Austin on Meaning and Use

• Authors: Marina Sbisa
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Austin rejected the objectification of “meanings” and was also critical of the identification of meaning with truth-conditions. Much of his work appears to be inspired by a conception of meaning as use. In particular, apparently at least, his “performative utterances” are utterances whose understanding amounts to the understanding of their use. But Austin did not endorse the tendency, common in Ordinary Language Philosophy, to explain the meaning of linguistic expressions in terms of their use alone. His distinction between locutionary meaning and illocutionary force was designed to avoid such a reduction. But it is unclear whether (and if so, how) speech act theory can escape paying the price of a new objectification of meaning (as consisting of “propositions” to which “forces” apply).

Keywords

EN

illocutionary force; performative utterance; sense and reference; Ordinary Language Philosophy

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Journal: Lodz Papers in Pragmatics
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 5-16

Dates

published

2012-06

online

2012-06

Contributors

author

Marina Sbisa

• University of Trieste

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/lpp-2012-0002