Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Performative Utterances and Avoiding Failure [Danielle Trzil]

1. The verification theory of meaning can be accused of committing descriptive fallacy because sentences can be said without actually being true or false. The verification theory of meaning stands true when we use language to state or report something, but when we that utterance has no truth value then descriptive fallacy occurs. 
2. Whereas when an unsuccessful statement or report is false, and unsuccessful performative utterance is mostly just thought down upon. For example, if asked if someone wants blue or green, and they responded with "I choose yellow!". That utterance isn't necessarily false even though in the context it was not applicable or not simply A or B. This can help our understanding of language by further analyzing these different utterances/statements and examining how we use them and how that is further understood by others. 
3. One question I have is how he would define the middle ground of constatives and performatives. When someone says "I welcome you here." but acts unwelcoming, why would this not be a true/false statement? Also,  can't the answer "How do you feel?" can be performative, but "Do you feel happy?" be true/false, even though they get at the same outcome of finding out how the person feels. I guess I just don't see it as a black or white definition to certain sentences and interactions. 

1 comment:

  1. I am not sure that answers to the question "How do yo feel?" are actually performative. For example, if I were to answer "[I feel] happy," this answer is a constative describing how I already feel. Saying "I feel happy," does not change the speaker's inner emotions or perform any other action, and thus is not performative.

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