We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
How to Read How to Do Things with Words: On Sbisà's Proof by Contradiction.
- Authors
Wanderer, Jeremy; Townsend, Leo
- Abstract
Midway through How to Do Things With Words, J.L. Austin's announces a "fresh start" in his efforts to characterize the ways in which speech is action, and introduces a new conceptual framework from the one he has been using up to that point. Against a common reading that portrays this move as simply abandoning the framework so far developed, Marina Sbisà contends that the text takes the argumentative form of a proof by contradiction, such that the initial framework plays an instrumental role as part of a proof in favour of the subsequent one. Despite agreeing with Sbisà's broad instrumentalist approach, we argue that her regimentation of Austin's narrative into a proof by contradiction ultimately fails - both as a proof and as an interpretation of Austin. Instead, we suggest that a better way of interpreting the peculiar structure of How to Do Things With Words is as a pedagogical exercise whose point is to bring a concealed alternative into view in a manner that also explains its initial concealment, and that this approach provides richer resources for supporting Sbisà's own conventionalist understanding of illocution than that afforded by reading the text as a proof by contradiction.
- Subjects
AUSTIN, J. L. (John Langshaw), 1911-1960; SPEECH acts (Linguistics); NARRATIVES; PROOF theory; HYPOTHESIS
- Publication
Philosophia, 2024, Vol 52, Issue 1, p101
- ISSN
0048-3893
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s11406-024-00714-8