacy, and the problems that can arise from his understanding of power: from who wields power and who doesn't.
Austin sets out with the notion that philosophy had been, up until that point, merely attempting to prove a given sentence true of false, and not looking deeper into what meaning these words might have on their own. (Austin, 1) Austin, in a legalistic way, is looking beyond the simple facts produced by a sentence and is instead trying to analyze ideas of intention, context, and legitimacy.
Austin turns our attention toward the complex differences between two modes of speech, ‘constative utterances’ and ‘performative utterances.’ Constitutive utterances are statements that, through reason, can be proven true or false. However, Austin's fascinating work is his research on performative utterances, the purpose of which, “Is not to describe my doing of what I should be said in so uttering to be doing or to state that I am doing it: it is to do it” (Austin,6) These types of utterances are warranted as speech-acts; in saying something we do it. “I bet” carries the weight of an action that is authorized by its speaker. Here we can witness the first parallel between speech and law-- when we say “I do” in the context of a marriage, our words are bound by law, and a King making an edict’s speech is law. Even without writing, our words carry force.
Jargow Part 2:
ReplyDeleteA second question relating to power thus arises: who is allowed to make performative utterances, and in what context? We are looking for how Austin deals with idea of legitimacy. In Lecture II, Austin illustrates what makes for a felicitous speech-act,
"There must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a certain conventional effect, that procedure to include the uttering of certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances further, the particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure invoked." (Austin, 14-15)
Austin painstakingly describes the importance of conventional procedures and appropriate circumstances for a beneficial outcome of a speech-act. How different are the above rules from a the ways by which a sovereign can be called ‘legitimate?’ In order to be validated, a sovereign needs to be put in power by a conventional procedure, participate in the correct rituals, and act in an appropriate manner and context. The specifics of these rules would obviously change from nation to nation, group to group. Predictably, Austin moves to a series of ways in which speech-acts can be infelicitous and illegitimate, which again is bureaucratic and legalistic in nature. However, we can assume that, given the correct conditions, a sovereign can wield the power to make performative; the power to act.
Finally, Austin ends his lectures with a turn to five possible moods we can see speech-acts operating in, which all connote their own mode of power.
"The verdictive is an exercise of judgement, the exercitive is an assertion of influence or exercising of power, the commissive is an assuming of an obligation or declaring an intention, the behabitive is the adopting of an attitude, and the expositive is the clarifying of reasons, arguments and communications." (Austin, 163)
Don’t these forms of speech-acts constitute the power to judge, the power to assert influence, the power to make someone commit to something, the power to shape behavior, and the power to produce knowledge? In basing his ideas on legal theory, Austin allows us to see exactly much power our speech-acts wield. Since a sovereign can make law by making a speech-act, and, in a legal sense, the contextual rules that need to be followed are law itself, there is really little standing in the way of a sovereign from exercising any power they wanted.
What about the powerless? What about those who wield no authority to make law; to make speech-acts; to do? Austin’s only response would be to suggest that only the illegitimate are powerless. As a society, we certainly know that not to be the case, that people are disenfranchised for reasons that elude the concept of legitimacy. Austin makes no safeguard for those who are powerless due to class, race, gender, sexual-preference, ability, location, or creed. We also know those in power often abuse their privilege, without any fear of reprimand or being deemed illegitimate.
Having seen how these parallels between Austin’s linguistic theory and legal theory, we can see the gaps he creates for the disenfranchised and begin to look at speech as always constituting a relation of power.
Melanie Van Allen
ReplyDeleteProf: Jose Muñoz
TA: Sujay Pandit
Introduction to Performance Studies PERF-GT 1000.001 – Section 2
15 May 2011
Lecture 1: Professor Jose Muñoz
J.L. Austin and Adrian Piper
Philosophical theory involving language historically had been mostly concerned with statements either being true or false. Oxford scholar of Moral Philosophy and linguist J.L. Austin challenges this topic in his book How To Do Things With Words. The book archives Austin’s lectures at Harvard University in 1955, and argues sentences containing truth-values form only a minor part of the vast range of utterances. Austin states, “… that this assumption is no doubt unconscious, no doubt precipitate, but it is wholly natural in philosophy.” Statements not only give facts and describe circumstances of affairs, but can also perform an action by a verbal utterance, which is referred to as a Performative Utterance, or just Performative. To utter one of these sentences, in its appropriate context and circumstances, is not to state a fact, nor to describe what is being done. To say something is to do something; or in which by saying something or in saying something we are doing something. (Austin 12)
To prove his argument Austin gives lucid examples of such performatives in their colloquial discourse: “I do” (take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife), as uttered in the course of a marriage ceremony, (Austin 13) “I bet you it will rain today” and “I hear by name this ship”. Utterance of these statements is the doing the action. Additionally, many conditions must exist in order for the performative to be completed effectively. The doctrine of the infelicities give clear parameters for what criteria and action is needed to insure this: There must exist an accepted conventional procedure, that procedure to include the uttering of certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances. (Austin 14) All participants must be appropriate for the course of action invoked, and all participants must execute the procedure, both correctly and entirely. Austin explains if one (or more) of these six rules is broken the performative utterance will be unhappy, or infelicitous, but not false. That is also to say that felicitous does not mean true.
Part 2
ReplyDeleteAustin further refined utterance by giving five classes to which they belong. The first, Verdictives, as the name implies, gives a verdict. The second, Exercitives are the exercising of authority and influence. The third, Commissives are by promising and committing. The fourth, Behabitives are involved with social behaviors and the acts of apologizing, challenging and congratulating. The fifth, Expositives make plain how our utterances fit into the course of an argument or conversation, how we are using words, or in general, are expository. (Austin 152)
Further, Austin explains the form and functions of the speech act or locutionary act. The three classifications: the locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act all serve speech with a certain dimension of the use of language. The locutionary act utters a certain sentence with a certain sense and reference and the illocutionary act utterances inform, warn, undertake, order and have a certain conventional force.(Austin 109) The perlocutionary act utterances bring about or attain something by saying something, such as challenging, warning, misleading, persuading, convincing, or deterring.
In viewing the performance artist Adrian Piper’s Cornered, the implementation of locutionary acts, notably perlocutionary acts, were clearly evident and used for methods to engage, interrogate and challenge the viewing audience. She also invoked use of the Behabitive utterance with her condoling and confrontational tone of her speech act. Similarly, Piper, a philosopher and performance artist presumed whom the viewing demographic would entail: white academia, as Austin wrote his lecture with the Ivy League caliber in mind.
Piper’s monologue begins with a long silence where only white noise can be heard, while she is gazing acutely into the camera lens. Labouredly, she makes the statement “I’m black.” Building upon her statement, Piper recites facts to challenge and provoke thought with the viewing audience and her speech begins to meander and self-contradict, parallel to the trajectory of J.L. Austin’s lecture.
Both Austin and Piper are very clear in labeling classifications and tribulations of their perspective subjects. There are similarities between the modes of resolution or refutation of ideas and theories. With his pragmatic vernacular, arid sense of humor and system of checks and balances, Austin unpredictably challenges, deconstructs and dismisses certain hypotheses and theories after lengthy forethought and clarification. Piper, has a similar path but with more distain and emergency for the subject matter. Her counter arguments have a sophisticated flow and come quickly and repeatedly, as did with Austin.
Chloë Rae Edmonson
ReplyDeletePERF-GT 1000.002 – Sujay Pandit
Reading/Lecture response for 13 June 2011
J.L. Austin’s How to do things with Words
Adrian Piper’s Cornered
Lecturer: José Muñoz
How to Do Things with Words, our first reading for Introduction to Performance Studies, was appropriately a performance itself – a lecture delivered by J.L. Austin for the William James Lecture Series at Harvard in 1955. In it, Austin explores how we do things with language; to this end, he necessarily pays great attention to how we fail to do things with or “just say” words. He begins his lectures by categorizing two types of utterances: performative and constative, respectively. Famous examples of performatives are “I do” (in a marriage), or “I bequeath x-object to y-subject” (in a will) (Austin 5). Austin’s first lecture, read in the context of the NYU Performance Studies program, was empowering; if we can “do” things with words, do we then have great power in “doing” things in performance?
In Lecture II, Austin goes on to say that performative utterances cannot be properly described as true or false; instead, they are best described as felicitous or infelicitous (happy or unhappy). For a performative utterance to be unhappy, something has to go wrong, i.e. something necessary is missing in the execution of the utterance or something infelicitous is present. Austin creates a chart of infelicities including, but not limited to, improperly executed customs and insincere promises (Austin 14-18). Then, however, Austin purports that “performative utterance[s] will…be in a peculiar way hollow or void if said by an actor on the stage, or if introduced in a poem, or spoken in a soliloquy” (Austin 22). This assertion made me unhappy, completely nullifying my newfound empowered feeling and my assumption that eventually I would figure out How To Do Things With Words (in Performance). In Lectures III and IV, Austin continues to expand on infelicities, concluding that understanding an utterance’s entire context is necessary to determine whether it is happy.
Edmonson Page TWO
ReplyDeleteTaking a philosophical “step back,” Austin works on what it actually is to say something, abandoning his original attempt at a list of “performative verbs” or his use of grammar to define a speech-act, both of which proved troublesome. According to Austin, to say something is: always to physically use one’s vocal cords (phonetic act), always to use words and grammatical sentences (phatic act) and finally, generally to utter these words with a “more or less definite sense and reference” (rhetic act) (Austin 92). A helpful and basic statement, one might wonder, why didn’t Austin start with this? Instead, he leads his readers through a maze, first taking us down a wrong corridor, only to “realize” the floorboards giving way at our feet, backs us up, and steers us down another hallway. In class, we discussed Austin as “devious,” since he knowingly took us down the wrong corridor first. I agree, as a reader I felt duped when he trashed his first attempt; I also, however, enjoyed his willingness to create his own failure. In a way, it made me trust him more, and wonder if there isn’t more room in philosophy and art for constructing our own failures or dead-ends, then and performing the act of back-tracking.
Finally, Austin defines five classes of utterances: verdictives, which give a verdict; exercitives, which exercise power and give decisions for/against things; commisives, which commit someone to action or make promises; behabitives, which have to do with social relationships with others; and expositives, which are acts of exposition and clarification (Austin 151-2).
To supplement the reading and lecture, we watched Adrian Piper’s recorded performance piece “Cornered,” in which Piper faces us, sitting at a desk backed into a sterile white corner. She is well-dressed and dons a string of pearl; we have a few moments to take her in before she makes the statement that sets the piece in motion: “I’m black.” Piper then delineates why the presumed white viewer might find her statement insulting, unnecessary, antagonistic or exploitative. Piper moves on to state that 5-20% of whites have black ancestry, which implies: “You’re black.” Now, going back to my disenchantment via J.L. Austin, anything Piper says can only be constative because it is uttered by a “performer;” for the sake of good class discussion, however, we disregarded this particular tenant of Austin’s. The simple phatic form of “I’m black,” could be otherwise interpreted as just a statement, but Piper wields the statement as a speech-act, designed to stir up the viewer according to his particular prejudice. Then, Piper delineates the conceivable (and mostly unpleasant) responses to her speech-act right before us, unpacking Anglo anxiety surrounding race. My gut-reaction to Piper’s work was to resist the assumption that we must claim blackness OR whiteness. There was no room in her piece for “AND,” which fostered boundaries and hostility. This hostility, however, served the piece well, creating tangible tension and discomfort.
Launching our journey into performance studies, Austin and Piper’s work inhabits the liminal space between disciplines; to quote Muñoz, Austin is both “too abstract for linguists and too concrete for philosophers” and Piper is “between performance art and philosophy” (Muñoz lecture). When an article or performance or theory resides in this exciting space of disciplinary neither/nor, there is a hope that we might bump up against a new concept or discipline, or maybe eventually a paradigm shift. As performance studies students, this borderland is our perpetual concern.
At the beginning of the text Austin makes the claim that for many years, philosophers believed that there were statements that could be true or false and everything else outside of these declarative statements that could be proven true or false were basically nonsense. He then causes us to ask the questions “What if these other utterances are not nonsense, but rather, they wish to serve some other purpose?” These are performative utterances and Austin goes on to detail their conditions for existence on page 5. He makes many revisions throughout the book and language is given a key role in his philosophy and understanding of the world. What is paramount in reading this material is the question whether language creates meaning for social/historical conditions or social/historical conditions create the meaning for language.
ReplyDeleteAustin takes us on a trail of terminology through this book. We begin with certain words, then he revises, and then we have a different outcome. He states on page 123 that this is a part of the process and that one must not “overlook things and go to fast”. He starts out with original guidelines for performative utterances on page 5 and after about nine lectures, we arrive at another phase of discovery. He introduces locutionary acts (uttering a certain sentence with a certain sense and reference), illocutionary acts (informing, ordering, undertaking), and perlocutionary acts (what we bring about or achieve by saying something). I am satisfied with these definitions, and most of the definitions for words that Austin introduces in the book. However, my problem is that it seems that all we have is words. Even at the end of the book we have a sprawling plethora of new words that we have learned, but I do not feel that I know much more about performance.
On page 5, Austin claims that for a performative utterance to be felicitous, “there must exist an accepted conventional procedure, having a certain conventional effect”. For example, for two people to get married there has to be a general, accepted understanding of what marriage actually is within society. One could say “I do” all day, but if there is no idea of what marriage is, then there is no marriage, there is no marriage ceremony or performance. My question for Austin (or whoever wants to answer) is, if to be felicitous, all performance utterances must coincide with these pre-established conditions, then how to we have new or revolutionary performances?
Let us think about Adrian Piper’s performance in “Cornered” for a moment. I thoroughly enjoyed the piece. I do not know if I can indefinitely claim that Piper’s speech act was successful or that it failed. However, I must go back to my original thought about this idea of words creating meaning. Adrian states that she is “black”, but this utterance would be meaningless if she were not presupposing that there are negative connotations surrounding her being “black”. There are conventional forces that “blackness” means something in America, that there are negative implications about being black and positive implications about being white. But “blackness” is still empty because it’s just a word without all these conditions and presuppositions. And like this empty “black” word without any conditions surrounding it, Austin’s arguments about performatives are interesting linguistically, but without objective conditions and social conditions there is no context for the utterances. I realize that he admits this in his initial conditions for performative utterances on page 5, but then why must we obsess over words?
Does everyone have the power to make performative utterances? Does an insane person have the power to make performative utterances? If an insane person walks down the road uttering that he is a “jiboodidyblah” over and over again, is this statement meaningless or not? Now we have this question of power. Who has the power to change reality with what they say? But at this point we are hardly talking about language anymore and now are discussing this idea of power. It seems easy for a white, upper class, British man to make these claims about performative utterances, but I do not wish to be too hard on him, as even at the very end he claims that he is not perfectly happy and that there are “numerous loose ends”.
ReplyDeleteAlyssa Pereira
ReplyDeleteProfessor José Muñoz
Performance Studies Intro
13 Jun 2011 – Austin & Piper
J.L. Austin, is his How To Do Things With Words presents and explores a common type of utterance applicable to performance. In theory, Austin’s assertions are somewhat convoluted by the lecture structure, but seem to provide a valid analysis of how words have the capability to accomplish an action. Furthermore, Austin implies the importance of performatives in society in his examples. Problems, however, begin to arise in application to performance; a dissemination of boundaries threaten to dismiss Austin’s assertions within speech in performance.
Austin, in this collection of lectures, essentially provides an extended definition for what he deems “performatives.” Concisely, Austin’s performative is the achievement of some type of action by a verbal assertion. In order to define and explicate his performative, he explores many types of utterances to discern what exactly constitutes a performative and what exactly about the utterance qualifies it as such. Before discussing how Austin deconstructs this definition of performatives, it is necessary to note why he chose to do so. In the course of the book, it seems most fitting that a performative in itself is important because our society relies on institutional action for social, economic and governmental structure. Such action is not necessarily a physical action, but rather verbal (or some mix of the two). Examples that would corroborate this follow:
“‘I do (sc. take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife)’ – as uttered in the course of marriage ceremony” (Austin 5)
“I find him guilty – I acquit.” (Austin 40)
I do (swear to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help [me] God.)
These performatives serve an institutional purpose. However, it is also important to consider the social necessity of performatives. These are necessary to maintain a balance between politeness (or lackthereof) and directness in everyday communication. Some examples of these would fall under the five types of locutionary acts Austin lists: verdictives, commissives, behabitives, exercitives and expositives.
Next, we can look at the structure of the arguments Austin makes to further decipher the purpose of the lectures. In each lecture, Austin presents an idea and subsequently deciphers it. In doing so, he deconstructs his thought in an attempt to leave as little room for error as possible. In the process, Austin recognizes two different ways of explaining these utterances: the locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary; and the phonetic, phatic and rhetic (which Austin states are all types of locutionary statements) (Austin 121). In structuring types of utterances in various ways, he highlights the necessity of performatives in language as forces of action within themselves.
Alyssa Pereira, page 2
ReplyDeleteIn application, Austin’s theory begins to face complications. In a performance called “Cornered” by Adrian Piper, a performance artist and philosopher, Austin’s boundaries of what constitutes a performative are blurred. The first statement made by Piper, “I am black” serves as locutionary act (it is in fact a statement) and it also serves as an illocutionary statement (the assertion that Piper is black is a force is defining her identity). However, Piper’s assertion that she is black in the performance as well as the motive for the performance itself is also a perlocutionary act and response. In considering Austin’s definition of the perlocutionary act, it is apparent that the performance was probably prompted by someone (or perhaps multiple people) assuming and stating that Piper was white. The performance was an effect of an illocutionary act; an utterance in the context of race.
Moving onward, we can understand how this is related to Austin’s How To Do Things With Words. Piper’s performance is a series of illocutionary and perlocutionary statements (and sometimes mixes of them). She invites and compels us to make a choice in our own lives about our conceptions of race; she invites us to perform a perlocutionary act in response. However, she does not wait for our response (as she cannot because it is a recording); rather she assumes what we are thinking and responds to her assumption of what we are thinking. In doing so she is responding in both an illocutionary act and a perlocutionary act.
It is of course obvious that Piper’s purpose is to negotiate with our socially constructed concept of race. After all, race is still an invention of man and one that still proves relevant even today, twenty years after this performance. If this performance proves anything for certain, it is that race is subjective. In the same manner, language is subjective as well.
Piper’s delivery of race and identity are done so by means of performative language. What exactly Piper accomplishes in using these performatives is subjective to each of her audience members. Which examples of Austin’s performatives she uses are all interpreted by how we as individuals perceive their effects on us. In performance, this at least will always hold true.
Austin and the Performative
ReplyDeleteBeginning his linguistic-philosophic lecture on How to Do Things with Words, John L. Austin promises his listeners “the greatest and most salutary [revolution in philosophy] in its history […] not, if you come to think of it, a large claim” (Austin 3-4). Thus, Austin launches into an examination of the nearly innumerable pitfalls and failures of performative utterances, or language that does something, effects some immediate change in the world. In other words, as Austin says, “the issuing of the utterance is the performing of an action—it is not normally thought of as just saying something”(Austin 6-7). Austin offers a few preliminary examples of the performative, such as the pronouncement, “I give and bequeath my watch to my brother” in a will (Austin 5). The statement itself (assuming that it is established according to certain legal/social guidelines, as we shall discuss momentarily) achieves the changing of hands of the watch. Performative utterances, more succinctly called performatives, have the ability not only to shape our perceptions of the world, but also to change the circumstances of our lives within it. In this way, Austin recognizes language as an active player in the production of knowledge.
To best understand the performative, we might consider its antonym, the constative statement (“He gave his brother the watch, and all I received was this lousy t-shirt”). Austin proposes ‘constative’ as a replacement for what previously might have been called ‘descriptive’: simply and temporarily defined, constatives are statements of fact, whether true or false (Austin 3). However, as Austin develops his argument, he begins to recognize parallels between his proposed binaries (Austin 52). For example, a constative statement might depend upon an external action—the example he gives is the constative “John is running,” which will be proved true or false by observing John’s current state-of-being (Austin 54). The performative relies upon a series of factors, but its veracity may also depend upon an outside actor, as in the statement, “I warn you that the bull is about to charge,” which, while successfully performing the act of warning, depends on the bull’s actions (Austin 55).
‘Veracity’ is perhaps a misleading descriptor, for in his theory of performative utterances, Austin finds little use for the designations of true and false. He chooses instead to judge the performative on whether the outcome is ‘felicitous’ or ‘infelicitous,’ or whether it is successfully/happily completed. He establishes a series of preconditions for the felicitous completion of the performative. To summarize, these conditions are: the existence of conventions and rituals to govern the performance; the participation of people fulfilling pre-ordained roles; the correct and complete execution of the performance by these people; the alignment of the participants’ thoughts, feelings, and intentions with that which they verbally express; and the fealty of the actors’ conduct to their verbal utterances following the performance (Austin 15-16). It is worth noting that these categories rely upon two overarching conditions: the existence of social contracts and rituals, and—to steal a phrase from theatre—the inner life of the participants. If any of these conditions are not met, the performative is infelicitous, and Austin describes each particular failure with its own terminology: Misinvocation, Misapplications, Misexecutions, Flaws, Hitches, and Insincerities (Austin 18). Any North American who scoffs at Austin’s exactitude might consider the 2009 Inauguration of President Obama, in which John Roberts misspoke and Mr. Obama, in return, fumbled over his oath while he was being sworn into office. The ceremony was repeated the next day in an attempt to silence any protestors who might declare President Obama’s presidency infelicitous.
(Continued below...)
(...Continued from above)
ReplyDeleteAustin’s demarcation of the many failures of performatives may read as somewhat pretentious, but his location of the speech act within and dependent upon social context is important. He recognizes three aspects of the performative: the locutionary act, or the grammar, that which is spoken; the illocutionary act, or the function of the act; and the perlocutionary act, the desired outcome of the speech (Austin 109). These categories allow us to deeply probe both the intention behind and the function of language, and Austin obliges us with his list of six performative modes: the verdictive, which passes judgment; the exercitive, which expresses favor or disagreement; the commisive, which commits or promises; the behabitive, which reflects social behaviors; and the expositive, which clarifies (Austin 153-161; Muñoz). Here we run into the breakdown of Austin’s original delineation between performatives and constatives as the two ideas begin to bleed together.
For “devious” Austin is really experimenting with what he can and cannot do with words (Muñoz). He begins his lecture series by promising that his assertions with be “true, at least in parts” before going on to question the usefulness of the idea of true and false statements (Austin 123, 1). He establishes the straightforward binary of performative/constative, and then he breaks it down through a minute examination of the structures of English grammar. He repeats himself, reexamines, revises. In this instance, I will take a page out of his book: I claim every right to re-write this particular response to his work, should the need arise.
Works Cited
Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1962.
Muñoz, José Esteban. “How to Do Things with Words.” New York University. June 13, 2010.
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ReplyDelete13 June 2011
ReplyDeleteJ.L. Austin’s How to do Things with Words is a compilation of lectures given by Austin in 1955 as a guide to the language of language. A philosopher and linguist, Austin addresses his colleagues in both fields in order to examine the performative nature of the speech act and to encourage the in-depth and deliberate form of communication and language. While Austin defines and describes language as performative and dedicates these lectures to linguistics, the subtext of his lectures as a performance is also informed by the content of the speeches he delivers. By comparing Austin’s lectures with a performance piece, Cornered, by Adrian Piper, the performative nature of his lecture is revealed.
Austin begins his lecture by stating that what he has to say is not difficult but that it is necessary (Austin 1). Austin believes that what he has to say is important because it is relevant to both linguists and philosophers and even though it affects both, little attention has been paid to it in the past. By contrast, Adrian’ Piper begins Cornered with a simple statement after a few seconds of silence: “I’m black.” After a pause, she begins again. “Now let’s deal with the social fact and the fact of my stating it, together. Maybe you don’t see why we have to deal with them together…But it’s not just my problem. It’s our problem.” Both Austin and Piper commence their lectures by stating an issue and starting a conversation about that issue. It is implied in both of their lectures that what they’re about to say isn’t relevant to them alone but is relevant to their audience as well. They both begin by performing what Austin would call an illocutionary act, utterances that have conventional and informative force ( Austin 109). While Piper perhaps has a more public stake in the reception of her work, Austin, too, is aiming to incite change in his audience by asking them to engage with him and use the concepts he is teaching. Both he and Piper aim at sparking conversation, which is at least one of the goals both set out to achieve.
It is safe to assume that the goals of both Piper and Austin were not unlike the goal of Austin’s “happy” performatives. Austin, who describes how to avoid the infelicities of performatives, seems to create a blueprint not only for language but for performances like Piper’s as well. The first tenant to avoid an infelicity describes a conventional procedure that has a conventional effect. Piper’s instillation itself might not be considered mainstream and conventional in itself, but the method of engaging and persuading recognize both that there is a conventional procedure which she is striving to challenge, and a conventional effect, which she discusses in great detail. Piper’s first few minutes of recording addresses the responses that her audience members might have in relation to her statement about her race.
Both Piper’s and Austin’s mediums of communication were primarily visual and auditory, though Piper’s art instillation is a recorded video and Austin’s lectures were later transcribed into a book. The intention and the aim of both lecturers despite the medium of their final product would involve engaging their audiences not only through their message but through their speech, appearance and method of delivery. Piper’s delivery is more noticeably and easily recognized because of the nature of her work, but Austin, too, must have understood the importance of delivery within his lectures.
Both lecturers address a specific audience in an intentional way. Piper preemptively addresses what she thinks the responses and concerns of her audience would be and Austin’s method for delivering his lecture shows an understanding of his audience. Austin uses humor to engage as well as examples of each concept he explains. The structure of his lecture is arguably as well thought-out as Piper’s and is possibly more complex because its success is dependent on the positive reception of his ideas.
Erin Hopkins PART 2
ReplyDeleteAt first, Austin’s work may not seem completely relevant to performance other than through its implications of writing or speaking, but Austin’s impact is lasting and important to the comprehension of speech as an act and performance as speech.
Patricia Valladolid
ReplyDeleteResponse to How to Do Things with Words
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As I move my lens towards the performative I do so in the same regard as philosopher, linguist J.L Austin; specifically his discussion on how language is always performative. In How to Do Things with Words author J.L Austin outlines two prominent theories one can be described as the abstract notion of the power of language and the other is a more practical evaluation of how language is performative in social settings. In reading his lectures, the tension of negotiating a space to understand both the abstract and practical was apparent and constantly in question. This tension can be said to be a result of J.L Austin’s own position as a philosopher and linguist. As he continues his lectures he is questioning power, subject/object, public space all in terms of language. I examine J.L Austin’s work in How to Do Things With Words for the way he negotiates the boundaries of language and how far they are challenged in everyday life.
If we assume all language is performative then we are also assuming the meanings behind our utterances are also performative. Austin is able to make this assertion by evaluating the total context of the use of language. Contextually, Austin is interested in the internal meaning and external response of utterances(Austin, 51). Austin comes to this point in his conversation only after he fines his distinction between the constative (language that describes) and perfomative (language that does) as unsatisfactory. One can understand that Austin is at this point becoming aware of the complexities within the performative. In lecture six Austin explores the performative as verbs, as the primary performative, and as explicit. By further investigating performative utterances, Austin begins to disentangle them from their primary relationship to constatives (Austin, 89). As he goes on to attach terms to each element in the exchange of
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ReplyDeletelanguage we are able to understand the full mode of how language functions in social settings and how language affects.
I will focus on the perlocutionary act or sequel, which Austin describes as the response to the locutionary(Austin, 101). If Austin’s intention is for us to focus on the context then responses in terms of perlocutionary are varied. To this he locates the connection between saying something and doing something (Austin, 91). This link speaks to the way we assume an intention and how might these assumptions lead to certain acts or responses. I am most interested in responses because of its organic or rather reactionary nature. We can also complicate this by looking at the position of the person providing the response, and how that position can provide some understanding for the response given.
In relation to J.L. Austin’s lectures the performance piece entitled “ Cornered” by Adrian Piper (1988) address a sequence of utterances and speech acts. To note Piper’s opening speech act, “ I am black,” can be considered in context with her performance. Piper is preforming a lecture style monologue. This monologue mimics or follows the tone and style of Austin’s work in How To do Things With Words. As she is aware of her audience she is also intending to move a white public. By explicitly stating, “ I am black,” Piper is removing herself from being an object, and at that moment creating a space for herself (subject) to exist. Aware of her personal position as a philosopher and artist Piper is working within both genres to move (get a response) her audience.
In terms of Performance Studies Austin’s work continues to be significant. The nature of Austin’s work speaks to a core understanding in the field of Performance Studies, which is what moves people and how is their performativity relative to their location. Modes by which we
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ReplyDeletespeak should also be contextualize, because if we consider language as inherently marginal then those who posses the power or tool of language are somewhat privileged. This argument is not directly addressed in Austin’s work, but once we begin to use speech act theory we then can push it towards critical theory in terms of race, class, gender and sexuality.
Austin’s attention to detail is often obsessive. I attribute this obsessing to the structure of language itself. As a linguist Austin is trained to understand language on a micro level, but as a philosopher he is trained towards generalizations. At the point of his obsessiveness he fails to locate multiple ways speech theory can in fact disrupt the structure of language. The potential of speech act to misfire is highly common, Austin’s anxiety of these misfires is evident in his discussion of them for a majority of his work. Speaking of failures I can think of language without connecting it to its failure. More specifically how is language failing communities that are ignored. Such that through the English language a woman of color is only able to communicate her positionality through a medium that was not created with her in mind, therefore her accessibility to it is much more complex that that of a white man.
This is where I turn to Adrian Piper’s “Cornered,” again, to provide me with an example of how a woman of color is in fact using speech act to speak of her positionaly, yet at the same time she is challenging Austin’s work through her use of performance. The utterance “I am Black,” moves Piper out of the corner and to the center because she is located race in a discourse that negates race and by centering race she is also center he use of language to speak of race and racism.
Sung Yeon Park
ReplyDeleteProfessor Jose Munoz, T.A. S. Pandit
PERF-GT 1000 001 Introduction to Performance Studies
June 13, 2011
Form of Doing
J. L. Austin explains his thoughts about “performative utterance” in his book, How to Do Things with Words. Austin mentions diverse theories related to performative utterance one by one with useful examples in his book. According to Austin, the performative utterance can be “derived, of course, from ‘perform’, the usual verb with the noun ‘action’: it indicates that the issuing of the utterance is the performing of an action – it is not normally thought of as just saying something” (6-7). As he states, the performative utterance is not just saying something, but also accompanies action, so it is more like language in daily life. This compilation about performative utterance is significant, especially us who study Performance Studies, because what Austin said connotes multiple meanings, including the importance of learning language, and understanding the culture of groups which use diverse languages. So, it helps us to understand and discuss various situations in many plays in depth. In terms of this, through access to performative utterance, we can easily explain and understand a universal principle of daily language use as we study the procedure of theory in languages. Therefore, Austin’s theory of performative utterance is very important to help comprehend about human’s language abilities and uses.
Later on, Austin states that the theory of speech acts is divided into three acts, which are the locutionary acts, the illocutionary acts and the perlocutionary acts. According to his summary, the locuionary acts are “roughly equivalent to uttering a certain sentence with a certain sense and reference, which again is roughly equivalent to ‘meaning’ in the traditional sense”. The illocutionary acts are “informing, ordering, warning, undertaking, &c., i.e. utterances which have a certain (conventional) force. The perlocutionary acts are “what we bring about or achieve by saying something, such as convincing, persuading, deterring, and even, say, surprising or misleading” (109). Austin distinguishes these three theories example conversations of daily life. Especially, illocutionary act has force, as it has features of performative utterance. These three speech acts are very important in communication because there are possibilities of losing or distorting meaning. Furthermore, miscommunication or misunderstanding might damage the story or text as a conversation structure.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of these three theories, I found an interesting connection from the video “Cornered” by Adrian Piper that we watched in class time. I thought that the video is very good example of Austin’s these three speech acts. At first, as a woman was speaking, gazing a camera, it shows how locutionary acts works in this video. Even though it was a video recording, the woman was talking to us saying “You are probably Black, too?” I thought that she wants us who are watching the video, to feel something from her speech. Later, she repeated that “It is our problem,” and added her strong feeling about racial issues. As in the title, the woman was seating the corner of wall. Definitely, all of her ways of speaking such as her voice, pose, pauses of speaking, gazing, mood and facial expressions look manipulated. Moreover, as the camera uses zoom in while she is stressing her point, this video seemed more like performance. As she asked us “What are you doing to do,” something to notice here was her manner of speaking. Her speaking ultimately had force toward the listener, along with illocutionary acts. We understand that her intention is to warn us, and that we should not ignore this problem. Lastly, since the video made me think seriously about racial issues as an Asian in America, it also demonstrates the perlocutionary acts. I was trying to find my own identity while I was watching the video, and this process makes me reflect on issues that, to my shame, I do not usually think about this problem seriously.
In conclusion, in my opinion, the place of Austin in Performance Studies is very significant because the theory what he established in his book was closely connected with our daily life as an evidence of the video “Cornered” shows. From studying his theories in performative utterance, we can communicate with each other without misunderstanding. Moreover, the study examines not only daily conversation, but also literary text’s dialogues and their impact on the integrity of translation.
Book:
How To Do Things with Words by J. L. Austin
Video:
Cornered by Adrian Piper
Verda Habif
ReplyDeleteN11134358
Introduction to Performance Studies
Report #1
06.15.2011
Performativity: Reflecting on J.L. Austin and How to Do Things with Words
What is language? What kind of a relationship is there between language and the world in which we live in? What is meaning? What renders possible an expression/statement to be meaningful? What kinds of activities do we perform in using language? What is communication? How can reality/actuality be interpreted through different ways of responding to these questions and how does one’s interpretation of reality/actuality shape our understanding of these concepts?
Theories of language have become increasingly central in the domains of philosophical and cultural discourses since the 20th century. Many philosophers of language have tried to address the above questions among others. One in particular, J. L. Austin, a professor of moral philosophy challenged the generally accepted theories of language-meaning through his theory of performativity of language in mid 20th century. Austin diverging from his predecessors, proposed a perception of language as a whole and to interpret elements of language within a context and called this “the total speech act” (1962).
As a philosopher of morals Austin’s take of the above matters can be said to be rather in between everyday practical use of language and the philosophy that lies at the basis of it. He says at the end of his lectures in Harvard that are put together in “How to Do Things with Words” (1962) after his death, “I have purposely not embroiled the general theory with philosophical problems (...) I leave to my readers the real fun of applying it in philosophy” (p.164). Although he doesn’t get too much into the philosophical implications of his propositions, his analysis brings about the discussions questioned above.
Austin places sentences as opposed to words on the basis of his approach to language. Furthermore, challenges the predominant meaning based approaches in the theories of language during his time, which take into consideration only the validity of statements as of truthfulness and falseness in relation to their meanings in general. He introduces instead, two new terms to define situations within their own contexts, namely felicitous and infelicitous. Therefore, using language becomes an act of doing that is a response/reaction by the speaking “I” to the stimulating circumstances. This reaction and the circumstances that bring it about are the keys to place his interpretation of meaning. The speaking “I” performs by issuing performative utterances. In this sense when one makes up a sentence to express something to someone he does not necessarily state something that is true or false, right or wrong, rather performs a felicitous or an infelicitous act of doing. He classifies the contextual situations they result to one of these descriptions, using terms such as misfires and abuses. Another set of categories that he uses to outline performative utterances can be listed as following: verdictives, exercitives, commissives, behabitives, expositives. (1962) Finally, Austin comes to the conclusion of distinguishing certain things that one does in saying something as locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts; locutionary, indicating the meaning of a statement itself, illocutionary, the contextual function of the act, perlocutionary, the results of the act upon the listener. (1962, p.108) Last, but not least one will easily note that all this theory presumes the speaking “I” as the center of the communication process.
If we are to elaborate to other spheres from his theory Austin provides us with a major concept, “performativity” that he introduces to the field of linguistics in 1955. The term plays a critical role today in reconsidering concepts in history, culture and art. Although questions with regards to the implications of the term remain to be disputed it would perhaps be plausible to say that it defines a relationship with actuality. (actual: existing in fact and now, Oxford Dictionary of English) Let us take this concept in terms of bringing something into existence in everyday reality; and let us not forget the other aspect of “now” inherent in its meaning. According to Austin, sometimes language does bring things into actuality. He in fact describes “performative utterance” as “issuing of the utterance is the performing of an action” (1962, p.6) A critical question that arises at this point is whether all performances are performative or do they intend to be as such?
ReplyDeleteAdrien Piper’s performance “Cornered” (1988) has a similar effect, manipulating its audience and asking them directly to take an action. The contextual contract here is the one between a piece of art and its audience. However, it is questionable whether the circumstances here are the same ones that both parties voluntarily commit themselves to. Or the “I” here from whose point of view Austin claims that his theory works, tend to constitute power over the other? Is Piper’s work itself performative or does it have the potential to be performative and would be performative if only it would have happened in a different context say of a social political one and succeed in activating its audience satisfying Austin’s definition of a perlocutionary act? Or does performativity come to being in the tension in between the “I” and the “other” where this potential lies?
Ana Chavez
ReplyDeletePERF-GT 1000.002 – Sujay Pandit
Reading/Lecture response for June 13, 2011
In How to Do Things With Words J. L. Austin playfully navigates between the disciplines of linguistics and philosophy trying to straddle the world of the concrete and abstract. What we are examining are actually transcriptions of his 1955 William James Lectures at Harvard University. These lectures at one point were performed. This is important to note because the structure of the lectures reveal a great deal about why his interest lies in the space between linguistics and philosophy. For him, the complexities that ordinary language can create within the world of the performative and within meaning through the structure of the lectures. He wishes against the “over-simplification, which one might be tempted to call the occupational disease of philosophers if it were not their occupation.”(38) In a piecemeal way, we begin to understand his unhappiness in practicing outside of this middle ground between the two disciplines mentioned. They do not satisfy him, and to use his terminology, when practiced separately, create infelicities within Austin.
I want to keep stressing “ordinary” in this reading of his work because immediately in the first lecture he expresses that in the “widespread and obvious”, or the ordinary, a phenomenon is occurring. The fact that specific attention is not being paid to this phenomenon, allows for a great deal of wiggle room on his part to lure us with the familiar everyday utterances only to disrupt the relationships our understanding of our comprehension of them in order to see “what we can screw out of language..”(123) The text is elaborate and reads like the notes of a mathematician, presenting rules and then exposing the variables that might upset the rules. There is a constant revision happening which you realize is the disruption he employs and enjoys so much. This disruption is what exploits the possibilities of the performative, or speech act, at the same time that it shatters the concreteness of linguistics. But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. Without all the rouse and tease, I will mention the distinctions he is makes between terms in order to talk about speech act and theorize its usefulness.
Part 2
ReplyDeleteHe begins by making a distinction between the statement which reports or describes versus the utterance that performs. The first he identifies as the constative and the latter as the performative. He then lets us off the hook in terms of engaging with what is true or false only to ask us to consider instead the state of happy and unhappy. “Besides the uttering of the words of the so called performative, a good many of other things have as a general rule to be right or go right if we are to be said to have happily brought off our action”(14) In order to explore understand right, he beings to classify cases in which things go wrong, also termed infelicities. The infelicities describe that which doesn’t match up. They locate in great detail flaws in procedure, non-compliant persons, failures to execute, and even consider the emotional mismatches as sites for infelicities. Needless to there are many chances for things not to match up and well isn’t that one way to paint social life and why Austin might find this topic of interest as a philosopher?
We move forward now to locate the terms that will help us identify, with less fuss, the utterance that indeed is doing something. He states that the locutionary act is meaning being stated and the illocutionary act is that meaning put in context. Finally the perlocutionary act is one that elicits reaction, it produces effect. This is where I want to jump to Adrien Piper’s video installation “Cornered” (1988) and work through some of these terms.
What I enjoyed most is her success in using the “widespread and obvious” language as a perlocutionary act to talk about the “race problem” in the United States. She begins the video by stating “I am black” in a dry tone, any feeling or emotion removed in her utterance. This demonstrates awareness that the utterance spoken any other way may elicit reactions from the audience preemptively. Such a misfire would only repeat the opportunity for the audience to walk away from “problem” as they might in everyday life. There is an amazing amount of control and composure she executes in this piece that contributes to the success of captivating the audience long enough to corner them instead. Very quickly she begins to weave in and out locutionary and illocutionary acts, each one further enabling her to succeed in the perlocution. “Now let’s deal with the social fact and the fact of my stating it together. Maybe you don’t see why we have to deal with it together. Maybe you think this is just my problem and that I should just deal with it myself. But it’s not just my problem. It’s our problem. For example, it’s our problem if you feel I am making an unnecessary fuss about my racial identity, if you don’t see why I have to announce it this way. Well, if you feel that my letting people know I am not white is an unnecessary fuss you must feel that the right and proper course of action for me to take is to pass as white.” As each perloctuion is introduced, the next one is at the ready to confront the audiences’ response to the initial perloctuionary act. Through this piece, Like Austin’s work, she slowly reveals a complicated phenomenon which is noticed but hardly paid specific attention to. Her piece is successful because regardless of what the audience chooses to do after or during watching this, regardless a choice has to be made. It’s a wonderful way of temporarily dispelling the “race problem” onto the viewer in a very real way.
Works Cited
Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1962.
Piper, Adrian. Cornered (1988). Video