How To Do Things With words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955 - Hardcover

Austin, J.L.

9780198245537: How To Do Things With words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 019824553X ISBN 13: 9780198245537

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 1975

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This work sets out Austin's conclusions in the field to which he directed his main efforts for at least the last ten years of his life. Starting from an exhaustive examination of his already well-known distinction between performative utterances and statements, Austin here finally abandons that distinction, replacing it with a more general theory of 'illocutionary forces' of utterances which has important bearings on a wide variety of philosophical problems.

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Review

Immensely worth reading...What is made available here is a choice work by one of the most acute and original minds that England has produced in our time...The myth that Oxford philosophers in general, and Austin in particular, do nothing but examine the details of ordinary linguistic usage should be exploded once and for all by this new book.

Austin had an extraordinarily keen ear for the subtleties of English and a remarkable sensitivity to the aptness of one expression as opposed to another in a given linguistic situation. To read him is not only a pleasure; it is also to learn much about English and to gain a new respect for its proper use.