Austin in the Lab: Empirically reconsidering the constative-performative distinction

Abstract

Austin’s groundbreaking distinction between constative and performative utterances and his investigation of how to act in saying something initiated a whole new research programme in linguistics and philosophy of language. Within this programme, the arguments and discussions concerning the constative-performative distinction are based on linguistic intuitions. However, generally, they are only based on the respective linguist’s or philosopher’s own intuitions. This fact makes the whole programme seem incomplete because the linguistic intuitions of native speakers should be considered an important contribution which, so far, is mostly missing. With this article, we contribute to closing this gap by empirically investigating native speakers’ linguistic intuitions with respect to the following four aims: Aim 1 is concerned with the question of whether Austin’s criteria for distinguishing between performatives and constatives work. In order to achieve Aim 2, we introduce a new criterion for distinguishing between constatives and performatives, representing what we call the event character of performatives. For Aim 3, we evaluate Austin’s presumably strongest argument to reject the constative-performative distinction which we call the Constative Expositive Argument. Aim 4 is concerned with the much-discussed question of whether performatives have truth values and, thus, are statements. In order to achieve the four aims, we present the findings of an online study comparing native speakers’ responses to vignettes containing constative or performative utterances.