Words and deeds: performatives in political practices and discourses

The publication of Austin's lectures was one of the critical events for both philosophy of language and theoretical linguistics of the second half of the twentieth century. After the systematization made by John Searle, the theory of speech acts and performatives has acquired a much more rigorous form in terms of its linguistic design, but by ignoring a number of extralinguistic factors determining communicative behavior. The author offers an alternative reading of Austin's work in order to highlight all those clarifications and reservations that have remained beyond the boundaries of Searle's interpretation. Such a reading of the lectures and the synopsis of these reservations make it possible to construct anotherversion, where the provisions considered, but not developed by Austin, might be its cornerstones. Instead of further purification, the theory may be saturated by consideration of phenomena that Austin treated as «non-pure», «non-direct» and «parasitic». The above-mentioned aspects have become particularly noticeable with regard to descriptions of political and social practices. The standard theory of performatives describes some specifically emphasized «emasculated» situations (e.g., speech etiquette or formulas of politeness, etc.), but it has proven ineffective beyond the descriptions of standardized situations (Searle). Another direction was the emphasis on aspects that could transform the theory of performatives into a theory of social action. (Derrida, Bourdieu, Butler). In the last decade, a range of conceptions considering the possibility of transcending from speech acts to actions and situations (Sbisà, Turner, May, Capone, Ilyin) have emerged. Considering these approaches, we also propose to supplement the theory of performatives with the notion of meaning and meaningful action. This allows for the convertibility of verbal and non-verbal mechanisms and the correlation of different modes of communication and social interaction.

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