Acceptance Speech

Through the beginning of President Obama's acceptance speech on election night, he poses a series of questions and then tells us that "tonight is the answer." It follows Austin's analysis of how equivalent performatives can be written in very different ways. While Austin compares "I order you to turn right" and simply "turn right," (58) this very much is about the actor of the performative. More conventionally it could be said that tonight answers. Instead of a verb, however, answer is a noun in the sentence, which gives it emphasis, as the one answer. Much of Austin's analysis has thus far looked at why and what kind of performatives exist, from explicit to descriptive. Here, a very important part of the utterance is the for what. Changing tonight from just doing an action to embodying something more, the answer, is more about character than form. That said, we can also see that variations in performatives matter, and Austin's analysis is clearly operating over consequential differences.