Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1993. [Vol. 1.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 21)

STUDIES - Csaba Czeglédi: On Constative and Performative Utterances

be used to make a promise. But (3) does not contain an explicit performative verb. Therefore utterances like (3) are called implicit performative utterances. 1.3 Locution and illocution When considering "how many senses there are in which to say something is to do something, or in saying something we do something, and even by saying something we do something" Austin (1975: 94) concludes that a speech act may and should be divided into several different acts. I mention only two of these here: the locutionary act and the illocutionary act A speaker performs a locutionary act when he says something in the words of a language in accordance with the grammatical rules of that language. An illocutionary act is performed when the speaker attributes some „ communicative function or force to his utterance. If, e.g., (3) is said in a natural speech situation, the locutionary act will be performed in saying a grammatically well-formed English sentence. The illocutionary act will be performed in saying (3) with the communicative intention of making a promise. We perform both a locutionary and an illocutionary act in every utterance we say. 2. The problem: performatives versus constatives After this brief introduction to the fundamental categories of the theoretical apparatus, let us turn to the problem. The last explication of the performative

—constative distinction is found in Austin (1962) and Austin (1975). Let us now consider carefully what exactly the distinction consisted in at various points in the explication of the idea. Henceforth, all page references will be to the 1975 edition edited by J. 0. Urmson and Marina Sbisa (Austin 1975) unless otherwise indicated. Austin (1975) highlights the performative

—constative distinction through the analysis of performative utterances of the kind illustrated below (a

—c). These performative utterances, as opposed to constatives, have the distinguishing property that to issue them "is not to describe my doing of what I should be said in so uttering to be doing or to state that I am doing it: 11